ã€ŠHereafterã€‹


 Chapter I: Cosmic Joke

    Chapter I: Cosmic Joke

    I came to slowly to the blare of a screeching alarm klaxon and an air thick with heat and smoke. Heavy eyelids blinked open to flashing red warning lights that flared on, off, on, off, off, over and over again.

    For a moment, I forgot where I was and how I¡¯d gotten there, and then I tried to move and my shoulder shrieked out with agony that lanced up my spine and straight to my brain.

    ¡°Ngh!¡±

    With an aborted scream, I collapsed back against the wall I was leaning on, and when I looked over, a crumpled pod shaped into a vaguely cylindrical tube pressed down on my shoulder. The very top had been shorn clear off, and the glass door was ripped away, ending in jagged fragments near the bottom.

    Oh, I thought. My coffin.

    It came back to me, then, the procession of events that had led me to where I was. The emergency alert, the rushed briefing from Director Animusphere, all of us prospective Masters racing towards our Klein Coffins, with Team A out in front.

    Team A, our crack squad of badasses, the vanguard of our operations throughout time and space. Each and every one of them a rare talent or possessed of an exceptional ability, with storied bloodlines going back hundreds of years. Calling them the best of the best probably wasn¡¯t all that inaccurate.

    On paper, the rest of them were so much more impressive than their final member, the tall girl with the magical prosthetic arm and not a single drop of magic in her lineage. Especially Kirshtaria and Ophelia, who had such storied heritage that it was hard not to hear the rumors about their abilities.

    On paper.

    I had serious doubts any of them had anything on half the shit I¡¯d somehow managed to live through and come out intact ¡ª mostly. Mostly intact. Hell, sometimes I had trouble believing some of the stuff I¡¯d survived, and I¡¯d been there through it all.

    But I hadn¡¯t gotten much chance to see how good they were, so there was no way of knowing.

    Where was I?

    I took in a smokey breath and my head spun. Oh. Yeah, that probably wasn¡¯t doing me any good, was it?

    As the alarms were going off, we had all climbed into our assigned coffins. The support team up in the command room had started going through a checklist of everything that needed to be ironed out and established before our Rayshift, with the Director standing in the middle of the room, watching us prepare.

    And then¡­ Then, there¡¯d been an explosion. Everything there was fuzzy and disjointed. I remembered being thrown about inside my own coffin, not knowing what was going on, the crash of breaking glass. Somewhere in there I must have hit my head or something and lost consciousness.

    I blinked at the coffin pinning me down. Which meant it must have been mine, didn¡¯t it? With that huge slab that was sitting on top of it, it falling the way it had was probably the only reason I was still alive and hadn¡¯t been crushed. Small mercies.

    Not that it would do me much good. The thing that had saved my life was also going to get me killed, because I was trapped in a burning room with rapidly dwindling oxygen.

    I cast my gaze around the Rayshift chamber ¡ª as much as I could, at least. The haze of the flames and the thick smoke rising towards the ceiling made it difficult to see much of anything at all.

    What had happened to everyone else? Had they managed to evacuate? Was I the last person still here, left behind simply because no one had been able to find me?

    What about the rest of Team A? Had any of them managed to make it out? Were they, even now, helping to pull others from the rubble? Or had they too been knocked senseless by the explosion and were lying in their coffins, pinned against the floor by the wreckage and debris? Maybe I had just been particularly lucky, and they had all been crushed or killed outright.

    Taylor Hebert, the last Master of Team A. Somehow, despite all the odds, I had survived when everyone else died. Again. Was it too early to call this a pattern, or was I catching on far later than I should have?

    I guess it didn¡¯t really matter, since we were all already dead. Our bodies simply hadn¡¯t figured it out, yet.

    A chuckle vibrated past my lips, low and unheard.

    How ironic. I survived fights with eldritch monstrosities, went toe to toe with a man who could transform into a dragon and came out the other side unhurt, squared off against a group of psychos who routinely slaughtered entire towns, pulled myself through getting sheared in half, lost my arm ¡ª twice in about as many days ¡ª and bounced back, made it through the apocalypse mostly intact, and when the next world-ending event kicked off, I was going to die before we could even get past the starting line.

    A two-year extension, Contessa? Was that all that she could give me, after everything? At least if I was going to die so soon, couldn¡¯t I have gone with dignity, in those final moments of slipping sanity, or else obliviously with the rest of mankind, never seeing the end coming?

    Instead, I was going to end as I began: in the fire, unable to do anything about it.

    Lung¡¯s grin would have been a sight to behold.

    A brief surge of defiance sputtered in my chest at the thought, a burst of emotion that echoed what I¡¯d felt when I¡¯d goaded him into burning my mangled arm off during that final battle, but a look down at the floor I was sitting on reminded me that my right leg was trapped under rubble. Not broken, for whatever that was worth just then, at least as far as I could tell, but I wasn¡¯t getting it free anytime soon. I¡¯d just waste what little of my dwindling strength still left to me trying and failing.

    Maybe I could¡¯ve sawed it off with my knife, if I¡¯d been so single-mindedly determined to live, but I doubted it would have done more than make me die faster, and besides that, my left shoulder was still pinned beneath both my coffin and that huge and undoubtedly very heavy slab. It didn¡¯t feel crushed, but that could just have been because the pressure on my shoulder had left that entire side of my chest basically numb.

    I wasn¡¯t getting out of there. Not unless I spontaneously became Alexandria and developed the strength to lift massively heavy objects.

    My sigh jerked into a coughing fit as my lungs tried to expel the acrid smoke that choked the air, and the edge of my coffin pinning me ground painfully against my collarbone.

    Maybe I should have just retired, instead of letting myself get drawn into this whole ¡°save the world¡± thing again. Just found a plot of land somewhere and settled down, or chosen a random city in America to plant my flag and move on with my life. Even if the end result was the same, two years of peace after two years of preparing for the end of the world, sprinting towards every possible way of stopping it and grasping every imaginable straw, just those two years would have been worth it, wouldn¡¯t they?

    ¡°Heh. Like I have it in me to just sit around and do nothing.¡±

    Who was I kidding? The instant Professor Lev and Olga Marie told me their organization¡¯s mission statement, they¡¯d had me hooked. In the end, leaving the important things up to everyone else had never been something I¡¯d figured out how to do. Maybe, if I¡¯d been dropped anywhere else, I could¡¯ve figured it out, but being set on Chaldea¡¯s doorstep had made the decision for me before I¡¯d even woken up.

    RAYSHIFT SYSTEM TRANSFERRING TO FINAL STAGE, the announcement echoed. COORDINATES: JANUARY 30TH, 2004 CE. FUYUKI, JAPAN.

    ¡°Mash!¡± I heard a voice calling distantly. ¡°Mash!¡±

    I looked around, blinking heavy eyelids, my head shrouded in fog. I still couldn¡¯t see anyone through the red flames and the haze of heat. As far as I could tell, I was still the only living thing in that room, and even then, it wouldn¡¯t be for long.

    Maybe I¡¯d just been hearing things, then. Hallucinating as I died. Funny. This would be the second time, and I wasn¡¯t having my life flash before my eyes this time, either.

    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    LAPLACE CONVERSION PROTECTION ESTABLISHED. ADDITIONAL FACTOR FRAME TOWARDS THE SINGULARITY SECURED.

    ¡°Geez,¡± I mumbled, ¡°you¡¯d think when they built this thing, they would¡¯ve programmed it to realize when all of the Master candidates were dead or dying. What¡¯s it going to do, send our corpses back in time?¡±

    I set my hand against the edge of the coffin pinning me down, and I tried again to slip out from under it ¡ª I couldn¡¯t bite back a cry as my bones ground together under its weight and a sharp pain lanced up my whole left side. Even when I pushed past that to pull myself out, because pain and I were old friends, there just wasn¡¯t enough wiggle room for me to manage it.

    ¡°Guh¡­ Ha¡­ Ha¡­¡±

    My whole body sagged, and I gulped down breaths of suffocating air that choked me even as I breathed it in. My vision itself was starting to blur, now, and my eyelids that had struggled to stay open struggled even more. Everything felt weak and tired, and it was so very tempting to just close my eyes and let it go.

    I¡¯d been ready for the end, last time. After everything, I wasn¡¯t just prepared for it, hadn¡¯t just accepted it, I¡¯d known it was coming, known it would come. For the things I¡¯d done, there hadn¡¯t been any forgiveness, and those violations would damn me just as surely as those final two bullets had. What I¡¯d been given instead was mercy.

    Maybe this was just my sins catching up with me.

    But now¡­ Now¡­ I wasn¡¯t ready to give up. I wasn¡¯t ready to just lay down and die. I wanted to get up and fight it, face down the end and bloody its nose, at the very least. It was so very ironic, then, that this time, there was nothing I could do but to give up and let go.

    Scion, so close to a god that there hadn¡¯t been a meaningful difference, and I¡¯d managed to do something. This time, a bit of falling rubble was what would do me in, and I couldn¡¯t even budge it.

    UNSUMMON PROGRAM SET. MASTERS, PLEASE ENTER THE FINAL ADJUSTMENTS.

    The faint blue glow of the globe set in the center of the room vanished and turned red. The shining dots that represented human civilization had all winked out and disappeared. The globe itself roiled with an ominous orange light, like magma bubbling up at the center of a volcanic basin, or the flaring of the sun as spots of darker color splotched its surface.

    This was it, then. The end of the world. Mankind, wiped out in one, fell swoop.

    And here I was, watching it happen helplessly.

    It burned in my gut, thinking about it like that. Being unable to do anything rankled, far, far worse than it ever had at Winslow. I didn¡¯t think I was the kind of person to let my own hype swell my head, but it felt like I should have been able to do something. I¡¯d already saved the world once before ¡ª numerous, uncountable worlds, more than all the stars in the skies ¡ª shouldn¡¯t I have been able to save it again?

    No. Because this time, everyone who could have helped me was already dead, and I had no powers anymore, no bugs to weave lines of silk and lift this block off of me just enough to escape. No Bitch to get one of her dogs to lever it up, no Atlas to do the same, no Golem, no Defiant to saw through it with nano-thorns.

    I was helpless.

    WARNING TO OBSERVATION STAFF. CHALDEAS¡¯ CONDITION HAS CHANGED.

    NOW REWRITING SHEBA¡¯S NEAR-FUTURE OBSERVATIONAL DATA.

    UNABLE TO DETECT THE EXISTENCE OF MANKIND ON EARTH FOR THE NEXT ONE-HUNDRED YEARS.

    UNABLE TO CONFIRM HUMAN SURVIVORS. UNABLE TO GUARANTEE HUMANITY¡¯S FUTURE.

    Another sigh hissed out of my mouth.

    That was it, wasn¡¯t it? The coffin nail. The device designed to read the presence of people on the planet¡¯s surface for the next century had just said there weren¡¯t any. Shy of seeing it for myself, that was probably the best confirmation I was going to get.

    CENTRAL BULKHEAD WILL NOW BE SEALED, a different voice announced. ONE-HUNDRED-EIGHTY SECONDS UNTIL INTERNAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURE.

    Something in the distance rumbled, and it vibrated the floor beneath me. The only thing I could think of it being was the big, thick, emergency steel doors, sealing off the fire and the room to keep things from spreading and getting worse. Not that it really mattered, if the world really had ended.

    But it meant that I officially had no way out. No rescue was coming. No one was going to show up and pull me out. I and everyone else in here had been written off for dead.

    ¡°Wish I could¡¯ve seen you guys one more time,¡± I murmured.

    Lisa¡­

    We¡¯d only really spent a few months together, and then the few short days that were Gold Morning. If you counted it towards the last time she and I had just been able to hang out, without any of the pressures of all of the shit happening getting in the way, it really had been more like four years since we¡¯d spoken.

    I¡¯d known going into it that I would never get the chance to see them again in this new world, but even so, I wished I could have seen her and Rachel and all the others one last time.

    BASELINE FOR MASTER VITALS COULD NOT BE ESTABLISHED. RAYSHIFT REQUIREMENTS NOT MET.

    A morbid chuckle vibrated out of my mouth. ¡°That¡¯s because we¡¯re all dead.¡±

    Confirmation, at least. Guess none of the others managed to make it out, either. So much for the crack squad of badasses ¡ª none of us had even managed to last long enough to make it to the first mission, let alone all the way through it. At least they¡¯d all died fairly quickly, then, instead of this long, drawn out agony.

    What about the rest of the world? Was it even just this one, or was this whatever-it-was that killed us widespread enough to touch other worlds, too? Lisa, Rachel, Aisha, Dinah, Theo, everyone I¡¯d ever known or cared about, had it been as quick and painless for them, too? Or were they still alive on some alternate world, unaware that this one was even now falling apart? Unaware that I¡¯d even lived past the end of everything before, too, and wasn¡¯t going to make it that far, this time?

    I didn¡¯t do hope all that well. Hoping had never gotten me much of anywhere. But I didn¡¯t have anything else, just then. There was nothing for me to do, sitting there helplessly like I was, except to hope that my friends were living and smiling, completely oblivious to this new mess I¡¯d found myself in, or that if they had gone, they¡¯d gone swiftly and without suffering.

    SEARCHING FOR QUALIFYING MASTER CANDIDATES¡­ SEARCHING¡­ SEARCHING¡­

    FOUND.

    I blinked. ¡°You can¡¯t mean me.¡±

    I was pinned beneath my coffin and a giant piece of rubble, my entire left side was numb, I had no idea if my leg was even still intact, let alone unbroken, and we shouldn¡¯t forget that I wasn¡¯t even in one of the coffins that they¡¯d spent months drilling into our heads were essential for the process. In what way did I qualify as a Master candidate at that moment?

    RESETTING CONTACT WITH MASTER CANDIDATES NUMBERS NINE, FORTY-SEVEN, AND FORTY-EIGHT.

    Nine, forty-seven, and forty-eight?

    I tried to hone my mind, to focus on those numbers and put a name, or at least a face, to them. Nine was mine, so I guess the system¡¯s standards for ¡°qualifying Master candidates¡± had a couple of glaring loopholes, but I couldn¡¯t remember anything about forty-seven and forty-eight. Newbies, they had to be, because the numbers went in order of recruitment and there were only forty-eight Master candidates that had been brought into the orientation meeting, but beyond that¡­

    Recalling anything else was a struggle. My head was stuffy and my thoughts were getting ever more sluggish. I thought¡­ maybe one of them had red hair? I¡­ I remembered thinking how strange it was, because she was apparently as Japanese as they came and there hadn¡¯t been a trace of hair dye. Red roots and everything.

    Nothing else was coming to me. The color blue, but what it was connected to was beyond me.

    BEGINNING UNSUMMON PROGRAM.

    Whoever it was, it meant I would at least not die alone. For whatever that might have been worth, when the only thing I had to let me know that was a monotone voice announcing another¡¯s presence over a loudspeaker.

    I wasn¡¯t a stranger to the idea. My memories of those final moments weren¡¯t entirely clear, but I remembered being utterly alone, having run away from everyone and everything I cared about so that I didn¡¯t hurt them by accident. I remembered dying there, kneeling in the dirt, hardly able to even think about standing, let alone doing it. I remembered Contessa, the cold comfort of the single human being who would be there, when it was all over.

    I remembered two bullets. The stars, so vast and distant. The universe, so impossibly big.

    As I gazed hazily up at the globe of Chaldeas, the rotating panels reflecting its red glow, I found it this moment not all that different from that one.

    BEGINNING SPIRITRON CONVERSION.

    What would happen to us? I could only wonder about it morbidly. Without the supposedly vital coffins, would we be strewn across all of spacetime, decohering into scattered strings of molecules that were dumped into random times and places? Would we simply evaporate as whatever mechanism was supposed to affirm our existence in the past failed? Or would we simply arrive dead, corpses thrown to the ground, hearts stopped and brains stilled?

    Or would we wind up stranded in the past, wandering ghosts clinging to whatever semblance of life we could manage, because while our souls ¡ª and hadn¡¯t learning those existed been a kick in the teeth ¡ª had been sent back, our bodies had been left behind to burn in the fire?

    RAYSHIFT IN 3¡­ 2¡­ 1¡­

    I couldn¡¯t say. I¡¯d read through the manuals they¡¯d given us way back when on how this was all supposed to work at least a dozen times, and every time, I¡¯d found something else that went completely over my head. Technical specifications that required a degree in mechanical engineering that I just didn¡¯t have, or else magecraft that ¡°just worked, don¡¯t question it,¡± brought in by one of the magicians on loan from the mysterious Mage¡¯s Association.

    Even the coffins worked on some Tinker-esque bullshit thing about being both alive and dead simultaneously until they were opened. Something about quantum uncertainty and Schrodinger¡¯s cat? It was a whole lot of stuff that I didn¡¯t know anything about, because at the end of the day, I wasn¡¯t a physicist who had spent her entire life studying high concept math and theoretical quantum interactions or a mage with a pedigree in spacetime manipulation.

    It was a bunch of stuff I just had to take on faith ¡ª which, being fair, was basically what passengers and powers had been like, in another life ¡ª and trust that others knew the things I didn¡¯t.

    There was only one thing I knew for sure, and it didn¡¯t require a PhD in astrology or a research grant from some blueblood with a thousand year lineage.

    ALL PROCEDURES CLEARED.

    We were already dead. Our bodies just hadn¡¯t figured it out, yet.

    BEGINNING FIRST ORDER VERIFICATION.

 Chapter II: Inauspicious Beginnings

    Chapter II: Inauspicious Beginnings

    Somewhat ironically, the first thing I noticed was the hunk of rock digging into one of my kidneys.

    Not the heat of the flames that smoldered what seemed like everywhere around me. Not the hard street I was lying on. Not the thick smell of smoke that lingered and clung to everything. It wasn¡¯t even the fact that I was no longer pinned beneath a huge piece of rubble.

    No. The thing that I noticed first was the sharp, jabbing annoyance pressing into my back just an inch or two to the left of my spine, so insistent that I had no idea how it hadn¡¯t woken me up sooner.

    I rolled over, grunting, and my hand smacked against something hard and very much solid.

    Ow.

    My nose wrinkled, and when I cracked open my eyes, I realized quite suddenly that I was no longer in Chaldea.

    My first thought was actually that I might be in Hell.

    I was never really a believer in any sort of religion. The Heberts were technically a Christian family, in the same sense as anyone else who paid the idea lip service was, but if we¡¯d ever gone to church on Sundays, I¡¯d been so young that I didn¡¯t remember it. Later on, well, it got harder to believe in a benevolent, omnipotent god watching over everything when cities got wiped off the map once every three months or so.

    But if there was a Hell, I wouldn¡¯t have been surprised to find myself there when I finally died for good.

    After the funny jolt that hit me in the stomach, though, I thought better of it and smirked at my own melodrama. Fire and brimstone? A city destroyed, with buildings collapsed and everything falling apart? That wasn¡¯t Hell. That was Brockton Bay on a Tuesday.

    Gingerly, I pulled myself to my feet and looked around. Aside the fading ache from that hunk of broken asphalt that had been trying to gouge out my kidney, nothing seemed broken or injured, and neither my leg nor my left arm ended in a stump ¡ª small mercies, considering how quickly I seemed to go through limbs ¡ª but that was the only bit of good news I could give myself.

    ¡°So if this isn¡¯t Chaldea anymore, where am I?¡± I muttered.

    The last thing I remembered¡­

    It was hard to grasp. Hazy. Considering how much smoke I must¡¯ve been choking on, maybe that wasn¡¯t all that surprising. It was something of a minor miracle I wasn¡¯t hacking up my lungs, right then, all told.

    But I remembered¡­ There¡¯d been a voice. Automated. The kind of prerecorded messages used by emergency service announcements. Something about Chaldeas being fucked and no available Master candidates ¡ª yeah, because everything had gone to shit and anyone who wasn¡¯t already dead had been dying.

    And then¡­ I think I¡¯d been Rayshifted. Somehow. Without a coffin. Which was supposed to be dangerous or even outright lethal, but hey, I was still breathing, so I wasn¡¯t about to complain too much.

    Where to, though? An equally important question was also ¡°when.¡±

    ¡°Something with an F,¡± I mumbled to myself. ¡°Fu¡­ Fuyuki, I want to say. In¡­Japan, I think? Right. A place I¡¯ve never heard of, though. And then the when¡­ Early 2000s, I want to say?¡±

    What could have happened here that it was a point needing correcting, though? The early 2000s¡­ On Earth Bet, that could only have been Leviathan, but this¡­

    I looked back around. The city in flames greeted me, drowning out the stars with orange light and blanketing the sky with black smog.

    This was not Leviathan. Not by a longshot.

    I wasn¡¯t sure I could have done anything about it, even if it was. What, correct the Leviathan attack on Kyushu so that it didn¡¯t happen? Me and what army? Without backup from Chaldea, I couldn¡¯t even summon a Servant to even things out.

    ¡°Wait.¡±

    My head swung around again, but the scenery hadn¡¯t changed. More importantly, I was still alone.

    ¡°Master candidates seven, forty-eight, and forty-nine¡­ So where are forty-eight and forty-nine?¡±

    If the program had registered them at the same time as me, then they had to have been in the room with me when the Rayshift happened, which meant that they must have been shunted back to this place, too. They should have landed here somewhere.

    But there was no sign of them.

    Maybe where they¡¯d been dropped corresponded with how far away they¡¯d been from me in the room before, but if that was the case, the room was only so big, so shouldn¡¯t they have still been within line of sight? Unless it wasn¡¯t a one-to-one thing, and that meant they could be clear on the other side of the fucking city, because of course, that was just my luck, wasn¡¯t it? My only allies within reach, separated from me by miles of labyrinthine streets, deep in hostile territory.

    I grimaced.

    ¡°Or maybe I lucked out and survived, and the other two got smeared across time and space the way we were all warned about.¡±

    Either way, it looked like I was alone in hostile territory against unknown enemies of unknown numbers and unknown capabilities. I had no backup, I had no allies ¡ª at least as far as I was aware, at any rate ¡ª and no hope of exfiltration. My only resources were the Mystic Code I was currently wearing and whatever meagre supplies I might be able to round up from what remained of this city.

    A city I¡¯d never been to and whose layout was also a complete unknown.

    I sighed.

    Great.

    Against my will, my lips pulled into a smile. ¡°So, it¡¯s Tuesday,¡± I said.

    No use moping around or whining about the unfairness of it all. I could honestly have said I¡¯d been in worse spots than this.

    ¡°Alright. First things first.¡±

    Basic survival had been one of the lessons we¡¯d gotten in the Wards. Generally, it had been stuff about what to do if you were stranded in the wilderness, but urban survival had been covered to some degree, too, and what hadn¡¯t been covered directly, well, there were some parts of survival techniques and priorities that were basically universal.

    The first and most important thing was shelter. Unless you were one of the rare capes with powers that normalized temperatures around your body, exposure was the quickest thing that could kill you. Three days without water and three weeks without food ¡ª it wouldn¡¯t be comfortable the entire time, but you could survive it. Exposure could kill you in under an hour. If I remembered the statistics right, it was the number one cause of death for the homeless.

    So. I needed to find some place to hunker down and establish a base of operations. I had no idea how long I was going to be there, not the faintest clue if there was even anything left of Chaldea¡¯s staff to stage a rescue, and I had to work under the assumption that I was completely alone.

    ¡°Only problem¡­ I¡¯m not seeing much in the way of intact buildings around here.¡±

    And the ones that were might not be for very long.

    My lips pursed, but looking around didn¡¯t really change the facts. There wasn¡¯t much else I could do except pick a random direction and hope it led me somewhere better off.

    ¡°Preferably on higher ground, so I can get a better look at the layout of the city itself.¡±

    It looked like I was on a main street, too, so if I was lucky, I¡¯d find a supermarket or something that could double as a dependable supply of food. Whether or not it had any power would be hit or miss, and if the city was as abandoned as it looked, that wouldn¡¯t last forever anyway, but there should still be enough canned and boxed food to last at least a little while.

    If that even meant anything, now. There was no way of knowing exactly how this Singularity connected to the larger world, so it was entirely possible that I could spend months surviving off of cereal and canned peaches without seeing any other person, and no one would ever come to investigate the city that had inexplicably vanished off the face of the Earth.

    I glanced back up at the sky, but with the smoke and the clouds so thick and dark, there was no way of knowing what time of day it was. Hell, it was entirely possible that it was actually the middle of the afternoon, but with roiling black blanketing everything from horizon to horizon, it might as well have been three in the morning.

    My finger looped through the collar of my jacket, tugged. Not cold, but that might be because it seemed like the entire city was going up in flames all at once. It was supposed to be almost February here, wasn¡¯t it? In that case, I wanted to have a setup in place before the fires went out and I was stuck in the winter chill.

    ¡°Alright.¡±

    A chanced look behind me showed me the same destroyed city as in front of me. Didn¡¯t look like it was going to make a difference either way ¡ª

    A sudden scream pierced the air, high-pitched and feminine, and I whirled around towards the direction it came from.

    Master candidate forty-eight was a girl, wasn¡¯t she?

    I was running before I even had time to think about it, my legs pumping, my arms swinging, my body going through the remembered and practiced motions of what felt like an entirely different life. My thoughts had been erased, and only a singular focus remained as I sprinted towards the voice. The unfamiliarity around me disappeared, became familiar, became something I recognized.

    I¡¯d never been to Fuyuki before in my life.

    In fact, if you¡¯d asked me to point it out on a map, I couldn¡¯t have done it to save my life. Hell, it was entirely possible that it was sunk with Kyushu on Earth Bet when Lung and Leviathan decided to stage their own live action Godzilla movie ¡ª no idea which one would have been Godzilla in that metaphor, but fuck it.

    In spite of that, though¡­

    The shattered pavement. The crumpled buildings. The glow of the flames that lit up the dark. The sense that danger lurked around every corner and you were never safe.

    It felt like coming home.

    Maybe in proper human history, Fuyuki was a perfectly normal place to live with perfectly normal people and no biweekly gang wars or rage dragons to disrupt its perfectly ordinary everyday life.

    Right here, right now, however¡­ If I was five years younger, it would have felt like my first night out, charging Lung with nothing but bugs and pepper spray.

    It wasn¡¯t long before I saw them, a horde of walking skeletons, human. They were dressed in rags and scraps of cloth and their bodies were barely held together by whatever magic had reanimated them in the first place. Each of them had a weapon, a spear or a sword, and they were moving with surprising speed ¡ª fast enough that anyone who wasn¡¯t as used to running as I was probably wouldn¡¯t be able to outrun them.

    Past them, I didn¡¯t have a clear enough view of the person to tell who it was, but I caught snatches of color, the clothes of whoever it was they were chasing. Black and yellow, entirely wrong for Chaldea¡¯s combat uniform.

    Were there actually natives still alive in this place?

    ¡°Why do things like this always happen to me?¡± the person shrieked hysterically.

    Something flashed, and one of the skeletons crumpled into dust. Again, and another one disappeared. It wouldn¡¯t make a difference, though, not at that rate. There were just too many skeletons.

    It wasn¡¯t like I would be doing any better. My options weren¡¯t exactly the best. But¡­

    I skidded to a halt, lifting my arm and bracing it with my other hand as I took aim at the backs of the crowd that hadn¡¯t yet noticed me. Something in my head snapped, and I had the fleeting image of a thread of silk breaking, and then I channeled my meagre magical power through my combat uniform the way I¡¯d been taught.

    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    ¡­I wasn¡¯t the type of person who could just callously watch someone die like this.

    Gandr!

    A ball of black energy leapt from my hand. Without my bugs, I wasn¡¯t anywhere near as good a shot as I used to be, but at that range with that tight a grouping, it didn¡¯t matter. My blast struck one of the skeletons in the back, and it collapsed, vanishing into dust before its stumble could even knock over the one in front of it.

    The rest kept going, completely ignoring me in favor of their other prey. If they got to her first and turned on me afterwards, it didn¡¯t really make a difference. We¡¯d both be dead all the same.

    I took aim again.

    Gandr!

    Another skeleton went down.

    Gandr!

    A third.

    Gandr!

    A fourth.

    The other person was still firing back, too, but the crowd of skeletons didn¡¯t seem to notice much or care, they just kept advancing. They were like Mastered minions: they didn¡¯t know what pain or fear or anger were, they only had the order to seek out and kill, and that was all they cared about.

    I panted and took aim again.

    Last two shots before I had to rest. My paltry six shot Gandr.

    Wasn¡¯t like I had any better options. What came after that¡­ I¡¯d figure that out when I got there.

    ¡°Save me, Lev!¡±

    My brain stuttered to a halt for a moment. It couldn¡¯t be.

    Director?

    How¡­ The Director wasn¡¯t supposed to have any Rayshift aptitude. Everyone in Chaldea knew that ¡ª a lot of them thought it ironic that the person in charge of the whole thing couldn¡¯t have carried out its prime directive if her life depended on it.

    I gritted my teeth and took aim again, trying to pick the thinnest spot so I could push through when I ran out of magical energy. I could scratch my head about the Director later ¡ª

    CLANG echoed across the street as a massive cruciform slab slammed into the already battered asphalt and crushed a skeleton. And then it moved, and the figure wielding it swung the sharper edges of its spokes around and into the skeletons with what had to be Brute strength and incredible speed. Pale hair fluttered, and eyes so blue they looked almost purple flashed as they passed me over.

    My focus stuttered for a second time.

    No way.

    ¡°Mash?¡±

    The only thing I could really do was watch as she moved, picking apart the group of skeletons with contemptuous ease. She dodged, she blocked, she swung the edges of that massive shield through their bodies, and one by one, they all vanished into puffs of smoke. I wanted to call it brutal efficiency, but calling it brutal implied something inelegant about it all. What I was seeing just then could only be called graceful. Like watching a prima ballerina dance.

    When it was over, Mash turned towards the Director and trotted to stand in front of her.

    ¡°Battle concluded,¡± she reported crisply. She didn¡¯t even sound winded. ¡°Are you okay, Director?¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± the Director demanded as she pulled herself to her feet.

    ¡°I¡¯d kind of like to know that myself,¡± I said as loudly as I could without shouting.

    The Director jolted as I walked over to join them, like she hadn¡¯t even realized I was there, and Mash turned to me, holding her massive shield like it was a toy.

    ¡°Miss Taylor ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Hebert!¡± the Director barked. ¡°There you are! Where¡¯s the rest of Team A?¡±

    ¡°Dead, as far as I know,¡± I answered.

    ¡°What?¡± she squawked.

    ¡°Whatever happened did catastrophic damage. I didn¡¯t see what happened to everyone else, but given the shape the Rayshift chamber was in, I¡¯m not sure they would¡¯ve survived it. When the emergency Rayshift happened, the system could only find three viable Master candidates. Me ¡ª¡±

    I looked behind her at the pair of kids who were peeking out over the ledge of an impressively large section of overturned road. They both jumped, like they¡¯d been caught doing something they shouldn¡¯t.

    ¡°And those two.¡±

    The Director whirled around.

    ¡°You!¡± she shrieked and pointed at them. ¡°The two brats who fell asleep during orientation! I thought I kicked the two of you out!¡±

    ¡°Ah, well,¡± the boy stuttered. He was a scrawny kid who couldn¡¯t have been older than seventeen, with messy brown hair and blue eyes and an otherwise vaguely East Asian shape to his face. ¡°You see ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Doctor Roman pulled us aside!¡± the girl declared boldly.

    Red hair. So I hadn¡¯t been imagining things, then.

    ¡°Romani¡­¡± the Director muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. ¡°No, forget about that! How the hell did you two become Masters, is the question! Team A was a carefully selected squad of talented and unique individuals considered peerless in their given fields!¡± A muscle in my jaw twitched, but I kept my mouth shut. That was quite the vote of confidence. ¡°A pair of country bumpkins shouldn¡¯t even have the aptitude for something so exclusive!¡±

    ¡°Please don¡¯t misunderstand, Director,¡± said Mash. ¡°Master and¡­Master did not initiate the contract, I did. The circumstances weren¡¯t ideal, so I had to establish it forcefully.¡±

    The Director looked at her incredulously.

    ¡°You what?¡±

    ¡°Let me explain.¡±

    And she did. How she¡¯d been lying, half-crushed beneath a slab of Chaldea¡¯s roof that hadn¡¯t landed on her quite so gently as the one that had pinned me down. How Ritsuka and Rika (their parents must not have been expecting twins) had found her and stayed, even as the room shut down and everything had started to look rather bleak.

    How a Heroic Spirit had reached out to her as the Rayshift was occurring and offered his powers, on the condition that she use them to resolve the cause of the Singularity. Demi-Servant, the Director called it when it came up. A fusion of a Servant and a human being, a halfway state where you could gain the powers of a Heroic Spirit and wield them in combat, without being overcome by the Heroic Spirit¡¯s ego.

    ¡°And we were Rayshifted here, to Fuyuki, Japan, the year 2004,¡± Mash concluded. ¡°No other Master candidates Rayshifted with us.¡± She blinked and looked to me. ¡°Ah, or so we thought. You and Miss Taylor are the only other humans we¡¯ve seen so far, but if you¡¯re both here, then that must mean the others could be here, too.¡±

    ¡°¡­It¡¯s possible, but I don¡¯t think it¡¯s likely,¡± the Director said thoughtfully.

    Mash blinked again.

    ¡°Director?¡±

    ¡°Hebert,¡± the Director turned to me instead, ¡°you weren¡¯t inside your coffin when you Rayshifted, were you?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°I was pinned beneath some rubble.¡±

    My coffin had been cracked open and I¡¯d fallen out of it, and in the chaos, I hadn¡¯t been able to get my bearings fast enough to avoid the collapsing ceiling that had landed on top of me. Not completely.

    ¡°I thought so,¡± said the Director. ¡°That means we¡¯re the only ones here, in all likelihood. No, I¡¯m certain of it.¡±

    ¡°What do you mean?¡± asked Mash.

    The Director swept her hand around the group.

    ¡°Each of us here has one thing in common. None of us was inside a coffin when the Rayshift occurred. Rayshifting flesh and blood has a much higher rate of failure, and that¡¯s why we have the coffins in the first place, but it¡¯s not technically impossible. Everyone else would have been inside their coffins, so they never actually got Rayshifted in the first place. We¡¯re here alone.¡±

    ¡°I see. That¡¯s why you¡¯re the Director.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re actually pretty reliable when you¡¯re calm, Director,¡± Rika said with a smile.

    ¡°What¡¯s that supposed to mean?¡± the Director snarled. ¡°Are you saying I¡¯m not usually calm?¡±

    I coughed to hide my smile behind my fist.

    ¡°Director,¡± her brother cut in, ¡°does that mean you weren¡¯t supposed to Rayshift?¡±

    The Director glared at Rika, but dragged her gaze away to address Ritsuka. ¡°Do you think that¡¯s weird? I¡¯m Chaldea¡¯s Director. I¡¯m your commander. The last place I¡¯m supposed to be is getting into the thick of it on the frontlines.¡±

    And yet, she was here anyway.

    Mash, the twins, and I had all been in the Rayshift chamber. Mash and I because we were supposed to be, the twins because they¡¯d come to try and rescue whoever they could in the wreckage. Whatever the case, we had all been in the room when we were Rayshifted.

    Where, exactly, had the Director been? Could she have been caught up in the confusion and unconscious when it all happened? Trapped in the room with us, out cold?

    She must¡¯ve been, to be here with us now.

    ¡°In any case, our first goal should be to establish a base camp,¡± I said.

    ¡°I know that!¡± the Director snapped. She turned towards the twins. ¡°Listen up! It¡¯s not ideal, but this is an emergency, so I¡¯ll provisionally approve your contract with Mash and accept you as Masters of Chaldea! That means, from here on out, you follow my orders. Got it?¡±

    ¡°Understood,¡± said Ritsuka at the same time as his sister snapped to a salute and barked out, ¡°Roger that, Boss!¡±

    The Director let out a miserable sigh, but didn¡¯t comment.

    ¡°Okay, then we need to find a Leyline Terminal, a place where magical energy converges. From there, we should be able to establish a connection with Chaldea. In this town¡¯s case, it would probably be¡­¡±

    Mash coughed pointedly. ¡°Director?¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    Mash pointed at the road beneath our feet. ¡°It¡¯s right here. This is the Leyline Terminal.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± And then as she processed the words, the Director¡¯s face turned bright red. ¡°I-I mean, I knew that already! I knew that from the beginning! O-of course I did!¡±

    ¡°The Director is kind of hopeless, isn¡¯t she?¡± Rika muttered. Her brother dug his elbow into her side.

    ¡°Mash, place your shield on the ground!¡± the Director ordered louder than she really needed to be. ¡°I¡¯m going to set up a summoning circle, using your Noble Phantasm as a catalyst!¡±

    ¡°Understood, Director.¡±

    Carefully, Mash placed her gigantic shield on the clearest patch of asphalt she could find, and the Director set about drawing up and preparing the summoning circle. I watched from the side, arms folded, feeling a little out of my depth but keeping an eagle eye on the whole thing.

    Magecraft¡­ Considering I no longer had my powers, I could only wish I had better talent for it. There was only so much two years of frantically cramming everything I could into my head was able to do to bridge the gap between me and even the most average of regular magi.

    When it was ready, the Director stood back and nodded. ¡°Okay. Now then, you just have to ¡ª¡±

    Beep-beep

    A chime sounded from Ritsuka¡¯s wrist, and a moment later, a hologram shot up over Mash¡¯s shield, depicting a frazzled Doctor Romani Archaman, facing towards Ritsuka.

    ¡°Thank goodness!¡± he said. ¡°I managed to get the connection back up! Ritsuka, Rika, Mash! The three of you are still okay! I¡¯m so glad.¡±

    ¡°Doctor Roman!¡± Rika called.

    ¡°You managed to secure the connection, good job,¡± said Romani. ¡°Now, we should be able to communicate properly, even send you rations ¡ª eh?¡±

    He looked at me. The hologram swiveled until he was facing me directly. ¡°Taylor? You¡¯re there, too? But then¡­No, you weren¡¯t in your coffin, either? I guess that explains the flatlined vital signs ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Romani!¡± the Director barked. Romani startled. ¡°Why are you the one sitting in that chair? Where¡¯s Lev?¡±

    ¡°Director, you¡¯re ¡ª !¡±

    ¡°Lev, Romani. Put him on. He¡¯s the next in line with me trapped here.¡±

    ¡°Uh¡­¡± Romani let out a little sigh and briefly closed his eyes. ¡°Professor Lev was in the command room. He was right there when the explosion went off. I¡¯m sorry, Director, but I can¡¯t see how he could have survived it. I thought that you, too¡­ But you¡¯re obviously okay.¡±

    The Director¡­sort of crumpled. The fire left her face and her posture slackened, and the only thing that came out of her mouth was a quiet croak that might have been an aborted attempt at a ¡°what?¡±

    ¡°Doctor,¡± I said, stepping up while she recovered, ¡°what¡¯s the state of things? There has to be a dozen other people who should take control before you do.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s about how many people we have left, actually,¡± Doctor Romani said grimly. ¡°We¡¯re still picking through and checking everywhere we can, but we¡¯re down to a crew of about twenty. The reason I¡¯m in charge right now is that there isn¡¯t anyone else more qualified to take the position.¡±

    A tremor went through my belly and my mouth worked as I tried to wrap my head around that. A staff of over two-hundred people, and in the span of a single attack, almost all of them had died?

    Just who or what had attacked Chaldea that they could kill that many people that quickly?

    ¡°Twenty?¡± the Director breathed. ¡°What about ¡ª the Master candidates. What condition are they in?¡±

    ¡°Critical, all forty-six¡­ ah, that is, all forty-five of them. We¡¯re short on both medical staff and supplies, so even if we let the worst off go, we might not be able to save that many of them ¡ª¡±

    ¡°You call yourself a doctor?¡± the Director demanded. ¡°The coffins all have in-built cryopreservation functions! You can worry about resuscitating them all later. For now, your top priority is to save as many lives as you possibly can!¡±

    Romani¡¯s mouth fell open and his eyes went wide, and then he slapped a hand to his forehead.

    ¡°Ah ¡ª right, I¡¯m so stupid! I can¡¯t believe I forgot about that!¡± Immediately, he leapt out of his chair, and his voice called back towards us, ¡°I¡¯ll get on that right away! Please wait!¡±

    The hologram of an empty chair not hovered in the air in front of us.

    ¡°I¡¯m a bit surprised, Director,¡± Mash commented quietly. ¡°Cryopreservation without consent is a violation of international human rights, and yet you committed to it without a second thought.¡±

    ¡°I can worry about something so meaningless later,¡± the Director said. ¡°Making sure they all survive is the most important thing.¡±

    In spite of the way she said it, though, her brow was furrowed and the line of her mouth was nervous. Times like these were when I remembered exactly how young she was, barely a year older than me, and exactly how much she¡¯d taken on her shoulders in spite of that.

    Maybe I didn¡¯t have the most unbiased perspective on that, though.

    In the uneasy silence that followed, I stepped up next to the Director. I didn¡¯t say anything, but she glanced in my direction, and then some of the tension in her shoulders eased just a little bit.

    A few minutes later, Romani returned to his seat and slumped against the backrest with a sigh. ¡°It¡¯s done. The remaining Master candidates have been put into cryopreservation, pending an attempt to resuscitate them at a later date.¡±

    ¡°Good.¡± The Director nodded. ¡°What¡¯s the state of the rest of Chaldea?¡±

    Romani sighed again. ¡°We¡¯ve lost about eighty percent functionality. We¡¯re doing the best we can with just twenty people on hand, but as it is, there¡¯s only so much we can handle, and we¡¯re already relying on the backup generators to keep things running. Right now, we¡¯re focusing on getting the Rayshift functionality repaired and maintaining Chaldeas itself and the SHEBA lens. Without external communications, that¡¯s the best we can do.¡±

    The Director¡¯s lips pursed, but she nodded.

    ¡°That¡¯s good. It¡¯s exactly what I would be doing right now in your place. Make Rayshifting your top priority. We need you to be able to recall us, so we can send another team to handle the situation. I¡¯m going to have Hebert attempt a summoning using Mash¡¯s shield, but if we run into higher tier enemies than the fodder we¡¯ve seen so far, our current setup won¡¯t cut it.¡±

    A jolt of apprehension shot through my stomach, but I did my best not to let it show.

    ¡°In the meantime,¡± the Director went on, ¡°we¡¯ll investigate the cause of this Singularity¡¯s formation.¡±

    ¡°Is that a good idea?¡± Romani asked worriedly. ¡°Even with a Servant and a Demi-Servant, it could be dangerous. We originally intended to send an entire team, after all. And that¡¯s assuming the summoning system works properly at all, considering we¡¯ve only successfully completed three summonings in its lifespan.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be ridiculous,¡± said the Director. ¡°Even if we only had Mash, a Demi-Servant should be enough to handle the sort of low level monsters we¡¯ve encountered so far. Besides, I have no intention of attempting to resolve this Singularity with just what we have here. Having said that, it¡¯s going to take time for you to complete repairs, and there¡¯s no sense in us standing here waiting while you do.¡±

    ¡°You do technically have two members of Team A with you,¡± Romani said thoughtfully. ¡°Mash, Ritsuka, Rika, I know this is a lot to ask of you three, but do you think you can handle this?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s fine, Doctor,¡± said Mash.

    ¡°We¡¯ll have this thing all wrapped up before you know it!¡± Rika added. Ritsuka gave a confident nod, and if Romani noticed the clenched fists and shaking hands, he didn¡¯t comment on it.

    He turned towards me.

    ¡°Taylor¡­¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s literally what I signed up for,¡± I told him.

    He sighed. ¡°Just don¡¯t push yourself. And if your arm starts to bother you ¡ª¡±

    ¡°It hasn¡¯t,¡± I cut him off. He seemed to take the hint.

    ¡°I can¡¯t do much from here, but I¡¯m rooting for all of you. Director, best of luck. If an emergency crops up, please contact me.¡±

    The Director let out a huff, but didn¡¯t comment. The connection cut and Romani¡¯s hologram vanished. We were alone, again.

    ¡°Director, are you sure this is the right decision?¡± Mash asked. ¡°We could just wait here for rescue.¡±

    ¡°If we did that, I¡¯d never hear the end of it from the Association,¡± the Director said. ¡°Worse, they might decide this whole thing was my fault for mismanaging the situation and take Chaldea from me. Like hell I¡¯m letting a bunch of stuck up busybodies take my father¡¯s dream away! We¡¯re not going back empty-handed!¡±

    ¡°This isn¡¯t the best place to stand, either,¡± I added. ¡°Sitting in the open is just asking for us to get attacked again.¡±

    The Director nodded. ¡°Right. We can¡¯t stay here no matter what, so we might as well start investigating so that this whole mess isn¡¯t a total loss. Before all of that, though¡­¡±

    She turned to me.

    ¡°I know this wasn¡¯t exactly how we told you it would happen, but you¡¯re going to summon a Servant.¡±

 Chapter III: Limitations

    Chapter III: Limitations

    ¡°We were supposed to be doing this with a proper catalyst,¡± the Director groused. ¡°At least then, we could have had a decent idea of which Heroic Spirit was going to be summoned. We were supposed to have more control.¡±

    She wrapped one arm across her chest, cradling the elbow of her other arm as she chewed on the end of her thumbnail, her brow furrowed. It was a nervous habit I¡¯d seen her adopt a few times, something she did when she was worried or anxious or just thinking herself in circles about a problem she couldn¡¯t fix.

    ¡°Ugh. It can¡¯t be helped. This whole situation is one big mess, and I¡¯d feel a whole lot better about it if we had more than just a single Demi-Servant to defend us.¡±

    ¡°Director,¡± said Mash, ¡°if my combat efficiency is a concern, I¡¯m still functioning optimally. If we encounter more enemies of that level, I should be able to handle them all without any trouble.¡±

    ¡°That!¡± the Director said. ¡°That is exactly the problem! If we encounter more enemies of that level. I know I just said Mash could handle it, but that¡¯s only if we don¡¯t run into anything scarier. You do remember the situation we¡¯re in, right?¡±

    ¡°A burning city?¡± Rika suggested.

    ¡°No! Weren¡¯t you paying any attention to the briefing? Ugh!¡± The Director let out a disgusted breath. ¡°This is Fuyuki, Japan, 2004. According to Chaldea¡¯s records, this is the site of a ritual referred to as the Holy Grail War.¡±

    ¡°Holy Grail War?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    The Director pinched the bridge of her nose. ¡°This is why I prefer selecting from the Association. They might be a bunch of students who think they know more than they actually do, but at least their knowledge base is good enough that I don¡¯t have to explain everything every few minutes. But no, this is a joint initiative with the UN, so I have to take in any Master candidate that shows even the slightest hint of promise, no matter how utterly clueless they are.¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Rika squawked.

    The Director pointed at me. ¡°Hebert. Explain, please.¡±

    I let out a breath through my nostrils.

    ¡°Seven Masters paired with seven Servants,¡± I explained shortly. ¡°A battle royale between them, and the winning pair get their wish granted by the Holy Grail.¡±

    The twins blinked at me.

    ¡°¡­That¡¯s it?¡±

    Rika huffed. ¡°I was expecting three paragraphs of exposition, at least.¡±

    My lips pulled tight.

    It wasn¡¯t like I was exactly an expert on the subject. I understood the basic premise and the most important mechanics, but I only knew about as much as had been explained to me. A battle royale between Heroic Spirits summoned as Servants controlled by Masters wielding Command Spells, all for the prize of a wish on the Holy Grail. I didn¡¯t need to know how all of the bits and pieces worked to get the important parts.

    ¡°It¡¯s a vast oversimplification, but if we took the time to cover all the details, we¡¯d be here for hours,¡± the Director said. ¡°The important takeaway is the first thing: seven Servants. Without Masters, they shouldn¡¯t be able to stay in this world, and looking at the state of this city, the Masters are probably all dead.¡±

    She looked around at the burning metropolis, and I had to agree. If there was anyone alive¡­ Well, if we hadn¡¯t run into them yet, either we wouldn¡¯t at all or they¡¯d probably be an enemy.

    ¡°Ordinarily, that should mean we wouldn¡¯t have to worry about Servants,¡± the Director went on. ¡°But this is a Singularity, which means something went wrong somewhere, so none of our assumptions are reliable. It¡¯s entirely possible we might run into no Servants, or we might run into several. Either way, relying solely on Mash to fight them all off would be stupidity of the highest level!¡±

    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t we summon as many of our own Servants as possible, then?¡± Ritsuka asked worriedly.

    ¡°That¡¯s what the rest of Team A was supposed to be for!¡± the Director snapped. ¡°Ugh! No, Masters can only handle supporting so many Servants at once! Generally, it¡¯s only the one, but if Chaldea was running at full power, we might have been able to get away with three or four. As it is now, however, we can¡¯t put too much stress on the backup generators, so trying for more than one more is too risky.¡±

    Rika¡¯s hand shot up into the air. The Director glared. ¡°Put your hand down. This isn¡¯t a classroom.¡±

    ¡°Couldn¡¯t we each try to summon a Servant?¡± asked Rika. ¡°I mean, there¡¯s three of us. Wouldn¡¯t it be better to have one each?¡±

    The Director looked between them for a second, then glanced back at me, and finally shook her head.

    ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°First off, didn¡¯t I just say we could only safely try for one? Geez! Secondly, you two are already supporting a contract with Mash between the two of you, aren¡¯t you? The last thing I need either of you doing in a situation like this is stretching yourself too thin!¡±

    ¡°Everything was a bit rushed, so the contract wound up split evenly between them,¡± Mash confirmed. ¡°Sorry, Director.¡±

    ¡°This whole thing has been one gigantic mess from the beginning,¡± the Director griped. ¡°Hebert! We¡¯re not wasting any more time. We don¡¯t have a catalyst to make things easier, so we¡¯re just going to have to hope that whoever you summon is at least somewhat useful.¡±

    I let out a breath through my nose, not quite a sigh. My stomach squirmed a little. ¡°Understood, Director.¡±

    She stepped away from the shield laying flat on the ground as I stepped closer, and the others followed her lead. ¡°You remember the incantation, right?¡± she asked.

    ¡°You don¡¯t need to worry. I have it memorized.¡±

    She worried her bottom lip, but nodded, and I turned to the shield and the magic circle inscribed around it and thrust out my hand.

    ¡°Thy Essence is of Silver and Steel,¡± I began, and then I went slowly and meticulously through the entire incantation.

    It sounded like a lot of nonsense, and I felt a little silly reciting it. Gems and the Archduke of Contracts, ancestors and grandmasters, forked roads and kingdoms, alighted wind and walls. Maybe it meant something to the people who had crafted the spell, but to me, it just seemed like gibberish strung together into vaguely coherent sentences.

    Throughout it all, I watched the circle light up, the lines and symbols glowing as it connected to the spiritual meridian beneath our feet ¡ª the ley line, and when I¡¯d learned about those, I¡¯d kinda wanted to laugh. I wasn¡¯t laughing, now. If my focus wasn¡¯t so narrowly turned towards the nonsense spewing from my lips, I might even have been nauseous.

    ¡°Let there be fivefold perfections upon each repetition, and break asunder with perfection.¡±

    Each member of Team A had at least a preferred class of Servant they had intended to summon, if not a preferred Heroic Spirit. I¡¯d been hoping to get a catalyst for a heavy hitter, someone like King Arthur or Achilles, maybe Herakles. One of what they called the knight classes. Not an Assassin, because that kind of Servant played too much to my strengths and the ways of thinking I¡¯d been trying to train myself out of.

    The thing I¡¯d dreaded most was summoning based on compatibility, without a catalyst at all. Because there were a couple of Heroic Spirits I feared summoning, both for the implications they carried with them and for the way of thinking they might encourage, just by existing.

    ¡°Arrive from the Ring of Deterrence, O Keeper of Balance!¡±

    The glowing circle flashed, surging, filling up and expanding, and for a moment, there was a sense of peeking through the veil of reality as a presence loomed on the other side, about to step through and manifest, staring straight at me as though it could see into my soul. Off to the side, Mash gasped aloud, and the Director took in a sharp breath in anticipation. Rika made a noise of delighted surprise, like a kid in a candy shop. My own heart thudded in my chest, so loud that I was amazed the others couldn¡¯t hear it.

    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    And then, the glow flickered, guttered and died, winking out suddenly and inexplicably, as the circle went inert. The door opened to the Throne of Heroes had shut, and standing before us all was nothing but empty air.

    For several seconds, a heavy silence hung between us. Something like disappointment curled in my belly.

    ¡°What?¡± the Director breathed disbelievingly.

    ¡°Was¡­that supposed to happen?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°I don¡¯t see anybody,¡± Rika commented, head swiveling as she looked around. ¡°Oh! Maybe they¡¯re invisible!¡±

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Mash said wearily.

    ¡°No!¡± the Director snapped. ¡°No, that¡¯s not what was supposed to happen!¡±

    She marched over to me and grabbed my hand, first the outstretched one and then the one at my side, inspecting the backs, and when she was done, she let go and grunted.

    ¡°No Command Spells, either,¡± she said, frustrated. ¡°I don¡¯t understand ¡ª your Master aptitude was among the highest in all of Team A! Only Wodime and Phamrsolone scored better! This should have been the easiest summoning we¡¯ve done yet!¡±

    Her thumb made its way back to her mouth, and she was chewing on her nail again.

    ¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± she muttered. ¡°Why did it fail? Sure, this spot isn¡¯t ideal, but the theory is sound and this place is a Singularity ¡ª it should be easier to summon a Servant here than it was in Chaldea. Is it a flaw in the system or¡­ No, maybe it has something to do with Chaldea¡¯s functionality being so far reduced? Damn it, I wish Lev was here, he¡¯d know.¡±

    ¡°Maybe you should try next, Director?¡± Ritsuka suggested.

    I grimaced as the Director¡¯s mouth snapped shut so hard and fast that the clack of her teeth grinding together was audible. He couldn¡¯t have known, so I couldn¡¯t blame him for it, but he¡¯d just stepped on the landmine of one of her biggest sore spots.

    ¡°I don¡¯t have any Master aptitude,¡± the Director ground out, like admitting it physically pained her.

    ¡°What? Like, none at all?¡± Rika asked. ¡°The Director of Chaldea can¡¯t be a Master?¡±

    ¡°I just told you a minute ago that my job isn¡¯t to be on the frontlines!¡± the Director snarled. ¡°So it wasn¡¯t supposed to matter whether or not I had Master aptitude, was it?¡±

    ¡°Director,¡± Mash said, trying to defuse the situation, ¡°maybe we should try again? It¡¯s possible the system just wasn¡¯t prepared for the summoning, or maybe that with things as they are, we just need to try another time or two before it works.¡±

    The Director swallowed whatever she was about to say and instead shook her head. ¡°No. Whatever the problem is, it won¡¯t be solved by bashing our heads against the wall trying to make it work. Standing here and shouting the incantation over and over again is just a waste of time.¡±

    ¡°Maybe Senpai did something wrong?¡± Rika suggested hesitantly.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± I repeated incredulously.

    Ritsuka offered me a patient smile. ¡°Well, you are the senior most Master on this team, right?¡±

    ¡°Taylor was hand-picked to be a member of Team A, the most elite team in Chaldea,¡± the Director said coldly. ¡°She was recruited during the initial stages, back when we were being very selective about who joined. Only the best of the best were accepted as potential Masters. You two were pulled off the street to fill out the last few slots in our roster.¡±

    ¡°Right. Senpai is a total badass. Shutting up,¡± Rika chirped.

    Ritsuka sighed wearily.

    ¡°Director,¡± I said as gently as I could while still being firm, ¡°they¡¯re new recruits.¡±

    Ease up on them, I didn¡¯t say. I liked to think she heard me, either way.

    The Director grimaced.

    ¡°Right,¡± she mumbled. ¡°There¡¯s no point. I¡¯m just wasting time and energy getting worked up by these neophytes.¡±

    ¡°Gesundheit,¡± Rika said.

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t a compliment, you ¡ª !¡± The Director reined herself in. ¡°You¡¯re Japanese, how do you even know how to use that word anyway¡­¡±

    ¡°If we¡¯re not going to try again, we should start our investigation,¡± I said, steering the conversation back on track. ¡°We should also be on the lookout for a stable base of operations. Somewhere we can hole up in case this stretches on for days instead of hours.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± the Director acknowledged. ¡°Right, yes, of course. Although with the state of the city, there might not be anyplace safe enough to rest for any appreciable amount of time.¡±

    Privately, I worried about that, too. It was good to know that Romani was alive and well and working on getting us out of here, it gave me a tangible goal to survive for, but losing eighty percent of Chaldea¡¯s functionality and staff would only stretch out the timeline for the repairs they needed to pull us back to base. Without a solid estimate on how long that would take, we really had no idea how long we¡¯d have to stay alive in this hellhole.

    ¡°We¡¯ll worry about that when the time comes. For now, we need to know where we are and where we¡¯re going.¡±

    The Director¡¯s lips pursed. ¡°The records showed that Fuyuki had two main districts that divided the city in half. The newer half was a metropolis, with office buildings, strip malls, and places like that. It was oriented more towards business and commerce. The older half was almost exclusively residential, with some houses dating back to the Victorian era, or, um, the¡­Meiji Restoration?¡±

    ¡°The revolution that put the Emperor back into nominal power,¡± Ritsuka added helpfully. ¡°It was the end of Japan¡¯s isolationist policies, so powerful Westerners took advantage to establish trade.¡±

    The Director eyed him, like she wasn¡¯t sure whether she should praise him or not for offering useful information.

    ¡°In any case, we¡¯re in the modern business half of the city,¡± the Director said. She gestured at the buildings around us, consisting mostly of modern high-rises and skyscrapers. ¡°The other half, the residential district, will be across the river that splits the city in two. We¡¯ll have to cross the bridge to get there.¡±

    I nodded.

    ¡°Points of interest?¡±

    ¡°There should be four main areas we¡¯ll want to look at,¡± the Director said. ¡°According to the records, there were four possible places the Holy Grail could manifest at the end of the Grail War, four hotspots where the ley lines converged and the magical power was dense enough to support it. One will be on the mountain, on the far outskirts of the city, past the edges of the residential district.¡±

    I grimaced and looked towards the left, but immediately felt silly, because I had no idea whether that was even the right direction. ¡°That¡¯s going to be a hike.¡±

    ¡°All the more so because that¡¯s likely to be our best bet at figuring out what happened in this Singularity,¡± the Director added.

    ¡°My feet are sore just thinking about it,¡± Rika whined.

    I turned back to the Director. ¡°The other three?¡±

    She gestured at the ground beneath our feet.

    ¡°There¡¯s one that should be near here, but I think we can rule it out. If it was the source, there should¡¯ve been a lot more going on than just a few skeletons. There¡¯s another one in the residential district across the river. The city¡¯s Second Owner built their house on top of it.¡±

    ¡°Second Owner?¡± chirped Rika. The Director sighed.

    ¡°The Second Owner is a family of magi that have been entrusted with the management of a significant spiritual ground, Senpai,¡± Mash explained patiently. ¡°They¡¯re chosen by the Mage¡¯s Association to handle all of the magical phenomena that occur in that place. For a city like Fuyuki to support an event as intense as the Holy Grail War¡­ Director, wouldn¡¯t that make this one of the most magically active lands in the country?¡±

    ¡°For what that¡¯s actually worth,¡± the Director said. ¡°Despite being an island nation, Japan is notoriously poor in terms of its spiritual grounds, to the point that there¡¯s really only two places in the whole country that are viable for large scale rituals like a Holy Grail War. It¡¯s part of why the Association has so little interest in it ¡ª or in the magi who come from it.¡±

    ¡°I feel like I should be offended,¡± Rika commented.

    The Director quirked an eyebrow. ¡°Oh? So that¡¯s what it takes to get you to pay attention.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s three,¡± I noted, trying to cut off another confrontation. ¡°Where¡¯s the fourth place?¡±

    ¡°An old Catholic mission,¡± said the Director. ¡°There should be a church near the edge of the city limits on this side of the river. It¡¯s the last possible place for the Grail to form at the end of the ritual, so at the very least, we should check it out and make sure there¡¯s nothing of interest going on over there.¡±

    My lips pulled into a frown. ¡°You don¡¯t think there will be?¡±

    The Director let out a slow breath through her nose. Resigned, that was a good word for the sense I got from her.

    ¡°It¡¯s possible, but I doubt we¡¯ll find anything except maybe more skeletons. If there are any Servants still left in this Singularity, they might have chosen it as a place to hide out. However, having said that, my estimation is that we won¡¯t find much of anything at any of the other three sites. Whatever is going on here, the most likely location for its epicenter is the mountain on the far edge of town.¡±

    She was probably right. No, even knowing so little about the functions of magic and its practitioners, I had the feeling that she was absolutely correct. The church, the Second Owner¡¯s house, whatever the last area near here was, they weren¡¯t necessarily bad places. In fact, since they were apparently so significant, they might be good places for us to plant our flag, so to speak, and hunker down when we needed to take a good, long rest.

    But if I were someone fucking around with history? If I wanted to screw things up badly enough and make it as difficult as possible to untangle it all? I wouldn¡¯t have chosen any of those spots. Too easy to access. Too easy to get to. Good ambush spots, if I¡¯d still had my power. Enough places to hide traps, to weave gossamer strands for any enemies to trip and tangle themselves up in.

    Even so, the mountain¡­ That was the best place. Remote, far less hospitable than the rest of the city, presumably rife with vegetation and even more places to hide traps. The most defensible spot, too. Not as convenient as a penthouse in the city or a mansion in the residential district, but that just made it better because it was the less obvious choice.

    Despite that¡­

    ¡°We should check them anyway,¡± I said. ¡°All of them, just to make sure.¡±

    It wouldn¡¯t hurt to be thorough.

    The Director¡¯s lips pursed, but she nodded. ¡°Nearest first, then the church. If we don¡¯t find anything, we¡¯ll cross the river and check the Second Owner¡¯s house.¡±

    ¡°Rest up, even get some sleep, if we can,¡± I added.

    ¡°Then, we¡¯ll check the mountain.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Closest first?¡±

    ¡°Closest first,¡± she agreed, and then she turned to Mash. ¡°Mash, you¡¯re in front. I¡¯m entrusting you with our safety, got it? If anything attacks, it¡¯s going to be up to you to handle them and protect us.¡±

    ¡°Roger that, Director!¡± Mash said.

    The Director pointed off in a vague direction, a winding pathway framed by low flames on either side. I could just make out what looked like a side road, or at least one that branched off from the main road that we were currently standing on.

    ¡°It should be about half a mile that direction,¡± she said confidently. ¡°In 2004¡­ It would have been a civic center.¡±

    ¡°Understood.¡±

    Mash reached down and hefted up her massive shield, swinging it around and wielding it like it was nothing more than a toy. Even having seen her do it before¡­ Well, no, maybe I wasn¡¯t that surprised, in the end, just unused to casual displays of superhuman strength, these days. It had been two years since I¡¯d last seen anything resembling the Brute capes I¡¯d known in my younger years.

    Holy fuck, that made me feel old, and I was barely twenty.

    Mash turned in the direction of the first point and looked at us from over her shoulder.

    ¡°Please stay behind me, Master, Director, Miss Taylor. I will defend you with my life.¡±

    And thus began our investigation into Singularity F.

 Chapter IV: Contractual Obligations

    Chapter IV: Contractual Obligations

    ¡°Battle concluded, Master, Director,¡± Mash reported as she let the bottom of her shield rest against the ground. The last of the skeletons vanished into dust.

    ¡°Good job, Mash!¡± Ritsuka said brightly.

    ¡°Wow, you¡¯re so awesome, Mash!¡± Rika added. ¡°You made that look so easy!¡±

    Mash smiled bashfully, and it struck me that it must have been the most honest smile I¡¯d ever seen on her face. How cruel it was that it was only happening here and now.

    ¡°Here, too,¡± the Director said thoughtfully, brow furrowed.

    ¡°They were at the other site, too,¡± I said. ¡°They must be related.¡±

    ¡°More skeletons appear the denser the concentration of magical energy, you mean?¡± the Director mused, cupping her chin. ¡°It¡¯s starting to look that way. It¡¯s strange, though. Normally, when you talk about reanimated corpses, you¡¯d expect to find a necromancer of some kind involved. But we haven¡¯t even encountered another living person, yet, let alone the magus who might be behind this.¡±

    If I translated that into powers as I knew them, that would mean there shouldn¡¯t be any minions without a Master to spawn and control them ¡ª no goblins without Nilbog, no ghosts without Crusader, no evil clones without Echidna. That was what made sense to me.

    Of course, that didn¡¯t mean magic necessarily followed the same logic, as I¡¯d been learning for the past two years.

    ¡°Could the magical energy itself be reanimating them?¡±

    The Director opened her mouth, paused, and then let out a disgusted sigh. ¡°I want to say no, but nothing here is making any sense to begin with! Ugh! So it¡¯s entirely possible that some sort of magical phenomenon has affected the ley lines, and any nexus points are causing spontaneous reanimation of human remains.¡±

    ¡°Maybe it¡¯s a Servant, instead?¡± I suggested.

    The Director grunted.

    ¡°It would have to be a Caster, in that case, and if they have the range to control their familiars from so far away, there wouldn¡¯t be anything stopping them from crushing us the same way,¡± she said. ¡°Otherwise, Romani would¡¯ve notified us of a Servant¡¯s presence.¡± She paused again and winced. ¡°If¡­the sensors for it are still working properly.¡±

    ¡°Doctor Roman was able to scan my Saint Graph earlier,¡± Mash chimed in.

    The Director shook her head. ¡°Then even if the range was reduced, any Servant nearby enough to sic familiars on us would ping the sensors. Besides¡­¡±

    She looked out over the ruins of the church, a mess of rubble so destroyed that there wasn¡¯t much of a single wall, let alone an entire building. The remnants were still smoldering as what was left of the pulpit and the pews burned down to nothing.

    It was no better off than the rest of the city. In fact, it seemed as though someone had specifically gone out of their way to demolish this building in particular, smashing it to smithereens. Or maybe it had just been a casualty of some earlier battle, blown to pieces when a pair of Servants decided to duke it out inside.

    Maybe two different Servants had had the same idea and killed themselves fighting over who got to claim the real estate.

    That one was probably wishful thinking.

    ¡°¡­it¡¯s pretty obvious that there isn¡¯t anyone hiding here, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°If they were, they aren¡¯t anymore,¡± I agreed.

    Beep-beep!

    The band on Ritsuka¡¯s wrist chimed, and an instant later, a specter of Romani appeared in the air. The Director snarled. ¡°What is it now, Romani ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Director!¡± Romani cut across her. ¡°I¡¯m detecting the presence of a Servant nearby your location!¡±

    Immediately, everyone was on alert, and Mash hurried forward, interposing herself between the group and the road we¡¯d come from, and planted her shield like a barricade.

    ¡°Everyone, please get behind me!¡±

    No one questioned her, we all just huddled behind the massive shape of her shield, silent and waiting. I had the thought that she might be facing the wrong direction, but if she had the instincts of the Heroic Spirit fused to her, body and soul, then she probably knew better about that than I did.

    I glanced past the embers of the ruined church anyway and found nothing.

    It made me feel helpless, standing there behind a teenage girl who had been in a grand total of maybe half a dozen actual fights in her entire life, unable to do anything else. I¡¯d underestimated exactly how impotent being a Master instead of a direct combatant would make me feel, and I didn¡¯t like it at all.

    A nail-biting moment later, Romani made a confused noise. ¡°Huh? It¡¯s gone?¡±

    The tension deflated like a balloon, and the noise that came from the Director¡¯s throat sounded like one. ¡°Romani! Did you misread the sensor output, you dunce?¡±

    ¡°F-forgive me, Director, but there was a Servant there, no question about it!¡± Romani said quickly. ¡°It appeared suddenly, stayed for a few seconds, and then it left! Almost like ¡ª¡±

    ¡°It came to observe us,¡± I realized.

    To¡­what? Scope out the competition? Or just to take a look at the strangers who had showed up where they shouldn¡¯t be? No, we couldn¡¯t afford to give this mystery Servant the benefit of the doubt. We had to assume it was an enemy, here to scout us out and get our measure.

    The Director turned to me, wide-eyed. ¡°Romani,¡± she said, quieter and with a thread of anxiety in her tone, ¡°are you sure you didn¡¯t just misread the sensors?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m positive, Director,¡± said Romani.

    ¡°Oh no,¡± the Director moaned. She started chewing on her thumbnail again. ¡°Oh no, oh no, oh no. This is bad. There weren¡¯t supposed to be any Servants here that we had to fight. There¡¯s no way we can take on a fully fledged Servant as we are with nothing more than a Demi-Servant like Mash.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with Mash?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    The Director whirled on him. ¡°What¡¯s wrong with ¡ª are you seriously asking that? In the first place, do you see any weapons on her?¡± She gestured at Mash with one hand. ¡°In the second, a battle between Servants is a battle between Noble Phantasms, and Mash doesn¡¯t even know the name of hers! If that Servant has an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm, we¡¯re all dead!¡±

    ¡°Director.¡± I placed my hand on her raised arm and gently forced it down. ¡°Calm down.¡±

    ¡°Calm down?¡± She turned on me, next. ¡°How can I calm down? The instant that Servant comes back, there¡¯s nothing we can do!¡±

    ¡°And panicking won¡¯t change anything about any of that.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not panicking!¡± the Director snapped.

    ¡°You kind of are,¡± said Rika with a shaky smile.

    ¡°I am not!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± Rika added, ¡°I¡¯m actually pretty freaked out, too.¡±

    ¡°The first thing you¡¯ve said that makes sense!¡± the Director said.

    ¡°Director, wait, that¡¯s not fair,¡± Ritsuka began.

    ¡°Fair?¡± she demanded. ¡°None of this is fair! None of this is right! Not a single thing has gone right all day! Lev is¡­is¡­! Chaldea is in ruins! Almost the entirety of the staff is gone, and I¡¯m stuck here with a half-baked Servant contracted to two novices who don¡¯t know a Command Spell from a Mystic Code ¡ª !¡±

    ¡°Everyone, please stop!¡± Mash shouted, and immediately, everyone else cut off. ¡°Director. You¡¯re right, this situation isn¡¯t ideal. However, please, have faith in me. I¡¯m still performing at optimal levels.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯ve been no significant fluctuations in her readings so far,¡± Romani added.

    ¡°I understand that I don¡¯t meet all of the expectations that were placed on me for this project,¡± Mash went on firmly, ¡°but even so, I think¡­ No, I know that I can handle any Servant that we might encounter. As long as I have my Masters¡¯ support, we can make it through this.¡±

    A moment of long silence stretched. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Ritsuka and Rika had positioned themselves on either side of Mash, as though to lend her words weight, standing opposite the Director, with me caught in the middle.

    The position of mediator¡­ There was something darkly ironic about that.

    ¡°We need to keep investigating,¡± I said at length. ¡°If that Servant didn¡¯t attack, that means they¡¯re probably not confident they can take us out. If that¡¯s the case, then if I was in their shoes, I¡¯d either regroup to find a more advantageous position or go for reinforcements.¡±

    Mash¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°If multiple Servants teamed up and attacked us¡­¡±

    The Director heaved a deep, heavy breath. Her hands were still trembling.

    ¡°Even if you can fight off one, fighting two at the same time is too much,¡± she said. We all pretended not to notice the quaver in her voice. ¡°You¡¯re right. At this point, our best bet is to keep moving. Even if we wanted to find a good, easily defensible spot, this most certainly isn¡¯t it.¡±

    ¡°Then the next point of interest?¡± I suggested.

    ¡°The Second Owner¡¯s house, in the residential district,¡± the Director answered. ¡°We¡¯ll need to cross the bridge for that. So be on your guard!¡± She pointed at Mash. ¡°If we¡¯re going to be ambushed, the bridge is basically the ideal place to do it! Keep your eyes peeled for any enemies!¡±

    She swung her finger around the group and landed on Ritsuka. ¡°That goes for you, too! The more eyes we have keeping a lookout, the less chance we¡¯ll get hit with a surprise attack!¡±

    Rika gave her a cheeky salute. ¡°Roger that, Boss Lady!¡±

    Ritsuka sighed. ¡°Rika, stop antagonizing her, please¡­¡±

    His sister didn¡¯t reply, but the glint in her eyes was familiar.

    Like trying to wrangle Alec, I thought with a muted pang. Just as obstinate and just as determined to needle whenever she could.

    ¡°In any case, if there¡¯s nothing of interest left to investigate here,¡± I said, ¡°then we should get moving. Mash, you¡¯ll need to take point.¡±

    ¡°Understood!¡± Mash nodded.

    ¡°Director ¡ª¡±

    ¡°The Masters should be immediately behind her,¡± the Director said suddenly. ¡°It¡¯s the best position for them to support her from.¡± She pinned me with a stare. ¡°Hebert, that means I¡¯ll be entrusting my protection to you.¡±

    I didn¡¯t reply immediately, just stared back, but her gaze didn¡¯t waver.

    I wasn¡¯t blind to what a show of trust this was. But then, the Director had had my back for a while now, so maybe it wasn¡¯t that strange that she was so willing to trust me with hers.

    ¡°Director, are you sure that¡¯s a good idea?¡± Romani asked worriedly. ¡°Taylor isn¡¯t a Servant, after all.¡±

    I didn¡¯t even glance in his direction. Neither did she.

    ¡°Understood, Director.¡±

    She nodded, and then turned to Mash. ¡°Back the way we came. The main road may not be in the best of shape, but it¡¯ll be the most direct path to the bridge. If we¡¯re careful and conserve our energy in case that Servant comes back, it should take us about an hour and a half to reach it. Two, if we run into any more skeletons.¡±

    ¡°If, she says,¡± Rika mumbled.

    A huff came from the Director¡¯s nostrils, but she didn¡¯t rise to the bait.

    ¡°Remember. Keep your eyes wide open. Mash may be a Demi-Servant instead of a regular Servant, but her performance will still drop if her Master is incapacitated. Or worse, killed.¡±

    Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    ¡°And of course, you getting killed is the worst case scenario,¡± said Rika.

    ¡°That should go without saying! I¡¯m the Director! I¡¯m the most important person on this team!¡±

    Somehow, we eventually managed to start the journey back into the city. Materially, nothing had really changed, but there was an air among the group as we walked that hadn¡¯t been there before. Everyone cast furtive glances about the buildings around us, no matter what shape they were in, looking for the ambush that we were all worried was coming. Every nook and cranny and every shadowed doorway seemed sinister in a way it wasn¡¯t earlier, and the nervousness had put a damper even on Rika¡¯s humor.

    The ambush we were all waiting for didn¡¯t come. There were more groups of skeletons that waylaid us along the road, but they weren¡¯t any more threatening or intimidating than they had been before, and they were just as easily dispatched. Mash handled them with an ease and aplomb that reminded me a little of Defiant, back in his Armsmaster days. Graceful and efficient, and brutally effective.

    If she was slowing down, I didn¡¯t see it. She seemed just as capable and just as calm as she was hours ago, when we first got dropped into this quaint little hellhole.

    Perks of being a Servant, I guess, even a Demi-Servant.

    By the time the big, red bridge came into view, we were all waiting for the metaphorical shoe to drop. Even still, there was no sign of the Servant who had come by to scout us out while we were at the ruins of the old Catholic church.

    ¡°¡­Was it a fluke, after all?¡± the Director mumbled thoughtfully. ¡°Maybe¡­no, just a sensor ghost? A blip caused by an accidental double read of Mash¡¯s Spirit Origin?¡±

    My lips pulled tight. ¡°We can¡¯t bet on that.¡±

    She looked around nervously up and down the banks of the river. No Servant materialized from the aether to try and kill us, but it did little to make her feel better.

    Being entirely honest, I¡¯d been expecting us to get attacked by now, too. We¡¯d passed dozens of points where the Undersiders would¡¯ve been able to stage a flawless ambush, made so numerous by the general state of the buildings around here, and anyone with a modicum of tactical prowess should have seen the opportunities for what they were just as easily.

    So whatever the Servant who had been observing us was, it probably wasn¡¯t an Assassin ¡ª there was no way one of those wouldn¡¯t have taken the shot already. Not unless they were counting on the bridge itself as a trap.

    An uncomfortably possible scenario.

    A Caster¡­

    Maybe. My money was on the Caster being wherever the source of the anomaly causing this Singularity was situated. It seemed to me that a Caster was the one most likely to be responsible for it in the first place, considering what I understood their skill sets tended to look like.

    ¡°We¡¯d still know they were there before they came after us, right?¡± Ritsuka asked nervously. ¡°So shouldn¡¯t it be fine?¡±

    ¡°Assassin class Servants have a skill called Presence Concealment, Senpai,¡± Mash told him solemnly. ¡°They can hide themselves until the moment they go on the attack, even from Chaldea¡¯s advanced sensors. If the Servant was an Assassin, we won¡¯t know until the attack has already begun.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a cheery thought,¡± Rika groaned. ¡°So they could be watching us right now and we wouldn¡¯t even know it? I feel kinda icky.¡±

    ¡°Think about that for a second,¡± the Director said. ¡°If it was an Assassin, would we even have known they were watching us back at the church in the first place? Use some common sense!¡±

    I shook my head. ¡°And if they wanted to lure us into an ambush?¡±

    The Director grimaced. ¡°Then why not just attack us at the church? Our guard was already down, so it¡¯s not like we were expecting them and prepared to defend ourselves.¡±

    A good point. Honestly, I agreed with her, but it didn¡¯t hurt to keep your mind open to even the stuff you thought unlikely.

    I looked across the bridge. The light of the flames danced across the red, metal beams and the equally red suspension cables, making them look like they were on fire, too. ¡°The road to hell¡± wouldn¡¯t have been an inappropriate comparison to make.

    ¡°We have to cross the bridge no matter what, right?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s the only way to make it across the river,¡± the Director said grimly. ¡°Anything else is miles further inland, which means hours or even days more walking.¡±

    ¡°Then we don¡¯t have much of a choice, do we?¡± said Ritsuka.

    It seemed like we really didn¡¯t. Fuck. I didn¡¯t like this.

    The Director took a deep, bracing breath. ¡°Right.¡±

    ¡°Keep your guard up,¡± I added. ¡°Mash, be ready with that shield.¡±

    ¡°Understood, Miss Taylor.¡±

    Hesitantly, we started walking. Mash stayed in front, shield held in front of her as though to ward off danger, and she peered over one of the massive spokes that jutted out from the rounded center shape. We all stayed behind her, huddled as closely together as we could without tripping over one another. My ears were constantly straining for the slightest off sound, but aside from our footsteps, our breathing, and the low crackle of the flames, the city remained eerily silent.

    ¡°We¡¯re off to see the wizard,¡± Rika sang to herself under her breath, so quiet that I barely heard her, ¡°the wonderful Wizard of Oz¡­¡±

    I glanced at her, thought about chastising her, but I seized the impulse before the words could even make it to my tongue, because I was trying to be better than the person I¡¯d been before Gold Morning. It wasn¡¯t malicious or inappropriately jovial, anyway; the line of tension in her shoulders made it obvious she was using whatever she could to distract herself.

    She was just a kid, I reminded myself. Older than I was when I became Skitter, sure, but far less experienced and far less prepared than even I had been on my first night out. A girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, in far over her head.

    Still, there was no sign of the enemy. No one leapt out at us, no one fell out of the sky on top of us, and there wasn¡¯t even the blip of Romani reporting a Saint Graph reading nearby.

    We were about halfway across when that changed.

    Beep-beep

    ¡°Romani ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Director!¡± Romani shouted without waiting for her to answer. ¡°There¡¯s a Servant near your location, North-Northwest!¡±

    Mash stiffened and immediately swung around, facing a point off to the right as though she could see the Servant herself.

    ¡°Director!¡± she said urgently. ¡°I¡¯m picking it up now myself!¡±

    Shit.

    ¡°Across the bridge!¡± I ordered. ¡°Now, now!¡±

    Mash hesitated and turned to Ritsuka. ¡°Master ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Go!¡± said Ritsuka.

    I broke into a sprint, and a bare moment later, the others fell into step with me. Mash kept pace, only instead of staying out ahead of us like she undoubtedly could have, she stayed to the side. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her glancing in the same direction every few seconds, like she was expecting to be attacked from there any second.

    Maybe she was. I wasn¡¯t a Servant, so I couldn¡¯t detect them on my own, and I wasn¡¯t so accomplished a spellcaster that I could track the magical energy to find their location that way.

    ¡°Reading¡¯s¡­holding steady,¡± Romani reported as we went. A burst of static punctuated his words. ¡°They¡¯re not disappearing, this time. I¡¯m sorry, the system can¡¯t get a better handle on the Spirit Origin or Saint Graph, so I can¡¯t even begin to tell you what kind of Servant it is or which Heroic Spirit it might be ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Just¡­keep an eye on it¡­Romani!¡± the Director huffed as we ran.

    ¡°Communications¡­still spotty,¡± Romani said, interrupted by static halfway. ¡°I¡­gen¡­location, but¡­more than¡­ It¡¯s on¡­orthwest bank¡­the river.¡±

    ¡°Romani?¡±

    ¡°Director,¡± he said, and then the feed cut out.

    ¡°Damn it,¡± the Director said. ¡°Damn it, damn it, damn it!¡±

    ¡°Director,¡± said Mash, ¡°I think he was trying to say that the Servant is somewhere on the northwest bank of the river.¡±

    ¡°I know what he was saying!¡± the Director snapped. ¡°Damn¡­it! Why¡­is everything¡­falling apart¡­on me¡­¡±

    The Director slowed to a halt as we cleared the end of the bridge. She hunched over, panting, hands on her knees. I stumbled to a stop a few paces beyond her, and Ritsuka and Rika did, too, hunching over next to the Director as they gulped down air. Only Mash seemed less bothered by the exertion of running across the bridge than I was.

    ¡°Director,¡± I started, ¡°we can¡¯t stay here.¡±

    The Director glared up at me. ¡°Damn¡­it. So¡­unfair. You¡¯re not¡­even¡­breathing hard.¡±

    ¡°Senpai¡­such a¡­badass,¡± Rika whined.

    ¡°Director,¡± I said more insistently.

    She grimaced.

    ¡°The¡­Second Owner¡¯s house¡­should be¡­in the southern half¡­of the residential¡­district.¡±

    ¡°Go,¡± I said. None of them moved. ¡°Go! If Mash can sense whoever that Servant is, you can bet they can sense her, too! We need to get moving before ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Master!¡± Mash shouted as she leapt, kicking off the ground.

    Faster than I could blink, she¡¯d interposed herself between Ritsuka, Rika, the Director, and the northern section of the riverbank, and at the same moment, a thunderous clang rang through the air as a dark figure materialized practically on top of her, feet planted on the surface of the shield and the butt of a polearm planted between her ankles. Her cloak and her long hair hadn¡¯t even had time to settle before the new woman flung herself away to land with the grace of a jumping spider, bent over in half, one hand planted on the ground, and her polearm held out behind her.

    ¡°Oh?¡±

    The voice that came out of her was silky smooth and slippery, and as she straightened, she gave us a perfect view of her ample cleavage and her tall, slender body. Her cloak was ragged and ripped, but the pale skin she left on display was unblemished, with the exception of what seemed like red tribal markings. Her long hair fell almost to the ground, an inhumanly vivid shade of strawberry blonde.

    But the most striking thing about her was not her body or her grace, it was her presence. A palpable aura radiated off of her, chilling the hot air, and it gave her the sense of some great predator, stalking its unsuspecting victims. A snake, coiled and ready to strike, to swallow us whole.

    ¡°You¡¯re better than I thought you would be,¡± she purred. ¡°To have blocked me so effortlessly¡­ My, my¡­ And behind you¡­¡±

    Her gaze traveled across Ritsuka, Rika, and the Director, and when it landed on me, I felt my insides freeze and all my muscles seize, like they¡¯d all locked up at once. I couldn¡¯t have moved to save my life, not even to breathe. It was like I¡¯d been turned to stone.

    She licked her lips, and her gaze turned back to Mash. The instant she looked away, I could move again.

    ¡°Two unknown Masters and some more fresh meat.¡±

    ¡°Director, that¡¯s¡­¡±

    ¡°A Servant. Judging by that weapon, a Lancer,¡± the Director said, voice quivering. She shaped one hand into a gun and braced it with the other, although it didn¡¯t quite stop her arm from shaking. ¡°Kuh¡­! O-of all the lousy luck! The first thing we run into that isn¡¯t a skeleton, and it¡¯s not even a living person!¡±

    The woman chuckled. ¡°My, a woman could take offense to that.¡±

    ¡°She appears to be operating without a Master,¡± Mash noted.

    ¡°Nothing about this situation is normal!¡± the Director bit out. ¡°In a situation like this, where everything has gone wrong, I¡¯m not surprised to find a Servant without a Master!¡±

    ¡°I thought you said Servants couldn¡¯t survive without a Master to support them!¡± Rika said.

    ¡°Ordinarily!¡± the Director shot back. ¡°Does anything about this seem ordinary to you?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s one of the Servants from the Holy Grail War, right?¡± Ritsuka asked hurriedly. ¡°Then, if we just explain that we¡¯re not a part of it ¡ª¡±

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t work that way,¡± I cut across him. I addressed the woman. ¡°Right?¡±

    The woman smirked, cold and cruel.

    ¡°When fresh prey stumble into my hunting ground, I can hunt them down at my leisure, can¡¯t I? The only thing my prey can do is try to run or try to fight.¡±

    She hefted her polearm, turning the hooked blade towards us, and her off hand glided sensuously up the haft.

    ¡°So? Are you going to try to run? Or are you going to try and fight me?¡±

    The Director bit her lip hard enough to bruise. Rika took a step backwards, face contorted with fear. Even Ritsuka¡¯s hands were shaking.

    Except for Mash, who squared her shoulders and took a brave step forward, holding up her shield. The woman¡¯s smirk grew into a bloodthirsty grin.

    ¡°Fight, then! Good! Try not to die too quickly!¡±

    Mash and the woman both moved at once, each kicking off the ground and throwing themselves at the other. They met somewhere in the middle, closer to our position than to hers, and Mash¡¯s shield shrieked as the blade of the polearm scraped down its surface, to no apparent effect. Mash planted her feet and pushed forward.

    But the woman was not deterred. She pulled backwards, and then surged back into action, swinging faster and faster with expert skill. Each blow glanced off of Mash¡¯s shield, but if the thunderous clang of each blow wasn¡¯t enough to tell me how hard each hit was, the way Mash¡¯s shoulders and arms braced for the impact would have been more than enough to clue me in.

    The woman laughed all the while.

    ¡°You¡¯re new, aren¡¯t you? You¡¯re still getting used to what it¡¯s like being a Servant! I can tell! The way you move, the way you don¡¯t move, the openings you miss even when they should be obvious ¡ª it¡¯s all you can do to try and keep up!¡±

    Mash grunted and didn¡¯t rise to the bait, she just kept blocking each attack. She weathered all of them, refusing to buckle, refusing to be beat down, holding that massive shield aloft as though it were the battlements of a castle and the woman¡¯s blows a battering ram. Neither she nor her shield gave a single inch.

    But it was obvious even to the others that she was outmatched.

    ¡°Mash¡­¡± Ritsuka whispered.

    ¡°There has to be something we can do!¡± Rika said frantically.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be ridiculous!¡± the Director shouted back. ¡°In a battle between Servants, the Master has only one place: in the back!¡±

    Good thing I¡¯m not a proper Master, then, isn¡¯t it?

    I pivoted on my heel and took off running at full sprint, aiming for the main road that led further into the residential district.

    ¡°Senpai!¡± Ritsuka shouted after me.

    ¡°T-Taylor,¡± the Director called, ¡°where are you going?¡±

    ¡°Did you think I¡¯d let you leave that easily?¡±

    Chains whipped out, crisscrossing over the space between the buildings. They wrapped around whatever they could, whether that was a lamppost, a wooden beam jutting up from the corpse of a house, or even just steel rebar, and they formed a tightly woven net that blocked off my path.

    I spun back around, and the woman was dashing towards me ¡ª leisurely, compared to her lightning fast attacks against Mash, but still too fast for a human to outpace. Her eyes seemed to glow as they pinned me in place, and my limbs froze again.

    ¡°My prey isn¡¯t allowed to escape!¡±

    It wasn¡¯t fear that had paralyzed me earlier. No, of course not. I¡¯d faced down Lung, Leviathan, Jack Slash and the Slaughterhouse Nine, Echidna, Behemoth, Nilbog, Scion. I¡¯d spoken with the Faerie Queen as equals, killed Alexandria with bugs, survived being cut in half. A single woman with a scythe, no matter how superhuman she was, didn¡¯t hold a candle to all of the things I¡¯d been through.

    The clue was eye contact.

    Just by meeting my eyes, she¡¯d been able to freeze me in place. I¡¯d learned a lot over the past two years, and one of the subjects was Mystic Eyes, specialized attributes activated through eye contact and line of sight. A Servant, a Heroic Spirit, who possessed a set of Mystic Eyes that could freeze you in place?

    I would¡¯ve been embarrassed if it had taken me more than that to figure it out.

    ¡°Medusa!¡±

    Magical energy circulated through my body, and the spell was broken, shattered with ease, now that I knew what it was and could fight it. Magic like this relied on surprise, on the victim not knowing what they were up against. It was much weaker if your guard was up.

    My arm rose. Black light gathered on my fingertips. With a direct line to my target, I couldn¡¯t miss.

    ¡°Gandr!¡±

    And a ball of black energy flew at her face.

    The thing about people, even capes with powers? They still had reflexes. Things they did automatically, things they¡¯d trained themselves to do, over and over again for years. Ingrained responses, either instinctual or muscle memory. Pyrokinetics could get used to their own flames, sure, but it took a lot of experience fighting to keep yourself from flinching away whenever someone else threw fire at you. Even high level Brutes still dodged and winced until they got used to being invulnerable.

    Servants were no different.

    Medusa was a Lancer, one of the Knight classes, which meant she had some form of Magic Resistance as a rule. My dinky, little Gandr was as harmless to her as a gnat. But even if she knew that intellectually, her body reacted without thinking, and instead of taking the shot and letting it splash off of her futilely, she deflected it with her¡­scythe, or whatever that thing counted as, because her eyes tracked an incoming projectile and the response she¡¯d trained into herself activated automatically.

    She slid to a halt as my Gandr glanced off of her and dissipated. She snarled at me.

    ¡°You¡­!¡±

    ¡°Now, Mash!¡± I shouted.

    Medusa whipped around ¡ª and as she went to swing her scythe into a counterattack, I reached out with my prosthetic¡¯s phantom limb and took a solid grip of it.

    It wasn¡¯t enough to truly stop her. If she exerted any real effort, she could have wrenched it away and ignored me completely.

    But the resistance distracted her, because she wasn¡¯t expecting it, and her head and torso turned back towards me, her eyes wide.

    ¡°Wha ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Raah!¡±

    And Mash leapt at her, swung that massive shield around right into her face. Medusa went flying, soaring across the ground, to tumble to a halt some twenty feet away, crumpled into a heap.

    ¡°Yes!¡± shouted Rika.

    ¡°Good job, Mash!¡± Ritsuka added.

    They started over our way.

    ¡°Ritsuka, Rika!¡± I barked out at them. ¡°Don¡¯t get any closer!¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Rika squawked. ¡°But Senpai, it¡¯s over!¡±

    ¡°Mash,¡± I said, making sure to keep my eyes on Medusa.

    She nodded. ¡°Understood!¡±

    The lump on the ground chuckled, low and ominous, and slowly, Medusa pulled herself to her feet.

    ¡°You kids should listen to your more experienced friend,¡± she purred. ¡°You two really are fresh-faced, if you thought that was enough to defeat me.¡±

    She turned back around, grinning a demented grin, and her tongue snaked out to lick up the trail of blood that dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. She slurped it noisily, like she was enjoying a fine meal.

    ¡°Not that her experience will mean anything,¡± Medusa said gleefully. ¡°After all, you worked oh so hard to get that one shot in on me, and all you have to show for it is a little bit of blood.¡±

 Chapter V: Beggars and Choosers

    Chapter V: Beggars and Choosers

    Medusa was uninjured. Everything that had been put into getting one good hit on her, and we hadn¡¯t even made it count by dealing a hard blow.

    I gritted my teeth, mind racing.

    She was right, much as I hated admitting it. I was down to five Gandr shots before I had to rest, Mash was outmatched, and that little distraction trick I¡¯d used probably wouldn¡¯t work twice.

    We couldn¡¯t win. Not as we were. We didn¡¯t have a good enough position, we didn¡¯t have enough tactics that would work against someone like her, and we just plain didn¡¯t have the firepower to finish the job.

    The only real option was to retreat. But none of us was fast enough to outrun her, and she could just chase us down at her leisure, so the only way for the rest of us to escape was¡­

    ¡°Mash¡­¡±

    The words wouldn¡¯t come out of my mouth.

    Was I really going to be that person again? To use and discard her, like she was a tool that could be replaced so easily?

    What happened to my decision to focus more on the people than the goals?

    ¡°Miss Taylor,¡± said Mash, voice steady and strong, ¡°please, take Master and the Director and escape. I can¡¯t defeat her, but I¡¯ll buy you as much time as I can.¡±

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka shouted, horrified.

    ¡°We¡¯re not gonna leave you here!¡± said Rika.

    Mash¡­

    You really were the best person on Team A, weren¡¯t you? Willing and able to stare death in the face in your first real battle for a couple of strangers and two people who might as well have been, all without flinching.

    ¡°We¡¯ll hold her off,¡± my mouth wound up saying. ¡°Director¡­ Take the twins and get going. Find a safe place to hole up until Romani can get you out of here.¡±

    I could feel the Director¡¯s eyes on me, like they were boring a hole in the back of my skull ¡ª heh. Wasn¡¯t that an ironic comparison?

    ¡°Taylor¡­¡±

    ¡°Damn it!¡± Ritsuka said. ¡°Do you think we¡¯re just going to leave the both of you to die?¡±

    ¡°I expect you to remember that this is larger than you or me,¡± I rebuked him sharply. ¡°The most important thing is getting as many of us back as we can, and the only one of us here who has any combat experience to help out Mash is me.¡±

    I stared down Medusa, trying to project a confidence I didn¡¯t really feel. ¡°I already managed to pull one over on her once. I¡¯m sure I¡¯ll think of something.¡±

    A deep, masculine voice echoed as it broke in, chuckling.

    ¡°You have to admit, Lancer, she got you good.¡±

    Mash tensed, and then she rushed over to place herself in front of me. ¡°Miss Taylor!¡±

    Over the spoke of her shield, a man faded into view, hefting a staff and wearing sky blue robes lined with white fur. He was facing towards Medusa and away from us.

    ¡°Another Servant?¡± the Director screeched.

    ¡°Even if she only got that glancing blow in,¡± the newcomer said, ¡°that gumption of hers got me up off my ass.¡±

    Medusa¡¯s eyes narrowed. ¡°You!¡±

    The newcomer pulled back his hood, and long, dark hair fell freely over his neck and shoulders. The glint of something silvery hung from his ears, the one I could see, anyway.

    ¡°Whaddya say we finally settle that score of ours?¡±

    ¡°Caster¡­!¡± Medusa seethed.

    ¡°Caster?¡± I asked sharply.

    If he was here¡­ No, did that mean he wasn¡¯t the one behind the Singularity? Or did he have some kind of other ulterior motive? If he was the one who threw things off track, why would he show himself now, of all times, here, of all places, instead of just letting Medusa finish us all off?

    The so-called Caster glanced at me over his shoulder, and eyes the color of freshly spilled blood glinted merrily as his lips stretched into a grin. He lifted one hand in an irreverent wave. ¡°At your service, Princess.¡±

    I looked at him incredulously.

    ¡°Princess?¡±

    ¡°I saw your group scoping out the old church a while back,¡± Caster explained easily, which¡­I didn¡¯t really know how I was supposed to take, yet. ¡°Wasn¡¯t quite sure what to make of you. Two Masters, a pair of magi, and one, lonely Servant? Curious thing to find, in a city where everyone else is dead, and the little missy there doesn¡¯t match any of the old competitors in this Holy Grail War.¡±

    He gestured at Mash, who blinked at him, nonplussed.

    ¡°Because we¡¯re not!¡± the Director shouted over at him. She stomped her foot. ¡°Geez! Why is that so hard to understand? We¡¯re from Chaldea! Chal! De! A! We¡¯re here to investigate what went wrong with the Holy Grail War, not participate in it!¡±

    Caster hummed thoughtfully.

    ¡°Chaldea, eh? Never heard of it,¡± he said, blas¨¦.

    The Director let out an inarticulate scream, like she just couldn¡¯t take any more nonsense.

    ¡°Caster,¡± said Medusa lowly, teeth gritted, ¡°why are you siding with this group of strays?¡±

    ¡°How could I not, after I saw Princess¡¯s clever, little trick? It¡¯s not every day you see a scrawny magus get one over on a Servant, especially one of the Knight classes,¡± Caster shot back with humor. I hoped he didn¡¯t stick with that nickname, because I really didn¡¯t like how it infantilized me. ¡°And the way these two here were so bravely willing to sacrifice their lives¡­I¡¯d be ashamed as a heroic spirit, if I just sat back and let that go without lending a hand. Plus¡­¡±

    The air froze. The presence I¡¯d felt before from Medusa radiated now off of Caster, only his seemed directed at her instead of just spread out like frost across the whole area. The smile had vanished from his face.

    ¡°Do I need a reason to help them kill a monster like you, Lancer?¡±

    Medusa snarled and took a step forward, teeth gnashing, and then, as though she¡¯d had an epiphany, she stepped back and her expression fell into one of surprise. It was only a second later that her malicious grin was back and she started chuckling. Her grip on her scythe tightened.

    ¡°No, this is fine,¡± she said, her voice a purr. ¡°Excellent, in fact. It makes no difference if you help them out, Caster, all you¡¯ve done now is save me the trouble of finding you and finishing the job myself.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Caster asked, something in his tone. ¡°You say that like the outcome has already been decided, Lancer. Are you really that confident you can take on two Servants by yourself, especially if one of them is me?¡±

    Medusa laughed a deep, throaty laugh. ¡°As I recall, Caster, the one who retreated from our last battle was you. If you think a little bit of backup from that baby Servant behind you is enough to make up for your own weakness, then I¡¯ll be happy to break that illusion for you.¡±

    ¡°How kind of you,¡± Caster drawled.

    ¡°Now.¡± Medusa crouched down, body low to the ground, spiderlike. Her hair fell about her back and over her sides like a cloak, and it almost seemed to have a life of its own. ¡°How should I do this? I think it would be most fitting if I left you alive for the very end, Caster, just so that you could watch me kill these stragglers without being able to stop it.¡±

    Caster grinned, twirling his staff to brandish it out at his opponent. ¡°If you¡¯re going to underestimate me that badly, don¡¯t complain when I beat you, Lancer!¡±

    He glanced back at me. ¡°Hey, Princess. You¡¯re a Master, too, right? There¡¯s no Command Spells on your hands, but I get that sense about you.¡±

    ¡°I was supposed to be, yes,¡± I said neutrally. ¡°Why? Did you have something in mind?¡±

    My mind raced through the possibilities. Was he about to ask what I thought he was about to ask? True, we¡¯d been trying to summon another Servant to help out earlier, but could we trust this one, when it seemed he was a competitor in this Holy Grail War that had gone sideways? Was this just a matter of him eliminating the competition, or could we trust him to stick with us through to the end?

    Maybe the better question was whether or not we had a choice, considering the situation. Beggars and choosers, and all that.

    ¡°Let¡¯s form a contract, you and me,¡± Caster said, his grin taking a sharklike edge. ¡°After all, your group looks like it¡¯s in need of another Servant, and me, well, hey, I¡¯m currently without a Master. Way I see it, we can both help each other out, here.¡±

    Just like I¡¯d thought.

    And I wasn¡¯t in a position to refuse him. Not with the situation as dire as it was. I just had to figure out how much that factored into whatever his plans were and whether those plans would be something we needed to worry about later on down the line.

    ¡°Miss Taylor,¡± Mash whispered worriedly.

    ¡°I know,¡± I mumbled back. Louder, I said, ¡°I accept, Caster.¡±

    He thrust his hand out over the spoke of Mash¡¯s shield, and before I could think better of it, I took it with my own.

    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

    ¡°Then from this moment forth, my sword shall be with you.¡±

    Like the lyrics to an old song, the response rolled off of my lips. ¡°And my fate shall be with you.¡±

    A flash of light, a brief burst of pain that surged up my nerves, and my left hand spasmed as three Command Spells drew themselves in red over the back. I didn¡¯t bother examining the design, beyond confirming that it was there.

    At the very least, I should be able to order him to kill himself if he tried to betray us. A cold comfort, but a failsafe like that made me feel better, somehow.

    Caster took his hand back as his brow drew down and he tilted his chin towards his chest. ¡°Looks like our contract is set, Master.¡±

    Medusa burst out into laughter, cackling madly.

    ¡°You¡¯ve reached a new low, Caster! Are you really so desperate that you¡¯d accept even a scurrying rat as your Master, now?¡±

    ¡°Heh. If you think I¡¯m weaker now that I have a more stable connection to this world, you¡¯ve really got another thing coming, Lancer.¡±

    ¡°Well, it doesn¡¯t matter, either way.¡± Medusa brandished her scythe. Her eyes seemed to glow from beneath her hood. ¡°I hope you enjoy the brief moment of having a Master again, Caster. It won¡¯t last you very long.¡±

    ¡°Long enough for me to finish you off, first!¡±

    Medusa kicked off the ground, streaking towards Caster like a rocket, but Caster didn¡¯t dodge, like I might have expected, he caught the haft of her scythe with his staff and twisted. His free hand came up and took hold of it just under the mount for the blade, and with expert skill, he maneuvered the thick crook on the end of his staff directly in front of Medusa¡¯s face.

    The etchings on it glowed bright orange, and then a ball of fire exploded out of it ¡ª and into Medusa¡¯s eyes.

    ¡°Agh!¡±

    She stumbled backwards, hand over her eyes, even though the rest of her looked undamaged, and Caster took advantage of the opening to etch a series of runes in the air with such rapid speed that it took even me by surprise. The runes glowed brightly, and then ignited, and an enormous explosion erupted out of them, flinging Medusa backwards.

    The entire thing happened so quickly that my hair hadn¡¯t even had time to settle after it had been blown back by the impact of their initial clash.

    Medusa landed on her feet like a cat, but she was worse for wear by the explosion. Burns pockmarked her exposed skin, and parts of her bodysuit had been torn away, but for all that she looked injured, it still seemed to be nothing more than superficial damage. At the very least, it hadn¡¯t done much more than make her angry.

    ¡°Caster!¡± she howled.

    She kicked off the ground again, throwing up chunks of asphalt into the air, and raced towards Caster again, but Mash took off at the same time, interposing herself between them with her shield up to take the blow. Medusa impacted with a thunderous clang, and Mash grunted as the force of it threatened to buckle her.

    ¡°Get out of my way, you brat!¡± Medusa spat.

    Caster thrust his staff out over Mash¡¯s shoulder and past one of the spokes of her shield, but Medusa had learned her lesson and used the circular base as a springboard to leap out of the way of the next fireball and up into the air. She flung out her arms, and her hair took on a life of its own, growing out into lengths of chain that homed in on Mash as though to bind her in place so that she couldn¡¯t interfere.

    She didn¡¯t even have the chance to get out of the way before Caster had moved in front of her, and he swept his staff out in an arc, the etchings aglow, and traced a quick circle of runes. Medusa¡¯s chains slammed into it and bounced off like rain, veering into wildly different trajectories that were nowhere near her opponents.

    I retreated away from the action as Medusa landed, because any one of the attacks being thrown around by either party would probably kill me if they spilled over enough or Mash or Caster miscalculated. The fight continued on as though nothing had changed, and if I put aside my pride, me disengaging didn¡¯t meaningfully change anything anyway.

    ¡°Let me see!¡± the Director hissed as I rejoined their group.

    Dutifully, I held out my left hand for her inspection, and she grabbed at it like a starving beggar, examining the strokes of my Command Spells. I let her at it as I watched Caster and Mash fight Medusa, dancing around the battlefield and throwing up chunks of asphalt as they moved. Mash wasn¡¯t really contributing much ¡ª Medusa was far and away more skilled and comfortable with her abilities, compared to Mash, who was very, very new to them. Caster was much the same, though, and although he was mostly playing on the defensive, deflecting attacks and slowly encircling the area so that Medusa¡¯s back was to us, he was just as comfortable as Medusa was and equally as confident.

    None of his attacks seemed to be landing, though. Medusa was just too fast and knew them just too well, because what she could avoid, she avoided, and what she could handle without issue, she deflected or just pushed through.

    ¡°These aren¡¯t Chaldea¡¯s Command Spells,¡± the Director announced.

    My head whipped around, and the twins, who had been entranced by the fight, turned their attention towards her as well.

    ¡°They aren¡¯t?¡±

    ¡°Eh?¡± Rika said incredulously. ¡°But they look just like ours!¡±

    She thrust her hand out, showing off her own set, and Ritsuka glanced down at his, but while his and his sister¡¯s were similar, even they weren¡¯t quite the same, and they both looked vastly different from mine. Theirs looked kind of like a shield with a stylized face, only the face was different between them, whereas mine¡­ I wasn¡¯t quite sure what mine looked like, exactly, and it didn¡¯t seem important to think about it too strongly, just then.

    ¡°W-well,¡± Rika hedged, ¡°maybe not exactly like ours¡­¡±

    ¡°What does it mean?¡± I asked the Director.

    She grimaced.

    ¡°Well, you did make a contract with a Servant of this sideways Holy Grail War¡­ If I had to guess, I¡¯d say these are Command Spells handed out by the Grail, which means that it¡¯s still around and performing at least some of its functions.¡±

    ¡°Didn¡¯t we already know that?¡± Ristuka asked. ¡°I mean, the Servants are summoned by the Holy Grail, right? So would they even still be around if it wasn¡¯t here, too?¡±

    ¡°O-of course I considered that angle!¡± the Director stammered, flustered. ¡°B-but this whole situation is strange, you know, so even that wasn¡¯t a guarantee ¡ª n-no, that¡¯s not the important part! Hebert.¡± She looked me in the eye. ¡°As a Master of this Holy Grail War, you should have something called Master¡¯s Clairvoyance. Chaldea¡¯s in bad shape right now, so our version probably doesn¡¯t work, but you should be able to see the stats and abilities of any of the Servants we run into, here.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± I mumbled. ¡°You mentioned that back during Team A¡¯s training.¡±

    The ability to see through a Servant¡¯s skills and Noble Phantasms simply by observing them in action¡­ There¡¯d been talk that it might not work on any Servant not contracted to Chaldea¡¯s FATE system, but there was no way to know until we tested it in the field. With all of the damage Chaldea had taken as a result of the attack on the facility, it was likely that it wasn¡¯t even functioning properly now, anyway.

    But by contracting with Caster, I¡¯d just given our team an advantage against any of the Servants still around from this Grail War.

    I turned back towards the fight in time to see Caster swipe his hand through the air again, sending a stream of fireballs at Medusa. She danced around them with serpentine grace, and what she couldn¡¯t dodge, she deflected into the ground, where they exploded like hand grenades. Mash came up from the side, leaping into the air, and with a shout, she tried to slam the bottom edge of her shield into Medusa.

    Medusa didn¡¯t let her and jumped out of the way, then raced back towards Mash and used the shield as a springboard again to fling herself at Caster.

    ¡°If you focus, you should be able to see their stats,¡± the Director said. ¡°In fact, you should be able to contact Caster directly with your mind, as well ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Director.¡±

    Her jaw snapped shut with an audible click.

    I glanced at Caster and honed my focus, and as I did, his skills and abilities unfolded in my mind¡¯s eye.

    Rune Magic ¡ª duh, I thought. He¡¯d been using it the whole fight.

    Protection from Arrows and Disengage. That explained how he¡¯d been able to come away from, at a guess, multiple fights with Medusa apparently unscathed. Disengage was a useful skill for retreating, but the fact that he had it meant I should be on the lookout for him cutting and running, no matter what he¡¯d said about jumping in because he couldn¡¯t let us die after witnessing our willingness to sacrifice ourselves.

    He was a Caster. When half the rest of the classes had some measure of resistance to your attacks, you had to get sneaky and creative about getting around those. If it were me, I¡¯d never engage the enemy outside of my specially prepared territory, where they would run into traps and tricks at every corner.

    A quick glance at Mash gave me nothing. That was about what I¡¯d been expecting.

    When I looked at Medusa, I could see her Mystic Eyes skill, along with Monstrous Strength and Independent Action, a skill normally reserved for the Archer class. Her Class skill, however, in particular her Magic Resistance¡­

    Convenient. Well, not as convenient as her not having one to begin with, but still good for us, in that it wasn¡¯t as high as it could be. Maybe that low a rank was some kind of side effect of not having a Master, or even whatever had caused the Singularity itself?

    Not important, for now.

    I focused hard, trying to thrust my mind outwards and towards Caster. I felt a little silly doing it.

    Caster?

    In the fight, Caster¡¯s step hitched for a bare fraction of a second, so short that I barely caught it, and as he deflected Medusa again, I thought I saw his eyes flicker over in my direction.

    Ho? The word came through to me as though across a distance, foreign and intrusive, but not intruding. Looks like I landed a pretty competent Master, indeed. Need something, Master?

    He kept fighting, but there was something a little more cautious in his movements, now. I had to be fast ¡ª the longer I took, the more I distracted him, and the longer he was distracted, the greater the odds of something going wrong.

    Monstrous Strength, Independent Action, and Mystic Eyes, I projected at him. The important part is her Magic Resistance. It¡¯s only rank C. If you¡¯ve got a strong enough spell to throw at her, you should be able to take her out in one hit.

    Caster grinned. Good to know. Means this trick should handle her just fine.

    Their dance continued. Caster continued to circle, breaking stride only to attack or defend. Medusa ping-ponged between him and Mash, but between Mash¡¯s massive shield and Caster¡¯s surprising skill with his staff, she wasn¡¯t landing a clean hit. Not with the business end of her scythe.

    Neither were Mash and Caster, though.

    I chewed on my bottom lip, looking for an opening, but I could feel Caster drawing on my magical energy as he fought. Not much, because he obviously had way more than I could ever hope to, but enough that I wasn¡¯t sure it was a good idea to risk using a Gandr to try and distract Medusa again.

    If it was truly desperate, I might have. Even with Caster apparently working on his own plan, the itch to get involved was strong. Leaving things to others had never been my strong suit; I preferred being in the thick of things, and maybe that was a leftover from my passenger¡¯s influence and maybe my passenger had chosen me specifically because it was part of who I was, but either way, that was the way it was.

    If I passed out, though, what would that mean for Caster? Now that he had a Master, was his performance tied more to me than Medusa¡¯s apparent freedom gave her? It wasn¡¯t worth risking it, not when Caster seemed so confident.

    Caster completed his circle. Mash rushed in, trying to bash Medusa with her shield, and when Medusa stepped back to dodge it, she swung that shield almost like it was an ax, swiping at Medusa with the longest spoke at the bottom. Medusa stepped back again to avoid it, then went on the offensive with a flurry of attacks from her scythe. Mash blocked each blow, grunting under the force of them.

    ¡°Girlie!¡± Caster shouted. ¡°Get back!¡±

    Mash braced herself, and in the moment between one swing and the next, she leapt backwards. Medusa made to follow, but she had to dodge out of the way again when Caster flung another huge fireball at her, jumping to clear the distance. She landed in what I realized a moment later was the center of the circle Caster had been walking, or close enough to it.

    A rune lit up beneath her foot, and she looked down at it, shock written across her face. ¡°What ¡ª¡±

    ¡°See ya later, Lancer.¡±

    ¡ª and a circle of glowing runes ignited around her, surging upwards in pillars of flame that twisted and snaked around each other, spinning, swirling, combining into a fiery twister that spat tongues of red and orange. The bulk stayed contained, never leaving the circle of runes from which it had all sprouted, and the air roared as the fire sucked in oxygen to keep going, to keep burning, to get hotter and hotter and hotter.

    Even compacted as it was, I could feel the heat from all the way over where I stood.

    For an instant, I was back on my first night out, Lung towering over me, the heat of his flaming body piercing the cold, spring night and pressing down on me. My pepper spray had blinded him, but only momentarily, and any single move would give me away. All it would take was one blow, one stream of fire from his fists, and I was dead.

    I wished I could believe it was going to be that easy, here. This¡­ This was on a different scale from the fireballs Caster had been flinging willy nilly before. Not a Noble Phantasm, I didn¡¯t think, but still a step above regular attacks. A finishing move, that might be a good way of putting it. An attack designed not to maim, injure, or distract, but to make sure the enemy died.

    But if there was one thing I¡¯d learned as a cape, it was that ¡°finishing moves¡± weren¡¯t necessarily just that. Not if your enemy had a way of surviving it. Not if they were just so tough they could shake it off.

    The twister kept burning, and I waited, making sure not to blink, so I could be ready if Medusa came out of that thing alive.

    Air alone wasn¡¯t enough to keep it going forever, though, and eventually, the gouts of flame that spawned this hellish tornado ran dry. The twister snuffed itself out with a low whump, and a column of smoke rose up into the sky, mushrooming as the hotter air pushed the cooler air out of the way.

    As it turned out, I needn¡¯t have worried. Of Medusa, nothing remained except particles of light that glittered and faded away just as quickly.

 Chapter VI: A Brief Respite

    Chapter VI: A Brief Respite

    A long moment of silence stretched out between us all as the final bits of Medusa vanished and the heat of Caster¡¯s attack began to die down. Only when it became obvious that she was well and truly gone and wouldn¡¯t spring out of the ground to land a devastating surprise attack did Mash finally relax, sagging a little as she let out a long, weary sigh.

    Caster, too, relaxed, smirking a little as he slung his staff across his shoulders and rested his arms atop it.

    ¡°Well,¡± he said with a touch of smugness. ¡°Finally got rid of that bitch.¡±

    That seemed to be the stroke that broke the dam, because behind me, the Director let out a relieved sigh of her own, even as Rika cheered.

    ¡°Ding-dong, the Wicked Witch is dead!¡±

    ¡°Seriously,¡± the Director groused, ¡°you grew up in Japan. How do you know all of these references?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m glad we all made it through that,¡± Ritsuka said with a smile. ¡°I was a little worried for a while, there.¡±

    ¡°Mash, you were great!¡± Rika jabbered enthusiastically. ¡°And Caster! Caster! That fire tornado at the end, that was so awesome! Like, wow, what kind of magic was that?¡±

    ¡°Rune magic,¡± Caster answered with the patient satisfaction of a man used to receiving praise. ¡°A little something I learned from my teacher. It¡¯s not the way I like to do things, but it got the job done, wouldn¡¯t you say, Little Missy?¡±

    ¡°Boy, did it ever!¡±

    ¡°Now what?¡±

    The cheering and celebrations stopped and everyone turned to me.

    After a moment, it was the Director who replied. ¡°We need to get to the Second Owner¡¯s house and continue our investigation.¡±

    ¡°I meant for you, Caster,¡± I said. ¡°What are you going to do, now that we¡¯ve beaten Medusa?¡±

    Does our partnership end here?

    Caster hummed thoughtfully, stroking his chin. ¡°You guys said you¡¯re with some group called Chaldea, right? You¡¯re here to investigate why this Grail War went so far off course?¡±

    ¡°Th-that¡¯s right!¡± the Director said. ¡°We¡¯re the Chaldea Security Organization, and we¡¯re here to correct the historical irregularities that caused this Grail War to deviate from proper human history!¡±

    ¡°Director,¡± I rebuked her. Startled, she looked towards me, like she didn¡¯t know why I was scolding her.

    Sometimes, it was all too easy to forget that she was a very young woman trying to fill very big shoes.

    ¡°Correct historical irregularities, eh?¡± Caster mused. ¡°Well, I don¡¯t really know anything about that sort of thing, so the way I see it, there¡¯s a Grail War in need of winning, and I intend to see my new Master across the finish line.¡±

    Of course.

    Because he was a Servant summoned by the Grail into this Holy Grail War, it was only natural that his only motivation was to complete the Grail War and get his wish. It wasn¡¯t in any way a surprise, and I¡¯d honestly been expecting it.

    ¡°So you can make your wish, even if someone messing with the Grail winds up being the reason this all happened in the first place?¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor,¡± Mash started. ¡°We don¡¯t yet know that the Grail is the cause for this Singularity.¡±

    We don¡¯t know that it isn¡¯t, I didn¡¯t say. I just kept staring straight into Caster¡¯s blood red eyes.

    ¡°Heh.¡± Caster grinned at me. ¡°Sorry to disappoint. Or maybe I should say, sorry I don¡¯t live down to those expectations of yours? I don¡¯t have a wish for the Grail.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t?¡± the Director echoed incredulously.

    ¡°Everyone has a wish for the Grail,¡± I said quietly.

    Even me.

    Even if what I felt towards the path I took wasn¡¯t quite the same as regret, the idea of having a second chance to do things over, to do them better, was appealing in a way that would have been far too tempting to a younger me.

    ¡°Unlike the rest of this rabble, I didn¡¯t come here to get a second chance at life or undo some mistake I made while I was alive.¡± Caster¡¯s grin took on edges. ¡°I just figured, how many chances was I gonna get to duke it out with some of the greatest heroes in all of history? A good fight against a bunch of strong enemies¡­I couldn¡¯t resist.¡±

    My brow furrowed.

    ¡°That¡¯s it? You¡¯re here¡­because it sounded like fun?¡±

    Seriously? Just which Heroic Spirit was this, that he was more interested in duking it out with other heroes than making a wish on an omnipotent wish-granting device? When tragic deaths and terrible twists of fate were so common in myth and legend, who had lived so well in spite of those that he was content just to have a good time while it lasted?

    ¡°That does sound a little unbelievable,¡± the Director said skeptically. ¡°A Servant answering the call for the Holy Grail War, but not having a wish he wants fulfilled? Wouldn¡¯t the Grail choose a Heroic Spirit with a stronger motivation than that? As a Caster, to boot!¡±

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°I finally managed to reestablish a connection!¡± Romani said as he reappeared. ¡°Director, there¡¯s a Servant ¡ª¡±

    He choked off as he saw Caster.

    ¡°¡ª right on top of you,¡± he finished meekly.

    ¡°Oh?¡±

    Caster stepped towards him, rubbing at his chin as he examined Romani¡¯s projected image. ¡°This is¡­ Some form of communication through magecraft? Pretty slick setup.¡±

    ¡°A-ah, yes, I mean¡­¡± Romani cleared his throat. ¡°Forgive me. I-I don¡¯t know which Heroic Spirit you are, but I would like to humbly extend my gratitude ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Romani,¡± the Director said irritably, ¡°stop trying to kiss his ass.¡±

    ¡°D-Director!¡±

    Rika giggled, the way little girls did the first time they heard their mothers swear.

    ¡°You can leave out all of that formal bullshit,¡± Caster agreed, waving a hand as though to ward away an unpleasant smell. ¡°Get straight to the point.¡±

    ¡°R-right.¡± Romani looked dismayed. ¡°A-ah. Ahem. First off, can I confirm that you¡¯re a Servant of this local Holy Grail War? Or what it was supposed to be, in any case?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve already established that,¡± the Director told him flatly. ¡°He¡¯s a Caster class Servant, although he hasn¡¯t shared his true name, yet. He helped us defeat a Lancer class Servant, true name Medusa.¡±

    Romani choked. ¡°M-Medusa? And you¡¯re all okay?¡±

    ¡°Everything¡¯s fine, Doctor Roman!¡± Rika said brightly, waving at him. Romani gave a sigh of relief and turned to something on the monitors he was sitting in front of.

    ¡°Rika, Ritsuka, Mash, yes, your vitals are all good,¡± he said. ¡°Director, I haven¡¯t been able to get a good read on you, but if you¡¯re well enough to scold me ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Romani,¡± she growled threateningly.

    ¡°¡ª a-and Taylor, you¡¯re showing some strain, but it¡¯s all within acceptable tolerances, so I¡¯m not too worried about that.¡±

    Strain. From supporting Caster, no doubt. It wasn¡¯t too bad, although I could definitely notice the dip in my own energy. A constant pulling sensation that felt like it was attached to some place inside of me that was impossible to describe, a place that was both in my body and yet beyond it. The fight with Medusa had been pretty quick, but I got the feeling¡­ If Caster got into three more fights of that length and intensity, I could handle that, but only barely.

    I cast him a surreptitious glance. He looked none the worse for wear. He didn¡¯t even seem to be breathing hard, although how much Servants even needed to breathe, I didn¡¯t really know for sure.

    ¡°That said,¡± Romani went on. ¡°Caster. If you and Lancer were both participants of this Holy Grail War¡­ Are you aware of the circumstances of the other five Servants?¡±

    Caster hummed and crossed his arms. ¡°This whole mess has been a shitshow for quite a while. Saber is the one guarding the Grail. She defeated the others and did something that converted them into these¡­caricatures, like you saw with Lancer. Lancer, Archer, Rider, Assassin, Berserker, they were all beaten one by one and transformed into these monsters. Corrupted, I guess you could say.¡±

    ¡°Do you know how this all started?¡± I asked.

    Caster shrugged.

    ¡°Not the first clue, Princess.¡±

    ¡°Princess?¡± Romani squawked. We both ignored him.

    ¡°One day,¡± said Caster, ¡°everything just changed. Masters disappeared, the whole city caught fire, and every living human just vanished. Poof. Saber started things back up again, not long after. I¡¯m the only one she never actually beat.¡±

    ¡°Which means the only way for the Grail War to end ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª is for me or her to kick the bucket,¡± Caster confirmed. ¡°That¡¯s why the others have been on my tail this whole time. I¡¯m the last Servant standing in the way of Saber¡¯s victory.¡±

    ¡°And the others?¡± Romani asked.

    ¡°I¡¯ve already beaten Rider and Assassin, and we just took out Lancer. Berserker¡­ That thing¡¯s off rampaging on its own, somewhere in the forest. The only ones left we really have to worry about are Archer and Saber.¡±

    ¡°Have you fought either of them before?¡±

    ¡°Heh!¡± Caster grinned. ¡°Enough to know that I can¡¯t take them both on, and Saber¡¯s just beyond me by myself. If I had been summoned as a Lancer, maybe. Unfortunately, that copycat bastard rarely strays too far from Saber¡¯s side, and even when he does, he only ventures far enough to keep her hideaway in clear view, so he can catch me if I even think about heading that way.¡±

    ¡°Hideaway?¡± Ritsuka parroted. ¡°You said she was guarding the Grail, so does that mean¡­ U-um, Director, what was it you said about the Grail manifesting?¡±

    The Director grunted. ¡°I said there were four places in this city where it could manifest. We¡¯ve already checked out two of them, and the way Caster is talking about Archer, I doubt it¡¯ll be at the third, which means¡­¡± She looked at Caster. ¡°She¡¯s hiding on the mountain?¡±

    Caster grinned. ¡°You figured it out, huh? Pretty slick. Yeah, there¡¯s a cavern in the mountain where the Grail is kept. Saber is down there, but Archer guards the entrance. I¡¯ve been avoiding going up there and confronting him, because Saber might decide to pop up and double team me, and I know better than to get into that kind of fight when that much firepower is being slung around.¡±

    ¡°Does that mean you know who Saber is?¡± I asked.

    Caster¡¯s grin dimmed and fell into a frown. ¡°King Arthur,¡± he said solemnly.

    The Director recoiled like she¡¯d been slapped, Mash¡¯s mouth fell open, and even the twins looked utterly gobsmacked. I guess a legend that famous was known even in far off places like Japan.

    ¡°Wh-wh-what?¡± Romani shrieked.

    Even I wasn¡¯t unaffected by the news, although I liked to think my reaction was much less extreme and much more muted than the others¡¯ were.

    King Arthur¡­

    My understanding of Heroic Spirits was that age and fame equated to larger degrees of power. The older and more celebrated a legend was, the more people recognized the name and deeds of a hero from that legend, the stronger they were and the more they had to bring to bear. Medusa probably would have been a good example, if she¡¯d been summoned as a Rider, with maybe Pegasus as her mount and probably something reflecting the island she¡¯d been exiled to. As a Lancer? Even her fame hadn¡¯t been able to make up for the limits of her class.

    King Arthur as a Saber?

    ¡°Which means her sword is Excalibur,¡± I said. In spite of myself, my voice sounded a little faint to my ears.

    Wait.

    ¡°Her?¡±

    Caster shrugged. ¡°The myths and legends don¡¯t always get things right,¡± he said, like that explained anything, ¡°and they don¡¯t always know all of the important bits.¡±

    ¡°Seems like a pretty big oversight.¡±

    ¡°Who cares about her gender?¡± the Director demanded hysterically. ¡°We¡¯re going up against the most famous knight in history! Wielding the greatest holy sword ever made! I think that¡¯s a little more important than whether or not she was a woman hiding her gender!¡±

    A fair point. Maybe I was a little more shaken by the news of who our final enemy was than I¡¯d originally thought.

    ¡°Director!¡± Romani shouted. ¡°You can¡¯t tell me you¡¯re actually intending to face him! H-her! King Arthur, I mean! E-even with Caster¡¯s help, there¡¯s no way Mash could possibly face someone that strong!¡±

    ¡°The useless weakling does have a bit of a point,¡± Caster said, humming.

    Romani sputtered, ¡°W-weakling ¡ª¡±

    Caster poked at Mash¡¯s shield.

    ¡°You can¡¯t even use your Noble Phantasm, can you?¡±

    Mash¡¯s mouth twisted into a miserable line and she looked away. ¡°N-no,¡± she admitted. ¡°I can¡¯t.¡±

    Caster made a noise of understanding.

    ¡°I thought so. It¡¯s not the end of the world, but it does put us in a bit of a bind.¡±

    ¡°What did I do to deserve this?¡± the Director moaned. ¡°King Arthur, Excalibur ¡ª Lev, why did this have to happen to me? Why did something like this have to happen on my watch, to my Chaldea?¡± She clutched at her hair as though to tear it all out of her scalp. ¡°What am I going to do? What am I going to do, Lev? I-I can¡¯t handle something like this! I just can¡¯t! This was never supposed to happen! I¡¯m going to die here in this miserable city before I ever even got ¡ª¡±

    The resounding smack of my hand hitting her cheek shocked her into silence.

    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°Whoa,¡± said Rika.

    ¡°M-Miss Taylor!¡± Mash gasped.

    ¡°Taylor! What are you thinking?¡± Romani said, aghast. ¡°D-Director, are you okay?¡±

    ¡°Get ahold of yourself,¡± I told the Director, I told Olga Marie Animusphere. ¡°You¡¯re the Director of Chaldea, aren¡¯t you? It¡¯s your job to be calm and in control, no matter the situation, because everyone under you is looking to you for direction. You don¡¯t crack, you don¡¯t break down, you don¡¯t panic, you keep cool and lead.¡±

    I stepped closer, and quieter, so that only she could hear, I told her, ¡°I know you can do this, Marie. I know you can. You just have to believe that you can.¡±

    Caster chuckled, folding his arms across his chest. ¡°Well now. You know, I have to admit, I¡¯m kinda jealous, Master. Usually, I¡¯m the one helping to calm down hysterical women.¡±

    Briefly, I closed my eyes and projected my mind at him. Not helping, Caster.

    I don¡¯t know, Master, Caster replied, a little humor can go a pretty long way in making even hopeless situations less grim.

    The Director took a deep, calming breath, and at length, in a quiet, strong voice, she said, ¡°Romani.¡±

    ¡°Y-yes, Director?¡±

    ¡°Have you managed to get into contact with anyone from outside of Chaldea, yet? The UN? The Mage¡¯s Association?¡±

    Romani grimaced and let out a long sigh, running his hand over his head.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid not, Director. We¡¯ve managed to repair at least a part of our communications apparatus, but we haven¡¯t been able to reach anyone outside, yet.¡±

    ¡°And the Masters in cryopreservation? Will any of them make a recovery in a reasonable timeframe?¡±

    ¡°¡­No. With things as they are, we can¡¯t even expect to begin treatment of their injuries for probably several weeks, at the soonest. Ritsuka, Rika, and Taylor are all we currently have, in terms of Masters, and since Da Vinci can¡¯t leave base, Mash is our only Servant.¡±

    Which meant the backup we had been trying to hold out for probably wasn¡¯t coming.

    I wanted to be surprised, but if I was being completely honest, it was basically what I¡¯d been expecting from the beginning. In terms of my career, this was how things had shaken out far too often.

    ¡°D-does Mash even need a Noble Phantasm?¡± Rika asked. ¡°She did pretty good without it against Medusa!¡±

    ¡°If Caster hadn¡¯t shown up to help, though,¡± Ritsuka mumbled.

    ¡°Weren¡¯t you listening before?¡± the Director asked, some of the fire returning to her voice. ¡°A battle between Servants can be said to be a battle between Noble Phantasms. Against Medusa, it might not have mattered quite so much, because as a Lancer, her Noble Phantasm was limited in scope. King Arthur¡¯s Excalibur is going to be on a completely different level.¡±

    ¡°Well, there might be something we can do about that,¡± Caster said. ¡°Girlie, you¡¯re pretty new to being a Servant, right?¡±

    Mash nodded. ¡°I¡¯m a Demi-Servant. Ah, that is, through a form of possession, I¡¯m a human fused with a Servant, although I¡¯m afraid the Servant who fused with me didn¡¯t tell me his name or teach me any of his skills.¡±

    Caster made another noise of understanding. ¡°Can¡¯t say I¡¯ve ever heard of that happening before, but it sounds similar to the sorts of things you¡¯d hear about old shamans and the druids. Well, it¡¯s not an easy problem to handle, but it¡¯s not unfixable, either.¡±

    ¡°In the meantime, we need to find the Second Owner¡¯s house,¡± said the Director. ¡°If we can¡¯t expect any backup¡­th-then we¡¯ll just have to handle this ourselves.¡±

    ¡°D-Director¡­!¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t have a choice, Romani!¡± she snapped at him. ¡°Proper history needs to be restored, no matter what! If we¡¯re the only ones who can do it, right now¡­ Then we just have to be the ones to do it!¡±

    ¡°Nice.¡± Caster grinned. ¡°That¡¯s a good attitude to have, Boss Lady. Looks like you have something of a spine in you, after all.¡±

    The Director huffed. ¡°I¡¯m not even going to dignify that with a response!¡±

    Isn¡¯t that what you just did?

    ¡°We should get moving,¡± I said instead. ¡°We¡¯ve already been out for quite a while, so we should find the Second Owner¡¯s house and get some rest, before we head up the mountain.¡±

    ¡°Hold on a second!¡± said Romani. ¡°Taylor, I¡¯m sure you¡¯re more familiar with this kind of situation, and Director, I realize we don¡¯t have much in the way of options, but there¡¯s no way Mash, Rika, and Ritsuka are ready for this! Especially Ritsuka and Rika! E-even if you managed to defeat Lancer, a legend like King Arthur is on a completely different level!¡±

    ¡°This Singularity isn¡¯t going to wait for us to be ready, Romani,¡± I told him. ¡°Our resources are limited, our supplies are limited, and that means our time is limited. If we tried to wait it out for a relief team that doesn¡¯t look like it¡¯ll be coming, then all that¡¯ll happen is that we¡¯ll be tired, hungry, and weak when we no longer have a choice but to handle this ourselves.¡±

    ¡°Still¡­!¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll be fine, Doctor Roman,¡± said Rika a little too brightly. ¡°After all, we¡¯ve got Mash!¡±

    ¡°Master,¡± Mash mumbled worriedly.

    And Romani¡­deflated.

    ¡°I can¡¯t stop you,¡± he admitted miserably. ¡°If you think this is the best course of action, then the only thing I can do is make sure you¡¯re as provisioned as I possibly can. Contact me when you¡¯ve settled in at the Second Owner¡¯s house. I¡¯ll send you some rations to help hold you over.¡±

    Without another word, his image flickered and vanished. For a moment, a dark pall settled over us and silence echoed through the group.

    ¡°The Second Owner¡¯s house is in the southern end of the residential district,¡± the Director said at length. ¡°We should notice it as we get closer¡­but I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if there were more skeletons hanging around it when we get there.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll lead the way,¡± Mash said strongly.

    I turned to my own Servant, temporary as he might be. ¡°Caster.¡±

    ¡°Roger that, Master.¡± Caster gave me a lazy salute. ¡°I¡¯ll bring up the rear and make sure we don¡¯t get ambushed.

    That wasn¡¯t what I was going to say, I wanted to tell him, but I pursed my lips and kept quiet. He¡¯d been helpful so far, so I guess I could extend him that much trust. All things considered¡­ If Caster wanted us dead now, he could have done it from the beginning. The time to watch for him would be when we made it to the Grail and beat Saber.

    I didn¡¯t intend on letting him bring up the rear then.

    In a kind of diamond formation, with us squishy humans in the middle and Mash and Caster forming the top and bottom, we turned down the main road and wound our way through the streets towards the Second Owner¡¯s house. The Director led, in a roundabout fashion, pointing out when we needed to make a turn and when to keep going straight, although I got the feeling that, strictly speaking, we weren¡¯t taking the most direct route and it was really more of a slow meander.

    Well, there was a difference between seeing a map and walking the route yourself. It made me miss my bugs, though; I¡¯d gotten used to not having the sort of absolute proprioception I¡¯d had as a cape, but there were plenty of times where it would have been very convenient to still have that absolute sense of where I was and what was around me, even in the Antarctic.

    It might not have done me much good, here. Chaldea was probably too cold and too remote to host anything like as thriving an insect population as Brockton Bay or Chicago, but Fuyuki City on fire would have had the exact opposite problem, since everything being on fire would likely have killed off all but a sparse few of the hardier species.

    At the end of it, we took maybe another twenty minutes of walking to reach the Second Owner¡¯s house, although calling it just a house might have been something of a misnomer. I wasn¡¯t sure ¡°mansion¡± quite fit, because by the standards of some of America¡¯s mansions, it was absolutely tiny, but if I compared it to the more modest homes that had burned down, the almost entirely intact building could be called palatial.

    It stretched up two stories, a thing of brick and wood that looked like it belonged in Victorian London instead of modern Japan, with dark paneling on the outside and a sloped roof, complete with chimney. It towered over the other residences around it, bigger and more expansive, with a larger plot of land to sit on to boot.

    Surrounded by smaller, more compact suburban homes with mid-century designs, it stood out, in more ways than one.

    ¡°Whoa,¡± Rika said when she saw it. ¡°The Second Owner must¡¯ve been loaded.¡±

    ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, out here,¡± the Director said dismissively. ¡°The position of Second Owner is somewhat prestigious, yes, but in terms of how much clout it gets you in the Association, location does matter. Being the Second Owner of a place as backwater as this is like being the mayor of a sleepy hamlet out in the countryside and will net you about as much fame.¡±

    ¡°Harsh,¡± Rika said with a grin.

    ¡°Does the Mage¡¯s Association really look down on Japan that much?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s like I already told you,¡± said the Director. ¡°Japan has notoriously poor spiritual grounds, and as a result, what magi do spring up here tend to be lackluster and third rate. The Association only keeps a token presence here and leaves most of the administration to the handful of Second Owners in charge of its few hotspots.¡± She looked up at the house. ¡°If I remember right, most of this Second Owner¡¯s wealth and influence comes from the patents their family owns. It¡¯s a bit surprising, considering how young their bloodline actually is.¡±

    I wished that kind of classism didn¡¯t make sense. But one of the things I¡¯d learned studying with the Director and the likes of Wodime was that age equaled power, for magi. The older and longer your lineage, the more impressive and robust your magic was. The only way to get around that was to be born with a really special attribute or innate ability, and if you were you¡¯d better hope you weren¡¯t special enough to get the attention of someone who wanted to find out how and why.

    Luckily and unluckily, I was barely average, in terms of potential. I wasn¡¯t a rising star, but I wasn¡¯t stuck somewhere in some nutjob¡¯s secret lab with my head in one jar and all of my organs in others, still somehow alive.

    I¡¯d come close enough to that with Bonesaw.

    ¡°It looks like the house is in good shape,¡± I commented. ¡°A few broken windows¡­ The upper floor might be a bit unsafe, but if it¡¯s stayed standing this long, we shouldn¡¯t have any trouble.¡±

    ¡°The bounded field looks like it¡¯s been put through the wringer, too,¡± Caster chimed in. ¡°It¡¯s not totally gone, but we shouldn¡¯t have to worry about being forcibly ejected or anything, just some mild discomfort on the way in.¡±

    ¡°Lucky us,¡± said the Director.

    ¡°I can¡¯t wait to get inside,¡± Rika groaned. ¡°My feet are killing me.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t mind sitting down for a while,¡± her brother agreed.

    One by one, we filed through the front gate, and then the front door, and although the twins shivered as the chill of the bounded field pressed down on us like some distant, disapproving eye, we made it through unaccosted and entered the house to find it marvelously intact, like it hadn¡¯t been touched at all by the fires raging outside. There wasn¡¯t even a layer of soot from the smoke billowing up from the rest of the city.

    ¡°The bounded field did a remarkable job keeping this place in good shape,¡± the Director allowed with a kind of grudging respect.

    She stepped up from the small well at the front door and onto the not-quite-pristine wooden floors ¡ª polished and cared for, but untended for who knew how long. I followed behind her.

    ¡°Um!¡± Mash interjected anxiously.

    The Director and I turned around.

    ¡°What is it, Mash?¡±

    ¡°In Japan, isn¡¯t it customary to remove your shoes at the door, so that you don¡¯t track dirt through the house?¡± she asked, looking pointedly at our feet. I glanced down and noticed the Director doing the same out of the corner of my eye; a trail of dirty footprints led across the floorboards to us.

    The Director and I shared a glance.

    ¡°Now isn¡¯t the time to be observing social norms and paying our respects to the home owners, Mash,¡± I told her. ¡°If we need to leave in a hurry, we won¡¯t have time to bother getting our shoes back on.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure the old residents would understand that the situation changes things,¡± the Director added. ¡°Hebert¡¯s right. If we need to leave in a hurry, we won¡¯t have the chance to grab our shoes, so it¡¯s better to just leave them on.¡±

    Ritsuka and Rika, who¡¯d been about to start tugging their shoes off, froze, and then abandoned the task.

    ¡°This feels a little weird,¡± Rika commented under her breath. I still heard her clearly.

    ¡°You¡¯re telling me,¡± Ritsuka muttered back at her.

    We made our way into the living room, where the plush, expensive furniture was just as intact as the rest of the house. Ritsuka and Rika made a beeline for the couch and they both collapsed onto it with a muted whump, sighing as they sagged into the cushions. The Director and I chose two of the armchairs instead, while Mash awkwardly propped her shield up against the wall and gingerly took a seat in one of the spare table chairs. Caster stayed standing. They were the only ones who didn¡¯t seem at all tired.

    ¡°Haaa,¡± Rika breathed, slumped. ¡°It feels like we were walking for days.¡±

    ¡°It must¡¯ve been almost six hours,¡± Ritsuka agreed tiredly.

    ¡°¡­It hasn¡¯t been that long,¡± the Director said thoughtfully, ¡°but come to think of it¡­ Was there any change in the cloud cover that entire time?¡±

    ¡°If there was, I didn¡¯t notice it,¡± I told her.

    ¡°So we have no idea what time it is or exactly how long we¡¯ve been here. Or if there are any unusual weather patterns, like it constantly being night.¡±

    I glanced over at the clock on the mantle above the fireplace, but it had long ago stopped working, so there wasn¡¯t any point. A good enough Thinker might have been able to discern how long things had been this way by how long ago it had stopped, but we were fresh out of those.

    ¡°The sky¡¯s been covered ever since the fires started,¡± Caster chimed in. ¡°Sorry, Boss Lady. Days start to slip together, after a while, so I couldn¡¯t tell you how long ago this all happened.¡±

    The Director grunted again. ¡°We need to contact Romani.¡±

    Rika and Ritsuka groaned, but eventually, Ritsuka pulled himself up, slid the sleeve of his Chaldea uniform up, and activated the comms device on his wrist.

    Beep-beep

    The image of Romani Archaman flickered into existence in midair, and he blinked at us, sandwich in hand and mouth full. My stomach rumbled, and it was joined a moment later by the twins¡¯.

    As soon as he realized what was happening, Romani swiftly chewed his food and set the sandwich down out of sight of the camera, then took a quick gulp of whatever he was drinking.

    ¡°Sorry about that,¡± he apologized immediately. ¡°You found the Second Owner¡¯s house sooner than I was expecting you to, so I went to grab a bite to eat.¡±

    ¡°How selfish of you, Romani,¡± the Director said darkly.

    ¡°H-hey! I¡¯ve been trying to keep an eye on you guys and manage the repairs for all of the vital systems for almost eight hours, now! I can only go so long before I succumb to basic human needs, you know!¡±

    Rika thrust one finger into the air. ¡°We¡¯ve got a couple of those to take care of ourselves, Doctor Roman!¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s right,¡± said the Director, although she didn¡¯t sound entirely happy to be saying it. ¡°We need those rations yesterday, Romani. Don¡¯t tell me you didn¡¯t get any ready.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got it all set up, actually,¡± said Romani. ¡°We¡¯ve managed to get that much fixed, at least. I just need Mash to establish a summoning circle for us to use to connect with, and I can send you as much food and water as you can carry.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± said the Director. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to try trusting whatever is left in this place¡¯s kitchen, so even the tasteless MRE bars in those ration packs are of more use to us.¡± She waved a hand in the general direction of the floor. ¡°Mash!¡±

    ¡°Yes, Director!¡±

    Mash bounded out of her chair and went over to pick up her shield, and then she set it down on the clearest patch of floor she could find, facing up. An instant later, the pattern of a magic circle inscribed itself in the air over top of it, glowing brightly.

    ¡°Got it!¡± said Romani. ¡°Connection¡­good. Rayshift procedure¡­cleared. You should get your supplies in three, two, one¡­¡±

    With a flash, the magic circle vanished, and in its place was a collection of cans, boxes, and plastic bottles of water, all neatly stacked and somehow balanced. The boxes were labeled in big, stenciled lettering: RATIONS.

    Caster let out a low whistle.

    ¡°Rayshift successful, Doctor Roman,¡± Mash reported.

    ¡°That¡¯s great.¡± Romani smiled. ¡°There should be enough there for two meals for each of you, plus a few snacks for quick bursts of energy. Please contact me again if you need anything more.¡±

    The Director appraised the stack of rations and bottled water and gave an approving nod. ¡°Good work, Romani.¡±

    Romani let out a self-deprecating laugh. ¡°Good to know I can be counted on to not screw up at least this much.¡±

    ¡°Do you have the local time?¡± I asked him suddenly.

    ¡°Oh! Uh¡­¡±

    Romani looked at something on his monitors.

    ¡°The readings say¡­it¡¯s a little after midnight.¡±

    I nodded and turned to the Director. ¡°We should get some sleep, once we¡¯ve eaten. We¡¯ll head for the mountain tomorrow morning, after breakfast, when everyone¡¯s had a chance to regain some energy.¡±

    I glanced pointedly at the twins, who looked like they were ready to fall asleep right then and there, and who most certainly weren¡¯t ready to hike up a mountain, right now.

    ¡°I agree,¡± she said, and then she looked to Romani. ¡°Romani, make sure you get some sleep yourself. As long as the Rayshift is functioning properly, we can worry about the other systems later, and we need you at the top of your game when we go to take out Saber, in case we have to make an emergency escape. There¡¯s no telling how quickly this Singularity will collapse.¡±

    Romani laughed again, like he¡¯d been told off and ordered around so much that he¡¯d gotten used to it. ¡°Roger that, Director.¡±

    The instant he was gone, the Director and I set upon the rations and started sorting them out with Mash¡¯s help. Some of them were flavorless, tasteless MRE bars, the kind high in energy but which were like chewing mud, and we set those aside for later, in case we needed the boost tomorrow. Some of them, though, were dehydrated meals, complete with instructions on how to prepare them.

    ¡°Good thing Romani sent us lots of water,¡± I muttered. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I want to trust the pipes around here.¡±

    ¡°Probably a good idea,¡± the Director agreed.

    The twins had nodded off at some point, snoring lightly, with Rika¡¯s head resting on Ritsuka¡¯s shoulder, and somehow, I managed to convince the Director to leave them be as we found the kitchen and started the process of rehydrating our food. A quick thing, it turned out. Once we got the pots and pans and got the water to boiling, it only took about ten minutes.

    The Director went to rouse the twins while I got plates and silverware out for everyone, and together, we sat on the floor around the coffee table in the living room and quietly ate. Even Rika was uncharacteristically subdued ¡ª she looked like she was barely keeping her eyes open as she shoveled strips of chicken into her mouth like she wasn¡¯t even tasting them.

    There didn¡¯t seem to be any point in washing dishes that weren¡¯t ever going to be used again, so we just stacked them up in the kitchen sink, and Mash quietly led Rika and Ritsuka upstairs to find a bed to sleep in. Even she seemed to finally be feeling the fatigue, although she was handling it much better than the twins did.

    When she came back downstairs, I announced, ¡°We¡¯re going to need to organize shifts.¡±

    The Director looked like I¡¯d just told her she was going to have to run all the way back to the church.

    ¡°The Director can take the last shift in the morning,¡± I said, taking pity on her. ¡°Caster, can you ¡ª¡±

    Caster waved me off. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it, Master. Servants don¡¯t need to sleep, so I¡¯ll keep watch the entire night. The rest of you can get a full night¡¯s sleep.¡±

    I wanted to be suspicious, but at that point, even I was getting too tired to put up a fight about it. Mash tried to hide a yawn behind one hand.

    ¡°We¡¯ll leave keeping watch to you, then,¡± I agreed.

    ¡°Thank God,¡± the Director mumbled.

    ¡°In terms of defenses, though,¡± I went on, ¡°do you think you can fix the bounded field?¡±

    Caster grinned. ¡°I¡¯ll do you one better,¡± he told me. ¡°I¡¯ll upgrade it, while I¡¯m at it. If that copycat bastard can get through it when I¡¯m done with it, he¡¯ll deserve to have managed it.¡±

    Not¡­exactly what I wanted to hear, but probably as good as I was going to get.

    ¡°Alright,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ll leave you to it, then.¡±

    With that taken care of, Mash, the Director, and I headed upstairs. Mash, quietly, pointed out where the bedrooms were, then the room where the twins were sharing a bed and went to join them. I guess, as their Servant, she wanted to stay as close to them as possible, and I couldn¡¯t fault that. The Director just marched towards the closest one and went in without pomp or ceremony, and that left me to pick the last one.

    Red carpeting stretched across the floor as I entered, with dark wood furniture and paneling on the walls that gave it a kind of elegant, old fashioned feel. Three windows were set into the walls, two on one side and one on the other, with canary yellow floral print curtains, and a comfortably large four poster bed sat in the middle, adorned with similar sheets. A mirror hung above a small vanity between two of the windows, and next to the third sat a chest of drawers. In one corner was a small table and two chairs, and with a jolt, I realized there was a cup of unfinished tea sitting there, leftover from this room¡¯s last occupant.

    Suddenly, I was aware that there had been another person here, once, living in this room and sleeping in this bed, another person with a life, dreams, goals, ambitions, a family. Someone who hadn¡¯t planned on dying and hadn¡¯t known she wouldn¡¯t be returning when she left. I felt like an intruder, stepping over her grave.

    I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

    There was nothing I could do for her, now. The only thing I could do was to fix this Singularity and make sure her death hadn¡¯t gone unanswered.

    That conviction was still burning in my gut after I¡¯d slipped my shoes off and crawled in between her sheets. Tomorrow, I was going to go and get her justice.

    I could still smell her perfume on her pillow.

 Chapter VII: Brittle Fake

    Chapter VII: Brittle Fake

    I wasn¡¯t sure how long I¡¯d been asleep before a tugging sensation vaguely in the area of my chest woke me up.

    It was hard to describe it, exactly. ¡°Tugging¡± was as good a word as I managed, but it didn¡¯t fit perfectly. Pulling? Maybe¡­ It wasn¡¯t like someone had stuck me with a hook and yanked on it, but it wasn¡¯t like someone had taken a fistful of my shirt and dragged me along with it, either.

    The one thing that could be said for sure was that it was constant. Like¡­ Like gravity, almost. An indescribable force that held me and inexorably pulled me along as it willed.

    I didn¡¯t want to wake up, but the tugging wouldn¡¯t let me roll over and go back to sleep. A deep groan vibrated up my chest and out of my mouth as I buried my face into my pillow, and I sucked in a long breath through my nose, only to be hit by a smooth, floral scent that instantly jolted me wide awake with the reminder ¡ª

    This was not my bed. I was not in Chaldea.

    I leapt out of bed without a thought, but my legs tangled in the sheets I¡¯d covered up with at some point, and I fell instead into an ungraceful heap on the floor with a yelp.

    There was no time to lick my wounds, though. Not when I could now recognize the sensation inside of me as Caster drawing on my magical energy, and especially not when I could hear his voice shouting from outside as though he was in battle.

    No, he must have been.

    ¡°Yah!¡± a feminine voice joined his.

    Mash, too.

    Had Archer come down from the mountain to ambush us? Or worse, had Archer and Saber decided to settle the issue here and now, instead of waiting for us to go to them?

    Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

    I scrambled for my shoes, hastily slipping them on as I hopped for the door to my borrowed bedroom. I had to use the knob for balance as I pushed it open, and immediately, I discovered that everyone else was already awake, as well, because all the doors were open and all the rooms empty.

    Once more, I could only lament the loss of my powers. Three years ago, the mere act of my teammates waking up would have been enough for my passenger to jolt me awake, too.

    I ripped down the hallway, racing as fast as my legs would carry me, and I took the stairs two at a time in my haste to get out the front door. My heart thundered anxiously in my chest, and my mind whirled a mile a minute as I tried to come up with some kind of tactic I could use to catch the enemy off guard while I had the element of surprise.

    The front door practically flew open, and I nearly ripped it off the hinges with my prosthetic arm ¡ª and then I had to catch myself to stop from bowling the Director over, because she was standing right there.

    Saying I succeeded wouldn¡¯t be wrong. Saying I failed wasn¡¯t wrong, either. I managed to avoid the Director, but my momentum was too much to stop, so all I wound up doing was skirting around her and tripping over my own feet to land behind her.

    The blow to my pride was more painful than the one to my knees. Or my elbow. Or my shoulder.

    ¡°Hebert,¡± the Director said neutrally without looking at me. She didn¡¯t sound stressed or worried, and I might even have called her tone thoughtful. Or contemplative. ¡°Good, you¡¯re awake.¡±

    ¡°Director?¡± I asked as I pulled myself to my feet. ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡±

    My gaze turned out to the street, where Caster and Mash were going back and forth, or really Caster was peppering Mash with spells and she tried to block them. Well, succeeded. She wasn¡¯t doing anything else, but none of Caster¡¯s spells were hitting anything except her massive shield. Further behind, the twins were watching the whole goings on, safely out of the line of fire.

    ¡°Caster decided that it¡¯s too risky to confront either of the remaining Servants guarding the Grail without Mash having access to her Noble Phantasm,¡± the Director explained. ¡°To that end, he¡¯s trying to train her how to use it, although his methods¡­leave something to be desired.¡±

    I eyed the spar, although calling any fight between two Servants a spar sounded ridiculous.

    ¡°No luck, so far?¡±

    ¡°None,¡± the Director confirmed. ¡°His only real advice was for her to reach really deep and shout it out from her soul¡­ or something utterly ludicrous like that. They¡¯ve been at this for almost an hour, now.¡±

    Caster chose that moment to let up and relax, and as he did, so did Mash, panting like she¡¯d run a marathon.

    ¡°Alright, Girlie,¡± he called over to her. ¡°Take a breather. This isn¡¯t working, so I need to think up another plan. In the meantime, you¡¯ve earned a bit of a break, so relax a little.¡±

    Mash sagged, and the twins, seeing that it was over, jogged up to join her. I couldn¡¯t quite hear what they were saying, but the tone of their voices sounded supportive, so I could only guess they were trying to lift her spirits. Mash, at least, seemed to appreciate the gesture.

    ¡°Yo, Princess!¡± Caster waved as he came our direction. ¡°Good to see you¡¯re awake. Maybe I should start calling you Sleeping Beauty?¡±

    ¡°Hard to sleep with all of the racket you were making, Caster,¡± I said sardonically. I nodded over at Mash. ¡°How is she?¡±

    He glanced over in her direction and sighed, scratching compulsively at the back of his head.

    ¡°I don¡¯t get it,¡± he lamented. ¡°This sort of thing worked fine when my mentor used it on me.¡±

    ¡°Mentor?¡±

    He chuckled. ¡°That witch¡­ She was the kind of woman to kick your ass, then lecture you about what you did wrong, then kick your ass until you got it right.¡±

    My brow furrowed. ¡°Your mentor was a woman?¡±

    ¡°Scariest woman in Ireland,¡± Caster confirmed. ¡°Ah¡­ Well, maybe second scariest, although that really depends on who you asked. My master was a terrifying, bloodthirsty warrior, and she put fear in the hearts of men and gods alike¡­but of all the things she put me through, fighting A¨ªfe on her behalf was easily the closest I ever came to death under her teachings.¡±

    ¡°Fighting A¨ªfe¡­¡± the Director trailed off, and then she jerked, staring at Caster with wide eyes. ¡°Wait a minute! An Irish hero, learned under a fierce female warrior, got into a fight with another woman warrior named A¨ªfe ¡ª you¡¯re C¨²chulainn of Ulster!¡±

    Caster blinked at her.

    ¡°Well, I¡¯ll be damned,¡± he said as his mouth pulled into a grin. ¡°You¡¯ve heard of me before, Boss Lady? I guess I¡¯m more famous than I thought I was.¡±

    ¡°Why are you a Caster?¡± she blurted out. ¡°G¨¢e Bolg might not be as synonymous to you as Excalibur to King Arthur, but it¡¯s easily your most famous Noble Phantasm! There¡¯s no way you shouldn¡¯t have been summoned as a Lancer!¡±

    Caster smirked. ¡°Unless the Lancer class was already taken.¡±

    ¡°Medusa ¡ª she should have been a Rider!¡± the Director protested. ¡°Pegasus has a cleaner attachment to her legend than¡­whatever she had as a Lancer! No, that was the scythe that killed her, wasn¡¯t it?¡±

    Now that I thought about it, it probably was, wasn¡¯t it? Maybe that wasn¡¯t what had twisted her into the cruel monster we¡¯d faced, but I couldn¡¯t imagine any Servant would be particularly thrilled at the idea of wielding the weapon that killed them, to say nothing of the conceptual and psychological mess of walking around with the very thing you were supposed to be weak to.

    ¡°Are you forgetting, Boss Lady?¡± Caster asked, amused. ¡°This place is a Singularity. Nothing here is as it should have been, and that includes the Servants and their classes.¡±

    ¡°Ugh!¡±

    The Director grunted, massaging her temples as though that would somehow force the world to start making sense, again.

    ¡°And Mash?¡± I asked Caster, dragging the conversation back to the relevant part.

    Caster grimaced and placed his hands on his hips.

    ¡°Well, frankly, I¡¯m not sure what she is. She¡¯s obviously not a Caster or an Assassin, she doesn¡¯t have any form of madness, so she¡¯s not a Berserker. No spear, so not a Lancer, no sword, so not a Saber, and no bow, although that last one isn¡¯t as much of a disqualifier for the Archer class as it should be. I guess she could be a Rider, but that doesn¡¯t help too much, does it? On the other hand, whatever she is, that shield is obviously her Noble Phantasm.¡±

    ¡°Obviously,¡± I agreed.

    ¡°Even just that would be a huge advantage,¡± he went on. ¡°But just flinging spells at her until she manages to pull it out hasn¡¯t been working, and that¡¯s the only way I really know how to do this. Unless¡­¡±

    I didn¡¯t like the sound of that.

    ¡°Unless?¡±

    ¡°Well, now¡­ That just might work, won¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Caster?¡±

    Caster grinned, a thing of teeth and edges, like a shark. ¡°Fear for her own life just ain¡¯t enough, is it? It¡¯s not a part of her temperament. I¡¯ve known a few folk like that.¡±

    I really didn¡¯t like where he was going with that, not if that meant what I thought it meant.

    ¡°Caster ¡ª¡±

    He flicked at me, and whether it was a hastily drawn rune, some other spell, or just his raw strength, it was enough to send me flying into the Director. She squawked as we went down in a tangle of limbs, and I scrambled to climb back to my feet, but I couldn¡¯t get my footing fast enough, because Caster had already stepped back out into the street.

    ¡°Girlie! New plan! If we can¡¯t get your Noble Phantasm up by putting your life in danger ¡ª¡±

    CASTER! I projected at him as firmly as I could. I reached out for him with my hand, as though I could hold him back ¡ª and when I saw the red markings on the back of it, realized my only option. By the power of my Command Spell ¡ª

    Don¡¯t go wasting any of those, now, Princess! Caster sent back. Just put a little faith in your Servant, yeah?

    ¡°WHAT ARE YOU DOING?¡± the Director shrieked.

    ¡°¡ª then we¡¯ll just have to put your Master on the line!¡±

    A giant arm made of flaming branches manifested and slammed its hand against the pavement, as though lifting itself up from the ground. More and more of it appeared. A shoulder, a head, a torso, until a blazing, wooden giant towered over Mash and the twins. A burning effigy of a human being.

    Should I stop him? Should I trust him? He was right, Mash needed her Noble Phantasm, but was that what this was about, or was he just pulling a trick to eliminate a potential threat? Had he truly escaped whatever corruption had claimed the other Servants, or was all of that a ploy just to get us to trust him?

    Why would he do it now, instead of murdering us in our sleep?

    ¡°Caster!¡± shouted Mash, hefting her shield. She stepped in front of the twins to protect them.

    ¡°CASTER, STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!¡± the Director screamed.

    ¡°I won¡¯t change my aim, Girlie!¡± Caster said, ignoring us. ¡°If you move out of the way, those Masters of yours will get smushed!¡±

    ¡°HEBERT!¡± the Director screeched at me. ¡°STOP HIM, RIGHT NOW!¡±

    ¡°Now, show me that Noble Phantasm of yours!¡±

    ¡°HEBERT! COMMAND SPELL!¡±

    I hesitated. I knew I had trust issues. In the right circumstances, I could connect with people faster than I¡¯d ever believed, but most of the time, I was suspicious enough for three people.

    Could I trust Caster? I didn¡¯t know for sure. Whatever logic I tried to apply, people were inherently irrational, and that included me. In the end, however, whether I trusted him or not, if nothing else, this would all be meaningless if I didn¡¯t sell the illusion, too.

    ¡°Caster! As your Master, by the power of my Command Spell ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Wicker Man!¡±

    Three people screamed as the giant¡¯s fist descended. One of them screamed in my ear, and I was sure it was going to be ringing for the next hour as a result. One of them was Rika, who had huddled in her brother¡¯s arms as he futilely tried to shield her with his own body.

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    One of them was Mash.

    It was hard to see from my angle, but what happened was unmistakable, regardless. There was no invocation, no incantation, no true name shouted to the heavens, but the glowing blue barrier that formed between Mash¡¯s shield and the giant¡¯s fist couldn¡¯t be anything else than her Noble Phantasm, and the giant¡¯s fist just¡­stopped. With the sound of a massive gong ringing, it collided with that barrier and went no further.

    A moment later, the giant faded away like smoke, and an ashen-faced Mash looked at us, at Caster specifically, from behind the spoke of her shield, eyes wide.

    And Caster? Caster kept on grinning.

    ¡°There we go! Knew that would do the trick! Geez, Girlie, that was more painful than pulling teeth! Didn¡¯t expect all of you to come out of that completely unscathed, though. Nice! That must be one hell of a Noble Phantasm!¡±

    ¡°It was a trick?¡± the Director demanded, her voice an octave higher than usual.

    ¡°Sorry about that,¡± said Caster, not sounding nearly as sorry as any of us would probably have liked him to be. ¡°It had to be convincing. If the Girlie over there looked at you two and realized neither of you was freaking out, she would¡¯ve known I wasn¡¯t serious. As long as everyone else believed it, she did, too.¡±

    ¡°Caster, you jerk!¡± Rika shouted. ¡°I can¡¯t believe I actually thought you were cool!¡±

    Caster just laughed.

    ¡°Sorry I frightened you, Little Missy! It¡¯s like I said, though. This is just the way I was trained, so it¡¯s the only way I know how to teach.¡±

    ¡°That just makes me question your teacher¡¯s sanity, too!¡±

    ¡°I¡­I did it,¡± said Mash, and then louder, ¡°I did it!¡±

    Ritsuka set a comforting hand on her shoulder. ¡°You did,¡± he told her, although there was a faint tremor in his voice that belied exactly how scared he had been.

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°H-hey, what¡¯s going on, there!¡± Romani shouted as his image appeared next to Ritsuka. ¡°I just detected two massive surges of energy from Caster and Mash! Did you run into another Servant?¡±

    The Director sighed as she dusted herself off and walked over to their group. I picked myself up and followed.

    ¡°Caster was helping Mash learn to manifest her Noble Phantasm,¡± she explained, and then tossed a glare Caster¡¯s way and acidly added, ¡°although he chose the most asinine, ludicrous, sideways method of going about it!¡±

    ¡°He used his Noble Phantasm against her!¡± Rika chimed in indignantly.

    ¡°Senpai!¡± Mash lamented.

    ¡°He what?¡± Romani demanded furiously. ¡°Caster, you lunatic! Just what kind of game are you playing, using your Noble Phantasm against Mash?¡±

    Caster brushed it off with another laugh. ¡°I¡¯m not going to be lectured by the likes of you.¡±

    ¡°As questionable as his methods were,¡± the Director said, shooting him another glare, ¡°and they were very questionable, it¡¯s undeniable that they produced results. Even so¡­¡±

    She scrutinized Mash¡¯s shield, eyes narrowed, like she was looking for something that she knew wouldn¡¯t be there.

    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s a problem, isn¡¯t it?¡± Caster agreed. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ¡°She managed to deploy her Noble Phantasm, but she didn¡¯t tease out its true name.¡±

    ¡°Not entirely unexpected, considering her circumstances,¡± the Director hedged, ¡°but not ideal, either. Inconvenient doesn¡¯t feel like a strong enough word for it.¡±

    ¡°Does she need to know its true name?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°A Noble Phantasm can only be unleashed to its fullest potential through the invocation of its true name,¡± Romani explained patiently, although he was still scowling at Caster. ¡°At the very least, the efficacy of her Noble Phantasm will drop without it.¡±

    The Director shook her head. ¡°It might not matter for now, but at the very least, she needs some method of focusing it. An incantation.¡±

    ¡°Like a spell?¡± I said.

    The Director nodded.

    ¡°Exactly. It won¡¯t get anywhere close to what you could expect from the true name invocation, but at the very least, we can increase the performance by giving it a more concrete image. Let¡¯s see¡­¡±

    She clicked her tongue.

    ¡°Since it¡¯s a pseudo-deployment of your Noble Phantasm, an image of its true form¡­ Let¡¯s call it Lord Chaldeas.¡±

    I grimaced. Romani¡¯s image blinked, and then a moment later, he laughed. ¡°Of course you would choose something like that, Director.¡±

    ¡°And what¡¯s that supposed to mean?¡± the Director spat. ¡°Do you have a problem with my choice in names, Romani?¡±

    Seriously? I knew my own naming conventions weren¡¯t exactly going to be winning any contests anytime soon, but even I had to call that one unoriginal.

    ¡°The bastion that defends the foundation of mankind¡¯s survival,¡± Mash said quietly. ¡°Lord Chaldeas¡­ I like it. Th-thank you, Director!¡±

    Romani¡¯s face blanched. ¡°W-Well, whether it¡¯s unoriginal or not, what matters is that it resonates with Mash, right? As long as she has a connection to it, the strength of that connection is the most important part.¡±

    ¡°You should know better than to question my decisions,¡± the Director said haughtily. ¡°Did you think it was just about glorifying my own family¡¯s legacy? I put more thought into it than just that!¡±

    ¡°Fou! Fou!¡±

    The sudden squeaking of a high pitched voice startled me, and racing up the street was a tiny bundle of white fur with long, rabbit-like ears and a bushy tail. It even wore a little cape with a kind of ribbon tied into a bow at the front.

    ¡°Oh, there you are, Fou!¡± Mash said. She bent down, offering out her hand, and the little critter bounded onto her palm, up her arm, and settled itself in on her shoulder. ¡°You must have gotten worried when Caster and I used our Noble Phantasms, didn¡¯t you? Look, we¡¯re fine.¡±

    ¡°How long has that been here?¡± I asked incredulously.

    Fou hissed at me like I¡¯d delivered some great insult. That was probably the thing about it that worried me the most: its obvious intelligence.

    ¡°He was with Senpai and I when we arrived,¡± Mash explained. She reached up and gave the thing a few pats, which seemed to mollify it. ¡°He ran off for some reason earlier, but we couldn¡¯t go looking for him, because the Director was in trouble.¡± She smiled at it. ¡°I guess he managed to take care of himself just fine, didn¡¯t he?¡±

    ¡°Fou!¡± it agreed.

    ¡°And how did it get here?¡± I asked her. ¡°This isn¡¯t somewhere you can just¡­take a casual stroll to.¡±

    Mash blinked. ¡°You know, I¡¯m not sure. I guess he must have been in the room with us and got Rayshifted. Although¡­ Before the explosion, the last I saw of him, he was running off somewhere in Chaldea. Maybe he just followed Senpai.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s because Fou already knows how awesome we are,¡± Rika proclaimed brightly. She offered her hand out, and Fou nipped playfully at her index finger. Ritsuka chuckled warmly next to her.

    ¡°It¡¯s been here this whole time?¡± the Director asked disbelievingly. ¡°How did it get past all the skeletons?¡±

    Mash looked up at nothing in particular and she pursed her lips thoughtfully.

    ¡°He must be too small, so they couldn¡¯t catch him. After all, if they were capable of getting tired, Master could have outrun them, too.¡±

    ¡°Heh.¡± Caster chuckled like he knew something we didn¡¯t. ¡°Skeletons are the lowest of the low, when it comes to magical monsters. Someone like you could pick them apart, Boss Lady. They¡¯re only really a threat to mages in numbers.¡±

    The Director¡¯s eyebrow twitched. ¡°In any case!¡± she said loudly. ¡°Now that the issue of Mash¡¯s Noble Phantasm has been resolved, we need to come up with a plan to take out Archer and Saber so we can retrieve the Grail.¡±

    At that moment, Rika and Ritsuka¡¯s stomachs rumbled, and both of them flushed, smiling awkwardly. The Director turned to me like she was hoping I would be the sensible one who could go on regardless, but the very second she did, my own stomach loudly voiced its protests, and her face fell.

    ¡°¡­After we¡¯ve had some breakfast.¡±

    ¡°Do you need any more supplies?¡± Romani asked.

    The Director¡¯s brow furrowed, but she shook her head.

    ¡°Being prepared to pull us out at a moment¡¯s notice is a better use of the Rayshift system than topping up supplies that we hopefully won¡¯t need in an hour or two. How is that looking, Romani?¡±

    ¡°Well, we haven¡¯t gotten everything back in tip-top shape, but it should be fine if we¡¯re just bringing you back to Chaldea. As for the rest of the facility¡­ We¡¯re still working on it, but we¡¯ve at least managed to restore one of the primary generators, so we¡¯re not relying solely on the backups, anymore.¡±

    ¡°Good.¡± The Director nodded. ¡°Keep an eye on the readings, Romani. We might not have time to contact you if things fall apart too fast.¡±

    ¡°Be careful,¡± said Romani. ¡°And¡­ good luck. All of you.¡±

    He flickered out of existence after one last parting glare at Caster. The Director swept her gaze over the rest of us, like a general taking stock of her troops.

    ¡°We¡¯ll eat first, and then we¡¯ll make our plans on the move. Don¡¯t leave anything behind, because I don¡¯t intend for us to come back to this house. We¡¯ll correct this Singularity today.¡±

    ¡°Roger that, Boss Lady!¡± Rika said with a salute.

    Ritsuka only let out a fond but exasperated sigh.

    Our little group squeezed back into the Second Owner¡¯s house, and we had a quick, relatively light meal with rehydrated scrambled eggs as the main dish. For an instant, as I dug into it, a pang tugged on my gut, and I half expected a middle-aged man with a receding hairline to sit down with us, carton of orange juice in hand.

    It didn¡¯t happen, of course. If he had survived Gold Morning, then we¡¯d been separated in the aftermath, and all I could hope for was that he hadn¡¯t been caught up in this end of the world, either.

    The Director let us sit and digest for about twenty minutes after we were all done, and then she hustled us out the front door again and ordered Caster to lead us to the Grail.

    ¡°It¡¯s a bit of a hike,¡± he warned us with obvious humor. ¡°Well. No more so than your trip to the church and back, but those steps up the mountain are gonna make it seem a whole lot longer.¡±

    ¡°Your schadenfreude is showing, Caster,¡± I told him.

    He laughed. ¡°Just telling it like it is, Princess. You sure you¡¯re all up for this?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not like we have a choice,¡± the Director said darkly. ¡°One way or another, we either die here or fix this Singularity.¡±

    ¡°Bring it,¡± Rika challenged him.

    Caster smirked and shrugged. ¡°Don¡¯t say I didn¡¯t warn you.¡±

    The path he took us on was definitely the main road, but it was anything but straight, and the destruction that had been dealt to the city became ever more obvious the further we went. There had been stretches of upturned pavement in the business district, too, but in the residential district and as we got into the outskirts of town, there were places where huge chunks had been ripped out entirely.

    It reminded me, to an extent, of Scion. The difference was, Scion¡¯s blasts had tended towards precision. Even the attacks that leveled continents or wiped out cities entirely were mostly edged with lines like the cuts of a scalpel. This damage, these holes, they were jagged, gaping wounds, like an explosion had gone off or some natural disaster swept through.

    Japan was famous for its earthquakes, wasn¡¯t it?

    Navigating across twenty-foot gaps bridged by fifteen-foot craters slowed us down more than I liked, and having to have Caster ferry us across one at a time might have made it easier than climbing up and down the sides, but no less tedious.

    Along the way, we passed by a large building four stories tall, surrounded by a bunch of other buildings and standing across the stretch of a large courtyard. The windows were all blown out and the whole place was dark, but it was still otherwise intact, and with a funny jolt in my belly, I realized it was a school.

    Winslow had been a lifetime ago. Three lifetimes, if you counted both the Wards and Chaldea as separate from those hectic two months as Skitter. And still, seeing that beaten up old building left an indescribable knot in my gut.

    Or maybe it was just coming face to face with yet more evidence of all the lives destroyed in this place.

    ¡°What can we expect from Archer and Saber?¡± the Director asked as we went.

    ¡°Well, naturally, Saber¡¯s more impressive, in the raw power sense,¡± said Caster. ¡°She¡¯s the type to hammer you into submission with overwhelming strength, and if that doesn¡¯t work, she¡¯ll whip out her Noble Phantasm and reduce you to smithereens. Girlie here is gonna be the MVP in that fight. If that shield of hers is half as strong as it looks, we¡¯ll need it just to stay alive.¡±

    ¡°Does she have a weakness?¡± I asked.

    ¡°She¡¯s not particularly fast. Well, no more so than any Servant of her level is,¡± Caster answered. ¡°She¡¯s also kind of straightforward. Not the kind to come up with some grand scheme sixteen moves ahead of you to trap you, you know? Of course, when you¡¯re throwing around as much power as she does, you don¡¯t need to be all that clever.¡±

    A classic Brute, then, with maybe Blaster thrown in for her Noble Phantasm. She would hit like a runaway train, but there were ways to maneuver around her. If we could lead her into a trap, we could win.

    ¡°She sounds really strong,¡± said Ritsuka, a thread of worry in his voice.

    ¡°Senpai¡­¡± Mash murmured.

    ¡°A Servant like Saber excels across the board,¡± Caster said. ¡°That¡¯s just the way it is with big legends, Boyo. She¡¯s not unbeatable, though. That¡¯s the thing you have to keep in mind. In a fight like this, the only ways to lose are dying or giving up.¡±

    ¡°Caster¡¯s right,¡± I agreed. ¡°I can¡¯t say I know what fighting King Arthur is going to be like. But I¡¯ve fought enemies like that, before. I beat them then, we can beat her now.¡±

    Caster sent me an appraising look, like he was trying to discern how much of that was a lie. The best part was that none of it was a lie at all.

    ¡°Really, Senpai?¡± Rika asked. ¡°How¡¯d you beat someone so strong before?¡±

    ¡°I wanna hear about this, too,¡± Caster added. ¡°What kind of enemy did you beat, Princess, and how?¡±

    If he was expecting me to come up with some tall tale or bluster my way through an admission of exaggeration, what I gave him instead must have been disappointingly blunt and simple.

    ¡°I beat a dragon. First, I rotted off his dick, and then I carved out his eyes.¡±

    The Director stumbled, a look of horrified mortification on her face, and from behind me, I heard only Mash¡¯s high pitched squeak and silence.

    Even Caster didn¡¯t seem to know how to take that, at first, going by the utterly stupefied expression he wore, but once he got over the surprise, he burst out into a deep belly laugh.

    ¡°I sure picked an interesting Master, alright!¡±

    If that¡¯s what you think now, I can only imagine what you¡¯d say if you heard about Scion.

    ¡°S-Senpai sure is intense,¡± Rika whispered.

    ¡°Th-that¡¯s one way of putting it, Rika,¡± her brother replied.

    ¡°Our best bet against an enemy like Saber is to pull her into a trap. Force her to overcommit, and while she¡¯s focused on Mash, have Caster use his Noble Phantasm.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Caster grinned again, shark-like. ¡°That¡¯s pretty underhanded, Master. Some might call that dishonorable.¡±

    ¡°Would you?¡± I asked him pointedly. ¡°I remember reading about your myth during our primer courses at Chaldea. A¨ªfe had you dead to rights, until you tricked her into looking away.¡±

    ¡°Heh!¡± Caster chuckled. ¡°Like I said, fighting her was the closest I ever came to death while I was learning under my teacher. Honor¡¯s fine and all, but when the stakes are high and you can¡¯t afford to lose, all bets are off. You do whatever it takes to make sure you get to wake up tomorrow, and if you¡¯re going to die no matter what, you make it count.¡±

    ¡°Glad we agree.¡±

    He gave me another appraising look, and then he shook his head and sighed. ¡°Man. If you had been my Master in a regular Grail War, we would¡¯ve swept the whole field together. You know, you¡¯re my kind of woman.¡±

    I stumbled as heat flooded my cheeks, and next to me the Director sputtered, a look of shocked indignation on her face.

    ¡°Caster, are you hitting on her?¡± she demanded shrilly. ¡°H-how dare you! D-don¡¯t think I don¡¯t remember your legend, you¡­ you¡­ you dog!¡±

    Caster just laughed.

    ¡°His legend?¡± Rika asked.

    ¡°The name C¨²chulainn means ¡®Hound of Culann,¡¯ Senpai,¡± Mash explained patiently. ¡°It¡¯s the name he was given after he slew a guard dog and offered to take its place until a new one could be raised. However, I think what the Director is referring to is¡­ Um, what I mean, Senpai, is that C¨²chulainn is rather famous for¡­ Well¡­¡±

    ¡°He slept with just about every woman he met,¡± I said bluntly.

    ¡°Not every woman,¡± Caster corrected, but he didn¡¯t sound particularly upset about the accusation.

    ¡°Enough of them that ¡®Hound of Culann¡¯ was an appropriate moniker,¡± the Director grumbled.

    ¡°Eep!¡± Rika squeaked, and when I glanced back at her, she¡¯d slung an arm across her chest, like she was trying to block it from his view. Caster¡¯s lips pulled into a smirk.

    ¡°You¡¯re a little too young for me, Little Missy, don¡¯t worry. You¡¯re safe from this horny old guard dog.¡±

    My lips pulled into a grimace ¡ª that was certainly an image I didn¡¯t need in my head.

    ¡°We¡¯ve drifted away from the original point,¡± I said, steering the conversation back on track. ¡°Saber is a straightforward powerhouse. What about Archer?¡±

    Caster sighed. ¡°Sorry to say, he¡¯s the exact opposite. He¡¯s a conniving bastard with a penchant for sneak attacks and underhanded tricks. Even so¡­ If you don¡¯t mind, Master, I¡¯d like for you to leave fighting him to me. I¡¯ve got a score to settle with that copycat.¡±

    ¡°What happened to honor being pointless when too much was at stake?¡±

    ¡°That guy doesn¡¯t have any either, so it¡¯s not about that,¡± Caster said. ¡°Besides. This is the kind of guy to take pot shots at Masters instead of fighting Servants straight up. The only way I can keep you all safe is if you¡¯re all huddled behind Girlie¡¯s shield while I fight.¡±

    ¡°This guy¡­sounds more like an Assassin than an Archer,¡± the Director said. ¡°Do you know his true name?¡±

    ¡°Haven¡¯t the slightest clue,¡± said Caster. ¡°The one time I fought him for real, the guy tried to nail me with several counterfeit Noble Phantasms from several different places and eras. Nearly got me with Caladbolg, of all things, although having seen the original myself, it was obviously a fake.¡±

    ¡°A Heroic Spirit¡­capable of using imitations of other Servants¡¯ Noble Phantasms?¡± she muttered thoughtfully. ¡°Could it be¡­ No, but why would someone like that be an Archer, of all things? I¡¯d expect that from a Caster.¡±

    Caster shrugged.

    ¡°Whoever he is, he¡¯s crafty and he¡¯s not above cheap shots.¡±

    In other words, he sounded a lot like me. Leveraging whatever advantage you had, attacking weak points, using tricks and traps to catch the enemy off guard ¡ª that was the sort of thing I had done, back when I had my powers. Harder to do now.

    If we were going up against someone like that¡­

    Yes. In my days as Skitter, targeting the weaker enemies instead of trying to take the strongest head on, that was exactly something I would have done.

    ¡°The instant you look like you need help, we¡¯re stepping in, duel or no duel.¡±

    Caster grinned. ¡°I¡¯d expect nothing less from you, Princess.¡±

 Chapter VIII: Sangraal

    Chapter VIII: Sangraal

    We wound up detouring back to the school for a short while and taking a break while we tried to hammer out a more concrete plan. Caster himself took several hunks of rock and rubble while we talked and carved out runes on their surfaces, and then he handed them out amongst the group ¡ª except for Mash, who didn¡¯t really have anywhere to stash them except her shield and wouldn¡¯t be able to make much use of them in the first place.

    Our attack plan still wound up more rudimentary than my liking. Even when Caster elaborated more on what our enemies were capable of, it didn¡¯t really give us more to work with in terms of how we could handle them. Not when we were so very limited in what we could all do ourselves.

    In the first place, Saber had high level magic resistance, more than the weakened, diluted version Medusa had sported. Even Caster himself hadn¡¯t been able to touch her with his spells, and if he couldn¡¯t, then my dinky, little Gandr would be worthless, and we didn¡¯t have the time or the energy to waste trying to teach the twins anything of worth, either, since they weren¡¯t even spellcasters like me.

    The Director¡­ Well, neither of us was particularly surprised that we would be useless against someone like King Arthur. It rankled, deep inside, and it made me feel weak and powerless, especially when so much of my cape career had involved punching above what was supposed to be my weight class, but that fight would inevitably come down to the Servants in our group.

    If only, I found myself wishing, C¨²chulainn had indeed been summoned as a Lancer. It would have been easier to have him as a frontline fighter instead of playing a mostly useless support for Mash.

    About half an hour after we entered the husk of the school¡¯s main building, we left it and continued our journey. By some strange twist of fortune, the road actually got steadier and more intact the further and further away we got from its two main districts. As we approached the edge and the forest that marked it, the divots and gaps disappeared almost entirely, and it took us half as long to make the second half of the trip as it had to reach the school.

    At last, we made it to the base of the mountain, and in front of us now was an enormous stretch of stairs. The path was so long that I couldn¡¯t actually make out the top, not in the dark and the gloom of the perpetually smoky sky, and just from what I was seeing alone, there had to be over a thousand steps. Maybe over two thousand.

    I wasn¡¯t the only one who was intimidated. The look of dismay on the Director¡¯s face, the shock on Rika¡¯s, and Ritsuka¡¯s worn down resignation seemed a good mirror for my own thoughts.

    Caster, of course, thought it was hilarious.

    ¡°I told you,¡± he said, grinning. ¡°The actual distance isn¡¯t the same, but the stairs up the mountain will make it feel a lot longer than it is.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not helping, Caster,¡± I told him.

    ¡°You¡¯re all making it a bigger deal than it actually is.¡± He waved it off as though warding away an unpleasant smell. ¡°We don¡¯t actually have to go all the way to the top. The cavern where the grail is hiding is only about halfway up.¡±

    ¡°Only halfway, he says,¡± the Director grumbled. ¡°Half of infinity is still infinity, you know!¡±

    ¡°My feet hurt just looking at it,¡± Rika complained. ¡°Mash, carry me!¡±

    ¡°W-what?¡± Mash stammered.

    Ritsuka looked up, tilting his head back as he tried to glimpse the top. ¡°There isn¡¯t another way up?¡±

    ¡°You could cut straight through the forest,¡± Caster allowed, ¡°but that¡¯s just making it harder on yourself. Sorry to say, there¡¯s no escalator to take you up, here. You¡¯ve just gotta use good, old-fashioned leg power.¡±

    Rika groaned.

    My lips pulled tight. ¡°We don¡¯t have a choice. Unless you want to stay down here and wait for the skeletons to come get you while the rest of us take care of the Grail.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not that, Senpai,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°It¡¯s just¡­ Rika and I didn¡¯t train for any of this.¡±

    I got the sense he wasn¡¯t just talking about the stairs, and I sympathized, I really did. There were a lot of things I wasn¡¯t prepared for when I started out, no matter how much I¡¯d tried to be. My first night as a cape had been a textbook case of things going wildly out of my control. Even so¡­

    ¡°Training or not, it¡¯s here and now, and it¡¯s on us. We can¡¯t afford to give up and let someone else try, because there isn¡¯t anyone else. If we don¡¯t do it, that¡¯s it, it¡¯s over.¡±

    ¡°If you two can¡¯t face this much down, then you might as well forfeit your contract with Mash,¡± the Director added, ¡°because you won¡¯t be Masters of Chaldea.¡±

    That, more than anything, seemed to galvanize them, because their spines straightened and both of them looked to the Director with fierce determination. Even the goofy Rika was suddenly deadly serious, the perpetual smile hiding in the corners of her mouth gone.

    ¡°We¡¯d better get going, then,¡± she said.

    ¡°Oh?¡± Caster grinned. ¡°Looks like the two of you do have some steel in you, after all.¡±

    He turned back towards the stairs.

    ¡°That Archer bastard is probably waiting for us. No matter what, there¡¯s no way he won¡¯t notice us coming, so however it lands, he¡¯ll try and ambush us before we make it inside the cavern. Girlie, you¡¯ve got the most important job here: keeping our Masters safe.¡±

    ¡°Understood!¡± said Mash.

    ¡°This is it,¡± Caster said. ¡°From here on out, there¡¯s no turning back, so I hope you¡¯re all ready.¡±

    We started up the stairs and towards the Grail¡¯s hiding place. One way or another, this whole nightmare would be over soon. If I had my way, every single one of us would wake up from it, even if it cost me my arm again.

    The twins¡¯ resolve lasted maybe the first hundred steps, and by then, they were grunting and panting, beads of sweat dripping down their faces. The Director, despite her earlier words, lasted maybe twenty or thirty more before she too started to really show the strain. They struggled onwards even so, but the seemingly interminable climb was really taking its toll. Even my legs were burning from the effort.

    It was maybe fifty more before it began getting to me, too. At that point, Rika, Ritsuka, and the Director were all lagging behind; the Director was several stairs below, and every following one seemed to take more out of her, while the twins were maybe twenty below her, with Ritsuka barely outpacing his sister.

    Mash¡­wasn¡¯t unaffected, but she was doing better than any of us. Caster was completely unfazed, of course.

    I made it to the next landing, looked ahead at how far up we still had to go, looked back at how far we¡¯d come, and then said, ¡°Maybe we should take a break.¡±

    Mash let out a relieved sigh, but the rest of our exhausted entourage were far less reserved, and three loud groans tore out of their mouths to let me know exactly how much they appreciated the idea. So I went to the next stair up and plopped down, massaging my burning thighs and flexing my toes to try and restore feeling in them.

    The Director was the first to make it up, and she sat down next to me, reclining against the stairs that stretched above us, no matter how uncomfortable it must have been. Ritsuka and Rika joined us a couple minutes later, only they just threw themselves onto the ground and laid there, huffing and puffing.

    Caster chuckled, leaning on the thick head of his staff. ¡°I always forget just how fragile and weak humans are, these days. Guess people just aren¡¯t as strong or as durable as they used to be.¡±

    ¡°Of course not,¡± the Director scoffed breathlessly. ¡°The definition of human limits has been solidified in the last thousand years. The things people could do back when you were alive are far and away beyond those of us in the modern era. That¡¯s the price for the proliferation of the human species and the advancement of its knowledge.¡±

    ¡°I guess so,¡± he said, shrugging. ¡°I can¡¯t say I understand how all of that stuff works. I¡¯m just a warrior. My only concern was always just how hard I needed to punch someone or how clever I needed to be to outthink him.¡±

    ¡°Director,¡± I said, ¡°you have those ration bars, right? We should take a minute to eat and regain some of our energy.¡±

    The Director looked at me, and then she grimaced ¡ª no, they didn¡¯t taste that great, but we weren¡¯t exactly in a position to cook a full meal, out here. She leveraged herself back up with a grunt and started digging into the schoolbag we¡¯d filched from the Second Owner¡¯s house to hold what we could of our leftover supplies.

    ¡°Here.¡± She handed me a ration bar that I accepted, and then she tossed two more at the twins with a lot less care. ¡°Hey, you two! Eat up! This is the last chance we¡¯ll have to eat before the final battle, and we¡¯re going to need all the strength we can get!¡±

    Grumbling, Rika and Ritsuka pulled themselves up into a sitting position and unwrapped their ration bars. Rika had barely bitten into hers when her face twisted with disgust.

    ¡°Blegh!¡± she spat. ¡°This tastes like sawdust!¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s sour expression said that he very much agreed.

    ¡°Eat it!¡± the Director ordered, pointing at them with her own bar. She rummaged about in the bag again and pulled out a bottle of water that she tossed Rika¡¯s way. It landed unceremoniously in her lap. ¡°Wash it down with that, if you have to, but just eat it!¡±

    After a quick reach back into the bag, she pulled out another bottle and handed it to me. I clutched my ration bar between my teeth and twisted the cap on the bottle open.

    We took another half an hour to rest and let the ration bars digest, and then we started up the stairs again. As we went, though, the air started to get thicker instead of thinner. It washed down over us like the breath of a sleeping giant, warm and oppressive and pungent, even though the only thing that I¡¯d been able to smell since we¡¯d arrived in Fuyuki was the acrid smell of the smoke and flames.

    ¡°We¡¯re almost there,¡± Caster said another two flights of twenty stairs later. His face was drawn and serious, all hints of levity gone. Mash hefted her shield, shifting it so it was more in front of her and she could block at a moment¡¯s notice.

    Eventually, Caster stopped us and led us off the stairs and through a hidden path in the forest. There was the sense of something straining as we walked it, like the gossamer strands of a spider¡¯s web, trying to tug us back towards the steps we¡¯d been climbing.

    Then, all at once, it broke, and we were standing in a clearing where a large cavern sat in the mountainside, supported around its mouth by manmade columns and tiles.

    The center of Fuyuki City¡¯s spiritual ground, the largest concentration of magical power in the city¡­ If that was the best place to build the system that summoned the Servants, it made sense the Grail would be there, too, and the obvious human touches to it spoke to that.

    ¡°The chamber holding the Holy Grail is through there, deep inside the mountain,¡± Caster told us solemnly. ¡°Now, everyone, I need you to get in there and get behind Girlie. Now.¡±

    Mash startled and gasped, spinning about. ¡°A Servant!¡±

    Caster stepped past the group and back away from the mouth of the cavern, and with a shout, he waved his staff and carved a circle of runes in the air. They¡¯d barely formed when something dark and almost invisible glinted and impacted, bouncing off as the barrier shattered like glass.

    Whatever it was gleamed as it landed tip-first in the dirt, jutting up, a long, narrow shaft with twists and knots to its shape that didn¡¯t belong on an arrow, and yet that was the only thing it could be. Before our very eyes, it disintegrated, just dissolved into tiny flecks of light that flickered out of existence.

    Archer. He¡¯d come to intercept us before we could enter the cavern to fight Saber, as expected.

    ¡°Eek!¡± Rika squeaked.

    ¡°Behind Mash!¡± I shouted, and the group of us huddled up and piled in behind Mash, who brandished her shield and thrust it forward, planting the bottom spoke in the dirt for stability.

    Another arrow whistled through the dark, and this time, Caster didn¡¯t bother deflecting it, he just leaned to the side, reached out, and plucked it from the air as it passed him. With a better look at it, now, I could see how the barbed tip curved sharply on the back ends and dipped into an undulating shaft that eventually terminated into a pronged butt. There was no fletching, and a moment later, it disappeared the way the first one had.

    It probably said something that I didn¡¯t bat an eye, but then, powers hadn¡¯t really ever followed logic, either, so maybe it wasn¡¯t all that strange I didn¡¯t find it strange.

    ¡°You gonna come out, Archer?¡± Caster called into the forest. ¡°Or are you going to sit in the bushes until I burn them to the ground and make you come out?¡±

    Another arrow shot through the air. Caster knocked it aside effortlessly.

    ¡°Come on, Archer! We¡¯ve played this game before! You already know you can¡¯t hit me with these! All you¡¯re doing now is wasting time!¡±

    Protection from Arrows. Of course. As long as it was a projectile, Caster shouldn¡¯t have any trouble with it at all.

    A moment of silence was the enemy Servant¡¯s response, and then Caster leapt out of the way as shafts of steel rained down from just above the treetops, thudding as they sank into the ground ¡ª Mash grunted as what had to be a full half of the barrage clanged off the front of her shield, bouncing, twirling, and eventually landing, many of them broken and snapped in half, in the dirt.

    They weren¡¯t arrows, like I might have expected. They were too long, with bladed edges, handles at the bottom end, and prongs jutting out from where the handle transitioned into the main body of the weapon.

    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°Are those¡­swords?¡±

    In hindsight, it should have been less surprising, considering Caster had already said that this guy could recreate Caladbolg, which was definitely a sword. I just hadn¡¯t expected something like this when Caster said he could rapidly produce more ammunition.

    ¡°That¡¯s so metal!¡± whispered Rika.

    Ritsuka grunted and a disgusted groan vibrated in the back of the Director¡¯s throat. ¡°That was a terrible pun!¡±

    What kind of Archer was this? I¡­ Maybe if you stretched the definition of what an archer was, but¡­

    Caster was the only one unfazed. ¡°Come on, Archer! That didn¡¯t work last time, either!¡±

    At last, a figure appeared on the branch of one tree, a large, black bow in one hand and a sword held by the pommel between two of his fingers in the other. He was¡­ Tall, broad-shouldered, with bronze skin and shocking white hair ¡ª attractive, if I was being entirely honest, and I might have spent longer tracing the curves of those muscles of his if he wasn¡¯t an enemy ¡ª but the thing that stood out the most about him was the jagged red lines that stretched up one side of his neck and over his face, while more zigzagged down one arm.

    They looked like Lichtenberg scars, only redder and starker. Like someone had cracked open his skin, and what lay beneath wasn¡¯t muscle and bone, but rust and flames. The only thing missing was the glow.

    Caster grinned. ¡°That¡¯s more like it. Coming to protect Saber, like always?¡±

    Archer dropped out of the tree and stepped forward to the edge of the bluff that overlooked the cavern, his expression cold, closed off, and utterly devoid of anything resembling emotion. He observed the entire group dispassionately, like a machine calculating the task ahead.

    ¡°There¡¯s no wish upon the Grail to be fighting for anymore,¡± Archer said, disinterested, like he was reciting something he¡¯d read out of a textbook. ¡°In that case, the least I can do is the mundane work of chasing off intruders. You should understand that, Caster.¡±

    ¡°What you¡¯re saying is that you¡¯re her guard dog, is that it?¡± Caster said sardonically. ¡°Is that your idea of a joke? Or maybe you meant it as an insult!¡±

    ¡°I have no idea what you¡¯re talking about.¡±

    ¡°Like I¡¯d believe that!¡±

    Caster swung his arm, drawing runes in the air, and blasts of fire shot out for Archer, who leapt from his perch to avoid them and landed in the ravine that sheltered the cavern. His feet had barely touched the ground before he was setting his stance, setting the sword in his hand across that enormous bow, and I could only watch as it streamlined down into an arrow identical to the first two that had been fired our way.

    ¡°Hu!¡±

    That arrow shot off at Caster with a crack of displaced air, but Caster batted it away just like everything else Archer had thrown at him.

    ¡°Haven¡¯t I already said that won¡¯t work? Ha!¡±

    Caster drew more runes, and more bolts of fire shot at Archer, whose bow vanished and was replaced by a pair of twin swords that he used to deflect Caster¡¯s fireballs. The flames rolled off the flats of the blades ¡ª one white and one black ¡ª and guttered out.

    ¡°Heh!¡± Caster grinned. ¡°Finally starting to take me seriously, are you?¡±

    ¡°Who knows?¡± Archer said. ¡°Maybe I just don¡¯t have the time to spend playing around with you.¡±

    He started walking, always keeping Caster in front of him, and across from him, Caster circled in the opposite direction until neither of them had their backs to us.

    ¡°You¡¯re going to make me sad, Archer,¡± Caster teased. ¡°After all, we¡¯re Servants. No matter what Saber does, our time back on Earth is limited. Shouldn¡¯t we go out having fun?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no point in something like that. Killing the lot of you is just my job. Enjoyment has nothing to do with it.¡±

    Archer¡¯s steely eyes ¡ª they were, quite literally, the gray of polished steel ¡ª flickered over in our direction, like a lion considering a gazelle or a snake a mouse, and I didn¡¯t need to be a genius or have any particular strategic acumen to realize his intent. Caster didn¡¯t miss it, either.

    ¡°Not so fast!¡± Caster shouted, and he jabbed his staff into the dirt as runes drew themselves at his feet. Four in particular, although I wasn¡¯t versed enough in runes to recognize their combined purpose on sight. ¡°Your opponent here is me, you bastard!¡±

    Archer stiffened and grunted, and he spat, ¡°Ath nGabla.¡±

    ¡°Ath nGabla?¡± asked Rika. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a special runic spell used by C¨²chulainn,¡± the Director explained quickly. ¡°It forces the opponent to fight a one on one duel to the death. Once you¡¯re bound by it, you can¡¯t retreat and you can¡¯t surrender. You either win or die. In his legend, he used it to hold off an entire army by forcing them to engage him one at a time.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right, Archer.¡± Caster¡¯s grin was full of teeth and edges. ¡°There¡¯s no more running away. One way or another, we¡¯re finishing this battle here and now.¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯re that eager to die¡­¡± Archer settled into a stance, brandishing his twin swords. ¡°I guess the only thing I can do is oblige you.¡±

    ¡°If you think you can manage it¡­¡±

    Caster swung his arm again, drawing yet more runes.

    ¡°¡­that suits me just fine!¡±

    The world exploded as they kicked off the ground. Hunks of soil and rock flew from where they¡¯d both been standing, and somewhere in the middle, they met, arms a blur, moving so fast that I couldn¡¯t even keep up with what was happening.

    Against all sense, Caster had abandoned his runes and was instead wielding his staff like a polearm, but Archer was fending him off with his pair of swords instead of putting distance to try and find something that Caster couldn¡¯t avoid. Their metal rang and shrieked with each blow, each so rapid that they began to overlap as both Servants got faster and faster.

    ¡°This is insane,¡± the Director murmured. ¡°A Caster fighting like a Lancer, and an Archer fighting like a Saber.¡±

    This wasn¡¯t part of the plan, I wanted to tell Caster, but I couldn¡¯t afford to distract him, so I could only bite my lip and keep silent. We¡¯d agreed, he could fight Archer one on one and have his duel, but a deathmatch curse had never been a part of that. We needed him to fight Saber too much to risk him losing and getting killed. Caster¡¯s wishes be damned, I¡¯d intended to intervene the instant it looked like he was about to die.

    Now, he¡¯d made that impossible. Had he done it specifically so that I couldn¡¯t, because I¡¯d told him that I would if I had to?

    My eyes flicked back and forth as I tried to keep track of the fight, but they were just moving too fast. Their bodies were little more than red and blue blurs as they danced across the gorge, and their weapons were essentially invisible. The only reason I could see Caster¡¯s staff was because it had burst into flame at some point, leaving a glowing trail in its wake.

    It wasn¡¯t that I couldn¡¯t see the logic. A one on one deathmatch curse ensured Archer couldn¡¯t target us and draw us into the fight, which meant we were safer here than without it. It also meant Archer couldn¡¯t just run away and ambush us later, he had to finish it now, one way or the other. As long as Caster won, we could be certain we wouldn¡¯t have an enemy at our backs.

    But I didn¡¯t like that Caster had made the decision without me, and I didn¡¯t like that it meant the only thing I could do was sit on the sidelines and watch.

    The seconds ticked by. The fight kept going, a lightning fast melee where neither side seemed to have the upper hand. Every few blows, one of Archer¡¯s swords would shatter with the crack of breaking glass, but before I could even blink, it was replaced with an exact duplicate. They were stuck in a stalemate where neither of them could advance, because the match was simply too even at close range.

    But it could only last for so long. The more intense the fighting got, the stronger the tug inside of me got, and the more magical energy Caster drained to keep going. Faster and faster, it dwindled ¡ª I¡¯d thought before that he could have three more fights of the sort of intensity he went at it against Medusa before I had to worry, and it looked like he was determined to prove that he could still kick it up a notch.

    Another one of Archer¡¯s swords went flying, the hilt in one direction and the shattered pieces of the blade another, and in that brief fraction of a second, Caster looked over at me and his eyes met mine. Could he tell he was draining me so fast?

    ¡°Where are you looking?¡±

    Archer, sensing an opening, reversed his grip on his remaining sword and mercilessly thrust it into Caster¡¯s chest.

    The rest of my group gasped.

    ¡°No!¡± said the Director.

    ¡°Caster!¡± Rika screamed.

    Caster froze, hunched over the blade in his chest, face carved into a rictus of shock ¡ª and then vines sprouted from the wound, wrapping around Archer¡¯s hand, and Caster¡¯s body turned brown and coarse, like the bark of a tree from his head to his feet to his clothes. Before our eyes, his back cracked open, and Caster, whole and unharmed, stepped away from his own corpse.

    ¡°Thought you had me there?¡± Caster¡¯s grin was a thing of victory. ¡°Don¡¯t think you can take me out that easily, Archer!¡±

    He stabbed his staff into the wooden statue of himself, and it caught ablaze instantly, pouring flames from every crack and crevice like some mockery of a funeral pyre. Archer grunted and tore himself free, putting as much distance between them as he could; the burns that marked his hand and forearm were red and inflamed, but mostly superficial. For a Servant, they were probably nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

    ¡°Where are you going?¡± Caster demanded.

    He slammed the butt of his staff against the ground, and a line of fire ignited across the gorge towards Archer, who leapt out of the way and into the air. The remaining sword disappeared, and Archer¡¯s bow rematerialized as he formed another longsword on its string.

    It was a different sword from before. Not basic steel and rudimentary structure, like you might see on any old sword from medieval Europe, but a drill-like spiral that terminated in a narrow point and had a dark blue hilt. Even from where I was, I could tell that this thing was something special, just from the sense of foreboding, of weight, it carried.

    I realized as he started to come back down ¡ª if he fired that off and Caster dodged, it would come and hit Mash. Us.

    ¡°Like I¡¯d let you!¡± Caster shouted and smacked his palm into the dirt.

    A wooden hand thrust itself out of the ground, and Archer, who was still in the air, couldn¡¯t dodge to avoid it as it reached up and took hold of him, hoisting him higher into the sky.

    Cage of Scorching, Consuming Flames

    ¡°Wicker Man!¡±

    The wooden hand ignited and the arm it was attached to swung down. Archer, who was trapped between its fingers, couldn¡¯t escape as it smashed into the ground with a thunderous crash that shook the mountainside, shattering with a burst of white hot flames. Shards of wood splattered across the gorge, skittering over the dirt, still flickering with the embers of the Wicker Man, and then they dissolved away.

    In the crater made by the Wicker Man¡¯s fist, Archer¡¯s body lay, chunks of him missing entirely, half his torso gone, one arm torn off from the elbow down, one leg mangled and twisted in sickening angles. He didn¡¯t move, didn¡¯t seem to be breathing or even conscious, and then, he flaked away into little motes of light that winked out of existence.

    He was dead. Again. Still. However the fuck that worked with Servants.

    And the instant he was gone, I felt as though whatever force I hadn¡¯t realized was keeping me steady disappeared with him, and I sagged against the spoke of Mash¡¯s shield, arms and legs trembling, and panted for a breath I hadn¡¯t even known I¡¯d lost.

    ¡°Taylor?¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor?¡±

    ¡°Senpai, are you okay?¡±

    I swallowed thickly around my tongue. My body burned. My nerves throbbed. Sweat dripped down my forehead, down the back of my neck, down the front of my shirt. I had to blink to refocus my vision, because it was blurring around the edges.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I said belatedly, slurring a little. Fuck. What was wrong with me? ¡°Jus¡­ Just give me a¡­¡±

    Footsteps. A familiar presence, cool and welcoming. I looked up into red eyes, trying to keep myself from collapsing to my knees.

    I was ashamed to admit that Mash and her shield were probably the only things keeping me upright.

    ¡°Sorry about that, Master,¡± Caster said, sounding honestly contrite. ¡°I took a little more energy from you than I should have.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s¡­¡±

    What was I supposed to say to that?

    ¡°It¡¯s fine.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not fine!¡± the Director squawked. ¡°Caster, we still have another fight to go through, you know! How are we supposed to face Saber when one of our Masters is like this?¡±

    ¡°Give her a few minutes to adjust,¡± Caster said, unconcerned. ¡°I¡¯m guessing she never pushes herself, right? Or more like, she keeps ironclad control over how much she stresses her magic circuits. She¡¯s just not used to channeling that much of her magical energy all at once.¡±

    My cheek twitched. I resisted the urge to scowl at him, that he could so easily see through me. He wasn¡¯t wrong, though, in either sense; even as he spoke, I could feel the pain and weakness fading as my magic circuits cooled and returned to normal. It was like I¡¯d said, I¡¯d only need a minute or so to recover my breath and my strength.

    To take the focus off of me, I said, ¡°Ath nGabla.¡±

    Caster grimaced and sighed. ¡°Yeah, I figured you¡¯d be mad about that,¡± he said ruefully.

    ¡°Of course we¡¯re mad!¡± the Director spat indignantly. ¡°Do you have any idea how reckless and irresponsible ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Director,¡± I cut in, ¡°a scolding would be more meaningful coming from his Master, wouldn¡¯t it?¡±

    Her mouth snapped shut and her cheeks went a little red as she scowled.

    ¡°I¡¯m not mad you did it,¡± I told Caster calmly. ¡°I¡¯m mad you made the decision by yourself.¡±

    I don¡¯t disagree with your reasoning, I continued silently, projecting my thoughts along the connection between us, nor do I disagree that it was probably the right decision. I disagree with you having done it without consulting anyone when you¡¯re essential to our fight against Saber. If we lost you, our chances of winning would plummet.

    ¡°Geez,¡± Caster chuckled awkwardly, looking younger for it than he had at any point thus far, ¡°sometimes, Master, you remind me of my teacher, but sometimes, you just remind me of my wife.¡±

    ¡°Are you flirting with her again?¡± the Director demanded.

    ¡°If talking about all of the other women they¡¯ve loved is the way modern men flirt, Boss Lady,¡± said Caster, ¡°then I can see why it is a catch like you is single.¡±

    Rika gave a delighted laugh even as the Director¡¯s face turned a bright, cherry red, her mouth flapping silently, because she was at a literal loss for words.

    ¡°That was flirting,¡± Caster added unnecessarily.

    ¡°In any case,¡± I said before the conversation could devolve again, ¡°are you good to keep going, Caster?¡±

    He grinned. ¡°Heh. Shouldn¡¯t I be asking you that? Don¡¯t worry so much, Master. You¡¯ve still got those three Command Spells, right?¡±

    He gestured in the direction of my left hand, where the web of red markings stood out against the pale skin of the back of my hand. They looked even more like blood than they ever had before.

    ¡°In that case,¡± he went on, ¡°you¡¯ve got an emergency stash of backup magical energy. If I¡¯m running low, just use one of those to give me a quick boost. No point in hoarding them during the last battle of the Holy Grail War, right?¡±

    Unless he decided to stab us in the back afterwards, that was. But I was beginning to think that Caster, that C¨²chulainn, just wasn¡¯t that kind of person. Could you call that trust? Maybe.

    I took a deep breath and pushed myself off of Mash¡¯s shield, and I didn¡¯t collapse, although I wasn¡¯t back up to one-hundred percent, either. That was only natural, though. It wasn¡¯t like I was going to regain all of the magical energy Caster used up in just five minutes.

    ¡°Ritsuka, Rika, are you ready?¡± I asked.

    Rika went ramrod straight, and Ritsuka startled a little at being addressed. ¡°A-ah, yes, Senpai?¡± Ritsuka said uncertainly.

    ¡°Tip-top, running on all cylinders, Senpai!¡± Rika chirped.

    It was going to take some getting used to, being addressed like that. Most of the rest of Team A hadn¡¯t thought much of me, although Wodime had never been exactly mean and Beryl¡­ Beryl had just been weird. Like he could see something in me the others didn¡¯t, and he didn¡¯t want to risk whatever he thought that was coming out.

    ¡°Mash?¡±

    Mash was the only one of them who treated me like I had any experience with anything more strenuous than bookwork.

    ¡°All parameters are normal, Miss Taylor,¡± she replied.

    ¡°Then let¡¯s get going,¡± the Director said. ¡°Mash, take point. No sense in taking any risks this late in the game.¡±

    She looked over at me and I nodded. ¡°Right.¡±

    ¡°Understood, Director.¡±

    Mash hefted her huge shield again and swung around to face the cavern. She held it out in front of her to ward off any ambushes and started cautiously into the cave. A moment later, we all fell into step behind her.

    The cavern turned out deeper than I¡¯d expected. I wasn¡¯t quite sure how long we wound up walking for, but the roughly hewn pathway we walked along was winding and continued on for quite a while. It was also much roomier than I¡¯d thought it would be, as well ¡ª stalactites hung from the ceiling, and stalagmites framed the sides, but there was easily enough space for our entire group to walk side by side, if we¡¯d been so inclined, and more than enough space for Mash to swing that shield any which way she liked.

    We must have traveled a whole mile into the mountainside before we saw the ominous glow ahead, and the tension in the party ratcheted up a notch as we kept going to the end of the tunnel and stepped out into a vast, utterly enormous chamber.

    If I¡¯d thought the tunnel was big, the chamber it led to was ridiculous. Easily large enough to fit an entire army, with a ceiling so far up that, even lit by that ominous glow, it was shrouded in darkness and shadows. It reminded me of Erebor or the Mines of Moria from The Lord of the Rings, and it was certainly big enough for an underground castle or city to be built inside of it.

    At the back of the cavern was a raised ridge, a circular thing that stretched from one side to the other, like the nest of some giant serpent, and standing on the lip of that ridge, overlooking us and the rest of the chamber, was a young woman.

    She was black all over, from her dress to the armor she wore over it to the exquisite sword she rested her hands on whose tip was planted in the dirt. A shock of platinum blonde hair sat on her head, and eerily glowing yellow eyes peered down at us from out of a pale-skinned face.

    The thing that stuck out the most about her was the sheer power she exuded, an aura of darkness that permeated the entire chamber and could be felt even from its entrance. Her sheer presence seemed to fill the room and soak into the ground, choking the life away and pressing down on us.

    And yet, there was something grand and majestic about it, something larger than life and almost noble. I could believe this woman, small and young as she was, could have been King Arthur.

    ¡°Welcome, Chaldea,¡± the young woman said. Her voice was cold and void of emotion, but there was something in there that I was almost tempted to call friendly. ¡°I am the Servant Saber. I stand guard here, to defend this place against all trespassers and those who would covet the power within.¡±

    And behind her, a massive pool of magical energy churned, so dense and so powerful that it was visible to the naked eye. It dwarfed Saber a thousand times over, a million times over, not only in sheer volume but in quantity and quality. There was so much of it that I couldn¡¯t have hoped to make use of it in the course of a hundred lifetimes, let alone a single one.

    Even as a novice spellcaster, I knew enough about magic to tell that this thing was the real deal, the authentic article. Not the cup of Christ from the Last Supper, but an omnipotent wish-granting device that could make any dream a reality. Without a doubt, this was ¡ª

    ¡°If you wish to claim your prize, you must first step over my corpse,¡± Saber said with the unshakeable conviction of the mountain around us. ¡°That is the only way you can take this Holy Grail.¡±

 Chapter IX: Grand Order

    Chapter IX: Grand Order

    ¡°A magical energy reactor of that scale,¡± the Director muttered, chewing on her thumbnail again. ¡°I read about this in our records about Fuyuki, but¡­ Seeing something capable of generating and processing that much raw magical power for your own eyes is a different thing entirely.¡±

    ¡°I was expecting a golden cup,¡± Ritsuka mumbled.

    ¡°This is such a ripoff,¡± Rika agreed. ¡°Why even call it a Holy Grail, then?¡±

    The Director scoffed. ¡°Ignorant neophytes, the both of you! The term Holy Grail is used for two primary purposes. Firstly, because it¡¯s convenient shorthand when talking about a device of this magnitude that can brute force wishes through its raw power. What else are you going to call an omnipotent wish-granting device? And secondly, because giving something a label like that defines it and reinforces its purpose. If you give something a name, you can give it shape.¡±

    ¡°Which further reinforces the Holy Grail¡¯s power to grant wishes,¡± Mash added.

    ¡°Exactly.¡±

    Powers weren¡¯t that different, were they? They were less precise, because I guess passengers didn¡¯t understand humans all that well, but why did Lung transform into a dragon? Why had my power limited my control to arthropods, to bugs, to creepy crawlies? Why had Sundancer¡¯s power shaped into a spheroid ball of fused plasma?

    Why had Echidna¡¯s mishmash of parts all featured terrestrial animals?

    Because passengers had based our powers on human concepts through human lenses.

    Up on the ledge, Saber lifted her sword out of the dirt ¡ª

    ¡°She¡¯s coming!¡± I warned everyone, and Mash stepped further forward, hefting her shield defensively, as the Director and the twins huddled closer together.

    ¡ª and with a single leap, she cleared almost half the distance between us. She landed roughly, more akin to the classic superhero ¡°three-point¡± landing than something graceful. There was a reason that landing was so iconic, though, and Saber proved that in the way she didn¡¯t flinch, didn¡¯t wince, and didn¡¯t seem at all inconvenienced by it. No pain, no discomfort, just a smooth transition back to her feet.

    Power. That landing was all about power.

    ¡°That Servant, too,¡± the Director whispered, eyes locked on Saber. ¡°That level of magical output is just unreal. It¡¯s on a completely different level from the other Servants so far. Can you even call her a mere Servant anymore?¡±

    ¡°In the legends, King Arthur is said to be the embodiment of the Red Dragon,¡± I said. ¡°The living representation of Britain.¡±

    Well, Wales, technically, but that had been lost as more and more of Europe adopted the mythos and added to it.

    ¡°A dragon in human form¡­ No, maybe not that far, but something like it? She¡¯d have one foot in humanity and one foot in the Phantasmals.¡± The Director grimaced. ¡°Her magic circuits¡­ No, they¡¯d really be more like a nuclear reactor than something as simple as circuits.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s like I told you before,¡± said Caster, face solemn, ¡°Saber is completely different from that Archer. She doesn¡¯t need complex tactics and convoluted strategy. If she can¡¯t overwhelm you with her raw strength, then she¡¯ll just blow you away with her Noble Phantasm.¡±

    Saber stepped towards us, casually, leisurely, except that really wasn¡¯t the right way to describe it. The absolute confidence, the almost predatory gleam in her yellow eyes, it was more like a lion stalking its prey.

    And we were the poor gazelle, in that case.

    ¡°How interesting,¡± Saber said as she came closer. She was looking at Mash and completely ignoring the rest of us. ¡°That shield¡­ I know the knight to whom it belongs, and you are most certainly not him, strange girl. And yet you most certainly wield it, and you are most certainly a Servant of some kind. Perhaps you are a distant descendent of his, borrowing his powers through possession?¡±

    I couldn¡¯t see the look on Mash¡¯s face, but I could imagine the thoughts going through her head.

    So, the Heroic Spirit who originally owned that shield was a knight ¡ª although, with that armor, that was kind of self-evident ¡ª and he was someone King Arthur had known in life, or at least known of, and seemed to respect. The only problem was, King Arthur¡¯s tale had been rife with knights of all sorts from all kinds of different places, so that didn¡¯t exactly narrow it down, and there was nothing to say that he was one of King Arthur¡¯s Knights of the Round Table and not an enemy.

    The possibilities had narrowed, but not by enough.

    ¡°¡­He passed his powers down to me at the last second to save my life, but he didn¡¯t tell me his name,¡± Mash admitted quietly, and I had to grit my teeth to keep from scolding her for giving that away so readily.

    ¡°I see,¡± said Saber, and there was something like fondness in her voice, but it was so faint that I wasn¡¯t sure I wasn¡¯t imagining it. ¡°Yes, that sounds like him. Doubtlessly, he intends for you to come into his power through your own growth. Very well then, strange girl.¡±

    Saber hefted her sword and brandished it, gripping the hilt with both hands. ¡°I will test the strength of your resolve and your worthiness to inherit his mantle! Prepare yourself!¡±

    There was no time to react. I didn¡¯t blink, but Saber moved so fast that she appeared to teleport; in an instant, she¡¯d crossed the distance and stood in front of Mash. I could only see her by the flutter of her dress and the ominous shape of her sword, Excalibur, from over the spoke of Mash¡¯s shield.

    Not that fast, my ass, Caster!

    She easily outpaced every other Servant we¡¯d fought, so far.

    CLANG

    The sound of the impact was thunderous and felt like it rattled the bones in my body and shook the ground beneath my feet. If I¡¯d had any fillings in my mouth, I was sure they would have been vibrated loose by that attack alone.

    Mash gasped and had to thrust her left foot back to absorb the blow, and it seemed a miracle to me that her shield hadn¡¯t gone flying in the face of something that strong. The only Brute I¡¯d ever known with that level of raw strength was Alexandria.

    CLANG ¡ª CLANG ¡ª CLANG ¡ª CLANG ¡ª CLANG

    Saber didn¡¯t give her the chance to recover or rest. She didn¡¯t attack with the blinding speed Archer, Medusa, and Caster had used in battle, but each swing seemed to shake the whole world with its power, and my ears rang with the screech of Mash¡¯s shield as her arms buckled beneath each blow. If I hadn¡¯t seen capes who had shrugged off attacks equally as powerful ¡ª if I hadn¡¯t fought Behemoth and watched him survive a blast that Phir Se had said could destroy the Indian subcontinent ¡ª just the fact that shield wasn¡¯t a ruined mess would have been impressive on its own.

    Even still, Mash was obviously outclassed. Her shield would not break, but her body was a different story entirely.

    ¡°Come on!¡± Saber stopped long enough to goad her, and then delivered another bone-shaking strike.

    CLANG

    ¡°Is that all you¡¯re capable of?¡±

    Another swing of Excalibur. It streaked through the air like black lightning.

    CLANG

    Mash grunted, her knees trembling and her arms shaking, not with fear, but with effort. Each attack should have sent her flying, but somehow, she was not only staying on her feet, she was managing to block them all.

    ¡°Can you do nothing more than clutch to that shield?¡±

    CLANG

    ¡°If you wish to claim the Grail, you must first go through me!¡±

    CLANG

    ¡°That isn¡¯t possible if you can¡¯t even take one step forward!¡±

    CLANG

    Mash gasped and fell to one knee. One hand still held the handle of her shield, and the other was braced against the left spoke as though that was the only thing standing between her and annihilation ¡ª and in a very real sense, it was.

    ¡°Mash!¡± the twins both cried out.

    It was only sheer luck that the Director and I managed to grab hold of them before they could rush to Mash¡¯s aid.

    ¡°What do you think you¡¯re doing?¡± the Director shrieked. ¡°You two are just Masters! The only thing you¡¯ll accomplish by going to her side is to get yourselves killed!¡±

    ¡°But!¡± Ritsuka tried to protest.

    ¡°She needs us!¡± Rika shouted.

    ¡°Have faith in Mash,¡± I told them, ¡°and remember the plan.¡±

    The both of them scowled and looked towards Mash, fists clenched and shaking. I couldn¡¯t say I didn¡¯t understand how horrible it was to feel so helpless, so unable to do anything.

    It was only the reminder that there was a plan and I couldn¡¯t have hoped to change anything in a fight against Saber with my own power that kept me from racing to get involved, myself.

    Come on, Caster, I thought. I¡¯m not sure how long Mash can take this.

    ¡°Stand up!¡± Saber barked at Mash. ¡°Do you think the fight is over simply because you can¡¯t go on? Servants fight to the death!¡±

    CLANG

    Mercilessly, she delivered another harsh blow. Mash¡¯s shield held, but her arms nearly didn¡¯t.

    ¡°The knight who wielded that shield was invincible!¡±

    CLANG

    Mash gasped, elbows quivering.

    ¡°As long as his heart remained stalwart, so too did his shield!¡±

    CLANG

    Mash¡¯s hand slipped, and she scrambled to move it back into place as her shield threatened to collapse on top of her.

    ¡°If your heart is so feeble that you can¡¯t even withstand this much ¡ª¡±

    CLANG

    ¡°¡ª then you are not worthy to inherit his legacy!¡±

    ¡°Give the girl a break, Saber,¡± Caster¡¯s voice echoed. ¡°She¡¯s only been a Servant for a little over a day. We only managed to tease out what her Noble Phantasm even looked like a few hours ago.¡±

    Saber stopped cold and whipped around, looking off to the side, where Caster stood. The ground beneath him glowed with a series of runes, his second Noble Phantasm.

    Caster grinned. ¡°Besides. She¡¯s not the only one here, you know. You still have me to contend with, too. Our Grail War isn¡¯t over.¡±

    Now.

    I palmed the runestone he¡¯d carved in preparation for this moment, and I threw it over the edge of Mash¡¯s shield, right into Saber¡¯s face.

    ¡°What ¡ª¡±

    My eyes squeezed shut. ¡°Anfang!¡±

    The flash of light was so bright, I could see it through my eyelids. Saber let out an agonized screech.

    ¡°Now, Mash!¡±

    ¡°Y-yes!¡±

    I heard her pull herself to her feet, and I managed to get my eyes back open just in time to see her swing her massive shield at Saber and send her enemy flying backwards. It couldn¡¯t have been more than a superficial injury, because Saber easily rolled back to her feet, squinting her eerie yellow eyes at us as she snarled.

    ¡°You!¡±

    Mash planted her shield in the dirt and braced herself.

    Human Order Foundation

    ¡°Lord Chaldeas!¡±

    Lines of blue light drew themselves in the air in front of her, forming an enormous magic circle, and a translucent barrier rippled into existence, large enough to cover an entire house, to encircle the Second Owner¡¯s mansion. It looked flimsy, if I had to admit to it, but this had blocked Caster¡¯s Wicker Man, so I had to hope this would be enough to protect us, now.

    Not a moment too soon, because Caster¡¯s voice shouted soon after.

    Great God Carved Seal

    ¡°Ochd Deug Odin!¡±

    Another flash of light detonated, brighter and more intense than my flashbang, and I had to look away, shielding my eyes in the crook of my elbow as my retinas burned from the overload. An explosion ripped through the air, a low, loud, thunderous boom that shook the cavern around me more than Saber¡¯s strikes could have ever hoped to, and I felt every particle of my body vibrate from its passing.

    But behind the barrier of Mash¡¯s Noble Phantasm, we were completely unaffected.

    The moment came and went. It took a few seconds, but I pried my eyelids back open and blinked blearily over the spoke of Mash¡¯s shield as she gasped and her barrier vanished. A cloud of debris wafted through the cave, and we stood in the center of a clear spot, like the eye of a hurricane.

    ¡°Did we get her?¡± Ritsuka asked quietly.

    ¡°There¡¯s no way she survived that!¡± Rika said confidently.

    ¡°Quiet,¡± I ordered them. ¡°Don¡¯t relax, yet.¡±

    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

    The dust and dirt kicked up by Caster¡¯s Noble Phantasm began to disperse, and despite my own words, I couldn¡¯t help the uncomfortable squirm in my gut as I saw what lay in the middle of it all.

    ¡°No way¡­¡±

    Slowly, Saber pulled herself to her feet, using her sword as a crutch. A miasma of dark energy curled around her lovingly, and even as I watched, the dark burns on her skin healed over and the rips in her clothing mended themselves as though time itself were being rewound.

    I gritted my teeth. Just what did it take to put her down?

    ¡°We did a lot of damage, Master,¡± said Caster, suddenly right next to me. ¡°Unfortunately, Saber won¡¯t go down so easily. She must have let loose a surge of magical energy right before my Noble Phantasm hit, and it was enough to absorb the brunt of the damage.¡±

    ¡°Just what kind of monster is she?¡± the Director demanded, horrified.

    Saber turned in our direction, and although her face hadn¡¯t really changed that much the entire time, there was something in her expression that I could only call furious.

    ¡°I see,¡± she said lowly, coldly, like the deadly frost before a blizzard. ¡°It seems I underestimated you Chaldeans and your talent for trickery. Very well. If you¡¯re going to resort to your Noble Phantasms, allow me to respond in kind.¡±

    She took hold of Excalibur with both hands, and the miasma swirling around her surged instead into her sword. It erupted into dark light, doubling, tripling, quadrupling in size, until she held a pillar of ominous black that dwarfed both her and us more than a dozen times over.

    With my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance, I could see it for what it was, now. A++, Anti-Fortress. A weapon designed for blowing away enemy castles and fortifications, more than enough to destroy both us and the mountain we were standing inside of.

    There was no way to survive it. No way to get out of the way in enough time. The instant that came down, we were all dead, the same as we would have been if it had been one of Scion¡¯s beams instead.

    We only had one chance of making it through this. A slim one. But when had that ever stopped me?

    ¡°Shit!¡± Caster swore, recoiling. ¡°Hey, Girlie, now would be a good time ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Mash!¡± I shouted over him. ¡°Noble Phantasm! Now!¡±

    Mash planted her feet and braced herself.

    ¡°EX ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Lord ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª CALIBUR!¡±

    ¡°CHALDEAS!¡±

    The barrier drew itself into the air, just in time for the pillar of light to come down. I heard Rika scream next to me, and Ritsuka shouted something I didn¡¯t make out as the wind swept my hair back. A torrent of black light raced for us, large enough, massive enough that it would have scattered our composite atoms to the four winds ¡ª except Mash¡¯s shield was stopping it. The main mass of the beam held fast in the air, suspended by Mash¡¯s Noble Phantasm, and the spillover washed around us to the far edges of the barrier like water off an umbrella, leaving us untouched as it carved away at the mountain.

    Even that would have been enough to kill us, if it had been close enough.

    ¡°We¡¯re¡­ We¡¯re alive?¡± the Director whispered incredulously.

    As though to prove her wrong, cracks began to form in the barrier, leaking that ominous light between them. Mash grunted and held her ground, digging her feet even further into the dirt beneath her, but it didn¡¯t seem to be doing any good. The cracks kept growing in size, spreading out like a spiderweb from the central point of the barrier.

    ¡°Shit,¡± said Caster. ¡°Girlie, this Noble Phantasm of yours is impressive if it¡¯s holding up this long, but I don¡¯t think this¡¯ll be enough.¡±

    I grimaced. There¡¯s nothing you can do?

    He glanced at me, frowning. Sorry, Master. If I¡¯d had a few seconds to prepare, I might¡¯ve managed to give it a boost.

    The stark, red ink of my Command Spells glared up at me. I didn¡¯t have too many options.

    But, callous as it might have been, Servants were replaceable. Living people weren¡¯t.

    Caster ¡ª

    My thoughts were ripped away as the twins tore past us, racing to support Mash.

    ¡°What do you two think you¡¯re doing?¡± the Director screeched.

    They ignored her, and they both each placed one hand on each of Mash¡¯s shoulders. She looked back at them. ¡°M-Master! Senpai, no!¡±

    ¡°By the power of my Command Spell,¡± Ritsuka shouted, and my eyes went wide as I realized he¡¯d had a similar idea as me.

    ¡°Mash!¡± Rika said.

    Together, they ordered, ¡°Block Saber¡¯s Noble Phantasm no matter what!¡±

    A flash of red light. A second. In an instant, two absolute orders were burned, angled towards a single purpose. The Director had always told me that a Command Spell properly used could turn the tide of the battle, but ¡ª

    ¡°Yes, Master!¡±

    Before my eyes, the cracks sealed over, good as new. Mash screamed, but this wasn¡¯t a desperate scream or one of pain, this was more like a battle cry, and the barrier in front of her morphed, growing, as the vague pane of light evolved, gained definition. More lines drew themselves across it, forming rectangles, stacked one on top of the other.

    Bricks, I realized. They were forming bricks.

    More and more and more, they filled in, ghostly, phantasmal, but there, until at last, they formed a single castle wall. A rampart, with parapets at the top.

    ¡°¡­Incredible,¡± the Director whispered.

    It did not leak. The ominous light didn¡¯t crack it, didn¡¯t break it, didn¡¯t spill through. The rampart held strong, sturdy and unbreakable, bolstered by Mash¡¯s resolve and the bravery of her Masters, and some part of me knew, knew there could only be one castle that had earned such fame throughout all of history, one castle that could belong to an Arthurian knight, one castle so iconic that it became a Heroic Spirit¡¯s calling card.

    But it escaped me. The name on the tip of my tongue refused to manifest.

    The torrent of light petered out, weakening and dying away until there was nothing left, and across from us, Saber¡¯s face was wide-eyed and shocked. She was frozen at the end of her swing.

    I didn¡¯t waste any time ¡ª

    Caster ¡ª

    And I instantly burned two of my own Command Spells.

    ¡°Kill Saber right now!¡±

    ¡°Roger that!¡± Caster grinned, slamming his hand against the dirt.

    The mountain rumbled again as a figure made of wood burst up out of the ground fist first. Saber recovered just barely fast enough to avoid its first swipe and leapt out of the way, but the second caught her in midair, and a fist bigger than she was took hold of her, squeezing tightly until she yelled.

    A flash of dark light, and Saber burst through the fingers gripping her, but the wooden effigy only brought its other hand around to hold her close as the door in its chest swung open to admit her.

    ¡°Wicker Man!¡±

    The door swung shut, trapping Saber inside. The flames coating the Wicker Man¡¯s limbs grew brighter and more intense, white hot, and the effigy compacted down, throwing itself to the ground with a thunderous thud as its body exploded. The shattered remains of its branches cracked and tumbled across the cavern, and then disappeared.

    And through it all, somehow, Saber remained.

    ¡°That didn¡¯t kill her?¡± the Director demanded hysterically.

    ¡°No, she¡¯s done,¡± said Caster calmly. ¡°Her body¡¯s healing, but that¡¯s just superficial. Her Spiritual Core is ripping itself apart as we speak.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s right,¡± Saber said as she climbed slowly back to her feet. Particles of light slowly drifted away from her body, like she was disintegrating before our eyes. ¡°That last attack of yours was enough. You¡¯ve beaten me.¡±

    She sighed. ¡°It seems my resolve simply wasn¡¯t enough. Yes, of course ¡ª as long as I stand alone, the end result will always be the same, won¡¯t it? Mere raw power wasn¡¯t enough to protect the Grail.¡±

    She took a deep breath, and then she pinned our entire group with her yellow eyes. ¡°Be proud, warriors of Chaldea, for this is your victory. However, do not think your Grand Order ends with me. This Singularity is merely the first step on your journey. You will have much more to face before your quest reaches its conclusion.¡±

    She vanished. Between one blink and the next, she was just gone, and her ominous presence disappeared, too. Something clattered to the ground where she¡¯d been, but I couldn¡¯t see it clearly enough from my position.

    A glimmer of light caught my eye, and I turned to see Caster glowing and fading away, too. He blinked, looking down at himself, and turned to me with a rueful grin.

    ¡°Caster!¡± Rika said, panicking.

    ¡°Looks like this is my curtain call, too,¡± said Caster. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Little Missy. It only makes sense, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°The Grail War is over,¡± the Director agreed. ¡°There¡¯s nothing tying you to this world any longer.¡±

    ¡°Sorry I can¡¯t stay around to help with the cleanup,¡± he said. He looked at Ristuka. ¡°Hey, Boyo.¡±

    Ritsuka jolted and straightened up. Caster pointed at him, grinning. ¡°You¡¯re the only man around, so you need to toughen up and become reliable, got it? That Servant of yours is something else, but she¡¯s only as good as her Master, so you¡¯ve gotta make sure you¡¯re the best.¡± He turned to Rika. ¡°Little Missy, you¡¯ve got guts and spunk. Keep that heart of yours as pure as it is and everything else will follow. Got it?¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir!¡± Rika chirped. Was she¡­? She was actually crying. ¡°I-I¡¯ll do my best!¡±

    The Director, next. ¡°Boss Lady, you¡¯ve got one helluva team. Make sure you treat them right, and maybe ease up on them here and there, yeah?¡±

    The Director huffed. ¡°I¡¯ll give them exactly what they¡¯ve earned and never anything more!¡±

    ¡°As I expected of you!¡± Caster laughed. And at last, he turned back to me. ¡°Princess.¡±

    ¡°Caster.¡±

    ¡°I can tell, you¡¯re not used to being on the sidelines, are you?¡± He shook his head. ¡°You were itching to throw yourself into the fight the entire time. Man, if only you¡¯d been alive in my day, we would¡¯ve torn it up like nobody¡¯s business.¡±

    ¡°S-stop flirting with her!¡± the Director ordered him, face flushed.

    Caster just laughed her off. ¡°Well, our time together might¡¯ve been short, but we won, huh? Just like I promised.¡±

    ¡°We did.¡±

    He shook his head. ¡°Man, you really are like her, aren¡¯t you? Do me a favor, Master. Next time you summon me, make sure it¡¯s as a Lancer, okay? Then I¡¯ll show you what I¡¯m really made of!¡±

    Like Saber, he vanished, leaving no trace behind except the handful of runestones we¡¯d never gotten the chance to use.

    To the spot he¡¯d just occupied, I said quietly, ¡°Thank you, C¨²chulainn.¡±

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°Director!¡± Romani said. ¡°Servant readings have disappeared! A-and the interference is clearing up, too! Did you beat her?¡±

    ¡°Like a drum!¡± Rika said cheerfully.

    ¡°Saber has been defeated, Doctor Roman,¡± Mash reported. ¡°Caster¡­has disappeared as well.¡±

    ¡°Vital signs are good. There¡¯s some strain, but you all just got through the fight of your lives, so I¡¯m not surprised.¡± Romani faltered. ¡°Ah, Director? Are you there? I-I still don¡¯t have a good read on you, so¡­¡±

    ¡°That Servant,¡± the Director said slowly. ¡°Saber. She mentioned us. Greeted us by name. Chaldea. Grand Order. How did she know those terms?¡±

    My eyes went wide. ¡°That¡¯s¡­ That¡¯s a very good question.¡±

    I¡¯d been too focused on the plan at the time to give it any thought, and maybe I was just too used to Thinkers who knew way more than they really should, but now that the rest of it was taken care of¡­ How had Saber known who we were and what our mission was called?

    ¡°Director, now might not be the time,¡± said Romani. ¡°I¡¯m still detecting a massive magical energy source in your vicinity.¡±

    ¡°Another Servant?¡± I asked sharply.

    Romani¡¯s head shook.

    ¡°No, nothing of that sort. I¡¯m not detecting a Saint Graph or a Spirit Origin on that level outside of Mash, so you¡¯re probably looking for ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Master?¡± Mash walked cautiously forward to where Saber had stood, and she picked up ¡ª

    The Director gasped. ¡°Is that?¡±

    ¡°The Holy Grail,¡± a new voice boomed.

    My heart stopped.

    No. No way. After everything that happened, for that person to appear at the end ¡ª

    Up on the ridge where Saber had stood was another figure, a tall man with a top hat and long, shaggy hair. He looked down at us, his hands folded behind his back.

    ¡°That Saber¡­ If only she¡¯d done as she was supposed to, instead of desperately clinging to this era. I suppose you lot did me something of a favor in eliminating her, although I never expected this ragtag group to make it this far.¡±

    ¡°Professor Lev?¡± Romani choked out.

    ¡°Lev?¡± the Director breathed, disbelieving, but it quickly changed to relieved affection. ¡°Oh, Lev, thank goodness! You¡¯re alive! When I heard you¡¯d died, I didn¡¯t know what ¡ª¡±

    She rushed off towards him, but I threw my arm out, and the air left her mouth in a sudden huff as she ran straight into it.

    ¡°H-Hebert,¡± she gasped, ¡°what are you doing? That¡¯s Lev!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not so sure about that,¡± I told her, never taking my eyes off of him. I refused to even blink. ¡°And even if it is¡­I don¡¯t think he¡¯s on our side.¡±

    ¡°W-what?¡± the Director demanded furiously. ¡°What are you even saying? Have you lost your mind!¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Lev grinned. It made Caster¡¯s most menacing seem downright friendly. ¡°If you don¡¯t mind my asking, what gave me away?¡±

    Fuck.

    I swallowed, mind racing, because he¡¯d just confirmed it, and the only one we had here who could defend us was a tired Mash. If Lev was anything other than what he looked like, that probably wouldn¡¯t be enough to save our lives.

    The only thing I could do was buy time. Time for Romani to Rayshift the whole lot of us out of here.

    Damn it, I missed having my powers. Siccing thousands of bugs on him might have wound up no more effective against him than they were against Scion, but at least it would have given me a better toolkit than my dinky little Gandr and a prosthetic arm that could grab stuff from far away.

    ¡°It¡¯s the fact that you¡¯re even here to begin with,¡± I said. ¡°One person surviving that bomb in the command room, I could buy. Under the right circumstances, one person in a million could survive something like that, just by the luck of their positioning. Maybe she was just far enough on the edge of the blast to be blown into the Rayshift chamber and fell unconscious when she landed. Maybe she was shielded by someone else¡¯s body and survived the brunt of it that way. They¡¯re long odds and I wouldn¡¯t bet on them, but I could believe it.¡±

    I¡¯d been one of those long odds, before. The one-in-a-million. The girl who survived the things that should have killed her by simply being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. By all rights, I should have been dead long before that final offensive against Scion, and I¡¯d only made it through some wild combination of being exactly where I needed to be to get rescued and just refusing to let myself die.

    That was why I hadn¡¯t given it much thought, before, back when Romani said he¡¯d thought the Director had died with Lev and the rest of the staff in the command room when the bomb detonated. She could have been that one in a million.

    But two people hitting that jackpot simultaneously? Without a precog making sure things went a certain way, those odds were just too long.

    ¡°Yes, one in a million odds,¡± Lev said. ¡°Like Romani being waylaid by two washout Master candidates just long enough to avoid getting caught in the blast, or one of Team A¡¯s coffins cracking open in just the right way for its occupant to avoid injury. You can only imagine how furious I was to find out the both of you survived, Romani, Taylor Hebert.¡±

    ¡°Lev?¡± the Director whispered. I could practically hear the desperate denials running through her head as she tried to find any excuse to make sense of what he¡¯d just admitted to.

    ¡°You as well, Olga. How vexing it was to find you here. In spite of the fact that I planted the bomb right beneath your feet, somehow, you¡¯re still alive.¡± He grinned again. ¡°Well, for a certain value of that word. After all, although your spirit was transferred here to this Singularity, the only reason that was even possible is because there¡¯s no longer a body tying you down in the present. Olga Marie Animusphere had no aptitude for Rayshifting while she was alive.¡±

    The sound of Marie¡¯s heart breaking was almost audible.

    ¡°Y-you¡¯re lying,¡± she breathed, barely a whisper. ¡°Y-you¡­you can¡¯t be Lev. Lev would never ¡ª !¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s the truth,¡± Lev told her cruelly and with relish. ¡°The instant this Singularity collapses and Chaldea Rayshifts you all back, you will simply dissipate, Olga. Your consciousness will unravel and your spirit will return to nothingness. There is no body for you to return to. You have, quite literally, reached a dead end.¡±

    ¡°Director¡­¡± Mash mumbled.

    ¡°Director Marie,¡± Rika said worriedly.

    ¡°I¡¯d suspected as much,¡± Romani admitted quietly. ¡°The shock of the blast, and even if she survived that, the fall out the observation window alone would be enough to kill a human being, especially if she landed head first. We¡­ The bodies at the center of the detonation were too badly damaged to identify, but¡­¡±

    ¡°And you¡­didn¡¯t say anything?¡± the Director demanded, voice quivering.

    ¡°When you showed up in Singularity F, I just wanted to believe¡­¡±

    That all of the evidence was wrong and she had miraculously survived. Yes, I understood that impulse well.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t it sad, Olga?¡± said Lev. ¡°You wished with everything you were to have the chance to inherit your father¡¯s dream and Rayshift, but you only gained the ability to do so at the moment of your death, when your spirit was no longer weighed down by your flesh. How delightfully ironic. Poetic, even.¡±

    He thrust out a hand, and the Director¡¯s body glowed as her feet left the ground. The rest of us recoiled as though we might be caught up in it if we touched her.

    ¡°W-what are you doing, Lev?¡±

    ¡°But that¡¯s just too depressing an ending, don¡¯t you think? So I¡¯ll give you one, last parting gift, and let you touch the Chaldeas you¡¯ve so coveted.¡±

    A snap of his fingers, and behind him, a rift opened up in the air, widening to an utterly enormous size until, on the other side, we could see ¡ª

    ¡°Is that ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Chaldea?¡±

    The Director screamed as she was carried forward ¡ª but I wasn¡¯t going to stand there and watch Lev do whatever he was about to do to her. I broke out into a sprint, and with my stronger, prosthetic arm, I grabbed the Director around the waist and dug my feet into the dirt.

    It didn¡¯t even seem to slow things down. The Director was still being carried towards the rift in space, and my shoes dug twin furrows as I fruitlessly tried to hold her back.

    ¡°Romani!¡± I shouted. ¡°Get us out of here!¡±

    ¡°R-right! But if I do that ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Just do it!¡±

    Lev laughed. ¡°If you cherish your director so dearly, Hebert, I will gladly award you the same fate as her. You can go together, and side by side, experience an infinite living death as you¡¯re absorbed into Chaldeas! Such a gift! You will be the only two humans to ever live who get to experience falling into a black hole!¡±

    ¡°Romani!¡±

    ¡°G-give me a second, I¡¯m trying!¡±

    My feet left the ground.

    ¡°Miss Taylor!¡±

    ¡°Senpai!¡±

    A hand grabbed my free arm, and another took hold of my hip, and together, they anchored me. I couldn¡¯t afford to look, but I heard the metallic thud as Mash¡¯s shield was planted into the ground behind us. I had no idea if it helped at all.

    ¡°This is fine!¡± Lev cackled. ¡°Yes, all of you! If you can¡¯t let go of your comrades, then you will die as they do! Chaldea¡¯s last hope, the last remaining Masters it can field, and its only Servant, dead at the starting gate!¡±

    ¡°Romani!¡±

    ¡°H-hold on!¡±

    And still, we moved forward. I couldn¡¯t tell if it was slower than before. I couldn¡¯t tell if we were accomplishing anything. All I knew was that my feet were back on solid land and still digging trails through the dirt.

    As long as that was the case, it wasn¡¯t over, yet.

    ¡°I don¡¯t want to die!¡± the Director sobbed loudly. ¡°I don¡¯t want to die! I haven¡¯t done anything yet! I haven¡¯t accomplished anything! N-no one has loved me or praised me, everyone hates me ¡ª¡±

    ¡°ROMANI!¡± I screamed at the top of my lungs.

    ¡°I-I¡¯m going as fast as I can!¡± Romani shouted back, panicking. ¡°I have your signatures locked on, but the instant I bring you back ¡ª¡±

    ¡°IF YOU DON¡¯T DO IT NOW ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Step aside, Romani!¡± someone else on the other end ordered him urgently. I couldn¡¯t spare the concentration to put a name to a face. ¡°I have an idea, but I only have a narrow window to make it work!¡±

    ¡°H-huh? Are you sure?¡±

    ¡°Of course not! But I don¡¯t see you coming up with any better ideas, and if we do nothing¡­!¡±

    ¡°Understood! I¡¯ll leave it to you!¡±

    My heels dug in along the ground, dragged closer as the force tried to pull me in. My magic circuits strained, burning under the abuse I was putting them through. Mash was screaming with me, one of her arms wrapped around my waist, and in the corner of my vision I saw the whip of Rika¡¯s red hair flailing in the nonexistent wind.

    The cavern rumbled. Great hunks of rock and dirt fell around us as the entire place destabilized. Chaldeas glowed ominously through the rift in space. Lev, unperturbed, watched us with a triumphant grin.

    ¡°Rayshift in three!¡±

    I gritted my teeth. My muscles strained. My arm was starting to go numb from the effort of holding onto Marie, but sheer iron will kept me from letting her go.

    ¡°Two!¡±

    My legs wobbled. My knees threatened to give out. My body was reaching its limit. At any moment, I would ¡ª

    ¡°One!¡±

    The world opened up beneath us, and we fell through a canal of stars.

 Interlude OMA: Personal Investment

    Interlude OMA: Personal Investment

    ¡°How is she?¡± Olga Marie asked quietly.

    Romani Archaman sighed and leaned back in his chair.

    ¡°Resting peacefully, for now,¡± he said.

    The girl in the bed was swaddled in bandages, asleep. The equipment monitoring her condition beeped slowly and lowly, utterly unconcerned with the fact she looked like death warmed over. Thick gauze was wrapped around her head, stained red in two coin-sized splotches in the middle of her forehead that made Olga Marie sick just thinking about. The stump of her right arm was wrapped just as much, stained an even starker red from where the surgeons had had to carefully pick at the raw flesh so that what was left could heal properly. Her neck was shiny with a cream to reduce the swelling of her bruises.

    It wasn¡¯t the extent of her injuries, but they were the most obvious and visible ones.

    The fact that she was even alive at all¡­ She didn¡¯t look like a girl who had gone toe to toe with what was basically a god. In fact, her wounds spoke all too clearly of enemies who were human, who had mauled her to send a message or who had tried very, very hard to kill her and almost succeeded.

    If Laplace hadn¡¯t recorded the events themselves as part of an alternate timeline, Olga Marie wasn¡¯t sure she would have believed it at all. Even still, it seemed far too fantastical to be true.

    Alien parasites forming contracts with compatible humans? Superheroes and supervillains like something out of a cheesy plebeian comic book? A golden man with enough power to casually erase entire continents out of existence? And something that terrifying had been beaten by a slip of a girl, so tall but so lean and willowy that it was hard to believe she could even throw a proper punch?

    It sounded outlandish. Impossible, even.

    ¡°And her injuries?¡± asked Olga Marie.

    Romani frowned and looked back down at his patient.

    ¡°We¡¯ve done what we can for her, for now,¡± he said. ¡°She¡¯s stable, but we¡¯re going to need to contact a few specialists to handle some of the more difficult parts. Some parts of this are just too far outside of my skill set.¡±

    Olga Marie swallowed and forced herself to look at the girl¡¯s forehead, at the splotches of red that sat in the middle of it like some parody of a third eye. Just imagining the internal damage those splotches hinted at turned her stomach.

    ¡°The bullet wounds?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a miracle, really,¡± Romani said, combing a hand through his hair. It got tangled in his ponytail, so he had to extricate himself carefully. ¡°The damage is actually minimal, all things considered. I¡¯m not a neurosurgeon, so I¡¯m not sure what sort of damage has been done to her memories or anything like that, and I can¡¯t imagine that kind of trauma won¡¯t leave some kind of mark. But the scans we¡¯ve taken of her brain actually show normal brain activity, similar to REM sleep.¡±

    A miracle¡­ The fact that she wasn¡¯t either dead or a vegetable after taking two bullets to the head definitely qualified.

    Olga Marie¡¯s lips pursed. ¡°Are we going to need to contact a physical therapist?¡±

    Romani shrugged helplessly. ¡°I honestly can¡¯t tell you. I¡¯d like to get a second opinion from an actual neurosurgeon, but if I had to make a guess? I¡¯d say it really depends on how long she¡¯s out for. We¡¯ve got her in a medically induced coma for now, but I don¡¯t want to keep her like that for more than a couple days.¡±

    He sighed and looked down at the empty space under the sheet where the rest of her right arm should have been.

    The original amputation hadn¡¯t been clean. Olga Marie had seen the wound for herself, and although there wasn''t any sign of the damage she would have expected of cauterization, it had been so raw and inflamed that the only reason she could think of why the girl hadn¡¯t screamed herself hoarse or convulsed whenever it was touched was because the nerves had been fried by whatever had burned it down to a stump.

    She wasn¡¯t sure whether it had been intended as a deliberate cruelty to cause as much pain as possible, or if the amputation had been such an emergency procedure that the only way the girl had been able to make sure the wound was at least closed was by cauterizing it. What that said about the situation this girl had been in¡­  That wasn¡¯t anything good, either.

    ¡°Her arm, on the other hand, there¡¯s nothing we can do about it. Fixing soft tissue damage is one thing, even stimulating bone growth to close up those holes in her skull is something that can be done with magecraft, but I don¡¯t know of anyone who could do something as incredible as regenerate her arm.¡±

    Olga Marie nodded. She¡¯d been expecting as much.

    In the first case, healers were a rare enough breed among magi. In the second place, someone capable of perfectly regrowing limbs and organs was the kind of person who received a Sealing Designation by the Association, and would therefore be out of reach, anyway, as a carefully guarded secret.

    ¡°I¡¯ve already had Lev get in contact with a specialist. We¡¯re going to commission the best prosthetic we can.¡±

    Romani gawked. ¡°That¡¯s going to be incredibly expensive! If you¡¯re getting it from who I think you are, you could buy a whole estate with what she¡¯s going to charge!¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t think I know that?¡± Olga Marie snarled. ¡°I¡¯m perfectly aware of what it¡¯s going to cost me to commission a limb of such quality that it¡¯s indistinguishable from the real thing! I¡¯m not an idiot, Romani Archaman!¡±

    That woman was notorious for her exorbitant prices, after all.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t mean to imply that you were!¡± Romani said hastily. ¡°But, Director¡­ I just don¡¯t understand. By all accounts, this girl isn¡¯t a magus. She¡¯s got no unique magical attribute that I can tell, and even her Magic Circuits are basically average in quantity and quality. Investing this much money and effort into a nobody who was dropped at our feet is just¡­¡±

    Did he think she didn¡¯t know that, too? When the Association found it, they were going to throw a fit, and they might just call her up to a tribunal and start throwing accusations around about her fitness to lead an organization as critical as Chaldea, especially considering the amount of money and resources that had been dumped into it by her father and the other contributors.

    By that metric, it would be better to cut her losses and dump the girl in a hospital somewhere to recover in obscurity.

    ¡°Are you saying I¡¯m wrong?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t misunderstand me,¡± said Romani. ¡°From a moral perspective, this is absolutely the right thing to do. As a doctor, when I don¡¯t have to be concerned about prices and budgets, I would absolutely agree with doing the utmost possible to help her get as close to back to normal as I can.¡±

    Because Romani Archaman was a bleeding heart. It made him good at his job, and Olga Marie appreciated that much, at least, but it was also considered a liability by the magi from the Association who looked at things in terms of human calculus.

    For the life of her, she couldn¡¯t imagine how her father had agreed to hire him, nor why Romani had decided to stay on once he found out about the experiments with Mash.

    ¡°But?¡±

    ¡°As a member of Chaldea¡¯s staff, especially as the head of medical, I do have to consider things like budget and prices,¡± Romani said. ¡°Director, the treatments to fix all of this girl¡¯s injuries are going to cost a fortune. Forgetting the top of the line prosthetic, just dealing with her other problems and the therapy she¡¯s probably going to need to get back on her feet are already going to eat into a significant portion of my department¡¯s budget.¡±

    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

    All of those were also things Olga Marie had taken into consideration.

    ¡°Do you have a point in all of this, Romani?¡±

    He shook his head. ¡°I just¡­ I don¡¯t understand, Director. Why go through all of this trouble for a girl you don¡¯t know who by all accounts can¡¯t hold a candle to someone as talented as Kirschtaria or Ophelia?¡±

    Because it didn¡¯t make sense, looking at it from the outside. The right decision from the point of view of the Association would be to ship this girl out. Spending so much time, money, and effort to get her back into working order was nothing more than a waste, better funneled elsewhere to more important projects and more promising Master candidates.

    The difference was, Olga Marie knew what everyone else didn¡¯t, and she¡¯d gone to great lengths to make sure that the data never made it into any official records. Even Lev himself didn¡¯t know all of the details, she¡¯d been that careful about who knew what and how much.

    ¡°Do you know how this girl came to us, Romani?¡± Olga Marie asked lowly.

    Romani looked at her, brow furrowing, confused. ¡°I¡­  No, Director. I can¡¯t say that you¡¯ve told me who she is or how she got here.¡±

    Olga Marie met Romani¡¯s eyes. She searched them for any hint of deception or mistrust, but like always, Romani was an open book, earnest to a fault. It wouldn¡¯t be accurate to say he couldn¡¯t hold a secret ¡ª there was a lot about him that didn¡¯t make sense, and he¡¯d never offered her an explanation that satisfied all of the question marks ¡ª more that he wasn¡¯t the scheming type.

    In that moment, for a reason she couldn¡¯t properly explain, she trusted him, more than she trusted Lev, or at least in this one particular area, she did. Maybe it was because Romani was one of the rare people in Chaldea who took every part of his job seriously, especially his Hippocratic Oath, above and beyond every temptation for self-advancement.

    Or maybe it was because she couldn¡¯t bring this girl back from the brink of death by herself, and the only person she could trust who was both willing and qualified to help her was sitting right in front of her.

    ¡°A woman appeared in my office,¡± Olga Marie began slowly. ¡°She used some kind of spatial transference magic. It might even have been a fraction of Lord Zelretch¡¯s Second.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Romani squeaked. Olga Marie shot him a glare and he swallowed whatever question he¡¯d been about to ask.

    ¡°She was carrying this girl,¡± she went on. ¡°She told me that this girl is Taylor Hebert, a native of an alternate timeline calling itself Earth Bet.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Romani interjected. ¡°Hold on a second. An entire alternate timeline aware enough of itself and its place in the Greater History of Man to make its own label?¡±

    ¡°Yes, apparently,¡± Olga Marie said irritably. ¡°Are you going to let me finish or not, Romani?¡±

    He mimed zipping his lips and she sighed.

    Sometimes, his clumsy nature and tendency towards such overstated reactions really was a nuisance. Well, but if he was more like a traditional Clock Tower magus, she wouldn¡¯t even have been having this conversation with him, would she?

    ¡°She said¡­¡± Olga Marie hesitated, and eventually settled on, ¡°She told me a wild, outlandish story about heroes and villains and monsters and a golden god, and she told me this girl¡¯s place in that story.¡±

    She looked down at the diminished, weakened form lying in the bed, so weak and frail that she could snuff the remaining life out with her own hands, if she had been so tempted.

    ¡°She said¡­¡±

    You have a choice, Olga Marie Animusphere.

    Olga Marie closed her eyes, and for a moment, she was back in her office, standing up from her desk, as that woman stood in front of a portal to another world and sat a half-dead corpse in one of the office chairs. Like it was an ordinary business meeting, rather than a complete stranger invading one of the most secure facilities on the planet.

    You can save this girl¡¯s life, and you will gain the staunchest ally you can imagine in your mission to preserve mankind, as powerful a Master as there ever was.

    As she did now, Olga Marie had thought then that the tall, willowy girl couldn¡¯t possibly have done all of those things. Not someone her own age. Not someone who looked so vulnerable. True, she bore the terrible sorts of wounds someone might expect of a person who had waged a great battle and come out of it by the skin of her teeth, but that had been the only really believable part.

    The rest was just too ridiculous.

    Or you can save her body and use it as a catalyst to summon the Heroic Spirit she has left behind.

    But when she looked at it analytically, when she tried to think of it from the perspective of a magus ¡ª all about the goal, all about the end result, all about what she could use and how she could use it ¡ª it felt like she¡¯d been handed the key to all her dreams and ambitions. Laplace¡¯s confirmation had only made it feel all the more like the providence of fate or some higher power, finally telling her that she could do something of worth.

    Olga Marie had never had the capacity to be a Master. She couldn¡¯t Rayshift. She was, by all accounts, a failure as Marisbury Animusphere¡¯s daughter and heir. Being told that she couldn¡¯t participate in her father¡¯s greatest work had been the greatest blow she had ever taken, eclipsed only by the news of his suicide.

    How proud of her might he have been if she recruited a Heroic Spirit who had managed to ascend in the modern day? Someone who had done the impossible and made such a mark on history in a world so bereft of mystery that she had been exalted into the halls of mankind¡¯s greatest legends?

    How much praise might she have received? How much adulation? How much acclaim? How many of her former detractors might be forced to applaud her? How much respect would be heaped upon her, day after day, for managing something that should have been beyond her wildest dreams?

    And Olga Marie¡­

    ¡°That I had a choice.¡±

    ¡°A choice?¡± asked Romani.

    ¡°I could let her die and gain all the secrets of her body,¡± said Olga Marie, hiding the critical detail, ¡°or I could save her life and gain the most powerful Master possible for my Chaldea.¡±

    ¡­had chosen instead to save this girl¡¯s life.

    Romani looked down at the girl, at Taylor Hebert, and his expression softened. His arm came up and reached out, as though he was going to stroke her hair or take her remaining hand, but he apparently thought better of it, because his arm dropped before it could go anywhere.

    When he turned back to her, his expression was far more compassionate than it had been before.

    ¡°You chose to save her life.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t say it like that¡¯s such a strange or unusual thing, Romani!¡± she huffed. ¡°I¡¯m not a monster, you know! Do you think, after everything that happened with¡­with M-Mash, that I¡¯d be so heartless as to let a girl my own age die, just like that?¡±

    Romani laughed a quiet little laugh. ¡°Sorry, Director, I didn¡¯t mean to insult you or anything.¡±

    She didn¡¯t reply, she just glared.

    Because he wasn¡¯t exactly wrong to think that about her, was he? No, if Olga Marie had been a little bit more like her father, there was no doubt she would have let Taylor Hebert bleed out in her office, instead of calling Romani to come and help the instant that strange woman left. A Heroic Spirit so capable as this one would supposedly be would be a boon of an entirely different sort, a trump card the likes of which Chaldea could never turn down.

    But Olga¡¯s decision wasn¡¯t entirely altruistic, either. Deep down, where she was honest with herself and no one else, she could admit that she relished the idea of her own ace Master. Her father had selected Kirschtaria, his own apprentice, a genius of unparalleled talent whose theory of Astromancy would have been revolutionary, if only it could be proven, and Ophelia Phamrsolone, who had a Jewel rank mystic eye that had been passed down her family for generations. He had recruited talented up and comers like Kadoc Zemlupus and mysterious loners like Hinako Akuta. Team A was a who¡¯s who list of rare and unusual specialists.

    All of the other potentials on their lists? Fodder. All of them fodder, and all of them picks from Olga Marie¡¯s Chaldea. None of them could compare at all to the shining stars her father had hand selected to be the organization¡¯s vanguard.

    And now¡­now, an ace Master had been dropped practically in her lap. An ace Master whose accomplishments put the rest of Team A to shame.

    And Olga Marie could tell no one about them. Not if she wanted to keep the Association¡¯s grubby paws off of Hebert.

    ¡°Romani,¡± she said suddenly.

    ¡°Yes, Director?¡±

    She stared him straight in the eyes, unblinking, to convey how serious she was. ¡°This is our secret, understand?¡±

    He blinked at her. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Director?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve already deleted the records confirming her history from Laplace,¡± Olga told him, ignoring his squawking protest (¡°Wait, you used Laplace for something like that?¡±). ¡°Her medical history, her treatment, any abnormalities in her condition ¡ª all of that is for your eyes only, got it? No one else in Chaldea gets to see who she is or what she¡¯s been through.¡±

    ¡°D-Director, there¡¯s such a thing as patient confidentiality, but this is going to break a whole bunch of UN regulations!¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t care about that!¡± she burst out, and that shocked him into silence for a moment. ¡°I¡¯m not giving anyone any excuse to come and take her away! That¡¯s why, Romani. You can¡¯t tell anyone about anything strange you find out about her. We treat her quietly, we treat her confidentially, we treat her in secret. The rest of Chaldea doesn¡¯t find out she even exists until she¡¯s made a full recovery.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t understand, Director,¡± Romani said. ¡°Who is this girl that you¡¯re going through so much trouble? You¡¯ve said something about some strange woman, but you never explained what makes this girl so special.¡±

    It was on the tip of her tongue. She was tempted to say it. Oh, so very tempted. She wanted to see his expression when he finally heard the words, just to watch his eyes widen and his mouth fall open. She killed a god, Romani.

    But this was the secret Olga Marie had to keep. Everything else, she could have told him. Everything else, she could have explained. Everything else was tame enough that it would get some surprise, maybe an eyebrow raised here and there, but the most unbelievable parts were always the circumstances, the world this girl had come from and lived in, not really the things she¡¯d done in it.

    Except this one thing.

    Olga Marie looked back at Taylor Hebert. Still frail and defeated, still weak and clinging to life so narrowly. It was still so hard to imagine what she must have looked like in battle, waging war.

    ¡°She¡¯s Taylor Hebert,¡± Olga Marie eventually said. ¡°Master Candidate Nine, the final member of Team A.¡±

 Chapter X: Monolith

    Chapter X: Monolith

    ¡°No, stop, please!¡±

    Her body was carried inexorably across space. I didn¡¯t even think about whether it was a good idea, I just broke into a sprint, chasing after her, the instant I realized what Lev Lainur intended.

    ¡°That¡¯s right, Olga!¡± he laughed. ¡°Come, touch it! Lay your hands on your Chaldeas! Reach out and grasp the treasure you¡¯ve coveted for so long!¡±

    ¡°Director!¡± I shouted after her. ¡°Hang on!¡±

    ¡°No!¡± the Director screamed desperately. ¡°No, no! Someone, help me! Help! I-I don¡¯t want to die here! I can¡¯t die here!¡±

    Lev continued to cackle. ¡°Yes! It¡¯ll be like falling into a black hole! A moment suspended in time, stretched out into eternity! An infinite, living death!¡±

    I ran. My legs pumped. My muscles burned. My lungs took in gasps of air and let them out again. I wasn¡¯t sure how much distance I must have crossed, but the Director never seemed to get any closer.

    ¡°No one¡¯s ever praised me! No one¡¯s ever cared about me! Everyone hated me, from the very beginning!¡±

    ¡°Director!¡±

    ¡°Haha¡­hahaha¡­haha!¡±

    The sound of Lev¡¯s laughter echoed in my ears. The Director¡¯s screams and begging drilled into my head.

    I kept running. I ran and ran and ran as fast as my legs would carry me. Faster. Faster than I¡¯d ever run before. But no matter how fast I was, I couldn¡¯t keep up. I couldn¡¯t reach her.

    ¡°No! Stop! No, no, no! Let me go! I haven¡¯t done anything, yet! I haven¡¯t accomplished anything, yet! No one¡¯s accepted me, no one¡¯s loved me! I can¡¯t die, yet!¡±

    ¡°Director!¡±

    She crossed the threshold of the portal, through the event horizon of the breach that connected the cavern with the Rayshift chamber where Chaldeas spun, glowing.

    She was already past the point of saving.

    ¡°Please, don¡¯t let me die!¡±

    ¡°Director!¡±

    She turned to me at the last second, reaching out with her hand as though to grasp mine. The terror on her face twisted something in my gut.

    ¡°Taylor!¡± she shouted back. ¡°Save me! Save me! You have to save me!¡±

    ¡°MARIE!¡±

    There was too much distance between us. I could never have made it. I was only human, and I couldn¡¯t teleport or fly or run faster than a car.

    But my prosthetic didn¡¯t have those limits. When I reached out with my right arm, my grasp extended, and I felt the ghostly touch of her fingers on mine ¡ª

    Right as she slipped beneath Chaldeas¡¯ glowing surface, and her screams fell silent.

    And with a gasp, I jerked up, heart racing, forehead drenched in cold sweat, lungs seizing as I gulped down oxygen. My right arm reached out into empty air.

    I wasn¡¯t in the cavern.

    What?

    ¡°Finally up, huh?¡± a familiar, lilting soprano asked me fondly. ¡°And so the hero of the story awakens at last¡­ or something like that, yes?¡±

    I blinked. The sleek, white-paneled walls of Chaldea¡¯s medical wing, a place with which I was very familiar, finally registered in my brain, and my arm fell slowly back to my side as I turned to the person sitting next to my bed and met a perfect, smiling face.

    ¡°Da Vinci.¡±

    Calling it perfect wasn¡¯t an exaggeration. Everyone had their tastes and their preferences, but the woman looking back at me with that secretive little smile was perfect from every angle and in every conceivable sense, from the smooth, unblemished skin to the exactly balanced ratio between her eyes, nose, and lips and the little, carefully chosen imperfections that kept her from stretching into the uncanny.

    I¡¯d come to terms with my own appearance a long time ago, or more like, I¡¯d just stopped caring about whether or not I was all that pretty, but even so, I couldn¡¯t help feeling a little jealous every time I looked at her.

    ¡°Good morning, Taylor,¡± Da Vinci said warmly. ¡°You pushed yourself a little farther than usual, during that Singularity, so you¡¯re the last one to wake up. The others have already gone to see Romani.¡±

    Others? My stomach squirmed.

    ¡°The Director?¡±

    Here, Da Vinci¡¯s smile finally fell, and she sighed. ¡°Yes, I should have expected that would be your first concern, wouldn¡¯t it? Ritsuka and Rika asked shortly after they woke up, too. I¡¯m afraid I told them the same thing I¡¯m going to tell you: it¡¯s complicated, and I want to wait to explain until I can explain it to everyone at once.¡±

    I scowled. ¡°Da Vinci ¡ª¡±

    ¡°You can glare at me with that scary face all you want,¡± she told me plainly, ¡°but I¡¯m afraid I won¡¯t budge on this one. I¡¯d prefer if I only had to give the details about it once.¡±

    Damn it.

    It wasn¡¯t like there was any way for me to threaten her, either. No Command Spells would work on her, if I had any to begin with ¡ª I checked, and wasn¡¯t surprised to see the ones I¡¯d gained upon contracting C¨²chulainn had vanished ¡ª and I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if she had some method of circumventing them anyway. Nobody knew who or what her Master was, if she even had one, so there was no way of leveraging that, either.

    And I shouldn¡¯t be thinking like that. I was trying to be better than that person.

    I took a deep breath.

    ¡°Just ¡ª tell me: is she alive?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s not dead,¡± Da Vinci answered cryptically.

    She gave my thigh a pat.

    ¡°Come on. You should be rested enough that you don¡¯t need to worry about any weakness, so there¡¯s no reason for you to stay in that bed. The sooner you get out of it, the sooner we can go and see the others, and that means I can explain the Director¡¯s predicament for everyone.¡±

    My lips pulled into a grimace, and I flung the thin sheet covering my legs off as I swung them around and planted my feet on the floor. A shiver went down my spine; the floor was cold.

    Duh, right? We were sitting in the middle of Antarctica. No matter how thorough the heating systems were in Chaldea, the floor was always going to be chilly when it was made of metal paneling.

    ¡°Your shoes are right there,¡± Da Vinci said mildly before I could even ask.

    Sure enough, they sat next to my bed, like they were waiting for me. I tugged them on quickly, did the bare minimum needed to lace them up and tie them off, and then stood, looking at Da Vinci expectantly. She sighed and shook her head.

    ¡°So impatient! Sometimes, you know, it¡¯s better to do things thoroughly instead of doing them fast.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t in the mood.

    ¡°Da Vinci¡­¡±

    ¡°Alright, alright. Come, come, let¡¯s go.¡±

    She pushed herself to her feet, and as it always did, there was a sense of complete incongruence with the fact that this larger than life figure, this legend so famous that everyone in the modern era knew her name, barely came up to my chin.

    ¡°They should be waiting for us in the Command Room,¡± she explained.

    I didn¡¯t wait for her to elaborate. The instant she told me where they were, I turned to the door of the infirmary and left, ignoring her indignant huff as I strode with quick, clipped steps down the hallways. She joined me a moment later.

    True to her word, Rika, Ritsuka, Mash, and Romani were all waiting together in the Command Room, chatting about something amongst themselves, with Fou perched on Mash¡¯s shoulder. The instant the doors opened to admit me, they all looked up, and their faces brightened.

    ¡°Senpai!¡± the twins said together. Rika gave me an energetic wave.

    ¡°Miss Taylor!¡± Mash echoed them.

    ¡°Taylor,¡± said Romani, ¡°it¡¯s good to see you awake.¡±

    ¡°Romani,¡± I returned the greeting. ¡°Ritsuka, Rika, Mash. It looks like everyone made it out okay. Right?¡±

    Romani¡¯s smile faltered. ¡°Ah, well¡­ About that¡­¡±

    ¡°We asked, too,¡± Ritsuka informed me with an air of exasperation, ¡°and, well¡­¡±

    Rika crossed her arms and huffed. She side-eyed Romani with a narrowed glare. ¡°Doctor Roman won¡¯t explain anything, either.¡±

    ¡°Fou, fou!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not that I don¡¯t want to!¡± Romani hurried to explain, holding up his hands as though to ward them off. ¡°It¡¯s just that this is really something Da Vinci understands better than I do!¡±

    ¡°The three of us are okay, Miss Taylor,¡± said Mash, ¡°and it looks like you¡¯re doing well, too.¡±

    ¡°The Director?¡± I asked pointedly.

    The other three immediately turned to Romani, who coughed awkwardly into one fist. ¡°Yes, well¡­ Now that Da Vinci is here, too, maybe she¡¯d like to explain everything?¡±

    We all turned expectantly to Da Vinci, who sighed.

    ¡°Good grief,¡± she said, shaking her head. ¡°Well, if my audience really wants to hear it, I guess I have to indulge, don¡¯t I? Very well. Do you remember what was happening at the last moment, as the Singularity was beginning to unravel and Lev Lainur appeared?¡±

    Of course. Did she think I could forget that? That any of us could? That was the sort of thing that left scars.

    Rika made a weird gesture with one hand. ¡°Professor Lev used Force Pull!¡±

    Ritsuka groaned.

    Da Vinci¡¯s smile twitched, while Romani¡¯s took on a fond edge.

    ¡°Yes, of course,¡± Da Vinci continued smoothly. ¡°Lev was using a form of telekinesis ¡ª although, strictly speaking, actual telekinesis is a different thing entirely from a mystery of remote locomotive manipulation like he was using ¡ª to draw Director Animusphere into Chaldeas itself. An unpleasant ending, let me assure you, and one she¡¯ll thank you to have avoided. Heroically, although perhaps somewhat foolishly, the rest of you attempted to stop the Director from being sucked in, and through your efforts, managed to stall the process long enough for Romani to begin the retrieval process.¡±

    I crossed my arms impatiently, frowning.

    ¡°The point, please.¡±

    Da Vinci shook her head. ¡°So impatient! Very well. Do you remember me pushing Romani to the side, when he was trying to tell you that the Director wouldn¡¯t survive the return trip?¡±

    ¡°That was you?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said shortly. I¡¯d been too focused on the Director to make the connection, at the time, but it was obvious in hindsight.

    ¡°You recall I said I had an idea, yes?¡± Da Vinci asked impishly. ¡°Well, earlier, Romani confessed to me his concerns about the Director, so I had something of an inkling about the situation. I¡¯d had a few hours to consider the problem, by the time we were faced with confronting the issue. The solution I came up with was a bit rushed, I¡¯ll admit, but also very much inspired, if you ask me! Why, some might even call it genius!¡±

    I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, reminded myself that Lisa could get like this, too, and that only made me miss her in that moment all the more.

    ¡°Is she alive or not, Da Vinci?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Yes and no,¡± Da Vinci answered cryptically. ¡°You see, without a body to return to, the Director¡¯s consciousness would disperse, once it was Rayshifted back to Chaldea. Her soul would depart the material world and return to the cycle of reincarnation. Fortunately, Chaldea is equipped with a system that is designed for the sole purpose of capturing the pattern of a Spirit Origin and recording it for future use. That is to say, the FATE system that we use to summon Heroic Spirits from the Throne.¡±

    I blinked once, twice, as the implication started to dawn on me. ¡°Wait, you can¡¯t mean ¡ª¡±

    Da Vinci grinned and spread her arms wide. ¡°Esatto! Yes, you¡¯re thinking correctly! I used the FATE system to record Director Olga Marie Animusphere to an Unregistered Spirit Origin!¡±

    ¡°H-hold on a second!¡± Romani spluttered. ¡°The Director¡¯s a normal human being! Something like that shouldn¡¯t be possible, should it?¡±

    ¡°Hehe!¡± Da Vinci grinned smugly. ¡°The human soul really isn¡¯t that different from a Heroic Spirit¡¯s Saint Graph. It¡¯s just a matter of magnitude and data volume. When you look at it that way, it was a trivial problem to overcome!¡±

    ¡°The Director¡¯s saved!¡± Rika cheered as she threw her arms around her brother¡¯s shoulders.

    ¡°We can get her back!¡± Ritsuka agreed, smiling.

    Da Vinci¡¯s grin faltered. ¡°Ah¡­ Well¡­¡±

    The beginnings of the smile tugging at my lips faded. ¡°You can get her back, can¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°O-of course!¡± Da Vinci said, but it didn¡¯t sound reassuring. ¡°Naturally, I can recorporate the Director, once I have the necessary materials to build her a replacement body! H-however¡­¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± Mash said quietly. ¡°With the state Chaldea is in, you don¡¯t have the materials you need.¡±

    And there, as the Bard would tell it, lied the rub.

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    Da Vinci sighed and gave her a sad smile. ¡°And there you¡¯ve arrived at the problem, Mash. W-well, it¡¯ll also take a little work to figure out how to move her soul out of the FATE system, but the larger problem lies in the fact that I¡¯d have to construct her a new body from scratch, and I don¡¯t have the supplies for it, right now.¡± She coughed, and under her breath, added, ¡°And forgetting the fact it isn¡¯t designed for her, I don¡¯t think the Director would appreciate having to use the one we actually do have.¡±

    I swallowed around the thick disappointment in my mouth.

    ¡°How long?¡± I asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s hard to say for sure,¡± Da Vinci admitted. ¡°We might be able to gather supplies from the Singularities themselves as we go, and to begin with, this isn¡¯t something I¡¯d like to attempt until we can fix a few more of Chaldea¡¯s systems more completely. Even without those concerns¡­ It will be a minimum of three months, I¡¯m afraid.¡±

    Three months. The Director was going to lose at least three months of her life.

    It was better, I supposed, than dying, or worse, being sucked into Chaldeas like Lev had been trying to do to her. But I¡¯d been in the position of waking up to find out weeks or months had passed and the world had kept on spinning without you. It wasn¡¯t an easy pill to swallow.

    ¡°Do we have to worry about degradation?¡± Romani asked.

    Da Vinci¡¯s hair rippled as she shook her head. ¡°There¡¯s no way to be certain, but I don¡¯t think so. FATE recorded her perfectly at the time of the Rayshift, and it¡¯s designed to hold patterns for resummoning as a sort of data backup. However, what I did is already stretching the purposes of the system, so there¡¯s no way to be absolutely certain until we bring her back.¡±

    ¡°Degradation?¡± Ritsuka asked curiously.

    Da Vinci turned to him. ¡°Everything degrades with time, Ritsuka,¡± she said patiently. ¡°Unfortunately, this includes the human soul. Think of it sort of like the aging process ¡ª the longer you live, the more your soul is weathered. It¡¯s not something you¡¯d normally notice on the scale of a human lifespan. In the Director¡¯s case, without a body to age, it would normally be a much bigger concern, but this entire situation is abnormal, no matter how you slice it.¡±

    Rika gasped. ¡°Is the Director going to be an old woman next time we see her?¡±

    ¡°Even in the worst case scenario, nothing that extreme,¡± Da Vinci answered with a slight smile. She turned back to Romani. ¡°In any case, Romani, there¡¯s nothing we can do about it, either way. At this point, we just have to hope for the best.¡±

    ¡°You can¡¯t use the body we already have?¡± I asked.

    Da Vinci¡¯s expression froze. ¡°Ah¡­ You heard that, did you?¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t you?¡± I pressed.

    Da Vinci refused to meet my eyes. ¡°Ah, well¡­ No, the thing is¡­¡± She gave me an awkward smile. ¡°The replacement body we currently have is¡­ not so much a replacement body so much as it is¡­¡± She coughed into her hand, and then quietly admitted: ¡°I¡¯m using it as my Master.¡±

    None of us quite knew how to take that. Romani blurted, ¡°You can do that?¡±

    ¡°Of course I can!¡± Da Vinci said with exaggerated brightness. ¡°After all, I¡¯m a genius!¡±

    ¡°So?¡± I said shortly. ¡°Stick Marie inside it, make her your Master. I don¡¯t understand the problem with that.¡±

    Da Vinci sighed. ¡°It¡¯s not that simple, I¡¯m afraid. Ignoring the fact that the body itself is already a poor fit for the Director, I designed it for maximum compatibility with¡­ Well¡­¡±

    She gestured down at herself.

    ¡°Still not seeing the problem.¡±

    ¡°Do you think the Director would appreciate being stuck looking like a twelve-year-old version of me?¡± Da Vinci asked smartly.

    No, she wouldn¡¯t. But better that than losing three months of her life, especially if the body could be tuned before or after putting her into it. Being twelve years old again would suck, but it would be better than losing all that time.

    ¡°There¡¯s also the matter of rejection to consider,¡± Romani put in. ¡°A ¡®blank¡¯ body made by someone like Da Vinci or Touko Aozaki is one thing. Even if the ¡®fit¡¯ isn¡¯t perfect, things will eventually adjust. A specially constructed body, however, would be like receiving a badly matched donor organ. The body and soul will reject each other.¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t realize you knew so much about puppetry in magecraft, Doctor Roman,¡± Mash commented with a hint of awe.

    ¡°Ah, well¡­¡± Romani ducked his head. ¡°I don¡¯t really know all that much, but you can¡¯t go anywhere near the Clock Tower without hearing about that particular woman. There¡¯s a reason she was Sealed.¡±

    ¡°Even if a miracle occurred, the Director can¡¯t be a Master, it¡¯s a part of her karma,¡± Da Vinci added on. ¡°So not only would she probably die in agonizing pain, but you¡¯d lose my magnificent self, too! Wouldn¡¯t that just be awful?¡±

    And then, with a false cheer that was entirely at odds with the grimness of her words, she said, ¡°On the other hand, if we leave her alone, she might start to degrade as her soul withers, and the person we see once we get her settled is a shell of her former self!¡±

    Dead silence met this statement.

    I think all of us were each imagining not only how bad off things would get if we lost both of them, but also our own version of the worst case scenario, of what it would mean if the Director¡¯s soul withered away while she was waiting for a replacement body to be readied. Was she even conscious in the FATE system? I didn¡¯t think so, but the thought itself was troubling.

    People had gone mad from solitary confinement lasting just a week. How horrible would it be to suffer that for three months, or even longer? The person who came out of that would be entirely different from the Director Olga Marie Animusphere who had gone in.

    That thought troubled me the most. All the more so because I couldn¡¯t do anything about it.

    ¡°What now?¡± I asked, changing the subject.

    The entire group turned to me. Romani grimaced. ¡°Now, we get Chaldea back on its feet,¡± he said.

    I shook my head. ¡°I meant about the Singularities. Singularity. Now that we fixed it, have things gone back to normal?¡±

    ¡°Hey, yeah!¡± Rika said brightly. ¡°That place being so weird was the problem, right? So everything should be better again, right?¡±

    Romani and Da Vinci shared a dark, complicated look, and Romani beckoned us over to what must have been the terminal he¡¯d been using to contact us during our Rayshift to Fuyuki. The rest of the Command Room was so busy that no one even bothered to look up at us.

    ¡°I think you four need to see this.¡±

    Rika turned to Ritsuka, who shrugged, and I pretended I didn¡¯t see them when they turned to me instead, like I had any better an idea of what he meant. Together, we crowded around him, looking at the screen as he opened what could only have been a recorded video file. An instant later ¡ª

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­!¡± Rika gasped.

    ¡°Professor Lev,¡± Mash murmured.

    ¡°Are you still watching, Romani Archaman?¡± the man on screen asked, grinning at the ¡®camera.¡¯ Static clung to the edges, like the connection was wavering even as he spoke. ¡°Of course you are. I helped to build some of the systems that you are even now using to observe this altered spacetime. I must commend you, you and that ridiculous Servant you have with you. You managed to retrieve that whole pathetic lot before they could be killed. Then, as one who happened to be a colleague of yours, allow me to reintroduce myself.¡±

    He slung one arm across his abdomen and one arm over the small of his back and bent at the waist. A bow.

    ¡°My name is Lev Lainur Flauros. I was the one charged with the year 2015 and disposing of you humans. There is no path forward available to you, now. Both Chaldea and mankind are finished. Yes ¡ª the moment of the human race¡¯s destruction is now at hand.¡±

    He smirked, staring menacingly at us as though he could see us through the screen.

    ¡°This is the end. Your future has already been incinerated. That is the meaning behind why Chaldeas has turned red. It is not that you have lost communication with the outside world. It is that the outside world no longer exists. Chaldea, protected by Chaldeas and its magnetic field, is truly humanity¡¯s last bastion, and even you will disappear in due time. The instant the year reaches 2017, you will be erased, just like everyone and everything else.¡±

    He spread his arms, and his smirk widened into a manic grin.

    ¡°You have already lost, Romani Archaman! Mankind was destroyed neither by its own hubris nor by its own inability to advance! You did not die to infighting or to ceaseless war! You were obliterated because you lost the grace of our King! You were killed by incompetence and your own foolishness! And like the worthless trash you are, you will all be burned away!¡±

    And then, with a flash of light, he vanished. The screen flashed ¡°CONNECTION LOST¡± a second later, and an unsettled silence stretched on for a few seconds after the video ended.

    ¡°Professor Lev,¡± Mash muttered sadly, ¡°all this time¡­¡±

    Fou licked at her cheek as though to cheer her up. I leaned over Romani¡¯s shoulder, watching the screen more closely.

    ¡°Play it again,¡± I told him.

    Romani looked at me, and then to what I had to imagine was Da Vinci, but played the video again.

    ¡°¡­name is Lev Lainur Flauros. I was the one charged with the year 2015¡­¡±

    ¡°Stop. Go back a few seconds.¡±

    Romani rewound the video, just like I¡¯d asked.

    ¡°¡­Lev Lainur Flauros¡­¡±

    Flauros. That stuck out to me. The primers and crash courses I¡¯d been given over the last two years had covered a lot of topics, but of the high level Heroic Spirits that had featured, there were a few in particular who had gotten a lot of attention.

    Flauros. If that was who I was thinking it was¡­

    ¡°Keep going.¡±

    The video played on, going through the whole speech, until ¡ª

    ¡°You were obliterated because you lost the grace of our King!¡±

    ¡°Stop.¡±

    The video stopped, right as the words ¡°CONNECTION LOST¡± were about to flash across the screen again. I frowned down at it thoughtfully.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°Did you notice something?¡± Romani asked.

    ¡°What does the name Flauros mean to you?¡± I said pointedly.

    Romani¡¯s eyes went wide, and I thought I could hear Da Vinci let out a smug huff under her breath.

    ¡°It¡¯s the name of one of the seventy-two demons King Solomon was said to command with his rings,¡± Mash answered. ¡°It was said to be a duke of Hell whose name was recorded as part of the Ars Goetia.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Romani, ¡°you don¡¯t think that has some kind of connection to this, do you?¡±

    ¡°Maybe not,¡± I allowed, ¡°but you don¡¯t think it¡¯s strange that Lev spent so much time and such a large part of his life helping to build Chaldea, only to tear it down, in the end? I mean, I¡¯m not an expert, but a shift that huge only has a few explanations I can think of.¡±

    On Earth Bet, we¡¯d have been talking about Master-Stranger protocols and drawing up a list of the different capes who could cause that dramatic a change or exert that level of control. But this wasn¡¯t Earth Bet, and instead of Masters in the sense of parahumans capable of twisting people¡¯s minds, here it was ¡ª

    ¡°Demonic possession, you think?¡± Da Vinci said approvingly. ¡°Yes, that was one of the conclusions I had drawn, as well. I don¡¯t think the usage of the name Flauros was an accident, and there aren¡¯t many who are desperate enough for the power of a connection like that to invite the attention of a high level demon by using it without a basis.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Which means the king he¡¯s talking about has to be ¡ª¡±

    ¡°King Solomon,¡± Romani concluded.

    Well, I was actually thinking ¡°Satan¡± or ¡°Lucifer,¡± but that was the other possibility, wasn¡¯t it? Giving it another thought, he¡¯d said we had ¡°lost the grace¡± of his king, hadn¡¯t he? Which would mean we¡¯d had it, at some point, and the Biblical stories always told of the Devil as hating mankind essentially from the get-go. Hard to have the grace of a nigh-omnipotent being that hated your entire species and didn¡¯t have to worry about the trappings of mortal politics.

    ¡°The guy from the Bible?¡± Rika asked.

    Romani grimaced. ¡°Well, yes, but also no. It¡¯s said that King Solomon is the one responsible for the existence of magecraft as we understand it today. His one, true miracle was to separate magic from the gods, giving it to the common man. That¡¯s why he¡¯s called the King of Magecraft.¡±

    ¡°Which would make him a Caster of the highest order, right?¡± I said.

    Romani gave a grim nod. ¡°He qualifies for the Grand station. Something as complicated as incinerating human history or throwing it off course by unpinning the staples that formed the most important turning points¡­ Here, look at these.¡±

    His fingers flew across the keyboard, and a moment later, another image appeared on screen, a flattened globe, like the surface of the Earth had been unwrapped and laid down. Seven spots glowed brightly: one in America on the northeast coast, one in England, one in France, one in Italy, one in the middle of the ocean, and then two more in the Middle East.

    ¡°After you resolved Singularity F, seven more appeared at various points throughout history, and they vastly outclass it in terms of distortion. SHEBA found them, once we got it up and running, again,¡± Romani explained. ¡°We haven¡¯t resolved the exact time and location for all of them, but the first two are already pinned down.¡±

    Another couple keystrokes, and the one in France and the one in Italy were highlighted.

    ¡°They¡¯re centered around Orleans and Rome,¡± he said. ¡°The first is a relatively minor deviation from the year 1431 AD, near the tail end of the Hundred Years War. The second is a deviation from the year 60 AD, about halfway through the reign of Emperor Nero.¡±

    ¡°Seven more Singularities¡­¡± I muttered.

    Because of course there were. It couldn¡¯t have been as easy as just taking care of Fuyuki and everything being fixed, could it?

    ¡°Seven more?¡± Ritsuka asked tightly.

    ¡°This¡­ This is a joke, right?¡± Rika asked, looking around with an uneasy smile. ¡°Like, haha, let¡¯s pull one over on the last Masters, it¡¯ll be a gas? Because okay, you got us, joke¡¯s over!¡±

    No one jumped up and laughed. Romani¡¯s face remained solemn and drawn. Rika¡¯s smile slowly cracked and fell.

    ¡°We don¡¯t have to try and handle them all at once,¡± Da Vinci began gently.

    ¡°In fact, we shouldn¡¯t,¡± I added.

    ¡°But this is no joke, Rika,¡± Da Vinci went on as though I hadn¡¯t spoken. ¡°This is very real. The world is in very real danger, and the three of you are very much the only ones who can save it.¡±

    ¡°No.¡± Rika shook her head wildly back and forth, and slowly, she started backing away, like Da Vinci was a dangerous animal she was trying not to spook. ¡°No, no, no, this is crazy! I-I¡¯m just a kid! We¡¯re just kids!¡±

    ¡°Rika,¡± her brother started, but he was pale and shaken, too.

    ¡°You see it, don¡¯t you, Onii-chan?¡± she demanded. ¡°This¡­ This is insane! We already almost¡­ We almost¡­¡±

    ¡°You almost died,¡± I said to her bluntly, and she turned to me, wide-eyed, like she was expecting me to lunge at her and try to tear out her throat. ¡°I almost died. Mash almost died.¡± I paused a moment for effect. ¡°But you didn¡¯t. You¡¯re here. Ritsuka¡¯s here. Mash is here. I¡¯m here. We¡¯re all still alive and kicking. We made it through.¡±

    I made a show of looking around the Command Room. The observation windows were still blown out, and several places were charred or stained brown with dried blood. I swept an arm around.

    ¡°They didn¡¯t,¡± I said simply.

    She glanced where I¡¯d gestured, stricken.

    I pointed out into the Rayshift chamber, where debris still cluttered up the floor. The coffins containing our fellow Master candidates had been removed, but I think what I was trying to convey still got across.

    ¡°They almost didn¡¯t, either. In fact, a lot of them still might not. If what Lev, what Flauros said is true, then we might never get the help we need to save their lives. Do you know what the difference between them and you is, Rika?¡±

    Slowly, she shook her head. I saw Ritsuka watching us out of the corner of my eye, his mouth falling open.

    ¡°It¡¯s not talent,¡± I said. ¡°Ophelia, Kirschtaria, Kadoc, they all outstripped you a dozen times over. It¡¯s not pedigree ¡ª Wodime alone was more qualified than the rest of us, if that was what mattered. It¡¯s not courage or wisdom or anything like that. You just happened to be at the right place at the right time to do the right thing.¡±

    Just like I had, that first night against Lung. And afterwards? Afterwards¡­

    ¡°That¡¯s what it means to save the world,¡± I went on. ¡°The first time, it¡¯s just luck. The second time? You have to choose it. You have to decide, I¡¯m going to be there. I¡¯m going to step up. I¡¯m going to do the right thing, because if I don¡¯t, then no one else will. I¡¯m going to be the one to do it, and I¡¯m not going to let anything stop me.¡±

    The story of my entire career, from Lung to Bakuda to the Slaughterhouse Nine, all the way to Scion. Sometimes, the only thing that had kept me going was the sheer, bull-headed stubbornness to keep going, and the knowledge that, while my methods might have been somewhat questionable, my goals were just and righteous.

    Rika shook her head, face drawn into a rictus of fear. ¡°I¡¯m not like you, Senpai. I¡¯m just seventeen.¡±

    I didn¡¯t even need to think about it, because I already knew the only thing I could say to that.

    ¡°So was I.¡±

    When it all fell apart, when everything started to crack, when all the holes finally started showing ¡ª

    When the world ended and it seemed like I was the only one trying to save what was left of it.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t let that stop me.¡±

    Because no one and nothing that had come after me and tried to kill me had cared that I was only fifteen, that, by Gold Morning, I was barely shy of eighteen. Not Lung, not Bakuda, not Jack, not Coil, not Scion.

    Rika looked down and refused to meet my eyes; her head fell, and her shoulders quivered as she hugged herself, as though to hold in whatever she could to keep herself from shattering into a thousand, broken pieces.

    ¡°I¡­¡±

    She froze, and slowly, she extended her arm out, turning the palm downwards to stare at the stark, red marks of her Command Spells that were emblazoned so boldly on her skin. Her hand was trembling.

    ¡°It has to be us¡­doesn¡¯t it?¡± she asked in a small, quiet voice. ¡°Mash needs us, and you need Mash.¡±

    To the other side, Ritsuka looked down at his, too, brow furrowing.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Romani told her. ¡°If the rest of Team A was awake and in good health¡­ But you, your brother, and Taylor are the only Masters we currently have, and we can¡¯t afford to say no to another able body, especially someone who¡¯s already proven herself capable. Not when we¡¯re already down so many people.¡±

    ¡°In the end, we¡¯re basically forcing you,¡± Da Vinci said solemnly. ¡°Romani and I are aware that we¡¯re not giving you much of a choice. Even Taylor, here¡­ This isn¡¯t exactly what she signed up for.¡±

    My lips twitched and I had to fight a wry smile. This was exactly what I¡¯d signed up for: saving the world. Again. The circumstances might have been a bit different than I expected, but they weren¡¯t unfamiliar, either.

    ¡°Even still, we have to ask this of you,¡± Romani went on. ¡°Rika, Ritsuka, Taylor, can the three of you do it? Can you Rayshift to these seven Singularities, right the wrongs of history, and restore the proper course of mankind¡¯s future? Can you three, together, shoulder this impossibly heavy burden?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± I said matter of factly.

    There¡¯d never been any other choice. Not for me.

    Ritsuka looked back down at his Command Spells, and then clenched his hand into a fist. His mouth drew into a determined line.

    ¡°If it has to be me,¡± he said, ¡°then yes.¡±

    Rika didn¡¯t answer immediately.

    ¡°I-I don¡¯t know,¡± she admitted at length. She looked to her brother, at his fist, at his Command Spells, and then back down to hers. ¡°But¡­ I-I have to try, right?¡±

    Romani let out a long sigh and combed a hand through his hair.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry to put this on you three,¡± he told us compassionately, ¡°but hearing you say that¡­ It makes me feel a bit better about this. For now¡­ I think you¡¯ve all earned some rest. We¡¯re going to make sure a few more systems are repaired before we even think about sending you into any of these other Singularities, so you should have about two weeks to prepare yourselves in whatever way you need.¡±

    Nobody said anything, and he blinked at us awkwardly for a few seconds, and then his face lit up with comprehension. ¡°Oh, uh¡­ Ahem. As Acting Director of Chaldea for the duration of Director Animusphere¡¯s incapacitance, I¡¯m dismissing you. Officially. I¡¯ll see you later, okay?¡±

    The group stood still a little uneasily, until Mash reached out and grabbed both twins by the hand and said, ¡°Come on, Senpai. Let¡¯s go get something to eat!¡±

    Rika glanced back at me one last time, and then let herself be pulled away by Mash. A moment later, they¡¯d left the Command Room.

    ¡°Well,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°there¡¯s still much to do, and there¡¯s no one more qualified to do it than me! I¡¯ll see you later, Romani!¡±

    She turned away and strode off. I gave Romani a quick nod and a short, ¡°Director Archaman,¡± that did interesting things to his face, then took off after her and managed to catch up to her in the hall.

    ¡°Da Vinci, wait.¡±

    She stopped and turned back to me curiously. ¡°Yes?¡±

    ¡°Are you sure?¡± I asked her lowly. ¡°That there¡¯s nothing else you can do to help the Director? You couldn¡¯t recalibrate that extra body you¡¯re using? Tune it up for her?¡±

    Da Vinci blinked at me, bewildered, and then her face broke out into a gentle smile as she chuckled to herself. ¡°My, you and the Director were much closer than I thought, weren¡¯t you?¡± she said ruefully. ¡°I¡¯m a bit surprised. She¡¯s always been so prickly, and you always struck me as the loner type who didn¡¯t make friends easily.¡±

    ¡°She didn¡¯t give up on me,¡± I said by way of explanation. ¡°I¡¯m not giving up on her.¡±

    Da Vinci¡¯s smile grew, and she reached out to place a hand on my shoulder. My right one. I wasn¡¯t sure if there was supposed to be a message in that.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Taylor. The Director is fine. Have faith, yes? She¡¯ll be back before you know it, good as new.¡±

 Chapter XI: Red Hound

    Chapter XI: Red Hound

    The first of the two weeks Romani had allotted us to rest, relax, and recuperate passed by in a flurry of activity, and I had no part in any of it.

    It made me feel antsy and anxious, having to sit on the sidelines and watch our skeleton crew of less than thirty people rush about as they tried to fix as much of the damage as they could as quickly as they possibly could. I got the sense that everyone knew we couldn¡¯t solve everything in a fortnight, even if Chaldea¡¯s systems were brought back up to where they¡¯d been before the sabotage, but everyone treated it like we would if only they managed to repair everything as soon as they possibly could.

    Naturally, as the most critical of Chaldea¡¯s assets, the twins, Mash, and I were relegated to just watching. If I was asked, I would have said it was overkill, but Romani fretted about any of us so much as pulling a muscle, and when Romani fretted, he tended to go a bit overboard.

    Well, it wasn¡¯t like I would have been much help even if I¡¯d been allowed to contribute, and that rankled in its own way, because I had always been more of a fighter than a technician, and what little knowledge of electrical repair I did have was woefully inadequate to the task of fixing basically anything in Chaldea. Although if the coffee machine broke down, maybe I could be useful then. Or if a lightbulb needed changing.

    There wasn¡¯t much else for me to do, in the meantime. I wanted to get up, be active, actually do something that wasn¡¯t sitting on my ass reading any one of the novels I hadn¡¯t touched before because they weren¡¯t the kind that interested me, but the fact of the matter was that there wasn¡¯t really anything else to do. Even the combat simulator Masters were trained on was down for repairs, which meant any appreciable level of practice I could¡¯ve gotten was out of the question.

    I¡¯d tried looking up information on King Solomon and the Ars Goetia that listed the seventy-two demons he controlled, but the data in Chaldea¡¯s servers was either too sparse to be useful or locked behind the Director¡¯s access permissions.

    Access permissions that only Olga Marie Animusphere had or could give, which meant it was a dead end until we got her back.

    The only thing really left to me that might actually have been meaningful was connecting with my fellow Masters, with Ritsuka and Rika, but I was socially awkward at the best of times and everything seemed to have hit them harder than I¡¯d expected. Neither of them seemed in the mood to talk the entire week.

    Not even Rika.

    It felt like living with a distant roommate, like things had been with Dad during the bad times after Mom¡¯s death. I saw them every day, and we exchanged empty pleasantries if we ever got within arm¡¯s length of each other, but they were both subdued and quiet and didn¡¯t seem to know how to talk to me or even what to say.

    I wasn¡¯t much better. They seemed to be taking the thing with the Director pretty hard, and the burden of the task ahead was dragging their shoulders down, and I just didn¡¯t know how to make them feel better or cheer them up. What was I supposed to tell them? That it got easier? Telling a lie like that wouldn¡¯t help anyone. Even if I said they¡¯d get used to it all, that probably would¡¯ve been more troubling than comforting.

    A full week since the resolution of Singularity F, I strode into the cafeteria, one of the few places in Chaldea that had gone relatively untouched by Lev¡¯s sabotage. As usual, Rika and Ritsuka were already awake and sitting quietly at a table together, with Mash sitting between them. She looked up at me as I stepped through the doors and offered one of her gentle, characteristic smiles.

    ¡°Good morning, Miss Taylor.¡±

    ¡°Morning, Mash,¡± I replied, and then to the twins, ¡°Ritsuka, Rika.¡±

    Both of them looked over at me sluggishly, bleary-eyed and sagging, and gave a weak, mumbled, ¡°Morning, Senpai.¡±

    And then they turned away, looking down into their mugs of what I could only assume was coffee. Dark circles rimmed Rika¡¯s eyes, and Ritsuka kept blinking slowly, like he was struggling to stay awake. Mash, sitting next to them, sighed quietly.

    My lips drew into a thin line, an expression Beryl had once told me made me look like a disappointed schoolteacher, but my stomach rumbled and I retreated away from the confrontation again.

    I think they needed gentle understanding, and I didn¡¯t really do gentle understanding. If push came to shove and being gentle wasn¡¯t an option anymore¡­ Well, there was a bridge I might have to cross, but until it came to that, there wasn¡¯t much else I could do but give them space.

    I picked up a tray and a plate and made my way through the morning buffet line, scooping up a helping of scrambled eggs, toast, and a few strips of bacon. There was a machine for hot water, a kind of electric kettle, but I passed it by and filled myself a mug of the brown sludge they called coffee instead.

    Tea was my preference, and I actually had a good selection of breakfast teas that Marie had requisitioned for me when she found out I liked it (when she heard I had ¡°good taste,¡± as she put it), but since we couldn¡¯t resupply in the foreseeable future, I was trying to ration those as best I could. There was no telling how long I was going to have to make them last.

    With my tray loaded down, I walked over to an empty table and took a seat, hyperconscious of exactly how sparse the entire place was. Just a few weeks ago, at this time of the morning, I wouldn¡¯t have been able to find more than a few empty places to sit, and Wodime would¡¯ve been insisting I eat with the rest of the dysfunctional Team A. I would¡¯ve been surrounded by noise, people, life. Now? The cafeteria that could house up to three hundred people was all but deserted, and I ate alone.

    I stabbed my fork into some of my eggs and took my first bite, grimaced, then grabbed the condiments tray and added some seasoning, a little salt and some pepper.

    ¡°Relatively¡± was a misleading term. Chaldea had lost some one-hundred-and-eighty of its two-hundred or so staff, and that included most of the senior cooking staff. What was left was doing their best, but their best wasn¡¯t exactly gourmet, and it showed very much in how bland and uninteresting most of the meals I¡¯d had for the last week had been.

    While I chewed, I peered over at Mash and the twins, using the spot I¡¯d chosen to surreptitiously spy on them. They had food, but it looked only half eaten, like they couldn¡¯t stomach the rest. Only Mash looked like she¡¯d done more than nibble around the edges.

    ¡­Intervening might wind up being inevitable. If they skipped out on eating for long enough, then things would get bad when we had to start repairing the other Singularities. We couldn¡¯t afford for them to starve themselves every time something bad happened, because inevitably, a lot of bad things would.

    In hindsight, Singularity F in Fuyuki had gone extraordinarily well. We technically lost the Director beforehand and afterwards (and that was a complicated bunch of tenses to explain to anyone who didn¡¯t know what had happened), but of the people who went in alive, we¡¯d all come out unharmed, and we¡¯d successfully repaired the Singularity. Mission accomplished, with flying colors, even.

    I wasn¡¯t under any illusions that things would go that smoothly the whole way through. I¡¯d count it a minor miracle if none of us lost at least one limb by the end of it.

    My appetite suddenly soured, but I forced myself to finish my food, even if my stomach didn¡¯t want it anymore. I was going to need my energy just as much as the twins were, in the days ahead. When I was finished, I drained as much of my coffee as I could make myself drink, then stood and returned my tray.

    Mash gave me a little wave on the way out of the cafeteria, but the twins didn¡¯t even seem to notice me leaving. They were still gazing down into their mugs like they could find the answers to all their problems there.

    Out in the hallway, I found myself unsure of where I should go and what I should do. I felt like I should practice my magecraft, do something productive with my time, but Gandr was something I¡¯d always done in the simulator, where I had room to fire it off and targets to aim at. When it came to the other bits of magecraft I had picked up¡­frankly, I hadn¡¯t had a breakthrough with my puppets in months, and Marie was the one who had supervised my training in runes.

    Without her to tutor me, what was I supposed to do? Again, the simulator was the best place for training something that could get fairly destructive. I wasn¡¯t about to sit in my room and play with the literal explosives.

    I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. When the only other thing left for me to do was read a bunch of novels I didn¡¯t care for¡­

    ¡°Guess I¡¯ll go and practice with my puppets, then.¡±

    A pivot on my heel, and I was heading back towards my room, accompanied only by the clack of my shoes on the smooth tile beneath my feet. I¡¯d just felt the emptiness of Chaldea in the cafeteria, but out here alone as I walked the halls only drove it home all the more. The last two years, I¡¯d seen at least a dozen people on the way to any place in the facility, no matter the time of day or where I was going.

    Now, it was a veritable ghost town, and all I had were the same useless, vague regrets that I hadn¡¯t gotten to know each and every one of those who were no longer there.

    A hundred and eighty people. So small compared to the billions who had perished in Gold Morning, and the billions more who had been incinerated by Flauros and his cadre of demons, and yet it felt all the more personal to have lost them than the faceless masses.

    A sigh hissed out of my mouth. Lisa probably would have had something to say about that. I wasn¡¯t sure I would have appreciated the humor, just then, but I wanted her there to say it all the same.

    ¡°Fou!¡±

    I blinked, stopped, and looked down to find that thing staring up at me, its large ears pointing straight into the air and swiveled in my direction. Its beady little eyes were locked, unblinking, on mine. I would almost call it expectant.

    I didn¡¯t know what it was about this thing, but something about it had always put me on edge. It wasn¡¯t just that it was smarter than any regular animal should be, no, it couldn¡¯t have been that simple, but whatever it was that unnerved me, I couldn¡¯t put my finger on it, either. It was like an itch that I couldn¡¯t reach, a long buried instinct that told me not to trust it, not to believe it, not to show my back to it.

    Like it was the most dangerous, most feral beast in the world, and if I gave it a single opening, it would rip out my throat.

    Keeping my eyes on the thing, I took one step to the side and tried to go around it, but it bounded back instantly and once more placed itself in my path. Waiting. For what, I didn¡¯t know.

    I took one large step to the opposite side and tried to pass it a second time, but it bounded back again and stopped in front of me. Its beady eyes pinned me, and it sat there with unnatural stillness, unblinking, without so much as a twitch of its nose or ears.

    ¡°Fou!¡± it declared imperiously in that high, squeaky voice.

    I could have stepped over it, except that a shiver swept down my spine at the very thought. I could have picked it up and moved it, except that the skin of my hands crawled even thinking about it.

    It seemed like the only thing I could do was indulge it.

    ¡°What do you want?¡± I asked it tersely.

    It jutted its chin up into the air and walked around me, and I watched it the entire time. It stopped a few paces away and looked back over its shoulder at me.

    ¡°Fou!¡±

    Of course. I sighed.

    ¡°Right, you want me to follow you.¡±

    ¡°Fou!¡±

    Taking orders from a squirrel¡­ cat¡­ thing, now. Imp would have been cackling like a loon.

    Turning away from the path to my room, I followed behind¡­Fou as it started trotting down the hallway, and I wondered at my irrational response to the thing. It had never done anything to really warrant my suspicion or concern, and it was perfectly well-behaved around Mash and the twins. In fact, it had taken a shine to Ritsuka and Rika in record time, by all accounts. Even Romani and Da Vinci got pestered for pets and shoulder rides, on occasion, like it was some affectionate housecat.

    So then why did I feel like it was the most dangerous thing in the whole facility?

    Fou led me off past the cafeteria and further on down the hallway to the Command Room, where it came to a stop next to the door, turned back around to face me, and in that same, imperious tone, barked, ¡°Fou!¡±

    My lips pulled into a frown, but I opened the door and stepped through, trying to ignore the prickling of the fine hairs on the nape of my neck raising when it put my back to Fou.

    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

    Two years of this shit, I swear. Why was it only me, anyway?

    Romani and Da Vinci looked up as I entered, huddled as they were over his terminal.

    ¡°Taylor,¡± said Romani. ¡°Good, you¡¯re here. There¡¯s a couple of things we needed to discuss with you.¡±

    ¡°So you sent Fou?¡±

    The little gremlin came as though summoned, and with an agility that could have gone either way, it bounded up to sit on top of Romani¡¯s terminal. Romani grimaced.

    ¡°Well, we didn¡¯t want to bring the twins in for this,¡± he admitted.

    I shifted, crossing my arms over my chest. ¡°You didn¡¯t?¡±

    He sighed himself, raking a hand through his hair. ¡°They need a bit of a break,¡± he said. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to overwhelm them by pushing this decision off onto them, so I figured, as we¡¯re the most senior staff left, in a way, we¡¯d handle it on our own.¡±

    ¡°What Romani¡¯s trying to say is that he doesn¡¯t want to put them on the spot, considering the state they¡¯re in right now,¡± Da Vinci interjected. ¡°It¡¯s better if the three of us take the burden, yes? Romani is the Acting Director, and you¡¯re our most experienced Master. We¡¯ll shoulder the weight, for now.¡±

    I pursed my lips. As much as I didn¡¯t think we could afford to baby them forever, I didn¡¯t disagree that pushing them to take on too much too soon might be a bad idea. ¡°What decision are we talking about?¡±

    Romani reached over and tapped something out on his keyboard. A moment later, the image on his screen depicted the map of the world he¡¯d shown us in the aftermath of Singularity F a little over a week ago.

    ¡°You remember what I said last week, right?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ve got data on two other Singularities, so far.¡±

    ¡°France and Italy, yes,¡± said Romani. ¡°Well, Rome, specifically. We still haven¡¯t managed to get a higher resolution image of the other five, but these two, at least, we¡¯ve got at least some idea of what they look like. Naturally, we won¡¯t be sending anyone into the others until we have a better idea of what we¡¯re looking at. For a lot of reasons, but the obvious one being that we can¡¯t confirm your existence if we don¡¯t know where and when it needs to be confirmed.¡±

    Which would mean we could unravel mid-Rayshift or simply cease to exist inside our own coffins, having never made it to our destination. Yes, I could see the problem with that.

    ¡°And?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve been trying to determine which of these two we should deal with first,¡± Da Vinci said. ¡°As an Italian myself, I admit I¡¯m partial to Rome. However¡­ 60 AD was a bit of a tumultuous time for Rome. That year, Boudicca, an Iceni queen, rose up in open rebellion against the empire, so it might be a little more problematic to try handling that first.¡±

    She shrugged.

    ¡°On the other hand, it¡¯s entirely possible that the moment in history that the Singularity is trying to untether is exactly that rebellion. The deviation from the proper course of human history might simply be that Boudicca never rebelled, or even that she died before she could do it, allowing Rome to fully conquer Britain. It¡¯s also possible that Boudicca¡¯s rebellion was a success and Britain conquered Rome.¡±

    ¡°And if that¡¯s the case, correcting it would be a lot more difficult,¡± Romani pointed out. ¡°Trekking across a city was one thing. Asking them to walk the breadth of the Roman Empire in search of the deviant influence is a bit much.¡±

    ¡°As opposed to having them search the French countryside?¡± Da Vinci countered. ¡°Orleans in 1431 only had one major, important event that changed the course of history, and that was the execution of Jeanne d¡¯Arc. You want to send them on a mission that might require them to kill a girl their own age who just wanted to protect her own people?¡±

    My stomach curled in on itself.

    ¡°Do we know that for sure?¡± I asked before they could get going again.

    Killing Joan of Arc¡­ That¡­ No, that would be rough, even for me. I¡­ I thought that I could probably do it, knowing that it would be essential to restoring our incinerated humanity, but I didn¡¯t really like what that probably said about me.

    Asking the twins to do it¡­ That might break them.

    The two of them glanced at me, then shared a look, and then turned back to me.

    ¡°We simply don¡¯t know what to expect, going into any of this,¡± Da Vinci admitted. ¡°It¡¯s entirely possible that the deviation is some other thing utterly unrelated to either of those scenarios. It¡¯s also entirely possible that both could be true, or even that the Roman Singularity will require you to kill a victorious Boudicca in order to set things right.¡±

    ¡°I think the one thing we should be able to expect is the presence of some form of Holy Grail,¡± said Romani. ¡°Frankly speaking, you¡¯d need a miracle of that power to unmoor history from its natural position, and given that we retrieved one from Singularity F when you defeated Saber, completely independent from Fuyuki¡¯s Grail system ¡ª¡±

    ¡°We can expect that the one responsible for the deviation will be the one¡­Flauros gave a Holy Grail to,¡± I concluded. ¡°Just like Saber.¡±

    Romani nodded. ¡°Theoretically, you might not even have to worry about personally correcting any mistakes. History is resilient like that. It should heal and fix itself on its own. As long as you can retrieve or destroy the Holy Grail responsible for pinning the deviation in place, the Singularity should dissolve without any other action from us.¡±

    The knot of tension in my gut slowly unraveled. So we probably wouldn¡¯t have to brutally murder the most famous saint in history who didn¡¯t have a holiday named after her.

    ¡°I think that¡¯s an incredibly optimistic outlook,¡± Da Vinci said bluntly. ¡°Even if all you technically need to do is remove the Holy Grail from the equation, by itself, that¡¯s going to require you wresting it from whoever has control of it. An enemy with possession of a powerful wish-granting artifact like the Holy Grail ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Isn¡¯t going to be one we can just flick on the nose and be done with it,¡± I agreed. ¡°So we should always go into a Singularity expecting a tough fight.¡±

    Romani shot Da Vinci a grimace, but held his tongue and turned to me instead.

    ¡°This is all our best guesses,¡± he admitted. ¡°The reality of the situation is that we just don¡¯t know anything for sure. We could be entirely wrong about everything, or we could both be some degree of right.¡±

    ¡°We can use some simple common sense, though,¡± Da Vinci said pointedly. ¡°Destroying the lynchpins of history is itself an inherently violent act. At the very least, we have to assume they will also violently resist being corrected.¡±

    Romani let out a long, tired sigh and gave me a wan smile. ¡°As you can see, we can¡¯t really agree about anything on the subject. As Acting Director while Director Animusphere is, ah, indisposed, I could make the decision unilaterally, but I figured that since you¡¯ll be the one the ground leading the twins and Mash, it¡¯s really a decision that you should be making. Cast the deciding vote, if you want to think of it that way.¡±

    Leadership. Of a small, elite team, in fact, pursuing a mission of vital importance. It was strange how unfamiliar it had become over the course of two short years. In other ways, it was like putting on an old jacket I hadn¡¯t worn in a while.

    Either way, since it was apparently up to me¡­ When the choice was between fighting a single woman with a Holy Grail and fighting a woman with a Holy Grail who had an entire empire¡¯s worth of soldiers between us and her, the answer was a fairly obvious and simple one.

    ¡°We¡¯ll handle Orleans first,¡± I said.

    Romani smiled the smile of the vindicated. ¡°I agree. I think, considering what little we have to go on, it¡¯s the safer choice to pick at this time.¡±

    Da Vinci sighed and shook her head, smiling ruefully. ¡°Well, I can¡¯t say I don¡¯t know when I¡¯m outnumbered. Okay, then. Since you two have made up your minds, it¡¯s settled. We¡¯ll deal with the Orleans Singularity first.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll make our preparations going forward under that assumption,¡± said Romani. ¡°In the meantime, Taylor, there¡¯s one other thing I wanted to handle, today.¡±

    I cocked my head to the side a little, uncertain. ¡°One other thing?¡±

    He nodded. ¡°We managed to get enough systems back online to properly restore functionality to FATE, as much as we ever had, at any rate.¡± My heart skipped a beat. ¡°We¡¯d like to test it and see if we can actually manage to summon someone, this time.¡±

    ¡°You want me to try again?¡± I managed to ask. He shook his head.

    ¡°Not you, specifically. If we get anyone at all, I¡¯m not sure they¡¯ll be deployed into the Orleans Singularity with you when the time comes, depending on which Heroic Spirit answers. For now, we just want to test a hunch and see if it works. We can wait to attempt a more serious summoning until you¡¯ve already got boots on the ground, so to speak.¡±

    Some of the tension in my gut eased.

    ¡°Why?¡±

    Da Vinci answered. ¡°If this works, then the next step is to try and hook up the Holy Grail you retrieved from Singularity F to Chaldea¡¯s power grid. If we can do that, we should be able to support at least three more Servants, whereas right now, we can only support Mash and two others.¡±

    Wouldn¡¯t it be better to wait until later, then? But I could see the sense in testing to make sure summoning more later would even be possible, too.

    ¡°We¡¯re just trying to see if we even can summon a Servant?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s fine, then. I don¡¯t see a problem with that.¡±

    ¡°Alright.¡± Romani leveraged himself out of his chair. ¡°Let¡¯s go, then.¡±

    I blinked. ¡°Now?¡±

    ¡°No time like the present.¡± He turned to Da Vinci. ¡°Could you go and get Mash and the twins? We¡¯ll meet you there.¡±

    Da Vinci grinned and offered him a sarcastic salute. ¡°Roger that, Director Archaman!¡±

    Romani groaned as she left. ¡°Acting Director,¡± he mumbled after her. ¡°Acting. The minute we¡¯ve got Director Animusphere back, I¡¯m just the head of Medical, again.¡±

    My lips tugged to the one side. Romani was one of the few people I¡¯d ever met who was so allergic to the idea of having power.

    ¡°Fou,¡± Romani said, turning to look at where it had last been, ¡°are you ¡ª¡±

    It was gone. Romani blinked. ¡°He must have gone after Da Vinci to get the twins. I swear, sometimes, Fou scares me with how sneaky he can be.¡± He turned to me. ¡°Ready?¡±

    ¡°As I¡¯ll ever be.¡±

    He typed a few things on his terminal ¡ª logging out, if I had to guess ¡ª and then started towards the door. I fell into step beside him and let him lead the way towards the summoning chamber. The empty halls echoed back at us in the silence.

    It was only once we were out of earshot of the command room that I spoke up.

    ¡°You can¡¯t baby them forever,¡± I told Romani quietly. ¡°Eventually, they¡¯re going to have to make real, hard decisions, and the longer we put that off, the less prepared they¡¯re going to be for it.¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± Romani admitted, equally as quiet. He sounded resigned. Tired. ¡°But if we just start dumping it on them all at once¡­ I don¡¯t want them to break under all that pressure.¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t.¡±

    He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. I expected him to say something trite, like pointing out that the twins weren¡¯t me. What he actually said killed any retort that I might have been mustering.

    ¡°I¡¯m not so sure about that.¡±

    I didn¡¯t know what to say to that, not when my response to losing a battle against a god was, as Alec might have put it, to leak my brains out of my ears until I landed on the winning strategy, so we made the rest of the trip in silence, our footsteps clacking off the floor.

    Eventually, we made it to another room behind another set of bland, white doors that slid open as we approached, and we stepped into what looked kind of like a teleporter room from either some 80s scifi show or some Tinker¡¯s attempt at making one of his own, with a strange machine mounted to the ceiling in the middle above a raised sort of circular platform. Arrayed around it were consoles and terminals for keeping track of the whole thing.

    Back when Marie had first shown me the summoning room, there had been half a dozen technicians monitoring Chaldea¡¯s FATE system. Debugging, chasing down error codes, running simulations, whatever was necessary to make sure that it would be ready to go when the time came. It had all looked fairly impressive.

    The summoning chamber of the current Chaldea had one man at its consoles, a single, slightly pudgy blond with glasses who looked like he hadn¡¯t slept since the sabotage. When I thought about it that way, it was entirely possible that he hadn¡¯t.

    It seemed like everywhere I went, I was faced with reminders of exactly how thoroughly and tragically Chaldea had been gutted.

    ¡°Are we ready to go?¡± Romani asked.

    The technician looked up at us, adjusted his glasses with one extended finger, and gave a slight nod. ¡°Everything is back online. We¡¯re back up to where we were before¡­¡±

    He trailed off uncomfortably.

    Romani sighed. ¡°Yeah.¡±

    An awkward silence fell, and after a moment, the technician went back to his monitors and Romani and I stepped off to the side, out of the way of the doors. Neither of us tried to strike up more conversation.

    A few minutes later, the doors opened, and Da Vinci walked in, smiling brightly. ¡°We¡¯re here!¡±

    Rika and Ritsuka followed behind her, looking rough and exhausted, and Mash brought up the rear. It, Fou, was perched on her shoulder.

    ¡°Miss Taylor, Doctor Roman,¡± Mash greeted us politely.

    The twins startled a little when they realized we were there. ¡°Senpai! Doctor Roman!¡±

    ¡°Hello, Rika, Ritsuka, Mash,¡± Romani said kindly. ¡°Good morning.¡±

    ¡°A-ah, good morning!¡± Ritsuka stuttered. Rika tried to echo him, but she broke out into a yawn before she could get the words out.

    ¡°So!¡± Da Vinci clapped her hands. ¡°Let¡¯s get this show on the road, shall we? Signor Meuniere, I realize this isn¡¯t your normal position in Chaldea, but I hope my instructions were clear enough on how this works?¡±

    ¡°Ah, yes, of course!¡± the technician, Meuniere, apparently, said.

    Da Vinci turned back to us. ¡°So! Who would like to do the honors, this time?¡±

    ¡°Senpai isn¡¯t doing it?¡± Ritsuka asked, sounding surprised.

    I affected indifference. ¡°If neither of you is up to it, I¡¯m perfectly willing.¡±

    The twins shared a look, and in that single look, seemed to have an entire silent conversation, because after a few seconds, Rika nodded and stepped forward. ¡°I¡¯ll do it!¡±

    Da Vinci stepped to the side and gestured to a small dais in front of the circular summoning platform. After a moment¡¯s hesitation, Rika walked forward and climbed up onto it.

    ¡°This is going to be a little different from Taylor¡¯s attempt in Fuyuki. Ah, but first ¡ª Mash? If you would be so kind, please place your shield in the center of the summoning platform overtop the formula, would you?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± said Mash, and in a flash of light, she had transformed back into the form of the Servant she¡¯d taken in Fuyuki. Once again, she hefted her enormous shield like it was weightless, and she did exactly as asked and set it down so that the round base was situated at the center of the platform, and then she stepped back.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t realize Mash¡¯s shield was so important it was part of the summoning ritual, too,¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°It¡¯s not supposed to be,¡± Da Vinci answered. ¡°After all, the summoning ritual and Chaldea¡¯s FATE system have been around for years, and yet last week was the first time Mash had successfully manifested the powers of the Servant bound to her body. However, the number of successful Servant summonings in Chaldea is less than five.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Really,¡± said Romani. ¡°Technically, you¡¯re looking at two of them right now. No one knows what happened to the first, but Da Vinci and Mash are the only ones we managed to make work right, and even then, I¡¯m not sure you can properly count Mash, since she¡¯s a Demi-Servant.¡±

    It made me wonder how they had intended for us Team A members to properly summon our own Servants, if the system had struggled to get just three.

    ¡°Wow.¡±

    ¡°I have a hunch, however,¡± Da Vinci said, grinning a grin just this side of manic. ¡°If I¡¯m right, then every summoning from here on should work perfectly, as long as we have the energy to support them.¡± She stepped forward. ¡°Meuniere, are we ready to begin?¡±

    ¡°Set up and ready to go, Da Vinci.¡±

    Da Vinci smiled. ¡°Now, Rika, I want you to repeat after me.¡±

    Rika¡¯s hair bobbed as she nodded. ¡°Got it.¡±

    ¡°Heed my words.¡±

    ¡°Heed my words!¡± Rika said loudly, thrusting her arm forward. She was almost certainly mimicking me.

    ¡°My will creates your body, and your sword creates my destiny.¡±

    ¡°My will creates your body, and your sword creates my destiny!¡±

    The circle beneath Mash¡¯s shield began to glow, and then the symbols seemed to lift off of the ground and into the air.

    ¡°If thou accedes to my will and reason, then answer me.¡±

    ¡°If thou accedes to my will and reason, then answer me!¡±

    The floating circle glowed brighter and brighter until it became hard to look at. Like some great gear lurching into motion after years and years gathering rust, a grinding noise filled the room as an unseen wind swept out from the center.

    ¡°I hereby swear ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª that I will embody all the good in this world and punish all evils!¡±

    ¡°Thou the Seventh Heaven ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª clad in the three great words of power!¡±

    ¡°Come forth from the Ring of Deterrence ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª Guardian of the Heavenly Scales!¡±

    The grinding noise reached a fevered pitch. The glow of the circle became too bright to watch, and I had to shield my eyes against it to keep from being blinded. The wind rushed out, whipping back my hair ¡ª and then, just as suddenly, it all died away.

    I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to blink the spots out of my vision, and slowly, I let my arm fall to look at the figure now kneeling atop Mash¡¯s shield. Red was the first thing I saw, red and black and a shock of white, and as my eyes readjusted, the rest of it slowly came into detail.

    My stomach clenched as the man stood.

    ¡°Servant, Archer.¡±

    His low, deep baritone sent shivers down my spine, and as he opened cool, steely gray eyes, he smirked at the group of us.

    ¡°You¡¯ve summoned me, and I¡¯ve come at your request. Nice to meet you, Master.¡±

    Rika, Ritsuka, and Mash all gasped.

    ¡°You!¡±

 Chapter XII: Wrought Iron Chef

    Chapter XII: Wrought Iron Chef

    ¡°I¡¯ve got my eye on you!¡± Rika promised for the thousandth time.

    Across from her, Archer ¡ª Emiya, as we¡¯d found out his name was, and finding a Heroic Spirit whose legend wasn¡¯t in our databanks had surprised everyone, Romani most of all ¡ª let out an exasperated sigh.

    ¡°I¡¯ve already told you, Master,¡± he said tiredly. ¡°Whatever that version of me may have done to you or against you, I have no memory of it.¡±

    I wondered if that was really true or just a lie he was telling to avoid embarrassment. In theory, Heroic Spirits were outside of time and space, beings who existed independent of past, future, or present, and so every memory they would ever or had ever had would be recorded at the moment they ascended. That was how it had been explained to me. In practice, how that worked with summonings whose events they should already know, I couldn¡¯t figure out.

    But if some alternate version of me had done something I couldn¡¯t condone, like joining the Slaughterhouse Nine or whatever, I definitely would¡¯ve tried to pretend I didn¡¯t know she existed.

    ¡°You say that,¡± Rika said, and it was good to see at least a little bit of her old energy back, ¡°but you aren¡¯t fooling me, Mister! I can see right through your dastardly plans!¡±

    Emiya just sighed again. ¡°Seconds?¡±

    Rika shoved out her tray and plate. ¡°Yes, please!¡±

    Without comment, he piled up more food onto her plate until he¡¯d matched her original portions, and she giggled like a bride on the morning of her wedding day as she watched. There was even a line of drool that dribbled down from one corner of her mouth, and she sucked it back in as she licked her lips. Probably the only reason she wasn¡¯t bouncing on her heels excitedly was because it would dislodge her meal. She wanted to be eating it, not wearing it.

    Emiya finished with a flourish by pouring another glass of orange juice for her. ¡°Enjoy it, Master,¡± he said wryly. ¡°After all, I made more than enough for you to eat it to your heart¡¯s content.¡±

    ¡°This still doesn¡¯t mean I forgive you!¡± she shouted back over her shoulder as she walked as quickly as she could back to her seat. Behind her, Emiya just shook his head, an exasperated smile on his lips, and busied himself with tending the kitchen.

    An extraordinary stroke of luck, it seemed, that the first Servant we¡¯d successfully summoned turned out to be a deft hand at the stove. I still had no idea what to expect of him as a combatant ¡ª the battle simulator was still undergoing repairs, so while I could practice my Gandr, Servants were forbidden using it ¡ª but even if he was barely middling, his skill with cooking was already an incredible boon.

    He wasn¡¯t what I¡¯d been expecting, but then I hadn¡¯t really been expecting much of anything, during that test. I think I¡¯d actually half-expected the summoning to fail, just because that was the sort of thing I was used to having happen.

    Rika slid back into her chair, and immediately, she grabbed her utensils and started shoveling her food back into her mouth. You might have thought, watching her wolf it down so quickly and with such abandon, that she hadn¡¯t eaten in a week.

    ¡°So good!¡± Rika moaned, like she was having an altogether different experience. Ritsuka smiled fondly and shook his head.

    I watched her from a little further down the table, sipping at a mug of surprisingly good coffee while I tried to think of something to say, but nothing was coming to mind.

    I was supposed to increase unit cohesion, Romani had said. Well, the way he¡¯d put it had been more like, ¡®open up to them so that they can trust you,¡¯ but it amounted to the same thing that my instructors had tried so hard to instill in me back when I was in the Wards. The goal of any squad leader was to have the respect of her squadmates while also being friendly and approachable enough to keep the squad from ripping itself apart.

    You didn¡¯t have to be everyone¡¯s big sister, but they should at least trust you.

    Admittedly, I hadn¡¯t really followed through on that. It had been more like I was racing towards a goal, and the Wards had been caught up in my wake, carried along by sheer momentum. Becoming a close knit unit, making friends, being that gentle authority all of the classes said I was supposed to be? That was something I¡¯d never managed to figure out, and at the time, hadn¡¯t really cared to.

    What would Lisa have said, at that moment? To me or one of the Undersiders, not someone she was trying to tear down?

    ¡°You know, if you keep eating like that, the first thing that¡¯s going to balloon is our food budget, followed shortly by your waistline.¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor!¡± Mash gasped.

    A snort tore out of Rika¡¯s nose, and she doubled over her plate, slapping a hand across her mouth to keep from spitting out her food. Visibly, audibly, and very noticeably, she swallowed what was eating, and then rasped, ¡°W-worth it¡­¡±

    ¡°Are you okay, Rika?¡± her brother asked.

    ¡°T-this is the food of the gods,¡± Rika proclaimed hoarsely. ¡°I won¡¯t let a single bite go to waste!¡±

    To punctuate this, she speared another bite of her pancakes and shoved them into her mouth, chewing with large, exaggerated gnashing of her jaw. It was actually kind of gross.

    ¡°Senpai has a bit of a point though, Rika,¡± Ritsuka said. ¡°I know Emiya¡¯s food is really good, but you¡¯re eating way more than you usually do.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t ruin this for me, Onii-chan,¡± Rika said. ¡°This might very well be my last meal. I¡¯m going to enjoy every bit of it I can.¡±

    And just like that, any hope of further conversation died a swift and brutal death. I sighed into my coffee as Mash¡¯s brow furrowed with worry and Ritsuka looked down into his own mug.

    There was nothing I could have said to encourage her that wouldn¡¯t have been a lie. If I was a more inspiring hero, maybe I could have told her something like, ¡°I promise you that I¡¯ll make sure we all come back,¡± or, ¡°No matter what, we¡¯re all making it out of this alive,¡± but I wasn¡¯t good with happy little lies like that. The reality was that one or all of us could be dead by dinnertime, if things went wrong or if we screwed up at any point. There were no guarantees.

    How quickly our second week of downtime had passed us by.

    Today was the day we began our mission into the Orleans Singularity, with the goal of correcting the deviant history and bringing it in line with the proper course of events.

    Unfortunately, we still didn¡¯t have a good idea of what all that entailed. Romani and Da Vinci hadn¡¯t been able to get any higher resolution scans of the situation on the ground, so there was no way of knowing just what had caused the deviation, what that deviation even was, who or what we could expect in terms of opposition, or even whether there were still living people there.

    Would it just be another burning wasteland, occupied only by Servants? I wasn¡¯t sure which I preferred: a desolate landscape bereft of people, or a thriving countryside filled with bystanders who could get caught in the crossfire. I guess the former. There was something kind of liberating in not having to worry about anything except bringing the enemy down, and that was something you didn¡¯t have when you had to think about collateral damage to a human population.

    My mood soured, I stood from my seat and drained the last of my coffee, then went to return my tray and plate. Behind me, I heard Ritsuka mumble to his sister, ¡°Good going, Rika.¡±

    Emiya arched one white eyebrow at me as I approached him, but whatever serious effect he might have been going for was ruined by the bright pink apron he was wearing, with ¡°#1 Chef¡± printed on the front in bold. It had, quite obviously, been owned by someone a lot smaller with a lot brighter a personality who was also quite female.

    ¡°Here for seconds?¡± he asked in that rumbling baritone that had no business being quite as sexy as it was. ¡°Or are you going to threaten me against even thinking of betraying you?¡±

    Did he expect me to blame him? C¨²chulainn had explained the concept clearly enough, I felt. The Servants of the Fuyuki Grail War had been changed, corrupted. Even Saber, the noble King Arthur, apparently hadn¡¯t been immune to the effects, such was her oppressive, malevolent presence, back in the cavern. Whatever had attacked us in that ravine might look close enough on the outside, but there was no telling exactly how messed up he¡¯d been on the inside.

    ¡°Do I have reason to?¡± I asked him mildly.

    He blinked, brow furrowing, because that apparently wasn¡¯t what he¡¯d been expecting.

    The best comparison I could think to make was to a Master power, the Master power, the most insidious and dangerous of them all. Heartbreaker wasn¡¯t a bad line to draw, but what my mind leapt to was the Simurgh, how she could twist you up inside without you ever realizing you¡¯d been twisted, how she could turn your greatest pleasure into your worst agony, your best friend into your most virulent enemy, and even an ordinary man into homicidal radical.

    The Hopekiller¡­ It was an appropriate moniker.

    ¡°I¡¯ve seen you at your worst,¡± I told him as I set my tray down. He took it to be washed almost on autopilot, his hands moving as his eyes stayed locked with mine. ¡°I¡¯ve seen the oppressive tyrant King Arthur could have become. I¡¯ve also seen things that make both of those pale in comparison. Walked through hell.¡±

    I felt my lips tug to one side as his eyes narrowed on me. The port where my real arm met my prosthetic was so seamless that you couldn¡¯t tell where the real deal ended and the replacement began, but the stump still ached with a phantom pain. I could even feel the twin divots in my forehead, scars that had long since healed as to be almost unnoticeable.

    ¡°Didn¡¯t come out the other side entirely intact.¡±

    He grinned. It wasn¡¯t a nice smile. ¡°Sounds like quite a story.¡±

    One that I didn¡¯t plan on telling him anytime soon. Or ever. There was a difference between trusting him not to kill me and trusting him with my deepest, darkest secrets.

    ¡°Point is,¡± I said, dragging the topic back, ¡°I don¡¯t find you very threatening. And, frankly, if you wanted all of us dead? We¡¯d already be dead.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± the bark of laughter burst out of him, and it seemed to catch even Emiya by surprise. ¡°Well, now. You sure are an interesting person, aren¡¯t you? It¡¯s almost a shame you aren¡¯t the one holding onto my Command Spells. A woman like you sounds like the kind of Master I¡¯d get along with just fine.¡±

    That was what I was worried about. It was true that I didn¡¯t blame him for what his counterpart had done in Fuyuki, but if that counterpart was just all of Emiya¡¯s priorities inverted and a few of his inhibitions loosened, then what little I knew of his tactics and thinking really were the worst sort of matchup for me, because they were the best sort of matchup for me.

    Emiya and Khepri probably would have gotten on like a house on fire.

    I gave him an empty smile. ¡°Sorry. I have a prior commitment with an Irish guard dog.¡±

    And then I turned and left him on that note, blinking and gaping incredulously at my back. I didn¡¯t bother returning to the twins and Mash ¡ª I still didn¡¯t quite know how to address their fears and concerns in a way that wasn¡¯t just ¡°buckle up and move on,¡± and my last attempt at humor had died in a fire.

    I felt like a broken record repeating this over and over again in so many ways, but they needed something different than a force of personality, and force of personality was the only way I¡¯d ever really known how to lead. From the Undersiders to the Wards and all the way up to becoming Khepri, that was all I¡¯d ever needed, all I¡¯d ever used, and for Earth Bet, it had worked just fine.

    This wasn¡¯t Earth Bet. Ritsuka and Rika weren¡¯t my Undersiders, weren¡¯t my Wards, and weren¡¯t hardened by a world constantly on the brink, and I couldn¡¯t treat them like they were.

    Strangely, I missed Glenn Chambers, just then.

    I took in a deep breath and I held it, waiting until the cafeteria doors slid shut behind me before I let it out in the empty corridor. The sigh that hissed out of my mouth was positively gust-like in its intensity.

    How the fuck was I supposed to do this? We, quite literally, came from two different worlds. I¡¯d spent two years fighting, bouncing from one conflict to the next, preparing for the end of the world, and then I¡¯d spent another two years preparing for the next world-ending catastrophe, which may or may not have pulled a stunt that made Scion¡¯s tantrum seem tame by comparison, because I still wasn¡¯t clear on whether ¡°all of mankind¡± meant ¡°all of mankind,¡± or just this particular world¡¯s.

    Before all of that, I¡¯d had to live with the knowledge that any day, a sea monster from Hell, a walking nuclear holocaust, or HP Lovecraft¡¯s twisted vision of an angel could decide, gee, didn¡¯t the place I was living in look like it needed a good remodeling?

    Rika and Ritsuka¡­ by all appearances, had led relatively normal lives in a relatively normal world, or at least one where they never had any reason to suspect it wasn¡¯t. A life without gangs whose power was enforced by a man who transformed into a dragon or a pair of women who could make themselves thirty feet tall. A life without capes or Endbringers or doomsday scenarios.

    Until now, that was.

    How the fuck was I supposed to lead them through a gauntlet of seven Singularities with enemies who could do things they only recently discovered weren¡¯t limited to comic books?

    ¡°Poorly, apparently,¡± I muttered to the air.

    Mouth twisting, I stormed off, mood fouled, and I tried to keep the frothing sea of my restless frustration from boiling over. The simulator was back up, if not completely repaired; maybe it was time to see if I could finally put my puppets into action.

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    It wasn¡¯t the first time over the last two weeks that I¡¯d had the thought that I might be better off doing this solo. I didn¡¯t think I would have said no to having Mash on board, not with that shield of hers being so sturdy and useful, but having it just be the two of us taking on whatever Flauros and his king could throw at us? It would have been so much easier.

    But however pragmatic it was, I would¡¯ve been an idiot to think it would happen. Not now, not after Fuyuki. Da Vinci and Romani might have sided with me, but Mash would pick the twins and dig in her heels, without a doubt. And a contract, especially between Master and Servant, needed the consent of both parties for it to work properly.

    And that meant I couldn¡¯t just leave them here to be babysat by the staff while I went and saved the world. Again. They had to go with me, and that meant that I had to lead them.

    If only I just fucking knew how.

    ¡°Oh, Taylor, there you are.¡±

    Halfway back to my room, however, I was met by one of the last people I wanted to see, just then. In my head, I imagined a release valve, and I let my anger and frustration drain out of it as I forced myself to calm down.

    ¡°Da Vinci,¡± I greeted her as politely as I could manage, just then. ¡°Was there something you needed?¡±

    ¡°In a way, it¡¯s really more like something you needed,¡± she replied, grinning, and then she reached into some pocket or compartment that I didn¡¯t quite see and pulled out a familiar knife resting in a sheath. ¡°Here.¡±

    My brow furrowed as I took it gingerly. ¡°This is¡­¡±

    The nanothorn dagger Defiant had given me. My lips pulled to one side in a sort of half-grin.

    ¡°Even you couldn¡¯t figure it out in the end, huh?¡±

    But Da Vinci kept grinning.

    ¡°Oh, it certainly took me a lot longer than I was expecting it to,¡± she said smugly. ¡°The black box that fudges some of the internal mechanisms really was quite the frustrating conundrum, so I had to work backwards from the basic principles to figure out how to do it properly, but it was only a matter of time until I had it solved.¡±

    I blinked. Stopped. Had to go back over that in my head to make sure I heard it correctly.

    ¡°You figured out Tinkertech?¡±

    ¡°Well, perhaps only this specific piece of it,¡± she admitted. ¡°Oh! And that delightful flight pack of yours, too! Ah, I¡¯m sorry to say, it¡¯s¡­ Erm, it¡¯s in a few too many pieces to put back together properly.¡±

    Da Vinci offered me an apologetic smile.

    Ah. So I wasn¡¯t getting that back, was I?

    ¡°You can¡¯t fix it?¡±

    ¡°Strictly speaking, it arrived broken,¡± she said. ¡°I managed to piece together the mechanism it uses for flight, but without knowing the original configuration when it was in working order, it¡¯s a bit harder to put it back together again. Oh! That reminds me. I upgraded that delightful little knife of yours.¡±

    She gestured to my nanothorn dagger.

    ¡°I fixed the maintenance issues, so it should restore itself to its default state while it¡¯s sheathed. No more tedious cleaning process!¡±

    I blinked at her again. ¡°You what?¡±

    ¡°I got the idea from a couple of myths and legends,¡± Da Vinci explained, ¡°spruced up a bit, of course, with more enlightened, modern sensibilities. The sheath keeps a ¡®blueprint¡¯ of how the dagger is supposed to look and function, and whenever that knife is sheathed, it¡¯s restored from that blueprint. Naturally, there are some limitations, but no more muss and fuss, no more maintenance!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡±

    Incredible.

    I looked down at my nanothorn dagger. Defiant would have given his left arm for this.

    My cheek twitched.

    If he still had the original, that was, and hadn¡¯t replaced it with cybernetics.

    And if he hadn¡¯t been wiped out with the rest of humanity. I clutched the dagger tighter, because it might very well be the only thing left of him and Dragon, now.

    ¡°Thank you for this, Da Vinci.¡±

    She waved it off. ¡°I¡¯m just returning what belonged to you, now that I no longer need it.¡±

    ¡°Still. This means a lot.¡±

    She gave me one of her rare, gentle smiles, the genuine kind that really brought out the image of the painting this body of hers was based on, like she understood exactly what I was thinking.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid that¡¯s all of the good news I can give you,¡± she said. ¡°It wasn¡¯t just returning that knife of yours that brought me to you; I was heading towards the cafeteria myself, because I need to retrieve Rika, Ritsuka, and Mash.¡±

    My heart jumped into my throat.

    ¡°Now?¡±

    She nodded.

    ¡°Romani wants to get the briefing out of the way, so that by the time it¡¯s over, breakfast will have settled well enough that we can Rayshift you with all haste. I¡¯m afraid the two week break is over, now.¡±

    I took a deep, steadying breath.

    ¡°I understand. I¡¯ll go get ready.¡±

    ¡°No rush,¡± Da Vinci told me. ¡°The others will need time to get ready, as well, so don¡¯t feel like you have to race to your room and grab anything that might be even vaguely useful. Take your time.¡±

    She stepped around me and gave me a wave as she passed me by, walking back the way I¡¯d come toward the cafeteria. Her footsteps on the floor echoed long after the curve of the hallway blocked her from sight.

    Another short sigh huffed out of my nostrils, and dagger in hand, I continued my journey to my room until I came to a nondescript door alike to every other door in the facility, set apart only by the placard proclaiming, ¡°TAYLOR HEBERT¡± above ¡°MASTER CANDIDATE 9.¡± The door whooshed open, and I stepped into a room much like every other residential room in Chaldea: bland white walls, bland white ceiling, fluorescent bulbs that lit everything in a stark, white light.

    Like every room, it had a frankly spartan and vaguely uncomfortable looking bed, a communications console set into one wall, and a closet where I kept my clothes and my puppets. My understanding of the situation was that I could have requisitioned a space for a workshop, but I wasn¡¯t a magus by any stretch of the imagination, so I¡¯d never seen the point.

    There was also a desk with a laptop I¡¯d requisitioned and a small sort of rack where my tea supplies were stored, but the real sign of personality was the bookcase Marie had gone out of her way to get for me. It was fairly basic and rudimentary, with copies of all my old favorites sorted neatly in no particular order, but the thing that made it special was that Marie had gotten it for me, for no other apparent reason than that I wanted one.

    She¡¯d actually apologized for not being able to find an appropriately aged antique, like that even mattered more than the fact she¡¯d gone through the trouble of getting one at all.

    I grimaced and looked away. This wasn¡¯t a time to go getting sentimental over furniture.

    The first thing I pulled out was the uniform that doubled as a mystic code. Someone had tried to put me in a skirt for it, but I hadn¡¯t been amused at the suggestion that I go gallivanting through any form of combat zone in a pencil skirt and sheer hose, so pants it was. Next, I grabbed the comms device akin to the ones the twins had been wearing during Fuyuki, because I wasn¡¯t going to be caught without that again, and slipped it onto my wrist.

    Last¡­ I looked down at the puppets I¡¯d been trying to make work for the better part of the last year, and I left them in storage.

    If I was a better mage, I might not have had any issues. I¡¯d heard there were forms of magecraft that let you split your consciousness into partitions, and each partition could perform its own set of tasks simultaneously, but I didn¡¯t have the first clue how to do that, and I just couldn¡¯t leave the things on any form of autopilot. Controlling them all manually was too strong an urge to shake off, because I was just too used to that absolute control.

    Without my passenger, however, splitting my mind along a dozen or more different paths just wasn¡¯t possible.

    With everything settled and ready and all my gear in place ¡ª including the newly reacquired knife now fastened to my belt ¡ª I shut the door to my closet and left my room, striding with purpose to my next stop.

    I arrived at the Command Room without meeting anyone else in the hallway, and the door slid open to admit me, revealing the skeleton crew that was hard at work preparing for our next jump. Romani stood in the spot that belonged to the Director, where Marie should have been, poring over something on the tablet he held in one hand.

    ¡°Romani,¡± I greeted him.

    He looked up.

    ¡°Oh, Taylor,¡± he said. ¡°Good morning. You¡¯re the first one here. Did you sleep okay?¡±

    ¡°Well enough.¡±

    We fell into an awkward silence.

    After a moment, as though to justify it, he said, ¡°We¡¯re waiting on the others to get here. We¡¯ll go over the mission details when they do.¡±

    ¡°Right.¡±

    We fell into another silence, and rather than try to fill it again, Romani turned back to whatever he was doing on his tablet. I didn¡¯t bother, either, and just leaned up against the massive and needlessly oversized console, settling in to wait.

    It didn¡¯t help with the lingering frustration I was still carrying around, so I tried not to focus on the fact I was going to be leading two floundering newbies into what might very well be a warzone and instead think up different ways to handle the possible scenarios that might crop up in Orleans. Who we might wind up fighting, why, who might be our allies, and what to expect from the major powers in the area, at the time.

    On second thought, scratch that. The longer we could avoid catching the eyes of either the French king or the British commanders, the better off things would be. My knowledge of the circumstances of the time was a bit spotty, but it wasn¡¯t called the Hundred Years Teaparty. Neither side would take kindly to interlopers in strange clothes claiming to be from the distant future, not when witchcraft was one of the accusations that had been slung against Jeanne herself.

    Of course, depending on who wound up in possession of the Holy Grail or what the deviation from proper human history was, confronting or collaborating with either side might wind up being unavoidable.

    At last, the door slid open again, and in walked Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash, all suited up and ready to go themselves.

    ¡°Good morning, Mash, Ritsuka, Rika,¡± Romani greeted them warmly. ¡°I hope you all had a good night¡¯s sleep and ate breakfast, because we¡¯re jumping right into things from here.¡±

    Ritsuka glanced around. ¡°We¡¯re not bringing Emiya along?¡±

    ¡°For the time being, Emiya is staying here,¡± Romani answered. ¡°Our position being what it is, we¡¯d prefer not to overstress our systems, and we¡¯re expecting Taylor to attempt a summon shortly after you arrive in Orleans. Nonetheless, he¡¯ll be on standby, so if an emergency occurs, we can send him to join you as reinforcements. If you don¡¯t have any other pressing concerns¡­?¡±

    Nobody said anything. Romani nodded.

    ¡°Let¡¯s get right into the briefing, then.¡±

    He set his tablet down and turned to the console he stood in front of. His fingers danced across the touchpad keyboard, and a few seconds later, the three transparent panels that jutted up from the top of the console lit up, showing the map of the world in the center and two streams of unintelligible data on either side. A tap zoomed the map into the glowing dot planted in the middle of France.

    ¡°As I mentioned to you after Singularity F, we currently have data on seven more anomalous points in history. Of those seven, only two can be observed with high enough resolution to safely Rayshift the four of you. Since its deviation appears the mildest and its fluctuations are relatively stable, we¡¯ve decided that the first Singularity we¡¯re going to have you investigate takes place in Orleans during the year 1431. With me so far?¡±

    A round of nods answered him.

    ¡°Good.¡± He went on, ¡°The main goal of your expedition is to investigate the deviation itself and attempt to correct it. What exactly that means, we won¡¯t be able to say until you¡¯ve figured out what¡¯s happening on the ground. However, considering the events of Singularity F, there¡¯s a distinct probability that the deviation itself is the result of a Holy Grail, which means your secondary objective should actually coincide with your first. After all, strictly speaking, unless you¡¯re the Lord Second, time travel is impossible without a Holy Grail.¡±

    ¡°What about Rayshifting?¡± Ritsuka asked. ¡°Isn¡¯t that time travel?¡±

    ¡°This and that are two different things,¡± Romani said. ¡°Rayshifting might appear similar, but it¡¯s not time travel in the conventional sense. I¡¯d explain it further, but if I¡¯m entirely honest, the exact mechanics of it make my head hurt, so just take my word for it, okay?¡±

    Da Vinci chuckled quietly.

    ¡°Now,¡± he continued, ¡°as I said, we don¡¯t know it for certain, but it¡¯s the best guess we¡¯ve got. Having said that, you can¡¯t just do one or the other, here. If you don¡¯t either retrieve or destroy the Grail, then any efforts you make in correcting the distortion are meaningless. You have to do both in order to fix the Singularity.¡±

    ¡°Understood, Doctor Roman,¡± said Mash.

    ¡°I¡¯ll need you to establish a summoning circle, too, using Mash¡¯s shield,¡± Romani added. ¡°The instant you get your bearings, I want you to set that up. Not only should Taylor attempt a summoning right away, but without it, we won¡¯t be able to send you any supplies you might need in the field. Establishing that connection is going to be your first priority.¡±

    ¡°Why doesn¡¯t Senpai just try before we go?¡± Rika asked. ¡°I mean, we got Emiya just fine, didn¡¯t we? Couldn¡¯t she try summoning here, too?¡±

    ¡°A couple of different reasons,¡± Romani answered. ¡°Primarily, it¡¯s because I want to make sure the system will work outside of Chaldea¡¯s very controlled setting, but equally as important, you¡¯re very likely to summon a Servant related to the situation. Having someone who knows the lay of the land is going to be very useful for your mission. Now, if there are no other questions¡­?¡±

    The twins looked around, but no one spoke up. Romani nodded.

    ¡°Excellent. I know it¡¯s sudden and we¡¯re moving really fast, but we¡¯re going to Rayshift you immediately. We¡¯ve managed to get four coffins in working order for this, so I¡¯d like you to please head down to the Rayshift chamber now.¡±

    ¡°This way, boys and girls,¡± Da Vinci said, and we filed in behind her as she led us out of the Command Center and in the direction of the Rayshift Chamber.

    If I¡¯d looked back, I was sure I would have seen Romani watching us leave, brow furrowed in that sort of constipated expression he got whenever he was worried.

    A few minutes later, and the massive doors to the Rayshift Chamber slid open to admit our ragtag group.

    ¡°We didn¡¯t quite manage to get everything cleaned up, but the parts that need to be clear are clear, so please bear with it, for now,¡± Da Vinci said, and indeed, there were still marks and scars from the sabotage, still debris and fallen ceiling tiles. My eyes, on their own, searched out the spot where I had been pinned two weeks ago, waiting to die a slow death as the fire choked me, and my stomach did a funny little flip.

    The intercom crackled to life, and Romani¡¯s voice called down to us. ¡°I know I¡¯m repeating myself, but I¡¯m going to go over this one more time for you all. The instant you get your bearings, establish a summoning circle and try to summon another Servant. Without the convenient framework of a Holy Grail War, there¡¯s no telling what sort of enemies you might wind up facing, so you need to bring in backup immediately. If we have no other choice, we¡¯ll send Emiya as reinforcements.¡±

    I craned my neck to look up at the Command Room, but the angle was all wrong and the windows had apparently been one of the first things repaired.

    ¡°That Romani,¡± Da Vinci chuckled lowly, amused. ¡°He¡¯s such a mother hen, isn¡¯t he? Don¡¯t worry, everyone. It¡¯s not that he thinks you¡¯ve actually forgotten, but this is the only way he knows how to say that he¡¯s really nervous about this.¡±

    If he heard her, Romani didn¡¯t respond, and the floor beneath us opened up like a series of torpedo tubes. Four cylindrical devices rose up through them, things of metal with futuristic-looking designs and panes of what looked like glass over the front. The panes slid off the tubes and rose, showing the cushioned insides big enough for a grown man and then some.

    ¡°We managed to get these four coffins in working order,¡± Romani¡¯s voice said again. ¡°We¡¯ve already tested them, and they¡¯ve got full functionality, so don¡¯t worry about it. Just step inside so we can start the process ¡ª properly, this time. Da Vinci, if you don¡¯t want to be dragged along, I suggest you leave the Rayshift Chamber.¡±

    Da Vinci grinned and waved him off. ¡°What Romani isn¡¯t telling you is that I fixed those up myself, so there¡¯s nothing to worry about! They¡¯re as good as new!¡±

    ¡°So we just¡­climb in?¡± Rika asked uncertainly.

    ¡°They were designed for someone much bigger and taller than you, so there¡¯s plenty of room,¡± Da Vinci answered. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, they¡¯re no more crowded than a subway car in Tokyo! It¡¯s fine!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s as reassuring as you think it is,¡± Ritsuka mumbled, but he stepped into his a moment later anyway. Rika and Mash followed his lead, and I¡­

    I eyed the metal tube and tried not to think of being squished into a high school locker, shut in with the muck and the grime, left to rot for over an hour. Before, when we¡¯d been rushing to get ready to go to Singularity F, I hadn¡¯t had time to think about it.

    Now¡­

    Me and tight spaces didn¡¯t agree so much.

    ¡°Claustrophobic?¡± Da Vinci muttered sympathetically, so that the twins and Mash didn¡¯t hear.

    ¡°Something like that,¡± I replied quietly.

    There really wasn¡¯t anything for it, was there? I wasn¡¯t about to be beaten by a metal tube, not after everything.

    The world didn¡¯t end when I stepped inside my own coffin (and didn¡¯t that sound morbid, out of context). The walls didn¡¯t close in. I wasn¡¯t crushed. Bugs and blood and shit didn¡¯t bubble up from the bottom and drown me.

    Now if only I could actually convince myself none of that was going to happen.

    ¡°Good luck, everyone,¡± Romani¡¯s voice came. ¡°Come back alive.¡±

    The pane of glass slid back into place, and with a click, it locked. Da Vinci gave me a little smile and a wave and left, and I had to close my eyes and swallow against the panic starting to well up in my belly. I forced myself to take long, slow breaths, even as my heart pounded away in my ribcage and the world seemed to compress down to me and that tube, growing ever smaller.

    It made me feel weak. Pathetic. All I¡¯d done, all the steps I¡¯d taken, all of the things, great and small, that I¡¯d accomplished, and I was being brought low by a fucking piece of Tupperware.

    The intercom crackled back to life and a neutral, computerized voice announced:

    UNSUMMON PROGRAM START

    SPIRITRON CONVERSION START

    A cool sensation swept down my body, starting at the very top of my head and traveling all the way down to my fingers and toes. The glass of the coffin suddenly turned opaque, and I had to fight to keep my breathing under control so that I didn¡¯t hyperventilate right then and there.

    Could they even call the whole thing off, at this stage?

    I just had to hold on, hold on, hold on until it was over. Less than a minute. Thirty seconds, tops. I could do that.

    RAYSHIFTING STARTING IN 3¡­

    2¡­

    1¡­

    Light rushed up the coffin interior, streams of light, and the world fell away as I was pulled through a canal of stars, out into infinity. I looked out as my body was drawn along and gazed upon the cosmos, so grand, so vast, a symphony of wonder and majesty that made me feel so very small, so very humbled.

    For an instant, I thought I saw something gaze back.

    ALL PROCEDURES CLEARED

    GRAND ORDER COMMENCING OPERATION

 Chapter XIII: Tyranny of the Light

    Chapter XIII: Tyranny of the Light

    There was a strange moment of weightless nothingness. An eternity passed in a second. A second passed in an eternity. I hung, blind, deaf, deprived of everything, including the sound of my own heartbeat, suspended between one thought and the next, completely disconnected from my own body.

    I was the void, and the void was me.

    And then gravity reasserted itself. I slammed feet first into the ground, staggering under the return of everything I¡¯d been missing as light, sound, taste, touch, smell, they all returned at once. The food in my stomach threatened to violently pull itself up my throat, and I had to slap a hand over my mouth as my head spun and my thoughts were pulled in a thousand different directions.

    Nearby, there were a pair of miserable groans that told me the twins had made it, too, relatively unscathed.

    Fuck. If that was what Rayshifting was like normally, I was suddenly thankful that I¡¯d been unconscious the first time it happened.

    ¡°I¡¯m really regretting having an extra helping of Emiya¡¯s pancakes,¡± Rika said queasily.

    ¡°I¡¯m regretting eating any breakfast at all,¡± Ritsuka agreed faintly.

    I closed my eyes for a long moment, trying to settle my own stomach, but the disorientation from the Rayshift was proving difficult to shake off. I still didn¡¯t feel entirely there, in fact. There was a strange disconnect between my head and my body, a thinness to my thoughts, like both I and my very essence were spread out through the land around us, into the soil, the air, the trees in the near distance.

    To the side, Mash let out a tired sigh. ¡°We managed to make it here safely, Senpai, and we¡¯re all intact. Rayshift successful. I¡¯m glad it still worked properly, now that it was an intentional Rayshift instead of the accidental one that took us to Fuyuki.¡±

    ¡°Fou, fou!¡±

    I blinked, trying to steady my thoughts, and looked at the little creature perched on top of Mash¡¯s shoulder.

    ¡°Fou?¡± Mash asked. ¡°Did you tag along, again?¡±

    ¡°Fou!¡±

    ¡°I guess that answers the question of whether Fou can Rayshift,¡± Ritsuka said as he walked over to Mash. He held out a hand, finger extended, and Fou nipped at him playfully.

    ¡°He must have snuck into one of our coffins.¡± Mash reached up and gave it a scratch behind the ears. ¡°Fortunately, that means he¡¯ll come back with us when we Rayshift out of this Singularity, so as long as we keep him safe, we shouldn¡¯t have to worry.¡±

    The world spun, swinging wildly from right to left and up to down. Rika didn¡¯t seem any more bothered than her brother as she joined him, petting Fou a little herself.

    ¡°He¡¯s a little troublemaker, isn¡¯t he?¡± she asked. ¡°I guess he must really want to get out of Chaldea, too. Maybe he got a little restless, having to look at those white walls every day.¡±

    ¡°Maybe.¡± Mash¡¯s smile disappeared as she looked over my way, and her brow furrowed with worry. ¡°Miss Taylor? Are you okay?¡±

    ¡°F-fine,¡± I managed to say, but my lips felt weird saying it. I tried to stand up straight, but I almost pitched over sideways before I caught myself.

    ¡°Senpai!¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor!¡±

    Naturally, the others didn¡¯t take me at my word, and they rushed over, fussing over me, just close enough that they could catch me if I fell.

    ¡°Is something wrong?¡± Rika asked.

    ¡°Maybe she¡¯s having a reaction to the Rayshift,¡± Ritsuka suggested.

    ¡°She was fine in Fuyuki!¡± Rika said.

    ¡°We don¡¯t know how she was when she arrived,¡± Mash pointed out. ¡°After all, we didn¡¯t see her immediately after we landed. She might have been like this last time, too.¡±

    ¡°Is there anything we can do?¡±

    Mash¡¯s helpless grimace wasn¡¯t the answer she probably wanted.

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­¡±

    I closed my eyes, and the galaxy spun under my eyelids. It only made my disorientation worse.

    ¡°I¡­¡±

    My head tilted and wobbled. My center of gravity was off, skewed. No, my proprioception, because I still felt like I was extended out into the world around me. I was stretched too thin, pulled in too many directions, and my body couldn¡¯t figure out how to handle that.

    The twins exchanged a helpless, frightened look.

    ¡°We need to contact Doctor Roman,¡± Mash said.

    Something flitted in the periphery. I tried to follow it with my eyes and turned my head, but it was already gone, spinning around and swerving around behind me before I could find it. Whatever it was, no one else had apparently seen it.

    ¡°Right,¡± Ritsuka agreed. ¡°He¡¯ll know what to do.¡±

    The something flitted past again, and my head swiveled as I tried to watch it, but it was moving too fast and too erratically, and when I tried to focus my eyes on it, there was nothing there.

    But there was. I knew there was. I could feel it, see it, even if my eyes couldn¡¯t quite pick it out. It flitted past again, and I caught it out of the corner of my vision as it moved past me again. Whatever it was, it was fast.

    ¡°I need to establish a summoning circle,¡± Mash said. ¡°But ¡ª oh, we need to find a ley line for that, don¡¯t we?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think Senpai¡¯s up for walking,¡± said Rika.

    ¡°There has to be somewhere we can put her while we look. Maybe if one of us stays behind?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s no good, Master. What if you get attacked while I¡¯m away? There¡¯s no one to protect you, and Miss Taylor isn¡¯t in any shape to help.¡±

    If I just waited a moment, waited for it to pass by, I should be able to ¡ª there.

    My hand whipped out, lightning fast, and closed around the something I¡¯d been seeing. The others cut off and turned to me, and they watched as I twisted my wrist around, uncurled my fingers, and revealed my target.

    A ladybug.

    My stomach twisted.

    ¡°Miss Taylor?¡±

    ¡°Senpai?¡±

    No. No, it wasn¡¯t possible. Was it?

    The ladybug on my hand stayed, utterly still and completely motionless. I gave it a mental prod, both akin and not to the way I¡¯d talked to Caster when I was his Master, and the ladybug fluttered its wings once, then returned to placidity.

    ¡°Miss Taylor? Are you okay?¡±

    There was no way. We were almost six hundred years in the past. It was still five hundred some years too early. There was absolutely no way this could be what I thought it was. Could it?

    Passenger?

    There was no answer. But then, there never had been, had there? The closest thing we had ever gotten to communicating with each other was at the end, where the line between us had blurred until even I wasn¡¯t sure which of us had been in control and which was the passenger.

    I relaxed my mental grip on the ladybug, and it unfurled its wings and took off now that I was no longer controlling it directly. I watched it go, first with my eyes, and then when my eyes lost track, with that familiar new other sense, that extended proprioception.

    ¡°I¡¯m more than okay, Mash.¡±

    It made sense, now, the disorientation. I was spread out into the soil and the grass and the trees ¡ª into the plethora of bugs inhabiting them, the worms and the ants and the beetles and the bees. It was just that I¡¯d forgotten what that felt like, being just one part of a larger whole. Having a swarm to disappear into.

    ¡°I¡¯m better than I have been in over two years.¡±

    I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and the galaxy behind my eyelids took on new meaning now that I knew exactly what each point of light was. If I reached out, I could touch each and every single one of them, could know them down to their most intimate details, no matter how gross or weird. They were all under my control, were I merely to flex my will and command it so.

    And so I took an iron grip on that galaxy, and I forced it into a familiar shape, weaving the mental position of each star and each planetoid and each and every part until I was at the very center, inevitable, inexorable, like a black hole.

    When I opened my eyes again to the concerned faces of my comrades, I realized I was smiling.

    Rika and Ritsuka both looked unnerved, like they hadn¡¯t seen anything like it on my face before and they weren¡¯t sure how to deal with it. At that moment, I didn¡¯t particularly care.

    I¡¯d spent two years trying to escape the trap of being a ¡°normal¡± human again, and I¡¯d just been handed a part of me I¡¯d lost. Of course I was happy.

    My legs straightened and I rolled my shoulders as I stood properly. I was still a little disoriented, but that would pass as I got used to my expanded proprioception again.

    ¡°We need to find a ley line to tap into, right?¡± I asked. ¡°We need to perform that summoning as quickly as we can. There¡¯s no telling whether or not we were noticed on the way in.¡±

    Mash jolted. ¡°R-right! Yes, Miss Taylor! U-um, give me a moment, I¡¯ll try and find a direction, at least.¡±

    I turned to the twins. ¡°What do you two know about the Hundred Years War?¡±

    They shared a somewhat panicked look, like a pair of students who hadn¡¯t realized there was going to be a quiz and they hadn¡¯t studied.

    ¡°Um¡­¡± said Rika.

    ¡°It¡¯s a war that lasted a hundred years?¡± Ritsuka ventured.

    I bit back a sigh.

    I had to be patient, I reminded myself. They were just kids, kids in over their heads, and they had none of the experience or the formal training I and the rest of Team A had gone through. It wasn¡¯t like I could expect a Japanese high school to teach about a complicated political quagmire in faraway France from six hundred years ago, either.

    ¡°The war itself wasn¡¯t actually fought nonstop the whole hundred years,¡± Mash told them helpfully. ¡°1431, the year we¡¯re in, was actually one of the lulls in the fighting. Which isn¡¯t to say there wasn¡¯t any fighting at all, only that it wasn¡¯t as intense as it was at other points of the war. It wasn¡¯t uncommon at times like these for captured knights to be ransomed back instead of kept prisoner or executed ¡ª Senpai?¡±

    Ritsuka was no longer paying attention; something had caught his eye, and he was staring up into the sky, head tilted back and mouth slightly open. There wasn¡¯t anything I could feel with my bugs, so I looked up to see ¡ª

    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    What?

    ¡°Something wrong, Onii ¡ª whoa.¡±

    What the fuck was that?

    ¡°Oh,¡± Mash said faintly.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Ritsuka began slowly, ¡°what is that?¡±

    It was probably supposed to be flattering that he thought of me as so knowledgeable.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± was the only response I could give him.

    A ring of light hung in the sky, utterly massive and impossibly distant. It looked like the storm wall of a hurricane, seen from the eye of the tempest, and with how far up it was, it had to encircle the entirety of the Singularity. Outside of it was normal sky, everyday blue dotted with clouds, but inside of it was dark, like all of the light that should have been there was being sucked into the ring, repurposed into¡­whatever it was that ring was supposed to be doing.

    Nothing good, almost certainly. It reminded me of Phir Se¡¯s attack, the one he used against Behemoth in India. Not in shape, but in scale and function. How devastating would it be if all of the energy bound up in that ring were unleashed at once?

    Another thought occurred to me.

    ¡°Was this in Fuyuki, too?¡± I wondered.

    There was no way to be sure, because the clouds had hidden the sky the entire time, but it was possible, wasn¡¯t it? Something that enormous, that high up, that was obviously not natural, so it must have been related somehow to these Singularities. Was it the cause? Or did it form the boundary of the altered spacetime, encircling everything that had been twisted out of its proper shape?

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°¡­and we¡¯re connected!¡± Romani¡¯s voice said brightly. ¡°Mash, Ritsuka, Rika, Taylor, it looks like the Rayshift succeeded without any problems, you¡¯re ¡ª is something wrong? What¡¯s everyone looking at?¡±

    ¡°Just a moment, Romani,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯ll send you a visual.¡±

    I lifted one arm up and over my head, taking aim with the comms device on my wrist, and then pressed a button on the band, like I was streaming a video from a camera. I couldn¡¯t say I understood how it all worked or why he could get a look at our faces but needed one of us to see anything outside our immediate vicinity, but it was probably one of those limitations that the technicians understood and I just had to pretend I did.

    He was observing us in an altered spacetime from six hundred years in the future. This was already pretty miraculous.

    ¡°Whoa,¡± said Romani, eyes wide.

    ¡°Any idea what we¡¯re looking at, here?¡±

    ¡°Some form of magecraft cast over satellite orbit?¡± he guessed. ¡°There¡¯s no record of a phenomenon like that in historical 1431, so it¡¯s definitely related to the Singularity somehow, but without a better read on it, I don¡¯t have the first clue how. In any case, it¡¯s absolutely massive. I think it¡¯s big enough to cover North America entirely.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡±

    Way bigger than I thought.

    The Simurgh, maybe Leviathan or Behemoth, Scion, they all could have probably done something like that. Capes, though? This was way beyond them. Magi, too. Just going by what I knew, making something on that scale at that distance, there was no magus alive with the raw power needed to pull it off.

    Thinking back to that fount of magical energy in Fuyuki, though¡­

    ¡°Do we think it¡¯s related to the Holy Grail, somehow? A sign of its manifestation?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s possible, but I doubt it,¡± said Romani. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, there¡¯s just not much I can tell you about it. We¡¯ll have to analyze it further from our end and see if we can¡¯t determine more about its purpose or origins.¡±

    I grimaced. Yeah, I hadn¡¯t been expecting much. It was worth a shot, at least.

    ¡°Thank you, Doctor Roman,¡± said Mash.

    Romani chuckled in that self-deprecating way of his. ¡°It¡¯s literally my job now, so don¡¯t worry about it. Speaking of jobs, though. I hate to be pushy, but you guys should get moving. Things are safe for now, but there¡¯s no telling what attention your Rayshift might have drawn, and standing around out in the open just makes you huge targets.¡±

    ¡°Good point,¡± I agreed.

    ¡°There are no Servants nearby, right?¡± Rika asked suddenly. There was a tightness to her voice.

    Ritsuka glanced at her, brow furrowed. Romani shook his head.

    ¡°The only Saint Graph I can detect within a mile of you is Mash. You¡¯re all in the clear, for now, at least as far as I can tell. Still.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Mash, nodding. ¡°First, we have to find a ley line. Then, Miss Taylor will attempt to summon a Servant to assist us in this Singularity. From there, we should begin our investigation of this Singularity.¡±

    ¡°Be careful,¡± Romani cautioned. ¡°I shouldn¡¯t need to tell you guys, but there¡¯s no way of knowing who or what your enemy will wind up being. Don¡¯t go picking fights you don¡¯t have to, but don¡¯t expect everyone you meet will be happy to see you.¡±

    And with that happy bit of advice delivered, his image vanished.

    ¡°So, where do we find a ley line, exactly?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°We¡¯re looking for a terminal, a place where magical energy converges, like we did in Fuyuki,¡± Mash explained. ¡°It¡¯s not always the case, but most cities are built atop at least one, because strong ley lines tend to result in prosperity for those who live atop them.¡±

    Ritsuka nodded. ¡°So if we want to find one of these Ley Line Terminals, we have to find a city first, right?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll need to scout it out, first,¡± I put in. ¡°If we go rushing in without any idea of who¡¯s where, we could get mistaken for an enemy patrol by whichever side is quartered there.¡±

    Ritsuka looked at me. ¡°Whichever side?¡±

    ¡°The English controlled large parts of France throughout the latter half of the Hundred Years War,¡± said Mash. ¡°It was only after Jeanne d¡¯Arc helped to turn the tide and Charles VII was officially crowned that the tide began to turn and England lost some of its grip. Even at this point, however, the English still had large numbers of troops and mercenary contingents stationed in various parts of France.¡±

    ¡°Do we have any idea where we are now?¡± I asked her.

    Mash pursed her lips and brought up her wrist; I couldn¡¯t see the hologram clearly enough to read what must have been a map.

    ¡°The geographical map Da Vinci made for us shows that we¡¯re a few miles north of Domr¨¦my, close to Vaucouleurs. That might be a good place to start.¡±

    Mimicking her, I brought up my own map, an exquisitely detailed thing that looked more like a picture taken by a satellite than something that had been drawn by hand, with settlements labeled in bold, stark letters and our own position denoted by a bright, red dot. Sure enough, we weren¡¯t all that far from Vaucouleurs, although it wasn¡¯t like it was just over the hill, either.

    I nodded. ¡°Then that¡¯s where we¡¯ll start.¡±

    ¡°Based upon our current position, it should take us about an hour and a half to reach Vaucouleurs.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s face twisted into a tight grimace, and Rika let out a long, miserable groan. I pretended I hadn¡¯t heard it.

    ¡°We¡¯d better get going, then.¡±

    ¡°Senpai is a slave driver,¡± Rika muttered.

    I pretended I didn¡¯t hear that, either.

    Despite their complaints and their grumblings, the twins didn¡¯t try to drag their feet when we started walking. Maybe Fuyuki had impressed upon them the severity of the situation, the true weight of the stakes we were playing for, or maybe they just didn¡¯t want to be thought of as weak or incompetent compared to the tall, skinny American girl.

    Maybe the little speech I¡¯d given them at the base of the mountain had stuck, or maybe I¡¯d struck a chord two weeks ago. There wasn¡¯t a way for me to be sure, and I wasn¡¯t about to just come out and ask if they¡¯d grown up between then and now.

    ¡°What do we know about Vaucouleurs?¡± I asked Mash as we went.

    She frowned thoughtfully. ¡°It should be French-controlled, at this point of the War. Jeanne stayed there briefly, while she was waiting to receive an audience with Charles VII. A garrison of the French levies should be stationed there.¡±

    It was tempting to think of that as ¡°friendlies.¡± Especially as an American, the States¡¯ somewhat biased view of English aggression made the French the ¡°good guys¡± of the Hundred Years War. The reality of it was that we weren¡¯t likely to be well-received, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because the French would be suspicious of strangers showing up out of nowhere for any reason, let alone something as ludicrous as correcting historical inaccuracies.

    The fact that America wouldn¡¯t exist for another three-hundred years wouldn¡¯t make convincing anyone any easier. The fact it was another five-hundred before a concept like the UN would even be imagined, let alone convened, wouldn¡¯t help, either.

    We could pretend to be travelers, maybe, but it was going to be hard managing it, when we were decked out in our fancy mystic codes and carrying nothing but the clothes on our backs. Of course, the biggest problem might wind up being the one that had nothing at all to do with any of that.

    ¡°And if the deviation from proper history is that Jeanne never left home to seek out Charles VII?¡±

    What if the English won the Hundred Years War?

    Mash grimaced. ¡°In that case, restoring events to how they were supposed to be might be much more difficult.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s that bad?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°Jeanne d¡¯Arc almost single-handedly turned the war around for the French,¡± I said. ¡°If she was delayed for some reason and the English gained too much of an upperhand, or worse, if Jeanne died before she could make it to Charles VII¡¯s court¡­¡±

    Would we have to take her place?

    My lips twitched. Taylor Hebert, the Maid of Orleans? What a thought that was. Even if my last name had French origins, trying to say I had that strong a connection to the land of my ancestors was stretching it by a country mile, wasn¡¯t it?

    ¡°Or maybe,¡± Mash said lowly, ¡°Jeanne was never captured, and the only way to restore the proper course of history is to ensure she¡¯s executed.¡±

    The twins both gasped. ¡°W-what?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a distinct possibility as well,¡± I said with an impossible nonchalance. The agitated buzz of the local insects would have given away how much that thought bothered me, if anyone here knew to look for it.

    ¡°S-Senpai!¡± Rika said. ¡°You can¡¯t mean ¡ª !¡±

    ¡°Our job is to correct history gone awry,¡± I told her. ¡°The form that takes isn¡¯t always going to be pretty or palatable.¡±

    ¡°You want us to be murderers,¡± Ritsuka accused me hotly.

    I thought, for a second, of one of my greatest regrets, staring down an innocent toddler and knowing, knowing that I could be wrong, knowing that she might have been entirely unrelated to the prediction that Jack Slash would cause the apocalypse, knowing that there wasn¡¯t any certainty her kidnapping fit into all the predictions¡­

    And pulling the trigger anyways, because whether it was true or not, whether she was related to the end of the world or not, it was a kinder fate than letting Jack sink his claws into her and raise her as one of his Nine.

    But calling it a mercy didn¡¯t make it any less of a murder.

    ¡°We are whatever we need to be to restore humanity, Ritsuka, Rika, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us. That is what it means to be a Master of Chaldea.¡±

    ¡°Senpai¡­ No. Master,¡± Mash said. ¡°If we don¡¯t do this, then humanity itself will be erased. Everyone in the entire world will be incinerated.¡±

    ¡°Mash¡­¡± Ritsuka said, voice raw.

    I took pity on them.

    ¡°We don¡¯t know what we¡¯ll need to do, anyway,¡± I said. ¡°You heard Romani. The likely cause of the deviation in the first place is a Holy Grail, like the one Saber had in Fuyuki. Throwing history off course without one simply isn¡¯t possible. Retrieving that should be our first goal, and once we have it, things might return to normal on their own.¡±

    The twins¡­didn¡¯t seem reassured by that, exactly, but some of the tension left them. I didn¡¯t tell them that it wasn¡¯t going to be that easy, and frankly, after how many close calls we¡¯d had in Fuyuki, they should have already known that. The fact we¡¯d all come away uninjured didn¡¯t mean Medusa hadn¡¯t been incredibly close to killing all of us, before C¨²chulainn had stepped in to lend a hand.

    Talk of having to kill Jeanne had murdered the conversation, though, so we kept walking mostly in silence. The only thing I could do was hope that it wouldn¡¯t come down, at the end of it, to having to personally kill a celebrated martyr whose only crime was wanting to help her country push out an invading nation.

    Some part of me hoped that our final enemy would be a living person, someone we could simply take the Grail from by force without too much trouble. Failing that, have it be a Servant, someone who was already dead and had no future to speak of. Killing a Servant might have been harder, but it would be easier on everyone¡¯s consciences.

    I had a niggling dread that it wasn¡¯t going to be that clean, though. Maybe I was being a pessimist, but nothing in my career had ever been so simple and easy.

    Another hour passed mostly in silence as we traversed the French countryside, with the sun shining down on our backs and the ring of light hanging above like the watchful gaze of some distant god. With nothing else to hold my attention, I found myself thinking wistfully about what a shame it was that we couldn¡¯t enjoy the simple beauty of the land around us, the lush grass, the beaten dirt road, the fields of flowers and the clear sky.

    What little girl hadn¡¯t wanted to visit Paris when she grew up, if she had the chance? To see the old world in all its majesty, where so many important, historical events had occurred? Who wouldn¡¯t want to walk through and glimpse the hamlets and little villages whose buildings still hadn¡¯t quite caught up with the times, almost perfectly preserved snapshots of yesteryear, like a bee trapped in amber?

    Here we were now, in a time when those places were still young and new, and we just couldn¡¯t take the time to see them, not with the threat of an unknown enemy looming in the distance.

    I guess even I still had that little girl inside me somewhere.

    Unprompted, Mash lifted her wrist and brought up her map again. ¡°There¡¯s a small forest up ahead,¡± she said quietly. ¡°Once we¡¯ve passed through it, Vaucouleurs should come into view.¡±

    ¡°And then we get Senpai a Servant,¡± Rika mumbled.

    I swallowed.

    I was still nervous. If I got someone like C¨²chulainn, that would have been fine, I think. A great hero who could really lend us a hand, that would be best, both for my own sanity and for very practical reasons. Perhaps not King Arthur, now that I¡¯d seen her dark side, but Achilles or Heracles or some other great name, any of those would work well.

    Summoning an Assassin was what I dreaded.

    Calling the forest we entered a forest was a bit of a misnomer. The beaten path we were walking along was broad, likely having been cleared for the purposes of troop deployments or trade routes, and the trees around us were sparser and further spaced than, say, a tropical rainforest, with far less underbrush. The only wildlife in the vicinity was mostly birds and a few small mammals, and they were all keeping far away from us.

    And then, as the other end of the forest came into view, we heard it.

    A roar.

    We all froze. The twins shared a look, and then turned to me and Mash. ¡°What was that?¡±

    Another roar, clearer this time, louder. My brow furrowed, because I was sure I must have been mishearing it.

    ¡°That¡­¡±

    ¡°Senpai?¡±

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t match anything I¡¯ve ever heard from documentaries,¡± Mash said slowly.

    Because it wouldn¡¯t, would it? I¡¯d watched documentaries, too, heard lions, tigers, bears, all sorts of different animals yip, yowl, snarl, and growl, and they were all distinctive in their own way. You could mistake one big cat for another, but never a lion for a bear or a tiger for an elephant.

    This¡­ I¡¯d heard this from only one thing before.

    ¡°There¡¯s no way. Not here.¡±

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Rika asked nervously.

    I took off at a dead sprint, racing towards the edge of the woods, and as I went, I gathered up as much of a swarm as I could, pulling them forward with me. I didn¡¯t have time to grab whatever spiders lurked in their hiding places, and my collection wound up eclectic and mostly harmless, because there just wasn¡¯t much to choose from in terms of dangerous or venomous bugs.

    One nest of wasps would just have to do.

    Up ahead, I was already sending whatever fliers I could into the air to try and scope things out, to try and prove my worst instinct wrong, but my hand still went to my knife, the very knife that now might be the only real weapon I had against the kind of enemy that I was definitely not prepared to be facing in mid-fifteenth century France.

    I cleared the forest, and further on down the road, a small town with a fortified garrison came into view as I jolted to a sudden stop.

    ¡°Senpai!¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor!¡±

    The others came up behind me.

    ¡°Senpai, what¡¯s wrong?¡± Ritsuka asked. ¡°Do you know ¡ª¡±

    Mash gasped.

    My lips pulled into a grimace, and I glared ahead at our enemy as though I could set it alight with my stare alone.

    An enemy I¡¯d fought before, from a certain point of view. Not the genuine article, but one that managed a decent enough imitation that he¡¯d named himself after the word for it in a different language. A creature of myth and legend, the epitome of power and strength, a symbol of avarice and evil.

    Once, my swarm had emasculated him. Once, I¡¯d carved out his eyes. Once, he had burned off my ruined arm, because the alternative was to let it cripple me for the rest of the fight.

    ¡°Dragons.¡±

 Chapter XIV: Sinner and Saint

    Chapter XIV: Sinner and Saint

    The dragon¡¯s roar seemed to shake the world, and answering screams came from the fort in the distance as it descended like the wrath of some terrible, pitiless god.

    I broke into a run. I didn¡¯t even think about whether it was a good idea or not. All I saw was an enemy ¡ª a familiar one, one I knew how to fight and beat, one I now had the tools to beat, again.

    ¡°Senpai!¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor! Wait!¡±

    My swarm rose up, from the grass, from the trees, from every nook and cranny where they¡¯d been hiding, waiting, living, and they took to the air ahead of me, around me, and the buzz of their wings was like a heavy drone that I felt within me as much as I heard, vibrating through my whole body and soul. Neither the dragon nor the soldiers racing back towards safety could miss them, and as the soldiers broke whatever ranks they had managed to muster to defend against the beast, the beast itself turned away from them and towards me.

    I didn¡¯t waste any time. The instant it was in range, I set my swarm to harrying it. My harmless fliers, the ones that didn¡¯t have any hard offense, they honed in on its maw of sharp teeth and its nostrils. The sole nest of wasps I¡¯d managed to collect, they focused on its eyes and swooped down, stingers ready, venom set to deploy.

    My plan fell apart almost immediately.

    I¡¯d known, intellectually, that actual dragons were much different from Lung. They were existences of fantasy rather than passengers meddling, creatures that man didn¡¯t understand and so had gained a degree of power that modern weapons couldn¡¯t touch. Lung¡¯s scales, I could have cut through. Punched through with a knife or a bullet, or failing that, one of Bitch¡¯s dogs could have torn him up with their teeth. His mouth was armored, but although his biology was strange and inhuman, he himself was still just as human as any other cape. I could have drowned him in bugs, the same way I had Alexandria, if I wasn¡¯t afraid to lose twice the number to his flames.

    A real dragon, it turned out, wasn¡¯t that easy to put down.

    My harmless fliers came within reach of the dragon¡¯s mouth and nostrils, and the sheer power, the dense magical energy in its breath killed them immediately, overloaded their bodies until they burst, raining their guts down to the ground in a disgusting shower of yellowish viscera. The beast swung its long neck to and fro, and with every pass, anything that came within three feet of its fangs simply exploded.

    The wasps didn¡¯t fare much better. They flew towards the beast¡¯s eyes, stingers out, and thrust them with all their meager strength towards the vulnerable tissue, but when the narrow points came into contact with the dragon¡¯s eyes, they skidded off, like there was some membrane as strong as iron that they just couldn¡¯t penetrate.

    A dragon¡¯s entire body was Mystery. I hadn¡¯t thought much of that lesson, at the time, beyond filing away the important bit for later: Mystery could only be beaten by a stronger Mystery. It had sounded like sophistry, like some zen koan that was supposed to be incredibly insightful or a recursive argument that wound back on itself.

    I was beginning to see what it meant, now. A dragon was a creature of mystery that existed in the realm of fantasy, and that meant that the only way to kill it was to have enough magical power to hurt it. My bugs, meagre existences that had so little strength on their own, either in the physical sense or the magical sense, couldn¡¯t even pierce its flesh, let alone the scales that covered it like armor. Even my wasps couldn¡¯t hope to hurt it at all.

    The only thing they were good for was a distraction.

    It meant I had to reorient my plan, because there was no way for me to bring this thing down by myself, not the way I had those skeletons in Fuyuki. No, of course not, what had I been thinking? C¨²chulainn had said it himself ¡ª skeletons, reanimated corpses, were the lowest of the low in terms of magical beasts and familiars. Any mage worth her salt could pick them apart, as long as their numbers weren¡¯t overwhelming.

    My bugs were the same way. They had always been the same way. It was just that humans could be brought down by stings and bites in ways something like this couldn¡¯t.

    My thoughts raced, and as my bugs adjusted their courses to focus on its eyes ¡ª to block the dragon¡¯s vision, even if only with the sheer volume of bodies that buzzed around its head ¡ª a new plan started to form.

    I wouldn¡¯t be able to do it by myself, though. I¡¯d need some help from someone with the raw strength to hurt it. Fortunately, there was just such a person running behind me.

    ¡°Mash!¡± I shouted. ¡°Bring it down!¡±

    ¡°W-what?¡± she called back.

    ¡°To the ground, Mash!¡±

    Through my swarm, the small number of bugs I¡¯d stuck to the rest of the team more via old habit than conscious consideration, I felt her shift as she turned to the twins.

    ¡°Master ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Do it, Mash!¡± Ritsuka ordered.

    ¡°Y-yes!¡±

    And then, she leapt into the air, far, far too high for a human to manage, still carrying that massive shield around like it weighed nothing at all, and my bugs parted in front of her to give her a clear path to her target.

    ¡°Hiyaaah!¡±

    The thud of her shield making contact reverberated throughout my swarm, and the dragon let out a roar that I could only interpret as pain as the edge of the bottom spoke slammed into the base of its neck, right between the wing joints. The beast spasmed, and its wings flopped helplessly as it lost the rhythm that kept it aloft. Without that, it dropped like a stone towards the ground.

    I was already racing towards it as it fell, my knife in hand.

    Could I kill a dragon? I didn¡¯t know. I wasn¡¯t at all sure, and I was keenly aware that this was incredibly dangerous. The better idea was to just let Mash finish it off, whack it over the head until she smashed its brains or whatever. A gross way to end the thing, but letting a dragon rampage throughout the French countryside sounded like something we weren¡¯t supposed to let happen.

    But some part of me needed to know. Was I strong enough? Was my knife, hodgepodge mess of magecraft and tinkertech that it was, powerful enough to hurt it?

    The dragon landing shook the ground beneath my feet, but I kept running. It wasn¡¯t far, and as long as I was fast enough¡­

    I wasn¡¯t. The dragon remained stunned for only a few seconds, and even running full tilt, I couldn¡¯t cross the distance in enough time. It was already starting to stir.

    ¡°Mash! Keep it down!¡±

    Mash landed atop one of its wings with a crunch, driving her heels into the joint where the bones were weakest, and as the dragon cried out, she flipped up, took hold of her shield with both hands, and slammed it down into the ground next to the dragon¡¯s neck. The left spoke came down on the beast¡¯s neck like a hammer, driving it back to the earth with another thud that left it dazed.

    I didn¡¯t have time to inspect it, but as I raced towards it, in some distant, faraway place, I was surprised at how small it turned out to be. Big, still big, but not any larger than one of Bitch¡¯s dogs. I clambered astride the neck as quickly as I could, my heart thundering in my ears, took hold of my knife with both hands, and drove the tip towards the base of the skull, right at the top of the spine. A killshot.

    It skidded off. The scales were just too strong.

    My options ran through my mind at light speed. There weren¡¯t many. If my knife couldn¡¯t get through its tough hide and its mouth was filled with dangerous, sharp teeth and a breath that could burn the flesh off my bones, where else could I attack it? Where else would it be vulnerable?

    If it worked on Lung¡­

    The fingers of one hand wrapped around one of the horns protruding from its head as I threw myself forward and drove my knife into one of its eyes.

    After a moment of resistance, the blade sank in like butter.

    The beast bucked beneath me, tossing its head back, roaring, and I had to wrap my legs around its neck to keep from being thrown off. The horns threatened to skewer me, and I was keenly aware of the one jutting out past my hip that would gut me with one wrong move, but somehow, I managed to stay on.

    ¡°Miss Taylor!¡± Mash called.

    I ignored her, twisting the nanothorn dagger in the soft tissue of the beast¡¯s eye with a savage wrench, and then my thumb flicked the switch to turn it on.

    Blood spewed forth, splattering over my hand and fingers in a fine, crimson mist. My dagger sank deeper in, and the dragon¡¯s thrashing grew worse as I clung to it with all my strength, trying to keep its undulating neck from tossing me off. The hum of the nanothorns was all but unnoticeable under the noise of the beast¡¯s suffering.

    Deeper and deeper my dagger went, further and further into the skull until my hand was wrist deep into its eye socket, and then, suddenly, the dragon jerked and collapsed, every part of it sagging into the dirt like a puppet whose strings had been cut. My entire torso rocked forward, and the smooth, rounded shaft of the threatening horn pressed hard against my side, like a warning of just how close I¡¯d come to a mortal wound myself

    I held, for a moment, heart still pounding, pressing my dagger ever deeper and keeping it there just to make sure.

    But the dragon didn¡¯t stir, didn¡¯t so much as twitch, and it had gone completely silent. It wasn¡¯t even breathing anymore.

    It was dead.

    My finger flicked the switch again, and the dagger turned off as I slowly extracted it from out of the creature¡¯s head with a sickening squelch. When I looked down at it, the entire thing was coated in blood and small bits of vaguely pink blobs that I didn¡¯t really want to think too hard about. My sleeve was red almost up to the elbow.

    Something curled in my belly. It felt like accomplishment.

    I killed a dragon.

    Slowly, I extricated myself, wiggling my legs out from under the dragon¡¯s neck ¡ª my shins were definitely bruised, I realized with a wince, and I was going to be feeling it for quite a while. It was probably a miracle I hadn¡¯t broken anything.

    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    But I couldn¡¯t be too upset about that. I killed a dragon. A real one, not an imitation like Lung. A beast of legend, a creature of myth, and sure, Mash had been the one to bring it to the ground, but I dealt the killing blow.

    For just a moment, I felt strong again, powerful, in a way I hadn¡¯t since Gold Morning. I was Skitter, I was Weaver, the cape who faced down all comers and never lost, even if she didn¡¯t win. I wasn¡¯t the no name spellcaster struggling to catch up to her peers, I was the girl who stood against the end of the world and gave it the middle finger.

    ¡°Whoa.¡±

    I smoothed my expression out as the twins came over, eyes wide and staring at me. I felt hyper aware of the blood dripping from my right hand and my knife, the red stains that coated my sleeve, as I turned to face them. They gaped openly and unabashedly at the corpse behind me.

    ¡°Senpai really did kill a dragon by carving out its eyes,¡± Ritsuka breathed.

    ¡°I thought she was exaggerating,¡± Rika admitted. ¡°Senpai really is a badass.¡±

    A muscle in my cheek jumped as Mash came over to join us. I hadn¡¯t realized the twins had taken that brief bit I¡¯d mentioned to C¨²chulainn so completely to heart. It must have sounded pretty ludicrous at the time, after all.

    ¡°Th-that was incredibly reckless!¡± Mash scolded me. ¡°Even if it was just a wyvern ¡ª¡±

    My brow furrowed. ¡°Just a wyvern?¡±

    That brought Mash up short, like she¡¯d forgotten that my education in magic and magecraft was much shorter and less comprehensive than hers or the rest of Team A¡¯s.

    ¡°Wyverns are a subspecies of dragon, Miss Taylor,¡± she explained slowly. ¡°Thaumaturgically, they¡¯re not considered true dragons, because their mystery is weaker, although they share many of the same innate traits.¡± She bit her lip worriedly, and her face twisted as she looked behind me at the fallen beast. ¡°If our enemy had been a true dragon, I¡¯m not sure any of us would have been able to harm it at all.¡±

    The sense of triumph in my gut soured. My grip on the nanothorn dagger tightened.

    So. I¡¯d gotten myself all hyped up for nothing, huh? Taylor the Dragonslayer. In the end, it was nothing more than a worthless fantasy cooked up by my own ignorance.

    I looked back at the wyvern, still just as dead.

    Saying ¡°all that effort¡± like we¡¯d fought a long and arduous battle wasn¡¯t quite right, but I¡¯d had a hard enough time doing anything at all to it. My swarm was useless, nothing more than a distraction, and my knife had made it through, but only the soft tissues of the eye. Now might be a good time to test it, see if I could carve off its scales with the nanothorns active, but did it lose mystery at the moment of death, because it was no longer a fearsome, unstoppable monster? That might be a worthless thing as well.

    An approaching presence jerked me out of my thoughts, and I looked up at the soldiers cautiously approaching from inside Vaucouleurs as a fly landed on the leader¡¯s back. Mash, seeing my attention shift, followed my gaze, and when she saw the soldiers coming closer, weapons raised, she held up one of her hands and took a step towards them.

    ¡°Monsieur,¡± she began. ¡°Excuse me, but we are travelers ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Back!¡± the leader shouted, brandishing a spear. Both it and his voice shook. ¡°Stay back, heathen! Begone from this place with your witchcraft and sorcery! W-we¡¯ll have none of that, here!¡±

    Mash blinked. ¡°Witchcraft?¡±

    ¡°Do you think none of us saw you summon that infernal swarm? Get back! Go! Leave this place!¡±

    Slowly, she stepped backwards until she was next to me, but she didn¡¯t go any farther. To protect me? Even if I didn¡¯t really need it against a bunch of ordinary soldiers, I still appreciated the thought.

    ¡°The ley line?¡± I muttered to her.

    ¡°There should be a spot somewhere outside the village, as well,¡± she whispered back. ¡°It won¡¯t be as convenient as lodgings here, but we could set up camp there, if we have to.¡±

    The lead soldier thrust his spear at us threateningly. ¡°Go! Leave! Now!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d say we have to.¡±

    She nodded. ¡°Okay,¡± she said louder, to the soldier, ¡°we¡¯ll leave peacefully.¡±

    Carefully, we backed up until we reached the twins.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka asked quietly. ¡°Mash?¡±

    ¡°There should be another ley line terminal somewhere in the forest outside the city,¡± I summarized for him. ¡°The soldiers think we used witchcraft to summon an evil swarm of bugs, so we¡¯ll have to camp out there instead of in Vaucouleurs itself.¡±

    ¡°That was us, right?¡± Rika asked.

    ¡°Yes, but it wasn¡¯t magic.¡±

    ¡°Then what ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Now isn¡¯t the time,¡± I cut across her. ¡°We can discuss that sort of thing later. For now, we need to leave, before those soldiers¡¯ desperation overwhelms their fear.¡±

    The twins nodded. ¡°Right.¡±

    Carefully, we all backed up, keeping Mash in front of us in case one of the soldiers got particularly brave, and we kept going until we¡¯d reached the treeline again and Vaucouleurs and its soldiers disappeared behind the foliage.

    ¡°Now what?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    I turned to our resident Demi-Servant. ¡°Mash?¡±

    She pursed her lips, and an instant later, her shield disappeared like a mirage. Returned to spirit form, I realized after a second, because regular Servants could do that with both themselves and their gear. I hadn¡¯t known Mash could, because she was obviously a living person and a Servant simultaneously, but then there was a lot I didn¡¯t know about how a Demi-Servant was supposed to work. I wasn¡¯t sure anyone else, even the Director, did either.

    Mash reached out and pushed aside some of the foliage. ¡°This way,¡± she said. ¡°Follow me, please.¡±

    We ducked under the canopy and left the beaten path to enter the forest proper, following Mash as she led us towards where she sensed the ley lines converging. Not for the first time, I wished my training in magecraft was more complete, that I¡¯d had more time to learn the things most magi took for granted. Being able to sense out the ley lines beneath my feet would have been an invaluable skill, both then and in Fuyuki.

    We made a beeline through the trees, and through my bugs and the galaxy of lights in my head that represented them, I felt us skirt around Vaucouleurs. The soldiers had retreated back into the fort, and as we got closer and I could send more bugs to recon the inside, a nasty picture started to form for me.

    We¡¯d been expecting a small town, a thriving place with a contingent of soldiers there to protect it. What I saw instead was little better than a mass grave, building upon building ¡ª those that were still standing, anyway ¡ª filled with people with varying and various injuries. Most of them were soldiers, wrapped in bloodied linens and disfigured in some way or form. The lucky ones were intact, but for gashes torn into their flesh. The unlucky ones didn¡¯t bear mentioning.

    What happened to this place? Had there been a battle that broke out, and these were the injured leftover? Or¡­

    A chill went down my spine.

    Was that not the only time they¡¯d been attacked by a wyvern? In that case, was the one I¡¯d killed the only one, or were there more, terrorizing the French countryside?

    A better question might be where a bunch of wyverns would have come from, since this was definitely too far outside the time when such things had supposedly lived in this world. How had Marie put it? With the advancing of mankind¡¯s supremacy, the mystics of the ages past retreated to the inner sea. Whatever that meant. I didn¡¯t need to understand the fine mechanics of it to get the general idea that things like dragons and unicorns had all but disappeared past a certain point in history, and the fifteenth century was definitely long past that point.

    Eventually, our little group came through the trees and found ourselves in the middle of a small clearing, where there sat ¡ª

    ¡°A campfire?¡± Ritsuka asked incredulously.

    Not anymore, but little tufts of smoke were rising from the blackened logs, piled on top of each other and arranged in the center of the clearing, away from anything else flammable. Cautiously, I stepped closer and reached out, waving my hand as close to the charred wood as I dared. If the lingering smoke hadn¡¯t convinced me, what I felt there did.

    ¡°It¡¯s still warm,¡± I confirmed.

    ¡°Someone else was here before?¡± Mash said lowly.

    ¡°Yes, I was,¡± a new voice interrupted.

    Mash and I both leapt, startled, as she summoned her shield and my hand went to my dagger, and we whirled around towards the voice to find a young woman, dressed in purple cloth and gleaming silvery armor. Her long, blonde hair was tied into a thick braid that was just way too long to be practical.

    She smiled at us sheepishly. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I didn¡¯t mean to startle you.¡±

    ¡°Who ¡ª¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s a Servant!¡± Mash said urgently.

    I glanced at her, and then back to the young woman. The only way she could have managed to get that close as a Servant without either Mash or Romani detecting her was if she was ¡ª

    ¡°An Assassin?¡±

    The young woman blinked, and her hands came up in a placating gesture as she shook her head vigorously. ¡°W-wait a second, I think there¡¯s been some kind of misunderstanding!¡±

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°Everyone, I¡¯m detecting a Servant nearby!¡± Romani told us. ¡°Their presence is incredibly weak and diminished, but it¡¯s definitely a Servant!¡±

    He stopped and looked at the young woman. Silence hung in the air for a second.

    ¡°Ah?¡±

    ¡°Maybe if I explained things?¡± she offered with a tentative smile. Slowly, she lowered her arms and pressed one hand between her, ah, large tracts of land, which were for some reason unarmored while gleaming plate covered her midsection. ¡°Yes, I am a Servant of the Ruler class. My true name is Jeanne d¡¯Arc.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Romani blurted out.

    ¡°It¡¯s true!¡± the young woman insisted. ¡°Ah, the reason you might have trouble sensing me¡­ Yes, for some reason, my performance is much lower than it should be. All of my stats have been ranked down for reasons I can¡¯t explain, and a lot of the unique abilities of the Ruler class that I¡¯m supposed to have are missing. For example, the anti-Servant Command Spells and the ability to reveal the true names of other Servants I encounter.¡±

    If those were the sorts of advantages Rulers could expect, maybe summoning one of them should have been my goal, instead of one of the Knight classes. That sort of thing sounded invaluable.

    ¡°Have you encountered other Servants, here?¡± I asked sharply.

    The young woman who claimed to be Jeanne shook her head. ¡°No. I was only summoned into this era a few hours ago, so I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m not even sure what¡¯s going on with this Holy Grail War. A lot of the information I should have been provided by the Grail seems to be missing entirely. It¡¯s been a bit of a godsend that I was summoned into a time and place I¡¯m familiar with, because I can at least speak the language.¡±

    I shared a look with Mash, and then I turned to the twins. ¡°Ritsuka, Rika, what do you see with Master¡¯s Clairvoyance?¡±

    They both squinted at Jeanne, frowning, and after a moment, shook their heads.

    ¡°Ruler class Servant, Jeanne d¡¯Arc,¡± Ritsuka reported. ¡°Revelation, Charisma, and Saint, although the last one is sealed. It looks like she is who she says she is, Senpai.¡±

    Slowly, we all relaxed, and Jeanne¡¯s tentative smile became broader and more open.

    ¡°Mademoiselle Jeanne?¡± Romani said. ¡°I think there¡¯s some things we need to talk about, before we get ahead of ourselves.¡±

    And so he explained Chaldea, our mission, what we were doing there and why. The Grand Order, Singularities and what little we knew about how they functioned, what they were and what they did, the proposed existence and role of the Holy Grail in making them, everything relevant to the situation.

    ¡°There are some things we just can¡¯t say for sure, yet,¡± he finished, ¡°but we can at least make some educated guesses. Do you have any questions?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a lot to take in, I¡¯ll admit,¡± she said at length, ¡°but no, I think I understand all of the important parts, ah, Doctor Roman?¡±

    ¡°Doctor Roman is fine,¡± he assured her.

    ¡°So the reason I don¡¯t have most of the abilities I could expect in a Holy Grail War is because this isn¡¯t strictly a Holy Grail War?¡±

    ¡°If you loosen the description to ¡®any conflict with the Holy Grail as its central prize,¡¯ then you could call it one, but yes, this isn¡¯t really a Holy Grail War like the ritual in Fuyuki, Japan. The Holy Grail is still the prize, but technically speaking, this whole thing started when someone ¡®won¡¯ it.¡±

    ¡°It would definitely explain a lot,¡± Jeanne muttered.

    ¡°What about you?¡± I asked. ¡°Do you have any information about what¡¯s going on in this Singularity? What point of history has been overturned?¡±

    She scowled. ¡°Unfortunately, I don¡¯t know as much as I would like to. However¡­ Yes, there are a few things I managed to find out in the few hours I¡¯ve been here.¡± She took a deep breath. ¡°Firstly, my living self was executed only a short time ago. In fact, it seems to have been only about a week. This might be why my abilities are diminished, since my legend is so ¡®new.¡¯ Secondly, as the point of divergence¡­ King Charles VII has been killed, and Jeanne d¡¯Arc was the one who killed him.¡±

    Silence met this statement.

    ¡°What?¡± Romani croaked.

    ¡°You didn¡¯t¡­¡± I started, but I wasn¡¯t sure how to articulate the question in my head.

    How did you ask a woman whether she killed the man she dedicated, sacrificed her life for? Jeanne d¡¯Arc gave up everything in order to see Charles VII crowned; the idea that she would turn around and kill him seemed like something out of a Master-Stranger horror story.

    ¡°No,¡± Jeanne confirmed. ¡°Based upon what I was able to hear, Jeanne d¡¯Arc lived and died here according to proper human history, as you call it. However, a few days after she was executed, a woman bearing her face and name, my face and name, appeared. She attacked Orl¨¦ans, slaughtered the entire city to a man, and slew King Charles VII and every single member of his court.¡±

    Orl¨¦ans and King Charles VII¡­ Her entire history was bundled up into that. The two greatest accomplishments of her relatively short career were ending the English occupation of Orl¨¦ans and ensuring Charles VII made it to the throne. It was quite literally what she¡¯d given her life for, after a fashion.

    I eyed her, looking for any sign that the news had gotten to her, but she didn¡¯t seem particularly upset or distressed. She might have been planning another military campaign with the French army instead of telling us that her life¡¯s work had been all for nothing, for all the difference it seemed to make to her.

    If it had been me, being told that a woman wearing my face and name had gone and crushed the refugees of Gold Morning just days after I killed Scion¡­ I wasn¡¯t sure I would have been anywhere near that calm.

    Jeanne¡¯s lips drew tight. ¡°They also say¡­that as part of her pact with the Devil to gain new life, she also gained a sorcery that allowed her to summon legions of dragons to do her bidding.¡±

 Chapter XV: Long Odds

    Chapter XV: Long Odds

    It only took a few seconds for the implications of what Jeanne was saying to sink in.

    My eyes went wide. ¡°The wyvern¡­¡±

    Jeanne nodded. ¡°It was likely one of this other Jeanne¡¯s¡­this Jeanne Alter¡¯s army.¡±

    ¡°Jalter?¡± Rika mumbled.

    ¡°That makes some sense,¡± Romani said thoughtfully. ¡°There¡¯s no way wyverns are a native existence to fifteenth century France. By that time, mankind¡¯s advance had already pushed them out into the previous texture. Even most of the stragglers were long dead.¡±

    ¡°I can¡¯t say I understand all of that, but you¡¯re right that no such thing existed while I was alive,¡± Jeanne said. ¡°Moreover¡­ I just don¡¯t understand how she¡¯d do such a thing as command them, either. I certainly didn¡¯t have any skill for controlling magical beasts.¡±

    That was a good point, wasn¡¯t it? There was a reason dragons of all types tended to sit at the top of tier lists when magi talked about Phantasmals. Admittedly, I didn¡¯t know as much about them as I¡¯d have liked to, and I didn¡¯t know if I was overcorrecting for how much my head had swelled over killing that wyvern, but if even things like ordinary lions and tigers were hard to tame, then something as powerful as a dragon would be even more so.

    For that matter, we had enough trouble just managing to summon Servants. We had a whole system dedicated to it, a cutting edge mechanism that still only had four recorded successes to date. Would summoning a magical creature be easier, or harder?

    And even if it was easier, to summon a whole army of them¡­

    ¡°Summoning them is already going to be an incredible feat, right?¡± I asked Romani.

    ¡°It¡¯s much like summoning Servants,¡± Romani answered. ¡°Strictly speaking, for modern magecraft, it¡¯s impossible. Even for the fifteenth century, it would be a difficult, high level spell, the sort of thing you need a Grand Ritual for.¡±

    ¡°Or a Holy Grail?¡±

    ¡­you¡¯d need something with a whole lot of power backing you up.

    Mash¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°Miss Taylor¡­do you think¡­?¡±

    I looked at her, face solemn.

    The pieces were starting to come together in my head. Jeanne d¡¯Arc had been summoned back into the world using the Holy Grail and then corrupted by it, and after that, she turned on France, used the Grail to summon her own army of powerful magical beasts, and destroyed everything her living self had helped to build. Out of what? Spite? Revenge, for the French letting her be executed instead of mounting a rescue? The reasoning didn¡¯t matter so much as the acts themselves.

    And perhaps this Jeanne Alter¡¯s presence had triggered a sort of autoimmune response that automatically manifested the original. I was a bit murkier on that, but I thought I understood the gist of how that sort of thing was supposed to work.

    There were a few holes, a few things that I didn¡¯t have an answer for, like who or what had summoned that twisted version of Jeanne in the first place, but it was entirely possible Lev or someone had done it just for the purposes of unpinning this point in history.

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t expecting to find the answer this quickly,¡± Romani admitted, ¡°but I think you¡¯re probably right. Occam¡¯s Razor and everything. If there¡¯s a Servant going around, by all accounts as corrupted as the Fuyuki Servants were, performing feats of magecraft that would otherwise be nearly impossible¡­¡±

    I nodded. ¡°It only makes sense that Servant would be the one with the Holy Grail. And if she killed King Charles VII and all of Orl¨¦ans, too ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Then she¡¯d also be the source of the historical deviation,¡± Ritsuka concluded.

    Romani¡¯s hologram nodded. ¡°Presumably, yes.¡±

    ¡°And so the only way to correct the deviation from proper history and set this all to right is to defeat my alternate self and reclaim the Holy Grail?¡± Jeanne asked.

    ¡°Presumably,¡± Romani hedged. ¡°I don¡¯t want everyone to get the wrong idea, here. This is all just speculation. Educated guesses. It¡¯s just that this is the best we can do with the evidence we currently have. The only way to find out for sure might be to confront her yourself, and, well¡­¡±

    I grimaced. ¡°Army of wyverns, right.¡±

    That would probably wind up being the biggest obstacle. One at a time, we might be able to take them down much the same as we had the first one, but I doubted Jeanne Alter or the rest of her army would be so kind as to come at us in an orderly line and wait their turn instead of just mowing us all down all at once.

    Romani let out a heavy sigh.

    ¡°Yeah. If it¡¯s just one or two, Mash and Jeanne might be able to handle them just fine, but if it¡¯s an actual army, I don¡¯t want you guys going anywhere near that.¡±

    Absentmindedly, my hand rose and glided over the hilt of my knife.

    With what we had right then, neither did I.

    ¡°I don¡¯t taste good extra crispy,¡± Rika mumbled.

    What we needed right then was someone to even the odds, someone who looked at an army of dragons and smiled. The trouble was, while quite a few Heroic Spirits had the anecdote of slaying a dragon in their myths, vanishingly few had it as a central focus of their legends. Most of the Knights of the Round Table, for instance, had slain at least one dragon throughout their adventures, but the killing of the dragon itself was just the removal of an obstacle, not the goal of the adventure itself.

    If I narrowed the field down¡­ Saint George was a big one. But if I was going for an iconic dragonslayer, a Heroic Spirit whose name was practically synonymous with the deed, someone whose legend still reverberated through the modern day? A big name, a powerful name, a respected hero with a storied history?

    I could only think of two.

    I turned back to Romani. ¡°You said you wanted me to try summoning again once we found a ley line, right?¡±

    Romani blinked at me, and then his eyes widened. ¡°Wait, you¡¯re not thinking what I think you¡¯re thinking, are you? Listen, one Servant isn¡¯t going to make much difference against an army of wyverns!¡±

    ¡°Depends on the Servant,¡± I replied. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say no to Saint George, but I was thinking¡­if we could get Sigurd or Siegfried¡­¡±

    ¡°We might be able to play on the conceptual advantage,¡± Romani muttered. ¡°But still, that¡¯s¡­ Even with one of them, Taylor, that¡¯s an uphill battle. Plus, think of how much magical energy a fight like that would burn through! I¡¯m not sure our generators can handle it!¡±

    ¡°Did you get the Grail from Fuyuki hooked up properly?¡±

    ¡°I-I¡¯m not sure that means what you think it does!¡± Romani sputtered. ¡°Just because we got the Grail jacked into our power grid doesn¡¯t mean you can just use as much energy as you want!¡±

    ¡°You said getting the Grail set up would let us support another three or so Servants, didn¡¯t you?¡± I asked pointedly. ¡°We don¡¯t need another three Servants, we just need one who can do the job of three. One top tier dragonslayer who can handle the wyverns for us.¡±

    ¡°But that¡¯s not a guarantee!¡± Romani protested. ¡°Sure, it would be great if you could manage to summon a Servant as powerful as Sigurd or Siegfried, but the spell doesn¡¯t work on pretty please and wishful thinking! You¡¯d need a catalyst with a connection to one of them, and even then ¡ª¡±

    I lifted my right arm, sleeve still coated in wet, red blood. ¡°A catalyst, like the blood of a dragon, for instance?¡±

    Jeanne gasped, and Romani¡¯s mouth flapped soundlessly as he stared at the proof of my victory. It was too bad I hadn¡¯t managed to grab a scale or fang or something, because that probably would have been a much less time sensitive catalyst, but when it came to the ideal catalyst for someone like Siegfried or Sigurd¡­ Well, the heart and blood were definitely top tier. They were just a lot more prone to degrading quickly.

    ¡°How¡­¡± he began, and his voice cracked halfway through. ¡°How did you get dragon¡¯s blood on your arm, Taylor?¡±

    ¡°I killed a dragon,¡± I replied simply.

    ¡°I-it was very reckless!¡± Mash burst in. ¡°Even if it worked, Miss Taylor could very easily have been killed, Doctor Roman!¡±

    ¡°She carved out its eye,¡± Rika said, giggling a little under her breath.

    ¡°What?¡± Romani asked, voice strangled.

    I cut the story down to its bare bones. ¡°Mash brought it down, and while she was holding it in place, I stabbed it in the eye with my knife and kept going until I reached its brain.¡±

    ¡°I really didn¡¯t need to picture that part,¡± Ritsuka muttered.

    ¡°Your knife?¡±

    ¡°Oh!¡± Romani was pushed aside with an indignant squawk, and Da Vinci¡¯s smiling face filled the hologram¡¯s screen. ¡°You got to give it a test drive! Tell me, how did it perform? Was it up to spec? Was it better or worse than it was when you first got it? On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate my repair job?¡±

    I blinked. ¡°Uh¡­ Ten?¡±

    Checking to make sure the nanothorn knife had been exactly as it had when Defiant gave it to me hadn¡¯t been very high on my priority list while I was busy shoving it into the skull of a powerfully magical beast. It was very close to the bottom, in fact.

    Da Vinci danced away, whooping triumphantly about how even alien blackboxes couldn¡¯t trump sheer genius, and Romani slowly pulled himself back up into his seat. He took a deep breath.

    ¡°Okay,¡± he said, and he sounded much calmer, now. ¡°Putting aside just how reckless and incredibly dangerous it was to get anywhere near a dragon of any kind with nothing more than a knife¡­ I¡¯m still not sold on this idea. Before you say anything,¡± he added as I opened my mouth, ¡°I¡¯m not disagreeing with the merits. And yeah, I did ask you to attempt a summoning when you found a ley line. I¡¯m just a little nervous about the impact this is going to have on our power consumption, because if it¡¯s not enough from us here, Taylor, you¡¯ll be the one having to pick up the slack, and that could be very, very dangerous.¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t have much choice,¡± I answered. ¡°Maybe we could bring Emiya in, but it would be better to have someone who specializes in taking out dragons instead of a Swiss army knife.¡±

    ¡°A what?¡± Mash asked bewilderedly.

    ¡°It¡¯s a metaphor for a jack of all trades,¡± Romani told her absently.

    Technically, that was a metaphor as well.

    I spread my arms. ¡°If you¡¯ve got a better idea, Romani, I¡¯m listening.¡±

    Romani¡¯s brow furrowed, but he didn¡¯t immediately offer any suggestions.

    ¡°Let¡¯s do it,¡± Ritsuka said quietly.

    Romani¡¯s head swiveled in his direction. ¡°Ritsuka?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re up against an army of wyverns, Doctor Roman,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°We need all the help we can get.¡±

    The silence stretched for a moment, and at length, Romani finally sighed and gave up.

    ¡°Okay,¡± he said. ¡°I guess making an attempt for a specific Servant will double as an extra test for the system. I¡¯ll monitor everything from this end and try to see what the readings will tell us, and that should make things smoother in the future. I hope you know what you¡¯re doing, Taylor.¡±

    So did I.

    Romani¡¯s image blinked out. Immediately, I turned to Mash.

    ¡°Get the summoning circle set up,¡± I ordered. ¡°With your shield, like in Fuyuki.¡±

    She hesitated and glanced at Ritsuka and Rika, and then set about doing as I¡¯d said. While she was getting that ready, I reached for the clasps and zippers on my top and started undoing them.

    Jeanne and Rika both squeaked.

    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    ¡°W-what are you doing?¡± Jeanne demanded in a high-pitched voice.

    ¡°S-Senpai, a maiden only reveals herself to the love of her life!¡± Rika agreed. She gasped and threw her hands over Ritsuka¡¯s eyes. ¡°Onii-chan, don¡¯t you dare look!¡±

    One of my eyebrows rose.

    ¡°I can¡¯t exactly throw myself onto the summoning circle, can I?¡±

    It took a little doing with just one hand, since my other was covered in blood, but eventually, I managed to get everything unfastened and shrug one arm out of my clean sleeve. There was no real way to avoid smearing more blood everywhere, though, although the blood on my hand had mostly dried. Some of it still got inside my top.

    Rika gasped. ¡°S-Senpai took her shirt off!¡±

    I rolled my eyes.

    ¡°Chaldea does have its own workout gym, you know,¡± I told them. ¡°You¡¯re not seeing anything now you wouldn¡¯t see if you spent time there.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t like I was wearing sexy lingerie, either, or some sheer, lacy thing you might see on a femme fatale in a James Bond movie. A sports bra only made sense when you were going into a combat zone, and it wasn¡¯t like I had a pair of melons attached to my chest that anyone would be getting a peek at. I had enough problems without adding chronic back pain on top of them.

    When Mash was ready, I stepped over to the shield she¡¯d placed on the ground, took an awkward hold of my top, and tried to wring the blood out of my sleeve (sorry to wrinkle your hard work, Da Vinci). Several thick drops squeezed out of the fabric and fell onto the surface of the rounded centerpiece, but too much of it had dried.

    This was going to be a pain in the ass to get clean, wasn¡¯t it?

    With a sigh, I shook out my hands and carefully draped my top over Mash¡¯s shield, taking great caution not to get the blood I¡¯d just squeezed out back in the cloth. Then, I stepped back and turned to her.

    ¡°Are we good to go?¡±

    Mash nodded. ¡°Whenever you¡¯re ready, Miss Taylor.¡±

    I took a deep breath and forced my doubts down and away, and when I let it out, I thrust my hand towards the shield. The others stepped back a few feet to give me some more space, leaving me to stand there by myself.

    No thinking about the results. No worrying about who might or might not show up. My catalyst should work, but even if it didn¡¯t, we wouldn¡¯t be worse off to have more allies on our side. Whichever Heroic Spirit answered my summons, he or she would be useful in at least some way for the upcoming battles.

    So it was time to stop dawdling and fucking do it, already.

    ¡°Thy Essence is of Silver and Steel,¡± I announced confidently. ¡°Thy Foundation is built of gemstone and the Archduke of Contracts.¡±

    I wouldn¡¯t deny I was hoping for a dragon-slaying hero, though. Not when it would be oh so very convenient for the army of motherfucking wyverns we were going to have to deal with. Sigurd or Siegfried, would it be too much to hope one of them would be the Servant who came to me, now?

    ¡°Let the alighted wind be as a wall. Let the four cardinal gates be shut. Rise above the Crown, and let the three-forked road to the Kingdom revolve.¡±

    Above Mash¡¯s shield, a magic circle rose and glowed a bright, pale blue. A faint pillar of light jutted into the air, brightest where it met the circle and all but invisible at my eye level.

    Not for the first time, I felt there must have been some deeper meaning to the incantation, that it couldn¡¯t be pure nonsense. The Crown, the Kingdom, I recognized them as having some relation to Kabbalism, but I knew next to nothing about that as a system of magecraft, so I couldn¡¯t have said how they were relevant here.

    ¡°Let it be filled. Again. Again. Again. Again. Let there be five-fold perfections upon each repetition. In my stead, let the filled sigils be annihilated.¡±

    A wind swept out from the pillar, low and gentle like a summer breeze, and my hair fluttered as it was pushed back away from my face. It was like the breath of some great entity turning my way.

    The connection with the Throne was forming. Just as it had in Fuyuki, just as it had in the summoning chamber where Rika had called Emiya. This time, this time, I was definitely going to summon a Servant of my own. No fuckups, no uncertainties. This time, for sure.

    ¡°Thy body shall rest under my dominion, and my fate shall rest in thy sword. Let this be my oath. I shall attain all the virtues of Heaven. I shall punish all the evils of Hell.¡±

    The wind reached a fevered pitch. My hair whipped about, yanked back away from my head. The winding, grinding echo of the magical energy churning vibrated through me and through my magic circuits, racing up along my nerves like electricity up a copper wire. The back of my right hand, my prosthetic, burned like someone had jabbed it with a cattle prod.

    I had to grit my teeth and force the rest of the incantation out. One last line. Just one. That was it.

    ¡°Thou the Seven Heavens, clad in the Three Great Words, arrive from the Ring of Deterrence, O Keeper of the Balance!¡±

    The pillar of light flashed. The vague burning on the back of my hand sharpened, condensed down, and I had to squint through the blinding light to see a familiar pattern etch itself across my skin ¡ª

    The wind vanished, sweeping out in one final burst. The light went with it, disappearing just as suddenly, and slowly, as I blinked the spots from my vision, my eyes readjusted to the shaded alcove of our little clearing. My heart thundered in my chest anxiously.

    ¡°You summoned me, so here I am,¡± a man¡¯s voice said calmly, and the bugs on the edges of the clearing started jerking about erratically as triumph filled my chest like an expanding balloon.

    His confident grin was the first thing I saw, and then the turquoise chestplate and shoulder plates, the red gauntlets and greaves. Short, dark hair, dark eyes that glittered, olive skin, and ¡ª the triumph in my chest wilted and died ¡ª a wicked-looking crimson bow.

    ¡°Archer class Servant, Arash Kamangir,¡± the man said. ¡°Pleasure to meet you, Master.¡±

    I looked down at the marks etched into the back of my hand, identical to the ones the Fuyuki Grail had handed to me when I contracted C¨²chulainn back in Fuyuki. Before, I hadn¡¯t had any idea how to describe them, what they could be said to resemble. Now¡­ Now, I saw them for what they were. Tentacles, branching tentacles made of eyes, or perhaps eyes made of tentacles. An eldritch monstrosity with a thousand eyes and an ever expanding reach.

    My passenger.

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said with affected neutrality, ¡°I guess it is.¡±

    The bugs in the distance buzzed with agitation.

    The summoning had worked, but I hadn¡¯t managed to call either of the two I was trying for. Was it just a matter of my catalyst not being strong enough, or was it me? Was this my karma or something? Destiny? Was there some cosmic rule that said I wasn¡¯t allowed to get what I asked for and had to make do with whatever the dice rolled for me? Because I was tired of getting snake eyes.

    Arash¡¯s grin fell and his brow furrowed. ¡°Is something wrong, Master?¡±

    I pointed to his feet. ¡°You¡¯re standing on my shirt.¡±

    ¡°Oh!¡±

    He jumped away and reached down, picking it up and flapping it as though that would clean it of the blood and grime already on it. When he apparently thought he¡¯d got it as well as he was going to get it, he stepped towards me and held it out with an apologetic smile.

    ¡°Sorry about that,¡± he said genially.

    I took my proffered shirt and started putting it back on.

    ¡°It¡¯s fine.¡±

    The others, perhaps sensing that things hadn¡¯t gone catastrophically wrong, stepped back closer to get a better look at our new addition. They all regarded him thoughtfully, like he was a puzzle that needed solving. Rika came the closest, leaning in to inspect him.

    ¡°Something the matter?¡± he asked her politely.

    ¡°You¡¯re not Sigurd,¡± she told him bluntly. ¡°Or Siegfried.¡±

    He blinked, like he wasn¡¯t sure what that was supposed to mean. ¡°I¡¯m not. Were you expecting one of those two?¡±

    Rika pointed at me. More accurately, at my sleeve, which was still red with drying dragon blood.

    ¡°Senpai was using dragon¡¯s blood as a catalyst.¡±

    He turned back to me, bewildered. ¡°And you got me instead?¡±

    ¡°Do you have dragon-slaying in your myth?¡± I asked pointedly.

    ¡°Afraid not,¡± he told me with a self-deprecating grin. ¡°I¡¯m just an ordinary archer. Nothing special.¡±

    ¡°Then yes. I got you, instead of one of the two I was actually trying to get.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± he laughed. ¡°Compared to those two, I guess I am something of a letdown, huh?¡±

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°Successful summoning completed!¡± Romani announced brightly. ¡°It all looks good, magical energy flow from the reactor is nominal, we¡¯re completely in the green! I guess I was really worried over nothing, huh? So, this is¡­¡±

    He trailed off as he caught sight of Arash, stared for a long moment, and then he looked down and started to furiously type at his keyboard.

    ¡°An Archer?¡± he muttered. ¡°But neither Sigurd or Siegfried should qualify for that class at all¡­ Plus, that appearance, that armor, that¡¯s all wrong for Scandinavia. Wait¡­¡± He squinted down at his screen and blanched. ¡°Arash Kamangir?¡±

    ¡°In the flesh!¡± Arash said with a jaunty wave, and then he winced. ¡°Well, kind of. Servant and all.¡±

    Romani sighed and deflated.

    ¡°Well, this didn¡¯t go anything like how it was supposed to.¡±

    Arash took it in stride. ¡°Sorry to disappoint.¡±

    That. That was kind of frustrating on its own. We¡¯d spent the last minute or two trashing him and talking about how we¡¯d wanted a completely different Heroic Spirit, and he wasn¡¯t even getting angry about it. In his place, I wouldn¡¯t have been anywhere near as forgiving or level-headed about it.

    In the absence of a catalyst ¡ª or if the catalyst just didn¡¯t work, I guessed ¡ª I was supposed to summon a Heroic Spirit who matched me as a person, someone who fit well with me. But this guy¡­ I just wasn¡¯t seeing it.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry. It¡¯s just we were pinning our hopes for resolving this Singularity on managing to summon a dragon-slaying hero.¡±

    ¡°You really needed them that badly, huh?¡± Arash asked.

    Romani¡¯s lips quirked, mirthless. Not a smile or a grin, but not quite a scowl or a grimace.

    ¡°What do you know about the situation?¡±

    ¡°Almost nothing.¡±

    Romani sighed again and ran a hand through his hair.

    ¡°Yeah, we¡¯re still working on getting all of the systems restored, so the information packet provided to summoned Servants is still really sparse. It should have at least contained the information about our Grand Order¡­¡±

    Arash nodded. ¡°I got that bit, yeah. I¡¯m not sure what¡¯s going on here, though. Can you fill me in?¡±

    Romani turned to me expectantly, and with an internal sigh of my own, I took that as my cue. Don¡¯t think I don¡¯t see what you¡¯re trying to do, Romani.

    ¡°Alright,¡± I said, ¡°this is the situation as it stands so far, at least as we know it¡­¡±

    I gave him the important bits, including the highlights of our adventure through Fuyuki and what little information we¡¯d managed to scrounge up about the Singularity we were currently inside of. I left out the part about how we could have gone to Rome instead, out of respect for Romani¡¯s wish to keep the twins as innocent as we could for a little bit longer.

    I got the feeling Arash saw right through that. Not that he gave any particular sign that I could point to, but rather a kind of instinct I¡¯d honed after spending so much time with Lisa.

    ¡°As of right now, our only confirmed enemy combatants are this Jeanne Alter and her army of wyverns,¡± I finished. ¡°There¡¯s no indication of other Servants on her side or ours, so far.¡±

    Arash hummed. ¡°It could be that the reason you didn¡¯t get Sigurd or Siegfried is because one or both of them are already here,¡± he said shrewdly.

    Romani blinked. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Well, call it a hunch,¡± Arash hedged with a shrug. ¡°But it makes sense, doesn¡¯t it? If stray Servants were summoned to counter Jeanne Alter and her army of wyverns, wouldn¡¯t an iconic dragonslayer be the top of the list for appropriate responses?¡±

    I shifted a little as I regarded him in a different light. It was possible, wasn¡¯t it? If Jeanne herself could be summoned by the world¡¯s autoimmune response to counter her evil self, then it was definitely possible that the very same kind of response had brought Siegfried or Sigurd into this Singularity as well.

    A glance at my hand showed the dark red command spells that stood out against my skin.

    In which case, it was still possible to form a contract with one of them, wasn¡¯t it? As long as they were here, we could find them and team up.

    ¡°That would be wonderful, wouldn¡¯t it?¡± Jeanne said brightly. ¡°If they¡¯re already here, then all we have to do is find them!¡±

    ¡°I¡­don¡¯t think it¡¯s going to be that easy,¡± said Ritsuka, wincing.

    There were just a few problems with it, though.

    ¡°We have no way of knowing where they might have been summoned to, all things considered,¡± I agreed. ¡°If they¡¯re even here at all, the entire French countryside is up for grabs.¡±

    ¡°They could be anywhere, couldn¡¯t they?¡± Mash said. ¡°Even if we went looking across the whole country, they might move on before we reach them.¡±

    ¡°My poor feet,¡± Rika mumbled miserably.

    Romani sighed for a third time. ¡°There goes that idea.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Jeanne confidently. We all looked to her.

    ¡°No?¡±

    ¡°If either of them was summoned, they would have appeared somewhere relevant to the situation, am I understanding that right?¡± she said.

    ¡°Theoretically,¡± Romani hedged. ¡°But that could still be anywhere.¡±

    ¡°Maybe so,¡± Jeanne allowed. ¡°Even if you¡¯re right, we already have a lead, don¡¯t we? The one place we know for sure my evil self has been, where she definitely used her army of wyverns to slaughter the populace.¡±

    I saw where she was going with that.

    ¡°Orl¨¦ans.¡±

    Jeanne nodded.

    ¡°We should begin investigating there.¡±

    My eyebrows rose a little. Wow. Okay. It was one thing to hear about exactly how clever Jeanne d¡¯Arc had been and how she had routed the English army without ever even drawing her sword. It was another thing to see it for yourself.

    ¡°Whoa, wait a minute!¡± Romani said urgently. ¡°That¡¯s where we know she¡¯s been already, right? What if she stuck around and set up her own base? You could be walking right into her headquarters! Even with an Archer like Arash, there¡¯s no way you¡¯re ready to face down an army of wyverns, right now!¡±

    Ironically, that was probably my first instinct ¡ª rush in and work things out as we went. But I wasn¡¯t too excited about our odds of making that work with what and who we currently had, and I didn¡¯t want to bring in our reinforcements just yet. Better to save Emiya for an actual emergency.

    ¡°You both have good points,¡± I cut in as Jeanne opened her mouth to rebut him. ¡°Orl¨¦ans is our best bet, but going straight there could be dangerous. So what if we did some snooping in the area, first, instead of charging headfirst into the dragon¡¯s den, as it were?¡±

    I took a quick glance at Arash with the Master¡¯s Clairvoyance that was supposed to come with the FATE system ¡ª and had to suppress a flinch, because wow, that Noble Phantasm was a huge handicap. Finding other stray Servants to ally with, if there even were any around, just got bumped way up the priorities list.

    ¡°There should be a few towns around the city,¡± Mash added. ¡°If there¡¯s a Servant like Siegfried or Sigurd near Orl¨¦ans, there would almost certainly be at least a few rumors circulating through them.¡±

    Jeanne frowned. ¡°There are several smaller towns within walking distance of Orl¨¦ans.¡±

    ¡°The closest one from here?¡±

    Jeanne¡¯s brow drew together in thought.

    ¡°La Charit¨¦,¡± she answered after a moment. ¡°It doesn¡¯t sit directly between Orl¨¦ans and Vaucouleurs, but it¡¯s one of the closest towns from here.¡±

    ¡°Then we¡¯ll head there, first,¡± I decided.

    Jeanne nodded. ¡°We can head out first thing in the morning.¡±

    My brow furrowed.

    ¡°It¡¯s not even noon,¡± I pointed out. ¡°And it¡¯s June in France. We should still have a half a day of daylight left to make it there. If we¡¯re quick, we can be there by sunset.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like a good idea, Master,¡± Arash chimed in with a bright grin.

    ¡°Um, Taylor¡­¡±

    I turned to find Romani staring at me. ¡°Yeah?¡±

    ¡°La Charit¨¦ is¡­ That is, from here to there is¡­ H-how should I put this¡­¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s over three-hundred kilometers, Miss Taylor,¡± Mash informed me.

    I blanched. ¡°What?¡±

    A noise of distress, like the air being let out of a balloon, came out of Rika¡¯s throat. Her brother¡¯s face was twisted in horror.

    ¡°On foot, it¡¯ll take you about sixty hours to make it there,¡± Romani told us. ¡°That¡¯s about¡­five days of walking, give or take, and that¡¯s only if you don¡¯t take breaks or stop to eat.¡±

    ¡°It would be faster with some horses!¡± Jeanne put in helpfully, except it really wasn¡¯t all that helpful.

    ¡°That¡¯s great,¡± I said. ¡°Do you happen to have some? Or maybe know where we could get a few, without any money to pay for them?¡±

    Jeanne flinched and her slumping shoulders answered me as surely as anything else would have. Not like I was expecting anything different.

    There was a moment of frustration where I had the thought about how much easier it would be if we could just steal a couple and move on, if only I believed Jeanne would let us get away with it, but it passed and settled into resignation. Even if this was a Singularity and everything would be corrected when it was all said and done, taking whatever we needed by force wasn¡¯t going to work in the long run.

    ¡°Romani, send us over some rations,¡± I ordered. ¡°We¡¯re going to need them, and there¡¯s no way of knowing when we¡¯ll find another ley line.¡±

    ¡°You still want to head out as soon as possible?¡± Jeanne asked.

    ¡°Sitting around the campfire for a day won¡¯t change how far we have to go or how long it¡¯ll take us to get there,¡± I said. ¡°We might as well get there sooner instead of later.¡±

    ¡°I wish there was more I could do, but Taylor¡¯s right,¡± Romani said. ¡°I¡¯ll make sure to pack you enough supplies to last two days.¡±

    ¡°Yay, more walking,¡± Rika muttered miserably.

    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not like they had cars in the 1400s, Rika,¡± her brother hissed back at her, but he didn¡¯t look any happier at the news.

    It wasn¡¯t like there was anything I could do about it, either. One way or another, we needed to put things to right and set human history back on track. Without any other way of getting around, we were just going to have to hoof it the whole way.

    I let out a long, explosive sigh.

    How ironic. It wasn¡¯t the way I¡¯d originally feared, but it looked like the only way to correct this Singularity was by killing Jeanne d¡¯Arc.

 Chapter XVI: Crest of Blood

    Chapter XVI: Crest of Blood

    Chaldea¡¯s beds were fairly basic and simple, but modern mattresses had spoiled me for bedding, because when I woke up in the attached quarters of La Charit¨¦¡¯s Notre Dame, it was on a far less comfortable cot that could barely own the name. My lower back and neck were both sore as I rolled off of it, and my shoulder throbbed whenever I moved it the wrong way.

    It was the worst sleep I¡¯d ever had, and I wasn¡¯t sure we hadn¡¯t been better off camping in the woods. Maybe I shouldn¡¯t have expected much from what amounted to the guest quarters in a church run by a small group of monks in a tiny garrison in Medieval France, but I¡¯d made too many comparisons to the cots we¡¯d slept on in that summer camp what seemed now like an eternity ago.

    The twins didn¡¯t look any better off when I found them. In fact, they didn¡¯t look like they¡¯d gotten any sleep at all.

    ¡°I¡¯m guessing your beds weren¡¯t very comfortable, either.¡±

    They glanced at me from their seats at the table, bleary-eyed and miserable, and mumbled a greeting my way. Mash, next to them, seemed a little better off, but not by much. Arash, of course, as a Servant, didn¡¯t need to sleep at all, and so he looked no worse than he had at the moment of his summoning.

    I envied him for that. Times like this made being a Noctis cape sound absolutely wonderful.

    ¡°Good morning!¡± Jeanne said brightly as she came over. Her arms were laden with a large, wooden tray piled with what might generously be called food. She set it on the table with a hefty thud.

    I raised one eyebrow. ¡°Morning.¡±

    Jeanne, on the other hand, looked positively at home. Which made some sense, I supposed, because she must have spent a not insignificant amount of time under the care of one monastic order or another both before and during her campaign.

    ¡°The monks didn¡¯t think it was appropriate to mingle, so we¡¯ve been left to our own devices, I¡¯m afraid,¡± she reported apologetically.

    ¡°That¡¯s fine.¡±

    I glanced down at the platter she¡¯d prepared. Unsurprisingly, it didn¡¯t look like anything special or well-prepared, and it wasn¡¯t a restaurant quality spread, but the scrambled eggs were familiar and the porridge, although I hadn¡¯t ever had any myself, wasn¡¯t all that out there, either. But I could already tell, just from the smell, that they were going to be bland and kind of tasteless.

    That was probably about what I should have expected on a pauper¡¯s penny. Spices would have been luxuries in this time period, a commodity whose trade would easily make you rich. I wasn¡¯t sure trade with India and China, where a lot of them had originally come from, was even all that common, yet. Either way, cinnamon and salt were not something you¡¯d find in a monk¡¯s kitchen.

    There was nothing to be done, and it would at least be more flavorful than ration bars, so I sat down, took one of the heavy, wooden bowls, and started to eat. Fortunately, at least, we had modern steel utensils, because my other options weren¡¯t particularly exciting.

    The others, like they¡¯d been waiting for me to give the okay, grabbed their own breakfast and dug in. Rika and Ritsuka were still sluggish, but weren¡¯t missing their mouths or anything, at least.

    Between bites, I turned back to Jeanne. ¡°Were you recognized?¡±

    Nervously, she patted her black hair, cropped short just below her shoulders. As much as she might have liked it, that ridiculous braid was just too distinctive, so it was the first thing we¡¯d had to change to disguise her.

    ¡°No, it seems like your disguise did the trick,¡± she admitted. ¡°I¡¯m not sure we even had to worry. I don¡¯t think Perrinet-Gressard ever even saw my face, certainly not close enough to recognize me at a glance.¡±

    For context: Perrinet-Gressard was the man who had held La Charit¨¦ when Jeanne had put it under siege in 1429 on the orders of King Charles VII. Owing to a number of factors, including some apparently very persistent inclement weather, he¡¯d managed to outlast Jeanne and her forces until they had no choice but to lift the siege and retreat.

    Naturally, it was something of a sore point for her, but the last thing we needed was him realizing she was right there under his nose and raising a stink.

    ¡°He¡¯s only one man, and it doesn¡¯t have to be him to make things difficult. As long as one person can point you out from the Siege, we could get in a lot of trouble,¡± I told her. ¡°Besides. Would you have preferred skulking around or staying behind while we came here on our own?¡±

    She sighed. Her shoulders sagged. ¡°No. You¡¯re right. Maybe I¡¯m just being overly sensitive about it.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t that I didn¡¯t sympathize, I really did. Waking up in Chaldea¡¯s infirmary with most of my hair shorn off had been the topping on a shit sundae. But sometimes, sacrifices had to be made, and cutting your hair and dyeing it was a really minor one in the grand scheme.

    ¡°If it helps, you¡¯re just as beautiful with black hair as you were with blonde,¡± Arash added in with a charming smile.

    Damn, he was pretty smooth, wasn¡¯t he?

    Jeanne¡¯s cheeks flushed pink.

    ¡°N-not that it was a concern for me!¡± she said, her voice a little higher than before. ¡°But¡­ I guess it¡¯s really convenient, this hair dye thing you have in the future. In this time, something like this would have been much more work.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re just lucky that one of Chaldea¡¯s staff members happened to use black hair dye,¡± Mash muttered somberly.

    One of the deceased staff, she meant. There had to be some kind of irony in the fact that this whole plan only worked because the original owner of the dye was dead and didn¡¯t need it anymore.

    ¡°If you think this is incredible, you should see some of the colors people dye their hair in our time,¡± I said wryly. ¡°Red, blue, green, purple, pink¡­¡±

    ¡°Like Mash¡¯s?¡± Jeanne asked.

    Mash flushed and patted self-consciously at her own hair. ¡°Ah, no, Miss Jeanne. This is my natural color.¡±

    ¡°Really? Rika, too?¡±

    ¡°Carpet matches the drapes,¡± Rika reported with a kind of smug humor.

    Arash choked on a laugh that he smothered, while Mash flushed again and Ritsuka gave his sister a completely unimpressed look. Jeanne, on the other hand, didn¡¯t seem to get what that meant, and I didn¡¯t have any intention of explaining it. Was there a thing for corrupting a saint? Something like ¡°delinquency of a minor?¡±

    I shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s not common, but there are different kinds of mutations that can result in unusual colors.¡±

    Or magecraft. I hadn¡¯t seen anyone else like that for myself, but if magic could change your hair color as a side effect, then whatever they¡¯d done to make Mash must have been responsible for that particular shade of lavender.

    ¡°You¡¯re looking at the prime mutation herself,¡± Ritsuka said, looking pointedly at his sister. She stuck her tongue out at him childishly, and fuck, if that didn¡¯t tell me they were siblings, nothing would have.

    ¡°In any case,¡± I steered the conversation back around, ¡°Arash, did you have any luck?¡±

    Arash shook his head ruefully.

    ¡°Sorry, Master. No luck finding any dragon-slaying heroes. There were rumors of a powerful warrior further down south, but no one gave me anything more solid than that.¡±

    ¡°That certainly narrows it down,¡± I grumbled.

    Southern France¡­ There was no way we had the time or the resources to spend searching the entire southern half of the country on a rumor, especially one that vague. With the speed of travel in this era ¡ª in terms of both the physical and the information ¡ª that was the work of months or years.

    ¡°What about my evil self?¡± Jeanne asked. ¡°Was there anything else you learned about her?¡±

    Arash shrugged. ¡°Nothing that we didn¡¯t already know. Sorry to say, your other half is just as bad as you feared. The folks around here had much more vivid stories about what she did to Orl¨¦ans, none of it good.¡±

    Jeanne let out a heavy, explosive sigh.

    I didn¡¯t have anything to say to comfort her, so I didn¡¯t even try. ¡°It¡¯s a dead end here, then.¡±

    ¡°Seems that way, Master,¡± said Arash.

    Frustrating, but there wasn¡¯t anything we could do about it. Lisa would probably have told me that sometimes, when you followed a lead, it didn¡¯t take you anywhere useful. Sometimes, there just wasn¡¯t anything there for you to find.

    That didn¡¯t stop it from feeling like a waste of time, though.

    ¡°Should we travel south next, Miss Taylor?¡± Mash asked.

    I chewed on a mouthful of eggs to give myself a moment to think. As expected, they were bland and kind of tasteless, although they weren¡¯t anywhere near as bad as the ration bars, so they had that going for them.

    We didn¡¯t really have a lot of options, did we? There were rumors we could chase down south, and we might find out more as we went, but that wasn¡¯t a guarantee. It sucked that we didn¡¯t have anything more actionable than that, but there also wasn¡¯t any guarantee that we¡¯d find anything of use if we circled through the cities and towns around Orl¨¦ans, either.

    As for our group, particularly when it came to combat¡­

    I glanced over at Arash.

    His skills were mostly decent and worked well both to keep him alive and support his archery, and I had to assume he was good with his bow, if he¡¯d been summoned as an Archer instead of one of the other classes. In hindsight, an Archer was probably the better option for fighting wyverns, since attacking something that could fly would be easier if you had ranged options yourself.

    But his Noble Phantasm was a nonstarter. It was the last resort of last resorts, because it would immediately leave us down a fighter, and that put a limitation on him that instantly undercut everything else. He¡¯d be useful, but at this point, we needed more than just him, and if Siegfried or Sigurd really was here, then there was no way we could pass them up.

    Once I¡¯d swallowed, I asked, ¡°What¡¯s the next major settlement south of here?¡±

    Mash turned to bring up the map, but Jeanne answered me immediately. ¡°Lyon.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­another 250 kilometers,¡± Mash added, brow furrowing.

    ¡°Another week of walking,¡± I muttered, doing the math in my head.

    Rika¡¯s head hit the sturdy, wooden table with a solid thunk, and she groaned at the floor at the mere thought of it. Her brother¡¯s face had paled to match his porridge.

    I wasn¡¯t exactly enthused with the idea, either. The travel time was fucking with us really badly, and I¡¯d never wished for a car and modern roads more than I had during the days we¡¯d spent trekking from Vaucouleurs to here.

    The problem remained that there still wasn¡¯t anything we could do about it. Horses would definitely cut down on some of it ¡ª not as much as I would have liked, but definitely some of it ¡ª but the entire reason we were bunking in the living quarters adjacent to La Charit¨¦¡¯s Notre Dame instead of an inn or something was because we still didn¡¯t have any money to spend on anything else and we didn¡¯t much have a way of acquiring any in a reasonable timeframe.

    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°There¡¯s nowhere else closer by?¡± I asked Jeanne. ¡°No other major towns or cities in that direction?¡±

    ¡°There are, but none of them are as big,¡± she answered. ¡°If we assume that my evil self wants revenge, then she¡¯ll start with the places that were most important to me, and then attack the largest cities.¡±

    ¡°And she¡¯s already massacred everyone at Orl¨¦ans, the sight of your iconic victory¡­¡±

    Jeanne grimaced.

    So if her evil self, this Jeanne Alter, wanted to destroy everything Jeanne had built and kill all of the people Jeanne had saved until, assumedly, all of France was a smoldering ruin, where would she go next? Working under that idea, it would be the sight of Jeanne¡¯s next biggest victory, and I would have thought that meant Reims, where Charles VII was crowned.

    Except Charles VII was already dead, along with the entirety of his court. Would there even have been any point in going after Reims, except as and when it became ¡°convenient?¡±

    Ugh. There was still just too much we didn¡¯t know and too large an area to cover without a good way of getting there in anything resembling a timely manner.

    ¡°Do you have any idea ¡ª¡±

    Beep-beep!

    Romani¡¯s image appeared atop the table.

    ¡°Romani,¡± I began.

    ¡°There¡¯s no time!¡± he cut across me urgently. ¡°Everyone, I¡¯m detecting the presence of a Servant, approaching fast! It¡¯s headed right for you!¡±

    The whole group froze, turning to look at him, and Rika¡¯s spoon fell from her fingers with a clatter. I was the first one to move, and my stool toppled over, I stood from my seat so fast.

    ¡°If you left anything in your rooms, get it now!¡± I ordered the twins, and they jolted, scrambling out of their seats. ¡°Jeanne, Arash, you two are going to be our frontline, I need you to ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Wait!¡± Romani shouted. ¡°I¡¯m getting a better scan now, it¡¯s separating! I-it¡¯s not one Servant, I¡¯m reading at least five!¡±

    ¡°F-five?¡± Ritsuka choked out.

    That many? How? Why? Did they know we were here, somehow? Had they detected us through some manner of Clairvoyance or magecraft and were even now coming to eliminate the threat to their plans?

    I didn¡¯t even entertain the idea that it could be a coincidence. The mere thought was ludicrous. Why else would Jeanne¡¯s evil self bring four or more other Servants to the fight if not to crush us with overwhelming force?

    ¡°You need to get out of there!¡± Romani said. ¡°There¡¯s no way you can take on that many enemy Servants by yourselves!¡±

    And for once, I agreed with him. Five on three wasn¡¯t the worst odds, but between not having any idea who the other Servants were and the simple fact that Arash was the only one with an offensive Noble Phantasm among our group, even I had to acknowledge that we were massively outmatched. If any of them had an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm? Or worse, if more than one of them did? We were fucked, completely and utterly.

    Even if they didn¡¯t, none of our Servants was suited for close range combat, let alone against multiple opponents at once. If they had enough frontline fighters to our ranged fighter and two supports, they wouldn¡¯t even need Anti-Army Noble Phantasms, they could just close in and pick us off with sheer numbers.

    That wasn¡¯t even considering if they brought an army of wyverns with them.

    If, if, if. Too many fucking ifs, not enough solid answers.

    ¡°Ritsuka, Rika, go!¡± I told them. ¡°Get your stuff, get moving!¡±

    ¡°B-but the town!¡± Ritsuka protested.

    They were going to burn it down, too, I realized. Massacre everyone here, like they had at Orl¨¦ans. No, of course. Even if they were here for us, there was no way Jeanne Alter would pass up the chance to get yet more revenge against France.

    And there was nothing we could do about it, was there? Unless¡­

    I glanced to Arash, brow furrowing.

    We had just summoned him. I had just summoned him. He¡¯d been with us barely a week, and I hadn¡¯t seen him fight anything more dangerous than the animals he hunted for us on the road here.

    But if we could get the group to clump together, if the enemy Servants grouped up close enough to hit them all at once, then¡­ That would be it, wouldn¡¯t it? Threat beaten, Singularity corrected, everything was said and done with a single Noble Phantasm.

    All it would cost us was one good man who was technically already dead.

    My right hand ached. My Command Spells throbbed, as though to remind me how easy it would be to force him, even if he resisted, and if I gave the order, I wasn¡¯t sure that he even would. Not when his Noble Phantasm itself was a crystallization of a moment of self-sacrifice.

    It was the pragmatic thing. It was the correct choice, as a matter of ending this whole thing as quickly and efficiently as possible. Three years ago, I didn¡¯t think I would have flinched to make it.

    But did that make it the right choice?

    ¡°I know how you feel, but there¡¯s nothing you can do for them!¡± Romani replied.

    ¡°We¡¯ll do what we can for them, but this is already going to be a fighting retreat,¡± I said. ¡°Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, Arash, Jeanne ¡ª our job will be to occupy the enemy Servants long enough for as many people as possible to evacuate. We¡¯ll draw their attention away from the town and disappear into the forest.¡±

    And if the opportunity to finish them all off with Arash¡¯s Noble Phantasm presented itself¡­ I¡¯d make the decision on what to do about it then.

    ¡°S-Senpai!¡± Ritsuka gasped.

    ¡°It¡¯s the best we can do!¡± I snapped at him. ¡°If we had more Servants ¡ª¡±

    I shut my mouth before I could say something I regretted, like implying Arash was useless. It wouldn¡¯t help anything, and especially not unit cohesion.

    ¡°Go, get your stuff,¡± I ordered instead. ¡°Romani, how long do we have?¡±

    ¡°Not long!¡± he replied. ¡°M-maybe¡­thirty seconds? They¡¯re approaching fast, but it¡¯s more like a speeding car than a jet plane!¡±

    Finally, finally, the twins jolted into action, almost stumbling over themselves as they raced off to the rooms they¡¯d been let borrow to retrieve whatever bits or bobs they¡¯d left in there. With them out of the way, I turned to Mash.

    ¡°Mash ¡ª¡±

    But she¡¯d predicted me; in a flash, she had transformed, clad in armor once more, although I still thought it looked skimpy and pretty useless. At least it protected her chest.

    ¡°I¡¯m ready, Miss Taylor.¡±

    Arash, next.

    ¡°Arash ¡ª¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll set up in the bell tower,¡± he said, ¡°and keep an eye out for our uninvited guests.¡±

    ¡°Jeanne,¡± I finished, turning to her last, ¡°keep that disguise as long as you can.¡±

    ¡°I won¡¯t shy away from my evil self,¡± she told me firmly.

    There was no time to argue, no matter how stupid or misguided I thought it was.

    ¡°Just don¡¯t rush in to face her!¡±

    With that last bit taken care of, I raced back to my own room to pick up the pack of supplies we¡¯d been carrying on our journey here. Or one of them, at least. It was much lighter than it had been when we¡¯d set off, but that didn¡¯t mean it was useless enough to leave behind.

    Ritsuka and Rika had made it back by the time I did, pale and a little shaky, but they seemed wide awake, now. The adrenaline of the moment had woken them up the rest of the way the same as it had me, but the crash later was definitely not going to be pretty for anyone.

    I turned to my communicator. ¡°Romani ¡ª¡±

    Master! Arash¡¯s voice interrupted.

    A piercing scream from outside rang out before he could go any further, and Jeanne¡¯s face contorted with surprise. She didn¡¯t wait a second longer ¡ª before my eyes, she vanished, a gust of wind chasing after her.

    Shit.

    ¡°There¡¯s no time,¡± I told the twins. ¡°Go!¡±

    They didn¡¯t fight me or protest. Together, we raced out of the living quarters and from the Notre Dame into the street, and as we went, I reached out into my swarm to try and get an idea of the situation. To the east, there was nothing unusual, except the people now running that way to escape, but to the west, across the Loire river ¡ª

    A dragon, a wyvern, fell from the sky maybe thirty feet from us, startling both the twins and Mash, who jumped to put herself between it and us. She needn¡¯t have bothered. Two arrows jutted out of one of its eyes, buried almost up to the fletching, and six more were embedded much shallower into its neck. If it wasn¡¯t already dead, it would be very shortly.

    ¡°Th-that¡¯s¡­!¡± Rika stuttered.

    Good job, I sent back to Arash.

    He didn¡¯t reply, but I saw another volley of arrows shoot across the sky towards another wyvern that my bugs were tracking. Several of them lodged themselves into its scales without even drawing blood, but several more sank into the crevices between them and found vulnerable flesh as the beast reared back in pain.

    Against my will, I was impressed. At closer range, I probably could have managed a shot like that, using some of my old tricks. But to manage such pinpoint precision from so far away, with a bow and arrows instead of a bullet? I was beginning to understand that Servants weren¡¯t just massively superhuman in terms of speed or strength, but that they were utterly superhuman in terms of their skills, as well.

    ¡°Where did Jeanne go?¡± Ritsuka asked loudly.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think we can afford to wait for her, Master,¡± Mash said.

    I didn¡¯t say anything as I searched for her myself, spreading out my swarm to find the telltale scent of the chemical dye in her hair. As the only person in the whole country right now who had that modern hair dye, she should have been relatively easy to find.

    ¡°Ha!¡±

    Of course, it turned out to be completely unnecessary, because it wasn¡¯t at all easy to miss the blonde-haired woman in armor jumping fifty feet into the air to slam the haft of a rolled banner into one wyvern¡¯s head. It was even harder to miss her riding it down to the ground until its neck snapped under her and then standing up as though nothing was amiss.

    ¡°Whoa,¡± said Rika.

    But as though they were white blood cells detecting an infection, the other wyverns turned from what they were doing ¡ª from setting buildings on fire, from crashing through brick and wood, from swooping down to claw at whichever unfortunate soul happened to capture their attention ¡ª and started to converge on Jeanne¡¯s position. They made directly for her like they were being drawn in by some kind of magnet.

    Arash predicted me before I could even make the order, and he shot salvos of lightning fast arrows towards every wyvern that he could see from his perch. One after the other, his targets dropped from the sky, crashing through buildings and blocking the roads. A few of them disappeared beneath the surface of the river with a titanic splash.

    It was a drop of water in a bucket. Even as he killed them, there were so many more that it didn¡¯t seem to make a difference at all.

    Jeanne took a deep breath ¡ª

    ¡°I am Jeanne d¡¯Arc!¡± she shouted, and her voice carried over the screams of the fleeing townsfolk. ¡°I am the woman they named the Maid of Orl¨¦ans! I am she who saw King Charles crowned! I am the one they burned at Rouen! As a servant of God, I have returned from beyond death itself to protect the good people of France!¡±

    What the fuck was she doing?

    ¡°You, foul devil who claims to seek revenge and wears my name, present yourself before me, for I name you a charlatan and a deceiver!¡±

    The crowd of wyverns shuddered, stuttered, and then, slowly, they began retreating, pulling away from the beeline they¡¯d been making towards her as Jeanne stood strong, triumphant over the body of the one she¡¯d killed. From above, five more descended, and I knew immediately who and what they carried without even having to look.

    The five enemy Servants.

    I got a better look as they came closer. The two on the left were both pale and white-haired, almost sickly looking. One was a man, dressed in fine, black clothing of rich make that gave him the air of a prince or a lord. He carried a spear. The woman next to him was full-bodied and looked like someone had crossed a noblewoman with a dominatrix, although the stark red of her gown contrasted her pasty white skin.

    The other two on the right ¡ª my right, that was ¡ª were in complete contrast. The first was a woman, long, dark-haired, dressed in a fetishized version of a knightly tabard and carrying a heavy staff whose end was fashioned into a crucifix. Her companion was¡­effeminate, but androgynous, with a slender frame and clothing that looked like it came right out of The Three Musketeers, complete with a fluffy feather stuck in a wide-brimmed hat.

    And in the center of this line was, incredibly¡­

    ¡°Two Jeannes?¡± Ritsuka muttered.

    Yes, another Jeanne d¡¯Arc. Identical from the shape of her face to her hair to the armor that looked as though it had been stained black by soot. She looked as though she could have stepped right out of the pyre that had killed her.

    The important difference was in their demeanors, the way they held themselves. Our Jeanne, standing on the ground, was a gallant figure, upright and righteous. The Jeanne riding the wyvern was the exact opposite, because her expression was cruel and twisted, and the air she gave off that I felt even from that distance was dark and malevolent.

    For an instant, she reminded me of Jack Slash.

    ¡°W-whoa,¡± Rika gasped, ¡°that¡¯s so freaky! She really is Jeanne Alter!¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be silly!¡± her brother chided her.

    The Jeanne atop the wyvern, Jeanne Alter, looked down at us from her mount, and the instant she saw her counterpart, she broke out into laughter. Cackling peals rained down upon the stillness of the town, high pitched and almost stereotypically evil.

    ¡°What,¡± she rasped out between laughs, ¡°what nonsense is this?¡±

    ¡°So,¡± our Jeanne said stoically, ¡°it¡¯s true, then.¡±

    ¡°This, this is too much!¡± Jeanne Alter guffawed. She turned around to look behind her. ¡°Gilles! Gilles, look! Where is Gilles? He just has to see this!¡±

    Jeanne hesitated. ¡°Gilles?¡±

    ¡°Oh. Yes, that¡¯s right. Gilles stayed behind.¡± Jeanne Alter giggled, still grinning. ¡°What a farce this is. What lunacy. This joke is so poor that I might just die laughing. To think, France is so pathetic that it still clings to me like a child at her mother¡¯s skirts, even after they betrayed me!¡±

    As they talked, I turned narrowed eyes on the assembled group and tried to measure the distance between each of them. Just from looking, it was already larger than I would have hoped, which meant it was far too likely that Arash would miss, if he tried to get them all at once. At least one of them would escape, which was a problem when we had no idea where the Grail pinning this Singularity in place was or who held it.

    I looked at Jeanne Alter suspiciously.

    In Fuyuki, the Grail had been held by Saber, who had been corrupted by whatever had originally formed the Singularity. A ¡°Saber Alter,¡± as it were. Now, a Jeanne who had been somehow corrupted was standing ¡ª flying, whatever ¡ª above us. A ¡°Jeanne Alter,¡± as we had taken to calling her.

    Would the enemy really be that confident, that brazen, that stupid that they would deliver it right to us?

    ¡°Who are you?¡± Jeanne demanded. ¡°Why do you have my face and my name?¡±

    Arash, I sent his way, if you used your Noble Phantasm, could you take out all of them at once?

    He hesitated a moment. He must have, because it took a few seconds for him to reply.

    Maybe, Master, but I can¡¯t guarantee it. Not without knowing what to expect of the enemies¡¯ Noble Phantasms.

    ¡°What a useless question!¡± Jeanne Alter snickered. ¡°I¡¯m Jeanne d¡¯Arc, of course! The saint who raised France from defeat and lifted the siege at Orl¨¦ans!¡±

    ¡°Saint?¡± Jeanne repeated, disgusted. ¡°What nonsense are you spouting? You¡¯re no more saint than I am!¡±

    If we couldn¡¯t risk his Noble Phantasm without knowing what their defenses looked like¡­

    What about a volley of regular arrows? How many could you fire at once?

    His response was immediate and matter-of-fact. Ten-thousand.

    My mouth twitched and my eyebrows rose just the slightest, the only signs of my surprise.

    But it would take me a moment to prepare, Master.

    ¡°That¡¯s not important, though!¡± Jeanne shouted. ¡°No¡­ No, more importantly¡­ At Orl¨¦ans, you slaughtered the whole city! You killed King Charles and all the members of his court! And now, you¡¯ve come here to do the same! Why? Why are you attacking the very people I fought to save?¡±

    I think you might have that moment, I told him. Get ready. Try and focus down. Jeanne Alter is the most important target, but get her army of wyverns if you can.

    Understood, Master.

    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t it be obvious?¡± Jeanne Alter asked with a malicious grin. ¡°I¡¯m going to carve a crest of blood across all of France, until the streets run red and not a single living soul remains!¡±

    She cackled.

    ¡°Such is the will of God!¡±

 Chapter XVII: Dragon Witch

    Chapter XVII: Dragon Witch

    ¡°Y-you!¡± Jeanne gasped, and for the first time since we¡¯d met, she seemed not determined or merely angry, but utterly and completely furious. ¡°How dare you! To claim that this¡­this barbarism, this cruelty¡­that this is the will of God!¡±

    ¡°Is it not?¡± Jeanne Alter smirked. ¡°I no longer hear the voice of the Lord. To have been called back from beyond death and set upon this country, and yet God no longer speaks to me, is that not evidence itself that He no longer blesses this country?¡±

    ¡°What madness has possessed you to think such lunacy!¡± Jeanne snarled at her doppelganger.

    ¡°Madness?¡± Jeanne Alter sneered. ¡°It¡¯s this country that has gone mad, not me! It¡¯s you who has gone mad! They betrayed me, they turned their backs on me, they spat upon me! I delivered them salvation in accordance with the Lord¡¯s will, and now that they have fallen from His grace, I¡¯ll destroy them in accordance with His wrath and His grief!¡±

    Jeanne¡¯s fist trembled, clenched so tight that her gauntlet creaked.

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t certain before, but now I¡¯m sure,¡± she said lowly. ¡°You¡­ There¡¯s no way you¡¯re me.¡±

    Jeanne Alter laughed. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t that be my line, you country bumpkin? Any human should understand exactly what I¡¯m saying! Any human being would feel the way I feel and come to the conclusions I have! If you can¡¯t understand why I am the way I am, then you¡¯re not a human, you¡¯re just a phantom! A ghost, a fragment, an image of me cast in the ideal of a saint who piously protects France!¡±

    She drew her sword with a long, metallic rasp.

    ¡°Yes, I know what you are, now! You¡¯re the scum I scraped off the bottom of my boot! You¡¯re nothing more than the residue of my discarded leftovers! You¡¯re neither a Ruler Servant nor Jeanne d¡¯Arc, you¡¯re just the unnecessary bits of myself I got rid of!¡±

    Jeanne¡¯s shoulders shook. At first, I wasn¡¯t sure if it was despair or anger, because just based on my experience with people, it was more tempting to agree with her other self. We were all ugly and horrible, deep down, selfish creatures that lashed out when hurt and jealously guarded the things we cared about, even at the expense of everyone else.

    And then she opened her mouth. ¡°No, it¡¯s exactly the opposite! The woman known as Jeanne d¡¯Arc¡­ I had all of those feelings! I was angry, I was wrathful, I was spiteful and opinionated! That¡¯s why¡­those were the things I had to cast away in order to save France!¡±

    She brandished her flag.

    ¡°I had to be better than my human frailties!¡± she said, with such conviction in her voice that I thought I must at last be seeing the woman who had led the battle against the English. ¡°I had to be pious and upright, that the people of France could take heart and know that we were not beaten! I had to become more than a simple farm girl who had never held a sword in her life and knew nothing of the arts of war! I couldn¡¯t be moved by such petty things as my baser instincts and emotions!¡±

    I¡¯m ready, Master, Arash reported.

    I made sure not to show it on my face. Not the slightest smile or the smallest smirk. Wait until I say.

    Jeanne pointed the spiked tip at her counterpart. ¡°You are all those things that I had to give up! You¡¯re nothing more than my lingering regrets and grudges, given form!¡±

    Jeanne Alter snarled. ¡°I¡¯ll show you who¡¯s real, you bitch! Berserk Lancer, Berserk Assassin!¡± The aristocrat and the dominatrix shifted, so that must¡¯ve been them. ¡°Rip her to pieces! Remove this ugly eyesore from my sight!¡±

    The aristocrat¡¯s face broke out into a pearly grin, and the dominatrix¡¯s lips curled with a sadistic smirk. The one lifted his lance, and the other materialized a heavy, metal staff topped with a winged figure that might vaguely be called draconic.

    There wasn¡¯t going to be a better moment than this.

    Now! I commanded, and something shifted as Arash let loose his ten-thousand arrows. The air howled. The sky opened up and dropped down upon the world. All at once, they came, an endless torrent as inevitable and inexorable as the tide.

    At one point, way back in my Skitter days, Alec had dragged the whole team into movie night and sat us all down to watch a cheesy action flick from Aleph, called 300. As a dramatized recreation of the Battle of Thermopylae, I¡¯d rated it a 4 for historical accuracy and privately rated it a 6 for all of the shirtless hunks in loincloths. There were some things that hot men in revealing clothes just couldn¡¯t fix.

    As Arash¡¯s arrows rained down from above, at that moment, a line from that cheesy movie came back to me:

    Our arrows will blot out the sun.

    The special effects from the movie¡­actually looked a lot like what I was seeing, now. Ten-thousand arrows ¡ª that number seemed enormous, but you couldn¡¯t appreciate the scale of something like that until you saw it yourself. Until you saw them rise into the sky and come back down, black dots growing larger and larger as their sheer number cast a long shadow over everything beneath them.

    Watching it, I was certain that even C¨²chulainn wouldn¡¯t have been able to dodge them all, even with his Protection from Arrows skill. At a certain point, the utterly ridiculous quantity had to overwhelm even as celebrated a hero as that.

    Even a towering monolith could be brought low if you swarmed her with enough numbers.

    Jeanne Alter screamed, lifting a hand up as though to shield herself from the incoming barrage. Like that would have been enough. No, we didn¡¯t even need Arash¡¯s Noble Phantasm if he could just fire off this many arrows like this. What enemy could muster a defense against what might as well have been an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm all on its own?

    The woman in the fetish tabard, apparently.

    She raised her staff towards the sky and the falling arrows, she opened her mouth, and she shouted one word towards the heavens.

    ¡°Tarasque!¡±

    And above their heads, large enough to cover all of them at once, an enormous tortoise-like shell shimmered into existence, covered across the back with huge, wicked spikes that jutted out in every direction.

    ¡°Then we will fight in the shade,¡± Rika mumbled, and my face twisted into a complicated expression.

    For once, I was glad I didn¡¯t have time to unpack that, right then.

    I knew before the arrows even hit that they wouldn¡¯t break through. Not against the deployment of an actual Noble Phantasm. We¡¯d just missed our best chance to end this whole thing in one swoop, and now we were on the backfoot. We¡¯d lost the element of surprise.

    And sure enough, even against so many coming down, the woman¡¯s defense held, and Arash¡¯s arrows bent, bounced, and broke against the hardened surface, skidded off the spikes, and sometimes just plain shattered into sparks of light.

    On the bright side, that shell might have been big, but it was barely big enough to cover the enemy Servants, and it most certainly wasn¡¯t big enough to protect the army of wyverns that hovered behind them, neatly lined up and waiting for orders. They had no Noble Phantasm defending them as Arash¡¯s barrage came down, nothing but their scales, and that proved not enough. The arrows tore through wings, sank through flesh, pierced eye and scale alike, and under that rain, they fell, crashing to the ground with thunderous thuds drowned out only by the staccato of the arrows landing.

    When it was over and the last arrow landed, Jeanne Alter turned a furious gaze towards the church and the bell tower, snarling out, ¡°You!¡±

    She lifted her sword as though to race forward and run him through, but I didn¡¯t waste any time; just as the barrage petered out and ended, I lifted up my arms and my swarm arose, a single, droning mass of black and brown easily enough to outnumber Arashs¡¯ arrows a thousand times over. They came up as a wall of chitin and wings, interposing themselves between our enemies and us, and I turned immediately and grabbed the twins by one wrist each.

    ¡°Come on!¡± I urged them.

    ¡°Wha ¡ª Senpai!¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Wait!¡± Rika cried.

    ¡°Miss Taylor!¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no time!¡±

    Arash, I thought at him, retreat!

    A blur leapt out of the bell tower, and even as he did, a wash of flame cut into my swarm, frying some of my bugs, but it was no use, because my swarm was almost twice as large as it would have been in modern France. Just the complete lack of pesticides had swollen their ranks past even my best from back in my days as a cape.

    The twins, once I got them started, picked up the idea and ran on their own, so I let them go and ordered, ¡°To the forest! Go, go!¡±

    Mash followed behind them, sparing me a worried glance as she passed, and I made to bring up the rear ¡ª but there was one person still left behind, and when I turned to look, she was standing there, staring up at the swarm and the gouts of flame that were making quick work of it.

    Fucking pyrokinetics. They¡¯d been screwing with me ever since my first night out.

    ¡°Jeanne!¡± I shouted at her. ¡°We need to get out of here!¡±

    She looked at me, hesitated, looked back at her evil self, and then turned away and started to run.

    Turning her back on her dark reflection, it must have tasted like the bitterest of defeats.

    We raced towards the treeline in the distance, and between my pace and Jeanne keeping slightly behind me, we caught up with the twins and Mash in short order. We¡¯d made it halfway there when something suddenly bulldozed its way through my swarm, swiftly making it towards us at a speed that could only make it one thing.

    ¡°Shit!¡±

    Jeanne and I both spun around, and the sheer force of the collision as a black blur slammed into her sent me flying back and tumbling ass over teakettle. Through the sparser collection of bugs I¡¯d kept closer by, I made out one of the enemy Servants, the aristocrat with the spear, even as I righted myself and pulled myself to my feet. Jeanne had managed to block him with the shaft of her flag.

    Back in town, Jeanne Alter was quickly whittling down the swarm, and it was only a matter of time until she¡¯d thinned it out enough to give pursuit. We couldn¡¯t afford to sit here and fuck around with the aristocrat, not unless we could guarantee a kill.

    Arash!

    As though he¡¯d predicted my thoughts, an arrow whistled over my head and towards the aristocrat, but he dodged it, leaning out of the way. Jeanne gave a shout and swung her flag, flinging him back a paltry dozen feet or so.

    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    It was enough room for Arash to fire another arrow, and then another and another, not a barrage like before but a series of consecutive shots that forced the aristocrat to deflect them with the shaft of his own spear. I didn¡¯t know how long either of them could keep it up, but I had the nasty suspicion that Arash would run out of arrows and have to restock before the aristocrat slipped up and took one someplace inconvenient.

    So I told him, Wait for an opening, a guaranteed hit. We don¡¯t need to kill him, we just need him injured enough for long enough for us to escape.

    Abruptly, the arrows stopped, and the aristocrat ¡ª Berserk Lancer, apparently ¡ª rushed forward to fill the space they¡¯d opened and attacked Jeanne, jabbing at her with the business end of his lance. She scrambled to defend herself, and if it hadn¡¯t been obvious before, it was now, as I watched them, that whatever the reason behind her decreased performance, it was severely impacting her ability to fight. He was going to overwhelm her eventually, one way or another.

    I palmed one of the runestones C¨²chulainn had left us in Fuyuki and eyed the aristocrat, squinting at his stats and skills with the Master¡¯s Clairvoyance provided by Chaldea. Magic Resistance B. My lips twitched. It wasn¡¯t even worth trying.

    ¡°Miss Jeanne!¡± Mash¡¯s voice called out, and moving so fast that the bugs I had attached to her were ripped off completely, she leapt over my head, hefted her massive shield, and with a warcry, brought it down on the aristocrat.

    The aristocrat ¡ª Lancer, because that was honestly easier to keep track of in my head ¡ª dodged out of the way, and the bottom of Mash¡¯s shield crashed into the spot he¡¯d just occupied. Mash didn¡¯t wait for him to come back around. She lifted her shield back up and kicked off the ground, eating up the distance between them effortlessly.

    She was moving better now than she had in Fuyuki, I noted as I watched her engage Lancer. A little more graceful, a little less clumsy, not as much in the way of wasted movement or overextending her attacks. Was it just a matter of her attuning to the Heroic Spirit that slumbered inside her, or was she actually learning how to fight that quickly?

    Lancer struck back with his spear, equally as quick and twice as elegant. There was a smoothness to his attacks that Mash still lacked, although even so, he couldn¡¯t land a clean hit. Like Medusa before him, Mash¡¯s shield was just too sturdy a defense and too large to operate around.

    I recognized the distraction for what it was. I didn¡¯t know if the twins planned to summon Mash back with a Command Spell, but if that was their plan, then it was actually fairly decent, since they had six Command Spells between them.

    I seized the moment and ran back to Jeanne, wrapping one hand around the cold steel of her gauntlet. She turned to me, blonde hair whipping against her cheeks.

    ¡°Come on,¡± I said. ¡°We need to get out of here.¡±

    She looked back towards the fight.

    ¡°But Mash¡­¡±

    ¡°Will be fine,¡± I cut across her. ¡°She¡¯s buying time for us to escape. The twins can get her after we¡¯ve left.¡±

    She hesitated for a moment longer, and then nodded, and we raced off again, heading for the treeline. In the distance, the bugs I¡¯d left on the twins hovered just out of plain sight, waiting for us in the forest.

    ¡°Have you gone soft, Dracul?¡±

    Jeanne gasped, and she wrenched me backwards so suddenly that she almost pulled my arm out of its socket. A bare instant later, faster than I could blink, the dominatrix, Berserk Assassin, appeared in front of her. Jeanne¡¯s flag and Assassin¡¯s staff collided so swiftly and with such force it was as though they were magnetized.

    ¡°It¡¯s not befitting such a monster,¡± Assassin purred, yellow eyes gleaming, ¡°to go so easy on such a tiny waif of a girl like that.¡±

    My brain skidded over the word like a record scratch.

    Dracul.

    Several bugs sought him out, tried to land, but he was moving too fast and his swings were too strong. Those that got close enough were either blown away by the force behind his blows or else died outright.

    Was he¡­? If I squinted, maybe it fit. He certainly looked the part of the legend, rather than the man. I could imagine him stalking through the streets of London or welcoming Jonathon Harker into his home with an unsettling smile, gracious and yet so subtly wrong.

    Dracul. Dracula. There weren¡¯t many other Heroic Spirits, if any at all, who had such a connection to that name. Vlad the Impaler had planted the seed, and Bram Stoker had made it grow. There was no one else I could think of that would be referred to that way.

    But for someone like that to have been summoned here, in the service of Jeanne Alter¡­ No, I suppose that actually made a whole lot of sense, didn¡¯t it? Who else would be so appropriate an attack dog than one of the most vicious warlords in history, so much so to have spawned the legend of bloodsucking monsters in popular media even hundreds of years later?

    ¡°Well, no matter,¡± said Assassin. ¡°It means I have the two of you all to myself. Your blood, so young and virile, will only make me all the more beautiful.¡±

    ¡°You sicken me,¡± Jeanne spat.

    Assassin leaned forward, chuckling low beneath her breath. ¡°My dear, you say that as though I haven¡¯t been hearing it all my life.¡±

    Right. This nutjob needed to be handled, too.

    I squinted at her with my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance, and a surge of triumph jolted through my gut.

    No Magic Resistance for you, bitch, I thought viciously.

    One of C¨²chulainn¡¯s runestones found its way into my hand. In my head, the image of a silk thread snapping resounded, and my magic circuits whirred into activity.

    ¡°Jeanne,¡± I shouted as I wound back my arm, ¡°close your eyes!¡±

    It said something about her that she trusted me enough to listen, turning her face away from Assassin, as I flung the runestone between them like a grenade. I squeezed my eyes shut and threw my arm over them to protect them.

    ¡°Anfang!¡±

    Assassin screeched as the runestone flashed with light that was, for a short moment, brighter than the sun, reeling back as she clawed at her face.

    Another Master might have let her go. An inexperienced Master might have prioritized escaping over the elimination of an enemy combatant. They weren¡¯t necessarily the wrong choices, and if we¡¯d just had Mash and Jeanne, I would¡¯ve run for all I was worth while I had the chance.

    Not here. Not now.

    Arash, take her down!

    A bevy of arrows loosed from the treeline, and Assassin gasped as they sank into her back with several, meaty thuds. One, two, three, four ¡ª an even dozen in total, all of them center mass, all of them targeting something vital and vitally important.

    I didn¡¯t need the spurt of blood that gushed from her mouth to know that at least one of those was a killshot.

    ¡°Y-you¡­¡± Assassin rasped breathlessly as red trickled down her lips.

    Whatever she¡¯d been about to say was lost. One, final arrow came from the trees, and it scythed through Assassin¡¯s neck, bursting through her throat just under her chin. The metal tip glinted.

    It was becoming more and more obvious that I¡¯d underestimated Arash pretty badly. He wasn¡¯t a dragonslayer, that was true. He wasn¡¯t a frontline fighter who could take on the enemy Servants while Mash defended his flanks. He couldn¡¯t effortlessly mow down every dragon, every wyvern, that we came across.

    But thinking that any of those things made him useless was absolutely wrong, and as someone who had wielded something as weak as bugs effectively enough to kill the woman everyone thought was unkillable, I should have known better.

    Assassin collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, and her body vanished before she even hit the ground, disappearing into motes of blue light. It felt a little anticlimactic to have defeated one of the enemy¡¯s Servants that quickly in the first encounter, but I wasn¡¯t going to complain that we¡¯d eliminated one of the threats arrayed against us.

    I rolled back to my feet and took off again for the trees. ¡°Go!¡±

    Jeanne startled, but she followed my lead without hesitation. ¡°Y-yes!¡±

    Back in town, my swarm was starting to thin. Jeanne Alter was really the only one who could kill them with any speed, but that just meant she was killing them too quickly. My swarm was massive, bigger than it had ever been, yes, but that didn¡¯t make the bugs in it any less vulnerable to fire or extreme heat.

    As the treeline loomed ahead, I turned my attention back towards Mash and Lancer to find nothing had really changed. We were running out of time for her to disengage, and Lancer didn¡¯t look like he had any intention of letting her take a breath long enough to escape.

    There were a couple of different ways¡­ But if we could avoid spending any Command Spells if we didn¡¯t have to, that would be better. And the way Assassin had been killed gave me a few ideas.

    Arash, I sent his way, are you ready?

    What did you have in mind, Master? Arash asked back.

    That tight spacing you did against Assassin ¡ª if you had a clean shot, could you do the same thing to Lancer?

    I could almost imagine the smirk curling at the corner of his mouth. If you can get me that clean shot, Master, I can handle the rest.

    Feet pounding the ground, I pivoted on my heel, turned around, and as I gathered as big a swarm as I could from the surrounding grass, I opened my mouth and shouted, ¡°Mash, get out of the way!¡±

    Mash blocked Lancer¡¯s next blow, and then she kicked off the ground and threw herself to the side. Lancer made to follow and chase after her, but at the same moment, a cloud of harmless bugs buzzed up and in his face, and he let out a startled yell, jerking back.

    Another dozen arrows flew out of the trees, and Dracul was in no shape to avoid them. They each landed, twelve perfect shots that hit center mass on his chest, just like they had Assassin. Killshots, a number of them. Debilitating even for those that weren¡¯t.

    And without even pausing, Lancer reached down and yanked them all out, one by one, brackish blood spurting out from each wound. My eyebrows rose towards my hairline and my mouth dropped open.

    Furiously, I checked his stats again, and something dreadful squirmed in my gut as my mind landed on one of his skills, one that made fighting him a lot more problematic than I¡¯d been expecting.

    Battle Continuation A. The ability to take even terrible wounds and keep fighting. To take an arrow to the heart, to the stomach, to the lung, and still advance like nothing had happened.

    Then, before my eyes, the blood leaking from Dracul¡¯s wounds rose into the air and lashed out in tendrils, like tentacles, spearing through my bugs with unerring accuracy until I felt every single one of them slip from my control. Dead.

    I could only watch as the bugs he¡¯d speared melted into slurry and got absorbed into the tendrils of blood, and as they sank back inside of his body, disappearing into his wounds that sealed up behind them, two more unknowns cleared up in the mind¡¯s eye of my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance.

    Vampirism A. Kazikli Bey.

    The ability to recover vitality and energy by sucking others¡¯ blood, and the Noble Phantasm of Vlad III, twisted by the legend of Dracula. Combined with his Battle Continuation, the only way to kill him would be to obliterate him all at once, to deal so much damage in a single attack that there was no way for him to recover.

    ¡°Mash, get out of there!¡± I screamed.

    It was like facing an Endbringer. The sheer, destructive power wasn¡¯t on the same level, and the raw durability wasn¡¯t anywhere close. But every wound he inflicted and every kill he made would rejuvenate him, and he could survive and recover from just about anything that didn¡¯t kill him outright. And if he came in range, he could pierce through our defenses with a Noble Phantasm that turned his entire body into a weapon, from his hair to his bones to the meanest drop of blood.

    It wasn¡¯t the best comparison. Maybe Alabaster was a better one, in some ways, and Crawler in others, but it was the one my brain made.

    Mash hesitated for the barest fraction of a second, and then she started to make her retreat. I didn¡¯t give Dracul any chance to follow her ¡ª I pulled every bug I could from the surrounding area, not just from the grass this time, but from the trees and the bushes and their boltholes in the ground, regardless of what they were or what use they could be, regardless of how few there were, and I set them upon him, knowing already that it was pointless at best and feeding him at worst.

    There wasn¡¯t anything else to do. Something like that, we couldn¡¯t hope to beat him, right now.

    ¡°Arash, covering fire!¡±

    Arrows shot forth from the treeline with perfect accuracy, but Dracul wasn¡¯t bothered by them in the least. With lazy swings, he knocked them from the air, or else he stepped to the side or back, avoiding them entirely. I watched him, unblinking, the whole way, until Mash made it past the treeline and into the cover of the foliage. Only then did I turn away and follow.

    The instant we¡¯d all made it, I pulled the tattered remnants of the swarm occupying Jeanne Alter and her other three Servants away from distraction duty and spread them out, blanketing the entire field we¡¯d just crossed and as much of the town that was still within reach in a writhing, droning mass of chitin. It wasn¡¯t as thick a cloud as I would have liked it to be, but it was still thick enough that those in the group without some sort of extrasensory ability wouldn¡¯t be able to track us as we fled.

    The twins and Jeanne were waiting for us, pale-faced and nervous.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Rika greeted me.

    ¡°We need to get out of here,¡± I said without preamble. Arash landed beside me almost as though to punctuate that statement.

    ¡°That wave of bugs, I assume that was your doing?¡± Jeanne asked. It sounded more like an accusation.

    I still hadn¡¯t figured out how I was going to explain that. A part of me wondered why I even had to, like being able to control bugs was somehow a strange and unusual magic that defied all orthodoxy. I¡¯d seen some pretty ridiculous powers in my career as a cape, but just what little I knew of magecraft was enough that I was perfectly aware of exactly how bullshit that could get, too.

    They could build a wish-granting perpetual motion engine. I controlled bugs, why was I the weird one?

    ¡°Not now,¡± I said instead. ¡°That won¡¯t keep them busy for too long, and we need to be gone when they get past it. Jeanne, you said Lyon was the next place we should go?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± she answered immediately, although the set of her brow told me we weren¡¯t done with my bugs, just yet. ¡°There are other villages between here and there that we could stop at, if we don¡¯t take a straight route there, but it should be our next destination.¡±

    I remembered that we¡¯d originally been discussing it in terms of investigating her evil self and figuring out motives for this destruction, but that wasn¡¯t exactly necessary anymore, was it? Jeanne Alter had told us exactly what she was doing and why. Putting more into investigating the rhymes and reasons was pointless.

    But our best lead on our potential dragonslayer was simply ¡°down south.¡± A major population center like Lyon was as good a place to start looking for that as any other. Better, even, because it should get travelers from across the region instead of just localized tradesmen.

    I nodded. ¡°Then we¡¯ll go there. Mash,¡± I turned to her, ¡°lead the way.¡±

    She hesitated and turned to the twins, but Ritsuka gave her a nod, and her expression firmed.

    ¡°Please follow me, everyone,¡± she said, and then she turned and started off deeper into the woods, fast enough to be called a speedy retreat but still slow enough for us mere humans to keep up.

    Behind us, as we put distance between us and La Charit¨¦, my swarm spread out and dispersed, forming vague blobs big enough to contain all of us that made off in every other direction but ours. Whether that worked or not, either way, it didn¡¯t look like Jeanne Alter and her Servants intended to chase us down.

    The smirk on Dracul¡¯s face as he watched us run away was going to stay with me the whole night through.

 Chapter XVIII: Dragonslayer

    Chapter XVIII: Dragonslayer

    As the town of La Charit¨¦ disappeared in the distance, no longer visible through the foliage, we kept running. Our panting breaths and the pounding of our feet on the ground formed a soundtrack to our sprint, as though to keep driving us forward towards the city of Lyon that lay in the far distance. Like we could reach it over the crest of the next hill or beyond the next copse of trees, forever just out of reach.

    We didn¡¯t stop. Long after even the field we¡¯d crossed to reach the forest had disappeared from the range of my control, we were still going, racing as far away as we could as fast as our legs would carry us. My legs burned, my lungs ached, sweat dripped down my head and my shirt, but none of us dared to stop for even a second.

    The twins, to my surprise, didn¡¯t complain or even really slow down as we went. Whether they¡¯d been trying to build up endurance in Chaldea¡¯s gym while I wasn¡¯t looking, I didn¡¯t know. Maybe I was just giving them too much credit, though. When it came to pushing past your limits and going farther than you¡¯d ever thought you could, adrenaline was a hell of a drug.

    Eventually, something had to give. Half our party was still human, and two thirds of it was still living and breathing instead of a materialized ghost. Perhaps somewhat expectedly, the twins burnt out first and stumbled to a stop, their legs trembling and their chests heaving as they gulped down air.

    I wasn¡¯t all that much better. Less winded, because I was more used to this sort of thing, but it wasn¡¯t like I could sprint all out and not even break a sweat. Even Mash was huffing and puffing a little.

    ¡°Did we lose them?¡± Ritsuka asked breathlessly.

    ¡°No enemy Servants detected, Sen-Senpai,¡± Mash answered.

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t look like they¡¯re chasing us,¡± I said.

    Why, I couldn¡¯t have said. After all, we¡¯d killed one of Jeanne Alter¡¯s Servants. That was one more Servant she didn¡¯t have to fight for her, to help her burn down the country. Shouldn¡¯t that have put us higher up on her shitlist? More of a threat? If it had been me in her place, losing one of what was for all intents and purposes my generals would definitely have had me focus on the one who had done it.

    Then again, even at my worst, I couldn¡¯t imagine burning down an entire fucking country on some roaring rampage of revenge, so maybe wondering why a pyromaniac nutjob wasn¡¯t making a rational decision wasn¡¯t a good question to ask.

    Or maybe¡­

    The thought sent a shiver of dread down my spine.

    Maybe the reason why Jeanne Alter wasn¡¯t concerned about the loss of a single Servant was because she could just keep summoning more. She¡¯d had four with her, after all. Four Servants that she took out to burn down a relatively minor town, backed up by an army of wyverns, and just by the way she¡¯d reacted to us, she hadn¡¯t expected us to be there when she did it, either.

    When the enemy could throw around that much force that casually¡­ What did that say about what she could bring to bear if she seriously wanted to destroy us?

    ¡°What about the townsfolk?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°Ah¡­¡± Mash¡¯s face fell. ¡°Senpai¡­I don¡¯t think¡­¡±

    ¡°Most of them managed to evacuate,¡± I told him.

    His expression lifted hopefully.

    ¡°Most?¡± Rika asked, voice somber.

    Her brother¡¯s hopeful expression faltered.

    There was no way to break this news delicately. Romani might have preferred if I told them a pretty little lie and said that everyone made it out unscathed and it would all be sunshine and rainbows, but even if I agreed not to burden them too much too quickly, hiding the truth like that wouldn¡¯t help out anyone, and eventually, they¡¯d realize I¡¯d lied, anyway.

    ¡°We did what we could, but some people died before we could do anything,¡± I told them. ¡°Some people died from the wyverns. Some people were crushed by the wyverns¡¯ bodies when Arash shot them down.¡±

    ¡°I did my best to put them out of the path of any bystanders,¡± Arash added.

    ¡°Some people never made it out of their houses,¡± I went on. ¡°And some people got trampled on the way out of town or fell into the river.¡±

    And now for the part that none of them wanted to hear.

    ¡°Most of them¡­ are probably going to die anyway.¡±

    The twins sucked in a sharp breath.

    ¡°Miss Taylor!¡± said Mash.

    ¡°No, she¡¯s right,¡± Jeanne said miserably. ¡°My other self¡­ If she truly desires the destruction of France and all of its people, then she won¡¯t let them go.¡±

    ¡°The smart ones will leave and go to another town nearby,¡± I said. ¡°Most of them¡­ When Jeanne Alter leaves, they¡¯ll return to town, try to pick up and rebuild, and when she brings another army of wyverns to finish the job¡­¡±

    They would all die just the same, as if we hadn¡¯t saved them in the first place.

    ¡°We have to go back!¡± Rika shouted. ¡°We can¡¯t just leave them all to ¡ª¡±

    ¡°And do what?¡± I demanded. ¡°Fight off five Servants and an army of wyverns with one Demi-Servant, one malfunctioning Ruler, and one Archer?¡±

    Jeanne winced, but didn¡¯t protest the point.

    ¡°Four Servants,¡± Ritsuka corrected, staring me straight in the eye with a determined look on his face. ¡°Arash killed their Assassin.¡±

    ¡°Five, minimum,¡± I rebuked. I didn¡¯t back down. ¡°If she doesn¡¯t already have more she can call on, then she can just summon another at her earliest convenience. Holy Grail, remember?¡±

    ¡°It can¡¯t be that easy.¡± Ritsuka didn¡¯t back down, either. ¡°Doctor Roman said that hooking the Grail we got from Fuyuki up to the power grid would let us support three more Servants. Jeanne Alter can¡¯t just summon as many as she wants.¡±

    Except that all appearances said that she could.

    ¡°You don¡¯t think,¡± I began, trying not to sound like a condescending asshole, ¡°that a Holy Grail, a legend born in France and connected to the Middle East, might be more powerful here, closer both geographically and culturally to the place it originated, than it was in the middle of a city in Japan?¡±

    I gestured back the way we came and squashed the burgeoning guilt in my belly. I had to get through to these two, because as much as I hated it myself, there wasn¡¯t anything we could do for those people that wouldn¡¯t get us all killed ourselves.

    ¡°How many wyverns do you think she had, for that matter? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? More?¡±

    ¡°At least a thousand,¡± Arash confirmed grimly.

    ¡°Four Servants as backup and an army of a thousand wyverns to burn down one little town when she didn¡¯t even know we were going to be there. How many would she have brought if she did know? How many can she bring?¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± Mash mumbled.

    ¡°And worst of all,¡± I finished off, ¡°none of us can kill Dracul.¡±

    ¡°I saw that,¡± said Arash. ¡°He shrugged off six fatal wounds like they were nothing.¡±

    ¡°Battle Continuation, A-Rank,¡± I said. ¡°Vampirism, A-Rank. And if he gets close, Kazikli Bey, which turns his whole body into a weapon.¡±

    Hookwolf might actually have been a pretty good comparison, there, now that I thought about it.

    ¡°Kazikli Bey?¡± Ritsuka muttered, brow drawing together.

    ¡°His Noble Phantasm,¡± I answered. ¡°It weaponizes everything from his hair to his bones to his blood and turns them into ¡®stakes¡¯ that can pierce anyone in his range. He has to get pretty close to use it, but if he does, he can rip any one of us apart in an instant, and it would definitely kill each and every one of us.¡±

    The twins turned a little green. My lips pulled tight.

    ¡°The only way to kill him is to deal so much damage all at once that he dies immediately. None of us can do that.¡±

    I looked meaningfully at Arash. ¡°None of us.¡±

    He nodded. Message received. No using his Noble Phantasm on Dracul. Good.

    ¡°We can¡¯t just leave them all to die, though!¡± Rika burst out. ¡°S-Senpai! Why did we even save them if we¡¯re just going to let them all get killed! A-Aren¡¯t you the ultimate badass? You killed a dragon! You can do something, can¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°No.¡±

    Her face fell. She must have been expecting me to pull some crazy plan out of my ass, but the simple fact of the matter was, there wasn¡¯t anything we could do about it. Not as we were.

    ¡°That¡¯s why we¡¯re headed to Lyon,¡± I said. ¡°If Jeanne Alter can just keep summoning wyverns and Servants willy-nilly, then we need more firepower. We need to see if there¡¯s any truth to the rumors about a great warrior down south. Lyon will give us a more solid heading.¡±

    I hoped. But I couldn¡¯t exactly seem so uncertain about it right then, could I? Rule one of being a leader: always look like you knew what you were doing, even when you were completely lost. There were a lot of things you could bullshit your way through just by being confident as you were doing it.

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°Thank God, you¡¯re all okay,¡± Romani breathed as he appeared. ¡°I was a little worried¡­ I-I mean, I knew you guys were going to make it through! After all, Taylor¡¯s the one leading you!¡±

    My lip twitched. Yeah, really strong vote of confidence, Romani.

    ¡°I-I managed to confirm the disappearance of one of the enemy Servants¡¯ Spirit Origins,¡± he went on. ¡°Good job, everyone. That¡¯s one enemy down.¡±

    ¡°With no guarantee they can¡¯t just summon more,¡± I said.

    ¡°Urk.¡± Romani blanched. ¡°B-be that as it may, at least you guys managed to take out one of them! A-and anyway, I¡¯m detecting a ley line nearby. You should be able to set up camp there while we plan out your next move.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s already been decided, Doctor Roman,¡± said Mash. ¡°We¡¯ll be heading to the city of Lyon, next.¡±

    Romani¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°Lyon?¡±

    ¡°There are rumors of a great warrior somewhere in southern France,¡± Jeanne said. ¡°Lyon would be a good place to look for more information.¡±

    ¡°A great warrior¡­¡± he mumbled. ¡°You think it might be a Servant?¡±

    ¡°We think so, yes,¡± I said.

    And hopefully, it was one of the dragonslayers who didn¡¯t show up for my summoning.

    ¡°Hang on, let me take a look.¡±

    ¡°Wait, isn¡¯t that, like, super far away?¡± said Rika. ¡°I thought you couldn¡¯t read Servants from that distance!¡±

    ¡°You guys are our main observation point, so we can get clearer readings the closer to you we look,¡± Romani explained absently, looking at something away from the camera. ¡°Within a mile, we can get details like Class, Alignment, and as you observe details with your Master¡¯s Clairvoyance, even things like True Names, Skills, and Noble Phantasms. But if we go further out than that, things start to get blurrier. If we can get a good enough look to detect a Servant at all, the only thing we¡¯ll be able to tell is whether there¡¯s a Servant in that general area. Well, unless it¡¯s a really powerful Servant, like a Grand, but there¡¯s no way you¡¯re going to run into one of those.¡±

    A minute of silence later, he blinked.

    ¡°Well, would you look at that,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s faint, but I¡¯m definitely detecting the presence of a Servant in Lyon. I should be able to pin it down better once you¡¯re inside the city itself, but it¡¯s definitely worth checking out.¡±

    ¡°Doctor Roman,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°can you detect whether or not there are any Servants remaining at La Charit¨¦?¡±

    Mash glanced at him sadly. ¡°Senpai¡­¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not that far away, so¡­¡± Romani trailed off for a moment, hands moving across his keyboard. ¡°Yes. I¡¯m still detecting a fairly strong Servant presence in La Charit¨¦. It¡¯s a bit difficult even from here, but given the data, it looks like multiple Servants are still there.¡±

    ¡°And the townsfolk?¡± Ritsuka asked. ¡°Can Chaldea detect vital signs from living humans in that range?¡±

    Romani¡¯s hands stopped moving. ¡°Don¡¯t do this to yourself, Ritsuka. It won¡¯t bring you any peace.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re leaving them behind!¡± Ritsuka barked. ¡°The least we can do is acknowledge¡­!¡±

    He looked down, angry, his fists clenched and trembling.

    ¡°If we couldn¡¯t even save them,¡± he said roughly, ¡°then the least we can do is acknowledge their loss.¡±

    Romani sighed. ¡°On average,¡± he said solemnly, ¡°one-hundred-sixty-four-thousand people die every day.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s head jerked up, stricken.

    ¡°That¡¯s not how people work,¡± I cut in. ¡°Things like ¡®the whole world¡¯ or ¡®the entire country¡¯ are just too big. People deal better with the stuff right in front of them. It¡¯s more real. Solid.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the point I¡¯m trying to make,¡± said Romani.

    ¡°What, that there are seven billion lives on the line?¡± I retorted. ¡°People don¡¯t fight for seven billion. They fight for seven. For seventeen. Their friends, their family, the people they care about and the people in arm¡¯s reach. You fight for the guy next to you, and the guy next to you fights for the guy next to him, and eventually, everyone is fighting for everyone.¡±

    I looked Ritsuka straight in the eye. ¡°I get it, Ritsuka. You feel that weight, don¡¯t you? You may not have known anyone in that town, and you probably couldn¡¯t name more than three of them, but for just that little while, they were your arm¡¯s reach.¡±

    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    And sometimes, that was all it took for it to matter. Like Dinah. I¡¯d seen her all of a few minutes, and just like that, she¡¯d become someone I couldn¡¯t leave alone and let suffer.

    ¡°And the worst feeling of all is when the only thing you can do is walk away from them.¡±

    ¡°Taylor¡­¡± Romani muttered.

    ¡°So don¡¯t let it be meaningless,¡± I finished. ¡°You have to walk away now, but this isn¡¯t how proper human history says they all died.¡±

    Something sparked in his eyes, and Ritsuka¡¯s shoulders squared. ¡°So if we correct this Singularity, none of them will have died at all!¡±

    His twin sister gave a triumphant whoop.

    ¡°Let¡¯s go! The faster we fix this stupid Singularity, the faster everyone will be saved!¡± Rika shouted, and then she took off running. ¡°To Lyon!¡±

    ¡°W-wait!¡± Mash scrambled after her. ¡°S-Senpai! Master, Lyon is the other way!¡±

    ¡°Rika!¡± Ritsuka shouted as he chased them.

    It left me alone with Arash, Jeanne, and Romani.

    ¡°Do you really think it¡¯s going to be that simple, Master?¡± Arash asked solemnly.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± The metaphysics made my head spin, and so did the regular physics. We were in aberrant space-time, as I understood it. Did anything we did here change anything at all? Or would things just snap back the way they were supposed to be the instant we took the Grail and left? ¡°But it¡¯s the only way I can accept leaving them to die myself.¡±

    ¡°Theoretically, as an otherwise unobserved moment outside of proper time and space¡­¡± Romani began.

    ¡°I don¡¯t want to hear any guesses, Romani,¡± I told him bluntly. ¡°If you don¡¯t know for sure, just leave it alone.¡±

    He shut up immediately.

    ¡°As much as I hate to admit it, there was nothing we could have done as we are,¡± Jeanne said quietly. ¡°My evil self¡­ Her forces simply outmatched us.¡±

    ¡°And that¡¯s the only reason we didn¡¯t stay and fight,¡± I said.

    She smiled a tight smile and then raced off after the others.

    ¡°Rika, Ritsuka, Mash, it¡¯s this way!¡±

    A moment later, Arash and I followed.

    ¡ª o.0.O.O.0.o ¡ª

    It was the better part of another week and a half of walking, trekking through the French countryside, before we finally made it close enough to see Lyon in the distance. What we saw as we looked down on it from atop a hill, however¡­

    ¡°Oh no¡­¡± Mash whispered.

    ¡­was a smoldering ruin. The smell of the smoke reached us even from so far away.

    Not the entire city had been reduced to rubble, but enough of it was gone, scorched down to the foundation, that there was little need to ask what had happened to the city and most, if not all, of its inhabitants. Because of course, the one thing we hadn¡¯t considered as we rushed to make it to Lyon was that Jeanne Alter would have gotten to it, first.

    How much sooner? Who knew? She could have ransacked it before we ever even made it to La Charit¨¦, just burned it down while we were making our trek through the forest from Vaucouleurs, or maybe she¡¯d anticipated where we were heading next, flew on ahead of us on a more direct path that we¡¯d never seen, and wiped it out before we could come to find our reinforcements.

    Had she killed the Servant we¡¯d been hearing rumors about, the one whose presence Romani had confirmed, or had our possible ally managed to escape her and her squad of murderers?

    My hand snapped up and I barked into my communicator, ¡°Romani!¡±

    There was no response. Damn it. Was there something interfering with our communications somehow, or were we just too far away from the nearest ley line terminal to get a secure connection? The only thing I could do was hope it was the latter and plan for the former.

    ¡°We need to get down there and find the ley line,¡± I said.

    Rika jolted. ¡°Survivors!¡± she burst out.

    ¡°That¡¯s right!¡± her brother startled. ¡°Senpai, with your bugs, can you ¡ª¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s out of range, right now,¡± I cut across him quickly. ¡°Once we get within about eighteen-hundred¡­¡± I did a quick bit of mental math. ¡°About half a kilometer, I¡¯ll be able to start looking. But Ritsuka, Rika¡­¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t get your hopes up,¡± Arash finished for me, face grim.

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°Arash, you can see that far, can¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m telling you,¡± said Arash. ¡°If there¡¯s anyone down there still alive in all that destruction¡­ I¡¯m not seeing them.¡±

    And the twins just sort of crumpled. My gut twisted, but none of my own turmoil showed on my face. As awful as this was, when it came down to it, nothing could beat out the carnage left behind by the Slaughterhouse Nine, the casual, malicious cruelty with which they¡¯d tortured their victims. Even by the numbers, Jack Slash had Jeanne Alter beat.

    ¡°This is horrible,¡± Jeanne anguished, her face twisted with pain. ¡°No matter how wrathful she is, how could she do something so terrible to all of those innocent people?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Miss Jeanne,¡± Mash said quietly.

    Jeanne shook her head, blonde hair whipping at her cheeks. ¡°There¡¯s nothing you need to apologize for, Mash. This¡­ This is¡­¡±

    She trailed off, because she couldn¡¯t seem to find the words to describe the atrocity before us. No one else suggested anything to fill her hanging sentence.

    ¡°We need to get down there,¡± I said into the uneasy silence. ¡°Find the ley line, connect with Romani. If we can figure out if the Servant he detected is still here or where he might have gone, then that¡¯ll give us our next move.¡±

    ¡°This¡­ Doesn¡¯t this mean anything to you?¡± Ritsuka snarled at me. ¡°People are dead! Hundreds! Thousands! The whole city is ¡ª¡±

    ¡°As callous as it is for me to say it, Ritsuka,¡± I interrupted, staring straight into his eyes, ¡°I¡¯ve seen a lot worse than this. And crying over all of the people who died won¡¯t bring them back. Only fixing this Singularity will.¡±

    Ritsuka flinched, and I turned back towards the city, or the husk that remained where it had once stood. In the quiet after my rebuke, the background buzz of my bugs seemed almost thunderous.

    Stupid. I forced my swarm to thin out, so that the agitated droning didn¡¯t give me away. Eventually, if the local insect population started acting out whenever they expected me to be reacting more extremely, they were going to figure out that my swarm expressed all of the emotions they never saw on my face.

    It had been so long since I¡¯d last had my powers that I¡¯d forgotten I used to do that. I¡¯d gotten so accustomed to having to bottle up and push down my frustrations that having that outlet had let me slip back into old habits without even realizing it.

    ¡°Whatever we feel about these circumstances,¡± Jeanne began, ¡°it¡¯s true that there isn¡¯t much we can do about it, now. The best we can do at the moment is as Taylor says: find out whether or not the Servant we were looking for is still around. Especially if he managed to survive this attack, that would be a good sign.¡±

    Ritsuka scowled.

    ¡°And if we find any survivors ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Then we¡¯ll do what we can for them,¡± I said.

    The twins didn¡¯t seem to like that, exactly, especially Ritsuka, but they accepted it as the best they were going to get, because it really was the best we could do, in the circumstances.

    We resumed our trek towards the city, a little slower and a little more cautiously, in case there were any stray wyverns still hanging around. As we came closer, the sharp, acrid tang of smoke became stronger and stronger, and the true tale of the city¡¯s destruction became ever clearer. Even now what must have been at least a day after the fact, a haze still hung in the air like mist, drifting upwards.

    It reminded me of the aftermath of an Independence Day party, after all of the fireworks had been set off. The smoke from the fires had spread out and thinned, and the sulfur from the flames lingered, clinging to the area even long after it was all over.

    As more and more of the city came into range of my powers, more and more was my original estimate borne out. Flies and maggots clung to corpses, and the other carrions flitted about from meal to meal, but aside from us, there didn¡¯t seem to be a single living person left in Lyon. By all accounts, everyone else had been killed.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Ritsuka whispered. ¡°Is there anyone¡­?¡±

    Even if he¡¯d wanted it, I wasn¡¯t going to give him a pleasant lie.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Ritsuka.¡±

    He took in a deep, shuddering breath.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Rika said hopefully, ¡°maybe it¡¯s just because we¡¯re out here, and as we get further in, we¡¯ll find¡­¡±

    Even she didn¡¯t sound like she really believed it.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think we¡¯re going to find anyone alive in Lyon, Master,¡± Mash told her somberly.

    We kept going and went deeper into town, through the outskirts and over the river that split the city in two near the northeastern edge, where we¡¯d come down from. The deeper we went, the further into the city my range stretched, although the fewer bugs their wound up being, on account of the burnt out husks of homes. Not only was the number dropping, but the variety was slimming down, as well, leaving me with mostly flies, maggots, and a few other creepies of the crawling kind.

    ¡°This was such a beautiful town,¡± Jeanne said quietly. Her head swiveled as she looked around at the destruction. ¡°Why would she do something like this? Lyon had no connection to me, at all.¡±

    ¡°Didn¡¯t she already say it was revenge?¡± I said. ¡°Against the whole of France?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not that simple,¡± Jeanne declared with such confidence that she sounded absolutely certain. ¡°It can¡¯t be that simple. Can it?¡±

    I thought about the villains I¡¯d known. About Lung. About Coil. About the Travelers and Echidna. About the Teeth and the Fallen. Mostly, I thought about Jack Slash, and how twisted and wrong he¡¯d been, not only in how he acted but in his entire way of thinking. Cruelty for the sake of cruelty, theater for the sake of theater, sadism for the sake of sadism, and all of it backed by the desire to be the biggest monster out there. The boogeyman that everyone feared.

    In other words, fame.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± was the only answer I could give. ¡°It really can.¡±

    Jeanne¡¯s brow furrowed, troubled.

    I didn¡¯t really blame her for wanting to think there must have been something more to it than that. It was tempting to grasp for a reason behind the evils of others, some greater purpose or narrative that explained their actions in a larger context, but all too often, the enemies I¡¯d faced had been driven by the pettiest of shit.

    Most people, it turned out, really weren¡¯t all that complicated.

    ¡°Miss Taylor,¡± said Mash, ¡°have you found any clues as to the whereabouts of the Servant that Doctor Roman detected here?¡±

    ¡°No sign of them, no,¡± I said. ¡°And there aren¡¯t as many bugs here as there were in La Charit¨¦, either. Do we know where the ley line is?¡±

    Mash lifted her wrist and brought up her map. Da Vinci had even included ley line terminals on that thing? I shouldn¡¯t have been surprised that she went that far, but somehow, she kept catching me off guard.

    ¡°There¡¯s one back on the other side of the river,¡± Mash said, pointing back the way we came. Her arm swung around to the left. ¡°One north of our current position.¡± She swung her arm around again and to the right. ¡°There should be one more to the south. According to the map, it should currently be the site of a castle.¡±

    ¡°Whoa,¡± said Rika. ¡°Like, an actual castle? Battlements, ramparts, have at the foul knave! The whole thing?¡±

    ¡°Many towns started that way, Senpai,¡± Mash explained. ¡°The oldest ones were settlements along sources of water, like the rivers that run through Lyon. Those also made ideal places for fortifications, so some towns and cities in Europe started off as Roman forts and military emplacements. Those evolved into medieval castles, and then towns and cities grew around them. Or sometimes the other way around.¡±

    ¡°You sure know a lot of stuff, Mash,¡± Ritsuka commented, although his heart didn¡¯t really seem in his smile.

    Mash flushed. ¡°O-oh, well¡­ I read a lot, growing up.¡±

    I looked in the directions Mash had pointed out. Back behind us, to the north of us, to the south of us, it was all destroyed, razed to the ground like it had been stomped on by a giant boot. I didn¡¯t like our odds of finding anything good no matter which direction we took, but¡­

    ¡°I think the castle is our best bet,¡± I said.

    Jeanne nodded. ¡°I agree. With the city in¡­the state it¡¯s in, the castle is the building most likely to be intact.¡±

    Because larger structures made of brick and stone were harder to tear down than smaller residences made of wood and plaster, or whatever people built their houses of in this time period. Yeah, that was my reasoning, too.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Ritsuka began.

    ¡°Still nothing.¡±

    He didn¡¯t press.

    We picked through the rubble to find the most intact street we could and made our way south, towards where the castle was supposed to be standing. Eventually, we had to make a detour back north to reach the bridge that took us across the other river ¡ª the Rh?ne, Jeanne called it, to the Sa?ne that we¡¯d already crossed ¡ª and then make our way back south, again.

    No matter how much we walked or how deep into the city we went, I found no signs of life. The whole place was as silent as the grave, an expression all the more appropriate now, it seemed to me, even if it was equally morbid.

    At last, in the distance, situated atop a hill and surrounded by foliage, a towering castle came into view, standing above the rest of the destroyed city. A thing of brick and stone with solid, strong walls, it was¡­

    ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± Rika asked. ¡°That doesn¡¯t look like a castle at all!¡±

    Disappointingly small. In terms of its size, it was definitely bigger than any of the residences around here would have been when they were intact by an order of magnitude, but I¡¯d been expecting something epic and enormous, like it had come straight out of The Lord of the Rings, or at least something on the scale of the Tower of London or Buckingham Palace.

    The castle we saw was definitely a castle, but it was like the whole thing had been built on a tight budget, so all of the features you normally expected of one were compacted down as much as possible. The thing didn¡¯t even have a moat and a drawbridge.

    ¡°Not everyone can be the King of England,¡± Jeanne said with an awkward smile and laugh.

    ¡°Well, you know what they say,¡± I commented idly. ¡°Men who carry big swords or build huge castles are making up for being¡­undersized elsewhere.¡±

    ¡°M-Miss Taylor!¡± Mash squeaked, scandalized, as Ritsuka squeaked and Rika gaped at me. Even Jeanne¡¯s face had turned bright red.

    Arash, at least, found it funny, if the laugh was anything to go by.

    ¡°On the bright side,¡± I said like nothing had happened, ¡°the fact it¡¯s not that big means it¡¯ll be pretty easy to search.¡±

    ¡°The tower makes for a good vantage point, too, if we decide to stay the night,¡± Arash added.

    ¡°We¡¯ll make those kinds of plans after we hash out our next move with Romani.¡±

    ¡°R-right,¡± Mash said, still a little flustered.

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°Romani?¡± I blurted out, surprised.

    A burst of static ate his first few words, but there was no mistaking the rest of his shout: ¡°¡ª Servant incoming!¡±

    I whirled around. ¡°Mash!¡±

    ¡°Master!¡± Arash yelled at the same time as Mash called, ¡°Senpai!¡±

    An arm wrapped around my middle like a steel bar, and my gut lurched as I was yanked off my feet and through the air, just in time for a meteor to fall out of the sky towards where I¡¯d just been standing.

    ¡°LORD CHALDEAS!¡±

    A pane of thin, blue light resolved itself into a castle wall, and the meteor slammed into it with a thunderous clang, forcing Mash to brace her back foot against the ground. A bare second later, my feet found the ground again as we landed and Arash set me down. His arm didn¡¯t leave my stomach. In case he had to pick me up and dodge again.

    Thankfully, Mash¡¯s Noble Phantasm held, protecting her, Jeanne, and the twins completely, and the meteor bounced off of it and spun back in the opposite direction to land in the destroyed street. The weight behind it cratered the already cracked road, and as it bled off its momentum, it slowly came to a stop.

    A tortoise shell. Lined with spikes and ridges, it was a gigantic shell the color of dried blood, and tucked inside were a horned, bearded head, six clawed legs, and a long, serpentine tail that emerged before our eyes. It glared at us with baleful yellow eyes over a leonine maw filled with sharp fangs.

    It didn¡¯t attack. It stood there, tail lashing out behind it, utterly massive and easily big enough to swallow each of us whole.

    And then another meteor fell out of the sky, a blur of white, red, and black that landed atop the beast¡¯s shell with inhuman grace. When she stood back up, staring down from her mount¡¯s back, it was the woman in the fetish tabard.

    ¡°Originally, I was tasked merely with observing your path forward,¡± she announced in a strong, clear voice. ¡°However, the Servant you¡¯re searching for here in Lyon is the greatest threat to my Master in this era, and as her Servant, I should absolutely prevent you from reaching him.¡±

    She brandished her staff.

    ¡°And as a servant of Our Lord, I must also do whatever I can to aid you, so long as even a fraction of my sanity remains. That¡¯s why¡­if you cannot make it past this Saint Martha, then you have no hope of facing my Master and her personal mount!¡±

    ¡°S-Saint Martha!¡± Romani stuttered, voice broken by a burst of static. ¡°Then that means¡­ Her mount is the dragon, Tarasque! N-not a wyvern, but a dragon! A real dragon!¡±

    In what world was that a dragon, I wanted to ask, but it was a useless question.

    ¡°Romani,¡± I said instead, ¡°the Servant we came here for, is he in the castle?¡±

    ¡°W-what?¡±

    ¡°The Servant, Romani! Is he in the castle?¡±

    ¡°Oh!¡± Romani scrambled. ¡°C-checking¡­ You¡¯re much closer, so my readings should be much more accurate! Yes! I¡¯m detecting the presence of a Servant inside the castle! The bottom floor, in the basement! W-wait, that would be the dungeons, wouldn¡¯t it?¡±

    The dungeons? Why¡­? No time to worry about that. I could ask him myself when we found him.

    Except there was a problem: five and a half feet of a reincarnated ghost of a great hero from the past and her twenty-something foot tall dragon, neither of whom would just let us run inside the castle and find that Servant. If we turned our backs and made a run for it, that dragon would squash us flat in an instant.

    I had to make a decision.

    We didn¡¯t have the firepower to take out Martha, not as long as she had her Tarasque by her side, which meant someone had to go into the castle to search for the other Servant there. The fact that we didn¡¯t have the firepower meant that we needed the defensive power instead to hold our ground while someone split off to go look. That meant Mash had to stay behind and keep Martha busy.

    She held off Excalibur. It wouldn¡¯t be easy, but she should be able to do it.

    The trouble was, the person who should go search for the Servant hidden in the castle was also obvious, because not only was Mash better off with the support of her Masters, but the person best suited to go was the person who could find the other Servant fastest. In other words, me.

    And that meant I was going to have to let the twins handle this on their own for the first time since we met up in Fuyuki.

    I hated it. I hated it. My job was to be their leader, to look out for them and make sure they made it back from all of this as alive and intact as I could possibly manage. As their leader, it fell to me to make the sacrifice play if and when the situation ever arose, because they were my responsibility and I wasn¡¯t going to throw their lives away. The people, it had to be about the people, or else what was the point of this second chance I¡¯d been given?

    But the person who went into the castle had to be me. The Servant who stayed to hold off Martha had to be Mash. I could bring the twins with me, but if something happened to Mash because they weren¡¯t there to help with a well-timed Command Spell, none of us would forgive ourselves.

    Damn it. Damn it. Damn it all. Why did this feel so much like running away?

    My mouth had already made the decision my heart still fought against. ¡°Ritsuka, Rika, Mash! Hold her off! Arash, give them support! Jeanne, I need you with me!¡±

    ¡°Yes!¡± Mash and the twins shouted back.

    Arash let out a short chuckle and leapt away from my side and up onto the roof of the nearest tower. He drew back his bow and took aim, waiting for the right moment. Ritsuka and Rika retreated to a safe distance, even as Mash planted herself like a tree between them and Martha.

    Jeanne was the only one who hesitated, glancing back at the woman on her dragon, like she thought her place was on the front lines.

    I understood the feeling, but I wasn¡¯t so stupid as to risk my own life needlessly by running to face an unknown Servant by myself. Not when I didn¡¯t know his alignment, his temperament, or anything else about him except that Jeanne Alter apparently had reason to fear him.

    ¡°Jeanne!¡±

    Finally, she turned away and came towards me, and once she was beside me, I turned towards the castle and we made our way inside.

    ¡°We shouldn¡¯t leave them by themselves,¡± she told me as we sprinted across the courtyard.

    ¡°We don¡¯t have the firepower to beat her ourselves,¡± I retorted shortly, ¡°but the Servant inside this castle is apparently a big enough deal that your evil self doesn¡¯t want us recruiting him, because he¡¯s a threat to her super special personal dragon. Which means¡­¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s probably one of the dragonslayers you wanted to summon,¡± Jeanne realized.

    ¡°Yeah.¡±

    I hoped.

 Chapter XIX: Der Trachenbluotige Helt

    Chapter XIX: Der Trachenbluotige Helt

    Our footsteps echoed through the hallways as we raced through the castle. We didn¡¯t waste time on talking and debating, on worrying about our friends and comrades as they faced off against Saint Martha and her Tarasque, we just focused entirely on the objective in front of us. Single-minded.

    For a wild second, I wondered if the only reason why Jeanne herself hadn¡¯t been the one I summoned was because she was already there.

    But that sort of speculation was a pointless distraction. I didn¡¯t have time to deal with what-ifs and maybes, so I let that thought be swept away, an idle curiosity.

    And while I ran, my swarm surged out ahead of us, beneath us, behind us, part of it crawling through the castle in search of our mystery Servant while the other half rose up to distract Saint Martha. Any support I could give Mash and the twins had to be worth something.

    No. Saint Martha didn¡¯t even flinch as a veritable biblical plague closed in upon her ¡ª if she would even have had to worry to begin with, because my utterly mundane ¡°familiars¡± wouldn¡¯t even be able to bite her ¡ª she just tapped the shell of her dragon with the butt of her staff. The Tarasque reared its head back, throat bulging, and spat out a gout of flame like some sort of biological flamethrower, swinging its neck back and forth wildly.

    Instantly, large swaths of my swarm disappeared as the dragon¡¯s breath flash-fried them. My initial attack run had failed, but I hadn¡¯t really expected it to succeed to begin with. If a wyvern¡¯s breath was so densely magical that my bugs popped just from proximity to its maw, then it stood to reason that the real deal, an ¡°actual¡± dragon like the Tarasque, would kill them just as easily and just as effortlessly.

    But the fact it went through the effort to kill them more expediently told me that Martha didn¡¯t have the patience to play around and didn¡¯t have some sort of extrasensory skill that would let her fight around my swarm.

    I couldn¡¯t sting her, I couldn¡¯t bite her, and if I tried to weave ropes of silk thread, chances were she wouldn¡¯t even be inconvenienced by them. But I could throw her off course for at least a little while, and every second I bought with my bugs was a second Mash didn¡¯t have to fight and an extra second I had to find and reach the Servant in the dungeons.

    ¡°This way!¡± I called to Jeanne, and I made a sharp turn as I found the quickest route to the basement.

    Outside, my swarm pulled back, and instead of swooping in to attack, they formed as dense, tall, and wide a wall as I could manage between Saint Martha and Mash, a screen of chitin that hid Mash from view. I knew it wouldn¡¯t last long.

    Saint Martha proved me right. She tapped the butt of her staff against her dragon¡¯s shell again, and the Tarasque reared its head back again and let loose another stream of fire. It burned a hole through my swarm, and those that weren¡¯t immediately fried by the flames dropped as the heat cooked them inside their carapaces.

    Saint Martha wasted no time; she leapt off of her dragon and through the gap it had made. I collapsed my swarm in on her, but she bulldozed right through it like it wasn¡¯t there, disrupting it in her wake with the speed of her dash.

    As Jeanne and I raced down the stairs, Mash took Saint Martha¡¯s blow head on with her shield, grunting and bracing herself with her back foot. Saint Martha wasn¡¯t deterred, and she attacked again with a blazing fast series of blows from her staff that rang as they smashed against Mash¡¯s shield. She moved so quickly that I¡¯d already lost count of them by the time my swarm had recovered enough to chase after her.

    Saint Martha stayed a step ahead of me and flung herself backwards in a leap that took her over the bulk of my bugs, and she landed back on the shell of her dragon. A tap from her staff had it spitting out another burst of flame that consumed yet more of my swarm.

    I was already down to about a third of what I¡¯d started with.

    But up ahead, the rest of my swarm finally found something, a figure in the shape of a tall, broad-shouldered man who was lying in a cell. He was propped up against a wall, and in one hand, he clutched the hilt of a sword that seemed, at least to my bugs, absolutely massive.

    ¡°I found him!¡± I told Jeanne.

    She smiled radiantly and opened her mouth.

    ¡°Have you?¡±

    ¡°Taylor!¡± Jeanne shouted, and she pushed me to the side so hard that when I slammed into the brick wall, I blacked out.

    I came to on the floor, sprawled out where I¡¯d fallen with my glasses askew. Through the lenses, I saw a tall, spindly figure with long, dark hair dressed in a ragged, black cape. His hands ended in claws like knives, and what little I saw of his skin was pale and sallow, because the half of his face I could see clearly was covered in a bone white mask.

    Jeanne struggled to hold him off, keeping him at bay with the shaft of her flag. Slowly, the tips of his claws inched closer to her face.

    ¡°How naive, how naive,¡± the new Servant rasped, because he couldn¡¯t be anything else. ¡°To think you would come here, and not realize that the dragonslayer you seek would be guarded by another Servant.¡±

    ¡°Taylor!¡± Jeanne shouted at me. ¡°Go! Find the other Servant! I¡¯ll ¡ª urk! I¡¯ll hold him off!¡±

    ¡°That simply won¡¯t do,¡± said the new Servant. ¡°The Dragon Witch has left me in charge of this town and the hero who once protected it. You won¡¯t reach him. You mustn¡¯t be allowed to reach him.¡±

    I stumbled to my feet, the world swaying around me for a moment, and I spared only a single glance back at Jeanne.

    But there was simply nothing I could do for her, just then, and the dragonslayer was only down the hall. Even if it left a bad taste in my mouth to turn my back on another comrade again, the best thing I could do just then was to make contact with the reinforcements who could turn the tide of this battle.

    After all, he might have been lying, but if he wasn¡¯t? This new Servant had just confirmed that the other one down here was exactly who we were looking for. Sigurd, Siegfried, Saint George ¡ª right then, I wasn¡¯t picky. Any one of them would be useful.

    I took off into a dead sprint. Behind me, I heard Jeanne grunt and then shout out, ¡°I won¡¯t let you past!¡±

    Alone now, I raced towards my target, even as I tried to keep track of two other battles at the same time. It was getting harder up above, because Saint Martha and Tarasque kept thinning out my swarm, but Mash was holding on, so if she could just keep it up for a little bit longer, then it would all be worth it.

    I made a sharp turn, and my boots slid along the floor as I threw myself into it without slowing down. The dragonslayer was being kept in ¡ª

    I came to a stop in front of the fifth cell down, and there, lying against the wall just as I¡¯d seen him with my bugs, was a tall, broad-shouldered man. He was sparsely armored with long, shaggy gray hair, but the most striking thing about him was the luminescent green marking splashed across his chest that curved up his neck and over one of his cheeks.

    And just like I¡¯d seen, he held tight to a massive greatsword with one hand.

    In different circumstances, I might have taken a moment to admire the sharply chiseled muscles shown off by the open front of his bodysuit, but right then and there, I wasted no time and ripped my knife out of its holster. A flick of a switch turned it on, and with a savage jab, I cut right through the lock on the cell door.

    It was so pathetically weak that I was surprised it managed to hold him.

    Finally, as I stood in the doorway, he looked up and blinked at me. ¡°You¡¯re not the Dragon Witch.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I confirmed. ¡°I¡¯m with an organization called Chaldea. We¡¯re here to stop her.¡±

    ¡°I see. So there are still people who would fight back against her.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a little more complicated than that.¡± The cell door swung open with a metallic squeal. ¡°We came here to get you. We need your help to beat her.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± he mumbled. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯m afraid I won¡¯t be of much use to you like this. You¡¯ve come to rescue me for nothing.¡±

    My brow furrowed. Was he speaking generally, or was there something in specific wrong?

    Time, time, not enough time to sit here and think about it. Jeanne was still holding off the other Servant, the man in the tattered cloak, and my thinning swarm was providing all the sparser a cover for the twins and Mash up above. Noble Phantasms hadn¡¯t been pulled out again, yet, but Saint Martha didn¡¯t seem to be pulling any punches otherwise.

    Or maybe she was. Maybe this was her fighting her orders from Jeanne Alter as much as she could. Without a reference point, I had no way of telling exactly how strong, fast, and brutal she was normally, so for all I knew, she was holding back to give us the chance to beat her before she did anything else she couldn¡¯t stomach.

    ¡°You don¡¯t have a Master, right?¡± I thrust my hand forward, showing off the bright red of my Command Spells. ¡°If you need magical energy, I can help you with that. Forge a contract.¡±

    He blinked up at me again, nonplussed, and then his lips curled into a rueful smile.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid that¡¯s not it at all.¡±

    He reached down with one gauntleted hand and pulled the fabric of his bodysuit to one side, revealing ¡ª

    ¡°Holy fuck.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t the worst wound I¡¯d ever seen. It wasn¡¯t even the worst wound I¡¯d ever suffered myself. I¡¯d been cut in half before, after all. Had my entire lower body disintegrated and my entrails flopping all over the ocean. As far as ¡°things that happened to me, and I survived¡± went, that one in particular was hard to top.

    But the ugly, ragged wound ripped into his chest just under the line of his ribs was raw and discolored, sickly and infected. I¡¯d never realized Servants even could get infected wounds. The assumption had always been that they were completely impervious to mundane afflictions like gangrene and bacterial infections.

    That was part of the point. Only Mystery could defeat Mystery. Regular germs didn¡¯t have the oomph to so much as inconvenience a Servant.

    ¡°My last encounter with the Dragon Witch¡¯s minions left me with this injury,¡± the swordsman explained. ¡°Normally, a wound like this would have been healed already. My constitution being what it is, it would¡¯ve been gone in a matter of minutes. The blessing bestowed upon me by the evil dragon¡¯s blood is simply too potent.¡±

    He tucked the injury away behind the fabric of his bodysuit. Now that I knew it was there, I couldn¡¯t believe I had somehow missed the gigantic splotch of blood that soaked through the cloth.

    ¡°This curse, however, persists stubbornly,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I would like nothing more than to help you, but in this state, I¡¯m of no use to you at all.¡±

    My mind raced.

    If he had Battle Continuation¡­ But if he had Battle Continuation, even a wound like that shouldn¡¯t have held him back. He would be able to stand up and keep fighting until someone managed a killing blow.

    That was the question, though. Did I need him to fight? Or did I need him to take advantage of a single weak spot, a fleeting moment of vulnerability? As a dragonslayer wielding a weapon for slaying dragons, did anything else matter as long as he could kill the dragon in a single blow?

    Without Tarasque, Saint Martha could be hemmed in, trapped, and taken out by Arash, Mash, and Jeanne. As long as she had Tarasque, though, she could hide behind its shell and be protected from any attack that might otherwise kill her. Just like she had in La Charit¨¦, where her Tarasque had stopped us from killing Jeanne Alter¡¯s whole retinue in one go.

    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

    ¡°Can you at least use your Noble Phantasm?¡± I asked. ¡°If you had the magical energy?¡±

    He was silent for a long moment, considering me. I had to keep myself from fidgeting and demanding an answer immediately.

    ¡°Yes,¡± he said at last. ¡°I should be able to use my Noble Phantasm at least once. I¡¯m sorry, I can¡¯t guarantee consecutive uses.¡±

    I nodded. Nothing about this was ideal, but as long as we hit the right target at the right time, I didn¡¯t need him to fire it off more than once.

    ¡°Then, there¡¯s just one last thing I want to confirm. Your True Name, it¡¯s ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Saber class Servant, Siegfried,¡± he answered.

    A thrill of triumph jolted through my belly. So, I was right. The Servant in Lyon was a dragonslayer, and his identity was Siegfried. That must have been the reason my catalyst failed when I summoned Arash, because Siegfried was already here, and therefore he wasn¡¯t available to be summoned a second time.

    Just as importantly, this would mean we now had the dragon-slaying hero we had been in desperate need of since we got here. For once, for once, things weren¡¯t going to hell in a handbasket while I struggled to find whatever I could to pull out a win, and we¡¯d been handed a secret weapon long before things had spiraled too far.

    I thrust my hand down, as though to help him to his feet.

    ¡°Then, let this be our oath,¡± I told him. ¡°Thy body shall rest under my dominion ¡ª¡±

    He reached out, letting go of his enormous sword long enough to wrap his massive, gauntlet-covered hand around mine. The metal was cool to the touch, and he was shockingly gentle. ¡°And thy fate shall rest in my blade, Master.¡±

    A brief flash of light. Pain lanced up my arm like fire, surging through my Magic Circuits, and my Command Spells throbbed as another contract was established. Siegfried, Servant Saber, was now my Servant, just like Arash. When I looked at him through my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance, his True Name, his class, and his Noble Phantasm all stood out, proud and prominent.

    Romani was probably going to be mad that I did this without consulting him, first, but there wasn¡¯t any time to get into an argument with him about this.

    Slowly, Siegfried leveraged himself up and stood, stooped over his wound. He took one step and stumbled, his free hand twitching as though to grab at the injury, but righted himself without me having to swoop in and help him. A good thing, too, because I wasn¡¯t sure he wouldn¡¯t drag us both to the floor decked out in as many metal plates as he was. Even without a full suit, they were big enough and thick enough that they couldn¡¯t be light to a normal human.

    ¡°There¡¯s another Servant out in the hallway,¡± I began.

    ¡°The Phantom,¡± Siegfried mumbled. ¡°Yes, he¡¯s been guarding me since the city was ransacked.¡±

    Phantom? Was that a name or some kind of title? A discussion for later, when we weren¡¯t pressed for time.

    ¡°The real Jeanne d¡¯Arc was summoned to fight her evil counterpart,¡± I summarized. ¡°She¡¯s holding him off as best she can, right now. I don¡¯t need you to fight him, but if I give you an opening, can you kill him?¡±

    Siegfried eyed me shrewdly.

    ¡°An opening?¡±

    I palmed one of C¨²chulainn¡¯s runestones. I was down to a meager three, and if and until we managed to summon him back to Chaldea, that was it. My rune magecraft wasn¡¯t anywhere near good enough to make replacements.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to distract him,¡± I said simply. ¡°You¡¯ll have only a second or two at most. Are you up for it?¡±

    He inclined his head. ¡°I¡¯ll have to be.¡±

    We made our way back down the hallway at a brisk walk. Even as tall as I was, Siegfried still had what had to be almost half a foot on me, with a stride to match, so despite his pace being stiff and slow for a Servant, he was still keeping up effortlessly.

    I wanted to run. My blood was thundering in my veins, and the impulse to take off at full speed was almost unbearable, but with my new Servant as injured as he was, we had to go at his speed. Instead, I used the time it was taking us to lay out the plan to as many people as I could.

    Arash, I projected my thoughts his way, I¡¯ve found the Servant we were looking for. True Name: Siegfried, from the Nibelungenlied. He¡¯s injured badly enough that he won¡¯t be able to fight, but he¡¯ll be able to at least take out Saint Martha and the Tarasque with his Noble Phantasm.

    Got it, Arash answered. I¡¯ll keep things in hand while you guys make your way out of the castle. Hurry, though, Master. I¡¯m not sure how much longer Martha is going to ¡°test¡± us.

    As fast as we can, I confirmed, and then I pushed down the thread to Siegfried. I have a runestone that I¡¯m going to throw at Phantom. It¡¯ll let off a bright flash of light, so when I tell Jeanne to shield her eyes, that¡¯s your cue.

    Understood, Master.

    As we came to the corner, I reached out with my bugs to get a sense of the fighting I could hear down the hall. Even diminished as she was, Jeanne was still moving fast enough that it was hard to keep anything on her at all, and Phantom was just as bad. It was still enough that I could grasp the basic layout of the action and the area around it.

    Nothing much had changed in the brief couple of minutes it had taken me to get Siegfried. Jeanne still held on, but that was likely only because the corridor was straight and narrow, which limited angles of attack, and Phantom liked to come at her with quick, obvious strikes before backing away to try again.

    Those were probably the only things saving her. I wasn¡¯t sure what Heroic Spirit Phantom was supposed to be, because I couldn¡¯t recall any legends about great figures who wore half a face mask, but even I could tell that he wasn¡¯t really the fighting type. The way he attacked was befitting of his class ¡ª like an ambush predator, a stalker, an assassin, used to finishing the target off before they could fight back, and as a result, not that good in a straight fight.

    Wait.

    An assassin, an ambush predator, a stalker, called Phantom, who wore a white mask over half of his face and dressed in the tattered finery of an aristocrat. Could it really be the Phantom of the Opera? Really? A character from a book qualified as a Heroic Spirit?

    Later. No time to give that too much thought.

    Leaping out from the corner, I sprinted down the hallway as Siegfried hobbled after me. The runestone grew hot in my hand as magical energy ran through it.

    My arm cocked back. ¡°Jeanne, eyes!¡±

    And I threw the runestone unerringly towards Phantom, or more accurately, towards the fly that was buzzing in circles directly behind him.

    Jeanne glanced over her shoulder at me, but she didn¡¯t hesitate to follow my command and squeezed her eyes shut as she flung herself to the side. Phantom leapt back warily, but it didn¡¯t matter, because the point hadn¡¯t been to hit him at all in the first place.

    I squeezed my own eyes shut.

    ¡°Anfang!¡±

    Phantom gave a startled shout as a bright light flashed, bright enough I could see it through my eyelids again, and a swift wind rushed past me, whipping my hair about. The bug I¡¯d attached to Siegfried¡¯s back was ripped off from the speed.

    The squelch of metal sinking into flesh was quiet, but the way it pierced the hallway, it might as well have been thunder. Phantom gasped, and there was an unholy shriek as metal ground against metal, and another squelch as Siegfried¡¯s massive sword was drawn from out of Phantom¡¯s body. Then, I heard the thump of someone hitting the floor.

    My eyes squinted open just in time for me to see Phantom disappear into motes of light that flickered out like fireflies, and Siegfried panted, using the wall to prop himself up as Balmung drooped in his grip.

    Jeanne pulled herself to her feet as I came up to join them, her brow furrowed, and Siegfried turned just far enough to see me out of the corner of his eyes.

    ¡°Enemy Servant eliminated, Master,¡± he reported, labored.

    I nodded. ¡°Good job.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re hurt,¡± Jeanne noted.

    ¡°A cursed wound,¡± Siegfried explained shortly. ¡°There¡¯s nothing to be done. I¡¯ll deal with it.¡±

    Jeanne reached for his side, where the wound was, and hesitated for a moment.

    ¡°May I?¡±

    Siegfried looked at her curiously, but shifted to provide her better access. Immediately, Jeanne pulled his bodysuit to the side, and she hissed when her hand found the nasty wound. Siegfried barely even flinched as she probed it.

    ¡°My evil self did this,¡± she muttered, somewhere between disgust and scorn. A gusty sigh left her mouth. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I can¡¯t heal it completely. In my current state, she¡¯s just too strong. I can at least ease it a little.¡±

    ¡°A little will be more than enough,¡± Siegfried said.

    Jeanne nodded, and she pressed her hand to the mauled flesh, muttering something under her breath. It sounded like a prayer. Her hands glowed, and before my eyes, the nasty wound started to close and fill in, some of the discoloration fading.

    But only some. When she was done and pulled away, it looked better than before, but it was still bad enough that a human being would be dead or dying, not standing straighter the way Siegfried did.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± he said.

    Jeanne returned it with a wan smile. ¡°I only wish I could have done more.¡±

    ¡°Are you still good to use your Noble Phantasm?¡± I asked Siegfried.

    He nodded, sure and confident. ¡°At least once, Master.¡±

    ¡°Then we need to get back,¡± said Jeanne, taking the words out of my mouth. ¡°Mash and the others need our help.¡±

    Jeanne and I started back the way we came, with Siegfried bringing up the rear at a brisk walk. His gait was smoother and easier than before, but he still wasn¡¯t back up to full health. His wound still bothered him, made him flinch every few steps.

    I didn¡¯t know how we were going to do it, but we were going to have to find a way to break that curse.

    As we made our way back out of the castle, I kept track of the fight happening above with my bugs, as much as I could with my swarm getting cut down with every breath Tarasque took. Mash was still holding her own, but she was visibly starting to struggle, and Saint Martha was still going strong. The twins, having some sense, had backed further away from the line of fire, and from his perch, Arash forced Saint Martha to ease up by peppering her with arrows that forced her to disengage or else become a pin cushion.

    It was a stalemate, but only because no one had pulled out a Noble Phantasm yet.

    If Saint Martha knew who had been locked in this dungeon, and I had plenty of reason to believe that she did, given what she¡¯d said at the start of the fight, then it was entirely possible that would change the instant she saw Siegfried. No, it was even likely. Siegfried was the only Servant on our side who could definitely defeat her in one blow.

    That would be our opening, then. A moment where both Tarasque and Saint Martha would be vulnerable. The perfect moment to finish them off.

    When we stepped out into the sunlight, it felt like we had been down in the dungeon for days, and we rushed for the gate as quickly as we were able. On the other side was devastation, the husks of the buildings that had been there before now flattened by the fighting. From the hill the castle sat on, I had a clear view of everything that had been crushed.

    I took in a deep breath.

    Get ready, I told Siegfried as he came up behind me. He jolted to a stop, like he¡¯d been about to jump into the fray until I¡¯d said something.

    ¡°Mash!¡± I shouted at the top of my lungs. ¡°Pull back! Ritsuka, Rika, get to the castle! Arash, cover them!¡±

    To Arash, I added silently, Force her back, but give her just enough room to breathe.

    Understood.

    The twins and Mash hesitated for only a second or two, then moved to follow my orders. Mash never turned her back to Saint Martha, holding her shield up as she tried to gain distance. The twins just turned and ran towards me as fast as their legs would carry them.

    Saint Martha herself looked up at my voice, and even from that distance, I could see her eyes widen as she caught sight of Siegfried beside me ¡ª and then a series of arrows from Arash forced her to retreat behind her dragon, where they broke upon its shell.

    I knew my plan was working when the dragon curled up into its shell like a turtle, pulling all of its limbs in. The instant Arash¡¯s arrows stopped coming, Saint Martha leapt up behind it and swung the cross-shaped section of her staff like a hockey stick, with the Tarasque as the puck.

    ¡°TARASQUE!¡±

    The dragon flew off of the ground with way more speed and force than she could possibly have imparted on her own, spinning as lightning crackled along its shell and gouts of flame burst out from the openings. With that much weight and speed behind it, it would hit like a rocket fired from a jet plane.

    But even before her staff had hit the beast, I was already giving another set of orders.

    ¡°Mash!¡±

    ¡°Use your Noble Phantasm!¡± Ritsuka shouted, picking up on my plan.

    Mash, halfway to us, planted her shield, and like she was issuing a challenge to the world, cried out, ¡°LORD CHALDEAS!¡±

    The barrier formed in front of her, morphing and twisting into a bricked, castle wall, translucent but solid. Tarasque slammed into it like a ballistic missile, and its spinning shell ground against the brickwork like a drill, trying to bore its way through to reach her, to smite her, to kill all of us in one go.

    But the castle wall held. The Tarasque hung, suspended in the air by its own momentum for a handful of seconds, and then rebounded, bouncing back and sliding on the bottom of its shell in the direction it had come from as its spin slowed down. The castle wall faded out of existence.

    There wasn¡¯t going to be a better opening.

    Saber ¡ª

    ¡°Now!¡±

    Siegfried leapt into the air with a grunt, crossing the distance in an instant to land roughly in front of Mash. The wind of his passing whipped my hair about, and Rika let out a startled yelp as her own hair fluttered.

    He stood and took grip of his sword with both hands, lifting the blade above his head. The jewel in the hilt glowed, and suddenly, a burst of energy surged up the blade, extending into a massive pillar of pale, blue light that reached up to the clouds above.

    My stomach flip-flopped. For an instant, I was reminded of King Arthur and her Excalibur, the terrible beam of energy that had almost killed us all.

    Siegfried stepped back on one foot, bracing himself. The pillar of light moved like it was nothing more than an extension of his blade.

    ¡°TARASQUE!¡± Marth screamed.

    The sword came down.

    ¡°BALMUNG!¡±

    The pillar of light descended like a guillotine, carving a path of destruction through everything in its way. It slammed into the ground and detonated, surging out in a wave and scouring the already destroyed city clean. Everything it touched was seared away and disappeared beneath the torrent of its might, and even Saint Martha and her Tarasque were swallowed up the same as everything else.

    The blast lasted an eternity, but also only an instant. Steam and smoke billowed out in its wake, and Siegfried stumbled back, clutching at his wounded side and panting as though he¡¯d run a marathon. My Magic Circuits throbbed from the sheer amount of magical energy that had been channeled through them to support that single blow.

    The billowing smoke eventually spread out and dissipated, curling in tufts up into the sky, and when it was gone, there was no sign anymore of the great dragon that we had struggled against. The Tarasque was no more.

    But Saint Martha remained, if only just. She was still alive, for whatever that word meant to a Servant, but she hadn¡¯t come out of Balmung¡¯s attack unscathed.

    Both of her arms were burned almost entirely black, along with a large portion of the left side of her face, like she had turned her head away and tried to shield herself with her arms. Her white tabard was ripped and torn and barely covered her modesty, not that it had been particularly conservative before, and her staff had disappeared somewhere, gone. Various other wounds mottled the front of her body, and any normal human would have been writhing on the ground in agony.

    Saint Martha didn¡¯t. She dropped her arms, scowled at us, and settled into a stance reminiscent of a boxer, leading with one of her mangled hands. Her legs bunched, tensed, as Mash and Siegfried both prepared to meet her, and ¡ª

    She stopped, face slack, as an arrow sprouted from the left side of her chest, buried in her flesh almost up to the fletching. A spurt of blood splattered across the ground behind her, and more leaked from the wound down her front.

    I didn¡¯t need to be Panacea to know that was a killshot.

    Saint Martha collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, falling to her knees as her arms dropped down, an expression of surprise on her face. For a moment, she swayed like that, her outline growing fuzzy and indistinct, like static on an old tv, and then she fell forward. The instant her face hit the ground, her entire body vanished in a cloud of golden sparks that flickered and died.

    But as she fell, I could have sworn I saw her smile.

 Chapter XX: Paladin at Thiers

    Chapter XX: Paladin at Thiers

    The instant Saint Martha was gone, Siegfried collapsed to his knees, as though her presence was the only thing keeping him upright. He supported himself with his sword, the tip thrust into the ground, and his other hand clutched at his side, where his wound still persisted.

    Rika squawked. "Hey, is he okay?"

    "Fou, fou!"

    The little menace leapt from off of her shoulder and scurried over to Siegfried, and as much as it sent a shiver down my spine to follow it, the rest of us took off and jogged over to Mash and Siegfried. At least for the moment, there didn''t appear to be any other Servants nearby to worry about. For whatever that was worth, when the Tarasque had burned through so much of my swarm.

    "Senpai!" Mash called as we approached.

    "Good going, Mash!" Rika cheered, grinning, and then she turned to Siegfried worriedly. "This guy doesn''t look too good, though."

    "I''m¡­sorry, Master," Siegfried said, looking up at me with a pained expression. "Even just that much¡­took a lot more out of me¡­than I expected."

    "You did well," I told him. "Exactly what I needed you to do."

    He sighed, and something of a relieved smile broke out on his face. In a movie, that would have been the clich¨¦ moment where he died, having succeeded in his mission or rescued the princess, but fortunately, his form stayed solid and corporeal, and he seemed in no danger of fading away, just yet.

    Yet. That was the part that worried me. That wound needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later, or else it was going to become a liability in short order. The very last thing we needed was to run into another pack of wyverns or one of Jeanne Alter''s Servants and Siegfried be too weakened to fight back. The Armor of Fafnir would help, but the wound itself already proved that it was possible to get through that and deal a heavy blow.

    "Is he okay?" Ritsuka asked, concerned.

    "Jeanne Alter and her Servants wounded him, and because it''s cursed, it won''t heal," I summarized for the twins. "He won''t be able to fight until we break the curse and heal the wound."

    "I did everything I could," Jeanne lamented, "but I''m afraid¡­with my abilities as diminished as they are¡­"

    "You can''t break the curse," Mash concluded.

    Beep-beep!

    "¡ª got through!" Romani said. "Thank goodness! That interference was really strong!"

    "Doctor Roman!" said the twins together.

    "Contract registered, by the way!" said Romani. "Saber class Servant, Siegfried, hero of the Nibelungenlied. It turns out your instinct was right on the money, Taylor! This is definitely a top class, Rank A Servant!"

    He grinned.

    "And two Spirit Origins have disappeared, as well! A-ah, we didn''t detect the last one until moments before it was snuffed out, but you definitely managed to handle Saint Martha! Congratulations, everyone!"

    With a quiet thump, Arash landed next to us. "Doctor."

    "Arash Kamangir," Romani replied respectfully. "Thank you for looking out for everyone."

    "Just doing my job," said Arash, smiling.

    Romani looked over at something on his console. "Everyone''s vitals are all in the green. No injuries, no one''s hurt, and thank God, no one died. I''d call that a success. Although¡­"

    Yes. "Although." There was no way he could have missed it, that little hitch.

    "You can see it, right?" I asked.

    Romani nodded.

    "Siegfried''s Saint Graph has some irregularities in it. Damage that predates the contract, along with some kind of status effect. Was there something that happened before you made contact?"

    "It''s a curse," Jeanne said sourly. "My other self¡­ My evil counterpart and her minions inflicted it upon him. I can''t lift it as I am."

    "If it''s lingering this long and managed to get through his Noble Phantasm," Romani hedged, frowning, "it''s likely the result of a Noble Phantasm itself. You''d need either a specialized Noble Phantasm or else a bona fide saint to lift it¡­ A-ah, I mean, n-not that you''re not a saint, Jeanne ¡ª"

    "Whatever history says of me, I don''t think of myself as one," Jeanne interrupted, and then she sighed. "However, whether or not I am one, in my current state, I can''t do anything more."

    And without her, we were fresh out of the other two things, weren''t we? Damn it.

    "Maybe Emiya has something?" Ritsuka suggested tentatively.

    "Emiya?" Arash echoed.

    "Our emergency backup," I explained shortly. "An Archer class Servant who can reproduce Noble Phantasms, at the cost of lowered performance."

    Arash, Jeanne, and Siegfried all reacted in a way I honestly should have expected: with surprise. In hindsight, being told a Heroic Spirit could make copies of the things that made other Heroic Spirits special wasn''t something ordinary even among Servants. I had to start thinking of it like Tinkertech ¡ª even other Tinkers couldn''t just casually reproduce a Tinker''s work, and mass producing them was the Holy Grail of Tinkering.

    And I just compared Emiya to Dragon in my head. I wasn''t sure who should have been flattered more.

    "I''ve never heard of such a Heroic Spirit before," Arash said.

    "Neither had we," Romani told him. "As far as our records are concerned, he didn''t exist before Taylor, Ritsuka, and Rika saw him in Fuyuki."

    Arash shook his head. "You would think a Heroic Spirit with such a unique talent would be well-known."

    "According to Emiya, his capacity for reproduction increased dramatically after his ascension ¡ª or rather, he couldn''t just throw around copied Noble Phantasms willy nilly while he was alive, and large parts of his repertoire were only acquired during his summonings as a Servant," Romani said. "In any case, I could ask him, but I don''t think he''ll be able to help with this. Remember, he''s limited to bladed weapons, and swords aren''t really made for healing, you know?"

    My lips pursed as an idea came to mind.

    "You could ask him, but I''m not sure we need him," I said. "How easy is it to send him here, anyway?"

    Romani scratched at the back of his head. "There''s some sort of time differential between you guys and Chaldea. We can keep track of you and where you''re heading, but even if it takes you a week to get somewhere, for us, it''s a few hours to maybe a day or so. Da Vinci thinks the difference is going to get even more extreme the further back you go and the bigger the deviation from proper history."

    "So?" Ritsuka prodded.

    "I''m getting there!" Romani said. "It means that, when we''re not in direct contact like this, it''s harder to pinpoint your exact location at any given moment. Chaldeas is a little more accurate than a GPS, but for us, you guys are moving around like a car on a highway. That''s why I''m sometimes late announcing the presence of an incoming Servant. By the time the sensors pick it up and I get the readout, you guys are already fighting. And that''s when interference doesn''t make connecting impossible to begin with."

    I made a noise of understanding in my throat.

    "So if you tried to Rayshift Emiya to us, there''s no guarantee he''d even land in our general area. Rika might have to use a Command Spell just to bring him to us."

    Waste one, I meant, and everyone picked up on that.

    Romani nodded. "Basically, yeah."

    "Why didn''t you just say that?" Rika groaned. "That wasn''t that hard to understand!"

    "Wha ¡ª h-hey!" Romani squawked. "I''m doing my best here, you know! This isn''t exactly my normal job!"

    "Romani." I brought the conversation back around before it could devolve. "If we forget about bringing Emiya in for now, can you detect any other Servants to the west or east?"

    "Hang on a second."

    He went back to the monitor, showing us the side of his face as he looked away.

    "It''s far enough away that the resolution isn''t great, but I''m definitely detecting the presence of at least one Servant west of you, at a city called Thiers, roughly one-hundred-twenty kilometers from your current location, and there might be one even further out past that. If it''s even there, it''s at least twice as far, so I''m sorry I can''t give you anything more concrete."

    I nodded. "And the one at Thiers, can you detect human vital signs in its general vicinity?"

    Everyone turned to look at me, eyes wide.

    "Oh my," said Jeanne. "That''s clever."

    "H-holy crap!" Romani said. "H-hang on a second, I''ll ¡ª Da Vinci''s going to cackle like a madman when she hears about this one!"

    "Human vital signs?" Mash asked. "I don''t understand."

    "Aside from our team, there should only be two kinds of Servants here," I explained while Romani checked the sensors. "Those who are on Jeanne Alter''s side, and therefore will be slaughtering every living person they come across, and those on the side of the French people, who will fight back and protect the innocent citizens. If there''s a Servant at Thiers and a bunch of people still alive there ¡ª"

    "Then that Servant is protecting them!" Ritsuka concluded.

    "That''s awesome!" said Rika. "I don''t see how that helps us, though."

    "Jeanne was obviously summoned to fight her evil self, the Dragon Witch." I nodded at her, and she grimaced, but didn''t protest the point. "But here at Lyon, we found Siegfried, a dragon-slaying hero, specifically suited for killing Jeanne Alter''s wyverns. There''s no guarantees, but if the Servants summoned are responses meant to match the threat, then the Servant at Thiers just might be another dragonslayer."

    "It could be Sigurd," Mash suggested.

    Siegfried nodded. "It''s possible. Though our legends are similar, he and I are two different Heroic Spirits. If the threat is dragons, he may have been summoned as well."

    "Maybe," I conceded, because it wasn''t impossible. "But if he wasn''t, then there''s one other dragon-slaying hero that might have been called."

    "Saint George," Romani said. "I''ve got a reading, and your instinct was right again, Taylor. I can''t get an exact number, but there are numerous human life signs located at Thiers. It looks like whoever the Servant is there is protecting the city along with all of the people inside it."

    My lips curled into a small smile.

    "Can you tell if it''s Saint George or not?" Jeanne asked.

    Romani shook his head. "I''ve already explained, I don''t have that kind of resolution from this far away. Not without one of the Masters having seen the Servant with their own eyes. The only thing I can tell you from here is the general location. I''m sorry."

    "It''s not ideal," I allowed, because it really would have been better to know who or what we were dealing with for sure, "but it''s better than what we had to go on five minutes ago. We don''t really have much better in the way of options, right now, unless you want to take another shot at summoning?"

    I addressed the last part to Romani, who grimaced.

    "Even if we tried, there still isn''t a guarantee that who you summon will be of immediate use," he said. "We already tried to summon Siegfried, right? Arash answered instead, and we found Siegfried later. So if we tried to summon Saint George and it turns out he''s the one at Thiers, won''t we just have filled up one of our open slots and increased the strain on you Masters unnecessarily?"

    That wasn''t exactly my thought process. But it wasn''t completely off the mark, either.

    "Then our next destination should be Thiers," I concluded. "Whether or not Saint George is there, the odds are good that the Servant there will be an ally. At the very least, we''ll be able to rest and brainstorm the next step from there."

    Arash nodded. "It''ll be a nice break from camping out every night."

    "Is it really that big of a deal?" Ritsuka asked. "Rika and I haven''t really been feeling any strain from supporting Mash or anything. Right, Rika?"

    "The only things strained are my legs!" Rika reported cheerily.

    Very deliberately, I stopped myself from rolling my eyes.

    "That''s because Chaldea''s doing most of the heavy lifting," Romani told them. "The more Servants you contract with, especially out in the field instead of inside Chaldea itself, the more you guys will have to pick up the slack with your own power. Right now, Ritsuka, Rika, you two are only supporting Mash, and Taylor is only supporting Siegfried and Arash. If you just kept summoning as many Servants as you could, you would definitely start to feel the strain. If they all started fighting the next time you ran into an enemy Servant, the drain might just kill you."

    The twins both blanched. I didn''t have any idea what they were imagining it would look like to be drained dry of magical energy, but the image in my head was of a desiccated corpse, sunken-cheeked and so brittle it flaked away at the slightest touch.

    "Then, it seems our next course of action has been decided," Jeanne concluded. "We will make our way to Thiers in the hopes of finding another ally and work out our next step from there. Are there any objections?"

    "I''m sorry," Siegfried mumbled. "You''re going through all of this trouble for me."

    I shook my head. "Getting help for you is one thing, but Thiers probably would have been our next stop anyway. We''ll need as much help as we can get to fight Jeanne Alter and her army."

    Siegfried''s expression drew out into determination. "Then I won''t let your efforts go to waste. Once my injury has been healed, Master, I will ensure the Dragon Witch is destroyed. This, I swear."

    <div>

    ¡ª o.0.O.O.0.o ¡ª?

    Not for the first time, I lamented the lack of industrial era conveniences in fifteenth-century France. It probably wouldn''t be the last. Without a car to take us there, the journey of a few hours became a few days, and while we didn''t have as far to go as before, Siegfried''s disability slowed us down by at least a whole day, so it still took us the better part of a week to go from Lyon to Thiers. It didn''t help that the terrain got far less flat the closer to our destination we got, to the point where "rolling hills" was a frustratingly accurate description of the obstacles we had to cross.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

    And unfortunately, by the time the sun had set and we settled down at the end of the fourth day, we still had another few hours of travel before we could crest the final hill overlooking the valley Thiers was nestled into, which meant another night of camping out in the wilderness.

    For a certain value of the word "camping," at any rate. We didn''t have nice, expensive tents or comfortable sleeping bags, and the only things we had for pillows were our own clothing, which didn''t exactly make for the most comfortable of rests. The only small mercy we had was that my powers let me keep things like mosquitoes from harassing us, and that meant we didn''t have to wake up in the morning with unexplained bites swelling on every stretch of exposed skin.

    Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, I was jealous of the Servants who didn''t have to sleep. Jeanne did anyway, and so did Mash, but Arash was always taking the night watch to keep an eye out for us, and Siegfried didn''t sleep, exactly, so much as he closed his eyes and tried to move as little as possible throughout the night.

    Trying not to aggravate his wound was my guess. Or conserving magical energy. It might have been both at once.

    That night, the twins fell asleep almost instantly. They were huddled up next to each other on the edge of our little bonfire, and despite how uncomfortable sleeping on the hard ground was, they were sawing logs without a care in the world.

    With Arash off in the dark, staying away from the fire to maintain his night vision, and Siegfried set off to the side, engaged in his nightly imitation of a statue, it left Jeanne and I alone in a rare moment of solitude.

    Not for much longer, I knew. I was handling it all better than the twins were, but walking all day still took a lot out of me, too. With food in my belly and my body aching from a long day, I''d be heading off to dreamland myself, soon. It took everything I had just to stifle my yawns.

    "Do you think she was right?" Jeanne asked into the silence.

    I blinked at her, uncomprehending. "Who?"

    "My other self," Jeanne said quietly. "My¡­evil self. Jeanne Alter."

    Oh. One of those conversations, then.

    "About?"

    "The reason my abilities are so diminished," Jeanne clarified. "Why I''m¡­not as strong as I should be." She was quiet for a moment longer, and then went on. "I know I said it so confidently back then, but¡­ Could it be true that I''m the fake, and she''s the real Jeanne?"

    Wasn''t that a loaded question?

    "Do you think you''re fake?" I asked.

    "I¡­I don''t feel like I''m fake, but¡­" She trailed off for a moment, then started again. "If I was nothing more than the idealized version of Jeanne that the people of France believed in, would I even know for sure?"

    I didn''t know how to answer that. I didn''t really know that there was any good answer to begin with.

    "I''m not sure what you''re expecting me to tell you," I said. "It''s not like I knew you when you were alive or anything. I can''t say one way or the other which one of you feels and acts the way the real Jeanne d''Arc did while she was still living and breathing."

    But I definitely knew that Jeanne wouldn''t appreciate me telling her that I thought Jeanne Alter''s way of thinking was more realistic. It felt more natural for someone to hate the people who abandoned her, to feel like everyone who turned their backs on her deserved to have everything she''d ever given to them ripped away. For the French, to whom Jeanne delivered everything, having everything destroyed was¡­not the appropriate response, but the one that matched what she''d done for their sakes.

    What she''d sacrificed for their sakes.

    Jeanne frowned miserably at the smoldering embers of our fire.

    "But," I continued, "I''ve heard enough of the stories about her to know she didn''t begrudge anyone for what happened. The English for their partisanship, maybe, the clergy who condemned her on every trumped up charge they could, probably, but not the people or the country she''d given up everything for."

    It felt like a lie. It was all true, of course, and none of it was wrong, but people could change a lot in the moments of their death. As she burned at the pyre, it was entirely possible the real Jeanne d''Arc had cursed everyone and everything even remotely connected to it. Maybe it was even likely.

    I didn''t tell her that.

    "Yes." Jeanne closed her eyes and bowed her head. "I accepted it, at the end. The English, the clergy, they tricked me into a false confession. But I knew¡­from the beginning, didn''t I? I knew that I would never return to the simple life of a farm girl the instant I left home to seek out King Charles. I knew what I was giving up for my people and what it would cost me."

    She clutched her hands to her chest.

    "I remember the moment I knew what I must do," she said quietly. "I remember making the decision to leave. I remember it all. My mother''s tears. My father''s love. My brothers'' embrace. The smiling faces of my countrymen, liberated. The jeers of the crowd as I burned." She pushed out her arms, as though throwing something into the flames. "I remember that final moment as I offered my body unto God."

    A small smile pulled at her lips. "Those are all things the real Jeanne d''Arc did. Those are all things the real Jeanne d''Arc felt. Those are all the things I lived and felt."

    She might remember all of that, too, I thought but didn''t say. It felt like the wrong thing to say in that moment.

    If someone told me that my Echidna clone was just as much a real person, a real Taylor Hebert, as I was, just because she had all of my memories, too, would I have been able to accept that? Could I say a dark mirror was equally as valid as the original?

    No. And when you looked at it like that, Jeanne Alter was just as much Jeanne''s dark mirror, a tainted reflection corrupted by Flauros'' Grail.

    Even if we said Jeanne Alter''s feelings were valid, that didn''t mean what she was doing wasn''t wrong. Real or fake, she was still the enemy, and we had to stop her. Whether or not she was the genuine article would just make it more or less tragic.

    "We should get some sleep," I said. "Tomorrow, we''ll be meeting whoever is at Thiers. We can''t afford to be exhausted, especially if they attack before asking questions."

    "You''re right." She offered me a radiant smile. "Thank you, Taylor. Your words helped dispel my doubts."

    I gave her a smile and a nod, perfunctory. I didn''t know how I''d really helped her when she mostly seemed to have talked herself around, but if she thought I''d helped, then I wasn''t going to argue. Turning away from the fire, I settled down, pillowed my head beneath one arm, and closed my eyes. Jeanne did something similar.

    A long breath eased out of my nostrils, and I tried to still my mind long enough to sleep.

    It seemed only seconds later that I was waking up to the morning sun on my face, feeling like I hadn''t much rested at all.

    The fire had burned down at some point, and as I gingerly sat up, I found everyone mostly where I''d left them the night before. The twins had shifted and moved around a little, but Siegfried remained where he was, utterly still but for his even breathing, and next to me, Jeanne began to stir, as well, probably because she''d felt me moving.

    Briefly, I closed my eyes and stretched out my senses, feeling out my swarm. I''d lost some in the night, of course, to predation and any number of other factors, but nothing major had disturbed them. Of course not, because it would have jolted me awake, but it never hurt to check.

    A mental prod at the thread connecting me to Arash got me a silent affirmation back, a sort of wordless "I''m here" to let me know he hadn''t been assassinated in the middle of the night. It only took a moment''s concentration to send the order for him to make his way back from wherever it was he''d been keeping watch.

    Now that everything else had been taken care of, I stood gingerly, sighing, and went over to wake up the twins. They were about as enthusiastic about getting up as I was, because as much as you could get used to sleeping on the ground and learn to live with the associated aches, those aches never stopped being new when you woke up to them in the morning.

    Siegfried was roused with nothing more than a quiet grunt to show his discomfort. He stood slowly and carefully, mindful of his wound, but although I thought he must have fallen asleep sitting there for the entire night, he showed no signs that he''d ever even started to doze.

    I would have bet that if I asked him, he would have told me that he''d been awake and on guard the whole time. I wasn''t sure I could even doubt it.

    Arash returned around that time, and a quick chat later, Romani sent us provisions for our breakfast ¡ª that showed up five feet in the air above Mash''s shield. Small mercies that none of it was fragile enough to make a mess.

    After a brief and largely tasteless meal (accented by some chocolate protein bars that were actually pretty good), we started up our journey again and continued our hike towards Thiers.

    "Do you have any more information about the Servant in the city?" I asked Romani as we walked.

    "Sorry, I don''t," he answered. Static tinged his words around the edges. Without a ley line terminal, a stable connection to Chaldea seemed like it was too much to ask for, but Romani and his sensors were the only line of information about the Servant at Thiers and the larger movements by Jeanne Alter that we had.

    "Nothing?"

    He shook his head. "I can tell you that he doesn''t seem to have moved outside of the city itself, and also that there doesn''t seem to have been any significant drop in the city''s human population, but even this far out, I''m just speaking in a general sense."

    My lips pulled into a frown. "What about Jeanne Alter and her forces? Do we have any idea what they''ve been up to for the last week?"

    Romani shrugged and sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Sorry, I can''t tell you much there, either. I''ve been checking back in whenever you guys settle down for the night, but the best I can give you is that there''s been movement by Servants. I couldn''t tell you one way or the other what she''s doing or why, only that she is doing something."

    That was more helpful than nothing, and we stuck to that for a while, discussing different things she might have been doing and reasons she might have been shuffling her "troops" around. Probably trying to spare the twins'' feelings, Romani kept things steered away from the obvious, that she was going out and burning down whatever town, village, or city caught her eye on any given day.

    I didn''t think the twins missed that, but neither of them brought it up themselves. They were inexperienced, not stupid.

    Eventually, we found ourselves on a road that seemed to have been excavated out of the hillside, a relatively narrow pass that had a steep upward slope to the right, enough space for a decently sized merchant caravan to ride, and then another steep slope to the left. The drop was sheer enough that I didn''t like the odds of us surviving uninjured if I or one of the twins fell down it.

    "¡ª at Lyon," Romani was saying. "I shouldn''t need to tell you, but she definitely knows you were there and she definitely knows you killed Saint Martha and Phantom. The next Servant she sends is definitely going to be even harder to fight. You guys need to be on your guard. She might even send two."

    "Being double-teamed is cheating," Rika muttered sourly.

    "Doctor Roman," said Ritsuka, who had been mostly silent the rest of the conversation, "has anything happened at La Charit¨¦?"

    Romani sighed, grimacing. At length, he reluctantly said, "There are no human life signs at La Charit¨¦, as of now."

    Ritsuka scowled, staring hard at the ground. His fists clenched. Rika, too, looked miserable, and Mash had the appearance of a kicked puppy.

    I didn''t want to say that I''d told him so. This was one of those things I would have gladly been wrong about.

    "That doesn''t mean anything on its own," Romani added. "It''s entirely possible that the people who evacuated all left for another town. They might have ¡ª"

    "Doctor Roman," Ritsuka interrupted quietly. "Please."

    Romani was silent for a moment.

    "I''m sorry, Ritsuka."

    Something chimed on Romani''s end, and he lunged forward, eyes wide, and shouted, "Incoming Servant detected!"

    We had barely a moment to register his words before something fell out of the sky like a ballistic missile.

    "Master!" Mash shouted, and she threw herself in front of the group, her shield materializing in front of her.

    The other Servant landed with a thunderous crash some twenty feet or so down the road, kicking up hunks of rock with the impact. They''d moved so fast that I hadn''t even had time for my bugs to pick up their movement before they''d landed.

    She, I realized as I took in her figure. Definitely a woman, dressed in a long, almost military-style coat, knee-high boots, and elbow-length gloves, all accented with small plates of gold armor and all predominantly white and blue with red piping. Her long, golden hair looked frankly ridiculous in a pair of tails that reached almost to her knees.

    The most striking thing, however, was not her appearance nor the tiny lance she carried in one hand, but the blazing star of a shield strapped to her other. At its center was a gold ornament with eight points, but radiating out from those points were eight spokes of pure energy, light solidified.

    For an instant, she reminded me of Glory Girl.

    "Halt!" she said firmly, brandishing the glittering, crystalline head of the miniaturized thing she called a lance at us. "Take not one step further! If you value your lives, turn around and leave this place immediately!"

    She tilted her head back, staring down at us imperiously. It only made my mental comparison to Glory Girl all the stronger.

    "I am the Lancer class Servant, Bradamante!" she declared. "The town of Thiers and its people are under my protection! You''re not welcome here!"

 Chapter XXI: Divide and Conquer

    Chapter XXI: Divide and Conquer

    "Bradamante!" Romani exclaimed. "She was one of Charlemagne''s paladins! His elite generals and most trusted agents! A-although, ah, strictly speaking, her legend is really more focused on romance than combat¡­"

    "Who''s there!" Bradamante swung her lance around and fell into a kind of half-crouch, like she was preparing for a fight. "Show yourself, foul devil!"

    "D-devil?" Romani sputtered. "H-hey, I might not exactly be a saint, but I don''t think I deserve to be called a devil! Incompetent, at worst! Maybe a little clumsy! W-wait, neither of those is a good thing either, are they?"

    Briefly, I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath through my nose. "Romani¡­"

    "Wait, I know what''s going on!" said Bradamante. "You''re a magus, aren''t you? Well, I won''t fall for your tricks! I''m immune to magic, so you might as well drop the invisibility and face me head on!"

    Okay, that was enough of this nonsense.

    I stepped forward, and Bradamante''s lance swung back towards me. "Is it you? Are you the one responsible for this? I warn you, I''ve defeated many powerful mages in my time! You''ll regret it if you think you can beat me!"

    Standing behind Mash''s shield, I fiddled with the communications device on my wrist, turned it from "sound only" to visual, and thrust my arm out over one of the spokes, just in time for Romani''s startled image to pop up above it.

    Romani blinked at Bradamante. "Ah, hello?"

    She studied him silently for a long moment., eyes narrowed on his image, and Romani fidgeted nervously. At length, she lowered her lance, relaxed a little, and asked, "What''s going on, here?"

    Mash relaxed a little, too. Romani cleared his throat.

    "Greetings, Lady Bradamante," he began formally. "I am Director Romani Archaman of the organization known as the Chaldea Security Organization. We are tasked with the Grand Order, that is, the preservation of mankind as a species, and it is our job to correct irregularities that threaten humanity''s future. Irregularities such as the one you currently find yourself in, deviations from the proper course of human history."

    Bradamante eyed him warily. "Director Archaman? Are you really the Director?"

    Romani faltered. "Ah, well, t-technically I''m just the Acting Director," he admitted. "Director Animusphere is currently, um, indisposed."

    "Indisposed?"

    She didn''t say anything else, but I could hear the skepticism in her voice, the suggestion that the Director must not be much of a Director if she couldn''t even do her job, and I didn''t know what she was thinking it was that kept Marie from her position, but it rankled.

    "She''s in suspended animation," I cut in coolly, "while we try and come up with a way to save her life."

    I''d put up with enough of the doubts over the last two years. Marie wasn''t the best Director out there. She was young, inexperienced, and she overcompensated for that by being overbearing and strict, but she''d put her neck out there for me and I wasn''t about to let her be judged for the fact that she didn''t have a body to be here for her job.

    The stupidity of the double standard rankled the most. When she tried to do her job, the rest of the staff was frustrated that she was nosy and not that great at it, and now that she wasn''t around, people were judging her for not doing it at all.

    Bradamante frowned and pursed her lips. "I''m sorry."

    The sincerity of the apology threw me off more than the apology itself. Maybe I was stretching that comparison to Glory Girl a little too far.

    "The, ah, issue of Director Animusphere aside," Romani said diplomatically, "this is our main combat team. It''s their job to actually go out and fix the problem. Lady Bradamante, just to confirm what you said earlier, can I assume you''re the Servant we''ve been detecting who has protected Thiers this entire time?"

    Finally, Bradamante relaxed entirely. "Yes. I''ve taken the people and city of Thiers under my protection. A Servant of the Dragon Witch attempted to force me out some time ago, but I dispatched him after a pretty intense fight."

    "A Servant?"

    "Ah, I didn''t get his true name, sorry," Bradamante admitted sheepishly. "He wasn''t a very talkative fellow. I think he might have been a Berserker, because he kept screaming the same word over and over again."

    "That sounds like a Berserker, alright," Romani agreed. "Were there any identifying marks on him? Any visual cues that might have helped pin down his true name or at least his region or era?"

    Bradamante shook her head. "I''m sorry, but there was some kind of effect that stopped me from seeing anything like that. I think it was his Noble Phantasm. The only thing I can tell you is that he was wearing plate armor."

    "So he was a knight." Romani let loose a gusty sigh and sagged back into his chair. "That certainly narrows it down, doesn''t it?"

    "It wasn''t one of the other Servants we ran into, at any rate," I cut in. "That description doesn''t match any of the ones from La Charit¨¦, and I doubt there was any connection to Phantom at Lyon."

    "It looks like you were right, Miss Taylor," said Mash. "Jeanne Alter has access to the Holy Grail, and she summoned more than just the five Servants we saw in La Charit¨¦."

    Romani nodded. "Given what we know now, it''s likely that she sends one or two Servants to handle cities that she doesn''t particularly care about, but attacks in force whenever she decides it''s personal. Places like Orl¨¦ans and La Charit¨¦, which held some form of significance to Jeanne when she was alive."

    I nodded, because I''d been thinking something similar. Jeanne grimaced and muttered, "Her hatred extends that far?"

    "Did she send any wyverns to reinforce the Servant you fought?" I asked Bradamante.

    "Barely a squadron. I took care of them without even breaking a sweat," she replied proudly. "They might as well have been children''s toys!"

    So whatever her legend might have focused on, she was at least competent enough to handle a Berserker and a few wyverns. I wasn''t sure that was exactly a ringing endorsement, not without having seen what that Berserker had been capable of, but I could at least say she wasn''t dead weight.

    Already, I was thinking about how we might slot her into our own forces. It was probably a better idea to wait until I''d had a chance to see her in action, first.

    "Have you encountered the Dragon Witch herself, yet?"

    Bradamante faltered. "Ah, that¡­ Sh-she hasn''t been brave enough to attack me herself, so no! But I''m sure I could hold her off! I''ll protect Thiers with everything I am!"

    "Your courage does you justice, Lady Bradamante," Siegfried said warmly.

    I glanced back at him. Right, I''d been getting caught up in the longer term plans. Taking care of his wound was more important, right now, and unfortunately, since the Servant protecting Thiers wasn''t Saint George, that meant we still had some searching to do.

    Bradamante peered around Mash and me, sizing up Siegfried with a discerning gaze.

    "You have the bearing of a knight," she said, "but I don''t recognize you or your armor. Would you tell me your name?"

    "Well met." Siegfried inclined his head and bent his torso slightly. Only the barest twitching muscle in his jaw betrayed his pain. "I am Siegfried, Servant Saber. I was summoned to this era in response to the wyverns, but I have contracted with Chaldea to aid them in their quest to destroy the Dragon Witch."

    "Siegfried!" Bradamante gasped. "Then that is the dragonslaying sword, Balmung! Oh, to meet such a famous hero! This is incredible!"

    "He''s also injured." I gestured to his wound. "Jeanne," and here, I pointed her out, to an awkward smile, "was summoned to defeat her evil counterpart, but she''s so new as a Heroic Spirit that she''s not strong enough to lift the curse."

    "When we discovered there was a Servant in Thiers, we were hoping it would be Saint George, summoned to fight the wyverns like Siegfried was," Romani picked up. "Since he, too, is a saint, we thought he might be able to lift the curse and heal Siegfried''s wound." He sighed again. "Unfortunately, it seems that he might not have been summoned after all, so that whole journey was for nothing."

    A beat later, he seemed to realize the insult inherent in his words and scrambled to reassure her, "N-n-not that I think you''re inferior or anything! It''s just that you''re not who we were hoping to find! Ack! I-I mean, I''m sure you''ve got your own strong points, it''s just not what we needed right now!"

    "Romani," I advised him, "unless you''re really fond of the taste of your shoe, maybe you should quit while you''re ahead?"

    "Oh man¡­" Romani moaned. "I totally made a fool of myself, didn''t I?"

    Except¡­ Bradamante, when I turned back to her, didn''t seem offended at all. In fact, with her brow furrowed and her mouth drawn into a line, she looked more thoughtful than anything.

    "You say he''s been afflicted by a curse?" she asked.

    That wasn''t the question of someone just looking for clarification or wanting to make sure she had the story right. That was someone who might have a solution.

    Maybe making the trek to Thiers wouldn''t wind up being a waste of a trip after all.

    Siegfried nodded. "I''m not entirely sure how it works, but I''m almost certain this is the lingering effects of a Noble Phantasm. It''s the only thing strong enough to have done so much damage through my armor."

    "Do you have an idea?" I asked her.

    Slowly, Bradamante nodded her head. "If it''s the lingering results of a Noble Phantasm, then it might be too much for even me to handle," she hedged, "but my other Noble Phantasm, my ring, Angelica Cathay, might just be able to undo the curse that ails Lord Siegfried."

    That¡­ Okay, no, I probably shouldn''t get my hopes up. Finding Siegfried at Lyon had already been an incredible stroke of luck, offset by his wound. It would be convenient if Bradamante could get rid of the curse, but since when had things been convenient when it came to my life?

    "How sure are you that it''ll work?"

    "W-well, it''s not a guarantee," she admitted. "B-but there''s one way to find out for sure, isn''t there? In fact, I could do it right here, right now! No special ritual or anything required!"

    A low, quiet rumble punctuated her statement, and we all turned to Rika, who smiled sheepishly and let out a slow, awkward laugh. "Do you think we could eat, first? Curse-breaking sure sounds like it works up an appetite, and I''m already hungry."

    Mash sighed. "Senpai¡­"

    And then another rumble sounded from her, and her face flushed as she hung her head so that her hair hid her flaming cheeks.

    "M-maybe this isn''t the place to be attempting to break Siegfried''s curse," Mash said. "Miss Bradamante, do you think we could wait until we''re in Thiers to try?"

    "I¡­" Bradamante didn''t seem to know what to say, for a moment, and then she beamed. "Of course! Yes, it''s more than okay if we get lunch for you before we try to break the curse! There''s no rush!"

    Mash turned to me expectantly, like she was waiting for me to insist that we get it out of the way as quickly as possible. In a movie or a tv show, that would also have been the perfect moment for my stomach to let out a loud rumble of its own to prove them right.

    It didn''t. Not loud enough for them to hear, at least, because we''d had not much of a breakfast, not much of a dinner, and not all that substantial a meal the entire trip here. It wasn''t really all that different from the sorts of things we''d had to eat in the aftermath of the Leviathan battle in Brockton Bay, when the city was limping on and stale rations were better than nothing, but that didn''t mean I had ever enjoyed it, and even if they were nutritious, they rarely felt filling.

    Yes, I was hungry, too. Fine, Mash, Rika, there wasn''t any reason not to do it your way.

    I held back my sigh and nodded. "Lunch first."

    "Yes!" Rika pumped her fist. "I''m so hungry, I could eat a horse!"

    "I don''t think that will be on the menu," Bradamante said diplomatically. "But I''m sure we''ll be able to find something to your liking! Please, follow me! When they see you''re with me, the people of Thiers will welcome you with open arms!"

    I wasn''t so sure about that, given the current shape of things, but I could hope and extend a little trust her way, at least.

    "We''ll be in your care," Ritsuka said politely. It sounded rehearsed, or maybe perfunctory would be the better word. Like something he had been taught to say all his life, so it had become second nature.

    Bradamante turned around and started back towards the city, and our motley crew fell into step behind her, weapons stowed into spirit form. By the anxious tightening of Jeanne''s eyes, it seemed I wasn''t the only one who was a little skeptical of Bradamante''s claims of the townsfolk''s hospitality.

    But, another ten minutes or so of walking later, she was proven right. The outskirts of Thiers were relatively sparsely populated, but once we got into the town proper, more and more people were milling about the streets, going about their day, and they all stopped to greet us ¡ª Bradamante in particular ¡ª as we passed.

    None of them cast us an unfriendly glance, despite Mash, Arash, and Siegfried decked out in armor and the twins and I dressed in strange clothes, with my one arm still stained a muddy maroon from that wyvern''s blood. At worst, they ignored us entirely. Some of them greeted us with the same bright smiles and warm words they did Bradamante.

    They weren''t even suspicious of Jeanne. No one side-eyed her, looked at her strangely, or worse, turned, fled, and screamed about "the Dragon Witch" coming to kill them all. It made sense when I thought about it and remembered that this was fifteenth century France, not modern America. This era didn''t have photographs or cameras to capture someone''s image for later viewing, so the only way for someone who had never seen Jeanne to know what she looked like was to hear her described by someone who had, and human memory was imperfect at the best of times.

    For that matter, without the internet or telephones or even newspapers, the only way information traveled was by word of mouth, and the further it had to travel, the less reliable it was. That game one of my teachers had us play back in middle school had made it abundantly clear just how easy it was for anything relayed between people to become completely distorted between the beginning and the end.

    So we were led through the city completely unaccosted ¡ª for a certain value of the word "city." Built into the slope of the mountainside, Thiers was a spectacular sight, for sure, but it wasn''t anywhere near as sprawling or populous as Lyon would have been, and it really was closer in size to La Charit¨¦.

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    That didn''t detract from the view at all. From the top, looking down, I imagined it was a pretty spectacular sight, but even from near the bottom looking up, there was a kind of rustic beauty to a human town fused into the side of the mountain, built into the slope. Almost like the brick buildings had grown up out of the soil, sprouting from between the trees and the side of the river. Moss grew along the bottoms, and vines snaked their way up the walls.

    The strange feeling twisting around in my gut as we made our way deeper in¡­ It wasn''t quite nostalgia, but I didn''t have a better word to encapsulate that sense of a world we''d lost somewhere along the way, that simple beauty of a time that had long passed us by. The people living here, life was less complicated for them, less busy, wasn''t it? Their days were full, but the hustle and rush of modernity were completely absent, and as I observed them all with my bugs, there seemed to be less weight pressing on their shoulders.

    Maybe having to fix these Singularities and live in the long past for weeks at a time wasn''t full of nothing but pitfalls.

    Bradamante''s route was winding and circuitous, but there didn''t seem to be a straighter road into the city. I thought I could see one further to the south, but just from feeling it out with my bugs, it would have taken us longer to cross the more treacherous terrain to reach it than it was to just keep going the way we were.

    "How long ago were you summoned, Lady Bradamante?" Romani asked.

    "It''s been almost a month," she answered.

    Romani made a sound of understanding in his throat. "So you would have showed up around the same time Jeanne did. In other words, shortly after the Dragon Witch materialized."

    Bradamante shook her head.

    "I wouldn''t know. I only know as much as the townsfolk do, and information about the Dragon Witch is fairly sparse. Most of it is just rumors, although it turned out to be true that she commands dragons, didn''t it? Berserker came after her first couple attacks failed."

    "And you defended the town in each case."

    "That''s right. A few wyverns weren''t any trouble at all."

    Romani hummed.

    "Now that I think of it¡­ Lord Siegfried, would you say you were summoned around the same time?"

    "There''s no need for such formality, Director Archaman," Siegfried said with a polite smile, only slightly strained. Although he tried to hide the discomfort of his wound, he still winced and flinched every now and again. "Any claims to royalty or nobility I might have had died with me. Now, I am merely Siegfried, the Servant Saber. Address me however it pleases you."

    "Ah¡­ Right." Romani grimaced. "In that case, since your weak spot is as famous as you are, maybe it''s better to just call you Saber. Oh, uh, and it''s okay if you call me Roman, too."

    "I think it''s safe to say that all of the stray Servants were probably summoned around the same time," I told Romani. "If they form a sort of autoimmune response to the problem, it only makes sense."

    "It''s difficult to say how much time I spent down in those dungeons," said Siegfried, "but if I was asked to guess¡­ Yes. A month sounds about right."

    "Then, if any Servant not summoned by the Dragon Witch herself was summoned around the same time¡­" Romani trailed off thoughtfully. "But you''d think we would''ve heard more rumors about them, wouldn''t we?"

    I shook my head.

    "If they weren''t summoned near someplace big enough to see lots of traffic, maybe not. Sieg¡­ Saber only stood out because he was at Lyon."

    "That''s a good point¡­"

    Eventually, Bradamante led us to a place in the city I should have expected: an old, weathered church made of timeworn stone that stood near the center of the city. In hindsight, we still didn''t really have any money, and as far as privacy went, it would be easier to discuss whatever we needed to talk about here than inside an inn, where anyone who so much as passed the door could listen in. This was definitely the better idea.

    Was it too much to ask to find a place with an actual bed, though?

    "The local priest was kind enough to let me stay here," Bradamante explained as we went inside. "Even though I don''t strictly need sleep, it''s nice to have a place to relax a little. I''m sure he''ll be glad to let you stay as long as you need, as well!"

    "I don''t think we''ll be staying that long," I said mildly. "A day or two at the most."

    "Even still."

    The doors shut behind us with an echoing boom, and Romani''s fingers flying over the keyboard filled the emptiness of the hall.

    "Hey, this is an incredible stroke of luck," he said. "You guys are sitting right on top of a ley line terminal. Mash, if you set your shield down on a large enough empty spot, I can send you some food right away."

    Rika groaned. "Not more ration bars!"

    Romani chuckled. "Nope. You guys are gonna love this ¡ª I managed to get Emiya to cook you up a hearty stew! It should hold you over for quite a while!"

    "Yes!" Rika cheered. "Oh god ¡ª is it bad to say that in a church? Oh well ¡ª I''ve gone too long without my gourmet chef! I need some of Emiya''s cooking right away!"

    Even I had trouble hiding my eagerness after hearing that. Mash all but scrambled to find a good spot to set down her shield, front facing upwards, and backed away.

    "Ready when you are, Doctor Roman!" she reported brightly.

    "Okay." The clack of more presses on his keyboard only drove the excitement higher. "In three¡­ two¡­ one¡­"

    A magic circle lit up over Mash''s shield, flashed, and an instant later, a large steel pot and a bevy of extra bowls and utensils appeared on the floor.

    "Enjoy!" said Romani.

    It wasn''t quite a mad dash to dig into Emiya''s cooking, but the twins were still almost fighting for first picks until Mash stepped in and lifted the pot onto a nearby table next to what must have been a donation box. When she lifted the lid, the aroma of a freshly cooked stew set even my own stomach to growling audibly.

    Strictly speaking, I think the four of us wound up eating more than we should have, and Jeanne and Bradamante eventually joined us when what was there proved too much even for us hungry travelers, just so they could see what the fuss was about. The looks of surprised delight on their faces was satisfying on an entirely different level.

    Yes, Emiya''s food was that good. After weeks of rations and whatever Arash could hunt down for us on the road, it was like manna from heaven.

    Once we had all had our fill and our used dinnerware was sent back to Chaldea, Bradamante turned our attention back to the issue at hand. "Now. Lord Siegfried, let''s deal with that curse!"

    Siegfried stepped forward and pulled aside his bodysuit. Bradamante let out a quiet gasp.

    "That''s a terrible wound!"

    She took two long strides towards him and pressed one hand against it, muttering what might have been an incantation under her breath. Something on her finger glowed and glimmered, but it was hidden by the fabric of her glove.

    None of us dared breathe. We all watched with baited breath and waited, hoping that this was it and our journey here hadn''t been for nothing. For a moment, a jolt of nostalgia reminded me of Scapegoat healing me in the aftermath of the Echidna battle, his startled shock that I''d been fighting so intensely while essentially crippled.

    Let this be that easy, I thought. Let this be all the more we had to do to get him cured.

    But when Bradamante''s mouth twisted into a frown, her brow knitted together, and she pulled away a moment later with a shake of her head, I wasn''t surprised. I wanted to be, but I wasn''t.

    "It''s too much for me to handle all at once," she reported, and I''d half been expecting her to say just that. "I''m sorry, but I can''t lift the curse like this."

    "I see," Mash sighed. "Thank you, Lady Bradamante. At least you ¡ª"

    "All at once?" I asked immediately.

    "I don''t have the power to brute force it in one go," said Bradamante. "I could unravel it a little bit at a time over the course of¡­maybe a week, if I worked on it every day, but I can''t afford to just pour magical energy into it until it breaks. I have to keep enough strength to fight, in case the Dragon Witch or her minions attack the city."

    Siegfried nodded. "I understand."

    "Sounds good to me," Rika blurted out. "A week-long vacation is just what the doctor ordered!"

    "We can''t really just sit around and wait for a week, but we could defend the city in your place while you recover your energy," Ritsuka offered instead. "If you break it all in one go, I mean."

    "I''m okay with that," Arash chimed in. "In fact, that''s a great idea, if you ask me."

    "It¡­ I think that could work, actually," Bradamante said with building hope and a slowly growing smile. "Yes. Yes! If you promised to watch over the city for¡­maybe five days while I recovered, then I could do it right this instant! Oh, it would be wonderful to have a team of heroes helping look out for Thiers with me! Especially a hero as great and noble as Lord Siegfried!"

    Ritsuka nodded, and his face broke out into a wide smile. "Let''s do that, then!"

    "We can''t," Jeanne interrupted in a strong but quiet voice.

    The excitement died immediately.

    "Miss Jeanne?" asked Mash.

    "I''m sorry, Ritsuka, Rika," said Jeanne, gaining volume with every word. "I understand what it is you''re trying to do, but we simply can''t afford to stay in one place for too long. Not when it means the Dragon Witch has free reign to do as she pleases. Not when there is a single life that might be lost because of our inaction."

    Her fists clenched tightly.

    "We need to keep moving," she went on. "The sooner we find strong allies to help us fight her, the fewer people have to suffer. I''m sorry, Lady Bradamante, but Thiers is only one city, and it already has you to defend it. For the sake of the people of all of France, we can''t spend any more time here than absolutely necessary."

    Mash let out a quiet sigh. "Yes, Jeanne is right. I''m sorry, Master, Lady Bradamante. Our mission is too important to delay."

    I remained silent, lips pursing as an idea of my own slowly percolated in my head. A way to fix all of our problems at once.

    "H-hang on a second," Romani protested. "I get what you''re saying, but it''s not that bad if you take a break for a few days, you know! Your mental and physical health are important factors in fixing this Singularity too! Haste makes waste!"

    "The more we lounge about, the more lives are lost to the Dragon Witch''s cruelty!" Jeanne rebuked. "Rest is important, that''s true, and I wouldn''t begrudge a day or two of relaxation, but a whole week of indolence is too high a price to pay! Not when innocents are at stake!"

    "W-wait, it wasn''t just about relaxing!" Ritsuka hurried to say. "I was trying to compromise! Isn''t it better that we cure Siegfried as quickly as possible before we move on?"

    "If it spares the lives of the Dragon Witch''s victims, then I will gladly suffer this injury for as long as I need to," Siegfried said solemnly.

    "If we wait an extra week, then those Servants we''re searching for might already be defeated before we arrive!" Jeanne added. "We can''t afford to delay any longer than absolutely necessary!"

    "Romani," I cut in, "how quickly do our Command Spells replenish?"

    "One per day," he answered immediately. "Ah, but that''s one per day in Chaldea. As long as you''re in that Singularity, it''ll really be more like one a week, from your perspective."

    Better than I''d feared, worse than I''d hoped. The fact that we even got Command Spells back at all was convenient, but the rate at which we got them back after using them wasn''t as fast as I would have liked.

    That we couldn''t use them as and when we pleased was probably a good thing, because it stopped us from getting too reliant on using them whenever things turned just slightly against us, made them more strategic and tactical. Right then, it just felt like a huge hassle.

    "Can you still detect that Servant to the west of here?"

    "Give me a second, I''ll check," said Romani, and his chair squeaked as he turned away.

    I hated what I was about to suggest. My stomach was twisting itself up into nervous knots just thinking about it. It went against every instinct I had, and I had to fight with my own tongue to keep from telling him to forget about it. To just let it be and we''d make do as we were.

    But I knew better than that. As much as I hated it, this was the right move. It saved us time and effort, it got us more allies as quickly as possible, and it let us solve about three different problems with one stone ¡ª more, if the Servant to the west was someone who would be really useful.

    "At least one," Romani said. "There might be more, but if there are, they''re grouped too close together for me to get separate readings at this range."

    "How far?"

    "Another¡­two-hundred kilometers or so."

    Damn it. Another fucking week of walking both ways.

    I looked at Ritsuka, at Rika, at Mash and Arash.

    It didn''t make sense for us all to be sitting here, waiting while Bradamante slowly lifted Siegfried''s curse. Not when there were other allies we could find out there who might be killed off if left to fight on their own. Against Dracul and the Dragon Witch, we needed to stack the deck with as many strong Servants as we could, and that meant someone needed to go and see who it was further west.

    The only problem was¡­it didn''t make sense for it to be me. If I went with Jeanne and we ran into trouble, I could summon Arash with a Command Spell. But if the twins stayed here with Mash and trouble came knocking, they had to make do with an injured Siegfried, Bradamante, and Mash, while Arash and I might not even know anything was wrong until it was all over, and we wouldn''t be able to help at all.

    But the alternative, then, was to send the twins and Mash with Jeanne and Arash. If trouble came knocking, I could call Arash back, and if they ran into trouble, he was already there. It wasn''t perfect, but it gave us enough wiggle room that no one would be undefended for longer than it took to use a Command Spell.

    It made more sense that way. I just had to let the twins out of my sight for the longest time since Fuyuki.

    Damn it. Damn it all. There wasn''t much of a fucking choice, was there?

    I swallowed around my hesitation and said, "We''re going to have to split up."

 Interlude S: Ally of Justice

    Interlude S: Ally of Justice

    Hero of the Nibelungs, they called him.

    What an empty, meaningless title. It was a title befitting a hero who had only ever answered others'' prayers, who had only ever granted others'' wishes, and who had only ever done as others asked of him. It was a fitting title for a hero who had only ever done what others had expected of him for the sake of others'' ambitions.

    That was not a hero. That was an errand boy.

    And yet, despite having lived his life in such a manner and despite having died in such a manner, people had still seen fit to call Siegfried "hero." They had still seen fit to record his deeds and exalt him. They had still seen fit to laud him for what little he had truly accomplished.

    It was a strange feeling, to know his own worth and yet to not feel worthy of it.

    No, that wasn''t quite it.

    The things Siegfried had done and the deeds he had accomplished were indeed worthy of praise. Without a doubt, they belonged to a Heroic Spirit who had gone on great adventures and done great things. As the one who had achieved those glories, it wasn''t wrong for him to be glorified, nor was it wrong for others to call him "hero."

    It was simply that Siegfried did not feel particularly heroic.

    He had helped all of those people and he had completed their requests, but that was only because he had the strength and they had the need. There hadn''t been anything more behind it than that. Was it proper to truly call himself a hero simply because he had done for others the things they had been unable to do for themselves?

    No, that wasn''t quite it, either.

    The problem was deeper than simple actions. After all, if you divorced what he''d done from his name, no one would disagree that the person who did those things and accomplished those feats was a hero. It followed that the dragonslayer, Siegfried, should then be called a hero himself, and that such a title was fitting.

    The problem¡­ The problem was that none of it had been of Siegfried''s own will, for Siegfried''s own desires, of Siegfried''s own volition.

    It would be wrong to claim that Siegfried regretted the things he had done while alive, but it would also absolutely be wrong to claim that Siegfried had died without regrets. No, perhaps it was precisely because he hadn''t regretted any of it that had led him to regret his own empty legend, that of the hero the people had asked for who had fulfilled all of their wishes.

    Siegfried had never done anything for his own sake. Or more to the point, he had coasted through his own life, agreeing to every request made of him, even the one that he had known would mean his own death, and he had never once acted to fulfill his own dreams and his own ambitions. Yes, how could you call someone a hero simply because he had never been able to turn down another''s wishes, even to his own detriment?

    If only it had not taken his own death to realize the emptiness of his life. If Siegfried had acted on his own will to fulfill his own desires, then perhaps nothing would have changed, but at least he could have claimed with pride that he was "Hero of the Nibelungs." Not a mere errand boy chasing down others'' requests, but an ally of justice who had done right by all of the people, simply because he believed in its inherent righteousness.

    Lady Bradamante let out a long breath, and her hand left his side. It didn''t twinge anywhere near as much as it had even just a mere few days ago.

    "My apologies, Lord Siegfried," she said as she always did. "I''ve done what I can for today, but it''s still not done."

    Siegfried smiled. It seemed he had been woolgathering while she worked.

    "Don''t worry yourself, Lady Bradamante," he said sincerely. "That you are lending us your aid is already something to be thankful for. Please, don''t feel that you have to push yourself for my sake."

    She offered him a sad smile. "You are too kind, Lord Siegfried. If it was someone like His Majesty, I''m certain he could have handled this in an instant." She gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Well, I can do at least this much! It may take me longer and more effort, but I swear to you, I will break this curse!"

    Siegfried inclined his head. "Then I will gladly accept this kindness."

    Bradamante let out a gusty sigh. "If only I could join you on your mission to fight the Dragon Witch. But I can''t leave Thiers undefended to go off chasing after witches, not while its people still need me. Ah, not that I regret this at all!" she added hastily. "As a knight, there''s no higher honor than protecting the people and their lives! Doubly so that they are the descendants of my own people and therefore my king''s subjects! It''s only¡­"

    She looked away.

    Ah, Siegfried thought. It was like that, was it?

    "To be trapped in a single place, waiting for something to happen, that is its own brand of suffering, isn''t it?"

    Bradamante sighed again.

    "It really isn''t befitting my temperament," she agreed. "Charging forward into battle, facing my foes head on ¡ª that is the kind of woman, the kind of knight I am! A hundred wyverns, a thousand wyverns, an army of enemy Servants, I would gladly stare them all down across the battlefield!" She turned, and although there was nothing and no one there with them in the church, Siegfried got the sense that her gaze encompassed the entire city and all its people. "But that is not what Thiers needs me to be."

    She turned back and offered him a smile. "So even if it chafes, I will continue to be this city''s stalwart defender! That''s why¡­ I''m sorry that I can''t simply break the curse in an instant."

    "I understand," Siegfried said, returning her smile. "I''m sure my Master does as well."

    Her smile fell.

    "Ah¡­" She looked away. "Yes, if you say so, Lord Siegfried."

    Yes, there was that, too, wasn''t there? Siegfried wondered if she had even noticed, but he was certain Jeanne and Arash had both noticed it, and given how sharp his Master''s eyes were, she had likely seen it too. The reason behind Lady Bradamante''s distrust of their Masters eluded Siegfried, but the fact that she did indeed distrust them was obvious in the way she talked to and about them. Never outright suspicious, but always with a polite distance different altogether from the respect she gave the Servants.

    Siegfried wasn''t sure what to do about it. He wasn''t sure there was anything that could be done about it, not without knowing the source of it.

    Perhaps he should have asked Arash while the opportunity was still there. Now, it seemed that he would have to wait until the others returned to ask and see if his ally had any greater insight into the situation than he did.

    The doors to the church swung open, and as though mentioning her had summoned her forth, his Master stepped inside, face flushed and brow damp with sweat from her "morning run." While he applauded the initiative in maintaining her fitness, Siegfried also had to lament how it left her unprotected to run through the streets every morning without a Servant to aid her if they were attacked.

    He was less concerned about a wyvern or two than he was an enemy Servant, especially another of the Assassin class. He didn''t expect a few lesser dragons to prove much of a threat to her, at least not one that she couldn''t escape with relatively little difficulty, although when he''d said as much to Lady Bradamante a few days ago, she''d been shocked and appalled.

    It was baffling that no one else seemed to have noticed. Was he the only one who knew the stench of the Dragonkind that clung to his Master''s bloody sleeve? Was he the only one who recognized that for what it was?

    Perhaps it was just a matter of like recognizing like. As a hero who had slain a dragon, he was more familiar than most with their particular mysteries.

    "Good morning, Master," Siegfried greeted her.

    "Morning, Siegfried, Bradamante," she replied. Her eyes immediately honed in on his wound. "How is it?"

    Siegfried''s hand moved to his wound of its own accord. It didn''t pain him anywhere near as badly to touch it as it had for the past few weeks.

    "Well enough."

    "It''s still going to take me a few more days," Bradamante told her.

    His Master accepted this with a nod. Not happily, but as a matter of fact, a statement of truth, something which had to be considered, accepted, and worked around. She did not whine or complain, she shouldered it willingly and stoically.

    And then she ran a hand through her hair and scowled.

    "I''d kill for a shower, right about now," she muttered, so low he almost didn''t hear it.

    With a sigh, she sank onto one of the empty pews and threw her arms across the back, letting her head lull onto the wood as she looked up into the church''s rafters.

    "I guess it''s kind of pointless to ask if the twins have gotten into contact, considering I''m the one with the communicator," she said wryly.

    "They''ve only been gone three days, Master," Siegfried pointed out.

    "Which means they should be coming across whoever that Servant is pretty soon," she replied. She spared a glance Lady Bradamante''s way. "I know I said it before, but I do appreciate that. We''ve been going by foot most of the time since we got here, and I don''t think we could have convinced that farmer to lend us a couple horses on our own."

    Lady Bradamante smiled brightly. "It was no trouble! Though¡­" She trailed off thoughtfully for a moment. "It seems that it would have been an easy problem to solve, if you trusted yourselves to your Servants."

    His Master snorted. "Chaldea''s courses on Servants had one thing to say about having them carry us to and from our destinations."

    "What''s that?"

    "Don''t."

    Siegfried couldn''t stop a smile, and the short burst of air that hissed out of his nostrils wasn''t quite a snort.

    Lady Bradamante''s brow furrowed. "Why not?"

    His Master rolled her shoulders in what might have been intended as a shrug.

    "It''s considered an unnecessary drain on Chaldea''s resources to have our Servants exert themselves for something so petty. If you''re in such terrible shape that a little exercise and some walking is enough to wear you out, you have no business being a Master of Chaldea ¡ª or so the Director liked to say. At this point, though¡­"

    She scowled.

    "We might have to rethink that rule," she admitted sourly. "It was fine when we were crossing a city, but it''s too much to ask for when we''re crossing the French countryside. We waste too much time just getting from place to place."

    And that there was one of the reasons why Siegfried was so certain that whatever misgivings Lady Bradamante had must have been unfounded. His Master was not a cruel or heartless woman, and she did not treat lives as currency.

    "I''m sure Mash, Ritsuka, and Rika are fine, Master," he said reassuringly. "Arash would not allow any harm to befall them. They''re in good hands."

    His Master''s scowl deepened. "I''m that transparent, huh?" she whispered under her breath.

    Truth be told, his Master wasn''t the only one feeling the wait. Although he spoke confidently about Arash''s competence as a defender, if he was being honest, Siegfried was anxious as well. It felt like he had spent the majority of his time since his summoning cursed by the wound that still plagued him, and he had never felt so useless as he had hobbling at the tail of the party as they trekked towards Thiers in search of aid.

    He, too, was ready to be rid of it and take the fight to the Dragon Witch. For the first time since his death, here was a moment, a conflict with clear right and wrong, and he was to be on the side of justice. And yet, he was cursed to sit it out, barely capable of walking without assistance, let alone fighting, powerless to do anything except wait for an opportune moment where he might fire off his dragon-slaying Noble Phantasm.

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    It rankled. There was a feeling of impotent frustration in his belly that threatened to boil over almost constantly, and it was tempered only by the knowledge that everyone was doing everything they possibly could to see it fixed as swiftly as possible.

    As cold a comfort as it was, he couldn''t do anything except accept it. It wasn''t that he wasn''t grateful, but he was ready to be rid of this wound and the curse that made it linger.

    His Master let out a long, slow breath, and then she levered herself out of her seat and back to her feet with one limber motion.

    "I might as well eat," she said. "Did the priest leave anything for me?"

    "Ah, yes!" Lady Bradamante said. "There should be a bowl of porridge ¡ª"

    Master honed in on it immediately and made a beeline for the thick, wooden bowl; Lady Bradamante faltered. "¡­right¡­over there."

    That, too, had taken some getting used to.

    Master picked up the bowl and grimaced down at the contents, like she had been personally offended. Although that bland, largely tasteless porridge was exactly the sort of thing Siegfried had eaten all his living life, having now tasted the food cooked by this "Emiya" for himself, he could understand the disappointment at having to go without it. He didn''t need food at all, and yet he found himself craving just one more bite of the stew that he had been blessed with tasting.

    "Barely two weeks since he took over the cafeteria, and Emiya''s already spoiling me," Master muttered.

    Despite her complaints, she took one of her metal spoons from the kit she carried and started eating.

    "If you are so offended by the priest''s generosity," Lady Bradamante said sourly, "then could you not simply have your Acting Director send you more of this Emiya''s fare?"

    Master shook her head and swallowed. "It''s not that easy. A lot of the science and the magecraft stuff goes way over my head, but us just being here is already incredibly complicated and should probably be impossible. Sending food and supplies can be done, but there are limitations on how and where."

    "Limitations?"

    Master lifted one eyebrow. "Do you think I''m going to start trusting you with all of our secrets when you won''t trust us?"

    Lady Bradamante flushed, but didn''t back down. "I trust you perfectly well!"

    "Really?" Master stopped eating long enough to thrust out her hand; the red of her Command Spells stood out starkly on her skin, and it was juxtaposed by the maroon stain on her sleeve. "Then make a contract right now. Become a Servant of Chaldea and help us fix this Singularity."

    Lady Bradamante grimaced and turned her head away, refusing to even look at Master''s hand.

    "I can''t," she said. "The people of Thiers need me ¡ª"

    "Because you think I''ll use a Command Spell to force you to leave, right?" Master said, cutting across her. "Use whatever it takes to get my way and force you to fight for my goal without any consideration of your feelings, regardless of what it means for this city."

    "Wouldn''t you?" Lady Bradamante shot back. "After all, what use are these people against the good of all of France? My obstinance must be quite the obstacle for you, magus of Chaldea."

    "How convenient that ivory tower of yours is," Master rebuked. "No one is as just and righteous as you, are they? We''re just a group of selfish wizards who don''t care about anyone but ourselves and accomplishing our own aims. We all think the ends justify the means, no matter how many people we have to trample on to get there. Is that right?"

    "Ha!" Lady Bradamante scoffed. "Are you trying to claim that this is all about altruism? Magi are all as you just said: selfish, greedy, and self-centered. I''ve yet to meet a single one worth even half of my weakest, least experienced page!" A moment later, she hastily added, "Except Lord Merlin, of course!"

    "You must not have met that many, then," said Master. "I''ve met at least three that I would call pretty decent people. One of them happens to be the closest thing I have to a best friend, these days."

    "I suppose you count yourself among them?"

    Master shook her head. "No," she said simply, and Lady Bradamante''s indignant anger just deflated. "I''m a lot of things, but I don''t know that ''decent person'' is one of them. I was that kind of person you seem to think I am. I''m hoping I left that behind when I joined Chaldea ¡ª"

    Master startled and turned away, vaguely in the direction the others had left to travel westward. "Arash?" she asked the air. "Is something happening?"

    She fell silent, although by the furrowing of her brow, the conversation continued in her head as she spoke with Arash via the Master-Servant bond. A jolt shot through Siegfried''s belly, an unusual sensation when paired with the persistent ache of the wound carved into his flesh.

    Something was happening to the other team. Something unexpected, or at least something they had hoped wouldn''t happen. An attack? Had another Servant been dispatched by the Dragon Witch to crush the others while they were all separated?

    And here he and Master were, stuck in Thiers, him too weakened to help and her too far away to contribute at all.

    A long moment of tense silence followed, although it couldn''t have been any longer than perhaps thirty seconds. It felt like hours to Siegfried. At last, Master turned back to him, and without preamble, she declared, "The town the others went to is under attack."

    "Is there anything we can do?" Siegfried asked immediately.

    Master shook her head. "From here? No. We can at least keep track of what''s happening, though. Romani!"

    She held up her wrist and spoke into the communicator. An instant later, a harried Doctor Romani appeared.

    "Taylor!" he said briskly. "I''m sorry, I can''t talk right now, the others are ¡ª"

    "Being attacked, I know," she cut across him just as swiftly. "Is there anything you can give me? Data, flow charts, profiles on the enemy, anything at all so I can keep track of what''s going on?"

    "R-right! Of course! Just give me a minute!" He turned away from the camera and started fiddling with something none of them could see. "Right, so, if I do this¡­ N-no, that''s not it¡­ Maybe here¡­ No, that''s something completely different. Damn it, Da Vinci, this is your field, why is it up to me to try and mess with this stuff?"

    Long seconds passed, but nothing changed except Master''s patience, and her mouth drew into an ever tighter line. Eventually, she just shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

    "Forget it, I''m going to get a look with my own ¡ª"

    She cut off mid-sentence and gasped, stumbling backwards into one of the pews as her bowl clattered to the floor and spilled porridge over her boots. Her face had become pale and drawn, like all of the blood had drained away, and her mouth flapped open and closed with naked shock.

    "That''s¡­" she whispered, and it was the first time Siegfried had heard anything like awe or fear in her voice. "That''s a dragon?"

    Siegfried''s gut clenched. "Master?"

    "That''s gotta be¡­almost twice as big as Behemoth," she said shakily. "If that thing breathed fire, would there even be a town left?"

    Oh.

    No, it couldn''t be, could it? Of all the dragons that the Dragon Witch might summon to her aid¡­ But it made a degree of sense that Siegfried did not want to believe. After all, if it was just a matter of a dragonslayer, then there were a number of Heroic Spirits who could have been summoned in response. However, that it was Siegfried himself who had been summoned instead¡­

    It must be. For a woman who had already slain a dragon, what dragon would she fear but the greatest and evilest of them all?

    "Master!" Siegfried seized her by the shoulders urgently, and he only just remembered to control his strength so he didn''t crush her bones into powder. "Please, that dragon, describe it to me!"

    They were two sides of the same coin, after all. Victim and murderer, inextricably linked by fate and destiny.

    Master blinked up at him, but turned immediately to her communicator. "Romani!" she barked into it. "That dragon, is that ¡ª"

    "The output far outclasses any of the wyverns you''ve come across so far!" the Doctor confirmed. "In terms of sheer magical energy and mana density, it puts even a top class Servant to shame! Taylor, that''s the genuine article, a real dragon!"

    "Master!" Siegfried insisted.

    She looked him in the face, and then her eyes trailed down to the glowing marking etched into his chest. Siegfried let go of her and recoiled, because that all but confirmed it, didn''t it?

    "Siegfried," she began with quiet haste, "that mark on your chest, is that ¡ª"

    "Yes," Siegfried said. "This mark is the mark of the blood of the dragon that I bathed in. It marks my Noble Phantasm, the armor of the evil dragon gained by killing it and taking its body as spoils. It binds us together, a symbol of our shared destiny."

    "Then," she said, "a dragon that has a symbol just like that on its chest would be¡­"

    Siegfried closed his eyes and inclined his head.

    "That''s correct, Master. That there is a dragon bearing this symbol on its chest attacking the others can mean one thing and one thing only."

    He sucked in a deep breath. The wound just below his ribs throbbed, as though to remind him that he was in no shape to go charging into battle against the greatest enemy he had ever faced.

    "The Dragon Witch has called forth my old nemesis," he said solemnly. "Once more, the evil dragon, Fafnir, now walks this Earth."

    Master whirled about towards the doors, as though she was going to sprint to the other team''s aid right then and there, but she spun back around halfway there and stalked down the aisle. A low buzz began to hum in the background from the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, as though the entire cathedral was about to come alive.

    She looked down at her Command Spells, brow knitted together.

    "If Arash used his Noble Phantasm," she began.

    "It may be enough to defeat Fafnir, but it would at least force a retreat," Siegfried agreed. "Master, Lord Arash will do whatever he deems is necessary. There''s no need to use your Command Spells."

    His Master''s restless energy matched his own. It was not in Siegfried to sit and wait, to be so passive when the enemy was clear and the goal unambiguous. He wanted to race off himself, to chase down the dragon and cast it from the sky with his Noble Phantasm. He wanted to be strong enough that he could do just that. Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, Jeanne, they were all in danger, and he was the only one strong enough to protect them from the evil dragon, if only the wound in his side was gone.

    But he wasn''t and he couldn''t. The wound remained. He was stuck in this church, unable to do anything but wait.

    "Romani!" Master barked instead into her communicator. "Send Emiya! Give them some kind of backup!"

    "I-I can''t!" the Doctor replied. "The interference from such a huge concentration of magical energy is throwing off our instruments! I can''t guarantee exactly where he''ll land!"

    "Send him anyway!" Master snarled. "What good is holding onto emergency backup if you can''t rely on him in an emergency? He just needs to get here! Rika can use a Command Spell to bring him closer if she ¡ª"

    "I-incoming enemy Servant!" Romani shouted. "Location, he''s on his way to Thiers, heading directly towards you!"

    Lady Bradamante gasped.

    Doctor Romani''s image turned to Master with wide eyes.

    "This Saint Graph reading ¡ª Taylor, it''s Dracul."

    Master jerked as though she''d been slapped, her mouth moving silently for a moment as she processed the news. The name meant little to Siegfried, because it wasn''t one he immediately recognized.

    But if the expression on his Master''s face was any indication, he was not a foe to be taken lightly.

    "Fuck."

 Chapter XXII: Common Enemy

    Chapter XXII: Common Enemy

    Almost before the word had finished leaving my mouth, I started into motion and made briskly for the church''s doors.

    "Romani," I barked into my communicator as I went, "how much time?"

    There wasn''t much time, there couldn''t be much time, not with Chaldea''s sensors having such a finite range for picking up the smaller details. One or two miles out, that was all I had, and at a Servant''s full on sprint speed, that wasn''t much distance at all. He could be here and slaughtering his way through the townsfolk as I spoke, and that added an extra urgency to my steps.

    "A minute, maybe two," Romani told me hurriedly. "The only reason we even have this much lead time is because we registered the readings from his Saint Graph during your last encounter."

    Outside, as I pushed the door open with my free hand, I started to gather a swarm, mentally cataloguing the stuff that would be useful and setting aside everything that wasn''t. It was the longest I''d stayed in one place since we''d first arrived in this Singularity, which meant I''d had much longer to start putting together some of my old tricks instead of just relying on sheer numbers and mass. Unfortunately, none of the stingers and the venomous bugs in my range were of any use against a Servant, so I had to reluctantly leave them all behind.

    "What direction is he coming from?"

    In the back of my head, I noted Siegfried and Bradamante following on my heels, both of them suited up in their full armor and with weapons at the ready. The latter of the two seemed to be paying particular attention to my abrupt briefing with Romani ¡ª of course. Probably the only reason she hadn''t raced off to confront Dracul directly was the fact she didn''t know where she needed to go.

    How had she detected us so early that she could meet us before we even got into town? My only guess was that our larger retinue and the fact we''d had three (and a half? With Jeanne diminished, I had no idea how she read to a Servant''s magical sixth sense) Servants had made us far easier to detect, but I didn''t really understand it beyond "Servants can sense other Servants." Some could do it from farther away than others, although my sample size was tiny, so what the fuck did I know either way?

    "North," said Romani, the word broken by a crackle of static halfway through.

    Without even thinking about it, I spun on my heel and course corrected. Even then, I was building up a three-dimensional map of the city with my bugs, looking through for the quickest route northwards.

    North, he said¡­

    "That''s from over the mountain."

    "Strictly speaking, it''s really more of a large hill than a mountain," Romani corrected, and then seemed to realize how stupid it was being pedantic about that right now. "B-but that''s not the important part, you''re right! What''s important is that there''s a whole city between you and him, and there''s no time to evacuate everyone!"

    "Which means we need to meet him halfway before he makes it all the way over the hill."

    The advantage of high ground ¡ª for whatever that would wind up being worth in a battle between Servants ¡ª and no bystanders to get caught up in the fighting. The trees and foliage should also give me plenty of places to hide without being so far away that any help I could give would be entirely useless.

    Not that I expected to be able to do much myself. Dracul had already proven my bugs were just nourishment to him, although how much was probably negligible. At the very least, being nearby would give me a good view of the fight, for a certain value of the word "view."

    The only problem: getting up the hill quickly enough to beat Dracul to the top. Bradamante wouldn''t do it, so there was only one real option, even if it wasn''t ideal.

    I whirled back around.

    "Siegfried," I said, "we need to get to the top of the hill. We have about" ¡ª fuck it, best guess ¡ª "thirty seconds. Can you manage it?"

    With his wound not yet fully healed and the curse not yet completely broken?

    Siegfried smiled a confident smile and gave me a nod, and then his sword disappeared as he knelt down and offered his arms. Internally, I grimaced. The princess hold wasn''t particularly dignified for the woman being carried, but for a Servant moving at the speed of a race car, it was almost certainly a lot safer than me clinging desperately to his back.

    "Bradamante ¡ª"

    But I hadn''t even finished turning to face her before the wind of her passing whipped my hair about, left in her wake as she dashed up the streets at speed.

    Still getting used to that kind of speed. Speedsters hadn''t been exactly uncommon capes, but Brutes, teleporters, and fliers had been much more common by far. The only pure speedster coming to mind just then was Velocity, and he was nowhere near that fast.

    Without any more delay, I spun back around and climbed into Siegfried''s waiting arms. He wrapped one around my shoulders and looped the other under my knees, and I wrapped mine around his neck just to give myself at least the resemblance of control over what was about to happen.

    "Ready," I told him.

    His legs bunched up ¡ª I caught the faintest wince, just barely there, at the pain of his wound ¡ª and then he leapt into the air. My hair whipped about my head, but even though that made it hard to see, I could tell just by the positioning of my bugs that we had cleared easily thirty yards in one go.

    We would be reaching the summit of the hill in no time at all.

    I hadn''t forgotten that the others were currently fighting Fafnir, another enemy of seemingly insurmountable strength. How could I, when Arash was still drawing a steady stream of magical energy from me, even if it wasn''t all that much compared to what C¨²chulainn had needed to fight the corrupted Emiya in Fuyuki? But I couldn''t do anything for the twins and Mash and I couldn''t change the outcome of that fight from here. I couldn''t afford to distract myself worrying about it when the worst possible enemy was even now fast approaching, coming to kill us all.

    Whether he would slaughter the townsfolk after killing me, Siegfried, and Bradamante wasn''t even a question.

    Another leap carried us further up the hill, and Siegfried had barely landed with deceptive softness before we left the ground again. The wind howled around me, biting at my exposed cheek. My stomach lurched with each jump, like I was at the bottom of a swing on a swingset. The whole world whirled about me ¡ª even with my eyes squeezed shut, the galaxy of lights that marked my bugs rushed past too quickly to grasp.

    But even before we made it to the top, my power settled on the bugs that lived there, and I realized that we''d been too slow to move.

    Dracul was already there. Waiting at the crest of the hill, looking down on the city. In one hand, he held his spear, and pinched between the fingers of the other was a single, ordinary fly, held in a grip like steel just strong enough to avoid crushing it.

    He seemed to sense my presence in the fly, because he turned to it with a mad grin.

    "Oh," he rumbled in that deep, dark voice of his, "there you are, clever Master. It seems I''ll be seeing you shortly."

    Dracul''s already here, I told Siegfried across our contract''s bond, because I didn''t trust my voice to the wind. There was a hitch, the barest hesitation on his next landing, but he kept going regardless and gave me a nod I felt in the shift of his corded muscles.

    Understood.

    "Hurry along, now," Dracul said. "If you and your Servant take too long, I might not be able to contain my bloodlust. This fly won''t be the only thing I crush while I wait."

    With the slightest flex of his finger, the fly was squashed and my connection to it was cut. Through the eyes of the other insects crawling all about, I could see him shake the viscera from his hand, as though the blood and guts were of so little worth that they couldn''t even take off the edge of his hunger.

    Those bugs were also what let me see Bradamante come racing up the hilltop bare seconds later, brandishing her shield in front of her and keeping a vice grip on her miniature lance. She had eyes only for Dracul, and she was already tense and ready for combat when she came to a stop.

    "No further than that!" she spat at him. "I am the Lancer class Servant, Bradamante! Paladin of Charlemagne! Thiers and all of its people are under my protection, and I won''t allow you to take a single life today!"

    "What a coincidence!" Dracul''s grin split his face. "I, too, am a Lancer class Servant! Although you seem to have escaped the curse of Madness that my Master placed upon me during my summoning. Tell me, were you summoned by that human woman, or was it one of those brats she was shepherding back at La Charit¨¦?"

    "I have no Master," Bradamante told him vehemently. "I kneel before no mage. My allegiance belongs only to my king and to the people of this city!"

    I grimaced.

    Set me down and keep going, I ordered Siegfried.

    Of course, Master.

    He came to a jarring halt at the end of the latest jump and carefully knelt down to let me find my feet. I stumbled a little trying to regain my bearings, but the instant I was confident I wasn''t going to fall over, I took off in a sprint down the side streets and over my shoulder barked, "Go!"

    Siegfried leapt like the wind, and I lost track of him from the sheer speed as I maneuvered my way closer to the fight behind the cover the city and its buildings offered me. Plans started to whirl up in my head as I sprinted, and while enough was different, I found myself comforted by the familiarity of the circumstances.

    This was my element. This was where I thrived. The rush of blood thundering through my veins, the surge of adrenaline that set my thoughts into hyperdrive, the burn of my muscles as I raced towards the action, and the huff of my breath as I sucked down air. Skitter, Weaver, Khepri ¡ª whichever name I''d worn, whoever was standing beside me, whatever enemy stood against me, this had always been me at my best.

    There was probably something incredibly sad about the fact I was more comfortable in the thick of combat than I was trying to be a good, understanding leader to a pair of teenagers, but that wasn''t the time to think about it.

    "You''re one of the strays, then," Dracul purred. He chuckled, low and menacing. "That means you''ll be all the easier to kill!"

    Bradamante settled lower into her stance, leveling her lance at Dracul. "The only one who will die here is you!"

    Dracul only laughed, tossing his head back as it pealed out of his mouth.

    "Such fire! Such vitality! You will make an excellent appetizer until the main course shows herself!"

    And at that moment, with all the grace of a cat, Siegfried landed in a crouch between them, clutching his massive sword with one hand. Slowly, he stood straight, flinching just the slightest from his wound.

    But there was no quiver or doubt in his voice. "If you''re referring to my Master, Dracul," he said confidently, "then you''ll have to make it through me, first."

    "Oh?" Dracul grinned. "You. Yes, you''re the Servant we defeated at Lyon. You still cling to this false life, do you? I''m amazed. A wound like that would have killed any ordinary Servant. Tell me, does it still ail you?"

    Siegfried grimaced, but very intentionally didn''t let himself reach for his wound.

    "Wound or not, I will defeat you all the same," he declared.

    "I''m sure," Dracul said, voice dripping condescension. "Your Master ¡ª is she that woman from La Charit¨¦, then? She seems to have traded in. Did that Archer of hers get killed?"

    Siegfried said nothing. Dracul seemed to take that for confirmation.

    "A shame. I was looking forward to peeling the flesh from his bones myself."

    "Don''t ignore me!"

    Bradamante rushed towards him and raced past Siegfried, snarling, but Dracul caught her tiny lance with the shaft of his own and held her there effortlessly.

    "Of course I''m not ignoring you," he said as though he was speaking to a child. "That would imply that I even remembered you were still here. If you''re going to offer yourself up to me on a silver platter, however¡­"

    An ominous premonition tingled at the base of my skull. I didn''t know exactly what he was about to do, but I knew enough to know it couldn''t be allowed to happen.

    STOP HIM!

    Siegfried was already moving before I could even finish giving the order, and he bulldozed Bradamante out of the way, crashing into Dracul like a speeding train. Their momentum carried them ten, twenty, almost thirty feet, it had to be, and midway through their flight, Dracul''s body erupted with dark spikes like he was some kind of human porcupine.

    Siegfried grunted, but weathered the attack with barely a scratch, little more than a handful of papercuts that scored only the surface of his skin. Dracul couldn''t hurt him, I realized suddenly. Armor of Fafnir negated everything that was B-Rank or lower, and everything higher got reduced by the same amount. Even with A-Rank strength, Dracul wouldn''t be able to do anything more than minor, easily healed damage.

    I made a sharp turn down a side road that led to the hilltop, a plan starting to form in my head, and my magic circuits churned as I focused on him and activated one of the spells loaded into my mystic code.

    "First aid!" I chanted between breaths.

    Immediately, all of the cuts sealed up as though they hadn''t happened. The wound that plagued him still, however, remained unaffected at all, just as it had when Jeanne had tried to heal it. If I was a betting woman, that would be the only other place on his body where Siegfried would be vulnerable, right now.

    Dracul broke out into laughter.

    "So she is around!" His grin was all teeth. "Then if I kill the two of you, she''ll have no choice but to show herself, won''t she?"

    "You won''t touch her," Siegfried promised.

    "As though you will have any say in that, once you''re dead!"

    "Ha!"

    Bradamante leapt towards him from the side, aiming to take advantage of his focus on Siegfried, but Dracul swung his arm around, and from his palm, brackish black blood lashed out like a whip. She was thrown to the side and crashed through a tree, disappearing into the undergrowth.

    Already, I was diverting some of my swarm to check up on her, but it quickly became apparent there wasn''t a need, because she charged back out, completely uninjured. Her shield must have taken the brunt of the blow.

    She and Siegfried attacked together, and Dracul met them both, deftly deflecting Siegfried''s sword to the side as he stepped out of the way of Bradamante''s lance. His hand came down over hers, and he used his superior strength to pull her off balance and push her into an overextension. He didn''t punish her for it, though. He just watched her stumble and right herself.

    Something was wrong with this picture. Siegfried, I could understand, because he was injured and definitely not fighting at his best. But Dracul should not be casually manhandling both of them, toying with them the way he was. Not when he was a Heroic Spirit better known for his tactics, strategy, and psychological warfare than his martial skill, compared to someone like Siegfried or Bradamante, both of whom would have focused more on direct combat in their legends.

    My focus honed in on Bradamante.

    Was it because she didn''t have a proper Master? If being without a direct source of power was forcing her to be more conservative about how hard she fought and how much energy she spent, then it would make sense how someone who was being supported by a Grail could outperform her.

    Or maybe I was just underestimating Dracul''s skill as a fighter. A bit of focus brought up his spread of stats and skills, and while they didn''t show him as particularly fast, he was sturdy, strong, and undoubtedly tricksy. They also told me almost nothing at all about how he fought or how good he was with an actual weapon.

    Siegfried came around again, and in one fluid motion, Dracul blocked his sword and lashed out with his other hand to strike at Siegfried''s wound with four sharp-nailed fingers. Siegfried gasped and stumbled backwards, fresh blood spurting from his side, directly into Bradamante. She squawked and diverted her blow from his back, but it cost her footing, and she barreled into Siegfried, taking them both to the ground.

    Dracul only laughed as they both scrambled to their feet, licking red blood off of his fingers with a long, pink tongue.

    "What''s wrong, Saber?" Dracul taunted. "You''re not fighting at your best. Perhaps that wound troubles you more than you''re letting on."

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    "Wound or no wound, I will defeat you," Siegfried promised again.

    "I said," Bradamante snarled, "stop ignoring me!"

    She put on a spurt of speed, leading with her shield, and with a warcry, she fell upon Dracul, thrusting her lance directly for his chest.

    Blood splattered across the forest floor. Bradamante gasped, and Dracul smirked at her, holding her lance by the crystalline green blade. Its point rested just above his chest, less than an inch away from the fabric of his clothing. The edge cut into the skin of his fingers, and small, red rivulets dribbled down it, but no matter how hard she pushed, it moved no closer to gouging out his heart.

    "I''m giving you all the focus you deserve," he said. "If you want my attention so badly, then do something interesting, first."

    He stepped to the side at the same time as he let go of her lance, and as she stumbled forward from the sudden lack of resistance, he delivered a punishing blow with his own lance that shook the trees and the ground itself and sent her flying. Red blood soared up into the air to mark her passing, and the crack of branches and whole trees snapping in her wake was like thunder.

    Siegfried grimaced as Dracul turned back to him. One hand was gripping his sword like a vice, but the other was pressed to his side, clutched against his wound.

    "Now then." Dracul''s mouth split into another manic grin. "Where were we?"

    Siegfried said nothing and just brandished his sword.

    As I reached the edge of the city, I quickly turned and stepped off the beaten path into the trees.

    Siegfried, I said as I ran. I''ve got a plan.

    There was the minutest of pauses.

    I''m listening, Master.

    My feet pounded the earth, and I closed my eyes as I raced through the underbrush, ignoring the whip of branches and leaves that smacked me in the face. My bugs formed a map that let me navigate even still.

    Dracul can''t be killed with a single fatal blow. As long as his head''s still attached, he''s just shy of invincible, and I''m not sure taking his head off is even enough.

    It should work, in principle, in theory. There had to be limits to what Battle Continuation, even at A-rank, would let him survive. The only reason I wasn''t sure was because of his Shapeshift skill, because I remembered Dracula, and while it was supposed to be more limited in the daytime, he was supposed to be able to do things like transform into mist and escape attacks. He ¡ª the character, that was ¡ª had only actually been killed by a simultaneous decapitation and blow to the heart.

    But without knowing for sure whether that held, there was one definite way of killing him.

    So our best bet is to destroy him completely with your Noble Phantasm. I doubt he''s going to give us the time to get that ready, though, so someone needs to distract him.

    Siegfried''s brow furrowed.

    Not you, certainly, Master.

    I shook my head a little, even though he couldn''t see it.

    We need Bradamante to make an opening. Look for it. The instant you see it, blow Dracul away. Until then, I need you to keep him busy. In fact¡­

    I squinted open an eye and looked down at my pumping hands. The red on the back of one stood out to me.

    Was it a waste? Maybe it was. Siegfried was strong enough and capable enough to hold off Dracul for at least a minute or two while I got Bradamante on board. But this wasn''t the time to be skittish and hesitate, not when the other team was facing Fafnir and the only thing standing between Thiers and a violent death was a pair of Servants, one of whom was injured and weakened and the other who didn''t have a Master to support her.

    For how much I''d quibbled about using them when we didn''t really need to, the decision was almost hilariously easy.

    "By the power of my Command Spell," I said between breaths, "Saber, fight Dracul at your best."

    On my hand, one third of the snaking tentacles flashed and faded away into vague smudges.

    The change was immediate. Siegfried straightened, taller and more solid than he had been since we''d first found him in Lyon. His posture was stronger and surer, more like what I might have expected had we summoned him properly back outside Vaucouleurs. His wound still bled and it wasn''t gone, but it didn''t seem to bother him anymore, at least for the moment.

    "Yes, Master," he said confidently.

    "Getting your second wind?" Dracul mused, walking slowly like a stalking predator. "I see. Your Master must have done something, then. A Command Spell?"

    "My Master is none of your concern, Dracul," Siegfried said as he took Balmung with both hands. "You won''t get anywhere near her."

    He launched forward with a devastatingly powerful swing of his sword that Dracul struggled to block, and I heard the ring of clashing steel even from where I was. I kept a selection of bugs watching, but put the fight to the back of my mind as I swung around the edges of it. I didn''t need to know any better than I already did just how badly they outclassed me in every metric, I just needed to keep track of how well Siegfried was doing.

    I found Bradamante dazed and barely conscious something like a hundred feet from the fighting. A wicked gash over her torso bled fresh blood and had come dangerously close to disemboweling her, snaking its way up from one hip, across her stomach, and over her ribcage under the left side of her bust. He had even torn into the muscle of her left bicep.

    Her armor had to be magical, because there was absolutely no way the flimsy-looking cloth she was wearing had been enough to protect her from a full force blow by Dracul. Not when I was fairly sure it would have ripped through even my sturdiest costume with ridiculous ease.

    Focusing on her the same way I had Siegfried, I fed magical energy into my mystic code and chanted off the spell.

    "First aid!"

    The wound sealed over until there wasn''t even a faint pink line left, and Bradamante gasped to life, jerking upright. She blinked, and then immediately focused in on me.

    "You!" She patted down the place where her wound had been, and her brow furrowed. "You healed me. Thank ¡ª"

    "There''s no time," I cut across her. "Siegfried is distracting Dracul, but unless he manages to get in a lucky shot and take Dracul''s head off, we can''t beat him like this. The only way we''re going to protect Thiers and get out of this alive is if we work together to take him out."

    Her eyes narrowed. "You want me to make a contract with you, become your Servant."

    "It would make things easier," I told her, "but as long as you can use your Noble Phantasm without Chaldea''s support, it doesn''t matter. Can you?"

    She hesitated. "Not consecutively," she admitted grudgingly, "but I should be fine to use it at least once."

    I nodded briskly.

    "Explain it to me," I said. "Quickly, in the simplest possible terms."

    She hesitated a moment longer, and then she did. Nonsensically, despite the fact that she was a Lancer, it turned out that it was her shield, and the tiny lance was basically just a miniature mana cannon. She could combine the two to do extra damage, but the main attack was just a powerful charge with her shield.

    A charge that not only did damage ¡ª and that alone may or may not be enough to defeat Dracul ¡ª but also stunned the enemy for a brief moment, not unlike a flashbang grenade. A moment where, say, another combatant might be able to guarantee a hit with his own Noble Phantasm.

    It wasn''t perfect. We were going to have to be exceptionally careful not to hit Bradamante in the process of killing Dracul.

    The sound of clashing steel still rang out, and when I briefly turned my attention back to the fight more completely, things had returned to a more even footing. Dracul was struggling against Siegfried''s punishing blows, but he forced Siegfried back and on the defensive even as I watched by targeting the grisly, half-healed wound, and that gave him enough room to protect himself from a finishing blow.

    "Here''s the plan," I explained hurriedly. "I''m going to grab Dracul''s attention. I need you to hit him with your Noble Phantasm, and that should stun him long enough for Siegfried to deal the final blow. Got it?"

    Her brow furrowed. "You want me to sacrifice myself?"

    Someone save me from suspicious girl knights¡­

    "No. Hit Dracul and keep going. Don''t stop until you''re way out of range, and even then, the instant you hear Siegfried call out his Noble Phantasm, put your shield between you and him, just to be safe."

    Bradamante frowned, but accepted this with a slight nod.

    "How do you mean to distract him?" she asked.

    "You let me worry about that," I said. "You just charge in the direction I point and don''t stop until the fighting does."

    "¡­Fine," she said at length. "For the sake of defeating a common enemy, I will trust you just this once."

    She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders, then lifted her shield in one hand, her lance in the other, and crouched down in a defensive stance.

    "I''m ready."

    The swarm I''d been slowly building in the background suddenly burst into motion, taking flight, and they swirled about with exaggerated drama, circling the other two Servants. They broke off their fight, both of them eyeing the thick collection of bugs that poured into the clearing, although Siegfried had already seen this sort of thing and was keeping half his attention on Dracul.

    The swarm buzzed angrily.

    "DRACUL," they droned menacingly in a discordant hum that shook the air.

    Dracul laughed, delighted. A broad grin stretched over his face. "We meet again, woman! Are you going to retreat a second time and leave yet another city to my mercies?"

    "NO RETREAT," my bugs boomed, and the swarm flew down to condense into a vaguely humanoid shape, a familiar trick of mine from back in my Skitter days.

    Siegfried, I ordered him, disengage!

    At the same time, I pointed directly at Dracul and I told Bradamante, "Straight that way. On my mark¡­"

    The bug clone spread its fake arms, even as Siegfried leapt backwards. "IF YOU WANT ME, I''M RIGHT HERE!"

    Dracul burst into motion as blood exploded from every pore of his body. He descended upon my bug clone like a ravenous beast, and the tendrils of his blood speared into my bugs, killing them in droves in an instant.

    "Go!"

    Bradamante thrust her spear forward, and a beam of light shot from the tip, through the foliage, and through my bugs'' eyes, I watched it lance through Dracul''s body.

    "Bouclier ¡ª"

    Her shield lit up like an exploding star, so bright that I had to squint my eyes almost closed just to keep from being blinded. She didn''t seem to charge forward so much as take off like a rocket, like she was being reeled in by a high speed fishing line or something, and she crashed through every obstacle in her way. The trees that hadn''t already been bowled over by her when Dracul flung her back were being crushed underfoot now.

    "¡ª de Atlante!"

    From behind, a shell of light seemed to form in front of her, but seen through the eyes of my bugs as she passed, she was like a comet, streaming a rainbow of colors in her wake. Dracul had only a moment to be surprised as my bug clone dispersed, a mere fraction of a second, and then Bradamante smashed into him like a freight train and kept going.

    It was an apt comparison. Dracul was trampled and knocked down, tumbling across the clearing chaotically, even as Bradamante kept running, using her shield like a battering ram to push through. When Dracul finally came to a stop, he looked like he''d been run over, because one leg was bent in sickening angles in at least three different places, one arm had been ripped clean off, including the shoulder joint, and half of his face had been torn apart.

    Even so badly hurt that he had to be barely alive, he still tried to climb to his feet, clutching at his remaining eye with his ruined remaining hand. Bloodstained lips pulled back into a snarl.

    "DAMN YOU!"

    Siegfried, now! I ordered.

    And Siegfried was already ahead of me, racing forwards with a blazing Balmung held in both hands. He got in close, but only close enough that Dracul couldn''t escape, and he swung his sword in a devastating upwards blow.

    "BALMUNG!"

    The blazing blue beam carved first into the ground, gouging out a chunk of the earth, and quickly expanded into a wave of light that consumed Dracul whole and shot off into the sky. Even from where I was, I could feel the weight of it and see it race upwards, parting the clouds as it passed through them.

    He''d controlled it, I realized a moment later. Instead of just letting it loose and obliterating everything in front of him for a mile, he''d swept it upwards so that the majority of the blast would sail harmlessly into the air, and in the process, he''d minimized the amount of damage done to the surrounding landscape.

    When it faded, there was no sign of Dracul, none that I could find with a cursory look through my bugs, at any rate. It looked like that had been enough to kill him.

    Enemy Servant neutralized, Master, Siegfried reported.

    I let out the breath I hadn''t realized I''d been holding and took off at a jog to meet up with him. My magic circuits ached faintly from the amount of energy he''d chewed through to fire off his Noble Phantasm, but unlike with C¨²chulainn in Fuyuki, I wasn''t really feeling much strain. Guess I had Chaldea''s reactors to thank for that one.

    Bradamante was already there by the time I had maneuvered my way around the wreckage to meet back up with Siegfried, and she was looking out over the deep, thirty-foot long divot that was carved into the hillside, up at the parted clouds. With my own eyes, now, I could see Dracul, or rather the complete lack thereof. There wasn''t even a splatter of blood remaining of him.

    "We did it," she said quietly, and then she looked over at me and added, like she wasn''t quite sure what to think of it, "together."

    Siegfried let out a long breath, and then he grunted, pressing a hand to his freshly bleeding wound. For good measure, I spun up my circuits again and chanted, "First aid."

    The wound didn''t exactly seal over, but the bleeding at least slowed to a stop, leaving us basically where we''d been before the fight. Siegfried let out a tense sigh, like he''d gotten some relief but not all the way.

    "Thank you, Master."

    If only I could have done more. But this much, at least, was within the scope of my abilities.

    "You helped me to protect the city," Bradamante said. "You could have run away. Lord Siegfried is injured. Retreating would have been the wiser option against such a fearsome enemy as the Lord Impaler."

    It would have been. If it was just me and Siegfried here, it might have wound up our only option, no matter how much it would have stung.

    "And you would have died," I replied. "You and all of the people in Thiers."

    She nodded. "I would have." She turned back towards the city. "We would have."

    She turned at last back to me.

    "I''ve decided!" she declared. "Tomorrow, I''m going to push the rest of the way and break the curse on Lord Siegfried! In exchange, I''ll be entrusting the protection of the people of Thiers to you!"

    I felt my lips start to curl. "I''ll ¡ª"

    Master, Arash interjected suddenly.

    "Hold that thought," I said to Bradamante.

    Arash? I pushed back.

    We survived, he explained shortly. We should be back at Thiers late tomorrow or early the day after.

    What happened? I demanded.

    Please, use my eyes for a moment, Master.

    I frowned, but closed my own eyes and pushed myself towards him; a moment later, I was in a completely different stretch of forest, watching over a beaten down caravan consisting of the twins, Mash, Jeanne, and two new people who were dressed so uniquely that they could only be Servants. One was a man with long blond hair carrying a conductor''s baton, of all things, and the other was clad in burnished copper armor with a white surcoat. The most striking thing about the second was the pauldron shaped like a dragon''s head that was curved around one shoulder.

    If that was who I thought it was¡­ But who was the Beethoven wannabe?

    Arash?

    I can''t explain everything right now, Master, he said. I can''t afford to let my guard down that long. I''ll explain everything when we return.

    I hesitated.

    If that dragon chases you down ¡ª

    I will protect Ritsuka and Rika, Master, he promised. Whatever it takes.

 Chapter XXIII: Requiem for a Queen

    Chapter XXIII: Requiem for a Queen

    I didn''t wait for Arash and the others to make it back to Thiers to find out what had happened with their team while Siegfried, Bradamante, and I were busy taking down Dracul.

    Of course not. Not that there wasn''t any value in getting it directly from the horse''s mouth, as it were, but in what world did it make sense to wait two or three days for a first person debriefing when you could get an after action report in minutes?

    Instead, I did the smarter thing and went back to the church with Bradamante and Siegfried, and there, away from the townsfolk''s prying eyes, I activated my communicator and contacted Romani.

    The instant his image appeared, he gave me a quick once over before he turned back to his monitor and checked it to his satisfaction.

    "Everything''s green for you," he told me when he turned back to me. "Some slight stress on your magic circuits, but that''s to be expected when you just got done fighting a Servant ¡ª uh, in the collective sense, I mean. Obviously, you didn''t fight Dracul."

    Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, I deliberately didn''t mention the thing with the bug clone. "Of course not."

    "Speaking of, congratulations!" he said brightly. "You guys managed to take out Dracul! Man, I thought he was going to be an end boss or something! I was so sure that you were going to wind up fighting him at the very end, right as the Grail was within reach. Talk about a completely unbalanced enemy!"

    An end boss? Seriously? Who was he supposed to be? Leet?

    "Seriously, you guys overperformed," said Romani. "You especially, Siegfried. I don''t want to even imagine how we would''ve beaten that guy without you there to take him out. You''re a massive help."

    "We did work really well together!" Bradamante said with a broad grin.

    "I was only following my Master''s orders," Siegfried demurred, but there was a small, satisfied smile on his face.

    "Enough with the accolades, Romani," I said, dragging things back on track. "What happened with the twins and Mash? Arash wouldn''t tell me anything because he didn''t want to divide his attention."

    "Ah." Romani''s smile fell. "Yeah, I can see why neither of them has contacted you. Things were¡­ They got a bit rough, over there."

    "The dragon?"

    "Exactly what you''d expect from the genuine article," Romani said grimly. "A colossal Spirit Origin, magical energy reactions off the charts, stats that would put even a Servant like Siegfried to shame. I know she''s been summoning wyverns left, right, and center, but I honestly don''t have any idea how she managed to drag something like that into this time period, let alone how she keeps it under control. It''s so ludicrously out of her league that it should have squashed her flat the instant it showed up."

    "No, it makes perfect sense," said Siegfried. "Fafnir and I share a destiny. A karmic bond, if you will. I can''t say which of us was summoned first, but without a doubt, it''s only natural that the other was brought here, too."

    My brow furrowed and I turned towards him. "Then if we had summoned you¡­"

    And Fafnir hadn''t already been here, would we have inadvertently brought a terrible calamity down on this already beleaguered country?

    Just imagining it hollowed out the pit of my stomach. What would we have been able to do, if a massive, winged beast big enough to swallow us all whole at once had suddenly appeared when we were trying to summon a dragonslayer? Running would''ve been pointless against something that huge that could also fly, and a maw that huge breathing fire would''ve easily wiped out even my biggest swarm, meaning distracting it would have been useless. Any of my bugs that got close probably would have burst, just the same as they did when I sicced them on that wyvern.

    Without Siegfried, we would have died right then and there. With him, the only thing we could''ve done was cower behind Mash''s shield and hope he could win.

    Siegfried shook his head. "It''s unlikely. A proper summoning performed by a proper Master shouldn''t pose those sorts of risks, but neither of us would have been properly summoned. To begin with, I shudder to imagine a Master capable and twisted enough to summon Fafnir directly."

    "Fafnir?" Romani asked, his voice an entire octave higher. "That was Fafnir, the evil dragon from the Volsunga Saga?"

    "No," said Siegfried. "I cannot say for certain that there isn''t some resemblance between the dragon Sigurd killed and the one I slew. However¡­" His fingers traced the mark emblazoned across his chest. "This mark identifies him. Only the Fafnir that died by my hands bears this same mark."

    I waved it off impatiently. As long as we didn''t have to worry about Fafnir resurrecting itself whenever Siegfried did anything, we had the space to figure things out.

    "That''s not the important part, right now. We can worry about Fafnir and how to deal with him later. Romani ¡ª what happened?"

    "Fafnir¡­" Romani mumbled with horror.

    "Romani!" I snapped.

    He jolted. "Wha ¡ª oh. Right. I guess the twins wouldn''t have told you anything yet, huh?"

    "Told me what?"

    "They ran into three more Servants in the town they went to," said Romani.

    My brow furrowed.

    "Three?"

    "I know, we were only expecting one, right? I was as surprised as you were when they all popped up on our instruments."

    "I saw the musician and the knight in copper armor," I said. "Who''s the third?"

    He blinked at me, bewildered.

    "Saw?"

    "Through Arash''s eyes," I explained shortly.

    "Oh," he mumbled. "Right. You can do that. I totally forgot."

    As much as I liked Romani as a person, I couldn''t wait until Marie was back in charge.

    "Romani. Focus."

    "Right." He sighed. "The third was Marie Antoinette, Rider class Servant. That musician you saw is Amadeus Mozart, Caster class Servant. The knight, you''ll be happy to hear ¡ª"

    "Saint George, right?"

    Romani scowled. "I hate it when you do that. It''s bad enough with Da Vinci."

    I ignored him, pretending he hadn''t said anything.

    "Marie Antoinette and Mozart?" I said thoughtfully. "They were strays, right? No Master, probably summoned by the world''s autoimmune response?"

    "I''m not sure any of that is the proper term for those things," Romani said wryly, "but yeah. As far as we can tell, all three of them were summoned the same way as Jeanne and Siegfried were. And Bradamante, I suppose."

    But why Marie Antoinette and Mozart, of all people? Siegfried, I could understand. He was a dragonslayer. Even if you took Fafnir out of the mix, it made sense for him to be summoned to deal with a bunch of dragons. Wyverns. Whatever. The same went for Saint George. They had a conceptual advantage against the enemy, and that gave them an edge that another Servant wouldn''t have. Even Bradamante, lacking that advantage, was at least a knight who had earned some acclaim for her martial prowess.

    What did Marie Antoinette and Mozart have, though? A musician who paved the way for a lot of the Classical musicians who came after him and a queen who was famous only for her death, remembered prominently for a single quote that might not even have been something she actually said. How were they at all useful against an army of wyverns?

    Plus¡­

    "I didn''t see another Servant with them," I remarked.

    I already had a suspicion why, though, as the sequence of events started to take form in my head, and when Romani grimaced, sighed even deeper, and raked a hand through his hair, I didn''t need him to tell me to know what must have happened to her, even if I didn''t know how.

    "How did it happen?" I asked quieter.

    "She stayed behind to protect the city while the others helped with the evacuation," Romani said. "Her Noble Phantasm was enough to buy them some time to escape, but¡­"

    "Not enough to stop Fafnir indefinitely," Siegfried concluded solemnly.

    As I''d thought. Marie Antoinette died for her country ¡ª again, if you thought about it a certain way.

    "There''s a reason he''s considered the preeminent dragon from mythology," Romani confirmed. "Ritsuka and Rika¡­didn''t take it that well. They were fast friends."

    "That quickly, huh¡­"

    Sometimes, that was all it took. They''d only been gone for about three days, which meant they probably had all of half a day to get to know her, but the twins didn''t have my trust issues, and even thinking that, I wasn''t so lacking in self-awareness that I didn''t know Lisa had won me over almost as quickly. The tried and true bond might have taken longer, forged over about two months of fighting side by side in battles of the mostly life-threatening variety, but she''d had her hooks in me from nearly the beginning.

    A pang of longing echoed in my gut, twisting my insides. God, I missed her.

    It made what I was about to say feel all the crueler.

    "We won''t be able to give them much time to mourn. A day, maybe, two on the long end. Once they''re back and Bradamante is stable enough to defend the city on her own, we''ll be heading to Orl¨¦ans to defeat Jeanne Alter and retrieve the Grail."

    Romani blinked at me, bewildered. "Already?"

    "Dracul was the heaviest hitting Servant that we know for sure they had," I said. "With him gone, her biggest threat is Fafnir." I turned to my newest Servant and gestured his way. "We have Siegfried and Saint George. Between them and Arash, Fafnir and the army of wyverns should be at least manageable, and even if she can summon more, it has to take time. During that window, she''ll be vulnerable enough for us to take out. Without her, everything else should fall apart, and then we just have to find the Grail."

    It wasn''t like I hadn''t given it any thought. Yes, I''d said before, we had no idea how many Servants she had at her disposal, and it was entirely possible for her to just summon more ad infinitum. But with the additional help of Emiya, we should have enough firepower to handle those, too, as long as none of them was another dragon-slaying hero and there wasn''t another monster like Dracul.

    Even if she did summon another powerful Servant¡­ Honestly? Siegfried should still be enough. That cursed wound was the only thing that had kept him from dominating his fight with Dracul, because even with my Command Spell, it was still a detriment, a handicap. Once it was cured, he''d be the strongest Servant in this Singularity, I was sure of it.

    We had an A-Rank Servant with a powerful Anti-Army Noble Phantasm, specially designed for killing dragons. We were much better off than we had been at La Charit¨¦.

    Plus ¡ª I deliberately avoided glancing at Bradamante ¡ª if she decided to come along, that was just one more strong ally to rely on.

    "I feel like you have to be missing a few steps in there somewhere," Romani said tightly.

    "It''s not going to be as easy as I make it sound," I acknowledged. "But we have two dragon-slaying heroes on our side, now. That''s already more than I was hoping we''d find, back when we were first heading towards Lyon. Between now and then, we''ve defeated three more of her Servants, including the one that I was most cautious about. We could keep running around, trying to gather up more allies, but we might wind up going in circles while she rebuilds her army, and we''ll be no better off then than if we go as soon as possible."

    "What if the Grail isn''t anywhere near her?"

    Yeah, there was that little snarl, wasn''t there?

    I grimaced. "Then we''ll be no closer to finding it if we wait and scour the countryside before taking her out."

    "And if her base of operations isn''t at Orl¨¦ans?"

    "We''ll cross that bridge when we get there."

    I wished I was as confident as that sounded. Truthfully, I wasn''t sure it would be at Orl¨¦ans, but I didn''t have any better ideas, either. The best place to set up a fortified defensive position from which to guard a powerful wish-granting device would be someplace that was already conveniently fortified, so a castle in a place as meaningful to her as Orl¨¦ans made sense.

    But she could just as easily be in any other city with a castle. Lyon had at least one, and Paris probably did, too. The best we could do was visit each one in descending order of likeliness and let Romani do a scan, if we couldn''t find it on our own.

    The only problem with that was that it would likely take weeks or months, if we went by foot. Ugh. Yeah, there was no way I was letting us take one step into the Roman Singularity without a better idea of how we were going to get between towns and cities that didn''t require us to walk the whole way.

    Romani sighed and rubbed agitatedly at his head. "I wish I had a better solution, but I''m a doctor, not a tactician. I''m really not cut out for this sort of thing, so the only thing I can do is hope you know what you''re doing, Taylor."

    You and me both, Romani.

    "It''s already been almost a month," I said instead. "We still have another six Singularities to figure out and correct. We can''t afford to spend a decade running around the French countryside."

    "No," he agreed. "I guess you can''t." He sighed again. "That''s going to have to be one of the things we plan around in the future, isn''t it? A month for you in that Singularity has only been about five days for us in Chaldea, and if Da Vinci''s right, it''s just going to get even more extreme as we go."

    He shook his head. "Anyway. I''ll send you guys the supplies you''ll need to make the trip to Orl¨¦ans. That''s about three-hundred-and-twenty-five kilometers, so it''s going to be another long trip."

    Great. My feet were already aching.

    "Romani. Don''t tell the twins, just yet. I''ll let them know when they make it back. Let them have the time to grieve, for now."

    I could at least do that much for them, as paltry as it might have been.

    Romani gave me a tired smile and mimed zipping his lips, and then his image flickered and disappeared. I collapsed onto a pew with a sigh, and the wood gave a loud creak beneath my weight as though in sympathy. The ceiling above offered no comfort, no advice or answers. Not like I had expected it to in the first place.

    What a mess this whole thing was turning out to be. What did it say about me, that the more things went sideways, the more at home I felt?

    I looked over at Siegfried. "Are you going to be okay with that? You''re probably only going to get a day or two to recover before we have to head out, again."

    Siegfried gave me a confident smile. "Don''t worry, Master. A day or two will be more than enough. I will be back to top form long before the battle with Fafnir arrives."

    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    Bradamante glanced back and forth between us, brow furrowed, but didn''t say anything at all.

    <div>

    ¡ª o.0.O.O.0.o ¡ª?

    A day passed in quiet worry for the twins and their group. Early in the morning, after I came back from my morning run through the city streets, Bradamante delivered on her promise and used her second Noble Phantasm to finally break the curse on Siegfried''s wound, and almost immediately afterwards, she''d collapsed onto the nearest pew, utterly exhausted.

    Siegfried, on the contrary, was fine only minutes later, and about half an hour after the curse was broken, he pulled back the hem of his bodysuit to reveal unmarred flesh. There wasn''t even a scar to mark the ugly wound he''d received, although as a Servant, I guessed it didn''t make sense for there to be one. As much as he looked like flesh and blood, as warm as his body was beneath my fingertips, and as solid as he had felt carrying me up through the city, he wasn''t a living person. He was just a particularly corporeal ghost. He didn''t scar because that wound wasn''t part of his legend.

    Bradamante remained mostly motionless throughout the day, resting to recover her energy. She had even, I realized when I went to check up on her once, fallen asleep, sprawled out on the hard wood of the pew as though it was a plush mattress, complete with temperature regulation.

    Maybe Servants were just made of sterner stuff, since they weren''t living people. God only knew how much trouble I''d had getting a good night''s sleep since we''d dropped into this Singularity. The first thing I was probably going to do when we got back to Chaldea was throw myself on my bed and take a long, well-earned nap.

    Contrary to my worst fears, we didn''t get a visit from another Servant in the meantime. It seemed, at least for now, that the Dragon Witch either didn''t care enough to avenge the loss of Dracul or, as I was hoping, simply didn''t have another Servant she was willing to risk to try again. It was entirely possible that she might be regrouping and preparing to come and take us down herself, with Fafnir in tow.

    Whatever the case, the rest of the day was quiet and unbothered by enemy action. There wasn''t even a stray wyvern to interrupt things and cause trouble.

    It was as the sun was setting, casting the city in a faint, orange glow as it sank behind the western hilltops, that Romani contacted me to let me know the twins and their entourage were on the outskirts of town ¡ª just in time for Arash to tell me the same thing.

    Master, he sent to me. We''ve made it back.

    "Hold on a moment, Romani," I told him, and Romani''s mouth snapped shut. "That''s them, now."

    Siegfried shifted and sat up straighter, his attention now fully on me.

    Any trouble? I asked Arash.

    None, was his reply. It seems we managed to make a clean getaway. We weren''t pursued at all on our way back.

    A breath hissed out of my mouth, relieved.

    Can you make it back to the church on your own, or should Siegfried and I meet you halfway?

    There was a moment''s pause, and then he said, We''ll make it back to the church without issue, Master. We''ll see you shortly.

    After acknowledging that, I turned back to Romani and the others. An exhausted Bradamante sat up on her pew, blinking blearily at me.

    "The others are back," I reported. "Romani, Arash says they didn''t run into any of the Dragon Witch''s other Servants and Fafnir didn''t try to follow them."

    Romani nodded. "That checks out, yeah. It''s been a bit harder to separate them all out from each other with so many Servants packed together in a single group, but there wasn''t any sign of enemy action that I could detect on their way back. They, ah, made the bulk of the trip pretty quickly, though."

    My brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

    "They crossed a hundred kilometers in a little over sixty seconds," Romani said with a bit of a puzzled smile.

    I blinked, sure that I must have misheard him. "What?"

    Romani shook his head. "They wouldn''t say what happened, when I asked," he told me. "They just said, ''Never again,'' like they had just seen some horrible monster. I don''t know what could have happened, though, since they didn''t run into any other Servants. They didn''t give me any more of an explanation than that. Even Emiya looked pretty shaken."

    There was a story there, I was certain of it. If the twins and Mash wouldn''t give it to me, I was sure that Arash wouldn''t have any qualms explaining what had happened.

    "You got Emiya out to them?"

    "Rika had to use a Command Spell to call him closer, and by then, they''d already escaped the town, but yes," said Romani. He sighed. "I''m going to miss his meals. He was the only decent chef we had left."

    "I''m certain Sir Emiya will be more content to have his martial skills put to use ending this Singularity," Siegfried said kindly.

    Romani grimaced. "Sir Emiya? Man, I can''t even imagine addressing him like that. Is that a bad thing? He''s a Heroic Spirit, after all."

    It sounded strange to me, too, although I didn''t admit as much. Given what little I knew about Emiya was mostly related to his tactics, he didn''t seem particularly knightly, so calling him like he was one just felt awkward.

    "Well," Romani went on, "I guess on our end, it''s only going to be for a day or two, depending on how much longer it takes you to wrap this up. Speaking of, are you absolutely sure about this, Taylor? What if she''s expecting you and she''s summoned a whole army of other Servants?"

    "If we keep worrying about what-ifs without having any concrete idea what she''s doing and where, then we''ll be here forever," I told him flatly. "It''s not like we''ve scoured the entire countryside, but Orl¨¦ans is the one place we''ve avoided going completely. At the very least, it''s worth a look, and we''re not any worse off now than we would be if we waited a month."

    Romani sighed. "The worst part is that I can''t argue with any of that. You''re right that we can''t just let her continue to build power and raze the country until Thiers is the last stronghold or something like that, but at the same time, I really don''t like the idea of you guys throwing yourselves into danger, even if I''m the one who sent the four of you into that Singularity in the first place. Five," he corrected. "I forgot about Fou."

    I snorted. "Fou is the one in the least amount of danger," I said wryly.

    Romani eyed me. "One of these days, I''ll figure out what it is you two have against each other."

    "The instant I can explain it, I''ll tell you myself," I promised.

    Once again, Romani sighed, and he glanced over at something on his monitor. "They''re back," he informed me. "They should be at the door ¡ª"

    Master, Arash said as a pair of knocks sounded from the door.

    "¡ª right now. I''ll send you some supplies for your trip in the morning. Goodnight."

    "Goodnight," I bade absently as the door swung open.

    In walked Mash, who looked utterly exhausted, and then an equally downtrodden Jeanne, and behind her were the twins, haggard and tired, like soldiers coming off of the battlefield, and after the twins was the musician, Mozart, and the copper knight, Saint George. Emiya and Arash brought up the rear, and they closed the door behind themselves.

    "Miss Taylor," Mash mumbled when she caught sight of me, and then her eyes landed on Siegfried and widened. "Ah, Mister Siegfried! You''re looking much better!"

    Siegfried smiled one of his understated smiles, a thing entirely of his closed lips and baring not the slightest hint of teeth. "Lady Bradamante undid the curse this morning. I''m back to normal now."

    Saint George looked over and gave a small nod. "It seems my services aren''t necessary, in that case."

    "Your help against the Dragon Witch will be appreciated regardless," I said.

    He nodded again. "And you shall have it."

    Jeanne was the first to approach. "Romani told us that Thiers was attacked as well?"

    "Dracul," I confirmed. "We managed to take him out through some clever maneuvering and Siegfried''s Noble Phantasm. Take a seat, everyone. There''s a lot to go over."

    The group split up and each took to a pew. The twins and Mash sat together closer to where I was standing in the aisle. Emiya took a seat further back, hunched over and hands folded between his spread knees. Saint George eased himself down carefully, mindful of his armor. Mozart folded his legs and clasped his hands like some kind of old-timey gentleman. Jeanne sat in the pew directly across the aisle from the twins and Mash, while Arash stayed standing in the back, leaning over the back pew.

    We traded stories back and forth about what had happened. The twins and Mash went first, although it was really Mash and Jeanne who did most of the talking. They went into more detail than Romani had, explaining about how they had met Marie Antoinette and Mozart on their way towards town ¡ª the twins both flinched at the mention of her ¡ª who themselves were wandering the countryside trying to shepherd as many refugees towards safety as they could, because neither of them was strong enough to face the Dragon Witch or her retinue.

    "Despite everything, she could smile so brightly," Ritsuka muttered, staring at the back of the pew in front of him.

    Then, chasing rumors of another Servant protecting the town westward of them, they made their way towards P¨¦rigueux, where they met Saint George. They stayed there overnight under the care of the Saint-¨¦tienne friars, and they''d barely rolled out of bed in the morning to start talking about him helping Siegfried when Jeanne Alter showed up on her personal steed: Fafnir.

    "I thought for sure that was the end of us," Mash confessed. "He was so massive, it was like he blotted out the sun."

    If it had come to it, Arash admitted to me silently, I would have used my Noble Phantasm.

    I glanced at him, but offered no reproach. It was, as harsh as it might be to say it, exactly what I would have expected him to do.

    Jeanne Alter had tried to kill them, but working together, Mash and Jeanne''s Noble Phantasms were enough to block the first attack, if only just. Saint George refused to leave as long as the townsfolk were still there, so together, while the civilians ran, they had managed to hold off Fafnir long enough to evacuate as many as they could.

    Marie Antoinette stayed behind to distract Jeanne Alter long enough for the rest of them to escape. Her Noble Phantasm, Crystal Palace, had held strong while they fled into the forest. None of them had seen what became of her, but none of them had needed to. No one in the room was under any illusions about the fact she hadn''t planned to make it out herself.

    "I see," Siegfried said solemnly. "She was indeed a worthy queen of France."

    I glanced at him askance, but managed to keep my mouth shut, because whatever she''d been guilty of during her actual reign, at least here, she had sacrificed herself for the people of her country.

    "Maria would be delighted to hear you say that, Sir Siegfried," said Mozart with a smile.

    From there, they had hurried as far away from P¨¦rigueux as they could as quickly as they could, and it was about then that Emiya had been Rayshifted into the Singularity. Rika was forced to use a Command Spell to get him to them as quickly as possible. After that, they made their way back to Thiers as fast as their legs would carry them, since they''d been forced to leave their horses behind.

    "Romani said you guys crossed about a hundred kilometers in about a minute," I pointed out. "How did you manage that?"

    Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash all shared a look and immediately clamped up. Jeanne had gone pale white and only gave me a smile and an awkward laugh. Emiya grimaced. Mozart looked away, hand over his mouth like the memory made him sick. Even Saint George turned his head down and remained silent.

    When I turned to Arash for answers, he gave them to me telepathically: Emiya projected a large sled, and I shot an arrow attached to it while everyone held on. The landing was a bit rough, but the rest of it worked out as intended.

    That was it?

    I swept my gaze around the rest of them, who all looked like they''d been through Hell and come out the other side traumatized.

    That was what they were all so tightlipped about? It didn''t sound like that big of a deal.

    "In any case," I said, "as I''m sure Romani told you, while you were dealing with Fafnir, Dracul attacked Thiers. Bradamante, Siegfried, and I worked together to take him out."

    A moment passed in silence. The twins looked at me expectantly.

    "That''s it?" Rika asked. "B-but you didn''t really tell us anything, Senpai!"

    "There has to be more to it than just that," Mash agreed.

    With a sigh, I launched into the story, a little less abbreviated, this time. There just wasn''t much to tell, though. It really wasn''t any more complicated than Siegfried keeping him busy, Bradamante hitting him with her Noble Phantasm, and then Siegfried finishing him off with Balmung.

    "That means Berserk Assassin, Phantom, Saint Martha, and Dracul are all taken care of," I finished. "Which means that now is the best time to strike and beat her."

    I laid out the plan, such as it existed. I played down the uncertainties, although I acknowledged they existed, and I set about explaining how we were going to deal with Jeanne Alter and her army. What to do if she summoned more Servants and wyverns, the important bits we needed to focus on. It was really more barebones than I liked, but no one protested.

    "As soon as Bradamante is back on her feet and ready to defend Thiers, we''re heading out," I said at the end. "We''ll march to Orl¨¦ans and end this, once and for all."

    "Good," said Rika with vicious heat.

    "The sooner we defeat her, the less people have to die," Ritsuka added with equal strength.

    "My evil self has plagued this country for long enough," Jeanne agreed.

    The rest of the Servants offered no arguments against it, and with our course decided, we broke for dinner, ate a bland but hearty stew Emiya concocted from our rations, and we all called it a night.

    As we settled down to sleep in our borrowed cots and the city settled down with us, slowly and quietly, a sad, haunting melody began to play, echoing through the church''s rafters and out the windows. I was about to reach out into my swarm to check on it, and then I recognized it and let it go. I wasn''t so callous that I would go out and stop it. We all mourned in our own ways.

    That night, four hundred years early, Requiem graced the country of France as Mozart said goodbye to its queen.

 Chapter XXIV: OrlÃ©ans

    Chapter XXIV: Orl¨¦ans

    It was another two days before Bradamante fully recovered her reserves, which gave us another two days to plan out our assault on Orl¨¦ans and come up with some contingencies in case we faced more resistance than we were expecting. We still knew frighteningly little about what we would find there, if we would find anything at all, and I hated exactly how blind we would be going in.

    There wasn''t much of anything for it, though. We had a map, which was obviously useful, but it didn''t have a radar or motion tracker or whatever that tied Chaldea''s sensor readings to us in real time. Da Vinci, Romani had told me, had it on her to do list, but the time differential between us and Chaldea and the fact that she was still dashing around like a madwoman as she tried to fix everything that was still broken and keep running everything that wasn''t meant that it kept getting shunted down the list.

    It would have been a useful feature to have, but even with it, what we could have picked up was limited. I hadn''t forgotten that the sensor readings got less reliable the further away from Chaldea''s primary reference points ¡ª that is, the twins and me ¡ª they tried to scan.

    Still, even just a general idea of enemy movements would have been invaluable.

    So, with that in mind, we had three main plans, or more like one main plan and two major contingencies. Plan A was simple: we went in, we attacked Jeanne Alter, killed her and Fafnir, and then we searched for the Holy Grail. If there were other Servants and wyverns there, well, we''d have to handle them, too, but between our current list of Servants, I was fairly confident that it wouldn''t be too hard to handle. I just had to hope they didn''t have anyone strong enough or with a conceptual advantage against Siegfried, seeing as he was our heaviest hitter, but the only one off the top of my head was Sigurd, and if he was here and on Jeanne Alter''s side, we had a whole host of other problems on our hands.

    I doubted it, though. If Jeanne Alter had someone that powerful on her side, the only places to put him would be guarding the Grail and the frontlines. The former was possible, but the latter more likely, and since we hadn''t heard anything about him from anyone anywhere, I was willing to bet he wasn''t here.

    "Can we be sure of that?" Ritsuka had asked.

    "There''s a lot we can''t be sure of," I had admitted. "But between the two of them, if I had Sigurd and Dracul at the same time, I would''ve kept Dracul back to defend the Grail and sent Sigurd out to crush the enemy. Whatever else she is, if Jeanne Alter is any part the real Jeanne d''Arc, she shouldn''t be stupid."

    Jeanne hadn''t protested but for a worried crease of her brow.

    Plan B was about as simple. If Jeanne Alter happened to not be home when we got to Orl¨¦ans, we would methodically eliminate every possible hiding place for the Grail, preferably using my bugs to find it instead of sending in a person or a Servant and possibly tripping an alarm or something. If we could get the Grail, this whole thing would essentially be over and done with.

    Hopefully, it would be that easy, but I had a niggling suspicion that it wouldn''t be.

    "History is robust," Emiya had told us, like a teacher imparting a lesson. "The fact that it requires something on the level of a Holy Grail to disrupt it should tell you that without the Grail, things will correct themselves on their own."

    "Removing the Grail won''t necessarily remove the Servants it summoned or undo the wishes made on it," I had pointed out. "Besides, it''s entirely possible that Jeanne Alter never lets the Grail out of her sight, or that she leaves it heavily guarded. There was never going to be a chance of doing this without a fight."

    Emiya hadn''t disagreed.

    "You sure are knowledgeable about this stuff," Rika had said.

    Emiya''s sardonic smirk had said everything and nothing at the same time. "When you''ve accumulated the level of experience I have, these are things you tend to pick up."

    Plan C, if Jeanne Alter was gone and took the Grail with her, or even if securing the Grail wasn''t enough to fix things, because we still weren''t sure if it would be, then we were going to set up an ambush as best as we could and wait for her to return to base. I had spools of tightly woven spider silk rope I''d been weaving together over the past week for triplines and the like, although I had my doubts about their efficacy against Servants that were so blatantly superhuman.

    "It''s likely we won''t be able to properly ambush her in any case," Jeanne had said.

    "Servants can detect the presence of other nearby Servants," Siegfried agreed. "I''m sorry, Master, but she will almost certainly know we''re there before we could possibly spring a trap."

    "I''m not entirely sure it''ll matter, one way or the other," I said. "She has Fafnir, and the one time she brought it to a fight, you guys ran away instead of fighting it directly. Her habit so far has been to throw her weight around whenever she does something instead of approaching things from a tactical or strategic standpoint. A hammer instead of a scalpel."

    Ritsuka made a noise of understanding. "Like La Charit¨¦ and Lyon and P¨¦rigueux. She''s been relying on overwhelming force instead of cleverness."

    I nodded. "If she thinks she''s untouchable, then she might not care about being ambushed and just spring it. There''s a thin line between confidence and arrogance, and she might just do us the favor of tap dancing across it."

    Plan D¡­ If it turned out she wasn''t basing herself out of Orl¨¦ans, we were going to have to start looking at other likely places. I doubted we''d have to, though. Romani had detected a "massive hotspot" to the north. The distance and general direction corresponded well with Orl¨¦ans, and if I was a betting woman, I would say that Jeanne Alter was consolidating her forces, gathering them all in one place.

    The only reasons to do that were to turtle up and hunker down to defend yourself or muster your forces for an all-out offensive. It could be either, but with her having lost so many of her Servants ¡ª four to us and at least one to Bradamante ¡ª I was fairly confident it was the former.

    "Could Jeanne Alter ¡ª ah, the Dragon Witch ¡ª have set up her base of operations in Paris instead?" was Mash''s question.

    "That''s also possible," I had conceded. "But it doesn''t have the same meaning to her as Orl¨¦ans. If it was just about tearing down France, taking and occupying Paris is probably more symbolic, but she''s already proven it''s just as much about a grudge she''s holding onto as anything else."

    "Orl¨¦ans was the sight of my first major victory," Jeanne had chimed in. "Paris¡­ If what happened to La Charit¨¦ was any indication, the Dragon Witch would have burned it to the ground, as payback for my failure to liberate the city from the English during my life." She grabbed at her thigh. "Or for the wound I suffered in the attempt."

    "Orl¨¦ans is closer, anyway," I had added. "There''s no reason to skip past it and go straight to Paris, so we''ll have to check on it either way."

    No one had disagreed.

    So, with our course of action set, we spent one last night in Thiers. Through whatever sorcerous means let him recreate objects so faithfully, Emiya did us the incredible kindness of replicating a pair of inflatable mattresses. Jeanne and I shared one while the twins and Mash huddled up together on the other.

    If anyone asked, I would of course deny it, but seeing them curled around each other was cute. Lisa might have called it "diabetes inducing" or something like that.

    With Arash on the roof keeping watch and the rest of the Servants standing guard, I laid down next to Jeanne with a sigh and let myself relax into the relative comfort of the mattress. I was asleep almost instantly.

    Morning came all too soon, and the five of us dragged ourselves out of bed to get ready for the coming day. There was a fire in the air that hadn''t been there before, a sense of purpose and direction that had largely been lacking the rest of our time in this Singularity as we flailed about trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing.

    Somehow, Emiya made our bland breakfast more appetizing. It wasn''t anything gourmet and it paled compared to some of his finer fare, but somehow, he managed to make even rehydrated rations taste like something more than cardboard.

    "Marry me, Emiya," Rika said through a mouthful of food. "I can''t go another day without one of your home cooked meals."

    Emiya smirked and said nothing.

    When everyone who needed to eat had been fed and watered, I set the group about packing up our supplies, and when that was done, we gathered together outside the front of the church.

    "There''s a rule that we''ve been following ever since we got here," I explained to them. "Director Animusphere was of the opinion that Masters of Chaldea should be self-sufficient enough to handle any physical exertion that might be required of them in the course of their duties. She considered it a waste of resources and Chaldea''s energy to have our Servants carry us everywhere we went."

    Rika let out a disgusted groan. I pretended I hadn''t heard.

    "I don''t disagree with the spirit of that rule," I went on, "and when and where it''s feasible to get somewhere by walking, we''re going to do that. But if there''s one thing the last month has shown, it''s that walking the whole way across the French countryside isn''t feasible. To that end, we''re going to speed things up a little so we can get to Orl¨¦ans as quickly as we can."

    I gestured to each of the Servants in turn.

    "Arash is going to be on overwatch," I told them. "His job is to make sure we''re not running into any ambushes and keep an eye out for enemy Servants. Jeanne, Mash, you''re going to be carrying our supplies. For one reason or another" ¡ª mostly the fact that they were shorter than everyone except Rika ¡ª "it''s better for you two to hold onto everything we need to take with us."

    "Understood," Mash replied.

    "You can count on me, Master," said Arash. "Nothing will even get close."

    "Siegfried, you''ll be carrying me," I continued. "Emiya, I''m entrusting Rika to you. Georgios, Ritsuka is with you. As for Mozart¡­"

    I trailed off.

    The man himself smiled and shrugged. "No need to explain. I understand perfectly. After all, I''m not a Servant born to particular physicality." He waved his hands dramatically. "It''s simply not a part of my disposition."

    At least I didn''t have to explain. If I was being honest, Mozart was the one I had the least idea what to do with. He obviously possessed a Noble Phantasm and it obviously did something, he wouldn''t be a Servant if that wasn''t true, but I wasn''t entirely sure what sort of role he could possibly play. It wasn''t that there was no use for his skills or Noble Phantasm, it was just that he obviously wasn''t a fighter and the only enemy I was really worried about facing was Fafnir.

    I would probably think of something by the time we actually set about to fight Jeanne Alter. Ambushing her once Fafnir was dead and hitting her with a Noble Phantasm that drained and weakened her might be disorienting enough to make the final battle a cakewalk.

    A tactic to tuck into my back pocket.

    "We''ll be keeping pace with the slowest of us," I said, leaving Mozart''s words unanswered. "Getting us all there in one piece at the same time is more important than getting there as quickly as possible. Ideally, this should still take us less than three hours and we''ll arrive outside the city right around noon. Any questions?"

    Rika''s hand shot up. "Please tell me we''re going to have bathroom breaks, Senpai!"

    Ritsuka let out a heavy sigh.

    "If anyone needs to stop for any reason, we will." Come to think of it, being carried for three hours wasn''t going to be incredibly comfortable, was it? It might slow us down, but it would probably be a good idea to set down and stretch our legs every now and again. "In fact, we''ll take five to ten minute breaks every half an hour or so to keep us Masters from cramping up before we get there."

    In spite of my first instinct to just keep going until we got there. But three hours being carried in someone''s arms, unprotected from the winds as we raced up the road at sixty miles an hour, that sounded a lot more uncomfortable when I gave it enough thought. For future Singularities, I was going to have to see if Da Vinci could magic up a few sets of goggles for us to wear whenever we had to travel like this. And maybe some gloves and old-fashioned leather aviator helmets, like the kind biplane pilots wore, so we could keep our (mostly mine and Rika''s) hair from getting blown all over.

    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    I swept my gaze over the gathered group. "Any other questions?"

    Nobody spoke up, this time. Good. That meant we''d covered enough last night that we didn''t need to go into more detail now.

    "We''ll go by foot up the north road until we reach the hill," I announced. "Once we''ve passed the city limits, we''ll mount up for the trip to Orl¨¦ans. Make sure all your straps are secure and your share of the supplies is squared away. Whether everything goes perfectly or not, we won''t be coming back to Thiers. Don''t leave anything you''ll miss."

    Emiya chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. "Geez. You''re really going to make me jealous there, Taylor."

    "O-of who?" Rika squawked.

    "Her," said Emiya, blas¨¦. "It''s not everyone who can say the famous hero Siegfried carried them across the French countryside."

    By the looks he got, especially from Arash, nobody believed him for a second, and I couldn''t help remembering his comment before we first Rayshifted here, about how I was probably a more compatible Master for him. I didn''t call him out on it, for Rika''s sake if nothing else.

    Now wasn''t the time for major interpersonal drama, anyway.

    "Let''s get going," I said instead. "We need to be there before sundown."

    Our group left the church ¡ª and Bradamante ¡ª behind, and in a disordered column, we snaked our way through Thiers and up the road that went up the hill through the northern section of the city. Some of the citizens who had gotten used to seeing us in town, Siegfried and me in particular, greeted us kindly as we passed them by, but we didn''t stay and chat. Rika responded to the one or two she recognized with cheerful replies, but even I could tell they were relatively subdued for her.

    Once we reached the edge of town and the last building disappeared in the foliage behind us, it was time to start sprinting the rest of the way. I turned to the group and said, "Pair up."

    There was a moment of dead silence, like no one realized what I meant, and then the twins awkwardly moved towards the Servant I''d assigned to carry them, like they weren''t quite sure what they were supposed to be doing. Ritsuka made to climb astride Georgios'' back.

    "Bridal style, you two," I added as I tied my hair back at the nape of my neck. "The last thing you want to do is lose your grip and fall while Georgios and Emiya are running as fast as a speeding car."

    Ritsuka blanched and Rika flinched, and as they figured things out with their rides, I turned to Siegfried and tucked my glasses safely away in my pocket.

    Siegfried knelt down, and with a little fumbling, I climbed into his arms like I had just a few days before. When he stood, my stomach flopped in my gut as my feet left the ground. That was so much less comfortable when I actually had time to think about it instead of rushing into battle.

    Already, it was obvious that this wasn''t going to be a comfy ride through the countryside.

    "Is everyone ready?" I called over in the direction of the others.

    Vague assents answered me. Neither of the twins sounded particularly thrilled with this, but in lieu of better options, this was what we had.

    God, I''d never wanted a car more in my life. Or better yet, one of Dragon''s aircraft.

    I patted Siegfried on the shoulder. "Go!"

    We took off. Like sprinters at the sound of the gunshot, our group went from zero to sixty almost instantly, and behind Siegfried and me, I heard Rika''s startled shriek and Ritsuka''s yelp, and I had to swallow one of my own against the wind that suddenly buffeted me from the front. It whipped my hair about and bit like ice against the nape of my neck and my exposed cheek, and I had to close my eyes to keep them from watering.

    It was even more disorienting that way. Bugs passed in and out of my range and control constantly. I barely had time to get a grasp on what was entering before it left, and the galaxy of lights under my eyelids shifted so rapidly and so constantly that it was almost enough to make me nauseous.

    Three hours of this. Forget a car or a Dragoncraft. Right then, I would have gladly taken Atlas.

    About ten minutes in, the surprise eventually gave way to monotony. My cheek had long since gone numb, and Rika''s shriek had turned first to whoops of excitement and then to utter silence. The only thing to listen to was the howl of the passing wind, and even that was more a nuisance, a persistent itch I couldn''t scratch, instead of something to distract myself with.

    The steep hill in whose valley Thiers was built swiftly gave way to farmland, then to thin patches of forest, and again to more farmland. The further away we got, the smoother the land around us became, until the almost mountainous highlands of Thiers turned into gently rolling hills with shallow slopes and inclines that reminded me more of the American Northeast than not.

    By the time our communicators beeped to let us know it had been a full thirty minutes, it wasn''t soon enough by anyone''s reckoning, and we had barely slowed to a stop before Rika all but leapt from Emiya''s arms, crying, "Land!"

    Ritsuka was a lot more careful about setting his feet back on the ground, but even he was obviously relieved to get a reprieve from the trip.

    Gingerly, I climbed out of Siegfried''s arms as he knelt down for me. If anyone noticed the slight unsteadiness of my legs, no one mentioned it. Probably because neither of the twins was particularly surefooted, either.

    My glasses nearly fell from my fingers as I fished them out and put them back on. My hands were still somewhat numb from the wind chill.

    "Do you need some assistance, Master?" Emiya asked, smirking.

    Without looking, Rika flipped the bird at him, but all it succeeded in doing was to make him chuckle.

    "Senpai," she began lowly, turning towards me, "I never thought I''d say this, but I agree with the Director. We absolutely shouldn''t rely on our Servants for travel."

    "Seconded," her brother mumbled.

    I pressed my lips together tightly, but even though I agreed with her about how uncomfortable it was, saying so out loud probably wasn''t the best idea. Besides, there simply wasn''t anything to be done about it. We couldn''t afford to take a week to get to Orl¨¦ans, this time.

    "Fifteen minutes," I said instead. "Eat a snack, take a drink, empty your bladder. If there''s anything you need to do, now''s the time to do it."

    The twins acknowledged me with unenthusiastic grunts, and Rika fiddled with her hair, trying to comb down the flyaway tangle it had become with her fingers. I didn''t see the point, since it was just going to get messed up again pretty soon.

    "Stupid hair," she grumbled, "stupid wind, stupid me for having stupidly long hair¡­"

    Emiya approached her with a shake of his head and extended a hand as though in offering. He mumbled something under his breath, and before our eyes, an aviator''s helmet took shape in his palm, old and worn and positively ancient-looking.

    Immediately, he had my full attention.

    "Whoa," said Rika.

    "You might only be trading one problem for another," said Emiya, "but this should help you at least keep your hair under control."

    Rika took it gingerly, examined it from every angle for a minute or two, and then she slipped it on with comfortable ease. It was a perfect fit.

    "This is amazing!" Rika grinned as she buckled the straps. "I feel like an old-fashioned dogfighter! Or, or, or like Amelia Earhart!"

    "That''s not a sword," I said cautiously, "or a bladed weapon."

    And the mattresses last night hadn''t been, either, come to think of it. I''d just been too tired to give it any more thought than to be grateful we finally had something comfortable to sleep on.

    Emiya blinked at me, bewildered, and then understanding crossed his face and he nodded. "Ah," he said. "Yeah. It''s not a replication, either."

    He held out his hand, and a moment later, there was another aviator helmet there. He tossed it to me and I caught it, and it felt as real and faithful as it looked. Old, worn leather, steel buckles, a padded lining, complete with machine stitching. When I tried it on, it fit snugly but comfortably over my head.

    "Strictly speaking, I''m not limited only to swords and bladed weapons," Emiya explained. "However, the cost for anything that doesn''t fit that category goes up, and anything more mechanically complicated than a fishing rod is too far beyond me."

    "So you couldn''t make, say, a gun."

    He shrugged. "I could probably project the individual parts, but the mechanisms are fiddly enough that I can''t do the whole thing, and if I wanted to make sure everything worked right, I''d have to have the real deal right in front of me. At that point, what''s the point of me making another one?"

    I thumbed the helmet. "And this?"

    He smirked.

    "I''m particularly proud of that clever little trick. Armor is one of the hardest things for me to make, so instead of trying to replicate it wholesale, I cut some corners by substituting leather patterned after sword grips and steel from guards and pommels. The consistency is a little different, but the overall material is functionally the same."

    Arash let out a whistle. "That''s a nifty way of working around your limitations."

    It really was, and once more, it reminded me of how I''d been as Skitter. Damn, Emiya really would have fit me well, wouldn''t he?

    Emiya shrugged. "I was never all that strong while I was alive, so thinking my way out of a fight was often the only way I managed to walk away with my head still attached to my shoulders."

    "Know your opponent and know yourself and you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles," Mash recited.

    Emiya looked at her, surprised. "You know Sun Tzu?"

    "Ah." Her cheeks flushed a little. "I, um, I read a lot, growing up."

    "That''s not generally on the curriculum at most high schools," said Emiya wryly. "Military prep schools, maybe, but not regular high schools."

    Mash shrank in on herself a little. "I was¡­homeschooled."

    One of these days, I was going to get a better story of who, what, and how Mash had been "made" from¡­ Definitely from Marie. The version I had was really far too sparse and sanitized for my liking.

    "There''s nothing wrong with that, Mash," Jeanne said kindly. "After all, I, too, was homeschooled. I never even learned to read properly while I was alive."

    Mash blinked, and then understanding dawned across her face. "Ah, that''s right, public education with a core curriculum only became the standard for children in most modern countries sometime in the nineteenth century. Before then, most people were tradesmen and learned basic skills from their family."

    I let them talk for another few minutes and waited for Ritsuka and Rika to have their fill when the two of them reached for a bottle of water, and then I ordered the break to an end and told everyone to saddle up again. My glasses came off and went back into my pocket, but I still saw clearly enough to recognize Emiya projecting another helmet for Ritsuka to wear.

    Once everyone was ready, we took off again. The rushing wind was marginally less of a pain with the helmet to protect my ears and keep my hair mostly contained, but the helmet did little for my exposed cheeks and hands and nothing at all for the discomfort of hanging from someone''s arms for thirty minutes straight.

    We stopped for a break another three times and passed at least four towns that we had to steer away from to avoid awkward questions, but on the last break, since we were making good time and weren''t that far away from Orl¨¦ans, the group made the decision to just push on through to the end. We were going to just make the extra seven miles in one go instead of stopping, and then we''d walk the final three. The twins weren''t excited about that, and neither was I, if I was being entirely honest, but it gave us enough distance to make a stealthier approach than just rushing in would have.

    Someone else, it turned out, had different plans.

    It happened too fast for me to track. The disturbance passed my bugs at lightning speed, so quick that there wasn''t any time at all for me to react.

    Master! Arash shouted, but there wasn''t any time for him to say anything else, either.

    Emiya moved before I figured out what was happening, a blur of red and black moving so quickly that he stole the breath for Rika''s scream, and then he was in front of us at the head of the pack. A flower of pink light with seven petals bloomed.

    "RHO AIAS!"

    And thunder struck it with the force of a hurricane.

 Chapter XXV: Felling the Sky Demon

    Chapter XXV: Felling the Sky Demon

    Our whole group came to a screaming halt, and my stomach jarred in my gut as Siegfried dug in his feet to bleed off his momentum so that we didn''t come to an even more sudden and painful stop. My body still jerked in his grasp, and I scrambled to grab onto something as my whole body threatened to be violently thrown out of his arms.

    Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow ¡ª

    "What?" I gasped.

    Romani was going to have to check us over, because I was pretty sure I had whiplash ¡ª fuck, my arms and legs were going to be mottled with bruises in the shape of Siegfried''s fingers ¡ª don''t throw up, don''t throw up, don''t throw up ¡ª

    Focus.

    Arash, I tried instead. What happened?

    Enemy Archer class Servant, Arash replied. A really good one, too, to have seen us from this far away through the trees.

    I blinked and craned my neck, fighting the swimming sense of almost vertigo. Whatever had struck Emiya''s flower wall ¡ª an arrow, almost certainly, and what a powerful Archer our enemy must be to hit that hard with just an arrow ¡ª had made a mess of the ground beyond it, but it failed to penetrate past it. Rika clung desperately to Emiya''s body, sideways somehow so that I could see her face from over his arm, and she looked completely and utterly terrified.

    "Senpai!" Mash called as she slowed to a halt, brow wrinkled with concern.

    Rika opened her mouth as though to speak, and then hastily slapped her hand over it, looking as nauseous as I felt.

    "Mash," Emiya said sternly, looking at her from over his shoulder. "You''re going to have to be faster on that. As our main line of defense, you can''t let any attack escape your eyes, no matter how sudden or surprising."

    "Y-yes!" Mash squeaked breathlessly.

    Emiya''s lips quirked. "Well, not that I can blame you. Even I almost missed that shot."

    Arash, I began.

    "Here, Master," Arash said, landing next to Siegfried and I.

    "Wh-what just happened?" Ritsuka asked shakily.

    "Let me down," I mumbled to Siegfried.

    Obligingly, Siegfried knelt down and carefully lowered my legs to the ground until I could stand on my own. I turned immediately to Arash, trying to ignore the throbbing ache that was searing across my neck.

    "What are we looking at?" I demanded without preamble.

    My bugs were spread out, but whoever was shooting at us was too far away and out of my range.

    Arash shook his head. "I didn''t get a good look at her. I managed to get a quick glimpse when I tracked her shot back to its origin, but I can''t tell you much other than the fact it''s definitely a woman."

    CRACK

    Another arrow impacted Emiya''s wall to mostly the same effect. Emiya grunted, but didn''t show any other signs of stress.

    Rho Aias, he''d called it. I didn''t understand the significance of the "Rho" part, but Aias was the original Greek version of Ajax. Ajax the Great was said to have spawned a flower when he died, which probably had something to do with the flower motif of that barrier, but the exact connection escaped me. Seven petals? Maybe something to do with seven-leaf lucky clovers?

    A thought for later.

    "A female Archer¡­"

    No one was coming to mind. The immediate answer was Artemis, but that was a goddess, and this far out from what Marie had called the Age of Gods, summoning a literal, actual goddess was supposed to be impossible, even with a Holy Grail.

    But this whole situation was literally impossibility stacked on impossibility. It was probably a better idea to take absolutes like that with a grain of salt.

    "She''s powerful, Master," Arash warned me. Like I hadn''t already figured that out for myself. "Skilled. I didn''t have enough time to counter her first shot. I wouldn''t want to go head to head with her if she got the jump on me."

    Only if she got the jump on him? Probably not actually Artemis, then.

    CRACK went the blow of another arrow crashing against Emiya''s barrier. CRACK ¡ª CRACK went two more.

    "She''s getting impatient," Emiya warned. "I''m fine as long as it''s regular arrows, but I don''t want to be here when she decides to use her Noble Phantasm."

    "What do we do?" asked Ritsuka.

    "Fire back!" Rika snapped irritably. She still seemed upset about the sudden stop.

    "I could draw her fire long enough for Sir Arash to counterattack," Georgios offered.

    Mozart shrugged. "I''m afraid I won''t be of much use here. If I go out, I''ll just become a pin cushion."

    I looked back to Georgios. "How long can you keep her distracted for?"

    "As long as you need me," he replied confidently. "Defense is where I''m strongest."

    My mind raced as my eyes swept to each of the Servants in our group, and the makings of a plan began to form in my head. It wasn''t a great plan, not even a particularly good one, but for all that it was relatively simple, it was solid. Maybe the fact that it was so simple and uncomplicated was what made it a better plan in the face of an unknown Archer whose Noble Phantasm and skills were a complete mystery.

    "Georgios, you''re our distraction," I said hurriedly. "Go towards her, wait for the first shot, then break off in a different direction." I turned to Emiya and Siegfried one after the other. "Emiya, Siegfried, while she''s distracted with Georgios, rush her. Straight on. Siegfried in front, block those shots when they come."

    "Leave it to me," Siegfried said.

    CRACK ¡ª CRACK ¡ª CRACK went the staccato of more arrows impacting the barrier. It still held strong.

    "Sending an Archer into melee range?" Emiya smirked. "Are you sure that''s the best idea?"

    "Fuyuki," I retorted shortly, and his smirk faltered. "I''ve seen what you can do at close range." I turned next to Arash. "While she''s focused on them, circle around and wait for an opening. Don''t take the shot unless you''re sure you can guarantee it''ll kill her."

    He nodded. "Understood."

    At last, I turned to Mash and Jeanne. "You two will be our defense. If she decides to ignore everyone else, you need to block her shots."

    Mash glanced at Ritsuka, and he gave her a firm nod. "We''ll be counting on you, Mash."

    Mash''s face drew into a mask of determination. "I won''t let you down!"

    "I''m afraid I have to ask you to take point, Mash," said Jeanne. "My only defense is my Noble Phantasm, and in my condition, it must be my last resort."

    "Right!"

    "Everyone good?" I asked quickly, sweeping my gaze around them. Various assents were given, verbal and not, and I took that for what it was. "Right. Then after her next volley ¡ª"

    A ghastly howl echoed off in the distance, and something much, much larger than an arrow raced through the foliage and into my range. It ping-ponged off of trees and branches without slowing or stopping, avoiding every obstacle and clearing every hurdle with effortless ease, and it moved so fast that I caught nothing more than a vague, black blur.

    "She''s coming!" I said urgently. "Go, go!"

    The Servants took off instantly, with Emiya trailing behind as Rika scrambled to get out of the way. Mash dropped the bags she was carrying and strode forward, her shield manifesting in her hands between one step and the next. Jeanne fell into place slightly behind and to her right, and us three Masters huddled behind the two of them. Mozart positioned himself at the very back, his baton held at the ready.

    The blur continued to move, eating up the distance with alarming speed. Some of that had to be down to her being able to keep going through the forest without slowing, because as I watched, Georgios, Siegfried, Emiya, and Arash all ran, bleeding off momentum every time they had to swerve around a tree or duck under a branch, and that limited how fast they could run.

    Georgios broke off, moving the opposite direction of Arash, and the blur ignored him completely. She continued her rapid beeline for Siegfried and Emiya, like she had a personal grudge to settle with the one who had blocked her shots.

    "Senpai," Ritsuka began.

    "I see her," I told him. "She''s ignoring Georgios completely."

    "Did she see through our plan?" Jeanne asked.

    I shook my head. "I don''t know. Maybe? Or maybe it''s just the influence of the Mad Enhancement she''s under, gave her tunnel vision."

    Like a rocket, she collided with Siegfried and Emiya, and the ringing of Balmung echoed even back to us with how much force she put behind ¡ª her claws? What?

    As Siegfried braced himself with one leg, I closed my eyes and cast my vision through his, giving me an up close and personal look at our enemy. A curtain of grayish hair fluttered behind her, and her body was covered in patches of black fur instead of clothing. Her fingers ended in catlike claws that must have been harder than steel to not have broken against Balmung''s flat. Almost comically, a pair of feline ears sat atop her head.

    But the most striking thing ¡ª and most bewildering, too ¡ª was the massive head attached to her one arm at the shoulder, a flat-snouted thing with large, black tusks and beady yellow eyes that seemed to look straight at me even now.

    An archer associated with a boar? Why did that sound familiar?

    "Kill you," she seethed in a rough, hoarse voice. "Kill you! Kill you! Kill all of you!"

    Emiya moved to the side, coming in to attack her from behind, but she leapt away to avoid the blow, and before my ¡ª Siegfried''s ¡ª eyes, her left arm sprouted a black bow. She fired a lightning fast volley of at least two dozen arrows that were so black and so insubstantial that they seemed to suck in the light. Several of them hit Siegfried and were powerful enough to carve shallow cuts into his skin, but Emiya twisted out of the way to dodge all of the ones that sprayed in his general direction.

    "Kill you!"

    She landed with catlike grace on all fours and kicked off the ground towards Siegfried, but right as he moved to block her again, she suddenly swerved off course and made for Emiya.

    "Shit!"

    Emiya blocked her with the twin swords I''d seen his alternate use in Fuyuki, but they shattered under her strength and he was thrown backwards. Amazingly, it seemed like he''d planned for that, because his swords had barely been dropped before a more familiar black bow materialized in his own hands as much more mundane arrows formed in his grasp.

    The unknown Archer threw herself out of the way of Emiya''s own barrage, right into the path of Siegfried, who swung at her with Balmung. Metal screeched as she reached out with both hands and grabbed the blade, her claws scraping against the flat even as the edge bit into her palms. She didn''t seem to care or even feel the pain of her wounds that leaked dark, brackish blood, her face still pulled into the same, perpetual snarl.

    "Kill you! Kill you!"

    Emiya fired another salvo. Even as I watched, the Archer''s body shifted and morphed, and a large, wing-like shape burst from her back, interposing itself and absorbing every shot.

    "What?" I said.

    The expression on Emiya''s face mirrored my own.

    Another Servant with a Shapeshift skill? What, were they giving it away when Jeanne Alter summoned her Servants? "Here, come get your free Shapeshift skill for being summoned as Jeanne Alter''s Servant!" Had Saint Martha and Phantom had it too and just never got the chance to use it?

    I didn''t have a connection to Emiya, so ¡ª

    Arash!

    I''m moving into position, Master, he reported. I don''t have a good line of sight on her, though.

    Damn it. The cover of the trees I''d been counting on to keep the Dragon Witch from seeing us until it was too close to matter was also keeping Arash from reinforcing Emiya and Siegfried.

    Get as close as you need to.

    And as he did, the fight continued. The Archer''s new wing shifted and retracted, and Emiya''s arrows dropped from it like discarded shreds of paper; they vanished before they even had the chance to hit the ground. She leapt back, and Balmung swept through the place she''d been with hurricane force. Emiya had to dodge out of the way to avoid the backlash, which gave the Archer more than enough time to throw herself at them again. She made for Emiya, forcing him to retreat even further, but rather than pursue, she planted one foot against the trunk of a nearby tree and bounced off of it towards Siegfried.

    Siegfried wasn''t prepared for it, but her claws scraped ineffectually across his stomach, dealing no damage whatsoever, and he brought Balmung back around to take off her head. She ducked under the blow with catlike agility, hair whipping about, and as she rose, her hand lashed out like a snake, aiming for his eyes.

    He wasn''t too slow, this time. Her claws stopped several inches from his face, her wrist held securely in the grip of one of his hands. From the vantage point of my bugs, I could see the cold, solemn expression on his face as he pulled on her trapped arm and brought Balmung across her torso with the other.

    Brackish blood splattered across the forest floor, and when he let go of her wrist, the Archer collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath, but still somehow alive.

    "Kill¡­ you¡­" she rasped.

    Slowly, she tried to climb to her feet, the black fur that served as her clothing shivering with each breath. A nasty cut was carved across her chest, and if she wasn''t a Servant, it probably would have disemboweled her.

    "I see," said Siegfried. "The only way the Dragon Witch could control you was to destroy you, leaving behind only a maddened beast."

    He hefted Balmung and took hold of it with both hands.

    "I''m sorry. The only thing I can do for you is to end your misery."

    The meaty squelch of an arrow landing was quiet and almost unheard over the Archer''s gasp, and then with a sigh, she sagged and fell to her knees, the metallic glint of an arrowhead sprouting from her chest. Behind her, Emiya let out his breath and his arms dropped, his black bow disappearing in motes of light.

    "Ah," the Archer whispered. "Finally."

    Her head tilted back and she looked up at the canopy of the forest above her.

    "My eyes¡­are clear again¡­"

    And with her next breath, her form dissolved and she disappeared.

    "She''s gone," I told the others, and they all relaxed as Mash let out a long sigh of her own.

    "The others?" asked Jeanne.

    "No injuries," I reported. "She attacked Siegfried, but she wasn''t strong enough to hurt him. Emiya dealt the final blow."

    "That''s a relief," said Ritsuka.

    Arash, I projected, connecting to both of my Servants, Siegfried, return. We need to regroup before we move on Orl¨¦ans itself.

    Understood, said Siegfried even as Arash responded with, I''m on my way.

    "Rika," I turned to her, "are you good to keep going?"

    I wasn''t noticing any real strain from that short battle, and she was only supporting one Servant on her own compared to my two, so I doubted she was, either. Still better to make sure, though.

    "Tip-top, firing on all cylinders!" she chirped, a bare second before her stomach let out a growl. Her cheeks flushed pink. "Although I definitely wouldn''t say no to some of Emiya''s cooking for lunch, first!"

    My stomach was inclined to agree with her, I realized. Unfortunately, this wasn''t the time or the place to stop for lunch. Not for a cooked one, at any rate. Not with Orl¨¦ans right over the proverbial hill.

    "We''re too close to the city, they''d see the fire," I told her. Her face fell. "Get Emiya back here and grab a ration bar, if you''re that hungry. He can cook you a full three course meal when we get back to Chaldea."

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    "Yeah, I got it," she said sourly. Underneath her breath, low enough that I probably wasn''t meant to hear it, she added, "I wanted his cooking now¡­"

    I pretended I hadn''t heard it anyway. "Mash, grab a couple of ration bars."

    "R-right!"

    She went back over to the bags she''d discarded and started to rummage through them as I turned to address the rest of the group, the ones who needed to actually eat, at least, so really just the twins and maybe Jeanne.

    "Anyone who''s hungry, eat now, while we have a moment. There''s no telling if the Dragon Witch noticed our fight with her pet Archer, so she could be ¡ª"

    Beep-beep!

    "En-emy movement detected!" Romani interrupted me. Static distorted the first word, but it was clear enough what he was saying. "I know you guys just got done fighting an enemy Servant, but the sensors are showing a massive magical energy response in motion!"

    My heart skipped a beat. Immediately, my mind''s eye conjured a massive beast taking off, each beat of its wings crushing everything beneath it with hurricane winds, so large that it cast the entire city in shadow.

    "Fafnir''s leaving Orl¨¦ans, and he''s headed straight for you!"

    The twins gasped, and Mash dropped the bottle of water in her hands to the ground with a thud.

    "Shit!"

    I turned in the direction of Orl¨¦ans, and my swarm began to contract and gather, pulling the stingers and the venomous creepy crawlies from their hiding places in preparation for a battle I knew they wouldn''t be able to do anything about. Tarasque had eaten through a swarm just like this one with relatively little effort, and Fafnir was a beast at least ten times bigger and a thousand times more terrifying. I might as well throw water balloons at him, because those at least might be useful fighting his firebreath.

    Siegfried, I sent his way, double time it! Jeanne Alter is on her way here, and she''s bringing Fafnir with her!

    I didn''t wait for his confirmation.

    "Mash, Jeanne, defense!" I barked out orders. "Ritsuka, Rika, get back! Can anyone get in contact with ¡ª"

    Even as the words were leaving my mouth, I was reaching out with my swarm, and I noticed a familiar figure in coppery armor making his way back towards us. He must have turned back when he realized he was no longer being shot at. Whether to help or because he figured the fight was over, it didn''t matter.

    "Nevermind, he''s on his way."

    "Who''s on his way?" asked Rika.

    "Georgios!" said Ritsuka, having apparently realized what I was talking about.

    "He''s okay?"

    "Like I said," I told them distractedly, "the enemy Archer ignored him."

    I eyed the foliage to either side of the dirt road we were on. Should we take cover? No, probably not. We wouldn''t fool Jeanne Alter for long, and the worst kind of cover to take shelter behind when a giant, fire-breathing dragon showed up was the very flammable trees. Staying out in the open went against every tactical bone in my body, but ironically, it was probably the safer option of the two.

    "Master!"

    Siegfried burst out of the forest like a rocket and came to a skidding halt in front of our group, kicking up clouds of dust. He held Balmung in one hand.

    "You''re our frontline," I said without preamble.

    He inclined his head. "Of course."

    I turned back to the communicator. "Romani, how soon?"

    The crackle of static was my only answer, and then the connection cut. My heart skipped another beat as a sense of foreboding settled in my gut.

    A sound like thunder rumbled and shook the ground, vibrating my bones and organs, and a gust of wind buffeted my swarm in the forest. A second later, another echoing blast of thunder reverberated through us and the ground beneath our feet, and a hurricane swept through the trees ahead, displacing every bug in its path.

    "It''s here!" Rika gasped.

    I looked up just in time for the entire sky to be cast in shadow as a massive form blotted out the sun with its bulk, and overhead, the truly enormous form of Fafnir flew. A jolt of unfamiliar fear wormed in my belly as he passed, and the mere wind from his wingbeats nearly tore me off of my feet. Rika and Ritsuka both screamed, protecting their heads with their arms, and I had to throw one of my own up to shield my eyes.

    Above, Fafnir made one gigantic circle, and then he turned and swooped back down. Even no longer directly beneath his wake, the force of being anywhere near his flight was still almost enough to bowl me over, and I had to brace myself just to stay upright.

    For an instant, I remembered that fateful fight against Leviathan, struggling against the waves and having to find cover just to keep from being swept away. My bugs drowning, my body being battered and bandied about. A cape being washed away, just a few bare inches from me as I reached to pull her to safety.

    Fafnir was on an entirely different scale than Leviathan, at least in terms of size. He was several times larger with a wingspan that put the Simurgh to shame, a rough, scaly body that looked hardier than Leviathan''s had, and horns and fangs that would have made Behemoth jealous. His massive maw could have swallowed our entire group whole and still had room, and his tail was long enough that I wouldn''t have been surprised if it reached all the way back to the city.

    And emblazoned across his chest was the exact same symbol as the one on Siegfried''s.

    The whole world seemed to shake when he landed, and for the third time in less than a minute, I was almost thrown off my feet. Next to me, the twins clutched to each other like that was the only way they could keep themselves from fainting.

    For once, I didn''t blame them. I''d come up against a lot of different things in my career as a cape, many of them horrible or horrifying, but there was something visceral and instinctual to looking up at Fafnir and wanting to run. An ingrained response to flee in the presence of a larger, more powerful predator and hope you were fast enough to escape, or at least so insignificant as to be ignored.

    Entire trees were crushed underfoot as the monster shifted and moved his forelegs, and he dipped his head to reveal a woman standing atop it, utterly tiny compared to him.

    Jeanne Alter, the Dragon Witch.

    "So," said Siegried lowly, clutching his sword with both hands. "We meet again, my old enemy."

    "Well, would you look at that!" Jeanne Alter crowed. "You''re still alive, my old leftovers? What a cockroach you are, that you keep surviving while everyone else dies around you!"

    "I live and die for the sake of France!" Jeanne said boldly, like she wasn''t facing down a massive dragon that could easily kill us all. "So long as France is in peril, I won''t allow myself to be killed, especially by the likes of you!"

    Jeanne Alter laughed. "I am you, you country bumpkin!"

    "No," Jeanne said with utter certainty, "you''re not. I can''t say for certain who or what you are, Dragon Witch, but I can say with absolute surety that you are not Jeanne d''Arc."

    The laughter cut off abruptly, and Jeanne Alter''s expression turned murderous.

    "I''m tired of looking at you, you eyesore," she sneered.

    She lifted her flag, and behind Fafnir, a veritable swarm of wyverns rose into the sky from the direction of Orl¨¦ans. They ignored us and took off in various directions, headed out into the countryside. No doubt, they were on a mission to kill and destroy as much of the remaining citizens of France as they could.

    Arash! I sent urgently.

    Already on it, Master, he replied.

    From the forest behind the great dragon, arrows whistled out one after the other and shot down wyvern after wyvern. He wouldn''t be able to get them all, but he''d hopefully get enough that we could end this whole thing before they had the chance to cause too much damage.

    "Tch," Jeanne Alter snarled. "That Archer, again! Berserk Saber, get over there and crush him! Fafnir! That saint, those meddlesome wretches she''s gathered around her, this entire nauseating country ¡ª burn it all down!"

    Fafnir reared back, neck snaking, and he looked down at us with malintent in his serpentine eyes as an orange glow gathered in the back of his maw. A guttural growl rumbled in his chest as it expanded, and the sound of it vibrated the earth beneath us.

    If that hit us, we were dead.

    "Mash!" Ritsuka shouted.

    I had a different idea.

    "Siegfried!" I called to him.

    Siegfried gave no sign he heard me, but he set his stance and planted his feet, and then he lifted Balmung above his head.

    "FAFNIR!" he bellowed over the rumbling growl. "DO YOU SEE ME, WICKED DRAGON? I STAND BEFORE YOU ONCE AGAIN, AND I''M UNAFRAID! AS I SLEW YOU BEFORE, NOW I''LL SLAY YOU AGAIN!"

    He twisted his grip on his sword''s hilt, and blue light erupted from the blade into a towering pillar.

    "SIEGFRIED!" Jeanne Alter howled.

    "FALL TO THE EARTH!"

    The dragon breathed. The sword swung.

    "BALMUNG!"

    A bomb detonated, that was what it felt like. Ritsuka and Rika both screamed, and even I let out a startled shout as the force of the two attacks meeting nearly tossed me off my feet yet again. I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep from being blinded, and even looking through the eyes of my bugs showed me only a bright white nova that drowned out everything else. Even from behind, the swarm that was at our backs only showed me our vague outlines against the backdrop of an overwhelming light.

    When I could see again, both still stood, and Lord Chaldeas faded into nothingness as Mash gasped from the effort of protecting us. Siegfried''s bodysuit had been ripped and torn at the sleeves, disintegrated all the way up to his elbows, but he was otherwise unharmed, and Fafnir was equally unscathed, glaring down at his nemesis. Jeanne Alter remained standing atop his enormous head, utterly livid.

    My mind whirled as the realization sunk in, and I had to discard an assumption I''d been making thus far: killing Fafnir would not be as simple or as easy as having Siegfried use his Noble Phantasm. It was going to take more than just one, good blow from Balmung to finish off that dragon.

    Or at least, if it was one blow, it had to be one uninterrupted blow while Fafnir was defenseless. As long as he could defend himself with his breath attack, Siegfried couldn''t kill him.

    I was hoping Siegfried would be our trump card to beat the Dragon Witch and her army of dragons, and he was, he just wasn''t an instant win button like I had wanted him to be.

    "You!" Jeanne Alter snarled. "Fafnir, crush him!"

    The great dragon let out a thunderous roar as he lifted one meaty, bulky arm, wings spread wide in what might have been a threat display on a mundane animal.

    "Siegfried!" I shouted.

    "Don''t worry, Master!" he shouted back. "This enemy is one I know how to defeat!"

    The claws came down, and Siegfried moved between them, holding it off with the blade of his sword against the flat of what passed for the palm.

    "You''re weaker than I remember, Fafnir!"

    Balmung lit up with blue light, and when Siegfried sliced its blade along Fafnir''s hand, it cut through the scales effortlessly. Red blood splattered over the ground, and Fafnir reared back, roaring his pain as his head tossed to and fro.

    "Have the Dragon Witch''s shackles reduced you so?"

    He kicked off the ground, racing towards the dragon''s underbelly. Fafnir swatted at him with his other hand, but Siegfried leapt over the sword-like claws, and with Balmung glowing blue again, sliced into the scaly wrist like it was made of paper.

    Small uses of his Noble Phantasm, I realized. Charging up the full thing took too much time and energy, so instead, he was enhancing his normal attacks with miniature charges, using his Noble Phantasm without actually using his Noble Phantasm.

    "I''m not the cowering fool I was when I first slew you!" Siegfried yelled.

    He landed, and his feet had barely touched the ground before he took off again, leaping like a rocket as yet more blue light trailed in the wake of his blade. He carved a line across Fafnir''s chest, splitting the glowing symbol in half with a spurt of red blood.

    "The reason why I don''t remember our first battle ¡ª it''s because I wasn''t enough! My dreams were too feeble and selfish, born of the same greed that made you! I was nothing more than your pale shadow!"

    One of Fafnir''s massive paws came down, and with a reverberating clang that set my teeth vibrating, Siegfried cleaved away one of the sword-like claws. It flew through the air, tumbling and turning and spinning, and it carved a trench in the road until it came to a stop, buried halfway into the dirt.

    "And so it was the wish of the people that brought you low, not my own strength! Their faith, their will, their hopes and fears ¡ª when my own strength failed, they led my blade into your heart!"

    Blue light gathered around his sword.

    "Now, of my own will, with my own strength, for the sake of my own justice, I will bring you down once more!"

    And when he swept it up, a thin, blue beam arced out towards the dragon''s head. Jeanne Alter screamed as one of the horns near her was severed, tumbling to the ground. Fafnir tossed his massive head, an angry roar bellowing out of his fanged maw that rumbled and shook the earth with his pain and fury.

    "What are you doing, Fafnir?" Jeanne Alter screeched. "Kill him, you useless dragon! Kill him, now!"

    Fafnir reared back onto its hind legs, and fire built up in its maw again as it prepared to breathe flames on us a second time. Siegfried planted his feet and lifted Balmung above his head in answer, and blue light spilled forth again, forming another massive pillar that reached up into the sky.

    "Back!" I shouted at the others. "Get back!"

    They didn''t argue, and we made a break for it as quickly as we could. There was only enough time to get maybe thirty or so feet from the action, and even that might not be enough to completely escape the spillover from those two attacks meeting again.

    "FALL, EVIL DRAGON!"

    The world shook as the dragon breathed. Siegfried swung his sword.

    "BALMUNG!"

    "Lord Chaldeas!" Mash screamed, and as the two attacks met, her rampart formed a protective barrier in front of us.

    I shut my eyes against the blast of light as the clashing blows exploded outwards again, casting my vision through Siegfried''s eyes to watch for the right moment. Even he couldn''t see quite properly, not so close to the epicenter of the explosion, but he could see well enough that the contest between him and Fafnir was less a single, instant eruption and more a brief push and pull as they tried to overpower each other.

    But they were equal, or close enough to equal that the difference didn''t matter. The potent magical energy between the two attacks mingled and ignited, and my magic circuits throbbed from the expenditure of so much power in such quick succession.

    It wasn''t over yet. Right here, right now, as the backlash washed over them both, that was when they were vulnerable, both of them, and that meant ¡ª

    "By the power of my Command Spell!" I shouted against the howling winds. "Siegfried! Kill Fafnir with your Noble Phantasm!"

    The second of the red marks on the back of my hand flared and faded, and no sooner had the words left my mouth than did another pillar of blue light scythe through the glare.

    "Yes, Master!"

    And like a guillotine, it came down on the evil dragon it had slain once before.

    "BALMUNG!"

 Chapter XXVI: A Desperate Wish

    Chapter XXVI: A Desperate Wish

    When the light of Balmung''s final slash faded, I opened my eyes to Fafnir''s death.

    The great dragon''s enormous head and serpentine neck had fallen to the ground, still and lifeless, his jaw dropped open to show the teeth as large as me, and it remained only half attached to the mangled torso. Scales had been peeled away, revealing raw flesh and the white of massive bone. The exposed meat was charred black where it hadn''t disintegrated outright.

    The chest itself had been carved open. The glowing symbol in the center was split, and I could see into the viscera to where the heart should have been but wasn''t any longer, because it had been cleaved away by Balmung.

    The greatest dragon to ever live was dead once more.

    For an instant, I was tempted by the mad thought of stripping off and doing as Siegfried had done, coating myself in the blood of that dead dragon to make myself invincible, or perhaps digging into the flesh for some scrap, some meager heart string that might endow me with Sigurd''s great wisdom. What an incredible resource that would be. How amazing to be so secure in my safety.

    But the thought had no sooner entered my head than it was discarded. The risks were too great. Killing Fafnir once wouldn''t have been possible at all without Siegfried. If I intertwined myself with the dragon as well, tied so much of myself to him the way Siegfried was, what would we do if the very act of me Rayshifting would bring Fafnir down on our heads again?

    The decision was taken out of my hands. Even before my eyes, the great dragon''s corpse began to dissolve, evaporating into the air in much the same way Saber Alter and the other Servants had, like he was decomposing in fast forward. Had he simply been another spirit, summoned to this time and place like Siegfried and the others, or was the world''s corrective force removing him from this Singularity as something that didn''t belong here and now, now that he was dead?

    Another thought for later.

    A burst of static announced Romani''s reconnection.

    "¡ª eliminated!" he crowed. "Good job, everyone!"

    "Romani," I said before he could go any further, "what happened to Jeanne Alter?"

    Even as I spoke, I started moving my bugs to search for her, mentally noting the three Servants who were making their way back towards us. Arash had beaten Berserk Saber, the musketeer-looking Servant who had been with Jeanne Alter at La Charit¨¦, and Emiya had handily dispatched Mister Trench Coat, a Servant I hadn''t seen before who had been wielding a broadsword that had well earned the "broad" part of the name. Georgios had been handling any wyverns that came within range.

    But, when I looked up, the wyverns were retreating straight back the way they''d left. Maybe Fafnir''s death had spooked them. It seemed even creatures so intensely magical had the mundane instinct to run away when the head honcho was beaten.

    "She''s retreating!" said Romani. "At speed! Her heading ¡ª she''s going straight back to Orl¨¦ans!"

    Without disturbing my bugs? Was she ¡ª no, that made some sense. If she had any idea that I could sense her through them, then she had to avoid them as much as possible. The key to escaping pursuit was to break line of sight and get as much distance as possible as discreetly as possible, and for her, the easiest way to do that was to follow the road back to Orl¨¦ans rather than cutting through the forest. Faster, too, if she didn''t have to worry about tripping or dodging branches.

    My feet made it three steps before my brain caught up with my instincts. Like the fact that I couldn''t go anywhere on my own until Fafnir had finished disappearing and wasn''t blocking off the whole damn road.

    "Is there a castle in Orl¨¦ans?" I demanded, and then immediately felt stupid. This place had withstood a protracted siege by the English up until Jeanne liberated it. "One that''s better fortified than the rest of the city?"

    At that moment, one after the other like they''d timed it that way, Arash, Georgios, and Emiya all came out of the trees and leapt up over Fafnir''s dissolving corpse.

    "Master," Arash reported, "enemy Servant ¡ª"

    "I know, I saw," I cut across him.

    Emiya huffed, smirking. "Well, that just takes the fun out of everything, doesn''t it?"

    "It takes some getting used to, for certain," Georgios agreed.

    I pretended they hadn''t said anything. "Romani?"

    "H-hang on a second, I''m checking!"

    "No need!" Jeanne took off at a run. She jumped over Fafnir''s massive forelimb and called back to us, "I know exactly where she''s going!"

    Damn it, did she forget we all couldn''t do stuff like that?

    "Jeanne!" Ritsuka shouted. She didn''t seem to hear him, because she definitely didn''t stop.

    I turned to the other Servants and swiftly started to deliver orders.

    "Arash ¡ª"

    "If it''s okay with you, Master," he interrupted me before I could even begin, "I''m going to stay out here and handle the wyverns." He looked significantly towards the city and the mass of wyverns that was steadily streaming in that general direction. "It''s only a matter of time before they get bold again and decide to head off on their own."

    Fine, I could handle that. It wasn''t a bad idea, even. Someone needed to handle the wyverns, it might as well be the guy who could let off ten-thousand arrows at once.

    "I as well, Master," Siegfried chimed in.

    Damn it, that one stung a bit more, and there wasn''t any time to waste arguing about it.

    "If it''s alright with you," said Georgios, "I would prefer to fight the wyverns, as well. It seems appropriate to my particular talents."

    Was everyone going to stay here and focus on the wyverns?

    I turned to Emiya. "You staying back, too?" I snapped impatiently.

    He shrugged. "I''m Rika''s Servant. I go where she needs me."

    Ritsuka snorted. "Is it bad to say he kind of has a point?"

    "He does! And your place is in the kitchen, my dear house-husband!" Rika cut in.

    Emiya grimaced, but this definitely wasn''t the time for that, so I bit my tongue around the reprimand and turned to the last member of our group. Mozart smiled at me placidly.

    "You?"

    He shrugged, a fluid motion that looked more graceful than it had any right to. "I can''t say I''ll be much use against a swarm of dragons, so it seems you''ll have to suffer my presence."

    I gave him a short nod and finally got around to delivering my orders.

    "Emiya, follow Jeanne. Make sure she keeps herself out of trouble, but try not to get so far ahead that we can''t call you back if we need you."

    Emiya slid a glance to Rika, but Rika just said, "Go forth, my house-husband of justice!"

    He gave an exasperated sigh, but shrugged ¡ª like "what can you do?" ¡ª and burst into motion, leaping over the still dissolving corpse of Fafnir as he raced to catch up with Jeanne.

    "Georgios, Arash, Siegfried, we''ll leave the wyverns to you."

    Nods answered me. "We can at least get you closer before we go," Arash added.

    Good. Not as good as having one or more of them helping out with what was probably going to be the final battle, but I would take what I could get with one Command Spell left to me, right now.

    I turned to what was left of my team. Mash, Ritsuka, Rika, the core we''d started this whole thing with. They looked a little frazzled from the experience of facing down Fafnir, but none of them looked ready to bolt or cower, so I counted that in my favor and gave an abbreviated motivational speech.

    "This is probably it. We might not find the Grail immediately, but with Jeanne Alter out of the picture, that shouldn''t be more than a matter of time. This is likely the final battle."

    I didn''t bother asking if they were ready. They didn''t have the luxury to not be.

    "Let''s go."

    "Right!" the three of them chorused.

    I turned to the Servants, the ones we''d picked up along the way or called on ourselves. "Siegfried, with me. Arash, take Rika. Georgios, Ritsuka."

    They gave varying one to two word assents, and then we all set into motion. Once more, I climbed into Siegfried''s arms, and Arash and Georgios took one of the twins each. Mash and Mozart handled themselves, and with a burst of strength, we were carried up and over the half-gone corpse, clearing the entire thing in one go, to land on the other side.

    The instant his feet touched down again, Siegfried took off, racing down the road much as we had been before we''d stopped to slow our approach. I shut my eyes against the wind and used my one free hand to keep my glasses pinned to my nose so that they didn''t fall off. I heard Rika shriek behind us, but only the once, so I put it out of my mind and focused on other things.

    At that speed, my range kept moving, and on the outer edges, I felt Emiya as he followed along the road that led to Orl¨¦ans. Every second or two, he disappeared out of my range, but Siegfried was keeping pace well enough that I never lost track for more than a moment.

    At length, we came to a small, narrow river and crossed over a wooden bridge, but Jeanne hadn''t slowed down, and so Emiya didn''t slow down and neither did we. Now, however, we started to see the burnt out husks of buildings, or at least I could see them through the brief glimpses of the surrounding bugs that remained living. The further we went, the more and more I saw, and the more and more parallels I could draw between what the Dragon Witch had done to Lyon and what she had done to Orl¨¦ans.

    There wasn''t an Orl¨¦ans.

    All of the people inside of the city had been killed, slaughtered to a man, just like Lyon, and just like Lyon, the entire city had been razed to the ground. Orl¨¦ans didn''t seem to be a city so much anymore as it was a giant, blackened soot mark on the face of France, a burnt out divot that was too completely eviscerated to properly be called even a husk. More and more, I saw no remaining buildings, no signs of habitation, just smoldering dust and charred splinters too tiny to host a flea convention, let alone a family''s home.

    My swarm was rapidly thinning as the population dwindled in the harsh, inhospitable wasteland left behind from Jeanne Alter''s wrath, so I pulled as many as I could from the back ends of my range and sent them off to follow us. Unfortunately, I didn''t have enough time to grab anything particularly nasty, so I had to settle for the meager fliers that could make the trip before they fell from my grasp. Mostly, that meant varying assortments of flies ¡ª nuisances without much bite, of little use but as a distraction.

    A good thing that was probably all I would have been able to do with them to begin with.

    Eventually, we came across another river, or maybe the main body of the same river, because it was much broader and much larger than the previous one. On our side, the remains of some kind of stone structure stood, barely more than a few blackened bricks that really could have been almost anything. A much sturdier stone bridge stretched across, big enough for a carriage or a caravan, the main route into the city from this side.

    Up above us, the army of wyverns circled, confused and in disarray. I didn''t have any idea how long that would last, but unless they were much smarter and cleverer than I really thought they were, it wouldn''t be all that long.

    Here, Siegfried set me down, and a moment later, Arash and Georgios set the twins down, too. Mash jogged up to join us, panting a little from the effort of running the entire way.

    "I''m sorry, Master," said Siegfried. "I''m afraid this is as far as I can take you."

    Arash''s bow materialized in his hands, and like it was some kind of signal, Balmung formed in Siegfried''s. Geogios unsheathed the sword at his hip with a metallic rasp.

    "We''ll handle the wyverns out here," said Arash. "Master, taking out Jeanne Alter will be up to you. If the worst happens, however, don''t be afraid to call for me."

    "Or me," said Siegfried.

    "Right."

    There wasn''t anything else to be said to that.

    The five of us took off again, with me in front, the twins behind me, Mash behind the twins, and Mozart bringing up the rear. As we ran, behind us, Arash pulled back on his bowstring and loosed a barrage of arrows into the swarm of wyverns above us, catching several in vulnerable spots like the neck or wings and striking them from the sky.

    It got the attention of the others, and just as they had in La Charit¨¦, they started to converge on the source of danger. A few stragglers saw our group and peeled off to follow us, but Arash discouraged that with some more well-placed shots, and the rest learned better than to pursue us very quickly indeed.

    "We need to find Jeanne," Ritsuka said between breaths.

    "And Emiya!" Rika added.

    "And Emiya, too."

    "There can''t be too many places they could be," Mash said. "But if they went after the Dragon Witch, they might already be fighting her."

    "They are," I told them. "But I know exactly where they went. It''s the big building with the ¡ª well, you''ll see."

    "That''s still weird," said Rika.

    "Miss Taylor never did explain," Mash muttered.

    I bit my tongue ¡ª metaphorically, because ow ¡ª and cut off the snappish retort I was ready to deliver. Again, omnipotent wish-granting device, perpetual motion engine, spirits of dead heroes brought back to life. Why was me controlling bugs the strangest part? For god''s sake, we were running through a burnt out city in fifteenth century France. What part of this was supposed to be normal?

    The run was longer than I would have liked, and the ground became even more uneven when we left the road and crossed where buildings used to stand so that we could make the trip faster. But where Emiya and Jeanne had made off to became very obvious in short order, because it was the only building still standing amidst the sea of ash and charcoal. There wasn''t any simpler process of elimination than that.

    It couldn''t be called a castle, at least not by the medieval fantasy sense of the word, maybe not even technically speaking, either. It was actually much more like a palace or a mansion, a Gothic thing that looked like it had been carved out of marble, with sloped, tiled roofing and tall, looming windows cut into the sides. It loomed above us, overlooking the heap of burnt ashes that was the rest of Orl¨¦ans, and even if it wasn''t the fortified stronghold I''d been imagining for Jeanne Alter, it seemed appropriate thematically for her to choose a towering monolith at the center of town for her base.

    We could see it in the distance from a long way off, and that meant we had to keep running for several minutes after we first sighted it. Eventually, however, panting a little, we did make it to the front door. We couldn''t hear the fighting that must have been happening through the heavy front doors, but a diminished insect population had managed to escape the massacre that destroyed the rest of the town, so through the various creepy crawlies that lived in the walls, I could feel the vibrations and hear the squelches of the battle raging inside.

    "This way!" I called to the group as I ripped the doors open, and they fell into step behind me as we entered, racing through the extravagant hallways.

    I led them down the corridors, making a beeline for where Emiya was fighting an unknown Servant that summoned some form of biological construct. As we came closer, I could hear the noises with my human ears instead of just with my bugs, and when we rounded the final corner to stand in the open doors of the enormous room ¡ª

    "What the hell is that?" Rika asked incredulously.

    ¡ª it was to see Emiya fighting off a horde of starfish monsters roughly the size of human children. They were about four feet tall, a deep blue with green spots and lumps, and on their undersides, there were fleshy red feelers that lined every limb and led to a sharp-toothed mouth. They bled green blood and filled up the hall from side to side, forming a grotesque mockery of a battle line like the English used to do during the American Revolution. Twenty wide and five deep, there had to be almost a hundred of the things packed together across from Emiya.

    And standing in the center of the formation, carrying a book that I was fairly sure had been bound in human skin, there was a mockery of a man equally as grotesque as his minions. With pallid, grayish skin, greasy black hair slicked back over his skull, and eyes that seemed two sizes too big for his skull, he cast a sickly image, and although his arms were strong and muscular, his body seemed far too small for the robes he wore.

    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    "More interlopers, more interlopers, more interlopers!" he chanted in a rolling voice that just sounded off.

    He shrieked something, and it might have been a command in some strange, incomprehensible tongue, because the line of starfish suddenly surged and rushed towards us with surprising grace, considering what they were. Mash pushed out in front of us and planted her shield.

    "Master, stay back!"

    "I won''t let you hurt Jeanne!" the Servant shouted.

    "Trace on."

    A wall of swords formed in the air around Emiya, and they shot forth like bullets, ripping through the starfish with startling ease and meaty squelches that would have had a younger me losing my lunch. Green blood splattered over the floor and the walls, and the ruined chunks of flesh that fell to the ground stayed there only for a moment before swiftly dissolving into the air.

    "Urk!"

    Next to me, Rika turned away, and vomit splattered over the floor as she heaved up the remnants of the ration bar she''d eaten earlier. Her brother looked as nauseous as she was, but he managed to keep his food down as he rubbed soothing circles across her back.

    Emiya landed next to Mash with catlike grace. "Sorry about that, Master."

    "Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!" the strange Servant howled. His book glowed, and more of the starfish monsters clawed their way into reality, refilling the ranks that Emiya had thinned.

    "W-what are those things?" Rika asked hoarsely. She gagged, but there wasn''t anything else for her to throw up, so it was only a single dry heave.

    "S-some kind of familiar," said Mash. "It seems as though he''s using that book as a medium to summon them."

    "Just so," Emiya agreed. His bow appeared in his hands, and he loosed a volley of arrows to strike down the wave of starfish that charged us. "In fact, I''d be willing to bet it''s his Noble Phantasm. I''m not sure whether he''s summoning those monsters or making them up as he goes, but either way, it seems like there isn''t a limit on how many he can call upon, just a limit on how many he can feasibly fit in this room."

    More monsters bubbled up from the aether.

    I nodded. "And you sent Jeanne on ahead?"

    My meager swarm gave me a disjointed view of their battle, and so far, it was looking pretty evenly matched. I didn''t have any intention of letting it swing in the Dragon Witch''s favor.

    Emiya smirked. "Well, it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. This guy and I both operate on a similar principle, so I''m naturally the one best suited to handling him."

    "Summoning?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Raw numbers."

    More swords appeared, and they shot off, mowing down the advancing starfish. More green blood splattered across the floor, and Rika and Ritsuka both looked queasy, but neither of them puked again.

    The strange Servant shrieked again, and his ranks were restored instantly as more starfish clawed their way through the veil and took form.

    "There''s a slight delay before he can replenish his lost forces," said Emiya. He swung his arm out and cut down this wave of enemies, too. "I''m going to make an opening for all of you. Before he can summon more of those things, you need to make it past him and go help Jeanne. She needs it far more than I do."

    "You''ll catch up?" Rika asked.

    "When I can." Emiya smirked. "It''s surprisingly hard to kill this guy without risking the building''s structural integrity."

    "We''ll leave this guy to you, then," I said.

    He nodded. More starfish formed across from our group.

    "After this next wave, make a run for it. I''ll cover you and clear the way."

    He raised a hand, and another wall of swords formed in the air. His arm dropped. "Go!"

    And as those swords mowed down even more of the giant starfish, our group took off at a sprint with Mash out front to push through anything that survived to attack us.

    "I won''t let you!" the strange Servant howled, and with another shriek, he summoned yet more of those monsters to stand in our way. They surged forward to meet us, to drown us in their numbers and do whatever it was they were designed to do. My imagination didn''t come up with anything pretty.

    More swords formed, pointing not forwards but down, and they dropped like a thousand guillotines, killing the freshly summoned creatures gruesomely. The instant their job was done, the swords vanished into motes of golden light, and our way forward was clear.

    "No!"

    Sprouting from the remains of their fallen brethren, more starfish suddenly grew to block our way. Their teeth gnashed and their stubby feelers wiggled, and they made wet, gurgling sounds as they leapt at us like starving lions.

    I lifted my arm, preparing to fire my measly six-shot Gandr to put them down.

    But a pair of spinning blades ¡ª one black, one white ¡ª curved around our group and scythed through the starfish, cutting them all apart like so much wheat. Ritsuka and Rika were white-faced, but the both of them deliberately focused their eyes on the door we were headed towards and didn''t let their eyes turn towards the carnage, even as green blood splattered over our feet.

    The strange Servant shrieked again, but we crossed the threshold and left the room, racing down the empty hallway as he screamed after us. No more starfish abominations formed to attack us, so I had to trust that Emiya did indeed know what he was doing and could handle the issue himself.

    Considering how easily he carved apart the things, once he managed to get close enough to attack that nutjob directly, I had to think it would all be over.

    "Up the stairs, then left," I told everyone. "They''re in the master suite."

    We didn''t slow down except to climb the stairs, and even then only because we had to, taking them as fast as we could. At the top of the stairwell, we made a sharp left and continued down the hall, and here and now, the metallic clang of Jeanne and her evil half fighting echoed out along the corridor.

    "What an awful racket," Mozart mumbled.

    "Is she¡­?" Ritsuka asked.

    "They''re both still alive," I confirmed for him.

    "Then let''s go help Jeanne!" said Rika.

    The doors to the grand hall or master suite or whatever the proper term was were half ajar, and we burst through them so forcefully that they banged off the wall, dragging the attention of both women inside towards us.

    "Jeanne!" shouted Ritsuka.

    "Oh look," the Dragon Witch sneered. "Your little friends are here."

    Jeanne looked back at us. "Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, Taylor." She sighed. "I''m sorry. I got selfish and ran on ahead without you."

    "And we''re very angry about that!" Rika said.

    "But it doesn''t matter!" Ritsuka added. "We''re here now!"

    The Dragon Witch laughed. "How quaint! They''ve come to throw themselves on the fire with you, you fake saint!"

    "I never claimed to be a saint!" said Jeanne. "That was always a label other people put on me, of their own wishes. I am nothing more than a simple country girl who set out to protect the nation she loved with all her heart!"

    Jeanne Alter snarled and swung her thin-bladed sword at her counterpart. Jeanne blocked it with the shaft of her flag, grunting.

    "And the very people you saved threw you away the instant it inconvenienced them!"

    "It''s true that they let me die," said Jeanne. "The very thought of the Englishmen who treated me so poorly makes my blood boil even now! But simple anger and hatred are different things! No matter what, I never once carried hatred in my heart, because it was too full of all the memories I cherished that kept me going throughout every battle!"

    She threw Jeanne Alter back, and Jeanne Alter grunted. "What are you nattering about now, you country bumpkin?"

    "My family," Jeanne said simply. "My mother and father, my brothers, the farm we tended to every day. No matter how vividly I can recall the blood and suffering of the battlefield, the memories of those I loved were all the more precious and all the more vibrant. They were my shield against the cruelties of the world, and they helped me to keep going, even when I wanted nothing more than to give up."

    She held out her hand as though offering it to her evil half.

    "Isn''t that why you''re so furious? Because you long so desperately for those simpler, kinder days?"

    And Jeanne Alter¡­flinched.

    Jeanne''s fingers curled and she pulled her hand back. "Or is it the very fact you don''t have those memories that makes your rage so potent? Because you have nothing to shield yourself from the grief and the anger."

    Jeanne Alter regained her bearings. "What does it matter?" But she was still off kilter. "Who needs those wretched memories? I''m still Jeanne d''Arc! The Maid of Orl¨¦ans! The Dragon Witch! Memories or not, I''ll kill you and this abominable country just the same!"

    "Yes, you are," Jeanne said sadly. "And that''s why¡­even if I have to kill you, I can''t help but pity you, the me who never knew kindness."

    "RAAH!" Jeanne Alter let out an inarticulate scream as she charged her counterpart, and Jeanne met her calmly, blocking the wild swings of her sword with the shaft of her flag ¡ª not easily, not effortlessly, but successfully all the same.

    "Miss Jeanne!" said Mash.

    She made to go and help, but my hand on her shoulder stopped her. "Miss Taylor! We can''t just sit here and watch!"

    "We aren''t," I said hurriedly.

    Rika grinned like a shark. "Senpai''s got a plan."

    Still getting used to being referred to that way, but whatever.

    "We don''t know how quickly the Dragon Witch can summon another Servant," I said, rushing through the logic. "She hasn''t yet, but she still might. Mash, I need you to help Jeanne and keep her distracted. Mozart, your Noble Phantasm ¡ª the instant you see a good opening, use it to slow her down, make her weak. While she''s vulnerable, Mash, hit her as hard as you can, and don''t stop until she''s defeated."

    "Right!" said Mash. She turned to put our plan into action, but I stopped her again. "Miss Taylor?"

    In one smooth motion, I yanked my dagger out of its sheath and handed it off to her. She took it, stricken.

    "Don''t worry about any of the other functions," I told her. "Just put the pointy end where it''ll hurt when you need to finish her off."

    She looked down at the dagger, uncertain, and I remembered then that Mash technically hadn''t ever killed someone before, not even another Servant. For all that she''d fought several, it was always someone else who delivered the final blow, and everything else she''d killed was always a familiar or an undead or a wyvern, a relatively dumb beast that was too dangerous to leave be. Jeanne Alter was the first thing with self and agency that she was going to have to personally end.

    Maybe it was too much for her. She was older than I was when I killed Calvert, but she was more sheltered, less worldly, and when I''d pulled that trigger, I was backed into a corner without that many other options.

    "If it''s too much," I started.

    "No." She tightened her grip on the nano-thorn dagger. "I''ll do what I have to."

    She tucked it away inside a compartment in her shield, and then she turned away and leapt towards the fight. Jeanne Alter shrieked as she was forced to turn away from her counterpart and slash at Mash to avoid a crushing blow.

    "You''re in the way, you pest!"

    "I won''t let you hurt anyone else!" was Mash''s retort.

    Jeanne Alter''s reply was swallowed by the resounding clang of her sword on Mash''s shield, and now forced to face two opponents, she pulled out the flag she''d been carrying and used it in her off hand like a bo staff. With surprising skill, she wielded them both to fight Jeanne and Mash together, blocking one with the flag staff and attacking the other in the same breath with her sword.

    "Go, Mash!" Rika cheered. "Kick her ass!"

    It didn''t feel any better now than it had every time before to have to stand in the back and watch the fight, knowing that there wasn''t a way for me to meaningfully contribute. The swarm I had was tiny, miniscule compared to the vast clouds of bugs, the galaxy of insects I''d had access to over the past month during our trek through the countryside, and most of them were ordinary house flies to boot.

    And now Mash had my only real offense. Well, there wasn''t anything to be done about that, was there? As a Servant, anything she wielded instantly became a weapon for use against another Servant, and while Jeanne Alter wasn''t as fast or as strong as Saber Alter had been in Fuyuki, she was still blindingly fast compared to an ordinary human like me, so trying to finish her off myself was just stupid.

    It quickly became obvious that Jeanne Alter being slower and weaker than Saber Alter also didn''t mean she was weak or slow, either. She was fast enough to keep up with both Jeanne and Mash simultaneously, no doubt in no small part due to the fact that Jeanne wasn''t at her best to begin with and Mash was still learning how to use whichever hero was fused to her to its fullest potential. She blocked Jeanne with the staff of her flag, and with the other hand, she fended off Mash with punishing strikes of her sword that let off eardrum-shattering shrieks as they collided with the flat of Mash''s shield.

    But she was getting sloppier, because she was getting angrier. The angrier she got, the less precise her blows became and the less careful her steps were, the more energy wasted when she swung or turned or blocked. It wasn''t enough to do her in, to make her miss a step or leave herself open.

    It would be enough that just one more distraction would give Mozart the opening he needed.

    "Mozart, are you ready?" I asked him.

    "Whenever my chance materializes, I will take it," he promised.

    I waited for a chance of my own, refusing to blink as I watched the fight. My right palm itched and tingled with phantom sensation. My skittering swarm in the walls stilled, peeking through the cracks to watch from myriad angles.

    And then Jeanne Alter lashed out with a particularly strong blow, and Mash stumbled back a step from the force behind it, and as Jeanne Alter lifted her flag to bring it down on Jeanne like an ax, I saw my opportunity and took it. My phantom limb lashed out, found my target, and pulled.

    Jeanne Alter staggered, dumbfounded, as the thread tying her flag to its shaft came undone, and the fabric unraveled to flap over her face.

    I''d been trying to yank on the whole thing, startle her by pulling on it in an unexpected direction, but it seemed she was just too strong, because undoing the knot holding it all bound was the only thing I''d managed.

    "Who did that?" she snarled, whipping her flag out of her face.

    As her eyes found me, I palmed one of my final two runestones and smiled at her. Her rumbling growl was so loud I could almost feel it from across the room.

    "You bitch!"

    She lifted her sword as though she was going to strike me down from where she stood, but whatever she was about to do, I wasn''t about to give her the chance.

    "Jeanne, Mash, eyes!"

    I threw my runestone as hard as I could, and Jeanne and Mash turned their heads away, squeezing their eyes shut. I shut my own, hiding in the corner of my elbow, watching the runestone soar through my bugs, and shouted, "Anfang!"

    Jeanne Alter let out a blood-curdling screech as the runestone exploded and a bright light flashed, searing against my eyelids. I heard the whooping of her sword as she lashed out blindly around her, like she was trying to feel out where everyone was or cover for her weakness by forcing Jeanne and Mash to stay away.

    Neither of them could get close. When I squinted my eyes back open, the two of them had backed away, safely out of range of Jeanne Alter''s sword, watching her warily as they waited for her to wind down.

    And Mozart stepped forward from the back of the group, breezing past us like a gentle wind, and raised his arms.

    "Requiem for Death!"

 Chapter XXVII: Kyrie, Eleison

    Chapter XXVII: Kyrie, Eleison

    Mozart raised his baton, and a familiar, powerful melody whose name I had never known as a child echoed out as though an entire orchestra stood behind him, playing at full volume. Voices sang Latin verses in somber, reverent tones, violins strummed, and drums thundered, filling up the entire room.

    I wasn''t much of a music girl, but even I couldn''t stop myself from feeling moved by the majesty and emotion of it all.

    Jeanne Alter took it like a physical blow, staggering backwards, and she pressed her hands to her ears as though she could block out Mozart''s Noble Phantasm just that easily. A ragged scream tore itself out of her mouth, her eyes squeezed shut, and she thrashed about like she was in the throes of some kind of psychotic break, tossing her head from side to side.

    Jeanne and Mash weren''t stupid. They saw the opportunity the same as I did, and they rushed towards her to finish the battle while she was distracted and weakened, taking advantage of the opening Mozart made for them.

    Jeanne Alter, however, was determined not to go down that easily, and whatever Mozart''s Noble Phantasm had done to her, she made up for it by being twice as tenacious. As Mash and Jeanne drew close, she lashed out with her sword, and a tongue of flame whipped out from the arc of her blade, forcing the other two to back away. Mash blocked it with her shield, but Jeanne had to retreat further back, because she had no defense like that aside from her own Noble Phantasm.

    Mash tried to push further forward behind the cover of her shield, but Jeanne Alter kept swinging, and the air crackled with the gouts of flame that washed over the surface of the shield and kept the two of them at a distance. Eventually, even Mash was forced to step back and retreat from the sweltering heat that the rest of us could feel even from all the way across the room.

    It looked like a massive effort of will, but panting for breath, Jeanne Alter forced herself to calm and stand straight, or at least as straight as she seemed able, right then. Her yellow eyes seemed almost to glow, and her lips curled as she pinned Mozart with a glare that seethed brimstone and hellfire. The floor around her ignited, and so did her sword as she lifted it up over her head.

    "Oh dear," said Mozart.

    And then a truck hit me and the twins, sending us back into the hallway and skidding along the carpet. My lungs seized in my chest as I gasped, struggling to stand as every survival instinct in my head screamed at me to get up before I was struck down.

    For an instant, I was back in Brockton Bay, fighting against the current as Leviathan tried to scour both me and the city away beneath his waves and his water. I felt as I did then, desperately trying to gulp down enough air to stay alive and climb back to my feet.

    Back inside the room, Jeanne Alter''s sword came down.

    "La Grondement du Haine!"

    "Mozart!" Ritsuka choked out breathlessly.

    Through the few bugs still inside the room that could stand the heat, I saw a wave of fire sweep across the floor, and when it reached Mozart, it split, encircling him in blazing red flames. Stakes rose out of the ground, and with nowhere to go and no place to dodge, Mozart wasn''t able to avoid them.

    My heart clenched in my chest as I watched, helpless to do anything else. One stake first, punching straight through his chest, then another from behind, skewering his thigh, then another, and another, and another. One, five, ten, an even dozen in total, they pierced through him one after the other, and then, as though to make extra sure to kill him if a dozen fatal blows wasn''t enough, the circle of fire surged inwards and collapsed on his body, igniting him and the stakes both.

    For a long handful of seconds, the moment hung, and his twisted mockery of a funeral pyre continued to burn. The heat of the flames washed over the twins and me. I felt it on my cheeks and my lips.

    And then, with a heavy woosh, they vanished, leaving behind a few glowing embers and a sunburst scorch mark on the floor. There was no more sign of Mozart.

    "He''s¡­gone," Rika croaked.

    On the far side of the room, Jeanne Alter stood, and she breathed heavily through clenched teeth. Her arms trembled and twitched. There was no triumph in her expression, only more inconsolable hatred and rage.

    "You monster!" Ritsuka shouted hoarsely. "Orl¨¦ans! La Charit¨¦! Lyon! P¨¦rigueux and Marie! Now Mozart! How many people are you going to hurt before you realize that this is all wrong?"

    There''s never enough, Ritsuka, I thought, trying to even out my breathing. Weakly, I managed to pull myself to my knees. Even if she killed the whole country, that still wouldn''t quench her thirst for violence.

    Because it was the entire reason she existed. I got it, now. Jeanne was right, back then. The Dragon Witch wasn''t simply Jeanne''s worst parts, magnified and brought to the surface. She was a dark reflection, all of the ugliness Jeanne had cast away so that she could save a country on the brink.

    She couldn''t be anything else, with a Noble Phantasm like that.

    "Shut up!" Jeanne Alter spat back at him. "I''m getting sick and tired of you and that useless fake yapping at me about the poor, innocent people of France, and I''ve had it up to here with your little team of nuisances constantly getting in my way! You care about these traitorous swine so much? Then you can die with all of the rest of them!"

    She lifted up her flag, banner fluttering, and smashed the butt of the staff down against the floor. The shaft glowed brightly for a brief moment, and then it raced down the length of it like a meter depleting. From the bottom, amorphous black shapes crawled along the ground, forming into pools of shadow.

    And from these pools of shadow, four figures slowly rose, woven together from black ink like silhouettes cast in obsidian. One was the Assassin Arash had killed back in La Charit¨¦, one the unmistakable Saint Martha who had been defeated at Lyon, one was the Saber who had fought Arash just earlier today, and the last¡­

    My heart skipped a beat.

    "Dracul," I rasped.

    None of them spoke. They didn''t even seem properly there, like they were smoke bound together in the shape of Servants, familiar but also distorted. Their bodies were so hazy that I wasn''t sure I couldn''t see through them or if it was just a trick of the light.

    "I don''t have time for a proper summoning right now," Jeanne Alter said furiously, "so why don''t you play with these shades while I get the real deal ready?"

    She gestured with her sword. "Attack!"

    The shades leapt into motion, and Jeanne and Mash moved to intercept them. The smoky simulacrum of Martha''s staff slammed down on the shaft of Jeanne''s flag, and Dracul''s lance made a strange, weirdly off clang as it smacked against Mash''s shield, but they were both stopped cold.

    Assassin and Saber, on the other hand, ignored our two Servants entirely. They made their way towards us Masters instead, slipping around Mash and Jeanne while they were preoccupied with the other shades.

    "Shit!"

    I scrambled the rest of the way to my feet, trying to ignore the twinge of my diaphragm that was still getting over Mozart''s desperate push to get us out of the way. One arm came up as my meager swarm poured out of the nooks and crannies of the room, seething through the cracks and the breaks and the gaps, and I braced with my other hand as my circuits churned and burned.

    There wasn''t time for anything special or clever, no rapidfire pulse of my measly Gandr, so instead, I supercharged it with double, triple, quadruple the energy I usually put into it, until an orb of crackling dark energy the size of a large softball clung to my fingertips. My swarm, I set about the shade of Saber, distracting him ¡ª her? I didn''t fucking know ¡ª as a buzzing cloud while I took aim at Assassin.

    "Gandr!"

    My Gandr shot leapt from my hand with a sizzling fwoomp, and it impacted Assassin in the blink of an eye. I didn''t expect it to do much more than buy me a few seconds to back up and use my final Command Spell to summon Siegfried, but against all odds, it sent her staggering and stumbling, like she had actually just taken a solid hit.

    Had I¡­really just hurt her?

    Beep-beep!

    "Not the time, Romani!" I spat out.

    "I''ll be quick," he said hurriedly. "Whatever those shades are, they''re not real Servants. They''re not as fast, they''re not as strong, and they can''t use Noble Phantasms."

    Oh.

    A savage grin curled on my lips.

    Well, that changed a lot, didn''t it?

    "Mash!" I shouted over at her. "They can''t use Noble Phantasms! One good hit ¡ª use the knife!"

    I pulled back my swarm and created a thin wall of chitin between us and Saber and Assassin, and then I turned to the twins, who were climbing to their own unsteady feet.

    "Do you two know how to use the spells preloaded into those uniforms of yours?"

    Rika nodded, wincing, one arm curled protectively around her gut, and Ritsuka added, "Da Vinci gave us a crash course when she had the time."

    It would have to be good enough.

    "Pace your shots," I told them. "We just need to keep those two shadow Servants distracted and busy long enough for Jeanne and Mash to take care of theirs. Got it?"

    They both gave me a nod.

    "Here they come."

    Assassin had recovered enough, and she charged through my swarm, only to meet a pair of Gandr shots from the twins directly to the face (although one actually went wide). My swarm, meanwhile, dispersed out and honed back in on Saber, heckling her to keep her from coming to Assassin''s aid. She lashed out with her rapier and cut down thin swathes of bugs with every swing, and it was only a matter of time until she beat me with sheer attrition.

    The twins kept up their fire, smacking Assassin over and over again with staggered Gandr shots that splashed almost ineffectually against her body. After the first to hit her face, they''d switched to center mass, and Assassin hunched over the blows as though they were punches.

    Eventually, the twins exhausted themselves, and they had to back up, panting for breath from the exertion of firing so many Gandr shots off so rapidly. They had bought us a measly twenty seconds.

    Good job, you two.

    Because those twenty extra seconds was all it took for Jeanne and Mash to finish off the two shades of Dracul and Martha ¡ª who disappeared without even the slightest splatter of blood from their wounds ¡ª and turn to engage the remaining two. Mash charged forward, shield in front of her, and as my swarm suddenly dispersed from Saber, she smashed into him like a freight train with a shout. Saber tumbled away and rolled across the floor to land in a heap against the wall, and Mash kept going, jumping up and slamming the bottom edge of her shield against Saber''s neck in an absolutely brutal blow.

    The shade of Saber vanished instantly. His head wasn''t even severed; he just disappeared the instant Mash''s shield hit his neck.

    Jeanne targeted the shade of Assassin, leaping up, and gripping her flag with both hands, she brought the shaft down on Assassin with the full force of her strength. Assassin crumpled to her knees, unable to withstand the attack, and Jeanne followed up with a stab from the pointed head of her flag like she was wielding a spear.

    Assassin couldn''t recover in time to avoid it, and just like that, her shade was defeated as well. As the others had, she disappeared instantly, no blood or viscera from her wounds. Like she was nothing more than a shadow to begin with.

    With all of the shades defeated, Mash and Jeanne turned back around to face the Dragon Witch, and she was absolutely livid.

    "You!" Jeanne Alter seethed. "You, you, you, you, you! Why won''t you just die, already!"

    She lifted her sword up above her head again, and flames swirled around her feet. The heat became sweltering again, filling the room with an uncomfortable haze.

    She was going to use her Noble Phantasm again.

    "Mash!" I shouted.

    But Mash was one step ahead of me, and she positioned herself between Jeanne and her counterpart, hefting that massive shield of hers.

    "La Grondement ¡ª"

    "Lord ¡ª"

    "¡ª du Haine!"

    "Chaldeas!"

    The wall of light formed in front of Mash, and the tongue of flame arced from Jeanne Alter, racing towards Mash. It collided with the wall of ephemeral bricks and broke into a line of fire, and from the flames came more stakes that crashed into Lord Chaldeas one after the other. Mash grunted and flinched with each blow, but the stakes broke against the ramparts and shattered, and with nothing to feed the fire, the flames guttered and died, ineffectual.

    When Lord Chaldeas dissipated, both Mash and Jeanne were fine, and Jeanne Alter growled.

    "Stop getting in my way!"

    She lashed out with a tongue of flame, and Mash weathered the blow with her shield, then took a step forward. Jeanne Alter lashed out again, and again, and again, and Mash withstood them one after the other, steadily advancing through the fire with gritted teeth and sheer determination.

    Finally, Jeanne Alter lost what little patience she''d had left.

    "RAAAH!"

    She leapt at Mash, abandoning her flag to grip her sword with two hands, and she brought it down in a single, powerful blow that crashed against Mash''s shield with a thunderous clang that set my teeth on edge.

    "Mash!" Jeanne shouted, worried.

    But Mash discarded her shield, using its bulk to push Jeanne Alter''s sword down and out of the way, and I saw the glint of something metallic in her hand as she stepped close in, too close for that sword to be of any use at all. Her arm wound back for a swing.

    The nano-thorn dagger, I realized.

    And then she thrust forward and buried it in Jeanne Alter''s chest, right in the middle, where her armor didn''t cover. Jeanne Alter stumbled back a step, a startled gasp tearing out of her mouth, but Mash pressed forward and took hold of the knife with both hands to push it deeper. A desperate shout ripped past her lips, like she was putting everything she had into one final attack.

    Because she had to, just to keep going. She had to force herself forward, or else she would have pulled back and given the Dragon Witch time to recover.

    So Mash kept going, kept pushing, just so she could hold onto the momentum and resolve to finish the job, and Jeanne Alter staggered back until she slammed back against the far wall. The sword she''d been holding clattered to the floor, and one arm scrambled for purchase on Mash''s shoulder as the other reached reflexively for the handle of the knife buried in her chest.

    For several long seconds, they stayed there, Mash''s shoulders heaving from the adrenaline that was no doubt starting to drain from her limbs. Jeanne Alter gasped and grunted weakly, but was still clinging onto her life, whatever that was worth to a Servant.

    "Mash," the real Jeanne mumbled worriedly.

    As though some spell had been broken, Mash stumbled backwards, and with her iron grip on my dagger, the blade was torn out of Jeanne Alter''s chest. She let out a ragged gasp and sagged, pressing both hands to the bleeding gash carved into her chest just to the right of her sternum. At that position and with that angle, it had to have hit what should have been her heart.

    Mash, panting, took several more steps backwards until she was standing next to her shield. Her trembling fingers remained clutched around the hilt of my knife, and her gaze remained locked on Jeanne Alter''s body, wary and ready for the fight to continue.

    But Jeanne Alter didn''t straighten and spit fire. Instead, she slid to the ground, and her form started to waver, becoming fuzzy around the edges like a blurry photo.

    "You¡­" she seethed weakly. She managed to lift her head and glare, but it didn''t seem aimed at any particular one of us so much as the whole group. "You worthless¡­scheming rats. You stupid¡­annoying¡­vermin. I have¡­the Holy Grail. How could I be beaten¡­by you motley rejects?"

    Cautiously, I stepped back into the room and closer to Jeanne Alter, watching as she slowly became more and more incoherent, like she was struggling just to keep herself together and fighting a losing battle. The twins followed behind me, hesitant but hopeful.

    "Did we beat her?" asked Rika. "Please tell me we beat her. The suspense is killing me."

    "Yeah," I said quietly. "We beat her."

    More confident now, I made my way over to Mash, and I dispersed what was left of my swarm to scope out the situation both with Emiya''s fight and with the wyverns outside. When I got closer, I could see a stream of silent tears glittering on Mash''s cheeks. She didn''t even seem to notice them, or if she did, she was still going in spite of them.

    "Jeanne Alter defeated," she said barely above a whisper.

    Gently, I moved up beside her and reached down to the hand gripping my knife. It was slick with Jeanne Alter''s blood.

    "You can let go now, Mash," I murmured, carefully prying at her fingers. If they weren''t covered with gloves, I was willing to bet her knuckles would have been stark white.

    Mash gasped and suddenly let go, and I fumbled about to catch the dagger before it could fall and hurt one of us as she stumbled back as though the weight of what she''d just done had finally hit her. A glance showed her wide, horrified eyes and her gaping mouth as she gulped down breath after panicked breath.

    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

    The dagger made its way back to its sheath ¡ª that nifty function Da Vinci had added would hopefully get it clean without any further effort ¡ª and I stepped closer to Mash as the twins huddled around her, concern written across their faces.

    "What''s wrong with her?" Rika asked, wringing her hands.

    "Senpai?" Ritsuka turned to me. "Is Mash going to be okay?"

    "It affects everyone differently," I told them. "Their first kill." To Mash, I said. "Just breathe, Mash. Calm down. Pace yourself. Just breathe."

    I tried to remember the training I''d been given. Dealing with trauma in the field was supposed to be something you didn''t learn until you officially graduated into the Protectorate, but I''d had a couple crash courses during my time as a Ward, and I tried to remember what I''d been told back then.

    Unfortunately, I was largely drawing a blank. All I could remember was breathing exercises and soothing words. My own experience killing Coil was largely useless, since I''d had a long time to come to terms with the inevitability.

    "Deep breaths, Mash," I mumbled. "In through the nose, hold it for a few seconds, then out through the mouth."

    Mash did as I told her, sucking in breaths through her nose, holding them as long as she could, and letting them out through her mouth. Slowly, her breathing started to calm and even out.

    "That''s it. Just like that."

    Ritsuka, of his own initiative, reached out with one hand and started to rub circles around her upper back.

    "Easy does it, Mash," he said soothingly.

    Jeanne Alter chuckled bitterly. "Done in¡­by an amateur. At least the English¡­were professionals."

    I pointedly ignored her, although Rika and Ritsuka spared her enough attention to give her silent glares.

    Eventually, Mash''s breathing evened out completely and she calmed down enough to steady herself.

    "I''m¡­ I''m okay," she said, sucking in one more deep breath through her nose. She nodded as though to convince herself. "I''m okay, Senpai."

    "Are you sure?" said Ritsuka.

    Mash nodded again, and in a stronger voice, said, "I''m okay, Master."

    We all stepped back to give her some room. Ritsuka stayed close enough to keep a comforting hand on her back.

    "You have good friends, Mash," said Jeanne kindly.

    Mash smiled wanly. She wasn''t okay, but she couldn''t afford to fall apart right now, and I knew that so well that it almost hurt to look at. Hopefully, Romani would be able to help her more once this was all over with and we were back at Chaldea.

    I stopped cold, my brow furrowing, and my swarm shifted and condensed as something moved through my net. It was small and fast and making a beeline through the hallways ¡ª

    Emiya was chasing after it.

    Wait, then that meant ¡ª

    "Eh? Emiya?" Rika asked, befuddled. "Get out of the way ¡ª"

    "Shit!"

    I took one step, wrapping my arms as best I could around our entire group, and then I threw myself bodily with all my strength towards the side, as far away from Jeanne Alter as I could. Rika and Mash both squeaked and Ritsuka let out a yelp, and we all went down in a tumble of limbs, just in time for a blur to race in from the hallway and through the open doors like a whirlwind. Jeanne shrieked in surprise and dove out of the way, but it ignored her and went straight for Jeanne Alter.

    "Jeanne!" the Servant Emiya had been fighting wailed. "Oh, Jeanne! Jeanne! Look at what''s become of you! Look at what these horrible people did to you! Oh, Jeanne! Jeanne!"

    "Gilles," the Dragon Witch mumbled.

    "Gilles?" It was Jeanne who said it, not me, as she slowly pulled herself to her feet. Her brow knitted together, and a look of befuddled confusion drew her face tight.

    "I couldn''t do it, Gilles," Jeanne Alter said quietly. "They¡­stopped me. They wouldn''t¡­wouldn''t let me¡­destroy France. I couldn''t get¡­revenge."

    "Hush, Jeanne," Gilles told her gently as he stroked her cheek. "Hush, now. Sleep. Rest, and I''ll take care of everything. I promise. I''ll take revenge for you. When you wake, I''ll have finished everything."

    "Rest¡­" The Dragon Witch rolled it over weakly. "Yes¡­ Yes, I¡­think I will. You''re right. I can¡­leave everything¡­to you¡­"

    And with a final sigh, she broke apart into particles of light and vanished, leaving behind ¡ª

    Wait. Wait, wait, wait. No, hold the fucking phone. Are you telling me¡­

    "So, that''s how it is, then," said Jeanne. "Yes, that''s about as I expected."

    This whole time¡­

    "And you¡­ You are Gilles, but not the one I knew," Jeanne continued. There was something in her voice, some mix of sadness and anger. Disappointment, maybe.

    "She had the Grail?" I demanded, trying to control my voice. "The entire time, Jeanne Alter was carrying the Grail around with her?"

    We could have ended this entire fucking debacle back in La Charit¨¦? Almost as soon as we got here?

    "No," Jeanne said as Gilles picked the Grail up gingerly. I was so focused on it and how utterly livid I was that I almost didn''t notice Emiya arrive, hanging back in the hallway. "It''s even simpler than that. You see, I began to suspect something was amiss earlier. It isn''t to say I never harbored darkness in my heart, but I was not vengeful and I was not at any point consumed by my wrath. For that reason, the Heroic Spirit ''Jeanne d''Arc Alter'' shouldn''t exist, not in accordance with proper history."

    "Your intuition is as formidable as ever it was," said Gilles. "Yes, it''s true. The Dragon Witch is not an aspect of the Jeanne I loved in her life. She was instead the wish I made upon the Grail."

    The walls hummed with the buzzing of my depleted swarm.

    "We could have finished this entire thing a month ago?" I asked tightly.

    "All those people who could have been saved¡­" Ritsuka whispered shakily.

    "My feet want revenge," Rika muttered, sounding angry herself.

    "She was never me at all, was she?" Jeanne asked Gilles. "She was nothing more than a fantasy you concocted."

    Gilles whirled around to face her. "I wanted you! You, you, you, Jeanne! From the bottom of my heart, I wished that you would come back to us! To France! To me! But the Grail¡­" He sobbed, of all things. "The Grail, the Grail! It refused me! It refused to grant my wish! It refused to bring you back to life!"

    His hands shook, and his voice swelled with fury. "So if I couldn''t have the genuine article, I would have my own Jeanne! The Jeanne I carried in my heart, the Saint I followed throughout those battles ¡ª even if it was a fake, as long as I had you, then that was all that mattered!"

    "All of this," I said lowly, "because you didn''t know how to deal with your grief?"

    That¡­ That hit closer to home than I was really comfortable with.

    "Who are you to judge me, girl?" Gilles snarled at me. "How could you understand my sorrow? My anguish? How could you understand the pain of losing your whole world so cruelly?"

    "And that somehow justifies all of this?" I retorted. "You''re going to take out your pain on the whole country, tear down everything she gave her life to build, and you think that''s going to make it better somehow? Like it''ll hurt any less when you''re standing on the ashes of everything she loved?"

    The buzzing of my swarm vibrated in the walls to punctuate my words. The twins glanced around a little nervously, like they were afraid they might get drawn into the crossfire when this devolved into a fight.

    Fuck. Maybe that was just one of my hot buttons. I''d been there so many times before that grief and I were old friends, and having it shoved in my face like that just rubbed me raw.

    "They don''t deserve it!" he thundered. "They don''t deserve the world she built! They don''t deserve the happiness that they robbed from her! I won''t allow them to have it!"

    "Gilles," Jeanne broke in firmly. "Whatever you intended, you must have known I wouldn''t abide your plans. No matter how tragic my ending, I would never have turned on the country and the people I loved so much."

    Gilles took in a deep breath through his nose and reigned in his anger. I scowled and tried to ease mine, and in the walls, the buzzing lowered to a quiet hum.

    "Yes," said Gilles. "Yes, of course. Of course you would forgive them. Of course you would never turn your back on this country. Of course you would keep loving it, even as it betrayed you. Your kindness, your compassion, those are the things I loved most about you. That''s why¡­ my wish¡­ It was never for your sake, Jeanne. The revenge to be taken on this wretched country¡­ IT WAS MY OWN!"

    He threw his hands out. "I WILL DESTROY THIS GODFORSAKEN LAND!" he raved. "I WILL SLAUGHTER THESE GODFORSAKEN PEOPLE! THESE PEOPLE THAT TOOK YOU FROM ME, THE GOD THAT ABANDONED YOU, THE KING THAT LEFT YOU TO DIE! I''LL NEVER FORGIVE ANY OF THEM! EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAS TO BE WIPED FROM THIS EARTH!"

    He pointed one bony, long-nailed finger at her. "AND IF YOU STAND IN MY WAY, THEN YOU''RE MY ENEMY AS WELL!"

    Jeanne''s face fell, and for a brief moment, she closed her eyes and grimaced, like she was in great pain. But when she opened them again, they were strong and resolute, and her face was etched with determination.

    "If that is how it has to be¡­" Jeanne brandished her flag. "Then I will stop you myself!"

    Gilles lifted up the arm holding the Grail. "HOLY GRAIL! GRANT ME THIS WISH! GIVE ME MY HEART''S DESIRE! I CALL FORTH ¡ª"

    A meaty squelch cut him off, and he stumbled backwards. The Grail tumbled from his hands and clattered to the ground as he clutched at the long, twisted arrow that was burrowed in his chest, and even Jeanne gasped as his red blood splattered over the floor.

    "No," he rasped. His knees gave out and he slumped against the wall, much the way Jeanne Alter had. "No, no¡­"

    Feebly, he reached out for the Grail where it had fallen, but it was too far away and he didn''t have the strength anymore.

    "I was so close," he said. "So close. I¡­ I could have done it¡­ I could have had my¡­"

    Jeanne stepped towards him, expression unreadable, and as she came upon his pitiful form, she knelt down next to him and gently placed her hands on his.

    "It''s over, Gilles," she told him softly. "This is enough, don''t you think? It''s time for you to get some rest."

    "Jeanne," Gilles gasped.

    "You believed in a simple farm girl, once," she said. "You were there by her side when she liberated this city. Even if this is what has become of you now, the man from that time was someone I cherished. That''s why¡­ I can''t bear to see you in such pain."

    She lifted her hand and gently cupped his cheek. Trembling, he reached up and cupped her hand with his.

    "So rest, Gilles. You''ve done enough. It''s time to lay down your sword and rest."

    "Jeanne¡­" He sighed and leaned into her hand. "Ah, Jeanne. Even now, you look at me with such tenderness? After everything I''ve done¡­ After everything¡­ You really are¡­the Saint we never deserved¡­"

    And in a flash of light, he burst apart into tiny motes that flickered and fluttered like fireflies. Gone.

    I watched him disappear, even as Emiya slowly walked towards us. The scene of his goodbye was tender and heartfelt, but I was stuck on the rage and the despair and what a broken mirror I''d just been looking into.

    Is that what I would have looked like, if Alexandria really had killed my friends? I couldn''t imagine ever falling that far, not when I''d weathered losing my mother, my best friend, the man I might have loved, once upon a time, even my whole life and my entire world. Fate had thrown her entire hand at me, and I''d managed to wade through it and come out the other side.

    But what if I hadn''t?

    "You," Jeanne addressed Emiya sternly.

    Emiya shrugged. "If I didn''t need to worry about all of you, I would have killed him before he even caught up with you. Do you want me to apologize for stopping whatever mad scheme he was cooking up in his head?"

    Jeanne sighed. "No. As much as I might dislike it, you likely saved us a great deal of grief. Just because I agree with the necessity does not mean I have to approve, though!"

    Emiya chuckled, scratching at the back of his head. A smirk curled his lips.

    "Somehow, that sort of scolding feels familiar."

    Beep-beep!

    "Servant responses confirmed eliminated!" Romani said brightly. "All I''m seeing on the sensors now are the guys on our team and a whole bunch of wyverns! W-well, the wyverns will probably sort themselves out, won''t they? So we can leave that to the native Servants and get you guys out of there. Do you have the Grail?"

    Mash bent down and picked it up. "Holy Grail acquisition confirmed, Doctor Roman."

    "That''s another one taken care of," said Romani as he looked away to type something on his keyboard. "Confirming¡­ And it looks like the proper timeline is starting to restore itself. Are you guys ready to get out of there and come home?"

    "Boy, am I ever!" Rika said. She heaved a great sigh. "If I have to eat one more ration bar, I think I might just mutiny!"

    Emiya chuckled.

    "It''ll be nice to be back at Chaldea again," Ritsuka agreed.

    "You''re leaving?" Jeanne asked.

    "There are still six more Singularities," I told her. "It''s our job to fix them."

    She smiled. "I suppose I can''t argue with that, can I? My own selfishness isn''t worth all the lives you have resting upon your shoulders."

    "I''ve prepared the settings to account for Arash and Siegfried," said Romani. At the mention of them, I checked in on them briefly to find them unhurt and still going strong. "When you Rayshift, they''ll be brought along, too. I''m sorry, Mademoiselle Jeanne, but there''s no time to alter the settings to bring you back, too."

    Jeanne shook her head. "That''s okay. Even if I can''t join you in person, I''ll be there with you in spirit. Just know that I''m cheering for you all the way."

    "We won''t let you down, Miss Jeanne," said Mash.

    "I know you won''t."

    I turned back to Romani. "It looks like we''re ready to go."

    He nodded. "Okay," he said, "just give me a minute to make a few final adjustments¡­ And get ready to Rayshift in five, four, three¡­"

    "WAIT!" a familiar voice shouted. "WAIT, WAIT, WAIT! YOU CAN''T LEAVE YET!"

    "Bwah?" said Romani, bewildered.

    And through the hallway raced the familiar figure of Bradamante. She was soaked head to toe in splatters of red wyvern blood, panting like she''d just run a marathon, and she raced towards us like a bullet, skidding to a stop five feet away.

    "Not without me!" she said.

    "Bwah?" Romani sputtered again.

    "Bradamante!" said Ritsuka. "You came after all!"

    "I''ve been¡­thinking about it¡­ever since you left!" she huffed. "And I just knew¡­I was going to regret it¡­if I left things¡­like that!"

    She let out a gusty sigh ¡ª "Phew!" ¡ª and then she straightened, showing off her best heroic pose. Droplets of blood flew off her spear and splashed the ceiling. "So I raced here as fast as I could, only everyone already beat the bad guys before I could do anything except kill some wyverns! There''s no way I can let it go like that, so you guys have to take me with you and I can dazzle you next time!"

    My brow furrowed. "Uh¡­"

    Ritsuka turned to Romani. "Doctor Roman?"

    "H-hey, it''s not up to me!" said Romani, waving his hands about. "We''re cutting it razor close right now to begin with, and it would take way too long for me to readjust the parameters of the Rayshift ¡ª"

    "Oh, budge over, Romani!" said Da Vinci''s voice, and Romani squawked as he was pushed out of his chair. Da Vinci smiled into the camera as she sat down at his monitor. "Don''t worry, everyone! A genius like me can recalibrate the Rayshift in no time flat!"

    Her fingers flew across the keyboard. Bradamante grinned, her teeth a sparkling white against the splash of maroon that coated one cheek.

    "As long as I''m adjusting for one extra passenger, should I make it two, Jeanne?"

    Jeanne blinked, thought about it for a moment, and then gently shook her head, smiling.

    "No, it''s fine," she said serenely. "I appreciate your offer, Miss Da Vinci, but France is my home. If you don''t mind, I''d like to stay here and make sure everything gets back on track."

    "Jeanne¡­" Ritsuka murmured.

    "No need to look so sad!" Jeanne said brightly. "I told you, I''ll be there with you in spirit! And who knows? The world called me back to help you correct one Singularity, so perhaps we''ll meet again in another, and you can tell me all about the adventures you''re sure to have in the meantime!"

    Ritsuka''s lips curled into a smile, and even I couldn''t stop myself from smiling a little at her enthusiasm and cheer. It was almost infectious.

    Yeah. The Maid of Orl¨¦ans who inspired a nation¡­ I could see that.

    "If you''re sure¡­" said Da Vinci.

    Jeanne nodded. "I''m certain. We''ll see each other again, I know it. So this isn''t goodbye, it''s just ''see you later.''"

    "Yeah!" Rika agreed.

    "Parameters set, calculations complete, calibrations all green. Rayshift in five¡­"

    "Here we go!" Bradamante cheered with a pump of her fist. "Ah, I splashed myself in the eye!"

    "Four¡­ three¡­ two¡­"

    "Thank you," Jeanne said last. "All of you, for everything."

    "One!"

    And as a canal of stars opened beneath our feet, the last thing I saw was her smile.

 Chapter XXVIII: Return to Normalcy

    Chapter XXVIII: Return to Normalcy

    The next thing I knew, I was upright with cool, artificial air clinging to my skin and a pervasive sense of claustrophobia that had my heart skipping a beat.

    My eyes snapped open just in time for the glass panel that served as the door of my Klein Coffin to hiss and rise away, and I stumbled out with a desperate gasp as my pulse pounded in my ears. The environs of the Rayshift Chamber greeted me, but they seemed almost foreign after having spent over a month in medieval France, and my skin felt too tight on my body, like it was stretched over something that was supposed to be much bigger, much more expansive, so much ¡ª

    Oh, I realized as I gulped down breath after breath. Yeah, that made sense, didn''t it? Chaldea was as clean as clean could reasonably get. I''d gotten used to having that expanded proprioception again, that sense of inhabiting something more than just my frail human body, and now I was going back to having none of that.

    Couldn''t control bugs in a place that didn''t have any, after all.

    I steadied myself against the lip of my coffin with one hand, panting and trying to get used to the idea of being so miniscule, so much lesser again. It was hard when I felt so impossibly tiny now. Compressed, that was a good word, like I had been shoved back into a container that was a dozen sizes too small.

    "Ugh," I heard Rika''s voice say, "as glad as I am to be back, I wish the trip was easier on the stomach."

    "It''s definitely going to take some getting used to," Ritsuka agreed.

    "I don''t think there''s anything to be done about it, Senpai," Mash answered.

    "Maybe it would be easier if we just came back unconscious like we did with Fuyuki," Rika grumbled. "Sleep it off instead of toughing it out."

    "Does that mean you aren''t up for that three course meal you wanted, Master?" Emiya asked from somewhere nearby.

    "Absolutely not!" Rika barked. "Back to the kitchen with you, house-husband! Back, I say! Mama needs her gourmet celebration feast!"

    Emiya chuckled. "As you say, Master. How about a little taste of home, then? Tempura sound good?"

    Rika was silent for a moment.

    "¡­Oh my god, marry me."

    "Rika!" Ritsuka yelped at the same time as Mash''s scandalized, "Senpai!"

    Does that count as necrophilia, since he''s technically dead? the little Lisa in my head sniggered.

    I didn''t realize I''d said that out loud until Mash and Ritsuka both gasped. Rika cackled while Emiya coughed awkwardly into his hand.

    My head swam a little as I shook it, but it helped to clear some of the fog and disorientation, so with a deep breath, I rolled my shoulders and stood straight.

    "Pretty sure it''s illegal, at any rate," I went on, doubling down. "You have to provide a birth certificate on the marriage license, and that''s kinda hard for a guy who doesn''t have one."

    Emiya coughed awkwardly into his hand again and looked away shiftily.

    ¡­Oh, you''ve got to be kidding me. Is that why we didn''t have any records of him as a Heroic Spirit? Because he technically hadn''t become one, yet? I must be more out of it than I thought if I was actually entertaining that possibility.

    The sound of a cleared throat broke into our little thing, whatever it was that was just happening, and that was when I realized Romani was there, tablet in hand and smile a little forced.

    "Welcome back, everyone," he said. "It''s good to see you''re all in one piece. Ritsuka, Rika, Taylor, Mash, I''m glad you all came out of that mess unharmed."

    "Fou!" the little beast chirped, appearing suddenly on Mash''s shoulder.

    "And Fou, too," Romani added.

    "He''s very lucky, isn''t he?" Mash smiled tiredly and stroked Fou under his chin, earning her a purr. No, seriously, what was it? A cat, a dog, a squirrel? No one had ever given me a straight answer. "I guess he must have good survival instincts. He had to have hidden during all the action."

    "Or maybe he just doesn''t know when to die," I muttered under my breath. No one else heard me, but Fou''s head jerked around and he pinned me with an unnerving, unblinking stare.

    "In any case," said Romani, "I just got the data back from Da Vinci. The restoration of the timeline has gone off without a hitch, and everything has returned to its proper place. Congratulations on resolving the Orl¨¦ans Singularity!"

    The others exchanged exhausted smiles, and even I couldn''t stop my lips from curling upwards a little. One down, six to go.

    "Oh no!" Mash gasped suddenly, aghast. "We left our supplies sitting in the middle of the road outside Orl¨¦ans!"

    My eyes went wide as I remembered ¡ª we had. We''d discarded them when that Archer started attacking us and never had the chance to return for them because Jeanne Alter had attacked us with Fafnir almost immediately afterwards.

    It had slipped my mind entirely in the aftermath of everything. Too much had happened one after the other.

    "Ah, shit," Rika said, and she summed up my own feelings on the matter, too.

    Romani winced. "I''m afraid there isn''t much we can do about it, now. Even if it was feasible to send you back in, there''s no guarantee the timeline hasn''t already corrected itself and removed them as ''excess.''"

    Mash sighed. "All of those supplies that everyone put together for us," she mumbled morosely, "and we just forget all about them in the middle of the road."

    From behind us, Arash chuckled, and we all turned to look at him. "Don''t worry so much, Mash."

    He and Siegfried shrugged their shoulders, and as the straps I hadn''t noticed before slipped down their arms, the packs with all of our supplies slid to the floor next to them.

    "After the Dragon Witch was defeated, the wyverns started to disappear on their own," Siegfried explained. "Lord Arash and I thought it prudent to retrieve the supplies we were forced to abandon at the outset of the fight."

    "Yes!" Rika cheered, fist pumping. "You guys rock!"

    "It was no trouble," Siegfried assured us with a smile.

    "We couldn''t just leave all of that behind," Arash added, "not after all the hard work that went into making sure everyone was well-stocked."

    "I''m sure everyone will breathe a sigh of relief to know their efforts didn''t go to waste," said Romani. He changed the subject. "In any case, everyone, I think you''ve earned a good rest, for now. Emiya, I know you just got back, but it seems like the Masters deserve a reward for their good work. Do you think you could prepare that celebratory dinner like Rika asked?"

    Emiya shrugged, chuckling, "If that''s what my Master wants. Servants don''t need sleep, so I don''t see any reason why I can''t go the extra mile and make something a little extravagant."

    "Thank you," Romani said politely.

    "I can already taste it," said Rika, and I thought I saw her drooling a little. "Emiya''s cooking¡­ Emiya''s tempura¡­ Ufufufu, it''s gonna be so good¡­"

    Her Servant shook his head, but took that as his cue.

    "Might as well go get started," said Emiya, and he went to leave.

    "Tem-pu-ra!" Rika chanted at his back. "Tem-pu-ra! Tem-pu-ra!"

    Emiya lifted a hand and gave her a wave without looking back.

    "Roger that, Master."

    "Tem-pu-ra-ra-rah!"

    "Arash, Siegfried," Romani turned to them next, "if you could get those supplies back to our¡­Acting Quartermaster, I would be grateful. I''m sure¡­whoever it is today would appreciate being able to unpack the stuff we can save for Rome."

    Arash smiled. "No problem, Director Archaman."

    Romani''s cheek twitched. It seemed he was still getting used to being the guy in charge.

    "I''d be glad to," Siegfried added.

    They picked the bags they''d dropped back up and left after Emiya. My brow furrowed as I watched them go, because I wasn''t sure how they were going to find the quartermaster when they''d never stepped foot inside of Chaldea before, but maybe Arash''s Clairvoyance would show them the way. They didn''t seem worried about it in any case.

    "And you guys," Romani began, and his smile grew broader. "I''m really proud of you. All of you. There were some pretty tough battles you had to go through to make it to the end, and I was worried sometimes, but you all pushed on anyway and saved France. You performed better than I could have ever expected of you. Good job."

    The others smiled again, proud of what they''d accomplished, and I was a little surprised to find I was proud of them, too.

    "We kicked ass," Rika said with relish. Romani laughed.

    "That you did." He turned to Mash. "Mash, we already handled the Grail you retrieved from Jeanne Alter and Da Vinci will deal with it from there, so the rest of you, take a load off for now and we''ll have the more formal debrief later on. You''ve earned a break for now."

    A collective sigh was heaved, although Rika''s was the loudest and heaviest. Romani just laughed.

    "Go on, get out of here," he said, shooing us with one hand. "It''s going to take Emiya some time to cook something up, whatever he winds up making, so you have some time to get some rest, if you want. No need to stand around here waiting."

    "No need to tell me twice!" Rika chirped, and she immediately started for the exit.

    Ritsuka followed behind her a moment later, gently taking Mash''s wrist with a soft, encouraging, "Come on, Mash. I''d bet you''d like to take a nice, hot shower."

    "Thank you, Senpai," Mash told him, and she let him lead her away.

    I shook my head and made to follow, because my bed was calling my name with a siren''s song and I didn''t have the strength to resist it.

    "Actually, Taylor," Romani stopped me, "Da Vinci needed to talk with you about something. She''s waiting for you in her workshop. I''m heading that way as well, so why don''t we walk together?"

    I eyed him, immediately suspicious, but I didn''t have the energy or the desire to raise a stink, so I went along with whatever this was about to be. "Okay."

    He tapped a few more things on his tablet, and then nodded at me and said, "Let''s get going, then."

    He walked towards the exit and I fell into step next to him, slanting glances at him from the corner of my eye as we made the trek to Da Vinci''s workshop. He didn''t give anything away, though. His expression was serious, but perfectly even, and he didn''t even look my way as we went.

    He didn''t think he''d actually convinced me with that half-assed misdirect, did he? Ugh, I was way too spent for this subterfuge.

    "What''s this really about, Romani?" I asked halfway there.

    His lips tightened, but he shook his head and quietly muttered, "Not out in the open. That''s why we''re going to have this talk in Da Vinci''s workshop."

    A frown tugged at my mouth, and I side-eyed him again, but I wasn''t Lisa or Alexandria. I couldn''t read his secrets in the lines of his face or the tightness of his expression.

    Romani had been good to me, though, for all that he could be kind of bumbling and a little overprotective, so I guess I could at least extend enough trust to hear him out on whatever this was about.

    Da Vinci''s workshop looked like it came right out of the fourteenth century, complete with diagrams and miniature mockups of all of the original''s famous inventions. In fact, almost the entirety of the interior had been redone and cast in a mimicry of what the original Da Vinci''s workshop had likely looked like, way back when, with wooden flooring and rafters pasted on top of Chaldea''s sterile tile, bookshelves against the far wall, and a pair of large, oaken tables sitting in the middle of it, complete with a set of chairs.

    Da Vinci herself was waiting for us, tinkering away at some project or another that she set down as we entered.

    "Ah, good, you''re here," she said.

    "What''s this about?" I demanded. "And why here, exactly?"

    "This is the most secure room in the entire facility," Romani explained simply. "The only place with a tighter lock and better warded against eavesdropping is the Director''s office. We still haven''t managed to get it open."

    "Marisbury always was a paranoid man," Da Vinci added sardonically.

    "So?" I prodded. "Whatever this is, it has to be serious if you didn''t want the twins around to hear it."

    The two of them shared a look, and something seemed to pass between them. If I''d had any remaining doubts that they were both in on this, that would have dispelled them.

    "There''s an unusual data volume in your readings," Romani began slowly.

    My brow furrowed. "An unusual data volume?"

    "Unusual is putting it somewhat mildly," Da Vinci interjected. "Frankly speaking, it should automatically disqualify you from Rayshifting entirely."

    My heart skipped a beat, but I latched onto the particular wording of her sentence. "It should disqualify me?"

    "We''re having trouble reading it," Romani explained. "As in, it''s somehow obscuring itself from our sensors. We can tell how big it is generally, for a certain value of that word, and we can tell that it''s connected to you in some way that makes it basically impossible for us to safely remove, but we don''t understand what it is or how it got there."

    "And that''s dangerous when we''re undergoing an operation as sensitive as a Rayshift," Da Vinci added. "As I''m sure you''re aware, we have to keep a constant eye on your presence during a Rayshift to prevent you from being excluded or erased by the Counter Force, and that means that knowing who and what we''re observing is essential. An unknown factor like this is dangerous."

    An unusual data volume that they couldn''t read¡­ There was only one thing I could think of that would explain that. So, my passenger really was back, then. Somehow, someway, it had reconnected with me and given me back my powers. The original ones, from back when I first triggered.

    All things considered, maybe I''d never lost it in the first place, and there had just never been enough bugs around for it to latch onto. If bugs had been my only power, I probably would have been able to believe that.

    "But you''re not taking me off the team," I cut in, folding my arms over my chest.

    The two of them shared a look.

    "Whatever this data volume is," Romani said, "it''s been mostly quiet. There''s a constant degree of activity, and it got more intense during Orl¨¦ans, but whatever it is, it''s not interfering with the measurements that are actually vital to establishing your presence in Singularities."

    "That''s the only reason we decided to let it be," said Da Vinci. "If it had been entirely up to me, I would have taken you off the team in a heartbeat. This thing has been with you since you came back from Fuyuki, however, and since none of our simulations showed any problems based upon the data we collected when we brought you back, Romani decided that the risk was worth taking."

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    "And I''ll stand by that decision," Romani chimed back in. "We needed her to get through Orl¨¦ans. I don''t think Ritsuka and Rika would have been able to handle it by themselves."

    I pursed my lips. "So why are you bringing this up now?"

    "Because we''re in a better position now," Romani replied. "Things still aren''t great, but we''re starting to pull together a solid team of Servants and we can afford to give you some slack. If you''re worried about your safety going into Rayshifts from now on, we can keep you in reserve and only send you in for absolute emergencies. You don''t have to risk this becoming a problem that gets you killed."

    This was starting to remind me of the Protectorate''s insistence that I never attend a battle against the Simurgh. I hadn''t liked it then, back when I couldn''t do anything to change their minds, and I didn''t like it now.

    "I''m not going to just let the twins flounder on their own." I shook my head. "No, I''m staying on the main team."

    Da Vinci''s eyes narrowed on me. "You''re not worried," she said, and it sounded like an accusation. "No, it''s not even just that, is it? You know what this strange data volume is, or if you don''t know for certain, you at least have some idea."

    A muscle in my cheek jumped. Her eccentric personality sometimes made it easy to forget that this was a genius, an unparalleled mind who had been centuries ahead of the times back during the Renaissance.

    "What makes you say that?"

    "You''re far too calm about it," she retorted. "You''re not surprised to hear this, either. In fact, I''d wager¡­ Were you expecting this sort of confrontation at some point?"

    And now she was starting to remind me of Lisa, which only served to make me miss her all the more, right then.

    "Not from you," I said simply, and then I elaborated. "The twins and Mash had some questions that I never answered in Orl¨¦ans. There never seemed like a good moment to talk about it, and I honestly didn''t know what to tell them."

    "Does that have something to do with the sensors ghosts that were following you around?" Romani asked.

    I looked at him, confused. "Sensor ghosts?"

    "Wherever you went, there were little blips on our sensors that registered as you," he told me. "In a radius of about one third of a mile, if we''re talking American measurements. They were too small and too weak to be human, so I chocked it up as a mistake in the sensors or a faulty repair job."

    Da Vinci''s smile was tight, like she was remembering something that pissed her off and was trying to hold in violence. "Of course it wasn''t a faulty repair job. I was the one who did the repairs, after all."

    Romani laughed awkwardly. "Right."

    Sensors ghosts¡­in a radius of about one third of a mile? Considering my range¡­

    "Are you talking about my bugs?"

    There weren''t many things that could be. But why would my bugs register as weak echoes of me? Everything was filtered through my passenger, so there shouldn''t have been anything of me to "register" in them.

    "Bugs?" Da Vinci and Romani asked simultaneously.

    My lips pulled tight. "How much about my past do you know?"

    Da Vinci didn''t answer, just turned that narrow-eyed look on me again, but Romani said, "Almost nothing. Director Animusphere said something about a world of heroes and villains, but not much else. It sounded like something out of a comic book."

    I snorted. If only things had been that idealistic. In comic books, the heroes and villains died and came back to life, fought against terrible enemies and eked out a decisive victory, suffered horrific injuries that should have crippled them, and got up to do it again the next day without any sign anything was wrong.

    The real thing wasn''t anywhere near that pleasant.

    I glanced shortly at Da Vinci, and for a moment, I thought about concocting some lie or somehow dodging the question ¡ª out of the abundance of caution Marie had tried to instill in me almost two years ago ¡ª but Romani already had some idea, and if there was one person that he seemed completely incapable of keeping a secret from, it was Da Vinci. He had also, rather inconveniently, given away the most important part of the secret just now.

    "The term we used was ''capes,''" I said, because there didn''t seem a point in avoiding it now. "People with strange, supernatural powers who donned costumes and went out to do¡­ Well, to commit crime and to fight it, depending on which side of the line you were supposed to be on." Although the labels turned out to not really mean anything, hadn''t they? Hero and villain was more a matter of PR than deed. "I was one of them."

    "What kind of supernatural powers?" Da Vinci asked carefully.

    I shrugged.

    "A lot of it might sound like magecraft to you." It certainly hadn''t been hard to draw the parallels myself once I started learning magecraft. "We had Tinkers who built super advanced technology that no one could replicate, Thinkers who could pluck the secrets from your head by reading the lint on your jacket, Shakers who could bend space and change the world around them, Changers who could take on different forms, Brutes with super strength and superhuman durability, Movers who could fly or teleport, Breakers who bent the laws of physics over their knees¡­ A whole gamut of things that we thought impossible before 1981."

    "And you?" Da Vinci posed.

    My lips twitched a little as I remembered Tagg''s threat rating, how he''d thrown everything in the book at me just to make me seem more threatening. Maybe some part of that wasn''t exactly wrong, but few people had pushed the limits of their powers quite as hard as I had.

    "I was a Master," I told them. Romani winced, like he''d just got the punchline of a bad joke. "Which meant my power was controlling minions. Insects. Anything that gets called a creepy crawly, in fact, from house flies to black widows and everything in between."

    "Oh geez," Romani muttered, low enough that we probably weren''t meant to hear him. "Did the Director never realize what that was supposed to mean?"

    Da Vinci nodded and made a noise of understanding in her throat. "That''s why the sensor ghosts. They registered all of the bugs under your control as ''familiars,'' so your presence was detected as a kind of echo in each of them." Her brow furrowed. "Wait. The radius covered one third of a mile. Exactly how many bugs can you control within that range?"

    "Yes."

    Lisa would be proud of the snark in that one.

    Da Vinci''s eyebrows rose. "You mean¡­ All of them?"

    "Anything bigger than a dust mite that doesn''t have an endoskeleton. That includes crabs, by the way, for some reason. I lived in a coastal city and learned that one when I got close enough to the bay."

    I''d never understood that one. Did crabs technically count as insects? If not, then what definition had my power been using when it adjusted its parameters for "bugs?"

    "That''s¡­"

    She turned away and started muttering under her breath, hunched over and head bowed as she¡­used her fingers to do the mental math? Having a Thinker for a best friend had introduced me to some strange tics, but this one was a little new, even for me.

    Romani looked at her and sighed. He ran a hand through his hair. "Well, she''s got something she''s trying to figure out¡­ I guess you don''t know anything about where these supernatural powers came from?"

    I shrugged.

    "I know more than most did, I guess," I hedged. "But even as much as I know is definitely only a tiny sliver of the whole story. The important bit is that they did have an external source that connects with the chosen host via the brain. That anchor is strong enough to reach through parallel worlds, so I wouldn''t be surprised to find out it can even find me during a Rayshift."

    Scion¡­ I steered well clear of even mentioning his name. That was a can of worms I didn''t want to open, filled to the brim with things I was still trying to get over even two years after the fact.

    Romani''s eyes went wide, and one of his hands drifted up to his forehead, right in the center, where two of his fingers touched ¡ª right where, on my forehead, there would be two tiny divots from the bullets Contessa had used to put Khepri out of her misery.

    It occurred to me, then, that as my primary care physician in Chaldea, Romani would have seen and treated all of my wounds, back then. Including those two bullet holes.

    "Can the connection be forcibly severed?" he asked quietly.

    "Yes," I answered, just as quiet. Like admitting it would summon the specter of Contessa back to finish the job. "I thought mine was, when I woke up here."

    Romani sighed. "Well, even if I knew what to look for, I''m not qualified to do brain surgery, so I can''t offer to remove it for you ¡ª"

    "I wouldn''t accept, even if you did," I told him sharply.

    "Which is about what I expected you to say," he said with a shake of his head, smiling a little. "Like I said, it isn''t proving to be an issue, so we can leave it alone, if you don''t want to try getting rid of it. I''m not going to say I don''t have any reservations about it, but you''d know better than I do regarding this particular ¡ª"

    "Haha!" Da Vinci cheered. "I''ve done it again!"

    Romani let out a breath through his nose and briefly glanced at the ceiling like he was praying for patience, and then asked, "Can I ask what it is you''ve done, Da Vinci?"

    She spun back around to face us, a triumphant grin on her lips.

    "I''ve figured out a way to fix the problem of our Director''s missing corpus!"

    A jolt ripped through my stomach.

    "Really?"

    "You have?" Romani said, surprised.

    Da Vinci nodded, her hands on her hips.

    "It''s quite the simple thing, actually," she explained smugly. One hand rose, like a teacher beginning a lecture. "Our biggest hurdle in building her a new body is biological material. Quite frankly, even if I repurposed the remains of both the Director and the rest of the staff, there was too much decay by the time we finally got everything cleaned up, so building a functioning body that didn''t have a prohibitive number of issues wasn''t possible. But! If I processed the material of enough biomass from living specimens, I could use a kind of printing process to recreate the necessary structures. The trick has been trying to find enough material of the right kind to form the structures properly."

    "Wait a minute," said Romani. "I''ve heard of that. Hasn''t there been talk of that kind of thing with modern medical science? Printing replacement organs for people in need of transplants? They can''t figure out how to do it on Earth, though."

    "The difference is, I''m a genius!" Da Vinci boasted. "Concerns like that are just obstacles to be overcome!"

    I made the connection after a moment of thought. Panacea had done something similar, after all.

    "You need my bugs."

    "Just so!" said Da Vinci. "In the next Singularity, we''ll have to take a moment when the team is resting to pull a portion of your bugs back to Chaldea. Small portions at a time, of course. Our food stores are too vital to risk a colony of ants or cockroaches getting into them while you''re not here to control them, but I''m certain I could rig up some kind of containment device, and we should be able to pull them directly inside it."

    My heart thundered in my chest, and I had to swallow around my own excitement.

    "How long would it take you to make her a new body? How many bugs would you need?"

    Da Vinci gave me a shrug and an awkward smile. "That part, admittedly, I''m not certain of. It will depend on the variety of insect we manage to find in Rome and how difficult it will be to overcome the current issues with the process. You said crabs also count for your powers, yes? Retrieving at least a few dozen of those will make fabricating the bone easier, but I can''t be certain of any of it until I''ve started."

    Oh. Some of my excitement died. I probably should''ve known better than to get my hopes that high.

    But still. This was a more solid lead than we''d had after Fuyuki, and Da Vinci was a far better and more talented mage than I could ever have hoped to be. She figured out Defiant''s nano-thorn dagger, after all. She''d figure this out, too. It was just a matter of time.

    "Whatever you need, I''ll get it for you," I promised. I owed Marie at least that much.

    Da Vinci smiled. "Later," she said. "For now, I think we''ve resolved the main thrust of our previous concerns. Wouldn''t you say, Romani?"

    "Resolved might not be the right word for that," Romani began. "She gave us an explanation and there''s nothing to be done, but the whole business kind of leaves a bad taste ¡ª"

    "I said," Da Vinci cut across him pointedly, "wouldn''t you say, Romani?"

    Romani blinked. "Oh! Oh, yes. Ahem. Sorry, we pulled you aside without warning, Taylor. You must be exhausted. Why don''t you go ahead and get a nap back in your room? I''ll send someone over to get you up in time for dinner, okay?"

    I forced myself not to smile and settled for a nod. "Alright. Sounds good."

    I turned to leave.

    "Good night," he called after me.

    I stopped, considered that for a moment, and decided on a neutral, "Thanks."

    As I walked away, I heard him say to himself, "Ugh, ''good night?'' Why did I say that? It''s the middle of the day¡­"

    Never change, Romani, I thought fondly.

    From Da Vinci''s workshop, I made my way back to my room, walking the mostly empty halls. There was no sign of the twins around, but if they were as tired and mentally exhausted as I was, they had probably settled down for a nap of their own, and they''d earned it. Mash¡­ I''d have to check on her later, see how she was coping with what happened there at the end. If I had to, I''d bring up the idea of therapy with Romani and Da Vinci, but I didn''t know if we had one on staff and I wasn''t sure Romani had the training for it.

    Perhaps not so strangely, at that moment, I missed Doctor Yamada.

    My room was the same as I''d left it when we began our journey into the French Singularity, but that was only natural. By Chaldea''s reckoning, we''d only been gone about a week, even if it had been a month for me, Mash, and the twins. Of course nothing would have changed.

    I stripped off my outer layer unceremoniously and dumped my jacket on the seat of my chair. My boots were left where I toed them off at the foot of my bed.

    Compared to the cots I''d had to sleep on and the hard ground we''d camped out on, the basic mattress I threw myself onto was like a cloud. It felt like my head had barely hit the pillow, filled with vague hopes for the future born of Da Vinci''s promises, and then I was out like a light.

 Chapter XXIX: The Fourth Wall

    Chapter XXIX: The Fourth Wall

    I was never going to take a proper bed for granted again.

    The nap I had gotten after my talk with Da Vinci and Romani had been good, and the feast Emiya had prepared afterwards was strange but heavenly, but a full night of good sleep on a comfortable bed was something I hadn''t realized I''d been missing out on quite as badly as it turned out I was. The day after we returned from Orl¨¦ans, I woke up feeling better rested and in a better mood than I had the entirety of the month we''d spent in France.

    Could Emiya project a tent to match those air mattresses, I wondered. If so, it might be worth it to skip out on keeping him here in reserve just so we could sleep in comfort while we were on our missions.

    Unless that meant he couldn''t cook any of his gourmet meals for us. That was a hard decision, whether a good night''s sleep or a warm, tasty, satisfying meal was more important, and even I wasn''t sure which side of it I would come down on, if I had to choose.

    Rolling out of bed was easier and far more painless than it had been in what felt like forever, and the twinges in my shoulders and neck were much less noticeable as I changed out of my pajamas and into my day wear. Casual stuff I could workout in, because I was definitely going to be hitting the exercise room at some point today, make sure to get in my daily run, even if it was on a treadmill.

    The clock read 9:37 a.m., later than I usually got up, so I tied my hair back into a loose tail and left my room for the cafeteria.

    There were maybe three people I saw on my way there, but the twins weren''t among them ¡ª a mystery quickly solved when I got close to the cafeteria itself, because a familiar female voice was loudly telling a story to what must have been Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash.

    "And then," Bradamante said excitedly, gesturing with her empty hands; sure enough, the twins and Mash were sitting at the table she was standing in front of, already eating, "and then, I charged forward with my lance, and he tried to stop me, but I was too fast ¡ª"

    I tuned her out as she continued the retelling of some adventure she''d gone on while she was alive. Something to do with some kind of wizard, it sounded like, but the twins found the whole thing more enthralling than I did. It wasn''t quite the same listening to someone''s "war stories" when you had quite a few under your belt, too. It probably wouldn''t be long before the twins were less impressed, too, since we still had another six Singularities to deal with.

    Emiya was behind the counter when I made it up to the food line, and he smirked at me as I stepped closer.

    "Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," he said. "Get enough sleep, last night?"

    "More than you did, I bet," I replied dryly.

    "Heh."

    He started piling food onto a plate for me. It all looked absolutely delicious.

    "I''ve been wondering about that, actually," I went on. "Servants aren''t supposed to need sleep, but does it affect you at all to go without? I''ve known a few people with conditions that prevent them from needing to sleep, and even if they didn''t need it, it always helped if they got a few hours of shut-eye every once in a while."

    I hadn''t known many Noctis capes, but the handful I''d met and asked about it had said that it felt good to sleep every once in a while, even if it wasn''t necessary. Refreshing. Helped them put their thoughts in order and reorient themselves.

    "It''s something like that for us, too," he answered. "Strictly speaking, Servants can go without sleep indefinitely without any drop in performance, so the act of sleeping itself becomes a kind of luxury. A novel activity to indulge in, when there''s nothing going on and you don''t have to worry about being attacked in the middle of the night. Unless your Master is a complete novice with no idea how to supply you with magical energy, that is. Then, sleep becomes a means of conserving mana."

    That¡­sounded like there was a story there. One that he probably wouldn''t tell me if I asked.

    "Of course," he continued, "here at Chaldea, there isn''t much to do in our off time. Since the simulator still isn''t fully repaired, the only thing for us Servants to do while you Masters are sleeping is to sleep ourselves. That is, if we haven''t been roped into other things, like cooking."

    A snort huffed out of my nostrils. "If you quit, Rika will mutiny."

    He shrugged and shook his head, like, ''what can you do?''

    "I think she might actually order me with a Command Spell if I tried to stop," Emiya said, but his voice was filled with humor, not bitterness. "It seems like a spectacular waste of such a precious resource, so I guess I''ll just have to content myself with my lot in life and continue to be Chaldea''s chef."

    "You sound very broken up about it."

    "Somehow," he said wryly, "I''ll try and muddle through." He added a dollop of butter atop my waffles, set a few slices of strawberries on the very top, and then placed a glass of orange juice in the corner of my tray. "All ready. Enjoy your breakfast, Taylor."

    Oh, I definitely would. No need to inflate his head any further, though, so I left him with a simple, "Thanks."

    With my tray loaded up, I made my way towards one of the tables and sat down to eat. A dozen feet away, Bradamante continued regaling the twins and Mash with the story of her adventures. Almost against my will, I found myself smiling a little as I turned to my food and picked up my silverware.

    I''d barely started cutting with my knife before Arash appeared opposite me, shimmering into existence in the chair across from me with a smile. He nodded his head towards the twins.

    "Not going to sit with the others, Master?"

    "I''m not going to interrupt story time."

    My first bite brought a burst of sweet and salty goodness, and in the privacy of my own head, I had to admit again that Emiya really was an excellent chef. Not what you expected when you summoned the spirit of a deceased hero to do battle against the enemies of mankind, but then you never could predict what sort of everyday skills they must have picked up while they were alive, could you?

    Did Arash or Siegfried have anything like that? Somehow, I had trouble imagining either of them in a Hawaiian shirt with a fishing rod or dressed in shorts and a tank top in front of a grill. Maybe hunting ¡ª wasn''t that how Siegfried was supposed to have died? While sipping at a stream on a hunting trip?

    Well, with his archery skills, no need to wonder if Arash was any good at it.

    "I''m not sure they''d notice if you did," Arash said, sliding a glance over at the other table. "Bradamante looks like she has them pretty deeply enthralled."

    I shrugged and took a sip of my orange juice. "War stories seem more impressive when you don''t have any of your own. They''ll be trading back and forth soon enough."

    "Spoken as someone who has a few herself?" Arash turned back to me, easygoing smile still in place. Guileless. But there was no way that was an entirely innocent question, not with eyes as sharp as his were.

    It was easy to forget, sometimes, what with that boyish charm and open face, but Arash was sharp and calculating. It was part of being an archer and an Archer, I had to imagine.

    "Are you asking me to share a few?" I replied with affected calm.

    He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "I suppose I wanted to get to know my Master a bit better, now that we''re not rushing about to save France. But considering that it was me you summoned, I think I might have a better grasp on your character than you''re honestly comfortable with."

    He tilted his head back over at the others.

    "They''re the ones who probably need to hear that sort of thing more," he went on. "Orl¨¦ans was tough on them. It was tough on you, too, but you''re used to it, so they didn''t see that so much. It might help them to know that you aren''t made of stone."

    I ate slowly to cover up my silence. Suddenly, the food wasn''t quite as good as before, and the sour of the strawberries stood out more on my tongue.

    It wasn''t like he was wrong, exactly. If Doctor Yamada was here, she might even say something similar, tell me about how healthy it was to open up with people and let them in. Intellectually, I knew that I couldn''t remain a distant figure of experience and authority with the twins forever. Eventually, one way or another, they''d wind up inside and learning more about me than I probably wanted.

    But¡­

    "That might be one of the ways in which you and I are very different, Arash," I told him. "I''m not the sharing type. I don''t pour my heart out."

    And in my head, I knew that was a remnant of the Trio and everything that had shaped me for much of my teenage years, even if I''d moved past those three long before Scion ever became a problem. The scars from that time of my life had made me guarded, jaded, and reticent. Slow to trust. When I connected, I formed strong bonds quickly. But outside a select few, I didn''t connect easily.

    Recognizing all of that about myself didn''t make it easier to change what I did about it.

    "I wouldn''t know where to start, anyway," I went on, but even I knew the excuse for what it was. I slid a glance the twins'' way. Rika''s face was open and excited in a way that it hadn''t really been for all of France. "I''m not sure they''d believe half of the shit I waded through before my sixteenth birthday."

    "I heard something about how you killed a dragon? Besides the wyvern in France," he added. "That might be a good one to start with."

    I snorted. "Beat. Beat a dragon. I''m not sure where I would be now if I killed him."

    Ignoring all of the other sorts of trouble it would have brought me, would I even have made it as far through Gold Morning without him? Lung burning off my mutilated arm was the only thing that let me focus on anything aside from the pain of the original wound. If that pain had instead gotten the better of me, would I even have been coherent enough to start formulating the plan that eventually led to Scion''s death? Or would I have bled out eventually from my mangled arm?

    Ironically, Lung had probably saved my life. Funny how that worked, when you considered where he and I started.

    "That might be a good place to start," said Arash.

    "I''d have to explain a whole lot of backstory, first," I told him. "Why he was there, why I was there, why I attacked him, how I attacked him, how I could attack him in the first place¡­"

    It was a lot. It would mean going over Scion appearing in the 80s, powers showing up, heroes and villains in costume, Brockton Bay, the situation with the gangs¡­ There was so much information that I had taken for granted my whole life that you needed to know just for it to make sense that I even met Lung, let alone why I fought him.

    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

    Da Vinci and Romani had just needed a bit of context for my powers. Telling the twins about my life? You could fit it all into a novel.

    "You can''t hide it all from them forever, Master," said Arash. There was no accusation or heat in his words, just blunt truth. "Eventually, they won''t take ''later'' for an answer."

    A heavy sigh heaved out of my mouth. "I know."

    I looked over at the twins'' table again. Bradamante had moved onto another story, this one apparently about her lover and some adventure she''d gone on to chase after him. I thought of Brian, then, even though time and distance had given me enough perspective to realize that whatever we''d had together probably hadn''t been remotely healthy for either one of us.

    And he was also probably dead. Even as Khepri, I''d never had the courage to check and make sure.

    "Not today," I decided, although I recognized the retreat for what it was. "Let them listen to Bradamante, for now. Most of my stories don''t have a happy ending."

    With my food finished, I stood from my chair and turned to take my tray back to Emiya so he could wash it. Behind me, I heard Arash''s low, rueful chuckle.

    "Most other heroes don''t either, Master."

    I deliberately didn''t think about the implications in that statement. I didn''t want to think about what he was trying to imply, because I was a lot of things, but I wasn''t sure ''hero'' was among them.

    I left my tray and plate with Emiya, and then quietly and discreetly left the cafeteria, skirting around the twins'' table and Bradamante. I could feel Arash''s eyes on me the whole way, and it felt like he was judging me for my cowardice.

    One day, the twins would find out more about my past. It was inevitable. No matter how much I tried to keep my secrets to protect them, there were always going to be tidbits that slipped out, crumbs for them to follow. They''d already picked up a few. Eventually, they''d have enough that there wouldn''t be a choice anymore.

    Even so, there was just too much to unpack and there were plenty of parts I didn''t want to relive if I didn''t have to. I didn''t think that was unfair of me.

    Exercising on a full stomach wasn''t a good idea, so I went back to my room and tried to do a little research on the era we were going to be dropped into when the time came to visit Rome. I wasn''t sure how much use it would be, though. At the end of the day, my admittedly sparse knowledge of the politics of the Hundred Years War hadn''t been particularly relevant in the last Singularity, and without any idea what the next one was going to look like, it was hard to know what was going to be useful and what would wind up utter junk.

    It wasn''t like a month was enough time to become an expert on the Roman Empire, either.

    About an hour after I sat down, my communicator chimed with a message from Romani asking me to meet him in the Command Room for a debriefing about the French Singularity, so I saved my place and left to go meet up with him. The halls still felt unbearably empty, vacant of the life that I had taken for granted for two years, and I saw maybe one person on my way, an exhausted technician who looked asleep on her feet.

    Looked like everyone was still pulling multiple shifts to try and keep everything running at least smoothly enough that we didn''t crash and burn. I still felt a little uneasy about the fact that I wasn''t one of them.

    Romani and the twins were already waiting for me by the time I arrived, with Mash standing patiently next to Ritsuka. Romani looked up from whatever he was working on as I entered and greeted me with a smile.

    "Oh, Taylor, you''re here," he said. "Good. Gimme a second, I need to finish up real quick¡­"

    He turned back to his work and his fingers danced over the touch screen as he fiddled with whatever it was he''d been in the middle of. The twins stood awkwardly, and I shifted to one foot, crossing my arms over my chest.

    A few minutes of long silence later, he tapped one more thing and then turned his attention back to us.

    "Right," said Romani, holding up his tablet, "so let''s get a quick overview of the events that went down, now that everyone has had a chance to rest and recover at least a little. This is really more of a formality than anything," he added. "I know it doesn''t feel that important now, but if we get everything back to normal, then the Mage''s Association and the UN are going to be breathing down our necks, so it''s better to make sure the paperwork is all in order. Things are less messy that way."

    Neither of the twins looked particularly happy about that, and I wasn''t thrilled, either, but crossing t''s and dotting i''s had become a familiar routine in the Wards. Especially being in the sort of position I was in, having all the paperwork in order had saved me a lot of hassle in the long run.

    Of course, then Scion had gone batshit, and paperwork hadn''t been quite so important, so in the longest run, maybe it had all been pointless. End of the world tended to uproot systems and organizations like that.

    "Where do we start, Doctor Roman?" Mash asked.

    "From the beginning, unfortunately," said Romani, sounding less than thrilled. "I''ll just make it easier and summarize everything, okay? All you guys need to do is answer the questions and clarify a few things. Sound good?"

    My lips pursed and I sighed. "I''ll write up my own official report later, too."

    "You really don''t have to," he tried to tell me.

    "I think I really should," I countered. "The twins and Mash should probably learn to write up after action reports, too. They''re going to need it if there''s an inquiry once this is all over and we have to stand before a tribunal or something."

    "Tribunal?" Ritsuka squeaked, his voice an octave higher than usual.

    I cocked an eyebrow in his direction. "You didn''t think the world could end, all of humanity could get erased, then when they came back, none of them would have any questions, did you?"

    "I¡­hadn''t really thought about it," he answered tightly.

    "We have Servants," Rika said mulishly, "they can direct their questions to Emiya''s bow."

    "Somehow, I don''t think they''ll like that kind of answer, Rika," Romani said, laughing awkwardly.

    "Tough cookies for them."

    "We''ll put that down as a method of last resort," Da Vinci interjected diplomatically. I hadn''t even noticed her come in. "In the meantime, keeping all of the paperwork in order can only help, so for now, let''s just get this out of the way, shall we?"

    Ritsuka grimaced and Rika didn''t look any happier about it, but neither of them objected.

    "Okay," said Romani, some of the tension leaving his shoulders, "let''s kick off from the beginning. After the Rayshift, your team arrived at a midway point between Vaucouleurs and Domr¨¦my¡­"

    Romani summarized the entirety of our trek through the French countryside and all the events therein: heading to Vaucouleurs, fighting the wyvern there, meeting Jeanne as a stray Servant, the journey to La Charit¨¦, fighting Jeanne Alter''s retinue, then going to Lyon to find Siegfried, fighting Saint Martha and Phantom, to Thiers in search of allies, splitting up, the twins and Mash in P¨¦rigueux.

    He skimmed most of it, hitting the highlights and focusing on them instead of the minutiae. The dual attacks on P¨¦rigueux and Thiers, Fafnir and Dracul, the Servants at P¨¦rigueux, the retreat back to Thiers, and then the final assault on Orl¨¦ans. Fafnir''s defeat, the wyverns going out of control, Gilles de Rais, the fight with Jeanne Alter, and then the revelation that Jeanne Alter had been a manifestation around the Grail the entire time.

    It sounded so succinct and compacted that I almost couldn''t believe it had taken us about a month to do it all.

    We answered when he asked for clarification for the sake of the record, but mostly we were just giving him yes or no answers and didn''t need to elaborate much further. The only times we had to explain anything was when we had to detail the logic behind some of the decisions we made.

    "Yeah, it all checks out. Your stories match our records," Romani said, but contrary to his words, he didn''t look satisfied.

    "Is something wrong, Doctor Roman?" Mash asked.

    "You look like you''re sucking on a lemon, Doc," Rika added.

    Romani''s hand made an aborted reach for his mouth, as though to check that his lips were indeed pulled into a grimace, and he shook his head.

    "It''s a discrepancy I noticed," he admitted. "Or, well, more like, there''s something I was expecting that wound up not being there, and you''ve just confirmed our sensors didn''t misread it."

    "Misread what?" I asked.

    He glanced around at our group. Slowly, he said, "You guys didn''t notice Lev Lainur anywhere, did you?"

    The four of us shared a look, and Mash''s brow furrowed the way mine must have been. Slowly, Ritsuka shook his head. "I don''t remember seeing Professor Lev anywhere, Doctor Roman."

    "He wasn''t there when we retrieved the Grail, either," Mash mumbled, sounding troubled.

    He wasn''t, was he? He''d shown up in Fuyuki once the battle was over and gloated, but he didn''t even pop up to laugh at us struggling the entire time we were in France. After the way he''d talked in Fuyuki, how personal he''d made the whole thing seem to him, that was a little strange, wasn''t it?

    Romani shook his head. "I might just be reading too much into it. If he didn''t show up in France, it''s probably because he''s in one of the other Singularities."

    "Should we be worried?" I asked.

    Romani shrugged helplessly. "It might be nothing," he admitted. "If Lev is powerful enough to come and go from those Singularities as he pleases, then there''s no way he''s hiding from us or anything like that. On the other hand, that might mean that some of the Singularities are less important than the others, so he''s watching over one of the more important ones instead of worrying about France."

    That¡­was a disturbingly likely possibility.

    If I had a plan like theirs, whatever the end goal was, and it required a handful of lynchpins in order to work out, then I would let my enemies waste their time and efforts on the less important, less essential ones and spend all of my time and effort on reinforcing the ones that absolutely couldn''t fail. Especially if my plan didn''t require all of my lynchpins to work, just a couple of the essential ones, and my enemies didn''t have any choice other than to dismantle all of them.

    "Of course, it might just be a matter of temperament," Romani added. "It could be that he''s staying in the Singularity that suits his tastes the best. There''s no way to be certain until we see him again."

    I shared another look with the others. None of us disagreed ¡ª we would be seeing Lev Lainur again. He wasn''t getting away next time.

    The part I wasn''t sure about was what that meant to the other three.

    "We''ll cross that bridge when we get to it," I said.

    "Or burn it down," Rika muttered.

    "Well, that''s all we really needed to go over today," said Romani, and then something dawned over his face. "Oh! Right, I almost forgot! We managed to get the second Grail provisionally hooked up to our power grid last night. Ritsuka, it doesn''t have to be right now, but we were hoping we could have you do a summoning next. You''re the only one who hasn''t actually performed one and picked up a new contract."

    "It''s fine, Doctor Roman," said Ritsuka with a shake of his head and a smile that wasn''t wholly genuine. "We might as well get it over with, right? I''m okay with doing it right away."

    Romani''s brow furrowed. I doubt he was any more fooled by that bravado than I was. "If you''re sure¡­"

    Ritsuka fidgeted a little. "There''s no reason to put it off, right?"

    "Don''t worry so much, Onii-chan," Rika said, grinning at him as she dug an elbow into his ribs. "I already called the awesomest Servant ever, so it''s okay if yours is a total dud."

    The glare he sent her way spoke volumes about how funny he thought that was, in big, capital letters.

    Romani cleared his throat pointedly to cut off any argument that might have started. "In that case, I guess our next stop is the summoning chamber, isn''t it?"

    Ritsuka met Romani''s gaze with firm determination. "Yes."

    "In that case, I''ll go fetch Mister Meuniere, shall I?" said Da Vinci.

    "Please do," Romani said gratefully. "Taylor, do you think you could call Arash and Siegfried? I don''t expect we''ll actually have any trouble, but just in case Ritsuka summons a Berserker, I''d really like the extra backup."

    I cast my attention down the line of my bonds with Arash and Siegfried. Arash, Siegfried, I told them, we''re going to attempt another summoning. Romani wants backup in case whoever comes through decides to get unruly.

    On my way, Arash replied at the same time as Siegfried''s simple, I''ll be there.

    "Done," I said.

    Romani nodded. "Well," he sighed, "no time like the present, right?"

    "Lead on, Doc," Rika said. "You''re in charge."

    Romani chuckled a little. "Yeah, I guess I am, huh? It''s a miracle the coffee machine still works with me running this thing." He cleared his throat. "Well, let''s get going, then."

    We all fell into step behind Romani as we made the trek to the summoning chamber. Ritsuka looked a little nervous, but to his credit, he didn''t hesitate or slow down, he just kept on walking. If I had to take a guess at what was going on in his head, I would have said that he was psyching himself up by reminding himself that summoning a new Servant couldn''t be any scarier than facing down Fafnir.

    Arash and Siegfried were already there by the time we made it to the summoning chamber, flanking the door like a pair of armed guards. Arash greeted us with a friendly smile and a jaunty wave, Siegfried with a solemn nod. They followed us into the summoning chamber and took up positions on opposite sides of the dais, far back enough not to interfere with the ritual itself but close enough to intervene if something went wrong.

    Da Vinci was several minutes behind us, and she had in tow a familiar spectacled blond man, the technician, Meuniere, who had handled the preparations back when Rika summoned Emiya. He made an immediate beeline for the consoles connected to the dais, ignoring us entirely as he got to work setting the system up.

    "Mash? If you could put your shield on the platform," said Romani.

    She nodded. "Right!"

    She transformed and hefted her giant shield, setting it down in the center of the dais, front facing up, just like she had before.

    "As I''m sure you remember, since we''re not using a catalyst, there''s no way to guarantee which Heroic Spirit will answer the summoning," Romani lectured. "That''s fine. The goal this time is to see if we can find a Heroic Spirit that would work well with you in particular, Ritsuka. Don''t feel like that means we need a powerhouse or some great hero. We''ve already got Arash, Siegfried, and Bradamante."

    "Right," Ritsuka said with a nod.

    "Of course, we wouldn''t say no to someone like Herakles, either," Romani went on. "Or King Arthur, although that one might get messy, huh, considering Fuyuki¡­ Well, one of the Knights of the Round Table would still be really good, too. I wouldn''t say no to a hero of the Trojan War either, of course."

    "Romani," Da Vinci chided him, "you''re going to psych him out."

    Romani winced. "Sorry, Ritsuka. Just give it your best and don''t worry too much about who you get, okay?"

    Ritsuka took a deep, calming breath. "I''m ready."

    "Do you remember the incantation?" Da Vinci asked.

    "Yes."

    She turned to Meuniere. "Are we good to go?"

    "All systems are up and running." Meuniere adjusted his glasses with one finger. "We''re ready whenever you are."

    Da Vinci stepped aside and swept her arm out, gesturing to the platform where Rika had stood when she summoned Emiya. "Ritsuka?"

    Ritsuka hesitated for a bare second, and then climbed up onto the platform. For a moment, he just stood there, and then he looked back over his shoulder and asked, "So I just¡­say the incantation, right?"

    "If the theatrics help you get in the right headspace, then feel free to indulge," Da Vinci replied. "But yes. The only thing strictly necessary from you is the incantation."

    He nodded and turned back around, taking first one, then a second deep, steadying breath, and only then did he throw out his hand, bracing his arm with the other. "Heed my words! My will creates your body and your sword creates my destiny!"

    Line after line, in perfect mimicry of how his sister had done it, he shouted the incantation, and the formula arrayed beneath Mash''s shield slowly lit up and churned. Brighter and brighter, it grew with each word, and like the spinning of a great propeller blade, a wind began to billow out from it, tossing our hair gently. Ritsuka, so close to the action, faced the brunt of it at its worst, but he didn''t flinch or slow at all.

    And then a grinding noise started to echo out again, a high pitched whine that grated on the ears. The light grew ever brighter, the wind grew stronger, until I had to squint just to keep my eyes open.

    In the center of the array, a form began to take shape, a vague shadow cast in three dimensions, indistinct and blurry.

    "Thou the Seven Heavens, clad in the three great words of power!" Ritsuka shouted over the wind. "Come forth from the Ring of Deterrence, Guardian of the Heavenly Scales!"

    The light collapsed inwards like a supernova in reverse, coalescing into the figure of a man, tall, dressed in the green finery of a medieval aristocrat. In one hand, he held a thick, leatherbound book, and along the line of his jaw was a neatly trimmed beard of russet hair. He threw his arms wide and grinned at us.

    "It''s good to meet you, Master!" he said grandiosely. He folded himself over one of his arms in an exaggerated bow. "Though I am but a humble bard, I am a Servant of the Caster class! Perhaps you have heard of me before? My name¡­"

    His grin grew broader and took on an almost manic edge.

    "¡­is William Shakespeare!"

 Chapter XXX: As the Bard Would Tell It

    Chapter XXX: As the Bard Would Tell It

    I didn''t know who I might have been expecting to answer Ritsuka''s summons. Sure, Arash had answered mine, and the more I interacted with him, the more I could see why he could be called compatible with me. Our ways of thinking weren''t exactly mirrors, but there were similarities, and in battle, he and I had worked well together throughout France.

    How Rika and Emiya connected, on the other hand, I didn''t quite understand, because they weren''t that much alike at all. Maybe as they fought together more, it would become more obvious, but right then, I didn''t see it.

    With that in mind, I hadn''t really had any expectations for Ritsuka, at least not regarding a particular hero. Considering the sense of justice I''d seen of him while we were hoofing it through the French countryside, I''d had in my head the vague image of someone morally upright, like a knight or a saint. Hell, considering we''d spent a month with her, maybe even Jeanne herself would have shown up.

    Shakespeare was so far off my list that he wasn''t even on it.

    "Who?" Rika asked.

    I grimaced. Really, Rika?

    Shakespeare gasped and clutched at his heart, whirling to face her with a rictus of horror stretching his mouth. "You''ve never heard of me?"

    "H-he''s one of the most famous playwrights in history!" Mash added, agreeing with him. "Senpai! How could you not have heard about him? His works are taught in literature and English language courses all over the world!"

    Rika laughed awkwardly. "Well, see, about that¡­"

    Ritsuka sighed. "She almost failed English in high school."

    "Onii-chan!" Rika whined. "You''re not supposed to say that about your favorite sister!"

    "I had to tutor her just so she could get a passing grade," he went on, ignoring her entirely. "I refused to speak Japanese to her at home for a whole year, including vacations."

    "You''re giving away my secrets!" Rika complained. "I''ll never get a husband if you don''t let me keep at least a few! A girl thrives on her mystery!"

    "I pretended not to hear her unless she spoke in English," he added, hammering in the final nail.

    One of my eyebrows rose, and I slanted a meaningful look in Rika''s direction. "Well, it seems to have worked."

    "Senpai!" Rika shouted. "Not you, too!"

    "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!" Shakespeare proclaimed, and when I turned back to him, he was¡­

    "Are you¡­writing this down?"

    He was scribbling in the book he was holding with a long, feathery quill.

    "Of course!" he said, grinning. "For what is art but an imitation of life? What is the world but a stage, and all the people on it actors?"

    Right, okay, Shakespeare was an eccentric. In hindsight, that probably should have been obvious from the beginning, but it had been a while since I last touched any of his works, and for as much as I enjoyed reading, classical literature hadn''t been high on my list of priorities for the past four years and change.

    You know, end of the world. Kind of hard to enjoy hobbies when you were trying to eke out every last possible advantage that would let you stop it.

    "No!" Rika squawked. "You can''t! Don''t write all of that down! I''d just die of embarrassment if everyone read about that!"

    Shakespeare just kept grinning.

    "A comedy! A tragedy! All have their value, my dear!"

    From off to the side, Romani coughed pointedly.

    "Sorry to interrupt," he said politely, although he didn''t sound particularly sorry at all, and the smile on his face belied his humor, "but we can''t stand here making fun of Rika all day ¡ª"

    "Hey!"

    "¡ª so maybe we should formalize the contract, now?"

    "Of course, of course!" The book snapped shut, trapping the quill in its pages, and Shakespeare pressed a hand to his chest again. "As I said, I am William Shakespeare, Servant of the Caster class." He offered his hand to Ritsuka. "Might I know the name of my Master?"

    Ritsuka didn''t look like he knew what he was supposed to do, but after a second, he took Shakespeare''s hand and shook it. "Fujimaru Ritsuka ¡ª ah, Ritsuka Fujimaru, that is. Pleased to¡­meet you?"

    Shakespeare grinned. "The pleasure is all mine, Master."

    Romani sighed. "Well, it''s not exactly the orthodox way of confirming the contract, but I guess that''ll do."

    "The exact wording doesn''t matter, just as long as the contract is finalized," said Da Vinci. "Though I have to admit¡­ Ah, Shakespeare, I''m not sure why you''re here."

    "I was summoned, of course!" he answered.

    Da Vinci smiled, but it was very obviously forced. "That''s not quite what I¡­meant, exactly. Although I suppose¡­ A Heroic Spirit of your nature doesn''t exactly fit something like the Saber class, do you?"

    "I should hope not!" Shakespeare said, aghast. "Why, that would be a dreadful idea indeed! Perhaps the pen is mightier than the sword, but I should think I wouldn''t take the one into battle against the other!"

    Off to the side, Arash hid a chuckle behind his fist.

    "What Da Vinci is dancing around," I cut in, "is what can you do, exactly?"

    Siegfried winced, and so did Romani. "You could have put it more delicately, Taylor¡­"

    Shakespeare didn''t seem offended by my bluntness.

    "I would shudder to think you might send me into combat," he said. "Indeed, I am the last man to be relied upon with my fists or a weapon. I confess, I lack even the supplementary skills a good Caster would take pride in, woe is me! However, that does not mean I am without use to your organization, my good lady!"

    "Oh, so the information packet went through?" Romani asked, interested. "I know we were working on that, but I wasn''t sure if everything important wound up being included instead of just the barebones Arash got when he was summoned."

    "Indeed it did," said Shakespeare. "I was given all the knowledge I need to understand your august group''s mission. Truly, it is a cause noble and grand, worthy of song and story! Why, I might just write down your adventures myself!"

    Da Vinci sighed and rolled her eyes. "Inspect him with Master''s Clairvoyance," she said patiently. "He was summoned by Chaldea, so his information should be properly recorded for you."

    I glanced at her, and then turned back to Shakespeare, squinting at him with the Master''s Clairvoyance granted to me by Chaldea''s systems, and his skills unfolded in my mind''s eye.

    First Folio|When the Curtain Rises, the Applause Shall Be As Ten Thousand Thunders. A B-Rank Noble Phantasm that used illusions and mental attacks to hit at regrets and buried trauma deep inside the target''s mind. It didn''t have much in the way of combat potential since it left the target essentially invulnerable to physical damage until it was all over, but could be very effective as a psychological attack. I made a mental note to be very careful about that, because I didn''t want to imagine what might come out if it was turned anywhere near my direction.

    The last thing anyone here needed was to see a recreation of Jack Slash or Bonesaw''s house of horrors. Things were already rough enough. I didn''t need to add that to the burdens on their shoulders.

    Territory Creation C. A lower than normal rank, as I understood it. Better than nothing, but as Marie might have put it, "a disgrace for a Caster class Servant." Because he wasn''t a proper Caster in the first place, or at least he didn''t have any skill with magecraft that the title kind of implied. All things considered, this might actually be better than I would have expected of someone like him.

    Item Construction ¡ª nothing. The skill was only there to say that it should be there, but didn''t exist. Made sense, I guessed. Shakespeare didn''t have any sort of crafting as part of his legend, not in the literal sense, rather than the literary.

    The Globe C. It was basically a miniaturized version of his Noble Phantasm. Less powerful, less useful, less versatile, and smaller in scale, but not useless. I could probably come up with a few ways to make use of it, in a pinch.

    Self-Preservation B, which looked like it was just another way of saying he was useless in a fight, so don''t send him into one.

    Lastly ¡ª

    I stopped, brow furrowing, and examined that again. No, it turned out, I wasn''t imagining things.

    Enchant A. Conceptual endowment. The ability to add functions and effects to items, giving them strength in proportion to the magnitude of the deeds and powers he ascribed to it. The more unique the item and the feats attributed to it were, the greater the effect, up to the equivalent of a C-Rank Noble Phantasm.

    "Oh."

    Slowly, a smile started to spread across my face.

    Useless? This guy was anything but.

    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    "Onii-chan," Rika mumbled, "Senpai has a scary look on her face."

    My hand started to reach for my dagger, and then I remembered that I''d left it back in my room. That was okay. I had the better part of a month. There was no rush.

    "Say, Shakespeare," I began slowly, "if I told you what I''ve done with a knife before, what could you do to a knife using your Enchant skill?"

    Da Vinci, it seemed, was the first one to catch on. "Oh dear."

    "Wait," said Rika, "wouldn''t that be the same knife she stabbed a dragon in the brain with? The one Mash used against Jeanne Alter?"

    Mash grimaced and I bit my tongue against scolding Rika for reminding her of what she''d used my knife to do. Calling her out in front of everyone wasn''t the way to handle that one.

    "Ohohoho!" Shakespeare cackled gleefully. "That sounds like quite the story! My lady, if this knife of yours is as special as it seems, then I could do quite a bit with it! Why, I''m salivating at the very thought!"

    "Whatever you''re thinking of, it''ll have to wait," said Romani, putting his metaphorical foot down firmly. "This isn''t the place for experimenting or item crafting. This is the summoning chamber. Anything other than summoning, you do it elsewhere."

    Da Vinci smiled. "Oh my, Romani. You almost sounded like Director Animusphere, there."

    Romani blanched. "Th-that''s not what I¡­"

    "In any case, he does have a point," said Da Vinci. She turned to the technician. "Signor Meuniere, perhaps you should get back to your normal position, now? I should think we won''t be attempting any more summonings at this time."

    Meuniere startled. "O-oh, yes, of course! I''ll get right back to that!"

    He scurried away, skirting around our group as he left. "Excuse me," he muttered as he passed.

    "I''m not that much of a hardass, am I?" Romani mumbled to himself.

    Da Vinci ignored him and turned to Shakespeare next. "For now, perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the facilities? Arash and Siegfried" ¡ª here, the two so named gave him a friendly wave and a polite nod respectfully ¡ª "are only two of the four Servants currently part of our roster, and there are plenty of rooms and workshops set aside that you might find accommodating. It might behoove you to pick one to your liking."

    Shakespeare chuckled. "My dear, I am many things, but a fool is not one of them. I can take a hint when one is slapping me upside the face with a dead fish."

    I grimaced at the mental image.

    He turned to Ritsuka with a bow. "For now, Master," he said with more grandiosity, "with your permission, I shall take my leave of you and find myself just such an accommodation. Should you require it, you need only send for me, and I shall grace you with my presence once more."

    Ritsuka blinked at him. "Um, right," he said uncertainly. "Sure. Go ahead. I''ll¡­see you later, I guess?"

    "Excellent!" Shakespeare grinned. "Then it is time for me to, as they say, exit, stage left!"

    And then he disappeared.

    Da Vinci sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand. Arash apparently found it a lot more amusing.

    "Well, he''s certainly a character."

    "I think he and Lady Bradamante will either get along well," Siegfried added, "or attempt to murder each other."

    A breath hissed out of my nostrils, not quite a snort. I thought, for a moment, of Alec, Regent, and his penchant for melodrama. They weren''t exactly the same ¡ª Shakespeare was much more flamboyant and boisterous than Alec had tended to be, his tongue seemed far less sharp ¡ª and I didn''t doubt that the differences would become easier to see the longer things went on, but just in that brief stretch, I''d been able to see the similarities.

    That wound was old, though. It had almost four years to heal. It wasn''t raw and gaping, it was just a slight twinge of sad nostalgia.

    "Hopefully," said Romani, "things won''t get quite that bad. This place is only going to get more hectic the more Servants we start summoning. We don''t need deathmatches and grudges forming when we have barely five."

    "Especially once we start getting those Heroic Spirits who have a history with each other," Da Vinci said with a wry smile. "Can you imagine if we had King Arthur and Sir Mordred here at the same time? We''d probably have our own Battle of Camlann before the week was out."

    "Oh dear," said Mash. "That doesn''t sound good at all."

    "I dunno, that might make things interesting." Rika grinned. "There''s not that much to do around here in our time off. A pitched battle might be fun."

    "Rika¡­" her brother sighed.

    Da Vinci shook her head. "Well, that''s a concern for later."

    "Hopefully, never," said Romani. "If we''re lucky, none of the Servants we summon will have any grievances that can''t be hashed out by a couple rounds in the simulator."

    "Of course, you realize, you''ve just tempted fate," Da Vinci said with a wry smile. "Now that you''ve done that, it''s almost guaranteed to happen."

    Romani sighed, lamenting, "Me and my big mouth."

    "I''ll keep my fingers crossed," Rika promised, grinning, as she displayed her crossed fingers.

    Mash leaned over to Ritsuka and quietly asked, "Does that actually work, Senpai?"

    "I wonder," Ritsuka replied with an awkward chuckle.

    "Yeah, yeah, let''s all gang up on Romani." Romani shook his head. "Anyway. There''s no reason for everyone to hang around here. I''ve got more work to do ¡ª"

    "You''ve got more work to do?" Da Vinci arched an eyebrow pointedly.

    "Da Vinci and I have more work to do," Romani amended. "I can''t really order you guys to go a few practice rounds in the simulator, especially since we''re still working out the kinks to let Servants take part, which automatically leaves Mash on the sidelines. Having said that, Ritsuka, Rika, you two in particular have a lot of catching up to do, and Taylor, there''s no reason not to keep your aim sharp, so maybe you three should get a few rounds in yourselves."

    The twins grimaced, sharing a look of horror, like they''d just been asked to wrangle a particularly venomous snake.

    "Um¡­" said Rika.

    "Yeah, I guess we could do something like that," Ritsuka picked up for her.

    "But, see, Onii-chan and I are really allergic to getting swarmed by bugs," Rika finished. "Like, really, deathly allergic. Have been ever since we were born."

    I snorted and had to fight down a grin.

    "What?" Romani asked, bewildered.

    "We''ve seen how Senpai fights," said Ritsuka. "Those bugs might not have been much use against Servants in France, or the wyverns, now that I think about it."

    "Be fair, Onii-chan," Rika admonished him. "Our piddly Gandr probably wouldn''t have done more than tickle them, either."

    Ritsuka nodded. "Right. Fair point."

    "But we''re squishy humans," Rika said. "Just thinking about Senpai letting loose her Biblical plague is gonna give me nightmares. And that''s before she brings out her knife."

    Ritsuka''s hand went to his eye. Rika nodded. "Right," she went on. "I don''t want to get a lobotomy, either."

    "They''re not even real bugs!" Romani blurted out, throwing up his hands. "Or a real knife!"

    "I''m sure my simulated feelings can tell the difference," Rika said brightly.

    Da Vinci burst into laughter as Romani sagged, pinching the bridge of his nose. She didn''t seem like she was going to be throwing him a metaphorical life preserver anytime soon.

    "Would it help," I began delicately, "if I promised to stick to nothing but Gandr?"

    The twins shared another look and eyed me suspiciously, like they were looking for some sign of trickery or deception. There wasn''t any. I was making an honest offer to give them a handicap, because them learning proper aim and the limit of how many times they could fire their Gandr in succession ¡ª and then how to safely push those limits ¡ª was going to be important going forward.

    I hadn''t forgotten that shot that went wide when we were trying to hold off that Shadow Assassin.

    "I¡­guess we can give it a try," Ritsuka started slowly.

    "But only if Senpai promises no bugs," Rika added quickly. "And no knives, either! And¡­and Gandr only!"

    I smiled. "No bugs, no knives, nothing but my own Gandr."

    For the first couple of practice bouts, at least. Later on, once they had some more experience under their belts, I would have to see about adding my puppets into the mix. I wanted to test out whether or not I could use them better, now that I had my powers back in at least some form or fashion.

    The twins shared one more look and nodded to each other.

    "Deal," they said.

    Time to whip these kids into shape, it seemed.

    I turned to Mash. "Mash, do you think you could get them ready and set up the parameters for the simulator? There''s something I need to talk with Romani about. I''ll be there with you in a minute."

    Mash blinked, and then nodded. "Right! Leave it to me."

    Together with the twins, she left, leading them off to the simulator.

    "We''re going to get our asses whooped!" Rika proclaimed cheerfully on their way out.

    "As long as it''s just her Gandr, I can live with that," Ritsuka groused.

    "Well," said Da Vinci, "I suppose I should get back to work, as well. There is still quite the workload for me to tackle, and even a genius such as myself can only do so many things at once!"

    "You don''t have to go," I told her, "but this is really something for Romani to deal with, so it doesn''t strictly concern you, either."

    Her eyebrows rose. "Oh, but now you''ve made me curious."

    A sigh hissed out of my nostrils.

    "What''s the problem, Taylor?" Romani asked.

    I grimaced and tried to think of a way to broach the subject delicately¡­but there really wasn''t a way to do that, was there? So maybe being direct and upfront was the best way to handle it to begin with.

    "Mash¡­made her first kill."

    Romani froze, stricken. It wasn''t lost on me then that Romani was probably the closest thing she had to a father, although what that even meant when so much of her backstory had never been told to me, I couldn''t have said. Whatever the exact nature of their relationship, it was obvious to anyone with eyes that he cared about her very much.

    "Who¡­" he choked out, but he couldn''t even get the whole thing past his lips before he was changing tacks. "You were supposed to protect them! You''re their leader! You''re the more experienced one, you''re supposed to handle the tough decisions until they''re ready ¡ª"

    "I can''t kill Servants, Romani!" I cut him off harshly.

    And he recoiled as though I''d slapped him, then immediately deflated, slumping in on himself like the air being let out of a balloon.

    "You''re right," he said somberly. "It''s not fair of me to pile all of that on you. I''m sorry."

    A gusty sigh passed my lips, and I carded a hand through my hair.

    "It was Jeanne Alter," I explained quietly. "She killed Mozart. Jeanne couldn''t get close enough safely enough. Georgios, Arash, and Siegfried were outside handling the wyverns, and Emiya was trying to deal with the Caster who made the wish that created the Dragon Witch in the first place. Mash was the only one left strong, fast, and durable enough to do it."

    "And you were down to just a single command spell, then," he mumbled.

    "A nasty business, all around," Da Vinci lamented.

    Romani looked up and met my eyes. There was something in his that I could quite place. Regret, maybe? Disappointment? Frustration? I couldn''t pin it down for the life of me. Whatever was stewing inside that head of his, he looked suddenly exhausted.

    "How did she take it?"

    I wasn''t sure how to answer that. What was a "good" way of handling your first kill? I was sure the various militaries around the world probably had equally diverse ways of addressing the psychology behind taking another person''s life, but strictly speaking, neither the Wards nor the Protectorate was military. The PRT was really more like a police force, too, which generally meant mandated therapy and a psychological evaluation whenever lethal force got involved.

    When it functioned right, anyway. In Brockton Bay, you probably got a pat on the back, a cold beer, and a "see you tomorrow," because things had just been that much of a mess.

    I didn''t need to know any of that to know that the way I''d reacted to pulling the trigger on Coil wasn''t "good" at all. But there''d been such a leadup to the whole situation and a whole trail of unusual circumstances that I didn''t really know if you could call it strictly "bad," either.

    The whole thing was fucked up.

    "Better than she could have," I settled on. Deliberately, I didn''t add the second half: worse than we might have hoped. The very last thing any of us wanted was for Mash to brush off killing someone without batting an eye.

    "You think she needs counseling," Da Vinci said shrewdly.

    She got to the heart of the matter, as expected.

    "Yes," I replied bluntly. "And I think I''m the last person who should try giving it. For a load of reasons, not the least of which being that I''m not qualified."

    Romani sighed and rubbed furiously at his head. "Unfortunately," he said, frustration bleeding into his voice, "I''m so busy trying to keep this whole organization from falling to pieces that I''m not sure if or when I''ll even have time to do my regular job. I''ve been working double shifts just trying to catch up with last week''s to-do list, which means I''m already behind on this week''s."

    "He really has been," Da Vinci added helpfully. "Why, he''s even been skipping sleep and relying on chemical stimulants to keep himself going. Isn''t he just so dedicated?"

    She lanced him with a pointed glare. The sarcasm dripping from her voice was almost physical.

    "I don''t just have psychiatric training, I''m a full blown physician, too," Romani grumbled. "Nothing I''m taking has any unmanageable long term side effects."

    Somehow, I didn''t think his definition of "unmanageable side effects" was the same as Da Vinci''s.

    "Maybe not. But your reliance on them and their overuse will have an eventual and inevitable adverse effect on your performance, Romani. They''re no replacement for proper rest, which as a physician, you should know your body needs to replenish and repair itself."

    "As long as I''m careful, it should be fine. I know my limits."

    D¨¦j¨¤ vu. This sounded like an argument I''d once heard Defiant and Dragon having.

    "I get that you''re busy, Romani," I cut in before their argument could really get going, "but this is important enough that you really should take the time to sit down with her. Not just so that she doesn''t choke in the next Singularity if she''s faced with another situation where she has to make that sort of life and death decision, but if you care about her well-being, too."

    Romani frowned and looked guiltily down at his tablet. No doubt, it had a list of things that needed to be dealt with that was at least ten pages long, and it was probably just going to keep getting longer over the course of the next few weeks. I didn''t envy him, but while I could lead a field team and write up after action reports, I really wasn''t qualified for handling the day to day managing of an organization like this.

    Neither, as it was becoming clearer and clearer to me all the time, was Romani. Better qualified than me, undoubtedly. He''d been here for years before I was dropped on their metaphorical doorstep. He''d had plenty of time to get a handle on how the whole thing functioned. But he''d never been calling the big shots until he was suddenly the most qualified man for the job.

    "Romani," Da Vinci said gently, "we can afford to delay tackling the next Singularity by a week or two. Mash is more important than keeping to a strict schedule for the Rayshift."

    He sighed. The hand holding his tablet drooped bonelessly at his side.

    "You''re right," he said. "I might be the Acting Director of Chaldea until Director Animusphere can be recorporated, but before that, I''m the head of Medical, and Mash is my patient. I can afford to put off some of this other stuff to make sure she''s okay."

    "You could also stand to delegate some of it," Da Vinci pointed out.

    He gave her a tired, wry smile. "What''s this? The only person in Chaldea more overworked than me is suggesting that I hand off some of my responsibilities?"

    "Only one of us is a Servant," Da Vinci said sardonically. "I don''t need sleep. You do."

    He sighed again. "Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I''ll clear some time to catch a few hours of sleep, if it''ll make you happy."

    "Happy isn''t quite the word I would use, but if it gets you into bed, I won''t protest."

    "After," he added, "I set up a schedule for Mash''s therapy sessions."

    Da Vinci''s brow furrowed, and then she shook her head and threw up her hands. "You know what? I think that''s the best I''m going to get. I''ll take it."

    Quiet as I could, I snuck out of the summoning chamber and left them to bicker.

 Chapter XXXI: Make a Master Out of You

    Chapter XXXI: Make a Master Out of You

    The black ball of a Gandr shot fizzed past my head as I ducked, and I returned fire with a Gandr of my own. Rika yelped and took the stinging attack on her shoulder as she scrambled to dodge and failed.

    "Gandr!" Ritsuka shouted as he fired a retaliatory shot to avenge his sister, but I countered with a burst from the ether cannon hidden in Muninn''s throat and canceled out his attack.

    "Keep moving!" I called out to them, and I punctuated my words with a pair of sizzling shots from Huginn that nipped at the twins'' toes, forcing them back into motion.

    "Gandr!"

    I ducked behind a tree and let the spell splash harmlessly against the bark, and then moved again, squeezing off two more shots with my own Gandr as Huginn and Muninn let off one each of their own. The twins both yelped again when my attacks landed, jerking and stumbling backwards like they''d been burned.

    They hadn''t been, of course. This was just a simulator. Virtual reality. The settings had been adjusted to let us feel pain ¡ª hence the shock whenever one of my shots landed ¡ª but no actual damage was being done, except to their pride.

    "Keep moving!" I called out again. The twins scrambled to follow my order, and finally, after staying out in the open had earned them hits as punishment, they made to find cover in the foliage of the forest where our "battle" was taking place.

    I took my own advice and found cover again, using the break in the line of sight to change direction and shake their attention.

    There was one definite plus side to having to support Servants and supply them with magical energy: it made you work out your Magic Circuits. C¨²chulainn back in Fuyuki had already pushed me past where I had spent two years hovering, but being a constant tap for a pair of hungry spirits had forced me to widen the channels even further, and that had the unintended benefit of increasing my shot limit.

    Huginn and Muninn cawed as they flitted about among the branches and leaves above, their inhumanly sharp eyes on the lookout for a pair of twins who should be finding good cover to hide behind. Through their eyes, I spotted my targets, and Muninn opened his beak again to let off another shot from his ether cannon.

    Rika grunted as she hid behind her chosen tree, letting Munnin''s shot go wide, and then she came back out to squeeze out a shot from her own Gandr. Huginn was already there and countering her, and rather than press the fight, my two puppets retreated into the cover of the leaves, getting out of the line of fire.

    But an increase in the amount of stress I could comfortably put on my circuits consecutively did not suddenly make me a first class mage with high quality magic circuits and an oil tanker''s worth of magical energy. Even with Huginn and Muninn there to provide me backup, there was only so much I could do in quick succession before my circuits started "overheating."

    Hence our game.

    The rules were simple: I wouldn''t use my bugs directly or overtly, and that meant no swarming them with a biblical plague or trying to trick them with bug clones, because it would defeat the purpose of training them to fight, and I wouldn''t lay traps. They won if they managed to hit me twice ¡ª once each was how I intended that to go, but I''d deliberately left that open so that it just had to be twice period ¡ª and Huginn and Muninn would count as "disabled" after one hit. Anyone who ran out of magical energy, which was determined by the official measurements of our capacity in Chaldea''s records, automatically lost.

    There was a glaring, obvious hole in those rules. The only way for the twins to lose was to run out of energy before they got two solid hits on me, another deliberate choice on my part. It might have been fairer if the loss factors were the same for both sides, but fairness was one of the first things I''d started to drill out of them. Fair was for video games and fairy tales. I was teaching them how to survive.

    As Huginn and Muninn found hiding spaces in the foliage, I had them start to crow to cover the rustle of the fake underbrush when I moved back out of cover. It had the added benefit of psychological warfare, because a pair of cawing ravens was an unnerving soundtrack to a battlefield.

    I did miss my costume, though. Not only would the dark colors have made it easier to blend into the shadows, the design itself had its own intimidation factor, and while I didn''t want to scare the twins away, learning to deal with psychological stressors was one of the things they would have to do if they wanted to make it out of this Grand Order intact. I just hadn''t been able to justify giving it to myself when I didn''t have the real thing anymore. That might not have been anywhere in the rules, but it went against the spirit of the limits I was trying to work within.

    My path swung around towards Rika''s last position. The simulated fly that clung to the back of her shirt had moved, but not particularly far.

    They''d improved, at least. The first time we did one of these war games with my puppets, they''d tried to shoot Huginn and Muninn in the trees, thinking that my puppets could be startled out of hiding by near misses the way ordinary birds would have been, and all they''d managed to accomplish was to exhaust themselves. They hadn''t tried that trick since.

    I took the roundabout way towards Rika and set a group of wasps in the opposite direction buzzing. Rika swiveled around at the noise, but unlike our first go around, she didn''t take the bait. Instead, she ignored my distraction and turned away completely to regroup with her brother, a path that inconveniently took her perpendicular to mine.

    They were fast learners.

    Adjusting my course to intersect with hers, I had Huginn and Muninn take off again, still cawing as they flew up above the treetops instead of swooping down into the fray. It had the added benefit of giving me a literal bird''s eye view of the battlefield, although that didn''t count for much when the battlefield was the Ardenne Forest in the flush of summertime. It was a little easier when I had a bug on Rika and Ritsuka, so I knew what direction to aim my ravens'' sharp eyes, but the thick foliage wasn''t conducive to a clear view.

    But it helped give me an even better idea of what the terrain looked like, so I adjusted Huginn and Muninn''s flight paths to send them further off to the side, still cawing. In real time, I got to watch Rika and Ritsuka both turn away from them ¡ª directly towards the river Meuse.

    Theoretically, we could have been traveling through this exact stretch of forest in exactly these sorts of conditions in the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, because this stretch of the Ardenne Forest was still within the borders of France and there were a couple of towns and villages along the river. We just had never gone this far east while we were in that Singularity, in no small part because we''d never had a reason to, so the twins didn''t have any idea what I was pushing them towards.

    That was technically their first mistake. I''d told them yesterday that we were going to be heading to the French section of the Ardenne, but they hadn''t done the research to get a better handle on the terrain beforehand.

    Maybe they''d just thought Da Vinci was too busy to bother her for a map. I could understand that, but Da Vinci was a resource that they could have taken advantage of and they didn''t.

    Rika and Ritsuka eventually met up and matched pace with each other, still heading towards the river. They''d probably hear it before they saw it, the trees were so thick, but I was chasing them towards it, and they didn''t seem to realize that yet.

    Inevitably, they reached the riverside and had to come to a stop, and I myself slowed down so I could creep up on them unheard and eavesdrop a little to see if they came up with any good plans. Deliberately, I kept Huginn and Muninn farther back to trick the twins into thinking I wasn''t as close as I was.

    "Shit," said Rika, panting for breath. "Senpai''s really going hard, this time. Do you think we lost her?"

    "Not a chance," said Ritsuka. "I bet she knows exactly where we are."

    "What do we do?"

    Ritsuka shook his head. "We just have to hit her twice."

    "I dunno if you noticed this, Onii-chan, but Senpai''s a certified badass. We haven''t even hit her once."

    "Ambush?" Ritsuka suggested.

    This time, Rika was the one to shake her head. "You just said Senpai knows exactly where we are, didn''t you? Think we can out terminate the terminator?"

    "If we time it right¡­"

    "Or we could just give up."

    I almost broke cover to scold Rika for that one, but I wanted to see what Ritsuka would say in response. A moment of silence passed as they regarded each other, and then they continued like the suggestion had never been made.

    "Hey, Gandr''s not the only spell loaded into these mystic codes, right?"

    Finally, I thought. I''d been waiting for them to realize that ever since we started these sessions. If they hadn''t come to that on their own, I had planned to include it as part of the lecture after this one.

    "If we use the two of these together¡­ Think we can make it work?"

    "I don''t have any better ideas. What''ve we got to lose?"

    This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    "The match," I said as I came out of my hiding place.

    The twins whirled around to face me, but my arm was already coming up and a Gandr was on my fingertips before they could even do anything. Showing that they had indeed been learning from these sessions, they both threw themselves out of the way, but there was nowhere left for them to go with their backs to the river.

    I swung my arm around and took aim at Rika.

    "Emergency evasion!" Ritsuka shouted right as I intoned my simple, "Gandr."

    And space seemed to shift a little as my spell curve harmlessly around Rika''s body to splash ineffectually against the grass.

    I turned my aim again at Ritsuka, funneling magical energy into my spell, and once more, before I could fire it off, there was a panicked, hurried shout, this time from Rika.

    "Emergency evasion! Momentary reinforcement!"

    "Gandr."

    My spell curved around Ritsuka''s body as he suddenly burst into motion, far, far faster than an ordinary human had any right to be. It wouldn''t have even been enough for a Mover 2 rating, but it was just superhuman enough that there was no time for me to get out of the way.

    Before I knew it, he threw his arms around me to pin me in place.

    "Rika!"

    "Gandr!"

    Unfortunately for Ritsuka, I knew a thing or two about grappling, and I stepped forward with one foot, hooking my ankle behind his and yanking him off balance. At the same time, I took hold of his belt with my hands and twisted in the same direction. It wasn''t textbook and it wasn''t perfect, but it was exactly the sort of thing I''d learned first with Brian and then in the Wards.

    Rika''s Gandr crackled and sizzled against Ritsuka''s back.

    Ritsuka gasped, and as his grip loosened in his surprise, I finished the throw and dropped him to the ground.

    "I didn''t say it was against the rules, so nice effort," I said. "But we''re not ready to start on hand to hand drills, because the last thing you want to do is get into melee with a Servant. We''ll cover that later."

    Ritsuka groaned on the ground. I lifted my hand up, took aim, and fired another shot. "Gandr."

    Rika shrieked and scrambled to her feet, not quite fast enough to completely avoid the black ball that nipped at her ankles. She didn''t stand straight, she hunched over warily, staring back at me unblinkingly.

    I gave her a moment to think up a plan, a handful of tense seconds where her eyes darted all over the place, trying to find a way out. Huginn and Muninn cawed ominously from overhead.

    And then Rika went and did something unexpected: she dove into the river.

    "Rika!" her brother shouted. He hesitated a moment, but another shot from Muninn made up his mind. "Shit!"

    He scrambled to his feet and dove in after her.

    "Well," I said to myself as I watched them struggle against the current to reach the other side. "I guess it''s only stupid if it doesn''t work."

    It was dangerous against the wrong kind of enemy ¡ª for instance, if I was so inclined, I could have used my prosthetic''s phantom limb to drag them under the surface and drown them both ¡ª but as an escape plan, sometimes the extreme option was the only one that kept you alive. Voice of experience on that one.

    I gave them time to pull themselves up off of the other bank, waiting to make sure they made it safely to the other side, and then I backed away to give myself a running start, broke out into a sprint, and cycled magical energy through my own mystic code.

    Momentary reinforcement!

    My legs suddenly doubled, tripled in strength, easily matching and then surpassing an Olympic sprinter, and I kicked off the ground right on the edge of the near bank of the Meuse, leaping towards the opposite side. It became quickly obvious that it still wasn''t enough to make it all the way across, so Huginn and Muninn swooped down and each took hold of an arm, pulling me up just that little bit extra so I could hover safely back onto land.

    The utterly dumbfounded expressions on the twins'' faces almost made me crack a smile.

    "That''s so totally not fair," Rika complained.

    But I''d given them enough of a reprieve already, so my ravens fired off a pair of sizzling shots, and the twins, completely soaked, caked with mud, threw themselves out of the way. Together, like they''d practiced it, they rolled into a crouch, lifted their arms, took quick aim, and each of them fired off a Gandr shot.

    "Gandr!"

    Huginn and Muninn fired back, aiming into the grass at an angle behind the twins because the bugs I''d kept on them had "washed off" in the river. Shot and counter shot met midair and cancelled out with a crackle, leaving us right back where we started, only with them colder, wetter, and more tired than they had been in the beginning.

    A buzzer sounded from my wrist, and I looked down to check it for a brief moment. "That''s the match," I announced.

    Ritsuka perked up. "It is?"

    "We won?" Rika asked hopefully.

    "No."

    Their faces fell. Sorry to break it to you, kids.

    "That last shot used up the last of your allotted energy," I told them. "That means you''re both out."

    "Aw, man!" Rika let out a deep, gusty sigh. "We were so close, too!"

    Not as close as she thought they were, but closer than I would have liked, considering I had been getting pretty close to my own limits. Was I supposed to be proud they''d last so long, or frustrated I hadn''t driven them to "exhaustion" quicker?

    Well, they were still supposed to be learning from this. Beating them down without mercy kind of defeated the point.

    "That''s just how it is, sometimes," I said instead. "We''ll go get some lunch, and then we''ll go over what you did right, what you did wrong, and where you need some improvement."

    Neither of them looked like they were looking forward to that, but I ignored it in favor of fiddling with the control module that was currently taking the form of the standard Chaldea communicator on my wrist. A few adjustments here, a button press there, and the entire world around us froze like a screenshot or a picture, then slowly lost cohesion and definition as the simulation shut down.

    The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the simulator room with the VR headset lifting up off of my eyes as the neural connections disengaged and I regained control of my real limbs. I stood up and started stretching with a grunt, loosening up the kinks I''d gained from sitting so still in one spot, and it was about then that I noticed our audience.

    "You guys were so close!" Bradamante cheered. "You almost had her! I''m sure you''ll win next time!"

    "Tii-chan?" Rika asked groggily as she slowly pulled herself to her feet.

    My cheek twitched at the ridiculous nickname, but Bradamante didn''t seem at all bothered by it.

    "You two did well," Arash said with a smile. "Much better than your last session. You''ve been improving dramatically."

    "Arash is here, too?" Ritsuka mumbled. "And Emiya and¡­ Wait. Is that everyone?"

    Indeed, it was. Siegfried, Bradamante, Arash, Mash, and Emiya, all of the Servants except for Shakespeare had gathered in front of¡­was that a monitor? Yes, a monitor, overlooking the main simulator, where they had all been huddled together until Bradamante said something. All that was missing was a big barrel of popcorn shared between them.

    "Everyone except for that playwright," said Emiya. "He said something about training montages being too mundane to observe and holed up in his room."

    "Were you¡­watching us?"

    "Ah¡­"

    The Servants all froze and looked at one another guiltily, like a group of children who had been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

    "Yes, we were," Mash was the one to admit, smiling sheepishly. "I''m sorry, Miss Taylor, Senpai. We wanted to watch your training session together."

    Emiya sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Bradamante wanted to make sure everything was safe and no one was getting hurt."

    "It was a legitimate concern!" the one so named protested.

    "There isn''t much else to do around here for us, so the rest of us thought it might be interesting to see, too," Emiya went on like she hadn''t spoken. "Da Vinci is the one who arranged for the monitor setup. She said it''s just a stopgap measure until she can get something a little bigger in place."

    "Aw man," Rika grumbled, "they all got to watch Senpai kick our asses!"

    Emiya coughed into his hand, but it wasn''t enough to hide his smile, not from me.

    "You did so well, though!" Bradamante said encouragingly. "I thought you had her, a couple of times!"

    "Senpai promised not to use her bugs on us, though," Ritsuka pointed out. "So it''s not like she was taking us all that seriously."

    "Ah¡­" Bradamante''s mouth flapped, but she didn''t seem to have a response prepared for that.

    I held my tongue. There was a lot more to me taking the twins seriously than just being free to use my bugs however I liked, and they were in no way at all prepared for something like that. In fact, I very much doubted that they were ever going to be ready to face me on the warpath, and I hoped they never truly had to understand what that meant.

    I wanted to say something like, "Things would have to have gone very wrong, first," but we were currently on a break between fixing twisted gnarls of altered space-time where items of incredible power called Grails were throwing proper history off track. Things had gone very wrong even before the sabotage that had killed off the vast majority of Chaldea''s staff and most of my coworkers.

    "That''s what experience does for you," Arash said, but his smile took off any edge that the words might have had.

    "You acquitted yourselves well, you needn''t worry," Siegfried reassured them. "I''m certain my Master would say so as well."

    All of the attention turned to me, and I sighed. Thanks for putting me in the spotlight, Siegfried.

    But I kept that thought to myself instead of sending it his way.

    "We''re only a handful of sessions in," I said. "You two did fine for your skill level."

    "That''s not as comforting as you seem to think it is," Ritsuka mumbled. I pretended I hadn''t heard him.

    Yes, I was aware, I wasn''t the warmest or cuddliest of teachers and I wasn''t great about the whole "be encouraging" part of mentorship. It couldn''t be helped, I was the best they were going to get, right now, because there really weren''t any other options.

    "We''ll go over all of the things you did right and wrong later. Before that, I''d like to get something to eat. It''s about time for lunch anyway, isn''t it?"

    I slid a pointed look over at Emiya, and he blinked, wide-eyed, like a deer caught in the headlights. "Ah¡­"

    But he caught my hint easily enough.

    "I''ll go get right on that."

    The words were hardly out of his mouth before he disappeared into thin air. Spirit form really was convenient for getting somewhere in a hurry, wasn''t it? Or for getting out of an uncomfortable situation.

    Bradamante let out a startled squawk. "He vanished!"

    "He made a tactical retreat, more like," Arash said wryly, chuckling. He turned back towards the simulator, inspecting it. "You know, Master, this device is pretty interesting. Especially once we enlist the aid of more Servants, it might be nice to be able to use it ourselves for sparring and war games."

    "That was one of its original functions, actually," I replied. "The goal was for Masters and Servants to train in live-fire exercises without anyone being in actual danger, including either the room or the building itself. Da Vinci has been working on repairing it since the sabotage, but it''s less vital than a lot of the other things she''s working on, so it''s still not fully repaired yet."

    Arash made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. "Yeah, I can understand that."

    "Oh!" Bradamante gave a delighted gasp. "Lord Siegfried, I would love to have a match against you once the simulator is fully repaired! A chance to test my mettle against the Hero of the Nibelungs ¡ª who could claim to have had such a rare opportunity?"

    "Surely as few as have had the chance to claim the same of you," Siegfried said with a friendly smile. "I would be honored to fight with you, Lady Bradamante."

    "It might be a chance to get Ritsuka and Rika more used to field command, as well," Arash added. "It would be a good idea to split up into teams and have mock battles against each other for practice."

    "That was one of the things I wanted for them to work on," I agreed. "We just haven''t gotten there yet."

    "I thought we did just fine in Orl¨¦ans," Rika muttered mutinously.

    "If you think ''fine'' is good enough, then Director Animusphere would have told you to pack your bags right now," I told her mercilessly. "She wouldn''t accept anything less than your best and I won''t either."

    The twins straightened as though the mere mention of Marie''s name was enough to summon her specter from the FATE system to come and chew them out for their deficiencies.

    "I think¡­none of us is there yet," said Mash quietly. "I know that I¡­I still need to get better. I need to get stronger. There''s so much I still have to learn, both about the Heroic Spirit inside me and what it means to be a Demi-Servant. So¡­" Determination drew across her face. "Senpai, let''s get better together!"

    "Right!" said Ritsuka.

    "We''re with you all the way, Mash!" Rika cheered.

    "Later," I stressed over their excitement. "We just got done with a match. Take a break, get some lunch, and we''ll talk more afterwards, okay?"

    "Screw lunch!" Rika shouted. "I''m ready to go again right now, Senpai! Give us your worst!"

    A loud, low gurgle echoed through the room, and Rika blushed as red as her hair, holding one hand to her stomach.

    "Okay," she said, quieter, meeker, and sheepish, "lunch first. That sounds like a good plan. We can wait to get our asses kicked again until we''re doing it on a full stomach."

    Ritsuka laughed awkwardly, but didn''t comment on the sudden reversal. I did my best to keep my smile from showing.

    They weren''t what Marie would have called "proper Masters of Chaldea" yet, but I was going to see to it that they got as close as I could get them before the end of this Grand Order. Whatever it took.

    I owed it to the rest of Team A and everyone else who didn''t make it.

 Chapter XXXII: Monotony

    Chapter XXXII: Monotony

    The days passed with agonizing slowness.

    There was only so much research I could do on the era of Emperor Nero''s reign and the geopolitical situation of Rome in 60 AD before my brain started leaking out of my ears. Too, the constant specter of futility kept hovering over my head, reminding me that knowledge of the Hundred Years War hadn''t been of much use in the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, so all of my studying and cramming ¡ª the majority of which I would probably forget before we even stepped foot in Rome ¡ª might wind up being completely pointless.

    Training with the twins was taking some of the edge off and doing wonders for my stress levels. It helped that the twins were progressing at a good pace, even if they weren''t exactly soaking up everything I was teaching them like sponges.

    At the end of the day, they were a pair of kids with average potential, made special only because they were essentially nobodies from the magical equivalent of the boonies. That they had any potential at all was supposedly the only thing at all remarkable about either of them.

    What they weren''t was my Chicago Wards or the Undersiders. They didn''t have the sort of background capes tended to come bundled with, and that meant their only real experience with combat was Fuyuki and Orl¨¦ans. I tempered my expectations a little with that in mind, and when I did, I thought it was more than fair to say that they were coming along at a decent rate.

    What really hampered us was the limitations of the simulator. It really was fairly low down on the list of priorities that needed to be handled, and I honestly had no idea when Da Vinci would get around to bringing it back up to snuff. It was getting to be close to a month since the sabotage that had crippled both the physical and human infrastructure, a stretch of time that felt longer since the twins and I had spent a month in Orl¨¦ans, even if only about a week had passed in Chaldea, and while it looked as though all of the important bits had been slotted back into place, I wasn''t really in the position to know one way or the other whether or not everything was fixed and what still needed more attention first.

    The fact that most of the rest of the staff were still stretching themselves fairly thin probably said more about it than not, though. It still made me feel kind of guilty to watch Meuniere and the others run themselves ragged while I got to get full nights'' sleep and had enough free time to get bored.

    I kept reminding myself that I didn''t have any place trying to help all of them, and I''d just get in the way if I interjected myself into any of their jobs. I was hired to be a Master of Team A. With Kirschtaria and the rest down for the count for the foreseeable future, my job was to lead Team A.

    One of the most frustrating parts was that I didn''t even have a collection of spiders around to weave useful things for myself in the meantime, like silk undersuits for our mystic codes or length of silk cord to use as rope.

    Maybe I could convince Da Vinci to let me set up a terrarium in one of the unused rooms so I could bring back a collection of spiders from Rome. Ghoulish as it might have been to say, there was no point in letting spare rooms go to waste now that the original occupants weren''t around to use them anymore.

    "Penny for your thoughts?"

    I blinked as Arash slid into the seat across from me, smiling that friendly, charming smile of his. He carried a modest tray of food, a small sampler that wouldn''t be missed, so that he could enjoy Emiya''s cooking without cutting into our essential supplies.

    To my knowledge, all of the Servants were doing that. They didn''t need to eat, but they wanted the chance to enjoy the little things every now and again, the finer, simpler parts of life. Well. "All" five of them, six, if you included Mash.

    "What?"

    "That is the right idiom, isn''t it?" he asked. "It all gets a little confusing, sometimes. Technically, I speak every language in existence, but the idioms can get a bit jumbled, and some of them only make sense in their native tongue. Like ''wash your neck.'' I think Ritsuka and Rika would get that one, but I don''t think it crosses into English well."

    Wash your neck? Was that one of those homophone puns that only made sense in Japanese?

    "No, that was the right idiom."

    One of the perks of being a Servant that I was actually jealous of. What was effectively a potent Brute and Mover package, those were definitely nice, and the Breaker kind of ability that let them ignore conventional attacks just by the nature of being a Servant, that was incredibly convenient. Skills, Noble Phantasms, they were all one shade of potent or powerful or another, and a younger me might have jumped at the chance to have any one of them.

    But the Thinker-esque ability to communicate with anyone they talked to, no matter who it was? Fuck, I wanted that.

    Just, you know, without the slight inconvenience of having to be a dead hero, first.

    "So?" he prompted.

    "So what?"

    "You looked pretty deep in thought, Master," he said. "Anything I need to be concerned about?"

    A breath hissed out of my nostrils.

    "Just feeling a little restless, I guess," I admitted. My fork speared down on my plate, but the scrambled eggs I''d been eating had cooled to an unappetizing lukewarm while I was navel gazing, and I couldn''t help but grimace around the metal tines.

    Arash chuckled and glanced back over at the twins'' group. Unlike usual, they were uncharacteristically silent. "Yeah, I think we''re all starting to feel that. There''s only so many stories we can all tell before we run out of anything interesting."

    "Mm."

    I gulped down a sip of my orange juice, but it had much the same problem as my eggs did, only in the opposite direction: it had warmed up closer to room temperature than I would have liked. A shame that temperature played as much of a roll in taste as it did, because Emiya made even a simple dish like scrambled eggs and toast far closer to gourmet cooking than it really had any right to be, and it felt like a waste to be disappointed with letting it sit for too long.

    "Your training sessions with Ritsuka and Rika have been a major source of entertainment, though," he added. "I think Bradamante is eagerly waiting for the day that they manage to get one over on you and win a match, although Siegfried is certain it won''t happen anytime soon."

    For some reason, that put a smile on my face.

    "That confident in me, is he?"

    "It''s because he sees something in you that she doesn''t," he remarked. He turned back to me with his dark eyes, and there was something in them, something deep and unfathomable, like looking into the boundless black of the deep sea. And then he laughed a little and that unfathomable depth disappeared. "Well, maybe it''s more like he just had more time to get to know you. You have commanded him in battle several times, and the way you met was a lot more action packed than how we met Bradamante."

    Bit of an understatement, there.

    "Maybe," I hedged. "Or maybe it''s just a matter of personality. She seems to get along with the twins much better than she does with me."

    She seemed like a bright, cheerful person, and me? Well, I didn''t know if it was really fair to label myself dour, but I''d been slapped with the word "intense" several times throughout my career. Mostly by the Chicago Wards when they thought I was out of earshot.

    "Well, who knows?" said Arash. "Maybe when the simulator is ready for it, we can start having scrimmage matches with all of the Servants. Her opinion of you might change a little after she''s had the chance to fight under your command a few times, even if it''s only in friendly, low stakes matches."

    "I had plans for something like that," I agreed. "I thought it might be educational to show how a single Servant under a competent Master''s command can fight off even multiple Servants simultaneously."

    Arash chuckled again. "Now who''s confident? Your faith in me is flattering, Master, but there''s a limit to what I can do on my own, you know."

    I slid a glance his way. "I was planning on Siegfried, actually," I admitted.

    "Ouch!" But he wasn''t insulted, he just laughed some more. I was beginning to wonder if he would take offense to anything on his own behalf. "That makes more sense. For how mild-mannered he is, Siegfried is quite the powerful hero. You would never expect a guy that humble to be that strong."

    He wasn''t wrong, come to think of it. Reputation had been everything as a cape. You could be approachable as a hero, but you couldn''t afford to appear weak. Always, always, you had to project the image of strength, confidence, and control, even when you wanted nothing more than to crawl into a ball and cry.

    Siegfried, the strongest single Servant on our team and likely one of the strongest Heroic Spirits period, flew in the face of all of that.

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    "No," I mused, "you really wouldn''t."

    "It sounds like that''s still a little ways off, though," he remarked. He looked back over at the other table. "Any ways of changing things up a little until we can get the Servants in on the fun?"

    "That''s one of the things I was thinking about," I said wryly. "There''s only so many ways I can add variety to French forests and farm fields."

    "I think you have a slightly better idea about that than I do," he said, chuckling. "The terrain in France is a little different from what I was used to when I was alive, and trying to manage aiming through dense forest cover was trickier than I would have expected it to be. It makes me wonder what heroes like Robin Hood must be like. Maybe I''ll get to meet him and compare styles of archery."

    I shrugged. "I grew up in the city myself. Went to nature camp a couple of times, but it''s not like I was exactly in my element in the forests either."

    "You seemed to have an easier time of it than I did," he commented. "Then again, I guess that bug power of yours gets even more powerful out in the forest than it would be in a city, so that makes some sense."

    "None of which does me much good figuring out how to mix things up with training the twins," I pointed out. "I can''t just keep jumping from field to field and expect them to get much better at fighting anywhere aside from French farmland."

    Maybe it was time to up the stakes a little, move on from the more simplistic war games we''d been doing. The twins were steadily improving, and there were only so many different kinds of natural terrains I could train them on before I had to start grasping at more and more unlikely zones with less and less common weather patterns. It wasn''t to say that we would never find ourselves climbing the sheer cliff face of a towering mountain in a blizzard, but throwing them into further and further extremes would just serve to frustrate and exhaust them.

    And, well, I didn''t exactly have oodles of experience with that sort of thing myself.

    So maybe it was time to go in the opposite direction. Double up on the lesson, too. After all, the twins weren''t magi, so they''d never heard that adage that Marie had drilled into my head about fighting a magus in his workshop, and we hadn''t had to face a properly sneaky Caster yet, but it was only a matter of time.

    "I think¡­I''m going to train them on urban warfare today," I decided aloud.

    Memories of Brockton Bay swam up from the recesses where I''d buried them, scenes of my childhood with my mom and dad, of school and simpler days, but more prominent were the sites of my battles ¡ª the stretch of the Docks where my first night out had culminated in a fight against Lung, the bank we''d robbed on our first job together, the storage facility where we fought Bakuda, the Forsberg Gallery, the staging area before the Leviathan attack, Coil''s underground base, the PRT headquarters, and so many more that I couldn''t name but stood out in stark relief from all of the adrenaline that had been pumping through my body as I passed through them.

    All gone, no doubt. There was no way of knowing if or how much of it was intact after Gold Morning, but if things had been rough and chaotic in the wake of Leviathan, I couldn''t see how the city had survived after a tragedy that made that one seem tame.

    "Urban warfare?" Arash asked curiously.

    Almost against my will, I could feel a smile starting to bloom on my face.

    "It''ll almost be like going home."

    <div>

    ¡ª o.0.O.O.0.o ¡ª

    The twins arrived in the simulator room early in the afternoon, after lunch had a little time to settle in their bellies but not so late that they''d be craving dinner soon, with Mash in tow. The curious look on their faces told me they were wondering about why I had delayed our usual session from morning to afternoon, but weren''t really expecting anything wildly out of the ordinary. They had no idea what was in store for them.

    I took a position at the front like a teacher or an instructor, trying my best to set my posture like the ones who had handled my training in the Wards. Authoritative and commanding, but not tyrannical.

    "The reason I postponed our training session from this morning was because I needed time to set up the simulator," I told them. "As you''ve probably guessed, we''re going to be doing something a little different today. Mash?"

    Mash stood a little straighter, like a student who had been unexpectedly called on. "Yes, Miss Taylor!"

    "You''re free to join us, if you want. It might do you some good to learn this, too. However, I haven''t set things up to account for your Demi-Servant form, so you won''t be able to use it if you do join us."

    Mash''s brow furrowed thoughtfully, but after a moment, she shook her head. "If it''s okay with you, Miss Taylor, I think I''ll stay out here and watch from the monitor. If I can''t transform, then I''ll just get in the way of Senpai''s training."

    I nodded. "That''s fine." Then, I turned back to the twins. "So. It occurred to me that we have yet to encounter a proper Caster class Servant in either Fuyuki or Orl¨¦ans."

    Ritsuka raised his hand. "Um, don''t C¨²chulainn and that Gilles guy count? Or Mozart?"

    "Even you don''t count Shakesy as a proper Caster, huh?" Rika chuckled lowly. "Poor Billy Shakes."

    "No, they don''t," I said confidently. "A proper Caster is like a magus. I realize you two don''t know much about magi and how they work and Chaldea hasn''t given you much education on that front, either. There''s an adage about magi, however, that it''s very important you learn: don''t fight a magus in his workshop. The very last thing you want to do is get into a fight with an enemy whose tricks you don''t know in the place where they are at their strongest. The same goes for a Caster class Servant, a proper one who was a magus in life: don''t fight them in their workshop.

    "That''s the reason I wouldn''t count C¨²chulainn, Gilles, or Mozart as proper Casters," I went on. "A proper Caster absolutely will not take the fight to you. They''ll hole up in an advantageous position and fortify it with all sorts of tricks, traps, and defenses. If Gilles had been a proper Caster, there''s no way we would have been able to walk through that palace unscathed until we found him fighting Emiya. No room in that entire building would have been safe."

    Ironically, in at least that sense, I would have considered Shakespeare more of a proper Caster than not. He didn''t have the skillset to land a decisive killing blow himself, but if he had the time to set it up, then he could trap an enemy inside the illusion of his Noble Phantasm, giving himself time to escape or another Servant time to set up for a decapitating strike.

    And his Noble Phantasm was like Tattletale''s best tricks on steroids.

    "But we didn''t have any choice except to go there," Ritsuka pointed out. "Even if Gilles was a proper Caster, what else could we have done?"

    "That''s part of the problem," I agreed. "Sometimes, fighting the enemy on their home ground is going to be unavoidable. That''s why, today, we''re going to be doing something different from usual. The only proper Caster we have on the payroll is Da Vinci, and she doesn''t have the time to spare helping us out with this. So, I''m going to do my best to simulate a fight with an actual Caster in her stronghold, and this is going to double as urban warfare training."

    "Urban warfare training?" Rika asked.

    I smiled. "You can consider it my specialty."

    Obviously, that did nothing to comfort them, and the twins suddenly looked like they wanted to be anywhere else than there. They''re learning, I imagined Lisa would have said, snickering.

    "Don''t worry," I said. "I''m not going to throw you straight into the deep end. For the first exercise, we''ll be going back to some place that''s at least a little familiar. Remember Fuyuki?"

    Immediately, they perked up. I nodded before they could even ask.

    "I found the data for what it was supposed to look like, so we''ll be going there again, only it won''t be on fire and there won''t be any Servants or skeletons trying to kill us."

    "Just you, right?" Rika snarked.

    I tilted my head a little, neither confirming nor denying it, then stepped to the side and gestured towards the simulator pods.

    "Let''s get started."

    The twins shared another dubious look, and their reluctance was clear on their faces, but I''d chosen to use Fuyuki instead of New York, Las Vegas, or Chicago, because at least they were passingly familiar with Fuyuki. For the opposite reason, I''d chosen to avoid Tokyo, the city in whose outer districts the twins had grown up in, according to their personnel files, because I didn''t know it at all. Giving neither side an immediate terrain advantage was the goal, because I was going to be pressing them hard enough without it.

    Naturally, Brockton Bay had never been an option. Leaving aside the fact it gave me too big a home field advantage, it would raise too many questions not just from the twins, but from anyone who got too curious about it. Brockton Bay didn''t exist in this timeline, after all. It''d be hard to explain where I knew it from and why.

    After another moment of hesitation, the twins stepped forward and climbed into the apparati for the simulator. Without further ado, I went over to my own designated spot, but before I sat down, I turned to our spectators.

    "Mash."

    "Yes, Miss Taylor?"

    "Whenever the others decide to stop hiding, let them know I don''t mind them watching, so they don''t have to sneak in."

    Mash blinked at me, bewildered, and then let out a startled squeak as a sheepish Arash and Siegfried, a smirking Emiya, and a gaping Bradamante all materialized around her. The twins let out a pair of surprised shouts, but I just shook my head, sat down, and started up the scenario I''d spent the last few hours programming. The visor came down over my eyes, and the back of the seat pushed up to cup the nape of my neck.

    A cool sensation swept down my spine, and with a feeling not unlike the process of Rayshifting, my real body fell away, left behind.

    Between one blink and the next, I was in Fuyuki. The metropolitan district, to be more specific. Shinto, if I was remembering the labels right. The street I''d appeared on was abandoned, empty of people, but the street lights were on and the city was not entirely dark, nor was it the ruined husk it had been when we were last here, the aftermath of a catastrophe. Instead, it was as though everyone had simply vanished, leaving everything frozen in that single moment.

    I could have simulated people, but adding in bystanders would muddy the exercise a little and was a few steps beyond where the twins were besides. Best to save more complicated things like that for later on, when they were a little more experienced.

    After a moment, the twins materialized a little further down the road, about fifteen feet away. It was a little strange to watch from the outside as the system built a wireframe, then a blank, gray model, and then filled in the details, all so quickly that you could miss the whole thing if you blinked.

    "Whoa," Rika said, looking up at the completely intact skyline and the clear night sky above. "It looks¡­different from the last time we were here. So, this is what Fuyuki is supposed to look like, huh? Got nothing on Tokyo, though."

    Ritsuka, on the other hand, had immediately found me, and his eyebrows shot up towards his hairline. "Senpai? What are you wearing?"

    Rika''s attention swung towards me, and her own eyes went wide. "Holy shit!"

    "The rules are going to be a little bit different for this exercise," I told them, ignoring their reactions and their surprise. "For one, I won''t be using my ravens, so you don''t need to worry about them. For another, a proper Caster is going to be miles better at magic than you are, which means no spells you throw at them are going to be of much use, so it won''t be as simple as just hitting me with a Gandr twice, this time."

    "Simple, she says," Rika muttered disbelievingly. I ignored that, too.

    "Your objective today is going to be landing one solid hit on me," I went on, patting my armor''s chestplate. "One good, strong blow on my body. Since I''m playing the part of a proper Caster, I won''t fight back physically, and I won''t just swarm you with bugs, so if you can get in close, you can win with a single punch."

    "There''s gotta be a catch," Rika said sourly.

    "Are there any other conditions?" Ritsuka asked more seriously.

    I nodded. "A few more."

    With a sweeping swing of my arm, I gestured out to the city around us. To the Shinto district, specifically.

    "I''m going to set a timer for thirty minutes," I said. "In that time, I''m going to find a base in this half of the city and start fortifying my position. I won''t go to Miyama. I won''t cross the bridge. I won''t leave the city limits."

    In truth, I''d already picked out my hiding spot. If the twins had been paying enough attention and remembered how things had gone in Fuyuki, it should be obvious where I was going to camp out at. After all, there were only so many places in this city that an actual Caster would choose to set up a base, and for a proper Caster who was actually a competent magus, in Shinto, there were only two.

    But it all hinged on how clever the twins were. If they picked up on it quick enough, then they''d come farther than I was expecting. If they didn''t, well, it would be a valuable learning experience for them either way.

    "Once the timer goes off, that''s your signal to come looking for me," I continued. "Your task today is to find my base, make it through all of my tricks and traps ''alive,'' and land that one, solid hit. Sound simple enough?"

    "I''m beginning to think our definitions of ''simple'' are just completely different," Rika muttered.

    "We understand," Ritsuka said, glancing sidelong at his sister. "Is there a time limit?"

    "We''ll stop for dinner, but otherwise, no. Be warned, however," I cautioned, "the longer you take to find me, the longer I have to prepare and the more dangerous my stronghold will be. If you take too long, it''s entirely possible that you might not even make it past the front door unscathed."

    I was exaggerating, of course, but not as much as either of them would probably like me to be. The twins exchanged a nervous glance but didn''t whine or complain, so I took that as a good sign.

    "Thirty minutes," I said, bringing up my arm so I could set the timer. "Starting¡­ Now."

    Their wrists both beeped, and the pair of them looked down at them for a brief moment.

    "Remember, you two." The feel of my mask sliding down over my face was achingly familiar, like pulling on an old pair of jeans I hadn''t worn in a while, and the yellowish tint of the lenses made something in my gut curl with nostalgia. "As soon as that timer goes off, the exercise begins. Use that time wisely."

    The swarm I''d been gathering surged up from the shadows and consumed me, and the twins backed off, recoiling away from the writhing mass as it spiraled around them like a tornado. Behind the cover of my bugs, my intact flight pack activated, and I took off, heading towards my destination.

    By the time my swarm dissolved a few moments later, I was already gone.

 Interlude R(F) I: Shelobs Lair

    Interlude R(F) I: Shelob''s Lair

    Life for Fujimaru Rika had gone sideways somewhere.

    Another girl might have said some clich¨¦ thing about not knowing where things had gone so wrong, but Rika knew the exact decision that had flung her life so far off course: the very instant she decided to let her brother sign the two of them up for an internship at the "Chaldea Security Organization." Everything that had happened since could squarely be traced back to the moment she relented and signed her name on the form he''d brought back for her.

    Nowhere in that brochure or on any of the waivers they''d signed was there anything listed about "Rayshifts" or "Heroic Spirits" or "Singularities," and under possible workplace hazards, there was no mention of bombs blowing up a solid eighty-percent of your coworkers, risking life and limb in the distant past, or famous Italian artists suddenly deciding to come back to life for the sole purpose of getting a sex change.

    Most importantly, no one told her that she was going to be working under a more senior employee who was the hardest of the hardcore and maybe also just a little, tiny, teensy-weensy bit insane.

    Speaking of, wow, what had Senpai been through that made her such a badass? Rika couldn''t even imagine it. All through Orl¨¦ans, Senpai walked on like the whole world around her couldn''t touch even a single hair on her head, even while people died and wyverns burned half the country down and a genocidal madwoman cackled atop the head of the biggest fuckoff dragon Rika had ever seen, let alone conjured in her mind.

    The only reason Rika hadn''t broken down gibbering was by not thinking too hard about it. The instant she stopped and actually thought through what was happening, she probably would have curled into a ball and cried for a week straight. She and Onii-chan had to sleep next to each other just to get any rest at all.

    And Senpai walked through everything, all of the chaos and the carnage, cool as a cucumber and twice as prickly.

    Senpai must''ve been through some seriously fucked up shit if she didn''t even bat an eye at the end of the whole goddamn world. It was all Rika could do to climb out of bed, some days.

    Sometimes, Rika wondered if she was the only sane person left in Chaldea. Onii-chan was adapting to the insanity pretty well, she thought. He took the whole Servants, Rayshifts, magicians stuff with aplomb she was frankly jealous of, and when Doctor Roman or Da Vinci explained the newest and craziest bit of bullshit, he just nodded along like it made more sense than the sky being blue or grass being green. Onii-chan was a serious person like that.

    Senpai wasn''t any help there, she was in on it, and so were the Doc and Da Vinci-chan. The only voice of reason Rika seemed to have was her own, and she was sure it was only a matter of time until the insanity infected her, too.

    "All your base are belong to us," Rika mumbled.

    "Rika?" Onii-chan asked, brow furrowed.

    She shook her head. "It''s nothing, Onii-chan. Just thinking out loud, that''s all."

    He looked at her weirdly, but let it go without comment. There''s such a thing as being too trusting, Onii-chan.

    But that was why he was the bestest brother in the whole wide world, and Rika wouldn''t trade him for anyone. Not even the cute, adorable Mash, who was just a cinnamon roll.

    "Where do you think she''s going to choose as a hideout?" Onii-chan asked instead.

    "She has half the city to choose from, Onii-chan," Rika pointed out wryly. "I''ll bet there''s loads of good places for her to park her keister and weave her wicked web."

    Onii-chan sighed. "Do you have to put it that way?"

    Rika just grinned.

    He shook his head and adopted a stereotypical thinking pose, like the complete dork he was, surveying the city around them with furrowed brow and narrowed eyes. The cogs in his head turned, but whatever he was coming up with, he didn''t feel the need to share.

    Speaking of the city, that was creepy. Sure, plenty of lights were on, throwing a soft, artificial glow out onto the streets, and the burnt yellow of the streetlights turned the normally grey asphalt a dull gold, but the entire place was a ghost town, completely empty. It felt like everyone who was supposed to be living there had just suddenly evaporated, leaving stoves on, cars running, and food half eaten, abandoned.

    Rika didn''t know if all of those things were set up, but Senpai seemed like the kind of stickler for details who went the extra mile, so she wouldn''t have been surprised if they tried to look inside one of the buildings and found signs that somebody had been there. It would definitely upgrade the creepiness factor from "pictures of Chernobyl" to "professional horror movie."

    On the subject of Senpai and creepiness, that costume. Like, whoa, where did she come up with that? The black bodysuit, the tattered skirt, the gold lenses that seemed to glow in the dark, Rika would run screaming in the opposite direction if she ever met someone like that in an alleyway at night.

    Which was probably the point, she reasoned. Senpai was going all in on this one. She might not be pulling out all of the stops, but Rika was more than willing to bet that Senpai was full of more and cleverer tricks than just "drop a biblical plague on the target," although Rika had to admit that dropping a biblical plague was probably more than enough to handle things against normal people. Just that Servants didn''t seem all that impressed by it, because Servants were anything but normal people.

    "Any ideas, Rika?" Onii-chan finally asked.

    "Nope," she said cheerfully.

    "You''re being a great help," he mumbled.

    She shrugged.

    "Dunno if you''ve noticed, Onii-chan, but Senpai''s way ahead of us. Like, boatloads of more experience. She''s at the peak of Mount Everest and we''re still near the bottom. If she doesn''t want to be found, she won''t be found, no matter who or what she''s pretending to be."

    "Pretending¡­" Onii-chan trailed off thoughtfully. "She said she''s going to roleplay as a Caster, right?"

    "Yeah? You saw the spooky costume, right? Guess Senpai''s a fan of method acting."

    "So what Senpai calls a proper Caster¡­is like a mage," Onii-chan went on slowly. "And mages are like Servants. They need energy to power their spells and stuff. So if a proper Caster is both a Servant and a mage, she''s going to need lots and lots of energy, right?"

    "I mean, I''m pretty sure you can''t run a car off of double-As, Onii-chan."

    Although the mental image of a car hooked up to a thousand double-A batteries and still sputtering as it failed to even start was kind of funny, Rika had to admit. She was going to have to note that down as something to look up after this whole shitshow was over and the internet was back up and running right.

    Onii-chan nodded. "Then if you need a lot of energy, you''d go to places where you can find lots of it. Like, um¡­ What did Director Marie call it? The places where ley lines meet up and loads of magical energy can be tapped into?"

    Rika''s eyebrows rose.

    "You mean those nexus points? Um, Ley Line Terminals? Like the ones we went looking for back in Fuyuki?"

    "And the ones Doctor Roman had us looking for in France," Onii-chan agreed. "Because they gave us a more stable connection to Chaldea¡­ I''m not sure how that''s supposed to work, though."

    "Your guess is as good as mine."

    Whatever explanation Doctor Roman had tried to give them had gone straight in one ear and out the other, because it was all way over Rika''s head.

    Onii-chan shook his head. "Anyway. If Senpai''s pretending to be a proper Caster, she would probably choose one of those as her base, wouldn''t she?"

    "I guess?" Honestly, the whole Servants thing still twisted Rika''s head around sometimes. She was still getting used to the idea of how it all worked. "There''s just one problem, Onii-chan."

    He blinked at her.

    "Yeah?"

    "Neither of us knows how to find those Ley Line Terminals. We''ve been relying on Senpai and Mash to figure it out."

    Onii-chan grimaced and wiped a hand down the front of his face.

    "That is a bit of a problem," he admitted. "But¡­ We''ve been in Fuyuki before, haven''t we? Would they be in the same place as before?"

    What, like she had any idea?

    "I dunno. Do Ley Lines change over time?" Rika didn''t actually know. Maybe something to ask Da Vinci about later. "Senpai did say this place is based on the version of Fuyuki from proper history, though, right? So they''re probably the same."

    "If they do change, it''s probably on a geological timescale." Rika snorted. Nerd, she didn''t say. Onii-chan went on, "So they probably are in the same place. Which means¡­"

    He lifted a hand and swung his arm around, index finger extended. The first target he landed on was the mountain in the distance, barely visible against the inky black horizon.

    "The mountain where the Grail is supposed to be."

    "Except that''s on the whole other side of the city, and Senpai is staying here, in this half," Rika pointed out.

    Onii-chan ignored her and moved his finger down, towards the residential district, and then he frowned when he realized that he didn''t actually know exactly where that swanky mansion they had stayed in was located. He wound up settling for making a vague, circular gesture with his finger, encompassing the general direction.

    "The¡­ What did Mash call it? The¡­Second Owner''s house."

    "You know, I''ve been wondering," said Rika. "If the lady who owns that house is the city''s Second Owner, then who''s the First? The mayor?"

    "I don''t know," Onii-chan said impatiently. "Ask Doctor Roman later. If he doesn''t know, Da Vinci does."

    Square bet. Da Vinci knew everything. If she didn''t when you first asked, she would three days later.

    Servants were bullshit. Grade A, one-hundred percent.

    "Still in the wrong half of the city, Onii-chan."

    "Right." I was getting to that, she heard, even if he didn''t say the words. "So that leaves the two places on this side of the city. One of those should be around where Mash rescued Director Marie, and the other one was the church on the hill."

    Rika grimaced. "You want to try looking there?"

    "It makes sense, doesn''t it?" Onii-chan said defensively. "It''s remote, it''s kind of small, with cramped corners and plenty of places to set traps. There was even a basement that we couldn''t look through because the entrance was collapsed by the time we got there."

    "It''s also an hour away from here by foot," Rika pointed out. "It''s gonna take Senpai just that long to get there. You think half an hour is enough time for her to set up traps there if it''s gonna take her that long just to make the trip?"

    Onii-chan''s brow furrowed thoughtfully as he considered what she said, but a moment later, his eyes went wide. "Maybe¡­ Maybe that''s exactly why she didn''t tell us where she was going," he began, so quick it was like he was chasing the words out of his mouth. "The church is the perfect place, right? So maybe Senpai wanted us to go there. If we wasted an hour or two checking out the church on the hill, then she''d have a lot more time to set up at the other place, wouldn''t she?"

    Rika felt her mouth stretch into a grin. "You know, Onii-chan, you''re really not as dumb as people say you are."

    He scowled at her, all broody and offended, but didn''t let her drag him into an argument about it. Fair enough, she should probably take this whole thing a bit more seriously, too. It was just hard to be doom and gloom, all dour and grim, when she gave any real thought to exactly how ridiculous this whole situation was.

    "So let''s assume you''re right," she said, surrendering. "Senpai decided it was too sacrilegious to bring a biblical plague into a church, and hey, if the Big Guy really does exist, the end of the world seems like a really bad time to get on his bad side, not judging. That means Senpai is hiding out in the civic center."

    "At the very least, it would be a better idea to check there first, since it should be closer," Onii-chan agreed. "We won''t lose as much time as we would doing it the other way around."

    "Fair enough." Rika nodded. "But¡­I mean, it was half destroyed at the time, but you do remember how big it was, don''t you?"

    He grimaced. "It¡­ Well, I mean, at least it''s not as big as the high school, right? That place would be hell to have to find her in."

    "You couldn''t get me back in high school even if you bribed me," Rika said dryly.

    Onii-chan''s cheek jumped, but maybe because he had grown up with her, he managed to fight back the smile that threatened to spread across his face. He at least did her the courtesy of not mentioning the brief stint during that first trip to Fuyuki where they had to hide out in the school to work out a more solid plan for fighting Saber Alter. It would have ruined the joke.

    "So that''s the plan," he said instead. "We''ll check the civic center first, and if she isn''t there, we''ll go to the church on the hill."

    Wow, that was barebones.

    "Great plan. What do we do when we get there?"

    Onii-chan opened his mouth to say something, stopped, and then closed it again as his brow furrowed. "I don''t know," he admitted. "I''m not sure what to expect Senpai to have set up when we get there. The only thing she promised not to do was swarm us with her bugs. That should make it at least a little easier, shouldn''t it?"

    Rika''s eyebrows rose. "You didn''t just say that. Tell me you didn''t just say that, Onii-chan."

    He rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, Rika, you can''t tell me you actually believe that."

    "Look at where we are and how we got here!" she insisted. "The world ended, we ''accidentally'' got shunted off through time and space, and now we''re the only ones left who can fix all the things going wrong with history! Murphy is our patron saint, Onii-chan!"

    "I don''t have any better ideas," he snapped. "Do you?"

    She scowled at him.

    "Yeah. That''s what I thought."

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    "You''re the ideas guy anyway, Ritsu," she mumbled petulantly. "That''s why you were born first."

    He heaved a heavy sigh. "That''s not how it works, Rika. We''re twins."

    And one of us definitely got all the brains, she wanted to say but didn''t. It was an old hurt, an old grudge, and Onii-chan didn''t deserve that particular ugliness, not from her. They were in this together, even when they fought like this, and there was no room for petty jealousies and insecurities, so she didn''t give them space in her heart. The acid on her tongue was swallowed so that it couldn''t hurt anyone but her.

    "Well," she said instead wryly, "I guess we''re winging it."

    Her brother sighed. She almost didn''t hear him say, "This is going to be painful."

    At that moment, their communicators beeped shrilly, announcing the end of the allotted half hour. Rika and Ritsuka both reached down and turned the timer off, and then they turned to each other, shared identical grimaces, and squared their shoulders, as though to say, "Well, here we go."

    We who are about to die salute you, Rika thought. If she knew what angle the Servants outside were watching from, she would have turned that direction and snapped off a mocking salute.

    They began their funeral march to the civic center in silence and without fanfare. The burnt husk of Fuyuki from the first Singularity was oppressive and choking, thick with smoke and heat as it was, but the atmosphere of the intact, empty city they were in now was equally as terrible, if for entirely different reasons. Fuyuki on fire felt like a tragedy, a mass grave that they were walking through, and Rika had dealt with that discomfort with her trademark humor. Empty Fuyuki felt wrong, unnatural, because there was something that was supposed to be there and wasn''t, and Rika couldn''t shake the chill of that loneliness, even with Onii-chan right next to her.

    "This place is seriously freaking me out," she muttered. Their footsteps echoed up and down the street, completely deserted except for the two of them.

    "We''re the only ones here, Rika," Onii-chan said, although there was a slight nervous thread in his voice. "Us and Senpai, and Senpai is hiding."

    "That''s not as reassuring as you think it is¡­"

    But Senpai didn''t jump out at them. Nothing and nobody jumped out at them. Their entire walk to the civic center was unbothered, just them alone and the looming giants of the abandoned city around them. Their only companions were the sound of their footsteps and their own breathing.

    When they finally arrived at the civic center, it was to find a completely normal building. It was four stories tall with a slightly curved facade, a thing of myriad windows like a thousand eyes that were framed with steel and concrete. Rounded pillars held up a sloped awning over the front doors like a gap-toothed smile. Further back, wings jutted out on either side, solid and opaque, far more mundane than the showy front.

    There was no sign of Senpai. The building looked untouched and unmodified.

    "Did she go to the church after all?" Rika wondered.

    "Maybe¡­" Onii-chan hedged. "We should still take a look inside, just to be sure."

    Rika glanced at him and then gestured for the glass front doors. "After you."

    He grimaced and muttered, "How brave."

    He hesitated for a moment, hands clenching and unclenching, and then he took a deep, bracing breath and strode forward. Rika fell into step behind him, far enough that he was definitely in the lead.

    The front doors slid open automatically as they got close, and they hesitated again, waiting for an attack that didn''t come. Only after several long, tense, uneventful seconds did they step across the threshold and into the building. The automatic door slid closed behind them a few moments later with a soft, hydraulic whine.

    The atrium of the civic center was dark and shrouded in shadow, but the distant lights from the surrounding buildings outside cast a dim glow on the polished marble floor. Pillars jutted up like massive arms to support the high ceiling that loomed four stories above their heads, and off to either side was a jagged staircase that led to the second floor, framed with steel railings and panels of clear glass. Across the room from the front doors was a large, curved wooden desk that would reach up to about Rika''s ribs, what she assumed to be some kind of customer service or check in center, and in either far corner were hallways that went further into the building, although these too were dark and uninviting.

    And, of course, behind the front desk was a set of double doors, closed tight. The only lights that were on came from the far end of the corridor behind them, and their light peaked through the cracks ominously, haloing the doors.

    It gave off major horror movie vibes. This would have been the part where the intrepid heroes clustered together and ventured further in, only for the monster to jump out at them from his hiding place and send them all scrambling in different directions.

    "So, that''s definitely the way she wants us to go, right?" Rika whispered to her brother.

    "Almost certainly," he replied with a nod.

    "Which means that the worst idea in the world is actually going that way, right?"

    "For sure."

    She considered the rest of the room, but none of the other options looked any more appealing than the first and most obvious. Of course, everything looked creepy in the dark, didn''t it? That robe hanging on the back of your door became the grim reaper, the flickering shadow of a tree branch on the wall became a malevolent ghost, and your table lamp became a burglar lying in wait.

    "Maybe the reason she wants us to go that way is because she didn''t have time to trap the rest of the civic center," Rika suggested hopefully.

    "Yeah," her brother agreed, although he didn''t sound fully convinced. "Yeah, maybe."

    Well, it wasn''t like he had any better ideas, was it?

    "Left or right, Onii-chan?"

    His head swiveled as he looked back and forth between them. "I guess¡­"

    A sudden hum filled the room with the low buzz of a thousand wasps, and the vibration seemed to shake the very air around them. Slowly, it resolved into syllables, and then into words, and a shiver swept down Rika''s spine.

    "WELCOME, MASTERS OF CHALDEA, TO MY HUMBLE ABODE."

    The droning voice was deep and resonant, and it seemed to carry something inhuman and monstrous underneath it, like some terrible abomination clawing its way from the bottom of the abyss. It came not from any one place, but all around them, as though the building itself was alive and watching them.

    "Okay, that''s creepy," Onii-chan said.

    "I HAD DEVISED COUNTLESS METHODS OF TRAPPING YOU, ALONE AND FRIENDLESS, TO BE CUT DOWN BEFORE YOU COULD THREATEN MY PLANS. NEVER IN A THOUSAND YEARS DID I IMAGINE YOU WOULD DELIVER YOURSELVES TO ME HERE, IN MY PLACE OF STRENGTH, WITHOUT EVEN YOUR SERVANTS TO PROTECT YOU."

    The click was almost like thunder, it was so sudden and so stark against the backdrop of the humming, and with a high, ominous creak, the pair of shut doors slowly swung open.

    "WON''T YOU COME CLOSER? I WOULD QUITE LIKE TO MEET YOU. I''M SURE THERE IS MUCH I COULD LEARN FROM THE THINGS IN YOUR HEADS."

    And then, as suddenly as it started, the buzzing stopped.

    "Okay, she definitely wants us to go that way," Rika said. "I vote we go any other direction. Like, that one should be off the table completely."

    "Agreed," Ritsuka said immediately. "But I think we should at least look and see where that leads."

    She looked at him incredulously, then back at the hallway, and what came out of her mouth was, "You''re going first."

    He grimaced but didn''t argue. Marshalling his courage, he stepped down into the atrium proper and strode across it, his shoes clicking against the polished marble. Rika glanced around, looking for traps, and then followed.

    They approached the open doors together cautiously, swerving around the customer service kiosk, and the closer they got, the more ordinary the hallway beyond looked. Another pair of open doors sat at the far end, and two more hallways split off in either direction, curving around the massive room that contained¡­a music hall? A theater, maybe. It was hard to see much from their limited angle, but row upon row of seats covered in wine red upholstery stretched in every direction, and in the distance, there was a stage with wooden floors that looked gold in the soft, yellow lighting that illuminated the whole room. In the far back, there were yet more seats above the stage set into the back wall.

    "A theater?" Rika wondered.

    The intercom at the front desk crackled, and a voice whispered over it, "Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly."

    Rika squeaked and spun, magical energy surging through her circuits, and the black ball of her spell leapt from her fingers almost before she had any time to properly aim. "Gandr!"

    The intercom at the front desk exploded in a spray of plastic shards.

    "Really, Rika?" Onii-chan asked, but his own voice was shaky.

    "I," she began vehemently, "hate horror movies!"

    He glanced back down the hallway through the open doors. "Right. Let''s not go that way."

    "Seconded," she agreed breathlessly. "Motion passed."

    She sucked down a deep breath and let it out as a long sigh. "Left or right, Onii-chan?"

    He considered his options for a moment, frowning, and then eventually said, "Left. Let''s go left first."

    She nodded. "Left it is."

    Their direction chosen, they skirted around the open doors and the front desk and made their way down the shadowy left hallway. What little light they had from the outside swiftly disappeared, and only about ten feet down the corridor, it became all but impossible to see where they were or where they were going.

    "Hang on a second," Ritsuka mumbled as he fiddled with his comms device. "It''s basically the same principle as using your smartphone, right? So I should be able to¡­"

    There was a click, and then the wristband lit up, casting a surprisingly intense light outwards. The twins had to hiss and shut their eyes, it was so sudden and stark a difference.

    "Geez," Rika mumbled, squinting against the light. "Da Vinci-chan really pulled out all the stops with these things, didn''t she?"

    "They''re really versatile," Ritsuka agreed.

    He held up his arm and faced his wrist away, and the flashlight function lit up the next fifteen feet or so brightly enough to see clearly, but further out than that, things started to blur and darken back into obscurity.

    Rika fiddled with her own communicator. "Here, let me¡­"

    "You just have to ¡ª"

    "I got it, I got it ¡ª"

    With a little bit of work and some trial and error, Rika got her own flashlight mode turned on. It didn''t make it that much easier to see ahead of them, but it gave Rika the ability to look around without relying on her brother.

    Rika panned her light around the hallway, revealing single doors interspersed along either wall stretching down into the dark. Meeting rooms, she thought. Conference rooms for groups and dignitaries to meet in and discuss whatever business they had together. Who would be coming to a comparatively small city like Fuyuki to talk about matters of state? She had no idea. What else would they be, though?

    A quiet rustling brushed against the ceiling. Rika''s heart jumped, and her light immediately turned upwards, but there was nothing there.

    She and her brother shared another nervous look.

    "You first?" she suggested.

    He grimaced at her and shook his head, but he took point without complaint. Once more, the entire building was silent, and the only things Rika could hear aside from the pounding of her heart were the clack of their footsteps on the marble floor and the rasp of their breathing. If Senpai was anywhere nearby, she was being so quiet that neither of the twins could hear her.

    Onii-chan walked right past the first door, but Rika took a short detour and twisted the knob until it clicked, peeking her head through the crack. She cast her light around the room inside, a large, spacious meeting room, just like she thought, with sleek, modern white tables and steel-framed chairs upholstered with maroon fabric. Her pulse thudded in her ears, and she swallowed against the butterflies in her belly, but although the shadows cast by her flashlight were spooky and stark, the entire place was empty.

    She closed the door until it clicked shut. Onii-chan looked at her curiously, and she shook her head. "Just checking," she told him.

    They continued on, stopping every dozen paces or so to open the next door and check the room inside. Every time, though, they found nothing, only empty, abandoned meeting rooms with the chairs neatly pushed in under tidily arranged tables. The layout wasn''t always exactly the same ¡ª sometimes, it was like a classroom, designed obviously for a presentation, and sometimes, they were pushed together into shapes, like squares or long rectangles ¡ª but the size of the rooms themselves stayed generally consistent with all of the rest.

    The further and further down the hall they went, the more and more Rika was becoming convinced that she was right and Senpai simply hadn''t had time to boobytrap anything but the very obvious pathway she''d set up for them to follow. That meant also that Senpai probably wasn''t in any of the rooms in this direction, maybe not even on this floor, because you''d think if she was, she would have set more tricks and traps up to deter them.

    "I think Senpai isn''t in any of these rooms," Rika said aloud.

    "I think you''re right," Onii-chan agreed.

    "Should we turn back? Maybe we should go the other way and see if we can find anything over there."

    "Maybe we should try the second floor," Onii-chan suggested instead.

    A crash suddenly echoed from further down the hallway, and Rika and Ritsuka took off to investigate. Their feet carried them past the remaining doors until they reached the end of the hall, where one final door on the left side was slightly ajar. It was still completely dark.

    They shared another look, and Ritsuka reached out with his free hand to push the door open as Rika prepped her Gandr, just in case. The hinges creaked ominously.

    "Senpai?" Rika tried, asking through the gap.

    There was no answer.

    She hesitated only for a moment, and then, as her brother pushed the door further open, Rika peeked inside, flashlight held up with one hand and the other formed into a finger gun.

    "Senpai, are you there?"

    She cast her light into the darkness and slowly swept it down the length of the room ¡ª and gasped, nearly stumbling back, as she realized it wasn''t as empty as she thought.

    "Senpai, is that you?"

    A tall, willowy figure slowly stood straight, and in the background, an unnerving hum buzzed, just on the lower end of audible. A long, black cloak fell about the figure''s body, hood drawn over the head, and with deliberate slowness, it turned around, face shrouded in shadow, even with Rika''s light shining directly on her. Something under the hood caught on the flashlight and glimmered, glittering brightly.

    "Senpai?"

    And then from inside the hood appeared one long, thin, hairy leg, easily twice the size of Rika''s index finger, followed by another, and another, and the black body of an absolutely massive spider pulled itself out from under the cloth.

    "Eek!"

    Rika squeaked and stumbled backwards, but Onii-chan was faster and cooler on the draw, because his hand had already risen.

    "Gandr!"

    The ball of black energy leapt from his fingertip, and it hit the cloaked figure square in what should have been its chest, but like a sheet of tissue, the body folded around the spell, the fabric billowing out as hundreds upon hundreds of bugs surged from underneath it, a writhing mass of chitin and too many legs. They fell upon the floor in a carpet of tiny, chittering bodies, spreading out across the marble in a wave too smooth to be natural.

    "Shit!"

    "Rika!"

    The two of them scrambled back out the door, and Rika slammed it shut with an echoing bang that was probably heard throughout the entire building.

    It didn''t stop the bugs. They squeezed and pressed their bodies out in the tiny gap between the door and the floor, flowing out into the hallway. The size of the space prevented them from all coming at once, but it was only a matter of time before they all came through.

    "Let''s get out of here!" shouted Onii-chan.

    "You don''t have to tell me twice!"

    They turned around and sprinted back the way they came, the lights of their flashlights bouncing around all over the place. Rika chanced a look back only once and wished she hadn''t, because a writhing swarm of darkness was crawling all over the floors and walls and slowly consuming the hallway behind them.

    Later on, she remembered that Senpai had promised not to drown them beneath an ocean of her bugs, but at that moment, all that filled Rika''s head was images of that swarm crawling over her, under her clothes, burrowing into her ears and mouth and nose as she screamed for them to stop.

    The atrium opened up before them and they rushed back out into the dim light of the nearby buildings.

    "The other way!" Ritsuka said.

    But no sooner had they started towards the hallway on the right than did they spy yet more bugs in that direction, another carpet slowly consuming the walls, ceiling, and floor. The right side hallway was off limits, too.

    "Shit!"

    "Up the stairs!" Rika hollered at him.

    "Right!"

    The words had barely left her mouth before she saw the crisscrossing pattern of webs woven between the railings on the stairs. Dozens of poisonous yellow bodies with black-striped legs sat in wait upon them, as though daring the twins to trap themselves and make for easy prey.

    The only way that was clear¡­

    "Onii-chan!"

    "I see it!" he shouted back at her.

    It was a trap. They both knew it was a trap. But there weren''t any other options, because every other path had been walled off by too many bugs to count. Senpai hadn''t left them with any other choice.

    Ritsuka and Rika ran for the double doors at the center, swerving around the front desk, and without hesitating, passed through them and raced towards the auditorium. The double doors closed behind them with a final, terrifying BANG.

    They didn''t stop, they kept going, thumping down the carpeted hallway. They didn''t look back, didn''t dare distract themselves, not until they''d made it into the auditorium and slammed the other set of double doors closed.

    Only then did they turn around, panting from the exertion, backing up slowly with their eyes glued to the door, just in case the swarm started pouring through the gaps here, too. For the moment, however, nothing came through. It was as though those double doors were an impenetrable barrier that blocked the swarm out.

    Just for an instant, Rika let herself believe they were safe ¡ª as safe as they could be, at any rate, which wasn''t very safe at all, when they were trapped exactly where their enemy wanted them to be with no way out. At that moment, at least, they weren''t in immediate danger, which was better than being set upon by a roiling mass of a fuckoff number of creepy crawlies.

    The one thing Rika could definitely be thankful for was that Senpai didn''t seem to have found any giant hornets. She and Onii-chan might really be in for it if she had.

    And then the walls themselves seemed to vibrate, and any notion of safety that Rika might have had was instantly dispelled.

    "SO NICE OF YOU TO JOIN ME," the voice from before buzzed. Again, it came from all around them, not a singular source but the building itself speaking to them. "YOU LOOK QUITE TIRED, MASTERS OF CHALDEA. WOULD YOU PERHAPS LIKE TO REST? MAYBE SOME FOOD TO TIDE YOU OVER? A NICE CUP OF TEA?"

    "Come," said another voice, tinged with the same hum of flittering wings and chittering chitin, and it was behind them, further down, distant enough that the words had to carry. When Rika and her brother turned around, there upon the stage at the bottom of the room was a figure in black and white, a hooded shawl drawn up over her head and a ragged skirt hanging from her hips, but with a physique that was unmistakably human. "Let me show you my hospitality."

    The words themselves were cool and polite, and there was little threatening about the way she spread her arms invitingly, but the effect was ruined by the bugs that crawled over her body, disappearing between the folds of her bodysuit and the gaps of her armor. A disgusted shiver swept down Rika''s spine, repulsed.

    Once again, Onii-chan was faster on the uptake, because his hand rose before Rika could even think about what she should be doing.

    "Gandr!"

    A ball of black energy flew from his fingertip. Senpai didn''t move at all to do anything, neither to dodge nor to counter, and against all odds, Onii-chan''s spell splashed uselessly against an invisible forcefield in the air and exploded.

    "No need for that, now," Senpai said silkily. "I simply want to talk."

    "Gandr!" Onii-chan called again, but just like before, his spell splashed against something invisible without getting within ten feet of Senpai. "Gandr! Gandr! Gandr!"

    Again, again, and again, his spell exploded before it even got close. Rika didn''t know how she was doing it. Since when did Senpai know any barrier spells?

    "If you insist on being unreasonable," Senpai said with an ominous lilt, "then I''m going to have to be a bit¡­rough with you."

    Ritsuka stared at her for a moment, silent, and then he snarled and took off for the stage, running down the aisle as fast as he safely could.

    "Onii-chan!" Rika cried out, trying to¡­ What? Warn him?

    You just have to land one, good hit, she suddenly remembered.

    Emboldened by the thought, she took off after him, because they just had to get up on that stage and land one punch and this would be over. That would be easier if there were two of them, wouldn''t it?

    Except Onii-chan made it all of maybe ten or fifteen feet before Senpai waved her hand and he tripped inexplicably.

    "Onii-chan!"

    Onii-chan didn''t stay down. He was up again almost instantly, dashing towards the stage. "One good hit, Rika!" he called back at her.

    Senpai tilted her head, and a sigh buzzed out of her mouth. "Good grief. You really have to make this difficult, don''t you?"

    The twins didn''t respond, they just kept going. Ritsuka was the first to the stage, because he was just a faster runner than Rika was, and he climbed up over the lip, clambering and barely slowing down, and he made towards Senpai ¡ª only to stop, suddenly, caught by some invisible force.

    "You didn''t think I would leave myself unprotected, did you?"

    Onii-chan struggled, pulling on his legs and his arms, and it took Rika a second or two to realize that he wasn''t fighting the air, but thin, gossamer threads of spiderweb. They were so fine that they were almost invisible until they caught the light just right.

    Rika could only stop and stare a few paces behind him, boggling at the cleverness of it and the sheer strength of the webbing to stymy her brother for that long. She remembered hearing somewhere that spider silk was as strong as steel, but every spiderweb she''d ever walked through on accident had all but fallen apart effortlessly, nothing more than a nuisance clinging to her face.

    Eventually, however, Onii-chan pulled himself free, tearing the threads from their mounting and snapping those that refused to come off, and he didn''t waste any time going after Senpai again. Rika started and followed, climbing up onto the stage just as her brother finally reached Senpai.

    And just like before, Senpai didn''t do anything. She didn''t try to dodge, she didn''t fight back, she didn''t raise her fists to defend herself ¡ª she promised not to, Rika remembered. Right, the whole point of the exercise was to show them how a Caster fought, a proper one, and proper Casters didn''t fight with hands or fists or weapons, they fought with magic and spells.

    That was why they just had to land one, good hit. The only way for someone to beat a Caster who actually fought like a Caster was to take the fight to the place where they were weakest, meaning up close and personal.

    Onii-chan gave a shout and thrust his fist forward, aiming not for Senpai''s face, because he probably didn''t want to actually hurt her, but for center mass, right in the middle of her armor. His knuckles landed with a solid crunch.

    That meant they won. One good hit.

    "We did it!" Rika cheered. "Great job, Onii-chan!"

    But she was the only one celebrating. Onii-chan was silent but for his panting breaths, and Senpai didn''t call a stop and offer them congratulations. In fact, for one, ominous moment, Senpai was silent as the grave.

    And then she spoke, and Rika had the ominous feeling that something had gone very wrong somewhere.

    "Didn''t anyone ever warn you?" Senpai murmured. "You should never face a Caster in her workshop."

    Onii-chan gasped and stumbled back as Senpai seemed to deflate, her costume sinking to the floor as bugs poured out of it. There was no body inside of it, no human limbs, no bones, no hair or skin, just a mass of bugs propping it up to make it look like a person.

    It was a decoy from the beginning.

    Rika barely had a moment to register the realization before something pricked the back of her neck, and she gasped as her limbs suddenly went numb and she lost all control of her body. The world tilted on its side and she collapsed to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs, unable to do anything but watch as Onii-chan fell, too, crumpling like a puppet whose strings had been cut. There was no pain. Whatever had struck her had removed all sensation from her body.

    A tremor of fear in her belly proved that she hadn''t quite lost all feeling below her neck. Somehow, that was even more terrifying than if she had gone down in horrible agony.

    And from up on the seats behind the stage, she finally appeared, walking leisurely down the aisle until she reached the bottom. Senpai, done up in her costume, leaned over the railing, propping herself up with her hands and looking down at them through those bright, yellow lenses, glowing all the more in the soft lighting that filled up the room.

    "And now," she said, "I have the two of you entirely at my mercy."

 Chapter XXXIII: Performance Review

    Chapter XXXIII: Performance Review

    The twins laid upon the stage, completely and utterly vulnerable. If I wanted to go the extra mile, I would have pulled in my swarm and had the venomous yellow Joro spiders wrap them up in webbing while the enormous Huntsmans skittered about their bodies. It would certainly have driven my point home.

    But it was cruelty bordering on pointlessness, and I thought that this was far enough to get the lesson across. No need to heap more trauma on them now.

    I did let them stew a little bit, however, as I made my way sedately through the hallways and down the stairs that led to the antechamber beneath the box seats that sat to either side of the stage. Their eyes snapped to me the instant the door opened, as much as they were able to with everything below the neck paralyzed.

    That particular little bit had been¡­ Well, I felt a little bad about it, but in lieu of having an actual spell that could immobilize them, I hadn''t had much choice except to program in a "venom" that did it for me. I made sure, however, that neither of them saw the giant hornets that delivered the sting, if only to avoid stepping on any traumas or cultural fears they might have grown up with in Tokyo.

    "If I was a proper Caster," I told them as I stepped closer. My footsteps were utterly silent, cushioned by my costume, "I could use an opportunity like this to take any information I wanted out of your heads. Some Casters might have some kind of telepathy power that would let them do it directly, and some would just hypnotize you into spilling whatever secrets they wanted. If they didn''t have a use for you afterwards, they''d probably just kill you. Some of them, however, might force you to use your Command Spells to order your Servants to obey them."

    That part especially, I needed to have them understand. Casters tended to be less physical, less capable of direct combat, and if they had the means, I couldn''t imagine one of them wouldn''t brainwash one of us Masters into working for them, bringing our Servants along for the ride.

    It would absolutely break Mash''s heart to have to fight against one of the twins, brainwashed or not.

    "Fortunately, I didn''t think sodium pentathol or some other truth serum would be quite the same as being hypnotized, so I didn''t load any of my bugs with them. I wasn''t sure whether or not it would affect your memories either, and it would defeat the point if you didn''t remember any of this when it was over."

    When I reached him, I crouched down next to Ritsuka and extended my arm; from one of the folds of my costume, an itsy bitsy house spider crawled down, over my hand, and onto the floor. It made its way across the wooden planks adroitly and climbed up Ritsuka''s hand, just far enough to sit on the fleshy part between his thumb and index finger, and then it sank its tiny fangs into his skin.

    Ritsuka gasped, but by the time my "antidote" had made it far enough into his system to counteract the paralytic, that little house spider had already moved on and made its way over to Rika. She kept her eyes on it, so to spare her the anxiety, I had it cross out of her line of sight and go for the other hand instead. It went for the same place it had on Ritsuka and bit her, too.

    The instant Rika could move again, she scrambled to her feet and as far away from my little spider as she could. "Eek!"

    Ritsuka, likewise, stumbled to his feet and cautiously stepped away, eyeing it like it was some terrible, horrible beast out to kill him. A part of me wanted to roll my eyes at how melodramatic they were being.

    My little house spider ignored them both and scurried back towards me, then back up my hand, up my arm, and into the little hiding place he''d come out of. Once he was there, I stood back up.

    "Follow me, you two."

    I turned towards the door I''d come out of, intent on leading them to my hiding spot, but Ritsuka behind me brought me up short. "Um, Senpai?"

    I looked back at him and the uncertain expression on his face. "Yes?"

    "Do you think you could¡­" He gestured vaguely at his head. "You know?"

    My brow furrowed beneath my mask. What was he¡­ Oh. Yeah, I guess that might be a bit unnerving, wasn''t it? Well, the lesson wasn''t quite over yet, but the part I needed it for was, so it had served its purpose.

    "Right."

    My fingers found the seam where the bottom of my mask rolled down over the neck of the bodysuit, and I peeled it up and over my head, shaking my hair and combing my fingers through it to get it back into place. Once I''d tucked the mask into my belt, I found my glasses in the compartment where I''d put them for safekeeping and slipped them back on, sliding them that last little bit up the bridge of my nose with one finger.

    Ritsuka looked marginally less tense than before, so I took that as confirmation that taking off the creepy mask was what he had been asking me to do.

    "Let''s go," I said. "Come with me."

    This time, when I turned and started walking, the twins fell into step behind me, silent but for the clop of their shoes on the wooden stage.

    "Oh my god," I heard Rika whisper. "I need a shower. All the showers. All of them. That was so gross."

    "Me, too," Ritsuka replied just as quietly.

    I led them backstage, and then to the hidden staircase behind the seats that overlooked the back of the stage. At some point, the twins turned on the flashlight function on their communicators, and I realized to my chagrin that I''d fallen into the habit of navigating entirely with my bugs again instead of using my more mundane senses. It was only going to make things harder on me when we left the simulator again and I was limited only to what I could sense as an ordinary human.

    We went down the stairs and into a corridor, and then I took them to the enormous basement, an absolutely huge room with an entire ceiling made of lights and a hard, concrete floor and walls. Row upon row of boxes containing all sorts of supplies and replacement materials were stacked on those barebones metal storage racks, the kind made of simple l-shapes with evenly spaced holes going up the limbs and hollow planks forming shelves so that they could be adjusted to accommodate any size needs. There was a chill here that wasn''t there upstairs, like the rest of the building was heated and this place was left cool.

    "Over here," I told them.

    Bobbing and weaving through the maze of shelving units, I led them through the labyrinth and towards the very back of the room. On the way, we passed spare lightbulbs, spare cutlery, spare tables (still packaged in plain cardboard boxes), spare chairs (in need of assembly), spare pots and pans, spare nametag stickers, and an assortment of other goods and products a civic center might need for its guests. Sheets of paper, bedsheets, pillowcases, and office supplies galore.

    At the very back of the room, sequestered between two shelving units, there sat an ordinary chair behind an ordinary desk. When we reached it, I turned back to face them and sat down on the desk, folding my legs and leaning back on my arms.

    "The entire time you were upstairs," I informed them, "I was down here."

    The twins'' eyebrows shot towards their hairlines, and they gaped at me, looking around in astonishment.

    "What?" Ritsuka croaked out.

    "I disabled the traps down here before I came back up, don''t worry," I said, although this didn''t exactly seem to make them feel any better. "But yes. I didn''t move from this spot until the two of you committed to taking on my decoy on the stage. Until then, I stayed down here and engaged from afar."

    "You''re shitting me," Rika said bluntly. "The entire time, you were sitting down here and terrorizing us with bugs from afar, like ¡ª"

    "A proper Caster," Ritsuka concluded, sounding like he''d come to some kind of important realization.

    I nodded.

    "I won''t tell you that Casters never get overconfident and reveal themselves when they shouldn''t, nor that all of them do the smartest, cleverest, most underhanded thing every time. But the smartest and cleverest of them will do what I did. They''ll misdirect, they''ll deceive, they''ll send you running around in circles, walking into trap after trap after trap. You might never meet them face to face, and when you do, it''s because they''re either that desperate or they''re that confident they''ve already won."

    There was a quote somewhere, although I couldn''t remember where, about hoping that the guy on the other end of the gun was an evil man, because evil men loved to monologue and delay, putting off the final moment. It wasn''t entirely right, because when grudges were involved, people tended to want to air their grievances before the kill. Most people had just enough evil in them to spit on an enemy they hated.

    But magic was an intellectual pursuit, to my understanding, at least generally. Most mages were scholars first and fighters second. They were the type to enjoy lording victory over their opponents, like Thinkers did, bragging about how much smarter and cleverer they were. I wasn''t so blind to Lisa''s faults that I hadn''t seen that in her, too.

    Of course, cutting words were the only weapons a Thinker like her had, so I couldn''t blame her too much for leaning on her greatest strength a little too hard sometimes.

    "I was also incredibly obvious about which direction I wanted you to go," I went on. "Most Casters won''t be. Some will, if they have a way of forcing you to go that way like I did, but most won''t. If they want you to fall into a particular trap at all, they''re more likely to make it seem safer than your other options, hoping you won''t think about why. You won''t realize you''ve walked right into their hands until it''s already too late to do anything about it."

    I thought of Jack Slash, just then, although the comparison wasn''t quite as one-to-one as I would have liked for an example. Jack''s traps had tended more towards the verbal than the physical, manipulating people with honeyed words and deceptions, as opposed to a Caster using spells and magic.

    The idea was shelved and put away for later. "So, for the purposes of the exercise, I didn''t give you any choice except to come after me. I hope I got some of my point across about why facing a Caster in their place of power is a bad idea. Having said that, I was a bit impressed that you knew where to go and didn''t waste any time getting here. Why the civic center?"

    They stared at me dumbly for a second before they realized it wasn''t a rhetorical question.

    "You said you were going to pretend to be a Caster Servant," Ritsuka answered. "I¡­ We thought that the best place for a Caster Servant to settle down and defend herself would be at one of the Ley Line Terminals, where there''s supposed to be lots of magical energy."

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    "Don''t be modest, Onii-chan," said Rika, although it lacked some of her usual cheer. "That was all you."

    Ritsuka grimaced but didn''t correct her. "There''s only two of them on this side of the city. The church¡­seemed like a better idea, but too far away to get there and start setting up traps in just half an hour."

    I nodded, seeing how his thought process must have gone.

    "So you decided to look here first, because it was closer and easier to get to," I concluded. "Good. I was hoping you two would remember the Ley Line Terminals and realize that was where I was going."

    They had done better than I was expecting, actually. We hadn''t exactly sat down and given them lessons about why a proper Caster who knew actual magic would choose to fortify atop a Ley Line Terminal when they had the chance, but the logic behind it wasn''t that hard to grasp and should be fairly obvious when you gave it much thought. It wasn''t that I thought the twins were stupid, just that they didn''t have the experience that should make that sort of thinking more common.

    It looked like they''d been paying closer and better attention than I''d originally given them credit for, though.

    "Not all Casters will automatically choose the Ley Line Terminal," I warned them. "Since it''s the most obvious spot, it''s also the spot most likely for enemies to look for a Caster at, and sometimes, the location is just too inconvenient to try fortifying, even for really talented Casters. Here in Fuyuki, however, they''re all very conveniently located in easily defended positions, so expecting a Caster to choose one of them is probably the correct idea."

    I slid off the table and stood.

    "When we do something like this again, I''ll have to try and come up with a harder, less obvious spot, so that we can get you used to thinking about the best places to hide in and the easiest places to defend."

    "We''re going to do this again?" Rika squawked.

    "Not exactly this," I allowed. "This time, I was trying to prove a point. You weren''t supposed to beat me, because you''re not supposed to fight a Caster in her workshop and definitely not without Servants."

    The twins looked affronted. Like they were upset that I''d stacked the deck so hard against them, when stacking the deck was part of what I''d been trying to drive home.

    "But you two do need to learn what it''s like to fight in a city," I continued. "In alleyways and buildings, on streets. Places where there isn''t as much room to maneuver and you have to think more about the space around you. We still have six more Singularities to go, and we won''t be fighting in open fields, parks, or forests the entire time."

    Rika opened her mouth to say something.

    "Like at La Charit¨¦," her brother mumbled solemnly.

    Rika''s mouth slowly closed.

    "Or the city where you found Georgios," I added.

    "P¨¦rigueux," said Ritsuka. I was a little ashamed that I was surprised he''d remembered its name.

    "What would you have done if Jeanne Alter had come at you on the ground instead of riding Fafnir? You would have had to think more about what was around you and where you were, how you were going to fight her. In a way, coming after you with Fafnir made things easier on you. It made it so that the only thing you had to think about was getting as far away from her as you could as quickly as you could."

    "It just cost us Marie," Ritsuka said bitterly.

    I thought of Brian, of Alec, who had been lost in the fighting, of Revel, one of the many I''d sacrificed during Gold Morning just to stave off the end for a little bit longer so I could find a way to win. I thought of Lisa and Rachel and Aisha, who I had left behind to pursue that chance, however slim, of stopping the end of the world. I hadn''t had the chance to meet Marie Antoinette, not when she was alive (of course) and not as the Servant who had made fast friends with these two, but I sympathized with his pain.

    My regrets were legion, and although I''d gone through with it in the moment, the people I''d sacrificed ¡ª both in terms of friendships lost and in the more literal, final sense ¡ª hadn''t felt as justified at the end.

    "Sometimes," I said quietly, "those are unavoidable, too."

    The twins both looked away with miserable expressions on their faces. A part of me wished I could comfort them, but the cold, hard truth remained that Marie Antoinette and Mozart might have been the first Servants we lost, but they probably weren''t going to be the last.

    I wasn''t under any illusions that the day would never come that Arash had to use his Noble Phantasm.

    "We''ll worry about covering that another time," was my pathetic attempt to move the atmosphere back to something a little less heavy. "For now, it should be close enough to dinner time that we need to get out of here and make sure Emiya has actually gone to prepare it."

    As pathetic as it might have been, it was still apparently enough to perk them up a little, so I turned to my wrist, lifted the "communicator" that served as my control panel, and deftly set about ending the simulation.

    It never stopped being a little eerie when it did. The way the entire world froze, like time had stopped except for me, and then slowly became blurrier and blurrier until it was nothing more than big blobs of pixels, before it finally cut to black for just long enough to send a shiver down my spine. Even if the whole process never took more than a couple of seconds, it felt entirely too long.

    The scant moments of helplessness when I "woke up" in the simulator room weren''t better. They reminded me of being at Bonesaw''s mercy, how I''d been unable to do anything, even use my bugs, as she went through the list of things she wanted to do to me.

    But there was nothing for me to do except ride it out and wait as the helmet that made the simulator work lifted off my head. Wait for the special device that connected to my central nervous system to disconnect so I could feel my arms and legs again, move them about.

    A sigh hissed out of my mouth, and I levered myself up, carding a hand through my hair.

    And then someone decided to start clapping.

    Startled, I looked over to the console where the Servants had been watching us, and there, standing at the forefront with a bright smile ¡ª

    "Bravo! Bravissimo!"

    ¡ª was Da Vinci.

    "Da Vinci-chan was watching us the whole time?" Rika sputtered.

    "My dear Rika, I''ve watched every single one of your practice sessions!" Da Vinci told her cheerfully. Rika let out an agonized groan. "Normally, I watch them while I''m taking a short break from whatever project I might be in the middle of, but for this particular session, I simply had to come and watch it in person!"

    Ritsuka grimaced. "You watched Senpai beat us that badly."

    "I-it wasn''t that bad!" Mash rushed to reassure him. "Really, you did very well under the circumstances, Senpai!"

    "It was a matter of professional curiosity, if you will," said Da Vinci, still smiling. "After all, it''s true that I am what Taylor would call the only proper Caster Servant currently in Chaldea. I simply couldn''t wait until later to see how well she captured the experience of how one would fight."

    "Oh?" I arched an eyebrow. "What''s the verdict, then?"

    "I would think my reaction when you came out of the simulator captured my opinion well enough," Da Vinci replied sardonically. "But if you want me to say it directly, then yes, you captured the experience quite well, Taylor."

    "A little too well," Bradamante muttered.

    "I never faced a mage in my life, so I can''t make any informed judgment either way," Siegfried added. "For what it''s worth, I thought it was well done."

    "As a Caster myself, I do know," said Da Vinci, taking control of the conversation again. "There were some things that weren''t quite right, owing to your own limitations in the field of magecraft, but you got the overall experience down pat. Frankly, Taylor, I feel a little embarrassed to admit that you''re actually a little sneakier about trapping your territory than I am."

    So she''d seen some of the stuff I''d been planning that the twins had managed to avoid through sheer dumb luck. I guess that was what you had to expect from a genius of her caliber.

    "High praise, coming from you," Arash noted. "You might be long after my time, but the name Leonardo da Vinci still carries a great deal of weight in the Throne, even if your legend isn''t particularly glamorous or mighty."

    It did? I looked at Da Vinci, but she gave no indication that the praise or the comment affected her one way or the other.

    "It''s a matter of personality and ways of thinking." Da Vinci brushed it off. "After all, for someone who was a brilliant star from the beginning, learning to leverage even the tiniest and most underwhelming aspects of one''s abilities is something often overlooked. For someone who only had the one thing, learning to exploit every aspect of it is the difference between excellence and mediocrity. Sometimes, it''s the difference between life and death."

    "I''m sure Emiya would appreciate the compliment," said Arash with a grin.

    "It''s too bad he''s not here to receive it," Bradamante agreed. "It''s always good to hear one''s hard work praised!"

    As long as you don''t let it get to your head, I thought wryly.

    "Say," said Rika, "where is Emiya?"

    "Emiya went to prepare dinner, I do believe."

    I fought down a smirk. Had he heard my comment about it and decided that discretion was the better part of valor?

    Rika breathed a sigh of relief. "At least he wasn''t here to see the whole thing."

    "Oh, he was," said Arash, laughing. "He stayed until you two were captured, but he left before he could hear the whole lecture you got afterwards."

    "Maybe he heard what Miss Taylor said and decided he needed to go make sure dinner was ready on time," Mash suggested.

    "Forget Senpai," Rika said dryly. "If dinner was late tonight because he stayed back to watch us get our asses kicked, I''d put him on kitchen duty until further notice."

    "But Senpai, Emiya is already on kitchen duty, isn''t he?" Mash pointed out.

    "Exactly!"

    I shook my head. We were already drifting away from the whole point of the exercise.

    "Ritsuka, Rika."

    The two of them nearly snapped to attention, such was their reaction to my tone. I wasn''t sure what it said ¡ª about them, about me, or about our relationship ¡ª that they were acting that way in response to a little bit of sternness.

    "You can''t really get physically tired in the simulator since it''s not really happening, but it can still take a toll on you mentally. Why don''t the two of you go relax before dinner?"

    Rika saluted me, grinning. "Yes, ma''am!"

    Ritsuka shook his head. "Thanks, Senpai. We''ll go do that."

    "Take Mash with you, too."

    "B-but I wasn''t doing anything in the simulator today!" said Mash.

    "You''re their Servant, aren''t you?" Da Vinci asked, perhaps having caught onto my intentions. "You don''t need to follow them everywhere, but their well-being is still your top priority."

    Mash straightened, standing in the way I''d come to associate with the determination she carried in her Servant form. "Right!"

    "At ease, Mash," said Ritsuka, smiling. "We''re just going down the hall, not into the next Singularity."

    Mash ducked her head, twin spots of pink dusting her cheeks. "Right¡­"

    The three of them left together, and the rest of us watched them go. Bradamante''s head swiveled as she looked back and forth between them and me, and the moment she seemed to realize what was going on was almost like the stereotypical moment in a cartoon where a lightbulb turned on above the character''s head.

    "Hey!" She took off after the twins and Mash. "Wait for me, guys!"

    Arash shook his head. "Well, it''s not like I can''t take a hint. I''ll go make sure they don''t get into trouble, Master."

    He elbowed Siegfried in the side, and Siegfried blinked. "Ah. Yes, I suppose I will, as well."

    They left, too, and then it was just Da Vinci and me. She gave me a sardonic smile.

    "I''m going to hazard a guess that you don''t want tips for your next session with the twins, do you?" she asked sardonically.

    "No," I agreed. "I wanted to ask¡­ Has there been any progress with the Director? With Marie?"

    Da Vinci sighed, a deep, heavy thing with weight.

    "You already know that we don''t have the biological materials necessary to build her a new body."

    "I''m aware," I said sharply. "But the rest of it?"

    "I do have quite a bit more on my plate than just the Director''s health, you know." Like I wasn''t already aware of that. I might not have known exactly how much Da Vinci was responsible for around the facility, but I wasn''t ignorant of the fact that she was one of the only things keeping this whole place running at all, let alone so smoothly. "And as much as I might make it seem easy, even someone of my talent can''t magic up a solution to such a delicate problem instantly."

    "I know," I said, and I bit down on any bitterness and frustration. "But she''s already been on ice for a month. That''s a month she''s not going to get back. How much longer is she going to have to wait?"

    Da Vinci sighed again and was silent for a moment. The index finger of that mechanical glove she wore ¡ª and it was a glove or a gauntlet of some kind, because I''d seen her without it ¡ª tapped against her staff like the ticking of a clock. I had to metaphorically bite my tongue to keep my impatience in check, although it got a lot closer to literal than I was proud to admit.

    "I think I''ll have the systems prepared before your Rayshift into Rome. The ''tissue printers,'' that is, for lack of a better term," she said at last. "While you''re in Rome, we should be able to gather the necessary materials for me to begin constructing a new body for Director Animusphere. After that¡­ It will take me about a week to construct the body itself. Depending on how quickly we can gather the necessary materials, she could be back and shouting at us all in about a month."

    I grimaced. "Another month?"

    "My original estimate was three, if you''ll remember," Da Vinci said. "By that measure, we''re actually quite a bit ahead of schedule."

    "That doesn''t mean it''s fast enough."

    But it sounded petulant even to my ears.

    She smiled at me. "I''m not unsympathetic, Taylor, not at all. Although it may be a little more selfish of me, I would like for the Director to make her return as swiftly as possible, too, so that Romani no longer has to shoulder command for this little endeavor."

    Was it wrong to admit that was one of the reasons I wanted her back, too? Romani wasn''t a bumbling fool, but he really didn''t have the temperament to run Chaldea, even if he was trying his absolute best ¡ª and destroying himself in the process.

    But more than that, Marie was someone I cared about. Knowing that she was held captive in the FATE system pushed many of the same buttons as Dinah''s captivity had, and that was mixed up with the underlying thread of a similar terror and helplessness to what I''d felt seeing Brian splayed open by Bonesaw.

    It wasn''t the same, but I felt just as impotent and useless as I had then.

    "But technology can''t be built faster simply by wishing it were so," Da Vinci went on. "Nor can resources be gathered more quickly or work be done more quickly. I know I don''t need to tell you this, Taylor, but there are some things that just can''t be helped. As agonizing as it is to wait, we don''t have any other choice."

    I sighed and carded a hand through my hair. "I know."

    That didn''t make the waiting any easier.

    Da Vinci smiled warmly at me. "I''ll say it as many times as you need me to: we will get Director Marie Animusphere back. I promise you, I won''t give up on her, no matter what setbacks try to get in our way. A genius never lets a little thing like obstacles stop her, no matter how insurmountable they might seem!"

    And she meant every word of it. It was rare that I got to see it, but right then and there, I felt like I was looking not at the eccentric Servant who flitted about Chaldea tinkering on whatever caught her fancy, but the unparalleled genius celebrated for his vast intellect and the far-sighted vision of the future that had let him blaze a path through history. I was looking at Leonardo da Vinci, the legendary Renaissance Man, Uomo Universale.

    "I''m going to hold you to that, Da Vinci."

    The grin she gave me was fierce and full of teeth. "Frankly, Taylor, I would be disappointed if you didn''t."

 Chapter XXXIV: The Passing Days

    Chapter XXXIV: The Passing Days

    The clock ticked down on our "vacation," and the closer the nebulous deadline came, the more hectic things seemed to get. There was a kind of nervous air about the facility, a static crackle of anticipation as everyone raced about trying to get the last little bit done before the next step of our mission began. Even I wasn''t immune to it.

    So I kept up my training sessions with the twins. I tried to impart as much as I could to them before it was time to begin our journey into the next Singularity, but although they were progressing at a steady pace, I''d known from the beginning that there was no way they would be as ready as I wanted them to be by the time of our next Rayshift.

    It just wasn''t possible to condense years of training and hard won experience down into the span of a single month.

    I drilled them all the same. For the most part, it wasn''t that much different from our earlier sessions, and I focused them on how to properly aim at a target, how to hit that target even when it was moving, and most importantly, how to pace themselves so that they didn''t drain their reserves dry trying to force that target into submission.

    Gandr was a useful spell. Easy to use, easy to overcharge into something with surprising punch, and intuitive in how it functioned. I could easily see why Marie thought of it as a cornerstone of combat, to the point that she''d even made it a staple of the official standard issue Chaldea mystic code.

    But for all its utility, Gandr was also a relatively weak spell. Eventually, once the simulator was fully fixed and we could bring Servants in safely, I was going to have to drill the twins even more on exactly how useless Gandr was against any Servant with any degree of combat ability, let alone one of the Knight classes that had that Magic Resistance skill that made them such a force to be reckoned with against even the talented, top notch magi I''d heard about from the Mage''s Association.

    Until then, all I could do was tell them not to rely on it against actual Servants. Distracting the weaker shadow Servants Jeanne Alter had sicced on us during that final battle had been a stroke of incredible luck, but any real Servant wouldn''t even slow down before plowing through it.

    I hadn''t forgotten how easily Medusa had blocked it, like she was swatting a fly. Even if that had been part of my plan, the twins weren''t ready to try tactics that ambitious, yet.

    Polishing their Gandr wasn''t the only thing we worked on, though, because I was a fan of doubling up as much as possible. At least once a week, I also varied things up and took them to a different kind of terrain to focus on how to fight under different conditions. They were getting much better at handling running battles in densely forested areas ¡ª small wonder when that was one of our most frequent "arenas" ¡ª but they still struggled with the lateral warfare of urban terrain.

    It was a little frustrating, but I didn''t blame them for having trouble with that. It was harder to get a grasp on thinking in three dimensions than people thought. What was the expression? People rarely looked up? Front and back and side to side were simple enough, but once you added verticality into the mix, things got harder to keep track of.

    Obviously, they weren''t going to be as good at it as I was. I cheated. I''d been cheating since I got my powers, because the expanded proprioception my bugs gave me made it easier to keep track of everything around me, whether it was above, below, to the side, in front, or behind me. That was just the way it was.

    In any case, both Brian (during our hand to hand lessons back when I was with the Undersiders) and the instructors I had been provided as part of the Wards program had emphasized the importance of mastering the basics first and foremost, so that''s what I tried to make sure the twins had down pat.

    It still wasn''t going to be enough for what they were going into.

    But I wasn''t above stacking the deck, either, which was what brought me to the little room Shakespeare had claimed for himself. He''d already started to decorate it to his liking, and the clash between the stark, sterile modern style of Chaldea''s standard and the spread of yellow-paged books, inkwells, and fluffy feather quills set upon a wooden desk that looked like it could have come out of his personal office was a little off-putting.

    Not nearly as incongruous as Da Vinci''s workshop, set as it was as an island of homely antiquity in a veritable sea of sleek utilitarian modernity, but it still felt weird.

    None of that mattered when he turned to me, presenting an unassuming little knife like a knight to his queen.

    "You''re finished?" I asked as I took hold of the hilt and slid the blade a bare inch or two from the sheath. It didn''t look any different from before.

    "I''ve done everything within my power, my dear," said Shakespeare. "Alas! Even one as skilled as I cannot do this work of art true justice, but I have nonetheless done my very best work. It will undoubtedly serve you well."

    I arched an eyebrow. "Do it true justice?"

    "Your tales are simply far too large for me to bring out its full potential," he said. "I''ve fit as much of them in as I could, but my dear, my Enchant skill is just too low to fit all of them in their entirety. You asked me to create from this knife a Noble Phantasm of incredible rank and mystery, but alas!" He held a hand to his heart dramatically. "The Rank of C is the highest form to which my creations may aspire!"

    My eyes narrowed on him. A quick glance at him with my Master''s Clairvoyance confirmed it. "Your Enchant skill is A-Rank," I pointed out. There were higher ranks than that, technically, but A-Rank was already incredibly high.

    "And that is the only reason I could accomplish as much as I did," he replied. "My good lady, I think perhaps you underestimate the value of a true Noble Phantasm. My skills allow me to forge one only because it is my nature as a storyteller. However, even my words are insufficient against the exalted legends that have entered the halls of the Throne of Heroes. The effusive praise of a single bard ¡ª even one as celebrated as I! ¡ª cannot match the prayers of the people who lift these great legends upon their shoulders."

    A breath hissed out of my nostrils, and I looked down at the knife, as unassuming as it had been before. There was¡­something there that hadn''t been before, something invisible and intangible, a weight that had nothing to do with gravity or mass.

    "So what did you do with it, then?"

    He grinned. "That weapon was already a remarkable armament. To have said I took it as far as I was able was no exaggeration ¡ª perish the thought! An unparalleled sharpness, a peerless edge, and most importantly of all, lesser dragons will flee at the very sight of it! For a woman who is the bane of the dragonkind, there is no more fitting a weapon!"

    My brow furrowed incredulously. "Bane of the dragonkind?"

    "Have you not used it to slay a dragon?" Shakespeare asked, still grinning. "Was it not from your own lips that I heard you tell the tale of carving out one''s eyes? My dear, those were not simple embellishments, those were the makings of a true legend! Would it not be fitting for such a weapon to make the very wyverns you fought in France tremble in its presence?"

    "Those weren''t the only things I told you I did with it," I said, conveniently omitting ¡ª as I had when I first told him ¡ª that this knife and the knife that had done some of those things weren''t one and the same.

    "But they were by far the most impressive!" Shakespeare insisted. "To simply say that the edge is peerless or the blade exquisite is quite dull, don''t you think? Far more compelling to claim that it might cleave fang or scale as readily as flesh and bone, that the blood of dragons has stained its very core red! A decisive weapon drawn only when no other option remains, to be wielded with a single, finishing blow! Your Last Resort!"

    "Last¡­Resort?"

    I¡­honestly, I''d never thought of naming the thing before. It was just a knife. A good knife, a memento of friends I would likely never see again, but it was a knife, and until Da Vinci had literally worked her magic on it, one I''d been well aware had an expiration date. Getting too attached to what would inevitably become a paperweight hadn''t been part of any plans, because in the end, it was just a tool. Expendable.

    Shakespeare''s grin turned positively shark-like. "Quite the appropriate moniker, wouldn''t you say? You called it a nano-thorn dagger, but a weapon like this one deserves a name of its own! An identity befitting the deeds it has accomplished! That is a Noble Phantasm!"

    Except suddenly, I was keenly aware that I wouldn''t be getting rid of it anytime soon. Even without Shakespeare''s contributions, Da Vinci had made this thing invaluable. Tinkertech that didn''t need a Tinker to keep it working? I''d be a fool to toss it away carelessly.

    A "treasured tool," that was the simplified description I''d been given during my crash course on Heroic Spirits and their Noble Phantasms. Weapons, armor, and abilities that embodied the stories of deeds accomplished with them, functioning as an extension of a hero''s power. Yeah. Okay. I could get on board with that.

    "You did a good job, Shakespeare. Thank you."

    He almost seemed to preen under the praise.

    "It''s to your liking, then?"

    Last Resort, huh? It was as good a name as any. Better for sure than anything I might have come up with.

    "Yeah. It''s perfect."

    He chuckled. "Yes, it most certainly is."

    But when I turned back to him, he wasn''t looking at the knife.

    <div>

    ¡ª o.0.O.O.0.o ¡ª

    Once my newly improved dagger was stashed back in my room ¡ª no matter how tempting it might have been to carry it around with me ¡ª it was about time to get some lunch, so I made my way to the cafeteria. As with most days, it was largely empty, because the only ones with anything resembling a stable schedule were me and the twins, although there were a few from the morning shift who were grabbing a bite while they had the time.

    There was no sign yet of Ritsuka or Rika, but Emiya was still manning the stove, just as he had been a few hours before for breakfast and last night for dinner. I was probably supposed to feel bad about the fact that he''d been relegated so completely to kitchen duty, but it was hard to care as much when he was the only reason we had anything that was actually tasty.

    He really was spoiling me. Us. I didn''t have to be a precog to predict that things would be rough when this was all over and he had no reason to stick around anymore, or hell, if something went wrong during the Singularities and we lost him. The cafeteria might just be empty for a week, either from mourning or from the simple fact that none of the food would be tasty enough to compare.

    He greeted me with a friendly smile and a polite hello when I went up for my food, and the plate he set down on my tray was loaded with what looked like an ordinary grilled cheese sandwich and a small bowl of soup. My nose, however, wasn''t as easily deceived as my eyes, and I could smell the sharp burst of extra spices that had been added to the bread and layered between the slices of cheese. A hint of garlic curled up my nostrils, a promise of things to come.

    Like I said. We were screwed the instant he was gone.

    "Enjoy," he bade me, and then turned away to continue cooking.

    I took my tray and found an empty seat at a table off towards the far wall that was also otherwise empty. Since the soup was obviously supposed to be an appetizer, that was the thing I grabbed first, and I lifted the bowl to my lips like it was a cup of tea. It wasn''t exactly bitterly cold in Chaldea, but it wasn''t the warmest place on Earth, either, and the soup was hot enough to blaze a trail down my throat and into my belly. The heat was invigorating, and the soup, for as simple as it was, was delicious.

    As much as he got teased for his culinary talents, Emiya really was a godsend, and it wasn''t difficult to wonder if he might have had a significant other in life. Man or woman, a partner who knew how to cook a good meal had their own appeal, and for all of Rika''s joking about marriage, even I had to admit that Emiya hit a lot of the right buttons for me.

    Just, you know, there was that tiny obstacle in the fact that he was technically dead.

    I was just about to take the first bite of my sandwich when a tray plopped down across from mine and Rika herself dropped into the seat as though my woolgathering had summoned her. I blinked at her, nonplussed.

    "Something wrong, Rika?"

    "You''ve been avoiding us, Senpai," she said lowly and ominously. "In Orl¨¦ans, we asked you over and over again, so many times that I can''t remember them all, and you never answered." She banged her fist on the table. "Well, this time, I''m not taking no for an answer!"

    She jabbed her finger at me, and I had to cross my eyes to look down at it over the bridge of my nose.

    "Senpai! How is it that you can control bugs like that anyhow!"

    My brow furrowed.

    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    "That''s your burning question?"

    "It''s been eating me up inside for almost two months!" Rika confirmed. "There''s such a thing as being too mysterious, Senpai!"

    For the love of ¡ª

    "We''re time travelers," I snapped at her, exasperated. "We go back in time to solve events in history gone awry, caused by wishes made on an omnipotent wish-granting device called a Holy Grail. We summon the spirits of the celebrated dead back to life to help us. Magic and magi exist, and we''re in a multi-billion dollar facility with cutting edge tech built into a mountain in freaking Antarctica. Me being able to control bugs is the part you have the most trouble with?"

    "This and that are two different things!" Rika insisted. "Besides! I might not understand how it all works, but the rest of that is easy enough to wrap my head around!"

    "Time travel is easy to wrap your head around?" I asked her incredulously.

    She nodded her head. "I don''t gotta understand the nitty gritty stuff to understand how it works!"

    That doesn''t even ¡ª

    Abruptly, I became aware of the fact that our little talk had garnered the attention of everyone currently in the cafeteria, which now included Mash, Ritsuka, Arash, and Bradamante, who had apparently been with her on the way in, and even Emiya, who was trying and failing to pretend he wasn''t eavesdropping.

    I pinched the bridge of my nose, irritated at my glasses being pushed up and out of place even though I was the one who had done it.

    "I guess the rest of you want to know, too, is that it?" I asked loudly.

    Several of the onlookers looked away as though ashamed of being caught out, and Mash''s cheeks flushed pink while Ritsuka found something very interesting about the ceiling.

    "Ah, well, that is, Miss Taylor¡­ Um¡­"

    "I mean, you did kind of promise to explain it earlier," Ritsuka pointed out awkwardly.

    "And none of you have heard the expression that curiosity killed the cat?"

    I wasn''t even quite sure why I was so frustrated over it. Maybe because everyone seemed so fixated on something that was utterly mundane compared to the workings that went on here every day. The making of familiars was magecraft 101, and bug familiars were apparently so easy and so common that no self-respecting magi would lower themselves to actually using them. The only thing unusual about mine was the sheer numbers.

    "Satisfaction brought it back!" Rika said with a vicious grin.

    I looked back at her face, not entirely sure what kind of expression was on mine, but she didn''t flinch and she didn''t waver. She just stared right back at me.

    For an instant, I was tempted to tell them, just to get it all off of my chest. It wasn''t like I had been going out of my way to keep everything about myself a secret, but there was a difference between telling Romani and Da Vinci, who were both old enough and mature enough and had been at Chaldea long enough to handle keeping sensitive information to themselves, and telling the twins, who were young, fairly impressionable, and frankly in way over their heads.

    And then I remembered something Marie had told me, back when I was still bedridden and trying to put my scattered brains back together.

    "Whatever happens, you can''t tell anyone where you came from or how you got here. If the Mage''s Association got one whiff of the fact you''re from a parallel world, they''d have you dissected to find out how. The less people who know are the less people who can be coerced to tell anyone about it."

    For two years, I''d been living like that, shirking the question of my past and where I''d come from. It had become a habit to keep things vague and uninteresting, an ingrained response that I reached for whenever someone got too curious. And being entirely fair, it really hadn''t been anything more than curiosity before, because there was nothing about me that was otherwise remarkable and most of Team A had a background that was just as varied and colorful as mine, if not quite as extreme. Even Hinako''s record was a little too squeaky clean not to be hiding something, and Beryl''s public personnel file was so sanitized that it might as well have had every other word blacked out.

    There was going to be an inquiry after this was all over. We couldn''t expect the world to end and no one to have questions when we brought it back. That meant the Mage''s Association would undoubtedly be sending a representative here to investigate, probably someone from what Marie had called the Policies faction, and there was no way Ritsuka and Rika wouldn''t be at the top of their list for interrogation.

    Marie was right. The less the twins knew about me, the less they could be coerced ¡ª one way or the other ¡ª into divulging.

    So I took a deep, calming breath and forced myself to relax, entirely too conscious of the lack of bugs that would have been moving erratically in the background, otherwise hiding my reactions.

    With an exaggerated, put-upon sigh, I dropped my cheek into one hand and lifted my sandwich up with the other.

    "It''s really not that big of a deal, I don''t know why you''re all making it one," I said, letting some of my real irritation leak through. "I went through a traumatic event back when I was fifteen and discovered an affinity for controlling familiars. Bugs are just the easiest and most convenient."

    Deliberately, I took a casual bite of my sandwich, like none of this was that big of a deal. Image was everything when you were trying to sell what you were saying ¡ª I''d learned that lesson many times over during my career.

    Rika''s grin fell away and her mouth flapped open. "That''s¡­ That''s so vague, Senpai! There has to be more to it than that! I need the deets!" She smacked the knuckles of one hand against the palm of the other. "Deets, I say! Big, juicy deets!"

    I took another bite of my sandwich, chewed it carefully and unhurriedly, and only once I''d swallowed did I give her a smile. "What was it you said, Rika? A girl has to have her secrets if she wants to get married."

    Somehow, that sounded even more ridiculous coming out of my mouth than it had hers.

    "Screw that!" said Rika. "It can''t be that simple! I want my solid facts! As long and hard as possible!"

    Bradamante choked on her spit in the background.

    "M-maybe there''s a good reason Miss Taylor doesn''t want to tell us everything," Mash suggested, red creeping over her cheeks and neck.

    "She did say it was a traumatic event," Ritsuka mumbled, so low I almost didn''t hear him. "Maybe it''s more polite not to pry¡­"

    He still wanted to know, it was written all over his face, he just didn''t want to be rude and trample all over my feelings. That probably shouldn''t have been as much of a novelty as it was.

    "It''s not as unusual as it sounds, Master," Emiya added, because he''d apparently given up on trying to pretend he wasn''t listening. "My own circumstances were somewhat similar. I struggled with my magecraft until a series of life-threatening events helped me to discover my own affinity for swords." As though to punctuate his words, he conjured a long, broad chopping knife with a wooden handle, the kind found in kitchens everywhere. "It''s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I was quite hopeless before then. Even simple Strengthening magecraft was something I struggled with."

    I slid him a glance, and as his eyes met mine, a sort of understanding passed between us: he knew exactly what he was doing.

    "Well, it sounds like the sort of thing that begins every hero''s journey," Arash said with a broad smile as he too came to my rescue. He laid a hand on Rika''s shoulder as though to rein her in. "What are they calling it, these days?"

    He definitely knew more than he was letting on. Was his Clairvoyance that potent? I''d assumed that its scope was more limited, like some of the precogs I''d known during my career as a cape, but this wasn''t the first time he''d shown a startling amount of insight.

    "The call to action?" Mash suggested.

    "The inciting incident," Emiya corrected her. "In myth and in literature, it''s the event that kicks off the main plot of the story. It can be any number of things, but it''s invariably too disruptive for the protagonist to ignore."

    "That''s the one," said Arash. "Although I''m a bit surprised you''re so familiar with it, Emiya. The information packet I got when I was summoned didn''t go that far in-depth. You haven''t been spending time with Shakespeare, have you?"

    "I wonder," Emiya drawled sardonically.

    "No!" Rika groaned miserably. "Not you, too, Emiya! There''s too much mysteriousness going around, I can''t stand it! I''m going to have to make a crazy conspiracy board just to keep track!"

    Arash laughed. "Come on, now, Rika. You don''t think everyone''s just going to spill all their hopes, dreams, and sob stories just because you refuse to take no for an answer, do you?"

    His eyes met mine.

    "They should!" Rika insisted. "How else am I supposed to unlock everyone''s route if no one tells me anything?"

    Are you sure you don''t want to tell them, Master? Arash asked me across our bond.

    The less they know, the safer they''ll be, I replied. What they don''t know, they can''t be forced to tell to someone who decides to pry.

    If someone is that desperate to find out, I''m not sure Ritsuka and Rika being ignorant will protect them as well as you think it will, he warned. What happens when someone expects them to know these things and they don''t?

    A beep from the communicator on my wrist alerted me to a message I had just received, and I used that to break away and smother any reaction that might have been showing on my face. The flashing button marked it as urgent, which meant the message could only be from one person.

    Saved by Romani.

    I took another large bite out of my sandwich and grabbed my plate as I rose to my feet. "Sorry to run out on you like this, but our Acting Director needs me for something. I''ll see you guys later."

    Arash predicted me. Before the words could even form on my lips, he gave me a nod and said, "I''ll take care of your tray. Whatever it is the Director needs from you is more important."

    "Thanks."

    With that handled, I turned to leave and made my way towards the door.

    "Senpai!" Rika shouted at my back. "You can''t leave me hanging like this!"

    "Sorry, Rika."

    I wasn''t. I left anyway, eating as I went, plate in one hand and sandwich in the other.

    Marie wouldn''t have been happy with me, but it wasn''t like Romani and the other staff hadn''t been ferrying their own meals and snacks to and from the cafeteria and their work stations, so I wasn''t too concerned about polishing off my sandwich as I walked. Who or what might have been handling the janitorial duties, I didn''t have the first clue, but there was no way Chaldea could remain as pristine as it usually was without someone or something cleaning fairly regularly.

    Knowing Da Vinci, she had probably made some kind of super Roomba or something. For all that she wasn''t a Tinker in the same sense as capes had been, she definitely seemed to have the same urge to come up with needlessly complicated solutions to simple problems.

    Then again, magi in general seemed like that, too.

    It took some finagling, but somehow, I managed to access my communicator as I ate, and the holographic display popped up to show Romani''s message.

    Taylor, it read, please meet me in Da Vinci''s workshop so we can go over the details of the upcoming Rayshift.

    I promptly did an about-face and turned the opposite direction, heading for Da Vinci''s workshop instead of the Command Room. My mind raced with the possibilities.

    It had been about a month since we made it back from what was officially being referred to as the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, and it felt like it was about time that we readied up for the next one. Romani had never given us a concrete timeline on when we would Rayshift into Rome, but there had been a general sort of feel that we were going to take a month break to decompress and hopefully prepare a little more, and that time was now almost over.

    It was simultaneously too soon and long overdue.

    But why talk about that in Da Vinci''s workshop instead of in the Command Room? Maybe I was overreacting and Da Vinci was just so busy that it was more convenient for us to go to her than the other way around, but her workshop was also one of the most secure rooms in the whole facility, and there were only so many topics that required that level of privacy. The schedule for the next Rayshift wasn''t one of them.

    The two of them were waiting for me by the time I arrived, and the warmth of my sandwich had settled into a kind of lukewarm soggy feeling in my gut.

    Romani smiled at me. "Sorry to interrupt your lunch."

    "It''s fine," I said. "What''s this about, Romani?"

    "Right." He nodded. "I said this was about the upcoming Rayshift, didn''t I? We''ve decided on the timing. Three days from now, our response team will Rayshift into the Roman Singularity, tentatively named Septem."

    So. It was finally time.

    "Three days?"

    "I''d like to prepare some more, but time is a bit of a luxury, so we can''t afford to put it off much longer," he explained. "There''s no telling how long you''re going to be in there, but thankfully, the divergence ratio is going to be a larger factor, so you can take your time a little more."

    "My estimates put the ratio of flux divergence at around twenty to one, compared to the Orl¨¦ans Singularity''s five to one," Da Vinci added. "Of course, for as generous as that is, it''s not without some downsides, yes? We won''t be able to reach you as easily as before."

    "Having a larger time difference might wind up being a good thing," Romani said tiredly. He sighed. "Because our initial readings seem to suggest that the Singularity encompasses the entirety of the Roman Empire."

    My eyes widened. "The entirety?" I repeated. "Doesn''t that mean basically the whole European continent?"

    Romani grimaced.

    "Unfortunately, yes."

    I¡­wanted to sit down.

    Crossing the whole of France was the work of a month, zigzagging back and forth between cities, and by the end of it, we''d really only covered a small, narrow portion of the country. Even then, we''d spent the large majority of our time there on the road, getting from place to place, and it was time that was essentially wasted when we were trying to solve the problem as quickly as we could. How much suffering might have been avoided if we had been able to get to each of our destinations at the pace of a modern car?

    Now, we were going to have to deal with the entire breadth of the Roman Empire at its height? An empire that had started in Italy and gone on to conquer not only France, but Portugal, Spain, Britain, and basically everything west of Russia?

    Fuck, that was the work of decades.

    "Please tell me we don''t have to cross that on foot," I said tightly.

    Da Vinci smiled. "You won''t have to cross that on foot!" she told me brightly. "It''s certainly a daunting prospect, yes, but half the reason we''ve delayed as long as we have is so that I might come up with a few solutions to the problem of travel. I''ve been working on that since before you even returned from Orl¨¦ans!"

    I sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm down the rush of panic that was still squirming in my gut.

    "Okay," I said. "Okay. So we''re scheduled to Rayshift in three days and the¡­Septem Singularity covers the entire Roman Empire, but we also have some solutions to the fact that we''ll be hiking all over Europe." Fuck, those better be some really good solutions. "Is there a reason you''re telling me about this here instead of in the Command Room?"

    The two of them shared a look, and when it came to me, that was never a good sign.

    "I wanted to make sure you were still good to go," Romani said solemnly. My brow furrowed, and he went on, "To Rayshift, I mean. You''ve had about a month to think about it now, and I''ve seen a few of your sessions with the twins in the simulator. They''re getting better every day. You don''t have to go with them, if you''re worried about ¡ª"

    "I''m not," I cut across him.

    "Listen, I''m not saying you''re afraid or anything," he tried, "I''m just worried that you ¡ª"

    "Don''t be," I interrupted him again. "I can handle myself, Romani. I know what I''m doing."

    "Do you?" Da Vinci challenged. "Rayshifting is a delicate business from the beginning. Do you truly understand all of the things that could go wrong as a result of the slightest mistake?"

    ''Your existence might unravel'' wasn''t that hard a concept to grasp, if you asked me. The idea of death ¡ª whatever name or esoteric description it went by ¡ª didn''t frighten me nearly as much as some people might have thought it should, and whatever fear of it I did have wasn''t enough to make me cower from my responsibilities.

    "Marie told me enough," I replied. "I understand as much as I need to. I''m still going to Rayshift. I''m a Master of Chaldea."

    It wasn''t a matter of pride, it was just a statement of fact.

    "You don''t have to prove anything, you know," Romani said. "Whatever battlefield you walked off of two years ago, you''re not a failure for losing. You don''t have to solve these Singularities to redeem yourself."

    I didn''t lose, Romani. I wasn''t sure I really won, either, but by the metric of whether I accomplished my goal and beat the enemy, I''d clawed my way to victory.

    "It''s not about proving anything to anyone," I told them both. "I''m doing this because ¡ª"

    For a moment, I floundered, and I realized suddenly that I''d never really given much thought to why I had decided to join Chaldea in the first place. Because I didn''t have anywhere else to go? I''d literally been dropped on their figurative doorstep with nothing to my name and no one except my costume and whatever scraps of my gear were left. I hadn''t known whether Dad was alive or dead, and either way, I''d been left here alone with no way of going back. Chaldea was all I had.

    That wasn''t a good enough reason, and neither of them would think so, either.

    Because I wanted to do something meaningful with my life? Fuck, was that loaded, and it felt a little juvenile, too. How do you one-up saving the whole world and everyone in it except by doing it again? Yeah, that wasn''t a good reason, either.

    It wasn''t that both of those reasons weren''t very much a part of it, it was just that¡­ They weren''t the whole of it. They were factors, and not insignificant factors either, but they weren''t the core of it, the core of what had been driving me to keep going, no matter what.

    In the end, I think it really came back down to the same thing that had motivated me since Dinah.

    "¡­Because I can''t just sit around and do nothing."

    Not then, and not now. I''d been on the other end of that. I''d seen what happened and how people suffered because all the people who could do something had done nothing. Being one of those people who let terrible things happen through their inaction was an idea that burned in my gut.

    A thought from a lifetime ago came back to me, then. I would never be able to forgive myself if I walked away, knowing there was something I could have done to help. I''d come a long way since those days, done plenty of things I wasn''t proud of, but the core behind it hadn''t gone anywhere. The Taylor Hebert who had gone to fight Leviathan had become older, wiser, and more cynical, but the common thread that still connected my past to my present was the determination to do what needed to be done, no matter what obstacles were put in front of me.

    I wasn''t going to shy away now just because things got slightly more dangerous for me in particular. I was in this until the end.

    "You don''t have to be in the field to contribute," Da Vinci pointed out. "You could take a position as a technician and guide Ritsuka and Rika through the Singularity from the Command Room. Even simply training them to be better Masters is an invaluable role."

    "And you think I could just stand by and watch from the safety of the Command Room if something happened to them while I wasn''t there to help?"

    That wasn''t who I was. That hadn''t been who I was since the night I went out for the first time and heard Lung ordering his cronies to kill a bunch of kids.

    "You won''t change your mind?" Romani asked. Da Vinci was giving me a strange look that I couldn''t quite parse. Pity? I didn''t know what she had to pity me about.

    "No."

    Romani heaved out a resigned sigh. "This isn''t something to be ashamed of, so¡­ If you ever do change your mind, just let me know, and I''ll put you back on reserve."

    "I won''t."

    Whatever else happened, I was absolutely sure of that.

 Chapter XXXV: Prelude to Septem

    Chapter XXXV: Prelude to Septem

    Nearly six weeks after our return from the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, the day finally arrived to begin our journey into the Roman Singularity. I''d given Ritsuka and Rika the last three days off to rest, relax, and recharge, so I woke up that morning feeling rejuvenated and ready to go.

    A brisk run on the treadmill banished any remnants of sleep, and then a hot shower eased away the soreness and tension left behind by exercise, and I entered the cafeteria refreshed and energized to eat another of Emiya''s delicious breakfast meals. It might have just been an omelet, but he''d done something different, added some spices that I couldn''t quite identify, and sprinkled bits of chopped bacon through the layer of cheese in the middle.

    "Good morning, Miss Taylor," Mash called to me as I sat down. Fou, as he always seemed to be when we were in Chaldea, was perched on one shoulder, watching everything with his beady blue eyes.

    "Morning, Mash," I replied.

    The twins were sitting with her and eating their own breakfasts, but they were quiet and withdrawn, like the weight of the Rayshift to come was dragging them down, and they didn''t even seem to know I was there, let alone greet me. They were already dressed and ready to go, otherwise, but even the normally energetic and bouncy Rika was subdued and lost in her own thoughts.

    It reminded me a little of Endbringer briefings. We hadn''t always had the time for a big, preparatory speech the way we had that fateful attack by Leviathan, but Defiant and Dragon''s predictive program had given us more and more leeway with every attack, and things were always solemn and serious. Smiles had been far and few between, shared between old comrades and veteran survivors meeting up after a long while apart.

    There was no room for joking or goofing off in the face of walking, city-destroying natural disasters.

    Once my plate was clean and my glass was drained, I took it back to Emiya, who accepted it with a tight-lipped frown and an acknowledging nod.

    "I made some quick and easy meals for you guys last night," he told me in a low, quiet voice. "It won''t last you long, but it should hold everyone over for a day or two until you can find a big enough city. Longer, if you land close enough to make it there on the first day."

    "Thank you."

    He didn''t reply except to give me another nod.

    With my plate and tray delivered, I turned to leave the cafeteria and go pick up the rest of my supplies, but as I passed the twins, I was struck by the urge to say something encouraging, something to lift their spirits a little. The only trouble was, I didn''t know what I should say.

    What would Lisa say? I asked myself. How would she put them at ease?

    It had been so long, I wasn''t totally sure, but¡­ It would probably be something like¡­

    "Hey." My right hand came down to rest on Ritsuka''s shoulder. "Relax a little. It''s going to be fine. We got through Orl¨¦ans, didn''t we?"

    They looked as surprised at what came out of my mouth as I was, or maybe they were just surprised I was being comforting and supportive. I knew that I''d been a little rough on them during our training sessions, but I wasn''t that much of a hardass, was I? Sure, I wasn''t the most cuddly, approachable person, but that didn''t mean I was lacking in something as fundamental as compassion.

    The twins didn''t reply, they just kept looking at me, wide-eyed, so I gave Ritsuka''s shoulder an awkward pat and made good my escape.

    "Fou¡­" I heard the little gremlin whine behind me, somehow managing to sound confused.

    Fuck. I just made things weird, didn''t I? Damn it.

    I distracted myself from stewing on it by going over a mental checklist of all of the things I was going to need for the Septem Singularity. Traveling relatively light was going to be essential. Whatever means Da Vinci had cooked up to make the travel times less of a problem, the inescapable fact of the matter was that we were going to be trekking across the entire European continent, this time.

    Maybe if we were lucky, everything would be centered on Rome and we could get around in a few hours instead of weeks, but I wasn''t holding my breath on that one. Life had taught me that particular lesson too many times for me to hope it would be that easy.

    So, the twins just had their Mystic Codes. They didn''t have any other equipment to carry with them. The job of carrying the rations that Emiya made and whatever we might pick up along the way (whether in the field or as a supply drop from Romani), that would have to go to them. Them and Mash, although it was probably a better idea to have Mash as unencumbered as possible, in case she had to leap to our defense.

    As for the others, making plans for who should carry what was probably a bit moot. Shakespeare I disregarded immediately, because it seemed obvious he would stay here, but as for who would be coming with us and who would be staying in reserve for emergencies, I hadn''t been briefed on that. Emiya had a lot of utility in a lot of ways, so I could see them sending him with us right off the bat, but Arash and Siegfried were both powerhouses.

    If I had the choice ¡ª and I technically did, as leader of the field team, but I''d be a fool to ignore the opinion of Leonardo fucking da Vinci ¡ª I think I would have picked Siegfried. He was an excellent combination of offense and defense, capable of outputting raw damage and taking heavy hits, and he was the only reason we had managed to kill Dracule at all. Arash was incredible as an Archer, but if Emiya was coming along, then that niche was technically already filled.

    Bradamante¡­ She wasn''t necessarily weak, if she fought off one of Jeanne Alter''s Servants by herself. But while she could probably fit the role of frontline attacker, Siegfried was just better at it. If we weren''t taking everyone along from the get-go, I couldn''t see her being part of the initial field team.

    With all of that in mind, what could I feasibly take with me?

    My communicator, obviously. The nano-thorn dagger, my Last Resort, that was a no-brainer, too. A book, something to do in case we had to sit around for a while again¡­ If I did, it would have to be something small and light so that it didn''t weigh me down. A paperback. The Da Vinci Code, maybe, a novel that hadn''t existed on Earth Bet. I''d bought it on a whim to tweak Da Vinci''s nose way back when ¡ª a fit of pique when I was missing Lisa a little too keenly ¡ª and never read it.

    That just left my puppets.

    When we started the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, I had left them behind because they were useless without the multitasking that I''d taken for granted as a cape. Now, with my powers back, they were worth their weight in gold. So about six pounds, total.

    They had a storage mode, where they collapsed into innocuous cylinders that might be mistaken for a pair of thermoses at first glance, but I couldn''t see myself storing them away all that often inside Septem. Unlike my bugs, the range limit on my ravens was a matter of how far away they could still receive my "signal" and keep working properly instead of an arbitrary distance limit set by an alien supercomputer as part of one, gigantic game.

    I worried, for an instant, about what might happen when someone finally realized that the ravens weren''t natural creatures and instead my puppets ¡ª an Archer, for instance, who would be able to pick them off before I even realized something was wrong ¡ª because they were far less expendable tools than my bugs were and much more difficult to replace. But it was the silly, childish fear of a little girl scared of breaking her favorite toys, and it passed just as quickly.

    They were just too useful, in the end. Quantity was a quality all its own, and I''d gone to great lengths to maximize the usefulness of my swarm, set them upon my enemies from unexpected directions in unexpected ways, but as the wyverns in Orl¨¦ans had proven, there was a limit to what I could do with even that. My ravens should help bridge the gap with enemies that required the extra oomph of actual magic.

    By the time I made it back to my room, I''d mostly decided, so it was as easy as flitting about to actually grab it all. My knife and its holster were strapped back on, a few miscellaneous supplies gathered ¡ª a couple hair ties for if I needed them at any point, for example ¡ª and when I had everything else, I carefully sandwiched my ravens into the sling bag whose strap I fastened across my chest.

    I was patting myself down to make sure I''d gotten everything when a knock sounded at my door and it whooshed open. Da Vinci''s smiling face was on the other side.

    "Oh, it looks like you''re ready," she said pleasantly.

    I nodded.

    "Time for the briefing?"

    "I just came from telling Ritsuka and Rika," she told me in lieu of a direct answer. She looked at my backpack. "You''re taking the ravens along with you, this time?"

    "My problems with multitasking before were the only reason I left them behind," was the answer I gave her. "With my powers back, I don''t have to worry about that anymore, so I can use them as much as I want. No sense in leaving a pair of my best weapons behind."

    Da Vinci''s lips pulled into a frown for a moment, although I didn''t understand why, but it was gone and the smile was back before I could ask what was on her mind.

    "Perhaps we should start calling you Hrafnague, then," she teased.

    I scowled at her, but that only seemed to make her laugh. "It''s not like I had tons of good options. ''Blackie'' and ''Spot'' were the next options down on my list."

    That only made her laugh harder, and I had to fight to keep my own smile from breaking out across my face.

    "Well, maybe it doesn''t fit that well anyway." She tapped at her cheek beneath her left eye. "After all, it was your arm you lost, not your eye, so it doesn''t quite fit."

    "You''re hilarious," I told her dryly.

    "I''m a genius," she retorted smugly. "Humor is but one of my many talents."

    Because the greatest polymath in history apparently needed more of them. If Achilles had been dipped in the River Styx and gained an immortal body, then Da Vinci must have been dipped in the River Lethe and gained unfathomable wisdom.

    I sighed and shook my head. "Let''s just get going."

    Da Vinci stepped back into the hallway and gestured with that ridiculously oversized gauntlet she insisted on wearing over her left arm. "After you."

    A muscle in my cheek jumped, but I took the invitation for what it was and stepped out of my room. The door closed behind me with another hydraulic whoosh, and when I started off towards the Command Room, Da Vinci fell into step next to me.

    "You know, I don''t understand why you went with ravens," she said conversationally. "Any number of options and the aid of a celebrated genius in bringing them to life, and you decided on something both special and mundane."

    Special and mundane? What was that supposed to mean?

    "Why do you think I chose ravens?"

    "That''s what I''m trying to figure out," she chirped. "You see, Orl¨¦ans showed me even more that you prefer brutal efficiency and utilitarianism over flash and style. One would think you preferred more humanoid puppets to make use of in that case, for their sheer versatility and available real estate, so to speak, or perhaps something that could blend in no matter where it went, which I suppose ravens can do. They''re a pretty ubiquitous species, after all. They wouldn''t look out of place throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere."

    She hummed thoughtfully.

    "Of course, there are plenty of other animals with a universal enough spread to be equally as useful," she went on. "A dog or a cat, perhaps, or maybe a wolf. Yes, yes, dogs or cats would be less conspicuous to bring about with you, wouldn''t they? They might be easily mistaken for an ordinary pet or a simple familiar. Ravens are less common companions and therefore more easily suspected. More suspicious to have them out and about with you." She sighed. "And of course, the part that I keep stumbling over, ravens just have fewer offensive and defensive options, both in terms of ''natural'' weapons and in the amount of space they have internally to carry different armaments."

    "They''re also harder to catch," I countered mildly. "They don''t need as much in the way of options because they''re not stuck on the ground when the fighting begins. What they lack in sturdiness they make up for in maneuverability and height advantage."

    "True," she agreed. "I suppose that makes some sense, as well. If you''re used to having bugs as familiars, then you''re used to having a higher vantage point of the action ¡ª ah. That''s it, isn''t it? You like having a bird''s eye view of what''s going on when you''re fighting, quite literally."

    That was part of it, but¡­ Well, as embarrassing as it was to admit it, it was even simpler than that. A bit childish, even, which was why I didn''t admit it out loud.

    "Yeah."

    I''d always wanted to fly. I hadn''t hit the power jackpot with mine and gotten flight, but the flight pack Dragon had made for me later on had let me shore up that bit, and while I''d mostly gotten over the childish joy of flying by that point, there was something that remained incredible about flying under (mostly) my own power.

    The sensory input from my ravens wasn''t as complete as it was for my bugs, but it made up for it by also being closer to human than bugs'' senses were. And that meant that I could experience, in some diluted, minor way, what it was like to feel the wind under their wings as they soared high up in the air.

    It was probably the closest I was ever going to get to flying again.

    "I suppose that does suit you," said Da Vinci. "Yes, you have a tendency to approach situations from lateral angles instead of head on, the way you defeated Dracul. And Jeanne Alter, come to think of it, and Saber Alter in Fuyuki."

    "In another life, I used my bugs to set up tricks and traps with silk thread," I agreed. "Caught plenty of people off guard with that."

    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    Da Vinci huffed a quiet chuckle.

    "I''m not so sure you could still call it another life, since you''ve introduced the twins to that sort of thing so intimately. Wouldn''t that be more like falling into old habits?"

    My cheek twitched, but I managed to fight down the smile again.

    "Weren''t you the one praising me for capturing the experience of fighting a Caster in her own territory so well?"

    "Isn''t that the same as calling you a competent magus?" she shot back, grinning. "The same adage applies, remember. Magi are more dangerous in their workshops than not, the same as Casters."

    "Be careful Sylvia doesn''t hear you say that," I said, "she might get insulted."

    Da Vinci chuckled again. "Very few of the magi who joined Chaldea are as much ''proper magi'' as I''m sure you''ve heard horror stories about. She might take it as a compliment to be compared to you."

    Somehow, I doubted that. I was barely what they called a mere spellcaster, let alone anything resembling a proper magus. Even the lowliest magus from the Mage''s Association would probably point and laugh at my skill with magic.

    Well. I was fine with that. Magic was just another tool. What did the opinions of a bunch of empty-headed academics matter to someone who wielded it as a weapon?

    Before long, we reached the Command Room, where Romani and the twins were already waiting with our Servants ¡ª minus Shakespeare ¡ª gathered around in a small, uncomfortable cluster. Several of the technicians on duty kept sneaking glances towards them, like this was the first time they''d seen Servants up close and personal. It probably was, actually.

    "And there''s the rest of the group," Romani said with a smile. "Good morning. I was just telling Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash about how we''re going to handle the Rayshift for this Singularity."

    Rika fidgeted nervously, as though the mere mention of it made her antsy, and even her brother was a bit jittery, although he hid it better than she did.

    "Good morning, Romani!" Da Vinci said brightly.

    "We''re doing something different than last time?" I asked, cutting right to the point. Romani''s smile grew a little wider, like he''d expected that and found it funny.

    "With the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, we only had Mash and Emiya on staff for our Servants," he explained. "We were also still fixing the damage from the sabotage, so we had to be much more careful about how much we stressed our systems, and that had something to do with our decisions about how conservative we had to be."

    "Which is why I had to stay behind during the initial Rayshift," Emiya intoned with a nod.

    "That was part of it, yes," Romani confirmed. "Well, this time, we''re much better off than we were back then, and we now have a second Grail to power both the facility and support the four Servants we''ve picked up since then ¡ª Arash, Siegfried, Bradamante, and Shakespeare. Not everything is fixed yet, and not everything is completely repaired yet, but we''re far more confident in our position than we were before."

    He swept his gaze across the assembled group.

    "That''s why it''s been decided that our initial group will consist of Mash, Taylor, Ritsuka, and Rika, accompanied by Emiya and Arash."

    Bradamante made a sound of dismay that might generously be compared to a cat being strangled, and Siegfried''s face drew into a troubled look. "We won''t all be accompanying them?"

    "It''s true that the Grails that Mash and the others collected from Fuyuki and Orl¨¦ans have bolstered our ability to support multiple Servant contracts," Da Vinci jumped in, "but even with the support of such massive wellsprings of magical energy, the strain on the Masters is not insignificant. Three Masters lets us send more Servants at once, but even with that, we have to be careful."

    "They seemed just fine in Orl¨¦ans!" Bradamante insisted.

    "Truly, I noticed no apparent strain on my Master," Siegfried agreed. "She supported myself and Lord Arash without much difficulty."

    Until the Noble Phantasms started coming out, I admitted in the privacy of my own head. Even then, the strain had been more on my Magic Circuits than on my reserves of energy.

    "I''m guessing you have a reason we''re not just sending everyone," Arash said.

    "Da Vinci and I discussed this in depth," said Romani. "When we reviewed the data from Orl¨¦ans, we realized just how many stray Servants the team ran into over the course of resolving the Singularity. Despite that, the only new contracts we picked up were technically just Siegfried and Arash, and Arash was manually summoned by Taylor. On the other hand, Bradamante''s contract was registered in an unusual way, so it''s actually shared between all three of the Masters."

    Oh. I thought I saw where this was going.

    "You want to keep our options open for recruiting more Servants," I said.

    Romani nodded. "Since we don''t know what we might be facing in future Singularities, it''s a good idea to hedge our bets and contract as many Servants as we feasibly can. At the very least, for those we can''t bring back with you guys at the end of the Singularity, we should record their Saint Graphs to the FATE system so we can attempt to summon them at a later date."

    Rika chuckled quietly, and under her breath, I heard her mutter, "The real treasure was the friends we made along the way."

    Romani apparently heard her, too, because he smiled. "Something like that, yeah."

    "There''s also another matter to consider," said Da Vinci. "While it''s true that Siegfried and Bradamante are both powerful Servants, they also had some relation to the situation in Orl¨¦ans, yes? Bradamante is technically a French Servant, and Siegfried is a dragonslayer, well-suited to fighting the wyverns burning the country down. In that case, rather than sending you into Septem with as much firepower as we can, the better idea might be to let you make contracts with the native Servants, who may be better suited to handling the specific situation ¡ª no offense, you two."

    "Ah, it''s fine!" said Bradamante at the same time as Siegfried''s solemn, "None was taken."

    "So," Bradamante began, "does that mean we''re sitting out the whole Singularity?"

    "What if we need their help?" Ritsuka asked.

    "We may run into another situation like with Fafnir," Mash agreed. "Without Siegfried and the others, doesn''t that put us in more danger?"

    Romani turned to Da Vinci, who told them, "Currently, I''m working on a system that would allow more rapid response summonings when we need them, which will let us cut down on overall strain while still allowing any of our Servants to respond when called, but for now¡­ Yes. Unless the situation changes, all Servants who aren''t part of the initial Rayshift will remain on standby."

    Bradamante groaned and deflated. "I''ll never get to show my stuff at this rate."

    "In the meantime," said Romani, "it''s not the best solution, but between Emiya''s barrier spell and Mash''s Noble Phantasm, you should have enough defense to hold off the enemy until we can send reinforcements."

    "Even if the time differential turns out to be as bad as you think it might?" I asked.

    Romani grimaced and turned to Da Vinci again.

    "Once I can get this system working properly, calling in reinforcements should be something you can do entirely from your end," Da Vinci answered. "For now¡­ Yes. I''m afraid even our best response time to sending you reinforcements is likely to be anywhere from one minute to five, on your end."

    "Is there any way for Chaldea''s sensors to detect whether an approaching Servant is hostile?" Mash asked.

    "So we can know whether to send in reinforcements before the fighting even gets started, you mean?" Romani shook his head. "I''m sorry. Unfortunately, something like that is just impossible, even for SHEBA or TRISMEGISTUS. Divining the intent of an approaching Servant is still more the realm of psychology than anything else. Raw numbers can''t be used to suss that out."

    "You''ll just have to use your best judgement," Da Vinci chimed in.

    "Are there any other concerns?" Romani''s gaze swept across the entire group. Neither Siegfried nor Bradamante looked particularly pleased with being left behind, but Siegfried at least seemed to have accepted the explanation.

    "I don''t like it," Bradamante muttered mutinously. "I didn''t join up just to sit on the sidelines and watch everyone else rush into danger!"

    "If you think you can do a better job of defending the Masters," Da Vinci said shrewdly, "then I''m sure Emiya or Arash would be happy to switch places with you."

    "Wait," Romani interjected, panic on his face, "hold on, that''s not what we ¡ª" Da Vinci must have shot him a warning look, because he cut himself off and suddenly changed tacks. "I mean, yeah. We can arrange a change in the roster if you think you can do the job better."

    Bradamante immediately backpedaled. "N-not at all! I''m sure Sir Emiya and Lord Arash are perfectly capable of protecting everyone! I just don''t want to be left behind! Th-that''s all I meant! I didn''t mean to insult anyone at all!"

    Emiya chuckled quietly, and from the small smile on his face, Arash recognized the ploy for what it was, too. Even the twins seemed to realize that Bradamante had just been played like a fiddle.

    "I''ll tell you what," said Romani. "If the number of contracts the team picks up with stray Servants in the Septem Singularity is lower than expected, you''ll be the first one sent in to fill out the team. Does that work for you?"

    Bradamante sighed. "I suppose it must," she lamented. "Still! For the next Singularity, I insist on being a part of the vanguard!"

    Romani smiled. "We''ll see how things work out, but I''ll make sure to keep that in mind." Again, he looked around the group. "Anyone else?"

    No one spoke up, and he nodded.

    "Let''s get the rest of the briefing over with, then."

    He walked over to his terminal, the Director''s terminal, and started typing on the keyboard as we all huddled around him. The massive multi-paneled screen flickered and changed as he brought up the map of the currently known Singularities again. A moment later, it honed in on the one located in Rome and brought up the details.

    <div>

    Rome, Italy

    AD 0060

    Human Order Foundation Value: B+

    "The source of the next Singularity is Rome during the year 60 AD," Romani explained. "We can''t tell you much about what''s going on in there, but during proper history, this was smack dab in the middle of Emperor Nero''s reign. Insofar as what is being disrupted? We don''t know for sure, but it''s likely that what is trying to be changed or altered is the fall of the Roman Empire. Either someone is trying to prevent it, or someone is trying to make it happen sooner."

    "Either one is bad," Da Vinci added. "The Roman Empire needed to fall for history to progress forward, but there are a number of things that needed to happen before it did. 60 AD is far, far too early."

    "Right." Romani nodded. "There''s also a bit of bad news."

    He typed something out, and a red line drew itself around Britain, the entirety of Europe, the Mediterranean, and a relatively thin sliver of Northern Africa.

    "As far as we can tell, this is the amount of land covered by the Singularity."

    A distressed sound squeaked out of Rika''s throat, like a groan that had been strangled before it made it all the way out of her mouth. "W-what?"

    "H-how," Ritsuka stammered faintly, "are we supposed to cover that much ground?"

    "Well," Romani began, "ideally, you''ll land right where we want you to and walking to Rome, the capital city, will take all of about twenty minutes."

    "And if we don''t?" Mash asked. "Doctor, Senpai can''t possibly walk across the entire Roman Empire! Miss Taylor, either!"

    "I''m not sure they''d appreciate being carried the entire way, either," Emiya said.

    "A-absolutely not!" Rika yelped, her voice an entire octave higher than normal.

    "You said you had a plan for dealing with this," I cut in.

    "Right." Romani cleared his throat. "Da Vinci, if you would?"

    "Of course."

    Da Vinci stepped away and went over to a corner of the room to retrieve a plain, white, cardboard box that I hadn''t noticed before, the emblem of Chaldea printed on the side. She brought it over towards us and set it down with a thud, then reached inside and pulled out¡­a metal harness holding a pair of wheels.

    "Hup!"

    But with a flick of her wrist, the harness unfolded and the bars snapped into place until she was holding a small bicycle by the handlebar. She smiled at us. "Ta-da!"

    "A¡­bicycle?" Ritsuka muttered curiously.

    "Not just any bicycle!"

    "It''s an e-bike," I realized when I spotted the compact motor attached beneath the seat.

    Da Vinci pouted, but it turned quickly into a secretive smile and she wagged the index finger of her free hand.

    "It''s not just an e-bike, either," she said smugly. "It''s an ultra-special Da Vinci custom e-bike, mark one!"

    I rolled my eyes.

    "What''s the difference?" Rika asked.

    "It runs on magical energy," said Da Vinci. She gestured to the motor, which was actually less than half the size of the ones I''d seen on Earth Bet. "The motor you see here has a condenser installed that absorbs ambient mana from the atmosphere and converts it into power. If you needed to, you could use some of your own mana, but I designed this with Orl¨¦ans in mind. Septem will have much, much more magical energy available to draw from, so there shouldn''t be any trouble with fuel. And when you don''t need it to get around¡­"

    She pressed something on the handlebar, and then with startling ease, she folded the entire thing back up again until it was just a pair of wheels and metal bars, small enough to carry around like a backpack.

    "Whoa," said Ritsuka.

    Rika let out a deep, exaggerated sigh. "My feet are saved!"

    "Top speed?" I asked.

    "If you floor it, right around a hundred kilometers per hour," Da Vinci answered. "However, for the sake of safety, perhaps you should stay closer to fifty?"

    "You won''t be magically getting from one end of the Empire to the other in less than a day, no matter what," Romani clarified, "but these should make the journey much shorter and far less strenuous."

    "I made four of them," Da Vinci said. She set the first down and pulled three more out of the box one after the other. "One each for the Masters and Mash, since the regular Servants can simply enter spirit form and travel that way."

    "What about helmets?" Emiya interjected. "Moving at those speeds on an open vehicle isn''t without risks."

    Da Vinci looked at him with a smile and one eyebrow cocked. He sighed and shook his head, a helpless grin curling the edges of his mouth.

    "Right. I got the hint. I''ll take care of it."

    "Like I said," Romani jumped back in, steering the conversation back on course, "we can''t tell you much about what''s happening inside the Singularity itself. We have no idea where the Grail is or who happens to be in possession of it. Whatever else might be different, that part remains the same. You have to find the Grail and either retrieve it or destroy it. The only other thing you can be certain of is that whoever has it won''t give it up without a fight."

    "Which probably means at least one enemy Servant," I added. Romani nodded.

    "At the very least, the pattern has held so far that Servants have been involved each time. You can likely expect both friendly and hostile Servants. If you can, the more friendly Servants you recruit, the better off you''ll be."

    He checked his watch and nodded to himself.

    "Okay. If there are no other questions, we should get moving. Everyone who is part of the initial Rayshift team, please head down to the Rayshift chamber."

    "What about us?" Bradamante asked, gesturing to herself and Siegfried.

    "It''s better if you stay here, for the moment," said Romani. "If you like, you two can watch from my monitor. I won''t promise it''s all that interesting, though."

    "I think I would like that," Siegfried said.

    "Alright." Da Vinci stacked the four folded bikes back into the box and picked it up. "Rayshift team, let''s go."

    "Wait." I''d barely started to turn around when Romani called out to us again. "I''ve got just one more order for you guys. Well, it''s really more like a request, but¡­"

    He pursed his lips, took a deep breath, and then said, "All of you. Be safe, and¡­ come back alive."

    Mash straightened and gave a confident nod. "Right!"

    "You got it, Doc!" Rika said brightly.

    "Understood, Doctor Roman," said Ritsuka solemnly.

    Romani looked to me last, and I met him straight in the eye. "I''ll make sure they come back safely."

    He smiled sadly, like he''d been expecting me to say something like that.

    "Emiya, Arash," he said to them next, "I''ll be expecting you to take care of them."

    "I''ll protect them with my life," Arash promised.

    Emiya huffed and smirked, shooting an amused glance Arash''s way. "You''re sending the strongest Servant to accompany them," he said arrogantly. "There''s nothing you need to worry about."

    Very confident, aren''t we?

    I guess he had reason to be. After all, he was the only Servant who would get stronger the more Servants we fought. In that sense, summoning him was probably the best result we could have gotten, back then.

    Romani sighed and gestured towards the door. "Okay. We''ve got a Singularity to correct. Get going, you guys."

    "This way!" said Da Vinci.

    Bradamante waved at us as we fell into step behind Da Vinci and made our way down into the Rayshift chamber. The closer we got, the more nervous the twins seemed to become, and even Mash was starting to get a little uncertain.

    Was she remembering Jeanne Alter? Sticking my knife into her and watching her bleed out on the floor? I wish I knew whether Romani had had the chance to talk to her yet, but he was the sort to take doctor-patient confidentiality very seriously, and I didn''t see him telling me how she was doing or what progress she might have been making, even if he had started counseling her.

    The massive doors to the Rayshift Chamber loomed soon enough, and with a whir and a hydraulic hiss, they opened to admit our group. Like they had before the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, four tubes, our Klein Coffins, jutted out of the floor like massive torpedoes.

    Da Vinci strolled into the room without a care and deposited the box inside, and after a moment of hesitation, the twins and Mash followed her. I was frustrated to admit that there was even a hitch in my step as I remembered I was going to have to step into the confined space of my own coffin and a jolt of fear seized my lungs.

    "Just like last time, everyone," Da Vinci said encouragingly.

    After another moment of hesitation, the twins climbed in, although Mash seemed completely unafraid.

    "Wasn''t any better back then, either," Rika grumbled.

    "It can''t be helped," Ritsuka said to her.

    "I know, I know¡­"

    I had to readjust my backpack first, moving the bag so that my compacted ravens were sitting on my stomach instead of wedged between me and the back of my coffin, and then I climbed in, too. Da Vinci took the time to stop by on her way out of the room.

    "It''s not too late, you know," she whispered. "You could stay on standby with Bradamante and Siegfried."

    My mouth drew into a scowl, and the anger served as a remarkably good distraction from the thundering of my pulse in my ears and the beating of my heart in my chest. I wasn''t blind to miss the manipulation for what it was. She was trying to use my claustrophobia to convince me to sit the Rayshift out.

    Not fucking likely.

    My answer must have shown on my face, because before I could say anything, she sighed and shrugged. "It was worth a try."

    No, it really wasn''t.

    She left, and a moment later, my coffin hissed as the glass door came down and closed, locking me in with a click. I closed my eyes and swallowed against the rising panic, forcing deep breaths into my lungs as I tried to think of anything else except for the fact that I was once more trapped inside that tiny little tube.

    Outside, the intercom crackled to life and the computerized voice announced:

    <div>

    UNSUMMON PROGRAM START

    SPIRITRON CONVERSION START

    A chill swept down my body, and an entirely different kind of anticipation started to build inside of me, fighting against the rising fear.

    I was about to get my powers back again.

    Are you there, Passenger?

    But like always, there was no answer. There never had been, there never would be. I had to believe it was listening, that it could hear me, if only because it was so much bigger and more powerful than I was, but whether it was or not, I''d never received any sign.

    I let out a long breath and tried to calm my thundering heart. One day, I promised myself, I would be strong enough to step into this coffin without flinching. One day, the Locker would never have this sort of power over me. One day, I would rule this irrational fear instead of it ruling me.

    Until then, all I could do was try to keep from panicking. I didn''t have to be in here long. I wasn''t going to be locked in with the shit and the blood for over an hour. It was only as long as it took for the Rayshift process to engage.

    <div>

    RAYSHIFTING STARTING IN 3¡­

    2¡­

    1¡­

    Once more, light suffused the coffin, so bright I could see it through my eyelids, and when I opened my eyes, the world fell away to welcome a canal of stars, and I was swept along. Carried by an unseen force, following an invisible path through the cosmos.

    <div>

    ALL PROCEDURES CLEARED

    GRAND ORDER COMMENCING OPERATION

 Chapter XXXVI: Le Bel Inconnu

    Chapter XXXVI: Le Bel Inconnu

    The landing in Septem was no more comfortable than the one in Orl¨¦ans.

    The jolt of gravity reasserting itself upon my body jarred my knees and my stomach and my head, and my thoughts spun out as my self suddenly expanded outwards into the local insect population. I stumbled under my own weight, dizzy and confused, and my breakfast made a rebellious attempt to claw its way back up my throat.

    But unlike last time, I knew what to expect. I swallowed against the rising nausea, and with the force of my will, I took an iron fist to that galaxy of lights and bent it into a familiar shape, with myself at the center like the inexorable, inevitable hold of a massive black hole.

    A deep breath hissed passed my lips and filled my lungs, and only then did I open the eyes that I hadn''t realized were closed to find a hand outstretched in offering. Arash smiled down at me, friendly and welcoming, neither judging nor condescending.

    I took it and let him steady me as I straightened. There was no way he didn''t notice the slight wobble as my skewed sense of balance nearly pitched me sideways, but he didn''t mention it at all, he just held my hand a little tighter so that I didn''t slip.

    "R-Rayshift successful, Master," Mash said from nearby, panting a little herself.

    "Are we all here?" I asked. "Sound off!"

    "I-I''m here!" Ritsuka rasped.

    "G-gimme a second, my soul needs to catch up with my body!" Rika said breathlessly.

    "Here," Arash chimed in unnecessarily.

    "Me, too," said Emiya.

    Mash sighed. "We all made it safely again."

    I looked at each of them in turn, tagging them all with at least one bug each from my newly replete swarm, but none of them looked like they were injured or missing body parts or anything like that. Just that those of us with actual, physical bodies were still getting our bearings from the disorientation of the Rayshift.

    With our safety established, I turned instead to the world around us, taking in the green grass, the gentle slopes of the countryside, and the thick, densely leaved forest that sprawled nearby. The air was crisp and warm, filled with the salty brine of the nearby river ¡ª

    River?

    My brow drew down as I spun around, honing in on the lifeforms that weren''t in the soil, the air, or the trees, but far, far below us, deep in the water. The familiar stench of saltwater wriggled up my nostrils, and I took cautious steps towards it as I made my way to the shoreline. There was no beach, no sandy white dunes, but the land gently sloped into the placid surface of the water regardless, going suddenly from sprouts of green grass to the deep, dark navy of a still river.

    Except it couldn''t be a river, could it? It was too quiet, too gentle, and just too deep, and most importantly of all, there, down below, were something that didn''t live in rivers or streams, and I wasn''t totally sure, but probably not even lakes.

    "Crabs?"

    I got closer to the shoreline, and what had to be two or three miles across from me was the opposite shore. A look up and down either side didn''t show me anything else that would tell me what was going on, but whereas the left side seemed to just go deeper inland, narrowing as it went, the right side seemed to expand out as the land itself tapered off.

    "This isn''t a river," I realized suddenly. "This is a coastline."

    So the reason why I could feel crabs down there at the bottom of the gulch was because that wasn''t a freshwater river, it was an inlet from the ocean. It was seawater all the way down.

    "It can''t be¡­"

    I wasn''t an expert on geography, and while I''d studied the map of the Roman Empire as best as I could during our break from Orl¨¦ans, it was just too much land to commit everything to memory in the span of a few weeks. Either way, I didn''t remember any inlets like this along Italy''s coast, none that were anywhere near Rome itself.

    "Senpai?" Ritsuka asked.

    Arash came up next to me. "Is something wrong, Master?"

    I whipped around. "Mash!"

    Mash startled and jolted to attention.

    "Y-yes, Miss Taylor?"

    The little gremlin popped up on her shoulder from out of nowhere. "Fou, fou?"

    "Fou''s tagged along again!" Rika exclaimed. I ignored them both.

    "Romani said we were supposed to land within walking distance of Rome, didn''t he?"

    "Y-yes, he did!" she squeaked, but it was a question I''d already known the answer to.

    I spun back around to the shoreline. "Then where the hell¡­"

    A twist of my wrist and a few swift button presses brought up the map that Da Vinci had so very helpfully loaded for us, showing the coastline that we were all standing near, framed by lush, green forest and grassland. But it was all wrong. The inlet went from east to west ¡ª or west to east, whatever ¡ª like someone had reached down and ripped the land open, letting the ocean fill in the gap.

    Zooming out didn''t make the situation any better, and a thread of furious dread curdled in my stomach the further out I zoomed. Slowly, the familiar line of the French coast resolved itself, with the dot representing our team far on the northwestern end.

    "We''re in France," I muttered numbly.

    "WE LANDED WHERE?" Rika demanded at full volume, her voice an entire octave higher than normal.

    Mash was already pulling up her own map, brow furrowing as she slowly started to realize the same thing I had.

    "Gaul," she said clearly, "on the coast of what would be Brittany, France in the modern day."

    "What?" Ritsuka asked faintly.

    "Oh," said Emiya, his eyebrows slowly rising towards his hairline.

    "This," Arash said, troubled, "is very far off course."

    "YOU DON''T SAY!" Rika shouted hysterically. She grabbed fistfuls of hair on each side of her head and scrubbed her scalp roughly. "DAMN IT!"

    "Fou, fou!" the little gremlin agreed.

    My communicator was on in a flash. "Romani!"

    Nothing but static answered me.

    "Fuck!"

    "Something must have happened to throw us off course," said Emiya.

    "STOP STATING THE OBVIOUS!" Rika howled.

    "Calm down, Rika!" I snapped at her.

    "YOU CALM DOWN!" she snarled back at me, her face contorting with her fury. "WE''RE ON THE OTHER END OF THE GODDAMN CONTINENT!"

    "And there''s nothing we can do about it, right now," Arash told her firmly. "Getting angry about it won''t change anything."

    Rika whirled towards him, arms stretched out and fingers curled into claws, and she looked very much like she wanted to wring his neck or scream at him some more, but before she could, she turned away and threw up her hands towards the sky. "UGH!"

    I understood the urge. It was lucky none of them could see the crabs down below, because if they could, they would have seen them scrambling about, snapping at each other with their pincers and wrestling whenever they came within spitting distance of one another. That outlet for aggression was the only reason it didn''t show on my face or in the local insect population.

    I took a deep breath to try and calm down. It didn''t really help that much.

    "Master, Miss Taylor," Mash cut in, looking upwards. "It''s here, too."

    We all followed her gaze and looked up at the midday sky, and there, far, far above, looming like the eye of an unfeeling god, was the ominous ring of light that we had seen in Orl¨¦ans. It looked exactly the same, a blot of dark, inky blue surrounded by bright, white light, so far up that even the clouds seemed nearer by comparison.

    "Could this have caused interference in the Rayshift that scrambled our landing coordinates?" Mash wondered.

    "I don''t have any better ideas," I replied.

    We still didn''t even know what that ring of light even was. Romani had suggested some sort of large scale, atmospheric magecraft placed in satellite orbit in the stratosphere, but to my knowledge, Chaldea hadn''t discovered anything new about it during our stay in the Orl¨¦ans Singularity since we first discovered it or in the month they''d had to study the readings since.

    Had it thrown us off course? I didn''t know. Could it even throw us off course? I didn''t have the first fucking clue.

    "Maybe we landed here for a reason," Ritsuka suggested. "What if something''s happening nearby?"

    "No sign of enemy combatants," Mash reported. "And I don''t hear any fighting or monsters nearby, either. I''m sorry, Master."

    A quick shift of my focus and a bit of maneuvering with my swarm showed nothing out of the ordinary disturbing the local bugs. Not that it necessarily meant anything at the speed Servants could travel, but at least at that moment, there was no one close enough to be in range of my swarm.

    "If the Grail is in Rome," Emiya began slowly, crossing his arms, "it could be that whoever has it has set up stronger defenses than Jeanne Alter did. We might have bounced off of a large scale bounded field covering the entire city."

    "Could that really explain how we landed so far off course?" Mash wondered. Emiya shrugged helplessly.

    "I don''t have a better explanation."

    "It''s moot, either way," I cut in. "Whatever caused us to land so far from where we intended to, we still have to get to where we were supposed to be. There''s no point in tossing theories around, right now. We need to start moving."

    "Rome is almost two-thousand kilometers away, though," Mash mumbled worriedly.

    The strangled groan that ripped out of Rika''s mouth sounded more like a distressed Chihuahua than a human being. I let it slide, because two-thousand kilometers wasn''t exactly my idea of a leisurely jog, either.

    "There''s nothing we can do about it," I said. "One way or another, we need to get to Rome. At least we didn''t land in Britain, where we''d have to find a way across the English Channel."

    "You know, some people take swimming across it as a challenge," Emiya remarked casually.

    I lanced him with a pointed glare, unamused. Not helping.

    "You, shut up!" Rika snapped at him, pointing with one outstretched index finger.

    "It''s a good thing we have the e-bikes Da Vinci designed for us," said Mash. She went over to the box and opened it, pulling out one of the e-bikes that had made the trip with us. Considering how far off course we were, I didn''t think it was a bad idea to count our blessings that the box ¡ª and the bikes inside it ¡ª hadn''t wound up on the south coast of Portugal. Or worse, sinking into the Mediterranean Sea.

    "We''ll have to find a good road," I agreed. "Once we have a better idea of our heading and a more direct path to Rome, we can plot out our course and make good time."

    Hopefully. I wasn''t sure just then whether it would be good luck or bad luck to run into whoever was holding the Grail on the way. In any case, some quick mental math told me that a generous estimate put us at about three days of travel, and that was only if we could get a good road, good weather, and the good fortune of about ten hours of travel per day at the bikes'' top speed.

    Realistically, it was probably going to be more like a week and a half. Strictly speaking, even that was technically making really good time, because going by foot would probably mean months of travel.

    "Ah," Mash muttered as she fumbled with the folded e-bike. "Miss Da Vinci made it seem so easy, but I can''t seem to get it to work."

    She struggled with the thing, tugging on different parts and testing them, but always careful to control herself so she didn''t wind up accidentally breaking it.

    Rika got closer and reached out. "Here, let me try, Mash."

    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    Dutifully, Mash handed it over, and Rika took it to make her attempts. First, she tried flicking her wrist the way we''d seen Da Vinci do, but that didn''t do anything except almost rip the thing out of her hand, so she turned to the same sort of experimental tugging that Mash had been doing. She was a lot less careful than Mash, but she also wasn''t nearly as strong, so she mostly wound looking just as Mash had, only a lot more frustrated and with twice as much grunting, growling, and expletives.

    I shook my head and pulled up my map again, barely paying attention as I searched for the nearest major road that we could use to cross the French countryside. We didn''t exactly seem to be swimming in options, because while a lot of the framework for the France we''d seen in the Orl¨¦ans Singularity was there, large swathes of it were either missing outright or much diminished from what would be there in fourteen-hundred years.

    "It''s busted!" Rika finally declared, giving up.

    Emiya sighed and shook his head as he went over to her. "Here, let me show you how it works. Watch closely now, Master."

    I watched idly as he demonstrated the mechanism that would let the bike unfold and then the one that would let it be folded back up, committing it to memory, and then turned back to the map as he demonstrated it several more times for Ritsuka and Mash, too.

    Fortunately, while the France we knew in Orl¨¦ans was largely missing, the one thing that the Romans had been meticulous about was building roads. Not out of some kindness for the locals, but because they needed quick, efficient ways of crossing the country themselves. Obviously, they couldn''t possibly have maintained their empire if they had to trudge through a jungle at every turn, militarily or economically.

    And we happened to be in luck, because there was a road nearby ¡ª within walking distance, in fact, less than two miles away. It wouldn''t take us straight to Rome and it actually meandered a lot more than I would have liked, but barring us actually having landed at our intended drop point, it was probably the best we could have hoped for. Better, at least, than untamed wilderness and no roads at all.

    "Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, come here," I ordered.

    The three of them froze in the middle of playing around with the e-bikes. They''d been practicing folding and unfolding them while I studied the map, and after a moment of hesitation, they finished folding or unfolding their bikes, depending on which they''d been in the middle of, and set them aside as I stepped closer, as well.

    "We need to sync up our map data," I told them as I thrust my hand out, communicator on my wrist.

    "Oh!" said Mash. "Right! I forgot we could do that!"

    She held out the arm bearing her communicator, too, and after sharing a look, the twins did, as well.

    "You just need to press these buttons in this order ¡ª no, Rika, that one and then that one, not the other way around ¡ª the next one over, Ritsuka ¡ª now hold it until it beeps¡­"

    It took a couple of tries and a bit of trial and error on the twins'' part, but eventually, we managed to get our maps synced up so that they had the same road highlighted that mine did.

    "So why did we need to do that anyway, Senpai?" Rika asked when we were done. "I thought Da Vinci-chan gave us all the same maps anyway."

    "If you look at your maps now, you''ll see one particular road stands out on them," I explained. "That''s the closest road to where we are now. It''s not a straight line to Rome, but it''s good enough to get us there. In case something happens on the way and we get separated, we''ll all agree to meet up at the next town on that road. Got it?"

    "Smart thinking," Emiya said approvingly.

    Rika grinned. "That''s why they pay you the big bucks, Senpai."

    "Technically, the three of us are in the top five wealthiest people in the world, back at Chaldea," I said with a smug little smile.

    The twins blinked at me. "Wait, what?" said Rika.

    "No one told you?" I affected mild surprise, because of course it hadn''t come up before. Who was around to pay us, right now? The UN and Mage''s Association were both gone with the rest of the world. "Being a Master is one of the highest paying jobs in Chaldea, right behind the heads of the various departments. Right now, the only one richer than us is Romani."

    And Marie, of course. But her pay would probably be suspended for the duration of her¡­ Well, if there was ever a proper time to call it "living impairment" unironically, this was it.

    "You''re shitting me," Rika blurted out.

    "Starting salary for a Master candidate fresh out of training is eighty-thousand," I told her. "Most of Team A was pulling in at least twice that."

    "Dollars?" Ritsuka squeaked.

    "American, yes. Singularities also count as hazard pay."

    Our back pay once this was all over would probably bankrupt a small country.

    "Holy shit," Rika breathed. "I''m gonna be a millionaire before I''m twenty!"

    Mash cleared her throat pointedly.

    "We should find the nearest Ley Line Terminal first, before we start the journey towards Rome," she said. "Doctor Roman and Miss Da Vinci are probably worried about us. It would be a good idea to check in."

    Rika perked up, spine straightening as a grin pulled her mouth.

    "That''s right," she said brightly. "We have to beat him up for landing us on the other side of the continent!"

    "Rika," her brother warned sternly.

    "Verbally! Verbally beat him up! He deserves it for getting us so far off course!"

    "You''re right, Mash, we should check in with Romani before we go," I agreed, purposefully ignoring Rika''s comment. I reached for the zipper on my pack so I could let out my ravens and get them in the air. They couldn''t provide the topographical map my bugs gave me, but their eyesight was easier for me to parse. "I''ll send my ravens out to scout ahead."

    Mash nodded and brought up her map again. "According to the map Miss Da Vinci provided, the nearest Ley Line Terminal should be ¡ª"

    She, Emiya, and Arash all stiffened at once and spun to face the same direction, further off towards the east. I hated to admit that it took me a moment to realize why.

    "Servant detected!" Mash announced urgently, confirming my suspicions.

    An instant later, I felt something small moving fast enter the range of my bugs. It raced towards us, weaving an unerring path through the foliage at the speed of a fighter jet.

    At the same moment, our own three Servants positioned themselves in front of us three Masters. Mash''s shield manifested with a heavy thunk, Emiya''s muttered incantation produced the twin blades he favored in a flash of light, and Arash had already half drawn the string of his bow before it had even finished solidifying.

    I was a bare second slower, retreating a safe distance from our defenders as I drew in a swarm as best as I could, and Rika and Ritsuka were only another second or two behind me, tense and waiting. They braced their arms but held them low, like a pistol drawn but pointed at the ground, finger resting on the trigger guard.

    "An enemy?" Ritsuka asked.

    "I don''t know," was the only answer I could give.

    Whoever it was made no attempt at hiding their presence, so our incoming Servant was either so confident in his skills that he wasn''t worried about facing three Servants by himself or he didn''t need to hide because he wasn''t here to start a fight. I was prepared for the former but hoping for the latter.

    A blur shot out of the woods and landed easily on a patch of grass a little further along the shoreline, resolving into a person who lifted an arm and waved. A boy, cherub-faced with a broad grin.

    "Hoy!"

    His wild, flyaway hair was a vivid auburn that shone purple under the sun, framing familiar eyes the color of freshly spilt blood. The mantle ¡ª or shawl, or whatever it was ¡ª that hung about his shoulders and the loose-fitting trousers that billowed around his lean legs were both a deep maroon, trimmed in gold and patterned with Celtic knots. A thick, heavy ring glinted from the thumb of one hand. By far the most remarkable thing about him, however, was his youth, because he couldn''t have been older than ten.

    There was no mistaking him as a Servant. The presence he exuded carried the weight I''d come to associate with one, and if that wasn''t enough, then the wicked-looking spear he carried one-handed solidified it. The thing was the poisonous yellowish green of a newly sprouted sapling, one piece from pommel to tip, with pointed barbs like spines sprouting from the base of its two-pronged head. It was also almost twice as long as he was tall.

    "Hi there!" he said brightly. "You know, you really shouldn''t be here!"

    "We got lost," I replied dryly. Rika snorted loudly from my left. "We''ll be leaving as soon as we can."

    "How about now?" the boy suggested.

    "I''m afraid this isn''t something we can rush," Arash said diplomatically, smiling a disarming smile. "We don''t want any trouble, but there''s something we need to take care of before we can get going."

    "The only people who have business around here are the ones who are looking for trouble," the boy shot back. There was an undercurrent of threat in his voice.

    After a moment, Emiya snorted, too, and he visibly relaxed, although he never quite let go of his twin swords.

    "We''re not the only ones who shouldn''t be here," he said confidently. "Does your mother know where you are, kid?"

    The boy Servant''s only response was to grin again, and damn it, there was something familiar about it, but I couldn''t quite put my finger on what.

    "Who do you think sent me?"

    Emiya''s stance shifted, and whatever response he was expecting, it apparently wasn''t that one. "Well, damn," he said, nonplussed. "She''s here, too?"

    "You''re standing on her land," the boy confirmed.

    That meant something to Emiya, and even Arash seemed to have at least some idea of what that meant, but all I could think up was some warlord who had laid claim to this area during the instability of the Singularity. Whoever she was, she was probably another Servant, but that didn''t exactly narrow the list down. There were plenty of heroes whose legends had gotten started because of their mother''s love and tutelage.

    Should I hope that this kid wasn''t Achilles? The clothing wasn''t Grecian, but that wasn''t necessarily proof positive that it wasn''t. And if it was¡­ Arash might be able to pull off the shot necessary to hit his heel, but I didn''t like the odds of fighting the greatest hero of the Trojan War, pint-sized or not.

    Arash, I began.

    Let me try to handle this, Master, he sent back.

    "This doesn''t have to turn into a fight," Arash tried. He took one hand off his bow to press it to his chest. "Listen, I''m an Archer class Servant, Arash Kamangir." Next, he gestured to the other two standing with him. "This guy here is Emiya, also an Archer class Servant, and that''s Mash. She''s a Shielder, in case the gigantic shield didn''t give it away."

    "U-um, nice to meet you?" Mash offered uncertainly.

    "These are our Masters." Arash gestured back to us. Rika, for some reason, decided to wave. "We''re with an organization called Chaldea, here to fix this deviant history."

    "Th-that''s right!" Mash chimed in. "We''re here to retrieve the Holy Grail and fix the changes it made to proper history! We don''t have any reason to fight a Servant who isn''t guarding the Grail. In fact, if you were summoned as a Rogue Servant to fight the Singularity, we could be allies!"

    If they were hoping that would be enough to sway the kid, then they were likely very disappointed that it didn''t.

    "Chaldea?" the boy said skeptically. "Never heard of it."

    "That''s ''cause technically we haven''t done anything yet¡­" Rika mumbled under her breath.

    "Hey, that''s a good thing!" Arash said with a grin. "That means we''ve been doing our job right! We only show up when something has gone wrong so we can put it back the way it''s supposed to be."

    "Don''t care why you''re here or what you want," the kid said mulishly. "You''re on Mom''s land. We want you off."

    Arash chuckled awkwardly. "So it''s like that, huh¡­"

    "It''s no use, Arash," Emiya told him, grinning a lopsided grin. "This kid is that hero''s son. He came here looking for any excuse he could get to fight. The only way to get him off our backs is to give him the spanking he deserves."

    That strangely familiar grin came back. "You can sure try."

    The words hung in the air for a long moment, thick with tension, and I took that moment to squint at the kid with my Master''s Clairvoyance to try and get a clue about who and what we were dealing with. I might as well have been staring at a blank sheet of paper, because although I could see his stats ¡ª all fairly impressive, if I was being honest ¡ª everything else was obscured as though covered in a thick fog, even his Servant class.

    The hell?

    Sorry, Master, Arash sent me apologetically, it looks like there''s no avoiding this one.

    That was the only warning I got before the kid burst into motion, crossing the meager distance with lightning speed, and before I could even blink, he was in Emiya''s face with that spear of his, aiming for a killshot. Emiya seemed prepared for him, because he deflected the spear up and over his shoulder with a grunt.

    "Mash! Protect the Masters!" was the only thing he took the time to say.

    "R-right!" Mash nodded, and then she fell back to place herself directly in front of us as Emiya counterattacked with his twin swords.

    But despite his size and apparent youth, that boy was an expert fighter, and he pulled back himself, deflecting Emiya''s swords with the shaft of his spear using a move that looked like it defied physics, even with what little of it my eyes managed to track. On the backswing, he lashed out with his spear again, swiping up towards Emiya''s eyes and forcing Emiya to back away.

    The boy didn''t allow Emiya even an instant of reprieve. The strength of a spear should have been its range, but the boy raced forward like a whirlwind, using his smaller, slighter physique to get in closer than his weapon should have allowed. His strikes were wild and vicious, but so precise that it seemed like everything Emiya could do to avoid getting skewered.

    And from behind, Arash appeared, stony faced and solemn, holding the haft of an arrow as though it was a dagger. He descended upon the boy with intent to kill, the tip of his arrow aimed right for the boy''s heart. It was a chilling reminder that Arash, for all of his smiles and his genial nature, was a hardened warrior, just like any other Servant.

    Mash gasped. "Arash ¡ª !"

    The boy wouldn''t be done in that easily. He dodged around the blow and used the shaft of his lance to catch Arash''s wrist, twisting the stab off course and forcing Arash and Emiya to dance around each other to keep from stepping on the other''s toes. Two short hops carried the kid back to where he''d started, none the worse for wear.

    Just like that, the conditions had been reset. The boy grinned a savage grin, bestial and wild.

    "Good, you''re not boring," he said lightly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "I was afraid you Archers would go down too fast, since you''re supposed to be useless up close."

    "The Archer class isn''t exclusive to bowmen, you know," Emiya said sardonically. "It''s really more about using projectiles. Your old man technically qualifies, although he''d probably show up even younger than you."

    "Rika," I mumbled to the girl next to me. "Has Emiya said who that kid is, yet?"

    I saw her glance at me out of the corner of my eye, and then her brow furrowed for a moment as she no doubt asked Emiya about it across their bond. A moment later, she scowled and told me, "He says he''ll tell us later. It''ll be ''funnier that way.''"

    ¡­I take it back. He and I aren''t compatible at all.

    Suddenly, the kid burst into motion again, twice as fast as before, and there was no more time for planning, because he rushed Arash first, and with a single swipe of his lance, the arrow Arash had been using as a dagger snapped like cheap plywood. The edge of the blade tore a cut into one arm, forcing Arash to retreat, and instead of pursuing, the kid bounced back towards Emiya, sweeping his lance upwards with so much strength that it ripped Emiya''s shortswords right out of his hands.

    Two disarming blows in less than a second. In the time it took to blink, he''d rendered both of our primary attackers defenseless.

    The kid grinned. "Got you!"

    Except in the instant it took Emiya to backstep and adjust his footing, two more identical swords appeared in his hands, and the kid''s follow up attack was deflected to the side. The boy was so surprised that he barely avoided Emiya''s counterattack, throwing himself back and away, and a thin red line carved itself across one bicep, a mark of how narrowly the kid had avoided a blow that would have been disarming in an entirely different sense.

    Rather than be upset, the kid just grinned. "Heh. Looks like I''ve gotta stop underestimating you, Mister Emiya."

    "Whatever do you mean?" Emiya drawled. "I''m just a simple bowman. Nothing I can do is all that special."

    "We''re playing that game, then? That''s okay." The kid adjusted his stance, turning to the side and aiming the tip of his spear towards the ground. Emiya stiffened and immediately started to backpedal. "I''m really good at that, too!"

    In a flash, the boy closed the distance again. "G¨¢e ¡ª"

    "Shit!"

    "¡ª Bolg!"

    But rather than try to stab Emiya with that weird stance, the kid swept the butt of the spear down, and Emiya, who was caught by surprise, couldn''t avoid having his shortswords torn out of his grip again. They crashed and clattered to the ground, leaving Emiya half hunched over and defenseless.

    "Surprise!"

    And the kid, using the momentum of his disarming blow to spin his spear around, was now poised to stab Emiya with the two-pronged tip.

    "She never actually taught me that one!"

    "Emiya!" Rika cried. "By my Command Spell ¡ª"

    It wasn''t going to be fast enough, and I pulled the swarm I''d been gathering in to collapse on the two of them, for whatever that might do, but that wasn''t going to be fast enough either ¡ª until Arash appeared just as suddenly out of nowhere, holding the swords that Emiya had first lost. With a fearsome shout, he brought them both down on the haft of the kid''s spear, right beneath the spines at the base of the head.

    With a thunderous crack, the spear split, and the head went flying up and away, tumbling through the air to land in the water with a wet plop.

    Arash wasted no time, and he swung out again, aiming for the kid''s neck this time with a scissoring blow, but the boy twisted the remains of his spear and it was the haft that was severed instead of his neck. It gave him enough time and room to throw himself backwards and away from Arash and Emiya.

    For a moment, the whole place seemed to freeze, hanging there as the momentum stalled. The ever-present grin on the kid''s face had finally fallen into a scowl, and he regarded the two remaining pieces of his weapon with disgusted frustration.

    "Aw, man!" he said at last. "Mom''s gonna be so pissed!"

    Emiya chuckled. "I think that''s the least of your worries here, Connla."

    Mash gasped. "Connla?"

    "Connla?" Rika parroted. "Who''s Connla?"

    "Wait." My brow furrowed as the dots started to connect in my head. Half-remembered courses on major Heroic Spirits from the British Isles came back to me. "Isn''t that C¨²chulainn''s kid?"

    He''d been barely a footnote in Chaldea''s primers on prominent heroes, though. His mother, A¨ªfe, had technically gotten more mention.

    "C¨² actually had a kid?" Ritsuka asked incredulously.

    "I guess what Director Marie said about him being a horny dog was pretty on the mark, huh," Rika said.

    "S-Senpai!" said Mash, scandalized.

    The kid, Connla, closed one of his eyes and smirked. "If you know who I am, then you know what geasa I''m bound by, and you should also know that I''m just as good at hand to hand as I am with that spear. You sure you wanna pick that fight, Mister Emiya? I''m not allowed to say no."

    "And what makes you think the two of us were taking it all that seriously, either?" Emiya said lowly. "Do you really think either of our Noble Phantasms are as limited as yours is?"

    Something flashed in Connla''s open eye. "That almost sounds like a challenge, Mister."

    Were they¡­actually about to get into a pissing contest? A grown man and a toddler? Enough of this. We''re wasting time and energy.

    I took a step forward, pushing the swarm I''d been gathering back, and Connla''s eyes snapped immediately to me. Feral and calculating, like a wolf sizing up another predator that had strayed too far into its territory. Now that I knew he was C¨²chulainn''s son, the familiar grin and the blood red eyes made it all the more obvious. Like I should have known from the beginning.

    "You said your mom''s here, too, right?" I began. "Where?"

    His smirk grew broader. "Here."

    Smartass. Maybe I should''ve expected that from a kid whose legend had ended at the age of seven. He''d never had the chance to grow up, so expecting anything more than a recalcitrant brat was probably asking too much.

    "Is she near the Ley Line Terminal?"

    Connla''s eyebrows rose slowly. He let out a low whistle, although his voice was way too high pitched to match what I''d heard out of his father''s mouth. "You''re a sharp one, lady."

    Not really. It was simple logic. If his mother had claimed this land as her own, then the natural place for her to stake that claim was atop the Ley Line Terminal that gave her access to essentially unlimited magical energy. I had no idea what class she was or what her Noble Phantasm would be, but it was basic enough that I was confident I was right. Without a Master or the Holy Grail ¡ª and I hadn''t ruled either of those out yet, but my luck wasn''t good enough for us to find the source of the Singularity right after we landed ¡ª tapping the ley lines was the only way to get a consistent source of power.

    "We just need to use the Ley Line Terminal to establish a connection with the rest of our team," I told him. "If your mom lets us do that, we can be there and gone in less than an hour without any trouble."

    And if A¨ªfe turns out to be the one in possession of the Holy Grail? Arash asked me.

    We crush her immediately, was the reply I didn''t hesitate to give. But I seriously doubt we''ll be that lucky.

    Luck, you call it, he mused.

    When it went against our experiences in both Fuyuki and Orl¨¦ans? Yeah. Luck was the only right term.

    "We really don''t mean to intrude," Mash added, "but we arrived very far away from where we meant to, so we need to contact Doctor Roman and Miss Da Vinci to let them know we''re okay!"

    Connla regarded the both of us for a long, silent moment, and then, at length, he threw back his head and laughed. Once more, he reminded me of C¨²chulainn, only younger and smaller.

    "I don''t see what''s all that funny about it," Rika muttered.

    "He does remind you of C¨², though, doesn''t he," Ritsuka remarked.

    Rika made a dubious sound that seemed like a grunt that had been caught in her nostrils. "I''m not so sure that''s a good thing, Onii-chan. If he tries to get in my pants, all belts are off."

    "I think you meant, ''all bets are off,'' Rika."

    "I know what I said."

    "Alright!" Connla said once he''d finished laughing. "I''ll take you guys to see Mom so you can ask her to use the ley line!"

    Mash let out a long sigh, loosening her grip on her shield, and even Emiya and Arash finally started to really relax.

    "But," Connla went on ominously, "whether she''ll actually let you, well, you might just have to fight her for it, first."

    His grin this time was a shark''s, a thing of malice and hunger, full of teeth.

    "And Mom''s unbeatable."

 Chapter XXXVII: Joyeuse Garde

    Chapter XXXVII: Joyeuse Garde

    Connla led us further inland along the coastline, walking with the carefree ease of a kid coming home from school ¡ª a comparison that probably would have made more sense, when I gave it some thought, if it had come from someone who hadn''t had as strange an experience with standardized education as I did. I didn''t have much of a better one, though, because his youth made it seem all the more fitting.

    The box containing our special e-bikes had been folded up and was being carried by Ritsuka, and each of us four who weren''t Servants had chosen a bike and secured it to our backs with the special harnesses Da Vinci had provided. It wasn''t all that comfortable, but this was one set of supplies we couldn''t afford to leave behind.

    "Are you planning on carrying those pieces of that spear back with you the entire way?" Emiya asked sardonically.

    "Bad enough it got broken. Mom''s gonna tan my hide for that already," Connla replied casually. "But she''d be even more pissed off if I showed up without it at all."

    Emiya chuckled.

    "She sounds strict," Arash commented in a friendly tone.

    I arched an eyebrow at him. Really? He was going to make friends with the kid who''d been so itching for a fight that he''d basically ignored everything we tried to do to avoid one?

    Arash just smiled back, because apparently, the answer was yes.

    Well. Not like I hadn''t gone and made allies of old enemies when things were too serious to be picky.

    "Mom is Mom," was Connla''s unhelpful answer. "She doesn''t take excuses, she doesn''t take prisoners, and she doesn''t take a day off."

    For some reason, everyone but Connla all glanced at me. I scowled back at them.

    "So who is this A¨ªfe lady, anyway?" Rika asked.

    "A very scary person," Emiya answered dryly. Arash snorted.

    "She''s part of the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology," I explained simply. "Same family of myths as C¨²chulainn."

    "C¨² did say something about a woman named A¨ªfe back in Fuyuki," Ritsuka mused.

    Rika made a noise of understanding. "So if C¨² is Connla''s dad and this A¨ªfe lady is his mom¡­ Does that mean they were actually married?"

    Up ahead, Connla snorted and burst out laughing, head tossed back as he cackled.

    "What?" said Rika. "What''s funny about that?"

    "During his training with his mentor, Sc¨¢thach, C¨²chulainn fought and defeated a formidable woman warrior named A¨ªfe," Mash told the twins. "As part of the agreement for sparing her life, she had to bear him a son, and that son was to seek C¨²chulainn out once he grew enough to wear the thumb ring C¨²chulainn left behind."

    "Mom''ll be really upset if you mention that one," Connla warned us. "She''s still sore about it. Says it doesn''t count because Dad cheated."

    I bit my tongue against what I wanted to say. Winning was winning. At the end of the day, when everything was on the line, how you won didn''t matter as much as actually winning. In life or death battles, there was no such thing as "cheating."

    But there were still lines that probably shouldn''t be crossed. That was Cauldron''s mistake. My mistake, too, after a fashion, but in the face of extinction, I''d grasped for whatever I could get, and I''d still regretted its necessity. That was probably where we''d wound up differing. Cauldron had eventually stopped caring about how ugly they were and simply resigned themselves to suffering whatever consequences came after it was all over, and I had never forgotten it.

    "¡­He raped her," Ritsuka said quietly.

    A chill descended over the group.

    "Onii-chan?" Rika asked.

    "What C¨² did to A¨ªfe," Ritsuka clarified, still just as quiet. "You said he forced her to bear him a son in exchange for sparing her life. He raped her."

    Emiya sighed. An oppressive silence fell, blanketing all of us. None of the Servants tried to deny it, not Emiya, not Arash, and not Connla, and even Mash''s mouth remained firmly shut as she refused to meet either of the twins'' eyes.

    "But¡­ He was so cool," Rika mumbled.

    "I hate to tell you this, you two," I said, "but you''re not going to find too many Heroic Spirits without something like that in their closet. It''s just the way things were for a lot of them."

    Not that it was a good answer either.

    "Just the way things were, huh¡­" Ritsuka breathed.

    "Gender equality as a concept is only about a hundred years old," I told them. "Back in the time of heroes like C¨²chulainn and Herakles, women were closer to property than people, and great female warriors were rare challenges to be conquered, not equals to be celebrated. It''s not as rare as you might think for the big names to have gone out on some other quest, defeated a woman in combat, and then spent a week ravishing her, whether the story says she was willing or not. This wasn''t just something that C¨²chulainn did. Remind me later to tell you about Hippolyta and Penthesilea. Or Chryseis and Briseis."

    It wasn''t an easy pill to swallow, but one of the things my mother had taught me about literature was that several parts of a story might only make sense once you understood the context of when and where it was written. That was¡­a little bit stranger to apply to myths and legends when the people in them turned out to have been real, though. Harder to square some of the ugliness when it wasn''t just fiction.

    "The thing you have to remember, Rika," Emiya cut in, "is that most of the Heroic Spirits you meet will be mellowed out and moderated by how perspectives changed over the years in addition to the adjustments made during the summoning process to avoid culture shock. A lot of the Servants you meet will feel a lot more like modern people as a result, even if they were ancient kings from two thousand years ago."

    "If it makes you feel any better, Mom''s angrier about the losing than the rest of it," Connla piped up, turning around to face us as he walked backwards. "She''s super pissed that history wound up remembering her more for the worst moment of her life than anything else she ever did."

    A grimace twisted my mouth. That much, I could relate to. I think I''d have been pretty angry, too, if the only thing anyone ever wound up remembering me for was the Locker.

    Or maybe that moment on my knees, in the dirt, barely able to keep my brain from literally leaking out of my ears as I waited for the final blow I knew was coming. I wasn''t sure I could have said which one was my worst moment, if I was forced to choose between them. Which was lower? The moment that marked the start of my journey, covered in blood and shit and vomit, or the end, when I tasted the ash of a victory I couldn''t enjoy?

    Could I even call it a small mercy that at least Contessa was the only one who ever realized exactly how far I''d fallen?

    "But he¡­!" Rika began, but the words lodged in her throat, like she couldn''t quite get them out. Her mouth moved, but nothing came out.

    "The value system of the ancient Celts was far different than the modern day," said Emiya. "Life and death were far more closely intertwined. I''m not going to excuse what happened. But it should tell you something that Queen Medb was far more aggrieved that C¨²chulainn didn''t take her to his bed after he captured her in battle than she would have been if he had."

    "That''s just the way things were," Connla agreed. "We respected strength in battle. We submitted only to those who beat us utterly and completely. And we never held hard feelings when we lost, because the guy you were fighting with five minutes ago might be drinking with you after the battle."

    He turned back around and kept walking. "That''s why Mom''s so sore about Dad winning. In raw strength and skill, Mom crushed him like a bug, but because he managed to trick her into lowering her guard, he beat her without actually beating her."

    Emiya chuckled at a joke only he got. "So much for pride and honor."

    My lips pursed by I kept myself from commenting on it. Not in front of three Heroic Spirits who probably wouldn''t take too kindly to it.

    "If it makes you feel better," I said instead, "then you can yell at him properly the next time we see him."

    Slowly, a nasty grin pulled at the corners of Rika''s mouth. I could only imagine what sort of punishments she was coming up with in her head.

    The trail we were walking along the edge of the shoreline eventually turned into the forest, where a roughly hewn pathway cut through the trees and towards the northeast. Connla turned here and we followed, slimming our formation down so that we could fit along the tighter quarters. Mash and Emiya took the front behind Connla, then Rika and Ritsuka, me, and Arash brought up the rear.

    It was only a short minute or two later that we came out the other side and into a clearing and a more proper dirt road, and when we turned onto it ¡ª

    "Whoa," Ritsuka breathed.

    "Now, that''s a castle!" said Rika.

    There up ahead sat a castle, a sprawling fortress that stretched up and out.

    It looked like something out of a fantasy film, or maybe a medieval period piece. It wasn''t as grand as the ones in the Aleph The Lord of the Rings movies, but it was closer to Helm''s Deep than not, constructed out of hewn stone with rounded towers and heavy oaken doors. Crude iron fittings and hinges formed the frames and the mesh gates, and the keep loomed high above us with empty windows that overlooked the courtyard.

    The ramparts were empty of defenses and no one manned the walls, but the wall that encircled the entirety of it was sturdy and strong looking. I wasn''t sure Siegfried would have been able to punch through it, not without serious effort.

    As we reached the front gate, an iron grate blocked the way in, and Connla stepped right in front of it and cupped his hands around his mouth.

    "HOY!"

    There was a moment of pregnant pause, and then with a rumble and the clank of iron chains, the grate lifted up from the entryway. As though nothing was wrong at all, Connla strode through and into the courtyard.

    The rest of us from Chaldea hesitated a moment, and the twins exchanged nervous glances with Mash. I''d said before that there was almost no way that we would find the Grail this quickly and easily, but while I didn''t think it likely, that didn''t mean the chances were absolutely zero.

    And if A¨ªfe did have the Grail, there was almost no way this wouldn''t come down to fighting her for it.

    I glanced at Arash. Don''t drop your guard for an instant, I ordered him.

    Arash''s mouth drew into a tight line as his fingers curled into fists. Yes, Master.

    "What are you waiting for?" Connla called back to us impatiently. "Come on!"

    "Be ready," I muttered to everyone. They all gave me small, short nods in response.

    Mash and Emiya stepped forward first, and the three of us Masters followed behind them. Once again, Arash brought up the rear.

    I half expected the grate to come screeching back down the instant we were all inside the courtyard, but it didn''t even squeak.

    The door to the keep suddenly swung open, and a hurricane compressed into the shape of a woman stormed out. Cool eyes the color of amethyst had attention only for the boy ahead of us, and the spear in her hand was far more menacing than the one Connla had broken, the red of freshly spilt blood and decorated with a pattern of vines with an aura that radiated malice. Her clothes were roughly spun and coarse compared to the uniforms Chaldea had provided the twins and me, but for the time period they came from, they must have been incredibly high quality, and like Connla''s mantle, they were maroon trimmed in gold.

    Strawberry blonde hair flashed in the sun as she walked, and Connla''s vivid auburn suddenly made sense, because it was some strange combination of his mother''s pale red and his father''s deep, blackish blue.

    "Connla," she said, and her tone was regal and frigid as she addressed her son. "You broke it."

    Connla kicked the ground sheepishly. "Sorry?"

    In the time it took me to blink, she was standing in front of him, and one gloved fist drove itself into his cheek with the force of a detonating bomb. Connla dropped to the ground like a stone.

    The twins drew in a pair of gasps.

    "She punched him!" Rika squeaked.

    The woman, who could only be A¨ªfe, let out an exasperated sigh. "You have your father''s knack for finding trouble."

    "Holy¡­" Ritsuka whispered.

    "A different value system, huh¡­" I muttered.

    "You''re the one who sent me out to scout out the disturbance, Ma," Connla said as he pulled himself to his feet. He rubbed at his cheek, but didn''t seem any the worse for wear. "Ya do remember the geasa I''m under, right?"

    A¨ªfe''s hand lashed out again, and she grabbed him by the ear and used that to pull him closer to her. Connla squawked.

    "Ow, ow, ow, ow! Leggo, leggo! Mom!"

    "I raised you," she told him flatly. "You can''t use that excuse with me. I know you too well."

    "You''re gonna tear it off, you''re gonna tear it off!"

    She didn''t even seem to hear him.

    "I brought you into this world, I can damn well take you out of it," Rika said in a low whisper, like she was quoting someone. Against my will, my lips twitched with the threat of a smile.

    A¨ªfe''s eyes flickered to Rika for a moment, and Rika squeaked again as she realized she''d been heard, but A¨ªfe didn''t offer any other acknowledgement of what Rika said.

    "We''ll talk more about this later," A¨ªfe promised Connla. "For now, it looks like you brought guests."

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    She let go of his ear, and he stumbled a few steps back, rubbing at the lobe and scowling petulantly at her. She raised a single unimpressed eyebrow and nodded her head at us.

    "Fine," said Connla. "Mom, these people were the disturbance you noticed earlier. Disturbances, this is my mom."

    I grimaced at the description he offered, but Arash and Emiya both seemed to think it was funny, because one huffed a chuckle and the other snorted.

    "Does that make Senpai the Disturbance in Chief?" Rika asked. Her brother sighed.

    Mash took a step forward and gave a short bow. "Please excuse us for intruding, Miss A¨ªfe. When we arrived, we were thrown off course unexpectedly, and we need to use a Ley Line Terminal to establish a connection with our allies at home. We don''t mean to trouble you."

    A¨ªfe regarded her with sharp eyes for a moment, looking Mash up and down critically, and then she looked back over towards us and inspected the rest of our group the same way. For the long, awkward moment of her inspection, she said nothing, and I surreptitiously began to gather a swarm from the nearby forest, just in case this devolved into a fight.

    Finally, she said, "You''re human." She regarded Arash and Emiya next. "And you two are Servants." To Mash, she added, "And you''re some hybrid between them. A human with a Servant inhabiting your body, almost like possession."

    "I-I''m what''s called a Demi-Servant, yes," Mash answered. "Um, that is, I''m a human who was merged with a Servant in the hopes of stabilizing the summoning process."

    A¨ªfe regarded us again for a moment, and then nodded to herself, like she''d come to a decision. "You''re not with the United Empire."

    United Empire?

    "No," I said. "We''re with the Chaldea Security Organization."

    "They say they''re here to fix whatever went screwy with this place, Ma," Connla added.

    A¨ªfe nodded again, like that was sufficient answer by itself. "Which would make the United Empire your enemy."

    "I thought it was the Roman Empire," Rika said to her brother.

    "Maybe that''s what got screwed up and made this place a Singularity?" Ritsuka suggested.

    "It''s not quite that simple," A¨ªfe told them, because they weren''t being as quiet as they thought they were. "Unfortunately, this courtyard isn''t a good place to be talking about the circumstances of this era, and I am not technically the owner of this castle, so I have no authority to invite you to make use of the Ley Line Terminal."

    "Aw," Connla whined. "You''re not gonna fight them, Mom?"

    "No," she said in a way that might as well have screamed, not right now. I was beginning to think that Connla''s insistence on fighting us earlier was something he inherited as much from his mother as his father. "There are more important matters to take care of, right now." Over her shoulder, she shouted, "You going to come out, or are you hiding inside for the rest of their stay?"

    There was a moment of silence, and then another figure stepped out of the keep, sighing.

    "You seemed to have matters well in hand," he told her. "It was my intention not to involve myself unnecessarily."

    A knight in shining armor. That was the first thought I had upon seeing him in full. Trimmed in gold, his white armor fit the stereotype so completely that I almost wanted to laugh, and I couldn''t help thinking that his handsome face and deep, blue eyes would send any girl swooning, no matter her orientation.

    "Oh my god, he''s a dreamboat," Rika breathed.

    "I''d say this is necessary," said A¨ªfe. "This is your castle, isn''t it? They need your permission to access the ley line."

    "Even though it was you who laid claim over this land, I suppose they do," he agreed reluctantly, and then he turned to address our group. "Forgive me, please allow me to introduce myself. I ¡ª ah."

    He stopped, staring at Mash, and Mash, too, was frozen, staring straight back at him, like a pair of ex-lovers who were meeting again years after a bad breakup and didn''t know what to do or what they should say.

    "It can''t be," the knight in shining armor finally said. "That armor, that shield, that presence¡­ Could you possibly be ¡ª"

    Faster than I could see, Mash''s shield went flying, and it slammed into his gut with a thunderous, reverberating gong.

    "Urk!"

    He tumbled over backwards, rolled twice, and came to a stop on his back, propped up on his elbows and grimacing as he looked back at Mash. The shield landed flat next to him.

    "Shitty old man!" Mash shouted at him, fists clenched and stomping one foot angrily. "Shut up! You''ll ruin it!"

    My eyebrows rose towards my hairline, because I''d spent two years training with her and gone through two Singularities fighting beside her, and I had never, not once, heard her talk like that. Or stomp her foot like an angry child, for that matter.

    Off to the side, Connla laughed.

    "Whoa," said Emiya.

    "M-Mash?" Ritsuka asked uncertainly.

    And just as suddenly, the anger evaporated and Mash recoiled with a gasp, her hands flying to her mouth.

    "I-I''m so sorry!" she said, horrified. "I-I don''t know what just came over me, it was like¡­like¡­!"

    The knight in shining armor sighed as he climbed back to his feet, apparently unharmed.

    "It''s all right," he told her patiently. "Forgive me, I made some assumptions I shouldn''t have, and it seems the Heroic Spirit inside of you saw fit to correct me for it. Please, allow me to apologize and introduce myself properly."

    He pressed one arm against his chest and bent over, bowing.

    "I am Lancelot, a knight of King Arthur''s court. I welcome you to my home, the Joyous Guard."

    Immediately, I straightened, looking at our¡­host, I guess was the proper term, in a new light. This was Sir Lancelot? The Sir Lancelot? King Arthur''s greatest knight and one of the major catalysts behind Camelot''s downfall?

    Could I count this as good luck, if it turned out he really was an ally? First, we found Siegfried in Orl¨¦ans, and now another famous knight in Septem? Not only that, but the knight in shining armor on whom the stereotype was based. It seemed to me like an incredible stroke of good fortune, and I wasn''t all that familiar with the feeling of getting those.

    Emiya, on the other hand, stiffened and started looking around at the walls, head swiveling. "This is the Joyous Guard?"

    "Ah ¡ª it one day will be," Lancelot admitted. "At the moment, however, it is nothing more than a well-built castle. It will be some centuries yet before the Copper Knight comes to take residence here, and therefore the curse that plagued this place does not yet exist."

    Something clicked in my head, and as stealthily as I was able, I sent small bits of my swarm to probe the rest of the castle''s interior.

    The name hadn''t resonated with me, at first, but the mention of the Copper Knight connected the dots. That particular story was part of Lancelot''s backstory, how he had gone as a nameless knight on a quest to lift the curse of the Dolorous Guard, a castle whose inhabitants suffered under the tyranny of the cruel Copper Knight. The way it went, the name of the knight who would free them was written under a slab inside the castle, only able to be lifted itself by that selfsame knight.

    The nameless white knight faced a gauntlet of twenty powerful knights, defeating them one after the other without rest, and at the end, the Copper Knight fled in fear. Lifting the slab that broke the curse, that nameless knight discovered his name, "Lancelot," written under the slab, and renamed the castle "Joyous Guard" after claiming it as his own.

    If this was that same castle, then it stood to reason that those twenty knights might already be bound to it, and the last thing I wanted was to be ambushed by them the moment we let our guard down.

    Emiya, on the other hand, relaxed once he heard Lancelot''s explanation. He''d been thinking the same thing I was now, I realized, that a squad of Servant-level knights would appear on the walls to fight us, except Lancelot''s words seemed to have put him at ease.

    For good reason, apparently, because I wasn''t finding any sign of those knights myself. That might not wind up meaning anything, since Servants were spiritual existences in the first place and didn''t have to stay physical, but for the moment, it seemed we didn''t have to worry.

    "You''re all stray Servants, then?" Arash asked.

    "Stray Servants?" Lancelot parroted with a confused wrinkle of his brow.

    "It''s one of the terms we''ve been using for Servants in these Singularities who aren''t summoned by the Grail and don''t have a proper Master," I clarified.

    "Like Siegfried, Georgios, Marie, and Mozart in France," Ritsuka added, as though that would mean anything at all to our hosts.

    "Meaning the World itself summoned you," Emiya drawled. "You were brought here by the Counter Force, and the Counter Force is the thing keeping you manifested."

    "Ah." Lancelot nodded. "Yes, it seems so. At the very least, I have no memory of being summoned by a Master into this era."

    "Neither Connla nor I have a Master, either," A¨ªfe confirmed. "We simply appeared here a few weeks ago for no apparent reason."

    "Just like Jeanne said back in the Orl¨¦ans Singularity," Mash muttered.

    With largely the same circumstances, even. Well, I doubted any of them was of the Ruler class ¡ª a quick check showed A¨ªfe was a Rider, Lancelot a Saber, and Connla an Assassin, of all things ¡ª and there didn''t seem to be any degradation in their skills or performance at first glance. Connla especially, because I didn''t want to think that he had only been half as strong as he was supposed to be when he nearly skewered Emiya.

    Otherwise, though, it seemed as though they had been summoned spontaneously just the same as Jeanne and all of the other strays we''d met in Orl¨¦ans.

    "In any case," said Lancelot, "you said that you needed to access the ley line in order to contact your allies, did you not?"

    "Yes," Mash answered with a nod. "Doctor Roman and Miss Da Vinci must be worried. We didn''t land where we were meant to."

    Lancelot nodded himself. "Then allow me to lead you there so that you might put your comrades at ease."

    He turned back around and started walking towards the large, wooden doors he and A¨ªfe had first appeared from, and after a moment, our group lined back up into the formation we''d been using and followed. A¨ªfe and Connla fell into step next to me and Arash.

    We stepped past the threshold and into the entrance hall, and immediately, I felt like I was stepping into Hogwarts. Lit torches sat in braziers to light up the room, and they cast the white brick of the walls and the floor in a warm, orange glow. Directly across from us as we entered was a set of stairs set into the opposite wall, and about six feet off of the floor, they stopped at a landing and split into two staircases that led up to the next floor. On the landing was another set of heavy doors leading further into the building.

    Off to either side were arched thresholds that opened up to more corridors, and up above was a vaulted ceiling and high windows that let in streams of sunlight. Suits of armor carved from stone stood vigil in small alcoves set into the walls, silent sentinels watching over the castle.

    One, two, three, four¡­ My bugs explored further in and found more sequestered in other parts of the keep, all set along the inside of the outer wall. Five, ten, fifteen¡­ Twenty total. A chill swept down my spine. Were these the twenty knights Lancelot was said to have overcome in the legend?

    The man himself made no mention of them. He just kept going, climbing the stairs and stepping through the next set of double doors.

    The next room was no less spectacular than the previous, a gothic tapestry of architecture and sculpture that looked like something out of a fantasy movie''s wet dream, as though to impress whoever stepped foot inside of it. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis would have thought they were in heaven, and Peter Jackson would have been beside himself with envy.

    But it all paled to the final room he took us to, a sprawling hall with a single stone table at its center, really more of an altar than anything else. It was barren and bare when we got there, decorated only with the grand arches and vaulted ceilings that seemed the castle''s trademarks, but I could imagine the finely woven banners and tapestries that would be hanging from the walls in Lancelot''s proper era, all of them bearing his heraldry and all of them made from shimmering satin.

    And along the back wall, high up and inaccessible to an ordinary human, there was an enormous pattern carved into relief in the wall. Geometric and made of swooping lines racing from the center of a circle to its edges, I couldn''t have said what it was, only that it was easily the grandest part of the entire room, looming over the rest of it like the eye of God.

    It was¡­impressive, I had to admit.

    Lancelot turned back to face us, and up close, he was just as handsome, but there was something almost¡­sad in his expression. As though a grimace was the way his face was naturally set, so that he always looked on the verge of tears.

    "It''s here," he declared. "If you would like to use the ley line ¡ª"

    "Yes, I can feel it now," Mash declared.

    She hesitated for a moment, but Ritsuka seemed to catch this even before I did, because he said, in a strong voice, "We need to contact Doctor Roman."

    "O-ho, yeah," Rika added with an ominous grin. "We have some words for the good doctor!"

    Mash nodded. "Right!"

    She stepped forward and toward the altar, then swung her shield around and laid it down so that the front faced upwards.

    "Establishing magical circle. We should have connection with Chaldea ¡ª"

    Beep-beep!

    "¡ª at any moment," Mash finished lamely.

    "Thank goodness, you''re all okay!" Romani said as his image appeared over the top of Mash''s shield.

    "No thanks to you," Rika said venomously, still smiling that deranged grin.

    Romani blinked. "Eh?"

    "Romani," I addressed him, dragging his attention my way, "what happened? Our insertion point was supposed to be right next to the Roman capital, wasn''t it?"

    Romani sighed and slumped back into his chair, running a hand through his hair. "I wish I knew. Da Vinci is going over the data right now, but whatever happened during the Rayshift threw you guys way off course, and I don''t actually have an answer why."

    Rika laughed a laugh so fake even I wanted to cringe away from it. "You don''t say, Doctor Roman! Gee, that''s a convenient answer, isn''t it!"

    "Listen, I can''t give you anything more concrete right now," said Romani. "You should have landed right near Rome itself. That''s where our coordinates were set to drop you in at. Obviously, that didn''t happen, and somehow, you guys wound up on the other end of the continent!"

    "Interesting," A¨ªfe interjected, walking closer so that she could lean over and inspect Romani''s hologram. "Instantaneous remote communication¡­ I assume you''re using some form of magecraft?"

    She poked Romani''s image. Her finger went right through his forehead, because of course, he wasn''t actually there.

    "Um, yes?" Romani answered awkwardly. "I¡­can''t say I know the specifics of how this works. But we use magical energy to form a connection with the team so we can talk like this."

    A¨ªfe nodded. "I''m assuming the connection drops or loses fidelity when in areas of high concentrations of magical energy¡­and also in areas of exceptionally low magical energy."

    Romani blinked.

    "Um, yes, actually."

    He looked at me, like I had an answer for why she was asking him questions about how our comms worked.

    A¨ªfe made a noise in her throat. "A pity, really. If we''d thought of something like this ourselves, my sister and I could have remained in contact quite easily."

    "Sister?" Romani shook his head. "Ah, before I put my foot in my mouth¡­ Can I assume you''re a Servant?"

    "You can."

    "I''m detecting¡­three unregistered Spirit Origins in close proximity, including you." His face set and his mouth drew into a hard line. "Can I take your presence here to mean you intend my colleagues no harm?"

    A¨ªfe huffed and one corner of her lips drew up into a smirk. "You may, for now."

    Rika snorted. "Her son, on the other hand¡­"

    Romani blinked again, nonplussed. "Her son? But Servants can''t have children!"

    "From when she was alive," I clarified for him. "They''re both Servants, now."

    "Both¡­" Romani frowned thoughtfully. "That¡­actually doesn''t narrow down her identity as much as it really should."

    "Don''t consider it too strongly." A¨ªfe waved it off dismissively. "I am A¨ªfe. My son is Connla."

    That did it.

    "From the Ulster Cycle!" Romani burst out. "Oh, that makes sense, then! But¡­ Um, don''t take this the wrong way, why are you here? I mean here-in-this-Singularity here," he rushed to add. "I don''t remember either of you having any major connection to the Roman Empire in your legends."

    "Neither did I," Lancelot chimed in, taking a step towards Romani''s image.

    "I''m¡­sorry. You are?"

    "I am Sir Lancelot of the Round Table." With a strangely bitter twist, he added, "King Arthur''s right hand."

    Romani''s mouth fell open, and it flapped silently for several moments as he tried and failed to find the words he wanted. Eventually, he settled on a strangled, "What?"

    "We''re contacting you from the Joyous Guard, Romani," I told him. "He''s the one currently in charge of the castle."

    "But¡­aren''t you technically an enemy of Rome?" Romani asked, bewildered. "G-granted, I don''t remember you ever being part of the conflict, but Lucius Tiberius was the emperor in your time period, and he was one of King Arthur''s most powerful enemies!"

    "If my king were here and commanded me to strike down the Roman Empire, then I would not hesitate," Lancelot confirmed. "However, here and now, I am but a Servant in the service of mankind. The kingdom to which I swore my oaths has not yet formed and my king has not appeared, and so I have no cause to quarrel with Emperor Nero."

    "You don''t have a reason to ally with him, either," Emiya pointed out.

    "He''s right," Romani agreed. "Having said that, though, can I take it that you''re all stray Servants? That is, you were summoned without a Master or a contract?"

    Lancelot nodded.

    "That would be correct."

    "Connla and I, as well," A¨ªfe confirmed.

    "A little too stray," Rika muttered with an acidic glare in Connla''s direction. Connla just grinned, unbothered.

    Romani nodded. "Then it would be safe to assume that you''ve been summoned here for the purposes of correcting the Singularity. One way or another, the Counter Force decided that your skills or Noble Phantasms were well-suited for this situation. I-I mean, that''s what I''m assuming, anyway," he backpedaled, and I grimaced. "It''s what makes sense since Siegfried was summoned to fight Fafnir in the last Singularity."

    A little more spine, Romani.

    But he was trying, and I could at least give him credit for that.

    "Can you tell us more about the situation we''ve dropped into?" I asked him, driving the conversation forward.

    Romani shook his head. "I''m sorry, but things are still limited. Ironically, it might be for the best that you landed where you did, because we can detect a lot of activity going on in France, we just¡­can''t really tell you what that activity is."

    "I can," said A¨ªfe, folding her arms over her chest. She looked over to me. "Do you recall I mentioned the United Empire earlier?"

    "Yes, actually," I answered. "Something about how being here to fix what went wrong with history made us their enemy."

    A¨ªfe nodded and turned back to Romani. "Some time ago, before any of us here was summoned, there was a schism caused by the appearance of a competing empire to Roman rule. How they appeared or why, no one seems to have any idea, but their appearance split the Roman Empire in two. What you might call the proper Roman Empire retains the seat of its power in Rome under Emperor Nero. The opposing United Empire has taken just about everything to the southwest of where we currently are. Gaul ¡ª that is, what you would know as France ¡ª is split nearly down the middle. It''s contested territory."

    Meaning a warfront. A shiver went down my spine. And if we had tried to go straight to Rome while all of that was happening, we probably would have gotten dragged into the fighting, wouldn''t we? With no idea which side we should be supporting.

    "Hence the elevated activity," Romani concluded. "What we''re detecting is the fighting going on in the middle of the country."

    A¨ªfe nodded. "One would assume."

    "Are they Servants?" I asked. "The leaders of the United Empire, I mean."

    They would almost have to be, because I couldn''t remember any direct challengers for Nero''s rule in my research ¡ª none with the pull and the support to split the empire in half, anyway.

    "Almost certainly," said A¨ªfe. "The generals at the head of the armies are all former Roman emperors, with Romulus himself leading the Empire."

    "It is much like my king''s Round Table," Lancelot added. "A coalition of equals, with the greatest of them as first among them."

    My eyebrows rose. The man said to have founded Rome, supported by former emperors, almost all of whom would have been famous for some great deed or another? No wonder the Empire had split right down the middle. Whatever the people thought of Nero, the past glories of those former emperors would be more than enough to sway large portions of the populace.

    "Then¡­Romulus would be the one with the Holy Grail!" said Mash.

    "That would make sense," Romani agreed. "He''d have to be a Servant, considering the Roman Empire is already centuries old at that point."

    A¨ªfe shrugged. "I couldn''t tell you for sure. I haven''t heard anything about a Holy Grail."

    "Would Emperor Nero know?" I asked.

    A¨ªfe shrugged again.

    Great. We knew more than we had before coming here, a lot more for that matter, and far more than I might have expected us to learn so quickly, but some of the most important details were still unclear. It looked like there was still a lot more investigating to do before we could pin down the location and owner of the Holy Grail.

    Gilles had proven that the one whose wish had formed the Singularity wasn''t necessarily the one holding the Grail itself. It might be another case of Jeanne Alter, but as much as I hoped it was, there was no way to be sure that Romulus would have the Grail himself until we fought him.

    "For now, it seems like you guys still need to get to Rome," said Romani. Rika let out a long, tortured groan, and Romani smiled wryly. "Well, you''re going to have to be extra careful about getting there. Listen, I don''t want you guys taking any unnecessary risks for this, okay? If you have to take a more roundabout route to avoid getting dragged into the fighting, then that''s what you should do."

    "Great," said Rika bitterly, "so you want us to take twice as long to get there."

    "Getting there safely is more important than getting there fast," Romani said firmly.

    "Would you feel better about it if we brought in Siegfried?" I asked pointedly.

    At the mention of his name, A¨ªfe perked up, perhaps with the thought of facing such a challenging opponent. Romani didn''t seem to notice and shook his head.

    "My reasoning from before still stands," said Romani. "We''re not going to start sending in our reserves just so you can take the quickest route to Rome. It''s better if you make allies inside the Singularity first, and you guys have barely been there an hour. There''s no way A¨ªfe, Lancelot, and Connla are the only stray Servants in the entire Singularity."

    He turned to look at A¨ªfe. "Speaking of which, can I ask where you three stand on this? Um, I''m assuming you''re on the side of proper history, so you''re Rome''s allies ¡ª I mean, Emperor Nero''s ¡ª but you''re all the way out here on the coast of France. It¡­doesn''t seem like a particularly relevant post."

    "It''s not," A¨ªfe said sardonically. "My position here is for the purpose of keeping Britain and ¨¦ire out of this squabble. Emperor Nero decided not to press the issue and leaves us alone. In exchange, I keep an eye on things in this area and send any of the United Empire''s cronies who wander a little too close packing."

    "Usually in pieces," Connla added with a savage grin.

    Rika grimaced and looked a little nauseous as she realized what that meant. A second later, Mash connected the dots, too, and gasped.

    "You mean you kill them," Ritsuka accused her.

    "If they don''t take the hint," A¨ªfe confirmed shamelessly. "There''s no fun or honor in killing hapless babes. But if they insist on a warrior''s death, then I oblige."

    "Different values, Ritsuka," Arash reminded him quietly.

    Ritsuka, who looked like he''d been about to protest, shut his mouth and scowled.

    "So you''re a kind of forward outpost close to the frontlines," Romani mused. He sighed. "Which means you''d probably prefer to stay put, huh? In that case, have you seen any other stray Servants around? The more help we can get, the better."

    A¨ªfe arched an eyebrow. "Actually, I think I can do you one better." She turned to her son. "Connla, I''ve got a job for you."

    Connla let out the put upon sigh of someone who knew he was about to be asked to do something he didn''t want to do. "Yeah, Ma?"

    "Head towards the Gallian front," she ordered him. "Find Queen Boudica. I have a favor to ask of her."

 Chapter XXXVIII: All Roads to Rome

    Chapter XXXVIII: All Roads to Rome

    "Wait, hang on a second," Romani choked out. "Did you just say Queen Boudica? You''re sending your son out to get Queen Boudica?"

    Connla looked at his mother questioningly, but she just sternly ordered him, "Go."

    He shrugged indifferently and left, and I followed him with a well-placed bug as he navigated his way back out to the courtyard, but I only half paid any attention to it, because his mother had just dropped a big bombshell.

    "Yes," A¨ªfe confirmed, as though saying it again would make any more sense than it had the first time. "Queen Boudica is fighting on the Gallian front of this conflict. Her help will be essential to ensuring you reach the capital city safely."

    "I-I feel like there''s several things wrong with that statement!" Romani protested.

    "There are," I agreed. "Like why she''d be fighting for Rome instead of trying to rip it apart."

    Unless that was part of the distortion in this Singularity. Could one of the things that had been thrown off course be the very rebellion that Boudica staged against the Empire? It seemed strange to think it, but if the divergence was early enough into the timeline, then maybe it was possible. Maybe.

    If only the books I''d been studying up on had been better about offering clearer dates for things instead of focusing more on the minutiae of what had been done to who and why. Or done both. Both was better.

    "Hello!" Rika''s hand shot up. "Bumbling neophyte, here!"

    "Senpai!" Mash sputtered.

    Rika ignored her, tilting her head to one side. "What''s the big deal about this Boudica lady fighting for Rome?"

    "I-it''s a very big deal!" Romani told her. "Rome ¡ª under Emperor Nero''s orders, too ¡ª did lots and lots of terrible things to Queen Boudica and her family! Incredibly terrible things! Unspeakably!"

    "They raped her," I told Rika bluntly, since Romani seemed to be trying to sugarcoat it. He blanched. "Her and her daughters, repeatedly, violently. Her husband was a king in Britain, and they were supposed to have an alliance with Rome. When her husband died, he left his kingdom in joint possession of both his daughters and Rome, and Rome decided that they were just going to take the whole thing, and damn the king''s dying wishes."

    "T-Taylor!" Romani scolded me.

    "If they don''t find it out from me, they''ll find it out from someone else," I retorted mulishly.

    "Still!"

    "Afterwards, Queen Boudica raised a rebellion against Rome," Mash said quietly, picking up where I left off. "She razed every Roman settlement in her path through Britain, but she and her army were eventually defeated, and she died." Even quieter, Mash added, "It''s estimated her forces killed eighty-thousand Roman citizens throughout their revolt, most of them civilians."

    "She wanted revenge," Ritsuka mumbled.

    "Talk about being indiscriminate, though¡­" said Rika, subdued. "Eighty-thousand people¡­"

    I didn''t know if I could really imagine myself killing eighty-thousand people in a rampage for revenge. Even at my pettiest and most wrathful, my darkest fantasies had been focused ¡ª precise. I may have come quite far from that girl in the bathroom, soaked through with soda and soft drinks, barely holding back a swarm of angry bugs, but I couldn''t think I''d ever been capable of that much collateral damage, no matter the insult.

    Romani sighed. "The politics adds more depth to the situation than that. Queen Boudica''s personal pain may have been what motivated her, but the other tribes and kingdoms in Britain also had to deal with Roman exploitation around that time, too. Really high taxes, whole tribes being enslaved, all sorts of ugliness that usually gets glossed over in the history books. It wasn''t just about one woman getting revenge for the suffering of her family."

    Like that somehow made it better that eighty-thousand innocent people died. Then again, Hitler had blown that number straight out of the water, and the Slaughterhouse Nine had existed, so the sorts of evils people could commit against random strangers didn''t really surprise me anymore.

    "It might not even be relevant," Emiya added. He addressed A¨ªfe. "We''re assuming Boudica is a Servant, but can you confirm that she''s not a human being instead?"

    So I wasn''t the only one who had that thought, then. Yeah, half of the trouble we might have with Boudica could be avoided if her rebellion hadn''t even started yet because she was still alive and well. On the other hand, a living Boudica who was in the middle of her rebellion when the Singularity formed would be a whole lot bigger of a problem, but wouldn''t have made sense if she was supposedly fighting on Rome''s side.

    "She is," A¨ªfe confirmed. "The events you''re speaking of have already transpired. The living Queen Boudica is already dead, her rebellion already crushed. The Queen Boudica fighting on the Gallian front is indeed a Servant, another of what you would call a stray."

    Emiya chuckled darkly. "Summoned here to fight for the empire that killed her and tortured her family, less than a year after the wound was technically inflicted. I don''t envy her."

    Neither did I. But then, I''d put my demons behind me when the time came to fight Scion. They were just too petty in the face of the end of the world. It made sense to me that Servants summoned to the cause of saving the world could do the same, even if their pains were of a magnitude greater than mine had ever been.

    Well, maybe that depended on the Heroic Spirit, too. I think I would have been more surprised if Mordred and King Arthur were fighting side by side, for example.

    "The question of Queen Boudica''s feelings is one that only she can answer," A¨ªfe declared as though it were law. "However she feels, she has decided to lend her blade and her chariot to Rome for the sake of correcting history. Of that, you can be certain."

    "Something like that is always certain," Emiya said ominously, "up until the moment you find a knife in your back."

    "I think we should give her the benefit of the doubt," Ritsuka interjected. "We don''t have any reason to distrust her, right?"

    Emiya shrugged. "If that''s the position you want to take. Although, Master, you''ll forgive me, but I wouldn''t be doing my job as your Servant if I didn''t keep an eye on her, just in case."

    "You''ll do what you think is necessary, Emiya," Rika agreed solemnly. And then, as though to counteract that moment of seriousness, she continued, "Just make sure you''re not watching Queen Booty too closely! I don''t want you to get distracted!"

    "S-Senpai!" Mash sputtered as Emiya choked on his own spit.

    "Rika," her brother muttered, exasperated.

    Romani and I both let out a sigh. Arash, on the other hand, chuckled.

    "Don''t worry, Rika," he said good-naturedly. "I''ll keep an eye on Emiya, too, to make sure he doesn''t get distracted by¡­Queen Booty''s booty."

    Ritsuka groaned as I grimaced, and Mash shot Arash a look of stunned betrayal. Emiya dropped his face into his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose.

    Rika, on the other hand, lit up like a Christmas tree. "I dunno," she said dubiously, although the smile still straining at the corners of her mouth betrayed her. "It might be too much booty for even you to handle, Arash. What if you get distracted, too?"

    Arash lifted one hand up and pressed the other over his heart, like he was offering an oath. "I''ll be like a monk, I swear. No distractions for me!"

    Rika grinned.

    Stop encouraging her, I sent Arash sternly.

    Arash didn''t even flinch; he just kept smiling like I hadn''t said anything at all.

    "It''s a good thing Director Animusphere isn''t here," Romani said. "She''d be chewing all of you out for that one."

    Rightly so, in this case, I didn''t say.

    "Queen Boudica aside," I began, attempting to steer the conversation back on course, "are there any other Servants we should be aware of, going forward? Any other strays we can expect to find?"

    A¨ªfe, who had been watching the shenanigans with a sort of bemused smile, pursed her lips thoughtfully.

    "Not as such," she eventually said. "Spartacus generally accompanies Queen Boudica, but insofar as other Servants on the side of the proper Roman Empire are concerned, it''s largely those two and the three of us here." She gestured to herself and Lancelot, plus the absent Connla. "If there are more allied to Emperor Nero, I have not been made aware of them."

    "Spartacus?" Romani sputtered again. "H-hang on a second! Why is another Heroic Spirit who rebelled against Rome also fighting on its side!"

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    And maybe I didn''t have as good a grasp on that as I thought I did a minute ago, if that still surprised me. Even if I understood the idea of putting aside old grudges for the sake of the greater good, it still felt like there should be at least one or two Servants that weren''t that pragmatic. Were Heroic Spirits simply that much better people than the capes I''d fought beside on Gold Morning? Where was the factionalism that had fractured our forces then, the same self-centered way of thinking that had made my becoming Khepri necessary in the first place? Where were the infighting and the selfishness, the petty whims and revenge?

    Maybe that was what it really meant to be a Heroic Spirit. That you were so exceptional that you weren''t really human in the way regular people were.

    A¨ªfe shrugged. "His reasons are his own. If you can manage to interpret some form of intelligible response from him, then all the better for you."

    "Th-that answer doesn''t get better the more times you use it, you know!" said Romani.

    Rika''s hand rose again.

    "Bumbling neophyte!" she chirped cheerfully.

    I swallowed a groan. Note to self, one of the things we were going to have to try and squeeze in among all the other things I was teaching them between Singularities was lessons on major Heroic Spirits and relevant historical details.

    "Spartacus was a gladiator," Mash answered her dutifully. "He led an uprising of Roman slaves against the Empire, achieved several decisive victories against the Roman legions, but was eventually defeated and died in battle."

    "The fact he was a gladiator means he was also a slave," Romani added. "Undoubtedly, that had something to do with how successful he was at bringing his rebellion together. If he''d been a Roman general or something, it would have just been internal politics."

    "So he has just as much reason to hate Rome as Queen Booty ¡ª I mean, Queen Boudica does," Ritsuka mused.

    Rika sniggered at his slipup.

    "If you''ll forgive me for interrupting," Lancelot demurred, "we Servants are formed after our deaths. While it''s true that we can''t easily shake the feelings we had when we were alive, there is a certain perspective that comes with being a Servant. Perhaps that is why Spartacus fights for Rome, even though he rebelled against it."

    "Or he''s simply mad," A¨ªfe chimed in. "He is a Berserker, after all."

    Lancelot nodded and conceded the point. "That is also possible."

    "A Berserker?" Romani grunted. "That''s great. He''s going to be impossible to negotiate with. We''ll be lucky to understand a word that comes out of his mouth."

    "Indeed," said A¨ªfe, sounding very much amused.

    Romani let out a long sigh. "I guess it''s better than having him as an enemy from the beginning."

    "Queen Boudica and Spartacus¡­"

    Why them, exactly? Jeanne had been summoned as a counter to Jeanne Alter, Siegfried as a counter to Fafnir, Georgios as a general counter to the wyverns, Bradamante was a hero from French tradition, and even Marie Antoinette was at least French royalty, for all that I hadn''t had the pleasure of actually meeting her.

    But other than a tenuous connection to Rome ¡ª a hostile one, at that ¡ª and maybe a more general connection to this era, why had Queen Boudica and Spartacus been summoned to aid the empire they hated?

    Maybe I would never know. And more importantly¡­

    "Then if those two are on our side," I said, "what do the enemy''s forces look like?"

    "I told you, didn''t I?" said A¨ªfe. "A coalition of Roman emperors, with Romulus at the head."

    "More specific than that," I clarified.

    "Do you expect me to recognize them all by sight?" she asked, one eyebrow rising. "A Heroic Spirit who has ascended to the Throne of Heroes will gain insight into those heroes who came both before and after, this is true, but even so, very few are so prominent that they can be recognized by appearance alone. No Heroic Spirit could possibly mistake Excalibur for any other sword, but that doesn''t mean that any but those who knew him would know King Arthur the instant they laid eyes on him."

    "Even that is no guarantee," Lancelot added. "Any Knight of the Round Table could never mistake the king for anyone else, but there are those who would call Sir Gawain as King Arthur because he served as the king''s stand-in during moments when Arthur had duties elsewhere."

    Inconvenient, but I understood the point. It was easy to forget, sometimes, but back before the internet and readily available cameras, the only way to know what someone looked like without seeing them for yourself was to hear from other people about them. Even then, descriptions like that could be vague at the best of times, and that meant that what one person conjured up in their head could and would be vastly different from what another imagined. All of that didn''t even have to look anything like the real person.

    Sculptures and monuments helped. But even those couldn''t capture everything, and some of them were made based upon secondhand accounts centuries after the actual person died. Jeanne was a good example, because the only contemporary depictions of her were doodles scribbled in the margins of court documents.

    "So you don''t know the identity of any of the enemy Servants?" Mash asked.

    A¨ªfe held up a pair of fingers. "Aside from Romulus? Only two, for certain. The United Empire''s foothold in Gaul is currently being commanded by Julius Caesar. The other I can confirm is Caligula, who tends to act as a cudgel against targets of the United Empire''s interest instead of an occupying force."

    "Julius Caesar?" Romani groaned. "Et tu, Brute?"

    "I don''t know about any tutu brood-hays," said Rika, "but even I''ve heard of Julius Caesar."

    "And that should tell you exactly how much trouble he could be for us," Romani said glumly. He turned to A¨ªfe again. "I''m going to assume even you have trouble defeating him? He was summoned into Rome, and he''s one of the most famous emperors in human history. It would probably be like trying to fight Napoleon in France."

    At his absolute strongest, Romani meant.

    "Whoever said any such thing?" A¨ªfe asked coolly. "The United Empire has largely refrained from testing me ¡ª perhaps out of a well-developed sense of self-preservation. They''ve sent foot soldiers to try and gauge my defenses, but I''ve yet to meet any of their Servants in battle."

    I blinked at her. "You mean you haven''t actually fought any Servants since you were summoned?"

    The bloodthirsty warrior who raised the contrarian hellion known as Connla was being so conservative that she hadn''t even left to scratch the itch of her bloodlust? Had I misjudged her personality to that large a degree?

    "I told you, I am the gatekeeper that guards Britain and ¨¦ire from this conflict." She crossed her arms. "Have you forgotten? I am a queen. Though the kingdom I ruled over has long since dissolved, my responsibility to my people has not diminished. I can''t be to them as the marauding tyrant I was in life, leading great armies of my indomitable students into battle. I must instead be as the northern wind, a great and terrible force to bar their enemies'' entry into their lands."

    In other words, she wasn''t willing to move an inch if it meant risking even one soldier from the United Empire crossing the English Channel. Convincing her to help us wasn''t going to be as easy as it had been contracting with Siegfried.

    I turned to Lancelot. "And you?"

    He bowed his head. "My presence here also acts as a form of deterrent. While it is true that Queen A¨ªfe is a formidable force equal to nearly any foe, even the mightiest of warriors may be overcome if the enemy brings sufficient numbers."

    "So what you''re saying is," said Romani, "you''re here so that the United Empire can''t just wear her down by ganging up on her all at once."

    Lancelot nodded and slid a short, surreptitious glance at Mash, so short and sneaky that I wasn''t sure anyone else had seen it. I wasn''t sure what to make of it, except to add it to the tally of hints about the identity of the Heroic Spirit inside of Mash.

    If I asked, he''d probably say something along the same lines as what King Arthur had in Fuyuki, about how that Heroic Spirit wanted Mash to earn his strength instead of having it handed to her from the beginning. Frustrating, but I didn''t think I was capable of prying the secret out of him.

    An Arthurian knight well-respected by both the king and Sir Lancelot¡­ Damn it, but that list was still too huge.

    "Neither can she be everywhere at once, and so I can also act where she cannot, should the enemy attempt to attack from multiple angles," Lancelot continued. "I will admit, the struggle of the people of Gaul is one I hate to watch from the sidelines, but I once turned my back on my king and the kingdom to which I swore my oaths. It seems the least I can do to repay that sin is to guard the lands that will one day be Camelot."

    "So you guys are just gonna sit here twiddling your thumbs?" Rika demanded. "While those United Empire jerks are picking apart the rest of Rome?"

    "Again, whoever said any such thing?" A¨ªfe asked rhetorically. "My place has been here since my summoning, for the purposes of protecting Britain and ¨¦ire. I have not had the luxury to leave and act more directly. I have no Master to offer me support, nor enough strong allies to stand beside me on the battlefield. Unless that changes, I simply can''t afford to leave."

    The dots connected in my head, and I wanted to let out a long, frustrated groan. Of course. The only way A¨ªfe would agree to join us was if we bested her in battle, the way we had Connla. What was it Connla had said? The ancient Celts had respected only those who fought well and accepted defeat only from those who conquered them utterly and decisively. If A¨ªfe was the same way, then the only way she would help us was if she believed we were strong enough to be worthy of her respect.

    Fine. It seemed like I wasn''t going to be able to get out of this way of doing things, so even if it was following a pattern I''d been trying to break, winning over an ally by beating them to a pulp was still familiar enough ground to feel like old hat.

    "And if we could offer you both?" I asked her.

    Her eyes flicked to me, and the hints of a smile hid themselves at the corner of her lips.

    "Can you?" she retorted. "You bested my son, Connla, that much is true, but I have yet to see your combat prowess for myself. Your Servants won victory only by destroying the meager toy I gave him to play with."

    A meager toy, huh? Deliberately, I kept myself from looking at the wicked red spear that she had set down at some point and which sat upon its rounded butt, perfectly balanced and straight. She was a Rider, but I was willing to bet my prosthetic that the spear was one of her Noble Phantasms. Considering the associations in her legend, I was almost certain it was G¨¢e Bolg, the spear so lethal that its every use had resulted in death.

    But even that sort of thing had to have its own weaknesses.

    "We can," I told her confidently.

    "You shouldn''t underestimate us," Emiya agreed with a rumbling drawl and a characteristic smirk. "We''re Servants of Chaldea. We wouldn''t be here if we weren''t heroes in our own right."

    "It should make for a good warmup, at least," Arash added with a confident smile.

    "W-wait, hang on a second!" Romani interjected. "This doesn''t need to come down to a fight! We can work this out like civilized people, can''t we? With words?"

    A¨ªfe''s answering grin was filled with teeth and edges, like a shark''s. It reminded me of Connla''s. "Haven''t you ever heard what the Romans say about us Celts? We''re a savage, bloodthirsty people, impossible to tame. We solve our disputes with our fists and our spears, not words."

    "I-is that really necessary?" Romani pleaded. "We''re all on the same side here, aren''t we? Beating each other up doesn''t help anyone but the enemy!"

    "Doctor Roman, please don''t worry," said Mash. She stared back at A¨ªfe with a strong, confident gaze, her grip on her shield firm. "If Queen A¨ªfe wants to test our strength, then I won''t disappoint her. For the sake of our mission, I can''t afford to back down."

    Romani turned to the twins. "Ritsuka, Rika, you''re her Master ¡ª"

    "Sorry, Doc," said Rika, grinning. "Looks like there''s no way out of this one."

    "We survived Orl¨¦ans," said her brother. "We beat Jeanne Alter and Fafnir. We can do this."

    Finally, Romani turned to me.

    It wasn''t what he wanted to hear, but I promised him, "I''ll keep things from getting out of hand."

    His expression crumbled, and he let out a long, defeated sigh. "You''re not doing it right here, right now, right?" he asked A¨ªfe. "The last thing anyone needs is for the castle to come down on all of your heads."

    "No," A¨ªfe agreed. "In fact, three on one sounds quite unfair to me, don''t you think so? I think it would be better if the sides were a little more even."

    Romani blanched and looked at Lancelot. "W-wait, you don''t mean to bring him into it, do you? I-I think that''s stacking the deck in the opposite direction! The greatest warriors of two different eras aren''t anything to sneeze at!"

    "I will maintain my vigil regardless," said Lancelot. "There''s no purpose in my testing you."

    Some of the tension in Romani''s shoulders loosened. "Then who? A mother and son tag team?"

    "And reward him for his earlier mischief? I think not," A¨ªfe answered dryly. "No, I was thinking differently. After all, Queen Boudica is also the kind of hero who would test you before allowing you to fight beside her. Would it not be more convenient to do both at once?"

    A breath hissed out of my nostrils. Was this her plan from the beginning? She''d already sent Connla out to get Queen Boudica, ostensibly to help us meet up with an ally, but she''d just admitted that Queen Boudica wouldn''t have agreed to team up without testing us first herself. Had she had her eye on doing her own test of our strength since then, or was she working towards this from the moment we got here?

    I think I underestimated her. This was no dull, mindless brute more interested in a good fight than anything else, this was an elegant, sophisticated queen who knew how to have her fun while still getting the job done. That she wore rough spun clothing and hardy leather belied the sharp, regal woman that hid behind that pretty face and striking eyes.

    "Should we take this out to the courtyard, then?" I suggested calmly. "There should be plenty of space to fight out there. No roof to come down on us if we aren''t careful."

    A¨ªfe smiled, a thing of cold hunger, and that ominous red spear seemed almost to hum as she seized it with one hand again, like it was vibrating in anticipation of the battle to come. Just as bloodthirsty as she was.

    "Yes, the courtyard should work fine," she agreed pleasantly. "Connla should be returning with Queen Boudica shortly as well, provided they weren''t waylaid."

    "It''s almost like you planned it this way," Emiya commented dryly.

    A¨ªfe neither confirmed nor denied it, and I might have been imagining it, but her smile seemed to grow just the slightest bit wider.

    "I think I get what Emiya meant when he said she was scary," Rika mumbled.

    "I wouldn''t want to be her enemy," her brother replied.

    Neither would I, I thought to myself. Jeanne Alter had been kind of simple and straightforward, for all that she was based upon a tactician as smart as the real Jeanne. Powerful, but a bit clumsy. No tricky stratagems, no win scenarios, or traps that blindsided us, just ambushes, surprise attacks, and extreme force. If we''d had Siegfried from the beginning, we could have finished her at La Charit¨¦ and wrapped up the Orl¨¦ans Singularity right near the start of it.

    A¨ªfe was proving clever and subtle, even though she came across as brash and impulsive. Even I hadn''t seen the trap she just laid until the moment she was ready to spring it. If she had been the one with the Grail and we had to fight her to get it, well, this could have ended very badly.

    "Then we''d better get going," I said aloud as though the twins hadn''t spoken. "The sooner we can get this over with, the sooner we can get to Rome and start tackling this Singularity."

    A¨ªfe chuckled. "There''s no need to rush. The United Empire won''t be defeated in a day. For now, there''s nothing wrong with enjoying a bit of fun, is there?"

    Somehow, I didn''t think her definition of fun and mine were all that similar.

 Chapter XXXIX: Test of Valor

    Chapter XXXIX: Test of Valor

    Romani''s image blinked out after he promised to keep an eye on all of our vitals ¡ª comms were "still spotty," as he said, owing to the greater density of mana in the air and the larger time differential. Getting in contact with Chaldea''s home base was going to be much, much harder to do away from Ley Line Terminals in this Singularity, it seemed.

    He did not, however, leave without offering a parting warning to A¨ªfe: that if Mash''s vitals got anywhere near the red, he was sending the rest of our Servants in as backup, no matter what she thought about her test of our strength.

    A¨ªfe had only offered him a smile and said, "Don''t threaten me with a good time, Doctor."

    Good grief. Connla, A¨ªfe, C¨²chulainn, and apparently even Queen Boudica. Were all the Celtic heroes going to be complete battle junkies?

    Only once Romani''s image had disappeared and the line was cut did A¨ªfe turn to Mash and say, "Your Doctor Roman is a good man. A bit flakey and something of a coward, but a good man, nonetheless."

    Mash blinked. "He''s been taking care of me for almost as long as I can remember."

    A¨ªfe nodded, like she''d had a suspicion confirmed.

    "Then it seems at least he has done one thing right."

    She turned and walked away, going back the way we came through the large set of double doors. Mash turned to look at me, a question on her face, but all I could do was shrug, because I didn''t have any answers, either.

    "Does that make the Doc Mash''s father?" Rika whispered a little too loudly.

    "Seems like it," her brother answered.

    "So, Da Vinci-chan as the mother, then¡­"

    "That''s not¡­!" Mash sputtered. "I-I don''t think Miss Da Vinci and Doctor Roman have that kind of relationship!"

    I didn''t either, but the way they acted sometimes made it a lot harder to say that out loud with a straight face. It might have been another thing that they were trying to keep out of view of the twins, because come to think of it, they hadn''t really had a disagreement like the one about the hours he was keeping in front of Mash and the twins, had they? What did it say about their trust in me that they were willing to argue about it in front of me?

    Maybe I was supposed to be flattered.

    "Enough fooling around, you three," I said. "Let''s go get this over with."

    Rika shot to attention. "Hai, Senpai!"

    Ritsuka shot his sister a look of fond exasperation. I pretended she hadn''t done anything out of the ordinary ¡ª because, in a way, she hadn''t ¡ª and started after A¨ªfe as the rest of our group fell into step behind me.

    "Besides," I threw out over my shoulder, "Romani still wears his wedding ring. Whatever else is going on, I don''t think he''s the kind of person to be unfaithful."

    The bugs I had on the twins ground to a halt for a handful of seconds as what I''d said processed in their brains ¡ª I could picture almost perfectly the identical stunned looks on their faces ¡ª and then they jolted back into action to catch up with me as our Servants brought up the rear. Lancelot stayed behind at first, watching us go, but after we''d left the room, he went off to the side and the bug I had on him started going up as he climbed a set of stairs. I didn''t have any idea what he was planning on doing, so I tasked a small portion of my swarm to keeping an eye on him.

    The last thing we needed was the castle''s stone knights springing to life in the middle of A¨ªfe''s "test" and ambushing us.

    "Maybe Doctor Roman is a widower," Rika whispered conspiratorially to Ritsuka, "and Da Vinci is the first woman he''s opened his heart to since his wife died. And¡­and¡­and he still wears the wedding ring because he doesn''t want to forget his first wife!"

    "Sure, Rika," said Ritsuka in the voice of all parents humoring their children. "That''s definitely what''s going on."

    "It''s so romantic, Onii-chan!" Rika gushed. "We''re witnessing the power of true love right before our eyes!"

    Somehow, I managed to hold back the snort that threatened to rip itself out of my nostrils. Mash wasn''t anywhere near that reserved about the sigh she let loose. "Senpai¡­"

    The courtyard was still empty when we made it all the way back outside. I stretched out into my swarm, searching for A¨ªfe''s wayward son and the guest he was supposed to be bringing back with him, but there was no sign of either of them, not within my range, at least. Lancelot, on the other hand, had made his way to the top floor of the keep and was watching us from the window like some kind of stereotypical princess waiting for her prince to come rescue her.

    As long as he was just watching, I decided, I would leave it alone. No need to draw attention to it just yet.

    "They''re slower than I was expecting," A¨ªfe murmured, looking out towards the gate. "Connla should have returned by now¡­ So maybe they did run into trouble on the way back."

    "There''s no sign of them anywhere nearby," I confirmed.

    A¨ªfe looked at me curiously, but I didn''t offer her an explanation as I swung my bag around and finally got the chance to unzip it. The two cylinders that were my puppets were pulled out without any trouble, and I held them out, resting on my palms, as the rest of the group watched. Come to think of it, I''d never let my ravens transform in front of Ritsuka and Rika, had I? I didn''t think even Mash had seen them in action yet. Not for real. Not outside the simulator.

    A mental prod and a bit of magical energy turned my ravens on, and before the groups'' eyes, the two tubes that were my ravens'' stealthy storage forms unfolded, sprouting a pair of wings, legs, and a head each as their feathers unraveled in a display that looked as impossible as it was graceful. I would probably never understand the exact mechanism, and the sensation from my puppets was too strange to make heads or tails of, like I was trying to parse a sense that my human brain didn''t have a section for, but no one else had to know that. They could just be as awed and amazed as they wanted.

    In an instant, a pair of ravens sat, balanced on my palms and eerily still. Their eyes watched the assembled group, unblinking and unerring, and their heads swiveled with the smooth grace of a human being instead of the jerky bobs and twitches of an actual bird.

    "Whoa," the twins breathed, and Rika added, "They''re like Transformers!"

    "Transformers?" Mash asked curiously.

    "It''s an old series that''s been adapted to a bunch of anime and movies," Ritsuka explained. "It''s about a war between two groups of sentient robots that can transform into, like, cars and trucks and stuff."

    "Don''t forget the dinosaur versions!" Rika scolded him. "The dinosaur versions were some of the coolest ones!"

    "Right." Ritsuka sighed. "Who could forget Beast Wars? Especially when you spent ages trying to get T-rex Megatron."

    "Wow!" said Mash, fascinated, like she''d never heard of such a thing. "There was a television show like that?"

    She was so well-adjusted usually that it was easy to forget sometimes exactly how sheltered Mash had grown up. But when you did remember, the idea that she could be so taken in with the idea of something as ordinary as a sci-fi cartoon aimed at children and young teenagers was actually more sad than it was incredible.

    One of these days¡­ But I''d already made that promise, hadn''t I? That I was going to get the full story behind Mash''s life from the Director, once she got her body back. Olga Marie Animusphere, just what had your father gotten up to before his untimely death?

    "Several of them," Ritsuka answered. "Plus animated movies, comic books, and then a few years back, there was a live action movies series ¡ª"

    "We don''t talk about that one," Rika said solemnly. "Those movies don''t exist."

    Ritsuka rolled his eyes. "Right. I forgot. Because it''s just a dumb, half-hearted plot stapled to a bunch of explosions and CGI, right?"

    "Exactly."

    "Better be careful about those comparisons," I interjected into their little byplay wryly. "If you meet a true puppet user, I think they might take it as an insult."

    I let my arms drop a little, and then swung them up and threw my ravens into the air. They spread their wings and flapped, taking off into the sky with speed, and after a brief moment of disorientation at having two more sets of much more human-like eyes, I was looking down on our group from above. My bird''s eye view.

    It didn''t really show me anything I hadn''t had a look at before, but the extra angle was incredibly useful for the finer details that bugs weren''t really built for sensing.

    "I see," said A¨ªfe. "So, you specialize in familiars, then. Some form of golem?"

    "Something like that," I agreed.

    Huginn and Muninn cawed, circled above us a couple of times, and then I sent them off to widen the net.

    "They can only go so far," I warned A¨ªfe, "but I should be able to see Connla and Boudica coming from quite a ways off like this."

    "Useful," she remarked.

    "It''s too bad people didn''t start building truly tall structures until the Industrial Revolution," Emiya drawled. "An Archer''s eyesight would put even those ravens to shame."

    "Well, there''s nothing to do about that," Arash said, smiling slightly. "Even Rome wasn''t building skyscrapers in this era."

    "Wouldn''t the Leaning Tower of Pisa count?" asked Ritsuka.

    "Not for another thirteen-hundred years, Senpai," Mash answered him. "The Leaning Tower of Pisa wasn''t fully constructed until the middle of the fourteenth century."

    "A shame." Emiya shrugged. "At that height, I could have given us a look at four kilometers out in any direction, down to the number of buttons on the enemy''s shirt."

    "Wow. Four kilometers? That''s amazing!" said Rika.

    Arash''s mouth twitched like he wanted to say something, but he kept it shut.

    Just then, Huginn caught sight of a dust cloud in the distance, rapidly moving, and when he swooped down to get a closer look, it turned out to be¡­a chariot? With two riders, pulled by a pair of white horses that were galloping at a speed no normal horses could hope to match, and one of the riders was a familiar young boy. The other was a voluptuous woman in white with a shock of bright red hair who also happened to be holding the reins. She also carried a sword and a simple, round shield was strapped to one arm.

    Queen Boudica, it had to be.

    "Heads up," I told the group, "they''re on their way. They''ll be here in¡­" At the speed they were going, my guess was, "about three minutes."

    "Alright!" Rika turned to her brother and Mash. "Game faces, everyone! Let''s get ready to kick Queen Booty''s booty!"

    "Right!" Mash agreed whole-heartedly.

    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    "As much fun as it would be to see you jump straight into battle with Boudica," said A¨ªfe, sounding amused, "I have no doubt that my mischievous brat of a son has explained all of nothing to her, so the fighting will have to wait until she''s brought up to speed."

    "Need time to come up with a plan of attack?" Emiya asked cockily.

    A¨ªfe snorted. "It''s simply more convenient to avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings. Unless you would prefer her to think you were truly an enemy and attack with the intent to kill?"

    No, that really would be one of the worst outcomes of this situation. Not that I didn''t think we could handle that sort of thing, but¡­

    "Chaldea''s not in the business of killing potential allies," I told her calmly.

    "We''ll take whatever help we can get!" Mash agreed, immediately undermining the confidence I was trying to project.

    It was true, we could use whatever allies we could manage to snag, but negotiating when the other side knew exactly how desperate you were closed down way more options than Mash probably realized. Power dynamics were more equal when only you knew exactly how weak your position was.

    As Brian had told me so long ago, reputation was everything. You needed to appear strong, even when you were half-dead.

    Nothing to be done about it now, I guess.

    A¨ªfe just smirked. "So you will, it seems."

    Another two minutes ticked by slowly, but long before Boudica arrived on her chariot, my bugs felt her coming from the vibrations of her steeds'' hoofbeats as she entered the range of my powers. At the speed she was moving, I couldn''t land anything on her safely and securely, but her horses kicked up such a ruckus with their passing that I could track her just as easily as she moved through the radius of my control and approached the castle.

    Long before that, everyone else could hear her coming. She rumbled down the road we''d followed like thunder, and as she came closer, the Earth itself seemed to shake from the raw power of her horses'' hooves.

    "She''s here," I announced almost entirely unnecessarily.

    The words were barely out of my mouth before Boudica came stampeding through the castle gate, heading straight for us. Mash gasped and threw herself in the way ("Master!") to protect us, but it turned out she hadn''t needed to even bother, because the horses and chariot suddenly swerved in a way that would have toppled any ordinary chariot and bled off their momentum swiftly. They came to a stop on the other side of us about halfway between where we were and the entrance to the keep, and the horses each let out a snort as they shook their heads like they hadn''t just made a trip stretching probably at least a hundred miles.

    Her Noble Phantasm, it had to be. Or one of them, at least.

    "Queen Boudica," A¨ªfe greeted the woman holding the reins.

    The so-named Boudica swept eyes the color of seafoam over our assembled group and didn''t so much as bat an eye at us. She turned instead directly to A¨ªfe.

    "Queen A¨ªfe," she returned respectfully. She dismounted her chariot and took a few steps closer. "Your son informed me there was something urgent that needed my attention. He was very insistent we get here as quickly as possible."

    "Holy crap," Rika muttered as the three of us got a good look at her, "she''s Queen Booby, too!"

    As irreverent as she was being, Rika wasn''t wrong. Queen Boudica had been blessed with a curvy, hourglass figure, and her white outfit had enough cleavage to feature in any teenage boy''s raciest wet dreams. In fact, she looked almost like she would spill out of her top at any moment, but some mystical force seemed to be keeping it all neatly contained.

    At the very least, none of the Celtic Servants we''d yet met were charging into battle wearing nothing but body paint.

    "Yo, Mom," said Connla, leaning over the chariot''s protective wall. He gave her an irreverent wave. "I brought Queen Booty!"

    "Ha!" Rika burst out with a broad grin. Her brother groaned.

    "He''s also been calling me that silly nickname," Boudica added, grimacing.

    "Rika," said Ritsuka sternly, "look at what you''ve started."

    "I regret nothing!" Rika proclaimed proudly.

    "As I expected, he only did half the job," A¨ªfe drawled dryly. She nodded our way. "You might have seen we have guests?"

    Now, Boudica turned our way, scrutinizing us more closely. "Yes, I did notice that. Three Servants among them¡­but the rest are humans. Is there some reason they''re here? I can''t imagine you''d allow prisoners to roam so freely if they were from the United Empire."

    "Implying that there are any greater bonds than the threat of my violence," said A¨ªfe, amused.

    Taking that as my cue, I stepped forward and addressed her directly. "We''re from the Chaldea Security Organization."

    Boudica''s brow furrowed. "Chaldea¡­Security Organization?"

    "We''re here to correct this aberrant history, what we call a Singularity," I went on. "Our job is to find out the cause that made it deviate, remove the source, and get proper history back on track."

    "I''m¡­sorry, I don''t understand," said Boudica. "Correct the Singularity? Get proper history back on track?"

    "They arrived here via some form of spatial transference magecraft," A¨ªfe told her. "Quite literally appeared out of thin air. I sent Connla out to investigate, and he escorted them back here."

    ''Escorted,'' huh. That brushed over a whole host of things and removed a lot of context, but I wasn''t going to quibble over it when there were more important things to deal with.

    "It''s called Rayshifting," I said. "The mechanics are too complicated for me to explain, but the gist of it is that we''re from the far future. Almost two thousand years from this time, in fact."

    Boudica''s eyebrows rose towards her hairline. "The future? The actual future? That means that you''re time travelers? Real, honest to goodness time travelers?"

    "Come with me, if you want to live," Rika said, affecting as deep a voice as she was able.

    Really, Rika? She couldn''t have made a reference with more class than Terminator?

    "Senpai?" Mash asked curiously.

    "I''ve been waiting to use that line since Fuyuki," Rika reported smugly.

    "Yes, we''re time travelers," I answered bluntly. I pretended Rika hadn''t said anything at all. "A mage claiming to be possessed by one of King Solomon''s demons has been dropping Holy Grails into different places throughout history, creating these Singularities. One was in a Japanese city called Fuyuki in the year 2004. One was in France in the year 1431. Both caused history to go awry when a wish was made on the Grail, and our team had to go in and retrieve them so history could be corrected."

    "And you think there might be another Holy Grail here in the Roman Empire?" asked Boudica, catching on quickly.

    "Yes."

    "The United Empire did not exist in history as it was recorded," Mash added. "That''s why¡­ We think that one of the Servants who is part of the coalition of past emperors must be the one in possession of the Grail."

    Personally, my money was on Romulus, since he seemed to be the head honcho managing things from their headquarters. On the other hand, I hadn''t thought Jeanne Alter would risk carrying around the Grail while she was running around the country and fighting, but I''d been wrong about that, after a fashion, hadn''t I?

    "But¡­normal humans couldn''t hope to fight an army of Servants," said Boudica.

    "Hence why they summoned us Servants to assist them," Emiya replied. "Arash and I are here as part of the forward team, to protect our Masters and help them correct this Singularity, but we have several more in reserve to serve as reinforcements, if necessary."

    "Two Servants and a Demi-Servant don''t seem like much of an expeditionary force," A¨ªfe commented. "Not against what could be twice that, for all we know."

    "It was decided that it would be more effective to make allies out of Servants native to the Singularity," I told her. "After all, the fact you''re here means that the Counter Force thinks you''re the right people for the job. It works out better for us in the long run if we can record more Saint Graphs and pick up more contracts, too."

    Understanding dawned across Boudica''s face, and she looked to A¨ªfe. "That''s why you called me here. They want help, and you think I could give it to them."

    "Three on one hardly seemed fair," said A¨ªfe, smirking. "Since I count for at least two Servants, I thought one more would even the odds up a little."

    Boudica sighed. "You have such a backwards way of doing things," she complained, and then she smiled. "Well, it''s not like I don''t understand that way of thinking. I''m sorry, Masters of Chaldea, but I won''t lend you my sword that easily. I can only entrust my sword and my chariot to those I can entrust my back."

    Now, it was Arash''s turn to sigh. "Well," he said, "I guess there really was no avoiding a fight, was there?"

    "What a strangely hopeful person you are," Emiya drawled, chuckling.

    "I know Queen A¨ªfe already told us that Boudica would challenge us as well, but¡­" Mash grimaced. "I was honestly hoping that we wouldn''t need to fight."

    "I''m sorry," said Boudica, smiling apologetically. "It''s not that I don''t trust your skills¡­ Well, no, I suppose it''s exactly that. So even though it''s a burden, I''m asking you to prove yourselves to me."

    "Is this what you''d call a breakdown in negotiations?" Rika asked wryly.

    "I guess so," Ritsuka replied.

    "No," I told them both. "This isn''t a breakdown in communications. Both sides are perfectly aware of what they want. What you''re seeing now is the art of compromise."

    And it put me back on familiar ground. True, my "compromises" during Gold Morning had often been more verbal than physical, but even though the comparisons weren''t clean, this reminded me of my recruitment of Sophia ¡ª Shadow Stalker ¡ª right as things were really going to shit.

    How many heads had I had to knock together over my career to get people to focus on solving the actual crisis of the day instead of bickering pettily? Too many, it felt like.

    "Well," Arash said, shrugging helplessly, "I guess there''s nothing to be done except to do it. Let''s get this over with, shall we?"

    "Indeed," Emiya agreed. "Master, Ritsuka, Taylor, step back. If A¨ªfe and Boudica want a fight, then that''s exactly what we''ll give them."

    Dutifully, Ritsuka and Rika started backpedaling to give the Servants some room, but I took steps forward instead.

    "Just a second," I said as I reached down for the knife in its holster. A deft flick of my fingers undid the strap holding it in place, and then I slid it from the sheath in a reverse grip and held it out in offering to Arash. "This should be a little sturdier than that arrow you used against Connla."

    Arash''s eyebrows rose slightly, but he took my Last Resort and started testing the balance. He flipped it, rolled it over his hand, and switched grips smoothly, and he even tossed it up and caught it out of the air.

    "It''s a great dagger," he said, "but are you sure you want to let me use it, Master? I was actually just planning on asking Emiya to make something for me."

    Not a bad plan, and I felt a little silly for not considering it myself, but I wasn''t about to back down now that I''d made the offer.

    "That dagger made it through the end of the world," I told him. "I think it can handle a simple spar."

    Arash''s eyebrows rose even further, and after a moment, he smirked. "Well, with an endorsement like that, how could I refuse?"

    I stepped back and kept going until I was next to the twins, and once I was safely out of the line of fire, Emiya and Arash turned their attentions fully to Boudica and A¨ªfe as Mash hefted her shield. It never stopped amazing me that a girl who looked so ordinary otherwise and who was so meek and mild-mannered in Chaldea could heft that massive thing like it weighed nothing at all.

    Maybe it was just because she didn''t carry herself the way Brutes tended to. Capes with high level Brute powers knew how strong they were and walked around either like they were untouchable or were surrounded by cardboard. Mash didn''t do either, and I think that was what threw me off.

    Across from our team, Boudica drew her sword and led with her black buckler while A¨ªfe took hold of the shaft of her spear with both hands, shifting into a stance that looked something like the one Connla had used.

    A moment of tense silence passed as either side sized the other up, trying to get their opponents'' measure. Nobody seemed to be blinking, and they were so tense and so still that I wouldn''t have been surprised if they''d stopped breathing.

    Then, A¨ªfe and Boudica exploded into action, crossing the minute distance in an instant. Mash threw herself in front of Arash ¡ª whether that was a conscious decision or a subconscious belief that he was the one with a weaker defense, I didn''t know ¡ª while Emiya spawned a pair of his familiar twin swords. Boudica''s sword rebounded off of Mash''s shield as Emiya diverted A¨ªfe''s spear with the same sort of technique he''d used against her son.

    For a frozen second, they hung there in the aftermath of their opening attacks, readjusting their strategies and recalculating our Servants'' skills and abilities. An instant later, the moment vanished, and they threw themselves back into battle with renewed fervor.

    My eyes and my brain both struggled to keep up. A¨ªfe''s red spear became a streak of color, opposed by Emiya''s own smears of black and white. Boudica''s sword flashed with every strike, glinting off of the blade of my Last Resort as Arash dove in to fight her up close, retreating only long enough for Mash to block a retaliatory blow.

    "Whoa," one of the twins breathed. I wasn''t sure which one.

    Briefly, I''d seen Arash''s skilled knife work at play before. Always, though, it had been quick flashes, and I''d never actually seen him go into a fight solely with a blade instead of his usual bow. Boudica''s technique was polished and functional, and it was obvious she knew how to use her sword and shield to great effect. It was also obvious, however, that for as good as she was, Arash was just as good, if not better. He got in close, close enough that the extra length of her sword became more of a hindrance than a help, and he was quickly forcing her onto the backfoot.

    Boudica, it looked like, could hardly get an attack of her own in. Arash was too close and too good with my dagger, giving her so little room to maneuver that her shield had become more of a hindrance than anything else. It seemed all she could do to keep the blade of Last Resort from landing any solid blows.

    It was almost like Arash was determined to prove he didn''t need his Noble Phantasm to be an effective force on the battlefield, whether that was at close ranges or long.

    Emiya''s fight with A¨ªfe, however, was swiftly heading the opposite direction. With every passing second, it was clearer and clearer that he was massively outclassed. They were moving too quickly to see clearly anymore, too quickly for me to make out the individual blows and counterblows, but every few seconds, there was the crack of shattering glass as another pair of his shortswords broke under the relentless assault of A¨ªfe''s spear.

    I could feel the strength behind her attacks even from so far away. She didn''t seem to be holding anything back at all.

    Emiya did the only thing he could: he retreated. Every lost set of swords was a step backwards as he made just enough room to replace the broken pair, and it was also a step away from the other fight. The red spear swung and thrust like lightning, unerringly seeking the vulnerable vitals that even Servants couldn''t survive losing, and it was taking everything Emiya had just to avoid instant death.

    He stepped back and back and back, and A¨ªfe kept moving forward and forward and forward. CRACK ¡ª another pair of swords shattered. Emiya stepped back again as a new pair formed in his hands. The red spear stabbed towards his face and he took yet another step back to brace himself so he could push it up with the blades of his swords.

    And then, unexpectedly, A¨ªfe abandoned her spear and got in close, and she threw her fist forward in a punch so perfect that entire textbooks could have been written about it. Emiya had no room to dodge, so he did the only thing he could and crossed his swords so that the flats of the blades formed a kind of shield against A¨ªfe''s fist.

    CRACK ¡ª under the force of her punch, his swords shattered again, and the strength behind it was so powerful that Emiya actually stumbled backwards several steps. A¨ªfe, a savage grin on her lips, retook her spear and pressed the advantage towards the now defenseless Emiya.

    "EMIYA!" Rika cried.

    "Trace, on."

    Swords formed midair, at least a dozen of them, and they shot towards A¨ªfe like arrows, forcing her into retreat, now. They landed almost like artillery shells, blowing out divots in the courtyard''s ground and then disappearing an instant later.

    "Roll out. Bullet clear."

    More swords appeared midair as Emiya righted himself. One hand rose up like a general ordering his troops.

    "Freeze out. Sword Barrel Full Open."

    Emiya''s arm came down again, and the swords took off again, tearing towards A¨ªfe as she backpedaled now. Her red spear flashed as she dodged what she could and deflected what she couldn''t. The shattered remnants of the flying swords flew about around her, vanishing before they could hit the ground.

    But the swords didn''t stop coming. The instant one wave flew forward, another was already forming in their place. It was like a gatling gun of flying swords, a steady fire of weapons that had no business being treated like projectiles, all aimed at A¨ªfe. The briefest of pauses happened between waves, only long enough for Emiya to adjust his aim and tweak the trajectories towards his target.

    Suddenly, A¨ªfe was the one on the backfoot, desperately trying to avoid attacks coming from too many different angles to block with the effortless ease she''d had before. She didn''t look hard-pressed, not going by the expression on her face or the efficiency of her motions, but she had no room for attack, no advantage to press, and it was only a matter of time until something gave one way or the other.

    That something, it turned out, was not Emiya or A¨ªfe, it was Rika.

    "Guh!" she gasped from next to me, stumbling on nothing. "H-holy shit, Emiya. How much energy are you gonna blow through with that?"

    "Rika!" her brother cried.

    "Master!" was Mash''s echo.

    And for just a short moment, Emiya paused to glance back at her.

    The brief respite was all A¨ªfe needed, because in that moment of pause, she dropped to her knees and slammed one hand to the ground. A circle of runes lit up around her palm, glowing as they burned with power ¡ª and then, quite suddenly, I couldn''t feel my ravens at all.

    What the fuck?

    Whatever she did, I wasn''t the only one affected, and I definitely wasn''t the main target, because the wave of swords Emiya had been preparing fizzled and vanished, unraveling. Emiya''s head swung back around so fast I felt a pang of sympathetic whiplash, and he gaped at her.

    "What?"

    A¨ªfe''s savage grin was filled with triumph. "Anti-magecraft runic spell. Disrupts all forms of magecraft in range."

    She kicked off the ground into a sprint, hefting up her red spear.

    "Which means you lose!"

    The red blade gleamed. The sharp tip shone. She was going for a killing blow.

    Shit!

    My ravens were still disconnected and I couldn''t use another spell, so I lifted my arm and took aim ¡ª but my magic circuits spasmed and refused to channel mana into the mystic code. Her runic spell hadn''t just disrupted my control of my ravens, it had also affected my ability to use my mystic code, as well.

    "Rika!" I snarled, already knowing that I wouldn''t be able to explain myself in time.

    Use a Command Spell! I wanted to tell her.

    But she wasn''t going to be fast enough, either. There was no way for us to help Emiya.

    Three blurs moved towards A¨ªfe. The black one pushed itself between her and Emiya ¡ª Mash hefted her shield. The bluish one got right in front of her, stopping her in her tracks ¡ª Arash held the shaft of the spear in one hand and my knife against A¨ªfe''s throat in the other. The white blur resolved behind her ¡ª Boudica held her sword against the side of A¨ªfe''s neck.

    "That''s far enough, A¨ªfe!"

 Chapter XL: Passing Grade

    Chapter XL: Passing Grade

    A¨ªfe clicked her tongue.

    "You have so little faith in me, do you? Even you, Boudica?"

    At that moment, my connection to my ravens reestablished itself, and I could see through their eyes again, even as Boudica''s stern expression wavered and waffled.

    "Even in my time, your nature is well-known," she said, but the thread of uncertainty made it sound more like an excuse than a legitimate reason. "You have a reputation for ferocity."

    "Well-earned, many would say," A¨ªfe said indifferently. Like she was talking about the weather and not how she was renowned for her brutality. "I''ll make no secret of who I am. Having said that, I''m no longer a marauding tyrant, and my days of errant wandering are long past. I do, in fact, understand the concept of restraint."

    "I''m not so sure about that," said Arash. "That attack you were about to land on Emiya didn''t look very restrained to me."

    One of A¨ªfe''s eyebrows cocked. "You mean the scratch I was going to use to drive my point home?"

    "With a cursed spear famous for killing people with one blow?" Arash countered.

    "Any weapon can kill a person in one blow, in the right hands," A¨ªfe replied bluntly. "Isn''t that the ideal of Eastern martial technique? That a true master might wield a blade of grass the same as a sword?"

    "An ordinary blade of grass isn''t a Noble Phantasm!"

    "No, she''s telling the truth." Emiya sighed and shook his head. "Loath as I am to admit it, if she really wanted to kill me, I would definitely be dead."

    He held out a hand, and in a flash of light, another red spear appeared in his grip, completely identical to the one A¨ªfe was holding, down to the raised vine pattern that snaked down the shaft. I''d never seen either before today, not the original in A¨ªfe''s possession or the replica in Emiya''s, but just going by what I knew of the mythology and what I knew of Emiya''s abilities, there was no mistaking it now.

    G¨¢e Bolg. The spear C¨²chulainn used in the Ulster Cycle, and always to lethal effect. A more poetic woman might have waxed dramatically about how its striking color was a result of all the blood that had soaked into it.

    "Oh wow," said Connla, grinning over the lip of Boudica''s chariot. "Pops would be super pissed if he saw that!"

    "As someone who died to it, it''s to be expected that you can tell the difference immediately," said Emiya. "But you''re correct. This G¨¢e Bolg, and that G¨¢e Bolg," he nodded towards A¨ªfe, "are two different things. One is the spear whose technique C¨²chulainn perfected, a sure-kill Noble Phantasm that always gouged out its target''s heart with a curse so strong that even a tiny nick will fester and struggle to heal."

    Emiya spun the spear around, rolling it over the back of his hand and twirling it in a way that looked familiar, but nothing like anything I''d seen him do before. My eyes turned to A¨ªfe, who was scrutinizing him with a sharp gaze ¡ª because it looked an awful lot like how she handled her spear, only different in an obvious but indescribable way.

    He took a strong grip of the shaft again, pointing the deadly tip towards A¨ªfe.

    "The other is a predecessor, a weapon one step older, from before he improved upon it. The original, if you will, a G¨¢e Bolg Prototype. When the blade enters the body, it sprouts countless thorns that rip and tear from the inside out."

    And now that he''d said it, I couldn''t not see the subtle differences. His had a longer haft and a slightly shorter blade, and the bottom third of that blade was serrated with fang-like spikes, like the teeth of a shark ¡ª or the sea monster whose bones it was said to have been carved from. A¨ªfe''s was shorter on the overall, but the blade was longer, with undulating waves along the edge that ended in sharp points.

    "This version can''t be thrown as a Noble Phantasm without causing great destruction," Emiya went on. "If A¨ªfe had thrown that version, I would have been killed, without a doubt."

    A¨ªfe snorted, smirking. "You''re quite the interesting Heroic Spirit, Emiya. I''ve heard of heroes who can borrow or even steal the Noble Phantasms of other heroes¡­but I can''t say I''ve ever heard of one who can replicate Noble Phantasms through something as hollow as projection magic."

    Emiya smirked back.

    "I''m a man of many talents."

    "And you''re going to be putting one to use to make up for what you just did to me!" Rika shouted at him. He faltered, his confidence failing, his smirk slipping from his lips. "You''d better take responsibility, Emiya!"

    "Rika¡­" Ritsuka breathed, exasperated.

    Emiya''s entire face turned bright red, and he dropped it into one hand in a vain attempt to hide his embarrassment. Rika was just as red and panting like she''d run a mile, but for an entirely different reason. She looked how I must have when C¨²chulainn fought that corrupted version of Emiya back in Fuyuki.

    We were going to have to go through some exercises to get her and her brother used to channeling large amounts of magical energy. The simulator worked to teach them their limits, but since it was all virtual reality, they hadn''t had the chance to actually push them. Not in a way that would actually mean anything.

    A concern for later.

    In any case, it seemed as though this "test" was over, one way or the other. Time to move onto the next step of "negotiations," so I stepped forward and got closer to the huddle of Servants who still hadn''t moved from the stalemate they''d been locked in for the past couple of minutes.

    Arash glanced back at me over his shoulder. Master!

    I know what I''m doing, I sent back to him. Just make sure you keep your eye on A¨ªfe.

    I didn''t actually expect her to try anything, not now, even if I was fairly sure she could extricate herself from her current situation any time she wanted to, but on the other hand, the only Servant who hadn''t done anything at all to stop her was Lancelot. He was still watching from the keep. Was that faith in A¨ªfe, to know she wasn''t actually going to kill Emiya? Or callous disinterest in what actually happened?

    He was a hard man to read. Not for the first time, I missed the convenience of Tattletale''s powers.

    "So," I said as I got closer, "have we passed this test of yours?"

    Eyes like gemstones turned in my direction, and then A¨ªfe relaxed, her tense muscles loosening as she leaned her head back. One hand left her spear, and she used two fingers to gently push the blade of my knife away from her neck. Arash let her, but didn''t quite relax himself yet. My dagger remained close enough for a quick attack if she showed any signs of sudden aggression.

    "If the United Empire had any warriors on my level, I''d tell you to run on home to your Chaldea and let me handle this situation on my own," she said bluntly. "Fortunately, the number of Heroic Spirits who can compete with me is vanishingly small. As neither my sister nor her Hound are here, I''m almost certainly the strongest in this¡­Singularity by default."

    She smirked again.

    "So yes. Your Servants are adequate for this situation." She huffed. "As for you Masters, I''m sure I''ll get a better measure of you over the course of this little adventure, so I''m willing to wait to pass judgment on you three." This time, her lips curled into that now familiar savage grin. "Don''t go disappointing me, now."

    I nodded, because I wasn''t in the mood to make banter or play her games, and turned to Boudica. "And you, Queen Boudica? Are you satisfied with our skills?"

    She blinked at me dumbly for a second, like she''d completely forgotten that half the point of this whole thing was her doing her own test of our abilities. Having to change gears so quickly to stop A¨ªfe had probably distracted her from it entirely.

    "O-oh!" And now she, too, relaxed, letting her sword fall back down to her side, away from A¨ªfe. "Yes, that''s right, I was testing you, too. Well¡­" She looked at Arash, glanced down at my knife, and then back to me. A smile broke out over her face. "I can honestly say I''m impressed. Yes, you''ve passed my test! I have no more doubts about your abilities!"

    Her smile turned sheepish. "There''s just¡­one problem I think we need to iron out, before we officially become allies."

    "Problem?" I repeated.

    "Could you tell me your names?" she asked. She nodded towards Arash, then Emiya. "I know that this is Arash Kamangir, and you''ve been calling him Emiya. And I think¡­I heard one of you is named Taylor?"

    "That''s me," I confirmed. I gestured behind me towards the twins. "The brunette is Ritsuka, the redhead is Rika." Then to Mash. "That''s Mash. Shielder Class Demi-Servant."

    "Demi-Servant?" Boudica said curiously.

    "Through a form of possession, I''m borrowing the skills, abilities, and Noble Phantasm of a Heroic Spirit," Mash explained as she relaxed now, too. "U-um, we''re not sure which, so I can''t tell you who it is."

    Boudica smiled a motherly smile. "And even with a limitation like that, you still performed so admirably!"

    Mash blinked, and then twin spots of faint pink blossomed on her cheeks. "A-ah. Thank you?"

    "No more fighting?" Connla whined. "Lame! Things were just getting good, too!"

    "We''re not here for your entertainment," I said dryly.

    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

    A¨ªfe slanted a sly glance his way. "If you really are that bored, Connla, and need something to do, I would be only too happy to deliver your punishment now."

    Connla flinched.

    "Ah, no, that''s okay, Ma, I''m good!" he said hurriedly, backpedaling for all he was worth. "In fact, I think I''m gonna go see if Uncle Lance needs anything, okay?"

    He made it all of five feet from Boudica''s chariot, and then A¨ªfe seemed to teleport next to him like Arash and Boudica weren''t even in her way. In a flash, she had him by the ear again, and he squawked as she pulled on it like she was trying to tear it from his head.

    "Argh! Ma, Ma, stop! Come on, stop! Leggo, leggo!"

    "This is twice in one day that you''ve interpreted my commands to your own pleasure," she scolded him. "Twice, Connla! You know just as well as I do the things at stake here, and you thought it fine to play games with something so serious? Not once, but twice?"

    "I''m sorry!" Connla whined. "I''m sorry, I''m sorry, I''m sorry!"

    Using her grip on his ear, A¨ªfe shook him about.

    "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!"

    "This is child abuse," Ritsuka muttered.

    "You wanna try and stop the murder machine, Onii-chan, I promise I''ll say something nice at your funeral," Rika whispered back.

    "We''re a few centuries too early to be calling CPS," I told them sardonically.

    "In this era, the closest thing the Romans have would be the molesters," Emiya added wryly. "It would defeat the point."

    Finally, A¨ªfe let her son go, but only so she could slap him upside the back of his head so hard that he slammed into the ground face first.

    "Since you seem to love being creative with how you interpret my orders today, I think this time I''ll give you one that you can''t wiggle your way around," she said as Connla slowly picked himself up out of the dirt. "You get to stay here and guard this castle. From inside the outer wall."

    Connla groaned. "Aw, Ma¡­!"

    "If you don''t think you can handle that much responsibility," she went on casually, "then I''m sure there''s a nice herd of sheep you could watch in Britain instead."

    Connla heaved a huge, heavy sigh. "Fine¡­"

    "I''ll carve you a new spear before I leave," she told him. "I expect this one to still be intact by the time I return."

    Connla kicked at a patch of dirt petulantly.

    "Yeah, yeah, I hear you¡­"

    "Then we should get going as soon as possible," I cut in, addressing her. "The sooner we can touch base with Emperor Nero and gather more information about what enemies we''re facing in this Singularity, the sooner we can solve it."

    "A wise move," A¨ªfe agreed, turning to me, "but you sound quite impatient. Are you in that much of a rush?"

    Was I? I didn''t think so. It just seemed obvious to me. We weren''t here to sightsee. This wasn''t a road trip vacation through Europe. We were here to do a job as efficiently and completely as possible, because there were another five Singularities after this one that we needed to handle, and we had a little under a year and a half to do it, with no idea at all how long it was going to take to fix each one.

    Unless and until we ran into Lev ¡ª or Flauros, as the case could likely be ¡ª or his mysterious king, whether that was Solomon or Satan, we weren''t likely to learn much of anything new about the overall situation from any of the Servants he was using as proxies. Our only objectives, then, were to recruit new Servants to Chaldea, correct the Singularities, and get Marie ¡ª

    Oh.

    "No, actually," I said slowly.

    Behind me, the twins shifted. "We aren''t?" asked Ritsuka.

    "It''s news to me," Rika agreed.

    I turned to Mash. "Mash? I need you to set up a magic circle so I can have a stable connection to Romani."

    She blinked at me. "Out here?"

    "Yes," I answered. "We need to know if we can stabilize the connection that way without sitting on top of a Ley Line Terminal."

    "Oh!" she said. "Right!"

    She hefted her shield and swept it about, swiping it over the ground to and fro, and using the bottom edge, she carved a simple, basic circle into the dirt. Once it was finished, she set her shield down in the middle the way she had when the twins did their summonings back in Chaldea''s summoning chamber. When she was done, she stepped back and looked at me expectantly, and I stepped towards it, thrusting my hand out over the center. With the other, I pressed the buttons on my communicator and barked, "Anfang!"

    The basic circle lit up with blue light, and over the top of the shield, a fuzzy image of Romani formed.

    "T-lor?" he asked me, startled.

    "Can you hear me?" I asked him back.

    "C-mmunica-ns are st-ll s-otty," he replied. "¡ª ng on, I''m ¡ª to fix -em."

    "Even this close to the Terminal, it''s still this bad?" Mash mumbled.

    A¨ªfe came up beside me and dropped down to one knee. "Give me a moment, I''ll try and clear this up."

    Inside the circumference of the circle, she carved several runes, and each one lit up as she finished drawing it. Around the entire inside, she went, and although the designs were somewhat familiar to the runes Marie had been teaching me, they were alien enough that I could only guess at their purposes. If the modern runes I''d been learning were attempted recreations of the oldest forms, then these would have to be the fabled primordial runes, wouldn''t they?

    Marie would have been chomping at the bit to see just one of them.

    Finally, A¨ªfe drew one last rune, and the instant she was finished, the image cleared up and Romani came in crisp and perfect, no static or fuzz at all. He blinked at it, bewildered, and said, "That''s all I had to do?"

    "Not hardly," said A¨ªfe as she stood back up and stepped away. "I stabilized the flow of mana that connects you to this era. Whatever gadgetry you were fiddling with over there, it had nothing to do with this."

    Romani laughed, self-deprecating. "Yeah, that makes a whole lot more sense."

    She arched one eyebrow. "You''re welcome."

    Romani blinked again. "Oh! Um, thank you?"

    A¨ªfe huffed a breath out of her nostrils.

    "Anyway," he changed the subject, "I''m going to guess that you guys managed to pass her test?"

    "Well enough," A¨ªfe answered.

    "That''s not what I''m contacting you about," I said. "Romani, is Da Vinci around?"

    "Um, I can get her, if you need her for something," he replied. "Why? Did your bikes not work? Da Vinci will be so disappointed if they broke the first time you used them."

    I shook my head. "That''s not what this is about, either. I need her to tell me how many crabs she needs."

    Romani''s brow furrowed.

    "Crabs?"

    I jerked my head over my shoulder. "About a ten minute walk from here is a coastline, and on the seabed, there are crabs. Since crabs are one of the things Da Vinci asked me to get for the Director¡­"

    "Oh!" he said and turned to check something on his console. "Let me take a look¡­ Ten minute walk¡­ To the south, right? Has to be, there isn''t another major body of water in any other direction. A coastline¡­ Yes, I''m seeing it, the ¨¦lorn estuary, and since that''s France, that would make it¡­ Yes! That''s the habitat range of the European Green Crab!"

    An instant later, he was out of his chair, and back to us, he shouted, "Hang on, I''m going to get Da Vinci!"

    An awkward silence followed him for a handful of seconds.

    "Can''t he¡­page her through his console?" Ritsuka asked uncertainly.

    Mash sighed. "Yes, Senpai. Yes, he can."

    I held back a sigh of my own and wondered how much sleep he''d gotten in the last forty-eight hours. It wouldn''t surprise me in the least if he''d been up for three days straight trying to get everything ready for the Rayshift.

    After a few seconds more, he came back and sat back down, and sheepishly, he told us, "I forgot that I can just page her from here."

    He typed out a quick message on his keyboard, and the sound of his fingers tapping filled the awkward silence. He finished it with a final flourish.

    "There. I marked it urgent, so she''ll put down whatever she''s doing and be here in a few minutes."

    He sighed and sunk back into his chair, looking suddenly exhausted. His voice was tired when he said, "So. Anyone want to tell me what that spike in mana expenditure was all about? Rika''s readings got pretty close to the yellow for a few seconds there."

    Rika''s head swung around and she glared pointedly at Emiya, who coughed into one hand and refused to meet her eyes.

    "I¡­may have started pulling out my more costly spells," he admitted reluctantly.

    Romani blinked, and then his brow furrowed with confusion as he looked between Emiya and A¨ªfe, and slowly, he leaned forward towards the camera. "I thought you were just going to test them," he accused.

    "Is it a test if they aren''t pushed at all?" A¨ªfe asked, arching one eyebrow.

    Romani slammed a fist down on the console, shaking our view of him.

    "That''s not the point! I know I said I was only going to send reinforcements if Mash''s vitals hit the red, but that''s because I thought you were going to only focus on the Servants! It goes doubly so for the Masters!"

    "You think it''s possible to test one without affecting the other?" A¨ªfe shook her head. "Regardless of what you might think, no one was in any real danger at any moment. You insult me if you think I have that little control over myself."

    Romani''s brow drew down. "You ¡ª"

    "I''m here! I came as quickly as I could!" a voice off screen announced. "What''s the emergency, Romani?"

    A short breath hissed out of Romani''s nostrils and he visibly tamped down on his anger as he leaned back away from the camera. To the side, he said, "It''s not really an emergency, but we needed you for something. Taylor found some crabs and she wants to know how many you need."

    "Oh?" Quick, clipped footsteps clacked against the floor, and a moment later, Da Vinci''s head came into view from off to the right of the screen. "You found some crabs already?"

    "We landed near the French coastline," I informed her shortly. "There''s a booming population of European Greens under the water."

    Her smile twitched. "Ah, yes. That''s right, you did land off course. I''m sorry to say that we''re still working on identifying why."

    A question I was going to be bringing up later, when there was a better time for it. Things turned out okay this time, but we couldn''t afford to have it happen again, especially when it could mean landing in the middle of the ocean.

    "How many do you need?"

    "Well, yes, to be on the safe side¡­" She used her fingers to count off the numbers in her head. "About six dozen, I''d say!"

    Romani jerked and turned to her, baffled. "What?"

    "S-six dozen," Ritsuka goggled. "That''s¡­a lot of crab legs."

    "I think I''m gonna be seasick," said Rika.

    If we were actually going to eat them¡­ Thinking of it that way, it probably would be a good idea to restock our food supply with local fauna at some point, just to make sure we never ran out. It wasn''t like we had any other way of replenishing what we were eating.

    "They''re quite small," Da Vinci reasoned. "If they were a larger species, it would probably be enough to have just one or two dozen, but the European Green is nowhere near big enough."

    I nodded. They were tiny. Maybe not unusually so for a crab species, but they weren''t much bigger than my palm. When I did a quick estimate in my head, six dozen seemed like a very reasonable number, considering what she was going to be using them for.

    "Do you have a container ready for them?" I asked.

    She smiled. "I have one prepared just for this! It''ll only take a few minutes to get everything set up."

    Good. We were finally on the path to getting Marie her body back. Just a little bit longer. Hold on just a little bit longer.

    "Before we leave for Rome, we''ll head back towards the coast and I''ll gather those crabs for you," I told her. "That should be enough time for you to get ready."

    "I''ll be waiting for your word," she promised.

    She gave us all a wave and then left.

    "Right, I should probably let you guys get to that, then," said Romani. "I''ll be monitoring things from here, so when you''ve got everything prepared, contact me again and we''ll get the retrieval process started."

    He lanced A¨ªfe with a glare. "And if you need help with anything else, let me know. The other Servants would be glad to drop in and lend you a hand."

    A¨ªfe, of course, was completely unfazed by the implied threat.

    "Will do, Doctor," said Ritsuka.

    Romani''s image flickered and disappeared. With our conversation done, Mash came over, bent down, and picked her shield back up. The runes inside her makeshift circle died.

    "Crabs?" asked A¨ªfe, amused.

    "The Director ¡ª" Mash began.

    "Puppets of Huginn and Muninn''s quality can''t be built from just anything," I cut her off, because this wasn''t the time, place, or person with whom to be airing Marie''s dirty laundry. "Bone that mimics the consistency and strength of actual bone needs specific substances, and crab shells are apparently one of them."

    Mash''s brow furrowed, but she deferred to my judgment and kept her mouth shut.

    "Huginn and Muninn?" A¨ªfe echoed. She glanced upwards. Whether or not she actually saw my ravens, I didn''t know, but the gesture was clear enough. "Ah. I suppose I can understand choosing names like that for a pair of ravens, even if they are¡­puppets, you said?"

    "Like you said," I replied, "they''re similar to golems, only more¡­mechanical."

    I honestly had no idea how to better explain them, because that was about the extent of my knowledge on the subject as it was. Da Vinci had consulted me on what I wanted in Huginn and Muninn, and she''d gone over how to use them when she was finished, but the actual construction was out of my wheelhouse.

    "I''ll take your word for it," said A¨ªfe.

    "And you need these crabs to build more puppets?" Boudica asked.

    "There''s a very special one that Da Vinci is currently building," was what I told her. "It''s important to the future of Chaldea, so it needs to be made exactly right."

    "Or else Director Marie might not come back," Rika whispered, so quiet that I was probably the only one who heard her.

    "I see." Boudica smiled warmly. "In that case, I would be only too glad to lend you my chariot to reach the coast."

    "That would be useful," I agreed.

    And then I stopped for a moment, considered how fast she''d been moving through my range when I first spotted her, how fast she must have been moving to make it back here from whatever frontline she''d been camped out on, and I had to wonder¡­

    "Exactly how fast is your chariot?"

    "Oh, it''s fast enough for me," Boudica demurred, "and I''m sure we''ll make excellent time, but I don''t think it''s anything special."

    "Would you like to test that with a race?" asked A¨ªfe, mouth slowly pulling into a grin.

    "Maybe later," said Boudica politely. "For now, I think we should just get to the coast, right?"

    "Right," I answered.

    "Fast enough for me," she had said. Maybe she didn''t actually know her top speed in terms of miles or kilometers per hour, and that would make sense since she was from a time before measurements like that even started being used, but¡­

    As long as it was faster than our bikes, "fast enough," indeed.

 Chapter XLI: Another Brick in the Road

    Chapter XLI: Another Brick in the Road

    It turned out that "fast enough" was actually really fast.

    I had no idea if it was even her top speed, because the distance we had to travel wasn''t far enough that I thought she was going all out, but it was less than a minute between her setting her horses into motion and then slowing back down as we approached the coastline. Way, way faster than even the theoretical top speed of Da Vinci''s special e-bikes.

    "H-here is fine!" I told her as we pulled up alongside it. I was embarrassed to realize that my voice had squeaked a little, because the acceleration had just caught me that badly off guard.

    Fortunately, whatever protective magic there was to the chariot made enough of a shield to blunt the wind shear as we moved at least in half, so neither I nor the twins had been thrown off. Small mercies.

    "Are you sure?" Boudica asked, looking over at me.

    I nodded back to her, perhaps a little faster than I would have under different circumstances. Up above, my ravens trailed far behind us, struggling to even stay inside my range for their control. Another small mercy that they weren''t limited to the range of my bugs, because I was pretty sure I would have lost them halfway here otherwise.

    "The crabs we need won''t be all in one place," I said by way of explanation. "I''m going to need to gather them slowly as I go up the coast."

    "That makes sense," Boudica agreed, and she pulled on the reins to command her horses to stop. Neighing as though to acknowledge her commands, their gallop slowed to a trot for maybe half a dozen yards, and then to a halt.

    My knees were a little shaky as I climbed down out of the¡­I was just going to call it a carriage, because I didn''t know the proper term. Ritsuka and Rika, who climbed down from beside me, didn''t seem much better, wide-eyed and windswept.

    "I''m alive!" Rika cried exultantly, throwing up her hands.

    "I''m sorry, I didn''t think about how hard that kind of speed might be on you," Boudica apologized.

    Behind us, A¨ªfe''s chariot trundled to a stop, too, carrying Arash, Mash, and Emiya, with Mash looking a little surprised at how fast they''d been going, but Arash and Emiya completely unfazed. I had to keep my eyes averted from the majesty of the horses pulling it, because even someone as inexperienced with magic as I was could recognize something unearthly about them, and if I admired them for too long, I might not stop.

    "I-it''s fine," Ritsuka told Boudica shakily, "I just don''t think we were expecting your chariot to be that fast."

    "Even mortal horses transcend such limits when they reach the Throne," A¨ªfe called from the carriage of her chariot. With a distinct note of pride, she gestured to her own horses ¡ª one a pure white and the other a stunningly vivid russet red ¡ª and added, "My B¨¢n Epona and R¨²ad ¨¦ta¨ªn would put them all to shame."

    That much, I wasn''t sure I believed. Sure, they were very beautiful horses, and they were very obviously far from ordinary, even disregarding that they must have been a part of A¨ªfe''s Noble Phantasm, but my sample size for Riders so far contained just two, and they were both right here. I couldn''t pass judgment either way.

    "They really are very pretty," said Rika, sounding like she very much wanted to go up and pet them but didn''t think she was allowed.

    "Funny how the myths don''t mention that part," Emiya chuckled. "You''d think it would be more relevant that you have a pair of Divine Beasts pulling your chariot."

    "These are divine horses?" Mash asked, shocked.

    She took the words right out of my mouth, I thought as I made my way down to the coast, just shy of the edge of the water. Under the surface, starting about ten feet down and extending to about a hundred feet down, there was a¡­colony, for lack of a better word, of European Green Crabs.

    Divine horses. No wonder they seemed so impossibly majestic.

    "You hadn''t figured that out?" asked Emiya. "B¨¢n Epona and R¨²ad ¨¦ta¨ªn ¡ª Epona''s White and ¨¦ta¨ªn''s Red. They''re both animal goddesses associated with horses."

    "Wow," said Mash. "Then, Miss A¨ªfe, were they a gift or a blessing of some kind?"

    A¨ªfe chuckled, low and throaty, and I didn''t need to turn to look to imagine the savage grin that was becoming her trademark. "Not hardly. I took these horses through conquest, as the spoils of victory."

    "In other words," Emiya said dryly, "she sought out Epona and ¨¦ta¨ªn, beat them up, and took their stuff."

    "Did you think my sister was the only one who spent her youth seeking out the strongest enemies to challenge?" A¨ªfe retorted. "When you''ve reached the pinnacle of human strength, what else is there better to test your strength against than the gods themselves?"

    "That sounds exactly like you," said Boudica. "It seems a miracle that you managed to stay put for more than an hour inside that castle."

    I set the crabs to gathering, pulling as many of them as I could and directing them to come to the surface. Since this was a Singularity and everything would reset back to normal once we were gone, I didn''t worry too much about decimating the population. In the first place, if there were this many right here, I could only imagine there were even more along the rest of the coast. This would make a dent, but not a crippling one.

    "I told you," said A¨ªfe, "my days of marauding and wanderlust are past."

    Slowly, I began to walk up the coast, making sure to keep my pace just slow enough for the crabs on the back edge of my range to stay within it even as more began to enter the front end. I didn''t bother keeping close track on the exact numbers, because having extra wouldn''t hurt, considering how important getting the Director her body back was.

    "I''ve actually been wondering, Queen Boudica," said Ritsuka. "Um, if you don''t mind me asking, that is, why you''re fighting on the side of the Roman Empire."

    "It must come across as strange," Boudica agreed. "And just Boudica is fine, Ritsuka. As for how an enemy of the Empire who swore revenge against it on the names of her gods became a Roman general¡­"

    She trailed off. Perhaps sensing that he had stepped into dangerous waters, Ritsuka rushed to assure her, "It''s fine if you don''t want to answer."

    Boudica laughed a little. "No, no," she reassured him, "it''s not like it''s particularly painful or anything. I mean, it''s true, I was tempted. Here I was, summoned back to life less than a year after my death, with all the targets of my wrath well in sight and utterly unable to stop me. I could have brought the entire Empire low, killed Emperor Nero, and satisfied the lust for vengeance that burned so hot in my blood. But¡­"

    She trailed off again. At length, she continued, "I''m still not sure why I didn''t. Maybe I felt guilty for all of those people in Londinium who were innocent victims of my rampage. Or maybe it''s just a part of my nature to fight to protect something instead of tearing it down. It just felt more¡­right, fighting on behalf of the Empire''s citizens, instead of letting the United Empire rip them apart."

    A slight hitch in my step was the only evidence of the pause that gave me. A strange feeling swirled in my gut, something like nostalgia only not quite, and I couldn''t give it a name.

    Good grief. Where were you during Gold Morning?

    "I guess that''s what it means to be a Heroic Spirit," said Mash thoughtfully. "A symbol of strength that denies villainy and upholds righteousness."

    Boudica laughed, but there was a tinge of self-deprecation to it.

    "I don''t know about that," she admitted. "At the end of the day, my feelings for Nero and the Roman Empire haven''t disappeared. I''m not doing this for the sake of Nero or the Roman Empire at all, and calling myself their ally would be wrong in a number of ways. I just¡­hate the United Empire more."

    "You''re putting aside your feelings for the greater good," I said appreciatively.

    "I think that''s a good way of putting it," Boudica agreed.

    I didn''t know if I could compare myself to her. So much of my career had just been an escalating train of shit, to the point that the earlier parts of it had seemed so small and insignificant by comparison. Lung and I, for example, would never be friends, but by the end, he was the one who felt stronger about what had passed between us than I did.

    But I could at least appreciate the kind of person it took to look past all of your grudges to deal with a bigger problem. Those had been in frighteningly short supply during Gold Morning.

    "We''re not saints, Mash," Arash cut in. He paused, thought about that for a second, probably remembered Jeanne, and then corrected himself, "Well, most of us aren''t, at least. Being Servants can give us some perspective on things that happened while we were alive, but it doesn''t erase the feelings we have about those things. For someone like me, who had no connection to the Roman Empire either way, fighting to preserve it for the sake of history isn''t hard. On the other hand, for someone who was wronged by the Empire during their life, it can be a challenge just to set aside those feelings long enough to even think about it."

    "I guess I understand," said Mash. "But in that case¡­Miss Boudica, doesn''t that make what you''re doing all that much more impressive?"

    "Well, I don''t know about that," Boudica replied. "I''m just doing what feels right to me. If that means I''m doing the right thing for the world, then I guess that''s all the better."

    As they talked, I continued slowly up the coastline, and for whatever reason, they followed me. Down by the waterline, the calm surface began to froth and foam as my crabs began to breach and clamber up onto the grass.

    "Whoa," said Rika. "That''s a lot of crabs."

    "Mash," I called over my shoulder, "get the circle set up, so we can connect with Da Vinci?"

    She paused a moment, and by the motion of the bug I''d stuck back on her, she was looking about. "Um, where should I¡­"

    "Anywhere you can find room." I glanced back at A¨ªfe. "A¨ªfe, we''re going to need to stabilize it again."

    She snorted. "In other words, you want my runes again."

    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

    "Yes."

    I paused mid-step for a second and then stopped as a thought occurred to me. "Actually," I began as I rooted through my pocket, "not just with the circle, either."

    My fingers curled around the last remaining runestone from Fuyuki, and without looking, I tossed it towards her. There was a meaty smack as she snapped it out of the air deftly, and a moment of silence as she inspected it. I started walking again.

    "Where did you get this?" she asked seriously. "This is one of the Primordial Runes."

    "C¨²chulainn carved several for us back in the Fuyuki Singularity," I answered without breaking stride. "I''ve used up all but that last one."

    "And now you want more."

    "Yes." I didn''t beg. I didn''t butter her up. I didn''t let her see even a hint of desperation of any kind. A woman like her didn''t respect any sign of weakness, so I didn''t show her any. "Originally, I didn''t expect to have the chance to get more until if or when we ran into C¨²chulainn again, but if you can carve the same sorts of runes that he can, then we won''t have to wait."

    "If, you say," A¨ªfe grunted indignantly. "Having seen me use them before, do you have any reason to doubt it?"

    "I wouldn''t know," was what I told her. "The only frame of reference I have for runic magic is you, him, and Director Animusphere, and while yours and his are obviously better than the Director''s, telling the difference between you two is harder. After all, he was a Caster, so rune magic was all he used, and you''re a Rider."

    Contrary to what I was expecting, some part of what I said made A¨ªfe burst out into laughter, and my bugs buzzed a little in the background as I kept my confusion off of my face.

    "A Caster?" she chortled. "The Hound, summoned as a Caster? Well, I suppose he could qualify, if only on technicality. But oh, how that must have rankled! To have to fight without either his spear or his chariot or even his sword!"

    "He did well enough," I said neutrally. I felt like maybe I should defend him more, but I wasn''t quite sure what I was defending him from. "He was¡­instrumental in defeating the corrupted King Arthur of that Singularity."

    For an instant, I half-expected Lancelot to pop up and demand answers, but no, we''d left him back at Joyous Guard with Connla.

    "Really?" asked Arash. "I hadn''t heard about that. Come to think of it, we never really talked about the Fuyuki Singularity, did we?"

    No, we actually hadn''t, had we? I wasn''t sure he hadn''t read the after action reports, but as for the events themselves, no one had thought to bring them up over the course of the month we''d spent preparing for Septem. Ritsuka and Rika might have told Bradamante while I wasn''t there, but the topic hadn''t really come up with the other Servants.

    An oversight. Keeping all of our Servants up to date about what had happened in prior Singularities was going to be something we had to do, going forward, if only so everyone was up to speed on what kind of threats we''d faced before and what kind of threats we might expect to face in the future.

    "We were caught off guard," said Mash. "Professor Lev''s sabotage¡­ The Rayshift into Fuyuki was unplanned and haphazard. C¨²chulainn was the only uncorrupted Servant remaining there, and he helped us the whole way through, despite being outnumbered and outclassed by Saber, Lancer, and Archer. I don''t know if we would have made it without him."

    A¨ªfe huffed. "To be expected. The Hound is at his most resourceful when disadvantaged."

    "C¨² was pretty great," Rika said with uncharacteristic quiet.

    "Yeah," Ritsuka agreed.

    "Fou," the little gremlin on Mash''s shoulder mewled mournfully.

    There went the hope that it had run off and gotten itself killed. For whatever reason, it had made itself scarce while we were at Joyous Guard, and I had no idea where it had squirreled itself away, but now that we''d left, it had come back.

    "Miss Taylor," said Mash, "is here okay?"

    "As long as you have room," I answered her, and then I stopped, reconsidered, and looked back at her and the spot of the road ¡ª really more of a beaten path than an actual road ¡ª she was gesturing to. "You''re going to want a bigger circle," I added. "We need to fit all of the crabs inside of it."

    "Oh." Mash blinked and looked towards the ground, brow furrowing. "That''s right, it needs to be bigger than the last one."

    "I''ll handle it, Mash," said Emiya, stepping forward. To me, he asked, "These crabs, they''re about how big?"

    "About¡­" I did some quick math in my head as my powers gave me a better sense of their anatomy. "Ten centimeters wide, on average, maybe three quarters of that long. Each leg is about a single body length long."

    Helpfully, I had one of the crabs scuttle up towards him and wave its pincer at him. He grimaced down at it, but didn''t comment as he eyed the thing critically, like he was trying to peer straight through its carapace and into its internal organs. As far as I knew, his form of Clairvoyance wasn''t actually strong enough for that, but Servants were complete bullshit as it was, so I didn''t question it.

    After a moment of intense scrutiny, he nodded to himself, held out his hand, and intoned, "Trace, on."

    Like in the courtyard against A¨ªfe, a collection of swords formed in the air, eight in total, pointed straight down. With a flick of his wrist, they fell towards the ground, although with the speed and intensity, it might have been more accurate to say they shot down, and with a series of squelches not unlike the bite of a shovel, they embedded themselves tip-first into the dirt, forming a perfect octagon.

    No, I realized after a moment, not an octagon. There was space between the blades, plenty of it, and if you were to trace a curve from the edge of one blade to the other all the way around, it would make a perfect circle with a diameter of about ten feet.

    It would unquestioningly have been more impressive if he had carved a perfect magic circle all at once, fit to match the diagram Marie had shown me for the summoning array used by Chaldea''s FATE system, but even this much was¡­not an insignificant thing.

    With a wave of his hand, the swords disappeared, leaving behind the thin lines they had carved into the ground.

    "Sorry I couldn''t do more," said Emiya, "but I think these are fine as guide lines, don''t you?"

    "Ah!" said Mash. "Yes, of course! Thank you, Emiya!"

    Her shield formed in her hands, and using the bottom edge once again, she began slowly, carefully connecting Emiya''s lines with an arcing curve, and the circle began to take shape. Leaving her to it, I started walking again, even as numerous crabs skittered up out of the water to form neat rows in the grass a short distance away, a mass of muddy green waiting to be swept away.

    "You know, I don''t think that''s ever going to stop being creepy," Ritsuka remarked.

    "With Senpai, you don''t catch the crabs, the crabs catch you," said Rika.

    I left them behind and kept walking, but I moved slowly enough that I didn''t go very far very fast. I watched through my bugs ¡ª and now through the eyes of the gathering crabs ¡ª as Mash finished the circle from the inside and carefully stepped out of it. A¨ªfe stepped up next, and with the tips of the index and middle fingers of one hand glowing, she drew a circle in the air.

    A quick flash lit up the group, momentarily blinding the crabs, and the circle Mash had just carved glowed with the same light as A¨ªfe''s fingertips. Then, she stepped over the glowing line and into the circle, and with those same fingers, she began to meticulously carve the same runes she''d used to stabilize our conversation with Romani back in Joyous Guard''s courtyard.

    As she worked, I continued to pull more crabs in from the¡­estuary, Romani had called it, coaxing them out of the sand and the mud as I puppeted their bodies all at once. When they made it to the surface, they marched to join the growing group that was watching A¨ªfe work, surreptitiously studying the runes she was using and how she inscribed them.

    There was more to runic magic than just the inscription of the rune. Marie had imparted that much. The meaning behind each rune, the method of inscription, the way the strokes were made, the order they were made in, there were numerous factors that went into making them more than some squiggly lines. There was no way I could learn the full breadth and depth of A¨ªfe''s runes without direct instruction from her.

    But that didn''t mean I couldn''t learn anything at all by watching her.

    If she suspected me at all, she didn''t give any indication. I wasn''t sure she would care even if she did know, or if she would be amused by my attempts at gleaning the knowledge from her, and I wasn''t sure it would matter either way, because I wasn''t learning much, no matter how many eyes I watched with from how many angles.

    There were no shortcuts worth taking in the study and application of magecraft, Marie had once told me. It seemed that applied to more than just what she''d been trying to teach me at the time.

    Despite my earlier insistence that I didn''t care about counting the crabs, the way my powers worked made it impossible not to know, and when I realized that I was going to reach my quota quicker and easier than I originally assumed, I started to ignore the crabs deeper down in favor of the ones closer to the shore. It was only about thirty feet away from where I''d left everyone else that I reached and then exceeded the six dozen Da Vinci had asked for, because there were just that many of the things.

    If I had to take a guess, without humans firmly established around here to catch them, there weren''t many natural pressures to thin the population. The only thing that stopped them from carpeting the entire seabed was probably simple food scarcity.

    Once the last few stragglers made it ashore and close enough I wouldn''t lose them, I turned back around and made my way back to the group, where A¨ªfe was drawing the final set of runes along the inside edge of our makeshift magic circle.

    When she was done, she stood and looked back at me, then smirked. "It seems we both finished around the same time."

    "There were more crabs around here than I was expecting," I said by way of explanation.

    I turned to Mash. "Ready?"

    Mash, who had been watching the tide of crabs arrive and neatly arrange themselves into tight rows with a kind of morbid curiosity, blinked, turned back to me, and nodded. "Oh! Yes, Miss Taylor."

    The crabs cleared out of her way as one mass, and she hesitated only a moment before stepping into the spots they''d opened up for her, into the circle, and setting her shield down. When she came back out again, taking care she didn''t need to in order to avoid squashing any of them underfoot, I took my own place just outside the circle and thrust my arm towards that shield.

    "Anfang!"

    The runes and the circle they were inside both lit up with a blue light, and an instant later, Romani''s image appeared in the air above the center of Mash''s shield. He blinked at us.

    "You''re ready already? But it''s barely been a couple minutes!"

    "For you," I reminded him.

    He blinked again, confused, and then understanding dawned across his face. "Right. Massive time differential. How could I forget? It must have been closer to half an hour for you guys." He cleared his throat. "Right. Do you have all of the crabs we need?"

    I looked pointedly down at my feet, and so did Romani. His face twisted into a grimace of fascinated unease, halfway between intense interest and an unsettled curl of his lips. Like a surgeon who was staring at a strange tumor he''d never seen before.

    "Yeah. I''m sure I''ll get the exact numbers when we do the Rayshift, but if you say that''s the six dozen she asked for, I''ll take your word for it."

    "Closer to eight dozen," I told him. "I thought it might be prudent to have extra, in case Da Vinci needed more than she originally estimated."

    "That woman is nothing if not meticulous," said Romani, smiling faintly. He peered down at the crabs again. "But if nothing else, it might be a good idea to keep a few extra in an aquarium so that we can have a stable source of emergency meat."

    "Oh, ick," said Rika.

    "As long as you don''t name them, it''ll be fine," I told her without looking. "It''s harder to eat something you''ve grown attached to."

    "Well, in the worst case scenario, I guess we can make them the organization''s mascots," Romani said amusedly. "Anyway, hang on a second, lemme check with Da Vinci¡­"

    His hands flew across his keyboard as his fingers tapped away, and when he was done, he stopped and waited for a minute, staring intently at his monitor until it beeped to let him know he had a message.

    "Da Vinci says she''s all set up," he reported. "Once we get a solid lock on all the crabs we''ll be bringing back here, we can get them captured."

    I nodded. "I''ll stack the crabs inside the circle."

    I stepped back, and as I did so, I maneuvered the muddy green crabs around my steps and carefully over the line of the circle, converging them into a tightly spaced mass in concentric rings around the center. A¨ªfe watched with vague interest, but the twins looked somewhere in the vicinity of disgusted fascination, like they didn''t want to watch but couldn''t stop themselves.

    "You don''t have to fit them all inside the circle," Romani informed me, "but as long as they''re close enough and you''re far enough, it should be fine. In fact, everyone, please step back and leave at least two meters of clearance between yourselves and the crabs so that we can reduce interference."

    Dutifully, everyone did as he asked and gave the roiling mass of crabs a wide berth.

    "That is¡­a lot of crabs," Boudica remarked.

    It was, although not nearly as many as it probably looked like, considering the sheer multitude that still sat in the estuary within my range alone, and it was their flawless synchronicity and close proximity that gave the illusion of greater numbers. Ten feet, it turned out, was more than enough space for the ninety-six crabs I had gathered, with room to spare. I didn''t even need to have them piling on top of each other to fit inside the circle.

    "Everything''s green," Romani remarked.

    "You sure that''s not all of those crabs, Doc?" Rika asked sardonically.

    Romani paused, thought about that for a second, then grimaced and shook his head. "You know what I mean. All of the proper materials are in place, our sensors have a lock on ninety-six European Green Crabs, Da Vinci''s special capture device is sealed and ready. Commencing transfer in three¡­two¡­one¡­"

    And with a flash of light, each one of the crabs lit up simultaneously. Between one blink and the next, they vanished, leaving behind only Mash''s shield and the circle and runes carved around it.

    "Retrieval successful," Romani reported. He peered over at his console as it beeped. "And¡­Da Vinci''s said that all of the crabs have been captured. We have what we need."

    Slowly, I let out the breath I hadn''t realized I''d been holding through my nostrils. Now, she could start working on building Marie a new body. Might only be one part of it, but that was how anything was done: one step at a time.

    "With that out of the way, it looks like you guys can get back to your mission," he went on. "According to local time, it should be a little before noon, so if you leave soon, you should be able to make it to the next major town before nightfall."

    "Right," I agreed.

    "I''ll keep an eye on things from here, but communications are still going to be spotty outside of Ley Line Terminals," he went on. "Be careful, be safe, and if you need anything, don''t hesitate to call. I''ll be here."

    Where you probably should be is bed.

    This wasn''t the time or the place for that, though, so I left it unspoken.

    "Understood."

    "Good luck, everyone."

    And then his image flickered and disappeared.

    "You still intend to go to Rome, then?" asked A¨ªfe.

    "It''s where we intended to land, but more than that, it''s still probably the best place to investigate this Singularity," I answered. "Emperor Nero and the upper echelon of the Roman military probably have a lot more information about the United Empire and their Servant roster ¡ª"

    "Ah!" said Boudica suddenly. "That reminds me! I meant to say so earlier, but I got distracted with everything, I''m sorry."

    "Say what?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Shortly before Connla came to find me, I received a message from Rome," Boudica told us. "Emperor Nero is going to be coming to the Gallian front to inspect the situation."

    My eyebrows rose. "The Emperor is coming here?"

    To the frontlines? I¡­guess I could respect a leader who led from the front ¡ª Rome seemed to have a lot of those among its emperors ¡ª but if history was to be believed, Nero had always been more of an artist first, statesmen second, and somewhere near the bottom of the list, there was his military leadership.

    Someone like Julius Caesar, that made sense. He was an accomplished tactician and leader. But you didn''t send a politician to be a war general.

    "Not here, specifically," said Boudica, "but yes. Within the week, Emperor Nero will arrive at the base camp for the Gallian expeditionary force with a full complement of Praetorian Guards."

    The twins shared a look with each other and Mash, like they weren''t sure if they should believe it. They must have been thinking what I was thinking. Could we count this as a stroke of good luck? We didn''t have to go all the way to Rome to talk to Emperor Nero, because Emperor Nero was coming to us. We could cut days of travel time out of our planning.

    There was no way it could be that easy.

    "Then that''s where we need to be," I told her bluntly. "If Emperor Nero is going to be at the expeditionary force''s base camp, we''ll meet him there. Boudica, we need you to lead us to it."

    And as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, she smiled and said, "Of course. I''d be glad to."

 Chapter XLII: Familiar Unknown

    Chapter XLII: Familiar Unknown

    The second time around, I liked to think I was better prepared for the speed of the chariots than the first time.

    But "better prepared" was not the same thing as "completely prepared," as my white-knuckled grip on the rail of the carriage of A¨ªfe''s chariot proved. Knowing what to expect had not made it easier to deal with the fact that we were traveling at what had to be well over a hundred miles an hour, making turns that should not be physically possible at those speeds, and I had nothing to tether me down except my fragile, human hands and nothing to protect me except the weight of Arash''s promise to pick me up and leap off if it looked like we were about to crash.

    That was why we had switched up the arrangements for this stretch of the journey, after all. If we were attacked by an enemy Servant while in transit, then Mash and Boudica could grab the twins while Arash grabbed me, leaving Emiya ¡ª our most versatile Servant ¡ª and A¨ªfe ¡ª probably our strongest Servant ¡ª free to engage the enemy.

    Of course, that didn''t help much when the sheer speed we were traveling at had bugs moving in and out of my range so fast that I felt even more unmoored than I had while being carried helplessly in Siegfried''s arms during the home stretch of the Orl¨¦ans Singularity.

    At least I had thought to recall my ravens and tuck them safely away back in the confines of my bag. There was no way they would have kept up with us otherwise.

    Somewhere along the way, a strong hand ¡ª Arash''s ¡ª found its way to the small of my back and gave me a way to ground myself. It helped more than I expected it to.

    I wasn''t sure how long we traveled or even really quite how far. We''d left the coastline and the estuary behind early on for the scenic French countryside, but we were moving too fast to enjoy the majesty of the world around us. Mostly, we felt the changes in elevation as gentle swings of a pendulum, and everything else passed us by as a vague green smear.

    Rika and Ritsuka were probably a little disappointed that they didn''t get to see it all, but I appreciated the haste we were making on our trip. Natural splendor or not, we couldn''t afford to miss Emperor Nero, so taking the long way was thankfully unnecessary.

    Eventually, the gentle slopes and plains got rougher, choppier, and steeper. Both A¨ªfe''s horses and Boudica''s took it in stride with ease, and at no point did the chariot buck so hard that I had any reason to fear being thrown off, but the change in terrain was obvious all the same. I still couldn''t make out the details of the world around us too well, but even through the blur, the rolling hills were plain to see.

    Later on, I thought to compare the experience to a rollercoaster, only without all of the obvious safety features that made the ride thrilling instead of terrifying, but in the moment, it was hard to think of anything at all as the disorientation sent my head swimming.

    But it had to end at some point, and some indeterminable time later, the chariot began to slow as the stomp of the horses'' galloping hooves petered off into a casual trot, and as the world resolved around us again, finally into a stop. Ahead of our group, the twins and Mash were already dismounting, and once the three of them had made it safely back onto solid ground, Boudica hopped down as well. Her chariot disappeared, evaporating into motes of golden light.

    I took an extra couple of seconds to reorient myself, closing my eyes as I sank into the local bugs and reestablished a swarm, dispersed and disjointed though it was. Immersed in their senses and in the expanded proprioception their very presence gave me, I felt out the place we had stopped at, mapping out a sloped valley of thick forest with the road that cut across it from east to west and the narrow river that cut a path down from north to south. Below us, at the base of the valley, a swath had been cleared and a camp set up, and soldiers in full kit milled about, ready to spring into action at any moment.

    Master? Arash asked silently.

    I''m fine, I replied, and I straightened, letting go of my iron grip on the railing of the carriage. Arash''s hand left the small of my back, but he hovered there for a moment longer, like he was waiting for me to fall on my face.

    He only backed away when I turned around and climbed down out of the chariot.

    "If this was supposed to be a race, I think you lost," Emiya remarked.

    A¨ªfe snorted. "Don''t be absurd. Boudica is the one who knew where the camp had moved to, so it''s only natural she took the lead."

    "Moved?" I asked, hoping to cut off any more of Emiya''s sarcasm.

    "Originally, we camped at Massilia along the southern coast," Boudica answered for her. "However, A¨ªfe, Connla, and Lancelot helped to push back the United Empire''s foothold in Gaul, so we could push further into it as well."

    And if they hadn''t, then we would have landed far behind enemy lines when we first arrived here with no idea who was friend or foe. If the United Empire was smart, they could even have convinced us that they were on the right side of the issue, maybe even claimed that the Nero in Rome was an imposter and Romulus was trying to restore the rightful Roman Empire.

    We wouldn''t have had any idea we were being played until we found the knife in our back.

    "I''m guessing you moved here for a reason?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Probably not for the scenery," his sister added. "I''m all for a swanky, hillside retreat, but you kinda need a swanky retreat to go along with your hillside for that."

    Boudica laughed, an easy smile on her lips. "Nothing so fancy as that, I''m afraid." She gestured with one arm. "Come on. I''ll explain more as we walk to the camp."

    She turned towards the path that had been cut through the foliage, and our group fell into step behind her. Now that it was no longer needed, A¨ªfe dropped down out of her chariot, as well, and it vanished much the same as Boudica''s had, taking those two incredible horses with it.

    "Like I said," Boudica went on, "originally, we were camped at Massilia, and we moved further inland as we took back territory from the United Empire. The plan was actually to be even further north of here, but the United Empire is trying very hard to keep it, and they''ve been very stubborn about being pushed out. A little ways to the east of here is a settlement, a booming town that changed hands without too much issue at first. Then we came far enough to win it back, and the United Empire didn''t intend on letting us have it if they had to lose it."

    "They burned it down?" I asked sharply.

    "No, but not for lack of effort," she answered grimly. "The rearguard slaughtered as many people as they could as they retreated, and caring for the wounded kept us too busy to chase them, no matter how sorely tempted I was to chase them anyway."

    My lips thinned. Standard scorched earth tactics, then. Deny the enemy resources, make them focus on anything else other than engaging you. It wasn''t pleasant and there was plenty wrong with it, especially from the moral perspective, but even agreements like the Geneva Conventions hadn''t stopped militaries from around the world from using it to slow down their enemies and disrupt supply lines.

    Unfortunately, it was also a very old tactic. Most nations just weren''t desperate or spiteful enough to slaughter their own citizenry so callously, even when those people were conquered by a foreign power.

    "Which town?" Ritsuka asked solemnly.

    "Lugdunum," said Boudica. "Um, I think the modern name for it ¡ª I mean the name you would probably know it by ¡ª is ¡ª"

    "Lyon," Arash finished softly.

    I felt my eyebrows rise towards my hairline, and Ritsuka stumbled as Rika tripped and fell into him. Her voice was an octave higher when she turned towards Boudica.

    "What?"

    "Oh," said Mash.

    The pieces started to come together in my head, and I couldn''t stop myself from following the line of thought as it laid itself out for me. We were currently to the west of Lugdunum, which would one day be the city known as Lyon, France, we were in the mountains, or at least terrain sufficiently mountainous enough that it wasn''t really small enough to be a hill, there was a road carved into the hillside that went from east to west, and a small river cut down through the valley towards the east side.

    "This is Thiers," I realized.

    Except there was no Thiers, not yet. The city hadn''t been built yet, hadn''t even become a minor settlement up in the mountains. No one lived here, and the only residents were soldiers camped out at the bottom, standing guard over the road to Lyon.

    "No way!" Rika looked around wildly, as though the entire city was hiding just behind the nearest copse of trees. "Seriously? But there''s nothing here!"

    "There won''t be," said Mash. "Not for another thousand years."

    Suddenly, she stiffened. "There''s another Servant approaching!"

    Emiya and Arash both tensed, prepared to fight, but Boudica waved them both down. "That''s just Spartacus," she told us. "You remember I told you he was here, too, right?"

    "Didn''t you say he was a Berserker?" Emiya asked, because her reassurance didn''t seem to reassure him very much.

    "Yes," she agreed, "but he can still tell friend from foe."

    Emiya eyed her dubiously. "You sound awfully confident about that."

    "Because I''ve fought alongside him almost from the moment I was summoned," was her answer, matter-of-fact. "You can trust that he won''t attack without reason. He probably sensed us and is coming to investigate."

    "Although whether you can communicate with him is another matter entirely," A¨ªfe added dryly.

    I found him now, too, a large, bulky man running up the path that had been hewn out of the forest in front of us. He was not, however, moving anywhere near the speed that Siegfried and the others had run at on our way to Orl¨¦ans at the tail end of the last Singularity, even though he was much faster than an ordinary human, so I wasn''t sure if you could call this kind of pace sedate or not.

    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    When you had a high enough Mover rating, I guess even Olympic record-shattering speeds could classify as a "light jog."

    "You''ve said that sort of thing before," Ritsuka said. "I mean, I guess the name kind of implies that they''re¡­well, insane, but you can still talk to crazy people, can''t you?"

    "Berserkers have a class skill called ''Madness Enhancement,''" I informed him as I tracked our newest ''ally.'' "Depending on how high it is, they might not be able to even think coherently, let alone talk."

    "At Rank B, for reference," said Emiya, "they won''t do anything but grunt and roar at you, and as a Master, getting them to obey without using a Command Spell is impossible."

    "Well, I can''t say I know what rank his Madness Enhancement is at," Boudica admitted, "but Spartacus can definitely do more than just grunt and roar. As for getting him to obey your orders¡­"

    "He''s famous for rebellion," Arash said with a wry shake of his head. "I think it would be hard to get him to obey even if he wasn''t a Berserker."

    The trees ahead of us rustled as something rushed through them, and Mash gasped. "He''s ¡ª"

    My bugs felt the whoosh of the displaced air as Spartacus leapt up above the trees, and he cleared the last few dozen yards between us at speed¡­laughing?

    A beast of a man landed in front of us roughly, wearing a broad grin ¡ª

    "He''s naked!" Rika gasped.

    ¡ª and not much else.

    "I-I think that''s actually a loincloth!" Ritsuka corrected her.

    "He''s almost naked!" Rika said. "A-and he''s¡­actually really muscly, whoa."

    There was no way he was dressed like this in life, I wanted to say. This¡­this wasn''t some ancient Roman loincloth and it wasn''t some kind of strange magical armor like Bradamante''s, this was just bondage gear. Every bit of it, from the mask that covered his entire face with the exception of his eyes and mouth to the straps that criss-crossed over his chest to the metal thong that protected his crotch. The only thing resembling actual armor on his person was the fauld that was attached to his codpiece and the bracers that covered his forearms.

    He was also built like a fucking truck.

    "Spartacus," Boudica greeted him with a smile like an old friend.

    Spartacus eyed us all up, gaze flitting from one person to another, pausing only long enough for a once-over, and the grin never left his face. "More champions!" he crowed delightedly. "More champions invited to this battlefield! You should be pleased, for our oppressors are legion, and they commit unspeakable atrocities as they approach!"

    He threw his arms out. "Come! This is the time of our rebellion! We shall do battle shoulder to shoulder and die gloriously!"

    The twins gaped at him, mouths working but no sound coming out. Even I couldn''t stop myself from staring as I tried to parse¡­whatever that just was.

    I think I was beginning to understand A¨ªfe''s earlier comment about communicating with this guy.

    "Wow," said Boudica appreciatively. "That''s impressive. I''ve never known Spartacus to take a liking to someone so quickly. Not without pouncing on them immediately," she added.

    That was him taking a liking to us?

    "I-if it''s all the same to him, I think I can do without the dying gloriously part," Ritsuka said.

    "I''m too young to die," said Rika weakly, like she was still recovering from the shock.

    Still, the grin never left Spartacus'' face. I honestly didn''t have the faintest clue what must have been going on in his head.

    "Don''t take it too literally," said Boudica. "That''s his way of saying, ''Welcome to the team!'' He''s not actually asking you to die with him side by side."

    But he was still able to communicate, even if it was in a twisted and backwards sort of way, so his Madness Enhancement must have been pretty low. If rank B was where you had no coherence at all, like I had been near the end of Gold Morning, then rank C should be just below that, where you might have just enough coherence to say a few words at a time. Being able to talk in complete sentences, his Madness Enhancement was probably rank D or rank E.

    I squinted at him with my Master''s Clairvoyance, and it turned out, was in for quite a shock.

    "How is he not a gibbering wreck?" I blurted out. "EX? Madness Enhancement EX?"

    I didn''t even know it was possible to have the skill that high.

    Rika''s hand shot into the air.

    "Most skills go from rank E to rank A, Senpai," Mash explained, predicting her question. "When there are special circumstances that make the skill better or when the skill is just that high, ''pluses'' might be added to it. The only time a skill is ranked EX is¡­"

    "When it goes off the scale," Emiya finished for her. "In the case of Spartacus, well, it might be best to think of it as him going so insane that he''s wrapped back around again into a kind of insane sanity. So he''s able to talk, even if what he says doesn''t make sense."

    "Thank you, Emiya," Rika said sarcastically. "That was very helpful."

    Very deliberately, I didn''t look at A¨ªfe, who also had an EX ranked skill. Bloodstained Queen. It had opened up to me after her "test" with Emiya, and if it was half as effective as my Clairvoyance implied, then she really had only been playing with him.

    He''d had the right of it, back in the courtyard. If she really wanted to kill him, he would have been dead.

    "Spartacus is in the same kind of position as I am," Boudica told us. "It''s not that either of us is an ally of Emperor Nero or Rome itself, but we simply can''t stand by while the United Empire attempts to rip the whole thing apart, not when they don''t seem to care whose lives they ruin along the way."

    "The cages are empty," Spartacus said solemnly, even though the smile never left his mouth. "The walls of the coliseum have fallen. My sword is still sharp. Now, the world itself becomes my coliseum."

    That¡­was¡­ I¡­think I might have understood what he was trying to say. Maybe. Probably not.

    "There, you see?" Boudica said, as though that explained everything. "He thinks the same way. That''s why we''re both out here, fighting for Rome."

    "I¡­guess?" Ritsuka hedged uncertainly.

    "Does he come with subtitles?" Rika muttered.

    "You who has sprouted from the fields of rebellion," said Spartacus, "tell me your names. Let us revolt together against the tyranny of the oppressors'' cruel invasion and cry our freedom to the empty heavens."

    "Oh, I forgot to introduce everyone!" Boudica gasped. "I''m so sorry, it slipped my mind!" She turned to us apologetically. "Um, one at a time, please?"

    The twins shared a look and seemed to have a silent debate about which one of them should go first. I held back a sigh.

    "Taylor Hebert," I said shortly. "Master of Chaldea. Team leader."

    Which was the same as saying "the most valuable target in the group," but the twins deferred to me enough that anyone paying any attention at all would know I was the leader in short order. There was no point in hiding it.

    "U-um, I''m Mash Kyrielight," Mash said next, bowing slightly. Considering how sheltered she was and the largely Western cultures represented in Chaldea, I had to wonder where she''d picked up such a distinctly Japanese mannerism. "Shielder class Demi-Servant." She gestured to the little gremlin that had balanced perfectly on her shoulder even when she bowed. "This is Fou."

    "Fou, fou!" it crowed.

    "He''s sort of like a mascot? I mean, he doesn''t have any official position, but he''s been at Chaldea for as long as I can remember."

    "I''m, ah, Ritsuka," Ritsuka said awkwardly. "I don''t know if I technically have any other position than one of Chaldea''s Masters?"

    "Same," said Rika, jerking her thumb at her brother, "only I''m his cute, innocent ¡ª" Ritsuka snorted ¡ª "little twin sister, Rika."

    Emiya huffed, smirking. "Are we all sharing our true names, then? Fine. The name''s Emiya, big guy."

    "And I''m Arash Kamangir," said Arash with a friendly smile. "No need for us to stand on ceremony, right?"

    "Wonderful! Wonderful!" said Spartacus. "There are no Masters and Servants, for we all stand as equals! Together, we shall strike fear into the heart of tyranny!"

    That¡­sounded positive? He wasn''t screaming or attacking anyone and things hadn''t devolved into a fight, so I had to assume that meant he accepted us.

    "I''m glad we can all get along so well," said Boudica, smiling.

    Is that what''s happening here? I wanted to ask.

    "With that said, Spartacus." She turned to face him. "We were on our way back to camp. Could you head back and let the troops know we''ll be there shortly? And that I''m bringing new allies with me. The last thing we need is for anyone to get too hasty and do something that can''t be undone."

    "Hahaha!" Spartacus laughed boisterously. "The seeds of our rebellion have borne fruit! The tyrannous oppressors shall shake so soundly that it will reach the very furthest depths of the underworld! Our allies shall carry their names to the afterlife!"

    "Thank you, I really do appreciate it," said Boudica, and without another word, Spartacus bounded off, back in the direction of the camp.

    "She understood that?" Ritsuka mumbled.

    "Maybe she has some sort of skill that lets her comprehend what he''s saying?" Mash suggested quietly. "A kind of¡­Madness Comprehension or something like that."

    "She doesn''t," Rika confirmed, just as quiet. "I checked with my super special Master Vision."

    And to punctuate herself, she waggled her hands and wiggled her fingers.

    Jazz hands. Of course. Because this was Rika.

    Boudica, having heard them, let out a soft, self-deprecating laugh as she turned to them with a smile. "It''s really not anything that incredible. Once you''ve spent as much time with him as I have, fighting enemy Servants side by side, you just sort of learn to pick out the meaning behind what he''s saying instead of the words themselves."

    I honed in on the particular wording of that.

    "Servants?" I demanded. "As in more than one?"

    "Well, we don''t actually fight all of them," she admitted. "Julius Caesar himself seems to prefer not to engage on the frontlines, even though he''s¡­actually fairly impressive when he does."

    Was that unusual? Julius Caesar was a Roman general. He was a leader of armies, a head of state, not a common foot soldier or a minor officer. It seemed stranger to me the idea that he would fight on the frontlines instead of commanding his soldiers from behind one of the Roman Empire''s famous military formations.

    Then again, his soldiers weren''t Servants, were they? Unless he had another Servant fighting under his command, then the only one at his disposal who could fight Boudica and Spartacus would be Caesar himself.

    "But you''ve fought more than just him?" I pressed.

    "A few," she said as she started walking again. Our group fell into step with her. "I can''t say I recognized any of them, though, and only Caesar and Caligula freely gave their names. I''m sorry, but I just can''t tell you much about them."

    That would have been too convenient, wouldn''t it? I guess it was just like A¨ªfe said earlier: even if certain Noble Phantasms could be recognized on sight because they were simply that famous, most Heroic Spirits wouldn''t know who was who by appearances alone unless they''d known each other in life.

    "Were they Roman?"

    "Yes," she said, and then she backtracked, "or at least they looked it. If they weren''t Roman themselves, then they were definitely using Roman armor and Roman weapons."

    "More Emperors?" asked Ritsuka.

    "It''s possible, but I''m not sure it''s likely," said Arash. "Frankly, I''m doubting there are too many of these ''emperors'' at all. There probably isn''t enough space for all of their egos."

    "A good point, but not one you should rely on," A¨ªfe cut in. "If it would take extraordinary circumstances for such egotistical individuals to overlook their own sense of self-importance, then wouldn''t these be just such extraordinary circumstances to begin with?"

    "I''d call the end of the world pretty extraordinary," Rika muttered.

    "That''s true," Mash agreed thoughtfully, having apparently not heard Rika. "Then, if they''re not Roman emperors, maybe they''re just Roman Servants?"

    "Hm, I hadn''t thought of that," said Emiya. "Well. The famous emperors just tend to overshadow everyone else, don''t they? That doesn''t mean that those emperors are the only ones who ever achieved glory."

    "Roman soldiers, you mean?" Arash clarified. "You know, that makes some sense, doesn''t it? I guess I''m kind of proof positive that it''s possible, aren''t I? After all, I was just a soldier, too."

    "In Rome," A¨ªfe said dryly, "the only difference between one and the other is ambition."

    My lips pursed ¡ª but this was one of those situations where the Romans'' propensity for keeping records actually worked against us, because even if we crossed "Roman Emperors" off the list, that didn''t narrow our possible candidates down at all. There were plenty of soldiers and unit commanders and generals of all kinds who had won glory or infamy over the course of the Roman Empire''s history, and none of them would be someone whose likeness was so well-known that we''d recognize them on sight.

    That was assuming they were even Roman at all, and not foreign Servants who had been handed Roman armor so they could fit into the United Empire''s military units. It certainly sounded like the sort of thing I''d do, if I was in their position.

    "It looks like we won''t know anything for sure until we have to engage them ourselves," I said. "For now, the only thing we can safely assume is that our assumptions are probably wrong."

    "Well, that''s just great," Rika groused. "We''re flying blind and no one gave us a parachute."

    "Your confidence in me is truly inspiring," Emiya drawled. "Truly, Master. I''m absolutely touched by your faith."

    She flipped him the bird.

    "Well, I can understand her worry," Arash said. "It''s hard to prepare for enemies when you don''t know what you''re preparing for."

    "The victorious warrior wins first and then goes to war," Mash recited.

    Emiya grunted. "Sun Tzu again?"

    Mash ducked her head, the tips of her ears turned red from embarrassment. She didn''t answer.

    "No, it''s not that I don''t understand, either." He shook his head. "But in a normal Grail War, this is how things would be. You, your Servant, and six enemy Masters commanding six enemy Servants whose classes, skills, Noble Phantasms, and true names are completely unknown. Knowing who you''re fighting for longer than the instant it takes for them to call their Noble Phantasm''s true name is a rarity."

    He went on, "In a sense, Chaldea has been spoiled. For both the Fuyuki and Orl¨¦ans Singularities, you knew who your ultimate enemy was fairly quickly, so you knew who you had to beat to fix everything. Here¡­ Well, we might not know who has the Grail until we face Romulus himself, and if we get it wrong, we''ll be deep behind enemy lines having killed their great, celebrated leader."

    "Thank you, Emiya," Rika gritted out, "that''s exactly what I wanted to be thinking about."

    "That''s why we have to talk to Emperor Nero," I reminded them both. "If Nero or any of the imperial generals knows more about who and what we''re facing, then we won''t have to take risks like fighting Romulus without knowing if he even has the Grail."

    "As I said before, Emperor Nero is on the way here," said Boudica. "I''m sorry, though. I''m afraid even the Praetorian Guard''s best horses are only normal, mortal horses, so it will take almost a week for them to arrive. In the meantime ¡ª"

    "We''re here," I concluded for her.

    And as we rounded the next curve in the path, up ahead, it opened out into a clearing. The low hum of men''s voices drifted over to our group, indistinct. I''d already tagged each and every one of them with a bug the instant we were in range, all four-hundred-sixty-seven of them, milling about as they kept the camp in as good a condition as could be expected.

    Boudica turned to us with a smile. "Welcome to the Gaul Expeditionary Force, everyone. It''s not much, but I''ll do my best to make it feel as close to home as I can."

 Chapter XLIII: Ave Caesar

    Chapter XLIII: Ave Caesar

    "I have to say, you found those crabs much faster than I was expecting. You caught me quite off guard with the suddenness of it, I hadn''t prepared to receive them that soon."

    "It would have been much harder if we had landed on course," I commented mildly.

    Da Vinci laughed, a little forced. "Yes, well, I''m afraid I''m no closer to knowing why that occurred than I was a few hours ago. Or rather, from your perspective, a few days ago."

    "It''s fine." I brushed off the implied apology. It wasn''t fine, but there wasn''t anything either of us could do about it. What was done was done. "I''m more concerned with whether or not it will happen again. If A¨ªfe hadn''t been here, we would have landed far behind enemy lines with only the United Empire to tell us what was going on."

    Da Vinci grimaced. "Yes, well, that certainly would have been problematic, wouldn''t it? If you''re asking me for guarantees, however, then I can''t give you any. Not yet. If we can figure out what went wrong, then we can fine tune things for future Singularities, but no matter how much preparation we do, things will get less and less certain the further into the past the Singularity is situated."

    My lips pulled into a thin line. It wasn''t the answer I wanted to hear, but when it came down to it, I preferred it when Da Vinci was honest with me instead of trying to soothe me with a pleasant lie. She probably knew that, which is why I was pretty sure she''d never lied to me, not when it really mattered.

    She was perfectly okay with deceiving me in other ways, though, or just not telling me things she wanted to keep secret.

    "Any news on that end, then?"

    It wasn''t entirely relevant to now, but knowing more about where and when we''d be going after this Singularity was solved might inform some of our choices about which contracts to pick up while we were here.

    "Nothing substantial," Da Vinci said. "We''ve been getting some clearer readings on the next Singularity you''re likely to tackle ¡ª the one in the middle of the ocean? But although we''ve managed to narrow down the era to the latter half of the sixteenth century, the other data is harder to interpret."

    I nodded. It would have been better to know the where just as much as the when, but if it was situated over a hundred years after Orl¨¦ans, then we could at least be secure in knowing our connection with Chaldea would be better.

    "Do you have things ready, now? I''ve gathered as many bugs as I safely can in this area."

    She nodded back. "Strictly speaking," she said, "this might classify as an unnecessary energy expenditure, but, well, it''s for Director Animusphere in the first place, so she isn''t here to yell at us, and there''s no one outside to come in and audit our books right now, so it should be fine, as long as we don''t do too many of these."

    "I would have been perfectly happy to do this the way we did the crabs," I reminded her.

    Da Vinci smiled wryly, cheeks dimpling.

    "Yes, but it''s much harder to lose a crab the size of your hand that will die after a few hours outside the water than it is to lose thousands of insects who might find their way into our food stores. It''s more secure to send you the canisters and have you pack them full."

    A perfectly valid point. Still. At some point, I wanted to set up a terrarium in one of the empty workshops at Chaldea. Having some spiders to weave with would give me more to do in the stretches of downtime between Singularities.

    Getting Marie her body back was just more important, right now.

    "Ready when you are, then."

    "Then, in three¡­two¡­one¡­"

    A heartbeat passed, and then, from Da Vinci''s end, a neutral, computerized voice announced the successful transfer. Barely a moment later, three canisters appeared out of thin air, things of solid, reinforced glass with bulky caps made of some kind of sturdy, black plastic. They were situated, perfectly upright, in a triangle around me, each exactly six feet away in each direction, and they were about as wide as I was from shoulder to shoulder and tall enough to reach my diaphragm.

    When I went over to one and inspected it, I found a handle that turned and a button of some kind on the top, which meant it was probably the "lid."

    A yank on the handle did nothing. A twist and a yank had no effect either, and it was sealed on tight. My lips pursed. On my third try, I pushed the button in and twisted the handle, and this time, I was rewarded with the hiss of escaping air as the seal was broken and the lid released.

    "You know," said Da Vinci, "you could have asked Mash to help."

    Mash, who had remained mostly silent since the beginning of the conversation, startled at being addressed.

    "I-I''m sorry!" she stammered. "I, um¡­ Miss Taylor¡­looked like she had it handled, and¡­"

    "You could also just have told me how it worked," I said to Da Vinci.

    "Now, where''s the fun in that?" Da Vinci asked, grinning. "Have you no sense of adventure? No urge to explore and discover?"

    I arched an eyebrow. "The mechanism on a canister?"

    "Well, maybe not," Da Vinci said wryly. "In any case, please fill those three canisters as full as you can make them. Don''t worry too much about some of the samples dying. The miniscule amount of time they''ll have to decompose is essentially insignificant for my purposes."

    "Right."

    I pulled in the bugs I''d gathered just for this, and my swarm arose from our surroundings ¡ª wasps and bees and butterflies, all sorts of fliers, and in their grips, they carried passengers that couldn''t fly, the slowest, most cumbersome insects that they could still lift. For the remainder that outnumbered the fliers, they marched in neat lines and thick columns, moving as an orderly mass of chitin, legs, and antennae through the jungle of grass.

    Mash squeaked and tried to get away, but unfortunately for her, my swarm came from all directions, leaving a clear spot only for her and her shield. She was hemmed in and there wasn''t anywhere for her to go that wouldn''t put her directly in their path.

    Sorry, Mash.

    I felt a little bad for making her so uncomfortable, but since there wasn''t anything else to be done about it, the only thing I really could do was try to be as quick as I could.

    The other containers, I unsealed as the first of my swarm stuffed themselves into the one I''d already opened. Then, the streams split into three different groups. One made their way for one container, one for the second, and the third for the third. They crawled up the glass sides and flew over the lip and threw themselves into the canisters as though sacrificing themselves to appease some cruel and unforgiving god.

    And I guess I was the god in that situation.

    "That is as fascinating as it is unsettling," Da Vinci remarked with morbid interest. "Your control of insects is so fine and so absolute¡­ If only they weren''t creepy crawlies, yes?"

    "It took me a while to get used to it, too," I admitted. "But when your power is bugs, there isn''t much other choice."

    Even now, some distant, buried instinct compelled me to be revolted by the squirming black bodies writhing inside those canisters. The difference was, I had long since learned how to suppress that instinctive reaction to the point that I almost didn''t notice it anymore.

    "That should be enough," Da Vinci eventually said.

    The canisters were filled almost all the way to the tops, but there was still enough space that I could have squeezed more inside if I had to.

    "Should be?" I asked.

    Mash, who had been watching the entire thing, looked queasy. If her shield wasn''t so necessary to keeping a stable connection to Chaldea, I would''ve done this without her. Unfortunately, while the Roman camp had been conveniently settled within walking distance of the ley line that would one day sit beneath the church we had lived out of during our time in Thiers, that shield was still necessary to transfer things to and from Chaldea itself.

    "It''s more than enough," Da Vinci corrected herself. "Frankly, the third canister is just a precaution and isn''t strictly necessary."

    "Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it?"

    Da Vinci smiled. "Precisely." Her eyes flickered to the side as she checked something on her monitor, and then she added, "Arash should be back soon, by the way."

    I nodded, even as I set about closing the canisters back up. "Right. Did you get anything useful?"

    "Not as much as I''d hoped," she told me ruefully. She heaved a sigh. "Well, it seems that because Servants are anchored more to you Masters than they are to the Singularity, they don''t make good enough reference points for our sensors."

    I frowned. The second canister hissed as the lid sealed tight.

    "You didn''t get anything?"

    She held up two fingers. "As far as we can tell, there are at least two Servants in that direction, both of them with strong Saint Graphs. Any more than that, and I can only give you my guesses. At the very least, they seem to be separated enough that you might be able to take one down before the other appears to help."

    My lips pursed. The third canister closed with another hiss.

    "Any chance one of them is a stray we could recruit?"

    "With how close they still seem to be? Almost none." Da Vinci shook her head. "It''s just my speculation, but I would have to say that they''re a singular force splitting up to accomplish separate missions. Given their location and the direction they likely came from, it''s a strong possibility one of them is Julius Caesar."

    "Which makes this the best opportunity we might get to take him out," I reasoned, and then I stepped back, putting some space between me and the containers. "Ready on this end."

    I dispersed the rest of my swarm back into the background, sending the ones left to pick up where and what they''d been doing before I dragged them in so Da Vinci could collect her samples. Mash watched them go uneasily ¡ª now that it wasn''t the middle of a battle, it seemed their presence bothered her more.

    "Retrieving the canisters in three¡­two¡­one¡­"

    The canisters blurred around the edges, and then they vanished. From the background on Da Vinci''s end, a cool, computerized voice announced, "RETRIEVAL SUCCESSFUL."

    A second time, she looked over at something on her console, and a pleased smile broke out over her face.

    "They''ve arrived without a hitch. Naturally, since I''m the one who prepared them," Da Vinci said. She turned back to me. "As for going after Julius Caesar ¡ª if it even is him, he won''t be a pushover. He''s been summoned into Roman territory, after all. Having said that, I know you better than to think something as simple as a challenge would give you pause. The only reason I''m not more against the idea is that you have quite a competent team with you."

    "Does Doctor Roman know?" Mash asked.

    "Romani is currently out cold in his bed," Da Vinci said matter-of-factly. "It took a lot of convincing, but I eventually managed to make him see my perspective on the matter, so he''s getting some sleep while things are still relatively calm."

    And that meant he wasn''t awake to flip out about us taking what he would view as a huge risk. Well played, Da Vinci.

    "I see." Mash nodded serenely. "That''s good. Doctor Roman needs to take better care of himself."

    "If only it were as easy as having you tell him so," Da Vinci said wryly. "Well, I''d better go see to those samples and start the printing process. Between the crabs you provided earlier, Taylor, and those bugs now, I should have enough organic material to start building Director Animusphere her new body."

    A jolt of excitement shot through my stomach. "Good."

    "The on-duty staff will continue to monitor your condition in the meantime," she went on, "and Bradamante and Siegfried remain on standby, in case of emergency. As for your operation against Julius Caesar and whoever that second Servant might be¡­ Well, I don''t have any practical means of stopping you, so I''ll leave the planning and execution up to your judgment. Just be careful."

    "Understood."

    She smiled. "Good grief, it seems Romani is starting to rub off on me, too." She shook her head. "Oh well. Ciao ciao!"

    And with a final, cheery wave, her image blinked out and the hologram disappeared.

    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    There was a brief moment of silence where nothing happened, like Mash was waiting for someone else to contact us, and then she walked over to her shield, stepping gingerly towards it as she looked for any bugs underfoot, and picked it up. She spent a short few seconds checking it over as surreptitiously as she could, and I didn''t have the heart to comment about how it was bug free, because I wasn''t sure how to do it without embarrassing her.

    Once she was done, she turned back to me. "Miss Taylor."

    I jerked my chin back over my shoulder. "Let''s get back to the rest of the team and let them know. Arash should be there pretty soon, too."

    She nodded. "Right."

    I spun on my heel and started walking back to camp, and Mash fell into step behind me as I brought the bugs at camp back to the forefront of my attention. The twins remained where I''d left them ¡ª talking and bonding with the soldiers under Boudica''s command ¡ª while Emiya cooked lunch with Boudica herself over the firepit. A¨ªfe was having sparring matches on a clear patch with Spartacus while a group of soldiers watched on, having doffed her armor and the outer layer of her clothes.

    Arash hadn''t entered my range yet, but he''d only gone out a few miles, so it shouldn''t be much longer before he did.

    After a short trek through the forest, we stepped back into the clearing that held the camp, and Mash followed me as I made a beeline for the twins. A few of the soldiers turned to look, but when they saw it was just us coming back, they nodded and went back to what they''d been doing prior. Mostly, that was loitering, chatting with their comrades, or servicing their gear.

    The twins had gathered a little following while we''d been gone, a small group of the younger, less experienced soldiers of the Gaul Expeditionary Force, who were listening as Ritsuka and Rika regaled them with tales of their childhood.

    "She pushed me!" Ritsuka was saying.

    "You were just standing there staring!" Rika retorted defensively. "If it was up to you, you never would''ve jumped in! Of course I pushed you!"

    "I didn''t know how to swim! I could have drowned!"

    "Oh, come on, Onii-chan! Mom and Dad were right there. If they seriously thought you were in danger, they would have jumped in to get you right away!"

    "What if they weren''t in time?"

    Rika snorted. "People don''t drown that quickly, Onii-chan. Besides." She flapped her arms suggestively. "You had floaties on."

    "Floaties?" one of the soldiers asked.

    "They''re these sort of¡­tubes filled with air," Ritsuka explained, gesturing with his hands. "You put them around your upper arms and they''re supposed to keep you afloat in water."

    "Wouldn''t that make it harder to swim?" the soldier nearest to them ¡ª Marcus, he''d introduced himself as, a relatively young, recently promoted centurion ¡ª asked.

    "Of course it does," said Rika. "But this big baby was too scared to learn how to swim properly until middle school. It''s one of the few things I learned faster than he did."

    "Well," I chimed in wryly, "they do say that girls mature faster than boys."

    The soldiers around them laughed at Ritsuka''s expense, although Ritsuka himself didn''t look particularly offended or embarrassed.

    "No wonder Senpai''s such a badass, then!" Rika said brightly.

    "A badass?" Marcus asked curiously.

    Rika nodded vigorously and made an energetic thrusting motion with one hand, fingers curled like she was holding a knife. "She killed a dragon by stabbing it in the eye!"

    Impressed murmurs circulated the group, and some of them looked at me with new respect. Others seemed more skeptical, like they couldn''t believe a beanpole like me could actually do that. Or rather, that a tall, slender woman had the strength to do any such thing.

    Welcome to the fantastic sexism of imperial Rome.

    It wasn''t like the rest of this era was much better, though.

    "What about you, Marcus?" Ritsuka asked with a friendly smile. "I mean, to make Centurion so young, you must have some pretty good stories, too."

    "Well, I can''t say I''ve ever killed a dragon," Marcus said with a humble laugh. "I''m not sure anything I''ve done can really compare to something like that, either, but¡­"

    "But?" Rika prodded.

    "There''s a story that''s been passed down in my family for generations. About a great warrior from the time of the first Caesar." The more he talked, the more animated Marcus became. "They say he was left with his cohort to defend a gate against a great army. Outnumbered, outflanked, and outmaneuvered, he and his men fought a desperate battle just to hold the enemy off."

    Marcus waved his arm as though swinging a sword. "He hacked and he slashed and he stabbed until his sword was blunt, and then he used his knife to carve off his enemies'' hands. As his comrades died around him, he deflected numerous javelin throws and he blocked countless volleys of arrows with his shield until a single lucky shot made it through and pierced his eye."

    "Geez," said Rika. "What a way to go!"

    Marcus shook his head, grinning broadly. "He didn''t die!"

    "He survived an arrow to the eye?" Ritsuka asked, impressed.

    "Guess he wasn''t reincarnated as a dragon in France, then," said Rika.

    I arched an eyebrow at her, but she just grinned cheekily at me.

    "No, he ripped the arrow from his own eye," and here, Marcus mimed the action himself, "and kept fighting! For hours and hours, he stood as a bulwark before the enemy army, even as his own comrades dwindled, until at last, the fatigue started to wear him down and he couldn''t stand anymore. Seeing him weakened and defeated, the enemy commanders called for their soldiers to stand down and walked over to this man to offer him terms for his surrender."

    Marcus''s mouth pulled into a giant grin. "And he ripped his blunt sword from its sheath, slashed open the one''s throat and split the other in half!"

    "Hardcore!" Rika said appreciatively.

    "The battle continued for some time after that," Marcus went on, "but he and his men held the line until the end, and because of their bravery and dedication, Caesar was able to soundly defeat Pompey mere days later. For his service to the Legion, he was named Primus Pilus, Caesar''s most trusted subordinate."

    "I dunno, Senpai," said Rika, grinning at me impishly. "I think that might beat out stabbing a dragon in the brains."

    Somehow, if she knew half of the other things I''d gotten up to during my career, I think she might have changed her tune again. An arrow to the eye was one thing, but surviving getting sheared in half was a bit more impressive, in my humble opinion.

    "I talked to Da Vinci," I said, changing the subject. "She didn''t get the results she was hoping for, but Arash should be able to tell us more. He should be here ¡ª"

    Just then, as though summoned by my words, a small, human sized object moving at speed entered the edges of my range, disturbing the surrounding bugs with his wake.

    "¡ª soon."

    The smiles and cheer evaporated like so much boiling water, traded in for stoic professionalism.

    A¨ªfe, I began across the bond to our newest contractee.

    Just a moment, Taylor, was her reply.

    Across the camp, A¨ªfe suddenly shifted her stance and took Spartacus head on, grappling him about the waist so she could throw him to the ground with an echoing thud. She twisted around him, grabbing his arm and yanking it painfully behind his back as she knelt on his spine ¡ª a pin if ever there was one.

    Spartacus laughed all the while, delighted, like he felt none of the pain at all.

    "That''s my win," she declared with her trademark grin.

    "Glorious! Glorious!" Spartacus shouted. "This exquisite pain is surely a sign of my love! More! More!"

    "Sorry, big guy," said A¨ªfe as she stood. "Duty calls."

    "Then it is time to face the oppressors!" Spartacus leapt to his feet, even as his arm snapped back into place with a meaty pop. "Truly, a glorious day! My coliseum grows ever larger!"

    "Sure."

    The group around them began to disperse, and the two of them started over towards us.

    "Boudica! Emiya!" I called over to them. "Arash is back!"

    Along the pathway cut through the trees that we''d used to make it here, Arash decelerated and approached the entrance to the camp at a lighter jog so that he didn''t bowl anyone over on his way in. The soldiers keeping watch let him pass without incident.

    Emiya and Boudica both looked up at us at my words, then over to Arash, then huddled together to murmur something back and forth before beckoning the camp cook over to keep watch on what they were preparing.

    Well. They weren''t the only ones cooking, but they were the ones who cooked for us and our most adjacent squad. I didn''t imagine it was impossible for them to feed four-hundred-sixty-seven people on their own, but I doubted it would be easy or convenient.

    They made their way over towards us and arrived shortly before Arash did.

    "Lunch will be ready shortly," Boudica promised. "All that''s left now is for it to cook for a little while."

    "Oh, oh, what''s on the menu?" Rika asked excitedly. "Some more tempura, maybe? Sushi? Don''t tell me, okonomiyaki?"

    "Do you like crab, Master?" Emiya asked, smirking.

    Rika''s face twisted with disgust. "Oh god, please don''t tell me¡­"

    "He''s teasing you," Boudica promised her. "It''s just a normal stew."

    "Do you have something against crabs?" Marcus asked curiously.

    She turned to him with a haunted look. "If I never have to see another crab ever again, it''ll be too soon."

    "No crab legs, then?" Emiya teased her.

    "If I throw up, it''s going all over those fancy boots of yours," Rika moaned. "How much are you gonna like those crab legs when they''re painting your shoes green?"

    "Enough joking around, you two," I told them both, and then I turned to Arash as he swerved through the crowd to reach our group. "Arash."

    Behind me, while she thought I couldn''t see her, Rika stuck her tongue out at Emiya.

    "Master," he replied solemnly. His eyes flickered across the group, then to A¨ªfe and Spartacus as they joined us, too. "Everyone."

    "Da Vinci told me there were at least two Servants around where you scouted," I began.

    Instantly, everyone straightened.

    "Two Servants?" Mash asked. "Then, the United Empire is making a move¡­"

    Arash nodded. "I understand she didn''t get as clear a reading as she wanted, but I managed to get a good enough vantage point to see what we''re looking at." He turned to me. "Master, can you bring up a map?"

    I held out my wrist and activated the map function on my communicator, producing a hologram that depicted the local area. Arash studied it for a long, quiet moment, and then reached out with an index finger.

    "Their main camp is right here, where the land starts to even out," he told us, "about forty-seven kilometers northeast of us." His finger swung down to land on the dot of a town or city. "Which puts them about ten kilometers north-northwest of this settlement, Rodumna. Right now, they don''t seem all that interested in it, so we can probably count on them leaving it alone."

    "It''s been a shipping hub for as long as I can remember," Marcus added helpfully.

    "So they''d prefer to keep it intact for their own use later on," Emiya commented, nodding. "That''s why they''re leaving it alone for now."

    "Right." Arash moved his finger up and towards the east. "There''s also a force of about twenty men heading this direction. If I had to guess, they''re headed here." He tapped at a point on the map, marked by the rough, jagged lines of higher elevation. A mountain or large hill. "There''s a pass here that will take them straight through." He swung his finger around again and settled it on another dot. "It''ll put them in position to sack Lyon again."

    "Oh no," Mash gasped.

    "We have to stop them," Ritsuka said insistently.

    "Don''t get ahead of yourselves," I told him calmly.

    "Senpai!" he protested.

    I ignored him and turned back to Arash. "Do we know where these two Servants are?"

    Arash nodded and tapped the spot where he''d said their main camp was. "There''s a token force here holding camp under a ranking officer, but they''re supported by a Servant, a large fellow in ornate armor, red clothing, and wearing a laurel crown."

    My eyes went a little wide. Given what we knew, there was only one Heroic Spirit that could possibly be.

    "Julius Caesar," A¨ªfe said with relish, her mouth pulling into a vicious grin.

    And it seemed she had reached the same conclusion I had.

    "Most likely," Arash agreed. He tapped the location of the other group. "The other Servant looks to be leading the attack force, another officer in Roman armor and wearing Roman colors. This one, I''m¡­less certain on. Frankly? The whole group was moving way too fast to be ordinary humans, but not so fast that they could outpace us if we chased them, so we may actually be looking at a Servant who can duplicate himself into lesser copies."

    That¡­sounded sufficiently bullshit to be a Noble Phantasm, actually. But what feat or legend did it represent, and who did it belong to? The trouble was, considering Rome''s emphasis on the military, most of Rome''s famous war heroes could feasibly have just such a Noble Phantasm.

    "A guy who copies himself?" Rika squeaked. "What is this, X-Men?"

    "About twenty, you said?" A¨ªfe asked thoughtfully.

    "Give or take."

    "Do you have any idea about who it might be?" I asked.

    Arash shook his head. "No. Sorry, it doesn''t ring a bell."

    I turned to Boudica, but she just smiled apologetically and shook her head, too.

    Emiya shrugged. "Ancient Rome wasn''t a field of study I focused on."

    A¨ªfe frowned at me. "No. There''s no one I''m familiar with who would fit that description."

    Spartacus laughed. "The oppressors are legion! The oppressors are faceless! Who would recognize the oppressors except by their cruelty and vice?"

    "That means no," A¨ªfe said dryly.

    "Unfortunately," Boudica added.

    Yeah, that''s about what I thought it meant.

    "If they''re heading to Lyon ¡ª to Lugdunum ¡ª then they''re probably going to attempt to take the city back," I reasoned.

    "Or it''s a trap," Emiya cut in. "They might be trying to make us split up. Divide and conquer. In that case, we''d be walking right into it."

    "So we should just let them attack the city?" Ritsuka demanded hotly.

    "No," I said. "No, we probably shouldn''t, trap or not. If they''re Servants under the United Empire''s banner, then we''re going to have to face them eventually, whether we like it or not. It would be better to do that now, when they''re isolated, than let them return to their capital and bolster the enemy Servants we''ll have to face there."

    Emiya made an approving sound. "So we take them out one at a time and whittle down the enemy forces before we try going after the head of the snake. There''s just one problem."

    "Aside from your mixed metaphors?" Rika snarked.

    Emiya ignored her and looked straight at me. "If the enemy has the Grail," he began, "then what stops them from summoning yet more Servants to their side?"

    My lips pursed. Jeanne Alter had attempted the same thing, hadn''t she? And I''d made the argument back then that the possibility made it necessary to go after her as soon as we could.

    It applied here, too, but it was much trickier. One, because we didn''t know who had the Grail, or at least control over it, not with anything close to certainty, and two, because we weren''t just facing a single Servant leading a small squad of other Servants and an army of mindless wyverns, we were facing a well-oiled machine that had successfully subverted half of one of the largest empires to ever exist whose current numbers we didn''t know for sure, let alone future numbers.

    "And how would they control these Servants?" A¨ªfe countered. "So far, they''ve had the fortune of summoning Heroic Spirits that would agree with their position. Do you think that might last forever, even as they summon yet more Servants to shore up their numbers?"

    "Without Command Spells, they don''t really have any means of exerting control," Arash said. The twins glanced down at their hands and the red markings emblazoned across the backs. "In the last Singularity, Jeanne Alter seemed to have used some sort of¡­Madness Enhancement type skill to twist her Servants into following her. Right, Master?"

    "Dracul said about as much, yeah," I agreed. "And it fits with our encounters with her other Servants."

    "But that won''t work in an organized military," Arash went on. "Not if you want them to follow orders instead of going off to do their own things. Spartacus is one thing, because he wants to be here, but having all of their Servants controlled by a leash as unreliable as Madness Enhancement¡­"

    "It wouldn''t work in the long term," Boudica concluded.

    "And even if they can just keep summoning Servants," said Ritsuka, "what''s to stop them from doing that anyway?"

    Emiya dipped his head, conceding the point.

    The answer was probably nothing. Maybe their Grail had a limit on the amount of mana it could produce at one time, because as I understood it, that was one of the limiting factors on the ones we had recovered from Fuyuki and Orl¨¦ans. But even if it did, we couldn''t realistically know what that limit was, so it was functionally limitless as far as we were concerned.

    "Then even if it''s part of their plan, we have to split up and take both of them out," I said. "One team is going to have to go after the attack force to intercept them before they make it to Lyon, and one team is going to have to go and take out Julius Caesar."

    "But who should go after which Servant?" Mash asked worriedly. "Senpai¡­ Miss Taylor, is it really okay to split the Masters up again?"

    I looked at the twins, but there was no sign of fear on either of their faces. Anxiety, a little bit. Nervousness, some. But outright fear, there was none of it.

    Their expressions told me they were perfectly willing to take the fight to either of the enemy Servants. Even if they were afraid, even if they were scared of screwing up, all I had to do was say they had to go and they''d go.

    "No," I said. "However we look at it, the attack force is only meant to be a distraction. That means that the Servant leading it probably isn''t all that large a threat. We have six Servants here ourselves, counting Mash. The bulk of our strength should be focused on Julius Caesar, because he''s definitely the larger threat."

    "So we send someone who can handle the attack force alone and dedicate everyone else to Caesar," said Emiya. He rolled his shoulders. "Alright. I think I can take care of a single Servant and his army of clones."

    "You''ll never get to find out, because I think it should be Boudica and Spartacus who go."

    Emiya''s mouth dropped open and his eyebrows rose towards his hairline, utterly gobsmacked.

    "Senpai," said Rika, "I think Emiya is trying to catch some flies!"

    Emiya''s mouth snapped shut with an audible click, and then, in a voice almost an octave higher, he let out a strangled, "What?"

    "The ones who handle the attack force," I repeated. "We''ll send Boudica and Spartacus."

    "I''m not objecting," Boudica began, "but why us?"

    "This unknown attacker is likely to fight like a well-oiled machine, especially if his squad is all copies of himself," I reasoned. "I don''t doubt Emiya''s competence, but it''s better to send a group that can also cover each other''s weaknesses. You and Spartacus have been fighting side by side since you were summoned. You probably won''t be better coordinated than them, but you only need to be coordinated enough to not be overwhelmed by theirs."

    With Boudica to focus on defense and Spartacus on attack, they should be able to cover each other''s weaknesses enough to handle this mystery Servant and his Noble Phantasm. Whoever this mystery Servant was, he would undoubtedly be a Roman hero with a distinguished military career, made stronger by being summoned in the Roman Empire.

    But Spartacus too was a Roman hero summoned in the Empire''s height, and he only got stronger the more he was injured. With Boudica to protect him from getting killed in a single hit, the worst case scenario should still see him become a terrifying combination of Crawler and Lung.

    "I agree," Arash chimed in. "We still don''t know the limits of this Noble Phantasm. It''s better to play it safe and send at least two Servants to fight him."

    "Leaving the rest of us to handle Caesar?" A¨ªfe drawled. She arched an eyebrow. "Don''t you think four Servants to take him on is overkill? One should be enough."

    "I''m guessing you think you''re the one?" Emiya asked, smirking.

    "Of course," she replied. "Do you think a single man, Servant or not, is more impressive than the sorts of foes I felled in life? Knowing, as you do, exactly how it was I acquired my horses?"

    "I guess you have a point," said Emiya, shrugging. "After all, it wasn''t a man, but a single teenage boy who handed you your only defeat."

    If A¨ªfe''s glare could kill, Emiya would have keeled over on the spot.

    "Ouch," Rika muttered. "I felt that one."

    "Whether A¨ªfe can take him by herself or not," I cut in, attempting to forestall further argument, "we''re not taking any chances with the most famous Roman general to ever live. Especially not if he has reinforcements that he can command."

    I jabbed my finger at the map and marked out the spot where Arash had said their main camp was.

    "While Boudica and Spartacus engage the Servant moving to sack Lyon, the rest of us will launch an attack on their main camp. Our objective is the United Empire Servant Julius Caesar."

    I swept my gaze across the assembled group, from the Servants to the twins to the Roman soldiers who were gathered around us.

    "One way or another, we''re taking him down."

 Chapter XLIV: RÃ­gan Fuilech

    Chapter XLIV: R¨ªgan Fuilech

    The ride was different the second time.

    Maybe it was the keener sense of purpose, the fact there was a more concrete goal ahead of me than "go here and wait a week," or maybe it was just because A¨ªfe''s chariot was much more crowded when it had to accommodate her, three Masters, and one Demi-Servant in full plate, and that made the whole thing feel more grounded. Maybe it was some combination of the two.

    Or maybe it was just that I was too focused on the fight ahead to think about the fact that Arash wasn''t standing next to me with his hand on my back and there were no safeties on this chariot.

    The rush of bugs entering and leaving my range so quickly was still stomach-churning, but it was easier to distract myself with thoughts of our enemy as I imagined different scenarios for what kind of opponent he would be. The biggest sticking point, of course, was that Arash didn''t have Master''s Clairvoyance, which meant that he hadn''t seen what class of Servant Caesar was, so all I had was a few educated guesses to help me there.

    We could probably rule out Berserker, just by the nature of the class. I mean, who would summon a general as famous as Julius Caesar and then hobble him with a skill as detrimental as Madness Enhancement? There wasn''t a point summoning a genius tactician and then lobotomizing him.

    Caster, I wanted to say, was also out. Julius Caesar had no magic in his legend, and while that didn''t automatically shut him out of the Caster class, he didn''t fit any of the nonstandard Caster roles we''d encountered so far. Not like Gilles or Shakespeare or C¨²chulainn had.

    Saber¡­ I remembered there being something about him owning a famous sword, so that was a "maybe," but in Rome, what would he be remembered for best? Not his swordsmanship, but his leadership, his strategic acumen. Saber wasn''t impossible, just unlikely.

    Lancer and Archer I wanted to rule out just because I couldn''t imagine what his Noble Phantasm would be in either of those classes. He was definitely too early for something as ridiculous as the Lance of Longinus.

    Assassin, there was almost no chance. It would have to be in a twisted, fucked up way, like he "assassinated" the Roman Republic so the Empire could be born.

    Of the standard classes, that left Rider. Again, I couldn''t think of anything that would serve as a Noble Phantasm for that class. He didn''t really have any famous horses or chariots. A cavalry charge? It seemed like a stretch, but it wasn''t out of the realm of possibility. If playwrights could be Casters and a guy who reproduced bladed weapons was an Archer, then it stood to reason there was some flexibility in how the classes worked.

    My money was on what the primers back at Chaldea had called an "Extra" class, like Jeanne in Orl¨¦ans. A Ruler, with a skillset that focused on coordinating his subordinates and perhaps a Noble Phantasm based upon the crossing of the Rubicon.

    I didn''t like it, but there was no way to be sure of anything until we met him in the flesh, so to speak, so our plans had been necessarily vague and flexible. At the very least, we were bringing enough firepower between A¨ªfe, Arash, and Emiya that we should be able to take him out without too much trouble no matter what class he wound up being.

    Beep-beep-beep!

    My communicator chimed to let me know we''d reached our intended destination.

    "A¨ªfe!" I shouted over the wind, and then immediately felt a little silly when I could have just projected my thoughts along the bond she now shared with us three Masters.

    Nonetheless, she heard me, because she pulled on the reigns, and her horses neighed as they slowed first to a trot and then to a stop. Without the momentum to steady things, the rest of us lurched to the side and had to grab the railing to keep from being pitched over the edge.

    "Whoa," Rika mumbled.

    "Are you okay, Mash?" Ritsuka asked.

    "F-fine, Senpai," Mash answered.

    "Arash," I barked out.

    Immediately, he materialized behind us, and the twins jumped at the suddenness of it.

    "We''re here," I told him, perhaps unnecessarily.

    He nodded and cast his gaze around, taking in the forest around us. Scrutinizing his sniper''s nest.

    "Good cover," he commented. "Elevation''s good for my sight-lines. I''ll set up a good position so I can cover you."

    "You can see him from all the way over here?" Rika asked, awed.

    "Well, not from here, exactly," Arash allowed with a shake of his head. "But once I get a clear line of sight, I should have a good enough angle to keep an eye on everything, yes. As long as they catch up quickly enough, I should even be able to keep an eye on Boudica and Spartacus."

    When he made the suggestion earlier, I finally got the joke from a few days back, that knowing smile when Emiya bragged about being able to pick out buttons on a shirt at four kilometers. In hindsight, I should have made the connection sooner, because I''d specifically looked him up during our month-long break after Orl¨¦ans, sparse as his legend actually was.

    Arash''s range wasn''t measured in kilometers. It was measured in leagues.

    "Wow," Rika breathed. She peered down the side of the mountain, like if she just squinted and strained her eyes hard enough, she''d be able to see that far, too. "Archer Servants sure are impressive, aren''t they? Hey, Emiya! Can you see that far, too?"

    Emiya appeared off to the side and coughed awkwardly into one hand. "Well. My range isn''t quite that far, no, but I make up for it in other ways."

    Like being able to reproduce Noble Phantasms. I hadn''t forgotten how his alternate self had tried to kill us by firing swords shaped like arrows from his bow. We hadn''t seen our Emiya try any such thing so far, but that didn''t mean he wasn''t just as capable of it.

    "We need to keep moving," I said, steering us back onto the matter at hand. "Arash ¡ª"

    "I''m your overwatch," he agreed. "Like I said, I''ll keep an eye on things from here and lend you some long range support, but don''t be afraid to call me with a Command Spell if things get too rough, Master."

    "You needn''t worry," A¨ªfe said coolly. "Nothing a mere Roman general can bring to bear is enough to get through me."

    Some part of me ¡ª perhaps the tattered remnant of the little girl who had dreamed of flying and beating up bad guys ¡ª wanted to believe that. Unfortunately, I had made a habit over the course of my career of defeating those who were supposed to be all but invincible, from Lung to Alexandria to Scion himself. I didn''t have it in me to just trust her word and her strength alone, no matter how impressive it might have been.

    For better or for worse, it didn''t get more impressive than casually erasing continents off the face of the planet.

    "I''ll keep that in mind," I promised Arash.

    A short huff of air left A¨ªfe''s nostrils, but she didn''t otherwise comment.

    Arash gave me an answering nod, and then his bow materialized in his hand and he leapt up into the canopy of the trees. A moment later, there wasn''t even the rustle of the branches to mark his passing, like he had vanished completely.

    "Let''s get going," I said into the silence that followed.

    "Right." Mash nodded, and her grip on the rail of the chariot tightened. "We need to go and face Julius Caesar, or else Miss Boudica and Spartacus''s efforts keeping the assault team busy will be for nothing."

    Ritsuka and Rika, both serious-faced, nodded. "Right!"

    Emiya dipped his head and disappeared like a mirage, there one second and gone the next. I would have felt safer with him physically next to us, but the carriage of A¨ªfe''s chariot only had so much room in it, and that was why he and Arash had been traveling with us in spirit form to begin with. Easier to fit in a cramped space when you technically didn''t have either mass or volume.

    A¨ªfe smirked and turned forward again, taking a tighter grip on her horses'' reins. "Better hold on, then, because I won''t be slowing down until we''re right on top of him."

    She snapped the reins, and the two divine horses pulling the chariot tossed their heads with a loud neigh, then lurched back into motion so swiftly that I wasn''t sure my stomach hadn''t been left behind. My own grip on the rail of the carriage tightened until my knuckles stood out as stark white against the rest of my hands.

    If she kept the contract and stuck around after this Singularity was solved, I was going to have to get used to traveling like this. Suck it up, Hebert. Riding shotgun on Brutus was way less comfortable than this, and I dealt with that just fine.

    I took as deep a breath as I feasibly could and distracted myself again with thoughts of the fight ahead.

    An ambush was actually one of the first ideas proposed, but it had been vetoed immediately, and not just because A¨ªfe found it distasteful. No, the problem was that none of our Servants were Assassins, and that meant none of them had that nifty Presence Concealment skill, so none of them could get within spitting distance of Caesar without him knowing it. He would know we were coming at roughly the same time that we would know we were getting close.

    Alternatively, Arash could have attempted to snipe him from so far away that he wouldn''t even know the attack was coming ¡ª except that, at those distances, any attack with enough power behind it to actually kill him had enough travel time for Caesar to sense the magical energy and defend himself. For that matter, since we didn''t know his class, it was entirely possible that he could have some form of skill that would let him set up a defensive perimeter on his camp, sort of like Territory Creation, based around his legend as a general, a leader of armies.

    If we tried that first and it failed, he might decide to call back the assault force, and the whole point of facing them separately would be soundly defeated.

    As frustrating as it was to admit it, our best option was a direct assault, a straightforward attack that let us get close enough to figure out if he had any defenses at all, and if he did, what they might be, with Arash keeping an eye on things from a far enough distance that he would be virtually undetectable. If the opportunity arose, then he could take a shot at Caesar in the middle of the fight, when he''d be too distracted to pay attention to an arrow coming from miles away on the mountainside.

    It was a simple plan, but sometimes, simple plans were the best plans.

    Hopefully, this would be as simple as letting A¨ªfe pound Caesar into a pulp, and none of the backups or contingencies would be at all needed. We could be done with it, go back to camp, and start making our plans to deal with whatever else the United Empire might have in store while we waited for Emperor Nero to pay us a visit.

    Yeah, right. Right after Lung adopts a puppy and Romani gets a full night''s sleep.

    The rest of the ride was silent but for the beat of the hooves upon the hard ground and the horses'' heavy breathing. My thoughts continued to spin off in different hypotheticals for what we might find in Caesar''s camp, but there were too many question marks to do more than make a few wild guesses, and those were next to useless as it was.

    But some unknowable time later, both A¨ªfe and Mash shifted, looking off into the vague distance. Immediately, I knew what it meant: they had just sensed Caesar''s presence, even if they couldn''t pinpoint his exact location.

    A¨ªfe gave a gentle tug on the reins, and her horses slowed to a much more reasonable canter instead of the all-out gallop that had carried us this far as she carefully steered the two of them in the general direction of where she and Mash had first looked. The thunderous stampede of the hooves quieted to a more subdued clop, but even that sedate speed was still enough to outpace the average family car.

    And that was when, as the speedy rush of so many insects coming in and out of my range slowed down, things finally settled down enough to get a handle on what I was sensing through my swarm, and I could see him, a hulking figure in a clearing not far to the northeast of us. The bugs were too scattered to get a clear picture, but the enormity of his bulk was obvious, even if the finer details were too blurry to make out right then.

    "Larger than life" seemed appropriate for the man who had such an outsized presence in the Western world even two-thousand years after his death.

    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    "He''s close," A¨ªfe warned before I could even open my mouth.

    "About a hundred and fifty meters to the northeast," I added.

    "Master," Mash said, but there was a lilt to her voice that made it almost a question.

    "I''m ready," Ritsuka replied, voice strong and resolute.

    "Let''s go kick the Caesar out of this salad!" Rika chimed in with only the barest hint of a quaver.

    Mash ¡ª wisely, in my opinion ¡ª decided not to question the logic of that one. "R-right!"

    We went another hundred meters or so, and then the chariot slowed to a stop as the horses nickered and tossed their heads, like they too were eager for the fight to come. Maybe they were, in hindsight. I had no idea exactly how intelligent they were, and right then, I didn''t think of asking. It wasn''t an important thing to worry about.

    Our group dismounted the chariot back onto the dirt road that had been carved through the forest who knew how many years ago, Mash''s shield appearing in her grip almost immediately, and once A¨ªfe herself had climbed down, she walked towards the front of it. One gloved hand trailed along the flank of the white steed''s shimmering coat, and she gave a grateful pat to the thing''s massive, muscular neck, and then the chariot and horses both vanished into glittering dust.

    Instantly, the slight tug inside my chest that I''d been ignoring for the past half an hour or so eased. The twins next to me both let out a sigh, now that the burden had been lifted from them as well.

    One of the advantages of splitting the contract between all three of us: no single Master had to shoulder the strain of being A¨ªfe''s only support.

    As soon as the chariot was gone, Emiya shimmered into existence next to us, and both the twins jumped a little at the suddenness of it.

    "Don''t do that!" Rika shrieked at him.

    Emiya smirked and shrugged. "Sorry, Master. I''ll keep your sensibilities in mind from now on."

    "Don''t make me put a bell on you!" she threatened him.

    He shook his head, a huff of air that wasn''t quite a snort escaping his nostrils, and then turned serious. "His presence is stronger than expected."

    "For you, perhaps," A¨ªfe told him, unconcerned. "For me¡­ Well. Maybe he''ll actually be something of a challenge."

    Emiya arched an eyebrow at her. "You''re still going to insist on fighting him by yourself?"

    "I''m not so easily intimidated," she replied. "As long as the combat is one on one, I won''t lose to an ordinary man, no matter how inflated his legend."

    "Underestimating him might get you killed," Emiya chided her, and before she could rebut him, he went on, "More importantly, you can feel that, can''t you?"

    He looked around the forest, eyeing the foliage like he expected an army to jump out and attack at any second. There was no such thing ¡ª the bugs around us showed no sign of any ambush waiting in the proverbial wings.

    "This sensation, it''s hard to compare it," he said. "But¡­ It''s like there''s something thick in the air pressing down on me. It''s not a defensive bounded field, at least not in the traditional sense, but whatever it is will make it harder to fight at your best."

    "I feel it, too," Mash agreed uneasily. Her grip on her shield tightened. "It''s almost¡­suffocating. Like wading through syrup."

    "It''s likely a Noble Phantasm of some kind," A¨ªfe said, but she might as well have been discussing the weather for how concerned she sounded. "A defensive structure that discourages and disadvantages the enemy so that it''s harder to fight. At full power¡­ But it''s not at full power."

    Emiya''s head jerked around so fast that I got sympathetic whiplash just watching him. "It''s not?"

    "No." She grinned that vicious grin of hers, all teeth. "After all, this isn''t his territory, is it? At best, it''s contested. At worst, it''s ours. All he can do with it is posture and play mind games." She huffed a condescending chuckle. "This has nothing on the Land of Shadows. Compared to a land where death stalks every corner and the restless dead hide behind every tree, this is just pathetic."

    "Heh." Emiya smirked. "Even something like this doesn''t faze you in the slightest. You really are a monster of a woman, aren''t you?"

    "I''m the only one Sc¨¢thach knew she couldn''t beat in a contest of martial skill," A¨ªfe answered. "I''m the only one who surpassed her as a warrior. When you reach the realm of martial arts where she and I dwelled, you''ve long left the limits of humanity behind. Whether you want to call that monstrous or divine, I don''t really care. Fear and worship mean the same thing to me."

    "I know I''ve said this before," Rika whispered to her brother, not nearly quiet enough to go unnoticed, "but she''s hardcore!"

    "I''m just glad she''s on our side," Ritsuka muttered back.

    "Enough dithering," A¨ªfe said. "We''ve kept Caesar waiting long enough."

    She started off in the direction of Caesar''s camp, and our group fell into step behind her, with Mash at the front, the twins in the middle, and Emiya and I in the back.

    "Emiya," I murmured, keeping my voice low. "I shouldn''t need to say this, but ¡ª"

    "I know," he replied, just as quiet. "Pride or not, I don''t intend on letting her get killed, either."

    I gave him a shallow nod, glad that he and I were on the same wavelength about this.

    She wouldn''t be happy if he interfered, but I preferred to have A¨ªfe alive and on our side, even if she was angry at us, than to lose her because she refused to ask for help when she needed it. Even I could feel the Noble Phantasm she was talking about earlier. Not as clearly as she, Emiya, and Mash obviously did, but however it worked, it worked well enough that my bugs were moving more sluggishly than they should have been. Like there was a buffer between them and me that was slowing down my control just enough to be felt.

    However confident A¨ªfe was, I wasn''t about to discount the danger of a single minor slip-up in a fight of this level.

    We made the trek through the last fifty or so meters of forest, and then the trees fell back behind us as we entered a clearing, a large, flat swath where the grass had largely been worn away by the trample of feet, hooves, and the wheels of carts, carriages, and chariots, stretching about sixty feet across and shaped almost like a giant almond.

    And in the middle of this clearing, reclined on a makeshift bench, was¡­

    "Oh, so you''ve finally shown up. I was wondering if you had lost your nerve."

    ¡­There was no way that was Julius Caesar.

    "Holy cow, he''s huge!" Rika burst out.

    The ornate, gilded armor fit with the image. The red clothing trimmed in gold, the epaulets, the short, dark hair, the skirt, the laurel crown that wrapped around the back of his head, even the sword was resplendent enough to fit the vague description of his "famous sword." Everything else about him would have screamed "Julius Caesar" in big, capital letters.

    Except his great bulk had much more to do with his inflated waistline than it did bulging muscles. This did not look like a distinguished veteran of many military campaigns who had marched across the breadth of the Roman Empire, this looked like a middle-aged shut-in who only left his mother''s basement to participate in reenactments of famous Roman battles.

    The man next to him sitting on an adjacent bench chuckled. "Looks like they''ve got your number, Caesar."

    Caesar sighed. "Of course, it''s only natural. Rome is the pinnacle of civilization, bountiful, plentiful. Rome provides for its citizens. That also means that there''s no shortage of exquisite food for its people to enjoy."

    He hefted himself up and to his feet with an ease and speed that belied his girth, looking us over with a critical eye.

    "There are more of you than I was expecting," he lamented. "The three Masters and that Demi-Servant, of course, I knew you''d be here, but that miserable court mage said nothing about that fence-sitter finally getting involved or that handsome Eastern fellow you''ve got with you, there."

    A chill ran down my spine.

    "Court mage?" But it was Mash who uttered the words suspiciously. "Could it be¡­?"

    Lev Lainur. Flauros.

    No, that was where my mind went first, but there was no guarantee of that, was there? It would be convenient to see him again this soon, a chance to wring some answers from him now that we were better positioned to face him, but it was entirely possible that this court mage was also just a Caster class Servant of some kind.

    A part of me wanted it to be Lev, so I could take care of him now and metaphorically serve his head on a silver platter to Marie when she got her body back. Another part of me wanted it to not be him, so that Marie could be there when we finally confronted him again. So that she could get her own closure from him.

    "Ah, perhaps I''ve already said too much," Caesar lamented with a small smile. "But there''s still more you yet want to know, isn''t there? Perhaps about the Holy Grail as well?"

    "And you''re going to tell us, just like that?" Ritsuka demanded.

    "No," I answered before Caesar could say anything else. "He''s goading us. Trying to get into our heads, throw us off our game."

    Caesar smiled wider. Like I really needed the reminder that his corpulence did not mean he was any less the genius tactician and strategist who had paved the way for the transformation of the Roman Republic into an empire.

    A¨ªfe''s lips split into a hungry grin. "Then you really are Gaius Julius Caesar."

    "Was it not already obvious?" He took several long strides away from his makeshift bench and brandished his golden sword. "But I shall make you this promise: if you beat me, then I''ll tell you where you might find the Holy Grail of this era."

    What?

    "That''s¡­!" Mash gasped.

    "Hey, Caesar," the other man behind him scowled. "What do you think you''re doing, you fat bastard? You''re going to give away our secrets? His secrets?"

    "If you truly think that man cares one wit for our success or failure, you''re delusional," Caesar told him. "What his goal is, I can''t possibly say, but whether we forge our immortal empire or not matters little to it." He smirked. "Of course, neither can I simply allow you Chaldeans to trample upon the dreams of we Roman Emperors who have given our fullest devotion to Rome. If you want to know where to find the Holy Grail, you must defeat me and prove that your history is the right history."

    "Don''t get too far ahead of yourself," A¨ªfe said as she stepped forward to meet him. "The one who should be saying, ''don''t disappoint me, now,'' isn''t you, it''s me."

    Caesar inclined his head. "Now, that''s the spirit."

    A¨ªfe took off like a rocket without any other warning, crossing the distance in the blink of an eye, and the blade of her spear aimed itself for Caesar''s gut, but with the clang of clashing metal, he deflected it using his sword. Effortlessly, she moved with the momentum of the deflection and spun her spear around, stabbing the butt of the shaft towards his forehead, and Caesar ducked beneath it to swipe at her own belly with his blade. She backed away and avoided it without any trouble at all.

    All before any of the rest of us could even think to give them more space.

    "Mash!" I said.

    "Right!" she replied, and she put herself in front of us as we three Masters backed up behind the defense of her shield.

    "This is going to be fun," A¨ªfe said with a low, throaty chuckle.

    "My dear," Caesar drawled, "for a woman as beautiful and deadly as you, I shall make sure that it is."

    They raced towards one another again and met in the middle, and this time, they moved too fast for my eyes to track. The deadly G¨¢e Bolg flashed in the sunlight, a streak of red, a smear of scarlet that twined and twirled around A¨ªfe''s body like a slithering snake. Her arms and legs became a blur of motion and strength, and her body didn''t so much flow from one position to the next as she seemed to flicker between them, resolving into existence only long enough for me to catch a glimpse of her and then disappearing.

    To compare it to her spar against Emiya several days back was a disservice to her. She was, as she had compared herself to back at Joyous Guard, as the northern wind, a hurricane of force and power that blew away everything in her path without care or mercy.

    "Oh wow," Ritsuka murmured. "Look at them go!"

    "I would if I could even see them!" Rika told him.

    A¨ªfe reminded me of Saber Alter back in Fuyuki. The same speed, the same raw power. This wasn''t a human being, but a force of nature shaped like one. Nothing should be able to stand against her.

    Except that Caesar was.

    Against all reason, his bulk didn''t seem to slow him down in the slightest. His golden sword was a streak of yellow to combat the smear of the red G¨¢e Bolg, flashing with every swing as the metal of the blade caught the sunlight. His arms, too, were blurs, but whereas A¨ªfe''s movements were so blindingly fast that they were almost invisible, his torso, his trunk, seemed to mostly stay in one place. The way he fought was more solid, compared to the fluid, almost breezy motions of A¨ªfe''s martial arts.

    Maybe that was why he could keep up with her. She was a whirlwind of power, so all he had to do was plant himself and weather the storm.

    The whole clearing rang with the clash of their weapons, a cacophony of deafening, metallic clangs that assaulted my eardrums. The deep, resonant bong of G¨¢e Bolg mixed and combined with the high pitched shriek of Caesar''s sword, echoing so loudly that I almost wouldn''t have been surprised if Boudica came rushing over to see what was happening.

    It was a fight at a level I had only seen a few times before. They still had nothing on Scion when it came to raw power ¡ª hard to compete with him ¡ª and for sheer destruction, the likes of Leviathan and Behemoth had them soundly beat. But the speed was where their superhuman abilities were really obvious.

    In one heartbeat, a hundred strikes. Between the next, a hundred more. It happened too fast to count, so fast that their limbs seemed to multiply as they sped up even more.

    If I ever thought I could seriously take on a Servant, standing there watching them go would have disabused me of that notion.

    With a final, echoing CLANG, they split apart again. Neither of them was so much as breathing hard.

    "Truly, you are indeed worthy of the acclaim afforded your name," Caesar praised A¨ªfe. "Even now, you''re holding back on me, aren''t you? You Celtic barbarians may lack in the class and sophistication of Rome, but your arts of war are no less potent."

    A¨ªfe smirked. "Do you bring a mallet to squash a single bug? Of course not, when your boot will more than suffice. Besides, do you think I haven''t noticed, too? You''re holding back, as well. If you truly wanted to win, you''d bring out that Noble Phantasm of yours."

    "You can tell?" Caesar cocked one eyebrow, then shook his head. "Well, it''s true enough. My reticence, however, comes not from confidence, it''s just that I''m reluctant to risk losing this sword again. I''m quite embarrassed to have lost it the first time, you see."

    A¨ªfe snorted and shifted into a lower stance, her hand gliding along the shaft of G¨¢e Bolg as her foot traced a winding path through the dirt.

    "Are you so impolite you''d force a woman to show you hers, first? You should rethink that. There''s a reason this spear is considered certain death. You might not survive if you keep holding back."

    Caesar inclined his head. "If the lady asks so fervently, then I must oblige, mustn''t I? Never let it be said that Julius Caesar was so uncouth a man as to leave his partner wanting!"

    He kicked off the ground and wound his arm back, and as he approached A¨ªfe, he called out the name of his Noble Phantasm.

    "Crocea Mors!"

    He swung. A¨ªfe''s legs moved. And ¡ª

    Clang

    The golden sword smacked uselessly against G¨¢e Bolg''s shaft, because A¨ªfe had thrust it out to its maximum length, leaving her body simply out of its range. Caesar had to bat it aside just to avoid having his throat gouged out from his own forward momentum.

    And A¨ªfe, like something out of a fantastical martial arts movie, flowed with the force of his strike, using the power behind it to spin about, bring G¨¢e Bolg under his guard, and press the shaft of the spear under one armpit and across his torso. Caesar, already unbalanced from having to parry so unexpectedly, was caught completely off guard.

    "What?"

    His face was drawn into a rictus of shock, like he had only just realized how badly outmatched he was in terms of raw skill.

    "A sure hit attack that is guaranteed to always find the mark on its first strike¡­is it?" A¨ªfe said lowly. "An inversion of that brat''s ultimate technique, almost. You had good reason to be confident. A Noble Phantasm like that would be devastating if it caught even someone like me completely by surprise."

    She huffed a short chuckle.

    "Unfortunately, it has the same weaknesses as any technique that relies on a sword. The biggest is, of course, if you''re out of the sword''s range, then it''s all but useless."

    "You ¡ª!"

    Her entire body tensed and she used her spear as a lever to launch Caesar back. Caesar tumbled, rolling over the ground until he came to a stop, but even as he pulled himself to his feet, A¨ªfe was already shifting her stance. She planted her legs, one knee bent, wound back her one arm as her grip on her spear flipped, and her other arm, she held out like a counterbalance, perfectly level with her shoulders. The fingers of her free hand pointed at Caesar like a promise, perfectly parallel with her spear.

    It was a textbook javelin throwing stance.

    "G¨¢e Bolg ¡ª"

    She threw. The red spear flew like a streak of lightning.

    "Prototype!"

    There was no time for Caesar to dodge. He had barely gotten to back up before the tip of the red spear slammed into him like a missile, the metal of his armor letting out an unholy screech at the impact. Caesar bent double, folding over the spear as he stumbled backwards. For a long moment, he hung there, like the spear itself was the only thing keeping him standing.

    "Is he dead?" Rika eventually asked.

    "Ugh."

    Caesar slowly straightened, one hand gripping the crimson shaft, to reveal the ghastly wound that had been inflicted ¡ª except there was no wound, not to his body. The golden armor had splintered, cracked, and split, pulsing, jagged red veins spreading through it from the point of impact like forks of lightning ¡ª or thorns ¡ª but otherwise seemingly unhurt. There was no blood spilling out from it.

    "Remind me to thank Constantine the next time I see him," Caesar said, grimacing. "That spear would indeed have been certain death under regular circumstances."

    "You," Emiya began, choking. "No way. You actually ¡ª"

    "Survived that, did you?" A¨ªfe asked shrewdly. "Then it''s as I thought. That Noble Phantasm is strong enough to affect us this much even out here, is it?"

    She kicked off the ground, racing towards Caesar with her fists raised. "Then I''ll just have to use my bare hands!"

    "Think again!"

    The other man in the back exploded into motion, a blur of silvery armor and red hair, cape trailing behind him. He reached A¨ªfe before she could reach Caesar, and his gauntleted fist smashed into her cheek with such power behind it that I could feel the blow even from where I was standing.

    Mash gasped. "He''s a Servant, too!"

    A¨ªfe went down, bouncing off the ground once, but she was up just as quickly, ready to keep fighting. She spat out a glob of blood onto the ground.

    The other man just laughed, and he drew his sword and brought it down towards her head so fast that all I saw was a flash of silver. A¨ªfe slapped her hands together, teeth gritted and mouth pulled into a snarl, the flat of the blade caught between her palms.

    "It''s my turn, Caesar!" the other Servant said, grinning madly. "You''ve had your fun, now let me have some fun of my own!"

    He took hold of the hilt of his sword with both hands, and the crimson edge pressed closer and closer to A¨ªfe''s head as she struggled to keep it from slipping out of her grasp. Her arms shook, and she slowly bent down on one knee, her eyes wide as she stared up at this new opponent.

    Off to the side, Caesar sighed and plopped down, resting. "Do as you want, Tiberius. Gods know I can''t stop you once you get going."

    Emiya took in a sharp breath. And then he said something that I''d never expected to hear out of his mouth.

    "Well, fuck."

 Chapter XLV: The Plains Dyed Red

    Chapter XLV: The Plains Dyed Red

    "Of all the luck," Emiya said ruefully. "The Roman emperor who drew King Arthur himself to a stalemate."

    Mash gasped. "Lucius Tiberius Caesar!"

    The name¡­vaguely rang a bell. Most of the Arthurian lessons I''d gotten as part of my training to be a Master of Chaldea had tended to focus specifically on the Knights of the Round Table and the events in Britain itself. At some point, near the end of his reign and shortly before Mordred''s rebellion, King Arthur and his most loyal knights had gone to the continent and fought the Roman Empire ¡ª or what was left of it ¡ª and eventually had to return home mostly empty-handed.

    Then, this guy, he was the Roman emperor of that time? The fact that he''d drawn with King Arthur said something, but¡­ Damn it, there just hadn''t been enough focus on him in the lessons to say what he could do with any certainty.

    Emiya held out his hands.

    "Trace, on!"

    A familiar pair of twin swords formed in his grasp, and he braced himself, leaning forward as he bent his knees.

    "Mash, guard the Masters!" he commanded her.

    "R-right!"

    "Take one more step and I''ll kick your ass myself!" A¨ªfe barked, and Emiya stumbled on his first step, dumbfounded, as she glared at him out of the corner of one amethyst eye. "No one asked you to stick your nose into things!"

    "You¡­can''t tell me you''re still going to fight him alone!" Emiya sputtered. "That''s suicide!"

    "Even if it were," she replied resolutely, "a one on one battle to the death¡­ That''s exactly the kind of battle I live for!"

    "I agree," Tiberius said, still grinning a bloodthirsty grin. "A fight between two warriors is sacred! You and I, one on one, that''s just the way it should be! But your friend there is also right. If you face me by yourself, you''re definitely going to die!"

    A¨ªfe sneered. "I don''t remember asking you¡­for your opinion!"

    She let herself fall, and Tiberius jerked forward under the sudden lack of resistance, and then she swung her legs up, curled them towards her stomach, and planted them in his chest with a sound not unlike the landing of an artillery barrage. Tiberius was launched upwards and away, and branches cracked as he disappeared into the forest at the opposite end of the clearing.

    A¨ªfe used her momentum and rolled over her shoulder and to her feet, and as Tiberius came charging out of the forest, cackling like a madman, she charged to meet him. She stepped into his guard as he brought his sword down, and she blocked it by bracing her forearm up under his wrist, then threw her back against his chest, took firm hold of his arm, and pulled him up, over her shoulder, and slammed him into the ground.

    "Shouldn''t we help her?" Mash asked quietly, gripping tightly to her shield. "That''s Lucius Tiberius."

    A¨ªfe jumped straight up, flipping midair, and brought her heel down on Tiberius, aiming for his head ¡ª but he rolled out of the way, and she struck the ground with such force that it felt like the whole planet rumbled beneath our feet as the earth cratered under her foot.

    "I''m¡­not sure she needs help," Ritsuka replied. "She looks like she''s got it handled all on her own."

    "Where was she back when we landed in Orl¨¦ans?" Rika complained.

    Tiberius rushed her, leading with his sword, and she leaned to the side, guiding his wrist with one hand, and with the other, she lashed out with a simple punch. A meaty thwack cracked the air as Tiberius caught it with his free hand, and he reared back long and far enough to slam his forehead into hers.

    A¨ªfe reeled and stumbled back a step, a surprised grunt torn from her lips, and then she braced herself and slammed her head just as hard into his nose. Blood went flying, spurting from his nostrils and all over her hair, but Tiberius was only more delighted to have been injured, and he leered down at her, towering over her as he did, grinning that mad grin as he cackled.

    "Neither of them has used their Noble Phantasms yet, though," I pointed out, "and A¨ªfe''s isn''t working right at the moment."

    Because of whatever "Constantine" was doing. It must have been his Noble Phantasm that was weakening A¨ªfe and Emiya ¡ª and interfering with my bugs, somehow ¡ª and if Caesar''s comment was to be believed, it was also the reason A¨ªfe hadn''t killed him with hers.

    If Tiberius pulled his out, then to save A¨ªfe, we might have to interfere, no matter what.

    "Emiya¡­"

    The words were on the tip of my tongue. I was ready to give the command, to tell him to jump in, regardless of what any of the other Servants thought.

    But I hesitated, because as much as she might hate the comparison, A¨ªfe was just like C¨²chulainn. They both had the same sort of pride as warriors, one that they didn''t suffer being trampled upon, and because we insisted on interfering back in Fuyuki, C¨²chulainn had used a curse to ensure we couldn''t. Whether he won that battle or not wasn''t important to the fact that he''d used the curse in the first place.

    If we interfered now, Emiya could definitely turn the tide of the battle in A¨ªfe''s favor, but it might cost us her trust ¡ª the trust of a powerful combatant with a chariot that could ferry us safely across the whole of the continent. Especially since she didn''t seem on the backfoot, if Emiya jumped in now, it would almost certainly alienate her.

    It went against my first instinct. Even so, I had to force myself to recognize that the best course of action here was to stand back and watch, at least for now.

    Arash, I sent to my Servant in the hills, don''t interfere unless she looks like she''s about to lose.

    There was a pause, and then his reply: Roger that, Master.

    "If he pulls out an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm, defend her," I ordered Emiya. "But until then, we''ll let her do this her way."

    To break the stalemate, A¨ªfe stepped in, hooked her leg behind Tiberius'', and pulled him off balance far enough that she could safely let go of his sword arm to land another thunderous blow against his armored torso. The metal groaned and cracked, but didn''t break, and Tiberius was sent backwards almost ten feet. He turned his uncontrolled tumble into a roll and was back on his feet almost instantly.

    A¨ªfe didn''t wait. She raced off to Caesar, who squawked as she got near, and she took hold of the red spear that was still lodged in his armor. With a brutal twist and a yank, she pulled it free, and several hunks of golden armor came with it, clattering to the ground as the red thorns sprouting from the head retracted back into the blade.

    "Leaving it to the last possible second¡­ You''re willing to risk things that far, are you? I''m surprised," said Emiya. "I would''ve thought that you would insist on winning, even at the cost of A¨ªfe''s pride."

    "I do," I answered. "But if there''s one thing I learned about leadership, it''s how to deal with strong personalities that don''t normally give ground."

    That was the only reason I''d had Lung''s respect, at the end of it, however grudging it might have been. If I had shown him weakness when he cauterized my ruined arm, if I had begged and pleaded or tried to appeal to his nonexistent human decency, he might just have left me to die or killed me himself.

    The difference here was that I didn''t have A¨ªfe''s leverage point yet. Lung was a petty tyrant, a bully; standing up to him was enough to earn his respect. A¨ªfe was also a tyrant, but of the charismatic type, and I just didn''t have a good enough handle on her personality to use it to my advantage. Until I did, I had no good way of convincing a woman as strong and prideful as her to follow my orders. It would not be anywhere near as easy as getting her to carve more runestones had been.

    A¨ªfe kicked off the ground, throwing up chunks of dirt as she seemed almost to teleport across the clearing. Her spear met Tiberius'' sword with an echoing, metallic ring, and then again, as with Caesar, their bodies blurred and faded as they exchanged dozens of blows the space of seconds. They swiped at each other, parried, swiped again, blocked, over and over again with such speed that I had no hope of keeping up.

    Unlike with Caesar, they moved around, ping-ponging across the ground as streaks of silver and maroon. The trees around us shook with the force of their blows, and the air cracked with each exchange with the steady staccato of a machine gun.

    I could believe that Tiberius had fought King Arthur to a draw, watching them. Not only did they have the same sort of strength I had seen from Arthur''s corrupted form in Fuyuki, but they were just as lightning fast, leaving behind only flashes ¡ª snapshots of motion ¡ª to the normal human eye.

    It was like watching a flip book, if half of the pages had been torn out.

    The flurry of exchanges lasted almost five minutes as they bounced across the clearing with no clear victor in sight and no one with an obvious upper hand. When they separated, flying apart until there was almost twenty feet between them, Tiberius had clearly come off worse from the fight, although his mad grin didn''t show it. Deep grooves had been carved into the metal of his armor where G¨¢e Bolg had cut into it, and blood still flowed freely from his twisted, broken nose and a couple of shallow slices along his cheeks where he had narrowly missed having something important gouged out. The armor on one of his forearms was even missing, and when that had happened, I had no idea.

    As though none of it mattered, he reached up with one hand, snapped his nose back into place with a sickening crack, and snorted out a glob of blood from one of his nostrils.

    A¨ªfe had not escaped unscathed, not by the cut on her cheek that bled sluggishly or the neat splits in her clothes where Tiberius had come closer than any of us would have liked to dealing a serious wound, but she was by far better off than him. The rest of the blood on her clothing was very obviously not hers.

    "Heheh," Tiberius chuckled. "This is fun. This is so much fun! You''re the strongest fighter I''ve met since I faced down that twerp, Arthur!"

    "Twerp?" Ritsuka choked out. "Did he just call Saber Alter a twerp?"

    "I still have nightmares about that fight!" Rika agreed.

    I could see why ¡ª she didn''t have the personal menace Alexandria had, but that corrupted King Arthur had been a force of terrifying speed and strength, capable of casually blowing us away with a single swing of her sword. She was a force of nature, inevitable and unstoppable, and it was only Mash''s shield that had protected us from being utterly destroyed.

    And this smug prick was calling a hero that powerful a twerp?

    "Tiberius," Mash murmured, brow furrowing as her fingers clenched tight around her shield.

    Even Emiya looked disturbed. Scowling, as though he himself had been personally insulted.

    A¨ªfe''s trademark smile broke out on her face. "You''re not so terrible yourself. I would gladly have fought you to the death, had you been around during my era."

    "But." Tiberius took hold of his sword with both hands, squaring his shoulders and bending his knees. "You''re too strong. Even weakened by Constantine''s Noble Phantasm, the best I can hope for in a contest of raw strength and skill is a draw. As much fun as all this is, if we keep going, I''m just going to keep risking a pointless, meaningless death. The only area I know I outclass you¡­"

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    The floral pattern along the flat of his sword''s blade slowly lit up, red light rising along it from the base to the tip. The edge, already a deep magenta, began to glow a deep, ominous crimson, like a bloody mist was seeping out of it.

    "¡­is my Noble Phantasm."

    He lifted his sword above his head. The magical energy flowing out of him and into his blade increased, and then increased again, surging.

    Shit!

    "Emiya!" I shouted.

    "Mash!" the twins cried.

    Emiya threw up one of his hands.

    "I am the bone of my sword!"

    Blooming

    "Florent ¡ª"

    Mash leapt in front of us, then hefted her shield and slammed the bottom spoke down. "Lord ¡ª"

    A¨ªfe dropped to her knees, pressing one palm against the ground. "Ochd ¡ª"

    Tiberius swung.

    Blood-stained Flower

    "Cruentus!"

    "Chaldeas!"

    "Rho Aias!"

    "Deug Odin!"

    Red light raced towards A¨ªfe ¡ª towards us, who stood behind her.

    A towering rampart of blue light etched itself into existence in front of Mash, protecting us from the blast.

    A seven-petaled flower bloomed to life in front of A¨ªfe, absorbing Tiberius'' attack even as several of the petals were torn apart like tissue paper.

    And around the clearing, several runes, unseen before, burned up as A¨ªfe drew on us Masters to power them ¡ª all located in spots where she and Tiberius had clashed, and where she must have carved them as she fought.

    A flash of light detonated. Ochd Deug Odin ripped through Tiberius'' Noble Phantasm, dispelling the beam of bloody light and going on to strike the owner. The twins gasped, and I had to close my eyes against the intensity of it, and even still, the bright light seared itself onto the backs of my eyelids like a branding iron.

    In the trees and around us, thousands of bugs suddenly died as the density of magical energy overloaded them in an instant.

    There was a rush of air as the attacks passed and dissipated, the great whump of heat rising as cool air rushed to fill its place. The tug pulling on me from the inside eased up and returned to the almost unnoticeable trickle it had been before, and finally, the light died down as the whole clearing descended into silence.

    Several seconds passed before I could squint my eyes back open, and Emiya panted as the seven-petaled flower ¡ª reduced to a meager three by Florent Cruentus ¡ª vanished into nothingness. After another moment, the rampart of Lord Chaldeas disappeared, too, apparently unneeded.

    Beyond it, A¨ªfe climbed to her feet, utterly unscathed, and across the clearing from her, Tiberius lay on the ground, broken and defeated. His armor had been ripped and destroyed, his red cloak in tatters, and the ground around him was wet with blood.

    He was still, somehow, alive.

    "No way," Rika breathed. "Does this guy have extra lives or something?"

    "Rika," I ordered her quietly, "heal Emiya."

    She startled, and then looked over at Emiya and gasped. "Emiya! Oh my god, what happened?"

    He was little better off than Tiberius, because he looked like he''d just come out of a pitched, life and death battle himself, and even then, only barely.

    "A consequence¡­of the Aias," Emiya grunted. "The damage to the shield¡­is reflected on the user."

    That might have been more useful to know earlier. It almost certainly would have changed Da Vinci and Romani''s calculus on who should be on the vanguard team.

    "Rika," I said sharply.

    She jerked, and then lifted her arm, pointed at Emiya, and said, "R-right! U-um¡­ First Aid!"

    Some of Emiya''s wounds healed, but not all of them. Apparently, he''d been hurt badly enough that just the one use wouldn''t do it.

    "First Aid!" she chanted again.

    This time, it was enough to get him back to full health, and he took in a deep breath as he straightened.

    "Thanks, Master."

    "Y-yeah, sure. Anytime."

    Slowly, A¨ªfe walked across the clearing towards Tiberius, who was struggling to stand.

    "Your tenacity is admirable," she told him. "Even reduced twice over, that should have been more than enough to kill you, and yet, still, you cling to this second life. You were a worthy opponent."

    "S-screw¡­you," Tiberius grunted.

    A¨ªfe snorted. "And you Romans claim that it''s my people who are the barbarians."

    She spun her spear around until the point faced him and reared back her arm for the finishing blow.

    "Goodbye, Lucius Tiberius Caesar," she told him. "I will remember your name as someone who gave me a good fight."

    A blur suddenly shot towards her from behind, moving so fast that my eyes could barely see it.

    "A¨ªfe!"

    It was all I could do to shout her name in warning, but I was too slow, because even as she spun around, there was almost no way she would be fast enough to block the incoming attack.

    Dodge!

    "Crocea ¡ª"

    "Hrunting!"

    Caesar stumbled to a stop, arm and sword still raised, to look down at the narrow shaft of the wickedly barbed sword that was sprouting from his chest, pierced straight through where G¨¢e Bolg had destroyed his armor. Next to me, Emiya let out a long, slow breath as the string of his bow vibrated for a brief moment. He clicked his tongue.

    "I almost missed that one," he said ruefully.

    I hadn''t even had time to realize he''d materialized it, let alone formed an arrow and drawn it back.

    "Oh," said Julius Caesar as he plopped onto the ground. "Well then. I guess that''s it."

    A¨ªfe''s shock gave way to thunderous fury. "You ¡ª !"

    "Bitch!" Tiberius snarled as he surged to his feet. He wound back his arm and took aim for her neck with his sword. "Die!"

    Oh no you don''t!

    Arash''s voice hadn''t even finished speaking in my head before a single arrow shot down from the sky and punched through Tiberius'' wrist. Florent dropped from his limp fingers to clatter to the ground as he let out an angry yowl, clutching at his wounded arm with his other hand.

    A¨ªfe whirled about, lightning fast, and G¨¢e Bolg lashed out as a streak of crimson to carve a line across his throat ¡ª but she wasn''t done with that single fatal blow, because she took aim and thrust her spear home into his neck.

    "Oh god," Rika whispered, sounding somewhere between horrified and queasy.

    Her brother agreed with a quiet, "Holy cow."

    Tiberius opened his mouth, but all that came out was a wet gurgle as blood spilled down his lips and chin. A¨ªfe pulled G¨¢e Bolg free with a savage yank and a spurt of arterial spray, and Tiberius fell like a puppet with its strings cut, already disintegrating at the edges into motes of glittering light. He vanished before he could even hit the ground.

    Her gruesome task done, she turned on her heel again, eyes wide and mouth drawn into a tight line, and she marched over to Caesar, who managed to muster a weak smile.

    "My dear," he tried, "has anyone ever told you that you are absolutely ravishing when you''re angry?"

    She ignored his words and reached down for his collar so she could use it to yank him to his feet.

    "You promised answers," she seethed like the chill of winter. "So deliver, you spineless dog."

    And Caesar chuckled. "Of course, that would be the worst insult that could ever leave those beautiful lips of yours, isn''t it? After all, the only man to ever best you was a spineless dog himself, wasn''t he?"

    A¨ªfe let go of G¨¢e Bolg, and it balanced itself perfectly on the rounded butt, jutting straight up into the air. She reached for the sword protruding from Caesar''s body and pushed it back slowly, dragging the barbs back through the wound with fleshy squelches.

    "I think I''m gonna be sick," Rika murmured.

    "You realize¡­the more damage you do, the faster I''ll disappear, don''t you?" Caesar asked tightly, smile strained.

    "If you won''t talk, then we have no more use for you," was her chilly reply.

    "A¨ªfe!" I barked at her, and she stopped, looking over at me as though daring me to command her to show mercy.

    Maybe I should have. The person I was trying to be probably would have. But I had no room to chide her for her cruelty, not when I''d done things that were arguably much worse and much crueler.

    Instead, I walked over to them, and I called up a simple ant as I walked, directing it subtly through my uniform so that no one could see it beforehand, and most especially not Caesar. I kept it up my sleeve ¡ª quite literally ¡ª even as I reached them, already thinking up my ploy for if and when I had to use it.

    "Are you a man of your word, Gaius Julius Caesar?" I asked him.

    "I would like to think so," he said, smile still strained, "but then, I''ve broken plenty of promises and quite a few oaths in my time, haven''t I?"

    "You promised to tell us about the Holy Grail if we beat you," I went on. One of my eyebrows rose pointedly. "You look beaten to me."

    "Yes, I suppose I am," he agreed, "and yes, I suppose I did." He sighed and briefly closed his eyes. "Very well, since a beautiful rose like yourself is asking, then how could I possibly refuse?"

    My cheek twitched, but I didn''t let him see any other reaction to the flattery.

    "The Holy Grail you seek is indeed located in the United Empire''s capital city," he told me, "in the seat of the empire''s power. Although there are several ''emperors'' who have been called to serve and guard it, the Grail itself remains in the possession not of any of them, but the Court Mage who serves our leader."

    So, Romulus wasn''t the one holding onto the Grail, but instead it was this court mage, whoever that was. Could that guy also be the one who wished on the Holy Grail and summoned the Roman emperors? If that was so, who could it be, and why would they want such a thing?

    Assuming, of course, that it wasn''t Lev ¡ª or Flauros, or whatever he might be calling himself now ¡ª and was someone else instead.

    "This court mage," I began, "does he have a name?"

    Caesar smiled. "Ah, but I''ve already told you more than enough, don''t you think? After all, no matter his true identity, you will still need to seek him out to take the Grail from him, won''t you?"

    "And knowing who he is could make the difference between victory and defeat," I retorted.

    "That much is true," he admitted. "But I''ve already given you what I promised, and to give more would only advantage you, my enemies, against the allies I''ve sworn to fight beside, won''t it?"

    "And Constantine?" Emiya called as he and the others drew closer, now that the fighting was over. "This Noble Phantasm of his, is it truly reaching us here from all the way back at your capital city, or do we have another Servant we need to worry about nearby?"

    Caesar grinned, even as he started to fade into glittering dust at the edges. "Ah, but would you expect me to tell you that either? My handsome Eastern friend, if I were to assist you that thoroughly, shouldn''t I just tell you all the true names of my allies and how you might go about defeating them?"

    Emiya sneered. "So it''s like that, then. Figures. It couldn''t be that easy, could it."

    "Is there anything we could do to convince you to help us?" Ritsuka asked earnestly.

    "I''m already dead." Caesar chuckled. "There are no more of my wishes that are within your power to grant, Chaldean Master. Why did you think I went along with this mad scheme, if not to find a chance to steal the Grail for myself?"

    He burst apart into motes of light that flickered and died, and he was gone. I clicked my tongue and had my ant retreat; I hadn''t had the chance to use him as a prop to convince Caesar to be more generous with his information.

    It probably wouldn''t have worked anyway. Anything with the oomph to affect a Servant likely radiated enough power on its own that the absence of that power would give me away. I was going to have to figure something out for that, or else just figure out how to enhance a few bugs so I could use them in a few more useful tricks.

    "Servant presence dissipated," Mash reported quietly. "He''s gone, Senpai. Julius Caesar has been defeated. Lucius Tiberius, as well."

    Ritsuka''s fists clenched. "He didn''t tell us anything we didn''t know."

    "No," I agreed, "but he confirmed a few things that we weren''t sure of. Like the fact that the Grail is in the United Empire''s capital city ¡ª A¨ªfe?"

    She spun suddenly, and the backs of her knuckles smashed into Emiya''s face with a thunderous CRACK. He stumbled, jerking to the side, and nearly fell.

    "Emiya!" Ritsuka and Mash cried.

    "What the hell are you doing?" Rika demanded, lifting her arm up ¡ª uselessly, because A¨ªfe had Magic Resistance at A-Rank, which meant she wouldn''t even be tickled by our Gandr.

    "Everyone, stop!" I ordered, prepared to use my Command Spells just in case.

    "That," said A¨ªfe, "was for interfering."

    "That''s a funny way of thanking someone for saving your life," Emiya grunted, wiping a streak of blood from the corner of his lips. "Not the worst thanks I''ve ever gotten, I''ll admit, but far from the best."

    "You would''ve died!" Rika agreed.

    "Which is why it was a slap instead of a punch," said A¨ªfe. "I''m no fool. This Noble Phantasm of Constantine''s is weakening all of us, to the point that our Noble Phantasms are almost useless. In that sense, my fight with Lucius Tiberius was never a proper one on one duel to begin with, so there was nothing lost on my end from accepting your help. That doesn''t change the fact that you inserted yourself, unwanted, into my fight."

    Emiya snorted as he straightened. "I see. So it really was just a matter of pride, wasn''t it?"

    "I didn''t break my oaths to the man who cheated me out of my victory," she told him dangerously, "even though it inevitably cost me my son''s life. Do you think I would start now?"

    "I don''t have any use for something as pointless as pride." Emiya shrugged and smirked. "I just feed it to the dogs."

    A¨ªfe smiled, a thing of cold and sharp edges. "So you do."

    "Enough," I cut in. "There''s no room among Chaldea''s forces for infighting." I turned pointedly to her. "A¨ªfe, if you''re dissatisfied with how things are, then we can have our contract nullified."

    "Wait, what?" Ritsuka demanded, panicking.

    "We can?" Rika asked, surprised.

    "A powerful Servant is not more important than a cohesive unit," I went on, pretending they hadn''t spoken. "If you can''t work with Emiya, then we won''t force you to stay."

    For a long moment, A¨ªfe searched my face, looking for¡­the lie, I had to assume, but although I didn''t want to let her go and didn''t actually plan on it, nothing I''d said was really untrue. We couldn''t afford to have our Servants at each other''s throats all the time, and if they couldn''t work together, we''d be better off knowing now and calling Siegfried or Bradamante as reinforcements than trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

    Finally, A¨ªfe snorted and smirked. "No, we understand each other perfectly well, I think. Very well, Master of Chaldea." She reached out, and her spear seemed almost to leap into her hand as she snatched it back up again. "In the interest of mankind''s future, I do believe I can set aside my pride and work together with you and your Servants. If future fights prove to be as entertaining as this one was, then I think I can be satisfied with that."

    "How gracious of you," Emiya said sarcastically.

    "Wait, I''m confused," said Rika. "Did Senpai just win a staring contest with Super Action Mom, or am I just dumb?"

    "I''m not sure what happened either," Ritsuka admitted.

    "Fou, fou, fou-fou, fou kyuu fou," the little gremlin on Mash''s shoulder said, in a tone that suggested it was explaining things. Like it could actually talk.

    Fuck me, where did it keep going whenever it ducked out of sight? Even something that size should still be noticeable to my bugs.

    "I told you earlier that you Masters would have to prove yourselves to me as well," said A¨ªfe. "You didn''t think it would be as easy as standing there behind your Shielder and watching me fight, did you?"

    "Is that what just happened?" Rika asked disbelievingly.

    "Well, I''m certain you''ll have more opportunities in the future," A¨ªfe told them with a smirk. "And more than that¡­ Emiya, have you noticed it?"

    Emiya''s brow furrowed, and then he straightened, head swiveling as he looked around. "Constantine''s Noble Phantasm¡­"

    My eyes went wide as I noticed it now, too.

    "I can''t feel it anymore."

    Neither could I. That oppressive feeling, like there was a wall of mist between me and my bugs, was gone now. My powers were back to normal.

    "A Noble Phantasm that absolute in effect isn''t easy to use," said A¨ªfe with the air of a teacher. "To have that much reach, the only way it could be enforced is if it relied not on such things as distance, but territory. Then, if all the lands of the United Empire are his territory ¡ª"

    "It covers the entirety of the United Empire," Emiya realized with dawning horror.

    My stomach clenched. Ice raced through my veins. "What?"

    If Constantine''s Noble Phantasm could do what it did across the entirety of the enemy''s territory, then wouldn''t that mean we''d be all but crippled if we tried to fight them in it?

    "Just as he said." A¨ªfe grinned, mirthless. "As long as you stand upon Constantine''s land, you are subject to his laws. Under his rule, Rome saw its greatest era of prosperity and wealth, bolstered by a unity it hadn''t seen before or since. Peace across the breadth of the empire ¡ª that is Pax Romana."

 Interlude QB: Morituri te Salutant

    Interlude QB: Morituri te Salutant

    Queen Boudica was a worrier by nature.

    If asked, she would say that she had always been that way, but it seemed that motherhood had sharpened that trait in her to a keener edge. Being queen had only extended that care and devotion out from her family to her people, to all those who thought her worth referring to with such reverence.

    She liked that part of herself. There was something incredibly fulfilling about wielding a knife to carve up the latest catch for dinner instead of a sword to stab an enemy on the battlefield. The act of caring for other people warmed her heart, and the simple pleasure of offering a smile and a pat on the head for a job well done had easily carried her off to sleep at the end of a long day many a time before.

    Boudica''s heart was full of love, and that love belonged to all of her subjects, from the lowest to the highest born. Even if she wasn''t really a queen in the same way as those exalted rulers of great nations spanning from sea to sea, that was okay, because it just left more room in her heart for the people she did rule over.

    It was wrong to say that they were like her own children. No matter what, she would never know even a fraction of her people as well as she did her daughters, and as much as it pained her to admit, naturally, she could never love them on the same scale as the two beautiful girls she had brought into the world.

    Even so, she loved them and she wanted the best for them. Their tribe, so tiny compared to the sprawling kingdoms of later years and the empire whose yoke they had tried so unsuccessfully to throw off, may not have been as her children, but they were her family.

    Many of those people were now gone. Some had fought beside her and perished when their rebellion was crushed. Those who had escaped that fate had instead been put to the sword when Rome swept in to stamp out even the tiniest embers her crusade had sparked. Were she to impossibly return to life, those that remained might expect her to gather them all together and rise up again ¡ª a temptation that Boudica knew, in her bones, that she mustn''t fall to.

    And so, when she was given this miraculous second life, she closed herself from Britain so that her heart could survive.

    But who she was at her core remained, and as she found herself on the side of Rome against this United Empire that slaughtered for pleasure and strategy and whatever whims struck their fancy, more people began to worm their way in, occupying space in her heart with all those she''d loved before.

    Boudica the woman had lost everything and died. Boudica the Servant was slowly finding new people to love and worry over, because she was suddenly in command of a cohort of Roman soldiers, many of them young and untested, all of them looking to her for leadership, and every single one utterly ignorant of exactly how outclassed they were against the enemies they would inevitably face.

    How could she not come to care for these men, after spending weeks trying to keep them all alive? Could anyone listen to them tell stories of the families waiting for them at home and be so cold-hearted as to think of them as expendable?

    Boudica was a worrier by nature. Caring for others brought her joy and fulfillment.

    And then, Queen A¨ªfe sent her son, Connla, to call her to the Joyous Guard, and there, Boudica met a trio of children saddled with the burden of stopping the United Empire so that everything could go back to the way it was supposed to be.

    Boudica wouldn''t have been Boudica if her heart didn''t stutter at the mere thought of those children marching towards danger, no matter how well-protected they were in fact.

    "The rebellion is strong, but the oppressors are legion," said Spartacus from next to her. "The only failure is death. Even so, the rebellion continues on in the hearts of all those who fight the oppressors!"

    Boudica smiled and shook her head. "You''re right, Spartacus. Yes, I''m worried about the others, but all I can do now is look forward and trust that they can handle themselves."

    Spartacus just kept grinning, never once turning to look at her. His eyes remained firmly fixed on the road ahead.

    If only it was as easy as saying it. The mind might know that they were as safe as they could reasonably be, doing what they were and heading to fight who they were, but the heart could not be swayed by things like logic and reasoning.

    The mother in her begged her to turn around and go to them, to abandon her mission and rush to their aid. A¨ªfe was every bit her superior, both as a queen and as a warrior, and if there was something that the greatest woman warrior the British Isles had ever produced couldn''t handle, then another mediocre Servant wasn''t going to make a difference ¡ª but surely, that part of her argued, surely, something terrible would happen if Boudica herself wasn''t there to make sure that no one got hurt. Surely, she would be the difference between life and death for one of those children.

    Her fingers tightened on her chariot''s reins.

    She couldn''t do it. What was needed now wasn''t Boudica the mother or Boudica the queen. What was needed now was Boudica the warrior. Not the warm, cheerful woman who had smiled at her daughters and her husband and her people, but the fierce, vicious woman who had ripped apart Britain on her quest to avenge her family. She needed to embody that. Not a harmless housecat, graceful and affectionate, but a ferocious lioness, claws at the ready and teeth bared.

    (She hated that side of herself. Not for what she''d done or the pain she''d inflicted, but for the way it made her think, for the way it made her act, and for the hollow chill it left in her chest afterwards. She didn''t like where it led her.)

    So she couldn''t turn around and go back to them. They were counting on her to see this through, and Boudica the warrior would bring them the victory she never had in life.

    "I''m sorry, everyone," she told the wind. "Even when I know better, I just can''t help wanting to coddle you."

    The howling wind that whipped her hair offered no answer and no solace. The people who deserved her words were too far away to hear them.

    The journey was long and continued on, stretching out before her chariot. Her horses couldn''t tire in the way mortal horses could, and neither could Boudica herself, but with all that time, she was left alone with her thoughts and her worries, and nothing she told herself could really, truly soothe them.

    But that was nothing new. Doubts had plagued Boudica in everything she did from the moment her husband died, but a kind of terrible inertia carried her on as it had then. She was going, and so she kept going. She was fighting, and so she would keep fighting.

    Now, she was on a mission to intercept the attack force moving on Lugdunum, and so she would see it through, because she must.

    That, more than anything, allowed her to steel her heart and keep moving forward. Not the thought of duty, but the thought of all those still living there who would suffer under the attackers'' cruelty. They had already been deemed expendable when last the United Empire had been forced out, and Boudica held no illusions that the Empire''s attack dogs would think them any less so when they took the town again.

    As much as she worried about the others, Boudica could not stomach the thought of what might happen to those innocent townsfolk, just barely recovered from their losses last time. The image alone made her nearly sick, of bodies strewn about the streets, lying in pools of red blood, of men, women, and children slaughtered indiscriminately, of the blackened burns left on those unlucky enough to have been caught up in the Empire''s attempts to burn the city down behind them.

    She would not let it happen again.

    The pounding of her horses'' hoofbeats became like war drums in her ears. Her thundering pulse quickened to match the tempo. Liquid fire pooled in her belly, waiting for the moment it would surge and spread through her limbs. The howling wind became as her people''s cries for blood in the aftermath of her worst day, egging her on.

    This was how Boudica prepared for battle. If she had been summoned as an Avenger, this would have been her every waking moment.

    "Spartacus," she said in a voice like cold iron. "This should go without saying, but there is no surrender, this time. If they''re willing to use innocent people as bait, then we offer them no quarter."

    "The oppressors shall know our boundless fury," Spartacus agreed. "The shackles of oppression shall melt in the fires of our rage to become our swords and strike at the bleeding heart of tyranny."

    "Good."

    They fell back into silence after that for the rest of the journey. The distance they had to cover was over twice that of their comrades, and Boudica''s horses were simply not the equals of A¨ªfe''s divine horses, so they couldn''t travel as quickly, even if they weren''t limited to having to use the roads and stay on the ground.

    Eventually, however, inevitably, there came the tingle of her sixth sense, to let her know that there was a Servant nearby in that general direction. A powerful one, or perhaps simply a single ordinary Servant and several who were much weaker.

    Boudica pulled on the reins of her chariot and steered her horses towards that presence ¡ª or rather, in the direction she felt it moving.

    They were distressingly close to the mountain pass that would take them through to Lugdunum. Boudica angled it and arranged for that pass through the mountains to be at her back, so that she only had to fight in one direction instead of watching for a sneak attack.

    Once her chariot had come to a stop, she and Spartacus dismounted, and as she drew her sword and checked the fastenings on her targe, Spartacus'' own sword materialized in his hand as though it had never left it, fading instantly into existence. His ever-present grin grew even broader, so wide that she could see the dark pink of his gums.

    "The oppressors draw near!" he announced excitedly. "The time of rebellion approaches! My love grows hotter with every second!"

    "Yes," Boudica answered, "let''s get a better look at who or what we''re dealing with."

    It didn''t take long. Bare minutes after Boudica''s chariot had stopped, a column of red shields came down the road at a clipped, careful trot, slower than a man sprinting all out, but so consistent that it was undoubtedly faster in the long term. Twenty men in Roman armor, each of them carrying a spear in one hand and a sword at the hip.

    Leading them was a grizzled officer. He, too, was dressed in Roman armor, but it looked like an older model than his subordinates, with more decorations and a more ornate design, befitting a revered Heroic Spirit who had distinguished himself from his legion. A helmet covered most of his head and his clean-shaven face, but one blue eye stared out at them. The other, on his left side, was a milky white. Useless. A jagged scar that ran from his brow, over it, and halfway down his cheek told the tale of some terrible trauma that must have inflicted the wound.

    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    To remain and linger even after death, immortalized into him as a Heroic Spirit, it must have been a defining attribute of his legend.

    The officer ¡ª the Servant, almost certainly, since his presence was stronger than the others ¡ª commanded his squad to stop in perfect Latin, and they all stomped to a halt about twenty feet away from Boudica and Spartacus. Then, he shouted another order in Latin, and forty feet thumped as twenty shields clattered into formation, spears jutting out at the ready.

    He did not, on the other hand, give the order to attack. Yet.

    "Queen Boudica," he greeted her in a voice as smooth as wine and deep as the ocean. "So. You''ve come, truly."

    "Yes," she said coldly. "To prevent you from reaching Lugdunum."

    "We need not pretend otherwise," he began diplomatically. "You know as well as I that my orders were never to sack the city itself, only to draw your attention away from the others. No violence need be visited upon Lugdunum or its people."

    "Again, you mean?" she asked with frosty heat.

    "Not so long as it comes under the United Empire''s control," the Servant went on smoothly. "If you prefer, we could even arrange it so that you were its¡­provincial governor, shall we say? I''m certain neither side would have any reason to provoke a response so long as a Servant of your caliber was in control of it."

    And suddenly, she understood his game.

    "You''re offering me to join you."

    It was quite clever, actually. Not particularly like the standard Roman response to their enemies and second or third class citizens, either. A threat and a promise both: "Come to our side and give us this territory you already control, and there will be no need to risk the safety of the people living there." The easiest way to defeat your enemy was to make them your ally, after all. It was how her people had originally secured their own safety, before her husband''s death had seen Rome try to steal it away.

    The Rome she knew wouldn''t have even bothered with the pretense of negotiation. Not if they felt they could just take whatever it was they wanted.

    "You have no reason not to," the Servant pointed out. "You and I both know: you have no love for Emperor Nero or for Rome. You owe them no allegiance. In fact, you have more reason even than I to see the whole edifice torn down and the earth upon which it stands salted. You, who suffered and died at the cruelties of this decrepit Rome, would you not help us destroy it and rebuild a new, more glorious empire?"

    It was a tempting thought. Boudica would have been a liar if she dared to claim that no part of her wanted to agree with him, because even as a Rider, the ache of the injustices she and her family had been forced to suffer still burned. After all, the woman who had died cursing Rome had, because of when and how she died, never gotten the chance to let those passions cool. Queen Boudica''s legend ended with the sting of her defeat, the cruelties inflicted upon her unpunished and the crimes committed against her unrepaid.

    But¡­

    Spartacus chuckled. "Hahahaha! The oppressors change their faces, but they cannot hide the stench of their tyranny! A change of clothes cannot sway the cause of justice! My love cannot be smothered by a pleasant sight!"

    "Spartacus is right," Boudica said levelly. "The atrocities committed by Rome can never be forgiven. I can''t forgive them, not for what they did to me and my daughters, and not for what they did to my people. Even so¡­ If the new empire you and your masters are trying to build is built on the corpses of innocent civilians, then it will be no better than the Rome you''re trying to topple now."

    Even if she hated Rome and she hated Nero and the pain of her suffering and her daughters'' suffering still burned in her gut, what would be gained by tearing down Rome just so these Roman defectors could build a new Rome, just as terrible and just as unjust as the original? She couldn''t be so selfish that she would seek her own personal satisfaction, not when there were people in need of protection and a greater purpose in seeing Rome returned to its proper place.

    And besides, there was a future where Rome''s own decadence would one day bring it down, if only this era could be put back on track. She would not be around to see it, but she could take solace in the fact that the Empire''s own corruption would be its downfall.

    The Servant''s face drew tight.

    "No empire has ever been built on peaceful thoughts and happy dreams," he told her. "The future cannot be bought with kind words and empty promises. It must be taken, its foundations cemented with the blood of those sacrificed to see it come into existence."

    "An easy thing to say, when the blood being used isn''t yours," she countered. "When the village being ransacked means nothing to you and the people dying are nothing but strangers. How convenient it is when it''s always other people making the sacrifices."

    "You think I haven''t sacrificed?" the Servant growled. He thumbed at his ruined eye. "I''ve sacrificed plenty, and if my Caesar demanded I throw my body upon the altar so that my bones could be used as brick and my blood as mortar, the only thing I would ask is where I would best serve!"

    "And yet, you''re already dead," Boudica replied coldly. "The same as Spartacus and I. What value would your sacrifice have coming from someone who isn''t actually alive in the first place?"

    "The colosseum thrives on death," Spartacus added for good measure. "However, only the living may die. The restless dead can only howl and moan."

    The Servant''s lips curled into a sneer.

    "Pah!" he spat. "It seems there''s no reasoning with you. I don''t know why I expected anything else from a barbarian whore!"

    He shouted an order in Latin, and as he drew his sword, a standard Roman spatha, the twenty men behind him stomped the ground and let out an answering battlecry.

    "This barbarian whore won''t let you get any closer to Lugdunum!" She pointed with her sword. "Spartacus!"

    "Hahaha!"

    Spartacus leapt forward towards the formation, and the Servant shouted another order as he hefted his own shield. Spartacus crashed into it like a meteor, hacking away with his sword without any kind of grace or technique, just raw brutality. The nameless Roman Servant grunted but weathered the assault, keeping his large shield positioned between himself and Spartacus'' sword.

    Spartacus didn''t seem to care. He kept laughing and hacking as though he was determined to wear the Servant down through sheer attrition.

    Being fair to Spartacus, that wasn''t exactly the worst plan of attack for him, considering how his Noble Phantasm worked.

    The unknown Servant must have figured something like that out, too, because he shouted another order in Latin, and in between swings, he bashed his shield into Spartacus'' face. Spartacus stumbled a few feet back, but he righted himself almost instantly, still laughing, even as blood streamed down his face from his nostrils.

    He moved to reengage immediately, but the Roman Servant retreated after his blow and the line of his soldiers opened up only long enough to admit him, and then they closed around him. He became just another part of the formation, with his allies arrayed along either side like wings.

    "Alae Scaeva!" the Servant shouted, addressing his men. "Promoveo!"

    Twenty-one pairs of feet stomped as they answered him with another roar, their shields forming a wall of red. Each of them, Boudica could see now, depicted a sword with wings sprouting from the guard, gold patterned on a crimson background.

    Spartacus crashed into them like a wrecking ball.

    The line of shields bent slightly under the weight of his bulk and the strength of his blow, but they pushed him back just as quickly, and those not directly in the line of his attack jabbed at him with their spears through the small gaps in the formation. They bit into his unprotected flesh, scoring wounds along his muscular arms, his thighs, even his torso.

    Spartacus just kept laughing.

    "More!" he cried. "More! Yes, let me show you my love even more! This pain is the pain of my love! This ecstasy is the ecstasy of my love! Let my love overflow!"

    Red blood splattered all over, staining his chest and limbs as more and more injuries accumulated, gouging out more and more flesh. Even as he was wounded, however, his wounds healed, sealing up, scabbing over, filling in, and something grotesque glowed and moved under his skin as his Noble Phantasm converted the damage into power.

    It was hard to watch. Boudica wasn''t the type of woman to stand back and sit on the sidelines as a battle unfolded before her, especially not when it was her allies and her friends who were doing the fighting. She ached to join in.

    But Spartacus was in his element. Even more than that, he was getting stronger with every attack as his muscles bulged and his arm swung. His blood splattered all about the ground, and the thunderous force behind each blow shook the Earth, but he wasn''t tiring and he wasn''t slowing. Quite the opposite, because he got faster and more energetic with each passing second.

    The soldiers had been aiming at first for his limbs, his joints, for disabling blows that would make Spartacus vulnerable for a follow up attack by one of the others in the formation ¡ª but Spartacus ignored them entirely, like he didn''t even feel the pain, and kept battering at the Servant''s shield as his wounds healed almost instantly.

    When they realized that Spartacus was unaffected by the attacks meant to cripple him, they moved instead for more immediately dangerous attacks, aiming their spears for his head and his vital organs. They jabbed at his torso, trying to hit his kidneys, his liver, his stomach, his heart and lungs. They jabbed at his muscular thighs, perhaps trying to puncture one of the critical blood vessels therein, though Boudica herself didn''t think that actually could kill a Servant.

    Even when they found their marks, however, Spartacus was undaunted. Covered in his own blood, drenched red from his wounds, he only got faster and stronger, and the air howled with each pass of his blade. The strike of each landing blow was like the crack of thunder, shaking the world with their might such that even the trees quivered. Somehow, the Roman Servant kept his shield up and blocked them, although Boudica couldn''t imagine how. Her arm ached just imagining being on the receiving end of those attacks, and her bones rattled even from here.

    And still, she worried, because even seeing that their own attacks were only making Spartacus stronger, the Roman soldiers didn''t change their strategy at all. They kept jabbing with their spears as Spartacus hammered away at their leader with single-minded intensity.

    This couldn''t be it, she found herself thinking. Their theory had been that this Servant''s Noble Phantasm let him split himself into twenty separate warriors, and the coordination between him and his men seemed to bear that out, but if their enemy was clever enough to have sent a distraction force to divide them up and make them easier to beat, would they then send a Servant who couldn''t do anything but mindlessly stab with their weapons at an opponent like Spartacus?

    If this really was Julius Caesar''s plan, where was the cunning? Where was the strategic genius? This just seemed¡­far too basic.

    "Alae Scaeva!" the Servant suddenly shouted, and he gave another order to his twenty men. They bellowed a wordless answer, and then they fanned out, forming an arrow around Spartacus, with the leader at the tip.

    Spartacus ignored them and swung his sword ¡ª except it was caught, this time, not by the enemy''s shield, but by a gleaming, silver sword.

    "Ah?" Spartacus stopped, confused.

    "Your strength is formidable," the Roman told him. "My bones ache to match blades with you. However¡­I have suffered wounds far more grievous than a few aching joints, and I will not be defeated by a mere howling beast!"

    And he pushed Spartacus'' sword away, sending Spartacus stumbling back a step. Spartacus just grinned again and charged back towards him, but the Roman met him head on, and their swords clashing echoed with an unholy screech that set Boudica''s teeth on edge as Spartacus was forced back a step again.

    Something was happening, she realized. Something had changed, but what?

    The Roman stomped forward before Spartacus could reengage, and now he was the one pushing Spartacus back, meeting him blow for blow and responding with punishing force. Boudica almost couldn''t believe what she was seeing, even as Spartacus was driven back into the center of the soldiers'' formation.

    "Pin him down!"

    The formation collapsed on Spartacus, and spears flew as they were thrown at him. Spartacus whirled about, trying for the first time to block them, but the Roman was already there, locking swords with him as several of the soldiers stabbed their spears through his legs and his feet and into the ground.

    It wouldn''t hold him long, but Boudica had a nasty suspicion it didn''t need to.

    "Spartacus!"

    She kicked off the ground, racing towards the fray. A few of the soldiers turned to her as she approached, but she batted one aside with the face of her shield and parried the other''s sword, sliding her blade across his throat with a smooth motion that she couldn''t help thinking A¨ªfe herself would have praised.

    Spartacus swung wildly up ahead, smashing one soldier''s head with his free arm, but with his legs skewered by almost half the squad''s spears, he couldn''t move very far or very well, and the rest of the legionnaires avoided his wrath by ducking out of the way once they had done their job. The Roman himself occupied his other arm, keeping his sword from swiping at any of the soldiers who got close.

    Boudica was prepared to barrel through them, but they all gave the Roman and Spartacus a wide berth, retreating a safe distance. She didn''t take time to think about why ¡ª the only reason the Roman would take care to immobilize Spartacus in the first place was to use a finishing move, a Noble Phantasm.

    Alone with the Roman, Spartacus wound back for another swing, but the Roman stepped in and took it on his shield with a grunt, leaving his sword entirely free to do with as he pleased. He lifted it high above his head like an executioner''s blade, and then he spoke.

    My Sword is Sharpest When Dull

    "Ferrea Voluntate Scaeva."

    "No!"

    Boudica threw herself onto Spartacus'' back, desperately swinging her shield up above his head to intercept the blow.

    With an echoing CRACK, it split, and white hot pain surged up her arm. Someone screamed, high pitched and shrill ¡ª it was her, she realized.

    The world spun. The sound of splintering wood popped in her ears, and the world moved around her, carrying her along for the ride.

    When she opened her eyes again, the Roman was several meters away, scowling at her, and she was cradled in Spartacus''s arms as he knelt protectively over her.

    "Spartacus?"

    "No rebellion can be without pain," he told her with what might be called regret, "but by overcoming pain, one can find the strength to do battle. This pain¡­is not the pain born of such strength."

    She looked down ¡ª

    "Oh."

    And her left arm ended abruptly below the elbow, red blood still flowing from the wound.

    How strange it was to be a Servant, she thought. A wound like this would likely have been a death sentence while she was alive, one way or another, and yet, here, as a Servant¡­

    "It''s fine," she said, and she slowly climbed to her feet. "I can still fight."

    Spartacus hovered over her cautiously as she stood, his eyes still locked on the Roman Servant. The blood from his own wounds still ran over his body sluggishly as the shattered splinters of those spears were forced out of his flesh.

    The remaining soldiers had moved back into formation, leaving their dead where they lay ¡ª actual bodies instead of vanishing spirits, and if there was time later, she would think about it then ¡ª and Boudica turned to face them with determination, her mouth set into a firm line and her back straight, like her arm wasn''t missing at all. The wound hurt, but not nearly as much as she thought it should have, and although she was losing magical energy almost as quickly as blood, she was still stable enough, she thought, that she could at least last through this fight.

    "It seems I underestimated you, Queen Boudica," the Roman said grudgingly. "Very well. Then as a sign of my respect, I shall tell you my name before you die again."

    "The only one who''s dying here today is you," she retorted confidently.

    His lips pulled into a smirk on one side, a brief expression of mirth that was gone just as quickly.

    "I am Marcus Cassius Scaeva," he said, "loyal servant of Gaius Julius Caesar, his most trusted subordinate."

    He hefted his shield and brandished his sword. The soldiers behind him mimicked him as one.

    "My Alae Scaeva and I will kill you in his name, so as to pave the way for the glory of his United Empire."

 Chapter XLVI: A Flesh Wound

    Chapter XLVI: A Flesh Wound

    The ride back to camp seemed swifter than the ride there. Maybe it was because there was less of a sense of urgency to getting there as quickly as we possibly could, and maybe it was because we were all distracted by our thoughts after the battle.

    Whatever the case, it felt like it took us half the time to get back as it did to find Caesar in the first place, and we arrived at the expeditionary force''s base camp without fanfare early in the afternoon.

    "Super Action Mom really is amazing!" Rika gushed as we dismounted to walk the last dozen or so yards back to camp. "She beat those two guys basically by herself! Girl power!"

    "Are you going to insist on calling me that ridiculous nickname?" A¨ªfe asked, sounding somewhere between frustrated and resigned. Like a mother who knew she wasn''t going to win this battle. "It''s quite literally three times as long as my actual name. Or my class title."

    "Yes," Ritsuka informed her wearily. "Now that she''s decided on a nickname, she''s going to keep using it for as long as she can get away with it."

    "Apparently, my actions don''t count for much, do they," Emiya drawled.

    "I mean, you''re cool, too, Emiya," Rika said, "but you didn''t basically solo two super badass Roman Servants back to back."

    "I could have blown them both away with Caladbolg from four kilometers out," Emiya suggested. "Would that have been sufficiently ''cool'' enough to earn me one of these vaunted nicknames of yours, Master?"

    "I mean, would that have gotten them both at once?" Rika asked dubiously. "Your edgier version tried that back in Fuyuki, but Cu never let Edgiya actually get anywhere, so I have no idea how powerful that actually is."

    I mostly tuned them out, listening with only half an ear as different possibilities about what had happened to Boudica''s team flitted through my head.

    We hadn''t had contact with them since before our teams split up. They had farther to travel, so it seemed only natural that our team would make it back first, but I''d been expecting them to call once things were over, and the fact that she hadn''t worried me.

    "Edgiya?" Emiya recoiled.

    "Just be thankful she''s forgotten to call you her house-husband for now," Ritsuka whispered to Emiya.

    At the back, Arash snickered behind his hand.

    "Caladbolg took off three hilltops in the myth," Mash informed Rika at almost the same time. "Um, so that might not have been a good idea, would it? Then we wouldn''t have had the chance for Caesar to tell us for sure where the Grail was located."

    Had we underestimated the distraction team? The reading and the look Arash got had suggested a single primary Servant with a squad of lesser combatants as support, and that should have been an easy enough fight for the likes of Boudica and Spartacus. The longer it went on especially, the more advantageous it should be for Spartacus, and that was part of why I''d thought it best to send the two of them instead of just one alone or a third.

    But Spartacus did have a weakness, one both Crawler and Lung had fundamentally shared as well: hit him hard enough before he could start ramping up, and you could take him out while he was still relatively weak and unthreatening. The difficulty with that was that you needed to have something that could deal that much damage all at once, and knowing that one way or another was difficult when we didn''t know who the enemy Servant was.

    That was why Boudica had gone with him. Defense to his offense.

    "Hey, fellas!" Rika greeted the guardsmen at the entrance of the camp.

    They returned it with a respectful, "Lady Rika," and then greeted each of the rest of us in turn. I gave them a nod, but my head wasn''t in it.

    Could they still be fighting? There hadn''t been a way for us to check before, not without risking distracting them at a critical moment, but now that we were back at camp, we should be able to get Da Vinci to take a peek for us.

    "All I''m saying is," Rika was saying, "we haven''t seen you do that much cool stuff yet, Emiya. You tease us with these super special awesome secret techniques you''ve got squirreled away for the winter, but you never really show them off, you know?"

    "Maybe if our fights weren''t so close quarters all the time," Arash said genially. "I have to admit, I haven''t been getting many chances to show off my archery skills, either."

    "I''m guessing that sword I fired into Caesar''s back right as he was about to sneak attack A¨ªfe isn''t counting, here?" Emiya asked sarcastically.

    Rika''s brow furrowed. "Yeah, that was kind of cool, wasn''t it? But it wasn''t¡­you know¡­all that flashy."

    Emiya snorted. "Because style matters over substance."

    "Why not both?" Rika asked cheekily.

    "Why not, indeed."

    "Hail, friends!" Marcus greeted us as we walked deeper into camp. He was dressed in full combat gear, kitted out with gleaming metal armor wrapped around his torso in segmented plates.

    Both of the twins smiled broadly.

    "Marcus!"

    "How went the battle?" he asked. "Were you victorious?"

    A¨ªfe snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. "Was there any doubt?"

    "Super Action Mom beat up both of those big, bad emperor dudes!" Rika told him.

    Marcus lifted one eyebrow, befuddled. "Super Action Mom?"

    A long breath hissed out of A¨ªfe''s nose.

    "Storytime can wait," I interrupted, and Rika''s mouth snapped closed with a click. "Marcus, has there been any news from Boudica and Spartacus?"

    Marcus shook his head. "I''m afraid not. Have they yet to report back from their own battle?"

    I''d figured as much. It was possible that they finished with their enemies long before us and started back sooner, but if they had managed to make it back already, there was no way we wouldn''t have noticed.

    "No, we haven''t heard from them either."

    "They did have to go almost twice as far as we did," Arash pointed out reasonably, and that was something I''d been thinking about, yeah. "That Servant''s Noble Phantasm could also be a troublesome one."

    "You don''t think something happened to them, do you?" Ritsuka asked worriedly.

    "There''s no way of knowing."

    Damn it, I wished we''d been more insistent about forming a formal contract. But Boudica had turned the idea down, saying that she wouldn''t officially join up without Spartacus back when we first asked, and I hadn''t seen the need to press the issue at the time. Not when I could barely understand Spartacus, let alone figure out how to convince him to put himself under our command. It seemed a minor miracle that he''d been willing to go along with our plan of attack.

    "We should go help them!" Rika said. "If Queen Booty needs our help, we''re wasting time standing around!"

    Her heart was in the right place, but realistically, battles between Servants lasted minutes at best. Fights between regular people often ended within the first thirty seconds. With them almost fifty miles away, even on A¨ªfe''s chariot, the ride would take somewhere around ten minutes. If something had gone wrong, the only thing we''d get there to do was discover the aftermath.

    The first thing we needed to do was establish whether or not we were worrying over nothing and whether or not Boudica and Spartacus had been defeated. Since Boudica was wearing Ritsuka''s communicator, the presence of Servants around it would tell us who won and who lost.

    If there were no Servants close to it¡­ Getting to Lyon would have to be our first priority. A Servant who could take out both Boudica and Spartacus wasn''t one we could just let go.

    "Maybe we should try contacting them first?" Mash suggested.

    "If they''re still fighting, we could distract them," I told her. "Mash, set up a magic circle. A¨ªfe, we need it stabilized. I''m going to check with Da Vinci and see if she can tell us anything."

    "If it would help, I could scout in their direction, see if I can find anything," Arash suggested.

    For an instant, I hesitated, reluctant to divide our forces again, but a moment later, I gave him a nod. "Any information you might be able to find would be useful. Be fast, and if you have a shot on the enemy, then take it."

    He nodded.

    "Roger that, Master."

    He turned to leave, but I stopped him before he could vanish into the forest.

    "And Arash?"

    He paused and looked back at me over his shoulder.

    "No unnecessary risks. We need to know what''s going on more than we need you to kill the enemy Servant."

    Translation: don''t use your Noble Phantasm.

    He nodded again. "Understood."

    He bent his knees, and then he rocketed into the air, across the camp, and disappeared into the forest. I felt him rushing through my swarm, and it was only a matter of seconds before he was outside of my range. The moment he was gone, I turned back to Mash. "Magic circle."

    She blinked, and then startled. "R-right!"

    She rushed to the first clear space she could find, set her shield down, and started digging a plain circle into the trampled dirt with meticulous haste.

    "Should we really be sending him out alone?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Independent Action is the specialty of the Archer class," Emiya told him. "It might sound a little strange, but this sort of thing is actually where we Archers perform best. Have a little faith in him."

    "Arash is a badass," said Rika, "but so was Queen Booty. And Spartacus! If that guy managed to beat them both ¡ª"

    "Then Arash will retreat," A¨ªfe cut in as she bent down next to Mash to start carving the necessary runes. "For all that he''s celebrated as a martyr, a Heroic Spirit like him won''t needlessly throw his life away fighting a battle he can''t win."

    "Worst case scenario¡­" I gestured to my Command Spells.

    I hated the idea of having to use one, especially since it would take almost three whole weeks to replenish it, but if it was the difference between losing him and not, it would be a worthwhile trade.

    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    "Magic circle complete, Miss Taylor," Mash reported. She and A¨ªfe straightened up, and just as she said, the magic circle had been finished.

    They stepped out of the way as I stepped over to it and flung out my hand. My fingers found my own communicator and pressed the activation button at the same time as I barked out, "Anfang!"

    A pale, blue panel appeared over Mash''s shield, and for a moment, it showed only the back wall of the Command Room and an empty chair.

    "Incredible," Marcus breathed. "What kind of magic is this?"

    And then a harried Da Vinci rushed into view and flung herself at the screen, filling up the entire panel with her face.

    "Sorry, sorry!" She moved back and dropped into the previously empty chair. "Your call was a little unexpected, so I wasn''t here to receive it!"

    "Is Doctor Roman still asleep?" Mash asked.

    "It hasn''t been that long since your last call, you know," said Da Vinci wryly. "Not for us, at least. Less than an hour."

    "Oh." Mash blinked. "Right. I forgot."

    "Da Vinci!" Rika called, leaning forward like she was going to try and shake Da Vinci for answers through the hologram. "Is Queen Booty okay? What about Spartacus?"

    Da Vinci blinked, bewildered. "Ah?"

    "We gave them Ritsuka''s communicator," I explained shortly. "We haven''t heard back from them since we split up. Can you detect them at all?"

    "Ah, yes, that would explain why Ritsuka''s body has been in one place and his comms device another," Da Vinci said reasonably, nodding. "In any case, yes, I should be able to detect the presence of Servants if there are any in proximity to Ritsuka''s communicator. I should even be able to get a rudimentary read of nearby Saint Graphs ¡ª in other words, I should be able to tell that it''s Queen Boudica or Spartacus who''s near it or not."

    "Hurry!" said Rika, bouncing on her heels impatiently.

    "Yes, yes, I''m going."

    Da Vinci''s fingers flew across the keyboard out of sight, and a moment later, something on her screen beeped. Her brow furrowed.

    "That''s odd."

    My lips drew tight, and I braced for bad news.

    "The readings are faulty," Da Vinci eventually said. "I''m not getting as much data back as I was expecting. That is, I can detect at least two Spirit Origins in close proximity to Ritsuka''s communicator, but I''m having trouble getting more complete data."

    "Could it be interference?" Ritsuka asked. "U-um, I mean, we need a magic circle to stabilize the connection, so maybe it''s because they don''t have one?"

    "Not impossible," Da Vinci hedged, "but it''s unlikely. The reason we have trouble contacting you inside of Singularities like this isn''t really a problem with us receiving a connection from you as it is you guys have trouble receiving a return signal from us. When you''re close to a Ley Line Terminal, the magical energy all converging on a single spot is like standing beneath a cell phone tower when you make a call. Similarly, these magic circles that are enhanced by Primordial Runes are like antennae that make it easier for you to receive a signal."

    "I thought as much," A¨ªfe said with a nod of her head. "After all, if you''re constantly monitoring the Masters'' vitals, then you would have no trouble at all picking up a communication signal."

    "So if there''s a problem with Senpai''s communicator," Mash summarized, "it''s on Queen Boudica''s end, not yours."

    Da Vinci nodded. "That''s right. Unfortunately, the nature of any such problem was what we were trying to determine, so by existing, it serves as a confirmation of sorts that there''s a problem in need of addressing in the first place."

    "They''re in trouble!" Rika insisted. "We need to go help!"

    "Not necessarily," Da Vinci said, holding up one index finger as though she were lecturing a student. "Your communicators were never intended to be taken into combat by a Servant. It''s entirely possible that the reason we''re getting less information back than expected is because the communicator itself was damaged during combat. After all, Servants have different limits than humans, so all Queen Boudica would have to do is be a little too rough with it and it could break entirely."

    A design flaw that I was sure Da Vinci herself would be rectifying as much as she could when we got back.

    "You should have seen already, Master," said Emiya. "Although a monster like A¨ªfe isn''t quite the norm, that sort of speed and strength isn''t so far outside of what most Servants are capable of."

    "Unfortunately, Ritsuka and Rika have only really seen some of the extremes of Servants'' capabilities," Da Vinci said with a wry smile. "Their first real experience with a Servant''s raw physical power was King Arthur, after all."

    "Suddenly, I understand Master''s unrealistic expectations of my close combat skills," he replied dryly.

    "You said two Servants?" I asked, addressing Da Vinci.

    "Spartacus and Queen Boudica," Mash breathed, some of the tension in her shoulders easing.

    "At least two, yes," Da Vinci confirmed. "Considering their opponent, however, and what sort of Noble Phantasm he likely had¡­"

    It wasn''t a guarantee that the "two" Servants she was detecting weren''t just whoever it was and his duplicates. In fact, I thought with a chill, if he was clever enough, he might be using a pilfered communicator to listen in on our conversation right now.

    "Do you have a heading for them?"

    "It''s not exact, but they seem to be returning your direction," said Da Vinci. "At speed, as well. The route they''re taking means that I can''t say for sure they''re not going back to Caesar''s base camp, but all things considered, it seems like Queen Boudica and Spartacus succeeded."

    A general wave of relief washed over the group.

    "Don''t get too comfortable," I warned them. "If it''s the enemy Servant, he might be looking for revenge for Julius Caesar."

    "The Romans tended not to take rebellion well," Da Vinci added.

    "Should we?" Marcus asked pointedly. "If you''ll forgive my impertinence, is not the rebellion of these¡­Servants you''ve spoken of the entire reason all of us are here? Is not our goal to restore the Empire to its proper place?"

    He wasn''t wrong, but the reasoning was different. We didn''t have to like or even support the Empire to know the importance of its place in history.

    "I didn''t think of it that way," Mash admitted. "For us, this is about fixing something that went wrong, but for you and Emperor Nero¡­ It''s a civil war, isn''t it?"

    "It''s not as though Rome is particularly unfamiliar with those," A¨ªfe said dryly. "Half of their emperors came to power by usurping the previous one or killing a rival for the position. The Empire couldn''t go a decade without one rebellion or another."

    "And that is why it is all the more important to deal with them swiftly and decisively," Marcus countered. "It may be true that there have been numerous rebellions throughout our history, and there will undoubtedly be more long after my bones are dust, but when we have peace and unity, true peace and unity, the splendor of Rome is the envy of the world."

    My cheek twitched, but this wasn''t a time to get into a fight about it, so I deliberately chose not to mention that Rome''s splendor was often built off of the exploitation, conquest, and slavery of the peoples they invaded. Boudica and Spartacus may have been two of the most famous, but uprisings of the poor, the downtrodden, and the underclass weren''t exactly uncommon in the Roman Empire.

    "Whoever it is, Arash should see them coming long before they get here," I interjected, cutting off any argument before it could get started. "We should know who and what we''re dealing with soon enough."

    "And whether or not Boudica and Spartacus won," Mash said with quiet solemnity.

    "Speaking of winning," Da Vinci segued, "congratulations are in order, are they not? Not only did you defeat Julius Caesar, but the mystery man who was with him turned out to be Lucius Tiberius, and you beat him, too!"

    "I¡­" Mash opened her mouth, paused, brow furrowing as she thought about it, and then smiled a little. "I guess it really was something of a team effort, wasn''t it?"

    "Not for lack of a certain someone''s trying," Emiya drawled.

    "I make no apologies for who I am," A¨ªfe replied stubbornly.

    "Even when it nearly cost us the battle?"

    "But it didn''t," said Ritsuka. "And it was a team fight from the beginning, wasn''t it? That Noble Phantasm that was affecting everyone¡­"

    Right. Constantine the Great, presumably. "Pax Romana," Caesar had called it. A Noble Phantasm that enforced "peace" within his territory, or at least near as any one of us could tell it. We would likely have to see him and use Master''s Clairvoyance to get anything clearer than that.

    "There were some unusual readings in the Servants'' Saint Graphs during the battle, but¡­" Da Vinci trailed off. "Perhaps you should explain what you mean about a Noble Phantasm affecting everyone."

    Our group shared a look.

    "We noticed it before we even found Caesar himself," Mash began.

    Mash took point, but between our whole group, we explained some of the finer details of our battle with the erstwhile emperors, from Constantine''s Noble Phantasm to Caesar himself to Lucius Tiberius. We covered the major moments and the important bits, and once that was done, what Caesar himself had told us before he faded away.

    "Pax Romana," Da Vinci muttered when we were finished. "What a terrifying Noble Phantasm. In an ordinary Grail War, it would be hard to use, but here, with the entire breadth of his faction''s breakaway empire under his heel¡­" She shook her head. "And then there''s this court mage figure, said to be in possession of this Singularity''s Holy Grail. Are you thinking what I''m thinking?"

    "Professor Lev," Mash mumbled. "He''s here."

    "Fou, fou," the beast on her shoulder added mournfully.

    "Caesar was expecting us," I chimed in, agreeing with Mash. "He called us ''Chaldeans,'' and said he was expecting Mash, the twins, and me to be there, but he was surprised by Emiya and A¨ªfe. Gilles and Jeanne Alter didn''t seem to have any idea who we were in Orl¨¦ans, but Caesar recognized us."

    "And the only one who could have told him about us is Lev Lainur," Da Vinci agreed grimly. "Yes, that was my thought, as well. That doesn''t mean Lev is necessarily here ¡ª he could have simply told Caesar and the United Empire that we were coming and what to expect ¡ª but this mysterious court mage fellow is quite suspicious."

    It was still no guarantee. The signs all pointed to Lev, for now, but there wasn''t anything ironclad enough to say it with absolute certainty. It might, in point of fact, just be a Caster class Servant and Lev had only been here long enough to drop off the Grail and warn the United Empire about our inevitable arrival.

    I still wasn''t sure I wanted it to be him. For Marie''s sake¡­would it be better or worse if she got to confront him herself? If she got to watch as we took him down? Would she sleep easier if she saw his broken body with her own eyes, or would the burden be lesser just knowing he was gone?

    We''ll cross that bridge when we get there.

    "Whoever this court mage is, it looks like we''re going to have to take Constantine out before we go after the Grail," I said. "We can''t afford for everyone''s abilities to be diminished when we fight any of their Servants, especially their leader. He''s going to have to be our first target when we invade the United Empire."

    "We''ll have to figure out where to look, first," said Emiya.

    "Not hardly," A¨ªfe disagreed. "A trump card like that¡­ Isn''t it obvious that he''ll be sitting in the seat of their power?"

    If he wasn''t a strong combatant himself¡­ No, even if Constantine had a good offense to go with such a powerful defense, if I was the one leading the whole thing, there were only two places I''d park him: somewhere out of the way, where he would be hard for the enemy to find, or right behind me, where my enemies would have to make their way through every other defense I could throw at them to take him out.

    "As much as I''d like to disagree, the best place to put an important asset like that really is behind the strongest defenses you have." Da Vinci sighed. "Well. The alternative is¡­ That is to say, the most surefire way to negate that advantage is to reduce the size of the territory under the United Empire''s control."

    My eyebrows rose.

    "You mean beat them back," I said. "Through conventional warfare."

    Da Vinci grimaced. "It''s not palatable, I know, but it''s the safer method."

    "E-eh?" Rika squeaked. "B-but¡­ H-hang on, that could take years!"

    "Not necessarily," Da Vinci hedged. "In fact, with enough Servants, you could force them back to their capital in a matter of weeks."

    "Unless they summon more to fill out their own ranks," Emiya pointed out. "Then it could become a protracted campaign. A war of attrition. They could win just because it''s faster and easier for them to summon reinforcements."

    Da Vinci sighed again. "Yes, there is that. Even if we sent the rest of our own Servants to help, we still have to think about our future missions, whereas for the enemy, this is all or nothing."

    "It wouldn''t solve the core problem, anyway," said A¨ªfe. "Even if we beat them back to their capital city, it''s the city itself where Pax Romana will be the biggest issue. Showing up with an army of Roman soldiers is just going to inflate the body count."

    "The less people get hurt, the better," Ritsuka said firmly.

    "Another good point," Da Vinci conceded. She hummed thoughtfully. "In the end, you''re going to have to face him in his own territory, no matter what. If we had an Assassin class Servant and a good idea of where Constantine was¡­ But, well, there might be something we can do about the one, but the other would be down to luck and chance at best."

    "You have an idea?" I asked.

    "I''ve been thinking about it ever since we first found that Singularity," Da Vinci confirmed. "Originally, I was going to bring it up after you made contact with Emperor Nero in Rome¡­but you landed far off course, and you might not be heading that way under other circumstances to begin with."

    "Is there something important about the city?" Mash asked worriedly.

    Da Vinci shook her head. "Not the city itself, no, but the nearby Mount Etna." Her lips tugged to one side. "Well, nearby, relative to where you are now and most of the rest of the Empire. Mount Etna is the center of a Ley Line Terminal that connects to all of the ley lines throughout the entirety of Western Europe. More than that, the Mount Etna ley line is also one of the most powerful."

    "Should we attempt a summoning there, then?" asked Ritsuka.

    That wasn''t a bad idea, was it? Unless I was misremembering, Mount Etna was far to the south, near the bottom tip of Italy''s "boot." It was close enough to the Mediterranean Sea, to Greece¡­ If we attempted a summoning there, could we get a powerful, Grecian hero?

    Fuck, imagine if we got Heracles.

    "Perhaps, but that''s not what I had in mind," Da Vinci replied. "We won''t know for sure until we try, but if my theory is correct, we should be able to use the ley line as a sort of¡­signal booster. It might just be possible for us to scan the entirety of the Singularity and find out both where the Grail is, and where each and every one of the United Empire''s Servants is located."

    Mash took in a sharp breath. "That''s incredible!"

    Rika grinned. "I never did like hide and seek!"

    "You''re sure about this?" I asked.

    It would be an amazing boon if true. Knowing where everyone on the map was wouldn''t exactly solve all of our problems, but it would definitely give us a good idea of where and who to attack first.

    "It''s not a guarantee," Da Vinci hedged, "but on the chance I''m right, isn''t it worth taking a look?"

    It was. It definitely was.

    "It''s going to have to wait a little, no matter what," I said. "We need to meet with Emperor Nero first, see if he knows anything more about who and what to expect from the United Empire''s Servants. After that, though, we can take a trip to Mount Etna and you can scan the whole continent."

    "A few more days of waiting, then, at least on your end." Da Vinci smiled. "In the meantime, I have a certain special puppet to start putting together. A few hours might not get me very far, but I can at least get started, yes?"

    And get Marie her body back.

    "The sooner the better."

    "Aw, yeah!" Rika cheered. "One step closer to saving Director Marie!"

    Da Vinci''s smile tilted a little. "Well, it''s not going to happen instantaneously. In fact, I might not be done even after you guys have wrapped everything up in that Singularity. But yes. One step closer to saving Director Animusphere."

    "This Director of yours must be quite the person, to inspire such loyalty," A¨ªfe noted.

    Da Vinci''s smile wavered and became strained.

    "W-well," she hedged, "she''s definitely a¡­unique personality, that''s for sure. Most importantly, though, is that she tries her hardest and never accepts anything but everyone''s best efforts!"

    A very polite way of saying that she doesn''t think she''s good enough and tries too hard to meet her own high standards.

    A¨ªfe grinned. "She sounds like my kind of woman, then."

    "Then," said Da Vinci, "with any luck, you''ll be able to meet her soon enough." She turned back to me and the twins. "For now, we''ll leave things here. If anything important happens, feel free to contact us again. If not, then I''ll expect to hear from you after you meet Emperor Nero. We can go over plans and options at that time."

    "Right!" said the twins and Mash.

    "I''ll see you again soon!" Da Vinci waved. "Ciao ciao!"

    Her image flickered and disappeared. As soon as she was gone, Rika giggled, grinning. "The Director''s coming back!"

    "She might even be back by the time we finish things here," Ritsuka said, smiling.

    "Coming back? Saving?" A¨ªfe asked, bemused. "Is this Director of yours away, or in some kind of trouble?"

    The twins stopped and shared a look. Several expressions crossed their faces.

    "Director Animusphere was badly injured during the sabotage that resulted in our first Rayshift to the Fuyuki Singularity," I told her, saving them from answering. "She needs a very specialized prosthesis and a very specific kind of surgery, and Da Vinci hasn''t had the resources for either until recently."

    A¨ªfe nodded. "Hence the crabs."

    "Yeah. I ¡ª"

    Master, came Arash''s mental voice.

    I held up a finger. "A moment."

    I found Boudica and Spartacus, he reported. The good news is, they managed to defeat the Servant and his squad of Pseudo-Servants.

    Pseudo-Servants?

    I didn''t ask. It wasn''t important, just then. And the bad news?

    Borrow my eyes for a moment, he said instead of explaining.

    I frowned, closed my own eyes, and pushed my consciousness down the thread of our contract. A moment later, I was looking out of his eyes into a patch of forest, and a large, musclebound Spartacus, covered head to toe in blood and for once not smiling, had in his arms a bundle of white and red ¡ª Queen Boudica. Her face was haggard and drawn, and one arm was curled against her chest while the other ended abruptly at the elbow, wrapped in white bandages that were stained with splotches of crimson.

    Is that ¡ª

    It seems we underestimated the assault team, Arash said grimly, confirming my thoughts before I could finish forming them. Spartacus and Boudica''s victory wasn''t without cost.

    But they did win. That was the most important part.

    His eyes swung around, and through them, I saw a very familiar mountain pass, one that we had come through at another time, when Thiers was a small but flourishing city.

    We''ll be back in about ten minutes, he continued. We should be entering your range soon.

    I retreated from his eyes and opened my own again. Is there anything we can do about it?

    Unless you happen to know a thing or two about spiritual surgery, he told me, then I''m afraid not.

    A grimace pulled at my mouth.

    Things could never be that easy, could they?

 Chapter XLVII: Doppelganger (Twisted Mirror)

    Chapter XLVII: Doppelganger (Twisted Mirror)

    The twins and Mash were understandably distressed when they saw what had become of Boudica. Much fretting was involved, and not a small amount of worry. The way they acted, you could have been forgiven for thinking she was going to disappear at any moment.

    Fortunately, Servants weren''t human. They weren''t strictly alive, even, which meant that a crippling, life-threatening wound for a living human being was less a life-changing event for a Servant and more of a temporary inconvenience.

    Yes, with enough time and magical energy, Servants could regrow limbs. No, I was not at all jealous, and the port connecting my prosthetic to my real flesh did not itch or throb the slightest bit.

    Unfortunately, the amount of time and energy a Servant needed to invest in restoring a lost limb was not small by any stretch of the imagination. Days, if the Master was good enough, compatible enough, and had a large enough supply of magical energy. For Boudica, the timeline was looking more like two weeks ¡ª unless, I thought privately, we took her to Mount Etna and hooked her up to the ley line there.

    Another bridge to cross when the time came.

    Eventually, things calmed down and cooler heads started to prevail. None of us had any actual skill in the spiritual surgery that would make healing Boudica easier, but it didn''t mean there wasn''t anything we could do for her. We were practically on top of a ley line ourselves, untouched and untapped by any locals simply because there weren''t any locals yet.

    So I called up Sylvia, one of the few magi who had survived the sabotage and who was now working as a technician monitoring our situation, and together with a little help from Mash, we taught the twins how to set up a proper magic circle. Formalcraft, one of the most basic, foundational skills of magi.

    If Sylvia noticed that I mostly let her do the talking, well, she didn''t say anything about it. I decided to believe that she was well aware that I was still not much more than a novice myself, but didn''t want to undermine my position as the twins'' more experienced leader, so she chose not to call attention to my own lack of knowledge.

    When we were done, there was a textbook magic circle, a little basic, but perfectly functional for our purposes, since all it had to do was concentrate the flow of magical energy. The Roman soldiers, in a show of solidarity and support, had cleared out a tent for Boudica to use so that she wouldn''t be sitting out in the middle of the camp for everyone to gawk at.

    Even Emiya decided to chip in, projecting a simple sleeping mat ¡ª a futon, he called it, and by the twins'' lack of surprise, I had to chalk that peculiarity up to America appropriating another term to use for a completely different object ¡ª for Boudica to rest on. As he told it, the futon would be stabilized by the magic circle, too, so she didn''t have to worry about it disappearing on her in the middle of the night.

    With that done, however, there wasn''t much else for us to do while we waited for Emperor Nero to finish the trip up here. Nothing, at least, that I felt it was safe to do in what could very quickly become a combat zone.

    So, naturally, A¨ªfe decided it would be the perfect time for us to learn some martial arts.

    "Uncle!" Rika yelped, slapping her free hand against the dirt. "Uncle! Uncle!"

    A¨ªfe relaxed her grip on Rika''s other arm and let her go, and Rika flopped to the ground, gasping for breath as her chest heaved. Ritsuka watched on from the sidelines, but unlike the first two days, he didn''t go rushing to check on her. If there was one thing A¨ªfe had definitively proven, it was that she was well aware of what our limits were and when and where they could be safely pushed.

    I swiped a stray lock of hair out of my face, matted with sweat, and grimaced. I doubted Emiya could project a fully modern bathtub, but he should at least be able to make a large enough steel tub, I thought. We were going to have to see about carrying around soaps and shampoos in the future, because rinsing off in a stream definitely wasn''t going to cut it after stuff like this.

    "Uuunnn," Rika groaned into the dirt. "My everything hurts."

    "Take a few minutes to recover, and then we''ll go again," A¨ªfe said. "This time, I expect you to try and put me into that hold."

    Rika just groaned some more.

    "Slave driver."

    "If you think this is rough, you would never have survived my teachings back when I was alive," said A¨ªfe, amused. "Unfortunately, I can''t push you as far, as fast, or as hard as I would like to, so this is going to be slower and more painful than either of us prefers."

    "Why not?" asked Ritsuka.

    Rika levered herself up far enough to lance her brother with a panicked glare. "Onii-chan, no."

    A¨ªfe pursed her lips, and for a moment, looked like she was mulling over how to explain. "You''re aware of the nature of Heroic Spirits, yes?"

    "I mean, we¡­know a little," Ritsuka admitted a little sheepishly. "They''re the spirits of heroes who were celebrated for doing great or terrible things, right?"

    "Yes," said A¨ªfe, "but we are not¡­moments of frozen time, so to speak. That is, a Heroic Spirit is not simply the hero at one moment of her life."

    "A Heroic Spirit encompasses the entirety of their legend," Arash added in. "Think of the Heroic Spirit on the Throne as the whole book instead of one chapter. A complete existence, encompassing beginning and end and everything in between."

    "A good analogy," A¨ªfe agreed with a nod. "Then, when you summon a Servant, would you expect the Heroic Spirit to arrive as both the young girl she started as and the grown woman she eventually became?"

    "That¡­isn''t possible, is it?" Ritsuka asked.

    "No," I answered, because it was obvious. "Something like that would be a paradox."

    It would be like asking me whether I was Skitter, Weaver, or Khepri. All of them were Taylor Hebert, all of them evolutions of the same person, but I could no more be the young, naive Skitter and the jaded, weary Khepri at the same time than a chicken could be both egg and rooster simultaneously.

    "Just so," said A¨ªfe. "Even then, however, certain aspects of a Heroic Spirit might be emphasized based upon the class they were summoned in, or even the area or time period in which they''re summoned." She gestured down at her own body. "Ordinarily, the Rider class is my most balanced. It allows me the greatest access to the full breadth of my power. However, because I was summoned to this time near the seat of my legend, what was emphasized in my summoning was my nature as a warrior queen."

    "Ah." Arash made a noise of understanding in his throat.

    "Is¡­that a bad thing?" asked Ritsuka uncertainly.

    "For her ability as a combatant? No." Arash shook his head. "But it means that there are some things that got excluded that might normally not be. Let me guess: your tutelary aspects were downplayed."

    A¨ªfe gave a helpless shrug. "Unfortunately, yes. And that means that the skills and Noble Phantasms normally associated with it are inaccessible to me, so it simply isn''t possible to speed this up any further than it already is."

    "Maybe that''s a good thing." Arash smirked. "After all, your teachings produced some of the finest warriors Ireland has ever seen. It would put us out of a job if you made the Masters able to fight all of the Singularities by themselves."

    My brow twitched. Easy for him to say. He didn''t have to feel helpless and weak whenever we ran into another Servant, wishing he had the strength and the speed to actually fight back. Even if the best she could make of me was a warrior half as strong as C¨²chulainn, I would have jumped at the chance not to have to sit on the sidelines anymore.

    And maybe, I realized to my chagrin, that was why it was actually a good thing. The wyvern back in Orl¨¦ans was one thing, but if I actually had the physical ability to keep up with a Servant, I couldn''t imagine I wouldn''t try ¡ª and then get killed by whatever Noble Phantasm they pulled out to finish me off.

    My Last Resort was useful and strong, but even still, something like King Arthur''s Excalibur or C¨²chulainn''s Wicker Man or Tiberius'' Florent Cruentus would be just as fatal to me, whether I had my knife or not. Even Medusa''s Harpe was dangerous, because it had range and reach over my knife. One nick in the wrong place and I''d bleed out as the twins and Mash watched helplessly.

    "I wouldn''t say no to having the ability to defend myself if a Servant ever ambushed us," I said deliberately, "but even if she could do that for us, we still wouldn''t have Noble Phantasms."

    "A good point," Arash agreed.

    "As though I couldn''t fashion you one myself," A¨ªfe said with a snort and a smirk. "With the right supplies, that is."

    "Sorry, we''re fresh out of sea monster bones," I said. "Would crabs work?"

    Mash blinked at me, confused, even as Rika burst out into startled laughter, rolling over onto her back so she could wrap her arms around her stomach and throw her head back against the ground. The rest of us watched her, Ritsuka and I both apparently a little concerned that she was laughing so hard at what wasn''t really that funny a joke.

    "Oh god, Senpai!" Rika wheezed. "I didn''t know you had it in you!"

    What? It wasn''t like that was the first time I''d made a joke around them. I wasn''t sure Rika even really got it anyway, not the whole thing at least, but apparently whatever part of it she did understand was somehow incredibly funny.

    "Ordinary crabs wouldn''t be enough," A¨ªfe said at length, having decided to ignore Rika''s slowly weakening cackles. "No, we''d need to find a magical beast of some kind, which shouldn''t be too hard. I can only imagine the reason we haven''t been accosted already is because the ones still alive in this era are wary of engaging so many Servants."

    "Fou, fou!" The little beast puffed itself up, throwing out its chest proudly, as though to declare that it was the reason nothing else had tried making a meal out of us. "Fou kyuu fou!"

    "Or maybe they''re scared of Fou," said Mash, smiling slightly, in the tone of voice of a mother indulging her child.

    Fou didn''t seem entirely pleased with that, until Mash reached up with one finger and scratched under his chin. Then, he seemed only happy to lean into her finger and let her scratch without complaint, like some kind of ordinary housecat.

    A¨ªfe arched one eyebrow, but chose not to deny the possibility. It said something ¡ª although I wasn''t quite sure what ¡ª that I couldn''t deny it outright, either.

    There was something about that creature. I still didn''t know what, but whatever it was that put me on edge, there was nothing to say that it didn''t do the same for anyone or anything else, either. It was entirely possible that whatever I felt, whatever instinct made me want to always keep Fou in my line of sight, the magical beasts around here could feel it, too.

    "Whatever the case," A¨ªfe said, "if we could find the right supplies, I''m sure I could fashion something for you Masters to make use of. Perhaps not the strongest weapon ¡ª not lacking, as I am, in my more tutelary aspects ¡ª but something, at least."

    "That would be useful," I allowed, "but only as a last resort. Whatever we feel, a Master''s place is in the rear, as far away from danger as she possibly can be."

    The weight of my dagger suddenly felt like a stone strapped to my body. The words came out of my mouth, but they were Marie''s ¡ª one of the first and, as she had said, most important lessons we Master candidates would learn.

    I had never been particularly good about staying in my supposed lane, though.

    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    "Without Senpai and Miss Taylor," Mash began, "Chaldea can''t do anything at all. That''s why¡­it''s so important that we Servants are also around to protect them."

    "Because mankind''s future rests on our shoulders," Ritsuka mumbled. I wasn''t sure I was meant to hear it.

    "So, you know," Rika said sarcastically, "no pressure, right?"

    "All the more reason, it seems to me, to ensure you can at least take care of yourselves," said A¨ªfe. She stepped back over to Rika and toed the girl with the tip of one of her boots. "Which means if you have the energy to sass, you have the energy to try again."

    Rika groaned and rolled over to escape A¨ªfe''s foot. A¨ªfe arched one eyebrow. "I have ways of motivating stubborn students, you know. They tend not to be particularly¡­pleasant."

    Immediately, Rika shot to her feet, squeaking, "I''m good, I''m good!"

    With a sigh, I stood, straightening as my joints popped a little and my spine crackled. "I''m going to check on Boudica," I announced.

    Everyone glanced my way. A¨ªfe nodded and told me, "When you get back, we''ll begin our next lesson on Primordial Runes."

    "Do you want some company, Miss Taylor?" Mash asked.

    "Fou," the little gremlin mumbled dubiously.

    Yeah, well, you were the one that decided to tag along with us again. If anyone should be complaining, it''s me.

    I shook my head.

    "It''s fine. Stay here and look after the twins. I won''t be gone all that long."

    Mash nodded. "Okay, then."

    As I walked away, I heard A¨ªfe start putting Rika through the ringer, again. "Alright, I''ve shown you how to do that hold, now try and put me into it."

    "Even Emiya''s cooking isn''t worth this¡­"

    Boudica''s tent wasn''t all that far away, so it didn''t take me that long to walk over to it, but it was far enough that we wouldn''t be overheard as long as no one started shouting. The ties holding the flaps together for privacy were undone ¡ª the weather had been mild and dry the last few days, so no need to worry about rain ¡ª and I pushed it aside as I entered.

    The tent''s lone occupant looked up at me sharply, seafoam green eyes glinting like daggers in the light of the magic circle that glowed beneath her, and then relaxed as she realized who it was. "Oh, Taylor. It''s just you."

    "Boudica," I greeted her. "Were you expecting someone else?"

    "Spartacus has been fretting ever since we got back," she admitted. "I think he thinks it''s his fault that I was injured. It''s not, really," she added, like she needed to come to his defense. "Neither of us was expecting Scaeva to have a second Noble Phantasm that got stronger the longer the fight went on."

    That had been an unpleasant surprise. The name Marcus Cassius Scaeva hadn''t meant anything to me when she''d revealed it, nor to any of our other Servants, but Marcus ¡ª our legionnaire Marcus, the young Centurion ¡ª had promptly revealed that to be the name of the warrior he''d told that story about. The one who had fought to exhaustion, taken an arrow to the eye, and kept on fighting.

    The lame eye in Boudica''s report had suddenly made a lot more sense.

    "Spartacus, fretting?" I asked. I had a hard time picturing it, although trying to imagine his bulky, musclebound figure squeezed into a nurse''s outfit was actually pretty funny.

    She smiled. "It''s not easy to tell, is it?" She laughed a little. "I''ve been around him long enough to see it, though. He feels responsible for my arm, even though we were both careless in that fight. It''s at least as much my fault as it is his."

    "Speaking of¡­"

    I gestured to her missing arm. She blinked and looked down. "Oh! Yes, here."

    She held out the wounded arm, no longer wrapped up in bandages because they were no longer needed. There was something¡­strange and unsettling about seeing her arm end abruptly, not in flesh and blood and bone, but in glittering particles of light ¡ª the same dusty motes that we saw whenever a Servant was about to disappear.

    She wasn''t disappearing, though. The opposite, actually. There was more of her arm than there had been when she came back from her fight with Scaeva. Not much more, only an inch or two, but it was an inch or two that she hadn''t had before. At the rate she was going, though, it probably would take the whole two weeks to get back the whole thing.

    The most unsettling part about it, or maybe the part that just felt strangest, was how it was coming back. It wasn''t like what I''d seen from other regenerators as a cape, where the flesh filled back in like wax into a mold, but more like the limb was still there, just invisible, and it was slowly being revealed one little bit at a time.

    My own right arm ached sympathetically.

    Better, at least, than not getting it back at all. I wasn''t sure how we would have worked around a crippled Boudica for the rest of the Singularity.

    "Looks like you''re recovering," I said for lack of anything better.

    "One of the advantages of being a Servant," she replied with a wry twist of her smile. Her arm dropped back down to her side.

    I''ll say.

    How convenient it was, to be able to regrow lost limbs with nothing more than enough time and energy.

    "I''ll be glad when it''s back to normal," she went on, sighing. "I feel kind of useless just sitting here while everyone else is working and preparing. Poor Emiya must be swamped, having to cook without me there to help."

    I couldn''t stop the snort that ripped out of my nostrils or the slight smile that curled my lips. "I think he prefers it this way, actually. Less competition."

    "I''m sure he does," Boudica agreed with a laugh. "For all his talents, however, I''m afraid he still knows very little about the flavor of authentic Britannian cooking!"

    For what that was worth. Even if he wasn''t as good at Western dishes as he was traditional East Asian meals, I would still have agreed he was a professional chef without hesitation, were anyone to ask. Boudica''s food wasn''t bad either, but she came from a time before spices were easily and readily available at the local supermarket. It put something of a limit on what she could do.

    She sighed. "Anyway. How are the others? I haven''t been able to look after them as well as I want to from in here."

    "Anxious, I think," I answered. "And probably sore, from A¨ªfe''s training."

    I was doing better than them, but only because I''d spent two years pushing my body to its limits to prepare for the end of the world, and while that might have slowed down at Chaldea because there was so much I needed to learn, it hadn''t ever truly stopped. I was used to running myself ragged.

    "It will definitely be rough, but it will also serve them well," Boudica said. "And I suppose¡­ Anxious, because they''re waiting for Emperor Nero to arrive?"

    "Right."

    It wasn''t like I wasn''t a little impatient, too. There was still so much we needed to do, starting with figuring out how many Servants the enemy still had access to, where they were placed, and what sort of forces Rome itself had under its banner as well. If there were other Servants loyal to Nero or just here to correct the distortion, that would be invaluable knowledge.

    "And you?"

    One of my eyebrows rose. "What about me?"

    "Are you anxious for Emperor Nero to arrive, as well?" she asked pointedly.

    "Perhaps," I hedged carefully.

    Boudica smiled and shook her head. "A¨ªfe was right. You are impatient, aren''t you?"

    "It''s not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it," I recited. "We''re sitting here, twiddling our thumbs, while we wait for Emperor Nero, who might not tell us anything we don''t know. Meanwhile, there are five more Singularities in need of solving with no idea what the situation is like in each of them, and if we don''t solve them all in a little over a year, mankind as a whole goes extinct. Am I supposed to sit back and relax while the world ends?"

    "No, but¡­" She sighed. "I''m sorry. Compared to the burden you, Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash are carrying, my problems must seem so very petty, don''t they? But¡­ Even if it was the regional governors who wronged me and my family most, I just can''t let go of the anger in my heart. Not entirely. That''s why¡­I guess I''m not very eager to see Emperor Nero again. "

    But she did. Even if she smothered it underneath duty and compassion, she could still ignore it long enough to do what she needed to do. I could understand her hesitation ¡ª I hadn''t been thrilled at the idea of recruiting Sophia, even if her and her cruelties had wound up seeming so petty and small compared to the rest of the shit I''d had to deal with ¡ª but I could also admire the strength of will and character it took to put your own problems aside to face a bigger threat.

    There was no reason we couldn''t make things a little easier on her, though.

    "If you want," I began, "we can tell Emperor Nero that you''re too injured to talk. We don''t need to have you there for what we need to ask him about."

    She smiled and shook her head. "Thank you, Taylor, that''s very kind, but I think it''s better if I don''t hide away. When Nero arrives, I''ll be right there with the rest of you and your team, no matter what I feel deep down inside."

    I suppose it only made sense that a woman who had faced down the might of the Roman Empire would have the courage to face it again.

    I nodded. "I''m sure you''ll hear when the Emperor shows up, but just in case you don''t¡­"

    One hand stretched out, and the ladybug that had been secreted away scurried down my arm, over my palm, up my finger, and then took off from my fingertip. Curious, Boudica reached out and let it land on her own finger, and the ladybug crawled down to sit in her palm, antennae twitching.

    "She''ll let you know."

    Boudica looked down, fascinated, and I had the ladybug flutter its wings a couple of times, just to show her I still had control.

    "Of course. Thank you, Taylor."

    With everything that needed to be said having been said, I turned around and left, pushing the tent flap out of the way. It swung closed behind me, and I walked back over to the rest of the Chaldea group ¡ª just in time for Rika to finally put A¨ªfe in the pin as it had been demonstrated.

    "Ha!" Rika crowed, panting. "Gotcha!"

    "Good job," A¨ªfe praised her, calm and even, despite the awkward position her body had been contorted into. There was no doubt that she could have broken free at any moment, if she wanted.

    "Miss Taylor!" Mash exclaimed when she caught sight of me.

    "Senpai!" Rika called over, grinning broadly. She took one hand off of A¨ªfe to wave at me. "How''s Queen Booty?"

    "Well enough," I replied. Just then, A¨ªfe twisted around, using Rika''s grip on her arm to turn the tables and pull Rika into the exact same hold.

    "Oof!" Rika grunted. The air left her lungs in a huff.

    "She''s recovering, but it''s still slow," I went on, as though nothing had happened. "It''s still going to be a while before she''s got her whole arm back."

    "U-urgh," Rika groaned. "W-wha¡­?"

    "You let go," A¨ªfe scolded her. "You left yourself open to my counter."

    "B-but we were done!" Rika whined. "I used that move just like you taught me to!"

    "I didn''t say we were," was A¨ªfe''s retort. "Don''t let your guard down, even if the enemy is subdued. If you leave an opening, they will take advantage of it."

    "Okay, okay!" said Rika. "Let me up, let me up!"

    Huffing, A¨ªfe let go and climbed off of her newest student. The instant she was gone, Rika scrambled as far away as she could, panting and rubbing at her shoulder.

    "Miss A¨ªfe''s teaching style sure is harsh," Mash murmured.

    "Such is the way of the ancient Celts," Arash commented. "Undoubtedly, this is the sort of thing C¨²chulainn and other Irish heroes experienced, as well."

    "I guess it''s my turn now." I rolled my shoulders. "Primordial Runes, right?"

    "Right."

    A¨ªfe beckoned me over, and as she drew those arcane symbols into the dirt, she explained their form, function, and stroke order.

    It was a lot like how I remembered learning the alphabet and how to write. The comparison wasn''t one-to-one, but there was a very similar sort of feel to it, because combining runes to form complex spells was sort of like forming sentences with actual language.

    Of course, it wasn''t that easy. Runes had their own spells attached from the base, too, sort of like each rune was a word, or a concept, more abstract or more concrete depending on the rune. This rune could be used for fire, for example, or it could be used for light, and so on. How you channeled energy into the rune, how you carved it, what substance you carved it into, what order you did the stroke or strokes in, those could all change how the spell manifested. That was runic conjugation, for lack of a better word.

    That was before getting into¡­conjunction, I guess was as good a term for it as any. Or construction. Combining runes to form more complex spells required knowing not only the stroke order for the individual runes, but how each of the runes combined together, and how the order of those runes changed the resulting spell. The more runes you added, the more complicated things got and the more meanings and orders you had to juggle.

    So maybe comparing it to learning a new language wasn''t that big of a stretch after all.

    No matter what, it wasn''t something I could learn in an afternoon, or in a few days, or even a week, for that matter. It was a long term study, one that would take years of practice to master. I found myself wishing A¨ªfe had kept her tutelary aspects, if only so we could hurry it up and I could learn these runes almost immediately.

    I cheated, in any case. Meaning and combination, construction, those were all things I was going to have to learn and memorize the old fashioned way. Shape and stroke order, though? Those, I could practice with my bugs, out of sight. I had a whole colony of ants dedicated to it, in fact, out in the woods. As A¨ªfe instructed me, I had them marching in lines, spelling out the runes in the proper stroke order, then in reversed order, then in inversion, and I mentally recited the meaning attached to each one as they went.

    It wasn''t perfect. I was under no illusions that this was going to help me master these runes anywhere near as quickly as I would have under a version of A¨ªfe with her tailor-made skills and Noble Phantasms. But I was deliberate and careful, making sure I got each one right so that I didn''t ingrain any bad habits or improper forms. It was a bit like learning how to write with my off hand, although my ants were far more precise than I would have been in that analogy.

    If A¨ªfe suspected my trick, she gave no indication of it.

    "Senpai is a fast learner," Ritsuka murmured appreciatively, perhaps thinking I couldn''t hear him.

    "Miss Taylor always was a dedicated student," Mash agreed, "but I don''t remember her learning magecraft this quickly."

    "She didn''t know it before she came to Chaldea?" Ritsuka asked, surprised. "I thought she was one of those¡­you know¡­lifelong magi."

    Mash shook her head. "No. There were the primer courses all Master candidates had to take, but even then, Miss Taylor was still learning the basics of magecraft when she joined Chaldea. Director Animusphere tutored her, when she had the time."

    My cheek twitched, but I deliberately let that one slide. I''d been afraid of that. So, Marie and I weren''t as discreet about it as we thought we were, were we?

    "Wow," Rika breathed. "And she learned all of this stuff in just five years?"

    "Two," Mash corrected her. "Actually, less than that. Miss Taylor was only introduced as a Master candidate about a year and a half ago, Senpai. She was still working on magecraft fundamentals back then."

    "Senpai really is a badass," said Rika.

    No, just incredibly dedicated.

    "We''ll stop here, for now," A¨ªfe announced, and as she stood, I did, too. With a few swipes of her boot, she erased the runes we''d been drawing in the dirt. "We''ve gone over enough for today, so we''ll pick up your lessons the next time we have a chance."

    "Right."

    I dispersed the colony of ants I''d been using to practice and sent them back to pick up what they''d been doing before I pulled them away.

    "They''re not wrong," said A¨ªfe consideringly. She eyed me, like she was sizing me up again. "You''re picking these up faster than I anticipated."

    "Is there something wrong with that?"

    Her lips quirked to one side. "No. I''m just rarely wrong about someone''s potential."

    "Please don''t tell me we''re going again," Rika begged.

    "Not now," said A¨ªfe with a shake of her head.

    "Actually, I think it''s ¡ª" I raised my wrist, and only belatedly realized that neither did I have a watch on, nor were our communicators built to tell the local time ¡ª "close to lunchtime."

    "Yes!" Rika pumped her fist. "Oh my god, I''m starving! I''m gonna go see what Emiya ¡ª"

    There was a sudden commotion from closer to the edge of camp, and Marcus came sprinting past us as he whispered furiously to every legionnaire he passed. Whatever he said lit a fire under each one''s ass, and they all scrambled into formation, linking up into their proper squads, some decked out in their armor and some dressed only in togas or tunics. They all snapped to attention, forming into two columns, with an empty path between them that stretched towards the entrance to the camp.

    A moment later, Marcus reappeared and raced towards the front, jamming his helmet on as he went.

    "Hail, Emperor Nero!" he bellowed out.

    "Hail, Emperor Nero!" the rest of the cohort echoed.

    The clop of approaching hooves that I hadn''t noticed before because I was too focused on my lessons with A¨ªfe slowed from a gallop to a light canter and then to a slow walk, and a new column of mounted cavalry trotted into camp. A quick count showed about thirty men, total.

    "Sons of Rome," a lilting, almost lyrical voice proclaimed grandly, "lift up your heads and your hearts! Banish the shadows of your fears and the weary fatigue of your days spent toiling!"

    The speaker was a petite woman in a red dress with gold armor, sitting astride a stallion bedecked in imperial finery. She cut a striking figure, with a skirt of white cloth sheer enough to show her bare thighs, golden blonde hair done up in a complicated bun, and eyes so green that they glittered in the sunlight.

    She rode at the front of a procession of stony-faced men armored in silvery steel accented with gold tracery and patterns. Each of the soldiers behind her and beside her was never so far away that they couldn''t throw themselves in the way of an attack, and they held themselves stiffly, alert to their surroundings at every moment.

    The woman pressed one hand to her chest, splaying her fingers in the valley of a bust that seemed all the larger on her petite frame. "You have no more need of them, for your emperor has arrived!"

    She was also the spitting image ¡ª

    "Holy crap!" said Rika. "Tell me that''s not who I think it is!"

    "Y-your Majesty?" Mash gasped.

    "What''s she doing here?" asked Ritsuka, panicking. "I thought we beat her back in Fuyuki!"

    ¡ª of King Arthur.

 Chapter XLVIII: Conscription

    Chapter XLVIII: Conscription

    I was expecting a man. Average height for his era, likely dark-haired, olive-skinned, dressed in the fineries of a Roman aristocrat, with maybe a cuirass sculpted to look like hard, firm abdominal muscles that he didn''t actually have and a beard of some kind.

    The bust I remembered featured a "chinstrap."

    He would be soft around the middle, because he was an artist and an administrator, not a soldier. A bit pudgy, probably a double-chin, with the famous aquiline nose that the Romans apparently prized so much. A self-important young man of twenty-two who was really more playing at emperor than being one.

    That was essentially what I''d been expecting.

    I was not expecting a slip of a woman who was maybe five feet tall if she stood on the tips of her toes. I wasn''t expecting the skirt of her dress to be so sheer that I could see the pure white loincloth she wore as underwear. I wasn''t expecting her to be almost completely without even token armor, but for the greaves she wore on her lower legs and the gauntlets that covered her lower arms.

    I most certainly wasn''t expecting her to look like she was King Arthur''s identical twin.

    "That''s just eerie," Arash commented lowly.

    "That¡­can''t really be King Arthur, can it?" Ritsuka asked, bewildered. "I-I mean, not here, not now."

    But the surprise only lasted a few seconds. Yes, it was shocking, and yes, it was incredible, and yes, the resemblance was simply that uncanny.

    That was all it was, though. Resemblance. Maybe, if that theory about how King Arthur was descended from the Romans was true, it was just genetics. Either way, everyone had a twin and everyone had a doppelganger, because otherwise, celebrity lookalike contests wouldn''t have ever existed.

    And, you know, Alexandria could never have pulled off being in two places at once.

    "No." It was A¨ªfe who said it, before I could even open my mouth. "Having never met Arthur, I can''t speak about the resemblance, but I can definitely tell you that woman there is the genuine article. Not a Servant, but Emperor Nero in the flesh."

    "They also sound nothing alike," I added for good measure.

    The postures were different, too. King Arthur had carried herself rigidly, stonily, like a statue or a machine. She was regal in the same way as an ice sculpture ¡ª firm, frigid, and unyielding. Emperor Nero was nothing like that at all. She was loud, she was proud, and the way she moved was exaggerated and graceful. Someone who loved being the center of attention and reveled in every second of it.

    She preened. That was as good a word for it as any.

    "King Arthur couldn''t sing," Mash mumbled, like she didn''t even realize she''d even said anything, and okay, how she knew that, there was only one way. Another point in the "was definitely someone who knew King Arthur well" category, but with so many myths and legends and so many knights among them, that still didn''t narrow it down by much.

    Not Lancelot now, obviously, since we''d met him, and the armor looked nothing alike. The younger group, then? One of Gawain''s kids? Percival''s? Thoughts for later.

    "You there, in the back!" Nero shouted, pointing directly at us. "The ones who are muttering to themselves like some kind of conspiracy!"

    My eyebrows shot towards my hairline. Conspiracy?

    "Wait, what?" Rika sputtered. "But we''re not even huddled together in a back alley! Or a secret room behind the bookcase!"

    Arash snorted.

    "Who are you and what are you doing among my men?" Nero demanded.

    My brain raced. How to defuse this one? The last thing we needed right now was for Nero to suspect we were spies or enemies. Not only did it cut off a potentially important source of information, but having to fight Rome from behind and the United Empire in front of us would be the worst possible outcome.

    "They''re with me, Emperor," came a voice from behind us, and Boudica walked forward, tall and straight. "I recruited them to the cause."

    "Allies from afar, My Emperor," I heard Marcus clarify quietly through my swarm. "Come to destroy the United Empire to its last speck."

    Nero nodded. "Mm-mm! So they are! I would still have ¡ª"

    And that was about when Nero realized that Boudica''s left arm was missing from just beneath the elbow on down.

    "Boudica!" Nero yelped, alarmed. "Your arm!"

    "Ah, yes." Boudica smiled ruefully. "I''m afraid I traded it in exchange for Spartacus''s life."

    "Traded it?" said Nero, brow furrowing. "With whom?"

    Boudica shook her head. "It''s a bit of a long story, and I''ve been resting while the wound heals. Could we have this conversation in my tent?"

    "Of course!" Nero dismounted promptly, swinging herself off the saddle with the expert ease of a practiced rider, and almost as one, the men who rode in with her did so as well. Like it was an afterthought, she handed the reins to a nearby soldier and commanded him to, "Tend to my horse."

    She took about two steps our way before she remembered that the rest of the camp was still assembled in neat rows in front of her, and she waved them aside with an impatient, "As you were."

    The two lines split apart, fanning out and away from her as they went back to the tasks they''d been working on when she arrived, and she strode over to us quickly and with purpose as her honor guard fell into step behind her.

    "This way, please," Boudica said as she turned on her heel and began walking back to her tent.

    There was an awkward moment where none of us moved. Nero and her entourage eyed us with naked suspicion, and it was obvious the very last thing they wanted to do was to leave their backs open to us. I understood the impulse, but, well, there was just one problem with it. A pretty big problem, too.

    "If we wanted to kill the Emperor, none of you would be more than a pebble in the way," A¨ªfe told them bluntly.

    Naturally, that didn''t put any of them at ease, but at least it saved me from having to point it out myself.

    "Wow," said Rika. "Diplomacy isn''t one of your many talents, is it, Super Action Mom?"

    Several of the honor guard glanced at her, bewildered, but only for a moment. I even caught one of them in the back out of the corner of my eye, mouthing the words to himself incredulously.

    "She''s not wrong," was all I said to rebuke her, and then I pointedly turned away from the group and started towards where Boudica had walked off to. Even with my back to them, I knew every move they made, but they didn''t have to know that, did they?

    The twins did a double-take, and then hurried to follow me. With one last look at the honor guard, Arash and A¨ªfe followed suit.

    Whether Nero and her soldiers viewed that apparent vulnerability as trust or confidence, I had no way of knowing. One would be more useful than the other, but I couldn''t decide it for them. The only thing I could do was to try and stack the deck as much as I could however I could. I didn''t have too many ideas for how to do that, but that wasn''t the same as having none.

    "Rika," I mumbled to her as they fell into step beside me, "tell Emiya to bring some food as soon as it''s ready. Enough for all of us, plus one."

    "Roger wilco, Senpai," Rika whispered back.

    Now we just had to hope that we could win some trust with some really good food.

    Boudica had already sat back down on her futon by the time we made it to her tent, the magic circle still glowing beneath her. Her arm kept sparkling as the missing limb slowly filled back in, but there was nothing we could do about that.

    Confidence. Confidence and competence were the most important things. As long as you looked like you were in control, people would be willing to believe you were.

    "Arash, A¨ªfe, get the table," I ordered quickly, because we didn''t have much time. "Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, we''ll get the chairs."

    The twins didn''t move right away, but when Arash and A¨ªfe picked up the table that had been moved to the back of the tent as though it weighed nothing at all (and to them, it probably did), they scrambled out of the way and followed my lead as I skirted around the outer edges and picked up the other furniture that had been sequestered away with it.

    There were only five chairs, and once the table had been set down, I had them arranged around it so that mine was at the center facing towards the tent flap, with the twins and Mash flanking me, and then one last one for Nero on the opposite side. It created an us-versus-them positioning, but there was nothing to be done about that when I needed Nero to look at us as, if not equals, then valuable collaborators.

    Roman emperors weren''t particularly known for their humility.

    Boudica watched us do the whole thing silently, and A¨ªfe''s sharp eyes observed my choices with shrewd cunning as she puzzled through them. Neither of them said anything, each for their own reasons, but I got the sense that by whatever metric they''d been using to evaluate our competence, I had just earned myself a few more points.

    For whatever that wound up being worth.

    I had barely gotten everyone seated properly ¡ª with A¨ªfe and Arash behind us, looming ¡ª when Nero pushed aside the tent flap, saw us, and stopped. She blinked, eyes raking over everything, from my posture to the table to the arrangement of the seating, and her brow furrowed.

    "Your Excellency," I greeted her respectfully.

    "Ah?" Her brow furrowed some more. "Excellency?"

    I fought the urge to grimace. Was that not the proper form of address? "Your Grace" was for dukes and duchesses, "Your Eminence" was the Pope, if I was recalling correctly, "Your Highness" for royals who weren''t the current monarch, and "Your Majesty" was for the queen or king.

    Or maybe I was just a lower middle class girl from the northeastern United States and had no idea how the aristocracy actually worked in old timey Europe, let alone the old Roman Empire.

    "I like it!" she decided pompously. "Mm-mm! It suits me just fine!" She turned halfway and pointed at one of her honor guard. "From now on, you shall address me as ''Your Excellency!'' It is only proper for my august self to be addressed by such an august title!"

    The poor guard looked like he really didn''t know what to make of this. "Y-yes, uh, Your Excellency. As my emperor commands."

    Rika leaned over to her brother and whispered, "Did Senpai just accidentally start a trend?"

    "I think she did," Ritsuka whispered back.

    Lisa would be absolutely beside herself with laughter if she saw this, wouldn''t she?

    "Emperor Nero," I tried again, and she turned back around, smile affixed in place, "please sit. There''s a lot that we have to discuss." I glanced behind her pointedly. "I''m afraid there isn''t much room for your guards, either."

    That got a reaction ¡ª from the guards, who bristled, probably thinking this was a blatant attempt to get the emperor alone. It was, just not so we could assassinate her.

    "My Emperor," one of them began.

    "Your Excellency," Nero interjected.

    The guard hesitated, then started again, "Your Excellency, we are here solely for your protection ¡ª"

    "It''s fine." She waved him off, and with only a short glance, pointed out two of them. "You and you. Two guards should be an acceptable compromise, yes?"

    "Yes," I answered immediately.

    It wasn''t like it made that much of a difference. I just didn''t want the headache of trying to squeeze so many people inside this tent and having to field the inevitable questions when we got them. Nero would almost certainly have some, but having to answer her guards'' questions too was only going to get tedious.

    The rest of her honor guard spread out, and through my swarm, I observed them as they surrounded the tent, posting men at every corner and halfway between each. Those who weren''t needed for that spread out further, establishing a perimeter around the tent, and that left the final two that Nero had picked out. They took up a post behind her to either side, flanking the slit of the tent flaps, stony-faced and solemn as they had been before.

    Nero sat down like she noticed none of this. She seemed a little¡­airheaded, so maybe she really didn''t. Like she lived in a different reality.

    A space-case leading our side''s war effort really didn''t sound appealing to me.

    "Let me begin by introducing us," I said, trying for diplomatic. I reached for the foggy memory of negotiating with the villains moving into Brockton after Leviathan''s attack, although that had really been more of a dictating of terms, hadn''t it? "I''m Taylor. To my right are Ritsuka and Rika." They both smiled nervously, and Rika gave a hesitant little wave. "To my left is Mash."

    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    "Pleased to meet you, Your Excellency," Mash said, bowing as much as she was able to, seated as she was.

    I still wanted to know where she''d picked up so many Japanese mannerisms.

    "Behind us are Arash and A¨ªfe."

    "Aha!" Nero burst out. The two men behind her twitched. "Mm-mm! Yes, that makes sense! You''re that A¨ªfe, then!"

    "The one who has kept the United Empire from completely taking Gaul, yes," A¨ªfe drawled.

    "Your son was the one who told us of your position." Nero nodded, like it was all starting to make sense. I wasn''t sure that it was. "He gave my men quite a bit of trouble!"

    A¨ªfe smirked. "Yes, he does have a habit of doing that, doesn''t he?"

    "Indeed! Some of them required weeks to heal properly!"

    "We belong to an organization called Chaldea," I interjected, attempting to steer the conversation back around, "dedicated to the preservation of the proper course of human history."

    "The preservation of human history?" Nero repeated, her brow furrowing.

    "We''re time travelers," I simplified, "from the distant future."

    Rika straightened, affecting a stony, impassive, dead-eyed look, and began, "Come with us, if you want ¡ª oof!"

    Her brother''s elbow in her side cut her off before she could finish that ridiculous line again. She turned a dirty look on him, but he only returned it with a sharp glare. I pretended neither of them had done anything at all.

    Nero rubbed at one temple. "Time travelers, you say," she muttered. "Here to preserve the proper course of history. To restore Rome to what it should be? Yes, yes, that would make sense, wouldn''t it?" She brightened with a grin. "Then, you must be here to defeat the United Empire!"

    "As Marcus said," I agreed.

    "Marcus said that? When?" Rika asked her brother quietly.

    "It must have been when he leaned over to Emperor Nero earlier," Ritsuka replied.

    "So he did!" said Nero brightly, having apparently missed their entire exchange. "That would make us allies, then!"

    "To an extent," I allowed, because I wasn''t about to agree to join her army and help her conquer the world or whatever. "We''re here for the United Empire. To defeat their Servants and retrieve the Holy Grail they''re using to alter history. As long as that''s the goal, we can work together."

    "Servants?" Nero asked.

    I sucked a deep breath in through my nostrils and prepared to explain.

    Mash beat me to it.

    "Heroic Spirits are the spirits of great heroes who were recorded in history for their deeds," Mash explained patiently. "It''s difficult, but there''s a process that allows a mage to call forth those spirits in the form of Servants, who temporarily take on a physical body so they can interact with the world."

    "Ah! Yes, I see!" Nero nodded. "I remember, my court mage attempted to explain such a thing to me, as well! Mm-mm! Although¡­I didn''t really understand everything he was talking about. It all seemed like a bunch of magical tomfoolery. Best to leave that sort of thing to the mages!"

    "Finally!" Rika burst out, gesturing wildly to Nero. "Someone else who understands! See, Ritsu? I''m not the only one!"

    "Are you not one of these mages yourself?" Nero asked, bemused.

    Rika shook her head. "Not even close! Six months ago, I was just a normal, seventeen year old girl! No magic, no monsters, no Servants! Just me and my senior year of high school!"

    "I think ''normal'' is pretty subjective, there," Ritsuka muttered.

    Nero turned to the rest of us. Mash predicted her question.

    "In terms of magecraft, Your Excellency," she said, "the only one of us who has what might be called a ''standard'' education is myself. Even then, my instruction started later than, um, what I understand is normal. It wasn''t¡­something my guardians were sure I would need to know."

    A chill shivered down my spine, and a nasty feeling settled in my gut. Mash had been made a member of Team A before I was even dropped off on Chaldea''s doorstep. To my knowledge, she had spent her entire life with Chaldea. She was also the only successful result of the Demi-Servant project the previous Director had started seventeen years ago.

    The only reason why she wouldn''t have been learning magic from the cradle was if she wasn''t expected to live long enough to make use of it.

    "Chaldea itself has a system in place to make the process of summoning these Servants simpler and easier," I told Nero, and then I bent the truth a little. "We have performed numerous summonings over the course of our organization''s history. Arash and Emiya and even Mash are all the results of those, although A¨ªfe, her son, Connla, and even Boudica and Spartacus are what we''ve taken to referring to as ''Strays.''"

    None of that was strictly untrue. There had been numerous summoning attempts made at Chaldea, most of them before I''d ever joined. It was just that there were technically only two successes, prior to our little jaunt through Fuyuki, and Arash, Emiya, and Shakespeare brought the official tally up to five. But saying it the way I had gave the impression that we''d had many more successful summonings than just that, which made us look a lot more competent.

    "Strays?" Nero repeated, brow furrowing. "Like pets or animals?"

    "It means they were summoned by the Counter Force," I said with deliberate patience, "not a mage. They''re here because, one way or another, they''re the best heroes for the job. We call them ''Strays'' because they have no connection to a Master giving them orders."

    "The Counter Force," Nero mumbled, rubbing at her temple again. "Yes, yes, I seem to recall something about that, too. My court mage¡­ He must be one of these Strays, as well. The Counter Force is sending me aid to keep Rome strong?"

    So there were definitely more Servants summoned on Rome''s side than just A¨ªfe, Lancelot, Connla, Boudica, and Spartacus. That was a little comforting, considering how many heavyweights seemed to be arrayed against us on the United Empire''s side.

    "Wait!" Nero leapt to her feet, pointing behind me at Boudica. "Boudica is a Servant, too?"

    "Um," Boudica said weakly, "surprise?"

    "And Spartacus¡­"

    "Him, too," Boudica confirmed reluctantly.

    Nero dropped back down into her seat, her expression heartbroken. "Then, the real, living Queen Boudica¡­"

    Boudica sighed. "Has already died, yes."

    "I-I see¡­"

    And for the first time since we''d met her, Emperor Nero seemed small. Her personality had filled up the room and expanded outwards around her, boisterous, exuberant, and so much larger than life, and now it was shrunken and subdued. Like she''d just been told her best friend had died.

    "Then¡­all of those things in the reports I received¡­"

    "Have already come to pass."

    Nero''s fingers gripped the edge of the table tight, so tight that her perfectly manicured nails scraped along the wood, and the table itself groaned from the strength of her grip.

    I had to readjust my expectations and my assumptions. The historians seemed to think that Queen Boudica''s suffering and the Iceni''s mistreatment were all, if not orchestrated, then done with Nero''s tacit approval. The way Boudica had talked certainly hadn''t given me any reason to assume otherwise.

    Now, however, it was looking like she was just another cog ground down by the Roman machine, and Nero herself hadn''t known anything about it until it was all over and done with. When messages and reports could take weeks or even months to go from one end of Rome to the capital, maybe that wasn''t so hard to believe after all.

    Unfortunately, this wasn''t the time or the place for Nero to brood about a tragedy that slipped by under her nose, and I wasn''t the person to be trying to help her work through her feelings about it.

    "That was one of the questions we were hoping you might be able to answer for us," I told her. "That is, if and who any other Stray Servants might have been summoned to help Rome, and whether you had any information on the number and identity of the United Empire''s Servants."

    "I-I see¡­" She perked up a little. "Yes, of course, it''s only natural that you would seek out my august self for help! There''s no one better!"

    A¨ªfe snorted. "She has no clue, either."

    "W-well, of course, matters of state are complicated!" Nero defended herself. "Even someone as magnificent as myself can''t be expected to know the entirety of my empire at once!"

    "She''s not wrong," Arash agreed. "Rome covers almost the entirety of Europe ¡ª or it''s supposed to, I mean. Even if the United Empire has cut that in half, that''s still hundreds of miles from border to border. Weeks of travel to and from the capital."

    "Of course!" Nero nodded. "With an empire that size, I can''t be expected to know of every little thing that happens inside of it!"

    My lips thinned a little, the only reaction I let show on my face. "So you don''t know anything else about the United Empire''s forces? Or Strays in Rome?"

    Nero let out a gusty, exaggerated sigh. "Nothing at all."

    "Your Excellency." One of the soldiers behind her leaned forward and down. "The wall¡­"

    Nero''s eyes lit up. "Ah! Yes, that''s right! Of course, how could I have forgotten? The wall!"

    "The wall?" the twins asked incredulously.

    "It was one of the first signs of the United Empire to appear!" Nero announced. "One day, it simply formed out of thin air, right in the middle of western Gaul! No one had any idea where it came from!"

    "Thin air?" said Ritsuka.

    "A Noble Phantasm?" Mash guessed.

    Or a form of magecraft. It wasn''t impossible that it was something their court mage was doing, but it was frankly more likely to be a Noble Phantasm of some kind.

    "Oh, right. I''d forgotten about that," said Boudica. "They moved further inland so quickly that I haven''t seen it at all since that first time."

    "I mean, what kind of a wall are we talking about, here?" Rika asked dubiously. "Because, like, if this is just some plaster and a wood beam or two, can''t you take a sledgehammer and knock it down?"

    "If it''s a Noble Phantasm¡­" Mash began.

    "Or is it, like, the Great Wall of China kind of thing?" Rika went on. "Because then you have to start talking national landmarks and if it''s okay to drop a ballistic missile on top of it."

    "Great Wall of China?" Nero parroted incredulously.

    "A series of stone walls built to the far east by various emperors of one dynasty or another for the purposes of keeping out nomadic tribes from the west. They were later connected into a single, long structure," I summarized briefly. "Regardless of the way she asked it, Rika''s question has merit. What kind of wall are we talking about here?"

    Nero didn''t answer. In fact, she had gone a little cross-eyed and unfocused, and I could only imagine she was trying to picture what the Great Wall of China looked like and how long it was.

    Damn it, Rika.

    "More the latter," said Boudica. "I''m not sure how large this Great Wall of China is, and I didn''t exactly check to see how long this new wall was, but¡­"

    "Take a guess?" I suggested.

    "About six meters high," she answered. "Three meters deep. And if I had to guess how long it was? I would say that it stretched from one end of the continent to the other."

    A bit of quick mental math gave me ten feet deep by twenty tall, a respectable height and more than enough to keep something like a marauding tribe on the other side of it. And if it stretched as far as Boudica thought it did¡­

    "That''s definitely a Noble Phantasm."

    But who would it belong to? I couldn''t recall any emperors off the top of my head who had a wall of all things as the hallmark of their rule, not so much so that it actually became a Noble Phantasm. Roads and cities, coliseums and temples, Rome had built plenty of. But walls? Specifically, fortifications for keeping people out?

    "Wait a minute!" Rika burst out. "What if it is the Great Wall of China!"

    "That would make the Servant¡­Shi Huang Di!" said Mash.

    That was the only conclusion I could come to, too. If the answer wasn''t one that belonged in Rome, then maybe it came from the guy who had connected the disparate wall pieces into the Great Wall. If Shi Huang Di was summoned outside of the Rider class and his Terracotta Army, it would make sense for the Great Wall to be his Noble Phantasm.

    There was just one snag that I ran into with that.

    "But why would he be working with Roman emperors to make the United Empire?"

    Mash''s mouth opened, and then slowly closed. Rika and Ritsuka didn''t have an answer for that, either.

    "Damn it, Senpai," Rika grumbled. "Ruining things with your logic."

    "It could be Shi Huang Di," Arash interjected. "As a ruler himself, could he want to join the two kingdoms and create a single united empire that rules all of Asia and Europe?"

    "Would a legend that strong be content to play second fiddle?" A¨ªfe retorted.

    We''d asked that about the Roman Emperors, too, and aside from the obvious and inexplicable "because they all decided to work together," Caesar had given us another, more plausible answer.

    "If he was biding his time, maybe, to take the Grail for himself," I said. "Or if he planned for the United Empire to help him retake what used to be his empire in China."

    But that only worked if Singularities could expand, because this one currently stopped at the edges of the Roman Empire. Could Singularities expand? I didn''t recall that ever coming up. A question for Da Vinci, maybe.

    "If it was about claiming territory, wouldn''t it have moved when they pushed into Gaul?" A¨ªfe pointed out. "I haven''t seen it myself. It wasn''t around Lugdunum when we retook that city, and it wasn''t near Massilia when I was first summoned."

    Yes, why wouldn''t it move? Maybe it wasn''t easy to do that once it was set, or maybe there were specific conditions that had to be met before they could, but that didn''t feel quite right. If they were really determined to expand and keep what they took, then I would have thought they would wait until they had an overwhelming advantage and had taken enough land from the Roman Empire that the wall itself would cement their victory.

    If they pushed into Italy and planted that wall around Rome itself, the city, then Nero wouldn''t have had any other option than to surrender or die. The fact that they put it right in the middle, splitting the territory of both sides into almost perfect halves, meant that it had to be about something else, something that they needed to do before they started grabbing for land. Something like¡­setting up a Noble Phantasm.

    "Because it''s not about taking territory," I realized, "it''s about establishing what''s already theirs."

    That was how they were keeping Constantine''s Pax Romana so strong. It wasn''t just about setting up territory or laying claim to land. No, they''d done something to make it so useful, so powerful, that just trying to move past the wall itself would be impossible. Something that couldn''t be fought or denied. Something absolute.

    They''d carved out their piece of land. Everything on the one side was theirs. Everything on the other was not.

    "As long as the wall exists, everything on the other side belongs to the United Empire, and as long as everything on the other side belongs to the United Empire, Pax Romana is the law of the land."

    Da Vinci was wrong, earlier. Conventional warfare would never be enough to overcome that advantage. The very existence of that wall meant that we either had to tear it down or kill the Servant who owned it to push the effects of Constanstantine''s Noble Phantasm back to their capital.

    And where else would the owner of that wall be than inside the capital itself? That would make another strong defensive asset that we had almost no way of reaching behind a defense that would make any fight an uphill battle. They really had stacked the deck, hadn''t they?

    "Then we invade!" Nero declared imperiously. "Mm-mm! I won''t allow a pile of rubble to stand in my way! If they want to hide behind a wall, then we just have to tear that wall down!"

    "Hell yeah!" Rika agreed. "I''ll get Emiya to make me a sledgehammer!"

    She mimed swinging one and nearly whacked her brother upside the head in the process.

    "Watch it!"

    "It won''t be that easy," Arash said grimly, dropping cold water on her enthusiasm.

    "We don''t have much in the way of anti-fortress weapons," A¨ªfe agreed. "Without that, breaking through and pushing into their capital will be a challenge at best, impossible at worst." She tapped one finger against her thigh thoughtfully. "Ochd Deug Odin might be enough to punch a hole, but if that wall is too high a rank, then even without the Pax Romana rank down, it might not be a very big one."

    "Would Balmung be enough?" Mash wondered.

    "It wouldn''t be useless," Arash allowed, "but it''s still an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm. It wasn''t designed for punching holes in fortifications."

    What we could really use right then was King Arthur. Excalibur, more specifically. Even diminished by Pax Romana, the idea of this wall standing up to that much concentrated power¡­ I couldn''t say for sure, but it seemed impossible. Without the twins'' both using a Command Spell, Mash''s Lord Chaldeas would have crumbled, after all.

    "Knock-knock," Emiya''s voice suddenly interrupted.

    Nero turned about in her seat. "Who''s there? This is a very important meeting!"

    "Lunch," Emiya drawled.

    "FOOD!" Rika exclaimed, leaping out of her seat.

    "Food?" Nero crossed her arms, frowning thoughtfully. "Mm, I''m not quite sure this is the time, right ¡ª"

    And then her stomach growled, as though to tell her, no, this was exactly the time, and her cheeks bloomed pink.

    "A¡­Ahem!" Nero said. "Y-yes, actually! I could go for a meal right now!"

    "Oh my gosh, you have no idea what you''re in for!" Rika gushed. "This guy is a god of cooking, I swear!"

    "We''ll break for lunch, then," I decided, "and pick this up afterwards."

    A round of agreements answered me. It seemed that no one wanted to miss a meal that had been cooked by Emiya.

    "¡­Could someone let me in, then?" Emiya asked. "My arms are full."

    Nero gestured, and her two bodyguards pulled the tent flaps back to let in Emiya, whose arms were laden with a pair of large, plastic trays carrying a veritable mountain of food. The instant the smell hit my nostrils, my own stomach let out a gurgle.

    "I''m afraid I''m not too familiar with traditional Mediterranean dishes, so I made do with what I had," he said as he set them down on the table. "I hope you enjoy it anyway."

    Each tray had five plates and enough silverware for each of us. A fully cooked meal, still steaming, occupied five of the plates, and what looked like communal side dishes filled the rest. Two long, freshly baked loaves of bread sat off to the side.

    He''d really gone out of his way with this one.

    "I managed to put together the ingredients for bread," he told us as he gently nudged one plate towards each of us. "But I''d suggest waiting to eat that for last. I''m told that it goes best when you use it to sop up the leftover sauce."

    With a smile, he clapped his hands together. "Bon appetit!"

    "That''s French!" Rika complained, but she was already reaching for her silverware as she said it so that she could cut up the delicious looking slab of¡­I think it was fish, but it had been prepared so thoroughly with the rest of the dish that I wasn''t sure.

    I grabbed my own set of silverware, and at a much more sedate pace, I started in on my own meal. Flavor exploded on my tongue at the first bite, and no, I didn''t let out a pleased little groan, and I was sticking to that.

    Nero took an extra minute to get started, watching us surreptitiously, and it occurred to me that she might not have any idea how to actually use the silverware Emiya had provided for us. She had actually originally picked up the spoon, and then stopped when she realized she was the only one.

    "Emiya, I have no idea how I got by before you showed up!" Rika moaned.

    "I aim to please," Emiya said, amused.

    Tentatively, Nero picked up her fork and her knife and used the former to spear her meal and the latter to cut, and then she lifted her bite up to her mouth, popped it in ¡ª and her face exploded with surprised delight.

    "Mm-mm! This is the food of the gods!" she declared, and then she sunk in with gusto. "Surely this must be ambrosia! The gods themselves would be jealous!"

    Bite after bite disappeared into her mouth, and soon, she was eating so quickly that it was like she was competing with Rika to see who could demolish their meal fastest. It was like neither of them realized that they could enjoy it longer if they ate it slower.

    No longer hesitant, she reached for one of the skewers sitting on the communal side dish and lifted it off the plate. Three round balls, caramelized and sticky with some kind of glazing, were stabbed through upon it.

    "And what confectionary masterpiece is this?"

    "Dango," Emiya answered. "I had to adjust the recipe to account for what I had on hand, but that should just make it more to your liking than not."

    "I have no idea what that is, but it sounds delicious!" Nero said happily.

    Without a care, she stopped eating what was on her plate long enough to angle one of the balls past her lips, and then she ripped it off the skewer like a lioness tearing at a gazelle. She bit down ¡ª and then she stopped.

    Her eyes went wide. Her fork fell from her fingers and clattered to her plate. A high pitched, nasally groan squealed out of her nostrils.

    "It''s delicious! It''s so delicious! I''ve never had anything so incredible in all my life!"

    One fist slammed down onto the table. The other hand shot up into the air, pointing towards the ceiling.

    "That''s it!" she proclaimed. "From this day forward, you shall be the Emperor''s personal chef! Mm-mm! So declares Emperor Nero!"

    "Hey!" Rika, who''d been reached for one of the loaves of bread, leapt to her feet, brandishing the long, thin loaf like a sword. "That''s my house-husband you''re trying to poach, there!"

    Off to the side, Emiya sighed. "So much for her forgetting about that part."

    Nero leapt to her feet, too. "I am Emperor! My word is law!"

    Rike lifted her other hand, showing off the stark red marks there. "And I hold his Command Spells!"

    Nero snatched up the other loaf and pointed it at Rika. "It is to be a duel, then! The winner keeps my personal chef!"

    "He''s not your personal chef yet!"

    "He is, because I have no intention of losing! Mm-mm!"

    And amidst all of this, Ritsuka continued eating like nothing was wrong. I envied his serenity.

 Chapter XLIX: Romeward Bound

    Chapter XLIX: Romeward Bound

    Fortunately, we managed to avoid any duels to the death for the privilege of eating Emiya''s food.

    Not through tugging at heartstrings, as it turned out. Appeals to camaraderie moved neither of them, as Mash discovered. Neither did appeals to a common cause, because we did still have a Singularity to deal with, and we needed both Rika and Nero intact if we were going to make it through this. Appeals to sanity, because this whole thing was frankly ridiculous, equally fell on deaf ears.

    What really calmed things down, funnily enough, was cold, hard logic: one way or another, Emiya would leave when this Singularity was solved, so the whole thing was moot. Pointless. Either he left with us when we Rayshifted back to Chaldea, or he would be pushed out when things were returned to normal, if he tried to stay behind. No matter what, he could only cook for Nero as long as this Singularity remained intact.

    The look on her face told me the idea was tempting, but her pride as Emperor of Rome won out over her gluttony, and she eventually came to accept that she wouldn''t be able to enjoy Emiya''s food forever.

    And then she said something dangerous.

    "I shall simply have to accompany you henceforth! Mm-mm!"

    Everything stopped. Ritsuka choked on his food, thumping his chest as he coughed, and I couldn''t help but stare at her, a thousand different excuses and reasons to deny her racing through my head at lightspeed.

    Like the fact that she was Emperor and the battlefield probably wasn''t the place she needed to be, right now, although that one kind of fell apart when I considered how many Roman emperors had also been accomplished soldiers and field generals. When succession in the Empire was so bloody, trying to tell her that she shouldn''t be fighting would probably get laughed at.

    Maybe the fact that she was strategically important, then. She wasn''t the only thing holding Rome together, but she was a pretty important lynchpin in Rome''s resistance against the United Empire ¡ª and that was why it would probably be a good idea for her to be seen as leading from the front. The people would be much more eager to rally behind someone who was also risking her life, and it would undoubtedly do wonders for morale on the frontlines.

    Or how about the fact that we were basically strangers and she had nothing to trust us but our word that we were on her side? That was kind of self-sabotaging, though, because we needed her to trust us, but at the end of the day, all we could really do was promise it until we had a chance to prove it more conclusively.

    It was her guards who immediately jumped on that point, however.

    "Your Excellency," the one said, leaning forward, "is that wise? We know very little about our¡­esteemed guests, only what they claim."

    "I can vouch for them," said Boudica.

    "A known rebel, who only months ago led an uprising against the Empire," was the guard''s retort.

    "It''s funny that you think it matters," said A¨ªfe. "I said so before, didn''t I? If Nero''s life was our goal, then you Praetorians wouldn''t make the slightest difference. Thirty or thirty-thousand, crushing you would be little more than a warmup."

    "A ploy," the guard tried again, "to gain the Emperor''s favor and stage a revolution from within."

    "To what end?" asked Arash. "The way she''s saying it is harsh, but what A¨ªfe''s saying isn''t wrong. A single Servant is more than enough to rout an entire army of conventional soldiers. As long as they have their own Servants, the United Empire doesn''t need subterfuge to make an attempt on the Emperor''s life."

    I added the final nail. "Arash could have killed her before you even set foot on the mountain."

    It was the simple truth. With his range, he could have sat up on the peak and picked her off before she could even have made it to the camp. Considering the number of arrows he could fire in a single volley with enough preparation, he didn''t even really need to know which of them was the emperor, he just had to mow down the entire group.

    The guard flinched and gripped tighter to his spear. In hindsight, that might have sounded threatening again when I was just trying to drive home the point.

    "Enough!" Nero ordered firmly. "Mm! I have already made my decision! Your emperor decrees it!"

    "Your Excellency," the guard tried one more time.

    "Besides," she added, "if Servants are such fearsome combatants, then surrounding myself with five of them is surely the most secure place in the Empire, is it not?"

    The absolutely maddening thing was¡­I couldn''t actually argue that point. Because it was true. If the enemy''s win condition was to take out Emperor Nero and conquer Rome after her death, then the safest place for the Emperor to be was not tucked away in Rome, cowering behind her completely human Praetorian Guard, but standing right next to us Masters as we fought back against the United Empire with our superhuman Servants.

    And instead of rejoining her with another argument to try and dissuade her, the guard backed down and surrendered.

    "Don''t we get any say in this?" Ritsuka rasped, still trying to gulp down air.

    "None!" Nero replied simply.

    Ritsuka looked to me for guidance, like I would come down from on high and lay out the law of the land. Like some kind of Moses thing, stone tablets and all. For a moment, however, I said nothing.

    My first instinct, my oldest instinct, was to force the situation into the shape I wanted, by whatever means necessary. Direct violence wouldn''t work, no, for a number of reasons, and if she couldn''t be cowed with intimidation through a biblical swarm, then maybe she could be made so miserable through pests and creepy crawlies in her meal, her clothes, her bedding, and just in everything she did throughout the day that she would voluntarily leave.

    How long would she be willing to stay if her every step was hounded by stinging wasps and biting flies, if her every meal was spoiled by maggots, if her entire wardrobe was eaten by moths? If every night''s sleep was disturbed by mosquitos drinking her blood? If every wooden structure she so much as looked at crumbled under the hunger of a colony of termites? How long would she be willing to put up with that misery?

    But I wasn''t that person, and I didn''t want to be that person. I had shed Skitter to become Weaver, and inevitably, I had left Weaver behind to be the person needed to beat Scion. Now¡­ Now, I was just Taylor, and I didn''t think Taylor would do such a thing.

    So I did something I was still learning how to do. I compromised.

    "Da Vinci still wants us to look into the Mount Etna ley line," I said at length. "Since we have to head towards Rome anyway, we may as well take the Emperor with us."

    Ritsuka''s face fell faster than his hopes must have. I wasn''t sure I could blame him. Rika and Nero seemed cut from, if not the same, then very similar cloth, and having to deal with one could be tiring enough already. Two was going to be a challenge. A test of patience.

    "Is that really okay, Miss Taylor?" Mash asked. "I-I mean, it''s true, having Servants to protect her would be as safe as she could be, but can we afford to slow down that much?"

    "We''re not slowing down at all," I told her. "Emperor Nero will just have to ride with us in one of the chariots. If anyone can''t keep up, they can just stay behind or catch up later."

    Meaning that the Praetorian Guard would just have to deal with us technically taking over their jobs, because none of their horses could hope to keep up with either A¨ªfe''s or Boudica''s. They could take their week to make the trip back to Rome.

    That was my compromise. If Nero insisted on coming with us, then she could come with us. But we weren''t going to be slowing down so that her Praetorians could keep pace.

    "That''s fine," Nero said with a nod.

    "Your Excellency!" her guard sputtered.

    "My decision is made!" she declared imperiously.

    Once more, her guard surrendered. She must be just as willful and whimsical as she seemed if he wasn''t being more dogged about his insistence on her safety. I could already feel the headache forming, and it wasn''t going to get any better from here on out, was it? I was going to have to put up with her for the foreseeable future.

    I suppose it couldn''t be helped.

    "Our next destination will be Mount Etna, then," I said, giving nothing away. "We''ll access the ley line there and try to use it to get a location on each of the Servants inside this Singularity. We''ll make a stop at Rome to pick up supplies first, and then we''ll stay there until Boudica''s arm has finished healing."

    "I''m sorry to be such a burden," Boudica apologized.

    "Of course you aren''t a burden!" Ritsuka insisted immediately. "Everyone needs a little help now and again, right?"

    "You''ve already been an invaluable help to us, Miss Boudica," Mash added.

    And then Arash chimed in: "That wound was gained protecting the people of Lugdunum, wasn''t it? You have nothing to be ashamed of."

    They all said the sorts of things I wished I could have, but didn''t know how. Being nurturing and supportive¡­it just wasn''t something I was all that good at. Not because I didn''t want to be, but because I''d spent so long honing myself into a weapon that I was having to relearn how.

    I''d told a woman, once, that if I''d had the chance to do it all over again, I''d do better. Focus more on what mattered, on the people that mattered, instead of focusing on the goal to the exclusion of all the people who would get hurt along the way. I wasn''t about to go back on that, just because it was hard.

    "Once Boudica''s healed, we''ll figure out where to go next," I continued. "If Da Vinci''s right, then scanning from atop the Mount Etna ley line should give us at least some idea of who and where we need to focus on next, and we''ll come up with a plan of attack then." I looked pointedly down at the table, where our half-eaten meals still sat. "For now, let''s finish eating this delicious meal Emiya went through so much trouble to make."

    "Thank goodness," said Rika as she picked her utensils back up. "I didn''t want to be the only one eating, but you guys were talking serious stuff for so long, I was scared it was going to get cold!"

    Without fanfare, we put aside all talk of Servants, Singularities, and empires so that we could go back to the latest masterpiece that had been crafted for our tastebuds. If her earlier proclamation of claiming Emiya as her chef hadn''t already said so, then the pleased noises Nero made as she ate, the little moans and groans and soft squeals, would have told the story of how much she was enjoying herself just fine.

    Somewhere along the way, one of the plates of side dishes disappeared, and Arash and A¨ªfe quietly ate that meager portion in the background. From the pleasant surprise on A¨ªfe''s face, it was much better than she had been expecting.

    Some part of me ¡ª what it was tempting to call my "inner Lisa" ¡ª wanted to make a cheeky comment about how this was exactly the sort of food she could expect if she returned to Chaldea with us once this Singularity was resolved. I decided to keep that thought to myself, for the time being. Another card in my deck to play if the time ever came that I needed it.

    Eventually, we all had our fill and our plates were cleared, leaving behind only a few crumbs and the better part of an entire loaf of the bread Emiya went through so much trouble to bake for us (and how he managed to do that without an oven of some kind, well, I couldn''t have figured it out). Nero, in her magnanimity, handed it to one of her guards and told him to divvy the rest up between them.

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    "Be honored!" was what she told him. "Your emperor is gracious!"

    He didn''t deny it. You probably had to get used to serving personalities like hers, when you were the emperor''s bodyguards.

    "That was so good," Rika said with a sigh, reclining as much as she was able to in her chair. "Emiya really outdid himself this time, didn''t he?"

    "Emiya''s food is always good," her brother agreed. "I always feel like I''m eating at a five star restaurant."

    "I know, right? We''re getting spoiled! I can never go back to instant ramen again!"

    "Really?" Mash asked. "I''ve never been to a five star restaurant, so the only thing I can compare it to is the Chaldea cafeteria food. Um, and a few of Doctor Roman''s meals, but Doctor Roman isn''t¡­a very good cook."

    The twins shared an uncomfortable look, and they must have been thinking about why and how Mash had never eaten anything aside from the cafeteria''s food before Emiya, but they let it slide, right then. I had no doubts it was one of many things they were likely going to bring up with Marie the instant she got her body back.

    "Well, we''ve never actually been to a five star restaurant, either," Ritsuka admitted.

    "I can still recognize really good food when I taste it, though," said Rika.

    I couldn''t help the smile that curled on my lips. "Truly, the greatest wonder of the modern world: you don''t have to be an emperor to eat like a king."

    Before Emiya had been summoned¡­when was the last time I''d had a good meal? Something more than the bland cafeteria food they served the Wards in Chicago or cheap Chinese from the chain restaurant at the supermarket? When was the last time I had actually gone out somewhere nice with great ratings, sat down, spent some of my ill-gotten fortune, and just enjoyed splurging on some fine dining?

    I couldn''t remember. Maybe Lisa had taken me out once, during a lull in the chaos that had been those handful of months, but¡­ No, things had been so hectic; if it had happened, I couldn''t remember it. And Dad¡­ Dad had tried, on occasion, but he was stressed, overworked, underpaid, and depressed. None of those made a good cook.

    It was kind of sad and pathetic, but¡­ I think the last time I had a really good meal, something that warmed me from the inside out and danced on my tongue, was back when Mom was still alive.

    "Meals like this are common in your era?" Nero asked, intensely interested.

    "Some places, maybe," Ritsuka said. "Most of the time, you have to pay a fortune for it, though."

    "My house-husband is good enough to be a professional cook," Rika added smugly.

    I half-expected Emiya to shout from across the camp about how he wasn''t her house-husband. It didn''t happen.

    "Mm-mm! Your era sounds quite fascinating!" said Nero. "I think I would like to visit!"

    "Uh¡­"

    The twins shared a look, then turned to me.

    "It doesn''t work that way," I said bluntly.

    "Rayshifting isn''t designed for that, Your Excellency, I''m sorry," said Mash. "Although we''re able to send supplies back and forth and our Servants will be able to return with us, the process isn''t calibrated to transport a living human to the future that doesn''t belong there."

    "You wouldn''t remember it when it was all said and done," I added. "Even if we could, you''d lose the memories when the Singularity got corrected."

    "Mmm," Nero hummed thoughtfully. "I can''t say I understand all of this stuff you''re talking about. It seems simple enough to me! What does it matter if I''ll forget, in the end? Just seeing it for myself would be quite the adventure!"

    The twins shared another look. This time, even Mash turned to me for an answer, like she didn''t know how to let Nero down any lighter than she''d already tried.

    "There''s not much for you to see," I told her with quiet solemnity. "The rest of the world has been burned away. In our era, the only thing left is Chaldea. Fixing that is why we''re here."

    That took the enthusiasm out of her sails. Out of everyone''s sails, really. It wasn''t really the effect I''d been going for, but I thought that stark reminder might have been needed. It was easy to forget, after all, when you spent so much time cooped up in Chaldea itself that the only thing left was Chaldea. Our last bastion against the end of the world.

    Maybe that wasn''t so easy to forget. A reminder of what we were fighting for, what we were fighting against, and why we were here was still needed, every now and again.

    A moment later, Nero rallied. "And to do that, you need to find this Holy Grail, yes? I can''t say I fully understand how that works, either, but if it''s what you need to retrieve to set things to right, then I will assist you in taking it back in whatever way I can! Not only for the sake of Rome, but for the sake of the future that can create such delicious food!"

    "Ha!" burst out of Rika''s mouth.

    "We really do appreciate it, Your Excellency," her brother said diplomatically.

    "Think nothing of it!" Nero said boisterously. "After all, your favorite emperor is as generous as she is gracious!"

    She was certainly something, but I didn''t think it started with a ''g.''

    "Then Mount Etna is our next destination," I said firmly. "I think we can take another day to prepare, then set back out for Rome the day after tomorrow. As long as no one has any problems with that?"

    "Nope."

    "None."

    "That''s fine, Miss Taylor."

    "Then it''s settled!" Nero grinned.

    "It is." Carefully and deliberately, so as not to startle her guards, I levered myself out of my chair. "With that taken care of, I''m going to update Da Vinci and let her know our plans." I glanced back at A¨ªfe. "A¨ªfe, Mash, I''ll need the two of you for this."

    Mash nodded. "Right!"

    A¨ªfe rolled her shoulders. "Very well, then. The Allfather would be rolling in his grave, to see what pedestrian ends his vaunted runes are being used for."

    "Technology in a nutshell," I replied wryly.

    A¨ªfe huffed a chuckle. "Quite."

    Mash stood, as well, and her, A¨ªfe, and I left the tent, skirting around Nero and passing through the watchful gazes of her two Praetorians. At least they did us the courtesy of pulling the tent flaps back for us. Could it still be called chivalry when the concept of the medieval knight didn''t even exist yet?

    I''ll keep an eye on things in here, Arash promised me silently. When I paused long enough to glance back over my shoulder, he offered me a reassuring nod.

    I''ll leave it to you, then, I said. Just make sure they don''t try to kill each other. Or worse, become friends.

    Things were going to be taxing enough with Nero and Rika in the same general area. I didn''t know how I was going to deal with it if they teamed up on me.

    No promises, was his cheeky retort.

    A short breath hissed out of my nostrils, but I didn''t dignify his comment with anything else.

    The three of us left the tent behind and went to find a clear spot, which wasn''t all that hard when the Praetorian Guards had sectioned off Boudica''s tent and a generous portion of the land around it from the rest of the camp. There was plenty of open space to take advantage of, and nothing that needed to be done with it otherwise, so it really was as simple as picking a spot just far enough away to give us the illusion of privacy from Nero.

    "Here is fine," I said.

    It really was only the illusion of privacy, though, because several of the Praetorians were around within clear sight. It felt a little weird to be doing this in front of an audience who hadn''t been around to see it before and therefore wouldn''t know what to expect, but Mash and A¨ªfe set about getting everything arranged quickly and efficiently.

    The Praetorians stood at attention, diligent and stiff-backed, and they tried to pretend they weren''t sneaking looks when they thought no one would notice. A¨ªfe seemed to fascinate them more ¡ª probably because, as I remembered Marie lecturing me, runes were a magecraft that had originated in Scandinavia. Rome may have conquered almost the entirety of Europe, but the particulars of magic from that far north must not have propagated down into the heart of the Empire. I wasn''t sure it ever did.

    Whatever the case, Mash and A¨ªfe seemed to be picking up the rhythm of working together like this, because they had the whole magic circle set up in maybe half the time it had taken them just a few days ago. When they were done, Mash set her shield in the center in the place of honor, and they both stepped back to give me room.

    With the press of a button and a barked "Anfang!" the circle lit up and activated, and a familiar face filled up the blue panel projected above that massive shield. The startled gasps and awed muttering from our audience were ignored.

    "Hello!" Da Vinci greeted me brightly. "Looks like I''m right on time this time, aren''t I?"

    "You are," I agreed.

    "Hello, Miss Da Vinci," Mash said politely.

    "Hello, Mash," Da Vinci replied. "Ah, wait, hold on a second, I have it here somewhere¡­"

    She turned away from the camera and rummaged through something off screen, and a moment later, she returned with a sheet of paper, held one fist up to her mouth, and cleared her throat.

    "Are you feeling alright?"

    Mash blinked. "Ah¡­Yes?"

    "No pain? No shortness of breath?" Da Vinci asked, and before Mash could answer, she went on. "You haven''t noticed any signs of unusual fatigue? Your sleep hasn''t been disrupted? No hallucinations or vivid daydreams? Loud noises aren''t bothering you? You haven''t been waking up disoriented in the middle of the night? No trouble remembering where and when you are?"

    My eyebrows slowly started to rise. I didn''t recognize all of that, but some of it I was definitely familiar with.

    "N-no?" Mash said uncertainly, looking lost and confused. "At least, I don''t think I''ve been experiencing anything like that."

    "All right, then." Da Vinci set the paper down with a smile. "Romani woke up about an hour ago, but only long enough to hand me this list of symptoms to ask you about."

    "Symptoms?" Mash asked worriedly.

    Da Vinci waved it off. "If you''re not having any problems, then there''s nothing for you to worry about right now. I''m sure Romani will want to give you a more thorough examination later, but for now, we can just leave it at that."

    Mash didn''t exactly look reassured by that. "I-if you say so¡­"

    "With that out of the way¡­" Da Vinci turned to me. "I suppose it''s time for your status update?"

    "Right." I wasn''t sure it was any of my business that Romani wanted to give Mash a quick checkup for PTSD. The fact that he was keeping an eye on her was about the extent of what I had a right to know.

    "I''m guessing since it''s been about another three days for you that you''ve met our dear Emperor Nero," said Da Vinci.

    "We have," I reported. "I left Arash to keep an eye on her, Ritsuka, and Rika."

    Da Vinci''s eyebrows rose. "Her?"

    "Yes."

    I still wasn''t quite over that one myself.

    "Well, I suppose this is another case of history getting the finer details wrong," Da Vinci mused, bemused. "I suppose¡­Greco-Roman views on masculinity being what they were, then if Nero behaved in a way they considered masculine, then her actual sex wouldn''t have mattered as much, so they would have regarded her as male. Maybe. Possibly. It''s a stretch, but let''s go with it."

    "She''s also a dead ringer for the King Arthur we fought in Fuyuki," I added.

    Da Vinci''s brows furrowed. "That¡­ That one, I''m afraid I don''t have a good theory for."

    "If King Arthur was descended from the Romans," I began meaningfully.

    "That''s not how genetics work," Da Vinci complained. "That''s not how they work at all. No, I''m serious, Taylor, two people won''t look identical just because they happen to have a connected ethnic background!"

    Of course I knew that. I just didn''t have any better explanation when the alternative seemed to be pure happenstance, which wasn''t out of the realm of possibility, even if it felt like it should be.

    "In any case," I changed the subject, "she wasn''t able to tell us much of anything we didn''t already know, but we did manage to agree to an alliance, based upon our mutual interests. I''m not sure how much help she''ll really be able to give us, but if nothing else, having her with us should open up a few doors that we wouldn''t have been able to open before."

    "Having her with you?" Da Vinci cocked an eyebrow. "You mean she''s going to be accompanying you from now on?"

    "It was the best compromise we could agree on," I said by way of answering. "With us might be the most dangerous place for her to be, but it''s also the safest, too."

    "Because the safest place in the whole Empire will be standing behind almost half a dozen Servants," Da Vinci concluded, like she''d been thinking the same thing I was. She sounded about as happy about it as I was, too. "The logic is a bit recursive, but that doesn''t mean it''s wrong, either."

    "At the very least, she''ll be going to Mount Etna with us," I said. "If she''s still determined to stay with us after that, well¡­"

    I was just going to have to learn to deal with it then, wasn''t I?

    "Mount Etna?" Da Vinci parroted. "You''re going to Mount Etna next?"

    I nodded. "We learned some other information during our discussion with Nero¡­"

    I launched into an explanation about this mysterious wall that the others had talked about, our guesses about how big it was, and an abbreviated summary of our theories about who it could belong to. Perhaps somewhat vainly, I hoped she would jump in and correct me, that she would say that it couldn''t be the Great Wall of China, and then list off a bunch of bullet points about why, but she just listened intently to the entire thing.

    "With the wall up and Pax Romana behind it, we can''t afford to go charging blindly through it," I finished. "Our best move right now will be trying to find out as much as we can about the enemy, and your idea of using the Mount Etna ley line to boost our scanners seemed like our best option."

    "Hopefully, using the Mount Etna ley line will help Queen Boudica heal faster, too," Mash added.

    "Queen Boudica was injured?" Da Vinci asked, brow furrowing.

    "She lost an arm protecting Spartacus from the enemy Servant''s Noble Phantasm," I answered simply.

    "Ah." Da Vinci nodded. "Yes, that''s noncritical damage to the Spiritual Core. Since Boudica doesn''t have a curse or a part of her legend about being maimed like that, repairing the damage should be as easy as throwing enough time and magical energy at it. Much simpler than Siegfried''s injury in Orl¨¦ans."

    "My thoughts exactly."

    "As for this wall you mentioned¡­" Da Vinci trailed off thoughtfully. "Mm, there''s no way to make any more educated guesses without seeing it for ourselves, is there? How unfortunate. Well, the alternative would be to ask you all to scout it out, but since that would involve sending you into what is currently dangerous enemy territory blind, let''s leave that as an option of last resort, yes?"

    "I agree," I said. "It''s too dangerous to attempt that right now."

    "Your faith in me is touching," A¨ªfe said wryly.

    "There is a difference between courage and recklessness," Da Vinci retorted.

    "It''s a thinner line than you might think," was A¨ªfe''s own reply.

    "We know too little to make it worth it, either way," I cut in before they could go further. Personally, I agreed more with A¨ªfe, at least in principle, but the trouble was that no amount of bugs and cleverness could let me kill a Servant all on my own. Being a Master of Chaldea had forced me to learn to try to curb those impulses. "Without a better idea of what the enemy''s forces look like, we could very well walk straight into an ambush."

    Without turning around, I addressed the person who had come out to join us: "Ritsuka. Something wrong?"

    Ritsuka stopped, and to himself, muttered, "That''s never going to not be creepy."

    I fought down a smile.

    Da Vinci blinked and looked behind me as much as she was able. "Oh! Ritsuka! How nice of you to join us! It''s¡­ Well, I can''t say, ''long time, no see,'' I suppose, since it''s only been a few hours since I last saw you, but it''s been several days for you, hasn''t it?"

    Ritsuka let out a sigh. "Hello, Miss Da Vinci." To me, he said, wearily, "Rika and Nero are bonding."

    "Ah." I checked back in on the tent using Arash''s eyes and ears, to discover that Rika and Nero were indeed becoming fast friends, in spite of their little tiff over Emiya. In fact, Nero seemed utterly enthralled with Rika''s stories of what the future was like. "My sympathies."

    "Thanks." And he actually sounded like he meant it.

    "In any case," I said, turning my attention back to Da Vinci, "the plan is to leave for Rome the day after tomorrow, making stops for supplies and rest as needed, and then beeline our way over to Mount Etna. Even with A¨ªfe and Boudica''s chariots, it''s a lot of ground to cover, so it might take a day or two to get there."

    Especially if Boudica''s injury affected how long and how hard she could push it. It seemed entirely possible to me that we were going to have to make several stops for her sake no matter what.

    "Meaning it will still be about three hours before I hear from you again," Da Vinci concluded. "Plenty of time to calibrate our scanners to account for the boost from Mount Etna."

    "Right."

    I would have thought that had already been taken care of, but considering how much of a mess things still were and the fact we were still trying to run the whole facility ¡ª big enough that it had taken an organization of about two-hundred to comfortably manage ¡ª with about twenty people, this probably wouldn''t be the last thing that had to be put off to the last minute. It certainly wasn''t the first.

    "In the meantime," Da Vinci smiled a cheeky smile, "perhaps it would behoove you to strengthen your ties to Emperor Nero? It certainly seems like she''ll be essential to your mission going forward."

    I really don''t like what you''re suggesting, there¡­

    "We''ll try," said Ritsuka before I could say anything myself. He didn''t sound very confident.

    "That''s all I''m asking," Da Vinci told him reassuringly. "As for me, it seems that I have some work I need to get to doing! Good luck, everyone! Tell Rika I said hi! Ciao ciao!"

    And as she waved, her image flickered and disappeared.

 Chapter L: Honored Uncle

    Chapter L: Honored Uncle

    For the most part, the rest of the afternoon was spent lounging and relaxing.

    The presence of Emperor Nero seemed to inspire the entirety of the camp to put their best foot forward, so the legionnaires made sure to be constantly active and seeing to the upkeep of the camp, and that gave our group from Chaldea not much to do at all. We were outsiders, and they were a well-oiled machine. There was no room for a misshapen cog to intrude on their workings.

    So, Ritsuka and Mash watched them like it was primetime entertainment, or perhaps trying to understand what it was the soldiers were doing and how they might be able to help in the future, because those two were like that. Rika had become fast friends with Emperor Nero, and they spent the afternoon trading stories ¡ª Nero remained fascinated with the technologies and societal standards of the future, while Rika was equally fascinated by the workings of Roman society.

    Fascinated, but judging by some of the indignant outbursts that came from her direction every now and again, not entirely happy with all of it.

    Why, yes, Rika, Rome was just as fantastically sexist as every other civilization in this era. The Christians did a lot of new things, but that wasn''t one of them.

    As for me¡­ Well, I must have looked like I was relaxing. In truth, my attention was elsewhere, focused not on the camp, but outside of it, where my colony of ants had been called upon again to lend me a hand practicing the forms and formations of the Primordial Runes. Until it felt like I could have done them in my sleep, I drilled myself on those runes.

    Without A¨ªfe guiding me through them, I also felt a little lost. Unmoored, maybe, like I was fumbling about with something I didn''t quite understand. So I focused only on the parts that I was one-hundred percent sure on and left the rest to be revisited after I''d had more lessons.

    Having some idea from what Marie had taught me about modern runes helped, but my magic attribute didn''t work well with runes to begin with. Puppetry felt natural, like an extension of my limbs. The magical energy just flowed so neatly into the shapes I needed. Runes felt like I was trying to wrestle the ocean into a bucket, using nothing but a teaspoon. It took almost twice the energy and it still didn''t want to do what I tried to tell it.

    It occurred to me, with some irony, that I was now exactly what Myrddin had always claimed to be: a magician. My magic powers just didn''t work quite so well.

    That night, there was a huge celebration feast in honor of Emperor Nero. Emiya had apparently been roped into helping make it, and it featured a traditional Roman delicacy ¡ª something about a goatfish? I had no idea what a goatfish was, but I had very serious and very well-warranted doubts that it was anything like what the name conjured up in my imagination.

    Although this was still technically the early days of the Age of Man, as my lessons had called it. Magical beasts of all kinds still roamed the land and swam the seas, so it was entirely possible that some kind of kelpie offshoot existed that was an unholy amalgamation of a goat and a fish. That didn''t seem to be what it turned out to be ¡ª an ordinary fish, by all accounts, prepared in some kind of salty herb sauce ¡ª but the more I thought of it, the more I realized that the existence of a goat and fish hybrid monstrosity couldn''t be ruled out.

    If there was any justice in this world, I would never have to find out firsthand. There were some things that my sanity was better off not knowing were real.

    The only one left out was Boudica, who remained in her tent, still recovering. Midway through the evening, I decided to escape the excitement and the festivities and took her a plate, filled with food. When I stepped into her tent, the way her look of surprise made me feel was¡­complicated.

    After a moment, she smiled ruefully and said, "You know that Servants don''t actually need to eat."

    "Want and need are two entirely different things," was my response. "Besides, even though it doesn''t make a huge difference, it''s not like you won''t get anything out of eating, and every little bit counts."

    "I guess it does," she said, laughing softly, and I sat down with her in silence as she slowly ate her meal with one hand.

    It was¡­nice, I think. We didn''t talk or really say anything else to each other, we just sat in companionable silence, and if, for the first time in almost two years, the thought of my friends or my father and how much I missed them didn''t hurt quite as much, well¡­ Maybe Boudica really was just that comfortable a person to be around.

    The next day was spent entirely in preparation. There wasn''t much time for bonding or small talk, and almost everything we all said to each other was strictly business. In the morning, we had a few brief lessons with A¨ªfe, but they were more relaxed and less strenuous than they had been for the last few days, and almost immediately after we had had a chance to cool down from that, it was on to planning.

    The first thing that became obvious when we started looking at our maps was that it wasn''t going to be quick or easy to get back to Rome. Large swaths of Gaul ¡ª of what would one day be France ¡ª were still wild and untamed, thick forests that had, at best, narrow, well-trodden paths that weren''t exactly an obstacle for A¨ªfe or Boudica''s chariots, but certainly an inconvenience and more effort than it was worth to mow them down.

    In hindsight, that was obvious. Even fourteen-hundred years into the future, during the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, the countryside was thick with forest and foliage. There were patches cut out for farmland and towns and villages, but we''d spent far less time out in open fields than we did under the thick canopy of crowded woodlands. Over a thousand years earlier, of course the difference would be an even starker one.

    Fortunately, we did have the old Roman roads marked out on our maps, courtesy of Da Vinci. That let us plot a course for the capital city, using pathways that had been laid out decades or even centuries before to establish the trade routes that were still in use and would remain in use even hundreds of years into the future.

    That was also where we ran into our first snag. Namely, a small, little known mountain range called the Alps.

    If Chaldea had ever promised that its recruits would "see the wonders of the world," then they might actually have wound up living up to that. Maybe I''d see if Marie was up to putting that in the brochure, after this whole mess was over with.

    The problem was that the mountains formed a sort of natural barrier between the Italian peninsula and the rest of Europe, and we were left with two choices: we could either take a faster but longer route around the mountains, south along Via Agrippa I to Via Julia Augusta and along Via Aurelia, or we could take a shorter but less timely route through the mountains, east along Via Helvetica, then swing through the foothills on Via Claudia Augusta and south along Via Cassia.

    None of those names meant much of anything to me, but Nero and Boudica knew them well enough that I decided not to comment. Either route would take us to Rome, and that was what was really important anyway.

    There was some debate about the merits of each route, but even though the southern route along the coast was technically longer in terms of distance traveled, it was faster and the terrain was more favorable. It seemed easier to travel that road at the sorts of speeds A¨ªfe''s chariot could reach than to take a riskier path through the mountains, where there were many more chances for the more vulnerable of us to be bucked out of the carriages or thrown out on sharp turns.

    That it would be easier on us Masters and our stomachs ¡ª and Nero, as well ¡ª was left unspoken. That was, until Rika loudly proclaimed her relief that she wouldn''t be riding another rollercoaster.

    "That''s a side benefit," I admitted casually, like it was an afterthought. From Arash''s smile and Emiya''s smirk, neither of them were fooled for a second.

    I didn''t cut corners when it came to saving the world, but that didn''t mean I liked being miserable, thank you very much.

    Our second problem was the distance. The trip came out to over thirteen-hundred kilometers, and I didn''t need to try and do the conversion in my head to know that it was a trip that would normally take closer to a month than a day. That wasn''t as big a problem as it could be, thanks to A¨ªfe and Boudica''s chariots, but even if I ballparked it and estimated that their top speeds were somewhere in the range of four-hundred kilometers per hour, that was still almost three heart-pounding hours racing along faster than a top-of-the-line Formula One car.

    No, obviously, we weren''t going to make the whole trip at once. Forget the fact that it would mean being miserable as bugs darted in and out of my range at nauseating speeds for almost three hours, just the idea of standing stock-still in the chariots for that long made my knees ache. Of course we were going to need to break this trip down into smaller segments.

    What we eventually decided on was that we would make the first third of the trip down to Massilia along the southern coast. We''d take an hour''s break or so and have lunch, give our food enough time to digest, and then make the second leg of the trip down to Genua, where we''d take our second break. Another hour to let our legs rest and catch our metaphorical breath.

    From there, it really depended on how good our time was. If our timing was good enough and we still had the daylight left, then our next stop would be Rome itself, where we could arrive in time for a late-ish dinner. If we were running late, then we''d stop over in Genua and stay the night, then get to Rome the next day, stop over for lunch, and head out to Mount Etna that afternoon.

    It wouldn''t be as quick as doing the whole thing at once, but it would definitely be easier on me, the twins, and Nero, so I shelved the twist of urgency in my gut, the remnants of my old life as a cape. We had time to do this right. Slow and safe was the way to go.

    With the planning out of the way, the rest of the day was spent getting ready, so that all we would have to do in the morning after our breakfast had digested was climb into the chariots and take off. That didn''t actually take all that long, though, so most of it was spent just relaxing.

    Well, the twins relaxed and occupied their time bonding with Marcus and the soldiers, when Rika wasn''t glued to the hip of her other, blonde twin. Naturally, I spent my time practicing my runes again.

    After a nice enough dinner ¡ª around that same table in Boudica''s tent ¡ª we went to bed early. Rika wanted to stay up and chat with Nero some more, but her yawns betrayed her, and eventually, even she had to admit defeat and call it a night.

    The next day arrived early for us. Not at the crack of dawn, but closer to it than not. Our group got up and had a quiet breakfast, because even Nero, it seemed, could be groggy early in the morning.

    More was the pity that tea and coffee hadn''t yet become common beverages. That probably would have perked everyone up.

    And after about an hour to let our food settle so it didn''t wind up all over the chariots'' carriages, it was time to go, and our group assembled. Once we were all together, I turned to face them.

    "We''ll walk up to the main road and mount the chariots from there."

    Rika saluted me. "Aye ¡ª ooooooowah ¡ª aye, Shushou!"

    She was interrupted by a yawn halfway through, but that didn''t mean I couldn''t catch the introduction of yet another new nickname for me.

    I slanted a glance at Ritsuka. "It means ''captain,''" he explained briefly. "Like of a sports team."

    As long as it isn''t the cheer squad, I suppose.

    "That''s no good," Nero huffed, hands on her hips. "After all, as emperor, the only one who should be considered the leader is me! Mm!"

    "As team leader of Chaldea''s response team," I said with deliberate slowness, "I''m technically the one in charge. Your Excellency, you aren''t actually part of our command structure."

    "I am the ruler of all that is Rome!" she declared pompously. "As you are my citizens, that makes me your ruler! No need to shower me with praise. Your emperor is as humble as she is generous!"

    My eyebrows shot towards my hairline. What?

    "We''re Roman citizens? According to who?" I couldn''t help blurting out.

    More importantly, when had that happened?

    "Me!" Nero nodded, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Mm-mm! As emperor, I am the one who decides who is a citizen of my great empire and who is not, and I have decided that it is only appropriate that you be citizens of Rome!"

    "Wow," said Rika. "I thought getting dual citizenship was supposed to be a lot harder. That was pretty easy."

    Don''t encourage this! I wanted to snap at her.

    The Servants all had the nerve to be amused by this, too. "Does that include us Servants, as well?" Arash asked. "Because I''m not sure how that counts when we''re technically dead."

    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    "Or when we technically led rebellions against the empire," Boudica added.

    "Haha!" Spartacus laughed. "The empire never dies! The chains of oppression choose new necks to bind, and they bind sweetly with a gentle caress!"

    "I am emperor!" Nero repeated, like that was the end of it. As far as she was concerned, it seemed to be. "I embody all that is Rome, and if I say that you are Roman, then you are Roman!"

    "Fine," I said impatiently. Whatever. "Then, glorious leader, what do you want to be called along the way?"

    "Hmm," she hummed thoughtfully. "As the emperor''s valued allies and personal comrades, it seems only appropriate! You may dispense with my well-deserved titles and simply call me Nero!"

    "Is that really okay?" Mash asked uncertainly.

    "I am emperor!" Nero declared for the third time. "I say that it is!"

    "I''ve never been on a first name basis with an emperor before," Ritsuka muttered. He sounded a little faint, like he couldn''t quite believe it.

    "If there''s nothing else, at least she''s upfront about this sort of thing," Boudica said, laughing a little.

    Arash smiled. "She''s definitely a very straightforward sort of person, isn''t she?"

    "I wonder if that makes it a good thing that the politicians hate her so much, then," A¨ªfe mused.

    Emiya huffed a short laugh. "Well, they do say Emperor Nero was better loved by her subjects than her senators."

    "Oh yeah!" Rika grinned and held out her fist to Nero. "My new best buddy is awesome!"

    Nero regarded her hand with confusion. "Is this some kind of gesture from the future?"

    "It''s called a fist bump!" Rika told her, and she held her other fist out to her brother, who sighed and tapped it with his. Rika mimed an explosion. "It''s a thing friends do with each other! Like a secret handshake!"

    Nero''s eyes widened and her lips pulled into a broad smile. "I see! Yes, a ''fist bump!'' Mm-mm!"

    She raised her own hand, furled her fingers into a fist, and then she and Rika tapped their knuckles together. They each spread their fingers as they pulled away, miming another explosion. Nero looked absolutely delighted.

    I could feel the beginnings of a headache starting to form, and I resisted the urge to reach up and pinch the bridge of my nose.

    "Then, Nero, if it''s okay with you, we need to get going if we want to make good time."

    Nero, who was curling and uncurling her fingers as she stared down at them in wonder, jolted to attention. "Of course!" she said brightly. "There''s not a moment to waste! We should leave immediately!"

    But you were the one who¡­

    My eyes pressed shut briefly and I choked back a sigh, then let it go.

    But finally, we could start the trip, because it was going to be a long one and the faster we could get it over with, the better. We made our way through camp and towards the edge of it, back to the path that would lead up the mountainside and to the road that cut across over to Lyon ¡ª Via Agrippa II, if I was remembering the maps right.

    Why the Romans had started reusing names like that instead of coming up with something new, well, I didn''t really care enough about the answer to ask. Probably, it was built around the same time as the first Via Agrippa on the orders of the same person, and since it was an offshoot of the main road, they just gave it a quick, easy, subordinate name. It might not be the most original, but there weren''t exactly dozens of spider-webbing, zigzagging streets to make it harder to remember which was which.

    Wasn''t sure I could really talk about originality, either, not when just about every major city in the US had at least one street named after George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Ben Franklin.

    As we were about to start up the mountainside, however, the familiar tenor of Marcus'' voice called out, "Emperor Nero!"

    We all turned to find him there, dressed in full kit, with the entirety of his four-hundred-plus cohort behind him, similarly bedecked. When he saw that he had our attention, Marcus straightened and squared his shoulders.

    "Soldiers of the legion!" he bellowed. "Salute!"

    The thump of eight-hundred feet and the thunk of four-hundred-something fists striking cuirasses echoed out at once, and in one voice, the entirety of the cohort let out a shout that shook the trees around us.

    "I guess it really is true," Mash said quietly. "Emperor Nero may have been despised by the politicians, but her people loved her."

    Nero, who may or may not have heard her, teared up a little, and she pressed her own fist over her heart and gave Marcus and his cohort a short bow, little more than a nod of her head and a bend of her shoulders.

    Without another word, she spun on her heel and exited the camp ahead of us, head held high. The legionnaires posted at the entrance snapped to attention as she passed. They didn''t relax until we had all followed after her, leaving the camp behind.

    "The love of the emperor is the empire," Spartacus said, uncharacteristically quiet. "The love of the empire is the emperor. The greatest tyranny is born of deep-seated oppression."

    The twins shared a look, and Rika shrugged. When they turned to me, I pretended I didn''t see them, because it wasn''t like I had any better an idea what he meant than they did.

    The sun had fully risen by the time we got up to the main road, hanging high above the horizon and sending shafts of golden light through the canopy of the trees. The countryside had awoken fully, filled with birdsong and the whisper of the late summer wind.

    "Emiya!" I called over to him, and he turned to look at me curiously. I gestured with my hands. "Helmets?"

    His eyebrows rose and his eyes went a little wide. "Oh, right."

    One after the other, he materialized the same leather aviator helmets we masters had worn for our dash towards Orl¨¦ans ("Trace, on."), which I was somewhat embarrassed to admit I''d forgotten to ask for during our last two rides, because it might have saved us a little bit of trouble. He tossed the first to me, and then made two more and handed them off to the twins.

    As we Masters secured our headgear, Boudica and A¨ªfe both summoned their chariots, and we split into our groups to mount up as Arash, Emiya, and Spartacus faded away into Spirit Form. Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash all climbed in with Boudica, which (to my misfortune) left Nero to ride with A¨ªfe and me.

    "How magnificent!" Nero proclaimed as she leaned over the carriage''s railing. "Never before have I borne witness to such a beautiful and majestic pair of horses!"

    The white one stamped a hoof and tossed its mane, like it had heard her and was preening. The red one looked at its partner and snorted with a shake of its head.

    "And you never will again," A¨ªfe said plainly. "The likes of these two have long since been left behind by this world."

    "Then I shall simply have to have my fill of them now! Mm-mm!"

    Ahead of us, since she had to set the pace, Boudica''s chariot lurched into motion, and the instant it did, A¨ªfe snapped on her reins and we followed. I gripped tight to the railing as my stomach jumped and closed my eyes to prepare myself for what was to come.

    It didn''t help much.

    Boudica and A¨ªfe didn''t immediately accelerate to top speed like physics was just a suggestion, perhaps as a nod to Nero''s comfort, and took the road relatively slowly for a minute or two. The instant we cleared the mountain, however, and the slope curved down into the valley, they rapidly picked up speed, and the galaxy of lights through which I visualized my swarm whirled into motion.

    The beat of the horses'' hooves and the squeak of the chariot''s axle provided a soundtrack to the dizzying whorls of bugs entering and leaving my range, but they did little to ease my nausea as my stomach squirmed from my brain trying to keep up with the lightning fast changes in the composition and size of my swarm. I was getting used to it, I think, but not so used to it that I could keep going without being bothered.

    One of the downsides to having my powers back. On the other hand, without my powers, it would probably be the smearing landscape that would have my stomach twisting itself into knots. Even the hardiest of folks would have trouble with motion sickness when they were looking out at a world that better resembled a swirling impressionistic painting than an actual countryside.

    We turned and skirted around the outside of Lugdunum ¡ª Lyon ¡ª crossing through the fields and then over the river to reach Via Agrippa I (where I found out that Boudica''s chariot could fly and A¨ªfe''s could ride on water, both of which would have been nice to know earlier), and then continuing south for a short while. We had to swerve again only far enough to avoid another town a few miles south of Lugdunum.

    From there, as we followed the road that ran parallel with the river, the ride was relatively smooth, for a given value of the word. My troubles with the speed remained, but there were no significant swings in the elevation, so there was at least that much to be thankful for. Small mercies, as it were.

    It was still an uncomfortable hour, although Nero seemed to enjoy herself much more than I did, going by the broad grin on her face that I saw when I chanced a glance. At least she didn''t whoop and holler like she was at an amusement park.

    At last, as the road began to straighten out, a wall of gleaming stone brick rose on the horizon, growing larger and larger with every second. Ahead of us, Boudica''s chariot began to slow, and instead of galloping straight into the city, she turned aside and pulled off of the road to a stop. A¨ªfe clicked her tongue, almost inaudible over the stamp of her horses'' hooves, and gave a tug on one side of the reins, steering her chariot towards where Boudica had stopped.

    Boudica and the twins had just finished dismounting when we pulled up beside them, and Arash, Spartacus, and Emiya shimmered into existence, frowning.

    "Is something wrong?" Arash asked, preempting my own question.

    "Ah," said Boudica, shaking her head, "not¡­wrong, exactly, I just didn''t think it would go over well if we charged in there when the Empire is in the middle of a civil war. Plus¡­"

    She gestured down to the stump of her left arm, still glittering around the edges as it rebuilt itself. In hindsight, yes, that would be a very difficult thing to explain to anyone who saw it, wouldn''t it?

    "Right, that would stick out too much," Emiya agreed. "More questions than we really want to be answering right now."

    "I don''t think our entire group should go in, either," Boudica went on. "We would draw too much attention and suspicion, and¡­ Emperor Nero, I think you especially need to stay out here."

    "What''s this?" Nero demanded. "Mm-mm! Why should I deprive my loyal subjects the glory of my august presence?"

    "And that''s exactly why," Boudica said.

    Nero tilted her head, brow knitting together.

    "You''ll cause a scene," I told her bluntly. "The instant enough people realize you''re there, we''ll be mobbed by a whole crowd of people who want to see you. They might even try to throw a feast."

    It would also be an excellent moment for an assassin to try and sneak up on us. Or an Assassin. There was no way of knowing if the United Empire had summoned one, but I wasn''t going to place any bets against it, and you couldn''t tell me that Brutus wouldn''t count as one. Not when his murder of Julius Caesar was one of the most famous assassinations in history.

    On the other hand, the idea that those two could work together seemed a bit of a stretch, didn''t it?

    "As they should!" Nero said. "It is only proper that the people should celebrate their glorious leader."

    "Except it would turn a one-day trip into a three-day trip," A¨ªfe drawled, leaning over the edge of her chariot''s carriage. "It would take us thrice as long to reach Rome if everyone threw a party whenever we stopped over."

    "Hmmm," Nero hummed thoughtfully. "I suppose you do have something of a point."

    "Can we really leave Boudica and Nero out here by themselves?" Mash asked, a thread of uncertain worry in her voice.

    "No," I answered immediately, "that''s not a good idea either."

    Rika grinned. "Well then, it looks like it''s time to split up, gang!"

    I resisted the urge to turn to her with an arched eyebrow. A Scooby Doo reference, this time? What was she, a pop culture machine?

    "The people who should go into town for supplies are the ones that will blend in best," said Arash.

    I nodded. "Agreed."

    He turned towards the twins and Boudica. "Rika, Mash, Emiya, I''m afraid to say that probably isn''t you."

    Emiya gave a helpless shrug. ''What can you do?'' his expression said.

    "Eh?" Mash looked down at herself. "Really?"

    "Your plate armor is a little too advanced for this era," Emiya drawled. "My clothes, too."

    She blinked. "But wouldn''t that mean all of the Masters wouldn''t fit in?"

    "The clothes can be discounted, if everything else looks right," said Arash. "But you, Emiya, and Rika don''t look Roman at all, what with those hair colors."

    "But Nero''s blonde!" Rika burst out.

    "Of course," Nero said proudly. "It''s only natural that the emperor is also the most beautiful in all of Rome!"

    "And Nero isn''t going, either," Arash pointed out. "So that''s a moot point."

    "But A¨ªfe!" Rika gestured her way with both hands.

    A¨ªfe arched one eyebrow. Arash frowned.

    "A¨ªfe could pass for a Celtic mercenary," he eventually said. "In fact¡­" He turned to me. "We''re your bodyguards."

    My mouth pulled to one side, but after a moment of thought, the idea made sense. It wasn''t an airtight thing, but it should hold up to casual scrutiny. My strange, finely woven clothing wasn''t because I was a time traveler, but because I was a member of the aristocracy, and A¨ªfe and Arash were my bodyguards.

    In fact, the more I thought about it, the more the cover story started to make sense to me.

    "There''s just one problem," I said. "We don''t have any money."

    Arash opened his mouth, paused a moment, and then uttered a simple, "Ah¡­"

    Nero huffed. "Is that all you''re concerned about? Just who do you think is standing next to you?"

    She rummaged about in the pack she''d brought with her, and after a moment, produced a handful of silver coins that jangled against her gauntlet. "This should be more than sufficient for our purposes!"

    Arash held out his own hand, and she deposited the coins in his palm. He counted them out with one finger and nodded. "Yeah, this should definitely do it."

    "What if one group gets into trouble?" Ritsuka asked solemnly.

    I was the one with an answer for that, and I shifted my bag so I could unzip it and release my ravens. A moment later, the two of them were perched on my hands, utterly and unnaturally still.

    "We have our communicators," I said, "but I''ll leave these two to keep an eye on things, just in case an attack comes."

    Huginn took off and climbed into the sky, while Muninn hopped onto the rim of A¨ªfe''s chariot and perched there, looking the group over with his beady little black eyes. The city was big, for this era, but not so big that I should be out of range of my ravens at any point. Worst case scenario, I could send either Arash or A¨ªfe off on their own.

    That seemed to mollify Ritsuka, and no one else looked to have any complaints, so I grouped up with A¨ªfe and Arash, and before we left, I looked back at Mash, Emiya, and Spartacus. "We''ll leave the protection of the twins and Nero to you three, for now. Emiya, if you could get things ready, we''ll probably be bringing back some fish for lunch."

    He nodded, then projected a wicker basket with one hand and tossed it our way. Arash snatched it out of the air before I could.

    "They don''t have shopping bags in this era," was Emiya''s explanation.

    Silently, I was thankful, because I''d kind of forgotten about that part. "We''ll be back in about half an hour. If you need anything¡­"

    I tapped my wrist meaningfully. The twins and Mash nodded.

    With all of the important details squared away, our group of three peeled away and turned down the road to start off in the direction of Massilia. The guards at the gate entrance glanced our way as we passed, but they offered no comment and didn''t try to stop us, so I rolled my shoulders as I felt some of the tension drain away.

    First hurdle passed.

    Inside the wall was a busy city, perhaps not surprisingly so, considering it was a big trading hub and had been for centuries. It wasn''t nearly the size of, say, Brockton Bay or Chicago, and it didn''t hold a candle to what little I remembered of New York City, but it was just as tightly packed, and a rich, civilian population milled about the streets as they did their business.

    As we walked, I pulled on the pests infesting people''s homes, taking out the nuisances to begin forming a swarm that would let me keep a mental map of the city. At the same time, I scouted ahead with the bugs that were coming into my range and used their senses to figure out the direction we needed to head to get to the market.

    The people around us looked at us curiously as we went. I could almost feel their eyes sweeping over my strange clothes and my glasses, the knife sheathed at my hip, my somewhat paler complexion. The instant they saw A¨ªfe and her menacing red spear, however, and Arash, decked out in teal plate, they averted their eyes and kept going.

    "It looks like this plan of yours is working," A¨ªfe remarked quietly.

    "Better than I expected it to, if I''m honest," Arash replied.

    And it was. No one seemed to want to bring our attention down on themselves. They were fine with stealing looks when they thought none of us noticed, but they never did more than that, and they gave us a wide berth as we walked, making sure they never got closer than about five feet away.

    I led our little team down the streets and towards the market, and as we got closer, the briny, rank smell of fish filtered up from the stalls and the docks, and I couldn''t help wrinkling my nose against the stench of it. In some ways, though, it felt familiar, because it was carried on the salty wind of a seawater bay, and the closer we got, the more I started picking up bugs that were crawling about the port.

    In some ways, it reminded me of home. Brockton Bay.

    But the differences couldn''t have been starker, because two thousand years made for a huge gap in what fishing was, and my view of the city gave me too good a perspective to forget where I was.

    "How much fish should we get?" Arash asked as we approached the market.

    "Given the size of them? Three should be more than enough," I told him.

    He nodded. "Three it is, then."

    "Feel free to pick up some bread and a few vegetables," I added.

    "Of course."

    He moved away from A¨ªfe and I, and with a smile, he walked over to the nearest stall, greeting the clerk on the other side politely. Clerk? Owner? Shopkeeper? Whatever the proper term was. He peered down at the fish on display with apparent interest as he made friendly small talk, and I had no idea what kind of food he''d eaten during his life, but he definitely seemed to have an eye for the fish that I hadn''t expected.

    While he was doing that, I closed my eyes for a moment and turned my attention back to my ravens ¡ª just in time for a blur to race down the road, streaking like a comet for the other team waiting for us outside the city.

    "Incoming Servant detected!" I heard Mash yelp through Muninn''s ears.

    The comet threw itself into the air and landed nearby with a crash, and it resolved into a man who stood, bedecked in golden armor and a long, red cape. A skirt of leather strips fell to mid-thigh, and a mop of short, black hair sat atop his head, windswept. The most striking thing, however, were his mad, red eyes, set in blackened sockets, that honed immediately in on Nero.

    "My beloved younger sister''s child," the Servant rasped in a rough, gravelly voice. "Give it up. Give it all up. That life. That body. That empire. GIVE IT OVER TO ME."

    Nero gasped, and in a small, quiet voice, she asked, "Uncle?"

 Chapter LI: The Mad Emperor

    Chapter LI: The Mad Emperor

    "Shit."

    The new Servant did not attack immediately, he stalked. His face was pulled into a rictus of agonized fury, with his eyes wide and crazed, and every footfall seemed to carry the weight of a mountain.

    And then, suddenly, he burst into motion, racing towards Nero with wild abandon. Mash put herself between them, shield held out defensively, but when the new Servant''s fist slammed into it with a thunderous CLANG that I wasn''t sure I didn''t hear from all the way over in the market district, she was actually pushed back. Her boots dug twin furrows in the ground.

    "Uncle?" Rika squawked, bewildered.

    "The previous emperor before Nero took the throne, Caligula!" Mash told her, voice strained.

    My first instinct was to rush back to help them, or failing that, because they would be held up by my being only human, to send Arash and A¨ªfe back first so that they could help the other team. When the enemy was strong enough to push even Mash back with a single punch, that was definitely someone we couldn''t underestimate. I had even spun around and taken a step back towards their camp outside the perimeter wall.

    But then my brain kicked in, and I realized that might be exactly what the United Empire wanted. If I sent Arash and A¨ªfe back, that would leave me alone and otherwise defenseless, and they could send anyone at all ¡ª any Servant, because you didn''t need a Servant specialized in ambushes and assassinations to kill a normal human like me ¡ª to take me out.

    Divide and conquer. I couldn''t say with any confidence that it was a phrase coined by a Roman general, but it certainly sounded like one, and whoever had first uttered the words, the tactic itself was old as dirt.

    In that case, the absolute worst thing I could do was let myself be isolated. Not only because it could very easily get me killed, but because any fight that broke out here and now in this crowded market square would invariably involve a lot of collateral damage.

    "Uncle, why?" Nero asked, pained and confused. "Why have you appeared like this, only to raise your hand against me?"

    "This¡­is destiny," Caligula answered. "My actions¡­are just. My beloved niece¡­for the future of Rome, you must¡­"

    He rushed forward again, and Mash grunted as he slammed his fist into her shield with another, earthshaking CLANG. Again, she was pushed back ¡ª he was an unstoppable force, and Mash was not quite as immovable as any of us would have liked her to be.

    Before I could even take a second step, I nearly tripped over myself spinning back around. A¨ªfe looked at me, brow knit in confusion.

    "A¨ªfe," I barked at her, "Arash, trouble!"

    Arash dropped the projected basket without ceremony, stopping only long enough to mutter a rushed apology to the shopkeeper, and whirled about to come towards me to see what was wrong. I didn''t even wait for him to make it there, I laid things out immediately, projecting my mental voice along both of the threads leading to each of them simultaneously.

    Arash, pick me up, drop me on the tower ramparts, I ordered him. I''d only just finished when he scooped me up and literally swept me off my feet, already moving back the way we came as he leapt over the rooftops. A¨ªfe picked up on things immediately and followed behind. Enemy Servant attacking the others. He seems to only be after Nero.

    Huginn swooped down from the sky as Muninn took flight. They opened their mouths and fired beams of scintillating light from their mana cannons, but they glanced off of Caligula''s golden armor without leaving more than a faint scuff mark. He ignored them like nothing had happened.

    But it wasn''t nothing. The fact that my attacks had landed at all suggested that if he even had Magic Resistance, it was of a pitifully low rank. Rank D at the highest, but even that was probably pushing it.

    Emiya came in from the side and slightly behind, where Caligula shouldn''t have been able to see him, but Caligula leaned back and out of the way, and he stepped back and he neatly dodged every followup swing as Emiya swiped at him with swords that were little more than streaks of black and white even to my ravens'' eyes.

    Strong and fast, I cataloged. No apparent weapons on him. It was entirely possible that he just didn''t see the need to use them, but the fact that he wasn''t drawing even to fight back probably meant that his fists were his weapon of choice. Noble Phantasm? Maybe his armor, but I couldn''t think of any anecdotes that would really indicate that.

    I wasn''t willing to rule out Saber, Lancer, or Archer, and Assassin was just plain unlikely, but I was leaning towards one of the cavalry classes. Not Caster, surely, not with that much raw physicality, but maybe Rider or Berserker. There was that thing about his horse, wasn''t there?

    On the next attack, Caligula stepped forward between swings and slammed his forehead into Emiya''s with a bone-rattling CRACK, and Emiya stumbled backwards, blood pouring down his face. He barely got his swords up in time, crossing them over his chest the way he had against A¨ªfe during their spar, and just like then, the force of Caligula''s punch was enough to shatter them like they were made of cheap glass.

    Unlike his spar against A¨ªfe, there was nothing held back. Emiya was thrown away by the punch, flying over a dozen feet from the impact, and tumbled to the ground. He at least managed to recover enough to roll over his one shoulder and back to his feet, grimace on his face and one eye squinted shut against the blood.

    His left arm also dangled limply in its socket.

    Mash gasped.

    "Emiya!" Rika cried.

    "Damn." Emiya turned his head to the side without looking away and spat out what might have been a tooth. "This guy hits as hard as Herakles."

    Behind my glasses, my eyes went wide.

    Fuck.

    "S-seriously?" Ritsuka asked squeakily.

    Emiya smiled grimly. "Fortunately, I don''t think we have to worry about this guy having eleven extra lives, so if we kill him once, he''s dead."

    "I-I think you just said something really unbelievable!" Mash sputtered.

    No time to think about how or why that would be possible for an otherwise normal human, I just had to accept that it was. Caligula''s strength was equal to the greatest hero of Greece, and Emiya knew from firsthand experience ¡ª so what did I do about that?

    As my mind raced, Spartacus appeared from nowhere and literally dropped out of the sky, laughing loudly. He brought his sword down in an overhand chop, but Caligula lifted one arm and took the edge on the gleaming gold of his bracer without so much as a grunt to show the effort. His return blow smashed into Spartacus'' ribs, and I could hear them snap like kindling as even that meaty, musclebound maniac was thrown backwards from the force of it.

    And then, while he pulled himself back to his feet, they cracked again as they moved themselves back into place. Something writhed under his skin, glowing beneath like spots of pink magma, and Spartacus kept laughing.

    Huginn swept low, firing off another sizzling burst of energy and light that did nothing to Caligula, and as Spartacus leapt back into the fray, I brought Muninn down to land on Ritsuka''s shoulder.

    "Rika," I ordered through Muninn''s mouth, and the twins jolted at the sound of my voice, "first aid for Emiya. Ritsuka, use your Master''s Clairvoyance to get a read on Caligula."

    "R-right!" they replied.

    Rika held out her hand, pointed at Emiya, and shouted, "First Aid!"

    Emiya grunted, and with a series of cracks and a sickening pop, his injured arm reset itself.

    "Thanks, Master."

    Spartacus swung down again, but Caligula caught his arm by the wrist easily, ignoring another blast from Huginn like the distraction that it was meant to be. Spartacus reared back his other fist and punched with enough strength to knock an ordinary man''s head clean off his shoulders, but when Caligula met his punch with one of his own, it was Spartacus'' arm that was reduced to a mangled mess.

    A twinge of sympathy throbbed along the port that connected my prosthetic. Gold Morning ¡ª my own arm had been mangled just as badly, back then.

    Still, Spartacus laughed, and before my ravens'' eyes, the bones and flesh twisted and contorted back into shape. Slower than his ribs, but far, far faster than they had any right to, even as a Servant. It had to be his Noble Phantasm at work, and seeing it for myself now, it really did seem like my original comparison to Crawler and Lung was dead-on.

    "Caligula!" Ritsuka said, squinting at the fight. "Class ¡ª Berserker!" My eyebrows rose. "Madness Enhancement ¡ª A¡­ A-plus!"

    A-plus? Then it was like Emiya had said before. Madness Enhancement looped back around ¡ª up to a certain point, you lost more and more coherence, but once you got so high, you started to become less mindless and more warped in terms of thinking. At A-plus, it made sense that Caligula would be less coherent than Spartacus was at EX, but more coherent than another Berserker would be at Rank B.

    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    "Strength ¡ª A-plus!" Ritsuka kept going. "Constitution ¡ª B-plus! Agility ¡ª B-plus! Mana ¡ª"

    "That''s enough, Ritsuka," Muninn told him. "His skills? Is there anything important there?"

    Ritsuka was silent for a moment. "Imperial Privilege, Rank A. It lets him use skills he doesn''t have. The other two just make his attacks stronger the longer and harder he fights."

    "Is that all?" Emiya drawled sarcastically.

    Spartacus snapped his forehead into Caligula, and Caligula reared back from the blow, but only so that he could slam his own forehead into Spartacus'' nose. The crack of it breaking was like thunder, and blood fountained from his nostrils as he stumbled back, but only so far, because Caligula still had an iron grip on his right wrist. With a squeeze and another crack, that broke, too, and Caligula let him go to deliver another powerful blow to his unprotected stomach.

    Spartacus folded over himself as he went flying backwards again, the air leaving his mouth in a huff, and he landed on the ground, tumbling along like he was rolling down a hill.

    And still, after he came to a stop, he pulled himself to his feet, laughing and smiling as his flesh bubbled and twisted back into shape.

    "We''re on our way back," I told them through Muninn''s beak. "You just have to hold out for another thirty ¡ª Nero!"

    "Nero!" the twins echoed as she rushed past them and Emiya, racing towards the fight. From the long, narrow bundle she''d been carrying over her shoulder the entire trip, she pulled a sword that looked like it had been forged of volcanic stone, black with a red edge, a thing with a jagged, undulating blade that looked better suited to ripping than cutting cleanly.

    "Wait!" Mash cried.

    But Nero ignored her, letting out a furious scream as she threw herself towards her uncle like a woman possessed. Her sword was nearly as long as she was tall, but she handled it like it weighed almost nothing and aimed mercilessly for Caligula''s neck.

    Red blood splashed across the grass as he caught the blade barehanded.

    "Nero," Caligula rumbled. "My niece¡­ My beloved niece¡­ Child of my sister¡­"

    He raised his other hand, balled into a fist, and ignored the flash of Huginn blasting him again.

    "Everything¡­ You will give it to me¡­ Everything!"

    And when his fist came down, Spartacus was there to catch it. His hand bent backwards, fingers snapping, the small bones in his palm snapping, the bones in his other forearm that he''d used to brace his hand cracked and snapped, blood splattered everywhere, but it was enough that when Caligula''s knuckles made contact with his forehead, Spartacus wasn''t instantly obliterated. The attack had been blunted just enough for him to survive.

    "The oppressors stand before me," said Spartacus. "Who should judge the oppressors? Who should throw off the yoke of tyranny? Only the oppressed! Only those ground beneath the heel of oppression!"

    "Rebellious¡­pest!" Caligula sneered.

    Emiya was suddenly there, sliding through the gap between Spartacus and Nero. In the same motion, he drew back on his black bow and one of his trademark sword-arrow things formed, a twisted mockery of gray steel that shouldn''t have been able to fly at all. Arash and I landed on the rampart for Massilia''s outer wall just in time for me to watch that thing shoot off like a meteor from three different angles and distances.

    Blood splattered across the grass. The arrow leapt into the sky as a streak of light and disappeared into the clouds, punching a hole through them as it went. But Huginn let me see it before the others did, the line gouged into Caligula''s cheek where Emiya''s shot had come frustratingly close to going through his eye but not actually managed it.

    A few centimeters higher and to the left and Caligula would have been beaten, just like that.

    There was no time to think about it and ponder the what-ifs, no time to lament that Emiya had missed by such a small margin. Seeing the opening for what it was, I didn''t hesitate.

    "Arash!" I barked. "Finish him!"

    I had barely gotten my feet back under me before Arash was preparing to do just that. He''d only just dropped me off, and in the space of a blink, his bow had materialized and he already had an arrow nocked and ready to fire.

    Caligula vanished. Between one moment and the next, he was gone, like he''d never been there, and Arash''s arrow soared through the place his chest had just been and bit into the dirt with the force of a hand grenade. If it had landed, it would have hit Caligula right in the heart.

    If it had landed.

    Arash clicked his tongue, eyes narrowed. "He''s retreating."

    "Tch," A¨ªfe scoffed as she landed next to me. "Figured out how badly outnumbered he was, did he?"

    "Can you hit him?" I asked.

    In Spirit Form, he was intangible for all intents and purposes, even to my bugs, which meant that I couldn''t track him or keep track of him until he materialized again. If Arash''s Clairvoyance was good enough, however, then even in Spirit Form, he should be able to track Caligula and nail him with an arrow.

    "No," said Arash. "Not while he''s in Spirit Form. He''d have to materialize to block it, but he''s in the forest already. He doesn''t have to worry about getting around obstacles; I do."

    A scowl pulled itself across my face. Damn it. The enemy Berserker would have enough of his wits about him to know when he was beaten and pull a tactical retreat, wouldn''t he? It would have been so much easier if he was a maddened battle junkie who fought to the death.

    Unfortunately, there was nothing else to be done about it. If Caligula was determined to retreat, then not only was he going to outpace us by virtue of having no Master to lug around, but he''d be almost impossible for us to follow anyway. It would just be a waste of time to give chase.

    "Go back and finish picking up our supplies," I ordered him. "It looks like this was just an attack of opportunity, but I''d like to be out of here as soon as possible in case he decides to grab reinforcements and come back."

    If he did, we would hopefully be in a much better position to counterattack at that point. Even better, if he followed us towards Rome, that would put him and his team deep behind enemy lines and cut off from that Pax Romana Noble Phantasm. He should be much easier to handle if we didn''t have to worry about that getting in the way.

    "Understood."

    Arash vanished from the rampart next to me. I picked him up again a few seconds later in a deserted alleyway, and through my bugs, watched him stealthily insert himself back into the flow of people making their way through the streets. I had no idea what he would tell the shopkeeper he had bailed on when he got back, because I couldn''t think of a lie just then that sounded convincing enough to explain our sudden disappearing act.

    It was his problem now, either way.

    Down below, Muninn landed on Ritsuka''s shoulder as Huginn stayed up above, watching over them from the sky. Muninn opened her beak again and through her mouth, I asked, "Is everyone okay? No one was injured? Aside from Emiya and Spartacus."

    Rika saluted. "Tip-top, firing on all cylinders!"

    "We''re okay, Senpai," Ritsuka translated. He looked over at Mash. "Mash?"

    "Ah!" She blinked. "Y-yes, I''m fine, Miss Taylor, Master. No injuries to report."

    I looked her over surreptitiously with Muninn, but couldn''t find anything wrong with her at a glance. If those two hits she took from Caligula had hurt her at all, she wasn''t showing it, or maybe she''d already healed from it. I still wasn''t sure I understood all the rules about how Demi-Servants worked.

    "I''m sorry I couldn''t do anything," Boudica said regretfully, "but in my current condition, I think Caligula would have killed me in one hit."

    She gestured helplessly to her missing arm, and while I didn''t think it was impossible to fight effectively while down a limb, I also had to admit that fighting for me tended to involve a lot less direct physical confrontation than it would for her. Not none, because I had never been one to sit back and handle everything from afar with my swarm, but a lot less than a more physically imposing cape would have.

    I turned to the most injured of us all as the other Servants rejoined the group. "Spartacus?"

    Spartacus just grinned, still covered in his own blood. To see him smiling from a face dyed red, another person probably would have found it chilling. Eerie, maybe, or just plain unsettling.

    Those people had probably never seen a fully transformed Lung.

    "The rebellion cannot be slain," said Spartacus. "Tyranny will always be opposed, for justice lives on in the hearts of the oppressed."

    I decided to take that as ''I''m okay.'' As long as he was smiling, that was probably a good sign.

    "I think I''m still feeling that first hit," Emiya added, rolling the shoulder that had been injured, "and I probably will be for the next week, but I''m back to normal otherwise."

    Mash let out a sigh of relief. "That''s good. We all came out of it okay."

    Muninn turned her head to the last member of our group. "Nero?"

    But Nero didn''t respond. She just kept looking out into empty space in the direction where Caligula had been standing when he fled, her ridiculous sword held so loosely that she might just drop it. She hadn''t moved since he left.

    Muninn took off from Ritsuka''s shoulder and flew the short distance over to land on Nero''s, and she jerked; the sudden addition of new weight was what got through to her. "Nero?"

    "Ah!" she said. "Yes, I am uninjured! Mm-mm! My august self won''t be done in so easily!"

    She looked back out again, staring off towards the forest. Ritsuka, perhaps sensing the obvious turmoil in Nero, approached her slowly.

    "Is something wrong, Nero?" he asked cautiously.

    For a moment, she was quiet. Like she was trying to order her thoughts before she asked the question that was burning her up inside.

    "Just now," she began slowly and at length, "that was my uncle."

    "Uncle?" Ritsuka asked, not understanding.

    "Yes," I answered for him through Muninn''s beak, because he wouldn''t recognize the significance of that. "The person you just fought was Emperor Caligula."

    "My uncle is dead," Nero said with finality. "He died¡­nearly twenty years ago."

    "Yes." When she would have been¡­ Come to think of it, it was actually pretty incredible that she remembered him well enough to recognize him on sight when she would have been about two years old when he died.

    Of course, if there were busts or statues that had already been made in his honor, then maybe it wasn''t quite so incredible.

    "Then¡­ the version of my uncle we fought just now¡­"

    "Was a Servant, without a doubt."

    She trembled. "And yet¡­ My uncle, whose empire was entrusted to me¡­ My uncle, who gave me the Rome that I now rule¡­ My uncle, from whom I inherited everything¡­ My uncle just tried to¡­"

    "It''s worth pointing out that he was a Berserker," I said. "He likely wasn''t in his right mind."

    Even more so with Mad Enhancement that high. There was no telling exactly how severely his mentality had been warped.

    "Even so!" she burst out. "Even so, he attempted to¡­to¡­"

    She couldn''t seem to finish the sentence, and in my real body, I frowned as my brow knitted together. Attempted to what? I still wasn''t quite sure what he''d wanted from her, exactly. Caligula had said something about her surrendering the empire, her life, and even her body, and while the first two made a degree of sense with the United Empire''s goals, the last had a lot of implications that I frankly didn''t want to unpack if I didn''t have to.

    Roman Emperors got up to some crazy shit, sometimes, and Nero had been a toddler when Caligula died. Now that she was grown up, a fully matured, adult woman¡­

    Purity of the bloodline, indeed.

    "Am I truly so worthless an emperor?" Nero whispered. I didn''t think I was meant to hear it. "Am I so incompetent that my uncle has come back from the dead to take his empire from me?"

    "Nero?"

    A moment passed, a handful of uneasy seconds. Ritsuka shifted behind her, his own brow furrowing.

    "No," Nero said at length. "I''m worrying over nothing! Mm-mm! It''s clear to me that the United Empire has brainwashed my uncle and put strange thoughts into his head! In that case, it is all the more reason why I must cast them down in the name of the true Rome!"

    The twins shared an uncertain look, but didn''t say anything. It seemed like they weren''t fooled by her bravado any more than I was.

    Unfortunately, the only thing Chaldea had that even vaguely resembled a therapist was currently sleeping off the better part of half a week of all-nighters, so the best any of us could do for Nero was to keep an eye on her and offer to listen if and when she decided to unload some of that baggage. Unless and until it started getting in the way of the mission, I decided, we could afford to give her the time to try and work it out herself.

    Nero spun around, nearly dislodging Muninn from her shoulder with how sudden it was, and strode back over to rejoin the group. Her sunny disposition had returned, but having seen that moment of vulnerability, I had to wonder how much of it was real.

    "Forgive me, my friends!" she said brightly. "Your emperor saw something unbelievable and was momentarily disturbed! There is no cause for alarm, for even my august self might occasionally stumble when faced with something so outlandish!"

    Emiya stared at her, disbelieving, and even Mash blinked, bewildered. They both looked towards my raven, like they expected me to call her out on her bullshit.

    "This doesn''t change our plans," I told them through Muninn''s mouth. "Although we might have to cut lunch a little shorter than we intended to."

    Emiya shook his head. "What the hell. Why not? Sure, if we''re going to ignore that little stunt, I guess that''s the way it is."

    Boudica chewed worriedly on her bottom lip, but didn''t say anything.

    "I think she''s right," Ritsuka agreed. "Meeting Caligula doesn''t change where we need to go or why, does it? So our plans shouldn''t change, either."

    "We still need to inspect the ley line at Mount Etna," Mash said a little hesitantly.

    "Yes," I confirmed for them. "After lunch, we''ll make our way to Genua, then to Rome, as originally planned."

    Rika perked up.

    "Does that mean you got the food, Senpai?" she asked eagerly.

    "We came back immediately the instant we realized you were in trouble," I told her. "After Caligula left, I sent Arash back to pick up where we were forced to leave off. Give it another ten or fifteen minutes."

    "Another ten or fifteen minutes¡­"

    A slow, dreamy smile stretched over Rika''s face.

    "And then," she said lowly, "another one of Emiya''s delicious meals."

 Chapter LII: The Eternal City

    Chapter LII: The Eternal City

    It was about twenty minutes before Arash arrived back from the city. His arms were laden with the basket that Emiya had projected for us earlier, filled with fish brought in by the local fishermen, and dangling from each hand was a sack that contained what my bugs registered as various kinds of fruit.

    "I come bearing lunch," he announced as he walked back towards our group. "Well. Kind of."

    He set the basket down, and Emiya, who''d been setting up the firepit over which he would be cooking our food, spared a moment to come over and peer down into it. He clicked his tongue thoughtfully.

    "Red mullet," he said with a nod, like that meant anything to anyone else here. Except it seemed it did, for all of the Servants, because none of them looked as lost as Rika and Ritsuka did. "Not my specialty, but I can work with that. Get anything else?"

    "A couple of different fruits you might want to work with," Arash replied, hefting his bags, "and if not, for the Masters to eat to keep their strength up."

    "Like?"

    "Some dates, a few pomegranates, apples, pears, a couple of lemons ¡ª"

    "Lemons!" Nero gasped, delighted. "Wherever did you find such a thing in Massilia?"

    Arash smiled. "Guess that explains why they were so expensive. They''re rare, around here?"

    "Food reserved for the nobility!" Nero confirmed with a nod. "Why, if I had known there were lemons in Massilia, I would have given you the money to buy out their entire stock!"

    He shook his head and huffed a short chuckle.

    "I did."

    "That should work well with the fish," Emiya commented. "Hm¡­ Yeah, I think I know what I''m going to do now."

    "You''re the chef," Arash said. "Anything else you need from here?"

    He held out the bag, but it was Boudica who told him, "Leave the dates. They should make for a good side dish to go with the fish."

    Emiya huffed. "I was going to use the apples, but I''ll defer to your judgment this time."

    "Thank you," she said sweetly.

    "Fine by me." Arash reached into the one bag. "Ritsuka, Rika, catch!"

    He tossed each of them an apple, and Rika almost dropped hers as she scrambled to catch it. A third, he held out to me, and I took it in the spirit it was given.

    Fresh fruit was a rarity in Chaldea. It came with the territory of living in an isolated facility in the middle of the Antarctic tundra. Hard to get shipments of fresh food when you were situated in such an inhospitable wasteland.

    "Thanks, Arash!" Rika said brightly.

    "Yeah, thanks," Ritsuka echoed his sister.

    "It was no problem," he said with a smile. He handed the bag over to Emiya, who took it and got back to work.

    Did you really spend all of that money on a few lemons? I asked him as I took my first bite of the apple. It was juicy and delicious and somehow tasted only a little bit like the apples I was used to ¡ª the consequences of two thousand years of selective breeding, I had to imagine.

    Maybe not all of it, he admitted to me silently.

    I hesitated on my second bite, but only for a moment. If Nero asks where the rest of it went ¡ª

    Then I''ll tell her the truth, he replied firmly. I used it to buy some food for a few street urchins.

    I paused again for a short moment, a strange feeling swirling in my gut as I kept eating my apple. Not quite nostalgia, but something related to it. The image his words had conjured was familiar, in an old, worn way, and it made me think of those days after Leviathan had hit Brockton Bay and I became a kind of warlord to keep my slice of the city alive and afloat. I hadn''t been as involved in the day to day as some of the others in my territory were, but that didn''t distance me from the orphans who hadn''t had anyone else.

    There was no way I could forget that kind of desperation. The desperation born of needing help and having little to no hope of it ever arriving.

    And to at least a few of those desperate people, Arash became that help they needed, if only the once. Sometimes, I forgot that he wasn''t just a hero, he was also a good man. It was frankly depressing how infrequently those two categories seemed to overlap.

    I won''t tell her if she doesn''t ask, I told him. I wasn''t sure if I would have agreed to lie if he wanted me to, but he didn''t ask me to.

    He glanced my way and offered a small smile. He didn''t have to say the words for me to hear his thanks, and for that moment, I felt closer to him than I ever had before. Not like we were on the same wavelength, because we often were in battle, but like we saw ourselves in each other.

    That sounded a little sappier than I meant it to when I gave it a second of thought.

    The moment ended, and we both turned away as Rika continued to noisily enjoy her apple, biting into it with gusto. Her brother ate his more sedately and with more poise, but the content look on his face said that he was enjoying it just as much.

    The better part of another half an hour passed, but it didn''t take anywhere near that long for the smell of the cooking fish to reach our nostrils, punctuated by the zesty scent of the lemon sauce that it was being cooked in. There were even a few extra herbs and spices that underlaid it, although I couldn''t name them all just by nose, but I didn''t need to in order to get a sense for just how delicious it was all going to be.

    Like I said. The instant we lost Emiya ¡ª whether that was in battle or after this whole thing was over ¡ª we were doomed.

    All the while, Rika kept getting more and more anxious. She had enjoyed her apple well enough, but the more the smell of Emiya''s cooking wafted over our group, the more impatient she seemed to get to dig into it. She was like a kid on Christmas, desperate to rip into her presents and see what "Santa" had gotten for her.

    Which naturally meant, yes, that she just had to ask, "is it done, yet?" every two minutes. I felt a pang of empathy with Rika''s mother for what she must have put up with for the past seventeen years.

    Finally, Emiya''s voice called, "Lunch is served!"

    Rika zipped over towards him so fast, I wouldn''t have blamed anyone for asking if she had teleported. Nero was much more sedate, but she still walked faster than normal as she made her way over. Ritsuka and I were the only ones who went at a reasonable pace, although even he and I weren''t so immune to Emiya''s cooking that we didn''t put on a little extra speed.

    For good reason, I found out a few minutes later as I sat at the table Emiya had projected for us (of course). The fish was flaky and fell apart like all well-prepared fish was supposed to, and it had been cooked in a salty brine that was offset by the bitter lemon sauce and the sweetness of the dates that had been paired with it, and it all combined with the fresh herbs and spices that formed a smooth undercurrent to the other flavors'' sharpness.

    Emiya was spoiling us.

    "Are you certain he can''t stay?" Nero asked mid-meal. She''d picked up how to use a fork with frankly astounding speed. "Emiya, I would reward you with whatever you like! Riches, women, land ¡ª for her personal chef, your emperor is most generous indeed! Mm-hm!"

    "Very generous indeed!" Arash commented with a grin.

    "Sorry," Emiya said wryly, smiling. "As tempting as the offers are, I''m afraid my current contract is too important for me to cancel, even if I could stay on as your chef in Rome."

    "He can''t," I added shortly, then went back to my food.

    Nero stopped eating for a moment, considering Emiya with a shrewd look and narrowed eyes, and then, she nodded, as though she''d made up her mind. "Men, then? I assure you, I''m willing to cater to whatever tastes you have!"

    Emiya sputtered, trying to muster a denial, and Rika snorted as she slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from accidentally spitting out her food while Ritsuka almost choked on his own. I couldn''t stop myself from rolling my eyes, because that sort of joke was so¡­sophomoric.

    "Oh?" said A¨ªfe, grinning wickedly as she joined in on the fun. "Is that how you''re so familiar with the Hound''s spear then, Emiya? Did he¡­penetrate you with it, at some point?"

    "Th-that''s not how it happened at all!" Emiya blurted out desperately. "I-I mean, it is, and he did, but not that way!"

    "Oh my," said Boudica, a faint blush rising on her cheeks.

    "And of course, there was thrusting involved," A¨ªfe added slyly. "I''m sure he was quite vigorous. It''s the Hound, after all."

    "Stop making it worse!"

    "O-oh my god, Emiya," Rika rasped, nearly bent double over her food. "Everything makes so much sense now!"

    "No, it doesn''t!" he snapped back at her. "Stop making stuff up in your head! This doesn''t make anything make more sense at all!"

    "It explains quite a bit to me," A¨ªfe said smugly.

    "Like why he''s such a good cook!" wheezed Rika.

    "Th-there''s nothing wrong with it," Boudica said diplomatically. "Many great men throughout history have preferred the company of other men."

    "Love is unbound by the mortal shell," said Spartacus. "Love is the glory of the distant stars! My love is a sign of my struggle! Your love is a sign of your rebellious spirit!"

    "Spartacus agrees," Boudica translated.

    "C¨²chulainn was trying to kill me!" Emiya protested. "That''s all that happened!"

    "He and Ferdiad fought to the death," A¨ªfe countered simply. "That didn''t stop them from being familiar with each other during their training days."

    Emiya opened his mouth.

    "I think we''ve tormented him enough," I cut in calmly.

    "Ease up on him a little, yeah?" Arash agreed.

    The laughter and joking petered off almost immediately. Nero, who had watched the entire proceedings with confusion, huffed. "Torment him? I was making a legitimate offer! Mm-mm!"

    Emiya sighed, and through gritted teeth, he told her, "I''m not interested."

    She hummed. "You are the honorable sort, then." She nodded. "I can respect that! Loyalty is the most attractive trait in a man!"

    Emiya''s face flushed.

    "Thanks, but I''m not interested in that, either," he said. "No matter how much you look like Saber."

    Everything stopped, except for Nero, who just looked confused again. "Saber?"

    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    The rest of us stared at him, trying to digest what he''d just implied. Even I was trying to wrap my head around how that one worked. Residual memories from his alternate self? I didn''t have a better explanation that made any more sense than that. Had Emiya Alter stuck with that corrupted King Arthur out of genuine affection?

    But¡­when and how had Emiya met King Arthur? Was it something that happened before Fuyuki''s Grail War went sideways, or had he somehow known her from somewhere else? None of it made any sense.

    "Emiya, you¡­" Mash said quietly. "Could it be¡­you were in love with King Arthur?"

    A pained look ripped across his face, but he didn''t answer. That alone was its own kind of answer, though, and I honestly wasn''t sure what to do with it.

    "That¡­actually would explain a lot," Ritsuka agreed.

    "Like why his evil self was working for her evil self," said Rika.

    Emiya spun away from the group and the question, and over his shoulder, he tossed out an explanation: "I''m going to go clean up, so we can leave as soon as we''re ready."

    He walked away to do just that, deliberately keeping his back to us, as though to say that he wouldn''t even acknowledge any other discussion on the matter.

    "I don''t understand," Nero complained into the silence he left behind. "Who is Saber, and what does she have to do with this King Arthur fellow?"

    The twins and Mash exchanged looks, and then when they all turned to me, I told them, "Go ahead."

    There wasn''t really a reason to hold it back. Nero wouldn''t remember any of it after we left, and Fuyuki had already been resolved as a Singularity, so there wasn''t any intelligence that could really be gained from what little they could tell Nero that would come back to bite us later.

    "The first Singularity we had to correct took place in a city called Fuyuki," Mash began to explain, "in the year 2004. The events gone awry were related to something known as a Holy Grail War¡­"

    She only focused on the essential background information, first, with the twins chiming in here and there with their own comments (or in Rika''s case, wry jokes). Once she''d established the core situation, she talked about the Servant who had been holding the whole thing in place, the Saber class Servant of King Arthur, and how King Arthur had actually been a woman disguising herself as a man.

    And then she went on to explain about the version of Emiya we had fought there, just as twisted and just as corrupted, but unmistakably the same person, the same Heroic Spirit, and how he had been serving as Saber''s staunchest ally. Nero nodded along the whole way, absorbing the entire story attentively.

    When it was all over, however, she admitted, "I don''t think I understand how it all works, but¡­ Emiya, he worked with this King Arthur Saber person, who was also a Servant? And even though it was a different version compared to this Emiya, he might have that Emiya''s memories of it?"

    "There''s no way to be sure," Mash said. "Servants aren''t supposed to remember the events of previous summonings. But¡­"

    "How else would he know you and she look almost identical?" I reasoned.

    "We do?" Nero asked, nonplussed.

    "Down to the hairstyle," Ritsuka confirmed. With a sheepish smile, he added, "It actually threw us all off when we first saw you."

    "Most of us," Arash corrected. "Not everyone here was around for the Fuyuki Singularity, after all."

    "Hmm," Nero hummed thoughtfully. "That''s no good. There can only be one Emperor Nero, and it wouldn''t do for anyone to confuse me with someone else. But you said that King Arthur''s legend takes place over four-hundred years from now?"

    "Around 500 AD, yes," Mash answered.

    "Then I came first!" Nero declared. "Therefore, it is her who looks like me and not the other way around!"

    That¡­ I mean¡­ Technically¡­

    "Hell yeah!" Rika cheered. "You''re way more fun than she was anyway!"

    "That is only natural! Mm-hm!" Nero agreed.

    Whatever. It didn''t really matter and I wasn''t ready to start an argument about it, so if she wanted us to pretend like the resemblance went the other way just because she came first chronologically, that didn''t really change anything.

    "If you''re done," I said, "you should probably finish eating. Before your food cools off all the way."

    "Ah!" Rika said. "Oh no! I got distracted!"

    "That''s karma for you," Arash said, amused. "The universe is getting you back for being so mean to Emiya."

    "Screw the universe!" Rika retorted.

    She dove back into her food with gusto, shoveling it into her mouth like it would freeze over if she let it sit for more than another few seconds. The rest of us turned back to our own meals and continued eating, if more sedately than Rika was, for the most part. Nero was still eating fairly quickly, which I put down to her being unused to having food quite as extravagant as Emiya''s fare.

    When she was done, Rika sat back with a sigh. "Where has Emiya been all my life?"

    "The Throne of Heroes," Ritsuka replied matter-of-factly, although his small smile betrayed him.

    Rika lanced him with a sour look. "You, shut up. If you had learned to cook anything more complicated than miso soup, we could''ve been eating like kings all throughout high school."

    "You could have learned, too, you know," Ritsuka pointed out.

    "Nope!" She lifted her nose in the air. "I''ve been too busy overturning traditional gender roles. Learning to cook would be a step backwards!"

    "¡­is the excuse you use for being too lazy."

    "I resent that! It''s not true in the slightest!" She smiled slyly at him. "Besides, Onii-chan, don''t you know? Women absolutely love a man who knows how to cook."

    "She''s not wrong," I added mildly.

    Ritsuka turned to me with raised eyebrows, like he was surprised I''d inserted myself into their little family ribbing. I pretended nothing unusual had happened and finished off the last of my own meal.

    "I guess I can understand that," Mash mused. "Courting rituals are still something I have trouble grasping, but if I was searching for a partner, I think¡­being able to cook well would be a definite positive."

    "Your future is so strange," Nero complained. "Men cooking is considered attractive to women? In Rome, it is a sign of femininity! Mm-mm!"

    "And yet," I said slyly, "right now, a woman is emperor, isn''t she?"

    Nero opened her mouth to say something, then closed it and was silent for a moment, frowning thoughtfully. What was it Da Vinci had said? Something like, in Roman culture, if Nero behaved in a fashion that was considered masculine, that would explain how she could be a woman and yet history knew her as a man?

    By degrees, that made sense to me. I could understand how it might work. But it just seemed kind of whacky and backwards that anyone would go through that much effort just to pretend a woman couldn''t be just as good a ruler as a man.

    The sexism of imperial Rome at work, I guess.

    Finally, Nero nodded, having apparently come to a conclusion. "Your point is well-considered! Very well, I have decided that it is not so unusual after all!"

    Arash shook his head. "That''s all it takes, huh?"

    "Yup!" Rika chirped. "So we''re gonna make sure you get as much of Emiya''s food as we can while you still can! It''s a crime that you have to lose it, but we just need him that much more!"

    "Weren''t you two just fighting over who would get to keep him not that long ago?" Ritsuka asked her.

    "Our differences have already been resolved!" Rika declared. "We''re now best friends forever!"

    She held out her fist, and Nero delightedly tapped it with her own. When they pulled back, they mimed an explosion with their fingers.

    "Mm-mm!"

    "How scary," A¨ªfe commented dryly. "The two of them, being friends."

    "It''s actually kind of cute, I think," said Boudica.

    "No," Ritsuka said, as though haunted by the specter of future calamity. "No, scary is the right word."

    On the balance, I think I was tempted to agree with his side of things. I''d thought it before ¡ª those two together were a headache just waiting to happen.

    "Just think," Arash said. "What would it be like if they managed to rope Shakespeare into their group, too?"

    Ritsuka looked absolutely horrified, which I thought was a perfectly reasonable reaction.

    When everyone was done eating, we set about getting the rest of everything put away, and that took enough time for our food to digest well enough that us Masters could handle the ride to the next town on our route to Rome: Genua. Emiya remained quiet the whole while, although whether that was because of the ribbing he''d taken earlier, the accidental slip about Saber and Nero''s resemblance to her, or some combination of the two, that was anyone''s guess.

    He struck me as a secretive kind of guy, for all that he could be surprisingly friendly. Guarded might be the better word. Letting out something he''d been trying to keep to himself was probably putting him even more on guard than he was usually.

    The groups split up the way they had before, with Nero and me riding in A¨ªfe''s chariot while Mash and the twins joined Boudica''s. Emiya, Spartacus, and Arash all vanished into spirit form, and then we lurched into motion, leaving Massilia behind us as the two chariots thundered down the road at speed.

    I didn''t think it would ever stop being nauseating to have bugs coming in and out of my range so quickly. It wasn''t just the appearing and disappearing, either, because I couldn''t remember it bothering me like this whenever I used a teleporter back during my cape days. No, it had to be the motion. The way they all moved around me as they passed in and out of my attention and my control.

    I''d told myself that this was just something I was going to have to get used to, but that was proving a lot harder to put into practice than it was to say the words, even to myself. It was beginning to seem like it would never happen and I was just going to have to learn to deal with it, and that was an uncomfortable prospect for a number of reasons.

    Losing sucked, even if it was to something as common and ordinary as motion sickness.

    The journey to Genua was thankfully shorter than the one to Massilia, although it wasn''t by that much in the grand scheme of things. The trip was also a little bumpier than the one from Lyon down to Massilia, but we''d chosen the route we were using specifically because it avoided the more mountainous terrain further to the north, so it was much smoother than it could have otherwise been if we''d taken the other path.

    We passed by another town on our way, following along the coastline so closely that most of the horizon to our right side was nothing but ocean ¡ª the Mediterranean Sea, to be exact. So close to it, I could feel some of the crabs that were scuttling about on the seabed, but it got too far and too deep too quickly for me to get a good read on the happenings far below the surface.

    By the time we slowed down for Genua, it was late into the afternoon, and I think we were all ready for another break, so Boudica and A¨ªfe pulled over to the side of the road and we all dismounted or sat down to breathe.

    "I am never taking airplanes for granted again," Ritsuka swore quietly.

    "Could you imagine having to walk the whole way?" Rika groaned. "Or worse, use those e-bikes Da Vinci-chan made?"

    "Why is that worse?" Mash asked curiously.

    "It just is!"

    Arash shimmered into existence next to me as I sat down on the edge of the well of A¨ªfe''s chariot. I deliberately kept my attention focused away from her horses, because the draw to admire them seemed all the stronger the more I was exposed to them, and it was twigging my Master-Stranger instincts something fierce.

    "How are you holding up?" he asked me quietly.

    I grunted. "Fine."

    My eyes tracked Nero as she walked over to the twins to join them, commiserating about the trip but completely and utterly unbothered by having to stand in a chariot for so long. I had no idea how regularly she did this sort of thing, but considering what travel was like in this era, she was almost certainly much more used to it than we were.

    Arash chuckled lowly. "The twins might buy that one."

    But I don''t, went unsaid.

    A breath huffed out of my nostrils. For a moment, I considered the merits of saying nothing, as opposed to admitting to weakness.

    "It''s disorienting," I admitted at length, barely above a mumble. "Having bugs coming in and out of my range so quickly."

    "Ah." He nodded. "Well, I can''t say it works the same for all extrasensory powers, so I just have to imagine what it''s like, but it definitely doesn''t sound comfortable."

    It wasn''t. It really, really wasn''t. But it wasn''t like it was the worst thing I''d been through, either.

    "I''ve been through a lot worse," I said gruffly.

    Like Gold Morning. Having my arm burned off. Having my body shorn in half. Having my brain put through a blender. Any one of those alone would have been horrible enough, but I''d also had the dubious honor of living through a Slaughterhouse Nine attack, fighting Endbringers on the regular, and nearly getting immolated on my first night out.

    Yeah, a little disorientation was nothing by comparison.

    "Pain is pain, Master," Arash said with quiet solemnity. "Just because you''ve had more than your fair share doesn''t mean it''s okay that you have to handle more."

    "Doesn''t it?" I asked. "The world needs saving, and it''s down to me." Again, I didn''t say. "There isn''t room for me to go complaining that I get a little nauseous when we move too fast."

    Arash rolled his shoulders and sighed. "Well, it''s a little cheesy to put it this way," he admitted, "but, Master, it''s not just you, is it?"

    He looked over his shoulder. I didn''t need to follow his gaze to know he was looking at the twins.

    "That''s different," I said because it felt like I had to.

    "Is it?" he retorted. "You might be their leader, but they are your team, aren''t they? And we''re here, too, Emiya and I, Siegfried, Bradamante, A¨ªfe, and Shakespeare."

    "And that means that it''s my job to lead," I told him. "They need me to show them the way forward, to be invincible. So I''ll be invincible."

    Like things had been back in the Undersiders days: rep was everything. As long as everyone believed you were on top, you stayed on top. The twins viewed me as older, wiser, stronger, so to keep up their morale and to give them hope, I had to live up to that image.

    Admittedly, I was still working on the tenderness part of that. Giving comfort wasn''t exactly my strong suit, and it wasn''t something I was all that practiced in.

    "That''s no way to live," Arash said sadly. "Taylor. You''re human, too, you know."

    "Parahuman, actually," I said with a mirthless smile. "It means I''ve got a little something extra."

    And you and I¡­ We''ve been working together a long time, haven''t we, Passenger?

    There was no response. Like always, my passenger remained quiescent, silent, without any sign at all that it had heard me. Not even a nudge from a single bug to acknowledge me.

    Paradoxically, Arash smiled and shook his head. "You really are something else," he said ruefully. "You remind me of some of the soldiers I used to know, back in the day. I think you would have been right at home among them."

    I said nothing. I wasn''t sure it was supposed to be a compliment.

    "So I''m going to make you the same promise I made them," he went on. "Master. I know we''ve already forged our contract, but as one warrior to another, not as Master and Servant, I''ll stay by your side and support you to the end." He tapped one hand to his chestplate. "Until this body of mine gives out, I''ll be your ally."

    Until your body gives out? I thought. Arash, wasn''t that the same as promising, ''until I use my Noble Phantasm?''

    But I understood the meaning. A self-sacrificial Noble Phantasm like his, it wasn''t one that could be used casually. He understood, better than most Servants did, I thought, the weight behind unleashing something so powerful and destructive. It meant he had to put his life on the line for something he believed in so wholly and utterly that he didn''t care if it killed him.

    Maybe, I thought, here was someone who would understand what I did on Gold Morning. Who would look at what I''d done to myself for the sake of victory and nod.

    What a thing that would be.

    I didn''t know what else to say to that than, "Thanks, Arash."

    Even if it felt wholly inadequate.

    He smiled. "I think I''m really starting to understand why it was I was the one you summoned back in Orl¨¦ans."

    Yeah. I think I was, too.

    The rest of our break passed as the sun slowly began to sink towards the horizon. There was still plenty of light left in the day, but we were losing it quickly, so as per the plan we''d come up with the day before, we saddled up for the last leg of the journey, the longest and farthest of the whole trip. I''d called the first part from Thiers to Massilia the first third and Massilia to Genua the second third, but in terms of sheer distance traveled, the journey from Genua to Rome was easily as long as the first two combined.

    Once more, Nero and I climbed back into A¨ªfe''s chariot as Mash and the twins climbed into Boudica''s, and after everyone was settled, we set off again. Our destination: Rome.

    It was not easier than the first two times. In fact, I would have argued that it was, in many ways, harder, precisely because it was so long. The flurry of bugs coming and going from my control was not magically easier after my talk with Arash, either, and the disadvantage of my powers was that closing my eyes didn''t really make it any easier to handle. In some ways, it actually made it worse.

    It wasn''t made any easier by the new varieties of bugs that started to pour in as we got closer and closer to Rome. The standard temperate climes gave way to something closer to tropical, and that meant a change in some of the fauna, particularly the insect species, and having new and unusual bugs that I hadn''t ever seen before thrown into the mix of old, familiar species added a new dimension of nausea to the swirl.

    Another day, I would have been delighted to explore new options. After all, there were some incredible insects out there, like the Darwin''s Bark Spiders down on Madagascar, or the bullet ant, or any number of strange and unusual creepy crawlies, and it would be downright incredible to find something on the Phantasmal scale, if such a bug actually existed. Magical bugs ¡ª just thinking about it would have had me thinking up new and exciting strategies to use.

    Here and now, the variety just increased my discomfort, sending jolts of new information into my brain as my power helped me grasp their forms and functions with startling speed. Even still, I barely had time to start compartmentalizing each bit before it was gone.

    There was nothing to be done about it. It couldn''t be helped. Not when the alternative would take us days and days longer.

    So I soldiered through. My knees got stiff from standing straight for so long. My thighs and feet ached for the same reason. My stomach kept churning from the sensory overload of bugs appearing and disappearing so rapidly.

    But I hung on, because this really didn''t top the chilling, jarring feeling of your intestines literally sliding out of your body. Nothing was going to beat that, not as long as I lived.

    The sun slowly slinked down as we went, and amidst it all, I had the funny realization that none of us had considered bringing sunscreen. I wasn''t sure it would matter. Did sunburn count as a deviation that the technicians would correct for? I honestly didn''t know. It seemed kind of silly that they wouldn''t.

    Finally, however, as purple painted the sky and a sliver of orange peeked out on the horizon, a city came into view, and it truly was a city. First, the outskirts resolved themselves, and in the dim light of the twilight, the pale bricks looked almost lavender, the red roofs almost purple. In the distance, the famous Roman aqueducts towered, set against massive buildings that must have been temples or the government offices. The Forum, maybe. Far off, I thought I could see the Colosseum.

    "Stop!" Nero shouted imperiously.

    Ahead of us, Boudica''s chariot pulled to a stop, and A¨ªfe did the same. The instant the chariot had come to a halt, Nero hopped down on her own, striding purposefully down the road. She did not, as I expected, go over to the twins, Rika in particular. Instead, she kept going until she was out in front of the entire group, and then she turned back to face us with the broadest of smiles, her hands on her hips.

    "Mm-mm!" she said. "Be honored, for your emperor is here, and she graciously welcomes you!"

    She swung an arm out and gestured down the road towards the city itself.

    "This is the seat of imperial power in the empire!" she declared. "The birthplace of the republic, the origin from which our greatness sprouted! The divine ancestor looked upon this hill and built this city with his own hands, and we have prospered ever since!"

    Pride all but radiated out of her from every pore.

    "This," she emphasized, "is the Eternal City, the Capital of the World! My friends, I, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, fifth emperor of this pinnacle of civilization, bid you welcome to Rome!"

 Chapter LIII: Caput Mundi

    Chapter LIII: Caput Mundi

    The sun had set by the time we set into the city of Rome, but the sky still clung to the last vestiges of twilight, even as the moon rose in the east, a faint crescent hung among the clouds. Some people had started lighting lanterns so they could continue about their business, but some navigated entirely through what natural light still remained, and Nero was one of them, because she led us through the streets as though she could have done it blindfolded.

    The buildings around us weren''t all the best. Some of them looked on the verge of collapse, like they had been left to rot for generations, but that made more sense once my bugs showed me how many families were packed into each one and I realized that the people living there were the poor, the underclass, who probably couldn''t afford anything better or more extravagant.

    They probably counted their blessings that they weren''t homeless.

    The deeper into the city we went, the more things started to pick up, in terms of quality. The buildings were even older, like we had stepped back in time ¡ª because, actually, we had ¡ª but better cared for and more sturdily built. These would be the wealthier peasants, then, the ones who could afford at least some degree of luxury, even if not much of it.

    Had I mentioned that the whole place smelled like shit?

    Yeah. Rika and Ritsuka didn''t seem any more impressed by the smell than I was, judging by the expressions on their faces, and even Mash''s brow and nose had wrinkled. Further in, I could see a sewage system in place with sort of rudimentary toilets for the people to use, but out on the outskirts and in these poorer districts, none of the houses featured any such convenience, so people literally did their business in buckets and threw it out onto the streets.

    My stomach clenched as any appetite I might have worked up in the past few hours died a swift and inglorious death. The bricks that we were currently walking on likely weren''t naturally that shade of brown.

    Nero''s brags and boasts about the glory of the city and the empire built from it washed over me, unheeded, and even Rika looked like she was having trouble focusing on her new best friend over the deluge of human waste that ran through the streets.

    "Oh my god, Onii-chan," Rika whispered to her brother.

    "Yeah," he muttered back. "I smell it, too."

    "It''s like that one time, out in the country ¡ª"

    "But a hundred times worse. I know."

    "The modern toilet wasn''t truly invented until the Victorian era," Mash mumbled, almost to herself.

    Thankfully, things started to improve once we got to the more affluent sections of the city. The rank smell never truly disappeared, not wholly, but it became less overbearing and more tolerable. It reminded me more of the composting bathrooms from summer camp or the animals'' stalls than the rotting garbage smell of further out, and I could live with that, even if I didn''t exactly like it.

    The flies, at least, were having a field day. I didn''t think I''d ever had a larger collection of them than I did then, and I wasn''t sure that was a good thing, no matter how much easier it made it to keep track of the goings-on around me. Some things just weren''t worth the trade off ¡ª rich, coming from me of all people, but wasn''t that part of what I''d been trying to do? Draw better lines for myself?

    Some lines were going to be easier and more palatable to draw than the others, it seemed.

    Along the way through the city, we entered what was probably meant to be an open air market, because some of my bugs could still pick out the remnants of fruit and other goods in the stalls, but so late in the day, all of the shops had closed up and the shopkeepers gone home for the night. Nero seemed quite disappointed that she didn''t get to enjoy any of it.

    "It''s a shame we arrived back so late, mm-mm," she said ruefully. "Emiya''s food is unrivaled in all of Rome, but I should at least have liked to fill my belly with an apple while we waited for him to prepare our dinner."

    "A little presumptuous, don''t you think?" Emiya chuckled. "Who said I was going to keep cooking for everyone? Maybe Spartacus should take a turn."

    "Haha!" Spartacus laughed. "I have tasted the food of the gods! Ambrosia sits upon my tongue! Surely, all other food is now as ash in my mouth, for these hands can only hold a sword!"

    "He can''t cook for shit," A¨ªfe translated bluntly.

    Nero looked back at Emiya, one eyebrow cocked. "Weren''t you?"

    "I guess someone has to," he allowed. "At least if we want it to be edible."

    If he thought he was going to get away with avoiding it, that would only last until Rika started begging. I wasn''t sure she was even above threatening the use of a Command Spell, either. Considering exactly how talented Emiya was in the kitchen, I wasn''t sure I would even reprimand her if she did. Even Marie would give it more than a moment''s thought and probably let it slide.

    I didn''t want to say something like, "Good food is essential to good morale!" because it sounded like a clich¨¦ out of some kind of movie or a campy line from a war comedy, but the thing that a lot of people missed when they said something was clich¨¦ was that clich¨¦s often had a basis in truth.

    Nero nodded. "Then I would have been presuming nothing but fact, wouldn''t I? Mm-mm! In that case, there shouldn''t be any problems!"

    Boudica, whose injured arm had been hastily wrapped up in bandages and hung in a sling across her chest, laughed a little. "That''s certainly one way of looking at it, isn''t it?"

    "You''re all lucky I enjoy it so much," Emiya muttered lowly.

    Mash inclined her head in as much of a bow as she could while walking. "Thank you for continuing to cook for us, Emiya."

    Emiya grimaced, sighed, and rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck. "It''s fine. There''s no need to go that far, Mash."

    "He really is a house-husband," Rika commented with exaggerated surprise.

    "That, on the other hand," Emiya said dryly, "I can do without. If you really want a house-husband, woman up and buy me a ring, first."

    Rika let out a high-pitched squeak, like a mouse that had been stepped on, and her face slowly turned red, starting at the tips of her ears and spreading across her cheeks.

    "Wh-what," she stammered. "B-but I''m too young ¡ª that''s not ¡ª it doesn''t work like ¡ª I''m not ready ¡ª"

    She went down a list of aborted objections, growing increasingly incoherent, and Ritsuka watched her with fascination, like he was seeing something new and different that he''d never seen before. Finally, Rika turned to him with a simple, plaintive, "Onii-chan!"

    "I mean, is he wrong?" Ritsuka asked her mercilessly. "Maybe this whole Master-Servant thing isn''t the same, and I guess Command Spells aren''t really a promise ring, but aren''t you supposed to be more committed before you reap the benefits of marriage?"

    Rika let out another distressed whine, looking at her brother with betrayal written across her face.

    And Emiya, who hadn''t turned to look since his comment, smirked smugly to himself, having finally gotten one over on her.

    Eventually, we entered what had to be the wealthy district, home of the senators and other aristocrats that actually lived in the city, because from my research, I recalled that a number of bigwigs actually lived in expansive estates outside the city. Here, the buildings and houses were much better constructed, in much better repair, and very obviously much more upscale than those cramped apartments where all of the underclass and the poor peasants lived. Up on the hill in the distance, I could see what must have been a temple of some kind, and not far off from there was the famous Colosseum, and everywhere I looked, there were the famous marble columns that Roman architecture favored, jutting up above our heads to carry the roofs over us.

    It was when we got to the "obscenely rich" area of town that we started seeing villas. Sprawling complexes that stretched out over enough space to fill an entire city block, filled to the brim with every extravagance that the imperial Rome of the time could provide. Private baths, private gardens, private toilets ¡ª private everything, where all luxuries were the exclusive property of and for the exclusive use of the owner.

    Not many, I noticed. Although the handful of villas all had many private, exclusive things, only one or two actually had private baths. Right, bathing was supposed to be an important daily ritual in Rome, wasn''t it? We''d passed by a multitude of public bath houses, both big and small, on our way through the city. I guess communal bathing really did mean communal bathing, and the rich bathed in the same baths as the poor.

    The upper class refusing to mingle with the "unwashed masses" must have been an invention of a later culture.

    Nero led us to a particular villa, not the largest of them all but definitely one of the largest, where she announced herself to her staff with a loud, boisterous, "Your emperor has returned!"

    She was so loud that her voice echoed off of the vaulted ceiling, although that might not have been that much of an accomplishment considering these buildings weren''t exactly designed to be soundproof.

    The first to approach was a fair-haired young woman dressed in a simple tunic. She kept her posture humble and deferential. "Emperor," she murmured as she came closer, "forgive me. We were not aware you would be arriving today."

    "Mm, there is no need to apologize!" Nero insisted. "I myself was not expecting to return to Rome so swiftly!" She gestured towards us. "And I come escorting guests! See to it that the baths are heated and the kitchens prepared, for we are all hungry and exhausted from so long a trip on the road!"

    "It will be done, my emperor," the young woman said, bowing.

    "Bath?" Rika breathed with cautious optimism. "Be still my beating heart ¡ª did I just hear the most wonderful word ever invented?"

    Nero smiled brilliantly. "Of course! And you will find no finer a bath than my own private facilities, for no expense was spared in making them ¡ª ah!" She stopped the young woman, who had been leaving. "I had almost forgotten! Take Emiya with you."

    "Emiya?" the young woman said carefully, testing the name on her tongue. She looked over to us, confused.

    Emiya sighed. "I''m the only one who doesn''t get to enjoy the baths, huh?"

    "Such is the peril of being a house-husband," Arash quipped.

    Emiya looked skyward, like he was praying for patience. "I''m never going to escape that now, am I?"

    "Nope!" Rika told him cheerily.

    "You''re doomed," Ritsuka told him flatly.

    "You''re so kind, Master," Emiya said sardonically.

    Something like understanding flickered across the young woman''s face, and she regarded him now with a kind of empathy that she couldn''t completely keep out of her expression.

    "Emiya is a chef of unparalleled quality," Nero told her. "He shall be in charge of making our supper. I expect his word to be followed as though it was my own! Mm-mm!"

    "Of course, Emperor," the young woman demurred. To Emiya, she said, "This way, sir, and I shall lead you to the kitchens."

    "You''d think, all things considered, I''d spend more time on the battlefield," Emiya remarked wryly, but he followed behind her and waved a hand in parting as they left.

    "She was cute," Rika commented after they were gone. "Kinda quiet, though."

    Arash and Boudica shared a look, like they were having a silent argument about which of them should break the news to her. I decided to cut the knot and do it myself.

    "She''s a slave, Rika," I told her bluntly.

    Rika turned to me, uncomprehending. "Huh?"

    "What?" her brother echoed.

    "That girl is a slave," I repeated. "That''s why she was quiet and deferential. No one wants an unruly slave."

    And while that girl''s life likely wasn''t particularly charmed, her quality of life was almost certainly better than even the best off of the poor. She was a slave of the emperor''s house, after all. She ate better, she had access to better facilities, higher quality clothing, better care if she got sick, and just a better life all around. There were probably a number of women who would have traded places with her in a heartbeat.

    "Rome has slaves?" Ritsuka asked, his voice slowly rising.

    I arched an eyebrow at him. "You don''t remember Spartacus''s story?"

    He flinched. "Well, yeah, but¡­"

    "I didn''t make the connection," Rika mumbled as though she was completing his thought.

    Maybe not so strange a thing. Sometimes, you had to be hit in the face with something before you realized the full implications of it, even if it was something you had found out a long time ago. It was one thing to know, and another thing to know, if that made any sense.

    "Is it so strange?" Nero asked, confused. "Mm-mm! How else would you build such incredible things in this future of yours if you had no slaves to do the building?"

    A mirthless smirk pulled at one side of my mouth. "Well, in a way¡­"

    If I was more of an anarchist, I might have made a comment about how people in modern society were wage slaves, bound to a corporate machine that used them, abused them, and discarded them when they were no longer good enough to fulfill its purposes. The collars had changed, and they''d turned in the whips and chains for pay cuts and meager healthcare benefits, but the culture of exploitation had never gone away.

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    That didn''t really cut to the heart of the matter, though. On Earth Bet, villains of all sorts ¡ª super-powered or not ¡ª had engaged in plenty of human trafficking, for all of the usual reasons plus more. The ABB in Brockton had been almost famous for it, and anyone at all familiar with how things worked among capes knew that Tinkers and Thinkers were the ones other cape organizations prized the most. Whether that Tinker or Thinker wanted to be part of any of those organizations didn''t usually factor into the equation.

    I''d had a front row seat to two Thinkers who had faced exactly that sort of slavery. I wasn''t proud of some of the things I''d done to free them of it.

    "No!" Ritsuka insisted. "Slavery has been illegal in every major country for centuries! It''s completely gone!"

    No, it isn''t, I didn''t say, smothering a cynical smile. You''ve just never had to see it happening in front of you yet.

    Because I doubted that it didn''t exist on their Earth, too. Even without capes, that didn''t magically remove the other reasons, many of them darker and less savory than just having access to a power you wanted to abuse. A pound of flesh had many more uses than that.

    But there was no sense digging up all of the ugliest sides of humanity here and now. Ritsuka and Rika were still pretty young. They''d find out eventually exactly how all of this stuff worked, and I didn''t have it in me right then to sit down and tear away all of their illusions about our grand, modern world.

    "You said something about private baths?" I asked Nero, cutting the conversation off before we could go much deeper.

    Nero smiled brightly. "Of course! Follow me!"

    She started off, and we fell into step behind her as she led us into her sprawling manor. I angled my own path so that I was near the twins, close enough to whisper to them without drawing the attention of the entire group.

    "Ritsuka, Rika," I murmured to them, "remember, we''re not here to change history. We''re here to get it back on track." They both grimaced, looking like they wanted to protest. I didn''t give them the chance. "There''s nothing we can do about that girl or her situation, and there''s nothing we can do to end something so ingrained in Roman culture. For us, all of this is already settled."

    That we were here with these people, laughing and smiling and fighting together, did not change the fact that their futures were, from our perspectives, set in stone.

    "It''s not right," Rika muttered back.

    It wasn''t, and it wasn''t like I didn''t agree with them about how wrong the practice was, but those were modern sensibilities, born from more refined philosophies. Like with A¨ªfe and Connla, the culture and way of thinking of this era''s Rome were different. To us, virtually unrecognizable.

    "And we can''t change it," I replied firmly.

    Neither of them looked happy about it, but they didn''t seem to have any other argument on the subject either.

    The trip to the baths was a relatively short one, but Nero didn''t lead us directly to the room like I might have expected. Instead, she took us to a kind of antechamber off to the side that had cubby holes and cabinets and hooks where you could hang your clothes, and after a moment, the room''s purpose dawned on me with belated realization.

    My brain stuttered to a stop for a second.

    "Um."

    "This is the apodyterium," Nero announced. "Come, come! Mm-mm! It is time to prepare for the baths!"

    Without further ceremony, she started pulling off her armor and setting it aside in one of the cabinets, completely oblivious to how the rest of us were reacting.

    Apodyterium ¡ª that word meant nothing to me, but I didn''t need to know its literal meaning to understand what it meant in a more contextual sense: changing room. The dots hadn''t connected earlier ¡ª and how ironic it was that what I''d thought just minutes ago about Rika and Ritsuka not realizing what Spartacus and his backstory meant about slavery in Rome now applied to me so soon afterwards ¡ª but there weren''t separate baths in Rome. Not truly. They were communal baths.

    Which meant, naturally, that everyone walked around in them naked. Without a stitch.

    "Oh," said Rika, sounding only faintly surprised but not scandalized. "So Rome does that kind of bathing."

    "Bu¡­ wha¡­"

    My mouth refused to work properly.

    "If it''s all the same to everyone else, I think I''m one person too many for this," Arash said politely. "I''m going to go pick out a spot to keep watch from until suppertime. Even here in Rome, we can''t be too careful, right?"

    "I mean, these baths are coed, right?" Ritsuka asked nervously, fiddling with the top clasp of his uniform.

    "From my understanding, the rules are a little looser than in a Japanese hot spring," Mash commented. "Um, which is to say ¡ª"

    "There aren''t any!" Nero declared proudly.

    I didn''t really think that was something to be proud of.

    "Still," said Arash, "I think you ladies would be more comfortable without me here, so I''ll catch you later."

    He gave a jaunty wave, and then he disappeared.

    Rika, who''d been starting to undo her own uniform, stopped and looked between her brother and Mash, back and forth, and her brow furrowed.

    "Okay, yeah," she decided. "This is gonna get really awkward really fast."

    "We''ve¡­never been to a mixed bathing hot spring before," Ritsuka agreed, uncertain.

    Neither had I, I couldn''t find the words to say. Stripping down in the locker room was one thing. No one paid too much attention to everyone else changing, and it was all same-sex besides. You went in, you got changed, maybe took a quick shower to rinse off the sweat somewhere in there, and then you were out.

    This was closer to skinny dipping.

    "Onii-chan, you turn around," Rika commanded. She pointed at him and twirled her finger. "Us girls will get in first, then you can get undressed and come in after we''re all in the tub."

    "That sounds like a plan," Ritsuka said, sounding relieved.

    "Any objections?" Rika asked the room in a tone of voice that suggested she wouldn''t hear any.

    A¨ªfe chuckled, grinning wolfishly. "You do remember one of the things we Celts are supposedly famous for, right?"

    "Oh." Mash blinked. "Right, I''d forgotten about that. Legends say that Celtic warriors would go into battle wearing nothing but warpaint, don''t they?"

    "Right."

    A¨ªfe''s clothes flashed, and then vanished, leaving her completely ¡ª wow, that was a lot of muscle.

    Ritsuka squeaked and spun around so fast that he could have gotten whiplash.

    Rika let out a low, impressed whistle. "Damn, Super Action Mom."

    A¨ªfe crossed her arms under her breasts, cocking her hips to one side. The sturdy clothing, it turned out, hid the figure of a Greek goddess, which might have had something to do with the fact that every part of her was lined with lean, compact muscle. She looked like I did, if I put on three cup sizes and spent another two years pushing my body to the limit every single day.

    Boudica shook her head. "Those legends are largely exaggerated, you know."

    "And even if they weren''t, I have nothing to be ashamed of," A¨ªfe said, and she really didn''t. "This body is the body I earned through my own effort. Let them look on with envy at the results of my dedication."

    "I''m not sure envy is what they''re looking on with," Boudica replied wryly.

    She took a deep breath, and then a moment later, her own clothing flashed and vanished, leaving her just as naked as A¨ªfe. Her figure was softer, curvier. Matronly, if I had to put a word to it. If I hadn''t seen her in action myself, I would never have believed so much power was packed into that frame.

    Nero, who had gotten through both gauntlets and one of her boots, stopped and stared, her brow furrowing. "What is this? Where have your clothes gone?"

    "Nowhere." A¨ªfe held up a hand, and in a flash, one of her gloves reappeared, and then she vanished it again. "They''ve simply dematerialized."

    Nero didn''t look any less confused. "Is this a Servant thing?"

    "Yes," Boudica answered patiently. "Servants, you see, are¡­basically just¡­how do I put this¡­"

    "A Servant''s body is made of spiritrons," Mash recited patiently. "They''re a type of particle¡­ Um, basically, they don''t have a solid form under normal circumstances. Strictly speaking, the entirety of a Servant is just ether, so a Servant can choose how much of their physical form exists in the material world at any given time, although I don''t think they can just make body parts disappear without turning entirely into spirit form."

    Nero nodded, and then shook her head. "Spiritrons? Ether? I don''t understand it, but if you say that Servants can make their clothes disappear and reappear like magic, that''s all I need to know." She pouted. "How convenient that is, however. Life would be much easier if dressing and undressing could be done with so little effort! Mm-mm!"

    "I''m a little jealous, too!" Rika laughed, slipping out of the sleeves of her shirt. Her bra was pink with yellow sunflowers, because of course it was. "Hey, Mash, aren''t you going to get undressed, too?"

    "U-um¡­" Mash looked down at her armor, although there really wasn''t much there to begin with. It was more bodysuit than anything else. "I-I guess¡­ It''s just the same as any other Servant, right?"

    She closed her eyes and screwed up her face, and a second later, she was just as naked as Boudica and A¨ªfe.

    I felt a little weird about it, so I looked away. Technically, Mash was only seventeen, so she was actually a minor, which made me feel kind of awkward, since I was three years older than her. For that matter, Rika was the same age, although how that was going to work out with the time differential, I had no idea.

    Rika clicked her tongue. "Perks of being a Demi-Servant, I guess. You''re just enough of a Servant to do that crazy stuff, too." She glanced over at me, and her brow furrowed in concern. "Hey, Senpai, is something wrong? You''re still fully dressed."

    Invincible, I''d told Arash just earlier today. Look how long that lasted.

    "No," I said, because it seemed like my tongue was finally back to obeying me. "Just never really been to this sort of thing before."

    My swarm buzzed in the distance, agitated, but it let my fingers be steady and sure as I set about undoing my own shirt. Besides, it wasn''t like I hadn''t taken at least this much off in front of them back in Orl¨¦ans. Going full frontal was a bigger step, but I just had to treat it like the girls'' locker room. Nobody here was ogling, nobody here was judging, we all had the same parts.

    Ignoring the nudity taboos you grew up with just wasn''t easy.

    Rika was the first of us mere mortals to finish undressing ¡ª turned out she hadn''t been lying back in Orl¨¦ans; the carpet really did match the drapes ¡ª but I wasn''t all that far behind her, because Nero''s armor was a lot more involved to get undone. As I shoved my clothing into one of the provided cabinets, Rika whistled at me again.

    "Senpai''s pretty cut, too!"

    "I was preparing for the end of the world," I said as I turned to face her, telling myself that the trick was to pretend I didn''t feel embarrassed at all. "Being in good shape was a pretty important part of that."

    Rika grinned and poked at her own belly, which was smooth and soft and lacking the definition A¨ªfe and I both had. "Makes me feel kinda jealous, that''s all." Her eyes immediately shot towards my right arm. "That''s a pretty gnarly scar, too."

    "Ah."

    She was talking about the marks leftover from where Lung had burned my original arm off. Well. "Original." Where he''d burned off my flesh and blood arm during Gold Morning, rather. It manifested as a line of pinkish tissue that encircled my bicep just above where the prosthetic started, with a few undulating curls from Lung''s less than delicate and careful treatment.

    Marie had actually been pretty upset that she hadn''t been able to get a specialist to fix it. I was fairly ambivalent about it, myself, although it did feel a little strange to have that one big scar when most of the other ones I''d earned during my career had been erased when Panacea healed me after Scion cut me in half.

    "The dragon I blinded back before joining Chaldea eventually got revenge," I settled on.

    Rika blinked. "Wh-what?"

    "Dragon?" A¨ªfe asked, curious. "This sounds like a story."

    "There''s not that much to it," I told her, because not only was it something I shouldn''t be revealing to the twins, but the backstory required so much explaining that I didn''t want to even bother. "I fought a dragon. In the first battle, I rotted off his crotch with venomous bugs. In the second, I carved out his eyes with a knife."

    Boudica looked at me, bewildered. "You did what?"

    "That explanation doesn''t get less ridiculous just because you tell it more times!" Rika insisted.

    "It really doesn''t!" her brother agreed, still turned to face away from us.

    A¨ªfe grinned, laughing. "Why is this the first I''m hearing of this?"

    "Mm-mm!" Nero chimed in. "It sounds like quite the thrilling tale!"

    "It''s honestly not," I said, because that first fight hadn''t even really been much of a fight. Aside from that heart-pounding moment where I had thought he was going to kill me, the rest of it actually sounded pretty boring. "He was about to go on a rampage, so I just threw every bug I could at him and targeted the biggest weak points I could find."

    Nero, about to pull off her dress, paused. "Threw bugs at him?"

    "Oh yeah," said Rika. "Senpai never explained her super special awesome bug powers, did she? To any of us."

    She was like a dog with a bone, wasn''t she? Even if she stopped for a little while, she was eventually going to come back to that question, one way or another.

    "I can sense and control bugs," I answered plainly. "Every bug of every kind, within a given radius. It''s how I know that one of your senators a few houses over is currently plowing his wife''s fertile fields and two of the slaves in another house are sneaking off for a minute alone."

    Rika pulled a face, sticking her tongue out like she had tasted something disgusting. "Ew, gross," she said. "TMI, Senpai. That''s way too much information."

    I smiled thinly. "You asked."

    "Mm-mm!" Nero pulled off her dress the rest of the way, leaving her in only a kind of linen loincloth. Her chest bounced like they were filled with helium. "A remarkable power, to be sure! And yet you used it to defeat a dragon?"

    "Defeat" is a strong word, I didn''t say. But I didn''t want to get into the Undersiders and how they saved me, either.

    "He was on fire and covered in scales," I replied. "I attacked the only parts of him I could reach without getting close enough for him to burn me to a crisp. Even then, I lost a lot of bugs just trying to get that far."

    "Hardcore," said Rika. "Still think it''s more impressive that you killed that wyvern by stabbing it in the eye, though."

    My mouth twitched, but I didn''t say anything to that. Privately, I agreed with her. Lung was incredibly powerful, but at least he was something I could fight with bugs, even if it required sacrificing a lot of them. With that wyvern, getting up close and personal was the only way I could kill it, and if I''d tried that when I was fifteen and fresh-faced, I had no doubt it would have managed to kill me instead.

    "Are you going to keep dangling these stories in front of me without actually saying what happened?" A¨ªfe asked.

    "Oh, this one, I can tell you." Rika grinned. "See, at the start of the last Singularity ¡ª"

    "Hang on," I interrupted her. "Where did Spartacus go?"

    He''d been so quiet and so unobtrusive since earlier that I''d actually completely forgotten about him.

    There was a loud splash coming from the next room over, and Spartacus'' voiced boomed, "Hahahahaha! Glorious! Splendid! This bath is surely the balm of freedom! It soothes my very soul!"

    I clicked my tongue. "Nevermind."

    "If he is already enjoying the baths, then we should waste no time to join him," Nero declared. "Mm-mm! Come, my friends! Let us soothe away the worries of the day! You have not bathed until you have bathed in a Roman bath!"

    Completely naked now, she strode forward with purpose towards the next room over, and the rest of us girls followed after her.

    "Aren''t we worried about him seeing us?" Rika asked.

    "He''s a Berserker," A¨ªfe replied wryly. "As he is now, I don''t think he''s even capable of having a sex drive."

    "Really?"

    Rika turned to Boudica.

    "I''m afraid I don''t have an answer for you," said Boudica apologetically. "He hasn''t said anything that might sound like it, for what that''s worth, and I haven''t caught him staring at any of us." She hummed thoughtfully. "If you were obvious about it and engaged him like that, he might reciprocate, but I don''t think he''ll take any initiative on his own on that front."

    "I''ll take your word for it," Rika said.

    The next room over was the bathroom, in the literal sense. It was large and spacious and almost the entirety of it was taken up by what really looked more like a swimming pool than a bath. It was the sort of luxury you might expect from a rich businessman in his personal mansion, big enough that we could have fit maybe fifty people inside before it got uncomfortably tight.

    It was also much cleaner than I had been expecting. The water was crystal clear and clean, marred only by the rose petals that floated atop it, and a flowery fragrance that I couldn''t quite name drifted up into my nostrils, pleasant and soothing and just strong enough that it wasn''t overpowering. Tufts of steam wafted gently upwards, giving everything a subtle haze that wouldn''t exactly hide us from any accidental reveals when Ritsuka came in, but was thick enough that he''d have to be looking straight at us to see anything.

    At the far end, Spartacus relaxed, head back and resting on the lip of the tub. His smile was smaller and less manic, and for once, I could see his face clearly. He wasn''t exactly handsome, but he had a kind of rugged appeal with a strong, square jaw and well-proportioned features.

    "Huh," Boudica said, bemused. "It''s much nicer than I was expecting. Definitely nicer than the baths in Britain."

    "My court mage worked his magic on it!" Nero boasted proudly. "He said something about these things called germs and bacteria, and then he put a spell on it so that the water is always clean! Mm-mm! I don''t understand everything he talked about, but I can appreciate his efforts either way!"

    Rika stopped. "Bacteria?"

    "Oh," said Mash. "Yes, that''s right, Senpai. Um, Romans are famous for their bathing habits, but the water in the baths isn''t usually changed very often, which can lead to¡­ Well, to bacteria and other contaminants festering. Even so, Romans continued bathing regularly, at least once a day." She cleared her throat. "Baths, wine, and sex corrupt our bodies, but baths, wine, and sex make life worth living."

    "Mm-mm! That''s very true!" Nero said, nodding sagely. "You understand very well, Mash!"

    Mash flushed a little. "I-I can''t claim any responsibility for that saying. That was actually said by Tiberius Claudius Secundus. I mean, it was the epitaph on his tombstone."

    "He was very wise!"

    Of course the Roman emperor thought so.

    "In any case, Emperor Nero said that the bath has been enchanted so that the water''s always clean," said Boudica. "You don''t need to worry, Rika. It''s safe."

    Rika looked at the water dubiously. "I mean, I don''t know how good of a wizard this court mage guy is¡­"

    "Fou!"

    The little gremlin raced out from behind the group, ran towards the edge of the tub, and leapt in.

    "Fou-kyu-fooooooou!"

    It landed with a small splash and sank beneath the surface for a second, and then came back up for air, tossing its head and its soaked fur back.

    "See, Fou''s not scared," Mash told Rika. "Doesn''t that mean it''s safe?"

    Rika still didn''t quite look convinced. Me, it had been way too long since I''d had a good, long bath, so I didn''t bother to wait for her to make up her mind, I just made my way over and slipped down into the water.

    It was wonderful. Hot, but not too hot, and it felt like every layer of dirt and sweat and grim I''d been accumulating over the last week was being drawn off of my skin as more and more of me went beneath the waterline. Every ache and pain I''d been carrying seemed like it was being washed away, and I couldn''t help the sigh that escaped my mouth as I relaxed, too, just like Spartacus was.

    God, it had been way too long. The showers in Chaldea just couldn''t compare.

    Like it had been some kind of signal, the others padded over and started slipping into the bath themselves. A¨ªfe came first, and an actual smile ¡ª an honest smile, completely bereft of her usual bloodthirsty bend ¡ª crossed her face as she dropped into the water. It was like years were disappearing from her skin, such was the difference in her demeanor.

    I guess a good bath was the one thing that all women across every era could agree upon.

    Boudica was next, and she let out a sigh as she carefully levered herself into the tub with her remaining arm. Her shoulders rolled, and a series of quiet crackles echoed from her spine.

    After Boudica was Mash, who was a little more cautious and careful, and she looked almost surprised as she got in, like she''d never actually had a chance to enjoy a good bath before. Fuck, knowing her background, it was entirely possible that she hadn''t, wasn''t it?

    Nero dropped in without ceremony like she owned the place, and that was probably because she did, but also because she was Nero. She would have acted that way if we were in a pond in the farthest reaches of untamed Britain.

    Rika was last, and she dipped her toes in to check the water first, and then slowly slid down into the bath herself.

    "Oh, wow," she groaned. "Oh, damn. Oh, I really didn''t realize how much I missed having a good bath."

    "And my baths are the best!" Nero proclaimed.

    "Not gonna argue with that one, Best Buddy," Rika replied. "Man, I really needed this. God, this is good."

    "So," said A¨ªfe, reclining leisurely against one of the walls. Her arms were spread out over the lip of the bath, giving everyone a clear view of her chest. "You were saying something about a story involving a wyvern?"

    "Right!" Rika grinned. "So after we beat that first Singularity in Fuyuki City, our next stop was in France, which was being attacked by a crazy lady claiming to be the real Jeanne d''Arc, and she had an army of wyverns that she was siccing on everyone¡­"

    She dove into the story, setting out the background of the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, and I tuned them out as I let myself go limp. My head went blissfully blank, and for that moment, I let myself drift and stop worrying about everything.

    At some point, Ritsuka came into the bath and slipped into the tub with us, and he joined Rika in bonding with A¨ªfe and the others as they talked about our previous adventures in France and Fuyuki. I didn''t stop them, because we were among allies and I was enjoying a nice, hot bath for the first time in years.

    Nothing was going to stop me from relishing in this chance. Scion himself could pop up, ready to blast us all back to our composite atoms, and I would have let him. I was completely at peace.

    "Fou, fou, fou-fou-kyu, fou-kyu-fou-fou-foou!"

    I cracked open an eye, glaring down at the beastie as it paddled across the water, chirping out a familiar tune all the while, and I had the impulse to reach out and shove it beneath the surface, drown the little monster while I had the chance. Instead, I closed my eye and left it alone, free to swim and live another day.

    I''ll worry about you later, I promised it silently. I''m too relaxed to care, right now.

    "Fou-kyu-fou-kyu-fou-kyu-fou-kyu, fou-kyu-fou-fou-kyu!"

 Interlude A I: A Genius of Hard Work

    Interlude A I: A Genius of Hard Work

    She was born with nothing.

    She was given nothing.

    She inherited nothing.

    Rather, if there was one thing she could be said to have received at birth, it was simple beauty, the most terrible blessing of all.

    She did not inherit the burden of divinity, for her parents were ordinary humans.

    She did not receive great wisdom, for she was an ordinary woman.

    She was not born with overflowing talent, for she was an ordinary person.

    Truly, there was nothing extraordinary about her, except for her radiant appearance, and so her parents gave her the only gift she had ever received: the name "A¨ªfe," which meant "beautiful."

    To her sister went all the things she lacked. Overflowing talent, great wisdom, and a body well-suited for combat ¡ª these were the things which Sc¨¢thach received, the gifts that allowed her to become so fearsome and so powerful a warrior that even the gods might tremble to hear her name.

    Even her name itself was fierce. "Sc¨¢thach." "The Shadowy One." A specter whose likeness haunted the dreams of men and monsters alike, who took her skill with a spear to such extremes that even the divine could be slain the same as a simple beast. She who was whispered about with fear, whose mere frown could send souls shivering with terror. She who entered the realm of gods with an ordinary human body.

    She was everything A¨ªfe wanted to be.

    In a different life, perhaps beauty would have been enough. For an ordinary princess or a queen, there were plenty of men who would find a pretty face pleasing enough to take her as a bride, to sire children with her, and to give her a life of comfort and luxury as they ruled their kingdom side by side. Her name would never be known for great feats, and she herself would never win lasting glory, and songs would never be written of her bravery and strength and skill, but it would not be such a bad life, would it?

    No, it would not. Even if her body was weak and ordinary, her tongue was sharp and her will was strong, and the men of ¨¦ire found that just as pleasing as great beauty. She could be a queen without being a figurehead, a mother without being a king''s broodmare, a woman of storied history without being a warrior.

    If she allowed her father to dote on her and her future to be decided by others, then such a life would not be so bad. Comfort. Luxury. The easy life, where her one gift became the only strength she needed to secure her place in ¨¦ire and in history.

    The very thought of it made her sick.

    Comfort and luxury? Passivity and obscurity? A life lived in the shadow of others, with her only accolades being the siring of others who might strike their own legends into the annals of history?

    How worthless. How pointless. How insulting.

    That was not the life that A¨ªfe wanted for herself. That was not the life she imagined in her future. That was not at all the sort of life she was willing to accept.

    Combat. Victory. Glory. Her name on the lips of others, her deeds recited around campfires, her own greatness acknowledged across the entirety of ¨¦ire ¡ª those were the things she wanted, a future where it was her own strength and her own prowess and her own accomplishments that engraved her name into history.

    She refused to live in anyone''s shadow, least of all her beloved sister''s.

    And so as soon as she could fit her fingers around the hilt, she picked up a sword and challenged her radiant sister to pitched combat.

    "A fine effort."

    A hand on her head, mussing her hair. An indulgent smile. Warm eyes looking down at her with affection.

    "Perhaps one day, you will be able to defeat me."

    Failure.

    In an instant, she had been defeated. No, worse than that, it was over before it had even begun. She had been defeated before she even picked up the sword in the first place.

    It was only to be expected. Sc¨¢thach was a shining star, filled to the brim with overflowing talent. She had raced ahead of A¨ªfe, absorbing knowledge and skill in the martial and mystic arts as a simple matter of course. She was simply too brilliant, and that brilliance would not be diminished by a half-hearted effort or the hasty, sloppy stroke of a novice swordswoman. A¨ªfe''s defeat there was a foregone conclusion.

    "One day, Sc¨¢thach," A¨ªfe promised then and there, "I will surpass you! And it will be you who stands in my shadow!"

    An indulgent smile. A quiet laugh. "Of course."

    A¨ªfe did not receive great wisdom. She had not inherited overflowing talent. She was an ordinary woman.

    But even an ordinary woman can possess determination.

    It would not be enough to simply match her sister. No, for Sc¨¢thach had received all of the things A¨ªfe lacked. To surpass her sister, A¨ªfe would need to put double, no, triple the effort. As Sc¨¢thach breezed through her lessons, A¨ªfe would have to toil three times as hard, push herself thrice as far, and sweat three times as much, just to stay even. Just to keep up, just to not be left behind, she would have to do at least that much.

    A¨ªfe picked up her sword and began learning.

    When her muscles burned from the effort, she pushed forward and kept going. When her lungs screamed for air, she gulped it down and kept going. When her body was drenched in sweat, she wiped it away from her brow and kept going.

    Every hour of every day was spent training, learning, preparing. She honed her mind and body, memorizing techniques and spells in equal measure, refusing to let herself fall behind, no matter what it cost her. She would become a warrior that even her sister would tremble in fear of.

    Three years after that first duel, A¨ªfe thought she might be ready, and so she challenged her sister a second time.

    "A fine effort this time, as well."

    A hand on her head, mussing her hair. An indulgent smile. Warm eyes looked down on her with affection.

    "You''ve improved. Perhaps one day, you might defeat me."

    Failure.

    Again. For the second time, she had failed to defeat her sister. Sc¨¢thach remained the superior warrior.

    It burned in her gut like fire.

    It had not been instantaneous, not like before, but it had still been decided before the fight even began. Sc¨¢thach''s victory remained a foregone conclusion. There was no way A¨ªfe would have won.

    "One day," A¨ªfe promised again, "you will stand in my shadow."

    That familiar indulgent smile. "Of course."

    Again, A¨ªfe redoubled her efforts. It was not enough to put in merely three times the effort. No, she needed to be even better than that, even more hardworking than that. If it was her limits that were holding her back, then she would just have to surpass those, and shatter the bonds that held her back.

    She pushed herself there, to the limits. She pushed beyond them. She continued to hone herself, body and mind, sweating until she bled, bleeding until she was sweating blood. Her mortal, human body tried to hold her back, to tell her that she had reached what was supposed to be possible and she could go no further.

    She refused to listen to it.

    As she grew, her body grew harder. As she grew, her skills grew fiercer. As she grew, her limits grew with her.

    If she had chosen the life of a pampered queen, she would have been soft and womanly. Her body would have become the body of a fertility goddess, rounded and curved, supple and voluptuous.

    But she had chosen the life of a warrior. Her body grew lean, thin, packed with tight muscle. Her chest grew only half as large as it could have. Her stomach became lined with rippling power. Her arms and legs firmed with unrivaled strength. Every part of her was devoted to exceeding the limits of what should have been possible for a human woman to accomplish.

    The only part of her which remained soft and feminine was her face.

    Many more times, A¨ªfe challenged her sister to pitched combat. Many times, Sc¨¢thach bested her, and A¨ªfe fed the flaming frustration of her defeat to the fires of her determination. She used it as kindling for the blazing furnace of her resolve, and she used that resolve to push herself ever further past her previous limits.

    And every time, the gap closed further. The duels lasted longer. No longer childish girls inexperienced in combat, they were young women dancing along the path of feats, and their battles were drawn out affairs lasting whole days at a time. There were many moments where the fight was almost decided, only to be prolonged as the opportunity was missed or closed.

    Even if Sc¨¢thach was still the winner each time, the conclusion was no longer foregone.

    Eventually, the day came. The duel ended. The blade of a red spear rested against A¨ªfe''s neck. The tip of a silvery blade prodded Sc¨¢thach''s throat.

    There was no longer an indulgent smile. No hand rested on A¨ªfe''s head. Those eyes, usually filled with warmth, were wide with surprise.

    "A draw."

    "No," said A¨ªfe. "This is your victory."

    It burned. But it was the truth, as A¨ªfe knew it. Her sister continued to grow and advance, getting stronger, more skilled, more powerful. Smarter, brighter, shining ever more brilliantly with every day.

    "I''ve reached the limit of how far I can go here," A¨ªfe admitted. "And even so, I''m still in your shadow."

    "Have you?" Sc¨¢thach asked. "I don''t see it."

    There are some things that you are simply too brilliant to perceive, thought A¨ªfe.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    And so she decided: "I''m going to leave and find other fights, challenge myself against other warriors. When I come back, I''ll have surpassed you, sister. Mine is the shadow you will stand in."

    "I eagerly await the day," said Sc¨¢thach, "for I, too, have reached the limits of what I might learn in this place. One day, we will meet again, and you will show to me the fruits of what you have learned."

    On the fateful day, the sisters went their separate ways. Sc¨¢thach traveled to the west, through the lands of Ulster and across the isle of ¨¦ire, carving a bloody path through any and all who might challenge her, and A¨ªfe traveled to the east, across the sea, first into heartland of Alba, then onto the continent, where the vast forest of Gaul awaited. She met every challenge as readily and eagerly as her sister and continued to expand her knowledge and strength.

    Many years passed. They were filled with new experiences and new warriors against whom A¨ªfe could pit her skills, but inevitably, A¨ªfe outgrew them. She knew then the tedium of her sister''s burden, to be faced with opponents so far below her own level that they were as flailing children, and she thought to herself, Ah, so this is what Sc¨¢thach must have experienced all those years ago when first I challenged her.

    Men fell before her like wheat before the scythe. Those who refused to back down had their lives cut short. Those who surrendered, she showed the mercy of the victorious, and allowed them to walk away with the painful lessons of their defeat. No matter who came before her, they were all as the same, and they were all equally disappointing.

    Through countless hours of hard work and dedication, she had reached the pinnacle of human martial prowess. Her muscles were like iron, her will like steel, her skills as radiant as the summer sun. In all of Gaul, she had become unrivaled.

    Still, she was unsatisfied, for her sister had surely come farther than this. Sc¨¢thach must have been growing still, facing stiffer competition, staring down enemies that would give even the bravest of heroes pause, and yet for A¨ªfe, nothing remained. There was nothing left to challenge her.

    Nothing mortal, at least.

    It was a thought equal parts mad and thrilling. What fool would arm herself and seek out the divine solely for the purpose of attempting to slay it? What ignorant child would think herself strong enough, her skills polished enough, her body resilient enough to face down a god and have any hope of victory?

    Sc¨¢thach would. She would not even hesitate. So A¨ªfe must not either.

    And so she did not. She set her mind to the act of deicide ¡ª

    ¡ª and woke up with a start, blinking away the sleep from her eyes as she realized that she had fallen asleep in the first place.

    "I fell asleep?" she mumbled to the open air as she rubbed at one cheek.

    Yes, she had. Night had long since fallen, the moon hanging far above her head, and while no city ever truly turned all the way off at night, most of Rome had tucked themselves into bed so that they might rise early the next day to start the cycle all over again.

    A¨ªfe clicked her tongue.

    "I must be getting soft," she scolded herself, "if I let myself relax that much after a simple bath."

    How careless. She''d let her guard down enough to fall asleep. If the enemy had an Assassin that had been so inclined to make an attempt on the lives of the Emperor or any of Chaldea''s Masters, then the assailant could have slipped right by her without her being any the wiser.

    With a grunt, A¨ªfe levered herself up and to her feet on the little section of roof she''d chosen as her post. She cast her gaze out across the city; her vantage point was not the greatest and she was no Archer, so she couldn''t see out to its edges, but the location of the emperor''s manor and the size of it gave her enough to see anyone coming long before they could reach her.

    But no threat materialized, least of all Caligula, who A¨ªfe yearned for the chance to match fists against, if only to see if he was as credible a threat as he seemed.

    A glance over to the top of the roof revealed Arash, casting his own eagle-eyed gaze across the city. There was no way he hadn''t seen her nod off, and yet he''d continued to do his duty without pause. Worse, he''d let her sleep, like she was a child in need of coddling who had stayed up far past her bedtime.

    Even kindness can be an insult, no matter your intentions, she thought at him, and she knew immediately that it wasn''t fair. He was from a different era, a different culture, and for all that she could respect his deeds and his legend, he was a different kind of hero than her.

    He was a hero who ended conflict. She was a hero who thrived in it.

    "I won''t be far," she told him instead, "but I''m going to break off on my own for a little while."

    Arash glanced at her, but he offered no rebuke or criticism, and nothing of his thoughts showed on his face. "I''ll cover for you," he promised with the utmost sincerity.

    Right then, it made her want to smash his face in.

    She turned away so he couldn''t see her lip curl, and G¨¢e Bolg leapt into her hand as she dropped off of the roof and landed with a quiet thump on the ground below.

    She needed to work off some steam.

    The emperor''s house had private baths, but it also featured other things that the Romans liked to attach to their bathhouses, so A¨ªfe made a beeline for the courtyard meant for exercise. It had nothing, of course, on the courtyard of a proper castle, and it was downright claustrophobic compared with the facilities where she had trained her own students once upon a time, but for her purposes, it should be enough, as long as she was careful not to be too careless with her strength.

    The last thing she needed to do was bring the house down around her Masters'' heads with a poorly-placed Torannchless.

    G¨¢e Bolg was left alone at the entrance, balanced straight up on its pommel, and she strode into the center of the courtyard, closed her eyes, and took a deep, preparatory breath. When she opened her eyes again, the ghostly figure of her sister stood across from her, fists raised in preparation for combat.

    Would that the specter was real instead of a figment of her imagination. Tiberius may in fact wind up being the greatest threat she faced in this Singularity, and she would have relished a challenge, just then.

    But she was not. Sc¨¢thach still remained behind in the Land of Shadows, warden of its gates, still carrying the burden for which A¨ªfe had been passed over. She would not be making any miraculous appearances here.

    Another deep breath. A¨ªfe sank into her own stance, fists raised, and then she and her imaginary opponent raced towards one another to meet in the middle.

    Time passed in the way it was wont to, as a blur. A¨ªfe had no idea how long she danced around that courtyard, alone but for the immaterial specter she had been chasing for most of her life, punching and kicking and fighting nothing but the air itself. She lost herself to the feeling of pushing herself again, of throwing herself into combat, imagined or not, and of squaring off against an opponent she couldn''t simply lay out with a single, well-placed punch.

    The true tragedy was that a Servant''s body wasn''t alive, and so couldn''t experience the strain of a good workout the same way. The burn that accompanied her fists and her feet was of energy spent, magical power expended, not her flesh and blood muscles being put through their paces. Even if she were to be fighting an opponent that pushed her limits, it was her body, her Saint Graph, that would break long before her limits did.

    Eventually, however, she''d worked out enough of her aggression that she didn''t feel like unleashing it on another person, and she went through a cooldown to ease herself out of that combative mindset. When even that was done, she wiped away the sweat that had gathered on her brow, and she was even tempted to smile, if only a little.

    "So, this is where you went off to."

    Instantly, her guard was raised, and G¨¢e Bolg leapt to her hand as she turned to face the intruder, ready to fight.

    Emiya held up his hands in the universal sign of surrender.

    "Oh." She allowed herself to relax with a breath. "It''s just you, Emiya."

    "I noticed you left your post and came to make sure everything was okay." He lowered his hands. "Only to discover you playfighting with the air."

    Playfighting? She snorted. "I came here to blow off some steam. Does that satisfy your curiosity?"

    "Who were you imagining on the other end of your fist?" He smirked. "The Hound, maybe? Not that I can blame you. He has a very punchable face, doesn''t he?"

    "And a very long, hard spear," she retorted, watching his face twist into a grimace. "But you would know all about that, too, wouldn''t you?"

    "You and I are talking about very different spears, I think," he said, feigning ignorance, "and I''m pretty sure the one you''re more familiar with is more flesh and blood than the one he used on me."

    Her eyes narrowed on him. "You''re bold. If that was near as much a wound as you believed it to be, I could very well have lashed out against you."

    If he was expecting it to be open and bleeding still, then he would be sorely disappointed. A¨ªfe the woman had died old, when her body gave out, long enough after that wound for the sting of it to lessen, not almost immediately after it, as Boudica had. She had had more than enough time to come to terms with the events of her life, even if those years felt to the current her like a fever dream.

    He shrugged.

    "It wouldn''t be the first time my tongue has gotten me into trouble," he admitted casually.

    So, they were going to play that game, were they?

    "Was your infatuation with the King of Knights truly that terrible of a secret?" she said. "I would have thought you above such petty revenge."

    Steely eyes flashed.

    "I would have thought the same about you," he shot back, "but then, your worthless pride almost got you killed against both Caesar and Tiberius, so I guess we''re all overestimating each other these days."

    "You yourself have emphasized multiple times how far removed the land and the culture I grew up in is from our Masters and presumably your own," she retorted. "You have no room to be surprised by my way of doing things."

    He crossed his arms. "I do when it puts my Master''s life in danger. You do remember what we''re here to do, right?"

    Did he think her a simpleton?

    "Do you really expect me to follow the orders of a child without first getting a measure of their mettle?"

    "That''s not what I''m talking about at all." He waved it off impatiently, like he was swatting at a fly. "I can''t say I''ve ever seen them first hand, but even someone like me has heard of your vaunted Celtic martial arts. You''re a master who taught the likes of that Hound and his best friend. Despite that, I didn''t even see so much as a¡­what''s it called? Salmon leap? Out of you."

    "Hypocrisy ill-becomes you, Emiya," she said coolly. "You talk about me holding back, but you''ve yet to say a single word to even your Master about your Reality Marble."

    He stiffened, and beneath his furrowed brow, his eyes widened. "Where did you hear about that?"

    Just now, from his mouth. Really, now. Did her own loss against the Hound make people assume that she was incapable of guile herself?

    "There''s little else to explain it," she told him. "Perhaps if you were a legend from the Age of Gods, it would have been the blessings of Hephaestus or Vulcan. If you were Wayland or some other famous smith, that too would be enough to divert suspicions. But your clothing and armor don''t fit, not for any era where those men might have lived, your features are far too clearly East Asian, and your method of reproducing Noble Phantasms might be effective, but anyone familiar with the originals you''re copying can immediately tell it''s flawed."

    His lip curled. "When I showed you G¨¢e Bolg ¡ª"

    "¡ª it wasn''t the only clue, but it was the largest," she confirmed. "You may as well have waved a flag in front of my face."

    In truth, there had only ever been suspicions. Emiya''s peculiar brand of reproducing Noble Phantasms was very clearly a form of magecraft, as evident by his use of similar incantations for the projection of both mundane items and Noble Phantasms alike, and it was an idea only bolstered by the obvious connections between the hollow, worthless blades he had tossed at her by the dozens and the near-perfect recreation of C¨²chulainn''s ¡ª Sc¨¢thach''s ¡ª famous spear. The trouble was, while reproducing Noble Phantasms wasn''t an impossible feat, the methods for doing so were vanishingly rare, and most of them were themselves the sort of thing that qualified as a Noble Phantasm.

    "Reality Marble" wouldn''t have been A¨ªfe''s first guess, or even her fifth, but it wasn''t like "Authority" was the more likely option when the man was so painfully human that he had likely never even come close to a real, actual divinity. The question that remained was what sort of Reality Marble would let him recreate Noble Phantasms, of all things.

    He wasn''t likely to tell her.

    He clicked his tongue. "So maybe we''re both holding things back for one reason or another," he allowed. "Difference is, one of my reasons is that I don''t think my Master can support the energy expenditure of my Unlimited Blade Works."

    A¨ªfe''s eyebrows rose.

    Or maybe he would.

    "I wonder what that says more about," she thought aloud, "your own inability to gauge your limits or your lack of trust in your Master''s competence to know her own?"

    Emiya scowled. "You really are trying to piss me off, aren''t you? Do you think that I''m going to forget about my original point if you distract me enough? I''m not going to turn away no matter how many times you say ''look over there!'' and point behind me."

    That one, on the other hand, was still sore. Since it had changed the direction of her life so drastically, it was hard to imagine it would ever stop being so, not when it had been engraved on her so deeply that it still lingered after her death.

    "Now you are provoking me," she accused him. "If you''re that desperate for me to tan your hide like a disobedient child, you need only ask, Emiya, and I will gladly oblige you."

    Something in his stance changed, and the air crackled with energy as A¨ªfe''s blood started pumping and her hands itched for the fight that was about to come. The tension zapped back and forth between them like bolts of lightning, discharging into the air like the flash of an approaching thunderstorm.

    And then the tension in Emiya''s shoulders deflated like a balloon and he relaxed, letting one arm fall limply to his side and the other hand rest itself on his hip as he looked away, like he''d lost interest.

    "Whatever," he said indifferently. "If you''re not going to talk about it, then I''m not going to bash my head against the wall trying to pry it out of you. At least one of us needs to keep his wits about him if we''re going to make it through this mess, and as usual, it looks like it has to be me."

    He turned around and started to leave, and her lip curled as she saw the tactic for what it was ¡ª a way to cut off whatever she might have wanted to say by making it look petty if she said anything at all.

    He stopped. "There''s just one thing I want to be clear on: ally or not, if this pride of yours endangers the lives of the Masters or Mash, I won''t hesitate to cut you down myself."

    He vanished into spirit form, gone, and A¨ªfe clicked her tongue, scowling at the place where he''d been standing.

    "No, of course you don''t understand," she muttered to the air. "Someone like you, who has never accomplished anything with his own strength, who has always borrowed the strength of others greater than yourself, what do you know of the pride carried by a hero who clawed her way to the top through sheer determination?"

    For all that some of Arash''s mannerisms rubbed her the wrong way, it was clear that the ones who were actually diametrically opposed were herself and Emiya. Someone who had nothing of his own to take pride in would naturally understand nothing of the woman who prided herself on everything she had accomplished on her own.

    It was only natural, then, that he wouldn''t understand her methods and means, her way of doing things. It was also only natural that they would butt heads over it, that they might argue and snipe at each other, and that it would bring them into conflict. They were simply too different.

    Her fingers tightened over the shaft of her spear, and she forced them to relax as she took in a deep, calming breath. It did little to settle the feeling in her gut.

    In the aftermath of her battle with Tiberius and Julius Caesar, she had pledged that she could put aside her pride to work with the likes of Emiya, and she had no intentions of breaking that oath. It seemed, however, that it would be tested many times before this Singularity was resolved, and so too her patience.

    "Damn it."

    She really wanted to punch someone, now. Unfortunately, there were no "acceptable" targets in range, and she wasn''t an Archer with their convenient Independent Action skill, so she couldn''t rush out into the wilderness and hunt down a few magical beasts to work out her frustrations on.

    A¨ªfe glanced at the courtyard behind her, but the idea of going through another mock battle with her sister left a sour, unsatisfied feeling in her belly, so she bunched up her legs and leapt back up to the roof, scaling the building until she had returned to her original spot.

    Her boots had barely settled before Arash''s voice called over to her: "Get everything worked out?"

    "No," she retorted shortly. But then, you already knew that, didn''t you?

    "I see," he said sincerely. "Sorry about that. I wish I could help you."

    Tch. What was it with Archers and their talent for getting under her skin?

    She couldn''t leave the city to pick a fight, she couldn''t fight anyone here, and fighting imaginary specters wouldn''t satisfy. A¨ªfe chose the only other way she was going to escape her frustrations at that moment.

    "I''m going to take another nap," she announced. "Wake me if anything interesting happens."

    He smiled. "Will do."

    Unceremoniously, A¨ªfe plopped back down into her original spot, reclining against the roof''s slope with her hands folded behind her head. The moon up above her hung high, offering nothing, and a sigh hissed out of her nostrils as she closed her eyes and tried to quiet the roiling turmoil of her mind.

    At some unknowable point, the real world slipped away, and A¨ªfe drifted off into dreams.

    This time, it was not her own past that played out behind her eyelids, but a strange and peculiar thing she didn''t recognize, a dreary place of sterile walls and metal bars. Across from her was a young man, softer around the edges than most of the ones A¨ªfe had trained over her lifetime, fuller in the face and thicker in the trunk, with determination burning in his eyes. He desired her expertise, her strength, not in the marital sense but in the martial sense of a student waiting to learn.

    Her arms were longer and leaner than she was used to, her body taller and thinner, but she met that determination with her own, and his instruction in the martial arts began with the familiarity of something long practiced and honed. She was in her element, the teacher who had trained so many brilliant, standout students that her name had almost become synonymous with the act.

    Even when they hated her for every moment of it.

    This boy, so strange and yet so familiar at the same time, came to hate her for it, too.

 Chapter LIV: Court Mage

    Chapter LIV: Court Mage

    I woke up the next morning feeling¡­strange.

    I didn''t have a better word for it. It felt like my thoughts were spread out, foggy and muddled, like my brain was slow to start, but it wasn''t anywhere near as disorienting as Rayshifting into France had been ¡ª either time.

    Instead, it was like¡­Dad''s old truck, when the engine sputtered and refused to spark. No matter how many times I twisted my metaphorical key, I couldn''t seem to get the momentum behind myself to put my thoughts in order.

    The remnants of that weird dream I''d had only made things worse. Like adding a bunch of sludge to muck up the gears.

    There hadn''t been a single day in my tenure at Chaldea where I''d wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep more than I did that morning.

    Fortunately ¡ª or perhaps unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it ¡ª I wasn''t alone in my vague not-quite-misery, because as our group muddled its way to the dining hall and the three of us Masters met up, the twins proved to be in just as strange a state as I was. Even the normally energetic Rika was quiet and subdued, bleary-eyed, as though she had been dragged out of bed just before dawn and still hadn''t fully woken up yet.

    Of our group, only Mash seemed unaffected, although she wasn''t quite normal either. The bath the previous night seemed to have done her some good, because she looked as relaxed as I had ever seen her. It was like a tension that had been steadily weighing down on her had lifted, if only a little bit.

    If I was in a better mood myself, I might have thought, Good for her. Right then, I only envied her serenity.

    "Good morning, Senpai, Miss Taylor," she greeted us with a cheerful smile.

    "Morning," I managed to mumble through a tongue that felt thick and numb.

    Rika just grunted, and Ritsuka made a sound that might eventually have one day grown up to be a moan.

    Mash blinked. "Is something wrong?"

    "No," Ritsuka tried to reassure her at the same time as his sister said, "Weird dream."

    They stopped and turned to look at each other. "You, too?" they asked one another in stereo.

    My own brow furrowed. What were the odds, exactly, that all three Masters would have a weird dream on the same night while sleeping in three different rooms in the same palace?

    Could it be a mental attack from an enemy Servant? But why that dream in particular, then? It wasn''t like it made me think any less of A¨ªfe. In fact, it actually made me respect her a bit more, if only for her work ethic and her sheer, dogged determination.

    "A weird dream?" Mash asked.

    "I had a dream about Super Action Mom," Rika said. "About her growing up and stuff."

    "Me, too," said her brother, looking very uncomfortable and weirded out.

    "Ah," Mash said knowingly. "That must be the dream cycle, then."

    "Dream cycle?" the twins said in stereo again. Immediately, they turned to each other and pointed at one another. "Jinx! You owe me a soda!"

    It really was too early for this.

    "Magical contracts are bonds of a more spiritual nature than physical," Mash explained patiently. "With Masters and Servants, sometimes, one or the other might experience visions of the other''s past in the form of dreams. Although¡­ Since Servants don''t strictly need to sleep, it''s usually the Master who experiences the Servant''s past as dreams."

    Oh. Right. The dream cycle.

    "I''d forgotten about that," I muttered.

    It was part of Chaldea''s courses on being a proper Master and how Servants worked, but it was considered such a minor detail that we''d only gone over it in enough depth to explain that it existed. There had been so much other stuff that was way more important that the dream cycle had just gotten buried and forgotten.

    So not a mental attack, we''d just all had a dream about A¨ªfe''s past.

    "But we haven''t seen Mash''s past in our dreams," Rika said, confused. "Right, Onii-chan?"

    "No," Ritsuka agreed.

    Mash gave a helpless shrug. "I''m sorry, Master. The dream cycle is irregular to begin with, and it may have something to do with the fact that I''m a Demi-Servant. It''s entirely possible that it doesn''t work that way for me."

    Even if it did, would they wind up seeing Mash''s past, or would they dream of the Heroic Spirit who had left behind his powers for her to use? I was actually kind of curious which it would be, and if they did start seeing visions of that Heroic Spirit''s life, maybe that would be enough to give us the clues we needed to finally figure out what his identity was.

    I didn''t think of it too often, but when I did, it still bugged me that I wasn''t any closer to pinning it down than I had been in Fuyuki. There were still just too many candidates.

    "That''s too bad," Rika said.

    "Guess we''ll just have to learn about Mash''s past the old fashioned way," Ritsuka said with a surprisingly charismatic smile.

    Mash swept her hair out of her face, a nervous habit I''d observed several times in the last two years. "I-I''m not sure what you''d find even if you did start dreaming about my past, Senpai," she admitted. "Most of it was pretty uninteresting. Just me in Chaldea, going through tests and reading whatever Doctor Roman¡­whatever I could get my hands on. I think you would find it pretty boring."

    Very deliberately, I didn''t glance in her direction, and I wondered if I was the only one who had paid any attention to that little slip she almost let loose. Maybe they just wrote it off as benign, since Romani treated her a lot like a daughter and his relationship with her was very obviously quite parental, but I tallied it up as another piece of evidence about the girl I''d been too busy preparing to save the world to question the circumstances of.

    I was going to have a lot of questions for Marie once she got back on her feet, both literally and metaphorically.

    Arash appeared suddenly just ahead of us, hand already raised in a wave and a smile on his face. The twins nearly leapt out of their skins, they were so startled.

    "Good morning, everyone!"

    "Why do you guys keep doing that?" Rika snapped, one hand held up to her chest.

    "I think Emiya just likes to see the look of surprise on your face," he answered wryly.

    "We''ll see how he likes his surprise when the next surprise is my boot up his ass," Rika mumbled, not quite quiet enough to go unheard.

    "Please try not to do that again," Ritsuka requested politely as though Rika hadn''t spoken.

    "Can''t make any promises like that, I''m afraid," Arash said with a shake of his head. "But I''ll try and keep the jump scares to a minimum. I''ll leave keeping you guys on your toes to Emiya."

    "That''s not very reassuring," said Ritsuka.

    "Anything happen last night?" I asked Arash.

    "Nope," said Arash, "just another boring night of guard duty. No sign of any hostile elements that I saw."

    And with eyes as sharp as his, that was as good of a guarantee as we were going to get. Good. I hadn''t ruled out the idea that the United Empire might try and send an assassin (or an Assassin) in to take out either us Masters or Emperor Nero, but I''d been hoping that the sheer difficulty of making it that deep into the Roman Empire''s territory would have discouraged them from it.

    Not that it had discouraged Caligula from attacking us at Massilia, but that one could be chalked up to the fact he was a Berserker ¡ª in other words, notoriously difficult to handle.

    "That''s good."

    "Were we expecting them to attack us?" Ritsuka asked.

    "No. But nothing''s a guarantee in this sort of situation, so it pays to be prepared."

    He nodded. "Like when Cu stood guard during that night we spent in the Second Owner''s house."

    "Exactly."

    As we talked, we made our way through the tall ceilings and towering marble columns of the emperor''s palace. The brightly painted walls stood out much better in the sunlight than they had last night in the dark, and while they didn''t quite clash, they were much more vivid and eye-popping than I was used to, all done in blues and burnt oranges and golds.

    Pretentious. That was a good word for it. Like someone flaunting their status by having everything done in the most eye-catching colors possible.

    Eventually, we approached the dining hall, and as we came closer, a familiar scent oozed through the air and wafted up my nostrils, an acrid, fiery smell that brought to mind stereotypical mob bosses and speakeasy backrooms. My mind immediately conjured a table shrouded in a gray haze, lit by the dim yellow light of a low-hanging lamp. Men in pinstripe suits, hair slicked back, holding playing cards as they cast shifty looks at each other for tells.

    Was that¡­?

    "Tobacco smoke?"

    Where the hell would someone get tobacco in this era? It was fourteen hundred years too early for that to be here in Europe.

    My brow furrowed.

    The emperor''s palace was remarkably clean for a building of this era, but not so clean that it was bereft of enough bugs to feel things out. I''d mostly been keeping them away from the kitchen and dining room out of a combination of courtesy and just good hygiene, but I peeled a few flies away from where I''d stuffed them and sent them to scope out the room ahead of us.

    Except something blocked them out. No matter how much I pushed for them to fly into the dining hall, they kept hitting some kind of invisible barrier and bouncing off, and the more they did, the more I felt my alarm starting to grow.

    A bounded field?

    "Oh, that." Arash laughed a little. "Yeah, I''d prepare yourselves if I were you, everyone. Emperor Nero''s court mage is something of a character, as you''re about to see."

    "Court mage?" Ritsuka asked.

    Rika gasped. "The guy who enchanted the baths to always be clean!"

    That¡­would also neatly explain the bounded field keeping my bugs away, actually. If this guy was so concerned about cleanliness that he''d enchanted the baths, then I could definitely see him putting up a bounded field to keep bugs out of the food.

    "You''ve met him, then?" I asked.

    "After a fashion," said Arash cryptically. "He''s definitely not what you''d expect, either from a court mage or¡­ Well, like I said, you''re about to see."

    "As long as he''s not an ugly troll," Rika said cheerfully, "I might just kiss him for ¡ª"

    And when we stepped into the dining hall, her voice cut out suddenly as we came face to face with Nero''s so-called court mage.

    "Whoa."

    He was a pretty boy.

    "I think he''s a little too old for you, Rika," her brother told her. "By about ten years."

    "I don''t care," she replied faintly, "I just got punched in the ovaries."

    "That can happen?" Mash asked worriedly.

    "It''s an expression, Mash," Rika answered, distracted.

    It wasn''t that I couldn''t see the appeal, even if the archetype didn''t do much for me. He had a lean, narrow face that sloped into a narrow chin ¡ª angular, that was a good word for it ¡ª with dark eyes set into high cheekbones, and long, dark hair that was sleek and obviously well cared for, which all went well with his slender physique. The only thing overtly masculine was the cigar that he was still puffing on and the look of perpetual disgruntlement that drew everything tight.

    He was also, ironically enough, dressed like a mob boss.

    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    He took one look at us, grunted, and said, "You three must be the Masters from Chaldea."

    The tone of his voice was scornful, and it conveyed without words that he wasn''t impressed with us. If he was actually a talented Caster class Servant, then maybe he had good reason not to be, considering the sorts of things Servants like that could do. Modern magi would seem infantile by comparison.

    That didn''t mean he had to be an ass about it.

    "You aren''t exactly what we were expecting, either," I replied calmly.

    He huffed. "Sorry, but I left my robe and wizard''s hat back in my school days."

    "Yeah," Arash said, still smiling, "I was a bit surprised, too."

    "The suit and the tie are a bit unusual for a Caster, too," I noted.

    Too modern, actually. The clothes themselves could fit any part of the last hundred years, if he was a rich aristocrat, or at least styled himself like one. The trouble was, that was way too modern in and of itself for an actual Caster class Servant that lived up to the name, so it was entirely possible that this was just one of the famous mid-century authors who had managed to claw out enough acclaim to ascend to the Throne.

    ¡­There was no way this was Tolkien, was there? I didn''t know if I could deal with that if he was.

    "You''d be surprised," the mysterious court mage grunted again. "There are plenty of Heroic Spirits who take a liking to modern styles of clothing and manifest wearing them instead of what they actually had in life. Maybe I''m one of them and think this is just more dignified than dressing up like a Merlin wannabe."

    Except you just said that you left your robes and hat back in your school days, I thought, but I chose not to push that angle, because I could already see the easy excuse. For that matter, "school days" implied itself a much more modern education in magecraft, because as Marie explained it, every mage who could get in went to the Mage''s Association in England like it was an exclusive, prestigious college.

    ¡­Which could also be explained by Tolkien actually being a magus. Damn it.

    "We''re dancing around the topic and it''s getting revolting," A¨ªfe chimed in from behind us, because apparently, she''d been leaning against the wall the whole time and I just hadn''t noticed.

    "Super Action Mom!" Rika said, surprised.

    "You''re Nero''s court mage," said A¨ªfe, ignoring her, "and you''re definitely a Servant, but you haven''t introduced yourself at all."

    "I could point out that none of you have, either," the court mage said pointedly, "but if you really have to call me something, I guess you can call me El-Melloi the Second."

    My eyebrows rose. That¡­ I didn''t recognize that name at all. It wasn''t impossible that his legend was fairly obscure, but something about that just felt off.

    "El-Melloi?" Ritsuka asked, sounding just as confused as I was.

    "The Second," El-Melloi stressed. "El-Melloi the Second. I''m just a placeholder for the actual heir."

    Ritsuka nodded. "So instead of being your true name, it''s sort of like a pseudonym. Or maybe a title? And you''re just using it for the time being until it''s time for you to pass it on."

    "Exactly."

    "Wouldn''t that be were?" Mash wondered. "After all, by definition, Heroic Spirits are, well¡­"

    "Dead," Rika concluded bluntly. Mash sighed.

    "Yes, that."

    El-Melloi grimaced. "I suppose¡­"

    "No, the present tense is correct, or at least it was, as of the time of his summoning," A¨ªfe suddenly declared. A triumphant grin broke out onto her face. "I''ve been trying to figure out what''s so different about you this whole time, because you don''t have the same sort of feel as a normal Caster Servant. But that''s just it, isn''t it? You aren''t a normal Caster Servant. You aren''t even a normal Servant."

    "He''s not?" asked Ritsuka. "He seems like a Servant to me."

    For what that was worth, when Servants looked just like regular people. Well. For the most part, at least, the likes of Spartacus notwithstanding. I did agree, though, that something about El-Melloi just wasn''t adding up.

    Please don''t be Tolkien in disguise, I begged him silently.

    "Because I am," El-Melloi II said tartly. "I''m as much a Servant as you are, Queen A¨ªfe."

    "In terms of how you function, perhaps," she agreed. "But you yourself are not a Heroic Spirit, are you, El-Melloi?"

    "The Second," he gritted out. "Stop leaving out the goddamned Second."

    "That''s why I''m so sure," she said, nodding in his direction. "The way you phrased that. How you had a ready-made excuse for your clothing. The quip about your school days. I almost missed it, but this nagging sense of dissonance made them easier to spot. You. Before you were summoned here to Rome, you were an ordinary human, weren''t you?" Her grin gained teeth. "You''re just like Mash."

    Ripples of shock spread out across the room, because no one had been expecting that. Not even me. It hadn''t even crossed my mind as a possibility.

    El-Melloi''s eyes narrowed. "I don''t know what you mean."

    "You''re a Demi-Servant?" Mash asked. There was something like hope in her voice. "That is, you''re a Servant created by a human being hosting a Heroic Spirit?"

    "He is," A¨ªfe declared confidently.

    El-Melloi grimaced and leaned back into his chair, closing his eyes as he took a deep drag on his cigar. When he blew out the smoke, it was carried along a deep, weary sigh.

    "Fine," he said at last. "You win. Yes, I''m what you might call a Pseudo-Servant, created when a human host is chosen to hold a Heroic Spirit that can''t, for whatever reason, manifest on its own. Under ordinary circumstances, either the Heroic Spirit takes over fully, or the personalities are meshed to varying degrees, but the Heroic Spirit I''m playing host to foisted his abilities and Noble Phantasm off on me and went to take a nap."

    "That''s possible?" were the first words out of my mouth, although in hindsight, Mash kind of proved that it was, didn''t she? The difference was, Mash had been deliberately created that way by Chaldea''s research, not summoned directly as a Demi-Servant.

    "Don''t ask me what the criteria are," El-Melloi II warned. "I have no idea if my case is the norm, or if the reason why I was summoned has something to do with the fact that I''m the one playing host to this lazy Caster."

    "You know why you were summoned?" A¨ªfe demanded.

    "I thought you needed something like Chaldea''s FATE System for that," Arash added. "The other Strays we''ve met so far seem to be acting mostly on their own will, not a set of instructions."

    "Whydunnit," El-Melloi II mumbled, almost too quiet for me to hear. "It wasn''t hard to figure out, given my location. As someone who participated in a Holy Grail War, the only reason the World would summon me to be Emperor Nero''s court mage was to be her teacher in the finer details of Servants and how they work."

    "Wait," said Ritsuka. "A Holy Grail War? Like the one in Fuyuki?"

    "The very same," El-Melloi II confirmed. "For me, it was about twenty years ago, in the nineties. The Fourth Holy Grail War."

    "Fourth?" Mash asked, confused. "Um, El-Melloi II¡­ Chaldea''s records show that the only Holy Grail War in Fuyuki took place in 2004. There was no previous or successive Grail War."

    El-Melloi II was stunned into silence. His mouth fell open, like he had something to say, but he couldn''t seem to find the words, and several long seconds passed before he finally let out a simple, "Huh." His brow furrowed. "I''m a lot farther away from home than I thought, aren''t I?"

    What was that supposed to mean?

    "Farther from home than you thought?"

    A disconnect between his own history and the history as recorded by Chaldea¡­ Was he like me, from a parallel timeline? Someone who didn''t belong in Chaldea''s world natively? What would it mean if he was?

    Marie had always told me that it was dangerous for people to know I was from an alternate reality. That it could get me in trouble with the Mage''s Association. Shouldn''t that mean he would just as jealously guard that secret as I was?

    Fortunately for him, he was spared having to answer when a loud, boisterous voice declared, "Rejoice, my friends, because your favorite emperor has arrived! Mm-mm!"

    Nero strode into the room proudly, wearing her usual dress and a broad smile.

    "And!" She lifted up one arm, finger jutting high into the air. "I bring with me a glorious feast for us to partake in!"

    She stepped to the side, and, from behind her, in walked Emiya and Boudica, both of whom were carrying trays of food.

    "A certain someone insisted on waiting by the kitchen for breakfast to be done," Emiya told us wryly. "I figured it was more trouble than it was worth to try getting her to move, and it was more important to cook breakfast than shoo her away."

    "Yes," Boudica agreed, laughing a little, "she''s very willful, isn''t she?"

    Emiya huffed and shook his head.

    "Not the words I would have used, but it''s probably better to stick with something more polite like that."

    He set his trays down on the table, sliding them across the surface, and then took the one Boudica was balancing precariously with her one arm and did the same. The smell of something absolutely heavenly teased my nostrils with promises of things to come.

    "You," El-Melloi II almost spat at Emiya.

    Emiya turned to him, and as he took his first real look at El-Melloi II, his own brow furrowed thoughtfully. "Have we¡­met somewhere before?"

    El-Melloi II''s lip curled, but he went back to his cigar. "No," he said grumpily. "You just look like an idiot I used to know from a few years back."

    Emiya snorted. "I''d say I get that a lot, but I''d be lying."

    El-Melloi II just grunted and looked down at the spread presented by our chef like he wasn''t sure if he should eat any of it. I wasn''t sure what it would taste like if he did, considering he''d been puffing on that cigar for so long.

    "Emiya made breakfast!" Rika cheered as she threw herself into the nearest seat like a kid at Christmas. "Oh wow, is this Oyakodon? You really outdid yourself, Emiya!"

    El-Melloi II startled, and he turned back to Emiya, mouth agape again as his cigar fell from his limp fingers. That was an interesting reaction.

    "I actually managed to get my hands on some chicken," Emiya said. "I figured now was as good a time as any to return to my roots and make something Japanese for you guys again, Master."

    "It looks delicious," Ritsuka said with a smile as he moved to sit down next to his sister. "It feels like it''s been forever since we had Oyakodon."

    "That''s why I thought it was about time."

    El-Melloi II groaned and dropped his face into his hand. "Emiya," he gritted out, massaging his temples. "Emiya Shirou. Of all the boneheaded, numbskull, imbecilic¡­ Of course you did something that stupid. I should have expected as much."

    Emiya was instantly on guard, eyes sharp. His hands fell to his sides, fingers spreading slightly, ready to grasp a pair of swords the instant fighting broke out.

    "You know each other?" Mash asked, missing the sudden hostility.

    Arash, I projected at him. I didn''t even need to finish asking, he was already prepared.

    I''ll step in if I have to, Arash promised.

    "What''s this?" Nero demanded. "You know this man, Lord El-Melloi II?"

    "Oh." The tension left Emiya''s shoulders. "That''s it, then."

    "That''s too strong a word," El-Melloi II grunted. "You could say we were allies, at one point. He knew one of my students, and we worked together on an important task. But I know enough about him to know that the only way he could get on the Throne of Heroes is by doing something monumentally stupid."

    "If you''re expecting me to argue about it, I''m going to disappoint you," Emiya said casually. "I''ll be the first person to admit that my entire existence is a mistake. The hero Emiya shouldn''t exist." He smirked. "Of course, for a hero like that, correcting aberrant histories that shouldn''t exist is the perfect job, isn''t it?"

    There was definitely something we were missing, I thought as I glanced back and forth between the two of them. Clues to Emiya''s past had always been sparse, but now, yet another one had dropped into our laps ¡ª whatever had happened, however it had happened, these two knew each other from when they were alive, and however well they knew each other, it was at least enough for El-Melloi II to have an idea of how Emiya had become a Heroic Spirit.

    A Heroic Spirit that Emiya himself had just claimed shouldn''t exist.

    "Tch." El-Melloi II''s lip curled, but he scoffed and turned away, looking sourly down at his cigar. He picked it back up gingerly, inspecting the smoldering tip, and shook his head. "Damn it. That was a perfectly good cigar. I don''t have many of those on me, right now."

    He stabbed it into the table and put it out, and when he noticed that he had everyone''s attention, he scowled. "What am I, a sideshow attraction? Sit down and eat this breakfast you were all raving about before it gets cold."

    For a moment, no one did anything, and when it was obvious that he didn''t intend on saying anything else and the excitement was over, we all did just as he said and sat down to eat. I was slowest as I kept an eye on Emiya and El-Melloi II, but neither of them seemed keen on starting things up again, so eventually, I had to stop procrastinating and sit down to eat my own breakfast.

    "How fortuitous!" Nero said as she served herself up a plate. "Mm-mm! That my court mage already knows one of your Chaldean companions certainly saves some trouble with introductions."

    "Well, obviously, we''ve all heard his name by now," said Arash, "but come to think of it, I don''t think we gave him our names, did we?"

    "Shut up and eat your damn breakfast," said El-Melloi II. "We can do the proper niceties later on. I''m not in the mood for it, right now."

    "Someone''s grouchy," Rika mumbled, but when he lanced her with a sharp glare in response, she squeaked and buried herself in her food.

    It was a little frustrating that I couldn''t keep any eye on everything with my bugs on account of the bounded field El-Melloi II had set up, but eventually, the combination of my own growling stomach and the tempting smell of this strange, Japanese breakfast got the better of me, so I had to eat my own food.

    As usual, Emiya''s cooking was sublime. What Rika and Emiya called "Oyakodon" wasn''t much like anything I''d had before, in the sense that it was a very foreign recipe from the sorts of things I''d grown up on myself. That didn''t mean that it wasn''t delicious or that I didn''t enjoy it for what it was, and while my tongue wasn''t quite sure what to make of it at the beginning, by the end, I had already decided that I would definitely enjoy eating it again.

    Even El-Melloi II eventually gave in and had his own dish, and he enjoyed it grudgingly, like he was personally offended that it was even being offered. Or like he had a beef with the one making it.

    Since it seemed like they knew each other, that second one was an increasingly likely possibility.

    Rika finished fastest of us all, and when she was done, she sighed, slumping in her seat with a satisfied smile.

    "It was a little different than usual, but still amazing," she said dreamily.

    "I had to substitute a few ingredients that aren''t available here in this era," Emiya told her. "Things like soy sauce and sake, for example. The wine I substituted should give it a bit of a fruitier flavor than normal."

    "As always, it is excellent!" Nero proclaimed.

    "It''s a strange kind of recipe," Mash commented, "but I think I like it."

    For a few minutes after we all finished eating, we sat around as our food digested, lazily considering not much at all. Eventually, however, reality had to reassert itself, because we weren''t there to just sit around and enjoy ourselves all day. We had, as the saying went, places to be and stuff to do, starting with a date with a certain mountain to the south of us.

    "We should get going," I announced, levering myself out of my seat and to my feet. "By the time we reach the edge of the city, our food should have settled enough for us to saddle up and make the trip to Mount Etna."

    Rika groaned. "Senpai!" she whined.

    "Come on, Rika," said Ritsuka as he, too, tried to pull himself out of his chair. "We have to help Boudica, remember?"

    "Really, there''s no rush," Boudica reassured them. "I''m in no danger of disappearing, so we can take our time."

    Rika groaned again, but slowly started to stand. "Fine."

    "You should know by now, Boudica," Arash said with a smile, "that they aren''t the kind of people who can sit around and do nothing when other people are in need of help."

    "I guess sometimes, the fact that we''re helping Rome makes me forget," Boudica agreed, and wasn''t that a loaded statement. There was no way I was touching that one.

    "You''re going to Mount Etna?" El-Melloi II asked me, and I turned to regard him.

    I considered, for a brief moment, that he could have been a spy for the United Empire. Whether or not he knew Emiya personally, we really only had his own word that he was on the side of proper history and Nero''s that he was trustworthy. It wasn''t impossible that he was a sleeper agent, waiting to strike while Nero was most vulnerable.

    But the idea was discarded almost as quickly. Not only would an actual spy be a lot more personable and social than he had already shown himself to be, ingratiating himself with everyone he could so as to avoid suspicion, but if the only goal was to see Nero dead and Rome tear itself apart in the aftermath, he''d had who knew how much time to do it before we even arrived in France, let alone come here to Rome itself.

    Plus, when I looked using my Master''s Clairvoyance, he actually was a Caster, not an Assassin.

    "We have a couple of things we need to do there," I settled on. "One of them is we''re hoping to get Boudica hooked up to the ley line so she can heal faster."

    "We''re helping Queen Booty!" Rika declared.

    "Naturally! Mm-mm!" Nero agreed. "It''s only just and proper!"

    "Queen Booty¡­?" El-Melloi II closed his eyes briefly, muttering something about a ''flat'' something or other. "Right." He glanced at Boudica''s injured arm. "Of course. The Mount Etna ley line is the most powerful in the Empire. It makes sense that you would use it to speed up a Servant''s recovery."

    "Da Vinci also suggested using it to boost the performance of Chaldea''s sensors," I said, carefully revealing that little tidbit. "We hope to be able to pinpoint at least the location of every Servant in the Singularity."

    "Da Vinci?" El-Melloi II''s eyebrows rose. "You have Leonardo da Vinci as part of your team?"

    He looked around, as though he expected her to suddenly appear like she''d been with us all along.

    "She''s back at Chaldea," I told him. "She''s helping to keep everything running smoothly after we had some¡­staff shortages."

    A¨ªfe snorted at my euphemism, but El-Melloi II, whose expression had become pinched, didn''t seem to notice.

    "She?"

    I grimaced. "That''s¡­complicated."

    "Try me," he ordered tersely.

    How could I explain it when I didn''t quite understand it all myself?

    "If you meet her, you''ll understand," said Emiya, coming to my rescue. "It''s not like Saber, who hid her gender, or Nero, who acts masculine and got recorded as male as a result. Da Vinci is¡­something different."

    "Yeah." Arash laughed. "It''s hard to describe her, isn''t it?"

    Emiya shrugged.

    "It''s not that complicated," said Rika. "Da Vinci-chan is Da Vinci-chan."

    The what wasn''t hard, no, but the why was another matter entirely.

    "We were going to use what we learned at Mount Etna to refine our plans going forward," I said, steering the conversation back on track. "If we find out as much as we hope, then we''ll know where and who we need to attack first to start toppling the United Empire''s house of cards."

    "I see." El-Melloi II closed his eyes briefly and let out a slow breath. "So that''s Chaldea''s goal, is it? Emperor Nero tried to explain it, but her view of the situation is a bit more simplistic, since she hasn''t received a broader education in how this all works. It lacks a degree of nuance."

    "My view of the situation is as nuanced as it needs to be!" Nero protested. "Mm-mm! Spirits of the honored dead have risen to take my Rome from me, and because it was not meant to happen, my new friends are here to help send them back to their graves!"

    El-Melloi II arched an eyebrow at me, and I could see what he meant. She wasn''t wrong, exactly, but she was missing loads of nuance, like the fact that, if we could have waged war against the United Empire on our own, then it didn''t strictly matter what Nero did or where she went. Her life or death didn''t really mean anything to us either, in terms of our goals or logistics, except that there was no way we could afford to face the full might of the United Empire, undistracted by Rome''s resistance.

    Of course, what she meant to Chaldea the organization and what she meant to the members of Chaldea were different things entirely.

    "Well, when you boil it down to its essence, she''s got the most important parts," Arash remarked diplomatically.

    "What about you, Mister El-Melloi II?" Mash asked. "If you''re Emperor Nero''s court mage on the side of Rome and proper human history, wouldn''t that make you our ally as well?"

    El-Melloi II winced.

    "''Mister El-Melloi II.'' That just sounds strange," he muttered, more to himself it seemed than anything, and then, he sighed again. "Fine. I can tell what you''re really asking. You want to know if I''ll join up with your merry band of misfits and follow you around while you flail at the United Empire."

    "Who''s a misfit?" Rika squawked.

    If I''d been so inclined, I could very easily have pointed out that just describing the makeup of our group sounded like the opening of a bad joke.

    In any case, I wouldn''t say no to having an actual Caster along, even if he was a little suspicious. I was willing to reserve judgment on his skills and utility until I''d had a chance to see him in action, but even if he was mediocre, he''d received a full education at the Mage''s Association. As a magus, that already put him ahead of me and Mash.

    "Were you planning to just sit here in Rome the entire time?" A¨ªfe mocked. "Until the entirety of Rome fell down around your ears?"

    "Don''t mistake prudence for cowardice," El-Melloi II bit out. "I''m a Caster. Worse than that, I have almost no direct combat ability. Taking to the frontlines on my own would be tantamount to suicide and achieve nothing."

    "But as part of a group¡­" I began suggestively.

    "We could always use more allies," Ritsuka said earnestly.

    "And Onii-chan has more than enough cheesecake to look at here," Rika added, gesturing to Boudica, A¨ªfe, and Nero. "I definitely wouldn''t say no to having more eye candy around."

    "I don''t know about eye candy, but I''d welcome another ally," said Arash.

    Emiya shrugged. "And you could eat more of my food, I guess. Apparently, I''m a pretty good cook."

    El-Melloi II''s eye twitched.

    "Damn it, stop trying to be welcoming and persuasive," he said, frustrated. "I''ve already decided to go with you!"

 Chapter LV: Aetna

    Chapter LV: Aetna

    Of course, as we were getting ready to leave, I realized that things had been suspiciously calm for too long, because Spartacus was missing in action, and that led to the whole group spreading out to look for him throughout the imperial palace. It wasn''t strictly necessary, since I could just search using my bugs, but there were a few places I couldn''t check myself, courtesy of our new friend, El-Melloi II.

    Naturally, I was the one who found him. It turned out that he had never left the baths the night before and had spent the entire time relaxing in there, just enjoying the hot water for hours on end. I couldn''t be sure, but he may even have fallen asleep at some point. It was impossible to tell, because unlike a living, breathing human being, he hadn''t shriveled up like a prune.

    I was a little jealous of the fact that he might actually have slept better than I did, and in a position that would have had me waking up sore, to boot.

    With Spartacus retrieved, we had no more reason to stick around or waste time, so we grouped up and began the trek south towards the city gates. Even so early in the morning, with the sun still on its way up into the sky, most of the city had already woken up, and the citizens were out and about doing their daily tasks.

    We walked in silence for a while, with Arash and Emiya taking the head and tail of our group to act as both guard and deterrent for any would-be pickpockets or rabble-rousers, before Ritsuka spoke up.

    "Senpai," he said, addressing me.

    I glanced over at him.

    "Need something, Ritsuka?"

    "There''s something I''ve been wondering about," he admitted. "I¡­don''t know if you could answer it?"

    If he was looking for a solid answer to that, then he hadn''t given me anywhere near enough to go on.

    "Ohoho," Rika chortled, grinning a cheshire grin, "is Onii-chan about to confess his heartfelt feelings?"

    Ritsuka shot her a glare, unamused.

    "Go ahead and ask, Ritsuka," I told him, cutting off any argument that might have started.

    He held the glare for a second longer, and then turned back away from her.

    "I know it''s not the only reason we''re going to Mount Etna," he began, "but couldn''t we heal Boudica if we made a contract with her, so she could just get energy from the Holy Grails we recovered from Fuyuki and Orl¨¦ans? Or even use our First Aid spells to help speed things up?"

    "Hey, yeah!" said Rika, realization dawning in her voice. "Queen Booty could be up and at ''em way faster like that, couldn''t she?"

    "U-um," Boudica stuttered, her expression pained, "I-I mean, about that, Ritsuka, Rika¡­"

    "There are a couple of reasons why we can''t," I answered him. "Or, well, even if we tried that, it wouldn''t work as well as you want it to. First, the energy the Grails provide may be virtually limitless, but the entire reason we can''t just bring everyone along in these Singularities is because all of that energy has to get channeled through us to reach our Servants. As far as I know, none of us is particularly spectacular when it comes to our Magic Circuits, so even with all three of us splitting the burden, the amount of that energy that we can channel to Boudica would still take at least a day to rebuild her arm."

    Probably. At the very least, it would take hours, and that would be hours of us keeping our Circuits active and open as long and as wide as we could. The sort of stress that would put on us would be very dangerous, especially out in the middle of nowhere, and it would have the equally dangerous side effect of hobbling the Servants who would have to take much greater care not to overstress us while we recovered.

    "That fits," El-Melloi II added. "Whatever system Chaldea is using provides the lion''s share of support to keep your Servants manifested, but for anything more than that basic support, the Master has to at least act as the conduit."

    "Second," I went on, "the First Aid spell is designed mostly to repair flesh wounds. For Servants, that means we can just keep throwing it at them until they''re healed, as long as everything is still attached and there hasn''t been major damage done to their Spiritual Core. For Boudica¡­"

    I gestured at her missing arm, which was most definitely not still attached to her body. If it hadn''t evaporated away the instant she lost it, then even if she and Spartacus had carried it back, I wasn''t sure we could have reattached it like that. A¨ªfe might have had something that could help, what with those Primordial Runes being as powerful as they were, but since it was gone, the point was moot.

    "Oh," said Ritsuka, disappointed.

    I looked his way again. "Have you been worried about this since she came back from that fight?"

    He shook his head. "I''ve just been thinking about it since we fought Caligula. Boudica had to stay back then, and if she''d been able to help¡­"

    "Not every Stray Servant you meet will be willing to make a contract with you, Ritsuka," Boudica said quietly. "Even the ones you count as allies. For some, it''s a matter of freedom, and some will just have personal hang-ups about it."

    "You said that you couldn''t agree to a contract unless Spartacus did, too," Ritsuka began. "Then, if he agreed to a contract, would you be willing to join us, as well?"

    "It''s not that simple," Boudica said reluctantly.

    "You may not have much of a choice," I told her. "Depending on who else the United Empire has, having the support of us Masters and our Command Spells might make the difference between winning and losing for you."

    Boudica glanced at Nero, a brief shift of her head and eyes that I wasn''t sure anyone else caught. "I''ll think about it. If we find out things are truly that dire at Mount Etna, then¡­"

    She trailed off, refusing to commit even now.

    So there were limits to how much even someone like Boudica was willing to set aside her own grudges. I guess it really was too much to expect someone to be that perfect. We all had our limits. Things we just couldn''t bring ourselves to do, because the pain was too sharp or too fresh, or even just the trust was too lacking.

    I didn''t think I would ever have been able to work alongside Jack Slash, for example. Not unless I had had him firmly under my thumb as Khepri.

    "Emperor Nero may have something to say about that," A¨ªfe commented slyly.

    "Mm-mm! It is perfectly acceptable!" Nero replied. "I can''t say I fully understand how it all works, but as long as Ritsuka, Rika, and Taylor are my cherished friends and comrades, then it matters little whether Queen Boudica is technically working with them or with me, for it is functionally the same in either case!"

    "You know it, Best Buddy!" Rika held out her fist, and Nero tapped it, as was becoming their custom. Together, they mimed an explosion.

    It didn''t quite work like that, but since there was no way for us to really fight the United Empire without Nero and Rome, there was no reason to say anything about it. Not for now, at least.

    Getting to the outskirts of the city and past the gates took a lot longer than it had the night previous, owing to the sheer number of people that now filled the streets. "Congested" would be a good term for what it looked like, and even if the regular citizenry was giving us a wide berth as we walked through them, the sheer number of people who had to get out of our way in the first place slowed us down much more than I really would have liked.

    There really wasn''t anything to be done about it, though. Even at my most callous, I wasn''t so cruel and inhumane as to suggest that we didn''t have to worry about trampling them underfoot because everything would be put to right once we solved this Singularity. Whether or not it was true didn''t change the fact that it was wrong, and it was definitely a mindset that shouldn''t be encouraged regardless.

    What it did mean, however, was that it took the better part of an hour and a half to reach the city''s southern gate, and by the time we were outside and far enough away to breathe and mount up, it was closer to noon than dawn. Once we got that far, however, another concern cropped up.

    "So how does this work?" I asked El-Melloi II. "I know that a Demi-Servant like Mash can''t go into spirit form because she''s actually a living human being, but does that apply to you, too?"

    El-Melloi II opened his mouth to say something, but stopped, and his brow furrowed in thought. "You know," he said at length, "I never thought about it. It wasn''t something that ever came up before."

    "If a Pseudo-Servant and a Demi-Servant are the same result of different processes," Mash began.

    "Except you''re a living human base who has been possessed by a Heroic Spirit," El-Melloi said, cutting across her. He gnashed his teeth, as though he was chewing on the butt of a cigar that wasn''t there. "Technically, I was, too, but it''s more like my base pattern was used as a support structure for a Heroic Spirit who doesn''t possess one. But then, even so, as a human being of the future, I''m also technically dead, since I don''t exist yet. For that matter, when this whole thing has run its course and my combined Saint Graph fades, will my memories of these events return to my living self, or will they just be recorded in the Throne¡­?"

    "Perhaps you''re like Saber was during the Fifth Grail War," Emiya commented, sounding amused by El-Melloi II''s quandary. "That is, the you of the future is technically suspended in the moment of your summoning, and your personal timeline will resume after your Servant form is destroyed."

    El-Melloi II grunted and glared. "You''re not helping."

    Emiya smirked. "Who said I was trying to?" he asked sardonically.

    A grimace pulled at my mouth, and I prepared to intervene if they got into another squabble. It turned out I didn''t need to even bother.

    "Is it really something we need to worry over?" Arash asked. "It seems a simple enough question to answer. Either you can or you can''t. If you try and fail, then that''s all there is to it."

    "Cutting through to the heart of the matter, huh?" El-Melloi II grunted again. "Fine. You''re right. Either I can or I can''t, and nothing will be accomplished if I sit here pondering the implications all day."

    For a brief moment, his face screwed up in concentration, and then his form flickered and vanished.

    "Guess that answers that question," said Rika. "Hot Pops can take Spooky Ghost Form, too."

    El-Melloi II faded back into view, a constipated expression on his face. "Hot Pops?"

    "Eh, I can''t think of anything better right now," Rika admitted. "Gimme a few days and we''ll see if I can find something that fits."

    "Hot Pops?" El-Melloi II reiterated, like he was questioning her sanity.

    "At least it''s not Queen Booty," Boudica said with a smile.

    "Or Super Action Mom," A¨ªfe added, smirking.

    "Perhaps you should consider it a compliment," Nero chimed in brightly. "Mm-mm! After all, is not the gifting of a nickname an act of camaraderie? You are being acknowledged as an ally worthy of trust!"

    El-Melloi II sighed and closed his eyes briefly, and again, he muttered something about a ''flat'' something or other beneath his breath. "Fine," he said at length. "Let''s just get going. The longer we stand here debating it, the more time we waste when we should be making our way to Mount Etna."

    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    Emiya chuckled. "You''re not going to escape it that easily, Hot Pops."

    El-Melloi II clicked his tongue, and then he vanished. This time, he didn''t reappear a few seconds later.

    "Well, that''s one way to beat a hasty retreat," Arash said wryly.

    "Not a very effective one," said A¨ªfe. "He''s still here, just now he can''t defend himself."

    "But it feels kind of like talking behind his back, doesn''t it?" Ritsuka said.

    "So don''t," I said. "Besides, he was right. We should get going. A¨ªfe, Boudica?"

    A¨ªfe rolled her shoulders. "Right."

    "Of course."

    The two of them stepped away from the group, and a moment later, in a flash of light, had summoned their chariots, and then they climbed up to take the reins. Taking that as their cue, Arash and Emiya both vanished into spirit form so that they didn''t have to take up physical space in the carriage.

    "Alright," I said, turning to the twins. "Same as last time. Ritsuka and Rika with Mash and Boudica, Nero and I will ride with A¨ªfe."

    "Um, Senpai!" Rika''s hand shot into the air. "Can I ride with Best Buddy this time?"

    "Mm-mm!" Nero said cheerfully. "I, too, find that idea most pleasing!"

    When I turned to Ritsuka, he gave me a shrug. "I don''t have any problems with it, Senpai."

    To begin with, the whole arrangement was about Command Spells and making sure that the two of us holding Mash''s were both in the same place while at least one of us was with A¨ªfe for the same reason. In case of an emergency, that was the best setup for our group. It was tactically and strategically sound, and it afforded us all the best protection in the scenario an enemy Servant attacked.

    "Please?" Rika pleaded.

    I sighed.

    But we were as safe as we were going to get, here. This was the heart of the Roman Empire. If they could reach us down here with impunity, and more importantly, if they felt they were able to reach us down here without worrying about reprisal, then we were in a much worse position than I thought.

    "Fine."

    Rika jumped, throwing her hands into the air. "Yes!"

    "Mm-mm!" Nero hummed, smiling a satisfied smile.

    "Rika and Nero will ride with A¨ªfe," I said. "Ritsuka and I will ride with Mash and Boudica. Any other objections?"

    "Nope!"

    "None!"

    "No, Miss Taylor."

    "Works for me, Senpai."

    "Fou, fou!"

    Overruled, I thought at the little gremlin. I kept going like it hadn''t said anything at all.

    "We''ll go south along the road Via Popilia," I told them. "We''ll skirt around Regium along the southern tip of Italy and cross the sea to Messana, then up the northeastern face of Mount Etna. If the information we have on this era is right, then there should be an old volcanic tube about halfway up the mountainside that will lead directly into a cavern beneath the surface."

    "Just like Fuyuki!" said Rika, grinning.

    I nodded. "Basically, yes. It should go deep enough to put us right on top of the ley line without forcing us to try tunneling into an active volcano."

    It would also probably be swelteringly hot, even if that volcanic tube hadn''t seen any lava flow in decades, but with how active that volcano was, that was a sucker''s bet. There was probably going to be lava close enough beneath our feet that we were going to be sweating our toes off.

    "Mm-mm!" Nero said, nodding her own head. "Perhaps we will be lucky enough to discover the forge of Vulcan himself!"

    Personally, I didn''t think that one was particularly likely. Forgetting the fact that the Age of Gods had supposedly ended something like half a century ago, if the forge did still exist, then it would either be completely inaccessible to us for one reason or another or in such disrepair that we wouldn''t recognize it even if we did see it.

    And on the off chance it still existed and we found it and it wasn''t a crumbling mess, what would even be there? Nothing any of us could use. Da Vinci would probably be in heaven, but the rest of us wouldn''t know what to do with whatever magical tools had been left behind, and sending them to Chaldea would probably be impossible.

    "Maybe," I said noncommittally. No reason to rain on the parade, as it were. "So let''s get going."

    Without any more delays, we mounted up, with Ritsuka, Mash, and me squashed together on Boudica''s chariot and Rika and Nero together in A¨ªfe''s. A crack of the reins set those majestic horses into motion, and then Boudica snapped hers with her remaining hand and we lurched into pace behind them.

    I closed my eyes and took a deep, steadying breath, trying to prepare myself for the ride to come. It didn''t help.

    ¨C o.0.O.O.0.o ¨C

    The ride from Rome to Mount Etna was almost half as long as the one from Thiers to Rome and no more comfortable for it. After over an hour of standing in the same position without reprieve, I felt more like a statue than a human being, and my companion, Ritsuka, didn''t seem any better off than I was. The instant we stopped, he almost sagged against the rail, rubbing at his lower thighs and kneading his thumb into the sore muscles.

    My knees ached, too, but it was going to take a minute for me to convince them that they weren''t made of stone.

    "Five minute break," I told him, "then we''ll continue on foot."

    He grimaced. "On foot?"

    "Whoo," Rika breathed as A¨ªfe''s chariot came to its own stop next to us, only facing the complete opposite direction. "A-almost forgot how much I hate traveling like this."

    "You could be riding one of Da Vinci''s e-bikes," I reminded her.

    "On second thought, Chariot Express all the way," Rika said immediately.

    "E-bikes?" Nero asked curiously. She, on the other hand, seemed none the worse for wear.

    "You wanna handle this one, Mash?" Rika asked.

    "U-um, well," said Mash. "I-I''m not sure how to describe them in a way Emperor Nero would understand."

    "Too bad we sent them all back to Da Vinci-chan," said Rika.

    We had. So much had happened that I''d honestly forgotten it was one of those things we took care of while we were at the Thiers camp, once it became clear that we wouldn''t need them and A¨ªfe and Boudica''s chariots were just faster and more convenient. Da Vinci had promised that the next version would be "even more compact," whatever that meant.

    Ritsuka climbed down from Boudica''s chariot as his sister and Nero did the same, and so did I, taking a seat on the edge of the carriage so that I could subtly massage the feeling back into my lower legs.

    "I guess¡­they''re kind of like a chariot?" Ritsuka ventured. "A chariot meant for a single person, powered not by horses, but by a kind of mechanism that lets you push it forward with your own legs using pedals."

    "Mm? Your own legs?" Nero asked, confused. "But wouldn''t that get tiring?"

    "In the modern world, it''s considered a form of exercise," Mash chimed in as she climbed down, too. "There are even sports based around it, or so I understand."

    "Marathons and races and that sort of thing, yeah," I agreed.

    I couldn''t even remember what happened to the bike I used to own. Had Dad sold it at some point? Maybe. Things had been pretty tight all throughout my teenage years, so he probably sold it to help pay the bills once I outgrew it and I just never got a new one. Taking a morning run instead of a morning ride was much less expensive, and day to day, probably safer.

    "I see." Nero shook her head. "No, I really don''t!"

    Ritsuka shrugged, as though to say, "I tried." If I was being fair, he''d done a decent job of it, but it really wasn''t easy to explain the things you took for granted every day to someone who didn''t have the first clue what they even were.

    The conversation continued a little as Mash and Rika joined in to try and help, but I tuned them out as I pulled up the map on my communicator. A few presses here and there added crisscrossing lines to the regular sort of "satellite view," snaking over the landscape ¡ª the ley lines. Da Vinci had sent us the data for it after we solidified the plan to go to Mount Etna, a useful feature that was coming in handy now.

    "Is that what I think it is?" Boudica asked, crouching down next to me.

    "It is," I confirmed.

    "What, what?" Rika bounded over, gasping at the wavy lines overlaid atop the island. "Cool! Da Vinci-chan does it again!"

    She fiddled with her own communicator and brought up the same map, after a little trial and error. Ritsuka, on the other hand, looked down at his own communicator and grimaced. When we got back into contact with Da Vinci, we''d have to see about getting him a replacement, at least until his current one could get fixed.

    "We''re here," I said, pointing out the dot that represented our group ¡ª or me specifically ¡ª and then I moved it up one of the flowing lines. "If we follow this up the mountainside, we should eventually find the volcanic tube we need to take that will lead us down into the cavern where the ley lines converge."

    In theory. My understanding of ley lines and how they worked wasn''t the best, but I thought I understood it well enough to say that natural flows like lava tended to follow the path of the ley lines down the mountain, so it should hold that following the ley line back up would take us to the volcanic tube we needed to find.

    "And then we can get Queen Booty back in fighting shape!" said Rika.

    Boudica smiled gratefully, and this time, didn''t try to convince us that we didn''t need to rush on her account.

    "That''s going to be a lot of open ground to cover," A¨ªfe noted.

    "We''ll need to split up," I agreed. I cast a critical eye over the group, imagining in my mind''s eye the Servants who hadn''t rematerialized yet. "Boudica, Emiya, and Nero will go with Rika on the right while A¨ªfe, Arash, and I go straight up the middle. Ritsuka, you''ll take Spartacus and Mash and go left."

    The Servants I named shimmered into existence as I called for them.

    "Looks like you''re stuck with me, Master," Emiya told Rika.

    Rika herself turned to Nero with a grin, "You, me, and Queen Booty makes three, Best Buddy!" She glanced at Emiya. "And Emiya is tagging along, I guess."

    Ritsuka eyed Spartacus, then turned towards him and gave a short bow. "I''ll be in your care."

    "Hahaha!" Spartacus picked him up in a bone-crushing hug and lifted him off the ground. "My fellow comrade, there are no oppressors here, only adventure!"

    Ritsuka couldn''t respond except to squeak as whatever breath he had left his lungs.

    "S-Senpai!" Mash shouted, panicking. "S-Spartacus, please let him down! Before he passes out!"

    Spartacus did, and Ritsuka wheezed as he was set back on his feet. "L-looking forward to working with you, Big Guy."

    "Senpai!"

    "I''m okay, I''m okay."

    "Guess he got a little too enthusiastic," Arash remarked lightly. He turned to me. "Pretty balanced spread, though. Defense and offense for most of the groups, although I did notice ours doesn''t quite match."

    Because they need it more than I do, I didn''t say. Arash might have seen straight through me anyway.

    "Isn''t that a saying in the modern world?" A¨ªfe asked. "The best defense is a strong offense?"

    "Well, I guess so," Arash demurred.

    A final figure appeared, scowling. "And where do I fit into this plan of yours?" El-Melloi II demanded sourly.

    "I don''t know what you''re capable of, so I can''t tell you where you''d be best fit," I told him bluntly. I''d honestly forgotten he had come with us, but it wasn''t any less true. "Go with whoever you want."

    He eyed Rika for a moment, grimaced, then glanced at Ritsuka, and finally, he sighed. "Guess I might as well join your group. My offense isn''t the greatest, but I do have some defensive capabilities that should serve well enough in group formations."

    "Then it''s settled."

    I stood up, and my knees weren''t back to normal, but they were feeling well enough that I shouldn''t have any trouble hiking up the mountainside. Once more, I missed my flight pack, and more than that, I missed the Dragoncraft that could have made this trip in twenty minutes or less.

    It couldn''t be helped.

    "We''ll split up and each take a side of the slope," I summarized. "Make sure at least one of you has the group closest to you in sight as much as possible so that no one gets lost. If your group finds the lava tube we''re looking for, contact the other two groups via your communicator and stay put. We all go down together. Got it?"

    Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash all replied with, "Got it!"

    Our groups divided themselves up and we spread out, hiking up the mountainside in search of the tunnel we needed. It only took five minutes for me to want a tour guide.

    Mount Etna wasn''t a simple incline like the image of a monolithic, sky-scraping pillar the idea of a volcano etched into my head. No, it was a series of slopes, mounds of blackened earth and crumbled rock that had formed from one eruption or another around the main peak and across the surface of its edifice. Each one itself was a steep climb that reached upwards of twenty feet tall, like there was a miniature mountain range jutting up from the surface of Etna itself.

    My already aching knees screamed their protest. I did my best to ignore it.

    It also made finding the right volcanic tube much harder, on account of the fact that it could have been hiding anywhere among those hills, tucked away in one of the valleys that dipped down between them, and the dirt was so dark that it was entirely possible our eyes would slide right over the entrance without realizing it.

    Fortunately for me, I wasn''t limited just to my eyes. The ground here wasn''t very hospitable to life, not with how active Etna was ¡ª unless I was mistaken, the peak high above us was still smoldering and smoking ¡ª but that didn''t mean that no bugs had made their homes up here. It did mean, however, that there weren''t quite as many as I was used to, and that many of them had burrowed deep into the mountainside.

    Which, it turned out, was just what I needed.

    My communicator turned on with a click. "Rika, Mash, I''ve found it."

    "Eh?" Rika asked incredulously. "Already? Senpai, you cheater!"

    "B-but it hasn''t even been half an hour yet," Mash protested.

    "Meet up with us and we''ll go in," I ordered them.

    After they acknowledged and agreed, I shut it off. To either side, their groups started back over our way, and I made a beeline for the tunnel''s entrance.

    "That power of yours really is convenient, sometimes," Arash said with a grin.

    "Cuts some of the hassle out of this sort of thing," A¨ªfe agreed.

    "Power?" El-Melloi II asked, confused. "What''s this about her power?"

    My next step was a second slow. Right, he was the only one in our group now who hadn''t heard anything about it.

    "I control bugs," I told him simply.

    His eyebrows rose. "Bugs?"

    I nodded.

    "Everything and anything with an exoskeleton in a radius of about half a kilometer."

    His nose wrinkled. "That''s¡­" He trailed off, and then revised what he was about to say. "I don''t think that should be possible. Not with modern magecraft."

    "I''m a bit of a unique case," I agreed vaguely.

    He scoffed, clicking his tongue. "That''s all you''re going to give me, isn''t it?"

    "Basically."

    El-Melloi II sighed, and his fingers twitched as though he was tapping a cigar that wasn''t there. Arash set a hand on his shoulder.

    "You''re in good company," Arash told him warmly. "She hasn''t given much more to anyone else in the group either."

    "Magi and their secrets," El-Melloi II groused sourly. I didn''t bother to correct him.

    "Senpai is a cheating cheater who cheats," Rika said as her group reached us, cutting off the rest of the conversation before it could go anywhere else.

    "It''s only cheating when the other guy does it," I said simply.

    This time, El-Melloi II snorted. "Tactics in a nutshell."

    "Just because you''re hot doesn''t mean I''ll forgive you for taking her side," Rika told him petulantly.

    "If you think that means anything to me, then you''ve still got a lot to learn, girl."

    If he was really as old as he claimed, then I could only imagine how much more childish seventeen-year-old Rika must seem.

    "Why did we split up if Senpai was just going to find it anyway?" Rika asked, changing the subject.

    "Because I''m not perfect," was the answer I gave. "It was better to have all of us looking instead of having most of us sit around and twiddle our thumbs."

    "Taylor might not always be around to lead you, too," Emiya chimed in. "It''s better you learn to handle yourself now, when we''re all here, than later, after you''ve been separated from everyone else and have to figure things out alone."

    She lanced him with a glare. "Curse you and your logic," she muttered under her breath.

    "There''s no need for concern," Nero insisted. "Mm-mm! My best buddy handled herself very well!"

    She held out her fist, and Rika, grinning, tapped it with her own. Together, they mimed an explosion.

    Those two were getting way too much mileage out of that.

    "Senpai!" Ritsuka called as he and Mash jogged back over, Spartacus trailing behind them. "You found it?"

    He glanced behind me at Nero and Rika, who were giggling to themselves over that stupid fist bump, and he grimaced suspiciously, like they were plotting something nefarious.

    "I did," I said. "It''s this way."

    I led the procession further up the mountainside, trying to keep my breathing regular and evenly paced as we climbed the uneven slope and its loose dirt. The distance wasn''t even half as long as the trip up Mount Enzo had been in Fuyuki, but the ground that crumbled and slipped and gave way under our feet made it four times as hard to navigate, especially without a well-worn footpath that had been compacted down by all the people who had walked upon it.

    Half an hour on the stairmaster every day didn''t really prepare you for this. Made it easier, sure, but it wasn''t anywhere near the same.

    Eventually, however, we came to a break in the incline, a spot in the climb that was not quite even, but shallower, and there, tucked away on the opposite end, a gaping darkness was wedged beneath an outcropping of hardened stone.

    The lava tube.

    In a low, ominous voice, Rika said, "The Crack of Mount Doom."

 Chapter LVI: Heart of the Mountain

    Chapter LVI: Heart of the Mountain

    Although her joke was in terrible taste, it turned out that Rika might have been a bit more on the nose than the rest of us living humans would have liked.

    The entrance to the lava tube was small and cramped, so small that we had to go single-file and duck down, hunched over, in order to get inside, almost as though it had been made to fit someone about half the size and height of a normal person instead of us regular-sized people. We didn''t quite have to squeeze in, it wasn''t that snug, but we couldn''t just casually stroll through either.

    If Rika noticed that the entrance was perfectly sized for a Hobbit, she wisely decided to keep her mouth shut. For once.

    Naturally, of course, none of this was a concern for the Servants, who could simply take spirit form and pass on through without a worry at all.

    "It gets wider up ahead!" Arash called from down the tunnel.

    It was more for the twins'' benefit than mine. There was a point where the magical energy started to get too dense and the heat too intense for my bugs to make the trip, but I could at least get a good enough picture of the next hundred yards to already know that it wasn''t going to be this cramped the whole way down.

    "I''m more interested in whether or not it gets cooler up ahead," Rika muttered crossly.

    "Sorry to disappoint," I told her.

    She groaned. "Senpai!"

    "We''re going into a volcano, Rika," her brother chided, impatient. "What did you expect? Built-in air conditioning?"

    "No, but I wasn''t expecting it to be this hot, either." She wiped some of the sweat from her brow on the back of her sleeve, and then her expression lit up. "Hey, Emiya ¡ª"

    Emiya, who had gone to spirit form so he could keep up instead of having to trail behind us, must have cut her off before she could even ask, because she immediately scowled.

    "What do you mean, no? You don''t even know what I was going to ¡ª well, it''s not like it''s the craziest thing you''ve made with that magic of yours! No, I''m not being unreasonable ¡ª what do you mean, I remind you of a troublesome person? Hey!"

    "I''m getting the sense that this is a very one-sided conversation," Ritsuka said dryly.

    A startled laugh burst out of Mash''s mouth, and she slapped a hand over her lips to muffle the sound as she ducked her head. It took me an extra second to get the joke ¡ª one-sided, because the only part of it we could hear was Rika''s, but also because Emiya seemed to be shutting down her suggestions before she could even finish making them.

    I had to stifle a groan. Really, Ritsuka? Of all the ways to prove he was Rika''s twin brother, making bad puns was the one he had to go with.

    "What is this ''air conditioning'' you speak of?" Nero asked from the back.

    "It''s a device that cools the air in a house or a building during days when it''s hot out," Ritsuka explained succinctly. "It''s usually paired with another machine that does the opposite when it''s cold out."

    "I see," Nero said pensively. "Mm-mm, the future sure is full of many useful conveniences, isn''t it?"

    "If air conditioning wows you, you''d flip out over a vending machine," I told her wryly.

    Nero cocked her head to one side. "Vending machine?"

    I didn''t answer, so Nero turned to her new "best buddy" and asked the same question, and Rika answering that led them down a whole new rabbit hole of everyday modern conveniences and how they affected our lives. Perhaps ironically, their conversation also conveniently made them forget that it was only getting hotter the deeper into the mountain we went.

    Of course, it wasn''t simply that the air was getting hotter, it was also that the flow of mana was getting denser, denser and purer than we modern humans were supposed to be used to, and the discomfort of that was being felt as extra heat. The twins probably couldn''t tell the difference, but even our new Caster friend was starting to sweat from the strain of handling it.

    My brow furrowed, and I had to maneuver uncomfortably to reach for my bag and pull out one of my ravens. Huginn unfolded and took off, flying awkwardly in the mostly still air, and landed about fifty feet ahead of us. El-Melloi II, who was leading the way with some kind of flashlight spell that he was using in place of our communicators, looked back at me, brow furrowing.

    "Senpai?" Ritsuka asked me. "Is something wrong?"

    "For now, nothing," I told him. "We''re just getting deep enough that the bugs are starting to thin out."

    It wasn''t strictly a lie, but I didn''t want to worry them about the mana concern just yet. Da Vinci hadn''t mentioned it ¡ª was that because she knew it wouldn''t be an issue, or had she just overlooked that particular detail?

    Ritsuka accepted that answer, but the look on her face told me that Mash didn''t, even though she didn''t call me out on it. She was the only other one of us Masters with any training in magecraft, so it only made sense that she had picked up on it, too.

    I guess she trusted me enough to believe I knew what I was doing.

    Up ahead, El-Melloi II came out into the wider section of the tunnel, and he slowed down to wait for me, a solemn expression on his face.

    "That''s a fairly high quality puppet," he murmured, low enough that the twins couldn''t hear. "Only a couple magi in the whole world could make something like it. You sure you want to use it as your canary?"

    "It''s replaceable," I whispered back. "We''re not."

    He gave a short incline of his head, conceding the point, and kept going.

    A small part of me did worry about losing Huginn in this tunnel. He might be replaceable, but not so replaceable that I could just pop on down to the supermarket and pick up a new one. Even if he wasn''t destroyed completely, it might take a long time for Da Vinci to make repairs, what with our limited resources and her stretched so thin.

    But Huginn''s capacity was the closest to human that we had available. Better to lose him and find out that the mana was too dense and pure for us than for one of us Masters to spontaneously combust and burst at the seams.

    So yes. Huginn got to be our canary. If our luck held, then there would be nothing to worry about and I was just being overly cautious. If it didn''t, then Huginn would literally save our lives at the cost of his own.

    The deeper we got into the tunnel, the hotter it got, and the more intense the friction of Etna''s magical energy pushing against my magic circuits got. We had all long passed breaking out into sweat a while ago, but it was getting to the point that I was sure my shirt was going to be soaked through at the chest and pits before long. Rika and Ritsuka gamely kept on, but they were feeling the discomfort too and tried to alleviate it however they could ¡ª tugging at their collars, fanning themselves with their hands, whatever could provide even a modicum of relief.

    It was one of the few times I was regretting my insistence on wearing my hair so long.

    "God, it''s hot," Rika complained. "You sure we need to go all the way down, Senpai? Couldn''t we set Queen Booty up here?"

    "It''s the difference between hours and days, Rika," I answered her, and if I was a little more impatient than usual because of the heat, well, I didn''t have it in me to feel bad about that just then.

    I understood her problem, I really did, but having to deal with it for a couple of hours was better than having to spend days at Etna, even if the rest of us camped out at the base of the mountain or something while Boudica sat inside. It was just better to stick it out and get it over with as quick as we could.

    Plus, we needed to get those higher resolution scans. We couldn''t do that until we were sitting right on top of the nexus.

    "We might need to get the Masters out as soon as everything is set up," Arash said worriedly, his brow furrowing. "You guys are going to be losing a lot of water if you have to sit down there the whole time Boudica is healing."

    And the instant he said it, I knew he was right. With how much we were sweating just getting down there, dehydration was going to be a major concern before long, and if we tried to stay down there with Boudica the entire time, we''d be putting our health at serious risk. Even getting there and going back was probably going to be dangerous.

    "We''ll see if Da Vinci can send us some bottled water to tide us over," I agreed. "We''ll stay down in the cavern long enough to get the scans, get Boudica settled in, and then we''ll go back out. Spartacus can stay behind to guard her."

    Neither Spartacus nor Boudica said anything, on account of the fact they were both still in spirit form, but the fact that they didn''t materialize to speak out against the plan told me enough about whether or not they agreed with it.

    "The less time we have to spend in this stupid tunnel, the better," Rika muttered.

    The lava tube continued on for what felt like miles, and it may in fact have actually been that long. It was hard to tell time and distance down here, and with my swarm too thin to give me a good feel for my surroundings, even I was having trouble judging how deep into the mountain we''d gone or how long the tube really was. We had long since left any semblance of daylight behind, so for all any of us knew, we''d been walking for hours.

    The one thing I was sure about was that the tube gently sloped downwards. It wasn''t steep enough for us to feel it as we walked, but I''d noticed it much earlier, back when I still had a larger selection of bugs around me in the dirt. It wasn''t as much of a concern as the slowly thickening magical energy all around us, but privately, I worried about that, too. If there was a sudden dropoff or if the slope got too steep too suddenly, it could spell trouble for us getting to and from the cavern we needed to reach.

    What felt like hours later, Huginn finally fluttered out of the tunnel and into a much larger, much more expansive space. In the dark, he couldn''t see far enough to tell for sure, but as I had him hop about, checking for the walls, it was wide enough and tall enough that he couldn''t find them.

    "I think we''ve found the cavern," I told the group. When I lifted my hand to wipe some sweat from my forehead, my fingers came back soaked.

    Rika let out a relieved groan. "Thank god."

    "Mm-mm," Nero agreed. "I have to admit, I, too, am quite ready for this whole adventure to be over. This journey to the heart of Mount Etna was not nearly as thrilling as I had hoped it would be."

    If you were seriously expecting to find Hephaestus'' forge, then you really need to work on your expectations, I didn''t say. If it even still existed under this mountain, then it would be much, much deeper, down below us, probably situated in the middle of a lake of magma. As much as Rika''s pop culture references were annoying, my mental image was basically just Mount Doom.

    Arash shimmered back into existence next to El-Melloi II, who grunted and stumbled as he tried to make room. He scowled at the side of Arash''s head, but Arash seemed not to notice.

    "I did a quick survey of the cavern," he reported. "It''s big. Really big. It was probably a magma chamber at some point that cooled off and hardened after a previous eruption."

    "The ceiling and everything is structurally sound, then? No signs of a cave in?" I asked.

    He shrugged.

    "I''m not an expert on volcanoes, so I can''t give you an answer with any certainty, but as far as I can tell, it''s safe." He smiled. "What I can say for sure is this is definitely the place we need to be. If you think the magical energy you''ve been feeling up until now was something, wait until you get deeper in. It''s not denser, exactly, but¡­ Well, you''ll see what I mean in a minute."

    "Oh, that would be a great way to spice up this whole thing," Rika groused. "Have our only way out collapse behind us. What fun."

    "Is that something we have to be concerned about?" Ritsuka asked worriedly.

    "Not likely, no," El-Melloi II grunted. "It''s not like in the movies. If we had to worry about cave-ins, we would have seen the signs of instability a lot sooner than this." He glanced back at us. "All the same, I wouldn''t go flinging around Noble Phantasms too carelessly. ''Stable'' doesn''t mean you can do whatever you like to it."

    It was a good thing King Arthur wasn''t here, guarding the ley lines. She could have brought the whole place down on our heads ¡ª would have in Fuyuki, if the cavern under Mount Enzo wasn''t huge enough to build a castle in. If I actually believed in them, I might have thanked my lucky stars that level of power wasn''t common, or else the United Empire could have taken us all out in one fell swoop.

    "I think the only one here with something destructive enough to worry about is Emiya."

    Ritsuka and Mash both immediately looked at Rika.

    "What?" she demanded defensively. "Why are you two looking at me like that? It''s not like I''m going to use a Command Spell and tell him to start throwing around the most destructive stuff he can, just for kicks!"

    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    "No reason," the two of them said together.

    "Hey, you two, I can hear the insincerity in your voices, you know," Rika told them grumpily. "I''m not all fun and games. I can be serious when I have to be!"

    "I wonder about that," Ritsuka said mildly, teasing her.

    "H-hey! Onii-chan! I can totally be serious! I really can!"

    "If the lot of you are done fooling around," El-Melloi II said sternly, "we''re here."

    He lifted his hand up and held his light aloft, but the cavern was so big and the ceiling so far above us that even that much light didn''t show us much of anything. High above our heads, faint glints of undulating rock glistened, a vague hint of the shape of this massive cave formation. When I lifted my wrist up to cast my own flashlight ¡ª with the twins following suit shortly thereafter ¡ª even those weren''t strong enough to reach it.

    I swung my communicator around, trying to get a better grasp on the shape and size of this cavern, because the magical energy had gotten so thick that there weren''t any bugs around for my powers to latch onto, but the beam of my flashlight fell far too short to reach the furthest sides.

    How deep into the mountain had we gone? For there to be a cavern this big and this stable, we had to be at least a mile beneath the surface.

    A¨ªfe flickered into existence off to the side, startling all of us so bad that the twins nearly jumped out of their skins as they squeaked. She pretended not to notice, but I was sure I saw a quick smile pull at her mouth, there and gone again so fast that I was almost willing to believe it was just my mind playing tricks on me in the sweltering heat.

    "Cripes!" Rika gasped, clutching her chest. "Could everyone stop doing that?"

    "Give me a moment, here," said A¨ªfe, "let me see if I can''t give us a better idea of what we''re looking at." She glanced around the darkness. "Or not looking at, as the case is."

    "Har-har," Rika said sarcastically.

    "I wasn''t trying to be funny."

    A¨ªfe turned away from the group and back towards the wall, and with her hand straightened out and fingers pressed together, she jabbed into the rock like it was soft clay and ripped out a hunk about the size of her fist. Casually, like it was something she did every day.

    Guess that was what having a high level Strength stat did for you. It reminded me a little of Alexandria, how she would and could carelessly rip traffic signs out of the sidewalk or heft a car over her head to use as a bludgeon against the likes of Leviathan or Behemoth.

    Completely unaware of that, A¨ªfe waved her free hand and dematerialized her glove, then started carefully carving runes onto the surface of that hunk of rock, squinting against the dim light. I turned my flashlight her way and shined it over her shoulder so that she could see what she was doing better.

    She glanced briefly in my direction, little more than a flick of her eyes and the slightest turn of her head. "Thanks."

    "Mm."

    I recognized some of the ones she was using from my lessons with her, but the way she was layering them and combining them was new and strange and unfamiliar. Using the analogy of trying to read a language I hadn''t fully learned might have been getting tired, but I still didn''t have a better one, so the only thing I could compare it to was watching someone write out a paragraph and only being able to pick out a word or two every sentence.

    When she was done, she spent a second or two turning the hunk over in her palm, checking her work, and then she waved her hand again and her glove came back. She turned back around and sidestepped me to make her way around the group and towards the front, and she stepped out ahead into the dark, our lights against her back.

    Then, she wound her arm back and threw that hunk towards the ceiling. I tried to track it with my eyes, but it was too small and the cavern was too dark, and I lost track of it.

    She muttered an incantation, and up towards the ceiling, the hunk lit up like a lightbulb and exploded into hundreds of tiny pieces that lit up on their own, bright and brilliant, and for a moment, I felt like I was looking up at the starlit sky on a clear night.

    But her plan became clear quickly, because the shining rubble cast enough light to see the surface of the ceiling, and my head swung back and forth as I tried to see as much as I possibly could for that brief moment that I could. My mind raced.

    Not as big as Fuyuki''s cavern, but it wasn''t as big of a difference as I was expecting. Maybe three-quarters the size? It was hard to make an accurate estimate when there was so little light to see by.

    For it to be that big and still stable, we must have been even deeper than my last estimate. A mile? More like two or three.

    "Whoa," Rika said quietly. "This place is huge!" She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted into the empty cavern, "ECHO!"

    "ECHO!" the cavern whispered back at her.

    "Incredible," Nero breathed. "Perhaps this was Vulcan''s forge after all! Mm-mm!"

    "If it was, I don''t think there''s anything here anymore," Ritsuka said.

    "It didn''t look like it, Senpai," Mash agreed.

    "No, it didn''t," A¨ªfe said up ahead, troubled. "In fact, it was completely empty."

    "Something wrong?" Arash asked her before I could.

    When she turned back towards us, she was frowning. "This much power in one place, and yet not a single magical beast has laid claim to it. Even with the Age of Gods over, this early into the Age of Man, I would have expected some sort of ancient monster making itself at home here. A chimera, perhaps, or even a Hydra. Something that has refused to acknowledge that its time is over."

    "A last redoubt against the ending of an era," El-Melloi II mumbled.

    "Exactly." A¨ªfe folded her arms across her chest. "And yet, not only is there nothing here, but we have yet to so much as stumble upon a lowly woodland sprite." Her frown deepened. "It will still be another thousand years before the last vestiges of fantasy have finally dwindled down to near extinction, and in spite of that, not even a single demon boar has accosted us across the breadth of the Empire."

    Boudica shimmered into existence. "I haven''t seen anything like that either, not once during my campaign throughout Gaul."

    "The cages are open," Spartacus said solemnly as he appeared too. "The cages are empty. And yet, my sword is still sheathed."

    "He says ¡ª"

    "I know what he meant," A¨ªfe cut across her. She clicked her tongue and turned back to us. "Perhaps this scan of yours will show us something about why all of the magical beasts are missing. Let''s get the circle set up."

    Mash and the twins shared a look, and then looked towards me.

    "Consider this the next step in your magecraft education," I told them. "You two get to set up the magic circle by yourselves, with only Mash helping you."

    Ritsuka''s mouth twisted and Rika groaned. "Senpai!" she whined.

    "You''ve done it before," I reminded her. "The only way to master it is if you keep doing it over and over."

    Take it from someone who was learning Primordial Runes by having colonies of ants march into the shapes. Repetition was one of the most surefire methods of learning.

    In spite of her grumbling, Rika joined her brother as they went to the head of the group ¡ª "Let me help, Senpai," said Mash as she hurried to keep up with them ¡ª and started looking for a clear enough spot to start setting up.

    "Not there," I told them. "Further on. We need to get as close to the center of the cavern as we can, where the ley line will be closest to the surface."

    The both of them shot me a frustrated look, then stood back up and started walking deeper in. The rest of our group fell into step behind them, letting them lead the way to where we needed to set up.

    "So this is your teaching style, is it?" El-Melloi II asked me, amused.

    "I''m not a teacher," I said, which got me a strange look from A¨ªfe. "But I have to get them up to speed as quickly as I can, because we aren''t exactly swimming in options for who can tutor them."

    El-Melloi II''s eyes narrowed on me. "No, I guess you aren''t."

    I wasn''t quite sure what he meant by that. El-Melloi II was a strange character. Not exactly mercurial, not exactly short-tempered. Abrasive was probably a good word for it.

    Not snooty, though. He said the El-Melloi name was a title he was holding onto until the heir came of age, didn''t he? And he''d been at the Clock Tower as a student at some point. But he didn''t behave like one of those Lords that Marie had told me about, so what exactly was his story and how had he wound up a regent for one of the bigwig families'' heirs?

    He probably wouldn''t tell me if I asked, would he?

    About fifty meters from the entrance to the cavern, I told the twins, "Here should do."

    "Thank God," Rika groaned. "Why is it so damn hot down here? It''s like a sauna!"

    "It''s because the magical energy down here is denser and purer than the two of you are used to," El-Melloi II explained. "We''re much closer to the Age of Gods in this era than the modern era. Your magic circuits aren''t built for handling mana of this purity. When you combine that with the sheer amount of mana that builds up in a place like this, the friction caused when it comes into contact with your magic circuits makes your bodies heat up."

    The twins looked back at him, surprised. He worked his jaw, like he was chewing on an imaginary cigar again. "You''re lucky that the Age of Gods faded faster on the continent than it did in Britain and other island nations," he told them. "Otherwise, you''d need a specialized mystic code to filter the mana in the air just to keep yourselves from exploding."

    "Exploding?" If Rika''s face wasn''t already washed out by the light of the flashlight, she would have been pale as a ghost. "Wait, you mean, like, we''d spontaneously combust?"

    "Pretty much," he confirmed.

    "You don''t need to worry about that in this Singularity," I reassured them, and wow, the fact that I was the one calming things down really was a novel experience. "If it was a problem, Da Vinci would have taken care of it before we even Rayshifted. You might be a little less comfortable here, but that''s all."

    They didn''t look exactly comforted by this, but it put them at ease enough to go back to making the magic circle we needed.

    "Holy cow," Ritsuka muttered, not nearly quiet enough to escape notice. "I feel like my life just flashed before my eyes."

    "I know, right?" Rika whispered back.

    El-Melloi II grunted. "These two really are novices," he said. "Why would Chaldea send them out to handle something this serious?"

    "Necessity more than anything," I said without giving much away at all. "In an ideal world, those two would be sitting back and watching as Team A tackled this whole thing on their own."

    "Oh?" He looked at me. "And what happened that necessitated putting these two on the frontlines?"

    I smiled grimly. "We don''t live in an ideal world."

    He snorted. "No," he said, "I guess we really don''t, do we?"

    "They''re trying," Boudica said quietly. "That''s what matters, isn''t it?"

    "And our job as Servants is to make sure they don''t fail," Emiya agreed as he materialized, arms crossed. He watched the twins like a hawk, unblinking. He did have some skill in magecraft himself, didn''t he? He hadn''t ever really said how much.

    "Well said," A¨ªfe agreed.

    Emiya slid a brief glance her way. "You''ll forgive me for being skeptical of that."

    "There''s a difference between letting your Master fail and giving them space to prove themselves to you," was her reply.

    "I wonder if you really understand the difference."

    A¨ªfe arched an eyebrow. "Do you?"

    Emiya scowled and went back to watching the twins. Had something happened between those two, or was this lingering from the fight against Tiberius several days back?

    Or maybe I was overthinking it and these two just couldn''t stand each other. Incompatible personalities. It wasn''t like that was a new or unusual problem to have, after all. I just wasn''t used to dealing with it in a way that didn''t involve at least the threat of gratuitous physical violence, and neither of these two would be impressed by that.

    Plus, you know, it would be kind of counterproductive. For a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I was trying to be a better person than that. I guess old habits just died hard.

    It took a while for the twins to set up the magic circle, even with Mash there to help them out, and all I was left there to do was stand and sweat. Time, as it liked to do when you were miserable, stretched out until it felt like an hour had passed, and in the darkness, without even a watch to count the minutes, it was harder to prove to myself that it hadn''t been anywhere near that long.

    Finally, however, the twins stumbled to their feet from the crouched position they''d been in on the floor. "Done!" Rika announced, somewhere between proud and relieved. "Finally!"

    "Magic circle complete, Miss Taylor," Mash reported dutifully.

    I stepped over towards them, but it was El-Melloi II who shined his spell down on their work, looked it over with a critical eye, and with a grunt, said, "Looks fine to me. A little shoddy, but functional."

    "Gee, thanks, Hot Pops," Rika drawled dryly.

    El-Melloi II scowled. "She''s going to keep doing that, is she?"

    "Unless and until she finds something she likes better?" Emiya smirked. "Buckle in, Lord El-Melloi. You can''t stop her."

    "The Second," El-Melloi II corrected grumpily. He dragged a hand down his face. "Stop leaving out the goddamned Second. Ugh. I know you''re doing it on purpose."

    "Get your shield in place, Mash," I ordered her.

    "Right!"

    As the twins stepped back, Mash materialized that massive shield, hefted it up, and set it down right in the middle of their work. I walked over to it and turned my communicator on.

    Beep-beep!

    "Hello!" Da Vinci called cheerily as her face appeared in midair. "Good afternoon, Masters of Chaldea! And the Servants, too!"

    "Da Vinci."

    "Hey, Da Vinci-chan!" Rika greeted tiredly.

    "Fascinating," said Nero. "This is¡­some sort of long distance communication spell? Mm-mm! Think of how much more efficient my empire would be with magic like this!"

    "Proprietary Chaldea technology, I''m afraid," Da Vinci told her politely. "Plus, it would all disappear once that Singularity is resolved anyway."

    "Mm." Nero shook her head, disappointed. "So I''ve been told."

    "You know, you guys all look pretty haggard," Da Vinci commented. "I know the trip to the Ley Line Terminal couldn''t have been easy, but you look way more wiped out than I was expecting."

    "It''s hot!" Rika whined. "Really hot! I''m dying over here!"

    "Between the actual heat and the friction from the dense, high purity mana, it''s pretty hot down here," I reported. "Da Vinci, we''re losing too much fluids. We need you to send some bottled water our way."

    "Roger that." Da Vinci typed away at her keyboard. "I''m filling out the requisition form right now. Let''s see¡­ I think it''s Sylvia''s turn to be the Requisitions Officer? I''ll get her to set things up and we''ll send them to you ASAP."

    She glanced around our group. "What are you going to do about Queen Boudica?"

    "She and Spartacus will stay down here until she''s finished healing," I said. "The rest of us will head back up to the surface as soon as everything else has been taken care of."

    "Not ideal," she noted, "but it''s better than you Masters suffering heat stroke down there if you tried to stay."

    "Oh great," Rika grumbled. "Another problem we have to worry about."

    "Which is why we''re trying to mitigate it," Da Vinci replied smoothly. "Looking at your vital signs and tracking back from when you entered that volcanic tube, you should make it back out just fine. A little uncomfortable, but well within human tolerances."

    "A little uncomfortable, she says," Rika muttered mutinously.

    "Rika," her brother scolded her tiredly.

    "Oh, it could definitely be a lot worse," Da Vinci told her wryly. "I won''t call you lucky, but trying to take one of the lava tubes higher up the mountain might have put you in, shall we say, hot water."

    El-Melloi II groaned. "This is Leonardo da Vinci?"

    "Hello, hello?" Da Vinci turned to him. "And who might you be, Mister Caster? You''ve been given a provisional name of El-Melloi on your Saint Graph registry, but I think I would have heard if someone from that family managed to make it to the Throne of Heroes. The scuttlebutt last I heard was that the El-Melloi clan was in decline."

    "The Second," El-Melloi II grumbled. "Why does everyone keep forgetting that thrice-damned Second?"

    "He''s a Pseudo-Servant," I answered for him.

    Da Vinci''s eyebrows rose, and she regarded him with renewed interest. "A Pseudo-Servant? My, that is an unusual case, isn''t it? Technically, that''s the ideal Marisbury was striving towards with his Demi-Servant program, but we''ve never actually encountered one before. It''s mostly been theoretical."

    "I''m honored to be your first," El-Melloi II retorted sarcastically.

    "So if you''re still going by El-Melloi II¡­" Da Vinci hummed. "That means that the main personality in charge is the host, isn''t it? Even curiouser. Something like that is a rarity on top of a rarity."

    "If you''re looking for a complete explanation, I can''t give you one." El-Melloi II clicked his tongue. "I had a total of one conversation with the lazy asshole riding shotgun in my head, and the only impression I came away with was that his perspective was too inhuman to be compatible with a nation of men."

    "Now you''re just teasing me," said Da Vinci. "I''m guessing the fact you''re dancing around it so much means you don''t have any intention of revealing his true name?"

    And against all expectations, El-Melloi II grinned. "Not on the first date."

    Da Vinci burst out into laughter, even as I turned to him incredulously. Off to the side, Rika cackled.

    "I didn''t know you had it in you, Hot Pops!"

    Neither did I. So far, he''d been dour and depressing with a relatively short fuse. And yet he''d just told a joke ¡ª worse, I think he just flirted with Da Vinci, of all people.

    "Well, we can table that discussion for now," Da Vinci said once she''d calmed down. "At the moment, our primary concerns are getting Boudica set up, and before that, the scan using the boost from Etna''s ley lines, yes?"

    "Right." I nodded. Thank god, familiar ground. "Is there anything we need to do on our end?"

    Da Vinci waved me off, turning from the camera to type something out at her terminal. "No, no. This is something I can handle entirely from here in Chaldea, you don''t need to do anything else. I only need you to keep this line of communication open to stabilize our synchronization, and¡­"

    With a flourish, she jabbed her finger down on one final key. "There! Now we just have to wait a minute or two for the program to run and the scan to complete."

    She turned back to the camera. "So! Did you enjoy your baths last night? They were quite exquisite, yes?"

    "Oh man, yeah," said Rika. "We really needed that. In fact, I''m looking forward to taking another one when we get back to Rome."

    "If we go back to Rome," I cut in.

    Rika turned to me with a dead-eyed stare. "I don''t like that word," she said flatly. "If. I really don''t like that word, Senpai. If. If is bad."

    "It depends upon the results of this scan," I told her. "If what we find out is time-sensitive, then we won''t be able to go back to Rome and we might need to attack immediately."

    Rika continued to glare at me with that dead-eyed look.

    Maybe this wasn''t the hill to die on. No matter what I said, there was very little chance we''d find something that was both close enough and too time-sensitive to ignore. One or the other, yes, but probably not both at once, which meant rushing to chase whatever this hypothetical thing might be down was moot to begin with.

    Fine. I knew enough to know which battles were worth fighting and which ones were pointless.

    "But as long as there''s nothing so close that we can''t ignore it, then I guess we have time to return to Rome today."

    A sigh left Rika''s nose, and she tilted her head back, closing her eyes as though to relax in a cool breeze. "Ahh. I can already feel the heat of the baths. Not even Senpai will stand in my way."

    "The Roman baths are good, but not that good," Da Vinci said, smiling a lopsided smile.

    "There are no baths in Chaldea, Da Vinci-chan," Rika told her flatly.

    Da Vinci tilted her head and cocked an eyebrow. "I suppose there aren''t, are there? Well, perhaps that''s an oversight I should see to fixing, yes?"

    Rika turned to Da Vinci now. "Don''t give me hope, Da Vinci-chan. Don''t you dare give me hope."

    "Would I lie to you?"

    Beep-beep! cut off any reply we might have given ¡ª obviously a resounding "YES!" that all of us could have agreed on ¡ª and Da Vinci turned back to her console, muttering, "Oh, the results of the scan are in¡­"

    Her eyes darted back and forth at speed as she read through it, and her eyebrows shot towards her hairline as her mouth dropped open.

    And then she said the scariest thing I''d ever heard her say.

    "What the hell?"

 Chapter LVII: Deus Ex Ignotis

    Chapter LVII: Deus Ex Ignotis

    "There must be some kind of mistake," Da Vinci said. "Even this close to the Age of Gods, something like this is just too far outside the realm of possibility!"

    She bit down on one of her fingers, her brow furrowed with worry. Rapid fire theories tumbled out from between her teeth, cycled through so quickly that she never seemed to completely finish a thought before she moved onto another one.

    "Could it be¡­ No¡­ If it was like that, then maybe¡­ Just because it wasn''t recorded¡­ No, it should still be¡­ So maybe it''s¡­ No, no, not for this era, it would have to be¡­ And it''s essentially out in the middle of the ocean, too!"

    "Da Vinci?" I asked, alarmed.

    Da Vinci jerked violently, blinking as though she''d been ripped out of her train of thought, and finally, she turned back to me.

    "What''s going on?"

    She blinked again, and then she smiled apologetically. "Sorry," she told me, contrite, "I let myself get carried away there. The preliminary scans are done, and, well, I found something I really wasn''t expecting."

    It must have been a pretty huge shock to get that kind of reaction out of her. I''d never seen the likes of it out of Da Vinci in the last two years, and that was terrifying.

    "Like what?"

    The console beeped again, and Da Vinci glanced back at it, grimaced, and then told me, "Several somethings, actually, and just one of them was already likely to have a significant impact on your future plans, to say nothing of the other results that are still coming in."

    I really didn''t like the sound of that.

    "Hold on," said Ritsuka. "What do you mean by change?"

    Da Vinci took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh.

    "There''s no easy way to say this," she said, "so I''m just going to rip the bandaid off. If these readings are right ¡ª and I''m the one who calibrated these sensors, so they are ¡ª then there is an honest-to-goodness god currently inside of that Singularity with you."

    A ripple of shock spread throughout the group.

    "What?" Mash asked faintly.

    "Are you sure?" I asked immediately. "It''s not just a Servant with a high Divinity stat? Romulus was a demigod, wasn''t he?"

    It wasn''t like those were exactly rare, after all, not in Rome and especially not in Greece. Most of the Heroic Spirits worth talking about from the latter had one god or another somewhere in their family tree, often within one or two generations.

    "No," Da Vinci said grimly. "It''s the genuine article. The readings from its Saint Graph are fairly low, but its divinity is off the charts. The only reasons it would have such a low quality reading from its Saint Graph was if it was a fairly weak god, which is unlikely if it''s stuck around this long, or ¡ª"

    "It''s hiding itself," I realized.

    "Hiding?" said Rika. "Why would it be hiding?"

    Because it wanted to escape notice for some reason, and there were a couple I could think of off the bat. Maybe this god wanted to avoid conflict. Maybe it had been badly injured from a fight with the United Empire''s Servants and was trying to lie low while it licked its wounds. Maybe it was just disinterested in this civil war and wanted to stay out of it.

    Or maybe it was building up power, gathering resources, biding its time¡­ For what? I could only make guesses.

    "I can only offer you theories," Da Vinci said apologetically.

    "Do we have any idea which god it is?" A¨ªfe asked.

    Da Vinci shook her head. "None. Whatever it''s doing to hide itself, it might not be thorough enough to hide its divinity, but it''s definitely enough to obscure the details of its Saint Graph. The only other thing I can tell for sure is its location."

    "There aren''t many gods that managed to hold on past the end of the Age of Gods," El-Melloi II added. "Not on the continent, anyway. The pool to choose from should be pretty small."

    "If it''s even a god native to this era," Da Vinci shot back, "and not something that was brought here by the Holy Grail."

    El-Melloi II gritted his teeth and grunted, conceding the point.

    "Could it be Hephaestus?" Ritsuka asked.

    Da Vinci opened her mouth to respond, paused, considered the question thoughtfully, and then let out a simple, "Huh. You know, you might not be wrong."

    Nero gasped. "Perhaps we might see Vulcan''s glorious forge after all!"

    Even more than that¡­

    "If it is Hephaestus," I began, "could he forge for us an Anti-Fortress weapon to take down the United Empire''s wall?"

    Emiya inhaled sharply. "Oh. That''s clever."

    "Under different circumstances¡­" Da Vinci hummed. "In that Singularity, however, you just might be close enough to the Age of Gods to bear witness to a god''s genuine miracle."

    Authority. That''s what she was talking about. My lessons hadn''t covered those in too much detail, but my understanding was that "miracle" wasn''t even the wrong way to describe one. Abilities on a level all their own such that even Noble Phantasms often paled in comparison ¡ª divine power at its purest and most potent.

    "You''re getting a little ahead of yourselves," A¨ªfe chided us. "Da Vinci. Where would we find this so-called god?"

    In lieu of answering directly, Da Vinci tapped something out on her keyboard, and a moment later, her face shrunk down to take up the upper corner of the hologram, leaving us to look at a familiar map of this Singularity. To the northwest of us, almost as far away from our current position as Rome itself, a big, red dot sat.

    "¡­That''s the middle of the ocean."

    It was right smack dab in the middle of the deep stretch of blue that was the Mediterranean Sea, at least fifty miles from the nearest shore.

    "H-hey, guys, I didn''t bring my swimsuit, you know," Rika said nervously. "Please don''t tell me we''re going scuba diving after this guy? Maybe if he wants to be left alone, we should leave him alone."

    "Much as I hate to agree with Rika," her brother chimed in hesitantly, "is it really a good idea to go after this god in a place where only two of us can fight? I mean, where would us Masters even stay that wasn''t right in the thick of things?"

    "Ordinarily, that would be a very good point," Da Vinci agreed. "However¡­"

    She tapped something out again, and before our eyes, an island drew itself around the dot. It had no label, not even a question mark. For all intents and purposes, it was like it didn''t properly exist. Not according to Da Vinci''s map, at least.

    "There''s an island that shouldn''t exist right where this god is hiding out," she said. "Seems mighty suspicious to me, don''t you think?"

    El-Melloi II clicked his tongue, eyes narrowed. "Definitely a god, then. If it can create an entire island out of thin air, that''s a step above the Noble Phantasm of a normal Heroic Spirit."

    "Fitting for a god of crafting to forge his own island out in the middle of the ocean," Da Vinci agreed wryly.

    That certainly seemed to line up with the very little information we currently had, didn''t it? I chewed on the thought. Even if we took the crafting bit out of it, Hephaestus ¡ª or Vulcan, whichever form was appropriate in this case ¡ª was also a god of fire, particularly volcanic fire. Theoretically, using his Authority could have let him spawn his own volcano wherever he pleased, no matter how much some part of me screeched about how plate tectonics didn''t work that way.

    Even living my whole life with powers and capes as part of it, even if only as things I knew existed, magic had flipped it all on its head and sent my common sense into the corner to cry. Still didn''t measure up to the "Scion is an alien and powers come from fragments shed from his body" bit, but that one was a little hard to top.

    "If it isn''t Hephaestus," I began.

    "If you''ve got a better theory, I''m definitely willing to hear it," El-Melloi II told me.

    "I mean, is making islands something all gods can do anyway?" Rika asked. "A bumbling neophyte wants to know!"

    El-Melloi II grimaced. "Bumbling neophyte?"

    Ritsuka sighed. "You had to be there," he informed El-Melloi II.

    Damn, that was getting to be a mouthful, even in my own head.

    "Um, it would depend on the god, Senpai," Mash told Rika. "Some gods just don''t have the Authority for directly affecting the Earth, while some gods have enough crossover that their Authorities should let them do something like making an island."

    "What does that mean, since we''re in Rome?"

    "W-well, um, there''s a lot of connection between the Roman pantheon and the previous Greek pantheon, so really, if we''re talking about gods capable of manipulating the Earth itself ¡ª"

    "If it isn''t Hephaestus," I cut across them all, raising my voice a little to silence them. "Do we have any other clues for who it might be, Da Vinci?"

    "None," said Da Vinci. "The island and the divinity itself are our only clues. Since it''s hiding itself, there isn''t anything else I can tell you about which god you might be dealing with."

    A¨ªfe huffed. "In other words, we won''t find out until we get there, is that right?"

    Da Vinci smiled ruefully. "Unfortunately."

    "This is the part where I''d normally say, ''it looks like we have another mystery on our hands,''" Rika revealed, "but I''m way too grouchy right now."

    "Noted," her brother replied dryly, wiping some sweat from his own brow.

    "As tempting as the idea of acquiring a weapon forged by the god of smithing himself is," said Arash, "maybe it would be better to avoid this mysterious god entirely. There''s no indication that it''s involved in the United Empire, right?"

    "Aside from the fact that it''s slightly closer to their territory than ours?" Da Vinci shook her head. "We just don''t have enough to go on to say one way or the other. It''s entirely possible that this is a patron deity summoned here by Romulus and the Holy Grail, which would absolutely make that god an enemy, both of Rome and of Proper Human History."

    "Meaning that it might be necessary to eliminate them in any case," Mash concluded.

    Very deliberately, I didn''t look at A¨ªfe.

    If we had to fight a god no matter what, then I guess it was a good thing we had someone on the team who had fought two of them before and presumably killed them, for whatever that meant to a god. Did gods die when you killed them, or was continued worship enough to sustain them until they could pull themselves back together?

    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    "As A¨ªfe said, let''s not get ahead of ourselves," I said. "Da Vinci, this island, can you tell whether or not it counts as part of the United Empire''s territory?"

    "As a matter of fact, I can," Da Vinci confirmed. She tapped something out on her keyboard again, and a bright yellow border drew itself around what would one day be Spain, Portugal, and most of the rest of Western Europe. It cut right down the middle of the continent, carving out about a third of France in the process. "Based upon the scans, this is the land that is firmly enough under the United Empire''s control that the function of Constantine the Great''s Noble Phantasm is detectable."

    Notably, neither Britain nor this new island was part of it.

    "Unfortunately, that still doesn''t give us a definitive answer," Da Vinci went on. "Gods are notoriously finicky about their lowercase-a authority, and it''s entirely possible that this god supports the United Empire without allowing its island to be subject to their control."

    Damn it. That was actually a really good point, especially when it came to the Greco-Roman pantheons. Those guys were infamous for their pettiness and fragile egos.

    El-Melloi II sighed. "No matter how you look at it, we need to investigate this god''s presence, don''t we?"

    "Are you forgetting something?" Emiya asked, arms crossed over his chest. He jerked his head in Arash''s direction. "You have two Archer class Servants standing right here. It''s well within the abilities of our Independent Action skills to make our way over to that island and scout out this god."

    That was true, but there was a problem with that way of thinking.

    "And if you run into trouble that you can''t handle?" I asked him.

    He arched one eyebrow at me. "You have Command Spells to call us back with, don''t you?"

    "Hey, now," Da Vinci cut in, indignant. "Don''t go thinking you can all be reckless just because we can replenish Command Spells! Don''t forget, just one is going to take your Master almost three weeks to replace! That''s a long time to be down on an emergency resource you might actually need in an emergency!"

    "I''m actually going to agree with Emiya on this one," said Arash. "Actually, we might not even need to set foot on the island itself at all. I just need to get a good enough look at it from the right angle. If I got enough altitude in spirit form and materialized in the air, I think I might be able to see enough of the island to see what we''re dealing with."

    "Before the two of you start competing to see which of you is more willing to throw himself into danger," Da Vinci said, "there''s a few other things you might want to take into consideration first, because that god isn''t the only problem you''re going to have to deal with."

    She tapped something else out on her keyboard, and a moment later, the land encircled by the border of Constantine''s Noble Phantasm lit up. Splotches of red took it over, filling up like blood welling from a wound, until a large swath of the eastern portion was covered in ¡ª

    No, wait. Those weren''t splotches of red, they were dots. Hundreds of them, thousands, so many that I couldn''t have even begun to count them, they were showing up that quickly. The bulk of them sat in Spain along the eastern border at the foot of the mountains, but many were interspersed throughout, some solitary, some gathered together in clumps.

    "Is that¡­?"

    I was almost afraid to ask. It couldn''t possibly be that these were the Servants summoned to fight for the United Empire, could it? The idea that there could be so many boggled the mind. If a single Heroic Spirit was a legend that had left an indelible mark on history, then where on earth had Romulus managed to summon thousands?

    "On a hunch, one of the things I scanned for was Phantasmals," Da Vinci told me grimly. "Yes, what you''re seeing right now is every single magical beast in that Singularity. Anything and everything more powerful than a reanimated skeleton."

    "Holy cow," said Rika. "There''s got to be thousands of them!"

    "You''re off by an order of magnitude or two."

    An army, I realized. Romulus and his United Empire had created an army of magical beasts to serve as¡­as fodder for anyone who had the will and the ability to cross over into their territory. Anyone brave or foolish enough to try would find themselves surrounded on all sides by every manner of Phantasmal that still existed in this era, from manticores to chimeras and maybe even some wyverns. They would be torn to shreds by an endless tide of fangs and claws, ripped apart and devoured until not even their bones remained.

    And if these beasts were all as closely packed together as they seemed to be, then it was entirely possible that even using my bugs to navigate a safe path around them wouldn''t work.

    "This is where they all went," said A¨ªfe, coming to a realization of her own. "The magical beasts that should have been hounding us across all of Gaul. It wasn''t that they were afraid of confronting so many Servants, it was that they had all been gathered up and corralled into the United Empire''s territory."

    "Fooou," the little monster whined, like it had been personally insulted.

    Emiya clicked his tongue. "That''s a rare skill. Here and there, you''ll hear about a hero who managed to tame a single Phantasmal. A girl who befriended a dragon or a woman who punched one into submission. A knight who rides a hippogryph or an adventurer who rides a winged horse. There aren''t that many who managed the feat of bringing every magical creature he met to heel."

    "It''s a vanishingly rare skill," Da Vinci agreed. "Based upon our record of his Saint Graph, however¡­ Yes, the likely culprit is Lucius Tiberius."

    But we had killed him. Why were all of those creatures staying in the same place? Sure, it had only been a few days, but without him there to wrangle them, wouldn''t they have spread back out and started killing each other off in territorial disputes?

    Beast Taming. He had the skill "Beast Taming," rank EX. I hadn''t thought anything of it before.

    "Son of a bitch." Emiya chuckled ruefully. "That bastard, he didn''t just bring them under his thumb, he trained them to follow orders."

    "Wait, wait, wait," said Rika. "Are you saying that Tiberius guy¡­that he made an army of dangerous magical creatures and gave it to the United Empire?"

    "That''s what it looks like," I confirmed.

    "Son of a bitch" was right. As though it hadn''t already been difficult, things had just gotten a lot harder, hadn''t they? Now, we didn''t have to just worry about the Noble Phantasms that would make us all weaker, we also had to look out for the army of magical beasts that were waiting on the other side of this mysterious wall.

    "You''re making a bigger deal out of this than you need to," A¨ªfe told us. "After all, between just those of us already here, we have numerous Anti-Army Noble Phantasms designed just for the purposes of routing contingents of enemy troops. It won''t be quick or easy, but if we''re not worried about collateral, then there''s nothing stopping us from mowing them all down."

    "There goes any subtlety," Emiya said sarcastically.

    "If their reach is as absolute as we think it is, they''ll know where we are at all times anyway," A¨ªfe replied stubbornly.

    "I''m not sure we were ever going to be sneaking in," Boudica said, looking meaningfully towards Spartacus.

    "A gladiator fights for all to see," Spartacus said by way of answering. "Only the dead remain in the shadows."

    There was no way to know that for sure, though, was there? The fact that there hadn''t been any reprisal for Tiberius seemed to indicate that no, Constantine the Great couldn''t actually sense what was going on in the territory covered by his Noble Phantasm, so it would absolutely be feasible to try and sneak our way into the United Empire''s capital.

    Unless Caligula''s attack on us at Massilia was that reprisal. Ugh. The uncertainty made this whole thing messier.

    "We still have the core problem we have to worry about before we even start talking about this army of Phantasmals," I said. I turned back to Da Vinci. "What can the sensors tell us about the enemy forces? The United Empire''s Servants?"

    She grimaced. "More than we knew before, not as much as I hoped."

    She tapped her keyboard again, and the map disappeared, replaced with a handful of symbols next to names, each of them belonging to a hero.

    "These are the Servants I can confirm have manifested within the United Empire''s territory."

    Ruler class, Constantine the Great. Berserker, Caligula. Rider class, Constantine XI. Rider class, Traianus Hadrianus. Lancer class, Romulus.

    "Hadrian," Arash said, picking up on that one immediately. "In hindsight, it was incredibly obvious, wasn''t it?"

    "Hadrian''s Wall," Emiya rumbled his agreement. "We got worried it was Shi Huang Di, but it turned out to be someone far less troublesome."

    "Hadrianus? Constantius?" Nero asked. "Mm-mm. I don''t recognize those names at all!"

    "That''s because Hadrian won''t be emperor until almost sixty years from now, from your perspective," Da Vinci explained. "Constantine the Great is almost three hundred years from now, and Constantine XI won''t rule until almost a thousand years into the future. Much like Lucius Tiberius, these are emperors of the future, so they would be completely unknown to you now."

    "Wait, there are two Constantines now?" Rika asked. "One was already one too many!"

    "They''re two completely different Heroic Spirits, Rika," said Da Vinci, amused. "You could even say that they''re mirror opposites, since one unified the empire during a tumultuous time and the other presided over the empire when the final remnants of it fractured and collapsed completely."

    "Romulus¡­" Nero muttered, devoid of her usual cheer. "So. It is true after all."

    "You didn''t know?" Da Vinci asked, surprised.

    Nero frowned and looked away, refusing to answer.

    "The United Empire has been using his name to recruit the citizens to their cause," Boudica revealed, stepping up to answer for her. "However, for all that they haven''t been shy about advertising that Rome''s divine ancestor is the one ruling the United Empire, Romulus himself has yet to make an appearance on the frontlines, so confirming that he''s really there hasn''t been possible."

    "So you thought it might have been propaganda," Ritsuka realized.

    It would have been a clever bit, if it was. Of course, better than propaganda was having the real thing. You had to tell fewer lies that way.

    "And yet now¡­" Nero mumbled. A troubled look wrinkled her face as she looked back up at Da Vinci''s image. "You are¡­certain that this is true? The Divine Ancestor is a part of the United Empire''s forces?"

    Da Vinci shook her head. "Our scanners can be tricked by the right spell or skill, but they aren''t wrong. The scan says that a Lancer class Servant whose true name is Romulus is in the city that is likely the United Empire''s capital. Ergo, unless it''s a Heroic Spirit so well-known for disguise that he can change his true name, it must be Romulus himself."

    "I see."

    Nero''s everything dropped. Her eyes, her expression, her shoulders, her head, her whole posture. She slumped in on herself, looking just as defeated as she had that moment when the truth of Boudica''s fate had been revealed to her.

    Rika, sensing her distress, stepped closer and reached out to rest a comforting hand on Nero''s arm. "Hey, Best Buddy¡­"

    "Excuse me." Nero pulled her arm away from Rika''s hand. "I need a moment to consider this."

    She turned away from the group, and with quick, clipped steps, she walked some distance away and stopped near the edge of the light cast by the hologram and our flashlights. Rika made to follow after her.

    "Rika," her brother said softly, "I think Nero needs to be left alone for now."

    Rika scowled and wrapped her arms around her chest, glaring at the ground. I didn''t have the words to comfort either of them, just then. Not without bringing up a whole host of things that I wasn''t supposed to talk about.

    But I could only imagine that what Nero was feeling just then was a whole lot like what I had felt when I realized that the heroes I had looked up to as a kid weren''t any better than the villains they fought.

    "So where are all of these Servants located?" I asked. "Are they all in the same place, or are they spread out?"

    Were we going to have to scour the countryside to find Constantine the Great? Or had they all bunkered down in the same place?

    "Caligula is moving in southern France," Da Vinci answered. "It looks like he might not actually have retreated that far after your first fight with him. The rest of them, on the other hand, look like they''ve all been staying in the same place this entire time, a city nestled between the Spanish mountain ranges near where Madrid will one day be. Based upon these scans, it looks to be an almost perfect replica of Rome itself."

    Emiya grunted. "That''s gotta be a Noble Phantasm."

    "Considering who they have on their roster, there''s no way of telling who it belongs to, though," Arash added.

    Aside from Caligula, it could have been any one of them.

    "And what about these last two, these unknowns?" I said, gesturing at the two sets of question marks. "Do we not know anything about them?"

    "Nothing," Da Vinci answered. "We know that they exist, but the sensors couldn''t even get a location, let alone an identity, for either of them. In all likelihood, they''re Assassins. Presence Concealment would easily explain why they''re so well hidden that we can barely even detect that they''re there at all.

    "Also, there''s one other thing," she went on. "The sensors picked up one final Servant, but his presence makes so little sense that I wasn''t sure whether or not to classify him as an enemy or not. It''s a Berserker class Servant with the true name of Lu Bu."

    "Ah," said Boudica.

    We all turned to her. "Ah?" I asked. "You know him?"

    "That''s a strong word," she replied. "I had the¡­pleasure, if you can call it that, of meeting him once. That is, do you remember what you said about how Berserkers can''t communicate?"

    "Yeah," El-Melloi II added. "Like talking to a wall. You have no way of knowing if he even understands what you''re saying, let alone if he''s willing to follow your orders."

    "As Emperor Nero''s court mage, you must have met him earlier, then," said Boudica. "Yes. Miss Da Vinci, I think I can solve one of your mysterious unknowns, too. Lu Bu was part of a special expeditionary force with an Assassin by the name of Jing Ke. Actually, those two were the special expeditionary force, just by themselves."

    "Jing Ke?" Mash asked. "I don''t recognize that name."

    "I do," said Da Vinci. "I''m surprised that you don''t, Mash, but I suppose the most extraordinary thing about Jing Ke as an Assassin is his failure, so that might not have been covered in your history lessons. As far as Chinese history is concerned, Jing Ke is really more of a funny anecdote about how close Shi Huang Di came to being assassinated, not someone known for succeeding."

    "Emperor Nero said that she didn''t have any other Servants in her employ," I said slowly.

    "I don''t think she ever knew they were Servants," El-Melloi II said. "The Emperor isn''t dumb, but there''s been a lot that she''s had to try and learn since this whole thing started. Jing Ke and Lu Bu didn''t advertise themselves as Servants, so the Emperor probably never connected the dots."

    Fair enough, I guess. I''d had almost two years to get used to all of this, and sometimes, it still threw me for a loop.

    "So what does this special expeditionary force do?" Ritsuka asked. "Are they like Marcus and the others working with Boudica?"

    "They''re an Assassin and a Berserker," Emiya said with a snort. "Take a wild guess."

    "They kill emperors, Onii-chan," Rika chimed in, smiling grimly. "Sneak in and put them down. Like a real life Terminator."

    Ritsuka let out a long, low sigh.

    "Do we know if they''ve managed to take any out?"

    I didn''t know anything about Lu Bu, but an assassin who failed to assassinate his target? That didn''t inspire confidence in how he would manifest as a Servant.

    "I have yet to receive any reports on eliminated enemy commanders," Nero revealed as she rejoined us, still subdued. "Mm-mm. However. I gave Lu Bu and Jing Ke discretion to act independently, so it is possible they would not have reported either success or failure in either case."

    "Best Buddy," Rika murmured. Nero gave her a wan smile, devoid of its usual cheer, and this didn''t seem to reassure Rika, but it mollified her enough that she didn''t push.

    "So if one of the unknowns is ours, what does that bring it up to?" Arash asked. "Six¡­plus Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Cassius Scaeva, and Lucius Tiberius, who are already defeated. Nine Servants on the United Empire''s side, total."

    "And they were enough to push my beloved empire to the brink," Nero concluded solemnly.

    Arash shook his head. "I''m thinking¡­it''s entirely possible there were more. Nine Servants is definitely enough to conquer a nation, but holding an empire the size of Rome? With Romulus, Constantine the Great, Hadrian, and Constantine XI in the capital to rule, plus Caligula, Julius Caesar, and Tiberius to act as the assault force, there''s a huge gap in their lines. There were probably at least one or two more Servants to act as the middle guard on the wall."

    He had something of a point. There was something to be said for arrogance, so it wasn''t entirely impossible that the United Empire had believed Hadrian''s Wall so unassailable that they didn''t need to guard it, but I would prefer not assuming my enemy incompetent unless and until I had concrete evidence to prove it.

    "The scans showed nothing of the sort," Da Vinci said, a little defensive. And then her eyebrows rose. "Oh. And if Jing Ke and Lu Bu have made it past the wall, then it stands to reason they must have eliminated the middle guard to do so."

    Arash nodded. "Right."

    Not necessarily. Assassin Servants were supposed to be sneaky, so Jing Ke might have slipped in under the United Empire''s watch¡­but that circled back around to the idea that a competent United Empire would have a watch to slip under.

    "There''s no way for us to be sure," I reminded them both. "Let''s not start jumping to conclusions."

    Although it would definitely be convenient if it turned out this "special expeditionary force" actually managed to help clear some of the field for us. It would also be a fairly ringing endorsement of their competence.

    "Yeah, of course." Arash shook his head again. "It doesn''t really change where we are right now, so¡­ Hey, Da Vinci, where is Lu Bu anyway?"

    Oh. That was good thinking, actually. If Lu Bu and Jing Ke were working together, then even if we couldn''t tell where Jing Ke was, we could still locate him based upon where Lu Bu was.

    "The capital, actually," Da Vinci answered.

    Wait, seriously?

    "Truly?" Nero asked. "They''ve made it that far?"

    "As long as they''re still together? Yes."

    That¡­actually changed a lot. Could change a lot. If they made it past the wall, then they had to have run headfirst into Constantine the Great''s Pax Romana. There was no way they could have missed it. What they didn''t have, however, was the knowledge of who that Noble Phantasm belonged to like we did.

    However¡­

    "If they managed to figure out that Constantine the Great is the one behind Pax Romana¡­"

    "Then if they take him out," A¨ªfe grinned fiercely, "there''s nothing holding us back from going straight to the capital ourselves. We just have to bust a hole in that damn wall."

    Not even that.

    "Even better. Da Vinci, bring the map back up?"

    Da Vinci tapped her keyboard again, and the current roster of the United Empire''s Servants was once more replaced with the map we had seen before. I pointed out our place on Sicily, then traced a line through the Mediterranean Sea towards our mysterious island.

    "We can investigate this god that is supposed to be on that island. Best case scenario, they agree to help. But we should avoid fighting them if we don''t have to, because we can use that island¡­"

    I swung my finger over.

    "As a launching point. From there, we cut straight into Spain here," I pointed it out, "from these islands to the south, which is technically United Empire territory. The instant Pax Romana goes down, we can make a straight shot for the capital. If we''re fast enough, we''ll get there in time to rescue Jing Ke before the rest can reorganize and fortify their position."

    Not likely at the speed Servant battles were fought, but it would comfort the twins and probably Nero to think we would.

    "Neatly sidestepping both Hadrian''s Wall and the army of magical beasts in the process," Emiya noted.

    I nodded.

    "Exactly."

    "And with the enemy right there," said Arash, "we should be able to find the Grail pinning this Singularity in place at the same time."

    Yeah. Everything neatly tied off with a bow.

    "Oh my." Da Vinci chuckled, smiling broadly. "You''ll set a record at this rate. You haven''t even technically been gone a day, and you''re all set to resolve this Singularity. I guess Director Animusphere really did know what she was doing when she picked you for Team A."

 Chapter LVIII: Shaped Isle

    Chapter LVIII: Shaped Isle

    Da Vinci gave us one more warning about an unusual reading from somewhere in the mass of magical beasts near Hadrian''s Wall, something that was registering on the sensors in a way similar to Mash''s Saint Graph but way less structured, and then she Rayshifted a package of bottled water and bade us good luck.

    Plain old water had never tasted so sweet.

    With the basic outline of a plan to work off of and water to help us Masters hydrate, the next step was getting Boudica situated so she could feed off of the ley lines'' abundant magical energy, a process that took all of a couple minutes and minimal effort. The groundwork for it had already been laid with our line to Da Vinci, after all, and there really wasn''t much more to it. It was as simple as having her sit inside of that magic circle and making sure she was able to tap into the ley line.

    After that, there was nothing else that needed our attention, so there was nothing keeping us in the sweltering heat of the mountain''s heart.

    No one thought it was going to be really necessary, but just in case, Spartacus stayed with her to make sure nothing happened while she was alone, and the rest of us made the trek back up to the surface, a journey that felt twice as long and arduous as the one down. By the time we finally made it back out into fresh air, I had gone through two bottles of water, Rika had made it most of the way through three, and Ritsuka was already dipping into his fourth.

    I never thought I''d miss the stale, cool air of Chaldea''s constantly controlled climate, but I would have taken it over that tunnel to hell any day of the week.

    The mountainside''s somewhat chilly air was a balm that all of us were grateful for. After spending what had to be at least two hours down in the bowels of Mount Etna, the brisk breeze against my sweaty skin was just as refreshing as that first sip of cold water had been back in the depths. It was relief ¡ª and the twins certainly weren''t shy about showing it.

    "Fresh air!" Rika cried, clawing at the sky. "Salvation! At last!"

    "Have to say, I''m glad to be out of there." Ritsuka wiped more sweat from his brow and let out a deep sigh. "I know we needed to help Boudica and do that scan, but that whole time was miserable."

    "Me, too." Mash sighed as well. "I wasn''t expecting it to be quite that uncomfortable inside that tunnel. The Grail cavern in Fuyuki wasn''t anywhere near that bad."

    "Mount Enzou wasn''t an active volcano less than a hundred years out from the Age of Gods," I pointed out.

    "I guess so."

    "Never again," Rika promised gravely.

    I arched an eyebrow at her. "You''re going to be singing a different tune in about ten minutes, when you''ve cooled down enough to feel the mountain air."

    "Don''t ruin this for me, Senpai!" she whined.

    I smothered a smile and busied myself with letting my ravens out so that they could keep an eye on as much of our surroundings as possible. Arash being there might have made it a bit pointless, but even if he could see farther and clearer than even my ravens could, having them out helped with the fact that I had a lot fewer bugs around than I was used to.

    From there, there wasn''t much left for us to do but wait. There was no telling exactly how long it would take Boudica to heal, but with the amount of magical energy she was sitting on top of, if it took more than a few hours, I would have been incredibly surprised.

    True to my prediction, the chilly mountain air turned from soothing to uncomfortable with speed once our bodies had time to readjust and reestablish equilibrium, so to avoid Rika''s inevitable complaints, I made the executive decision for us to head back down the mountain the way we came. Since there were no complaints, we started the trip immediately.

    "Sometimes, Senpai," a shivering Rika told me, hugging herself to try and keep warm, "I really hate when you''re right."

    "I hope Arash will be okay up there by himself," Mash said worriedly.

    "He''ll be fine," I reassured her. "If he actually gets uncomfortable, he can just go into spirit form and stay like that."

    "H-how cold of you, Senpai," Rika said, teeth chattering a little. "Have you no sympathy for poor Arash?"

    "You''re welcome to stay up there with him if you think he needs company that badly."

    The whole reason he was staying up there in the first place was to wait for Boudica and Spartacus so he could lead them back down the mountainside to our group. The last thing we needed was for them to come out, realize we weren''t there, and then get lost looking for us in the complete opposite direction.

    "I-I''m good," she rushed to say.

    "It''s not as though it''s strange for a Servant to be alone," Emiya said. "Mash might need sleep like a normal person, but for regular Servants, it''s just a luxury we can engage in if we want. After all, we''ve stood guard around you Masters every night, haven''t we?"

    "I guess that''s true," Mash said thoughtfully. "Do you really stay up all night, Emiya? What''s that like?"

    "Very boring," Emiya drawled. He slid a glance at A¨ªfe. "Of course, some of us pass the time a bit differently than the others."

    "I haven''t criticized you for your own hobbies and interests," A¨ªfe replied. "Would you prefer I started teasing you for having such a feminine interest as cooking, Emiya?"

    An old instinct arose inside me to come to his defense, to call that sort of thinking sexist and old-fashioned, but before the words could come out of my mouth, my brain caught up with my ears and I realized that the point she was making was that she''d been respecting him enough not to go for such a cheap shot. Too, she was a female warrior, wasn''t she? A fighting queen who had surpassed even her male counterparts, to the point that the greatest hero of Ireland had resorted to trickery to beat her.

    Wasn''t she basically the definition of bucking traditional gender roles?

    "Was it a criticism?" Emiya wondered sardonically.

    "How does A¨ªfe pass the time while we sleep, then?" Ritsuka asked curiously.

    Emiya shrugged. "I guess you''d call it shadowboxing."

    That was it? That wasn''t embarrassing at all. The way he''d been building up to it, I''d been expecting something really girly and feminine, like flower arranging or something. Something that a hardened badass might actually have some reason to hide, the way someone like Hookwolf would never admit he liked to crochet.

    The idea that A¨ªfe passed the time by shadowboxing¡­actually fit her personality pretty well.

    "Shadowboxing?" Nero asked, bemused.

    "It''s where you practice your skills by fighting imaginary opponents," I explained shortly. "You''re ''boxing'' with ''shadows''."

    "Shadowboxing." Nero repeated the word to herself, like she was trying to memorize it. "Mm-mm! I understand! I think."

    "Heh." Rika grinned against the cold. "H-have the shadows ever fought back, Super Action M-mom?"

    A¨ªfe gave her a strange look, like she didn''t quite know what to make of that. Being fair to her, I couldn''t imagine she''d ever heard the joke about how talking to your stuffed animals was only bad when the stuffed animals talked back.

    "Not since I became a Heroic Spirit," said A¨ªfe, and it took me a moment to realize that she was being completely serious.

    "I¡­don''t actually have a reply for that one," Rika admitted.

    "I guess the Land of Shadows is quite deliberately named," Emiya remarked.

    "It''s a land of the dead," A¨ªfe said matter-of-factly. "A cursed place overrun by countless ghosts, wraiths, and evil spirits. Is there any better name for a land where specters haunt every shadow than ''the Land of Shadows''?"

    "And you lived there?" Ritsuka asked incredulously. "That sounds like a really dangerous place!"

    A¨ªfe''s lips pursed, and for a moment, I thought she wouldn''t answer. After a short pause, however, she said, "I grew up there. One of two candidates to hold shut the gates that kept those phantoms from leaking out into the rest of the world. A thankless, eternal task that could only have gone to one of us."

    "And it went to your sister," Emiya noted.

    A huff of air burst from her nostrils. "Yes. Sc¨¢thach was the one who was eventually chosen for that position, and I was passed over. It was one of many contests over which we competed." Her trademark smile slowly curled her lips. "I was the one who won the rest."

    Was she? I didn''t call her out on it. What I''d seen in that dream, those moments from her past, the legends said that A¨ªfe was the superior warrior, but up until they parted ways to pursue their own paths, Sc¨¢thach was the one who won every fight they ever had. If they ever met up again and fought after they''d spent time apart to hone their skills¡­

    Well, I hadn''t seen it in the dream, but obviously, if Sc¨¢thach was so certain of her own defeat that she had hesitated to fight A¨ªfe on that fateful day, they must have fought again before in a friendlier context.

    "Didn''t she beat your ass a lot, though?" Rika asked.

    I closed my eyes briefly. Rika¡­ One of these days, that girl was going to learn some tact. Preferably, before it got her killed.

    "Only when we were children," A¨ªfe replied crisply, "flailing at each other and swinging weapons we barely knew how to use. As grown women, she never once bested me."

    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Considering they had to have been about thirteen or fourteen when they went their separate ways, yeah, I guess I was willing to let her have that one.

    Eventually, we made it down the side of the mountain and set up camp ¡ª metaphorically ¡ª in the sparse, scorched landscape near the base, where life hadn''t quite managed to encroach. The sun had stretched high into the sky in the hours it had been since we first climbed Mount Etna, and mine wasn''t the only stomach that was rumbling and ready for food.

    "Maybe we should have packed a bento for each of us before we left Rome," Ritsuka said ruefully. "Or asked Da Vinci to send us something to eat."

    An idea that I was regretting not having just then myself.

    "It''s not like it''s too late for that," I said, and then I turned to Mash and A¨ªfe. "Even this close to the ley line, we''re probably going to need to stabilize the connection¡­"

    Da Vinci was only too happy to help, once we explained the situation, and she sent us a package of foodstuffs ¡ª mostly canned goods and other easily stored items, but even with that, Emiya managed to throw together a devilishly good meal. Fairly light, all things considered, but still filling enough that we were all satisfied by it.

    "Another delicious meal, mm-mm," Nero said with a sigh. "Are you certain I can''t tempt you, Emiya?"

    "Are we going to go through this again?" Emiya asked, shaking his head. "My answer hasn''t changed. Even if I said yes, it wouldn''t change anything, in the end."

    "More''s the pity," Nero lamented.

    "Look on the bright side, Best Buddy," Rika chimed in. "Even if you can''t enjoy his food forever, you can at least enjoy it now, right?"

    Nero smiled. "Mm-mm. Yes, I suppose that is so."

    We lazed about as our food digested, lounging around in a collection of lawn chairs that Emiya had projected for us ¡ª and seriously, exactly what were that guy''s limits, anyway? "Fundamentally limited to bladed weapons," my ass. This wasn''t the first time he''d done something that shouldn''t have been possible by that metric, and I doubted it was going to be the last.

    I guess I didn''t have too much room to talk about secrets, though. I doubted Emiya''s were quite as dangerous as mine were, but then again, since he was a person who would one day become a Heroic Spirit instead of a Heroic Spirit of the distant past, maybe his were just as much about protecting his living self as anything else. If it was really that important to hide, then prying maybe wasn''t the greatest of ideas.

    He was willing to get the twins off my back about the source of my bug powers. The least I could do in exchange was keep my mouth shut about the nonsensical limits to his.

    Slowly, a boring hour passed us by as we waited down at the foot of the mountain. With nothing else to do, eventually, we had to wind up discussing what we were going to do next and how we were going to tackle the strange island where the mysterious god had set up.

    "I maintain that it''s well within my ability to go and scout it out myself," Emiya insisted. "We don''t need to put anyone else at risk to go and see what''s going on."

    "Anyone else but you, you mean," A¨ªfe rebuked him.

    "I''d think someone like you would understand," Emiya retorted slyly. "After all, isn''t ''by yourself'' your preferred method of handling things?"

    "You seem to forget that I was also the leader of an army. Even if I prefer single combat, I''m not unaware of how to fight as part of a larger unit."

    "No one will be going to that island alone." I put my foot down to forestall the argument that had been about to brew. "We might wind up sending you in to scout it out, but not from this far away. Not if we can help it."

    "If we get up close, it might be too late to discover that god has set up some nasty defenses," he pointed out.

    "So we should just send you in and hope for the best?" Ritsuka demanded.

    "I''m a Servant. Technically, I''m already dead." Emiya shrugged. "Which means that I''m more replaceable than you are."

    Mash''s face twisted. "That''s not¡­" But she trailed off, and in a quieter voice, continued, "I suppose the job of the Servant is to protect the Master, even if it means dying. In that sense, Servants are more replaceable than Masters, aren''t they?"

    "A good Master doesn''t throw away their Servant like a cheap familiar," El-Melloi II chimed in. "Respect is the most important part of any Master-Servant pairing. If both sides don''t respect each other, then failure is a guarantee."

    Emiya''s cheek twitched, but he didn''t comment. Whatever nerve that had touched, he didn''t feel the need to share.

    "We''re not throwing anyone away," I said. "Remember, we want to avoid engaging this god if we can. We''re just going there to investigate. On the off chance that whoever it is happens to be hostile, however, having the rest of the team be hundreds of miles away won''t help any of us. Besides, if there was some incredibly dangerous bounded field we had to worry about, don''t you think Da Vinci would have warned us?"

    My understanding of bounded fields was that the stronger they were, the more the inside deviated from the outside, so the more detectable they were. If this god we were worrying about had set up something strong enough to seriously endanger our lives, then that should have been something Da Vinci picked up during her enhanced scan of the Singularity.

    "It''s also counterproductive to set up something like that if this god is trying to hide its presence," A¨ªfe added.

    "That''s not a guarantee either," El-Melloi II said. "There are some incredibly nasty ways to trap a bounded field, and gods don''t have to play by the same rules as magi."

    "Which is why Emiya and Arash are going to be the spearhead and not lone scouts," I said. "They''ll go in ahead of us to make sure it''s safe enough for the rest of us, but we''ll follow close enough behind to reinforce them if things go south. There''s going to be some element of risk no matter what, but we''re going to minimize it as much as possible."

    "Do we really need to go there at all?" Ritsuka asked reasonably. "If this god is leaving everyone alone, then shouldn''t we just leave them alone, too?"

    "Onii-chan''s adventurer spirit is weak," Rika put in, ignoring the flat look her brother gave her, "but he''s got a point, you know. Why are we poking the bear?"

    "Because it''s better to poke the bear now than to find out it was just waiting for you to turn your back," said Emiya.

    "Basically that," I agreed. "It''s entirely possible that this mysterious god we''re worrying about really is a neutral party that just wants to be left alone. But I''d rather be sure I don''t have a dangerous enemy at my back before going into battle with an enemy as powerful as the man who founded Rome."

    Especially when he had undoubtedly been empowered by the era he''d been summoned into. Here and now, at what was undoubtedly the peak of his strength? Romulus was going to take everything we had to beat. We couldn''t afford to be attacked from behind while we were fighting him, too.

    "And if this god really does just want to be left alone?" Ritsuka pressed.

    "Then we''ll leave them be," was the simple answer.

    I wasn''t stupid enough to try and force a god of all things into siding with us. If it didn''t want to fight and just wanted to do whatever in peace on its island? I was willing to let it sit and swivel. Things were already dire enough without borrowing trouble.

    Lisa would probably laugh her ass off if she ever heard those words come out of my mouth.

    "Personally, I''m hoping this god is the god of sandcastles," Rika said flippantly. "Something nice, safe, and unthreatening."

    El-Melloi II snorted. "Trust me, if you think that even something as tame as sandcastles can''t be a nightmare when made by a god''s Authority, you''re in for a pretty terrible surprise."

    Rika stuck her tongue out at him.

    "Sandcastles?" Nero asked. "Mm-mm. I can''t help but think that such a thing is not what I am imagining in my mind."

    Rika jolted upright in her chair, face contorted in mock horror. "You don''t know what sandcastles are? Best Buddy, you don''t know what you''ve been missing!"

    And she proceeded to launch into a long, detailed explanation of sandcastles and how they were made. I wasn''t sure she would ever have made one in her life either, despite what she was saying ¡ª the twins had grown up in Tokyo, in the middle of Japan''s capital city, so unless their parents took them out to the beach as kids regularly enough for them to actually try building sandcastles, the only place I could imagine she knew them from was popular culture. Movies and tv shows.

    Eventually, the talk of sandcastles devolved into funny stories about Ritsuka learning how to swim when he was younger, and another hour or so passed with the standard bickering and sniping of two siblings who knew everything there was to know about each other. Ritsuka gave almost as good as he got, but as it went on, it became apparent that either Rika was far more ruthless about it than her brother or he just had a whole lot less dirt on her than she had on him.

    Rika was just getting into the story of how Ritsuka had come home one day and begged her to help him practice kissing so he didn''t look like an inexperienced idiot to his cool, new girlfriend when Arash announced to me, We''re on our way down.

    "Heads up," I cut in, interrupting Ritsuka''s most embarrassing moment. "The others are coming down from the mountain."

    Ritsuka let out a relieved sigh, his cheeks still cherry red from Rika''s torment.

    "But I was just getting to the good part!" Rika lamented.

    I think your brother will thank me for my timely interruption, I didn''t say.

    "Too bad," I told her as I levered myself out of the chair Emiya had projected. Ritsuka and Mash followed suit, then Nero a moment later, and Rika, reluctantly, was the last. "Break time''s over. It''s time to get back to work."

    "Ugh," Rika grumbled. "And we''re not even gonna go back to Rome for another bath."

    "A shame," Nero agreed. "I would have liked to enjoy another bath with you, my friends."

    "With or without giving Ritsuka a show?" Boudica shimmered into existence, smiling wryly.

    "There is nothing of which I am ashamed!" Nero insisted, throwing her chest out.

    "Boudica!" Ritsuka exclaimed at the same time as his sister shouted, "Queen Booty!"

    "Hello again, everyone," said Boudica. "I''m sorry to have kept you waiting."

    "Your arm?" I asked. Behind her, Arash materialized, too.

    Boudica''s smile grew, and she lifted her left arm to show a fully formed limb, sleeve and all, with five fingers intact. She was completely healed.

    "You''re all better!" Rika cheered.

    "Thank goodness," said Mash.

    "Yup! It even fixed this for me!"

    In a flash of light, her shield formed on her restored arm, good as new. There wasn''t so much as a scratch on it to show that it had been damaged in the attack that had amputated her arm.

    "Awesome! Queen Booty is back in action!"

    "Indeed! Mm-mm!"

    "You''re back to normal, then," said A¨ªfe. It was more of a statement than a question. "Good. That means no more delays."

    "Right!" Boudica''s friendly smile pulled into something tighter, more like a smirk. Confident. "Then our next target is ¡ª"

    "This mysterious ''god.''"

    We brought the others up to speed on the plan for how we were going to handle the uncharted island and the god who had set up on it and likely formed the thing in the first place. They weren''t any more enthused about it than the rest of us, and the hour or two it had been since we first discussed it in the cavern hadn''t warmed them up to the idea any more, but our options for dealing with it were fairly limited.

    "I''m still not liking this whole plan," Arash admitted.

    "What if this god is hostile?" Boudica agreed. "I appreciate A¨ªfe''s confidence, but¡­"

    A¨ªfe arched an eyebrow. "You don''t think I can do it?"

    "As a living human, maybe," Boudica allowed, "but as a Servant, your limits are different from when you were alive. That doesn''t always mean they''re higher."

    A¨ªfe scowled, as though she''d been reminded of something very unpleasant.

    "If all else fails, there are a few fallbacks," said Emiya. He held out his hand. "Trace, on."

    In a flash of light, he held ¡ª

    "That''s!" Mash gasped.

    "Medusa''s scythe!" Ritsuka finished for her.

    And it was, perfectly recreated, a flawless replica of the scythe we had seen Medusa wield in Fuyuki. The wickedly curved blade, the long, plain shaft, it looked more like a tool for farming than a weapon wielded against one of Greek mythology''s most famous monsters.

    I was past the point of being surprised. He''d already shown off G¨¢e Bolg earlier, and C¨²chulainn had told us Emiya Alter had used Caladbolg before. The idea that he could recreate Medusa''s scythe too wasn''t that much of a shock.

    "Harpe," Emiya said simply. "If the situation devolves to the point where we need to kill this god, this scythe will do the job."

    "I see," said Boudica. "That does ease a few of my fears, I will admit."

    A¨ªfe smirked. "Your stock of weapons in that head of yours really is unlimited, isn''t it?"

    Emiya''s cheek twitched, and he plastered on a mocking smile. "I even have a few that are related to thunder gods, actually. They were used for some incredible feats, too."

    A¨ªfe scoffed, whatever that was about, and glowered at him silently.

    Arash sighed and shook his head. "I guess there''s no way around this, is there?" he lamented. "In that case, I guess I just have to do my best as the vanguard of this whole thing, don''t I?"

    "Then if there are no more objections?" No one looked happy about it, but no one spoke up either. Story of a lot of my plans, wasn''t it? "Right. We''re running out of daylight. As it is, we''re probably going to have to spend the night on this god''s island, provided things go smoothly enough, so let''s get going. A¨ªfe, Boudica?"

    In but a moment, our two resident Riders had summoned their chariots.

    "Dibs on riding with Best Buddy!" Rika immediately proclaimed.

    "Then you and her will ride with Boudica," I replied without hesitation. Rika saluted cheekily. "Ritsuka, Mash, we''re with A¨ªfe."

    There were no objections to that, so we all mounted up as I said, with Rika and Nero standing with the healed Boudica and Mash and Ritsuka climbing up to stand with A¨ªfe and me. Huginn and Munnin were tucked safely back into the bag I used to carry them, and with Emiya''s projected chairs disappearing into shimmering motes, we were all set and ready to go.

    "We''ll make a straight shot through the Mediterranean," I said, "and approach the island from the northeastern face. Once Emiya and Arash have made landfall safely, we''ll follow behind them and search for this supposed god. Everyone got it?"

    "Right!"

    "Roger wilco, Senpai!"

    "Understood!"

    "Yes! Mm-hm!"

    "Then let''s get going," I said.

    A¨ªfe and Boudica cracked the reins of their chariots, and with a jerk, we were back in motion, racing along through Sicily back the way we came in. Very shortly, the fauna picked back up, and my stomach started churning from the fresh waves of bugs that came and went through my range. My hands gripped the rail of the chariot tightly.

    Blessedly, it didn''t last too long. The journey off of Sicily was comparatively short, and it was maybe ten or so minutes before we swung past the city along the northern coast whose name I couldn''t remember and left solid ground behind. The open sea stretched out before us.

    Thankfully for my stomach, there was almost nothing within range that counted for the purposes of my power, and although it was a little strange to have my sense of self compressed back to my own frail, human body again, the relief was much more profound by far. Without that making everything worse, the ride in A¨ªfe''s chariot was actually pretty tolerable. Not fun, but tolerable.

    A long, uncomfortable hour passed, whereby my tortured knees only got more and more sore from the constant standing, and the spray of the Mediterranean Sea splashed anemically over my arms, protected as we were by whatever magic made A¨ªfe''s Noble Phantasm work. The briney, salty smell got old and stale quickly, but eventually, I got used to it again.

    At last, however, something appeared on the horizon, a splotch of greenish brown that grew larger and larger as we approached. Slowly, more and more details started to fill in as the distance closed ¡ª greenery that grew in sparse patches across the rolling hills, a beach framed by craggy cliff faces, and somewhere deeper in, a small mountain that towered over the rest.

    "This is it!" A¨ªfe said over the sound of the waves and her chariot''s wheels.

    The mysterious island, and the god who called it home.

 Chapter LIX: Sweet Nothings

    Chapter LIX: Sweet Nothings

    The two chariots slowed as we approached the island, both so that we didn''t reach the coast before Emiya and Arash could test the waters ¡ª so to speak ¡ª and so that we could ease to a stop instead of jerking to one and giving us Masters whiplash. Almost a third of the mile out, I felt the beginnings of the local fauna slip under my control: shallow water crabs that were making themselves at home near the beach.

    Their population abruptly dropped off, however, about a hundred feet from the shore, where there was almost a sort of line that none of them would cross. A plummet straight into the abyss, I found, a point where the seabed went straight down to the bottom, leaving the island like the finger of a god jutting up from the sea floor.

    If we had needed any confirmation that this place wasn''t meant to be here¡­

    Ahead of us, as we came within about a football field''s length from the shore, Emiya and Arash materialized on the sandy beach and cautiously ventured further inland. Contrary to our worst case scenarios, nothing happened to them. They were not accosted by some guardian waiting to protect the island, and no bounded field activated to smite them where they stood.

    Anything? I asked Arash.

    I''m not sensing anything to worry about, he replied. The magical energy here is as dense and as pure as you''d expect from a god''s domain, but there doesn''t seem to be anything else unusual about this island.

    He turned around and gave us a quick wave, which A¨ªfe and Boudica both took as a sign that it was safe to make landfall.

    Something about the whole situation tickled old instincts. "Suspicious" was a good way to describe how I felt about our turn of luck, because why would this god leave his island apparently completely undefended? Why just let anyone come and go as they liked without even offering the slightest of resistance?

    Unless this god was so confident in its power that it didn''t feel the need to lay down any defensive measures.

    White sand sprayed out as sixteen hooves transitioned from water to beach, and our two Archers stepped aside to make room as the chariots trundled to a stop about halfway between the frothing waterline and the first patches of anemic green. The instant I took my first breath, I could feel what Arash had meant about the mana in the air, how it sat about the place, sticky and oppressive, like a humid day in early Spring.

    We dismounted into the warm sand, the rest of the team materializing around us, and just like with Emiya and Arash, the presence of several more Servants didn''t seem to inspire any action from the resident god who had brought this island into existence and made it home. No beast from the Age of Gods surged down the beach to attack, no mechanical monstrosity built by Hephaestus dropped down on our heads, not even a threatening rumble of thunder to let us know we weren''t welcome.

    "What?" Rika said sarcastically. "No welcoming committee? No women in grass skirts throwing leis around our necks? No drinks served in little coconuts? Two stars!" She kicked the sand. "At least the beach is kinda decent."

    "Leis are Hawaiin, Rika," her brother explained, "not Greek."

    She stuck her tongue out at him.

    "I''m not picking up anything," Mash said, head swiveling as she looked about. "No sign of the god, Master."

    "Neither did we," Arash said as he and Emiya rejoined the group. "Aside from the mana in the air? This place looks just like any other island in this part of the world."

    "Almost like it was pulled directly from the Reverse Side," Emiya agreed.

    That¡­actually would have made just as much sense as Hephaestus making this place from scratch. I couldn''t say I understood how the whole thing worked, but apparently, stuff got moved to the "Reverse Side of the World" as the Age of Gods ended, which I guess could mean whole islands, too, and a powerful enough god manifesting here would theoretically have what it took to bring an island back, wouldn''t he?

    El-Melloi II grunted. "Can''t be. If this place was pulled directly from the Reverse Side, the Masters wouldn''t be able to even set foot on it without combusting."

    "W-wait, was that a possibility?" Rika''s eyes were round and wide as saucers. "H-hey, we didn''t go over that when we were talking about coming here! I like not exploding, thank you very much!"

    "That''s why we had Arash and Emiya come first," I told her.

    "To check for traps!"

    "To make sure it was safe."

    Although I hadn''t really considered the possibility of the mana density being a problem when we made those plans. It was just a happy bonus that it happened to be one of the things they could check for.

    "You''re right about one thing, Rika," A¨ªfe said, eyes narrowed. "I was expecting a much more hostile welcome from this god than this."

    "Maybe they really do want to be left alone," Ritsuka suggested, "and they won''t bother us unless we bother them."

    "Or they laid a trap deeper in," Emiya replied. He swept his own narrowed gaze across the landscape, but nothing appeared to attack us. "This place¡­ There are a couple of old Greek gods that were very much ambush predators. Hunters. If this island belongs to one of them, then they''ll wait until we''re in just the right place to try and land a critical blow."

    "And if there is a trap?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Then we spring it," I answered bluntly.

    Emiya grunted. "Can''t say I like the idea of facing any of those gods on their home turf, but I guess we do have our very own godslayer on the team, don''t we?"

    "Keep that scythe handy," A¨ªfe said, ignoring the jab. "If you''re right, then there''s one Greek god that would definitely be weak to it."

    Emiya''s brow furrowed, and then his lip curled. "Shit. She might be here? That just makes this whole thing a lot more troublesome."

    "She?" asked Rika. "What, old girlfriend of yours, Emiya?"

    "Can you think of no one from Greek mythology, Master," said Emiya pointedly, "who was once a god, but isolated herself on an island and became a man-eating monster?"

    I straightened and immediately felt around with my bugs, looking for any sign of anything suspicious. Facing down Medusa as a Servant, as a shadow of the monster of Greek mythology whose stare could kill with a single glance, that was one thing. Facing down the original, however? A fallen goddess in all her terrible, awful glory? In an era and place where her legend and belief in it were at their height?

    I wasn''t going to take any fucking chances with that.

    But my bugs found nothing. No suspicious figures hiding on the hilltops or among one of the sparse copses of trees. If she was here, she wasn''t in range.

    "I don''t see Medusa anywhere," I announced for the group''s benefit.

    "Technically, seeing her is the last thing you should do," Emiya joked morbidly.

    "Wait, Medusa?" Ritsuka asked. "She''s the one Emiya was talking about?"

    "Oh dear," said Boudica.

    "If¡­if she''s been summoned as a goddess," Mash said nervously, "then how do we fight her? U-um, we don''t have any of the Noble Phantasms used to defeat her. Unless¡­um, Emiya can make more than just Harpe¡­"

    The look on Emiya''s face said that he didn''t.

    A¨ªfe''s lips pulled tight. "Give me a moment."

    She stalked off and up the beach, making a beeline for the nearest tree, a lone thing that was maybe twice my height and therefore absolutely tiny as far as trees went. G¨¢e Bolg appeared in her hand in a flash of light, and then she swung out, and with a single slash, she cut the tree down almost to its roots.

    "Oh," said Emiya, who had apparently figured out what she was doing. "Yeah, that might work."

    "You know what she''s got in her head?" El-Melloi II asked.

    Emiya crossed his arms, watching her intently. "If she''s doing what I think she''s doing, then yeah."

    A¨ªfe set her spear down, balanced on its butt, and lifted the tree with both hands, and then, with a grunt of effort, threw it into the air. G¨¢e Bolg leapt back into her palm as she reached for it, and as the tree came back down, she lashed out with a flurry of strikes that ripped through it like a woodchipper, sending splinters all about.

    When she was done, a set of roughly hewn wooden plaques fell to the ground, compact enough to sit comfortably in the hand. It dawned on me then what her plan was, and she proved me right when she picked them all up and began carving runes into them one by one.

    Clever. We didn''t have a magical shield that would let us fight Medusa without looking at her, so the only solution to that would be to make something that could let us look at her without worrying about being turned to stone.

    "These should offer some protection against the effects of Medusa''s Mystic Eyes," A¨ªfe announced. She handed one of the plaques to me, and I was a little proud of myself for recognizing at least some of the runes scrawled on it. "If she is the goddess on this island, then even this won''t be a permanent solution, but it should at least last long enough to fight her and kill her."

    She started handing the rest out to the rest of the group.

    "Super Action Mom does it again!" Rika said, grinning broadly.

    "Mm, are these some form of barbarian magic from Britannia?" Nero asked, turning hers over in her hand.

    "You''ve seen me use them before," A¨ªfe said. "They''re a form of magecraft from the Norse. The Primordial Runes that it''s said Odin learned by hanging himself upside down on the World Tree."

    "Ah." Nero nodded. "Germanians, then."

    "You''re not going to keep one?" El-Melloi II asked as he inspected his.

    "My Magic Resistance should be enough to offset her eyes," A¨ªfe answered. "It''s the highest of all of the Servants here."

    "It is until it isn''t," Emiya told her as he took his.

    "Then my skillset already offers me a solution."

    "My Noble Phantasm should help out too, if we need it," Boudica added.

    Emiya shrugged and shook his head.

    "Don''t hesitate," I ordered for good measure. I slipped the makeshift runestone ¡ª although it couldn''t really be a stone when it was made of wood, could it ¡ª snugly into the sheath that housed my knife, wedged between the blade and the leather. "We''re not taking any chances. If you even suspect that her eyes are starting to get to you, then use whatever countermeasures you have to."

    A¨ªfe huffed, but didn''t protest.

    "Emiya and Arash will take point again," I went on. "The rest of us will follow a short distance behind them, so that we don''t all get ambushed. Mash in the front, A¨ªfe and Spartacus on the sides, and El-Melloi II and Boudica will bring up the rear."

    "Smart," El-Melloi II praised. "That would have been my arrangement, too."

    I wasn''t sure what that was really worth when we knew so little about him and the Heroic Spirit he was housing.

    "Da Vinci-chan did say that Senpai fought like a ''proper Caster,''" Rika said.

    "Did she?" El-Melloi II''s thoughts didn''t show on his face. "That''s interesting."

    "When this is all over," I said, "you can ask her yourself, if you want."

    "Maybe I will."

    We arranged ourselves into the formation I specified, and then Arash and Emiya started the trek inland, off the beach and onto more solid ground. As we''d glimpsed earlier on the approach, the island proved a less than hospitable place, with anemic patches of short grass that seemed to struggle to claw for every inch, revealing patches of bald earth and rock that seemed too dry and barren to grow anything at all. The tree A¨ªfe had cut down and apart with her spear was one of the very few that managed to worm its roots deep enough to survive on some hidden reserve of freshwater, and none of them were all that much taller than the first.

    Calling this place dead was a bit of an exaggeration, but not nearly as much of one as it could have been. Even the bugs swiftly began to dwindle as we made our way further onto the island until only the hardier species remained, eking out a living below the hard-packed ground and in the air above it.

    The island itself was not overly large, but it was large enough that it took us the better part of an hour and three rocky, craggy hillsides to make any significant progress towards the center. It was as we were cresting one such hill that Arash and Emiya both held up a hand and we all jolted to a stop.

    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    "There''s something up ahead!" Arash called back to us.

    "Could you be a little more specific than that?" Rika retorted sarcastically. "Are we talking a person, a monster, a god, a monster god, or did we stumble on some buried treasure? Please tell me it''s buried treasure!"

    "Some booty for Queen Booty, maybe?" Ritsuka suggested.

    Boudica chuckled quietly. Probably as much because of who made the joke as it was the joke itself.

    "No," Rika told him flatly. "No, don''t you dare. You''re not allowed to make the jokes, Onii-chan. That''s my job!"

    "It looks like¡­a temple of some kind," Emiya answered.

    A temple? Here, on the island that shouldn''t exist?

    "Oh god," Rika groaned. "When did this become Indiana Jones? I don''t know how to use a bullwhip!"

    My cheek twitched ¡ª she''d come uncomfortably close to my own thoughts about it, although the way she''d phrased things was colored by the usual Rika flair.

    Still. Having there be a temple here on the island wasn''t good news, in the sense that would almost certainly give this god an advantage, but it wasn''t all bad news either, because it meant we had a pretty good idea of where that god spent most of its time. Her? I guess we still didn''t know for sure who it could be, so it still wasn''t impossible for it to be Hephaestus.

    My experience was telling me we weren''t that lucky.

    The rest of our group joined Emiya and Arash on the hill, and when he sensed we''d come up beside him, Arash pointed out towards the distance, towards a valley sitting in the shadow of a far hill. It had to be at least two or three more miles away, which would feel twice as long when we had to climb the hills that were still in the way.

    "See it?" Arash asked. "Built into the hillside, over there."

    Not really. His eyes were just that much better than mine, it seemed, because even with my glasses, I couldn''t make out anything distinct. Just a vague white blur smeared against the dry earth and green grass that was probably large enough to be a building. The late afternoon sun, glaring down on us from the right, made it all the harder to distinguish distant shapes.

    "I don''t see it at all," Rika complained, shielding her eyes with one hand as she peered across the hilltops. "What''s it look like?"

    "A temple," Emiya offered unhelpfully.

    "What kind of temple?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Greek," Emiya went on. He frowned, squinting. "Maybe¡­late Antiquity. I don''t know, I''m not an expert on ancient Greek architecture."

    The twins turned to me. I arched an eyebrow at them. "I''m not either."

    "Hephaestus?" Nero asked eagerly.

    Arash shook his head. "Somehow, I doubt it. Master? Borrow my eyes for a moment."

    I glanced at him, then did as he asked, closing my own eyes as I pushed myself down the thread connecting us so I could look through his.

    It would never stop being amazing seeing through his eyes. Instantly, my vision was sharp as an eagle''s, and the indistinct blob of white gained a level of definition that I was frankly jealous of. White pillars held up the overhang that jutted out from above the entrance, and gleaming marble made up the whole thing, painted in bright colors along the bricks. It stood almost thirty feet high, maybe higher, and I could even see the reliefs carved into the front depicting three identical faces.

    "Master," said Emiya, "you may as well do the same."

    "Oh," said Rika, "um, right, hang on. How did this work again¡­?"

    But more important than all of that was the person walking about out in front of the temple, a young girl of maybe twelve or thirteen dressed in a gown that was a bizarre mix of an ancient Greek chiton and gothic lolita with long, strawberry blonde hair that was so luxurious it made mine on my best day look like a rat''s nest.

    It was also so vivid that it looked pink. A very familiar, very worrying shade of pink.

    "W-wait," Rika said, having apparently figured out the vision sharing trick, "is that¡­"

    "Not Medusa, fortunately," Emiya confirmed. Rika let out a gusty sigh. "Unfortunately, with that level of resemblance, there are only a few options for who it could be, and I''m sorry to say that''s definitely not Hephaestus."

    "One of the other Gorgons, then?" I asked.

    Their names escaped me. They were such a footnote to the Medusa myth that I honestly hadn''t memorized them.

    "Others?" Ritsuka asked, his voice a little higher than normal. "There was more than one?"

    "Stheno and Euryale," Arash confirmed. "Although I''m not sure what kind of goddesses they were."

    "Goddesses of the Earth who embodied men''s desires, pure and virginal and forever lusted after," Emiya drawled, and then he shrugged. "Or something like that. I don''t think we have to worry about her turning into a giant half-snake monster on us."

    "Thank the gods for that," Rika said, relieved.

    "I think you can actually do that personally, here," Boudica said. "Although I''m not sure that one will be all that amused if you did."

    If she was as fickle and prideful as the other Greek gods had always been portrayed to be? Definitely not. Taunting or making fun of the gods was one of the fastest ways to become miserable or dead in all of those Classical myths. Odysseus spent ten years trying to sail home after he snubbed Poseidon, and one of the things I''d had to come to terms with at Chaldea was that those myths were probably more real than not.

    "So what can she do, then?" Ritsuka asked.

    "I don''t remember the myths mentioning anything that might be an Authority," said Mash. "I''m sorry, Senpai. I don''t know."

    "The fact that they''re Medusa''s sisters is the extent of my knowledge," said Emiya.

    Arash shook his head. "Sorry. I''m familiar with their names and some of the details of their legends, but I''m not an expert."

    "That''s about how much I know, too," Boudica said apologetically.

    "The secrets of oppression are vast and varied," Spartacus chimed in. As always, he was grinning. "Those who rebel can only discover the surface of their plots!"

    "Sorry," said El-Melloi II. "The Authorities of minor goddesses from the Greek pantheon weren''t a focus in Modern Magecraft Theories."

    "So it seems none of us knows anything about what this goddess might be capable of." A¨ªfe huffed and crossed her arms. "I guess there''s only one real way to find out now, isn''t there?"

    We could have tried asking Da Vinci¡­but setting up the magic circle and establishing the connection would likely announce to the goddess down there that we were here, if she didn''t already know ¡ª and with how little she seemed to care about her surroundings, it was entirely possible that she didn''t. If it turned out she was hostile, then the closer we could get before she attacked, the easier it would be to project the entirety of our force in response.

    It shouldn''t need to be restated, but a real, live goddess, flush in her divinity, was not something I wanted to take any chances with.

    "Firsthand," I agreed. A¨ªfe grinned that shark-like grin.

    El-Melloi II scoffed. "Because there''s no way that could backfire, is there?"

    It wasn''t like we were flush with other options.

    "Wait," said Ritsuka. "We could just turn around and leave her alone, couldn''t we? Now that we know who it is, I mean."

    "I like that plan," Rika agreed immediately. "That''s not the bear we thought it might be, so can''t we just not poke it?"

    "And if she attacks us from behind while we''re fighting Romulus?" A¨ªfe suggested.

    "Why would she?" Ritsuka countered. "She''s a Greek goddess, right? What does she care about Rome or the United Empire?"

    "Then what is she doing here?" was my own retort. "You know how this works by now, Ritsuka. She doesn''t belong to this era, which means she was brought here for a reason. Whether Romulus brought her here or the World itself called her to fight him, she''s not here just to sit around and do nothing."

    "I mean, she looks pretty comfortable doing nothing to me," said Rika. "I say we let her keep doing nothing."

    "No, Taylor has something of a point." El-Melloi II grunted unhappily. "The Counter Force doesn''t act on whim. If she was summoned to help us, then we''re almost certainly going to need her help at some point. If she was summoned by Romulus¡­ Well, she might have more freedom in that case, but she''d be reliant on his Holy Grail to keep existing."

    A¨ªfe nodded. "Which gives her a vested interest in his success."

    "Oh," said Boudica. "She died several centuries ago, didn''t she? Then this would be like a second life to her."

    "And even if she isn''t normally inclined to help the United Empire, the threat of having that taken away might make her side with Romulus anyway."

    Arash sighed. "So she either has to be on our side, or we have to make sure she can''t interfere. I can''t say I like forcing the issue, but the stakes are too high to let her be."

    "Mm-mm!" said Nero. "It doesn''t matter if she was Greek! If she pledges to support Rome, then I shall make her Roman!"

    Naturally. I wasn''t looking forward to what a clash between Nero''s ego and a goddess''s ego was going to be like.

    "In the end, we''re likely overreacting," said Emiya. "It''s true that she''s a goddess, and that isn''t meaningless, but compared to the Olympians, she''s so minor that she''s almost not worth talking about."

    Rika groaned. "Tell me you didn''t just say that. Tell me you didn''t just say, ''Meh, we can take her.''"

    Emiya smirked. "Petty superstition doesn''t look good on you, Master."

    "Think about the situation we''re in," Rika ordered him flatly. "Think about how we got here and why we''re here. Think about what you and Arash and A¨ªfe all are, and then tell me with a straight face that it''s petty superstition instead of pattern recognition."

    "All her other flaws aside," said El-Melloi II, "at least this one has a good enough head on her shoulders to recognize the situation for what it is."

    "Either way," I cut in, "we''re not going to take her lightly just because she isn''t one of the big names in the Greek pantheon. We keep going like before ¡ª Arash and Emiya out front, with the rest of us following at a distance in case they need backup. Whatever you do, don''t let your guard down."

    A round of assents answered me, some of them a little grudging, and we arranged ourselves back into formation as Emiya and Arash got their head start. We gave them a distance of about fifty feet, which was more than enough space for a pair of Servants to fight while not being so much that the others couldn''t rush in to lend a hand, and then started to make our way in the direction of the temple and the goddess out in front of it.

    "He jinxed us," Rika grumbled under her breath. "Mark my words, Emiya jinxed us, I just know it."

    "Aren''t you blowing it a little out of proportion?" her brother mumbled her way.

    "You don''t tempt Fate, Onii-chan!" Rika hissed back. "That and Murphy are the two things you shouldn''t flip the bird!"

    "Mm, I can''t say I know this ''Murphy,''" Nero chimed in. "However, there are numerous stories about what misfortune befell those who taunted the gods."

    What a world this was that those stories were probably even true, and therefore valid warnings about what happened to those who flaunted forces they couldn''t hope to control.

    It took us another hour or so to cross those two or three miles, made longer by having to go up and down the slopes of the hills that stood in the way. Finally, however, as the late afternoon sun beat down on our necks, we came over the last hilltop and started down the other side towards the temple that was nestled in the valley below. Facing away from us was a slight figure in white, a waifish thing with thin, weak-looking arms and a young, slender body.

    The goddess. Stheno or Euryale.

    Our group slowed as Emiya and Arash continued on, their hands empty and their postures relaxed and nonthreatening. We followed behind cautiously, Mash with shield in hand and A¨ªfe''s shoulders drawn tight. My swarm was still anemic compared to what I''d been able to build up on the mainland, but I maneuvered what little I had into place just in case. If nothing else, they could serve as a distraction.

    The goddess had taken a seat on the ground by the time we were close enough to make her out in better detail, propped up on one arm, and she seemed to be¡­playing with a flower? She looked content to laze about and stare at it, and it was such a stereotypical thing that I half expected her to start pulling out the petals, chanting, "He loves me, he loves me not," like some schoolgirl with a crush.

    Even this close, I couldn''t feel her at all. Was she hiding herself so thoroughly that I couldn''t sense her when she was within metaphorical arm''s reach? Or was she just that weak?

    Emiya and Arash approached her from behind while the rest of us settled in to wait on a hair trigger. The goddess didn''t move, like she didn''t even notice them despite the fact that their presences should be like blaring horns so close to her and neither was making an effort to keep quiet, but when they came to a stop a respectful distance away, so did she as she let her flower drop to the ground.

    Arash and Emiya shared a short look, like they were having a silent debate about which of them was going to take charge of the situation, and then the goddess took the decision right out of their hands. She sighed and stood without waiting for them to announce themselves, and even dripping with annoyance and disdain, the sheer beauty of her voice sent shivers down my spine when she spoke: "I had thought I''d seen the end of the days when men sought me out on my island long ago, but it seems a goddess as beautiful and desirable as me can''t ever escape the attentions of amorous suitors."

    Except what came out of her mouth was almost like a physical force, a trap not unlike my old tricks with spider silk, and it wove around our two Archers with every syllable that passed her lips, ensnaring their minds like a spider might a pair of flies caught in her web.

    Old, dusty alarms that hadn''t seen use in over two years started wailing in the back of my head.

    "That''s¡­not¡­" Arash tried to say, but the words came out slow and stilted, like he was having trouble stringing them together.

    "We''re¡­actually¡­here to¡­ask¡­"

    Emiya wasn''t much better.

    "To ask¡­"

    "Oh, dear me, how bold of you," the goddess said coyly, smiling a smug smile that ill-fit her words. "Both of you at once? Why, you''d rip me apart! After all¡­" Her voice dropped to something seductive and suggestive. "This body has never once known a man''s touch. I can only imagine the sorts of things tall, strong men like you might do to it."

    "Guh!" Emiya stumbled, shaking his head as though to clear it, his hands spasming wildly like he wanted to reach out and grab her ¡ª whether he would throttle her or rip off her clothes to try and take her right there on the ground, I wasn''t sure just then.

    Arash, meanwhile, swayed unsteadily on his feet, like his legs were trying to rise one at a time but something was keeping them rooted to the soil.

    Half-forgotten Master-Stranger protocols rushed to the front of my mind ¡ª but they had to swim against the influence of the goddess''s voice, because even I was being affected by it. There was a hypnotizing quality to it that I couldn''t explain, something in the perfection of the pitch and timbre that made me just want to stop and listen to whatever she said.

    Something was wrong with this. Something was wrong with what was happening¡­wasn''t it? What was wrong? What could possibly be wrong?

    "Perhaps your friend would like to join in, too?" the goddess purred, and it was like the sweetest music in my ears. Her eyes turned to our group, but she looked straight past me and towards Ritsuka. "Well, young man? Won''t you come here and kneel before your goddess?"

    Maybe it was me. Maybe I was what was wrong. After all, why else would this goddess ignore me completely and pick Ritsuka?

    "Nnn¡­"

    Ritsuka took one slow, halting step her way, and then another, and another, like he was fighting a losing battle to resist. The goddess smiled, and she reached out to gently place a hand each on Emiya and Arash''s bare skin, caressing them like she might a lover.

    I had never been more jealous in my entire life than I was just then.

    "No need to fight," she told them both. "You''re only making things harder on yourselves than they need to be. Just submit and pledge yourselves to me, body and soul."

    She turned her gaze back to the struggling Ritsuka and held out a hand in offering. "Won''t you, young man?"

    Ritsuka took another stumbling step forward, faster and surer than the graceless, plodding stalk from before.

    "O¡­nii¡­chan," Rika wheezed.

    And then a droning mass arose from the world around us, a thin cloud of every flying bug in the better part of half a mile, and descended towards the goddess without care or mercy. She let out a startled shriek, and coming to her defense, Emiya rushed forward and projected a flaming sword that ignited every bug that came anywhere near the blade when he swung it. He waved it about like a torch, searing white hot lines through my meager swarm.

    Passenger!

    What was it doing? Why was it attacking the goddess? It was going to make her hate me.

    "Chariot of Boudica!"

    A familiar chariot raced around our group and cut through the space between us and the goddess, galloping about in a circle, and images of the wheels trailed behind it like a row of the famous Roman shield wall.

    Her Noble Phantasm? But there wasn''t anything we needed protecting from.

    Next came A¨ªfe, who stepped between us and the goddess and quickly drew out burning lines of runes in the air with such speed that I couldn''t even see the strokes.

    Instantly, I felt something snap back, like my brain was a rubberband and whoever had been holding the other end had lost their grip, and I staggered as though the goddess''s bewitching voice had been the only thing keeping me upright.

    Ritsuka stumbled backwards, gasping like he''d just run a marathon, his entire body atremble. Buckets of sweat poured down the side of his face, and his hands were shaking so violently that they almost seemed to be vibrating.

    I wasn''t much better. In the heat of the Mediterranean sun, I felt cold. Chills shivered up and down my limbs and my spine, and a cold sweat of my own had broken out on my forehead, leaving me feeling clammy and disgusting.

    Worst of all, I felt used. Violated. It was hard to tie it back to any other moment in my past, because I couldn''t remember a moment that felt quite the same. Nice Guy was the closest, but his power was just to make us disregard him as a threat. He didn''t hijack my everything, make me hang onto his every word, seek out his approval, or hinge my self-worth on his attention. He didn''t drag me back to that small, tiny world that my life had been before the Undersiders, before Leviathan and the Slaughterhouse Nine, before Echidna.

    He didn''t make me feel worthless.

    Swallowing down on my anger, I did my best to reorient myself, to find my metaphorical balance again and regain the calm I would need for the battle about to happen. It was harder than usual.

    I hadn''t been prepared for a mental attack. A terrible mistake, in hindsight, considering the number of relationships in Greek myths that began because Aphrodite or Eros made two people fall in love at first sight.

    "Drat," the goddess sighed, and it took me an extra second to realize that I could actually feel her presence, now. "You had to make things harder, didn''t you? Why couldn''t the whole lot of you just become my playthings and let me do what I want?"

    "You¡­" El-Melloi II seethed. I thought I heard his teeth grinding.

    "Spoiled brat!" Rika snarled. "What you just did, what you were about to do¡­ We''re not toys for you to yank around however you please!"

    Ritsuka panted, unable to contribute, but I could practically feel the fury in his glare.

    "Master, are you okay?" Mash asked shakily. She and A¨ªfe seemed to be the only ones who hadn''t been affected by the goddess''s voice. Even El-Melloi II had been bewitched. "The goddess seems to have some sort of voice-based mental interference type skill."

    "I-I''m fine, Mash," Ritsuka said. I doubted I was the only one who didn''t believe it.

    "I am a goddess," the goddess said plainly, like it was obvious. "Even if some of you are Servants, you are all still humans. The natural state of our relationship is you following whatever I say."

    Emiya jerked violently, but a calming hand from the goddess soothed him back into complacence.

    How did we break her hold? A¨ªfe had obviously done something with runes, but without that, what methods could we use to disrupt her control? Would a simple bee sting knock them out of it? Could we block it by covering our ears, the way Odysseus had the sirens'' song? Was it a matter of distance and it got weaker the further away from her they were?

    All things to think about, but the only surefire way was probably to just kill her and wash our hands of the whole thing. The only trouble with that was whether or not the island beneath our feet would disappear when she did.

    "Heh!" A¨ªfe spat, smiling a nasty smile. "Spoken like one of the Greek gods for sure! The whole lot of you were just a bunch of petty children! Each and every one of you lost your shit when one of your ''toys'' refused to play along!"

    The goddess''s eyes narrowed. "I don''t like you. I think you''ll be the first one to die."

    "Haha!" Spartacus stepped forward to the front of our group, grinning. "The emblem of tyranny stands before me! The greatest oppressor presents herself! There could be no greater field for rebellion!"

    His grin threatened to split his face.

    "And so I will rebel, even if it is against the gods themselves!"

    "What he said!" Rika added.

    "I couldn''t agree more, Spartacus," Boudica said, her voice like iron.

    "¡­What the hell," El-Melloi said, his brow drawn down so deep that it almost seemed to have merged with the bridge of his nose. "I''ve never killed a god before, but there''s a lot of things I never thought I''d do twenty years ago."

    "Our primary goal is to free Emiya and Arash," I told the group. No, my earlier sense wasn''t off, was it? Her presence was¡­tiny, for lack of a better word. "We can worry about what to do with this goddess after we''re sure we''ve got them back."

    "Right!" Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash chorused.

    "Mash and Boudica, you''re our back line. El-Melloi II, you''re on support. A¨ªfe and Spartacus, you''ll have to engage Emiya and Arash."

    "I''ll try not to enjoy punching his face too much," said A¨ªfe.

    "My love overflows!" Spartacus crowed.

    Across the distance, I met the eyes of the uncaring goddess, and her easy gaze was unbothered. If she felt the anger that was simmering behind mine, she gave no indication that she even cared, let alone that it unnerved her in any way.

    She wasn''t a Jack Slash. She wasn''t near enough of a monster for me to put her in the same category as him. If anything, her casual indifference and her apparent disinterest reminded me much more strongly of Alec, although her aloof affectation was much closer to Alexandria than I was comfortable with.

    That was fine, I decided. I wanted to kill her just as much.

 Chapter LX: Sacking the Temple

    Chapter LX: Sacking the Temple

    "Go!"

    Spartacus and A¨ªfe took off like rockets, racing towards the goddess and her two thralls, and Emiya and Arash stepped forward to meet them head on. A¨ªfe made immediately for Emiya, like she had a grudge to settle, and Spartacus in turn intercepted Arash before he could dogpile on her, laughing as he swung his sword.

    The difference in skill level was obvious from that first clash. Spartacus was strong and his history as a gladiator showed, but Arash was simply on a completely different level, because he maneuvered Spartacus'' swordarm about using nothing more than an arrow he conjured out of thin air.

    I didn''t think it would ever stop amazing me. That Arash was a skillful archer was obvious, given it was the class he''d been summoned in and probably the only one he was really qualified for, but his ability to use an arrow like a dagger and the associated skill with knife fighting were as unexpected as they were incredible.

    It wouldn''t be accurate to say that he toyed with Spartacus. Spartacus wasn''t that unskilled, even if he''d likely never gotten formal training in his life. But he got in several shots that he wouldn''t have if he was fighting A¨ªfe instead, jabs at the arms, legs, and gut that nonetheless healed over almost the instant Arash''s arrowhead left Spartacus'' body.

    A¨ªfe''s fight with Emiya was going the opposite direction. She was a whirlwind of blows, raining punches and jabs with her fists that Emiya struggled to try and block with his swords ¡ª she had abandoned G¨¢e Bolg, probably to avoid the risk of dealing any serious damage with her cursed spear.

    Like Arash, he was mostly holding his ground, refusing to let himself be pushed too far away from the goddess he was protecting. He was having a harder time making it work, but somehow or another, he was making it work, dodging and weaving and taking small hits to avoid larger, more devastating ones.

    And as she watched, the goddess smiled a cruel smile. She opened her mouth to talk, no doubt to try and snare Spartacus under her thrall, too. A fly zooming down her throat stopped her before she could even start, and she bent over, hacking and spitting and dry heaving. I wasn''t proud to admit that I got some pleasure out of how miserable she looked.

    So my bugs couldn''t hurt her, but they could definitely be used to distract her. A lesson to take into future fights with Servants with high Magic Resistance who would be immune to the rest of my current kit.

    "Go for the head!" Rika shouted at the melee. "That always works in the movies!"

    I bit my tongue against an admonishment, because in this case, she might not actually be wrong. Would it be that simple? My experience wanted to say no, but in a lot of ways, magic wasn''t as absolute as powers were. None of the Masters and Strangers I''d known could be resisted by sheer willpower, after all.

    It was a better idea than nothing, and it wasn''t like we lost anything in the trying. Probably better not to make it the only thing we tried, though.

    Try and split them off, I ordered A¨ªfe. Give me a clear shot at the goddess.

    Understood, was the short response I got.

    She forced Emiya back, made him stumble, just to give herself a little room, and then she planted her feet and cocked back her arm. The air suddenly trembled. Reality itself wavered and flexed, and then rushed towards her fist, dragging the world along with it. Everything, even my own focus, condensed down, sucked into a point clutched between her fingers as though she held a naked singularity in the palm of her hand.

    My instincts screamed at me that something big was about to happen, that this wasn''t an ordinary punch, and Emiya evidently felt the same, because he scrambled to dodge out of the way as she swung her arm forward.

    "Torannchless."

    BOOM

    Thunder echoed across the valley. Power leapt from A¨ªfe''s knuckles, exploding outwards like a detonating bomb, and the world in front of her cracked and shattered. Stone, dirt, and grass alike disintegrated. The goddess'' scream as she was thrown aside like a ragdoll was swallowed by the torrent of sound.

    The moment passed. The world returned to normal, and I sucked down a sharp breath as my ears rang in the relative silence left behind by A¨ªfe''s attack.

    "Holy cow, Super Action Mom!" Rika squeaked.

    "W-what was that?" Ritsuka asked incredulously.

    "T-toranchless," Mash answered. "Thunder Feat. A-a technique of the ancient Celtic martial arts that C¨²chulainn was said to have used to kill over a thousand men. I never thought I''d actually get to see it¡­"

    The fight didn''t stop just to sit and marvel at the raw power behind that attack, nor to gape at the divot gouged out of the earth in its wake, because Emiya had rolled back to his feet right away, bow forming in his hands and arrow already notched along the string.

    But he didn''t aim at A¨ªfe. No, just like his alternate self had during his fight with C¨²chulainn back in Fuyuki, his sights were set instead on us Masters, and I met his cool, steely gaze from across the battlefield.

    CLANG

    The arrow shattered the sound barrier, and before my eyes could even register him releasing it, Mash had intercepted it with her shield. The twisted metal thing bounced off and up into the air, spinning, to land point-first in the ground off to the side.

    "Emiya, you jerk!" Rika shouted at him. "You''re gonna owe me big time for that one, Mister!"

    "I''m not sure that''s what you should be focusing on," Ritsuka told her.

    "Let me deal with the fact that my chef just tried to kill us in my own way, Onii-chan!"

    Emiya didn''t get a second chance to shoot, because A¨ªfe was on him instantly, redoubling her assault with her fists. He backpedaled for all he was worth, struggling to keep up with her lightning fast strikes, but always protecting his head, like even under the goddess'' control, he could tell what his most vulnerable spot was.

    Arash, meanwhile, was being forced back by Spartacus, who made up for the skill deficit by simply being so dogged and so impossible to put down that Arash had to give ground just to make enough space to move his arms. Blood poured down Spartacus'' body from wounds that no longer existed, and spots of pink light roiled beneath his skin like magma. He laughed all the while, hacking with his sword and seeming not to care at all about the injuries inflicted on him.

    Of course he didn''t. Spartacus seemed to only get happier the more he was hurt. That EX rank Madness Enhancement wasn''t there for nothing.

    And with both of our captured Servants distracted and being forced back and away, that left the goddess herself wide open for attack.

    "Rika, Ritsuka!" I called out to them as I lifted my own arm and took aim. "Now, while the goddess is vulnerable!"

    "Got it!"

    "Roger that, Shushou!"

    The goddess, who had only just picked herself up from where she''d been thrown, snapped her head up, looking stricken.

    You brought this on yourself, I thought viciously. If she was expecting mercy, then I was all out of it.

    Magical energy gathered into my finger, forming a black ball. "Gandr!"

    "Gandr!" the twins echoed a bare instant after me.

    Three Gandr shots zipped through the air. The goddess didn''t move, like she was frozen in place and couldn''t dodge, even as they closed in on her. Was that confidence, because she knew they were useless and wouldn''t do anything to her? Or was she so shocked that she was actually rooted to her spot?

    By the look on her face, I was inclined towards the latter.

    A red blur broke away from the fight with A¨ªfe, and Emiya landed in front of the goddess to block all three shots with the broad side of his twin swords, but that in turn left him open as A¨ªfe appeared behind him as though she had teleported, fist cocked back, and slammed a punch into the back of his head so hard that his face was driven down into the dirt.

    I felt the impact from over here.

    "That looked like it hurt!" said Rika.

    Emiya groaned and slowly picked himself up from the ground. He was actually a little unsteady as he pulled himself to his feet, and a trickle of blood ran down his face, staining several strands of his hair red. "That''s because it did."

    It worked. Blunt force trauma to the head was enough to knock Emiya out of the goddess'' spell.

    "I-I''m not sure you needed to hit him that hard!" Mash called over to A¨ªfe.

    "Better to err on the side of caution," was her flippant response.

    "There''s such a thing as being too cautious," Emiya grumbled.

    "You''re still alive, aren''t you?"

    "There''s no way that would have worked if it was an Authority," El-Melloi II said.

    Definitely not. So whatever power she had that let her take control of us with just her voice, it wasn''t derived from some kind of Authority. That meant that part, at least, would be something we could resist and overcome, but it also meant that she still had something up her sleeve that she hadn''t used yet. Maybe she needed a specific kind of setup, or a certain time of day. Maybe it only worked on men.

    I tagged her with a fly as she picked herself up off the ground, even while my eyes watched Emiya and A¨ªfe turn to help Spartacus knock Arash out of it. I pretended not to notice as she slowly crept away from the fighting.

    "She''s getting away!" Rika shouted, jabbing her finger towards the fleeing goddess.

    Thank you, Rika, I thought, annoyed, for letting her know we know she''s escaping. It''s not like I was tracking her with my bugs or anything.

    "After her!" I ordered aloud.

    "Don''t let her escape!" Nero echoed. "She has much to answer for!"

    The sneaking goddess instead broke out into a run, racing towards the marble archway of her temple, and Arash in turn broke off his fight with the others to cover her retreat. He materialized his bow between one step and the next, and a volley of arrows found Spartacus'' legs, pinning his feet to the ground. Spartacus didn''t even slow down ¡ª he ripped himself free in a spray of gore, blood, and joyous laughter.

    "More!" he crowed. "More! Let me show you my love even more!"

    Or maybe the only place the goddess could use her Authority was inside her temple. I didn''t want to find that out the hard way.

    Arash scooped the goddess up in one arm, leaping across the distance, and set her down at the foot of the stairs leading up and into her temple, and as she stumbled and hurried to make her way inside, he turned back around and barred our way. Another volley of arrows sank into the flesh of the pursuing Spartacus, but Spartacus just laughed them off again as though they weren''t even enough of a nuisance to care.

    I saved my Gandr for later and made sure to keep Mash between myself and Arash, in case he pulled a tactic from Emiya''s playbook and decided to target us Masters, but the odds were stacked too far against him. Against Spartacus alone, he might have managed. Against two Servants, he was good enough that he might actually have held his own for a while.

    But not against three, especially when one of them was an expert martial artist whose skill had long surpassed human limits.

    Using the arrow he was wielding as a makeshift dagger, he was good enough to both parry Spartacus sword and deflect Emiya''s arrows, a display of ability that frankly made my understanding of physics want to go cry in a corner. Then Aife came in, rushing into his guard like a runaway train, and Arash, caught between handling Spartacus and Emiya attacking him at the same time too, just didn''t have enough arms and enough space to avoid the fist that homed in on his left temple as though it was magnetized.

    He didn''t go down like Emiya. Instead, he was thrown backwards as though he had been shot from a cannon and smashed into the temple stairs with enough force to crack the marble he landed on.

    This time, the fighting did stop. We all held our breaths, waiting, tensed and prepared for if he got back up and kept fighting. A¨ªfe''s fist was still clenched, Spartacus leered over him, unblinking, and Emiya''s fingers were curled around the string of his bow.

    Then Arash groaned and levered himself up, grimacing and rubbing at where he''d been punched. "Did you really have to hit me that hard?"

    "Had to be sure," A¨ªfe told him unapologetically.

    "Hits like a truck, doesn''t she?" Emiya said wryly.

    "Or an elephant."

    With their fighting over and everyone back to normal, the rest of us raced over towards them. Arash turned to me, smiling ruefully. "Master ¡ª"

    "No time," I cut across him. "The goddess has made it into her temple and down the secret passageway at the back ¡ª"

    "Oh, you''ve gotta be kidding me!" Rika exclaimed. "Really?"

    "¡ª and I don''t want to find out the hard way what she can pull off if she has enough time and prep while she''s down there."

    "Nothing good," El-Melloi II added darkly.

    "Couldn''t we just leave?" Ritsuka asked.

    "You want that at our backs while we''re fighting Romulus?" A¨ªfe asked him. He didn''t have an answer to that.

    "No arguments," I said firmly. "We go, now, while we''re still able to put her down, before she has the chance to reach whatever she''s trying to reach down there."

    And while the fly I had stuck to her was still both alive and within my range. My swarm just didn''t have the density right then to do something like search the entire network of tunnels down there.

    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!

    No one seemed any more eager than I was to let the goddess dig in and start pulling out the real divine stuff ¡ª whatever that wound up being for her ¡ª so we gathered together, cast a few First Aid spells on Arash and Emiya to fix their wounds, and immediately followed the goddess into her temple.

    Marie probably would have been shouting at me about how this was just like fighting a magus in his workshop only a thousand times as dangerous, but our options were just too limited.

    The temple itself wasn''t overly large, and it was mostly just a singular room filled with the usual rows of columns holding up the ceiling, with a smoothly hewn floor and walls with etched murals depicting what, at a quick glance, might have been the story of Medusa and her two sisters. We made a beeline instead for the door behind the altar, a boxy shape cut into the wall where the murals on either side met, and in that empty space was supposed to be the fearsome figure of Medusa in all her terrible glory.

    But the secret passage had been opened, leaving that doorway for us to enter, and down into the passageway we went.

    Immediately obvious was a difference in the build. I couldn''t help noting how the temple itself was well-kept and new-looking, with the only damage being what we had done to it with our fighting, while the passageway that led down into the earth was much worse cared for. Loose marble bricks lined the ceiling and walls, with cracks through some of them, and whereas the pillars in the temple looked as much decorative as functional, the ones here were much more obviously supporting the structure.

    "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this," Rika huffed as we descended the stairs. "That Indiana Jones thing was supposed to be a joke!"

    So did I. The thing about Indiana Jones movies was that they tended to have a lot of collapsing temples and secret traps that released venomous snakes, and I could very much do without any of that, thank you.

    We came to a split in the tunnel, a fork with three offshoots.

    "This way!" I told everyone, and I turned right on the path the goddess had taken.

    My anemic swarm wasn''t the best, but as I pulled them in to map the rest of the place as best I could, the other paths opened up to me more. The one on the left seemed to be a deadend, coming to a stop at a secret chamber that had¡­something in it, but what, I couldn''t tell. My swarm wasn''t dense enough to give me a clearer picture.

    The middle path, I couldn''t see the end of it. I was willing to bet it either went to a separate chamber or led back outside somewhere. For whatever reason, the goddess hadn''t taken it either, so we had to avoid it.

    "Miss Taylor," Mash asked, "what are we going to do when we catch the goddess?"

    I didn''t have a good answer. Some part of me wanted to end the threat immediately, but the dangers in that hadn''t just disappeared because I was angry about what she''d done to us ¡ª to me. Killing her summarily probably wasn''t the best idea, I just didn''t have a better one.

    "Whatever we have to," I eventually decided on.

    "Are we going to have to kill her?" Mash asked quietly.

    "Maybe."

    Mash''s hair fell over her eyes as she hung her head. "I see."

    "Let''s not get ahead of ourselves," said El-Melloi II. "If the goddess pulled this island from the Reverse Side, then there''s a distinct possibility that it would slip right back when she disappears. Killing her might not be an option."

    So I wasn''t the only one worried about something like that.

    "Oh great," said Rika, "more Indiana Jones shit. Will the whole place collapse if we step on the wrong tile, too?"

    "This isn''t a movie, Rika," her brother chided.

    "It should be! Because it definitely feels like one!"

    "A movie?" Nero asked bemusedly.

    "It''s like a painting with sound ¡ª"

    "Not the time, Rika!"

    "There''s no better time than when you''re starring in one, Onii-chan!"

    "We''ll figure something out," I said. I hated how vague and unhelpful that was.

    Deeper into the island''s belly we went, and the further we went, the worse the state of disrepair. The cracks had evolved into missing chunks, and then into whole sections of brick gone entirely. Hunks were torn out of the columns supporting the ceiling, like someone had taken a shovel or a pickaxe and scraped away at them. Some of them were so dilapidated that it was a miracle they were still standing.

    The floor didn''t escape unscathed. Loose bricks jutted up, and it was a minor miracle that none of us Masters tripped over them. In some places, the marble had been worn away, leaving patches of bare earth and rubble, and more and more, we had to watch our steps so that we didn''t go tumbling to the ground and land in a gigantic pile of bodies.

    The one saving grace was that this wasn''t like Mount Etna. Things were getting steadily warmer as we went, but nowhere near the stifling heat that we''d experienced going down that lava tube and towards the nexus of ley lines that lied at its end.

    Eventually, the goddess'' path changed, and after a moment, I realized that it was impossible for her to move the way she was in the passageway we were all traveling in. Further on still, the sound of raised voices echoed off the marble, distorted by the distance and by how much they had to be bouncing around.

    "Voices?" Ritsuka huffed, panting.

    "Is there someone else here?" Boudica asked worriedly. "Da Vinci didn''t say anything about there being another presence on this island."

    "It could be that the temple hid them from her scan," said Mash.

    "But not the goddess herself?" El-Melloi II countered.

    "Or the goddess was the one hiding them," suggested A¨ªfe.

    "The better question is who it is, not how or why they''re here," Emiya said gravely. "On this island, in a temple dedicated to one of the Gorgons ¡ª"

    "Make sure you all have the protective charms A¨ªfe made," I ordered, having already reached the same conclusion.

    The worst and most likely possibility was that the other two were up ahead and the goddess had gone instead for reinforcements. We were about to have a rematch with Medusa.

    "¡ª talking to me, you jumped-up iguana!" came as we got closer to the end of the tunnel.

    "Who are you calling an iguana, you overgrown garden snake?"

    "Garden snake? How presumptuous of you to address a true dragon so rudely!"

    "''True dragon,'' my tail! I''m more of a dragon than you could ever hope to be, you oriental bumpkin!"

    "Bumpkin? How dare you! I''m a refined lady!"

    "Please! I have more refinement in my left pinkie than you do in your whole body!"

    "Enough!" the goddess'' voice thundered. "We don''t have time for your antics!"

    We came out of the passageway and into a hallway, something that resembled the temple we''d started in, only if it had been left out to the elements for a thousand years. There were no walls, only a floor, a roof, and more of those famous Grecian pillars that held it up. We raced through it and down the stairs at the end, and at the bottom, we exited out into¡­

    "Whoa¡­"

    ¡­a massive cavern, filled to the brim with even older architecture. To either side was a raised platform made of what looked more like sandstone than marble, and twin streams of water flowed down shallow canals and into the basin that sat across from us. The basin itself formed a kind of pool, or perhaps a bath, and steam wafted off of the surface to let us know exactly why it had gotten hotter as we came closer.

    And standing in that basin, submerged up to their hips ¡ª

    "There''s intruders on the island, and they''re ¡ª"

    "Eek! Right behind you!"

    ¡ª was a pair of naked young women.

    "Kyaaa!" screamed the second of them, dropping down into the water to hide herself. "Don''t look!"

    She had horns, of all things. A pair of them, the white of exposed bone, jutting out from her hair and curling around her head like one of the Romans'' laurel crowns.

    "A bit late for that, bumpkin!" the first shouted, and in a flash, she was dressed in a gothic pink and black dress. "Besides, did you already forget what you are? How pathetic!"

    She also had a pair of horns, although they looked much more diabolic than the other''s, and of all things, she even had a large, serpentine tail swaying behind her. Connected, somehow, to the base of her spine, and thick enough that my head spun trying to imagine how that anatomy was supposed to work.

    Then again, I''d known a guy who was literally made of metal. I wasn''t sure I really had room to talk.

    "Those two are¡­"

    "Servants detected," Mash reported crisply. "Master, it looks like those two are Servants summoned by the goddess somehow."

    "That''s not Medusa," Emiya blurted out.

    The goddess whirled around, eyes wide and expression now without any hint of mirth or smugness.

    "Oh, right," the second woman said, and as she stood, she too was dressed in a flash of light, donning what looked to my inexpert eyes like a formal kimono. "I''m a Servant, too."

    I narrowed my eyes on first one, then the other. Two unknowns. Lancer and Berserker, but I couldn''t see anything beyond that. Of course, neither of them had revealed anything else, had they?

    So what did they have to do with the goddess and why were they here on her island? More Strays, or had they been specifically summoned?

    "Senpai," said Rika, sounding uncertain, "am I supposed to be able to see her skills and stuff with my super special Master vision?"

    "Her?"

    Rika pointed ¡ª not at either of the new Servants, but straight at the goddess.

    What?

    "I see it, too," Ritsuka confirmed. "Class ¡ª Assassin. Presence Concealment, A-plus. Divine Core of the Goddess, EX. Magic Resistance, A. Alluring Ee-you ¡ª"

    "Alluring Euphony," I read out myself as I turned to see it with my own eyes. So that was what she''d used to snare us with just her voice.

    "That shouldn''t be possible," El-Melloi II said. "Servant containers aren''t built to handle a Divine Spirit. Her Saint Graph should be too high quality to fit." He grimaced, and then added, "Normally."

    It worried me that he had to add that caveat at the end. Just what had he been through in his life that he could so confidently imply that there were exceptions to gods being impossible to summon as Servants?

    Not that I really had room to talk there, did I? Again. He would probably think my life sounded like a fever dream if he ever heard about it.

    "How rude," the Berserker in the kimono huffed. She produced an intricate paper fan from thin air and used it to hide her mouth like she was some kind of noblewoman. "Don''t you know it''s impolite to peek at a lady while she''s bathing?"

    "Of course it is," the Lancer said. "So you don''t have anything to be concerned about, do you?"

    The Berserker snarled. "Why, you ¡ª !"

    "Enough!" the goddess bellowed. "The both of you! Stop fighting each other and fight them!"

    Both of the other Servants grimaced, cowed. The Lancer summoned up a wicked looking spear, twirling it about like it was a baton, and then brandished its wicked point our way. The Berserker lifted her fan as though it was her weapon, too.

    There were stranger weapons out there, I guess.

    "Looks like we''ll have to settle this later, Snaky," the Lancer said.

    "Hell itself must have frozen over," the Berserker said, "because it looks like I have to fight beside you, Iguana."

    "Master¡­" Mash muttered. "It looks as though we can''t avoid a fight."

    "No," Ritsuka agreed. "And it doesn''t look like they''re under the goddess'' spell, either."

    They were coherent and talking, so no, it seemed like they were just working for her on their own account. Had she summoned them herself, then? Maybe. Or maybe they''d been assigned to guard her by Romulus.

    My eyes flicked between the three of them.

    We had the numerical advantage and probably the strength advantage. However, as long as the goddess could open her mouth and turn almost any one of us against the others, that meant not much of anything at all. Lancer and Berserker wouldn''t let us just swoop in and take her out, not if they were following her orders to begin with, but if they were otherwise distracted, then taking the goddess out would be simple.

    We just had to be careful, because I didn''t think the swarm I was pulling in from their exploration of the other tunnels would get her fast enough to be of use gagging that goddess.

    "A¨ªfe," I began quietly, doling out orders, "subdue the goddess, using whatever means necessary. Nonlethally, if you can." Still didn''t want to find out what happened to us if this island slipped back into the Reverse Side while we were still on it. "Emiya, Spartacus, that Berserker and Lancer will be up to you. You just need to keep them distracted long enough for A¨ªfe to get the goddess. Arash is overwatch."

    Emiya glanced at Rika. "Master¡­"

    "We''ll go with Senpai''s plan, Emiya," Rika told him, uncharacteristically quiet and serious. "Dunno about you, but I don''t want Miss Pied Piper over there to turn me into her stooge again."

    "Which leaves Mash and I on the defense," said Boudica.

    "And me on support duty," added El-Melloi II.

    "Right."

    The tension hung in the air. Both sides seemed to be waiting for the other to make the first move. None of the Servants even seemed to be blinking, and since I didn''t think they even had to, it was entirely possible they weren''t.

    Then, it happened, so quickly that it took my brain a few moments to catch up with everything, and by then, it was already over.

    Who moved first or who reacted first, I still wasn''t sure. But between one blink and the next, Emiya, Spartacus, and A¨ªfe all launched themselves across the gap as Lancer came in to meet them. Berserker didn''t jump forward into the fray herself ¡ª instead, she swung her fan and flung a fireball in Emiya''s direction.

    "Futile!" El-Melloi II shouted, and he swung a feather fan that sent a gust of intense wind to intercept the fireball. It exploded halfway to its target.

    "Trace, on!" Emiya incanted.

    A volley of ordinary swords shot out, and Berserker screamed as they snagged on her kimono and yanked her back into the water, pinning her to the basin floor.

    "Hahaha!" Spartacus laughed. "Let me show you my love!"

    "Get away from me, you freak!" Lancer squealed.

    Spartacus came down on her like a sack of bricks, and she scrambled to keep him from gutting her with his sword.

    A¨ªfe was the fastest, and she was on the goddess almost before the other two had reached their own targets, and the goddess, clumsy and physically unimposing, was swiftly and effortlessly trapped in a submission hold.

    And it all happened in just a second or two.

    "Okay, okay!" Lancer cried. "I surrender, I surrender!"

    I took in a breath. That was¡­unusually easy, after how much trouble the goddess had given us up above.

    "Mmph!" the goddess in question grunted, unable to get a word out because of how A¨ªfe was holding her jaw.

    Since the danger seemed to otherwise be over, I walked closer to the goddess, who glared at me with baleful red eyes.

    "Do you?" I asked, turning briefly towards where Spartacus was battering on Lancer, hacking away at the shaft of her spear like he was chopping down a tree.

    "I do, I do!" Lancer squeaked. "Just get this big, ugly brute away from me!"

    I glanced at Boudica, and she nodded back. "Spartacus?" she said calmly. "I think that''s enough. Let poor Lancer catch her breath, will you?"

    "Hahahaha!"

    But he did as Boudica asked and stopped hammering away with his sword. His mouth was still pulled into that unsettling rictus grin. I didn''t think I''d ever seen him without it. No, maybe once, but that was it.

    Lancer, no longer under assault, sank into the basin as though she was dissolving into a puddle, apparently unbothered by her dress soaking right through. A long, weary sigh heaved out of her lips.

    As for Berserker, she was still trapped, and Emiya stood over her with his bow out and an arrow half-drawn. If she tried to get out or attack, he could end her instantly. I was inclined to leave her down there for now, since Servants didn''t need to breathe.

    That just left¡­

    "Goddess," I began, staring down at her without blinking. She glared back up at me. "A¨ªfe," I said without looking away, "if she tries to bewitch any of us with her voice again, feel free to snap her neck."

    Mash gasped behind me, and the goddess'' eyes went wide, but A¨ªfe just grinned that savage grin, apparently on the same wavelength as me. "Of course."

    I took another breath, deliberately slow this time, and let it cool the remnants of the anger I''d carried with me from outside. I needed a level head for this. Letting what happened outside color my actions would be counterproductive.

    "Let her talk," I ordered.

    A¨ªfe''s hand shifted to rest gently but threateningly along the throat, and the goddess grunted, working her jaw as though to test for soreness or soothe out the kinks.

    "So?" the goddess said eventually. "What is it you want from me, human?"

    "There''s a lot I could want," I acknowledged, because revenge was definitely one of them, "but first and foremost, there''s a few questions I need answered."

    "Like what?" the goddess asked frankly.

    "Are you on the side of the United Empire?"

    I expected a couple of different reactions. Maybe an immediate denial, maybe a smug confirmation followed by a threat of what Romulus would do when he found out about this. A derisive snort wasn''t one of them.

    "Of course not," she said, like the very thought was ridiculous. "Although they are, in a way, why I was summoned here."

    "Romulus summoned you?"

    "No. My summoning was a response to his. No doubt, the World intended for something of equal magnitude to show up, but that man willfully suppressed his divinity, so I showed up instead."

    How did that make sense? "Why you?"

    "I am Stheno," she replied as though that was self-evident. At least we finally had a name to give her. "I am a goddess formed from men''s ideals, to be worshiped, pampered, and lusted after, not to conduct matters of war or conflict. I may be a full goddess, but in many ways, this Servant''s body is an upgrade from what I was before."

    "Ah," said El-Melloi II. I turned to him for a moment.

    "Ah?"

    "The Counter Force tends to act by matching a threat with a kind of equal but opposite response," he explained. "Since he''s considered Rome''s Divine Ancestor, Romulus would no doubt possess a high level of Divinity under normal circumstances, especially when he''s summoned inside Rome itself. The response to that might be another Servant with a high level of Divinity, or else one specifically built for the act of godslaying. Because he suppressed his Divinity, however ¡ª"

    Emiya chuckled. "The response went awry and accidentally snagged this useless goddess instead."

    Useless? I wasn''t sure that was true. Sure, she didn''t have the raw combat potential of A¨ªfe or the sheer physicality of Spartacus, but with her voice, there was a lot of havoc she could wreak ¡ª had wreaked just on us a short while ago. Masters and Strangers might not be as obviously impressive as Brutes, but they were no less dangerous for it, as so many of us had proven over the course of the last twenty years.

    "The Divine Ancestor denied his godhood?" Nero asked, confused. "Why?"

    "Who knows?" Emiya shrugged. "It''s not like any of us have met the guy."

    "I should hope you would have told me if you had! Mm!"

    I turned back to Stheno. "And these other two? Were they summoned with you?"

    "In a way," Stheno replied. Her eyes lanced a glare Lancer''s way. "These two useless lumps were my own botched summoning attempt. I tried to chain summon my sisters off of my own summoning, and these two are what showed up instead. I might as well have not bothered and saved myself some time and energy."

    Thank god it failed, I thought. Facing all three Gorgons at once would have been a nightmare. Facing one had come closer to defeating us than I was frankly comfortable admitting.

    I had to wonder, though, how Lancer and Berserker connected to Stheno, if they connected at all. Had the Counter Force interfered with Stheno''s attempted chain summoning and they were here because we would need them later on? Or was it all just a coincidence and there was some unknown thread tying the three of them together?

    "Then does that put you on our side?" I asked. "That is, the side of Proper Human History?"

    "Your side?" Stheno laughed derisively. "Why should I care either way? Whether human history continues or is snuffed out doesn''t matter to me at all."

    A¨ªfe snorted. "Spoken like a true Greek goddess. Zeus must be proud."

    "Considering I''m more of a true goddess than he is?" Stheno said smugly. "He''d be jealous, not proud."

    I was just going to put that one aside, for now. Whatever she meant by that wasn''t relevant to the situation at hand.

    "So you''re just going to sit here while the world burns?"

    Stheno stared back up at me defiantly, unbowed. "And what if I am? As I said, I''m no use to you in combat, and I have no interest in your petty squabble with Romulus. What do you intend to do about that? Kill me?"

    A part of me was tempted, if only to remove the threat she could pose because of how easily she could undermine us. As long as we could be sure she wouldn''t come back to get us later, however, then I was fine with leaving her be.

    Even if it would be really convenient to have her around to bewitch the enemy Servants. On the other hand, high levels of Magic Resistance were apparently enough to shrug off her Alluring Euphony, and Romulus would almost certainly have it at a similar level.

    "Hold it!" Nero interrupted before I could say anything. "As your beloved emperor, I would have a say in these negotiations!"

    I looked back at her, and she strutted across the aging stone with her head held high and her shoulders squared proudly. When she reached us, she jabbed a finger at Stheno.

    "I have an offer for you, Goddess Stheno!" Nero proclaimed. "Become Roman!"

    "Huh?" Stheno sneered, tilting her head. Although she didn''t say it aloud, I heard her silent, "what are you? Stupid?" that was tacked onto that.

    "Pledge yourself to Rome!" Nero elaborated. "Become Rome''s patron goddess! Bless Rome, and I shall erect monuments to your glory and make you Rome''s beloved goddess! Mm-mm!"

    "Well, that''s one way to get her on our side," Ritsuka said wryly.

    "Shush." Rika hushed her brother. "Let Best Buddy work her magic!"

    "Become a Roman goddess?" Stheno mused. "I refuse."

    "Your refusal is refused!" Nero said stubbornly. "I am emperor!"

    "And I am a goddess," said Stheno, like that was the end of it.

    To be fair, when you actually were, it wasn''t like that was a bad claim to authority.

    "There''s no need to hesitate!" Nero insisted. "I am emperor! If I say it will be so, then it will be so! If I proclaim that you shall be as a radiant goddess of the dawn, then the people of Rome shall praise you as such! If I say you are the protector of our great empire, then they will give thanks in your name! The goddess Stheno shall become as glorious as August Jupiter!"

    "Not interested," Stheno said immediately.

    Nero opened her mouth to continue, but she stopped when I set my hand on her arm and gently pushed hers back down.

    "Perhaps the goddess Stheno will reconsider after she''s had some time to think about your generous offer," I said diplomatically. "After all, it''s been an¡­eventful afternoon, and we did invade her temple."

    After she ensnared us with a Master effect and made us fight each other, but it wouldn''t help the situation to inflame tempers again, least of all mine.

    "We''ll stay the night on the island, near the beach," I went on, and I glanced meaningfully at A¨ªfe, who would be key in protecting us if Stheno decided to get revenge in the middle of the night. A¨ªfe gave me a small nod. "We''ll head back out tomorrow, after breakfast. If she''s changed her mind by then, we can take her with us."

    Nero''s brow furrowed, and for a moment, she considered my suggestion. Then, she nodded, and in the same boisterous voice, she declared, "I shall allow it! Mm-mm! Your emperor is as gracious as she is generous, after all!"

    Ritsuka turned to his sister, and in a whisper that everyone heard:

    "Are you sure I wasn''t supposed to let Senpai work her magic?"

 Interlude MJB: Knifes Edge

    Interlude MJB: Knife''s Edge

    Of all the wonders that came with being a Servant, the chance to see what had become of everything you had built over the course of your life so long after your own death was undoubtedly the greatest.

    Brutus hated every inch of it.

    The Rome that Brutus had sacrificed so much for, the Rome that he had killed for, the Rome that he had eventually died for, it was a Rome that no longer existed.

    Instead, in the place of that enlightened republic was a farcical empire, a facsimile of the nation he and his fellows had dedicated their lives to building and preserving. Ruled no longer by the wizened sages of the Senate but by the whims of tyrannical emperors, it was everything he had first feared it would become that day when he had plunged his dagger into the chest of Gaius Julius Caesar.

    It was no longer a nation of people, but a festering pit that served only to glorify those who claimed to be exalted above the rest, those petty children who paraded about calling themselves emperors. It was no longer a nation guided by the steady hand of the senators who held stewardship of the lands and their people, but a crumbling cesspool yanked to and fro by the indelicate grip of a stream of dictators who invariably exploited that power and prestige for their own ends.

    The most recent of these so-called emperors, Nero, was no better than her forebears. She was just as impulsive, just as whimsical, and just as prone to flights of fancy. Worst of all, she was exactly the sort of self-aggrandizing, self-centered, self-absorbed madwoman that Brutus had feared would one day sit at the helm of Rome since the moment Caesar himself had refused to relinquish his power.

    Of all the parts of this current Rome that chafed his sensibilities, she was the one he hated most of all.

    "A callow upstart," Brutus muttered to the empty air. "I would see Rome in better hands than hers."

    And then, immediately, he sealed his lips and silently scolded himself for letting even that much out. The capital city was full of loyalists, and any indiscretion of his within earshot of the wrong ears would carry with it an inevitable and ignoble end.

    He was no novice to intrigue and subterfuge, after all. Even if his contempt sometimes got the better of his tongue, this was not his first conspiracy against a foe so dangerous to the cause of a more just Rome, and he of all people understood the necessity of keeping one''s sentiments close to the chest, especially those that those in power might consider seditious or treasonous.

    The past weeks, however, had not been easy on the nerves, and the growing sense of the approaching culmination of all that work had left even one as esteemed as he with an impatient anxiety.

    The time was almost upon him. Soon, he would commit his second act of murder.

    Therefore, this was no time to let himself slip up and make such critical mistakes. If all was to go as it needed to, then the most important thing was that he escaped suspicion for at least that much longer. As long as he could keep it together until then, until that moment.

    What happened after was of no concern.

    No, from the beginning, Brutus had known the inevitable result that would come from his plot. There was no other possibility.

    When this was all over, Marcus Junius Brutus would be dead once more.

    And he had accepted that as a foregone conclusion. Therefore, there was no reason to fear the unavoidable outcome of the path he had committed himself towards.

    A breath hissed out of his lips, and his footsteps became surer, less tense, as though the thought put him at ease. In a way, it did. There was something incredibly freeing in knowing that your death was inevitable and soon, as though the weight of the future no longer needed to rest upon your shoulders.

    Yes. Brutus would entrust the future to those who came after. The only thing he needed to concern himself with was ensuring that the opportunity for that future to be grasped came to pass.

    For now, destiny called, and so Brutus walked through the streets of the capital city towards his certain doom.

    Along the way, he was greeted respectfully by several of the city guard, men decked out in the legion''s armor. "Senator," they mumbled at him as he passed, bowing their heads in deference, stony-faced and solemn.

    "Citizen," he greeted them each in kind.

    He saw no faces he recognized, not truly, even though they recognized him either from his face or from his senatorial robes. They were all as the same to him, all victims of this same corrupt system that had betrayed the principles of the Rome Brutus believed in, and so the names and the faces to which they were attached were interchangeable.

    Ha. What a farce. What use were senatorial robes as a marker of his station when there was no senate for him to be a part of?

    It made him sick, and the sour feeling in his gut drew his lips tight and his brow down, carving deep furrows into the lines of his face. Some might have said it made him look distinguished. Certain others might have used the word "constipated" in their vulgarity, a sure sign of Rome''s degradation. All would have immediately put him to the sword if they had even an inkling of his thoughts.

    Eventually, as the sun drew high in the sky, the Curia came into view, a tall, simple building unadorned with any of the ostentatious ornamentation of the imperial palace, and Brutus took a brief moment to pause, breathe, and square his shoulders. The false heart in his chest, a simulacrum of the one that had stopped upon his death so many decades ago, picked up speed, and he forced it to calm.

    It would have been appropriate, he thought wryly, if the Curia he was about to enter was the same in which he had ended Caesar''s life. But that murder had taken place in the theater while the Curia Julia was still being built, and the Curia Julia had been complete for many years now. There was no reason why he and his compatriots should meet elsewhere than where they were originally meant to.

    Brutus ascended the hill leading up to the Curia, all the more keenly aware of the weight against his side because of what it was about to be used for.

    As he climbed the steps, however, a woman peeled away from the building''s shadow, a petite, lithe thing with long, black hair and eyes as sharp as razors.

    "Good morning, Brutus," she greeted him amicably, smiling as though he was an old friend.

    "Good morning," he greeted her in turn.

    "You''re looking especially dour today," she teased. "Haven''t had your morning cup of wine yet?"

    "Whereas I see that you have yet to drink yours," he said archly.

    From her belt, she produced a wineskin, and she held it out in offering. "We could always remedy both of those right now, if you like?"

    "I think not."

    She shrugged. "Suit yourself."

    Then, she lifted the wineskin to her lips and drank deeply of it. Brutus watched her throat contract with every gulp with a kind of morbid curiosity. For such a small woman, she handled her liquor well.

    "Can Servants even become intoxicated?" he wondered.

    It was not in his personality to have tried. As any Roman, he enjoyed a good cup of wine, sweetened with sapa, but the very last thing he needed to do here was risk the discovery of his plans or his true nature, so he had never truly tried. Not if there was even the slightest chance that it would loosen his lips.

    She took one last gulp and lowered her wineskin with a sigh, shaking her head. "Who knows? I''d like to think that even normal Servants can enjoy the effects of good wine or that beer stuff the Mesopotamians invented, but you''d have to ask one of them."

    "Quite."

    She secured her wineskin on her belt again, then folded her arms and looked back up at him. When she canted her hips to the side, one leg slipped past the hem of her robe, revealing the smooth, bare skin of her thigh. Brutus wondered if she dressed the way she did specifically for the purpose of distracting men so that they never suspected her.

    "So what brings you to the court today?" she asked.

    Brutus, who had begun to relax against his will, straightened. "An emergency summons," he answered.

    Her eyebrows raised. "No joke? Something going on that I should know about?"

    "Nothing that I was informed of officially," he told her cryptically. "However, given the current state of affairs, the conclusions I have come to are all but certain. It appears that the Divine Ancestor believes that the situation has devolved to the point he may need to become personally involved."

    "You don''t say¡­"

    "I fear that our time has run out," he confessed. "The moment for which I have been preparing has arrived, and my path forward is clear. The course I have set upon is reaching its inevitable conclusion."

    "Are you sure?" she asked solemnly. "There might still be time. A better opportunity to aim higher. Emperor Nero isn''t even in Rome anymore, last I heard. She''s out of reach."

    Brutus scowled and took a deep, calming breath. Even if her very name infuriated him, losing his temper over Nero now of all times was dangerous.

    "Things with Emperor Nero will be handled in due time," he replied. "It is unfortunate that I will be unable to see them through, but it was something to which I had already resigned myself from the beginning."

    His compatriot frowned. "I see. There''s nothing I can do to convince you otherwise? If you already know how this is going to end, then you have to know it means you die."

    "As I said. I had already resigned myself to this from the beginning."

    A bitter smile curled on her lips, and she shook her head again. "Yeah," she said ruefully, "I understand that better than you probably think."

    Brutus did not question her on that. Her backstory wasn''t one he was especially familiar with, even as a Heroic Spirit, but there was no shortage of people throughout history who had gone to their deaths for the sole purpose of achieving the one thing they thought needed to be achieved.

    This did not have to be her own grave, however. He could lie in it by himself this time.

    "Perhaps it is insulting to ask you to be a simple courier," he said, and he dug about in his robes for the scroll he had prepared, "but as I myself will be unable to deliver this intelligence¡­"

    He held it out to her, a thin thing hidden in a brass tube, and she took it with a grin, sliding it up her sleeve into some hidden pocket. "You''re saying you need me to make it out of this one alive, is that it?"

    "There is no need for the both of us to die here," he told her. "My end is unavoidable. I will be surrounded by my enemies, and the moment my betrayal is evident, they will waste no time in destroying me. You, however, have no ties to this place or these people, for you are only a guest. You can sneak away during the chaos, free of suspicion."

    "How about that," she said. "My lucky streak continues, it looks like."

    "Lucky streak?"

    She shook her head. "Don''t worry about it. Can''t talk about it out in the open anyway. Maybe if we ever see each other again, I''ll tell you over some wine."

    A rare smile broke out on Brutus'' face. "Perhaps we will."

    "Alright. I''ll escape during the ruckus your little trick will cause and make sure this information gets to the right hands." Her grin widened. "Think I''ll take my own shot on the way out, even the playing field a little more. What do you think?"

    "Your escape is paramount ¡ª"

    "Won''t have to worry about that. I can still call for backup." She scanned the skyline, looking about what they could see of the city from their place in front of the Curia, and she nodded at a nearby palace. "He''s over there, right? The golden goose. I don''t think I''ve seen him leave since I got here."

    "He has not," Brutus confirmed. "The decision was made that he would be safest there, and so he has been forbidden to leave it so that his life is never endangered. Truthfully, I believe he prefers it that way. At his age, he is much easier to kill than you or I."

    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    She chuckled. "Makes it easier on me, at least. That''s the best place to kill your target: deep inside their territory, at the place where they think they''re safest. They''re always more surprised that way."

    "Indeed." That was essentially how Caesar had died, after all.

    "Alright, then." Her eyes slid up to lock onto his. "I guess I just need to wait for the screaming to start, and that''ll be my cue."

    Or the sharp increase in magical energy being thrown around. Brutus thought it incredibly likely that the most immediate response to his murder would be to kill him with whichever Noble Phantasm reached him fastest.

    "Yes. I shall attempt to postpone it for long enough that you might position yourself optimally, but I will strike before the opportunity slips me by. I apologize that I cannot afford you greater leniency."

    "It''s fine," she assured him. "I''ll have more than enough time to get into place, so you just go whenever you feel like you''ve got the best shot, yeah? Don''t let me be the one who screws this up for you."

    "Very well. I shall trust you to act as you believe is best."

    She chuckled, shaking her head. "So wordy." She offered him a smile. "The phrase you''re looking for there is ''Good luck,'' Brutus."

    A ghost of a grin graced his lips, there and gone again in a flash. "And to you as well."

    She stepped away and slipped back into the shadows, and Brutus rolled his shoulders, then pushed open the heavy doors of the Curia Romanum and walked into the antechamber. Predictably, it was empty, and the room itself shrouded in dim light from its singular window above his head. From further in, voices resounded, muffled and indistinct, so Brutus went further in and pushed open the door that led to the main chamber.

    Immediately, the voices quieted, and all heads in the room turned to look at him, and he felt the eyes of Roman emperors past and future scrutinize him. He bowed his own slightly.

    "My apologies for my tardiness," he said smoothly. "I was waylaid on my way here and unavoidably delayed."

    At the head of the room, seated upon a marble throne, the imposing figure of the Divine Ancestor waved his hand.

    "All is forgiven," he said imperiously, and that was that.

    Brutus gave a short bow of his head again, showing the proper deference to the man whose efforts had forged the Rome that he himself had loved so dearly, and then moved to take one of the empty seats as his robes swished about his legs. Ironically, in a place that had been originally built for the purposes of the Senate to meet, Brutus himself was the only senator in the room.

    To the right was Konstantinos XI, a lean man in red and black, easily the latest of the entire group, in terms of legend. To the left was Hadrianus, thick-necked and curly-haired, who would normally be bedecked in the armor of a Roman general, but here in the capital wore only a tunic and toga marking his status.

    Only once Brutus had taken his seat next to Hadrianus did the Divine Ancestor rise. If the room had not already been silent, it would have become so at that moment.

    "My beloved children," the Divine Ancestor said, "sons of Rome whose love of it has been immortalized in history, there is grave news." He closed his eyes briefly as though pained. "Six of our brethren have fallen."

    A ripple of shock traveled the whole group, and Brutus himself affected his own expression of surprise.

    "Six?" Konstantinos XI choked out. "But¡­how?"

    "They were slain, each by a Heroic Spirit acting on behalf of the doomed Rome of this era," the Divine Ancestor said. "Marcus Cassius Scaeva, Gaius Julius Caesar, and Lucius Tiberius Caesar all died in combat along the Gallian front."

    "Gallia?" said Hadrianus. "What threat could there be in Gallia that could defeat three Roman Servants of that caliber? I understood that there were only two mediocre Servants leading Nero''s resistance in Gallia."

    The Divine Ancestor turned to the man standing beside his throne, a man in green wearing a tall hat who had been so still that Brutus'' eyes had initially registered him as part of the background.

    "Court mage? What have you to say about this?"

    The court mage, who Brutus believed had called himself Lev Lainur, stepped forward, and although he was by all accounts an ordinary human, he wasn''t at all cowed by the presence of so many Heroic Spirits in front of him.

    "Only that it was inevitable, once the fencesitter got involved," the court mage said bluntly. "So long as that wild dog was content to sit upon that pile of rocks and play at guarding Britain from us, our victory was assured and certain. However, even if many of you have found yourselves at the peak of your strength because you were summoned in Rome, A¨ªfe was also summoned here in the ideal time and place. The Counter Force chose well."

    "One woman?" Konstantinos XI demanded incredulously. "A single woman was enough to put down three great warriors of the Roman legion?"

    "You would do well not to underestimate such a strong legend," the Divine Ancestor warned. "A warrior who took the gods themselves as a challenge to be overcome is a powerful foe, even if she is a woman."

    "No, she did not accomplish it alone," said the court mage. "She had help. Not only from those two Servants leading Nero''s resistance that you believe mediocre, but from the meddling pests from Chaldea as well."

    "Chaldea?" asked Hadrianus.

    "Cockroaches," sneered the court mage. "Vermin that simply don''t know when to lie down and die."

    "They are agents here to stop us from reforging our empire," the Divine Ancestor explained. "Children of a distant era far removed from this one, sent to bolster Nero''s Rome and cast ours down."

    "They brought their own Servants here," said the court mage. "And then they joined forces with that fencesitter and those you call mediocre nobodies. They are ultimately the reason those three Servants were killed."

    "We can''t let that stand!" Konstantinos XI said, fists clenched so tight that his gauntlets creaked. "We have to do something! We''ve come too far to let them ruin everything!"

    "I already have," the court mage said smugly. "They''re to the south now, visiting with that useless goddess hiding out on her island. I sent Caligula to handle them."

    "You what?" Hadrianus demanded, rising to his feet. "Six of us already killed, and you sent another to face the enemy alone?"

    "He''s little more than a mad dog himself," the court mage said, dismissive. "Even if he does die, it''s no great loss for our side."

    "You!"

    Hadrianus made to lunge at the court mage, but a raised hand from the Divine Ancestor stopped him in his tracks. The Divine Ancestor, however, only had eyes for the court mage.

    "I did not give you that order," he said sternly. "I would have you explain yourself, Lev Lainur."

    The court mage''s lip curled. "Despite the position you''ve seen fit to hand me, I don''t take orders from you, Romulus. Remember which of us holds the Holy Grail that summoned each and every one of you. Without me, this entire endeavor of yours becomes impossible, whereas I can replace all of you at my leisure."

    A chill descended upon the room. Hadrianus and Konstantinos XI both leveled glares at Lev Lainur, but Lev Lainur was unfazed. There wasn''t even a bead of sweat upon his temples to belie his apparent courage.

    Eventually, against all reason and common sense, it was the Divine Ancestor who backed down. "I expect you to replenish our forces as necessary."

    "I don''t need you to say so to do something so obvious," the court mage said.

    Hadrianus and Konstantinos XI both bristled, scowling at him, but since the Divine Ancestor wasn''t rebuking him more strongly, the both of them settled back into their seats reluctantly. If there was even more reason why Brutus hated this entire farce, the amount of control the court mage could exert on all of them would have been enough.

    "This decision may turn out to our benefit," the Divine Ancestor said. "Even if Caligula falls, it is possible he may cause serious harm to one of Chaldea''s members, and they will come here to seek vengeance as a result. They will have to fight us on our terms, in a place where we hold the ultimate advantage."

    "And we will be able to crush them effortlessly," agreed Hadrianus. "Yes, I see. We may yet snatch victory even through such folly."

    "Forgive me, Exalted One," Brutus interrupted, "but you said that six of our number had fallen, did you not?"

    "Yes," the Divine Ancestor said gravely.

    "Wait," Konstantinos XI began, "but then that would mean ¡ª"

    "That is correct," the Divine Ancestor confirmed. "Traianus, Agrippa, and Octavian have all fallen as well."

    So it was true. Then, naturally, she would be able to strike down her own target as well, for she had already struck down three of them. He had no need to worry.

    "That''s impossible," said Hadrianus. "There must be some mistake. My wall ¡ª it still stands. Constantius I yet breathes. So long as both of those are true, even if Chaldea were to muster every single one of Nero''s allied Servants, they would fall upon my wall and fail!"

    "It was not Chaldea," said Lev Lainur. "Not once have they approached your wall. There was no opportunity through which they might have killed any of those three who were guarding it."

    "Who did, then?"

    "Unknown."

    "Tch. An Assassin," spat Hadrianus. "It''s the only way those three could have been killed without us knowing."

    "It is likely," agreed the Divine Ancestor. "Perhaps one summoned specifically for having killed a Roman emperor in life."

    "But who?" asked Konstantinos XI. "Who was so prolific an assassin in Rome that he could kill three of us on his own?"

    None of them turned to Brutus with suspicion. As always, Brutus felt a wash of relief to know that his Noble Phantasm had secured his position so, because his own legend should have made him the most obvious choice.

    "Many of Rome''s emperors were assassinated," said Hadrianus. "You are right, however, in that I cannot think of a singular name whose legend would lend him the weight necessary to kill three emperors without contest."

    "Then shouldn''t you think to stop looking for a Roman?" mocked the court mage. "Do you think Rome was the only empire to ever exist? That Roman emperors were the only ones ever assassinated? You Servants, always getting so caught up in your own legends that you miss the obvious answers."

    "Your condescension is unproductive, Lev Lainur," said the Divine Ancestor. "Speak. If the answer should be clear to all of us, then that must surely mean that you have already deduced the culprit."

    The court mage sneered yet again. "As I said, there have been many empires throughout history, and many emperors assassinated. Grecian empires, Persian empires, British empires, Mongolian empires, and indeed, even Chinese empires. Each of them should be distinct enough from one another that you could determine the culture and era of an assassin from any of these empires merely by the clothing and the name offered to you."

    Brutus shifted uneasily. This was not going a direction he liked.

    "Your comrades'' bodies are not even cold, as the saying goes," the court mage continued, disdain dripping from every word. "Can you think of no one who arrived here recently enough that she might be the Assassin you''re looking for?"

    Eyes around the room went wide. Hadrianus rose from his seat again, panicked words spilling from his lips, "You mean, that woman ¡ª"

    "I have personally vouched for Jing Ke," Brutus said confidently. "She is as trustworthy as I am. Your suspicions are groundless, Lev Lainur."

    It was not instant, but slowly, the urgency faded and the rest of them relaxed. Brutus allowed himself to relax again as well. It was only because he himself had been so careful to avoid suspicion that his ruse just now had succeeded at all.

    The effects of his Noble Phantasm did not apply to his allies, after all, only to himself.

    "Forgive me, Brutus," said Hadrianus. "I had momentarily forgotten, and I let my paranoia get the better of me."

    "It is forgiven."

    "These are trying times," the Divine Ancestor said. "Now, more than ever, we must stand united."

    "Yes," Konstantinos XI affirmed at the same time as Hadrianus said, "Of course."

    Lev Lainur''s expression was sour. "Simply because Brutus is trustworthy does not mean that he himself is incapable of being deceived."

    "Enough," the Divine Ancestor commanded, and though he didn''t raise his voice, even Lev Lainur didn''t disobey. "I will hear no more of it. We would be better served determining who our mysterious Assassin might be."

    "Perhaps it is one of the Sicarii," Brutus suggested slyly.

    Hadrianus grimaced. "Do you think so? I would not think them any more pleased with Nero''s Rome than with ours."

    "Sicarii¡­I see. Jewish assassins." The Divine Ancestor hummed thoughtfully. "Although the group themselves are familiar, I cannot recall any individual member ascending to the Throne of Heroes."

    "There was a sect of Muslim assassins a few centuries before my era," Konstantinos XI pointed out. "Perhaps they are like them, and they are an otherwise nameless collection of potential Heroic Spirits."

    "But why would they side with Nero''s Rome?" asked Hadrianus, sticking to that point. "What cause would they have to side against us instead of Nero?"

    "Why does Boudica?" Brutus retorted. "Indeed, why does Spartacus? Why does A¨ªfe, who never crossed paths with Rome in her life?"

    "They are agents of the proper course of human history," the Divine Ancestor answered. "You may not be wrong, my son. If they, too, believed in the proper course of history, then even the Sicarii who hated Rome would set themselves against us instead of Nero."

    "I have seen no such thing," the court mage said stiffly. "There is no indication of the presence of the Sicarii in this era."

    "Other than the ones currently alive, you mean?" Hadrianus said sardonically.

    "It''s still six years too early for them to be involved in anything," said the court mage. "And the living Sicarii would be all but useless against the Servants you lost. If, by some impossible sequence of events, any of them had been summoned in the form of a proper Assassin class Servant, I would know about it."

    "We''re getting nowhere," Konstantinos XI said, frustrated. "All we''ve managed to agree upon is that none of us can be sure who the assassin might be that killed Traianus, Octavian, and Agrippa, and inconveniently, I''ll remind you, Agrippina committed suicide rather than take up the fight against Nero, so it couldn''t possibly be her."

    She had? Through an exercise of will, Brutus kept his eyebrows from rising. Agrippina''s presence had never been discussed before. If she had truly been summoned and committed suicide¡­ Why, it must have been almost immediately, before Brutus ever arrived in the United Empire, let alone made the trek to the capital.

    Truly unfortunate. She might have been an ally if he had made it here soon enough to keep her from killing herself ¡ª and that, too, was a surprise, because Agrippina''s hostile relationship with Nero was well-known, especially among Roman Heroic Spirits.

    Konstantinos XI raked a hand through his hair, slumping in his seat. He looked up to the ceiling, as though the tiles that made up the roof could offer an answer that none of the others present had.

    "We''re just going in circles at this point," he continued sourly. "Forgive me, Great Founder, but it seems to me that we won''t know who the Assassin is until they''ve arrived in the capital and attempted to kill ¡ª"

    The air shifted. At that moment, the oppressive film of Pax Romana that had hung about the capital the entire time Brutus had been there flickered, faded, and died, disappearing from the world as though it had never been there in the first place.

    Constantius I was dead.

    Konstantinos XI flailed and fell to the ground in his shock. The Divine Ancestor straightened, eyes widening as his mouth thinned into a line, furious surprise roiling like thunder in his chest. Even the court mage''s expression fell, for once looking stunned.

    Brutus briefly closed his eyes.

    You were too impatient, Jing Ke.

    Hadrianus was the first to react, leaping to his feet. "What? Where has Pax Romana gone?"

    "Constantius I¡­" Konstantinos XI murmured.

    "The Assassin!" Hadrianus gasped. He spun towards the door. "We must go now! The Assassin has not yet had time to flee! We can catch him in the act!"

    Brutus stood and placed himself in the way, reaching out with one hand to stop Hadrianus. Hadrianus, having the benefit of much superior strength, nearly bowled him over in his rush, but hadn''t had enough time to really build up a run.

    "There will be no need for that, Hadrianus."

    Hadrianus'' brow furrowed. "No need? Brutus, what do you mean? Constantius I has been killed!"

    With one hand, Brutus took tight hold of Hadrianus'' shoulder, and with the other, he reached into his robes for the dagger concealed there.

    "Because I already know who it is that killed Constantius I."

    "You do?" Konstantinos XI blurted out.

    "Yes. But more importantly, Hadrianus¡­"

    The squelch of pierced flesh resounded like thunder.

    Hadrianus gasped, staggering, and looked down at the dagger buried in his chest, uncomprehending, as his hands flew reflexively to the wound. His eyes followed the hand that held it, up the arm, and when he reached Brutus'' eyes, his own asked why. Why had Brutus done this?

    For the Sake of Democracy, I Slay Thee

    "Sic Semper Tyrannis."

    The Noble Phantasm hit like a hammer blow, dealing even more damage, and Hadrianus stumbled back and collapsed to the floor, taking Brutus'' dagger with him. He was already fading at the edge, flaking away into motes of light.

    The veil was torn away. In the face of such a blatant betrayal, the Noble Phantasm which had allowed Brutus to be so trusted among these heroes could not stand.

    "YOU!" Konstantinos XI shouted, scrambling to his feet. "YOU! YOU TRAITOR!"

    A metallic rasp echoed off the walls as he ripped his sword from its sheath, and without waiting for permission from the Divine Ancestor, he rushed across the room, the pointed tip of his blade aimed unerringly at Brutus'' chest.

    Brutus made no attempt to stop him.

    Blood spattered across the floor. Konstantinos XI''s sword found its mark, piercing straight through cloth and flesh alike, and just as Hadrianus had, Brutus staggered under the blow. Unlike Hadrianus, he braced himself with his legs, accepted it, and did not allow himself to collapse.

    This had been the only possible conclusion from the beginning.

    "Damn it," Konstantinos XI cursed. "Damn it! You''re not even going to fight back?"

    Of course not. What dignity was there in something so pointless?

    "I''ve¡­achieved the reason why I''m here," Brutus ground out. "I''m an Assassin. This¡­was the extent¡­of what I could do."

    "Et tu," rasped Hadrianus, "Brute?"

    "Yes."

    Hadrianus'' face twisted with resigned agony, and he burst apart, exploding into dust that glittered and vanished. Brutus'' dagger clattered to the floor.

    "You¡­" Konstantinos XI''s hands trembled. "We trusted you¡­ Brutus, you stood with us as an equal, and still¡­"

    Was he expecting an apology? There wasn''t one forthcoming, and there wouldn''t be one. There was no room in an Assassin''s heart for uncertainty or regret. Every kill was made with the entirety of his spirit behind it.

    "How did I not see it?" the court mage muttered to himself. "How did I not see it?"

    Brutus ignored him and turned his gaze towards the Divine Ancestor, whose countenance was stony. A cough racked him, and what spewed from his throat and across Konstantinos XI''s cheek was bright, red blood.

    He would not last much longer, he knew. That, too, was as expected. He was no great warrior, no famous centurion who had held off a barbarian horde or withstood a month-long siege. He was merely an assassin, famous for the final blow he delivered to a man who had trusted him completely.

    "Nothing to say¡­Divine Ancestor?"

    "My son," the Divine Ancestor began sadly, "even you are one of proper history''s champions? Even you, who knows best of all the corruption of Rome?"

    "Yes," Brutus managed to grit out. "The democracy I¡­loved is dead."

    Caesar had killed it. No, it had been a joint effort, hadn''t it? Caesar, the Senate, even Brutus himself had all played parts in its death. Nothing Brutus had done that fateful day on the Ides of March would have changed the inevitable outcome.

    "The empire you¡­created, it has¡­no room for democracy."

    He was no fool. The United Empire was, in some ways, a pleasant dream, a return to what had forged the great republic of Brutus'' life. But he could not blind himself to the fact that it would always be an empire with the Divine Ancestor at its helm, with the emperors of the past and future as his delegates.

    There was only one thing left for him to bet on. Only one thing he could put his faith in. Yes, if the past and the present were both full of failures, then that only left one thing for him to believe in.

    "But¡­the future¡­ It may teeter¡­on a knife''s edge, but¡­ The democracy of the future¡­"

    He grinned, through the blood and the quickly fleeing strength, teeth stained red, and with the last few seconds he had left, he spat his final curse at Romulus, the man who had twice built Rome.

    "Lives on!"

 Chapter LXI: Die Hard

    Chapter LXI: Die Hard

    As usual, I was the first of us Masters to wake up the next morning, and I carefully extricated myself from the snug pile of bodies and bedrolls that made up our little group. When I nudged open the tent flap, behind me, Mash murmured something and curled tighter into Ritsuka''s side.

    "It''s just a length of canvas and some wooden poles," Emiya had said when he made it.

    I was beginning to suspect that he was much less honest about his full capabilities back when he first explained them than he''d seemed. The helmets, I could accept, given the reasoning he provided. Even pots and pans, I could give a pass, since they were essentially just shaped metal and that wasn''t all that different from a sword.

    There was a limit to how far I was willing to accept those kinds of stretches, though.

    Those were thoughts for later, so I put them out of my mind as I rolled my shoulders and worked out the kinks in my back from the awkwardness of our sleeping positions. The morning sun shone down on me from above, still climbing into the eastward sky, and I squinted, estimating the time to be around eight o''clock, maybe eight-thirty.

    A¨ªfe stood from where she''d been keeping watch as I stepped closer to the center of our little "camp" and the remains of last night''s fire.

    "Sleep well?" she asked.

    "Well enough," I told her, noncommittal. My anemic swarm checked the perimeter, but there was no sign of any disturbances since the night before, so it looked like Stheno had indeed left us alone. "Anything interesting happen last night?"

    "Nothing. Either that goddess isn''t the vengeful sort," and I could hear the doubt in A¨ªfe''s voice, "or she realized how outmatched she was and decided not to throw her life away on a petty attempt at revenge."

    The second, it seemed we both thought, was more likely. After all, our team had utterly manhandled the two Servants she had serving her yesterday, and while there was no telling how the tables might turn once Noble Phantasms came out, I was fairly confident that we could weather whatever they might have. Between Emiya and Mash, after all, we had a pair of fairly incredible defensive Noble Phantasms ourselves, and with us Masters around plus Chaldea''s generators as backup, we could hold out for longer, too.

    "Do you think she might actually take you up on the offer you made yesterday?" A¨ªfe asked.

    Offer? Ah. About her coming with us. Well, it really was Nero''s offer more than it was mine, wasn''t it?

    "No," I said. "My bet is that she stays here with those two bodyguards of hers and enjoys whatever time she has left while we go and fix this Singularity."

    "Sounds about right," Arash agreed as he joined us. "Calling her hedonistic isn''t quite right, but she isn''t the type to fight for anything."

    "She bewitches others to do that for her," A¨ªfe added dryly.

    A Master, the kind cautionary tales were told about on Earth Bet. The kind like Regent, who took away your autonomy and subverted your body or your mind.

    "As useful as she could be, I think this works out better," I said. "If she doesn''t have the desire or the motivation to help us, then even if her Alluring Euphony worked on some of the United Empire''s Servants, she''d just be a liability."

    She would''ve been incredibly useful during Gold Morning as a sort of "backup singer" for Canary, but here and now, if she didn''t want to fight and help us, then she was nothing more than dead weight. Better to let her sit here and twiddle her thumbs than lug her around with us in the vague hopes that she might be useful later.

    It went without saying that I could probably force her to help if her life was directly in danger while she was with us, but when she had the ability to subvert all but two of our team, that wasn''t a tightrope I was all that interested in walking.

    "If only it really had been Hephaestus, huh?" Arash mused, smiling.

    Yes, that really would have been convenient. And if he was anything like his mythological self, he would have been a lot more personable than Stheno, too.

    "We were never going to be that lucky."

    My career had driven that point home for me often enough.

    "Fooou."

    The little gremlin strutted out of the tent, took a moment to open its mouth and let loose a jaw-cracking yawn, and then started to stretch out like a cat. While it was doing that, the tent flap was pushed aside and Mash came out. She stopped to crouch down and scratch Fou, and it leaned into her touch and crooned happily.

    It never ceased to amaze me just how well she got along with that thing.

    When she stood back up, she turned to us with a smile. "Good morning, Miss Taylor, Miss A¨ªfe, Arash."

    "Morning," I returned.

    "Sleep well, Mash?" Arash asked.

    Mash nodded. "Yes, thank you."

    "The twins?"

    "Still asleep, for now."

    "And Nero?"

    "Her, too, Miss Taylor."

    Emiya faded into existence nearby, smirking. "How much do you want to bet that Rika would be out of bed in an instant if I said ''breakfast'' loud enough?"

    No bet, I thought, although it would definitely be funny to watch her scramble out of the tent like it was on fire. Aloud, I said, "And if you did it without breakfast actually being ready? Are you willing to bet Rika wouldn''t use a Command Spell to forbid you from doing something like that again?"

    Emiya raised his hands in surrender, chuckling as he shook his head.

    "Message received," he said. "I''ll see what we still have from what we brought when we left Rome and the rations we got sent earlier. We might just have to see if Da Vinci can send more supplies over, though."

    "Speaking of Da Vinci," said Arash, "shouldn''t we have contacted her yesterday after everything was over with? She''s probably been worried about what happened."

    My mouth pulled into a grimace as Mash gasped. "Oh! I forgot about that completely!"

    So had I. I could only blame that on just how much Stheno and her playing with our heads had put me off kilter ¡ª it was different from Imp or that time with Nice Guy. Their powers messed with my perceptions, too, but neither of them had twisted me around their fingers the way Stheno had. The only comparisons I could think to make were Cherish and Heartbreaker, but I''d been exposed to one comparatively little and the other not at all, so it was all intellectual. Academic.

    No, wait, I''d forgotten that faceoff with Valefor back when everyone and their grandmother wanted a piece of the Bay after Leviathan''s attack. But again, while I''d seen the effects of his power, I hadn''t really experienced them firsthand.

    Stheno¡­really was the first time I''d truly experienced a power like that for myself, wasn''t she?

    "Get breakfast started, Emiya," I ordered. He arched an eyebrow at me, but didn''t protest. "Mash, A¨ªfe, and I will get into contact with Da Vinci and update her on everything that''s happened since Etna."

    Boudica materialized then, too. "I''ll help him," she said.

    I didn''t have any reason to tell her otherwise, so I just nodded. As the two of them split off to start making food, I turned back to Mash and A¨ªfe.

    "We''ll probably need to stabilize the connection even more on this island."

    "Right!"

    "Understood."

    "I''ll stick around back here and keep an eye on the other three," said Arash, nodding towards the tent.

    "I''ll leave that to you, then."

    Mash, A¨ªfe, and I split off and went to find a good spot outside of camp to set up the magic circle we needed to get into contact with Chaldea. I was careful along the way to step over and not on the faintly glowing line of runes that marked the edge of the bounded field A¨ªfe had helped to erect the night before, although even if I''d tried my hardest, I probably wouldn''t have been able to so much as smudge them. The difference in our respective power was simply that vast.

    We had to go a little deeper inland to find a good spot, mostly because the beach was either rocky and uneven or soft sand, neither of which was conducive to a sturdy, stable magic circle or the carving of runes. As long as we had the camp in sight, though, I wasn''t too worried.

    With our spot found, A¨ªfe crouched down and scrawled a familiar set of runes into the hard-packed dirt, meticulously forming a circle as she had several times before. When she was done, Mash placed her shield face-up in the center and stepped back so that I could step forward.

    "Anfang!"

    The familiar hologram sprang to life in the air above Mash''s shield, and after a brief moment of blank static, it resolved into the main station of the Command Room. Da Vinci''s face blinked back at me.

    "Ah, hello?" she said tentatively. "I wasn''t expecting you guys to contact me right now. Your vitals evened out about half an hour ago, so I thought you would be sleeping."

    "Good morning, Miss Da Vinci," Mash said politely.

    "Buona serata, Mash," Da Vinci said wryly. "It''s closer to midnight here."

    Mash blinked. "Oh."

    Da Vinci smiled. "It must feel incredible, but even though it''s been almost a week and a half for you guys, for us here at Chaldea, it''s only been about twelve hours since you left." She cleared her throat. "Now, I have my suspicions already, but what did you need?"

    "After everything that happened, we forgot to report in last night," I said. "I thought it would be a good idea to tell you what went on sooner instead of later."

    "Yes, there were a few irregularities we observed in your readings last night, and some brief spikes in energy consumption that match Servant combat." Da Vinci leaned towards the screen. "Tell me everything."

    "We met the goddess hiding out on this island," I told her, and silently, I added, And she was a massive bitch. "Unfortunately, it wasn''t Hephaestus or any other god that we might have thought it was¡­"

    So I told her about Stheno. About how and when we''d first spotted her, our decision to make contact, Stheno''s immediate reaction, and the details of her Alluring Euphony skill. How we''d had to fight Arash and Emiya, how we''d knocked them out of her control, and then how we''d chased her down into the depths of her temple.

    "That was a terrible decision," Da Vinci scolded me. "Facing a goddess inside her own temple? There are so many reasons that''s a bad idea and I shouldn''t need to tell you any of them, Taylor."

    "We didn''t know who she was," I said bluntly. "I wasn''t willing to take the chances that she was going down there to activate a trump card."

    "¡­I guess I can give you that one," Da Vinci said reluctantly. "It still shouldn''t have been done, and it could have gone a lot worse for you, but under the circumstances, a living goddess on an island that was probably pulled straight from the Reverse Side is the sort of threat you really don''t give any chances."

    "So I didn''t."

    I went on, explaining what we''d found down at the end of the tunnel, as well as the two Servants Stheno had in her employ and how easily we''d defeated them. Last, I relayed what we learned from Stheno about the likely circumstances of her summoning and what little she''d known about Romulus.

    "Hmm," Da Vinci hummed thoughtfully. "A Lancer with horns and a tail and a Berserker in a kimono with horns¡­ I can''t say that rings any bells. Shapeshifting isn''t a common skill, but it isn''t uncommon either, and there are numerous heroes who were born with inhuman blood as part of their background."

    She shook her head.

    "If they were summoned by Stheno attempting to summon her sisters, then it''s possible the connection is something about ''transforming into a monster,'' which doesn''t narrow the list down as much as you might think. Well. As long as you don''t think they''ll bother you, I suppose their identities don''t matter."

    "They obey Stheno," I said simply. "Neither of them seemed to particularly care about us until she ordered them to fight."

    "They''re not much of a threat in either case," A¨ªfe added. "Those two weren''t very impressive from the beginning."

    "Not every Heroic Spirit earns a place on the Throne for being a peerless warrior," Da Vinci told her cheekily. "Why, some of us never so much as threw a punch before ascending!"

    A¨ªfe huffed a snort, but didn''t rebut the point.

    "As for the rest of it¡­" Da Vinci trailed off for a moment. "Romulus denying his Divinity isn''t something I can say is in character or not. It could have been a tactical decision instead, a way of limiting the effectiveness of the Counter Force''s response. I suppose the difference really is academic at this point, isn''t it? It''s not like we''ll find out with enough time to plan around it."

    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    "Without armaments specifically meant for killing gods, I''m not sure it would matter either way."

    If Emiya had anything designed solely for godslaying instead of just "anything with a healing factor," then he had yet to say so.

    "Quite." Da Vinci sighed. "Well, it didn''t turn out the way we were hoping, but at least we know now which god was squatting on this island and why. Now that you''ve solved that mystery, your next step is to make your way into the heart of the United Empire''s territory, yes?"

    I nodded. "Right. Up through Spain and into their capital. We might not be able to approach it from behind, so they might see us coming, but we should at least be able to get fairly close undetected. It''ll be dangerous, but we''ll be far enough away from Hadrian''s Wall to avoid the army of magical beasts, and the instant Jing Ke takes out Constantine the Great, we can rush in and take the fight to Romulus."

    "A bit basic as far as plans go, but simple is often the best. Less that can go wrong." Da Vinci smiled. "I suppose the only thing left for me to do is wish you good luck ¡ª"

    Beep-beep! chimed an alarm from Da Vinci''s monitor. She turned briefly to look at it, and her eyes went wide.

    "Enemy Servant incoming!" She whirled back towards us. "ETA ¡ª thirty¡­ No, twenty seconds!" Gravely, she said, "It''s Caligula!"

    My eyebrows rose even as Mash gasped. Twenty seconds? Caligula? I wasn''t sure whether I should be grateful he was coming to us mostly on our terms or furious that he''d caught us during a moment like this.

    "No time!" I spun about, back in the direction of camp. "Mash ¡ª go! Protect Ritsuka and Rika! A¨ªfe!" I gestured vaguely at myself. "Pick me up and let''s go!"

    "Right!"

    Mash planted one foot and reached down to scoop up her shield.

    "Be careful ¡ª" was all Da Vinci got to say before her image flickered and vanished.

    Even as Mash kicked off the ground and raced back towards camp, A¨ªfe appeared next to me and swept me off my feet ¡ª literally ¡ª and into her arms. It must have looked comical considering she was almost five inches shorter than me.

    An instant later, we were moving, and in just a few seconds, we were back at camp, because we really hadn''t gone that far to begin with, maybe thirty yards. A¨ªfe set me down almost roughly, and I stumbled as I got my feet back under me. I didn''t waste any time pulling out my puppets, for as useless as they''d been in our last fight with him, and she had barely dropped me off before her spear appeared in her hands.

    Ritsuka and Rika, who had been loitering about the campsite, blinked at me. "Senpai?"

    "Ritsuka, Rika ¡ª"

    "Master!" Arash materialized, bow in hand. "Incoming Servant! It''s ¡ª"

    "Caligula!" Mash shouted.

    BONG

    Mash''s shield reverberated like a gong as Caligula appeared, his fist planted on its surface, and she grunted as the blow pushed her back several feet, her heels digging trenches in the dirt. Maddened red eyes turned and looked past her, searching.

    For Nero, who still seemed to be in our shared tent, sleeping.

    "There you are!"

    A¨ªfe''s fist slammed into Caligula''s cheek with the force of a detonating bomb, and he went flying backwards, tumbling across the ground to land in the sand of the beach. She gave chase, but Caligula was back up and standing long before she reached him, and the second time, her punch was caught with the palm of one hand.

    "I hope you don''t run away this time," said A¨ªfe. "I didn''t get to test your strength the last time you showed up."

    "Nero¡­" Caligula rasped. "My niece¡­ My beloved niece¡­ Where is Nero?"

    "Shit!" Rika cursed from nearby. "This guy is back again? I wasn''t interested in a sequel!"

    "You''ll regret it if you take your eyes off of me," A¨ªfe told Caligula. "It''s going to take everything you have just to keep up!"

    Her other fist came around, planting itself in his stomach, and Caligula grunted as his armor shrieked in protest from the force behind the blow.

    "Insolent¡­pest!"

    He pulled back one hand and punched with the same impossible strength that Emiya had compared to Herakles, but A¨ªfe twisted around the blow, let his momentum carry him forward into an overextension, and used his arm as a lever to throw him into the sand. He was back on his feet in an instant, the beach exploding as he threw himself back at A¨ªfe, but A¨ªfe calmly redirected his momentum again, swung him around her hip, and flung him back the way he''d originally come. Caligula skidded along the beach like a stone skipped in a pond and landed with a splash in the shallows just off shore.

    There was a moment of silence, a brief second of calm, and then water sprayed everywhere and Caligula seemed to teleport across the distance. A¨ªfe braced herself, and their fists met with a thunderous crack that seemed to rattle my teeth. Sand flew about, kicked up from the sheer strength behind their blows.

    And then they accelerated, speeding past what my eyes could follow as I lost track of individual moves and had to settle for a general flow of the action. The meaty staccato of their fists striking each other''s bodies formed a drumbeat to match their pace. The spray of sand going everywhere formed a haze that further blurred their bodies.

    That was the moment when the other Servants decided to join us. Emiya and Boudica landed nearby, eyes already on the action, and El-Melloi II materialized like a mirage, brow furrowed.

    "He''s back again," Emiya sneered.

    "I can help this time," Boudica said.

    "You''ve encountered him before?" El-Melloi II asked.

    Mash nodded. "Yes. Berserker class Servant, Caligula. According to Emiya, he has strength equal to Herakles."

    El-Melloi II''s cheek twitched. "Putting aside how you know that¡­"

    The action slowed for a brief moment as Caligula''s fist sailed over A¨ªfe''s shoulder, and A¨ªfe''s counterblow struck him square in the face, hard enough to knock him down onto his back. She did the same maneuver I''d seen her do against Tiberius, jumping up, flipping for the momentum, and bringing her heel down on his body. Unlike Tiberius, Caligula caught her foot and flung her away. They were both up an instant later and back at it, their whole bodies nothing but vague blurs as they raced across the beach.

    "What do we do, Master?" asked Mash.

    Rika turned to Emiya. "Emiya, can you hit him without hurting Super Action Mom?"

    Emiya grimaced. "No. Most of the stuff I have that would hurt Caligula enough to matter has a ''minimum safe distance.''"

    If it could hurt Caligula, then that also meant that it would hurt A¨ªfe, too, which would defeat the point of helping her in the first place.

    "Arash?" I asked without looking his way.

    "Maybe," he said. "If they separate for long enough. With how close they are right now, decent odds I''ll hit her instead."

    And we didn''t have anyone else on A¨ªfe''s level who could insert themselves into the melee. My mind raced. What were our options? We didn''t have many. Siegfried would have been helpful to have here, but without him, we had to work around our range limitations against an enemy who just got stronger and faster the longer he fought.

    That was the biggest hurdle we were going to have to surmount. Time.

    "Spread out!" I ordered. My ravens took off and flapped their wings, climbing high enough that Caligula would have to jump quite a bit to reach them. "Look for an opening! If you get a shot, take it!"

    "Right!"

    We fanned out, thinning our line across the outer edges of the battlefield, far enough away that none of us was in danger of being directly drawn into the fight. Huginn and Muninn circled up above, struggling just as much as I was to keep track of the battle raging down below, while Emiya and Arash watched, eagle-eyed, for their chance to jump in with a well-placed shot.

    There just wasn''t enough room. With every second, A¨ªfe and Caligula got faster and faster, bouncing around with such speed that the only reason I could follow them was because I had a literal bird''s eye view. Even still, they were disappearing, and increasingly, they looked more like they were teleporting around than actually physically crossing the distance.

    "Boudica," I muttered to the woman who had come with me to act as a kind of bodyguard. "Can you get in there?"

    She frowned and shook her head. "No," she told me ruefully. "They''re starting to move too fast even for me. If I tried to push my way into it, I think I would probably just be killed."

    "I might be able to," Arash chimed in, "but it would be dangerous even for me."

    CRACK was the sound of another heavy blow landing, and this time, it was A¨ªfe who was thrown back, tumbling along the sand and into the dirt. Caligula, standing strong, chased after her.

    "Now!" I shouted.

    Emiya and Arash didn''t hesitate, and each shot a volley of arrows at Caligula to try and pin him down, but Caligula powered through them, lifting his arms to protect his head as he charged. The arrows pinged off of his armor, glancing off of the gleaming golden metal, and the handful that found the chinks went ignored like they were little more than annoyances.

    Considering his Constitution, which was the measure of how much damage he could take before his spiritual core started fracturing, they probably were.

    "Gandr!" the twins shouted, firing off black balls of light. I joined them and pelted him with shots from my ravens, but just like the arrows, our attacks didn''t even make him flinch.

    "You''ll have to go through me, first!" Boudica cried, and she charged to meet him, sword drawn and shield brandished.

    This, Caligula did stop for, but only so he could knock her sword to the side and take hold of her neck with his other hand. He lifted her off the ground as she struggled, but her sword glanced off the plates of his armor just the same as Arash and Emiya''s arrows had.

    "Queen Booty!" Rika screamed.

    The ground shook when he slammed her down, and Boudica hit the beach in a plume of white sand as the entire island seemed to vibrate beneath my feet.

    "Son of a bitch!" Rika snarled. "Gandr! Gandr! Gandr!"

    Her shots splashed uselessly against Caligula''s armor. He didn''t even glance her way; he just lifted his arm, like he was about to deliver the final blow against Boudica.

    "Hahaha!"

    Except Spartacus appeared as if from nowhere, dropping out of the sky the same way he had in their last fight, his sword aimed to split Caligula''s head in half. Metal screeched as Caligula blocked the attack with one gauntlet and the blade of Spartacus'' sword skittered across the surface, and then Spartacus went flying back from a devastating punch that shattered his ribs again.

    "More!" Spartacus was back up in an instant. "Give me more! Let me show you my love more!"

    And as he reengaged Caligula, Boudica sprang back to her feet as well, and together, they tag-teamed him. Paradoxically, with those two holding him off, Emiya and Arash had an easier time getting shots in, and with four Servants focused on him like that, even Caligula was slowly driven back as those tiny, minor wounds accumulated.

    With him so distracted, I turned my own focus to our currently injured member. "Ritsuka!" I barked at the one closest to her. "Check on A¨ªfe! Give her First Aid if she needs it!"

    "Roger!" Ritsuka acknowledged. He hadn''t made it three steps before A¨ªfe''s voice stopped him.

    "Don''t bother," she said as she stood from where she''d landed. Even as we watched, the wounds Caligula had inflicted sealed up and healed over until it was like they''d never been there. A cold grin showed her teeth. "A useful trick I learned from my sister."

    She held out her hand, and G¨¢e Bolg leapt to her palm as though magnetized.

    "Let''s show this lumbering brute another one, shall we?"

    She settled into a stance I had only seen of her once before, but which was all the more familiar for it, with bent knees, one arm held out as though to counterbalance the other, and the other reared back. The shaft G¨¢e Bolg ran parallel to her outstretched arm. A javelin throwing stance.

    My head whipped around to the fight. "Spartacus! Boudica! Disengage!"

    They split off from Caligula immediately, and Arash and Emiya increased their own focus on him to keep him from pursuing. Caligula grunted and blocked them with his arms, protecting his head with his gauntlets much as he had before.

    It wouldn''t hold him there. Not for long.

    It didn''t have to.

    "G¨¢e Bolg ¡ª"

    The air froze. Dripping bloodlust radiated from the glowing blade of the spear. My own heart thudded in my chest as the feeling of impending doom pressed down like a knife against my throat.

    "Prototype!"

    The red spear flew. Like a missile, like a streak of light, it crossed the distance in less time than it took to blink, the world howling in its wake. It shot unerringly towards Caligula''s chest, and this time, there was no Pax Romana here to keep it from punching straight through and dealing a fatal blow. Caligula''s red eyes had only enough time to see it coming.

    And he snatched it right out of the air, the shaft held tight in his fist right below the mounting. The tip of the wicked, undulating blade hovered a scant inch from his chest, vibrating violently.

    Mash gasped.

    "No way!"

    Caligula caught G¨¢e Bolg.

    A moment of stunned silence hung, a brief second as we all processed the impossible act we''d just witnessed, but Caligula gave us no time to come to terms with it. He flipped his grip on G¨¢e Bolg, and then he twisted and threw it ¡ª not back at A¨ªfe, but towards Emiya.

    "Rho Aias!" Emiya shouted, and a four-petaled flower bloomed in front of him just in time to catch the red blur that was A¨ªfe''s spear. Two of the petals shattered just from the strength behind the throw, but his hastily formed barrier was strong enough not to break completely.

    Caligula was already in motion before his stolen weapon even reached his target, spinning around and kicking off the ground. I didn''t even have time to think about who he was going after before his fists slammed into the dirt where Arash had just been standing as Arash leapt up into the air to avoid him.

    Arash took aim, but by the time he loosed another volley of arrows, Caligula had already moved again, so fast it was almost like he was teleporting. The crack of flesh meeting flesh echoed as A¨ªfe was driven straight into the ground with such force that she left a crater behind two feet deep.

    "Super Action Mom!" said Rika.

    I could barely keep up.

    "Rah!" Mash cried. She came to A¨ªfe''s defense, swinging her shield around like it was a cudgel. Caligula stepped back and out of the way, and then stepped back in and swung his fist towards her. Her shield rang again, and this time, the hit was so hard that she was actually lifted off her feet when she was thrown back.

    Huginn and Muninn swerved up above, firing more shots down at him, but just like before, he ignored them, letting them splash against his armor and even his skin like they were just raindrops. The blood from his wounds sizzled as my ravens'' burned it away.

    Just what was it going to take to put this guy down?

    "Hahahaha!" Spartacus laughed and rushed back into the action, swiping at Caligula with his sword. Caligula knocked each swing away with the metal of his bracers, and between them, he launched fast, harsh jabs into Spartacus'' chest, breaking something every time.

    Spartacus ignored them the same way Caligula did his own wounds, except Spartacus healed after each one. Spots of pink light glowing from under his skin betrayed the work of his Noble Phantasm.

    "Tch." A¨ªfe scoffed, snarling, and pulled herself to her feet. Even from where I stood, I could hear the crackling of broken bones snapping back into place as her runes healed her. "No style and no technique, but this guy definitely hits hard and moves fast, doesn''t he?"

    Can you still fight? I asked her.

    Don''t insult me, she replied. He might be fast and strong, but technique is more important than raw physicality. I''m not out of tricks yet.

    Aloud, she shouted, "Thirty seconds!"

    Emiya seemed to catch on first. "You don''t ask for much, do you?" he called back at her sarcastically. "Keh¡­ Master!"

    "Do it, Emiya!" Rika answered.

    Arash, I began, but he already knew what I was going to order.

    Understood, Master, he replied. Reinforcing Emiya.

    Emiya''s bow disappeared. "Trace, on!"

    A dozen normal blades appeared in the air above him, and they fired, forcing Caligula to separate from Spartacus to avoid them as they speared the ground. Emiya was already moving as it happened, his trademark twin swords forming in his hands, and then he flung them out like a pair of boomerangs that spun like buzzsaws.

    "Spirit and technique, flawless and firm."

    They bounced off of Caligula''s bracers and ricocheted up into the air, still spinning.

    "Our strength rips the mountains."

    Another pair formed in Emiya''s hands, and he leapt into the air.

    "Our swords split the river."

    Caligula lifted his arms to block, and his gauntlets screeched and split as Emiya''s swords carved deep gouges into them.

    Emiya dropped the second pair of swords and let them bite into the sand, even as his arms swung back and a third pair formed in his hands.

    And up above, the deflected pair curved back around, honing in on Caligula like heat-seeking missiles. I could see the plan even as it came together.

    "Our names reach the imperial villa."

    The third pair of swords grew and splintered, spines shaped like feathers jutting out along the spines so that they almost looked like a pair of wings.

    "The two of us cannot hold the heavens together!"

    Metal screamed. Blood splattered. Emiya''s swords carved through Caligula''s armor and cut into the vulnerable flesh beneath even as the first pair came down and sliced lines through his bare biceps. The first and second pair of swords disappeared like mirages, but the third, altered pair shattered and split like glass.

    "Guh¡­eh," Caligula grunted. The tattered remains of the sashes that crossed his chest hung limply from their mountings.

    But he was still alive.

    "You¡­nuisance," Caligula rasped. "You¡­pest!"

    He lifted his arm to deal another heavy blow, and before he could, a volley of arrows from Arash forced him to defend himself, giving Emiya a critical moment to back away.

    "Damn," he muttered, clicking his tongue. "Even that wasn''t enough for a final blow, huh? Guess a famous Servant summoned on their home turf really is that incredible."

    Caligula, still being peppered by arrows, brought one foot up and stomped it into the ground, sending the whole island shaking. A plume of sand shot up, obscuring him from view, and in that brief fraction of a second of reprieve, he moved, racing through it and straight towards Emiya.

    "Haha!" Spartacus put himself in the way, but his injuries only seemed to make Caligula more furious, because he reached in past Spartacus'' sword and took hold of his meaty neck, and just like he had earlier with Boudica, he slammed Spartacus into the ground. As though to make sure Spartacus stayed down, he stomped one, two, three times, and each time, the CRACK of snapping bones echoed.

    Boudica herself came to reinforce Spartacus, but Caligula spun around, and with his ludicrous strength, he batted her sword to the side so hard that it was actually ripped right out of her hand. Then, he backhanded her across the face, and I heard her jaw and cheek shatter.

    Shit.

    "Queen Booty!" Rika cried again.

    "MASH!" Ritsuka roared. "GO!"

    "Yes!"

    I took off running, even as Mash rushed to put herself between Caligula and everyone else. Caligula had no patience for her either, and reared his fist back for another bone-shaking punch.

    "Momentary Reinforcement!" shouted Ritsuka, and Mash''s body glowed briefly as the spell settled on her.

    BONG was the sound of the collision, and Mash grunted, knees bending, but stayed in place, unmoved.

    "Hiyah!"

    Her return blow wasn''t anything more complicated than bashing him with the front of her shield, but it was enough to force him back a step, even if it didn''t do any appreciable damage.

    It didn''t stop him for long.

    My hand reached for my knife, but I wasn''t stupid enough to think I could do anything to him on my own. No, not like my desperate strike against Leviathan with Armsmaster''s halberd. Here, there was no Panacea to fix my back if he snapped it, and I was a vital member of the team, not another body thrown into the grinder in the hopes of buying just one more minute.

    Arash! I called out to him. Catch!

    Ahead, Emiya was already in the air, bowstring drawn and arrow notched, one of those undulating things that used to be a sword. At the same moment, I threw my Last Resort, Arash leapt towards the fray, and Emiya let go.

    "Hu!"

    But Caligula was just too fast. Emiya''s arrow streaked past him, impacting the sand and throwing up another plume of it, and all he had to show for that effort was a thin line of red across Caligula''s cheek and half an ear torn away.

    Eyes wide with fury, lips curled into a snarl, Caligula whipped his fist around, and without the burst of temporary strength from Ritsuka''s spell, Mash was thrown backwards again with a yelp.

    Arash came down before he could follow her, and he stabbed down with my dagger. Caligula lifted one arm to block, catching Arash''s wrist with his forearm, and instead of trying to force it down, Arash let my dagger drop into his other hand, aiming to gouge out Caligula''s throat.

    "Grah!"

    Blood spurted, but the cut wasn''t deep enough, and Caligula threw Arash away with the arm he already had up. Arash landed with the grace of a cat, knees bent, and switched my knife back to his other hand, then rushed back in.

    "Momentary Reinforcement!" I snapped, taking a page from Ritsuka''s book.

    Arash''s speed doubled, and fast as lightning, he was in Caligula''s guard, my Last Resort skittering across the golden armor that protected Caligula''s torso.

    And then Arash thumbed the switch, and as a gray cloud erupted from the blade, he dragged it back over, and the durable metal that had managed to blunt even Emiya''s special technique parted like tissue paper.

    Caligula''s reflexes were once again the only thing that saved him from being killed. The instant Last Resort started carving so effortlessly through his armor, he threw himself back and away, putting as much distance in a single hop as he could. He managed to buy himself about twenty feet.

    Blood coated the front of his body, and the part of his stomach that had suffered the attentions of my Last Resort ¡ª however briefly ¡ª looked like someone had taken a metal grinder to his skin, that was how badly just that short touch had managed to hurt him.

    And still, he stood there, ready to keep fighting.

    But he was not Leviathan. Under that armor, he bled real blood, and if we hit him hard enough, he would die. There was no special core that needed an unfathomable amount of strength to crack, just organs that would fail the same as any human being''s did.

    "How¡­dare you," Caligula growled. "Impudent¡­scum. Worthless¡­wretch." He bared his teeth and hunched over, muscles tensing. "Just¡­die!"

    And a red comet intercepted him before he could move, A¨ªfe''s fist planted in his cheek.

    "You first!"

 Chapter LXII: With a Vengeance

    Chapter LXII: With a Vengeance

    The blow knocked Caligula ass over teakettle, and he tumbled across the sand, skipping like a stone cast in a pond again. Light flashed briefly, like sparks, and A¨ªfe chased him, somehow even faster than she''d been before.

    Caligula was up and ready by the time she reached him, braced for the incoming blow, but her next punch still sent him sliding backwards through the sand as the air cracked and his gauntlets shrieked. When she came in again, he was ready for her, and he met her punch with one of his own.

    Two days ago, when we''d first encountered him, I was pretty sure that even A¨ªfe''s arm would have been crushed by the differences in their strength. Emiya, after all, had his shoulder wrecked from a blow that had been blunted by the flats of his swords, and even Spartacus had been more messed up than usual just trying to block his punches.

    Now, A¨ªfe matched him without flinching, with nothing to show the strain but for the flickers of light ¡ª magical energy igniting? I didn''t recall that being a thing that happened in fights between Servants, not normally, but this was a lot of uncharted territory I was in these days.

    Caligula staggered back as though stunned that his attack had been blocked, and then he whipped his fist back around in another thunderous blow. A¨ªfe didn''t even try to dodge, she just crossed her arms in front of herself and took his punch as yet more sparks lanced up and down her forearms.

    "Heh." A¨ªfe grinned. "Even after all this time, I''m still using the tricks that you yourself came up with, dearest sister."

    Tricks?

    One foot slid forward, her torso twisted, and as even more sparks raced up and down her arm, she landed a heavy blow right into the wound that Arash had carved through Caligula''s armor.

    "Nnnng!" Caligula groaned and stumbled back a step.

    A¨ªfe pressed her advantage, launching a series of jabs into his torso with the dull, metallic thunk of her knuckles on steel ¡ª or whatever his golden armor was made of, because I doubted it was actual gold ¡ª and Caligula staggered with each one. He grunted and took them, reeling too much from that hit to his wounded side to mount a counterattack.

    And before every punch, her body lit up with more sparks. It was like she was channeling ¡ª

    It struck me like a bolt of lightning.

    No, I realized. They weren''t sparks. They were runes. That was how she was taking hits that had laid her out before and dishing back hits that were stronger than she was managing just a minute ago. Those thirty seconds she had asked for, she used them to engrave patterns of runes into her clothing ¡ª runes of protection, runes of power, runes of speed and safe travel, and they all combined together to make her faster, stronger, and hardier so that she could compete with Caligula''s own increased strength and speed.

    Over and over again, she struck him like a machine gun. Her arms had blurred until it seemed like she had a dozen, and the sound of her hits was a rapidfire staccato that echoed across the whole beach. In the brief, two second window she had bought herself, she had to have launched over a hundred punches, each one strong enough to have killed any of us Masters outright, no matter where it landed.

    But no matter how many times she hit him, his armor didn''t bend, didn''t break.

    The window closed. Caligula planted one leg for stability, and in a move that my brain struggled to keep up with, he dodged one of her punches and trapped one of her hands between his arm and his armor.

    A¨ªfe didn''t even slow down. She launched a hard cross towards his face, and he caught it with a meaty smack in his other hand and slammed his forehead down into her nose. Blood fountained from her nostrils, and she retreated back one step.

    But even if he didn''t still have her arms occupied, I knew her well enough by now to know she wouldn''t have retreated any further than that.

    I also knew her well enough by now to see her retaliation coming a mile away.

    My arm rose, my fingers splayed out as I took aim at her.

    "Momentary Reinforcement!" I chanted, and A¨ªfe lit up in the glow of both my spell and her runes.

    Just in time for her to slam her own forehead into Caligula''s nose.

    CRACK

    "GRAH!"

    Caligula let her go, stumbling back again as his hands flew to his own nose reflexively. With her arms free again, she took a brief moment to wind her fist back for another punch, gathering strength like a spring coiling tightly, and then she delivered it straight into his chest again. Caligula flew back, tumbling across the beach as splotches of red splattered over the sand from his wounds.

    A¨ªfe took that moment to reach for her nose and twist it back into position with a squelch that turned Rika''s face green.

    "That armor of yours is far more durable than it has any right to be," A¨ªfe said to Caligula. "It''s far and away past the point where it should have shattered."

    "You¡­" Caligula''s growl rumbled in his chest like thunder. As the waves crashed behind him, he pulled himself to his feet, his lips curled in a snarl. "You¡­annoying wretch¡­irksome¡­bitch! You''re¡­in my way!"

    A¨ªfe''s mouth twitched at one corner, and she bent her knees, winding her fist back again. "Try not to die to this one, would you?"

    The world drew down into her palm. Like yesterday, it felt like everything, even my own thoughts, was being sucked into some unknowable point clenched tight between her fingers, and I realized at once what she intended to use against Caligula now.

    A plume of sand rose behind her as she kicked off of the ground, and across from her, Caligula tried to dodge ¡ª even in his maddened state, he seemed to understand that there was no way he could afford to get hit by that attack.

    "You''re going nowhere!"

    But El-Melloi II, who had been watching the entire fight from the back, spat those words out, and with a terse gesture of his hand, stone walls rose up out of the ground, boxing Caligula in before he could go anywhere. He was trapped.

    A¨ªfe hit him like a missile, and the world itself howled as her fist swung forward.

    "Torannchless."

    The terrible sound of rending metal was almost drowned out by the thunderous clap of her fist making contact, and it all happened so fast that it looked like A¨ªfe hit him, his armor ripped and tore, and he smashed into the stone pillar behind him hard enough to crack it all at once. The rock cratered around his body, fissures spider-webbing from the point of impact, interspersed with roping tendrils of wet, red blood.

    El-Melloi II grunted. "You hit him hard enough to crack that? You absolute madwoman."

    He gestured, and the slabs of stone disappeared into thin air, leaving Caligula to fall to the ground limply. His golden armor was in ruins, absolutely destroyed by A¨ªfe''s Thunder Feat, and the damage that had done left a growing stain spreading out under his body. The shrapnel alone must have ripped apart his internal organs like shredded tissue paper. It almost certainly would have killed anyone on our team, with the exception of maybe Spartacus or Boudica.

    And somehow, Caligula had survived it. He had Imperial Privilege as a skill; was it possible he''d used it to gain something like Battle Continuation?

    "Bitch!" he rasped as he dragged himself to his feet. "Bitch, bitch, bitch! You¡­complete bitch! Celtic¡­sow!"

    He staggered under the weight of his wounds. His chest, now that I could see it clearly, was completely shredded. It was more ripped flesh and bleeding wounds than it was intact skin, and it wasn''t helped by the wounds Emiya had dealt earlier or the gouge Arash had carved with my knife.

    "Holy shit, this guy," Rika said. "All of that, and he still won''t go down?"

    "No," said A¨ªfe. "That fractured his spirit core beyond repair. He''s leaking magical energy like a sieve now. These are just his death throes."

    She held out her hand, and G¨¢e Bolg zoomed back into her palm, but instead of finishing him off, she turned away and started walking towards camp.

    "Boudica, Spartacus," she called out. "If either of you has any unfinished business you want to take out on him, this is your chance. No matter how desperately he tries to hold that Saint Graph of his together, it''s falling to pieces as we speak."

    Boudica hesitated and looked at Spartacus.

    "My love is boundless," said Spartacus solemnly. "My love is merciful. Oppression is the choice of the oppressors. Love flourishes only in freedom."

    "Yes." Boudica grimaced. "That''s what I thought, too."

    Emiya sighed. "So that''s how it is, huh? I guess it falls to me to do the job no one wants again."

    "Empire¡­" Caligula grunted. "My¡­Empire!"

    With whatever final reserves of strength he had left, he kicked off the ground into a stumbling run, aiming at A¨ªfe''s retreating back. It was a last, desperate grasp at a hopeless victory, and you didn''t have to be a master martial artist or a mythical hero back from the dead to see it.

    Emiya stepped back with one foot and squared his shoulders as his bow formed, an arrow shimmering into existence between the fingers of his other hand. A¨ªfe clicked her tongue, scowling, and spun on her heel, winding up for a more decisive death blow. Arash flipped his grip on my Last Resort and thumbed the switch, ready to jump in if he needed to.

    None of them got the chance.

    A red blur raced out from behind us, dashing across the ground and the sand ¡ª and making straight for an intercept course with Caligula.

    "Nero!" Mash gasped.

    "Best Buddy!" cried Rika.

    What did she think she was doing?

    I gritted my teeth, because I couldn''t stop her, not with this little prep, such a thin swarm, and almost no time to act.

    I flung out my hand again, taking aim a second time. Up above, my ravens pelted Caligula with a pair of staggered shots and made him stumble, slowing him down almost by half.

    The only thing I could do was make sure she didn''t get herself killed.

    "Momentary Reinforcement!"

    Nero''s speed almost doubled, and she soared like a rocket across the beach towards Caligula. Caligula himself didn''t even seem to see her or notice her, because he didn''t change course or otherwise react at all.

    A volley of arrows zipped faster than either of them, and with a series of meaty thunks, they found Caligula''s shoulders, right in the joints. A crippling blow, if he was a living human. Unlike how easily he had shrugged off similar attacks earlier, now, he jerked back, stumbling, and gasped as though he''d just taken a devastating hit.

    If everything else hadn''t been enough, Emiya''s arrows had opened up his guard, and with a meaty squelch and a fierce shout, Nero''s black and red sword sunk into his gut and burst out of his back in a spray of gore. On top of all of the other damage he''d taken, there was no way he would survive it, no matter whether or not he''d stolen Battle Continuation with his Imperial Privilege.

    And Caligula¡­deflated, for lack of a better word. He sagged and fell to his knees, his body already flickering and fading around the edges as his flesh peeled away into glittering motes of light.

    "I''m sorry, Uncle," Nero said, and in the silence that followed her running him through, she might as well have shouted. "Your niece was a coward who couldn''t bear to see you reduced to this state, and so she hid in her tent, ashamed of her own fear and indecision."

    Her hands shook. The hilt of her sword clattered loudly in her gauntlets.

    "The Divine Ancestor stands as the enemy of my Rome," she said wetly. "And he called to his side my own uncle, the man whose Rome I inherited, to fight against me. I am ashamed to say¡­I, Emperor Nero, doubted myself and my rule."

    "Oh, Best Buddy," Rika murmured.

    "But." Nero took a deep breath. "Whatever happens to my Rome, whether I truly deserve to rule it or not, whether the Divine Ancestor is right to take it from me, the future my new friends live in is so very bright. All things one day die, even empires. If my beloved Rome is destined to one day fall, then I shall ensure that its splendor is remembered forever! That its glory shall serve as a beacon for other empires to follow! That their shining future can learn from its successes as well as its failures! Mm-mm! Mine will be the story of Rome''s greatest hour! As Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, that will be the legacy of my empire!"

    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

    Emiya snorted, and under his breath, so quiet I almost didn''t hear him, he said, "No one tell her how she dies."

    "Ah¡­" Caligula sighed. "Nero. My beloved niece. My sister''s daughter. Heir to my empire."

    With surprising tenderness, he reached out and cupped her cheek, a wistful smile on his face.

    "You have grown so beautiful," he told her. "The seed that sprouted twenty years ago has blossomed into a beautiful rose, and the Rome she has built makes even mine pale in comparison. There is no one more worthy to rule it, not on Earth or in the heavens. My niece, I¡­proudly call you Emperor."

    And then, like an artist taking an eraser to an errant line, his body disappeared from the feet up, leaving behind only glowing ash that fluttered and vanished on the wind.

    "Servant response dissipating," Mash said quietly. "Master¡­Caligula is¡­"

    Nero sank to her knees as her sword fell into the sand now that it was no longer lodged in Caligula''s stomach. She reached out with one hand, grasping at the dust that was the remains of his body, but it slipped through her fingers like water.

    "I see," she murmured. "Then, this is what it means for a Servant to be killed, is it? For something that is already dead to die again, then it will leave behind no trace of itself. My uncle¡­truly was one of these Servants from the beginning."

    Her hand dropped back down to her side.

    "What happens to him now?" Nero asked. "Lord El-Melloi II, will my uncle remember me as I am today, or will I always be the sputtering babe I was when he first died?"

    El-Melloi II hesitated, frowning. "When a Servant disappears from the world, their record ¡ª their memories ¡ª returns to the main body on the Throne of Heroes. Strictly speaking, since the Throne is atemporal, Caligula has always possessed memories of this moment and what occurred in this Singularity, although they were removed upon his summoning here to prevent a paradox."

    "I see." She was quiet for a moment. "Then¡­those words he said to me, the feelings behind them¡­ My uncle has always had them?"

    El-Melloi II opened his mouth, and then slowly closed it again, apparently unsure of how to answer that. I didn''t have one to give her either, because my knowledge was purely technical and wouldn''t really tell her what she wanted to know anyway.

    "Yes," Boudica said, stepping closer, although she never got close enough to actually touch Nero. "Although I myself never knew Caligula, as a Heroic Spirit, I can say with certainty that those feelings of pride were not fleeting, but enduring sentiments carved into his very being. They were a message carried across time and space from ''Heroic Spirit Caligula'' to his niece."

    "Uncle¡­ You really did¡­"

    Nero leapt to her feet suddenly, shaking her head about as though to clear it of any melancholy thoughts.

    "Enough!" she proclaimed boisterously. "The Nero that my uncle took pride in was not a weeping willow but a blossoming summer rose! The tragedy of his second death is but one more crime I must lay at the feet of the United Empire, and I shall exact my justice from them in due time! For now, this is no time for tears and moping! Mm-mm!"

    Boudica sighed fondly. "There we go. That''s more like the Nero we all know."

    "Nothing seems to keep her down for long," Ritsuka agreed.

    Nero whirled about. "Forgive me, my friends, for I owe you an apology as well!" she said. "I awoke to the fighting, and I hid in our tent because I could not bring myself to face my uncle! Mm-mm! My own conflicted feelings and hesitation put each of you at risk! For that, I am deeply sorry!"

    "That''s probably where you should have been," Emiya said wryly. "After all, you''re technically one of the VIPs in this group, aren''t you?"

    "VIP?" Nero tilted her head, confused.

    "Very Important Person," I told her.

    "Ah!" Nero nodded sagely. "Well, yes! I am Emperor Nero! I am a very important person indeed! Mm-mm!"

    That''s not technically what that means, I didn''t say. Explaining modern slang and lingo to Nero was Rika''s job, not mine.

    "Well, it all worked out in the end," said Arash. "Even if things did get a little bumpy here and there."

    "A little bumpy?" Rika asked incredulously. "What''s your definition of actual danger then?"

    "Fafnir."

    Rika opened her mouth, thought about it for a second, and then nodded. "You know what, Arash? I''m gonna give that one to you. Godzilla was pretty scary."

    Ritsuka groaned. "Really? The actual name is shorter and easier to say."

    "Says you."

    Although I didn''t say so, I was actually on Rika''s side, this time. Maybe it was because it was such a prominent cultural icon, but "Godzilla" rolled off the tongue much easier than "Fafnir" did. It was even an appropriately apt cultural reference to make, considering Fafnir''s size and power.

    "Another dragon you lot encountered?" asked A¨ªfe. "Exactly how many have you seen and fought?"

    "Technically, most of the enemies in the Orl¨¦ans Singularity were dragons," I said, "so quite a few, actually."

    "Ah." A¨ªfe nodded. "Right. Yes, I remember you talking about that before, now."

    "Yeah, but none of the rest of us Masters were hardcore enough to stab them in the eye," said Rika, looking pointedly in my direction. I pretended not to notice.

    "In this particular case, we didn''t really fight Fafnir ourselves," said Arash. "Siegfried was the one who killed him, and we just stayed back and kept safe while he handled it."

    "Wait, back up," said El-Melloi II. "What''s this about stabbing a dragon in the eye?"

    Rika''s face lit up with delight, and she grinned. "Oh yeah! Hey, Hot Pops, you weren''t around when we told that story, were you?"

    "Technically, neither was I," Emiya said.

    "We can trade war stories another time," I cut off the discussion. "For now, does anyone need First Aid?"

    It should''ve been the first thing we took care of after Caligula died, but out of respect for Nero, we''d let her have her moment. Even I understood the importance of closure.

    A sheepish smile curled Boudica''s lips. "Now that you mention it¡­"

    She and Emiya were both the worst off of our group. Boudica from being tossed around and manhandled and Emiya as backlash from the Rho Aias he''d used to block G¨¢e Bolg when Caligula had caught it and thrown it back. Neither of them was anywhere near as badly hurt as Boudica had been from the fight that lost her an arm, but it behooved us to heal them anyway.

    Everyone else was fine. A¨ªfe had already healed herself using runes, Mash hadn''t been hurt at all, Arash hadn''t either, and Spartacus had already healed as well.

    "First Aid!" Rika chanted, and Emiya''s wounds began to close. "First Aid!"

    "How convenient it is to have a Master that can actually heal me properly," Emiya grumbled. He inspected himself, like he was checking for missed spots. "At least this time, I don''t have to go around for a whole day with one of my arms almost ripped off."

    "I thought Servants didn''t remember other times they were summoned," Mash said curiously. "Emiya, do you?"

    "I wonder," Emiya said cryptically.

    Rika poked him. "One of these days, people are going to get tired of your mysterious bullshit."

    "I have to keep some secrets, don''t I?" He slid a sly glance her way. "Otherwise, how will I get married?"

    Rika''s face turned as red as her hair. "Y-you¡­! Ugh!"

    "This sounds like another story," A¨ªfe commented idly.

    "Not one we''re going to tell," Rika muttered darkly.

    "Um, was it really something that bad, Senpai?" Mash asked. "It was just Shakespeare ¡ª"

    "Not one we''re going to tell," Rika repeated, shooting Mash the stink eye.

    Mash, wisely, chose to let it drop. Rika was enough of a handful when she wasn''t on the warpath.

    "First Aid!" her brother chanted, aiming for Boudica.

    Unlike with Emiya, Boudica''s wounds weren''t quite so severe, so their fixing wasn''t as immediately obvious as his. The purpling bruise on her neck, however, where Caligula had grabbed her and thrown her into the ground, slowly faded into healthy skin. The swelling and mottled, reddened flesh of her cheek and jaw returned to normal as well.

    Thinking about it, it was actually incredible that she''d been able to talk like that at all, let alone so easily. As if I needed another reminder that Servants weren''t quite human, no matter what they looked like.

    Boudica sighed, rubbing at where the bruise was. "Well, I was mostly fine, but it''s still a relief to get that taken care of. Thank you."

    Rika gave her a thumbs up. "No problem, Queen Booty!"

    Emiya rolled one shoulder. "I think I''m finally over that hit I took from Caligula a few days ago."

    "Just now?" Rika asked. "But I healed you back then, too!"

    "He hits hard," was the only answer Emiya gave.

    "As hard as Herakles, you said," A¨ªfe mused. Emiya slanted her a look, like he knew exactly what was going through her head.

    Of course, I was pretty sure I did, too.

    "Caligula also didn''t have a stock of eleven extra lives," said Emiya. "Or skin that negated any attack below Rank A. So he was a lot easier to put down."

    A¨ªfe smiled, wolfish. "Exactly what I wanted to hear."

    Emiya shook his head, but didn''t comment on it.

    "Are you done yet?"

    Everyone else startled and whirled to look at Stheno, and the only reason I didn''t was because I''d already known she was coming. I''d tagged her in the middle of the fight almost absentmindedly; she''d apparently come to investigate the commotion, and predictably, decided not to get involved.

    On the off chance Caligula had defeated us, what would she have done? Would she have let him rampage about unchecked, doing whatever he wanted, or would she have ensnared him herself and made him commit suicide?

    She wasn''t a complicated personality, she was actually pretty transparent, but she was also the kind of whimsical that was just a pain in the ass to deal with. Like the Fairy Queen had been, back before things really got bad on Gold Morning, only twice as capricious and dangerous in a completely different way.

    "Holy cow, where''d she come from?" Rika asked, clutching her chest.

    "Presence Concealment," El-Melloi II muttered.

    "You''ve done nothing but cause problems for me since you got here," said Stheno. "So if you''re done making a mess, then I''d prefer if you left."

    "Ah!" said Nero. "Does this mean you''re taking me up on my offer then?"

    "No," was Stheno''s simple reply.

    "Good riddance," Rika mumbled under her breath. Someone should check for the sky falling, because that was twice in less than twenty minutes where I actually agreed with Rika.

    "That eager to see us leave, huh?" said Emiya.

    Stheno''s red eyes flicked towards him. "Like I said. You being here has just made things more annoying for me, and I don''t care about Rome or the United Empire, and I certainly don''t care about the proper course of human history. There''s no reason for you to stay, so leave."

    "And if we don''t?" A¨ªfe asked coolly. "Do you think your attempts at controlling us will go any better than they did last time? My Master has already given me permission to handle that the way I''d prefer to."

    Me, she meant. That order I''d given her yesterday when we had Stheno pinned and at our mercy.

    Stheno scowled and looked down at her feet, where the glowing line of runes stood out to mark the boundary of our camp. A¨ªfe had set it up specifically to prevent yesterday''s near catastrophe from happening again, which meant that even if Stheno tried her best, her Alluring Euphony was useless.

    "I don''t think there will be any need for that," Arash said diplomatically.

    "There isn''t," I agreed, although probably not for the same reasons that were on the tip of his tongue. "We stayed here last night for no other reason than it was too late in the day to travel anywhere within a reasonable distance."

    "Ugh," Rika groaned softly. "What I wouldn''t have done for another bath last night."

    "After we''ve got everything in order, we''ll pack up and go," I went on. "And you can go back to sitting around and twiddling your thumbs."

    Stheno huffed. "Fine," she said shortly. "Just make sure you don''t leave any of your junk behind. You''ve all polluted my island enough with your presence, and I don''t want even a single trace of it left when you''re gone."

    "Are you certain you won''t accept my offer?" Nero asked. "Mm-mm! The people of Rome would gladly accept you into our pantheon! As chief god, even!"

    There was no way it was really that simple, but I could at least give Nero credit for trying.

    "Not interested," Stheno said. "I don''t care about you Romans or your worship. I just want you all off my island."

    Nero frowned, lips pursing and brow furrowing, like she was about to dig in her heels and refuse to take no for an answer, but before she could start throwing out more counteroffers, Stheno turned on her heel and disappeared.

    Guess that answered whether or not she was a full-fledged Servant.

    "Well, that could have gone better," said Ritsuka.

    "We had a critical breakdown in negotiations," Rika added, and this time, even I didn''t have the slightest clue what she was referencing there. She turned to Nero. "Better luck next time, Best Buddy!"

    "Hmph!" Nero huffed. "It was quite the generous offer! Mm-mm. Any other god would be glad to accept it!"

    "It''s too bad it really wasn''t Hephaestus here," said Mash.

    "Except we don''t really need him anymore, do we?" A¨ªfe pointed out. "If we''re avoiding the wall by going around it, then the whole reason we were hoping to gain his assistance is no longer relevant."

    "A weapon forged by the god of smithing is convenient to have, whether or not you need it at that moment," Emiya chimed in. "Even if we''re going around the wall instead of through it, I still wouldn''t have said no to having Hephaestus make us a weapon."

    Neither would I. It would have been like having something made by Hero, only jacked up by an order of magnitude or two. My Last Resort was useful and versatile, but more firepower was never a bad thing.

    "True," Arash agreed, "but there''s no use thinking about the what-ifs with that sort of thing. More importantly, what now? Our next stop is the United Empire, isn''t it?"

    Right.

    "We''ll eat breakfast first," I said. "Give that maybe an hour to digest. Then, we''ll make our way northwest so we can find an appropriate jump-off point to use for our route into the United Empire. There should be another few islands in that direction, one of those might be good ¡ª"

    Beep-beep!

    My communicator chimed, and when I lifted it up, Da Vinci''s image appeared, flickering and fuzzy around the edges from this era''s interference.

    "Da Vinci?"

    "I¡­gent news," she said. The static ate most of it. "You¡­hear th-s."

    "Hold that thought, Da Vinci."

    I turned to A¨ªfe. "We need to clear this up."

    She frowned. "I can stabilize the connection, but it''s not going to be as good as it is when we prepare everything beforehand."

    "It''s better than missing every other word she says."

    A¨ªfe accepted this for what it was and dropped to her knees without another word, carving out the familiar sets of runes she''d used every other time before that we needed a stable connection to Chaldea. This time, of course, she drew them in a circle around me instead of Mash''s shield.

    About twenty seconds later, she finished, and with a burst of magical energy, they flared to life. Instantly, Da Vinci''s blurry, static-ridden image cleared up, although it was still a little fuzzy in some places.

    "Da Vinci?" I tried again.

    She smiled. "There we go! Much better, yes? You''re receiving me much more clearly?"

    "We are."

    "Hey, Da Vinci-chan!" Rika waved.

    "Good to see you in good health, Rika! You too, Ritsuka, Mash, and everyone else as well!"

    "Good morning again, Miss Da Vinci," said Mash politely.

    Da Vinci grinned wryly. "Still nighttime here, Mash."

    "Oh." Mash blinked. "I''m sorry, I forgot."

    Arash chuckled. "Yeah, that can get a bit confusing, can''t it?"

    Off to the side, El-Melloi II stared, a complicated expression on his face. I wasn''t sure what he was thinking, I wasn''t sure if he even knew what to think about her, but I could at least sympathize with his confusion. I''d given up within a month of meeting her, way back when. It was easier just to think of her as transgender and go with the flow, and she had never corrected me about it.

    He''d reacted much more calmly when we contacted her at Etna, but maybe now that the initial shock had worn off, he was twisting himself into knots trying to figure her out. More power to him.

    "First of all," said Da Vinci, "Caligula''s Spirit Origin is confirmed to have vanished, so good job handling that. If the readings we got from your Master''s Clairvoyance were at all accurate, he couldn''t have been an easy foe to vanquish."

    "It could have been a lot worse," Emiya told her.

    "That goes without saying," Da Vinci agreed, "but he was still the most imposing enemy Servant you have all faced since Saber Alter in Fuyuki. It''s no less an accomplishment that you managed to defeat him without suffering any casualties in the process."

    "Not for his lack of trying," Rika muttered.

    "Second of all, I owe you all an apology."

    "An apology?" the twins and Mash all asked simultaneously.

    My brow furrowed. "For?"

    "I miscalculated," Da Vinci admitted. "It''s true, your trip to Etna''s ley lines made it possible to scan the entire empire, and that let us pin down what to expect from the enemy Servants. Unfortunately, I also forgot that a Singularity is technically an unobserved gnarl of space-time, so observing it with such completion is actually counterproductive."

    Counterproductive?

    "How so?" I asked carefully.

    I didn''t like the sound of that.

    "I could go into a whole lecture about quantum mechanics and how observation through precise enough instruments can solidify something''s existence, but that''s not important." She sighed. "The important thing is, because Chaldea observed the Singularity almost in its entirety, the Singularity itself is being reinforced. That means that the time differential between Chaldea and the Singularity is rapidly decreasing."

    "W-wait," said Rika, "that sounds bad!"

    "It is bad," Da Vinci replied grimly. "Ordinarily, the differential doesn''t matter that much aside from how much extra time it gives you to resolve the Singularity. Here? The closer it gets to a one-to-one ratio, the harder that Singularity will be to unpin. It will become what mages call a Universe of Record."

    In other words, the Singularity would become self-sustaining, and even if we resolved everything else eventually, the proper course of events would still be thrown off. All of the people who died and all of the events that occurred would become set in stone.

    "How long?" I asked gravely.

    "No more than two days," she answered. "At the rate it''s decreasing, the differential will be down to five-to-one by dinnertime tonight. If you don''t resolve things by tomorrow night, then the events of that Singularity will become true history, and the projected course from there leads to the collapse of Rome ¡ª almost four-hundred years early."

    And our mission will have failed.

    Two days. That wasn''t much time at all. It was enough, however, that what we were being asked to do wasn''t outright impossible.

    "Holy shit," someone whispered. I was pretty sure it was Rika.

    "Hold on!" Nero interjected. "What does that mean, exactly? Mm-mm! Rome has survived many rebellions in its time! Magical mirage lady, this time is no different!"

    "Magical mirage lady?" El-Melloi II mouthed those words to himself.

    "Again, I could go into a lecture about the geopolitical landscape of Rome, especially in that era, but it would take days and it''s beside the point," said Da Vinci. "The important part is that this is different from Rome''s other civil wars and rebellions. I''m sorry, Emperor Nero, but no matter what you might want to believe, if this becomes solidified, then there is no recovering from it. Rome will be destroyed."

    "I won''t allow it!" Nero proclaimed loudly. "No, not the empire my uncle entrusted to me! Mm-mm! Rome won''t fall!"

    "Then you''ll just have to retrieve the Grail and defeat Romulus before tomorrow night," Da Vinci said simply. She grinned, sharklike and triumphant, something that looked more at home on A¨ªfe''s face than hers. "Fortunately, there''s been a development that should make things a lot easier on you."

    She tapped something on her keyboard, and her image minimized over to the corner as the map of Rome took over the hologram. The United Empire''s territory was highlighted in yellow.

    "I don''t know how, but Jing Ke''s done it," said Da Vinci. "As far as our sensors can tell, Pax Romana is gone. Constantine the Great is dead."

    A tremor of something shot through my belly. It felt like excitement. "Oh."

    "Well now," said A¨ªfe, grinning a grin to mirror Da Vinci''s. "That changes everything, doesn''t it?"

 Chapter LXIII: Caput Imperialis

    Chapter LXIII: Caput Imperialis

    Pax Romana going down did change everything, and one of the things it changed was our timetable moving forward. Ideally, we would have been within spitting distance of the United Empire''s capital city first, so that we could jump on the moment of confusion and weakness when their defenses were crippled and they weren''t prepared to fight back. If we timed it right, we might even have been able to take Romulus out with a single decapitating strike ¡ª maybe even literally.

    Unfortunately, we were still on an island hundreds of miles away. Even at our best speed, they would have hours to recover and start to rebuild, and by the time we got there, they would be ready instead of reeling. If they were feeling particularly vulnerable, it was entirely possible they''d use the Grail they had to summon reinforcements and fill out their missing members.

    There was nothing we could do about that. Since we couldn''t change it, we were just going to have to deal with it as and when it became relevant.

    The only thing we could do was get moving as quickly as possible, because even if the United Empire was going to have more time to fortify their position than we wanted, it was still the better idea to give them as little time as we possibly could. That meant that one of the things we were going to have to do was cut our breakfast plans short.

    "No way!" Rika complained when that part came up. "I refuse to miss one of Emiya''s home-cooked meals!"

    "Do you want to be wearing it in fifteen minutes?" I asked her pointedly. "Because I can guarantee you that it won''t be in your stomach long if you eat right before we get on the chariots and ride back to the mainland."

    "Urk." Rika paled. "I-I, uh¡­ M-maybe¡­it might be worth it?"

    "It''s going to taste a whole lot better going down than it will coming back up."

    Still, she wavered, and then I got a bit of backup from an unexpected source.

    "P-perhaps it might be best to wait to eat," Nero suggested. "Mm, I''d rather not waste such delicious food in such a way."

    "We can eat when we rendezvous with Jing Ke and Lu Bu," was the compromise I offered. "They should have information on what to expect from the capital itself, and that''s going to be vital to attacking it."

    Rika looked torn. "But Emiya and Queen Booty already went through the trouble of cooking¡­"

    "We barely had the chance to set up the cookware before Caligula showed up," Emiya chimed in. "We aren''t losing anything by waiting an hour or two to meet Jing Ke first."

    "We really didn''t get very far," Boudica agreed.

    That was enough for Rika to give in.

    "This breakfast better knock my socks off," she muttered.

    Fortunately, there wasn''t much to do to get ready to leave. The tent, the cookware, most of the supplies we were using to camp out ¡ª they were projections made by Emiya. It was as easy as him dismissing them and letting them vanish.

    Once everything else was taken care of, those of us who could ¡ª Spartacus, Emiya, Arash, and El-Melloi II ¡ª took to spirit form while those of us who couldn''t split off into our separate groups again. As it had been the last few times, Ritsuka and Mash came with me and A¨ªfe while Nero and Rika rode with Boudica.

    "Are we even sure that Jing Ke and Lu Bu will be headed towards us?" Mash asked quietly as we mounted up.

    "The expected route is for them to head straight for Roman territory," A¨ªfe answered. "If it was me, I''d go where they didn''t expect me to go. Easier to shake a tail that way."

    "Going west or south won''t take them anywhere," I agreed, "and going northeast towards the wall is what the United Empire would expect them to do, since it''s the shortest path back to allied territory. That leaves east, and Rome is east."

    "They might even have split up," said A¨ªfe. "Lu Bu could lead the enemy off Jing Ke''s trail by heading towards the wall, leaving Jing Ke to safely go east towards Massilia and return to Rome unnoticed."

    It wasn''t a guarantee, but we couldn''t afford the time to search for Jing Ke any other way. Either we met up on the way to the United Empire''s capital or we missed each other and we had to go on without a layout of the city. My hope was that Jing Ke would be coming east and come to investigate our presence when he sensed our Servants moving towards the capital.

    "Then let''s get going," said Ritsuka. "We have to get to Jing Ke first, just in case."

    "Heh." A¨ªfe smirked. "You don''t need to tell me that, Master."

    With a crack of the reins, we lurched into motion, and water sprayed as we rode out onto the sea. Under the morning sun, we left behind Stheno''s island and the colossal waste of time visiting it had wound up being.

    Based upon our maps, the trip from the island to the United Empire''s capital was just about three quarters as long as our trip from the camp at Thiers to Rome had been, around eight-hundred kilometers. Fortunately, the first half or so could be covered entirely on the water, which meant no twists and turns, no major changes in elevation, and nothing we had to swerve around to avoid hitting. It was just a straight shot from the island to the shore.

    My own stomach was very grateful for that.

    It still took about an hour for us to cross that distance, and my range gave me an extra thirty seconds or so lead on our landfall. More crabs were in the sand and under the surf, and all sorts of bugs burrowed into the ground beyond and flew in the air above, including some dragonflies and some regular flies.

    The transition from sea to shore was a little bumpy, made worse for me by my perpetual problem with new bugs constantly coming in and out of my control. It was a bit more of a shock than usual too, going from the sparse insect population on Stheno''s island to the emptiness of the sea and now back to something more lively, but there was nothing in my stomach to heave up so the nausea was more manageable than usual, too.

    This time, we didn''t stop at the nearest town halfway through the journey, and to my knees'' displeasure, we kept going. The smooth Spanish coastline quickly transformed into rolling hills, although A¨ªfe and Boudica both did all of us mere mortals the favor of weaving through them along the much more even dips and valleys instead of racing atop the peaks.

    Eventually, however, the rolling hills smoothed down into much gentler and milder slopes as the terrain evened out. Vegetation became sparser and thinner, with patches of green among islands of bare earth and the occasional copse of thin, white-barked trees.

    It was like some eclectic mishmash of the Mojave Desert and the Great Plains, though I''d really only ever seen pictures of either. Some strange combination of untouched nature and inhospitable no man''s land, where the landscape couldn''t seem to decide whether it wanted to be dry, barren clay or lush grassland.

    Master, Arash said not too long after we''d pulled out onto this leveler ground, I''m sensing a Servant''s presence in the distance.

    I closed my eyes. Focusing on talking with him made the queasiness in my gut more bearable. Is it Jing Ke?

    Can''t tell from here, he answered. Whoever they are, they''re headed in this general direction, but they don''t seem to be course correcting to make directly for us.

    That had to be Jing Ke. That Arash could sense him at all with his Presence Concealment meant that he was testing us to see if we were all going to track him down ¡ª he wanted to see if we were friend or foe. If our entire group changed course and started running him down, he would probably disappear and sneak away instead of risking us being reinforcements from the United Empire.

    Break off and go make contact, I ordered him. Give him whatever information you think he needs to know we''re allies, then make your way back to the group so we can pool intelligence.

    Roger that, said Arash.

    And Arash? I wished he was corporeal just then, so I could give him a meaningful glance. It lost its weight when I couldn''t even be sure exactly where he was. Don''t take any chances. We''re too close to the end to lose anyone to something stupid.

    I imagined a smirk curling on one side of his mouth. Got it. Be back in a jiffy.

    I didn''t feel him go, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw him briefly phase into existence on a nearby hilltop, appearing only long enough to push off before he vanished again. In the distance, atop another hill, he reappeared again for only a moment, then kicked off the ground and disappeared.

    A neat trick. I had to wonder how much momentum he conserved when he went to spirit form like that. It reminded me a little of a few Breakers I''d known in a past life.

    My attention turned towards the woman driving the chariot I was standing on. A¨ªfe. Arash is going to check on a nearby Servant presence, so we should pull over and set up camp.

    Out the corner of my other eye, I saw her nod. Understood.

    She pulled on the reins gently, and her horses obeyed instantly, going from full gallop to a canter to a trot. We slowly eased to a stop as Boudica did the same behind us.

    "Miss Taylor?" Mash asked. "Is something wrong?"

    "HEY!" Rika called over. "Why are we stopping?"

    "Arash picked up a Servant''s presence," I said, pitching my voice so Rika and Nero could hear me. "He''s going to investigate to see if it''s Jing Ke or not."

    Rika went ramrod straight, her eyes widening. "Does that mean it''s time for breakfast?"

    This girl is ruled by her stomach, isn''t she?

    "Yes, Rika. That means it''s time for breakfast."

    And a break in either case, because my knees could definitely use a breather. Making the first half of the trip over the sea had cut some time off that we would have lost having to otherwise follow a road on land, but we had still been standing in those chariots for the better part of an hour.

    "YEAH!" Rika cheered.

    "Mm-mm!"

    Emiya and El-Melloi II both shimmered into existence. "I guess it''s up to me to get started," Emiya said.

    "I''ll help," Boudica offered.

    Emiya nodded. "It''s appreciated."

    She smiled in return. "It''s no trouble at all."

    "Another home-cooked Emiya meal," Rika said excitedly. "I can''t wait! Oh, it''s gonna be so good!"

    "Mm! My own stomach cries out impatiently!" Nero agreed. "They say that pleasure delayed is all the sweeter, and I intend to see if they''re right!"

    "Who''s they?" Rika asked.

    Nero shook her head. "I haven''t the first idea!"

    As Emiya and Boudica picked out a spot off to the side to set up and cook ¡ª aided by liberal use of Emiya''s projection magic ¡ª the rest of us dismounted the chariots, and as I had a few days ago, I sat myself down on the edge of the well, letting my knees rest. A¨ªfe hopped down without trouble, and Mash helped Ritsuka down, whose legs looked about as steady as mine felt.

    "Senpai," Ritsuka murmured, keeping his voice low, "what if that Servant isn''t Jing Ke? Or Lu Bu?"

    "That''s why the rest of us will stay on guard," I answered, just as low, "and why A¨ªfe will be keeping an eye out."

    "Understood," said A¨ªfe.

    "I''ll set up a bounded field, too," El-Melloi II added, having apparently heard us. "It won''t be my Stone Sentinel Maze, but if our mystery Servant is hostile, it should at least buy us a minute to get our bearings and get ready to fight."

    "Good idea," I said. In fact¡­

    I reached around and swung my bag across my chest, unzipping the main compartment to let my ravens out. After they''d unfolded into their active configuration, I threw them up and they took off, wings flapping as they climbed into the sky.

    Between them, El-Melloi II''s bounded field, and my bugs, we would have more than enough warning, if the mystery Servant was an enemy. I didn''t know what Jing Ke looked like, but the fact he was Chinese meant I should expect him to be wearing traditional East Asian robes, so that would be a quick and relatively easy way of telling, although not necessarily the most reliable.

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    El-Melloi II eyed my ravens as I set them loose, but didn''t comment on them again, and instead, he turned away and set off to put up the bounded field he''d talked about. Several minutes later, I felt the shift in the air, something indescribable that nonetheless felt oh so subtly different than things had been before.

    Good. Hopefully, it wouldn''t wind up being necessary, but an abundance of caution would always be welcomed, especially with the sorts of things we already knew we were going to have to deal with going forward.

    Ritsuka and Mash eventually drifted over to Rika and Nero, and they began chatting amiably ¡ª punctuated by Rika and Nero''s boisterousness here and there ¡ª while we waited. It wasn''t long either before the heavenly scent of Emiya''s cooking wafted up my nostrils, and my stomach gurgled eagerly for whatever dish he was concocting even as I sat there.

    "A puppetmaster, are you?" El-Melloi II asked, having wandered back over my way.

    "I''m assuming you''re talking about my magecraft."

    His cheek twitched. It was there and gone too quickly for me to see if it was a frown or a smile.

    "I''ve met one or two of your kind throughout my tenure at the Clock Tower," he said.

    Somehow, I very much doubted that. Because if he had, we would be having a very different conversation right now.

    "Aside from a certain troublesome woman, there was a cantankerous old codger," he went on. "He''s the only other person I''ve seen who controlled so many familiars simultaneously." He eyed a fly that buzzed past, like he suspected me of making it take that path, even though it was just doing its own thing. "Of course, the way he did that was a little¡­unsavory."

    I had a feeling El-Melloi II had a real talent for understatement.

    "Unsavory how?"

    "He split his soul among them," El-Melloi II said simply, like he hadn''t just dropped a huge bomb in my lap.

    Split his soul?

    "What?"

    El-Melloi II nodded. "It wound up as disgusting as it sounds. He divided himself up amongst his worm familiars and used their biomass to force them into a shape resembling his human body. In practice, he himself was made up entirely of blood worms."

    That¡­actually sounded a little bit like my bug clones. Or like an avenue my powers could have taken, if they''d been configured just a little bit differently in the Locker. Some part of me recoiled at the idea, but another part of me couldn''t help but notice how convenient it might have been if I could literally become a part of my swarm and reconstitute myself from replacement bugs if I ever got injured.

    It would have made this prosthetic of mine a whole lot less necessary.

    "I can''t help but notice a similarity." He looked at me through the lenses of his glasses, eyes sharp as blades. "After all, it should take a lot of brain power to control that many bugs at once, at least for the average mage."

    Ah. So that was his game.

    "So this guy that you''re talking about," I began. "What happened if he lost too many of his familiars?"

    El-Melloi II clicked his tongue. "He had to¡­acquire more biomass to construct replacements from. My understanding was that it usually came from unwitting bystanders."

    In other words, he slunk off, found the nearest oblivious pedestrian, and then he used his familiars ¡ª blood worms, El-Melloi II had called them ¡ª to eat them, for lack of a better word. Whether he just processed the raw biomass the way Panacea could or had to do it the more natural way, by breeding, well, I guess that was academic.

    The worst part was, I could imagine that as another way my powers could have wound up working, too. It was one of the times I was actually thankful I''d gotten what I had, because a version of me that had to make more bugs by consuming flesh? That had to eat people? I would have been one of the candidates for the Slaughterhouse Nine when they visited Brockton Bay again.

    "I can at least assure you that my powers don''t work like that," I told him. "I don''t make more bugs except the long, tedious way, and I''m limited to taking over what''s already there."

    "Long, tedious way?"

    I arched an eyebrow at him. "Have you ever seen a queen bee get fertilized?"

    He grimaced. "Ah."

    You asked, I thought dryly.

    "I won''t say I''ve never attacked someone with my bugs that way," I allowed. There were numerous examples, but Alexandria was the one that came to mind first. "But my options were somewhat limited, so I had to fight the way that I could."

    El-Melloi II worked his jaw. "I''ve noticed you put it that way both times it was brought up. You call them powers, not magecraft."

    Damn. He''d noticed that, had he?

    "So?"

    "So no self-respecting mage would be that¡­I guess ''plebeian'' is the best word for it," he said. "Even that Emiya calls his magecraft what it is."

    Double damn.

    "I don''t know what you''re expecting me to tell you ¡ª"

    "The truth would be nice," he snarked.

    "Then the truth is that I was told to keep it all a secret," I transitioned smoothly. "Da Vinci and Romani both have at least some idea, but Director Animusphere had my past classified, for her eyes only. If you want to hear the full story, you''ll have to wrangle permission out of her, and I''ll wish you the best of luck."

    Especially since she currently didn''t have a body. Hard to ask a question of a woman who was a spirit stuck inside of a machine, right now.

    El-Melloi II''s eyebrows rose. "Animusphere? There''s a Lord of the Clock Tower involved?"

    "As for my terminology," I went on, "there''s a very simple answer to that: I''m not a mage. I''ve been able to do what I can do since I was fifteen, but up until I joined Chaldea, I didn''t even know magecraft existed."

    His brow furrowed. "Then how ¡ª"

    I arched an eyebrow at him, and he scowled.

    "That''s all you''re going to tell me, isn''t it?" he muttered.

    "It''s more than I''ve heard," A¨ªfe said suddenly, reminding us that she was still there.

    Well, El-Melloi II, anyway. I hadn''t forgotten.

    He startled. "Wha ¡ª you! How long have you been sitting there?"

    "The entire time," she answered simply. "I just didn''t feel the need to insert myself into your interrogation."

    "Interro ¡ª I had legitimate concerns!" he snapped back at her. "You may have had more of a chance to get to know her, but I''ve been with the team only a day or two!"

    A¨ªfe shrugged. "That may be the case, but look at who she''s surrounded herself with and how much they trust her, in spite of her secrets. Do you think someone like Arash Kamangir would follow her so willingly if he didn''t think her character was beyond reproach?"

    El-Melloi II clicked his tongue and reached into his jacket, pulling out a brassy gold case. He flicked open the clasp and from inside withdrew a long, thin cigar, then closed it with a click and stuffed it back into his pocket so he could grab a lighter. A moment later, he was puffing on the cigar as the end smoldered.

    My nose wrinkled. I''d never been fond of tobacco smoke. The smell had always been something that irritated my nostrils.

    "Tch. Fine," said El-Melloi II. "I can tell when I should retreat. I''ll let it drop for now, but the first chance I get, I''ll want to talk to this Director Animusphere about this."

    "More power to you," I said nonchalantly.

    You''ll have to come back to Chaldea and wait an extra week or two for that.

    I wasn''t sure he''d want to go that far. Frankly, Boudica was a lot friendlier to us, and I wasn''t sure she would be willing to come back with us when this was all over.

    "The bounded field''s up," he announced, changing the subject abruptly. "Like I said, it should buy us a few moments to get ready if the Servant Arash went to find turns out to be an enemy."

    And with that said, he walked away, leaving me alone with A¨ªfe.

    "A bit nosy, that one," she commented. "You have to realize, of course, that he won''t be the last one with questions like that."

    My lips drew tight. "We''re in a Singularity, hunting down a Holy Grail, fighting side by side with the resurrected spirits of dead heroes who wield their legends in the form of weapons. What I can do with bugs is tame by comparison."

    "It is," she agreed. "However, the thing about all of that? You just compared yourself to a Servant."

    I froze.

    I¡­ Technically, I had, hadn''t I?

    "I won''t pry," A¨ªfe went on. "After watching that El-Melloi come up against the walls you''ve built, I know better than to try and push past them. What you have to understand, however, isn''t that controlling the bugs themselves is in any way special. It''s the sheer magnitude of how many you can control at once that makes so many of us raise our eyebrows."

    A long, slow breath hissed out of my nostrils. Yeah, I already knew that, didn''t I? That had always been the real strength of my powers, my ability to act through them in so many directions simultaneously. It seemed that much was still unusual, even in a world with actual magic.

    Master, Arash''s voice jumped into my thoughts. We''re on our way back.

    I straightened. Jing Ke?

    Yeah. I could almost see him nodding. It was pretty dicey for a minute there, but I managed to prove that I''m on the side of Rome.

    My cheek twitched. Dicey? I hadn''t felt him drawing on any magical energy from me. Everything okay?

    We didn''t come to blows, so everything''s fine, he assured me. We''ll be back in a few minutes. Jing Ke''s dressed in white robes.

    Good. It helped to know what we should be looking for.

    I stood from my spot sitting on A¨ªfe''s chariot and took a brief second or two to stretch my legs. My knees were still a little sore, but there was nothing else to do about that right now.

    "Head''s up!" I called over, pitching my voice to reach the others. "Arash is on his way back with Jing Ke!"

    "Just in time for breakfast!" Boudica called back from the spot where she and Emiya were cooking ¡ª on an old-fashioned iron stove that he must have projected. This one, I think, I was willing to give him a pass on, since it wasn''t really that complicated.

    "It''ll be done in a few minutes!" Emiya added.

    "Yes!" Rika cheered. "I''m hungry enough to eat a whole hippo!"

    "I would happily down an entire roast boar!" Nero proclaimed.

    "I don''t think either of those is on the menu," Mash said, quieter than the other two.

    "And we''re fresh out of zebras," said Ritsuka wryly.

    Rika spun to face him suddenly, face serious and arm outstretched as she pointed at him like a disobedient dog.

    "No!" And scolded him like one, too. "Bad Onii-chan! Bad! That''s my schtick!"

    "You''re not the only one who watched Disney movies as a child," Ritsuka retorted mildly.

    Rika was undeterred.

    "But making cheesy, wildly inappropriate references is my job in this party! It''s the thing I''m best at! Who else is going to make everyone laugh when they should be crying?"

    "No one!" Nero agreed.

    "Goddamn right!" said Rika. "This trauma bus has no brakes! It needs a little comic relief!"

    "Take it from me, laughter is even more important when things are bleak."

    Rika turned with a gasp as Arash materialized from thin air, a smile on his face.

    "Arash!"

    Arash shook his head. "And somehow, I''m still the only one here without a patented Rika nickname. I''m starting to feel left out."

    "A tragedy," Ritsuka said in a voice as dry as bone.

    "H-hey, comedic genius needs appropriate timing!" Rika blustered. "I can''t reveal Arash''s super awesome nickname just willy nilly, you know! It needs the right moment!"

    Ritsuka translated. "She can''t actually think of one."

    "Onii-chan! My secrets!"

    "Because you can''t get married without at least some, right?" Emiya asked as he appeared at her shoulder.

    "Being a little mysterious is the most important part of being a woman!" Rika insisted. "Just ask Senpai! She''s the most mysterious person here!"

    "Don''t drag me into that," I told her.

    Rika gasped. "Wait!" She turned an accusing glare at Emiya. "You''re supposed to be making breakfast! Its flavor quotient drops by half if it''s burned!"

    "Flavor quotient?" Mash muttered to herself.

    "Boudica is handling the finishing touches," Emiya answered. "I''m just here to take care of something first." He arched an eyebrow. "Unless you''d like to eat standing up?"

    Rika considered that for a second. "Will it let me eat sooner?"

    Emiya shook his head, exasperated, and stepped off to the side towards a clear patch of land. He held out one hand, squared his shoulders, and set his stance. "Trace, on!"

    And one after another, he formed the pieces of a tent, a gazebo really, that he propped up on sturdy wooden posts wedged into the ground with a Servant''s strength. A safe place to eat, that was what he was making, and given his track record, a picnic table wasn''t far off into the future.

    I turned towards Arash. "Jing Ke?"

    Arash, in turn, looked to the empty air next to him, and after a moment, a petite figure in a white robe with long, black hair and delicate features materialized there, a smile on her face. Yes, very obviously "her" face, because even if I discounted the very daring slit up the sides of her robe that revealed almost as much as a bikini did, there were too many other clues that were equally hard to ignore.

    You know what? It''s happened one time too many for me to be surprised anymore.

    King Arthur was a woman, Emperor Nero was a woman, what was one more Servant whose gender had apparently been recorded wrong?

    "You were right, Arash," Jing Ke said in a silky alto. "They certainly are a lively crowd, aren''t they?"

    "Never a dull moment," Arash agreed.

    "Jing Ke!" Nero cried, grinning broadly.

    Jing Ke inclined her head shallowly. "Emperor Nero."

    Nero''s expression morphed into a frown, and she planted her hands on her hips sternly. "You never told me you were one of these Servants, too! Mm-mm!"

    "Ah." The corners of Jing Ke''s eyes crinkled as she smiled. "It seemed easier that way. You''ll have to forgive me."

    She didn''t sound sorry at all.

    "There are more important things to talk about besides," A¨ªfe chimed in. "Like the layout of the United Empire''s capital."

    Jing Ke opened her mouth.

    "Breakfast, everyone!" Boudica called over. "Emiya, if you''re done, could you lend me a hand carrying the food?"

    Emiya glanced at his makeshift tent, gave everything a once over with a critical eye, and then, apparently satisfied with how it all turned out, went over to help out Boudica.

    "We''ll talk while we eat," I slid into the conversation smoothly. "You can explain everything we need to know over breakfast."

    "I''m sure Emiya and Boudica made enough for you, too," Arash said.

    Jing Ke smirked. "Well, with an invite like that, how could I resist?"

    So we all huddled in under the big tent Emiya had pitched, taking seats at the large, wooden picnic table that he''d made with that oh so versatile projection magic of his. Emiya and Boudica arrived with breakfast and plates shortly thereafter, with everyone already allotted a portion and anything extra set on a communal tray.

    "Obviously, I know Emperor Nero," Jing Ke said, "and I recognize the fearsome A¨ªfe, if only by her reputation, Boudica, Spartacus, and Mister Court Mage over there ¡ª"

    "I could have sworn I told you my name was El-Melloi II," El-Melloi II said.

    "¡ª but the rest of you are strangers to me."

    Our group of Chaldeans sent each other silent looks. Mostly, it was the others looking to me for what to say.

    Time to be a leader, I guess.

    "We''re from an organization called Chaldea," I began as I cut up my food.

    What followed was one of the most informal debriefings I''d ever gone through. Between the four of us and our accompanying Servants, we described our purpose, our mission, and our names, one person picking up while the others chewed their food. Somehow, I still wound up doing the most talking, but not nearly by much, and by the end of it, we''d also wound up explaining what we''d accomplished so far in this Singularity.

    "Tiberius, Caesar, Scaeva, and Caligula?" Jing Ke mused. "I guess that makes us four to four, then. Damn, I thought I was going to come out ahead."

    My brow furrowed as I digested that little tidbit. Did she mean¡­?

    "Four to four?"

    "Lu Bu and I also killed four enemy Servants," said Jing Ke. "Although I guess I''m technically ahead, since all of mine were actually emperors."

    She launched into an explanation of her own, skipping over the trickery she''d used to get the three emperors manning Hadrian''s Wall to let down their guard and focusing instead on the actual killing, and then she went into her infiltration of the United Empire''s capital and the Servant who aided her ¡ª Marcus Junius Brutus.

    "Brutus is here as well?" Mash asked, surprised.

    I didn''t blame her. He was the last Heroic Spirit I would have expected to side with either empire, simply by virtue that they were empires. The man had killed his own friend for the sake of preserving what was left of Roman democracy.

    "Was," Jing Ke corrected. "He didn''t plan on making it out, and killing Hadrian was definitely the last thing he did."

    "Hadrian''s dead?" asked Arash.

    So Jing Ke explained yet more about the plan she and Brutus had concocted, a scheme where he helped her infiltrate the deepest echelons of the United Empire through his Noble Phantasm so that the two of them could each take down a target. She had gone for Constantine the Great because he was the easier target, and he had gone after Hadrian because he was the only one who could get close enough without getting caught until the deed was done.

    By the time she was finished, we had all finished eating, and Emiya and Boudica silently cleared the leftovers away while we listened.

    "He allowed me to get away with this," she said, and she pulled a tube from somewhere in one of her voluminous sleeves. "This is everything he managed to figure out about the United Empire''s Servants, from their true names to their Noble Phantasms."

    She twisted off the lid, and when she shook it out, rolls of parchment spilled onto the table, curling at the top and bottom like shriveled leaves. Neat Latin script filled out every sheaf, and although I couldn''t read it, I could still see the amount of care and detail that had been put into every word, with the intent that whoever received it ¡ª probably meant for Nero''s eyes, actually ¡ª would have more than enough to plan the United Empire''s downfall.

    "Well, that''s convenient," Emiya remarked. "The two most troublesome emperors are already dead, and intelligence on the enemy''s forces gets dropped into our laps." He peered down at the parchment. "Very thorough intelligence, too, by the looks of it."

    I know, I thought, I''m not used to things going this smoothly either.

    "I''m not so sure we should be looking too closely at this horse''s teeth," El-Melloi II said, puffing on the final remnants of his cigar.

    "Mm," said Nero, quieter and more solemn than usual. "A man died to see this reach our hands. I cannot call that convenient."

    "No," Ritsuka agreed. "Me neither."

    My lips pursed. No, I guess it didn''t really matter that he was a Servant to begin with, did it? Maybe it was easier to sacrifice when you were already dead, but that didn''t make that sacrifice less meaningful.

    "It does make things a bit easier on us, at least," I said instead. "And this gives us a definite edge over the enemy."

    I reached out and smoothed out one of the pieces of parchment, careful not to touch the ink, but it was no more intelligible to me than it had been a minute ago. Too bad Winslow had never offered a Latin course.

    "I haven''t had the chance to look at them myself," said Jing Ke, "but there should be more than enough there to help us figure out how to take down the United Empire''s remaining Servants. Brutus was meticulous like that."

    I didn''t doubt it.

    "So what''s the plan, Senpai?" asked Rika seriously.

    Not for the first time and definitely not for the last, I wished I had a watch. I was going to have to put that suggestion in for Da Vinci after this Singularity was over and done with.

    "First, we''re going to go over every word of what''s written here," I said, jabbing my index finger against the table. "That should give our food enough time to settle. Then, once we know our enemies'' weaknesses back to front, we''ll come up with a plan of attack."

    My head turned back towards the road, as though if I looked hard enough, I could see the walls of the United Empire''s capital in the distance.

    "And when we''re ready," I went on, "we''ll make our way to the capital and put an end to this civil war."

    One side of Arash''s mouth curled upwards. "Romulus won''t know what hit him."

 Chapter LXIV: Divine Ancestor

    Chapter LXIV: Divine Ancestor

    It was the better part of another hour of riding before the walls of the United Empire''s capital loomed ahead of us, and as we approached the outskirts of the city, our group dismounted from the chariots. As much of an advantage as we could get, we had to have, so we had to slow down far enough away that we wouldn''t draw suspicion.

    It meant, unfortunately, that we were going to have to make the final approach on foot. If we rode in at full speed, the only thing we would have accomplished was the run headfirst into Constantine XI''s threefold barrier.

    "So that''s the United Empire''s capital, huh."

    "It can''t be," Nero muttered. "It looks just like¡­"

    "Rome," Boudica concluded. "Yes, Miss Da Vinci did say, didn''t she?"

    "Has to be the work of a Noble Phantasm," said Emiya. "Even this close to the Age of Gods, building a city with magecraft that quickly would be impossible."

    "Depends upon the magecraft," El-Melloi II said immediately. "But you''re right. Building a perfect replica of Rome in less than a decade means that it had to have been sped up somehow."

    Brutus had theorized that it had been constructed through the use of Romulus'' Noble Phantasm, but he hadn''t been able to confirm that one way or the other. It was as good a theory as any we had, so I was willing to accept it, even if it wasn''t one-hundred percent confirmed.

    As long as he couldn''t turn the city itself against us and attack, it was immaterial, and Brutus had surveyed the city at length during his stay. He hadn''t found any indication of any kind of defensive or offensive emplacements inside the city, so for all intents and purposes, it really was just a city, and how it got there didn''t matter all that much.

    "And protecting it¡­"

    "Theodosios Constantinos," I said, frowning at the thick, stone ramparts that jutted up around the city itself. "The Noble Phantasm of Constantine XI. If Brutus is right, it gets weaker the more it has to protect, so if he''s trying to cover the entirety of the capital city¡­"

    "It''s at its weakest," Arash agreed. "In that case, it shouldn''t be too hard to make our way inside, should it?"

    Rika grinned, all teeth. "I always wanted to be a ninja!"

    "You did not," Ritsuka accused her. "You used to freak out whenever they showed up in the movies, because you thought someone had glued socks to their faces."

    "I was five!"

    "A ninja?" Nero asked, confused.

    "Not now," I cut in, stopping the tangent before it could get off the ground. "If you want to explain, it can wait until later, after this is all over."

    Thinking I couldn''t see her, Rika stuck her tongue out at Ritsuka, who glared back at her. I pretended nothing had happened, because the only reprimand I could think of was to threaten to wash that tongue with soap, and I wasn''t her goddamn mother.

    "Arash," I began, thinking about the city not so far away, "you got a good look when we were on higher ground, right?"

    "Pretty good one, yeah."

    "Then the gates are all where they''re supposed to be?"

    "They are," he affirmed. "Exactly where Brutus said they should be."

    I nodded. I hadn''t expected it to be any different, but getting confirmation was useful. And frankly, I just trusted Arash a whole lot more than I did a Servant I''d never met, especially one who had no reason to like either side of this civil war.

    "Then the plan remains unchanged," I said. "The main group will move in and head towards the eastern gate. Emiya, Boudica, and Spartacus will head towards the southern gate and stay out there. Emiya will use a Noble Phantasm to shatter Theodosios Constantinos, which should get Constantine XI''s attention, and we''ll sneak in."

    The small details had changed a little, but the important parts were the same as they were about an hour ago when we had first come up with this plan. It wasn''t the most involved and there wasn''t some higher dimensional chess going on to complicate things, but it should be perfectly serviceable to get us inside so we could take out Romulus and his court mage.

    "And if Constantine XI brings reinforcements?" asked Emiya. "We know they have at least a legion''s worth of trained soldiers."

    Yeah, there was that little wrinkle, wasn''t there? We hadn''t really come up with anything solid for that. Brutus had given us the guard rotation and the deployment schedules, so the tentative plan there was to just sneak around them, but that could all very easily have changed once Hadrian and Constantine the Great were dead.

    "We don''t have to kill them," Ritsuka said suddenly.

    "Senpai," Mash murmured sympathetically.

    "They''re not a threat to anyone but us Masters, right?" Ritsuka went on. "Then¡­ We just have to knock them out. Or injure them so that they can''t keep fighting."

    "You don''t ask for too much, do you?" A¨ªfe said dryly.

    "It''s not how it is in the movies," I agreed. "People don''t go down from a hard tap to the head and stay down. Not without serious brain trauma."

    "M-me, too!" Mash burst out. "I-I agree with Senpai! The soldiers, we don''t have to kill them at all!"

    "Yeah!" said Rika. "We''re the good guys, right? The good guys don''t kill!"

    Emiya clicked his tongue, frowning thoughtfully. "Well. I guess the soldiers of the modern era got out of it by shooting themselves in the foot, right? Guess I just have to aim there, then."

    Ritsuka turned to him, a hopeful look blooming on his face. "You can do that?"

    "I never miss my intended target," Emiya bragged.

    "A-and¡­I can use the blunt edge of my shield!" said Mash. "That way¡­the only thing we have to worry about is broken bones!"

    "I can do the same," Arash chimed in. "Injuries to the foot may not be nice, but you can still walk away from them, metaphorically speaking."

    "Love is pain!" Spartacus pronounced. "But pain does not mean death! It is the audience who decides the gladiators'' fates!"

    "I¡­think I could use the flat side of my blade," said Boudica, sounding less certain than the others. "I-it won''t be easy, but I should be able to do it!"

    My mouth twisted into a grimace. Fine, I could see where this was heading.

    "And our Gandr shots should lay them out after one or two hits," I allowed. "We just have to be careful to pace ourselves and not use too much energy too fast."

    "Even if they are misguided, they are still citizens of Rome!" said Nero. "Mm-mm! It is my duty as their emperor to deliver them mercy when needed!"

    El-Melloi II let out a sigh. "You''re all getting too twisted up into knots about this whole thing. The answer is obvious. I''m the one here who will be least useful against Romulus, but I can at least handle keeping the rank and file soldiers from throwing themselves on your swords. Leave that part to me."

    Rika grinned. "Alright, Hot Pops," she said. "You''re pretty cool, aren''t you?"

    "Don''t give me too much credit," El-Melloi II told her. "It''s precisely because I''m not a Heroic Spirit myself that I understand these things like you do, so it''s only natural that I''d want to make myself useful by doing something within my skill set."

    "At least this softness doesn''t extend to the enemy Servants," A¨ªfe said, sounding annoyed. "Fine. Mercy is the privilege of the strong. If we encounter any enemy soldiers, I''ll endeavor not to deal fatal wounds."

    And Ritsuka¡­beamed at her, for lack of a better word. I wasn''t sure how I felt about that. We weren''t always going to have the luxury of sparing the normal enemies we ran across in these Singularities. He was going to have to come to terms with that eventually.

    I guess that just wasn''t going to be today.

    "Then if everyone''s clear on their role, let''s get moving," I said. "Emiya, Spartacus, Boudica, make your way over. Rika will signal you when we''re ready for the diversion."

    "I''ll make it a loud one," Emiya promised, and then he paused, looked over at Nero, and held out his hand.

    In a flash, he held a raincoat, bright yellow and glaring, and he tossed it at her. She caught it, confused. "What''s this? Mm."

    "You''re emperor, aren''t you?" he asked her sardonically. "If you don''t want to get recognized right away, you need to disguise yourself at least a little."

    "Good thinking," I told him.

    "My house-husband is good for more than just his delicious food!" Rika said proudly.

    "Who would have thought, right?" Emiya shrugged, and then he disappeared into spirit form. Boudica and Spartacus followed a moment later.

    I looked back at El-Melloi II, A¨ªfe, and Arash. "You three, too. The smaller our group is, the less attention we''ll draw."

    "And I need to lead the way," Jing Ke added.

    "I''ll let you know before I split off from the group," El-Melloi II said, and then he vanished.

    "I''ll keep an eye on things from the rooftops once we get inside the city," Arash told us, and then he vanished, too.

    A¨ªfe huffed. "Which means at least one of us needs to stick close in case things devolve into a fight." She shook her head. "A group of Servants this large, and we''re still talking as if we need more."

    She vanished last, and although they were still with us, just intangible, it gave the sense that it was just down to us humans and Jing Ke. After a moment, Mash looked down at her shield, frowning, and it evaporated into thin air.

    "Should we have called in reinforcements from Chaldea?" Ritsuka asked uncertainly. "I mean, this Romulus guy, he''s a big deal, right? Will it be enough with the Servants we have right now?"

    "Tii-chan would''ve been happy to come," Rika added.

    My lips pursed. "You''ll notice it once the fight gets started. Servants use up a lot of energy, especially the high class ones like A¨ªfe and Siegfried. The entire reason we didn''t bring everyone we had to begin with is because the instant they got into a fight, it would drain us Masters dry, remember?"

    If it was an option, I would have just called in Siegfried and had him along for the ride. But having to support him, A¨ªfe, and Arash simultaneously was probably beyond me, and it would do no one any good if I collapsed mid-fight from trying to keep them all well-stocked with magical energy.

    When it came down to it, one strong Servant with a powerful Noble Phantasm was worth three who couldn''t use theirs.

    It wouldn''t be bad to have backup, though, if things got a little dicey. We just had to be a little choosier about who we called for backup. Since Siegfried would probably be too much, that left the other Servant we''d picked up in Orl¨¦ans.

    "I''ll leave that to you, Rika," I decided. "If it starts looking like we''re going to need help, contact Da Vinci and have her Rayshift Bradamante here."

    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    Rika saluted me. "Roger that, Boss!"

    "Tii-chan?" Nero asked. "Bradamante?"

    "She''s a friend we made in the last Singularity," Rika told her, grinning broadly. "She''s really cool, Best Buddy! I think you''d like her!"

    Nero beamed. "Then I would be very pleased to meet her! Mm-mm!"

    "Only if it looks like we need her," I stressed. "The less energy we have to split between different Servants, that''s the more we can spare to help A¨ªfe, Arash, Mash, and Emiya."

    "Right," Rika said, much less excited than before. "Yeah, I get it, Senpai." Under her breath, she added, "Doesn''t mean I have to like it."

    I let that one slip. "Then let''s get going. It should be about twenty minutes to the east gate. Let''s not keep Emiya and the others waiting."

    We set off. As we walked, Nero fumbled around with the raincoat Emiya had projected for her until Rika took pity on her and helped her slip it on over her regular clothes. Frankly, it looked ridiculous, and I wasn''t entirely sure that it wouldn''t draw some unwanted attention on its own, but people looking at the yellow raincoat and thinking it looked silly would hopefully be far less inclined to look closer at the woman wearing it.

    "I am emperor," Nero mumbled petulantly. "My glory should never be hidden from my people."

    "You''re also one of the prime targets of the United Empire," I told her, "and the one the people here would recognize best. If we want to reach Romulus unaccosted, then we need to be able to get there without anyone realizing the Emperor of Rome is walking the streets of the capital city."

    Nero scowled miserably, but dropped the subject.

    As I predicted, it took us a little over twenty minutes to make it to the looming gate of Theodosios Constantinos that led into the United Empire''s capital, and as we approached, the sturdy brick constructs towering over our heads, I turned to Rika and mumbled her name.

    "Right," she muttered back, looking about surreptitiously. Her brow furrowed with concentration, and then she nodded. "Message sent, Senpai."

    A tense second or two passed. Then ¡ª

    BOOM

    The Earth itself seemed to shake beneath our feet, and a second sun rose to the south, bright enough and brilliant enough that I actually had to lift a hand to protect my eyes from the light. The others let out startled squeaks and shrieks, but I kept my attention on the city in front of us.

    And as the light from the blast of whatever Noble Phantasm Emiya had used faded ¡ª we were going to be having some words about that later ¡ª the sturdy brick walls of Theodosios Constantinos began to crack, crumble, and at last, break. Great hunks of what I assumed to be sandstone broke off from the larger structure, forcing us all back a few steps as the nearby civilians descended into a blind panic, and they shattered and evaporated when they hit the ground. Disappeared, just like Servants did when killed.

    Bit by bit, the walls fell. And when they fell, they revealed the city behind them, no longer protected and no longer impenetrable. There was no longer anything standing in our way.

    "Go!" I shouted over the panicked screaming, and I took off into the city as my control settled over the insects inside it that had been blocked from me before.

    It took the others an extra second to follow, and Jing Ke put on an extra spurt of speed to outpace me so she could take point and lead the way, and then we were racing through the streets of the United Empire''s capital city. It really did look just like Rome, only cleaner and nicer, newer and fresher.

    Like everything had just been built, because for all intents and purposes, it had.

    The civilians who had chosen Romulus, perhaps realizing that this was an invasion of sorts and fearing an enemy army, scrambled to get out of the way and find the nearest building to hole up in. They raced through the streets just like us, but with the goal of hiding away, and more than one person was nearly trampled in the chaos.

    We weren''t spared from it. The crowd jostled us about, and I stumbled more than once as I was nearly thrown to the ground, but a pair of strong, thin arms caught me and kept me from falling.

    "I''m breaking off to take care of the soldiers," El-Melloi II told me gruffly.

    "Got it."

    He nodded when he was sure I had my footing back, and then he vanished again, heading towards the southern gate where the city''s legionnaires were likely to be going. I trusted him to be able to handle it on his own and kept going.

    Jing Ke led us through the maze of streets, and the deeper into the city we got, the more the crowds thinned out ¡ª most of the populace had made it inside already, and with my bugs, I could see them, huddled in the corners and in their rooms, as far away from the windows and doors as they could possibly be.

    They were scared. Terrified, as families clutched to each other and waited, no doubt praying to their gods that their lives would be spared, that the invaders wouldn''t burst in and put them all to the sword.

    It was hard to have too much sympathy for them, easier to blame them for their own suffering now, to say that this was what they got for choosing Romulus over Rome. But I''d also seen too many examples before of charismatic leaders convincing people of their way of thinking, of how the right person saying the right thing to the right people at the right time could make monsters out of ordinary men. Could make them make the worst decisions imaginable, because they were told those decisions were the correct ones.

    I could disagree with their choices, I could condemn their choices, I could absolutely say they were wrong. But I couldn''t forget that they, too, were victims of a kind, who didn''t know anything about a "proper human history" or a "Singularity," and who were only faced with the decision of following one autocrat or the other. Choosing the living god back from the dead must have seemed like the obvious one.

    As long as they didn''t throw themselves in our way, that choice didn''t have to be a fatal one.

    The deeper we got into the city, the fewer people there were still out, and more than once, Jing Ke veered us through a side street to avoid a patrol of soldiers marching along ¡ª I saw them as they passed us by with my bugs. They all seemed to be going southwards, towards the gate that Emiya had blown wide open.

    It looked like our distraction plan was working.

    Like with the real Rome, the outer sections of the city were mostly for the poor and underclass, and the closer towards the center we got, the better the accommodations and the richer the owners. By the time we got to the villas and mansions of the truly rich ¡ª I spared a brief thought to wonder who had become this empire''s aristocracy and how ¡ª things were starting to look almost frighteningly familiar.

    It was one thing to say that the United Empire''s capital was a perfect replica of the real Rome, and it was another thing entirely to see it for yourself, down to the brickwork and the placement of the marble columns.

    "This is really creepy," Rika huffed under her breath as we went. "I recognize that building."

    "You''re telling me," her brother agreed.

    "It really does look just like Rome," Mash marveled.

    Nero looked troubled by the very notion.

    Eventually, Jing Ke led us through the aristocratic district and to a very specific building, a tall, large, palatial mansion that dominated the hill it stood upon. It was everything you might have expected from Roman architecture: bold, ostentatious, hewn from gleaming marble, and decorated with gold mounted upon every carving and relief.

    This one building was where the two Romes differed. In proper Rome, in Nero''s Rome, this was Nero''s palace, a proud structure proclaiming Rome''s splendor and glory. It was the palace of an emperor, carved with the likenesses of gods and great men, a monument to everything that was Rome and everything that Rome had accomplished.

    Here, in this Rome, it was Romulus'' palace. Superficially, they were fairly similar, but the reliefs etched into the facade and above the towering pillars depicted not many men and many deeds, but a single one ¡ª Romulus himself, from his birth and childhood raised by the she-wolf to the moment he founded Rome itself. Each image glorified only him, praised only him, exalted only him, because he was the first and true king of Rome.

    It was a temple, dedicated to the Divine Ancestor.

    Nero gasped and stumbled to a stop when she finally got a good look at it, gaping up at the myths carved into the stone. Her eyes were wide and her mouth flapped soundlessly.

    I stopped and turned to her, and a moment later, Rika realized something was wrong, too, and turned herself. After that, Mash and Ritsuka were inevitable.

    "Best Buddy?"

    Nero didn''t reply.

    Jing Ke, sensing that we had stopped following, spun on her heel.

    "Is something the matter?" she asked. "This is it. This is where Romulus should be. Isn''t reaching him our goal?"

    Nero startled and jerked, blinking wildly. "Ah," she stammered. "Ah, yes, I¡­ F-forgive me, I was just¡­ M-mm, I mean, yes! Yes, that is why we''re here! Yes, we should absolutely get to that!"

    My brow furrowed.

    "Best Buddy?" Rika asked uncertainly. "You okay?"

    Nero shook her head emphatically. "It is nothing, it is nothing! Mm! I was simply¡­momentarily overwhelmed by the Divine Ancestor''s splendorous abode! I allowed myself a moment too long to admire it!"

    I wasn''t sure I was the only one who didn''t quite believe her. Even Rika looked a little uncertain and worried. Now would be the worst time for Nero to chicken out or start thinking Romulus might be right.

    Jing Ke took it all out of everyone else''s hands.

    "You can admire it later," she said brusquely. "Or not, since it''ll probably disappear when he does. Either way, we need to get going. Your handsome friend and the others won''t be able to hold off Constantine XI forever."

    "You''re right." I turned away from Nero and put the issue behind me, almost literally. "If Romulus is just inside there, then shouldn''t you be going to find a good shadow to ambush him from?"

    If my less than delicate phrasing bothered her, Jing Ke didn''t show it. She just smirked, one side of her mouth pulling upwards, and she turned around, running towards the palace. Over her shoulder, she tossed a flippant, "See you in there, then!"

    "Mm!" Nero marshaled her resolve. "Indeed, we shall! Onward, my friends! Our destiny awaits! The Divine Ancestor is within reach."

    Relief washed over Rika and Ritsuka''s faces, and as Nero charged forth to take point, we started running again, scaling the stairs that led up the hill. When we reached the top, those famous marble pillars loomed overhead, and the ominous doorway that led inside beckoned.

    Nero didn''t slow down, so neither did the rest of us, and into the palace we went. My bugs were already crawling through the structure ¡ª like Nero''s palace, it was surprisingly sparse on insect life, but unlike Nero''s palace, there was no bounded field keeping them out ¡ª and when Nero tried to take a wrong turn, I led in the right direction.

    "This way!" I shouted over my shoulder.

    The team reoriented and fell back into step behind me, and I took point now, weaving through the spacious hallways and the fairly Spartan corridors towards the large, open room that had the palace''s singular occupant. He was waiting for us there, I knew it, and maybe it wasn''t the best idea to run into what may very well have been a trap, but there wasn''t time to think up much in the way of alternatives.

    If he was a Caster, I would have made time, but in many ways, Romulus being a Lancer was to our advantage, even if it also presented a few problems.

    There were no doors barring the way, so we burst into what I could only call the throne room as a group, us Masters panting from the run, and across from us, at the far end, the towering, muscular figure looked up. He sat on a simple stone throne, little more than marble hewn into the shape of a chair, legs crossed and his cheek resting on the knuckles of one massive fist.

    He looked even more impressive in person than he had through my bugs.

    "You''re here," he said simply in a deep, rumbling baritone. His blood red eyes swept over our group, lingering for an extra moment on Nero. "You''re all here. Good."

    "Th-this is¡­" Nero mumbled, huffing as she caught her breath. She stared, unblinking, up at the form of the man who was said to have built Rome into the empire it became through sheer will alone.

    Slowly, leisurely, the man ¡ª the Servant ¡ª sitting on his throne uncrossed his legs and stood.

    "Welcome, Chaldean Stargazers," he rumbled. "Welcome, Emperor Nero, my child. I am Romulus, the leader and ruler of this United Empire, my new Rome."

    "The father of Rome," Mash muttered. "Lancer class Servant, Romulus."

    "Indeed, I am he." Romulus spread out his arms in welcome. "Come. Rest and be at ease. Lay down your arms and be welcome."

    "What?" Slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.

    He¡­wasn''t itching for a fight? Every other member of his empire had been almost eager to trade blows with us, like they had some kind of grudge to settle with Chaldea or with Nero. Berserker or not, Caligula had been so driven that he''d followed us down to Stheno''s island to get a shot in on us. This whole empire was a violent civil war fought against the real Rome, to the point that Rome itself had been split right down the middle.

    "Will you not accept my hospitality?" he asked. "Even those Servants of yours who are still hiding ¡ª it isn''t necessary. My United Empire bids you welcome."

    A¨ªfe and Arash shimmered into existence, standing at the front of the group as though to protect us the instant the fighting started. Romulus regarded them with the same calm, dispassionate gaze, as though he was looking over different wallpaper options to put in his sitting room.

    "I see," he said. "A Celtic warrior queen and a hero of the Assyrians. Chaldea''s allies are varied indeed."

    "They¡­are not merely Chaldea''s allies!" Nero proclaimed, her voice gaining strength with every word. "They are the allies of Emperor Nero! Of Rome! Mm-mm! They are my trusted comrades in the war against the United Empire!"

    "To have gathered them to your banner, you are indeed a worthy emperor," said Romulus. There was a hint of something like pride in his voice. "Your Rome is a radiant beacon, my beloved child. It is only a stroke of misfortune that has brought me to it as your opponent."

    The whole group tensed, fingers tightening over weapons and hands clenching into fists, and Romulus, unbothered, took an unhurried seat back on his throne. I wasn''t the only one thrown for a loop by it.

    What?

    "It is unfortunate that this became necessary at all," he lamented. "However, this need not end in violence. Indeed, although history would see us as enemies, I believe we are allies in the same cause ¡ª the cause of saving humanity from annihilation."

    "W-wait," Rika stammered. "I thought¡­you were the one messing history up. Aren''t you trying to destroy humanity?"

    "That is not my goal," Romulus said gravely. "It has never been my goal. I have seen the future, children of Chaldea. I know, as you do, that the world has been incinerated. The mankind of your time has already been destroyed."

    "By Lev Lainur," I said. "Your court mage."

    We still weren''t absolutely sure of that, but Romulus'' response should give us a more definitive answer to that question.

    "Lev Lainur''s ambitions are of no relation to me." Romulus waved it off, unconcerned. "Indeed, that he is at all capable of doing such damage to the mankind of your era only proves what I already know. The mistake was that such a world was not prepared to fight for itself, to stave off its own death. That it was too weak to prevent its own end."

    He swung his arm about, as though to encompass the whole of the city. "The Rome I have built was built to rectify that mistake, to create a world that cannot so easily be snuffed out. The future I envision thrives and continues, resilient and strong. It cannot be undone by the whims of a single man, whether he is god or demon."

    That¡­was new. Different. Saber Alter''s reasoning hadn''t ever been made clear, but Jeanne Alter had crowed her motive from the metaphorical rooftops, shouting to everyone who would listen about how she had been wronged and how much she wanted to punish those who had done it.

    When I''d given any thought to Romulus and his motives for this whole thing, I''d kind of been assuming that he thought Nero was a bumbling idiot at best and that he was a puppet for Lev at worst. The idea that his motive was¡­I wasn''t sure I could use the word "altruistic" here, but I hadn''t been expecting it.

    Romulus held out his hand to Nero, palm up and fingers unfurled. Offering it.

    "Nero," he entreated. "My beloved child, my youngest child. The Rome you have inherited is doomed. Its future is already determined, and its destiny is oblivion. If you truly love Rome, then join me, and together, we will build a Rome that will never fall, that will never falter, and never fail. Our Empire will be eternal, stretching across the entire globe, encompassing all places and peoples. A new, glorious, immortal Rome."

    Nero trembled.

    "And what of my Rome?" she asked tremulously. "The Rome of my uncle, Caligula, the Rome that burns so bright and will one day fall? What of the future that gave rise to the valiant warriors of Chaldea, who have come here to protect it?"

    "Your friends are welcome to join us," Romulus said easily. "All are welcome in my new Rome. But your question¡­ Yes, the future that is now will be erased and supplanted. There will be no need for Chaldean Stargazers, nor for their warriors defending it. Only my Rome is necessary for the growth and perseverance of mankind."

    "Then¡­they will disappear," she concluded. "As though they themselves were mere Servants returned from death."

    "They are a product of their future," Romulus told her. "If that future ceases to be, then they too will cease to be, at least in the form they currently take. It is an unavoidable consequence."

    "No," said Nero, "it is cruelty. It is murder!"

    From the bundle strapped to her back, she produced that twisted mockery of a sword with its undulating black and red blade. With flourish, she threw the pack away, brandishing that sword towards Romulus.

    "My Rome is not wrong!" she proclaimed boldly. "The future born from it is not incorrect! Mm-mm! Even if my beloved Rome will one day fall, the world it gives rise to is worth protecting! It is a world worth entrusting my legacy to! Mm! It is a world that will create many wondrous and incredible things!"

    She grinned and thrust out one fist towards Rika, who blinked at it, surprised, and then met it with her own.

    "Including my best buddy!"

    "Fuck yeah!" Rika cried.

    "It is my duty as emperor to shepherd that future!" Nero said. "To nurture it, to guide it! Mm-mm! To reject it is to reject everything that I and my ancestors built over the course of centuries! To reject the legacy of Rome itself!" She took hold of her sword''s hilt with both hands. "Even if the Divine Ancestor himself says that it must be that way, that is something I cannot accept, no matter what!"

    "Well said," said Arash, smiling. His bow materialized in his hands.

    "For all her troubles and mistakes, Emperor Nero at least understands the important parts," A¨ªfe agreed. G¨¢e Bolg spun in her grip, the keen edge flashing in the light. "A shame the same can''t be said for Heroic Spirits who should know better, but if that were the case, we wouldn''t be here, would we?"

    Arash nodded. "True enough."

    "I see." Romulus briefly closed his eyes, grimacing as though pained. "That is your answer, then."

    "It''s not perfect," I said sharply, "but it''s ours. If we didn''t think it was worth saving then we wouldn''t even be here."

    "That''s right," Ritsuka agreed. "There''s too many people counting on us to give up now."

    "You can give up if you want to, though," Rika told him. "You know. Cut out the part where Super Action Mom beats your ass like a drum and just hand us over the Grail."

    "Then you leave me no choice," said Romulus.

    He stood again, and his presence filled the room like static, like the jolt of energy in the air that preceded a thunderstorm, thick with power. Although he hadn''t gotten taller or changed form at all, he seemed to loom over us, and even Mash took a step back with a gasp, her shield forming in her hands. She held it up as though to ward him off, even though he made no move to leave that spot.

    "This will be the final battle between Rome and the United Empire!" Romulus bellowed.

    He held out one hand, and in his grip formed¡­something. It had a handle in the middle, long enough for about three of his hands to fit on it, but the top and bottom looked like shards of red wood. Like someone had taken an ax to a fully grown oak and whacked at it until they''d hacked off a large enough slab, then filed down the jagged edges into something resembling a blade and dipped it in red paint.

    Obviously, it was supposed to be a weapon, a polearm of some kind, but at least Medusa, A¨ªfe, and Dracul had all used something that actually looked the part. Even Bradamante, for all hers was tiny by comparison, wielded a lance that resembled one. Romulus'' looked crude and more like an oversized spade.

    He lifted up that ridiculous thing he called a spear. "Let us see which Rome is more worthy of surviving. Let us determine whose love burns brighter. The future will be decided now, Emperor Nero."

    The butt of the spear slammed into the ground with a sound like a gong, ominous and final.

    My Love Reaches All

    "Moles Necessrie."

 Chapter LXV: Rome Eternal

    Chapter LXV: Rome Eternal

    In an instant, the outside world disappeared.

    Like the blade of a guillotine coming down, I was cut off from everything outside of the palace. Every bug that remained beyond the walls, no matter how big or small, slipped from my powers at once.

    The suddenness of it hit me like an electric shock, and I staggered under the abrupt feeling of having my senses cleaved so neatly in half. It was like someone had reached into my head and scooped out one of my eyes to leave me half blind.

    "Senpai!" the twins cried, worried. Arash glanced back at me, brow furrowing, but didn''t ask.

    The words "I''m fine" were on the tip of my tongue, an almost automatic response, but when I looked back up at Romulus, meeting his pitiless red eyes, what tumbled out of my mouth instead was, "What did you just do?"

    "Have you injured one of my comrades before the fight has even properly begun?" Nero demanded. "Mm-mm! Such cowardice!"

    "This is the final battle of our civil war," Romulus repeated, completely ignoring her accusation. "It shall remain between us ¡ª I on my own, and you with your champions and comrades. From here, none shall have the right to intrude. Not my allies¡­" His gaze turned towards her meaningfully. "And not yours."

    A deathmatch. Of course. He was confident enough in himself to think that he could take on all of us there just then, but whether he was worried about having to fight Emiya and the others alongside us or just didn''t want someone else butting in, like his court mage, he''d decided to set things up so that we could have our own private arena to duke it out in uninterrupted.

    At least this time it wasn''t a stubborn Irish hound making that decision all on his own.

    "What''s that even mean?" Rika shouted.

    "It means he''s cut us off from the outside world," I answered her, taking stock of my remaining swarm. Not nearly enough that I could afford to sacrifice them willy nilly for the sake of split second distractions. "We can''t get out, but Emiya and Constantine XI can''t get in."

    We were all completely cut off from all allies. I couldn''t even feel the bugs that were outside of the ramparts that had been erected as part of his Noble Phantasm. For all intents and purposes, the outside world didn''t exist anymore.

    And given where and when we were and who he was? There was little doubt that the only way this Noble Phantasm was going to come down was by killing Romulus himself. It would be too convenient if it was as easy as wearing him down and waiting for him to run out of energy, so we had to assume that this barrier was going to stay up as long as he did.

    That also meant that we probably couldn''t call for reinforcements from Da Vinci, like we''d planned to do in case of an emergency. There would be no Siegfried or Bradamante to come and lend us a hand. We were going to have to win this with nothing more than the people we currently had with us.

    "I see." And instead of being upset, Nero grinned, full of teeth. "Mm! No, this is exactly the way it should be, isn''t it? The winner shall be determined by the strength of our convictions! Armies, allies, Servants ¡ª it is all down to whose love shines brighter! My love for the Rome I have built, the Rome that will one day give rise to the world my friends hail from, or the love of Rome''s Divine Ancestor for his new creation!"

    Well, I could give her credit for her spirit, at least. I felt one side of my mouth pull up almost against my will. I couldn''t believe the thought even entered my head, but where was she during Gold Morning, when it seemed like almost everyone had lost hope and given up? When I needed whoever had the will to keep going against the impossible and found so many people wanting?

    "Well said," Romulus told her, a proud smile curling on his lips. "Indeed, that is precisely the spirit which an emperor of Rome ought to have. I see you and acknowledge you, Nero Claudius."

    "Of course!" Nero replied. "I am Nero! I am emperor! This much is only natural!"

    "My Best Buddy is the best!" Rika agreed.

    A little biased there, Rika¡­

    My remaining swarm could find no weaknesses in his Noble Phantasm. No cracks or crevices where I could slip more in or some out, only impossibly solid walls. Just as I''d thought, we were completely locked in.

    If only it could have been so convenient to have been like the walls of Troy, where the legend would have left them vulnerable to infiltration. But no. We weren''t that lucky.

    "Then we will see here and now¡­" Romulus hefted his weird polearm, and his relaxed stance tensed into something ready for battle. "Whether that is enough for you to overcome me!"

    He exploded away from his throne and into motion, and in the blink of an eye, he was on us.

    "Master!" Mash shouted, and she put herself in the way, holding her massive shield out to block Romulus'' equally massive spear. It struck with an echoing BONG. "Kuh!"

    Romulus sprang back, and Mash slid as she landed, her feet dragging along the tiled floor. Although the hit was heavy, she didn''t seem overly bothered by it, at least not to the extent she''d been when we fought Caligula and he essentially manhandled all of us. A quick glance with Master''s Clairvoyance showed above average stats all around, but nothing like the utterly monstrous strength Caligula had possessed.

    A¨ªfe and Arash didn''t wait for the word "go." They leapt into action a bare second after Romulus had, chasing after him after his brief clash with Mash. Arash kept relative distance, using his bow for once, but A¨ªfe jumped straight into the fray with G¨¢e Bolg. She led with a powerful stab, fast enough that I saw little more than a blur.

    Romulus blocked it. With contemptuous ease.

    A¨ªfe didn''t let that stop her, and she launched into a furious flurry of blows that matched the speed I''d seen of her when she fought Tiberius and Julius Caesar before, moving so fast that she seemed to flicker between strikes instead of actually making them. Romulus didn''t move anywhere near as fast, and yet he blocked them, deflected them, and parried them, standing like an oak in the same spot as though he refused to be moved against his own will.

    Red spears flashed and arrows flew, but neither side gained ground. I couldn''t be sure just watching them that Romulus was actually unable to fight back against A¨ªfe and Arash together or simply choosing not to, but he didn''t look strained or stressed, and no matter how fast A¨ªfe moved or how many arrows Arash managed to sneak in between the swings of her spear, Romulus handled them the same.

    It was a different kind of power from Caligula. This was not supreme strength that could crush mountains and sink islands, and this wasn''t the speed of a hurricane compressed into the shape of a man, but his calm confidence was a kind of intimidation on its own, and the ease with which he defended himself was its own form of overwhelming might.

    I refused to let myself blink as I strained my eyes to catch as much of the action as I could. I looked for any opening, any sign of weakness or vulnerability, like a particular focus on defending one side more than the other or a refusal to let A¨ªfe come anywhere near a specific spot, but there were none, and if they were revealed by the furious strokes of her spear, they were there and gone again too quickly for me to see.

    He was invulnerable.

    Not in the literal sense, because if he was immune to damage then he would have just stood there and let everything bounce off of him, but it was becoming increasingly obvious to me just how much of an advantage it was for a Servant to be summoned into a time and place where their legend was the strongest. His stats weren''t the highest ever, but it was almost like he was more there, more real, and because of that, he could keep up with a whirlwind like A¨ªfe who should have been outpacing him.

    And somehow, we had to beat him.

    Nero, apparently unable to sit on the sidelines anymore, rushed into the fray. "Have at thee, Divine Ancestor!"

    She brought her sword down with both hands in an overhead chop, forcing A¨ªfe and Romulus both to step out of the way, and Arash took advantage to nail him with a trio of shots ¡ª but Romulus intercepted them with the massive flat of his ridiculous spear. He turned it back around into a swing at Nero''s head, and she hastily blocked and was thrown backwards a dozen feet by the strength of it.

    A¨ªfe swooped back in, leading with a stab aimed at taking out his eye ¡ª or at her level of strength, probably his whole head ¡ª and he leaned out of the way and took hold of the shaft with his free hand.

    "I see," he said evenly. "It''s become apparent that you are the one among the Chaldeans with the greatest martial prowess. Lev Lainur was not wrong to say you would be one of our greatest threats if you decided to intervene more directly."

    "When you want to snuff out a wildfire," she replied, grinning that shark-like grin, "you pray to the northern wind."

    "Metaphor?" Romulus asked, amused. "Very well. Then a deeply rooted oak can withstand even the mightiest northern wind."

    Magical energy gathered, multiplied, condensed, and I wasn''t the only one to realize what was about to happen. Arash just happened to be the one who spoke first.

    "A¨ªfe!"

    "Pierce."

    Romulus swept his spear up, and blood splattered across the floor as A¨ªfe flew backwards, her own spear still held in his other hand. She tumbled along the tile, rolling, but she managed to regain enough control to get her feet underneath herself, sliding to a stop in a crouch. One arm hung limply from her shoulder, where a great gash had been torn through the cloth and the flesh beneath and ripped off her pauldron.

    And sprouting up from the floor near Romulus'' feet, the bark stained red with A¨ªfe''s blood, there was a large, thick tree branch, the end pointed and sharp. If A¨ªfe had been a fraction of a second slower dodging, it would have skewered her straight through the heart.

    "Super Action Mom!" Rika cried.

    "Queen A¨ªfe!" said Nero, alarmed.

    "A neat trick, Romulus." A¨ªfe''s teeth gleamed. "Should I show you mine, too?"

    For the first time since the battle started, Romulus'' eyes went wide, but he didn''t react quite fast enough to avoid what happened next.

    "Pierce, G¨¢e Bolg."

    Thorns sprouted from the red spear, and blood splashed as they ripped and tore through Romulus'' fingers. He dropped G¨¢e Bolg with a loud hiss, but the damage was already done, and he scowled down at his bleeding hand.

    Unfortunately for us, when he flexed and tested his range of motion, it seemed that he was largely unhurt. If it was going to have any effect at all on his ability to fight, we would have to find out the hard way.

    "First Aid!" I chanted, and A¨ªfe''s wound healed over.

    She rolled her shoulder, testing it, and then held out her hand. G¨¢e Bolg lifted off the floor and zipped across the room to smack into her palm like it had been attached to a fishing line and reeled in. Weapon back in hand, she stood back up, ready to go again.

    "It seems neither of us accomplished anything with those little parlor tricks," she said to Romulus.

    "Parlor tricks?" Romulus echoed. "It was courtesy. My Noble Phantasm is not something which can be confined to the space of this room, so I have thus far avoided using it."

    There was a brief moment of pause.

    "So you have," A¨ªfe allowed.

    "It will take more than drawing a little blood to push me that far," Romulus said. "Come. You have yet to impress me."

    "Then how about an arm!"

    Black and red cut through the branch that Romulus had used to wound A¨ªfe, and Nero rushed through the space opened by it, swinging her sword down with the aim of hacking off one of Romulus'' limbs. Fire trailed in the wake of her sword, as though it were ablaze from inside.

    When had that happened?

    Romulus blocked her with the barest of effort. "Your spirit is strong, but your body cannot keep up with it. Do you truly intend to throw your life away by attacking me alone?"

    Nero growled, teeth bared in a snarl. Romulus flung her back again, and she flew across the room to land on her feet, sliding across the tile.

    Arash, keep supporting them! Aloud, I ordered, "A¨ªfe, go!"

    They needed nothing more than that, because they were leaping back into motion almost before I could finish giving the order. Nero rejoined them a heartbeat later, and together, she and A¨ªfe engaged Romulus in melee while Arash peppered him from afar.

    The addition of a third person proved a bit more of a challenge for Romulus than before, especially because A¨ªfe had slowed her pace and molded her attacks to work around Nero''s. What was lost in speed and power was made up for with teamwork, as corny as that might have sounded, because it split Romulus'' attention more and it let A¨ªfe conserve more energy.

    They were still moving blindingly fast, faster than I thought Nero should be able to, but it let me keep track of the action a bit better, for all of the good that did me. I''d clustered as many of my bugs as I safely could as close to the room as was feasible, but the sheer strength and speed in combination with the inexplicable fire that Nero''s sword occasionally belched made it impossible to use them for anything.

    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    Plus, Romulus had Magic Resistance B, which meant that both my Gandr and my ravens'' mana cannons would do absolutely nothing to him. Even the flashbang runestones A¨ªfe had made for us ages ago would probably be more detrimental than helpful, because unlike A¨ªfe and Arash, Nero wasn''t a Servant with a contract to Chaldea, so none of us could conveniently send her a telepathic message to close her eyes.

    I hated how useless that made me feel. At least in Orl¨¦ans, I''d been able to do something, even if the final battle was largely me watching the fight just as helplessly as I was now. There were no traps I could lay that would meaningfully trip Romulus up, no threads I could weave that would hold him at all, let alone long enough to actually leave an opening A¨ªfe or Arash could exploit.

    "I''m beginning to see through your moves, Divine Ancestor!" Nero boasted. She grinned as she swung, even though Romulus was still blocking both her and A¨ªfe without seeming to break a sweat.

    "Indeed, you are," he said calmly. "You truly are a shining star of an emperor, Nero. You should be proud."

    "I am! Mm!"

    Instead, I had to stand there, straining my eyes for an opening so small that it might be there and gone before I could order anyone to take advantage of it, forced to wait impotently as my magical energy was slowly sapped away.

    But the fact that I couldn''t hurt Romulus on my own didn''t mean I couldn''t do anything to impact the fighting at all.

    Arash, I began as I reached down the thread connecting us, if you had an opening, could you hammer him with your ten-thousand arrows trick?

    The pause in his next shot was so small that I wasn''t sure I didn''t imagine it.

    I don''t think so, he replied. The sheer volume of that large a volley would make it almost impossible not to hit one of our allies in the crossfire. Even then, if he can use his spear to summon up another tree branch¡­

    Then all he had to do to defend himself was bring one or more up to use as a shield. There was no way to know the exact limit of how big he could make any of them, but the one that had nearly skewered A¨ªfe was already uncommonly large and thick. Too big not to think that he could manipulate their size at will.

    Damn it. It wasn''t going to be as easy as turning him into a giant pincushion, was it?

    A¨ªfe, I tried, pulling on the other thread, this isn''t sustainable. You''re going to have to use your Noble Phantasm.

    She didn''t reply immediately, but she couldn''t have been blind to it either. The drain on us Masters was relatively low for how intensely she was fighting, especially since it was spread out among the three of us, but if she got injured too many times fighting in close combat with a man who was one step shy of an actual god, then that was quickly going to change.

    You''re right, she finally admitted. This guy isn''t anything at all like Caesar or Tiberius.

    Aloud, she barked, "Nero, break away!"

    "Why?" Nero demanded.

    "Just do it!"

    And reluctantly, Nero did, leaping back and away from the fray. Romulus frowned and turned his full attention towards A¨ªfe, who had flung herself back as well, flipping her grip on her spear.

    "I see. So you''re beginning to become that desperate, are you?"

    "Desperation has nothing to do with it!" A¨ªfe spat back at him. "You''re boring, Romulus! If you''re just going to stand there and defend yourself, then there''s no point in dragging this out any longer!"

    Red light lit up the spear. An ominous chill descended over the room, reaching down to the very marrow.

    My arm swept up, pointed at her. "Momentary Reinforcement!"

    Catching on, both of the twins echoed, "Momentary Reinforcement!"

    And A¨ªfe grinned, a thing full of teeth, as the extra power filled her limbs and strengthened her body.

    "G¨¢e Bolg Prototype!"

    The red spear flew.

    Like a streak of lightning, it flashed across the room ¡ª and met a tree branch thicker around than a fully transformed Lung. Wood and bark splintered, cracking and breaking, as the blade of the spear passed through it like a hot knife through butter, but it was enough, just enough, to send that deadly spear off course. It soared over Romulus'' shoulder and embedded itself in the wall behind him, thrown with such violence and power that it sank into the stone up to its mounting.

    "Shit," someone said. I thought it might be Rika.

    "A valiant effort," Romulus praised. "I can see your resolve, Chaldeans, and I can do nothing less than match it. It is obvious now that you will not be dissuaded. And you, Nero? Even now, will you still side with them? Will you not surrender and join with me, to build my new, stronger Rome?"

    "This is a battle for the sake of my Rome!" Nero shouted back at him. "I won''t sit idly by while it is fought in front of me!"

    Romulus closed his eyes briefly, as though those words pained him to hear, but they snapped back open before I could even think to take advantage of the moment.

    "Well said!" he rumbled. "Then it is with my Rome that I shall crush all of you at once!"

    He lifted his own spear thing, spinning it around so that the tip was pointed towards the ground, and took hold of the black grip with both hands. Magical energy built up inside of him rapidly, surging into his weapon until the jagged fan-like blade began to glow.

    "Everyone!" I shouted. "Behind Mash, now!"

    Mash stepped forward, hefting her shield, even as A¨ªfe, Arash, and Nero all rushed to get behind it.

    "That will not save you!" Romulus roared.

    Mash slammed the bottom spoke of her shield against the tiled floor.

    "LORD ¡ª"

    "MAGNA VOLUISSE ¡ª"

    "CHALDEAS!"

    "MAGNUM!"

    At the same time, the glowing rampart constructed itself in front of us, etched with lines of power, and Romulus thrust the tip of his spear into the ground.

    BOOM was the sound of massive tree branches smashing into the rampart, bouncing off of its surface like water and pushing up and through the ceiling above us. BOOM was the second branch, veering to the side to crash against the palace wall, and Mash grunted under the effort, teeth gritted against the raw power trying to smash us all into dust or rip us all limb from limb. BOOM came the third branch, so soon after the first two that I almost didn''t realize it was a third instead of a continuation of the second, and this time, Mash had to brace herself by taking a step back with one foot. A crack formed in the barrier protecting us.

    "Master!" she croaked. "I-if too many more of those hit us¡­!"

    A gloved hand came over her shoulder and gently traced a rapid series of runes against the surface of the back of her shield. Mash''s eyes went wide.

    "A¨ªfe?"

    "Spretta."

    The runes lit up like a Christmas tree, and the rampart evolved, growling larger and more solid. Extra brickwork sprang into existence above and to the sides, and the single rampart became a sturdy curtain wall instead, the mortar glowing blue and the bricks themselves gleaming white, still translucent and phantasmal but almost there.

    "He won''t be happy," A¨ªfe told her. "But just for a moment, look and see the next step on your journey, Mash Kyrielight."

    The wall grew and grew, stretching out until it filled the room from one side to the other, and the branches of Romulus'' Noble Phantasm bounced off like rain on an umbrella. The palace shuddered and threatened to fall as they tore into it, ripping through the brickwork and the tiles and gouging great holes in the floor, ceiling, and walls.

    Through it all, Lord Chaldeas stood strong.

    "Wait."

    No, that was wrong. This wasn''t Lord Chaldeas. To begin with, that was just a placeholder name, something to fill the silence because we didn''t know the name of the Heroic Spirit inside of Mash. What A¨ªfe had just done, this was exactly what she''d said it was, a glimpse at the true power of the shield Mash held, a peek at what it was meant to be.

    A castle. A gleaming castle of white brick and sturdy walls, built as a bulwark against the dark days of post-Roman Britain. How had it taken me so long to realize it? There were many castles in Britain, and many that had stood in the days of King Arthur, but only one that symbolized a bastion of peace and prosperity amongst the struggle, only one that held itself up as a safe haven against the chaos and strife.

    "That''s ¡ª"

    Arash''s hand landed on my shoulder, and my head whipped around, but he wasn''t looking at me, he was looking at Mash.

    It''s not time yet, he told me. Mash still has too much growing to do. If you give her the answer now, you''ll stunt it.

    I wanted to call that stupid, but I bit my tongue against it, because I actually could understand the idea. If someone had come to me a week after my first fight with Lung and told me I was going to save every world in the multiverse before I was even twenty¡­well, if I actually believed them, it would have twisted my head around a few dozen times. Carrying that weight so early into my career might have crushed me.

    Mash¡­wasn''t ready either. I wasn''t sure I would know what it looked like when she was, but if the Heroic Spirit inside of her was watching closely enough to stop Lancelot from revealing his identity too early, then I didn''t have much choice except to trust that he would know better than I did.

    No matter how much I didn''t like it. I guess I just had to think of it like I had Dinah, to know that I could force the issue, but that I wouldn''t like the person it would make me if I did.

    The palace rumbled threateningly under the stress of taking so many hits, but it held as Romulus'' Noble Phantasm finally slowed to a stop. Ahead of the group, Mash panted and staggered as Lord Chaldeas flickered and disappeared, leaving us to stare into the tangled snarl of tree branches as thick around as an SUV. They veered off at sharp angles where they had slammed into Lord Chaldeas, punching out and through the walls and the ceiling and the floor, with irregular gaps spaced throughout.

    It was like something out of Blasto''s craziest fantasies. Tree branches bending at perfect ninety-degree angles or backwards at sixty-degrees, growing in ways that were all but impossible in nature.

    "Oh my," Nero murmured and stared, eyes wide.

    On the other side, my bugs gave me a garbled image of Romulus, who had not moved from his spot as he glared over at the mess that stood in front of us. I didn''t know what was going through his head, but he could sense Servants just as well as our own could, so there was no way he couldn''t tell that we''d survived that.

    "So¡­am I the only one who''s going to ask?" Rika whispered. "What''s a tree got to do with founding Rome?"

    "I don''t get it either," her brother agreed just as quietly.

    A¨ªfe. Her head turned minutely my way to show she was listening. Romulus just used an enormous amount of magical energy. We''re not going to get another shot like this. Take him out, whatever it takes.

    Her lips hiked up on one side. "Understood, Master."

    "Wait, what?" asked Ritsuka.

    "Go," I told her.

    A¨ªfe kicked off the ground, flipping, and landed on one of the branches in a crouch, and then she kicked off again and bounced off the side of another branch like a rubber ball. She built momentum as she went, and this next one carried her up to the ceiling, where she kicked off of the tile and rocketed down, straight towards Romulus.

    The palace shook again as she crashed into the floor like a meteor, the tile shattered under her feet, but Romulus had dodged backwards in enough time to avoid the blow and came back around to strike in that moment of vulnerability ¡ª except A¨ªfe threw herself back and away, landing on the side of another tree branch, and bounced off of that and back towards him with a punch that probably would have literally knocked his head off.

    He dodged that, too, and like before, A¨ªfe was gone before he could counterattack. She used his branches as springboards, zooming in with lightning fast punches and kicks that more than made up for the amount of room she''d lost from all of the branches that now filled it. Even though they were so obvious that he could still dodge them without too much trouble, she was moving too quickly for him to hit her either.

    "Very few Noble Phantasms can be tossed around casually," I told the twins as I watched the action with my bugs. "Most of them need lots of energy to use, so Servants can''t just spam them one after the other until the enemy dies. That means that the moments after a Servant uses their Noble Phantasm are usually when that Servant is most vulnerable."

    "So you sent A¨ªfe to attack while Romulus was weakened," Mash concluded. "I see."

    "Is that okay?" Ritsuka asked, frowning. "Even before, A¨ªfe fighting him alone, she couldn''t beat him."

    "Did you forget, Ritsuka?" I asked him rhetorically. "G¨¢e Bolg isn''t A¨ªfe''s only Noble Phantasm."

    On the other side of the branches, Romulus snarled. "I tire of your acrobatics!"

    He swung that ridiculous spear again, and from the branch in front of him, another, smaller branch sprouted. In the blink of an eye, it had pierced through the spot where A¨ªfe had just landed ¡ª but she was already gone, moving so much faster this time that she seemed to simply teleport right in front of him, her right fist cocked back.

    "Then let''s put an end to this," she said with deathly cold. "Torannchless."

    BOOM was the sound of her fist shattering the sound barrier, followed by the CRACK of Romulus'' hastily raised branch splintering into a hundred-thousand tiny shards. Romulus recovered quickly, swiping with his spear again to cover the moment of vulnerability, but A¨ªfe, in a feat of agility that would have made gymnasts the world over green with envy, leapt over the blow and landed atop the massive fan-shaped blade.

    She sprang off of it immediately, and her heel came down with thunderous force between Romulus'' shoulders. The sheer strength behind it threw him to his knees, and he had to brace himself with his hands to keep from smashing straight into the floor. That moment was all she needed to land and whirl about, and this time, when her heel came down on the small of his back, he was driven straight into the ground. The floor beneath them cracked and threatened to give way.

    In another moment, she had him pinned, the thumb of one hand pressed into the shoulder joint of the arm that held his spear and the other twisting his other arm behind his back. Her foot pressed down on his spine.

    Romulus grunted and tried to throw her off, but somehow, he just didn''t seem to have the strength. It was like he''d been tied down with invisible, unbreakable chains.

    "What?" he demanded. "What is this?"

    Binding of the Noble Hero"Fornadmaim Niad N¨¢ir," A¨ªfe said clearly. "One of my martial arts'' secret techniques, if you want to call it that. Unfortunately, without the right preparations, the only way I can make sure you don''t go anywhere is if I hold you right here."

    All the more right then, I wished that she had been summoned with those tutelary aspects she lacked now. Just how many special techniques did those Celtic martial arts have?

    "More importantly," A¨ªfe went on, chiding him, "you weren''t paying close enough attention earlier. Did you think I was just randomly hopping about for the fun of it?"

    And across the room, every spot she''d touched while blitzing him lit up, each one aglow with a different rune. Eighteen in total, they radiated power, oozing energy like the crackle of static electricity, and once I realized the number, their purpose became alarmingly clear.

    My foot tried to carry me forward, but there was nowhere to go and no way to reach her. The branches of Romulus'' Noble Phantasm blocked us off ¡ª protected us.

    "A¨ªfe!" I shouted. "Don''t!"

    Arash, I thought frantically, go ¡ª

    But it was too late.

    "Ochd Deug Odin."

    A bomb went off, that was what it felt like. A thunderous explosion ripped through the room, sending the entire building aquiver ¡ª there was no way it could survive too many more shocks like that ¡ª and the floor beneath our feet shook so violently I nearly fell over. On the opposite side of those branches, each and every bug that was watching the fight died at once, surviving only long enough to see the flash before the boom.

    It was over before any of us could do anything.

    "Arash!" I ordered anyway. "Go!"

    He was already gone, hopping up to find one of the openings. I was following him a bare moment later, climbing up to the nearest one I thought I could fit through.

    "A¨ªfe!" the twins cried. They, too, found the nearest branch low enough to grab onto and started to climb their way out.

    "What happened?" Nero asked. "Mm! Another one of these noble whatsits?"

    "Queen A¨ªfe just used one of hers, yes!" Mash told her, and then she, too, started making her way to the nearest gap, following the twins.

    "What is that?" Nero asked. "What does that mean? Is it over?"

    I hope not, I didn''t say, because if that had been strong enough to take out Romulus underneath her, then it was definitely strong enough to take A¨ªfe out, too.

    I''d misjudged my positioning, because when I came out the other side, I tumbled to the ground, rolling down the mass of branches to land painfully on my ass. There was no time to worry about it, so I didn''t, just scrambled back to my feet to find that a large portion of those branches from Romulus'' Noble Phantasm had been incinerated in the blast. Not all of them, but even the thick tangle that had protected us had nearly been seared away, leaving behind only about half of the original mass of growth. Any leaves that might have been growing on the offshoots had burned away.

    "Master!" Arash called.

    Somehow, in the middle of all that carnage, there was a body, small and compact, female. Arash cradled her gently, his brow furrowed, and it frankly seemed a miracle that she had survived at all. Half her body was covered in some level of burn, but an alarming amount of it was the black of third degree, charred and sickening. The smell of burnt pork radiated off of them.

    "A¨ªfe!" the twins called as they rushed over.

    Then the smell hit them and they saw her condition and the both of them recoiled.

    "Oh fuck," Rika groaned, pinching her nostrils closed.

    "Is she¡­?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Shit."

    But it wasn''t my mouth that said the word, it was A¨ªfe''s.

    "That bastard." Teeth gritted, one amethyst eye squinted open, the other burned shut. "He put up a defense at the last second."

    "It was the only thing that saved us both," an unwelcome voice rasped.

    And from the epicenter of the blast, a body pulled itself out of the rubble, bark and wood chips falling away like he''d just walked out of a lumber store. He was nearly as badly injured as A¨ªfe was, and somehow, he still had a grip on his spear, but he was so battered that it seemed like a miracle he could even stand.

    "First Aid!" the three of us Masters called, because it looked like we''d all had the same idea.

    Immediately, the burns on A¨ªfe''s body receded, giving way to healthier flesh. Even with three casts of the spell, it wasn''t enough to fix her even halfway back to normal, but it was enough that she could draw the rune that she used to heal herself before.

    "Not hardly," she grunted up at him. Slowly, tenderly, she sat up, and Arash let her go, backing away a little as he summoned his bow. "Those plants of yours messed up my runes. I took more damage than I should have because of that trick."

    "Do you expect me to have sympathy for my enemy?" Romulus asked her coldly.

    "I expect you to know when you''re beaten," I told him, cutting in.

    His red eyes turned towards me. "Beaten?" He stood straighter, despite his wounds. "My Rome still stands. I still stand! So long as that is the case, I am not beaten!"

    He lifted up his spear, gathering magical power once more ¡ª this close, even the twins must have been able to feel it.

    "Even like this, I can still defeat you, Chaldeans of proper history! Magna ¡ª"

    Three arrows sank into his shoulder, right at the joint, and his right arm fell limp. Romulus spun around, honing in on Arash, who had fired those arrows, and he ripped them out of his flesh in a spurt of blood.

    "I will not go down so easily!"

    A sickening squelch cut off anything else he might have said, and he staggered as more of his blood spilled across the floor. He looked down, disbelieving, at Nero, who looked like she herself could hardly believe what she''d just done. Her ridiculous sword was buried almost to the hilt in Romulus'' stomach, ripping through his body and out the other side. It was only the angle that had prevented it from severing his spine, although whether that would even mean anything to a Servant, I had no clue.

    "You¡­Nero¡­"

    "Y-your time¡­is over, Divine Ancestor!" Nero said shakily. Her voice gained confidence with every word. "Now¡­ Now is the time of my Rome! And I¡­I won''t allow you to trample all over it, even out of love! For I love my Rome too dearly to allow it to be erased! Mm-mm!"

    And Romulus¡­sighed and smiled. "I see."

    He let go of his spear, and it clattered to the ground, then burst apart into motes of light. Romulus himself began to fade around the edges, glittering dust peeling away from his body, the way so many other Servants had disappeared in this Singularity and the ones before.

    "You are dazzling, Nero Claudius," he said fondly. "It seems your love was indeed stronger than mine, for it brought to you comrades who lent you the strength to overcome even my own empire."

    "Yes!" Nero agreed. "Mm-mm! These friends of mine, these comrades of mine, it is only because of their help that I was able to face you! Even if they must go away, merely to have had them¡­ It makes my Rome the strongest, greatest Rome there will ever be! Mm! Even if it too must one day fall!"

    "Then there is nothing left for me to do except this," Romulus said. He reached out with his free hand and set it atop Nero''s head, as a father might his daughter''s. "My beloved child, Emperor Nero, I leave it all to you. I entrust the future of Rome to you and your heirs, whatever form they might shape it into. Even if it becomes something unrecognizable, it is still Rome, after all¡­"

    He smiled.

    "Rome is eternal."

    And then he disappeared.

 Chapter LXVI: Flauros

    Chapter LXVI: Flauros

    "Enemy Servant response dissipating," Mash reported. "Romulus is defeated, Senpai."

    "It is done." Nero sighed and sagged a little, as though a great burden had been lifted off of her shoulders. "The Divine Ancestor is no more, and his United Empire dies with him. Mm-mm. Although¡­"

    She looked around, frowning, at the palace that still stood, despite the many holes that had been torn into it during the fighting. The ridiculous tree branches, at least, had also disappeared, but that just made it even more incredible that the building hadn''t fallen down around our ears.

    "The fake Rome remains standing! Mm-mm!" Nero complained. "Wasn''t it supposed to disappear as well?"

    "Um, it may be that the city itself has become self-sustaining," Mash offered. "O-or even that it doesn''t need Romulus to be here after it finished forming? It will likely¡­ No, it should be corrected with the rest of this Singularity."

    "So it''ll go when everything gets put back to normal," Arash summarized. "That makes sense. Gotta hand it to the guy, though, this place really was built to last."

    "Something we should probably be thankful for," I commented, "because it means the roof didn''t come down on top of us."

    The twins looked up at the ceiling ¡ª and the gaping holes that showed the blue sky outside ¡ª and Rika lifted her arms in mock cheer. "Yay for the power of bullshit Roman engineering?"

    "Well, of course!" said Nero. "Roman architects built to last! Mm!"

    I was decently sure it didn''t work like that when the buildings in question had been constructed from the function of a Noble Phantasm, but that wasn''t a hill that I wanted to die on, so I decided to leave it be. There were more important things to worry about than talking that sort of semantics anyway.

    "More importantly," I said, steering us back to more relevant topics, "this isn''t over yet. It isn''t time to celebrate right now."

    Mash, Arash, and Ritsuka all straightened up, faces drawing together solemnly. "Right," said Mash.

    "It''s not?" Nero asked. "Mm-mm! The Divine Ancestor is defeated! The United Empire is no more! Is that not a thing to celebrate?"

    "Romulus might be gone, but that doesn''t mean the United Empire goes, too," said Ritsuka. He looked to me. "Right, Senpai? As long as the Holy Grail is out there¡­"

    Rika groaned. "Damn it. Right, we still have to find that, don''t we?"

    "The Holy Grail?" Nero asked.

    "It''s the thing that let Romulus and his other Servants come back to life, remember?" Arash reminded her. "Master''s right that this isn''t over until we have it. The Court Mage can just keep summoning more Servants to take over the fight until we do."

    I nodded. "We need to meet back up with the others and start scouring the city. Whoever he is, the Court Mage shouldn''t be a Servant, so there''s a limit to how quickly he can move. If Arash can spot him from the palace roof, then we can take him out just like that, but if he''s hiding somewhere, then we''re going to need to search before he escapes."

    "Let me save you the trouble."

    Startled, I whirled about, eyes wide, towards the entrance to Romulus'' throne room, where a familiar man in green stood. A crocodile grin split his face.

    How did he¡­?

    "Allow me to offer you my congratulations," said Lev Lainur. "As much as he frustrated me, I was quite sure that Romulus would prove a much more difficult challenge for you Chaldean rats than he did. It was especially surprising that a mere Demi-Servant was able to so effectively block his Noble Phantasm, so it seems you''ve become stronger since Fuyuki. Haven''t you, Mash Kyrielight?"

    And held delicately in one hand like a goblet of wine¡­

    "That''s¡­!" Ritsuka gasped.

    ¡­was a golden chalice, the Holy Grail.

    "The Holy Grail," Mash breathed. "It''s¡­just like the ones we recovered from Fuyuki and Orl¨¦ans."

    And just as powerful. Even as far away from him as we were, I could feel the magical energy pouring off of it, overflowing. How much he must have used to summon so many Servants, and yet the damn thing still had so much left.

    "You!" shouted Nero. She brandished her sword. "You are the Divine Ancestor''s court mage, yes? Mm-mm! Then you are the man behind all of this!"

    "I merely provided the players," Lev said, frowning. "Unfortunately, Romulus was less than cooperative. The plan, as I imagine you must have surmised, was to find a suitable candidate who would destabilize this era and seek the destruction of Rome, much like that poor fool in France."

    He scowled at us. "Which has also been undone, I hear. I understand I have you to thank for my current predicament ¡ª that failure is the entire reason I was sent to oversee this era instead of returning to my king''s Temple."

    "You bet your ass!" Rika told him. "Yeah, we did that! We beat Jalter like a drum!"

    Lev grinned a wide, manic grin. "I got quite the scolding for that! I''m still feeling that punishment, even weeks later!"

    "So you gave the Grail to Romulus, only he didn''t want to play ball," I concluded. "So you had to stick around and try to think of something else to throw a spanner in the works."

    Something was strange about all of this. Not Lev''s apparent plans ¡ª knowing only what he''d told us about his and his king''s goals, I could see how they were supposed to work ¡ª but the way he was explaining them. Monologuing. By himself, without any apparent backup, in a room with two Servants and a Demi-Servant, plus whatever was going on with Nero that let her fight like one. Carrying the Holy Grail we needed to set this era to right, on top of it all.

    And then there was the issue of how he managed to sneak up on me without me detecting him at all with my swarm.

    Arash, I began across our bond, something''s fishy. Be ready.

    Yeah, he agreed. I feel it, too. There''s something we''re not seeing here.

    "Yes," said Lev. "As I said, Romulus was less than cooperative. You can''t imagine my frustration when he refused to destroy this era and chose instead to try and find a way around the Incineration. That was, it seems, my mistake. The Heroic Spirit I summoned was far too noble, unlike the one in Orl¨¦ans."

    "Of course he was!" Nero shouted, indignant. "The Divine Ancestor is the one who created Rome! Mm-mm! He gave birth to the empire, to the culture, to Rome itself! Even now, he wanted only to see it grow, brighter and more brilliant than before!"

    "You''re annoying," Lev growled. "It''s precisely that sort of drivel that I hate the most about you humans."

    "A strange perspective to have." A¨ªfe climbed to her feet. Her wounds had finally finished healing. "For a human, that is."

    My head shifted minutely as I detected something moving fast through my swarm. Was that¡­?

    Nearby, Rika muttered, "Not now, Emiya, he''s monologuing."

    "You dare!" snarled Lev. "Lump me in with those fetid, pathetic worms? Lower lifeforms, better off wiped away? That trash!"

    Mash jolted. "Master! Incoming Servant!"

    Lev sneered. "More trash!"

    A moment later, a new figure burst into the room, haggard and injured. Once, his red armor would have looked regal and sturdy, but now it was scuffed and scratched, scored with deep cuts that had mostly protected his body beneath but hadn''t been enough to completely avoid getting wounded. His black hair was matted with sweat and blood, and one ear bled freely from the shredded lobe.

    "Great Founder!" he cried as he entered. "Great Founder, are you ¡ª"

    He stopped halfway between us and Lev, his wide eyes landing on our group as took in the scene and his brain put two and two together to reach four.

    The sword in his hand drooped. "No," he breathed despairingly. "No, it can''t be¡­"

    "Who''s this guy?" Rika asked.

    "By process of elimination?" Arash suggested. "Constantine XI."

    That was when Emiya, Boudica, and Spartacus arrived, hovering near the entrance. Constantine XI immediately went back on guard, lifting his sword warily as he looked back and forth between our groups.

    "You could have said something!" Rika called over.

    Emiya''s face twisted, and exasperated, he said, "I tried to warn you!"

    "Try harder, next time!"

    "Lev Lainur," said Constantine XI, solemn. "I''ll hold them off for as long as I can. Please use that time to summon the Great Founder back."

    Immediately, the rest of us were on guard and ready to fight, because fuck no, we weren''t about to let that happen. If either of them thought we were going to give them the time to summon more Servants to prop up this United Empire, then they were about to be shown exactly how poorly mistaken they were.

    Except Lev and Constantine XI apparently weren''t on the same page.

    "You couldn''t even kill one of those weaklings?" Lev demanded, condescending. "Just like your beloved Romulus, you''re an incompetent fool. Your failure is complete, Constantine XI. You Heroic Spirits truly are a pathetic, useless lot."

    Constantine XI''s head turned, bewildered. "What ¡ª"

    Lev lashed out ¡ª with what, I couldn''t see ¡ª and Constantine XI let out a cry of surprise as his back split open as though he had been sliced with a sword. Blood fountained from the wound as he fell to the ground, unmoving, only to disappear into glittering dust a second or two later.

    Just like that, he''d been dispatched. By a man he''d thought his ally, at that.

    "How could you?" Boudica demanded. "Your own ally!"

    "Cruelty is ever the resort of the oppressors!" Spartacus agreed.

    "I have no allies in this era," Lev said disdainfully. He flicked drops of blood from his fingers, because it looked like he''d actually killed Constantine XI using his own hand like a blade. "Only pawns, and this one was a waste of time and magical energy. Besides, I already said, didn''t I? Romulus and his ilk had no interest in destroying mankind. If they can''t even remove one of Chaldea''s allies from the board, that makes them useless to me."

    He lifted the Grail up above his head. "Which means it falls to me to see this work done!"

    Arash, I said, "Stop him!"

    "Emiya, go!" shouted Rika.

    Bowstrings were drawn and released, and from two different directions, arrows sank into Lev''s flesh, into his chest, his arm, his legs, all of them either debilitating or fatal to some degree or another.

    Lev ignored them all¡­and swallowed the Holy Grail.

    My eyes watered watching it fit in his mouth, let alone down his throat, but somehow, without either of those having to actually make room, he did it, and the Grail disappeared into his body. His stomach, presumably, although at that point, I was beginning to think he might not have one as we understood it.

    "Recover the Holy Grail?" he mocked, as though he didn''t even notice the arrows protruding from his body. "Repair the Singularity? Undo the Incineration? You''re laboring under a delusion, Chaldeans." He spread his arms out, grinning that crocodile grin. "There''s nothing you can do to change things. You''ve already lost. These are merely the death throes of mankind! And¡­if you want to try and fix this era¡­"

    His flesh began to bubble and bulge, his arms and legs and torso swelling like balloons being filled with air at different speeds. His face twisted and distorted, stretching out, expanding until his eyes were on separate sides of his head ¡ª and then, like the farmer in that alien movie from the early aughts, he split open in a shower of viscera as his body was ripped apart.

    "Oh god," Ritsuka whispered.

    "I think I''m going to be sick," Rika agreed.

    Something black and red pulled itself from the remains, growing larger with every second. It was completely drenched with Lev''s blood, and orbs like rubies pushed themselves to the surface in columns and rows as the thing continued to swell to an ever larger size. Eventually, whatever was inside of it grew too large for its own shell, because the black flesh split open, too, revealing rents of something raw and red and sickening that stretched up and down the thing from orb to orb ¡ª from eye to eye, I realized with a sharp jolt as the cruciform pupils at the center of each one turned to focus on each of us.

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    It grew so large that it burst through the already tortured ceiling, punching another hole through it, and we actually had to back up as it swelled to take up nearly half the room with its bulk.

    "THEN," it rumbled in a voice that shook the whole palace and seemed to come from everywhere at once, "YOU WILL HAVE TO DEFEAT ME, FIRST."

    What¡­the hell¡­

    "Magical energy response rising!" Mash reported frantically. "That thing¡­it''s not a Servant, not a Phantasmal Beast! M-Master, whatever it is, it''s¡­"

    "By the gods," Nero breathed.

    "IT HAS BEEN SOME TIME," the monster thundered. "ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF AGAIN. I AM THE DEMON GOD, FLAUROS, ONE OF SEVENTY-TWO PILLARS WHICH UPHOLDS THE INCINERATION. THIS IS THE FORM OF MY GLORY, UNBOUND BY THE WEAKNESS OF HUMANITY. THIS IS THE FAVOR OF MY KING!"

    "How the hell are we supposed to fight that?" Rika blurted out. "He''s huge! A-and¡­a tentacle? Why is he a tentacle? I didn''t sign up for anything Adults Only! I''m not that homesick!"

    "Focus, Master!" Emiya barked at her. "We need to come up with a plan to fight this thing!"

    "The same way you fight anything!" A¨ªfe cackled. "With overwhelming force!"

    "COME, MEAGRE HEROIC SPIRITS," said the monster. "I SHALL CRUSH YOU AND YOUR PATHETIC MASTERS ALIKE. THAT IS THE WILL OF MY KING!"

    "With pleasure!"

    A¨ªfe sprang up and back, landing feet first against the wall next to where G¨¢e Bolg had been lodged, and as she took hold of it, she pushed off and pulled it free. Like a bolt of lightning, she zipped past us, landed with a skid that tore up the already tortured floor, and cocked her arm back in a familiar pose.

    "Let''s see if you even have any internal organs, monster!" Cold bloodlust radiated off of the red spear, matching A¨ªfe''s grin. "G¨¢e Bolg Prototype!"

    The streak of crimson light rocketed through the short gap and landed, sinking through the mottled black flesh the same as it would have a normal human''s. Thorns the color of freshly spilt blood burst out of Flauros body around the wound, spreading out to the surrounding tissue, and two of the massive eyes popped as they were skewered. Black ichor spurted from the wounds and spilled all over the floor as Flauros let out a high-pitched squeal.

    The sight of it made even my stomach threaten rebellion.

    But after a moment, the remaining eyes focused on A¨ªfe, and the rumbling voice was smug when it spoke again: "DID YOU TRULY BELIEVE IT WOULD BE THAT EASY? ALLOW ME TO SHOW YOU THE GULF BETWEEN YOU AND I."

    The red eyes gleamed, and the magical energy in the air surged, too much and too fast for me to even think about how to defend myself.

    "Master!" many voices called out at once.

    "PERISH!"

    Light flashed. Something slammed into me and carried me to ground, just in time for a wave of heat and force to pass by overhead as roiling darkness blanketed the room.

    My senses came back to me a second ¡ª an eternity ¡ª later, and Arash''s pained face was over mine as red blood dripped down his forehead and landed on my cheek. The reality set in a fraction of a second later, and I realized that he had just saved my life.

    "Arash!"

    "Damn it," he cursed. "This thing really is on a different level! A wide-area attack of that scale that quickly?"

    This close, there was no way I could miss. "First Aid!"

    His wounds sealed over, and even though he couldn''t stop the sigh of relief that hissed out of his mouth, he grimaced down at me. "Not sure you really needed to do that, but thanks, Master."

    "The others?"

    He jerked his head to the side, and with a jolt, I realized that whatever had been left of my swarm and whatever I''d managed to bring in since Ochd Deug Odin had been wiped out, so I actually had to turn my head. Fortunately, while Arash had shielded me with his body, Mash had been able to protect the twins and Nero on her own, and Emiya had brought out Rho Aias again to protect himself, Boudica, and Spartacus.

    "COCKROACHES!" Flauros spat. "ALL OF YOU! COCKROACHES! YOU SIMPLY DON''T KNOW WHEN TO DIE, DO YOU?"

    To the other side of us, A¨ªfe stumbled back to her feet, blood pouring down one dangling arm and her teeth gritted against the pain she must have been in.

    "Don''t make me laugh," she growled. "My sister put me through worse as a child!"

    Arash got off of me and stood up, and then he helped me to my feet, face set into a deep scowl.

    "This is bad," he murmured to me. "This thing, if it can shrug off even something like G¨¢e Bolg¡­"

    Then how on Earth were we supposed to kill it, right? Even as I watched, A¨ªfe''s spear was pushed out of Flauros'' body, and the flesh that had been ripped and torn bubbled and reformed as the red eyes that had been destroyed were restored like new. G¨¢e Bolg clattered to the floor, and it was like nothing had happened to him at all.

    Deviant biology. Mash was right to say that this couldn''t compare to a mere Phantasmal like a wyvern, because if we tried to find some singular vital point to attack, we''d fail. This wasn''t a creature that relied on blood and bones and organs, but something that existed beyond the limits of biology as humans understood it. Something that shrugged off wounds and just restored the damage like it was simply filling in a pothole.

    Like it was reaching into a nearly bottomless well.

    My heart picked up in my chest.

    I''d faced something like this before, hadn''t I? Several somethings, technically, but only one that so casually shrugged off its injuries, that filled them in like this, that tossed around so much power with such ease. Like Flauros, it had stood apart, a pinnacle that existed beyond every other enemy I''d fought. Something that had no weak points, that couldn''t simply be destroyed by dealing physical damage.

    The difference was, I had no leverage over Flauros, nothing to chip away at, and I doubted he''d turn his attention away from me long enough to accidentally reveal some emotional vulnerability I could capitalize on.

    "Master?"

    Arash''s voice cut through the spiral of my thoughts, and I forced myself to calm, to steady my pounding heart. No, this wasn''t like that at all. I''d just let myself get a little rattled. The situation wasn''t so hopeless that I could start comparing it to the hardest fight of my life just yet.

    "It''s gotta be the Grail," I said quietly. "If we can find that and pull it out of him, that should be enough to make him vulnerable."

    It wasn''t the exact same, but it reminded me of a different fight, one much smaller in scale that had spanned just one city instead of entire worlds. Yeah, that was a closer comparison, wasn''t it? Just like then, what made Flauros such a threat was what he had inside of him. In this case, an almost limitless source of magical energy that he could use to fill in the gaps of his own strength, instead of turning others'' strength against their friends and allies. Without that, there was no way he would be anywhere near this powerful.

    "Any ideas about that?" Arash asked.

    "Blast him," I said simply. "Rip him apart faster than he can regenerate until we find the Grail."

    Arash snorted softly, and a wry smile curled his lips. "I guess it really is that simple, isn''t it? Easier said than done, though."

    And there was nothing I could do except give orders and watch. I hated how familiar that feeling was becoming.

    "VERY WELL," Flauros thundered. "I COMMEND YOU, HEROIC SPIRITS, FOR SURVIVING THAT FIRST ATTACK. IF I MUST GRIND YOU DOWN TO DUST ONE MOLECULE AT A TIME, THEN I SHALL!"

    The magical energy began to surge again, and I scrambled to throw myself behind Mash as Flauros'' red eyes gleamed again. Arash half lifted me to carry us the rest of the way, just in time for that voice to rumble again.

    "DISAPPEAR!"

    A wave of roiling darkness rolled out from Flauros, and Mash''s shield screeched as it washed over us to no effect. This time, I could see enough to notice the flash of runes as A¨ªfe raised her own defenses to protect herself. My Command Spells still throbbed to let me know that she had been injured ¡ª the first time I''d been paying enough attention to them in a fight to even notice that, come to think of it ¡ª but not enough to tell me her life was in danger.

    This time, when the darkness passed, one of the petals on Emiya''s barrier had been ripped apart, which wasn''t a good sign at all.

    "Is that all you know how to do?" A¨ªfe spat. "The same thing over and over?"

    All of the eyes immediately focused on her.

    "PEST."

    An explosion ripped apart the air right in front of her, and A¨ªfe gave a startled shout as she was thrown bodily backwards hard enough to tumble into the wall.

    "Arash."

    "Got it," he acknowledged, and then he raced out from behind cover, firing off arrows with such speed it was like a machine gun. They hit Flauros hard, tearing into him, ripping his flesh apart, popping his eyes, but never going much deeper than a few inches. Flauros'' flesh simply restored itself too quickly.

    Emiya joined in shortly thereafter, and Spartacus leapt into the fray with his characteristic laugh, hacking away over and over even as the wounds inflicted by his slashes filled back in. Flauros blasted him with the same explosion he''d used to hurt A¨ªfe, but Spartacus just got back up, injuries healing lightning fast, and threw himself back in.

    It made a decent distraction, though.

    A¨ªfe, I said, reaching down the thread connecting us, it''s not going to be enough to do precision damage against something like this.

    "First Aid!" I incanted, healing the worst of her wounds as she pulled herself up gingerly.

    Yes, that seems to be the case, isn''t it? She replied sourly. Any suggestions?

    The Grail is what we need to focus on, I told her. If we can get that away from him, he should be much weaker.

    A¨ªfe grimaced up at the tower of flesh. Not an easy task to fulfill.

    No, I agreed. The only way we''re going to get it is by blasting him apart faster than he can recover until we find it.

    The grimace turned up into a smile. I might have a few ideas about that.

    Whatever it takes, was what I left her with.

    "Damn, this guy is beefy," Rika mumbled. "Geez! What''s with this secret boss shit? Romulus was supposed to be the final boss of this Singularity!"

    "Secret boss?" Nero asked. "I suppose¡­ Yes, he was secretly the one in charge of everything, wasn''t he?"

    "Not what that means," Ritsuka told her. "But later."

    "I-I''m sorry, Master," said Mash. "I-I can''t¡­ If I join up with the others, then you''ll be defenseless!"

    "Then you''re where you need to be," I told her.

    "What Senpai said," Ritsuka agreed. "Mash, you just need to focus on keeping us safe, okay?"

    Mash''s shoulders firmed up. "Th-then I won''t let you down! Any of you!"

    "Is there a plan, Senpai?" Rika asked. "I didn''t think to bring my strategy guide, so I''m all ears for whatever you got."

    "He transformed after swallowing the Grail," I laid out simply. "If he can throw around this much power so casually ¡ª" another explosion knocked Spartacus back again ¡ª "then the Grail is almost certainly why. We just need to get it out of him."

    Rika''s brow furrowed. "Uh¡­" She looked at me, then at Flauros, from top to bottom, then back to me. "I have¡­concerns about this plan, Senpai."

    "It''s not going to be easy," I acknowledged. "He heals fast. What we need to do is hit him hard enough with a bunch of big, powerful attacks faster than he can heal until we find the Grail."

    "Still have some concerns," Rika said, "but a lot less than before. How, exactly, are we gonna do that?"

    "This is going to be rough on you," I told her especially, "but we need Emiya to start pulling out the big guns."

    Rika grimaced and groaned. "This is gonna suck so bad, but it''s not like I''ve got any better ideas, so¡­ I guess I gotta just deal with it, huh?"

    "Good girl."

    "If you''re going to say that, the least you could do is bribe me with a Scooby Snack," she muttered.

    I pretended she hadn''t said anything.

    "I don''t like it," said Nero. "Mm. What are the rest of us supposed to do while we rely on Emiya?"

    "Provide cover, of those of us who can." A¨ªfe, Arash, Boudica, Spartacus. "They''re already doing it. The four of us? We need to stay back. If we get hit by that wave, it''s going to hurt us a lot more than it does them."

    Nero grimaced, unhappy with that idea.

    I sympathized. If only it could be as simple and as easy as pulling in my bugs, weaving lines of silk, and strangling Flauros with them, but he didn''t even have an obvious mouth, and like I''d observed before, deviant biology. If my silk threads could even do anything to him at all, it didn''t even look like he needed to breathe.

    "Done," Rika said suddenly. "I let Emiya know the plan."

    Across the room, Emiya pulled back and stopped firing regular arrows. It was hard to see clearly, but he held out one hand, and in a flare of fiery power, a sword took shape above his palm ¡ª a familiar sword, a spiral shape that spun up from the hilt to the tip like a drill or a screw.

    "Boudica, Mash!" he shouted as he took the sword and set it upon his bow as though it was an arrow. "Noble Phantasms, now!"

    "Wait," said Ritsuka, having seen the same thing I did, "is that ¡ª"

    Emiya pulled back, and bolts of lightning traveled up and down the sword as it streamlined into an undulating, swirling shape that could only generously be called an arrow. Mash, realizing his plan, set her feet, squared her shoulders, and planted her shield in front of us. Across the way, trusting him not to lead her astray, Boudica did similar, and her chariot galloped around her in a circle.

    "My core is twisted in madness."

    The words echoed throughout the room like a spell, even over the din of fleshy thuds as Arash kept up his fire.

    "Chariot of ¡ª"

    "Lord ¡ª"

    "Boudica!"

    "Chaldeas!"

    The familiar rampart rose in front of us, shining, glimmering blue at the same time as light arose from Boudica''s chariot. With Arash already at a distance and A¨ªfe having stayed back to finish healing her wounds, the only one left in the line of fire was Spartacus, who was hit by one more explosion and let it carry him back with a laugh.

    Even from this distance, I could see one side of Emiya''s mouth tick upwards.

    "Caladbolg."

    The sword that had been transformed into an arrow left Emiya''s bow at such speed that it shattered the sound barrier with a thunderous CRACK. It was so fast that I didn''t even see it, only the spiraling trail it left in its wake, the massive hole it drilled through Flauros ¡ª and then the explosion that obliterated almost the entire wall of the palace.

    The flash of light nearly blinded me, and the boom filled my ears and drowned out everything else. I had to shut my eyes and clamp my hands over my ears to keep from being deafened, and the whole building shook, threatening to collapse for the billionth time in the last hour.

    When I opened my eyes and blinked away the spots, an enormous hole had been ripped out of the far wall and the ceiling, like a gigantic hand had come down and scooped away a full third of the room. The midday sun shone down through it, casting light on the writhing form of Flauros, which was even now slowly filling in the damage done.

    There was still no sign of the Grail.

    "¡ª MONGREL!" Flauros was saying when I could hear properly again. "WORTHLESS SCUM! HOW DARE YOU! HOW DARE YOU! HOW DARE YOU!"

    The hole through its center ¡ª large enough to drive a SUV through ¡ª closed at a snail''s pace, but it was still fast enough that I could see it happening. Even what had to be one of Emiya''s strongest attacks hadn''t done anything more than piss Flauros off.

    If even that hadn''t been enough¡­ Balmung had taken the extra power of a Command Spell just to finish Fafnir off, and that attack had to be on a similar level. Would bringing Siegfried here to help even accomplish anything at all?

    At this point, would even Arash''s Noble Phantasm be enough?

    "Holy shit," Rika breathed. "What does it take to put this guy down?"

    "I-I don''t know," Mash murmured miserably. "Senpai, this is¡­"

    "UNFORGIVABLE!" Flauros thundered. He ignored the continued arrows from Arash and the renewed assault by Spartacus like they were nothing more than biting fleas. All of his eyes were focused on Emiya. "THIS IS UTTERLY UNFORGIVABLE! YOU CHALDEAN WRETCH! I WILL ERASE YOU FROM EXISTENCE! NOT EVEN THE THRONE WILL REMEMBER EVEN THE TINIEST SCRAP OF YOUR HISTORY!"

    His eyes flashed, and Emiya dove to the side, enough to escape the brunt of the next explosion. Flauros didn''t let up; again and again, his eyes flashed, and again and again, Emiya did his best to avoid taking too direct a hit, even if he didn''t quite manage to escape them unscathed.

    If nothing else, at least it kept Flauros distracted for a few moments.

    My mind raced. Harpe? It would accomplish the goal of preventing Flauros from healing, but only what it directly cut, as far as I knew, so that was basically pointless. We didn''t have time to try and kill him with a death by a thousand cuts. That trick Emiya pulled off with the three sets of his twin blades would be similarly ineffective.

    We also didn''t have much else in the way of options. Our capacity for large-scale destruction was limited, and when it came down to it, even if we had our whole roster here at once, that only increased by one. We just didn''t have the raw firepower to deal that much damage all at once.

    Our best chance right now was probably to hope that what had worked on Romulus and Tiberius would be enough to work on Flauros, too.

    A¨ªfe, I tried.

    My turn, is it? she asked, like she already knew what I was thinking. Fine. I''ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. Let''s see if they''re enough to make him blink.

    And then, suddenly, she was dragging energy from me through our contract, and I staggered under the sheer amount of it she took. Beside me, both Ritsuka and Rika gasped.

    Sorry about this, Master, A¨ªfe said, sounding not very sorry at all. But I''m not going to hold back on this one.

    "Super Action Mom?" Rika asked breathlessly, because apparently, that message was meant for all of us. "What are you doing?"

    Even from here, I could see the cold smile that pulled at A¨ªfe''s mouth, mirthless. Killing a Demon God.

    The world shrank down, sucked into her hand, into a tiny point in her palm, only it was much, much stronger this time. It felt now like everything was being pulled in, from my eyes to my focus to my bones and marrow, down to my soul itself. Space itself warped and twisted until the black of her glove seemed to drink in the light, radiating shadows. All of creation was compressed down into the naked singularity she held in her fist.

    Even in his blind fury, Flauros couldn''t miss this.

    "NO," he rumbled. Magical energy built up inside of him as his eyes gleamed. "NO, I WON''T ALLOW YOU TO FINISH THAT."

    Stars glittered into existence around him, even as their light was dragged towards A¨ªfe.

    "HARKEN, YOU UNWORTHY FILTH. THE TIME OF THE AWAKENING HAS COME."

    A stone pillar dropped from the sky, landing within inches of Flauros'' body, and the magical energy he''d been gathering suddenly fizzled and died. A second pillar landed, then a third, a fourth, until a total of eight had formed a circle around him, stretching up towards the sky. Between the pillars, glowing Chinese characters formed, burning the air.

    Stone Sentinel Maze

    "Unreturning Formation!"

    From back near the entrance to the room, standing in the shadow of the hallway, El-Melloi II waved a feather fan and shouted out the name of his Noble Phantasm.

    "NNNNNG!" Flauros groaned, his many eyes swiveling blindly about. They gleamed and flashed, and explosions ripped through the air, aimed at nothing and hitting no one. One or two of them came uncomfortably close to us, but not close enough to do any damage. "YOU! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

    "Bought me just enough time and room."

    A¨ªfe crossed the gap between them so quickly that she seemed to teleport, like between one step and the next, she''d gone from her starting position to her end point. She cocked back her fist, dragging reality along with her, and with the weight of the sun behind her, she swung it forward.

    "Torannchless."

    BOOM

    It hit like a bomb. The whole world seemed to shake and shudder around us, and everything in front of her knuckles was just¡­erased, blown apart and shredded like it had been ripped to pieces by the tidal forces of a black hole. There was no blood or scraps of black flesh ¡ª that punch was so powerful that they had been atomized, leaving nothing at all behind. It was like Flauros had simply been erased, and with him, everything behind him for what had to be at least a hundred feet.

    What remained behind was only a moment of stunned silence as all of us stared at the aftermath. At the gigantic hole that had been made in the wall again, giving us a clear view of the divot that had been carved into the hillside outside. A crater gouged into the floor, leading from the point of impact to the wall that was no longer there.

    The fact that what was left of the ceiling still hadn''t collapsed after that was almost as amazing as the fact that she''d done that much damage with a single punch.

    "Whoa," wheezed Rika. "W-who knew Super Action Mom could do something like that?"

    A¨ªfe sighed and relaxed, letting her extended arm drop. "Unfortunately, not often. Putting that much power behind it is costly." She shook out her hand as though trying to return the feeling to it. "Almost as much as one of my other Noble Phantasms."

    Something fell suddenly from above, and a mass of black flesh roughly the size of a car landed on the floor with a wet plop. Instantly, everyone''s attention turned to it, and Rika let out a strangled sound high in her throat.

    "He''s still not dead?"

    It was the final remnants of Flauros, a shapeless blob coated in ichor, less than a tenth of what had just been stretching through the ceiling in front of us. It had no eyes, and it was so weak that I couldn''t even sense its presence from less than twenty feet away.

    A¨ªfe stepped forward, and G¨¢e Bolg leapt from where it had been thrown back into her palm.

    "That can be changed quickly."

    The black mass moved, and then it sagged and began to shrink as the flesh evaporated, not like a Servant''s would but like a pot of boiling water. Slowly, it disappeared, growing smaller and smaller with every second ¡ª and then, from inside of it, a bony shoulder covered in green fabric appeared, then an arm, then a torso and a head of long, shaggy hair, until the only thing left was a human body.

    Lev Lainur glared feebly up past the spear pointed between his eyes.

 Chapter LXVII: Engine of Destruction

    Chapter LXVII: Engine of Destruction

    "Impossible," Lev spat venomously. "Am I actually being forced to retreat¡­by a gaggle of mere Heroic Spirits?"

    "Mere Heroic Spirits?" A¨ªfe asked, like the very thought was so absurd it threatened to make her laugh.

    "Gotta say, I don''t feel like a ''mere'' anything," Arash chimed in, still holding onto his bow. "I may be a simple bowman, but even someone like me knows it takes something special to become a Heroic Spirit."

    "I''m not sure you can count this as retreating, either," Emiya added. "It looks much more to me like we''ve got you backed into a corner, ''Demon God.''"

    "No." Lev sneered as he slowly climbed to his feet. "No, no. This is nothing more than a miscalculation. A simple underestimation of the effect of being away from the Temple for so long."

    A¨ªfe looked ready to deliver a final blow right then ¡ª although whether it would even stick, we had no way of knowing ¡ª and I held her back with a jolt of mental warning.

    We still don''t know where he has the Grail, I reminded her.

    A¨ªfe''s eyes flickered over to me, a brief glance that didn''t even move her head. If we give him too much time to recover, he might transform again. It''ll be harder to kill that thing a second time.

    My cheek twitched. A part of me wanted to just let her do it, cut his head from his body and sort the rest out after. Give him no time to screw us over and remove the traitor that had killed Marie with one swipe of that spear. She would never have to worry about him again and we could search his body for the Grail at our leisure.

    Provided it actually worked, at least. Lev had already shrugged off what should have been several fatal wounds, and I wasn''t entirely sure it had anything at all to do with that giant tentacle thing he transformed into.

    The smarter part of me knew that it would be better to take him alive, if we could. He had information about what he called the "Incineration" and his "king''s" plans that we could extract, if we could figure out a way of holding him that he couldn''t slip out of ¡ª very likely a tall order to manage on the fly, admittedly.

    How convenient it would have been if I could do a high class binding spell using nothing but some silk threads.

    "Enough!" Nero barked, and she stepped past Mash and towards Lev. She marched over and stared him down, hands on her hips and shoulders squared imperiously, and it was almost comical because she also happened to be almost a foot and half shorter than him. "You are beaten, ''Demon God'' whatever you are! Mm-mm! Surrender your Grail to my Chaldean comrades at once!"

    "Beaten?" Lev chuckled lowly, leering at her with that crocodile grin of his. "On the contrary. This embarrassing display was but a minor setback. I still have yet more cards to play ¡ª and you, yourselves, have done me the favor of delivering an ace directly to my hands!"

    "Magical energy reaction detected!" Mash reported ¡ª unnecessarily, because I could feel the mounting power as he gathered it inside himself. "He''s utilizing the Holy Grail!"

    The decision had been taken out of my hands. "A¨ªfe!"

    She jabbed at Lev with her spear, aiming to take him in the throat as she had Tiberius, but Lev caught it with his bare hands, seemingly unbothered as the razor sharp blade cut deep into his palms and fingers. He still grinned that manic, mad grin.

    Arash and Emiya both shot him with more arrows to similar effect. He ignored it all like they were gnats buzzing around his head.

    "You''re too late!" he crowed. "By sacrificing Rome ¡ª by utilizing the destruction of this ''Rome'' you have done me the service of destroying ¡ª I can call forth the greatest Heroic Spirit, one truly suited to destroying your beloved empire, Nero!"

    "I won''t allow it!" Nero proclaimed. "Rome is the world, and the world is eternal! The future the Divine Ancestor entrusted to me shall never be destroyed by the likes of you!"

    "Ignorant bumpkin!" Lev said gleefully. "Your bravado will make it all the sweeter to watch that confidence be crushed! See with your own eyes the form of your destruction!"

    A glowing magic circle bloomed out under his feet, and A¨ªfe leapt back warily, keeping herself well out of its range. It lit up the room, so bright that it even outshone the sunlight streaming in through the broken roof and walls.

    "W-wait!" said Ritsuka. "That looks like¡­!"

    "A summoning!" Mash concluded.

    "Now, come forth!" Lev boomed. "Arrive from the distant Throne of Heroes and annihilate this foundation of human history! With this destroyed Rome strewn about my feet, I call upon you now, great hero of destruction, Altera!"

    Although the magic circle beneath his feet was the same, the words tumbling out of Lev''s mouth bore only a passing resemblance to the incantation we''d used to summon Servants before. That didn''t seem to matter at all, because the passageway to the Throne of Heroes opened up before our eyes, and a shadow cast in three dimensions rose up from the glowing array, taking the form of a slender figure with long hair and a sword.

    Altera? I''d never heard of a Heroic Spirit by that name before.

    Rapidly, the svelte form filled in, gaining brown skin, white hair, and a strange sword that seemed to be little more than a pole of multi-colored glass with a pointed tip. Eyes like garnets gazed at each of us dispassionately, and strange white lines raced up and down her torso and limbs. What they were meant to signify, I hadn''t the slightest idea, but they didn''t have the look of tattoos. They were almost like birthmarks.

    She was also almost naked. For some reason. There wasn''t a single piece of visible armor anywhere on her body.

    Despite that, I discovered when I examined her with my Master''s Clairvoyance, she had high stats across the board. B''s and A''s everywhere and nothing lower. Not as high as Caligula''s, but Caligula had set a high bar in that area. And of course, she was a Saber, which meant high Magic Resistance, so she''d shrug off anything I threw at her if it came to that.

    Fou suddenly leapt out of his hiding place to take a spot on Mash''s shoulder, hissing at the new Servant with his hackles raised. Strangely, that was the part that worried me the most.

    "It''s over now!" Lev cackled. "This Heroic Spirit is not some trifling founder of a third rate empire, nor is she a fake saint born of some madman''s delusions! This is the ultimate destroyer, an unmatched killing machine that razes even the mightiest of civilizations to the ground! Rome will be ¡ª"

    "Silence."

    Lev''s voice choked off as the new Servant''s ¡ª Altera''s ¡ª hand sunk into his chest with a sickening squelch. He looked down at the offending limb, uncomprehending, and then jerked when she ripped it free of his flesh, holding in her grasp ¡ª

    "The Grail!" Mash shouted.

    A golden chalice that glimmered in the sunlight.

    "But¡­" Lev gasped. "You¡­"

    With an effortless, contemptuous swing of her sword, Altera split him in half from shoulder to hip, and the two pieces of his body fell to the floor with meaty thumps.

    No one moved. I think we were all just that surprised that the "perfect Servant" Lev had said he would summon had just summarily executed him without a second thought. Did she want the Grail that badly?

    "Did¡­" Rika began at length. "Did she just¡­"

    "She cut Professor Lev in half," Mash confirmed. "He''s not¡­ I think she really killed him, this time."

    And then the Grail began to glimmer and glow, fading away at the edges like an artist erasing an errant line, and the light sank into Altera''s flesh, surging up her arm. Before I could realize what was happening, it was already over: the Grail was gone. She had absorbed it.

    Because of course she had. It couldn''t be as easy as her handing it over to us, could it?

    "Hey!" Nero cried indignantly. She marched over to the lean figure of the newest Servant. "Just what did you do with that? My friends have need of it! Mm-mm! Return it at once and I shall forgive your impertinence!"

    "Return," Altera mumbled softly. "Yes. I have returned here, to finish what I began."

    The air grew thick.

    "Magical energy response rising!" Mash reported urgently. "She''s using the power of the Grail! Master, this is ¡ª"

    "I am a warrior of the Hun," Altera said, "and its king. The King of Destruction who laid waste to everything in front of me."

    She lifted her sword, pointing the pommel towards the sky.

    Noble Phantasm.

    "Everyone!" I ordered. "Get to cover! Now!"

    "Mash!" Ritsuka said a bare second behind me. "Use your Noble Phantasm!"

    The magical energy surged.

    "What?" Nero asked. "What''s going on? What is she doing?"

    A¨ªfe landed next to me, dropping El-Melloi II unceremoniously to the ground at the same time Mash planted her shield. Emiya arrived a short moment later, eyes wide and lips drawn tight as he stared at the gathering storm of power that swept out from Altera''s raised sword, and then Arash, grim-faced and solemn.

    But Spartacus had a different plan. He abandoned his sword and leapt through the tempest to latch onto Altera''s body, enveloping her in an enormous bear hug. Boudica, knowing what he was about to do before anyone else, pulled Nero back and out of the way, threw herself on top of Nero, and raised her shield defensively.

    "The rebellion lives on in the hearts of all those who oppose tyranny!" Spartacus bellowed. His flesh bulged grotesquely, muscles inflating as spots of pink light danced beneath his skin, until he had grown to twice his size and three times his girth. "This is not the end of my rebellion! My love transcends all boundaries!"

    He was going to try and stop Altera before she could use her Noble Phantasm.

    "Spartacus!" Ritsuka shouted.

    But Spartacus didn''t listen. He merely smiled, held Altera tighter, and said a final two words.

    "CRYING WARMONGER!"

    And then he exploded.

    A flash of blinding light made me close my eyes, and a deep, resonant BOOM shook the tortured palace again as all of the power Spartacus had gathered rushed out all at once. A wave of hot air blew past me, whipping my hair about, and then, just like that, it was over.

    When I blinked my eyes open again, there was no more Spartacus, just another divot gouged into the floor to mark his passing and the destruction caused by his Noble Phantasm. And Altera¡­

    "She''s not even singed?" Rika choked.

    ¡­was completely unharmed. Any damage that Spartacus might have done had already been healed, probably by the Holy Grail she was currently feeding off of like a leech.

    "They called me divine punishment," she said flatly, like she was reporting on the weather. The raw power in her sword continued to build, flowing into the pommel until it glowed red. "Heaven''s judgment."

    Shit. Anything that took that long to charge had to be strong. There was no more time to try and figure out a way of bringing her down before she could unleash it. We just had to bunker down and hope that this thing wasn''t powerful enough to match Excalibur.

    "She''s still going to use her Noble Phantasm!" Mash said urgently. "Master, I can''t wait any longer!"

    Rika whirled about towards Nero, face stricken.

    "Best Buddy!" she cried.

    My head turned. My thoughts seemed to occur in slow motion. Halfway across the room, Boudica looked between us and Altera, and she reached the same conclusion I did.

    They weren''t going to make it.

    I saw the decision she came to the instant she came to it, the determined, resigned set of her mouth and brow. Something passed between us as her eyes met mine ¡ª an agreement on what needed to be done and what could be done about it.

    She reached down to grab Nero''s dress and lifted her up with one hand as one of my own rose, pointing her direction.

    Momentary Reinforcement.

    "LORD!" Mash began.

    "Chariot of," Boudica chanted as she used the temporary boost to throw Nero bodily in our direction.

    "CHALDEAS!"

    Nero landed and tumbled to a stop at Rika''s feet, nearly bowling her over.

    "Boudica!"

    The chariot raced to encircle us as the rampart of Mash''s shield built itself up, and A¨ªfe reached over, hastily scribbling more runes to pull off the same upgrade she had earlier. Even Emiya lifted his hand and added to our defenses.

    "Rho Aias!"

    "The Scourge," Altera continued as though none of us had spoken, "of God."

    A tiny ray of light shot up from the pommel of her sword and through the destroyed section of the roof, disappearing somewhere above us. For a fraction of a second, my first thought was, That''s it?

    And then the weight of the sky fell on us and I realized that no, that had just been the beginning.

    It was hard to describe what happened next. Calling the massive pillar of raw power that dropped down on our heads a simple beam of light didn''t quite capture what it was like to be hit by it, what it was like to have it come down on you like the hammer of an angry god. More than any of the other times before, it felt like the whole world trembled and shook beneath our feet, and the thunderous BOOM of it making contact with our layers of defensive barriers vibrated the very marrow in my bones with its intensity.

    I held my hands over my ears, but it still deafened me. I squeezed my eyes against the bright flash of light, but it still blinded me. For an instant, as every bug in my range was vaporized and disappeared from my power, I feared that it would be too much, that we had survived the sabotage at Chaldea, Saber Alter''s Excalibur in Fuyuki, Fafnir and Jeanne Alter in Orl¨¦ans, and even Caligula, Romulus, and Flauros here in the Roman Singularity, only to die here. Someone was screaming, and I wasn''t sure that it wasn''t me.

    The moment eventually passed. The great cacophony of sound died away, and it was replaced with a dead, eerie silence, like the entire world was holding its breath to see if we had made it out alive.

    When I peeled my eyelids open, I found only destruction. Our party was untouched and unscathed, a safe haven in the eye of a tempest, and outside of that, there was nothing. The tortured palace had finally been destroyed and destroyed utterly, annihilated down to the last brick, and the city outside of it, the city that had surrounded us and which had housed every single one of the men, women, and children who had decided to follow Romulus¡­

    "Oh my god," Rika whispered.

    ¡­had been scoured down to the foundations.

    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    "All of those people," Ritsuka mumbled. "They''re¡­"

    Gone. Some parts of the outskirts had survived the initial blast, but the aftermath had killed even more people, and the fallout from the beam of light ¡ª the heat and force that spread from the center of the Noble Phantasm''s attack ¡ª had spread even further. If I had to give it an estimate, then if the city had a population of about two-hundred-thousand, something like ninety percent of them had just been¡­erased, for lack of a better word.

    It was like looking at the aftermath of Scion''s opening attacks during Gold Morning. Indiscriminate devastation, senseless destruction, wiping out everything in range simply because it was possible.

    All of that from a single Noble Phantasm.

    My head jerked around, looking towards where Altera had been standing, but she was gone. Had she blown herself up along with the rest of the city? But why would she steal the Grail just to use a suicide attack?

    "Queen Booty!" Rika suddenly burst out. She took a handful of steps out of the unscathed circle we stood in and then stopped, looking around.

    It was useless. That Noble Phantasm was indeed on the level of Excalibur ¡ª I''d seen it at the last second, A-plus-plus, Anti-Fortress. Trapped outside of the defenses we''d raised to survive it, there was no way Boudica had managed to make it out. Not even her Battle Continuation could let her survive something like that.

    "There''s no sign of Queen Boudica''s Spirit Origin," Mash said sadly. "I''m¡­sorry, Senpai, but Queen Boudica is gone. Altera''s Noble Phantasm killed her."

    "For me," Nero mumbled. "She died¡­for me."

    "She saved your life," Arash said softly. "At the last moment, she had the chance to save herself or you, and she chose to save you."

    Nero''s face twisted into a snarl. "I didn''t ask her to!"

    "No," I agreed quietly. "But she did it anyway. Because she decided that your life was more important."

    And Nero¡­deflated. "I didn''t¡­" she murmured, heartbroken. "I didn''t even get the chance to¡­for everything that happened¡­"

    I grimaced and looked away, uncomfortable, and tried not to think too much about Dad and how I''d never gotten the chance to say anything, to clear the air and try to mend bridges before Gold Morning ripped the world apart.

    Thankfully, there were more important things for me to worry about, so I didn''t have to let myself fall down that rabbit hole.

    "Mash," I said instead, "can you detect the Grail anywhere nearby?"

    Mash frowned and squinted in concentration for a few seconds, then shook her head. "There''s no sign of the Grail, Miss Taylor, or Altera."

    Had it been vaporized as well? Could the Grail even be vaporized? Presumably, it could be destroyed somehow, and if anything could do it, I had to guess that a Noble Phantasm that strong could do the job, but¡­

    "And Spartacus, too!" Rika growled. She stomped her foot. "Damn it! She took out two of us just like that!"

    "It''s not over," El-Melloi II said suddenly.

    Rika whirled about. "Whaddya mean, it''s not over? It looks pretty over to me!"

    I turned to him. "You''re saying she survived that?"

    "You don''t think she did?" El-Melloi II retorted. "If all she wanted to do was commit suicide, there are far easier ways of doing it than trying to take us out with her."

    "And the Grail isn''t here, either," Emiya added.

    Beep-beep!

    When I answered my communicator, Da Vinci''s panicked face appeared, hovering in midair.

    "What the heck is going on over there?" she demanded frantically. "First, there was that utterly ridiculous Spirit Origin, and then another Servant got summoned? And then that enormous magical energy reaction that almost shorted out your vital readings!"

    "Later," I said. "We can talk about that later. First things first, Da Vinci. Can you still detect that Servant or the Holy Grail?"

    Da Vinci looked like she didn''t want to accept that as an answer, then visibly reined herself in. "Yes," she said, "which is another thing! Who on Earth was that Servant and why is she heading east?"

    "East?" I asked.

    "East!" Da Vinci insisted impatiently. "I can''t even imagine where she''s going at that speed, but she''s not stopping for anything and it looks like she''s mowing down everything that gets in her way!"

    Arash turned to me, his brow furrowing. "You don''t think¡­"

    "Rome," I concluded.

    After all, that was why Lev had summoned her, wasn''t it? He''d wanted her to destroy Rome, to put the final nail in this era''s coffin and disrupt history irrevocably. It looked like she was perfectly willing to do that, she just didn''t feel like listening to Lev''s orders as she did it.

    I turned back to Da Vinci. "How long will it take her to get there?"

    "At her current pace, at least a day," Da Vinci answered. "I already told you, didn''t I? She''s not going very fast. Compared to the speeds a Servant is capable of reaching when they put their mind to it, she''s essentially walking there. Now can you tell me more about her? That wasn''t her Noble Phantasm the sensors just detected, was it?"

    "Compared to the speeds a Servant is capable of reaching" wasn''t all that slow. A day? To get from here to there, that was still as fast as a car on the highway. Even if it wasn''t anywhere near as fast as A¨ªfe''s chariot, it was still far and away too fast for us Masters to catch up with her on foot.

    A day. That wasn''t as much time as it sounded like.

    "Later," I promised Da Vinci a second time.

    "Hey," she said indignantly, "don''t just blow this off! You have to know that the sensors detected Spartacus and Boudica''s Spirit Origins disappearing. Even Jing Ke is ¡ª"

    "I need you to send us Bradamante," I cut across her, and her mouth snapped shut with a click. "Quick."

    I was a bit ashamed to admit that I''d forgotten all about Jing Ke in the midst of the fighting.

    "Not Siegfried?" Da Vinci asked.

    It was tempting, but no. A¨ªfe''s earlier full power Thunder Feat had been spread out among the three of us, but it was still enough of a drain that having to support both Siegfried and Arash on top of what I''d already lost from that would be difficult. As it was, pushing it on A¨ªfe''s chariot to catch up to Altera was going to take even more, and supplying energy to a high maintenance Servant like Siegfried would leave me dangerously low, even if he never used his Noble Phantasm.

    And even with Balmung, we weren''t going to be winning a contest of raw power with Altera.

    Bradamante was not only split between the three of us, easing the individual burden, but her Noble Phantasm was relatively cheap and made up for in utility what it lacked in power. She was not only the safe choice, but the tactical one.

    "No. Not for this."

    Rather than question my decision more, Da Vinci just nodded. "I''ll be expecting more detail in your after action report," she said sternly as she typed away at the keyboard, "so you''d better make it up to me then!"

    "Bradamante," a cool, feminine voice said in the background, "please report to the Rayshift Chamber for immediate deployment. Bradamante, please report to the Rayshift Chamber for immediate deployment."

    "Reinforcements?" El-Melloi II muttered behind me.

    "She''s a Servant we met and befriended in the last Singularity," Ritsuka told him quietly. "She helped us out a lot, and when we left, she decided to come back with us."

    "You can do that?" he asked, surprised.

    "I mean, we can bring Servants here with us, so why wouldn''t we be able to take any back to Chaldea when we leave?"

    "Why not, indeed."

    "Parameters set," said Da Vinci. "Target aligned. Array prepared. Mash, if you could set your shield down¡­"

    It took Mash an extra second to catch up with what Da Vinci had said, and when she did, she took a few hurried steps back and set her shield down on the clearest spot of floor still left after Altera''s Noble Phantasm. A moment later, a familiar summoning circle bloomed atop it, glowing.

    "Connection to summoning circle established," Da Vinci reported with a nod. "Rayshifting in three, two, one¡­"

    The circle grew brighter and brighter, and a swift wind picked up, whipping at my hair, and at the center, a familiar silhouette appeared. A moment later, it filled out, gaining color, definition, and detail, until, with a flash, Bradamante stood in front of us.

    "Ah, hello?" she said awkwardly. "Lady Da Vinci didn''t tell me much about what''s going on, but whatever you need, I''m here to help!"

    "Tii-chan!" Rika greeted her.

    Tii-chan? El-Melloi II mouthed to himself.

    "We''ll fill you in as we go," I told Bradamante. "Da Vinci ¡ª"

    "She''s still heading due east," Da Vinci answered my question before I could ask it. "I''m losing resolution the further she goes, but it doesn''t seem like she''s making any detours. It looks like she''s taking the fastest route she can."

    "Thank you."

    I closed the connection with a press of a button, then turned back to the team. "A¨ªfe."

    A¨ªfe nodded. "It''ll be a tight squeeze," she warned, "but if we all huddle together, it should be manageable."

    Considering how many of us were going to have to stand in that chariot together? That we could fit at all wasn''t something I was going to complain about.

    "We can''t leave anyone behind," I said, "and without Boudica, your chariot is our best option."

    Our only option, really. Even if we did like we had in Orl¨¦ans and had the Servants carry us, Altera was already moving at that kind of speed, so it would take us that much longer to catch up to her. It would be much easier in a chariot that was moving four times as fast.

    "Queen Boudica?" Bradamante asked, perking up. Her head swiveled as she looked around. "She''s here? Where?"

    "Ah¡­" Ritsuka breathed, frowning. His brow furrowed.

    "She''s gone, Tii-chan," Rika said quietly. "Altera killed her."

    "She died protecting me," Nero chimed in solemnly. "Even though¡­my Rome was the cause of her suffering."

    "I''m¡­sorry, but," Bradamante began, "who are you?"

    A¨ªfe''s chariot thundered into existence, summoned by her call, and the pair of divine horses reared up and tossed their heads as though to announce their presence.

    "Explain on the way," I told the twins. "You should have enough experience by now to do it without speaking."

    "Right," the twins chorused.

    A¨ªfe stepped into her chariot, taking the reins, and our group of Masters climbed in after her. Mash and Ritsuka wound up to one side with Nero and Rika on the other, which left me in the rear, in the awkward position of having to hold onto A¨ªfe herself instead of the support rail on the lip of the chariot''s facade. Already uncomfortable because I had almost six inches on her, it was made all the worse by the simple fact that I was going to be clinging to another person instead of something more stable and solid.

    It couldn''t be helped. We were already pushing the limits of what could fit in that carriage as it was.

    One by one, the other Servants turned to spirit form until the only people who were actually physically present were the ones who had to be. A¨ªfe waited only for me to say, "Go," in her ear before she snapped the reins and we took off.

    The scenery passed by in a blur, and this time, there was no excited whooping as we raced through the devastated remnants of what had once been the United Empire''s capital city. Ritsuka and Rika, grim-faced, kept their eyes forward, and Nero maintained a stiff upper lip, although I wasn''t sure I didn''t see her hands trembling in the white-knuckled grip she kept on the chariot.

    The fact that it had been a nearly identical recreation of Rome couldn''t have made seeing that sort of thing any easier.

    Unlike the last few times we had traveled by chariot, this time, the ride took only a few minutes. The difference in speed was simply that great, because although Altera had managed to make it over ten miles from the city in the time we''d spent gathering our wits in the aftermath of her Noble Phantasm, she couldn''t make it far enough to outpace A¨ªfe''s chariot.

    "There!" Ritsuka shouted against the wind, pointing towards the rapidly growing white dot speeding away from us.

    A¨ªfe tightened her grip on the reins.

    Hang on tightly, she projected ¡ª at all three of us ¡ª right before she started dipping into our magical energy again.

    Another Noble Phantasm, I realized, and I clung tighter to her waist. To the sides, the twins did, too, instructing Mash and Nero to do the same. When we were all as ready as we could be, the chariot picked up even more speed, and Altera continued to get larger and larger in front of us. The horses let out loud neighs, the thunder of their hooves gaining a deeper, otherworldly quality as sparks of blue fire kicked up from beneath them like water droplets.

    Dominion Over Beasts

    "R¨ªgan B¨ªastae!"

    The sparks became a cone, and the cone became a vortex of power, swirling around the entire chariot. Tails of energy whipped off at the back end, and like a comet, we bore down on our target, cloaked in divine might.

    The thump of the chariot running Altera over was almost anticlimactic by comparison.

    Even at that speed, the bump was barely noticeable, and we kept on going as A¨ªfe steered us around in a physics defying turn that bled off more momentum than should have been possible. We came to a complete stop with nothing more than a slight jerk almost sixty feet from where we''d run over Altera, facing the opposite direction.

    And the lump of bronze flesh that lay where she had been trampled slowly pulled itself to its feet, sparking electricity crackling over her skin as the wounds left behind filled in.

    "Even that wasn''t enough to finish her off, was it?" A¨ªfe muttered.

    The chariot vanished beneath our feet, and I managed to stick the landing despite how unexpected it was and the sudden jolt of my stomach dropping into my knees. The twins didn''t do quite so well, although they both managed to keep from falling on their faces, and Mash squeaked but didn''t so much as stumble.

    "A little more warning next time!" Rika snapped.

    "There''s no time," A¨ªfe said. "Mash, get ready!"

    Mash blinked. "W-what ¡ª"

    Across from us, Altera lifted her sword and pointed it directly at us, and from as far away as we were, even still, I could feel the sudden rush of magical energy gathering. My eyes went wide ¡ª another Noble Phantasm?

    Arash suddenly materialized in front of me, bow drawn and arrow nocked, and he let it fly at Altera''s head with the crack of the sound barrier shattering, but he might as well not have wasted the time and energy, because a swirling vortex of rainbow light formed a cone around Altera''s sword and Arash''s arrow disintegrated against it.

    "Shit," he mumbled.

    "Mash!" Ritsuka shouted. "Use your Noble Phantasm!"

    "Right!"

    Mash lifted her hands, and halfway through the motion, her shield rematerialized. A¨ªfe was already starting to draw a pattern of runes in the air as she slammed it down.

    "Lord ¡ª"

    Altera raced towards us, the swirling cone of light gouging a line in the ground as she flew across the distance like a fish being reeled in on a high speed line.

    "CHALDEAS!"

    The familiar brickwork formed, and the rampart materialized in front of our group just in time for Altera to reach us. She collided with a shockingly gentle crash, compared to everything else that had hit Mash''s shield, but then the vortex of light ground against the wall like a drill on stone and the high pitched whine stabbed into my eardrums and set my teeth on edge.

    Some monkey brain instinct compelled me to squeeze my eyes shut and slap my hands over my ears, and the twins did just that, staggering under the nails-on-a-chalkboard screech. I had to grit my teeth and do the latter, but through some force of will, I managed to keep my eyes open so that I could be ready when the moment showed itself.

    The vortex wound down just as cracks were starting to form in Lord Chaldeas, and the multicolored blade of Altera''s sword stopped spinning, leaving the pointed tip pressed against the small divot it had managed to carve into the rampart. I met her cold, dead eyes through the translucent barrier.

    Just as Lord Chaldeas flickered and disappeared, Emiya dropped down from the sky, twin blades in hand, aiming for a debilitating blow. Altera leapt back, swiping at him with her sword, and all I could feel as it lengthened and bent like a whip to fend off his attack was exasperation.

    Seriously? Just how much bullshit did she have hiding up her nonexistent sleeves?

    Emiya aborted at the last second and took her sword on his two, letting himself be thrown away a few feet, and he landed next to Rika, grimacing.

    "Damn," he muttered. "She''s got pretty good fighting instincts."

    The rest of our team materialized around us, tensed and ready for battle. Bradamante took to the front, next to A¨ªfe, and stared down Altera with an unwavering gaze.

    "So," she said, "this is the terrible enemy my friends were telling me about, Queen A¨ªfe?"

    "She calls herself Altera," A¨ªfe answered. "So far, we''ve seen two Noble Phantasms. One, you just saw, and the other resulted in the aftermath you were summoned into."

    "I see." Bradamante''s grip on her tiny lance tightened. "So all that destruction¡­all those lives lost¡­ It''s all on her hands, isn''t it?"

    "Yes," said Mash. "That''s why, Miss Bradamante, we need your help to beat her."

    Bradamante squared her shoulders.

    "For this¡­you didn''t even need to ask, Mash."

    "I see," Altera said in the same soft monotone she''d been using since she was summoned. "Then you''re all¡­still going to stand in my way?"

    "Stand in your way?" Nero asked, voice trembling. "Yes, of course we are! Mm! For the comrades you killed and for the sake of the Rome you intend to destroy, I¡­ All of us refuse to let you advance one step further!"

    "I see."

    Instantly, she was in front of us, sword already in motion, and A¨ªfe took point, blocking the rainbow smear with her red spear. A¨ªfe grunted at the strength behind the blow, but held her ground without giving any away. Arash, from the side, let loose a barrage of arrows, but Altera retreated, swiping them out of the air with her impossible sword as she stepped back.

    "There!" El-Melloi II called as he flung a fireball. Altera batted it aside with her free hand, unaffected. "Tch. Figures that her Magic Resistance would be that high."

    Emiya threw out his signature twin blades, and even as they flew at Altera, he prepared his second set and rushed forward to do that same finishing move he''d tried against Caligula ¡ª and then flailed before he could even get started when Altera smashed that first set with a single swing.

    "What?" he sputtered. "That''s not fair!"

    "Keep your head in the game!" A¨ªfe barked at him, and then she took off, racing to meet Altera halfway.

    Her opening attack was deflected with ease that was quickly becoming familiar, and she went through a series of stabs and slashes with her spear that even to my eyes seemed much, much slower than usual. Altera blocked, dodged, or just outright batted them all aside without any sign of struggle, which probably wasn''t saying much when her face hadn''t changed since the moment she''d been summoned.

    And then A¨ªfe kicked it up a notch and the slow, testing strikes vanished into the blur of motion and force that I had come to expect of her at her best. She swung and jabbed with such speed that her arms disappeared and her spear became nothing more than momentary flashes of red in between strikes.

    Altera kept up with them all, expression never changing. Any injury she took was minor ¡ª scratches at best ¡ª and healed almost as quickly as it appeared, thanks to the Grail she had absorbed. Neither side seemed to be giving an inch, but neither side was taking one, either.

    Bradamante looked ready to go and join in.

    "Don''t," I told her shortly.

    She looked back at me, brow furrowing. "Why not?"

    "This isn''t going to do it," I said. "The instant you see an opening, I need you to make it wider so that we can take advantage of it."

    "If you want an opening," El-Melloi II said, "then I can give you one."

    He gathered magical energy swiftly, and I realized his intent a bare second before he swung that feather fan he''d taken to using whenever we got into combat.

    "Unreturning Formation!"

    My head jerked back around.

    "A¨ªfe, back up!" I shouted at her.

    A¨ªfe broke off in just enough time to avoid the pillars of stone that fell from the sky, landing one after the other in a circle around Altera. Fiery Chinese symbols lit up between them, aglow with power. From above, a final stone ceiling dropped, octagonal in shape, landing so that each pillar stood at one of its corners.

    "No."

    And then Altera swung her sword about, its blade shining with light from each section, and those pillars were cut in half like so much wheat. El-Melloi II''s Noble Phantasm fractured, broke, and disappeared.

    His mouth dropped open. "What?" he choked out.

    "She just¡­destroyed El-Melloi II''s Noble Phantasm?" Mash breathed.

    Altera kept going like she hadn''t done anything out of the ordinary and chased A¨ªfe down to reengage in melee, only this time, she was on the offensive and A¨ªfe was forced on the defense. That ridiculous sword lengthened, bent, and contracted, and it met G¨¢e Bolg with a sound not unlike crackling glass.

    Light surged as the prongs at the base of Altera''s sword began to spin, and the blade of her sword erupted in red fire. When she swung, sparks leapt from every smash of the blade against A¨ªfe''s spear, and A¨ªfe was suddenly on the retreat, dodging, blocking, and parrying each blow, even as G¨¢e Bolg was nearly ripped out of her hands each time.

    She was doing the same thing Siegfried had done against Fafnir, I realized with a nasty jolt. Altera was using miniature charges of her Noble Phantasm to increase the striking power of her sword. It was giving her a very literal edge over A¨ªfe, who had to do everything she could to avoid a direct hit just so that she wouldn''t be killed instantly.

    Shit.

    "Emiya, go!" I ordered.

    Emiya glanced at Rika.

    "Go help Super Action Mom!" Rika echoed me without hesitation.

    He didn''t waste any more time and leapt towards the fight. He went on the attack with his twin swords, needling Altera with strikes of opportunity.

    It didn''t help as much as I''d hoped. Emiya''s mere presence forced things into a more even equilibrium, because his hit-and-run tactics kept Altera from focusing exclusively on A¨ªfe, but all that wound up doing was giving her enough breathing room to counterattack on the margins. There was no chance for her to disengage and do something like use her own Noble Phantasm, not when she must have seen ¡ª as I could ¡ª that Emiya would be crushed instantly if he was on his own.

    Damn it. She''d survived being run over by A¨ªfe''s chariot at full charge, she''d busted straight through El-Melloi II''s Noble Phantasm without breaking a sweat, and even if she wouldn''t survive Emiya''s Caladbolg to the face, there was no room for him to prepare that safely.

    As a test, I split off a section of my swarm and had them beeline for her face, but she didn''t even break stride as she seared through all of them with a swing of her blazing sword.

    It was like watching our team fight a machine. She never made a wrong move, never made a mistake, never slipped up. She wasn''t even that good a martial artist ¡ª A¨ªfe was obviously far and away much more skilled ¡ª but she didn''t have to be when she never showed a single opening.

    "Arash," I began, "can you¡­?"

    "Not without hitting Emiya or A¨ªfe," said Arash, like I''d expected him to. "They''re moving too fast for me to land a sure hit."

    "What even is she?" Rika murmured.

    "I can help," Bradamante said. She turned to me, entreating. "Master. I can help them!"

    For a heartbeat, I considered telling her no. But we really were running low on options, and I could feel A¨ªfe being forced to dip into our reserves again to bolster her own strength. I was already coming dangerously close to half empty; it was half the reason I hadn''t cast any spells to lend a hand.

    "Do it."

    Her smile lit up her face.

    "Yes!"

    She kicked off the ground, rocketing towards the battle that was still raging, and this, this was enough to tip the scales more in our favor. They had already surpassed my eyes'' ability to keep track of the individual moves, but the flow of things very obviously turned against Altera. Even with that trick she was using adding strength to her strikes, a third opponent put her squarely on the defense, and when one of our team was forced back, the other two were enough to buy the fraction of a second needed to recover.

    I had barely dared to hope when it all went wrong again.

    The fiery blaze around Altera''s sword exploded, and the force of it threw Emiya, Bradamante, and A¨ªfe back dozens of feet. She bought herself a few seconds ¡ª but those few seconds were all she needed, because the prongs of her sword spun up again, and she pointed it straight forward. At us.

    Mash''s shield was strong enough to defend us, but that wouldn''t matter. The vortex of Altera''s second Noble Phantasm was large, large enough that it would sweep up all three of our Servants, even if they tried to dodge.

    The blade of the sword ignited. Magical energy swirled. Light spun off of the multicolored blade.

    I made a choice. The only one I had.

    "Photon ¡ª"

    "Everyone," I shouted, "come back!"

    Instantly, two of my Command Spells burned away. A¨ªfe and Bradamante teleported next to me as Mash planted her shield.

    "Lord ¡ª"

    "Emiya," Rika called as one of her own Command Spells blazed, "come!"

    "Ray!"

    "CHALDEAS!"

    Altera was already charging when Emiya appeared behind the safety of the rampart that was Lord Chaldeas, and he had just barely made it in before the vortex of light swallowed up the place where he''d just been standing.

    An instant later, the point of Altera''s Noble Phantasm smashed into the wall, grinding and drilling away at the translucent stone. This time, without enough time for A¨ªfe to strengthen it, the wall started to chip beneath the raw power of what Altera called "Photon Ray." The brickwork shuddered and groaned, losing small chunks at a time, but still held as the swirling light died down.

    And then Altera pulled back her sword, the blade blazed again, and she stabbed ¡ª directly into the divot her Noble Phantasm had carved into the barrier.

    Lord Chaldeas shattered, and the tip of the sword screeched as it made contact with the shield behind the wall. More magical energy gathered, the prongs spun up once more, the blade shone with light, and I realized with horror that she was going to use her Noble Phantasm again, before we could even hope to muster a defense.

    Mash gasped, Rika shrieked, and Ritsuka yelped, because none of us had expected her to make it through a defense that had stood up to Excalibur.

    "Arash!" I scrambled desperately. I didn''t even have an order in mind, I just hoped that there was no way he could miss with her this close.

    "Arondight¡­"

    It was not Arash who answered me.

    "Overload!"

    Instead, a gleaming blue blade descended to take Altera''s head.

 Interlude Co: Mothers Lessons

    Interlude Co: Mother''s Lessons

    In the end, it was only natural that Connla was the one to notice something amiss first.

    After all, he wasn''t the type to sit still. He may not have understood words like "rambunctious" or "incorrigible," and words like "recalcitrant" and "intractable" went straight over his head, but if someone bothered to explain their meanings to him, he would have grinned, nodded, and laughed, saying, "Yeah, that sounds just like me!"

    Not only because his legend and life had ended at a mere seven years old, before he had the chance to mature, but also because he was the child of both Ireland''s most free-spirited and uncontrollable hero and the woman who had defied the destiny of her birth through sheer force of will. Neither of his parents understood the concept of restraint, so it was strange to ever believe that he would either.

    Therefore, it was only natural that Connla would hardly wait until his mother was out of earshot before disobeying her.

    Of course, even so, he didn''t do something as rebellious as actually follow her and those Chaldeans to Rome. There were a lot of things Connla was willing to risk to stave off boredom ¡ª up to and including his own life ¡ª but well and truly arousing his mother''s ire was not one of them.

    Not that it wasn''t tempting. During the week and a half that passed after she left, nothing much of note happened around the castle, let alone inside of it, and there were only so many times he could venture out just a little bit farther than he really should to spook some of those United Empire idiots before even that got dull and repetitive, no matter how much he handicapped himself to make things more interesting.

    It was nearing two weeks since he''d been left to defend the castle with Uncle Lance when he finally noticed something strange on one of his "walks."

    "You''re certain it came from this direction?" Uncle Lance asked as they raced through the forest.

    "Yeah, yeah!" Connla called back. He hopped about from tree trunk to tree trunk, or even branch to branch, instead of Uncle Lance''s boring, ordinary run. "Hey, just because I''m seven doesn''t mean I didn''t finish my training, you know! Pops was over twice my age when he got with Ma, and I fought him to a draw that day!"

    "I don''t mean to doubt your competence," Uncle Lance said apologetically. "It''s only that¡­ Well, this direction is¡­"

    Connla laughed. "That''s what makes it interesting, isn''t it? Not only is it the first time we''ve seen some major magical beasts since we were summoned, but they also came from where that wall we heard about is supposed to be! Why, it''s almost like this might be the enemy testing the waters for a full scale attack, isn''t it?"

    Uncle Lance glanced at him briefly, face as solemn and serious as ever. Connla found that kind of boring, too. What was the point in being so sad all the time? Where did it get you to carry all that weight around everywhere? Connla''s own father killed him when he was just seven, for doing what he''d been told he had to do, for that matter, and you didn''t see him moping around day in and day out.

    Well, it wasn''t like Connla really got all of that guy''s legend, either. In a distant sort of way, he understood the idea of being in love and how that led to kids and marriage and stuff, but it just seemed kind of silly to go through that much effort for a girl.

    Connla also knew, in that distant sort of intellectual way, that his opinion would very much have changed as he got older, but he never got the chance to experience that, so it was all the same to him.

    "Even if I have my doubts, the possibility itself is enough to warrant investigation," Uncle Lance said. "I might question your motives, but you''re right that we can''t afford to let it go unanswered, not when considering who our enemy happens to be."

    Uncle Lance was on his side, this time. Heh. Now if only Mom was that easy to convince. She would''ve seen right through him.

    "At least it''s more interesting than sitting in that castle all day!" Connla grinned. "You can only count the number of bricks in the wall so many times before you start thinking about throwing yourself off the top of the tower!"

    Even if Connla couldn''t actually remember a time when that would have killed him. It was the principle of the thing, you know?

    "Of course, if this turns out to be a false alarm and nothing comes of it," said Uncle Lance, "then I will be telling your mother about this."

    Connla faltered for a moment and nearly tripped and fell on his face. "Uncle Lance, you''re so uncool."

    "You''re in my care," was the unflinching reply. "I''m responsible for your well-being and your discipline."

    Ugh. Uncle Lance really was a stick in the mud, wasn''t he? How could a guy that was supposed to be so cool be so boring at the same time?

    Well, whatever. It wasn''t like Connla wasn''t already hoping to run into something ¡ª or someone ¡ª on this little outing. The fact that he had another reason why he wanted it to happen didn''t really change anything.

    They kept going for a while, and several hours passed as they ran. They had to take stops here and there, of course, because without Masters, their supplies of energy were a bit more limited, so they couldn''t go nonstop, but for the most part, they kept going without interruption.

    And then they ran into a hulking chimera, a huge beast that mages might call a "centennial monster." Connla just knew that it had to be pretty old to be that big, so big that it looked like it could swallow him whole if it put its mind to it, which meant that it had to be pretty powerful, too.

    It roared a challenge from the mouth of its lion head, and the goat''s head and the snake that made up its tail fixed beady red eyes on the both of them with hunger.

    "Another one," Uncle Lance mumbled.

    An instant later, he had crossed the distance, and red blood splattered over the grass. The chimera, however, was no fool, and although the long, scaly serpent that made up one third of the thing flopped to the ground, writhing in its death throes, the larger creature had avoided death with a nimbleness and a cunning that belied uncommon intelligence.

    Like it was trained or something. Fancy that. Those United Empire guys had a monster tamer on their side. Who would''ve thought?

    The chimera charged in for a counterattack, but Uncle Lance dodged out of the way and drew a thin line across its flank for its trouble. Again, however, it managed to avoid getting killed in a single blow, and the injury on its side that bled freely seemed only to make it angrier ¡ª and worse, more cautious.

    "I hate that kind of thing," Connla mumbled to no one.

    Uncle Lance dove in again, and the chimera dodged again, snarling a furious growl. It swiped at Uncle Lance as he passed, but he threw himself into a roll to avoid the worst of it and probably only wound up with a few scratches on his backplate. The chimera landed lightly on its feet in spite of its size and bent those huge legs it had as it prepared to go on the offense.

    It was taken by surprise by the wooden spear that neatly pierced the vulnerable flesh just beneath its jawbone and stabbed straight up into the lion''s brain.

    "Smart monsters are just a pain."

    The ground shook as the great beast fell and collapsed onto its side. The goat''s head bleated impotently, thrashing back and forth, until Uncle Lance walked over and slit its throat to put it out of its misery. Connla joined him so that he could retrieve his spear, yanking it free in a spurt of blood and then cleaning it off in the thing''s thick mane, because Mom really would tan his hide if he lost another one that easily.

    There was nothing to be done about the splash of red that coated the tip, though. It would dry and turn a rusty maroon, no matter what, because after all, this spear was just a piece of ordinary wood that had been hastily carved into a weapon.

    "There may have been something to your suspicions after all," Uncle Lance admitted. "I''m sure you noticed ¡ª that chimera might not have been a match for you or me, but against a normal human soldier, it would surely have been an almost insurmountable foe."

    "Maybe if they were blind, deaf, and dumb," Connla replied flippantly.

    The furrowing of Uncle Lance''s brow said that he wanted to respond to that, but he decided not to, and that was fine by Connla, too. Fighting of the more verbal kind was only fun in the ways that it could lead to fighting of the more physical kind.

    "In either case, I can''t imagine that was the only one," said Uncle Lance. "We should continue. The wall shouldn''t be too far away, and we''re likely to encounter more of this kind of magical beast as we approach it."

    "Fine by me."

    They took off again, leaving the corpse of the chimera behind. Something that was a mere one-hundred years old didn''t have anywhere near enough weight behind it to make it worth harvesting any of its parts, and there wasn''t time to waste on something like that right then anyway.

    True enough, the chimera may have been the first, but it wasn''t the last. They must have run for another hour, the monotony broken only by encounters with more magical beasts. Bicorns and chimeras, monster crabs and demon boars, ghosts and restless skeletons, the things that they wound up fighting were as varied and different as it was possible for magical beasts to be, almost as though someone had gathered them all up from all across the continent and bundled them together in one place before letting them loose.

    None of them were much more than annoyances, although they seemed to be getting progressively sturdier and cleverer the further along Uncle Lance and Connla went. That first chimera was already an outlier, more cunning than it had any right to be, but as lone monsters became rarer and groups of them became the norm, their crude tactical ability became more refined and more sophisticated.

    It would actually have been kind of incredible if it also wasn''t so annoying.

    At last, however, their group of two came to their goal, the great, towering wall that was supposed to stretch from one end of the continent to the other, barring their way forward. Only¡­

    "Huh? Where did it go?"

    There was no such wall there anymore.

    "It''s vanished," Uncle Lance said unnecessarily.

    Connla huffed. "I can see that, Uncle Lance. I''m not blind."

    "It was here," Uncle Lance went on. He gestured to the strip of bare earth, flattened and starved beneath the heavy stones that had sat upon it for who knew how many weeks. "Look. A long stretch of barren land, wide enough for a full complement of mounted cavalry to march. The forest hasn''t had time to even begin reclaiming it ¡ª this only happened recently. Days, at best."

    Duh. Connla rolled his eyes. Talk about saying the obvious stuff. Any idiot with half a brain could have realized all of that.

    "So where did it go, then?"

    "Something which can appear and disappear so quickly must be a Noble Phantasm," Uncle Lance concluded. "To bar our way into the United Empire, it must also have belonged to one of the Servants under its banner. That it''s disappeared now would only mean that the Servant to whom it belonged was vanquished."

    He straightened, his eyes growing almost imperceptibly wider. "And that must mean¡­the warriors of Chaldea have made their way into the heart of the United Empire itself."

    And that could only mean that Mom was having a blast. Man, she got to do all of the fun stuff, didn''t she?

    "Your decision to come out here was the correct one," said Uncle Lance. "We should go. The final battle of this era''s correction is no doubt being fought, and we may be of some assistance to those who came to preserve the future."

    "Go and kick some butt down there against all those pretenders? Sounds like loads of fun," Connla said wistfully. "There''s just one thing we gotta take care of, first."

    Uncle Lance''s brow drew down, and he eyed the trees scornfully. "Yes, I suppose there is."

    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

    Connla smirked.

    "Hey!" he called out into the forest. "You hear that, you big loser? Why don''t you stop hiding and come out and face us like a real warrior, yeah? Stop skulking about like a coward!"

    A moment of silence answered him, and then the trees rustled and the ground shook as laughter echoed out across the clearing. Branches cracked and snapped, and from further on ahead, slightly off the path they would have taken towards the capital city, a massive, hulking form stepped out, smushing everything underfoot as he walked.

    "I should have known I wouldn''t be able to keep myself hidden from other Servants," the figure said. "Even in this sorry state, you upstarts should at least be able to feel my presence."

    Connla whistled, eyebrows rising as he looked up and up and up at the humanoid thing. Had to be something like six meters tall, an enormous creature with pale, naked skin, covered only by a crude loincloth and a few pieces of basic leather armor. The right arm was noticeably bigger than the left, bulging with muscle, and atop the comparatively tiny head was a mop of blood red hair.

    "Big fella, aren''t you?"

    "Not by choice," the giant snarled suddenly. "That stench clinging to you¡­ That means it was your whore of a mother who put me in the position of having to squeeze my fractured Spirit Origin into this body, wasn''t it?"

    Connla grinned, a thing of teeth and danger. "Hey, hey! No need to be a sore loser just because Mom kicked your ass so hard you got even uglier! I bet this was an improvement!"

    The giant took one earth-shaking step forward. "You brat! Just for that, I''m going to rip your head from your body so I can show it to your mom!"

    "Idiot," Connla laughed. "We''re Servants! If you rip my head from my body, I''ll just disappear entirely!"

    Really, you''d think this guy was smart enough to make threats he could actually carry out, but apparently, switching into a giant''s body also made him stupider as well as uglier.

    The giant growled, glaring down at him from far above, and the rumble of it seemed to shake even the trees.

    "Tiberius," Uncle Lance said solemnly.

    The giant''s tiny head swiveled to look at Uncle Lance, and the beady eyes narrowed as they inspected him, glancing up and down his body at the armor, the hair, the face, even the sword, and then they narrowed even more.

    "You. I remember you now. You''re one of that Arthur brat''s Circlejerk Squad, or whatever ridiculous name you were calling yourselves." The giant sneered, lip curling. "Funny. I don''t remember seeing you later on, so maybe you died earlier. Or ran away like a coward."

    "Indeed, I am a Knight of the Round Table," said Uncle Lance, ignoring the jab without the slightest sign of anger. Uncle Lance really was a boring guy to try and pick a fight with. "My name is Lancelot. To my shame, I was not present for my king''s final campaign against you, Tiberius, and so I could not aid my comrades in striking you down."

    He hefted his sword, the blade gleaming in the sunlight. "It is a mistake I intend to rectify right here and now."

    The giant, Tiberius ¡ª know what? That was too much of a mouthful. Connla decided he was just gonna call the guy Tibby from now on, since he was literally half the man he was when he fought Connla''s mom.

    Tibby laughed, a deep, booming laugh that shook the trees and seemed to fill the entire clearing.

    "You? Strike me down?" Tibby asked. "You''re not a knight, you''re a comedian. Even in this twisted mockery of my usual self, there''s no way I''d lose to another snot-nosed brat like you!"

    "Shall we test that?" Uncle Lance asked, serious as the grave.

    "Why not?" Tibby leered, and his oversized fingers tightened on the comically undersized sword in his right hand. It looked more like he was holding a toothpick than a sword. "I could use a warmup to let out some of my pent up aggression before I hunt down the bitch that did this to me."

    "You guys forget about me?" Connla asked them both. "Maybe you want to get a room? Work this out the old-fashioned way? I can stick my fingers in my ears and pretend I''m not listening."

    "Get out of here, brat," Tibby said dismissively. "Count yourself lucky that you''re not interesting enough to go through the effort of killing."

    "Go and assist your mother and the Chaldeans," Uncle Lance ordered. "I will stay here and dispatch this menace at once, then join you."

    "You''re gonna try," said Tibby. "And fail. Miserably."

    Geez, they were even going through the pre-fight banter. It was almost embarrassing to watch.

    "Heh." Connla grinned. "See, there''s three things I''m not allowed to do, no matter what. First, I''m not allowed to give my name. Second, I''m not allowed to turn back once I start something. Third¡­"

    He kicked off the ground, flying through the air like a diving falcon, and Tibby was so surprised that he didn''t react in time to avoid the right cross Connla landed on his cheek. Connla landed nimbly on his feet with a little bounce, but the ground shook as Tibby stumbled backwards, reeling.

    "I''m not allowed," said Connla, "to back down from a challenge. And you already challenged me, didn''t you?"

    "You son of a bitch," Tibby growled. He wiped away a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. "Just for that, I''m going to kill you first."

    Connla''s grin showed his teeth. "That sounds like another challenge."

    "Connla¡­" Uncle Lance murmured.

    "Hey, hey, don''t get even moodier on me, okay?" Connla waved him off. "You go and help Mom and those Chaldea people, yeah? This guy is pretty pathetic. I''ll catch up after I''ve finished what Mom started."

    Uncle Lance considered that for a moment, then turned to leave.

    "Running away?" Tibby jeered. "Again? Are you that frightened of me that you won''t stand your ground and fight?"

    "Hey, that''s rude, you know!" said Connla. "Are you deaf up there with that tiny head of yours, Tibby? I''m the one who''s gonna fight you!"

    "You''re going to let a child fight your battles?" Tibby asked, ignoring Connla entirely. "Huh, Sir Lancelot?"

    "Do not mistake me," said Uncle Lance. "It is prudence, not cowardice, that bids me to take leave of your odious presence. Were it only you and I and nothing else on the line, I would gladly stay and cut you down. However¡­ There is far more at stake than my pride or my king''s honor, and so I shall leave the task of dispatching you to one who is more than qualified so that I might go where my own power is more necessary."

    "Oooh," said Connla, grinning. "That has to sting! He just said you weren''t even worth his time! Hey, Tibby, do you need something to soothe that one? Mom taught me some stuff about herbs for pain relief!"

    "Brat!"

    Tibby lashed out, but it was so haphazard, so poorly executed, and so blatantly telegraphed that Connla would frankly have let himself be killed if he actually got hit by it. He landed on the balls of his feet, bouncing from the anticipation, his mouth stretched wide and showing every one of his teeth.

    "Go on, get going, Uncle Lance!" Connla called. "This won''t take all that long, so I''ll catch up in a few minutes."

    Uncle Lance inclined his head, and before he left, he said, "Your mother will kill me if you die here, Connla."

    And then he was gone, racing off through the foliage and in the direction of what should be the United Empire''s capital. It was still going to take him a while to make it all the way there, and he would probably get caught up at least a few times fighting some of the magical beasts that were undoubtedly waiting on the way, but it was still loads better than both of them wasting time to take out the big guy who just didn''t know when to let himself get killed by a better warrior.

    "Heh." Connla twirled his spear and settled into a ready stance. "Not as bad as she''ll kill me if I lose to a chump like this!"

    "Tch." Tibby sneered. "Guess I''ll just have to put you down before I go and slaughter that weakling, you brat. Any last words?"

    "Just two," said Connla. He channeled magical energy into the fragile spear, just enough to give it the air of something that it wasn''t, and hefted it into a pose he''d seen his mother use before. "G¨¢e Bolg."

    "Shit!"

    The spear flew, aimed straight for Tibby''s tiny head, and Tibby reached out to grab it out of the air. With his free hand, he wrapped his smaller fist around the shaft, leaving the point to jut out past his fingers and towards his face. And then nothing else happened at all.

    Tibby''s brow furrowed. "The hell?"

    Connla put on a spurt of speed and landed an instant later on the back of Tibby''s hand, crouched.

    "Don''t you know? I never learned that one."

    His fist lashed out, lightning fast, but Tibby reacted just fast enough to avoid the worst of it, and the punch that was meant to burst one of Tibby''s eyes landed instead on the tip of his nose. The echoing crunch of it breaking was like the snap of a wooden branch breaking, and Tibby reeled back with a shout, dropping Connla''s spear in his pain.

    Connla sprang off of one of Tibby''s massive pectorals, flipped midair, and retrieved his spear, then landed on the ground in the sort of perfect landing he''d always seen his mom pull off. One leg thrown out, one knee bent to his chest, and one hand pressed flat against the forest floor, with his spear held out behind him.

    Probably looked so cool. Too bad no one was around to see it.

    "You brat!"

    Blood streamed down Tibby''s face from his shattered, crooked nose, but the pain only seemed to make him angrier, and he lashed out with his toothpick sword ¡ª that was actually a perfectly ordinary-sized longsword that only looked small because of who was holding it ¡ª in that massively oversized hand.

    Connla leapt over the blow into a hero''s salmon leap that carried him into the branches of a tree on the edge of the clearing. He felt the wind whipped about by Tibby''s swing as it passed him, and for once, he was frowning a little as he landed in a crouch on the bark.

    Whatever Tibby had lost when he was forced to squeeze whatever was left of his Spirit Origin into that giant''s body, his raw strength obviously wasn''t part of it. Maybe he''d lost some of his Magic Resistance? That was how a number of great heroes had been brought down in the Celtic legends. When they broke a geis, their power was cut down by the curse, and some of them even lost the super incredible abilities that made them so special in the first place.

    Made sense. He was just going to have to be careful not to get hit by that huge fist or anything swung by it, because it would really hurt.

    Connla hefted his spear again, and once more, he threw it with all of his might. Tibby snarled and swatted it aside with his toothpick, and Connla flung himself into the air with another spurt of speed, grabbed his tumbling spear, and hurled it back towards Tibby again. Tibby leaned out of the way, dodging with a kind of grace that was frankly ridiculous for how huge and lopsided he was, and the spear sank tip-first into the ground.

    And then Tibby, going with the flow of his momentum, slammed his other fist straight into Connla''s gut with the force of a runaway train, although with how much bigger Tibby was, it was more like he just hit Connla''s whole torso.

    Connla rocketed through the air, and tree branches whacked him over and over, snapping against his back one after the other after the other as he went flying through the forest, until at last he landed on a trunk that was sturdy enough not to break immediately. Stars bloomed in his head as his skull bounced off of it, and he drew in an involuntary gasp as his body tumbled to the hard ground.

    Ow, ow, ow. That guy really did hit pretty hard, didn''t he? Tibby might be the ugliest thing this side of Hell, but at least he was actually strong.

    Slowly, Connla pulled himself to his feet. His back felt like one, gigantic bruise. His whole front ached and throbbed. Hot blood trickled down one corner of his mouth, and its coppery flavor sloshed over his tongue. He spat it out on the ground, wiped it off of his chin, and grinned. So maybe taking extra damage actually was a bad thing, even when you were fighting a misshapen giant who only had half a Spirit Origin. Who knew?

    "But that''s what makes it fun, isn''t it?"

    A regular human would have been paste on the ground or a smear on Tibby''s knuckles. A weaker Heroic Spirit would probably have taken critical damage to his spirit core ¡ª would be struggling to hold his Saint Graph together.

    Connla wasn''t either of those, because his mom raised a tougher kid than that. Not many toddlers could say they fought Ireland''s greatest hero to a draw, after all.

    "Alright. Ready for round two, Tibby?"

    Connla put on another spurt of speed, and the ground blurred beneath him as his feet stretched across the distance and he stepped back into the clearing. Another spurt carried him over to his spear, miraculously still intact, and he yanked it free in a spray of dirt and grass just in time for Tibby to realize that he wasn''t dead yet.

    "Tch." Tibby sneered. "You''re just like your bitch of a mom, aren''t you, brat? You just don''t know when to lay down and die!"

    Connla grinned mockingly. "Where do you think I learned it from?"

    Tibby swung, and Connla leapt over it again, and then again as Tibby swung back around, lumbering about with his enormous body. That looked like it was something else Tibby must have lost when he took that giant''s body, because he was definitely fast enough to catch a regular human easily enough, but as long as a Servant didn''t let himself be cornered, Tibby was almost too slow to hit anything.

    "Stay still!" Tibby growled.

    Connla laughed, and this time, he timed his jump so that he landed, crouched, on the back of Tibby''s massive fist. "Why would I do that?"

    "So I can kill you!"

    Tibby''s other hand came around to smash him as though he was squashing a bug, but with another spurt, Connla landed on the opposite shoulder, grinning, and hefted back his spear. This close, there was no way he could miss.

    "See ya later, Tibby."

    "Disrespectful brat."

    They stabbed at the same time, except apparently Tibby had been holding back, because that toothpick sword of his was lightning quick as it aimed for Connla''s stomach, and Connla, already mid-thrust, almost didn''t react fast enough to avoid being gutted.

    Blood spurted and flew. Tibby''s sword glanced across Connla''s side as Connla twisted and bent awkwardly to avoid the worst of it, narrowly avoiding a fatal wound, and then, just as he thought it was over and he could get away, Tibby swept his sword down in a cut that absolutely would finish the job.

    Damn, thought Connla. I screwed up.

    Blood spurted and flew again, and Connla crashed into the ground with a thud, thrown by the slash. He rolled to a stop, red splashing across the grass in his wake, and laid there.

    Sorry, Mom. I know you taught me better than that.

    "Guess it doesn''t matter who your mother was," said Tibby disdainfully. "You were still just a brat, weren''t you?"

    He turned to leave and took one lumbering, thunderous step in the direction Uncle Lance had left.

    "Hey, Tibby."

    Tibby stopped and turned back around. He scoffed. "You''re like a cockroach, kid."

    Slowly, Connla pushed himself off of the ground. "Say my name."

    Tibby snorted. "You want me to give you that respect, you brat? I''ll acknowledge your mom as a real warrior, even if she''s a woman, but you''re just a bug I needed to squash."

    "Can''t even give me a last request?" Connla asked. He blinked down at the spear, the last defense he had only barely managed to put up between himself and Tibby''s sword. Just like the last one, the shaft had been sliced in half. Mom was going to be pissed. "Come on. I just wanna know you know it, you know?"

    He could practically hear the nasty grin in Tibby''s voice. "Fine."

    The giant lumbered closer until Tibby''s massive shadow fell over Connla. On the ground, Connla watched the shadow''s arm twist and distort as Tibby lifted his sword up to deliver the final blow.

    "I''ll be sure to send your mom to see you real soon, Connla."

    Unseen, Connla''s lips stretched into a smile. Thanks, Tibby. That''s the last one I needed to get rid of.

    Tibby''s sword came down to take Connla''s head ¡ª but Connla put on a spurt of speed and was already gone, sliding to a stop halfway across the clearing in the divot left behind by Hardian''s Wall. Tibby''s head swung around.

    "What?"

    "Hey, Tibby, you know, Mom has a rule," said Connla. "She says, telling your enemy all about your trump cards is a stupid idea! The only time you explain what''s happening is after you''ve already dealt the final blow!"

    Connla tossed aside the two halves of the spear his mother had carved for him, and as he reached back to the small of his back, a sheathed appeared with a handle jutting out of it. He took hold of the handle, and with the ring of singing steel, he pulled free his sword and flipped it around in his grip.

    "But I think it''s funnier when you tell the other guy just how badly he screwed up," Connla said gleefully. It was way more fun to watch the way their faces twisted up when they realized it was all their own fault. "See, my legend means I have three things I can''t do, remember? But that means that as long as I''m bound by those three things, I can''t fight all out! [Geasa Tr¨ªanach might hide me, but there''s a price I gotta pay to make it work."

    His grin gained teeth. "But when I can''t hide anymore, that means I don''t have to play by those rules anymore, either."

    Tibby''s eyes went wide with fury, and his lips curled in a snarl.

    "You''re saying I just made you stronger?!"

    "Can''t you tell?" Connla mocked. "I was a Saber pretending to be an Assassin this entire time!"

    "You¡­!" Tibby growled. "I''m done playing games!"

    Magical energy swelled, and Tibby thrust his toothpick into the dirt. The blade filled with blood red light that traveled down the center and into the earth. Glowing lines of power radiated out from it and formed into concentric magic circles, like ripples in a pond.

    Blossoms of the Bloody Flower

    "Florent Sanglant!"

    The Earth trembled, and the whole clearing shook and rumbled, and from beneath the soil, bodies sprouted like flowers, pushing up through the grass and the dirt. They clawed their way to the surface like newborn chicks breaking out of their shells, and one after another, magical beasts rose up from the ground, fully formed and grown.

    One after the other they came, one, two, three, five, ten, until a full two dozen creatures of various kinds stood around Tibby like an honor guard. A chimera, another giant ¡ª this one proportioned like an actual human instead of Tibby''s misshapen, malformed body ¡ª a bicorn, a manticore, a couple of monster crabs, a demon boar, and several others that Connla couldn''t name or just didn''t care to.

    "It''s not up to my usual standards," Tibby said with a sneer. "You can thank your whore mother for that. But these children of mine should be more than enough for a snot-nosed brat like you."

    Connla grinned. "Heh."

    Sorry, Mom, it looks like it''s gonna take me a little bit longer to catch up with you. You and those Chaldea people will just have to get by with Uncle Lance for now.

    Magical energy surged into the sword in his hand, and the blade lit up with a bright glow, as though the whole thing was filled with light.

    A spurt carried him into the midst of the hoard, and before any of them knew what was happening, Athd¨¦nta Soluis ripped through the manticore''s throat in a spray of blood and gore. The hoard reeled and turned to rip him apart, two dozen different beasts roaring and clacking and growling, but he was already gone again with another spurt that brought him behind their ranks.

    "More than enough?" Connla laughed as his blood sang, because this was the most fun he''d had since he was summoned. "This is barely a warmup, Tibby!"

    The blood on his blade sizzled as the light inside burned it away. Connla leveled it at the whole group in challenge.

    "Try not to die too fast!"

 Chapter LXVIII: Sagum Vocationis

    Chapter LXVIII: Sagum Vocationis

    There was an instant where I thought it was over, a fraction of a second where I believed that Altera wouldn''t be fast enough, or that she might try and just take the hit on the faith that the Grail would keep her alive.

    But she didn''t. The glowing blue sword swung down, and Altera broke off her attack, retreating. I didn''t know one way or the other whether her instincts were just too strong or if she calculated the risk out that quickly, and her placid, dead expression gave nothing away.

    Arondight bit into the ground where she''d just been standing instead of her neck, and as the blue glow began to fade and the sword returned to its normal white, Lancelot pulled it free of the hard earth with a gentle yank.

    I took a deep breath to calm my racing heart. How close to death ¡ª to failure ¡ª we had just come.

    "Another one," Altera said softly. "Another has come to stand in my way."

    "Please forgive me for my tardiness," said Lancelot. He didn''t take his eyes off of Altera for a second. "However, it is only because Connla sensed something amiss with the wall that I knew to come find you in the first place."

    "I''d say you showed up just in time," Rika said shakily. "A hero always arrives right on time!"

    "He does?" Nero asked.

    Rika nodded enthusiastically. "Yes! Always!"

    "You flatter me," Lancelot demurred.

    "And where did that troublemaking son of mine get off to, then?" A¨ªfe asked as she stepped forward to stand next to him.

    "He stayed behind to handle Tiberius."

    There was a pause. By the looks on the others'' faces, I wasn''t the only one who was confused.

    "Did he, now?" A¨ªfe hummed thoughtfully.

    "Wasn''t¡­that guy already dead?" Rika whispered to her brother. "Super Action Mom used a fatality on him, right?"

    "That''s what I remember," Ritsuka confirmed.

    Questionable wording aside, we''d seen Tiberius take G¨¢e Bolg to the throat and vanish. So how had he survived that?

    "His form was twisted and distorted," said Lancelot. "His Spirit Origin had been grafted onto the body of a giant, and it was ill-suited to act as a vessel. I don''t believe Connla will have any difficulty dispatching him with all due haste. Now¡­"

    He brandished his sword.

    "I realize that we never formally established a contract, but¡­ Your orders, Master."

    It took me an extra second to realize that he was talking to me.

    "Her sword is her Noble Phantasm," I said briskly. "Two forms ¡ª the first is a sweeping charge with a wide range, Anti-Army, Rank A. The second is an Anti-Fortress attack that rivals Excalibur, and she used it to wipe out almost the whole of the United Empire''s capital city. If she points the handle of her sword towards the sky, retreat, and we''ll bunker down behind Mash''s shield."

    It wasn''t worth the risk to try and interrupt her. I was making a few assumptions, but she probably didn''t need to stand still to charge it, and her fighting instincts had let her do things like swat Arash''s arrows out of the air, so it was more likely that she''d just dodge around until she was ready and all we''d accomplish would be to have our best fighters out of position when she let it off.

    Lancelot stilled a moment, and he glanced back at me over his shoulder. "The whole city?"

    "Almost."

    His grip on his sword tightened. "I see."

    I didn''t know him well enough to be sure, but if he needed motivation to fight her before, he probably didn''t anymore.

    "Everything we''ve thrown at her so far has failed. She has the Holy Grail from this era, and as long as she does, she can heal from anything that isn''t instantly fatal. Her head or her heart. Destroy either one of those and her Saint Graph should fracture."

    "Understood."

    I took another breath and looked at Altera, who stared back impassively, like she was waiting. How polite of her to let us confer on strategy like this without interrupting.

    "It''ll be down to you or A¨ªfe," I finished. "Whichever of you finds an opening to use your Noble Phantasm, that''s who''s going to have to take her out."

    "So, you know," Rika quipped. "No pressure or anything!"

    "Then I shall endeavor to present just such an opening for Queen A¨ªfe to take advantage of," Lancelot said solemnly.

    "My, how kind of you." A¨ªfe grinned and shifted her grip on her spear. "Shall we make a competition of it, then?"

    "No need. This time, my role is merely to support you, so the only one who you are competing with is yourself."

    "Are you two forgetting someone?" asked Emiya. He, too, stepped forward, twin swords in hand. "Don''t tell me you''re going to leave me out."

    "Or me!" Bradamante chimed in, thrusting her chest out in what was probably supposed to be a heroic pose. Mostly, all it did was draw my eyes to the, ah, bounce in her step.

    "Heh. Four Servants on one," said A¨ªfe. "Normally, this sort of thing would just be overkill."

    "But this isn''t a normal enemy," Emiya agreed. "Not when she''s got the Holy Grail."

    "Even so, she doesn''t stand a chance!" said Bradamante. "All we need to do is create an opening! With the four of us, there''s no way we''ll lose!"

    Arash, I said without looking in his direction, if you see a shot¡­

    I''ll put everything I''ve got behind it, he promised. Without, you know, using my Noble Phantasm.

    My lips pursed. At the end of the day, it didn''t matter who got the kill. An opening was an opening, and any attack that could destroy her heart or her brain would be enough. I hadn''t forgotten how Arash had killed Saint Martha, after all. A single shot like that should be enough to take out Altera, too, if he could land it.

    Even though Altera was just happily letting us discuss strategy for killing her out in the open, however, that didn''t mean she wasn''t paying attention. No, of course she was. That was why we needed an ace in the hole that we didn''t even talk about.

    "I see," said Altera, sounding just as unaffected as before, "so you still intend to stand in my way." Her sword blazed with light, glowing brightly even in the midday sun. "Then I will destroy you as well."

    "We''ll see about that."

    A brief, tense moment of silence passed, and then they all exploded into motion. The shock of the collision between them was strong enough to throw my hair back, A¨ªfe''s spear reverberating as Altera''s sword crashed against it. Lancelot came in from the side, but Altera disengaged swiftly to parry his sword with hers, and then in the same breath, she turned and deflected Emiya and Bradamante one after the other.

    The wind settled. My hair fell back into place. I hadn''t even had the chance to blink yet.

    They rushed back in, darting back and forth, and my eyes struggled to follow the action as our four Servants ¡ª three contracted, plus Lancelot ¡ª ganged up on Altera. They had moved back into the realm of the superhuman, too fast for a mere human to keep up with, and all I could make out were brief moments where they slowed just enough for me to catch up.

    Here, A¨ªfe''s spear carved a shallow cut into Altera''s cheek, but failed to do anything meaningful. The cut was gone almost as soon as it was made, with only a thin trail of blood to show for it. There, Lancelot snuck in a stab that almost disemboweled her, and she avoided the worst of it by a hair''s breadth. There, Emiya''s swords shattered as Altera channeled power into her sword and parried his attempt to cut off her head. Bradamante covered for him so he had a chance to step back and make a new pair.

    I didn''t dare to blink, but even so, I didn''t see much more than that, than the flash of that rainbow sword as bright red light surged through it or the streak of A¨ªfe''s spear as it sought out vulnerable spots. The crash and crack and metallic clang of their weapons formed a discordant soundtrack that blended together because of the sheer speed behind their movements.

    I''d had the thought earlier, that Altera was like a machine with how efficient, how economical her fighting was, how she could keep herself alive against such powerful legends despite her actual swordplay being so mediocre by comparison. It seemed all the more incredible now, because even with the addition of Lancelot, she was holding her own well enough that her wounds were all minor enough for the Grail she had inside of her to heal them before they could accumulate.

    "This is unreal," Rika murmured from next to me.

    "How is she doing that?" Ritsuka agreed. "She''s fighting four Servants at once¡­and she''s not losing."

    "She''s not winning, either," I told them.

    And that was an accomplishment of its own, especially considering the weight of the heroes she was fighting. Whatever you could say about Emiya and Bradamante, neither of them were pushovers, even if they might not compare to the highest extremes, and A¨ªfe and Lancelot were both warriors without peer. It was already amazing that she could fight A¨ªfe, and that she could fight A¨ªfe and Lancelot and two other Servants who weren''t unfamiliar with direct combat was¡­actually kind of frightening.

    What had she called herself? A warrior of the Huns and its king. Except I didn''t recognize the name Altera from any legend about them at all. Not one that could have a Noble Phantasm that powerful, at least. In fact, the Huns didn''t have many legends worthy of remembering to begin with, with the exception of a single "hero" that was still famous even to the modern era. Famous for the destruction he caused across large swathes of Eastern and Central Europe.

    "It''s incredible," said Mash. "Her Noble Phantasm earlier was so strong, strong enough that it even managed to pierce Lord Chaldeas, and she''s managing to fight like this while avoiding instantly fatal blows¡­ Is this what the Holy Grail can do to a Servant?"

    "She''s like the Energizer Bunny," said Rika.

    "Energizer Bunny?" asked Nero.

    "She just keeps coming back for more."

    Unless¡­

    My face twisted into a complicated expression.

    I wanted to say it was impossible. To deny that it could ever be true. There was no way, surely. It was just too out there. But¡­

    "So she does! Mm-mm!"

    Deliberately, I didn''t look at Nero.

    It wouldn''t be the first time, would it? We had already encountered more than one historical figure who wasn''t what they were supposed to be ¡ª who had been recorded as men even though they were women ¡ª so it wasn''t like it was unprecedented. If even someone like King Arthur could be remembered incorrectly, if Emperor Nero, whose existence was accepted fact instead of debated legend, could be recorded wrongly, then why would it stop with just them?

    It was just¡­ It was starting to seem silly.

    "Damn it," I breathed so quietly no one else could hear me.

    Okay. Put aside the absurdity of yet another Heroic Spirit who was a woman instead of a man. Accept the probability that this was Attila the Hun. What did that mean for the team who was still fighting her?

    Unfortunately, nothing much. Attila didn''t have any obvious or significant weaknesses an enemy could exploit, not like Siegfried did. There was no magical spot that would kill him ¡ª her instantly, no hidden trait that could be exploited. A psychological weakness? Nothing obvious. Even if I tried to think of something in her history, the woman I was watching patiently and placidly combat four other Servants seemed entirely too calm and too centered to fall for something like that.

    My eyes tracked Bradamante for the brief second she became clearly visible. She was off again a heartbeat later.

    That was why Bradamante was supposed to be here. To force an opening where one didn''t properly exist. The only trouble was making that work against an enemy who was very good at making that difficult.

    I glanced briefly down at my Command Spells. Two of them were little more than faded smudges. I only had one left. Rika had used one of her own.

    I didn''t have a plethora of ideas. With both Bradamante and A¨ªfe fighting in front of us, they were steadily draining magical energy from us three Masters, and when you combined the earlier fight against Caligula this morning, plus the fights against Romulus and Flauros, we were all rapidly approaching the limits of what we could safely give. There wasn''t room to be throwing around Momentary Reinforcement casts to buff our Servants.

    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    One might be a safe enough thing, if it gave A¨ªfe and the others space to finish her off. Two would be okay. Even three would be fine. But too much more and we were going to be in serious trouble.

    Outside of using the sudden boost to surprise Altera, the only thing I could think of¡­ Well, it was tenuous and maybe nothing, but Flauros had called her Altera when he summoned her, hadn''t he? Not Attila. Was there a reason for that, or was that just him knowing better than the rest of us and not realizing we didn''t know?

    But¡­ At no point had Saber Alter back in Fuyuki tried to correct us calling her King Arthur.

    Was there anything to lose by trying?

    An image of Rachel, snarling, growling, demanding to be called "Bitch," flashed into my mind.

    No, there really wasn''t, was there?

    "Ritsuka, Rika," I addressed the two of them. They turned to look at me. "Get ready to use a Command Spell to strengthen Bradamante."

    "Senpai has a plan?" Ritsuka asked.

    "I like plans," Rika added. "Plans are good."

    "Plan" is a strong word, I didn''t tell them. "It might not work," I said instead, warning them. "But if it does, it should leave her open for a short moment. Don''t waste it."

    "Right," the two of them agreed.

    Is this dangerous? Arash asked me privately.

    A good question. There was no way to tell, really. Exactly how much feeling was bundled up in a name that it could affect even someone as stoic as Altera? With a different kind of person, I could almost guarantee "a lot" was the answer, but with the quiet, solemn ones, you could never be completely sure whether or not they had a serene calm to the core or if that peaceful surface hid a volcano underneath.

    So it was entirely possible that she''d flip out, and it was also entirely possible that she wouldn''t even flinch.

    It shouldn''t be, I told him the only thing I could. Not to us Masters, at any rate.

    He didn''t nod, but I still got the sense of acceptance from him.

    I''ll intervene if I have to, he promised, which was what I expected of him.

    Now for the tricky part. A lot of bugs had died from the Noble Phantasms she''d thrown around earlier, but we''d been sitting in this same stretch of land for long enough for me to gather a decently sized swarm in the background. It was nothing on some of my biggest, and compared to what I''d pulled together in La Charit¨¦ back in Orl¨¦ans, it was tiny. It was, however, big enough for my purposes, and so I set about my plan.

    First, I pulled the swarm together into clumps, large clumps that wouldn''t have gone unnoticed if Altera and the others weren''t so busy fighting each other that they couldn''t spare the attention.

    "Uh, Senpai," Rika said nervously. "That''s you, right? Please say that''s you."

    "It''s me, Rika," I told her. "Now get ready."

    One, two, three¡­ I managed six in total. It was all I could do in that time with that many bugs. The plains were just too sparse on anything more ambitious, owing to the relatively fewer fliers hanging about.

    Slowly at first, and then gaining speed, the clumps pulled themselves together with a low, almost unnoticeable hum, building up their shapes until they resembled something tall and gangly. Something human.

    I took a deep breath. It was as much to calm my nerves as it was to get the air I needed for this next part.

    Here went nothing.

    "ATTILA THE HUN!" I screamed.

    I felt kind of stupid doing it, but that didn''t stop my bug clones from echoing me with an ominous, rumbling, "ATTILA THE HUN."

    And against all of my expectations, Altera¡­stumbled.

    It wasn''t much. It was barely a second where she faltered and flinched, like the name itself caused her physical pain, and her brow crinkled as her nose wrinkled in the first sign of distress I''d yet seen from her, but it was there.

    That was all we needed.

    "Lancelot, press!" I ordered, trying to keep my excitement contained. "A¨ªfe, Bradamante, pull back!"

    And just for good measure, I aimed at Lancelot and incanted, "Momentary Reinforcement!"

    Lancelot''s next blow hammered Altera, who was just put off enough that she wasn''t as prepared as she should have been to take it. She stumbled again, her guard clumsy and weak, and in the same moment, both A¨ªfe and Bradamante stepped away from the melee.

    I tugged on the threads connecting me to the two of them. Get ready!

    "Momentary Reinforcement!" I incanted again, and again, Lancelot''s blow hammered Altera harder than before, hard enough to push her even further off balance. I gave him one more order. "Lancelot, your Noble Phantasm!"

    Altera''s eyes narrowed, and her sword ignited as she brought it around to stop him ¡ª except Emiya threw himself in the way, taking her strike on his twin blades, and even though they cracked and shattered and her sword bit into him with enough strength to throw him several meters back, it was enough room for Lancelot to finish preparing his Noble Phantasm.

    "Arondight ¡ª"

    The glowing blue blade came down.

    "Overload!"

    Altera, too overextended to dodge, could only throw up her sword in the best block she could manage, but Arondight had too much power behind it, and that ridiculous sword of hers was thrown down and away. Arondight carved through her flesh, and blood spurted from the slash that looked like it had come within mere inches of cutting her in half.

    Altera stumbled back, but the wound was already healing before our eyes. Lancelot had dealt a massive blow, but he hadn''t hit anything critical enough to do irreversible damage to her spirit core.

    There wasn''t going to be a better moment.

    "Now!" I shouted.

    "Bradamante!" Ritsuka shouted, picking up the initiative first. "Use your Noble Phantasm!"

    A flash of red light flickered on his hand and died, and the words had barely left his mouth before a beam of green light leapt from Bradamante''s tiny lance, piercing straight through Altera''s gut. Lancelot retreated and left the way clear just in time for Bradamante herself to throw her bright, shining shield in front of her body and brace herself against the ground.

    "Bouclier ¡ª"

    She flew across the distance, carried along by an unseen force as the energy around her shield formed a shell around her like a comet.

    "d''Atlante!"

    She ran over Altera like a runaway train, her shield bashing the already stunned Altera, and she kept going, charging off until she was far clear of her target. Altera was thrown several meters, kicking up dirt and spurting blood from her wounds in every direction until she came to a halt. She wasn''t still for long, but she struggled to pull herself to her feet, and she appeared dazed, confused.

    Rika picked up the opportunity before I could tell her to.

    "A¨ªfe!" Another Command Spell was spent. "Use your Noble Phantasm!"

    Beneath the hot sun, a stark chill descended, and the sense of impending doom settled over the whole group. Red light like blood radiated off of G¨¢e Bolg as A¨ªfe planted her feet, cocked back her arm, and took aim.

    "G¨¢e Bolg Prototype!"

    The red spear flew. It soared across the distance as a streak of crimson light, moving so fast that I only saw its passing, not its motion, and Altera simply didn''t have enough time to gather her wits and escape.

    G¨¢e Bolg struck its target in another spurt of red blood, and Altera stumbled again as it pierced straight through her left breast and lodged itself in her heart.

    She looked down at herself. Her fingers pressed to the wound, then came away, slick with her blood, and she stared down at them, transfixed. Her lips moved, but we were too far away to make out any words.

    "What''s she saying?" Ritsuka asked.

    "I can''t hear her!" Rika agreed.

    "I see," Arash said, and it took me a second to realize he was reading Altera''s lips. "So, there truly does exist in this world¡­things that my sword can''t destroy."

    Across from us, Altera¡­actually smiled. It wasn''t much. It wasn''t huge. But her mouth curled upwards into something gentle and genuine that seemed all the larger for how silent and stoic she''d been the entire fight. Her head tilted back and her eyes closed, and her body began to fade around the edges, flaking away into glowing golden motes.

    "Even this War God''s sword," Arash went on when she continued speaking, "couldn''t destroy them. Yes¡­ That¡­makes me happy."

    She disappeared. In her place, the red spear and a golden chalice fell and clattered to the ground.

    I let out a breath, a short sigh of relief. My hands shook from all of the adrenaline as it started to drain from my limbs. It was over.

    "She''s gone!" Nero said, stating the obvious. "Mm-mm! Just like the Divine Ancestor! Does that mean it''s over?"

    "It should, yes," I answered. "The fighting, at least."

    "Right." Mash nodded. "We still have to retrieve the Grail. Senpai, please stay beside me."

    She hefted her shield, and then we as a group went over towards where the Grail had fallen. The rest of our team slowly congregated around it, too, and G¨¢e Bolg leapt back into A¨ªfe''s palm when she held out her hand for it.

    When we reached it, Mash bent down and picked up the chalice. Dutifully, she reported, "Holy Grail retrieved, Master."

    "We did it!" Rika cheered.

    "I know I was only here for the end," said Bradamante, "but it was an honor to fight alongside you, everyone!"

    "For me, as well," said Lancelot, bowing his head respectfully.

    "Can I get a little help, here?" asked Emiya, who was still bleeding.

    Rika gasped. "Right! I completely forgot!" She pointed at him. "First Aid!"

    His wounds sealed over, and he sighed. "Thank you, Master. Even if you made me wait."

    Rika stuck her tongue out at him.

    "It''s just a shame," Bradamante said sadly. "I would like to have met Queen Boudica and Sir Spartacus."

    A huff of air puffed out of A¨ªfe''s nostrils, not quite a snort. "I don''t think you can call him a ''sir'' at all."

    "Well, it''s only respectful!" Bradamante argued.

    "I wish you''d had the chance to meet him, too," Emiya added, smirking. "If only to see just how badly that title fit him."

    "I, too, wish our comrades had made it to the end with us," Nero said, quieter and more solemn. Morose was a good word for it. "So that I could have told Queen Boudica¡­"

    An awkward silence descended. Rika and Ritsuka traded worried looks, and Rika looked like she wanted very much to reach out and offer Nero a hug.

    "Ah, screw it!" she said, and then she pulled Nero into her arms.

    Nero squeaked at first, surprised by the suddenness of it, and then when she''d gotten over the shock, she returned the hug ¡ª perhaps a little too strongly, because Rika choked.

    "Ack!'' she wheezed. "Too tight, Best Buddy! Too tight!"

    "Ah!" Nero hastily let go and stepped back. "Forgive me, my friend! It was not my intention to hurt you! Mm!"

    "N-no problem," said Rika breathlessly. "J-just remember that us modern girls are a little more squishy next time, okay?"

    "Of course!"

    Nero turned to me, and her somber expression had been replaced with a broad smile.

    "I''m not hugging you," I told her flatly.

    "Don''t look at me," El-Melloi II added immediately. "I might be your teacher, but that doesn''t make me your best friend."

    A¨ªfe arched an eyebrow, like the idea amused her, and crossed her arms. Emiya did similar, smirking, and Lancelot smiled awkwardly. So did Bradamante.

    "Don''t take this the wrong way," Bradamante said, "but, well, we aren''t¡­ I don''t know you that well, Emperor Nero. It doesn''t seem appropriate."

    "We fought together against the greatest enemy Rome has ever faced and prevailed!" Nero proclaimed. "I should think that is a greater bond than many could lay claim to! Mm-mm!"

    "Ah¡­" Bradamante forced a chuckle. "If you say so¡­"

    Beep-beep!

    Da Vinci''s face appeared as my communicator turned on.

    "Servant responses confirmed eliminated," she said brightly. "That Servant you were fighting finally went down, did she?"

    "She did," I agreed.

    She nodded. "I see you''ve also retrieved the Grail from that Singularity."

    "We have, Miss Da Vinci," said Mash. "Altera dropped it when she was defeated."

    "And the five Command Spells you had to use between the three of you?" Da Vinci asked, still smiling.

    "Ah¡­" Ritsuka stuttered. He and Rika shared a nervous look. "About that¡­"

    "It was a hard fight," I answered simply.

    "So it seems." Da Vinci hummed mysteriously. "I''ll be expecting to read all about it in your after action report. Don''t spare any details, okay?"

    If I was younger and less experienced, the fact that she was still smiling and said that so cheerily might actually have frightened me. It certainly seemed to spook the twins.

    "I won''t."

    "Well," said Da Vinci, looking at something on her monitor. "With Romulus defeated and the Holy Grail secured, it looks like that era is starting to reorient itself properly. To think, Romani actually missed the entire operation, this time! My, I wonder what Director Animusphere is going to have to say to that?"

    I couldn''t stop the snort that ripped out of my nostrils.

    "So long, Doctor Roman," said Rika as she pressed a hand to her chest. "It was nice knowing you."

    "It won''t be that bad!" Mash insisted. "Really! Director Animusphere might be strict, but she''s not cruel!"

    "Well," Ritsuka said awkwardly, "she did kick us out of the orientation meeting for falling asleep partway through¡­"

    "Senpai!"

    "At any rate," Da Vinci steered the conversation back around, "it''s time for all of you to return. I''ve arranged the settings so far to account for Taylor, Mash, Ritsuka, Rika, Bradamante, Emiya, and Arash. There''s still time if anyone else wants to come along."

    "As though I''d miss out on the chance for more fights like that," said A¨ªfe. She looked toward Lancelot. "You?"

    Lancelot hesitated, sliding a glance Mash''s way that none of us missed, and then he shook his head. "It is not my place," he said. "Although I have no doubt that I could be of great assistance in your mission, I have not yet earned the right to pledge my loyalty to you Chaldeans. Furthermore¡­ Were I to come along, I fear I would stunt your growth, Mash Kyrielight."

    Mash blinked, and then her face twisted into a snarl. "Good riddance, you shitty old man!"

    A moment later, a look of horror replaced it, and an obvious apology sat on the tip of her tongue. Lancelot only chuckled and smiled.

    "Yes," he said warmly, "that''s the sort of response I expected from him."

    If that''s what kind of response he was expecting, then I had to wonder what kind of man the Heroic Spirit inside of Mash was, or at least exactly how dysfunctional their relationship must be for that to be the expected response. Even at its worst, my teammates'' relationship with Rachel had never been that bad.

    "A shame," said A¨ªfe. "I was looking forward to sparring with you on occasion." She turned to El-Melloi II now. "And you, Court Mage?"

    El-Melloi II''s mouth contorted back and forth, like he was chewing on the thought. "Well," he began eventually, "I suppose it can''t be helped. If Chaldea is so short-staffed that they''re sending kids this inexperienced into the field, then they could use someone like me to make things easier." His lips quirked into something resembling a bitter smile. "He''d probably have words for me if I turned something like this down, too."

    There was something there that he wasn''t explaining, so I put that down in my mental notebook as a subject to broach later.

    "Alright." El-Melloi II held out a hand. "Let''s get this over with. My body shall rest under thy dominion ¡ª"

    Ritsuka, Rika, and I all reached out to put our hands over his, like a team cheer, and together, we said, "And our fate shall rest in thy sword."

    Beep-beep!

    Da Vinci looked over at something else on her monitor. "Contract established," she reported. "If no one else is coming along, then let''s get the Rayshift scheduled and bring you home."

    "You''re leaving now?" Nero asked.

    We all turned to her. Rika grimaced. "Yeah¡­"

    "It''s time for us to go," I told her. "Before everything gets corrected."

    "I see." She closed her eyes, then nodded. "Mm! Then this is goodbye!" She held out her fist. "Best Buddy, I''ll cherish the memory of our friendship until the end of my days!"

    For the first time, Rika didn''t bump fists with her. Instead, her face fell entirely. "Nero¡­ You won''t¡­"

    "Won''t?" Nero tilted her head.

    "Everything is corrected, Emperor Nero," Mash reminded her softly. "Including your memories."

    "Oh." Nero''s own face fell. "Then¡­I won''t remember any of this."

    "Nothing concrete," Da Vinci told her. "Perhaps you might recall some small sentiment, or a name, but nothing else. For you, it will be as though you woke from some vague nightmare you can''t recall the details of."

    "So I''ll forget you," said Nero. "All of you. And everything you taught me, all of the fun we''ve had, all of the joy and laughter¡­"

    "I''m sorry," Arash said regretfully. "We''re the only ones who will remember all of this."

    "It''s the way it has to be," Da Vinci added. "The proper course of history does not feature time travelers from the future come to correct an inaccuracy. Even if we wanted to leave some memento, the Counter Force would remove it because it doesn''t belong."

    Nero''s eyes fell. "I see."

    Whether she really did or not, I couldn''t tell. I think she at least understood it well enough to know that there wasn''t anything to be done about it.

    Rika gave Nero a sad smile. "Even if you have to forget me, I won''t forget you." She held out her fist. "Okay, Best Buddy?"

    Nero stared at her fist for a moment, and then looked down at the sword she still clutched in one hand.

    "Heroic Spirits exist outside of time and space, is that correct?" she asked.

    Mash blinked. "Yes¡­?"

    "Then, as a famous emperor, my glorious self will one day be carried off to this Throne of Heroes, won''t it?"

    "Best Buddy?" Rika asked uncertainly.

    "It stands to reason," Da Vinci hedged. "At the very least, if someone like Caligula made it there, then you should have, too, yes."

    "And when they return to the Throne of Heroes," Nero went on, "the memories of their adventures and the friends they made return with them, do they not?"

    "They were always there, Boudica said," Ritsuka agreed. "Um, right, Da Vinci?"

    "It''s higher dimensional science that those bound to linear time can''t properly understand," said Da Vinci. "But the simple answer is yes."

    Nero lifted her sword. "I¡­was not sure whence this sword appeared," she told us. "I thought, perhaps, it was a gift from the gods. A blessing to aid me in my fight against the United Empire. Mm. It seemed only fitting!"

    She laid the blade across her hands, looking down at it. "I think now¡­ This must be my own Heroic Spirit, aiding me in my time of need."

    My brow furrowed. I turned to Da Vinci. "Is that¡­possible?"

    "It''s¡­not impossible," Da Vinci hedged. "Heroic Spirits can be summoned into a time period technically before their own legend occurs. Tiberius, for example, or either Constantine. It may be that the summoning didn''t happen properly because Nero is already alive, so whatever fraction of her Saint Graph made it there instead found Nero as a host."

    That¡­ Could summonings fail like that? I was under the impression that they either worked or didn''t work. Some Servants had unique circumstances or manifested in strange and unusual ways ¡ª El-Melloi II was a good example of that ¡ª but they were still Servants, fully formed and complete.

    Then again, this was a Singularity, so expecting things to be weird was maybe what I should always default to when I found something unexpected.

    "So," said Nero, "even if my living self must forget these events ever occurred, my Heroic Spirit on the Throne shall remember them always! I won''t forget you, Chaldean Stargazers! Mash, Ritsuka, Taylor, and especially not you, Rika!"

    She thrust her sword into Rika''s arms, and Rika nearly stumbled backwards at the unexpected weight.

    "Take this as a gift!" Nero proclaimed. "And a promise! Even if we part here and now, one day, we shall meet again! And on that day, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus will greet you all as beloved comrades! As friends!"

    Rika''s bottom lip wobbled as her eyes shone wetly. Even Ritsuka looked moved, struggling to smother a smile.

    Arash chuckled. "Trust Emperor Nero to cut the knot."

    "I don''t know what that means!" Nero replied. "But I shall take that as a compliment!"

    "I''m sorry to interrupt, but we really do have to be hurrying this along," said Da Vinci. "I''ve put it off as long as I can, but the correction is spreading and we can''t afford to wait any longer."

    "Right!" Rika hugged the sword to her chest, and smiling so broadly her cheeks must have hurt, she thrust her fist out again. "See you later, Best Buddy!"

    Nero pressed her knuckles against Rika''s. "It''s a certainty!"

    "Parameters set, calculations complete, calibrations all green. Everything''s ready," said Da Vinci. "Rayshifting in three¡­two¡­"

    "Ah, damn," said a new voice. "Guess I really was too late after all, huh?"

    "One¡­"

    The last thing I saw before the world fell away was Connla''s rueful grin.

 Chapter LXIX: Return to Normalcy (Refrain)

    Chapter LXIX: Return to Normalcy (Refrain)

    Returning to my body in Chaldea was no easier the second time than it was after Orl¨¦ans, and once more, as the lid to my Klein Coffin hissed and rose, I came back to myself with the sense that I had been stuffed back into a too-small container. As though I had been struck half-blind and half-deaf before my brain was shoved into a skull two sizes too small.

    The disorientation made it hard to keep my balance as I stumbled out of my coffin, holding onto the lip of it to keep myself from pitching over sideways. I squeezed my eyes shut against the disorientation and took deep, calming breaths as I waited for it to pass, like it had before.

    No more powers, for now. Not until our next deployment. I really had to see about getting a terrarium built into one of the spare rooms, maybe two, so that I could keep a swarm around in between missions. Maybe actually have time to start weaving lines of silk thread for later use.

    The others stumbled out of their own coffins, better off than me but not by that much.

    "Is that ever going to get easier?" Rika whined. She was actually using Nero''s sword ¡ª which had come back with her ¡ª as a crutch to keep herself upright. "Ugh. I am so glad we didn''t eat anything right before we came back."

    "Me, too," her brother agreed.

    A hand appeared on my back, rubbing soothing circles between my shoulders. Arash, it had to be. It didn''t do much of anything about the powers-related issues, but it did help make it easier to deal with.

    "Thanks," I murmured to him.

    "Anytime," he replied earnestly.

    "It must be a living human thing," Emiya said. "It doesn''t seem like any of us Servants have that much trouble with Rayshifting."

    "Ah, it is a bit strange," Bradamante added. "But it''s not that bad? I think it''s because we as Servants don''t have real physical bodies."

    Yet another thing to be envious of Servants for: the convenience of not having to deal with the disorientation of Rayshifting.

    The most frustrating part was that it looked like this was going to happen every time, both when we left and when we came back, and it didn''t seem like it was going to become any easier with repetition. Knowing to expect it had made it somewhat less confusing going into Septem, but it didn''t make the disorientation itself any less of a nuisance to deal with.

    "Hey, Super Action Mom," said Rika. "Was that Connla I saw right before we left?"

    "I thought I heard his voice," said Mash, "but I didn''t have time to look before we were Rayshifted back to Chaldea."

    "That brat," A¨ªfe huffed. "Of course he showed up at the very last second. He''s just like his father ¡ª nothing but trouble."

    "Is he?" Emiya asked sardonically. "I''m not so sure about that."

    "No picking fights," Rika ordered in a rare show of seriousness. Emiya''s eyebrows rose a little, but he didn''t snap back with something witty; he just accepted it as it was and obeyed.

    "So, this is Chaldea," said El-Melloi II''s voice thoughtfully.

    "I''d welcome you more formally," said Da Vinci, and when I blinked open my eyes to look, she was standing at the door to the Rayshift Chamber, "but I''m afraid it''s technically very late right now, and all of you just came from the most difficult fight yet, so I''m going to keep things as brief as possible."

    "Leonardo da Vinci," El-Melloi II murmured.

    "In the flesh!" Da Vinci said brightly. She approached the group leisurely, at ease. "It''s good to finally meet you face to face, El-Melloi."

    "The Second," he corrected tersely.

    The smile on Da Vinci''s face said that it was deliberate.

    "You as well, Queen A¨ªfe," she went on. "Since Romani is still asleep, I suppose it falls on me to thank the both of you for lending our team a hand in this last Singularity. We at Chaldea appreciate it very much."

    "Your gratitude is accepted," said A¨ªfe.

    "It''s not like we could have said no," El-Melloi II added. "The fate of mankind''s future was in the balance, wasn''t it? Petty excuses don''t really cut it in the face of that."

    "You''d be surprised," slipped out of my mouth before I could think better of it.

    I realized my mistake the instant the words passed my lips, because instantly, I was the center of attention for the entire room. I''d just given away more in three words than I had in three months.

    El-Melloi II''s brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

    I wanted to play it off, call it nothing, but with everyone turned to look at me, there was no passing it off and playing it down. I had to give them something.

    "I''ve been in high stakes situations before," I settled on, choosing my words carefully. "Even with everything they cared about on the line, most of the people who should have stayed and fought cut and ran the instant things started to look too hard."

    "Is this the dragon fight I''ve been hearing so little about?" A¨ªfe asked, interested.

    "No," I said. "Later than that." Technically the end of my career, in fact. "By that point, even that dragon had to set aside his grudges to fight beside me. He had things he wasn''t ready to lose, too."

    It was ironic, actually. A hardened criminal, a former gang kingpin, one who I had blinded and emasculated at two different points, and he was one of the ones who stayed to fight when so many heroes tucked tail. Whatever grudge he had against me had been put aside ¡ª but not forgotten ¡ª in the face of something that was more important. It would have been funny if there had been any room for laughter during Gold Morning.

    "The more I hear about the things you got up to, the more I want to hear," said A¨ªfe.

    I worked my jaw, trying to think of something more articulate than a simple "I can''t talk about it," because that wasn''t going to satisfy anyone. For that matter, how much did it even really matter anymore, when El-Melloi II himself wasn''t shy about the fact that he was himself technically from an alternate timeline?

    Well, he was a Servant, though. Automatically, he didn''t have to play by the same rules as I did. I just wasn''t sure if that meant he was more or less free to talk about that sort of thing than I was.

    "I''m afraid the finer details of Taylor''s past are all classified," said Da Vinci, coming to my rescue. "Only Director Animusphere can decide what can and can''t be shared. Even I haven''t seen the entirety of her record."

    "And where is this Director Animusphere?" asked El-Melloi II. "Is it that Romani you said is currently asleep?"

    "Ah, well, about that¡­" Da Vinci turned to me for help. All I could do was shrug, because I didn''t see much point in keeping that part secret anymore when they were already here and contracted, so Da Vinci sighed and said, "Okay, I suppose there''s nothing for it, then. Director Olga Marie Animusphere was one of the victims of the sabotage that killed so many of our staff. Her body didn''t survive."

    "I thought she was still alive," said A¨ªfe, "the way everyone has been talking about her."

    "In¡­a manner of speaking," Da Vinci hedged. "Through a series of complicated events, her body died, but her soul remained behind long enough for us to capture it with the FATE System we use to summon Heroic Spirits and maintain our team''s contracts with Servants. She''s been there since Singularity F, about a month and a half ago, when this whole situation started."

    "You''ve preserved her soul by registering her as a Servant?" El-Melloi II asked incredulously.

    "If you want to try and simplify it, then yes," said Da Vinci, "but it''s really more complicated than that. We can''t materialize her soul, for example, not like Servants do. That''s the Third True Magic, and that''s beyond even our most advanced capabilities. We need to prepare another body for her to inhabit before we can get her out of there."

    A¨ªfe made a sound of understanding in her throat. "That''s what you needed all of those crabs for. The ''puppet'' you''re building is a new body for this director of yours."

    She''d remembered that, had she? I wasn''t that surprised. For all A¨ªfe could be brisk and brusque, she wasn''t an idiot by any measure of the word.

    "Yes, actually," said Da Vinci, surprised. "I didn''t realize you knew anything about puppetry, Queen A¨ªfe."

    "I don''t." A¨ªfe shook her head. "But the Throne of Heroes is outside time and space. Even someone like me has heard of Leonardo da Vinci."

    "Well, that makes a lot of sense," El-Melloi II agreed. "After all, half of our knowledge about human anatomy came from Da Vinci''s sketches and studies. They catapulted our understanding of our own bodies ahead by centuries."

    Da Vinci chuckled. "Well, I am a genius!"

    "Fou!" the little gremlin announced, hopping out from wherever he''d been hiding.

    "And that accounts for everyone." Da Vinci smiled down at it. "You guys went through a lot of energy at the end there, but it looks like everyone made it out without any major wounds, didn''t they?"

    "Not everyone," Ritsuka said quietly. Boudica, Spartacus, and Jing Ke, I could read in what he didn''t say. None of them had made it out.

    Da Vinci''s smile turned into more of a grimace. "Yes, forgive me, that''s not what I meant. Only that none of you who couldn''t recover from a crippling injury were seriously injured."

    "Give them more credit," A¨ªfe told Ritsuka. "Boudica and Spartacus knew exactly what they were doing. What happened was a result of their own choices, not some failure of yours."

    Ritsuka frowned and looked away, but didn''t argue the point. Maybe I needed to talk to Romani about giving the twins some attention, too. They were getting better at taking initiative and recognizing what sort of moves to make in battle, but if they started second guessing themselves because they were afraid of getting any of our Servants hurt or killed, then they''d just slide backwards, and that was no good.

    And if not Romani, maybe Arash. He seemed pretty good at handling that sort of thing, too, and it wouldn''t hurt to make Romani''s workload a little lighter these days.

    "Well, in any case," said Da Vinci, "I''m sure I don''t need to tell you by now, but you resolved the Septem Singularity and things are going back to normal there. Congratulations, everyone! Good job! I''m sure Romani would say much the same if he was awake right now."

    "Ah, let him sleep," said Rika. "Doc''s been working really hard the last few weeks, he could use a break."

    Da Vinci smirked. "Exactly my sentiment, as well."

    "Great minds think alike!" Rika said smugly.

    Da Vinci laughed a little, but didn''t comment one way or the other.

    "In any case," she went on, "we''ve already handled the Grail you retrieved again. It''s going to take a little while to get it hooked up to our power grid, but it appears to be almost identical to the one from the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, so I don''t foresee any problems with that. Once we have, I might be able to make a few tweaks to ease the burden on you Masters a little."

    I had to wonder exactly what that would mean. Were we going to be taking larger teams into Singularities from now on? Or was it just a matter of being able to get into more intense fights than before without our team draining us dry if things got tough? I was sure Da Vinci would tell us more when the time came, so I put those thoughts aside for the time being and focused on something much more important and much more immediate.

    "And the Director?" I asked.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    "Ah¡­ The issue of the Director''s replacement corpus is another matter entirely. After all, you''ve all been gone for less than a whole day, technically, so I haven''t had much time at all to work on that particular project," she said. "Having said that, however¡­" She held up an index finger. "One week. Give me one week, and things should be ready to restore the Director to¡­well, back to life."

    One week. One week until Marie was back and talking again, back and barking orders again. It felt simultaneously like an eternity and no time at all. It had already been a month and a half. I could wait one more week, couldn''t I?

    "One more week," Ritsuka murmured.

    "Director," whispered Mash.

    "Hell yeah," said Rika. "One more week until Director Hardass is back!"

    "S-Senpai!" Mash sputtered.

    "With all of that said," Da Vinci pivoted, "we do need to discuss what happened at the end, back there." Rika groaned, so Da Vinci held up her hands, placating. "The big debrief can wait until tomorrow! I know it''s late and all of you want nothing more than to climb into bed, so I''m not going to ask you to describe everything that happened in the Septem Singularity, but I do need to get at least some details about the final battle while it''s still fresh in your minds."

    "Fine," Rika grumped.

    "Where do you want us to start?" asked Ritsuka.

    Da Vinci''s lips pursed thoughtfully. "Well, I suppose we understood enough about your fight with Romulus that it doesn''t really need much explanation for now, so¡­ I think you should start with what happened after you defeated Romulus, because that''s where things started to get¡­strange, at least on our sensors."

    Rika snorted. "Not only on your sensors, Da Vinci-chan."

    Da Vinci''s brow rose curiously. "Oh?"

    We all shared a look, us Masters and Mash, thinking about all of the stuff that had happened once Romulus was defeated, and it was Mash who started with, "After we defeated Romulus, his court mage appeared. The one who had the Holy Grail."

    "It was Lev," I picked up, "Lev Lainur, although he introduced himself as Flauros¡­"

    So we told the story of all of the things that happened after Romulus was defeated, from Lev appearing all the way to the end. We told her about how Lev had swallowed the Grail and then transformed into that monstrous tentacle thing, calling himself a Demon God, one of seventy-two. Da Vinci didn''t miss the significance of that. We told her about how tough and durable he was, how much of what we''d thrown at him hadn''t worked at all, and how what did work didn''t work well enough. We told her about how easily he threw magical energy around, and how he manhandled our team with wide-area attacks that he could use almost instantly. How close we had actually come to being wiped out as a result.

    Repeating the series of events back to her, the way the fight ended felt almost anticlimactic. The Thunder Feat at full power was anything but a simple punch, but explaining it, it felt an awful lot like saying that all sorts of other techniques and Noble Phantasms had failed and a simple punch was enough to do Flauros in.

    Like someone had taken Fafnir out with a box cutter.

    "I suppose the martial arts of the ancient Celts were indeed quite formidable," was all Da Vinci said about that. I wasn''t sure there was a better response to begin with.

    From there, we told her about Lev using the power of the Grail he''d absorbed to summon Altera, who he''d called the "great hero of destruction," and Altera''s immediate betrayal. How she''d stolen the Grail for herself and absorbed it, using its power to charge her Noble Phantasm, and how Spartacus had attempted to take her out with his own.

    "He really was a hero," said Ritsuka.

    "Sparty was a great guy," his sister agreed. "I wish he could''ve come back with us."

    "Unfortunately," I said, continuing the report, "his Noble Phantasm was largely ineffective. What damage it did was easily healed, thanks to Altera''s possession of the Grail."

    I tried not to put too much emphasis on how close we all came to getting wiped out by Altera''s Noble Phantasm, the more powerful one that she dropped on us from the sky. Sure, it had been closer than I would have liked, but the point was that we survived and made it out, so that was what really mattered.

    As I went on, it really came into perspective exactly how much had happened one after the other. We''d fought Romulus, then Flauros, and then Altera back to back to back, and each one was a larger challenge than the last. Both Flauros and Altera had almost killed the entire team at least once, after all.

    Da Vinci already knew we needed Bradamante, so I skipped over that part and went right to us catching up to Altera, including A¨ªfe using one of her Noble Phantasms to mow Altera down ¡ª and the fact that it amounted to nothing, after all of it. For the fight itself, I focused mainly on the highlights, the important takeaways, specifically how Altera managed to hold her own against multiple Servants at once.

    "It was likely her possession of the Grail that allowed her to do that," Da Vinci commented. "As a Heroic Spirit, she is undoubtedly a powerful one, but even if she was miraculously good enough to avoid major injuries in a fight stacked that far against her, the injuries she did take would eventually have caught up with her."

    I nodded. "I agree. Her Crest of the Star skill in particular, I think, is what let her fight so well, but A¨ªfe had her outmatched in terms of raw ability."

    "Her form was serviceable and solid, but not transcendental," A¨ªfe chimed in. "In a competition of raw skill, Lancelot or I could have taken her without issue. Connla as well."

    "Speaking of," I said, "he showed up midway through. Apparently, he and Connla sensed something wrong with Hadrian''s Wall and went to investigate¡­"

    There wasn''t much left of the fight to talk about after that, but I went over it anyway. Naturally, when I got to the part about her name, reactions to that were a bit¡­mixed.

    "That was how you defeated her?" Da Vinci asked. "By calling her name?"

    Emiya shook his head, chuckling. "When you put it that way, it does sound a little silly, doesn''t it?"

    "I don''t really understand why it worked, though," Bradamante confessed. "Lady Altera¡­ King Attila? Um, King Altera, maybe¡­"

    "You know," said Rika, "history is really bad at this, isn''t it? How many Servants have we met now that are supposed to be guys but are actually girls?"

    "Three, I think," her brother said.

    Mash shook her head. "Four, Senpai. Jing Ke, too, remember?"

    "Ah, right." Ritsuka nodded. "Altera, King Arthur, Jing Ke, and Nero. That''s four."

    "A-anyway!" said Bradamante. "Um, I don''t get why that threw her off so much!"

    "No one was actually calling her Attila," I said, truncating my reasoning. "I decided it was worth a shot to see if she would react to it when I did."

    "Taking advantage of her trauma in order to introduce a moment of weakness." Emiya shook his head again. "How shrewd."

    "And also apparently effective," Da Vinci said. "It''s a bit unusual as far as weaknesses go ¡ª far less blatant than Siegfried''s ¡ª but a weakness is a weakness, I suppose."

    "After that," I concluded, "we hit her with three different Noble Phantasms to finish her off. From there, you know the rest."

    "You forgot the part where she broke mine," El-Melloi II said grouchily.

    "Broke¡­? Your Noble Phantasm?" Da Vinci asked incredulously.

    El-Melloi II grunted. "Not that it really matters that much in the grand scheme, but¡­ Yes. Altera broke my Noble Phantasm. Or the implementation of it, more specifically."

    Da Vinci sighed. "Good grief. Who knew Lev had that kind of ace up his sleeve?"

    It made me wonder what else he had in the wings ¡ª or his king and seventy-one allies, in this case ¡ª because while Altera was a pretty strong card to play, so to speak, there was almost no way she was the only one. We still had five more Singularities that we needed to resolve, and I had no doubts that there were going to be some obstacles that were just as impressive for us to go through.

    I was certain A¨ªfe was going to be more than happy about that. More challenges for her to face and fight and test herself against. I wasn''t really looking forward to dealing with seventy-one more enemies as hard-hitting and hard to put down as Flauros, though.

    "Ah, speaking of," said Da Vinci, "the sensors that power your Master''s Clairvoyance did get confirmed readings for her before you defeated her, so if her reaction to that name wasn''t enough to tell you so, then I can tell you myself that you were correct, Taylor. That Heroic Spirit, whatever she decided to call herself, was indeed Attila the Hun."

    It would have been weird if she hadn''t been, reacting to that name the way she did.

    "I don''t remember orbital lasers being a thing Attila the Hun could do," Rika muttered crossly. "Why is she the one with an ion cannon?"

    "There is quite a lot about Heroic Spirits that is either forgotten to time or simply unknown to the general populace," Da Vinci told her, like she''d spoken at full volume. "I''m afraid this wasn''t the first time and won''t be the last where you encounter Servants that can do things that seem quite impossible, to the layman."

    As though I needed yet another reminder. The ancient Celtic martial arts could kill armies, a modern hero could replicate Noble Phantasms with his magecraft, Excalibur fired beams of light that could easily erase castles, and now Attila the Hun had an orbital laser that wiped out almost an entire city of two-hundred-thousand people. Oddly enough, my career as a cape had done more to prepare me for that sort of thing than the primers on Heroic Spirits and Servants I''d gotten from Chaldea.

    "Don''t feel too bad, Master," Emiya said, sounding amused. "You''ll get used to it. Eventually."

    "I refuse," Rika said petulantly. "I won''t embrace the crazy, no matter what kind of delicious, scrumptious, utterly out of this world food you bribe me with!"

    He snorted. "Hint received."

    "Are you sure you want to eat this late, Rika?" her brother asked. "You might have some strange dreams tonight."

    She lanced him with a glare and a scowl, and she hugged Nero''s sword to her chest. "I need some comfort food."

    Ritsuka grimaced, and he didn''t seem to have anything else to say to that. I wasn''t sure what he could have said to that without coming across as a complete asshole.

    "Senpai," Mash murmured worriedly.

    I looked away from them awkwardly. That was another thing I didn''t need another reminder for: how much I missed my own best friend, who I was increasingly beginning to accept had probably been erased ¡ª incinerated ¡ª with the rest of human history, and who I had known from the moment I woke up here in Chaldea that I wasn''t likely to ever see again.

    If I thought too hard about how Rika must have been feeling just then, I was only going to miss her more, and letting myself fall down that slope was just going to make me miserable.

    "Was that all you needed, Da Vinci?" I asked her.

    She blinked at me. "Ah. Yes, I suppose so. I have kept you for quite a bit longer than I originally intended to, haven''t I? My apologies. I just wanted to get a few details before you all called it a night and I got carried away."

    "It''s," Ritsuka paused to stifle a yawn behind his hand, "fine, Da Vinci."

    Da Vinci gave him a brief smile. "I still need you three to write up your after action reports," she warned us, "but you have some time, so they can wait until you''ve all had some rest."

    "Still don''t understand why we have to do those," Rika said. "Who are we sending them to? Santa Claus?"

    That particular mental image aside¡­

    "I''ve told you before," I said to her, "when things get back to normal, everyone is going to have questions about what happened, and they''re going to look to us for answers. We need to have them, or there will be even more questions. Reports now mean fewer interrogations later."

    "You mean no interrogations," Rika said with fragile hope. "Right, Senpai?"

    "No."

    Her hopes were dashed. Sorry, Rika. Even if I was the friendly, big sister type of leader, this was one time where I definitely wouldn''t have sugarcoated it.

    Da Vinci sighed. "Unfortunately, Taylor has the right of it here. No matter what, there are going to be too many questions for simple reports to answer, when we''ve gotten everything back to normal. Even so, filing your after actions reports properly will make things far easier on all of us." She smiled. "So don''t forget to write them up, okay?"

    "Ugh," Rika grunted. "If I knew how much writing this internship was going to ask of me, I wouldn''t have let you sign me up for it, Onii-chan."

    "If you say so," said Ritsuka in a tone that clearly said he didn''t believe her. Rika, being a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, did the mature thing and stuck her tongue out at him.

    "You might not want to hear this," El-Melloi II said gravely, "but they''re both right, Rika. The last people you want to come to you with questions is the Association. No matter what, it won''t be avoidable that they''re going to send someone to look into this, but things will go a lot better for you Masters if there''s a paper trail and properly done reports to corroborate what happened."

    Rika scowled and mumbled, "Fine."

    "With all of that out of the way, I think I can let you Masters go get some rest now." Da Vinci held out her hands, smiling. "There''s just one last thing we need to take care of, if you wouldn''t mind, Rika."

    It took a couple of seconds for Rika to realize what she meant, but when she did, she clutched Nero''s sword tighter to her chest. I couldn''t imagine it was in any way comfortable.

    "No," said Rika. "Best Buddy gave this to me. I have to take care of it."

    "A shelf in your room is not the proper place for an artifact like that," Da Vinci said wryly but with patience. "Strictly speaking, if Emperor Nero was right and that sword is what I believe it is, then it''s something of a miracle it even made it back with you. Noble Phantasms aren''t meant to outlast the manifestation of the Servant they belong to."

    I was glad I wasn''t the only one who thought that was unusual. On the other hand¡­

    "Knowing Nero," I said dryly, "she''d say, ''Of course I could make it stay behind with you! After all, I am Emperor! Mm-mm!'' or something like that."

    Ritsuka snorted, and even Mash hid a smile behind her hand. El-Melloi II''s brow knit together into something of a constipated look, and Arash chuckled under his breath.

    "That sounds about right," A¨ªfe agreed.

    Da Vinci sighed. "There''s a limit to how willing I am to accept a completely unscientific explanation like that, you know. Unfortunately, I don''t have a better one at the moment, so just for now, I can gracefully admit defeat and plot my revenge."

    "Oh my," said Emiya sardonically, "how frightening. If you need my protection, Taylor, I can guard you so that Da Vinci never has the chance to strike back."

    "Hey, now," said Arash, joining in on the joke, "isn''t that supposed to be my job? Yours is over there."

    He jerked his head towards Rika, who, for once, wasn''t taking part in the humor. Instead, she was staring down at Nero''s sword, her brow furrowed, like she was thinking very deeply about something.

    Bradamante leaned over to whisper in my ear, "Would Lady Da Vinci really be so petty?"

    "Of course not," I replied.

    "My, such faith you have in me, Taylor," said Da Vinci, who had heard us because she wasn''t that far away. "Are you so sure about that?"

    "Even if you did, that''s still a fight I''d win," I told her. The next bit was a threat straight from Lisa inspired by a prank that Aisha had liked playing fairly often. "I''d just break into your workshop and move everything that wasn''t bolted down three inches to the left."

    Emiya snorted as Arash laughed, and Da Vinci shook her head ruefully. "A note to my future self," she said, smiling. "Remember never to get into a prank war with Taylor. She is cruel and doesn''t fight fair."

    "It''s on my r¨¦sum¨¦," I added, straight-faced. "The Director had it listed as one of my strengths."

    It really had been a long day, hadn''t it? I think it said something that I was having an easier time connecting with the incarnated spirits of long dead great heroes than I was my own mortal teammates, but I wasn''t really sure what.

    "What makes it better," said Da Vinci wryly, "is that I would actually have to go and check to make sure."

    "I''d believe it," said Emiya immediately. I wanted to call him a traitor, but he was Rika''s Servant, not mine.

    "So would I," A¨ªfe agreed.

    "I don''t think that''s fair," Mash chimed in. "Miss Taylor is¡­ Well¡­"

    "Exactly the way Da Vinci described her?" Emiya suggested.

    Mash shook her head. "It''s not that! Or, um, not only that, I think. The Miss Taylor that everyone here has seen is the Miss Taylor who leads us into battle, not the Miss Taylor who worked hard for two years to get ready for when she would have to! Everyone here has only seen the Miss Taylor who has to be strong for us, not the Miss Taylor who refused to let herself fall behind and endanger Chaldea''s mission! That''s why¡­ I think Miss Taylor is a very admirable person!"

    I wasn''t the only one who was stunned by this outburst. Da Vinci, Emiya, A¨ªfe, Ritsuka, El-Melloi II, Bradamante ¡ª the only one who didn''t look at all surprised was Arash.

    "Well said, Mash," he praised her warmly.

    Mash''s cheeks flushed and she looked away. "Th-that''s just what I think!"

    Mash¡­ Is this what you''ve thought about me all this time? She''d never let on at all. Was that just because she was too shy, or because she hadn''t been able to find the right words for it?

    "Fou," the little gremlin said dubiously. Like I cared what it thought about me at all.

    "Da Vinci-chan," Rika said suddenly. "This is very important to me, so¡­" She thrust out her arms and held the sword out to Da Vinci. "Please take good care of it!"

    Da Vinci smiled. "It might very well function as a catalyst for a summoning." She took the sword from Rika gently, and appropriately, seemed to have a much easier time lifting it. "I was going to treat it with care to begin with."

    "Best Buddy¡­" Rika murmured. She bit her bottom lip as her brow wrinkled.

    Ritsuka picked up on what was wrong immediately, since he was her brother. "I''m sure Nero will remember us when we summon her."

    "That''s right!" Bradamante agreed. "Strong bonds aren''t broken that easily! You''ll see, Master! Emperor Nero could never forget you, I''m sure of it!"

    "Onii-chan¡­ Tii-chan¡­" And then Rika plastered on a broad grin so brittle that I was sure it would have shattered if I reached out and poked it. "Of course she will! I''m just being silly and worrying about nothing! When she comes back, it''ll be like no time passed at all!"

    Da Vinci''s smile pulled tight, but whatever it was she wanted to say, she decided to keep it to herself.

    "In any case," she said instead, "it''s very, very late, and all of you have just come back from a very difficult fight. Now that we''ve gotten the most immediate concerns out of the way, why don''t all of you go and get some sleep? I''m sure you''ll feel much better in the morning."

    "That sounds good," Ritsuka said.

    "Uwah, an actual bed, mattress and all," Rika groaned. "I''m gonna sleep like a baby tonight."

    "I''ll save the celebratory feast for tomorrow, then," said Emiya.

    "If it doesn''t turn me into a puddle of goo in my seat, I''m gonna sue you for false advertising."

    Emiya snorted. "Noted, Master."

    "In the meantime," said Da Vinci, hefting the sword she was holding, "I''ll go see about putting this someplace safe and secure, shall I? Next time I see you guys, you had better be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! Buona serata, everyone!"

    She turned and walked away, leaving the Rayshift Chamber and heading towards, I could only guess, her workshop. I thought about following her and demanding more answers about bringing Marie back, but I could admit to myself that I already knew the only thing she could do was offer me more platitudes about how everything was going well and it would all be fine. She knew far more about making realistic puppets than I did, after all.

    This was one of those situations where I had to let it go and trust her to do her work. I could do that. I had done that plenty of times before. I just¡­hated feeling like there wasn''t anything I could do about it.

    For now, the only thing I could do was exactly what Da Vinci had suggested: get some rest. It had been a long day, packed full of four separate fights, three of them back to back, all of them intense, and while I''d had longer, more exhausting days before, this one definitely had a spot high up on the list.

    "Get some sleep, everyone," I told the twins and Mash. "Da Vinci''s right, it''s been a long day. Everything else can wait until tomorrow."

    And if it was exhausting for me, it had to be doubly so for them, because they weren''t used to this sort of thing just yet. None of them had anything they needed to push themselves for right now, so without complaint, they took my suggestion, and us mere mortals headed off to the comfort of our beds.

 Chapter LXX: After Action Reflection

    Chapter LXX: After Action Reflection

    As far as we Masters were concerned, our sojourn into the Septem Singularity''s Roman Empire lasted about a week and a half ¡ª less than half the time we spent in the Orl¨¦ans Singularity walking across France ¡ª and yet that was more than long enough that my quality of sleep our first night back was much improved. Even our single night''s stay at Nero''s palace couldn''t hope to compare to the comfort of a modern mattress in a climate-controlled room.

    Better still, there were no strange dreams to interrupt my rest, no memories of any of my Servants'' past intruding in the middle of the night. If I dreamt at all, then by the time I woke up in the morning ¡ª an hour later than I usually got up ¡ª I had forgotten them completely.

    It had not gotten any less sobering to walk through the empty halls of Chaldea''s facilities or to go through my morning routine and realize that my fellow Master candidates from Team A were still lying in their coffins, frozen on the precipice of death, but I was finally getting used to it. I hadn''t exactly flinched away whenever I went to say something to one of my erstwhile teammates and didn''t find them there, if only because I had never gotten particularly close to any of them over the last two years, but some part of me always felt their absence.

    More to the point, I''d always felt the weight that absence left behind. The fact that it meant I was now responsible for a job that was originally meant to be carried out by a whole team, left to shoulder the burden of leading two novices through a gauntlet that had essentially claimed the crack squad of experts before we could even get started.

    In some ways, it was like leading the Chicago Wards again. In others, it was nothing like that at all.

    The Wards, at least, had some level of experience. Even if they weren''t quite on my level when I joined them, that wasn''t the worst indictment, considering exactly how action-packed my career had been at that point. Barely active a month and I''d already seen more S-Class threats than most capes faced in a lifetime.

    Ritsuka and Rika didn''t even have the Wards'' experience. To be fair, neither did the original Team A, but the original Team A had training and skill sets to offset their lack of experience in actual combat, and the twins ¡ª as unkind as it might have been to say it ¡ª had essentially been pulled off the street at random.

    Despite that, they actually were doing exceptionally well. There were undoubtedly moments where someone with a broader skill set, like Wodime or Ophelia, would have done better, but for all they were missing, Ritsuka and Rika were filling in the gaps with more speed than I expected. They had started the race a mile behind and were quickly catching up.

    Was that a reflection of how well I was leading them, or their own ability to adapt?

    Those thoughts stayed with me throughout my morning routine, and I was still rolling them over in my head almost an hour later as I sat down to await breakfast in the cafeteria. Emiya had prepared another odd but oddly delicious-looking meal that I had to assume was Japanese, but what its proper name happened to be was beyond me.

    "Penny for your thoughts?" Arash asked.

    I blinked and was a little irritated that I hadn''t sensed him coming. Sooner rather than later, I was going to have to see about getting that terrarium built so that I didn''t feel half-blind all the time.

    "They''re coming along pretty well, don''t you think?"

    Arash blinked back at me. "The twins?"

    I nodded and ate my toast appetizer, chewing on my thoughts as much as my food. Predictably, they weren''t up yet, but I didn''t begrudge them a little sleeping in after the day we''d had yesterday. Those fights were all rough.

    "It''s only been a couple of months, if you count the time inside the Singularities," I said, "and look at how far they''ve come."

    "I don''t think you''re in danger of losing your job, if that''s what you''re asking," said Arash.

    A huff of air escaped my nostrils. It might someday have grown up into a proper snort.

    "They''ve still got a long way to go, don''t get me wrong," I told him. "But they''re way better off than they were during Fuyuki."

    "I''ll have to take your word for that," he said. "I''ve only known them in Orl¨¦ans and Septem, and they''re still relying on you to carry them forward. But I can see what you mean. Even if they''re not there yet, they are learning how to be Masters." He smiled at me. "They have a good teacher."

    I ducked my head. It wasn''t that I hadn''t ever taught before ¡ª hell, I''d taught the twins directly between Orl¨¦ans and Fuyuki, and I would be again once we''d had a few days to cool off ¡ª but I wasn''t sure how much credit I could take for some of the subtler aspects of being a proper Master. It was harder to teach courage and initiative than tactics and strategy, after all.

    "They''ll have another one now, too," I added dryly. "We just brought back A¨ªfe, after all."

    Arash shook his head. "Somehow, I don''t see either of them being quite so excited about that part."

    Neither did I. On the other hand, well¡­ A¨ªfe''s methods might have been extreme by our modern sensibilities, but extreme circumstances required extreme methods. We didn''t have room to spend the amount of time and care that had originally gone into Team A''s training getting the twins up to speed the rest of the way.

    My train of thought was derailed when a tall figure in a white coat stumbled into the cafeteria, beelining for the coffee machine, and I blinked at the long, red-haired ponytail as it swished behind him like a pendulum. Back and forth it went, swaying in opposition to his plodding footsteps, like it was a counterbalance keeping him just upright enough that he didn''t fall over.

    "Romani?"

    He didn''t hear me, or at least didn''t seem to, and like a zombie, he found a cup and the coffee grinds and set about making some for himself.

    "Ugh," he lamented to the open air, "I can''t believe I actually slept through the entire mission! And I''m still tired, too! Director Animusphere would have kicked my ass if she heard about this!"

    My brow furrowed as I watched him, and he grumbled some more, whining about how we "might have needed him," and he "would have been fine, if Da Vinci didn''t steal his stimulants," while the coffee machine gurgled and spat out the toxic black sludge that this organization called "coffee."

    "Is¡­he all right?" Arash asked dubiously.

    Yeah, I thought, he''s just coming down off of a big crash.

    Good grief, Romani. You were a doctor. Weren''t you supposed to know better than that?

    Ignorant of my thoughts, Romani picked up his cup of poison and dumped three spoonfuls of sugar into it, then a splash of cream, and by that point, his cup was so full that it was in danger of spilling over. As though he noticed none of that, Romani did a sort of half-twirl around, noisily slurped from his hot cup of coffee, and nearly planted his face into the floor.

    Luckily, Arash was faster and caught him, and he even did Romani the courtesy of steadying his cup of coffee so that it didn''t splatter all over the place.

    What a swell guy, my inner Lisa chortled.

    "Maybe you should take a seat, Director," Arash said pleasantly. He gently escorted Romani into the chair across from me, and Romani only put up a token resistance. "You''re no good to anyone if you trip and split your skull open. Work can wait a few minutes more."

    Or maybe Arash was being a little more insistent than it looked.

    "Acting Director," Romani murmured sulkily. "I''m only Acting Director. I''m just holding the seat until Director Animusphere is back and healthy."

    "Acting Director, then," Arash agreed smoothly.

    Romani sighed and looked down at his cup of coffee, grimaced, and then took another long swig, throat contracting as he gulped it down. It didn''t seem to help him much at all.

    "It figures that the instant I actually get some real sleep, it knocks me on my behind," he grumbled. His coffee was already half gone. "Da Vinci probably knew exactly what was going to happen, too. That''s why she swiped all of my stimulants while I was asleep."

    "You''ll probably be better off," I told him mildly. "Chugging them down instead of climbing into bed day after day can''t be healthy."

    "No," he admitted, "but the side effects are manageable, if you take the right doses. And I''m a doctor, so I know all about the right doses."

    "Manageable doesn''t mean nonexistent," I told him. "And you''re an important part of this team, Romani. You need to take care of yourself, too."

    The irony of the fact that it was me saying so didn''t escape me.

    He sighed. "Yeah, that sounds like what Da Vinci said, too. I just can''t win when the two of you gang up on me."

    What Lisa would have said just then was wholly and completely justified. "Good. You''re learning."

    Romani pierced me with a flat stare. "You''ve been spending too much time with Da Vinci. She''s rubbing off on you."

    More like my reflective mood made me think about the past a little more than usual, and that came through like this. I didn''t say so aloud. For now, Lisa and all of the friends I left behind were things I didn''t want to share, least of all in the middle of the cafeteria.

    Instead, I shrugged. "There are worse influences."

    "I guess there are, aren''t there?"

    He shook his head, then looked me up and down with a critical eye.

    "Well," he said, changing the subject, "there weren''t any injury reports waiting for me when I woke up, and you look unharmed to me, so I''m going to assume everyone came through the Singularity okay?"

    I thought immediately of Boudica and Spartacus, the two we''d lost at the very end.

    "Not everyone," I told Romani, "but us Masters and Mash were fine, just tired. The last few fights were all back to back to back."

    He blinked. "Back to back to back?" He shook his head. "Wait, I''m missing something here, aren''t I? I thought you just had to worry about Romulus first and foremost."

    "If only it had been that easy," Arash said ruefully.

    "That," said Romani, "sounds like I''m not going to be happy with what I hear. What did I miss while I was conked out in my bed?"

    Arash and I shared a look. "A lot," he eventually decided on. "Sorry to say, Acting Director, but you missed quite a bit."

    "Like the fact that Emperor Nero was a woman," I added.

    Romani choked, and I was glad I hadn''t waited until he was taking another sip of his coffee, because if I had, I would have been wearing it just then.

    "W-wait, what?" he sputtered. "Emperor Nero, a-a woman? How does that work?"

    "Da Vinci had a theory," I said. "Something about, if Nero presented as masculine, then the Romans would record her as male."

    "I¡­" Romani pinched the bridge of his nose as though to ward off an incoming migraine. "Okay, I can accept that, because I guess I have to, but I get the feeling that''s not the worst part, even if I''d really like it to be. What else happened while I was asleep?"

    I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Strictly speaking, this was all stuff I was going to have to put in my after action report anyway, but if I didn''t give him at least the cliff notes version now, then he was going to putter about the place, worrying about it until that report was officially filed for him to read.

    So I took pity on him.

    "Things were going mostly as expected for a while," I began, "but it was once we investigated Mount Etna that the situation veered wildly¡­"

    So I started off the explanation there: our trip to Etna to get that higher resolution scan and set up Boudica to heal her arm.

    "Wait, wait," Romani said before I could really pick up steam, "Queen Boudica was missing an arm? How?"

    "Right," I said, "you missed that, too."

    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

    Since he needed the context, I explained that first real fight against Julius Caesar and Tiberius and how Boudica and Spartacus had gone off to fight what turned out to be Marcus Cassius Scaeva.

    "H-hang on just a second," he interrupted me again. "Tiberius? Lucius Tiberius Caesar? As in, the Roman Emperor who kept King Arthur from expanding into the continent? That Tiberius?"

    "Romani," I told him flatly, "if you keep flipping out over every minor detail, then it''s going to take all day to get you caught up."

    "The Heroic Spirit who fought King Arthur to a standstill is not a minor detail, Taylor!" he protested. "A-and one of Rome''s most famous generals, the man for whom hundreds of later rulers named their titles! He''s not a minor detail either!"

    "We beat both of them without suffering any casualties," no matter how close it got, I didn''t say. "They''re minor enough that I''m not going to give you a play by play of how that fight went down. Now, if I can continue?"

    He swallowed whatever he''d been about to say and sourly conceded. "Fine. I guess the more important thing is the fact you all made it through these fights safely, so even if it goes against my instincts, I''ll let it pass."

    "Thank you."

    My explanation continued. I skimmed over a lot of the drama of meeting Nero and the negotiations that went into joining forces with her so that I could move on and pick back up at Etna, where I''d originally started. I mentioned, briefly, our staying the night in Rome, but paid more attention to what Da Vinci''s scan had told us.

    Romani, predictably, flipped out about Stheno.

    "A goddess?" he choked. "An honest-to-goodness goddess?"

    "We thought it might be Hephaestus, at first," I told him. "The idea of commissioning a weapon from the God of Smithing was¡­tempting."

    "You actually went to investigate a goddess on her own territory?" Romani''s voice rose an octave.

    I''d already known he wasn''t going to be happy about that, and maybe the fact that I''d seen it coming made me more annoyed with the fact that he was getting so upset over it.

    "Would it have been better to find out she was an enemy when she attacked us from behind while we were in the middle of fighting Romulus?"

    "Neither!" said Romani, rather unreasonably, in my opinion. "Neither is better! What on Earth were you thinking, confronting an actual goddess on her home ground? That''s a thousand times worse than fighting a mage in his workshop!"

    "I was thinking we didn''t have much choice," I rebuked him.

    "That''s not¡­!" Romani visibly restrained himself, reining in whatever he''d been about to say. "Obviously, you''re here, so you came through that fine, but there are so many ways that could have gone very wrong!"

    "We took as many precautions as we could," Arash said diplomatically. "We didn''t go rushing in without a plan, Acting Director."

    "That''s the worst part!" Romani bit back. "Ritsuka or Rika, I could understand. They don''t have the training or the experience. But I know you know better, Taylor!"

    No, the worst part was that he had something of a point, because despite our best efforts and our preparations, Stheno had come closer to beating us with her voice than most of our enemies had with swords or fists or Noble Phantasms. In hindsight, we would have been better off forgetting about her and going back to Rome.

    That was the thing about hindsight, though. It was useless.

    "There weren''t any better options," I repeated, if not in so many words. "We needed to know, so we investigated."

    Romani sighed and glared miserably down at his half-finished cup of coffee.

    "Fine," he eventually grunted. "Fine! Shouting at you isn''t going to solve anything and it''s already over and done with, so¡­ Keep going, I guess. What else happened while I was in bed?"

    For the sake of keeping the peace, I skipped over Stheno Mastering us and what had happened there and went straight to staying the night and our plans to go around Hadrian''s Wall. I almost decided not to mention Caligula either, but there was no doubt that Romani was going to be checking my official report later, and with the twins and Mash both having their own reports to write up, I couldn''t just conveniently omit him.

    Well, I could have, sure, but it involved bullying all three of them into falsifying the records, and I¡­didn''t really want to do that. For a number of reasons.

    Romani''s blood pressure would just have to take another hit.

    "As hard as Heracles?" Romani echoed, disbelieving. If his eyebrows stayed like that for too long, I was sure he would start getting wrinkles. "Caligula was that strong?"

    "According to Emiya, yeah," I said.

    "But¡­" Romani''s face twisted with confusion. "How would he¡­ Servants aren''t supposed to¡­"

    Emiya had never explained how he knew. All things considered, however? It wasn''t that big a stretch to imagine that it was something he experienced when he was alive. After all, El-Melloi II himself had said that he participated in a Grail War when he was younger, and if I was a Master in a proper Grail War, Heracles and King Arthur would have been at the top of my list for who to have on my side.

    "I can''t speak for the comparison," Arash said, "but Caligula was definitely uncommonly strong. It took a concerted effort from the whole team to finally bring him down."

    "I couldn''t confirm it, but he might have been using his Imperial Privilege skill to mimic Battle Continuation," I added.

    Because it was the only thing that made sense to me. The only one who had been harder to put down was Altera, and Caligula hadn''t had the advantage of a Holy Grail to just throw magical energy at his wounds until they healed.

    "Please tell me things calmed down after that," Romani pleaded.

    Arash and I shared another look.

    Romani closed his eyes, aggrieved. "Of course they didn''t."

    "Like I said earlier," I told him, "the last three fights were essentially back to back to back. After we beat Caligula, we made our way towards the United Empire''s capital, and we met Jing Ke along the way. She had intelligence reports from Brutus¡­"

    I launched back into the explanation, skimming our plans and our planning stages and going to the battles themselves. Looking back, Romulus really was the easiest of the last three, and that was saying something, considering who he was and what place he occupied in the hierarchy of Roman Heroic Spirits. Flauros and Altera were much more terrifying challenges, because even compared to Romulus, they were just so much farther above him.

    When I got to the part about Lev showing up, Romani''s expression changed to somber and solemn.

    "Lev was there?"

    "Yes," I replied. "It seems, just like with Fuyuki, he was responsible for the presence of the Grail that spawned the Singularity. He took credit for Orl¨¦ans, too."

    Romani grimaced. "So he''s somehow moving from time period to time period, and he''s doing it without Rayshifting technology. Or could it be that he''s copied our systems himself somehow?"

    "He mentioned something about being ejected from a temple," I said, "although he didn''t really go into any detail about it. Just that he''d been kicked out for letting us screw things up in France."

    Romani''s brow furrowed. "A temple?" he muttered. "Could it be¡­ But no, that doesn''t make any sense, does it?" He focused back on me. "Did he say anything else?"

    "Nothing that was particularly helpful," I answered. "And then he transformed."

    Romani blinked. "What?"

    So I had to explain Flauros, the magical giant tentacle monster, and how we had to fight him almost immediately after Romulus. I also had to explain just how utterly bullshit he was as an enemy, and how much effort it took to bring him down, because it really was just more nonsense piled on top of what we''d already had to deal with in the same damn day.

    When I was done, Romani couldn''t do anything but sigh. Like I had exhausted all of his outrage and panic and he''d gone straight to weary.

    "That makes three," he said almost desperately, "so that means things were over after that, right?"

    I grimaced.

    "Taylor," he said with an air of resigned exasperation, "that was the end of it, right? He had the Grail. All you had to do after you defeated him was retrieve it."

    If only things really had been that simple.

    "We didn''t have the chance," I admitted at length. "He used it almost immediately after we beat him to summon another Servant. Attila the Hun."

    Romani''s head dropped into his hands. The slump of his shoulders told me more than words that he really hadn''t gotten enough rest to be back to his best yet.

    "You''re all okay," he said into his palms. "Everyone made it out. No one was seriously injured. Even if it wasn''t easy, you still made it through unscathed."

    "We did," Arash reassured him. "We''re all back, Doctor Roman. Ritsuka, Rika, Taylor, and Mash are all fine."

    Romani leaned back in his chair, letting his head loll back over the back of his chair, and to the ceiling, he said, "That''s the important part, isn''t it? Thanks, Arash. I think I really needed that."

    Arash smiled. "No problem, Acting Director."

    "Do you want me to keep going?" I asked, more for the sake of it than because I actually expected him to want me to.

    Romani''s smile as he straightened back up was tighter and less honest than Arash''s. It didn''t reach his eyes. "I really probably should have you tell me the rest, but¡­" He shook his head. "Sorry, I just don''t have it in me right now. I think this was all a little too much for me to deal with so soon after waking up."

    He sighed and levered himself out of his chair, taking another swig of his coffee. By the expression on his face, it had long gone cold. I''d had far too many mornings like that myself.

    "If you''re sure."

    "I''ll read the rest of it in the reports later," he told me. "I''m sure there''s some things you glossed over anyway, so I''m going to have to if I want to get the clearest picture I can."

    My cheek twitched, but I didn''t give him any other sign of exactly how close he''d hit to home with that one. Romani could be really perceptive, sometimes.

    "For now," he went on, "I''m still Acting Director, which means a lot of paperwork is sitting on my desk that needs sorted through. I''m going to go handle some of that now so that Director Animusphere doesn''t yell at me later for neglecting my duties while she''s gone."

    He gulped down the rest of his coffee like it was alcohol, grimacing at how cold it had gotten, and shook his head as though to dispel the remaining cobwebs.

    "Enjoy your breakfast," he bade me, and then he turned to leave.

    "Don''t forget to have some yourself at some point," I called after him.

    "Right, right!" He waved at me from over his shoulder. "You and Da Vinci both, I swear! I''m not that careless, you know!"

    You really are, I didn''t say as I watched him go. I''d have to convince Emiya to take him something later on.

    As Romani left through one door, heading towards his office, the door on the other side of the rounded room opened, and in walked Mash and the twins. Their heads swiveled towards the other door, and then, seeing me and Arash, they made a beeline over towards us.

    "Was that Doctor Roman?" asked Ritsuka.

    "It was."

    "Good morning, Mash, Ritsuka, Rika," said Arash.

    Ritsuka blinked and backtracked. "Ah, good morning, Arash, Senpai."

    "Morning," Rika got out right before she yawned.

    "Good morning, Miss Taylor, Arash," said Mash politely.

    "Sleep well?" I asked wryly.

    "It was a bed," Rika said, "with an actual mattress and a soft pillow."

    "And, um, air conditioning?" Ritsuka hazarded.

    "Central heating, actually," I told him. "Antarctica, remember?"

    "Right."

    "Whatever," Rika groused. "It''s better than sleeping out in the wilderness in the middle of the summer."

    It wasn''t even a contest, I agreed silently. Then again, maybe I was spoiled a bit, being an American girl. I heard some countries didn''t even have a market for air conditioning units, whereas almost every house in the US that wasn''t built a hundred years ago had one.

    "You would have been miserable in my time period," Arash said, amused.

    "Modern technology is the beeeeeeest," said Rika.

    "Did Doctor Roman want something, Miss Taylor?" asked Mash, curious.

    "To catch up on what he missed," I answered. "I gave him an abbreviated rundown of what happened after he went to take a nap."

    Mash looked towards the door Romani had left through. She mumbled, "He didn''t look happy."

    "He wasn''t."

    He was a dedicated physician with a soft heart being forced to send the girl he had essentially raised into a combat zone against the kinds of forces that had a reputation for routing entire armies. Even if I thought he needed to do a better job filling the shoes he was currently in, I could at least acknowledge the difficulty of his position.

    We just couldn''t afford to cut him any slack about it.

    "Did we do something wrong?" asked Mash.

    I grimaced. How to answer that question? Strictly speaking, the answer was no. We''d done our best in the Septem Singularity with the information we''d had at the time, and while I could acknowledge that there were things we could have done better in hindsight, it was like I''d already thought earlier: hindsight was useless. The best decisions were always more obvious in hindsight.

    "Hell no," said Rika. "We kicked ass! And took some names, while we were at it!"

    "Did we?" Ritsuka asked quietly. "I¡­ All of those people in the United Empire''s capital¡­"

    Ah. He was still thinking about that, was he?

    "We did the best we could," I told him. "Sometimes, the only thing you can do is survive."

    Ritsuka scowled. "Survive, huh¡­"

    "You won''t win every battle," Arash took over for me. "Even if you try your hardest and do your best, there''s always going to be times where someone gets the best of you or catches you by surprise. Even if you don''t win those fights, the only way you really lose is if you die." He pressed a hand to his chest. "And as Servants, it''s our job to make sure that we always die before you Masters do."

    Ritsuka''s hands clenched. "I don''t," he said vehemently, "want anyone dying for me!"

    "That''s a call you might have to make some day," I told him bluntly.

    "Miss Taylor!" Mash gasped.

    "No, she''s right," said Arash. "Let her talk."

    "You two have been doing pretty well," I said. "You''re not there yet, but you''ve been getting better at this job. Even if you made a few mistakes and missed a few opportunities during Septem, you''re a lot better than you were at the beginning of Fuyuki."

    Neither of them looked happy to hear me say so. I think they both sensed the "but" coming.

    "But what would you have done," I began, "if you had to choose between saving a Servant like Boudica and an important historical figure like Nero?"

    Both of them recoiled. Rika was the first one to regain her bearings.

    "W-well," she answered with false bravado, "I would have saved them both, of course!"

    "You can''t," I said. "You only have time for one. You can cast a Momentary Reinforcement so Boudica has the strength to throw Nero to safety, or you can cast an Emergency Evasion so that Boudica herself can make it to safety. You have to choose which one is going to live and which is going to die."

    "Miss Taylor," mumbled Mash, "is that what¡­?"

    I acted like she hadn''t said anything at all.

    "You have to choose. So which one do you save?"

    The twins looked at each other, uncertain and unnerved, and then they seemed to carry out a silent conversation comprised entirely of different facial expressions and swift, jerky hand movements, and as they did, I watched their postures change, their stances firm up, and their minds solidify on a course of action.

    When they turned back to me, they''d made a decision, and their faces were determined and strong.

    "We don''t choose either one," said Ritsuka.

    "We save them both," Rika added.

    "Together," they chorused.

    "She casts a Momentary Reinforcement, so Boudica has the strength to carry Nero fast enough," said Ritsuka.

    "And he casts Emergency Evasion, so they can make it to safety," said Rika.

    I smiled, and it seemed to unnerve them, because they were suddenly less sure of their decision.

    "So why didn''t you?"

    And just like that, their confidence evaporated. I felt a little mean to have to burst their bubble like that, but there wasn''t room in this job for coddling them.

    "This is what I mean," I went on. "It''s all fine when you two can work together and be on the same wavelength. You''ll get better at that as we go. But you won''t always have that option, and you won''t always be able to coordinate the "best" solution. There are going to be times when the only thing you can do is choose the least bad of a crop of terrible options."

    Speaking as someone who was very familiar with having to do just that.

    "Our lives are the most important ones in this entire facility," I told them. "Without us, Chaldea doesn''t function. The world ends. Mankind goes extinct. That''s why you have to be prepared, if it comes down to it, to sacrifice a Servant''s life to save your own."

    "We''re all prepared for it," Arash added. "Every single one of us. We already know the score." He nodded towards Mash. "Even Mash."

    The twins'' heads whipped around towards her, so fast I wasn''t sure I hadn''t heard them crack, and Mash looked alarmed to suddenly be the center of attention.

    "Every time she holds up her shield, she knows she might not make it," said Arash. "Every time she throws herself in front of you to block an attack, she knows it might kill her. She does it anyway, because she also understands what it means to be a Servant."

    His hand landed on my shoulder. "And each and every one of us is trusting you, as our Masters, to know when and where to spend our lives best. We''re trusting you to carry the weight of that decision and not to make it lightly. That is what it means to be a Heroic Spirit. That''s what it means to be a Servant."

    The twins looked¡­overwhelmed. Like they had too much dumped on them all at once, and in hindsight, maybe they had. This was a really heavy conversation to be having before we''d even eaten breakfast.

    Perhaps Arash could sense this, because he disarmed them with a smile and said, "In the meantime, we''ll support the three of you to the best of our abilities. So feel free to rely on us when you need to, okay?"

    "If you''re done scarring my poor Master for life," a familiar baritone drawled.

    "Emiya!" Rika squeaked.

    A white eyebrow raised over a steely gray eye, and Emiya set down a tray of steaming food in front of Rika. I didn''t recognize what it was, only that it was some kind of eggs and rice dish, which meant that it was probably Japanese.

    "I could sense the atmosphere from the kitchen," Emiya continued, "and I thought, my, wouldn''t my Master appreciate it if I brought her something scrumptious and delicious to eat? After all, I''m her house-husband, aren''t I?"

    "You''re goddamn right!" Rika agreed enthusiastically, thoroughly distracted from our previous conversation.

    I arched an eyebrow of my own at Emiya, and he merely smirked back at me. He was well aware of what he''d just done.

    "And since we didn''t get to have our celebratory dinner last night," he kept going demurely, "it seemed only appropriate that I cooked a breakfast fit for an empress, or else my Master might get mad at me."

    You really are milking this just a little too much, I thought at him. Unfortunately, he wasn''t my Servant, so I couldn''t communicate telepathically with him. He seemed to catch on either way.

    "Well, it doesn''t seem fair that Master is the only one who gets to eat so richly," he said slyly. "Shall I go and get food for everyone else, as well?"

    "Yeah, sure," said Rika flippantly. She only had eyes for her meal as she broke apart the pair of chopsticks Emiya had provided to go with her food. "Go ahead."

    Emiya inclined his head like a waiter at a fancy restaurant. "As you say."

    "It really does look pretty good," Ritsuka commented as Emiya left back towards the kitchen.

    "It''s Emiya, Onii-chan," said Rika. "Of course it''s good!"

    "Is this another Japanese recipe?" Mash asked curiously. "I don''t think I''ve seen something like this before."

    "Just wait until you try it, Mash!" Rika said brightly. "You''re gonna love it! Promise!"

    A minute later, Emiya returned with two more trays, one for Mash and one for Ritsuka, and he slid me a glance as he went back for mine that was almost like a threat. Like, don''t ruin this for them, got it? If he weren''t still wearing that ridiculous apron of his, I might actually have been intimidated.

    My stomach gurgled to let me know that I still hadn''t eaten yet, either.

    Well, so I wouldn''t coddle them. That didn''t mean I couldn''t let them have moments of respite like this.

 Chapter LXXI: Pastimes

    Chapter LXXI: Pastimes

    The next few days were relatively quiet and peaceful, giving me plenty of time to write up my formal after action report. The more I thought about it, the harder it got to believe that we''d actually been gone less than two weeks, just because so much had happened in that span of time that it felt more like months.

    Fittingly, having to put it all down on the metaphorical paper made that feeling all the stronger. The fact that at least as much action as we''d seen in Orl¨¦ans had been compressed into a stretch of time totaling eleven days did not make those eleven days somehow shorter or the fighting less intense. What it did do was let me excise a couple hundred words that would otherwise have amounted to, "and then we spent a week traveling through the countryside."

    My Orl¨¦ans report had featured quite a number of sections saying essentially that, if in not so many words.

    It was boring work, but work I''d gotten used to doing during my stint in the Wards, and more than that, it was a way to pass the time while I counted down the days until we were scheduled to bring Marie back. It was better and more productive than parking myself in Da Vinci''s workshop and anxiously watching her work, at least, and frankly, probably about as interesting.

    On the other hand, I hadn''t heard anything from the twins about whether or not they''d started on their own reports, so it would probably be a good idea to check in on them at some point, if only so they could avoid Marie''s wrath. Wouldn''t that be a great thing for her to come back to? Her first day returned to life, only to find out two of the Masters who had been left to handle things were "slacking off."

    Marie really could be a hardass, sometimes.

    Well, it wasn''t like I spent the entirety of those days doing nothing but writing my own report, either. Even if we were technically on break after the Septem Singularity was resolved, I still got up every morning and went to the gym so I could stay in shape. Usually, I was alone. If the twins spent any time working out in there, then it wasn''t usually at the same time as me, probably because they slept in more.

    This morning, I found out I wasn''t the first person there.

    "Keep going!" A¨ªfe barked from the sidelines. "I want to see some sweat, Rika!"

    Rika, doing laps around the indoor track, was panting too hard to give one of her normal quips. She didn''t even seem to have the energy or the breath to offer A¨ªfe a glare.

    "Back straight, Ritsuka!" A¨ªfe said now, turning her attention to Ritsuka. "Keep that behind of yours in the air! Proper form is important!"

    Ritsuka, doing pushups off to the side, grunted and lifted his hips back into proper alignment. On shaking arms, he lowered himself until his nose touched the floor, held for a handful of seconds, and then slowly rose back up.

    Off to the side, Mash was watching both of her Masters with pursed lips, looking very much like she wanted to say something but didn''t have the courage.

    At the entrance to the room, I stood, blinking, and tried to wrap my head around what I was seeing.

    Mash was the one who noticed me first. "Ah! Good morning, Miss Taylor!"

    Ritsuka, surprised, collapsed to the floor, gasping, "Senpai''s here?"

    A¨ªfe pinned him with a glare. "I didn''t say you could stop! Back into position, Ritsuka! Ten more!"

    Ritsuka, miserably, retook his pose and levered himself back up, struggling the whole way. "R-right!"

    "Rika!" A¨ªfe barked. "Two more laps!"

    Rika gasped and huffed, but couldn''t do more than that as she passed by again. Her hair was matted to her head ¡ª as A¨ªfe had demanded, she was absolutely dripping with sweat, and it was soaking through her Chaldea standard issue workout clothes. The emblem on the front, normally a rich, royal blue, was a dark navy.

    Finally, A¨ªfe turned to me. "Good morning."

    "I¡­guess it is," I replied uncertainly.

    I couldn''t stop my eyes from going back to the twins, and A¨ªfe noticed that right away. She huffed, somewhere between a chuckle and a scoff.

    "My lessons don''t stop just because we''ve left Rome," she answered my unspoken question. "Now that there''s nothing else to focus on, I intend to pick up where we left off when Nero arrived at camp."

    "I see."

    I couldn''t think of anything better to say to that. I guess she really was dedicated to the whole "teacher of heroes" thing, even though she had been summoned in her more martial aspects.

    "Is¡­this something you plan on doing every day, then?"

    "For the foreseeable future," she answered. "It seems I''ll have to find some other method of entertaining myself throughout the day."

    Come to think of it, I hadn''t really given much thought to what the Servants spent their time doing while we weren''t deployed. Shakespeare, I got the sense he could entertain himself, but the likes of Bradamante, Siegfried, and now A¨ªfe? I had no idea what they did to pass the time. It was probably something I should see about looking into, if only to keep unit cohesion smooth.

    "Why''s that?"

    "I spoke to Da Vinci," said A¨ªfe. "Unfortunately, she''s told me that your battle simulator hasn''t yet been fully calibrated to account for Servants, and there''s no telling if even we Servants can safely go outside of the facility without being incinerated, so my match with Siegfried has to wait until the adjustments are finished."

    Ah. So that was the problem then.

    "And that''s been put on hold until the Director is back."

    "Yes."

    Naturally, that left her without many ways to keep herself busy. There was nothing saying she couldn''t sleep at night with the rest of us, but how boring would that get if she spent her entire stay here at Chaldea napping her days away? I could sympathize with that.

    Around that time, Ritsuka and Rika finished their repetitions, and Mash, carrying bottles of water, went over to each of them as they both collapsed on the ground, chests heaving. Watching her as she helped them drink gave me an idea.

    "Chaldea has an extensive library, both fiction and non-fiction," I told A¨ªfe. "You could always grab a book and read, if you have nothing else to do."

    I half-expected her to scoff at the suggestion, like the very notion of stopping her intensely active lifestyle for long enough to read a novel was ridiculous, but instead, she just frowned thoughtfully. Like she was actually considering it.

    "I''ll have to see if there''s anything that catches my eye," she said neutrally.

    I guess that was the best I could reasonably expect. I didn''t really have any other ideas to offer her. Video games, maybe? Did we even have any of those lying around for her to try playing?

    Another thing I''d have to look into. Although, even so, if they happened instead to belong to one of the deceased members of our staff, then¡­ Well, taking a dead man''s stuff felt a little ghoulish. If it came down to it, I was just going to have to keep their origin and original owner secret.

    "And in the meantime, you''re going to torture the twins."

    She snorted. "Hardly torture. They''re in decent shape for a pair of teenagers from the modern era, but ''decent shape'' isn''t going to carry them through to the end of this. You already know that."

    I shook my head a little. "Yeah, I guess I do."

    I just wasn''t sure I was the right kind of role model for what you did to prepare for the end of the world. Not after everything I''d given up on the way. I wanted the twins to be ready for what was coming, to be better, but that didn''t mean I wanted them to follow in my footsteps down to my shoe size.

    "I hope you don''t expect that you''re somehow exempt," A¨ªfe warned me suddenly. "Just because my focus is on the twins doesn''t mean I''ll allow you to slack off either. As my Master, I won''t accept anything less than your best effort."

    A snort ripped its way out of my nostrils. "Don''t worry. It won''t happen anyway."

    And if it does, I thought humorously, it''ll be because Romani has confined me to bed.

    I walked over to the twins and peered down at them, lying on the floor together as they were. They were still red-faced and panting, but not nearly as badly as they had been a few minutes before, and their complexions were slowly returning to normal.

    There was that, at least. Even if she was strict and stern, A¨ªfe did actually know their limits and when it was safe to push them.

    "Feel like ancient Celts yet?" I asked the two of them wryly.

    "Senpai," Rika moaned, "save us! Super Action Mom is trying to kill us!"

    Her brother groaned a wordless agreement.

    "Sorry," I said, merciless. "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."

    "But what if I start sweating blood?" Rika cried melodramatically.

    The answer I gave her was both entirely serious and completely flippant.

    "Then we call Romani, because something is seriously wrong."

    "I-is that really a thing that can happen?" Mash asked worriedly.

    Yes, actually. Putting aside someone who might have a power that worked that way or someone like Dracul, whose blood was a weapon, it was in fact possible to sweat blood. It was just exceedingly rare and probably a sign of a deeper underlying problem.

    "Not normally, which is why we''d call in Romani if it happened."

    At that moment, the door to the gym whooshed open, and in walked Fou, strutting across the gym. The little gremlin passed our group, greeted the twins and Mash with a polite, "Fou-kyu fou," and went over to one of the treadmills, and then hopped up onto the belt and started trotting. Like nothing strange was happening and he did this every morning.

    The treadmill beeped and turned on, and Fou didn''t even stumble as the belt picked up speed to match his pace.

    "Oh," said Mash, "so that''s what Fou gets up to while we''re eating breakfast. I''d always wondered."

    What my life had become. Watching a squirrel-cat-dog-thing jog on a treadmill with the casual air of a housewife getting her daily exercise in.

    "Fou!" Rika gasped, reaching weakly towards the treadmill. "Help! Save us from Super Action Mom!"

    "Fou-kyu fou fou-kyu!" the thing chirped back at her, and then went back to its walk.

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    "I think he just said, ''you''re on your own!''" Ritsuka rasped.

    Rika''s arm flopped back to the ground bonelessly. "I''ve been betrayed¡­"

    Mash sighed, but the smile on her lips was fond. "Here, Senpai," she said patiently, "why don''t you have some more water? You have to keep your fluids up so you don''t get dehydrated!"

    "You''re an angel, Mash¡­"

    I gave my head a little shake and stepped around the twins as Mash administered to them like their own personal nurse. My eyes turned towards the treadmills, but a shiver crawled down my spine at the idea of running beside Fou, so I decided to walk further out and take the indoor track this time. Neither, of course, was a good replacement for taking a run along an actual route through the streets of Brockton or Chicago, but modern treadmills could at least mimic changing terrain by increasing or decreasing the incline. I appreciated that, when the only place to get my workout in was a sterile room.

    I just had to make sure Fou and I were never working out at the same time.

    The indoor track was at least a decent size, so my run didn''t feel claustrophobic or short, and I tacked on an extra lap or two before my cooldown to push myself a little further than usual. A¨ªfe was right that I shouldn''t be slacking off either, and I''d been sticking with the same distance every day as a matter of routine. It was high time I changed things up a little.

    The twins had already moved on by the time I finished my run, and A¨ªfe drilled them through more exercises designed to build strength and endurance as I continued on to the rest of my workout. At some point, Fou had finished his walk on the treadmill and had moved to stand with Mash, watching Ritsuka and Rika as A¨ªfe put them through their paces.

    For a moment, I felt a twinge of nostalgia, and a strange kind of melancholy sat in my belly. It had been over two years since I''d last seen any of them, and it wasn''t like I was incredibly close to most of them, but just for that moment, I missed the Chicago Wards. Training with them. Teaching Theo how to fight. Those moments of camaraderie whose brevity and rarity I''d come to regret by the end.

    I wondered how many of them had made it through Gold Morning. Like I had with Lisa and the remaining Undersiders, if they were, even now, living their lives, picking up the pieces of Scion''s aftermath, or if they too had been incinerated with the rest of mankind.

    Just more names to tack onto the list of people who were counting on me to do the impossible a second time.

    At the end of my workout, I left the gym, sore and sweaty, but satisfied, and the twins remained behind a while longer, lagging their way through a few more exercises. A¨ªfe really was being hard on them, but she''d probably ease up as they got closer to whatever she was using as a satisfactory baseline.

    It probably wouldn''t take them too long. They were starting from a much better point than Theo had, and it wasn''t like I hadn''t been trying to ease them into it on my own, so they didn''t have as far to go as someone like, say, Greg Veder would have.

    God, I hadn''t thought about him in forever either, had I? Maybe Meuniere was a more recent comparison.

    A shower was next on my morning routine, and I may have stayed an extra few minutes to enjoy the hot water, because a camp in the middle of the wilderness naturally didn''t have a shower. The only place I''d been able to enjoy getting clean again was the bath in Nero''s palace, and from my perspective, I''d gone most of two weeks without anything else. I figured I was entitled to luxuriating a little bit for the first few days back.

    Once that was done and I''d gotten dressed and ready for the rest of the day, I made my way to the cafeteria so I could have breakfast.

    I wasn''t expecting what I found there.

    "Siegfried?"

    Or more accurately, who. Because it looked like the rest of our Servant roster had decided to squeeze into the room, waiting in lines for the counter, all so they could get a taste of Emiya''s food.

    Siegfried turned to me when he heard his name, and he smiled a soft, understated smile. "Forgive me, Master, I didn''t realize you were there. Good morning."

    "Good¡­morning."

    I looked past him at the others in line. Well, I''d called it "the rest of our Servant roster," but it wasn''t like we had hundreds of them, so it was really more like Bradamante, El-Melloi II, Arash, Siegfried, and Shakespeare, all of whom were in the same room at the same time for the first time since¡­ever, I thought.

    Arash, having apparently heard Siegfried, turned, saw me, and offered me a smile of his own. "Good morning."

    "Good morning," I repeated. "Are you¡­all here to eat breakfast?"

    "It seems that way," Arash answered.

    "Why?"

    "Well," he said, "of course, you already know, we don''t really need to eat."

    Yes, but that didn''t mean they couldn''t enjoy good food. We''d already had a conversation about that during Septem.

    "But then it got out somehow that Emiya''s cooking is really good," he went on, "and those of us who have already had it decided that we might as well get a taste while the newbies are getting their own."

    Ahead of him in line, El-Melloi II grunted. "If there''s one thing you can say about Emiya, it''s that he''s a good chef. Which makes up for all of the other things he lacks, I suppose. Like common sense."

    "I''m sorry," Siegfried added. "I wasn''t aware that Sir Emiya''s culinary prowess was something to be kept secret. If anyone is to blame for it spreading around, I''m afraid it''s me."

    "It''s¡­fine," I said, for lack of anything more eloquent.

    At the head of the line, Shakespeare got his tray and strutted off with a boisterous, "Exit, stage right!" leaving Bradamante to take his place, bouncing eagerly on the balls of her feet. With a smile and the patience of a saint, Emiya served her up her own tray of food. The smell wafted teasingly into my nostrils and made my stomach gurgle.

    "Is¡­this going to be a regular thing?"

    "For now, no." And I nearly jumped out of my skin as Romani''s voice spoke up from behind me. I might have whirled about to face him faster than I really needed to. "I agreed to let them do this today, but until we can establish a stronger supply line, we can''t afford to start feeding the Servants all the time, too."

    "A stronger supply line?" I asked.

    "We have enough rations to last the original staff of two-hundred for about six months, plus emergency rations to last another two," he answered. And then he grimaced and took a sip of his coffee to hide it. "Now that we''re down to about twenty, we should be able to stretch that out at least a little, but since we can''t rely on the UN supply shipments anymore, we have to be a lot more careful not to waste anything."

    "So we Servants agreed," said Arash. "One day of meals per week for each of us. If things change later on, then we can revisit that idea then."

    That was¡­very reasonable, actually. And very fair, I thought. Food was too important to us humans and our continued survival for the Servants to eat three meals every day, but once a week was still conservative enough that we wouldn''t be going through our supplies too fast while still giving them something to look forward to.

    Chaldea, I thought with a bit of humor. Come to save the world, stay for the world class cooking.

    "Stronger supply lines?" I asked Romani again.

    "Right." He blew out a breath. "Well, you sending us back crabs and bugs for Da Vinci''s project proved the concept, so there''s no reason that you guys couldn''t send more supplies back while you''re out in the field, right? We''d have to get everything set up for it first and figure out the storage for anything you send, but in the long term, we can use that as a method to¡­I guess ''replenish'' isn''t really the right word here, is it?"

    "It''s good enough," I told him, because the important part was that it was a really good idea. A lateral solution to a straightforward problem. "This your idea?"

    The line moved forward again as Bradamante all but flounced off to go and eat her breakfast. Romani ducked his head bashfully.

    "Well, I guess this is just the sort of thing you have to think about," he said, which was its own kind of answer. "When you''re the one in charge of this place, I mean. Knowing the Director, she probably would have figured it out before we even sent you into Orl¨¦ans."

    Don''t sell yourself short, Romani.

    Sure, he wasn''t the best Director of Chaldea ever (for what that was worth when I only knew about two others), and I''d lamented his mistakes more than once since he took over after Fuyuki, but the fact that he was trying his best did count for something.

    "Still," I said, "it''s a good idea, Romani."

    He laughed, self-deprecating. "Somehow, hearing you say that just makes me feel like I really should have figured it out sooner."

    He really needed to learn how to take a compliment.

    "Anyway," he went on before I could say anything else, "I already ate, so I might as well get back to work. I''ll let you enjoy your breakfast."

    Coffee in hand, he turned away and left. The door swished shut behind him, just in time for El-Melloi II to walk away with his own tray of food. My nose wrinkled. Thank goodness there were rules about smoking in the common areas of the facility, because I didn''t enjoy the idea of having to deal with the acrid smell of tobacco while I ate.

    Siegfried and Arash both offered to let me go next, but I declined and let them get their own meals first, and about five minutes later, I sat down at a table ¡ª with the two of them, fittingly enough ¡ª and dug into another one of Emiya''s delicious meals.

    He could make toast into a gourmet meal, I was sure of it.

    It was as I was finishing up and sipping from my own morning cup of tea, brewed from the secret stash in my room, that the twins finally dragged themselves in behind A¨ªfe and Mash. In her exhaustion, Rika wasn''t even able to get excited about the food, although the grunts and groans that escaped her mouth as she ate said enough to cover for what she wasn''t saying verbally.

    "Looks like they''ve been having fun," said Arash, smiling.

    "Is something wrong with them?" asked Siegfried.

    "A¨ªfe has taken it upon herself to make sure they''re both in the best shape they can be," I summarized their suffering. "As you can see, she''s not taking it easy on them."

    Siegfried looked over at the woman in question. "She has?"

    "Well, everyone has to have their hobbies," said Arash. "It''s probably as much about having something to do as it is about making sure Ritsuka and Rika are prepared for when things get tougher."

    "She mentioned something about not being able to spar with Siegfried with the simulator still not working right for Servants."

    "I see," said Siegfried. "I''ll have to apologize to them later. Miss Da Vinci and Director Romani both forbade us Servants from fighting in the facility directly, for fear of damaging something critical. I didn''t think it would drive Queen A¨ªfe to seek out entertainment elsewhere."

    "I think she would have started training them anyway, no matter what," Arash told him. "I think helping you to improve yourself¡­ It''s part of how she shows she cares."

    Siegfried turned to him, bemused. "Truly? I don''t think I can say that I myself have ever known a person like that, but if you say so, Lord Arash, then I will believe it."

    "Really?" Arash''s eyes turned to look at me, mirthful. "I guess I just have keener eyes than most, then."

    I arched one eyebrow at him, unimpressed. That wasn''t any funnier the second time.

    "Unfortunately, getting the simulator set up to work for Servants properly is going to have to wait until the Director is back, so it''s going to be at least another week," I said. "In the meantime, I suggested she could find a book to read. Chaldea''s library is pretty comprehensive."

    Siegfried paused. "Chaldea has a library?"

    It turned out that our Servants had seen a lot of Chaldea''s common areas, but we had never actually given them a tour of the entire facility ¡ª the parts that weren''t off limits for one reason or another, at least. It was a pretty big oversight that we were going to have to correct at some point in the near future, because with El-Melloi II here now, we officially had a "proper" Caster on our roster, and while he was the first, he probably wouldn''t be the last.

    All of those supplies we had squirreled away? The reagents and the catalysts and the ingredients that any proper magus would need to ply his craft? The ones that had been sitting mostly untouched since so many of our prospective Masters were out of commission? There was now actually someone else who could make use of at least some of them. Someone who wasn''t our organization''s perpetually overworked genius inventor.

    Da Vinci was just going to have to learn how to share.

    When the opportunity presented itself, I stood from the table and excused myself, telling the two of them that I had a few things to discuss with Da Vinci. It had the benefit of being true.

    "I guess if there was someone to talk to about setting up a tour, she''d be the one, wouldn''t she?" Arash mused.

    "There''s no rush, Master," Siegfried assured me. "We''ve gone this long without needing to be shown everything in the facility. There''s no reason we shouldn''t be able to wait until a more convenient time."

    "It''s not just that," I told him. "I''ve got one or two things I''ve been meaning to ask her about myself, so that''s just another thing to add to the list."

    I took my tray back to Emiya, who accepted it and then handed me a new one, laden with more of that delicious smelling food.

    "Here," he said. "Since you''re going to visit her anyway, take that to Da Vinci for me, would you?"

    A few smart comments floated in the back of my head, but I kept them off my tongue and took the tray with me as I left. A glance in the twins'' direction on my way out showed Bradamante had sat down with them as they ate, chatting amiably.

    The halls were mostly empty as I made my way out of the cafeteria and towards Da Vinci''s workshop, but I passed a few of the staff who were either coming off or going onto their shift, and they all eyed the food I was carrying with naked desire. All I had to do was say it was "for Da Vinci," though, and even the ones who looked tempted to actually ask me for it backed down.

    I guess no one was daring enough to risk her ire. "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." Yeah, I wouldn''t want to risk Da Vinci getting creative revenge either.

    "Hello, Taylor," Da Vinci said without turning around as I walked through her door, and I paused, blinking.

    So that''s what that feels like.

    "Emiya sent some food," I told her.

    She chuckled. "How kind of him!" She waved over at the general area of her table as she continued tinkering on some strange contraption whose purpose I could only guess at. "Set it down for now, I''ll eat in a few minutes."

    I did as she said, setting the tray down on the table. I even did her the kindness of conveniently putting it right in front of the empty chair.

    "You heard about the arrangement then, I take it?"

    Da Vinci chuckled some more. "Romani''s idea of having a day where Servants can eat, once a week? Yes, I have. Quite an elegant solution, don''t you think? Romani really can surprise us sometimes."

    He could indeed. How ironic, that he might finally be getting comfortable in the role of Director right as we were getting ready to bring Marie back.

    "That wasn''t all you came here for though, was it?" Da Vinci looked back at me over her shoulder. "Was there something else you needed? Perhaps you were wondering at my progress on returning our dear Director to the flesh?"

    Well, it wasn''t one of the things I came to her workshop for, but I wouldn''t mind hearing about it.

    "Is there any change in the timetable? Complications or anything like that?"

    "Of course not," said Da Vinci. "My original estimate was spot on. It''s meant pulling some all-nighters to reach the deadline I set, but things are on track exactly as I expected they would be."

    "Then that''s all I need to know about it."

    It wasn''t like I would understand the details if she tried to explain all of the nuances to the process. There was a reason I took Huginn and Munnin to her for maintenance instead of trying to do it all myself.

    Although maybe I should see about changing that at some point. Being a puppetmaster was a natural enough extension of my old skill set that it hadn''t taken any adjustment, but being able to make and repair my own puppets was a skill I''d mostly thought out of my reach because of how far behind I was in terms of my magecraft education.

    "I actually had something else I wanted to discuss with you," I said. "Something I''ve been meaning to ask about since we came back from Orl¨¦ans, but there was always something else that needed attention."

    "Something else?" Da Vinci set down what she was working on and turned around to face me fully. "Well, you have my full attention now. What was it you needed to talk about?"

    "It''s¡­" I grimaced. It was going to feel ghoulish no matter what, wasn''t it? "I know I never put in an official request for a workshop, but in light of the fact that my powers came back, I wanted to see about setting up a terrarium."

    Da Vinci''s eyebrows rose. "A terrarium?"

    "One of the things I used to do was have spiders spin silk clothing," I told her, revealing only the most relevant part of it. "Black Widows at first, and later Darwin''s Bark Spiders. They have ¡ª"

    "The strongest silk of any spider species in the world, yes," Da Vinci cut in. "And you¡­had them weave clothing?"

    "It saved my life more than once," I admitted. Using spider silk was, in hindsight, one of the best early decisions I made. "I figured Chaldea could have some use for that as well, if only to make more comfortable mystic codes."

    "And while you''re deployed into a Singularity ¡ª"

    "Are you trying to tell me that you couldn''t make a bounded field that kept them confined to that room and stopped them from infighting while I was gone?" I asked pointedly. "The great Leonardo da Vinci, genius extraordinaire?"

    She smiled. "Playing to my ego, are we?"

    "If it works."

    "I never said it didn''t!" She shook her head, still smiling. "And I suppose your interest was galvanized by my little request to send back all of those bugs, wasn''t it?"

    "It proved to me that it was possible."

    "It was always possible, at least theoretically," Da Vinci said wryly, "just harder to justify to the UN and the Mage''s Association. Neither of whom, I suppose, are technically here right now to raise a stink about it."

    She rapped her fingers thoughtfully against the tabletop, and for a long moment, didn''t say anything else. I had to assume she was going over the logistics in her head, planning out how it could be done and how she could do it with the resources on hand. She reminded me of some of the Tinkers I''d known in a past life, at least in some ways.

    I just had to make sure she didn''t get carried off into a fugue the way those Tinkers did.

    "So?"

    She smiled a little. "Well. The really tricky part will be finding the right time and place to retrieve these bugs you want, seeing as none of the previous Singularities and none of the ones we currently know about seem to cover Madagascar, and I confess, I''m a little hesitant to bring a species as venomous as the Black Widow here¡­"

    She hummed.

    "Frankly, it would be more convenient to simply build a handful of puppets for you that could accomplish the same thing, but getting the structure and tensile strength of the silk just right is going to be a challenge without a sample."

    My brow furrowed. I could see her point, even if I didn''t really agree with it. We could have a whole menagerie of the most venomous spiders and insects in the world, and as long as I was here and Da Vinci configured the bounded field right, there wouldn''t be anything to worry about.

    Although I couldn''t say that the prospect of more and more varied puppets to use was an unwelcome one. It would be more for me to carry into the Singularities, instead of having to just make do with whatever local bugs were available.

    "Do you still have my old costume? The one I was wearing when I came here?"

    Da Vinci''s eyes lit up. "Oh! Now that you mention it, I think I do!"

    If I had to settle for that, at least for now, then it would have to do.

 Chapter LXXII: Lazarian Return

    Chapter LXXII: Lazarian Return

    The next several days passed with agonizing slowness, made only somewhat more bearable by the comfort of the routine we had settled into. In the early morning, we Masters would get up, go to the gym, get in a daily workout session, and after we showered off all of the sweat, go to the cafeteria to have one of Emiya''s delicious meals.

    It was the rest of the day that proved to be a problem, because that was entirely free for us to do mostly whatever we liked. Unfortunately, at least for me, the Wards had trained me too well. My after action report on the events of the Septem Singularity was done long before the deadline for Marie''s return was anywhere close, and that meant that most of my days were relatively empty, because there were only so many times you could check for errors in your report before you had to call it finished and there was only so much training you could get in before it started to be detrimental instead of helpful.

    The twins, at least, were otherwise occupied. El-Melloi II had appointed himself as their teacher in the fundamentals of magecraft, although he didn''t seem particularly enthusiastic about the job, so their afternoons were filled with lessons on magic and how it worked, how to cast spells properly, how to safely control the amount of magical energy running through their magic circuits, and so on.

    I thought about sitting in on their lessons ¡ª there weren''t many who could say they''d learned at the feet of one of the Association''s Lords, let alone two ¡ª but when I spied on them to see what they were learning, I realized immediately that it was all stuff that I already knew. There just wasn''t a point in putting myself through the boredom of listening to El-Melloi II lecture on topics I''d learned over a year ago.

    It didn''t leave me with a plethora of options for how to occupy my own time, because Da Vinci hadn''t given us very much information about where and when the next Singularity was going to occur, which meant that I couldn''t distract myself with research on that era and nation. "Late sixteenth century" was frighteningly vague, and quite aside from the fact that it covered a period of at least thirty years, I didn''t even have a geographical location to focus on.

    The only thing really left for me to do was grab one of my novels off of the bookshelf in my room and find the most comfortable place I could to sit down and read it, so I made myself a cup of my favorite tea from my secret stash, sweetened it to my liking, and then made my way down to Chaldea''s very, very expansive library, where no one was likely to disturb me.

    I wasn''t expecting to find A¨ªfe huddled in the exact corner I''d planned to sit myself down in, nor was I expecting her to be dressed in a tank top and a pair of sweatpants, and I definitely wasn''t expecting her to be reading what she actually had her nose buried in.

    "Is that¡­"

    A romance novel?

    A¨ªfe startled at the sound of my voice and swiftly snapped the book closed, hiding it out of sight as her head swiveled around to look at me. A faint blush dusted her cheeks, the first real sign of femininity I think I''d ever seen from her.

    "Yes?" she asked awkwardly. "Was there something you needed from me, Master?"

    "No, I¡­" Should I even bring it up? I''d never seen her actually embarrassed about something. "I was just coming here to do some reading myself."

    I held up my book, Under the Moonlight, a thick vampire novel set in Victorian era France about a woman getting revenge on the one who turned her. The author had never been born on Earth Bet, so this was actually the first thing he''d written that I would have the chance to read, but the blurb on the back made it sound interesting enough.

    "Oh." She settled down, and some of the tension in her shoulders eased. "So you came here for a quiet place to read."

    "That was the plan."

    She nodded and stood from her chair. "Then I shall have to find another place, I suppose."

    She made to leave, and maybe the twins and their nosiness was rubbing off on me, but whatever the reason, my mouth opened on its own.

    "A¨ªfe."

    She stopped.

    "I know it was my suggestion in the first place, but¡­can I ask?"

    A¨ªfe sighed and stopped hiding her book, revealing a flowery cover that depicted a man and a woman embracing very intimately, as though they''d been captured in the act of leaning in for a kiss. I''d never read it myself, but I''d seen it ¡ª or another copy of it, at least ¡ª in Akuta''s hands on occasion. From what little she''d told me about it, it was a pure romance novel, a sort of modern day Pride and Prejudice, where two people from vastly different backgrounds fall in love and have to reconcile those differences.

    "You saw it, then." It wasn''t a question.

    "Sorry."

    "No, I suppose if I wanted to truly escape notice, then I should have hidden out in one of the empty rooms," she said ruefully. "Those, at least, no one would have had any reason to visit."

    Depending on the room. Da Vinci hadn''t gotten back to me yet about setting up a terrarium in one of the unoccupied rooms, so I hadn''t had reason or opportunity to go shopping for one to pick out, but that was only a matter of time.

    A¨ªfe looked down at the novel, the pad of her thumb rubbing over the cover, and for a long moment, she was silent. It struck me then that she hadn''t actually revealed much of herself to us before, not anything that we couldn''t have found out either from the myths or from reading between the lines, and I think I was beginning to realize that she was actually a fairly private person.

    "You''re aware," she began at length, slow and deliberate, "that I¡­didn''t have much luck with love."

    "I know that C¨²chulainn essentially forced himself on you," I replied carefully, "and that he had you put those geasa on Connla."

    A breath huffed out of her nostrils, not quite a snort. "Yes, well, I wasn''t in the best of positions to be denying him, was I?"

    I didn''t say anything. What Emiya had said at the beginning of Septem came back to me then ¡ª the value system of the ancient Celts was vastly different from the modern day. There was too much I didn''t know about that kind of life for me to inject my modern beliefs without care.

    "By the time he left, I hadn''t made up my mind whether I hated him or not," she confessed. "The original defeat still stings, and the method he used was the gravest insult I have ever suffered, but he was¡­unique, as a man. I''ve yet to meet anyone quite like him, in this life or my last."

    She looked back down at the cover of the book. "There hasn''t been anyone else. No one who quite lit the same flame, and that means that this one area is a place where I am¡­inexperienced."

    My brow furrowed, although I guess I could understand her problem. Brian was¡­ Well, he was the only boy I''d made time for, and there hadn''t been a space for anyone else after I left the Undersiders and turned myself in. Preparing for the end of the world had simply been too important.

    "Inexperienced?"

    A¨ªfe sighed again, irritably. "You''ve doubtless heard the myths already, yes? My sister found a man pleasing enough to give her a daughter, and she was quite familiar in that sense with the Hound as well. For myself, I never allowed a man to distract me while I was younger, still perfecting my skills, and after Connla left, I had lost any interest I might have had in seeking out a husband. My only frame of reference is the Hound."

    The guy who slept with just about every woman in his myth, I didn''t say, but I had no doubt that she was already keenly aware of the sorts of things he''d gotten up to. Theirs was in no way a committed, normal relationship, even by the standards of the ancient Celts.

    "So this is¡­research, then?"

    "In a sense," she said. "It is also¡­I suppose, a look at what kind of life I might have led, if I had chosen differently."

    The dream I''d had while we stayed at Nero''s palace¡­ She was talking about how things might have gone if she''d chosen not to become a warrior and settled for being some king''s queen.

    I guess even hardened warriors like A¨ªfe, who had spent her entire life honing her skills and pushing her limits, wondered what it was like to be a woman in love. To feel something so intense and all-consuming that it could change you and your life so drastically.

    Maybe that book was one I should put on my own reading list.

    "I understand."

    She blinked and looked over at me. "Oh?"

    "My situation was a little bit different." Understatement of the year. "But I''ve only ever had one partner, too. There was never any room to try again after we separated."

    She gave me a considering look. What else, if anything, she got from that, she didn''t share.

    "I see."

    "You don''t have to go anywhere," I told her. "Feel free to keep reading and pretend I''m not here. I won''t tell the twins what books you keep on your shelf as long as you keep quiet about this little corner."

    Her lips pulled into a familiar grin. "That, I think, is something I can do, Master."

    "You can call me Taylor, you know."

    She gave me another considering look, like she was looking for a hidden meaning in what I''d said. "Taylor, then," she eventually decided.

    And that was how I found a reading buddy.

    Every afternoon, while the twins were off getting lessons from El-Melloi II, she and I sequestered ourselves into that little alcove and silently read our books. It was¡­nice, as quaint as it was to put it that way. Even if we didn''t talk, the subtle air of companionship was pleasant.

    Finally, however, the day arrived, and Da Vinci''s week was all used up. I was ready to skip everything and go straight to her workshop ¡ª except I hadn''t even gotten out of bed before receiving her message, letting me know that she''d call us down when she was ready to commence the procedure that would bring Marie back.

    Great.

    It was tempting to go down anyway and wait, but I wasn''t a kid at Christmas, lying on the couch so I could see Santa come and deliver presents, so I forced myself to be patient for just a little while longer and went about my daily routine. If I pushed myself a little harder than usual to try and work out some of the frustration, well, no one decided to comment on it, if they even realized it.

    Unfortunately, it also made breakfast hard to enjoy, and that wasn''t something that escaped Arash''s notice.

    "You look like you''ve got something on your mind today," he said from across the table. Even though this wasn''t one of the Servant meal days, he still chose to sit with me, and had every day.

    I debated the merits of deflecting, but unfortunately, I didn''t think he would let me get away with it.

    "Da Vinci''s supposed to bring Marie ¡ª Director Animusphere ¡ª back today."

    Rika ¡ª because the twins had also decided to sit with me today ¡ª gasped, giving me a very good look at the half-chewed food in her mouth. It didn''t make my own food any more appetizing.

    "That''s today?" she slurred around her breakfast.

    "Rika!" her brother scolded her. Even Mash looked a little grossed out by the display.

    "Yes," I said, "although she didn''t tell me exactly when."

    Rika looked ready to start talking again, until Ritsuka reached over, stuck one finger under her chin, and forced her mouth closed. "Don''t talk with your mouth full," he chided her.

    Rika gnashed her teeth with exaggerated motions of her jaw, swallowed audibly, and then stuck her tongue out at him. A put upon sigh breezed out of his mouth.

    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    "We''re really getting Director Marie back today?" she asked once she was done antagonizing her brother. Thankfully, without shoveling more food into her mouth first.

    "Da Vinci said it would take a week," was my simple response. "It''s been a week."

    "Oh," said Mash. "I guess it has, hasn''t it?"

    "Then what are we waiting for?" Rika asked. "Let''s finish so we can go see her right away!"

    "Don''t you want to enjoy your breakfast properly?" Ritsuka said wryly.

    Rika''s expression twisted, torn, and she looked down at her remaining food uncertainly. Like she couldn''t decide whether it was more important to go bug Da Vinci immediately or stay and savor every bite she could of the meal Emiya had prepared for us.

    I decided to spare her the dilemma.

    "Da Vinci already sent a message saying that she would let us know when she was ready to bring the Director back. Didn''t you get one this morning as well?"

    "That''s what that was about?" Rika asked, surprised.

    Of course she hadn''t listened to it.

    "Yes."

    "What did you think it was about, Senpai?" asked Mash.

    "I thought it was another reminder from Doctor Roman about that report thingy," Rika answered. "I''m going as fast as I can, damn it!"

    "You''re still working on it?"

    It had been a week. It wasn''t like it was a book report and she had to read some thick novel and analyze the themes or something like that. She just had to write down what had happened in Septem.

    "She''s always been like that," Ritsuka told me. "Whenever we had a project for school, she always put it off until the last possible minute. I had to force her to sit down and do it on time more than once."

    Rika pouted at him.

    "Well, we didn''t exactly have paperwork in my era," said Arash, laughing a little. "And I wasn''t really anything more than a footsoldier, so working out logistics wasn''t part of my responsibilities. I guess it''s a good thing we Servants aren''t expected to hand in any reports to Chaldea, huh? I don''t think I''d be good at it."

    "Really?" asked Mash. "You seem so responsible though, Arash."

    "It''s kind of you to say so," Arash told her, "but there really are things that I never learned how to do while I was alive. Chaldea''s summoning system may have given me the knowledge of how to read and write in this modern era, but any reports I had to give to my superiors in the army were all oral, so writing up a report like that isn''t something I''m familiar with."

    He might have said so, but I had no doubts that he wouldn''t have any trouble with it if he was actually asked to do it. The twins might not have realized it, but I could tell immediately that he was trying to make them feel better about not being good at writing up those after action reports Romani wanted.

    As if I needed more proof that he really was a good guy.

    "It''s a skill you learn in any modern organization," I said, "so it''s better to learn it now, Rika. Most jobs you get worth anything are going to ask you to write reports at some point or another."

    "At this point, I''d settle for surviving this one," Rika said dryly. "I''m not super worried about my future prospects right now. I''m still technically in high school!"

    "You are?" Mash asked.

    "This was just supposed to be a summer internship," said Ritsuka. "We were going to be starting our senior year¡­but I guess that kind of got put off, didn''t it?"

    "Kinda hard to attend high school when all the teachers and students are gone, you know," Rika added.

    A snort ripped itself out of my nostrils before I could stop it, and the twins both looked over at me, surprised. It would probably have been less surprising if they had any idea what my own high school education had looked like, but my circumstances hadn''t exactly been normal in any way, had they? Forgetting the fact that Leviathan had interrupted the school year pretty drastically, finishing high school had just seemed like such a small concern next to everything else I was handling at the time.

    Frankly, it was a small miracle that I had gotten my GED. If I hadn''t surrendered and joined the Wards, I wasn''t sure I would have even bothered.

    "Senpai?" Rika asked, confused.

    "Natural disasters and the end of the world do make it kind of difficult to finish your education, don''t they?" I said without really saying anything.

    "Yes," said Rika, still confused. "Yes, they do." She turned to her brother and whispered, "It sounds like she''s talking from personal experience. Why is she talking from personal experience?"

    "I don''t know!" Ritsuka hissed back. "Why don''t you ask her?"

    "Because I have self-preservation instincts!"

    Like I would kill her for her curiosity, I thought, amused. It seemed like she was putting a little too much stock in that line about curiosity killing the cat.

    "Did¡­you not finish high school, Miss Taylor?" Mash asked.

    "Bless the cinnamon roll for her courage," Rika muttered.

    I considered my answer for a moment. This should be mild enough and innocuous enough not to worry about, right? After all, there were plenty of places that were hit by hurricanes every year, so it wasn''t like I was revealing anything about Earth Bet by letting them have this much.

    "My hometown was hit pretty hard by a natural disaster near the end of my sophomore year," I revealed mildly. "Happens, when you live on the coast. Going back to school wound up being pretty low on the priorities list."

    Grades seemed petty when people were starving and homeless. Then again, even if I hadn''t been busy trying to keep order in my little section of Brockton, I wasn''t sure I would have gone through the trouble of dealing with school after everything else that had happened.

    "¡­I don''t know how to feel about this," said Rika. "Does this mean we technically have more education than Senpai does?"

    Not quite.

    "Sorry to burst your bubble, but I did eventually get my GED. So no. Technically, I did eventually finish my high school education."

    "Eventually?" Ritsuka mumbled under his breath.

    Rika squinted at me. "Senpai''s only in her early twenties, though, aren''t you?"

    "And you spent most of your time at Chaldea learning magecraft," Mash added, "so wouldn''t that mean that you finished your education at a normal time, Miss Taylor?"

    I blinked. Huh. I guess I actually had, hadn''t I? Even if I hadn''t graduated like a normal high school student, I''d technically been the same age as one when I finished my GED.

    "I guess you''re right."

    "I''m not sure ''the world ended'' is going to be an excuse your school is going to accept not to go back once this is all over, though," said Arash. "So maybe you should just consider your senior year of high school delayed instead of canceled."

    Rika groaned. "Oh no. We''re going to have to go back? We''re going to be a year behind on everything!"

    "Which means we''re going to have to study," Ritsuka concluded with something akin to dawning horror.

    "Hot Pops and Super Action Mom are already running us into the ground!" said Rika. "I can''t study normal stuff too at the same time! My brain will explode!"

    "I-I''m sure Chaldea will make sure you have any tutoring you need to catch up!" Mash hurried to reassure her. She turned to me for backup. "Right, Miss Taylor?"

    They''d done as much for me, hadn''t they? Well, that was studying magecraft, though, and Marie was the one who did most of the tutoring, so that wasn''t quite the same situation. I wasn''t sure how exactly a mundane education would be treated by comparison.

    The twins had gotten in on an internship, technically, so finishing high school might actually be something that the organization didn''t care about one way or the other. It wasn''t like you needed any of the skills traditionally taught in high schools to be a Master, after all.

    Another thing to ask Marie about, once she was back on her feet, figuratively and literally.

    "Chaldea is invested in the success and continued well-being of its Masters and Master candidates," I settled on. "If needed, I''m sure the Director will be willing to arrange for anything you need to complete your high school education once the Grand Order has been resolved."

    Maybe not happy, but willing. Knowing Marie, she''d probably have a caustic comment or two about how low our standards had to be if we were accepting candidates who hadn''t even graduated high school yet. And then she''d set them up anyway, because she took care of her people.

    "What if we decide not to?" Ritsuka asked.

    "What?" Rika squawked incredulously. "Who are you and what did you do with my Onii-chan, you imposter!"

    "I-I''m just saying!" Ritsuka scrambled to explain. "Th-this job is really important, right? What if it''s too important to waste time going back to school instead of staying here?"

    My lips pursed.

    "Don''t worry so much," said Arash. "I''ve never met her, but this Director Animusphere sounds like a rational enough person. I''m sure she wouldn''t kick you out just for deciding not to finish your high school education."

    "You might not have a choice," I warned.

    "No choice?" the twins parroted simultaneously.

    "What do you mean, Miss Taylor?" asked Mash.

    Had they really not realized it?

    "I''ve said before, there''s going to be an inquiry when this is all over. The entire world can''t go to sleep one day and wake up to find however many months have passed without there being a lot of questions that need to be answered, and we''re the only ones who will have those answers. Chaldea as an organization will almost certainly be temporarily shut down while the UN and the Mage''s Association investigate what happened."

    "But we''re saving the world!" Rika protested.

    "That''s not going to mean anything to the Association, when the time comes," a new voice interjected.

    "Hot Pops!"

    "Nor will the fact that Director Animusphere is a Lord of the Clock Tower," El-Melloi II went on, stepping closer to our table. The white stick of a lollipop sat between his fingers like one of his cigars, which was just as ridiculous an image as it sounded. "Neither the United Nations nor the Mage''s Association are the sort of organizations that are willing to take no for an answer. No matter what we accomplish between now and fixing this mess, both of them will be willing to scour Chaldea down to the bedrock to find out what happened."

    That was just what happened when people were that scared, I thought. They were willing to do anything to make the scary thing go away ¡ª or, in this case, make sure it could never happen again.

    "Which is why your after action reports are so important," I chimed back in. "The fewer questions they have to ask you directly, the less you two will have to worry about."

    Rika groaned again. "Fine, fine, I get it. Scary stuff will happen later if we don''t write our reports now."

    It was going to happen either way, there were just likely going to be fewer problems for the twins than for me. After all, I was the only remaining member of Team A, and I was technically their leader in the field. My decisions were going to get almost as much scrutiny as Marie''s and Romani''s.

    No need to worry them about that sort of thing, though.

    "As long as you don''t present too tempting a target, you should get by just fine," said El-Melloi II.

    I looked at him askance, and he glanced back at me, as though daring me to deny it. He wasn''t necessarily wrong, but I''d heard enough horror stories about the Association to be less sure he was right.

    Well. Again, more likely to be my problems than theirs.

    "Wait," said Rika. "Why are you here, Hot Pops? You''re not gonna drag us into another lesson, are you?"

    "So that I can deal with you hours before I''m scheduled to?" El-Melloi II huffed. "No. I''m just the messenger, this time. Da Vinci asked me to come and get the lot of you, says there''s an emergency she needs you all for in the infirmary."

    We all straightened.

    "Emergency?" the twins asked.

    "In the infirmary?"

    "That''s what I said, isn''t it?" El-Melloi II stuck his lollipop back in his mouth. Muffled a little, he continued, "That Doctor Romani Archaman is there, too."

    "Doctor Roman''s in trouble?" was naturally the conclusion Rika came to. I wasn''t sure it was the wrong one, considering what he''d been doing to himself for the last month or so.

    Mash gasped. "Oh no!"

    "Calm down," I told them, and then I turned back to El-Melloi II. "Did Da Vinci say what she wanted or what the emergency was about?"

    The lollipop came back out with a loud, wet, obnoxious pop. I had the distinct feeling that he was being incredibly passive-aggressive about sucking on it because he was just that annoyed that he wasn''t allowed to smoke.

    "No. Just that she needed you there as soon as possible."

    The worst part of it was that it just wasn''t possible to tell if there was a real, actual emergency or if she was just doing this to get our attention as quickly as she could. With Da Vinci, it really could go either way.

    I looked thoughtfully down at my tray of half-eaten breakfast. Even if my appetite wasn''t up to snuff today, I knew better than to miss out on a meal, especially given my daily workout routine.

    "She can wait until we''ve finished our breakfast," I decided.

    "But Doctor Roman!" Rika protested.

    "Is probably fine," I said. "But if you''re that worried, then you''ll just have to eat a little quicker, won''t you?"

    She did just that. So did I, really, because on the off chance this actually was something incredibly important, it would be better to get down to the infirmary sooner rather than later.

    With our food polished off and the plate and trays returned to Emiya, we set off as a group towards the infirmary. Rika was antsy the entire way and visibly restrained herself from racing off to run through the hallways, and Mash was better off, but anyone who knew her at all could see the anxiety in her posture, in the way she walked and the clench of her fists, in the way she would periodically bite her bottom lip.

    It was starting to make me worried, too. The last time we''d been down the infirmary was¡­what, when we''d woken up after Fuyuki? There hadn''t been a reason to visit since then, and if either of the twins had gone to talk with Romani, well, they were more likely to have visited his office or the Command Room, because that was where he spent most of his time these days.

    So what could this be about, then? His abuse of stimulants aside, Romani had seemed otherwise healthy every time I''d seen him. A little more tired and a little more drawn, and maybe he''d lost some weight, but none of that was unexpected when he was trying to run Chaldea with only twenty staff members.

    What if it wasn''t Romani?

    If anyone noticed the stutter in my step, they didn''t comment on it. Probably too distracted with their own doomsday scenarios.

    What if the emergency was that something had happened with the plan to bring back Marie? Da Vinci had told us that it should work out just fine, but this whole thing was unprecedented. A shoddy, ad hoc plan put together under pressure, and although Da Vinci liked to claim she was an unrivaled genius, she wasn''t perfect. She could make mistakes.

    What if that mistake was that she had messed up preserving Marie''s soul, back at the end of Fuyuki? After all, she''d as good as admitted that the FATE System wasn''t designed for something like that. There were any number of ways it could have gone wrong.

    Most of them would mean that Marie wouldn''t be coming back.

    Romani, healthy and whole, was waiting for us at the entrance to the infirmary, serious and solemn-faced. My stomach dropped. He turned to look as our group arrived.

    "Good," he said, "you''re all here. Thank you for bringing them, Lord El-Melloi II."

    El-Melloi II grunted and noisily shifted the lollipop in his mouth. The stick bobbed from one corner to the other. "You can thank me by setting up a private room I can smoke in."

    Romani laughed a little. "I''ll see what I can do about that."

    "Doctor Roman!" Rika cried. "You''re okay!"

    "Thank goodness." Mash breathed a sigh of relief.

    "Ah?" Romani blinked, bemused. "Oh. Sorry. Did I worry you guys?"

    "El-Melloi II didn''t tell us any details," said Ritsuka. "He just said that you were here and Da Vinci needed us for an emergency."

    "Oh." Romani laughed again. "Sorry about that. No, this is important, but it''s not about me. I''m fine, so don''t worry, okay?"

    "That''s a relief," said Rika.

    "Is it about the Director?" I asked.

    Romani turned to me, sighed, and shook his head ruefully. "I should have realized you were going to pick up on it first. I was hoping to make it a surprise, but I guess there''s no point trying to keep it a secret anymore, is there?"

    "Did something go wrong?" Mash asked worriedly.

    The door to the infirmary whooshed open, and Romani stepped aside, smiling. "Come and see for yourselves."

    My heart thudded in my chest as we walked into the infirmary, and Romani came in with us, leading our group through the rows of stark, empty hospital beds until we reached a drawn curtain, a stiff, yellow thing that was pleated like an accordion. Romani pressed a button on the wall, and with a mechanical whir, the curtain drew back to reveal yet another hospital bed with sterile, white sheets and a boxy, uncomfortable frame.

    The difference between this one and the others was that there was a person in it.

    My heart skipped a beat.

    Rika gasped. "Director Marie!"

    Because the person lying in that bed had long, platinum colored hair and pale skin. The sheet was drawn up over her modest chest, but her arms laid atop it, poking out of the sleeves of a pale blue hospital gown.

    "Shh!" Da Vinci, who sat in a chair beside the bed, pressed her index finger up to her lips. "Don''t startle her awake! What do you think the last thing she remembers is, anyway?"

    Lev trying to kill her. Being sucked into the crushing weight of Chaldeas itself.

    "Sorry!" Rika squeaked sheepishly.

    "Is she okay?" I asked immediately.

    "I kept her body sedated during the entire process, so there was no trouble there," said Da Vinci. "Everything went off without a hitch."

    I sensed a "but" in there. I really didn''t like it when there were "buts" like that.

    "But?"

    Da Vinci sighed. "You really are too sharp, Taylor. I don''t want to worry any of you unnecessarily, but there really isn''t any way to tell if she lost anything during her¡­captivity until she wakes up."

    "Is that likely?" Ritsuka asked before I could.

    "I just said, there''s no way to tell." Da Vinci shook her head. "I did everything I could to pull this off as flawlessly as possible, but this was an emergency procedure from the start. Almost every part of it was completely unprecedented."

    That did nothing to reassure me.

    "Her vital signs are good," Romani chimed in. "No signs of rejection between her soul and her new body. All of her readings match the baseline taken at the Director''s last physical. By all indications, she''s fine."

    That¡­didn''t really reassure me either. There were a lot of things that could go wrong in the margins between "she''s physically okay" and "she''s mentally messed up," and I was better acquainted with those margins than either of them likely were.

    "So we just have to wait for her to wake up," Ritsuka concluded.

    "When?" I asked.

    "As I said before, she was sedated for the procedure," Da Vinci answered. "I took her off of it once I was sure everything had gone correctly and there weren''t any complications. She should be waking up any ¡ª"

    On the bed, Marie drew in a sudden, sharp breath.

    "¡ª minute."

    And then she shot up off the mattress and screamed.

 Chapter LXXIII: Invisible Scars

    Chapter LXXIII: Invisible Scars

    Romani reacted first of the whole group.

    "El-Melloi, Arash, hold her down!" he ordered immediately.

    They leapt into action ¡ª for once, El-Melloi II didn''t complain about "the Second" being left off of his name ¡ª and they each grabbed one of Marie''s shoulders, forcing her back down onto the mattress. Their other hands went to her thighs just above the knee to keep her kicking legs from lashing out at anyone else, leaving her feet and toes to thrash wildly about beneath the bedsheet.

    It didn''t stop her arms from swinging about, landing blows to their stomachs, but Arash ¡ª having had the foresight to remove his armor so she didn''t break her fingers on it ¡ª took it without complaint and El-Melloi II only grunted after the first one hit and was silent thereafter.

    "Gently!" Romani insisted. "We don''t want her to hurt herself!"

    He rushed over to the bedside, squeezing into the space between El-Melloi II and the wall, and from one of his coat''s pockets, he pulled out a small penlight and clicked it on. With one hand, he held Marie''s head as still as he could manage, and with the other, he flashed the light in each of her eyes.

    "Pupillary response is normal," I heard him mutter as Marie gasped down a desperate breath. He stashed the penlight back in his pocket, and then felt along the column of her throat, pressing his fingers underneath her jaw. I didn''t hear what he said next over Marie''s resumed screaming.

    One after the other, Romani checked her vitals for anything physically wrong with her, and I watched helplessly, my heart clenching in my chest every time she opened her mouth to let out another scream, like she was being tortured. Her tormentor, however, was in her head, not physically present, and a surge of vindictive anger boiled in my gut at the memory of Lev, beaten and at our mercy. Lev, cut in half by the very Servant he''d summoned in a last ditch attempt to destroy us and Rome.

    It was too bad we hadn''t been able to bring his body back with us, so that Marie could face the man who killed her and find closure in his corpse.

    Once the shock of seeing her waking up so violently had worn off, however, I realized that this probably wasn''t a great place for the twins to be. They didn''t need to see this ¡ª see their Director breaking down, trapped in the last thing she could remember and screaming incoherently.

    "Mash," I said as I turned to her, "take Ritsuka and Rika and wait outside."

    Mash blinked at me, bewildered. "Miss Taylor?"

    "But Director Marie," Rika began.

    "You can''t do anything here but get in the way," I cut her off, more harshly than I meant to, and Rika actually flinched like I''d physically struck her. The twinge of regret in my belly was summarily ignored. "Go."

    In her bed, Marie had lost the strength for screaming and had descended instead into nonsensical babbling, vacillating between begging Lev for answers and shouting for someone to save her. My hands clenched into fists, and I wanted very much just then to punch something as hard as I could. If I had a choice, Lev Lainur''s smug face. It might not have fixed anything, but feeling his nose shatter under my knuckles would have been very cathartic.

    "Senpai," Ritsuka tried next.

    My first instinct was to say something even harsher, to start making demands, to throw my metaphorical weight around, but I checked that impulse and forced myself to be a little more diplomatic, a little gentler. The man who truly deserved my venom was already dead, after all.

    "I''ll come get you when she''s calmed down a little," I promised, "but for now, you shouldn''t be here. You don''t need to see this."

    They still hesitated, rooted to the spot.

    "Do as she says, please," said Da Vinci. "Unfortunately, things didn''t turn out as we had hoped, so we need a minute to make the Director presentable, okay? She wouldn''t want you to see her like this. Let her at least preserve some dignity, yes?"

    El-Melloi II grunted something, but whatever it was, he didn''t feel like sharing with the rest of us, and if he felt the weight of my eyes on him, he didn''t show it.

    "Come on, Rika, Mash," Ritsuka eventually said. "Let''s go wait outside."

    "Onii-chan!" Rika protested.

    But Ritsuka didn''t back down, and his expression was stern when he turned and addressed her with nothing more than a firm, "Rika."

    Her mouth pulled into a sour line as her brow furrowed, but she caved with a bitter, "Fine."

    He reached out to take her hand, perhaps to lead her out of the room, but she jerked her arm away and followed of her own volition, casting one final look at Marie as she did.

    "Senpai," Mash murmured, and she, too, gave Marie''s bed one more worried glance before she walked after them towards the exit.

    With them out of the way, I turned my focus back towards Marie herself, and I stepped closer to the bed, hovering near the foot and wishing there was something more I could do. The shouting and the babbling had died down, too, and what was left was a sobbing, insensate mess that couldn''t seem to hear him as Romani tried to calmly call her name.

    "You should probably take your own advice," Da Vinci told me quietly as she came to stand next to me. "I don''t think this is something you really need to see, either."

    Maybe it wasn''t. It certainly didn''t make me feel any better about anything to see her so broken. It hadn''t taken too long after Marie took me under her wing two years ago to realize she was something of a fragile mess, but she''d held herself together with sheer determination and a kind of terrible inertia I was all too familiar with. I''d done my best to support her where I could, to repay her for what she''d done for me, but this wasn''t like that at all.

    The Marie I''d met two years ago was a leaning tower. Bowing under the weight of what she was carrying, but still managing to stand in spite of it. The woman in front of me now was shattered.

    As hard as that was to look at, I wouldn''t let myself turn away just because it hurt.

    "She was there for me," I said simply, "so I''m going to be here for her."

    Because this might be her worst, but she''d seen me at my worst. She''d spent six months piecing me back together after Gold Morning. The least I could do was help her to piece herself back together after her own world had ended.

    Da Vinci sighed and shrugged. "Suit yourself."

    Arash glanced in my direction, but whatever he might have thought about that, he kept it to himself. His face gave nothing away.

    Finally, after what felt like an hour of watching Marie helplessly, the worst of it passed as she wore herself out. She was still shaking and sobbing, but she wasn''t kicking, scratching, and flailing anymore, and the screaming and shouting had subsided into slurred mumbling.

    "Director Animusphere," Romani tried again, speaking calmly and clearly, "it''s okay. You''re safe. You''re in the infirmary back at Chaldea."

    This, at last, seemed to get through to her.

    "Ch-Chaldea?" Marie rasped. She shook her head weakly. "C-can''t be. Chaldea''s g-gone. A-all gone. Chaldeas¡­ Lev¡­"

    She choked.

    "Lev¡­ Lev¡­ Why, Lev? Why? What did I do wrong?"

    "Director," Romani cut in before she could descend back into her desperate pleading, "the Fuyuki Singularity was fully resolved. The team made it back without issue. Chaldea hasn''t been destroyed. You''re safe, Director."

    "But Lev," Marie moaned piteously.

    "Lev Lainur isn''t here," Romani told her. "He has no way to hurt you. You''re safe. It''s okay, Director. You can relax."

    She still didn''t seem to believe him. All things considered, especially when the last thing she remembered was Lev''s betrayal, that was probably to be expected.

    "Director," Romani went on, "I''m going to ask El-Melloi and Arash here to let go of your arms and legs. Can you remain calm for me? I don''t want you to hurt yourself."

    Marie whimpered, and my heart clenched in my chest, but Romani took this as some kind of positive sign, as though she''d given him a very confident "yes." He glanced at Arash and El-Melloi II, and he told them, "Gently, now. Slowly let her go. If she starts thrashing again, I don''t want you to go too far."

    Gently, slowly, El-Melloi II and Arash did as he said: they relaxed their firm grips on Marie''s shoulders and thighs and cautiously lifted their hands away from where they''d been holding her down. Marie didn''t even seem to notice.

    "Good," Romani said soothingly. "That''s good. You''re doing great, Director. Now, if you can, please open your eyes."

    Marie whimpered again, and like she was afraid of what she was going to see, she slowly squeezed her eyes open, ready to shut them again if she saw something she didn''t like.

    "See? It''s just like I told you, Director. You''re in the infirmary at Chaldea. It is currently¡­" He checked his watch. "11:36a.m. I''m sorry to tell you that breakfast hours are over."

    Da Vinci groaned and dropped her face into her hand. "Romani¡­"

    "Right, that was in poor taste, wasn''t it?" Romani sighed. "As you can see, Director, we''re still here. You''re still here. Chaldea is still here. We''re safe. You''re safe."

    She looked at him fearfully. "L-Lev?" she whispered, like she was afraid just saying his name too loudly would call him down upon her.

    It just made me want to punch his face again.

    Romani grimaced. "That, I''m afraid, is a little more complicated. You''ve been¡­out of commission for quite a while, Director. There have been¡­new developments since your encounter with him in Fuyuki."

    "He''s gone, Marie," I spoke up for the first time. "I watched him die myself."

    Marie''s eyes swung over towards me. "Hebert," she croaked. It was too broken to read anything into it.

    "And of course, I''m here, too!" Da Vinci said with false cheer. "None other than your humble genius, Da Vinci!"

    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    I saw El-Melloi II''s cheek twitch out of the corner of my eye.

    "L-Lev is¡­gone?" Marie asked hoarsely.

    "He got cut in half," I confirmed. "He''s not coming back from that."

    Marie just sort of¡­deflated, for lack of a better word. Like the air being let out of a balloon. She sagged into the mattress, boneless and weak, all of the fight gone, even if the fear hadn''t quite left yet.

    "Th-there were¡­two more," she mumbled, exhausted. "M-Master candidates¡­there with us. A girl and a¡­boy."

    "Mash, Ritsuka, and Rika are waiting outside," Romani told her gently. "They made it through Fuyuki just fine, too, I promise."

    "G-good¡­"

    And then her eyes fluttered closed and she dozed off again, too spent to stay awake. Romani sighed and stepped away from her bed. He carded a hand through his hair, rubbing at his scalp irritatedly. When he turned towards us, he jerked his head away, and I caught on quickly enough to follow him towards the further end of the infirmary. Da Vinci, El-Melloi II, and Arash weren''t far behind.

    "So the good news is that Da Vinci outdid herself," he said frankly. He pitched his voice low so that he didn''t disturb Marie. "Like I said earlier, all of Director Animusphere''s readings match her last physical to a tee. Medically and biologically speaking, if I didn''t know that it was a puppet Da Vinci made in the Director''s likeness, I wouldn''t even know there was a difference."

    "As if there was any doubt," Da Vinci said smugly.

    "The bad news, of course," Romani went on as though she hadn''t spoken, "is that the last thing she remembered before we¡­restored her was Lev trying to suck her into Chaldeas, which resulted in the very obvious situation you all just saw. If we''re fortunate, she was coherent enough at the end there that she won''t have another episode the next time she wakes up, but unfortunately¡­"

    "It won''t stop the nightmares," I concluded.

    Because what happened to her was the sort of thing that left a mark, one way or another. Saving her life was only half the job.

    Romani shook his head. "I can''t even say that the worst of it is over. The Director is in for a long, hard struggle, and frankly, even once she''s well enough to resume her own duties, there''s still just too much going on for me to dedicate the time and care she needs to make a full recovery. Mentally speaking, I mean."

    "Tch," El-Melloi II grunted. "Like that girl wasn''t neurotic before."

    Romani blinked. "You know Director Animusphere, El-Melloi II?"

    "I am technically a Lord of the Clock Tower, you know," said El-Melloi II. "Even if our timelines are somewhat divergent, they''re similar enough that it''s only natural for me to have met at least some version of Olga Marie Animusphere."

    His lollipop came out of his mouth with another pop.

    "In this case, she was friends with my¡­younger sister. The version I''m familiar with doesn''t seem remarkably different from this one, although this one looks to be even worse adjusted than the one I know." He grunted again. "I didn''t even think that was possible. Just what is her karma, anyway?"

    No one seemed to have an answer for that. Even Da Vinci was completely devoid of any witty comment, her face solemn and serious.

    "Do you have any ideas for how to help her, then?" asked Romani.

    "I''m no therapist," El-Melloi II groused sourly. "Besides, I already said that she was really closer with my younger sister than with me. Even if I''m familiar enough to recognize her name and face, my knowledge of her personality is all either surface level or secondhand. You all should know her better than what little scraps I have."

    Romani sighed. "Yeah, I guess that''s how it is, isn''t it? I got my hopes up for a second there."

    So had I. I guess I''d been getting used to El-Melloi II being a contemporary and coming from a background more like Romani''s than the twins''. It made the things he didn''t already know stand out even more.

    "Are we going to have to put her on suicide watch?" I asked lowly.

    The Marie I knew six months ago would never even think of it. Her self-destructive habits were always driven by her anxiety and her issues with her self-esteem, never intentionally self-sabotaging. Her tendency to overthink things was what got her so worked-up and high-strung, and that was why she could start to spiral whenever she felt like she screwed up.

    But the Marie I knew six months ago hadn''t been stabbed in the back by the one man she had trusted to always stand beside her, nor had to watch her family''s life''s work crumble around her like a sandcastle, and that Marie hadn''t been consigned to an infinite living death ¡ª and then saved by the narrowest of margins.

    "There''s enough of us here," Arash said. "I''m sure if I spoke to the others, they would all agree to take shifts so we could keep watch on Director Animusphere, just in case."

    Romani grimaced and glanced back at Marie''s bed.

    "It''s too soon to tell for sure," he said. "As someone who knows her personally, I want to say that she would never do such a thing, but as a medical professional, I have to acknowledge that her mental state right now is almost certainly very precarious. It''s difficult to say whether or not she''s going to experience suicidal ideation."

    "It would be a good idea to have someone on watch by her bed at all times anyway." Da Vinci hummed. "It¡­might also be possible to make a dreamcatcher to help with any nightmares she might have, but¡­"

    "Dreamcatcher?" asked Arash. "I''m not familiar with that term."

    "It''s a Native American thing," I explained to him. "A protective charm that''s supposed to protect you from bad dreams." I turned to Da Vinci. "But what?"

    She sighed. "Well, naturally, the most effective way of tapping into the foundation of a mystery like that would be to make it according to traditional methods. Unfortunately, here in Antarctica, you might have noticed that we''re somewhat lacking in willow trees, and while it might be possible to make up some of the difference by reenacting the mythology behind a dreamcatcher, we''re also lacking in female spider goddesses. Spiders in general, as well."

    Yes, we were, I realized, but we also had the next best thing, didn''t we? Maybe it was a little arrogant to think so, and even if you stretched it as much as you could, I''d never had an ounce of actual Divinity in my body, but metaphorically, didn''t I count?

    Or maybe I was just grasping at straws.

    "Da Vinci," I began slowly, "are you still willing to make that puppet you offered the other day?"

    Da Vinci''s brow furrowed, and she regarded me with skeptical confusion. "That spider puppet? Well, yes, I don''t see why not, but I''m not sure I understand your sudden interest."

    My hand rose, almost of its own will, to my hair, the long, silky black hair I had spent the last two years regrowing and repairing in the aftermath of Gold Morning. My last connection to my mother, my last connection to my past life, and aside from a few bits and bobs I''d had on me when I was dropped here, the last physical proof I had that everything I went through was real.

    Marie had approved of my growing it long again. She said that there was power in a female mage''s long hair. That it had mystical properties of its own. That it could be used in many ways.

    "I''m not a goddess," I prefaced the beginning of my idea, "but if I used that spider puppet and wove the dreamcatcher from my own hair, do you think it would help?"

    Da Vinci blinked, surprised. "Oh."

    "I feel like I''m missing something here," Romani complained. "Da Vinci, why is Taylor asking if weaving a dreamcatcher from her own hair using a spider puppet would make it more powerful?"

    "The mythology of the dreamcatcher is that it was first woven by Asibikaashi, the Spider Grandmother," Da Vinci said slowly. "That''s why it''s known as the spider web charm in the culture it originated from. As for why she''s offering to use her own hair¡­ As a man, Romani, I suppose you wouldn''t know, but for female magi, long hair has its own sort of power."

    She looked back at me, her eyes boring straight into mine. "It''s a little too extreme to say that she''s offering to cripple herself, but it''s not too far off of the mark either."

    Romani balked. "H-hang on, that''s going a little too far, isn''t it? No one needs to cripple themself! We just brought the Director back, that''s already pretty miraculous!"

    "Speaking frankly, it''s all theoretical anyway," Da Vinci admitted. "That spider puppet should be more than enough weaving with ordinary silk; using Taylor''s hair instead might make it more effective in some ways, but silk has a cleaner connection to the mythology, so the tradeoff might not be worth it."

    She was giving me an out. I could see it. A way to save face and take it back, agree with her idea instead.

    I didn''t take it.

    "Does it have to be silk, or is the fact a spider is weaving it enough?"

    What was my hair compared to Marie''s safety?

    Da Vinci''s lips pursed. "Well, it''s immaterial right now anyway," she hedged. "There isn''t yet a spider puppet, so we can''t make the dreamcatcher on short notice, and the issue remains that Director Animusphere shouldn''t be left alone until we can."

    El-Melloi II grunted. "So are we going to set up a rotation then? There are¡­what, seven Servants in this place, if we just talk about the ones contracted to the Masters? It shouldn''t be too hard to figure out shifts."

    "I''m¡­not sure Shakespeare is the safest Servant to have around someone in the Director''s condition," Da Vinci said delicately. "It might be self-defeating."

    He''d been behaving well since he was summoned, but I could see what she meant. From what few interactions I''d had with him, Shakespeare struck me more as a man to pick at a scab to see what new and interesting ways it might bleed than to intervene in someone''s mental breakdown.

    "Six, then," El-Melloi II corrected himself. "Four hours each¡­ Sounds reasonable enough."

    "And us Masters?" I asked.

    He glanced at me. "I didn''t consider you three a part of the equation. After all, we Servants don''t need to eat or sleep, so we don''t have to worry about drifting off if we''re bored or getting distracted by hunger."

    "If you think that''s going to stop Ritsuka and Rika from coming to visit her whenever they get the chance, then you don''t know them very well at all."

    And I had no intention of sitting in my room or the library while I waited for word about how Marie''s recovery was going.

    "I would want a Servant here in any case," Romani said. "No offense to Ritsuka and Rika, but they don''t have any real way of holding her down if she wakes up determined to do¡­anything, really. Marie is a classically trained magus, after all."

    "With all of the pitfalls that entails," El-Melloi II added dryly.

    "It''s not like it''s going to be an overly long wait," Da Vinci chimed in. "She''s just asleep, not in a medically induced coma. She should only be out for another few hours, a day at most. As long as she''s coherent, I can''t see any reason not to discharge her to her own quarters."

    Romani shook his head. "Even after she wakes up, I want someone with her at all times for at least the first week. Until you can put together that¡­dreamcatcher, you called it? Until you can put that together, it''s very likely she''s going to be waking up very violently for the foreseeable future."

    El-Melloi II sucked noisily on his lollipop. "However we do it, we''re going to have to find something that works around our respective schedules," he said. "After all, several of us do have other responsibilities that take up our time. It''s not all just leisure." He pinned Romani with a stare, arching one eyebrow. "Unless you''d like to take over Emiya''s cooking duties, Acting Director, or maybe my magecraft lessons with Ritsuka and Rika."

    Romani winced and shook his head again. "No, you''re right. We''re going to have to make sure there''s some structure to this whole situation. It''s too important to just wing it the whole way through."

    "I can take extra shifts to cover for the others, if I have to," Arash offered.

    Romani worried his bottom lip.

    "That might actually be necessary," he admitted. "Arash, I''ll leave the organizing to you, so if you could have a shift rotation in my hands before the hour''s out, that would be a lifesaver."

    "I can get right on that."

    "Go," I told him. "Siegfried first. If you''re having trouble finding A¨ªfe, let me know and I''ll get in contact with her."

    Arash bowed his head and vanished into spirit form. I couldn''t actually feel him like that, but the skin on my right arm prickled as though a brief breeze passed by me, and I wasn''t sure whether that was a psychosomatic response or some sort of warning system Da Vinci had put into the prosthetic without telling me.

    I almost told him that he could find A¨ªfe in the library, but she''d probably appreciate it if that secret stayed between us, so I decided to keep both my literal and metaphorical mouth shut.

    Romani sighed. "There''s that part taken care of." He turned to the door, smiling grimly. "Next, we should probably talk to those three about what just happened, huh?"

    "Rika will probably claw her way into the room if we leave them too long," said Da Vinci.

    He grimaced. "Right." He glanced at El-Melloi II. "For now, El-Melloi II, could you keep an eye on the Director?"

    El-Melloi II grunted. "Well, at least she''s old enough now that I''m not literally babysitting her."

    He turned away and stalked back over to Marie''s bed. I honestly didn''t have any idea what she would think if she woke up to find him hovering over her, sour-faced and sucking on a lollipop. Whatever her reaction was, I was certain we''d hear it before we saw it.

    The door of the infirmary whooshed open, and the three teenagers on the other side almost tumbled through it from how closely they''d been crowded around it. Luckily, they hadn''t actually been leaning on it, trying to listen through to hear what was going on, so they caught themselves before they could wind up in a pile on the floor.

    "Is Director Marie okay?" Rika blurted out immediately.

    "Physically, there''s nothing wrong with her," Romani answered calmly. "I double checked all of her vitals, and she''s as healthy as any woman her age, all things considered. Mentally, on the other hand, I''m afraid she''s not doing all that hot."

    "It''s because the last thing she remembers¡­it''s the end of Fuyuki, right?" asked Ritsuka. "When she almost¡­"

    "Professor Lev," Mash mumbled.

    "Fooou," the little gremlin on her shoulder growled.

    "That''s what it looks like, yeah." In the worst case scenario¡­ I didn''t really want to imagine what it would have been like if she was stuck in the FATE System, unable to interact with anything, trapped in that moment of being about to die for the past few months. I''d seen that sort of horror firsthand. "It''s too soon to know more without talking to her first."

    It seemed I would be spending many moments in the upcoming days wishing we had managed to bring Lev''s corpse back from Rome. I didn''t know if it would be good for her in the short term, but giving Marie the chance to confront him and find closure would have been worth the trouble.

    "Who''s the medical professional here, again?" Romani asked me wryly. "In any case, Taylor''s right. So far, it looks like the Director''s last memory was of those final moments before we Rayshifted you out of Fuyuki, so it''s only natural that she reacted the way she did when she woke up. Hopefully, we managed to calm her down enough that the next time she wakes up, it''ll be significantly less¡­ Well, less violent."

    "The next time she wakes up?" Rika parroted.

    "She tuckered herself out," said Da Vinci. "She fell back to sleep a few minutes ago, so she''ll probably be sleeping for another few hours."

    "El-Melloi II is keeping watch right now," I told them. "I sent Arash ahead to talk to the other Servants so we can set up a rotation and keep an eye on her until she wakes up again."

    "Is she going to be okay?" Mash asked.

    I looked to Romani, and he took that as his cue: "Like I said, physically, she''s fine. There''s nothing to worry about there. Mentally¡­ It''s not that easy. Trauma like what she went through always leaves a mark, even if it isn''t physical. Some scars can''t be seen with the naked eye."

    "Is there anything we can do?" asked Ritsuka. "To help, I mean."

    Romani sighed. "Time," he said wearily. "Patience. It''s still too soon to know the extent of how this is going to affect her, but just from what little we''ve seen¡­ She''s probably going to be more irritable, more prone to flying off the handle, more emotional. Yelling back if she starts shouting isn''t going to help at all, so even if you have to bite your tongue, don''t push back."

    I looked deliberately at Rika as he said this. She noticed.

    "So we''re just supposed to take it if she starts ripping into us?" Rika asked.

    "In a word? Yes," said Romani. "I''m not expecting you to be a saint. Any of you. She won''t accept it if you walk on eggshells around her either, so don''t do that. But don''t provoke her, and if she provokes you, don''t fall for it, okay? The most important thing is that she feels safe, and yelling isn''t going to help with that at all."

    "Easy for you to say," Rika grumbled.

    "Rika," her brother chided sternly.

    "I know, I know," she muttered irritably. "I''ll behave. I do know how to do that, you know."

    I think that was the best we were going to get from her, at least right then. If I needed to pull her aside later, then I would, but for now, I was willing to let it drop.

    Ritsuka turned back to Romani. "Can we see her? Now, I mean?"

    "I don''t think a kiss is going to fix this sleeping beauty, Onii-chan."

    This time, both her brother and I fixed her with a stern stare, and she sighed, folding immediately, "Fine, I know. I''m shutting up."

    "As long as you''re quiet," said Romani, pretending the whole exchange hadn''t happened. "The last thing we need is for her to wake up to loud voices, or worse, shouting, so as long as you keep your voices down and don''t get too noisy, there''s no reason why you can''t visit her for a few minutes."

    "We can do that," Ritsuka promised immediately.

    Next to him, Rika mimed zipping her lips. It was an oddly American gesture ¡ª but then, it wasn''t the first such thing I''d seen from her, was it?

    "As long as you keep that in mind¡­" Romani trailed off, and after a moment, he stepped aside to let them into the infirmary. "Okay. Watch your step. It would be pretty embarrassing to go through all of this trouble just to wake her up by accidentally kicking a chair, right?"

    Cautiously, carefully, he led the twins and Mash back into the room. I brought up the rear, trying to ignore the way Fou kept one ear trained in my direction the entire time. Marie, as we came upon her, looked peaceful ¡ª tired, worn, exhausted, but sleeping untroubled.

    My own dreams probably weren''t going to be particularly pleasant tonight.

 Chapter LXXIV: Lingering Shadows

    Chapter LXXIV: Lingering Shadows

    Someone once said that there was freedom in having nothing left to lose. What they did not add was that such a freedom was a terrible, awful freedom, an aimless freedom, like a sword in the hand of a battle-drunk berserker, like as not to cut the wielder as it was to cleave a path open in front of him.

    Rapidly leaving the prime of her life, it was this very sort of freedom that A¨ªfe found herself cursed with.

    Seven years had passed since the day when A¨ªfe''s fate had been irrevocably changed. Seven long years since her record as an indomitable warrior, her streak of flawless victories, had been broken by a callow upstart too clever for his own good. Seven years of raising a young boy who was too perfect a combination of her and his father for her to do anything less than love him.

    Much had languished in that time. Although the sisters now could train with each other and sharpen their skills against one another with impunity, it was hollow and unsatisfying, because the geis which bound her prevented her from giving her all against Sc¨¢thach, and therefore from pushing their limits together. Their schools had undergone a sort of merging. Their students had become foster brothers instead of rivals. In the aftermath of that battle, the sisters shared their teachings together, and the shadow of the great Sc¨¢thach loomed over her sibling once more.

    Slowly, the legend of A¨ªfe, the strongest warrior woman in the world, faded away. The great warrior whose name had inspired awe and dread had become instead a mother, and she did as she promised, imparting as many of her skills as she possibly could onto her son. She turned a young boy of seven into a warrior without peer, without equal, the pinnacle of Irish martial prowess that could stand even with the greatest names in all of ¨¦ire.

    Already, that young boy was dead. A¨ªfe knew it in her bones.

    What was left, then? Her school had been subsumed. Her legend had been overshadowed. Her son had met his fate on the end of his father''s cursed spear, as she knew he would before she even sent him off with that accursed thumb ring.

    Damn him for binding her to that oath. Damn her for thinking how satisfying a revenge it would be to make father and son fight one another, without realizing that she could ever come to care about either, let alone both.

    There was nothing more for her now. Not in ¨¦ire. Maybe not even in all of Alba, in all of Gaul. Not when her only son was dead, not when her sister''s shadow consumed her, and not when no student she trained could ever hope to match the Hound that brought such glory to Ulster and to Sc¨¢thach that his name would surely echo on for centuries.

    "You''re leaving, then."

    The voice was calm and even. A¨ªfe turned to face her sister for the last time. Her ever-youthful sister, who had not changed in the slightest in almost ten years.

    She, the undefeated Sc¨¢thach, had already reached her zenith, and in doing so, she had left humanity behind. A¨ªfe was jealous ¡ª envious of the chance that had been stolen from her, the possibility that, if not for that one, humiliating moment, they could have spent eternity together, constantly battling, constantly growing, constantly exceeding their limits. How amazing that would have been. How incredible. What new heights might they have reached, if only that future hadn''t been robbed from them?

    Instead, there they stood, one sister aging and the other eternally young, one forever in her prime and the other inching away from it.

    "There is nothing left here for me," A¨ªfe answered.

    Sc¨¢thach nodded and accepted it as it was. "If you leave, then you won''t be able to return."

    "You''re closing the gate." It wasn''t a question, merely a statement of fact. "Even if I stayed, what would become of me? In this one way, you have surpassed me, sister. You have stepped beyond the realm of mere men and cannot die. Were the gate to close with me inside, then I would become nothing more than another one of its restless ghosts."

    A¨ªfe had lost much, but she was not willing to become such a thing. To stay with Sc¨¢thach and debase herself, the only result would be endless regret and an ignoble death. An eternity by her sister''s side, howling her grief and her envy with every moment.

    "I wish you well," were the last words Sc¨¢thach ever said to her beloved sister.

    "I hope one day you find someone who can kill you," were the last words A¨ªfe ever said to her beloved sister.

    That was how the sisters parted ways, and that was how A¨ªfe left the Land of Shadows to continue the journey that had ended when she came back to test herself against Sc¨¢thach. Many great battles awaited her, many challenges, but the legend of the greatest woman warrior in the world had already ended.

    "Master?"

    A hand on my shoulder jolted me awake, and my book clattered to the floor as I startled in my seat. Arash ¡ª or a blur that looked like him ¡ª stepped back, and he came into clearer focus when I pushed my glasses back up my nose from where they had slid down.

    "Arash?" The evidence clicked in my head and I came to the only conclusion I could have. "I fell asleep?"

    And had another dream about A¨ªfe''s life. This time, what she''d done with it after Connla left. How many more was I going to have?

    "Yeah," Arash said softly. "My shift is almost over, so I thought I''d wake you up and let you know."

    He reached down and scooped up my book, then handed it back to me. I accepted it with a quiet "thanks," and gave up for the moment figuring out where I''d left off. I didn''t even remember nodding off.

    Marie, when I looked over, was still out like a light, Muninn perched over her bed like a silent guardian. The room lighting had been dimmed so that she didn''t wake up to the bright, sterile glare of the overhead lights, casting her in a soft glow that smoothed down the more haggard edges of her face. It made her look more her age than she had in almost all the time I''d known her.

    "No change?"

    "None," Arash confirmed. "She''s been like that the whole time. Hasn''t moved except to breathe."

    That was worrying, but also a little reassuring. It meant that she probably hadn''t fallen into any more nightmares, a minor blessing amidst this fucked up mess she was in. At least we could say that much.

    "Any word from Da Vinci or Romani?"

    He shook his head a little. "No, but it''s been less than half a day, Master. I know Da Vinci''s incredible, but even she isn''t a miracle worker."

    Right. Of course. Expecting Da Vinci to have put together that spider puppet or that dreamcatcher in less than twelve hours was maybe a little bit unreasonable. My impatience was not going to make it go any faster.

    I sighed and rolled my shoulders, wincing slightly at the hitch where the right met my neck. That was what I got for falling asleep in a chair like this.

    "Who''s next in the rotation?"

    Arash hummed thoughtfully. "Well, it''s still technically the dinner hours, so Emiya''s still busy in the cafeteria. I think¡­it should be Bradamante who''s coming down to relieve me. Speaking of dinner, Master, I think this is a good time for you to step away and eat some of your own."

    As though to agree with him, my stomach gurgled its dissatisfaction before I could rebut his suggestion, punctuated by a sharp, empty pang in my gut. My lips pulled tight into a grimace ¡ª I''d eaten a small, modest lunch so that I didn''t have to be away from the infirmary for longer than was strictly necessary, and I think I was feeling that now.

    My eyes moved of their own accord to Marie and lingered on her still body, her placid face and the mess of her hair, tousled by the pillows and her earlier thrashing. She showed no sign of waking up again anytime soon, but that could change at any moment, including while I was off eating dinner.

    My attention, of course, didn''t go unnoticed. Arash''s eyes were too sharp for that.

    "Director Animusphere isn''t going anywhere now," he told me. "What would she say if she knew you were starving yourself for her sake?"

    An image popped into my head as though summoned, of Marie scolding me for not taking better care of myself, lecturing me about how my health was the most important thing for my duties as a Master of Chaldea. Against my will, my mouth threatened to curl into a smile.

    Even still, I didn''t want to leave. Romani and Da Vinci were perfectly amicable colleagues, but Marie was the closest friend I''d had in the last two years, and I owed her a lot. My life, for one. My position in Chaldea, for another. The dedication she''d shown in making sure I was ready for the challenges I would face here, and that itself was a huge debt.

    But that also meant I owed it to her to take care of myself, because she would and had chastised me before for endangering my health. One skipped meal might not kill me, but she wouldn''t accept that as an excuse for missing it.

    In the end, that was what wound up convincing me. I sighed.

    "Fine, I''ll go."

    Because I really wouldn''t do anyone any good if I collapsed from hunger.

    I reached for my book and frowned down at the cover. I couldn''t remember where I''d left off last, so there probably wasn''t any point in trying to find my place right now. The bookmark slid into the protection of the front cover smoothly, left for later use.

    With a soft grunt, I stood, trying to ignore the dull ache that felt like someone had superglued the muscles in my neck together. Might have to see about going to Da Vinci or Romani and asking them if they could fix that for me, because it was really annoying.

    "The twins probably want a status update, too," I said.

    "Probably," Arash agreed. "They''re good kids like that, worrying over someone they barely know."

    They really were, weren''t they? I didn''t know that it was necessarily the best trait to have when you were trying to save the world, though. Trying to save absolutely everyone was a recipe for either failure or burnout, neither of which would serve them well for obvious reasons. It was like I''d told them before: sometimes, you had to make the hard choices.

    Maybe I should have added the caveat that you should start to worry when those choices became easier. Down that road led to the likes of Alexandria and Cauldron.

    "Right," I said. "I''ll leave you to the rest of your shift. I''ll go get something to eat before I come back here."

    "Not a big fan of Bradamante?"

    I shook my head. "It''s more that she gets along better with the twins than she does with me."

    Probably because she was a romantic hero ¡ª in the classical literature sense of the term ¡ª rather than an antiquity hero. Those sorts were all about rescuing the princess and love conquering all, the kind of do-gooders that had inspired modern views of what heroes were. The type of hero, in other words, whose deeds were good rather than grand, because grand got you remembered forever, but good got you remembered fondly.

    It said something about Earth Bet that we''d had several "grand" heroes, but so very few "good" ones.

    "Well, you can''t force people to be friends," said Arash. "Some people just naturally don''t get along."

    Wasn''t that the truth?

    I made my way to the door, but stopped before I could leave and looked back one last time at Marie. Nothing had changed in the few seconds between leaving my seat and reaching the door.

    "I''m going to leave Muninn here to keep an eye out, but¡­ Let me know if she starts to wake up?"

    I meant it as more of an imperative statement, not quite an order, but somewhere between my brain and my mouth, it became a question.

    Arash smiled. "Of course."

    The door whirred shut behind me. Some part of me wanted to turn around and go back inside, but as though it was deliberately presenting a counterargument, my stomach chose that moment to gurgle again and beg me for food. Like it was saying, "you promised you''d feed me!" and it turned out that was a very convincing viewpoint.

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    The cafeteria was my next destination, and I made my way there, wishing, not for the first time, that Chaldea wasn''t quite so big. It was convenient, at times, when I just wanted some solitude, because it was basically a gigantic college campus smushed together into a single, large building, but it made for quite the journey getting from one part of it to another. If something happened with Marie, it would be over before I could get from the cafeteria back to the infirmary.

    On the other hand, it meant we had a sizable gymnasium and a library to rival the legendary Alexandrian one, and both of those were very much appreciated. Especially since we couldn''t have safely gone outside even before this whole mess started.

    The cafeteria door swung open in front of me as I approached, and I went inside to find that about a quarter of the remaining staff were having their dinner break. That made it sound like more than it was ¡ª only about five people, plus the twins and Mash. I spared a brief thought about whether the staggered shifts Romani had set up to keep everyone on a healthy sleep schedule meant that Emiya technically spent all day every day cooking, but he didn''t seem put out by it, so I guess it wasn''t that important.

    "Senpai!"

    Naturally, of course, Ritsuka and Rika spotted me immediately. The place was designed to fit over a hundred people and there were less than ten inside, so it wasn''t all that hard.

    "Be with you in a minute, Rika," I told her. My stomach gurgled again as the smell of Emiya''s cooking reached my nose. Something fruity and spicy ¡ª lemon? Had he brought some back with him from Rome?

    If he did, he didn''t say so as he set a large piece of chicken on a plate for me and drizzled a sweet and sour honey lemon sauce over it, then added some rice ¡ª of course, because he had to be a stereotype, too ¡ª and some steamed vegetables. It looked and smelled heavenly.

    "Something a little more Western this time," he told me with a cryptic smile. "Change things up a little, you know?"

    "Of course."

    "Master seems to like it," he said, shrugging. "So did the others who have already eaten. You''ll have to let me know if you enjoy it as much as they do."

    "I don''t think anyone enjoys your food as much as Rika does," I told him wryly.

    He smiled cryptically again. "Oh, there''s someone. She ate like a lion."

    "That''s all you''re going to tell me, isn''t it."

    "I wonder."

    I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who it was anyway. I could always be wrong, because he hadn''t told us much about his past, but what little we did know gave a likely enough answer.

    Tray in hand, I left Emiya and went over to where the twins and Mash were sitting, already done with their own dinners. I knew better than to think that I could get out of giving them what they wanted, so rather than beat around the bush, I just picked a chair at their table and sat down.

    Not for the first time, I lamented the hard plastic of the standard issue cafeteria chairs that some paper-pusher years ago had decided were the right choice to match the tables, designed as they were to be easily fixed and replaceable in the case they were damaged. At least the visitors'' chairs down in the infirmary were padded and more comfortable. My neck wouldn''t be the only thing that was sore if I''d fallen asleep in one of these instead.

    "So?" Rika asked immediately.

    "No change," I answered, and then I started to dig into my food. I deliberately ignored the little white monster perched on Mash''s shoulder like it was his nest.

    Rika groaned.

    "I-it''s not like she''s doing this on purpose, Senpai!" Mash told her. "Director Animusphere won''t wake up faster just because we want her to!"

    "I know," Rika said sourly. "But still! We''ve been worried about her for months! I''m gonna get an ulcer at this rate!"

    "Fou, fou!"

    Ritsuka sighed, then turned back to me. "At least that means she''s resting peacefully, right?"

    "It looks that way."

    And I hoped so. The lack of fitful sleep didn''t mean she wasn''t having nightmares, but if she was, at least they weren''t violent and disruptive enough to wake her up.

    Da Vinci couldn''t make that dreamcatcher fast enough.

    Until then, the only thing I could really do was hope that Marie''s motionless sleep meant that she wasn''t dealing with nightmares. She''d been through enough that she didn''t need to relive it every time she closed her eyelids. She deserved to dream happy dreams, and if she couldn''t have that, then to sleep dreamlessly.

    Unfortunately, trauma didn''t work that way, and everyone responded to it differently.

    "Ugh," Rika grunted. "This is all that asshole''s fault. And he seemed like such a cool guy when we first met him, too!"

    I stopped long enough to swallow and ask, "Lev, you mean?"

    The twins both nodded. "We met him shortly before the whole¡­sabotage," he said. "Right before Director Marie''s orientation ¡ª"

    "That she kicked us out of," Rika supplied helpfully. "Which is probably the only reason we''re still kicking instead of Master-cicles, so that worked out, I guess."

    "¡ª and he was actually really helpful," Ritsuka finished, as though his sister hadn''t spoken. "Nice, too. He seemed very kind."

    "Turns out, that was all an act," said Rika. "Who knew, right? Guess he pulled the wool over everyone''s eyes, though, because no one saw it coming in Fuyuki."

    Mash sighed. "It still feels unbelievable, sometimes. Professor Lev was one of the founding members of Chaldea as we know it today. The SHEBA Lens was even his own personal invention. Our mission wouldn''t be possible without him, and yet¡­"

    And yet, he''d still betrayed us, killed about a hundred and eighty people on our staff alone, and had tried to condemn Marie to a miserable death. For all that the Lev most of us had known was a fairly congenial person with a mild personality, when the mask came off, the thing underneath was a monster.

    I wish I could say I knew better. That I''d cottoned on to his duplicitous nature and realized early that there was something about him that wasn''t right. That I''d never trusted him at all. But the truth was that he''d fooled me, too, and it was only the nature of what had happened in Fuyuki that had clued me in that there was something wrong at all.

    It didn''t stop me from being satisfied at the way he''d eventually died. For the sake of Marie''s peace of mind, if nothing else.

    I went back to my food and continued eating. The sweet and sour tang exploded on my tongue with every bite ¡ª delicious, just like everything else Emiya had ever cooked. Fugly Bob''s just couldn''t compare, and while the regular cafeteria staff had tried their best, even their best was woefully inadequate when put up against Emiya''s regular fare.

    "Well, I guess we came out ahead, in the end," Rika said wryly. "Sure, we lost a lot of people, but we saved Director Marie and he''s kinda dead now."

    "Senpai!" Mash sputtered.

    "That''s a¡­unique way of putting it," Ritsuka said diplomatically.

    "I mean, it sucks," Rika said. "Even if we never knew them, all of those people died, and they didn''t deserve to die, and even if we save the rest of the world, they''ll still be gone. At least he bit it, too, though, right? I think we can call that one karmic justice."

    How uncharacteristically serious of her, I thought, looking at Rika out of the corner of my eye. I guess there were things even she could be solemn about.

    Mash sighed again. "Still. I would have liked to know¡­why it was he did what he did. I-I imagine Director Animusphere would, too."

    "Fou¡­"

    I did, too, but I wasn''t going to lose sleep over it. Flauros, he''d called himself, both in Fuyuki and in Septem. If we were right about the meaning behind that name, then it seemed like a pretty clear cut case of demonic possession ¡ª as clear cut as something like that ever was. Whatever the endgame was behind these Singularities, I was sure we would find more evidence over the course of the next ones, and even if we never found out the why, that didn''t really matter as long as we stopped their plans.

    But I was willing to bet we were going to find out more as we went. I had serious doubts that this "king" Flauros had gone on and on about had just the one subordinate flitting about to muck things up. In fact, I was willing to bet he probably had something like seventy-one more underlings involved one way or the other.

    So that probably meant more giant tentacle monsters in the future. I was going to have to work strategies for dealing with that into our training program, wasn''t I?

    "Ah, geez!" Rika suddenly burst out. "That got way too heavy! Senpai, say something ridiculous so I can make a joke about how much of a badass you are!"

    I swallowed before asking, "Like what?"

    "You said you made that dragon you fought shrivel up in a not-so-fun way, right? Did you, like, mount any of it on your wall or something? Because I''m wondering how big a trophy you walked away with!"

    A surprised snort ripped through my nostrils, and if I''d still had food in my mouth, I would have been choking on it.

    "S-Senpai!" Mash sputtered again.

    "Fou, fou-kyu!"

    Ritsuka buried his face in his hands, shoulders hunched, and groaned.

    Well, of all the questions I thought I would be asked about my fights with Lung, whether or not I kept his manhood as a trophy wasn''t one I''d ever considered before. That was probably why I should have expected it to come out of Rika''s mouth eventually.

    "No," I got out once I was sure my voice wouldn''t crack. I wasn''t sure how calm I managed to sound. "Necrotizing flesh doesn''t work like that. It would have been more like it just kind of¡­melted off of his body."

    Don''t make me go into more detail, I asked her silently. I was trying to eat, after all.

    Rika looked both disgusted and fascinated at the same time. "So does that mean ¡ª"

    Ritsuka''s hand slapped over her mouth, cutting her off before she could ask me to explain how Lung''s crotch rotting off worked. I sent him a grateful look, and he met it with a pained grimace, his face red from ear to ear.

    And then his expression twisted, and he pulled his hand away from Rika''s mouth so he could wipe it on his trousers. "Rika!"

    She stuck her tongue out at him.

    "I never kept souvenirs or trophies of my enemies after I beat them," I went on, hoping this would crush any followup question, "because that''s the sort of thing psychopaths and serial killers do."

    I''d had a front row seat to exactly that kind of person, after all. One had almost cut my head open so she could play around with my brain.

    Rika opened her mouth, and for one of the only times since I''d known her, thought better of what she''d been about to say, and closed it again.

    An awkward silence descended, and I focused back on my food. Thinking about that sort of thing hadn''t done my appetite any favors, but my stomach still needed food and my body still needed sustenance, so even if I''d been put off what was still an excellent meal, I kept eating.

    "Senpai," Mash eventually picked up, "how was your lesson with El-Melloi II today?"

    Ritsuka looked relieved at the change in subject.

    "We''re still going over the basics," he said. "We might know how to use our magic circuits, but there''s still so much that we need to get caught up on. It''s kind of overwhelming."

    "He called us amateurs." Rika huffed. "Which, I mean, yeah, we are, but still! It''s the principle of the thing! Hot Pops might be cool, but that doesn''t mean he has to be mean about it!"

    "I think he''d be a lot nicer if you stopped calling him Hot Pops¡­"

    "Too bad! No one escapes the Rika branded nickname! It''s my trademark!"

    Between the two of them, they somehow managed to tell the story of their lessons with El-Melloi II. To listen to them, it sounded an awful lot like my early magecraft lessons, back when I first joined Chaldea, only missing a stern tutor with a strict standard, and El-Melloi II sure sounded like he was trying his best to fill that role.

    They were still years behind. One week wasn''t anywhere near enough time to get them even close to where most of the Master candidates had been when they signed up, let alone at the level of someone like Wodime.

    Fortunately, that left them sufficiently distracted for me to finish my meal without any further interruptions, and when I was done, I left them to go and deliver my tray and my used plate to Emiya.

    I was halfway back to my seat when a foreign presence pressed up against my mind.

    Master, come quick! Bradamante shouted across our link. From the way Ritsuka and Rika staggered, I wasn''t the only one she was contacting. The Madam Director has woken up!

    Shit.

    I clambered for the door, changing direction abruptly. My heart pounded anxiously in my chest, and it was all I could do to navigate my way through the cafeteria instead of just running out without a care for what was in my way.

    "We''re on our way, Tii-chan!" Rika shouted back, because she''d apparently forgotten in all the excitement that she could respond mentally.

    The instant I was out of the cafeteria, I took off at a run. The twins and Mash were a bit slower on the uptake, but they weren''t far behind me, and as my feet carried me towards the infirmary, I cast my attention towards Muninn, who was already there.

    "¡ª going to ask you again!" Marie was shouting. Her arm was raised, her fingers pointing at Bradamante, ready and willing to cast a Gandr the instant she was provoked. She was leaned against the wall behind her bed, her sheets tangled around her legs. She must have panicked when she woke up and scrambled to get back from Bradamante until she found herself pressed up against the wall ¡ª quite literally.

    "Madam Director, please calm down!" Bradamante shouted back from across the room, as far from Marie''s bed as she could get. Her hands were raised so as to present herself as non-threatening.

    "Don''t tell me to calm down!" Marie bit back. "Chaldea is one of the most secure facilities on the planet, second only to the Clock Tower! Now tell me who you are and how you got here! I''m not going to ask you again!"

    "Madam Director ¡ª"

    "Marie!" I cut in, projecting my voice from Muninn.

    Marie squeaked and jumped, conking her head back against the wall, and then she slumped, groaning, and pressed her hand to what was no doubt going to be a painful lump.

    Muninn took off from her perch and landed softly on Marie''s bed, looking up at her from the tangled sheets just below her feet. Muninn''s beak opened, and I spoke through her some more.

    "Director," I began more formally, "this is Bradamante, Lancer class Servant. She''s been contracted with Chaldea. You can consider her an ally."

    "Hebert¡­?" Marie squinted one eye open, looking down at Muninn. "You¡­ That''s right, Da Vinci made you those puppets, didn''t she? Wait." Both eyes went wide. "Lancer class Servant? Contracted with Chaldea? When did that happen?"

    "In France!" Bradamante chimed in, unhelpfully.

    "France?" Marie sputtered.

    "You''re in the infirmary, Director," I went on calmly as though Bradamante hadn''t spoken. "I''m on my way there now. I''ll explain everything I can when I get there. I''ve also ¡ª"

    In my real body, I turned on my communicator and connected to Romani. Before he could even get any words out, I told him, "Marie''s awake! I''m heading to the infirmary right now with the twins!"

    "I''ll be right there!" he promised. "Whatever happens, try to keep her calm!"

    "Right!"

    "¡ª informed Romani that you''ve woken up. He''ll be there soon, too."

    "Romani?" Marie parroted.

    "See?" Bradamante started to lower her hands. "There''s nothing to worry about, Madam Director!"

    The instant she saw movement, Marie''s arm snapped back up. Bradamante squeaked and threw her hands back up. I wanted to sigh.

    "Director," Muninn said patiently, "she has high ranking Magic Resistance. A Gandr wouldn''t even tickle her."

    Marie''s cheek twitched, but she didn''t drop her arm again. "I-it''s the principle of the thing!"

    "I don''t mind!" Bradamante insisted. "If it keeps the Madam Director at ease, I can stay right here!"

    This was the wrong thing to say. If there was one thing Marie hated above all else, it was being looked down upon or pitied.

    "What do I look like, a child?" Marie spat. "I don''t need you to patronize me! Put your arms down!"

    Bradamante, looking a little confused, slowly did just that, and Marie did the same, refusing to look away from Bradamante for even a second. After what had happened to her, I guess it only made sense that she wasn''t willing to trust just anyone, no matter what they said or who vouched for them.

    I wanted to explain the whole situation to her, to let her know that we''d picked up Bradamante''s contract in Orl¨¦ans and that she''d been a huge help there, but Marie still didn''t know that she''d been gone for the better part of three months. Trying to tell her that while no one but Bradamante was there to help her if and when she had a breakdown over that was a bad idea.

    "Director," I tried instead, "Bradamante was stationed in the infirmary with you for your own safety. You can trust her."

    Marie''s brow furrowed. "My safety?"

    "Yes. The situation being what it is, it was decided that it was critical for your health and safety to keep a Servant stationed in your room at all times until you were awake. It just so happened to be Bradamante''s turn when you woke up."

    "Until I was awake?" Marie repeated, catching onto that in particular. "Just how long are you saying I was out?"

    "You''ve been in the infirmary for less than a day." It wasn''t exactly a lie so much as me being deliberately misleading. "A lot has happened in a relatively short time. Like I said, I''ll explain it to you in person as soon as I get there."

    Marie turned narrowed eyes onto Muninn.

    "There''s something you''re not telling me," she said suspiciously.

    "There is," I confirmed shamelessly, "but it''s something we should talk about face to face, with Romani there to help explain."

    In my real body, I came to a stop in the hallway in front of the infirmary and took a moment to calm my racing heart and my heaving breaths. The twins and Mash stumbled up behind me a few seconds later, confused about why I had stopped.

    "Senpai?" Ritsuka asked breathlessly.

    I breathed deep once, twice, three times, forcing myself to go through the calming exercises I''d learned a lifetime ago, and then I stepped forward and the door whooshed open in front of me.

    "He can give you some more perspective on what''s been happening," I said, continuing my thought smoothly as Marie''s head swiveled towards the door.

    "Master!" said Bradamante, sounding relieved.

    "Director Marie!" the twins said from behind me. Marie''s eyes turned to them.

    "You!" she sputtered out.

    "Director Animusphere!" said Mash.

    "Fou, fou-kyu-fou!"

    "You two are still here?" Marie squawked.

    The twins faltered. Incredulously, Rika asked, "Were we supposed to go somewhere else in the middle of Antarctica?"

    "Like I said, Director," I interjected, dragging the conversation back my way as I stepped into the room so that we didn''t have to shout across it, "a lot has happened in a relatively short time, and we need to get you up to speed."

    Irritation flickered across Marie''s face. "Well, you''re here, now, so feel free to explain it all to me!"

    "As soon as Romani ¡ª"

    "I''m here, I''m here!" Romani panted as he stumbled to a stop behind the twins and Mash. "Nobody panic, everyone calm down!"

    "Who''s panicking?" Marie demanded. "Romani! What are you talking about? Why is everyone acting like I''m a time bomb waiting to go off? Someone give me some answers!"

    Mash let out a relieved sigh, smiling serenely. "That''s the Director, all right," she said fondly. "You''d never believe she just spent two months stuck inside the FATE System."

    A pregnant silence filled the room. I squeezed my eyes shut, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose, but Romani was far less reserved and dragged a hand down his face, exasperated. The twins both looked at Mash, mouths dropping open.

    And then the inevitable happened.

    "WHAT?"

 Chapter LXXV: Difficult Adjustments

    Chapter LXXV: Difficult Adjustments

    "What''s that supposed to mean?" Marie demanded loudly. "Two months? In the FATE System?"

    Romani sighed. "Ritsuka, Rika, I know you just got here, but could you please take Mash with you and go and get the Director something to eat? I''m sure Emiya is still in the cafeteria, and it has been a while since she had any food."

    "What?" Rika squawked. "But, Doctor Roman ¡ª"

    "We want to help!" her brother said passionately.

    "And that''s exactly what I''m asking you to do," Romani said patiently. "Guys, I know I''ll only be Acting Director for a little bit longer, and I wasn''t doing the best job at it either, so as your friend, please?"

    "Acting Director?" Marie sputtered from her bed.

    "Please," Romani repeated, looking at them specifically.

    The twins turned to each other and seemed to come to some silent, miserable agreement. Neither of them looked happy with it at all.

    "Fine," said Rika. "We''ll go get Director Marie some food."

    "Come on, Mash," said Ritsuka. "Let''s go talk to Emiya."

    Mash blinked rapidly, confused. "D-did I say something wrong?"

    Rika gently took Mash by the hand and pulled her away, back the way we came. "The delivery was fine," Rika told her, "but your timing was off ¡ª"

    The door whooshed shut behind them, leaving me, Romani, and Bradamante with Marie, who looked like she was swiftly building up to another outburst. I didn''t blame her, considering how disorienting this whole situation must have been for her, but this whole thing would go smoother if we could avoid shouting.

    "Bradamante," I said, "you can go with them."

    She looked grateful for the out, but put up just as much resistance as she thought she needed to. "I-if you''re sure, Master."

    "Go. Romani and I can handle things from here."

    Bradamante vanished into spirit form, and Marie startled in her bed at the suddenness of it, letting out a squeak like a mouse whose tail had been stepped on. It only lasted a moment, however, and then she was right back to where she''d been before.

    "What''s going on here, Romani?" Marie demanded again. "What did Mash mean, two months in the FATE System?"

    Romani sighed again. Wearily, he asked, "What''s the last thing you remember?"

    "What kind of stupid question is that?" Marie countered.

    "Humor me," said Romani.

    Marie huffed irritably. "We were in Fuyuki! Me, Hebert, Mash, and those two, and we''d just beaten that corrupted Saber! And then Lev showed up and ¡ª"

    She cut off, and her face twisted with horror.

    "Lev," she breathed. "Lev was there, and he¡­ No, no, no, he wouldn''t, he can''t have, he must have ¡ª"

    "Director," I cut in before she could start spiraling again.

    It didn''t work.

    "He said I was¡­ That my body¡­" She stared down at her hands, splaying her fingers out like she would suddenly find some seam or imperfection, or like the flesh would flake away to reveal her burned, destroyed body. "The only way I could Rayshift was¡­"

    If, as Flauros had said, her spirit was no longer tied down by her flesh.

    "I''m sorry," Romani said, not unkindly. "I wish I could tell you differently, but the fact of the matter is that everything he said seems to have been the truth. Most of the remains we found in the Command Room were too damaged to identify, but¡­"

    "He¡­he tried to¡­" Marie squeezed her eyes shut, and her fists clenched so tight that her knuckles turned an even starker white than her already pale complexion. "This¡­this isn''t my body¡­"

    Romani hesitated, grimacing. To be fair, it wasn''t every day that you had to tell a patient that she''d essentially gotten a full body transplant, and it definitely wasn''t the kind of conversation medical training prepared you to have.

    "No," I told her. "It''s a replacement, constructed from raw materials gathered on-site during our last deployment. Da Vinci made it."

    Marie bit her lip so hard I was afraid she would draw blood. "Then this is¡­just a puppet. I-I''m not even¡­"

    The door whooshed back open, and in stepped a familiar curvy figure decked out in her full regalia, carrying her staff and wearing her ridiculous gauntlet.

    "Technically speaking," said Da Vinci, "it might be more akin to a full body prosthesis. Even that, however, is a woefully inadequate description for exactly how much of a masterpiece your new body is, Director Animusphere."

    Marie''s head jerked around. "You!"

    Da Vinci smiled and gave a short bow. "Leonardo da Vinci, at your service!" She straightened. "One would think that you would understand best, Director. After all, wasn''t it me who tuned up and adjusted our own Miss Hebert''s prosthetic before it was attached, so that it matched her body exactly? You should already know that my work is indistinguishable from the real thing!"

    "Th-that''s not the same!" Marie sputtered. "That was an arm! This is¡­!"

    "I''m sure you''ll be thinking quite a bit differently the first time you have your cycle," Da Vinci said wryly. "My dedication to faithfully replicating every part of your physiology might not be so welcome then, will it?"

    My lips pulled into a grimace as Marie''s cheeks flushed red. Romani groaned.

    "Not the way I would have put it," he groused. "There are probably a dozen different examples you could have used that would have worked just as well."

    "This was the most fun one," Da Vinci said.

    Romani sighed a longsuffering sigh. "If it makes you feel any better, Director, I gave your body as thorough an inspection as I feasibly could without being invasive. As far as I can tell, it''s an exact match to your original body, so for all intents and purposes, you''re still a one-hundred-percent flesh and blood human."

    "Of course," said Da Vinci. "My work is nothing less than the best, after all. If a modern mage could achieve something of this level, then it''s only natural that I could as well."

    Marie was silent, her head hung and the curtain of her hair hiding her face. Her fingers curled into the fabric of her hospital gown, and it was hard to see, but her shoulders were trembling, just a little.

    I didn''t have the words that could convince her, right then. She knew enough about my life that she undoubtedly knew that I had lost half of my own body before, during Gold Morning, but reminding her of that ¡ª and that the half I''d lost had been remade from scratch afterwards ¡ª would raise too many questions with Romani and Da Vinci that I just didn''t want to answer at the time.

    So I did the only thing I could. I went up to her bed, crouched down next to it, and laid my hand down next to her thigh, palm up. My right hand, my prosthetic.

    Romani and Da Vinci watched, no doubt a little confused, and for a long moment, Marie didn''t react. But then, slowly, one her hands unfurled from the deathgrip it had on her gown and reached down, hesitantly brushing gently against my palm. She traced the wrinkles and the folds in the flesh, finding every crease and crevice, every faint, purple blood vessel that snaked through the skin under the surface.

    For all that I felt the phantom pain of the port acting up every now and again, the fact of the matter was that there technically wasn''t one. This was a prosthetic in the strictest of senses, but if it wasn''t for the pinkish scar left over from where the damaged flesh had sloughed off after Panacea healed the burns Lung had left behind, it would have been completely indistinguishable from my real, flesh and blood arm. For all intents and purposes, it was as real as my other one, just with a little extra I could do with it.

    Eventually, Marie''s fingers pulled away, and in a quiet, scared voice, she asked, "Was it¡­really Lev?"

    Romani didn''t answer right away. Again, I didn''t blame him. Lev, by all accounts, had stood by Marie since long before I came into the picture, and to have him suddenly turn on her and do what he did¡­ Having to tell her that the man she trusted and relied upon utterly and completely had tried to condemn her to a fate to match Gray Boy''s worst wasn''t easy.

    "¡­The vocal pattern, spiritron wavelength, and physical stats all match Lev Lainur exactly," he said at length. "Having said that, there were some¡­strange things that lead us to believe it might not have been Lev himself, exactly."

    Marie''s shoulders sagged a little. "So it wasn''t Lev?"

    He didn''t betray me? I heard in her voice.

    "It was his body, at least," said Da Vinci. "Given what we learned from him afterwards, however, we have reason to believe that this may be a case of demonic possession."

    Marie''s head whipped around. "D-demonic possession?"

    "He introduced himself as Flauros," I told her, "one of the seventy-two demons that King Solomon commanded."

    Something like hope started to spread across her face. "Th-then, if we could exorcise the demon possessing him ¡ª"

    She cut herself off when she saw the grimace that pulled at my mouth, and which was no doubt pulling at Romani''s as well. Da Vinci could have gone either way, but I imagined her smile becoming awkward.

    "W-what?"

    "Flauros appeared at the end of the last mission," I told her. "The demon using him as a host transformed his body in front of us, and was then killed by friendly fire."

    Marie''s brow furrowed. "What? What mission?"

    "It''s been about two months since Fuyuki, Director," I said. "In that time, we''ve resolved another two Singularities, out of a total of eight."

    Marie stiffened. "Two more?" she choked out, her voice an octave higher than normal. "Out of eight?"

    Romani sighed. "I guess that''s my cue."

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    He stepped closer, looked around for a second, and then grabbed the nearest chair and wheeled it over. He sat down in it, hunched over, elbows resting on his knees.

    "There''s no easy way to say this, Director," he began, "but after we retrieved the team from Fuyuki, we detected another seven Singularities in various locations and eras¡­"

    He went on to explain what we knew about the previous and remaining Singularities, sticking to generalities. Orl¨¦ans, 1431. The Roman Empire, 60 AD. He didn''t go into everything we''d done in each of them, because that would take hours more, but he spent about ten or fifteen minutes summarizing the key takeaways and the little information we had on the upcoming Singularities, including the three Grails we''d managed to collect from each of the ones we''d already finished.

    It didn''t paint the best picture of our odds, and Marie picked up on that, if the set of her brow and the worry in the lines of her face was any judge.

    "So we have a little over fifteen months to resolve another five Singularities," she summarized. "We''re down to a staff of about twenty people of the two-hundred we started with, including three Masters and a handful of technicians who were actually trained for the jobs they''re currently doing. And the world outside is, for all intents and purposes, gone."

    "Obviously, it''s difficult to confirm that last part," said Romani. "We can''t exactly step outside and take a plane to Paris to check if anyone''s home, but¡­ I''m sorry, Director. We haven''t been able to get in touch with anyone outside of Chaldea itself."

    "It''s not all doom and gloom, Director," said Da Vinci. "For example, we have confirmed the active presence of the Counter Force in each Singularity so far. That is to say, our team has encountered several ''Stray'' Servants that have been summoned by the World in order to deal with each Singularity. We''ve even managed to establish contracts with a few of them and bring them back to Chaldea for future deployments!"

    "That''s not exactly great news!" Marie snapped. Her head dropped. "B-but it''s not the worst news, either. The FATE System itself should be able to handle over two-hundred contracts without major strain, no matter their origin." She stared down at her hands and bit her lip again. "Romani¡­ Mash said¡­ I spent two months in the FATE System, right?"

    "Ah¡­" Romani said awkwardly, trying to find the right words to explain it.

    "It was the only way we could preserve your consciousness," Da Vinci slid in smoothly. "It wasn''t the most elegant method, and it wasn''t without some risks, but on such short notice, it was the only available option that had any hope of being fixable in the long term. Essentially, since the FATE System allows for Saint Graphs to be recorded and restored in the case of termination in the field, it acted as a form of suspended animation for your soul."

    Marie relaxed a little, and that gave room for the fire to burn again. "Well, why did it take so long to get me out, anyway? Two months is way too long!"

    Better than six, I didn''t say. Or the fate that originally would have awaited her if we hadn''t managed to save her in time. It didn''t make losing two months any better, but I was just glad we had her back at all.

    "Ah," Da Vinci said hesitantly, "y-yes, about that¡­"

    "Because of the sabotage, we didn''t have the materials necessary to build you a replacement," I said, saving Da Vinci from having to admit that she''d used them all up on her own puppet Master. "We had to gather them from sources inside the Singularities, and it wasn''t until Rome that we could get everything we needed."

    I glanced at Da Vinci over my shoulder. You owe me one.

    "Y-yes, that''s it exactly!" Da Vinci laughed awkwardly. "Th-the sabotage was hard on our stores of supplies, so I didn''t have what I needed on hand without cutting into our more essential things, like the food storage. It''s only because of Taylor that we were able to gather the raw materials necessary for me to synthesize what I needed to construct your body!"

    Marie''s brow furrowed. "I don''t understand. Hebert is obviously an exceptional talent, but the process of making puppets is still something that takes years of study. Shouldn''t you have been better able to get what you needed on your own, Da Vinci?"

    "Even I can admit that it would have taken me much longer without our illustrious team leader''s unique talents," said Da Vinci.

    The furrow of Marie''s brow deepened. "Unique talents?"

    I lifted my hand, and Muninn hopped up to perch on my arm with a flutter of her wings. Marie startled a little.

    "My powers came back," I explained simply. "Immediately after our Rayshift into Orl¨¦ans."

    Marie''s brow reversed course and rose towards her hairline. "What? I thought that you lost them after ¡ª"

    She managed to shut her mouth before she could say anymore, but some of the damage had already been done, and her slip right there was going to do nothing if not arouse Da Vinci''s curiosity.

    "They came back."

    I didn''t have an explanation for it either. However my passenger had done it, it had done it. Whether that had been the result of some loophole in its restrictions or something else entirely, I doubted I would ever know.

    "Trust me, we were surprised, too," said Romani. He sighed. "The unreadable data volume that is apparently behind it has been with her since Fuyuki, even though it didn''t show up on any of her tests prior to that."

    "Unreadable data volume?" Marie echoed.

    "A blank spot in her readings," Romani explained. He tapped his head. "A small section about an inch in diameter with hairline tendrils that spread throughout the rest of her cerebrum. We''ve been trying to convince her since the Orl¨¦ans Singularity that it presents enough of a danger that she should refrain from Rayshifting."

    Marie went ramrod straight, eyes wide and panicked.

    "That''s!" She looked at me, and the alarm on her face rapidly drained away. She took a calming breath before speaking again. "Is it an immediate problem? Does it interfere with her ability to Rayshift safely?"

    "Well¡­" Romani said reluctantly.

    Da Vinci let out a sigh. "No," she admitted. "Although it presents some risks, it doesn''t actually interfere with any of the things that are vital to actually establishing her presence in a Singularity, so there isn''t an issue Rayshifting her." To Romani, she said, "It looks like that plan went up in smoke. We probably should have expected her to side with Taylor."

    "In hindsight, it was a fifty-fifty shot at best," he agreed.

    And it probably would have worked if they had waited until after I left the room to drop that little bit of information on Marie. I might have been able to convince her it was still okay even then, but she would have had way more time to doubt and start cooking up doomsday theories in her head, and that would have made it much harder.

    "Then as long as that''s the case, we can''t afford to bench our best Master," said Marie. "Especially when she''s the last remaining Master candidate from Team A."

    "I feel like I should defend the twins, since no one else is here to do it," Romani said.

    "The twins?" Marie''s brow furrowed. "You mean those two neophytes we pulled off the streets?"

    "Hey, now, they''re not that bad anymore!" said Romani. "They''ve really been improving these last two months!"

    Marie scoffed.

    "They''re still rough around the edges," I told her, "but they have been getting better, Director."

    She looked at me, surprised. My patience with them hadn''t been that thin in Fuyuki, had it?

    "Field experience does wonders for competence!" Da Vinci chirped. "And, well, it doesn''t hurt that Taylor here has taken to teaching them the ropes in the simulator in the downtime between deployments. Speaking of, remind me to show you the recording of her little Caster scenario, it really was quite something else."

    "Caster scenario?" Marie echoed. "I¡­ What?"

    "I set up the simulator to emulate what it would be like for them to face a competent Caster in her own territory," I explained simply. "I decided it would be a good learning experience, since we haven''t really encountered any proper Casters in these Singularities yet."

    Marie''s hands rose to the sides of her head, and she pressed her fingertips to her temples and rubbed, eyes squeezed shut. "Just how much have you all gotten done in the past two months?"

    Quite a bit, actually, I realized just then. If we discounted Fuyuki, then technically, we were averaging one Singularity resolved per month, and that was a fairly fast pace when I thought about it. With seven Singularities after Fuyuki started this whole thing, if we continued at this rate, we''d have everything taken care of long before our supposed deadline.

    Romani laughed awkwardly. "Things have been pretty busy, but we''re on a pretty strict time limit, too, so there wasn''t really much we could do about it. Mostly, we''ve just been doing whatever we can to get through all of this together, and it hasn''t all been smooth sailing, but we''ve done okay, I think."

    "Of course," said Da Vinci. "Well, naturally, the one who has been doing the most work is yours truly, but it''s been a team effort. You''d be proud of them, Director. They''ve all been doing wonderfully, including your ace Master here."

    Flattery will get you nowhere, I thought dryly.

    Contrary to what Da Vinci had intended, however, hearing how well we''d been doing in her absence didn''t make Marie any happier. Slowly, her face fell, and she turned away from us, hiding her expression behind her hair.

    "And¡­" Marie''s hands fell and wound up on her legs. Her head hung and she hunched over. "You didn''t need me for any of it, did you? You all managed just fine on your own."

    I straightened, my eyes widening a little. "Marie ¡ª"

    "Oh, I don''t know about that," said Da Vinci. "After all, Romani here has been doing his level best to drive himself into an early grave!"

    "Da Vinci!" Romani sputtered, jolting up in his seat.

    "He''s been abusing so many stimulants to stay awake, I had to force him to take a break and sleep during the latter half of the most recent deployment," she went on, ignoring his protests. "I think he''s been averaging¡­oh, maybe three hours a night, since Fuyuki? There''s no way it can be healthy!"

    "I-I''m not stupid!" Romani said defensively. "I''m a physician! I know what I''m doing! I can self-prescribe and self-medicate!"

    "See what I mean?" Da Vinci waved his direction. "Poor Romani isn''t cut out to handle the pressures of leadership. If you don''t take the reins again, why, he''ll probably have a heart attack within six months!"

    "Da Vinci!" Romani whined.

    Marie''s fingers curled into the fabric of her bedsheet. "Do you really¡­need me that much?"

    Both Da Vinci and Romani fell silent, and that left it to me. I had a feeling they both felt that it really was more my place to reassure her than it was theirs.

    I didn''t have heartfelt words to give her. There was no grand speech I could start spouting that would sway her. Not like that time in the cafeteria at Arcadia ¡ª my audience was much, much different from then, and I wasn''t convincing a group of teenagers to side with me because of how much I''d done to help them.

    Instead, I told her something simple. Something that said everything she needed to hear without saying it at all.

    "It''s not Chaldea without you, Director."

    It took an extra second or two, and I was worried that maybe that hadn''t been enough, but then the miserable tension in Marie''s shoulders eased, and she straightened up in her bed.

    "O-of course it isn''t!" she blustered. None of us called her on it. "I-in fact, it''s a miracle the whole place hasn''t already burned down with Romani in charge!"

    "Hey!" Romani protested.

    "She''s not wrong, though," Da Vinci teased him.

    "Just whose side are you on, here!"

    At that moment, the door whooshed back open, and Rika strutted back in, proclaiming, "We come bearing food! And also a Jesus pun, but I didn''t have three days to come up with it, so I couldn''t think of one!"

    "What are you even trying to imply with that?" Marie sputtered.

    Rika stuck out her tongue and stepped to the side, and in came Ritsuka and Mash, each of them carrying a tray piled high with food. The smell of that same chicken dish from before wafted up my nostrils, and even having already eaten, I was tempted to dig into some of it myself. The second tray had several condiments of different kinds alongside three large slices of bread, butter, and a dipping sauce, and the garlic was strong enough that I could smell that clear from across the room, too.

    Emiya really went all out for this, I thought. Maybe he was trying to make a good first impression to make up for his altered self in Fuyuki.

    "We''re back, Director!" Mash said brightly.

    "When we told him you hadn''t eaten all day, Emiya sent us with a load of food," Ritsuka added, smiling. "I hope you like it, Director Marie."

    The mouth-watering smell of Emiya''s cooking wasn''t enough to distract Marie from the other salient points of that.

    "Emiya?"

    "He was our first successful Heroic Spirit summoning, after Fuyuki," Romani explained. "It turns out he''s actually a very good cook, so he''s taken over kitchen duty after the, ah, other cafeteria staff were¡­lost."

    Her head whipped around so fast that my own neck throbbed sympathetically.

    "You successfully summoned a Servant?" Marie asked immediately.

    "Three, technically," Da Vinci answered, holding up three fingers. "Two here in Chaldea, one in the field in Orl¨¦ans. Emiya was the first, Arash was an attempted catalyst summon in France, and Shakespeare was the third."

    Marie gaped at her. "Three?"

    "We can go over the details later. There''s a lot we need to catch you up on, and this isn''t the best time and place for it." Da Vinci waved it off. "For now, why don''t you eat? Emiya really is quite the chef, you know."

    "I''m not ¡ª" Marie flinched as her stomach let out a loud growl. Her cheeks bloomed with pink splotches. "F-fine, I guess I could eat. Everyone''s saying how good it is, I might as well see for myself."

    Rika giggled under her breath. "Just you wait, Boss Lady. My house husband is unrivaled."

    Mash and Ritsuka took that as their cue and approached the bed, and then looked for where to set their trays down and came up empty. One could have fit on her lap, but two wasn''t going to, and it would make for an awkward way of eating besides.

    "Uh¡­"

    "Oh!" said Romani. "Right, give me a second here¡­"

    He reached over for a console built into the wall and fiddled with it for a moment, and then a compartment opened up and a mechanical arm unfolded from behind Marie with a hydraulic whir. She squeaked a little as it spun and turned and presented a flat board right in front of her, just above her navel. It was big enough for only one of the trays, though, which was proven when Ritsuka set his down and it took up almost all of the space.

    "U-um," said Mash, "Doctor Roman, should I¡­?"

    Romani sighed and held out his hands. "Here, let me take it."

    She handed it over and Roman spun around so he could set it on the desk space set next to the bed just outside of where the curtain would be.

    "All right." Marie took up the silverware Emiya had helpfully provided, spent a brief moment inspecting it, and her lips pursed. "Let''s see what all of this fuss is about."

    The twins waited with baited breath as she cut her first piece off of the chicken, stabbed it with her fork, and then put it in her mouth and froze. Her eyes closed, squeezing shut, and a high pitched noise vibrated out of her nose.

    "This is¡­!" She caught herself and cut herself off, clearing her throat. "A-adequate, I suppose! A-at least this Emiya isn''t a total buffoon!"

    "And that," Rika said smugly, "is the Boss Lady seal of approval!"

    "H-hey, you!" Marie sputtered. "Don''t put words in my mouth! I-I said it was adequate!"

    "From you, Director Marie, that''s high praise indeed," said Ritsuka, smiling. "I''m sure Emiya will be glad to hear you enjoyed his food so much."

    "Th-that''s not what I¡­!" But Da Vinci and Romani smiling took the fight out of her response, and she huffed, cheeks flushed. "F-fine. S-so maybe this food is really good ¡ª compared to what we used to eat in the cafeteria, at least! That doesn''t mean it''s the best thing I''ve ever tasted!"

    Romani laughed. "No, of course not, Director."

    Marie pointed her fork at him.

    "I can tell when you''re patronizing me, Romani! You might have been handling things while I was¡­i-indisposed, but I''m still the official Director in charge of this organization!"

    "No one forgot," I told her, both earnest and attempting to calm things down a little. "Everyone here has been waiting for the day we could bring you back."

    It did the trick ¡ª her cheeks flushed an even brighter red, and she turned her face away again to hide the blush.

    "A-as you should!" she said, all bluster. "I''m your Director, after all! Irreplaceable!"

    "That you are," said Romani. "For now, though, you really do need to eat. We just got you back. We don''t want you to starve, okay?"

    Marie looked back down at her food. Her stomach gurgled again, as though to remind her that it very much enjoyed that first bite and would like some more.

    "F-fine. If this Emiya really went to that much effort for me, th-then I guess it would be insulting to let all of that work go to waste. Especially when we don''t have a supply chain from the UN anymore! I might as well eat it all, right?"

    "Tsundere," I heard Rika mumble under her breath. I was going to have to ask one of them what that word meant later on.

    Mash smiled. "It''s good to have you back, Director," she said fondly.

    Marie hesitated as she was about to take her next bite, and her mouth wobbled a little. Whatever emotion was trying to escape, she smothered it beneath another bite of her food, shoveling a forkful of chicken and rice past her lips.

    I stood from my chair, stretching my legs a little, and turned towards the twins. When I checked my watch, it was almost eleven ¡ª three hours had slipped by without me even realizing it.

    "Come on," I told them. "Let''s leave her to eat in peace."

    They blinked at me, confused.

    "Eh?" said Rika. "But we just got back!"

    "And it''s almost eleven o''clock," I countered. "We all have training in the morning. Unless you think A¨ªfe is going to let you out of it just because you stayed here visiting the Director until two in the morning, then you can go ahead and stay."

    The twins blanched and winced.

    "Besides," I went on, pretending not to notice, "I''m sure Da Vinci and Romani are going to want to talk to her about some things you don''t want to hear about."

    "R-right," said Ritsuka. "L-let''s let them have some privacy."

    "A-and not give Super Action Mom any more excuses to drive us into the ground!" Rika added.

    "A¨ªfe?" Marie asked around a bite of food. "Super Action Mom?"

    "We''ll get into that later," Romani assured her. "It''s like I said, Director, there''s a lot of things we need to catch you up on."

    Marie scowled around her fork, but let it go and accepted it for what it was. Taking that as permission to leave, I led the twins back out of the room. The door whooshed shut behind us.

    What a long day, I thought as we left. I wouldn''t be surprised if I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

 Chapter LXXVI: Resolution of the Final Regret I

    Chapter LXXVI: Resolution of the Final Regret I

    I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, breath puffing in the air, thick, humid wind on my face, with water sloshing around my shins. The bleak sky cast the whole street in tones of gray and muted pastels, turning every stop sign a pale maroon and every brick a brackish brown. A sense of urgency pushed me forward against the tide trying to carry me away, and I struggled against it, knowing that too much hung in the balance.

    Wave, my armband announced, and the whole world rumbled around me as the water surged in from the bay, sweeping along everything in its path.

    It would sweep me along, too. Drown me beneath the water, bash me against a building. I wasn''t a Brute, I wouldn''t survive that.

    I was out of position. There was no place for me to bunker down, to take cover, only ¡ª I spotted it at the last possible second ¡ª a sturdy traffic light, pole thick and metal and held by the concrete of the sidewalk.

    I whirled about and lunged for it, too far for my arms, and the phantom limb in my prosthetic latched on, curling around the pole with a grip like iron. Just in time for the wave to reach me.

    My grip faltered. Water splashed against my face, pushing itself up my nose and into my mouth, and I sputtered against it as I kept my phantom limb wrapped as tight as I could around the traffic light. Even with the extra strength it afforded me, the extra reach, the ghostly fingers almost slipped off, that was how strong the wave was.

    But it passed, and my feet set back on the ground, safe. I was alive. Uninjured. I had survived the wave.

    A litany of names sounded in my ear, unrecognizable. The ones who didn''t survive.

    There was nothing I could do for them. I couldn''t afford to stop, so I didn''t. I ran again, racing towards ¡ª my armband flashed yellow ¡ª the library, where an Endbringer shelter was tucked away just for days like this one.

    The world whirled about me, and I arrived just in time to find Leviathan already there. His claws were ripping into the vault-like door that protected the shelter, tearing out great gouges with shrill, metallic clangs.

    My bugs descended on him en masse, looking for every weakness they could, but nothing they did accomplished anything. Leviathan ignored them all, sparing them only enough attention to kill them with a burst of pressurized water, and then he went back to attacking the door.

    Mister Gladly was inside there, I knew. A man some part of me still despised for how callously he had dismissed me, how he had abandoned me, even when the Trio''s cruelties were right in front of his face.

    I wasn''t Mister Gladly.

    My feet carried me across the distance, and I leapt through the air to land on Leviathan''s back, just above his tail. One hand wrapped around his torso to hold on, digging my fingers into his wounds for leverage, and the other found my knife, pulled it from its sheath, and flicked the nano-thorns on. With all my strength, I plunged my Last Resort into his back, squinting against the spray of dust that flew from the cut as the blade sank into his flesh.

    Something slammed into me and carried me off his back, yanking me away. I rolled to my feet, water dripping off my shoulders, but Leviathan ignored me and reached down. With a single, mighty pull, he ripped the shelter door off of its hinges and tossed it away.

    I ran towards him again, determined to stop him, whatever it took. Someone inside the shelter screamed.

    "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaathach!"

    I stumbled over the grass and caught myself just before I could fall. The gathered host ignored me entirely, as though I wasn''t even there.

    What?

    "Let us settle this now, for once and all!" a familiar voice bellowed. "Come meet me here on this path of feats, and we shall see which of us is the greater warrior!"

    What?

    I looked around, baffled, at the young men around me, most of them bare-chested and wearing not much more than a skirt and a pair of boots. They were each of them strapped with swords, shields, and carrying spears, and they all had wild hair and tribal symbols painted over their skin in varying colors.

    Where¡­?

    The blue sky shone above, bright and cloudless. The grass beneath me was green and rich, and the plateau we stood atop dipped sharply nearby, sharply enough that a careless tumble would almost surely be fatal.

    Just where the hell was I?

    I pushed through the crowd of warriors, and they parted without giving me much more than a glance. None of them thought to comment on my appearance, on my clothes, or even on my glasses. It was like I was just a spectator, a ghost that none of them really saw.

    When I reached the front of the group, I found myself looking at the back of a familiar head of strawberry blonde hair. Across from her, another army parted to let through a young man, a boy, really, who couldn''t have been more than maybe sixteen, and even that was probably pushing it. He had long, dark hair, bright red eyes, and his grin ¡ª

    "C¨²chulainn?"

    And if I took about ten years off of the Servant we met in Fuyuki, it was indeed him. He dressed more like Connla had, and he carried a sword instead of a staff or spear, but the face, the way he held himself, and that grin were all the same.

    "She sends her Hound to face me?" asked A¨ªfe, sounding insulted.

    "Teach don''t fight just anyone, you know," C¨²chulainn said, and he sounded so young. "You''re gonna have to get through me, first."

    "¡­Then I''ll simply go through you."

    They sprang at each other, exchanging a dozen fast blows in the blink of an eye as their swords rang out with each clash, and just as I had every other time I saw her fight, I struggled to keep up with A¨ªfe''s speed. Even C¨²chulainn looked like he was having a bit of trouble, if the look of concentration on his face was any indication.

    But this wasn''t her fastest. It wasn''t her strongest. I had already seen her at her best, and I could tell that this just wasn''t it.

    They separated with one final clash. C¨²chulainn panted from the effort, taking in great, heaving breaths, but A¨ªfe was just as calm and collected as she had been before they started fighting.

    "You have potential," A¨ªfe told him, offering her praise objectively. "You will one day grow into a formidable warrior, a hero whose name is never forgotten."

    C¨²chulainn grinned. "Ya don''t say! High praise comin'' from a warrior as strong as you are!"

    "Unfortunately for you," A¨ªfe went on, "that day isn''t today."

    She leapt at him, crossing the distance as though she had teleported, and C¨²chulainn threw up his sword in a hasty block.

    "Bruud gine."

    An awful, ear-splitting metallic shriek rent the air, and the blade of C¨²chulainn''s sword snapped off at the base as A¨ªfe''s came down on his like a hammer, leaving him holding nothing but the hilt. The force of the blow even knocked him off his feet and to the ground, where he landed on his ass. He stared down at the handle, surprised.

    "Today," A¨ªfe said, "you''re still an untrained brat."

    C¨²chulainn suddenly turned his head towards the drop, and he pointed behind her, exclaiming, "Oh no! Your horses and chariot are falling down the glen! They''re gonna die for sure!"

    "What?"

    A¨ªfe turned almost reflexively, brow furrowing as she looked where he pointed. Behind her, C¨²chulainn grinned and leapt to his feet. He swung his arms open wide and came up behind her, poised to pin her arms to her sides.

    I knew enough about the myths to know what was coming next.

    "A¨ªfe!"

    But I needn''t have bothered. Just as he was ready to pounce, the tip of her sword found his throat, jutting out from under her arm, and he stopped cold. The grin fell from his face as he stared down at the blade threatening certain death.

    "Life for life, O C¨²chulainn."

    He swallowed. The bobbing of his throat pressed his skin against the tip of her sword, and a trickle of blood pooled there, dribbling down his neck.

    "Your three demands," C¨²chulainn said. "Name them."

    A¨ªfe smiled. "Henceforth, you will fight all duels honorably, never afterwards oppose your teacher''s will, and never wield your spear against your own blood."

    C¨²chulainn grimaced, but wasn''t in any position to object to her demands. "I promise it all thus."

    The tip of A¨ªfe''s sword left his throat. "Go back to your teacher," said A¨ªfe. "Let her know that I will be waiting for the day she is willing to face me herself again."

    C¨²chulainn bowed his head and retreated, defeated, to disappear back into the crowd of warriors that made up his side''s army. A¨ªfe watched him go, her expression a strange mix between bitter and satisfied.

    "Super Action Mom!" a familiar voice called just then.

    "A¨ªfe!" Ritsuka''s voice echoed.

    The two of them pushed their way through the crowd and eventually made it all the way to the front as A¨ªfe turned around towards them. Her eyes found me first, and then moved over to the twins, thoughtful.

    "How curious," she said. "And just how is it that the three of you happen to be here?"

    "Three of us?" the twins said in stereo, and then only just seemed to realize I was there, too. "Senpai!"

    "Ritsuka, Rika," I greeted them. I turned back to A¨ªfe. "I''m wondering that myself."

    "What?" Rika''s head swiveled about, and she even stood on her tiptoes so she could try and look over the heads of the crowd. "Hey, where''s Mash?"

    "Unless I miss my mark, she won''t be joining us," said A¨ªfe. Her lips pursed. "What is the last thing each of you remembers?"

    The twins blinked, bemused. It seemed they hadn''t quite cottoned on to what was happening just yet.

    "I was dreaming," I answered, "about¡­" The battle against Leviathan, or the first one, at least, although I think there might have been a few things that didn''t fit. Like my Last Resort being there, four years too early. "¡­something that happened a long time ago."

    Something that A¨ªfe and I apparently had in common tonight, it seemed. After all, that fight with C¨²chulainn had already happened over two-thousand years ago. It was quite literally ancient history.

    "Eh?" said Rika. "U-um¡­ Yeah, I guess I was dreaming? I don''t remember what about, though."

    "Me, neither," Ritsuka agreed. "I don''t¡­think it was anything bad? If it was, I guess I should be glad I don''t remember it."

    "That would explain it, then," said A¨ªfe. "I don''t know why now and why this dream in particular, however. This isn''t much more than a guilty fantasy I imagine up on occasion."

    Rika blinked. "Eh?"

    "Hang on," said Ritsuka, "does that mean we''re ¡ª"

    "In A¨ªfe''s dream, yes," I answered him. "Because we all share her contract, so we''re all connected to her. That''s why Mash isn''t here with us, because she doesn''t have the kind of connection with A¨ªfe that we do."

    That also meant no Arash or Emiya or anyone else. We were here with A¨ªfe alone, and maybe anyone she conjured up in her imagination to help us out.

    I wasn''t holding my metaphorical breath.

    "Not that this isn''t cool and all," said Rika, "because this is pretty awesome, being in Super Action Mom''s dream, but how do we get out of here? This place might be a nice change of pace from Chaldea, but there ain''t exactly a Ritz for us to stay in."

    "Will we just¡­wake up when A¨ªfe does?" Ritsuka added.

    My lips pursed. I didn''t have a good answer for that, because I honestly didn''t know for sure. I wanted to say that there was no way we''d be stuck in here indefinitely, but Servants didn''t exactly follow the same rules as regular people.

    "No," said A¨ªfe. "Servants don''t sleep the way normal humans do, remember? With all of us in here, we''re essentially trapped inside my dream."

    "Forever?" Rika squeaked.

    A¨ªfe huffed. "Of course not. Don''t be so dramatic. We should be able to end the dream if we solve the root cause behind it, and then we can all go back to sleeping the way we were before."

    "Or wake up?" Rika asked hopefully.

    A¨ªfe nodded. "Or wake up, if it winds up taking us that long."

    "Well then, what are we waiting for?" asked Rika "Let''s get this gravy train rolling! What do we need to do to finish this dream of yours? Beat up C¨²? I owe him a punch to the face!"

    If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

    A¨ªfe grimaced and looked behind her, where C¨²chulainn had been a minute ago, and I was startled to discover that not only had he disappeared entirely, but so had the rest of the warriors who had been gathered on the hilltops to do battle. As though they weren''t any more substantial than a puff of air, they had vanished, one and all. We were completely and utterly alone.

    When had that happened? Had I just gotten so used to having my bugs around to keep track of everything that I''d really gotten that inattentive? Or maybe it was just the fact that this was still technically a dream, so my attention slid off of things more easily than it did in the real world.

    "Whoa," said Rika. "Where''d everyone go?"

    "They disappeared," Ritsuka murmured.

    "If it was that simple, it should already have ended," said A¨ªfe. "So then, the root issue of this dream must be something else, not my loss that day to C¨²chulainn."

    What else could it be, though? Her loss to C¨²chulainn was the single most pivotal moment in her life. It had literally changed her fate and sent her down a different course, if those memories of her life I''d been seeing in my dreams were at all accurate. There wasn''t anything else that remained unresolved, even by the time of her death.

    ¡­No, that wasn''t entirely right, was it? There was one other thing.

    "Could it be¡­Connla?" I asked quietly.

    A¨ªfe stiffened, and her face shuttered completely, leaving behind a cold mask.

    "Him? That brat? Why would he¡­" Rika spied the expression on A¨ªfe''s face and finally snapped her mouth shut. She changed tacks. "Okay, so say it is Connla. Do we gotta go somewhere special or something?"

    "Connla died far from here," A¨ªfe answered stonily. "If we could find a boat, we might be able to reach the site of his battle with the Hound. However¡­"

    It wouldn''t be a short trip. Not when we had to go hundreds of miles to reach our destination.

    "How long would that take, exactly?"

    A¨ªfe''s lips drew into a grimace. I took that to mean "hours or days," which could be a bit of a problem, because I really didn''t want to think about us being stuck in this dream for that long. Not when we''d just gotten Marie back, and not when that would mean hooking the lot of us up to IVs and catheters.

    How inconvenient it was that this whole episode hadn''t waited a week or two to happen, after Marie had gotten settled and found her feet again.

    "This is a dream, isn''t it?" asked Ritsuka. "So doesn''t that mean that time and distance are kind of¡­well, meaningless?"

    "Yeah!" said Rika. "I had a dream once where I swam across the ocean ¡ª"

    "She was on the swim team our first year of high school," Ritsuka offered as explanation. It actually did help contextualize things a little.

    "¡ª and I made it all the way to Newfoundland before I woke up!"

    A¨ªfe''s brow furrowed. "Isn''t Newfoundland on the east coast of ¡ª"

    "The point she''s trying to make," I said, "is that dreams don''t have to follow the logic of the real world, so we could theoretically walk for a few minutes and find ourselves where we need to go."

    Theoretically. Of course, how that sort of thing worked in a Servant''s dream, and even more to the point, in a dream where four minds were connected and all of them lucid enough to recognize things like the laws of physics, that was another problem that we might have to confront. It was entirely possible that the mere fact we were all here would reinforce what we knew of as the structure of reality.

    It was equally possible that the logic of A¨ªfe''s era would assert itself and the twins and I would suddenly find ourselves capable of superhuman feats of strength and agility. I was actually kind of hoping for that one. It would make getting through this quicker and easier.

    A¨ªfe folded her arms and hummed thoughtfully.

    "Do we have anything to lose by trying?" asked Ritsuka.

    "No, I suppose we don''t," she admitted. "Very well, then. We''ll try walking first."

    "You should take the lead," I told her. "Since it''s your dream, you being in charge of the direction might make it quicker to get there."

    "I mean, she''s also the only one who knows where we actually need to go," Ritsuka pointed out.

    Embarrassingly, I''d missed that part on the first pass.

    "That, too."

    "Both well-made points." A¨ªfe''s head swiveled about, and her lips stayed frowning and her brow furrowed as she cast her gaze over the scenery. If she was looking for some kind of sign or symbol that would tell her which direction she needed to go, she didn''t tell us what it was, and eventually, a frustrated huff of air hissed out of her nostrils. "I suppose, in that case, it really doesn''t matter which way we go, does it? For all the difference it will make, it may as well be the correct one."

    "Dream logic!" Rika waved her jazz hands. A¨ªfe''s cheek twitched.

    "Let''s get this over with," she said brusquely, "and see what this dream has in store for us."

    She picked a seemingly random direction and started walking, and us three Masters hurried along behind her. It struck me just then that she didn''t have G¨¢e Bolg with her, but instead wielded a plain wooden spear with a metal head, and strapped to her waist was the sword she''d used to defeat C¨²chulainn earlier.

    I didn''t recall a specific moment when she''d received that famous spear herself in the previous dreams. Was it something she''d always had and just hadn''t used at this point, or had she never had it in the first place and only got it as a Servant because the legends said she should?

    We''d probably find out soon enough, in any case.

    The sun stayed high as we walked through the grassy field and rolling hills, and although the terrain was recognizable as somewhere on the British Isles, I didn''t have the first clue where. Were we in Scotland? Ireland? Or were we somewhere else entirely? This far back in history, none of the landmarks that I might have used to place us even existed yet, and I wasn''t enough of an expert in British geography to figure it out from the rock formations.

    "This place is pretty," Rika commented, looking about as we walked. "Hey, Super Action Mom. You grew up here, right?"

    "Not in this exact spot," said A¨ªfe, "but close enough, yes."

    "Man, it looked a lot different back before people built asphalt roads and skyscrapers, didn''t it? Kinda sad, when you think about it."

    A¨ªfe huffed a short breath out of her nose, not quite a snort. "You think so? It''s true, the unrestrained beauty of the natural world is pleasant to look at, but your asphalt roads and skyscrapers have their own charm, as well."

    "What do you mean?" asked Ritsuka.

    "The condition of man is to always crave advancement," A¨ªfe answered. "The betterment of the self, the improvement of his condition, the expanding of his limits. All people crave that feeling of conquest, of victory ¡ª for me, over any challenge that stood in my way. For others, over the very laws of nature themselves."

    Philosophy? From A¨ªfe? Was she ever going to stop surprising me?

    "I don''t know about that," said Ritsuka. "I think plenty of people just want to be able to live comfortably. To just be able to be happy in their day to day lives."

    "And those sorts of people are able to live in such a manner because of people like me," said A¨ªfe. "People who refused to accept their own limitations and rejected the idea of an imposed destiny. The world would still be under the yoke of the old gods, defined by their whims and caprices, if mankind hadn''t rejected that comfort in favor of carving their own path into the world."

    She sounded almost proud as she finished with, "Long ago, humanity decided to refuse to stand in the shadows of their gods, much as I refused to stand in my sister''s. Your modern world wouldn''t exist if not for those who looked at what they had and declared that it wasn''t enough."

    "That sort of thinking also led to some pretty bad things, too," I told her. "War. Famine. Genocide. Slavery. A lot of innocent people died because someone saw their land and decided he wanted it. Six million Jews were among them. So were about two-hundred-thousand Chinese civilians."

    I was simplifying things by quite a bit, but I thought my point was clear enough.

    "Wait," said Ritsuka, "you''re talking about ¡ª"

    "Yes," I cut him off. "I understand it''s a touchy subject in Japan, but no amount of silence and wishful thinking is going to change the fact that it happened."

    His mouth snapped shut with a click.

    "The mindset itself is not inherently good or evil, even if it becomes greed or a lust for power in some people." A¨ªfe hummed. "Perhaps this isn''t the best time or place to be discussing philosophy, though."

    At one point in my life, I might have pushed the issue. For now, though, I saw the olive branch for what it was and accepted it.

    "Probably not, no."

    Some time passed. It might have been hours, but it felt like minutes, and with the sun stubbornly staying in the same place above us, there was no way to be sure. Eventually, however, as we crested another hill¡­

    "Whoa!" said Rika. "Who are these hunks?"

    ¡­we were met by three young men carrying weapons, all dressed as the others had been when A¨ªfe had her brief battle with C¨²chulainn. None of them could be older than seventeen, and with the same red hair and imposing heights, they all looked similar enough that they had to be related. One held in his hands a spear, one a longsword, and the third a pair of shortswords.

    They were all also shredded. Lean and athletic, I was pretty sure I could wash my clothes on their abs, or if I was feeling particularly adventurous, grate some cheese.

    "You don''t recognize them?" A¨ªfe asked.

    "Nope!" said Rika. "I think I''d remember meeting guys this hot! Which calendar did they walk off from?"

    "Are we supposed to recognize them?" Ritsuka asked.

    "I suppose you just arrived too late to see them get cut down," said A¨ªfe mildly. She addressed the three men in front of us. "Cire, Bire, Blaicne ¡ª"

    "Gezundheit," Rika interjected blithely. A¨ªfe ignored her.

    "¡ª why are you three here?"

    "Sorry, Teacher," said the tallest with the spear. "It''s nothing personal."

    "Except it kinda is," said the one with the pair of shortswords. "We love you too much to make it easy on you."

    "That''s why," the third said, "on these fields and hills where we trained and slept and bled under your tutelage¡­"

    The tallest grinned. "We''re gonna make you go through us, if you want to reach the end of this road!"

    A¨ªfe was silent for a breath or two, and then she let out a quiet sigh. "You boys," she began lowly, "that''s exactly the sort of thing I''d expect out of my students." She hefted her own spear. "Never be content with your current limits. Always push yourself to greater heights. Face every challenge that stands in front of you with your whole strength. I definitely instilled that sort of attitude in everyone who trained under me. However¡­"

    Instantly, the three brothers leapt back, raising their weapons defensively as though she had just delivered some terrible threat.

    "¡­you never got to finish your training under me."

    It was over in a flash. My eyes weren''t even fast enough to see the individual movements, that was how quickly it ended. Just¡­one moment, she was standing still, and the next, all three brothers fell to the ground, defeated, as blood spurted from their wounds. A¨ªfe flicked her spear, and a few droplets flew off of the blade to land on the grass.

    "D-damn," the tallest groaned. His weapon had been snapped in half, leaving him holding three feet of useless wood. "Th-that quickly¡­"

    "As expected of Teach!" The second rasped a pained chuckle, spread-eagled in the dirt. "She really took us apart¡­like it was nothing!"

    "M-man," said the third, wistful. "I miss those days. If only we''d been better warriors, then maybe¡­"

    "No," A¨ªfe told them. "The fault of your defeat lies with your teacher. I wasn''t ready for my sister to have found such a promising disciple, and as such, I failed to prepare any of you to face him. My mistake cost you three your lives."

    The second laughed again, wheezing. "That''s also just like Teach! That sense of responsibility¡­"

    The first sighed. "That''s why we stayed to learn under you."

    "We weren''t cut out to be the greatest warriors of ¨¦ire," said the third. "But still¡­ The greatest warrior woman in the world¡­ The woman who broke every single one of her limitations without fail¡­ Out of admiration, we came to learn under you, and that¡­"

    "Yeah," said the second.

    "I agree," said the first. "Teacher, even if we lost, even if we died¡­"

    "We don''t regret a single minute of it," said the third.

    And then they were gone, like dust in the wind. Even their blood had vanished, leaving nothing of them behind.

    "You three," A¨ªfe said quietly, her fists clenched tight, "you don''t have any idea just what you were really capable of, do you? You never had the chance to see it. You died too early."

    "A¨ªfe," Rika began, "are you¡­"

    A¨ªfe straightened. "I''m beginning to see the shape of this adventure we''re on," she said, pretending Rika hadn''t spoken. "Come, Master. Let''s get this farce over and done with."

    The twins shared a look, and then turned to me, and yeah, I could see it, too. Anyone with eyes could tell that A¨ªfe wasn''t completely unaffected by what had just happened, and maybe letting her bottle it up wasn''t the healthiest way of doing things.

    But A¨ªfe wasn''t the sort to start sharing if we pushed her on it. She was likelier to get angry and clam up even tighter, and that wouldn''t solve anything either.

    We were going to have to let her come to us on this one.

    "We''re still following your lead, A¨ªfe," I said to her.

    She huffed a short, bitter laugh. "Yes, I suppose you are."

    She started walking again, and after a moment of hesitation on the twins'' part, we followed after her in silence, broken only by the swish of the grass about our feet as we trampled it. How much longer we kept walking, I couldn''t say. Not to beat a dead horse, but time was funny in a dream, and if I let my focus drift too much and stopped paying attention to my surroundings, we didn''t walk so much as teleport between moments of lucidity.

    That was just as trippy as it sounded.

    At some point, we crested another hill, leading down into a narrow, treacherous path, and standing in front of that path as though to guard the way was a house.

    "Onii-chan," said Rika, "I''m not hallucinating, am I?"

    "No," he answered.

    "Because that''s a house," she went on, "and it''s just¡­there. In the middle of nowhere."

    "I know, Rika," he said. "I see it, too."

    Except it wasn''t just a house, because that would be too tame. No, it was a full-on, European style mansion made of red brick that looked like it had been ripped straight out of Victorian London. Tall, rectangular windows dominated the front of it, and capping off its third storey was a sloped roof made of black tiles.

    Compared to the richest of the rich, it was downright modest, but it was at least twice the size of the house I''d grown up in, spent my childhood in, and eventually left behind, and it had no business being out here in the middle of the ¡ª Scottish, I was assuming ¡ª Highlands.

    The thing that made it feel even more out of place was what stood behind it, because down the path that it was guarding, at the very end, there stood a castle. A curtain wall barred the way, and beyond that, overlooking a sheer cliff, a towering spire reached towards the heavens.

    I remembered something about the ruins of a castle on the Isle of Skye off of Scotland, supposedly the site where D¨²n Sc¨¢ith had once stood. The dangerous, narrow pathway, the towering stone castle situated on a bluff¡­it all fit. The only thing that didn''t was the red brick mansion that was serving as some kind of extended gatehouse.

    "I''m going to assume," I began, addressing A¨ªfe, "that the mansion there has some meaning to you?"

    "After a fashion," she said. "I¡­had thought that this would be¡­ But no. This is something else entirely."

    Definitely words I wanted to hear coming out of her mouth here.

    "Is it dangerous?"

    She huffed. "No more than any other such place would be. No, I expect the real danger is going to be the person inside of it."

    "Someone lives there?" Rika asked, surprised.

    Did she think it was just for show?

    "Another student of mine."

    "I¡­didn''t think they built houses like that, back in your time," said Ritsuka.

    "They didn''t," said A¨ªfe. "Do you think, Master, that you are the first person to ever meet me as a Servant, rather than a living human? That you are the only students I have taken on after my death?"

    "When you put it that way¡­" said Ritsuka.

    "So who is it?" asked Rika. "Must''ve been pretty impressive to catch your eye, Super Action Mom."

    A¨ªfe hummed, noncommittal. "I suppose so."

    She started walking again, heading for the mansion, and the rest of us hurried to follow. We actually had to take it slow so we didn''t slip and roll down the hill, because beyond the house and the narrow path was a steep and sudden drop that looked to go on for miles. None of us were keen on testing exactly what would happen if we fell down that jagged slope and died, even if this was just a dream.

    That was a good instinct for the twins to have. Just because it wasn''t "real" didn''t mean it couldn''t hurt you.

    When we reached the tall, narrow, black-lacquered door to the mansion, A¨ªfe didn''t even bother knocking. She just reached for the knob and twisted it open to a chorus of squeaks from the hinges.

    The inside was¡­actually pretty nice. Tasteful and opulent without being gaudy or gauche, it could have passed for the home of anyone in the upper middle class. It reminded me of the Barnes'' home, in that sense, or what I remembered of it, at least. It was the house of someone who did well for themselves but wasn''t tossing money at every status symbol they could get their hands on.

    In front of us, a staircase led to the next floor up, but immediately on the left, the hallway opened up into a parlor, and in that parlor, there was a small table with a single chair. Sitting in that chair was a young man, barely my age, if that, with his legs crossed and a steaming teacup in his hand.

    "Oh," he said pleasantly as he took another sip of his tea. "You''re here."

    "We are," said A¨ªfe, "Hero of the Winter Crisis."

    The man in the chair smiled, and the way it crinkled his eyes and pulled at the muscles in his cheeks highlighted the parts of his face that looked more Japanese. It was all the more incongruent with the bright blue of his eyes.

    "You had to choose the most unflattering of epithets, didn''t you?" he lamented.

    "Sounded pretty cool to me," said Rika.

    "Because you didn''t hear it in Old Irish," the man said. "The word she used for ''crisis'' can also mean ''bad time,'' in the same sense as ''you showed up at a bad time.'' She makes it sound like I popped in while she was in the shower."

    "Not for lack of interest," A¨ªfe said dryly. "I was not blind to your attentions. Perhaps if your eye had wandered less you might have gone further faster."

    "You''re a very attractive woman," the man told her, "and I was never a monk. My ''wandering eye'' didn''t slow down my training by that much, though."

    A¨ªfe huffed a short breath. "Whoever said I was talking about your training? Or have you forgotten that it was the teacher''s job to instruct her students in all the aspects of being a man?"

    Wait, what?

    "Oh my god," Rika whispered. "Are they flirting?"

    It¡­looked like they might be, actually. I felt like I was watching a pair of old friends catch up after years apart, with an added dash of sexual tension, and it was a stark departure from the three young men we''d faced earlier.

    The man shook his head, chuckling lightly.

    "It''s been a while, A¨ªfe," he said. "Although I suppose, for a Heroic Spirit, time takes on an entirely different meaning, doesn''t it?"

    "It does. For me, my time with you has already ended, and yet it seems like only yesterday that we worked together."

    "So," the man said, suddenly solemn, "that would mean¡­technically, you''d already know¡­"

    "It doesn''t work like that," A¨ªfe told him. "It wouldn''t change anything either. After all, you''re not actually here, are you? You''re a manifestation of my regrets. No matter how much you look like him, you''re nothing more than my mental image of what he was like."

    He sighed. "Well, I suppose nothing I could say would change your mind on that front, would it? I certainly feel real enough ¡ª but that is also something you would expect me to say, isn''t it?"

    "Existentialism always was your favorite philosophy," A¨ªfe replied wryly.

    He smiled tightly. "That would be a yes."

    He took one final sip of his tea, and then he set the cup down and stood. Shockingly, he was actually quite tall ¡ª taller than me, in fact, although not by more than a few inches ¡ª and as he moved, my eyes caught on to the shift of his muscles beneath his clothing. Well-built. Athletic, like those guys from before, without being overly muscular. His pretty boy face belied the physicality of his physique, which meant he was probably a lot more dangerous than he looked.

    Carefully, he took off his pair of glasses and set them down next to his teacup.

    "I suppose there''s no escaping it then, is there?"

    "Why else would you be here in this place, at this time?" A¨ªfe countered.

    He shook his head, resigned.

    "And that''s a no."

    He held out his hand, and in his grip appeared a spear, long and ominous ¡ª

    "Holy¡­!" Rika swore. "That''s¡­!"

    ¡ª and a familiar shade of blood red.

    A¨ªfe''s lips pulled back from her teeth. "Now I know you''re not the real deal. There''s no way you could have that spear, not ever!"

    The man tilted his head a little. "Maybe you don''t remember all of it after all. It''s true, even the best replicas can''t quite compare to the originals without the bones of a sea monster to form a base, but ash wood is a perfectly acceptable substitute, if you''re willing to lose a little of the lethality." He smiled, but it had a dangerous edge to it. "More importantly, it''s more than adequate against an ordinary spear like the one you''re wielding right now."

    A¨ªfe''s foot shifted, and my eyes jerked towards it as I recognized it for what it was: retreat. Because he had something of a point, and at least the three of us knew it. I didn''t know how good he actually was, but if he could hold his own against her, then that spear could make up all the difference.

    Surreptitiously, I checked my hand. Three red Command Spells glared starkly from my pale skin. I wondered if I could actually use the real things in this dream or if these were just a representation.

    "Master," said A¨ªfe seriously, "step back. Mash isn''t here to protect any of you from a stray blow."

    "H-hey," said Rika, "isn''t there a rule about fighting inside the house? Because this place looks too nice to get ripped to shreds!"

    "Seeing as it''s my house," the man said mildly, "I think I''m the authority on what can and can''t happen in it, don''t you agree? In any case, yes, you might want to take a few steps back. I don''t think either of us intends on pulling any punches."

    The twins looked at me, uncertain.

    "Let''s go back to the front door," I told them. "Just in case."

    In case we had to beat a hasty retreat if things got too hot for us to handle.

    The stranger did us the courtesy of waiting for the three of us to back away to the front door. We were still close enough to lend a hand via a spell or two if we had to, but it gave them enough space that we should be safe enough.

    "Now then," said the stranger, "let me show you just how much I''ve improved since our last spar."

    And then he swept one foot across the floor, and a series of runes lit up like Christmas lights.

 Chapter LXXVII: Resolution of the Final Regret II

    Chapter LXXVII: Resolution of the Final Regret II

    I barely had time to realize what was happening, and by then, A¨ªfe had already slapped her own hand to the floor, twisting her wrist as her own set of runes blazed into existence ¡ª just in time to blunt the explosion of light and force that seemed to shake the entire building.

    "You''ve gotten faster!" A¨ªfe praised. "I haven''t seen anyone that quick with runes since my sister!"

    G¨¢e Bolg let out a resonant bong as it collided with A¨ªfe''s spear, and they were moving so fast I hadn''t even seen them move their weapons into position. They had just suddenly gone from one pose to another without any in-between, because unlike those three from before, this new guy was able to keep up with her speed.

    "High praise indeed, coming from you," the stranger said. "To be compared to the Witch of D¨²n Sc¨¢ith ¡ª that''s an honor I never expected to receive when I first started training with you."

    They separated briefly, each retreating about half a dozen feet, but in an instant, they were at each other''s throats again, exchanging blow after blow at speeds I''d come to expect of Servants, not ordinary people. A¨ªfe was still holding back, I could tell, because this still wasn''t as hard or as fast as she had gone up against Tiberius and Altera, but it was closer than I would have expected.

    BONG was the sound of a particularly powerful strike, and the two of them held there, the shafts of their spears pressed so hard against each other that I thought A¨ªfe''s might snap in two.

    "Even if you aren''t the man whose face you wear, you should already know," said A¨ªfe. "I don''t offer praise lightly. If I compliment someone, I mean it. If I praise a student, it''s because they really have achieved something of which to be proud."

    "I only made it this far because I had an excellent teacher," the man said. "Even if I was the Master and you the Servant, everything I accomplished was because you were there to bring out the potential that slept inside of me. That''s why¡­"

    He twisted his heel, and another series of runes lit up under the path his toes had taken.

    "I don''t intend to hold back against you!"

    "Shit!"

    It was A¨ªfe who said it, but it was me who grabbed the twins and pulled them back through the front door, just in time for another explosion to rip through the house. The glass of two of the front windows shattered and went flying out onto the grass as Rika, Ritsuka, and I all tumbled onto the front lawn. Smoke chased us out of the doorway, thick and oily.

    "Holy shit!" Rika swore. "They''re really going at it, aren''t they?"

    "Yeah," her brother agreed.

    Two shapes soared out of one of the broken windows and landed twenty feet away from us, kicking up dirt on impact, and they resolved into A¨ªfe and the mysterious man, deadlocked again.

    "Who is this guy?" Rika asked incredulously.

    "I don''t know," I said, keeping my eyes trained on the action.

    "Hero of the Winter Crisis," A¨ªfe had called him. Except he was apparently a modern enough human who had also been her Master at some point ¡ª in another timeline? Probably in a Grail War, like the one from the Fuyuki Singularity. Maybe El-Melloi II would recognize him if we brought the name up. Or Emiya, for that matter.

    Either way, if this was the sort of thing that became possible when A¨ªfe had her tutelary aspects to make use of, I was sorely missing the fact that she didn''t have them. Being able to fight at this level would have been incredible.

    The stalemate broke, and the two of them engaged in another flurry of blows, faster this time, and their arms and weapons swung about as blurs. The ringing bong of G¨¢e Bolg echoed the wooden crack of A¨ªfe''s ordinary spear, a discordant chorus of collisions that rang out in such quick succession that it was impossible to count by sound alone. My ears ached just hearing it.

    Was there even anything we could do in this fight? My power wasn''t here with me ¡ª or at least, if it was, there weren''t any bugs around to control ¡ª nor my ravens, and I wasn''t even sure we could cast magic in a dream. Command Spells? Somehow, I doubted they would actually accomplish anything, because here, there were no Command Spells, not really, just our brains changing the pigment on our hands because we''d grown used to them being there.

    Instead, I could only watch with the twins as those two went back and forth, flitting to and fro at speeds that my eyes simply couldn''t follow. They''d left us behind, so focused on each other that they seemed to have forgotten that we were even here, or even that this wasn''t anything more than a dream.

    Maybe it was because it was a dream that A¨ªfe was taking it so seriously. This was a moment that couldn''t exist in the real world, something that she could never experience again, so she was doing whatever she could to make the most of it.

    I wasn''t sure I could blame her for that. If it had been my dream we were stuck in and all of the people I''d loved and lost were there, I wasn''t at all sure I''d be in any hurry to leave it, even if it meant the twins got to see everything.

    A¨ªfe suddenly broke off and made distance. So quickly I struggled to keep up, she swept her foot across the ground and drug her fingers through the dirt, leaving burning runes in her wake. The stranger mirrored her exactly, and even though he was behind her by a few fractions of a second, somehow, he was still fast enough to finish almost simultaneously.

    The realization of what they were about to do only hit me as they were doing it.

    "Ochd," A¨ªfe snarled.

    "Deug Odin!" her opponent finished.

    "DOWN!" I yelled at the twins, and I grabbed their arms as I dropped straight to the ground as quickly as I could. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for what was about to hit.

    Twin flashes of light detonated through my eyelids, and a pair of thunderous booms so deep and so powerful that my bones ached from the force behind them exploded from the direction of the two combatants. A hot, searing wind whipped past me, gathering up my hair and throwing it all over the place.

    The heat disappeared almost as quickly as it came, replaced by a familiar chill that reached down to my marrow. My eyes snapped back open in time to watch the stranger take a familiar throwing stance, one arm held out for balance and a red spear clasped tightly in the other. Across from him, singed but mostly unharmed, A¨ªfe''s eyes went wide, because she was far too close to avoid that, no matter how quickly she backpedaled.

    The snapping of a spider''s thread resounded inside of me.

    "G¨¢e Bolg ¡ª"

    I did the only thing I could, under the circumstances.

    "Prototype!"

    Emergency Evasion!

    A¨ªfe''s body moved faster than fast as the streak of red light took aim at her heart, and she leaned out of the way at an impossible angle, letting it pass through the place where her chest had just been. One of her hands snaked out, viper quick, and snatched the deadly spear out of the air. Much like how Caligula and Romulus had done in Septem.

    The ordinary wooden spear was dropped unceremoniously, and A¨ªfe bent and twisted back into that same pose the stranger had just used. A fell chill descended upon the entire valley again, and now it was the stranger''s turn to backpedal as he hastily drew another set of runes.

    "G¨¢e Bolg ¡ª"

    The deadly red spear flew again, headed the opposite direction from before.

    "Prototype!"

    Glass shattered as the stranger''s barrier spell broke before the strength of A¨ªfe''s throw, and he couldn''t avoid the point of the blade as it pierced through his vest, his shirt, and then his heart in one go, so deep that it jutted out of his back. Like Caesar had before him, he stumbled back, hunching over the wound and clutching at the spear lodged in his body.

    The tension wound in my gut loosened. It was over.

    Strangely enough, though, there wasn''t any blood. The stranger remained standing, but didn''t move, not even to pull the spear from his chest.

    "I never taught you that," A¨ªfe said into the sudden silence. "Even if I wanted to, that technique can''t be passed down by me."

    "Not in the form you use," the stranger agreed, strained. "After all, the bones of that sea monster are far out of your reach now, aren''t they? The only thing you can make¡­is a cheap replica."

    A¨ªfe looked down at the spear she had discarded. With the toe of one boot, she kicked it up, and it had become an identical red spear, except whatever it was made from was duller, less vibrant, like it had been made from a weaker, lower quality material. Her face twisted into a snarl.

    "Is that what I''m supposed to come to terms with here?" she spat. "That no matter what I do, she''ll always come out ahead of me? I''m always going to be second best? A pale imitation standing in her shadow? Are you trying to say I should just accept that and move on?"

    "Heh." The stranger chuckled weakly. "Don''t spare my feelings, now. I thought I did pretty good."

    "You matched the Hound as he was when he left my sister''s tutelage," A¨ªfe said, but it was bitter and disappointed, not a compliment.

    The stranger sighed, shoulders sagging. "Ah. And¡­naturally, that means¡­"

    "Yes." A¨ªfe tossed the replica aside like it was cheap trash. "The Hound grew and grew and kept growing. His strength and skill only increased over the course of his adventures. That you matched him at all is praiseworthy, but you only matched him ¡ª"

    "¡ª at the beginning of his journey," the stranger finished. "Geez. I guess¡­I still have a ways to go, don''t I? I really am the Hero of the Winter Crisis."

    And then, just like the three young men from before, he was gone. Rika squeaked as the mansion ¡ª along with the front step the three of us had wound up sort of sprawled out over ¡ª disappeared, too, leaving us to drop to the ground.

    "Failure after failure after failure," A¨ªfe said lowly. Her glove creaked as her fist tightened around her spear. "Three warriors of great potential, snuffed out because I hadn''t prepared them to face a genuine prodigy. A warrior of the modern era whose training I never completed, left to plateau without my guidance. A failure as a queen, a failure as a teacher ¡ª is my last obstacle to be my failure as a mother?"

    "H-hey, you''re not a failure!" Rika insisted as she scrambled to her feet. "You killed that magical tentacle monster! And that super scary Altera lady! And that Tiberius guy and that Caesar guy!"

    A¨ªfe didn''t say anything in response to that as Ritsuka and I climbed to our feet, too. If Rika''s words reached her at all, she didn''t give any sign. Not even a twitch of her lips for the smile she might have been trying to smother.

    Instead, she just reached out with one hand, and G¨¢e Bolg flew back to her palm, like she''d been carrying it the whole time. She turned towards the treacherous path that led towards the castle, away from us.

    "Come, Master," she said evenly. "There should only be one more trial for us to vanquish, and then you can all wake up."

    "A¨ªfe," I tried, and she glanced over at me, her expression saying what her mouth didn''t. Whatever I''d been about to say died in my throat.

    She started forward without us, and we fell into step behind her. I wasn''t the only one who had to be concerned about the thunderous disposition she had right then.

    "What''s going on?" Rika whispered my way. "I''ve never seen Super Action Mom like this before!"

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    "I''m not sure," I admitted, because we really hadn''t. She was normally too composed, too in control of herself. I''d had the thought before that she was actually a really private person, and it was proving even truer than I''d originally thought, because I had no idea how long she must have been stewing on this for it to spill over the way it was right now.

    This was different from that book I''d caught her reading. Deeper, more meaningful to her. On some level, I''d known that she wasn''t entirely satisfied with how her life had gone from that day onwards, but she''d never let on that it bothered her this much.

    "If we''re here because there''s something she needs to resolve," Ritsuka began quietly.

    That much seemed obvious enough. Dreaming of your Servant''s past was an established enough thing, but getting dragged into their dream was unprecedented and unusual enough that something important was definitely going on.

    I just wasn''t sure how we were supposed to help her.

    "We might need to intervene," I told them. "If the first two got her this worked up, then the third is going to be a doozy."

    "How?" Rika asked incredulously. "That Winter Hero guy was fighting on her level. We''d be crushed!"

    My lips pursed. "I''m working on that. For now¡­ It might not work, but if you see a moment where you think she needs help, don''t be afraid to try using a Command Spell."

    The twins looked down at the backs of their hands, where the three strokes of their Command Spells lay. We''d been back from Septem more than long enough to restore the ones we''d used at the end, and no matter what I''d thought a minute ago, we wouldn''t be leaving again soon enough that we''d have to worry about being down one or two, so it was worth a try if it came down to it.

    "Will they really work in a dream?" Ritsuka asked, unknowingly echoing my own doubts.

    "Don''t be afraid to find out."

    "This is gonna be a helluva thing to explain to Da Vinci-chan," Rika said.

    It would be a hell of a thing to explain to Marie, too, and of the two, she was probably going to be less understanding.

    We stayed mostly single file down the treacherous path, because the steep cliff and jagged rocks that lay over its edge weren''t something any of us was looking forward to testing. Thankfully, nothing else sprung out of the air to attack us, so we made it to the other side unaccosted and none the worse for wear to stand before the gates of the massive curtain wall that leered down at us at the end.

    The huge double doors swung open with an ominous creak as we approached as though to welcome us inside. A¨ªfe paused for a moment, then let out a long, low breath through her nose.

    "Of course," she mumbled bitterly, but didn''t elaborate.

    The doors led to another path, wider and less treacherous than before, but the drop was still steep and ominous, so we took it carefully, sticking as close to A¨ªfe as we could without crowding her. The path itself sloped upwards and wound around to another gate and another wall, and these too opened before us without our group needing to do anything aside from get close.

    Past the second gate was a courtyard, a wide, open expanse, easily big enough that I could see an army hundreds strong packed inside it comfortably, and on the opposite side of it was the giant tower I''d seen from afar, jutting up towards the heavens. It was tall enough that Emiya could have seen for miles comfortably, and Arash would probably have called it an ideal sniping spot.

    And there, standing at the foot of that tower, familiar red spear in hand¡­

    "Hello, Sister," A¨ªfe greeted her.

    ¡­was a woman. She dressed in dark, skintight clothing, and her long hair fanned out behind her like a cape. An aura of cold calm radiated off of her, like she could kill you in an instant without so much as a twitch of her brow and feel nothing about it. It matched the expressionless look on her face.

    "Hello, A¨ªfe," said the woman who could only be Sc¨¢thach.

    "Holy cow," Rika murmured. "There''s two Super Action Moms! And they''re both super hot!"

    "If that''s A¨ªfe''s sister," Ritsuka began, whispering, "then does that mean¡­ That''s the woman who trained C¨²chulainn?"

    "Yes," I answered him. "Yes, it is."

    "I thought it would be you," A¨ªfe said, stepping forward. Sc¨¢thach observed her placidly. "Perhaps Connla, maybe the Hound, those were also possibilities I considered, but when I thought about my greatest regrets¡­ They''re all tied to you."

    "And mine you," said Sc¨¢thach, still eerily calm. She might as well have been discussing the weather. "There were many things I wished to have done differently. That day, too, is one of them."

    A¨ªfe stopped. "Is it? Have you no pride in your student, who managed to defeat me?"

    "I already knew beforehand, he wasn''t ready to face you in honest combat," said Sc¨¢thach. "That was why I tried to keep him from that battle. I knew it could only end in tragedy."

    A¨ªfe chuckled lowly, bitterly.

    "Whose? Mine, or his?"

    Sc¨¢thach closed her eyes briefly. Like she regretted what she was about to say.

    "Setanta had the weight of destiny on his side. There was only one outcome to that battle."

    My lips pulled tight. Only one outcome, she said. It was destined. Predetermined. Already decided long in advance. Except I''d faced that sort of thing before, too. Had the odds stacked against me, been told there was no way out ¡ª and then I''d made one.

    Destiny was just an excuse people used to justify their bad decisions.

    "Destiny?" A¨ªfe echoed, something dangerous and sharp in her tone. "If something as trite as destiny was enough to defeat me, then I would never have picked up a sword at all. I would have become some king''s broodmare and popped out heirs to great kingdoms, instead of fighting them to test my mettle. It wasn''t destiny that guided him that day. It was the one woman in the whole world who knew what I cherished most and told it to him."

    She snarled, "It wasn''t destiny that let him win! It was his teacher telling him exactly which button would guarantee his victory!"

    My eyes bounced back and forth between them while I watched and listened. Even if the pattern hadn''t already been established, I could tell that this was going to come to blows, it was just a matter of time, and I had to be ready for it when it did.

    "I know," Sc¨¢thach agreed, "but you must have seen his talent just as well as I. It was too soon for his life to be cut short."

    "But it was acceptable for mine?" A¨ªfe demanded furiously. "Your precious Hound still had too much life left to live, but mine had gone on long enough that it didn''t matter if he ended it, whatever form that would have taken?" She sneered. "Would you have let him put that sword through my throat?"

    "Would you?" Sc¨¢thach countered. "I know you too well. Setanta was talented, but you were the greatest woman warrior in the world. Even at his mercy with his sword pressed against your throat, couldn''t you have turned the tables on him, if you truly wanted to?"

    This time, A¨ªfe didn''t answer right away.

    "Maybe I could have," she said eventually, some of the fire gone. "Maybe I wasn''t thinking clearly, because he surprised me the way he did. Maybe, in that moment, some part of me admired him." Her hands trembled. "And maybe it was the look on your face. Like everything had gone exactly as you had known it would, and for just that moment, I felt as a child again, beaten and defeated by my brilliant sister."

    For a moment, Sc¨¢thach bowed her head and closed her eyes, pained. "That was not my intention."

    "No," A¨ªfe allowed. "You were simply selfish. So selfish and so greedy to keep your pet project alive that whatever he did to me was an ''acceptable outcome.'' As long as he lived long enough to kill you, right?"

    Sc¨¢thach didn''t deny it, which, well, that said a lot of things about both her and the sisters'' relationship.

    "That''s fucked up," Rika whispered, summarizing my own thoughts.

    "You don''t have to worry about that anymore, Sc¨¢thach," said A¨ªfe. She swept her spear out, holding the red shaft tightly. "Because I''m going to kill you right here and now."

    "It has been a long time since last we fought one another seriously," Sc¨¢thach said. Her eyes widened and her brow furrowed, and a burst of something swept out from her, a focused chill that reminded me of the spear they both wielded. "Very well. Let us dance along the path of feats one more time."

    The ground shattered and Rika let out a startled yelp as both sisters disappeared. Suddenly, they were in the middle of the courtyard, a loud BONG echoing out from the shafts of their crossed weapons as they collided with the intensity of a detonating bomb. For a tense second, they hung there, staring into each other''s eyes, red against amethyst.

    And then, they moved, flickering out of sight as they danced back and forth across the courtyard. They reappeared only in the moments when they collided, the brief fractions of a second where they came to a stop, but they were gone again by the time I turned my head to follow. The staccato of their impacts and the trading of their blows seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and it was impossible to tell which was the original sound and which was just an echo bouncing off of the castle''s stone walls.

    It was on a different level than what I''d seen before, in no small part because I couldn''t see it. I thought A¨ªfe had already shown us her best, that we''d already had a chance to see what she looked like when she was going all out and holding nothing back, and maybe that was true, but here, she was unbound. Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, Romulus, Altera ¡ª none of them could compare to the sheer power, the unbelievable speed, the raw physicality that Sc¨¢thach brought out in her.

    The same seemed to be true of Sc¨¢thach. They were moving too fast for me to get clear looks, but blood was flying in every direction, splashing across the ground, and the brief glimpses showed me the wounds that they came from: they were both giving as good as they got. And even though they were both wounding each other, they were both also healing themselves up almost as soon as the wounds were made.

    "Holy cow, look at them go," Ritsuka whispered.

    "I would if I could even see them!" said Rika. "Damn! Even that Winter Hero guy didn''t make Super Action Mom go this hard!"

    A final BONG rang out, and the sisters separated, skidding backwards from each other to bleed off momentum. Both of them were panting for breath, their clothing ripped and rent from where their spears had cut into the fabric.

    A¨ªfe reached up with one hand, wiping blood away from her cheek with one thumb. The wound had already sealed over seamlessly, leaving a faint smear over undamaged flesh.

    "Two thousand years," she said, "and this is all the further you''ve come?"

    "My training has never stopped," Sc¨¢thach replied evenly, "but there is only so much farther one might go without worthy challenges to surmount and worthy enemies to fight."

    A¨ªfe''s lips pulled away from her teeth. "You could have had me!"

    She kicked off the ground again, racing towards her sister, and the two of them met in the middle once more, exchanging another flurry of blows too fast for me to see.

    "An eternity together!" A¨ªfe spat as they fought. "Day after day, challenging our limits, pushing each other even further beyond what should have been possible! Always advancing, never stopping, until even the gods themselves looked upon us with awe!"

    "Do you think that would have made you happy?" Sc¨¢thach asked placidly.

    "Of course it would!" A¨ªfe answered. "Fighting strong enemies, overcoming great challenges, pushing past my limitations ¡ª those were the things I lived for!"

    "Even if it would have meant Connla never existed?"

    A¨ªfe¡­stumbled, for lack of a better word, and this time, I saw it as Sc¨¢thach''s red spear ¡ª so similar to A¨ªfe''s, and yet also so different ¡ª took aim at her throat. But if I could see it, there was no way A¨ªfe couldn''t, and she proved it by dodging out of the way and throwing herself back, creating enough distance to recover. I lifted my arm and prepared to toss another Emergency Evasion or a Momentary Reinforcement her way, in case she needed it.

    She didn''t. Sc¨¢thach didn''t follow up. I let some of the tension ease out of me.

    "If you had never been defeated by Setanta, you would never have taken him to your bed," said Sc¨¢thach. "Our rivalry would have continued unabated, our skirmishes would have escalated. He would have completed his training under me and left, and your paths would never have crossed."

    "Are you saying," A¨ªfe said lowly, her voice tremulous, "that you did me a kindness?"

    "You would never have known the joy of motherhood," Sc¨¢thach continued to explain. "You would never have had the experience of raising a son and watching him grow, as I did. Your own excellence would have been your undoing."

    "THEN WHY DID YOU LET HIM DIE?" A¨ªfe roared, more furious than I had ever seen her.

    She took off like a jet, and she attacked Sc¨¢thach with a thunderous blow that seemed to shake the whole castle. Sc¨¢thach blocked it and held it off, but only just, because I could see her arms tremble under A¨ªfe''s strength.

    "I taught him everything I could!"

    She threw Sc¨¢thach back, and then took up the javelin throwing pose. This time, she didn''t spend the time or energy to incant her Noble Phantasm, she just threw the spear with all of her strength, aiming to take her sister''s heart out with nothing more than raw speed and power.

    Sc¨¢thach deflected it with another BONG.

    "I pushed him as far as he could go, and I never let him slow down!"

    A¨ªfe seemed to teleport across the distance, her fist drawn back, and Sc¨¢thach leapt out of the way as the punch passed through the space her head had just occupied. The wall behind her exploded, tossing chunks of gray stone all about.

    "I taught him side by side with you, and I watched him soak up our knowledge like a sponge! He learned everything we had by the time he was only seven!"

    She chased Sc¨¢thach, throwing punches and kicks with such speed that I couldn''t follow them anymore, and the only thing more incredible than how fast she was laying into Sc¨¢thach was the fact that Sc¨¢thach was still managing to dodge it all.

    "There was only one thing he never learned ¡ª"

    Another Thunder Feat whooped out of A¨ªfe''s knuckles, soaring past Sc¨¢thach''s shoulder, and in the distance, the far wall cratered.

    "¡ª and you refused to teach it to him!"

    Sc¨¢thach backpedaled, and A¨ªfe held out her hand instead of following. G¨¢e Bolg, her G¨¢e Bolg, leapt back into her hand.

    "You even refused to let me teach it to him!"

    Bloodlust chilled the air as A¨ªfe''s G¨¢e Bolg ignited with cold power, sucking in all the warmth from the courtyard. A¨ªfe spread her legs, thrust out one arm, and cocked the other back until the spear ran parallel with her body.

    "If you covet this technique so dearly," A¨ªfe said with deadly venom, "then you can go ahead and die to it!"

    Sc¨¢thach spread her own legs, mirroring A¨ªfe''s stance, and cocked her arm back.

    "G¨¢e Bolg ¡ª"

    And then, at the last second, she hesitated. I realized what was about to happen a fraction of a second too late to do anything about it.

    "Prototype!"

    Like it had so many times before, G¨¢e Bolg flew like a missile across the distance, too fast for me to see as anything more than a streak of light. Sc¨¢thach didn''t try to dodge or to block or even parry. She just stood there and let it hit her, folding over the spear as it pierced through her heart and stumbling backwards.

    The twins gasped from next to me, but no one seemed more shocked by what had happened than A¨ªfe herself.

    "You¡­"

    Sc¨¢thach gulped down a ragged breath, her hands clutching the spear as red blood poured from the wound and ran down the blade and the shaft. The front of her skintight bodysuit darkened.

    "You invented that technique," A¨ªfe said. "There''s no way¡­!"

    "You were right," Sc¨¢thach rasped. "I was selfish. I was too selfish. I wanted my star pupil to survive. I wanted him to overcome all challengers, to remain my undefeated student, even if it cost my nephew his life. I wanted him to one day return and take my life, so that I could finally die like a human being."

    She reached out with one bloodied hand as though to cup A¨ªfe''s face, but A¨ªfe was too far away. Sc¨¢thach smiled a small smile as a trickle of red dribbled down from the side of her mouth.

    "I wanted my sister to live the life I couldn''t have," she went on. "I wanted her to live and die as a human being. I wanted her to know the simple, ordinary joys that I had to leave behind. Most of all¡­I wanted her to be free of the burden that would come with taking my life. I wanted her hands to never be soaked in my blood."

    "That''s it?" A¨ªfe asked, voice trembling. "You came all this way, you invaded my dream, you set up these obstacles for me to face¡­all so that you could tell me that you loved me too much to let me suffer like you have?"

    Sc¨¢thach''s smile grew brighter and broader until it crinkled her eyes, and she tilted her head a little, the way a mother might when leaning down to praise her daughter.

    "I also¡­selfishly wanted to see my sister''s face again."

    Slowly, A¨ªfe walked towards her sister, and Rika moved to follow her, but I threw out my arm to keep her back with us. She looked at me, a question on her face, but I ignored it in favor of watching A¨ªfe.

    She came to a stop within arm''s reach of Sc¨¢thach.

    "As children, I idolized you," she confessed. "I saw your brilliance and selfishly wanted it for my own. And so I took up a sword ¡ª"

    "And challenged me to a duel." Sc¨¢thach chuckled weakly, flecks of blood flying from her lips. "You had courage and drive ¡ª"

    "But no skill," A¨ªfe finished. She reached out and cupped her sister''s cheek tenderly. "I lived in your shadow for so long, and when it finally seemed that I''d grown out of it, you shoved me back in, using your prodigy as the tool."

    Sc¨¢thach sighed. "I''m sorry."

    "As am I," said A¨ªfe. "For not realizing when you were looking out for me, even if it wasn''t in a way I could appreciate. You''re right. If not for that day, Connla would never have existed, and I would not have known the joy of having him, raising him, nor the pride of seeing him grow." She paused. "But you''re also wrong. I would gladly have spent eternity fighting with you, beside, and against you, and even knowing what it would cost, I would not have regretted it."

    "That is my greatest regret," Sc¨¢thach admitted. "That I was always underestimating you, even when I should have known better."

    And then she vanished, bursting apart into golden dust. It glittered and disappeared in a nonexistent wind.

    "And mine," said A¨ªfe, addressing the empty space, "is that I left you alone in that hellscape, doomed to an eternity of solitude amongst its ghosts."

    Her hand fell back down to her side, and she let out a heavy sigh. "But that is how regrets work. You can never regret something that you can change."

    "Super Action Mom¡­" said Rika with quiet empathy.

    "I''m sorry to have dragged the three of you into my mess, Ritsuka, Rika, Taylor," said A¨ªfe, finally addressing us. "No doubt, it was also Sc¨¢thach''s intent that you might see me in this moment of vulnerability ¡ª more of her meddling."

    "It''s okay," said Ritsuka. "I know we didn''t do much except stand here and watch, but¡­"

    "I think you''re even cooler now, Super Action Mom!" Rika blurted out.

    A¨ªfe ducked her head. I could make out the traces of a smile on her lips.

    "Don''t think for an instant this will mean I''m going to take it easy on you in training," she warned. "But¡­for tomorrow, I think I can give you the day off."

    "Oh my god!" Rika gasped. "Onii-chan, now I know this is a dream!"

    "Now if only we could figure out how to make it last another week," Ritsuka agreed.

    "Right?"

    A¨ªfe chuckled and shook her head, staring off into the distance. What she was seeing, what she was thinking about¡­ Maybe she was just wistfully reminiscing about the sister who had just disappeared.

    "I hope the rest of your dreams tonight are a little less eventful."

 Chapter LXXVIII: Dreamcatcher

    Chapter LXXVIII: Dreamcatcher

    If I dreamt at all after being drawn into A¨ªfe''s dream, then by the time I woke up the next morning, I didn''t remember any of it. They were, at least, apparently decent enough, because I felt well-rested and energized, and not at all like I''d spent a significant portion of my night watching one of my Servants almost literally tackle her demons.

    I was, however, on my own as I did my morning workouts. Ritsuka and Rika had taken A¨ªfe''s offer of a day off and decided to sleep in instead of getting up and doing at least a light workout, something they might come to regret tomorrow, when they were going to be back on their previous schedule and found themselves less prepared to wake up so early.

    Fortunately, Fou also decided not to come in at the same time, so that little distraction wasn''t present to throw me off. Small mercies. Maybe he was just as leery about being in the same room as me by himself as I was him.

    Whatever the reason, I was glad not to have to deal with him. Someday, I would figure out why we reacted the way we did to each other, but it didn''t look like it was going to be anytime soon.

    After my workout, I went back to my room and finished my daily ablutions, getting a hot shower that I lingered in for just a few extra minutes. Then, I went to the cafeteria to get some breakfast. Emiya was only too happy to burden me with a tray of homemade waffles, a few rashers of bacon, and a glass of orange juice.

    I''d said it before and I''d keep saying it: we were screwed as soon as we lost him.

    It was as I was halfway through eating that Romani stumbled, haggard and exhausted, into the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. He looked like it was the worst thing in the world that he had to actually wait for the machine to finish spitting out that black sludge before he could drink it.

    "Romani?" I asked.

    He didn''t answer me right away, but once his cup was full, he staggered over to the table I''d picked to sit at, dropped heavily down into the seat, and then took three large gulps of his caffeinated poison. Only then did he let out a ragged sigh and give me a wan smile.

    "Good morning, Taylor."

    "You look like shit," I told him bluntly.

    Romani grimaced and dragged a hand down his face. Heavy bags hung from under his bloodshot eyes.

    "The Director didn''t sleep so well last night," he told me, "which means that I didn''t sleep so well, either."

    My brow furrowed. "How many?"

    "Six," he answered.

    That¡­wasn''t fun, but it could be worse. Like staying up for three days straight, sustained only by coffee and stimulants, the way he had been for most of the week leading up to our deployment into Rome.

    "Six hours?"

    Romani shook his head. "Six times," he clarified. "She woke up six times last night."

    That, on the other hand, did count as worse.

    My lips pursed. "Was she¡­?"

    She''d seemed okay when we were talking to her yesterday, if understandably frazzled, but one of the things we''d worried about was that she''d start experiencing suicidal thoughts. That was part of why Romani and Da Vinci had kept her in the infirmary overnight, to my understanding. So they could keep a closer watch on her than they could if she went back to her room by herself.

    "Just nightmares, thankfully," said Romani. "I know it doesn''t sound great to put it that way, but since it could have been a whole lot worse, I''m thankful that it''s just nightmares, for now. My body, unfortunately, is not." He sighed again. "And Da Vinci still hasn''t given me back my stims, so I''m feeling it now."

    My gut twisted a little, but I wasn''t sure there was anything that could have been done about it. Even if we hadn''t been stuck inside of A¨ªfe''s dream last night, the fact that Romani wasn''t saying anything about how deeply we''d slept meant that no one had come to any of us about Marie''s nightmares, so we probably would have slept through the night anyway.

    It didn''t stop me from wishing I''d been able to be there. Even if all I could have done was offer her my shoulder, that was better than nothing.

    "How bad were they?"

    Romani frowned and covered his hesitation by taking another sip of his coffee. "About as bad as we were expecting them to be. Even if her body is back in Chaldea, her mind keeps getting dragged back to Fuyuki while she sleeps. Half the times she woke up last night had her sobbing about Lev and how he could do what he did."

    He sighed and went on, "I can''t say I blame her for that. I know I didn''t tell you guys this, but just between you and me? I had my own fair share of nightmares about that day for the first couple of weeks afterwards."

    I didn''t say anything to that. What could I say? That I''d become so inured to that sort of thing that I''d slept like a baby afterwards? Any nightmares I''d had after Fuyuki had been almost entirely about Marie and failing to save her. Lev hadn''t featured anywhere near as much, just because we''d never been particularly close. Polite and cordial to each other, but too distant for it to sting the way it did for Romani and Marie.

    Romani would probably have some comment about how that wasn''t healthy. Thinking about my sessions with Doctor Yamada, he was probably even right. There just wasn''t anything I was willing to do about it now.

    "Is there anything else we can do for her? Until Da Vinci makes the dreamcatcher, that is."

    Romani shrugged helplessly. "I''d like to say be there and be supportive," he said, "but Director Animusphere isn''t the kind to accept sympathy like that. She''s too determined to do everything for herself."

    It was nothing I hadn''t already expected, but some part of me, however small, had been hoping he would give me a better answer than that.

    I went back to my food. The waffles didn''t taste quite so good anymore, coming off of the news that had just been dropped into my lap, but that was no reason to let them go to waste just so I could be hungrier than usual a few hours from now.

    "At least everyone else seems to have slept well last night," Romani said tiredly. "I half expected either you or the twins to visit Director Animusphere in the middle of the night. You especially, given how anxious you were about getting her back before."

    I regarded him for a moment, using chewing my food as cover for my thoughts. A¨ªfe probably wouldn''t appreciate it very much if I started airing her dirty laundry, even if it was to Romani, but the fact that we had been pulled into her dream meant that we could be pulled into our Servants'' dreams, and that was probably something he needed to know, at least until Marie was back in the Director''s chair.

    After taking a second to swallow, I told him, "We got pulled into A¨ªfe''s dream last night."

    He blinked, bemused. "Pulled into her dream? You mean the three of you?"

    "It started off normal enough," I said. "Standard dream stuff. About halfway through, I suddenly found myself in Ireland, or maybe Scotland, watching a battle between A¨ªfe''s army and her sister''s¡­"

    In the interest of maintaining at least some of A¨ªfe''s privacy, I didn''t go into too much detail about the trials she faced or who they pitted her against. Instead, I focused on the way the dream felt, the lucidity we all had during it, and the fact that even so, things were still dreamlike enough that things like time, distance, and geography could be malleable enough to change when we weren''t paying attention.

    The one thing I had to tell him was the thing that A¨ªfe had never come out and told us, but which had been made obvious to me by the way she talked to Sc¨¢thach at the end of the fight. Namely, the fact that the whole thing had supposedly been set up by Sc¨¢thach herself, presumably from the distant Land of Shadows where, if A¨ªfe was right, she still lived, training and fighting by herself every day.

    By the time I finished, his brow had furrowed and a pensive look was on his face.

    "That''s¡­" He didn''t seem to know what to say. "I want to say that should be impossible, but those two regularly did things that flew in the face of that. You''re sure that the person she fought was the real Sc¨¢thach?"

    "No," I admitted, because it still seemed far-fetched even to me, "but A¨ªfe seemed sure, and the way she talked, it sounded like she was certain it was something Sc¨¢thach could do."

    Romani sighed, rubbing at his eyes with the fingertips of one hand. "There''s no precedent for that," he told me bluntly, which wasn''t anything I didn''t already know. "The dream cycle is an established thing, but that''s just supposed to be seeing a Servant''s memories of their past, not¡­"

    He gestured jerkily, as though to encompass the entirety of it. I understood the feeling.

    "That''s why I''m telling you," I said. "If it happened once, it can happen again. Next time, it might not be a sister reaching out across time and space to give her sister some closure, it might be one of Solomon''s Demon Gods trying to eat us."

    Romani held up a finger. "That part, I''m less sure about. After all, it stands to reason that if they could do that, they would have already done it, wouldn''t they?"

    That¡­was actually a pretty good point. If Flauros could have crushed us in our sleep by reaching into our dreams and breaking our minds, why did he go through that whole thing in Septem? For that matter, if it was that easy for them to affect us, then why were we even still alive?

    "You think we''re¡­protected, somehow? That''s the reason why he had to set bombs instead of sabotaging us some other way?"

    Romani shrugged. "Da Vinci could give you a whole lot more details, I''m sure," he said. "But it makes more sense than the idea that they''re just ignoring us, even after we foiled their plans twice. Don''t you think?"

    He might be onto something. I wasn''t sure I was willing to extend it to the idea that we were virtually untouchable in Chaldea ¡ª last night disproved that idea on its face ¡ª but every Thinker I''d ever encountered had blind spots, from Lisa to Dinah to Alexandria herself. Even Cauldron''s boogieman with her "I win" power had things that she couldn''t use it on, for one reason or another.

    It stood to reason that idea followed here, too.

    "Maybe."

    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

    "Still," he went on. "It is strange and a little worrying. I''ll have to talk to Da Vinci and see if there''s anything we can do about it."

    Beep-beep! my communicator chimed, and when I checked it, there was a message from Da Vinci, asking me to meet her down in her workshop.

    "Speaking of Da Vinci¡­"

    Romani blinked. "That''s her? She must be pretty busy if she isn''t coming up here to get you herself."

    "She wants me to meet her down in her workshop."

    "Oh." He took another sip of his coffee. "Yeah, she mentioned something about solutions to the Director''s sleep problem after she woke up screaming for the third time. I''m not sure what she needs you for, though."

    My heart skipped a beat. Was she taking me up on my idea from earlier? Could she really have made that spider puppet that quickly?

    Who was I kidding? This was Da Vinci. She''d made Marie a replacement body in a week.

    "I might have an idea."

    I finished off my breakfast with a little more speed than necessary, gulped down my orange juice, then took my empty plate and tray back up to Emiya, who accepted it back wordlessly. He had on another one of those silly novelty aprons, the kind with witty or playful phrases on the front. This one was an ordinary "Kiss the Cook."

    Naturally, I didn''t obey it. The only thing he got from me was a small, brief smile, a raised eyebrow, and an empty tray. His cooking was good, but it wasn''t that good.

    With that done, I headed towards the cafeteria exit, because I didn''t want to waste any time.

    "Have a good day!" Romani called after me, toasting me with the cheap, paper cup he was drinking out of.

    "Go take a nap!" I threw back at him.

    The cafeteria door closed behind me before he could offer a rebuttal, and I started off towards Da Vinci''s workshop, forcing myself to take the trip at a walking pace. There was no need to rush, because even if I was right, getting there a few minutes faster wouldn''t change much about how quickly Da Vinci could bring her idea to life.

    On the way there, I ran into someone ¡ª Mash, coming from the direction of the dorm rooms, where Ritsuka and Rika looked to still be asleep.

    "Oh!" she said, surprised. "Good morning, Miss Taylor!"

    "Fouu," the little gremlin on her shoulder greeted me sourly.

    "Good morning, Mash," I replied, ignoring Fou entirely. "The twins still asleep?"

    She sighed. "Yes, they are. Senpai said something about having a day off, and Senpai said that she was catching up on her beauty sleep. I told them that A¨ªfe would be harder on them if they tried to skip their morning workout, but Senpai said that A¨ªfe was the one who gave them the day off, even though I haven''t seen A¨ªfe all morning."

    Senpai and Senpai ¡ª that was going to get very confusing, if she wasn''t careful.

    "They''re not lying," I told her. "We got sucked into A¨ªfe''s dream last night and helped her with some things, so A¨ªfe gave them the morning off today."

    Mash blinked. "Oh." Then what I''d said caught up with her, and she panicked. "W-wait, you got sucked into A¨ªfe''s dream? Without me? W-what do you mean, Miss Taylor?"

    My lips pursed. As much as I liked Mash, I was in the middle of something when she and I found each other, and I''d already taken the time to finish eating before I left the cafeteria. I wasn''t in a rush, but I didn''t want to make Da Vinci wait any longer than I had to, not if it was about what I thought it was, so I couldn''t just stand around in the hallway to sate Mash''s curiosity.

    "I was on my way to Da Vinci''s workshop, she needed me for something," I told Mash. "We can walk and talk."

    "Oh," Mash said. "I''ll come along, then!"

    She fell into step beside me as I started walking again, and I did my best to ignore the itching sensation of Fou''s gaze on my face and his presence beside me while I explained the situation from the previous night to Mash. As I had with Romani, I edited out a lot of the details for the sake of A¨ªfe''s privacy, but I made sure to convey the important points. Like the fact that A¨ªfe was grateful enough afterwards to give the twins the morning off.

    "I see," Mash said quietly once I''d finished. "So even someone who seems so strong like Queen A¨ªfe¡­can have things that weigh her down." She smiled. "I''m glad. That Senpai and Senpai could help someone else the same way they did me."

    "The way they helped you?" I asked.

    I hadn''t heard about this part before. When had the twins done that?

    Mash blinked, surprised. "I didn''t tell you, Miss Taylor?"

    "Not that I remember."

    "Senpai¡­ They came looking for me in the Rayshift Chamber, after the bombs went off." She ducked her head, smiling happily, like it was a memory she cherished. "The whole room was on fire, and I was pinned beneath a pillar. It must have weighed several tons, and it probably severed my spinal cord, because I couldn''t feel my legs. If the emergency Rayshift hadn''t happened¡­I think I would have bled out in another minute or two."

    I looked at her askance. It wasn''t like I hadn''t met people who took joy in things even stranger and more depraved ¡ª the entire Slaughterhouse Nine came to mind, like Manton, who enjoyed eating people with his Siberian ¡ª but that still didn''t sound like something you were supposed to be happy about.

    "They found me there," Mash went on, "and they tried to lift that pillar off of me, even though it was way too big and way too heavy for ordinary humans. And when the bulkhead doors sealed, they sat with me and held my hands. Even though they could have escaped before that and saved themselves, they stayed with me and gave me comfort."

    They¡­really did that? Up until now, I''d been under the impression that the twins had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time ¡ª or, perhaps in these circumstances, the right place at the right time. Just bystanders who got swept along when things went to shit.

    Except apparently, they weren''t. They might not have deliberately stayed around to become Masters, and they might not have had much idea of what they were getting themselves into, but it said something about them, something good, that the whole reason they were even there in Fuyuki was because they both decided to be good people, even if it was going to cost them their lives.

    I really had underestimated them, it seemed. Even if they were green as grass in Spring, they had something that a lot of heroes in my own career had been lacking: a genuine desire to do good.

    "They really did that, huh¡­"

    "Mm!" Mash nodded. "That''s why¡­ When we were Rayshifted to Fuyuki, I made them my Masters. I couldn''t do anything else for the people who did so much for me."

    There was a pause, and her face flushed red. "N-not that I don''t think you''d make a great Master, Miss Taylor!" she rushed to add. "I-it''s only that¡­I-I didn''t realize you were there, too! I-if I''d known that you also were still in the Rayshift Chamber with us when we were sent to Fuyuki ¡ª"

    "It''s okay, Mash," I said, offering her a smile. "I''m not offended or anything. I get it. Remember what I told the twins after Fuyuki? The first time, it''s all just a matter of luck. The right place at the right time to do the right thing. That time, it was them."

    "Fooou," the little gremlin murmured doubtfully. I ignored him.

    "I see. Thank you, Miss Taylor." Mash sighed. "I''m glad, though. In the end, you summoned a Servant that works so well with you, too. Even if it wasn''t who you were hoping for, Arash is a real hero."

    I tried not to let my smile fall too far. He really was. In some ways, I think he was better than I deserved. In others, I think he was exactly the sort of Servant I deserved. A Heroic Spirit who did everything right the first time, even if it cost him his life.

    Was it karma that brought him to me?

    "Well, we found Siegfried eventually, too," I said, playing it off. "So I did wind up getting the Heroic Spirit I was looking for, in the end."

    "That''s true, isn''t it?" Mash mused. She hummed. "And then we found Bradamante, and now Queen A¨ªfe and Lord El-Melloi II¡­ I-it can''t make up for all of the people who died, but¡­ Chaldea really is growing, isn''t it?"

    Not to mention Shakespeare and Emiya, although the former had been holed up in the room he claimed for himself almost since the moment he''d been summoned. A part of me wondered what he was getting up to in there. Another part of me worried about finding out.

    And the most important thing, of course¡­

    "And now we got Director Animusphere back."

    Mash smiled. "Yeah!"

    When we reached Da Vinci''s workshop, Mash turned to me, gave a short bow, and said, "Thank you for telling me about the dream with Queen A¨ªfe, Miss Taylor. I''m going to see if I can get Senpai and Senpai out of bed again. Good luck with Miss Da Vinci!"

    "No problem, Mash."

    Then, she left. Thankfully, the little gremlin decided to go with her, so that persistent itch of something crawling up and down my spine left, too.

    The door to Da Vinci''s workshop swooshed open. "Hello, hello!" she greeted me as I stepped inside. "Good morning, Taylor!"

    "Good morning, Da Vinci," I replied in kind. "You said you needed me for something?"

    "Yes, yes! Come here!"

    She waved me over with one hand, smiling broadly, and after a brief moment of hesitation, I stepped further in and towards the project she was currently working on at her desk. Table? Whichever it counted as.

    I recognized the rounded hoop shape immediately.

    "That''s ¡ª"

    A dreamcatcher.

    "Yes, that''s right," said Da Vinci. She gestured down at the simple wooden loop, bound together at the top by a piece of twine. I didn''t imagine she was going to keep it that way. "The idea of using a dreamcatcher to aid our illustrious Director Animusphere was not a bad one, it just presents us with a few difficulties in seeing it through."

    I looked around, scanning the antiquated, Renaissance Era workshop, but there was no sign of the spider puppet that she''d mentioned building for me. I did spy a diagram of a spider sketched onto what looked like thin parchment, with special attention paid to the spinnerets.

    I also saw a stretch of black silk sitting out nearby that sketch. A very familiar bolt of black silk that looked like it had been carefully sheared away from a larger piece of fabric.

    "Is that¡­?"

    From my old costume?

    Da Vinci looked where I was looking, then turned back to me with a smile. "I hope you don''t mind. I would have needed a sample to get the silk composition correct to begin with, but I also thought that it would be much more efficient and much less time consuming to simply use some silk that was already woven by a real spider."

    I¡­wasn''t quite sure how to feel about that. Things had been moving so fast at the time that I couldn''t remember whether I''d explicitly given her permission to cannibalize my costume to make the dreamcatcher or the silk from the spider puppet, but even if I hadn''t¡­ The costume was all but useless to me, and it was from a part of my life I was trying to move past, so I would have given her permission if she asked.

    "Will it be enough?"

    Given the kind of shape it was in and the shape of the bolt of silk she had there, she must have pulled it either from the shawl or the skirt. Definitely not the mask, though, because it didn''t have any holes cut into it for my lenses.

    "Oh, more than enough," said Da Vinci, unconcerned. "The hard part, frankly, will be separating out the individual threads so I can make use of them, but even that is more a matter of tedium than effort. I won''t even need all of what I have here, if I''m being honest with you."

    "What about the rest of the costume?"

    She looked at me dubiously. "Well, if you want it back, I don''t strictly need it for anything, but I can''t imagine what use you might have for it. Even if I took the time to bring it up to spec to match your current standard issue Mystic Code, it''s a bit too¡­conspicuous to use during Rayshifts."

    Of course it was, I thought, a little annoyed. I wasn''t stupid. The only place that costume belonged was on Earth Bet, or maybe shoved into my closet, like an old jacket I couldn''t wear anymore but held onto for sentimental value.

    "That''s not what I''m saying," I told her. "I meant that it might be better to use it for something else. Like putting a silk underlayer into the Chaldean uniforms. It might not help that much against Servants, but that doesn''t mean it would be useless."

    Da Vinci raised a finger, opened her mouth, closed it, and then said, "That might actually be something worth doing. I''ll have to look into it." She shook her head. "Regardless, that''s not the reason I called you down here. Taylor, I need your assistance with putting this dreamcatcher together."

    I looked at her skeptically. "You do?"

    The great genius, Leonardo da Vinci, needed my help building something so simple?

    Da Vinci nodded and waved me over again. "Come closer," she said.

    Warily, I stepped closer to her desk, and she kept on smiling.

    "Now," she twirled her finger, "turn around for me, please."

    Still leery of what she had planned, I did as she asked and turned around, putting my back to her. A moment later, her hand was in my hair, combing through it calmly, and with a jolt, I realized what she was about to do.

    Oh. I know I offered, but even so, something squirmed uncomfortably in my gut.

    "And now, if you would," said Da Vinci, "I would like you to turn on your magic circuits and cycle mana through them, please."

    I took a deep breath, and in my mind''s eye, I pictured a thread of spider''s silk pulled taut, fraying in the middle, and snapping. My magic circuits spun up, and I carefully took just enough magical energy to fill each and every one of them and began flowing it through, looping back around like a turbine turning.

    "Yes," said Da Vinci. "Just like that. Hold it for me for a moment."

    My heart thudded in my chest, but I did as she said, closing my eyes. It made the sound of the scissors snipping away seem all the louder as she cut once, twice, three times, cutting my hair loose with each one.

    On the tenth snip, she suddenly declared, "All done! You can stop cycling mana now."

    My eyes shot back open, and I whirled back around to her smiling face as she held out ten individual strands of hair from her fingers, and only ten. That was it. Just ten hairs. The rest was completely untouched.

    I lost more than that to my hairbrush every week.

    "What?"

    "Did you expect me to take it all?" Da Vinci shook her head. "My plan only needs ten strands of your hair ¡ª to weave together with ten strands of silk, you see. It''s a bit of mixing and matching mythologies and systems of magecraft, but in numerology, ten is the number of completion, you see, and cycles. Theoretically, it should help strengthen the dreamcatcher''s purpose."

    "Theoretically?"

    I''d heard that term and its synonyms plenty of times throughout my career, and things had often worked out in some form or fashion in spite of them, but that didn''t mean I liked to hear it any more than I had before.

    "Mixing and matching systems of magecraft always carries some risk of failure," said Da Vinci. "In this case, there isn''t anything that says these particular forms are incompatible, so even if I can''t offer you a guarantee, I can at least say that there''s no reason why it shouldn''t work."

    I still wasn''t particularly happy about that, but this was Da Vinci, after all. She wasn''t perfect, but she''d already performed a miracle and brought Marie back to life, so I could give her a bit of slack and trust her at least this far.

    "How long will it take you to finish that?"

    She laughed and waved it off. "Oh, come now, Taylor! This is me you''re talking to, after all! If a child at a summer camp could make one in an afternoon, why ever should it take me any longer than that for me to make one myself?"

    That¡­was actually a fairly good point. I''d made one myself in summer camp, too, and it really hadn''t been that hard or taken longer than an hour or two while we listened to the camp counselors talk us through doing it.

    "So you''ll have it done for tonight, then."

    "Of course!" she said brightly. "Why, our dear Director Animusphere will be sleeping like a baby tonight, just you wait!"

    I felt a bit of weight lift itself off of my shoulders. "Thank you, Da Vinci."

    "It''s no problem." She smiled slyly. "Speaking of Director Animusphere, I''m sure she''s feeling quite lonely right now, so why don''t you go and see her? She should still be in the infirmary ¡ª doctor''s orders, you understand."

    So that it was easier to keep an eye on her. Yeah, I understood that completely. Marie probably didn''t appreciate it ¡ª scratch that, I knew she didn''t appreciate it ¡ª but her safety was more important to me than her comfort. I wasn''t willing to risk losing her right after we got her back.

    "I''ll go and do that, then," I said, turning to leave.

    "Have a good day, Taylor!" Da Vinci chirped at my back. I lifted a hand and waved, and then I left.

    The infirmary, fortunately, wasn''t on the complete other side of the facility, even if it wasn''t exactly right next to Da Vinci''s workshop either, so it didn''t take me all that long to make the trip. It was only a few minutes later that I was walking up to it, and the door whooshed open with a hydraulic whir.

    Marie, from the other end of the infirmary, looked up from the stack of papers she was going through and over towards me. Her eyes widened, surprised and a little relieved.

    "Hebert!"

    I couldn''t stop myself from smiling a little. "Good morning, Director."

 Chapter LXXIX: Road to Recovery

    Chapter LXXIX: Road to Recovery

    "One more step."

    Marie looked at the floor, down at the cushioned mats that covered it, and at the distance that still separated us. Her knees shook from the effort of staying upright, and her face burned with the humiliation it took to manage just that alone. Her hands gripped the rails that helped her stay balanced so tightly that her knuckles stood out starkly against her already pale skin, a feat considering the sterile white lighting that lit the whole room.

    "I hate this," she mumbled miserably. "This is so humiliating."

    I know, I thought but didn''t say. It had been humiliating for me, too, having to relearn how to walk again. The determination to get better had let me distract myself from the frustration and embarrassment of having something that was supposed to be so easy become so hard, but every stumble had carried the sting of failure that no amount of distraction could completely overcome.

    "If I did it," I told her, trying to be encouraging, "then you can do it, too."

    The guard rails she was using to support herself squeaked under her tightening grip. The blue padding was at least sturdy enough not to burst under the torment she was putting it through.

    "That''s right," she murmured, almost like she was talking more to herself than to me, "you had to do this sort of thing, too, didn''t you?"

    Months of it, after Gold Morning, which meant that I''d become very familiar with this private room adjacent to the main gymnasium and all the myriad forms of torture that it contained. Quite aside from what Contessa''s bullets had done to my brain ¡ª and what I had done to it myself, by having Panacea mess around with my Corona ¡ª I''d been bedridden for weeks. There were a lot of things I''d had to relearn how to do in the aftermath of that. Walking was only one of them.

    Marie closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and then took one more step forward. A look of triumph and victory dawned over her face, but it only lasted until she took her hands off of those guard rails, and then she started to tumble forward. Fortunately, that was what I was there for, so it was no effort at all to reach out, take hold of her arms, and steady her.

    "Damn it," she cursed.

    "You did well," I told her.

    "At least I didn''t fall flat on my face, you mean?" she bit back bitterly. "God! At least those two neophytes aren''t here to see this!"

    Then they might get to see their Director as a human being, and how terrible that would be. Not like they hadn''t already gotten a taste of it when she woke up screaming her head off and sobbing about Lev''s attempt to kill her.

    "Technically, those two now have more experience than all the rest of Team A," I reminded her.

    Something flashed in her eyes as she looked back up at me, hungry and proud. "Except for one."

    I acknowledged that with a short incline of my head. I didn''t know if it was the fairest assessment, since I was pretty sure that I was the one with the greatest amount of field experience on the entirety of Team A, but I could at least let Marie take pride in this much.

    "They wouldn''t think less of you," I told her quietly.

    Her face twisted into a grimace. "It doesn''t matter. I''m their boss, the Director of Chaldea. They shouldn''t see me like this." She ducked her head, and quieter, she said, "I didn''t want you to see me like this."

    "You did it for me," I reminded her. "The least I can do is return the favor."

    Her cheeks burned, and even the tips of her ears turned red. It wasn''t strictly true, because she''d really been more like a harsh taskmaster demanding I give my best from the sidelines, but she didn''t bother to correct me.

    And even if it wasn''t strictly true, that was only because she left it up to the professionals to treat me. She''d still been there the entire way, making sure I got the best treatment she could afford with the utmost discretion.

    "Romani should be the one doing this," she mumbled.

    "Romani is also still the Acting Director while you get back on your feet," I said. "Since he doesn''t have the time to help you himself, of course he delegated it to someone who was willing and able."

    And too stubborn to take no for an answer.

    It wasn''t like anyone had been chomping at the bit to get the chance to take my place, though. Of the remaining staff, the only one who was anywhere near as close to Marie as me was Romani himself. Everyone else was too far removed from her in the organization or too put off by her standoffish personality to have had the chance to get to know her the way I did.

    Even if that hadn''t been the case, I still would have volunteered. I owed her at least that much.

    Her fingers dug into my wrists. "It''s already been a week."

    "And it takes longer than that," I reminded her again. "You should already know, this isn''t something that happens overnight." I gave her arms a comforting squeeze. "But this isn''t going to take forever either. You''re just getting used to your body again, not relearning from scratch. Romani said it should only take about two weeks."

    And we had already gotten her through the first one, I didn''t say, because I didn''t need to. She just had to get through one more, and by then, she should be able to walk on her own. Maybe not unassisted, but without someone half-carrying her or wheeling her along in a wheelchair.

    Marie ducked her head. "It doesn''t feel like I''m getting anywhere," she murmured miserably.

    "Compared to where I was after the first week?" I said. "You''re already doing way better."

    She didn''t have a response to that. Or maybe she did, but she thought it sounded too petulant or childish to actually give voice to, so she simply didn''t. It wasn''t like she wouldn''t have had a point if she said that my recovery had been harder because of how much more I''d had to piece back together, but by the same token, I hadn''t had my soul transplanted into a new body after my old one got blown to pieces, so technically, she had it a whole lot worse than I had. She just had it easier because there wasn''t actually anything wrong with her, she just had to get her new body used to moving around and carrying its own weight.

    "Come on," I said as I lifted her back up and maneuvered her hands back onto the guide rails. "We should have enough time for you to get one more round in before the twins finish their daily lessons with El-Melloi II."

    She grimaced. "Don''t remind me! Ugh. I''m still trying to wrap my head around how he''s supposed to work!"

    "You''ve read my report ¡ª"

    "The concept is understandable enough," Marie waved it off, quite literally lifting one of her hands as though to swat away a fly buzzing about, "it''s the person that makes so little sense! Of all people who could be the host of a Heroic Spirit, why him?"

    "Maybe it''s just a matter of personal compatibility."

    She blew a puff of air out of her mouth, and her bangs flopped about for a second over her forehead.

    "The frustrating thing is, I can''t refute that because he still hasn''t told us the identity of the Heroic Spirit he''s playing host to!"

    I smiled a little as I walked around to the other end of the guide rails. It wasn''t like it was hard to look up "Unreturning Formation" or "Stone Sentinel Maze" now that we were back at Chaldea, and it betrayed the fact that Marie had been so dogged about catching up as quickly as possible that she hadn''t read the notes I''d attached to my report yet.

    No need to bring that up right now, though. It would just embarrass her even more. She would get to that eventually.

    "Okay." I set myself up at the opposite end of the guide rails. She looked back at me over her shoulder. "One more time, Marie."

    Her lips pulled tight into a grimace, but whatever else Marisbury had done ¡ª as a man, as a magus, and as a father ¡ª he hadn''t raised a quitter, and Marie turned herself around slowly and deliberately until she was facing me, then started the arduous journey from one side of the eight-foot rails to the other. Even when her knees shook and threatened to give out beneath her, she didn''t let it stop her from making it across.

    She probably would have preferred to go straight back to her room when we were done, but dinnertime was fast approaching and Romani had forbidden her from eating in her room. Privately, he''d told me that he wanted her out of her own head as much as possible, so I wasn''t to let her take her meals anywhere else than the cafeteria, but to Marie, he''d said something about how much it would raise morale for the rest of the remaining staff to see their Director alive and well, if not fully recovered.

    I suspected that was truer than he even realized.

    Naturally, appealing to her responsibilities as the Director of Chaldea was the quickest and easiest way to convince Marie of a plan, if not necessarily the most guaranteed, so even if the idea of being pushed into the cafeteria in a wheelchair grated on her pride, she''d had to reluctantly agree.

    The halls, of course, were all but empty, leaving us only the company of my echoing footsteps and the squeaks of the wheelchair''s wheels. The day shift should have just traded off with the evening shift about an hour before, and the night shift were still in bed, so the day shift was probably getting dinner in so they could relax for a few hours before they had to climb into bed themselves ¡ª a bit of a funny way of saying six people were eating, six people were working, and six people were sleeping.

    Halfway there, Arash materialized next to us mid-step, and Marie squawked, nearly startled out of her wheelchair.

    "Afternoon, Ladies," he greeted us.

    "You ¡ª how long have you been there?" Marie sputtered.

    "The whole time," he answered simply. "Taylor is my Master, after all."

    Marie''s face cycled through a series of rapid emotions, going from surprised to horrified to furious and back again, like she couldn''t decide whether she was supposed to be outraged or mortified.

    "Was there something you needed?" I asked him.

    He smiled. "That''s what I was just about to ask you. Do you want me to pop on ahead and let Emiya know you''re coming?"

    "W-wait," said Marie, "you said ¡ª then you saw e-everything? All of it?"

    "Was I not supposed to?" Arash asked. "I''m sorry, Director, I didn''t mean to spy on you or anything. It''s just that we Servants don''t have much to do around here right now. Those of us who don''t have a hobby just stick by our Masters. Keep an eye on things, you know?"

    Marie''s face turned a violent shade of red. "I-including when I had to¡­ And when I was getting dressed?"

    "Well, naturally, I stayed outside the room for that," Arash said smoothly. "If we need to watch our Masters during moments like those, Bradamante takes over. She says it isn''t proper for a man to see a lady like that."

    I almost missed the subtext in all of that. It was a very shrewd way of telling me without telling me.

    "Th-that''s not much better!" Marie protested. "You, haven''t any of you heard of something called privacy?"

    "I don''t think they''re watching us constantly," I told her calmly. I glanced over at Arash. "Here in Chaldea, I think we''re safe enough that we don''t need round-the-clock supervision."

    Romani still has her under observation? I asked silently.

    He wants to be sure she doesn''t relapse, Arash answered. Or hurt herself by trying to do too much too soon.

    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

    I kept my reaction off of my face as I told him, I agree. At least until she can walk on her own again.

    Arash dipped his head. "I understand."

    "W-well, good!" Marie blustered. "There are some things you don''t have the clearance to see! E-even Servants have to follow the regulations, you know!"

    Arash bent forward into a shallow bow, smiling. "Of course, Madam Director."

    "I can tell when you''re patronizing me," Marie informed him sourly, scowling.

    "No, no, I do understand," he assured her. "I was a soldier once. I only need to know what I need to know, right?"

    She eyed him for a moment longer, like she was looking for any sign of dishonesty or mockery, and when she was satisfied, she settled back into her wheelchair. "At least someone in this organization understands operational security," she muttered.

    Arash pretended not to hear her, and instead, he turned back to me. "I''ll go tell Emiya to prepare meals for two more people, then, if that''s alright with you, Master?"

    "Go ahead."

    Once more, he disappeared, leaving me alone with Marie again.

    "He was your compatibility summon?" she asked me.

    "Yes," I answered. "Our first field test of the summoning system inside the Orl¨¦ans Singularity."

    "The Hundred Years'' War deviation, right," Marie said. "The one featuring this ''Jeanne Alter'' character."

    I let myself smile a little. Yeah, that sounded like Marie. Even though she was supposed to be resting and recuperating, she had spent that time catching up on what had been happening while she was¡­indisposed, so to speak.

    "He could stand to be a little less cheeky," she groused. "But¡­he''s a good match, I think. A strong Heroic Spirit."

    I appreciated the sentiment, but I wished she would have phrased it a little less like she was my mother approving of the boyfriend I brought home.

    "He is," I agreed neutrally. "Saved our lives a couple of times, too."

    "And killed two Servants without taking a scratch," she added. For another second, she was silent, and then, quietly, she asked, "He wasn''t who you were originally going for, was he?"

    My lips drew tight. I''d made no secret of that to anybody, least of all Arash, but I''d never let on to anybody which Heroic Spirit I''d originally been hoping to get, back when we started lining up catalysts.

    In truth, I didn''t really know who I would have picked, just based upon who I thought I might work well with. Herakles and I might have been fairly compatible, being that we were both lateral thinkers, but the trouble with powerful heroes like that was that they were often mana hogs, so any advantage I might have had with him would have evaporated against the fact that I probably wouldn''t be able to handle supporting him for more than a few minutes at a time.

    Other than that and my pie-in-the-sky wishlist? There wasn''t a particular Heroic Spirit I''d really been hoping for.

    "No," I said, just as quietly, "but I''m glad he''s the one who showed up anyway."

    "Good."

    Not too much later, we arrived at the doors to the cafeteria, and they whooshed open to admit us. I pushed Marie along, and the instant we were inside, all conversation stopped and everyone who was there eating turned to look. Under their scrutiny, the tips of Marie''s ears turned red.

    "Well?" she demanded. "What are you all staring at? Stop wasting your time gawking and finish your food!"

    As though that was some great sign that she was alive, well, and (mostly) back to normal, the seven members of the staff who were in the cafeteria with us turned back to their meals so they could avoid the Director''s wrath. Marie harrumphed and folded her arms, scowling at the whole world, so I wheeled her over to the nearest empty table and moved a chair out of the way for her.

    "I-idiots," she mumbled lowly. "What am I, a circus attraction? Th-there''s nothing unusual about this!"

    I was about to go over to get us some food, but Emiya chose to bring the food to us instead, hefting a pair of trays, one on each arm. He still had one of those ridiculous novelty aprons on ¡ª I was convinced he had a stock of them that he rotated through, because it seemed to be a different one each day with a different phrase stitched into the front. This one featured a fork and read, "With prongs like these, who needs a recipe?"

    "Special delivery," he told us. "A certain person told me to expect our illustrious Director to make an appearance, so I went out of my way to prepare a platter for you."

    He set down another mouth-watering meal within Marie''s reach, and then immediately opposite her, he set the second tray down, laden with the same exact food. Marie took a breath, and she couldn''t seem to help herself but to take in the smell wafting up from her steaming tray. It was another chicken dish of some kind, although I didn''t recognize it on sight.

    One of these days, he was going to run out of new stuff to make. I just wasn''t sure it would be anytime soon.

    "I decided on something a little more Western today," he told us. "Thought I might shake things up a little. This one in particular is Greek."

    Marie looked down at her tray critically as I took my seat across from her, eyeing her meal like she suspected him of lying. Or maybe poisoning it. She''d nearly thrown a fit the first time she saw him, until we explained how he wound up here and cooking our meals.

    "Greek, huh¡­"

    "If you''ve had it before, it might not be exactly the same," Emiya said. "I was a bit more limited with my ingredients, after all. I had to adjust the recipe to account for that."

    "So you say."

    Marie took up her utensils and started cutting into her meal, lifting the first bite ¡ª and stopped halfway to her mouth to shoot Emiya a withering glare.

    "Are you just going to stand there and watch or something? It''s creepy!"

    "The customer''s satisfaction is the greatest compliment a chef can receive," Emiya retorted without missing a beat. "I wanted to make sure you liked it, because my skill with Western dishes isn''t as great as my talent with Asian recipes."

    With a large, exaggerated motion, Marie bit off her first bite, had to stop for a second when the flavor hit her tongue, and then chewed it more sedately.

    "Well?" Emiya asked once she''d swallowed.

    "I-it''s good!" she said huffily. "Now will you let me eat my meal in peace? I don''t need everyone staring at me so much!"

    "If the Director is pleased, then I''m sure Rika will enjoy it as well," Emiya said, nodding to himself. "Enjoy your meal, Director."

    He turned around and went back to the kitchen, leaving us by ourselves. In all of the fuss, I''d started in on my own meal, and like always, Emiya had made something spectacular. The truly frightening thing was that when my tastebuds finally got used to eating so much high class, delicious food, going back to ration bars and mass-produced cafeteria fare was going to be torture.

    "Seriously," Marie muttered angrily as she stabbed her fork into her food, "why can''t everyone just mind their own business? They have more important things to be doing than gawking at me just because I''m in a wheelchair!"

    "They''re still getting used to having you back," I told her between bites. "Most of them probably thought you were gone for good."

    I wasn''t sure how much Romani had told them. It was entirely possible that he''d spread the knowledge that the Director wasn''t permanently gone amongst the rest of the staff, but it was also possible that he hadn''t wanted to commit to anything, so the only ones who had been in the know were those of us directly involved in bringing her back.

    Then again, we weren''t exactly in a private room when we first discussed the issue after Fuyuki. Anyone with ears who was paying attention to us must have heard that we had a plan to save her. Whether that made the rounds, well, I hadn''t thought to ask.

    Marie hunched in on herself a little. "They did, huh¡­"

    "I wasn''t around right after Fuyuki to say for sure," Arash said as he shimmered into existence in the chair next to me. Marie squeaked, startled, and jumped a little in her seat. "But I talked to a few people after we got back from Orl¨¦ans, and it seems that most of them thought there wasn''t any hope. Your return is something of a minor miracle, Director."

    "Stop doing that!" Marie hissed at him.

    "Sorry, sorry!" Arash held up his hands in surrender. "I know, Rika has complained about that, too. There just isn''t a great way to materialize that doesn''t involve giving someone a shock."

    "It should be a matter of common courtesy!" she insisted. "Besides, you can materialize right outside the door and walk in, can''t you? At least then we''d see you coming!"

    "I guess so," Arash agreed easily. "Either way, Director, a lot of people didn''t think you were going to be coming back."

    Marie ducked her head, staring a hole in her plate. I didn''t need to be a mind-reader to see the direction of her thoughts: And I was one of them.

    I couldn''t do anything about that. I didn''t have the tools to make that better or help her learn to deal with it. I wasn''t even sure Romani could help with it, although I intended to see if he could try.

    "It''ll die down," I assured her. "It''s a novelty right now, but once they get used to the fact that you are back, things will go back to normal."

    As much as they ever were around this place.

    As though summoned by that very thought, the door to the cafeteria whooshed back open, and Rika loudly complained, "Ugh! My brain feels like it''s leaking out of my ears! Why does magic have to be so complicated?"

    "Because it''s so dangerous," El-Melloi II answered as he followed her and Ritsuka into the room. "The more complicated something is, the more prepared you need to be, because the higher the chances are of something going wrong. That saying I mentioned in our first lesson might sound like a clich¨¦, but that doesn''t stop it from being true."

    "A-at least you''re making progress, Senpai!" said Mash, trying to reassure her.

    "Harry Potter lied to me!" Rika whined.

    "It''s not all wand-waving and silly incantations," Ritsuka agreed. Rika reached over without looking and gave his arm a half-hearted slap, as though to remind him that he wasn''t allowed to make pop culture references.

    "Of course not," El-Melloi II said. He grinned. "If it was that easy, then everyone could do it, couldn''t they?"

    "I feel like you''re referencing something from season two of an anime when I haven''t even watched the first," Rika told him dryly. "In the name of the Director, I''ll punish you!"

    Across from me, Marie suddenly choked on her food and slapped her hand over her mouth so she wouldn''t do something embarrassing, like spit it out on her plate.

    Completely oblivious, the twins'' group arrived at the counter, behind which Emiya''s form could be seen in the kitchen, still cooking. "Emiya!" Rika said dramatically. "Brain mush, need fuel! Much delicious!"

    "Senpai, there''s no need to be so rude!" Mash chided.

    "Eh." Rika waved it off. "My house-husband knows the score by now."

    "Indeed I do," Emiya drawled. He arrived at the counter, trays in hand and plates already filled. He set one down for Ritsuka, one down for Rika, and to Mash, he said, "I''ll be back with yours in a moment, Mash."

    "Thank you, Emiya!" Mash said brightly.

    "It''s no problem."

    "See?" said Rika. "Look at how well-trained he is!"

    "Much as I like to malign that particular person," said El-Melloi II, "even I have to say that he''s more than a well-trained dog."

    "I just know better," Emiya replied as he came back. "If I tried to serve Mash before Master, she''d just hand her tray over and wait to get her own."

    "I¡­" Mash ducked her head, embarrassed. "Y-yes, I guess I would¡­"

    "You''re a good person, Mash," Ritsuka told her kindly.

    Mash ducked her head even more. "Th-thank you, Senpai."

    "There''s such a thing as being too kind, though," El-Melloi II put in. He pulled on his lollipop with a loud smack, and at the same time, his eyes scanned over the room and landed on us. For a brief moment, they widened, and then they narrowed. "Anyway, Master, I''m going back to my room. I''ll see you tomorrow for our next lesson."

    He shimmered and faded from view, gone.

    "Ugh, so not looking forward to that," Rika groused.

    "But we definitely need it," Ritsuka admitted reluctantly.

    "Doesn''t mean I have to like it."

    At that moment, Mash turned around and saw us, gasping, "Director!"

    The twins turned around immediately, and their faces lit up. "Director Marie!"

    They rushed over to join us, and by then, Marie had managed to regain control of herself and swallow whatever she''d choked on.

    "You two," she rasped, "just who do you think you''re addressing so familiarly?"

    "Sorry about that, Director," said Ritsuka, although he didn''t sound all that sorry.

    "We just haven''t seen you all that much in the past week!" Rika concluded. "Senpai wasn''t the only one waiting for you to do your Gandalf impression!"

    "What?" Marie asked, bewildered.

    "From The Lord of the Rings, Director," I supplied helpfully. "Wizard who came back from the dead."

    "Oh." She gathered herself up. "W-well, that''s still no excuse! Even if I was gone for a few months, I''m still your director! Your boss!"

    Rika saluted with her fork. "Roger wilco, Boss Lady!"

    "Don''t you start!" Marie growled.

    "It''s good to see you in such good spirits, Director," said Ritsuka.

    "We were worried about you," Mash added.

    "Fou!" the little gremlin chimed in, as though to agree.

    Somehow, I was the only one in the whole facility it hated. I couldn''t even remember Lev getting such vitriol from the thing as I did, and if it could sense whatever it was about me that it didn''t like as clearly as I could sense whatever it was about Fou that set my hackles to rising, then there was almost no way it shouldn''t have been able to sniff out his malicious intent.

    I wasn''t sure if it had and just hadn''t let on, or if it hadn''t and there was just something special about whatever we had going on between us.

    "W-well, there''s nothing to worry about!" said Marie, who didn''t seem to know how to deal with their concern. "As you can see, I''m fine!"

    Rika looked pointedly at Marie''s wheelchair. "Uh¡­"

    "It''s temporary! I''m not stuck in this contraption for the rest of my life!" A second later, her brain caught up with her mouth, and her cheeks burned. "Ugh! You know exactly what I mean, don''t pretend you don''t!"

    "Good afternoon, Ritsuka, Rika, Mash," Arash said suddenly, drawing the attention in his direction. "How did your lesson with El-Melloi II go?"

    "Ugh, don''t remind me," said Rika. She shoved a bite of her meal into her mouth, and around her fork, she continued, "Hot Pops is the kind of teacher to throw chalk at you if he thinks you''re not paying attention."

    "But¡­we don''t even have any chalkboards in Chaldea," said Mash, confused.

    Rika waved it off. "It''s the principle of the thing! A metaphor!"

    "I don''t know if I''d really call him strict," said Ritsuka, "but he''s definitely the kind of guy who won''t accept you slacking off."

    "Which sucks," his sister added, "because slacking off is my favorite thing to do in class."

    "Do you not have any idea how lucky you are?" Marie demanded. "You''re getting personal lessons from a Lord of the Clock Tower! There are magi who would gladly sell their organs to be in that position!"

    Rika blinked. "You tutored Senpai, though, didn''t you?"

    Marie flinched. "W-well," she said, flustered, "th-those were extenuating circumstances!"

    Rika''s eyebrows rose.

    "I dunno about you, Boss Lady," she said, "but these circumstances feel pretty extenuating to me."

    "That''s why you have to give it your best, guys." Arash swooped in to save the day again. "All of the stuff you''re learning from A¨ªfe and El-Melloi II is super important. It might just save your life in the future."

    "Ugh," Rika grunted. "I hate it when you say stuff like that, because it makes too much sense and I can''t argue against it. Logic is my weakness, you know!"

    "I''ve known you our whole lives," Ritsuka said dryly, "and it definitely is not."

    She shoved another bite of food into her mouth. "Mm. At least I can always trust Emiya''s food to be amazing. Emiya''s cooking will never betray me."

    "Unless you eat too much of it," Ritsuka pointed out. "Then, it''s going to be in violent rebellion against your stomach."

    "Ugh!" Bradamante suddenly appeared in the chair next to Arash. Marie let out a startled shriek again. "Don''t remind me! I still haven''t recovered from curry night last week!"

    "Tii-chan!" Rika greeted brightly.

    "Stop doing that!" Marie snarled. "Don''t any of you have a single shred of common decency? What kind of troglodyte just randomly materializes in the middle of a conversation?"

    "Oh!" Bradamante gasped. "I''m so sorry! I didn''t even think about it!"

    Just as suddenly as she appeared, she vanished, and Marie squeaked in surprise. "What? Where did she go now?"

    A moment later, the door whooshed open, and Bradamante stepped through and walked back over to our table. She took the seat she''d just vacated, and as though nothing had happened, she continued, "Sir Emiya''s cooking is wonderful, but that makes it all the more dangerous. You must take care not to eat too much of it, or else suffer for your gluttony."

    "You¡­" Marie pinched the bridge of her nose with unsteady fingers. "As though leaving just as suddenly was any better at all¡­!"

    "I''m sorry?" said Bradamante, confused. "Should I have stayed instead? I confess, some of these matters of Servant etiquette are a bit befuddling. I''m still learning the proper forms."

    "It is a bit different from how it was when we were alive," Arash agreed. "Just being able to take spirit form changes a lot."

    "I don''t know if I can say anything," Mash admitted. "Since I can''t take spirit form, I don''t have to think about those sorts of problems."

    "Maybe Boss Lady should hold a seminar or something," Rika suggested helpfully. "Hey, yeah! A class about the proper use of spirit form and when it''s okay to go in and out of it!"

    "That''s¡­!" Marie began angrily, and then she stopped, thought about it for a second, and leaned back into her wheelchair. She took what I''d come to think of as her thinking pose: head tilted down, her chin resting in the corner of the index finger and thumb of one hand, and the other cupping her elbow. "That''s¡­actually not a terrible idea."

    Rika paused, blinking, her fork halfway to her mouth. "It isn''t?"

    It really wasn''t, and the surprising part was that no one had given it enough thought before now to how it would work. I''d had some inkling that it was going to be necessary before, but it had been such a low priority that I hadn''t really tried to plan it out or anything.

    Rika''s plan wasn''t perfect, but it was pretty simple. On the plus side, it would give Marie something to work on and brainstorm until she was in good enough shape to resume her duties as director.

    "Obviously, it''s going to need some refinement!" Marie said. "But Chaldea is a secure facility! The technology that protects our mission and our very lives isn''t something that everyone should have access to! For that matter, if one of our technicians is startled while they''re working and damages something so vital, then it''s no better than if L-Lev himself had destroyed them! Who else should explain something this important than the director?"

    "Well, look at that." Arash smiled. "Good job, Rika."

    Rika looked from Marie to Arash and back again. Hesitantly, she pumped her free hand.

    "Go me?"

 Interlude OMA(II): Fighting Demons

    Interlude OMA(II): Fighting Demons

    It took two and a half weeks of painstaking effort for Olga Marie Animusphere to regain full use of all her limbs. Two and a half weeks of putting herself through the ringer every afternoon and making a fool out of herself to an audience of her ace Master before she could stand up on her own two legs without having to worry about whether she might topple over or her knees might give out.

    Two and a half weeks. Three days longer than Romani''s original estimate. The humiliation of it burned.

    Bad enough that a full four-fifths of her father''s organization ¡ª her family''s organization ¡ª had been gutted by the single most heinous act of sabotage that the history books were going to remember, if Olga Marie had anything to say about it, but she''d also had to suffer the indignity of knowing that everyone who was left had seen her so low that she had struggled to even stand. That she had taken three whole days longer to get herself back under control than she was supposed to.

    How were any of them going to respect her after that? She should have told Romani to shut up and locked herself in her room until she could walk again. Better they think she was a recluse than so incompetent.

    The worst part was the way they treated her. Like she was fragile. Like she would break if they said too harsh a word. The patience that they had when her own frayed a little too thin and she said something harsh of her own ¡ª she knew they were calling her a bitch as soon as she was out of earshot, but it was the fact that they waited until she was out of earshot to say it.

    They''d never waited until they were sure she was gone before the sabotage that nearly killed her. How weak did they think she was that they didn''t think she could weather their muttered insults anymore? Lev¡­ Flauros had tried to condemn her to a fate worse than death, but he''d failed. She''d come back. She''d survived. She was fine.

    Even if she couldn''t sleep without that stupid dreamcatcher Da Vinci had made. Even if her first few nights back had been haunted by his laughter and by the weight of Chaldeas pressing down on her chest. Even if she still had trouble even saying his name out loud.

    Damn it. Damn it all, and damn him most of all. She wished she''d been there that day to see him get cut down like the worm he was. She wished she''d had the chance to see him understand what it was like to be betrayed like that.

    She wished she understood why he''d betrayed her in the first place. Was it something she did? Was she the one who had driven Lev away, who had opened his heart to the predations of a Demon? Was Chaldea''s sorry state all her fault, in the end?

    Was her incompetence the thing that had almost destroyed her father''s legacy?

    Olga Marie squeezed her eyes shut and bit her bottom lip so hard she almost drew blood. Don''t cry, she ordered herself sternly. Don''t you dare cry. Don''t you dare show that kind of spineless weakness here.

    She was strong. She was strong. She had to be. The fate of humanity, of the entire world, rested on the shoulders of her Chaldea and the people in it, and they were all counting on her to lead them through to the end.

    She couldn''t do that if she fell apart because her feelings got hurt.

    "Everything alright, Director?"

    Olga Marie took in a sharp breath through her nose and forced her eyes open. They watered threateningly, but no tears escaped her.

    Her father would be ashamed that she even came that close.

    Da Vinci watched her, unblinking. There was almost no way she didn''t know what had been going through Olga Marie''s head, but she was treating her the same way everyone else was: as though a single indelicate touch would cause her to topple like a house of cards. Olga Marie refused to blink, because if she did, she was sure those tears would start falling, and she couldn''t bear to be humiliated like that right now.

    "If they''re not to your satisfaction," Da Vinci said, "then I can always keep iterating and revisit issuing them before the next Singularity."

    "I-it''s fine!" If Da Vinci noticed Olga Marie''s voice crack a little, she didn''t mention it. Olga Marie both appreciated that and hated it simultaneously. "I-it just doesn''t look all that different from the previous version!"

    The deflection was obvious and glaring and Olga Marie was embarrassed that it even came out of her mouth, but Da Vinci still didn''t bring it up and just rolled with it as though she hadn''t said anything unusual or unexpected.

    "Keeping the frame identical was part of its proof of concept," Da Vinci explained. "It might appear the same to the naked eye, but I assure you, Director, anyone who has worn the previous version would be able to tell the difference right away." She lifted the fabric off of her workbench and offered the mystic code to Olga Marie. "Would you like to try it for yourself?"

    "What?"

    Olga Marie''s brain stuttered for a second, and then the offer registered for what it was, and the burn of shame, frustration, and resentment boiled in her belly. You¡­ Da Vinci, are you trying to humiliate me right now?

    "Hmph! There''s no point, since I''m not a Master and can''t Rayshift! It won''t mean anything to me!" And having to say that all out loud again is just another kick in the teeth. "Besides, I never had a chance to use the previous version, did I? How am I supposed to tell the difference?"

    "Ah¡­" Da Vinci laughed awkwardly. "I suppose I hadn''t considered that. My apologies. However, even so, Director, you would be able to tell exactly how special these new model mystic codes are. The difference is simply that remarkable."

    Was she just trying to rub it in, now?

    "How remarkable can they be?" Olga Marie asked. "Besides, didn''t you design the original version? How can this one be that much better?"

    "Ah, but the original was an improvement upon Chaldea''s base design already," said Da Vinci. "I made that one not long after my original summoning, remember? This one, however¡­ Well, you''re not the only one who came into an incredible windfall two years ago. We even have the same source."

    Olga Marie''s brow furrowed. "What?" After a moment, she realized what it was Da Vinci was hinting at. "You mean that costume? What does that have to do with anything?"

    "Oh my, Director, you''re underestimating the number of things I managed to glean from that ''costume,'' as you call it," said Da Vinci, smiling secretively. "For example, it let me come up with quite a few functions for this new mystic code¡­"

    And so, she explained all the new features her new model of mystic code would have, from its durability to its adaptability to its life support. Against her will, Olga Marie found herself being impressed, and somewhere along the way, listening and thinking about the implications of all of these things that had been added to what was originally just a basic Rayshift platform with a few handy spells preloaded made her forget about the dark thoughts that had been plaguing her earlier.

    "¡­really quite an impressive update, don''t you think?" Da Vinci finished. "The old model isn''t just obsolete, it''s practically fossilized by comparison!"

    It really was. If the new version could do even half of the things that Da Vinci was claiming it could do, then the old version was shamefully inadequate and pathetic. It was like comparing a clay tablet to a modern computer.

    The old version, which had been specifically calibrated with Rayshifting in mind, developed and produced back before Olga Marie had become Director. Back when her father was still alive.

    And she was about to let it be desecrated, to have his legacy altered and erased. Bit by bit, she was slowly letting Marisbury Animusphere''s memory and contributions to the Chaldea he built be eroded. She was destroying everything of him that was left, no matter how small and insignificant it was.

    How cruel and unfaithful a daughter could she be?

    Olga Marie bit her bottom lip so hard she almost drew blood again.

    No. That was nonsensical talk. What was she, an idiot? The goal of magi was to prepare and contribute to their family''s legacy, to give their heirs and their descendants the best possible base upon which to build their craft. It was expected for a long lineage of magi to develop, evolve, and advance the family''s field of magecraft, for the future generations to hone and refine what their ancestors had begun, all with the final goal at the end of perfecting it into something so unique that they could reach the Swirl of the Root.

    Chaldea was no different. Her father had taken a simple observatory and turned it into a bastion against any threat that might attempt to destroy mankind''s future. Through effort and collaboration, he and his team of researchers had successfully built SHEBA, LAPLACE, CHALDEAS itself, and negotiated the rights to construct TRISMEGISTUS from the Wandering Sea''s own blueprints. He had gathered a team of varied talents who would protect his vision and carry out his Chaldea''s purpose, his Grand Order.

    And when he was gone, she had built on top of it. Expanding the roster of Masters, seeing to their training, managing the organization in its day to day functions so that they could be ready when the time came.

    One of her additions happened to be the last remaining member of Team A who wasn''t in cryonic suspension. The same Master who was now essential to carrying out their mission.

    As Marisbury Animusphere''s daughter and heir, her job wasn''t to preserve her father''s legacy. It was to take it and expand upon it, make it grander.

    "Director?" said Da Vinci, and Olga Marie realized she''d lapsed into another spiral. "I assure you, I''ve tested my new changes rigorously. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, they should hold up to the sorts of stresses the Masters are expected to encounter in future Singularities."

    "I-it''s nothing," Olga Marie insisted. "I''m simply¡­marveling at the number of advancements you''ve managed to put into these!"

    Internally, she winced. Ugh, that made her sound stupid, didn''t it? Couldn''t she have come up with a better cover for what she''d been thinking about? Something that didn''t make her look like an easily impressed idiot?

    Da Vinci smiled and shook her head. "Frankly, even I am a little surprised. The technology packed into the equipment Taylor came here with was decades or even centuries ahead of its time. I can''t even be embarrassed that it took me two years to figure out how they worked, because they were just that advanced."

    And probably made by aliens, Olga Marie didn''t say.

    "Well, at least you figured it out eventually," she said instead. She reached down and ran her fingers over the material. It didn''t feel any different from the previous version at all. "And these are ready for deployment in the next Singularity?"

    "I''ve done everything I can here in Chaldea to bring them up to snuff," said Da Vinci. "The only way to improve them now is to give them a field test and look for where their performance drops off."

    Marie nodded. "Then prepare them to distribute to the Masters. There''s no better time to put these new designs to the test than in the field!"

    "Well said," Da Vinci agreed, "although I¡­do foresee Rika being less than pleased with the design."

    "If she doesn''t want to wear the uniform, then she can resign as a Master and stay in her room!" Olga Marie said.

    When her meeting with Da Vinci was over with, Olga Marie left the workshop and made her way to her next matter of business. As she walked, she fiddled with her tablet ¡ª her virtual clipboard ¡ª and rewatched the recording of Taylor''s "Caster simulation" session in the simulator for what must have been the dozenth time.

    It brought her a pleased warmth in her belly every time. Pride. This was the Master she chose, the one she''d handpicked to stand with a genius prodigy like Kirschtaria Wodime. She could readily admit that Taylor wasn''t that impressive as a magus, was downright average at best in many of the fields that her peers took for granted. She would never be a first rate mage that the Association praised for her talent and skill.

    But as a Master, she was first rate. As a tactician, she was surely the most experienced and most competent of the group. Even if the Association scoffed at her magecraft when the time came that this whole situation was resolved, they would be forced to acknowledge that she was the only reason Chaldea managed to succeed.

    In spite of her incompetent screwup of a director.

    Olga Marie stopped for a moment, snarling at nothing, and came within inches of smashing her tablet against the nearest wall.

    Stop that! she ordered herself silently. Stop thinking like that!

    Even if it was true, she wasn''t allowed to fall into that sort of pit again. Chaldea was counting on her. The world was counting on her. Taylor was counting on her, and she had already saved Olga Marie from her own stupidity and incompetence twice. Olga Marie didn''t want her to have to do it a third time.

    Because what if Taylor decided it wasn''t worth it?

    She wouldn''t, Olga Marie tried to tell herself. Taylor had held onto her even as she was being sucked into Chaldeas, had traveled through time and personally gathered the resources Da Vinci needed to craft the replacement body for her. Taylor''s selflessness and determination to save her was the only reason Olga was still alive, in spite of being killed.

    But everyone had their limits, didn''t they? How many times would Taylor have to save her before giving up and letting her die?

    That was why¡­ That was why Olga Marie had to be strong. She couldn''t let herself fall apart. She couldn''t let herself fall into the same traps she''d fallen into when she found out what her father had done to Mash. How he had created her.

    Olga Marie took a deep, steadying breath. It didn''t help. She forced herself to pretend it did.

    With her composure reestablished (paper thin as it was), Olga Marie started walking again and continued on her way to her next destination. A few minutes later, the doors to the Command Room whooshed open with a hydraulic whir, and she stepped inside.

    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    Something in her gut squirmed as she looked over the anemic staff. Barely half a dozen people doing jobs that were originally meant to be spread out over twice as many technicians. This, too, was the result of her incompetence, her willingness to trust a man who turned out to have been a traitor and a murderer.

    If only she hadn''t depended on him so much. He may have been her father''s associate, but it was only her own cowardice and weakness that had convinced her to keep him as close as she had. If she had just been stronger, more confident, better as a director, then he would never have had the access he''d used to sabotage them.

    So really, the entire thing was her fault. She got a hundred-and-eighty people killed because she just wasn''t good enough.

    Stop it!

    "Romani!" she barked to cover up her twisting feelings.

    Romani, standing at the director''s console in the middle of the room, startled and nearly spilled his coffee all over it. Really, he should know better by now than to be that careless. How had he managed to keep things running if he didn''t even take better precautions with the equipment that they needed to run the facility?

    "D-Director Animusphere!" Romani said as he turned to face her. "I-I''m sorry, I wasn''t expecting you to ¡ª"

    "Save it!" she told him. "Just where do you think you''re standing, anyway?"

    He stared at her for a second, and then realization spread across his face.

    "S-sorry, Director!" he said again. He moved to leave. "I''ll just leave it to you, then ¡ª"

    Olga Marie walked over to him with quick strides, and he flinched back from her as though expecting a scolding as she leaned in close.

    "Grow a spine, Romani!" she hissed at him, low enough that the others wouldn''t hear her. "You''re the Vice Director now, so act like it!"

    "R-right!" He cleared his throat when she kept glaring at him. "I mean, yes, of course, Director."

    "Good!" She stepped back out of his personal space. "Then give me a status report! What are we looking at, right now?"

    Romani cleared his throat again. "All systems are operating within acceptable tolerances, Director. With the Septem Grail connected to our power grid, we''re finally back up to full capacity, and we even have enough surplus energy generation that we could contract three more Servants without any expected drop in performance."

    "Good!"

    Excellent, even. She''d gone over the stats while she was laid up as part of getting caught back up on everything that had happened while she was¡­indisposed, and while they''d had things well in hand before, there was always a compromise between fueling certain less vital functions (that Da Vinci made up for using her Noble Phantasm ¡ª like she thought Olga Marie wouldn''t have realized it) and giving full support to their Servants.

    It was part of why the battle simulator was still only half functioning. Beyond the repairs it currently needed to accommodate Servants again, there was also the problem that simulations involving Servants were much more energy intensive than the ones Taylor had been using to drill the Fujimaru twins. The Servants themselves might not use actual magical energy in the process, but the calculations needed for the simulator to simulate those Noble Phantasms with complete accuracy did.

    "And the readout on the next Singularity?" she asked.

    "Still vague, I''m afraid," Romani answered. He sighed. "Unfortunately, whatever is happening in that Singularity, it''s preventing us from pinning down an exact location, no matter how we tweak the scanners. Da Vinci thinks that even the geography itself might be twisted out of order in this case as part of the deviation."

    Deviant geography?

    "That shouldn''t be possible, even with a Holy Grail."

    Romani shrugged helplessly. "If I had a better explanation, Director, I would tell you. I''m just the messenger here."

    "Tch."

    There was no use getting angry at Romani over something like this, but¡­

    Really, Da Vinci ought to know better, too. A deviation that could change the structure of an area on a geological scale would have required a lot more power than a single Holy Grail and would have had to occur so deep into the Age of Gods that mankind might not even exist yet.

    "Then it looks like further scanning is pointless," she allowed sourly. "The only way to confirm the structure of the Singularity will be to explore it firsthand."

    "I was afraid you were going to say that," Romani lamented. "I really don''t like the idea of sending the team in completely blind like this."

    "And you think I do?" she snapped at him. "The entirety of mankind is hinging on our success! If something happens to the Rayshift team because we weren''t good enough, then the extinction of the human race will be on our heads!"

    "Like I needed that reminder¡­" he grumbled.

    Did he think that she wasn''t living with that knowledge every second of every day, now?

    "The ¡ª point ¡ª is!" she said. "There''s too much at stake here to make simple mistakes! But if there''s nothing else we can do, then it''s our job to reduce the risks involved as much as we possibly can!"

    "Yeah, I know." Romani sighed and raked a hand through his hair. "Okay. We''ve already spent almost three weeks trying to get a better read on this Singularity, and it hasn''t changed at all. Are we going to send the team in like this?"

    Olga Marie resisted the urge to bite down on her thumbnail and chew on it nervously. "We don''t have much of a choice. We''ll continue attempting to scan it up until the very last possible second, but we can''t afford to sit here until time runs out and fiddle with this in the vain hope we might find something of use."

    "No, I guess not," said Romani. "Not when we still have another four Singularities to tackle after this one. Okay. When should we conduct the Rayshift?"

    Olga Marie thought about it for a few seconds. As much as she felt the urge to get it done as soon as possible, that just wasn''t feasible as a plan. They all needed time to prepare themselves, both mentally and in terms of supplies. Rushing it wouldn''t help anyone.

    "We''ll brief the Masters and Mash tomorrow," she decided. "After that, we''ll give them three days to prepare, and the Rayshift will be four days from today."

    That should be ample time to get everything ready. For all of them.

    And maybe when the Rayshift went according to plan, she might actually feel like she belonged in the director''s chair, because she''ll finally have done something right.

    "In the meantime," she went on, "send for Da Vinci and the Masters, tell them to head to the summoning chamber."

    Romani blinked at her. "You want to attempt another summoning?"

    "Why else would I have them go to the summoning chamber?" she snapped at him. "With three Holy Grails powering the facility, we have more than enough power to host more Servants, and I intend to take advantage of that!"

    And finally, finally see a Servant summoned to her Chlaldea, instead of her father''s or Romani''s. Proof, at last, that she was a worthy successor to Marisbury Animusphere.

    "R-right," said Romani. "And I take it you''re going to go there yourself?"

    "Of course!"

    So she could watch it happen with her own eyes. She wasn''t sure she''d be able to believe it if she didn''t.

    "Just make sure none of them are late!" she ordered. "I won''t accept tardiness for something this important!"

    With everything important seen to, she turned around and left the Command Room. The doors whooshed open for her, and the clip of her footsteps followed her as she turned and started for the summoning chamber.

    She made it halfway there before her composure disappeared, and she was left gasping and leaning up against the wall for support.

    She could still feel their eyes on her. Judging her. Watching, while they thought she was too busy talking to Romani to notice. Like bees stinging her skin, over and over.

    ''Is she even cleared to be back here?'' she could hear them ask. ''I thought she was still confined to her room. Last I heard, she was still freaking out.''

    Or worse, ''Ugh. Of all the people to survive, why did it have to be someone so useless?''

    "Shut up," she rasped. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

    But of course, they didn''t, because they weren''t there, were they? They were back in the Command Room, whispering to each other now that she wasn''t there, and Romani had no idea what they were saying right underneath his nose. How they were mocking her.

    I''m not useless! she wanted to scream. All that would do was give those whispers strength and validity. If anyone saw and heard her yelling at nothing then they really would say she had no business being Director of Chaldea, and then what? Where would she be without that?

    She''d just be Olga Marie, the girl without any talent as a Master, without any aptitude for Rayshifting, and without any place in her father''s legacy.

    "Get yourself together, you stupid girl," she whispered to herself harshly. "Who''s going to follow a Director that''s falling apart at the seams?"

    "I would."

    Olga Marie whirled about, sucking down a gasp, and turned to face her ace Master.

    "Hebert! H-how long have you been there?"

    "Long enough," she said simply.

    Long enough? To what? To see her stumble? To see her grasp weakly at the wall? To hear her hissing at her own spiraling thoughts like some sort of mental case?

    "And you just stood there?" Olga Marie''s eyes felt hot. Her vision turned watery, but she refused, through sheer force of will, to let herself actually cry. "Watching me? Listening to me make a fool of myself?"

    "That wasn''t what I saw," Taylor said quietly.

    "No? Because that''s what happened!" Olga Marie clutched her tablet to her chest, hunching in on herself. "I can''t even¡­stay in the same room with my subordinates for five minutes without¡­"

    Taylor came over, stepping close, and for one second, Olga Marie thought she was going to hug her.

    But no, that was a little too much for either of them, wasn''t it? Neither of them was built for that sort of¡­physical intimacy. Instead, Taylor reached out and laid her hands over Marie''s and gently pulled them down.

    "You''ve seen me at my lowest," Taylor reminded her. "When my brains were a scrambled mess and I struggled to string a sentence together. You spent six months helping me get back on my feet, and then another eighteen tutoring me in all the things I needed to know to be a Master in this place. Not even once did you tell me I should give up and leave, even when I struggled."

    "But I¡­" Olga Marie ducked her head, unable to meet Taylor''s eyes. "You¡­ You''ve already done so much, and I''m just a¡­a screw-up. Recruiting you is the only thing I''ve ever done right!"

    "I don''t believe that."

    Olga Marie''s head jerked up. "W-what?"

    "You ran Chaldea for two years," said Taylor. "Everything worked fine ¡ª until a literal demon tried to kill us all. If you managed to keep the whole organization running smoothly for two whole years, then obviously, you were doing something right."

    "That''s¡­That''s different!" Olga Marie insisted. Mundane, day-to-day decisions couldn''t possibly hold a candle to some of the things Taylor had done.

    "Is it?" asked Taylor. "Marie, doing things right isn''t about a single, big decision. It''s about smaller decisions you make along the way. The things you choose to focus on, the people you give power to ¡ª those are the important things. The way I see it, the only screw-up you made there was giving Lev so much power over you, but that''s a mistake we all made, isn''t it?"

    "That''s¡­still¡­!"

    Maybe she was right, maybe it was a mistake they''d all made together, trusting Lev. But it was Olga Marie making that mistake that led to so many people dying.

    "You''ve seen enough of my past," Taylor said lowly. "You know I didn''t always do the right thing, even when it felt like the right thing at the time. Do I deserve to be mocked, ridiculed, and thrown out, just because I wasn''t perfect?"

    "Of course not!" Olga Marie gasped.

    "Then why do you?"

    And Olga Marie¡­didn''t really have an answer to that. It was no less true than before that her mistake had gotten almost two-hundred people killed, and the weight of that clung to her, but the instant she tried to give voice to it, she remembered the scenes of that final battle. She remembered watching through LAPLACE as Taylor fumbled and stumbled her way from battlefield to battlefield, throwing scores of her allies at a pitiless god one after the other in a desperate bid to buy enough time and space to figure out how to beat him.

    She was pretty sure a lot more than two-hundred people had died in that battle.

    "You supported me in my lowest moment, Marie," Taylor murmured, so quiet that even someone standing right next to them might have struggled to hear it. "Let me support you in yours."

    "Taylor¡­" Olga Marie closed her eyes and swallowed thickly. "Th-thank you."

    Even if she didn''t deserve it, right then, Olga Marie needed it. She needed it more than air.

    Taylor flashed her a brief smile, and then stepped back, letting her hands fall back down to her sides. "Now," she said in a normal voice, as though nothing at all had happened, "we were heading towards the summoning chamber, right?"

    Olga Marie envied her level head.

    "R-right!"

    She drew herself up, turned back around, and walked with purpose towards the summoning chamber. Taylor fell into step next to her, as though to declare that she would always be there, ready to catch her if she fell.

    They were not the first to arrive. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that honor went to Da Vinci, who was already there and getting ready. She barely looked up from the console to give them a short greeting before going back to work.

    It was only a few minutes later when the Fujimaru twins and Mash walked in through the door.

    "Director Marie!" the twins cried when they saw her, overshadowing Mash''s quieter, "Director!"

    "You''re ¡ª"

    And then a fourth person came in from behind them, and the words twisted around in Olga Marie''s mouth.

    "A¨ªfe?"

    Eyes like gemstones cut her way and looked her up and down. Inspecting her. Judging her. Olga Marie felt suddenly like a little girl again.

    "I am," said the new, unfamiliar woman. "And you must be the illustrious Director Animusphere."

    Olga Marie cleared her throat and drew herself up as much as possible. "I am!"

    "Is she here to provide security?" Taylor asked Da Vinci.

    "Not quite," Da Vinci answered without looking up from her work. "You see, when the Director mentioned performing another summoning to me a few hours ago, we had a discussion about how we were going to go about it and what we intended to accomplish with it. Director?"

    "R-right!"

    Olga Marie walked over to the box set to the side ¡ª Da Vinci had brought it with her, as Olga Marie had asked ¡ª and lifted the lid, and from inside, she produced a multi-colored, multifaceted crystal. Every time it shifted, the light shining through it shifted hue, giving it a rainbow-like quality.

    "This," she said as she held it up for the Masters to see, "is what''s known as a Quasi-Spiritron Crystal."

    "Saint Quartz!" Mash gasped.

    Olga Marie''s eyebrow twitched, but she kept any reprimands off of her tongue. "As Mash has just said, the staff at Chaldea have nicknamed it Saint Quartz, because of its function."

    "Sorry, Director," Mash mumbled.

    Olga Marie pretended she hadn''t said anything.

    "Taylor and Mash already know this, but the summoning system that we use to call upon Heroic Spirits was built with these at its core," she went on. "In this form, however, it can function as a single-use mystic code, of a sort. It allows you to cut away some of the randomness and attempt to summon a specific Servant by bypassing the necessity of a catalyst and using your own intent and willpower instead."

    "Whoa," said Rika. "Why weren''t we using this before? This sounds super useful!"

    Olga Marie''s eyebrow twitched again.

    "Before the Fuyuki Singularity, the FATE System was unreliable at best, useless at worst," Da Vinci took over before Olga Marie could say something harsh. "Remember, most of our summonings have been tests to calibrate the system itself now that it''s actually performing its intended function. Wasting a rare resource like that is just silly, don''t you think?"

    "Oh," said Rika.

    "Why are we using them now, then?" her brother asked.

    "Because we''re performing another test!" Da Vinci answered brightly.

    Olga Marie cleared her throat. "Since its intended function has been almost entirely theoretical up to this point, we''re going to use Saint Quartz to see if we can intentionally summon a specific Heroic Spirit. Namely, the Jeanne d''Arc you met in the Orl¨¦ans Singularity."

    "I want to see if the Master already possessing a bond with a given Heroic Spirit can increase the likelihood of success," Da Vinci added. "Director Animusphere agreed."

    "So that''s the goal today," said Olga Marie. "Masters of Chaldea, you''re going to summon Jeanne d''Arc!"

    "Not Best Buddy?" Rika asked, sounding heartbroken.

    Ugh. This was why Olga Marie preferred to work with professionals. It wasn''t that forming bonds with Servants was a bad thing, but getting too attached to them was just silly.

    "That''s why we have her sword as a catalyst, Rika," said Da Vinci reasonably. "We can attempt to summon Emperor Nero at a later date. If this test goes well, I''ll even see about requisitioning the use of Saint Quartz to up the odds!"

    Olga Marie bit her tongue. Not likely.

    "Are we all going to be doing it together?" Taylor asked. A sensible question, finally.

    "While having Servants contracted to individual Masters has worked out okay," said Da Vinci, "things work out better when the contract is shared between the three of you. It makes it easier to support the Servants in question when the burden is split."

    "That''s why all future contracts should ideally be shared," Olga Marie concluded.

    "Any more questions?" asked Da Vinci.

    There were none.

    "Okay, then!" Da Vinci said brightly. "Everything''s calibrated, so it''s just a matter of everyone getting into position! Mash, if you would?"

    "Right!"

    Mash manifested her shield, and Olga Marie stepped out of the way so she could set it upon the altar that formed the summoning circle.

    "Very good," said Da Vinci once the shield was in place. "Now, Rika, Ritsuka, Taylor, if you would each take a position around the circle? A triangular formation would work best."

    They did so, with Taylor standing upon the main dais in front and the other two taking "leg" positions opposite her. Olga Marie went over and set the Saint Quartz in the center of the array, and then she stepped back. Her heart thudded in her chest, eager to see the impossible become possible before her very eyes.

    "All together," said Da Vinci, "recite the incantation. And remember to focus on summoning Jeanne d''Arc specifically!"

    "Heed my words," Taylor said solemnly. The twins picked up after her immediately. "My will creates your body, and your sword creates my destiny."

    The array in the center lit up and began to glow. The light refracted through the Saint Quartz and cast a rainbow over the walls, constantly shifting and changing colors.

    "If thou accedes to my will and reason, then answer me."

    The console Da Vinci was manning beeped and chimed. Da Vinci''s face split into a smile. "Spirit Origin detected! Keep going, everyone!"

    "I hereby swear ¡ª"

    The magic circle at the center lifted off of the floor and came to hover above Mash''s shield, flashing and spinning. A noise like the grinding of a set of enormous gears whined.

    "¡ª that I will embody all the good in this world and punish all evils!"

    The console chimed again, and Da Vinci''s smile evaporated. "Wait¡­"

    "Thou the Seventh Heaven ¡ª"

    An unseen wind picked up, rushing out from the center of the room, and the glow of the magic circle turned briefly gold, then flickered into a kaleidoscope of bright, vivid colors.

    "The Saint Graph is inverting?" Da Vinci squawked, bewildered. "Ruler¡­ No, not Ruler anymore!"

    "¡ª clad in the three great words of power!"

    A vague silhouette formed in the center, like a shadow cast in three dimensions. It had a somewhat feminine shape.

    "Come forth from the Ring of Deterrence ¡ª"

    "Wait!" Da Vinci shouted, barely audible over the noise. "Stop!"

    "¡ª Guardian of the Heavenly Scales!"

    But it was too late to stop anything. The sparks of rainbow light collapsed inwards, sucking into the shadow at the center as the wind suddenly rushed outwards and whipped Olga Marie''s hair about. The silhouette gained color and substance, filling in and becoming a woman in blackened armor with pale skin and platinum blonde hair.

    Yellow eyes opened and regarded them all. "Servant, Avenger. I came in response to your summons."

    "Jeanne!" Rika gasped.

    "That''s not Jeanne," Taylor said immediately.

    Mash drew in a sharp breath and stumbled backwards, and when Olga Marie turned to look, the girl''s face had drained of color as she stared, wide-eyed, at the new Servant.

    The woman in her blackened armor canted her hip to one side, her upper lip curling into a sneer.

    "What?" she asked, voice dripping with annoyance. "What''s with that look? You''re my Master, aren''t you?"

    "That''s Jeanne Alter."

 Chapter LXXX: Manifest Fantasy

    Chapter LXXX: Manifest Fantasy

    That''s not possible.

    Heroic Spirits had some degree of mystery. The primer courses had delivered that like a big, glowing neon sign that said "Take with a grain of salt." The degree of mythologizing that went into most of the older heroes made it impossible to tell fact from fiction with most of them, or even whether some of them had existed at all.

    But Heroic Spirits by their nature had to be someone that people had genuinely believed in at some point or another. Someone whose existence a culture had accepted as fact.

    By definition, that didn''t include someone who only existed in a single man''s addled, grief-stricken mind.

    "Well?" Jeanne Alter asked, impatient. "Are you my Master or not? Stop standing around looking like idiots and say something already!"

    "That''s¡­definitely not Jeanne," said Rika, sounding faint. Shocked. For once, I couldn''t blame her.

    Jeanne Alter wasn''t a legitimate existence. There was no facet of the Heroic Spirit "Jeanne d''Arc" that could be said to hold her wrathful vengeance ¡ª Jeanne herself had said as much.

    "W-wait," said Marie. "Jeanne Alter? A-as in the enemy Servant you fought at the end of the Orl¨¦ans Singularity?"

    "What?" Jeanne Alter asked. "What are you talking about? Orl¨¦ans Singularity? Stop talking nonsense now! Are you my Master or not?"

    My fists clenched. My Command Spells stood out on the back of my hand, a stark red against the white skin stretched tight over my bones.

    Unlike the real Jeanne, she had no Magic Resistance. A single Command Spell was all it would take to force her to commit suicide, as gruesome a thing as that would be for the twins to witness. Against Jeanne Alter, in a space this tiny, right on top of equipment this delicate, however? It was really our only option.

    So why hadn''t I done it already?

    My lips pressed tight.

    Because she hadn''t given me a reason to.

    "Th-this shouldn''t be possible," Da Vinci said from the side. I didn''t take my eyes off of Jeanne Alter. "This isn''t a Heroic Spirit that exists ¡ª her Spirit Origin shouldn''t be cohesive enough to manifest, let alone sustain itself. She should be self-destructing in front of our eyes!"

    "Self-destructing?" Jeanne Alter''s hand went to the sword sheathed at her hip. "Damn it! If none of you are going to flap your gobs enough to tell me anything useful, then I''ll show you self-destructing, you ¡ª"

    A wind rushed past me, and before I could even blink, A¨ªfe stood on the plinth with Jeanne Alter, one hand on the pommel of the sword to keep it from being drawn and the other pressing two fingers with threatening intent against Jeanne Alter''s throat. Jeanne Alter looked back at her with wide, yellow eyes.

    "You!" she snarled. "Get your hands off of me, you thug!"

    "Master," said A¨ªfe, ignoring her, "give me an order. Are we keeping this one, or should I dispose of her?"

    "D-dispose!" Mash choked, and yeah, there was that, too, wasn''t there? Romani was going to have a field day helping her through this one.

    "W-what?" Marie demanded. "After we went through all of this effort and spent all of these resources on summoning her?"

    "I''m afraid this one might be a lost cause," Da Vinci said.

    "Lost cause?" Jeanne Alter sneered, and magical energy began to gather inside of her, licking the edges of her body like black flames. "Lost cause this ¡ª"

    "Jeanne!" I said sharply.

    Yellow eyes flitted to me, waiting. Her lip remained curled, but the mana she''d been gathering stayed where it was, ready to be used but not yet used.

    I hoped I wasn''t going to regret this, but this wouldn''t be the first time and probably wouldn''t be the last that I''d teamed up with someone who had once been my enemy.

    "Yeah?" she said.

    "You should have received a packet of information when you were summoned," I told her, "detailing the mission statement of our organization, Chaldea, and the general state of things. Right?"

    "What are you asking questions with obvious answers for?" she said, annoyed.

    To establish the baseline we''d be building off of.

    "And you still answered the summoning?"

    "Why wouldn''t I?" Jeanne Alter countered.

    Because you''re not real, so there was no Throne for you to wait at. I didn''t say that, though. Whatever had happened, however it had happened, she was real enough to stand in front of us right now, so I had to treat her as though she was a real Heroic Spirit.

    "Do you have any problems following our orders to fulfill the mission?"

    "If you think I''m going to let you boss me around like your toy soldier, think again," she answered. She looked disdainfully down at A¨ªfe. "I''m no one''s pet dog."

    That¡­was about as much as I was expecting, if I was honest. Even if I hadn''t known the version of her from Orl¨¦ans ¡ª the memories of which she didn''t seem to have ¡ª I could''ve figured that out in the first five seconds of her opening her mouth.

    "Jeanne," Ritsuka said suddenly, "if we''re your Masters, are you going to betray us?"

    Jeanne Alter craned her head, but the position she was in with A¨ªfe made it impossible for her to turn towards him fully.

    "As long as you don''t betray me," she said, "I won''t burn you all to a crisp."

    It wasn''t the most reassuring answer, but I got the sense it was the best one we were going to get.

    "W-wait," said Mash, "Master! A-are you really going to¡­to¡­"

    "I''m¡­not so sure about this, Onii-chan," said Rika. "Senpai usually knows what she''s doing, but this feels¡­too out there."

    "Ugh," Jeanne Alter huffed. "Would you idiots stop waffling already and make up your mind? If we''re going to fight to the death, just get on with it!"

    I looked behind me, towards Marie. She was the closest thing we had to an impartial third party. "Director?"

    Marie bit her lip so hard it turned white. "I¡­" There was something she thought about saying, but at the last second, she reined it in. "I trust your judgment on this."

    "Hang on," said Da Vinci, "you can''t really mean to establish a contract with her! Not only is she an Avenger class Servant, she tried to burn down France!"

    "This doesn''t look like France to me," Jeanne Alter commented sardonically.

    "Because it isn''t."

    "Taylor!" cried Da Vinci.

    It wasn''t like I didn''t understand her perspective. It went against some of my own instincts as well, hardened as they were by my career as a cape. Some part of me wanted to eliminate her now, while we could, because she was just that dangerous and she''d never shown any remorse for what she''d done or any attempt to change.

    But we''d accepted Emiya into the team, in spite of what his other self had tried to do to us in Fuyuki. Maybe it wasn''t quite the same here as it was then, but it was similar enough, I thought.

    "I know who she is, Da Vinci," I said to her. "I know what her other self did. I haven''t forgotten all of that."

    "And you''re still willing to trust her?" Da Vinci demanded.

    "No." I met Jeanne Alter''s eyes as she looked back to me, one eyebrow arched, like she was questioning me. "But I''m willing to let her earn it."

    Slowly, Jeanne Alter''s lips curled into a smile, really more of a grin, tinged with malice. "You sure you''re not going to regret that, Master?"

    "As long as you don''t betray us," Ritsuka said before I could, "then we won''t have a reason to."

    Da Vinci''s console chimed, and she looked down at it.

    "Con¡­Contract established," said Da Vinci. "It wasn''t¡­the most conventional of ways to do it, but it''s been registered here, clear as day."

    Jeanne Alter sneered at A¨ªfe. "You gonna put those fingers of yours away, attack dog?"

    A¨ªfe''s fingers slowly curled back towards her palm, and then suddenly, she grabbed Jeanne Alter by the throat.

    "A¨ªfe!" said Ritsuka. She ignored him.

    "I don''t do threats," said A¨ªfe, completely calm. "This is a promise, and I never break those: the instant you betray us, this second chance of yours ends."

    Abruptly, she let go and stepped back, turning away to walk back over to my side. Jeanne Alter touched her throat, rubbing faintly at the spot where A¨ªfe''s hand had held her, and arched an eyebrow at me.

    "You just going to let her get away with that, Master?"

    I glanced back at A¨ªfe over my shoulder. She was unmoved.

    "I said I would give you a chance to earn our trust," I told Jeanne Alter. "I didn''t say you''d get more than one."

    Although the blatant threat wasn''t the most helpful way of driving that point home. I''d done stuff like that in the past, but I was trying to be a better person than I was then.

    Paradoxically, Jeanne Alter grinned. "Maybe you''re smarter than I gave you credit for."

    Da Vinci stared at me intensely. I could practically feel her demanding, ''are you sure that this is a good idea?'' I wasn''t. But it still didn''t quite sit right with me to condemn her when the only thing she''d thrown at us so far was words.

    I could deal with words. Words wouldn''t kill me. And I''d dealt with far harsher and more cutting verbal attacks than Jeanne Alter''s attempts at menacing.

    "I-if everyone''s done posturing!" Marie interjected suddenly. "We have other things we need to be doing today, and we''re all wasting time standing here in the summoning chamber!"

    Rika''s face twisted with horror. "Crap! Hot Pops'' lessons!"

    "Oh," said Ritsuka wearily, "right, we still have that to go to. I forgot all about it."

    "Hot Pops?" asked Jeanne Alter, looking like she wanted to laugh.

    "Rika has a tendency to hand out nicknames to people," I explained patiently. "She calls A¨ªfe ''Super Action Mom,'' and one of our Casters, El-Melloi II, she calls ''Hot Pops.'' Only a few of us have escaped getting labeled with one."

    "Oh?" Jeanne Alter leered at Rika. "And does she already have one for me?"

    "She does," Ritsuka confirmed, "although it''s a lot tamer than the other ones she came up with."

    "Hey!" Rika protested. "Jalter is a perfectly serviceable nickname! There''s elegance in its simplicity or whatever!"

    "Jalter?" Jeanne Alter asked.

    "From ''Jeanne Alter,''" I said, watching her face closely. "A way to differentiate you from the original."

    The change was immediate, because any trace of levity was gone from her face in an instant, and a chill radiated off of her, as though she was sucking in all the heat in the room.

    "Tch. That''s only natural," she said. "If you had given me a nickname that was supposed to belong to her, then I would have set you on fire where you stand."

    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

    Once more, Da Vinci tried to bore a hole in my head with her eyes, as though asking, ''are you absolutely sure it''s worth keeping her around?'' And my answer hadn''t really changed.

    Even though Jeanne Alter seemed to be doing her best to convince me that it should.

    "N-noted," Rika managed to say.

    "In any case, Ritsuka, Rika, the Director has a point," I said. "The two of you have lessons to get to. You might as well go and get ready for that."

    "R-right," said Rika. "Y-yeah. Let''s¡­go and do that, Onii-chan."

    "Right." Even Ritsuka looked spooked. "Sure. Come on, Mash."

    Mash, pale and drawn, didn''t say anything. She all but scurried out of the room after the twins when they left, like she couldn''t wait to get out of here, and with them gone, it was just me, A¨ªfe, Da Vinci, Marie, and our resident problem child.

    "A¨ªfe," I began carefully, "I''d like you to give Jeanne Alter a tour of the facility. Show her where the cafeteria is, the library, the Rayshift Chamber, things like that. Maybe pick out a room for her from one of the empty ones."

    Jeanne Alter sneered. "A tour, huh."

    I could feel A¨ªfe''s eyes on the back of my head.

    Keep an eye on her and keep her distracted, I added mentally. I need to have a discussion with Da Vinci and the Director.

    Fine, A¨ªfe answered. I''ll keep her occupied and out of the way.

    "There''s nothing else for me to do, so I might as well," she said aloud.

    "And who says I want to go on a stupid tour with you?" Jeanne Alter said.

    "The simulator isn''t fully fixed yet, so you can''t spar with another Servant," I said pointedly. "Do you have something better to do?"

    Her face twisted, and she looked away, planting one hand on her hip. "Tch. Fine, I''ll go on this stupid tour. Might as well see what this super advanced place is like for myself."

    "Then let''s go," said A¨ªfe. "Unlike you, I do happen to have other things I could be doing today."

    "Yeah, yeah." Jeanne Alter stepped down from the plinth, her armor clinking against the floor as she walked and tinkling as she moved. "Don''t get your panties in a bunch, Super Action Mom."

    The instant Jeanne Alter was within arm''s reach, A¨ªfe''s hand snaked out and she gave Jeanne Alter a flick to the temple.

    "Ow!" Jeanne Alter snarled. "What the fuck was that for?"

    "I let Rika get away with it because it''s part of her personality. It''s how she shows respect and affection," A¨ªfe answered. "I''m not going to afford you the same courtesy, because you aren''t showing either."

    "Fuck you!"

    "Keep up the attitude, and it won''t be anytime soon."

    "What''s that supposed to mean?"

    They left, bickering all the while, and Marie meandered closer as she watched them go. At least it didn''t look like they were in danger of starting a fight that would bring the whole place down around our ears.

    The instant they were out of earshot, Marie turned around and hissed, "What was that?"

    I frowned. "As long as she hasn''t given us an actual reason to terminate the contract ¡ª"

    "Not that!" Marie waved her hand impatiently. "Da Vinci! What happened? I thought we were supposed to be summoning Jeanne d''Arc!"

    "That was the goal," Da Vinci agreed. "Frankly, Director, this shouldn''t have been possible. There is no basis in the Heroic Spirit of Jeanne d''Arc for a Jeanne Alter, as an Avenger class Servant or otherwise. She''s an entirely fictitious being created by Gilles de Rais'' wish on the Orl¨¦ans Holy Grail."

    "Then how did this happen?" Marie demanded. "If it''s not possible in the first place?"

    Da Vinci shrugged and shook her head. "I don''t know," she admitted. "I don''t have the faintest idea."

    It was no less scary hearing her say it a second time than it had been the first. Logically, of course, Da Vinci was fallible, because even if she was a Heroic Spirit, she was still a human being. But it was easy to get used to her having an answer for everything, even if it was just a haphazard guess.

    "What did happen?" I asked, because this was supposed to be simple. The only way for things to go wrong was supposed to be for the Saint Quartz to not work at all, not for it to summon someone who shouldn''t exist.

    "The Saint Graph inverted halfway through the summoning," said Da Vinci. "It would be fascinating, if the implications weren''t so dire. It simply¡­started changing on its own, almost like it was being infected."

    I didn''t like the way that was phrased. "Infected" was far too similar a word to "invaded," and that implied a much, much deeper and more pressing problem than just a simple miscalculation or a fluke.

    "Can¡­can they reach us even here and manipulate our systems?" Marie asked, horrified.

    Da Vinci frowned and shook her head. "We''re not perfectly isolated, but if they could affect our summonings to such a degree, then why wouldn''t they have done it sooner?"

    "Because they didn''t consider us a serious enough threat sooner," I answered immediately. "Not until we fixed three of their Singularities and beat one of them head to head."

    "That doesn''t track, I''m afraid," said Da Vinci. "After all, if Flauros and his allies didn''t consider us a valid threat prior to Septem, then why ever would they have attempted to destroy us before we even set foot in Fuyuki?"

    A¡­valid point. They had tried to kill us all before, and they''d come dangerously close to succeeding. If they had the capability to hijack our summoning system, then why not just use it as a backdoor into the facility and come down on us all at once? One Demon God had been hard enough for us to handle. Seventy-one all at the same time would crush us, no matter what A¨ªfe or Emiya did.

    Hell, even just five might be too much for us to survive.

    "Then what happened?" Marie demanded again. "Da Vinci, you must have some idea! Something like this doesn''t just happen out of nowhere!"

    Da Vinci tapped her fingers thoughtfully against the surface of the monitor, brow furrowed, and didn''t say anything for a long moment. At length, she said, "It¡­may be¡­"

    Her mouth twisted as she worked her jaw, like she was chewing on her thoughts.

    "Saint Quartz is essentially crystallized possibility," she continued slowly. "It helps give form to the ephemeral, solidifying that which by definition has no structure. Chaldea itself holds the only record of the existence of a being called ''Jeanne d''Arc Alter,'' recorded in our systems as a concrete existence with a completed Saint Graph."

    My brow furrowed. Was that¡­possible?

    "You¡­ Are you saying what I think you''re saying?" Marie asked incredulously. "Even in our wildest dreams, no one ever believed the FATE System could be used in such an¡­obtuse manner!"

    Da Vinci shook her head. "It''s the only explanation I can give you right now, Director. Without a thorough examination of the data, I can only make guesses based upon the information I currently have. Frankly, it still sounds far-fetched, even for me."

    It made sense, after a fashion. The logic fit together in my head. The combination of Jeanne Alter''s Saint Graph recorded during the Orl¨¦ans Singularity with the determinative effects of using Saint Quartz had given form to something that wasn''t ordinarily supposed to possess one.

    Of course, even with a Saint Graph acting as a framework to give her structure, she still needed a spiritual core, didn''t she? That was where things hit a stumbling block ¡ª only Heroic Spirits that actually existed could have a spiritual core, formed from the original''s existence in the Throne of Heroes. A sort of pale imitation of the original''s soul.

    Unless¡­

    "What did the Saint Graph read as before it inverted?" I asked.

    "Ruler," Da Vinci answered immediately and without hesitation. "That was why I thought our little test was going to be a success, at first. While I don''t doubt that there are other Heroic Spirits that qualify for the Ruler class, the only one that we have directly encountered so far is Jeanne d''Arc herself." Da Vinci''s eyes widened. "Hang on a minute. You don''t think¡­"

    "Do you have a better explanation?" I countered.

    "Well, no, but¡­"

    "Wait, wait." Marie''s nose scrunched up, like she couldn''t believe what she was hearing. "How would that even be possible? Something like that would require a¡­a conscious effort from Jeanne Alter, wouldn''t it? How would she even hijack the original''s Saint Graph like that?"

    "We''re speaking of Heroic Spirits now, Director," Da Vinci reminded her patiently. "The bounds of possibility ceased to matter a long time ago, I''m afraid."

    Marie didn''t look happy with that answer either. Honestly, neither was I. It felt too much like tossing up our hands and calling it a miracle, and while there were a lot of things I''d gotten used to writing off as "fucking Tinkers" during my career, that didn''t make it something I was any more excited to accept as inexplicable.

    In large part, that was because I knew there was an answer now. It may have been "because passengers did it," but that was just an admission that it was too far beyond my understanding, not that it didn''t have an explanation at all.

    "I can''t accept that," Marie said sternly. "Da Vinci, I want you to double check the data, then triple check it, then check it another dozen times, if you have to. I refuse to accept that there isn''t a better explanation for what just happened! Especially not with the sort of odds we''re facing!"

    "It may be that I simply can''t give you a better explanation, Director," Da Vinci warned her. "I may be a genius, but if the information doesn''t exist, then I can''t magically make it appear just because I want it to."

    Marie huffed. "If that''s how it is, then I''ll accept that when we get to it, but only after all other avenues have been explored! The mere possibility that an outside force interfered with our FATE System and can alter the outcomes of our summonings is too important to simply write it off as bad luck or a fluke!"

    Da Vinci sighed. "I understand, Director," she said. "And you''re right, of course. Even if it turns out that it really was just a fluke or a weird interaction between FATE and the data recorded from Orl¨¦ans, the possibility of foul play is one that definitely needs to be investigated."

    I wasn''t sure which one I was rooting for. On the one hand, sabotage really was a big problem, and we''d dealt with it enough and had more than enough stacked against us that we didn''t need to be borrowing trouble like that. On the other hand, the idea that unexpected and unintended interactions between FATE and the Saint Graphs of enemies we fought inside of these Singularities could randomly affect the results of our summonings wasn''t a very appetizing thought either.

    Jeanne Alter straddled the line as it was. If we fought someone even worse later on down the line, there was no way I wanted to see them "accidentally" show up in Chaldea.

    "Good!" Marie nodded. "Taylor, with me. Da Vinci, send Romani to meet us in my office. If he''s going to be my Vice Director, then he needs to know about this before he sees her with his own eyes."

    "Of course, Director."

    Marie spun on her heel and strode out of the room with purpose. I gave a nod to Da Vinci and then followed her, falling into step next to her. The click of her heels was steady and sure.

    We were barely fifteen feet down the hall before Marie gasped and fell in on herself. She barely caught herself on the wall, or else she would have pitched sideways and landed on the floor.

    "D-damn it!" she cursed. "Damn it, why? Why does everything I touch wind up such a mess?"

    What was I supposed to do here? Reach out and give her a hug? That felt like too much. Put my hand on her shoulder? That just felt awkward and useless.

    What I wouldn''t have given for some sage wisdom from Doctor Yamada, just then.

    "None of what happened back there is your fault," I told Marie.

    "Isn''t it?" she demanded. "I was the one who insisted on a summoning! Who insisted on using Saint Quartz! It was me who decided to attempt to summon Jeanne d''Arc!"

    "So?" I replied. "Do you think we wouldn''t have tried to summon her ourselves eventually? Or that we wouldn''t ever decide to try using Saint Quartz? For all we know, this might have been inevitable, and it was just a matter of time."

    "But it was still me who¡­!"

    I stepped in front of her and placed my hands on her shoulders. Her head swung up, and she looked at me with red-rimmed eyes ¡ª not crying, but closer to it than she would ever have liked to admit.

    "Sometimes, bad things happen to good people," I told her, "for no goddamn reason. You''ve seen enough of my past that you should know this by now, Marie. Was Leviathan my fault?"

    "What?" she squawked. "No! Of course not!"

    "Then Jeanne Alter deciding to hijack our attempted summoning isn''t yours."

    "But what if it was?" she whispered, like the mere act of saying it out loud would make it true.

    "None of us believe that," I said, "so neither should you."

    She shuddered. "You''re right." Then, louder, she repeated, "You''re right. No one could have predicted things would turn out the way they did, not if even Da Vinci is stumped."

    "Exactly."

    I stepped back as she straightened and let my hands fall from her shoulders. Confidence firmly back in place, she said, "Come on. We have to go tell Romani about this mess, before he catches sight of her in the halls and has a heart attack."

    "Of course, Director."

    We set back off and made our way towards her office. It occurred to me, as we walked, that I hadn''t seen Arash since breakfast, and it was entirely possible that he was following us around in spirit form, watching silently for an emergency he might need to get involved in or a moment where he might be needed.

    Should I be happy if he was there and had decided not to inject himself into Marie''s moment of crisis? Either of them? Or was I supposed to be annoyed that he just stood by and watched without doing anything?

    I wasn''t sure just then, not in the least because I didn''t know if he''d been there and I wasn''t going to try and hash that out with him in front of Marie ¡ª silently or aloud.

    Fittingly, when we arrived at her office, Marie had to press her palm against the scanner set into the wall and type in an access code before the door whooshed open and the lights flickered on automatically.

    Somewhat unfairly, Marie''s office was much cozier than the standard issue dormitory rooms we Masters had to stay in. A perk, I supposed, of being Director. For one, it had actual carpeting across the floor, and a large, wooden desk that sat where the bed was in my room (with papers strewn across it, of course, and a large pile of folders and forms), and to complete the comfortable atmosphere, the lighting was softer and warmer instead of the harsh, white overhead lights that were so standard.

    It was also twice the size of a regular room. There was even enough space for a coffee table and a handful of plush, leather armchairs that looked like they would swallow me up if I sat down in one.

    Marie looked at first like she was going to go over to her desk and sit down there, but she hadn''t made it more than a single step before her face twisted with disgusted frustration and she spun about towards the chairs.

    "Ugh!"

    Unceremoniously, she threw herself into one, crossing her legs and then her arms with a sour expression on her face. I could only guess that she didn''t want to try and have a conversation with Romani with her desk drowning in paperwork.

    So, instead of standing there like a gargoyle, I followed her and picked my own seat. The chair turned out just as soft and just as squishy as I''d expected it was going to be, squeaking as I eased myself into it.

    More perks of being the Director, I had to guess.

    A few minutes later, the door whooshed open again, and Romani stood on the other side of it. "I''m here!" he announced as he stepped inside. "I came as soon as Da Vinci sent the word!"

    He blinked, bemused, and looked towards the empty desk. "Director?"

    "Over here, Romani!" said Marie.

    Romani''s head swiveled around. "Oh!"

    He ambled over, and for a moment, stood awkwardly next to a chair, like he was waiting for permission or a rebuke. When neither came, he hesitantly sat down.

    "So," he began, "Da Vinci didn''t really say what this was about. I''m guessing it has something to do with the summoning? Did it fail?"

    "Yes and no," Marie replied.

    Romani blinked again, confused. "What?"

    "It''s complicated," she said, frustrated. "The summoning succeeded, and we even got the Heroic Spirit we were intending to summon, but it also failed, because we didn''t."

    "What?" Romani repeated.

    "We got Jeanne Alter," I clarified for him.

    "What?" he said for the third time, sputtering. "But¡­that''s not possible! There is no Jeanne Alter! Not on the Throne of Heroes! She wasn''t anything more than Gilles de Rais'' twisted revenge fantasy!"

    "We know," said Marie, annoyed.

    "She showed up anyway," I said.

    "How?" Romani asked.

    Marie huffed. "Da Vinci is going to investigate that. Needless to say, I won''t be authorizing any more summonings until she can complete her investigation and determine what, if anything, caused her to be summoned instead of the original, like we intended."

    "I¡­" Romani pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, I guess that''s the reasonable response, isn''t it? I''m surprised, though, that we didn''t hear the fight even from as far away as the Command Room. She didn''t exactly go down easy the first time."

    Marie and I shared a look.

    "There wasn''t a fight," she said.

    Once more, Romani blinked at her, nonplussed. "¡­What?"

    "You should have seen the updated contracts list on your console," she told him sternly. "Jeanne Alter has been registered as a Servant of Chaldea."

    "I¡­feel like I''m missing something here," Romani said. "How? More importantly, why? She was an enemy Servant! She was responsible for the Orl¨¦ans Singularity!"

    Marie looked to me, as though telling me that I was the one who had to answer this one. I didn''t think she was really wrong about that.

    "Because she didn''t give me a reason to kill her."

    Romani nearly leapt out of his seat. "Tens of thousands of dead civilians would beg to differ about ¡ª"

    "Then why did we let Emiya stay?" I countered.

    Romani took a breath to keep going, mouth opening to offer a rebuttal, but once my words made it from his ears to his brain, he lost steam and sank back against his chair.

    "The Emiya we met in Fuyuki tried to kill us," I pressed. Marie''s expression twisted, because no, she didn''t like being reminded about that. "And yet we still let him into Chaldea, and now, he cooks our meals. Everyone''s meals. He''s an integral part of the organization."

    "That''s not the same thing at all!" Romani protested. "For one thing, the Emiya in Fuyuki was corrupted, and the one Rika summoned is the normal version! Jeanne Alter is the corrupted version to begin with!"

    "And yet," I said, "she answered our summoning and hasn''t seriously tried to kill any one of us yet."

    "You used the words ''seriously'' and ''yet'' in that sentence," said Romani. "Both of those are very important words when it comes to someone as dangerous as her!"

    "Obviously, I don''t trust her," I told him. I''d be a fool if I did. "But I''m not willing to condemn her for something she technically hasn''t done."

    "And if she does try to kill us all?" Romani asked pointedly.

    "We have nine Command Spells," I answered immediately, "and at least four Servants willing and able to put her down the instant she tries anything."

    "What happens when you Rayshift into a Singularity, then?" Romani asked. "Are you just going to keep her here the entire time and lock her in a room? What''s the point in even keeping her around in that case?"

    "Obviously, we''ll be keeping her under observation for the time being," Marie answered. "We''ll have to keep at least one Servant dedicated to watching her, just in case, even if that means having to keep back someone who was originally supposed to Rayshift." She huffed. "But it would be a waste of our resources to just kill her outright! We don''t have an infinite amount of Quasi-Spiritron Crystals, you know!"

    Romani sighed and carded a hand through his hair. To me, he asked, "Are you sure about this? For someone like you, I''m sure I don''t need to list all of the ways this could blow up in our faces."

    I wasn''t. My first instinct was still to remove her from the equation while we still had the chance, before she tried something.

    But I kept coming back to that one thing that had stayed my hand in the first place: she hadn''t given me a reason, despite everything she''d said. And while I was more than fine with planning a preemptive strike against someone I knew was going to screw me, frankly, I wasn''t anywhere near sure that she was.

    For now, at least, I could treat her like we had Bonesaw: give her enough slack to tie her own noose, but let her make sutures with it until she did.

    "It''s because I am who I am," I told him. "My hands haven''t been lily white in a long time, but people still took chances on me. That''s the only reason I''m here at all."

    Brian and Lisa, for one, even though Lisa knew who and what I was planning from day one. Parian and Flechette, despite the Undersiders being villains in every sense of the word. The Chicago Wards, after a fashion, even if they hadn''t really liked me.

    And two years ago, Marie picked up a shambling wreck and nursed her back to health. There was no way I could forget that.

    "Chaldea doesn''t care about your past, only what you can do in the future," Marie chimed in. "You should understand that better than anyone, Romani. This organization was built on promises and fragile hopes. Even the Rayshift technology was only a theory until we did it successfully." She huffed. "Did you think that only applied to our machines and our magecraft? Potential is the most important attribute here!"

    "I think the potential of setting us all on fire is very important!" Romani insisted.

    "But that''s not the only thing she has the potential to do, is it?" Marie shot back. "After all, how close was Taylor to dying when she came here, and now she''s the only Master left from Team A, because I chose to trust in what she could accomplish if she was given the chance! The potential that matters is the one that''s realized!"

    A faint warmth kindled in my chest, and I was tempted to smile.

    "We''re going to give Jeanne Alter a chance, Romani," I told him. "That''s it. If she lives up to it, then we''ll trust her. And if she doesn''t, then we''ll put her down."

    "I¡­" He sighed, raking his hand through his hair again. "I''m not going to convince you otherwise, am I?" He sagged back into his chair, letting his head tilt back so he could look up at the ceiling. "Somehow, I''m not as surprised as I think I should be."

    "Look on the bright side," I said. "If I''m wrong, you get to tell me you told me so."

    Romani squawked indignantly. "That''s not a bright side at all!"

 Chapter LXXXI: Oceanic Mystery

    Chapter LXXXI: Oceanic Mystery

    The next two weeks passed largely without incident. Jeanne Alter attacked anyone and everyone who caught her attention with her sharp tongue and her acidic wit, but that was all the farther she ever took things. At no point had things ever escalated to physical violence, even when Jeanne Alter threatened it or tried to goad our other Servants into starting something.

    Fortunately, Emiya''s tongue was just as sharp as hers and his wit drier than bone, Siegfried was far too calm and chivalrous to engage the way she wanted, Arash was too unflappable to rise to her bait, and A¨ªfe was only too happy to treat her like a petulant child desperate for attention.

    As for Shakespeare, she avoided him entirely, the way a rabbit might a fox: as though she was deathly afraid of what would happen if he happened to notice she existed.

    I couldn''t say he was my favorite person, and of the Servants on our team, he was the one I interacted with least, a status quo I generally happened to like just how it was. But Jeanne Alter seemed outright afraid of him, even if she would rather die than admit it, and I didn''t really have any idea why.

    In the meantime, everything continued apace, and even with Jeanne Alter''s belligerent attitude, things settled back into a kind of normal. Our morning workout sessions with A¨ªfe continued, as did the twins'' afternoon lessons with El-Melloi II, and Marie slowly eased back into the role of Chaldea''s Director.

    It wasn''t all easy. For all the progress Marie was making, she wasn''t going to fully recover in just a couple of weeks, and I was sure that for every miniature breakdown she had in front of me, there had to be at least one more that I wasn''t there to see and help with, and I hated that. I hated that there were some battles that I couldn''t help her fight.

    But following her around everywhere she went, waiting for the moment she needed me? That wouldn''t help either. It would send the wrong message, and I knew Marie well enough to know she would slide further and deeper into her doubts, would give more weight to her demons.

    I just had to trust that she was strong enough to pull through even those rough spots. With Romani in the Vice Director''s chair to more evenly distribute the workload, the only semblance of a mental healthcare professional that we had was just too busy to give her individualized attention. There was nothing anyone could do about it, least of all me.

    So, almost six weeks since we came back from the Septem Singularity, I came out of the shower after my workout to find a message waiting for me on my room''s console. It was just two short lines of text:

    Fourth Singularity Briefing

    10:30

    I marked the message as read with one hand while I toweled my hair dry with the other. Given the brevity of the message, the only person it could have come from was Marie. The time was a little unusual ¡ª Marie would normally schedule something like that for at least an hour earlier ¡ª but it made more sense if she was accounting for the routine A¨ªfe put us through every morning. Well, the one she put twins through, more specifically.

    It said something that Marie was willing to adjust her own schedule around something like that. I didn''t think the Marie I''d first met two years ago would have been that flexible.

    Dressed and with my hair blown dry, I left my room about ten minutes later and made the trek down to the cafeteria for breakfast. As expected, the twins and Mash were already there and eating by the time I arrived, with (ugh) Fou nibbling on bits of egg that Mash fed him like he was an ordinary pet cat.

    Obviously, Romani had never taught her the dangers of adopting strange animals, or of feeding them when they weren''t tame. Just as obviously, it was far too late to do anything about it, since the thing had become the organization''s unofficial mascot and Mash treated it like it was a beloved pet cat she''d raised from a kitten.

    It should have been a lot more suspicious than it was, all things considered. No one knew where it came from, it went about the facility as it pleased without any supervision, and it had ingratiated itself with the staff? That was Master-Stranger behavior straight out of the manual.

    Except the most suspicious thing it had done since I got here was hiss at me. It didn''t seem to have any magical powers ¡ª over other people''s minds or otherwise ¡ª it followed Mash around more than anything, and the only one who seemed at all affected by its presence was me. Everyone else was either ambivalent about it or treated it the way all things cute were treated.

    Alec would probably say that was exactly why it freaked me out.

    I tried my best to ignore him while I went to get my food, but that was harder to do with the chill that shuddered down my spine when I passed their table.

    "I''ve noticed you two don''t get along," said Emiya as he piled food on my plate. When my brow furrowed, he nodded behind me. I didn''t need to turn to look to know that he was referring to Fou.

    "Neither do you and Jeanne Alter," I replied calmly.

    "True," he acknowledged. "However, Jeanne Alter is confrontational and rude with everyone, so saying she and I don''t like each other much isn''t particularly insightful. The only one Fou seems to have a hard time getting along with is you."

    And that was part of what made it even harder to ignore the instinct to recoil from him. It would be easier to deal with if there was a rhyme or reason behind that feeling.

    "It would be a lot easier if I could explain it," I admitted. "But whatever it is, it''s not something I can put into words."

    Emiya''s eyes narrowed, and he paused a second to look past me and over my shoulder, but only for a second.

    "I''d worry, but he seems content to be Mash''s pet," said Emiya. He finished dishing up my food. "If there was something more to it than that, then there''s been ample opportunity to act on it, so I''m inclined to let it be."

    Therein lied my problem. The only one whose behavior was unusual was me.

    "That''s exactly why I don''t bring it up," I told him. "The only thing it would accomplish is to make things awkward with Mash. If he makes her happy, then I can just suck it up and deal."

    Emiya huffed, smiled, and shook his head. "I guess that''s why you''re the one leading the Masters." He set a glass of orange juice down on my tray. "Enjoy your breakfast."

    "Thanks."

    I turned around, and my first instinct was to find an empty seat at an unoccupied table, as far away from Fou as I could reasonably be without someone realizing I was avoiding him. But I wasn''t about to let myself be ruled by that instinct, so I made right for the twins'' table instead.

    "Good morning, Senpai," Rika greeted me through a mouthful of eggs. It sounded more like "Goo'' morn''g, Semmai."

    Ritsuka rolled his eyes. "Good morning, Senpai," he greeted me after swallowing what he''d been chewing on.

    "Morning," I replied as I sat down. I deliberately ignored Fou''s gimlet eye.

    Blessedly, Rika decided that her food was more important than conversation, so breakfast was eaten in relative silence. Aside from the four of us chewing on our meals, the only real sounds came from the kitchen and the murmured conversations of the others still there in the room with us.

    Eventually, however, the food was eaten, and Rika relaxed into her chair as much as she was able with a contented sigh.

    "I really don''t know how we made it before Emiya came along," she said wistfully.

    "I feel like I''m supposed to be insulted," her brother said dryly.

    She looked over at him. "You gotta admit, Onii-chan, we''ve never eaten as well as we do now. It''s gonna be hard to go back to regular food when this is all over. I might have to steal Emiya for ourselves."

    "I don''t think that''s possible, Senpai," Mash told her. "Um, without the FATE System, you would have to supply Emiya with magical energy all by yourself, and for a normal human, that''s not possible."

    "I''d figure something out," Rika said, waving it off.

    "Not with your work ethic," her brother said.

    "My work ethic is fine," she retorted, "it''s just the rest of the world that''s unreasonable. I went to cram school, too, you know. You''re not the only one who had to work your tail off to make it into high school."

    "Just the one who took all the notes you used to study," Ritsuka said.

    "Hey!"

    While they were having their fun, I checked my watch. Plenty of time to give the food a few minutes to digest and then make our way down to the Command Room.

    "Oh!" Mash, who had seen me, checked her own watch. "That''s right, I almost forgot! The Director scheduled the briefing for the next Singularity today!"

    "That''s what that message was about?" asked Rika. "I wasn''t even sure who it was from when I first saw it, it was so short!"

    "That''s the Director for you," said Mash. "She doesn''t like to waste any time."

    "I feel like this is one of those times where she should waste a little time," said Rika. "So that I actually know what I''m getting into."

    "It''s been almost six weeks," I told her. "There are still another five Singularities we need to correct. We''ve had our month-long break, so now it''s time to get ready to handle the next one."

    Rika groaned and slumped in her seat. "It feels like we just got done fixing the last one! And we still haven''t summoned Best Buddy back!"

    "I''m sure you could talk to the Director about it," Mash tried to reassure her.

    "Ugh, I know exactly what she''d say." Rika straightened and drew herself up into a passable imitation of Marie''s famous lecturing pose. "Just because we have several Holy Grails hooked up to our generators now doesn''t mean we can summon Servants willy nilly! Your Best Buddy will have to wait until later!"

    Mash giggled a little. "That does sound somewhat like the Director, Senpai."

    "Just a little," Ritsuka agreed.

    "The summoning itself isn''t where the whole thing begins and ends," I said. "There''s numerous considerations that have to go into it. Remember, if we summon more Servants than the FATE System is prepared to handle, we Masters have to pick up the slack."

    Rika grimaced. "Yeah. Really not looking forward to becoming a mummy at the ripe old age of seventeen." She blew a breath out past her lips. "Doesn''t mean I have to like waiting. What if Best Buddy''s sword disappears in the meantime? Da Vinci-chan already said that the fact we could bring it back with us to begin with wasn''t normal!"

    I wasn''t sure Da Vinci would even tell us if it did disappear. On the other hand, we had numerous catalysts sitting around, so I didn''t consider it impossible that we might have another one tied to Emperor Nero.

    Or, if they ever figured out what had happened with Jeanne Alter, she could just try using Saint Quartz to weight the odds.

    "They''re also still trying to figure out how we got Jeanne Alter instead of the original Jeanne," I said. "The last thing we want to do is perform another summoning and accidentally call up Gilles de Rais. He might convince her to go on a rampage throughout the place."

    I wasn''t totally sure that he would, but the odds weren''t close enough to zero for me to be comfortable with the possibility.

    "Ugh!" Rika stuck out her tongue, disgusted. "It''s a good thing I already finished eating, because I really didn''t need to think about Mister Starfish again."

    "I wonder what really did cause us to summon her instead of Jeanne herself," Ritsuka commented. "No matter how I look at it, I don''t think we did anything ourselves that could have changed things up like that."

    It may have been that there wasn''t anything at all, and it was just a fluke. A random interaction between our records and the FATE System. Until Da Vinci could give us all a better answer, the only thing we had to go on was theories.

    I checked my watch again, then pushed my chair out and stood up, grabbing my tray along the way. "Let''s get going. We don''t want to be late to the Director''s briefing."

    "Think she''d throw us out again?" Ritsuka asked as he stood, too. "Now that we''re the last three Masters and everything."

    Rika snorted. "Hell no! We''re way too important to get tossed aside like yesterday''s trash!" She cleared her throat. "Having said that, Onii-chan, if we''re late, then I''m blaming you."

    "What?" Ritsuka squawked indignantly. "Hey!"

    "Your sacrifice will not be in vain!"

    And before he could come up with anything else, she walked quickly back over to Emiya to hand in her tray and her plate. Emiya had barely taken them back before she was already speeding towards the door.

    "Slow down!" he called after her. "Rika!"

    But she ignored him, and Ritsuka rushed to follow her, taking long, quick strides to return his own tray.

    Stolen story; please report.

    "Senpai!" Mash stood, and then she followed, too.

    I took it a little slower and walked like a normal person, following the group of them more sedately. Emiya arched an amused, bemused eyebrow at me, little smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth, and flicked his eyes in their direction.

    "I guess they''re just that excited about the briefing," I told him dryly.

    "Somehow, I doubt they''re really all that excited for a briefing," he replied, just as dry. He took my tray from me and set it aside with the others, then undid the knot holding his apron on and took it off, hanging it on a nearby hook. "But if it''s time for the briefing, then I guess that means it''s time for me to take a ''coffee break'' and make sure I''m up to speed."

    Over his shoulder, he called, "Hey, Marcus!"

    A head of dark hair peeked out from the back. "Yeah?"

    "I''m heading out for the briefing. You''re in charge of things until I get back."

    "Got it!"

    The so-named Marcus came out from the back a moment later, drying his hands on a towel hanging in the front pocket of his own apron. Emiya gave him a wave as he approached, and then disappeared ¡ª only to reappear a moment later, having apparently used spirit form to get past the counter in front of him.

    At my look, he shrugged. "Saves time."

    "Sure."

    I suppose if you had the ability to conveniently avoid obstacles like that, then it only made sense to use it. It was also just a bit lazy.

    We left the cafeteria together, only to find a familiar face on the other side of the door.

    "Good morning, Master," said Arash with a smile.

    "Good morning," I answered automatically. "Were you¡­waiting for me out here?"

    "How dedicated," Emiya said snarkily.

    "Only for a few minutes," Arash said. He ignored Emiya''s comment effortlessly. "I figured I''d meet up with you on the way to the briefing. Siegfried, A¨ªfe, and the others are already there."

    "And the twins and Mash are on their way," I finished. "Alright. Let''s get going, then."

    "Don''t want to be late, huh?"

    Emiya huffed a chuckle. "She''s probably the only one here who could get away with it."

    I didn''t dignify Emiya''s remark with a reply, and we set off towards the Command Room, where everyone else was waiting. As expected, we got there with several minutes to spare, and when the door whooshed open, the other Servants were indeed waiting, with the exception of Shakespeare.

    "I guess that guy''s just not going to see any action," Emiya murmured.

    "I think he prefers it that way," I replied. That one skill of his all but confirmed that the battlefield was the very last place he wanted to be.

    "Oh!" Bradamante was the first one to catch sight of us. "Master! Sir Arash! Sir Emiya! Good morning!"

    "Good morning to you, too," Arash replied amiably.

    "Still haven''t gotten used to being called Sir Emiya," Emiya muttered under his breath.

    "We actually got here before Senpai," said Rika. "Onii-chan, pinch me. I''m not dreaming ¡ª ow!"

    "You said to pinch you," Ritsuka told her.

    "I didn''t mean literally!"

    The commotion drew the attention of Marie, who was standing at the Director''s terminal, Romani and Da Vinci at her side. Her eyes caught me first, and then swept out across the rest of the assembled group.

    "Everyone''s here?" she demanded rhetorically. "Good! It''s a few minutes early, but let''s get started!"

    "Right, right." Romani cleared his throat. "So, if everyone would come over here?"

    We did, crowding around the terminal so that we could all see the screens. It said something about the size that we all managed to fit behind it quite comfortably.

    Romani smiled at us all. "Good morning, everyone! How did you all sleep? Ah, those of you who¡­needed to, I mean, and I guess those of you who wanted to, too?"

    Marie pinched the bridge of her nose, grimacing. Jeanne Alter, standing in the back with her arms folded, scoffed and said, "Idiot."

    "I wouldn''t have said no to another hour or two," Rika answered.

    "Romani," said Marie tersely, "this is a briefing, not a departmental meeting. Skip the pleasantries."

    Romani laughed awkwardly. "Right, right, my bad." He cleared his throat again. "To recap, so far, we''ve corrected three Singularities and retrieved the Holy Grail located inside of each one: Singularity F in Fuyuki, Japan, the Orl¨¦ans Singularity in France, and the Septem Singularity in the Roman Empire. In these Singularities, we''ve encountered not only Servants on the side of both the Counter Force and the aberrant faction, we''ve also encountered an entity referring to itself as Flauros. It occupied the body of a colleague of ours, one Lev Lainur."

    Marie stiffened next to him, hunching in on herself a little, but didn''t stop him.

    "At this point," Romani went on, "we can''t be totally sure that this entity is indeed one of the seventy-two Demon Gods summoned and bound by King Solomon of Ancient Israel. Even though Flauros itself is making this claim, it''s completely unsubstantiated, even if it would make a degree of sense."

    "If there is someone capable of forging multiple Holy Grails and placing them throughout history," Da Vinci added, "then such a revered figure as King Solomon is certainly on the very short list of culprits."

    "Even so," Romani said, "we have to take it with a grain of salt. It''s not that the possibility doesn''t exist, but rather, uh¡­ How should I put this? I think the way I''d say it is¡­it fits the legend a little too well."

    "Isn''t that¡­kind of how Heroic Spirits work though, Doc?" Rika asked, confused.

    "At the core of a Heroic Spirit, there has to be a kernel of truth," Marie took over. "You should have seen it by now, if the reports are anything to go by. On top of that, that Servant from Fuyuki ¡ª isn''t it just too ridiculous that King Arthur was a girl?"

    "That''s why I''m a little skeptical," said Romani. "King Solomon existed in a time before the concept of demons truly existed, so if he had a Noble Phantasm, wouldn''t it be something entirely different? That''s all I''m saying."

    "I mean, that giant tentacle monster makes it a pretty convincing argument," Rika said. "Looked pretty demonic to me."

    "I can''t say I''ve ever seen one myself," Ritsuka hedged, "but Rika''s got a good point. It didn''t look like anything else I''ve ever heard of."

    The closest thing I could think of was either Echidna or the flesh garden in Cauldron''s basement, neither of which were connections I wanted to draw nor things I wanted to explain right then. I kept my mouth shut.

    "You''d be surprised at the variety of Phantasmals in the world," said El-Melloi II. "Having said that, it doesn''t look like anything I can remember from the Clock Tower''s archives. Someone from the Department of Zoology might have been able to say more."

    "That''s a thing?" Rika asked, surprised.

    "Considering some of the monsters you hear about in mythology," said El-Melloi II, "were you expecting that it wasn''t?"

    "We''re getting a little off topic, don''t you think?" said Da Vinci. "For now, we should assume that the possibility exists that our ultimate enemy could in fact be King Solomon, and therefore that Flauros ¡ª whether he''s the genuine article or not ¡ª was not working alone. At the very least, that he was also operating under someone else''s orders, who may be the real thing or someone else just pretending to be Solomon."

    "It''s better if we just assume that it is," Marie said. "Until we can find irrefutable evidence one way or the other, it''s better if we''re prepared for that possibility."

    Romani sighed. "Okay, Director. We''ll do as you say. Now, getting back on topic¡­"

    He turned around to fiddle with the keyboard, and on the screens behind him, new images appeared. The left and right ones were filled with what I could only assume was data about the Singularity, meant for those trained to read it, while the center one displayed a large map, filled with almost nothing but an expanse of navy blue.

    "This is the next Singularity."

    "But there''s nothing there?" Ritsuka pointed out.

    "Is that¡­water?" Mash asked.

    "We''ve spent the last several weeks trying to pry more data out of our scans," said Da Vinci. "The hope was that we might have a better idea about what we''re looking at and which section of the world this particular Singularity was going to be located." She shrugged helplessly. "Unfortunately, this map you see here is the best we could do. Our scanners just weren''t up to the task."

    "I told you, there''s nothing wrong with the scanners," Marie said snippily. "Obviously, whatever is causing the Singularity is distorting space! How else do you explain an unrecorded island chain that doesn''t resemble real geography anywhere in the world?"

    "Which is the only real conclusion we can draw," Da Vinci admitted apologetically. "It''s hard to believe that a single Holy Grail could cause a spatial distortion this severe, but if the owner wished for an endless sea, well, I''d say they got what they asked for."

    "I don''t like it any better than you, but none of us has a better explanation!" said Marie. She huffed. "Anyway, we can''t change what we''re working with, so we''ll make do with what we have. It might be inconvenient, but Chaldea is expected to deal with this sort of thing, and if anyone thinks they can''t, they can just turn around and spend this deployment in their room!"

    She glared pointedly at the twins, who nonetheless didn''t quail under her gaze.

    "I think we''re all committed to seeing this through, Director," said Arash. "None of us is going to leave now."

    Marie huffed again. "Good!"

    "Da Vinci," I picked up, "you said this was going to be taking place sometime in the late sixteenth century?"

    "Ah, you remembered!" Da Vinci smiled. "Yes ¡ª 1573, in fact. Romani, Director, if you would like to continue?"

    "I can handle it!" Marie insisted. She drew herself up and cleared her throat a little. "As you can see, the Fourth Singularity, codenamed Okeanos, takes place in the ocean ¡ª an endless ocean, so far as our scanners can tell. However, if you look closely, you should be able to see that there are actually islands. Our Rayshift should be accurate enough to place you safely on one of these, so there''s no need to worry about swimming."

    "How are we supposed to get around, then?" Jeanne Alter asked mockingly. She leered at Marie. "Unless you''re hiding a ship under that skirt of yours, the only way around is to swim, isn''t it?"

    "Or my chariot," A¨ªfe interrupted. "It worked well enough in Septem."

    "Not all that comfortably, though," Rika said.

    I had to agree with her. A¨ªfe''s chariot worked, if we didn''t have any other options, but four people crowded onto it wasn''t going to be either comfortable or safe for longer trips, especially on the open ocean.

    "We''re hoping that there will be a Servant or two with a ship to ferry you around," said Romani. "It only makes sense, right? In an endless ocean, wouldn''t the Counter Force summon Heroic Spirits with ships?"

    "I hope so," said Mash. "I don''t know how to swim."

    Since Mash was raised in Chaldea, maybe it wasn''t so surprising that she lacked a skill like that. There weren''t many places or opportunities for her to learn in Antarctica.

    "I do," said Rika, "although I can''t actually swim from Japan to Newfoundland on my own, you know."

    A¨ªfe snorted quietly.

    "If necessary, we can attempt a summoning onsite to see if we can call a Rider with a more convenient mode of transportation," said Da Vinci. "I''m afraid we don''t have too many solutions dreamed up, so this is a bridge we''ll have to cross when we get there."

    "As I was saying!" Marie cut in. "Obviously, it isn''t possible for the Masters to swim across the ocean to reach each island, so we''ll come up with alternatives as and when they''re necessary. However, the smaller search area should mean that the location of the Grail pinning this distortion in place will be easier to find. There are only so many islands in this Singularity, after all!"

    Unless it''s underwater, I didn''t say. That wasn''t particularly likely, though. The number of heroes with a connection to the sea ¡ª more specifically, under it ¡ª was vanishingly small. The only one that came to mind immediately was Captain Nemo, and now that I thought it, I was half-expecting we would find him somewhere in this Singularity.

    "And if the enemy with the Grail also happens to be on a ship?" I asked.

    Marie faltered. I felt kind of bad about ambushing her with that question, but it was something that needed to be addressed, because if we were going to be chasing down a pirate ¡ª like Blackbeard, for example, who was definitely famous enough to have become a Heroic Spirit ¡ª or a famous crew like Jason and the Argonauts, this was going to get a lot more tedious.

    "That, I''m afraid, is also something that we''re also going to have to figure out when we get to it," said Da Vinci, coming to Marie''s rescue. "I''d like to say it won''t come to that, but the fact that this Singularity has been twisted into an endless ocean does kind of imply that our enemy will be a sailor of some kind, doesn''t it?"

    Considering the alternatives? I hoped so. I wasn''t particularly fond of the idea of having to chase down Charybdis or something like that.

    "W-which is why acquiring a ship of our own is all the more important!" Marie added, recovering. "Not only is it necessary for traversing from island to island, you might need it in order to reach and board the enemy''s ship!"

    "Wait," said Rika. "Wait, wait, wait. You said reach and board. Are you telling me we''re going to go on our very own pirate adventure?"

    Marie grimaced, like the very words pained her to hear.

    "Well, considering some of the most famous sailors in history are pirates," said Romani, "that''s not all that unlikely, Rika."

    Rika blinked, looking stunned. "Huh. I need my jar of dirt."

    Ritsuka groaned. I was tempted to, as well.

    Marie''s eyebrow twitched. "Jar of¡­dirt?"

    "It''s from a movie series," Ritsuka informed her wearily.

    "Because of course it is."

    "That''s something else you''re going to have to be careful of," said Romani. "Ordinarily, the sixteenth century is far enough out of the Age of Gods that most ancient mysteries are long gone, but with things twisted up the way they are, it''s not impossible you might find any number of sea monsters hanging around."

    El-Melloi II grunted. "Maritime mythologies always were some of the wildest."

    "So be on the lookout for things like sirens and other sea monsters," Romani went on. "Arash and Emiya''s Magic Resistance should be high enough to resist them, but that doesn''t mean you can take it easy against something like that!"

    "Wait," said Bradamante, "what about me?"

    "Ah." Romani floundered a little. "W-well, you''ll be going along, too, of course, it''s just¡­"

    "You''re a woman," Da Vinci said bluntly. "Unless there''s something you want to say to us now, the sirens'' voices shouldn''t affect you at all. Even if they could, your Magic Resistance is Rank A, so you''re protected either way."

    "Wait," said Marie. "We didn''t discuss this. Bradamante going along was never brought up, Romani."

    Romani sighed and rubbed sheepishly at the back of his neck. "Honestly, I just forgot about it, but I did promise her she could be part of the main team on this Singularity."

    Marie pinched the bridge of her nose. "Fine. She can go," she said tersely. "But we''re not sending anyone else! If the team needs to summon a Rider for a ship or contract one that''s already there, we need them to be able to!"

    "Right, right," said Romani. "All the other Servants are staying here."

    El-Melloi II grunted. He looked over at the twins. "Guess you two are getting out of my lessons until you get back."

    Rika turned to Marie immediately. "How soon do we leave?"

    "Tomorrow," Romani answered. "There are still some final adjustments we want to make, and we want you guys to have the night to prepare."

    "What?" Jeanne Alter sneered. "You lot summoned me here, and you''re just going to leave me behind?"

    All things considered? Yes. None of us was quite sure we could trust her yet, and if Romani had tried to send her with us despite that, I would have called him out on it right here in front of everyone. Two weeks was not enough time to build that level of trust.

    "We Masters have limits," I told her. "We can''t support our entire roster of Servants all at once, especially not if we have to make contracts with stray Servants in the Singularity. Limiting who goes and who stays is about making sure we don''t spread ourselves too thin."

    "While we''re on that subject," Da Vinci slid in hurriedly, "I have some news for all of you!" She smiled. "You see, after, ah, the enemy Jeanne Alter used the Grail to summon shades of the Servants you had already defeated back in Orl¨¦ans, I had an idea. A way for you Masters to make emergency summons inside the Singularity without any input from us here in the facility."

    I straightened. That¡­sounded incredibly useful.

    "Wait," said Ritsuka, "are you saying we can call anyone we need at any moment?"

    Da Vinci held up a finger. "Almost."

    Then, she reached down and picked up a box that had been sitting underneath the console, and she set it down atop it, off to the side of the keyboard. She pulled the lid open, then reached inside and retrieved¡­

    "Tada!"

    ¡­the old Rayshift suit, the one that we hadn''t been using since Fuyuki. The official name was the Chaldea Combat Uniform, a skintight thing that was also supposed to increase the success of Rayshifts. I guess now I knew why we hadn''t used them for Orl¨¦ans or Septem.

    "Meet your new and improved mystic codes!" Da Vinci said brightly. "Complete with enhanced functionality!"

    If she was expecting awe, then the response she got was the exact opposite.

    "I don''t care how new and improved it is," Rika said, "you''re not getting me into a goddamn plugsuit unless you give me a giant robot to go along with it."

    Da Vinci''s smile strained. "I''m¡­afraid we''re all out of those."

    "Does it¡­have to be skintight?" Ritsuka asked uncomfortably.

    The smile grew back. "I''m glad you asked!"

    She pressed something on the suit, and before our very eyes, it shifted and morphed, twisting and flowing as the fabric unwound into threads of glittering dust and rearranged itself. A moment later, she was holding the standard Chaldea uniform, the one the twins were wearing right now. The female version, anyway.

    "The ''plugsuit'' version is simply the default," Da Vinci explained. "As long as the amount of fabric remains roughly the same, it can be configured into any pattern we like. We can even load in a design that will let you blend into whatever era we send you to!"

    "Wow!" said Rika, grinning. "That''s so cool!"

    "That is convenient," her brother agreed. "This would have been really useful in Orl¨¦ans for sure."

    "How did you accomplish that?" El-Melloi II asked, stunned.

    Threads of glittering dust, almost like ¡ª

    "Nanomachines," I realized.

    El-Melloi II turned to me so fast I could have sworn I heard his neck crack. "What?"

    "Exactly!" said Da Vinci. "Thanks to a certain device that came into my possession, I was able to reverse engineer these nanomachines and use them to enhance these mystic codes. It let me do all sorts of new things, like adding a self-repair function, a "cushion" function that will protect you if you take a nasty fall, and even internal batteries and this new ''shadow'' Servant summoning!"

    Her smile showed her teeth. "And one of the best parts? It''s designed to connect to a module that will let us change the preloaded spells without altering the actual suit!"

    She actually did it, I thought faintly. She studied my nanothorn dagger, and not only had she repaired it, she''d used what she learned from it to make this. She reproduced Tinkertech.

    "How does the ''shadow Servant'' part work?" I asked.

    Fuck, how did I keep underestimating her?

    "Quite simply, actually," Da Vinci answered. "The internal batteries can be used as an emergency energy source, but their intended function is to serve as a reservoir for the Servant you summon. When you summon a ''shadow'' Servant, what you''re doing is accessing the Saint Graph stored inside the FATE System and creating a temporary ''copy'' of the Servant in question. Unfortunately, there''s no way for that Servant to get extra energy, not unless you expend a Command Spell, so they''re limited to the amount they''re summoned with."

    "What happens if we run out or get killed?" asked A¨ªfe.

    Da Vinci grinned. "The pattern, along with the memories attached to it, returns to the FATE System ¡ª to you, in other words."

    "I see," said Siegfried. "So it will be as though all of us had gone along, even though we''re all still here."

    "Close enough," said Da Vinci. "The best part of this new function is that it won''t require any actual magical energy from the Masters themselves, so as long as the batteries have had time to recharge, it''ll be entirely self-sustaining."

    So we wouldn''t have to worry about straining ourselves too much. This was¡­actually a really, really big upgrade from what we''d been using before. Just on the "shadow Servant" function alone, it would be worth using, no matter what it looked like. Everything else on top of it? This thing was going to be a game-changer.

    "Wow," said Rika. "So does it cook and clean, too?"

    Da Vinci chuckled, shaking her head. "That''s a little too much to ask for, I''m sorry to say."

    "Still have problems with wearing it?" Marie asked smugly.

    Rika looked the new mystic code over. "I mean, I still wouldn''t say no to a giant robot, but I guess that''s not a dealbreaker."

    Romani laughed. "I''m afraid giant robots just aren''t in our budget, Rika."

    "Drat."

    "Either way, this is what you''ll be wearing from now on during Rayshifts," said Marie imperiously. "You''re a Master of Chaldea, aren''t you? You''ve already faced down the sorts of things that make grown men tuck tail! You''ve stared death in the face a dozen times in the same day! Don''t tell me the uniform is going to be enough to make you quit now?"

    "No way!" said Rika. She linked her arms with Mash and Ritsuka''s. "We''re a package deal!"

    "Then make whatever preparations you need to tonight," Marie told her. "Tomorrow morning, your mission into the Okeanos Singularity begins!"

 Chapter LXXXII: Towards the Ocean Blue

    Chapter LXXXII: Towards the Ocean Blue

    Thankfully, I slept well and didn''t dream, and when I woke up the morning of our Rayshift into the Okeanos Singularity, I wasn''t exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but my mind was clear and focused and my body was awake and energized. I was ready to begin the next stage of our mission.

    It felt a little strange to skip out on my usual routine right after getting back into it, but I forewent most of my morning workout ¡ª taking only enough time and energy to get in a quick jog on the treadmill ¡ª and started my last minute preparations instead. Huginn and Muninn went into my bag, my communicator went on my wrist, and then I squeezed into the brand new mystic code Da Vinci was so proud of.

    It felt familiar, in a way. It wasn''t quite the same as my old costume ¡ª it was a snugger fit, for one ¡ª but the way it clung to me felt almost nostalgic. Like putting on an old pair of jeans I thought I''d grown out of.

    It looked a little ridiculous, though. More like fetish wear than a uniform for an organization of professionals safeguarding the proper course of human history. Skintight, with swooping symmetrical stripes in black, white, and orange that contoured around my torso and my limbs. If it had been black leather or latex, it wouldn''t have looked out of place in a dominatrix club.

    Being fair, I suppose, my old costume would have looked just as strange anywhere else aside from Earth Bet. For all that we''d gotten used to the trappings of superheroes and supervillains, in a world without capes, the only place it belonged was a Halloween party.

    Or a Caster simulation.

    Fortunately, I also read the manual, so after a little bit of trial and error, I managed to figure out how to connect the standard uniform module and activate it.

    Watching the fabric twist and shift around my body into the jacket and pants I''d spent the last two years wearing was surreal. Feeling the threads unravel into mist, ghosting along my skin like a million tiny feet crawling all over me¡­

    The only thing that made it feel strange was the fact that this wasn''t me secreting bugs into every nook and cranny that would fit them. The sensation wasn''t anything I hadn''t felt before, but the lack of that absolute sense of what was doing it threw me off.

    Rika was going to hate it.

    I spent an extra minute in front of my mirror when it was done, checking to make sure everything was as it should be and that nothing looked strange or out of place, but as expected of Da Vinci''s work, there weren''t any flaws or mistakes. If I didn''t know any better, if it hadn''t happened right in front of my eyes, I wouldn''t have even realized there was a difference.

    It really was amazing just how many disciplines she had mastered, and how easily she could make use of each one. "The Universal Man," indeed.

    And just like she said, the module she''d supplied had the trio of spells I''d grown used to using. I had to wonder what spells the other modules would have preloaded, because I couldn''t imagine Da Vinci would put the same things on all of them. Even if only as a matter of pride, she wouldn''t be that ''unimaginative.''

    Showered, dressed, and as prepared as I was ever going to be, I made my way down to the cafeteria to eat breakfast, my footsteps echoing through the empty hallways. I met no one on my way, not even that little gremlin playing at team mascot.

    Naturally, of course, that was because he and the rest of the "away team" were already in the cafeteria, huddled around the twins and Mash, who were eating breakfast. Arash looked up and met my eyes as I entered, then flashed a smile and raised his hand in greeting before he turned back towards the twins.

    Emiya greeted me with a tray and a plate of food, already ready for me the instant I walked in the door. This time, his apron featured a set of Greek letters whose intended message escaped me.

    "Something relatively light, today," he told me. "Should make the Rayshift a bit easier on you, this time."

    "Thanks," I replied automatically. I hadn''t really given any thought to how uncomfortable the last few Rayshifts had been, how disorienting they were, and what that would probably mean for this one. Everything else had taken up more of my attention.

    "Don''t mention it."

    "Getting a last meal in before we head out?"

    He smirked. "Making sure my ''assistant'' has all the recipes in order so everyone else won''t miss me so much. And getting in one more meal made in a proper kitchen before we go, yeah."

    "Don''t let it make you late," I warned him.

    He waved it off. "Yeah, I figured that one out on my own, thanks. Now go enjoy it while you still have time."

    I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, long enough to turn away from him at least, and took my tray over to the table where the twins were sitting, picking at their food. Arash, thoughtfully, had left a space open for me to sit at, and I took it without hesitating.

    "Good morning," he greeted me with a smile.

    "Morning."

    "Good morning, Miss Taylor," Mash greeted me politely. The little gremlin on her shoulder looked at me with his beady eyes and lifted his snout snobbishly, like I wasn''t good enough to warrant a verbal response of any kind.

    "Morning, Mash."

    "Morning," Rika muttered miserably at the same time as her brother gave me a subdued, "Morning, Senpai."

    "Something wrong?" I asked as I started cutting up my food.

    "I feel so exposed," Rika admitted, glancing about as though she expected everyone to be staring at her. She was hunched in on herself, presenting the smallest target possible, as though she could escape notice entirely if she just made herself look small enough.

    No one was staring, of course, out of the five or six other people in the room, but I understood the feeling. Winslow had been like that, too, and even though it felt like several lifetimes ago, I could still remember it. How much it sucked and how it made you hyperaware of every one of your flaws, real or imagined.

    "It''s a bit much," Ritsuka agreed. He wasn''t doing as bad as his sister, but he still looked uncomfortable.

    "It''s really not that bad, Master!" Bradamante tried to reassure them. "Really, it''s very flattering!"

    "That''s part of the problem," Rika mumbled. She swirled her food around her plate with her fork moodily.

    I glanced down at the mystic code she was wearing, a mirror image of the one I''d squeezed into less than an hour ago. Swooping lines of black, white, and orange in large blocks of color, skintight and clinging. Rika''s happened to flatter her figure more, mostly because she had more of a figure to flatter.

    Even if I''d long since come to terms with my own appearance, Rika was more full-figured than me. Larger bust, wider hips. It meant there was more there for people to notice.

    Of course, it wasn''t as thin as that made it seem. It was skintight, yes, but it had a consistency closer to spandex, so the fabric was thick enough and padded enough that it wouldn''t be, ah, riding up anywhere uncomfortable, or showing off any intimate details.

    In that sense, her brother actually had more to worry about than she did. He''d probably be fine if he didn''t let his eyes wander too much.

    "Is it?" asked Mash. "I always found it very comfortable, and Miss Taylor never complained."

    Rika favored her with a gimlet eye. "Considering what you wear when you''re in Servant mode, I don''t think you have room to talk, Cinnamon Roll."

    Mash blinked. "Cinnamon roll?"

    Ritsuka sighed. "She''s finally decided on a nickname for you."

    "Seems kinda long," said Arash.

    "As opposed to Super Action Mom?" Ritsuka pointed out.

    Arash laughed. "Maybe not. It rolls off the tongue easier, though."

    "Keep that up and you''ll never get one," Rika muttered.

    Arash raised his hands in surrender.

    I decided to take pity on her then, and a breath hissed out of my nostrils as I held out my hand. "Give me your arm."

    Rika looked at me, confused, brow furrowing.

    "It came with a module for the spells," I explained patiently, "one that lets you change the appearance to one of the preset designs. It''s why I''m dressed like this instead of the way you are. Give me the arm you attached the module on."

    Understanding rippled across her face, and almost eagerly, she thrust out her left arm into my hand. I set my fork down, found the module, and started adjusting the settings the way I had my own not that long ago.

    After a few seconds of fiddling with it, the fabric of her suit unraveled into strips of dense mist, and Rika squeaked, face turning red, as she ripped her arm out of my grasp and tried to cover herself up, one arm slung over her chest and the other hand pressed down towards her lap. Next to her, Ritsuka''s eyes had gone very wide.

    "Senpai!" Rika squealed.

    I pressed my lips together to keep from saying anything. It wasn''t like the mist of nanomachines was thin enough to see anything aside from vague splotches of fleshy color. Honestly, it was less revealing than a swimsuit, and the way they glittered as they changed patterns distracted the eye away from anything you could see. I''d seen more skin on the cover of my dad''s Sports Illustrated, and more of hers in Nero''s bath.

    It was over almost as quickly as it began, and instead of the skintight suit of the Combat Uniform, Rika was now dressed in the standard issue Chaldea uniform, female model: white jacket, pleated black skirt, and leggings, complete with white boots. Her communicator was the only thing left unchanged, sitting like a bracelet on her wrist.

    "There," I said as I picked my fork up and dug back into my breakfast. "Problem solved."

    "Problem not solved! Problem very much not solved!" Rika protested, face still very red. "Senpai, I didn''t sign up to be a stripper!"

    "I-I didn''t see anything," her brother said, looking anywhere but at her.

    "M-me neither, Senpai," Mash agreed. "I-it was¡­um, actually¡­very pretty to watch."

    "Like a magical girl transformation sequence," added Ritsuka.

    Rika blinked. "What?"

    "A¡­magical girl transformation sequence?" asked Bradamante. She looked to me like I had any better idea what they were talking about than she did. All I could do was shake my head.

    "Really? Huh." Rika looked down at herself. "Does that make me Sailor Moon?"

    Ritsuka''s face twisted into a complicated expression. Mash just tilted her head to the side and asked, "Sailor Moon?"

    Rika turned a pitying look on her. "Oh, you poor, deprived child."

    Ritsuka poked her in the side, making her squeak. "Play nice."

    She stuck her tongue out at him.

    "If you two are done messing around," I said, "you should probably finish your breakfast. The Director won''t be happy if you show up late."

    The two of them grimaced and went back to their food, pausing only long enough to shoot each other a look I couldn''t quite interpret.

    "Yeah," said Rika, uncharacteristically quiet. "Don''t want to piss off Boss Lady."

    I wasn''t one-hundred percent sure what that was about ¡ª were they still doing what Romani had told them back when we first brought Marie back? Here and now, however, wasn''t really the time or place to ask about it, so I let the topic drop and polished off my own meal instead.

    Somehow, despite being the last person to sit down, I was the first person to finish, and when I got up to take my tray back to Emiya, Arash got up with me, like he was following my lead.

    "After you''re done eating, make sure you have everything you need before you head to the Command Room," I told the twins. "The Director will appreciate it more if you''re late and ready to go than if you''re on time but still have something you need to take care of."

    "Got it," Ritsuka said. Rika, whose mouth was full and who was in the middle of chewing, snapped off a salute ¡ª with the wrong hand.

    I didn''t comment on it, just made my way back towards Emiya as Arash gave the twins a smile, a wave, and a short goodbye before he headed over to the door to wait for me.

    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

    Emiya was already ready for me and took the tray off my hands almost before I could even offer it to him. He looked behind me at Rika and Ritsuka and said, "I''ll wait until they''re done eating, then make my way over."

    "Right."

    I left right as the twins were starting to finish up, Arash falling into step behind me, and since I was already ready to go, I made my way directly to the Command Room, where Romani, Da Vinci, and Marie would be waiting.

    I made it about halfway there before I got a message on my communicator from Romani:

    Have you seen the Director? She''s running late and she won''t respond to my messages.

    Shit.

    I turned on my heel and headed instead for Marie''s office. It was the first place that stuck out at me as where she might go if she was having a moment and trying to get control of herself. If I didn''t find her there, then I''d check her room next.

    "Master?" Arash asked, a hint of confused concern in his voice.

    "The Director isn''t¡­feeling well," I decided on. "I''m going to make sure she''s okay."

    He accepted that without any further explanation. "Right. I''ll make sure to stay out of sight."

    Thankfully, the Director''s office was closer to the infirmary than it was to the dorms where the Masters and staff stayed, so I didn''t run into either the twins or Mash on the way there, and the rest of the staff was otherwise occupied, one way or the other. The only company I had was the hurried clip of my footsteps and Arash next to me, patient and understanding.

    A few minutes later, I came upon the door to the Director''s office. From outside, I couldn''t hear anything, but the place was soundproofed, so that didn''t mean anything anyway. The biometric scanner accepted my palm without problem ¡ª Marie had added me way back, so that she could tutor me in private, even if she hadn''t given me access to her secure files in the process.

    Probably better that she hadn''t. I wouldn''t have been able to resist snooping, especially on the rest of Team A.

    The door whooshed open with a hydraulic whir, and I stepped inside alone as Arash vanished into spirit form behind me. Behind the desk ¡ª nothing. To the left ¡ª nothing, just empty armchairs. To the right ¡ª in the corner, huddled in on herself, sat Marie, hugging her knees to her chest and chewing on one of her thumbnails as red blood stained her bottom lip. Her eyes were wide and staring at nothing.

    Cautiously, I crept closer to her, making sure not to make any sudden movements or loud noises. Marie didn''t even acknowledge that I was there.

    "Marie?" I said softly.

    She didn''t reply. I got closer, close enough that I could reach out and touch her, and slowly, I knelt down next to her. Again, I called to her, "Marie?"

    Her eyes flickered in my direction for a moment, and then went back to staring into space. I took that as permission to keep going.

    "Is everything okay?"

    For a long moment, she didn''t reply to that either, and then, slowly, she stopped chewing on her thumbnail, and when it came away from her mouth, it was red, raw, and bloody. She''d chewed it so badly that the nail itself had split open.

    "It''s going to explode," she told me in a whisper.

    My heart clenched in my chest. I didn''t need her to explain anything more. I already knew what she was talking about.

    "It''s going to explode again," she kept going before I could say anything. "It''s going to explode and I''m going to die and Chaldea is going to be destroyed and I¡­ I''ll be a failure. The world''s going to end and it''ll be all my fault. The Director who failed the Grand Order."

    Gently, I reached out and took her hands, ignoring the blood and spit that wetted my palm. Marie''s wide eyes finally turned towards me.

    "It''s not going to explode," I told her softly. "You''re not going to die, I''m not going to die, no one is going to die. Chaldea won''t be destroyed."

    Her hands trembled.

    "How can you know that?" she asked, like speaking too loud would make it real. "It happened before, and I¡­I was¡­"

    "Because Lev is dead," I said. She flinched, squeezing my hands tightly. "I saw him die myself. Flauros is gone. We''re still here. Mash is still here. Romani and Da Vinci are still here. The twins are still here."

    I leaned forward a little closer, like I was telling her a secret. "We Rayshifted into two other Singularities," I reminded her. "We resolved them. We defeated the Servants skewing history awry, and we retrieved the Holy Grails they were using to do it. No more bombs went off. There wasn''t another sabotage."

    "But what if it happens again?" she whispered. She sounded so terrified.

    "It won''t," I said confidently. "Da Vinci has searched the place up and down, left and right, six ways from Sunday. She knows this place better than anyone. We''re so safe that we can even give a former enemy a chance to be an ally, and when the whole world got incinerated, we were the only place that didn''t get touched."

    Marie closed her eyes. Her lower lip wobbled.

    "I''m scared," she confessed to me like it was some terrible sin. I barely managed to hear it.

    "I am, too," I told her, just not of the same things she was. "But we have strong people here in Chaldea. We have strong Servants to help us. Trust them to protect us if things get bad. Trust us to make it through, even when it looks like it''s impossible. After all." I smiled. "Isn''t that what I''m good at?"

    She looked up at me, met my eyes. Her lips formed around a word, a name ¡ª Khepri. I stifled the wince that threatened to cross my face.

    "It is," she said at last, hanging her head as her hands squeezed mine. "That''s why¡­you''re Team A''s ace Master. You can do what everyone else can''t¡­even when you have a Director like me holding you back."

    "You''ve never held me back," I told her firmly. "You''re the only reason I''m even here, remember?"

    Her hands squeezed tighter, but she didn''t reply.

    "You brought a walking corpse back to life," I reminded her. "You treated her, taught her, and made her a member of your team. Everything I''ve done since I got here is because you showed me how." I squeezed her hands back. "And everything we''ve accomplished in your absence is because you gave the right people the right chance at the right time. When everything is said and done, the world will be saved because of you."

    "I¡­I don''t know if I can believe that," she whispered.

    "You don''t have to," I replied, "because I will. Ritsuka and Rika will. Mash will. Romani and Da Vinci will. If you can''t believe in yourself, Director, then all you have to do is keep moving, and we''ll believe in you instead." Slowly, I stood. "All I need you to do is be the same Director Animusphere who saved me. I''ll take care of everything else."

    I gave her arms a gentle tug.

    "Do you think you can do that?"

    "I¡­" She bit her bottom lip so hard it turned white. "I''ll¡­have to try. Won''t I?"

    "Then if you''re ready to try," I said, "we have a briefing to get to, don''t we?"

    "We do."

    The words came out tremulous and unsure, but she stood up on her own, knees a little shaky, but feet squared and strong. When she lifted her head, the evidence of tear tracks remained, and splotches drying blood were splattered over her bottom lip, but the terrified little girl was gone. Not totally vanquished, but pushed back where she belonged, a little weaker than before.

    "Take a minute to clean up a little," I told her, "and then we''ll go."

    She sucked in a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment, and nodded, and then she turned away and strode over to the bathroom attached to the office. I waited until the door clicked shut and I could hear the faucet turn on.

    "Arash," I said quietly, so that Marie couldn''t hear me, "thank you for not saying anything."

    He didn''t appear, but across our bond, I heard, It was no trouble, Master.

    A minute later, Marie came back out, refreshed and ready. If you looked closely, you could still have seen the evidence of her earlier breakdown, but she''d covered it well. She even healed up the cracked thumbnail and washed away the blood, leaving behind no sign of how badly she''d chewed it up.

    "Let''s go," she said strongly.

    "Right."

    Go on ahead and meet us there, I told Arash. Better if she doesn''t realize you were ever here.

    Of course, he replied.

    Again, I felt the feather-light brush of something against my prosthetic limb, a faint, unexplained tingle, and I still wasn''t sure if that was an intended function or if I was just imagining it.

    The door whooshed back open as we left, and side by side, Marie and I walked the empty halls of Chaldea in silence. Of her moment of weakness, we said nothing. She didn''t thank me for helping her, and I didn''t bring it up, because receiving thanks and praise wasn''t the reason why I''d done it in the first place. I didn''t need to hear her say the words to know how much I''d helped her and how much she appreciated it.

    As we approached the door of the Command Room, however, she suddenly stopped, sucking in a sharp breath. When I looked over at her, her eyes were wide again and her hands were clenched into fists, trembling.

    Trauma wasn''t an enemy so easily slain.

    Gently but forcefully, I pushed the fingers of my prosthetic hand under her own, prying her fist open. I didn''t protest when her fingernails dug painfully into the skin, I just gave her hand a firm, comforting squeeze.

    Marie jerked, and her head swung around to look at me. I didn''t give her a smile or say anything, I just looked back at her, firm and confident, like she could use that surety to bolster herself just by my being there.

    It seemed to work. Marie took a slow, deep breath, and when she eased up on the vice grip she had on my hand, her trembling had stopped.

    Once again, she didn''t say anything or even acknowledge that it had happened at all. She just squared her shoulders, straightened her spine as though she was lifting up her courage, and stepped forward. The door to the Command Room whooshed open ¡ª for Olga Marie Animusphere, retreat was no longer an option.

    "Good morning, Director," Arash greeted her as we walked in.

    Romani and the rest of the group turned to look.

    "Director Marie!" the twins called.

    "There you are," said Romani, sounding and looking relieved. "When I couldn''t reach you, I was afraid ¡ª"

    "There was a last minute emergency that needed handling," I cut in before he could embarrass her in front of everyone else.

    "There was?" he asked, confused.

    I shot him a meaningful look and held his gaze until understanding dawned across his face.

    "Well, if that was the case, it can''t be helped," he said, covering up his thoughts with unusual grace.

    "A last minute emergency?" asked Mash, worried. "Was something wrong?"

    "It''s been handled," I assured her.

    "It''s nothing you need to worry about!" Marie blustered. "Besides, shouldn''t you be more focused on the Singularity? You''re about to Rayshift to it, after all!"

    The twins and Mash all straightened. "Right!"

    "No need to take it too seriously," said Da Vinci. "After all, we haven''t had any trouble with it since Fuyuki, so there shouldn''t be any problems now either."

    "You say that," said Rika, crossing her arms, "but we wound up on the other side of the freaking continent last time."

    "Ahahaha," Da Vinci laughed awkwardly, "yes, well¡­ We''re still not entirely sure about why, but that doesn''t mean the same thing will happen again!"

    "And now that you''ve said it, it''s basically a guarantee," Emiya said sardonically.

    Da Vinci''s cheek twitched, and her smile became a little forced.

    "Anyway," said Romani, "we went over everything yesterday, so we''re just going to summarize the most important parts before we send you off, okay?"

    He turned back to the Director''s console and brought up the map from yesterday.

    "As we explained before," he went on, "this is the best and most recent scan of the Singularity. It looks to be an anomalous sea containing a chain of unrecorded islands. Earlier, it was in flux, but as of the last couple of weeks, the structure of the Singularity itself seems to have stabilized, so we''ve loaded the map data into your communicators for you. Barring any changes that happen after you Rayshift, this is what you''ll be dealing with on the ground."

    "Changes?" asked Ritsuka.

    "It''s an anomalous space," answered Marie. "A sea that doesn''t exist filled with islands that don''t exist. It''s inherently unstable."

    "As the Director said," said Da Vinci. "The nature of this Singularity is different from the previous ones. Because it''s a place that doesn''t actually exist, expecting everything to be as concrete as it was in France or Rome is a mistake. If it can be made the way it is, then the same force can change it. Maybe not on a whim, but it can be changed."

    Like Labyrinth, I thought. We couldn''t even be sure that the mechanism wasn''t similar. It was a Holy Grail ¡ª why couldn''t it smush together a hodgepodge mess of islands pulled from separate parallel worlds? It might even explain why the place was shifting so much earlier.

    I didn''t give voice to my idea. The minutiae honestly didn''t matter. It didn''t change the goal and it wouldn''t change the enemies we had to face.

    "Given the nature of the Singularity," said Romani, "we can''t offer you any idea of what or who to expect when you get there. The only thing we know for sure is the time period ¡ª 1573 AD ¡ª but without a region or culture matching the real world, that doesn''t mean much of anything."

    "What we can tell you is that the one with the Holy Grail is likely to be a sailor of some kind," Da Vinci picked up. "Failing that, perhaps someone from an island nation, which doesn''t narrow it down as much as we would like it to. Caribbean, Polynesian, Japanese, British, Greek ¡ª it could be any of those or none of them."

    "Or Mongolian," Rika muttered. Her brother elbowed her in the side, and she shot him a glare.

    "As for how you''re going to navigate this Singularity," said Romani, "well¡­ We¡­don''t really have any better ideas than yesterday. We''re just going to have to hope there''s a ship and crew available for you to sail with, or failing that, that you can summon a hero who has one."

    "No genius inventions for this one, sorry," Da Vinci added apologetically. "Besides, I didn''t think you guys would much appreciate paddle boats here. It''s a lot of sea to cover in a ride designed for a carnival!"

    "Paddle boats?" Bradamante asked, bemused.

    "A small boat with two seats," I answered her. "You make it go by pedaling like a bicycle. The only way to steer it is for one person to pedal while the other doesn''t."

    Emma and I used to ride them together at the fair when I was a little girl. I had a distinct memory, a snapshot of a moment, of us racing after Mom and Dad in their own paddle boat, a big, bold 42 emblazoned in black on the back of the yellowing surface. Mom and Dad smiling and laughing as we chased them.

    It was a good memory.

    "What about the team?" asked Arash. "Any changes?"

    Marie cleared her throat. "After discussing it following yesterday''s briefing, I''ve decided that we''ll allow for Lancer class Servant Bradamante to join the main team for this Singularity."

    "Yes!" Bradamante cheered. "Thank you, Madam Director!"

    Marie shot her a glare, and Bradamante quailed, quieting immediately.

    "This brings the team to Mash Kyrielight, Ritsuka and Rika Fujimaru, Taylor Hebert, Bradamnte, Emiya, and Arash," she went on. Sternly, she added, "No one else! We need to make sure we have enough available power to accommodate extra contracts that might be made in the Singularity!"

    "As the Director said," Romani agreed. "Other than that, your goal remains the same. Find the Holy Grail pinning this Singularity in place and retrieve it. I shouldn''t need to say, but you''re probably going to have to fight whoever has it." He sighed. "Again."

    "Hopefully, it won''t be quite so hard a fight as the last one," Arash said.

    Rika groaned. "You jinxed us, Arash!"

    "What?" asked Marie, bewildered.

    Romani coughed into his hand. "Yes, well. If you need any help, we can send backup, and if it''s an emergency, Da Vinci''s new ''shadow Servant'' function should let you summon emergency aid. Fortunately, despite its Foundation Value being rank A and its geography being so weird, the time divergence ratio is about the same as it was in Orl¨¦ans, so we should be able to respond to you much faster."

    "So don''t be afraid to give us a ring if you need anything!" Da Vinci chirped.

    Marie rolled her eyes.

    "Are there any questions?" asked Romani.

    No one spoke.

    "Then what are you standing around for?" Marie huffed. "That Singularity isn''t going to correct itself!"

    Rika snapped off a salute. "Yes, ma''am, Boss Lady!"

    "Go!"

    We filed out, us Masters and our Servants heading towards the Rayshift Chamber.

    "I was going to wish them luck," I heard Romani say behind us.

    "Don''t be ridiculous, Romani," Marie scolded him. "They don''t need it."

    Da Vinci escorted us down. Bradamante vibrated with excitement the whole way, like a child waiting for Christmas morning. I guess she was really looking forward to being on the frontline of our next deployment.

    When we got there, the massive doors opened with a whir and the hiss of hydraulics, and just as they had been the last two times, four Klein coffins jutted out of the floor, waiting for us Masters and Mash.

    Now that the time had actually come to step inside of them, the twins'' nerves seemed to have returned, because they were a lot less sure than they had been a few minutes ago. The reality of the situation had set in: we were about to go and risk our lives again, fighting an unknown enemy in an unknown land, with nothing but the clothes on our backs and the Servants we brought with us.

    Just to make sure, I checked on my knife and found it exactly where I''d strapped it earlier.

    "Here we go again, everyone," said Da Vinci. "You know how it goes."

    "Yeah," Rika said quietly.

    Our group split up, and we each went to our assigned coffin and stepped inside. I distracted myself from the claustrophobia clawing at my gut by adjusting my backpack as I climbed in, but it didn''t help anywhere near as much as I would have liked it to. The thumping of my heart in my chest filled my ears and almost seemed to echo throughout the coffin, small and confined as it was.

    Da Vinci came around to check on each of us in turn, one at a time, making sure everything was in order. Last minute checks to keep things from going wrong.

    "Everything okay?" she asked me when she got to mine.

    "Let''s just get this over with," I managed to bite out. It felt like there was no way she couldn''t hear my thundering heart, but if she could, she didn''t comment on it. Not even to try and convince me to stay back again.

    When she was done, she left, and a few seconds later, the lids descended, and with a click, I was locked in. I sucked in as deep and steady a breath as I could, shutting my eyes to shut out the darkness as the door turned thick and opaque.

    It felt like an eternity before the intercom outside crackled to life.

    <div>

    UNSUMMON PROGRAM START

    SPIRITRON CONVERSION START

    Like every other time, a chill swept down my body, and I hugged my bag tighter to my chest. The excitement was almost as strong as the irrational fear gnawing at my belly.

    I was going to be getting access to my powers again.

    Passenger?

    As always, there was no response.

    <div>

    RAYSHIFTING STARTING IN 3¡­

    2¡­

    1¡­

    My coffin lit up with bright light, and a moment later, I was falling, traveling along a canal of stars as my body was pulled through the cosmos. Pinpricks of light swirled around me, turning to streaks, to smears.

    <div>

    ALL PROCEDURES CLEARED

    GRAND ORDER COMMENCING OPERATION

    For an instant, I hung there, weightless, bodiless, suspended between thoughts, trapped between moments, forever in a second in forever. I was a fly in amber.

    And then, gravity reasserted itself, and I landed with a jarring thud on something solid. My feet stumbled in an attempt to keep myself from pitching over, and my stomach jolted in my gut at the sensation of suddenly having weight again.

    But something was immediately different from last time, because I couldn''t sense anything. There were no bugs hanging about in the soil, no bees pollinating flowers, no worms in the dirt, no spiders spinning webs. I could sense a relative handful crawling about beneath my feet, but it was paltry compared to the numbers I was used to.

    When I opened my eyes to the sunlight, I found myself standing not on a stretch of dry land, but on the wooden planks of a ship''s deck. A towering mast stood like an ancient oak off to the side, white sails fluttering in the salty breeze, and hemp ropes creaked under the strain of holding them tight and securing them in place.

    Next to me, the twins had landed similarly, heads swiveling as they looked around. Mash was with them, shield and armor back in place, and Arash, Emiya, and Bradamante surrounded us like an honor guard.

    And beyond them, there was a crew. Sailors, standing about on the deck and hanging from the rigging as they worked the ship and kept it going. A man stood at the wheel, hands in place, frozen, just like everyone else.

    For a long moment, we all stood in stunned silence. The group of sailors stared at us, dumbfounded, and we stared back at them, just as confused. Everything seemed to have come to a halt, because even the men on the rigging and the sails had stopped what they were doing and turned to look at us. In the dead silence, the only thing that intruded was the splash of the sea up against the ship''s hull, washing over it in crackling waves, and the creaking of the wood as it bent and flexed against itself.

    I was the first one to regain enough control to speak, and the only thing that made it out of my mouth was a shocked, ineloquent, "What the hell?"

 Chapter LXXXIII: Compulsory Acquisition

    Chapter LXXXIII: Compulsory Acquisition

    As though my words broke some sort of spell, one of the sailors snapped out of his surprise long enough to exclaim, "Where the hell did you lot come from?"

    Some of his comrades shifted uneasily, looking unsure of what was going on and trading glances with each other. None of them were yet getting aggressive, but the shock of our sudden appearance would only last so long before they started thinking about just getting rid of the problem.

    "We missed our target again," Ritsuka mumbled.

    "This is the second time," Mash agreed. "We landed off course in Septem, too."

    "Doc," said Rika in a tone that promised violence, "I''m going to file a complaint when we get back."

    "Well, it could be worse," said Arash, trying to sound positive. "We could have landed in the water."

    "It could also be a lot better," said Emiya, "because we really might have landed in the water."

    The sailor who''d spoken ¡ª who seemed to have some kind of leadership role, since the others were looking to him for direction ¡ª took a step forward, his hand drifting towards the saber hanging from his belt. "Hey, now¡­"

    I took my own step towards him before things could escalate, and projecting as much confidence as I could, I addressed him and the crew around him, pitching my voice to carry, "Boys. This doesn''t have to turn violent, but we need this ship of yours. Cooperate, and you can still be on it when we reach land."

    A moment of stunned silence greeted me. Every eye turned my direction, staring at me incredulously. In a past life, I would have been using that time to snare each and every one of them with silk threads spun by my spiders, but in lieu of that option, I just had to convince them with my words instead.

    And then, the whole crew burst out into laughter.

    Yeah, that went about as well as I''d been expecting. It would have been convenient if we could have solved this that easily, but it was a longshot from the beginning.

    "Missy, you must be dreaming!" one of them called.

    "You think we''re just going to hand the ship over to you fucks? Take a dip, sweetheart!"

    "Come over here and shine my knob, and maybe we''ll let you stay on!"

    "Hey!" Rika protested on my behalf, even as Ritsuka''s face turned red. "That was uncalled for, you jerk!"

    "Very uncouth!" Bradamante agreed.

    "Who the fuck do you think you are?" the leader demanded, grinning broadly. "Dunno if you bothered to learn your numbers, girl, but there''s way more of us than there are of you! You think you can take over this ship with that puny knife of yours?"

    Puny knife? A more hotheaded girl might have taken offense to that. This knife of mine had been through a whole lot more than a fight with some pirates ¡ª because I was becoming increasingly sure that was what these sailors were ¡ª and cut through things a whole lot sturdier than ordinary flesh and steel.

    But my ego wasn''t quite that fragile. I had nothing to prove to these random strangers, so I treated their insults with all the weight they actually had ¡ª which was to say, none at all.

    "Arash," I said calmly, and he glanced over at me, "try not to do any permanent damage. We still need both the ship and the crew intact to get anywhere."

    He smirked. "Got it, Master."

    My hand went to my dagger, and I pulled it from its sheath and tossed it over to him. Arash caught my Last Resort effortlessly, flipping it over with expert grace a couple of times. Showing off to intimidate the pirates, if I had to guess. On a couple of them, it even seemed to work.

    "Mash," said Ritsuka, "you, too."

    "Right!" Mash''s shield materialized in her hands, and the crew actually hesitated and took a step back when they saw how easily she handled the massive thing. "I''ll make sure not to hurt them too badly, Master! I''ll use the back of my shield!"

    "Hey, Emiya," said Rika. "Give that one guy an extra hard kick for me, would you?"

    "Hmph." Emiya smirked as his twin swords appeared in a flash of light. "Do you want me to just damage his pride, or remove it entirely?"

    "Remove it entirely!" Bradamante''s shield flared to life. "A man who treats a lady in such a manner has no business ever laying a finger on one!"

    Rika smiled a nasty smile. "Oh, I don''t think he ever has, Tii-chan! A real man would know better!"

    "H-hey!" one of the sailors protested.

    "Oh, what are you even complaining about, Fournier?" the leader snapped. "Who gives a flying fuck what that little chit says? If it sticks in your craw that much, shut her up yourself!"

    The so-named Fournier flushed, although with his ruddy, sunburnt complexion, it was hard to tell how much was embarrassment and how much was just how he looked naturally. "R-right, Boss!"

    Rika''s cheek twitched. "Hey, Emiya? Sic ''em."

    What happened next could barely be called a fight. Emiya appeared suddenly in front of the leader, who still hadn''t been named, and the man had barely managed to pull his saber free of its sheath before Emiya batted it out of his hands and delivered a heavy blow to the gut with the flat of one of his blades.

    The leader went down hard, collapsing onto his back on the wooden deck with a thud, but that seemed to galvanize his crew, because their boss had barely let out a groan, clutching his belly with both arms, before the rest of them were pulling out their own weapons, mostly sabers of a similar make to their boss. Even to my inexpert eye, not all of those swords were in the greatest of shape ¡ª the perils of being out at sea, where whetstones and other things necessary to keep a steel blade in working order were rare.

    The rest of our Servants took that as their cue to join the action, and with a pair of shouts, Mash and Bradamante leapt into the fray, swinging that massive shield and that tiny lance about and laying out whoever got in range of them. Arash followed with more precision, as was befitting of an archer and an Archer, carefully slicing belts and strings so that anyone in his path had an, ah, accident with their clothing.

    A creative way of beating someone without actually hurting anything more than their dignity. An enemy who was too busy trying to pull their pants back up was one who was too busy to fight.

    Everyone who didn''t have the good fortune of facing our most merciful Servant was laid out by the others and left a groaning mess on the floor. True to the orders I''d given Arash and Ritsuka had given Mash, none of them was seriously hurt, save for maybe a broken bone here or there. There were no cracked skulls, no severed arteries or veins, no slit throats or spilled guts, just a whole lot of bumps and bruises.

    When it was all over, we were the only ones standing. The entirety of the crew lay on their ship, moaning and groaning and utterly defeated.

    I walked over to the unnamed leader, my shoes thunking against the deck, and looked down at him with the same expression I''d used before. Calm confidence carried a lot of weight in any negotiation; coming from a place of strength wasn''t nearly as important as convincing the other guy that you were, although it definitely helped to have both.

    "Like I said," I told him, "we need your ship. You can cooperate and still be on it when we reach land, or we can make other arrangements for you if you don''t."

    "Okay, okay! We surrender!" The leader groaned as he leveraged himself up, but didn''t seem to have the strength to stand just yet. "Sheesh, lady. You really know how to drive a hard bargain, don''t you?"

    "I don''t know about that." Emiya smirked and crossed his arms, swords vanishing mid-motion. "After all, you''re all still breathing, aren''t you?"

    "Like I said," I repeated. I held out my hand, and Arash dutifully returned my knife. I slipped it back into its sheath, completely free of blood. "No need for that kind of violence."

    The leader groaned and slumped back on his elbows.

    "Um, Miss Taylor?" said Mash, coming over towards us. "Do you¡­think we should interrogate him? He might know something about this Singularity."

    A good point. At the very least, he could give us some information on what had been happening here since it formed, and if we were lucky, he might know a thing or two about whoever had the Grail.

    "Hey, yeah!" Rika chimed in. "Senpai''s American, right? That means you know how to waterboard him!"

    Ignoring that stereotype and the problematic things that came along with it¡­

    "Well?" I turned pointedly back towards the leader. "Do you know anything about what''s going on in this ocean?"

    The leader grunted. "Fuck, lady, was honestly hoping you might have some idea. You sure seemed like you knew what you were doing, yeah? We been out here with our asses flapping in the wind for weeks. Maps are useless, compasses don''t work no more, fuck, even the constellations don''t look right."

    "I ain''t seen the North Star in over a fortnight!" one of the other sailors chimed in. It was surprisingly helpful information, even if it was just confirming more of what we already knew.

    "Might as well piss overboard and see what direction it flows," the leader said. "Sure as shit ain''t finding any better way of navigating this place so far."

    "Ew," said Rika, disgusted. Her brother didn''t look any happier about that idea than she did.

    The leader grinned at her, all crooked, yellow teeth. "Never sailed before, have ya, lass?"

    That delightful mental image aside, "So you don''t know anything at all about this ocean?"

    "Well, I wouldn''t say nothing," the leader said slyly. He turned his grin on me, and my stomach turned a little. Proper hygiene was another thing that tended to suffer out at sea. "It just so happens that we''ve heard tell of an island nearby, a pirate''s paradise kinda place, if ya get my meaning. And, shucks, wouldn''t ya know it, we were just headed that way ourselves! We''re starting to run low on food and water, ya see, and thought it might be a nice place to restock¡­"

    Who did he think he was fooling? He might as well have put up a gigantic neon sign with the word "TRAP" in big, bold letters, he was being that transparent about it. Lisa would have been laughing her ass off at the utter lack of shame.

    But it wasn''t like we had any better leads. A pirate''s paradise, he said? There were decent odds that we would run into one of the famous pirates at a place like that, and a lead on a Servant ¡ª enemy or stray ¡ª wasn''t something we could pass up either. If we were particularly lucky, we might find something out about whoever had this era''s Grail and why they''d used it to make this place.

    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    I had serious doubts about that, but just on the chance alone, it would be worth looking into.

    "Then I guess you know where to go, don''t you?"

    The leader grinned broader, probably thinking he''d pulled one over on me. He didn''t seem particularly bright.

    "Aye, aye, ma''am!" He pulled himself to his feet with renewed vigor, and then he rounded on his crew. "Oy, whaddya sorry sacks of shit think you''re doing, lazing about on the job? Hop to, on the double!"

    The sailors ¡ª pirates ¡ª who had been laid out by our team groaned.

    "What''re you sorry lot complaining about?" the leader barked. "That little love tap weren''t enough to knock you all down, was it? How pathetic can you shits get?"

    "Boss," one of them began.

    "Stuff it, Fournier! That goes for the rest of you lazy fucks, too! You heard the nice lady, we''re headed for the hideout, and right quick! If you don''t wanna be stuck in the brig eating tack and nothing else until we get there, you''d better get off your sorry asses and get to work!"

    That seemed to get them all into motion. All together, the rest of the crew struggled to their feet as quickly as they could, shouting back at him, "Aye, sir!"

    Some of them were a bit quicker than the others, but none of them dared risk his ire by staying put, and in short order, they were all back to doing the jobs they must have been doing when we were so unceremoniously dropped into their midst.

    Our group moved out of their way, huddling together off to the side with our backs to the side rails that kept things ¡ª and people ¡ª from slipping overboard in choppy waters. Needles to say, we didn''t exactly trust these men, especially not when they were so obviously trying to pull a fast one on us.

    "I dunno about this, Senpai," Rika said lowly.

    "Don''t we have any other leads?" Ritsuka agreed.

    "I don''t trust these men," said Bradamante. She eyed the pirates, like she was waiting for one of them to leap out and attack us again. I didn''t think we had to worry about that until we got closer to this hideout of theirs. "They''ve all but confessed to piracy, which means they''re a greedy, unsavory lot that would do¡­unspeakable things, if they had the chance. Especially to us ladies!"

    "Unspeakable things!" Rika agreed vehemently.

    "None of us thinks otherwise," said Emiya. He watched the pirates, too.

    "We don''t have any other leads," I told them, "and we wouldn''t have any idea of where we were going if we forced them to take us somewhere else. Otherwise¡­" I looked pointedly over the railing. "You said you could swim, right, Rika?"

    "What do I look like, a penguin?" Rika crossed her arms. "I didn''t bring my surfboard, Senpai."

    Ritsuka sighed, but didn''t comment on whatever she was referencing. "So we''re just going to go along with them?"

    "For now," I answered. "First, we need to see if we can find anything out at this pirate island they''re talking about. Whether it''s a¡­den of iniquity or not, hubs like that tend to be a great place to pick up information. We can make plans for where to go from there after we see if there''s anything we can find out about what''s going on here."

    "Oh!" Rika nodded sagely. "It''s a spy mission! Why didn''t you say so, Senpai?"

    "There''s no guarantee that anyone there will know anything we need," Arash pointed out.

    As much as I hated it, he was right about that, and if I was being honest, I was expecting things to work out that way. I doubted very much that we would find out where the Grail was this soon and this easily.

    "What if they don''t?" asked Ritsuka.

    "Then we''ll have to pull up our maps, pick an island, and commandeer a ship to take us to it. Process of elimination might be slow, but without a better lead, it''s all we have."

    Left unsaid was the fact that we''d basically started out the other three Singularities in the same position. All three of them had begun with us essentially picking the nearest point of interest and heading towards it, and one thing or another had happened in the process that led us to where we actually needed to go.

    "Won''t that take a long time?" Mash asked worriedly.

    Yes, but¡­ "We aren''t exactly swimming in options."

    Rika snorted. "Ha! Swimming in options! Good one, Senpai!"

    Good one¡­? The realization hit me a second later, and I wanted to groan at the accidental pun, but I managed to keep my reaction down to a grimace.

    Fuck, Rika wasn''t rubbing off on me, was she?

    "If the pattern holds, either we''ll find something or something will find us that will lead to solving this Singularity," I said, pretending it hadn''t happened. "We should have a better idea of what to do from there."

    "Right," said Mash. "In Fuyuki, we met Medusa and C¨²chulainn. In Orl¨¦ans, it was Jeanne, who led us to La Charit¨¦. And in Septem, Connla introduced us to Queen A¨ªfe, who introduced us to Queen Boudica, and from there, Emperor Nero."

    "Huh." Rika folded her arms and cocked her head to the side thoughtfully. "Now that you mention it, things really did turn out kind of convenient like that, didn''t they? Hey, Onii-chan, do you think this is that Counter Force thing that Hot Pops was talking about?"

    "How would we know if it wasn''t?" Ritsuka replied.

    Rika nodded her head sagely. "Good point! I bet you if we asked, we''d get some kooky, bullshit response, like, ''when you do things right, people won''t be sure you''ve done anything at all.''"

    Emiya snorted. "You''re not entirely wrong. Having said that, Master, if you''re ever in a situation where you can interact with the Counter Force that directly, forget about asking questions or making deals, just run in the opposite direction. As fast as you can, preferably."

    "Oh!" Rika grinned. "That sounds like a story!"

    "Not one I''m going to tell." Emiya waved her off.

    Beep-beep!

    Without hesitating, I answered the communicator. Romani''s face appeared above my wrist, and he blinked at me, surprised.

    "Huh," he said, "we got through really easily, this time. I was expecting it to be a lot harder."

    "Hey, Doc!" Rika grinned nastily. "You''ve got some explaining to do!"

    "Yeah," said Romani, "about that ¡ª"

    "Move aside, Romani!" Marie''s voice commanded, and Romani squawked as he was pushed out of frame. Marie''s face replaced his. "Taylor! What happened? Your location data ¡ª"

    "We landed on a ship," I told her simply.

    She flinched. "W-what? But you were supposed to Rayshift onto an island!"

    "This happened last time, too!" Romani''s voice chimed in from off screen.

    "It did?" Marie jerked like she''d been slapped, and suddenly, she drew herself up, projecting an image of confidence. "I-I mean, yes, of course, I remember! The Rayshift into Septem was also off course!" She turned to Romani again. "Why wasn''t that corrected? The number of ways this could have gone wrong is unacceptable!"

    "We never identified the cause," Romani answered. "The coordinates were input correctly, the Rayshift occurred without error, and our calculations should have put them exactly where we wanted them to go. Whatever happened last time was a result of an unknown factor. Even Da Vinci couldn''t do anything but throw up her hands and shrug."

    Which said quite a bit about the situation, and none of it good. Unfortunately, it was a problem that we couldn''t do much about.

    Marie grunted and pinched the bridge of her nose, scowling. "And this time?" she asked tightly.

    I could imagine Romani shrugging, too. "Some other unknown factor. Frankly, Director, it might not even be the same thing that went wrong. It could just be that the Singularity''s geography is so distorted that even our scanners couldn''t account for the full scope of its spatial anomalies."

    "Great," Marie said flatly. "Just great." She pried open her eyes and met mine. "At least everyone is in one piece. Your vitals are all safely within acceptable ranges, although there was a brief moment of increased activity on the Servants'' end a minute ago."

    She didn''t word it like one, but I could definitely hear the question in that sentence.

    "Hi, Boss Lady!" Rika waved cheekily.

    "The locals weren''t all that happy that we showed up unannounced," I explained. "There was an¡­altercation. It''s been handled."

    Marie''s brow furrowed.

    "Locals?"

    "The only thing pirates hate more than the navy," Emiya drawled, "is other pirates."

    "Pirates?" both Romani and Marie echoed.

    "They were quite rude!" said Bradamante. "Some of the things they said aren''t fit for polite company, Madam Director!"

    "H-hold on, you said something about pirates!" Marie said. "Just what kind of ship did you land on, exactly?"

    The twins shared a look, and Rika grinned again. She crooked one finger in imitation of a hook. "A pirate ship!"

    The look Marie sent her could have curdled milk.

    "There weren''t any major identifying marks," I said. "No Jolly Roger or¡­ Arash, did you see anything?"

    Arash shrugged. "Nothing that would tell us who these people are. Pirates have existed as long as there was sailing, but if we''re talking about the Age of Piracy¡­ It''s a little after my time. The only thing I know is what the Throne gives me."

    "Which isn''t all that much, unfortunately," Bradamante added, sighing. "I could tell you that Blackbeard hid lit fuses in his hair! But¡­not anything else about what he looked like. I''m sorry, Master."

    "I''m about as limited," Emiya said apologetically. "I could give you a list of names, even a few famous features, but I didn''t recognize any of them among this crew."

    Rika clasped her hands together theatrically, lifting her head as though she was praying. "Wikipedia, we knew not what we would miss!" She sighed. "Geez! How are we supposed to recognize any of these famous pirates even if we do meet them?"

    "They''ll be Servants," I told her.

    She blinked, and then she smacked her forehead with her palm. "Oh. Right. Duh!"

    "I didn''t sense any Servants on board with us," Mash reported dutifully.

    "There aren''t any," Romani''s voice came. "The only Servants currently on our sensors are the ones we sent with you. Everyone else nearby is a normal human."

    My lips pursed thoughtfully. The only Servants on the sensors, huh? It worked before, back in Orl¨¦ans, to at least some degree. Maybe it would work here, too.

    "Romani," I said, "the crew we''re sailing with right now is headed towards an island, what they called a ''pirate''s paradise.'' Can the sensors detect a Servant over in that direction?"

    "Wait, what?" Marie exclaimed. "Pirate''s paradise?"

    "Hang on," said Romani, "let me check."

    "Wait!" said Marie. "A pirate''s paradise? That sounds like the last place you should be going!"

    "It''s the only lead we currently have," I told her calmly. "And it''s also a place where a lot of people are going to be gathered. It''s our best chance of finding out what''s going on in this Singularity right now."

    Marie deflated. "Oh¡­ Well, if you think it''s a good idea, then I''ll approve it."

    "So fast!" Rika remarked.

    "I guess Director Marie really trusts Senpai to know what she''s doing," said Ritsuka.

    Twin spots of red bloomed on Marie''s cheeks. It looked strange through the faint blue tint the hologram gave everything. "W-well, of course I do! She''s the Master I hand-picked for Team A, after all!"

    "Got it!" said Romani. He leaned over Marie''s shoulder so that he could fit his face on the screen. "Sorry, Taylor, it looks like your hunch didn''t pan out, this time. There''s a strong magical energy reaction on that island, but at least from this far out, our scanners aren''t picking up the presence of a Servant."

    "Drat!" said Rika. "There goes that one!"

    "Are you sure, Romani?" Marie demanded, looking over at him.

    He nodded. "I checked twice. I can''t say what the source of that magical energy reading is, but I can definitely say that it isn''t a Servant. No Saint Graph was detected."

    "Could it¡­be like Stheno?" Mash suggested tentatively.

    Romani hesitated.

    "Doc?" asked Rika, sounding worried. She wasn''t the only one, because Stheno had easily been one of the most harrowing parts of the last Singularity, and I wasn''t looking forward to a repeat.

    "I want to say no," said Romani. "This reading is way different than the one we got from her. For one, there''s no trace of divinity. But on the other hand, this isn''t like your scan from Mount Etna, so I don''t have as high a resolution as we did back then."

    "And the only way to increase the resolution would be to find a ley line as strong as Mount Etna''s was," Mash concluded softly.

    It wasn''t ideal and that wasn''t as certain a thing as I would have liked it to be, but I''d learned my lesson from before. If we encountered any goddesses hanging about, the very last thing we were going to do was let them get the chance to bewitch us the way Stheno had. Whether that was by beating her first or just removing her from concern outright, well, if and when it came up, we could address it then.

    "Can you tell us anything else?"

    He shook his head. "Not from here. The scanners get less accurate the further away from you guys they try to look, remember? I can tell there''s a source of magical energy in the general direction of that island you''re heading towards, and I can tell it isn''t a Servant, but anything more than that is just too much to ask for."

    How inconvenient. Even if I hadn''t been expecting much of anything better, I would still have preferred to have a better idea of what we were going to be finding on this island. Springing a trap happened to work better when you had some idea of what the trap itself was. For all we knew, Smaug was hiding out on that island and would smite us when we got too close.

    I guess I should be glad we had Siegfried on speed dial.

    "We''ll keep a close eye on that magical energy reading," Marie assured me. "The instant we find out more, we''ll contact you and let you know what to expect."

    That was better than nothing.

    "Thank you."

    "Either way," she went on, "if it''s the only lead you have, then there''s no other choice but to investigate it. No, especially since there''s a magical energy reaction in that direction that we can detect from this far away! That''s suspicious, no matter how you look at it!"

    "I agree," I said, because it was. I just also didn''t think we were going to be lucky enough to find the Holy Grail that had started this Singularity that quickly and easily.

    "Do you think it could be the Grail, Director?" asked Ritsuka.

    Marie crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. "It may not be likely, but it''s certainly possible. All the more reason to go and check!"

    "That would be some kind of record, wouldn''t it?" said Arash, smiling. "Retrieving the Grail in less than a day? That would be the fastest we ever solved one of these Singularities, wouldn''t it?"

    "Technically, we resolved Fuyuki in less than a day, too," Mash corrected him. "Um, but those were really unique circumstances, so that might not be a fair comparison."

    "Here and back at Chaldea again in just a few hours?" Rika asked wryly. "Sign me up! The less time I have to spend sleeping on the ground, the better!"

    "C-could we really handle things that quickly?" Bradamante said with a nervous smile. "Maybe we should spend more time investigating! We only just arrived, after all! It would be a shame if we missed making new comrades because we moved too quickly!"

    "Wouldn''t faster be better?" Emiya pointed out. "After all, this isn''t the last Singularity we have to deal with, is it? There are still four more after this."

    Bradamante hesitated. "I¡­suppose¡­"

    My lips pursed, but I didn''t call her out on it, no matter how transparently she hated the idea of her first deployment ending right after it began. The others had probably noticed it, too, and were likewise pretending they hadn''t.

    "Right now, we don''t know what we''re going to find on that island," I said instead. "We shouldn''t go in expecting that we can finish things and be home by dinner, because even if it is the Grail, it''s not going to be as easy as picking it up off the ground like loose change. Whoever has it will fight to keep it."

    Rika grinned. "We''ll just have to fight harder!"

    "Just be careful!" Marie insisted. "Don''t forget, you''re there to restore proper history! Your actions won''t just determine the future of Chaldea, but that of the entire human species! You can''t afford to fail!"

    "So, you know," said Rika sarcastically, "no pressure or anything!"

    "We know, Director," I assured Marie. "We won''t let you down."

    Her lips drew tight and she nodded. "Good!"

    And then, her image disappeared, and the connection to Chaldea terminated. I let my wrist drop and looked out past the front of the ship towards the horizon, far in the distance. If I squinted, I could just make out a smear amongst the dark ocean and the pale blue sky, a blotch that broke up the monotony.

    "Geez," Rika whined, "that got me all excited! Can you imagine it, Onii-chan? There and back before dinnertime? My back is already crying with relief!"

    "I-I suppose it would be better," Bradamante hedged. "W-well! The important thing is that we solve this Singularity properly, right? Th-then¡­even if it''s done quickly, that''s what matters!"

    "I''m just worried about what we''ll find on this island," Ritsuka admitted quietly. "Even if Doctor Roman didn''t detect the presence of any Servants, he still found something there with lots of magical energy, and that could be anything."

    "We don''t have enough information to say for sure," I told them. "Even if it turns out to be nothing to worry about, that doesn''t mean you should let your guard down, especially in a place where so many criminals and outlaws are gathered together. Don''t give anyone a single chance to take advantage of you."

    "Right!" said Mash and Ritsuka.

    "And if someone gets handsy," said Rika, "Emiya can cut their pride down to size!"

    Emiya snorted and drawled, "Happily, Master."

    A pirate''s paradise, huh. Guess we were going to find out if it was as pleasant a place as it sounded.

 Chapter LXXXIV: Paradise of the Pirate Queen

    Chapter LXXXIV: Paradise of the Pirate Queen

    "LAND!" Rika cried as she threw herself onto the sand. This was one of those times where I didn''t blame her, because all of us were feeling a bit peaky from the trip in the longboats ¡ª significantly smaller than the main ship, and therefore much more susceptible to the chop and churn of the waves.

    Ritsuka and Mash were similarly sickly looking, pale and drawn as I was sure my face must have been, and the only thing keeping Ritsuka''s mouth shut was likely the fact that I was pretty sure he would throw up if he opened it.

    I couldn''t claim to be much better. The main ship had rocked a little, but it had been remarkably stable, and the longboats had been significantly less so. My own stomach was less than happy to have spent time in one and all the more glad to be out of it and back on solid land.

    "Now I know you ain''t never been on a ship afore, girl," the lead pirate ¡ª who had eventually introduced himself as Gallagher ¡ª said with a grin. He took great delight in our suffering. "Ain''t no sailor worth his salt what would kick up a fuss about a little trip in a longboat."

    Rika rolled over in the sand and sprawled out. She scowled at Gallagher. "As soon as the world stops spinning, I''m gonna kick you in the nuts."

    Gallagher laughed and shook his head. "Bigger women than you have tried, lass. I bet it won''t hurt much but tickle."

    Rika did the mature thing and stuck her tongue out at him. Gallagher just kept chuckling as he looked back at the longboat we had all just climbed out of. Only now were the rest of his crew arriving in their own boats and clambering onto shore.

    "It''s the damnedest thing, though." He turned to Emiya. "Where''d you get that contraption that let you get here without rowing? And where''d it go?"

    "Who knows?" Emiya said with a shrug. "I''m sure I don''t have any idea what you''re talking about."

    I favored him with an unimpressed look as Gallagher shook his head again. This wasn''t the first time Emiya had done something so ridiculous, so maybe I should have expected him to project a motor, complete with propeller and fuel, to speed up the trip to shore. At that point, it may actually have been more shocking if he hadn''t had something up his metaphorical sleeves.

    "Fou!" the little gremlin popped up on Mash''s shoulder, and then it hopped down to land in the sand and trotted over to Rika.

    "Ah, Fou!" said Mash. "Have you been here the entire time?"

    "Fou!"

    "I guess he decided to tag along again," Ritsuka said faintly.

    The shudder of revulsion that swept down my spine sent my stomach to clenching again, and I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath to try and calm the nausea. To distract myself, I stretched out into the swarm that I had started to feel as we got closer to the shore, and in the background, I heard Rika say, "See, you understand, don''t you, Fou? Those tiny boats weren''t any fun at all!"

    "Fou-kyu-fou!" As though to say, no, they weren''t.

    Wait. Was that¡­?

    I turned around, nausea almost forgotten as I walked back down towards the ocean, my brow furrowing. I reached out into my swarm, tugging on what I felt at the other end, and I was halfway wondering if it was even possible for my powers to hallucinate.

    "Taylor?" Arash asked, having noticed the first out of everyone. "Something wrong?"

    The pirates gave me a wide berth, like they were afraid I would make good on my earlier threats if they got too close, but I paid them no mind beyond the fact that they were staying away.

    "Senpai?" asked Ritsuka, stronger now that he''d had a moment to calm his stomach.

    I stopped where the surf started and waited, examining what I felt but couldn''t yet see. The others, sensing that something unusual was happening, started paying attention to me now, and Emiya came up beside me, tensed and narrow-eyed.

    "We expecting company?" he asked lowly.

    "Yes and no."

    Company, of a kind, but not the kind he was worried about.

    He huffed. "That was informative."

    "There''s¡­something strange¡­"

    At that moment, the water pulled back, and my unusual acquisition appeared from under the waves, skittering slowly up the soft, wet sand of the beach on thick, segmented legs.

    Emya leapt back, arms spread and hands held out, ready to call up his favorite swords. "What the hell?"

    "Holy shit!" Rika scrambled to her feet. "Look at the size of that thing!"

    Echoing cries of alarm spilled out of the pirates, who all backpedaled away from the giant hermit crab that was making its way towards us. Someone pulled out a pistol, but a fly buzzing up in front of his face made his shot go wide, and the lead ball hit the sand instead of the crab.

    "Shit!" one of the other pirates ¡ª Fournier, I recognized him ¡ª reached for his sword.

    "Miss Taylor!" Mash cried, and her shield materialized at the same time as Bradamante''s blazed into existence.

    "Calm down," I told them.

    Bradamante, who had looked ready to jump into a fight, hesitated, and Mash made it one step before she stopped, looking over at me incredulously. Gallagher stared at me like I''d grown another head, and Fournier looked to Gallagher, sword halfway drawn, for orders about what to do.

    Like nothing was wrong, I crouched down, and the giant hermit crab scuttled over to me, presenting itself for inspection. It held out one massive pincer, and I ran my fingers down over the brick red surface, careful not to cut myself on the surprisingly sharp ridges of its claw.

    Strangely enough, it felt exactly like it was supposed to, which was to say the same as any other hermit crab, despite the fact that it was the size of a large St Bernard and probably three or four times as heavy. Maybe more, considering the size of the shell it was using, and where the hell had it found one big enough to fit its body into?

    "Senpai?" asked Ritsuka. "Is that you?"

    "Yes," I answered simply.

    "That''s¡­a Phantasmal," said Mash. "Miss Taylor, you¡­ Your powers can even control something like that?"

    Apparently. I hadn''t been sure before, and we hadn''t encountered anything that would qualify under my powers in Orl¨¦ans or Septem, but I guess if it was something that fell under the category of animal my powers applied to, then I could control it just the same.

    "Can''t say I''ve ever seen one this size before," Arash commented as he crouched down next to me. "Those claws look pretty strong, too."

    "O-oy," said Gallagher. "Missy, is that your pet?"

    "In a way." I turned to Emiya. "Can you make me a sword?"

    He gave me a strange look, but a moment and a mumbled incantation later, an ordinary broadsword landed tip-first into the sand next to my crab.

    "Thanks."

    The hermit crab reached out with its massive claw and took hold of the sword''s blade, and then, with a brief, metallic shriek, snapped it in half. The two halves fell to the sand unceremoniously, and a few seconds later, dissipated into motes of light that flickered and vanished.

    More than one of the pirates ¡ª several of whom had drawn swords ¡ª looked dubiously down at their own weapons. Suddenly, they were much less sure about risking them against the hermit crab, especially the ones that weren''t in the best shape.

    "Very strong," Arash amended. "That''s definitely a magical beast, if it can break steel like that."

    "It''s kinda cute," said Rika as she strode up to join us. "You know, in that vaguely horrifying kind of way."

    "Unusual, to see a Phantasmal this far out from the Age of Gods," Emiya said. "But this far out from the Age of Gods¡­I guess something that can only break steel is about as much as you can expect."

    "Only break steel?" Gallagher goggled.

    "I wouldn''t expect you to know." Emiya shook his head. "But Mash, Bradamante, Arash, you should all be able to feel it, right? Even as incredible as it is¡­"

    "Yeah," Arash agreed. "It''s still too weak to be a threat."

    I wondered if they would have the same opinion if I told them that there was an entire colony of these crabs down there. Probably. With the obvious exception of Mash, they all had more than enough firepower to take them all out in one go, if it came to that, and none of them would flinch to do it.

    Rika might actually mutiny if I suggested stocking up on them to help shore up our food supplies, even if just one of these could probably feed our entire group for a week.

    I stood up. "It looks like Romani was right. If something like this is here, then it wouldn''t be that big of a stretch to expect the more dangerous kind of Phantasmals, too."

    "Sounds like we''re going to have to be a little more careful about where we set up camp," Arash said.

    "Sounds like lunch to me!" a new voice called from the nearby copse of trees.

    Everyone else turned towards it, Mash and Bradamante especially whipping their shields about defensively.

    "Boss!" Gallagher shouted.

    "Boss Bombe!" the rest of the crew cheered.

    The last one to turn was me, because I was the least surprised to see him, and I got a good look at the man who had been stepping so indelicately through my swarm. Swaggering, really. Of all the pirates we''d met so far, he turned out to be the one who looked the most like one, with a red bandanna over his head, a black patch over one eye, and several thin scars across his face. He couldn''t have looked more like a pirate if he''d stepped out of the pages of Treasure Island.

    "Looks like you made a few new friends there, Gallagher." Bombe grinned, and from the sash around his waist, he pulled out a flintlock pistol and took aim. "Real shame we ain''t in the business of accepting visitors ¡ª alive, anyway."

    Mash and Bradamante both tensed, and Emiya projected his usual pair of swords, scowling.

    "Are you sure that thing will even fire?" I asked him calmly.

    "What kind of question is that?" Bombe laughed. "Course I am! I loaded it and cleaned it myself!"

    As though to punctuate that statement, a pair of long, hairy legs squeezed out of the end of the barrel, then two more, then another four, and a large, black body pulled itself free and looked up at Bombe with beady eyes.

    Bombe gave a shout and dropped it as though it was on fire, recoiling from the otherwise harmless tree spider as though its very touch was venomous.

    "The hell?"

    Then, the entire forest seemed to come alive as every flying bug in it fluttered their wings at once, creating a single, droning buzz, and several men fled out of it, stumbling onto the beach with wide eyes and thundering hearts. Bombe''s crew, at a guess, or at least part of it.

    The lone spider that had plugged Bombe''s pistol skittered along the sand, and every pirate in its way scrambled away from it like it was the devil''s own familiar. Eventually, it reached me, and I bent down to let it scurry up my fingers, my arm, and it settled into place on my shoulder like a mirror to Fou''s usual spot on Mash''s.

    "A very relevant question," I said, "seeing as you just spent twenty minutes walking through a forest with all of these ''pets'' of mine."

    "Fuck," one of the pirates breathed, "and I thought she were scary afore!"

    "You know, Senpai, you''re still the baddest badass I know," Rika said. "But that''s never not going to be creepy."

    "Yeah," her brother agreed, wide-eyed.

    Emiya huffed and shook his head, his sword vanishing. "Damn. We didn''t even have to beat these ones up."

    "I¡­think that''s a good thing?" Bradamante said uncertainly.

    "Now that we''ve got that out of the way¡­" I walked over towards Bombe, my newly acquired hermit crab skittering after me, and all of the pirates gave me an even wider berth than before. Bombe himself took a step back, looked over his shoulder at the forest, and seemed to weigh his choices between me and my swarm. "We need some information. Your friends over there couldn''t tell us much, but you look like you''re a bit more informed than they are."

    "Information?" Bombe''s hand twitched as though itching to reach for his sword, but his remaining eye flickered first to my dagger, then to the crab behind me, and then to the spider on my shoulder, and he gave up on whatever he''d been thinking of doing. "What kind of information are we talking, here?"

    "Anything about what''s been going on here," I said. "Why this place is an endless ocean, anything that''s been happening on these islands, particularly odd occurrences. That sort of thing."

    "That''s it?" Some of the tension left Bombe''s shoulders and he grinned. "Aye, that''s easy enough, ain''t it?"

    "So you do know something!" said Bradamante.

    "Fess up!" Rika called over to him. "Or we''ll make you walk the plank!"

    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    Bombe looked at Rika, then at me, as though I was going to agree with her, and when I didn''t, he just let it slide. "Well, no, I don''t rightly know all that much, but if anyone knows what''s going on, it''ll be the boss!"

    "The boss?" Rika parroted. "How many bosses are there in this place? We''re already at three, and that''s three too many!"

    "Ain''t no one the boss of the boss!" Gallagher said insistently. "Boss Bombe''s Boss Bombe, but the boss is the boss!"

    I resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose, because it sounded an awful lot like we were going in circles.

    "Who is the boss?" asked Mash. "Um, the boss of everyone, I mean?"

    "Ha! Only the greatest and most glorious pirate to ever sail the seas!" Bombe crowed. "We, here? We''re all the crew of the famous Francis Drake!"

    I straightened, but the twins just looked at one another, confused. "Francis Drake?" they asked each other.

    "Francis Drake?" Mash echoed eagerly. "The real Francis Drake?"

    "None other!" Bombe said proudly. "Right through this forest is Boss''s secret hideout! In fact, we can take ya there right now! Boss''ll be wanting a word with you lot, I''m sure!"

    The other pirates, thinking they were pulling the wool over our eyes, all grinned to themselves.

    Another transparent trap, and also another one we couldn''t afford not to spring. Francis Drake ¡ª if he was here, could that magical energy reading from before be him? 1573 would have been right in the middle of his voyage. Were we about to meet another person like Emperor Nero? Someone whose Heroic Spirit had been summoned into their living body?

    No, there really wasn''t any way we could pass this opportunity up.

    "Then lead the way," I told him. "We''d like to have a word with your boss, too."

    Bombe grinned broader. "Aye!" To his subordinates, he said, "All right, you wimps, you heard her! Let''s get these folks over to Boss''s secret hideout and show them our hospitality!"

    "AYE!" Gallagher''s crew ¡ª and the men who had stumbled out of the forest ¡ª shouted in reply.

    Bombe turned about and took one step back towards the forest, and then he faltered. "Er," he said, "say, Missy¡­"

    "Don''t worry," I assured him. "They''ll only sting if I make them."

    "You don''t say," he said dubiously. "What''s that? Some kinda¡­magic or something?"

    "Or something."

    Emiya snorted, but didn''t comment. Rika looked like she wanted to agree with Bombe about my being so vague, but managed to hold her tongue ¡ª perhaps sensing that letting that detail out wouldn''t do us any good right now.

    Bombe shook his head. "Ah, to hell with it! Let''s go!"

    And boldly, some might say stupidly, he stomped into the forest. His crew and Gallagher''s moved to follow, still thinking they had us all fooled, and they leered at us as they passed, doing nothing at all to hide their attempted deceit. It was almost embarrassing exactly how transparent they were, like they were sitting there trying to bluff and didn''t realize they''d set all their cards down face-up.

    The twins and the others were a little slower to follow and huddled around me instead of trailing behind the pirates. None of them were any more fooled than I was.

    "So this is obviously a trap, right?" Rika muttered.

    "Obviously."

    Rika nodded. "So are we just gonna pull a Kenobi and pop in, like, ''Hello, there,'' and beat them up?"

    "If we have to."

    I had a vain hope that it would be easier than that¡­but I knew it was vain. Could you call it pessimism when it had always happened that way, or was that just pattern recognition?

    "Maybe Drake will be reasonable," Arash suggested in a tone that betrayed his doubt.

    "We should be so lucky," Emiya drawled.

    "We should still try and talk first," said Ritsuka.

    "And we will," I agreed. "We''re just also going to be prepared when it doesn''t work."

    "Of course!" Rika grinned. "After all, true warriors only understand each other when they cross fists!"

    I didn''t have any idea what that was referencing, but Ritsuka''s pained expression told me I probably didn''t want to.

    "Wait up, fellas!" Rika called, and she took off after the pirates. "Don''t leave us behind! What if we get lost?"

    "Master, wait!" Bradamante shouted, and she raced after Rika at a fast jog.

    The rest of us shared a look, and then we followed, too.

    It only took a minute for us to catch up, because neither the pirates nor Rika were really moving all that fast, owing at least in part to the fact we had to make our way through untamed forest. The pirates, at least, seemed to know where they were going, which was something of a relief given how¡­well, how dumb they were.

    They still seemed to think we didn''t know they were trying to lead us into a trap. These men obviously weren''t chosen for their mental acumen.

    "So, hey, Mash," Rika said conversationally. "Who is this Drake person anyway? You sounded like you knew about him."

    I glanced at her. "You haven''t heard of Francis Drake?"

    "Nope!" Rika replied, popping the ''p.''

    I guess world history wasn''t one of the Japanese education system''s strong suits, although being fair, it wasn''t exactly the American education system''s strong suits either. Drake was almost entirely someone I''d learned about at Chaldea.

    "Um," Mash said thoughtfully, "well¡­ If I had to describe him in a single word¡­a scoundrel."

    Emiya snorted. "Yeah, that probably fits."

    "Francis Drake is a great hero," Mash went on. "He was a pioneer who circumnavigated the globe for the first time in history, defeated the invincible Spanish armada, and through his actions, he brought incredible glory to Great Britain. The rise of the British Empire wouldn''t have been possible if not for him and his accomplishments. ''The Hero who Brought Down the Sun'' and ''El Draque'' are the sorts of epithets that were bestowed upon him."

    She sighed. "But even if he did a lot of great things, a pirate is still a pirate."

    "Privateer, technically," I chimed in. "He was, after all, officially sanctioned by the Crown."

    "Still." Mash shook her head. "I think you''re right to expect him to be unreasonable, Miss Taylor. Since this Singularity occurs in 1573, it''s likely this Drake will be a living person instead of a Heroic Spirit tempered by later perceptions of his character. In that case, he''s probably a thug, a gluttonous ne''er-do-well who passes the time by drinking entire barrels of rum."

    Rika''s eyes lit up. "He sounds like he knows how to party!"

    "No," her brother said flatly. "I don''t care what the laws are in this era, we are not drinking rum, because we''re still technically underage."

    "Party pooper," Rika said petulantly. She turned to me, "Senpai''s of age, though! Senpai, you''ll have to tell us what it tastes like!"

    "No," I answered shortly, even as I explored the camp up ahead that had just entered my range. "We''re on the job, Rika. No getting drunk on the job."

    "Ugh!" she grunted. "No one''s any fun around here!"

    She turned to the Servants next. "Hey, you guys actually can''t get drunk, can you?"

    "As a Servant?" Arash shrugged. "I''ve never tried."

    "Me neither, Master," said Bradamante with a shake of her head.

    "We can''t," Emiya confirmed. "Well. Maybe a Pseudo Servant like El-Melloi II could, but not us."

    Rika eyed him suspiciously. "I kinda want to know how you know that."

    "I, as well," Bradamante agreed. "How did you come to know this, Sir Emiya?"

    Emiya shrugged. "It''s not really that interesting a story. I''ve had alcohol before as a Servant, and that''s really all there is to it."

    "Boo!" Rika jeered. "That''s so lame!"

    He arched an eyebrow, unimpressed.

    "In regards to Drake," I said, swinging the conversation back around, "if he knows as much about what''s going on as Bombe believes he does, then it''s going to be important that we secure his help. If that involves drinking with him, then you can have a sip." I turned my head to pin Rika with a stare. "But only a sip, Rika. The rest of it, you either find some discreet way of getting rid of it, or you pretend to drink it."

    "Yes!" Rika cheered. "Senpai is cool after all!"

    "But, Rika," I cautioned, "if you get drunk, it won''t be me you''ll be answering to. It''ll be the Director."

    Rika froze, her grin turning frail and strained. "R-right. M-message received, Senpai. I''ll be a good girl!"

    "See that you do."

    "Huh," said Ritsuka. "Is that really all it takes?"

    The instant my eyes left her, Rika turned to her brother and stuck out her tongue. I pretended not to notice.

    Eventually, we came to the other end of the forest and stepped out into a large encampment settled between two cliffs, populated by canvas tents that looked like they had been made from the sails of some large ship. Other pirates milled about the area, some sixty or so men in total, some of them going about tasks and some of them lounging about drinking with their comrades.

    The instant we were all out of the forest, Bombe took off, shouting, "Boss! Hey, Boss! We''ve got some, er, guests here!"

    And he made a beeline for the very last person I was expecting.

    "They said they want to talk with you, Boss!" Bombe told not any of the sailors walking or lounging, but the short, lean woman who was chugging a thick tankard of some kind of drink and looked like she was getting quite the buzz.

    "What the hell are you prattling about, Bombe?" she demanded in a voice that sounded like it came right out of an eighties action flick. "Guests? What kind of guests could we be getting out here? More pirates?"

    "Holy shit," Ritsuka whispered. "There''s no way those are real."

    She was also absolutely stacked, because her coat did everything it possibly could to show them off short of being actual lingerie. Frankly, they looked like they might pop out if she stretched too far in the wrong direction, and each one was at least the size of her whole head.

    I wasn''t sure whether I should envy her or pity her. A woman that well-endowed in an era before proper support wear existed? It was a miracle she wasn''t hunch-backed.

    "No wonder she''s a pirate!" Rika said. "She comes with her own flotation devices!"

    Drake ¡ª because screw it, this wasn''t the first time this had happened, and I had run out of the fucks necessary to care ¡ª squinted over at us as Bombe said, "Uh, I don''t think so, Boss. They look like they''ve got a little more class than we do. A lot more class."

    "They took over our ship!" Gallagher supplied.

    "Sounds like pirates to me!" Drake leveraged herself up from the barrel she''d been sitting on, swayed just a little, but managed to walk without any sign of trouble. "But you''re right, they sure don''t look like pirates. Huh? What are you lot? Government of some kind? All the way out here?"

    Rika and Ritsuka shared a look, then Rika turned to me, "Hey, Senpai, are we technically government agents?"

    "Of a sort." To Drake, I added, "But not any government you would recognize as such, Francis Drake."

    Drake grinned. It stretched the jagged scar that cut diagonally across her face from her hairline, between her eyes, and down one cheek. "You''ve got me at a disadvantage. Fine, I''ll play along. Bombe, how''d you meet these people?"

    "Found them down at the shore with Gallagher''s crew," Bombe answered. "Said they wanted to meet you, Boss! They''re big fans!"

    "We are?" the twins said in stereo.

    "Fans, you say?" asked Drake, bemused.

    "Oh, yeah!" Bombe agreed. "Heard ''em talking on the way over. About the Great Captain Francis Drake, who defeated the invincible Spanish armada! El Draque! The Hero who Brought Down the Sun! The devil who could down entire barrels of rum!"

    "Ha!" Drake said. "Well, they aren''t wrong!"

    And she tipped her head back, taking several gulps from her tankard, and when she was done, she let out a refreshed sigh.

    "So," she went on, "what do you folks want with me, then? Sorry to say, if you''re looking to join my crew, you''re a little young to be anything but cabin boys."

    "Not¡­quite," I said. "We''re here to investigate what''s been happening in this place. The¡­strangeness of this ocean and the islands in it."

    "Yes," said Mash. "Our organization is called Chaldea. My name is Mash Kyrielite." She gestured to the twins. "These are Ritsuka and Rika Fujimaru, my, um, my Masters."

    Drake eyed her shrewdly, no doubt picking up on her stumble ¡ª because Mash must have remembered, at the last second, that Drake had been part of the slave trade. Tangentially, to a degree, and only up to a certain point in his ¡ª her ¡ª career, but still involved.

    "Chaldea, eh?" Drake said thoughtfully. "And what does a bunch of stargazers want with this place?"

    Mash blinked, wide-eyed and stunned. "She¡­knows about Chaldea''s origins?"

    "We''re here to correct it," I told Drake. "A navigator of your skill can''t have missed how¡­strange this ocean is. Abnormal. Our job is to find the source of the distortion and remove it so that things can go back to how they''re supposed to be."

    "Remove it?" Drake laughed. "Now why would you do a thing like that?"

    The words I''d been about to voice died on my tongue.

    "You¡­don''t care that this place is nothing but an endless sea?" Emiya asked, unnerved.

    "This unnatural world doesn''t alarm you?" Bradamante added. "Truly?"

    "Why should I?" Drake asked bluntly. "Strange, you say. Unnatural. So what? That may be true, I won''t deny I''ve seen it for myself, but this place is fun!" Over her shoulder, she called, "Am I right, boys?"

    "Of course, Boss!" Bombe agreed.

    "The best, Boss!" Gallagher said.

    "Yeah!"

    "It''s great!"

    "Wouldn''t have it any other way!"

    Even the ones who hadn''t been paying us any attention and probably had no idea what she''d even been asking about answered her with a wholehearted affirmative. Several of them cheered and used it as an excuse to down another gulp of whatever they were drinking.

    "What?" Mash squeaked.

    "Hear, hear!" Drake took another gulp of her own drink. "You see? Good, evil, natural, unnatural, the way things are supposed to be ¡ª what do I care about any of that? I''ve got good men around me, good food in my belly, good rum to drink, and more freedom than I''ve ever had before!"

    "Onii-chan," Rika whispered, loudly enough that everyone heard her, "when did we fall into One Piece?"

    "I don''t know," Ritsuka answered faintly.

    "You were right, Mash!" Bradamante told her. "Francis Drake really is a scoundrel, through and through!"

    My lips pulled tight and I stared straight at Drake through my glasses. "So you''re not going to cooperate?"

    I guess this was what you could call a breakdown in negotiations. Or perhaps a critical failure of diplomacy.

    "With you brats?" Drake laughed. "Why should I? You''ve got nothing I want, and even if you did, I could just take it! I''m a pirate, remember?"

    "I see."

    Suddenly, the forest behind us and the grass at our feet came alive, and the droning hum of the many bugs there filled the air, drowning out all other sound. The entire camp came to a stop, looking around nervously, and Bombe''s confidence suddenly plummeted.

    "Uh, Boss?" he said hesitantly. "Maybe¡­this one ain''t one to mess around with."

    In other circumstances, we could have let it be and gone on and looked elsewhere, but right now, Drake had the honor of being the only person here who might know anything at all about what was going on in this Singularity. It wasn''t impossible for us to just walk away, but it would be a waste.

    Brute force and terror tactics had worked on the other pirates. Time to see if they would work on Drake.

    "Then you won''t complain," I said calmly, "if we take what we want from you, right?"

    A hand landed on my shoulder. "Hey, now," Arash said genially, "that''s not really necessary, is it? Captain Drake, is there a way we can come to some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement?"

    Drake looked around at the forest and the encampment, nonplussed, then back at me. "Huh. Guess I underestimated you, didn''t I?"

    Click

    And almost before I could realize what was happening, she''d pulled out a flintlock of her own from somewhere on her person and pointed it ¡ª directly at me. Her finger curled around the trigger, pulling, and the muzzle spat a flash of light and smoke.

    There was the sensation of motion as Arash pushed me back and out of the way, taking the shot on his armor ¡ª and staggering as though he''d been hit by a heavy blow. A gasp tore itself out of his mouth.

    "Magical energy reaction!" Mash shouted. "Master, it''s coming from Captain Drake!"

    What?

    "She''s a Servant?" Rika demanded shrilly.

    "N-no! It''s something else! Almost like ¡ª"

    The Holy Grail.

    The pieces clicked together. Drake didn''t want this place to go away, she was happy here. Complete freedom, she said. Total autonomy. She''d laughed at the very idea of correcting it. She didn''t care that it was strange and unnatural, that it was all a dead end. She wasn''t alarmed. In fact, she was enjoying herself.

    She wasn''t a Servant, but did that really matter? If she had a wish and she had the Grail, then did it even mean anything that she wasn''t a Servant?

    Had¡­we really found the solution to this place that quickly and easily?

    Emiya leapt into action, twin swords in hand, and brought them down with lethal intent, but Drake moved faster than a human should be capable of and leapt out of the way, stumbling a little as she landed. Her drink sloshed in its tankard.

    "Don''t kill her!" Rika ordered desperately.

    "She might not give me a choice!" Emiya called back. Drake pulled out another pistol and Emiya grunted as he blocked her shot with the flats of his blades.

    "W-we can''t kill her!" Mash agreed with Rika. "F-Francis Drake doesn''t die in 1573! Killing her might upset proper history!"

    That wouldn''t mean anything if this Singularity ¡ª and everything that happened in it ¡ª was corrected. But, as a living human, she also wouldn''t just disappear if we killed her, so we wouldn''t have any idea where she hid the Grail.

    If she''d done the stereotypical pirate thing and buried it on some other island, we could be here for decades searching. There were some treasures I''d heard about that had remained hidden for centuries. That were, in fact, still hidden by the time Gold Morning rolled around.

    "We need her alive!" I told them all.

    "Like I said!" Emiya grunted again as he deflected another shot, and when was Drake reloading? "She might not give me much choice!"

    "Mash!" Ritsuka ordered. "Go!"

    "Right!"

    Mash leapt into the fray, but like before, Drake proved maddeningly nimble, despite the fact that she was both drunk and an ordinary human. She was also pulling out shots from her flintlocks out of nowhere like they were modern semi-automatics, and her shots hit hard enough that even Mash had to brace herself to take them.

    I pulled in my swarm, trying my best to stuff as many expendable bugs as I could into the barrels of Drake''s pistols, but she fired them like there was nothing wrong, and the bugs inside died violently and suddenly to no apparent effect.

    "Ha!" Bradamante came in from the side and swept her lance up, knocking Drake''s tankard out of her other hand and spilling the contents all over. Drake, snarling, jerked forward and smashed her forehead into Bradamante''s nose, and against all reason and logic, Bradamante stumbled backwards, blood streaming from her nostrils.

    "Bitch!" Drake slurred. "I wasn''t done with that!"

    Arash? I thought at him as Bradamante stared at Drake, wide-eyed, as surprised as any of us that Drake had actually hurt her.

    Not without risking seriously hurting her, Arash answered me before I could even ask him.

    I scowled. Killing her was off the table, for the reasons I already thought of, and maiming, too, because the line between them was much thinner than Hollywood let you believe. She wasn''t like Lung or Altera, who had regenerative abilities that let them brush off anything short of actual death.

    But she was also an ordinary human. We should be able to beat her just by knocking her around a bit and pinning her down until she surrendered.

    She''s not a Servant, I reminded him. If we can knock her down, we can force her to give up, so if you see an opening ¡ª

    "Understood," he said aloud.

    But when that opportunity would come, I didn''t know. Drake was clumsy and stumbling, because she was drunk, but she recovered fast, and with the obvious handicap of being unable to do serious damage, Bradamante, Mash, and Emiya were having trouble dealing with that. There were several moments, as I watched, where a killshot could have ended the whole charade, but they were too short and too small for something less lethal to sneak in.

    It was maddening how she could be so strong and so fast despite not being a Servant, and that she could keep herself so steady despite the fact that she was intoxicated. The magic bullets didn''t help, because I still had yet to see her actually reload any of her pistols, no matter how many rounds she fired from them.

    Frankly, I was a little bit jealous, too. If I had a pistol that didn''t need reloading and hit hard enough that even Servants couldn''t afford to take a direct hit, well¡­

    There was only so long she could last, however. Even if she was fighting on relatively even grounds with Servants, she was still a human, so her body still did things like get tired and her muscles could still seize up and twitch. The instant I saw her knee start to buckle, I didn''t hesitate, I threw my crab directly at her like a miniature bulldozer.

    Drake didn''t even pause. She grabbed one of her flintlocks, cocked back the hammer, and put a round right between my crab''s eye stalks. It crumpled almost before I could register the phantom sensation of the bullet passing through its head.

    It was enough, because in that exact moment of her attention being on the crab ¡ª

    "GANDR!"

    ¡ª the twins fired off a pair of shots directly into Drake''s chest. Vindictively, I watched the pair of black balls slam into the wide, open expanse of her unprotected cleavage, and she staggered.

    "Ugh!"

    Drake slapped a hand over her mouth as though she was about to be sick, and Mash swept in with a body slam that sent Drake stumbling and then falling onto her back.

    "Arash!"

    He didn''t need me to give anything more specific as an order, because he was on Drake immediately, one knee pressing down on one arm, one hand holding down the other, and the head of an arrow poised threateningly at her jugular.

    "Boss!" the gathered pirates cried in one voice. Several of them reached for their weapons and pulled out their swords with a series of metallic rasps.

    "Give up?" Arash asked menacingly.

    For a moment, Drake looked up at him, dazed, and then she did something totally unexpected.

    She laughed.

    "Looks like you lot kicked my ass!" she said as though she''d just lost a game of tag.

    "Boss?" asked Bombe. "You all right?"

    "What the hell kind of question is that?" Drake barked. "Of course I''m alright! I just got beat up a little, that''s all! Put your damn swords away!"

    The pirates all looked at each other for a second, like they weren''t sure they should obey her, and then, hesitantly, they put their weapons away.

    On the ground, Drake sighed.

    "Well then," she said, as casual as the weather. "Looks like I''m at your mercy, Chaldea. The great Francis Drake is yours to do with as you please."

    A beat passed.

    "Did¡­" Ritsuka began incredulously, "she just say what I think she did?"

 Chapter LXXXV: Two Grails

    Chapter LXXXV: Two Grails

    "That''s right!" said Drake. "Anything you want, boyo! We''ve got some rope around here, if that''s your thing ¡ª"

    "J-just what are you even saying!" Mash sputtered out indignantly. "S-Senpai would never¡­!"

    "That''s right!" said Rika, clenching her fist. "Onii-chan is saving himself for the Cinnamon Roll! Loose pirate captains are off limits, no matter how big their bazoongas are!"

    "Rika!" her brother cried, dismayed, even as Mash''s face turned an interesting shade of red and she swooned a little.

    And Drake just laughed like it was the greatest comedy routine she''d ever seen. The fact that she could laugh like that while she was pinned down beneath Arash and at his mercy said perhaps just as much about what kind of person she was as her early spiel about freedom did.

    "If you''re through," I said, and Drake''s laughter petered out.

    "Yeah?" she said. "So what is it you want from me, lady?"

    Let her up, I ordered Arash, and he climbed off of her, slowly and carefully, so that she could sit up and get back onto her feet. She seemed less tipsy than before, more sure in her footing, and I wasn''t sure it was supposed to work like that, but having never been drunk before, I couldn''t really say for certain.

    "There''s a couple of things we want from you," I said, "but the rest of it might not matter, depending on the answer to the first one. Have you come across the Holy Grail?"

    "Holy Grail?" said Drake. "What, like that trinket from out of those King Arthur stories?"

    "Basically."

    "I-it might not look exactly like a cup," Mash said, still a little red around the cheeks. "But it''s¡­a form of wish-granting device, so it can do incredible things! If you found it, or if it was given to you¡­"

    "Holy Grail, eh?" Drake mused. She reached towards her chest, her cleavage, and particles of golden light coalesced in her hand, taking a familiar shape. "This what you lot are talking about?"

    And she held out a shimmering chalice, radiating so much magical energy that I could feel it. It looked exactly like the others had.

    "Holy shit!" Rika breathed.

    "She actually had it!" Ritsuka said, shocked.

    Could we really be done already? We hadn''t even been inside this Singularity for a day, and we had already found the Grail. It was right in front of us. I really wasn''t used to being this lucky, but ¡ª

    "Hey, now." Drake drew the Grail back towards her chest, and I realized only then that I''d been reaching for it. "If this is what you want, I don''t mind that much forking it over, since I lost fair and square. Just what is it you want with this thing, though?"

    "It''s the entire reason why we''re here," said Mash.

    I had a different concern. "Where did you get it?"

    "You didn''t happen to see a giant tentacle monster drop it, right?" asked Rika. "Because I feel like it should be obvious that you don''t just pick up a giant tentacle monster''s droppings."

    "Ha!" Drake burst out, grinning. "Nah, nothing like that! It really ain''t that interesting a tale, truth be told!"

    "What are you talking about, Boss?" Bombe shouted. "It was the adventure to end all adventures!"

    Beep-beep!

    "Taylor!" Marie said as soon as I answered my communicator. "We''ve detected the Holy Grail! It''s right ¡ª"

    She blinked as I turned my wrist to get Drake into the shot.

    "¡ª in front of you?"

    "Whoa-ho-ho!" said Drake. "What''s this, now? Some kind of strange magic or something?"

    "Something like that," I answered. "Now, you were saying? Something about an adventure?"

    "It really wasn''t all that special," said Drake.

    "The hell it wasn''t!" Bombe said. "Seven nights of nonstop sailing! Maelstrom after maelstrom in sea after sea, and at the end of it, the legendary lost city of Atlantis!"

    "Atlantis?" Marie demanded, leaning so far forward that she almost pressed her nose up against the camera. "You actually saw it?"

    "Wait, Atlantis was real?" Rika blurted out. "Disney was telling a true story?"

    "Oh yeah!" said Bombe, grinning. "There were even a giant sea monster that said it was gonna flood the world! Boss went right up to it, kicked its giant ass, and," here, he mimed violently ripping something apart, "tore that there treasure right out of its carcass!"

    A feeling of foreboding coiled in my stomach.

    "A giant sea monster?"

    Like Leviathan?

    "It was pissing me off, simple as that!" Drake waved the whole thing off so casually. "Went around calling itself Poseidon. No self-respecting sailor could''ve accepted that, let alone a buccaneer like me, so I tore it a new asshole, kicked it back where it came from, and sank the whole place while I was at it. Even took this here thing you''re calling the Holy Grail from it."

    Marie choked. "You beat up a Divine Spirit? No, h-hang on a second, if it still had a corpus, that was a fully-fledged god!"

    "No way," Mash breathed.

    "Well," said Emiya. "Not every day you meet a genuine godslayer."

    Arash''s gaze flickered briefly over my direction, and a cold stab of fear made me wonder just how much he knew.

    "There''s a difference?" Rika asked.

    "Y-you!" Marie sputtered. "Of course there''s a difference! A massive difference! Divine Spirits are one step removed from reality, so their power is vastly diminished, but a fully corporeal god is what it controls! Poseidon isn''t just a god of the seas, he is the sea!"

    "Was, now," Drake said blithely, like she didn''t just reiterate that she''d killed an actual god. She turned the Grail around in her hand. "And this thing has been pretty good to me ever since. Endless meat and rum, whenever I want! I can even hurt those strange guys we''ve been seeing ever since everything went all weird and shit!"

    "You''ve gotta be kidding me!" Romani muscled his way into the frame. "I knew Francis Drake was an important person in history, but this just goes way beyond what I was expecting! The world was in legitimate danger from a rogue god, and she actually just solved the problem on her own? Just what kind of Heroic Spirit is that!"

    The kind that was still actually alive, which I think made it all the more impressive. I didn''t know how Poseidon stacked up to some of the threats I''d faced, but if he was anything at all like Leviathan, the fact that Drake had essentially beaten him by herself said a lot about just how powerful she was.

    "You said something about strange guys," said Arash. "What kind of strange guys are you talking about?"

    "Invincible fuckers. Take everything we can throw at them without blinking. But, if I just put this here thing back inside me¡­" Drake pressed the Grail to her chest, and as we watched, it dissipated back into her flesh. "All of a sudden, I can hurt them. It ain''t fun, though. Makes my chest feel tight, I can''t stand it."

    "Servants!" Bradamante exclaimed. "She''s encountered other Servants before, Master! That means there are others here!"

    It confirmed, at least, that there were other Servants here, just like in the other Singularities. Strays? But where were they, then?

    "Servants?" asked Drake.

    "Spirits of the exalted dead, returned to life," I told her simply. "You mentioned King Arthur? Heroes like that. The only way to hurt a Servant is with magic or another Servant."

    Maybe they were trying to take the Grail from Drake so the era could correct itself, or maybe they just wanted the Grail themselves.

    "Huh." Drake retrieved the Grail from inside her body again, examining it in a new light. "So I guess those guys were Servants, and this thing''s power is why I can hurt them now. Makes sense." She looked back over at us. "What do you fellas want it for?"

    "The Grail is the reason behind the formation of Singularities," Mash said faintly, like she still hadn''t quite gotten over the bombshell of Drake killing Poseidon. I didn''t blame her. "If the Grail is retrieved and removed, the Singularity will be corrected."

    "It''s why this place is so strange," I added. "If we take it, things should go back to normal. That''s why we''re here."

    "And what happens to you after you have this thing?" Drake waggled the Grail back and forth like it was a snowglobe.

    "We go back to Chaldea," I said, "and get ready to tackle the next Singularity. Your life goes back to how it was before this all started, like this was nothing more than a dream."

    "That simple, huh?" Drake said thoughtfully. "Here, take it."

    She tossed it over to me without warning, and I almost fumbled it as I scrambled to catch it. It felt like someone had just handed me a nuclear reactor, so much power radiated off of it.

    "She gave it up so easily!" Marie said incredulously.

    "Like I said, I lost." Drake shrugged. "It''s a nice bauble, no doubt about that, and I doubt I''ll ever find another like it in all the world, but if you don''t want anything else, I can hand that over and move on. Nice to meet ya, thanks for making the trip."

    Immediately, I turned around and handed it over to Mash, who accepted it and announced, "Holy¡­ Holy Grail acquired."

    A moment of silence passed.

    "So," Rika began, "are we leaving?"

    "Yeah," Drake agreed. "Was something supposed to happen?"

    "There''s¡­no sign of the era correcting itself," Romani said. "Nothing''s¡­ Nothing''s changed. The readings are the same as before." Marie sat back in her chair, brow furrowing as she stuck her thumbnail in her mouth. Romani turned to her. "Director?"

    Marie took a few seconds to answer.

    "Francis Drake said that she took the Grail from Poseidon," she said slowly, "near the lost city of Atlantis. If recovering the Grail didn''t fix this Singularity, then¡­it''s entirely possible that this Grail isn''t one belonging to the enemy left to be found and used, but one completely native to that era."

    "So there''s a second Grail," Romani reasoned, "one unrelated to Drake or hers. That¡­would actually explain how this entire situation happened, wouldn''t it?"

    Marie nodded. "A single Grail creating a distortion of this magnitude sounded impossible, but two Grails whose functions are twisting and warping each other could feasibly have enough power to create that impossible spacetime."

    "So you''re saying there''s another one of these things floating about here?" Drake asked.

    "Oh, great," Rika groaned. "So much for being done and home before dinner!"

    "I guess it really was too much to hope for," Ritsuka agreed ruefully.

    "I-it really is a shame!" said Bradamante, fooling no one.

    I swung my wrist around so that my communicator faced Mash. "What does that mean for this Grail?"

    Marie grimaced. "If it really is native to that era, then taking it will accomplish nothing," she admitted, looking like the words physically pained her. "Francis Drake won that Holy Grail, and it therefore belongs to her. Chaldea has no right to take it."

    My brow twitched. Some part of me wanted to protest the direction I could sense this taking.

    "Director," said Mash, surprised, "you''re going to give this Grail back to Captain Drake, just like that?"

    But at the end of the day, it wouldn''t be more useful to us in the long term than it would for Drake to keep it in the short term. Not if there was another one we needed to recover.

    "O-of course!" Marie squawked. "Just how greedy do you think I am, Mash? Even if you forget about the fact that it''s a part of that era as a matter of history, Francis Drake is the rightful owner!"

    "We''re not hurting for resources quite that badly, Mash," Romani interjected. "Besides, it really does belong to Captain Drake."

    Mash nodded. "Understood."

    She walked forward and held the Grail out for Drake to take. Drake raised an eyebrow.

    "Ain''t this what you lot were raising a stink over?" she asked.

    "It seems there''s another Holy Grail in this era for us to retrieve," said Mash. "Therefore, there''s no reason for us to keep this one."

    "You don''t say." Drake accepted it back, looking it over again. "Another one, eh?"

    "That means you still owe us," I told her.

    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

    Drake laughed, and her grin split her face. "I guess it means I do! So, if you don''t want this bauble and you don''t want my body, what can this pirate offer you, aside from her life?"

    "A ride."

    "A ride?" several voices chorused.

    "If we don''t retrieve the Grail, this Singularity won''t be resolved, and you and your crew will spend the rest of your lives sailing about these islands aimlessly," I explained calmly. "At best, you''ll run into other pirates. At worst, you''ll find nothing and no one, and you''ll wind up going in circles until you die, everything you''ve accomplished erased."

    "Ouch," said Rika. "Senpai isn''t sugarcoating it."

    "Has she ever?" Ritsuka pointed out.

    "Good point."

    "What Master is trying to say," said Arash diplomatically, "is that we can both benefit by working together. We''ve already handled three of these Singularities, so we know how to fix this place, but we don''t have a ship to get from island to island, so you can help us do that with yours."

    Drake laughed. "Was about to say that I''ve never had treasure pass in and out and back into my hands so easily! But I get what you''re saying. You want me as part of your crew to help you turn this place back to rights, yeah? And unless I want to sit back and let you handle all the big fights, I need this here Grail so I can actually hurt the enemy."

    "Yes."

    Having her take part in the actual fighting wasn''t ideal, but it was better that she could actually defend herself if she had to than to have her be helpless when we inevitably ran into whoever had the other Grail.

    "Sounds like a fair deal to me," said Drake. Over her shoulder, she shouted, "What do you think, you scumbags? This place is nice enough, but it''s gonna get real boring lazing about all day, won''t it?"

    "AYE, BOSS!" the pirates roared.

    "Well, hell!" She grinned. "We ain''t exactly the heroing types, but it seems to me if we wanna get out of here and back to what we were in the middle of, we''re gonna have to become some big damn heroes, aren''t we?"

    "AYE, BOSS!" the pirates echoed. Bombe added, "The biggest damn heroes!"

    "So it looks like we''re gonna be taking orders from these folks for a little while!" Drake jerked her thumb back at us. "And that means that we have some new comrades in our midst, don''t we? A bunch of do-gooders here to teach us how this hero thing works! Almost enough to bring a tear to your eye, ain''t it?"

    More than one of the pirates was grinning. "AYE, BOSS!"

    "So," said Drake, "you know what that calls for, right?"

    "AYE, BOSS!" the pirates replied again.

    "Someone get our new friends a drink," said Drake, lifting the Grail in her hand, "because it''s time to PARTY!"

    "YEAH!" they all cheered, and those who had drinks immediately chugged them down.

    "W-wait!" Marie sputtered, barely audible over the whooping and hollering. "This isn''t the time for that!"

    "Ah, don''t get your knickers in a twist!" Drake turned around, tipping the Grail back and taking a mouthful of the rum that had suddenly materialized in it. "A good captain knows when to let her sailors let loose, you know! There''s no rush. That crazy sea will still be there in the morning, won''t it?"

    "That''s not the point!" Romani leaned into the screen. "Rika and Ritsuka are both underage! Taylor, too, by American law!"

    "America?" Drake said blithely. "Who''s that?"

    Romani''s mouth flapped, but no sound came out.

    "Yeah, lighten up, Doc!" said Rika. "America technically doesn''t exist yet!"

    "That''s not¡­!" Romani sputtered. "J-just because it isn''t illegal in that time period doesn''t mean that it''s okay to drink alcohol! You two are still growing!"

    "Don''t worry, Romani," I said, turning to stare at Rika, "they already know that they''re not supposed to drink. I''m sure they''ll be responsible, as expected of Masters of Chaldea."

    Rika, paling, nodded frantically. "R-right, Doc! I''ll be a good girl! No rum for me!"

    "See that it stays that way!" Marie ordered sternly. "And stay on your toes! Just because they''re allies now doesn''t mean they aren''t still pirates!"

    "Yes, Director!" Mash replied dutifully.

    The connection cut, and the hologram disappeared.

    "The old nag gone, then?" Drake asked.

    I itched to correct her, to come to Marie''s defense, but Drake struck me as very irreverent, sort of like Rika, only without even the veneer of impulse control and no respect for any authority that didn''t beat it into her first. The only thing protesting that characterization would do was make her double down on it, and it just wasn''t worth the effort it would take to make her stop at that point.

    "For now," I answered. "Director Animusphere doesn''t see a need to hover over us constantly. She trusts that we can work without her direct supervision."

    "She trusts one of us for that, at least," Ritsuka said dryly.

    "Then what''re you waiting for?" Drake whirled around and tossed her arms up. "It''s back to the grind tomorrow, so tonight, it''s time to have FUN!"

    Her crew roared their agreement, laughing, and toasted to their captain as she sauntered over to join them. A moment later, someone had started singing, and the whole group of them joined in, slurring their way through a drinking song that I didn''t recognize. Drake was one of the loudest, and, it turned out, she couldn''t carry a tune worth a damn.

    "They certainly are a lively bunch, aren''t they?" Arash commented wryly.

    "Give it an hour or two and most of them will be passed out on the ground," Emiya replied.

    "Well," Bradamante said half-heartedly, "at least they''re not moping and depressed?"

    "Are they really going to party all night?" Mash asked.

    "Never underestimate the energy of men under the influence of alcohol," I said dryly.

    Dad had tried never to drink too heavily around me, but I had more than one memory of times when he''d had a little too much and he and Kurt spent the rest of the night acting out some harebrained scheme. Like the time they decided to repaint the shed at two in the morning and wound up asleep in the backyard with paint all over their faces and hands.

    Mom hadn''t been sure whether she should be laughing or furious.

    I shook my head and checked my communicator for the local time, but as I should have expected, the nature of this Singularity rendered it useless and wrong, so I looked up at the sky instead. Without any idea where in the world we were supposed to be, it wasn''t the most useful of indicators, but if the temperature was any indication, this was closer to an equatorial region than not.

    That meant the local time was probably closer to evening than later afternoon, and therefore ¡ª as my stomach chose to remind me at that moment ¡ª closer to dinner than lunch.

    "As long as they keep their ''energy'' in their pants," Rika said. "Are we just supposed to stand around and watch, Senpai?"

    "Yes," I said. "Don''t let yourself get dragged off. Try to stick together so that you don''t have to worry about these guys remembering to ''keep their energy in their pants.''"

    "Don''t worry, Master," Bradamante said firmly. "I''ll make sure these scoundrels keep their hands to themselves!"

    "Thanks, Tii-chan!"

    "Feel free to be extra stern," Ritsuka told her.

    Bradamante nodded. "Right!"

    I looked over at the corpse of my giant hermit crab as my stomach gurgled again. Well, that was essentially what I''d brought it with us for, so I guess it may as well serve its intended purpose.

    "Emiya," I began, "how good are you at crab dishes?"

    Emiya blinked at me, bemused. "I''m¡­decent enough at them, I suppose. Why?"

    Rika, who caught on to my intentions first, groaned. "Oh god," she said miserably. "Senpai, no."

    Senpai, yes.

    <div>

    ¡ª o.0.O.O.0.o ¡ª

    The party lasted long into the night, past the sun setting and into the early hours of the morning, but the twins had fallen asleep long before that after getting drawn into the festivities, and Mash had followed them almost as soon as we got them settled in Drake''s tent. Drake herself was somewhere off in one of the piles of bodies littering the camp, out like a light, probably with a half-full Grail clutched in one hand, and it left only myself and the Servants still awake in the silence.

    "They''re going to be feeling that in the morning," Arash said ruefully.

    "It''s their own fault," I said, unsympathetic. "I warned them. If they decided not to listen, then they have no one else to blame."

    "Hard to say no to a bunch of personalities like this," Emiya commented. "And if we''re being fair, they did only take one sip. It was just one sip from each tankard that was thrust into their hands."

    "You know the Director won''t accept that as an excuse."

    Emiya shrugged, as though to say, ''I tried.''

    Bradamante sighed. "I''m sorry, Master," she said. "I tried to keep them from imbibing too much, but there were just so many people!"

    "It''s fine," I said. "The worst they''re going to have to deal with is a hangover and a scolding from the Director. You did the most important part."

    So Rika wouldn''t wake up in the morning with a different kind of soreness. Her head was going to be the only thing that ached.

    "Well, this will serve as a lesson for them," said Arash. "Rika will be less eager to try some alcohol in the future."

    "And Ritsuka will learn how to say no," Emiya drawled.

    Especially when people were shoving stuff in his face. If we ever faced an Assassin in the future, that was going to be important.

    "I''m going to get some sleep," I announced. "I''ll leave keeping watch up to you three."

    "Roger that." Arash gave me a two-finger salute.

    Emiya snorted. "Since my own Master is currently out like a light, I guess you have to stand in for her. Fine."

    "I''ll guard the tent!" Bradamante offered.

    "Sure."

    Arash and Emiya went to find posts from which to keep watch, and Bradamante followed me back to the tent, positioning herself at the mouth where the entrance was cut out of the fabric while I stepped inside. Ritsuka and Rika were curled up together on a bedroll over to one side, with Mash sleeping dutifully next to them, ready to protect the both of them even in sleep.

    I found a spare roll over in another corner and laid it out next to them, then grabbed another to use as a pillow. It was, thankfully, warm enough that I didn''t need a cover, but cool enough that I didn''t need to strip anything off, so I laid down, made myself comfortable, and settled in. My head barely touched my makeshift pillow before I fell asleep.

    It felt like a moment later when I was snapping back awake. Through my swarm, I sensed the movements of Drake''s crew as they meandered about the camp, pulling down the tents and packing away the supplies with surprising energy and clarity. Drake herself was no less spry and chipper, calling out orders, snapping out reprimands when someone fumbled something, and like her sailors, she seemed none the worse for wear, despite the amount of alcohol she had guzzled down last night.

    It took a moment to convince myself to leverage my body up so I could sit on the bed roll, and I turned over to the still sleeping occupants next to me so I could reach out and wake them up.

    "Mash?"

    Mash''s hand whipped out before I could actually touch her shoulder, wrapping tight around my wrist, and one amethyst eye narrowed on me for a second before she realized it was just me.

    "Oh," she said, contrite, "Miss Taylor, I''m sorry!"

    She let go of my wrist, and I resisted the urge to rub it where she had squeezed a little too tightly. "It''s fine. Wake up the twins?"

    "R-right!"

    I turned away to hide the grimace that crossed my face as Mash rolled over to shake the twins awake. "Senpai," I heard her mutter, "it''s time to wake up," answered by a pair of tortured groans. My wrist throbbed when I put my weight on it to climb to my feet, but a muttered First Aid spell put that to rights while the others were too distracted to notice.

    "Five more minutes," Rika said groggily.

    "I''m sorry, Master, but I can''t do that," Mash replied. "The others are already awake and getting ready to leave."

    Rika grunted. "Ugh. Fine, I''m getting up, I''m getting up!"

    "Can you all just keep it down?" Ritsuka rasped.

    "Nope!" Rika reached over and slapped him lightly on the cheek, and he flinched. "If we have to get up, so do you, Onii-chan!"

    "Gah!" Ritsuka rolled away from her on reflex and banged his toes against one of the support beams, sending the whole tent aquiver. He was fortunate to still be wearing his shoes, so it wouldn''t have hurt as much as it could have. "Ungh. How are you so energetic this early, Rika?"

    "Because I actually listened to Senpai," Rika said smugly.

    "Ugh." Ritsuka rolled onto his back and flung one arm over his face, hiding his eyes in his elbow. "My head feels like it''s two sizes too small. And my tongue has a carpet."

    "Maybe someone should drill a few holes," Rika suggested, smirking. "Let some of that pressure out."

    Ritsuka pulled his arm down long enough to favor Rika with one bloodshot, angry eye, then hid back behind it.

    "Senpai?" Mash asked worriedly. "Are you okay?"

    "He''ll be fine," I told her. "He''s just learning exactly what a hangover feels like and why you aren''t supposed to drink to excess."

    "Everyone kept handing me a mug," he muttered, as though that excused it.

    "We sailors have a solution to that," Drake announced as she strode into the tent. "Wanna try it?"

    "Hair of the dog?" I guessed wryly.

    "Well, that''s a fine enough thing, too!" Drake laughed, and Ritsuka cringed, curling into a ball as though to escape it. "But we aren''t dumb, you know! You can''t sail if you don''t know how to take care of the little things, can you?"

    She held out the tankard in her hand, and I took it first, lifting it up to my nose to sniff.

    "Water?"

    Considering part of what caused a hangover was dehydration, that was actually surprisingly smart.

    "There''s a natural spring further inland on this island," Drake explained. "Had the boys go out and stock up on it, in case the next island ain''t so accommodating." She pulled the Grail out of her body again, waggling it. "And in case we happen to lose this thing."

    She set it down on a wooden chest with a thunk, and in the cup, a pile of apples appeared suddenly, like they''d been there all along. She took one for herself, then threw one over to me, and I caught it with one hand as I passed the tankard over to Mash, who bent down to help Ritsuka sip.

    "Scurvy''s a bitch to deal with," Drake said around a mouthful of apple. "Luckily, this thing here means that we don''t have to worry about it. Endless food and drink ¡ª and it ain''t limited to meat and rum!"

    "That is convenient," I said, and then took a bite of my own apple. It was refreshing.

    "Is that what you wished for, Captain Drake?" Mash asked. "When you acquired the Grail, I mean."

    Still in his bed, Ritsuka was sitting up, gulping down water like he had been without for days.

    "Huh." Drake paused for a moment and looked at the Grail. "You know, you mentioned something about that yesterday, didn''t you? Called it a wish-granting device. If that''s true, I guess I must''ve! Yeah, that sounds like a great wish to me!"

    Halfway through my next bite, I stopped and looked down at my half-eaten apple. Endless food and drink, she said, and it wasn''t limited to meat and rum.

    We may have just found a solution to any of our future supply problems. I was going to have to talk to Da Vinci and Marie to see if we could find storage space for it.

    "That''s really cool!" Rika reached over and grabbed her own apple. "Man, I would''ve wished for something so much stupider!"

    "Like what, Senpai?" Mash asked.

    "A boyfriend," Rika replied nonchalantly.

    Ritsuka choked on his next gulp of water, pushing the tankard away so he could pound on his chest as he coughed.

    "Senpai!" Mash cried.

    "Or maybe an endless supply of strawberries," Rika went on blithely.

    I looked over at her. "You''re referencing something, aren''t you?"

    "Now you''re catching on, Senpai!" Rika said brightly. She affected a deeper voice. "The greatest action cartoon on the planet!"

    I kept staring, because I had no idea what she was talking about. Rika pouted.

    "It''s only half as much fun when no one else gets it. Senpai, didn''t you grow up in America?"

    "I didn''t really watch cartoons as a kid," I told her as an excuse. I did, they just weren''t the same cartoons that this universe would have had. Capes had infested every aspect of day to day life, even kids'' media. "Having a literature professor for a mom means you grow up reading instead."

    "Your mother was a literature professor, Miss Taylor?" asked Mash.

    "No wonder Senpai''s so smart!" Rika said.

    My mouth thinned, but I didn''t bother correcting her. Whether Mom and her career had affected how smart I grew up to be wasn''t something I could prove or disprove, wasn''t something I was particularly interested in proving or disproving either, but my career had been what honed my mind the way it did.

    "Yeah," I said instead. "I even sat in on one of her classes when I was younger."

    I realized only after I''d said it that I''d said more than I meant to.

    "That," Rika breathed, "explains so much."

    "It really does," her brother rasped.

    Mash turned back to him and offered the tankard of water again. "More water, Senpai?"

    He shook his head, then winced. "N-no, I think I''m good for now."

    He caught the apple that Drake threw at him, and when he bit into it, it looked like it was the most delicious thing he''d ever tasted.

    "Th-thanks."

    "We''ll be getting ready to cast off in, oh, twenty minutes?" Drake warned. "You''ve got maybe ten before this tent''s coming down. Finish waking up, get your shit together, and be ready to go by then. I might be following your lead on this Singu-whatsits business, but that don''t mean you can go slacking, got it?"

    Rika snapped off a salute. "Understood, Captain Drake, sir, ma''am, sir!"

    "We''ll be ready," I translated.

    Drake stood back up, swept the Grail back up, and tossed the last apple to Mash, who caught it, blinking, and then she left. Bradamante''s head peeked in a moment later.

    "Master?"

    "We''ll be right out," I promised her.

    "R-right!"

    And she left us to it.

    Five minutes or so later, we stepped out of the tent, and Ritsuka hissed against the sunlight, squinting as he lifted a hand to protect his eyes. Rika looked over at him and grinned.

    "You know, this is a strange feeling," she said. "For once, I''m actually the responsible one. Onii-chan, is this how you feel all the time? Because it''s pretty cool!"

    "Shut up!" Ritsuka hissed at her.

    "Oh, wait until Mom hears about ¡ª"

    She cut off suddenly, grin falling and brow knitting together. Remembering, no doubt, that her parents and her friends weren''t there anymore and wouldn''t be unless we won.

    "Senpai?" Mash asked. "Is something wrong?"

    "I-it''s nothing!" Rika plastered on a grin so brittle it hurt to look at. "Just thinking about all the stuff I''m gonna do when this thing is over, you know! No one at school is gonna believe half of the stuff we got up to!"

    "If you''re even allowed to tell them," I said, pretending not to notice the fragility. "The UN and the Association will probably slap us with so many NDAs you won''t even be able to say the word Singularity."

    Rika looked appropriately horrified.

    "The Association might make you sign a geis scroll instead," Emiya said as he appeared. "If they do that, it''ll make you literally unable to talk about it."

    "That''s a thing?" Rika squawked.

    "You''d be surprised," Emiya told her. "Magi have a number of ways of ensuring compliance. Only the amateurs and the obscenely powerful rely on threats and violence."

    "I wouldn''t worry too much about it right now, Rika," Arash advised as he approached to join us. "We have other things to focus on first, don''t we?"

    "Right," I agreed. "We still have this Singularity to fix, plus four more. We can start thinking about what''s going to happen after once we''ve made sure there''s going to be an after."

    It was on that appropriately sobering thought that Drake found us again. "Ready to set sail, cabin kids?"

    "Cabin kids?" Rika repeated indignantly. "I thought you were following our lead? Doesn''t that make us your boss?"

    "Sure," said Drake, "but it''s still my ship, ain''t it? Means I''m still the one in charge!"

    "Then don''t think of us as being in your chain of command," I said. "Think of us as important patrons you''re escorting. We might tell you where we need to go, but you''re the one in charge of getting everyone there. Does that work for you?"

    Drake waved it off. "Works fine by me! So, important patrons, are you lot ready to set sail?"

    "As I''ll ever be," Ritsuka said miserably.

    "Lead the way, Captain," Arash said.

    With everything packed up and loaded, it was time to head back to the ship ¡ª Drake''s ship, this time, which was anchored on the other side of the island of Gallagher''s. Gallagher and his crew gave us a jaunty, cheery goodbye, and then went their separate ways while Drake, Bombe, and the rest of their crew hauled their camp supplies in almost the complete opposite direction. Our group wound up wedged in the middle, following Drake herself while the other members of the crew formed a surprisingly orderly column around and behind us.

    "Enjoy yourself last night, kiddo?" Bombe teased Ritsuka as we walked.

    "More than I should have," Ritsuka mumbled.

    "Director Animusphere isn''t going to be happy," Mash lamented.

    "If we tell her, you mean," Rika said. "I''m all for tormenting Onii-chan, but there are some things that even I don''t want to subject him to."

    Marie wasn''t that harsh. "She already knows by now. Did you forget that there are technicians watching our vitals every second of every day while we''re here?"

    Frankly, it was more surprising that she hadn''t already called to chew them out. Considering it had been the better part of a day since we''d Rayshifted, though, maybe she was off to lunch or something. Fifteen hours here should be about three back in Chaldea.

    "They''re watching us that closely?" Ritsuka asked.

    "They know your shoe size," I told them both, "and when you stub your toe."

    Rika''s face turned bright red. "Including when I get my¡­ when I get a visit from Aunt Flow?"

    "That, too."

    "Ugh." She hid her face in her hands. "That''s so¡­so¡­"

    "Yeah," her brother agreed, looking a little pale.

    Bombe laughed. "Sounds like you''ve got a strict boss! Right, Boss?"

    "Sounds like you''re saying I''m too easy on you shitstains!" Drake said boisterously. "Bombe, from now on, the punishment for backtalk is being floated in a barrel for half a day!"

    "Right, Boss!" Bombe agreed. "You''re an angel of mercy, Boss!"

    "And for that lip you just gave me, you''re the first one who gets to try it!"

    The crew around us laughed, including Bombe. Like she was everyone''s favorite big sister, none of them took that threat seriously, not even Drake herself.

    Eventually, we came to another beach, filled with white sand and framed on either side by steep cliffs that hid the slope down from view. Gentle waves lapped at the shore and gently licked at the longboats resting there, creating the picturesque scene of an island paradise. And there, sitting slightly out to sea, rocking slowly on the glistening water ¡ª

    "Whoa," said Rika. "Now that''s a ship!"

    A fully sized galleon, with white sails furled and a hull painted in red, black, and gold. It was almost regal, and obviously well cared for, the sort of ship that really did fit a legend like Francis Drake, who had circumnavigated the globe.

    "Ain''t she just?" Drake laughed. "Well, there she is, folks, home sweet home."

    She turned back to us and grinned. "The best ship to come out of England''s docks! The Golden Hind!"

 Chapter LXXXVI: Mysterious Ghost Ship

    Chapter LXXXVI: Mysterious Ghost Ship

    By the time we climbed out of the longboats and up onto the Golden Hind''s deck, Ritsuka was pale and sickly and looked like he had seen much better days. It seemed like all he could do just to keep his mouth shut and that apple he''d had earlier in his stomach, because he hadn''t said anything on the entire trip over.

    Rika was better off, but not as much so as she might have preferred to be. I didn''t blame either of them, because I wasn''t at my best either. I''d been on Dragoncraft and airplanes before, but if I''d ever spent time on the ferry before it was shut down, I was too young to remember it, so I really didn''t have much experience with ships to speak of.

    The one solace was that it wasn''t as bad as it had been aboard Gallagher''s ship. The longboats were equally stomach-churning either way, but the Golden Hind seemed far more stable than whatever Gallagher''s ship was named.

    "Are you okay, Master?" Bradamante asked.

    "Y-yeah," Ritsuka rasped hoarsely. "I-I think¡­I-I should b-be able to handle this."

    He didn''t look it. In fact, he looked like he was about five seconds from racing over to the side so he could strip a few layers of paint off the wood.

    Mash sighed. "I''m sorry, Senpai, but this is the consequence of drinking so much last night." She grimaced. "A-although being on a ship is taking some getting used to."

    "Ha! Now I know you brats have never sailed before!" Drake laughed. "Don''t you worry, though! I''m sure you''ll find your sea legs. Eventually."

    "Hopefully sooner than later," Rika groused. "If I have to spend this entire Singularity seasick, I''m going to mutiny."

    Drake laughed and stepped away towards the center of the ship''s main deck. "Everyone onboard?" she bellowed.

    "Aye, Cap''n!" Bombe shouted back. "Crew aboard, longboats secured! We''re ready to set sail!"

    "Well, look at that!" Drake grinned. "Looks like you useless scumbags can get moving in a timely manner after all!"

    The crew roared with laughter, and Drake strode over to climb up to the upper deck towards the back of the ship ¡ª whatever it was called ¡ª so she could take the wheel, a sturdy thing that looked like it had been reinforced with a brass frame.

    "All right, you rotten scallywags!" she called. "We''re setting sail! Time to cast off and say goodbye to this half-assed paradise!"

    "AYE, AYE, CAP''N!" the crew shouted back.

    The sails unfurled, and the ship lurched into motion, making us Masters stumble as we tried to keep our footing. Arash steadied me, and Rika flung her arms around Emiya''s as Mash helped Ritsuka stay standing.

    "Whoa!" Rika squealed. Her brother groaned and held a hand to his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut.

    "T-try to stay calm, Master," Mash told him. "It''s important to stay hydrated and maintain proper nutrition while out at sea, so you can''t afford to waste the food you had earlier."

    Ritsuka nodded shallowly, but even that seemed like it was nearly too much for his stomach to handle.

    Emiya huffed. "Well, this isn''t exactly how I imagined this Singularity going, although I guess I should''ve known better." He looked down at Rika. "You alright there, Master? If you need to lie down, I''m sure Captain Drake wouldn''t mind me projecting a hammock for you."

    "Oh, sure, make fun of us squishy mortals," Rika grumbled. "Servants don''t have to worry about getting seasick, do they? I wonder if a Command Spell can change that."

    "I-I don''t think that''s a good idea, Master," Bradamante said with an awkward chuckle. "The Madam Director might not approve."

    "She wouldn''t," I agreed, "and you wouldn''t like some of the things she might come up with as punishment."

    "It was just a joke," Rika muttered. "Geez. Lighten up a little."

    I guess I needed to work on my delivery a little if she didn''t realize mine was, too, although not as much of one as she would have liked.

    Marie''s worst punishment tended to be termination ¡ª of your employment. It also tended to be her first punishment, because she took everything about Chaldea with deathly seriousness and treated it like the high stakes job it was. With Masters, however, she had a bit more leeway, because she had the latitude to do things like make us run more drills in the simulator or do more Rayshift compatibility tests. More than one candidate during my two years of training had washed out because that took too much out of them.

    Arash shook his head. "Well, there''s not much we can do about the seasickness thing. Sorry to say that it really is just something you''re going to have to get used to, Rika."

    "Ugh." She grunted, and then slid a sidelong look at her brother. "Well, I guess it could be worse. I could be hungover, too, couldn''t I?"

    Ritsuka opened his eyes long enough to lance her with a glare, unamused.

    I let that one pass, just because she was right. She had been the more responsible one last night, and she was reaping the benefits of that now, even if her brother didn''t appreciate it. It was actually kind of funny to see the metaphorical shoe on the other foot, especially after three Singularities where I wouldn''t have guessed it would work out this way.

    I guess fear of Marie''s wrath really did work as a motivator. I''d have to let her know later on.

    The Golden Hind pulled away from the nameless island Drake had been camped out on, and the wind picked up as we left the beach behind, carrying the ship out to sea even faster under a sunny, cloudless sky. The nostalgic smell of saltwater spray filled the air, as stale as it was familiar.

    And of course, the further we got from the island, the more viable targets for my powers diminished, and it wasn''t long at all before the last giant crab slipped away and there was nothing left ¡ª I was back to my normal, human senses. At least that told me something about how deep the waters were here.

    Once we were out on the open ocean, however, things quickly got very samey. There wasn''t much to look at when there was water in every direction and nothing else, and it struck me then exactly how much math and planning there must have been involved in navigation, especially back in Drake''s day. When you didn''t have any landmarks except for the stars, following a map was probably as much about knowing how far you had to go and how fast you were getting there as it was anything else.

    A little bit of fiddling with my communicator opened up the map Da Vinci had prepared for us, the last, most up to date scan of the Singularity''s layout. The tracking function showed a small, red dot moving slowly northeast, leaving behind a slowly fading trail of dash marks from a relatively small island that could only be Drake''s "paradise."

    Further on in front of us, however, there was another island, barely larger than the one we''d just left, with what looked like a mountainous ridge that formed a crescent shaped shell around its beach.

    When I leaned out over the side of the ship, I saw no such thing on the horizon.

    "Senpai?" Rika asked. "Is something wrong?"

    I looked over to Arash instead of answering her and pointed up at the crow''s nest. "Can you see anything about where we''re headed?"

    Arash held up a finger, and then he vanished. Rika squawked.

    "I thought we had rules about that!"

    "In Chaldea," Emiya drawled. "Out here, it''s too useful to be too polite about it."

    A moment later, I saw Arash reappear up in the crow''s nest, startling the guy who was already up there, and he took a second to steady the man before he looked out ahead of us, scanning the horizon in every direction. Once he''d decided he''d seen as much as he was going to, he disappeared again and reappeared with our group. This time, everyone was expecting it, so no one was surprised.

    "I couldn''t see the actual island," he told us apologetically. "There''s some kind of distortion up ahead, a mist or a fog that''s too thick to see through."

    Bombe, who had apparently been paying close enough attention to overhear us, didn''t seem surprised. "Aye, that sounds about right," he said. "Things have been strange out here on these waters."

    "Strange how?" I asked, turning towards him.

    "One minute, we''re sailing through a tropical paradise," he said. "The next, we be making our way through the chill of the North Atlantic. Before we can get our bearings, we''re in Mediterranean waters, and a typhoon is trying to sweep us away. Things be wild out here, wilder than anything I''ve seen afore, I assure you."

    "Bombe, stop your lollygagging!" Drake barked from the wheel. "Get your ass back to work!"

    "Aye, Boss!" Bombe replied dutifully. "Just letting our guests here know some more about the crazy seas afoot!"

    "They''ll learn well enough when they see it firsthand!"

    Taking that as dismissal, Bombe scampered off and went back to what he was doing before he stopped to talk to us. Our group huddled back together again, and although he still wasn''t in great shape, Ritsuka seemed to have improved a little since we first climbed aboard.

    "So what does this mean?" he asked, still a little queasy.

    "It means that we need to be ready for anything," I said. "Let''s go see if Drake has any better idea what we''ll be facing."

    "Right behind you, Senpai!" said Rika.

    We broke apart, and I led our motley crew up the main deck and towards the wheel, where Drake arched an eyebrow at us.

    "Don''t tell me a little mystery frightens you?" she teased.

    A little bit of fiddling brought up the map again, and Drake whistled as she got a look at it. "Damn," she said. "I caught a glimpse last night when you were talking to that boss of yours, but I had no idea you had a map in that little doodad, too!"

    I zoomed in and pointed out the little red dot. "This is us." Scrolling up, I focused in on the island we were headed towards. "This is where we''re headed right now. Know anything about it?"

    "Can''t say that I do," Drake said. "We haven''t been out on these seas all that long, and things were real screwy for a while there. Even if we had been to that island before, it might not be the same one anymore, get me?"

    My lips pulled into a scowl. So it wasn''t just the scanners having trouble, this place really had been shifting around and changing up until we got here, and there was no telling if it would stay the same the entire time either.

    "So Miss Da Vinci was right," Mash mumbled.

    "You have no idea what to expect then?" I asked.

    "Nothing solid," said Drake. "I met a few of those invincible bastards ¡ª Servants you called ''em, right? Managed to fight them off all by my lonesome, but if they''ve got a base around these islands, well, I ain''t found it, that''s for sure."

    "These Servants have names?"

    Drake shrugged, which, yeah, that was probably about what I should have expected. We''d gotten used to the Servants we ran into broadcasting their identities to anyone and everyone who would listen, but tactically, in a situation like this one, it made sense for them to hide who they were. They weren''t Romulus recruiting soldiers and citizens for his new Rome, after all, or Jeanne Alter crowing her revenge from every rooftop she could find. Keeping their names secret was a much larger advantage to them in this case.

    "Bombe said something about the seas changing wildly around here," Arash said. "Something about shifting between tropical and arctic at the drop of a hat?"

    "Aye," said Drake, frowning. "Unpredictable, they are. They change almost randomly, and for no reason, to boot. Plays merry havoc on the weather, but not nearly as much as it should."

    "No typhoons or hurricanes?" Emiya asked. "Even someone like me knows that temperature differentials like that should cause all sorts of nasty stuff."

    "Should, but they don''t," said Drake. "It''s like someone mashed together all the oceans in the world and told ''em to play nice."

    "I mean, do we really want to make a big deal out of that?" asked Rika. "I, for one, really like the idea of not being bashed against the nearest rock by kamikaze."

    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    Drake and I both looked over at her. "What?"

    What did Japanese suicide bombers have to do with this?

    "In the late thirteenth century, the Mongols attempted to invade Japan," Mash recited. "However, midway through the fighting, a powerful typhoon struck and destroyed a large portion of the invasion fleet, and the Mongol leaders retreated, leaving thousands of stranded soldiers to die. The Japanese, viewing the typhoon as divine intervention, named it kamikaze, or Divine Wind."

    "That''s the basic gist of it, yeah," Ritsuka agreed.

    "Ha!" Drake grinned. "Bunch of pansies! Scared of some wind and a little choppy water? What kind of sailor quits that easily?"

    The kind that didn''t want to sink more resources and men into a fight that had already cost them too much of both to be worth it. Superstition about the wrath of gods had probably played at least some part in it.

    "Leaving that aside," I said, "have you noticed any other¡­strangeness about this ocean?"

    "Nothing that exciting," Drake answered. "Just gotta keep your wits about you. Fortunately, you''re sailing with Francis Drake! I ain''t met a storm yet that''s beat me!"

    "Master." Arash nudged me, and when I turned towards him, he jerked his head over towards the side, where, with a jolt, I saw a rolling mist creeping along the water.

    Had we reached it already? No, we couldn''t have. We were moving fairly fast, but not that fast. That mist he''d seen earlier should still be a few miles off.

    "Brrr!" Rika said, hugging herself. "Is it me, or did the temperature just drop, like, ten degrees? Centigrade, I mean, not that wacky Fahrenheit stuff America uses."

    It wasn''t just her, I felt it, too.

    "See what I mean?" Drake asked pointedly. "Changes out of the blue."

    Up above, the sky darkened suddenly as clouds rolled in out of nowhere, thick and ominous. They gathered together swiftly, and in less than a minute, they''d blotted out the sun, casting the entire ship in a sort of dim twilight.

    "Is¡­this part of those sudden changes?" Ritsuka asked worriedly.

    Drake nodded. "Seen crazier since we got here, kiddo, trust me."

    The mist creeping along the water grew thicker and rose higher and higher, slowly climbing up the side of the ship. Up on the masts, the sails suddenly whipped about, flipping in every direction as the wind spun, and our speed dropped like a stone. Drake frowned.

    "Oi, Bombe!" she shouted down. "Bring us down to half-sail! Something freaky''s going on!"

    "Aye, Boss!" Bombe shouted back, and the crew adjusted the sail, pulling it up until it was only halfway open. The ship slowed even further until we were basically drifting along from our own momentum.

    "Oh, geez," Rika wheezed, "I''ve seen this movie before! The comedic relief always goes first!"

    "You''re worrying too much, Master," Emiya said. "This is real life, not a horror movie."

    Despite his words, however, he held his hands loose, fingers splayed, ready to summon his preferred weapons at any moment.

    "What''s got you all in a tizzy?" Drake asked. "Just more of the usual shit. Give it a minute and it''ll pass."

    "Master," Arash said sharply, looking about.

    "Yeah."

    I wasn''t the only one who found this suspicious. The only question was, who was coming, and what were they after?

    Slowly, I reached down and took hold of the hilt of my dagger.

    Beep-beep!

    "S-rva-t de ¡ª" was all Romani managed to get out, and then the feed cut and his image disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

    "Okay, now I''m worried," said Ritsuka.

    The ship lurched, and we all stumbled as we tried to stay standing. Arash braced me, and Emiya braced Rika, but Ritsuka fell to his knees and Mash nearly joined him. Bradamante helped them both back to their feet.

    "W-what was that?" Mash asked frantically.

    "The Hell?" Drake tried to turn the wheel, but it refused to budge. "Something caught the rudder?"

    Up above, the sails suddenly went slack as the wind settled, and down below, the mist crept onto the deck, wafting over our ankles gently, but so cold that it sapped the warmth from anything it touched. A shiver shuddered reflexively down my spine.

    "Boss!" Bombe called.

    "I know!" Drake shouted back. "Fuck! Keep an eye out! Something screwy is going on here!"

    By now, the mist had become a fog so thick that anything further out than fifteen feet or so from the ship was all but invisible ¡ª the perfect time to ambush us and take us by surprise.

    The only question was, who? I wasn''t an expert on maritime heroes, but I knew enough of them to know that it wasn''t likely any of them could control the weather like this. It was too close to a Divine Spirit''s territory, something Poseidon or some other sea god could do, like an Authority. If that was the case, had he followed Drake here after she stole his Grail?

    I wished we could rule that out.

    Mash gasped and spun about, her shield materializing in her hands. "Enemy Servant det ¡ª"

    The word died on her tongue before she could finish it, because out of the mist sailed a ship, a ghastly thing coated in barnacles and strips of some kind of stringy plants that glowed with an ethereal light, casting a faint, ghostly sheen over the hull''s faded paint. The ragged sails remained full and filled, despite the lack of wind and the many rips and holes in them, and yet it crept along at a snail''s pace.

    It made no move to attack. None of the cannons were out, and the course it was maintaining would bring it past us, but not on a ramming run. Against all reason, it¡­didn''t seem hostile.

    "Holy shit," Rika breathed. "No way."

    "Master," said Arash, something like a question in his voice. He hadn''t yet summoned his bow, but he was ready to the instant I gave the word.

    "Just¡­"

    My instinct was to strike preemptively, before we were attacked first, but this wasn''t like with Jeanne Alter, who had actually tried to kill us in Orl¨¦ans. Whatever or whoever this was, they hadn''t done a single thing to give us reason to think they were an enemy. They weren''t taking an offensive posture at all, but neither were they trying to be particularly friendly, and I just didn''t know what to make of that.

    And as the ship came close, we could finally see the deck and the phantoms that worked atop it, faint impressions of human beings that only seemed halfway there. A low, droning sound echoed eerily off of them ¡ª a work song, I realized, a sea shanty.

    "Haul on the bowline," they chorused, flat and dead, "the bully ship''s a-rolling. Haul on the bowline, bowline hauling."

    The ghostly crew shuffled about, going through the motions of the jobs they''d had in life, and they were completely oblivious to us. For all they cared, we were the ghosts, no more substantial than air and no more worthy of attention. I wasn''t sure they would have noticed if one of our Servants killed one of them.

    "Fuck me running," Drake breathed.

    But it was the captain who stood apart from the rest, a tall, gangly, much more solid figure in ratty, tattered pirate garb, complete with tricorn hat, manning the wheel. His skin was pale and washed out, as though it had been completely drained of blood, and strips of blackened seaweed hung from his gaunt face in place of a beard or hair, framing milky white eyes that seemed to stare not at us, but through us.

    He didn''t speak. He said nothing as his ship came within spitting distance of the Golden Hind and slowly sailed past. He just watched, turning that dead, piercing stare on each and every one of us one at a time, like he was looking for something and didn''t care as long as we didn''t have it.

    BANG was the sound of someone firing a shot, but the round flew wide, passing through ship and crew alike as though they weren''t even there. The silent captain remained unfazed and unbothered, and then, at last, he turned away, and his ghostly ship sailed off back into the fog. Between one heartbeat and the next, it was gone, disappeared, as though it had never been there in the first place.

    "E-enemy Servant¡­disappeared, Master," Mash said into the silence.

    "A real, live ghost ship!" said Bradamante. "I never thought I''d actually see one!"

    "That one of your ''invincible guys?''" I asked Drake.

    "No," Drake replied. "Think I would''ve remembered a spooky fucker like that."

    "He didn''t attack," Arash remarked.

    "Then what did he want?" Emiya asked.

    Maybe, just like back in Fuyuki, "Reconnaissance."

    Arash hummed thoughtfully. "Scoping out the competition?"

    It would explain a lot of what just happened. He might not have been so confident he could take us all out when we had three Servants on our side, plus Drake, who was nearly as good as one. There was no telling what those phantoms on his ship could do, but there was no way they matched up to the quality we had on our side. He almost certainly figured that out.

    "Maybe he was like C¨²chulainn," Ritsuka suggested shakily. "He wanted to see who we were and what we''re doing before deciding if we were enemies or not."

    "H-he didn''t have to be so creepy about it!" Rika exclaimed.

    "He didn''t say a word," Bradamante added. "That''s poor form for negotiations!"

    "Maybe he couldn''t," Mash suggested. "We''ve already encountered Berserkers who communicate in strange ways, Master, Miss Taylor. Maybe he has a skill that prevents him from speaking in coherent sentences."

    It would be inconvenient, if it was true. After all, if he was an ally, or even just unaligned with whoever the enemy was, then how were we supposed to negotiate his help or even work together at all? If he had a skill like Mad Enhancement, then it was entirely possible he wouldn''t be able to understand us either, which shut down just about any hope of meaningful communication at all.

    Just as important was another question.

    "Do you have any idea who that was, Captain Drake?"

    "Can''t say that I do," Drake said. "Like I said, I would''ve remembered a spooky fucker like that. Never heard of a legend about that sort of guy either."

    "I-I need my jar of dirt!" Rika blurted out.

    "Rika," her brother began wearily. She shook her head wildly.

    "No, Onii-chan," she said, stressing the next part, "I need my jar of dirt."

    For a second, he stared at her, brow furrowed, and then the confusion morphed into realization. "You think¡­that was Davy Jones?"

    "Davy Jones?" Drake echoed, bemused.

    "Yeah!" Rika nodded. "I mean, I was expecting him to be more¡­" She put her hand under her chin, palm down, and waggled her fingers. "Tentacle-y, you know? Maybe a little Bill Nighy in there. But who else could it be?"

    "I¡­can''t think of anyone," Ritsuka admitted.

    Emiya sighed. "Master. That movie franchise wasn''t historically accurate at all."

    "So it''s a character from a movie?" Arash asked.

    "I''m sure the legend predates the movie by more than a few years," I said, "but I''m not sure you can say a real Davy Jones ever existed."

    Emiya arched an eyebrow at me, and although he didn''t say anything, I got his point. Yeah. Heroic Spirits. Solid proof any individual one existed wasn''t always available. Just because he was treated as a sailor''s superstition in the modern day didn''t mean there was never a being called "Davy Jones" who did such things as ferry those lost at sea to the afterlife.

    "Are there no other possibilities?" Bradamante asked.

    Unfortunately, I couldn''t think of any. There were plenty of pirates and sailors in general famous for dying in a storm or from their ship sinking, but that didn''t really explain the ghastly, ghostly appearance of our mystery man, nor the seaweed hair and beard. If you wanted to try and stretch it, maybe Jonah from the Biblical story about the whale, but he had no business being dressed in those sorts of clothes. Too close to modern.

    The sails up above suddenly snapped to full as a brisk wind swept down across the deck, and the ship lurched into motion. Ahead of us, the mist began to clear, slinking away across the water, and the clouds blocking the sun dispersed, evaporating into nothingness.

    "Look!" said Mash. "Things are returning to normal!"

    And she was right. The Golden Hind exited the cloud of mist to the bright, sunny day atop a calm, placid sea that it had been before we entered it. Strangely enough, although the mist had rolled over the ship while we were still many miles out from the island we''d been aiming towards, somehow, we were now within metaphorical spitting distance.

    Beep-beep!

    Romani''s image appeared in a flicker of static. "Thank goodness, you''re all okay! When we lost contact with you so suddenly, I was afraid something seriously bad had happened!"

    Marie pushed him aside so that she could glare at us through the camera. "What happened?" she demanded. "We detected a Servant, but there wasn''t any increase in magical energy expenditure. Where did it go?"

    "He¡­left," I said simply, for lack of anything better.

    Marie recoiled, confused. "He left?"

    "Serious horror movie stuff, Boss Lady!" Rika chimed in. "That spooky jerk just rode up and stared at us without even saying hi!"

    Marie blinked, still confused. "What?"

    "We encountered an unknown Servant, Director," Mash reported dutifully. "No direct contact was made. It seems he was here only to observe us."

    "What do you mean, observe?" Marie asked. "What kind of Servant even was he?"

    "Some kind of pirate," I answered. "He didn''t match any obvious descriptions of famous pirates ¡ª"

    "It was Davy Jones!" Rika interrupted.

    "¡ª but his appearance is distinctive enough that it shouldn''t be too hard to figure out who he is."

    "Come on, Senpai!" Rika complained. "It was Davy Jones! It has to be!"

    "Don''t be ludicrous," Marie snapped impatiently. "Davy Jones is just an urban legend, an old maritime superstition. The basis for his actual existence is too flimsy to produce a Heroic Spirit!"

    Rika shook her head vigorously. "You didn''t see him, Boss Lady! He had seaweed for hair and everything!"

    "I''ll give you a better description later," I promised Marie. "As far as what he wanted, he didn''t speak, he just looked at us. It''s possible that he can''t talk for one reason or another, but he may have been performing reconnaissance."

    On principle, I had to agree with Rika, that it was entirely possible our mystery man was Davy Jones. In practice, though, I agreed more with Marie. It wasn''t necessarily as impossible as she was saying, but the only reason I was even giving it that much weight was because of just how unusual he looked.

    If a Servant''s appearance could be dictated by the manner of their death, then Arash would have been summoned on death''s door, his body torn to shreds from his famous shot.

    On the other hand, there were skills that could change a Servant''s appearance. If he was a Berserker, Mad Enhancement would neatly explain away both his appearance and his apparent inability to speak.

    "Reconnaissance?" Marie asked. "A scouting party?"

    "Or he was a stray who was coming to see who we were and check if we were a threat," I said. "He didn''t give us any indication either way."

    "Class?" she asked.

    I shook my head a little, frowning. "I didn''t get a good look. Given the ship he was on, though? Rider or Berserker, probably."

    Marie made a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat. "That doesn''t exactly narrow it down, does it? Just about every sailor to ever make it to the Throne is going to be either a Rider or a Berserker."

    "I suppose there aren''t many pirates famous for being master swordsmen, are there?" Mash said thoughtfully.

    "Hell no!" Drake said. "Give me cannons and a good flintlock any day of the week!"

    "Somehow, that suits you perfectly, Captain Drake," Bradamante commented.

    "Course it does! I''m the one who said it, aren''t I?"

    "Leaving that aside," said Marie, eyeing Drake dubiously, "we''ll begin cross referencing the description of the Servant you encountered with our records here at Chaldea. If there is a Heroic Spirit matching that appearance anywhere in recorded history, we''ll be able to match him up with a true name."

    "Get a jar of dirt, too!" Rika said.

    Emiya sighed. "Master," he said, "that was invented for those movies. Even if it is Davy Jones, nothing in them will be relevant to his actual strengths and weaknesses."

    Rika looked at him askance. "Isn''t that how Heroic Spirits work? They''re, um, what was the word Hot Pops used¡­"

    "Ameliorated," Ritsuka supplied helpfully.

    "That''s it!" She snapped her fingers. "Aren''t Heroic Spirits ameliorated by common beliefs held by a bunch of people?"

    "That''s¡­" A complicated expression crossed Emiya''s face. "That wasn''t exactly what he meant when he explained that to you, Master."

    "It''s because they''re modern movies that it doesn''t work like that," Marie said, sounding like it was taking every last ounce of her patience to explain. "And anyway, it doesn''t matter, because Davy Jones doesn''t exist!"

    Rika looked ready to defend her belief with her dying breath, so I cut in to keep things from devolving any further.

    "Are there any readings we need to concern ourselves about on the island ahead of us?"

    Marie took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, forcing herself to calm back down. Once she''d regained her even keel, she told us, "There are some anomalous readings on the island itself, but nothing of the scale of Captain Drake''s Holy Grail, and there''s no detectable Saint Graph. Whatever it is that''s on the island, it''s not a Servant."

    "It''s probably some low grade Phantasmals," Romani supplied from off screen. "Something on a similar level to that giant hermit crab from earlier."

    Ah. I should have expected them to have seen that. I''d been so caught up in the fact that I could even do it that I hadn''t considered what implications it would have back at Chaldea.

    "Nothing for us to worry about, then," Arash said with a smile, coming to my rescue.

    Marie huffed. "For four Servants and a¡­whatever it is that''s going on with Captain Drake? Of course not."

    "CAP''N!" Bombe''s voice suddenly called.

    "Aye, I see it!" Drake shouted back. "Keep us at half sail, Bombe! Let''s ease into this one nice and slow! No need to risk running aground after we''ve gotten this far!"

    "Aye, Cap''n!"

    "It sounds like you''re about to find out what it is that''s making that island home," Marie said.

    "We''ll contact Chaldea as soon as we''ve finished investigating it," I said. Marie nodded, but before she could cut the connection, I went on, "One last thing, Director."

    "Yes?"

    "Captain Drake''s Holy Grail is an unlimited source of food and drink," I said, and she didn''t quite follow where I was going with that yet. "If Da Vinci can find the room, it might be worth it to send some of it back to Chaldea every time we stop for the day."

    Marie''s eyes went wide.

    "That could solve every single one of our supply problems overnight!" Romani exclaimed excitedly.

    "I-I''ll bring it up with Da Vinci!" Marie said. "Taylor, you¡­!"

    I could tell she wanted to say it. She was absolutely bursting to proclaim for everyone to hear, ''this is why you''re Team A''s Ace Master!'' and it was only her pride and her sensibilities that were keeping her from actually saying it.

    "We''ll be in touch again soon."

    Marie nodded. "R-right!"

    The connection cut, and I let my arm fall back to my side.

    "Pretty smart," Arash said. "Good thinking, Taylor."

    "Maybe this will mean I can put more variety into my cooking," Emiya said wryly. "I wouldn''t say no to the chance to branch out, so to speak."

    "More Emiya goodness?" said Rika. "Yes, please!"

    Ritsuka sighed ruefully. "He really is spoiling us."

    "Maybe we can even expand Servant meal days into twice a week instead of just once!" Bradamante added eagerly. "Or even thrice a week! O-oh, Master, that would be delightful!"

    She looked like she was vibrating with excitement just thinking about it. There was even a little bit of drool in the corner of her mouth.

    Good grief.

    A shout among the crew down below preceded the sails being fully drawn, and then there was a heavy splash, as of something large and weighty landing in the water.

    "Anchor''s set, Cap''n!" Bombe reported. "All set to go ashore!"

    Drake turned to us with a grin. "Alright, esteemed guests, ready to go and see what all of the fuss is about on this island?"

    Ritsuka looked over at the longboats, grimacing, his face going a little pale. His throat bobbed as he swallowed whatever it was he thought about saying.

    The longboats weren''t comfortable, so I couldn''t entirely blame him, but it wasn''t like we could swim to shore.

    "Let''s," I said.

    "Yeah," Rika agreed reluctantly. "Just¡­Senpai, this time? If there''s giant crabs? Don''t make us eat them. Please."

    I didn''t have the heart to tell her that there very much was.

 Chapter LXXXVII: Spirit of Adventure

    Chapter LXXXVII: Spirit of Adventure

    "LAND!" Rika cried as she threw herself onto the sand.

    "Master?" Bradamante asked, confused.

    "Are you planning on doing that for every island we visit?" Emiya drawled.

    Ritsuka, who was looking much better than he had a few hours ago, sighed. "Yes, she probably is."

    "She''s done that before?" Drake asked, amused.

    Rika rolled over, spreadeagle on the beach. "You can''t stop me!"

    "You don''t have any right to complain about all of the sand you''ll be fishing out of your clothes, then," I said mildly.

    She sighed. "I hate sand. It''s rough, coarse, and it gets everywhere."

    I closed my eyes briefly and held my tongue. I should have expected that it was only a matter of time until Rika started pulling out the prequel memes.

    "But¡­you''re lying on the beach, Senpai," said Mash, confused.

    "She''s making another reference," Ritsuka explained wearily. "One that doesn''t have anything to do with pirates, this time."

    Rika stuck her tongue out at him.

    Emiya shrugged and shook his head with mock exasperation. "You''d think she could at least stick to a theme if she was going to keep cracking those sorts of jokes."

    "Themes are for amateurs," she declared as though she was the authority on such things. I was pretty sure a professional comedian would have disagreed.

    "Well, fun and games aside¡­" Drake stepped forward, skirting around Rika only as much as she had to in order to avoid stepping on her, and she looked about the empty beach. "This dump sure is pretty boring, ain''t it? And here I thought we might actually find some clues about where this Grail you''re looking for is hanging around!"

    "There isn''t really all that much here," I agreed.

    I didn''t have the entire island under my range, but I had enough of it to get a decent grasp on what was there, and it truly was fairly limited. The insect population was robust enough, if not particularly diverse, but there wasn''t really much else in terms of local fauna ¡ª ironically, it was mostly a handful of parrots of a species I didn''t immediately recognize. The terrain probably had a hand in that, because once you got off the beach, the forest didn''t go on for very long before the island turned sharply upwards.

    That ridge I noticed when I was looking at the map earlier. It dominated a larger portion of the island than I originally thought.

    "Aw, man!" Rika whined. "So this stop was just a huge waste of time?"

    "I''m not detecting any Servants within the vicinity," Mash reported. "I''m sorry, Senpai. It looks like there really isn''t anything here."

    "I guess we can''t find someone like Captain Drake on every stop we make," Arash said with a wry smile.

    "Of course not!" Drake said boisterously, laughing. "That said, you sure there ain''t anything worth finding on this island? Even if it ain''t much, there''s more to it than this beach, isn''t there? Plenty of places to hide treasure!"

    And if we dug up the entire island looking for treasure, we''d be here for a decade.

    "Sure enough," I answered. "If someone hid treasure here, then we''re not going to be finding it anytime in the next century."

    "You sure about that?" Drake asked skeptically.

    "If anyone buried treasure on this island, they didn''t do us the courtesy of leaving a big, red ''X'' to mark the spot," I said dryly.

    There weren''t any areas of conspicuously upturned soil either. Nothing large enough that it could be actual buried treasure, at least. At best, it was probably one of the local birds digging for worms.

    "Geez!" said Rika. She dug her hand into the sand; it slipped through her fingers faster than she could grab it. "It''s not a pirate adventure without booty to plunder!"

    "Not that kind of booty," Ritsuka rushed to add when Drake opened her mouth ¡ª no doubt, about to make a saucy remark about how she''d offered to let us plunder her booty last night.

    "It does seem like a bit of a waste, though," Arash remarked.

    It wasn''t like it could ever have been that easy. The idea that we could solve the Singularity in an afternoon was nothing more than idle fantasy and wishful thinking.

    "I guess we¡­just head back to the Golden Hind?" Mash said uncertainly.

    I shook my head. "Not just yet." And then I lifted my wrist, the one I had my communicator on. "As long as we''re here, we might as well ¡ª"

    Beep-beep!

    Before I could use it to contact Chaldea, however, Chaldea contacted us.

    "Everyone," said Romani, voice only this time, "we''re getting a few strange readings from that island you''re on right now."

    My brow furrowed. "Strange readings?"

    "What kind of strange readings, Doctor?" asked Ritsuka.

    "Really unusual ones," said Romani. "It''s not a Servant, but whatever it is, it doesn''t read quite like a Phantasmal either. The structure is human, but it''s not¡­really a living thing. I''m sorry, I can''t really explain it."

    Rika climbed to her feet without seeming to care at all about the sand dusting her skirt and stockings. "On the island? Like, with us?"

    I stretched out with my powers, scouring the island for any sign of what Romani might be talking about. I hadn''t seen anything special before, but it wasn''t like my coverage was perfect or without holes, so it wasn''t impossible that I''d missed something.

    "Yes," Romani replied, "and they seem to be heading right ¡ª"

    "Wait." My brow furrowed. "Where the hell did they come from?"

    Everyone''s head swiveled in my direction. "They?" the twins asked, confused.

    I pointed over at the forest, really not much more than a thick copse of trees that formed a sort of natural division of the island into three segments, just in time for a man in ragged sailor''s garb to stumble out onto the beach.

    "Treasure!" he moaned, turning towards us with cutlass in hand.

    "Loot!" another cried, coming out behind the first.

    "Silver!"

    "Gold!"

    "Booty!"

    More and more arrived, swelling the ranks until an army of about fifty "pirates" stood at the edge of the forest, all in varying clothes from different eras and different cultures. Some were Indian, some European, some were Middle Eastern, and there were even a few Chinese and Japanese in there, although they were far outnumbered.

    "Treasure!" the first said again.

    "Treasure!" the rest echoed. "Treasure! Treasure!"

    "Uh," said Rika, "guys¡­? I''m gonna go out on a limb here and say they want something."

    Deliberately, I avoided looking at Drake. The Grail. It was the only thing of real value that we had in our group, so it only made sense that it was what they were after.

    "I thought this island was abandoned," Ritsuka said faintly.

    "It was," I told them. "These guys came out of nowhere. Literally."

    "That''s them," Romani''s voice crackled through my communicator. "That''s the source of this strange reading. Whatever they are, they''re human, they''re not alive, and they''re not Servants. It''s almost like they''re¡­shells of some kind. Containers? Filled with¡­with stuff. Some kind of pirate stuff."

    "You''re telling me we''re about to fight Tupperware?" Rika asked incredulously.

    The first pirate lifted his sword. "TREASURE!"

    The rest of them lifted their swords, too. "TREASURE!"

    And then they did the most predictable thing ever: they charged down the beach at us, waving their swords about like flags.

    "We can worry about what they are later!" I said. I lifted my arm and took aim. "Right now, worry about putting them down first!"

    "Right!"

    My first shot missed the lead pirate when he stumbled in the sand, but the one immediately behind him staggered, fell, and burst apart before he could hit the ground, just like a Servant.

    Not alive, not a Servant, but still human. Whatever they were, one good hit was enough to deal with them.

    BANG was the sound of one of Drake''s flintlocks, and another of the charging pirates disappeared. Arash and Emiya''s arrows were silent by comparison, and even though they did the pirates the courtesy of aiming for disabling shots instead of lethal ones, it didn''t seem to make much difference. Each pirate took only one good hit before he was dispelled.

    "GANDR!" the twins shouted, and they didn''t hesitate to fire into the crowd either.

    Even if they''d been spending much more time learning magecraft with El-Melloi II and honing their bodies with A¨ªfe, their aim was just as good as it was the last time I had a session with them. A brief flash of pride shot through my chest ¡ª had they kept up their practice in their free time?

    "Hey!" Rika said. "They''re just like Shadow Clones!"

    Ritsuka didn''t comment, but his brow furrowed a little at the reference, whatever it was she was actually referring to, as he fired off another shot.

    One by one, we mowed them down. With flintlock, arrow, or Gandr, it didn''t matter which, they all disappeared the same way when hit. Bradamante and Mash stood defensively in front of us ¡ª unnecessarily, it turned out, because none of the pirates got close enough to warrant them needing to defend us.

    It was almost anticlimactic. An army of pirates, and they all went down like so much chaff.

    "Is that all of them?" Ritsuka asked when the last one dissipated.

    "I''m not seeing any more."

    "The reading is gone," Romani supplied helpfully, "so it looks like you''ve handled all of them successfully. Good job, everyone."

    "It''s not like it was all that hard," Rika muttered.

    "Romani," I began, "what were those?"

    Romani sighed breezily. "I''m not even really sure how to explain them. Based upon the readings, they were actually physical enough that you could have beaten them without needing spells, magecraft, or Servants. As in, they were close enough to human that an ordinary bullet could have dispersed their structure, but they weren''t quite human enough to actually have souls?"

    "They were materialized concepts," Marie broke in suddenly.

    "Concepts?" Drake asked, confused. "How does that work? More of this magical mumbo jumbo?"

    "Oh, I understand now!" Romani said. "Yeah, that makes sense, doesn''t it?"

    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

    "Hello?" said Rika. "Home team? Exposition time? What makes sense?"

    "As Romani said earlier, they''re like shells," Marie explained. "They''re human-shaped bundles of ideas and vague wills, drawn here ¡ª likely by the Grail, or perhaps as a result of there being two of them. They''re spiritual bodies etched with the memories of sailors and pirates from the Age of Exploration, little more than puppets animated by a vague desire to seek treasure. As such, they can only act in accordance with that singular drive, so they''re not complete enough to negotiate or communicate with like a normal person."

    So they were kind of like ghosts, filled with the regrets of sailors who sought their fortunes and failed. Kind of. In that case, it was just like Romani had said: they weren''t alive, they weren''t Servants, but in the vaguest of senses, they were human.

    "That''s possible?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Under normal circumstances, no!" Marie grunted. "Ugh! But this Singularity is even more messed up than normal, so even things that are far outside the norm become things that can actually happen. The important part is that they''re not people, so you''re not killing anyone if you destroy them, got it? There''s no reason to feel guilty or hold back!"

    Mash let out a relieved sigh. "Thank goodness. They were just disappearing whenever we hit them, so I wasn''t sure, but it''s good to know no one is actually getting hurt."

    "Can we expect more of them?" I asked.

    "As long as this Singularity exists, the conditions for their existence remain," Marie answered grimly. "You''re likely to encounter more of them in the future, and as the distortion continues, it''s even possible they might grow stronger, or even have their own ships. Not strong enough to match a Servant," she added hastily, "but strong enough that they won''t go down in a single hit."

    If it came to that, we were just going to have to rely on our Servants to handle the issue. An army of pirates that took several solid hits to go down was probably something that our Gandr wasn''t going to pack enough punch for.

    On the other hand, if they were physical enough for blunt force to do the job, well, they should be physical enough to drown in bugs, shouldn''t they?

    "It''s unfortunate, but that''s how it is," Romani said ruefully. "So everyone be careful, okay? Just because they''re not that strong doesn''t mean that''s an excuse to get reckless!"

    "Right!" Mash and the twins said together.

    "Ah, don''t worry so much!" Drake said cheerfully, waving it off. "I''ve only known ''em for a little while, but I can already tell that these folks have good heads on their shoulders! Things''ll be fine!"

    "That''s exactly the kind of thinking that''s going to cause problems later on!" Marie retorted. "Fujimaru, Taylor, Mash, do you hear me? Don''t let this drunkard convince you to drop your guard! I expect you to conduct yourselves with the proper dignity as representatives of Chaldea!"

    Drake just laughed. "Well, she''s got me pegged, doesn''t she!"

    "Director," I began before things could deteriorate any further, "how quickly could you prepare extra storage space for food supplies?"

    "Just think of it," said Rika in a stage whisper. "All of the new things we''ll get to try!"

    "A few hours, maybe a day, depending on how much space was needed," Marie answered. She started. "W-wait, just a minute ago, you said something about infinite food and drink, didn''t you?"

    Yeah. It was possible that Drake''s Grail didn''t actually supply food and drink endlessly, but ''limitless'' and ''functionally limitless'' weren''t really all that different for our purposes. As long as we could take advantage of it, there was no good reason why we shouldn''t.

    "What I mentioned earlier, about Captain Drake''s Grail being a source of infinite food and drink ¡ª we have reason to believe that Captain Drake has actually made a wish on her Holy Grail," I explained, "and that was what she wished for. If it really is an endless supply, then it seems to me that there''s no reason why we can''t, ah, procure some of it for ourselves, in lieu of better, more sustainable options in the future. We just need a place to put it all."

    Silence greeted me, and the moment hung for several seconds more. My brow furrowed.

    "Director?"

    "She just took off," Romani said. "She''s going to talk to Da Vinci, I think. We got distracted trying to figure out those strange readings, so she forgot to do it earlier. Taylor, I know you said so before, but are you sure about this? Because this¡­ If this is true, it could be game changing. Rationing our food supply has been one of the most important logistical hurdles we''ve been dealing with since the Sabotage."

    I turned to Drake, holding out my wrist. "Captain Drake?"

    "Eh?" Drake blinked, and then leaned closer to my hand. "Er, yeah. Yeah, I guess so. I don''t know anything about this wish-granting Grail business, but if that''s what this thing is supposed to do, then I probably made a wish, yeah."

    "From the Grail?" I prompted.

    "Yeah!" said Drake, gaining confidence as she did. "Yeah, sure! Just set it on a table, and poof! Instant food! And when I want rum, all I have to do is pick it up, and it''s full!"

    "We ate apples it made for breakfast," Ritsuka supplied helpfully.

    "They were really good apples, too," said Rika. "Perfect ripeness and everything!"

    "That''s¡­that''s actually incredible," said Romani. "Listen, as great as this is, we''re not prepared to just go loading up on extra food and water right now, okay? This is going to take some planning and preparation before we can do something like that. In the meantime, go about things as normal and continue to investigate that Singularity. Hopefully, by the time you reach the next island, we''ll be ready, and we''ll arrange things then."

    Rika snapped off a salute. "Roger that, Boss Man!"

    Romani sighed. "Ah, geez," he muttered, "I thought I''d gotten away with something benign when she started calling me Doc¡­"

    The connection cut out with a click.

    "Well," said Arash, "I guess that means we keep going the way we''ve been going."

    "No sense in sitting on our hands while we wait," Emiya agreed.

    "Right." I messed around with my communicator a bit and brought back up the map from before, then dragged it around to show a much, much larger island. "This looks like the nearest island, so it should probably be our next stop."

    Rika made a noise in her throat. "We just going to follow them in order, Senpai?"

    "As much as we can," I reasoned. "We need to investigate each island, and zigzagging around will take three times as long. There''s no reason we shouldn''t just make a circuit until we''ve covered each one."

    "I guess this train is staying on the rails for now," Rika said. She kicked at the sand. "You know, for an obligatory beach episode, I thought there''d be a lot more beefcake walking around."

    Ritsuka looked as though he was hoping the ground would open up and swallow him whole. Unfortunately for him, he was going to have to stay and deal with Rika''s shenanigans just like the rest of us.

    Emiya just smirked. "You know, I''m sure if you asked, Bombe would be more than happy to strip down for you."

    Rika grimaced and shook her head frantically. "Um¡­ You know what? Forget I said anything!"

    "What''s this about a beach episode?" Drake asked, confused.

    "It''s nothing important," I told her. "So, if there''s no other business for us to do on this island, we should get a move on. The next island is a lot further away than these last two were."

    "Aye, you have a point there," Drake admitted. "If that little magic map of yours is accurate, I''d say it should take us about ten hours to get from here to there."

    Ten hours?

    "Oh my," said Mash faintly. "That''s at least twice as long as the trip from the last island."

    At least, I didn''t say. All things considered, that would mean we''d arrive at that island somewhere around midnight, and I doubted any of us was going to be in any condition to go exploring in the middle of the night with nothing but the moon to guide us. Depending on how robust the insect population was on that next island, maybe not even me.

    "Then what are we waiting for?" Rika demanded. She thrust her hand into the air and started marching towards the surf. "Adventure is out there! Let''s go and find it!"

    "Back to the longboats!" Drake agreed. "It''s time to set sail again!"

    Rika faltered for a second, and then recovered. "Back to the longboats!"

    Ritsuka groaned, and he trudged after them much less enthusiastically.

    "It''ll be okay, Senpai," Mash said, trying to reassure him. "At least the Director didn''t yell at you earlier, so it could be worse."

    "Mash?" Ritsuka said flatly. "That''s not helping."

    "Oh. I''m sorry?"

    I shook my head a little and followed.

    <div>

    ¡ª o.0.O.O.0.o ¡ª

    As soon as we were back on the Golden Hind, Drake made a beeline for the wheel.

    "Nothing interesting out there, Boss?" Bombe asked.

    Drake shook her head. "Nah! Just some mystical mumbo jumbo and a bunch of posers who wanted my treasure! You didn''t miss much, Bombe."

    "Shame," Bombe said ruefully. "Well, I guess not every island can be exciting, can it? There''s a dud in every barrel!"

    Drake burst out into laughter. "Too true! Guess we just have to hope the next stop will have a little more going on, won''t we?" She shouted out. "Weigh anchor! Let''s get out of here and put this boring hunk of rock behind us!"

    "AYE!" the crew shouted back, and a moment later, they were all scurrying about the deck and going about their work. The anchor was hauled back up from where it had been dropped, and then the sails unfurled, and Drake spun the wheel about, turning the ship northwest towards where the next island sat.

    To avoid cluttering the deck and getting in the way, our group went up and huddled near Drake at the wheel. There wasn''t much for us to do except watch and try to stay out of the crew''s way as they worked.

    As the ship swerved away from the island we''d just visited, the sails on the mast fluttered and filled, and Drake looked up at them, grinning broadly.

    "Oho!" she said. "Looks like we''re catching a strong westerly wind! Good news, esteemed guests! We might be able to shave an hour off our travel time!"

    "Just an hour?" asked Emiya.

    An hour was an hour, but it did sound less incredible when this was already going to be a ten hour trip. It was the difference between arriving before midnight or after and not much else, so it was entirely possible that we were going to be sleeping on the ship tonight.

    "This ship ain''t magic, magic man," Drake told him. "She''s gotta obey the winds and the ocean currents, same as any other ship. If this favorable wind dies down or the currents start to turn against us, well, there ain''t much we can do about that except deal with it, is there?"

    Emiya shrugged. "Point taken."

    "Is there a place for us to sleep tonight if we don''t make it to the next island early enough?" I asked, because as accommodating as Drake was being, I didn''t much relish the idea of bunking in the crew quarters tonight.

    It wasn''t that I was worried about being assaulted or something. Even if that was a concern, Arash, Emiya, and Bradamante were more than up to the task of making sure no one tried to climb into my or Rika''s bunk uninvited. It was just¡­easier if we had our own place to sleep instead, for a number of reasons.

    The smell wasn''t the least of them. Unwashed bodies was a thing I''d had to get used to after Leviathan, but that didn''t mean I enjoyed it.

    "Mm." Drake peered over at me. "I guess there''s no better place for esteemed guests to stay than the Captain''s cabin, eh?" She turned narrowed eyes on Emiya, Arash, and Bradamante. "Might be a bit cramped, though. Four extra people is already pushing it. Seven sounds downright uncomfortable."

    "Oh, don''t mind us," said Arash. "Servants don''t need to sleep, so we''ll be fine standing guard the whole night, just in case our friend from earlier decides to come back."

    "You think he will?" Drake asked.

    Honestly? Not really. There wasn''t a way to be absolutely sure, but if he was looking to pick a fight, I think he would have when he first showed up. It all really depended on what he wanted and why he was here, and neither of those were questions we had answers to.

    "It''s not impossible," I replied, "so it''s better to be safe than sorry."

    "True enough."

    "And if he does show his face again," Bradamante added, "we''ll be ready for him this time!"

    "Suppose that solves that little problem, then!" said Drake.

    "Good thinking, Senpai," Rika said approvingly. "The only motion of the ocean this girl wants to find out about tonight is the one outside the ship!"

    Ritsuka groaned.

    "You wouldn''t have to worry about that, Master," Emiya said. "I''m your Servant, remember? My job is to protect you, and not just from other Servants."

    "Ha!" Drake burst out. "You lot don''t have to worry about that from this crew! Any of them tried anything like that, and they know their ass is shark food! Ain''t that right, boys?"

    "AYE!" the crew hollered back.

    I guess that only made sense, considering their boss was a woman. Viewed in that light, this crew was probably the most forward-thinking, least sexist crew on the ocean, at least for their era. Not radical feminists or anything, but with Drake as their captain, far more willing to view women as equals instead of property or a convenient object to slake their lusts.

    "I-I don''t get it," Mash admitted, confused.

    "Lady Mash," Bradamante began.

    "Tii-chan," Rika cut her off, "let the cinnamon roll remain a cinnamon roll for a little longer, okay?"

    "N-no, not that, Senpai." Mash shook her head. "Captain Drake, I don''t understand. This era should be an era where sexism and misogyny are much more prevalent than they are in our era, especially amongst sailors, and yet¡­all of these men, they follow you so fervently, despite the fact that you''re a woman. I-I know you''ve done some incredible things, but¡­ It still seems so hard to believe."

    "Ha!" Drake grinned. "They weren''t always this way, but after I showed ''em who''s boss, well, they all settled down real quick, you know?"

    Mash blinked. "Really? It was that easy?"

    "Easy" might not have been the right word for it. I thought I remembered something about Drake dismissing his ¡ª her ¡ª officers mid-voyage after doubts began arising about her leadership, and then rehiring them to make a point about who was in charge, but I wasn''t sure whether or not that had even happened at all, let alone whether it had happened this early in her career, so I didn''t bring it up.

    "Sometimes, taking charge of a group is just a matter of being the one who seems to know the most about what''s going on," I said instead.

    Confidence, reputation, charisma ¡ª when you had all three, people tended to listen. Having enough of the other two could make up for it if you lacked one of the three.

    "Ain''t that the truth!" Drake guffawed. "A man''s gotta respect you if you can drink him over the table, under it, and then outdrink his best friend! This rowdy bunch would still be back in England if I hadn''t rounded up their sorry asses and brought them along!"

    "Aye!" the crew agreed.

    "And sometimes," I added dryly, "it''s just a matter of who has the biggest mouth."

    "Ha!" Rika exclaimed, so surprised that she couldn''t stop herself.

    Drake didn''t even look offended. "That ain''t wrong either! I''m the captain of this ship ¡ª of course my mouth is the biggest, because I''ve got the biggest appetite of them all!"

    Emiya shook his head. "I guess that''s what you should expect from a famous pirate."

    "Of course," said Drake, shark-toothed. "That''s why they call me the Pirate Queen!"

    After that, the conversation died down a little bit as Emiya projected his stove to make us lunch. Drake was only too happy to lend us her Grail for the raw ingredients he needed, and perhaps as a nod to the importance of citrus fruits on a voyage out to sea, he concocted another lemon dish, this time with fish instead of chicken, with a side of potatoes that he fried in a sour brine.

    As expected of Emiya, it was as delicious as it usually was. Drake was only too happy to agree, and I couldn''t have been the only one who realized that he was bribing her with his cooking. Fortunately, although she could be just as boisterous as Nero and she was a pirate besides, Drake also wasn''t under the impression that she could steal Emiya out from under us.

    "It''s a shame," she said instead. "Food like this could keep the whole crew going for a hundred years!"

    "I didn''t hand him over to my best buddy," Rika replied, unamused, "I''m not going to hand him over to you either!"

    Ritsuka, perhaps predictably, didn''t eat anywhere near as much as he usually did. Being fair, the entire reason why Drake could eat any of it at all was that none of us was quite as eager to fill up on food that we might revisit later, if we were unfortunate enough to hit a particularly rough patch of sea.

    Fortunately for what we did eat, that never happened. After lunch, Drake returned to the wheel, and the pirates kept to their jobs aboard the ship, manning the rigging and the sails and doing tasks whose purposes I didn''t always understand. Our group lapsed into a post-meal malaise, left without much else to do except sit back and watch the ocean go by.

    There wasn''t much to see. It was kind of boring, actually, but the sort of mindless, unthinking boring that I remembered from long car rides as a child, where I could watch the passing scenery without really seeing any of it and my mind just kind of¡­slipped over the passing time. It was almost meditative.

    It would have been easier to distract myself if there was anything to do with my powers, but this far out at sea, there was nothing in range, not even, strangely enough, lice or other parasites. Against all sense and logic, the pirates of Drake''s crew were astonishingly clean, even if they smelled like a men''s locker room after it had spent a month marinating in old gym socks and sweaty shorts.

    Eventually, the sea got smooth enough and the waves calm enough that there wasn''t much for the pirates to do, and those who weren''t keeping an eye on things or retiring to rest before their next shift were left without much of any way to entertain themselves either.

    Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that one of them found a way to alleviate that boredom.

    "Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies," he belted out, and I turned away from looking out at the water to try and pinpoint who had started singing. "Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain! For we have received orders for to sail to old England, and we may ne''er see you fair ladies again!"

    There was a moment of pause, and then several other voices cried out, "We''ll rant and we''ll roar, like true British sailors! We''ll rant and we''ll roar across the salt seas! Until we strike soundings in the Channel of ol'' England! From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues!"

    "Ugh," Drake groaned. "They know I hate this one!"

    "What''s going on?" Rika asked, roused from her own woolgathering.

    "The pirates are¡­singing, Senpai," said Mash.

    "We hove our ship to, with the wind from sou''west, boys," the first voice sang out. "Then we hove our ship to, for to strike soundings clear! Twas forty-five fathoms with a white sandy bottom! So we squared up our main yard and up Channel did steer!"

    "Really, boys?" Drake asked. "Of all the songs you had to pick, it had to be this one?" Louder, she shouted at them, "You scumbags do remember that we were fighting the Spanish, yeah?"

    "All the more reason to go a-conquering through some of their fertile fields!" one of the pirates rejoined, to the laughter of his comrades.

    "We''ll rant and we''ll roar, like true British sailors!" they chorused, and it was more of them now, emboldened by the others. "We''ll rant and we''ll roar across the salt seas! Until we strike soundings in the Channel of ol'' England! From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues!"

    "What''s going on?" Ritsuka asked as the instigator started up the next verse.

    "Sailing is long, hard, tedious work, Senpai," Mash answered. "It wasn''t uncommon for sailors to alleviate boredom on long journeys by singing."

    "Hence the ''sea shanty,''" I added.

    "We''ll rant and we''ll roar, like true British sailors!" the chorus came again.

    "It''s kinda catchy!" Rika said, bobbing her head along with the song. "Don''t you think so, Onii-chan? From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues!"

    "Rika," Ritsuka said slowly, "you''re not a pirate."

    "The first land we made was a point called the Deadman," the instigator picked up. "Next Ramshead off Plymouth, Start, Portland, and Wight."

    "Says you!" Rika retorted. "We''re sailing on a pirate ship with a pirate crew under a pirate captain! From where I''m sitting, we''re all pirates!"

    Suddenly, she lurched up off the deck, raced past Drake, and threw herself against the wooden railing that kept her from tumbling onto the deck below.

    "Oi!" Drake squawked a protest.

    "We''ll rant and we''ll roar, like true British sailors!" Rika belted out, joining the chorus. "We''ll rant and we''ll roar across the salt seas! Until we strike soundings in the Channel of ol'' England! From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues!"

    Laughter and cheers rose up from the crew, and Rika grinned down at them as they whistled up at her.

    "Never had a soprano for this one!" Bombe called, chortling merrily. "Boss always refused to join in!"

    "For good reason, you tosser!" Drake hollered. "Now finish the damn song so I don''t have to listen to it anymore!"

    More laughter answered her, and it took a minute for it to die back down enough for the original guilty party to pick up the last verse.

    "Now let every man here drink up his full bumper! And let ev''ry man drink off his full glass! We''ll drink and be jolly and drown melancholy! And here''s to the health of each true-hearted lass!"

    "We''ll rant and we''ll roar, like true British sailors!" the group sang, Rika included. "We''ll rant and we''ll roar across the salt seas! Until we strike soundings in the Channel of ol'' England! From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues!"

    A cheer went up as the final line trailed off, and Rika, face flushed from excitement, stepped back, off to the side, then grabbed the hem of her skirt and dipped into a shallow curtsy ¡ª to thunderous applause. Even Arash was clapping politely, and I resisted the urge to turn to him and arch an eyebrow.

    As the cheering started to die back down, Rika turned back to our group and was nearly skipping as she came back over. Still riding high on the fun she just had, she plopped down on the deck again, smiling from ear to ear like she''d just won the lottery.

    It was almost a shame to rain on her parade.

    "Rika," I said calmly. "If the Director asks how it was we became pirates, I''m blaming it on you."

    From the expression that crossed her face now, it was very obvious she hadn''t thought about that at all.

 Chapter LXXXVIII: Uninvited Guests

    Chapter LXXXVIII: Uninvited Guests

    "I dreamed a dream the other night."

    "Lowlands! Lowlands away, me Johns!"

    "My love, she came, dressed all in white."

    "Lowlands away¡­"

    I stepped away from the side of the ship, turning from the glassy black sea towards Drake, who still stood at the wheel.

    "Arash says we''re about a mile off from the island," I reported.

    "That so?" she hummed. Louder, and with much less energy than she''d had earlier in the day, she called, "Alright, boys! Let''s bring her down to quarter sail! No sense running aground this far in, yeah?"

    "Aye!" the crew answered, also much less energetic than they had been earlier in the day, and the sails on the mast furled as several of them pulled on the rigging at once.

    "I dreamed my love came in my sleep."

    "Lowlands! Lowlands away, me Johns!"

    "Her cheeks were wet, her eyes did weep."

    "Lowlands away¡­"

    I looked back out at the ocean. In the dark, it was impossible to see anything except for the reflection of the night sky above and the glow of the ship''s lanterns. A shiver swept down my spine. Was this what it was like for the Titanic, traveling across an inky black sea towards an iceberg rendered all but invisible?

    A good thing we weren''t sailing across the North Atlantic. I liked our odds a lot less than the Titanic''s would have been.

    A yawn threatened to burst out of my lips, and I covered my mouth with my hand as my jaw cracked open. My eyes watered on reflex, and they burned with exhaustion as I wiped away the excess moisture.

    "She came to me at my bedside."

    "Lowlands! Lowlands away, me Johns!"

    "Dressed all in white, like some fair bride."

    "Lowlands away¡­"

    Drake chuckled. "Can''t say as I expected you to last the longest of the group. That girl has mountains of energy, she does. Seemed like she was gonna be up the whole night."

    "Those who burn brightest burn out first," I said in lieu of another explanation.

    Drake hummed again. "Suppose that''s true," she allowed. "Ah, but I think I''d like it that way better! Living a short, exciting life is heaps better than living a long, boring one, don''t you think?"

    I said nothing. Technically, I would have been one of those bright, swiftly burning candles, too, if we were using that metaphor. A fast-paced, meteoric career, topped off with the fight to end all fights ¡ª if I hadn''t been dropped off with Chaldea, set on the path to continue the exact sort of thing I''d been doing before, I probably wouldn''t have any idea what to do with the rest of my life.

    When you literally saved the world ¡ª all versions of it across the multiverse, even ¡ª what was there left for you to do? What could you meaningfully contribute that would hold up to what you''d already accomplished? I didn''t have an answer to that. I''d just thrown myself into saving the world again, like putting it off until later would somehow give me more time to come up with an idea.

    "Depends on what you do with it, I think," Arash said for me. "Not everyone is cut out to be a swashbuckling pirate," he set a hand on my shoulder, "or a great hero saving the world. I think the important thing is living without regrets."

    "And bravely in her bosom fair."

    "Lowlands! Lowlands away, me Johns!"

    "Her red, red rose, my love did wear."

    "Lowlands away¡­"

    "I can get behind that!" Drake pulled out her Grail again, and when she lifted it to her lips and took a swig, it was filled with more rum. "Ah! Aye, a pirate''s life for me!"

    She offered out the Grail, and I looked down at it, uncertain. Arash took the decision out of my hand when he accepted it with a, "Don''t mind if I do," and downed a mouthful with the same gusto as Drake.

    "Mm." He smacked his lips. "Don''t think I''ve ever had rum before. Back in my day, it was beer."

    Vaguely, I remembered something about that being the oldest form of alcohol, originally made in ancient Sumer, although there might have been honeyed mead in Egypt, too, around the same time. The details were fuzzy, though. Winslow''s history courses had never been the most comprehensive.

    "If you like piss, maybe!" Drake chortled.

    Arash smiled a good-natured smile. "Hey, if you make it right¡­"

    "I wouldn''t know," Drake agreed. "All the beer I''ve ever drank tasted like the Devil''s armpit."

    "I''m a bit concerned you know what that tastes like," Arash told her. "Your taste in rum, at least, is pretty good, though." He held the Grail out in offering, not to her, but to me. "Give it a try, Master? It''s not every day you get to drink straight out of the Holy Grail."

    I eyed the Grail and the dark liquid swirling about inside its cup. My lips pursed. I really shouldn''t. Just as a matter of professionalism, drinking on the job was a bad idea, and it was kind of hypocritical to do the exact thing I''d warned Ritsuka and Rika against the night before.

    Fuck it. Why not?

    I accepted the Grail, put the cup to my lips, and tilted it up. Vaguely warm rum washed over my tongue, sweet and fruity with an undertone of vanilla, and it was¡­actually really good. Not, I would say, like drinking the nectar of the gods, but better tasting than it probably had any right to be.

    Of course, I thought. Drake wished for endless food and drink. It should have been implicit in that wish that it be good food and drink, so it only made sense that the rum in her Grail was really good rum.

    "She made no sound, no word she said."

    "Lowlands! Lowlands away, me Johns!"

    "And then I knew my love was dead."

    "Lowlands away¡­"

    As I''d told the twins the night before, I took only a single sip of the rum, and then I handed the Grail back off to Drake, who drained the rest in one go.

    "I can''t say I''m especially familiar with all the forms of alcohol," I said, "but I can see why you enjoy that rum, Captain Drake."

    Drake chortled again. "Don''t tell me you''re a beer drinker, too!"

    "Tea, actually."

    Her brow furrowed. "Tea? That stuff the Portuguese have been bringing back from China?"

    I felt my lips curl up into a smile. "It''s ironic that you say that, because over the next hundred years or so, drinking ''that stuff'' is going to be very, very popular in England. To the point where dumping a bunch of it into the harbor is considered a viable form of protest against the government."

    People tended to forget that the American Revolution was British citizens revolting against the British government because they didn''t like how Parliament was treating them. The Boston Tea Party happened precisely because the ones doing it were also British and understood the importance of tea in the British economy.

    "You don''t say," said Drake. "Didn''t realize you Chaldean stargazers were in the business of divining the future, too."

    My smile turned into a grimace.

    "Not¡­as such," I allowed. "More like¡­time travel. For you, it''s the future. For us, it''s history."

    Maire would probably have preferred to give a powerpoint presentation all about the intricacies, but I was a grunt on the ground, in this regard. Knowing the ins and outs of how Rayshifting worked wasn''t part of my job description and involved stuff that mostly went over my head anyway.

    Drake goggled at me. "Time travel?"

    "From about four-hundred-fifty years in the future," I replied. "2015, specifically."

    "Four-hundred¡­" Drake turned to her Grail, looking at it as though she couldn''t decide whether she''d had too much to drink or not enough. "Thought you folks was from somewhere far off, what with those strange clothes of yours and that magic hocus pocus you got on your wrist, but you''re coming here from a hell of a lot farther away than I ever imagined."

    "It''s part of our job," I told her. "How we do what we do and why. We fix moments of history that have gone awry because someone is messing with them. Hard to do that if we can''t go to those moments and fix them ourselves, isn''t it?"

    "Heh." Drake grinned and lifted her Grail again, taking a sip from the rum that appeared in its cup. "Now that sounds like a grand adventure! And you said you kids have already been through three of these things?"

    "Japan, 2004," I recited. "France, 1431. Rome, 60 AD. This makes our fourth, yes."

    Drake sighed. "Man, it would be a blast to go with you guys on that sort of thing! Imagine seeing places like that in their heyday, walking with legends like Julius Caesar!"

    Drake and Nero, I decided just then, must never be allowed to meet. Between the two of them and Rika, I wasn''t sure my sanity would come out the other side intact. Marie''s, either.

    "It has its perks, I suppose."

    "What are we, chopped liver?" Arash said, smiling. "You''re already sailing with three such legends, Captain Drake. More than that, if you count our Masters and Mash, who have been traveling through time on their own adventures."

    "Oh yeah. Ha! You did say something about that, didn''t you?" Drake peered over at him. "Can''t say I''ve heard of you before, though, if you don''t mind me saying so. Not sure I''ve heard of a Bradamante or an Emiya before either."

    It was lucky Bradamante had gone to watch over the twins when they went to bed. I think hearing that would have broken her heart.

    "Well, I''m not surprised," Arash said, chuckling good-naturedly. "I''m just a simple bowman. I don''t think I''ve done anything all that incredible. As for Emiya, he''s technically not done anything yet, so of course you haven''t heard of him. And Bradamante¡­"

    "She''s French," I supplied bluntly.

    Drake chortled. "Yeah, that''d do it! Shame. I actually kinda liked her!"

    My brow twitched ¡ª I''d known the rivalry between Britain and France was kind of intense, especially this close to the Hundred Years War, but it wasn''t like being French was a terminal illness, so there was no reason to refer to her in the past tense.

    "Frankish, technically," Arash corrected me. "She was a few hundred years too early to actually be French."

    I considered pressing the point, but decided to let it drop, because it wasn''t an argument worth having. It wasn''t like we were literary scholars debating the exact cultural heritage of the Matter of France or something like that.

    "It''s all the same to me," Drake said with a shrug.

    I opened my mouth, but a yawn snuck up on me and forced its way out before I realized what was happening. Drake cast a glance in my direction, then jerked her head towards the captain''s quarters.

    "Looking pretty dead on your feet, there," she said, not unkindly. "Think it''s about time you think about joining your friends and turning in for the night. No point in running yourself ragged this late at night."

    I blinked at her. I guess I was pretty tired. Not tired enough that I couldn''t keep going if I had to, but tired enough that I''d probably fall right to sleep if I crawled into bed.

    "The island?"

    "What, you think we''re gonna get in the boats and sail to shore? In this light?" Drake waved it off. "Nah. We''ll get close enough to drop anchor and make for land once we''ve got the sun on our side. No point in taking extra risks like that, yeah?"

    I suppose not. She was the expert here, after all.

    "What about you?"

    She snorted and nodded towards the deck. "These scumbags would run us aground if I left them on their own. ''Sides, I''ve got enough left in me to get us safely where we need to be heading. I can sleep once I know we won''t wind up wrecked on the nearest sandbar."

    That was when I realized ¡ª the singing had stopped. Had there been another verse, and I''d just been so distracted talking to Drake that I''d missed it completely? Fuck, if I was that tired, I probably should be heading to bed.

    I glanced to Arash. I''ll leave keeping a lookout to you.

    Arash smiled and nodded. I''ll make sure we don''t wind up marooned in the Bermuda Triangle.

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    I didn''t have enough energy to stop myself from rolling my eyes. "See you in the morning, then."

    The wooden deck thudded dully under my boots as I turned around and made for the captain''s cabin. I hadn''t understood before, back when Drake first mentioned us bunking there, but it really was quite small, small enough that the five cots set out inside of it all but took up the entire room. It was not at all like what Hollywood had conditioned me to expect, because there was no way a dining table with room for ten would have fit.

    Rika and Ritsuka, as expected, were lying together in what must have been Drake''s original bunk ¡ª not sure what she was going to think about that when she saw them ¡ª with Mash laying in the cot next to them, snoring softly. Amusingly, if a battle were actually to break out, there was no way she was making it out of that cot without tripping over something.

    Presented with a dearth of options, I climbed over the closest cot and into the one closer to Mash, a precarious adventure that left me worried one or both would collapse at several points. Fortunately, I made it to what was to be my bed for the night without actual trouble, laid down with a soft grunt, and let myself sag into the canvas.

    Somewhere between one breath and the next, my eyes fluttered closed, and I nodded off to the gentle rocking motion of the ship. My thoughts just sort of slipped away, as though they were being carried off by the tides one at a time, ferried deep, deep, deep down into the waters below.

    If I dreamed, I didn''t remember any of it. If I woke up when Drake eventually came in to join us, I didn''t remember that either. I just sort of¡­floated in a calm nonexistence.

    And then I was rudely awoken when the ship shuddered violently. Nearby, Rika snorted awake, too, and groggily demanded, "Who slammed the front door?"

    A distant boom thundered, and the room shook as our cots rattled. I was pushing myself up off of mine when Mash suddenly shot up, going from lying to sitting without any transition in between.

    "Something''s wrong!" she announced urgently.

    "Mash?" Ritsuka murmured.

    Another boom. The room shuddered again.

    "Cap''n!" a voice called, muffled through the door. A moment later, it swung out, and Bombe stood there, face a rictus of alarm. "Cap''n!"

    Drake grunted and propped herself up off of the final cot next to me. "Bombe, I swear, if the world ain''t ending ¡ª"

    "Enemy ship, Cap''n!" Bombe said. "They''re firing on us!"

    Instantly, everyone was wide awake and scrambling to get out of bed, which was very hard when we were all crammed together in the same room the way we were. Drake, naturally, as the one nearest to the door and the only one who didn''t have to climb over everyone else to get out, was the first to make it to standing.

    "Familiar colors?" she demanded as the rest of us tried to follow her.

    "No, Cap''n," Bombe answered. "Ain''t never seen that flag afore!"

    "Any attempts at parley?" she asked as she shoved her hat back on her head.

    I made it onto the wooden floor at last, with Mash right behind me. The twins were still trying to extricate themselves from the tangle of limbs they''d become in their sleep.

    "None, Cap''n," said Bombe. "They just started firing on us. No warning shot or nothing."

    I stepped out onto the deck behind Drake, just in time for another BOOM to rock the ship as one of the Golden Hind''s cannons spat smoke and presumably a cannonball. On the same side, Arash drew back on his bow and loosed an arrow, and something exploded midair about twenty feet from the side of the ship.

    He was shooting enemy cannonballs out of the air, I realized.

    Master, he greeted me without looking my way.

    Further along, Emiya also stood, his own sleek, black bow held in his hands as he kept steely gray eyes focused out to sea. In the distance, approaching at a fairly fast pace, there was a ship, another galleon, but this one looked more like it had come out of a pirate movie. Even from as far away as it was, it was obviously bigger, broader, and had more guns than the Golden Hind.

    "What the hell¡­" Drake sneered. "More pirates, eh?"

    "We fired warning shots back," Bombe reported, "but they ain''t stopping, Boss. We might''ve been full of holes already if our, er, friends here weren''t shooting their cannonballs out of the sky."

    Ritsuka and Rika made it out of Drake''s cabin, hair askew and looking like they''d just rolled out of bed, because they kind of had.

    "Enemy ship?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Emiya and Arash are handling it," I answered shortly.

    "They in range yet?" Drake asked Bombe.

    Bombe gave a quick shake of his head. "Not yet, Boss. And we''re sitting ducks out here, seeing as we''re anchored down and everything."

    "I hate it when the enemy doesn''t play fair," Drake said sourly. "That''s our job!"

    "It looks like they''re more of the same guys we met yesterday," Arash called over. He paused long enough to fire another arrow, shooting another cannonball out of the air. "We can probably take them out the same way."

    "That so?" Drake grunted. "And if that ship of theirs comes in range, will that disappear in one, good hit, too?"

    It stood to reason, but¡­

    "We can''t know for sure."

    "Master!" Bradamante said, stepping forward. She was all but vibrating. "Master, I can handle it! Send me over and I''ll teach those villains a lesson!"

    "All on your own?" Bombe goggled.

    "Or I could do it!" Emiya called over. "Might be a bit overkill, though!"

    With ¡ª ah. The same sort of thing he''d done to try and kill Flauros back at the end of Septem. Yeah, something like that was sure to work, but it was definitely overkill. Too much overkill, if it cost as much as I thought it did.

    The twins looked to me, like they were asking permission. I decided to let them call the shots on this one.

    "Either one will work."

    Ritsuka immediately turned to Bradamante. "Go!"

    Bradamante''s face nearly split in half from her smile. "Yes!"

    And then, she turned towards the enemy ship, bent her legs, leapt ¡ª and she disappeared ten feet above the deck.

    "What the hell?" Bombe squawked. "Where''d she go?"

    Drake chortled, grinning. "Don''t get your knickers in a twist, Bombe!" she said. "She''s just like those ''invincible'' bastards we''ve seen crop up in this ass-backwards place!" She nodded towards Arash and Emiya. "Them, too. We''ve got some of that firepower on our side, now!"

    Bombe gaped at them, looking back and forth between Emiya and Arash with a new kind of respect.

    "Well, fuck me and call me a Spanish whore." He grinned broadly. "Guess we made the right call, letting them on board, eh, Boss?"

    "Damn right I did!" Drake agreed. "So why''re you pretending you had anything to do with it, Bombe? You wanna try out that new punishment so bad you''re trying to steal my thunder?"

    "No, Boss!" Bombe hadn''t stopped grinning. "Never, Boss!"

    "Then stop wagging that tongue of yours!"

    "She made it," Arash announced suddenly. "From the look of it ¡ª yeah, the same as yesterday. They''re a little bit sturdier, but they''re disappearing as soon as they take a good, strong hit."

    More of those "personified concepts," then. When Marie said we should expect more of them, I wasn''t expecting to face more of them this soon. I probably should have.

    "Tii-chan?" Rika asked.

    Arash smiled, but kept watching. "Not a scratch."

    I strained my eyes, but as expected, the ship was too far away for me to see any finer details. Ironically, the people aboard it looked like little more than ants scurrying about, scattered by a faint green whirlwind.

    Closing my eyes, however, and borrowing Arash''s sight let me see things in finer detail, and naturally, Bradamante was cleaning house with the enemy pirates. They tried to fight back, to swing swords at her and fire pistols, but even if they were a little bit stronger than they had been on the beach before, they were still too slow and too weak to compare against a Servant. She was making short work of them, laying them out with effortless ease, and every swipe of her tiny lance, every bash of her glowing shield, and every kick dissipated one of the pirates.

    It was anticlimactic and over quickly. I''d barely started watching before she was finishing off the last one with a flourish, and then she disappeared as the pirate ship itself dissolved into thin air, leaving a rush of water to fill in the space it had occupied.

    "Even the ship is gone!" Bombe exclaimed.

    "Because it was never really here to begin with," I said calmly as I opened my eyes again.

    Bradamante abruptly appeared nearby, flush with excitement and not even breathing hard. Her smile threatened to split her face. "Enemy forces dispatched, Master!"

    "Great job, Tii-chan!" Rika cheered.

    Emiya shook his head ruefully and shrugged. "Guess I''ll show my party trick off some other time."

    "I''m sure the opportunity will present itself at some point," Arash teased him.

    Emiya arched an eyebrow. "That''s exactly what I''m afraid of."

    "Well," said Drake, "now that those wankers have been seen off ¡ª and without a single scratch on my Golden Hind as well ¡ª how''s about we get on over to that island and start exploring ¡ª"

    "Master!" Mash said urgently. "Magical energy reaction ¡ª"

    The world shuddered. A wave of something swept out from the island like the breath of a giant, carrying an ominous tremor in its wake, and it passed through the trees inland, the sand on the beach, then into the water. In mere seconds, it reached us, and I felt it thrum as it passed through the ship and the crew and kept going. The Golden Hind creaked and groaned, and then settled.

    Half a mile past us, the ripple weakened and died and was swallowed by the tides.

    "What the hell was that?" Drake demanded immediately.

    I had no idea. Whatever it was, it didn''t appear to have done anything at first glance, but I wasn''t so naive as to believe that it actually hadn''t. The question was, what?

    "Cap''n! We''re stuck!" one of the crewmen said.

    Drake rounded on him. "What?"

    "Cap''n!" said another, the one who had been manning the wheel when we came on deck. "The rudder, she won''t move!"

    He wiggled the wheel to prove his point ¡ª or rather, he tried to, because the wheel itself wouldn''t move, like it had been glued into place.

    "Cap''n! The anchor''s lodged, it won''t budge!"

    "The sails, Boss! They''re caught on something! They won''t open!"

    Over and over, one thing after, the crew reported in, telling Drake the same thing: we were stuck.

    "What the hell is going on?" Drake demanded furiously. "What was that just now? Some kind of magic?"

    "A bounded field," Mash breathed.

    I glanced at her briefly, then turned back towards the island. This far out? There was no way. An ordinary bounded field just didn''t have that much range.

    "A what?"

    "It''s a kind of spell that is overlaid on top of an area," Ritsuka told Drake. It looked like those lessons with El-Melloi II were paying off. "Mages usually use them to protect their homes and their workshops. They do things like keep out unwanted visitors or enemies."

    "Except a bounded field large enough to cover the island and still reach us out here is way too large for any old mage to make," Emiya cut in grimly, his face carved from stone. "Even for a powerful Caster, covering that much ground should be impossible. I don''t know a single one that could do it."

    "That means there''s only one thing that could have both the power and the range to affect us out here," Arash concluded.

    "A Noble Phantasm."

    I guess that solved the question of whether or not there were other Servants on these islands. Not that Drake had given us any reason to doubt her, but, well, independent confirmation was always better than just taking someone at their word.

    The next question was, was our host a stray Servant who was taking precautions because they didn''t know who we were or why we were here, or was this an enemy laying down a trap and trying to convince us to walk into it?

    "W-wait, so," Rika said, "we''re stuck here?"

    "As long as this bounded field is up?" said Emiya. "Yeah. This ship isn''t going anywhere. That means there''s only two ways to free us from it."

    "Either we convince the Servant who deployed it to lift it," Mash murmured, "or we¡­force them to take it down."

    "This¡­sounds an awful lot like a trap," Rika pointed out. "I''m not the only one who sees that, right? Like, this guy might as well have put up a giant neon sign with the word ''TRAP'' in all caps!"

    "Yeah," said Arash. "Unfortunately, it looks like this is a trap we kind of have to walk into if we want to leave here anytime soon."

    Friend or foe ¡ª there was no way to tell without springing it.

    "Well," I said wryly, "whoever it is went through all the trouble to gift wrap an invitation. We might as well go and say hello."

    <div>

    ¡ª o.0.O.O.0.o ¡ª

    This trip in the longboats was significantly calmer and less taxing than our previous ones. It was owed, no doubt, to the fact that even the waves washing up towards the beach had been slowed to a near stop, which cut down on the rocking and the sway by a great deal. It was the smoothest sailing we''d yet experienced in this Singularity.

    The mood was solemn as we climbed out of the boats and onto shore, and even Rika was quiet and nervous, her eyes flicking about as she looked for any sign of an enemy.

    Unfortunately, it wasn''t that simple. The swarm that had fallen under my sway revealed nothing of interest, just trees, trees, and more trees, plus a few groups of animals that kept a wild berth from us. If the enemy Servant was nearby, then they were staying in spirit form ¡ª unlikely, since none of ours was sensing them.

    Unless our mystery Servant was an Assassin. I hated when it was possible that an unknown Servant could be an Assassin. The last time it happened was with Stheno, and that incident had nearly cost us dearly.

    "Anything?" Ritsuka asked.

    "No," both Mash and I said at the same time, and we traded a bemused look. Mash continued first, "There''s no sign of a Servant''s presence, Master."

    "I''m not seeing anything either," I added. "Whoever it is must be further inland, probably by a mile or two."

    And hopefully wasn''t an Assassin. This Noble Phantasm wasn''t necessarily an Assassin''s Noble Phantasm, but it was ambiguous enough that it very well could be.

    Rika''s stomach growled suddenly, and she flushed as we all turned in her direction. "What?" she said defensively. "I haven''t had breakfast yet!"

    My lips pursed. None of us had, but, "We shouldn''t stop long enough to eat. It would leave us wide open for an ambush."

    Emiya sighed. "Even if I hate to admit it, that''s not wrong. I might be incredible, but I''m not so incredible that I wouldn''t be vulnerable in the second it took me to switch from cooking to fighting."

    Drake ¡ª thinking ahead ¡ª retrieved her Grail from out of her chest, and with a flourish of her wrist, it produced more apples. "This should be enough to tide us over, yeah? At least until we find this fucker that''s messing with my ship!"

    She handed one off to each of us, even the Servants who didn''t need to eat, and I bit into mine with relish. Just because I''d said we shouldn''t stop to make breakfast didn''t mean I wasn''t hungry, too.

    Rika moaned as she bit into hers. "I dunno what it is about these apples," she said around a mouthful, "but they taste so good!"

    "It must be because they were made by the Grail," said Mash. "They''re the, um¡­Platonic ideal of what an apple is? Maybe."

    "Or maybe you''re all just hungry," said Emiya, chuckling.

    "Er, Boss?" said Bombe. "What about the rest of us?"

    He gestured at the other crewmen who were climbing out of their own longboats and standing there, waiting for orders. Drake took a bite of her apple, and she used the time it took to chew it to eye the whole lot of them while she stuffed her Grail back into her body.

    "No tellin'' whether it''s safer on the boat or shore," she said once she''d swallowed. "Get everyone gathered up and set up camp, grab some food from the stores and eat while you have the chance. No sense bringing any of you along with us if one of those invincible bastards is the one behind this."

    Bombe straightened. "Aye, Boss!" He turned to the rest of the crew. "You heard her! We''re setting up camp for now, boys! Hop to it!"

    Drake turned back to me. "That quake that caused this whole thing came about eastwards, yeah? That sound like the right place to look?"

    "The epicenter of that wave was too far inland for me to pinpoint the exact origin point through the trees," Arash said, "but based upon the way they moved? Yeah, it came from further east."

    Or that''s what our mystery Servant wanted us to think. We didn''t have much else in the way of options, though. If the ship could still move, I might have suggested we go around the island and approach from the north heading south, but since the ship being immobilized was half the reason we were here in the first place, that wasn''t a viable option.

    "Then we''ll head that direction," I said. "Bradamante will stay here to guard the ship. Mash, you''ll take point. If anything comes after us from the front, we''ll need you to defend us. Emiya and Arash will bring up the rear. Captain Drake ¡ª"

    "Nah, I get it." She waved it off. "Makes the most sense for me to be with you folks in the center, don''t it? This bauble of mine might make me able to hurt those invincible bastards, but it don''t make me one meself, does it?"

    "The perils of being a squishy human," Rika added dryly. She glanced pointedly at Drake''s chest. "Some of us a little squishier than others."

    "Senpai!" Mash scolded her.

    Drake grinned, shark-like, and laughed.

    "Let''s get going," I said. "The last thing we want to do is spend the night here, because that would be an even worse time to have to defend from an attack."

    "If we do, I''m sleeping with one eye open," Rika promised.

    "Me, too," her brother agreed.

    "I-I don''t know how to do that, but¡­me, too!" Mash chimed in.

    "Don''t worry, Master!" Bradamante said. "While I''m here, no enemy will come within a mile of the ship! You can count on me!"

    "If any of those pirates gets handsy," Rika told her, "feel free to cut their pride off, Tii-chan!"

    Several of the pirates listening in eyed each other nervously.

    "Understood!"

    Ritsuka sighed. "Try not to hurt anyone permanently, okay? We do need a crew to steer that ship, after all."

    And so, we set off, heading deeper inland and leaving the sandy beach behind for grassy hills. The island quickly changed elevation on us, but it wasn''t nearly as steep or insurmountable as the last island was, so there were¡­ramps, of a sort, conveniently hewn out of the cliff faces that we were able to use to go up.

    It made me wonder how the geography formed on these islands. Was it random? Given the flora, fauna, and just the vastly varying climates, I wasn''t sure if I could believe it. Had it been shaped by the owners of the Grails instead? If these islands were some twisted amalgamation of ones that Drake and our enemy had visited before, that would definitely explain the variety and the strangeness of their shapes.

    Once we''d gotten up the cliff, however, we found another forest, the one that we''d seen swaying from the ripple of the bounded field activating, and unfortunately, it didn''t have a convenient path cut through it like the ones in Orl¨¦ans did, nor a road like the ones in Septem. We had to weave in and out and push through the underbrush the tedious, old-fashioned way.

    "This feels really familiar all of a sudden," Rika groused as she pushed a branch out of the way. "I''m getting flashbacks to Senpai''s lessons."

    "Then they served their purpose," I told her.

    She scowled, and under her breath, she said, "At least there aren''t any crows cawing at us this time."

    There wouldn''t be. I''d let Huginn and Muninn out while Drake wasn''t paying attention because I didn''t want to answer questions about them right then, but it wasn''t like they were normal birds anyway. The cawing and the crowing was something completely under my control, and therefore only something they did when it served my purposes.

    The forest continued on for quite a while, and I picked up new bugs as we went, some of which I recognized and some of which were new even to me. Not any Darwin''s Bark Spiders, sadly, although that really would have been convenient for me. Maybe too convenient. Just why would that very specific breed of spider find its way onto one of these hodgepodge islands, waiting for me to find them?

    We must have spent an hour slowly picking our way through that forest, dealing with the shrubbery and the tall, thick-trunked trees, when my ravens finally saw something ahead of us that wasn''t more trees.

    "Heads up," I warned everyone, "about half a mile in front of us, there''s a lake."

    "A lake?" the twins parroted.

    "How big?" asked Emiya.

    "Big enough you''d have to sail across it."

    In fact, just based upon what I was already seeing, it must have been about an entire third of the island''s width. It was absolutely huge ¡ª relatively speaking, of course.

    "It looks like it''s fed from a river that connects further north."

    Although what was up there was too far away and hidden behind both higher elevation and more trees. Even my ravens didn''t have enough height to tell for sure where that river started.

    "A lake?" Arash mumbled. "What could be at a lake that would cast that bounded field?"

    "The only thing I can think of isn''t all that likely," Emiya said wryly.

    Given his connections and what we knew about him? Yeah. This wasn''t Britain, so women in ponds distributing swords wasn''t likely.

    Drake grinned. "Guess we''ll just have to find out the hard way."

    "Ugh," Rika grunted. "More mysteries. I hate when we have more mysteries with our mysteries."

    "I think we''ll be fine as long as no one says, ''Let''s split up, gang,''" Ritsuka told her.

    "Don''t even joke about that!"

    We kept going, heading towards the lake, and eventually, with the sun high in the sky, we came out of the trees and onto a narrow ledge that dropped steeply down into the water below. Light glistened off the placid surface, and calm, rich blue dominated everything in front of us until it seemed to stretch almost from one end of the horizon to the other.

    "Holy cow!" Rika exclaimed. "It really is huge!"

    "It would take us at least two hours to walk around to the other side," Ritsuka agreed.

    "Not all that deep, though," Arash said. He reached down and picked up a rock, and with a flick of his wrist, he sent it out almost halfway across, where it hit the surface and sank. "Maybe¡­ten meters or so at the deepest sections. You could definitely drown, but you''re not going to hide a castle or something down there."

    Emiya arched an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. It looked like I wasn''t the only one drawing some conclusions about what he''d had in mind earlier.

    "You could sink a ship," Drake added, "but we''d still see the masts from here."

    Arash''s brow furrowed, and he looked my way. "You don''t think our friend from yesterday is the one behind this, do you?"

    The guy with seaweed for a beard? That¡­wasn''t impossible, because whatever he''d done had held us in place then as well, but I couldn''t imagine why he''d be so roundabout when he''d come up to us and met face to face before. I also couldn''t really rule it out, since we didn''t know his class or identity with any certainty.

    "I''m not sure," I admitted.

    "Master," Mash said suddenly, "I''m¡­detecting a source of magical energy nearby."

    "You are?" asked Ritsuka.

    "She always has been more sensitive to that stuff than the rest of us," Emiya remarked.

    "How nearby is nearby?" asked Rika.

    "It''s¡­" Mash''s brow furrowed, and she looked down at her feet. "Beneath us."

 Chapter LXXXIX: The Labyrinth and the Minotaur

    Chapter LXXXIX: The Labyrinth and the Minotaur

    The instant she said it, I noticed it, too ¡ª because I normally didn''t give too much attention to things like worms and other underground bugs, owing to their much diminished senses, I had completely missed it before. Now, however, it was almost mind-boggling that I had actually managed to overlook it.

    There was something inside the hill we were standing on.

    "What the hell?"

    I crouched down, and up above, my ravens swooped low, to see if they could see in the cliff face what I was sensing with my bugs.

    "What is it?" asked Ritsuka.

    "Something wrong?" Drake asked, too.

    "There''s a¡­structure of some kind carved out of the hillside," I said. "And that''s¡­.a doorway?"

    With Huginn and Muninn, I could see it, a marble structure built conspicuously into the dirt and the rock, white brick and tiles from top to bottom. There was no door or gate barring entry, just a rectangular opening that was obviously manmade with stairs that descended down into the dark, lit only by sparsely spaced torches. The passageway was fairly narrow, narrow enough that three of us walking side by side would be uncomfortably close together, but, paradoxically, the ceiling was high enough that Rika could have stood on my shoulders and still would have had to reach up to touch it.

    "A structure?" Arash said.

    "It''s¡­"

    And suspiciously, my bugs were getting lost. Everything I sent in there, whether it was a flier or a crawler, got turned around almost immediately and wound up coming back the way it went in. They only made it far enough in for me to tell that there were turns in the hallway, sharp, ninety degree pivots that led further on deeper into the hillside.

    It was almost like they were getting disoriented and losing track of direction in the space between torches, like those brief stretches of darkness barely dark enough to count as shadows played tricks on them ¡ª and therefore on me, by extension.

    The absolute strangest thing was that the whole structure seemed to just lead off into nothingness, at least from the outside. It made my brain hurt to "look" at it, but the marble just seemed to fade off into the rock, or through the rock, like it was reaching out into some kind of fold in space.

    I''d only seen that sort of thing happen a few times in my career, and none of those examples boded well as a comparison.

    "I''m not¡­sure¡­"

    Suddenly, it clicked, and a ripple of shock tore through my gut as I shot back up to my feet. In the background, a group of spiders immediately set to work, because if I was right, then fuck, we were absolutely going to need it.

    "H-hey, Senpai," Rika said nervously, "everything''s okay, right? We''ve been through some pretty hairy stuff! Whatever this is can''t be that bad, can it?"

    "It''s a maze," I said.

    "A maze?" half of the group parroted. The twins immediately turned to each other and said, "Jinx!"

    "Oh!" said Mash. "I''ve heard about that! Isn''t it possible to solve a maze by staying close to the same wall and always turning the same direction every time? Eventually, you''ll find the exit, because even if you take a wrong turn, you''ll wind up taking the correct path by elimination!"

    "What?" Drake said incredulously. "That''s a thing? You can do that?"

    Ritsuka blinked and looked at her. "Yeah. Is that¡­not a thing that people realized before our era?"

    Drake shook her head. "I''ve never heard about that before today!"

    There was just one problem with that idea.

    "It''s not just a maze," I reminded them, "it''s a Noble Phantasm, which means it won''t be that easy to beat."

    In fact ¡ª no, wait, just how many legends about mazes actually existed? I could only think of the one.

    Emiya sucked in a breath. "Oh."

    I turned to look at him, his eyes wide, his face a rictus of shock. It seemed he''d come to the same conclusion as I had at basically the same time.

    "You don''t think¡­"

    I shook my head. "It has to be. Can you think of anyone else that fits?"

    "I can''t," Arash chimed in. "I''m just not sure how that particular guy wound up in this Singularity, of all places."

    Me, neither. Maybe¡­it had something to do with the island? Large swathes of Greek mythology had taken place on one island or another, so if this one had taken part of its geography from Crete¡­ It felt like a stretch, though.

    "Hey, hey," said Rika. "Senpai, Emiya, Arash, you guys feel like sharing with the rest of the class?"

    My lips pursed. "This isn''t just a maze, it''s a labyrinth. The Labyrinth, built by Daedalus."

    "Oh," it was Mash''s turn to say. She looked just as unnerved as Emiya had. "So then, this Noble Phantasm¡­"

    My mouth pulled into a tight line. "A Caster in his workshop."

    "H-hang on, we had a lesson on this, didn''t we?" Rika stuttered. She turned to her brother. "Right, Onii-chan? First from Senpai, and then Hot Pops told us what to do in a situation like this! In big, bold letters, even!"

    Ritsuka nodded. "Don''t." His brow furrowed. "But¡­do we have any other options? If this Noble Phantasm is the reason we''re trapped on this island¡­"

    Yeah. The only way to leave the island was to get Daedalus to let us go, one way or the other. Now that we knew there was a Caster involved, it just became all the more possible that this was a trap and not a defensive posture from a wary Stray.

    "Can''t we just run out the clock?" Rika said, sounding almost desperate.

    "Run out the clock?" asked Drake. "Is that some expression from the future?"

    Rika nodded. "This is a Noble Phantasm, right? Then he can''t just sit there forever! He''s gonna run low on energy eventually, won''t he? Poof! No more labyrinth!"

    A good point. Except ¡ª

    "He''s already held it for over an hour," I pointed out. "That doesn''t mean he can keep it going forever, but if he''s on top of a ley line, it''s not that different."

    Rika turned to Mash. "Is he?"

    Mash frowned and looked back down at the ground like she was looking through it.

    "I¡­can''t say for sure," she admitted. "There''s a ley line that runs through this area, I can feel it, but it''s all¡­tangled, somehow. U-um, out of order, sort of? Like someone attached a weight to a line of thread. Something''s pulling it out of its natural pathway."

    Like, say, a labyrinth that was fused into the hillside. If the owner had shifted the ley line by setting that labyrinth right on top of it, well, that sounded like something a Caster of that level of skill could accomplish.

    "Guess that answers that question," Arash commented.

    "Yeah."

    We really didn''t have any other choices. We couldn''t wait outside for him to run out of energy to sustain the labyrinth, we couldn''t flush him out using my bugs, and while we could send just a single Servant down to check things out, the best one for that in terms of sheer survivability was Mash, and none of us would be comfortable sending her in alone. Not me, and certainly not the twins.

    It was almost like the whole situation had been engineered such that we wouldn''t have any choice but to venture inside to look for the Servant responsible. What else should I have expected from an inventor so clever that he had almost trapped himself inside of that labyrinth? The guy whose solution to being held captive was to build himself and his son a pair of wings from feathers, string, and some beeswax?

    Fucking Tinkers. This place was going to be loaded with booby traps, wasn''t it?

    "Senpai, can''t you just¡­you know¡­" Rika made a buzzing sound and waggled her fingers. "And look around that way?"

    "I''ve already tried that," I told her. "They keep getting turned around. However else this Noble Phantasm works, it won''t let us solve the labyrinth that way."

    "Oh." Emiya held out a hand. "Trace, on."

    A moment later, he held a large spool of yarn, roughly the size of a beach ball. I wasn''t the only one looking at him strangely.

    "What?" he asked, annoyed.

    "That''s¡­a big ball of yarn," Ritsuka said, speaking for the rest of us. "Just, um, why did you ever need that much?"

    "Never knew a guy like you was that big into knitting," said Drake, sniggering. "Suppose it makes sense enough, seeing as you can cook so well."

    Emiya rolled his eyes. "Give me some credit. I''ve told you before that I can make new things based upon stuff I''m already familiar with, right? It''s the same principle. A standard yardage of yarn is about three-hundred meters, but I seriously doubt that would be anywhere near enough to cover a labyrinth that''s probably measured in something more like a kilometer or two."

    He held up the spool of yarn.

    "All I did was up the length of the yarn. It really isn''t as big a deal as you''re making it out to be."

    The most annoying thing wasn''t that he was right, it was that his method was even more effective than mine. After all, he''d just made more thread in a few seconds than I would have with an hour to sit and let my spiders weave, and that meant the weaving I''d already had them doing was essentially wasted.

    Well. It wasn''t completely pointless. There were other things I could use that thread for, now that Emiya had so helpfully provided enough yarn to ¡ª hopefully ¡ª get us through the labyrinth.

    "Good thinking," I said instead of anything else.

    If we were going to be doing this, there was no sense in leaving my ravens out, so I called Huginn and Muninn back to me, and they swooped over, deathly silent. Drake startled.

    "What the hell?"

    They each alighted onto one of my hands, perfectly balanced.

    "More pets of yours?" Drake asked.

    "Close enough."

    And then they folded up into their storage forms and I arranged them back inside of my bag. Drake, watching, shook her head.

    "Fuck it," she said. "I''m just gonna write all that strange stuff off as magic shit."

    Fair enough.

    "Trust me," Rika told her, "you ain''t seen nothing yet."

    Her brother agreed with a nod.

    I turned to Emiya. "How long can one of your swords last?"

    He raised an eyebrow back at me. "As long as we need it to."

    That was certainly convenient. I nodded. "Then we''ll wedge it into the cliff outside and attach one end of the yarn there. One of us Masters will carry the spool and unravel it as we go. Ritsuka, are you up for that?"

    "Yes." He didn''t even hesitate.

    Rika''s face contorted, pained. "Ugh. We''re really doing this, aren''t we? We''re actually going to fight a Caster in his workshop, even though that''s one of the biggest no-no''s on the list!" She sighed, and then jabbed a finger at me. "But I''m doing this under protest! I want it on the record that I was against this idea from the start!"

    "Noted."

    She pouted, and with a huff, crossed her arms.

    "I know this isn''t the best idea," Mash said, "but, Senpai, we can''t afford to stay on this island forever, and the longer we leave him alone, the longer Daedalus has to set up defenses to protect himself. I-I think this is¡­as vulnerable as someone like him is ever going to get."

    A lesson I''d thought I drilled into them when we did that Caster simulation. Maybe on our next one, I''d arrange the scenario so that I could emulate days or even weeks of prep time. They would be miserable having to go through a gauntlet like that, but I think it would do them a world of good to see what a truly entrenched enemy was capable of.

    "That doesn''t make me feel any better, Mash," Rika said dryly.

    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

    "You''re worrying too much, Master," said Emiya, smirking. "You''ve got me on your side, don''t you? Then there''s nothing to worry about."

    She grumbled, "That doesn''t make me feel better either." She sighed again. "Let''s just get this over with."

    That, at least, I could agree with, so I walked over to the edge of the cliff. The angle of the slope made it impossible to see the entryway into the labyrinth, courtesy of how the lake had worn away at the rock and dirt ¡ª and wasn''t that a trip to think about, since this place was technically only a few months old ¡ª but we were essentially right on top of it.

    "The drop is about twenty feet," I told them, more for the twins'' sake than anything else. "The water should only be about knee deep, so we don''t have to worry about swimming or getting too wet."

    I took a step back, my lips pursing. It was fine, of course, for the Servants to ferry us down. We''d probably need a second trip to bring Drake along, but getting back up once we were done was honestly going to be the bigger hassle. Not by much, but a bigger hassle nonetheless.

    On the other hand, Da Vinci had said something about a new function that could cushion our falls, right? There had to be a limit, so I wasn''t about to go skydiving to see if I could walk that off without trouble, but twenty feet wasn''t that big a fall. It should be well within the range of what these mystic codes were capable of, especially if, as I suspected, it was built based off of the function of my old flightpack.

    "Uh, Senpai?" Rika said hesitantly. "I recognize that look. Please don''t do something crazy."

    I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

    "It''s not crazy, Rika. I''m just going to test one of the new functions of our mystic codes." To Arash, I turned and said, "I''ll trust you to handle things if something goes wrong."

    Like if I broke my leg when I landed. Drowning in two feet of water would be an embarrassing way to die after everything else I''d been through.

    Arash peered down over the edge of the cliff, then nodded. "Shouldn''t be any trouble."

    "Wha ¡ª hey! You''re not supposed to be encouraging her!" Rika squawked.

    "Miss Taylor, are you sure this is a good idea?" Mash asked worriedly.

    "It''s twenty feet," I said, "not the top of the Empire State Building."

    "Just make sure you guys have your First Aid spells ready," Emiya said, smirking.

    I shot up an unimpressed look, then stepped back towards the cliff again. Arash shimmered, vanished from his spot, and reappeared down below, waiting for me to take the metaphorical and literal plunge.

    Nothing else to it, so I hopped off, jumping forward just enough that I shouldn''t hit anything on the way down. Behind me, Rika shrieked, "She actually did it!"

    "Ah, quit your belly-aching!" Drake said. "That drop''s nothing!"

    Right before I hit the water, my body suddenly slowed, as though gravity had abruptly weakened to an eighth its usual strength, and with a soft plop, my shoes hit the surface and sank into the sand below.

    "Looks like you were right," said Arash. "Nothing to worry about after all."

    Everyone else crowded around the ledge, looking down over the edge, and when I looked up, I raised an eyebrow at the collective group.

    "Not a scratch!" Rika remarked, amazed.

    "Give Da Vinci a little more credit than that," I said sardonically. Or more like Dragon, since she''s the one who built the original anti-gravity function in my flight pack.

    It still amazed me a little that Da Vinci had actually managed to replicate it, although considering she''d figured out nanothorns, it probably shouldn''t have. If Daedalus wound up even a fraction that talented, we might be in trouble.

    Or we might have landed on a gold mine. If he wasn''t working with the enemy, then two minds that sharp would be incredible.

    "And you lot were so worried!" Drake chortled. She took a step back ¡ª "Hup!" ¡ª and then leapt down to join me. She landed in the water, knees bending to absorb the impact, with a significantly larger splash. She grinned back up at the group. "Come on in! The water''s fine!"

    It was actually a bit chilly.

    Ritsuka looked at his sister and Mash, shrugged, and then jumped down. "Master!" Mash cried at the same time as Rika squeaked, "Onii-chan!"

    Just like I had, he slowed right before he hit the water and landed with a gentle plop.

    "Wow," he said, impressed. "That really is useful."

    "S-Senpai!" Mash called. "Don''t do that without warning!"

    She jumped next, landing the easiest out of all of us so far, because she was a Demi-Servant, so of course she did. The water splashed up to her hip, and she grimaced down at the metal bits, particularly the greaves on her legs.

    "I-I hope none of this rusts," she murmured.

    Rika hesitated for a moment longer, then said, "Wait for me!" and leapt down. Just like her brother and me, her landing was soft and gentle. Up above, Emiya shrugged, vanished, and reappeared among our group.

    "Huh." Rika blinked down at herself and gave the water a kick. "That really was pretty cool! Man, Da Vinci really outdid herself with these things! I wonder how high we can drop from?"

    "Maybe you should ask about the limits next time we see her," I said dryly, "instead of trying to find out the hard way."

    "I''m not the one who decided to test it by jumping off a twenty-foot cliff," she retorted, and she wasn''t entirely wrong, but I wasn''t about to admit that to her.

    "So, this is it, then?" Drake asked, staring at the marble entryway to the maze. She grinned. "I got a feeling there''s some treasure in this place!"

    "Not of a kind that will be of any use to you, I don''t think."

    "Ha!" she chuckled. "Only one way to find out, right?"

    Unfortunately.

    I turned to Emiya. "The sand will be too soft, so if you could get it in the rock or even in the marble itself, that should be enough to hold it without coming loose."

    "Hm." He closed one eye and narrowed the other at the ceiling. A moment later, a basic-looking sword appeared in the air next to his head without any warning and shot off like a rocket, bouncing off the marble with a loud, echoing CLANG.

    Rika covered her ears, shrieking, "A little more warning next time!"

    Emiya clicked his tongue. "No good. That marble is tougher than it looks. I''d have to put in way too much effort to get through it, and there''s no way our host wouldn''t notice it."

    "He''s probably going to notice either way," I pointed out.

    "A fair point," Emiya conceded with a nod. "Still¡­"

    Another sword formed, and this one shot into the rock above the entryway, sinking up to the hilt without any trouble whatsoever. Next, he took the massive spool of yarn, leapt up to where the sword was lodged, and tied the end around the hilt of the sword, wrapping it around several times to make sure it was secure.

    When he came back down, he tossed the spool at Ritsuka, who fumbled a little but caught it.

    "It won''t hold up if something cuts the thread," Emiya warned, "but shy of that, it should work just fine."

    Ritsuka nodded. "Right."

    "One last thing, then."

    I held out a hand, and a troop of dragonflies buzzed down, carrying a spool of silvery silk thread. I took it and sent them back off, ignoring the strange looks from most of the rest of the group.

    "I''m not sure I''m ever going to get used to that," Ritsuka said quietly.

    "Me neither," his sister agreed.

    I started unwinding the thread and held the end out to Mash, who accepted in, confused.

    "The last thing we want is for any of us to get lost," I explained. "Mash, you''re taking point, so tie that thread around your waist. Emiya ¡ª"

    "I''ll stay in spirit form," he interjected, "and stick close to my Master."

    My lips pursed, but I accepted it for what it was and moved on. "Ritsuka and Rika are next, do the same. I''ll be behind you two, Drake will be behind me, and Arash will bring up the rear."

    "Oh," said Mash. She started securing the thin silk thread around her waist. "Good thinking, Miss Taylor!"

    "This is why they pay Senpai the big bucks," Rika agreed. "If, you know, there was anyone around to pay us right now."

    "What happens if we do get ambushed?" Ritsuka asked. "Won''t all of us being connected like this make it hard to fight back?"

    "Spider silk is strong, but not that strong," I answered. "It should break long before we get dragged along by the fighting."

    Especially since this wasn''t Black Widow silk or Darwin''s Bark Spider silk.

    "Fou!" the little gremlin popped up. "Fou, fou! Fou-kyu!"

    Mash giggled and scratched under his chin. "Don''t worry, Fou! I''m sure as long as you stay with me, you won''t get lost either."

    Hope sprang eternal.

    We took a few minutes to get everyone tied together, fastening the silk thread in loose but secure knots through our belts (for those of us who had them) and around the waist (for the Servants who didn''t). With the way it was arranged, all of us squishy humans ¡ª and the slightly less squishy Drake ¡ª would have no trouble staying together, and Mash and Arash at the ends could free themselves with virtually no effort and engage the enemy.

    "Everyone good?" I asked once we were all tied together. A series of affirmatives answered me. "Then let''s get going. Mash?"

    "Right!" Mash nodded and manifested her shield. "Please follow me, everyone!"

    She started walking, stepping down the stairs and into the flickering torch light of the labyrinth, and we all followed behind her like some sort of strange procession. If I thought about it, it sounded like the beginning of a bad joke: a knight, two kids, a supervillain, a pirate, and two archers walked into a maze¡­

    Hell if I knew the punchline, though. As long as it wasn''t "and they all wandered for the rest of eternity," I didn''t particularly care.

    The sparsely spaced torches were not any less ominous with my human eyes as we left the sunlight behind and descended into the labyrinth, and being inside of it myself did not suddenly make it any more possible to send bugs to scout out ahead. Everything I tried to use to navigate further in made it into the shadows between torches and somehow got turned back around, leaving me no other option than to keep them on the walls, floor, and ceiling within our immediate vicinity. As long as I didn''t try to send them too far ahead of us or leave them too far behind, they didn''t get lost.

    As I should have expected from the mythical labyrinth. If solving it was that easy, then it wouldn''t have been highlighted as one of Daedalus'' greatest works.

    The one thing I could do without any trouble was have my bugs travel along the thread Ritsuka was leaving behind us. I didn''t know for sure whether it was because it matched the myth or just because there wasn''t any way for them to get lost traveling in a straight line over an unchanging surface, but it let me ferry in emergency reinforcements without losing them somewhere between the entrance and our position.

    The labyrinth, it turned out, was not a traditional maze, or maybe it would be more accurate to say it was more a traditional labyrinth than the later mazes that had false paths and dead ends, all things considered. That didn''t mean that I couldn''t see how easy it would be to get lost or turned around, because the entire place was uniform, and the only thing that broke the monotony was the turns, all of them sharp and square. If you had to stop and take a break, you might just forget which direction you were going and turn around.

    I wasn''t sure how long we''d been walking for when Mash suddenly stiffened at the front of the line.

    "Movement up ahead, Master!"

    A moment later, I heard it, the clicking and clacking of something moving along the marble surface, and as they passed through the light of a torch, I saw what Mash must have detected: skeletal warriors made entirely of bone carrying weapons made of bone. They were completely human from toe to neck, but instead of a head, they had only a set of shark-toothed jaws that sat atop their spines like bear traps.

    "What the hell are those?" Rika demanded. "Skellies? Like back in Fuyuki?"

    As though they had heard her, each and every one of the skeletons honed suddenly on our position and raced towards us at speed. They brandished their roughly hewn swords with obvious intent, but other than the clacking of their steps and the clicking of their bodies, they made no sound at all.

    "Then they should go down just the same!" I told her as I lifted my arm. The image of a spider''s thread snapping resounded in my mind.

    "I hate mob type enemies!" said Rika as she lifted her own arm. "Gandr!"

    "Gandr!"

    Two of the group took our shots head on and scattered, clattering to the floor. The other ten kept coming fearlessly, as though they hadn''t even noticed that two of their own had been destroyed.

    That, too, matched their behavior from Fuyuki.

    "Gandr!"

    Two more shots took down another two skeletons, paring the number down to eight. It looked like Rika''s aiming practice was really paying off, because she wasn''t missing.

    "Hey!" said Drake. "Why do you two get to have all the fun?"

    She pressed herself up against my back, and my brain shorted a little as those massive things attached to her chest squished against my spine, and with one hand, she braced herself on my shoulder while she leaned out to the side and took aim with a flintlock in the other. The bark of her pistol reverberated off of the walls, drowning out the sound of another skeleton collapsing in a heap.

    It took only a moment to recover my wits, and Rika and I squeezed off another shot each as the remaining group raced towards us.

    They didn''t even make it close enough to fight Mash. The remaining five went down one after the other with almost no effort, leaving us with nothing more than scattered piles of dark bone.

    "Geez!" Rika complained. "I was expecting Indiana Jones stuff, not Night of the Living Dead!"

    "Can''t say as this was what I was expecting to run into down here either," Drake agreed as she stepped back and the weight of her chest left mine.

    Good grief. How had she not suffocated under those things?

    "I''m¡­not sure why they might have been down here," Mash admitted. "Maybe¡­they''re the remains of those who died in the Labyrinth?"

    "They look a little funny, though," said Rika. "What''s with their heads?"

    "I thought it was just me," Ritsuka added.

    Maybe Chaldea had gotten a better read on them. If we were lucky, their instruments might even be able to map out the labyrinth for us as we went, which might not make that string unnecessary, but it would give us more wiggle room going forward.

    But when I lifted my communicator and attempted to contact them, all I got was static.

    Ritsuka''s brow furrowed. "That''s¡­a bit ominous."

    "More horror movie bullshit," Rika said sourly. "I like my brain uneaten, thank you!"

    "I don''t think you''re going to have to worry about that with these," Emiya said as he shimmered into existence. He stepped forward and bent down to examine the bones. Whatever he found didn''t make him happy. With a click of his tongue, he went on, "Damn, I was afraid of that. I recognize these."

    "You do?" the twins said in stereo.

    "Dragon Tooth Warriors," he said distastefully.

    Oh.

    "From the legend of Jason and the Argonauts?" Mash said before I could.

    Emiya nodded. "Although what they''re doing here, I couldn''t tell you. The Heroic Spirit they belong to has no connection to the Labyrinth or the Minotaur, let alone Daedalus."

    There was a connection between Theseus and Jason, I thought, but it was tenuous enough that I didn''t see the need to correct him. More importantly, there was no connection between the Labyrinth and Jason, except for Theseus, and three degrees of separation was too much even for me to believe it was possible.

    "Great," Rika groused. "You realize that means we''ll see more of them now, right? This place was spooky enough without adding zombie bone monsters!"

    "Ah, quite your belly-aching!" Drake said. "We took that lot down quick and easy, yeah? What''re you even worried about?"

    "Fortunately, they are relatively weak and easy to put down," I agreed. "Just be ready to use Gandr on them, Rika, and we shouldn''t have too much trouble."

    "I won''t let any of them hurt you, Senpai!" Mash chimed in. "None of them will make it past my shield! I promise!"

    "You''re lucky you''re such a cinnamon roll, Mash," Rika said. She shook her head. "Ah, whatever! I''m not going to let a bunch of skellies scare me! Not after I''ve been through Senpai''s funhouse of bugs and spiders!"

    "It is kind of hard to beat that," Ritsuka agreed, "even if we were never in any actual danger at the time."

    "Stop trying to make it worse!"

    When the twins settled back down a minute later, we started back on our journey through the labyrinth. The walls around us remained perfectly uniform and without flaw as we walked ¡ª stepping carefully around the piles of bones as we passed the remains of the Dragon''s Teeth ¡ª and it was becoming increasingly obvious why this place had been considered such a nightmare to navigate, back in the myth. Everything looked the exact same, down to the etching in the reliefs carved up higher on the walls.

    The mathematical precision involved in replicating everything down to the millimeter was mind-boggling, doubly so for a man who had existed somewhere around a thousand years before Pythagoras was even born.

    Then again, the pyramids were the same way, weren''t they? The ancient Egyptians had accomplished marvels of engineering and architecture that, to my knowledge, still baffled experts to¡­well, to the modern era.

    Couldn''t exactly say "to this day" when we were technically four-hundred years in the past.

    True to Rika''s prediction, we did in fact run into several more groups of Dragon''s Teeth. Hampered as they were by the relative narrowness of the corridor, they weren''t any harder to put down than they were the first time. In a wider area of engagement, I could see them being a little more challenging, but without the space to flank us and being forced to come from a single direction, the advantage of their numbers was massively curtailed.

    And still, there was no indication as to their source. I wasn''t sure who I was expecting to find if we did actually find someone. The myth, after all, technically belonged to Jason, but that didn''t mean that Jason was the only one who could make them. I just wasn''t sure where the limits of that logic ended either.

    The Labyrinth stretched on. The spool of yarn in Ritsuka''s hands grew ever smaller, although it hadn''t yet grown small enough that I was starting to get worried, but neither did there seem to be any end in sight. The uniform structure of the walls didn''t just play merry havoc on our sense of direction, it also made it hard to tell the passing of time or even distance, so it was almost impossible to say exactly how long we''d been walking or how much time had passed since we first entered.

    With our communicators unable to even tell us the local time? We could have been walking for hours without realizing it.

    "Geez," Rika grumbled. "Just how big is this place?"

    "I don''t know," I said.

    Mash sighed. "Unfortunately, Senpai, the myth didn''t give exact measurements, so there''s no way of saying exactly how big the Labyrinth actually is. For that matter, as a Noble Phantasm, it doesn''t necessarily have to obey the normal boundaries of physical space, so it''s entirely possible that the Labyrinth itself is larger on the inside than the space it takes up on the outside."

    Which would go a long way to explaining the oddities I''d noticed when we first discovered it. If it was a sort of localized dimensional pocket, then it might only take up a few cubic feet of the hillside, even though it was this big on the inside.

    "So¡­what?" Rika asked. "Do we just keep walking until we find this Daddy guy?"

    Her brother grimaced. "Please don''t call him that ever again."

    "Questionable phrasing aside," I began, "it''s a good point. We can''t let him go for too long, but I think, once we reach the end of Emiya''s spool of yarn, we should turn back and start talking other options."

    Like nuking the whole place down to the bedrock. It felt a little extreme, but if we couldn''t negotiate and he wasn''t willing to come talk with us, then we''d have to take whatever way off of this island we could.

    Ritsuka looked down at the spool of yarn in his hands. "We still have a ways to go, then."

    "Ugh," Rika grunted. "Why can''t this guy be polite and meet us halfway? What, were we supposed to knock to let him know we were coming?"

    Somehow, I didn''t think it was that simple.

    "Should we call that Plan B?" Arash suggested humorously.

    "If we have to," I answered in all seriousness. "I''d rather not alienate a Caster as strong as Daedalus. He''s too useful to have as an enemy."

    "I''ll drink to that!" Drake proclaimed, and she reached into her cleavage again long enough to pull out her Grail and take a long swig of rum. When she was done, she stuffed it back in again. "Ah! Who cares if we get another mouth to feed when I''ve got all the food and drink I could ever need?"

    "Servant''s don''t need to eat, Captain Drake," Mash told her matter-of-factly. "A-ah, that is, regular Servants don''t, but a Demi-Servant like me does. I can substitute magical energy for a time, but eventually, I have to have food."

    "That doesn''t mean we can''t enjoy a good meal, though," Arash chimed in. "Just that we don''t need it to survive."

    "Geez!" Drake whined. "You Servants are cool in so many ways, but not getting to eat or drink? I don''t know how you can stand it!"

    "When you''re a Servant yourself," Arash replied, "you''ll understand just fine, I think."

    "Never!" Drake said firmly.

    Abruptly, Mash gasped and stiffened. "This feeling¡­!"

    The whole of the Labyrinth shuddered and shook, and even the flames in the torches flickered and wavered in their brackets. The thud of heavy footsteps echoed off of the walls, and a metallic whine scraped along the tiles like nails on a chalkboard. From further on ahead, something lumbered towards us, growing ever closer with each plodding footfall.

    My mind raced through the possibilities. Had Daedalus been responsible for any automatons? I couldn''t remember. I wanted to say no, but the man was a brilliant inventor who had constructed functional wings from feathers, wax, and a bit of string, so underestimating his limits was the worst idea imaginable.

    Emiya suddenly materialized, hands held out to his sides as his swords manifested. "Master!"

    From up ahead, a massive, bronze-skinned hand gripped the corner of the wall, and then a head rounded the turn, a visage of a skeletal bull with a thick mane of white fur that almost swallowed the pair of enormous black horns jutting out from inside of it.

    No, I realized. I''d been assuming from the start that this was the Noble Phantasm of Daedalus, because it fit the mold. He''d created the thing, after all. But he wasn''t the only one associated with it, was he? He wasn''t the only one whose legend had been defined by it. He wasn''t the only one who could be said to have it as a Noble Phantasm.

    There was still someone else who had lived here, been trapped here, and eventually died here. Someone not traditionally considered a character or a person, someone that the legend of the Labyrinth tended to treat like a brainless, unfeeling monster.

    But when you think about it, what was the difference between a demigod who was half divine and half man and a monster that was half man and half animal? If they were both half human, then didn''t that make them both human enough to become a Heroic Spirit?

    "Servant detected!" Mash reported unnecessarily.

    After the head came the torso, thickly muscled and crisscrossed with thin scars. Heavy iron bands wrapped tightly around the arms as though to weigh down the colossus stomping around the corner, and beneath a skirt the color of blood, more wrapped around the ankles. One in particular was attached to a literal ball and chain large enough that it could have slowed down a fully transformed Lung.

    "Holy fuck," Drake swore. "That fucker is ¡ª"

    "The Minotaur," I breathed.

    The whole hallway shook and rumbled, and it took me an extra second to realize that it was the Minotaur growling. He hefted a pair of large polearms, halberds with sharp spikes on the end of the shaft and the back of the ax''s head. They looked like they could easily cleave me in half and still keep going.

    And with a voice like an avalanche, he spoke.

    "Die."

 Chapter XC: Divine Lookalike

    Chapter XC: Divine Lookalike

    In a flash, the Minotaur was upon us, and one of his halberds smashed into Mash''s shield with a thunderous crash that made my teeth ache and my ears ring.

    He''s fast!

    Mash grunted, knees buckling under the force of the blow, but remained standing and unmoved. There was no time for her to counterattack ¡ª with another resounding blow, the Minotaur brought his other halberd down upon Mash''s shield, and Mash grunted again, knees bending, but took it without complaint.

    "Mash!" the twins cried.

    "Stay back, Master!" Mash replied. "H-he''s too strong!"

    BANG!

    Drake, leaning over to the side, abused my poor eardrums further as she fired off a shot from her pistol. Blood spurted into the air as it landed, punching an almost insignificant seeming hole in the Minotaur''s body, but it looked like he hadn''t even felt it. He didn''t so much as flinch.

    "Kill¡­all¡­you¡­"

    The Minotaur brought up his halberds again, smashing them against Mash''s shield another time. The whole labyrinth seemed to shake around us from the sheer power behind his swings. Somehow, Mash still managed to hold on and stay standing, although how many more of those she could take, I didn''t know.

    Bang! Bang! Bang!

    Drake kept firing one after the other, stopping only long enough to pull back the hammer on her pistols, but even though she wasn''t missing, she wasn''t doing any more damage than before. In fact, he was already healing. Not like Altera had, not like Flauros, but his wounds barely bled and didn''t slow him down at all, and even before my eyes, they seemed to be shrinking, slowly but surely.

    "Damn it!" Drake cursed. "What''s it gonna take to put this fucker down? It''s like I''m not even hurting him!"

    One of her shots pinged off of the metallic mask protecting his face and ricocheted into the ceiling, disintegrating. The Minotaur didn''t acknowledge it at all, like he was in no danger even if it had hit him in the head.

    Maybe he wasn''t. Altera and Flauros had both had incredible healing abilities born from the Grail, but the last time I''d seen someone tanking hits like this was Caligula. The last time I''d seen raw strength like this was that same fight.

    BONG!

    "Ah!" Mash gasped, one foot sliding backwards to brace herself.

    The Minotaur didn''t relent. He kept hammering on her shield over and over again, raising a cacophony of noise that I was sure was going to give me a headache once this was all over, and Mash held on, refusing to take so much as a single step backwards.

    And then, further down the hallway behind him, Arash and Emiya suddenly appeared, bows drawn, and a volley of arrows struck the Minotaur in the back.

    Finally, he reacted, staggering under the sheer number of hits he''d taken at once. Hunching over himself, he almost looked like a porcupine, with the dozen or more arrows protruding from his flesh his quills.

    But it was short-lived. With a roar that rumbled and shook the whole hallway, the Minotaur threw his shoulders back, flexing violently, and all of those arrows shattered and disappeared into motes of flickering light.

    What the hell?

    My eyes narrowed in on him ¡ª it stood to reason that if he was a Servant, we should be able to view his abilities with our Master''s Clairvoyance ¡ª and quick as I could, I read through ¡ª

    "Holy shit."

    I didn''t realize at first that the words came from my own mouth, but the surprised looks on the twins'' faces would have clued me in anyway, and it wasn''t important. No, what was important was that the Minotaur didn''t just have strength to rival Caligula, he was at least twice as strong as Caligula at his best.

    Two modifiers, on both his Strength and Constitution. I wasn''t even aware that was possible. Caligula had been trouncing us back in Septem with just one.

    "You¡­die¡­" the Minotaur growled. "Me¡­protect¡­"

    He lashed out with a kick at Mash''s shield, and Mash skidded backwards, stumbling as she tried to keep her feet on the ground, but he didn''t follow up. Instead, he turned around and raced towards Emiya and Arash like a rampaging bull.

    More arrows rained down upon him, but the Minotaur crossed his halberds over his face so that the flats of the blades protected him and ignored all the rest. His arms, his shoulders, his gut, his thighs, even his feet ¡ª it didn''t seem to matter where he was hit, none of them so much as slowed him down.

    Shit.

    Bang!

    "Fuck!" said Drake. "Is this guy for real? I''ve put enough lead in him to sink a small boat!"

    And every shot did nothing, or close enough to it that there wasn''t much difference.

    "Shit!" Emiya projected his usual pair of swords as the Minotaur bore down on him and Arash, but they might as well have been made of glass for how easily they were smashed with a single swing of one of those halberds. It might have been the only thing that saved his life, because with how hard he was thrown into that wall, even he might have died if he''d been hit with that at full force.

    Arash dodged the backswing, but with everything in such close ranges, even that wasn''t enough, because the sheer energy behind the blow still sent him sailing several feet back and into the wall. I felt my Command Spells twinge, but not enough to tell me he was in serious danger yet.

    From how narrowly he avoided the follow up blow that would have taken his head off, if he was just a little bit slower, that might change very quickly.

    "Holy crap!" Rika gasped. "This guy is ¡ª Emiya, dodge!"

    My mind raced as I watched Emiya and Arash dance around the Minotaur as best as they could, narrowly avoiding a dozen fatal blows in half as many seconds. No Magic Resistance, which was a point in our favor, but with a Constitution stat like that, it might not have functionally mattered. He was taking shots from Arash and Emiya and walking them off, and those two''s arrows were closer to tank shells than regular arrows.

    That technique Emiya had used against Caligula¡­? No, that wouldn''t work either. He didn''t have the room to make it work. That was why we couldn''t afford for him to use Caladbolg the way he had against Flauros either, because it might be enough to take out the Minotaur, but it would probably take us out with him.

    Bugs¡­would do nothing. And it would take several minutes to ferry enough of them here to matter. My ravens had the same problem as Emiya did: not enough room. There wasn''t space for them to maneuver, the high ceiling that let the Minotaur stand up without trouble was still too low, and the only direction Huginn and Muninn would be able to attack from was head on. I might as well just dash them against the ground and stomp on them, because that would do less damage than those halberds would.

    How were we supposed to fight this guy?

    My eyes zeroed in on the wounds dotting the Minotaur''s body, watching them as Arash and Emiya narrowly avoided another pair of swings that would have disemboweled them and still wound up smacked around. His wounds were healing, but it was still so slow. They bled, but only a little. I''d faced enemies like that before, who didn''t seem to take much damage and recovered rapidly.

    If we couldn''t afford to even try to hit him with something powerful enough to actually hurt him and we weren''t doing enough to hurt him yet, then there really wasn''t much of a better option than to bleed him slowly. Even if we couldn''t kill him, if we could hurt him enough to force him to disengage, then we could retreat ourselves and come up with a better plan.

    I didn''t like our chances of escaping if we tried the latter without doing the former.

    It looked like this was going to be a good chance to test out one of Da Vinci''s new functions.

    I reached into the mystic code and touched one of the batteries. A single spark of magical energy was enough to turn it on, and I focused on the feeling ¡ª like I was using a Command Spell, without actually using one.

    Lines ran up and down my uniform, creating a pattern I couldn''t fully see. "Siegfried, come forth!"

    The magical energy in the battery churned, surged, and¡­dissipated, accomplishing nothing. Siegfried didn''t appear.

    "Was that supposed to do something?" Drake asked. "Because the pretty light show was nice and all, but nothing happened!"

    "I-it didn''t work?" Rika stammered. "H-hey! Da Vinci-chan! I want a refund!"

    "It must be the Labyrinth!" Mash said before I could get my thoughts back in order. "I-it''s cut us off from Chaldea completely! We can''t even summon Shadow Servants like Miss Da Vinci told us!"

    Shit. That meant this wasn''t going to be as easy as pulling in one of our powerhouses and letting them duke it out with the Minotaur. We were going to have to do this with the Servants and the supplies we had on hand and nothing else.

    What else could we do? Think. How did you bring down a Brute that didn''t seem to feel any attack you threw at him?

    If you couldn''t bring raw, overwhelming power, then you had to fall back on sheer numbers.

    I didn''t have any better ideas just then, so we were going to have to go with something simple and stupid until I could figure something else out.

    Bang! Bang!

    "Drake!" I shouted over the ringing in my ears. "Keep firing!"

    "Whaddya think I''ve been doing?" Drake hollered back over the roar of her snap-crack of her pistols.

    "Ritsuka, Rika ¡ª Gandr, and don''t let up until he does!"

    "Right!" said Ritsuka, and he dropped the spool of yarn to take aim.

    "Roger wilco, Senpai!" Rika acknowledged.

    Arash! I said urgently.

    I¡­heard! he replied, and down the corridor, he ducked under another swing, his hair whipping about from the gust of the passing blade, and stabbed an arrow as deep as he could into the Minotaur''s torso.

    It didn''t seem to do anything except make him angrier.

    "Gandr!" the twins cried, and balls of black energy whipped down the hallway, to splash uselessly off of the Minotaur''s broad back. Instead, he took another swing at Emiya as though he hadn''t even felt them, completely ignoring Drake''s bullets, too.

    Death by a thousand cuts. A form of torture, a style of execution whereby the victim was slowly bled dry from hundreds of small, individual cuts, all of them insignificant on their own, but painful, and when added up, deadly.

    In principle, it was the same way you dealt with any other dangerous Brute. The regenerators, at least, or those who just took less damage instead of having some kind of threshold. There was one, Gavel, who had been there at Gold Morning and managed to actually hold Scion off for a few minutes on his own, and the Minotaur reminded me of him.

    As I said, it was a simple plan, but right then, it was all we had.

    I took aim and ran energy through my magic circuits. "Gandr!" I shouted, adding my own voice to the chorus.

    It didn''t seem to do any more than anyone else''s attacks. We were hitting him, but he was completely ignoring everyone except Emiya and Arash ¡ª thinking, rightly so, that they were the strongest and most threatening of our group. He attacked them with wild abandon, like a rabid dog, and it was all either of them could do to avoid the worst of it.

    His strength really was unreal. The whole of the labyrinth seemed to shake with each blow, as though the entire hillside would fall in on our heads at any moment, but the walls didn''t threaten collapse. It made sense, in a way. If the Labyrinth was the Minotaur''s Noble Phantasm, then it wouldn''t break that easily. It would sooner fade from lack of energy than that, and if it was sitting on top of a ley line, then even that could be held essentially indefinitely.

    But even a towering powerhouse like that had to go down eventually after accumulating so much damage. With more and more wounds pockmarking his flesh with every second, it didn''t matter that they weren''t that large and were healing fast enough that we could see it happen, because eventually, it would just become too much.

    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    Even Gavel had died, in the end, killed by Scion. Damage mitigation wasn''t invulnerability.

    The trouble was that it was quickly becoming a battle of attrition. The Minotaur couldn''t go on forever, even if he kept swinging as though he could, and we simply couldn''t fire Gandr shots at him indefinitely. The only one of us with truly "unlimited ammo" was Drake, and while she wasn''t missing, her shots seemed to do the least out of everyone''s.

    Rank A Constitution, with two modifiers. A stat so far beyond the limits of what was supposed to be possible that it had only ever been a theoretical in our primer courses back at Chaldea. With a body that sturdy, it was becoming frighteningly possible that he would outlast us, all of us. He might even be resilient enough to withstand taking a Noble Phantasm to the face.

    It was perhaps somewhat appropriate, therefore, when a voice interrupted the whole thing.

    "En garde!"

    A missile of green light streaked over our heads, and a tiny lance, made larger by the swirling vortex of magical energy that surrounded it like a halo, found the Minotaur''s back unerringly. Red blood splattered across the floor, and the Minotaur threw his head back and roared.

    "Tii-chan!" Rika cheered.

    "Bradamante!" Ritsuka and Mash echoed in stereo.

    Bradamante had no chance to respond, because the furious Minotaur whipped around with a roundhouse kick that would have reduced any of us Masters into pulp. Bradamante avoided a similar fate by blocking it with her shield, but there was still enough power behind it to fling her back and almost into Mash.

    "Sorry I''m late, Master!" Bradamante said brightly. "Lord Ritsuka informed me of the situation, and I came immediately!"

    "He did?" Rika blurted out, unknowingly echoing my thoughts.

    "We needed the help," Ritsuka said simply.

    Mash gasped. "Here he comes!"

    The whole corridor seemed to tremble as the Minotaur growled low and deep in his chest, and he took first one, then another world-shaking step towards us with murderous intent. Bradamante and Mash both lifted their shields, ready to defend themselves.

    They needn''t have bothered, because a twisted black arrow the size of a spear sprouted from the Minotaur''s torso in a shower of blood.

    Finally, he staggered, gasping, and collapsed to one knee, and behind him, a panting, battered Emiya slowly let his bow droop in his hand. Red blood dripped from the wound, and when the wicked-looking arrow disappeared a moment later, the Minotaur staggered again, and the drip became a steady flow, running in rivulets down his chest and splattering all over the marble floor.

    "On the plus side," Emiya said dryly, "that would never have worked on Herakles."

    "One of these days," Arash replied, "you''re going to have to tell us all about how you know these things."

    Emiya scoffed. "Don''t hold your breath."

    "Won''t¡­let¡­" the Minotaur rasped. "Kill¡­all¡­"

    Slowly, shakily, he started to pull himself to his feet, and Emiya''s eyebrows rose.

    "Damn," he said. "Even after all of that, you can still keep going?"

    The Minotaur stumbled a little, but managed to catch himself, giving us all a good look at the grizzly wound in his chest. It had apparently missed his heart ¡ª his spiritual core ¡ª but on a human being, that was easily a whole lung gone and probably a couple other very important organs.

    I''d seen very few people able to survive a hit like that, let alone stand up afterwards. I hadn''t seen a Battle Continuation skill when I observed him earlier, but with his Constitution so high, it looked like he didn''t even need it. Despite taking so much damage, that wouldn''t be enough to put him down.

    It was obvious that he was beaten, though. As a Servant, he would eventually be able to recover even from a wound that bad, but it had weakened him severely. He was struggling to stand, let alone keep his grip on both of his weapons.

    Grimacing, Emiya dismissed his bow and traded it in for a broad, square bladed sword obviously meant for chopping. "Master," he said grimly, "you''re probably going to want to look away from this."

    "W-what?" Rika asked.

    An execution. Emiya was going to finish the Minotaur off.

    "Hey, I think you might be getting a bit ahead of things," Arash said. "This labyrinth is his Noble Phantasm, isn''t it? What''s going to happen to us if it disappears when he dies while we''re still inside of it?"

    Emiya stopped suddenly. "Shit."

    So I wasn''t the only one who was worried about that. Yes, "the hard way" was never how you wanted to find out what would happen to the contents of a folded space when that fold collapsed.

    The Minotaur shifted, the head of one halberd screeching as it dragged along the tile floor, and Arash lifted his bow, pulling back on the bowstring halfway as everyone else tensed, ready to fight again the instant the Minotaur made one aggressive move.

    "He might not give us a choice," Emiya said sardonically.

    "I can try and pin him down," Arash replied. "At the very least, if I fill his limbs with enough arrows, it should buy us enough time to escape before you work your magic and break this place over your knee."

    "Your confidence in me is inspiring."

    It was as good a plan as I thought we were going to get. Now that we knew who was here and where he stood, it would be safer to retreat and just blow the whole hillside up. There was no point in further risking our lives in a pointless brawl on the enemy''s home turf.

    "We''ll retreat with Mash," I said, pitching my voice to carry. "Emiya, Arash, it''ll be up to you to keep him busy until we can get out of here, then we''ll send in Siegfried to finish him off. Bradamante will cover us."

    "Got it," said Arash.

    "That work for you, Master?" Emiya asked, looking Rika''s way.

    "As long as you don''t take any stupid risks!" she shot back. "I can''t go back to MREs and protein bars! I refuse!"

    One side of his mouth ticked up. "I hear you loud and clear."

    Bradamante didn''t look entirely happy, but she nodded. "Then I will leave this foe to you, Sir Emiya, Lord Arash."

    "Wait!" a new voice said suddenly. "Stop!"

    From down the corridor behind Emiya and Arash, a petite figure came around the corner, dressed in a frilly white gown. She trembled a little and refused to step any closer, her fists clenched as she glared at our two Archers.

    "No¡­" the Minotaur gasped. "Stay¡­"

    She ignored him.

    "I''ll go with you!" she shouted at us. Her voice echoed off of the walls, bouncing back at us. "You can do whatever you want with me! Just stop hurting Asterios! If you kill him, then this place will collapse, and we''ll all die!"

    "Asterios?" the twins said simultaneously.

    "It''s the name of the Minotaur," Mash explained quietly. "Most people only know him as the Minotaur of Crete, but his true, proper name is Asterios. This labyrinth is the place where he lived and died in mythology¡­so I guess Daedalus isn''t here after all."

    No, probably not. I''d given up on the idea the instant I''d seen the Minotaur myself. As convenient as it would have been to be able to recruit him, it just seemed like a longshot that they would both be here, let alone that they could stand to be in the same place together.

    The girl in the dress took a step forward. "Did¡­didn''t you hear me? I said I''m willing to go with you!"

    And it put her directly under the light of one of the torches. Mash gasped. "Master! That''s ¡ª !"

    "Stheno!" Ritsuka yelped.

    My stomach roiled. A block of cold dread dropped into my belly like ice.

    Immediately, Rika clapped her hands over Ritsuka''s ears, and Emiya and Arash turned to face Stheno fully, drawing back on their bows. Stheno backed up, shock rippling across her face, and raised her hands in an attempt to be placating.

    The Minotaur growled and dragged himself around again, lifting his halberds, but before he could even attempt to do anything, Bradamante leveled her lance at him and commanded, "Don''t move!"

    "H-hang on, what''s with the sudden attack position?" Stheno asked. "Don''t you guys need me for something? Alive?"

    What ¡ª after what she''d done to us back in Septem, why would we want anything from her? Did she really think we''d forgotten all about that bit where she''d tried to turn us into her slaves?

    "Unlike last time, we''re not on that island, so we don''t have to worry about it disappearing on us," Emiya said. "If you think we''re going to give you another chance to bewitch us, you really aren''t that smart."

    "Island? Another chance?" Stheno said, bewildered, or at least faking it fairly well. "What are you even talking about? I''ve never met you goons before today!"

    "Hey!" Rika said indignantly. "Who are you calling a goon? Especially after you sicced those two dragon girls on us last time!"

    But Stheno seemed only more bewildered. "Dragon girls? What?"

    Emiya, seeming to realize something, huffed and slowly lowered his bow. "If you''ve been summoned here as a Servant, then I guess it only makes sense that you don''t remember being one in the last Singularity, too."

    My cheek twitched. I wanted to say that was too convenient, but unfortunately, I knew too much about Servants to think he was wrong. Emiya himself was a prime example. It would explain her reaction to us, at least, if she didn''t have any memory at all of what went down on that godforsaken island.

    It didn''t really explain the attitude, though. The Stheno we''d fought had been in complete control the entire time, with a kind of bored, disinterested affectation that only peeled away once we took that control away from her. If this one and the last one were the same person taking the same form, then why was one a lot less cool-headed than the other?

    Were we actually dealing with Stheno? Or was there something else going on?

    "What?" Stheno demanded, annoyed. "Would you start making sense already? I told you, I''ve never met you idiots before today! Not here and not anywhere else either!"

    Slowly, Arash lowered his bow, too. "I think we''re all making some assumptions here. First off, let''s clear this up before we do anything else ¡ª you''re not Stheno, are you?"

    Wait. Stheno was part of a set of three sisters.

    Her face contorted with disgust, and I realized what he had a second before she opened her mouth. "Ugh, what? You seriously mistook me for my sister? You classless brutes really don''t know how to treat a lady, do you?"

    If she wasn''t Stheno and she looked far too young to be Medusa, then by process of elimination, that left ¡ª

    "Euryale."

    "Whose eye did what?" Rika asked, bewildered.

    "Euryale, the third of the Gorgon sisters," Mash supplied helpfully. "Remember, Master? We talked about them before. Stheno and Euryale were the sisters of Medusa."

    Rika''s brow furrowed, and she squinted back at Euryale. "No one said they were twins¡­"

    No, that part really hadn''t been incredibly explicit in the myths, but I guess it made some sense, didn''t it? The oldest form, back before later revisions started changing things around, was a tale about three sisters, all of them identical at first, except the one who wasn''t quite immortal and grew into a woman while the other two remained eternally young.

    Comparing both the Stheno I remembered and the Euryale in front of me, yeah, I could see the family resemblance between them and that Medusa we fought in Fuyuki. Age Medusa down by ten or fifteen years, stick her in one of those gothic lolita dresses that the other two were wearing, and it would be hard to tell any of them apart from one another.

    "Listen, do we have a deal or not?" Euryale asked, annoyed. "I already said I''d go with you if you leave Asterios alone, so just take me to that creep already and get it over with."

    "No¡­" Asterios the Minotaur groaned.

    "Maybe you could explain why you think we want you for anything first?" said Ritsuka. "Because I''m¡­still a little confused about that part."

    I jumped in while I had the chance. "We came here to investigate a bounded field that activated not long after we anchored near this island because it caused our ship to stall. If you thought we were here to capture you, then you did a very poor job of trying to keep us away."

    But why were they here in the first place? We''d learned from Stheno that she''d been summoned as a sort of mistaken response to Romulus, a flub that resulted from him suppressing his own Divinity. There was no way the circumstances were exactly the same, so exactly what function was Euryale here to fulfill?

    A quick glance told me that her class was Archer, but her skills were largely the same as her sister''s, and having that on board was a disaster just waiting to happen.

    She was functionally the same as Stheno. Maybe not in personality, but in ability, in combat potential. She almost certainly wasn''t here to fight.

    "Yeah!" Rika agreed. "You can''t complain about us showing up in this creepy maze if you sent us an engraved invitation, you know!"

    Euryale blinked at us, stunned, and her mouth flapped for several seconds soundlessly before she managed to squeak something out. "What¡­you¡­you''re¡­" She shrieked, "ARE YOU SERIOUS?"

    It echoed off of the walls and bounced around, amplified, stabbing into my eardrums like ice picks, and even I had to wince at the sheer volume.

    "Hey!" Rika squawked. "No need to shout in here!"

    Euryale ignored her and stormed down the corridor, stomping past Emiya and Arash like they weren''t even there ¡ª they watched her go, exchanging bewildered looks ¡ª and as she came upon him, she seethed up at Asterios the Minotaur.

    "It was supposed to keep them out!" she scolded him furiously. "Not lock them in! They wouldn''t even have known we were here if you hadn''t trapped them on the island!"

    And Asterios just¡­slumped sheepishly, thoroughly cowed (an appropriate way of putting it, in hindsight). "¡­Sorry."

    "Ugh." Euryale groaned. "All of this trouble over a simple misunderstanding¡­ And look at you! If you kept going in that shape, they really would have killed you, and then where would we be? How exactly were you planning to protect me if I''m just going to die when your labyrinth collapses, huh?"

    Asterios slumped further, and this time didn''t even offer a token apology. It was¡­strange looking, considering just how badly injured he actually was.

    "Wow," said Rika. "It''s like watching him get told off by his mom, except she looks like his little sister."

    "Yeah," Ritsuka agreed.

    Euryale breathed out a gusty sigh, and then turned to address us. "So if we lift the bounded field, you guys will just leave, right?"

    The question became, then, if she wasn''t here to fight, was she another mistake, like Stheno, a purposeful choice, like Siegfried, or had she just gotten sucked in by the Singularity? Because damn it, that was a possibility, too, wasn''t it? This place was so twisted up that she might have been pulled for no other reason than she used to live on an island herself.

    "Not immediately," I answered, "but there''s nothing on this island we really need, so we have no reason to stay all that long."

    If we forgot about the question of her purpose in this Singularity for a second ¡ª because unless she knew herself, I didn''t see an answer forthcoming ¡ª then the reason we''d stopped on this island in the first place was to investigate for Servants and see if we could find anything out about the other party with a Grail.

    That¡­was probably something these two might have some kind of answer to.

    "Now, hang on a second, don''t be too hasty!" said Drake, butting in. "See, I''ve been around for a while and I''ve seen some pretty strange shit! It''s given me an eye for the peculiar and unusual. Lets me catch on to things some people might not see right away."

    "Your point?" Euryale asked archly.

    "You''re here hiding from someone, ain''tcha?" Drake said pointedly. "Only reason why you two''d sit your asses down on this abandoned island and put up a gigantic sign telling folks to stay away."

    Euryale looked at her coldly. "It has nothing to do with you."

    Drake grinned. "And what if I wanted it to?"

    Briefly, I closed my eyes and let out a slow, quiet breath, not quite a sigh. I guess we were going to run into this one head on, weren''t we? I was hoping to figure that one out without having to have an extended conversation with a goddess who could bewitch us with her voice.

    Euryale blinked. "What?"

    "Like I said!" Drake said. "I''ve gotten to have a good feel for this kind of thing! An instinct! And right now, that instinct is telling me¡­whatever you two are tangled up in?" She jerked her thumb towards me and the twins, and almost managed to jab me in the ear in the process. "It''s got something to do with what my esteemed guests are here looking for!"

    I was afraid she was going to say that. Worse, I was afraid that she might be right, because that would mean ¡ª

    "So here''s what we''re gonna do about that!" Drake went on. "You''re coming with us! We''ll take you along on this crazy trip and see what nonsense shakes out, and one way or the other, your problems will wind up getting solved. Everyone wins, aye?"

    "Wait!" Rika squeaked. "We''re taking her with us?"

    "That wasn''t part of the plan," Ritsuka said faintly.

    "We did come here looking for a Servant to recruit," Mash mumbled. "And¡­they must be here for a reason, right? All of the other Servants we''ve come across in the previous Singularities were."

    "Damn it," Rika grumbled. "Why do you have to be right about that, Mash?"

    "Sorry?" Mash said meekly.

    This was somehow easier when we thought it was going to be Daedalus holed up in here.

    "I didn''t agree to anything like that!" Euryale protested shrilly. "You can''t just decide something like that on your ¡ª and I''m not leaving Asterios behind, so you can just forget whatever crazy schemes you''ve cooked up in that brain of yours!"

    "Whoever said we were gonna leave him behind?" Drake retorted. "Of course we''re bringing him along, too!"

    Euryale blinked once, twice, three times, and for a long moment, was stunned into silence. At length, she managed a dumbfounded, inelegant, "Huh?"

    And there it was, the part I wasn''t particularly excited about: Drake wanted to bring both of them along. It made a lot of sense, strategically, because if the people hunting them also happened to be the ones with the other Grail, then taking Asterios the Minotaur and Euryale along would guarantee we''d run into them.

    If they weren''t, then they might have information on who did, which would be just as valuable. We wouldn''t know until we met these mysterious pursuers and asked them ourselves. Or beat it out of them, whichever was necessary.

    The part that made me most wary about this whole idea was that it could go from "fine" to "we''re all fucked" the instant Euryale decided she wanted it to. At least with Jeanne Alter and Bonesaw, there had been checks in place to stop things from going too far, whereas we didn''t really have any for Euryale''s Alluring Euphony.

    "Yeah, why wouldn''t I want him around?" Drake asked. "Look at him! Beefy ¡ª" here, Rika snorted, sniggering behind her hands ¡ª "hunky, he can take a hit and keep on going! I don''t even know how many shots I put into him, and he shrugged ''em all off like it was nothing! I''d be a piss-poor pirate if I didn''t try and bring him into my crew!"

    Euryale''s brow furrowed, but there was tentative, cautious hope in her voice when she asked, "Are you sure? Even if it means you have to protect us from some dangerous people?"

    "All the more reason!" Drake said boisterously. "Ha! Dangerous people usually have better stuff to steal! That ain''t a drawback, that''s a selling point!"

    "No," Rika said, "no, I think that''s a drawback, Captain Drake!"

    "Don''t get your knickers in a twist!" Drake retorted. "Whoever these wankers are, I''m sure we can handle ''em just fine and dandy!" Her grin was closer to a leer. "Whaddya say there, Little Missy? That sound like a good deal to you? We''ve even got food and drink aplenty! And lots of gold, too, if you fancy some spending money!"

    "Captain Drake must be very confident," Mash murmured, "if she''s willing to give up some of her treasure for this."

    Considering this was the woman who would ¡ª in a few short years, from the perspective of the current era we were in ¡ª circumnavigate the globe for the first time in history? Her instincts, such as they were, were probably a lot more trustworthy than most.

    It only made it all the more painful to admit that she was likely making a good decision by bringing Asterios and Euryale along.

    There was just one thing I wanted to clear up, first.

    "Before we go making any promises," I interrupted right as Euryale looked ready to accept, "there''s something I think we need to hear from you first. Namely, who it is that''s chasing you and what they want from you."

    She grimaced. "Did you really have to bring that up? I already told you, it has nothing to do ¡ª"

    "No," I cut across her. "If we''re taking you along with us, then that makes it our business. You don''t really think we''re going to protect you against anything and everything that comes after you without any idea why, do you?"

    "It''ll be easier to keep you safe if we know what we''re protecting you from," Arash added, picking up my line of thought.

    Euryale looked like she''d swallowed a lemon. To Asterios, she asked, "Are you really okay with going with these guys? We can just stay here if you don''t trust them."

    "You¡­go¡­I¡­go," Asterios told her in that halting speech of his.

    Euryale sighed. "Fine," she said, "but let''s get out of here, first. I don''t want to talk about that creep in a place as gloomy and depressing as this."

    "Oh, good," Rika said, relieved. "I can totally get behind that!"

 Chapter XCI: Euryales Woe

    Chapter XCI: Euryale''s Woe

    If Stheno was a bitch, then Euryale was a brat.

    Our group backtracked out of the Labyrinth, following the yarn thread we''d left as a trail behind us, with Asterios the Minotaur and Euryale at the front of the group so that we could keep an eye on them, and even when we stepped out of the dark maze and into the sunlight again, she still refused to talk about who was after her and why. She seemed to have a thousand excuses for putting it off ¡ª first, that the Labyrinth was a gloomy and depressing place, and then that her dress would soak through if we stood about at the edge of that lake, and then that she wanted to see our ship first so that she could be absolutely certain we weren''t on the side of the creep that was after her.

    It was frustrating, having to accommodate her. Doubly so when Asterios continued to bleed and his wounds continued to slow us down, and no number of casts of our First Aid spell was enough to completely close the gaping hole in his chest from Emiya''s nearly fatal blow.

    Even Ritsuka, who was often the more even-tempered of the twins, looked like his patience was being tried. I wouldn''t have blamed him for snapping at Euryale when she complained about being forced to walk the whole way back to the beach we''d come ashore on.

    "If she thinks this is tough," Rika mumbled under her breath, "she''d have keeled over back in France!"

    Silently, I agreed. There was no point in saying so aloud, though. Sometimes, you just had to put up with an asshole to get the job done, and there wasn''t much you could do except grit your teeth and bear it.

    Honestly? I wouldn''t have been surprised if Euryale was doing it on purpose. Like she was testing how much we would let her get away with. Pushing the boundaries so she could figure out exactly how far she could go before we put our foot down. I could at least be happy that no one actually agreed when she demanded that someone carry her.

    She was a Servant. None of us believed her when she said her legs were getting tired.

    Finally, however, as the sun overhead was starting to creep down towards the horizon and the day loomed into midafternoon, we came out on the other side of the forest and onto the slope that overlooked the bay. The rising ramp that we''d climbed on the way to the Labyrinth descended before us, leading down onto the sandy beach, where puffs of smoke rose from the camp of canvas tents Drake''s crew had set up.

    "There!" Drake pointed, jabbing an index finger towards the bay and the motionless galleon that sat in it. "That''s my Golden Hind over there! Ain''t nothing like what this creepy stalker o'' yours is sailing around in, is it?"

    Euryale''s brow furrowed, and her eyes narrowed as she looked out at the Golden Hind, looking over the red and black and gold paint that made it so distinctive. For a moment, she was silent, and then, almost reluctantly, she sighed and admitted, "No, it really isn''t."

    Like she''d been hoping we were lying and we actually were in cahoots with whoever it was that was chasing her.

    "Fine," she said, resigned. "Asterios, remove the bounded field, would you? It looks like these guys¡­might be trustworthy."

    "Says Stheno and Medusa''s sister," Rika grumbled.

    Euryale said nothing to that as Asterios nodded, straightened (as much as he was able to), and took a deep breath somehow while still probably missing a lung.

    It was easy to forget, sometimes, what with how human and alive they looked, but Servants weren''t really either of those things anymore. They weren''t really flesh and blood, so they weren''t bound by the same limitations.

    Then ¡ª

    Mash squeaked and the twins yelped and Drake gave a shout, and I heard none of it as I did what they did and slapped my hands over my ears to try and drown out the torrent of sound that keened out of what I assumed was Asterios'' mouth. A visible wave rippled out from him, much like the one that had trapped us on this island, and it washed out and over the grass, the sand, the water, and eventually, the ship, jostling it all on the way. The Golden Hind rocked and wobbled in the sudden surge of waves that buffeted it, free from the trap that bound it in place.

    My ears were still ringing when that¡­whatever Asterios had just done ended, and it seemed like I wasn''t the only one.

    "What the hell?" Drake squawked.

    "W-what was that?" Ritsuka asked.

    "A little warning would''ve been nice, you know!" Rika shouted.

    "Was that¡­really necessary?" I asked our newest "comrades."

    "¡­Sorry," Asterios mumbled, so low that I almost didn''t hear it over the fading tinnitus.

    "Stop whining," Euryale told us without the slightest trace of irony. "The bounded field''s gone, now. Shouldn''t you be happy about that?"

    "I''m sure we''d all be a lot more appreciative if we didn''t have to worry about permanent hearing loss," Emiya said dryly.

    "You don''t," said Euryale. "You''re Servants, aren''t you? Something like that won''t happen even if Asterios spent the whole day screaming in your ear."

    "Maybe not us," Arash allowed, "but our Masters are still very much human. Maybe show a little more care about that? After all, us Servants can''t protect you without our Masters here to support us."

    Euryale breathed out a put-upon sigh. "Fine. I guess we''ll have to be more careful in the future. Did you hear them, Asterios?"

    "¡­Sorry," Asterios mumbled again.

    "Why are you still wearing that thing, anyway?" she asked him. "Asterios, take off that ugly mask, won''t you? I can barely hear you with it on."

    "Mask?" Rika parroted, echoing my thoughts.

    As though to answer her, the skeletal visage of a bull evaporated off of Asterios'' head, and underneath it was a¡­surprisingly normal face. The long mane of tangled white hair wasn''t normal, of course, and neither were the curving black horns that jutted out of it nor the thick tuft that hung from under his chin like a beard, but of his face itself, the only thing really unusual was the menacing red of his eyes.

    "Wow," Rika said. "When you take off the scary bull mask, he''s actually kind of cute."

    Asterios looked away, a hint of red on his cheeks. He was actually blushing. The dreaded Minotaur that had slain almost three dozen children, said to be a bloodthirsty monster so violent and dangerous that it had to be locked away in an inescapable labyrinth, was actually embarrassed to be called cute by a teenage girl.

    I''d thought I was done being surprised by this stuff, but it looked like I was wrong.

    "That aside," I said, choosing deliberately not to think about it too deeply, "we''ve held up our end of the bargain. I think it''s about time you start explaining who''s after you and why."

    "Ugh." Euryale grunted. "Fine, fine. You want to know about the creep that''s chasing me around, right? Like I said, he''s a creep who doesn''t know how to take no for an answer. It''s nothing that unusual for me, not when I''m as cute and pretty as I am. Men have been chasing me for as long as I can remember because I''m just so charming."

    "Not to mention humble," Rika added dryly.

    "It goes without saying," Euryale agreed, either missing or completely ignoring the sarcasm. "This one, however, is a little bit different. He''s a pirate, like your friend over here."

    She gestured at Drake, who blinked back at her.

    "A pirate?" said Drake. "Well, can''t say I haven''t known a few here and there who go out kidnapping pretty girls."

    "Even that part isn''t so strange," Euryale said. "After all, men of all kinds came to my island, hoping to ''rescue'' Stheno and me from the terror of our sister." She rolled her eyes, like she thought they were all dumb. "They never seemed to realize that the ones we needed rescuing from were them. A bunch of fools who would have lived a lot longer if they''d just learned to leave well enough alone, but a pretty face makes idiots of even the smartest and the bravest, doesn''t it?"

    My cheek twitched, but I didn''t say anything. She wasn''t entirely wrong. I''d learned that lesson a long time ago.

    "So what makes this pirate creep special, then?" Rika asked. "You just said pirates and men coming after you for, uh, reasons ¡ª" she tried to avoid the obvious ¡ª "isn''t all that out there, right?"

    "Because he''s a pirate Servant," said Euryale, confirming my suspicions. "A nasty piece of work. Honestly, calling him a creep doesn''t even really do justice to how much of a creep he is. Just imagining his eyes on me is enough to make me feel unclean."

    She suddenly scrubbed her hands on her dress, lip curling in disgust, like she''d just set them down in something vile.

    "Ugh. It still creeps me out. That pervert isn''t even here and I want to throw myself into the nearest hot spring and spend an hour washing off!"

    Mash and Ritsuka traded a look, like they weren''t sure whether they were supposed to offer to help her or not.

    "Does this creep have a name?" I asked.

    Euryale''s lips pursed. "He didn''t say, and I didn''t ask, so I couldn''t tell you what it was."

    Of course not, because that would be too convenient, wouldn''t it? We were just going to have to wait until he inevitably showed up to figure out just who it was who was chasing her.

    "What about what he wanted from you?" I asked. "What does this guy want that he''s willing to chase you so far and so persistently that you decided to hide out on this island with Asterios?"

    Euryale looked at me like I was stupid. "I know a girl like you might not understand," she said snidely, "but it should be obvious what he wants with a woman as pretty as I am. Of course he wants to do unspeakable things with my body!"

    "Ouch," Rika said. "I felt that one, and it wasn''t even directed at me."

    I didn''t react to Euryale''s blatant insult ¡ª I gave it a six out of ten, honestly, because I''d heard a lot worse ¡ª and paid more attention to what she had basically admitted: she didn''t actually know what this mystery man wanted out of her. I seriously doubted it was just some horny guy looking to slake his lusts, for a number of reasons, but chief among them was the fact that this might be the guy with the Grail.

    If he had the Grail, what did he need Euryale for? Gilles had proven that a wish on a Grail could make a person from whole cloth. Chasing the real Euryale was pointless.

    Maybe it was because she was the real one. He didn''t want a cheap fake conjured up from his imagination, unlike Gilles, who had rejected the real Jeanne because she didn''t fit how he imagined her in his head. For whatever value "real" had when it came to Servants that only captured a snapshot of the original person.

    Of course, it might also just be a pirate Servant who had gotten sucked up in this Singularity, too. Him chasing her made a bit more sense then. That also wasn''t something we could find out until we met him.

    "Did you happen to get a good look at him?" Arash asked before I could. "So we know what this creep looks like and we''re not just firing at any Servant who shows up."

    "Not really." Euryale sighed, frowning thoughtfully. "I guess he had black hair and a beard? And he was a pirate, like I said, so he has a ship. A really big one. Bigger than yours."

    She nodded towards the Golden Hind, so it was another galleon. If it was bigger, then that meant it was probably newer, so it was probably something from the Golden Age of Piracy. Unfortunately, black hair and a beard didn''t really narrow the list down, because those weren''t terribly uncommon traits, although it did mean we could cross Barbarossa off the list.

    "Hey, now," Drake said. "It doesn''t matter if it''s bigger! My Golden Hind is the best ship you''ll ever see!"

    "It''s all about the motion of the ocean!" Rika agreed, even though what she was referencing didn''t actually have anything to do with actual ships.

    "You don''t know anything about ships," her brother pointed out dryly. "Or sailing."

    "I don''t have to!" she told him. "Captain Pillows here is the greatest pirate to sail the seas! That''s all I need to know!"

    And there it was, the Rika branded nickname. I deliberately avoided looking in the direction of her, uh, generous endowments for which she had earned a nickname like "Pillows."

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    "Pillows?" both Euryale and Drake echoed, confused.

    "Congratulations," Ritsuka told Drake. "You''ve officially received a nickname from Rika. Welcome to a very exclusive club."

    "I don''t just hand them out to anybody!" Rika agreed.

    Except she had literally given one to almost everyone we''d met, so far. That was almost the opposite of exclusive.

    Unless she was being silly and including the rest of humanity and all of the people we hadn''t met yet, and knowing Rika, it was entirely possible that she was.

    Whatever. I wasn''t going to argue this one. I recognized a pointless battle when I saw it.

    "Unfortunately," I said, attempting to drag the conversation back, "that description doesn''t really narrow our list down. It''s too vague. There''s almost two-hundred years'' worth of pirates of one stripe or another in this era alone, and a fair number of them would have had black hair."

    Including, technically, that guy with seaweed for hair we''d met a few days ago. Damn. Could he have been searching for Euryale and that''s why he stopped us and looked us over? It might explain the entirety of that encounter, and I''d definitely go so far as to call that guy "creepy."

    I didn''t know that I could believe that his interests were¡­prurient, so to speak. That bath we''d taken with A¨ªfe back in Septem proved that Servants had all the proper anatomy, but even still, with how decrepit he''d been, it was a bit harder to believe that he had all of the necessary parts to¡­"enjoy pleasurable company."

    And now I was making references to those movies.

    "It''s all the more I have," Euryale said defensively.

    "So¡­what?" asked Rika. "Are we just supposed to hope he announces his name when we see him? Like, ''My name is Captain McCreep. You have Euryale. Prepare to hand her over.''"

    "Most of the Servants we''ve met so far have been fairly upfront about their identities," Mash pointed out. "Perhaps¡­um, Captain McCreep will do the same?"

    "Please don''t encourage her," Ritsuka said.

    "Especially when she''s ruining a classic," I added. Changing back on topic, I went on, "It looks like we might not have a choice, all things considered." To Euryale, I asked, "Will you recognize him when you see him again?"

    She sniffed snootily. "What do you think you''re even asking? Of course I would. I''ll never forget that man''s ugly face for the rest of eternity."

    I guess that was as good as we were going to get. It would have been more convenient if we''d been able to get something like a composite sketch of his face, but we were all out of sketch artists and she didn''t have enough detail to go off of besides.

    "Then let''s ¡ª"

    Beep-beep!

    "Hebert!" Marie said immediately. "What happened? We lost contact with you for nearly an hour!"

    Ah. Deliberately, I didn''t look in Euryale''s direction, although I could feel her eyes watching me. Fortunately, I''d had the foresight to keep things to audio only, so our new companions couldn''t see Marie directly.

    I wasn''t sure I wanted her interacting with Euryale. I had a feeling things would deteriorate very rapidly.

    "A moment, please, Director." To the twins, I turned and said, "Why don''t you two and Captain Drake show Euryale and Asterios to the camp and introduce them to the crew? I''ll catch up after I''ve filled the Director in on everything that''s happened."

    On the comms, Marie choked, and there was a sound in the background that could only have been her slapping a hand over Romani''s mouth to keep him from flipping out.

    "Oho?" said Euryale. "What''s this? Are you trying to have a secret meeting with your boss behind my back? Well, at least it sounds like a woman, although she''s probably an old hag. That''s the type that likes to nag their subordinates."

    "Who are you calling an old hag!" Marie squawked indignantly. "I-I''m only twenty-one! That''s the very opposite of being an old hag! In fact, I''m in the prime of my youth!"

    "That''s¡­not really something you''re supposed to go around bragging about, Boss Lady," Rika said awkwardly.

    "Shut it!"

    "Don''t that make me feel old!" Drake laughed. "I''m already in my thirties! Shit! Does that make me the oldest person here? I''m not responsible enough for that!"

    "A pirate like you, I''m not sure I''d call you responsible at all," Euryale said dryly.

    Drake pulled out her Grail, lifted it as though in toast, and proclaimed, "I''ll drink to that!"

    And then she gulped down the rum that had appeared inside of it, throat bobbing with every swallow.

    "Are you actually drinking right now?" Marie demanded. "Just how irresponsible can you get? This isn''t the time to get intoxicated! You''re no use to anyone if you pass out on the beach!"

    "Ah!" Drake sighed, satisfied, once she''d drunk it all down. She waved off Marie''s concerns. "Quit yer worrying, girl! I''m a lot of things, but I ain''t stupid enough not to know my own limits! This much rum won''t even make me tipsy!"

    "Does she have a hollow leg?" Ritsuka muttered. "How can she just gulp it all down like that like it''s nothing?"

    "Perhaps she has extra storage space in those useless sacks attached to her chest," Euryale suggested snidely. "Why, they''re big enough to hold a gallon of rum each, don''t you think so?"

    Drake just grinned. "Sounds an awful lot like jealousy there, little goddess."

    "Please," said Euryale. "I''m the epitome of beauty. What do I have to be jealous of?"

    This was starting to get out of hand.

    "Ritsuka, Rika," I said, trying to take control of the conversation back, "we don''t all need to be here to report what happened, and Captain Drake, I''m sure the crew would appreciate being told that everything was handled. As your crew, it should also be your responsibility to tell them that we''re bringing Euryale and Asterios along for the foreseeable future."

    "What?" Marie shrieked.

    "I''ll catch up with you after I''ve informed the Director about what happened," I went on. "It''ll be easier to get through without anyone distracting me or butting in."

    If they caught any of the subtext in my words, I couldn''t be anywhere near sure, but neither of them put up a fight about it. Ritsuka nodded and Rika gave me another one of those silly salutes, responding, "Roger wilco, Senpai! Leave it to us!"

    "We''ll handle it," Ritsuka translated. He turned to Euryale and Asterios. "So, um¡­Miss Euryale and¡­Mister Asterios?"

    "Don''t hurt yourself, boy," Euryale said. "We''ll go with you."

    Asterios grunted, but didn''t reply verbally.

    "Ah, don''t be like that, big guy!" Drake told him. She slapped him on the arm, probably because she couldn''t reach his shoulder, and he looked down at her, unsure of how to react. At the very least, he seemed to understand it wasn''t an attack. "It''ll be fine! C''mon, we''ll get you patched up, and then get some food in that belly of yours! Then you''ll be right as rain!"

    "That''s not really¡­" Mash began, and then she gave up and sighed. "Right. Let''s get back to camp."

    And together, they all left, but not without Euryale eyeing me suspiciously as they went. Even though I could understand her paranoia, especially if this creep of hers really was that dogged in his pursuit, it was annoying that she was still so distrustful.

    Once it was just Arash and me, I switched the communicator over to video, and Marie''s face popped up in front of me. "Director ¡ª"

    "Hold on!" Marie said. "There were three extra Servant signatures with you when I contacted you! Why hasn''t the third one left yet?"

    My heart stopped. A third Servant? One we hadn''t detected before now?

    "Where?" I whispered.

    Marie''s brow furrowed for a moment, confused, and then realization washed over her face and her eyebrows shot up towards her hairline instead.

    "About six meters to the east," she answered quietly. "Behind you, in the forest. We can detect the Saint Graph, but that''s it."

    Arash shifted behind me, tensing as his fingers curled around an invisible bow. My own hand went towards my Last Resort, and slowly and carefully, I unfastened the sheath so that it could be drawn quickly.

    Had they been following us this entire time? In that case, were they with Euryale and Asterios, even though neither of them had said anything or given anything away, or were they with Euryale''s mysterious creepy pirate Servant?

    Or were they somehow unaffiliated? Had they been on this island originally and watched both us and Euryale and Asterios come here, trying to decide if we were friend or foe? No, that one seemed the least likely. Not impossible, but not probable either.

    Whoever they were, they were probably in spirit form. There was no way I wouldn''t have noticed them following us otherwise, and no way I still wouldn''t be able to detect them with my bugs even now.

    So I forced myself to relax a little and let out a dramatic sigh.

    "Well?" I said, pitching my voice to carry. "I can''t pretend you''re not there anymore. Are you going to come out, or are you going to skulk about in the shadows some more?"

    A long moment of silence followed. A breeze rustled the trees, sending the leaves dancing, but nothing else happened. Our mysterious guest didn''t appear, but neither did Marie say that whoever it was had left, so I had to assume they were still there, watching, waiting, and probably hoping I was just bluffing. The problem for them was, I happened to be very good at bluffing, and I had a very good poker face.

    "This will go a lot more smoothly," I warned, "if you cooperate. This is only a fight if you make it one."

    Another several seconds passed. Marie fidgeted a little nervously and bit her lip, brow furrowing, but said nothing more.

    And then something shifted in the forest behind me, and when I turned around, a woman shimmered into existence, appearing from the head down in condensing blue particles of glittering dust. The cowl of a black cloak hid her face from view, and she hugged the fabric to her body, as though shielding herself from the world. The only reason I could even tell it was a woman was because of her dainty feet and the fact that she was five foot four if she was lucky.

    Even so close, I could barely make out her presence. By the furrow of his brow, even Arash was having trouble sensing her, and yet, she obviously wasn''t an Assassin, because if she was, then there was no way Chaldea''s sensors would have even picked her up. Not unless she was so poor an Assassin that her Presence Concealment was abysmally low.

    "How long did you know?" she asked me bitterly.

    Lisa might have said something along the lines of "since before you were born," but that wouldn''t be particularly helpful here. I just needed to keep her from knowing the truth; pissing her off wasn''t necessary.

    So I settled for the vague, noncommittal, "Long enough."

    Her mouth ¡ª the only part of her face I could see at all ¡ª pulled into a scowl.

    I wished I was more confident in how long she''d actually been tailing us, because it would really have thrown her off guard if I said that I''d known she was following us since the Labyrinth and she actually had been. Unfortunately, getting that wrong would weaken my position here too much to risk it, so I left it at that.

    "You want to tell me why you were hanging around?"

    "Don''t you already know?" she shot back.

    "I have a few guesses," I said calmly. "I''d rather hear you say it yourself."

    She bowed her head and said nothing. Great. I guess we were going to be doing this the hard way, then.

    "Alright. The way I see it, there are three main possibilities. First, you''re a minion of that creep that''s chasing Euryale, and you''re here to scout out and report her location."

    A huff of air escaped her nostrils, and it might one day have grown up into a snort. That was a no, then, which was all for the better as far as I was concerned. It pulled her out of the "almost certainly an enemy" category and moved her into "possible ally," although it wasn''t definitive enough to say for sure.

    "Second, you were summoned by the Counter Force and you''ve been trapped on this island ever since. When Euryale and Asterios decided to hide away here, you snuck around, and you''ve been following them in secret to try and get a hang of what''s been going on in this place."

    "And the third?" she challenged, so it wasn''t option two, either. I''d had my doubts.

    "I thought so," I said like I''d known the answer from the beginning. "I guess it was too much to expect that Euryale would trust us that easily. If it really concerns you that much, then go ahead and listen while I give the Director my report. The reason I sent the others away was to avoid wasting too much time on the bickering and insults."

    She took a step forward and out of the forest. "Then you won''t mind if I get closer so that I can hear you properly?"

    "As long as you don''t mind the fact that Arash will be keeping a close eye on you."

    Arash, who had been silent up to now, merely frowned. The genial, friendly hero was nowhere in sight, and that was almost as worrying as the idea of him cussing up a storm.

    Something wrong? I asked him silently.

    ¡­I don''t know, he admitted. There''s¡­something about her. A¡­kind of presence that clings to her like tar.

    That¡­wasn''t what I wanted to hear. Is it something to worry about?

    I don''t know, he said again. It''s not something she''s causing, I don''t think. It''s more like a curse she''s under.

    Fantastic. And she would clam up tighter than Fort Knox if I asked about it, wouldn''t she? As suspicious and distrustful as she was, I wouldn''t get a straight answer at all, so there wasn''t even a point in asking.

    I turned back around and addressed Marie, "Should we get back to my report?"

    She startled, blinking at me for a handful of seconds, before she regained her composure.

    "R-right! Yes, of course!" She cleared her throat into her fist and tried for an air of professionalism. "You were going to explain why it was we lost contact with you for almost an hour."

    "Right," I said, pretending not to notice our "guest" stalking closer to me. "It happened not long after we dropped anchor near the island¡­"

    So I explained what happened, from the ship getting trapped to the fight with Asterios all the way to Euryale''s admittedly sparse explanation of the Servant pursuing her. In the interest of saving time, I kept mostly to the highlights and avoided things like my attempt to summon Siegfried failing and just how much trouble Asterios actually gave us. No need to tell our mystery woman too much about what we were capable of.

    Although if she''d been with Euryale and Asterios since the beginning, then she''d probably already seen that summoning fail. I still wasn''t going to give her anything more to go on, not when we knew almost nothing about her.

    By the end of it, Marie was leaning forward on her console, chin in hand and brow furrowed, the bridge of her nose crinkling ¡ª the seated version of her thinking pose.

    "A pirate with black hair and a beard?" she murmured. "That''s¡­"

    "Hopelessly vague, yes," I concluded. "It might be our visitor from a couple days ago, but without more to go on, there''s no way to know for sure."

    "I''ll run the description to see if we can find any positive matches that would narrow it down," Marie promised, but she didn''t sound all that hopeful. I wasn''t, either. "In the meantime, are you going to stay on that island?"

    "For the night, yes," I told her. "The next island is significantly further away, and there''s some sort of perpetual vortex that we''ll have to avoid, according to the map, so it''s better if we have some time to relax and prepare beforehand."

    Marie nodded. "We''re still making space to accommodate the supplies you suggested sending, so we might not be ready before you leave the island ¡ª tomorrow?"

    "Yes."

    "Before you leave tomorrow," she finished. "However, we should be fully prepared by the time you reach the next island, so at that point, we''ll arrange to receive whatever food and drink Captain Drake''s Grail can send our way."

    "Understood," I said. "I''ll contact you once we''ve made landfall to set up the transfer."

    "For now, however¡­"

    She tapped something on her keyboard, and after a minute or so, she ordered, "Check your map."

    I resisted the urge to arch an eyebrow and did as she asked, pulling up my map of the Singularity. There, immediately, I could see three new labels: the first, the island where we met Drake, was simply "Pirate''s Paradise." The second, where we''d first encountered those "concepts of the pirates," was named "Crescent Island," no doubt because of the crescent shaped mountain that curved around the beach.

    The third, where I was currently standing, was called "New Crete," and I had to stifle a groan. Something, however, must have shown on my face, or maybe she was just incredibly self-conscious about it, because Marie immediately went on the defense and said, "I-it''s not like there''s a more appropriate name for it, is there? It seemed appropriate!"

    "No," I allowed neutrally, "I guess not."

    On the plus side, if Marie was making changes like this, then it meant that the Singularity itself hadn''t changed since we arrived, so it was settled enough that we didn''t have to worry about the islands spontaneously morphing under our feet. It was as "terra firma" as it was going to get.

    "I-in any case," she segued clumsily, "be careful! We still don''t know who has the Grail that is distorting that Singularity, so keep your eyes peeled! It might even be this creepy pirate Servant that Euryale claims is chasing her around, which means he''ll be coming to you! You have to stay vigilant!"

    Or it could be someone who hadn''t even shown their face yet. After all, Drake hadn''t recognized any of the Servants we''d come across so far, and yet she''d apparently had encounters with one or more that led to the discovery that her Grail let her hurt them. We still knew way too little about what was going on in this place.

    "Of course, Director."

    "A-and another thing!" she went on. "No more drinking! Tell Ritsuka if he gets intoxicated again, I''ll¡­I''ll dock his pay!"

    I resisted the urge to smile. "I don''t think that''s going to have quite the impact you think it will, Director."

    Since we technically weren''t even getting paid right now. Even when this was all over and if by some miracle our backpay got handled smoothly, he would still get enough for fixing these Singularities that docking a few days'' worth for being "drunk on the job" would be essentially meaningless.

    She huffed. "I-it''s the principle of the thing! As a Master of Chaldea, he has a responsibility to represent us and comport himself appropriately! I won''t tolerate any¡­any slovenliness from anyone!"

    Only Marie could use a word like "slovenliness" so seriously.

    "Of course, Director. I''ll make sure to remind him."

    Marie grunted and crossed her arms, glowering at me through the hologram. "I can tell when you''re humoring me, you know. I know you well enough by now."

    "Then you know that I won''t let any of it get in the way of the job," I replied. "I think Ritsuka has learned his lesson. It won''t happen again."

    She met my gaze for a long second and then nodded. "Good."

    A moment later, the connection cut, and I shut my communicator off as I turned back around to face our mystery guest.

    "Satisfied?"

    For a moment, she didn''t reply, she just stared at me from under her cowl, her eyes hidden. The only thing I could make out was the thinning of her lips. At length, she sighed and forced herself to relax a little, but even with how little of her face and body I could see, I could tell it was largely an act. That cloak of hers couldn''t hide everything.

    "I suppose I''ll have to be, won''t I?" she lamented. "Very well. At the very least, you don''t seem to be on the side of that pervert. I''ll go along with you, for now, since it seems like our interests align at the moment."

    And she wasn''t going to tell me how they aligned, was she? Of course not. If she got any more skittish, I wouldn''t be surprised to see her grow a pair of wings and take off.

    Fine. I knew how to play this game. Eventually, one way or another, it would all come out. I just need the right leverage to pry those secrets out of her, and the longer she spent around us, the more of it I would collect.

    For now¡­

    "Do you have a name we can use, then?"

    She hesitated, but only for a second. "Calliope."

    I blinked. I''d honestly been expecting her to tersely tell me her class. "Like the muse?"

    "Of course." She smiled, but it had something in it that felt not quite¡­honest. "Many men ¡ª and women alike ¡ª have been influenced by me and my actions. My words have changed the fate of nations. Who else would I be?"

    Who else, indeed?

    "You can call me Taylor," I told her. I nodded to Arash. "This is my Archer class Servant, Arash."

    No reaction, or if she had one, it was hidden by that cloak.

    "Charmed," Arash said politely.

    "I''m sure you are," she replied.

    "Now that we''ve gotten that out of the way," I said, "let''s go and introduce you to the rest of the team, Calliope."

 Chapter XCII: A Day to Relax

    Chapter XCII: A Day to Relax

    By the time we made it back to the rest of the group, Euryale and Asterios had been welcomed by Drake''s crew with open arms. By the cheering and the laughter, they even seemed delighted to have them both among them, and more than one marveled at Asterios and his incredible height or the wound that was still bleeding sluggishly on his chest. Drake''s word that they were allies now seemed to be all the more any of them needed, and considering how much they all adored her, maybe it really was.

    Euryale, from the look of her, didn''t quite know what to do with all of that. She seemed somewhere between upset and confused, like she was used to being the center of attention ¡ª men''s especially ¡ª and couldn''t decide whether she was supposed to be upset or not that no one was really ogling her.

    Some of that might also have been her expecting the crew to treat the two of them a lot differently, and now that they had so thoroughly defied her expectations, she was lost and clueless about what she was supposed to be doing. No one was looking at Asterios like he was a monster, not to be trusted, likely in no small part because he wasn''t wearing that bull mask anymore, so she didn''t need to put herself on display and distract them to keep their attention away from her wounded¡­friend?

    Were they friends? It was hard to tell. Asterios didn''t speak much or clearly, but it was obvious from their interactions that they cared about each other to some degree. How much went in which direction wasn''t as easy to discern.

    Asterios, for his part, seemed equally bewildered and out of his depth at the reception he was receiving. He looked uncomfortable, and he probably wasn''t used to people treating him with such carefree attitudes, considering his myth. The Minotaur hadn''t known a single kindness in all his life, had never had a single friend, and while the myths had said that he was a callous, bloodthirsty killer with a taste for human flesh, it was fairly obvious that the myths weren''t entirely right about that.

    That was becoming a theme, wasn''t it? No, that should be obvious, especially with two very large examples being shown off every second we spent in this Singularity, barely contained within that red coat. "True to history" had gone out the window starting in Fuyuki, and it didn''t look like it was coming back anytime soon.

    "Who''s this, then?" Drake asked from where she and the others were waiting as the three of us approached the camp.

    "Another tagalong," I said simply. "Calliope."

    "What?" the twins asked in stereo.

    "That so?" Drake squinted at her, and Calliope pulled her cloak tighter around herself as though it would shield her from Drake''s scrutiny. "Skittish little thing, ain''t she?"

    "Wouldn''t you be, in my situation?" Calliope asked sourly. "Stranded in a strange place among strange people without the faintest idea why?"

    Drake chuckled, unperturbed. "And she''s got some bite, too! How long was she following us for?"

    "Wait, she was following us?" asked Ritsuka at the same time as his sister asked, "Who''s Calliope?"

    "One of the muses from Greek mythology," Mash explained dutifully. "She presided over eloquence and epic poetry, and she was the mother to Orpheus, who was said to be the most masterful lyre player to ever live. Even the god of the underworld, Hades, was charmed by his skill. In some versions, he was also a member of the Argonauts, a companion of Heracles and Jason."

    Calliope snorted, and under her breath, she muttered, "He wishes."

    She didn''t elaborate, and when I glanced over at her, she turned her head away, her lips pulling into a tight line. Who the "he" was remained unsaid. Not Heracles, I was sure, because he had nothing to be envious of except a stable family life, and¡­I wanted to say probably not Jason, considering the Argonauts was packed with big names as it was, but the Jason of the myths was a petty, greedy gloryhound.

    Another thing the legends had missed? I guess it wasn''t impossible that many Greek heroes envied the chance to be part of the famous Argonauts, even those you didn''t expect to care. Sort of like wanting to work under Alexandria or Legend and be a part of one of their teams.

    "She was hiding in the trees," I said as though she hadn''t spoken. "If we hadn''t called her out on her sneaking around, she would likely have spied on us for as long as she thought she was undetected."

    "Spy?" the twins squawked, this time echoed by Mash.

    "How suspicious!" Bradamante added.

    "Fou, fou!" the little gremlin agreed.

    I nodded towards Euryale, who was awkwardly hanging around Asterios in the middle of the camp as one of the pirates wrapped a stretch of gauze over his wound. I was pretty certain it wouldn''t actually do anything, but no one was correcting him.

    "It seems she''s not as willing to take us at our word as she says she is."

    The tension eased out of the twins. "Oh," said Rika. "Well, that''s different! We''re not really jumping for joy at having her around, either!"

    "What she means is," said Ritsuka, turning to Calliope, "we had a¡­bad experience when we met her sister a while back, so we''re a bit more cautious about her than we might normally be when we meet a new Servant."

    "Both sisters," Rika reminded him. "Don''t forget Fuyuki!"

    Ritsuka grimaced and corrected himself. "Right. Both sisters. Neither Medusa nor Stheno left the¡­best of impressions."

    "The gods tend not to," Calliope said dryly, "even the fallen ones."

    "I suppose you would know," Emiya said sardonically. "Better than most, right, Calliope?"

    Calliope scowled at him. "Not that it''s any business of yours, Emiya."

    I kept my expression schooled into my usual calm. That confirmed it, at least. The only time we''d mentioned Emiya''s name since entering the Labyrinth was during the fight with Asterios, and while she''d managed to keep her presence suppressed enough to follow us without notice afterwards, Marie would have said something if she''d been following us since we made landfall on the island.

    "Do you two¡­know each other?" asked Ritsuka.

    "No," Calliope said, simple and direct, at the same time as Emiya shrugged and agreed with a, "Not really."

    Or they knew each other, I amended. I wondered, for a moment, whether or not they were both telling the truth, but if it wasn''t important enough for Emiya to tell us anything about it, then even if it rankled a little not to know, I guess I could let them off for now. Stuff like that tended to come out, one way or the other, especially when strong feelings were involved.

    If they hated each other? I gave it a day, maybe two. In the meantime, I''d add it to the list of things I was watching out for.

    "In any case," said Ritsuka, "we don''t blame you for being a little cautious."

    "Even if you were spying for Your¡­E-yur¡­"

    Rika grimaced as she stumbled over the name again.

    "Euryale," Mash supplied helpfully.

    She jerked her finger at Mash. "What she said."

    "My," Calliope murmured, "how generous of you."

    "Well, if she were spying for the big guy and the tiny tot, that makes her an ally, don''t it? Friend of my friend and all of that jolly stuff?" Drake asked. She nodded without waiting for anyone else''s input. "In that case, looks like we''re welcoming three new hands aboard the Golden Hind!"

    "I-I suppose," Bradamante hedged, "i-if Master is okay with it, then¡­I don''t see any problems."

    Saying I was "okay with it" might have been a bit of a stretch, but, "There''s no reason to leave her behind. Strays are always here for a reason, and I''m sure we''ll want her close by when we find out what hers is."

    Whether it turned out she really was an ally or not. Keep your enemies close, right?

    "Three new hands?" a pirate walking past asked, having come close enough to catch the tail end of it. "We taking on more esteemed guests, Cap''n?"

    "That''s what I said, ain''t it?" Drake barked back. She turned around and addressed the whole of the camp. "You hear that, you shitstains? We got three new people to welcome aboard our humble little ship!"

    "Three new people?" Bombe called from where he had hoisted a barrel of water. "Say it ain''t so, Cap''n! We just made space for the last set!"

    "Your brain going with those ears of yours, Bombe?" Drake snarked to laughter from her crew. "Starting to get senile in your old age? That''s right, you heard me just fine! Three new people, three new mouths to feed ¡ª in a manner of speaking ¡ª and that means three new people we need to show some very homely hospitality! And, of course, the only proper way to make them feel at home¡­"

    She pulled her Grail out of her chest, and because she was turned away, she missed the double-take Calliope did when she saw it.

    "¡­is to eat, drink," Drake lifted up her Grail in toast, "AND PARTY UNTIL WE DROP!"

    The whole island seemed to quiver under the force of the cheer that rose up from the camp, like every single member of her crew had decided to belt out the loudest shout they''d ever shouted all at the same time. I wasn''t the only one that winced and covered my ears with my hands until it ended ¡ª only it didn''t really end properly, so much as it transformed into the cacophony of four dozen excited voices all trying to talk at once, and getting louder to make sure they were heard over the din of everyone else.

    Drake seemed the only one of us unaffected. She just grinned that big, crocodile grin of hers, downed the rum that had appeared in the cup of her Grail, and turned back to us.

    "Alright, you lot," she said loudly, audible only because of her proximity. "We''ll worry about that business with this creepy pirate and his hunt for the little tot tomorrow! Tonight, we have some fun again! So grab a tankard, fill it up as high as it goes, and loosen that collar of yours!" Her grin grew broader. "And if the old nag has anything to say about it, well, you just say it was Captain''s orders!"

    "I-I don''t think Boss Lady is gonna accept that for an answer," Rika squeaked, but Drake didn''t hear her over the commotion, and she had already turned around again, barking off something at one of her crew as she waded deeper into camp. She was swallowed up by the throng, and the only way I could keep track of her was the bugs I had secreted away in the folds of her clothes and the brim of her hat.

    "I don''t think she heard you," Ritsuka informed his sister uselessly.

    "I''m not sure she would have cared even if she had," Emiya added dryly.

    Arash shook his head, smiling ruefully. "That''s Captain Drake for you, I guess."

    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    I could barely hear him, muffled as he was by the noise. Off to the side, Euryale was less amused, standing sentinel by Asterios with her arms crossed and doggedly refusing the cajoling of any pirate who so much as stepped close. The pirate wrapping his wound at least seemed to have his priorities straight. He was probably the closest thing they had to a doctor or a medic.

    A sigh nearly breezed out of my mouth, but I swallowed it and jerked my head over in the direction of our wayward duo. "Come on!" I called over the dull roar in the background.

    We skirted around the edge of the camp and the party that was starting to take off, making a beeline for the island of relative calm off to one side. Bradamante''s head was on a swivel the whole way, watching out for any wandering hands that might try and cop a surreptitious feel. Fortunately for all of the pirates and their "pride," none of them was actually daring enough to attempt it, so we came upon Euryale and Asterios without being accosted.

    "We brought something of yours," Emiya announced sardonically.

    Euryale''s head spun about, and her eyes landed an instant later on Calliope. For a brief second, she looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and then, she grimaced. "Oh."

    "It couldn''t be helped," Calliope told her by way of explanation. "Unlike that fop, these people are competent." Her head turned my direction. "At least they don''t seem to be in league with your stalker. The person she contacted bore no resemblance to him or any of the flunkies we glimpsed."

    So there were flunkies, now. I guess, if they''d been assuming we were with this stalker of theirs to begin with, then that only confirmed that he did indeed have other Servants working with him, although if his interests in Euryale were as¡­sexual as she''d been implying, then I couldn''t imagine why they might go along with it. Personal loyalty? That only took you so far.

    Maybe, if he actually had the Grail, then they all wanted it and were just waiting for the right moment to swipe it, especially if the flunkies were pirate Servants, too. No honor among thieves, right?

    "Come to think of it," Mash said thoughtfully, "Senpai, I don''t think we ever explained Chaldea or what we were doing here to Miss Euryale and Asterios."

    "You didn''t," Euryale said snidely. "Quite the oversight, don''t you think?"

    Rika''s cheek twitched, and she looked like she was about to spout something acidic, but a subtle nudge from her brother had her swallowing it before it could make it out of her mouth.

    "Good idea, Mash," Ritsuka said instead. He hesitated and looked at me, like he was asking permission. "Um, should I¡­?"

    "Go ahead," I told him. I wanted to see if he could do it without stumbling all over the place. This was our fourth Singularity, and the twins had to start mastering the interpersonal parts of being a Master of Chaldea, too.

    I couldn''t see why we''d have to right now ¡ª or anytime in this Singularity in particular ¡ª but if I wasn''t there for any reason, even if just because I''d gone to handle a bodily function or two, they needed to be able to pick up the slack.

    "Right," he began, and then, a second later, more confidently, "right. So, um, we''re with the¡­Chaldea Security Organization, and our job¡­our job is to safeguard the future¡­"

    And he proceeded to explain what we were doing there in that Singularity, pretty comprehensively, at that. He stumbled a little, he meandered a little, and strictly speaking, he gave more detail than he really needed to, but he did a decent enough job. The important part was that he covered all of the relevant bits in a way that was clear and understandable.

    "Two Grails?" Calliope squeaked when he let that part slip. "There are two Holy Grails in this¡­Singularity?"

    "Well¡­yes," he said, nonplussed. "You¡­already saw Captain Drake has ¡ª"

    "Yes, yes, I knew what that was," she interrupted peevishly, "but you''re telling me there''s a second one?"

    "Yes," was the answer Mash gave. "We¡­haven''t confirmed its existence for ourselves, but the Singularity remained stable when we took possession of Captain Drake''s Grail, so it was the only conclusion we could draw."

    "Then you haven''t ¡ª"

    But that was as far as Calliope got before she caught herself and snapped her mouth shut, refusing to finish the thought. Hadn''t what? Had she been assuming Drake had taken the Grail from another Servant in this Singularity?

    Did that mean Euryale''s creep wasn''t the one who had the other one? Was there yet another faction in this to worry about, or just two groups working together because their goals aligned? I wanted to demand the answers from Calliope, but she was frustratingly tight-lipped and I had no leverage to use yet.

    When Ritsuka was done explaining, Euryale sat back, looking overwhelmed. Asterios was a little harder to read, but his expression was slack and his eyes were open slightly wider, so I assumed that meant he was just as stunned.

    Calliope remained the hardest to read. With most of her face and her body language hidden by that cloak, getting a good sense of what she was thinking was difficult at best.

    "A Singularity," Euryale said. "A twisted gnarl of space and time¡­ No wonder this place is so strange. It was obvious for anyone with eyes that something unnatural had happened, but I wouldn''t have imagined¡­"

    "Servants¡­fix¡­" Asterios added.

    "Yes, that does rather raise the question, doesn''t it?" Euryale admitted. "If Servants are summoned here either by the Holy Grail or by the Counter Force¡­" She gestured to herself and Asterios. "Why us? Not that I discount my own radiance, but even I can admit that I don''t make much of a fighter. I won''t be fixing anything anytime soon."

    "A glitch, maybe," I told her. "When we met your sister, she said that her summoning was a mistake, because Romulus suppressing his divinity resulted in things being botched. Something like that could have happened here."

    "Or you might have a role to play," Arash interjected. "It''s hard to tell until it becomes obvious, but there have been a few Servants we''ve met whose presence seemed inexplicable. And then some were simple and straightforward," he added, nodding towards Bradamante.

    Was it? I wondered about that. On the surface, Bradamante''s summoning was to protect the people of France, and she''d settled in Thiers¡­but what if she''d been put in our path specifically so that she could heal Siegfried? Had the whole thing been planned that far in advance by the Counter Force?

    Precogs were such fucking bullshit.

    Euryale sighed. "Oh good. So you''re saying that I have to stay with your group, is that it? Because I might be instrumental to fixing this place?"

    "The Counter Force isn''t so transparent," Emiya said dryly. "It could be that you''re just here to look pretty." He smirked. "Or be the damsel in distress." He looked over at Asterios. "Although the valiant knight is usually a little more¡­shiny. And wearing a little more clothing."

    "I suppose my only other option is to hide away on an island and hope that creep doesn''t find me," Euryale said sourly. "Fine, fine. I already agreed to go with you lot, didn''t I? Saving the world isn''t really my sort of thing, but I suppose if I''m being called to do it, I can''t exactly say no."

    "Sure you could," Rika said, apparently feeling a lot less charitable. "Stheno did, and we managed just fine without her, didn''t we?"

    "Stheno wasn''t being chased by the Servant who might just have the Grail pinning this distortion in place," I reminded her. "We need Euryale for that, if nothing else."

    Rika grimaced, but didn''t fight the point, because she knew I was right. If having Euryale with us would cut down the amount of time we would actually have to spend in this Singularity¡­ Well, I wouldn''t say I would be happy to take her along, but it kind of made the choice for me, didn''t it?

    Euryale arched one eyebrow at me. "So I can be bait, you mean."

    "Well-protected bait," Arash corrected her diplomatically. "It might not be glamorous, but you''re going to be safe and guarded by four Servants." He glanced over at Calliope. "Sorry. Five."

    "Four," Calliope said reluctantly. "I''m afraid I''m¡­not of much use defending anyone."

    I chanced another glance at her, but no more of her stats had become visible since I''d first looked. I still had little more than her Caster class to go off of, which wasn''t much at all.

    "That''s better than just one, I suppose," Euryale said. To her companion, she said, "Sorry, Asterios. Even someone as strong as you can''t take on so many Servants at once."

    "Under¡­stand¡­" Asterios'' hand lifted to his wound, wrapped in white fabric. His hand was big enough to cover it entirely. "I¡­no¡­enough¡­"

    A sudden cheer arose from the rest of the camp behind us, cutting off our conversation, and as a single voice, the pirates bellowed out:

    "And it''s no, nay, never! No, nay, never, no more! And I''ll play the wild rover! No never, no more!"

    The clink of dozens of tankards being mashed together sounded, and the whole crew seemed to take a sip of their drinks all at once. A moment later, they broke out into song again.

    "I went to an alehouse I used to frequent," they all belted out, a discordant harmony that was off key at best. "And I told the landlady my money was spent! I asked her for credit and she answered me, Nay! A custom like yours I can have any day!"

    They all clapped and stomped their feet, and the whole island seemed to tremble under the weight of it as the sound rumbled through the air like thunder.

    "And it''s no, nay, never! No, nay, never, no more! And I''ll play the wild rover! No never, no more!"

    "Well, they''re certainly having fun," Emiya commented. "Funny. I never realized this song was that old."

    "A lot of stuff started as an oral tradition and only got written down decades or even centuries later," I said. I had to raise my voice a little to be heard over the chorus.

    "I took from my pocket ten sovereigns bright! And the landlady''s eyes opened wide with delight!"

    "I wonder if they realize the irony of singing a song about giving up piracy and drinking as they drink among a pirate crew," he said.

    Probably not, I thought. Drake might be a genius navigator who had taken her crew ¡ª or would take in a few years, from her perspective ¡ª around the globe, but none of them were particularly bright or scholarly. Most of them probably didn''t even know what irony was.

    The benefits of a modern education and having an English Lit professor for a mom.

    "And it''s no, nay, never! No, nay, never, no more! And I''ll play the wild rover! No never, no more!"

    When the song ended, another cheer went up, another clink of their tankards being smashed against one another, and they all took another heaping gulp of their drinks, laughing and smiling all the while as the volume subsided for a brief moment. One in particular started wading through the rest, making a beeline for our little island of relative sanity.

    "We''re about to have company," I warned the group.

    "Company?" the twins echoed. Rika grimaced. "Ugh. Senpai, no, please don''t tell me it''s more giant crabs! The last one gave me nightmares!"

    I gave her a sidelong look, my brow furrowing a little. What was so scary about a hermit crab?

    "Emiya!" Drake called as she came closer, waving her Grail about. "Emiya, you handsome devil, c''mere! Where are you?"

    Emiya grimaced, and he looked ready to pull a Houdini and disappear, but before he could put thought into action, Drake managed to meander over to us and catch sight of him. She grinned, sloshing rum in her Grail, and yet somehow not spilling a single drop.

    "There you are!" she said over the din. "Been looking for you, you louse! Where''d you go off to?"

    "I''ve¡­been right here the entire time," Emiya said.

    "Bah!" Drake took a swig of her rum. "Nevermind that, now! We gots more important shit to talk about! Like food! Really, really good food, and in particular, the one here who goes and makes it!"

    "I feel like I''ve had this conversation before," Rika said, "only this time, I don''t have a baguette to fend her off."

    "See, I was thinking," Drake went on. "Drake, I says to myself, Drake, what goes better with good booze and good company than good food? Why, Drake, I replies to myself, that''s a great idea! It''s just about suppertime, too, ain''t that convenient as all get out? And who do we know who makes great food to go with our good booze and good company?"

    Emiya breathed out a weary sigh. "Let me guess," he said, resigned. "It''s me, right?"

    Drake''s mouth pulled into an even larger grin. "Sure as shit! Smart one, ain''tcha? So whaddya say, Emiya? Think you can whip up a feast for us poor, deprived souls? We ain''t asking too much, are we?"

    Emiya looked to Rika for an answer, but it wasn''t the one he was probably hoping for.

    "You heard her, house husband!" she said. "We''re eating here, too, so I''m loaning you out! Mama needs her three squares, and I missed out on one earlier!"

    He shook his head and sighed, shrugging, as though to say, "what can you do?"

    "I''ll need that Grail of yours," he told Drake, "if you want to have enough to go around."

    Drake''s grin threatened to split her face. Over her shoulder, she shouted, "You hear that, boys? We''ll be dining rich tonight!"

    An answering cheer rose up from the crowd, deafening, and they toasted again, using the news as an excuse to take yet another swig of their drinks. Drinking that much, it was a miracle they were all still standing, let alone conscious.

    I had the feeling they would have cheered and guzzled down another gulp if she''d just told them they were going to be digging latrines in the morning. Any excuse would have done.

    "And it''s no, nay, never!" they sang. "No, nay, never, no more! And I''ll play the wild rover! No never, no more!"

    Drake drained the rest of her rum from her Grail, and then she tossed it over to Emiya, who was so surprised that he almost dropped it. "What about the rest of you lot?" she asked us. "What are you doing, standing about with your thumbs a-twiddle? Don''t you see there''s a party going on?"

    "Uh¡­"

    The twins turned to look at me, stricken, like they didn''t know what the correct answer was and whether they''d get in trouble for saying yes.

    "The Director¡­wouldn''t be happy if we were too rowdy," Mash said hesitantly.

    "And last time didn''t exactly go that great for me," Ritsuka added. "I''m¡­still feeling it a little, actually."

    "Bah! A little booze never hurt anyone!" Drake waved it off, then looked over to Asterios and Euryale. "And what about our guests of honor? Here you two be sitting while we all get sauced in your names! What kind of hosts are we if we aren''t showing you a good time?"

    "We''re Servants," Euryale told her flatly. "We can''t get drunk."

    "Me¡­never¡­" Asterios admitted. It wasn''t any more coherent than anything else he''d said since we''d met him, but I still managed to figure out the gist of what he was trying to say: that he''d never tried alcohol before, in any form.

    And when I thought about it, that was kind of tragic, wasn''t it? If the myths were wrong about exactly how monstrous Asterios was, then it would mean that what had happened to him was actually all kinds of terrible. A chance to try alcohol and find out whether he even liked it wasn''t the only thing that had been denied to him in life.

    "Don''t mean you can''t enjoy other bits of it! A party''s about more than booze!" Drake insisted. "C''mon! Live a little! Er, given what you are, that is. As much as you''re able? Ah, you know what I mean!"

    And of all people, Euryale turned to me, like I would swoop down from on high and deliver her from her predicament. Maybe I even could have, if I was insistent enough about it. Drake was the kind of personality that dragged you along with her, but she wasn''t unmovable, and we''d already earned her respect. Beaten it into her, in point of fact.

    But there was nothing pressing for us to do, just then. No reason for us to sequester ourselves away from the party and, as Drake had put it, twiddle our thumbs for the rest of the night. We would just be bored. And as an extra bonus, it would mean I would have to spend less time directly interacting with our resident goddess ¡ª a few hours where I didn''t have to put up with her condescending attitude.

    So if I enjoyed getting the chance to burst her bubble a little, well, no one had to know but me.

    "Why not?" I said mildly. "We''re going to be sailing with these guys for the foreseeable future. Might as well get to know them a little better."

    Euryale wasn''t the only one who looked like she didn''t much like that idea, although why Calliope wanted to stay away from people so much, I wasn''t sure. Something had happened to her, but I wasn''t sure what, and all things considered, I couldn''t even be sure it was something that had happened to her in this Singularity or something she was carrying over from when she was alive.

    Hell, I couldn''t even be absolutely certain she even was the real Calliope.

    Euryale sighed. "Well, if you insist, then I suppose I''ll have to¡­mingle with your crew, Captain."

    "There you go!" Drake said, grinning. "See? Hey, cheer up! These folks ain''t all bad, you know! Just because they''re the saltiest buccaneers to ever sail the Spanish Main don''t mean they''ll treat you wrong!"

    "Good," said Euryale, "because Asterios will be protecting me. If anyone puts their hands where they don''t belong, he''ll be the one they have to answer to."

    The gigantic Asterios rumbled an agreement. His severe face could have been carved from granite.

    "I will, too!" Bradamante promised. She practically vibrated as she turned to Rika. "Master! You, as well! If anyone tries anything untoward, Captain Drake, I''ll divest them of their pride!"

    Arash shook his head. "Are we still using that as a euphemism or¡­?"

    "Yes!" Bradamante said viciously.

    "Alright," said Rika. "I¡­guess it''s party time!"

    Another cheer arose from the nearby pirates who heard her, and the others further away who hadn''t joined in just because their crew did. As a whole, they chugged down another gulp of their booze, and the party went on, just as lively as before.

    "That''s what I''m talking about!" Drake shouted. To the crowd, she hollered, "Hey! One of you tossers get our friends some drinks! What kind of hosts are we if we don''t even have something to wet a parched throat?"

    "AYE, CAP''N!" someone yelled back.

    "Just remember what I said a few days ago," I reminded the twins. "About drinking and how much you can have."

    The both of them grimaced. Ritsuka even looked faintly green, like the very idea made him feel sick ¡ª remembering, no doubt, what his hangover had felt like yesterday.

    "Don''t worry, Senpai," he said grimly. "I''ve learned my lesson."

    So had I. That was why I planned on keeping a much closer watch on how much the two of them drank tonight.

    Marie would be much less forgiving if it happened a second time.

 Interlude CWK: As I Sailed

    Interlude CWK: As I Sailed

    The office wedged at the back of the Adventure Galley was dark beneath the full moon, shut off as it was from the outside, with the thick, velvet curtains drawn across the windows set into its backside. The door was shut, as much for privacy as to muffle the sound coming in from outside, and it left nothing but candles to light the interior of the cabin.

    The walls of the cabin were made of a dark, earthy wood, but they glittered and shone in the candlelight, rich with the gold and valuables plundered at sea. Bolts of silk lay atop the furniture, shimmering, festooned with ropes of silver chain and bejeweled studs, and raw bullion sat piled up inside barrels and chests and crates in the corners, mingled with gleaming, polished coin, and it said nothing of the treasures that must have been stashed in the hold or locked away in other safe places, where there was more room to store them. Even the curtains were adorned with opulence, embroidered with fancy designs and fine stitchwork.

    These things alone were the value of a king''s ransom, more than enough to buy an estate and a comfortable life afterwards. A man could happily have survived off of the profits he would have found selling these things, if only he had had the chance.

    At the center of all of this was a large table that took up most of the room that wasn''t already bulging with treasure, and atop this table was a map printed on parchment, half-finished and incomplete. Pouring over this map were two men, one adorned far more fancily than the other, dressed in silks and satins under his hardy outer coat and roughspun breeches. A hat hung from the corner of the chair nearest him, and a compass sat nearby the hand he had planted on the table.

    His companion, by contrast, was shabby and shady, and standing side by side with the other, he would have looked like a beggar or a pauper, because his tunic was coarser and the layers he wore fewer. The only sign of wealth on his whole body was the scattered bits of gold adorning his fingers, belt, and neck.

    The first man, a famous pirate by the name of William Kidd, dragged his finger across the map, frowning down at the scant lines that had been drawn across it. More than once, his fingertip crossed a large swath of blank parchment where there was nothing, not even a smudge where the cartographer might have accidentally placed his hand in the wet ink.

    "To the west," he said to the room around him, "unknown."

    Captain Kidd swung his finger back around in the opposite direction, and when he stopped, his fingertip had once more landed on a wide, empty stretch of parchment bereft of labels or the meanest hint of geography.

    "To the east, unknown."

    His finger came down towards his body ¡ª another swath of blank space.

    "To the south, unknown."

    And when he moved his finger upwards, towards his companion who stood across from him, again, it came to rest on nothing.

    "To the north, unknown."

    "Would that we had found someone better acquainted with this cesspit," his companion, a man by the name of William Burke, said ruefully.

    Captain Kidd tapped the surface of the map ¡ª could it really even be called that? It was more blank parchment than anything else, and it was truthfully missing far too many details to ever justify calling it a real map. So far, it showed Captain Kidd where he and his crew had already been, the geography of the land that they themselves had already witnessed firsthand, and while that was not useless for returning to any of those places, it was useless for finding islands they might not have yet visited.

    The ocean was vast, after all, and traditional methods of navigation were simply ineffectual in this strange, backwards place. Compasses didn''t point north, the constellations were constantly in flux, the islands themselves were not even stationary; just about the only thing that could be counted upon was the sun, for it still rose in the east and set in the west.

    Finding anything at all in this twisted ocean was more a matter of luck than anything else. Certainly, it had little at all to do with skill.

    "Do you think there will be others?" Captain Kidd asked thoughtfully.

    "It''s a matter of certainty," Burke replied. "We''ve already encountered these¡­hollow men, these phantoms, however easily they were dispatched. It''s only a matter of time until we find other Servants."

    And they will not go down quite so easily as those simulacra did, Captain Kidd concluded, but did not say aloud. They were both thinking it, so it didn''t really need to be said.

    "And when we do," he murmured, "there is no doubt that they, too, will be seeking the same treasure we are. The Holy Grail."

    The greatest treasure of all, an omnipotent wish-granter that could overturn fate and change even things that had been set in stone. The key to fixing the mistakes of Captain Kidd''s life and erasing all of his missteps. So many things that had gone wrong, and he could undo them all as though they had never happened in the first place. History would remember him with respect.

    As though taunting him, the words filtered through the closed door, quieter but not silenced entirely.

    "My name was Captain Kidd!"

    "As I sailed, as I sailed!"

    "Oh, my name was Captain Kidd!"

    "As I sailed!"

    Captain Kidd''s finger slipped and nearly ripped a hole through the map, such was the intensity of his sudden ire. Anger burst to life in his breast, like a beast attempting to claw its way out of his body, and it lit a fire in his blood that burned his limbs and boiled his brain.

    Captain Kidd took in a deep, slow breath, pushing the anger down and away, and he tried to pretend he didn''t see the sympathetic look on Burke''s face. His friend at least had the good grace not to give voice to whatever thoughts were now in his head, because Captain Kidd could not be sure he wouldn''t have struck the man ¡ª the foul temper that had been immortalized in history was more exaggeration than not, but that did not mean it was entirely baseless, only that he was not some hot-blooded malcontent liable to fly off the handle and spout venom whenever faced with the slightest provocation.

    But neither did that mean that William Kidd was an easygoing man who rolled with the punches and let insults slide with grace. Even a reasonable man had limits of what he might tolerate.

    "Regardless," Captain Kidd said, "we can''t be sure of what sort of opposition we might face. Other Servants, certainly, but we cannot expect that they will all be Riders, nor even possessed of their own transportation, only that they will all be after the same thing."

    "Oh, my name was Captain Kidd, and God''s laws did I forbid, and most wickedly I did!"

    "As I sailed, as I sailed!"

    "And most viciously I did!"

    "As I sailed!"

    Trying his best to ignore the song drilling through the door, he added, "It might even be that more than one teams up for the sake of achieving a common goal."

    "Like us, you mean?" Burke said. "A problem, no doubt about that. We''re not exactly the sort what can take on all comers without trouble. Might be prudent to see about picking up some allies of our own."

    Where? Captain Kidd wanted to ask. It came back to the same problem: they didn''t have any idea where to look for any such allies, because there was nothing for them to rely on to find them. What use was a map for navigating new places when it could only show where you personally had been?

    Captain Kidd''s hand shifted. Well. Perhaps they didn''t have nothing on which they might rely, but there were limits to how useful their tools would be.

    "And if we take the time to gather allies of our own," Captain Kidd said, thinking of the flaws of that plan, "we may find that we will have given our enemies too much time to consolidate their own powers. It may, in fact, be more prudent to strike swiftly and soon, instead of searching for safety in numbers."

    "Except we haven''t the slightest clue how long those other Servants have been around," Burke pointed out. "Could very well be that we''re the latecomers to this little party and most of the rest have already formed their teams. We''d be on the backfoot."

    A damnably good point. They had already met one such team, after all, even if the encounter had gone less than smoothly and the two of them had walked away thoroughly chastened. Captain Kidd couldn''t say that he much enjoyed feeling like a child being scolded by his mother, but in lieu of more concrete options¡­

    "My parents taught me well!"

    "As I sailed, as I sailed!"

    "My parents taught me well!"

    "As I sailed!"

    Captain Kidd''s brow twitched, but once more, he mastered himself well enough to keep the anger bottled up inside of him instead of letting it explode. Instead, he dragged his finger back over to one of the few islands that was inked out on the map, although calling that collection of blots separated by shallows an island was perhaps a bit of a misnomer.

    "If we''re seeking allies," he said, "then it might behoove us to revisit that little hideout and negotiate."

    "With that lot?" Burke asked incredulously. "Pardon the insinuation, but are you mad, Will? You want to go back to those people?"

    No, but they weren''t precisely faced with a glut of options, were they? It may be the better course to seek out allies that they knew existed instead of hoping they might miraculously stumble upon some who happened to align with their views and goals more cleanly. Better to have allies at all than to go about and lose looking for ones they liked.

    Seizing the Grail was what mattered. What difference did it make whether or not the ones who helped him do it were the sort of folk he would happily go and drink with afterwards?

    Burke, perhaps seeing Captain Kidd''s thoughts written on his face, went on, "Will, forget about that crazy bitch who almost killed us, or the other crazy bitch who wanted to make you a pin cushion, that asshole nearly swindled us out of all of our treasure!"

    "My parents taught me well, to shun the gates of Hell, and against them I rebelled!"

    "As I sailed, as I sailed!"

    "Against them I rebelled!"

    "As I sailed!"

    "And what use is ordinary gold and silk to us, Burke?" Captain Kidd snapped. "Did you, by chance, happen to see an English port for us to anchor in? Mayhaps you found a governor willing to lend us a sympathetic ear? Did you receive letters of pardon from the King that you''ve yet to tell me about?"

    "You know very well that I haven''t," Burke replied sourly.

    "Then what might we spend our treasures on?" Captain Kidd asked peevishly. "You''ve been here with me the entirety of our stint in this slice of Hell, and not once have we glimpsed the slightest sign of civilization on these islands. Gold is little more than pretty rocks if we''ve nothing to spend it on, and silk nothing but a comfort on the cold nights in our beds ¡ª if we even had need of sleep!"

    "Your point is made," said Burke. "Fine. The treasure doesn''t matter. I''m still not so sure we want to be shacking up with those lunatics."

    Captain Kidd sagged, and a breezy sigh left his mouth. "In that, at least, you might be right."

    How ironic it was. The Quedagh Merchant was, in many ways, the crowning achievement of Captain Kidd''s life. It had been largely forgotten in the wake of the other parts of it that had become more famous after his death, but taking the Merchant and its valuables was the capstone to William Kidd''s career as a privateer. If he had but the chance to make any use of it at all, Captain William Kidd may have gone down in history as the most successful pirate to ever sail. Petty politics and a miscarriage of justice were the only things that had prevented it.

    And now? Even with that vast treasure at his fingertips and no political tomfoolery to doom him, he might as well have a collection of mud. Without a place to spend any of it, their value was the same, which was to say, worthless.

    "The trouble is that we''ve a dearth of options to choose from," Captain Kidd went on. "Can we afford to be particular about who it is we ally with when that group is the only other Servants we know of that we can be sure care little enough for the Holy Grail?"

    Therein lay one of the biggest dangers of seeking out other allies in the unknown: the uncertainty of whether or not they would be rivals seeking the same goal. It was not that Captain Kidd much minded the idea of sharing ¡ª indeed, if the Grail had the power to grant more than one wish, Captain Kidd would happily hand it over after his was made. The problem was that he much preferred knowing where he stood and whether or not he should expect a knife in the back.

    The very last thing he wanted was to face another mutiny.

    "Oh, I murdered William Moore!"

    "As I sailed, as I sailed!"

    "Oh, I murdered William Moore!"

    "As I sailed!"

    Captain Kidd''s cheek twitched, and the fingers of one hand curled into a fist as his other pressed his fingertips deep into the parchment of the map. He sucked in a deep, trembling breath, trying to calm himself.

    It wasn''t working.

    "It might be better to know that we couldn''t trust our allies over knowing that their goals are different from ours," Burke was saying, but Captain Kidd could barely hear the words over the thundering of his pulse in his ears. "At least in that way we could be sure that they wouldn''t stab us in the back until we had the Grail in our hands."

    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    Captain Kidd gritted his teeth and drew in a sharp breath through his nose. An intrusive thought lingered, that this would be far more effective at soothing his temper if he were flesh and blood instead of a clump of manifested magical energy. If his lungs were real and his heart was real and his brain was real.

    If he was a living, breathing person. If he hadn''t been executed in the name of political expediency.

    "I murdered William Moore, and I left him in his gore, many leagues up from the shore!"

    "As I sailed, as I sailed!"

    "Many leagues up from the shore!"

    "As I sailed!"

    "Damn it!"

    Captain Kidd whipped around and took hold of the first thing he could get his hands on ¡ª his chair, it turned out ¡ª and with all of his might, he threw it across the tiny room. When it hit the back wall, it did not, as it likely would have on a ship made of ordinary glass and wood or the cheap lumber the original Adventure Galley had been constructed from, go through the window, but instead, it shattered into splinters and shards, some the size of a small sword and some no larger than a sliver. His hat bounced and rolled and came to a stop near Captain Kidd''s boot.

    "I wish they would stop singing that¡­that infernal song!" he spat, frustrated. He gesticulated wildly at the open air.

    Because it kept reminding him, over and over and over and over again, the exact circumstances of his life and death, the entire reason why it was he sought out the Grail. The lyrics of that blasted ditty hounded him every waking hour of the day, a constant thorn in his side, and he did not need the song itself bellowed on repeat to add to his misery.

    "It helps to keep them coherent," Burke reminded him. "They''d be half the sailors they are if they didn''t sing that song to focus on their purpose and identities."

    "It''s slanderous!"

    "It could also be much worse," said Burke.

    Captain Kidd spun back around and glowered at him. "How so? What could possibly be worse than that farcical nonsense that ruined my good name?"

    Burke arched an eyebrow pointedly. "You could be so well remembered for the one kindness you did another man that your legend became a part of his instead of remaining your own."

    Captain Kidd grimaced and looked away uncomfortably. "Your point is well-made," he admitted grudgingly.

    That, at least, was the one advantage Captain Kidd''s notoriety had bought him ¡ª unlike Burke, he was his own man, with his own ship, born of his own legend. Burke had the indignity of possessing none of those things, and so his one power, his one Noble Phantasm, allowed him to be called upon by Captain William Kidd in Captain Kidd''s time of need.

    It was, in many ways, a pitiful state of affairs, and Captain Kidd could well understand what Burke would wish for on the Holy Grail, but Captain Kidd could not say that it wasn''t to his advantage at the same time. Burke was an infinitely better conversationalist than those brainless lumps manning the ship, for one, and far more capable of defending himself besides, to say nothing of how useful a man so resourceful would have been in a more ordinary Grail War.

    "Then if you''re done with your tantrum¡­?" Burke said leadingly.

    Captain Kidd glowered at him, hating how childish that description made him sound, but didn''t take the bait and start a fight over it. He could save his anger for the enemies that would no doubt stand in their way of the Grail, for it would serve him much better there.

    "I spied three ships from Spain!"

    "As I sailed, as I sailed!"

    "I spied three ships from Spain!"

    "As I sailed!"

    "Fine," Captain Kidd said through gritted teeth. "Have you some sort of suggestion, then? Because as it is, I see little in the way of how we might find allies better suited to our sensibilities, not lacking, as we are, a suitable map which we might use to seek them out."

    Burke lifted one hand to his chin and rubbed thoughtfully at his whiskered jawline. He peered down at the map as though he would actually find anything of use upon it, riddled as it was with enormous blank spots, his brow furrowed.

    A little vindictively, Captain Kidd doubted he would actually come up with anything. Their situation truly was that unenviable, and no amount of staring at the map would magically fill in the parts that were missing, no matter how much either of them might have wished it were so.

    "I spied three ships from Spain, and I looted them for gain, ''til most of them were slain!"

    "As I sailed, as I sailed!"

    "''Til most of them were slain!"

    "As I sailed!"

    At length, Burke breathed out a long breath and leaned back. "Short of choosing a random direction to go and explore, I don''t see how we''re going to find anything at all out here," he admitted.

    I told you so, Captain Kidd thought viciously. It wasn''t so simple, was it?

    "What about that skill of yours, though?" Burke asked. "What was it¡­ Seeker of Fortune?"

    Captain Kidd''s gut squirmed. His lip began to curl. Another reminder of his failure, of the injustices visited upon him in life. He could not have something more respectable, a skill of the sorts belonging to those who found riches in life or who achieved great deeds, oh no, the skill he had acquired was one that was built upon failing to do either of those things.

    It was a skill perfect for someone who had once had glory within his grasp, someone who had touched wealth with his fingertips, someone who had come so close to success and victory, only to lose it all before any of it was truly his.

    The perfect skill, in other words, for William Kidd, who had gone out seeking to make his mark on the world, only to face failure after failure time after time, and at the very end, right as success was within his grasp and the future he had dreamed off within reach, had all of it ripped away from him. William Kidd ¡ª immortalized in history for his failures.

    Before he realized what he was doing, Captain Kidd''s hand moved towards his compass, but the instant his brain caught up with his fingers, he stopped.

    It was true, Seeker of Fortune would let him find the things he wanted. That was what it did, it led him to opportunity, because it was an instinct for where he could find it. Even if it couldn''t help him seize it, it gave him the chance to try.

    All he had to do was admit that he was enough of a failure to need it.

    "Come all you young and old!"

    "See me die, see me die!"

    "Come all you young and old!"

    "See me die!"

    The squirming in his belly ignited, and Captain Kidd seized his compass savagely, flipping the lid open with such violence that he would ordinarily have feared breaking it. Inside, the mounted needle spun wildly, whirling about over the wind rose beneath it such that it might have seemed to point in every direction at once.

    Too much opportunity. The opportunity to turn around and sail back to the archipelago so that he might make allies of the Servants there, even though they might sooner see him returned to the Throne. The opportunity to chase down the owner of the Grail so that he might take it for himself and make his wish. The myriad opportunities to seek out others who desired the Grail, so that he might either make them his allies or remove them from the competition.

    Opportunity existed everywhere. That was the truth. Perhaps that was the mistake William Kidd had made in life, chasing the opportunities he saw with the greatest prizes instead of the ones that were more certain and less risky. Perhaps, had he sought out his fortune on land as a governor or as part of the British navy, he might not have found his end where and when he did.

    Or perhaps a bunch of feckless partisans had hung him out to dry the instant he was no longer useful to them, and his mistake was trusting them to stand beside him instead of taking his fate for himself.

    "Come all you young and old, you''re welcome to my gold, for by it I''ve lost my soul!"

    "And must die, and must die!"

    "By it, I''ve lost my soul!"

    "I must die!"

    Captain Kidd focused on what he wanted, what he desired most, the opportunity he sought ¡ª the chance to find like-minded allies who sought the Grail, who wanted the same thing he did. Even if he couldn''t trust them not to stab him in the back at the end, if he could at least trust that their goals aligned with his up until the very last moment, then that would be enough.

    The needle of his compass quivered to a halt, and then it swung back around, and this time, when it stopped, it stayed there, pointing unerringly in the direction he needed to go to seek out that opportunity he wanted.

    "Don''t think I''ll ever get used to you doing that sort of thing," Burke commented.

    "It''s far easier than doing it on the map," Captain Kidd replied. "Channeling it through my compass at least gives me a direction. The map might tell me where I need to go, but that doesn''t mean anything if I don''t have a heading to take me there."

    "True enough."

    Keeping his mind focused on that specific opportunity, Captain Kidd looked down at his map, and his eyes roved over it, waiting until he found the place that clicked. It was harder to do with a map so incomplete, because without geography to act as a landmark, it wasn''t easy to tell where his intuition was even telling him where to go. On a map with so many blank spots, it could very well be that his target was in the ocean and on the move, and so he could wind up constantly chasing where they''d been instead of where they were.

    "There."

    Captain Kidd tapped the spot his instinct was leading him towards, and with a minute application of magical energy, planted a large cross to mark it. He was not sure how many of his Servant peers ¡ª pirates and sailors and privateers who had etched their names into history ¡ª realized it, but navigational gear, too, was a part of a ship, and therefore an extension of the Adventure Galley and its functions. It could be used and used well, if only one knew how.

    Letting out a breath, Captain Kidd changed his focus, and the needle on his compass spun and swung around. Keeping the same goal in mind, the same opportunity, he felt out again across the map, and as his finger moved, a line drew from that cross he had made all the way back to the archipelago where they had encountered that belligerent team.

    "And there."

    One more time, Captain Kidd changed his focus, and once more, the needle swiveled and whirled until it found what he was looking for. For a third time, he dragged his finger across the parchment and stopped where his gut told him he should.

    Harder was not impossible.

    "And ¡ª"

    Captain Kidd stopped and stared down at the map, not quite sure he should believe his eyes.

    "Oh."

    "Well, fuck me," said Burke, eyebrows rising towards his hairline. "Is that¡­?"

    "Where we might find the opportunity to take the Grail," Captain Kidd answered, just as stunned.

    And it was only a scant few miles away, so close that it might be called arm''s length. They could be on it in an hour or less, depending on whether the wind stayed on their side and the oceans changed.

    Captain Kidd looked down at his compass again, but the needle remained pointed in the same direction as before, and his instinct did not compel his finger to move. Whoever or whatever possessed the Grail was stationary, or at least moving slowly enough that the Adventure Galley could catch up quite easily.

    "That''s spitting distance," Burke commented. "We could have the Grail before sunrise."

    "We could."

    Excitement welled up inside of Captain Kidd. They really could. Truly. His wish was within his grasp, and he could finally correct the mistakes of his life and undo the ignominious record of proper history. William Kidd could be a hero, a celebrated name revered for his accomplishments. No longer a stain, but someone people looked up to, venerated, idolized. A privateer who brought glory to the British Empire by seizing the treasures of France, a pirate hunter who stopped the Golden Age of Piracy in its tracks ¡ª whatever future he dreamed up, he could make it a reality, a reality where he would be the foremost name in naval history.

    Perhaps he would even have a ship named after him. The HMS William Kidd ¡ª it had a nice ring to it.

    Captain Kidd looked at the other two blots on his map. The first, a place where he might find allies in his hunt for the Grail, and the second, a place where he would find allies of desperation. Both, however, were much farther away than the Grail. The journey to either would take days, valuable time where the Grail might be seized by another party or move further out of reach. A wish might even be made upon it, and then it could become useless and lose its power.

    Once more, opportunity might slip through his fingers.

    When he looked back up, Burke seemed to have come to the same conclusion. "Dare we risk it, Will?"

    And so, Captain Kidd had to make a choice again. Did he take the chance and hunt down the Grail, or did he seek safety in allies first and risk losing it for good? The greater prize for the higher risk, or the safer path with less certainty of ultimate success?

    It was, in the end, an easy choice, and really, there hadn''t been any other ¡ª

    "Wait."

    "What?" asked Burke.

    Captain Kidd''s brow furrowed. "Do you hear that?"

    A moment of silence passed. The ship creaked and groaned, the waves beat against it, but otherwise, there was nothing.

    "Don''t hear nothing," Burke said.

    That was exactly the problem.

    "Why did they stop singing?"

    This time, it was Burke''s brow that furrowed, and the two of them shared a suspicious glance before turning away from the table and making for the door. They both reached for their flintlocks, and Burke took point, opening the door to the cabin.

    Cold mist billowed in through the door, slinking about the floor and coating the entire room in short order. It moved with slow, meticulous purpose, like a snake slithering in the underbrush as it scented its prey, and in the dark outside, it clung to the ship, drifting through the railings'' posts and over the wooden boards until everything below it was obscured in a thick, gray fog. Beneath the dim moonlight, it glittered like silver dust, and the only thing that rose out of it was the ship''s mast, looming like a towering oak.

    Of the crew who should have been manning the ship, there was no sign. Not a single one of them was at their post, nor were any of them slacking off, as though phantoms who had no sense of self would ever be tempted. It was as though they had all been plucked from the ship and taken away.

    "What the devil?"

    Burke and Captain Kidd stepped out onto the deck, ignoring the mist as it crept along and caressed their legs like icy fingers. For once, Captain Kidd was glad that Servants didn''t quite experience the world as living humans did, because it would have been quite distracting.

    "Where have they all gone?" Captain Kidd asked the air.

    "There''s no trace of them, Will," Burke said. He scuffed his boot against the deck, but hit nothing aside from the wood.

    Of course not. Even if they were all killed, they were phantoms, specters of his old crew. Mere memories shaped into shells that looked like people. They would leave no bodies behind to rot.

    Burke and Captain Kidd ventured further out, walking down the length of the ship, but the only thing that greeted them was the thud of their boots as they went. Along the way, they found only work half done ¡ª rigging that had been in the midst of being adjusted, knots that had been tied only halfway, and other such things that implied the crew had been removed suddenly and without warning.

    At the end, they met up at the bow, having discovered nothing which might explain what had happened.

    "You didn''t notice them vanishing?"

    "No," said Captain Kidd. "In fact, I still have not. As far as the Adventure Galley is concerned, they''re all still here."

    A voice like the ocean rumbled across the ship.

    "They belong to the sea."

    Burke and Captain Kidd whirled about, pistols raised, and quite suddenly, there was a man standing aboard the ship with them, only he looked nothing like any man ought to look, not living, in any case. His skin was pale and drawn, sunken, with eyes the milky white of a long dead corpse and a beard hanging from his face like strips of seaweed. His clothing was tattered and ragged, and his hat scuffed and worn.

    "By God!" Burke gasped.

    "Name yourself!" Captain Kidd barked. He cocked back the hammer of his flintlock. "I have not patience for charlatans and tricksters!"

    "Name?" said the stranger in his burbling voice. "I have¡­many. Old Scratch. The Man Below. The Evil of the Deep."

    A shiver swept down Captain Kidd''s spine. Those were all nicknames for ¡ª

    "Davy Jones."

    The stranger didn''t deny it, nor did he confirm it. His cracked lips pulled back from jagged teeth, and he ambled forward, only he didn''t seem to walk so much as glide. His footsteps made no sound on the deck, as though he wasn''t even truly there.

    "Your men have been consigned to their proper place. All who die at sea are mine."

    CRACK was the sound of Captain Kidd''s pistol firing, and the stranger stumbled, but to Captain Kidd''s horror, what spouted from his wound wasn''t blood of any kind, but water, as though the ocean itself ran through his veins.

    "I may welcome you as well," he said as though he hadn''t just been shot, "and so I must ask you, Captain William Kidd. You and your companion¡­do you seek the Holy Grail?"

    Something cold gripped Captain Kidd''s insides, and then it sparked and lit into fire, and he snarled, cocking his pistol a second time. This time, he would not miss. This stranger, whether he was who he claimed or not, would lose his head. Even a Servant couldn''t survive that.

    "Fuck you!"

    And with another CRACK, the stranger''s head vanished into a fine mist. His body fell backwards against the deck and exploded when it hit the wood, disappearing just as suddenly as he had appeared.

    Captain Kidd''s pistol lowered. "What the fuck was his problem?" Burke asked from beside him.

    "A rival, perhaps ¡ª"

    Burke gasped, and Captain Kidd whipped around just in time to see the sword as it was pulled back out of his body. Burke stumbled to his knees, clutching at the wound as red blood fountained from his chest, spurting between his fingers, and he had only enough time to turn to Captain Kidd with a fearful despair on his face.

    "Will¡­"

    And then he burst apart into glittering dust, flickering as it faded away.

    Captain Kidd spun about, throwing himself backwards as he turned to face the perpetrator, the stranger, whose bloody sword was now clean again. It, like the rest of him, looked decrepit and decayed, and yet it had been sharp and strong enough to deal a killing blow to a Servant, whatever it may have appeared on the outside.

    "You bastard!"

    CRACK was the sound of the pistol firing again, but the stranger deflected it with contemptuous ease. A second shot was equally as unsuccessful. The stranger would not be hit, not unless he decided he wanted to be.

    Had he been playing around with Captain Kidd the entire time? Merely pretending that he could be killed?

    "Captain William Kidd," the stranger said in that eerie voice, "do you seek the Holy Grail?"

    Captain Kidd stumbled backwards. A third shot, a fourth ¡ª even as he retreated towards his cabin, he kept firing, but each produced the same result, and the stranger kept coming, stalking slowly and ever closer.

    At last, Captain Kidd''s heel came down, skidding along a wooden wall, for he had backed himself not into the cabin itself, but into the outside of the wall that separated it from the outer sections of the ship. When his foot slid down and found the deck again, something rattled, jostled by the abrupt movement. Captain Kidd''s heart leapt in his chest.

    No. Absolutely not. And under ordinary circumstances, he would never. He hated that with a passion, almost as much as he hated what had become of his legend, how his life had ended, how his legacy had endured.

    But he was too close to undoing all of that to be picky about his Noble Phantasms.

    "Do I seek the Holy Grail, you ask?" he said. "What an absurd question! I am a privateer! A pirate! I sought my fortune at sea, throwing my all into the adventure and the glory that came with it! Do I seek the Holy Grail? Of course I do!"

    He reached down and took hold of the bucket that sat near his boot, left behind by whoever had been swabbing the deck. It was heavy with water, but that was of no consequence for a Servant like him.

    "And I won''t let a trumped up ghost story stand in my way!"

    And as magical energy surged into that bucket, he lifted it and threw it with all of his strength.

    Fatal Blow that Sealed Kidd''s Fate

    "The Murder of William Moore!"

    The bucket flew, reenacting the legend of William Kidd murdering his gunner, the crime for which he had been convicted, the only crime for which he had ever truly been guilty. With the weight of that sin, carrying the history of that loathsome act, bearing the grudge of a man who had lost everything because of it, if it struck head on, it would no doubt be a fatal blow.

    BOOM

    And from out of the mist, a cannonball barreled through the air. With an unerring precision, it collided with the bucket, and they were both smashed to pieces. Captain Kid''s final gambit, his most hated and humiliating Noble Phantasm, had failed. His last resort had simply come up short, was inadequate to the task of defeating his foe.

    Captain Kidd, defeated, slumped back against the wall and slid down. That was it, he thought. His last, best effort, because he was a sailor and a navigator, not a great warrior. With his ship, with his crew, with the Adventure Galley''s cannons and armaments, he could mount a scrappy fight and go down swinging. Even if he was sunk and his ship went down, he could at least bloody the enemy''s nose.

    But in personal combat, his pistols and his last ditch Noble Phantasm were all he had. A sword? He was passable at best, for his true talents lay in the roles his ship asked of him, not frontline combat. A true professional, a duelist or a soldier, would swiftly and effortlessly outclass him.

    The stranger stalked forward with all the gravity of an executioner. He lifted his sword, a saber with a blade that was pitted and rusted and a hilt encrusted with barnacles. The milky white eyes stared down at Captain Kidd, piercing through his soul.

    "All those who die at sea belong to it," the stranger said. "All those on this sea who covet the Grail will die. Captain William Kidd, do you seek the Holy Grail?"

    Once more, his fortune had changed. Once more, William Kidd would be denied his chance, denied the opportunity to make his mark the way he wanted. As he had in life, he would die an ignoble death, having failed to accomplish anything worth speaking of, let alone remembering, done in by a specter from out of old sailors'' superstitions.

    A ghost done in by a ghost story. How utterly pathetic.

    "Go to hell," Captain Kidd spat.

    "Yes," the stranger said gravely, "we shall."

    And the sword came down.

 Chapter XCIII: Black Flag

    Chapter XCIII: Black Flag

    After a certain point, the exuberance died down, and the raucous party became more like a barbeque. Drake and her crew still ate and drank to their hearts'' content, but by the time night fell, it was slower and more measured, because evidently, they knew their limits a lot better than they seemed like they did at a cursory glance, and they were all well aware that they would have to get up in the morning and drag themselves into the longboats and back to the Golden Hind.

    Someone even convinced Euryale to sing, and despite my misgivings, she didn''t use her voice to bewitch anyone, although from the dreamy, satisfied looks on some of the pirates, you would have been forgiven for thinking she had. It didn''t stop any of us from Chaldea from covering our ears at first, but after the first song got cheers and applause and even a few whistles and the second song received much the same, we took a chance, with Bradamante ready and waiting to rescue us if that changed.

    It was¡­nice. Maybe I should have expected it, considering her skills, but Euryale had the voice of a professional, classically trained singer ¡ª or what I imagined one might sound like, if I''d ever had the pleasure of hearing one ¡ª and it was actually kind of soothing to listen to her on the beach as the sun went down and the party petered off.

    I slept well that night. I would never admit it to her aloud, of course, not at the risk of swelling her already swollen head, but Euryale''s singing might have had something to do with it. On the other hand, it might have been funny to see the look on her face if I told her she would have made a hell of a nanny.

    Just imagining it would have been worth a laugh. A goddess from the old days, before the dawn of the modern era, who had lived in the time when divinity of all kinds roamed the land, relegated to singing lullabies for unruly kids.

    Once she got past the ridiculousness that was my life these days, Lisa probably would have laughed herself hoarse.

    The next morning, almost as soon as there was enough light to work by, the pirates broke camp and packed up all of their gear. They were just as efficient about it as they had been before, getting it all put away and ready to go within half an hour, like they had loads of practice with it, because they undoubtedly did. And when I asked Arash ¡ª

    Nothing, he told me across our bond. None of them left the entire night, not even Calliope. They all even stayed materialized.

    ¡ª he let me know that none of our new "friends" had done anything suspicious while the rest of us were asleep. How convenient it was to have allies who didn''t need to sleep, so they could keep watch for us instead of us having to schedule rotations. Ones who could see well in low light conditions, to boot.

    Of course, that also meant that Euryale, Asterios, and Calliope should know they wouldn''t be able to sneak off without drawing suspicion, so the fact that none of them had didn''t necessarily mean that we could trust them all yet. We were going to have to wait and see before passing final judgment.

    I was inclined to believe them, though. When I put aside my sore feelings from what Stheno had done to us, if Euryale was anything at all like her sister, she probably didn''t much care for the Grail or making any wishes on it, she just also didn''t particularly care about saving proper human history either.

    Not the best of allies to have, but it was convenient that she may be drawing the one with the Grail to us. I could forgive her ambivalence if she helped us solve this Singularity, even if she didn''t want to.

    Asterios¡­seemed to be there for Euryale, so his interest was protecting her and might not go any further than that. It made him easier to predict and account for. Calliope was the one whose motivations were still a big question mark. I got the impression that she was hanging around with the other two for safety in numbers and wasn''t particularly close to them beyond that, so as long as whatever had happened to her wasn''t the mysterious stalker''s fault, it was entirely possible she might ¡ª literally or metaphorically ¡ª jump ship the instant she got the chance.

    She was the one we were going to have to keep the closest eye on.

    Emiya made us a quick breakfast while the camp was being packed up, courtesy of some eggs supplied by Drake''s Grail, and once everyone was ready, we climbed back into the longboats and made our way onto the Golden Hind. It wasn''t much more fun than any other time we''d ridden in them, but at least we seemed to be getting the hang of it more. Neither the twins nor Mash looked anywhere near as miserable as they had the last couple times, and my stomach was better settled.

    It was just a shame we didn''t have any room for the giant hermit crabs. Somehow or another, I found another colony at each island we''d yet visited, but they weren''t fast or useful enough to do much of anything with. Asterios would have ripped through them effortlessly, and while distractions and disposable minions was my specialty, the crabs were just too lumbering and weighty to have tripped him up.

    At the level of Servants, physical mass was meaningless. Their shells would have broken like cheap glass when he stepped on them. He wouldn''t have even slowed down.

    Maybe I would get lucky and find an older, more powerful crab later on down the line, a millennial beast instead of mere centennial ones. Something like that might wind up actually being strong enough to level the playing field a little.

    "Everyone aboard?" Drake bellowed once we had all climbed onto the ship. "Esteemed guests, you lot all here?"

    "Present and accounted for, Captain Pillows!" Rika chirped with a chipper salute.

    "Ready to go, Captain Drake," Ritsuka reported more calmly.

    Drake took them both in stride and addressed her crew next. "All right, you scallywags! We made a few new friends here, but there ain''t much else to look at, so it''s time to get moving! Let''s spin this tub around and make way for the next island!"

    "Aye, Cap''n!" the crew shouted back.

    "Hoist anchor!"

    The anchor came up off of the sea floor, the sails unfurled, and like that, we set off again. A strong westward wind blew and carried us away from the island that Marie had so unimaginatively named New Crete.

    I guess I didn''t have much room to talk on that front. I wasn''t exactly all that great at naming things myself, as evidenced by¡­my whole career as a cape, basically.

    To keep out of the way of the sailors, our group wound up lounging on the deck behind Drake at the wheel. With the addition of three more people, it was quickly becoming fairly crowded, especially when Asterios sat down. Somehow, even on his haunches, he was still almost as tall as me, which really said something about his frankly ridiculous height.

    As soon as New Crete was behind us and the open sea stretched out in front of us, Drake waved over at us. "Let me see that there map of yours again!"

    Electing myself as the map bearer of our group, I walked over to join her and fiddled with my communicator until the map came up, displaying our position on the expanse of the endless ocean. Drake peered down at it, studying the locations of the islands on it.

    "Hm," she muttered to herself. "It took us¡­ from there to there¡­ and then¡­ to there¡­"

    She spent a few minutes looking it all over, and I could only imagine she was doing mental calculations and course charting in her head. When she was done, she clicked her tongue and straightened.

    "Hope you lot are in for the long haul," she warned. "If that map is right, then this trip is gonna be a whole lot longer than the last few."

    "How much longer is a whole lot longer?" Rika asked.

    "A few days," Drake answered. "The next island is at least two days away, if we keep this here favorable wind, four, if we don''t, and you better believe we''re gonna want to avoid that nasty vortex sitting in the way, so we''ll have to tack on another couple of days to account for sailing around that."

    "A week?" Rika squeaked. "We have to spend a week on this boat?"

    My brow furrowed, and I looked back at the map. Sure, the next closest island was much farther away than the previous three had been from each other, but I wasn''t sure I would say it was that much farther away.

    Then again, I wasn''t exactly an expert navigator, was I? Drake obviously knew her stuff if she was good enough to circumnavigate the whole globe.

    "If the winds change," Drake confirmed.

    Rika''s face looked pained. "Isn''t there, like, a shortcut we could take or something?"

    "Only shortcut''s through the maelstrom," said Drake, "and while I ain''t afraid to sail through a bad storm, something that risky is just unnecessary, ain''t it? Don''t want any of you falling overboard and getting swept away. Vortex that bad, you''d get torn limb from limb. We ever saw you again ¡ª alive, that is ¡ª we''d have good reason to call you stumpy!"

    "No," Ritsuka said faintly, paling, "no, we definitely don''t want that happening."

    "Yeah, uh," Rika agreed, "somehow, I¡­don''t think we''d find the Dragon Palace down there. No reason to go looking, right?"

    "Don''t trust your Servants to pull you out?" Emiya teased.

    "Get back to me when you can walk on water," was her response.

    "I¡­still don''t know how to swim," Mash mumbled, which was probably something we would have to fix later on. I made a mental note to bring it up with Romani after we''d solved this Singularity, because not only would it give a sheltered girl like Mash a chance to have more normal experiences, but it was probably going to be relevant in a later Singularity, too, and that was a fairly important side benefit.

    Instead, I studied the map again, then looked out at the ocean in front of us. It was calm, or as calm as it ever got, at any rate, and there was no sign of the swirling vortex that¡­took up a decent chunk of the map, actually. It had to be several miles across. In fact, it looked more like a hurricane than a whirlpool, at least in terms of size. Something that big would be more than powerful enough to suck us all under.

    Arash, peering over my shoulder, made a noise of agreement. "Yeah, that looks too dangerous. Better not to take any chances with it."

    "Scared of a little water?" Euryale taunted. "Well, I guess it can''t be helped. It would be bad even for one of us Servants to be caught up in something that size. I can only imagine how much worse it would be for ordinary humans."

    "If it really ain''t that big a deal to you, we can always tie you to the prow and make a new figurehead of you," Drake offered.

    Euryale grimaced and opened her mouth to offer something else, but Asterios rumbled something quietly, and whatever it was, it was enough to make her swallow whatever caustic remark she''d been about to make.

    "Fine, fine," she said instead. "I''ll stop playing with them. I suppose it is only fair when they''ve so generously offered us their protection."

    "It''s only polite!" Bradamante added with a vigorous nod.

    Euryale opened her mouth again, but Asterios gave her a gentle nudge, and she snapped it shut again with a sigh.

    A few moments of relative silence passed, and when I was done studying the map, I turned it off, frowning. We''d already been to three islands, and on one, we''d encountered Drake, while on New Crete, we''d picked up Asterios, Euryale, and Calliope, who had given us some more information to work off of. We''d barely been inside this Singularity for a few days, but it already felt like we''d been here a while, and this cluster of islands wasn''t particularly large.

    In fact, we''d already visited about half of them. There were more than just six, of course, way more if you counted each section of that archipelago to the southwest as individual islands, but most of them were little more than hilltops jutting out of the ocean. In other words, largely unimportant and probably completely abandoned, and so of no interest to us.

    And yet, we''d yet to catch even a hint of the other Grail. It was a total tossup whether or not Euryale''s stalker had even encountered it, let alone had it in his possession, which meant that it was entirely possible that it was on one of those last three islands.

    If I was a betting woman, I would have put my money on the archipelago. Because of course it would be in the very last place we would be looking.

    "Say, Eury," Rika began.

    "Eury?" Euryale said, bewildered. "And who gave you permission to address me so familiarly?"

    "Look, it''s easier for me than trying to butcher the whole thing, okay?" Rika said impatiently.

    Euryale looked ready to protest still.

    "Oh, let her have it," Calliope said disdainfully. "It''s not like you were ever in line to be one of the Olympians, so there''s no reason for you to complain about the lack of respect."

    "As opposed to you, you mean?" Euryale said cattily. "All of those gods in your family tree, and still ¡ª"

    Asterios nudged her again, and in that low, rumbling voice of his, "Nice¡­"

    Euryale sighed again. "Fine!" She rolled her wrist. "Get on with your question, girl."

    Rike eyed her, but managed to hold back any commentary of her own. "Right, so¡­ This stalker guy of yours, you said he''s chasing you, right?"

    Euryale arched an eyebrow, like she thought this was a particularly dumb question. "Yes¡­"

    "So, um, how did he know where you are, exactly? And, like, how is he following you around? I mean, he isn''t exactly tracking your IP address or anything, and it''s not like this place has GPS."

    Euryale blinked, because she obviously hadn''t been expecting that. Being fair to her, I wasn''t, either.

    "Oh," said Mash. "That''s a good point, Senpai. If Miss Euryale''s stalker is following her, then can he still follow her even while she''s aboard the Golden Hind?"

    Euryale''s brow furrowed and her lips pulled into a scowl, but she didn''t answer. Instead, it was Calliope who said, "There are a number of ways he could accomplish it, under the right circumstances. If any of the Servants he has with him has the skill for it, then it doesn''t matter how far we run, he''ll find us eventually."

    So he could be on our tail even now, and we wouldn''t know it until he came sailing up to attack us. Worse, if he and his team could just astralize, then they didn''t even need to be in physical form, and they could just drop in on us ¡ª either literally, or they could materialize once they were within range to attack us and have the advantage of surprise either way.

    "Where was the last place you saw him?" I asked.

    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

    "I¡­can''t say for sure," Euryale admitted. "We escaped him back when things were still settling down. We fled across the sea to that island, and we spent at least a few days there before all of you showed up. I''m not sure where we managed to slip out from under him, but it''s not impossible that he might be tracking us still."

    "So¡­he could show up at any moment," Rika said. "Great. That''s great. Amazing."

    "He''s still a Servant," Emiya reminded her. "More importantly, this guy is supposed to have several Servants working under him, right? We''ll sense him long before he gets here."

    "And even when he does show up, we''ll take his pride away!" Bradamante chimed in. "Don''t worry, Master! He doesn''t stand a chance!"

    I wondered if she was still using that as a euphemism for a certain part of his anatomy, but I thought better of asking and shook my head. I was pretty sure I already knew the answer anyway, and I didn''t need to encourage Rika to infect Bradamante any more than she already had.

    With that part settled, the conversation petered out, and the rest of the day passed slowly. The pirates sang as they had before to occupy the time, and Rika joined in and sang along, but after the first hour, her energy started to flag, because even Rika''s enthusiasm wasn''t endless, and even if it had been, her throat could only handle so much abuse before she started to feel it.

    Lunch was the highlight of the day, and armed with Drake''s Grail once more, Emiya fed us what he assured us was an English dish, although I didn''t recognize it from sight or taste alone, so I couldn''t have said for sure whether it was or not one way or the other. It was still good, although much quieter than usual, because Rika''s throat was too sore to make smalltalk.

    Somehow, we even convinced our new allies to join us, and the normally dour Calliope was even more dour after she tasted it ¡ª or maybe jealous was a better word for it, because she took one bite and started sulking.

    "It''s not fair," she told Emiya sourly. "How are you so good at cooking, anyway?"

    Emiya arched an eyebrow at her, smirking. "When I was growing up, someone had to be. My old man could have burned water, so if I wanted to eat something actually edible, I had to learn to cook."

    "Kuh¡­!" Calliope scoffed, and to choke down whatever she''d been about to say, she shoveled more food into her mouth and enjoyed it bitterly.

    Even Euryale couldn''t find anything to complain about.

    "It''s amazing how far food preparation has come in the past few thousand years," she said airily. "Of course, it can''t compare to the gods'' ambrosia, but for something mortals came up with, it handily beats out anything from my era. Don''t you think so, Asterios?"

    Asterios, meanwhile, looked almost like he was having a religious experience, which made some sense, seeing as he''d probably never eaten food that was actually prepared. If the myths were true, his only real source of sustenance was the sacrifices sent down into the Labyrinth, and if you forgot the icky part about him eating people, well, none of it probably tasted particularly good.

    "I''m glad a goddess appreciates my food so much," Emiya told her sardonically. "If even someone like you can be impressed, then my cooking must be something special indeed."

    "I''ll say!" Drake agreed as she dug in gluttonously. "Man, Emiya, the future you come from must be a pretty awesome place! If food like this exists, shit, what I wouldn''t give to see it! My treasure, my ship ¡ª ah, maybe not my ship. Definitely my treasure, though!"

    "A goddess, an emperor, the pirate queen," said Arash, smiling. "That''s quite a ringing endorsement, don''t you think?"

    Emiya huffed, and under his breath, I heard him mutter, "Don''t forget a king. She was my best customer, after all."

    I wasn''t the only one who heard him, but based upon the look the twins shared and the pursing of Mash''s lips, they knew better than to poke that particular wound. Last time, it made him clam up tight enough to make Cauldron jealous, and none of us seemed eager to get a repeat performance.

    After lunch, things were quiet for a completely different reason: we were digesting our food. The Servants were fine, of course, but Rika looked like she was ready to curl up and take a nap, and as for Ritsuka ¡ª

    "I couldn''t eat another bite¡­"

    ¡ª he sprawled out on the deck, shielding his eyes in his elbow. It looked like he might have eaten a little too much.

    Somewhere along the way, the crew changed shifts, and the ones from the morning went to go and eat their own lunches while a better rested group took their places. For lack of anything better to do, I watched them work and listened to them sing, and about half an hour after the shift change, Drake climbed back to her feet and retook the wheel from Bombe.

    The sun above drew across the sky, and then slowly began to sink. The afternoon bled into evening, and at some point, Rika had drawn Euryale into smalltalk about ancient Greece and what life was like there. I missed when she started ¡ª might actually have dozed off for a few minutes myself ¡ª but by the time I was actually paying attention, Euryale was telling the tale of the poor, unfortunate souls who had come to the sisters'' island in search of her and Stheno and met Medusa instead.

    "Of course, the fool had to be brave," she was saying with relish. "He thought all the rest were simply cowards not to have looked in my sister''s eyes, and, well, he learned quickly that it was better that he not. Too late, naturally, because by then, he was already halfway turned to stone, but I''m sure it was a lesson he never forgot, even in the afterlife."

    "I dunno," said Rika, grinning, "it sounds like he had a pretty hard head."

    "By the end of it, for sure!" Euryale agreed.

    Ritsuka, who also seemed to have been listening, groaned quietly. Mash, on the other hand, seemed to have missed the pun entirely.

    "It sounds like the three of you loved each other very much, Miss Euryale," Mash said earnestly.

    And for a moment, Euryale was silent. At length, quietly, she said, "Yes, we did."

    Asterios gave her a gentle nudge with his foot, as though to comfort her, because no one could possibly have missed how loaded that was. No one, fortunately, thought it was a good idea to go digging on it either, and Mash seemed to have realized that she had touched a nerve with that comment, because she didn''t press either.

    Dinner came around as the sun began to slink below the horizon, and the monotonous ocean we''d been sailing since morning was slowly dyed in reds, yellows, and oranges as the warm day started to cool off. Emiya prepared us all yet another delicious meal, just as good as every meal before it, with a comment about how it was a modified Mediterranean dish.

    "Less spicy than normal," was what he claimed. "A ship at sea sounds like the worst place to get the runs."

    "Trust me," Drake chortled, "you ain''t seen nothing."

    "You really haven''t," Calliope agreed.

    We ate slower than we had at lunch, savoring the food, Asterios especially, and even the raucous, boisterous singing from earlier in the day calmed down into something slower and softer as the evening stretched on and the last rays of sunlight painted the skies in pinks and purples. The crew themselves were more subdued and less energetic, and even when they changed shifts again, the atmosphere was far less excited and the air less charged.

    It was almost like the night itself calmed them all down. The sea didn''t change, was still just the same, but the crew had, and if I had met these men as they were then instead of as they had been the rest of the day, I would have thought them all a very agreeable group.

    "Man," Rika said, stretching her arms out, "I know we didn''t do all that much today, but I''m beat!"

    "I know what you mean," Mash said, sighing. "All we did was sit around and talk, but I''m exhausted."

    So was I.

    I looked up at the moon. Of course, I couldn''t tell the time just based on that, but given how it had been yesterday¡­no, that wasn''t a good measurement, because I might have been imagining it, but I thought the sun had set an hour earlier today. Without an accurate way of measuring time, it wasn''t possible to be sure, but¡­

    Fuck this place. Even the length of the days couldn''t be consistent.

    "Could put you to work, if you''re feeling lazy," Drake said teasingly.

    "Doing what?" Rika burst out. "No offense, Captain Pillows, but I don''t know my keel from my stern! We''ll wind up taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque!"

    "Where, now?" Drake asked, bewildered.

    "She''s referencing a character from a cartoon," I answered.

    Drake was no less confused. "A what?"

    A breath hissed out of my nostrils. This was one of the perks of Servants ¡ª they came preloaded with modern knowledge, so I didn''t have to explain stuff like this all the time.

    "Think a painting that moves," said Ritsuka, coming to my rescue, "with sound. It''s meant to be entertainment."

    Drake looked back at him from over her shoulder. "The future sounds like one wild place."

    "Trust me," Emiya drawled, "you ain''t seen nothing yet."

    Drake grinned and shook her head. She hadn''t missed that callback to her earlier comment. "Cute, Emiya."

    "I try."

    Eventually, we all got too tired to keep going, so us Masters and Mash dragged ourselves back into Drake''s cabin again, sorted out the sleeping arrangements, and crawled into the cots set up for just that purpose. This time, I wound up wedged between the twins and the wall, and Mash slept in the bunk closer to the door, so she could come to all of our defense instead of just theirs, should the need arise.

    It took a minute to settle in and get as cozy as I was going to, but eventually, I found a position that I thought would leave me without a crick in my neck come morning and laid back in the dark to close my eyes.

    Still not the most uncomfortable thing I''ve ever slept on. The thought carried me off to sleep.

    That night, I had a strange dream. I didn''t remember much of it, but I had the impression of a man in gold, smiling down at me with a mocking grin. I heard his laugh, but nothing else he said.

    Despite that, I woke up feeling well-rested, with one of Rika''s arms thrown over mine and her hand resting on my stomach. The room was mostly dark, and I was halfway to checking my communicator for the time when I remembered that it wouldn''t tell me the right time anyway and let my hand flop back down onto the cot.

    Rika snorted and rolled over, taking her arm with her.

    The flashlight was obnoxiously bright when I turned it on, and I had to squint against it as I waited for my eyes to adjust while I inspected the room. Drake, I already knew, was outside and at the wheel, and the array of lice and other sorts of less savory infestations told me which members of the crew were also awake and going about their work.

    Well, I was up. No sense in lying about on this cot for another couple hours.

    It was a bit of work to extract myself from the cramped setup we had going on in the cabin, but somehow, I managed to do it without rousing either of the twins. Mash, though, was unavoidable, because she was directly in the way and there was no way I was going to climb over her without waking her up.

    I wasn''t expecting her to startle the instant I touched her arm.

    "I''m awake!" she yelped as she shot up.

    "Shh," I hushed her. "It''s just me, Mash."

    She blinked at me in the dark, all vague outlines thrown into sharp relief by the focused light of my flashlight, pointed past her shoulder. "Miss Taylor?"

    "The twins are still asleep," I whispered, jerking my head in their direction over my shoulder. Sure enough, they were both still snoozing away, oblivious to Mash''s outburst. "I''m going to go out. Figured it''d be better to wake you up like this instead of trying to climb over top of you."

    "Oh," she said softly. "Thank you." A moment later, after my words had fully penetrated, she shifted. "U-um, just a moment, let me¡­"

    Moving about was harder in the dim light, but after some uncomfortable rearranging, she had cleared as clear a path towards the door as I was going to get, and I ambled past her, stumbling a little when I misjudged the distance between the edge of the last cot and the floor. Mash, instead of lying back down, followed after me and waited until I''d gotten the door open and stepped outside before finding her feet herself.

    The sky outside was dull and overcast, washing out all the color and leaving everyone looking sort of pale and muted. Even Drake''s bright red coat had an appearance closer to maroon than crimson, the gold accenting a murky yellow, and her hair looked closer to copper than its usually more vivid shade.

    The air was cold, too, and I couldn''t suppress the brief shiver that shuddered down my spine. It had to be a good ten or twenty degrees cooler out than yesterday''s balmy, almost tropical warmth.

    "Are you alright, Master?" Bradamante asked, concerned. I was frankly jealous that she could walk around in that sort of clothing when it was halfway to freezing out.

    "Fine," I said somewhat shortly. "Just a little cold."

    "Aye, now you get to see it for yourself, eh?" said Drake. "T''weren''t sunny and warm just a day ago, and now it''s right and proper English weather."

    If this was English weather, then the sooner we crossed the Channel and hit something more appropriate to a French beach, the better. Metaphorically speaking.

    "So it is. I take it this is the ''freaky shit'' you were talking about the other day?"

    "None other," Drake confirmed. "To be expected, though. The closer we get to that vortex, the wilder this shit is going to get. Even steering around it, we''ll hit some swings that''ll make your head spin."

    How wonderful.

    "I can''t say that I''ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing weather like this," Euryale complained, lounging about on the rearmost deck with Asterios. "If I''d known we were going to have to put up with it, I might have decided to stay on the island. Right, Asterios?"

    "Cold¡­" rumbled Asterios. "Not¡­bother¡­me¡­"

    Euryale sighed. "Yes, well, that''s the one upside to this, isn''t it? At least as a Servant, I don''t have to worry about anything more than some discomfort. A pity that living humans aren''t quite so lucky."

    The smug condescension was so thick you could cut it with a knife, so I defused the situation by ignoring her comment and looking up at the crow''s nest, where Arash was situated, on lookout. Emiya, by contrast, was positioned at the bow, although when he saw me awake, he made his way over, probably to prepare breakfast.

    "First up again?" he asked me once he''d joined us.

    "It''s a habit I never grew out of."

    "That so? I suppose I understand something of that."

    And that was all he gave me. The frustrating part was that I didn''t know if that comment had anything to do with whatever Grail War he''d been a part of, or if it was just a tidbit about his daily life that didn''t actually mean much of anything.

    I knew better than to ask.

    The dreary day stretched on as Emiya started to prepare food for us to eat, and naturally, the smell of food attracted a pair of hungry teenagers, who wandered out of Drake''s cabin groggily.

    "Good morning, Senpai," Mash greeted them both.

    "Good morning," Ritsuka replied, still not fully awake.

    "I smell Emiya''s cooking," Rika mumbled as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

    "Just in time," Emiya told her. "It''ll be ready in a few minutes." He gestured to the small table he''d projected in what was quickly becoming the crowded deck behind the wheel. "Grab a seat."

    Breakfast, just like every other meal we''d eaten cooked by Emiya, was wonderful, although I think I was the only one awake enough to truly appreciate exactly how good it was, aside from our Servants.

    "If there''s one positive aspect to this Singularity," Bradamante said, "it''s that I can eat more than once a week!"

    "Hey, if Senpai''s idea works, that won''t be a problem soon!" Rika told her.

    "I know!" Bradamante sighed wistfully. "I can hardly wait! Just imagining being able to enjoy this delectable food every day¡­it''s almost too much!"

    "Too bad I can''t convince you to stay, Emiya," said Drake as she ate with her fingers instead of utensils. "Eating like this, it''s gonna spoil me!"

    Immediately, Rika''s head whipped around, and she turned a dead, cold stare Drake''s way. "Emiya," she said calmly, "can you project a baguette? As stale and hard as possible?"

    "We''ve been over this before, Master," said Emiya in the voice of a man who had dealt with this many times over. "Even if I wanted to stay, I couldn''t. You don''t have to worry about me being ''poached.''"

    "You say that, but I still have to defend my investment! With force, if need be!"

    Emiya arched an eyebrow. "With a loaf of bread?"

    "It''s the principle of the matter! And also, it''s a callback! There''s no more appropriate way of defending my chef than by sword fighting with loaves of bread!"

    Emiya just shrugged, as though to say, ''what can you do?'' I wasn''t sure there really was anything he could do about it. Rika was Rika. It was just the way she was, and she didn''t show any sign of changing anytime soon.

    Things didn''t really pick up after breakfast. The sky remained just as dark and overcast, with bare traces of sunlight making it through the thick cloud cover. Even the mood aboard the ship was more sullen, less excited, like the cold and the dark had made the entire crew less cheerful. There was less singing than before, and it left the ship quieter and more subdued.

    Ironically, this was what I might have expected the day after a big party like the one we''d had the night before we left New Crete. Instead, everyone had remained in good spirits, despite how many spirits they''d imbibed the day prior, and it was only now that everyone had spent a whole day stone cold sober that they were so unenthusiastic.

    The day seemed to drag on in that gray haze, and it got to the point where Emiya had to project a deck of cards so that we actually had something to do aside from sitting around and staring aimlessly into the distance. We started with something simple, something that was easy to teach and easy enough to learn.

    "Got any twos, Onii-chan?"

    "Go fish."

    "Damn!"

    "Do you have a five, Mash?"

    "Um, two of them, Senpai. D-do I just¡­"

    "Yeah, you''re supposed to hand them over. Here¡­"

    And after a few slow rounds of that, Rika all but bullied the rest of us into teaching Mash poker. She even roped Emiya into lending a hand.

    "S-so if I have all five cards of the same, um, s-suit? Then that means¡­"

    "It''s called a Flush. If they''re all in order numerically, it''s called a Straight Flush. If they''re all in order but they''re not the same suit, it''s just a Straight."

    When we got the part about betting, however¡­

    "There''s gambling in this game?" asked Drake, suddenly interested.

    "Normally," I answered. "It depends on where you play it and who you''re playing with. In a casual game, you might bet snacks or low money stakes, but on the professional circuit, you can win millions of dollars if you make it to the end of a tournament."

    Drake let out a low, sharp whistle. "Sounds like my kinda game!"

    "Don''t forget about Strip Poker," Rika said evilly, as though Alec himself had possessed her to say it. "The version where you bet articles of clothing!"

    Drake laughed. "That sounds even more like my kinda game!"

    "That''s¡­not one you should be playing with family, though," Ritsuka said diplomatically. He gave his sister a look that all but screamed, ''like you and I are.''

    "I''m willing to sit it out if you and Mash want to go head to head, Onii-chan," Rika teased him.

    Mash and Ritsuka''s faces both lit up like a Christmas tree.

    "M-maybe, uh, m-maybe later," Ritsuka said awkwardly. "F-for now, let''s, um, just play normally."

    Eventually, Drake couldn''t resist anymore, and she went to dig out a pile of doubloons that she had probably pilfered from the Spanish armada she was credited with sinking. She doled out an equal share to each of us, with the promise we could keep whatever we had left at the end of the game.

    And then she promptly swindled us out of most of them.

    "I''ve never had that much gold in my entire life," Rika said, disgusted, as Drake raked in the pot. "And I''ve never seen it disappear so quickly."

    "I''d wonder if she was hiding cards up her sleeves," Emiya drawled, "but I''ve been watching the entire time and she hasn''t cheated once."

    "I guess that''s the kind of luck you have to have to make it around the world in one piece," Ritsuka murmured. He looked down at what he had left ¡ª three more doubloons, the last of his ''funds'' ¡ª and then down at the hand he''d just lost.

    Drake''s luck really must be that stupid, because she''d beaten his Four-of-a-Kind with a Royal Flush, and the odds on that made my head spin. In fact, she''d won every hand she played, and I was ready to call shenanigans. Shamrock wouldn''t have had this kind of luck, and that was basically her power.

    By the time lunch rolled around again, Drake had cleaned us all out and taken back every bit of gold she''d handed us at the beginning, and then she flicked a single doubloon to each of us with a grin and a, "Thanks for the fun, guys!"

    Somehow, despite having just learned the game today, it felt as though it had been rigged against us from the start.

    Since we all weren''t particularly hungry, Emiya concocted something relatively simple and light, and it was still delicious in spite of that. Drake joined us for that again and let Bombe have the wheel, then lazed about for a little while as we all let it digest again.

    The afternoon was much the same as the morning. The sun still hadn''t managed to break through the gloom, and things remained sluggish and dull, like the world was covered in a film.

    "Ain''t gonna get any better," Drake promised us. "We''ll be coming up on that vortex soon enough, and even sailing around the edges, well, the weather will be just as miserable."

    Given the size of that thing, I could believe it. I''d compared it to a hurricane before, and that description still fit.

    "I thought we were sailing around it?" Ritsuka asked.

    "We are," said Drake. "But even if we put miles and miles between that thing and us, it''s a right old bastard. Doesn''t matter how far away we skirt, we''ll still feel its tantrum."

    "It''s fine," I said. "We can deal with a little cold."

    "I just wish Da Vinci-chan had programmed in a winter coat," Rika muttered crossly.

    I elected not to tell her about the swimsuit setting, at least for now.

    "Cap''n!" one of the crew shouted down from the crow''s nest at the same time as Arash called, "Master!"

    "Yeah?" Drake hollered back.

    Something wrong? I asked more discreetly.

    We''re being followed, Arash answered.

    "There''s another ship on our tail, Cap''n!" the crewmate said. "Starboard, and gaining fast!"

    "What?" Drake bellowed, drowning out Rika''s echoing squeak.

    "Who?" I asked aloud for everyone else''s benefit.

    "I don''t recognize the flag," Arash called down, "but they''re definitely pirates!"

    My brow furrowed. More of those personified concepts we''d fought before? Or was this the mysterious stalker we''d been hearing about, come to take Euryale and do whatever it was he wanted with her?

    Show me, I ordered.

    And when I looked through his eyes, I saw it, a large galleon approaching off from the right, propelled by red sails the color of wine. Fluttering in the brisk wind was a black flag, and upon that flag was a skeletal devil with triangular horns. In one hand, he held a spear, and it pointed directly at a large, red heart.

    "Shit."

    I recognized that flag. How could I not? After all, it belonged to the most famous pirate to ever live, the man who had made the profession so famous. There had been several others before and after, but there was only one that lived so infamously, only the one that everyone knew about, even centuries after his death.

    "That''s Blackbeard."

 Chapter XCIV: Lost at Sea

    Chapter XCIV: Lost at Sea

    "Who?" asked Drake.

    "The most famous pirate to ever live," I answered.

    She glanced over at me, brow furrowed. "I thought that was me, weren''t it?"

    Not hardly, I didn''t say, but that was mostly because Drake was more famous for the stuff she''d done that wasn''t pirating, whereas Blackbeard''s entire legend was his piracy. I''d once heard it described that pirates were like rock stars, in that their lives looked exciting and glamorous, up until you actually looked into what those lives were actually like, and it turned out they were all broke, up to their eyeballs in debt, and desperately scrambling for their next score.

    "Your accomplishments are grander, Captain Drake," said Mash, "but when it comes to the word ''pirate,'' when people think of what a pirate is, what a pirate looks like, how a pirate acts, the only name that can come to mind is the most infamous scoundrel to ever sail the seas: Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard."

    As I watched through Arash''s eyes, the Queen Anne''s Revenge ¡ª because that was the only thing that ship could be, when Blackbeard himself was the one steering it ¡ª drew ever closer. The Golden Hind had the wind on its side, by all accounts, but somehow, the Revenge''s sails were full and driving it towards us at alarming speed.

    Unless he had something that would let him control the wind, that had to be a Noble Phantasm. No, I could almost guarantee it. The Revenge didn''t have as much renown as Blackbeard himself, but there was no doubt that it was his Noble Phantasm, because what else would it be, except for maybe something to do with the Republic of Pirates?

    "He''s even famous in Japan," Rika added. "I mean, Oda-sensei might have had a hand in that, but still!"

    Drake didn''t seem particularly thrilled to hear that, almost like the very idea insulted her.

    "Most infamous scoundrel ever, huh?"

    She took her eyes off of the sea ahead long enough to get a look at the approaching Revenge, and the instant she laid eyes on the maroon sails and the fluttering flag that were becoming only more distinct the more the ship gained on us, she did a double take.

    "What the bleeding hell?" she exclaimed. "Bombe, are you seeing this shit? I haven''t gone mad, have I?"

    "Aye, Cap''n, that''s him for sure!" Bombe shouted back.

    I drew back from Arash''s eyes and turned to Drake sharply. "You''ve seen him before?"

    "You kidding?" she snarled. "That asshat tried to run us aground when we first got here! Bastard nearly sank us!"

    "Dear me, that is a coincidence," Euryale said airily, "because I happen to recognize that flag and those sails, too."

    I nearly gave myself whiplash from how quickly I spun around to face her. "You''re serious."

    Her mouth drew into a tight grimace. "I only wish it were a joke, but no, it''s true. That ship belongs to the man who has been chasing me the entirety of my time in this place."

    "Well, that''s convenient," said Rika. "I guess the only ones who haven''t met him yet is us."

    It really was, I thought as I turned back towards the oncoming ship. It was rapidly closing the gap, near enough now that I could see the black square that was its flag with my own eyes, even if I couldn''t make out the design printed upon it.

    "What do we do?" Mash asked.

    "What the fuck do you think we''re going to do?" Drake barked. "Bombe! Get the cannons loaded! We''re gonna sink that bastard, this time!"

    "You can''t," I said immediately.

    She turned to me, furious. "The fuck I can''t!"

    I shook my head. "I mean that you literally can''t. You''d just be wasting ammunition."

    It took her an extra second for her brain to parse what I meant, and when she had, her face scrunched up with frustrated anger. "Fuck!" she swore. "Fucking¡­ Shit! He''s one of them invincible bastards! My cannons won''t even scratch the paint!"

    More than just that ¡ª

    "I can do it," Emiya offered. "Just say the word, Master, and I''ll sink him."

    "You can''t, either," Ritsuka said before I could. "If he has the Grail and it goes down with his ship¡­"

    "We''re all out of scuba gear," Rika concluded.

    Emiya''s nose wrinkled, and he looked away, towards the oncoming ship, with a scowl. It wasn''t that I didn''t understand the sentiment. Sinking him straight off would be easier, at least from the position of removing the problem before it had a chance to make itself more of one. It would be convenient if we could solve this Singularity like that with a single use of a Noble Phantasm.

    Unfortunately, there was a problem with that idea.

    "If you take him out and he has the Grail, there''s no telling where it might go," I said. "The currents could carry it out for miles."

    Emiya''s lip curled. "Tch."

    Because the seas had been getting rougher the closer we got to that giant vortex. The waves were larger, the ship was rocking more, and provided the Grail didn''t get flung off into the distance by Caladbolg, it could very well wind up being swept along and ferried to some distant part of this Singularity.

    Or worse, it might be sucked down into the maelstrom, and we''d have to try and retrieve it from a whirlpool the size of a hurricane with waters moving at gale force speeds.

    And even if it went straight down, which was the least likely possibility, then what? If I remembered the numbers right, something like eighty percent of the ocean floor was unexplored, and people had been searching for sunken ships in relatively shallow bays for centuries, despite having descriptions or even exact coordinates for where they went down. I didn''t like those odds if we had to send our Servants diving for the Grail.

    "We''re going to have to let him get close," Ritsuka concluded, almost as though he''d been reading my mind.

    "Are you mad?" barked Drake. "You want me to let that asshole within spitting distance of my ship? After he tried to sink her?"

    "You have something you didn''t, back then." I turned towards Euryale, whose mouth drew into a tight line. "Something that he wants quite badly."

    "You''re going to use me as bait, is that what you''re saying?" asked Euryale, unimpressed. Asterios shifted uncomfortably behind her, hunching over a little as though to shield her with his bulk.

    "He won''t try and sink us as long as you''re on board." Hopefully, anyway. You never could tell with some people, especially the really irrational ones. If he was willing to pursue her across this Singularity, however, then I was willing to bet he wouldn''t just blow the Golden Hind full of holes as long as she was on it. "The longer we can convince him to talk, the more chances we''ll have to find where ¡ª or if ¡ª he has the Holy Grail."

    "If he literally pulls it out of his ass, I''m not touching it," Rika said dryly.

    A slight tightening of my lips was the only reaction I let show on my face, although Mash''s cheeks were reddening at the mental image and Ritsuka grimaced. I couldn''t say I found it particularly thrilling either, but I''d seen things a whole lot worse and a whole lot more disgusting.

    I didn''t want to ever meet the man who wanted to try to outdo Bonesaw''s worst.

    "Do you think he might tell us more about who gave him the Grail?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Maybe," I hedged. "It depends on a lot of different factors, and we can''t be sure before we talk to him."

    Loyalty, however, at least to governments and superior officers, had never been something pirates were well known for.

    "Good luck," Euryale drawled.

    Grinning, Rika turned to Bradamante, "Maybe he''ll be more talkative if Tii-chan flutters her eyelashes at him?"

    Bradamante''s cheeks reddened. "I-I''m not that kind of knight, Master! I''m really not!"

    "Maybe he prefers redheads instead of blondes," Emiya slipped in slyly.

    Wordlessly, Rika gestured to Drake, which actually wasn''t the worst rebuttal. Men tended to like figures like Drake''s a whole lot more than mine, and a pirate like Blackbeard might even find that scar stretching across her face attractive. It was just a question of whether or not Drake could use that to our advantage or if the fact he had almost sunk her and her ship was too large a barrier.

    "Like I said, we won''t know until we talk to him." Because all of that might still be moot if he was single-mindedly obsessed with Euryale. "Captain Drake? If you could bring us down to half-sail, so that he knows we''re giving him a chance to¡­parley."

    "As set down by Morgan and Bartholomew," Rika added sagely.

    Sure, why not. I was just going to pretend I understood what she was referencing that time. Probably something pirate related, considering the circumstances.

    "Not sure I like this idea of yours, esteemed guests," Drake told us tersely. "This bastard nearly sent us down to meet Old Hob, and now you want to give him another shot at it? Sounds mental to me!"

    As though I would make it that easy for him.

    "That''s why I want you and the crew ready to sail away at a moment''s notice," I said. "Arash and Emiya will be keeping an eye on their cannons and shoot down anything they try, and Mash can cover our retreat with Ca ¡ª with Lord Chaldeas. If, at that point, we''re sure he doesn''t have the Grail and he doesn''t know who does, then there''s no reason not to deal with him more permanently after we''ve gained enough distance."

    "A lot of distance," Rika said dryly. "Tactical nukes aren''t really that picky about who they blow up."

    "Have a little more faith in me than that, Master," Emiya said. "I do have options between ''kill that one guy'' and ''obliterate everything in that general direction.''"

    "A-and what if he''s not actually that bad?" Mash burst out.

    I wasn''t the only one who looked at her askance, because Blackbeard''s various misdeeds weren''t exactly a secret, and she flinched, then rallied to explain herself, "I-I just mean, Captain Drake isn''t¡­um, isn''t exactly the noblest or most virtuous hero in history, and yet, she''s also generous and kind and friendly!"

    "Hey, now," said Drake, sounding amused, "those are some pretty serious accusations you''re tossing my way! You''ll ruin my reputation! Who''s gonna respect the lovable and cuddly Francis Drake?"

    Her crew, for a start.

    "No, I get what she''s saying," said Ritsuka. "Just because he got remembered as someone horrible and violent doesn''t mean that he actually is, right? I think¡­if there''s one thing we''ve learned since Fuyuki, it''s that history doesn''t get everything right, and even when it does, it''s not the whole picture."

    "Yes!" Mash nodded firmly. "So¡­just because he''s after Euryale for, um¡­r-reasons, that doesn''t mean he has to be an enemy!"

    They had a point. I closed my eyes briefly, and when I opened them again, I looked out across the sea towards the approaching Revenge. At the speed it was going, we only had a few minutes before they were close enough to engage, and from there, it wouldn''t take much longer until they were close enough to shout across from ship to ship.

    "And when one of his demands is that you hand me over?" Euryale asked acidly. A tense Asterios huddled even more protectively over her. "Are you just going to pass me to him, like I''m a mere bauble? A piece with which to bargain with your new ally, no matter what he wants to do to me?"

    "No one is saying that," I said before things could get more heated. "But Ritsuka isn''t wrong to say that it would be better to negotiate than to jump straight to fighting him. Chaldea isn''t in the habit of shying away from its enemies, but neither are we in the habit of making them unnecessarily."

    It was a good reminder. I''d let myself fall a little too deeply into Euryale''s narrative, and I''d made some assumptions based on that. I needed to stick to the facts ¡ª that she was running from a stalker, Blackbeard was that stalker, and he wanted her for some reason. Euryale had made her own assumptions about why, but it was equally as possible that he was trying to protect her from someone else who wanted her for more nefarious purposes or that he''d assumed Drake''s Grail was the one messing this place up.

    That didn''t mean that Euryale was automatically wrong, or that Drake hadn''t been attacked completely unprovoked for an entirely more selfish reason. Just that I should be keeping an open mind about the other Servants we met in this Singularity.

    "Captain Drake?" I said. "Half-sail, please. Let''s see what Blackbeard wants from us."

    Drake grunted. "Fine. This Servant and Grail business is your lot''s wheelhouse, so might as well trust you know something about what''s going on here. Bombe!"

    "Aye, Boss?" Bombe shouted back.

    "Take us down to half-sail, but be goddamn sure we''re ready to run like the Devil himself is on our tails at the first sign of trouble!"

    Bombe stared at her for a moment, hesitating, before finally saying, "A-aye, Boss! Will do!" He turned towards the rest of the crew. "You heard the Boss! Half-sail, and no slacking! If we go down because you sorry sacks of shit weren''t ready, Hell itself will seem like a nice spot to settle by the time I''m finished with you!"

    "AYE!" the crew roared back.

    They got to work, and in short order, the sails keeping us going were halfway furled. Almost immediately, our speed rapidly fell, and while we didn''t come to a full halt, compared to how quickly we''d been going before, it felt almost like we had.

    "Just hope you stargazers know what you''re doing," Drake muttered.

    It was a tense few minutes while we waited for the Revenge to come closer. I took that time to push my mind at Arash''s and ask, Did you hear all of that?

    Enough, was his answer. I can already tell you that Blackbeard isn''t alone.

    My lips drew into a tight line. How many?

    At least four other Servants, said Arash. He''s also got a ghostly crew, just like our friend from the other day. I can''t say anything about how strong the Servants are, but the phantoms aren''t going to be any kind of threat.

    Four other Servants. I took a deep breath. That was either going to be an incredible boon or a nightmare to fight, depending on which way his loyalty swung.

    Any clues about their identities? I asked him.

    Not many, he replied. Two women. By the way they dress, they''re pirates, too. Another is a young man. Early to mid teens. There aren''t many Heroic Spirits who were famous enough so young, but I don''t have anything else to go on. The last is an older man with a spear. Leather armor, with some bronze plate. Probably a hero from antiquity.

    Antiquity¡­ Meaning ancient Greece?

    I got the mental equivalent of a nod back. Or one of their legends. He doesn''t really look Grecian, and the armor doesn''t match the usual style, but it fits the era.

    So one of Jason''s Argonauts might just be here, then. What a motley crew Blackbeard had put together. The question was whether that crew was here to help us get this place back on track or had their own selfish aims they were trying to accomplish.

    We were about to find out. As the Revenge pulled up alongside the Golden Hind ¡ª closer than I thought any pirate would have dared while alive and at risk of actually sinking ¡ª one of the figures on the deck rushed over to the side and hung so far over the railing that he would have tumbled over if someone gave him a shove.

    I almost didn''t notice Calliope dipping behind Asterios, like she was trying to hide from our guests'' attention.

    "AHOY!" he shouted in a rough, gravelly voice as smoke rose from his head. He shaded his eyes with one hand, as though the barely there sun was actually blinding him, and grinned at us madly. "What''s this I see? One, two, three, four ¡ª and Euryale-chan makes five! Lovely beauties in front of me!"

    The lit fuses smoldering in his hair meant this could only be one man: Edward Teach. Blackbeard. Physically, he definitely lived up to the image history had recorded of him, because that was definitely a healthy beard and it was black as tar, same as his hair, and he even dressed the part.

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    "Oi!" Drake said indignantly. "There''s six beautiful women here, you wanker!"

    In terms of personality, however¡­

    "You don''t count!" Blackbeard said, almost petulant, and I had to fight the jolt of surprise as I realized he''d counted me in his original statement. "An over-the-hill hag like you with those useless udders just isn''t my type! Come back fifteen years younger, and then we''ll have something to talk about!"

    Was¡­I allowed to be disappointed?

    "See?" Euryale said flatly. "It''s just like I told you. He''s a useless pervert who doesn''t know how to take no for an answer."

    "My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined," said Rika.

    "Hey, hey, no need to talk like that!" Blackbeard said. "Euryale-chan might be the loveliest of all, but you four are definitely top notch, too!"

    "Oh dear," one of the Servants behind him, a petite, ashen haired young woman with a scar as grisly as Drake''s, said wearily, "here he goes again."

    Blackbeard leered, and then mimed a curvy figure with his hands, aiming at Bradamante. "Older and experienced, with plenty of heart! A perfect maiden, saving herself for love! Joie de vivre!"

    Then, he turned towards Rika, and swept his hands out in a gesture I couldn''t quite parse. "Young and supple, full of gumption! She''s got the spirit to MAKE! YOU! MOVE! A-rooooo! Genki girl for life!"

    Mash recoiled when he looked at her next. "Age is just a number, yeah! She might be young and inexperienced, but she''s got a lot of mileage on that soul! Unbending will, ironclad determination, willing to give it all for the people she believes in! Gotta love that De-Di-Cay-Shun! That''s a perilous line to stride, so STRUT IT like you OWN IT, GIRL!"

    "U-um, th-thank you?" said Mash, confused. I think I was the only one, besides maybe Emiya, who realized exactly what Blackbeard had just hinted at.

    He was more insightful than his act made him seem. More dangerous.

    Next, it was my turn, and I met his gaze impassively. Instead of another gregarious, exaggerated, and undoubtedly sexual movement with his hands, he adopted a more thoughtful pose, nodding his head.

    "And the mysterious leader with the cool head," he said. "She''s got a past she wants to let lie, and she tossed away all the fluff to make herself into what she is today!" He made a chopping motion with one hand. "Cut away the excess! Trim it all up! Oh yeah! The only thing sexier than those legs is that fierce gaze! She can strip you bare with just a look, and I wouldn''t mind if she tied me up! Senpai, share that burden with me!"

    My cheek twitched, and an unfamiliar warmth burned the tips of my ears. I¡­ Okay, I hadn''t been prepared to have that turned on me. He''d hit so close to home on the others, I really should have expected him to see right through me, too.

    "Goddamn," Rika said, stunned. I had to stop myself from agreeing with her out loud.

    "Five lovely ladies, each with their charms! Oh!" Blackbeard nodded to himself, arms crossed. "To have just one of them! No! To have them all, all at once or one at a time! Any man would give his left arm for a chance like that!"

    "Don''t go cutting it off just yet," I said. "You might need it soon."

    "Oh yeah! It''s only half as fun if you don''t cut it off for me!" He winked at me, and the way he just rolled with it so easily¡­actually threw me off my guard. The burning on my ears spread. "That''s how you show your L-O-V-E! It ain''t real if you ain''t willing to do a little permanent damage! Oh!"

    "Uh¡­huh¡­?"

    This was¡­not at all what I''d expected of Blackbeard. It wasn''t that no one had ever flirted with me before, but most of them tended to sort of stop when I tried to shut them down. A lot of people thought of me as too intense, and that was off-putting, so they lost interest and just stopped trying. I was used to that. I''d come to accept that not everyone was willing to push as far or as hard as I was. It was why the Chicago Wards hadn''t ever really been friends.

    Blackbeard¡­actually seemed to get more interested the more intense I was, and I just wasn''t sure what I was supposed to do with that. Was I supposed to be flattered? Creeped out? I wasn''t about to leap into his arms, but running in the opposite direction didn''t seem like the right response, either.

    "Oh my god," Rika breathed, "he''s actually flirting with Senpai!"

    "He''s got guts," her brother agreed faintly, "I''ll give him that."

    "Has he actually moved on?" the petite pirate Servant from before drawled. "From how he''s been talking this whole time, I wouldn''t have believed it was even possible."

    "Even a dinghy can get where it wants to go, if you give it long enough to get there," the taller, more buxom blonde pirate Servant said.

    "No way!" Blackbeard said petulantly. "No matter what, I can''t give up on Euryale-chan! I just can''t set aside these lovely ladies either! I can''t choose between them, so I''ll just have to take them all!"

    I blinked. "Excuse me?"

    "No, you heard him right," said the blonde pirate. "He really is that dumb."

    "He''s the kind of guy who shoots for the harem route in a dating simulator," the petite one added, like I had any idea what any of that even meant. I mean, I could kind of get it from the context, but I''d never heard of that sort of thing before.

    "Wow," said Rika. "He really is a scumbag."

    Which naturally meant that Rika had.

    "I told you," Euryale drawled. "He''s exactly the sort of person I described."

    "I have¡­very mixed feelings right now," Emiya said tersely.

    "I don''t!" said Bradamante, scowling. "My heart belongs to Ruggiero and no one else! This pirate is just another¡­another no-good, dirty rotten, scoundrel!"

    Blackbeard gasped and clutched his chest as though he''d been dealt a mortal wound to his heart, and okay, this was starting to get out of hand. I might not know what to do with the flirting, but the antics? Those were familiar ground, and I could handle them more easily.

    "Captain Teach!" I said, perhaps a bit louder and more firmly than necessary.

    In an instant, he was leaning forward again, like he was hanging onto my every word. "Yes? Say the word and this pirate will sweep you off your feet and carry you to a grand adventure!"

    "By now, you''ve no doubt seen what''s become of this place, what we call a Singularity," I said, resisting the urge to grit my teeth. "If our goals align, then we can work together to solve it, so I have to ask: why are you here?"

    Blackbeard''s face fell, and then so did his head, and he leaned heavily on the railing, like the weight of everything was trying to pull him down. "Why, you ask," he said lowly. "Why am I here¡­? Yes, why indeed was Blackbeard himself brought to this endless sea? What does he chase? What does he desire?"

    "Oh boy," the blonde said, sighing. "Here we go."

    "I want," Blackbeard said gravely, "it all." Louder, he went on, "Everything there is to have! All the treasures of this world, all of its bounties!" He threw out one arm. "Sex!" He threw out the other. "Money!" And then, he clutched them both to his chest, like a dragon clutching its hoard. "Power! Women, treasure, status, glory! Everything you can possibly imagine!"

    "You demand the finer things in life!" Rika suddenly burst out.

    And Blackbeard¡­deflated, like the wind had been taken out of his sails.

    "Holy shit," said Ritsuka, "that''s Greed."

    That was what? Was everyone making pop culture references I didn''t recognize now, including the Servants?

    Blackbeard, looking lost, blinked. "You¡­you recognize that?"

    "I mean, duh!" Rika pointed at her face. "Japanese, see? That''s an incredibly popular anime! Why wouldn''t I recognize it?"

    "Oh fuck me," Emiya murmured. "They''re multiplying."

    "Tch! Fine, I admit it!" Blackbeard shouted. "Fuck yeah! I cribbed that shit straight outta FMA! How could I not? Who would have imagined that 300 years after I died, some clever bint from an island I never even heard of would capture so perfectly exactly the way I feel? I''m a pirate! Of course I stole all of that without a second thought!"

    "Well," said the young, redheaded teenager on the Revenge, "at least he admits it. There''s something to be said for knowing exactly who you are, right?"

    "Don''t give him too much credit," the petite pirate said scornfully. "A cretin is still a cretin, even if he knows exactly how lowly he is."

    Blackbeard spun around to face them and cried, "Just whose side are you on, anyway?"

    "Yours, because we kind of have to be," the blonde reminded him. "You''re the one holding our strings, after all."

    My heart jumped in my chest. I had to stop myself from asking if that meant what I thought it did.

    "Can I take that to mean, then," I began, "that you have no interest in returning this Singularity back to normal?"

    "Normal?" Blackbeard looked back over his shoulder at me and slowly turned around. "Who wants normal? Why would I want normal? Normal''s a world where I''m dead! Caput! Toast! Buzzard food! Normal''s a world without Euryale-chan in it!"

    My cheek twitched again. Was he really that big of a degenerate horndog that the absence of our snooty goddess was the biggest problem he had with proper history?

    "Wow," said Rika. "I know she said he was a stalker, but that''s just downright obsessive."

    "Are you satisfied?" asked Euryale. "It''s just like I told you, he''s not interested in being your ally, he just wants me. Are you going to kill him now?"

    The Servants on the Revenge all tensed, tightening their grips on their weapons, and that made ours tense up, too, as the tension in the air thickened like soup. Blackbeard just clicked his tongue and shook his head, hands on his hips.

    "Well," he said, "I guess that this here is what you''d call a critical breakdown in negotiations, innit?" His eyes sharpened, dagger-like. "Anne, Mary, Alex, Hektor ¡ª these folk have a couple of things I want. Do me a solid and take the you-know-what from the old hag and grab Euryale-chan, too."

    The older man in the background, who had been silent so far, sighed. "Well, if that''s an official order, I guess it can''t be helped."

    "This guy doesn''t give too many of those," the teenager agreed.

    "Heh." Emiya smirked, and his twin swords appeared in his hands. "Guess it''s coming down to a fight after all."

    Mash brandished her shield. "Master."

    "¡­Keeping them from taking Euryale is the most important thing," said Ritsuka.

    "Understood!"

    "Then if Lady Mash is on the defense," said Bradamante, "that means I can go on the offense!"

    Arash, I began, overwatch for now. If I''m right, Blackbeard has the Grail.

    I''ll keep an eye out for an opening, Arash promised.

    And then the blonde pirate pulled out a flintlock rifle, took aim, and pulled the trigger, so swiftly that it almost seemed to happen all at once.

    Mash threw herself forward, and the shot pinged off of her shield and went wide as I retreated back to the safety of the others. It seemed to be the signal for hostilities to start, because an instant later, Blackbeard''s other three crewmates leapt off of his ship and over to ours as Bradamante and Emiya charged to meet them.

    The petite Servant rushed over with a scimitar almost as big as she was and forced Emiya into melee ¡ª her and the blonde had to be Anne and Mary, although which was which, I had no idea ¡ª and the teenaged redhead collided with Bradamante, who pushed him back onto the Revenge. The last, the older man, went directly for Euryale and found himself stymied first by Mash, and then by Asterios, who had almost entirely recovered from the wound we''d dealt him the other day.

    Blackbeard stayed back, cheering and barking silly orders, but there was no telling if or when he might throw himself into the fray.

    I took a moment as the fights started to peer closely at each of our opponents, trying to discern a weakness or some hint about the Heroic Spirit each embodied, to not much avail. The older man was a Lancer, like that wasn''t obvious, and he was the guy dressed in armor dated to ancient Greece. He didn''t really look very Greek, though, and although he was somewhat pale, his features were somewhat more Middle Eastern than ¡ª

    Wait. A spear-wielding hero from antiquity among a group where one of them was named Hektor. Of course, that was Hektor of Troy, the guy who got into a grudge match with Achilles.

    So the redhead ¡ª Alex, by process of elimination ¡ª who was wielding a Greek broadsword¡­ I would have been embarrassed if it took more clues than that. The clothing was a little weird, but a Greek hero named Alex who was famous enough that his legend had started as a teenager? There was no way that wasn''t Alexander the Great. A Rider, so his Noble Phantasm was probably tied to his horse in some way.

    The other two, I still didn''t know. Anne and Mary, those didn''t ring any bells, not for famous pirates, anyway. If I''d come across them in any of my research, they''d been minor enough to escape my attention.

    It didn''t matter. Alexander the Great and Hektor of Troy were big enough names on their own. Not the biggest ever, but big, and while Bradamante was holding her own against Alex just fine and Hektor had yet to find a way around the combination of Mash''s defense and Asterios'' offense, neither of them had pulled out their Noble Phantasms yet.

    They might not have to. I tried to keep track of the multiple fights going on at once, but the battlefield was so small and tightly constrained that it was hard to focus on any of them aside from the one right in front of me. I didn''t need to know the fine details, however ¡ª

    "Hey!" Drake shouted as a chunk of railing was torn out by a stray blow. "Watch what you''re doing! That''s my ship you''re ripping apart, you wankers!"

    ¡ª to know that we were at a fairly big disadvantage. After all, the Golden Hind was made of ordinary wood. Although it might one day become a Noble Phantasm, today, it was just a regular English galleon, and Servant fights were none too gentle on just such a thing.

    "Don''t listen to the old hag!" Blackbeard cackled. "Rip that gaudy thing to shreds! As long as the old hag and Euryale-chan make it out, that hunk of junk can be lost at sea!"

    "FUCK YOU!" Drake howled at him.

    "Asterios, Mash, Emiya!" I called to them. "Push them back to the Revenge!"

    "I''m too young to go down with this ship!" Rika added.

    Another shot pinged off of Mash''s shield. "U-understood!"

    Asterios rumbled something, but whatever it was, it sounded like a growl to me. He swiped at Hektor with a blow hard and heavy enough to shatter concrete, but Hektor had the good sense ¡ª unfortunately for us ¡ª not to let himself get hit by the Minotaur that could turn him to paste with one, good hit. The reach of Asterios'' halberds forced him to leap back and onto the Revenge to avoid getting gutted, and he didn''t dare to risk coming back over just yet.

    Emiya, having nowhere near that much raw physical power, proved that he had no qualms using underhanded tricks on what looked like a young girl, and he did a clever little feint with his swords that left her wide open to a kick that would probably have shattered my ribs. She, too, retreated to avoid the follow up swipe that would have taken her head off of her shoulders.

    Bradamante, perhaps sensing that the lines had been reset, disengaged from her own fight and returned to the Golden Hind. She looked excited, but wasn''t even breathing hard. She probably thought that she''d just barely started to get warmed up, and the broad grin on her opponent''s face said he thought much the same.

    "Hm," Blackbeard said, scowling as he looked at us. "These guys aren''t just NPCs we can roll over, they''re full blown main characters. We aren''t gonna win this one by half-assing it, are we?"

    "You say that like it means something," said Emiya, smirking. "By my count, the only one of your lackeys with a Noble Phantasm that has any hope of sinking this ship is Hektor. I''d like to see him try."

    "No, no," said Rika, "what are you doing, Emiya? We don''t want them to sink us!"

    But I saw his plan an instant later when I remembered ¡ª one of the Noble Phantasms Emiya could replicate was called Rho Aias. A seven-layered shield with a hibiscus pattern, named after a hero whose seven-layered shield was said to have blocked Hektor''s spear. I didn''t recall if he''d ever explained, but the number of coincidences was too much to pretend that they weren''t one and the same.

    "He''s the only one?" Blackbeard sneered. "Oi, oi, Hektor, just for that, you get to be the one to go and fish the old hag out of the sea!"

    The air suddenly grew thick with power, and ghostly cannons shimmered into existence on the deck of the Revenge as Blackbeard surged with enough magical energy that he was actually glowing.

    "M-magical energy response!" Mash reported. "Master! That amount of power, it has to be¡­!"

    The Holy Grail. So he really did have it.

    An arrow shot through the air, so fast that I didn''t even notice it until Blackbeard had already deflected it with the high, tortured ring of his cutlass'' steel. The blade even kept ringing for several extra seconds, and with that much power behind it, it was incredible he''d even managed to deflect that arrow in the first place.

    "Anne!"

    The blonde ¡ª Anne, which made the smaller girl Mary ¡ª took such swift aim that I didn''t even have time to call out a warning before she fired a shot towards Arash. Wood exploded above us, raining splinters down on the shouting crew, and Arash landed in a crouch next to me with a thump. A line of red blood trickled down his cheek, a testament to how close she''d come to doing serious damage.

    Blackbeard grinned. "Now that all of the enemies are in one place ¡ª"

    The power surged, and the phantasmal cannons became more solid, transforming into forty massive black things that would have given modern warships pause with how big their cannonballs had to be. As one, they swiveled and pointed in our direction, their intent clear.

    Shit. We did not want to be in the way of that.

    "Mash!" Ritsuka ordered.

    "Captain Drake!" I shouted. "Get us out of here!"

    "Use your Noble Phantasm!"

    "Yes, Master!"

    As Mash rushed over to the side of the ship, Drake turned to her crew and barked, "Full sail!"

    The crew scrambled to follow her order, and a moment later, the sails unfurled above and the ship lurched into motion right as Mash planted her shield and cried, "LORD CHALDEAS!"

    "Queen Anne''s Revenge!"

    The massive barrels belched smoke and flame more terrifying than any of the dragons we had faced in Orl¨¦ans, save Fafnir himself. Lord Chaldeas'' protective rampart formed just in time to intercept the barrage of cannon fire from the Revenge, and the thud of each shot slamming home was almost as deafening as the thunderous BOOM of the cannons. One after another, they landed, smashing against the translucent blue wall, and each of them was the size of a beach ball and perfectly capable of reducing all of us to a smear. The ship shuddered around us and the whole world seemed to shake, but none of them made it through. Lord Chaldeas held.

    I wasn''t sure how many shots actually impacted, but by the time the barrage was over and Mash breathed a sigh of relief, the Golden Hind had picked up enough speed to put some distance between us and the Revenge. Maybe fifty feet and increasing fast. A younger me might have believed that was the end of it.

    But I was not surprised when the Revenge went full sail, too, and started rapidly making up the gap we''d created. Worse, I knew that the Holy Grail meant that Blackbeard wouldn''t have to stop at any point to rest and regain some of his energy. The fight against Altera had proven just how much of a difference an inexhaustible energy source made for a Servant''s performance.

    He was going to catch up, it was just a matter of time, and when he did, what was to stop him from just gunning us down with back to back uses of his Noble Phantasm? Worse, what if he could just extend the barrage by pumping more energy into it until there was nothing left of us but splinters?

    We needed to get away, retreat and find a better method of engaging him. In a battle between ships, his was always going to win, just by nature of it being a Noble Phantasm.

    "Uh, guys?" Rika said, watching them as they chased us. "Can this thing go any faster? It''s, uh, kind of important!"

    Drake looked back over her shoulder and cursed. "Shit! That fucker don''t know when to quit, does he? No, we can''t go any fucking faster! We''re sailing against the storm! Tryna avoid that vortex, remember?"

    An idea came to me just then. Not the greatest idea ever, but it was daring and maybe a little desperate, and while those didn''t always turn out the greatest for me on a personal level, they tended to work at doing what I actually needed them to accomplish.

    "What if we didn''t?"

    Drake looked back again, goggling at me. "What?"

    "If we''re fighting the storm because we''re trying to avoid the vortex, then what if we didn''t?" I repeated. "Captain Drake, if we were to sail into the storm, skirt around the edges of the maelstrom, would the current give us enough speed to escape?"

    I could see the wheels turning in her head as she ran that idea over, her brow furrowing in thought.

    "It¡­it might," she hedged.

    "W-wait, I thought we were trying to avoid the maelstrom for a good reason!" Rika interjected. "Because, you know, it''s kind of dangerous? Something about us getting swept overboard?"

    "I still don''t know how to swim," Mash muttered.

    It wasn''t that none of those things was a concern now, and more that ¡ª

    "At sea, Blackbeard has the advantage," I reasoned. "If we''re right and that was the Grail Mash sensed earlier, then he can use his ship as long as he wants and just keep firing at us until he wears us down. What we need to do is force the fight into a place where we have the advantage ¡ª on an island, where his ship doesn''t matter as much."

    "He would still be able to manifest the cannons to fire at us," Emiya pointed out.

    I gestured to the battle scars the ship had suffered during our brief scuffle, the gouges carved into the planks, the chunks torn out of the railing that was supposed to protect us from slipping overboard, the bullet holes where Anne''s shots ricocheted into the wood. Just from those scant few moments, the ship had taken that much damage.

    "But we wouldn''t have to worry about the Golden Hind disintegrating beneath our feet."

    Emiya acknowledged this with a nod.

    "And it would be easier to bring in other Servants to help," Ritsuka added helpfully. "Like A¨ªfe, or Siegfried. We''d have more space to fight."

    Exactly.

    "We won''t be able to do that if he catches up and sinks us before we can lure him to land."

    "Tch." Drake snarled. "Fine! Bombe, batten down the damn hatches, and make sure the lines are secure!" She spun the wheel. "Looks like Francis Drake and her crew are in for another wild ride!"

    "Aye, Cap''n!"

    The ship lurched again as the wind caught the sails, and the Golden Hind turned away from the middle line of softer gray clouds that straddled the outer edges of the storm and towards the dark, ominous clouds that sat at its center. The mast creaked under the strain of the sails suddenly being so much fuller, and the ropes pulled taut, groaning.

    But the sudden increase in speed put more distance between us and the Revenge. It wasn''t enough to lose them completely, not right away, but they weren''t gaining quite as fast as they had been before. Instead, it was more like the distance was remaining mostly the same, with us slowly slipping away. The Revenge was retreating towards the horizon one little bit at a time.

    "Holy crap," Rika said, "it''s working! Ah!"

    She stumbled as a particularly strong wave rocked the ship and threw her arms out wildly as she teetered. Emiya caught her before she could fall flat on her face, steadying her.

    "Thanks."

    "No problem, Master."

    "Well, I''ll be damned," said Drake. "All right, boys, here we go! It looks like those fuckers and their half-assed ship can''t keep up when the wind''s on our side!"

    The crew gave a half-hearted cheer, too busy making sure everything stayed stable enough for us to survive the storm ahead.

    The seas started to get rougher as we left behind the calmer waters and made for the outer edges of the maelstrom. The waves were choppier, the wind was stronger, and the Golden Hind rocked and bucked as it plowed through. The sky grew steadily darker, and at some point, the clouds began dropping a torrent upon our heads. The deck became slick and wet, and it wasn''t long at all before our clothes clung to our bodies.

    "This was a great idea!" Rika said sarcastically, hugging herself to ward off the cold, but she wouldn''t have been wrong if she had been serious. Blackbeard hadn''t given up yet, but the Revenge trailed behind us, so far behind that it was hard to make out the maroon of the sails as the light got dimmer and dimmer the closer we got to the maelstrom.

    Thunder rumbled up above. A crack of lightning split the sky off in the distance, as though the heavens themselves were reaching down into the center of the whirlpool.

    "Captain Drake?"

    "Aye!" Drake replied. "We''ll be skirting it real close to ¡ª shit!"

    A particularly large wave rose up out of nowhere and splashed against the Hind, spraying all of us with saltwater, and the ship threatened to teeter over and capsize under the force of it, but managed to stay upright through some miracle.

    "Holy fuck," Rika gasped. "That''s¡­!"

    But the reason for the freak wave became quickly apparent, because sailing on the other side of it, running almost perpendicular to us, was another ship, one we''d never seen before. It was obvious whoever was aboard it was expecting us just as much as we were expecting them, because it suddenly swerved ¡ª impossibly adroit for any ordinary ship ¡ª until it was running almost parallel instead, separated from us by about three hundred feet.

    In the poor lighting, at that distance, it was nearly impossible to make out any details, save for the general color of the wood and the paint. The only way to really distinguish it from the Revenge, aside from the fact that the Revenge was still trailing behind us, was the fact that the sails weren''t maroon.

    "Servant detected!" Mash reported. She gasped. "Senpai, look! Behind that ship, it''s ¡ª"

    Davy Jones. Or, at least, the Servant that Rika insisted was Davy Jones, because his ship was giving chase to the newcomer, and rapidly closing the gap. If he decided to ram, he''d probably go right through and hit us, because there were no signs he planned on slowing down.

    "Oh, come on!" Drake groaned. "That fucker''s here, too? Who else is gonna show up here, the fucking Pope?"

    "Captain Drake ¡ª"

    "Yeah!" she hollered back at me, and then she turned the wheel further, putting us on an even steeper path through the maelstrom. "Shit! Hold onto your skivvies, everyone, because we''re gonna fly past this thing by a razor''s edge!"

    But the captain of the other ship had obviously had a similar idea, because like we were watching a mirror, he swerved the opposite direction, taking him on a path further out of the storm, and the distance between our ships grew slowly larger. So, too, did the waves, washing over the ship in great, heaving splashes that hit hard enough that I wouldn''t have been surprised if they were peeling away the paint.

    "Grab hold of something and don''t let go!" Drake ordered us all. "We''re about to hit that bigass vortex, and I don''t want any of you falling off on my conscience!"

    "Then I guess I can''t afford to wait any longer."

    Mash gasped. "Servant ¡ª"

    But she was too slow. Hektor had already dropped down into the middle of our group, and Mash barely had the chance to raise her shield against the blow he aimed in Ritsuka''s direction. His spear smacked off of the surface with a CLANG, but Mash hadn''t been ready, so the force of it pushed her back into her Masters. Ritsuka and Rika fell over in a tangle of limbs with a shout of alarm.

    Before I had even finished turning around, Emiya was skidding backwards, one sword in hand and the other flying off into the storm. The surprise had left him off balance, unable to plant himself and absorb the blow.

    Arash and Bradamante, both further away, turned just a fraction of a second too slow. They were set just a little bit apart from the rest of the group, better prepared to fight an enemy coming at us head on, not one who just so suddenly appeared in our midst.

    Hektor''s eyes met mine. He offered me an apologetic smile.

    "Sorry about this, milady."

    I had a bare moment for the dots to connect, and a feeling sort of like grudging respect that I didn''t have time to examine too closely ¡ª his was a courtesy not many gave before screwing someone over, me least of all. Later on, looking back, I wasn''t sure if that made it better or worse.

    And then something hit me, hard and fast, right in the ribs. It flung me back, far back, and something else slammed into my kidneys like a freight train ¡ª the railing, I realized, but only after my body rolled over it and I was watching it ¡ª and the boat it was affixed to ¡ª fall away.

    Oh, I thought faintly, he knocked me overboard.

    "Master!" someone shouted.

    But before I could recognize the voice, the water rose up to greet me, and my world became cold and dark.

 Chapter XCV: Prince of Pirates

    Chapter XCV: Prince of Pirates

    The water rushed in around me, pushing down, and I spun beneath the force of it, churned about by the waves and the currents until I couldn''t tell up from down. The pittance of air in my lungs burned, trying to escape out into the sea, and I held it in as best I could, because even in that moment of confusion and shock, I knew I would die if I let it go.

    The world whirled about me. The dark sky above, the dark depths below, they melded together until I couldn''t tell which was which. Feuding tidal forces pulled me up, down, left, right, all simultaneously, like they each wanted a piece and would settle for the largest chunk of me they could get. One tried to drag my left leg down, another my right foot up, yet another tried to yank my left arm off into the distance, and the only thing I had any real control over was my right arm.

    Something pushed on my back, right in the middle, and my body shot up as though I was being lifted by a giant hand. My face broke the surface, bathing me in chilly, salty air, and ¡ª

    I gulped down a desperate gasp, flailing as I shot up towards the blue sky. My hands found purchase not in churning water, but on soft sand, as my chest heaved in air as though I''d been drowning.

    Where ¡ª

    "Hey."

    A pair of hands settled on my shoulders as Arash kneeled down in front of me. A comforting smile curled his lips. "Hey, it''s okay. We''re safe."

    It only took a moment for me to put the pieces together, but still far longer than it should have.

    "You rescued me."

    "Well, I couldn''t just let you drown," he teased me. "Kinda hard to survive as a Servant without a Master, you know? And¡­I did promise you, remember?"

    It took me an extra second to remember ¡ª right. Back in Rome. My faithful Servant, always by my side, until the day his body gave out. I should have expected that he''d be the first person to dive in after me. Arash was just that sort of person.

    "What happened?"

    "Hektor flung you off the ship ¡ª you remember that part, right?" he asked.

    I nodded. One hand came up to touch my ribs, which were a bit tender, but not broken. Considering how easy it would have been for him to snap my spine like a twig, I wasn''t sure if I was supposed to count it as a kindness or not that he''d only used his spear to catapult me across the ship instead of breaking me in two. On the one hand, I was alive and I wasn''t hemorrhaging internally, so I didn''t have to worry about drowning in my own blood.

    On the other hand, I had almost drowned in the ocean instead, so while he''d spared me a more gruesome fate now, at the time, he was trying to drown me either way. The method he used didn''t matter so much.

    My back, however, felt like one, gigantic bruise, like there was an enormous strip of abused flesh that went from about mid-shoulder down to the small of my back, radiating pain. I''d hit the railing and rolled over it, ass over teakettle, and that, I was definitely still feeling.

    A quick activation of my magic circuits and a mumbled "First Aid!" took care of that, though, and sweet relief washed over me. When I rolled my shoulders, there was a satisfying crackle, but no pain.

    "I remember someone screaming for me, then hitting the water," I said. "Nothing after that."

    Arash nodded. "Good. That means you didn''t hit your head on the way down, so that''s one thing we don''t have to worry about."

    Yeah, a concussion would have made this whole situation a lot more problematic. It was a minor miracle I''d plunged straight into the water, considering the waves, and hadn''t been dragged under the ship by the current.

    "As for what happened with Hektor, I can''t be sure," he went on. He let go of my shoulders and sat back. "I dove in after you, and I was too focused on making sure I got you out of there alive to pay much attention to what was still happening on the Golden Hind. My guess? He retreated as soon as he thought you were gone."

    Because that was his goal. He wasn''t there to fight the Servants, he was there to make sure his side won, and the easiest and quickest way of accomplishing that was by killing one of the Masters ¡ª and by taking charge of the conversation the way I had, I''d shown him that I was the most experienced of the three of us. The leader.

    A sigh hissed out of my nostrils. It couldn''t be helped. Cowering and forcing the twins to try and take the role was¡­ Well. Among other things, I wasn''t that kind of person.

    "He''s treating this like an actual Grail War," I said aloud. "He went after the enemy Masters and made sure to target the one who looked most like she knew what she was doing."

    "It looks that way," Arash agreed.

    It¡­fit, from what I remembered of the Hektor in The Iliad. It wasn''t to say that he was a dishonorable kind of guy, but that he was too much of a tactician to avoid crippling the enemy when he saw an opening. In a regular Grail War, that sort of thinking was even the kind I would have approved of, as long as I wasn''t on the other side of it.

    "And after that?"

    Arash sighed. "Well, the waves were a little too chaotic, so we got dragged away from the Golden Hind. I managed to find an island to camp out on and swam the way here. It''s been¡­I want to say about half a day since then. You slept through the night, but you were breathing fine, so I didn''t try to wake you."

    "So you have no idea where ¡ª"

    My head whipped around towards the nearby cliff face, just in time for another person to round the turn, a bundle of sticks and twigs carried in his arms. When he realized he''d been spotted, he stopped and froze, blinking back at me with wide eyes.

    Arash sighed again. "Okay, I might have had a little help, too."

    The stranger came closer, still clutching his bundle of wood ¡ª presumably for making a fire ¡ª and as he approached, he addressed Arash instead of me, "She doing okay, then?"

    "Yeah," Arash answered. "Startled herself waking up, but there''s no concussion and she remembers everything that happened, so it looks like we worried over nothing."

    The stranger smiled, an honest, open smile that¡­actually made him look kind of cute. "Well, that''s good! Everything worked out, then!"

    I examined him a little closer, taking in the pirate''s clothes, the black velvet jacket, the even darker black hair that he wore long, tied back at the nape of his neck. He had the bronzed complexion of someone who spent a lot of time in the sun ¡ª which made sense for a pirate, and Blackbeard had been similar ¡ª and he couldn''t have been much older than me. Maybe mid to late twenties.

    He was also decked out in enough jewelry to buy his own ship. Rings on nearly every finger, bangles around his wrists, chains accenting everything from the sash around his waist to the pockets of his coat. If he sold just half of it, he''d probably bankrupt a small country.

    "Who are you?"

    He blinked at me again. "Oh, where are my manners? Sorry about that! The name''s Sam, Sam Bellamy. Nice to meet you!"

    "The¡­pleasure''s mine, I guess."

    Sam Bellamy¡­ That was another pirate name. "Black Sam" Bellamy, not because he was some terrible rogue who put fear in the hearts of men and gods alike, but because he wore his black hair free instead of using a powdered wig as was fashionable. Kind of like Blackbeard in that sense, because Teach''s name came entirely from the color of his beard instead of something more nefarious.

    Funnily enough, this one had nothing to do with Chaldea and everything to do with Dad. I remembered, vaguely, the story he''d told me when I was younger, about how rich we would''ve been if he''d been on the team that found Bellamy''s treasure back in ''84. If he''d gone diving just a few miles north, why, the Heberts might''ve been one of those fancy families living in a big house in the nice part of town.

    Later on, it became recriminations about how he could''ve used that money to repair the ferry.

    "Sam here happened to be in the area when you went overboard," Arash explained. "He fished us out of the water and gave us a lift to this island."

    Bellamy smiled sheepishly. "I was the, uh, other ship you guys nearly ran into. That jerk was chasing me, so I tried to flee into the storm to get away from him, and, well, you know the rest. It was a good thing, though! It meant I was nearby, so when I saw Arash swimming around without any idea where to go, I could lend you guys a hand. It was the least I could do."

    That was¡­certainly convenient. I wasn''t sure what Arash would have done if he''d had to carry me to the nearest island all on his own when the nearest island was, as far as we knew, still two days away ¡ª by the Golden Hind, at least. A Noble Phantasm like Bellamy''s ship was no doubt faster, just by virtue of being able to propel itself without wind.

    "I guess I owe you my thanks." If not my life.

    Bellamy blinked again and laughed it off. "Oh, don''t worry about it! Rescuing damsels in distress isn''t something pirates get to do all that often, you know? Definitely not something I got to do when I was alive. It''s actually a really cool experience!"

    This guy was very friendly, wasn''t he? Maybe a bit of a ditz, too. It was strange, because pirates were supposed to be complete scoundrels, but this guy was breaking the mold in every way imaginable, with the exception of his looks.

    I made a show of looking around. "So where are we, exactly?"

    "That¡­I can''t answer so well," Bellamy said, shoulders slumping. "Sorry, but I haven''t actually been here all that long, so I''m not as familiar with the layout of this place as some other Servants might be. That ghost guy has been chasing me around so much that I can''t do much exploring."

    He meant the Servant that Rika was so convinced was Davy Jones. The mystery of what that guy wanted and why he was here was going to have to remain unsolved for now, it looked like, because aside from eliminating the competition, I couldn''t imagine what he might have wanted from another stray Servant enough to chase him down so doggedly.

    "The one thing I can tell you for sure," he went on, "is that we''re west of that big maelstrom. There''s at least one more island down south of here, but other than that, I''ve been running from that jerk, so I haven''t had the chance to go looking for anything else."

    I clicked my tongue.

    "It matches what we already knew," Arash said. "This island, another island to the south, and beyond that, an archipelago. That''s what''s on the maps, at least."

    "Da Vinci would have sent us an update if anything had changed," I reasoned. I hid a glance at Bellamy behind my hair. Yeah, I guess for now, we could extend him a little bit of trust. He had rescued us from the ocean, after all.

    Arash nodded. "Yeah, for sure."

    Bellamy perked up. "Da Vinci? As in, Leonardo da Vinci? You''re working with him?"

    I picked at my clothes, pinching a bit of the fabric between my fingers. "She made the mystic code I''m wearing."

    "Whoa¡­" Then, he blinked again. "Wait, she?"

    This was going to be a thing every time we talked about her, wasn''t it? Maybe I should look into having a brochure made or something, save me some time and effort.

    Nonetheless, I explained Da Vinci as best I could, given what she''d told me, which wasn''t very well, because she hadn''t told any of us much. Most of her explanation tended to boil down to her choosing to present as a woman because of that line about how everyone would be a pretty girl if they had the chance.

    Again, until they had to deal with the plumbing.

    Bellamy listened raptly, hanging off of every meager word like I was telling him the secrets of the universe. I''d called him friendly before, but maybe a better word was earnest. It was like he didn''t have a single ounce of deception in him, because he was honest and straightforward almost to a fault.

    Eventually, I wound up explaining Chaldea and our reason for being in this Singularity, too. I made sure to gauge his reactions, to watch for subtle twitches and microexpressions that might give him away, so that I could figure out which side he would come down on, if given the chance. When I told him about the Grail, he was naturally disappointed.

    "Aw, really?" He sighed dramatically. "Crud. And I was really looking forward to finding that thing!"

    "You wanted the Grail?" I asked the obvious.

    He nodded. "It''s probably why I was summoned here. I''ve come across a few of these, uh, brainless guys over the past few days, when that guy wasn''t chasing me, I mean. Lights are on, but nobody''s home, you know? They were looking for it, too. Was the only thing they talked about. Like the words ''Holy Grail'' were the only ones they knew. Really freaky stuff."

    These¡­manifested concepts we''d run into, that was what he was talking about. The idea of treasure-seeking pirates given physical form. So it wasn''t just us that had run afoul of them, then. If they were after the Grail, the same as Bellamy, then it was likely they had a kind of sixth sense for it, and they were drawn to both Drake''s and Blackbeard''s.

    Hopefully, they''d pay more attention to Blackbeard. The more distracted he was, the better it would be for us.

    "But I guess if it''s messing with history and throwing things out of whack, I''d be way too selfish to keep chasing after it, huh?" He came over to us and dropped down with another sigh, and then he let his bundle of wood spill out onto the sand unceremoniously. "Damn, that sucks. It''s not every day you have the chance to get your wish granted, you know."

    I could sympathize with that much, at least.

    "What would you have wished for, if you don''t mind me prying?" asked Arash.

    "Dunno! I just wanted to have it!" Bellamy grinned brightly, and as he thought about it, tapped his chin. "Hm, what would I have wished for? Probably a chance to keep living my adventure! Man, do you have any idea how much it sucks to have died so early on in my career? I was only a pirate for a single year! I had my whole life ahead of me, I just got a great haul, and then ¡ª"

    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    He smashed his fist into his palm with a meaty smack.

    "¡ª just like that, it was all over! Me and my crew, smashed against the rocks! Or, well, the beach, technically, since that storm drove us into the sand, but the sentiment''s the same!"

    "And you''re willing to give that up?" I asked. "The chance to fix it?"

    He blinked at me, bemused. "I mean, yeah? It''s no use trying to get a wish like that granted if the whole world''s screwed up in the process. Kind of defeats the point, you know? There''s no reason to get a second chance if there''s no one else there to enjoy it with. It stings, but it''s just kind of silly getting too sad about losing something that I never had in the first place."

    I stared at him, perhaps longer than I really should have. Was this guy even a pirate? Drake was one thing, because her sense of fair play ¡ª the code by which even she lived ¡ª had compelled her to hand over her Grail to even the scales. This guy? What pirate willingly gave up a shot at the greatest treasure he could ever ask for?

    This one, apparently. The stories I remembered hearing painted him in a fairly favorable light, compared to the likes of Blackbeard, but Blackbeard wasn''t exactly a favorable comparison to begin with.

    Beep-beep!

    My communicator interrupted anything else we might have said, and when I fiddled with it to turn it on, Marie''s relieved face appeared, hovering over my wrist.

    "Taylor!"

    "Thank goodness you''re okay!" Romani''s voice said in the background.

    "When your vitals started to drop, I¡­" Marie began, and then she caught herself and affixed a paper thin confidence on her face. "I-I mean, I knew you would be okay, o-of course! Something like that is nowhere near enough k-kill you!"

    "Easy for you to say!" Romani called. "I was running around like my pants were on fire the instant she went overboard! That''s harder to survive than people think, you know, especially in the middle of a turbulent sea like that!"

    "We had some help."

    I turned my wrist around so that the camera could capture Bellamy''s face, and he blinked back at them, nonplussed. "Ah, hello? Sam Bellamy, here. Nice to meet you?"

    "The¡­pleasure''s ours?" Romani replied, equally as uncertain. "Um¡­ I¡­guess you can call me Romani, or Doctor Roman, like the twins¡­ Well, like Ritsuka does, anyway. And the lady in front here is Director Animusphere, so¡­"

    The camera came back my way.

    "According to Arash, Captain Bellamy rescued us out of the sea and brought us to this island. We have him to thank for my continued well-being."

    Bellamy ducked his head.

    "I mean, it was the decent thing to do," he said bashfully. "Wouldn''t anyone?"

    Not as many as he might have liked to think, but maybe more than I was willing to give credit. Brockton Bay''s gallery of misfits and malcontents probably wasn''t the greatest of examples to look towards for human decency.

    "If they''re right, then I was out for the better part of half a day," I said, "so I''m sure I missed some things. What happened with the twins and the Golden Hind?"

    Marie frowned at me for a moment, but let it drop. No doubt, even though the sensors would have detected me as being unconscious for half a day, for her and the rest of Chaldea, that would have passed in an hour or two. It would have seemed like a much smaller amount of time.

    She turned to her second in command. "Romani?"

    When she left the frame, Romani took her place, smiling at me slightly. He looked much better rested than he had the last time I saw him.

    "Well, they managed to escape Blackbeard, you''ll be happy to hear. They lost him in the storm, and the Queen Anne''s Revenge has left our sensor range," he said. "Geez, that guy. Someone like him has the Grail? What a troublesome situation. Couldn''t it have been a weaker, lesser known pirate that we could have just knocked down without any effort?"

    Preaching to the choir, Romani. It would have been much more convenient if, say, someone like Bellamy had the Grail instead. I wasn''t sure he wouldn''t have handed it over without a second thought if we just asked politely.

    "Anyway," Romani went on, "Hektor retreated after you fell overboard, so there weren''t any casualties, and everyone managed to make it out of that uninjured. Even the ship didn''t take any major damage, although Captain Drake didn''t seem all that happy about the minor damage it did take. Hopefully, that will get corrected when this Singularity is returned to normal. I don''t want to imagine the headache of Chaldea getting a repair bill five hundred years overdue."

    Thank goodness. We''d managed to get through that mess without anyone getting hurt ¡ª aside from me, and my aches and pains had already been taken care of ¡ª and no one was dead. All things considered, it might not have been a win, but it was definitely better than the alternative.

    "I see. That''s good."

    "The twins will be relieved to hear you''re up and at ''em, by the way," said Romani. "I told them your vitals were well into the green, but no amount of reassurances was enough to make them stop worrying. I had to remind them that Command Spells only work on Servants, so they couldn''t just teleport to your side like that."

    My cheek twitched, but I didn''t let the smile bloom on my face. "I''ll be sure to contact them as soon as we''re done here. Where are they now?"

    He looked aside and tapped on the keyboard to bring up the data. A moment later, he said, "The current carried them a lot farther out than, um, Bellamy?"

    "That''s me!" Bellamy said brightly. "My Whydah Gally won''t let a little storm send us anywhere but where we want to be! A second time, I mean. The first time doesn''t count, since it wasn''t a Noble Phantasm yet."

    I wondered if he realized that admitting that didn''t exactly inspire confidence.

    "Right." Romani nodded. "So the, uh, the Whydah Gally went a completely different direction. The twins and the Golden Hind turned your way as soon as we gave them your location, but by your measure, they''re still¡­about half a day out? Geez, they got thrown way off course, didn''t they?"

    So it seemed. That maelstrom turned out to be much more powerful than we''d given it credit for, didn''t it? After all, Drake had originally said it would take an extra two days to get around it and get to ¡ª presumably ¡ª this island, and yet even having thrown her off course, it had shaved at least half a day off the journey.

    We were going to have to be incredibly careful about navigating around it, if we had to head that direction again. It might slingshot us ahead of where we expected to be, but it could also send us in the complete opposite direction.

    "There''s one other thing."

    My brow furrowed. "One other thing?"

    "Well, I didn''t mention it before, because Bradamante isn''t showing any signs of major strain ¡ª"

    "Bradamante?" I interrupted. "She''s here, too?"

    "She was right behind me when I dove off of the ship," Arash informed me. "She helped me keep you afloat while we were swimming against those waves."

    Huh. She had, had she? I''d never thought that she hated me, necessarily, but she didn''t seem like she liked me all that much either. That flowery, idealistic, Romantic hero that she was just didn''t line up particularly well with someone like me, who had seen all the uglier sides of mankind and come out the other side more cynical for it.

    "She''s active, but not so active that I thought it was something to worry about," Romani went on. "That''s why, um, I didn''t mention earlier that there''s another Servant there with her."

    I straightened, alarmed. "Another Servant?"

    Were we going to find more of them on every island we visited now? More importantly, who was it going to be? Hornigold? Redbeard? Bellamy aside, my patience for more pirates was really starting to wear thin, and I didn''t want to have to go and fight another one without any idea who they were and what they were doing here.

    "Yes," Romani answered. "Like I said, Bradamante doesn''t seem to be fighting this other Servant, although she is fighting ¡ª there are some readings that match the wyverns from the Orl¨¦ans Singularity, and they''re all over the island."

    I resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose. "Wyverns?"

    "The island is swarming with them," he confirmed. "It''s like this place is a nest for them or something, that''s how many are hiding out here."

    Because that was what I needed on top of everything else: another army of wyverns was on this island with me and probably very disinterested in sharing it. A quick glance at Arash showed no concern for this news ¡ª without Fafnir or Jeanne Alter around to complicate things, he could probably handle them all on his own without much trouble. Small mercies.

    Of course, that was presuming there wasn''t a Jeanne Alter or Fafnir around. It would be just my luck that one or the other was here, too.

    "And this mystery Servant?"

    "Unknown," Romani said. "The Saint Graph isn''t registered with Chaldea, so the sensors don''t recognize it, although it registers similarities to Emiya and Arash, so it''s probably an Archer, with, um, some kind of¡­familiar of some kind hanging around it? A small echo, sort of like the way we read your bugs back here."

    "Oh," said Bellamy wearily, "them."

    I turned to him. "Them? You know who it is?"

    "A comedy act on four legs," he answered, and then frowned. "Or¡­would it be six legs? I''m not sure how he counts, since he''s technically a bear¡­"

    This kept getting stranger and stranger.

    "A bear?"

    "A tiny one." Bellamy held his hand out about a foot and a half off of the ground. "Really small. I think he''s actually in the body of a children''s stuffed toy, for some reason. Kind of undignified, really, but the way he acts, maybe he deserves it."

    And because it wasn''t already strange enough¡­

    "This stuffed animal guy have a name?"

    Bellamy shrugged helplessly. "The Servant carrying him around keeps calling him things like ''Darling'' and ''Beloved.'' He, uh¡­" Bellamy coughed. "He keeps trying to get away from her. Can''t say I''ve ever been in that kind of relationship myself, but it looks kind of abusive to me, you know?"

    Great. So we had a Servant with ¡ª at a guess ¡ª either some kind of split Saint Graph or some subordinate spirit attached to hers in a toxic relationship with a stuffed bear. Some way or another, they were near Bradamante, and they were fighting, but not each other, because there were wyverns on this island and that was probably what they were dealing with.

    "The weirdest situations imaginable" should have been in Chaldea''s literature when I went through orientation.

    "You said they''re not fighting each other?" I asked Romani.

    "I¡­don''t think so?" he hedged. "Like I said, there''s some strain on Bradamante''s energy expenditure, but not as much as I would expect of her fighting another Servant. With the number of wyverns I''m detecting in that area too¡­"

    They were probably working together against a common enemy. At least that meant we likely didn''t have to worry about this new mystery Archer being someone we were going to have to fight ourselves. I wasn''t quite sure what to feel just yet about the idea of having her as an ally, though, all things considered.

    "Give me a moment," I told Romani. I didn''t wait for his reply before I focused my senses down the thread connecting me to Bradamante ¡ª and abruptly found myself watching blood fountain from a scaly neck.

    "Fifty-six!" Bradamante''s voice called.

    A brace of arrows found the soft flesh of another wyvern, slipping past the scales with relative ease, and that one fell to the ground, too, motionless and dead. Its blood seeped into the grass, dying it red and turning the ground black.

    "Sixty-nine!" a new voice called, and when Bradamante turned to look at her opponent ¡ª

    Seriously? Is there something in the water in this Singularity?

    ¡ª an albino in some mockery of a strapless white evening gown with a chest large enough to give Drake''s a run for its money, and yet also somehow with even more cleavage on display.

    "You''re so far ahead of me!" Bradamante complained, but she sounded more excited than anything else. "I''ll endeavor to catch up with you! I''ll have sixty-nine kills before you know it!"

    "Speaking of," another voice put in squeakily, and an actual stuffed bear danced around, swooning. "My dear Bradamante, if you like, I can introduce you to the wonders of ¡ª ack!"

    The shaft of an arrow quivered as the tip planted itself in the dirt mere inches from his stubby foot. The Archer, who had shot the arrow that had nearly pinned the bear to the ground, turned to him with a strained smile that promised violence. "What was that, Darling? I could have sworn you were trying to flirt with her again! Aren''t I enough for you?"

    If the bear could have sweated, I imagined it would have. "N-now, Dear, th-there''s no need for that ¡ª"

    I left Bradamante''s senses behind before things could devolve any further and let out a low breath through my nostrils.

    "You''re right," I told Romani, "they''re fighting wyverns." I looked back over my shoulder at the enormous plateau that jutted up in the center of the island. "At the top of the mountain, it looks like."

    The clouds I''d glimpsed during my brief look had seemed an awful lot closer than usual, and the edge of the cliff was too steep and too sheer to be almost any other part of the island that I could see.

    "And she is an Archer," I added. The bow kind of gave it away.

    "Well, I guess that puts that to rest," Romani said. "We''ll have to wait until you get eyes on her directly for your Master''s Clairvoyance to pick up more details ¡ª"

    Marie shoved her way into the frame.

    "Hey!"

    "This is more important!" she told him waspishly, and then she regarded me with utter solemnity. "There''s something wrong with Blackbeard''s Noble Phantasm."

    "Wrong?"

    Her brow scrunched up. "O-or¡­not wrong, exactly, but¡­" She lifted her thumb to her mouth and started up that bad habit of chewing on her fingernail. "Maybe¡­anomalous? N-no, that''s not the right word either. Abnormal? Ugh, isn''t that just saying the same thing?"

    "Director?"

    She blinked out of her tangent and looked down at her thumb, realizing that she''d fallen back on that little habit. Her lips pursed as she deliberately pulled it away from her mouth, as though she had caught it doing something it wasn''t supposed to while her back was turned.

    "The sensors detected swings in his ship''s power," she said. "With the time differential, it''s hard to tell exactly, but¡­ They seem to correspond with whenever the Servants on his crew leave or board it."

    The implications bloomed in my head like a particularly ugly flower, and I didn''t like the picture that they painted for me.

    "You''re saying his Noble Phantasm becomes more powerful the more Servants he has crewing his ship?"

    "What?" Romani sputtered. "That''s ridiculous! What kind of overpowered nonsense is that?"

    "That''s exactly what I''m saying," Marie said grimly.

    "Director, are you sure ¡ª"

    "I triple-checked the data myself, Romani!" she snapped at him. "Yes, I''m sure! I don''t like it any better than you do!"

    Romani, cowed, closed his mouth and subsided. I let out a breath through my nostrils as Marie tried to calm herself down.

    So the Queen Anne''s Revenge got stronger the more Servants Blackbeard had serving on it. There was no telling what the limit was, but one had to exist, presumably, because the idea that it could get infinitely stronger just seemed¡­not impossible, but unlikely. Blackbeard was a strong, famous, infamous legend, but not so much any one of those things that he would have a trump card that powerful.

    I wondered, for a moment, if the strength of the Servant mattered, too. Would he get a larger boost from having, say, Herakles or King Arthur on board? A consideration for later, and one that might not be relevant. After all, however it shook out, the situation seemed very obvious to me.

    If his Noble Phantasm became more powerful the more Servants were on his crew¡­

    "So if we want to beat Blackbeard, then we need to take out the Servants on his side first."

    "It''s looking that way, yes," Marie agreed, something like approval in her voice. "Naturally, it''s something that sounds easier than it actually is to accomplish, but¡­"

    Right. Our side wasn''t exactly hurting for options that would make it easier. Even if we couldn''t force them onto land and a more advantageous battlefield for us, now that we had a better idea of what we were dealing with, it should be easier to call on reinforcements to lend a hand. Siegfried came to mind, although Balmung might not be enough if the boost to the Revenge was really that large. If A¨ªfe could get a clear shot with G¨¢e Bolg, then even with his ships defenses increased, even Blackbeard might go down just like that.

    Those were still some bigger ifs than I liked, though. Better to just force him onto land, where the Revenge was less of an issue.

    "We''ll have a plan for dealing with him figured out for the next time he shows up."

    Marie nodded. "You will."

    "Was there anything else we needed to go over?" I asked.

    "That idea about replenishing our food supplies," Romani offered from the background.

    Marie grimaced. "I was getting to that!" she insisted, annoyed. "Ugh! Yes, your idea for using Captain Drake''s Grail to fill up our food stores for the foreseeable future. I''ve gone over it with Da Vinci, and even if it''s really short notice, we managed to clear some space to use. We''re going to try and find some more rooms we can free up, too, but for now, we''ll be ready to receive some supplies by the time the others make it to that island with you."

    "Wait," said Bellamy, "Captain Drake has the Grail?"

    The naked want in his voice was something I needed to squash right then and there. The very last thing we needed was to make yet another enemy with a ship for a Noble Phantasm, not when we''d just gone over one of them and how difficult an opponent he was going to be.

    "A Grail," I said to him. "There''s more than one in this era. Hers was already won before the Singularity formed, and she''s already made a wish on it. The other one is responsible for the formation of the Singularity."

    I¡­also kind of liked him. I didn''t want to have to fight and kill the guy who had just saved my life.

    Bellamy deflated again. "Oh. Well, damn. Guess there''s nothing I can do about that, then."

    Marie eyed him suspiciously, because she hadn''t missed that eagerness either. I just had to hope that she and I were being paranoid and it wasn''t something we would have to worry about later on.

    "I''ll make sure to contact you when we''re ready to transfer the supplies over," I said. It was a painfully transparent change of subject. "Was there anything else you needed, Director?"

    She eyed Bellamy for a moment longer, a handful of seconds that felt extremely obvious to me, although if Bellamy noticed the extra attention, he didn''t show it.

    "No," she said after that too-long delay, "that was all of the important parts." She huffed a short breath. "Romani and I will be monitoring the situation from here. Once you''re ready, notify us, and we''ll begin transferring as much in the way of supplies as we can handle."

    "Understood."

    She shot one last glance at Bellamy, and then her image vanished and the connection cut out. The instant she was gone, Bellamy leaned back and let out a long sigh.

    "Man," he said ruefully, "she really doesn''t like me, does she?"

    "Hey, don''t take it too personally," Arash said, smiling as he laughed a little. "The Director has a lot of pressure on her shoulders, so she hates taking big risks. Not every Servant we''ve met has been as easygoing as you are, you know. A lot of them have tried to kill us, even the ones who wound up being our allies."

    Bellamy hummed and looked up at the sky, like it had some secret it was hiding in the clouds. "Guess so."

    A moment later, he sprang to his feet and clapped his hands together. "Alright! No sense in sitting here wallowing in my bad luck, huh? I might not need to eat anymore, but I could go for some breakfast!" He turned a smile my way. "And I bet you''re starving, right?"

    As though to agree with him, my stomach chose that moment to rumble and clench, letting me know that, yes, breakfast would be very much appreciated. Bellamy grinned and thumbed his nose.

    "Thought so!"

    With a sigh, I levered myself to my feet, dusting off the sand on my ass and my pants. Across from me, Arash stood, too.

    When I held out my hand, Bellamy blinked at it, nonplussed.

    "Taylor Hebert," I said to him. "Master of Chaldea."

    The grin came back, and he took my hand with his, giving me a firm but gentle shake ¡ª gentle for a Servant, at least, because it was definitely strong enough for a squishy human.

    "Samuel Bellamy," he said. "Prince of Pirates, Robin Hood of the Sea, and probably half a dozen other ridiculous titles they slapped on me over the years. Nice to meet you."

    He let go. "Now, whaddya say we go and find some grub?"

    Well, there were at least a few berry bushes hanging around, and some wildlife that might make for a decent meal.

    "That sounds ¡ª"

    "LOOK OUT BELOW-HO-HO-HO-HOOOOOOO!"

    About fifteen feet away, something small dropped suddenly into the sand with a muffled, "Oof!"

    "STAND CLEAR!" another voice called, and a much larger something ¡ª a person ¡ª dropped next. The Archer I''d seen through Bradamante''s eyes landed with much more grace, with one foot planted in the back of the stuffed bear that had landed first. She wore a bright, friendly smile, even as that bear let out a pained, breathless wheeze.

    "Excuse me, sorry to drop in so suddenly," she said politely.

    "My back¡­" the stuffed bear whined weakly.

    "MAKE WAY, MAKE WAY!" a third, much more familiar voice shouted down.

    At last, Bradamante landed, only with much less grace and much more explosively, because she also happened to have a wyvern thrown over her shoulders, and it was very much dead. She was, as she had been when she asked to return to Chaldea with us, splattered head to toe in blood, and she didn''t seem at all disturbed by that.

    "Master!" she said brightly. "Look! I brought breakfast!"

    She bounced the wyvern''s corpse around as though to demonstrate, the limp wings and head flopping all about grotesquely ¡ª

    "Ah! I got some in my eye!"

    ¡ª and accidentally splashed blood in her eye, just like she had back then.

    "Well," Bellamy said awkwardly, "that''s, um¡­a lot of meat! Enough for all of us!"

    I swallowed a sigh, and instead, it hissed out of my nostrils slowly.

    "I hope you know how to prepare that thing," I said flatly, "because I don''t."

    "Can''t be too hard," Arash said gamely. "It''s got scales, right? Shouldn''t be too different from fish."

    Bellamy brightened. "Hey, yeah! The, uh, bones might be a bit bigger than normal, but all we have to do is get the scales off and remove the internal organs, and everything should be easy from there!"

    No, I thought bleakly, no, it really isn''t.

    The wyvern''s tongue slid from its mouth and flopped down on top of the bear''s head. A glob of drool dribbled down and soaked him, turning the fabric of his body dark and wet.

    "Ack!" the bear flailed helplessly. "Get it off, get it off! It''s ¡ª wait. Is this flammable? No, no, no! Get it off! Help! I don''t taste good well-done!"

    Something told me my breakfast was going to be tough, chewy, tasteless, and nearly impossible to swallow, if it wasn''t burnt to a cinder first.

    Where was Emiya when you needed him?

 Chapter XCVI: Exaggerated Reports

    Chapter XCVI: Exaggerated Reports

    "Thank goodness you''re okay, Miss Taylor," Mash said. "When Hektor knocked you off of the ship, I really thought we''d lost you."

    Deliberately, I avoided looking back at the fire pit, where my companions were doing their level best ¡ª and failing ¡ª to make an appetizing meal out of the wyvern that Bradamante had brought back with her. They were still trying to figure out how to get the scales off so they could actually cook the thing.

    "''Okay'' is a relative term."

    My stomach probably wasn''t going to be very ''okay'' later on today, but as long as it was edible, it was better to eat and not like it than to go hungry in a situation like this. I could, at the very least, comfort myself with the fact that Emiya would definitely be here to make dinner, and that meant I would only have to really suffer through one meal.

    I did fully expect to suffer, though. The jury was still out on how much.

    "But I''m not hurt, no," I said. Not anymore, at least.

    In the intervening time, I''d had the space to think about Hektor flinging me off the ship instead of killing me outright, and the only conclusion I''d been able to come to was that his intention had been to force us to separate. If I died going overboard, he got rid of an enemy Master. If I somehow managed to survive, he also had a decent chance of making at least one of our Servants follow me into the water, and we could have wound up just about anywhere.

    Without Bellamy there to pick us up, he might have succeeded. Had succeeded, just not as well as he probably intended.

    "I see," said Mash, relieved. "I''m glad."

    I changed the subject.

    "What about the twins? Everything okay with them? Romani and the Director said that no one else was injured aside from me."

    "They''re both fine," Mash assured me. She sighed. "We were all worried¡­but it''s true, none of the rest of us were hurt in the battle. We all came out of it uninjured."

    "Speak for yourself!" Drake''s voice called from the background. "Those bastards did a number on my ship! My poor Golden Hind might not ever be the same again!"

    "Everyone with the exception of the ship," Mash amended, completely serious.

    "Of course."

    I wasn''t exactly an expert, so maybe I didn''t have any room to say so, but the damage I remembered seeing to the ship had been mostly cosmetic. Maybe not easily repaired, but not serious enough to actually impede its function or its ability to sail. If the mast had been damaged, for example, then that probably would have been crippling, and I honestly had no idea how we would have fixed a problem like that.

    Considering that it would be the easiest way to stop us from escaping, we should probably treat that as a priority target for the enemy. It was frankly something of a minor miracle that neither Blackbeard nor any of his crew had decided to try destroying it in the first place. We would''ve been sitting ducks if they managed to break it, and no amount of favorable winds or strong currents from the maelstrom would have been able to make up for losing the main mast and its sails.

    If only disabling the Queen Anne''s Revenge would be that simple.

    "And you haven''t seen any sign of those guys since you made it out of the storm?"

    "None," Mash confirmed. "There''s been no indication that Blackbeard or any of his Servants have been following us, although¡­"

    Right. If Blackbeard wanted Euryale that much, there was no way he would give up that easily, especially not when he probably thought Hektor had managed to get rid of me. Down a Master and probably at least one Servant ¡ª if I''d been in his position, that would have been an opportune moment to chase down the enemy and take advantage of their weakness.

    That made it all the more important that they got here as quickly as they could. Safety in numbers, and since Bradamante and Arash were here with me, they were technically down two Servants, which left them with three Servants ¡ª Emiya, Mash, and Asterios ¡ª who were actually combat capable.

    Five on three wasn''t the best of odds, especially when they had so many people to protect.

    "We can talk about that when the rest of you get here," I told her. "There''s no point in making plans until we''re all in the same place to talk about them."

    Mash nodded. "Right!"

    If he wasn''t as much of a fool as he seemed and his ship got stronger the more Servants he had on his crew¡­ But no, as I said, that was something we could talk about later. There was no use speculating about it right now.

    "Stay safe, Mash. Blackbeard and his team might not be the only enemy Servants in this Singularity."

    Bellamy had almost been one, after all.

    "You, too, Miss Taylor," said Mash. "We''ll be there soon!"

    The line cut, severing our connection, and I let my arm flop back down to my side. Still the better part of half a day until they got back, which left me not much else to do except watch four Servants struggle to skin a dragon.

    It almost sounded like the opening to a bad joke.

    When I turned back to look at the motley crew working the wyvern''s corpse, they hadn''t seemed to get much farther than when I''d turned away from them. Arash was using my knife only as a knife, for obvious reasons, and Bellamy had produced one of his own from somewhere, a thin, curved thing with a wicked looking blade, but they were still having difficulty getting anywhere with the wyvern''s tough hide. Bradamante was holding the whole thing aloft, and had been for so long that I wouldn''t have blamed her for complaining about her arms being tired.

    The Archer and her plush bear were the only ones who weren''t doing anything; they stood off to the side, watching, like I was.

    I¡­wasn''t quite sure what to do with the teddy bear thing. Mostly, I''d been trying to ignore, because it wasn''t the most ridiculous thing I''d ever seen ¡ª not even if we were just counting my career before Chaldea ¡ª but it still felt really odd. Almost out of place.

    "Any luck?" I asked, more formality than anything else.

    "Not really," said Arash. "This is slow going."

    "It''s tougher than it looks!" said Bellamy. "Man! This isn''t anything at all like descaling a fish, is it?"

    I could have told him that from the beginning.

    "Look, Darling, they''re struggling," said the Archer. "Shouldn''t you give them a hand?"

    "With what hand?" the bear said a little hysterically, waving his blunted paws around. I couldn''t help imagining a teddy bear version of Jack Slash waving around toy knives, and just the idea was so absurd it made me want to laugh. "I''m a plush bear! I don''t have any hands! On top of that, what makes you think I know anything about how to prepare a wyvern? It''s not the same as other animals, you know! I''m insulted that you think it''s that easy!"

    "Hm," the Archer hummed. "Maybe we should have brought back something a little easier to deal with, then?"

    "This was all that we could find on that plateau!" Bradamante reminded her. "There wasn''t even a rabbit or anything!"

    And even if there had been other animals up there, they would all have been scared off by the wyverns and the Servants killing each other. I imagined that anything brave enough to stay so close to a nest of wyverns in the first place had been frightened when two squishy-looking humans came up and started slaughtering everything else that moved.

    Of course, alternatively, I could have just dragged up a crab or two from the colony off the shore ¡ª kind of frustrating that the most stable thing around this Singularity was the population of phantasmal crabs. They would at least have been easier to prepare than the wyvern, although likely not any better tasting, considering who was here to cook them.

    I did toy with the idea of offering to let my bugs crawl in and quite literally flay the thing, save us all some time and effort, provided they didn''t just pop from the overload of being near it, corpse or not, but I had a feeling that none of them would be at all eager to handle the meat afterwards. Bugs tended to freak people out, and although I had gotten used to them, I could recognize that most people were still repulsed.

    Instead, I found as good a place to sit down as I could and pulled out my two ravens, setting them aside so I could turn my bag inside out and let it dry after my dip into the ocean. The ravens themselves were, conveniently, waterproof, but considering what was flying about on this island, I wasn''t about to risk them by having them fly around. Something told me that wyverns wouldn''t be much impressed by their mana cannons.

    It was a shame they''d been almost completely useless in this Singularity. The only place where I might actually have been able to do something with them was during that first fight with Drake, and that giant hermit crab had distracted me so thoroughly that I''d forgotten to even consider it.

    Then again, Drake herself might have wound up shooting them out of the air if I actually had used them, so maybe it was better that I hadn''t.

    With that taken care of, I opened up my map, trying to study the two remaining islands that we hadn''t yet visited. We hadn''t gotten an in-depth scan, not the way we had with the Etna ley line, for obvious reasons, so there was no telling what or who might be waiting on those islands, but the geography was mapped well enough to get at least some idea of what each of them looked like, and therefore which of them might be a good place to plan an ambush against Blackbeard and his crew.

    For this island, the disadvantages were fairly obvious, because it was basically a giant plateau. Sure, there was some advantage in having this much height, so if we cleared out the wyverns up top and made sure that there wasn''t anything else up there to surprise us, that would be a great vantage point to fire down on the Revenge. It was also not particularly defensible, though, because as a counterpoint, Blackbeard could ¡ª with the Grail powering him ¡ª just bombard us until the structure got too unstable and collapsed.

    It wasn''t necessarily a bad idea, but if the goal was to force him into a land battle, then it would fail automatically.

    The next closest island was basically a giant caldera, and I was a bit embarrassed that I was only noticing now that the islands we''d yet been to seemed to conveniently be dominated by a singular characteristic geological structure. "New Crete" and Drake''s "paradise" were the obvious exceptions, since they looked more like you might expect out of an island, but that second island, "Crescent Island," and this one, and even the next one? All were taken up almost entirely by that single defining feature.

    For the next island in particular, it was a caldera, because that seemed to be what the entire island was: a giant caldera. Inside that caldera was a lake and probably at least some land, since there were trees covering half of it, but if there was a cave system of some kind that would make it easier to get into that caldera instead of having to hike up and over it, well, that wasn''t on the map. Or, I should say, if it was, then it wasn''t obvious enough for me to spot it without going over the whole thing with a fine tooth comb.

    A shame. Especially if there''d been a large gap in the one side, a gap big enough for a ship to sail through to make it inside the caldera, that would have been an excellent place to set up an ambush. Force Blackbeard to come our way through a single entrance? We could have trapped the entire place thoroughly enough to take him out ¡ª or at least weaken him ¡ª without having to get into a direct fight at all.

    The way it actually was would be bad for us. Sure, getting up on the hillside would give us a great vantage point for our Archers to attack from afar, but it left us open to those cannons of his far more than I was comfortable with. If he used his Noble Phantasm, he could bomb the hillside until there was nothing left of us except ashes. The only part that would be difficult for him would be having Hektor sneak in and steal Euryale from under our noses, and as Hektor had proven by flinging me overboard, that wasn''t as tall an order as it might have sounded.

    The archipelago was much better. Not perfect, but it was much more manageable in terms of setting up that ambush. It was just as hard to defend, if it came down to the cannons, but the water that filled the space between the islands would be much shallower, so we should be able to take him down without worrying about losing the Grail. A couple dozen feet was a much less worrying dive than sending our Servants to the bottom of the ocean.

    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

    The ironic thing was that we actually would have been best off if we had stayed on New Crete, done something to advertise our presence for him to find, and hunkered down inside the Labyrinth. His cannons and his Servants would have been almost useless to him there, and we could have picked him off without much trouble at all.

    My lips pursed.

    In fact, that might still be the best idea. Not New Crete, no, because I doubted we''d be able to make the trip back there without running into him again, and I didn''t want to take more unnecessary risks out near that maelstrom, not when it had nearly gotten me killed the first time. But¡­if we made our way down to the archipelago, picked the largest plot of land we could find, and then set up the Labyrinth so that he had to chase us down into it¡­

    It could work. Not everyone would be happy with it ¡ª Bradamante least of all, I thought, since this wasn''t exactly "chivalrous" ¡ª but as far as plans went, it was solid enough that it might just be good enough to beat Blackbeard and all of his friends. None of them looked to have a defensive Noble Phantasm of any kind, after all, so as long as we could get in a solid enough hit, that was all it should take to win.

    Now I just had to wait for the rest of the team to arrive so that we could go over this plan and finetune it a little more. Emiya, I was sure, would almost certainly have something to say about it, if only to offer to be the one to take Blackbeard out.

    While I was busy brainstorming, the others continued to struggle with skinning the wyvern and preparing it properly, and I was long done formulating my plan for taking down Blackbeard ¡ª and was getting pretty hungry besides ¡ª when they finally managed to get somewhere. It was kind of funny, in a sad, ironic way, to think that it took Heroic Spirits literal hours to figure out the proper way of dealing with a wyvern carcass, but eventually, it got more boring than anything else.

    It wasn''t like our trips aboard Drake''s ship were that much more engaging, though. At least there, we had pirates singing to entertain ourselves, for whatever that was worth.

    Of course, once they finally got the wyvern skinned, gutted, and the meat cleaned and cut, they ran into the next obvious problem: how were they going to cook it without proper cookware or a stove? That stumped them for a good fifteen minutes or so, until Bellamy remembered that he could manifest parts of his ship selectively instead of bringing the whole thing into reality, and one of the things a proper ship had was a kitchen, complete with cookware. Conveniently, that also meant a wood-burning stove, which he manifested just for the occasion.

    The look of pride on his face would only last until the first time he saw Emiya project a stove, but I did him the kindness of keeping that to myself. No need to burst his bubble.

    So it was that by the time I finally got served up a plate with something edible on it (I accepted it from Bradamante with a simple "thanks"), the sun had started westward and it was really more of a late lunch than a breakfast. That also meant that I was hungry enough that I might just have eaten it raw, if they had tried to serve it to me like sushi.

    I only gave the strips of pale meat a dubious look for a few seconds before I gave in and used a knife ¡ª Bellamy''s, not mine ¡ª to stab the nearest, most edible bit and stick it in my mouth. Everyone else watched me with bated breath, eager to hear my verdict on this strange monstrosity they''d cooked.

    "So?" Bellamy asked eagerly. "Is it good? It''s good, right?"

    "If I could cook in this tiny body," the bear muttered, "she''d be singing my praises and begging me for an entirely different kind of white ¡ª ack!"

    A huff of air left him when the Archer stomped him into the sand, which neatly hid the sound of my knife skittering across the metal dish Bellamy had provided for me.

    "Hush, Darling," she said with a smile so fake it looked plastic. "Words like that are only for me, okay? We can save that sort of talk for later, in private. I''m sure she doesn''t need to hear that while she''s eating."

    I had to wonder what she would have thought of Alec then, because he would have had a much worse line than something so tame.

    When I swallowed, Bradamante immediately asked, "How was it, Master? We tried our best!"

    It tastes like chicken, Alec would have joked.

    "Bland," I said. "Dry. Tough. You cooked it for too long."

    Their faces fell as I gave them my honest opinion. Bellamy clicked his tongue and kicked at the sand with his boot. "Damn. I knew we should''ve taken it off the fire sooner!"

    I stabbed another strip of meat and refrained from telling them they could''ve made a sauce from some of the berries around the island. I planned on having my ravens go around and pick a few sprigs, then check to make sure they were actually edible instead of something poisonous, and I wasn''t sure these guys would have been able to tell the difference on their own.

    Maybe. Probably, even, because wilderness survival was an actual skill they would have needed in their lives. But I also didn''t trust them to know how to make a good sauce out of those berries, so no need to risk upsetting my stomach like that.

    "You''re still eating it," Bellamy noted skeptically.

    "I''m hungry," I told him dryly. "I don''t have the luxury of being too picky."

    Arash smirked and shook his head a little. "They say hunger is the best spice."

    "W-well, I guess there is that," Bradamante said awkwardly. "So, on the bright side, it''s at least edible! That''s something, isn''t it? Right, Master?"

    Some would argue it was the bare minimum. Emiya would probably have been incredibly offended by the mere suggestion.

    "It''s enough." For now.

    Nonetheless, my review was enough to turn them off of wyvern meat, although Bradamante and Bellamy were both at least willing to give it a try on their own before passing final judgment, and Bradamante discovered it was exactly as I had described it: dry, tough, and mostly tasteless. Bellamy, on the other hand¡­

    "Hey, this isn''t half bad!" he said as he munched on a strip. "A bit on the chewy side, and I''ve definitely eaten richer, but I would''ve given my left arm to have food like this on voyages!"

    ¡­had never had the pleasure of a meal cooked by Emiya.

    "Geez, you guys must be picky!" he said, already on his third strip. "You really don''t know what you''re missing, you know!"

    "Nobody tell him," I ordered wryly.

    Arash laughed. "Yeah, it''ll be a lot more fun to see his face when he experiences it firsthand."

    Bradamante looked a little more conflicted. "I-I suppose so," she said hesitantly. "And it''s not like I can truly do Sir Emiya''s cooking justice with just my words¡­"

    Bellamy blinked and took a moment to swallow. "Emiya?"

    "You''ll find out soon enough," I promised him.

    "So ominous," the bear sighed dreamily. "Chicks with secretive dark sides are so sexy ¡ª ack!"

    The bear wheezed again as the Archer stomped him into the ground some more, so brutal that it kicked up a plume of sand.

    "You know, Darling, the moon has a dark side, too," she said pleasantly. "Would you like to see it for yourself?"

    The bear struggled to lift its head enough to look up at her.

    "I think I''m seeing it right now, and it''s incredibly unflattering ¡ª gah!"

    She smiled and ground her heel into his back, and somehow, that was hurting him. "What was that?"

    "S-save me¡­" the bear rasped, reaching out one blunted paw as though begging for water in the desert.

    I wondered what it would actually take to kill him, come to think of it. His body didn''t have organs in the traditional sense, or even bones for that matter, and I''d seen him take several hits that probably would have killed him if he did. Could he even be destroyed, or was his existence entirely dependent on the Archer, so he would only disappear when she did?

    How ironic it would be if he was technically indestructible, despite being nothing more than a stuffed bear.

    At the very least, I could trust that the Archer herself wouldn''t do anything that could kill him, so whatever abuse she put him through, that was the threshold I should probably use. A pity he was too small to serve as a good distraction, otherwise we might have been able to use him as one.

    Fuck me, I was actually questioning the durability of a stuffed bear.

    When Bellamy and I were done eating, cleanup of our plates and utensils was fortunately extremely easy, because all he had to do was dematerialize them, since they were part of his Noble Phantasm. The remains leftover from the wyvern, unfortunately, were not so easy to rid ourselves of, and while a part of me would have loved to use its body for the sorts of incredibly rare ingredients it contained¡­

    "If killing it was that easy, it''s not worth harvesting for parts."

    Arash made a noise of understanding in his throat. "Yeah, that''s a bit of a conundrum, isn''t it? If a dragon like that doesn''t take all of your effort to bring down, then it isn''t worth the effort of harvesting its scales or fangs."

    Which wasn''t to say that no one back at Chaldea would have any use for the scales or fangs or even the organs, but unless I was mistaken, the only one who had the skills in the necessary disciplines to actually make something of them was Da Vinci. I didn''t know Sylvia''s family craft, but she hadn''t made any mention of wyvern parts at any point during or after Orl¨¦ans, so I had to assume it wasn''t relevant. The same for the other couple of magi still left in our tiny group of twenty people.

    "It can''t stay here," I said, because that might attract more wyverns, or with how this Singularity was, something worse, "but I''m not sure what else to do with it."

    At this point, I wouldn''t be surprised if it turned out Moby Dick was roaming about somewhere.

    "I''ll handle it," Arash promised. To Bradamante, he added, "I won''t be gone long, but I''ll leave things in your hands until I get back."

    Bradamante straightened like a little girl being called on in class. "You can count on me, Lord Arash!"

    He smiled. "I know I can."

    And then he bundled the carcass up the way a housewife would her groceries at the store and took it towards the other end of the island, far enough away that any animals that went snooping wouldn''t immediately be led back to our little makeshift camp. Not so far, however, that he was technically out of my range, but fairly close to it.

    I wasn''t sure if that was a deliberate choice, but I wouldn''t have put it past him.

    "Huh," said Bellamy, bemused. "Wonder what that''s about."

    "Obviously, it''s because he doesn''t trust us," the bear said ruefully, shaking his head.

    "Or perhaps it''s simply that he doesn''t trust you," the Archer said pleasantly, "not to assault his poor Master with your lustful gaze."

    "Well." The bear looked at me askance. I raised an eyebrow back at him. "If appreciating beauty is a crime, then consider me guilty ¡ª ack!"

    The Archer lifted her foot, still smiling as though nothing was wrong, and stomped the bear into the sand again.

    "Oh, Darling, haven''t I told you enough times?" she said. "The only one who can withstand your lustful stare is me!"

    "He can stare all he wants. I don''t particularly care," I told her mildly, and her smile froze. "The instant he crosses the line, though, I''ll string him up in the nearest tree and introduce him to a few of my friends."

    The sand near the bear shifted, and from its hiding spot, an absolutely enormous spider shook itself free, waggling its fangs. The bear squeaked and went still, as though he could escape notice by not moving.

    It was not, unfortunately, a true sand spider, it was just a tarantula that looked close enough to pass for one at first glance. More was the pity. An actual sand spider might have been useful, if only for the sorts of things Da Vinci could make after studying its venom. Already, I could imagine a special potion for coating Arash''s arrows, one that would break down a Servant''s spiritrons and erode their body, a potent addition to our arsenal.

    Too bad my imagination was where that would remain.

    "Oh my," the Archer said faintly.

    Bradamante breathed a weary sigh even as Bellamy grinned and let out a low whistle. "Damn," he said. "She''s got fangs!"

    I did my best to keep my grimace off of my face, because that pun was just bad.

    "I-I''ll be good," the bear promised meekly.

    Further out, I waited until Arash had left the wyvern''s corpse behind and started back our direction before setting upon it with every bug I had available in the vicinity. In death, at least, it seemed to have lost some of its mystery, or perhaps the fauna in this Singularity were simply more used to it, because they didn''t immediately explode from getting too close and being overwhelmed by its innate magical power.

    That might have been why it had actually been a problem in Orl¨¦ans; the wyverns there hadn''t been native to that time or that location, and because they''d been from a bygone era, the bugs weren''t accustomed to the level of power those wyverns took for granted. The end result was bugs popping whenever they got too close.

    In this Singularity, with things mashed together the way they were, it seemed that the bugs were more acclimated to that power, so they didn''t explode, not even when I set them to devouring the corpse and removing the evidence of its existence. The organs and the remaining meat were going to be easy enough to deal with, it seemed, but the scales and the bones looked like they were going to be much more stubborn.

    Arash returned a minute or so later, his job done, and when he saw the bear cowering away from me and my spider, he lifted an eyebrow at me, amused. I just met his gaze, completely unapologetic, because I''d meant everything I said.

    With everything else taken care of, it left us without much else to do while we waited for the others to arrive, so Bellamy pulled out a bunch of dice, a table, and wood-carved cups, all from his Noble Phantasm, and introduced us to a game he called, "Liar''s Dice."

    I begged off playing the first couple of rounds and instead watched as he roped in Arash and Bradamante, listening as he explained the rules and went through a "practice round" so they could get a feel for it. It was a little bit like poker, and yet nothing like poker at the same time, but it wasn''t all that hard to understand how it all worked.

    At its core, it was a mind game. The guessing and the bets didn''t matter quite as much as getting into the opponent''s head and making them think what you wanted them to think.

    Lisa would have loved it, although we might have had to forbid the use of powers if we had ever played it with her. She would have cleaned house otherwise.

    Eventually, I found myself confident enough in my grasp of the game to join in, and we passed the time like that, playing successive games against each other. Bellamy proved surprisingly intense after I went on a winning streak ¡ª it turned out that being able to bluff with a perfectly straight face was incredibly important in a game that revolved around bluffing. Who would''ve thought?

    The hours passed like that, mindlessly, and the sun slowly slunk towards the horizon all the while. The afternoon wore on, and evening drew closer and closer, and eventually ¡ª

    "Master."

    ¡ª Arash drew my attention and nodded his head out towards the water. When I turned to look, a familiar ship, painted in red, black, and gold, stood out from the waves, headed right for us. Bellamy, having realized something was going on, turned to look, too, and he squinted as though that would somehow make it easier to see more clearly.

    "Huh," he said. "That''s the Golden Hind? I mean, I''ve heard stories, but to think I''m actually going to get the chance to see it for myself¡­"

    "A perk of the job," I said wryly. "Fighting King Arthur with C¨²chulainn, sharing a campfire with Jeanne d''Arc, bathing in the heart of Rome with Emperor Nero¡­"

    "And now sailing with Francis Drake," Arash concluded. "Yeah, it''s pretty incredible, isn''t it? Never would have thought this is the sort of thing I''d be getting up to in the afterlife while I was alive."

    If I hadn''t done it all myself, it would have sounded too fantastical to be true.

    "Geez," Bellamy said. "If a job like that had been around back in my day, I might not have become a pirate!"

    It was still another hour before the Golden Hind made it close enough to drop anchor and deploy the longboats, and then the longboats took several minutes to make it to shore ¡ª one in particular raced out ahead of the rest, propelled by modern machinery and the Servant who could project it instead of mere human muscles and wooden oars.

    I guess the twins were just too impatient to let Drake''s sailors do their jobs. One of these days, we were going to find ourselves in a situation where Emiya didn''t have a gadget he could pull out of his ass to make things quicker and easier, and, being fair, Rika probably wouldn''t be the only one missing the convenience.

    As the first longboat slammed to a stop in the wet sand, I went down to meet them, watching the twins scramble out of it like it was on fire with some amusement. They were in such a rush that they both nearly stumbled and fell face first into the sand, compared to the much more sedate pace Mash and Emiya were taking things.

    "Senpai!" the twins cried as they raced towards me.

    "Ritsuka," I greeted them, "Rika, Mash, it''s good to see ¡ª"

    The air was nearly driven from my lungs as a ballistic missile with red hair launched itself into my gut. A pair of arms wrapped around my torso as though trying to squeeze whatever was left of my breath from my body as something burrowed into my shoulder.

    "Senpai!" Rika said, muffled by my jacket. "You''re okay! You''re really okay! You''re really, really okay!"

    Bewildered, I looked to Ritsuka, who had at least managed to keep himself from trying to tackle me into the beach, but his eyes were shimmering and he looked on the verge of breaking out into tears himself. If I tried to ask, I was afraid he would break down, too, and just start sobbing and sniffling.

    I looked down at the girl buried in my chest. What was I supposed to be doing with this?

    "One second, you were there, and then, you were gone!" Rika babbled. "And ¡ª and I couldn''t see you, and Arash wasn''t there, and Tii-chan wasn''t there, and I-I thought¡­I thought¡­" She broke off there, and she made a strange sound that was somewhere between a giggle and a sob. "But you''re here! You''re alive! You''re really, really, really okay!"

    Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated, Lisa might have said there. It wasn''t the right thing for the situation, so I wisely kept it off of my tongue.

    I wasn''t quite sure what else to do, though. I didn''t¡­ It wasn''t that I had never given anyone comfort before. That moment with Brian, pulling him back from the headspace of his trigger event ¡ª but even that was a bit different. Not the same. I didn''t think it would work quite so well on a girl like Rika, and this wasn''t about trying to anchor her to the moment instead of letting her get stuck in her own head.

    So maybe a good question was¡­if that one, terrible day that had so changed the course of my life had turned out to be nothing more than a nightmare, how would Mom have comforted me? What would she have said and done as I cried into her chest about how it was so real that I''d thought she died?

    If I could have had my wish on the Holy Grail, how would Mom have soothed me? How would she have filled the shadow that Dad had drowned in?

    Slowly, hesitantly, I brought my arms up and gently wrapped them around Rika''s shoulders. I closed my eyes and imagined for a moment the woman I had always looked up to, the one person I had always felt was better than I could ever hope to be. Her voice was the one I needed, just then.

    "I''m here, Rika," I murmured into her ear. "It''s okay. I''m here."

    Rika only clutched me tighter, as though to reassure herself that it was true.

 Chapter XCVII: Twice the Trouble

    Chapter XCVII: Twice the Trouble

    Fortunately for everyone involved, Rika didn''t cling to me for more than a minute or two, so things didn''t really have time to get truly awkward. Once she''d gotten her fill and reassured herself that I was alive and wasn''t going anywhere, she sniffled, let go of me, took a few steps back, and then she offered a watery smile and a snappy salute.

    "Fujimaru Rika, reporting for duty!" she chirped.

    I opened my mouth ¡ª

    "Oi!" a familiar voice called over. "So you managed to survive that mess after all, eh?"

    ¡ª and Drake managed to break whatever moment we''d been having by lifting the weight off of it with that single, irreverent remark. I wasn''t sure if I was supposed to be thankful or not as I turned to look at her, climbing out of the longboat far more sedately than the twins had. There wasn''t a single tear shimmering in her eyes or even a crease in her brow to show how much she''d worried about me.

    "Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated," I told her dryly.

    It was, on the other hand, a much better moment to use a line like that. Rika, gobsmacked, gaped at me openly.

    "So they were!" Drake said, unfazed. She raked her eyes over me, up and down, just the once. "Mm, a dead woman wouldn''t look so lively! Bombe owes me ¡ª he thought you were a goner for sure!"

    I''m touched by your faith in me, I didn''t say.

    "Y-you were betting on whether or not Miss Taylor survived?" Mash squeaked.

    "They''re pirates," Emiya told her. "They bet on everything."

    Drake laughed. "Too true, too true!"

    "Are we all done fawning over her like she''s returned from the dead?" Euryale drawled as she daintily stepped out of the longboat. Asterios helped her down, and she favored him with a smile and a rare, "Thank you."

    "Hey!" Rika squawked.

    "Senpai is important to us," Ritsuka said firmly. "It''s only natural that we worried about her."

    "It''s not like she was actually ¡ª"

    Euryale froze. Her eyes met the Archer''s, wide and shocked, as the Archer blinked back at her, bemused.

    "Oh," said the Archer. "Little Euryale is here, too!"

    "''Little'' is an appropriate moniker," the stuffed bear huffed. "Look at her. No curves at all! No chest to speak of! She''s tiny! Ack!"

    The Archer stomped him back into the sand. "Be nice, Darling. Not everyone can be as radiant as me, you know!"

    "You," Euryale all but snarled. "What are you doing here, Artemis? In that silly getup, too!"

    My stomach clenched. Almost everyone else on the beach turned to the Archer and, surprised, shouted, "Artemis!"

    There was another goddess hanging around this Singularity? One of the actual Olympians at that?

    "Oh, not really!" the Archer said bashfully. "I mean, yes, I am Artemis, but technically, I''m actually inhabiting Darling''s Spirit Origin, so at the same time, I''m not!"

    "That''s a thing you can do?" Rika asked hysterically.

    "Darling?" Mash gasped. "W-wait, then does that mean¡­!"

    "Oh, ordinarily, no," Artemis said, still talking as though she wasn''t dropping bombshell after bombshell on us. "I had to suppress so much of my Divinity to fit myself into this Saint Graph, it''s really only because I love my Darling so much that I was even willing to try. He gets into so much trouble, you know? I was worried!"

    The dots connected, and I realized at that moment the same thing Mash must have just seconds ago. I looked down at the bear ¡ª an unassuming, frankly silly little stuffed animal that looked more like a children''s toy ¡ª and the fact that it was a bear he was inhabiting suddenly made a whole lot more sense.

    "You''re Orion."

    The stuffed bear lifted its head from the sand. "P-pleased to meet you."

    "Oh, fuck me." Emiya laughed helplessly. "I thought I''d gotten used to it, but, Master, you really do wind up finding the weirdest nonsense imaginable, don''t you?"

    "I-it''s not like I''m trying to!" Rika insisted.

    The sad thing was that this probably wouldn''t be the weirdest thing we found ourselves stumbling upon. We still had several more Singularities to correct after this one, and while the weirdness here was abnormal in its quantity, I had a feeling there were still a lot more chances for us to find something even weirder than this.

    "Hang on a tick," said Drake, "does that mean we''ve got two goddesses here?"

    "Only by technicality," Artemis said. "Like I said, this is Darling''s Saint Graph, so you should just treat me like I''m him, okay?"

    "And what about him?" Drake jerked her head over at Bellamy, who jolted at being addressed. "You a goddess in disguise, too, kiddo?"

    "N-no, sir!" Bellamy said, going ramrod straight. "Er, ma''am! Uh, Captain Drake, sir! Just a regular, ordinary pirate! It''s an honor to meet you!"

    "He is a Servant," Mash muttered.

    "Cut it out with the ass-kissing." Drake waved a hand in front of her face as though to ward off a bad smell. "You''ll give me indigestion if you keep trying to crawl up my ass!"

    Bellamy''s face went red. "Yes, uh, Captain! Sorry!"

    Drake grunted. "You got a name there, kid?"

    "Samuel Bellamy!" he reported dutifully. "Captain of the Whydah Gally!"

    "That so?" Drake asked. "And what''s a brat like you doing out here, Samuel Bellamy, Captain of the Whydah Gally?"

    Bellamy blinked, opened his mouth, but all that came out was an unintelligent, "Uh¡­"

    "He was the other ship we nearly rammed into while we were escaping Blackbeard," I said, coming to Bellamy''s rescue. "He was being chased by our mysterious friend and tried to escape into the storm." A much riskier move for him, considering his weaknesses, so it must have been more desperate than he''d implied earlier. "He fished the three of us out of the ocean after I was knocked overboard."

    "It was a great help!" Bradamante added earnestly. "It''s thanks to him that we managed to make it here as safely as we did!"

    Bellamy''s face got steadily redder, like he was embarrassed to receive such praise in front of what I had to assume was his own personal hero. At least he couldn''t say that he had underwear with her face printed on the front. In that respect, he was already topping my first meeting with Armsmaster.

    Drake turned narrow eyes on him. "That so¡­" And then, a moment later, she broke out into her trademark grin. "Guess that makes you a friend! And with the busty bint over there and her stuffed bear, hey, that technically makes three more, don''t it?"

    "Busty bint?" Artemis echoed indignantly.

    "I''d argue about the stuffed bear part," Orion murmured, holding up his blunted paws morosely, "but she''s not exactly wrong¡­"

    Drake nodded. "Three more friends, by my count! Three new additions to the Golden Hind''s crew!"

    Mash sighed. "Oh dear. I think I know where this is going."

    So did I. At this point, it was just pattern recognition.

    "It''s Drake," Emiya drawled. "There''s only one place it can go."

    "Ah, shucks, you guys know me so well!" Drake laughed.

    "Or you''re just that predictable," Ritsuka said.

    "Then there''s no need for me to hold back!" Drake proclaimed shamelessly. "Today, we''re gonna celebrate making more new friends and have another PARTY!"

    She was met by silence, and when she realized that no one else was cheering her on, she blinked and looked about. "Wait just one damn minute, where''s Bombe?"

    Emiya coughed into his fist, and with his other hand, he pointed out towards the sea, where the other longboats were still several minutes out. The reason Bombe and the rest of the crew hadn''t cheered her on was simply because none of them had made it to the island yet. She, the twins, Mash, Emiya, Asterios, Euryale¡­ They had all come in the same boat, and with Asterios there especially, I guess there just hadn''t been room for more of the crew.

    "Well, damn," said Drake, setting her hands on her hips. "Guess I forgot about the magic of your magic thingamabob, Emiya."

    "It''s a doohicky, actually," Rika said matter-of-factly. "A watchamacallit, if you wanna be totally technical."

    Drake gave her a thoughtful hum. "That so?"

    Emiya''s eyebrow twitched, even as Bellamy looked at Rika with horror.

    "It''s called a propeller," Emiya said tersely, "as my Master surely knows. For some reason, she thinks it''s funny to start teaching you nonsense about our technology and how it works."

    "Because it''s funnier that way," Rika answered flippantly. "It''s not like this is going down in the history books or anything. What''s it matter if we have some fun with it?"

    Drake laughed. "See? That''s the spirit! Who cares if she''s teaching me a crock of horseshit? Ain''t like I''m gonna be going around telling anyone in England! They''d burn me at the goddamn stake!"

    "I guess it doesn''t really hurt anything," Arash said mildly, "if Captain Drake doesn''t really care. It''s not like this is about mission critical details or anything, so it''s just harmless fun."

    I wanted to disagree solely on principle, but he wasn''t entirely wrong. Drake was the one getting pranked, so as long as Drake wasn''t bothered by it, it really didn''t matter at all. As he said, as long as she didn''t start feeding anyone bullshit about the stuff that mattered, it was just harmless fun.

    "I guess so."

    "So how''s this propeller thingy of yours work, anyway?" Drake asked. "And more importantly, can it be scaled up to work on a ship?"

    "In principle," said Emiya, "yes, but¡­"

    And he launched into a brief explanation of the function of a propeller and why it wouldn''t be so simple to make a Golden Hind sized one, which I was honestly expecting. It would have been too convenient if he could project a motor, fuel, and propeller that could get us to and from the islands faster.

    But that was something that wasn''t as simple on a larger vessel. More weight being moved around meant it needed more support to keep it attached, and therefore it was more like you had to build the ship around the engine rather than just installing an engine in the ship.

    "Shame, that," Drake said when he was done. "Would''ve been mighty convenient."

    Emiya shrugged, as though to say, ''what can you do?''

    "Ahoy, Cap''n!" Bombe called as his ship made landfall. He glanced around at Bellamy and Artemis. "Are me eyes going bad, or am I seeing a couple of new folk hanging around?"

    "You ain''t blind yet, you old sea dog!" Drake said, grinning. She made her way over towards them as they pulled themselves from their boats. "We made some new friends today! New hands we''re gonna be bringing aboard the Golden Hind! Sounds to me like cause for celebration, don''t it?"

    "AYE!" the crew roared back at her.

    "The crew agrees with ya, Cap''n!" Bombe told her unnecessarily.

    "I ain''t deaf!" Drake said, to laughter from the crew. "Well, hell, with an endorsement like that, I can''t exactly let you all down, can I? Looks like we''re having another PARTY!"

    The crew let out another thunderous cheer, and Bombe, grinning ear to ear to match his captain, turned to them. "You heard her, lads! Hop to it! The sooner we get camp set up, the sooner we can be balls deep in the nearest cup!"

    "AYE!"

    Drake, laughing, turned away from the boats and beckoned them along. "Come on then, you worthless shits! That little cliff up there looks like a great place to camp for the night, so grab your skivvies and get going!"

    The crew reached into their longboats and produced bolts of canvas and large wooden stakes, and as a group, they trailed after her, following along as she led them further along the beach and deeper into the island.

    There was, of course, a bit of a problem with that.

    Stolen novel; please report.

    "Arash."

    He nodded. "I''ll go and keep an eye on things. Don''t want them catching the attention of any wyverns, do we?"

    He vanished, right as Rika squeaked, "Wyverns?"

    "Oh," said Bradamante. "Yes, Master! There are wyverns on this island! I''ve already killed seventy-nine of them, in fact!"

    "S-seventy-nine?" Mash squawked. "Th-there were that many wyverns here?"

    The little gremlin hopped up ¡ª where from, I wasn''t even sure ¡ª and landed on her shoulder, his chest puffed out as though he would personally defend her. "Fou-kyuu fou fou!!"

    "A nest of them, actually," Artemis answered. "For whatever reason, they decided to settle atop the plateau. Is that normal wyvern behavior?"

    Of course, none of us had an answer for her, because none of us was an expert on the nesting habits of wyverns. Orl¨¦ans didn''t count by virtue of the fact that Jeanne Alter had been controlling them from the start, so nothing they''d done was what you could call natural.

    Then again, this place wasn''t really natural either. There was no telling if the wyverns had found themselves adrift in this Singularity and chosen this island because it suited them best or if they had all just appeared on this island and had no reason to leave. I was inclined to believe the latter.

    "Oh, great," Euryale drawled. "This is such a fantastic mess you lot have dragged us into. How, exactly, is this safer than when we were hiding on that one island inside of the Labyrinth?"

    "H-hey, it''s not like we were planning on this island being inhabited by a bunch of lizards with wings!" Rika squawked indignantly.

    "I wouldn''t worry too much, Master," Bradamante said. "They weren''t very strong. Granted, I''m not sure we found the, um, is ''alpha'' the right word?"

    Technically, the guy who did that study debunked the very idea of it shortly after he finished it, but, "It works well enough for shorthand."

    Emiya grunted. "I guess we''ll find out soon enough. At the very least, though, we should be able to put up a bounded field around to discourage any stragglers from wandering in."

    "W-will that even work on something like a wyvern?" Mash worried.

    "We don''t lose anything by trying, do we?" Ritsuka pointed out.

    "No," I agreed. "And even if it doesn''t work, we''ll still have three Servants keeping a lookout, just in case. Trust them to keep us safe tonight."

    Provided the ''alpha'' didn''t turn out to be something on the same scale as Fafnir, but if something like that was here, I expected we would have run into an actual dragon slaying hero to take care of it. On the off chance I was wrong, Siegfried should be just a short call away.

    As Drake rounded the cliffside and disappeared from sight, Bellamy deflated with a sigh, sagging.

    "Oh man," he murmured, dragging a hand down his face. "I totally blew it! She must think I''m a complete dork!"

    "I don''t know about a complete dork," Rika said sassily. Bellamy only groaned, because that didn''t make him feel better at all.

    "I don''t think you really need to worry about that, um, Captain Bellamy?" said Ritsuka, trailing into uncertainty at the end.

    "Just call me Sam," Bellamy said moodily. "All that captain stuff is just too formal."

    "Drake isn''t that uptight, Sam," Ritsuka went on. "At worst, she was confused about how much respect you were showing her, and she might have thought that was weird."

    "And now she thinks I''m weird!" Bellamy moaned. He sounded more like a teenage boy who was pining after a crush than an experienced pirate captain pushing thirty.

    "Well, this is just fantastic," said Euryale. "Of all the pirates we could run into here on this island, it just had to be one who worships the ground that cow walks on."

    "Wouldn''t it be more accurate to call it the sea she sails on?" Emiya asked sardonically.

    Euryale ignored him, and instead, she turned a glare in the direction of Artemis and Orion. "And to make matters worse¡­"

    "Oh my." Artemis smiled, but there was something menacing hidden in her expression. "It isn''t like we brought you here, Little Euryale. Us two lovebirds were just minding our own business on this island. We would have been fine staying here by ourselves the whole time!"

    Euryale scoffed. "Typical of you Olympians."

    Asterios rumbled something that might have been an agreement.

    "That''s not how Servants work," I told her matter-of-factly. "If you''re here, it''s because you were summoned, and if you weren''t summoned by the Grail and you aren''t here to chase it, then you''re here to help us fix things in some way, shape, or form. To get proper history back on track."

    Even if, being completely honest, I would have preferred to sail away and leave both her and her diminished lover far in the rearview mirror.

    Artemis turned that smile of hers my way. "And why should I care at all about proper ¡ª eep!"

    In a show of athleticism that should not have been possible in the body of a stuffed bear ¡ª although, being fair, moving shouldn''t have been possible in the body of a stuffed bear ¡ª Orion leapt upwards and smacked his blunted paw against her face with all the force of a soggy noodle. Against all logic and reason, Artemis recoiled as though it actually hurt her.

    "Ah! Darling!"

    "Don''t be stupid!" The instant his feet touched the sand, Orion leapt back up again, and he smacked Artemis several more times. "I know that skull of yours is thick, but even you have to understand the situation, so stop pretending you''re a selfish idiot! If proper history is out of whack, then it''s the responsibility of any Heroic Spirit to do whatever it takes to fix it!"

    He landed again, and this time, he crossed his arms and stared up at her imperiously, and just the image of it was so ludicrous that part of me wanted to believe I was dreaming.

    "And since you''re the one currently occupying my Saint Graph," he said sternly, "that means the responsibility falls firmly on you!"

    Rubbing at her cheek as though his smacks had actually stung, Artemis sighed. "Fine. You win, Darling. Just as long as you don''t smack me anymore!"

    Orion huffed. He might as well have said, ''no promises.''

    "I feel like I just watched a domestic violence incident," Rika said faintly, a conflicted expression contorting her face, "but it was¡­far, far too weird and way too cute."

    "Yeah," her brother agreed.

    Euryale, with the tips of her ears burning red, hid her face in her hands like a niece who had just watched her aunt and uncle get into a heated argument at Thanksgiving dinner. I didn''t blame her.

    Orion turned to me. "We''ll be coming with you. Just as long as you don''t send me into battle, okay? As much as I hate to admit it, I''m dependent on this klutz over here, so I can''t do anything by myself."

    I¡­wasn''t sure why he thought we were desperate enough to send a teddy bear into battle. Did we look that desperate? I''d been doing my best to make sure we didn''t.

    "I¡­think we can promise that."

    Euryale grunted softly. Under her breath, she muttered, "That''s just great. Who are we inviting along next? Zeus? Poseidon?"

    Asterios gave her a quiet, sympathetic rumble. At least Artemis didn''t have a track record of sleeping with just about any woman that breathed, for however low of a bar that was.

    I didn''t respond to Euryale''s sarcasm; instead, I turned to Bellamy, who still looked miserable. "And you? I know we talked a little bit about it earlier, but we didn''t really formalize anything. Are you going to join us, Bellamy?"

    "Is Captain Drake even going to want me?" Bellamy murmured sullenly.

    "Didn''t you hear her earlier?" Rika asked incredulously. "Three new friends!"

    She pointed at Artemis, then Orion. "One, two," and then she pointed at Bellamy, "three."

    Slowly, Bellamy lifted his head and looked around, casting his eyes across our entire group. It only took him a second to do the math, and once he had, he started to perk up, his shoulders lifting along with his spirits.

    "Hey," he said. "Hey, hey!" A smile broke across his face. "Hey, yeah, you''re right! She did list me in the group of three new friends! That means¡­she accepted me, didn''t she?"

    "I think she''d accept a ham sandwich if it called her captain," Ritsuka mumbled, but the only one who seemed to hear him was Emiya, who snorted.

    Bellamy turned, all smiles, towards Rika. "Hey, I needed that! Thanks, uh¡­" His brow furrowed. "Who are you, again? Sorry, I don''t think we were ever properly introduced."

    Actually¡­ No, they weren''t. We just hadn''t really gotten around to it amidst everything else. Guess that was something we needed to rectify, wasn''t it?

    One by one, I started pointing out the members of our group.

    "The redhead is Rika." Rika gave him a cheery little wave, smiling broadly. "The brunette next to her is her brother, Ritsuka."

    Ritsuka coughed into his fist. "We''re twins, technically."

    "Really?" Bellamy said, eyeing them skeptically. "You guys don''t really look anything like each other."

    "Fraternal," the twins said simultaneously, like they got that a lot. They probably did.

    "He''s Emiya, Archer class Servant." Emiya grunted a greeting. "The girl in armor is Mash."

    Mash bowed. "Pleased to meet you, Captain Bellamy!"

    "Same!" said Bellamy. "And it''s just Sam, Mash."

    Mash smiled. "Sam it is, then!"

    And lastly, "Euryale and Asterios." I nodded to Bradamante. "You''ve already met Bradamante and Arash."

    "When I fished you guys out of the ocean!" Bellamy agreed.

    "Fou!" the little gremlin protested.

    "And this is Fou," Mash added, placating him with a scratch under the chin. "He''s¡­ I guess you could say he''s sort of like our mascot."

    Orion huffed and regarded Fou evenly. "You''re welcome to it, buddy. I might be cute and cuddly now, but in my normal form, I''m the pinnacle of manliness!"

    He posed like he was some sort of bodybuilder, and being entirely fair to him, if he was human and as built as he was claiming to be, then it would have shown off his muscles quite nicely. As he was, however, he looked more ridiculous than sexy, a parody of a great and powerful hero. If I was watching a satire, he would have fit right in.

    "Fou!" Fou huffed, and he leaned in as Mash offered him more scratches.

    "He''s also cuter than you," Bellamy said honestly. He waved at the thing. "Hello, Fou! Nice to meet you!"

    "Hey!" Orion squawked.

    "Fou-kyuu kyuu-fou-fou." As though to say, The pleasure is all yours.

    "As for what we''re doing here," I said, "you''ve already heard some of it, but to be more specific, we''re part of an organization whose job it is to correct things like this endless ocean, what''s called a Singularity, and restore history to its proper course."

    "And you do that by retrieving the Holy Grail," Bellamy concluded. "Right?"

    "By defeating whoever possesses it," I confirmed. To head off the inevitable question, "Drake''s Grail is one belonging to this era, and one she got in proper history, so we have no reason to take it. The one we''re concerned about is the one designed specifically to throw things off course, and it''s currently in the possession of Blackbeard."

    Bellamy let out a low whistle. "That guy''s here? Man, you guys sure have your work cut out for you, huh?"

    "I''ll say," Rika huffed. She shuddered theatrically. "I''m gonna need so many showers after this is over to wash the creep off of me from when he checked me out. Ugh."

    "He''s the one who was chasing us yesterday," said Ritsuka. "When you almost rammed into us in the middle of that storm."

    Bellamy let out an awkward laugh. "Yeah, sorry about that," he said sheepishly. "I was trying to escape from my own creepy stalker. Wasn''t expecting to run into anyone else crazy enough to sail straight at the maelstrom like that."

    The twins both turned pointed looks my way, as though to accuse me of being the one crazy enough to do just that, but I pretended not to notice. It wasn''t like anyone had any better ideas at the time, and ignoring Hektor dropping in and knocking me overboard, it had worked out just fine.

    "So that''s our current goal," I said. "Defeat Blackbeard somewhere where we don''t have to worry about diving to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve his Grail, retrieve it, and that will return things to normal. We''ll go back to our headquarters and Drake will continue on with her life as though nothing happened."

    Because for all intents and purposes, nothing would have.

    "And I guess us Servants go back to the Throne when it''s all said and done?" asked Bellamy.

    "Not necessarily," said Mash. "If a Servant is willing to continue working with us, we can take them back to Chaldea when we Rayshift. Bradamante, Siegfried, Queen A¨ªfe, and El-Melloi II all decided to stay with us and help restore history past their original summonings."

    "You''d be welcome to come along, too, when this is over," Ritsuka offered. "But you don''t have to if you don''t want to. Sir Lancelot decided to stay behind in Rome, and Jeanne d''Arc stayed behind in Orl¨¦ans."

    Bellamy ducked his head. "Man, you''re throwing out some pretty famous names, there. I''m just a humble pirate. I''m sure those people are a whole lot more awesome than I am."

    "We''re two kids from Tokyo," Rika told him, gesturing between herself and her brother. "You''re already way more awesome than us."

    Bellamy still didn''t look sure. It was almost unbelievable that he could be so humble when Drake was so bombastic and Blackbeard was so¡­Blackbeard.

    "Think about it," I said. "You don''t have to make up your mind right now, and the offer doesn''t expire."

    "Yeah¡­"

    "Not going to ask us?" Euryale drawled.

    I arched an eyebrow at her. "Would you accept it if I did?"

    The huff that escaped her nostrils might one day have grown up into a snort. "Why would I?" she asked. "It''s not like I''m of any use to you as a Servant, and frankly, I''ve no interest in being your organization''s pet goddess." She glanced pointedly at Fou. "You already have a mascot, after all."

    Asterios rumbled thoughtfully next to her, his expression wistful. "Might¡­be nice¡­have home¡­"

    My cheek twitched, just barely. A home, a place to belong ¡ª I wondered if that might have been the thing he would have wished for on the Grail. Would securing his loyalty be as simple as offering that to him? Could we afford to pass up on the chance if it was?

    Rika looked up at Asterios and stared at his horns. "I mean, you might have to be careful about hitting your head on some doorways, but¡­"

    She turned to me expectantly, waiting for the final verdict. "We''d have to run it by the Director," I hedged, "but I don''t see any reason why not."

    As long as he remained mostly as he had since joining up with us, then provided he didn''t start rampaging randomly or anything, there was no reason we should pass up on a Servant like him. He''d been remarkably docile, in fact, and for a Berserker as strong as he was, that was already as uncommon as it was incredible.

    "Oh dear," said Artemis. "Are you going to offer it to us as well? Oh my, I don''t know if I can accept, this is so sudden!"

    "Hey," said Orion, "you''re not forgetting this is a package deal, are you? You think I want to be stuck in this form any longer than I have to be? Of course we''re saying no!"

    "But Darling," she said, "weren''t you just the one who was saying it was your duty as a Heroic Spirit to help them out?"

    Orion huffed and crossed his arms. "This and that are two different things! At least if we help them fix this place, I can be back to normal faster. If we go back with them to that Chaldea place just like we are now, then I''ll be stuck as a teddy bear for the foreseeable future! I refuse to suffer this humiliation an instant longer than necessary!"

    "It might make it easier to get attention from other female Servants," Artemis said slyly.

    Orion stilled. If he''d been human, a cold sweat might have broken out on his brow.

    "That''s a low blow," he told her. "Especially since I know you''re just saying that so you can tag along with me and make sure that I don''t!"

    "Phooey!" Artemis pouted. "You figured me out too quickly!"

    "Of course I did! I know you too well for you to pull that kind of trick on me!"

    "Oi!" Drake called down from atop the cliff above us, interrupting them. Her hands were curved around her mouth. "You lot coming? It ain''t much of a party without the guests of honor! And we need our expert chef!"

    Emiya sighed. "Of course they do. When I became a Heroic Spirit, I never would have guessed that I''d spend most of my time after being summoned to save the world cooking meals for various historical figures."

    "Well, maybe if you were a little less good at it," Rika said.

    "You''re not asking him to start throwing, are you?" her brother said. "What''s to stop him from screwing up on purpose now?"

    Rika''s eyes went wide as she panicked. "Wait ¡ª hey, that''s not what I was saying at all! Emiya!"

    "I think there''d be a mutiny if I tried something like that," Emiya said. He shook his head and shrugged helplessly. "It can''t be helped. I''m the one who got myself into this situation, so I might as well take responsibility."

    Rika wiped a hand across her brow. "We''re safe! Whew!"

    Maybe that would teach her to be a little more careful about her teasing. It was all in good fun until someone took actual offense, and the minute it turned malicious, I would be the first to put my foot down.

    "We might as well go join the party," I said, "before they send someone else to make sure we didn''t get lost."

    "Or eaten," Euryale said dryly.

    Somehow, considering the ¡ª literal and figurative ¡ª firepower currently on this island with us, I didn''t think that one was particularly likely. To the twins, I said, "Standard rules apply."

    The twins just nodded; it was Bradamante''s face that lit up like a Christmas tree. She snapped off a crisp, obedient, "Of course, Master! You can count on me!"

    Euryale heaved a sigh, but she didn''t offer any other protest, and Asterios seemed a little hesitant, but oddly hopeful. I didn''t think he had quite gotten used to the idea of being accepted as easily and eagerly as the pirates had that first day we "recruited" the two of them, but that didn''t mean that he didn''t enjoy it.

    It was probably the first positive contact with other people he''d had since he died.

    As we walked, following the footprints in the sand left behind by Drake and her crew when they all stomped past, Bellamy leaned over towards Bradamante and quietly asked, "Standard rules?"

    "If any pirates assault any of us with unwanted advances, I''m free to remove them of their pride!" Bradamante answered with far more cheer than it really warranted.

    Bellamy, wide-eyed and disturbed, leaned away. "Er, r-right¡­"

    I could almost hear him thinking, ''I guess that means me, too, doesn''t it?''

    "Us Masters are also supposed to be careful about how much alcohol we consume," Ritsuka added, because everyone had heard Bradamante and figured out what the conversation was.

    "Wait, really?" Bellamy blurted out. "But that''s half the fun of a party!"

    "Because we''re technically still on the clock as long as we''re here, Bell-boy." A second after the words left her mouth, Rika''s face wrinkled. "Bell-boy? Sorry, that one totally sucks, I can definitely come up with something better than that!"

    "And this island isn''t exactly a hotel," her brother pointed out. She stuck her tongue out at him.

    "Sam is still fine, guys," Bellamy told them.

    "So, u-um, Sam," said Mash, "if you don''t mind me asking, what''s your relationship with Captain Drake?"

    Bellamy''s face turned bright red, and there was enough tension in his body to string a violin. "R-relationship?"

    Seemingly completely unaware of what she''d just implied, Mash nodded. "It seemed like¡­you really looked up to her, earlier."

    "Oh." The tension eased out of Bellamy''s body. "Yeah, I guess you could say that."

    He looked up at the sky, towards the clouds that were painted orange and gold and pink by the sun slowly inching towards the horizon.

    "She''s Captain Drake," he said. "The great hero who circumnavigated the whole world and brought down the invincible Spanish armada. The greatest pirate to ever sail the seas! Yeah, I looked up to her when I was alive. Still do! She''s the golden standard of what a pirate should be! An inspiration to any sailor that left home to seek his fortune on the high seas!"

    "Heh," Rika chuckled under her breath. "Golden standard, he says¡­"

    "Growing up, that was just the kind of sailor I wanted to be," Bellamy went on. He laughed, self-deprecating. "Things¡­didn''t really turn out that way, though. You know? By the time I was captain of anything, I was already a pirate, and after that, I died in such an embarrassing way after just a single year. A sailor missing the signs of a bad storm on the way, that''s just kind of pathetic, isn''t it?"

    "You''re the richest pirate to ever sail, if it makes you feel any better," I told him.

    He blinked at me, stunned. "Really?"

    "There was an article about it after the remains of your ship were found off the coast. Forbes has you listed as the number one wealthiest pirate in history."

    The whole haul had been valued somewhere around a hundred and fifty million dollars, by modern day standards, which meant his great-great-great grandkids could have comfortably lived off of it, especially if he''d invested it and let it grow. Not the richest man ever, but more than enough to live off of.

    That was why Dad had lamented missing his shot. Even if he had to hand it all over to a museum or something, just the finder''s fee would have been a hefty sum.

    "Well, I''ll be damned," Bellamy said.

    "I didn''t know you were interested in that kind of thing, Miss Taylor," Mash said.

    "My Dad ¡ª" The words choked in my throat as I realized just exactly what I''d been about to say.

    But the damage had already been done, because everyone had noticed and was looking at me expectantly. I couldn''t hold this secret so tightly now, not when I''d already almost given it away.

    And just this much should be fine, shouldn''t it? It wasn''t like Dad and his career somehow revealed all of the things I was supposed to be keeping quiet about.

    "My Dad was a union rep for the Dockworkers," I forced myself to say. "We didn''t live all that far south of where the wreck was discovered. Dad was always talking about what it would have been like to be the one who found it."

    "Huh," said Rika. "A union rep and a literature professor. That''s an unlikely pairing if ever I''ve heard one."

    "I happen to think it sounds lovely!" said Artemis. "Don''t you agree, Darling? Very romantic!"

    "It is!" Bradamante agreed.

    "Almost as unlikely as a goddess and a hunter," Orion said sarcastically. "And yet, here we are."

    "Was?" asked Ritsuka. "Did he¡­?"

    The worst part was that I didn''t know. I''d never found out whether or not he survived Gold Morning. And even if he did¡­

    "The same as your parents."

    And maybe that was a good thing. After all, if Dad had come with me to this world and somehow convinced Marie to let him join Chaldea, then it was very likely he would have been among the hundred-eighty or so people who died in the sabotage that crippled us. At least this way, I could pretend that he was with all of those who were erased by the Incineration, so saving the world would mean saving him, too.

    "We''ll save them," Ritsuka said firmly, and when I looked over at him, he was serious, resolute, and confident in a way that I didn''t see on him too often. "Everyone, including your dad. We''ll save all of them."

    He looked like a Master.

    I turned away, back in the direction of the party. The celebrations had already started, although some of the crew were still setting up camp, and several of them, anticipating Emiya, had even begun collecting what firewood they could for him to use in his stove.

    "Yeah. We will."

 Chapter XCVIII: High Seas Ambush

    Chapter XCVIII: High Seas Ambush

    "That''s quite enough for now," Da Vinci said. "We can make more space for extra supplies, but even so, there''s a point where it just becomes excessive, yes?"

    I arched an eyebrow. "More isn''t always better?"

    Behind me, Drake cackled. "There''s no such thing as too much!"

    "In this case, I''m afraid there is," Da Vinci said. She sighed. "Well, we lost a lot of supplies in the sabotage, but the greater damage was to our energy infrastructure and personnel, so we technically already had more than we needed for the foreseeable future. If our methods of preserving food so that it didn''t spoil weren''t so effective, a lot of this would be going to waste."

    "We''ll go over the inventory and recalculate," Marie promised from her spot behind Da Vinci. "If we turn out to have the supplies necessary, then¡­I-I suppose we can see about¡­expanding Servant meal days from their current schedule."

    Standing next to me, Ritsuka smiled. "I''m sure Bradamante and the others will be happy to hear that."

    "Can''t say I''m not happy to hear it, either," Arash said, smiling.

    "Even if they don''t need to eat, Emiya''s food really is delicious," Mash agreed. "Everyone will appreciate being able to eat it more, which will no doubt increase camaraderie and cut down on conflict within the team. The Director really is thinking far ahead!"

    Marie''s cheeks turned red, which still looked odd through the blue tint of the hologram. "W-well, of course! Any Servant of Chaldea should be honored to do their duty to humanity, b-but being able to eat good food and enjoy hobbies is essential for morale! Of course I''m thinking about that sort of thing!"

    Da Vinci chuckled under her breath, but wisely chose not to tease Marie.

    "If it''s necessary, then we''ll make more room and have you send over more supplies," she said instead. "That way, no matter what, the Servants can eat meals more often. It might make more work for Emiya, but that''s the price for being popular, I suppose."

    "I don''t think Rika will disagree," Ritsuka said. "She''s already had to fend off two different people who want him to be their personal chef."

    Deliberately, I didn''t glance back over my shoulder, where Rika was sitting among the remains of camp and helping herself to an after breakfast snack, courtesy of Emiya. Perhaps somewhat ironically, she was the one who abused his talents the most. I''d have been a bit more worried about it, but Emiya seemed genuinely happy to cook, no matter how much he complained about his food being more important to people than his combat skills.

    Marie huffed and crossed her arms. "Even if I were willing to allow something so ludicrously wasteful, Servants can''t stay behind once we bring the rest of you back. The Counter Force would remove them."

    "So we''ve explained," I replied. Multiple times, in Nero''s case, and even then, I wasn''t sure it had truly sunken in until the very end.

    "A damn shame," Drake added. "That guy''s cooking is fit enough to make the Queen herself jealous. The royal chef could stand to learn something or two from him!"

    Had Drake rubbed elbows with Queen Elizabeth yet? I couldn''t remember for sure.

    "In any case," I said, steering the conversation away from food, "we''re going to skip past the caldera. There doesn''t look like there''s anything interesting there, and it''s not the best place to be caught by surprise by Blackbeard and his team."

    "A sensible decision," Da Vinci agreed. "I saved you some trouble, by the by, and did a few scans to try and get a feel for the state of those last two major islands. Although there weren''t any Saint Graphs that we could detect in the general vicinity of that caldera, there were responses from around the archipelago."

    "And you didn''t tell me?" Marie snapped.

    "You were eating lunch, Director," Da Vinci said simply. "I decided it wasn''t urgent enough to interrupt your meal ¡ª or my own preparations for receiving these supplies at a moment''s notice."

    Marie grimaced and pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes squeezed shut like she was fighting off a headache.

    "How many?" I asked. I wasn''t getting my hopes up for a good answer, but it needed to be asked either way.

    "That, unfortunately, I can''t tell you," Da Vinci said with an apologetic smile. "Our sensors still have far more limited resolution at range, remember? The reading was strong, but that could mean either a single Servant of particular power or multiple Servants that are, shall we say, somewhat more average."

    A breath hissed out of my nostrils. Yeah, that was about what I was expecting. So it could either be Herakles or half a dozen less famous pirates, and we wouldn''t know until we were much, much closer. By that point, it might just be moot, because the sensors wouldn''t tell us anything that we weren''t about to learn firsthand and fast.

    "Guess we''ll just have to find out the old fashioned way." Drake grinned. "Just the way I like it! More fun that way!"

    The scowl on Marie''s face said that she disagreed very strongly and was very ready to let Drake know exactly how much.

    "Anything else you can tell us?" I said, trying to keep things from escalating.

    "Yes, actually," Da Vinci said, surprising everyone. "There was another strange reading from the archipelago, but I can''t quite get a hand on what it means."

    "Strange how?"

    Da Vinci grimaced and spent a few seconds mulling over how she was going to describe it. Eventually, she settled on, "Like the Holy Grail, except very much not. It''s not a Servant either, so that means it''s likely a Noble Phantasm of some kind, and if I can detect it from this far away¡­"

    "Then whatever it is, it''s gotta be powerful," Ritsuka finished for her.

    Powerful enough that we were going to have to be very careful about approaching it.

    "Oh dear," said Mash, brow knitting together. "That sounds¡­worrying."

    "Does this change our plans at all?" Arash asked, looking at me.

    "No," I said, because, "the most likely answer is that it''s a defensive Noble Phantasm set up by whoever is hiding out in the archipelago. If they''re hiding out on the archipelago, then either they don''t have a ship to go looking for the Grail or ¡ª"

    "They''re hiding from Blackbeard," he concluded, nodding. Like he''d read my mind. "That makes sense. It might even be a combination of both."

    My lips drew tight. So it could even be that whoever it was had the same idea we did: force Blackbeard into a position where his ship was almost useless and ambush him with overwhelming strength.

    There was no telling if our mystery Servant ¡ª or Servants ¡ª would be allies, but if they were¡­ That would give us a numbers advantage, wouldn''t it? For that matter, if we drew in Blackbeard along the way, whoever it was might just do our job for us before we even had the chance to ask.

    The only thing we were going to have to be careful about was whether or not they were after the Grail themselves. Things would get really messy if we had to fight about that as soon as Blackbeard was gone, but I had confidence in my team. As long as we weren''t fighting aboard the Golden Hind, at least. We didn''t need our ride disintegrating beneath our feet.

    "Captain Drake," I began, fiddling with my communicator to bring up the map again, "how long do you estimate it''ll take us to get to that archipelago?"

    Drake stepped closer to me and leaned over, squinting at the map. "Mm, probably another couple of days. Three, I wanna say, although maybe four or five on the long end. It''s pretty far from here."

    "The distance between the islands seems to keep increasing," Mash murmured.

    "That would be my estimate as well," Da Vinci agreed. "That is, based upon your previous travel speeds and distance you have to cover. Four days would fit the math."

    "Provided the conditions remain in their favor," Marie pointed out sourly. "If the wind turns or the currents change, it might take several days more."

    Drake shrugged, unbothered. "That''s just how it is. Ain''t no certainties in sailing, just preparation, grit, and a dash of good luck."

    Marie didn''t like that much, either. Being fair, neither did I, but half of my battles had been me seeing an opportunity and taking it. Having to improvise on the spot was old hat by now.

    "Then we might as well set sail as soon as possible," I said. "The last thing we want is for Blackbeard to come here and find ourselves wedged between his cannons and the plateau. The longer we stick around, the more likely that becomes."

    Drake grimaced.

    "Aye," she said sourly. "Much as I''m looking forward to a rematch with that scumbag, we''re sitting ducks on this island. Best make tracks right soonish."

    Marie nodded grimly. "We''ll keep an eye on things from this end. If the situation starts to turn, remember, you can call for backup at any time."

    "Frankly, I''m disappointed you haven''t tried it out already," Da Vinci added cheekily.

    "Senpai tried," Ritsuka told her. "It didn''t work inside the Labyrinth."

    Da Vinci''s eyes flashed. "It didn''t, did it? Well, in a place like that, I suppose it only makes sense, doesn''t it? A challenge I''ll have to overcome."

    "We''ll check in again when we arrive at the archipelago," I promised the both of them. "Provided it''s safe, that is."

    Marie nodded again. "And we''ll contact you ourselves if something changes with that reading."

    Stay safe, her eyes told me sternly. She didn''t say the words out loud as the hologram flickered out and the connection cut.

    "Well," said Drake, "guess we might as well get out of here, yeah? No reason to stick around this island."

    "Yeah."

    Mash retrieved her shield, and then we went back over to rejoin the main group. The camp, by this point, had been reduced to the barest of bare bones, not even enough of it left to be called a skeleton, and most of the crew had already made their way to load it back up into the longboats. Aside from a few stragglers, the only ones left were the Servants and Rika, waiting for us to finish sending supplies back to Chaldea.

    "So?" Euryale said as we rejoined them, drawing the attention of everyone else.

    "There are two more islands we haven''t explored yet," I said. "The caldera and the archipelago. Da Vinci confirmed for us that there aren''t any Servants in the direction of the caldera, so we''re going to go straight to the archipelago instead."

    "Wait," said Rika, "you just said we''re skipping the caldera because there aren''t any Servants that way. Does that mean there are at the archipelago?"

    How perceptive of her.

    "According to Da Vinci, it''s either one strong Servant or a group of more average Servants."

    Rika blinked at me. "Wait, really?"

    "Yes."

    "Oh dear," said Artemis. "That sounds like a fight waiting to happen."

    "If you didn''t want to get into fights," Orion grumbled, "then why did you even bother coming here?"

    "Because I was worried about you, of course!" she said.

    "Master," said Bradamante, "could this be that scoundrel''s base of operations?"

    The thought had crossed my mind, but I didn''t think it likely. The main reason why not? Because if you set aside the Noble Phantasm Da Vinci had detected there, powerful enough as it was to show up on Chaldea''s sensors from so far away, if the theory was right that Blackbeard''s Noble Phantasm grew more powerful the more Servants were part of its crew, then it just didn''t make sense for him to keep any "in reserve." It was better for him to bring his whole group along, just for the security of knowing he was always at his absolute best.

    "No," I said. "The only way that makes sense is if he had them guarding the Grail, but Mash said she detected it when we fought him in the storm."

    "The amount of magical energy he was releasing was too much for an ordinary Servant," Mash said.

    "So there are still some more parties at play here," Emiya rumbled. "Hm. Wonder who would go down there just to hide."

    And why it was they''d chosen the exact same strategy as the one I''d come up with. My money was still on the idea that they didn''t have a ship. That wasn''t as big a problem for a Servant as for a human, but navigating around this place without at least some skill at sailing was a tall order, even for a Servant. It wasn''t so much the lack of a ship that would be the problem as it was the lack of sailing experience.

    "That''s one of the things we''re going down there to find out."

    "And what''s the others?" Bellamy asked.

    "To set up an ambush," I told them all. "The reason why we''re skipping the caldera isn''t just because there''s no indication anyone is even there. It''s also a terrible place to go if we want to force Blackbeard onto land so we can fight him properly."

    "If all goes well, we should be able to get two birds with one stone," Arash added. "Find allies, and lure Blackbeard in so we can take him out without having to worry about his ship."

    Euryale scowled. "You''re going to make us bait again, aren''t you?"

    Asterios shifted uncomfortably, frowning.

    "No more so than the rest of us," I said. "He''s going to expect you to be with us, so it''s more like the ship he''s going to be chasing. We''re going to use that to lure him down to the archipelago."

    Bellamy made a noncommittal sound in his throat. "Not too sure how well that''s going to work. That guy was sharp as a tack. He might see right through it."

    I grimaced. "Then we''ll just have to make it convincing."

    Although I didn''t much like the ideas for how we were going to do that. Not after how our last skirmish with Blackbeard and his crew had gone.

    I didn''t want to be flung overboard again.

    "Hey, now," said Drake. "I don''t much like what I think that means."

    "Me, too!" Rika agreed. "Last time was way too damn close, Senpai!"

    "If it comes to it, we''ll call in backup," I said. "Before we have to worry about any of that, though, we need to get off this island. The archipelago is a four day trip, and the sooner we leave, the less we have to worry about Blackbeard showing up and bringing the plateau down on our heads."

    Rika tilted her head back and looked up, face twisting as she imagined it. "You make a very convincing argument, Senpai."

    "I disagree," said Euryale. "Servants like Asterios and I don''t have to worry about something so mundane as a rockslide at all." She let out a longsuffering sigh. "Of course, it''s not like we can stay here by ourselves, is it? If it was that easy to beat him, there wouldn''t have been any point in running away in the first place."

    Asterios closed his eyes briefly, pained, and rumbled a quiet agreement.

    "Hey, now," said Drake. "You''re part of the crew, now, remember? That means you''re under our protection! Means part of our job is to protect you from that bastard!"

    "Us, too!" said Mash.

    Ritsuka nodded like it was that simple. "You''re our ally."

    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Euryale''s brow furrowed as she eyed us skeptically. "I thought you guys didn''t like me."

    "We don''t have to like each other to work together," I told her bluntly. "We just have to have goals that are similar enough. You want Blackbeard off your back. We need the Grail he has to fix this Singularity. Blackbeard is after you. Us working together only makes sense."

    "And it''s not like we''re going to sit back and watch him do whatever he wants to you," Arash added. "Friends or not."

    Euryale blinked, bemused, and then she let out a sigh. "Well," she said, "when you put it that way, we''d be stupid to walk away from help like that, wouldn''t we?"

    Asterios rumbled an agreement.

    If only the whole "enemy of my enemy" thing was always that easy. For me, too often, petty grievances and grudges had gotten in the way, so I was still getting used to so many more people agreeing with me now. The novelty of it hadn''t quite worn off yet.

    With all of that taken care of and the camp packed away in the longboats, our group, now almost three times as big as it had been when we arrived in this Singularity, made our way back down to the beach. Euryale insisted on Asterios carrying her on his shoulders, and Asterios obliged her without complaint, smiling a little all the while.

    I guess when you spent your entire life locked away and treated like a rabid animal, even something as normal as having someone ride on your shoulders was something to cherish.

    We all clambered into a cramped longboat together, and even with Emiya, Arash, and Bradamante taking spirit form to give the rest of us more room, it was a bit more of a snug fit than any of us would have liked. It certainly made for an¡­interesting ride, and if the lack of elbow room distracted us enough that nobody even thought about getting seasick, well, that was an unintended benefit.

    An uncomfortable fifteen or so minutes later, we were climbing out of the longboats and back onto the familiar deck of the Golden Hind, and while the rest of us were either familiar enough with it that it was nothing special or ambivalent to it altogether, Bellamy was all but vibrating with his excitement.

    "This is the Golden Hind!" he said, his voice an octave higher than normal and his mouth stretched into a grin that threatened to split his face in half. His head swiveled about, trying to take in every plank and splinter as though to commit them all to memory. "I can''t believe I''m actually standing on the deck of the Golden Hind!"

    "Maybe ya might consider standing someplace else?" Drake suggested wryly as she took the wheel. "So that the boys can get us going and we can start sailing for that archipelago?"

    Bellamy immediately snapped to attention. "Y-yes, Captain Drake! Sorry, Captain Drake!"

    Drake''s crew laughed, and Bellamy''s face turned steadily redder. He looked like he wanted the ocean to rise up and sweep him overboard.

    "Now, this, here," said Bombe. He slapped Bellamy on the back. "This is a fan, wouldn''t ya say, Cap''n?"

    "Don''t much care what he is," said Drake, "as long as he''s not in the way."

    "R-right," Bellamy mumbled. "S-sorry."

    And then he disappeared into spirit form. Drake sighed. "Ah, shit. Didn''t mean to frighten him off like that."

    "Oh dear," Artemis said worriedly.

    "That kid needs to unwind himself a little," said Orion. "I know those heavenly mounds are incredible, but ¡ª ack!"

    Smiling, Artemis stomped him into the deck mercilessly. His wheeze sounded more like something belonging to a dog''s squeaky toy.

    "I wouldn''t worry too much," I told Drake as our group settled into its usual place on the deck behind her. "It''s not easy to meet your heroes. He just needs a minute to cool off."

    He was certainly doing better than I had the first time I met my own heroes. Not that it was a particularly high bar to clear, considering the circumstances. Armsmaster demanding to know whether I was friend or foe at the point of his halberd wasn''t exactly a stellar example of a friendly and open role model.

    "Have a lot of experience with that?" Drake asked me.

    "Enough."

    At least Drake wasn''t threatening the lives and safety of everyone Bellamy knew and loved. That already put her miles ahead of Alexandria.

    "It''s kinda in the job description," Rika chimed in. "You know, travel through time, meet famous people, shake hands with emperors and warlords. All in a day''s work at Chaldea."

    "The crazy thing is," Emiya shimmered back into existence, "she''s not wrong. We''ve already told you about some of that, remember?"

    Drake grunted. "Just not used to being the ''hero'' everyone wants to meet. Those other folk you met in the last three of these things as weirded out about it as I am?"

    The twins shared a look. I didn''t need to be a mind reader to know they were thinking about Nero, who already thought the universe revolved around her, and Jeanne, who didn''t even like being referred to as a saint, let alone treated like one.

    "Some of them," said Ritsuka.

    "But not all of them," Rika finished.

    "Bah." Drake pulled out her Grail long enough to take a swig of rum from its cup. "Guess I''ll just have to get used to it, eh? Francis Drake, famous pirate." She grinned. "Probably shouldn''t let that swell my head too much!"

    "Anymore than it already has, you mean? Too much bigger, and it might actually be the same size as those udders of yours," Euryale drawled. Asterios huffed a quiet laugh.

    Drake''s grin gained teeth. "As long as my hat fits, I think I''m just dandy!"

    Before long, we left the wyvern infested island and its towering plateau behind and set out on the open seas again. The sails were unfurled and caught the wind, and we were pulled along in the vague direction of our next destination. A four day journey stretched out ahead of us like a long country road.

    It didn''t take long for all of us to settle back into our roles for the trip, which unfortunately left our group without much to do again. Arash and Emiya could at least busy themselves with keeping watch for incoming enemies, but for the rest of us, there wasn''t much we could do besides sit and twiddle our thumbs.

    Not for the first time, I wished I''d brought a book to read. It was only the fact that it would have been more waterlogged than my shoes after Hektor knocked me into the ocean that had kept me from asking Marie to send me one earlier. If I fell in again, or if I just got rained on particularly hard, it wasn''t worth the damage that would do to my favorite books.

    Eventually, of course, the crew found things a little dull themselves, and maybe an hour after we set sail, the singing started up again.

    "There was a gallant English ship a-sailing on the sea!" one man began.

    "Blow high!" the rest chorused. "Blow low! And so sailed we!"

    "And her captain he was searching for a pirate enemy!"

    "Cruising down along the coast of High Barbary!"

    Rika perked up. "This one''s new!"

    "Look ahead, look astern, look a-weather and a-lee!"

    "Blow high!" the chorus came again. "Blow low! And so sailed we!"

    "I see a wreck to windward, and a lofty ship to lee!"

    "Cruising down along the coast of High Barbary!"

    Rika''s foot started going, tapping to the beat of the melody as her head bobbed. When the chorus came up again, she joined in, bellowing, "Blow high! Blow low! And so sailed we!"

    "Sounds like we''ve got our soprano again, boys!" one of the crew shouted, to cheers and laughter from the others.

    "''Oh no, I''m not a pirate, but a man-o-war!'' cried he!"

    "Cruising down along the coast of High Barbary!"

    Rika elbowed her brother and turned to him, grinning. "Come on, Onii-chan! Join in!"

    "I''m good, thanks," Ritsuka said. "I''ll leave the singing to you."

    She stuck her tongue out at him, and then she turned back around just in time for the next round of the chorus: "Blow high! Blow low! And so sailed we!"

    "For we have got some letters to be carried home by you."

    "Cruising down along the coast of High Barbary!"

    When the song ended a few minutes later, Rika clapped, and was joined by Mash, who looked like she was doing it more to be polite than anything else. Down on the deck, one of the pirates gave a mocking bow.

    "What about you, milady?" he called up to her. "Would you like to lead us into the next one? Mayhaps a song from your homeland?"

    Rika blinked and pointed at herself. "Me?"

    "Aye!" he replied. "We so rarely get to hear such a sweet voice as yours on our journeys, we''d be delighted to hear some more of it now!"

    "Oi! Fuck you, too!" Drake hollered. The crew laughed.

    "Well," Rika said coyly, pretending to think about it, "I guess I do know one song I could sing for you guys. It''s even a pirate song!"

    The crew broke out into cheers. "That''s more like it!" someone shouted.

    Drake looked over at Rika, lifting an eyebrow. "Well? Now you''ve done it, girl. They ain''t gonna give it up until they''ve got at least one song outta you."

    Rika''s mouth stretched into a grin, and she stepped forward until she was at the railing that sat at the edge of the top deck. She lifted one hand to her mouth, cleared her throat, and immediately, everyone was silent. The wind and the waves and the creaking of the ship were the only sounds that broke it.

    "The king and his men stole the queen from her bed," Rika began in a low, haunting cadence, "and bound her in her bones."

    Ritsuka groaned and dropped his head into his hands. "Of course it''s that one," he muttered. "Of course it is."

    "The seas be ours," she went on, her voice rising, "and by the powers, where we will, we''ll roam!" She lifted her arms, like a conductor commanding a symphony. "Yo-ho, all together, hoist the colors high! Heave-ho, thieves and beggars, never shall we die!"

    Her arms dropped.

    "Some have died and some are alive, and others sail on the sea. With the keys to the cage and the Devil to pay, we lay to Fiddler''s Green!"

    Her arms came up again.

    "Yo-ho," she began, and a moment later, someone picked up the chorus with her as the rest slowly joined in, "all together, hoist the colors high! Heave-ho, thieves and beggars, never shall we die!"

    Her arms dropped again, and the crew petered off to let her sing the next verse.

    "The bell has been raised from its watery grave. Do you hear its sepulchral tone? A call to all, pay heed to the squall, and turn your sail towards home!"

    This time, when she raised her arms, the whole crew, including Drake, sang out the chorus with the heavy, ponderous rumble of thunder, "Yo-ho, all together, hoist the colors high! Heave-ho, thieves and beggars, never shall we die!"

    When Rika dropped her arms yet again, there was a moment of silence, like they were waiting for the next verse, and when, after a few seconds, it didn''t come, then the cheering started. Rika, face flushed and a smile so broad it hurt to look at pulling at her mouth, stepped back away from the railing, took hold of her skirt, and dipped into a curtsy.

    "Well, it ain''t exactly what we''re used to," Drake said loudly, barely audible over the crew, "but it suits us just fine, I think! Ain''t that right, boys?"

    The cheering grew louder and more exuberant, and then, slowly, it began to die down. The crew returned to their duties, muttering their appreciations to each other about Rika''s song.

    "Gonna have to remember that one," Drake said as Rika returned to the group. "Save it for special occasions, yeah?"

    I wondered what she would think if I told her the context of that song. Knowing Drake, she''d adapt it as her own secret code.

    "Um, Captain Drake," Mash began.

    Drake looked back at us over her shoulder. "Yeah?"

    Mash opened her mouth, no doubt to remind Drake that they wouldn''t remember any of this when this Singularity was over and resolved, but then she seemed to think better of it and shook her head. "Nevermind. It was nothing."

    Drake arched an eyebrow at her skeptically, then shrugged and let it drop. "How about the rest of you?" she asked instead. "Anyone got any songs they feel like sharing?"

    Ritsuka shook his head. "Sorry. I was never all that great a singer. And, um, I don''t know anything I think you''d like. Mostly J-Pop, which I¡­don''t think anyone here would understand."

    "And anime theme songs," Rika added wryly, and then she perked up and turned to me. "Hey, wait! Senpai''s dad was a dockworker, right?"

    A union rep. It wasn''t exactly the same thing as actually working the docks.

    "Miss Taylor did say so earlier," Mash murmured.

    "Then you''ve gotta know a sailor song or two, Senpai!" Rika said. "Right? Can you sing it for us?"

    One or two. I''d been around Kurt and Lacey and the others enough to pick up a couple, although some of them were a bit¡­saucy. Saucier than Mom had wanted me to know, at that age, even if I hadn''t understood the innuendo until later.

    Back then, I think I sang along, probably mixing up half the words, but I¡­couldn''t actually remember the last time I''d sung anything. Not that I didn''t like music, just that books had always captured me more, and after Mom died, there just hadn''t been much reason to sing.

    Frankly, I probably sucked at it.

    Might be a good idea, Arash told me with the mental equivalent of a nudge.

    My lips drew tight. "Sorry. I don''t have anything."

    "Aw, c''mon!" Rika insisted. "You''ve gotta have something, don''t you?"

    "Maybe some other time, Rika."

    She pouted at me like an eight-year-old who had just been denied dessert. It wasn''t enough to change my mind.

    "I happen to know a few," Orion offered, his voice low with promise.

    Artemis'' hand landed on his head with ominous intent. If his body had been capable of it, Orion probably would have broken out in a cold sweat. "There are children present, Darling. I don''t think they need to hear any of those songs."

    Orion laughed awkwardly.

    "R-right! Of course not!"

    At the back of the group, Asterios nudged Euryale, and she heaved out a put-upon sigh as she stood. "Oh, fine," she said, sounding aggrieved. "I suppose it''s the least I can do."

    And so she stepped up to the spot Rika had taken and started singing. What, I didn''t recognize, but all things considered, it was probably an old Greek song, and it was a hauntingly sad melody about a young woman waiting every day for her husband to return home, holding out on hope that he would come back to her, even though he had been lost at sea. It ended with a mournful verse about how the woman waited every day for the rest of her life, and her husband never returned.

    The crew ate it up like one of Emiya''s meals. The only one on the entire ship who didn''t seem moved was Calliope, who looked like she''d eaten something sour, judging by the scowl on her lips. I filed it away for future reference ¡ª another hint of some kind about who she really was that would almost certainly make sense later on.

    The rest of the day passed like that. Despite the fact that she''d sung for them before, Euryale seemed even more emboldened by the reception of her singing now, and she sang several more songs that probably came from the same era as the first, but begged off after she''d gotten through another three.

    "If I''m the only one singing, then I''m the only one they''ll want to sing," she said pompously when she sat back down. "Spending my entire time on this ship singing for them would just be too much of a chore."

    Although the way she said it was exceedingly arrogant, I hated to admit that she wasn''t entirely wrong. I wasn''t much of a judge of singing voices, but even I could tell that hers was easily the best on the whole ship.

    After Euryale decided she was done, the crew settled back into more shanties, bringing back some of the familiar ones we''d already heard. Rika joined in on the chorus when she knew the words, and when she didn''t, she just tapped her feet and bobbed her head to the rhythm, humming along.

    At least she was entertaining herself. It wasn''t like the shanties the crew was singing were bad either, so it wasn''t an unpleasant way to pass the time, even if I still would have preferred having a book to read instead.

    By whatever fortune, we weren''t accosted by Blackbeard the entire day. There was no sign of the Queen Anne''s Revenge on the horizon in any direction, not a single speck of maroon sails, which was almost as much a cause for concern as it was relief.

    What was Blackbeard doing? Had we really shaken him from our tail, or was he slinking along with his crew in spirit form, staying just outside the range of our detection? How were we going to lure him into an ambush if he wasn''t following us?

    Questions we were going to have to answer at some point. Getting to the archipelago first was a higher priority. It didn''t stop me from going to bed that night with those thoughts swirling about in my head.

    The next day was much the same as the first, only Bellamy had finally cooled off after that little embarrassment from the day before, because he was there instead of hiding in spirit form. He''d taken to helping out the crew like he was one of the members of it, singing along with the shanties and even himself introducing a few new ones from his own era. The crew seemed absolutely delighted to have him.

    "Even Blackbeard didn''t start out as a captain, you know," he told us over lunch when Rika asked about it. "Some of us got commissions first, sure, but some of us were just regular old sailors before we got voted into the big chair. Er, the big hat? You know what I mean."

    "So you jumped straight from genin to kage," said Rika, nodding like that made some kind of sense. Her brother, at least, seemed to understand what she was saying.

    "I-I guess?" Bellamy agreed, confused. "Well, I was a sailor in the Royal Navy for a while, but it''s not like I got very far. Even when me and a couple of friends joined up with Captain Hornigold, I was still just a normal sailor until the crew voted him and Blackbeard out, not first mate or nothing. I never was sure why they made me captain at all, if I''m honest."

    "A pirate with humility," Euryale drawled. "Imagine that."

    "Dunno if you can call it humility," Bellamy said humbly. "I just never forgot that my entire crew was the ones who decided they wanted me leading them. I only got to where I was because they wanted me there." He hummed. "Maybe the fact that my career only lasted a year had something to do with it, too? I wasn''t in charge long enough for it to go to my head, I guess."

    Whatever the case was, it was something of a relief. Bellamy was down to earth and personable. I wasn''t sure I could have handled it if he was as rowdy as Drake, or worse, if he was more like Blackbeard. One of each was more than enough.

    And still, by the time we crawled into Drake''s cabin for bed that night, there was no sign of Blackbeard. There wasn''t even the hint of his maroon sails or his infamous jolly roger. I might have wondered if he got sucked down into the vortex when we cut across it, except no Servant worth being called one ¡ª especially not one who also happened to be a pirate ¡ª would be killed by something like that.

    If Bellamy was right about just how clever Blackbeard actually was, then I was certain he was planning something. Whatever it was, it wouldn''t be anything good. Not for us.

    All the more reason for us to get to the archipelago as quickly as possible. The more time we had to set up our ambush, the more confident I was in our chances of outthinking Blackbeard.

    The third day dawned cold and miserable, a striking change from the relatively balmy weather we''d been experiencing for most of our time in this Singularity. Plenty of teeth chattered as we came out of the cabin and onto the deck, and I wasn''t ashamed to admit that mine were among them, not when the temperature had dropped something like twenty or thirty degrees overnight.

    Even more unfortunately, Da Vinci hadn''t prepared a setting in our mystic codes designed for colder weather, so the only thing we could do was suffer through it and plow on. At the very least, it wasn''t close to freezing, so we didn''t have to worry about the dangers of exposure. It was unpleasant, but manageable.

    "We hit one of them cold zones again," Drake told us when she saw Rika hugging herself to stay warm. "Sorry to say, can''t do too much about it. We packed for warmer weather ourselves ¡ª weren''t expecting this crazy shit anymore than you lot did."

    "It''s f-f-fine," Ritsuka said. "J-j-just¡­taking a bit to g-get used to."

    "I''d k-k-kill for a jacket," Rika said.

    Wordlessly, Emiya made her one, a red button-up thing that looked like it was designed for slightly colder weather than we were dealing with, but Rika took it gratefully and slipped it on immediately.

    "You''re a godsend, Emiya," she told him. "We''d be lost without you."

    "I''m sure you''d manage somehow, Master," he said. "Even if you were a little bit¡­colder."

    And then, he made several more, one each for each of us living humans in our group, and I accepted it with a nod and a tight smile. I wasn''t sure what he was trying to say that mine looked more like a sports jacket of some kind, a white body with black sleeves and shoulders. It was actually a little too big on me.

    "Thank you, Emiya," Mash murmured as she pulled hers on.

    "Must be nice," Orion said, eyeing her enviously. "I''m just a stuffed bear, I don''t have a real fur coat."

    "Sorry," said Emiya, "they don''t really make coats in your size."

    "Darling!" Artemis cried, and she scooped up Orion and pressed him into her chest. If she squeezed too much harder, I thought she might just pop out of her dress. "Here, I''ll keep you warm!"

    "I think I''d rather be cold," Orion muttered.

    The cold persisted for most of the rest of the day and into the evening, putting a damper on the whole crew''s mood, broken only by a hot lunch made by Emiya that helped to warm us up. It was only after the sun had set and the sky had started to lose the last bits of light that the temperature rose again, flipping like someone had toggled a switch. One moment, it was like we were in late autumn, with winter closing in, and the next, we were back to midsummer.

    I couldn''t wait until this Singularity was over and done with. Chaldea might have been in the middle of Antarctica, but at least it was climate controlled.

    It meant, at least, that by the time we climbed back into bed again that night, it was back to being comfortable and warm, and I had no trouble at all slipping away into sleep.

    Day four, fortunately, didn''t start with a temperature swing, so everyone was a lot more lively and in much better moods than the day before. After a good breakfast, Bellamy went down to help out on deck again, and I pulled Drake aside to review the map and make sure we were still on course.

    "Mm," she hummed, narrowing her eyes on the trail of dots that marked our path. She reached out and dragged her finger up from our current location back to the island we''d left. "We drifted a bit last night."

    "Is it anything we have to worry about?" I asked.

    She shook her head. "Nah. Ain''t that big of a drift. We just added an extra couple hours to the trip, is all. We''re still making great time. Should be there around dinner this evening."

    So somewhere around sunset.

    "Early enough to go ashore?"

    "If our luck holds," she said. "Gonna want at least enough light that we ain''t gonna run afoul of a reef or something. Don''t do us any good if we wind up marooned in that place ¡ª easy pickings for that Blackbeard bastard, yeah?"

    Better, at least, than being stuck between his cannons and a giant plateau, but no, we didn''t want to be stuck anywhere. In the worst case scenario that the Golden Hind got sunk, Bellamy should be able to take us where we needed to go on his own ship, but it was better if things didn''t get that bad.

    Hopefully, Blackbeard wouldn''t ambush us in the middle of the night while we were anchored off of the archipelago. We still hadn''t seen any sign of him, and I wasn''t sure which idea worried me more ¡ª that he was following us and we simply hadn''t detected him, or that he wasn''t and was off somewhere making plans that we couldn''t account for.

    The idea that he might have some method of avoiding detection by our sensors was a big concern. There was no way a guy like Blackbeard wouldn''t abuse that as much as he possibly could.

    Those thoughts distracted me for most of the rest of the day, and even Emiya''s wonderful food couldn''t pull me out of it for very long. I wasn''t so preoccupied that I didn''t notice the concerned looks that Arash shot me every now and again, though. Somewhere along the way, he and Emiya had settled into watch shifts, and they traded off every few hours between watching the horizon and keeping an eye on us Masters.

    The trouble was, I didn''t know what to expect from Blackbeard. Our initial encounter with him was very head-on. Straightforward. There was nothing to say whether Hektor''s idea to try taking us Masters out ¡ª and me in particular ¡ª was his or Blackbeard''s, but even then, it was a rudimentary tactic. Obvious, even, for any Servant who wasn''t bound up in things like chivalry and honor. Taking out the Master was the safest way for a Servant to beat another Servant.

    But if Blackbeard was as shrewd as Bellamy had said, then he was more than capable of coming up with something that would catch us all off guard, and that was the last thing I wanted.

    "Penny for your thoughts?"

    I blinked and looked back at Arash, then past him and towards the spot where the twins were running another poker game, this time teaching it to Bellamy, Orion, and Artemis, the latter of whom looked the least interested. I''d backed out of it earlier, because I wasn''t in the right headspace for it.

    I turned back towards the ocean. There was nothing as far as I could see, nothing except water and waves and blue sky, uninterrupted. The sun overhead crept slowly towards the horizon, painting undulating lines of gold along the surface of the ocean. Sunset would be upon us soon.

    "I''m worried," I admitted quietly. "We haven''t seen hide nor hair of Blackbeard since that first time."

    He hummed thoughtfully and propped himself up on the railing by his elbows, mimicking my posture.

    "Think that''s a bad thing?" he said.

    "If he''s as clever as Bellamy says he is¡­"

    Arash nodded his head. "You think he''s planning something."

    "I think he has enough firepower that he shouldn''t need to," I said. "Or at least shouldn''t think he needs to."

    The Revenge was strong enough that we couldn''t face it head-on ourselves. Galling as it was to admit, the best move for Blackbeard was probably to just keep blasting us until we ran out of energy.

    "Maybe he doesn''t think he does," Arash suggested. "It might have seemed overwhelming from our side, but he might have a weakness we didn''t notice while we were fighting. Besides needing other Servants to make his ship stronger, I mean."

    "A weakness?"

    What weakness? When he could just use his Noble Phantasm over and over and over again, that already made him a threat that was hard to beat. Adding Servants to his side just made him even more powerful.

    I straightened.

    Unless the Servants on his side meant that he couldn''t spam his Noble Phantasm. No, I realized, that was the problem for him, wasn''t it? The more Servants he had on his ship, the more powerful his ship became, but the less often he could use his Noble Phantasm, because he had to support their existence.

    "A weakness."

    "You thought of something?" Arash asked.

    Nothing concrete, no, but if he couldn''t use his Noble Phantasm as often because his Grail couldn''t put out enough power to support both that and his team of Servants at the same time, then ¡ª

    "Master!" Emiya called down from the crow''s nest, interrupting my train of thought. "There''s a ship ahead ¡ª"

    Boom was the muffled sound of a distant cannon firing, and salty seawater splashed up onto my face as something hit the waves nearby. I recoiled, sputtering, when some of it got in my mouth.

    "Shit!" Drake cursed.

    "What''s going on?" Rika demanded as she scrambled to her feet. "Emiya, what''s happening?"

    "That was a warning shot!" Drake told us.

    Mash gasped and manifested her shield immediately. "A warning shot?"

    "From where?" Ritsuka asked incredulously.

    "Oh dear."

    Artemis lifted an arm and pointed out across the front of the Golden Hind, off into the distance and towards the horizon. We all followed the direction of her extended finger, and I couldn''t have been the only one expecting to find Blackbeard and his Queen Anne''s Revenge waiting for us, cannons aimed and ready to blast us to splinters.

    It wasn''t the Revenge, but that was a cold comfort, because there, growing larger as it sailed towards us, was not a single ship, but an entire fleet.

    "Oh, fuck me," Orion breathed.

    "I think," said Artemis, "that whoever is hiding on that archipelago is telling us to stay away."

 Chapter XCIX: High Seas Chase

    Chapter XCIX: High Seas Chase

    My neck almost cracked from how quickly my head turned towards the crow''s nest.

    "EMIYA!" I shouted up at him, because I didn''t have that convenient Master-Servant bond. "THEIR FLAG, IS IT ¡ª"

    "I don''t recognize it!" he called back. "No sign of Blackbeard!"

    I held the breath that I was tempted to let out. Okay. There was that, at least. My eyes weren''t wrong. The Revenge wasn''t in that fleet assembled across from us, which meant that we didn''t have to suddenly worry about facing Blackbeard with a fucking fleet of Noble Phantasm level ships. We''d managed to dodge that particular bullet.

    "I know I don''t really believe in him," said Rika, "but thank God."

    That didn''t mean we were home free, though. The fact that Blackbeard wasn''t among them didn''t mean that the fleet that had just shot at us wasn''t very much prepared and willing to sink our ship or that they were suddenly our allies. It just meant that they weren''t automatically our enemies either.

    "Is that really a good thing?" asked Ritsuka. "At least if it was Blackbeard, we''d know he wants Euryale alive. These guys don''t look like they care either way."

    "I-I''ll protect us the best I can, Master," Mash promised, "b-but¡­against that many ships, all firing on us at once¡­"

    Depending on how many cannons they were bringing to bear, it might be too much even for her. Even with less power packed behind every shot than Blackbeard''s had been, enough cannons firing sequentially would wear her down ¡ª in terms of energy, if nothing else.

    However we looked at this, fighting them was the worst idea. If it was just the numbers, then there were ways to mitigate that as a factor, draw them into a series of one-on-one engagements that would be to our favor, but when those were all a part of some Heroic Spirit''s Noble Phantasm, that mean they outclassed us in terms of firepower, too, and the Golden Hind wouldn''t be able to do any meaningful damage.

    "I could shoot down the first barrage on my own," Arash warned, "but I can''t do that consecutively. It takes me a minute to prep the arrows for that."

    Emiya landed next to us with a soft thump.

    "Unfortunately, I can''t even promise that much," he said grimly. "If we knew who the Servant was, I might be able to take him out first, but in a fleet that big, there''s no way of telling without an obvious flagship."

    And on the defense, the Aias would only last so long, too, before it got overwhelmed, no matter how incredible it was.

    We needed to negotiate.

    I took three quick strides over to the wheel. "Captain Drake."

    "Yeah?" She glanced at me askance. "You got any ideas there? Because this situation here looks a little hairy, and I''m not game to run up against a fleet like that all by our onesome."

    "We need to surrender."

    Drake''s head spun towards me so fast that I wasn''t sure she hadn''t given herself whiplash.

    "WHAT?"

    But she wasn''t the only one to shout that at me so incredulously, because it sounded like half of the ship had decided to join in with her, including the twins, Mash, and even a couple of the Servants.

    "What''s the big idea ¡ª"

    "Are you out of your ¡ª"

    "Just whose side are you supposed to be ¡ª"

    "Senpai, I''m usually all for your plans, but ¡ª"

    "Is this your idea of protecting ¡ª"

    "EVERYBODY, SHUT UP!" Drake roared, and the furor died down almost immediately. She glared daggers at me and pointed with one finger my direction. "You. Explain. Fast. While we still have time before they sink us."

    "We can''t fight them," I said simply. "The only place we can retreat to is another four days of sailing away. We need to try and negotiate. The only way we can make that happen is if we surrender first."

    Drake stared at me, silent.

    "It might work," Arash added. "We''d have to be extremely careful and ready to run at any moment. But in the worst case scenario, it should tell us who''s in charge over there."

    "So we can attack them?" said Emiya. "You know, I''m pretty sure there''s an article about that in the Geneva Convention."

    Calliope, who had been so quiet that I had almost forgotten she was even still with us, snorted. "You mean the agreement that won''t be signed for another four hundred years?"

    Emiya shrugged.

    Drake, without saying anything else to me, whirled back forward and barked, "Bombe!"

    "Aye, Cap''n?" Bombe shouted back.

    "Furl the sails!" Drake ordered him. "Make sure the cannons aren''t exposed! And then¡­bring our flag down."

    Bombe did a double take. "C-Cap''n? Are you sure?"

    "Did I stutter?" Drake demanded. "Yeah, I''m sure! Get those sails furled up and that flag down off the mast! We don''t wanna give those tossers any reason to shoot us all full of holes!"

    "A-aye, Cap''n!"

    Bombe turned to the rest of the crew. "Well, you heard her, you sorry sacks of shit! Hop-to!"

    The crew jolted and then scrambled to follow the order, running about across the deck like mice in a trap. The ropes pulled taut as they took the sails from full to furled, and I watched the canvas steadily roll upwards as someone else went to bring down the flag that was flying from atop the center mast above the crow''s nest.

    "Chaldea is¡­technically a UN organization, right?" Ritsuka muttered.

    "Yes, Senpai," Mash told him just as quietly. "The Chaldea Security Organization is a joint venture between the Mage''s Association and the United Nations, which means we actually are beholden to international law."

    "Remember when the Boss Lady made the others into Master-cicles?" Rika reminded him.

    Ritsuka nodded. "I remember that it was against international law to do that without consent."

    "And she said she''d worry about something so meaningless later," Rika said with a bit of humor.

    "I hope you know what you''re doing," Euryale told me scathingly. "We have no guarantee that these pirates will be any more reasonable than that creep, after all."

    We didn''t. All we had to go on was the fact that they''d been willing to fire a warning shot instead of just sinking us outright, and while that didn''t prove anything, it might mean they were at least reasonable enough that this negotiation would work.

    I hadn''t quite figured out what we were going to do if it didn''t. Like I''d told Drake, the only place for us to sail back to was another four days of sailing away, and it would put us right back where we were when we left it.

    The air was tense and quiet as the sails were fully furled and the flag brought down. The ship slowed to a leisurely cruise, never quite reaching a full stop, and everyone seemed to be holding their breaths as we waited on the fleet to see if they would accept our "surrender." No one was willing to break the silence, like doing so would somehow ruin the whole thing, and the churning in my stomach had nothing to do with the rocking and bobbing of the ship under the waves breaking on its side.

    After what felt like an hour, however, the fleet finally started to move, advancing on us as one, solid mass, all congregated around a single vessel at the front. Whether that meant anything about the Servant in charge, I couldn''t say. If he was a man well-versed in tactics and strategy, that front ship would be a decoy, and the real flagship would come up from behind, after we were surrounded, and wait for us to make one wrong move.

    It was how I would have done it.

    "Is that it?" Rika asked anxiously. "Are they coming here to, you know, negotiate?"

    "Looks that way," Drake said solemnly. She wasn''t smiling. Her hands were gripped to the wheel like vices, her knuckles a stark white.

    "How would we know for sure?" Ritsuka asked.

    Drake''s mouth quirked into a humorless smirk. "Five minutes from now, we''ll still be here instead of swimming with the fishes."

    Mash''s hands curled into fists.

    The fleet drew steadily closer. As it did, I could make out more of the details of the ships in it, and they were all fairly impressive. Warships, definitely. None of them were exploratory or cargo ships, they were all decked out with cannons and weaponry, ready to engage in a fight at any instant, and they were built like sailing fortresses.

    Whoever this guy was, he was probably an admiral or something like that in life. A bigshot who led entire naval battle groups into combat and probably had quite the history behind him.

    The fleet came within range of the Golden Hind''s cannons, which put us well within reach of theirs. Despite the tension that was thick enough to cut with a knife, no one fired or was fired upon. Their cannons seemed to be out and ready to go, but the fuses were unlit and the threat they posed was aimed at an oblique angle ¡ª a miss, if it was fired at us, but still situated in such a way that it could change very quickly.

    "Looks like your idea is paying off," Drake said grimly. "Whoever this guy is, he respects a surrender well enough, I''ll give him that. Might be he really is willing to negotiate like a civilized person."

    "Then it looks like that''s our cue!"

    My head whipped up ¡ª along with almost the entire rest of the crew ¡ª just in time to watch four bodies drop down from above, leaping from¡­

    ¡­Was that the Revenge?

    "Since when could it fly?" Rika burst out hysterically.

    So high in the sky that I had to squint to see it against the glare, the massive bulk of the Queen Anne''s Revenge hung aloft as though it was suspended on invisible strings. Even before my eyes, it was sinking rapidly down, coming closer and closer to us with startling speed and casting an ever expanding shadow over the Hind.

    Fuck. How long had he been following us? Had he actually done something as ridiculous as avoid our sensors by being too high for us to detect?

    "Always!" Blackbeard shouted down from above. "You don''t think I''d show off all of my trump card on the first go around, do ya?"

    "Arash!" I shouted, and in the same motion, I ripped my Last Resort from its sheath and tossed it towards the deck.

    Arash leapt into action, snatching my dagger out of midair, and he collided with a CLANG with the lithe, teenage Alexander, driving them both down onto the deck. The crew scattered and scrambled to get out of the way, giving the two of them wide enough berth to avoid being caught in the brawl.

    I had no time to watch it, because the other three had dropped with him ¡ª Hektor, Anne, and Mary ¡ª and I had to rush as quickly as I could to get to safety as Mash stepped forward with her shield. The ping of Anne''s first shot ricocheting off of its surface might as well have been a thunderclap for how closely I listened for it.

    "Bradamante!" I called next.

    As though she''d already been in motion before I even opened my mouth, Bradamante leapt into the fray, charging towards Anne, except Mary rushed to her defense with that ridiculously huge cutlass, and despite her small stature, she was very much an expert in its usage. She deflected Bradamante''s opening strike towards the side and pressed the opening, and even though she wasn''t quite good enough to land a hit like that, she didn''t need to be, because Anne had lined up a second shot in the interim and forced Bradamante to take a step back, too.

    It would almost have been an amazing sight to watch, the way the two of them weaved around each other, like they were dancing partners out on the floor, if only they weren''t our enemies. Instead, it was a problem, because it meant that Bradamante couldn''t get in for a decisive blow ¡ª when Anne''s shot was deflected, Mary swooped in to attack the opening, and when she had to retreat, Anne was there to give her the distraction she needed to do it.

    They covered for each other like they''d been doing it their whole lives. All things considered, maybe they had been.

    Even when Artemis jumped in to lend a hand, they were just too coordinated, and Bradamante and Artemis simply weren''t, because the sum total of their time fighting side by side was against the wyverns on that island. At the very least, however, the sides seemed evenly matched enough that I wouldn''t have to worry too much about Bradamante and Artemis losing.

    I chanced a quick glance past them towards Arash, but nothing had changed. He and Alexander were still going at it in a lightning fast melee that I could barely see at all, and I had no hope of keeping track of who was doing what specifically. Their arms were just blurs to me.

    The crew, at least, had managed to find places to hide or just avoid the fighting. I was a little ashamed to admit that I didn''t pay that as much attention as I should have been. The approaching fleet from earlier had slowed down, like it was waiting to see what happened first, so we couldn''t expect any help from them.

    My eyes flitted about, trying to keep some semblance of connection to each of the fights. Emiya had vanished, no time to think about where. Anne, Mary, Alexander, with Blackbeard still on the Revenge. That left ¡ª

    I whirled around. "Hektor!"

    He appeared amidst us much as he had before, smiling ruefully. He''d used the chaos of the other fights to try and sneak up on us again. "Guess I''ve been found out."

    He whipped his spear around as the others turned to face him, and Bellamy went flying with a long, drawn out, "Shit!" He tumbled over the railing and into the water with a splash, much as I had a few days ago.

    Mash gasped and spun about. "Miss Taylor!"

    Hektor''s spear lashed out again and found purchase on Mash''s shield, and with her footing precarious, she couldn''t stop herself from being forced back a step. In that brief moment, he spun back around to face Asterios, who towered over everyone at his full height. Those massive halberds were gripped tightly in his hands.

    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    "I''m gonna need you to step aside, big guy," said Hektor casually.

    "No," Asterios rumbled like the ocean tide.

    Hektor sighed. "I guess if that''s the way it''s gonna be¡­"

    He whipped back around, lashing out with a strike that landed on Mash''s shield with a thunderous CLANG, and I saw behind him Asterios lift one of those enormous halberds to attack Hektor''s unprotected back.

    Except Hektor wasn''t that sloppy. He would never be that sloppy.

    "Don''t!"

    I couldn''t get the word out fast enough. The halberd came down, and I caught the barest glimpse of Hektor''s grin as he spun back around again. The halberd missed and slammed down into the wooden boards of the Golden Hind''s deck ¡ª Drake''s furious squawk was so unimportant right then that I barely even noticed it ¡ª and Hektor stepped into Asterios'' guard as he cocked his spear back and magical energy surged.

    "Durindana Pilum."

    Blood splattered across the deck. Asterios stumbled backwards, a keening groan tearing from his lips as one of his halberds clattered to the deck limply.

    "No!" Euryale cried. "Asterios!"

    "Asterios!" Mash echoed. She made to jump to his aid.

    But she was forced to stop after a single step when Hektor turned his spear back our way. "Step out of line," he said without looking, "and I''ll take the chance you give me to kill those Masters of yours."

    Mash stepped back, teeth gritting and hands clutching tight to her shield.

    "This guy," Rika growled, "he really doesn''t fight fair, does he?"

    No, because fair was for knights in their honor duels and kids playing games. On the battlefield, you did what it took to win, even if it was distasteful.

    "Now¡­" Hektor turned his spear back towards Asterios. "I don''t like doing it if I don''t have to, but you''re going to make me kill you before you give up that goddess, aren''t you? And after I controlled my Noble Phantasm to avoid a lethal blow, at that."

    Asterios, bleeding from a new wound that had been drilled into his body, growled and glared, hunched over. One arm sagged, rendered almost useless by the gaping hole through his shoulder. Hektor sighed.

    "Guess there''s no getting around it, huh? Oh well. You brought this on yourself."

    "Rika, Ritsuka," I said lowly. "Get ready."

    They glanced over at me, but they had the good sense not to ask me to explain. There wasn''t time for it, right then.

    Hektor cocked his arm back. "Stand still. If I aim this wrong, I''ll accidentally kill that goddess, and then I''m in big trouble."

    Asterios'' lips pulled into a vicious snarl.

    "Durindana¡­"

    "First Aid!"

    "Momentary Reinforcement!"

    "First Aid!"

    Two First Aid spells hit Asterios, stitching up at least part of his wound, at the same time as Rika''s Momentary Reinforcement increased Emiya''s strength so that when he came down on Hektor from above, his overhead chop nearly ripped Hektor''s spear right out of his hands.

    But only "nearly." Despite the power behind Emiya''s attack, bolstered by Rika''s spell, Hektor still managed to keep a grip on his spear and avoid taking any damage.

    "Damn," said Emiya as Hektor backed away a step warily. "I thought for sure that opening was big enough for me to land a decisive blow, but it looks like you older heroes really do know what you''re doing."

    Hektor''s mouth twitched into a smile. "Comes with the territory, I''m afraid."

    He glanced around, taking stock of his situation, but the tables had decidedly turned. Even with Asterios still injured, this was now a three on one fight. If Mash stayed back, we were still in an advantageous position, because he was wedged between Emiya and Asterios with nowhere to go.

    "Well now," he said mildly. "This is a pickle, isn''t it?" His eyes flicked towards the other fights, still happening in the background, but too fast for anyone to take advantage of a moment of distraction. "Three on one, and me without any backup. Seems like the right idea here is to retreat."

    My eyes narrowed on him, and when I saw his skill spread, my lip threatened to curl. Disengage. Of course. There really wasn''t anything stopping him from cutting and running whenever he wanted.

    "You''re just going to run?" Emiya taunted. "So much for the vaunted pride of a Heroic Spirit."

    Hektor huffed a short laugh. "That might have worked on another hero, but for an old man like me, pride doesn''t mean too much. I know better. Pride just gets you killed." He hummed thoughtfully. "On the other hand, my boss is gonna be super pissed off if I fail to bring that goddess back a second time, so I''m not so sure I can afford to leave."

    He sighed. "Guess there''s nothing for it, then. Hey, Mister Archer, you wanted to see my Noble Phantasm for yourself, right?"

    He hefted his spear again. Magical energy surged. Emiya choked.

    "This close range?" he demanded. "Are you out of your mind? You''ll be destroyed, too!"

    Hektor smirked. "Then I guess you''ll just have to block it."

    He cocked back his arm, and Emiya threw one of his out.

    "Durindana ¡ª"

    "RHO AIAS!"

    "Pilum."

    A barrier marked by seven flower petals bloomed in front of us, just in time to block¡­a length of wood. It bounced against the barrier impotently and flopped onto the deck. Emiya''s face reflected the stunned disbelief that churned in my stomach.

    And instead, Hektor turned around, stepping towards Asterios, and lifted up his sword, the blade glowing a bright, brilliant white.

    He''d tricked us.

    "Asterios!" Mash shouted.

    "No!" cried Euryale.

    "Durindana ¡ª"

    The sword came down.

    "Spada."

    Except a black shape threw itself between them, hand raised, and Calliope shouted something ¡ª over the roar of Durindana searing through the air, I couldn''t hear what. Light flashed, bright and blinding, and I had to close my eyes against it so that all I heard was the tinkle of shattering glass and the crack of splintering wood.

    I opened my eyes again as soon as I could, blinking the spots from my vision, to find Calliope gasping against Asterios, leaned back against his chest as he held her with his nearly useless arm. Red blood coated almost the entirety of her front, staining her dress a dark maroon, but she was still in one piece, still alive, even if she was grievously wounded.

    Hektor himself was untouched, but he had stumbled back a step as though she had clocked him upside the head. He looked almost confused for a moment, until he laid eyes back upon Calliope.

    "You."

    Calliope sneered. "Me."

    BANG came the retort of a pistol firing, and Hektor jumped out of the way of the shot that bit into the deck where he''d been standing. Bellamy, soaked head to toe and hanging from the rigging, cocked the hammer of his pistol back again.

    "Asshole!" BANG! "Who even does that?" BANG! "Learn a new trick, would you!" BANG! "Mangy old dog!"

    Hektor deflected or dodged each shot, his sword now a spear once more. Each round bit into the wooden planks beneath us, gouging more holes out of the Golden Hind.

    "STOP SHOOTING UP MY GODDAMN SHIP!" Drake roared.

    Hekter leapt up and landed on one of the railings, balanced there like some kind of acrobat. "I guess it really is time for me to get going, seeing as I''m so badly outnumbered. Before I do, though¡­"

    His eyes slid over to Asterios, who was still clutching the bleeding Calliope, and I caught his intent immediately.

    "Emergency Evasion!"

    I snapped the spell off just as Hektor''s boot came down where Asterios'' head used to be ¡ª except it didn''t, and Hektor landed instead on the very back deck, where Euryale was now undefended, because I had just given him a clear shot at her.

    My stomach churned and fire flooded my veins. I''d been played.

    Euryale screamed when he scooped her up under one arm and struggled to get free, but no amount of pounding her tiny fists against his thigh would be enough to make him drop her. Even if she was like Stheno and had been made stronger by becoming a Servant, it still wasn''t enough to make up the gap in their abilities.

    "Emiya!" Rika shouted like he wasn''t right in front of us. "Get her back!"

    Emiya bent his knees, prepared to throw himself at Hektor and rescue Euryale. He looked just as furious at being tricked as I was.

    "Careful, now," said Hektor as he positioned the blade of his spear next to Euryale''s throat. She froze, staring wide-eyed down at it, and so did Emiya and the rest of us. "My hand slips while I''m defending myself and we''re both screwed."

    "Damn it," Emiya breathed. "You really are a bastard, you know that?"

    Hektor offered us a lopsided smile. "I''m just doing what my Master ordered."

    A thousand different retorts sat on my tongue. A scathing comment about the Nazis and Nuremberg was in there somewhere, and I didn''t particularly care just then whether Command Spells and the Holy Grail made that comparison less applicable. There were plenty of Servants who would have stuck to their principles even then.

    I didn''t get the chance to use them. Hektor leapt up and towards the crow''s nest, landing with pinpoint precision on the very top of the mast. My hand rose up to track him as a spider''s thread snapped in my mind''s eye and my magic circuits flipped on.

    "Gandr!"

    "Senpai!" Rika said, panicked, thinking that Hektor might make good on his threat.

    But my Gandr spell splashed uselessly against his body, flowing off of him like water off a duck''s feathers. About what I''d expected, considering the level of his magic resistance skill. Nothing I could do without a week''s preparation would be able to do anything to him at all.

    Damn it.

    Like he hadn''t even noticed my attack, Hektor leapt up again, and the Revenge''s anchor dropped down just in time for him to reach up and snag it so that Blackbeard could pull him back up. He looked down at us from there, his feet balanced on the anchor flukes, tilted his head, and offered us a mocking salute.

    "Emiya ¡ª"

    "Against someone on his level, a clean shot is too much to ask for. He dodges the wrong way, I''ll hit Euryale instead."

    And that would defeat the whole point. Fuck.

    My mind raced for options, but there weren''t many. My prosthetic''s phantom limb wasn''t a bad idea, but it wouldn''t be strong enough to do anything meaningful, not like it had against Medusa. There was no way I could do something as ridiculous as pry his fingers off of Euryale one at a time, and even something like that would probably be blocked by his Magic Resistance.

    But my prosthetic wasn''t the only tool in my arsenal. Da Vinci had recently given me a new one, and while it hadn''t worked inside the Labyrinth, this wasn''t inside the Labyrinth, was it?

    Not Siegfried, this time, not Jeanne Alter or Shakespeare. This required both precision and overwhelming firepower. When I tapped into the reserves inside my mystic code, I focused on the Servant we needed, and lines of light traced themselves across my body.

    "A¨ªfe ¡ª"

    BANG

    Something slammed into me with the force of a freight train, and for a wild fraction of a second, I thought I might actually have been shot, because as my body went flying, I caught a brief glimpse of Blackbeard''s smoking gun pointed down at me. Whether he knew what I''d been about to try or just didn''t want to give me the chance to try and be clever, he''d stopped me from summoning A¨ªfe.

    Just like in the movies, the sound of a ricochet pinged in my ears.

    And then I hit the railing, and whatever breath was left in my body was driven from my lungs. As I collapsed to the floor, a distant part of me felt nostalgic. I''d had my back broken against Leviathan, too, hadn''t I?

    "Miss Taylor!" Mash cried.

    "Senpai!" the twins echoed her.

    Two heartbeats after I landed, I sucked down a gasping breath and realized, no, my back hadn''t been broken, but it certainly felt like it. Even the act of breathing itself sent shoots of pain up and down my spine, like every vertebrae had been doused in acid and then shoved back into my body.

    "First Aid!" a pair of voices shouted, and sweet relief rocketed through my body, easing away the pain of my wounds. It still took me an extra couple of seconds to gather myself and shakily pull myself back to my feet.

    Mash had saved my life, I realized. She pushed me out of the way of Blackbeard''s bullet. Even if she hadn''t been gentle, the alternative was probably a hole the size of a grapefruit blown through my body.

    Up above, those handful of seconds I''d been down had been enough for Hektor to climb back up aboard the Revenge''s deck, and the instant he had, Blackbeard leaned over the side, stuck his fingers into his mouth, and let out a sharp whistle.

    "Time to go, ladies!" he called down. "The train''s leaving, and we ain''t got no brakes once we get up to speed! Move it or lose it!"

    Immediately, Anne, Mary, and Alexander broke off from their fights. Mary disappeared without fanfare, but Anne took a quick second to give Bradamante a salute and a wink, saying, "See you later, cutie! Next time, I''ll be sure to plunder some of your booty!"

    She was gone, too, before Bradamante could sputter an indignant response.

    Alexander was the last to leave, laughing as he disengaged from his fight with Arash. "This was fun, Mister! Maybe next time, we''ll be able to fight more seriously!"

    I was tempted to snap off a Gandr shot against him, too, but even at rank D, his magic resistance was enough to completely nullify it. It would be pointless. A waste of energy.

    Arash attempted a last second blow, but Alexander vanished, and my dagger cut through empty air instead. A scant few seconds later, he rejoined the rest of his team up on Blackbeard''s ship, and the instant they were all back on board, the Revenge lurched into motion and started to fly away like it was sailing on wind currents instead of water ones, retreating away from the fleet that had stopped advancing ¡ª probably to watch the fight and figure out what was going on before getting involved.

    "They''re getting away!" Rika said unnecessarily.

    "No!" Asterios cried. He attempted to stand, like he was going to chase after them, but Calliope gasped in his arms, and he looked down at her, torn.

    "I can stop them," Emiya said hurriedly, "but I can''t guarantee I won''t hit Euryale in the crossfire. Master ¡ª"

    "No!" And this time, it wasn''t just Asterios who shouted that out, it was half the crew, Rika, Ritsuka, and even Mash.

    "Like hell!" Drake added. "I wanna shoot bastard down as much as anyone, but we made a promise to that little lady, and I aim to fucking keep it!"

    "If you have any better suggestions, I''m all ears!" Emiya snapped back.

    "We have to follow them!" Ritsuka said. "Get Euryale back!"

    If for no other reason than that Blackbeard didn''t have anything else he really wanted from us, then yeah, we had to follow them. There was no telling where he''d go when he had everything he wanted, or what he''d do afterward.

    Even if I didn''t like her, I wasn''t about to let him do whatever he wanted to her.

    "Captain Drake!" I said. "Turn us about!"

    Drake spun the wheel. "Aye! And get the sails down, Bombe, we need as much speed as we can get!"

    "Aye, Cap''n!" Bombe shouted back.

    The ship lurched back into motion as the sails unfurled to full, but I didn''t need to be an expert sailor to see that the Revenge was moving away fast and we probably wouldn''t manage to even finish turning before we lost sight of it.

    "Hope you got some more plans stuffed away," Drake said, "because even if we had the wind on our side, it don''t look like that guy''s gonna wait for us to catch up!"

    Asterios groaned.

    "It''s because it''s a Noble Phantasm," Mash said. "Since it doesn''t have to obey the laws of normal physics anymore, it can even do something as incredible as fly. If only the Golden Hind could do the same."

    "I''m sorry," Rika said a little hysterically, "I forgot to bring my jar of fairy dust!"

    Arash appeared amidst our group without warning. "I''ll be able to keep track of them for a while, but only so far, and if they go above the clouds¡­"

    It wasn''t like I could send my ravens out either. Anne would snipe them out of the sky the instant she saw them, and I had no illusions I could keep them hidden from her for long enough to make it count.

    "Shit!" Drake grunted. "Sure would be a convenient moment for this wish-granting Grail of mine to pull off a neat trick!"

    A beat passed. Nothing happened.

    "Was worth a shot¡­"

    "Captain Drake!" Bellamy called as he leapt off of the rigging where he''d been hanging. He landed with a wooden thump on the deck with us. "Captain! I-I have a solution! W-with your permission, Captain, I''d like to ¡ª"

    "If it can get us up there after that asshole?" Drake said, cutting across him. "Permission fucking granted!"

    Bellamy blinked for a moment, stunned, and then shook his head as though to clear it away. "R-right! Then, um, with your per ¡ª I-I mean, Captain, I need the wheel!"

    Drake stepped away from the wheel immediately and gestured at it impatiently. "Get to it already! Just don''t fucking break anything else, you hear? My poor ship has already been through enough today!"

    Bellamy hesitated a moment longer, then stepped up and took hold of the wheel. "Right. O-of course. Don''t break anything. Got it."

    He took a deep breath, then let it out slow. His grip on the wheel tightened.

    "Whydah Gally!"

    And a golden glow lit up across the ship, seeping through the cracks in the wooden boards and filling in the holes and gouges that had been carved into it during the fighting. The Golden Hind groaned as glittering, ephemeral patterns etched themselves onto every surface, tracing a mimicry of wood grain and polish ¡ª no, I realized, as a second ship laid itself over the Hind like a shell, supporting what was still there and replacing the parts that were missing.

    "What in the name of¡­" Drake whispered.

    Like an extra armor plating, the Whydah continued to materialize. The sails on the mast shimmered and suddenly filled, like a strong wind had caught them, and an unfamiliar flag sprang to life at the top, fluttering in a nonexistent gust. Although I couldn''t see it well from that angle, a figurehead described itself in gleaming lines on the front of the ship, and I imagined the words "WHYDAH GALLY" had probably formed on the back.

    And then, at last, ghostly oars sprouted near the waterline, and with a splash and a lurch ¡ª

    "Holy shit," said Rika. "We''re actually flying!"

    ¡ª the Golden Hind leapt from the water and into the air.

    "Fuck me running!" Drake threw herself towards the side and leaned down over the railing, looking below us as the ocean dropped away. "We really are!"

    Murmurs of amazement came from the crew, and not a few of them suddenly found something to hold onto, like they might be thrown off at any moment. Bellamy, ignoring all of this, turned the wheel, and as though it was on a pivot, the ship turned with it as it rose higher into the air. Ahead, the Revenge was higher still and further away, but we were quickly eating into its lead.

    "This is what it means to be a pirate!" Bellamy shouted. "The will to seek out your fortune, no matter the cost, and the freedom to go wherever adventure leads you, whether that''s land, sea ¡ª"

    The oars rowed like the flapping of a bird''s wings, and whenever they came down to push us forwards, they threw up a spray of golden sparks as though they were moving through an invisible ocean.

    "¡ª or sky!"

    "That''s what I''m talking about!" Drake hollered. "Kid, you may be an awkward little duckling with stars in your eyes, but goddamn if you ain''t as true a pirate as I''ve ever laid eyes on!"

    Her crew roared their agreement. Bellamy''s grin was so broad and so bright that it threatened to split his face in two. As though bolstered by her praise, the ship put on an extra spurt of speed, trailing glittering dust in its wake.

    The Revenge grew steadily larger in front of us as we gained on it, starting far ahead and above and slowly leveling off as we climbed higher. Like the reverse of the other day, when we watched it grow larger as it chased us, now we chased it down, following behind it as it fled. Where, I couldn''t be sure, but unless I got the angle wrong, it might actually have been retreating towards the storm we''d used to escape them.

    In some strange twist of irony, it looked like Blackbeard was going to try to use it to escape us.

    Suddenly, in a motion so fast I almost couldn''t see it at all, Arash pulled out his bow and loosed an arrow, and halfway to the Revenge, it burst apart and vanished as though it had hit some invisible barrier. No, I realized almost as soon as I thought it, as though it had collided midair with another projectile and they had each destroyed each other.

    Another projectile, like maybe a bullet.

    I glanced at him sharply. "Was that¡­?"

    "Anne," Arash confirmed. "She was aiming for Bellamy. I think it''s safe to say they know we''re following them."

    "But¡­" Rika''s nose scrunched up. "They have Euryale. Why wouldn''t Blackbeard just blast us to smithereens with his cannons?"

    A good question. Why wouldn''t he just turn his Noble Phantasm on us and be done with it? It wasn''t like he''d been shy about the idea the first time we ran into him, and that time, Euryale had still been on board the ship with us. He should be even less worried about it now that he had her in his grasp.

    Arash loosed another arrow, destroying another bullet.

    Unless he couldn''t.

    "Maybe he can''t," said Ritsuka, like he was giving voice to my thoughts. "Even with the Grail, he''s supporting four other Servants and using his ship to fly. There''s got to be a limit on how much energy he can put out at once."

    "So he can''t do all of that and fire his cannons at the same time," I concluded, because that was what I''d been thinking.

    "I-I can confirm that," said Bellamy. "Flying like this¡­takes a lot of energy. Sh-ships aren''t meant to fly, you know?"

    "Someone''s never played a Final Fantasy game," Rika muttered.

    "Can you do it, Sam?" Ritsuka asked.

    Bellamy''s smile grew tight. "H-ha! Just what are you even asking? I''m not about to let myself fall apart when Captain Drake needs me! You just focus on getting that friend of yours back, and I''ll worry about keeping this ship in the air!"

    Despite his bravado, however, the strain was obvious in his expression, his posture, in the bead of sweat that curled down the side of his face ¡ª he was a stray Servant with a limited supply of magical energy. He would not be able to keep this up indefinitely.

    My lips drew tight. We hadn''t really brought it up before, because things kept getting in the way and distracting us, distracting me, but there really wasn''t any good reason why we shouldn''t offer him a contract, was there? If only so that he had a little more support for stuff like this.

    This might not be the best time, but it might be the only chance we''d get.

    Before I could step forward, however, Drake was already taking the two short strides she needed to reach him, and without fanfare, she pulled her own Grail from her chest and offered it up to him.

    "Here."

    Bellamy blinked down at it, gobsmacked. "That''s¡­the Holy Grail! And you''re just gonna¡­hand it over?"

    "You need it more than I do, don''tcha?" she said pointedly. She waggled the Grail impatiently. "Better you use it now to keep this tub afloat than me sitting on it while we drop out of the sky."

    Bellamy looked ready to start crying, or maybe like he had just come down on Christmas morning to find everything he''d ever asked for sitting under the tree, including the puppy he''d spent years begging for. He extended one hand and set it down atop the one Drake was holding the Grail with.

    "Aye, aye, Captain!" he said thickly.

    There was a flash of light from the Grail, and Drake hissed, recoiling, but when it had passed, Bellamy stood there, strong and firm, somehow a little more solid, a little more real than he had been a moment ago, like his outline had grown sharper, crisper. The gold of his many pieces of jewelry even seemed to glint brighter than before.

    Suddenly, the ship beneath our feet shifted. The glow that suffused the wooden boards and planks transformed, solidifying, and became traceries of golden embossing in the pattern of waves that snaked over nearly every surface. The holes and the gouges and the damage that the light had been patching filled in and became whole. The image of a red dragon stitched itself across the mainsail, set on a blue background. The oars twisted and merged, fusing together into a pair of skeletal wings that glittered with the same designs that coated the rest of the ship.

    And Bellamy laughed, absolutely delighted, as he spun the wheel about and the ship put on another spurt of speed. The Revenge loomed ahead, almost within striking range.

    "Well, hell, boys!" Bellamy crowed, standing taller than I''d yet seen him. If you''d told me he actually grew an inch or two, I might have believed it. "Looks like I''m officially one of you, now! Part of the crew and everything!"

    He grinned, and there was a tinge of ferocity that hadn''t been there before.

    "Whaddya say we go and take back what was stolen from us?"

 Chapter C: Blackguard

    Chapter C: Blackguard

    The Revenge was fast ¡ª faster than anything that size and shape had any right to be in the air, unless it was falling ¡ª but the Hind, boosted and supported by Bellamy¡¯s Whydah, was faster. We ate into Blackbeard¡¯s lead like a starving man into one of Fugly Bob¡¯s Challenger burgers, and the back end of his ship grew rapidly larger. It wasn¡¯t long before I could even make out the lettering that stood in relief under the windows of the captain¡¯s cabin: QUEEN ANNE¡¯S REVENGE.

    I had no idea of our exact speed. We had to be flying much, much faster than we¡¯d been sailing, but it was hard to tell if the sky above us was moving by that fast because we were that fast or if the clouds were moving fast enough to make it seem that way. I didn¡¯t notice the wind chill regardless ¡ª likely something to do with the Whydah and Bellamy, and the precise mechanics didn¡¯t concern me right then.

    We had a goddess to rescue and a Grail to secure.

    Anne had not given up all the while, taking shots at Bellamy with every chance she got, and Arash responded by shooting them out of the air, foiling every single one of them. Even if Anne was an expert marksman, at the end of the day, her skill with a musket simply didn¡¯t match Arash¡¯s skill with his bow. If it was actually something she had to worry about conserving, it would have been nothing  more than a waste of ammo.

    Instead, it was a tense standoff. Anne might not be hitting anyone or anything with her bullets, but that didn¡¯t matter. I knew enough to recognize that she only had to get lucky once. He couldn¡¯t afford to screw up even a single time. Arash had to succeed every time.

    It was a good thing I was confident he could do exactly that.

    ¡°So, what¡¯s the plan for getting back our little songstress?¡± asked Drake.

    ¡°We board the ship and kill everyone else,¡± I said simply.

    She hummed. ¡°That easy, huh?¡±

    ¡°He can¡¯t use his ship¡¯s cannons, right now,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°That means that we don¡¯t have to worry about him blowing up the Golden Hind and we can take the fight to him. Right, Senpai?¡±

    ¡°Exactly.¡±

    The fact we had to rescue Euryale also put us in the position where we didn¡¯t have much choice but to take the offense. That had some disadvantages, because it let him dictate the battlefield for one, but it wasn¡¯t without its upsides, too.

    ¡°So who¡¯s staying and who¡¯s going?¡± asked Emiya.

    ¡°Sorry to say it, but I¡¯ve gotta stay here and keep this ship afloat,¡± Bellamy said immediately. ¡°Plus, I was never that much of a fighter, you know? Most of my career was spent doing whatever it took to make the other guy surrender without a fight.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m staying here, too!¡± Orion shouted from the doorway to the captain¡¯s cabin. He pointed a paw at Artemis. ¡°Take her! She might be useless at close range, but she can still fight with that bow!¡±

    ¡°Oh, Darling!¡± Artemis said. ¡°I love how much confidence you have in me, but I don¡¯t want to leave your side!¡±

    ¡°The sooner this nightmare is over, the sooner I can get out of this ridiculous body!¡± Orion went on like she hadn¡¯t said anything.

    I did a mental tally of everyone else and thought of their previous fights with Blackbeard¡¯s Servants. The trouble was, no one had yet used a Noble Phantasm aside from Hektor and Blackbeard himself, so unless it was some sort of passive thing, Anne or Mary could pull one out the instant they felt pressured, and without much idea about who they were, there was no way of knowing just how bad it could be for us.

    As for Alexander¡­ That early into his legend, I didn¡¯t think there was much he could have as a Noble Phantasm. Maybe something to do with taming his horse or his tutelage under Aristotle? I didn¡¯t know how either of those would manifest, so it really wasn¡¯t that much different from Anne and Mary.

    My eyes narrowed on the Revenge. We didn¡¯t have much time before having a plan was going to become very relevant.

    ¡°Arash.¡±

    He shot down another bullet. ¡°Yeah?¡±

    ¡°How tough are those phantoms serving on Blackbeard¡¯s ship?¡±

    Arash¡¯s mouth drew into a line, and without answering verbally, he notched two more arrows on his bow and fired them in a single smooth motion. An instant later, two shouts of pain drifted on the winds from up ahead of us, followed shortly by cries of dismay from the rest of the ghostly crew.

    ¡°Sturdier than those ¡®concepts¡¯ of pirates, but not so sturdy that you can¡¯t beat them with a good Gandr,¡± Arash said.

    That was better news that I¡¯d honestly been hoping for.

    ¡°Then we all go,¡± I said. ¡°Mash, you¡¯ll protect us while we pick off his phantom crew. Arash, handle Hektor. Emiya, Alexander. Bradamante and Artemis can take care of Anne and Mary ¡ª¡±

    ¡°And I¡¯ll handle Blackbeard,¡± Drake interjected, grinning savagely. ¡°I owe that asshole for all the damage he¡¯s done to my poor ship, and I¡¯m looking forward to shoving my pistol up his tailpipe!¡±

    ¡°Bellamy needs the Grail ¡ª¡±

    ¡°No, it¡¯s fine,¡± Bellamy cut in. ¡°My connection to Captain Drake isn¡¯t so fragile as that. Right, Captain?¡±

    Drake¡¯s grin grew. ¡°Knew I liked you!¡±

    Fine. I didn¡¯t like it, but there was still enough time to call on another Servant to even the playing field a little ¡ª

    An animalistic roar shook the entire ship, and the Hind bobbed in the air ¡ª ¡°Whoa!¡± Bellamy cried ¡ª as Asterios suddenly leapt from the deck and towards the Revenge. A spurt of red blood gushed from him midair when Anne tried to shoot him down, but it was like Drake¡¯s shots back in the Labyrinth, and he ignored it just the same, landing on the Revenge with the same weight and force of a wrecking ball.

    Shit.

    ¡°Even with as sorry a state as I¡¯m in, I can at least heal a wound that minor,¡± Calliope rasped, chuckling lowly. I glanced back at her only long enough to see her leaning against the railing, still coated with blood but stable enough she seemed in no danger of disappearing.

    I would have to worry about her later.

    ¡°No more time!¡± I said hurriedly. ¡°We go! Now!¡±

    Because Asterios had forced our hand.

    ¡°Hey, Sam!¡± Drake shouted, even though he was right next to us. ¡°Give us a lift!¡±

    ¡°Aye, Captain!¡± Bellamy replied.

    The Whydah Hind lurched again, and a sudden spurt jerked the whole thing higher into the sky, as though the ship itself had jumped. The crew cried out at the suddenness of it, clutching to the nearest solid object within reach.

    And just like that, we were above the Revenge, and if we¡¯d been any closer, we would have been skimming the sails. The rigging stretched out below us like a safety net, waiting for us to take the jump. Beyond it, Asterios fought wildly, swinging his halberds at everything he could reach and keeping himself from being swamped through sheer ferocity.

    It wouldn¡¯t last.

    ¡°Go!¡± I shouted.

    And then I took a running leap, planted one foot atop the railing as though it was a stepping stone, and threw myself over the side. The wind that I had been protected from until then howled in my ears and threatened to toss me, but the jump was short and the gap between the Whydah¡¯s protections and the ones that the Revenge must have had was small. The rigging bounced just the slightest.

    For an instant, as I groped for a grip on the rigging, I felt like I was in a movie. Like if I looked to the side, there would be a startled enemy pirate next to me, and I had to kick him off and watch him fall to his death. Maybe put my Last Resort between my teeth and climb to the top of the mast.

    But the instant passed, and Arash dropped down, skipping the rigging entirely. A brace of arrows left his bow ¡ª one each forced Blackbeard¡¯s Servants to dodge, and another half a dozen at least made short work of some of the phantom crew.

    ¡°Geronimo!¡± Rika shouted, and a moment later, she bounced off of the rigging next to me, scrambling to wrap her arms around the nearest rung so that she didn¡¯t fall off. Ritsuka, right behind her, landed with an ¡°oomph!¡± below us, looking like the wind had been driven straight from his lungs.

    ¡°Why did I think that was a good idea?¡± he wheezed.

    ¡°Don¡¯t look at me,¡± said Rika, ¡°I was following Senpai!¡±

    Bradamante, Emiya, and Mash all dropped next, landing with thuds down on the deck, followed shortly by Artemis.

    ¡°Why me-he-he-he-he?¡± I heard Orion cry as she passed us. I had to admit, if only in the privacy of my own head, I was wondering about that, too.

    And the last of us to drop down, Drake, didn¡¯t bother with aiming for the rigging and a softer landing, the way us Masters had. Instead, she landed atop one of the beams holding the sails, and she stepped swiftly down it with a surety of foot that I think a ballerina might have envied. I could only watch as she crossed near to the middle and leapt off of it, taking hold of one of the ropes that trailed down the center mast and sliding down it like a fireman down a pole.

    She reached the deck and hit with a soft thump that I saw more than heard, and without pausing, she pulled out a pair of pistols and started shooting at the phantom pirates, abusing the unlimited ammo her Grail afforded her the entire time.

    ¡°Okay,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°even if she wasn¡¯t already a total badass, that was really cool.¡±

    ¡°Not as cool as Best Buddy,¡± said his sister, ¡°but yeah, that was totally awesome.¡±

    This is no time to be gawking.

    ¡°Move,¡± I ordered them. ¡°We¡¯re vulnerable up here like this.¡±

    Although with our Servants running a screen and handling a lot of it, that might not have been as true as it could have been.

    The twins still jolted and started climbing down, and once there was enough clearance for it, so did I. It felt a little stifling, having to wait for there to be room, but that sort of feeling was familiar in its own ways, too, so I stamped down on it and focused on putting my feet and hands exactly where they needed to go.

    When we were close enough to the deck that I was more comfortable about trusting Da Vinci¡¯s ¡°soft fall¡± function, I swung myself around to the inside of the rigging and let myself drop. My stomach shot up into my throat, and a thrill of instinctive fear zigzagged through my insides, but as expected, right before I landed, my body slowed almost to a stop and I touched down gently.

    The twins weren¡¯t far behind me, and as I stepped forward, turning my magic circuits on with the snap of a spider¡¯s thread, I took a brief moment to sweep my gaze around the battlefield. Arash was knife-fighting with Hektor, forcing him on the defensive with an arrow he wielded like a dagger, and Hektor¡¯s spear ¡ª retracted into a sword once more ¡ª had difficulty keeping up just by virtue of the lack of room.

    Good. Better if we could kill him, but as long as Hektor was otherwise occupied, that was what I cared about. After all, if the other Servants were, as they had implied earlier, summoned by Blackbeard¡¯s Grail, then if he was defeated, wouldn¡¯t they all disappear, too?

    I wasn¡¯t counting on it, but I had my hopes. Worst case scenario, we took them out one by one, starting with the easiest and then overwhelming the strongest with sheer numbers.

    A large space on the foremost deck had been cleared for Anne and Mary to fight Bradamante and Artemis, an even matchup if ever there was one. Artemis and Anne were as far from each other as they could be, with Anne behind Mary and Artemis on the rearmost deck, sniping at each other and risking a shot or two to support their ally here and there. They were also stalemating, although that, too, might change the instant a Noble Phantasm got pulled out.

    After we got Blackbeard, they might be the best bet. Forget about the easiest first. They were actually team fighters instead of just a ragtag group thrown together by a common master.

    Emiya had cornered Alexander, and that one was going a lot more in Emiya¡¯s favor than the other two fights were. However good he would be in the future, the Alexander of his youth was still growing, so he was technically the weakest he would ever be right now. Even if he was holding on and still smiling, the momentum was very obviously against him, and that was only a matter of time.

    Mash had taken a defensive posture, waiting on us and blocking whatever came her way. Anyone who got too aggressive and tried to get close was bashed with ¡°the back side of her shield,¡± as she had put it, which wasn¡¯t enough to kill them but more than enough to put them down for at least a few seconds.

    There was no sign of Euryale, not anywhere on the deck with us. She had probably been tied up and locked in the brig or something inside, and if we had someone else we could afford to send, I would have sent them to look. For now, though, we¡¯d have to come back to it and look for her once this was all over.

    Worst case scenario? She fell out when Blackbeard died and the ship vanished, and we could safely fish her out of the sea, if she didn¡¯t just turn into spirit form and float back to the Hind on her own.

    As for Blackbeard¡­

    ¡°Whoop!¡±

    He skirted to the side, and one of Asterios¡¯ massive halberds slammed into the deck.

    ¡°Whoo!¡±

    When Asterios swung the other around to chop off his head, Blackbeard instead ducked under it, avoiding the blade so narrowly that a couple of his fuses got ripped straight out of his hair. He grinned and aimed a finger gun at Asterios.

    ¡°Close shave!¡± he said.

    ¡°Stand still!¡± Drake snarled. With a crack of ignited gunpowder, she aimed a shot his way.

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    He bent backwards like something out of a movie and dodged the shot. ¡°Missed me! Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo!¡±

    ¡°Oh my god,¡± Rika groaned. ¡°He just ruined The Matrix for me!¡±

    Drake, frustrated, turned her second pistol on a nearby phantom and shot him dead. He collapsed to the deck and vanished into sparkling dust. Blackbeard clicked his tongue and shook his head.

    ¡°What did he ever do to you, Old Hag?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s one of your crew,¡± Drake bit back. ¡°Ain¡¯t that enough?¡±

    ¡°For shame,¡± said Blackbeard. ¡°Haven¡¯t you heard that it¡¯s innocent until proven guilty these days? For all you know, he was an innocent bystander caught up in my mad schemes!¡±

    I¡¯d seen enough to get my bearings, so I started towards Drake¡¯s fight, picking off Blackbeard¡¯s phantoms as the opportunity arose ¡ª and there really wasn¡¯t much. Between Arash¡¯s opening salvo and Drake shooting her way through, most of them were either dead and gone or wisely staying out of the way.

    The twins picked up the idea quickly and followed on my heels, taking their own shots of opportunity, and Mash hurried to put herself in a position in front of us to act as a sort of vanguard so she could deflect stray shots or phantoms that thought they saw a moment of weakness.

    We reached the fight just in time for Asterios to rip his halberd free of Blackbeard¡¯s ship, and he roared as he swung wildly, rattling the Revenge with every blow. Blackbeard dodged out of the way of each by what looked like the skin of his teeth, making cartoonish sounds and poses every time, like this was some sort of giant game to him. Asterios got angrier and angrier with each miss, and that seemed to only make him stronger even as it made him sloppier.

    It was like watching a Looney Tunes skit, with Blackbeard taking the place of Bugs Bunny. The only sort of insanity he wasn¡¯t doing was the utterly ridiculous, like pulling himself out of the way of an attack by yanking on the back of his own coat.

    I admit, I almost fell for it myself. If Bellamy hadn¡¯t told us exactly how clever Blackbeard actually was, even I wouldn¡¯t have been able to tell that the act was intentional and probably intended to do exactly what it was doing: pissing everyone off.

    ¡°Stop moving and let me hit you, you bastard!¡± Drake snarled.

    BANG, and he slipped out of the way of her shot like an eel.

    ¡°Contrariwise, it seems to me ¡ª¡± Blackbeard dodged another swing ¡ª ¡°that would be quite the detriment to my health, wouldn¡¯t it? Whoo!¡±

    BANG, BANG, BANG went Drake¡¯s pistols, but Blackbead kept dodging, somehow managing to stay out of the way of both her shots and Asterios¡¯ halberds. It would have been impressive if it wasn¡¯t also a little frustrating.

    Some part of me wanted Mash to get in there and help, but there wasn¡¯t much room for it. The fighting was tightly packed, with each battle taking place in its own little section, and it was something of a minor miracle as it was that none of them were spilling over into the others. If Mash tried to insert herself into things like that, she was liable to hit one of our allies as much as she was our enemies, because there just wasn¡¯t enough space for her to swing that massive shield around.

    It was the exact same reason it was hard for me to squeeze in a Gandr shot at anyone aside from the phantoms. Against Blackbeard especially, I was more likely to hit Asterios than Blackbeard himself.

    ¡°Damn it,¡± Ritsuka muttered. ¡°I can¡¯t get a clear shot at Blackbeard.¡±

    ¡°Me either,¡± Rika agreed. ¡°He¡¯s like a wet noodle, and the Big Floof keeps getting in the way!¡±

    ¡°Then wait for the right moment,¡± I told them both. ¡°A well-timed Momentary Reinforcement or Emergency Evasion is going to be more impactful here than our Gandr will.¡±

    They weren¡¯t any happier about it than I was, but without enough bugs in range to form a suitable distraction ¡ª because if the Hind was implausibly clean, then the Revenge was outright immaculate ¡ª that was the best we could do right then. Watch, and wait for a moment where we could turn the tide of the fight.

    Magical energy suddenly surged, more than enough for a Noble Phantasm, and nearly everyone turned towards the source ¡ª just in time to watch Emiya bury one of his swords in Alexander¡¯s gut.

    Blood splattered across the deck, and Alexander choked on whatever he¡¯d been in the middle of saying as more surged up his throat and out of his mouth, flowing down his chin in rivulets. Savagely, Emiya ripped his sword free, and Alexander stumbled backwards as his sword fell from his fingers and clattered to the deck.

    ¡°Ah,¡± he said weakly into the thunderous silence. ¡°Guess¡­this is it, then. Sorry, Mister Blackbeard, looks like I screwed up.¡±

    And then, bizarrely, he smiled. ¡°It wasn¡¯t the Okeanos I dreamed of seeing in my lifetime¡­but I¡¯m glad I got to see this beautiful ocean.¡±

    He burst apart into glittering dust, and then even that faded away into nothingness.

    ¡°Well,¡± said Blackbeard, ¡°I guess it¡¯s time I start taking things a little more ¡ª¡±

    BANG went one of Drake¡¯s pistols, and more blood flew as a hole bored itself into Blackbeard¡¯s shoulder. He staggered back, clutching at the wound.

    ¡°Shit,¡± said Drake. ¡°My aim was off. Meant to hit his black little heart.¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Blackbeard squawked. ¡°Foul play! I call foul! Red card, ref! Don¡¯t you know the bad guy is supposed to get the chance to reveal he¡¯s not left-handed before you get back into the fight?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t give a fuck!¡± Drake snapped back. ¡°I¡¯m a fucking pirate!¡±

    Asterios roared and swung out at Blackbeard as though to punctuate her statement, and this time, there were no theatrics when Blackbeard leapt out of the way, no witty one-liners or mocking, cartoonish shouts. Instead, Blackbeard just pulled out a pistol of his own and shot Asterios directly in the chest.

    Asterios ignored it entirely, much the way he had Drake¡¯s shots back in the Labyrinth. ¡°Give¡­back¡­Euryale!¡± he thundered in that rumbling voice of his.

    He lifted both of his halberds at once, and then, with all of his strength, he slammed them down into the deck. The wood beneath them splintered and cracked, and the whole ship shook beneath us, threatening to knock everyone over, and as the twins gripped each other to stay standing, Blackbeard was thrown up into the air. Face entirely solemn and serious for the first time I could remember, he took aim with both pistols and fired off a pair of shots.

    One struck Asterios in the head, ricocheting off his skull as blood flew from the wound, and the other landed somewhere I couldn¡¯t see from behind him. Chest, most likely. Asterios flinched from the first, head jerking from the bullet, but completely ignored the second. His halberds remained stuck for a moment, but after a brief struggle, they came free in a shower of wooden shards. Like a wild animal, Asterios let out a furious roar.

    Blackbeard¡¯s lip curled as he landed. ¡°Tch. Bullet to the heart ain¡¯t enough to do you in, is it, beastie? Well, with Alex gone, I guess I have enough for ¡ª¡±

    BANG

    More blood splattered across the deck, and Blackbeard recoiled as another hole opened in his chest. The first had already closed ¡ª slower than Altera¡¯s had, because he was doing so much more with his Grail, but still fast enough that a single shot likely wouldn¡¯t be enough. We were either going to have to deal a lot more damage all at once or fill him with holes faster than he could plug them.

    ¡°Would you quit doing that, you old hag?¡± Blackbeard snapped. ¡°I¡¯m trying to have a suitably impressive badass moment, here!¡±

    ¡°Fuck you!¡± was Drake¡¯s eloquent response.

    Blackbeard grinned nastily. ¡°You¡¯d have to pay me, first!¡±

    ¡°Not even if you were the last man on Earth!¡± Drake snarled at him.

    ¡°Anne!¡± Mary cried suddenly, and when I turned to glance at what was happening, it was to see Anne stumbling back, a slash across her gut from one of Emiya¡¯s blades.

    A moment later, an arrow sank into her chest, courtesy of Artemis, and against all reason, Mary stumbled, too, clutching at her chest as though she was the one who had been hit. The two of them reached out to one another across the distance, as though they could grasp each other¡¯s hands from so far away, even as Anne tried to hold her gut wound closed with her other arm and blood poured down her front, soaking her already red coat.

    And then another arrow landed in Mary¡¯s back, and she jerked from the blow. She didn¡¯t even have time to fall before both she and Anne vanished, exploding into flickering golden dust. It, too, was gone before it could even land on the deck.

    ¡°Damn it!¡± Blackbeard cursed. ¡°Why does everyone keep killing my underlings? They don¡¯t grow on trees, you know! I actually have to summon them with ¡ª¡±

    Asterios brought one of his halberds around, and Blackbeard dodged around it again, then dodged another shot from Drake¡¯s pistols. He spun one of his own pistols around and put another round in Asterios, but just like all of the others, Asterios ignored it and kept going.

    ¡°And you!¡± said Blackbeard. ¡°Ugh, why did you have to show up? Can¡¯t you take the hint and just die already? I can¡¯t even have any witty banter with you, because all you shout about is ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Euryale!¡± Asterios roared. ¡°Give¡­back¡­!¡±

    ¡°Exactly!¡± Blackbeard said. ¡°Exactly that! You won¡¯t shut up about Euryale-chan! I¡¯m not going to give her back just because you keep howling her name, you know! Can¡¯t you add some flair? Maybe curse my name a time or two? You know, really ham it up so this feels like a proper final battle?¡±

    Asterios¡¯ response was to swing his halberds again, and Blackbeard clicked his tongue as he leapt out of the way of them. He glanced back over his shoulder and must¡¯ve seen Emiya and Bradamante preparing to join the fight, because he clicked his tongue and scowled.

    ¡°Whatever. Guess there¡¯s no more time to fuck around, is there? Things are looking pretty dire, so if I want to come out of this on top, then I¡¯ve gotta get serious, don¡¯t I?¡±

    Phantasmal cannons began appearing in the air behind him, growing more solid by the moment as magical energy surged into them, and they all swiveled in our direction, aiming to blow both us and Asterios away.

    ¡°Mash!¡± I shouted.

    ¡°Captain Drake, get back!¡± said Rika.

    ¡°Get ready to use your Noble Phantasm!¡± Ritsuka ordered.

    Mash planted her shield on the deck. ¡°Yes!¡±

    ¡°Eye,¡± a voice called, ¡°of the Euryale!¡±

    An arrow sprouted from Blackbeard¡¯s chest, right in his heart, and he gasped, stumbling, and looked down at it dumbly.

    ¡°Nani the what?¡± he babbled.

    When I turned to look, a familiar goddess stood in the door leading down into the ship, a small bow held in one hand and the other poised as though she had just loosed that arrow. A thunderous scowl marred her face, and her red eyes looked more inhuman than I had ever seen them before.

    ¡°Fuck,¡± she said slowly and deliberately, ¡°you.¡±

    A moment later, an equally familiar teddy bear stumbled out from behind her and proudly proclaimed, ¡°I found her! She was tied up in a dark room, and I¡¯m just not into that stuff, so I managed to get her loose with these stubby paws!¡±

    ¡°Euryale-chan,¡± Blackbeard moaned, ¡°why would you do this to me?¡±

    ¡°You even need to ask me that?¡± she spat at him. ¡°You trussed me up in your room and left me there so you could do unspeakable things to me later, and you¡¯re wondering why I would shoot you with my Noble Phantasm?¡±

    ¡°Nooooo!¡± Blackbeard wailed. ¡°I just wanted to love you long time! Why wouldn¡¯t you let me love you? Euryale-chan!¡±

    ¡°Okay,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°now this is just getting kind of sad.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Rika agreed. ¡°I mean, it sucks when you don¡¯t get enough relationship points for the route you want, but he was tripping all the flags for a bad end from the beginning. I think it¡¯s time for his game over.¡±

    Not the way I would have put it, but yeah. This nonsense had gone on for long enough.

    ¡°I-I have to admit, I never imagined the famous Blackbeard would be so¡­¡± Mash trailed off, grimacing, like she couldn¡¯t quite find the words. I didn¡¯t blame her.

    ¡°Asterios,¡± I began, ¡°if you would.¡±

    Asterios grunted and hefted one of his halberds with lethal intent.

    ¡°Fuck that,¡± said Drake. She lined up one of her pistols for a shot, aiming straight at his head. ¡°Sorry about this, big guy, but this bastard has been a pain in my ass for too long. I¡¯ll be the one to take his head.¡±

    Asterios glanced at her, then bowed his head and backed away. As coherent an agreement as he could explicitly give her.

    ¡°Euryale-chan!¡± Blackbeard moaned again, clutching at the arrow in his chest. There must have been some kind of Master effect in that arrow, because he wasn¡¯t even reacting as Drake pulled back on the hammer of her pistol.

    Master! Arash said urgently. Look out! Hektor¡¯s ¡ª

    Blood spurted, splattering over the deck, and I stumbled back as the twins gasped, shocked.

    ¡°Hektor!¡± Mash said, just as surprised.

    ¡°Geh!¡± Blackbeard gurgled, back arching. It only made his wound worse as the blade of Hektor¡¯s spear sawed through his chest. ¡°H-Hektor, you b-bastard¡­¡±

    ¡°Sorry about this, Captain,¡± Hektor said genially, like he was apologizing for stepping on Blackbeard¡¯s foot. ¡°Master¡¯s orders, you know? That¡¯s just the way things are, sometimes.¡±

    ¡°This whole time¡­¡± Blackbeard gasped. ¡°So that¡¯s¡­how it is, huh? I knew you weren¡¯t¡­exactly how you appeared, but¡­ You managed¡­to pull the wool over my eyes?¡±

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t easy,¡± Hektor said conversationally. ¡°You didn¡¯t give me that many opportunities. The fact you always kept your guard up, even around your comrades? Man, I thought I¡¯d never get the chance. But¡­¡±

    He looked past Blackbeard and stared straight into my eyes.

    ¡°These Chaldea folk, they gave me the opening I was looking for. How kind of them to do me a favor like that.¡± He smiled wryly. ¡°Too bad I can¡¯t afford to let them take your Holy Grail, Captain Blackbeard.¡±

    He twisted his sword, then yanked it free and shoved his free hand into the wound.

    ¡°I think I¡¯m gonna be sick,¡± Rika mumbled.

    A moment later, he pulled his hand free, and in his grip, he held a glittering, golden chalice. The Holy Grail.

    ¡°I¡¯ll just be taking this, if you don¡¯t mind,¡± he said.

    ¡°Stop him!¡± I shouted.

    Emiya appeared from above, dropping down to deliver a double blow from his swords, and Bradamante rushed in to pincer Hektor between them. A brace of arrows came from both Arash and Artemis, as though to pin him in for the other two to take out.

    But the Grail in his grasp glowed, and Hektor moved, vanishing from sight as he leapt out of the way of all of those attacks at once. The arrows sank into the Revenge¡¯s deck, and Emiya and Bradamante nearly collided with each other without their target to hit. They had to awkwardly dance around one another just to keep from hurting the other by accident.

    As though he had teleported, Hektor reappeared next to Artemis, who gasped and stumbled away from him. ¡°That was a close one. Even making use of this Holy Grail, an old man like me just can¡¯t do something as ridiculous as fight off five Servants at once. Without my Disengage skill, that would¡¯ve been the end of me, right there.¡±

    BANG

    Hektor moved his spear, putting the flat of the blade in front of his head in enough time to deflect the bullet. He frowned at Blackbeard, the one who had shot at him.

    ¡°Still holding on, Captain? I gotta admit, that¡¯s kind of impressive. Even for a pirate, that¡¯s some pretty serious tenacity.¡±

    ¡°Fuck you, Hektor,¡± Blackbeard panted. One hand was pressed against his wound, but it wasn¡¯t doing anything to stop the blood from flowing down his chest. He grinned. ¡°My love can¡¯t be stopped that easily¡­is what I want to say, but even spite can only take a guy so far. You got me good, you bastard.¡±

    Hektor hummed. ¡°Well, there¡¯s no reason for me to stick around, and I¡¯ve got a delivery to make, so¡­¡±

    Rika gasped. ¡°The Grail!¡±

    But Hektor was already gone, leaping over the side of the Revenge, and I raced after him, crossing the deck ¡ª unobstructed, now, because somewhere between getting shot by Euryale and stabbed by Hektor, the remaining phantoms had disappeared ¡ª towards the spot where he jumped down. When I leaned over the side, bracing myself against the railing¡­

    ¡°A dinghy?¡± Ritsuka said from beside me.

    ¡­to find Hektor falling towards the ocean below in a small, wooden rowboat. It must have been enchanted or something, because there was no way it would survive hitting the water otherwise.

    ¡°What?¡± Drake demanded as she came up behind us.

    ¡°Has that been there the entire time?¡± Rika asked a little hysterically. ¡°How? When? Where? I have so many questions!¡±

    Blackbeard laughed, stumbled backwards until he collapsed against the mast. ¡°That complete shit! He¡¯s been planning this from the beginning!¡±

    He flickered, like static on an old TV, and the Revenge shook threateningly, like it was about to fall apart at the seams. We weren¡¯t safe there. The instant Blackbeard died, his ship would vanish, too, and even if one of his skills let him hang on while mortally wounded, that couldn¡¯t last forever. He was going to disappear sooner rather than later.

    Chasing Hektor could wait until we weren¡¯t in danger of dropping down into the ocean.

    ¡°Back to the Hind!¡± I shouted. ¡°Go, go!¡±

    ¡°OI, SAM!¡± Drake hollered. ¡°BRING HER ABOUT! WE NEED OUR TICKET OUTTA HERE!¡±

    ¡°AYE, CAPTAIN!¡± Bellamy yelled back.

    The Hind suddenly sank, dipping down from its position above the Revenge until they were side by side, and then down a few feet more. I took a running start, jumped high enough to put my foot on the railing ¡ª as I had when I was doing this the other way around ¡ª and leapt back onto the Hind. My landing was just as soft now as it had been before.

    A few seconds later, the twins followed behind me, although they stumbled a little as their feet found the deck, with Drake shortly behind them and much more surefooted, and then the Servants came. First Mash, then Bradamante, then Emiya, Arash, Asterios with Euryale in his arms, and finally, Artemis, with Orion tucked under one arm like he really was a stuffed animal. He landed limply when she let him go and flopped down onto the deck.

    ¡°Whew,¡± said Orion, haunted. ¡°For a second there, I really thought you were going to leave me behind!¡±

    ¡°Oh, Darling!¡± said Artemis. ¡°I could never!¡±

    I didn¡¯t waste any time, and I made immediately for the wheel, where Bellamy was still standing. He grinned as I approached. ¡°Ahoy, there! I see you managed to rescue our wayward goddess!¡±

    ¡°Hektor stole the Grail,¡± I said shortly. ¡°He¡¯s escaping on a ship he prepared ¡ª¡±

    The Revenge suddenly shuddered again, like it was shaking itself apart, and then it wavered around the edges, turned ghostly and translucent, and finally, it faded away into nothing like a mirage, as though it had never really been there in the first place. I caught a glimpse of golden dust glittering, but it was carried away on the wind and disappeared as well. Any sign of Blackbeard ever existing in this Singularity was gone.

    Rika, in something like solidarity, gave the empty space a brief salute.

    ¡°Sam!¡± Drake shouted as she made her way up to the wheel, too. The twins and Mash scrambled to follow her. ¡°Sam!¡±

    ¡°Aye, Captain?¡± Bellamy replied.

    Drake pointed down towards the ocean, where a tiny little boat was vaguely visible against the surface, not much more than a dark shard against the deep blue. ¡°That old bastard¡¯s getting away! He¡¯s got that shiny little bauble everyone¡¯s fighting over!¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s got the Grail? We¡¯re chasing him?¡± asked Bellamy.

    ¡°Goddamn right, we are!¡± Drake barked. ¡°Even if my friends here didn¡¯t need that thing to put this screwy place back to rights, there¡¯s no way I¡¯m letting that wanker get away with fucking everyone over like that!¡±

    ¡°Aye, Captain!¡± Bellamy spun the wheel, and the ship turned and began to descend, the bow pointing down at a shallow angle like a diving submarine. ¡°Everyone, hold onto something! If we¡¯re chasing after that guy, there¡¯s no time to be gentle! We¡¯ll hit the water pretty hard! That alright with you, Captain?¡±

    ¡°Long as you don¡¯t break my goddamn ship!¡± said Drake.

    Bellamy grinned, savage and fierce. ¡°Aye, aye, Captain!¡±

    We continued to dive, and the near weightlessness sent my guts into uncomfortable flips and squirming, like that feeling you got on a swing right before you hit the bottom of the arc. My stomach seemed caught somewhere between my diaphragm and its proper place in my body, as much in freefall as the rest of me was.

    And as the ocean below grew larger and larger and the horizon in the distance slowly climbed, so too did Hektor in his little dinghy, never quite resolving into something clear and crisp but getting more so with every second. If I squinted, I imagined I could almost see the glint of the Grail he had stolen from Blackbeard ¡ª to take back to his mysterious Master, whoever that wound up being. Almost certainly no one good.

    I took a deep, calming breath. It did little to settle my belly.

    It was almost over, I consoled myself. We just needed to catch up to Hektor, secure the Grail, and then it wouldn¡¯t matter who his Master was. This Singularity would be resolved. We could go back to Chaldea, rest, and start preparing for the next one.

    Even so, I couldn¡¯t shake the feeling that it wouldn¡¯t be that simple.

 Chapter CI: Mad God

    Chapter CI: Mad God

    The Hind shuddered beneath our feet as we slammed back into the ocean, sending up a spray of salty water along the sides of the ship. We seemed almost to skip along the surface, teetering back and forth as we settled on the water, and the whole ship creaked and rocked under the forces it was being subjected to ¡ª without the Whydah reinforcing it, the whole thing likely would have snapped in half along the keel.

    "Whoa!" Rika said as she and her brother reached for the nearest thing they could find to steady themselves. I had to do it, too, and clutched to the railing in front of the wheel. "You weren''t kidding about how rough it was gonna be, Sam!"

    "Any landing you can walk away from," Ritsuka added.

    "Sorry!" Bellamy said. "Can''t be helped!"

    "Fuck!" Drake swore. "That would''ve torn the Hind in half! You Servants and your toys are bullshit!"

    "You won''t hear any arguments from me!" Rika replied.

    "Speaking of bullshit," Emiya muttered, gaze narrowed on the sea ahead of us. "That guy¡­ There''s no way that''s a normal boat."

    "H-he''s so fast!" Mash said. She shielded her eyes as she looked out at Hektor and the path he was blazing through the waves.

    And he was. Despite the fact that it was barely big enough to raise the single sail that it did have, it was moving with the speed of a modern motor boat, at minimum. Even with our sails at full and the Whydah boosting the Hind''s own speed by a significant amount, he was still outpacing us, still so far ahead and getting farther. We were going fast enough that we could have turned that four day trip it took us to get from the wyvern island into a four hour trip, and somehow, his little boat was faster.

    His Master must have prepared it for him, because there was no way it was natural, and with the Grail to give it an even bigger boost¡­

    "Goddamn," said Drake. "If the Hind could move this fast on its own¡­ Fuck, there ain''t no one on the seas who could catch us!"

    "Where is he even going?" asked Ritsuka. "I know he''s returning to his Master, but¡­ The only thing that way is more ocean."

    My mouth drew into a tight line. "Arash? What do you see?"

    Arash narrowed his gaze on the sea ahead. "Not¡­much of anything. There''s a storm far off ¡ª the outer edges of that maelstrom, from the other side, it looks like. Other than that, there doesn''t look like there''s anything else out there."

    I strained my eyes, but although, now that he mentioned it, I could see dark clouds far off towards the horizon, I couldn''t find anything else either. Not that I really expected to, considering how much better his vision was than mine, but even a hint of something would have been welcome.

    Maybe Hektor''s plan was our plan, and he intended to lose us in the storm. It wasn''t the worst idea, but we were the ones with a map, so as long as we had his general heading, figuring out where he was going wouldn''t be particularly hard. Provided he didn''t feint and change course halfway there.

    The issue was the Master. Who it was and where they were hiding, because we''d been to every island except the archipelago and the caldera, and Hektor wasn''t sailing towards either.

    "Could that be where his Master is hiding?" Ritsuka suggested. "Staying on the outer edges of the vortex, just far enough to avoid getting sucked in, that would be a great way to avoid running into anyone you didn''t want to, wouldn''t it?"

    "How cowardly," said Bradamante disdainfully. "Hiding inside the storm while his underlings go out and risk their lives for him, has he no shame?"

    "Depending on how strong he is, it might be the only way he can avoid getting killed," said Emiya. "It''s definitely clever, I''ll give him that, so if there''s one thing we can be sure of, it''s that he''s probably not a frontline fighter."

    "That doesn''t narrow it down much," Arash chimed in. "We can definitely say it''s not Blackbeard, but if it''s another pirate Servant, that''s still a pretty long list."

    "Might be Captain Hornigold," Bellamy offered. "It all happened after I died, so I can''t say for sure, but he became a pirate hunter, didn''t he? I can''t imagine Teach was all too happy about that."

    "That''s right," said Mash. She explained, "In 1717 and 1718, King George offered pardons to all pirates who willingly surrendered to a regional governor and gave up piracy. Benjamin Hornigold accepted, turned himself in to Woodes Rogers, the governor of the Bahamas, and became a pirate hunter, and unlike some of the others, he didn''t eventually return to being a pirate himself. But, Sam, Blackbeard died before Captain Hornigold accepted the pardon, so he wouldn''t have had any reason to consider him a traitor, would he?"

    Bellamy winced. "Oh yeah¡­"

    "It would certainly make things awkward between them," said Emiya. "If Hornigold reformed and Blackbeard remained a pirate to the end¡­ Even as Servants, it could be that neither of them can stand the sight of the other. There''s no enemy worse than one who used to be your friend."

    As someone who had plenty of experience, I wasn''t sure I could agree with that. Emma had done plenty to try and earn it, but I''d faced a whole lot worse than her petty insults and barbed words. She didn''t even really compare to some of the people I''d had to fight over the course of my career, in any sense of the word.

    The twins gave me a strange look, then traded one with each other, like they were trying to convince one another that the other should be the one to comment, and I deliberately smoothed out my expression. I wasn''t sure what had shown on my face, but it was obvious that there had been something.

    "Can''t say as I blame ''em," Drake added. "As a pirate having to look at the guy who turned his back on everything you stood for or the guy who decided to do the turning, it''s all shit either way."

    "As long as it''s not another pervert," Euryale said stiffly.

    "One was more than enough!" Bradamante agreed. Discreetly, Orion shuffled away from her and closer to Artemis'' legs.

    Ahead, the looming storm clouds drew ever closer, and the sea became choppier and rougher ¡ª not that we really noticed it, with Bellamy and the Whydah keeping us steady and on course. Perhaps somewhat ironically, it was the smoothest sailing I''d experienced since we Rayshifted into this Singularity, although I wasn''t sure how long Bellamy could afford to keep it up. Maybe it was easier for him now that we were no longer flying, and if he was still hooked up to Drake''s Grail, then his supply of magical energy was functionally infinite, wasn''t it?

    Was Hektor''s Master really hiding out in that storm, or was he actually going to try and lose us in it, the same way we''d outrun Blackbeard?

    "Let''s say it isn''t Hornigold, for the sake of argument," I said. "Who else could it be?"

    "Too many people," Emiya said dryly.

    "Oh!" Rika hopped excitedly, her hand shooting up into the air like she was a student waiting to be called on. "It''s Davy Jones!"

    "Rika," her brother began wearily.

    "No, really!" Rika said. "Seaweed Face is the only one we''ve met so far that we don''t know what side he''s on, right? And he changed the weather when he stopped the ship back when we first met him! What if he really was just coming along to check for Eury?"

    My brow furrowed. That¡­was actually a good point. So far, the mysterious man with seaweed for hair was the only Servant we knew of for sure that we couldn''t account for, discounting whoever was guarding the archipelago. We didn''t know what he wanted or why he was here, and all things considered, he might not even have to worry about the storm.

    "And if he can change the weather," said Ritsuka, "then he could just make a pocket of calm sea right in the middle of that storm, can''t he?"

    But then why had he shown up in the middle of that storm chasing Bellamy when Blackbeard was on our tails? Unless¡­his goal at the time had been driving Bellamy towards us, either to take us both out at once or to make us meet so we could team up against Blackbeard. It would have made his job easier, whatever his end goal happened to be, whether it was Euryale herself or Blackbeard''s Grail.

    The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. After all, if we were all in his way to whatever it was he wanted, then no matter who won the battle between us, he could just swoop in and take out the weakened victor, or even let Hektor do it for him. He came out on top no matter what.

    When we followed Hektor back to his Master, would we find ourselves facing a derelict ship covered in glowing moss and manned by ethereal specters, with a ghastly, pallid corpse at the helm?

    "If he tries any of that again," Bellamy said, "then we''ll just blast him out of the sea. Ain''t that right, boys?"

    The crew roared back an affirmative answer. "Goddamn right, it is!" one of them shouted.

    Drake sighed and shook her head. "It''s a crying shame you were born a couple centuries too late, Sam. Would''ve loved to have you on the crew! You''re a damn sight better than some of the wankers we''ve had to deal with before!"

    Bellamy''s cheeks bloomed with red, and Drake laughed boisterously, saying, "But I guess we''ll have to settle for having you on it now! Better late than never!"

    The crew cheered again, and Bellamy ducked his head bashfully. "Ah, geez, Captain¡­"

    "When this is all over, Sam," Drake said, quieter and with meaning, "we''ll have a right proper send off for you and these Chaldean stargazers, you hear? Something none of us will ever forget, no matter what happens when this screwy place is set to rights. Something we''ll all remember ''til the day we die."

    "Captain Drake¡­" Mash said softly.

    Drake grinned. "We''ll eat Emiya''s rich food, and we''ll drink some rich drink from this Grail of mine," she tapped her chest, "and we''ll party all night long, no matter what that old nag of theirs says, and when it''s time for everyone to go, we''ll say our goodbyes and see you all off with a smile!"

    Bellamy sniffled, but whatever it might have been from, he wiped his nose on the back of a sleeve, then lifted his head with a grin and loudly said, "Yeah! For sure!"

    "Don''t go celebrating too early," Arash warned, "because there might be a problem with your theory about our friend with the seaweed hair."

    "Problem?" the twins echoed.

    "Are you seeing something?" I asked him.

    He nodded towards the ocean in front of us. "Up ahead, there''s a ship. It doesn''t look anything like what he was sailing either of the times we ran into him. It¡­ Honestly, it looks closer to something from my era than it does the Age of Piracy."

    "What?" Rika squawked, echoing my own surprise. "But I was so sure of it, too!"

    "Sorry to disappoint," Arash said apologetically.

    "You said it looked more like it belonged to your era?" asked Emiya shrewdly.

    "You should be able to see it soon, too," said Arash.

    Emiya clicked his tongue. "No, I''ll believe you. If that''s what you say, then that''s how it is." He closed his eyes briefly. "There''s only so many legends from that era with strong seafaring themes. One of them¡­happens to fit quite nicely with our estimation of a canny schemer known for maneuvering his enemies into no-win situations."

    I realized what he meant immediately. "Odysseus."

    And it did fit. The style of the boat, the era it must have come from, even the profile we''d built up of what our ultimate enemy might look like. The scheming type who used plans and trickery to defeat enemies he might otherwise be incapable of fighting normally ¡ª that definitely fit the Odysseus from the myths.

    There was just one problem I had with that idea.

    "Why would Hektor have agreed to team up with him? They were on opposite sides of a war, and Odysseus was responsible for destroying Troy."

    Calliope chuckled lowly. "Because it''s not Odysseus."

    All attention turned to her, and everyone turned around to face her, where she was still leaning against the backmost railing of the ship. Everyone, that was, except for Emiya, who merely sighed and shook his head.

    "The fact that it''s coming from you tells me all I need to know about who it actually is," said Emiya. He tilted his head back, looking at her over his shoulder. "Are you going to let them know or should I? It''s at the point where we can''t afford to keep it a secret anymore."

    She didn''t say anything, just ducked her head. Emiya''s lips drew tight as he turned to face her fully. "I was fine with letting it go as long as it didn''t get in the way of our mission, but we''re past that point now."

    Calliope flinched and pulled her cloak tighter around herself, as though it could ward off his words. Emiya didn''t offer her any mercy.

    "I''m not bluffing," he said. "As a matter of courtesy between one Heroic Spirit and another, I''m giving you the chance to come clean. But if you''re not willing to tell them what we''re about to face, then I will, regardless of your own feelings about it. I won''t let courtesy get anyone on this ship killed."

    "Kuh¡­!" Calliope growled, her lips pulling into a snarl.

    "You might as well," Euryale added lazily. "I didn''t bother asking before, but it''ll be too much of a pain if things go bad because you were keeping a secret like that."

    Calliope hunched in on herself. "Fine," she muttered. "Fine! If you''re going to strip me bare no matter how it goes, then I might as well¡­"

    And with fingers clothed in black gloves, she lifted her hands to the cowl of her cloak, hesitating for a moment, as though it was some powerful protection she was scared of losing.

    "That ship is the Argo," she said, "captained by Jason, and the Master that Hektor is returning to is a young mage by the name of Medea ¡ª"

    Like ripping off a band-aid, she pulled back her hood, and pale blue hair spilled out, framing a beautiful face and eyes like chips of ice. Ritsuka gasped.

    "¡ª my younger self."

    "Whaaaaaaaaaaat?" Drake said bewilderedly, drawing the word out.

    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    "Oh god," Rika said, horrified, "we''re not in One Piece, we''re in a soap opera!"

    "What a twist!" Orion added. "I didn''t see this one coming!"

    The terrible thing was, she wasn''t exactly wrong, was she? This was just like something out of a soap opera, with evil twins and time travel and everything. The only thing missing was someone in a coma waking up to find out her fianc¨¦ had married her best friend, and even that one could be ticked off the list if you counted Marie being married to her job.

    "Your¡­younger self," I prompted, trying to get the mental image out of my head.

    Calliope ¡ª no, Medea ¡ª sneered. "The me from before Jason revealed exactly how cruel and self-serving he was. The little chit is still madly in love with him, the fool, so she''s going to choose his side no matter what. Even if it means the destruction of human history. She arranged for Blackbeard to have the Grail, in the hopes that he would manage to find the things she needed to make Jason a god king."

    "And where do you come in with all of this?" asked Arash.

    Medea''s sneer turned into a dark smile. "Heroic Spirits are composite existences," she said. "Even if my younger self only views the memories of her future as a kind of prophetic dream, they still existed in her Saint Graph. When a demon came offering her the Grail, well, the possibility existed for those memories to manifest more¡­concretely."

    She wasn''t explaining everything, I was sure of it. There was something she was still holding onto, something about how she had ripped herself out of her other self''s Saint Graph, but the fact that she had ripped herself out of the younger''s Saint Graph explained a lot about what was happening now.

    "That''s why she''s acting through proxies," I realized. "You literally tore her power in half."

    And that neatly explained why our sensors could barely detect her, too. The one in front of us. Why she had shied away from fighting at all. Why she was so skittish and hesitant. It wasn''t that she had some method of hiding herself or suppressing her presence somehow, it was that she was literally half of a Servant, and she only had a portion of her full power.

    "Whoa," said Rika. "Hardcore."

    "Well, damn," said Emiya. "Have to admit, that''s not what I was expecting."

    I hadn''t been expecting it either. I''d known from the beginning that she probably wasn''t the real Calliope, and I hadn''t had any particularly strong theories about her true identity or why she was the way she was, but this wasn''t what I would have predicted at all. Although ¡ª I stole a quick glance at Artemis and Orion ¡ª maybe it wasn''t quite unprecedented.

    "I didn''t realize that was possible," said Mash.

    "I think¡­when it comes to the Holy Grail, that word starts to lose some of its meaning," Ritsuka told her.

    "What should we expect going into this, then?" I asked. "You said Jason was there, and this younger version of yourself, and Hektor will obviously be there, too. Are there any other Argonauts we need to worry about?"

    Emiya stiffened, but he relaxed with a sigh a moment later when Medea shook her head.

    "The other Servants she summoned left shortly after hearing what she planned," said Medea. "Atalanta, Hippolyta, and King David all ran ¡ª to where, I''m afraid I don''t know. They went the opposite direction of me."

    Considering she went to New Crete and hid out with Euryale and Asterios¡­

    "They''re down at the archipelago."

    If they were still around, at least, and we had no reason to expect that they weren''t. Atalanta, Hippolyta, and King David? Not the biggest names ¡ª not even the biggest names on the Argo ¡ª but big enough that I couldn''t imagine them going down quickly or easily.

    "And they seem to have made a friend or two while they were down there," Arash added thoughtfully. "None of those three is known for having a fleet, after all. Looks like they ran into another sailor and decided to team up."

    Neatly explaining why one showed up and threatened to blow us out of the water when we went down there. Whoever they teamed up with was just protecting them from what they probably thought was a group of Jason''s lackeys.

    "Wait," said Ritsuka. "Doesn''t that mean that the Grail Blackbeard was using to summon Anne, Mary, and Alexander is the same Grail that this, um, other Medea used to summon Atalanta, King David, and Hippolyta?"

    "Oh," Mash said softly. "Then that''s why he couldn''t use his cannons at the same time as he was flying his ship. The Grail he''s using is supplying power to several other Servants, too."

    Beep-beep!

    Frowning, I turned on my communicator. "Director ¡ª"

    "Did you say King David?" Romani demanded immediately. "King David is there in that Singularity? He''s really, actually there? It''s not some other guy with a similar name?"

    "Yes," said Medea. "I wasn''t lying. Each of the Heroic Spirits I named was summoned by my younger self."

    "Whatever you do, don''t accept any deal he tries to offer you!" Romani said urgently. "I mean it! Don''t let that cheapskate swindle you! He''ll take you for everything you''re worth if you ¡ª"

    There was a sound as of someone being bodily shoved aside and the crash of someone falling out of their chair. The twins exchanged a bewildered look, then turned to me, but I didn''t have any better explanation I could give them. All I could do was frown and shake my head.

    "Excuse me," Marie''s voice said tersely. "He activated the comms before I had the chance to stop him. Continue what you were doing. We''ll be prepared to Rayshift you back as soon as you''ve handled this other Medea."

    And then the line went dead.

    "Well," Orion said into the awkward silence. "That happened. What''s that guy''s deal, anyway?"

    Mash sighed. "I honestly can''t tell you. Even for Doctor Roman, that was strange."

    I turned back to Medea. "You said we only have to worry about Hektor, Jason, and your other self?"

    "Even something like the Holy Grail has limits," she answered stiffly. "It''s already supporting numerous Servants, so while it isn''t impossible she summoned more, it only has so much power."

    "And with the younger Medea weakened and Jason being, well, Jason," Emiya began, and Medea snorted, "Hektor should be the only combatant we really have to worry about."

    "You have nothing to be concerned about," said Medea. "With this many strong heroes on board, Jason''s little party will end quite easily."

    "Which means it''s almost time for us to head home," Rika said dreamily. "Ah, I can''t wait to sleep in a regular bed again! No offense, Captain Pillows, but there''s nothing like a real, actual mattress! And showers! Daily showers!"

    "I guess being back in time before things like that existed makes you appreciate them all the more," Ritsuka said wryly.

    "A damn shame I just have to take your word for it!" Drake laughed.

    Up ahead, Hektor''s destination came into view, a slowly growing sliver of honey brown amidst the blue of the ocean around it. The storm above us, threatening rain but not quite raining, made it harder to see among the churning waves, but once it came into view properly, it was hard to miss, and it became rapidly larger as we approached.

    "Gonna bring us up alongside her!" Sam told everyone, and as he spun the wheel, our trajectory took on a more oblique angle so that we wouldn''t just ram straight into it ¡ª as tempting an idea as it was for an opening attack, I wasn''t sure the Hind would survive it, the Whydah supporting it or not.

    "Damn," said Drake, "that definitely ain''t a ship of the line like any I''ve seen! You''re right, there, Arash, that thing is ancient!"

    The Argo ¡ª because that was the only thing it could be ¡ª was, indeed, an older style of ship, one that looked, appropriately so, more like it belonged in Hellenistic Greece than the Caribbean Sea. Stretching twenty-five, maybe thirty feet across at the widest part, it was low and squat with a single, triangular sail affixed to a short mast sitting in front of a slightly larger square sail on a slightly taller mast. A little over halfway between the waterline and the edge of the deck, oars jutted out and into the water, marking it as a galley, just like Sam''s Whydah.

    "Well, shit," said Orion. "That really is the Argo, the real deal, accept no substitutes. I wasn''t sure I could believe it would really be here, but now that I''m seeing it with my own eyes¡­" He waved one paw in front of his face. "Well, what counts for eyes on this body, anyway."

    "That''s really it," Mash breathed. "The legendary ship from Greek mythology, the Argo."

    And as we approached, Hektor leapt up out of his little dinghy and onto the deck, where two vague figures awaited him ¡ª Jason and Medea''s younger self, no doubt. The Whydah Hind slowed to something almost like a drift, and with a precision that should have been impossible for a ship on the ocean, Bellamy maneuvered us so that we would come to a stop with the slightest of gaps to spare.

    "Get ready," I told my team lowly. "They''re not going to surrender that Grail without a fight. Take out Jason and Medea first, and that''ll make Hektor our only concern."

    "A decapitating strike." Emiya nodded approvingly. "Works just fine for me. Master?"

    "They didn''t fight fair from the beginning," Rika said a little viciously. "So neither will we."

    Emiya smirked. "Understood."

    From the Argo, the taller of the two figures strode towards us, coming up near the edge of the deck, while the shorter trailed behind him deferentially, quiet and demure. Blond and green-eyed with a fancy gold embroidered tunic and bangles, he looked like some ancient king flaunting his wealth, an impression only made stronger when he smiled down at us smugly.

    "Ahoy, there!" he called. "You motley crew on your derelict little ship! You pathetic dregs of society!"

    "Who are you calling derelict?" Drake spat furiously.

    "You, you worthless nag!" the man who could only be Jason laughed. "Well, maybe you''re not totally worthless. After all, you did bring me both Euryale and the second Grail I needed, so I guess you had some use after all!"

    My eyes narrowed on him. Focus on Jason, I ordered Arash silently. Emiya seems to know what to expect out of Medea better, so let him take her out.

    Understood, Arash replied.

    "Jason," I said evenly, drawing his attention off of our Servants. "Would you be willing to surrender that Grail to Chaldea so that we can set this era to rights?"

    Jason sneered. "Hey, hey, what''s with that tone? The only way for a peon like you to address a hero as grand as I am is with deference and respect! Awe should drip from your voice when you say my name!"

    "Wow," Rika muttered. "Someone has an inflated opinion of himself."

    Medea ¡ª our Medea ¡ª huffed out a quiet laugh. "You don''t even know the half of it."

    Considering his ego had played a large part in his downfall in the myths? Yeah, this was probably what we should have been expecting to begin with. Since this was the same man who thought his wife would accept being relegated to the role of concubine just because it would let him marry a princess, this really did seem like par for the course.

    "I''m going to take that as a no."

    "As well you should," Jason said snidely. "Why would the heroes turn around and surrender when they have the upper hand? Victory is right in front of me! Like hell would I let it go just like that!"

    Fine. Not like I was really expecting him to just hand it over anyway, but it was worth a shot on the off chance he could actually be reasonable. Maybe one of these days, someone would actually surprise me. Today wasn''t it.

    Arash, I began.

    "It''s me who should be telling you," Jason went on. "Hand over that hag''s Grail and Euryale and I might be merciful enough to let you stick around and bask in my glory! That''s a pretty good deal, isn''t it? You''re going to lose anyway, so you might as well walk away with your lives!"

    "Is he serious?" Rika asked incredulously. "He sounds like something straight out of a manga!"

    "Unfortunately," our Medea said grimly.

    Take him out, I ordered.

    Jason smiled nastily. "Of course, if you''re going to scorn my generosity, then it''s all the same to me ¡ª"

    Arash manifested his bow, drew back on the string, and nocked an arrow all in the same instant, with Emiya just barely lagging behind him. Jason had only a fraction of a second to realize what was going on and recoil, squawking with indignant panic, before that arrow aimed for his heart ¡ª his Saint Graph''s spiritual core ¡ª flew at him faster than the sound of the bowstring vibrating could reach my ears. Emiya''s shot followed in its shadow, aimed at the waif next to Jason, who was the spitting image of a younger version of Medea.

    Just like that, it was over, and we could take out Hektor at our leisure.

    Except a hulking shadow formed between the arrows and their targets, and it solidified into a gray mass of muscle and power, using its body as a shield. The arrows fired, each of them strong enough on their own to shatter boulders, shattered themselves against skin the color of lead and dissipated into golden sparks.

    "What the¡­"

    "Who¡­" I wondered.

    "Shit!" Emiya cursed. "He really is here!"

    "No¡­" our Medea whispered.

    The hulking giant ¡ª nearly as tall as Asterios and twice as thick ¡ª slowly stood, and the muscles of his bare chest and arms rippled with obscene strength the whole way up. A wild tangle of black hair surged down the back of his neck like a lion''s mane, and when he breathed out a low, ominous growl, it sounded more like something out of a tiger or some other wild animal than a human being. The only stitch of clothing on his entire body was an armored skirt that hung from his waist.

    And from him exuded an aura of sheer menace, an air of barely contained violence, ready to be unleashed at a moment''s notice. The bloodlust oozing off of him was enough to make my stomach curl and my heart thunder. My mouth was suddenly dry.

    The dots connected. The reactions from Medea and Emiya, the appearance, the stature, the power, the location, the enemy and their identities ¡ª when I added it all up, there was only one conclusion for me to draw.

    "Fuck."

    That could only be ¡ª

    "Herakles!" Jason shouted. "You lout! That was way too close! If you''d been just a little bit slower, that would have killed me for sure! Just how dedicated are you to our mission, fool! Are you trying to get me killed?"

    The giant did not react at all to the insults, he just kept glaring at us, as though his gaze itself was enough to do us in. If I''d had to face him on my first night out, it just might have.

    "Oh no," Mash gasped.

    "We''re doomed," Orion said matter-of-factly.

    "What power," Bradamante breathed. "He''s¡­he''s incredible!"

    "That''s Herk?" Rika demanded. "He''s huge! And¡­really muscular, whoa! Even Sparty wasn''t that ripped!"

    Jason leaned over, peering at us from around Herakles'' massive bulk. "Shocked? Amazed? Dismayed? That''s right, this guy here is Herakles, the greatest hero of Greece! Well, aside from yours truly, at least! This is the guy who went everywhere, killed every monster, and never failed any task ever given to him! He''s never been defeated, not once!"

    Still, Herakles stood there stoically, his face carved into an unmoved scowl. He wasn''t reacting at all. In fact, I wasn''t sure he was even breathing.

    I peered closer, opening my mind''s eye to scan him with my Master''s Clairvoyance ¡ª

    "Berserker?"

    At this, Herakles finally moved, his brow twitching minutely and his head turning just the slightest, and my blood froze as I was suddenly the center of his attention. It was like having the eye of God staring down at me.

    Fuck.

    Emiya chuckled uneasily. "That really doesn''t make him less dangerous."

    "Unfortunately, that''s what the big guy lacks in this form," said Jason. He patted one massive thigh. "Intelligence. Can''t talk worth a damn, so he''s not that great a conversationalist, and there really isn''t that much going on upstairs, so his most dangerous asset has been ground into nothing." In spite of what he said, Jason still smirked. "But he''s kept all the parts that make him more than enough to crush you worthless bits of trash. He''s even more obedient like this, so when I tell him to break all of you over his knee, he won''t even protest!"

    Herakles snarled, as though to punctuate Jason''s words.

    "Master," Emiya said lowly. "We need to run."

    "What?" But it was Drake who protested immediately. "Like hell! We chased these bastards all the way here, and you want to tuck tail now, with this lot right in front of our noses?"

    "You''ve never faced him before, so you don''t get it," Emiya said ominously. "That guy¡­ It''d be one thing if we were just facing him as he is, but his Noble Phantasm means we can''t just gang up on him and whittle him down. I can take a few of his lives, but even with help, I''m not sure I can take them all."

    It took everything I had not to whip my head around to stare at him. A few of his lives? What?

    "Oh? So you even know about that, mister trash?" Jason crowed. "Man, what a joke! You can take a few of his lives? As if! And even if you really did have the power necessary in that puny Spirit Origin of yours to kill Herakles a couple of times, there''s no way you have enough to do it all twelve!"

    "Twelve?" Ritsuka choked out. "You''re saying¡­he has twelve lives?"

    "What is he, a secret boss?" Rika cried. "You''re supposed to stumble across those in out of the way places, not face them down right before the big bad!"

    My eyes widened. Twelve lives. One for each of his Labors.

    "And each killing blow," Emiya said lowly, "has to be at least A-Rank in power. Even A¨ªfe''s G¨¢e Bolg won''t even scratch him."

    "Shit," said Arash. "So even my Noble Phantasm wouldn''t¡­"

    There was no trace of humor in Emiya''s expression. "No."

    My mind raced. Twelve lives, each of them sturdy enough that we needed the highest level of attack to take them, and even then, they would have to be fatal blows to be worth anything. Emiya was confident enough that he had the firepower for at least a few of those ¡ª and I had to assume there was a reason he couldn''t just use his Caladbolg over and over to get the job done, even if only as a matter of energy costs ¡ª but not enough to finish the job.

    Our options, then. Bradamante, Arash, and Euryale were automatically out. I had to assume Artemis was, too. If he could get in a killing blow, Asterios could take one life, but presumably no more than that. If we brought in A¨ªfe and Siegfried, then that was one life each between the Thunder Feat and Balmung.

    That still only got us about two thirds of the way there.

    "So?" said Jason. "I''ll give you one more chance. Aren''t I generous? Aren''t I magnanimous? If you surrender that hag''s Grail and Euryale, then the rest of you can take your little boat and sail away! What do you say?"

    But¡­killing Herakles wasn''t the goal, taking the Grail was. That was how we would solve this Singularity. As long as Herakles was unable to stop us, we could defeat Jason, take the Grail, and then it wouldn''t matter how many lives Herakles had.

    "Emiya," I said quietly, "do you have a way of keeping Herakles occupied?"

    Emiya slid a glance my way. "I do. I can buy you a few minutes like that, but it won''t be enough to defeat him for good."

    "Senpai?" asked Rika. "Do you have a plan?"

    I nodded minutely. "I do."

    "Well, hell," said Drake, quieter than I was used to. "Let''s hear it, missy. How are you gonna put that big beastie in the ground?"

    "We don''t need to kill Herakles," I explained, quiet enough to keep Jason from overhearing. "He doesn''t matter, he''s just an obstacle. Our goal here isn''t anything at all to do with him, we just need ¡ª"

    "The Grail," Ritsuka breathed. "That''s right. As long as we get that, it''s over, isn''t it?"

    Especially since Herakles had likely been summoned by it. Once it was in our possession, we would theoretically be the ones holding his strings, wouldn''t we? At that point, his incredible strength and extra lives wouldn''t matter.

    "And Jason''s the one who has it," I concluded. "He has no martial feats in his legend. He''s just a guy who happened to know a lot of famous heroes. We can handle that easily."

    Emiya made a noise of understanding in his throat. "So you just need Herakles out of the way long enough to do that. Yeah, that sounds doable. It won''t be easy, but as long as Master focuses entirely on supporting me, I can buy you at least enough time for that."

    "Then do it," said Rika seriously. "I don''t care how you do it, Emiya, just keep him off our backs until we can mess that pretty boy up."

    Emiya smirked. "That''s all well and good, Master, but would you be terribly angry if I killed him instead?"

    We all turned to look at him.

    "W-what?" Mash stammered.

    "B-but you just said," Rika began.

    "Sorry, sorry," Emiya apologized, chuckling a little. "It''s a bad joke, I know, but for just a second there¡­ Well, it doesn''t matter. You''ll have more than enough time to take the Grail back, Master."

    "Hey!" said Jason, annoyed. "You guys, do you think I''m just going to let you scheme over there forever? If you aren''t going to accept my generous offer, then I''ll just send Herakles over to deal with you!"

    "Sorry to waste your time!" Emiya called back. "But, before we get this started, do you mind if I recite a bit of poetry? Against a hero as strong as Herakles, I need a bit of help to psych myself up to face him."

    "Poetry?" Jason''s lip curled. He waved it off. "Fine, fine. Never let it be said I don''t give my enemies their dying wishes. Just hurry it up, would you?"

    Emiya smirked. "I''ll try my best to be quick, then."

    He glanced back at Rika for a moment, and as though she heard something the rest of us didn''t, she nodded. "Got it. We''ll be ready."

    Emiya squared his shoulders, taking a deep breath, and then he let it out as a sigh.

    "I am¡­the bone of my sword."

    Something beyond sight slid into place, like a giant gear turning. My eyes flitted about, but there was nothing there, only the stormy sea, the heavy sky, and us.

    "Steel is my body and fire is my blood."

    The air shifted. Something else slid into place, as though an unseen key was slowly turning in its lock. The Whydah Hind creaked.

    "I have created over a thousand blades. Unknown to death, nor known to life."

    Emiya suddenly slid into focus, as though my eyes had been glazed over before and I was only now seeing him in his entirety. Between one word and the next, his outline solidified in an indescribable way, like he had become more real.

    "Have withstood pain to create many weapons, yet these hands will never hold anything."

    Scorching heat radiated out of his body, so hot it was like standing in front of a furnace at full blast, or a bonfire at full burn.

    Or, I realized, a forge.

    "Wait a second," said Jason, "that''s not any kind of poetry I''ve ever heard about!"

    "Oh dear," the young woman at his side said. "Master, this may have been a bad decision."

    "So as I pray," Emiya said in a voice thick with promise, "Unlimited Blade Works."

    A ring of fire swept out from his feet, carrying swiftly across the boat, and half of us tried to leap away from it before it could touch us ¡ª except it washed over me without burning, without even the slightest bit of heat, racing outwards at speed until it had consumed first the Hind, and then the Argo, and between one blink and the next¡­vanished.

    And it had taken Emiya and Herakles with it.

    "Well, would you look at that," said Hektor, impressed. "Man, I really underestimated that guy. Who knew he had something like that up his sleeve?"

    "Herakles!" Jason raged, whirling about like he could find his missing Servant huddling behind the mast. "Hey, Herakles! Damn it, where did you go? This is no time to be slacking off, you bastard!" He spun towards us. "You! What did your shitty Archer do, you little shits?"

    "Senpai, now!" Rika shouted.

    Arash, I ordered, and swifter than lightning, he had nocked another arrow, taken aim, and fired it, straight for Jason''s heart. It moved so fast that I couldn''t even follow it with my eyes, not even as a streak of color. Jason was way too slow to avoid it.

    A bronze hand materialized suddenly in the path of the arrow, catching it with the tip less than an inch away from Jason''s chest. Up the hand came an arm, then a torso, then a head and legs, and then, standing there, Arash''s arrow clutched in her fist, was another Servant.

    She turned one blue eye our way, and a wave of bloodlust slammed into me with all the force of a freight train. My knees threatened to buckle under its weight.

    "Alright, you bastards," she said in a rough voice. "I was enjoying that nap, just now, so which of you made me get up?"

 Chapter CII: Strongest in the World

    Chapter CII: Strongest in the World

    For the second time in less than ten minutes, I felt like the eye of God was staring down at me. The pressure of the new Servant¡¯s attention was like a physical weight pressing on my skin, trying to force me down onto my knees. I could feel them shaking, and I didn¡¯t dare take my eyes off of the new arrival long enough to check how badly.

    The twins, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, didn¡¯t seem to be faring much better.

    Everything sharpened under that pressure. The world drew itself in stark relief, and every detail of the new Servant stood out like a beacon in the fog. The white hair, the bronze skin, the blue eyes filled with murderous intent, the white and black clothing, the sparse armor that seemed more for decoration than actual use. The very real anger etched into the lines of her face, like it was a physical force she was just barely containing.

    ¡°M-Master,¡± Mash gasped. ¡°A Servant¡­!¡±

    The new Servant ¡ª a Lancer, when I looked at her with my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance ¡ª shifted her gaze, and it landed on Arash. Her scowl deepened, and in her grasp, his arrow snapped and dissipated into flecks of blue dust.

    ¡°Only seeing one Archer,¡± she said lowly, ¡°so I guess that means it must¡¯ve been you, right?¡±

    ¡°Th-this guy,¡± Rika stuttered, ¡°he had¡­another Servant?¡±

    ¡°She feels¡­just like Herakles,¡± said Ritsuka.

    She did. She had the same weight to her presence, the same raw power rolling off of her in waves. Was that Divinity of some kind? I hadn¡¯t felt anything like it against Stheno and Euryale, and Romulus had been suppressing his, but for a powerful Heroic Spirit with a high level of Divinity¡­was this what that felt like?

    ¡°H-hey, Caenis!¡± said Jason. ¡°Do you realize how close that was? Were you just going to let me die, you lazy jerk? If that arrow had actually hit me, you would¡¯ve disappeared too, you know!¡±

    My thoughts ground to a halt. Caenis.

    ¡°Shut up,¡± she told him, annoyed. ¡°Stop stating the obvious. I got up, didn¡¯t I? If I was gonna let you die, I would¡¯ve just rolled over and gone back to sleep.¡±

    In the story of the Argonauts, she was¡­ Well, not a she, for starters, or at least not by the time she became one of them, but all things considered, that was the least important part of her legend. No, no, it was the events surrounding that which were more important, because of what it meant for her in terms of Noble Phantasms.

    ¡°C-Caenis?¡± Ritsuka asked. ¡°I don¡¯t recognize that name.¡±

    ¡°Caenis was another one of the Argonauts,¡± Mash explained quietly. ¡°According to the legend, she was the loveliest woman in Thessaly, and Poseidon wanted her for his own. D-depending on which version of the story you read, either he negotiated with her for her body or, um, h-he raped her, and afterwards, he offered her one wish. She wished to be a man, so that she could never be violated ever again.¡±

    ¡°Damn,¡± said Rika. ¡°I know that whole thing with C¨² and Super Action Mom kinda slapped us in the face with it, but things really were different back then.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a nice story and all, but it ain¡¯t explaining what we¡¯re seeing right here, Mash,¡± Drake said.

    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Jason demanded. ¡°Are you just going to stand around, Caenis? I didn¡¯t summon you so you could look pretty, you know!¡±

    ¡°Waiting,¡± said Caenis. ¡°I¡¯m waiting, that¡¯s what I¡¯m doing.¡±

    ¡°According to the myth, Poseidon was so pleased with her that he granted her wish,¡± Mash went on. ¡°He transformed Caenis into a man, and she became the powerful warrior, the Argonaut, Caeneus, and he also granted her¡­¡±

    Arash, I ordered silently, a volley, straight at her.

    ¡°Waiting?¡± said Jason. ¡°Waiting for what? Hey, I didn¡¯t summon you for that either!¡±

    Arash drew back and fired off a volley of arrows so rapidly that they seemed to all leave his bow simultaneously, aimed straight for Caenis¡¯ body. For a single instant, I held out a faint hope that it would really be that easy and we could just move on, that Caenis wouldn¡¯t be as powerful as I feared she actually was.

    And then she swept her arm out to the side, her spear manifesting midway through, and dashed most of the volley just like that. One or two arrows made it through, but they bounced off of her skin and shattered uselessly.

    ¡°¡­an impenetrable body,¡± Mash finished.

    Caenis smirked. ¡°For them to realize exactly how fucked they are.¡±

    Mash suddenly gasped and threw herself in front of the group, and it was only when her shield let out a resonating BONG that I even realized that Caenis had moved from her spot, that was how fast she was. I hadn¡¯t even blinked, and she had simply materialized in front of our group as though she had teleported.

    ¡°Master!¡± Mash cried. ¡°Stay back!¡±

    Caenis clicked her tongue. ¡°Thing¡¯s stronger than it looks, huh? Well, that just means it¡¯s gonna take more than a single strike to break it!¡±

    She ignored another volley of arrows from Arash that broke against her skin and slammed her spear into Mash¡¯s shield again, and another echoing BONG nearly made my teeth ache with its intensity. I scrambled back to put as much distance as I could between me and Caenis, but it wasn¡¯t like there was much room for that on the Hind to begin with.

    The twins did the same as me, but Rika stumbled halfway, gasping and clutching at the hand that bore her Command Spells. ¡°Emiya!¡±

    We were running out of time. Fighting one or the other was already a tall task, but having to fight both Caenis and Herakles at the same time would be impossible. Even with our full roster brought out all at once, I didn¡¯t have high hopes of us winning that. Especially when they both had such powerful defensive Noble Phantasms.

    I narrowed my gaze, refusing to blink as Caenis swung another powerful strike that threatened to buckle Mash¡¯s knees.

    But no Noble Phantasm was truly absolute. No, because absolutes like that were the domain of things like a god¡¯s Authority, the power of true divinity ¡ª as true as any divinity could be, at any rate. The Noble Phantasm of a Heroic Spirit had to have limits, and if you knew what they were, you could exploit them.

    Just as Herakles could be hurt and killed by anything that passed the threshold of Rank A and Siegfried had that linden leaf-shaped weak spot on his back, Caenis¡¯ impenetrable skin had to have a limit, too, a way it could be beaten.

    The first thing I was going to try was throwing a little more firepower at it, and for that, we needed enough room that we wouldn¡¯t be caught up in the crossfire.

    Bradamante, I started, and she startled, stumbling a step just as she was about to join the fighting, I need you to go over to the Argo and target Jason.

    She frowned. Master, that¡¯s¡­

    Dishonorable, she was probably about to say. We need to force Caenis back over there, I told her. Once she is, I¡¯m going to summon A¨ªfe. At that point, I want you to use your Noble Phantasm, make Caenis trip up, so A¨ªfe has an opening to exploit.

    She didn¡¯t look happy, but Bradamante still nodded. Got it, Master.

    She turned on her heel suddenly and leapt over to the Argo, and as she came down, she aimed her tiny spear straight at Jason, who scrambled back as he realized he was in danger again. Caenis broke off midway through another swing at Mash, returning to the Argo in a blur of speed so she could place herself in front of Jason and block Bradamante¡¯s attack. It was distressing how easy she made it look, frankly, like she was just toying with us and could kill us all whenever she pleased.

    Unexpectedly, Asterios let out a roar of challenge and took off after her, donning his mask as he charged towards Caenis to help Bradamante. Despite his incredible strength, however, triple her own and enough that a single straight hit would have killed any of our own Servants when we fought him, even he wasn¡¯t doing any noticeable damage to Caenis. His halberds forced her back a few feet with every swing, but left behind no visible sign they even tickled her.

    It was enough breathing room. I took a breath, reached into my mystic code, and spun up one of the batteries. There was no Blackbeard or Anne to interrupt me, this time.

    Lines of light lit up my body. A summoning circle bloomed on the deck, glowing.

    ¡°Come forth, A¨ªfe!¡±

    A shadow formed atop the summoning circle, cast in three dimensions, and then quickly filled in, taking on the familiar form of A¨ªfe, down to the vicious red spear in her grip. She seemed somehow less substantial than the real thing, like she wasn¡¯t wholly there, which I suppose made sense since she technically wasn¡¯t. The body she was in was nothing more than a shade of a shade, so it wasn¡¯t surprising that she seemed diminished like this.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got the gist of the situation,¡± she said briskly. ¡°What do you need of me?¡±

    ¡°Super Action Mom!¡± Rika cried, relieved.

    ¡°We need to defeat Caenis as quickly as possible,¡± I told A¨ªfe shortly. ¡°Emiya is holding off Herakles, and there¡¯s no way we can beat them both at once.¡±

    ¡°Her skin¡¯s impenetrable,¡± Ritsuka added. ¡°You can¡¯t afford to hold back.¡±

    A¨ªfe¡¯s lips quirked into a smirk. ¡°Got it.¡±

    She disappeared in a spurt of speed and was suddenly up in the air, arm cocked back. G¨¢e Bolg flew as a streak of red, and Caenis stepped out of the way, letting it sail past her and thunk into the Argo¡¯s deck.

    ¡°Damnit,¡± said Drake. ¡°Don¡¯t I feel fucking useless. All I get to do now is stand here and watch others fight my battles for me!¡±

    Orion patted her leg sympathetically. ¡°I know the feeling.¡±

    Over to the side, Artemis paused, looking like she was going to say something, and her brow furrowed for a second, then the moment passed and she pulled back on her bowstring. She joined Arash in firing volleys of arrows at Caenis, but they turned out to be about as effective, which I really should have been expecting.

    A bright light lit up across the Argo¡¯s deck, shining like a newborn star.

    ¡°Bouclier,¡± Bradamante¡¯s voice rang out, ¡°d¡¯Atlante!¡±

    And she flew across the Argo like she was being reeled in by a line. Caenis turned to face her at the last second, giving Asterios the time and room to get out of the way, but whether out of arrogance or inability, she didn¡¯t dodge, and Bradamante collided with her, then raced past. Caenis, momentarily stunned, stumbled, but otherwise seemed entirely unharmed.

    So even Bradamante¡¯s Noble Phantasm wasn¡¯t enough to hurt her. Would Balmung have been just as ineffective?

    Now, A¨ªfe! I ordered.

    A¨ªfe took the opening for what it was, racing towards Caenis as she gathered power in her fist. Whether she¡¯d seen Bradamante¡¯s Noble Phantasm fail and decided not to try her own or simply thought this would be a stronger attack, I didn¡¯t know, but I recognized the way the entire world seemed to compress down into a point clutched in her hand.

    ¡°Torannchless!¡±

    Right before the punch struck, Caenis seemed to recover her wits, and she threw up her arms to block the blow as though that would save her from its full power.

    BOOM was the sound of the eponymous Thunder Feat. The air shook, the ship rocked, the sea itself sloshed and churned as all of that imparted force and power hit and vibrated through everything around it, and against all expectations Caenis¡­slid back almost a dozen feet, without even a bruise to show for it. The armor on her forearm hadn¡¯t even bent.

    She looked up from behind her crossed arms and smirked.

    ¡°That it?¡±

    My stomach clenched.

    ¡°No way,¡± Rika breathed. ¡°That attack took out the tentacle monster no problem¡­and she just tanked it like it was nothing!¡±

    Worse, it had taken out that same tentacle monster while it was empowered by a Holy Grail, gifted with near limitless regeneration and a body that lacked any and all forms of standard biology. It had been powerful enough to blast a hole in the wall behind it, too, and keep going. For that matter, if she¡¯d managed to get enough time and space to wind up for it, she might have taken out Altera in one blow.

    Caenis looked like she¡¯d barely even felt it.

    Jason cackled. ¡°Was that supposed to do something? Ha! Don¡¯t you losers know? Caenis here was blessed by Poseidon ¡ª¡± as though the name itself infuriated her, Caenis¡¯ smirk turned into a thunderous scowl ¡ª ¡°which means as long as she¡¯s out here on the sea, nothing you throw at her is even gonna leave a dent! Haven¡¯t you figured it out yet? The Argonauts are the greatest heroes in the world!¡±

    Medea ¡ª our Medea ¡ª stepped back. ¡°No¡­ I got this far, only to¡­¡±

    I latched onto that phrasing. At sea. As long as we were at sea, Caenis was invincible. Did that mean that the instant she set foot on land, she wouldn¡¯t be? Was that the weakness in her Noble Phantasm I¡¯d been looking for?

    Some part of me wanted to believe it, but I couldn¡¯t say for sure just on Jason¡¯s boasting alone. There was no way to test it here and now, not when we were hours or days away from the nearest island, depending entirely on how long Bellamy could hold out.

    Rika suddenly gasped again, grasping tightly at her Command Spells. I knew what it meant. Emiya was struggling. We were running out of time, and just as quickly, we were running out of options, because brute force obviously wasn¡¯t going to be enough.

    The archipelago. That was going to be our saving grace.

    I said the only thing I could say in that situation. ¡°We need to retreat.¡±

    Every unoccupied head turned immediately in my direction. ¡°What?¡± Drake squawked. ¡°You, too? But they¡¯re right fucking in front of us! This thing¡¯s so close to over I can taste the celebratory rum!¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Ritsuka immediately, ¡°Senpai¡¯s right. This is too much. We don¡¯t have a plan for Caenis. If we just keep throwing whatever we have at her and hoping it¡¯ll stick, then all it¡¯ll mean is we¡¯re all tired when she kills us.¡±

    ¡°Damn,¡± said Orion, ¡°that¡¯s dark.¡±

    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

    ¡°A-and Emiya,¡± Rika managed to groan out, ¡°c-can¡¯t keep this up for much longer! Me, either! I now know what a garden hose feels like with the water turned up full blast!¡±

    Drake snarled. ¡°Damn it! Damn it all! Fuck! Sam!¡±

    ¡°Aye, Captain?¡± Bellamy said.

    ¡°Turn this tub around and get us out of here!¡± she ordered.

    ¡°Aye!¡± Bellamy replied. ¡°Where are we headed?¡±

    Drake turned to me expectantly.

    ¡°Back to the archipelago,¡± I told them both.

    Drake turned back to Bellamy and barked, ¡°You heard her! The archipelago, and be quick about it! We need to be out of here yesterday!¡±

    ¡°Aye, Captain!¡±

    Bellamy spun the wheel, and the Whydah Hind lurched into motion as the oars pushed us away from the Argo. Even with them propelling us, it felt like forever for the ship to swing around and back towards the way we came.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t there a hostile fleet at the archipelago?¡± Euryale asked pointedly. ¡°Are we leaving one disaster and racing headlong into another?¡±

    ¡°At worst, neutral,¡± I said. ¡°We never met the owner. Blackbeard interrupted us before we could try negotiating.¡±

    ¡°Maybe¡­the Servant down there will have something we can use to defeat Caenis,¡± Ritsuka suggested.

    I wasn¡¯t going to bank on it, but it wasn¡¯t outside the realm of possibility. It would be incredibly convenient if they did. Frustrating, as it always was dealing with precogs, if the Counter Force had stuck the Servant we needed to defeat Caenis at the last island we were going to visit because it knew we were going to wind up there, but convenient.

    Bradamante, I sent down my link to her, break off and come back. We¡¯re retreating. Let Asterios know.

    Understood! Bradamante replied dutifully.

    A¨ªfe, I ordered next, keep Caenis occupied for as long as you can. Buy us time to retreat.

    A¨ªfe¡¯s mental acknowledgement carried a kind of grim acceptance. I don¡¯t know how long this form will last, but I¡¯ll wring out every second I possibly can.

    I just had to hope it would be enough.

    ¡°Hey!¡± Jason called after us. ¡°Who said you could run away, you cowards!¡±

    Drake gritted her teeth and whirled about, sprinting to the very back of the ship.

    ¡°Captain Drake!¡± Mash called. ¡°Wait! Where are you going?¡±

    Drake ignored her, leaned against the railing, and pulled out one of her pistols to take aim. The hammer clicked as she cocked it back. ¡°FUCK YOU!¡±

    ¡°Master!¡± the younger Medea cried. ¡°Don¡¯t let that hit you! She has the Grail!¡±

    BANG was the sound of Drake firing, and Jason recoiled more on reflex it seemed than anything else.

    But as I expected, Caenis broke off her fight with our other Servants and raced to his defense, reaching out with one hand to pluck the bullet out of the air. It would have been nice if it could have been that easy to take out Jason, but of course it wasn¡¯t.

    And then the bullet did something unexpected: it punched straight through Caenis¡¯ hand in a spurt of red, kept going, and bounced off of her cheekbone, drawing a line of blood across her face. Caenis looked as stunned as the rest of us.

    ¡°What the hell¡­¡± Drake whispered.

    ¡°How¡­¡± I began.

    ¡°¡­did you just do that?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    Was it¡­something to do with the Grail, or¡­maybe Drake herself? If Caenis was supposed to be invincible on the sea, then how was it that Drake¡¯s bullet ¡ª empowered by a Holy Grail or not ¡ª had managed to do anything to her at all?

    Caenis¡¯ surprise quickly transformed into rage. ¡°You¡­! I¡¯M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD!¡±

    A¨ªfe¡¯s fist slamming into her face stopped her from charging immediately after us, and although Caenis went down and hit the Argo¡¯s deck so hard she bounced, she was back up again in a flash, just as furious and just as uninjured as she had been from every other one of A¨ªfe¡¯s attacks. So whatever it was, it had something to do with Drake and it wasn¡¯t some sort of time limit or threshold of accumulated damage or something.

    Rika let out another groan. Later. We could brainstorm later.

    ¡°Double time it, Sam!¡± I shouted to Bellamy.

    ¡°YOU¡¯RE NOT GETTING AWAY!¡± Caenis roared.

    ¡°Caenis of the Argonauts!¡± A¨ªfe shouted. At her feet, she quickly sketched a set of runes, four in total, and although they were too far away for me to make out, they glowed so brightly they would have been blinding up close. ¡°I challenge thee! A duel between warriors, one on one, to the death!¡±

    My eyes went wide. I recognized that. It was the curse C¨²chulainn had used in Fuyuki to force the corrupted Emiya into a straight fight.

    And Caenis, bound by that curse the same way, had to abort her jump right as she was about to chase after us.

    ¡°DAMN IT!¡± she howled. ¡°DAMN YOU, YOU MEDDLING BITCH!¡±

    ¡°Bradamante, Minotaur!¡± A¨ªfe called. Even from this distance, I could see the way Asterios stiffened. ¡°Leave now, while I have her attention in full! Our Masters will need your aid for the battle to come!¡±

    ¡°Yes, Queen A¨ªfe!¡± Bradamante said, and she took the opportunity to retreat, leaping off of the Argo and disappearing in midair. She reappeared a moment later with us, a little worse for the wear but not seriously hurt.

    Asterios hesitated a moment longer. His head swiveled back and forth between A¨ªfe and Caenis, who was slowly reining her anger in enough to do more than rage and scream. What was going through his head, I didn¡¯t know.

    ¡°Come on, Asterios!¡± Euryale called over to him. ¡°What are you waiting for? Let¡¯s go!¡±

    His head dipped. And then, he turned to look at Jason ¡ª who was, I just realized, entirely defenseless. The only one standing between him and us now was the younger Medea, who wasn¡¯t a frontline fighter to begin with and only had half of her power.

    Jason seemed to realize the same thing a bare second later. He started to back away from Asterios.

    I threw myself against the railing, and as loud as I could, I shouted over to him, ¡°Asterios! There¡¯s nothing in the way! Take the Grail!¡±

    ¡°No!¡± Medea shouted. ¡°Hektor!¡±

    The dots connected. Shit. Hektor had slunk around in the background so much that I¡¯d forgotten he was even there, but now that he¡¯d been brought back to my attention, my eyes zeroed in on him, stalking forward from behind the other Medea. His spear was drawn, ready to be used, and while Asterios had a lot on him in terms of raw physical might, I hadn¡¯t forgotten how easily Hektor had held his own while wedged between him and two other Servants.

    My mouth opened to call for him to forget about it and retreat ¡ª

    Only for Rika to suddenly gasp and let out a choked sob. ¡°No¡­!¡±

    At the same moment, the space above the Argo¡¯s deck twisted, and a mass of leaden skin and bulging muscle was deposited on the wooden planks with a thud that shook the whole ship.

    Herakles.

    He was riddled with maybe a dozen different swords, all of them jutting out from his torso and limbs like some kind of demented porcupine and all of them deep enough to have hit something important. Blood ran in rivers down from the wounds, and his entire body seemed to be drenched in it, as though he¡¯d decided to bathe in a slaughterhouse. How much of it was his was impossible to say.

    There was no sign of Emiya.

    ¡°Oh no,¡± Mash gasped softly.

    Rika just sobbed, clutching at her Command Spells like they were the only thing tethering her to the ship. I didn¡¯t need to be a genius to figure out what had happened.

    ¡°Herakles!¡± Jason cried, relieved. ¡°What took you so long, you lazy oaf? Don¡¯t tell me that weakling actually managed to kill you a few times!¡±

    Herakles did not reply with words, but he stood as though unbothered by his injuries, and a moment later, all of the weapons sticking out of him vanished into glittering dust that was carried away on the wind. We were too far away to see properly, but I had the sense that his wounds were healing rapidly, because I could see the steam that rose from his body, billowing out of the rents in his flesh.

    ¡°Damn,¡± Arash muttered. ¡°That guy¡­ He really is as strong as they say he is.¡±

    Asterios, back on the Argo, looked at Herakles, at how he seemed none the worse for wear, and in that moment, made a decision. I recognized the slant of his shoulders for what it was. Had seen it more than my fair share, especially at Endbringer battles.

    Resignation like that was for people who knew they weren¡¯t coming back.

    ¡°We waiting for the big guy or what?¡± Bellamy asked.

    ¡°Get us out of here,¡± I said.

    ¡°No!¡± Euryale raced towards the side of the ship. ¡°Asterios! Asterios, what are you doing? Come back!¡±

    He didn¡¯t. He looked our way one last time, lingering for just a moment, like he was etching her face into his mind one last time, and then he walked over and put himself between Herakles and us. He brandished those two halberds of his, growled so low and loud that even so far away, it shook my bones, and then, without an ounce of hesitation in his body, he leapt into action and threw himself against the mountain that was Greece¡¯s greatest hero. There was no way he didn¡¯t already know the outcome.

    Jason¡¯s cackle echoed.

    ¡°ASTERIOS!¡± Euryale screamed at him.

    She looked ready to fling herself overboard and go to him, but Artemis swooped down and scooped her up in a moment of surprising tenderness, like an older sister comforting her sibling.

    ¡°Damn,¡± Orion said. ¡°Never would¡¯ve expected that outta him. That guy really was a big softie in the end, wasn¡¯t he?¡±

    ¡°Shut up!¡± Euryale snarled. ¡°He¡¯s not dead! We have to go back!¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t spit on his sacrifice like that!¡± Drake barked at her. ¡°Can¡¯t you see he¡¯s doing this so you can escape? Respect his decision and run away so you can avenge him later!¡±

    Euryale¡¯s face screwed up into a complicated expression, and she pounded her fist against Artemis¡¯ arms furiously. ¡°Damn it!¡±

    And then, she wriggled out of Artemis¡¯ grip and raced up to the very back of the ship. She leaned against the railing, cupped her hands around her mouth, and yelled, ¡°ASTERIOS! THANK YOU! FOR EVERYTHING!¡±

    An earthshaking roar was the only reply offered, but she didn¡¯t seem to have been expecting anything else or anything more coherent. She lingered only for a moment, fingers digging into the railing with deceptive strength for her size, but she didn¡¯t stay and watch as her¡­friend, or whatever it was he had become to her, died for her sake.

    Instead, Euryale took a step back, squaring her posture like an opera singer preparing for the biggest, most important song of her performance, and then she sucked in a deep breath, lifted her arms like she was offering supplication to the air, and started to sing.

    From out of her mouth came a slow, mournful song, one I didn¡¯t recognize for the lyrics or melody, but whose echoing, haunting quality was familiar in a way that made my chest ache and a very old wound throb. The song didn¡¯t much resemble anything modern, but it had a solemn, sad lilt that also sounded resolute and final that anyone who had ever lost someone would know well.

    It was a dirge. A funeral song, sung now for someone whose death and suffering had never before been mourned, only celebrated. A goodbye not to the monstrous Minotaur, but to Asterios, who had given his life for another. For a friend.

    Whether or not he heard it¡­ I didn¡¯t know. But some part of me hoped he did.

    ¡°Beautiful,¡± Ritsuka whispered.

    ¡°And¡­sad,¡± Mash added mournfully. ¡°Not only Asterios, but Emiya, too¡­¡±

    Rika choked on another sob. She curled in on herself, clutching her Command Spells to her chest like they were the only thing she had left of him. For a moment, I considered reminding her that we could summon him back using the FATE System as soon as we got back to Chaldea, so there wasn¡¯t technically anything to mourn, but it felt too callous, so I swallowed the words before they could even reach my tongue.

    ¡°Oh dear,¡± said Artemis. ¡°This is exactly why I didn¡¯t want you to be summoned, Darling! What would I have done if you were one of the ones who died?¡±

    ¡°Read the room!¡± Orion hissed back at her.

    I left them to it and took a few steps over to Bellamy. Quietly, so as not to interrupt the others, I said to him, ¡°As quick as you can. Asterios and A¨ªfe will buy us as much time as they can, but we won¡¯t have a huge head start.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re sure about the archipelago?¡± he asked me just as quietly. ¡°Euryale had a point about how it wasn¡¯t exactly the most welcoming place.¡±

    ¡°If they wanted us dead, they wouldn¡¯t have missed that first shot,¡± I reasoned. ¡°No. Whoever is down there is cautious, likely protecting something. Atalanta, Hippolyta, and King David ¡ª if they¡¯re all still around, it¡¯s likely they¡¯re hiding in the archipelago and probably found another ally.¡±

    Whether or not they¡¯d be willing to help us¡­ Well, that was another question. Medea said they¡¯d left Jason out of disgust for his plans, but that didn¡¯t automatically mean that they would be willing to fight against him. King David and Hippolyta wouldn¡¯t have any real connection to stop them, but Atalanta might have a more complicated relationship with the idea of fighting an old friend. Two or four, even, depending on how close she¡¯d been with the others.

    For that matter, whoever they found might have his own opinions on taking the offense against Jason and Medea. Ironically, if he did, playing this defensively might be the only real way to defeat someone as strong as Herakles.

    ¡°Alright,¡± said Bellamy. ¡°Archipelago it is. Shouldn¡¯t be too hard, right? Making friends is the one thing I¡¯m really good at!¡±

    Euryale continued singing as we sailed away, and she kept singing even as we left the Argo far behind us and Asterios¡¯ ears were too far away for her words to reach, and only once she had decided that she had sung a much as she wanted to sing did she let her song die down and her voice trail off. For once, there was no applause greeting her, only solemn silence, because they might have been a bunch of irreverent treasure hunters, but the rest of Drake¡¯s crew recognized what had been lost. Some of them had even hung their heads and pressed their hands to their hearts as though they were attending an actual funeral, and considering how life at sea was, maybe this was the closest thing to one they ever got.

    The mood remained dour and downtrodden as our journey continued, and the crew went about their usual work ¡ª as much as they needed to, with Bellamy¡¯s Whydah still supporting the Hind ¡ª quiet and subdued. Arash returned to the crow¡¯s nest so he could keep a lookout and make sure we weren¡¯t taken by surprise, and Bradamante, as our sole remaining dedicated frontline fighter, stood sentinel over the team. Soon enough, there was nothing in any direction except more sea, and the storm where the Argo was hiding faded into the horizon.

    Our retreat wasn¡¯t quite as frantic as our chase of Hektor had been, but we were still making far better time than the Hind would have on its own. Periodically, I made sure to check my map, so I wouldn¡¯t be surprised when we ran into that mystery Servant¡¯s fleet again.

    ¡°What are we going to do?¡± Mash asked Ritsuka quietly. ¡°Master, against an enemy like Herakles¡­w-without E-Emiya there to help us¡­¡±

    Rika¡¯s shoulders stiffened, but she didn¡¯t reply, not even to offer some witticism or make a reference that only her brother understood, as sure a sign as any that what had happened hit her hard.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Ritsuka replied. ¡°If it was just Herakles¡­but with Caenis there, too, things aren¡¯t so clear.¡±

    ¡°Somehow, Captain Drake was able to hurt Caenis, though,¡± Mash said, and both she and Ritsuka looked at Drake as though Drake would be able to tell them how. As I expected, Drake could only offer them a shrug.

    ¡°Got me,¡± she told them glumly. ¡°Not like I did anything special or something. Just squeezed off a shot at that wanker and she hopped in the way.¡±

    ¡°It can¡¯t be anything about you specifically,¡± I chimed in. She cocked her head at me.

    ¡°How d¡¯you figure that?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re a living human,¡± was my blunt answer. ¡°You¡¯re not a Heroic Spirit, so you don¡¯t have conceptual advantages based upon your legend, you just have the stuff you have on you and the Grail.¡±

    Could it have been the combination? If Caenis¡¯ impenetrable body only worked against the weapons of Antiquity, then something like a spear or a sword or even arrows would just bounce right off of her. It would neatly let something like a bullet or a musket ball get through her defenses, since they were too far removed from the sorts of things that existed back in her era. Too modern.

    That didn¡¯t quite feel right, though. A Heroic Spirit like Caenis should definitely be aware of a weakness like that in her Noble Phantasm and therefore know to avoid giving us the opportunity to exploit it ¡ª or even letting us know it was something to be exploited.

    ¡°Ain¡¯t like the pistols are all that special,¡± Drake said, gesturing at one. She reached for her chest and pulled out the Grail, scrutinizing it thoughtfully. ¡°You think this here bauble might have something to do with it?¡±

    Considering the options? Probably. The question was how. If it was something that only applied to Drake, like it was based upon her wish or something asinine like that, then we would be stuck trying to find the right opportunity for Drake to get in a killing blow against Caenis, which was already a difficult proposition before we started talking about Herakles being there, too.

    ¡°Almost certainly.¡±

    On the other hand, if it was something to do with the mere possession of the Grail, an advantage or ability afforded to anyone who held it, then that opened up a number of other avenues for us to attack Caenis from. We wouldn¡¯t have to rely on Drake ¡ª still an otherwise ordinary human ¡ª managing to score a fatal blow with her pistols, or something equally ridiculous, like making sure her hand was on whatever weapon we decided to use to kill Caenis.

    I wanted to have a better theory about how it worked before we started making any plans, though. Marie might have a few ideas that could help. As much as I¡¯d tried to cram into my head over the last two years, the fact of the matter remained that she still had a more robust knowledge base to work from.

    ¡°I don¡¯t understand how that¡¯s possible, though,¡± Mash said softly. ¡°Even with the Holy Grail, Caenis¡¯ Noble Phantasm should still protect her as long as she¡¯s on the sea, shouldn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°I got a look at it during the fighting,¡± Ritsuka said. ¡°That¡¯s exactly how it works. Nothing we used against her should have worked at all.¡±

    Hence our current conundrum.

    ¡°The Director or Da Vinci may have some idea,¡± I said. ¡°They might have gotten a better reading with Chaldea¡¯s sensor suite.¡±

    And even if they didn¡¯t¡­maybe it really would be as simple as fighting her on an island. It would really depend on what her Noble Phantasm conceptually counted as ¡°being at sea.¡± It was entirely possible that the size of the island mattered.

    We lapsed into silence after that. The whole ship was quiet, a silence broken only by the splash of the waves against the hull, the slosh of the sea, the creaking of the ship beneath us, and the oars slapping the water. I kept checking the map and kept one eye behind us, waiting for the Argo to give chase, even though Arash had it covered and had better eyesight besides.

    We were down an Archer. In a very real sense, we were half blind, and there was no swarm half a million strong giving me a picture of everything within half a mile to compensate.

    The hours passed like that. Conversations were sparse and quiet, and when they happened at all, it was usually about the maintenance of the ship or a few murmurs between the crew. Even Rika remained withdrawn; she retreated to the wall near Drake¡¯s cabin, sat down with her back against it, and spent almost the entire time staring down at her Command Spells.

    I could imagine the thoughts that were swirling through her head. The blame she was probably loading onto her own shoulders, like it was her fault Herakles was so powerful that Emiya had died against him or that Caenis had woken up to save Jason or that Asterios had been forced to stay behind to hold off Herakles.

    There wasn¡¯t much I could say to her to ease that burden. When something went wrong, it was far too easy to blame yourself, and logic tended to take the backseat. Later, when she was ready to listen, I decided I would take her aside and tell her why it wasn¡¯t her fault and there was nothing else she could have done.

    It was my plan anyway. If it was anyone¡¯s fault that it hadn¡¯t gone off right, it was mine, and even then, I¡¯d done my best with the information I had. There were just some things you couldn¡¯t account for. Herakles and Caenis were just that sort of complication.

    That didn¡¯t mean I was going to let Asterios and Emiya¡¯s sacrifices be for nothing.

    The day drew long, and the sun was dipping below the horizon when Arash gave me a gentle mental prod. Master.

    I looked up, then out towards the front of the ship, where, in the distance, the fleet from before had materialized again. They were waiting for us. Whether they¡¯d been there the entire time and never moved or if the Servant behind them had sensed us coming somehow, there was no way to know.

    Quietly, I made my way back over to Bellamy, and to him, I murmured, ¡°Ease up a little. Bring us in slow, so they know we aren¡¯t here for a fight.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± he said back. ¡°Probably don¡¯t recognize us, huh? Last time, it was just the Hind.¡±

    It depended on how good a look they¡¯d gotten at our chasing after Blackbeard. It was entirely possible they¡¯d seen the whole thing and kept an eye on the fighting until we were out of range, in which case they knew exactly what the Hind merged with the Whydah looked like.

    The fact they weren¡¯t firing on us was a good sign, at least. A good start. Easier to negotiate with someone that wasn¡¯t trying to kill you. Easier still if you happened to have a common enemy, although experience had taught me that it didn¡¯t always work out that cleanly.

    Now we just had to convince them to help us kill the strongest hero in the world half a dozen times.

 Chapter CIII: Enemy of My Enemy

    Chapter CIII: Enemy of My Enemy

    The ship remained silent ¡ª this time, out of nerves ¡ª as the fleet approached us, coming closer as a long line instead of clustering together. I had to admit that even I was a little on edge, because the way the formation was set up, it would be very easy for them to simply surround us and bombard us from all sides. There wouldn''t be much of anything we could do about it except kiss our asses goodbye.

    Mash''s Noble Phantasm was incredible, but somehow, I didn''t think it would be able to protect us in that case.

    The worst part about it was that we wouldn''t know it was coming until it had already happened, because there was no indication at all whether or not this guy was peaceful or just biding his time. As much as I had told Bellamy that we probably didn''t have anything to worry about, the fact of the matter was that my logic wasn''t flawless. I could very easily have been mistaken.

    Even if I wasn''t, it might change when they found out we had a Grail. There were a lot of Heroic Spirits who would do quite a bit for the chance to use it ¡ª a pirate would simply have less qualms about doing whatever it took to get it, no matter how underhanded or selfish.

    Our mystery Servant gave no sign of aggression as the ships approached, with a large galleon at the lead, sailing out in front of the rest. Even still, however, there wasn''t any sign of the Servant either, and the ships themselves seemed to be entirely unmanned, like they were all being controlled by a master pulling the strings.

    It was eerie, frankly. Not even the flagship had anyone on it. No one pulling the rigging, no one manning the wheel, no one at the guns, ready to blow us to smithereens. The ship was completely and utterly deserted.

    "What the hell?" Drake murmured. "Where is everybody?"

    Arash? I asked.

    I don''t see anyone either, Master, he replied.

    "Guess that gives new meaning to a ghost ship," Rika muttered, but it lacked the usual energy, the flare I''d come to expect from her.

    Be prepared, I told Arash, perhaps somewhat unnecessarily. Don''t take any overtly offensive action, but just in case he''s not friendly¡­

    The flagship came close, keeping only enough distance to avoid getting entangled with the Hind or slapped by the Whydah''s oars. It was close enough now that even in the dying sunlight, I could read the name printed across the side of its hull: Oxford. It wasn''t a ship whose owner I immediately recognized.

    As the flagship slowly passed us by, the rest of the fleet swerved around behind us and turned, swapping sides as they formed a kind of procession, like an honor guard ¡ª or a prisoner escort. I did my best to keep them in my peripheral vision, just in case, and had to swallow my own nerves.

    We were being watched, I could feel it. Like the barrel of a gun pressing against the back of my head. Who, where, and why, I didn''t know, but whoever was behind this, they were inspecting us. What they were expecting to find, I could only guess. What they would do if they didn''t like it, well, that was significantly more problematic.

    I hated situations like this, where I had so little control over the outcome, but we still didn''t have the greatest options in front of us. The caldera wasn''t out of the question, no, but the fact that the Argo came from a time before shipboard cannon emplacements did not change Herakles and Caenis or their lethality. Even if we could sink the ship, it wouldn''t mean anything against the Servants aboard it.

    Might even be worse for us, in point of fact. Sink the Argo, and the only place for the fight to go was the Hind, and that would put us at a massive disadvantage.

    Mash suddenly gasped and spun about, hefting her shield reflexively. "Servant detected!"

    And from somewhere in the formation of ships, one of them came close, opposite the flagship, and sailed up alongside us, creeping along the way our mysterious seaweed-haired friend had several days back. If they''d wanted to ambush us, they could have done it with frightening ease. We hadn''t even noticed it until it was practically on top of us.

    The "SATISFACTION" stenciled along its hull felt painfully ironic.

    Different from the others, this ship wasn''t completely unmanned. No, as it drew up side by side with the Hind, I could see a single person standing at the wheel, a tall figure with wavy black hair that fell to his shoulders, a thick mustache above his upper lip, and a neatly trimmed beard tracing the line of his jaw. He was adorned richly in buccaneer''s clothes, black with gold hems, knee-high leather boots, a red sash tied around his waist holding together his red coat. Atop his head was a tricorn hat.

    Something tickled at my memory. It felt like recognition. I''d never seen the man before in my life ¡ª he was a Servant, and in those clothes, from the Golden Age of Piracy, so how could I have? Somehow, though, there was something about him that was very familiar. Like I had seen him before, somewhere, from afar but never up close. For the life of me, however, I couldn''t figure out what made me feel that way. What about him triggered it.

    And then he strode over to the side of his ship, planted one foot on the lip of the deck, and leaned forward to rest his elbow on his knee as his other hand fell to rest on his hip. I felt my eyes open wide.

    No fucking way.

    "Ahoy, there!" he said in a bright, jovial voice. "Now what brings you fine folk out here to this little stretch of Hell?"

    Drake stepped over to the side of the ship and greeted him like an old friend. "Running from the same thing you were, I suspect! Got an angry demigod and a couple of his friends on our tail, and for some reason, why, they want a friend of ours!"

    "Senpai," Ritsuka murmured to me, "that''s not who I think it is, is it?"

    "I¡­don''t know."

    A part of me dreaded the answer myself. On the one hand, yes, later perception of a Heroic Spirit could have drastic effects on their appearance, their Noble Phantasms, and maybe even their personality ¡ª Dracul had been an excellent lesson on exactly that. On the other hand, my credulity had been stretched one time too many in this Singularity, so I was hoping I was wrong.

    "You don''t say." The other pirate stroked his chin thoughtfully. "And which friend of yours is this, exactly? Only, it seems mighty convenient for you and me to have a common enemy, don''t you think?"

    "Mighty inconvenient, more like," Drake groused. "Pah! Bastards want our local songstress of a goddess, although what for, well, they weren''t exactly in an explaining mood, you feel me?"

    "A goddess, you say," the pirate said. "Got quite a few who might fit that one with you now, don''t you? So, is it the busty one, the flat one, the one with the fancy shield, the elf girl, or the one with the big shield?"

    Artemis squeaked and flung an arm over her chest, as though it would be enough to hide her cleavage, while Medea shrank away from the attention, the tips of her ears burning. Bradamante looked down at her shield and realized she was the one with the "fancy shield."

    "And why should we tell you that?" Euryale snapped at him.

    His eyes immediately turned to her. "That''ll be you, then."

    She snarled. "So?" she demanded. "Do you want something from me now, too? Going to kidnap me and try to do unspeakable things, just like those creeps?"

    "Never much interested me, if I''m frank," said the pirate. "What about the rest of them there? And the fellow up in the crow''s nest waiting for me to twitch the wrong direction?"

    I took a step forward. "You''ll forgive us if we''re a little less forthcoming, considering the situation."

    The pirate smiled tightly. "Might want to decide to be a little more forthcoming, lass. These''re some high stakes we''re playing with here, and I''m not the type to give people enough rope to hang themselves with. Prefer the pistol. Quicker, cleaner, less chance of me getting screwed over."

    A threat. And if he had control over each of these ships simultaneously, not an idle one. He was willing enough to hear us out that he came himself, but he was also perfectly willing to blow us out of the water if things went south one way or the other. Unfortunately, it gave him a lot of control over the situation.

    But there were more ways of controlling things than a monopoly on physical force. I''d learned that lesson more times in my career than any other ¡ª at the foot of the queen, if I was allowed to be a bit poetic about it.

    "These sorts of things go both ways, Captain Morgan," I said evenly. "You''re asking us to give you reasons to trust us, while you have a gun pointed to our heads."

    The pirate''s smile grew even tighter, confirming my suspicion. "Figured that one out, did you?"

    Behind me, Ritsuka groaned softly as Mash gasped.

    "Y-you''re Sir Henry Morgan!" she exclaimed. "The famous privateer who used trickery and cunning to conquer a number of cities throughout the Spanish Main! The Terror who cut a path throughout the Caribbean one victory at a time, against odds that many said were impossible! The one who people said inherited the spirit and mantle of Francis Drake!"

    "Inherited my what, now?" Drake asked. "Don''t remember putting any of that in my inheritance, pittance that it is."

    "Francis Drake?" Morgan said. He looked Drake up and down, bemused. "You don''t look anything at all like how I imagined you would."

    "Better in person, right?" Drake shot back, grinning.

    "Most things are," Morgan replied. Drake''s grin grew larger.

    "Careful, now," she said playfully. "Too much flattery and I might start thinking you''re after something!"

    Morgan laughed. "A famous privateer? After something? Perish the thought!" His smile fell away from his face, and from his sash, he pulled a pistol and cocked the hammer back, letting it hang threateningly towards his ship''s deck. "But it''s precisely because I am one that I have to ask what it is you''re hoping to find in that archipelago."

    "Hey, hey," said Drake, annoyed, "flattery''ll get you plenty of places with me, but don''t think it means I''m just gonna turn the other cheek when you start pulling out weapons!"

    "Like I said," Morgan said bluntly, "lots at stake, here. Risks I''m not willing to take. Trust''s a hard thing to come by, these days. Ain''t something you can just give away for free. Seeing as I''m a reasonable man, however, I feel it only fair to give you another chance to answer: what is it you''re looking for in that archipelago?"

    He leveled a solemn glare at us all, radiating danger and menace in waves that washed over the ship and everyone on it, and several of Drake''s crew, including Bellamy, shifted nervously, murmuring to each other. Worried this was going to devolve into a fight. None of them liked their chances, surrounded as we were by Morgan''s fleet.

    "Allies, Captain Morgan," I told him unflinchingly, like I wasn''t at all worried about the swarm of ships just waiting for us to make one wrong move. "Allies against Jason and his Argonauts."

    Morgan stared at me, searching my face, and then turned his look on Drake, and then again on each of the others, one by one, waiting for someone to crack and reveal the "truth." Several people shifted under the weight of his gaze, but no one suddenly broke out and said I was lying, so that moment never came.

    "Well, alright, then," said Morgan. With a click, he uncocked his pistol, and then he pushed off and stood straight. He was actually pretty tall. "That, I think, we might be able to work out a deal on. Let''s see what my friends happen to think of it first."

    So there were more Servants than just him hiding out in the archipelago. I guess we would be finding out how many soon enough, and who else he had with him. Hippolyta, Atalanta, and King David ¡ª had they all made it down there together? Had they found any other Servants, aside from Captain Morgan?

    Morgan turned away and strode back over to the Satisfaction''s wheel. Over his shoulder, he threw out, "I''ll be going on ahead of you. Make sure you follow, now! That archipelago''s waters can get deceptively shallow. Don''t want you to wind up running aground, now do we?"

    "Thanks for the tip!" Drake said. "My poor ship here''s been through some mighty nasty stuff lately!"

    Morgan barked out a laugh. "I can tell! If you have that whelp''s Noble Phantasm holding it together the way it is, the Hind must''ve faced some pretty stiff challenge!"

    "But she''s still trooping on!"

    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    Morgan''s laughter echoed as the Satisfaction put on a spurt of speed and lurched ahead of us. One by one, the rest of his fleet began to vanish, and the weight of threat that they carried with them lifted from the crew''s shoulders.

    The instant Morgan was out of earshot, Drake heaved a gusty sigh. "Shit. That guy''s the real deal, ain''t he? Was like looking in the bleeding mirror, I''ll tell you what!"

    "C-Captain Morgan''s famous for his cunning and ruthlessness," Mash told her.

    "And for making a pretty good rum," Rika muttered, barely audible. It still lacked her usual flair.

    I glanced at her, and when she noticed me looking, she tacked on a lame, mumbled, "Allegedly."

    "It''s how he was so successful," Mash went on, having apparently not heard Rika. "Even outmatched or outnumbered, his willingness to use unconventional tactics made it possible for him to win."

    "I heard he once convinced a local governor to surrender," Bellamy added, "by sending a messenger with his gun and the message that he''d be back for it in a year''s time."

    Drake made a sound of interest in her throat. "No foolin''? Damn. I think I like this guy."

    "Does that mean we''re following him?" Bellamy asked.

    Drake nodded. "Came this far, didn''t we? Might as well go the rest of the way. Right?"

    She turned to me. I nodded.

    "Emiya and Asterios died so we could get this far," Ritsuka said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rika hunch further in on herself. "We can''t turn around now."

    "So we won''t," I agreed.

    "You heard ''em, Sam," Drake told Bellamy. "Steady on. Let''s see if this guy won''t lead us to a few new friends."

    "Aye, Captain."

    The Whydah Hind lurched into motion, sailing after the retreating form of Morgan''s Satisfaction, and we followed as he led us further along. Discreetly, I checked my map, just to make sure he wasn''t leading us astray, but it turned out I didn''t have anything to worry about, because the archipelago laid straight ahead of us and we were making a direct line for it.

    That was about when my communicator decided to chime.

    Beep-beep!

    This time, when I answered it, I put it on video, and Marie''s face appeared, intense and focused.

    "Director."

    "Hebert."

    "Was there something you needed?"

    She frowned and awkwardly said, "We''ve¡­been keeping an eye on the readings."

    Ah.

    "You saw, then."

    "The readings taken by your Master''s Clairvoyance, yes, as¡­well as Emiya''s defeat." Under her breath, she added, "Who apparently had a Reality Marble, of all things, and didn''t tell anyone about it!"

    "Director Animusphere," Mash greeted.

    "Mash, Ritsuka," Marie replied. "It''s¡­good that neither of you were seriously hurt."

    "Thanks to Emiya and Asterios," Ritsuka said.

    Marie''s lips drew tighter. "Of course."

    "You saw the readings on Caenis and Herakles, then?" I asked.

    She sighed, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. "Yes. As ridiculous as those two are. Of all the Heroic Spirits the enemy could have summoned, it had to be two of them that were so impressive. Just my luck!"

    "Hey!" said Drake. "Don''t go talking like it''s a foregone conclusion that we''re gonna lose!"

    "I''m not!" Marie bit back. "B-but I have legitimate concerns about how we''re going to defeat Servants of that level with Noble Phantasms that make them almost untouchable! I-it''s not like we can just throw around A-Rank attacks whenever we want! That sort of thing normally takes magi up to a week to prepare ahead of time!"

    "What about Caenis?" I asked.

    Marie grimaced. "Yes, we saw her readings, too. Poseidon Blessing ¡ª that''s just as unfair a Noble Phantasm as Herakles'' Godhand! Ugh!"

    "Drake managed to hurt her."

    Marie''s brow furrowed. "She did?"

    "Damned if I know how," said Drake. "Didn''t think this Grail of mine would let me hurt this supposedly immortal warrior. Not when she was shrugging off the sorts of things that make my poor pistols look like pea shooters."

    "That¡­shouldn''t be possible," said Marie. "Caenis'' Noble Phantasm is supposed to make her invincible at sea. Your pistols shouldn''t have even scratched her."

    Drake shrugged helplessly. She didn''t have any better answers than we did.

    "Was there anything in the readings that might give us a hint as to how it happened?" I asked.

    Marie''s nose scrunched up. "You know as much as we know. Caenis'' invulnerability is derived from her Noble Phantasm, Poseidon Blessing, like I said. Given how it works, it must come from the part of her legend where Poseidon blessed her with an impenetrable body. We can''t confirm that it only works at sea, but¡­assuming that we''re right about where it comes from, it makes sense that the blessing of a sea god wouldn''t work on land."

    "Could it have something to do with how Captain Drake defeated Poseidon when she attained her Grail?" Ritsuka suggested.

    My brow knitted together as an idea occurred to me. Could it really be that simple?

    "It doesn''t work like that!" Marie insisted. "Captain Drake is still a living human! She doesn''t get conceptual advantages against enemies because she hasn''t become a Servant yet!"

    I''d assumed earlier that it had something to do with the Grail itself, and I didn''t think I was necessarily wrong, but I''d been going about it from the wrong angle. Because Drake''s Grail wasn''t just a Holy Grail, was it? That was the mistake I''d been making. It wasn''t a wish-granting device she''d found in some treasure horde somewhere, left behind to be discovered by some intrepid adventurer.

    "Captain Drake."

    She''d ripped it out of Poseidon himself.

    "You said you got that Grail by tearing it out of Poseidon''s body, right?"

    "Well," said Drake, nonplussed, "yeah! Coulda sworn I told you guys that already."

    Marie took in a sharp breath. "It''s not just a Holy Grail," she said, barely above a whisper, "it''s a portion of Poseidon''s Divine Core."

    Mash gasped.

    "Oh," Artemis said. "Well, that changes things, doesn''t it? Who knew there was a human around who could do something like that to a god as hardy as Poseidon was!"

    "Guess dear old Dad wasn''t as tough as he pretended to be," Orion said dryly.

    Drake retrieved her Grail, looking at it dubiously. "This thing? A, uh, watchamacallit¡­ Divine Core? That important, somehow?"

    "No, no, this makes perfect sense," Marie said. "Taylor¡­ That''s genius."

    If it was so genius, why had it taken me so long to figure it out? We wouldn''t have even needed to run away if I''d realized this was all it took to get past Caenis'' defense.

    "Yes, Ritsuka," I said, answering his earlier question. "It turns out it does have something to do with how Captain Drake defeated Poseidon when she acquired that Grail."

    "Good thinking, Master!" Mash said brightly.

    Ritsuka smiled bashfully, his cheeks a little pink.

    "Someone want to fill us meathead pirates in?" Bellamy asked, jumping into the conversation. "I think I might get it, but on the other hand, maybe not."

    "Caenis'' Noble Phantasm is a blessing from Poseidon," I explained simply. "Someone holding onto Poseidon''s Divine Core ¡ª Captain Drake''s Holy Grail ¡ª is able to pierce that blessing using Poseidon''s power."

    "And that''s how Captain Drake was able to hurt Caenis with her pistol," Mash concluded. "Th-that means¡­we have a way to defeat her!"

    "That''s nice and all," said Drake, "but she''ll be expecting it now, won''t she? I''m great and all, but there ain''t no way in Hell I can hit her if she''s moving fast enough to dodge every shot, and I guarantee you she''ll be watching out for it."

    There was an easy solution to that, though.

    "That''s why it won''t be you." I looked up towards the crow''s nest, where Arash was still on lookout. "It''ll be someone she already thinks can''t hurt her."

    And to really sell it, Arash would fire his first few volleys without the Grail at all, luring her into a false sense of invincibility. Once she was absolutely sure nothing he did could hurt her, only then would he attack with Drake''s Grail, and thinking it wouldn''t do anything, she wouldn''t dodge, so she''d take the full force of every arrow. Even if she was hardy enough to survive, she would almost certainly be critically wounded and therefore unable to fight.

    Medea chuckled, low and dark. "That¡­just might work."

    Any problems with that? I asked Arash silently.

    None, he replied. It''s a sound strategy. Even Servants of that caliber can get complacent, when they''re used to being invulnerable.

    "Forgive me for interrupting, Master," said Bradamante, "but how will we go about defeating Herakles, in that case? If our attacks must be a minimum of Rank A¡­"

    "Between us three Masters, we still have plenty of charges for summoning Shadow Servants," I reasoned. "Emiya was able to take at least a few ¡ª"

    Marie''s gusty sigh cut me off. "That''s not going to work," she said, sounding annoyed. "Unfortunately, the Servant you summon with that function has to have an active Saint Graph in the FATE System. Although his Saint Graph has been recorded for later restoration, right now, you can''t summon Emiya, no matter how much you might want to. It''s an oversight in Da Vinci''s design," she added. "She forgot to account for the possibility that we might¡­lose a Servant during deployments, because she only meant for it to be used to summon Servants that weren''t already in the Singularity with you."

    "Well, damn," said Drake. "Guess there goes my meal ticket for the rest of your stay here, don''t it?"

    "Emiya was more than a meal ticket!" Rika burst out, standing suddenly. "He w-wasn''t just some¡­some tool we could use whenever we needed good food or a laugh or¡­or¡­"

    "I know that, girl," Drake said, surprisingly soft. She sighed. "Ah, geez. Didn''t mean to upset you none or nothing like that."

    Rika deflated, sagging back against the wooden wall again, and she dropped her face into her hands and took a long, shuddering breath.

    "Emiya isn''t our only option," I picked up, attempting to move the conversation along. "A¨ªfe and Siegfried also provide us with at least another two ways of killing Herakles, maybe more, depending on whether or not Siegfried can take more than one life with Balmung."

    "It might be best to assume he can''t," Marie said grimly. "Against a Noble Phantasm like that, it''s better to be conservative. Whatever it is that means each method grows less effective after it works the first time, we should go into this working under the idea that each method only works once."

    "What about Jeanne Alter?" Ritsuka asked. "Her Noble Phantasm was recorded at A+, right? That should be able to kill Herakles at least once."

    Marie looked at me, and all I could offer her was a tightening of my lips. It was true that we couldn''t be sure we could trust Jeanne Alter yet, but unless the others in the archipelago had more options, we didn''t have many available ourselves.

    "It may be that we''re that desperate," Marie admitted with great reluctance. It looked like the words physically pained her to say. "So if you make that decision, I¡­can''t stop you."

    No matter how much I might want to, I heard, even if she didn''t actually say the words.

    Beep-beep! Something chimed on her end, and Marie turned away to look. "The sensors are picking up a magical energy response," she said, "directly ahead of you. It looks like¡­Oh."

    Oh?

    I looked past her and into the distance, ahead of the ship, ahead of Captain Morgan''s Satisfaction, and there, resolving into greater detail, was¡­

    Oh.

    "Is that¡­a city?" Mash asked.

    "I''ll be damned," said Drake.

    "Hang on," said Bellamy. "If he''s Captain Morgan, then that''s gotta be Port Royal!"

    And as those had been the keywords I needed to hear, under my Master''s Clairvoyance, it clicked into place. Port Royal, Captain Morgan''s Fortified Redoubt. The fortress city where Henry Morgan served as governor, whose prominence in the Caribbean had been bolstered by his efforts to make it a holdfast against a naval siege. A safe haven for pirates and privateers.

    Except, as we drew closer, it wasn''t quite a city, or at least not one as we would have recognized it, and I suspected not at all as it was when he was alive. At the outer edges were wooden docks, leading up to a stone terrace, and atop the terrace were single story, old style buildings that looked like they came directly out of a historical movie or a documentary. There were even phantoms, barely there, going about their work and their daily lives as though nothing had interrupted them.

    And then beyond that, situated at the top and overlooking the townhouses, was a fort, a towering structure made entirely of weathered stone, with recesses cut into the walls whose shadows hid cannons ¡ª defensive emplacements designed to fend off an enemy fleet. Just from the ones I could see, there were enough to put up a good fight against half the fleet Captain Morgan had surrounded us with.

    It didn''t end with a single island, however, or a single fort. Across the shallows from one island, there was another small town, similar to the first and yet also different, this one also protected by a towering stone fort with cannons aimed outwards, and then even further out, in the distance, another small town with a matching fort, and another, for a grand total of five, spread out across different islands. They formed a rough square, with the largest and most impressive fort situated in the middle of the other four.

    Captain Morgan led us in on the eastern side of the archipelago, where there was the largest gap between the islands, big enough for maybe four or five large galleons to safely sail through side by side, but not much more than that. More than enough clearance for the Whydah Hind to get in without any trouble.

    And as we came upon it, the local fauna began to come under my control, and I could use them to explore this strange rendition of Port Royal in ways the human eye simply couldn''t. It was, in fact, even stranger than it looked, because while each of the forts had different sections of a town situated around them, the town itself was remarkably complete, with everything from granaries to smithies to taverns, all of them populated with ghostly shadows of the people who worked them.

    It was a literal ghost town.

    "Incredible," Marie breathed. "These readings¡­ No, can it really be self-sustaining? A Noble Phantasm of that scale? Even if he tapped into the ley line, providing the magical energy for something of that size shouldn''t be something a Rider Servant is capable of!"

    "What about that large reading Da Vinci mentioned earlier?" I asked. "The one that wasn''t a Grail, but she couldn''t be sure what it actually was?"

    "It''s¡­clearer now, and it''s¡­" Marie''s brow furrowed. "Not¡­the city? The source of the reading is almost certainly a Noble Phantasm, but it''s located within the city, in the central fort. A¡­core?" She chewed on her thumbnail thoughtfully. "Could it be¡­the source of his Noble Phantasm? A magical energy reactor of some kind meant to support the structure of the main body?"

    Since we seemed to be headed that way, I was sure we were going to find out, one way or the other. At this point, I was fairly sure that Morgan wasn''t an enemy, even if we couldn''t quite call him an ally yet, because he''d had ample opportunity to try and kill us all and hadn''t taken advantage of it even once.

    The fact we were on speaking terms was already a good sign about how successful any negotiations might go.

    "What about the Servants?" I asked. "The readings from before ¡ª are they more defined now that we''re closer?"

    "Three more," Marie said crisply. "Four, if you count Henry Morgan. Until you can achieve visual confirmation, I can''t tell you anything else, but¡­"

    Yeah. We were expecting Hippolyta, King David, and Atalanta.

    "Uh," Orion began nervously, "maybe Artemis and I should¡­go somewhere else, while you meet up with those other Servants."

    "What?" said Mash. "But why? Do you have a bad relationship with one of them or something?"

    "Not something that simple!" Orion laughed awkwardly. "But things might get a little strange if she happens to see us, especially together!"

    Mash''s brow furrowed, confused. "She?"

    Oh.

    "Atalanta."

    Who happened to belong to a cult that was devoted to the idea of a pure, virgin goddess, untainted by such things as desire for a man ¡ª the radical feminists of ancient Greece. I wondered what they might have thought of Lustrum.

    "Oh!" said Artemis, delighted. "I completely forgot about her! Hehehe, it''ll be good to see her again!"

    "A-are you really so sure we should do that?" Orion asked desperately.

    "Hm?" Artemis blinked at him, bemused. "Well, of course! Why wouldn''t I? She''s a huntress who worships me! Or would that be worshiped, now that she''s a Heroic Spirit? In any case, I need to give her my blessing!"

    "For what?" Marie blurted out incredulously.

    "To find love, of course!" Artemis replied brightly. "She''s a pure maiden who has never known what the real thing feels like, so she''s stiff and uptight and doesn''t know how to relax. What she needs to do is find a man who can make her happy!"

    Or a woman, I almost said, like some kind of reflex. I wasn''t sure where it came from.

    Marie''s face had settled into a complicated expression, some Frankenstein combination of disgust, disbelief, and resignation, like she couldn''t believe that what she''d just heard had come out of Artemis'' mouth, but she''d come to accept that this sort of thing was going to be happening with more regularity from now on. I could relate.

    The further into the archipelago we got, the more of it fell under the range of my powers, and the more of Captain Morgan''s city I could reach, and it was about then, as the subject of Atalanta came up, that I found our other three Servants hiding out in the central fort. Waiting, apparently, for Morgan to return with news about who had come seeking them out and what for.

    That was also when I discovered it.

    It was situated in the center of the center keep, kept well away from both prying eyes and wandering hands, like it was some great treasure that needed to be hidden as far from sight as possible. Whatever it was, it was vaguely box-shaped, although I didn''t have a clear enough image to say exactly what it looked like, so I sent out some feelers to get a handle on exactly what I was working with.

    The instant they touched it, whatever it was, the bugs I was using to feel it out started to die, dropping dead suddenly, and I couldn''t stop myself from recoiling at the feedback of the absolutely bizarre sensation of having my soul ripped out of my body.

    Fuck.

    "Taylor!" Marie called, worried, at the same time as Ritsuka said, "Senpai!"

    "What''s happening?" Marie demanded. "An attack? From where? There''s nothing on the sensors ¡ª"

    "I think," I began, and they both fell silent, "I just found whatever it was you''ve been detecting in this archipelago, Director."

    And whatever it was, it really didn''t like me touching it, even with my bugs. I doubted I would fare any better if I tried using my own hands. It probably worked on some sort of permission based concept, a trait you had to possess in order to handle it safely, like some kind of biometric lock. If Tinkertech could do it, why not a Noble Phantasm?

    A thought occurred to me then. A possibility I hadn''t considered when we were assuming that whatever the source of the reading was happened to be some kind of Noble Phantasm, and a particularly powerful one at that.

    What if we were more right than we realized?

    "And I think," I went on slowly, "that the reason Captain Morgan and the others are here is that they''re hiding it."

    "Hiding it?" Marie asked skeptically. "From Jason? Hiding what?"

    Ahead of us, the Satisfaction began to slow as it drifted towards the docks of the center island and its fort. Inside, perhaps detecting his and our approaching presences, the waiting Servants stirred and started to move in our direction.

    "That is what we''re about to find out."

 Chapter CIV: Covenant

    Chapter CIV: Covenant

    It felt almost like being in a pirate movie, and yet also almost like being at home, when we stepped off of the Hind and onto the docks. For an instant, as I looked down the pier and towards the bustling town filled with ghosts, I saw the Boardwalk instead, sitting at the height of its glory and decadence in the days before Leviathan struck the city. Shops and food stands and tourist traps and all, exactly as it had all been for most of my life.

    But the moment passed as quickly as it came, and I was left with only the hollow feeling of nostalgia for a life that hadn¡¯t been mine in nearly half a decade.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°It¡¯s nothing.¡±

    The wooden boards thunked and echoed under our footsteps as our merry band followed Morgan into the city, transitioning to something softer when we stepped onto the first terrace. He seemed in his element, completely comfortable with the town, and he moved with a familiarity that spoke of experience.

    I guess that made sense, since this was his Noble Phantasm. It was only natural that he would know his way around the place. Doubly so, considering the amount of his life he spent at the original Port Royal.

    Bellamy was the last of us to disembark, leaving the Golden Hind to return to its own natural form as the Whydah Gally evaporated off of it like a cloud of steam. It was pitted and battle-scarred, riddled with all sorts of damage that it had taken from our battles against Blackbeard and his allies, but still seaworthy. I wasn¡¯t sure how much more it could stand before that changed.

    Up onto the next terrace we went, and then up again, climbing the stairs each time set into the side of the wall, and then into the town proper, where the most of the phantoms milled about. They were little more than silhouettes with vague, undefined features, possessing only the suggestion of details that spoke of their role in the city and things like the shape of the nose or the style of the clothes. Out of the corner of my eye, I hardly noticed, but the instant I looked at them properly, it was hard to ignore.

    My bugs couldn¡¯t touch them at all. That was probably what made them creepiest. Just¡­the inability to know they were there until I actually saw them with my own eyes.

    Ritsuka, Mash, and even Drake seemed as spooked out as I was. Unnerved. I couldn¡¯t blame them. I was just better at hiding it.

    ¡°Man, I was in Port Royal before a few times back when I was alive,¡± Bellamy said quietly, ¡°and sure, I can see some of it here now, but¡­it really looks different.¡±

    ¡°I imagine it would look a lot more familiar if it wasn¡¯t spread out across multiple islands,¡± Arash commented.

    ¡°Probably,¡± Bellamy agreed. ¡°Just a bit weird, is all, seeing it like this instead.¡±

    I¡¯d said before that the fort was situated higher than the rest of town so that it could look over and out at the sea, but that didn¡¯t actually explain much about its position. Most of the town ¡ª befitting a coastal city built on an isthmus ¡ª sat close to the edge of the island, which left the fort more to the back of a strip of buildings that stretched up and down the coastline and therefore well inside my range. Most of the town was, for that matter, except for the furthest edges farther along.

    I almost missed a step as I used my bugs to get a closer look at the other Servants we were going to meet, because one of them happened to be fairly familiar. A little bit different than I remembered her, dressed in an actual dress instead of furs and lacking the boar¡¯s head attached at the shoulder, but there could only be so many Heroic Spirits with cat ears, of all things.

    ¡°I-incredible,¡± Mash murmured. ¡°Even if the layout is different, it really does seem like the historical Port Royal! It¡¯s even got, um, p-people here.¡±

    Ahead of us, Morgan laughed gregariously. ¡°A city is nothing without its people, my dear! Brick and mortar, wood and stone ¡ª those are what a city is made of, how it¡¯s built. But its people, now, its people are the city. They give it its spirit and identity, its soul, its essence ¡ª the parts that make it alive.¡±

    Ritsuka looked dubiously at the phantoms strutting about, ignoring us almost as though we were the ghosts. It was entirely possible that they didn¡¯t even have enough consciousness and higher thought to even realize we were there, so for all intents and purposes, for them, we probably were. As tangible as the autumn wind and gone just as quickly.

    A group of the ghosts, paying us no mind at all, walked through us on their way across the street, and as they did, a chill washed over my body and a shiver passed down my spine as the hairs on the skin of my prosthetic stood on end. From the grimace on the faces of the others, they felt much the same as I did, and were equally as uncomfortable.

    ¡°Don¡¯t look particularly alive to me,¡± Drake said. ¡°Walked right through us and everything.¡±

    Morgan sighed. ¡°Yes, well, if you had seen it in its heyday¡­¡±

    As we approached the fort, the familiar cat-eared woman stepped through the heavy doors at the front and pointed her bow ¡ª arrow nocked on the string ¡ª our way. Mash, Arash, and Bradamante all stiffened, preparing to leap to our defense.

    ¡°Stop right there!¡± she called down at us. ¡°Morgan, why would you bring these strangers straight to us like this?¡±

    ¡°No need for that, Atalanta!¡± Morgan said, waving her down. His words confirmed what I¡¯d suspected about her identity ¡ª there really weren¡¯t that many archers tied to legends about boars. ¡°These fine folk here are allies of ours against Jason¡¯s crew! They had a nasty run-in with some of his lackeys a little while ago, and from the sounds of things, they met the man in all his illustrious glory ¡ª complete with a few of his new friends, it seems.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Atalanta slowly eased the tension of her bowstring, frowning. ¡°It¡¯s as I suspected, then. So he used that Grail to summon more allies to his cause?¡±

    ¡°Caenis,¡± I told her, pitching my voice to carry, ¡°and Herakles.¡±

    Her eyes went wide. ¡°Both of them? How in the gods¡¯ names did you manage to escape?¡±

    Rika¡¯s head drooped as Ritsuka and Mash both looked away. ¡°We¡­had to leave a few people behind,¡± Ritsuka said.

    ¡°I see.¡± Atalanta¡¯s lips pulled tight. ¡°My condolences.¡±

    ¡°They bought us as much time as they could,¡± I said, ¡°but Jason won¡¯t be more than a couple hours behind us. We need to talk strategy.¡±

    And see if maybe these guys didn¡¯t have a few more options for how to deal with Herakles. We didn¡¯t know for sure exactly how many lives Emiya had managed to shave off, so the larger our margin of error, the better.

    Atalanta nodded. ¡°Understood. The others are waiting inside. Come, and we can discuss how we might foil Jason¡¯s mad plan to end the world.¡±

    What?

    ¡°End the world?¡± Mash echoed, horrified, because I wasn¡¯t the only one surprised. ¡°He wants to end the world?¡±

    Atalanta¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°You¡¯ve come this far and you don¡¯t even know that much?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s an enemy standing in the way of our mission to correct this Singularity,¡± I said matter-of-factly. ¡°His motives weren¡¯t as much a concern as simply eliminating him and securing his Grail.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± she said for the third time, nodding. She glanced at Medea briefly, which told me a lot more than she likely meant to. ¡°Yes, in that case, it might make sense that you wouldn¡¯t have heard what it is he¡¯s planning. Very well. We can cover that as well.¡±

    She turned back towards the fort, and over her shoulder, she said again, ¡°Come.¡±

    She stepped inside without another word.

    ¡°Er, Boss?¡± Bombe said hesitantly. ¡°What about us? Don¡¯t rightly know what use a bunch of thick-headed buccaneers will be to this strategy meeting of yours.¡±

    Drake snorted, eyeing the ghosts still going about their lives uninterrupted. ¡°A lot more than this lively bunch, that¡¯s for sure!¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t underestimate them simply because they don¡¯t seem like much,¡± Morgan said. ¡°Hm, I saw the sorry state of that ship of yours, she needs some repairs, doesn¡¯t she? Mayhaps a few of my shipwrights and builders could be of assistance in getting the old gal back onto her feet in the proper way.¡±

    ¡°Well, if you¡¯re offering, I¡¯d be a fool to turn ya down!¡± Drake said. To Bombe, she added, ¡°Send off a few of the lads to get that all squared away, nice and proper like, and then see about finding someplace with enough space to settle in for the night, Bombe. Don¡¯t go putting down roots, though, just in case we have to ditch this place in a hurry.¡±

    ¡°Aye, Boss!¡± Bombe said, and then he turned to the rest of the crew. ¡°You heard her, you louts! Rogers, get the rest of your shift and go make sure the Hind is still in one piece come the morning! The rest of you, let¡¯s find us a place to sit awhile! But if I find anyone with any moss growing on his beard, there¡¯ll be hell to pay!¡±

    The crew made noises of agreement, lacking some of their usual spirit, and then the whole lot of them dispersed, walking off to follow their orders, and once they were gone, it was just us Masters, Drake, and the Servants. Drake grinned, but there was something a little hollow in it, and it didn¡¯t quite reach her eyes.

    ¡°Guess that leaves us to take care of business, eh?¡±

    ¡°Heh. Of a sort,¡± said Morgan. ¡°Just be careful where you utter that particular word, Captain Drake, or more to the point, in front of whom.¡±

    ¡°Oh?¡± Drake¡¯s grin became a little more genuine. ¡°Color me curious, Morgan!¡±

    Morgan grinned back. ¡°You¡¯ll find out shortly, although you might regret it soon after.¡±

    He climbed up the steps and walked through the front door. Drake looked after him and shrugged. ¡°No sense in dawdling anymore, right? Sooner we get this plan hashed out, sooner we¡¯re ready for that dandy and his flunkies.¡±

    The mental image of Jason in a canary yellow suit with his hair slicked back into a pompadour briefly flitted across my mind, complete with a cane, a top hat, and a pair of pink-lensed sunglasses, and I made sure no sign of it showed on my face.

    ¡°Right.¡±

    With Drake in the lead, we filled into the fort to find a surprisingly normal-looking interior. I¡¯d already mapped out most of it with my bugs, of course, but there was something to be said for seeing it with entirely human eyes that saw different ranges of color and different levels of detail. The walls, naturally, were hewn stone and mortar, but the furniture was all wood, and the tapestries and rugs throughout ¡ª all done in bright primary colors ¡ª gave it the feel of a place that had been first built to last, and then fitted with furnishings to live in.

    Morgan led the way down a hallway and we followed, our footsteps echoing off the walls, to the thick, wooden door fitted with crude iron fastenings nonetheless probably designed to keep the entire door from splintering if an enemy were to attempt breaking through any given part of it. Beyond, I knew, there was a kind of conference room, so I was the only one who wasn¡¯t surprised to find Atalanta and the other two Servants awaiting us inside of it.

    ¡°Hey,¡± said the taller of the two, a young-looking man who couldn¡¯t have been older than maybe twenty. ¡°We¡¯ve been waiting for you guys to show up for a long time.¡±

    I stilled, and Mash and Ritsuka both stiffened, neither of them any more sure of how they were supposed to take that than I was. Waiting for us to show up for a long time? How on Earth would he have known to expect us?

    The shorter of the two, a petite woman with dark red hair done up in a fancy bun, sighed. ¡°King David, please refrain from saying such ominous things. It will only serve to confuse them and make them wary.¡±

    The man, King David, because there really couldn¡¯t have been anyone else he could be, laughed awkwardly. ¡°Right, sorry, I guess that came out kind of weird.¡±

    ¡°Pay him no mind,¡± said Atalanta. ¡°It was not you, specifically, who we¡¯ve been waiting for, but rather allies sent by the world to help us defeat Jason and the others.¡±

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    That¡­made a bit more sense. A quick check with Master¡¯s Clairvoyance showed no sign of a Clairvoyance skill on any of these three, so how they would¡¯ve known to expect us specifically wouldn¡¯t have had any good answers. It would almost certainly have meant we¡¯d walked into a trap of some kind, although one that felt very convoluted, considering the advantages they¡¯d had over us since the moment we got here.

    ¡°First and foremost,¡± Atalanta went on, ¡°I think we should get introductions out of the way ¡ª you¡¯ve already heard, but I am Atalanta, of the Calydonian Boar hunt. We¡¯ve actually met before, but at the time, I was afflicted with the Dragon Witch¡¯s Madness Enhancement, so I was not in my right mind.¡±

    So I was right about that. The boar-head thing and the fur, those must have been some other Noble Phantasm. The pelt of the Calydonian Boar allowing her to take on its properties? Not the most farfetched thing I¡¯d heard.

    ¡°W-we did?¡± Mash asked, confused.

    ¡°Right before Fafnir showed up,¡± I clarified for her. ¡°She was that Archer. Siegfried and Emiya defeated her.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash. ¡°Yes, I remember now.¡± She bowed shortly to Atalanta. ¡°Pleased to meet you. I¡¯m Mash Kyrielight, Shielder class Servant.¡±

    ¡°Well met,¡± said Atalanta. She gestured to the young man, King David. ¡°This, as you might have guessed, is King David.¡±

    ¡°Yes, that King David,¡± he interrupted. ¡°King of Israel, in the old days. Nice to meet you all.¡±

    By process of elimination, that meant the young woman who looked even younger than him could only be¡­

    ¡°And this,¡± Atalanta went on as though King David hadn¡¯t spoken, ¡°is Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.¡±

    Hippolyta offered us a polite smile. ¡°Pleased to meet all of you.¡±

    ¡°You, too,¡± Ritsuka replied just as politely.

    Atalanta nodded to Morgan. ¡°You¡¯ve already met Captain Henry Morgan.¡±

    Morgan smirked and gave us a lazy wave.

    ¡°We have,¡± I said, taking charge. ¡°My name is Taylor Hebert. Mash has already introduced herself. With her are Ritsuka and Rika Fujimaru. Our Servants are Arash Kamangir ¡ª¡±

    He gave them a smile and a nod.

    ¡°Bradamante ¡ª¡±

    Bradamante sank into a brief, courtly bow.

    ¡°Samuel Bellamy ¡ª¡±

    Bellamy sent them a jaunty wave and a wide grin.

    ¡°Euryale ¡ª¡±

    Euryale merely sniffed, looking imperiously down her nose. A feat, given how much shorter than everyone else she was.

    ¡°Medea ¡ª¡±

    Medea favored them with a stiff nod and a tight-lipped grimace.

    ¡°¡ª and Artemis.¡±

    ¡°Yoohoo!¡± Artemis said brightly as she peeked out from behind the rest of the group. ¡°Nice to see you again, Atalanta! You look very cute in that dress! Oh, and those cat ears, too!¡±

    Atalanta staggered, stumbling back and nearly collapsing on the large table in the center of the room. She stared back at Artemis with wide eyes and an expression of utter horror.

    ¡°A-Artemis?¡± Atalanta said faintly. ¡°I-it can¡¯t be! Artemis is a goddess! There¡¯s no way she could be summoned as a Servant!¡±

    Artemis pouted. ¡°Oh! Darling!¡± She grabbed Orion, who squawked an ineffective protest, and brought him up. ¡°She doesn¡¯t believe me! What¡¯s so hard to believe about this? Look, Atalanta, it¡¯s Orion! Isn¡¯t he so cute like this?¡±

    She squished Orion¡¯s stuffed body against her cheek. Atalanta did not look at all comforted by this; in fact, she looked even more disturbed, like she was looking at something that terrified her utterly and completely. Or perhaps like her understanding of the world had just been turned on its head and she didn¡¯t know how to cope with it.

    Yeah, I knew how that felt, too.

    ¡°Oh dear,¡± said Hippolyta, looking over at Atalanta with concern. ¡°I don¡¯t think she was expecting something like that. Perhaps I should take over from here¡­?¡±

    ¡°N-no,¡± Atalanta said shakily, ¡°I-I¡¯m fine. I j-just¡­need a moment to adjust, th-that¡¯s all. S-something like this¡­is nowhere near enough to break me!¡±

    It would have been more convincing if she didn¡¯t look like she was ready to keel over in a stiff breeze.

    ¡°Trust me,¡± Ritsuka said sympathetically, ¡°this is nowhere near as bad as it could be.¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t make me feel any better!¡± Atalanta snapped at him.

    ¡°How do you think I feel?¡± Orion demanded sourly. He crossed his arms, which only made him look more ridiculous, dangling as he was from Artemis¡¯ hands and pressed up against her cheek. ¡°Being stuffed into this ridiculous body while she hijacks my Saint Graph ¡ª I got turned into a mascot character!¡±

    Fou appeared on Mash¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Fou-fou kyuu-fou!¡±

    Orion gestured at him. ¡°And they already have one!¡±

    ¡°A problem that will be taken care of once Jason¡¯s Grail has been retrieved and this Singularity is resolved,¡± I cut in, keeping a close eye on the reactions of these new Servants. ¡°That is our job as Masters of the Chaldea Security Organization.¡± I waved a hand in Drake¡¯s direction. ¡°Captain Drake was kind enough to ferry us across this ocean so that we could do that.¡±

    ¡°Kind enough to ferry ¡®em, she says,¡± Drake muttered under her breath.

    ¡°You¡¯re after his Holy Grail?¡± Hippolyta asked immediately, suspicious.

    ¡°It¡¯s what caused this Singularity to form in the first place,¡± Mash answered for me. ¡°If it¡¯s recovered and removed to our custody, this era will correct itself automatically from there.¡±

    ¡°This is our fourth Singularity,¡± Ritsuka added. ¡°That¡¯s how it worked with the other three.¡±

    ¡°Fourth?¡± Atalanta asked sharply. ¡°There were three others, not just France?¡±

    ¡°One centered around the city of Fuyuki, Japan,¡± I said, ¡°one centered around Orl¨¦ans, France, where we fought you, once centered around the early Roman Empire, and now this one. We still have another four to resolve after this.¡±

    A ripple of shock spread amongst the others, and even Morgan looked disturbed to hear it.

    ¡°Four?¡± Atalanta whispered, horrified. ¡°You¡¯re not even halfway finished?¡±

    ¡°No.¡±

    Immediately, Atalanta whipped around towards Medea, and waspishly, she demanded, ¡°And you didn¡¯t think to tell them what they¡¯re up against and why?¡±

    Medea sneered. ¡°Would it have changed anything? Their goals and objectives remain the same either way. If things had been handled properly ¡ª¡±

    ¡°They would have known better than to take a goddess within spitting distance of Jason, to start!¡± Atalanta snarled.

    ¡°That is something we haven¡¯t been clear on,¡± I said. ¡°Blackbeard was upfront about what he wanted Euryale for, but Jason never said.¡±

    Deliberately, I avoided looking at Medea, because it was now apparent that she hadn¡¯t either.

    ¡°I think it¡¯s time we all received a proper explanation,¡± Hippolyta said. ¡°Medea, as you are the only one who knows in full what your younger self and Jason are planning, perhaps you should tell the tale.¡±

    Although it was worded like a suggestion, her tone of voice said that it was much more like an order, and Medea didn¡¯t take kindly to it. She scowled and looked ready to dig in her heels, until Hippolyta added, ¡°If you leave it to one of us, then I¡¯m afraid we can only explain the parts we know personally, and therefore any details that might be vital will be missed.¡±

    Medea¡¯s scowl deepened. ¡°Fine,¡± she bit out. ¡°Since you insist so vigorously, I¡¯ll explain the situation as it stands now.¡±

    Are you happy? I heard in her tone, although she didn¡¯t say the words out loud.

    ¡°That will be much appreciated, thank you,¡± Hippolyta said, ignoring the subtext completely.

    Medea took a deep breath and heaved out a frustrated sigh. ¡°To begin with, neither my foolish younger self nor that fop are in complete control of the situation. She was summoned and subjugated by a greater power, one with which I myself am unfamiliar, and she in turn summoned Jason under its orders to act as a patsy.¡±

    A shiver traveled down my spine. ¡°A greater power?¡±

    There were only so many things that could be considered that way to a mage who had learned from the Goddess of Magic herself.

    ¡°It called itself Forneus,¡± Medea said sourly, confirming my worst suspicions. ¡°Whatever it was, it possessed enough power to defeat my younger self utterly and completely. Even as much of a fool as she is, she should still have been able to match any ordinary Caster class Servant, so whatever it is, it¡¯s far beyond that.¡±

    Mash gasped. ¡°Forneus¡­another one of the seventy-two Demon Gods!¡±

    ¡°Oh dear,¡± said King David. ¡°That¡¯s not good at all.¡±

    That cinched it, then. It wasn¡¯t just Flauros in Septem, it wasn¡¯t just Lev, there was a whole organization of some kind behind it. A team, a gang, presumably a leader in whoever the mysterious ¡°King¡± happened to be. A conspiracy of some kind to destroy the world, although we still had no idea why or what motives were behind it.

    ¡°Their goal is to use the Holy Grail, the Ark, and a goddess to destroy this era utterly,¡± Medea went on, ¡°although my younger self has Jason fooled into thinking it will make him a god-king instead. The stupid bastard doesn¡¯t have the slightest clue that he¡¯s being led around by the nose, or even that my younger self has been bound to this ¡®demon god¡¯s¡¯ will. He¡¯s completely clueless, and he wouldn¡¯t listen even if you tried to tell him otherwise.¡±

    That sounded about right. Jason hadn¡¯t struck me as a particularly reasonable person. Even if we tried to negotiate and tell him the truth, he would probably think it was some kind of ploy to save our own skins from Herakles and Caenis and wouldn¡¯t listen to a thing we said.

    ¡°Hang on,¡± said Arash. ¡°The Ark? As in, the Ark of the Covenant, from the story of Moses? The one that killed whoever touched it?¡±

    I glanced at him, a little surprised he was familiar with it ¡ª but then, as a Heroic Spirit, the Throne would have provided him with knowledge about that sort of thing, wouldn¡¯t it? Even if the legend was recorded long after his own era.

    King David laughed awkwardly. ¡°Ahahaha¡­ Yeah. That¡¯s the one.¡±

    I turned to look his way and pinned him with a stare. ¡°You know where it is.¡±

    ¡°You¡­could say that,¡± he said evasively. ¡°It¡¯s my Noble Phantasm, after all, even if it¡¯s an unwieldy, mostly useless thing that¡¯s almost impossible to move. It¡­would definitely work the way she¡¯s saying, if you were to sacrifice a goddess to it. In a world as unstable as this¡­Singularity, you called it? That would destroy this entire place in one go.¡±

    ¡°The gods of the old world were essentially systems of rules,¡± Medea added helpfully. ¡°Embodiments of the laws of nature. Were one to be sacrificed to an artifact that guaranteed death, no matter who or what it touched, it wouldn¡¯t be all that dissimilar from sacrificing the World itself.¡±

    King David sighed. ¡°Ordinarily, the world¡¯s robust enough to weather something like that. The destruction would be localized. Just Jason and the Argo would go up, you know? But like I said, in a Singularity, things are just too unstable. This entire ocean ¡ª and everything in it ¡ª¡±

    He mimed an explosion with his hands.

    Presumably, that would also mean us from Chaldea and Captain Drake, too, and if this Singularity were to detonate¡­ Well, if it was Forneus¡¯ plan, then we had to assume it would accomplish the same thing as leaving the Singularity to fester.

    ¡°This Ark,¡± I began, ¡°you wouldn¡¯t happen to be storing it in the center of the keep, would you?¡±

    The other Servants stiffened, and their heads all whipped around towards me. ¡°You know where it is?¡± King David asked, somewhere between surprise and alarm.

    To demonstrate my point, I brought the nearest butterfly over ¡ª a species I didn¡¯t recognize on sight ¡ª from out of its hiding place in the corner and had it land atop an outstretched finger. It fluttered its wings to punctuate my point.

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said simply. I pretended not to notice Morgan cocking his pistol behind his back.

    Hippolyta¡¯s eyes narrowed on me. ¡°How much of this fort can you see?¡±

    ¡°Enough to know that the Ark does exactly what you say it does.¡±

    King David sighed and sagged. ¡°Ah. You types with your extra senses really are the worst. Planning around that sort of thing is such a pain.¡±

    As opposed to dealing with Servants, who could outright ignore most of the things I could do? Of the two of us, I thought I still had more right to complain about unfairness than him.

    ¡°So their plan is to use the Ark, which is being hidden inside this fort, to sacrifice Euryale and destroy the world?¡± Mash sighed. ¡°The only trouble is, now that we know what they¡¯re after, how do we stop them? Even if E-Emiya managed to take a few of Herakles¡¯ lives, we still don¡¯t know how to finish off the rest of them.¡±

    ¡°Emiya?¡± asked Atalanta. Her eyes scanned our group again, and I could see the moment when she came to the right conclusion. ¡°Ah.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°If the Ark kills anything it touches¡­would that be enough to finish off Herakles?¡±

    ¡°Theoretically,¡± said Medea. ¡°Good luck getting him to touch it, though. Herakles might be addled by Madness Enhancement as a Berserker, but his instincts remain sharp. Tricking him into touching the Ark would be a task in and of itself.¡±

    ¡°We can call that Plan B,¡± I said. Or Z. The idea had merit, but making it work might require too much to pull off. ¡°If we have other, simpler options, it would be better to make use of those, first.¡± I turned to Atalanta. ¡°Your Noble Phantasm?¡±

    She shook her head. ¡°It¡¯s only B-Rank. Were I to draw my bow to its maximum, I might be able to pierce his skin, but he would surely see it coming and avoid it accordingly.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t look at me, either,¡± said King David. ¡°The Ark is my strongest Noble Phantasm, and it would definitely do the job. Anything else I have, though, he¡¯d just shrug it off. Sorry.¡±

    My lips pursed. ¡°And you?¡± I asked Hippolyta.

    Briefly, she touched the ornate sash that wrapped up and over her right shoulder, and she frowned. ¡°It¡¯s possible I might be able to take one or two lives from him, but truly not much more than that. Unfortunately, as someone who died to him, I am more than aware that he is a far greater warrior than I, and while it is not impossible that I could, perhaps, push beyond those limitations¡­¡±

    She sighed. ¡°It would be counterproductive.¡±

    Lastly, I turned to Morgan, and before I could even ask, he grinned and shrugged gregariously. ¡°Well, it¡¯s not out of the question. There isn¡¯t much, I find, that survives a barrage of cannonfire, if you have enough cannons and enough fire. Rather unfortunately, the best I can promise is a single of his lives. Anything more than that, well, I was always better with guile and trickery than brute force.¡±

    In my head, I tallied it up. Assuming one life each from Morgan and Hippolyta, one life taken by Siegfried, one life taken by A¨ªfe, and maybe, if we got lucky, one life by Atalanta¡¯s arrows, that still only got us about halfway. If we risked Jeanne Alter, that would put us at an even half dozen, and while that was impressive, if Emiya managed to take anything less than the same number, we would still have to contend with Herakles after all of that.

    ¡°That¡¯s only five,¡± Ritsuka murmured. Who he wasn¡¯t counting, I wasn¡¯t sure.

    It looked like the Ark was going to have to be our main plan after all. We could put our best effort into taking Herakles out with the rest of the team, but if that failed, we were going to have to move immediately to implementing the Ark as a contingency.

    ¡°Then this is how we¡¯ll do it,¡± I said. ¡°However smart and confident he is, Jason isn¡¯t likely to attempt a sneak attack at night, just because it¡¯ll be harder for him to see an ambush in the dark. Since he¡¯s the most vulnerable member of his current team, he won¡¯t want to risk it, especially with five Archers on our side. Instead, he¡¯ll probably aim for an early morning attack, not long after dawn, when he expects us to be just waking up.¡±

    Medea chuckled lowly. ¡°That sounds like him. Too much of a coward to risk his own life.¡±

    ¡°When he does attack,¡± I went on, ¡°we¡¯ll deal with Caenis first and make sure she¡¯s neutralized. Arash will handle that, using Drake¡¯s Grail to get through her invincibility. Once Caenis is down, we¡¯ll put on a show of attempting to kill Herakles and take as many of his lives as we feasibly can, and if we don¡¯t manage to take them all, we¡¯ll perform a fighting retreat and lure him towards the Ark. Even if it doesn¡¯t kill him outright, it should still drain him dry of any energy, and then it won¡¯t matter how many lives he has left.¡±

    Even a Servant like Herakles couldn¡¯t continue without magical energy to support him. If he was sucked dry in an instant, then it wouldn¡¯t matter whether Jason¡¯s Grail was supplying him with power or not.

    ¡°Oh my,¡± said King David. ¡°So you even saw through it to that extent, did you? Very impressive, Miss.¡±

    ¡°And with Herakles and Caenis both taken down¡­¡± Ritsuka began.

    I nodded. ¡°Jason will be vulnerable. With only Hektor left to defend him, we have enough numbers and firepower to overwhelm them and take the Grail.¡±

    ¡°And this Singularity will be resolved,¡± Mash finished.

    Leaving us to return to Chaldea, so we could prepare for the next one and bring Emiya back. Rika¡¯s continued uncharacteristic silence had not gone unnoticed.

    ¡°Anyone have any concerns they need addressed?¡± I asked, looking over the room. No one spoke up, and everyone whose eyes I met had the confidence of someone with a solid plan they had faith in.

    Since there were no objections forthcoming, I nodded again. ¡°Then we¡¯ll take the night to prepare. We Masters need to eat and sleep, and it¡¯s been a long day. Captain Drake, we¡¯ll need your Grail.¡±

    ¡°Aye,¡± Drake said grimly. ¡°The boys¡¯ll likely have picked out a spot by now, and we have some unfinished business to attend to, don¡¯t we?¡±

    I had an idea what that might be, but before that, I had some things of my own to take care of.

 Chapter CV: Parting Glass

    Chapter CV: Parting Glass

    ¡°¡­last we checked,¡± said Marie. ¡°It won¡¯t be possible to track their movement from this far out, but based upon where they were when A¨ªfe¡¯s Saint Graph dissipated aboard the Argo, half a day isn¡¯t impossible.¡±

    So she actually managed to buy us that much time? Just when I thought A¨ªfe had stopped impressing me.

    Although I suppose it really shouldn¡¯t have. After all, in the myth, hadn¡¯t C¨²chulainn held off an entire army for a year by forcing them all into single duels one after the other? A¨ªfe keeping Caenis occupied for several hours using the same method didn¡¯t seem that unlikely by comparison.

    ¡°I see.¡± I looked out at the ocean, where the last embers of twilight glittered on the water and cast the island in a sort of halfway point between light and dark. ¡°Thank you, Director, that was exactly what I needed to know.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t think I¡¯ve forgotten about that Noble Phantasm,¡± Marie warned. ¡°I¡¯ll be expecting your full report on this ¡®Ark¡¯ after you¡¯ve returned.¡±

    My lips threatened to smile. ¡°Of course, Director.¡±

    The connection terminated, and I let my arm drop. Good news ¡ª I¡¯d come to expect the worst often enough that it felt novel when things actually went my way.

    With that taken care of, I stepped out of the spot in an alleyway I¡¯d sequestered myself away in for privacy and back onto the street, using my bugs to navigate towards where Drake and the others had gone and avoiding the ghosts whenever I saw them pop up.

    Still hadn¡¯t gotten any less creepy to look at them, let alone walk through them. At least Servants in spirit form turned invisible to the naked eye.

    Drake and the crew had holed themselves up in what was likely originally a military barracks, a sturdy building made of stone much like the fort, but squatter and nowhere near as big, with a large, open courtyard for them all to congregate in. There, they had set up camp, as though there weren¡¯t quarters available to all of them just a stone¡¯s throw away in the barracks. Maybe they had simply gotten used to spending all of their time outside. Who knew?

    The twins, at least, as well as Mash and Drake, had been given quarters inside the building. The officers¡¯ quarters, to be more exact, and they¡¯d even found a room for me to use, too. I didn¡¯t know what I was going to do if one of Morgan¡¯s ghosts barged in while I was trying to sleep and laid down in the bed with me, but I guess that was something I was going to have to worry about when the time came.

    The crew had all gathered as I slipped in amongst them, murmuring amongst themselves with a kind of tired energy that only men on the eve of battle could have and each carrying a tankard that smelled of alcohol. The Servants were among them, although only ours and Euryale stuck near the twins, while Artemis and Orion had gone off to mingle a little. Our new allies had elected to stay in the fort, perhaps somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of joining our group when they didn¡¯t really know us at all.

    When she caught sight of me, Drake stood and climbed atop a barrel, and when she clapped her hands loudly, the voices all died down and the crew turned to her, waiting.

    ¡°Today,¡± Drake said solemnly, and her words carried across the courtyard, ¡°we went out to a fight, another of many a scrape we¡¯ve been in before, and not all of us came back from it.¡±

    Dead silence greeted her.

    ¡°We¡¯re pirates,¡± she went on. ¡°We ain¡¯t exactly unfamiliar with losing folks to a hard fight. It¡¯s a goddamn miracle all of us have made it this far in this crazy shitstain of an ocean, especially considering the bastards on the other side. Us mortal folk weren¡¯t made to fight fucking legends brought to life, and God only knows how we all sailed away without much of a scratch until now. Guess when everything in this place is trying to kill you, well, you just don¡¯t have time to worry about what¡¯s gonna do you in so much that you trip and take a dip in the drink.¡±

    A few scattered chuckles rumbled across the group.

    ¡°That don¡¯t make it any easier when we do lose someone,¡± Drake continued, all traces of levity gone. ¡°Especially when that someone ¡ª those two ¡ª sacrificed themselves to give us time to win, and all we could do with it was turn our tails and run the other fucking direction. Don¡¯t matter if we¡¯ve only known ¡®em a few days, they¡¯re crew, and we take care of our crew, don¡¯t we, boys?¡±

    ¡°AYE!¡± the entire group roared.

    Drake nodded. ¡°That¡¯s right. Emiya and Asterios weren¡¯t with us long, but they were crew, and that made ¡®em family. And today, we lost two of our family, not to some freak accident at sea or a typhoon that swept in and carried ¡®em all off to the depths, we lost ¡®em both to the flunkies of a jumped-up, would-be ¡®hero¡¯ who don¡¯t care who he hurts or what he has to do to get what he wants. Normally, I¡¯d call that there pirate-y behavior, but even scumbag buccaneers like us have standards and principles, don¡¯t we?¡±

    ¡°AYE!¡± the crew roared again.

    ¡°Tomorrow,¡± said Drake, ¡°we can worry about taking back our pound of flesh from the asshole who stole away two of our family ¡ª and you mark my words, boys, by the end of this, that pansy is gonna rue the day he killed two of ours ¡ª but tonight, we remember. Tonight, we honor those two who sacrificed themselves for us. Tonight, we all pour one out for them.¡±

    She retrieved her Grail from inside her chest and lifted it towards the sky. ¡°To Emiya and Asterios!¡±

    ¡°EMIYA AND ASTERIOS!¡± the crew echoed.

    And then she tipped it over and poured her entire drink out on the ground. The others followed in her lead and did the same.

    ¡°Alright,¡± Drake said. ¡°Tonight, our party ain¡¯t just a mindless reason to let off steam! Tonight, we¡¯re celebrating the folks we owe our lives to, so give thanks to whatever god you believe in that we met two outstanding guys who aren¡¯t here to eat with us, and honor them with every bite!¡±

    The crew let out another roar in reply ¡ª no one noticing the one person slipping away in the furor ¡ª and set about partying when Drake stepped down off of her barrel.

    I moved to follow, pressing through the throng as Drake went around and started passing out food from her Grail to everyone, like some sort of strange mimicry of Catholic Communion. It looked like one of Emiya¡¯s dishes, one of the ones he¡¯d prepared for us before while we were here in this Singularity, and it even smelled the same ¡ª just as mouth-wateringly delicious. My stomach growled to let me know I hadn¡¯t eaten yet.

    But as I passed by a group who had already received theirs, I heard one of them murmur, ¡°Just don¡¯t taste the same. Something¡¯s missing, ya know?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± one of his companions said. ¡°That Emiya¡­ Even the Cap¡¯n¡¯s magic food can¡¯t measure up.¡±

    Eventually, I made it through and came out of the crowd of bodies, and I made a beeline for the one I was following, tracking her with a small collection of well-placed bugs as she left the party behind, too, and ventured out into the city.

    My brow furrowed when she started to wander aimlessly, exploring the town without any apparent destination in mind, and I backed off for the moment to leave her to it and wait until she either approached the edge of my range or found a place to settle.

    In the meantime, I turned and headed towards the other woman who had slipped away from the party and gone to be alone in the quietest part of the town: the church, a wooden building situated off to the side of the fort that had the distinction of being one of the tallest in town by simple virtue of the steeple that jutted up from its front.

    If not for that, I might not have thought it was a church at all, looking at it from the outside. I was used to imagining towering gothic cathedrals or expansive brick monoliths designed to fit hundreds of people at once, and the much smaller, much more compact thing that stood in their place was, perhaps expectedly, much more befitting a smaller, tighter knit community. Something you might see in a sleepy little hamlet out in the midwest, compared to the ones I¡¯d seen in Brockton and Chicago.

    Medea didn¡¯t move when I opened the heavy double doors to the chapel, she just stayed in the chair she¡¯d chosen, staring up at the crucifix hanging behind the pulpit. Like it was some fascinating kind of insect she¡¯d never seen before and she wanted to understand it better. She didn¡¯t react at all when I walked over and took a seat in the chair next to her, although I was certain she knew I was there.

    ¡°Do you ever wonder if he¡¯s still around?¡± she asked me without looking my way. ¡°If he¡¯s still watching and meddling, whispering in the ears of his faithful and answering prayers, or if he¡¯s just like all the other gods and can¡¯t do anything at all anymore except watch it all burn down?¡±

    ¡°Not particularly,¡± I answered. ¡°I¡¯m not sure he¡¯d like it if I actually did.¡±

    Because it would mean everything was part of his ¡°plan,¡± and I¡­wasn¡¯t entirely sure what to feel about that idea. Not after everything I¡¯d been through.

    She made a sound I couldn¡¯t quite parse in the back of her throat. ¡°It was all after my time, so I don¡¯t have any firsthand experience with him and his worshippers, but¡­ Well, I do know some of it. Through the Throne, I mean. The idea always sounded farfetched. A god who loved everyone equally and forgave all sins? Who welcomed everyone that sincerely repented and punished the wicked in the name of justice?¡± She chuckled bitterly. ¡°A fairy tale. A fantasy you tell children to make them behave.¡±

    She fell back into silence, and I let her have it for a moment or two, let her stew in her own thoughts and ruminate about the meaning of life or whatever it was she was thinking about. Frankly, I didn¡¯t particularly care about the question of God. I guess, by whatever standards you held me up to these days, I could count as an atheist. At the very least, I¡¯d stopped actively believing somewhere between losing Mom and fighting Leviathan, so it was all kind of moot.

    At length, I decided to address the elephant in the room. ¡°You lied to us.¡±

    She chuckled again. ¡°You knew that from the beginning. After all, you never believed I was the real Calliope, did you?¡±

    The possibility had occurred to me, yes, but that wasn¡¯t what I meant.

    ¡°You never told us that Jason was the real enemy, or that this whole thing was one long chain of patsies for your other self.¡±

    She huffed. ¡°Because I had ample reason to trust you,¡± she said sarcastically.

    ¡°By the time we were chasing down Blackbeard?¡± I said. ¡°Yes.¡±

    Medea grimaced and hunched in on herself, and then she said the thing that I had heard way too many times for my liking: ¡°You don¡¯t understand.¡±

    ¡°Then make me understand.¡±

    Her head whipped around, eyes flashing as she snarled at me. ¡°How could you? How could you possibly understand what it was like to watch that ignorant brat fawn over that bastard like a lovesick maiden? What it was like to be violated by yet another pitiless god, forcibly subjugated to his design? To tear yourself in half just to escape it, left with only scraps of who you used to be and gaping holes in your very self?¡±

    She stood suddenly, ripping her black cloak off at last to reveal her body, thin and waifish and clothed in a purple dress that looked like it barely fit her with how it hung off of her body. She wasn¡¯t quite emaciated, but there was no way she was as full-figured as she should have been.

    ¡°I am Medea of Colchis!¡± she bellowed, and it echoed off of the walls. ¡°I learned sorcery from the Goddess of Magic, Hecate! I know spells and potions and all sorts of secrets that magi like you can only dream of!¡± She waved a hand, and sparks of pink light flickered up and down her fingers impotently. ¡°I can barely cast a single spell without risking my very being ripping itself apart!¡±

    Her lip curled into a sneer. ¡°And yet you wonder why I, who was betrayed by everyone, refused to risk being betrayed again?¡±

    Calmly, slowly, I stood, too, and carefully, I brushed my hair aside, tucking it behind my ear, and gave her a good, long look at the pair of scars that dappled my forehead, normally hidden by my bangs. Her eyes were drawn to them immediately.

    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

    ¡°I understand better than you think.¡±

    She didn¡¯t seem to know what to say to that.

    ¡°I¡¯m not going to preach to you about the merits of trust,¡± I told her. I wasn¡¯t that much of a hypocrite. ¡°But when it has so many implications for Chaldea¡¯s mission and our success at it? Yes. Keeping secrets like that could have gotten us all killed.¡±

    ¡°Those wounds¡­¡± she murmured.

    ¡°If you were to look,¡± I said calmly, ¡°you would find two corresponding marks on the back of my head. Entry wounds.¡±

    Her brow twitched. ¡°You were shot in the back of the head.¡±

    Betrayed, she didn¡¯t say, but she was almost certainly thinking it. I didn¡¯t do anything to dissuade her from that conclusion, even if it wasn¡¯t, technically speaking, the right one. It wasn¡¯t like I hadn¡¯t ever been betrayed before that moment, after all. Just that the bullets had been more mercy than anything else.

    ¡°It took me six months to piece myself back together,¡± I said. ¡°So yes, I know a thing or two about having gaping holes in myself.¡± Both figuratively and literally. ¡°What it¡¯s like to hold onto whatever scraps of yourself you have left. I do have some idea of what you¡¯re going through and what you¡¯ve been through.¡±

    Even if it wasn¡¯t quite exactly the same.

    ¡°But what I do for Chaldea and Chaldea¡¯s mission are bigger and more important than my problems,¡± I went on. The story of my career, really. Putting aside old grievances for the greater good. ¡°Too much is at stake for me to let my own hangups get in the way. I may not tell my team everything, but when it could mean the difference between success and failure or one of us living and dying? My secrets aren¡¯t worth that.¡±

    ¡°How do you do it?¡± she asked me quietly. ¡°How do you let someone in again, after something like that? Something that almost killed you?¡±

    She was talking about the bullets, but my thoughts instead went to Emma, to the Locker, to Lisa and the Undersiders. My mouth started moving before I could think better of it.

    ¡°I had a friend, once. She was like my sister. Grew up with her and everything. Told her all my secrets, all my fears and worries, all my pains and sorrows. She held me when I cried after my mother died. One day, she turned around, and for no reason I ever knew, she spat on all those years of friendship and stabbed me in the back in nearly every sense.¡±

    And even then, the Locker came closer to the literal than I was comfortable with.

    ¡°She taught me caution,¡± I went on. ¡°Made me jaded. I made other friends later, and I did things with them that I¡¯m not entirely proud of. Hurt some people I shouldn¡¯t have, even killed. From them, I learned camaraderie.¡± My lips pulled into a tight smile. ¡°And then I left them behind for the greater good.¡±

    Even if I wasn¡¯t sure how much good it did in the end. Supposedly, it made the numbers better, but what that even meant when so many people had died¡­

    ¡°When I arrived at Chaldea, I had nothing. My friends were all gone, one way or another. I¡¯d betrayed so many people, including myself, and I¡¯d been betrayed in turn. And despite knowing that, despite knowing what I¡¯d done, what I¡¯d sacrificed, and what I¡¯d thrown away, someone still decided to trust me and put her faith in me. I couldn¡¯t do anything else than the same for her.¡±

    ¡°And she knows everything?¡± Medea asked.

    ¡°Maybe not,¡± I admitted. ¡°But she knows enough.¡±

    ¡°So there are still secrets you¡¯re keeping,¡± she accused me.

    ¡°Everyone does, Medea,¡± I said, unfazed. ¡°Everyone carries secrets around. Traumas that left scars. Stupid mistakes they regret. Evils they committed, whatever the reason might be.¡± I sure as hell did. ¡°Some of those secrets are no one¡¯s business. Keep them. Lock them away in your heart. But no secret is worth letting the whole world get destroyed. Not yours. Not even mine.¡±

    She looked down at her hands. Clenched and unclenched her fists. They shook, like the effort was almost too much for her diminished body.

    ¡°Even when those secrets are all you have?¡± she whispered.

    ¡°Even then.¡±

    Arguably, especially then.

    For a moment, she was silent as her hands fell. I wasn¡¯t sure if that was all of it. Whatever she might still be holding back ¡ª if anything ¡ª I wasn¡¯t sure she was going to share, and as the moment stretched and the seconds ticked by, I waited for something that might not come.

    Outside, my other target had finally stopped wandering and was slowly heading towards the pier, and my stomach was still rumbling. I didn¡¯t have the time to stand there all the rest of the day with Medea.

    Just as I was about to leave, she brought one of her hands up, and in a flash, she held a crooked, jagged dagger with a rainbow-colored blade. It looked more like a decorative piece or something designed for rituals than a functional weapon.

    ¡°My Noble Phantasm,¡± she said, ¡°is Rule Breaker. With it, I can cancel any and all forms of magecraft, including,¡± she emphasized, ¡°a Servant¡¯s contract with his Master.¡±

    The pieces started slotting together. ¡°Herakles ¡ª¡±

    ¡°His Noble Phantasm cancels mine out,¡± she admitted. ¡°Caenis, as well. Even were it possible, I haven¡¯t the strength necessary to force my will upon them now. Servants as unruly as they are would never obey me unless I subjugated them first.¡±

    She looked down at her dagger, and then it disappeared as she let her hand drop again.

    ¡°When Hektor used his Noble Phantasm against Asterios,¡± she began, ¡°and I put myself in the way of his attack ¡ª¡±

    ¡°You stole his contract?¡± I said sharply.

    She nodded. ¡°Jason doesn¡¯t realize it. As long as Herakles and Caenis are still around, however, there isn¡¯t an opening for Hektor to take advantage of. Only when the both of them are gone can he make his move.¡±

    I had a different concern as the bugs in the background began to buzz. ¡°He could have handed us the Grail after he stabbed Blackbeard.¡±

    Medea shook her head. ¡°The Grail belongs to Jason and my other self. Taking it from Blackbeard would have had no meaning, because it never belonged to him. Even if it might not seem like it from the outside, these Singularities ¡ª if they truly are formed from the usage of Grails ¡ª are technically Holy Grail Wars.¡±

    I froze. The implications unfolded in my mind like a particularly ugly flower, and I liked none of what they showed. It was true that none of these Singularities had the same sort of structure inherent to the Holy Grail War that I had learned about in Chaldea, the battle royale for the prize of a wish granted, but to begin with, those were rituals set up by magi. Some form of structure and a set of rules was to be expected.

    But what would a Holy Grail look like in nature? Drake had handed me the answer to that when we met her, in the form of a golden chalice that she used to produce endless food and drink, which she had wrested from the sea god, Poseidon, during pitched combat. She won it, fair and square, and so it granted her wish ¡ª hers and no one else¡¯s. We could sip from it, we could eat the food it supplied, we could use its power to hurt Caenis, but we couldn¡¯t summon Servants with it or fulfill our own deepest desires.

    Drake had won the Grail, and she¡¯d made a wish. Her Holy Grail War was already over. Presumably, anyone who wanted to use it again would have to defeat her and take it by force.

    And ours wouldn¡¯t be ¡ª hadn¡¯t been before, in any of the other Singularities ¡ª until we beat the current owner and took the Grail through conquest. There had to be a quest, a journey, a challenge to overcome, just like there was in all of the legends about the Holy Grail. It could never be freely given.

    ¡°I see,¡± was the only thing I could say. ¡°That¡¯s good to know.¡±

    Her brow knitted together. ¡°Aren¡¯t you angry?¡±

    I was furious.

    ¡°I am,¡± I admitted calmly. ¡°But there¡¯s nothing I can do about it now, so there¡¯s no point. What¡¯s important is that we can use this going forward.¡±

    ¡°Carefully,¡± she said, guarded.

    ¡°Yes,¡± I agreed, ¡°and it¡¯s going to be your responsibility. As his Master, it¡¯ll be up to you to see the moment and seize it, because it¡¯ll be your orders he follows.¡±

    She frowned. ¡°I understand.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Good. And Medea?¡±

    I waited until she turned her head up and looked me directly in the eye.

    ¡°Thank you. For telling me now.¡±

    She blinked, bewildered, and her mouth dropped open a little soundlessly, and I took that as my moment to turn around and leave, walking back towards the double doors at the front of the chapel. Behind me, as I pushed them open, I heard her whisper to herself, ¡°Oh. So that¡¯s what that feels like.¡±

    Night had fallen almost completely by the time I stepped back outside, leaving only the barest hint of light shining across the dark sky, and I turned out of the church and towards the north to follow the road. My other target had journeyed there and settled at the docks not far from where we had set anchor, and I made my way there now. There were more ghosts I had to dodge around along the way, presumably making the trek towards whichever of these houses had counted as home when they were alive.

    Running into them was no more fun now than it had been when we first landed here. Not the worst thing ever, just supremely uncomfortable.

    I found her out on the pier, sitting on its edge with her legs dangling and her shoulders hunched as she looked out across the sea towards the horizon. She didn¡¯t seem to mind the fact that her view of the sunset was obscured by another island that sat to the west, nor even that the sun had finished setting maybe an hour or more earlier.

    She was so lost in thought that she didn¡¯t even seem to hear me coming.

    ¡°Rika.¡±

    Rika¡¯s head turned towards me, and she blinked, looking a little lost. ¡°Oh. Senpai.¡±

    ¡°Do you mind if I sit?¡±

    ¡°Oh. Sure.¡±

    She turned back towards the water, and I made the last few steps over to her and sat down a few feet away ¡ª close enough for her to feel my presence, but far enough not to crowd her. I folded my fingers together, let my hands fall into my lap, and silently, as the waves lapped at the stone below us, I waited.

    I¡¯d been overthinking it, I found as I sat there. Back when we¡¯d started this adventure and things got a little tough, I¡¯d agonized over what to say and what I could do to help them deal with the weight of everything. How I could give them what they needed to bounce back from the tragedies and the trauma and how I could teach them to shoulder the burden this job was putting on their shoulders. I hadn¡¯t been able to find the right words that would solve it all.

    But I didn¡¯t really need to, did I? It wasn¡¯t that complicated. Special training might have made it easier, given me techniques to use, but what they needed most and what would help them the most wasn¡¯t any of that, it was just me, listening, supporting, validating. Giving advice born from my hard won experience.

    They didn¡¯t need me to be their therapist, just their leader.

    ¡°Did you ever¡­¡± Rika began suddenly, ¡°¡­screw up that badly?¡±

    ¡°Plenty of times,¡± I said mildly.

    Her head swung around, disbelieving. ¡°Really?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said, staring out at the ocean. The picture of calm. ¡°I made many, many mistakes when I was younger. Did plenty of stupid things, screwed up a lot. Nearly died more than once.¡±

    ¡°But you¡¯re¡­¡±

    She trailed off.

    I hummed thoughtfully. ¡°You remember what the Director said about why I was chosen to be a Master of Chaldea.¡±

    Her head fell, and she stared down at her lap. Her fists clenched together.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± she said, self-loathing in her voice. ¡°You¡¯re a badass who¡¯s done tons of amazing stuff, and Onii-chan and me¡­we¡¯re just kids off the street. Extras. Spots to fill out a quota. We weren¡¯t even supposed to be down there that day, it was just dumb luck.¡±

    ¡°I know I¡¯ve told you before,¡± I said. ¡°The first time, it¡¯s luck. The right place at the right time. Things coming together just right. After that, you have to make the choice to keep doing it.¡±

    ¡°But you¡¯re so cool and amazing!¡± Rika burst out. ¡°And I¡¯m just¡­me. Stupid, slow, and so bad at this Master thing that I¡­¡±

    She didn¡¯t finish her sentence.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t pop up out of the ground like this, you know,¡± I told her wryly. ¡°I just told you, I made a lot of mistakes, especially when I was first starting out. But that¡¯s the thing about mistakes, as cheesy as it might sound. You learn from them. You get better. So that next time something like that happens, you don¡¯t make the same mistake again.¡±

    ¡°I-I got Emiya killed,¡± Rika said, voice thick with emotion. ¡°Somehow¡­I don¡¯t think¡­that¡¯s a mistake you can learn from. Th-there is no getting better for that.¡±

    ¡°If that was true, then I wouldn¡¯t be here.¡±

    Her head whipped around again. ¡°W-what?¡±

    ¡°If getting people killed somehow made it so that you could never help anyone or do anything good ever again, then I wouldn¡¯t be here either.¡±

    ¡°B-but you¡¯re¡­Senpai!¡± she protested. ¡°You¡¯re always so¡­!¡±

    Oh, Rika. If I was half as amazing as you made me out to be, I wouldn¡¯t be here now either.

    ¡°Because I learned from it. I fought smarter. I picked up new tricks. I did whatever it took, no matter how dirty it might have been. And when I screwed up again, I kept learning. I kept growing. I kept getting better.¡±

    Until the only person I sacrificed was myself.

    ¡°And I still make mistakes. I still screw up. I still make sure I learn from them, so that I can stop myself from making them again.¡±

    Even if that was a whole lot harder than it sounded. But Rika didn¡¯t need to hear that part. She could figure it out on her own later.

    ¡°You guys are still young,¡± I went on. Rika gave me a complicated look. ¡°You still have a long ways to go. One day, you¡¯ll look back on the person you were at the start of all of this, and you¡¯ll be surprised at how much you¡¯ve grown since then.¡±

    Because it¡¯ll feel like a lifetime.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know if I¡¯ll ever get there,¡± Rika murmured.

    ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m here,¡± I told her. ¡°Why the Director¡¯s here. Why Romani and Da Vinci and all the rest are here. So that we can help you get there. So that we can help you learn and grow and get better. That¡¯s why Emiya¡¯s your Servant, too.¡±

    Her hands clenched so tight that her knuckles turned a stark white. ¡°Will he even want to be my Servant, after I got him killed?¡±

    I let out a long, slow breath. ¡°Don¡¯t you remember, Rika? Servants know what their role is. They know that we Masters will sometimes have to make a call that will get them killed. And each and every one of them was prepared from the moment they were summoned to give their lives for the mission. Emiya is no different.¡±

    ¡°But I¡­!¡± Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her bite her lip so hard she almost drew blood. ¡°I-it¡¯s my fault he died! I¡¯m the one who ordered him to fight Herakles! I-I¡¯m the one who told him to last as long as he could! I-I¡¯m the one¡­who wasn¡¯t good enough to help him do it!¡±

    ¡°Then get better.¡±

    Her shoulders tensed. ¡°I can¡¯t!¡±

    I turned to her, and calmly, confidently, I said, ¡°Yes, you can.¡±

    ¡°I-I can¡¯t!¡± she insisted, shaking. ¡°I-I¡¯m not like y-you! I¡¯m not like O-Onii-chan! I-I¡¯m a no-good screw-up who barely passed high school b-because my brother wouldn¡¯t let me fail! I have no business being a¡­a Master and trying to save the world!¡±

    ¡°And you think he¡¯s going to let you fail now?¡± I asked.

    She hunched further in on herself. ¡°Th-that¡¯s not¡­!¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re all here for you, Rika,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯re not going to let you fall behind. We¡¯re not going to let you down. We¡¯re all here to help you become the Master we all know you can be, and that¡¯s not going to change.¡± More firmly, I added, ¡°But we can¡¯t make you get better, and we can¡¯t do it for you. If you think you¡¯re not good enough to be Emiya¡¯s Master, then set yourself to becoming good enough and follow through. No one else can make that decision but you.¡±

    Rika gasped.

    ¡°You¡¯ve got two good legs,¡± she breathed, like she¡¯d just come to some kind of epiphany, ¡°so get up and use them.¡±

    My brow twitched. What? Was that another reference?

    Hands trembling, Rika splayed her fingers across her thighs, and the stark red of her Command Spells stood out against her skin. She lifted her hand up, staring down at them, at the design printed there and engraved into her flesh by Chaldea¡¯s FATE System.

    ¡°N-no one else can do it for me,¡± she said. ¡°So I¡­have to stand up and walk that path myself.¡± Her hand trembled. ¡°N-no matter how hard it is¡­or h-how many mistakes I make along the way.¡±

    She clenched it into a fist. ¡°I just have to¡­keep moving forward. A-and if I stumble or¡­or trip¡­¡±

    ¡°Then your brother and I and Mash and Emiya and everyone else,¡± I said, ¡°we¡¯ll catch you.¡±

    She turned to me, eyes wet and bloodshot, her face streaked with tears, and she gave me a watery smile. ¡°Yeah!¡±

    My stomach chose that moment to remind me ¡ª loudly and in no uncertain terms ¡ª that I was actually very hungry. Rika broke out into a burst of hysterical giggles, then had to stop when her own stomach growled just as loudly. She blinked at me.

    Then she giggled harder. Even I could stop myself from breaking out into a smile.

 Interlude: Argo

    Interlude: Argo

    The roar of warring spears echoed across the deck of the Argo. Two streaks of red flashed as a maroon blur smashed against a white blur, and for a single moment as they collided, they resolved into two women, one of them in the roughspun cloth of a Celtic barbarian and the other in the finer wool of a Greek warrior. The barbarian wielded a spear made entirely of the same crimson material, with patterns of thorny vines along the shaft and an undulating blade. The Greek warrior¡¯s spear also had a red shaft, but the blade was broad and blackened with a sharp, silvery edge.

    They were a study in contrasts. The taller Greek warrior fought savagely with powerful, overwhelming strikes meant to defeat the enemy with a single blow. Her face was twisted into a furious snarl. She held nothing back. The shorter Celtic barbarian fought carefully with measured, precise strikes that would have been no less lethal than her opponent¡¯s, designed to conserve as much energy as possible. A broad smile lit up her entire face, despite the fact that everyone knew she was inevitably going to lose.

    No sooner had they stabilized into distinct, visible form than did they disappear and become blurs once more, racing across the Argo¡¯s deck. For brief moments, mere fractions of a second, they slowed long enough to become visible again, before darting back off into pitched combat.

    This pattern had been repeating for hours yet. Neither side had gained ground, for while the Greek warrior had many cuts and holes and scratches scored into her clothing and armor, her skin was entirely unblemished. Even if her opponent could get past her guard, her body was impenetrable, invulnerable, invincible, and she simply could not be harmed. The Celtic barbarian, by contrast, had suffered many fewer cuts and injuries, and yet they had healed almost as soon as they had been inflicted, leaving her just as pristine as the Greek.

    And yet, despite the stalemate, only one of them had the support necessary to truly go on forever. The end result had already been predetermined from the beginning. What was happening now was nothing more than a waste of time and energy ¡ª time and energy that could be better spent on other, more important things, as far as one of those watching was concerned.

    It pissed Jason off.

    ¡°Caenis!¡± he shouted at the Greek. ¡°Stop playing around with her! Finish her off already!¡±

    These words did little for the Greek warrior known as Caenis. She was already pissed off herself, and they only served to make her angrier. Jason¡¯s cajoling accomplished nothing.

    ¡°The fuck do you think I¡¯ve been trying to do?¡± Caenis bellowed back at him. ¡°This bitch ain¡¯t giving me any fucking openings! If you think you can do better, then get your ass over here and try!¡±

    The difference in their skills was obvious, and that, too, only served to make Caenis even angrier. This was the truth of the matter: the living hero known alternately as Caenis and Caeneus had never been anything particularly special, possessing neither unusual strength nor exceptional martial prowess. It was only the blessing of Poseidon that now made her so formidable, only the things which she possessed as a Heroic Spirit that made her so powerful.

    In contrast, the Celtic barbarian, A¨ªfe, was a warrior who had dedicated her life to improving herself. She had honed her body into a weapon and mastered all the skills available to her during her training and adventures. She had well-earned everything in her arsenal, and there was nothing she wielded which had not been gained through her own efforts.

    In that regard, although only one of them possessed any shred of Divinity in her Saint Graph, only one of them could truly have earned the moniker of a goddess. It was only natural, therefore, that even though Caenis could not be harmed by anything A¨ªfe wielded, nothing which Caenis possessed was capable of matching A¨ªfe either.

    To have one¡¯s own inadequacies thrown into her face, anger was the natural reaction.

    ¡°Urk!¡± Jason blanched, grimacing, for neither was he anything special as a warrior, but long practice with belligerent teammates let him recover quickly. ¡°Don¡¯t you think if I could do anything, then I would? Herakles would turn her into paste! But you had to get caught in that trick of hers and none of us can do anything but watch!¡±

    Jason gestured to the hulking behemoth of muscle and power that was Herakles. He stood stoically at attention, watching everything without even the slightest inkling of what ¡ª if anything at all, given that he was a Berserker class Servant ¡ª might be going on inside of his head. As he was now, he wasn¡¯t anything more than a bundle of instinct, ingrained fighting prowess, and a vague, inscrutable will.

    Perhaps he obeyed Jason simply because there was no one else to give him orders. Whether it was a matter of personal loyalty or the influence of the Grail in Jason¡¯s possession, the only one who could have said either way could not have communicated the answer in any coherent way.

    ¡°DON¡¯T FUCKING REMIND ME!¡± Caenis roared.

    In her fury, she lashed out with a particularly powerful blow, a swipe of her spear that would have easily sliced in half almost any Servant who had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of it, but A¨ªfe contorted, ducked under it so that the black blade passed over her head by mere centimeters, and then retaliated with a powerful blow of her own. Reflex made Caenis flinch away from the strike that would have gouged out her eye and gored her brain, were it not for her impenetrable skin.

    ¡°BITCH!¡±

    Her free hand balled up tightly, and her body twisted around to add force behind her blow as Caenis aimed a punch to avenge what the spear would have done to her ¡ª for Caenis¡¯ body might have been uninjured, but her pride had been damaged mightily, and this was the greater insult of the two.

    But A¨ªfe retreated before Caenis¡¯ fist could make contact, putting just enough distance between them to avoid any attack that might have followed. Contrary to Caenis, she still looked like she was having the time of her life, such was the expression of joy on her face.

    ¡°Come,¡± she taunted. ¡°If that is the limit of what you can do, then I still have much to teach you and little time in which to teach it.¡±

    Caenis snarled. ¡°Then stand fucking still and let me hit you!¡±

    These, however, were only compounding the origin of Caenis¡¯ ire. Caenis was no stranger to combat, after all, and no stranger to worthy opponents or strong enemies. How could she be, when one of her own companions was the greatest hero Greece had ever produced, so famous that his name was remembered millennia after his bones had withered into dust?

    No, mere competition could never have accomplished this, for it was too ordinary. What had truly aroused such fury within Caenis was that she had been tricked. She had been outwitted by her enemy, surprised first by an attack that had somehow managed to make it through her invincible body and then again by this nonsense that forced her to fight in a battle to the death in single combat. That this state of affairs kept highlighting her weaknesses and deficiencies as a warrior only served to stoke the flames of her rage, and when combined with her Madness Enhancement, there was no going back. She would continue raging until this battle ended, and she would not stop before then.

    This was, for Jason, the worst outcome. It was not possible for him to move forward before this final foe had been vanquished, but there was nothing he could do to bring the fight to a swifter conclusion, for the Shoal of the Four Branches was inviolable, and so there was nothing for him to do except watch impatiently. Neither his emotional support nor his accusations would by miracle allow Caenis to match an enemy who was simply more skilled than her.

    Why couldn¡¯t everything just go according to plan, he wondered. Why were there these constant setbacks? He had the greatest hero in the world at his beck and call, there should be nothing at all that could hope to stand in his way. And yet, somehow, his ascendancy kept being delayed.

    ¡°Your impatience is indeed your worst trait,¡± A¨ªfe said calmly as she dodged yet more attacks from Caenis. ¡°You would be a much greater warrior, if only you could master your emotions and learn restraint.¡±

    ¡°SHUT UP!¡±

    Caenis unleashed another flurry of blows so fast that even Jason¡¯s eyes couldn¡¯t keep up with them, and yet her opponent dodged around them so effortlessly that he was honestly a little jealous. Well, that was only natural. Jason had never had the same opportunities to become one of those bigshot heroes. He was sure, if he''d been given a chance to really show his stuff, then he would be the equal of names like Herakles. No, he would be better.

    That was the whole point of this venture. Jason had never gotten the chance to realize his full potential, and now, with the Grail and with his plan to become a god king, his time would finally come. Once he had Euryale and the Ark, there would be no more obstacles on his path, and then everything would turn around.

    This time, there would be nothing to sabotage him at the last second. After all, the Medea at his side now was too slavishly devoted to even think of doing the same thing her older counterpart had done to him in life. With her at his side and Herakles as his subordinate, his victory was nothing more than inevitable.

    That was why¡­

    ¡°Just shut up and kill her already, Caenis!¡±

    This was the absolute worst.

    ¡°RAH!¡±

    Caenis did not respond with words, for she had gone beyond them. There was not enough space in her mind now to form a coherent thought, and all she could think of was the red haze that crept across her vision.

    Truly, she was an irascible, uncontrollable Heroic Spirit.

    Watching all of this, Medea could only sigh. Lacking any interest in the brutal melee and having no desire to watch the two warriors trade ineffective blows, she instead turned her eyes towards the sea and the sky and thought wistfully of home and of her life with her Lord Jason. If she strained, she thought she might have been able to see the shape of the coast that sat upon the edge of her native Colchis in the distance, hidden in the haze of the setting sun, just barely on the edge of sight.

    How wonderful it would have been to return to those times and live in them forever. How terrible that they were long gone, lost to the fog of history.

    Still, if she was allowed to dream and fantasize, to imagine what would bring her happiness¡­ Maybe, that was what she conjured in her mind¡¯s eye. A paradise where she could be alone with Lord Jason and they could enjoy each other¡¯s company to the fullest, without interruption or care.

    She was not unaware that there was something missing, although she could not have said what. Her memories were incomplete. There was something she knew should be there, some vital piece of information that would change so much of her existence, and yet it had all been ripped free, leaving only jagged edges in her mind. There were only gaping holes where they should have been, blank spots that left not even impressions.

    There was nothing to be done about that, and so Medea didn¡¯t concern herself with it. If it was missing, then it wasn¡¯t truly important, and it was that line of thinking that let her focus more completely on the current circumstances. Her current objective and goals.

    She, too, felt Lord Jason¡¯s impatience, although not for quite the same reasons. There was instead the press of something urgent on the back of her mind, something with incredible weight that sat insistently upon her. She thought, perhaps, she understood the burden of Atlas, at least a little. Despite nothing physical pushing down on her shoulders, they ached with a phantom pain.

    ¡°I know,¡± she murmured to the air. ¡°There have been far too many interruptions and impediments, haven¡¯t there? It should not have been this difficult.¡±

    Her task remained all the same.

    She turned her eyes back to the fighting. Nothing of it had changed.

    This was only a small stumble on the road to it. Both she and Lord Jason yet had parts to play.

    ¡°What was that?¡± Jason demanded.

    Medea pasted a smile on her face. ¡°Nothing at all, Lord Jason! Only that I, too, grow weary of these interruptions that keep getting in the way of our plans!¡±

    Jason sneered at her. ¡°Of course you do. This plan was partly yours, anyway, even if I made it better.¡± He turned to their last member. ¡°And what about you? Aren¡¯t you getting bored of this, too?¡±

    Hektor only smiled lazily and shrugged. ¡°This old man isn¡¯t too bothered by any of this. Troy was sieged for ten years, remember? Patience was something I had to learn early on.¡±

    He was the only oddity, and as far as Jason was concerned, the only one who wasn¡¯t quite trustworthy. After all, the rest of their crew were Argonauts and had all served beside him ¡ª under him, as he was the captain ¡ª on their adventures. If they weren¡¯t quite friends, they were at least comrades and people he had entrusted his back to, once upon a time.

    Hektor was none of those things. He wasn¡¯t even a Greek. Technically, he was even an enemy of the Greeks, although what bearing that had on things when the Trojan War was after the Argonauts had long since disbanded, there was no way to say. What stake he had in Jason¡¯s plan, therefore, well, Jason didn¡¯t really know, and that was why he didn¡¯t trust Hektor. Herakles and Caenis were why he didn¡¯t really need to.

    He could at least admit that Hektor had wound up useful enough. That useless wretch, Blackbeard, had failed so miserably, so if nothing else, it was convenient that Hektor had been there to reclaim the Grail. What a nightmare it would have been to try and reclaim it if someone else had managed to steal it away.

    ¡°Tch.¡± Jason turned back to the fight, the flurry of two spears clashing against each other. Neither side had yet gained any ground. ¡°How pathetic it is that the guy who isn¡¯t even an Argonaut has done a better job of helping me than the actual Argonaut on my crew.¡±

    Even, he was loath to admit, Herakles. Just how had the greatest hero of Greece let himself get suckered into that Archer¡¯s stupid magic? Worse than that, how had he actually lost several lives to that weakling? Shouldn¡¯t his instincts have been enough to warn him of the danger? Shouldn¡¯t that have been enough to avoid it?

    And if not him, then shouldn¡¯t his expert mage have been able to pick up on what was happening sooner instead of way too late for anyone to do anything about it?

    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    ¡°Hey, Medea!¡± he yelled, turning to the slavish little twit. ¡°Just how was it you missed that guy¡¯s incantation anyway? Shouldn¡¯t you have known he was up to something? Just how incompetent a mage are you, anyway?¡±

    Medea sighed pitifully. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Lord Jason. It was my mistake not to realize he was incanting a spell sooner. I messed up.¡±

    ¡°Damn right, you did!¡± he berated her. ¡°Someone who learned magic from the Goddess of Magic herself should¡¯ve known better!¡±

    She bowed her head contritely, accepting blame, and the fire left Jason immediately. It was hard to get really angry at someone who didn¡¯t even fight back. At least if she¡¯d tried to deny it, he could have yelled at her some more, but someone who just meekly took it and didn¡¯t even tear up a little? That just left a sour taste in his mouth.

    ¡°Ugh! Why couldn¡¯t we have had someone more experienced on this ship?¡±

    Circe was a crazy bitch who probably would¡¯ve turned him into a pig out of some misguided attempt at revenge for what Medea had done to herself, but at least she would have realized what that Archer was doing fast enough to actually stop it.

    ¡°Seems like a bit of an oversight,¡± Hektor commented mildly. ¡°Maybe it really would have been a good idea to have more than one mage onboard at a time, huh?¡±

    ¡°Shut up,¡± said Jason, annoyed. ¡°It¡¯s not a matter of skill, it¡¯s experience. Damn it, it¡¯s convenient to have a version of Medea that doesn¡¯t want to kill me on sight, but couldn¡¯t I have gotten one from a little further along in our journey?¡±

    ¡°Kill you on sight, Lord Jason?¡± Medea asked, aghast. ¡°Why ever would I want to do something like that? Lord Jason, I would never! I¡¯m your faithful wife, and that¡¯s never going to change!¡±

    She couldn¡¯t even imagine the idea that she could ever want to kill him. He was Lord Jason. He was everything to her. Sure, he wasn¡¯t always nice to her, but when he was mean, it was usually because she deserved it, and when she didn¡¯t, he didn¡¯t mean it.

    Jason grunted and looked away, and Hektor¡¯s face fell with pity.

    ¡°She really doesn¡¯t know, huh?¡±

    ¡°Shut up,¡± Jason said again. ¡°Isn¡¯t it obvious? When that bitch took off, she took Medea¡¯s memories of her future, too. As far as this Medea is concerned, she hasn¡¯t been on any of the adventures we went on yet, so she has no idea what happened later on in our legend. Even if you told her, I doubt she¡¯d believe any of it for a second.¡±

    ¡°That so?¡± said Hektor, sounding like he actually did pity her.

    What was there to pity? As far as Jason was concerned, Medea was the best off of their whole group, because she was still stuck in her happiest moments. Frankly, Jason would¡¯ve liked to not remember any of the bad stuff that happened to him later on, too. In fact, he would¡¯ve preferred for his memories of his life to stop in the middle of their journey, before the tragedies started to fall on his head, back when it was as simple as returning home to claim his prize and his throne.

    Compared to Herakles, who couldn¡¯t even think straight, and Caenis, who had been summoned in the form of the woman she was before Poseidon had his way with her? Medea¡¯s situation was a blessing. She had none of the baggage that was weighing the rest of them down.

    The little twit probably didn¡¯t even understand the reason why Jason wanted to become a god king, even if the only thing he wound up ruling over was this godforsaken ocean. It was something he wanted, so she was going to make sure he got it, whatever the reason. She didn¡¯t need anything more than that to convince her.

    Maybe that really was something to pity after all.

    ¡°So she doesn¡¯t even remember what happened to her brother?¡±

    Medea blinked at him and tilted her head with a confused smile. What did Absyrtus have to do with anything? ¡°My brother, Lord Hektor? Did something untoward occur? Well, he¡¯s a bit headstrong, so if he got on some poor maiden¡¯s nerves, he has only himself to blame.¡±

    Really, he was so hopeless, she thought. The later events of his life must have been among the memories that were missing, but she wouldn¡¯t be at all surprised if he offended a visiting princess and got himself in trouble with her father.

    Hektor just gave her that pitying look again, for some reason. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said. ¡°Yeah, something like that happened, I guess you could say.¡±

    Medea sighed. Good grief. Of course it had. Absyrtus really was so hopeless. He¡¯d have lost his head a dozen times over if it wasn¡¯t attached to his neck.

    ¡°Like I said,¡± Jason told him. ¡°It¡¯s no use. Her head is too empty to even consider the idea.¡±

    ¡°My head isn¡¯t empty, Lord Jason,¡± Medea said, giggling a little. ¡°It¡¯s filled with thoughts of you!¡±

    Jason arched an eyebrow at Hektor meaningfully, and Hektor only sighed. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said morosely, ¡°I think I get it now.¡±

    BOOM

    The entire ship seemed to rattle at once, and the main mast quivered and shook as Caenis slammed into it at speed. Had it been an ordinary boat, made of ordinary wood, it would undoubtedly have snapped straight in half, and then Caenis would have gone on to plow through much of the rest of it. It was only the fact that the Argo was a Noble Phantasm with thousands of years of mystery behind it that kept the whole thing intact.

    If it had been anyone but Caenis, it wouldn¡¯t have been inaccurate to say that she had suffered the greater damage, but even the blow that had knocked her back so effectively wasn¡¯t enough to make it past her invulnerability. The only thing of Caenis¡¯ that had been injured now was her pride.

    ¡°Ah.¡± A¨ªfe sighed, grimacing down at her extended fist. ¡°It seems as though that¡¯s the limit of this form. I¡¯ve exhausted everything I can do now.¡±

    Caenis roared as she took off like a rocket, and she swung her spear with enough force that she might even have cracked the ship itself if she made a direct impact, only for the black blade with its silvery edge to pass straight through A¨ªfe¡¯s body. The Celtic barbarian was already fading away, her body evaporating like so much steam on a hot day.

    Her voice carried on the wind. ¡°It¡¯s too bad. I was actually starting to enjoy myself. I would have liked to keep going just a little while longer.¡±

    And by the time Caenis whirled back around, she was gone entirely, leaving no trace of her behind.

    ¡°Finally!¡± Jason cried, throwing his hands up in the air.

    ¡°Where did she go?¡± Caenis demanded furiously. ¡°Where did that bitch get off to? Huh?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s vanished, Lord Caeneus,¡± Medea said helpfully. ¡°It seems she ran out of magical energy and disappeared.¡±

    Caenis spun about, snarling, ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, she¡¯s gone,¡± said Jason. ¡°It took you, like, six hours, but one way or another, you finally wore her down. Couldn¡¯t you have managed that a few hours ago? Those bastards are long gone now!¡±

    ¡°Shut up!¡± said Caenis. She punched the main mast so hard that it shook and shivered again, but not so hard that it splintered. ¡°That bitch! She couldn¡¯t even lose! She had to go and run out of energy!¡±

    Of all the rotten, worthless ways to win a fight, thought Caenis, your opponent just running out of energy was the most bullshit. Because in every way that mattered, you hadn¡¯t actually won. It wasn¡¯t even a contest of endurance, the way it would have been when they were alive, it was just a matter of who had the better supply of magical energy to keep them going.

    Fucking bullshit.

    ¡°Not to worry, Lord Jason,¡± Medea chimed in brightly. ¡°Even if I might not be at my best, I can still track them down and follow the trail of their magical energy. I know exactly where they¡¯ve gone!¡±

    ¡°Yeah?¡± said Jason, sneering. ¡°You¡¯re finally useful for once, huh? Well, let¡¯s hear it! Where did those rats scurry off to with that goddess?¡±

    Medea smiled, happy she could do at least this much. ¡°It¡¯s good news, actually! It seems that group went down and joined up with Atalanta and King David! Not only are they all in the same place, but the Ark we need should be there as well!¡±

    Jason blinked. ¡°Seriously?¡± Was his luck finally starting to turn around? ¡°They actually went off to that archipelago with the Queen of Losers, that miserly king, and the traitor?¡±

    Herakles let out a rumbling growl, but what he was reacting to and what he was trying to say, no one there had the slightest clue. Maybe that was for the better, though. As formidable as Herakles would have been with all his wits about him, Jason wasn¡¯t entirely sure Herakles in his right might would have approved of everything Jason was doing. That pipsqueak goddess might have punched one of those traumas related to his kids.

    ¡°Yes.¡± Medea nodded. ¡°It seems they¡¯ve all gathered together. This could be our chance, Lord Jason! With everything we need in one place, we won¡¯t even have to go anywhere else. We can simply sacrifice Euryale to the Ark where it is!¡±

    ¡°That does sound convenient,¡± said Hektor. ¡°A little too convenient for this old man. You sure it¡¯s a good idea to walk into that?¡±

    ¡°You spent too much time hiding behind walls,¡± Jason said dismissively. He patted one of Herakles¡¯ thick forearms, because he was too short to reach a shoulder. ¡°With this guy here, we have nothing to worry about! It doesn¡¯t matter who or what they throw against us, Herakles can¡¯t be beaten!¡±

    Hektor sighed and shrugged.

    ¡°You sure you want to go chasing after them so soon, though?¡± he asked instead. He looked pointedly up at the sky, which had faded to a dark gray as the last shards of daylight slowly followed the sun and fell behind the horizon. ¡°Even with the big guy there to provide cover, fighting all of them at once in the dark sounds like a bad idea to me. Much harder to see an ambush coming.¡±

    He slid a glance over at Jason.

    ¡°If one of them sneaks up on us while Herakles is distracted fighting, then even I might not see it coming in time to stop it, and they have your ex on their side, don¡¯t they? Someone like her could definitely do that.¡±

    ¡°Urk.¡±

    Jason¡¯s face pulled into an ugly grimace as his skin paled. Maybe that was a good point after all. Even if she was just the castoff half of the Medea with him now, the older version was still conniving and clever enough to do just that. If she was half as diminished as his version was, then they wouldn¡¯t even be able to sense her coming until she was right on top of them.

    And Jason wasn¡¯t fool enough to underestimate the bitch¡¯s spite. The last time he did that, it had cost him what little he¡¯d had left, and the end result was him sitting under the rotting remnants of his prized Argo, only to be crushed when the keel finally gave out and fell on him. That was a mistake he wouldn¡¯t be making a second time.

    ¡°Lord Jason??¡± Medea began, eyeing the mist that was slowly starting to crawl up the sides of the ship.

    ¡°Y-yeah, you actually have a good point there. I guess there¡¯s a good reason the Grail made you one of my Servants!¡± Jason crossed his arms, trying to put on a brave face. ¡°Fighting in the dark has too many risks, even with the sort of firepower we have on our side. As incredible as we all are, that bitch is really good at sneaking around. Even a hero as great as Herakles was brought down from the angle he least expected!¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Hektor sighed again, sounding relieved this time. Maybe he was scared to fight in the dark. Ha. Who would have thought? The great hero of the Trojan War, scared of the dark. ¡°When should we attack then?¡±

    ¡°Lord Jason,¡± Medea tried again as the mist grew thicker.

    ¡°Right after dawn, of course,¡± Jason said. ¡°Some of those guys were ordinary humans, and they¡¯ll have to sleep, won¡¯t they? So the instant there¡¯s enough light to see an ambush coming, we¡¯ll storm the archipelago while they¡¯re half asleep and rout the whole lot of them! They¡¯ll never see it coming!¡±

    ¡°A raid at dawn, huh?¡± Hektor mused. ¡°So we¡¯ll attack then and try to catch them off guard. Works for me, Master.¡±

    ¡°Lord Jason!¡± Medea said urgently.

    ¡°Ugh!¡± Jason whirled about to face her. ¡°What do you want now? Can¡¯t you see we¡¯re busy planning how we¡¯re going to win?¡±

    ¡°I think¡­we¡¯re under attack,¡± she told him.

    ¡°What?¡±

    Something tickled along his shins, and that was about when Jason realized there was mist all over the ship, blanketing the deck in a glittering, gray fog. The stormy clouds above suddenly opened up and let loose a torrential downpour, soaking Jason from head to toe in short order.

    ¡°What?¡± He turned to the last Servant in their group. ¡°Caenis, what are you doing? Stop fooling around!¡±

    She sneered. ¡°Ain¡¯t me. This is something else.¡± Her lips curled into a nasty smile. ¡°Someone else that thinks they can play at being a sea god.¡±

    Herakles let out a low, rumbling growl as though to agree with her.

    ¡°Oh,¡± Hektor mumbled. ¡°This guy¡¯s back.¡±

    Jason turned to him. ¡°You know what¡¯s going on?¡±

    Hektor nodded. ¡°Met him once or twice while I was going around with that loudmouth, Blackbeard. He shows up like this, all spooky and mysterious like, and then, when you¡¯re sufficiently freaked out and wondering just what the hell is going on, he¡¯ll pop up out of the woodwork and ask ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Jason of the Argonauts, do you covet the Holy Grail?¡±

    Jason did not squawk and squeak like a little girl when he whirled around to face the new voice, he very much did not, thank you, nor did he find the desiccated corpse that shambled out of the mist in any way intimidating, no, not at all. Why would he, when he had Herakles and Caenis there to protect him? He was the safest person in the history of history. There was nothing at all for him to be afraid of.

    ¡°Just who the hell are you supposed to be, old timer?¡±

    ¡°I have many names,¡± the corpse burbled. ¡°None that matter to you, I would think, and none that matter now. I ask you again. Do you covet the Holy Grail?¡±

    ¡°Covet it?¡± Jason sneered. ¡°Why would I covet something that¡¯s already mine? Get out of here! I¡¯m not in the mood for playing games with a jumped up phantom playing psychopomp!¡±

    The corpse stilled, and its milky white eyes turned on him with sudden intensity, unblinking.

    ¡°I see. So then, you are the one who is responsible for this era and its corruption. Were you to be slain¡­¡±

    And in Jason¡¯s ear, the voice whispered, ¡°Then this distortion would be corrected.¡±

    Jason was suddenly flying, held protectively in a pair of strong arms as the world blurred around him. A fraction of a second later, he came to a stop, carried aloft in Herakles¡¯ surprisingly gentle grip, and he was all the way on the other side of the Argo.

    What?

    Medea, too, had squeaked and leapt away, only she was slower than Herakles, and so she only escaped the specter¡¯s sword by virtue of the fact that he had been aiming for Jason to begin with. If Herakles hadn¡¯t swept him up, that pitted, rusty blade would have gone straight through his heart, and there were a lot of things Medea could fix, but she couldn¡¯t perform true miracles. She was not, after all, Lord Hades or Lady Persephone. She didn¡¯t have the power to resurrect the dead.

    Caenis broke out into laughter. ¡°Know what? Fuck it! Yeah, I could use someone to beat up on for a little while!¡±

    She leapt across the deck at blinding speed, blood pounding eagerly in her ears, and when the specter put up a meager defense with his sword, she smashed right through it ¡ª and him ¡ª like there was nothing even there. There was a spurt of water from the ghastly wound that nearly cut him in half, and then he vanished like any other Servant would have.

    Her mouth curled into a mad grin. There was no way that was all there was to him.

    And with a splash, she was proven right, and the corpse reemerged on the deck, completely uninjured.

    ¡°Caenis of the Argonauts. If you interfere with the justice I must mete out, then you too shall be condemned.¡±

    Caenis cackled. ¡°I¡¯m gonna enjoy seeing you try!¡±

    She threw herself back at the specter, and she could feel him struggle to keep from buckling under the strength of her blow as the pitted steel of his sword whined and groaned against the blade of her spear.

    He wasn¡¯t as strong as that Celtic bitch who made her waste so much time, but that was just fine, because he also wasn¡¯t anywhere near as skilled as she was. That meant he couldn¡¯t jerk her around for six hours like she was a dog being led around by the nose.

    The instant her feet touched back down on the deck, Caenis unleashed a flurry of blows with her spear, and fuck if it wasn¡¯t gratifying to watch the fucker struggle to deal with each and every one of them. She was faster and stronger than him, more skilled with her spear than he was his sword, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn¡¯t stop her from slicing into him like he was some kind of prize hog.

    ¡°Justice, my ass!¡± Caenis laughed. ¡°You¡¯re going to mete out justice? Like that? Get lost! I don¡¯t know what kiddy pool you¡¯ve been playing in up until now, but you¡¯re not gonna mete out anything if this is all you have!¡±

    Her spear rained down on him like a torrential storm, blasting past his guard with all the force of a typhoon and rending flesh with every strike. Water flew from his accumulating wounds like blood, splattering wetly across the deck and indistinguishable from the fat raindrops pouring down from the sky.

    She had to be careful, though. If she let her excitement run away from her, then this guy would die too soon and her fun would be over.

    No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than did the corpse try a clever disarming move, only instead of pushing her spear away and wrenching it out of her hand, it redirected the black blade directly into his chest. Caenis¡¯ excitement soured in her belly.

    ¡°Damn it.¡±

    She yanked her spear free in a shower of more water. It splashed across the deck as though it was blood, soaking through the corpse¡¯s ripped clothing and making it even darker.

    ¡°Just when it was getting good, too.¡±

    ¡°Do you think,¡± the specter said ominously, ¡°it is so easy to kill the sea?¡±

    He burst apart into glittering mist, and at the same moment, something massive breached the surface of the ocean a scant dozen meters or so from the Argo like a whale. Glowing, covered in ghostly algae and seaweed, crewed by droning phantoms who went about their jobs monotonously, it was a ship, a literal ghost ship, with its cannons pointed right at the Argo with obvious intent.

    ¡°What the fuck is that?¡± Jason yelped.

    Herakles growled, low and loud, like a tiger whose territory had just been encroached upon. She paid neither of them any mind.

    ¡°That¡¯s more like it!¡± Caenis cackled.

    And at the helm of the ship, manning the wheel, why, there was the corpse himself, hale and whole, as though Caenis had not just stabbed a massive hole through his chest. He didn¡¯t even have the cuts she¡¯d carved into his limbs during their brief exchange of blows.

    She grinned. ¡°Kill the sea?¡±

    She spun her spear around, whirling it about as though striking an invisible enemy, and around the Argo, the waves churned and roiled. Every swing agitated them more and more, and then, when they were all nice and riled up and she was sure everything was right where she needed it to be ¡ª

    ¡°I am the sea!¡±

    ¡ª she swung her spear in a brutal uppercut, and the water between their ships surged, rising up in a gigantic wall that easily dwarfed the enemy¡¯s ship. It grew and grew and grew, gaining more water, more mass, more power behind it until a veritable mountain of water separated them, enough to capsize a whole fleet of warships built for the most rugged of seas.

    ¡°So fuck off! Poseidon Maelstrom!¡±

    And the gigantic wall of water came down on that ghost ship like the fist of an angry god.

 Chapter CVI: Thalassocide

    Chapter CVI: Thalassocide

    Drake and her crew partied long into the night, paying their respects to Emiya and Asterios in the only way they knew how, and although we indulged for a while ¡ª eating our fill so we could jump into the fight first thing in the morning and even taking a sip or two of rum to toast our fallen friends ¡ª us Masters were still the first to climb into bed that evening. We, more than the rest of them, needed our sleep so that we could be at our best, and Drake¡¯s crew, being unable to contribute in a battle between Servants, had no such concerns, so they could keep going for as long as possible.

    Rika, at least, seemed to be in better spirits. Maybe not completely back to normal yet, but some of her liveliness had returned, and if suffering through a few puns was the sacrifice I had to make for that, well, I guess I was happy enough to make it. It was good to see her bouncing back.

    Fortunately for my sanity and my rest that night, after I crawled into the somewhat firm bed in the room that had been set aside for me, none of Morgan¡¯s phantoms tried to climb in with me. I didn¡¯t know if that was by design ¡ª if, in other words, Morgan himself had done me that kindness ¡ª or just a happy accident, but it meant that I slept through completely uninterrupted.

    Considering the number of times I¡¯d been startled awake by an enemy attack of some kind since we teamed up with Drake, that was a gift horse whose teeth I wasn¡¯t going to inspect.

    I woke up the next morning well-rested, alone in my room, with nothing but the bed, desk, and chair for company. The faint light shining feebly in through the window told me that the sun hadn¡¯t yet risen, but it wasn¡¯t long before it would.

    Medea, later on last night, had confirmed it from Hektor: Jason was going to attack early in the morning, because he was scared of being ambushed, but he wanted to try and catch us off guard. The fact that Arash hadn¡¯t alerted me yet, however, told me we still had time before he got here.

    Sitting up in the crude, old-fashioned bed that came with the room, I swung my feet out and onto the floor. A shiver swept down my spine. Even in what felt quite a lot like a tropical zone, the temperature had still dropped overnight, and the floor was cold.

    I slipped my boots on and laced them quickly, then levered myself to my feet and to the door. The hallway outside was empty, and the doors to Mash, Ritsuka, and Rika¡¯s rooms were still shut. They must have still been asleep. I strained my ear ¡ª at some point in the night, the crew must have packed it in, too, because I couldn¡¯t hear anyone still partying and carrying on.

    Bradamante shimmered suddenly into existence. ¡°Good morning, Master!¡±

    ¡°Morning,¡± I returned her greeting. ¡°Anything interesting happen?¡±

    ¡°All quiet!¡± she reported. ¡°Captain Drake¡¯s crew got a little rowdy, but nothing she couldn¡¯t handle! No sign of enemy activity either!¡±

    Good. I wouldn¡¯t have been entirely surprised if Jason had tried something ambitious, like sending Caenis after us while he made his way here more slowly. Considering we had already shown we could wound her, however, maybe he wasn¡¯t so willing to risk that we could take her out and had decided to be a bit more cautious.

    Good news, she hadn¡¯t attacked us in the middle of the night. Bad news, they hadn¡¯t screwed up by giving us a chance to pick her off while she was alone.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to go meet up with Arash and get ready,¡± I told her. ¡°Wake up the others. There¡¯s no telling how much time we have before Jason gets here.¡±

    Bradamante nodded. ¡°Understood!¡±

    As she went to the other rooms to start waking up Mash and the twins, I went the opposite direction, feeling things out with my swarm as I made my way towards the exit.

    The crew, as expected, was camped out in the courtyard and fast asleep. A few early birds were up and milling about, but most of them were passed out in their tents and sawing the metaphorical logs. The Servants, on the other hand, requiring no sleep to function and incapable of drinking themselves into a stupor, were all gathered together on the outskirts of the camp, waiting.

    Once I¡¯d gotten out of the barracks and stepped into the open air, I made my way towards them, carefully picking my way around the edges of the camp to avoid stepping on any literal toes. Euryale noticed me first, and when she looked over my direction, so did the others with her.

    ¡°Good morning!¡± Artemis greeted me brightly as I approached.

    ¡°Good morning,¡± I replied politely.

    ¡°Best one since we got here,¡± Orion grumbled, ¡°because it¡¯s probably the last one.¡±

    And he could finally be out of that little bear body. I couldn¡¯t begrudge him that.

    ¡°Any update from Hektor?¡± I asked Medea.

    Her lips pressed together. ¡°None since last night.¡±

    A little worrying, but in this case, no news was probably good news. I imagine she would have felt it if he was discovered and killed in the middle of the night, so if he hadn¡¯t reported in then there likely wasn¡¯t anything to report just yet.

    ¡°Will he let us know once they¡¯ve gotten close?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± she answered confidently. I didn¡¯t have any reason to think she was wrong, so I nodded.

    ¡°How convenient,¡± Euryale drawled, ¡°that we happen to have a¡­what is the term? A mole? On Jason¡¯s crew.¡±

    ¡°For sure,¡± Bellamy agreed. ¡°Man, it¡¯s great to have a guy spying on the enemy so we can know his every move!¡± He shook his head. ¡°Not that I don¡¯t trust Arash or anything, but by the time he sees them coming, they¡¯ll be almost right on top of us!¡±

    Medea¡¯s lips drew thinner. As she should have expected, no one had been particularly thrilled to find out she¡¯d flipped Hektor and had him keep playing Jason¡¯s lackey ¡ª Rika¡¯s reaction had been especially vitriolic, at first, given what had happened to Emiya ¡ª but the knowledge that we likely would have had to face Jason no matter what in order to truly secure the Grail had helped to cool some tempers.

    I wasn¡¯t absolutely sure Medea was right about it, but it also wasn¡¯t something I wanted to risk if she was. I was going to bring it up with Da Vinci once this Singularity had been resolved. Even she might not know for sure one way or the other.

    Before anyone could dogpile on Medea, I decided to change the subject and bow out of the conversation.

    ¡°I¡¯ll go touch base with Atalanta and the others. Mash and the twins should be up soon, too.¡±

    I received a few acknowledgements from them, along with a parting, ¡°Good luck!¡± from Artemis as I turned around and went back the way I came.

    Atalanta and her comrades, inconveniently, had not shacked up in the same place as us. I was sure some of it was probably a lack of complete trust ¡ª I couldn¡¯t totally blame them for it, even if it irked me ¡ª and some of it had something to do with an unwillingness to leave the Ark so unprotected for so long, but it meant I had to make the trek from the barracks back to the fort, which was an extra few minutes longer than I would have liked it to be.

    Arash was also at the fort, however, because it offered him the best sight line on any approaching ships, so one way or another, I suppose I was going to have to go there anyway.

    The streets, at least, didn¡¯t have quite so many phantoms roaming them. They weren¡¯t completely empty, and I suspected they never had been at any point throughout the night, but if the city followed the day-night cycle of the Singularity, then it only made sense that the only ¡°people¡± out and about at this hour were either those who had never gone to bed or those who had to get up early for whatever job they worked.

    I was glad that I didn¡¯t run into many of them. The feeling of walking through one wasn¡¯t any more pleasant than it had been the night before, and my bugs had not magically become capable of landing on them in the interim.

    As I reached the fort, it became apparent that the other Servants, too, had stayed up the entire night, although given his reputation, I wouldn¡¯t have put it past Morgan to have spent the whole time drinking, whether he could technically get drunk or not. His alcoholism had driven him into his grave, after all.

    Expectedly, he was lounging in an officer¡¯s quarters, chair kicked back, feet on top of the desk, and nursing a tankard of something sweet that was probably rum. Whether he¡¯d been that way all night, I couldn¡¯t say, and I didn¡¯t particularly care beyond idle curiosity. As long as he would be ready to fight when the time came.

    King David remained near the Ark, standing guard over it, if I had to guess. I wasn¡¯t sure if he expected us to try and steal it or try and use it, or if he was just nervous about it in general. If I had to put money on it, I would have said the latter, and I didn¡¯t entirely blame him. I think his Ark of the Covenant was the first Noble Phantasm I¡¯d yet seen that broke the ranking scale Chaldea used to measure their power.

    Atalanta prowled the upper floors, pacing from room to room like a lioness inspecting her territory. Whether or not she expected to find anything out of place, I couldn¡¯t have said. It may just have been her way of dealing with the anxiety and pressure of a looming battle, or it could have been some kind of ritual she engaged in.

    Hippolyta, on the other hand, had chosen a room to herself and seemed to be going through an early morning workout. She seemed like she would be the easiest to approach, so I decided I would head towards her first.

    Anything? I asked Arash as I stepped in through the front door.

    No sign of them yet, he replied. But if the Argo can fly, too¡­

    I grimaced. Then we might not see them coming until they literally dropped out of the sky. Worse, the cloud cover was overcast, so if they went high enough, then not even Arash would be able to see them until they dropped beneath it. They would catch us almost completely off guard.

    We¡¯ll just have to rely on Hektor to let us know, I said. But for good measure, Don¡¯t let your guard down. I¡¯d rather not put too much trust in the guy that tried to kill me, no matter how much he half-assed it.

    Understood, Arash said.

    With that handled, I made my way through the fort, walking through the corridors and down the halls made of brick and stone lit by candles and torches burning with open flames. Even here, there were a few phantoms, although not nearly as many as there had been on the streets last night. Could Morgan actually control them to some degree or another?

    A shocking thought followed on the heels of that question: could he use them the same way I used my bugs? Could he ¡°see¡± through them, use their sense of ¡°touch¡± to feel out where things were?

    My lips pursed. He would never tell me, would he? And why would he? If the phantoms themselves couldn¡¯t interact with anyone, then the only use they could have was sensory, and letting anyone at all know risked the chance that the information would spread and any advantage he might have had would disappear.

    It seemed he was even cleverer than I originally gave him credit for.

    When I reached the heavy wooden door to the room where Hippolyta had sequestered herself away, I lifted a hand and rapped my knuckles on it firmly. There was a moment¡¯s pause, a few seconds where I couldn¡¯t do anything but stand there, and then ¡ª

    ¡°Come in!¡±

    The door opened without trouble, and Hippolyta turned to face me fully as I entered the room. A thin sheen of sweat beaded her forehead and clung to her face, but she looked no less lively than when I¡¯d first met her the day before. I had the feeling she and A¨ªfe would either get on swimmingly or not at all.

    ¡°Can I help you?¡± she asked politely.

    ¡°We need to finish preparing,¡± I told her without preamble. ¡°Jason and the Argo should be coming soon, so we have to be ready to fight before then.¡±

    A solemn mask fell across her face. Her expression could have been carved from stone. ¡°I take it you would like me to gather the others for you?¡±

    ¡°Yes. I want to go over the plan one last time, then get everyone into position. We can¡¯t afford any mistakes.¡±

    She nodded. ¡°Very well. Where were you intending to conduct this final meeting?¡±

    A jerk of my head gestured over my shoulder, towards the towering curtain wall outside that housed the cannons. ¡°The battlements. It¡¯ll give everyone the best view of where things are and what will be where.¡±

    Hippolyta dipped her head again. ¡°I understand. Your comrades? They¡¯re to be joining us, correct?¡±

    ¡°Still waking up,¡± I said. ¡°Bradamante will be bringing them along shortly.¡±

    As the words left my mouth, I reached out along the thread that connected me to Bradamante and told her, Once they¡¯re all awake, gather the others and bring them to the fort, up to the battlements. We¡¯re meeting there.

    Understood! Bradamante replied crisply.

    ¡°Then I will see to Atalanta, King David, and Captain Morgan,¡± said Hippolyta. ¡°Though¡­if you don¡¯t mind my asking¡­¡±

    I arched an eyebrow. ¡°Something you want to know?¡±

    Her lips pursed.

    ¡°You say that you have done this three times before, correct? That this is the fourth of these¡­Singularities?¡± she asked.

    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

    ¡°Yes.¡± And there would still be four more after it.

    Her brow furrowed a little. ¡°Then tell me honestly, if you would: is this to be your most difficult battle yet?¡±

    All of the ones before raced through my mind. Medusa, Emiya Alter, Saber Alter, Saint Martha, Dracul, Fafnir, Jeanne Alter ¡ª even if I stopped at the end of Orl¨¦ans, there had been a number of enemies that had pushed us, that had come closer than I would have liked to killing at least one of us. Very few of our battles had been in any way easy, and even those had posed their own sorts of challenges.

    And if I started including my career as a cape, well¡­ It really wasn¡¯t any kind of contest.

    ¡°No.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Hippolyta let out a little breath as some of the tension in her shoulders eased. ¡°I¡¯m glad. To have found allies so experienced, it¡¯s more than I would have hoped for.¡±

    When we left the room, we went our separate ways, and Hippolyta headed deeper into the fort while I made my way towards the curtain wall and the nearest set of stairs that would take me up atop it. Not for the first time and probably not for the last, a little jolt of surreality flitted through my stomach as I walked, taking in the brick walls and the Elizabethan era furnishings, because I was in Port Royal, scaling the walls of one of its forts. I was, technically, in the year 1573.

    I even had a Spanish doubloon, freshly minted, sitting in my pocket.

    Arash was already up there and waiting, and he turned to me with a slight smile as I walked over to join him. One of my hands came to rest on one of the wall¡¯s teeth ¡ª crenellations, I would later learn was the proper term ¡ª and the brick was rough beneath my fingertips, as though it was freshly laid.

    Down below, the rest of the town stretched out. I was high enough I could see the barracks, although not so high I could see over it and into the courtyard where Drake¡¯s crew had set up camp. Over at the docks, the Golden Hind had been repaired and fixed up, looking not quite as good as new, but in much better shape than she had been just the night before. Between the small team Drake had sent to keep an eye on things and the phantoms Morgan had supplied, they¡¯d managed to do that all in a single night.

    ¡°Penny for your thoughts?¡± Arash asked. My mouth twitched, threatened to smile.

    ¡°All I¡¯ve got on me is a doubloon.¡± Although that wasn¡¯t quite how that phrase worked, was it? ¡°Just¡­had a thought. My best friend, she would never believe some of the stuff that¡¯s happened these last few months.¡±

    The last few years, really. Meeting Da Vinci alone would have been enough to throw Lisa for a loop.

    ¡°It does strain credulity,¡± Arash agreed. ¡°Just a little bit, though.¡±

    A huff of air escaped my nostrils. It might one day have grown up into a snort.

    ¡°This friend of yours,¡± he went on. ¡°I think I¡¯d like to meet her one day.¡±

    ¡°I¡­¡± Something leaden dropped into my stomach. ¡°Don¡¯t think that¡¯ll be possible.¡±

    For either of us.

    Arash didn¡¯t judge, he just made a soft noise in the back of his throat. ¡°Shame.¡±

    Soon enough, Hippolyta had gathered up her allies and brought them out to join us, and it wasn¡¯t long after that before Bradamante led the procession of the twins, Mash, Drake, Bellamy, Artemis, Medea, and Euryale up through town and towards the fort. In another situation, it might have been funny exactly how mismatched they were, because none of them looked like they belonged in the same time period, let alone the same place.

    Somehow, we managed to group up together atop that curtain wall with more than enough space for everyone to stand comfortably, arranged in a vague oval shape.

    ¡°Can¡¯t Jason come back later?¡± Rika mumbled tiredly, rubbing at one eye with her palm. ¡°It¡¯s way too early for this¡­¡±

    Ritsuka looked like he agreed, and even Mash seemed a little bit sluggish.

    If we still had Emiya, he might have been able to whip up a pot of coffee.

    ¡°Alright,¡± I said firmly, and the twins straightened a little, as though my voice itself was enough to wake them up. ¡°Let¡¯s go over this one more time.¡± I nodded over at Medea. ¡°Thanks to Medea, Hektor will be able to give us advance warning of exactly when we should expect Jason and the others. No news?¡±

    ¡°None,¡± said Medea. ¡°They aren¡¯t yet close enough for him to notify me.¡±

    ¡°Which means we have a little more time,¡± I went on. ¡°When they get here, here¡¯s how we¡¯re going to do this. First, Arash, Artemis, and Atalanta will engage with a barrage of arrows. The goal will be to keep Herakles, the other Medea, and Jason confined to the Argo ¡ª if Jason can¡¯t risk leaving Herakles¡¯ protection, he won¡¯t have any choice but to send Caenis on her own.¡±

    ¡°Leaving her vulnerable,¡± Ritsuka added.

    I nodded. ¡°Exactly. While Atalanta keeps them pinned, Arash, at that point, will use Captain Drake¡¯s Grail and defeat Caenis. She shouldn¡¯t be expecting anything he fires at her to do anything, so she isn¡¯t likely to bother dodging.¡±

    ¡°I won¡¯t miss,¡± Arash promised.

    ¡°Neither will I,¡± Atalanta agreed.

    ¡°From there,¡± I continued, ¡°we need to convince them to come further in. Atalanta, Arash, Artemis, once Caenis is taken care of, give them a reprieve, enough space to think we¡¯re retreating. As soon as the Argo is inside the archipelago, Captain Morgan, I need you to use your Noble Phantasm and bombard them. If you can, I want you to take one of Herakles¡¯ lives, but even if you can¡¯t, sink the Argo. Force them to come onto land, where we¡¯ll have the home field advantage.¡±

    Morgan smirked. ¡°I do believe I can manage such a thing.¡±

    As long as we got them off of their ship, that was the part that mattered. If they didn¡¯t have a method of fleeing the fight, then we shouldn¡¯t have to worry about them cutting and running the instant things looked bad.

    ¡°Once they¡¯re on land,¡± I gestured to us Masters, ¡°we¡¯ll summon in A¨ªfe and Siegfried and engage Herakles. With them to help, we¡¯ll take as many of his lives as we can ¡ª every one of us who thinks they have a shot at killing him at least once, take it. If it¡¯s enough, we should be able to take care of Jason without any trouble. If it¡¯s not ¡ª¡±

    I pointed to the main building, where the Ark was hidden, deep inside the basement.

    ¡°¡ª we¡¯ll retreat into the fort and lure Herakles towards the Ark, and one way or another, make him touch it. However it works out, Herakles will be dealt with and Jason will be vulnerable. It should be a simple matter of securing the Grail at that point.¡±

    ¡°And then this Singularity will be resolved,¡± Mash concluded.

    ¡°An effective plan,¡± Hippolyta noted with something like approval. ¡°However, if Jason should decide to flee once Caenis has been defeated, what then?¡±

    If he didn¡¯t take our bait, she meant. I didn¡¯t think it likely, but Jason had never been known or famous for his bravery. Frankly, I didn¡¯t remember a single part of his myth where he¡¯d ever had to do anything braver than listening to his wife.

    So if he really decided to let his cowardice rule him, in spite of having Herakles there to protect him¡­

    I turned to Bellamy. ¡°Then we¡¯ll need you to sink the Argo.¡±

    He grinned. ¡°Yeah, I can do that. Sure beats sitting around here and twiddling my thumbs while all the action is happening!¡±

    A brief flash of jealousy stabbed at my gut, but I didn¡¯t give it a chance to take root.

    ¡°The rest of us are support. Our job is to make sure the others can do their jobs ¡ª¡±

    Medea suddenly stiffened, her back ramrod straight, her eyes widening as her mouth slackened, and she whirled about, looking towards the horizon, where the first rays of sunlight were starting to paint the sky in shades of pink and gold. She didn¡¯t need to open her mouth for me to know what had caught her attention.

    ¡°They¡¯re here,¡± she whispered, confirming what I already knew. It couldn¡¯t have been anything else to begin with.

    ¡°Shit!¡± said Drake, summarizing what we all must have been thinking.

    ¡°Everyone, get into position!¡± I ordered. ¡°No time to waste ¡ª go!¡±

    They didn¡¯t quite scramble ¡ª the only one who was going anywhere anytime soon was Bellamy, who needed to be ready to cut Jason off and sink the Argo ¡ª but the huddle did break as our Archers positioned themselves along the front wall of the fort, bows at the ready. Everyone else either stepped back a little or, like me, joined them to look out towards the ocean.

    If nothing else, I thought, I had to give Jason some credit for approaching where and when he was. The sunrise made it difficult to look towards him, so I had to slant my gaze downwards a little and squint to avoid being blinded. It made him nearly invisible against the glare.

    ¡°What I wouldn¡¯t give for a pair of sunglasses,¡± Rika muttered as she did the same.

    Emiya probably would have been happy to make some for us, I didn¡¯t say. I wondered if she was thinking it, too. If she was blaming herself again. If she was, she wasn¡¯t showing it.

    ¡°Oi, Arash.¡± Drake reached for her cleavage and retrieved her Grail in a sparkle of golden light, to the surprised goggling of our new allies, who hadn¡¯t seen her do it yet. ¡°You¡¯ll be needing this little bauble, yeah?¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± He accepted it with a slight smile. ¡°I¡¯ll be sure to take good care of it.¡±

    Drake grunted. ¡°Long as it does its job, I don¡¯t give a rat¡¯s ass what happens to it afterward.¡±

    The minutes passed slowly, long and filled with tension. On the horizon, as the sun climbed upwards at a torturous pace, the vague form of a distant ship slowly described itself against the surface of the ocean as little more than a muted splinter of dark color against the shimmering yellow.

    ¡°That¡¯s them,¡± Arash said confidently.

    I closed one eye, pushing my mind down the thread connecting me to Arash, and my head nearly spun from the disorientation of looking through both my own eye and his simultaneously. From having such radically different qualities of vision. Seeing from multiple perspectives was something familiar to me, though, so after a brief second to adjust, I got used to having his much sharper vision on one side and my much more limited vision on the other.

    In the distance, the shard of color resolved into a ship, a familiar galley that I had first seen just a day ago, with five Servants standing upon the deck. Jason, Medea the younger, Caenis, Herakles, and Hektor, all accounted for. This time, no one was out sneaking up on us.

    ¡°He really did summon Caenis and Herakles,¡± Atalanta muttered.

    I pulled myself back along the connecting thread and opened my closed eye. It really was ridiculous how much better Arash could see than me, even ignoring my need for prescription lenses.

    ¡°That¡¯s them,¡± Rika said quietly. Her hands curled into fists, knuckles a stark white.

    The Argo moved with impossible speed for a regular ship, but it still took quite some time for it to cross the distance and get closer, close enough that we could actually start to make out the shape of the mast and the sails jutting up from the deck, and it felt like forever before it reached the shallows just outside of the archipelago. Even there, they were still technically several miles out from us and far enough that my eyes just weren¡¯t good enough to see the individual people on it.

    But it was more than close enough for our purposes.

    ¡°Now.¡±

    Arash pulled back on his bowstring, nocking an arrow, and Artemis and Atalanta both followed his lead, nocking their own arrows. A moment later, they fired, and fired, and fired again, so rapidly that I saw nothing but a blur as an enormous volley of arrows flew up into the sky like rain in reverse. It was not the ten-thousand strong volley Arash had once boasted he was capable of, not even close, but it was definitely in the hundreds.

    When they came down, they came down on that one spot, converging upon the Argo as though it had its own personal rain cloud. I couldn¡¯t hear him, I couldn¡¯t see him, but I could definitely imagine Jason¡¯s panicked squawking as he and Medea the younger were pulled in by Herakles so he could protect them. Unfortunately, I could also imagine those arrows breaking against that leaden skin, splashing off of him like simple rain, completely ineffectual. Useless against his Noble Phantasm.

    But that was fine, that was part of the plan.

    ¡°Keep going.¡±

    Between the three of them, they did, firing staggered volleys of arrows that soared up into the sky and came back down on the Argo, all aimed at Jason, and by proxy, Herakles. There was no break, no moment of reprieve, because they didn¡¯t stop firing, not even for a second, and arrow after arrow left their bows with inhuman, mind-boggling speed. It reminded me of a video I had once seen of Miss Militia using a machine gun.

    All the while, Jason could do nothing except cower beneath Herakles¡¯ protection, waiting for an end to a rain of arrows that wasn¡¯t going to come. If he stepped one foot out from under Herakles, he would be killed instantly.

    ¡°This almost feels like bullying,¡± Ritsuka murmured.

    ¡°They deserve it,¡± Rika said pitilessly.

    Medea seemed to agree with her, because a cruel smile was pulling at the corners of her lips. Like she was enjoying Jason¡¯s suffering.

    She probably was.

    I refused to blink, watching, waiting for the moment when Jason finally decided he¡¯d had enough and sent Caenis out. Once he did, we could start the next part of the plan.

    I wasn¡¯t expecting the sea in front of the Argo to suddenly rise up into an enormous wall of water.

    ¡°What?¡± Rika squeaked.

    ¡°Caenis!¡± Medea snarled. ¡°It¡¯s her Noble Phantasm!¡±

    She had more than one?

    ¡°She¡¯s going to try and drown us out!¡± Atalanta warned.

    The wall of water was growing large enough that I was willing to believe it. Twenty feet, thirty, forty, and it wasn¡¯t stopping. Maybe because it was in the shallows of the archipelago, it was even easier to make it bigger than it would have been out at sea.

    ¡°Is she mad?¡± Orion squawked. ¡°She won¡¯t just kill all of us, she¡¯ll kill Euryale, too!¡±

    With her Madness Enhancement so high, I wasn¡¯t sure she would have cared either way. I doubted even Jason could reason with her when she set her mind to something.

    Drake threw herself against one of the crenellations. ¡°BOMBE!¡±

    But he was too far away to hear her, and even if he did, there wouldn¡¯t be anywhere near enough time for him to get to safety. I wasn¡¯t sure we could, even if we hunkered down inside the fort. That wave might just sweep us all away, too, and scour the city down to the bedrock. It looked like it came straight out of a disaster movie.

    Fuck. Even if we killed her before she could send it our way, that much water settling back down would still flood most of the island.

    I whirled about. ¡°Mash!¡±

    ¡°By my Command Spell!¡± But Ritsuka was already a step ahead of me. ¡°Mash, use your Noble Phantasm to stop that wave!¡±

    ¡°Yes, Master!¡±

    Mash kicked off the wall like she¡¯d been shot from a cannon, soaring like a meteor down towards the edge of the town. She moved like she had a pair of rockets strapped to her waist, crossing the distance with a speed I hadn¡¯t known she could possess, and she positioned herself at the end of the outermost terrace, overlooking the water below ¡ª just in time for that gigantic wall, easily a hundred feet high, to turn into a wave.

    So loudly that I could hear it from here, she shouted, ¡°LORD CHALDEAS!¡±

    The familiar rampart formed, translucent and blue and towering, a comically small wall that was supposed to hold off an enormous tidal wave big enough to consume the whole island. It wouldn¡¯t be enough on its own. Even if it could stop some of it, the rest of the wave would flow around that rampart and take out everything behind her anyway.

    My vision flickered. For an instant, I thought I saw a looming shadow in the midst of that wall. In my ear, a small, tinny voice announced, ¡°Wave.¡±

    ¡°Mash!¡± the twins called, and they both held out a hand, ready to use another Command Spell each to reinforce her.

    Except Mash let out a scream, a loud cry filled with determination, and I felt my eyebrows start to rise as the single rampart stretched out, growing, becoming taller and wider as it transformed into a colossal curtain wall that reached from one side of the town to the other. Still shimmering, still glowing, still incomplete, but more than it had been just a second ago.

    Rika gasped. ¡°That¡¯s¡­!¡±

    ¡°Just like against Romulus,¡± Ritsuka breathed.

    Not quite. But it was closer than not. Not as solid or as firm as it had been then, not as real, but sitting right on the cusp of it.

    ¡°Don¡¯t let up!¡± I ordered our Archers. ¡°Arash, the instant Caenis leaves the Argo ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Got it!¡± he replied.

    The looming wave surged. The water roared. With all of the unstoppable, ponderous weight a wave that size possessed, it came upon our island, dwarfing the town, dwarfing the fort, dwarfing the hill that fort was built upon, and it crashed down onto Lord Chaldeas with crushing, explosive force and power.

    It felt like the world was ending. The entire island seemed to shudder and quiver under the assault, and the ground beneath our feet rumbled like a groaning giant. I wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if the brick and mortar we were standing on started to shake itself apart, or if the island itself had started to buckle beneath the torture it was being put through.

    But it held. Lord Chaldeas held. The wave thundered down upon that towering wall in a torrent of sound and water, trying its damnedest to wash her away, to sweep her and the rest of us into the deep and drown us all, but she planted her feet and refused. She wouldn¡¯t be moved. She wouldn¡¯t be washed away. She wouldn¡¯t let us die.

    And as though it was her will made manifest, Lord Chaldeas turned that determination into reality.

    It couldn¡¯t have lasted more than a handful of seconds, but it seemed like so much longer. All of that water, the entirety of that wave, it expended itself on the surface of Lord Chaldeas and flowed gently around it, passing our island right on by. There was nothing to show for it except a brief rise in the sea level, and even that tapered off and returned to normal.

    ¡°By the gods,¡± Atalanta whispered, ¡°she actually did it!¡±

    Drake laughed, delighted. ¡°Fuck yeah! That was fucking amazing!¡±

    The twins both breathed sighs of relief. ¡°Thank goodness,¡± Ritsuka said, sounding like he was the one who had just held back the enormous tidal wave.

    ¡°M-man,¡± Rika said shakily, ¡°that was way too close! I thought we were goners for sure!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not over yet,¡± I reminded them all. ¡°Don¡¯t let your guard down.¡±

    The mood instantly sobered again. ¡°Right!¡± the twins said.

    Spent, Lord Chaldeas flickered and vanished. Behind it, Mash sagged against her shield, panting breathlessly from the effort like she had just run a marathon.

    It did not go unnoticed.

    A rocket took off from the Argo in a spray of water and a burst of raw energy, so fast that I could only see the trail it left behind in its wake. Before I could even open my mouth, it slammed into Mash like a runaway train, and we all heard her startled scream as she was sent flying backwards into the nearest house. It collapsed on top of her like cheap plywood.

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka shouted.

    Down below, Caenis resolved into existence like a splash of seafoam, spear extended, and she wound it back, getting ready for another attack.

    It was the best opening we were going to get.

    Arash! I barked mentally.

    As though he had read my mind, he swiped up the Grail that Drake had given him and took it into his body, and in one smooth motion, so fast that it all seemed to happen simultaneously, he nocked an arrow, pulled back on the bowstring, and let it fly, aimed straight at the enemy¡¯s heart.

    Caenis, believing he couldn¡¯t hurt her, didn¡¯t even bother to try dodging it. She didn¡¯t even spare it the attention to look away from the building she had flung Mash through, that was how sure she was of her invincibility.

    That was why she was utterly shocked when it punched straight through her chest in a spray of red blood.

 Chapter CVII: Final Labor

    Chapter CVII: Final Labor

    Caenis staggered. For a moment, caught up in her surprise, she didn''t react beyond it, like she couldn''t believe that Arash actually managed to injure her. She was stuck staring down at the arrow as though it was some strange, foreign thing that she''d never seen before, even as blood slowly began to spread across the pristine white of her clothing.

    Arash didn''t pass up the opportunity she was giving him. Lightning fast, he fired off another brace of arrows at her, and when Caenis finally reacted, turning to throw herself to the side and out of the way, it wasn''t fast enough ¡ª one sank into her belly, another into her arm, a third into her leg, her heel, her shoulder, between her ribs and into a lung, and instead of landing upright and ready to keep fighting, she tripped over and fell to the ground.

    By some miracle, she managed to manifest a shield with enough time to protect herself from another volley, but the damage had already been done. The first arrow was already a killshot, even if she was holding on through sheer stubbornness, and the others just chipped away at any remaining strength she might have had. Even when she stumbled back to her feet, hacking up mouthfuls of blood, it was already over.

    That was why, when Mash charged out of the pile of wood that had once been a house and slammed into Caenis with her shield, Caenis couldn''t do anything except be thrown backwards into the water and sink like a rock. A splotch of maroon marked where she''d fallen like some kind of twisted gravestone, spreading slowly.

    If I hadn''t gotten a good enough look at her Poseidon Blessing to know that she didn''t get any special healing powers in the water, I might have worried that Mash had just undone all of that effort. Even still, I was going to have to say something to her later about how that could come back to bite us in the ass. For now, though, no ¡ª the only question was whether or not we''d done enough damage to put her down, or if she still had enough strength left to pull herself up and keep fighting.

    Several long seconds passed waiting, several long seconds of baited breath, but Caenis never resurfaced, and the splotch of maroon started to fade as it dissipated into the water. A weight lifted from my shoulders.

    One down. Now we just had to hope the fight against Herakles went as smoothly.

    "Next phase!" I told everyone. "Rika, I''ll leave bringing A¨ªfe here to you!"

    "Aye, aye, Senpai!" Rika chirped.

    "Ritsuka, get Mash back up here!"

    "On it!" he replied, and then his brow furrowed as he reached along his connection to Mash to call her back.

    Like clockwork, our Archers stopped firing and stepped back away from the crenellations a few feet as Mash turned away from the water and raced back towards the fort, fast enough to look like a retreat but slow enough that Jason would be able to tell where she was going. For a moment, it looked like he wouldn''t take the bait, because the Argo remained where it was and wasn''t moving. The order to have Morgan bombard them anyway while we still had the chance waited on the tip of my tongue.

    But then Jason started shouting something that I couldn''t hear, and I didn''t need Medea''s grimace to know that none of it was pleasant and probably some portion of it was aimed in her direction, or at least at her younger self. The rest, no doubt, was reserved for us and hurling insults our way, and considering how long his screed was going on for, he was either very creative or very repetitive.

    The most impressive part was honestly the fact that we could hear him at all, considering how far away he still was. The one thing he could definitely claim as his own was the set of lungs he happened to have on him.

    Whatever the case, the content of his shouting didn''t matter so much as the fact that the Argo jolted into motion and came further into the archipelago, and I watched it make its way closer, waiting for it to get far enough in to close the rest of the trap in around them. By some miracle ¡ª whether it was arrogance or sloppiness, I didn''t particularly care ¡ª they didn''t even seem to notice the cannons on the forts stationed on the outer islands.

    Maybe he thought they were mundane cannons and therefore nothing to worry about, or maybe he thought that more modern weapons wouldn''t be able to sink his ship. Either way, his mistake was to our advantage, so I didn''t question it too deeply.

    Mash made it back around then. She scaled the fort''s walls with a single superhuman leap and landed among the group effortlessly.

    "I''m back, Master," she told Ritsuka dutifully. "No injuries to report!"

    "Great job, Mash," said Ritsuka.

    "You were amazing!" his sister added.

    "Gotta admit, I wasn''t expecting that to go so smoothly," Orion said, crossing his arms. "Against those guys, no plan should survive contact with the enemy."

    "That may be why it did," Atalanta chimed in. "If Jason believes so completely that they''re untouchable, then it is very easy for him to fall into a trap that plays upon it."

    "He''s an amateur," Drake said, grinning savagely. "Ain''t no true self-respecting pirate would forget that anything could go wrong at sea at any damn moment!"

    Out on the water, Jason and the Argo sailed past the outer islands and into the archipelago proper, and without even realizing it, they put themselves directly where we wanted them to be. I waited only until the rear of the Argo cleared the last stretch of those outermost islands, and then I turned to Morgan.

    "Captain Morgan."

    He grinned. "Guess that''s my cue, aye? Alright, then. Let''s get this party started!"

    He stepped forward, and like something out of a commercial for the rum bearing his name, he planted one foot atop a crenellation, rested an arm atop his raised knee, and threw the other forward in the Argo''s direction.

    Sequential Military Bombardment"Port Royal Cannonade!"

    With a hiss, the fuses on all of the cannons built into the walls beneath our feet lit.

    "Fire!"

    BOOM

    The whole world seemed to shake.

    BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM

    One after the other, the cannons fired, not just from the walls beneath us but from each of the forts on each of the islands around us. They belched smoke and flame and cannonballs the size of my head, and the raw force behind their firing seemed to set the ground beneath our feet aquiver. I wouldn''t have been surprised if the bricks started cracking apart at the mortar.

    And ahead of us, the Argo had nowhere to go. It was bombarded from every angle and every side, leaving it nowhere to escape, nowhere to flee beneath the rain of thick iron munitions heavy enough to blow a hole in a modern battleship.

    Barriers rose up to intercept the cannonballs, but they shattered like cheap glass beneath the bombardment, ineffective. Medea the younger''s attempt at defending them, no doubt. I watched, refusing to let myself blink, as holes opened up on the ship, as chunks of wood went flying every which way, as splinters spun off into the shallows, as one cannonball got particularly lucky and smashed into the main mast. It fell, sail and all, like a towering oak that had just been chopped down, and the crack of it crashing into the deck was drowned out by the booming staccato of yet more cannonballs being fired.

    More and more holes opened up on the Argo, and it was only a matter of time before they were close enough to the waterline for the ship to start taking on water. Even that might not have been enough to take down something with that much history and mystery behind it, but it didn''t matter, because there were enough cannonballs flying that there wouldn''t be much left either way.

    Eventually, the smoke got too thick, and my eyes watered as I squinted through it, trying to see what was going on. The barrage died down and then stopped, and the thick cloud of gray smog hung about for longer than I would have liked, slowly rising upwards with the hot air left behind by the cannons.

    "I ¡ª ack!" Rika coughed, covering her mouth with her sleeve. I took her idea and did the same, although it didn''t help as much as I would have liked. "I think ¡ª urk ¡ª think you overdid it, Captain Morgan!"

    "Nonsense, my dear!" said Captain Morgan. A crocodile grin threatened to split his face. "No such thing!"

    Drake waved a hand in front of her face as though to ward the smoke away. "That''s one of those Noble Phantasm things, ain''t it? Does it even use gunpowder, Morgan?"

    "They''re cannons, Captain Drake," Morgan told her like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Of course they do."

    "Here they come!" Arash warned, and no sooner had he said so than did something slam into the island below us. It couldn''t compare to the shuddering of the cannons firing one after the other, but I still felt the vibrations in the brick beneath my feet like the aftershocks of a distant earthquake.

    The smoke had cleared enough at least for me to peer down at the site of the impact and see the vague outline of a hulking figure, hunched over on the promenade. Before my eyes, it twisted and contorted, and what I realized was an arm snapped back into place as the squirming muscles rebuilt themselves in fast forward.

    A lead-skinned hand came down and slapped the ground, and with a rumbling, almost leonine growl, the mass of tangled black hair was tossed back as a head rose, half gone but quickly returning. Watching his flesh regrow would have been stomach-churning if I hadn''t seen a whole lot worse before in my career, and even then, the only reason my breakfast didn''t threaten to make a return was the fact that I hadn''t had any.

    Herakles.

    "You bastard!" a higher pitched voice screamed up at us, coming from that general vicinity. "You blew up my ship!"

    "At least you''re unhurt, Lord Jason!" Medea the younger said.

    "Shut up!" Jason snarled back at her. "You''re the one who''s so useless you couldn''t even block a few cannonballs! Just what kind of expert mage are you, anyway? Gods, it almost would''ve been worth it to have your older version instead!"

    "I-I''m sorry! There wasn''t anything I could do!"

    "That''s exactly the problem! You''re so useless that you couldn''t even do your job and defend me!"

    When the smoke finally cleared, Jason glared up at us, sheltered beneath Herakles'' hunched body, with Medea the younger next to him and Hektor landing adroitly in the back. Above him, the last of the damage done by Morgan''s bombardment finally filled in, and Herakles slowly climbed to his feet, his lips pulled back away from his teeth in a furious sneer.

    "Damn it!" Jason stood, too, faster and more impatiently than Herakles had, and he patted his clothes down to dust the dirt off of himself. "As if these bastards weren''t annoying enough, not only did they take one of Herakles'' lives, they also destroyed my Argo! Hey, you old hag!"

    He jabbed a finger up at us, pointing in Drake''s general direction.

    "When this is over, I''m taking your ship as compensation!"

    "Like hell you are!" Drake hollered back. "The only part of you that''s stepping one foot on my Golden Hind is your Grail!"

    "Yeah, yeah, whatever." Jason waved her off. "You won''t be able to stop me, seeing as you and the whole lot of your pissant crew are gonna be dead!"

    "FUCK YOU!"

    "Rika," I hissed over at her urgently, "now!"

    In my mind''s eye, a spider''s thread snapped, and magical energy churned through my circuits as I activated Da Vinci''s new system. At the same time next to me, as lines of light described themselves up my body and through the predesigned pathways in my mystic code, so too did Rika''s. Twin magic circles drew themselves across the brick beneath our feet.

    "Siegfried!" I began.

    "A¨ªfe!" Rika echoed me.

    And then a third voice chimed in, to my surprise, as her brother shouted, "Jeanne Alter!"

    "Come forth!"

    Three shadows lifted up off of the ground, coalescing into three different figures, two slender and feminine and one broad-shouldered and masculine, and they rapidly filled in, gaining detail and life in less than a second. Barely had we finished calling for them than had Siegfried, A¨ªfe, and even Jeanne Alter formed amongst us.

    Atalanta stiffened. "Jeanne Alter?"

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    "Hoh?" Jeanne Alter said silkily. "You''re actually going to let me stretch my legs, Master?"

    "Behave," A¨ªfe told her sternly.

    "Your Noble Phantasm is strong enough to kill Herakles, isn''t it?" Ritsuka asked.

    Jeanne Alter grinned. "It looks like we get to find out!"

    "Hey!" Jason squawked indignantly. "Who said you were allowed to call in reinforcements?"

    "It''s not like we need your permission, Dandyman!" Rika shouted back at him. "Super Action Mom, go!"

    "Yes, Master!" A¨ªfe replied, and she kicked off of the ground and threw herself over the crenellations, down into the town below. Jeanne Alter startled.

    "Hey, don''t start without me, you bitch!"

    She scrambled to throw herself after A¨ªfe and dove over the side of the wall.

    "Siegfried ¡ª"

    "I''m aware of our goals, Master," said Siegfried. "Rest assured, I will do my absolute best to fulfill them."

    Then there was nothing more for me to tell him other than, "Go."

    He took off like a rocket and followed after the other two, and together, the three of them formed a kind of defensive line against Herakles. Jason, seeing them all, sneered, lip curling.

    "You bastards actually think you can defeat Herakles?" he shouted up at us. "Tch! You third rate Heroic Spirits really should know when you''re outmatched! Herakles is the strongest in the world! He won''t lose to backwater hacks like you!"

    He smacked his knuckles on Herakles'' abs as though to demonstrate exactly how tough Herakles was. I wasn''t the only one who didn''t find it a particularly convincing argument.

    "A lot of talk for someone who''s planning on standing behind him," said A¨ªfe. "Stop wasting my time. I finally get to see what all of the fuss is about and you want to stand there and monologue about it."

    "Much as I hate to agree with this bitch," Jeanne Alter jabbed her thumb at A¨ªfe, "she''s right. Stop pissing around! I don''t have all day!"

    Jason snarled. "Fine!" And then he stepped aside, pointed at our Servants, and told Herakles, "Herakles! Crush them!"

    Herakles tensed, muscles bulging, lips pulling away from his teeth, and then ¡ª

    "¨y¨y¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|¨y¨y¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|¨y¨y¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|!"

    ¡ª he disappeared, was suddenly among the three we''d arrayed to fight him, and A¨ªfe let loose a delighted laugh as his fist came down like a hammer upon her crossed arms. The echoing CRACK told me at least one of them had been broken as she was flung backwards, but she stopped only long enough to use a rune to heal the damage.

    Jeanne Alter backed away to avoid getting hit herself, but Siegfried leapt into action without hesitation, Balmung glowing a pale blue as he charged up a miniature use of his Noble Phantasm the same way he had against Fafnir. This time, however, it was ineffective, and Balmung skittered off of Herakles'' abs without doing anything to him at all.

    Herakles'' retaliatory punch, on the other hand, smashed into Siegfried like a freight train and sent him flying backwards, although he managed to stay upright enough to land on his feet and skid across the ground instead of tumbling. He felt it ¡ª I knew he must have, considering Herakles'' prodigious strength ¡ª but his own Noble Phantasm had blunted it to almost nothing.

    In a war of attrition, Siegfried would lose. It wouldn''t be quick and it wouldn''t be easy for Herakles, but eventually, the damage Herakles dealt would accumulate, and it would become a matter of whether Siegfried could take all twelve of his lives before taking too much damage to continue.

    The world suddenly compressed, condensing down, and a maroon rocket raced towards Herakles as little more than a blur. Herakles turned to face it, snarling, and threw out one of his fists in an attempt to meet it head on, and A¨ªfe mirrored him, throwing out her own fist with a ponderous, inexorable, and very familiar weight.

    "Torannchless!"

    Herakles exploded. There was no better way to describe it. His hand, his arm, and half of his chest just suddenly burst apart in a shower of viscera that sprayed all over a shrieking Jason, coating him head to toe in red blood. Medea the younger was similarly painted, squeaking as it stained her white dress a ruddy crimson and ran in streaks throughout her hair. Herakles himself collapsed, falling to his knees and slumping over as his jaw fell open and his head lolled, barely attached to a neck that was half obliterated itself.

    "I think I''m gonna be sick," Rika mumbled.

    "I-I know what you mean," her brother agreed.

    "What the hell?" Jason squawked. "How did you do that? Hey! A single punch shouldn''t be able to hurt Herakles that badly! Just who the hell are you, you crazy bitch?"

    "Smart enough to know that''s not the end of things!"

    A¨ªfe leapt back and away from the corpse ¡ª just in time, because Herakles suddenly surged back to life, his missing flesh filling back in rapidly, and with his remaining hand, tried to snatch A¨ªfe up before she could escape. At the speeds they were moving, I couldn''t tell exactly how close he came, but it was almost certainly closer than I would have liked.

    A single arrow soared across the gap, whooshing past me with such speed that I hadn''t even felt its wake until it had already reached its target, and in a shower of gore and a splash of red blood, one of Herakles'' eyes ¡ª and half of his head along with it ¡ª vanished. Nearby, Atalanta let out a small breath, almost like a sigh.

    But Herakles wasn''t down for long. He stumbled once, twice, back a meager two steps in all, but before he could tumble backwards and to the ground, he jerked back to life.

    "¨y¨y¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|!"

    As though he hadn''t been interrupted at all, Herakles leapt after A¨ªfe, so fast that he seemed almost to teleport, but before he could reach her, a smaller, black form interposed itself between them, brandishing a sword and a flag as though they were both weapons. Herakles smacked the sword aside like it was a nuisance, and then aimed a punch that would take Jeanne Alter''s head off if it connected.

    "¨|¨{¨y¨y¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|!"

    Except, somehow, when it landed on the shaft of her flag, it stopped completely. The flagpole didn''t crack or break. Jeanne Alter wasn''t flung backwards like a ragdoll in a hurricane. Herakles'' fist just came to a total halt. Like all of the power behind it had just disappeared the instant it made contact.

    "This is the howl of my soul, burnished by hatred!" Jeanne Alter shouted. "La Grondement du Haine!"

    Fire exploded from the point where his fist met her flag, and it sent Herakles skidding backwards. Pillars of flame erupted around him, reaching towards the sky and so hot that I could feel them on my face like a bonfire even from as far away as we were, and his head swiveled about like he was searching for a way out.

    Suddenly, as though he could sense what was coming, Herakles leapt to the side, and the first stake missed him, and the instant his feet touched the ground again, he dodged again, avoiding the second stake. My eyes narrowed on him again as I reexamined him with my Master''s Clairvoyance ¡ª Eye of the Mind (False), an instinct for danger, honed through experience. Somehow, it was actually enough to warn him of when he was about to be skewered.

    As though Herakles wasn''t already an incredibly powerful Heroic Spirit.

    "You''re not going to escape!" Jeanne Alter crowed.

    The pillars of flame twisted and swirled, tightening around him until there was nowhere left for him to go, and they created such a dizzying lightshow that I almost had to look away as they spun. With nowhere left to escape to, the instant Herakles touched the ground again, another stake sprouted from the promenade and stabbed straight through his foot.

    "¨|¨|¨{¨{¨z¨z¨y¨y¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|!"

    After the first came another, then another, then another, each one bursting out of the ground and tearing through his body like paper. The swirling flames spun faster and faster until they blended together, and the only way I could know that he was still being stabbed was from the roars of furious pain that accompanied each blow.

    The flames spun tighter and tighter, compressing down until they had to be burning Herakles as they swirled. They blazed brightly enough to outshine the sun, hot enough to dry out my lips and eyes, forcing me to blink, and then, with a whoosh, they exploded outwards and dissipated into the wind.

    Left behind in their wake was Herakles, strung up on the stakes of Jeanne Alter''s Noble Phantasm like some grotesque mockery of modern art. Every part of him had been skewered at least once, from his arms to his legs to his chest and even through his throat, and the only reason he was even upright was probably because they were holding him that way. His entire body was charred black, although against his leaden skin, it was harder to see the burns.

    "Damn," said Orion. "She''s hardcore."

    For a long moment, Herakles hung there, suspended, a grotesque sculpture. Longer than I was expecting him to.

    "Did¡­did we get him?" Rika asked uncertainly. "That was only four, right? But he''s not¡­moving."

    "He''s not disappearing either," Ritsuka pointed out.

    "No," Atalanta told them both grimly. "It will take far more than that to defeat Herakles."

    As though her words themselves were the signal for him to come back to life, Herakles'' head jerked, and a low growl rumbled out of his ruined throat ¡ª so low that I couldn''t hear it from where I was, but I could feel it vibrating in my bones. With a sudden flex of his muscles, he pulled his arms towards his chest and all of the stakes piercing into him shattered, disappearing into motes of dark light.

    "¨|¨|¨{¨{¨z¨z¨y¨y¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|!"

    Like a shot from a cannon, he took off, and the ground cracked beneath his feet from the force of his sudden acceleration. Jeanne Alter gasped and scrambled to get out of the way ¡ª

    "I won''t let you!"

    ¡ª only for Siegfried to put himself between them, sword already swinging as a familiar blue light lit up the blade. Herakles stomped the ground to slow himself, but he was already in range, and Balmung made contact with explosive power, and although he wasn''t so much as singed, Herakles was still thrown back.

    His feet hadn''t even found the ground before a streak of red raced for his chest.

    "You''re open!"

    But Herakles snatched G¨¢e Bolg out of the air with even less effort than Caligula had, his massive fist wrapping tight around the shaft, and he snarled at it as though he was insulted by the effort. A¨ªfe, racing behind her spear, looked like she was counting on him doing exactly that, because she slammed her own fist against the pommel.

    Even as her hand split open and knuckles bled, lines of light ¡ª runes ¡ª raced up and down G¨¢e Bolg, and it jerked in Herakles'' grip, piercing straight into his chest.

    "G¨¢e Bolg Prototype!"

    Herakles roared again as red thorns sprouted from his flesh, one after the other. As though a rosebush was growing rapidly inside of him, they jutted out of his leaden skin, dots of crimson amidst the gray that wept rivers of blood. They spread across his chest, his pectorals, his shoulders, even up his neck, growing out of every vein and artery and ripping their way out of his body violently. Herakles could do nothing but roar and smack futilely at them with his hands, as though pushing them back into himself would stop them from doing any damage, until, quite suddenly, he stopped moving again.

    That was number five, and he still hadn''t disappeared yet. Without knowing exactly how many of his lives Emiya had managed to shave off before, we were just going to have to keep going until Herakles didn''t anymore.

    "She just¡­used her runes to increase the rank of G¨¢e Bolg?" Ritsuka whispered. "I didn''t¡­know they could do that."

    "Primordial Runes are so hax," his sister agreed.

    I reached down the line connecting me to our Servants.

    A¨ªfe, retreat! I ordered her, and immediately after that, Siegfried, now''s your chance! While he''s still out, charge up Balmung!

    A¨ªfe leapt back, and G¨¢e Bolg ripped itself free of Herakles in a spurt of blood to zip back into her uninjured hand.

    "Yes!" Siegfried acknowledged aloud. He took hold of Balmung with both hands and lifted it high above his head. The jewel in the hilt lit up with blue light, and then the blade did as well, growing larger and larger until a bright pillar jutted up into the sky.

    Jason and Medea the younger, perhaps sensing that this wasn''t something they wanted to be in the way of, threw themselves to the side and scrambled to get as far from the path of the blast as they possibly could.

    "¨|¨|¨{¨{¨z¨z¨y¨y¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|!"

    And the instant Herakles regained life, Siegfried brought his sword swinging down like the blade of an executioner.

    "Balmung!"

    The pillar of light descended. Herakles was swallowed up by it, consumed beneath the searing glare as the air howled and hissed with its passing, and then, with a flash, it detonated, and I had to turn away and shield my eyes with my arm to avoid being blinded. The whole island seemed to shake under my feet, the brick vibrating straight through my shoes and into my toes, and a torrent of sound assaulted my ears as my hair was blown back away from my face, whipped about in the passing wind.

    Once the light had died down and it was safe to look again, I turned immediately back towards the fight, bringing the swarm that I had been holding in reserve away from the danger zone closer in. With both Jeanne Alter and Siegfried''s Noble Phantasms now used, the amount of sheer destruction any of us could cause in one go was much more limited.

    Down below, there was nothing left of Herakles except for a pair of badly charred lower legs that stopped about halfway up the calves, but despite how much of his body was just gone, it was instead Siegfried who was starting to disappear. My lips pursed. A single use of his Noble Phantasm ¡ª that, on top of the handful of miniature charges he''d used to enhance his slash, and even just that was enough to burn through his reserves of magical energy.

    I''m sorry, Master, he whispered to me across our bond, and then he was gone. At least he''d managed to take a sixth life from Herakles before he ran out of energy.

    "Just how many A-Rank attacks are you holding onto, you bastards?" Jason demanded from behind the building he''d retreated to.

    "Master!" Medea the younger squeaked. "At this rate, Herakles really will ¡ª"

    "Shut up!" Jason snarled back at her. "There''s no way! There''s just no way! Herakles is the strongest in the world! The idea that these pathetic weaklings could actually defeat him is so impossible that there isn''t even a word for how impossible it is!"

    As though to punctuate his words and give them weight, the ruined legs sprouted bone, then muscle, then skin, and the rest of Herakles began to fill in like an anatomical model adding one layer at a time. In mere seconds, he was back to normal, restored to full health, like he''d never been injured at all, let alone so severely.

    "¨|¨|¨{¨{¨z¨z¨y¨y¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|!"

    "How many A-Rank attacks do we have?" Rika asked a little hysterically. "How many is it gonna take? That was six!"

    And if Emiya had managed just two, then we were only about halfway there, and we were quickly running our options down.

    Herakles burst back into motion, except he didn''t make for either of the two Servants still down there to fight him, he raced past them like they weren''t even there ¡ª he was making a beeline directly for us.

    Shit!

    "Arash!"

    "Yes!"

    Atalanta startled into action and drew back on her bow, firing shots directly at Herakles, and so did Artemis, but Arash didn''t bother to waste time on that and aimed instead for Jason. Almost as though he sensed what was about to happen, Herakles broke off his attack run and spun back around, shattering more of the street as he kicked off the ground and went the complete opposite direction. For an instant, he moved so quickly that I lost sight of him.

    And then, like he had teleported, he reappeared in front of Jason, using his body to shield both him and Medea the younger from Arash''s volley of arrows. Unlike with Caenis, possessing the Grail did nothing. Arash''s arrows still broke uselessly against Herakles'' leaden skin, shattering like they were cheap plywood, and then vanishing into particles of light.

    A moment later, both Artemis and Atalanta joined in, pinning them down beneath a hail of arrows and giving me some space to think. We''d killed Herakles six times already, but it hadn''t been enough. Jeanne Alter could make it an even seven if she could get one good, strong blow in with that sword of hers, but if even that wasn''t enough to put him down all the way, then we really would be completely out of options.

    The danger of that was that she wasn''t that much of a fighter. Not that she couldn''t fight at all, but that someone like Herakles was far and away more skilled, even as a Berserker, so if she was going to manage to kill him, he needed to be thoroughly distracted first. Unable to fight back.

    I think she would have been rightly angry with me if I suggested she throw herself into that hailstorm of arrows and jump onto his back. Even if this form was only a shadow of her true Servant self, I doubted she would appreciate being turned into a pincushion.

    With how much maneuvering it would take to give her that opportunity, it would wind up wasting more time and energy than we could really afford for it to. No, it would be better for us to move onto our backup plan and lure him towards the Ark. Now, while A¨ªfe and Jeanne Alter were still around and in good enough shape to help.

    "It wasn''t enough," I announced to everyone. "We''re going to move on to the next plan ¡ª"

    "Hey, Artemis!" Orion butted in, sounding annoyed. "Now''s the time, don''t you think? Are you just gonna sit on that for the rest of the battle? Your Noble Phantasm should be strong enough!"

    I wasn''t the only one who was surprised, because the twins both said, "What?"

    "Oh, but if I''m not careful, Darling, this Spirit Origin might just go pop!" said Artemis.

    "This is the final battle, isn''t it?" said Orion. "If you''re not going to use it now, then when? One way or another, we won''t be here much longer anyway!"

    "Oh, fine!" Artemis said petulantly. She paused firing only long enough to pull deliberately back on her bow, forming a single arrow along its draw. The tip glowed, and then sprouted protrusions that flickered every color of the rainbow, flowing shafts of light that surged up and down the curve of the bow''s arms and formed what looked almost like a pair of ornamental wings.

    I wanted to say that thing would never go where she wanted it to. It wasn''t shaped right for it. Hell, Emiya fired swords from his bow, and he had to change their shape first to make sure they stayed on course and didn''t get slowed down by wind resistance. This thing, with none of that, looked like it would wobble all over the place and flop to the ground.

    Of course, this was a Noble Phantasm. Physics could go sit in a corner and cry.

    "Watch closely, everyone, okay?" she chirped. "This is my and Darling''s love, made manifest! Rampaging, passionate, beautiful ¡ª and now, let free to fly! Tri-star Amore Mio!"

    Her fingers released the bowstring, and quite suddenly, that mockery of an arrow leapt from her bow at such speed that the air shuddered from its passing. I didn''t even see it go ¡ª one second, it was there, and the next, light exploded across Herakles'' back, and he let out a roar of pain as it pierced straight through his skin and struck his heart.

    Again, he fell to his knees, slumping over and trapping Jason and Medea the younger beneath his bulk. Blood splattered over the ground and poured out of the wound, and more flowed freely from it when the arrow itself disappeared, leaving behind a gaping hole half the size of his fist. Arash and Atalanta stopped, waiting to see if that was the last.

    For a moment, I dared to hope that would be enough. Seven lives, that was how many we''d taken from him. We''d planned around his Noble Phantasm. We''d gathered an array of different ways to kill him and thrown each one his way, and he''d gotten up to keep going after each one. Seven lives. Had Emiya taken enough for it to matter?

    Euryale tentatively approached the crenellations, peering down at Herakles, and she frowned. "Is it over?"

    "¨z¨z¨y¨y¨z¨z¡­"

    Herakles suddenly burst to life and spun around, and with a flex of his massive muscles, he slammed his hands into the ground, kicking up a thick cloud of dust and dirt between us and him. Immediately, I sent my bugs in, searching for him, for any sign of him, even if only his passing, and there wasn''t even time to feel things out before the earth rumbled again.

    "¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|!"

    "Shit!"

    A¨ªfe appeared abruptly in front of the fort, and she kicked up with thunderous force, obliterating a hunk of rock big enough to have crushed any one of us Masters flat that had come dangerously close to doing just that. I flinched away, shielding my face, and Rika shrieked as tiny pebbles of gray stone pelted us ¡ª the parts that hadn''t been completely destroyed by A¨ªfe''s kick. A line of heat drew itself across one of my cheeks. Several more stung my palms.

    Without any warning, he was there, hanging in the air above us, a mass of lead skin and bulging muscle, his untamed hair flapping behind him almost like a cape or a shawl. One enormous hand was balled into a fist and wound back, and it didn''t matter who he aimed for, I already knew that anyone he hit was a goner.

    He seemed to come down in slow motion, but my own limbs moved as though through molasses. There was nowhere for me to run. Nowhere for us to escape to. Not enough time for me to snap out a command or a spell that would save anyone, let alone myself.

    An arm wrapped around my midsection, pulling me back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the others scrambling, Mash thrusting herself in the front, shield raised to protect the twins, Atalanta pulling back on her bowstring for a point blank attack, Artemis doing the same, Hippolyta kicking off the ground to meet him, Medea shouting something that I couldn''t hear over the roaring of my pulse in my ears. Morgan brought up one of his pistols, for all of the use it would be against Herakles. It probably wouldn''t even leave a powder burn behind.

    "Durindana ¡ª"

    And then a comet struck him from behind, bursting straight through his skin and out the other side of his chest in a spray of blood and gore. Bright light poured from the golden blade of a lance, surging like a rocket''s exhaust and searing the flesh it touched. A trail of glittering energy traced back to its origin and the man in green who had thrown it.

    "¡ª Pilum!"

 Chapter CVIII: Forneus

    Chapter CVIII: Forneus

    Herakles landed limply on the fort¡¯s wall ¡ª heavy enough that the entire curtain wall seemed to shake beneath his bulk ¡ª wedged between the crenellations. His upper body slumped over the spot where we¡¯d just been standing, but his legs dangled towards the ground, and he made for something of a morbid tableau, with his hair splayed about the brickwork and his mouth hanging open as blood slowly pooled beneath him.

    Slowly, cautiously, Arash set me back down on my feet and loosened his grip on my midsection. I could already feel the forming bruises along my ribs, distant and dulled by the adrenaline.

    ¡°What the hell did you just do?¡± Jason demanded furiously. ¡°Hektor! How could you? What do you think you¡¯re doing! Traitor!¡±

    ¡°Sorry, Mister Jason,¡± I heard Hektor say through my bugs. ¡°Master¡¯s orders.¡±

    ¡°Master?¡± squawked Jason. ¡°What the fuck are you talking about? I¡¯m your Master! I summoned you! I hold the Grail that¡¯s even now keeping you here!¡±

    ¡°Yeah, about that¡­¡±

    Hektor held out a hand, and with a grotesque squelch and a spray of blood, his spear ripped itself free of Herakles¡¯ body and flew back towards him. He snatched it out of the air with expert grace, then spun it around and pointed the tip threateningly at Jason. Medea the younger squeaked and flinched.

    ¡°I¡¯m gonna have to ask you to hand that Grail over. My Master¡¯s allies need it to put this place back in its proper order.¡±

    ¡°Your Master¡­¡± It took a second, but Jason eventually figured out exactly what that meant, and his eyes went wide with fury as he snarled. ¡°That bitch! She¡¯s the one behind this, isn¡¯t she? Just like she always is! Just like she always was when we were alive, too! She put you up to this, didn¡¯t she? Stole your contract and swindled you out from under me!¡±

    Hektor smirked.

    ¡°Well. Took you long enough to figure it out. Here was me, all worried that you were gonna realize something was off at any moment and turn either of those two pieces of work on this poor, old man. I thought for sure I was going to be a pancake before we ever made it down to this archipelago, let alone Herakles and Caenis being taken out.¡±

    ¡°Bastard!¡± Jason sneered. ¡°Just who do you think you¡¯re talking about, anyway? Haven¡¯t I told you pathetic losers ¡ª YEAH, THAT MEANS YOU, TOO, YOU CONNIVING BITCH ¡ª enough times already? Herakles is the strongest in the world! No matter what you throw at him, third rates like you won¡¯t defeat him, no matter what!¡±

    ¡°¨z¨z¨y¨y¨z¨z¡­¡±

    Herakles fists suddenly clenched.

    ¡°He¡¯s still alive?¡± Rika blurted out incredulously. ¡°How many more lives does he have?¡±

    Hektor looked over towards us, surprise written across his face. ¡°You¡¯ve gotta be kidding me!¡±

    ¡°¨|¨|¨{¨{¨z¨z¨y¨y¨z¨z¨{¨{¨|¨|!¡±

    And Herakles rose up, clawing at the brickwork as one hand scrambled for purchase and the other swiped at Euryale, who avoided his grasp only by the narrowest of margins. The whole fort seemed to shake as his feet scraped against the wall for footholds ¡ª or worse, made them in the bricks and stone from the sheer force behind those enormous legs. His eyes glared, one red and one golden yellow, above a snarling maw of shark teeth.

    We all threw ourselves back desperately, trying to get out of his reach, and his hand came down, fingers puncturing holes into the battlements, so he could pull himself up to attack us. Arash launched several arrows directly into his face, and so did Atalanta and Artemis, even as both Drake and Morgan fired their pistols, all to no avail. Orion squeaked and hid behind Artemis, and Euryale, perhaps sensing how much danger she was in, turned to run away and into the fort proper, where the Ark was hidden. Hippolyta stepped back and slowly began gathering magical energy, although what for, I could only guess.

    ¡°Just stay dead already, you bastard!¡±

    And Jeanne Alter dropped down from the sky like an avenging angel, plunging her sword straight through Herakles¡¯ thick neck. From my angle, I had a front row seat to how it burst out of his throat in another spray of blood.

    The growling and roaring suddenly cut out. The great, towering figure of muscle and power froze, one hand outstretched towards Euryale and the other dug into the brickwork, mouth open wide in a rictus of fury, and for a single, heart-pounding moment, hung there, halfway through climbing up the curtain wall.

    Nine lives. We¡¯d killed him a total of nine times. Had Emiya really only managed to take two? All of that time he¡¯d bought us, all that he¡¯d sacrificed, had he really taken a meager two lives?

    And then, just as suddenly as he¡¯d come back to life, Herakles burst apart into a cloud of glittering dust, and soon enough, even that was gone, too, flickering out of existence like fireflies. Jeanne Alter¡¯s sword scraped against the stone and her boots and armor clinked as she landed, now that there wasn¡¯t anything for her to be kneeling on top of.

    For several long seconds, there was only silence as the weight of what had just happened sunk in. Those of us from Chaldea, I think, or at least I did, wondered if that was really, finally it, if Herakles was well and truly beaten or if he was going to suddenly pop up again, fully restored and ready to pound us into paste. I felt around cautiously with my bugs, looking for any place he might have snuck off to for a chance to recover, just on the possibility that he might have, no matter how slim.

    But there was nothing. Herakles was gone, and no sign of him, not even the stains of his blood from his many deaths, remained behind.

    ¡°I-is he¡­?¡± Ritsuka whispered.

    ¡°Son of a bitch!¡± Jeanne Alter sneered as she stood. ¡°That bastard just didn¡¯t know when to die, did he? Ugh! Persistent men like that are such a pain!¡±

    ¡°Y-you¡­¡± stammered Jason. ¡°Th-that¡¯s¡­not possible! Herakles is¡­ Herakles is unbeatable! He¡¯s the strongest in the world! There¡¯s no way a bunch of third rate no-names could ever¡­!¡±

    ¡°SHUT UP!¡± Drake hollered at him. ¡°I¡¯m getting sick and tired of hearing those words come outta your mouth like they¡¯re the Gospel truth! Nothing is impossible! No one is unbeatable! And just because that big old bastard had the biggest name ever doesn¡¯t mean that nothing else anyone ever did matters a damn!¡±

    ¡°Goddamn right!¡± Rika added.

    ¡°I almost didn¡¯t believe it was possible,¡± Atalanta murmured, sounding a little faint. ¡°But we did it. We defeated Herakles.¡±

    ¡°I can scarcely believe it myself,¡± said Hippolyta.

    ¡°We actually did,¡± Mash agreed breathlessly. ¡°H-Herakles¡¯ Saint Graph confirmed eliminated, Master. We¡­really did beat him!¡±

    ¡°Thank goodness,¡± Ritsuka sighed wearily.

    ¡°It¡¯s not over yet,¡± Medea reminded us.

    I nodded. ¡°It isn¡¯t. Medea, give the order. It¡¯s time to retrieve the Grail.¡±

    She smiled nastily. ¡°With pleasure.¡±

    Down below, Hektor turned back to Jason and Medea the younger, and he aimed his spear at them threateningly. ¡°Now,¡± he said, ¡°we were talking about you handing the Grail over, if I remember right.¡±

    Jason flinched and stumbled backwards. ¡°You¡­ You don¡¯t really think I¡¯m just going to hand it over, do you, Hektor, you bastard? I¡¯m going to be a god-king, do you hear? I¡¯m gonna¡­!¡± Over his shoulder, he snarled, ¡°Medea, you useless wretch, do something! My wish is about to be taken from me! Everything I¡¯ve worked for this whole time is going up in smoke!¡±

    ¡°But, Lord Jason,¡± Medea the younger said innocently, ¡°I don¡¯t know any offensive magic. I can¡¯t fight for you at all.¡±

    Hektor sighed. ¡°It¡¯s going to end the same either way, but¡­ Maybe I¡¯m too soft, but I was going to give you the choice about how much it hurt. Mercy, you know? I can see now¡­¡±

    He pulled his spear back, aiming for a fatal blow. Jason scrambled back, but all he succeeded in doing was pushing himself up against Medea the younger, who squeaked.

    ¡°You¡¯re going to chase this silly dream of yours the whole way, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    Blood splattered. The twins gasped, and I threw myself against the crenellations, staring down at the last thing I had been expecting.

    Hektor choked, spitting up a mouthful of red blood, and looked down at the spear stabbed into his chest as though he couldn¡¯t believe it either. ¡°Shit.¡±

    ¡°No way!¡± Mash said. ¡°But I thought¡­!¡±

    Caenis, absolutely soaked in seawater, still bleeding freely from her wounds, and looking like she had one foot in the grave, panted and gasped as though she had run a marathon. It was her spear that had punched through Hektor¡¯s ribs and deep into his chest, dealing what was no doubt a fatal blow to his spiritual core.

    ¡°How is she even still alive?¡± Rika demanded incredulously, echoing my own thoughts. No one with that many holes in them should still be standing, not even a Servant, unless they had a Battle Continuation skill.

    She¡­did look a little different, though. Less armor, less clothing, and for some reason, a pair of rabbit ears atop her head. Even her spear had changed somewhat, streamlined and become more ornamented.

    Had¡­she modified her Saint Graph somehow? Aside from her appearance, though, I couldn¡¯t find anything different. Her skills and parameters had all stayed the same.

    With a savage yank, Caenis ripped her spear out of Hektor¡¯s body, and Hektor staggered, stumbling backwards as he clutched at his wound feebly. His legs fell out from under him, and he collapsed to the ground, blood pouring out of his chest and staining his clothing.

    ¡°Well, shit,¡± I heard him say through my bugs. ¡°I guess that¡¯s it, then. Sorry about this, Master.¡±

    And then, just like Herakles, he vanished into particles of light.

    ¡°SHIT!¡± Caenis screamed, so loud that we could hear her without trouble. ¡°Damn it! You bastards, look what you did to me! Hey, Medea, get off your ass and do some healing! I might not last much longer anyway, but I¡¯m not gonna be able to kill those guys in this shape!¡±

    ¡°R-right!¡± Medea the younger stuttered, and she leaned to the side of Jason, waving her staff.

    There was no way I was going to give her the chance, so I threw every bug I had in range at their whole group and shrouded them in a thick cloud of wings and chitin.

    ¡°W-what do we do?¡± Mash asked. ¡°Master, even in that sort of state, Caenis is still¡­!¡±

    ¡°We hold out,¡± I answered before the twins could. ¡°Artemis, Arash, Atalanta, if we can keep them pinned, all we have to do is ¡ª¡±

    A wave of water suddenly rose up out of the shallows, tiny compared to the one that had tried to swallow the entire island before, but big enough on its own to reach almost twenty feet up and crash down on Jason, Caenis, and Medea the younger. It washed away all of the bugs I had gathered there, driving them all into the ground and even squashing a large number with the sheer force behind it.

    And once they were clear, Caenis slumped over, using her spear to keep herself upright. She looked even worse for wear than she had been when she crawled back up out of the shallows.

    If she was that badly hurt, then it really would be that simple.

    ¡°Arash.¡±

    Arash nocked a brace of arrows, and then he let them loose at Caenis, aiming to take her out ¡ª after all, he¡¯d never handed the Grail back to Drake. Caenis, however, was a bit more slippery than that, because she held up her shield to protect her head and tackled Jason and Medea the younger to the ground. Arash¡¯s volley thudded home in her shield, but went no further.

    Arash gave no indication that this was at all a problem, he just readied another barrage and fired them off again. Caenis didn¡¯t dare to move her shield and kept it raised, and once more, it blocked Arash¡¯s arrows and held, but the arrows lodged in its face were being replaced as quickly as they disappeared, and it was beginning to look frankly ridiculous.

    ¡°Atalanta,¡± I said, ¡°if you see the chance, take it.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± she agreed.

    Barriers suddenly bloomed into existence in front of Caenis¡¯ shield, large enough to cover all three of them comfortably, and unlike with Morgan¡¯s Noble Phantasm, they didn¡¯t so much as flicker under Arash¡¯s barrage. His arrows instead bounced off of their surface, giving Jason, Caenis, and Medea the younger enough space to climb to their feet.

    Medea, our Medea, threw herself against the crenellations and snarled down at them, ¡°What are you doing, protecting him, of all people? Just give it up, you stupid bitch!¡±

    ¡°Never!¡± Medea the younger shouted back. ¡°Because Lord Jason is ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Phoebus Catastrophe!¡± Atalanta called, and she fired just two arrows not at the barrier, but up into the sky.

    Medea the younger screamed, and several more barriers bloomed into being in every direction until she and Jason were ensconced in something that looked more like a dome of interlocking panes of light instead of a wall. And then, the sky opened up, and streaks of light fell like rain from above, leaving trails in their wake like flaming meteors, and while those barriers might have held up against ordinary arrows, these were not.

    Atalanta¡¯s Noble Phantasm did not quite rip through the shell of barriers, but it didn¡¯t take long for it to start breaking them, shredding the panes of light one after the other. By the look of what I could see through the bright flashes down below, Medea the younger was trying her damnedest to replace every barrier as it broke, and to her credit ¡ª even with her Saint Graph ripped in half ¡ª she wasn¡¯t failing completely.

    But she wasn¡¯t succeeding either. The arrows from Atalanta¡¯s Noble Phantasm were coming down just too quickly and in too high a number, and it was only a matter of time before the sheer volume and speed with which they dropped upon her outpaced her ability to shore up her defenses. Her barriers shattered and tore, and slowly, that dome shrank and holes opened up in its surface.

    The only thing she and Jason could do was cower and press themselves as close as they could against Caenis, who lifted her shield upwards and held it over their heads like an umbrella in a desperate attempt to protect them all. Somehow, by some miracle, it worked, and by the time the rain of light came to an end, they all managed to come out of it unscathed.

    Caenis¡¯ shield, however, had been reduced down to a pitted, jagged piece of scrap that remained only barely attached to her arm. There wasn¡¯t enough left of it to even properly call it a shield anymore, that was how utterly it had been destroyed.

    ¡°Atalanta, again,¡± I told her quietly.

    A single arrow leapt across the distance in the space between breaths, just after Atalanta¡¯s Noble Phantasm ended, and Caenis reflexively batted it aside with what remained of her shield. In the shadow of that arrow, however, another flew ¡ª this one from Arash, who had come to know my tactics so well that he could predict what I was going to order ¡ª and once more, it sank into Caenis¡¯ flesh effortlessly.

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    Caenis staggered, stumbling, and nearly tripped over Jason and Medea the younger as she struggled to stay on her feet. More blood poured down her chest from the wound.

    ¡°DAMN IT!¡± Caenis ripped the arrow free from her body and crushed it, roaring. Even as her edges started to flicker and fade, her whole body began to glow with golden light. ¡°I WON¡¯T¡­BE TAKEN OUT BY YOU FUCKS THAT EASILY! LAPITHAE ¡ª¡±

    Red blood flew. Medea the younger squeaked and Jason let out a startled yelp, and they both scrambled away as quickly as they could. Caenis, wide-eyed, stared down at the rusted, ruined sword that jutted out of her chest as though it was some kind of monster she¡¯d never seen before.

    Standing behind her and holding that sword ¡ª

    ¡°Who the hell is that?¡± Orion asked hysterically.

    Rika gasped. ¡°Davy Jones!¡±

    ¡°W-when did he get here?¡± Mash wondered.

    ¡ª was a familiar gaunt, tattered figure, his seaweed-like hair and beard dripping with water.

    ¡°What the hell?¡± said Drake. ¡°So he was on our side the whole time?¡±

    So it seemed. I wasn¡¯t entirely convinced, but it was certainly looking like he just might be.

    ¡°Caenis of the Argonauts,¡± he said in a warbling voice, ¡°your time has come. The sea welcomes you. It is time for you to return home.¡±

    ¡°You¡­bastard!¡± Caenis choked out. ¡°You¡¯ve got¡­some of him in you, don¡¯t you? That son of a bitch god¡­Poseidon!¡±

    ¡°I am no god,¡± said the stranger, ¡°merely a custodian, here to prevent further deviance. All those willing to further that deviance in the name of selfish gains¡­¡±

    He twisted his sword, and Caenis gasped as more blood flowed from her wound and soaked her front. Her outline became even fuzzier, even less distinct, but somehow, she held on. It was frankly astounding that she was still managing to stay alive just through sheer bullheaded determination.

    ¡°¡­must be eliminated.¡±

    ¡°Fuck¡­you,¡± Caenis rasped.

    The pitted sword was ripped free of her body, and as she stumbled ¡ª as though that sword in her chest had been propping her up ¡ª the so-called Davy Jones wound back his arm, took aim, and ¡ª

    Rika gasped again and turned her head away, just in time to avoid having to watch Caenis¡¯ head go flying as her body collapsed limply to her knees. Neither remained long enough to hit the ground, instead bursting apart into particles of light that flickered and vanished moments later. This time, there could be no doubt that she had been killed for sure.

    ¡°Oh dear,¡± Artemis murmured, ¡°what an unpleasant way to go, the poor girl.¡±

    ¡°Save your pity,¡± Atalanta said bluntly. ¡°Whatever we were in life, whatever we might be in some future summoning, here and now, we¡¯re enemies. She made her choices to follow Jason ¡ª they all did.¡±

    ¡°Tch.¡± Jeanne Alter sneered. ¡°Couldn¡¯t have happened to a nicer bitch.¡±

    ¡°E-enemy Servant response dissipating,¡± Mash reported, looking even paler than usual. ¡°C-Caenis is¡­confirmed defeated, Master.¡±

    ¡°I¡­can see that, yeah,¡± Ritsuka said faintly.

    With his grisly task done, the stranger turned now to Jason and Medea with all the slow, ponderous weight of an executioner.

    ¡°Jason of the Argonauts,¡± he said in that gurgling voice of his, ¡°you covet the Holy Grail. You must die.¡±

    Jason flinched. ¡°N-no! No! It¡¯s not over yet! I refuse to die here, after I came so close! I refuse ¡ª Medea!¡± He spat at her again. ¡°Medea, get off of your worthless ass and protect me! Do your duty as my wife!¡±

    ¡°Protect you?¡± Medea the younger asked, confused. ¡°Lord Jason, I already told you, I don¡¯t know any offensive magic. I can¡¯t fight for you. And my defensive spells are weaker than they should be, so I¡¯m afraid it¡¯s only a matter of time until the enemy breaks through them.¡±

    ¡°Then what good are you?¡± he howled at her. ¡°Pathetic! Worthless! You good-for-nothing, backwater priestess!¡±

    ¡°This is kinda sick,¡± Rika muttered. ¡°These two¡­weren¡¯t they supposed to be madly in love? This just sounds like spousal abuse.¡±

    It really did ¡ª but then, I wasn¡¯t surprised. If Jason and Medea had ever actually been in love, then the later events of their lives would have soured it. The only question was whether this vitriol was new or a common part of their relationship.

    ¡°The only one Jason has ever truly loved is himself,¡± our Medea said scornfully. ¡°That¡¯s why¡­the only thing he really cares about is his own wealth and power.¡±

    Medea the younger sighed. ¡°Well, I suppose it can¡¯t be helped, at this point. If things go on as they are, then this whole thing is finished for sure. It seems it¡¯s time for the contingency plan.¡±

    Contingency plan? There was a contingency plan? To¡­what? Summon more Servants to fight for them? Was there another way for them to trigger the collapse of the Singularity using just the Grail they already had in their possession?

    Or was there something else I wasn¡¯t seeing?

    Jason took a step back from her fearfully. ¡°C-contingency plan? What are you talking about?¡±

    ¡°Come now, Lord Jason, you¡¯re not truly that foolish, are you?¡± Medea the younger said. ¡°Did you really expect that you could become a god-king by sacrificing a god to the Ark? The only thing that would result from a scheme like that is the destruction of this space-time. Shouldn¡¯t it have been obvious?¡±

    Jason¡¯s eyes went wide with terror. ¡°Y-you lied to me?¡± he squeaked.

    ¡°If you sacrifice a Divine Spirit to the Ark, then all of your enemies would be destroyed, and even the world itself would be torn asunder,¡± she told him matter-of-factly. ¡°That would be a form of ultimate power, wouldn¡¯t it? There was no lie in that.¡±

    She waved her staff, and a pane of light appeared to block the stranger¡¯s sword. His strike bounced off of it with the tinkle of cracking glass.

    ¡°Rude!¡± she said petulantly. ¡°Can¡¯t you wait for a moment?¡±

    ¡°W-wait,¡± said Mash, ¡°does this mean¡­Jason didn¡¯t know what was going to happen this entire time?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s looking that way,¡± I said.

    Although that was its own kind of pathetic.

    Surreptitiously, I began spreading out my bugs, looking for signs of anything happening. Flauros had shown up right at the end of Septem, after we¡¯d defeated Romulus, and according to our Medea, another Demon God, Forneus, was supposedly involved in this one. Now would be right about the time it was mostly likely to show its face, or whatever it might have had that passed for one.

    ¡°I¡¯m gonna need you guys to give me the play-by-play later,¡± said Rika, ¡°because I can¡¯t hear a word they¡¯re saying, now that they¡¯ve stopped shouting.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± her brother agreed. ¡°Later.¡±

    ¡°The younger Medea is revealing the truth of their plan to Jason,¡± Atalanta summarized, ¡°and it seems that Jason truly was uninformed about what would actually happen if it succeeded.¡±

    ¡°Of course he was,¡± our Medea sneered.

    ¡°Y-you¡­¡± Jason stepped backwards, and then he seemed to regain some confidence, because he snarled, ¡°What would be the point in that? You bitch! I can¡¯t be a god-king of a pile of ash! That¡¯s not what I wanted at all!¡±

    ¡°Oh well.¡± Medea the younger shrugged. ¡°The contingency plan doesn¡¯t actually need you to be willing anyway. All it really needs is the Holy Grail in your possession.¡±

    ¡°M-my Grail?¡± Jason flinched again. ¡°No¡­!¡±

    He turned around as though to run away, but he couldn¡¯t even make it a single step before the bottom of Medea the younger¡¯s staff found his back and pierced straight into it.

    ¡°Did she just literally stab him in the back?¡± Rika demanded. ¡°God¡­ I¡¯m going to need to keep a scorecard at this rate! It¡¯s like they¡¯re actively trying to tick off every box on the Evil Villain¡¯s Bingo List!¡±

    ¡°Arash!¡± I said aloud, and he drew back on his bow to fire off another volley of arrows ¡ª to no effect, because they bounced off of Medea¡¯s barrier spell just the same as the stranger¡¯s sword had.

    A¨ªfe! I ordered her urgently. Whatever she¡¯s doing, stop her now!

    A¨ªfe kicked off of the ground and took off like a rocket, racing towards Jason and Medea with all due speed ¡ª

    But Jason¡¯s wound had already begun to glow, and a miasma of raw power oozed out of him like a physical force. He flesh bubbled and bulged, inflating, growing larger and thicker in a way that we had only seen one time before, when Lev turned into Flauros.

    ¡°Holy Grail,¡± Medea the younger said, and it sounded like an incantation or a prayer, ¡°vessel of desires, granter of wishes, manifest before me and grant my wish.¡±

    ¡°Graaaaaaah¡­!¡±

    Jason¡¯s groan tore out of his throat with a tortured rumble, and his body had already expanded to twice its natural size. When A¨ªfe smashed into him fist-first, his skin ruptured like an overfilled water balloon, spilling a brackish ichor that I could smell even from so far away ¡ª and as though that was what allowed it to break free, his flesh started to tear, revealing ¡ª

    ¡°Oh god,¡± Rika whispered. ¡°No. It¡¯s another one of those things!¡±

    ¡ª leathery black skin, writhing and growing and merging together. A¨ªfe leapt back and away from it as it got larger, returning back to our group, and the thing got ever bigger, expanding outwards and upwards, growing large, ruby-like orbs ¡ª eyes ¡ª that spiraled up along its length. Soon enough, the leathery black skin grew too tight, and around the eyes, rifts split open, revealing raw, red flesh beneath the surface.

    ¡°M-magical energy reaction!¡± Mash shouted. ¡°Senpai¡­ That thing, it¡¯s just like the one back in Septem!¡±

    ¡°By the gods,¡± Atalanta muttered, ¡°what is that thing?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no question about it now,¡± said King David, who had returned from watching the Ark almost without me noticing. Bradamante, who had gone with him, did a double take and gaped up at the monstrous form of Forneus. ¡°What Medea told us earlier, it¡¯s the truth. That thing¡­ Without a doubt, it can only be one of Solomon¡¯s seventy-two demons.¡±

    Bigger, and bigger, and bigger, it grew, until it had consumed the whole town and towered over us, reaching up towards the sky. Twisting, turning, it was so big that it should have collapsed under its own weight, but it gave no indication at all that such a puny consideration as physics meant anything to it ¡ª and, of course, that should have been expected. This was no less deviant than Flauros. It had nonstandard biology, did not have to care about what we thought it should or shouldn¡¯t be able to do.

    ¡°It¡¯s even bigger than Flauros,¡± Ritsuka breathed.

    ¡°Master,¡± Bradamante began, ¡°you fought something like this before? Th-this was the enemy at the end of the last Singularity?¡±

    ¡°The fuck?¡± Jeanne Alter shouted. ¡°What the fuck is that thing? It¡¯s fucking huge! And gross!¡±

    ¡°Oh dear,¡± said Artemis. ¡°Do you see, Darling? This is why I had to, um, replace you when you were summoned! I can¡¯t even bear the thought of you facing something like this on your own!¡±

    ¡°H-hey!¡± squawked Orion. ¡°You know, you realize, if you¡¯d just come here as yourself, you could flatten this thing in no time! W-wouldn¡¯t that have been a better idea?¡±

    ¡°But then I wouldn¡¯t have been able to stay with you!¡±

    ¡°I think there are more important things to think about here!¡±

    ¡°Just like before,¡± A¨ªfe said solemnly, ¡°the Grail¡¯s inside that thing, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°It is.¡±

    And just like last time, the only way to retrieve it would be ¡ª

    ¡°So we¡¯re going to have to cut it down to size, just like Flauros,¡± Arash said.

    ¡°Fuck!¡± said Drake. ¡°You lot have seen something like that before? Fuck me!¡±

    ¡°Only once,¡± I answered.

    ¡°Wait!¡± She threw herself against the crenellations, looking down at the town below that was no longer there, consumed by Forneus¡¯ bulk. ¡°Shit! Bombe! Are you scumbags still down there? FUCK! My crew, my ship!¡±

    ¡°Oh, crap!¡± said Rika, panicking. ¡°I-I forgot they were still down there!¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t need to worry,¡± I told them both. ¡°The crew boarded the Hind and set sail towards one of the other islands the instant they saw what was happening.¡±

    Smart of them, considering. I would¡¯ve thought they might try something ridiculously brave, like sailing out to fight Forneus with nothing but ordinary cannons. It seemed they had more sense than I gave them credit for.

    ¡°They did?¡± Drake looked ready to collapse, such was the intensity of her relief. She sagged away from the battlements. ¡°Damn. Bombe, you sly old bastard! I¡¯m gonna kiss you next time I see you!¡±

    ¡°So how do we deal with this thing?¡± asked Atalanta, staring up at the grotesque tower of flesh that had finally stopped growing. ¡°Since you seem to know what it is and how it works.¡±

    ¡°Destroy it faster than it regenerates.¡±

    She glanced at me askance. ¡°That simple, is it?¡±

    A¨ªfe huffed a chuckle. ¡°Simple, she calls it. The previous one of these was a monster that took a hit from Caladbolg and still came back nearly instantly. This one is even larger and more monstrous. It may not go down quite so easily.¡± Her grin fell away. ¡°Master. If I¡¯m going to try what worked last time, I¡¯ll only have enough for one attempt.¡±

    ¡°Do it,¡± Ritsuka ordered before I could. ¡°If we can end this with a single attack ¡ª¡±

    ¡°GRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH.¡±

    The entire island shook and rumbled as thunder rolled, drowning out whatever it was Ritsuka had been about to say, and it vibrated down to my bones so intensely that I was nearly thrown off my feet. The others gave shouts and yelps of surprise, but I couldn¡¯t hear any of them, only see their mouths open, because the echoing boom bored into my eardrums just too loudly. The brickwork beneath us quivered and threatened to break apart, and out in the shallows, waves rose and rippled out to sea.

    And then it ended, and silence filled the space it had left with a ringing weight. It took me an extra second ¡ª more than it should have ¡ª to realize it was the sound of the Demon God¡¯s groan.

    That was all it had done. Groan. And just that much had nearly been enough to blow out my eardrums and shake the whole fort apart under us.

    ¡°Holy shit,¡± Rika breathed, ¡°that felt like a solid six-point-five!¡±

    ¡°M-Magical energy reaction,¡± Mash stammered disbelievingly. ¡°Master, there was enough magical energy just in its voice to match an A-Rank Noble Phantasm!¡±

    The Demon God¡¯s eyes suddenly flashed, one after the other, and fire exploded up in the air above us like fireworks. Flash ¡ª boom ¡ª flash ¡ª boom ¡ª flash ¡ª boom, in rapid succession, in all of the most random of places.

    ¡°The hell is it doing?¡± Drake demanded, squinting against the light.

    ¡°More magical energy reactions,¡± Mash said, something like horror in her voice. ¡°Senpai¡­ I think¡­ Each one of its eyes is a Mystic Eye!¡±

    Ritsuka sucked in a breath. ¡°Oh.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± indeed. That wasn¡¯t good.

    ¡°For the rest of us!¡± Drake hollered.

    ¡°It means that it just has to look at us to cast a spell,¡± Atalanta answered for me. ¡°The instant it turns its eyes on you, it can set you on fire.¡± She smiled grimly. ¡°And it has a lot of eyes, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s cheating!¡± Rika whined.

    ¡°Fuck yeah, it is!¡± Jeanne Alter agreed. Complained, more like. ¡°Why don¡¯t I have a set of super special eyes like that? That would be fucking ¡ª¡±

    ¡°UNFORGIVABLE,¡± Forneus rumbled, cutting her off. I had to slap my hands over my ears just to keep from being deafened. ¡°UNFORGIVABLE. YOU PESTS AND YOUR INSOLENCE¡­ARE TRULY UNFORGIVABLE!¡±

    Every single one of its eyes that could turned towards us, and the instant I realized its intent, I pulled up every bug I could and threw it between us and Forneus.

    ¡°Mash!¡± I shouted, feeling like I was screaming into a hurricane.

    Mash was a step ahead of me, having no doubt realized the same thing I did, and she planted her shield in between the ¡®teeth¡¯ of the crenellations, facing outwards. Bracing herself against the fort beneath her feet, she summoned what sounded like every ounce of breath in her body and shouted, ¡°LORD ¡ª¡±

    ¡°PERISH.¡±

    ¡°¡ª CHALDEAS!¡±

    The Demon God¡¯s eyes flashed, all of them at once. The bright blue rampart of Mash¡¯s Noble Phantasm built itself into existence rapidly, forming a protective barrier between us and Forneus. A black cloud, a swarm of flying insects as large as I could make it in the time I had, rose up in front of Lord Chaldeas, like a layer of ablative armor.

    In an instant, it was seared away, and they all disappeared from my grasp. A flash of light and heat erupted against the surface of Lord Chaldeas, sending a shockwave through the entire fort that threatened to throw us all to the ground and a blast of hot air that whipped my hair about my face, and Mash let out a cry of alarm as her one foot slid backwards, forcing her to bend over to keep from slipping.

    But when it was over a moment later, we were all still standing, and Lord Chaldeas was undamaged. We¡¯d made it through unharmed.

    Enormous cannons suddenly began to form in the air behind Forneus, ghastly and ghostly, dripping seaweed from their barrels, and a rickety, half-decayed wreck of a ship pulled itself up from the water in a spray of mist. As one, they belched smoke and fire, and their cannonballs smashed against Forneus with echoing booms and wet squelches ¡ª to almost no effect. They didn¡¯t even manage to break the leathery skin.

    ¡°PATHETIC NUISANCE,¡± Forneus rumbled. ¡°BEGONE. TAKE THY PALTRY AUTHORITY BACK TO THE GRAVE.¡±

    Its eyes turned away from us long enough to swivel towards the ghost ship ¡ª towards the so-called Davy Jones, who must¡¯ve been the one commanding it ¡ª and one after another, they flashed again. The staccato of rippling explosions tore through the air, and we couldn¡¯t do anything but watch as they blasted the ship to pieces, one chunk after another, until the charred, flaming remains collapsed into the sea. In the air, the phantom cannons flickered, and then vanished.

    It wasn¡¯t much of one, but it was an opening. The least we could do to repay him was take advantage of it.

    ¡°A¨ªfe!¡±

    Her name hadn¡¯t even finished leaving my mouth before she was taking off, flying up over Mash as she cocked her fist back. That familiar feeling of being dragged into a point held in her hand overtook me again, growing and growing until it reached the level it had when she struck down Flauros. The ponderous, inexorable gravity of it seemed to pull the fabric of reality along with it.

    And then she swung her fist forward, and the entire world shook.

    ¡°TORANNCHLESS!¡±

    BOOM

    The eponymous Thunder Feat was let loose. The air cracked and howled. In an instant, an enormous chunk the size of a whole house disappeared from the Demon God¡¯s tentacle body, taking one or two of his eyes with it, and the water in the shallows erupted into a geyser as the leftover force smashed into the sea. Brackish black ichor fountained out of the hole and showered the entire island ¡ª us included.

    ¡°Oh, this is so gross!¡± Rika shrieked.

    Forneus shuddered and shook. A high-pitched, keening wail echoed out across the entire archipelago, drilling into my ears, and I had to slap my hands over them again just to keep from being deafened again. An icepick pounded into my head on either side, the beginnings of a migraine that I could feel coming on, and I squeezed my eyes shut as though that could stop it before it started.

    Eventually, the shrieking faded, although I couldn¡¯t have said why or how, since it didn¡¯t have lungs to run out of air. My ears rang in the aftermath, to the point I felt more than heard A¨ªfe land back amongst us heavily. A glance showed her fuzzy around the edges, barely holding onto her form. That Thunder Feat had drained her almost dry.

    And Forneus himself¡­was already filling in the hole she¡¯d left behind. At first, slowly, much more slowly than Flauros had, and I thought for a second that maybe all of that extra bulk made it harder for him to heal his wounds when he only had access to the same amount of power Flauros had, and then, without warning, it accelerated and the damage disappeared like evaporating steam.

    Damn it.

    ¡°WRETCHED FILTH! VILE VERMIN! HOW DARE YOU!¡±

    Master, Arash said urgently, just now, Medea, the younger version, she cast a spell. The reason Forneus recovered so quickly, it¡¯s because she¡¯s healing him!

    My heart skipped a beat. That meant I was right, didn¡¯t it?

    Take her out! I ordered against the pounding in my skull.

    As swiftly as I gave the order, Arash nocked an arrow, took quick aim at something I couldn¡¯t see, and let it fly. Forneus¡¯ gaze was suddenly on him, watching the path the arrow took ¡ª

    ¡°NO!¡±

    ¡ª and a burst of fire ignited midair, trying to stop it, but it was too late and too slow. The arrow flew true, too fast to be knocked off course that easily, curving around Forneus¡¯ bulk, and I watched through my remaining bugs¡¯ eyes as Medea the younger turned at the last possible second ¡ª and the arrow punched straight into her chest. She collapsed to the ground, bleeding profusely. She didn¡¯t stand back up again.

    ¡°UNFORGIVABLE!¡± Forneus thundered. ¡°UNFORGIVABLE! I SHALL NEVER FORGIVE THIS TRESPASS, YOU SCUM!¡±

    All of its eyes turned towards us again, and anticipating what was coming, Mash braced herself and her shield, and she cried out a second time, ¡°LORD CHALDEAS!¡±

    Once more, a blast of light and heat detonated against the glowing blue rampart of her Noble Phantasm, and a wash of hot air whipped across the curtain wall where we stood, but nothing else. The island shuddered beneath us, and I felt it vibrating through my body ¡ª a second later, I realized what it was: a growl so low that it was actually inaudible to the human ear.

    Every single one of Forneus¡¯ eyes began to glow, and the gathering magical energy was so enormous that I could feel it condensing in front of us completely unaided, like a thick tar that was oozing into the air.

    ¡°HARKEN ¡ª¡±

    BOOM

    The air shuddered again, and Forneus jerked as something smashed into it from behind. Concentration broken, its eyes turned around, looking for what had dared to interrupt it.

    ¡°WHAT?¡±

    ¡°Is that¡­?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Behind Forneus, the Whydah Gally sailed into the archipelago, cannons smoking and ready to fight.

 Chapter CIX: From the Depths

    Chapter CIX: From the Depths

    ¡°Way to go, Sam!¡± Drake hollered. ¡°Show that bastard what it means to be a pirate!¡±

    BOOM

    Even with Forneus¡¯ attention now solely on him, Bellamy did not turn around and retreat. He kept up his attack, and his cannons belched smoke and flame and black iron death without pause or hesitation. As though his very life depended on it, he continued his unflinching assault, firing over and over and over again.

    ¡°Fuck yeah!¡± crowed Drake.

    BOOM-BOOM-BOOM

    Forneus¡¯ black flesh ripped and tore as more cannonballs smashed into its body, gouging away chunks of its body. The rapid staccato of the Whydah Gally¡¯s cannons echoed, and yet more cannonballs exploded against Forneus¡¯ twisting body and massive eyes, and each one dealt even more damage. Paltry, perhaps, compared to something like A¨ªfe¡¯s Thunder Feat that obliterated everything in front of it in one go, and Forneus was slowly healing it all even as it accumulated, but it wasn¡¯t nothing.

    ¡°YOU WRETCH!¡± roared Forneus.

    If he said anything in reply, Bellamy was too far away for me to hear, and it didn¡¯t really matter anyway. Bellamy had distracted Forneus, and that gave us an opening to work with.

    ¡°EVERYONE!¡± I shouted. ¡°THIS IS IT! GIVE IT EVERYTHING YOU¡¯VE GOT!¡±

    ¡°Yes!¡± said Atalanta. She pulled back on her bow, nocking two arrows again, and aimed straight up into the sky. ¡°I offer these arrows to the twin gods, Artemis and Apollo! Phoebus Catastrophe!¡±

    The two arrows went up, and an instant later, down came a rain of light. Like a meteor shower, they descended upon Forneus, carving away grooves of its flesh and even popping one or two of its enormous eyes. Forneus shrieked, high pitched and grating, but the noise cut off before I could even slap my hands over my ears as more cannonballs slammed into it and compounded the damage from Atalanta¡¯s Noble Phantasm.

    Arash joined in a moment later, firing volley after volley of his own arrows. They didn¡¯t do nearly as much as Atalanta¡¯s, just because they were regular arrows instead of a Noble Phantasm, but I realized, after a second, that he was specifically targeting the injuries that were already there instead of trying to open new ones.

    It was hard to tell how effective it was, but even if all it did was keep those wounds open, that was enough.

    ¡°Well, goodness,¡± said Artemis, ¡°if even little Atalanta is getting into this, it looks like I don¡¯t have any other choice!¡±

    ¡°You got that right!¡± Orion told her. ¡°Now hurry up! Fire it off! We need to kill this thing before Apollo decides to take notice and show up!¡±

    She just smiled, not the least bit concerned.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Darling! I¡¯ll protect you from everything, even my big brother!¡±

    Artemis pulled back on her own bowstring, and the arrow that formed grew strange, curling protrusions from the head that matched the curve of her bow. She took aim at the nearest eye, the one that was level with the curtain wall and so close that it dominated my field of view.

    ¡°This is the proof of my love, made manifest! Tri-star Amore Mio!¡±

    The arrow took off like a rocket and became a streak of pale blue color. Before I could even see it leap from her bow, it had already scythed through that enormous eye, boring a hole into Forneus body that was big enough to drive a car through. Black ichor spouted from the wound, spurting all about and splattering across the battlements and our shoes.

    This was going to be a pain in the ass to wash out, I was willing to bet. Da Vinci was probably going to file a formal complaint when she found out.

    ¡°Well, hell!¡± Morgan laughed, grinning broadly. ¡°This is the end of it, isn¡¯t it? Guess there¡¯s no more reason to be holding back, is there? Might as well put all my cards on the table!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯m talking about!¡± said Drake, answering his grin with one of her own. ¡°Hey, Morgan, that fleet of yours worth a damn, or is it all just for show?¡±

    Morgan cackled. ¡°You know what they say, Captain!¡±

    Up in the air around us, particles of light shimmered, coalescing into the familiar shapes of the fleet of ships that had greeted us when we came down to this archipelago. Just like the Whydah had when we chased Blackbeard, just as the Queen Anne¡¯s Revenge had when Blackbeard ambushed us and took off with Euryale, they sailed the winds just as surely and just as easily as they did the waters below. Eyeballing it, there must have been something like fifty ships in total, each of them a galleon fit for war and loaded for battle.

    Morgan strode quickly over to the edge of the rampart and planted one foot between the ¡°teeth¡± of the crenellations, taking up his iconic pose.

    ¡°Take a man¡¯s measure through his actions!¡±

    He jabbed one finger at Forneus. ¡°Now, you so-called Demon God, see for yourself the might of Captain Morgan¡¯s Expeditionary Fleet!¡±

    Several of the ships caught fire, set ablaze for no apparent reason, and of those that didn¡¯t, every single cannon swiveled and turned towards Forneus. The sizzle of what had to be nearly a thousand fuses hissed.

    ¡°Fire!¡±

    BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM

    Morgan¡¯s fleet of ships joined the Whydah in bombardment, and the ones that had caught fire tilted and sailed forward, collapsing in on Forneus and slamming into it with the crack of splintering wood. Where they collided, Forneus caught fire himself, and it clung to the wounds unnaturally, like tar or oil, and continued to burn. The cannonballs from both the Whydah and the fleet ripped into it all the while, tearing out great chunks in sprays of black ichor that seeped into the water and stained the island.

    ¡°PESTS!¡± shrieked Forneus. ¡°VERMIN! INSOLENT WRETCHES! HOW DARE YOU!¡±

    One by one, its eyes flashed, and the remaining ships of Morgan¡¯s fleet ¡ª the ones that weren¡¯t supposed to be ¡ª were set ablaze. With us, Morgan reeled, flinching as though he had taken a strong blow to the gut, but an instant later, he caught his second wind and snarled, ¡°I¡¯m not done yet!¡±

    Beneath our feet, the fuses of the fort¡¯s cannons lit once more, and with Forneus in the way, I couldn¡¯t see them, but the cannons in the other forts throughout the rest of the archipelago must have as well.

    ¡°Port Royal Cannonade!¡±

    The thunderous roar of more cannons echoed, and the entire fort beneath us seemed to shake under our feet as the ones below went off, too. From all sides, the bombardment continued, and Forneus jerked under each one landing as they all ripped into flesh that hadn¡¯t even finished healing yet. Larger and larger chunks started disappearing from its body, eyes popping under the pressure of the assault, and a veritable flood of ichor flowed from its wounds.

    And it still wasn¡¯t enough. Forneus twitched and jerked under each hit, spraying yet more ichor all over, but appeared no closer to being defeated. If we could have kept up an assault like that, I think it would have eventually been enough, just based upon the amount of damage we were doing.

    But it wasn¡¯t, and we couldn¡¯t. Morgan kept it up for as long as he could, but that was his third use of his Noble Phantasms in less than an hour, and he had no backup from one of us Masters to keep him going. Eventually, inevitably, he had to stop, panting, his face beaded with sweat from the effort, because if he pushed himself too far and ran himself dry, then the fort beneath our feet would disappear and drop us onto the island.

    Bellamy, too, stopped firing, although whether that was because he was running low on energy as well or just because he was waiting for his cue to start up again, I had no way of knowing. In the next Singularity, I think I was going to have to be more insistent about forming contracts with the stray Servants, even if they were only temporary ones.

    A lull developed in the aftermath. The haze of smoke from Morgan¡¯s cannons drifted lazily upwards, leaving behind a thin smog that burned my nostrils and made me want to cough. Rika, face twisted into a grimace, tried to wave it away with a hand, to not much success, and Ritsuka hid his nose and mouth in the elbow of his sleeve, squinting and eyes watering.

    ¡°Damn it.¡±

    The remains of Morgan¡¯s fleet flickered and vanished. He himself looked on the verge of unraveling at the seams, such was the amount of energy he¡¯d used up to bombard Forneus with everything he had, and whether he was holding on through sheer tenacity or if he had some trick that was letting him replenish himself, somehow, he was staying solid.

    The problem was, so was Forneus. It was pockmarked with pits and holes, missing what had to be almost half of its flesh and several of its eyes, and it had taken enough damage to make even Herakles flinch, but it was still standing. Its wounds were slowly filling back in, restoring the missing flesh, and the eyes it had lost were slowly being replaced.

    Morgan gritted his teeth. ¡°All of that, and it still stands, does it?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s sturdier than the last one,¡± Arash noted.

    ¡°Fucker just doesn¡¯t know when to quit,¡± Jeanne Alter agreed. ¡°Damn. That bastard just takes everything we can throw at him, doesn¡¯t he? Shit!¡±

    ¡°What else can we do?¡± said Bradamante. ¡°Queen A¨ªfe has already struck it, and now so have Sir Bellamy and Sir Morgan, and even Lady Artemis¡¯ Noble Phantasm wasn¡¯t able to defeat it. No offense to King David ¡ª¡±

    ¡°None taken,¡± King David said. ¡°You¡¯re right, I don¡¯t have anything that would do more than make that thing flinch. The Ark might be enough to finish it, but moving it is too much of a pain, and I don¡¯t have any method of throwing it Forneus¡¯ way. And, uh, I¡¯m not sure I want to know what¡¯ll happen if the Holy Grail that thing has makes contact with the Ark. Nothing good, I want to say.¡±

    Because, of course, it would have been too convenient if it was that easy.

    ¡°¡ª and I don¡¯t think my own Noble Phantasm will do much,¡± Bradamante went on.

    ¡°Is there aught else you might attempt?¡±

    I wasn¡¯t the only one who was startled and nearly jumped out of my skin, whirling about to find a familiar gaunt face among our group. How had he snuck up on us? On me?

    ¡°Davy Jones!¡± Rika squeaked.

    Atalanta, Artemis, and Arash had also turned, aiming his way with all of their bows drawn and arrows nocked. He ignored them completely.

    ¡°Have you nothing else?¡± Davy Jones asked. ¡°No more tactics you might utilize against this foul creature?¡±

    I glanced A¨ªfe¡¯s way, and she was flickering, like she was mere moments away from vanishing, then down at my Command Spells, and then again over at Jeanne Alter. Already, a few ideas were percolating in my brain. No, we hadn¡¯t exhausted all of our options yet. Even if we had to get a little more desperate, we could still call Siegfried back here a second time and have him use Balmung once or twice, and if that still wasn¡¯t enough, then I would start worrying in earnest.

    ¡°A few.¡±

    Davy Jones bobbed his seaweed-covered head. ¡°Then I shall provide you an opening. It will be up to you, champions of proper history, to ensure it is used to its utmost.¡±

    With this message delivered, he melted, quite literally. His body just¡­collapsed into a puddle of water, and Rika recoiled away from it as it spread across the brickwork.

    ¡°Ew,¡± she said. ¡°If I accidentally step in that, am I stepping on soul juice?¡±

    Orion eyed the puddle with similar unease. ¡°Pretty sure that¡¯s just regular water, but I¡¯m still not gonna touch it.¡±

    ¡°Do we trust him?¡± Arash asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure we have much of a choice,¡± I said.

    ¡°Whatever you¡¯re planning, make it quick,¡± A¨ªfe warned. ¡°I¡¯ve barely enough energy to maintain my form, and even that won¡¯t last much longer.¡±

    I opened my mouth to start explaining.

    ¡°HAVE YOU EXHAUSTED YOURSELVES, WORMS?¡± Forneus thundered. ¡°IF YOUR ARSENAL HAS RUN DRY, THEN STAY THERE AND DIE, LIKE THE VERMIN YOU ARE. HARKEN ¡ª¡±

    BOOM

    And another cannonball slammed into Forneus. Several of its remaining eyes swiveled around, focusing on the Whydah as Bellamy fired off more shots ¡ª BOOM, BOOM, BOOM ¡ª to keep its attention off of us.

    Forneus¡¯ patience, however, seemed to have run out entirely.

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    ¡°I TIRE OF YOUR PERSISTENT MEDDLING! BEGONE, WRETCH!¡±

    The eyes flashed, all at once. A rumbling, deafening BOOM echoed across the whole archipelago, and off on the other side of Forneus, the Whydah exploded in a shower of splinters and flame. Jagged wooden planks and tattered scraps of canvas splashed into the water, the only remains left behind. Moments later, a wash of heat kissed my cheeks.

    Drake threw herself against the battlements again. ¡°SAM!¡±

    ¡°Sam!¡± shouted Ritsuka and Rika.

    ¡°Damn it,¡± said Atalanta.

    There was no reply. At this distance, it wasn¡¯t possible to make out fine details, but even just with what I could see, there was no sign of Sam Bellamy amongst the wreckage of his ship. Not even his hat.

    ¡°Is he¡­?¡± I muttered to Arash.

    ¡°I don¡¯t see him,¡± Arash replied just as quietly. It was as good as confirmation.

    It felt cheap. Sam had been with us against Blackbeard, and he¡¯d made it through all the rest of the stuff that had tried to kill us since we met up with him. He¡¯d managed to hold out long enough to chase after Blackbeard, then after Hektor, and then he¡¯d brought us down here to the archipelago without a break in-between, and after all of that, a giant tentacle with some special eyes did him in.

    ¡°SUCH IS THE DESTINY OF THOSE WHO STAND AGAINST MY KING.¡±

    ¡°Bastard!¡± Drake snarled. She pulled one of her pistols free and snapped off a shot at Forneus, but with her Grail still in Arash¡¯s possession, it didn¡¯t even penetrate. ¡°Fuck your king and fuck his horse, too! And fuck you most of all!¡±

    She tried to fire again, but she didn¡¯t have unlimited ammunition anymore, so her pistol just clicked uselessly. I didn¡¯t have it in me to tell her it was pointless.

    ¡°YOUR RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, AND YOUR PATHETIC ATTACKS IMPOTENT. IT IS NO USE. NOW, HARKEN, FOR THE TIME OF THE DRIFTING ¡ª¡±

    And from out of the sea behind it, a ship appeared, surfacing like a whale from water that really was too shallow to have hidden it. Forneus¡¯ eyes snapped towards it.

    ¡°WHAT?¡±

    It wasn¡¯t just any ship either. It was a galley, with oars jutting out from either side and a patterns of gold along the rails and the edges of the decks. The mainsail was a royal blue, and stitched into it was the image of a red dragon, large and dominating. Stripes of the same blue color ran horizontally across the hull, making the gold accents all the more eye-catching.

    ¡°The hell?¡± said Drake, confused.

    ¡°Is that¡­¡± breathed Ritsuka.

    ¡°The Whydah!¡± Rika exclaimed excitedly. ¡°That¡¯s Sam!¡±

    Was it? I had my doubts about that, for a number of reasons, including the fact that we¡¯d just seen the Whydah get sunk. It was still too far away for my regular human eyes to see so I could tell for sure, but¡­

    I turned my head minutely to look over at Arash, and as though he sensed my eyes on him, he gave his head a tiny shake, confirming my suspicions. It was as I¡¯d thought then. Even if that actually was the Whydah Gally and not some lookalike, and that was already a bit of a stretch, the one at the helm definitely wasn¡¯t Bellamy.

    ¡°He survived!¡± Mash breathed, relieved. ¡°Thank goodness!¡±

    Drake grinned. ¡°Tougher than I gave him credit for, he is!¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Atalanta, dashing their hopes. ¡°That¡¯s not Sam Bellamy.¡±

    More ships burst out of the water one after the other, all of them different, all of them from different eras. From ancient things that looked like they belonged in Classical Greece to galleons straight out of the Golden Age of Piracy all the way to ironclads from the Civil War, they all came up out of the water like a pod of surfacing whales, wet and soaked and streaming water from every available porthole. Those that had cannons opened up their gunports, and like a pack of hunting orcas, they maneuvered around to encircle their prey.

    Each ship was manned by phantoms, just like Morgan¡¯s Port Royal, and leading the whole thing, captaining a familiar ghastly ship that looked as though it had sailed straight out of a maritime ghost story, there he was. Davy Jones.

    Fuck it, I was just going to go with it. If we were all wrong and he was some other Heroic Spirit, we could worry about that later.

    ¡°It¡¯s our new friend.¡±

    ¡°Then,¡± Ritsuka began, ¡°that means that Sam¡­¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Ritsuka,¡± said Arash. ¡°I don¡¯t see him.¡±

    Drake¡¯s grin turned into a snarl. ¡°Bastard! Now it¡¯s personal! No one touches my crew and gets away with it!¡±

    ¡°Yeah!¡± Rika agreed. ¡°Let¡¯s make takoyaki out of this son of a bitch!¡±

    ¡°Easier said than done!¡± yelped Orion.

    ¡°INSOLENT WRETCH,¡± rumbled Forneus. ¡°DO YOU BELIEVE MERE NUMBERS ENOUGH TO DEFEAT ME? VERY WELL. BRING AS MANY AS YOU LIKE. I WILL CRUSH EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THESE MEAGER HOPES YOU CULTIVATE, SO THAT YOU MAY DIE IN DESPAIR!¡±

    BOOM was the resounding report of the first shot, and as though that was a signal for all the rest, the other ships opened fire as well, all together, like a symphony. The echo of their cannonfire rent the air, sending the brickwork beneath us aquiver and shuddering through my already abused eardrums.

    The first cannonball crashed into Forneus and ripped out another chunk of flesh, and so did the ones that followed. One after the other, they landed, gouging out hunk after hunk from the giant tentacle, and the wounds that had been healing up were torn back open violently, spraying yet more black ichor all over.

    But I noticed almost immediately that it was less effective than Morgan¡¯s, that these shots were dealing less damage to Forneus, and it only took me a second to realize why: this wasn¡¯t a Noble Phantasm. These cannonballs could hurt Forneus and any other Servant by virtue of the fact that Davy Jones was commanding the ships and using them as his own personal armada, but otherwise, there was nothing special about them. They were otherwise ordinary cannonballs fired from otherwise ordinary cannons.

    Because Davy Jones wasn¡¯t a naval commander, he never had been. That wasn¡¯t his legend. He was a psychopomp. He could call on each of these ships because ¡ª if he really was Davy Jones ¡ª all of these ships had sunk at some point, and therefore fell under his domain as something just shy of a sea god, but none of them was his Noble Phantasm.

    ¡°HOW QUAINT.¡±

    One of Forneus¡¯ remaining eyes flashed, and with a crack, one of the ships in Davy Jones impromptu fleet caught fire as a large chunk of its deck exploded into splinters and shrapnel. Another eye flashed, and a second ship cracked open and was set ablaze, flames spreading with unnatural speed over the wood and catching several phantom crew in the crossfire. A third flash hit a third ship, and then a fourth smashed open a fourth.

    And Davy Jones was well aware of his limitations. That was why this was only meant as a distraction from the beginning, and why he¡¯d only promised to provide an opening. He was doing just that.

    Which meant it was up to us to finish this off and bring it home.

    ¡°A¨ªfe!¡± Her attention snapped over to me as I held out my hand, the symbols on the back aglow. ¡°By the power of this Command Spell, use this energy to activate your Noble Phantasm, Ochd Deug Odin!¡±

    With a flash, one of the strokes of my Command Spells faded into a smudge, and A¨ªfe¡¯s form solidified some more, gaining definition around the edges. She offered me a cold, shark-toothed grin. ¡°Yes, Master!¡±

    ¡°Super Action Mom!¡± Rika added, burning through one of her own Command Spells. ¡°Do what Senpai says and blast that tentacle monster to kingdom come!¡±

    A flash of red light, and one of the strokes of Rika¡¯s Command Spells faded away, too. A¨ªfe laughed, delighted. ¡°Of course!¡±

    She took off like a rocket, kicking off of the curtain wall so quickly that she was nothing more than a vague maroon blur. She hit what little ground still remained below us, then leapt onwards, leaving behind a shining, burning rune carved into the dirt. Next, she landed on one of the ships Davy Jones had summoned, this one an ancient looking thing that had no cannons to fire and so really seemed only to exist to fill out the ranks or add fodder to the fleet, and on the deck, she left behind another rune.

    Like that, she started bouncing from ship to ship, leaping from one to the other and finding strategically advantageous places to leave a rune that worked best for her Noble Phantasm.

    Of course, she couldn¡¯t remain unnoticed forever. Even with Davy Jones distracting it, Forneus had too many eyes not to see her going and realize that something was afoot. No amount of wishful thinking could hide her from sight.

    ¡°I THINK NOT!¡± Forneus thundered. ¡°DO YOU BELIEVE ME BLIND? FOOL!¡±

    The only question was, would a Noble Phantasm designed to work against people work on something like Forneus? There was only one way we were going to find out.

    ¡°Bradamante!¡±

    But before I could order her to use her Noble Phantasm to keep Forneus distracted long enough for A¨ªfe to finish, another figure in red kicked off of the rampart with us and soared like a bullet through the air, straight towards Forneus.

    ¡°I won¡¯t let you!¡±

    Hippolyta, of all people, swung her fist around, and with a crack like thunder, threw a punch directly at Forneus. It connected with the meatiest smack I¡¯d ever heard, and against all sense and reason, defying the laws of physics completely, her tiny hand, curled into a ball, delivered so much force at once that Forneus actually recoiled. The crack of her punch landing was almost as thunderous as Morgan¡¯s cannons.

    She flew backwards and touched back down on one of the crenellations¡¯ teeth, and her feet had barely made contact before she leapt away again, rebounding like a rubber ball. She shot towards Forneus again, spinning midair to gain momentum, and when she got up close, she lashed out with a bone-shattering roundhouse kick that would have made any master martial artist pause to take a moment and appreciate it.

    And Forneus recoiled again, ruined body contorting and wriggling from the sheer power behind the blow. Bare moments later, the crack of her leg smashing into it reached my ears, followed shortly by Forneus¡¯ startled shriek.

    What the hell? Was she capable of doing this the entire time?

    ¡°Holy shit,¡± said Rika. ¡°Chuck Norris would¡¯ve been jealous of that one!¡±

    As Hippolyta landed on one of Davy Jones¡¯ ships, I honed in on her with my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance ¡ª and my eyebrows rose towards my hairline.

    ¡°How did she do that?¡±

    Her stats had all skyrocketed. Strength, Agility, Constitution ¡ª each and every one of them had all gone up at least one rank, and even her Divinity had increased. In fact, as I was looking, it ticked up another rank, and the petite young woman gained a weight, a presence to her that she hadn¡¯t had before. The whole world seemed to watch as she kicked off again, rocketing like a missile back towards Forneus, and when her fist made contact, the fabric of space itself seemed to ripple as its body jerked beneath the blow.

    ¡°One of the reasons why none of us suggested simply killing Euryale as a method of stopping Jason¡¯s plan,¡± Atalanta said, seeming to understand what I was asking. ¡°There were simply too many alternatives that would make it moot. Caenis alone would have been enough, if she pushed her Saint Graph that far, and if not Caenis, then even Hippolyta could have been a candidate for sacrifice.¡±

    She might as well have spelled it out for me.

    ¡°She¡¯s becoming a god.¡±

    That was why everything about her was increasing. Why her presence was becoming heavy enough that I could feel it, that it was almost a tangible force. She was becoming more than a mere Servant, and unlike Artemis, who had to squeeze herself into Orion¡¯s Saint Graph, or Euryale and Stheno, who were so weak that being a Servant was technically an upgrade, Hippolyta had started strong and was going to become stronger.

    ¡°Divine Spirit, technically,¡± said King David.

    ¡°That¡¯s something you can do?¡± Rika asked incredulously.

    King David shook his head. ¡°Not normally, no. But¡­she was already a demigod. With that Noble Phantasm of hers, she can push past the realm of a Heroic Spirit and ascend¡­although how long she¡¯ll last like that, I couldn¡¯t say.¡±

    Hippolyta came around for another earth-shaking blow, and between her and Davy Jones¡¯ fleet, A¨ªfe had more than enough distraction to flit about and find the ideal place to plant the runes needed for Ochd Deug Odin. It was just taking her longer than it had against Romulus by virtue of the fact that Forneus was big enough to dwarf not just Flauros, but the entire imperial palace.

    ¡°ENOUGH!¡± thundered Forneus, and once more, its eyes began flashing, and explosions of heat and flame and force ripped across the air around him like a shield. By sheer volume, one of them managed to catch Hippolyta, setting her ablaze, and she was thrown into the brackish water of the polluted shallows below.

    ¡°I TIRE OF YOUR INSOLENCE! YOU, ALL OF YOU, SHALL RUE THE VERY DAY YOU CAME INTO THIS WORLD!¡±

    Magical energy began to gather, rapidly swelling, and out on the water, spots of light started to glow. Forneus quivered with the effort, still being slammed by shots from Davy Jones and his fleet, but didn¡¯t flinch or stop, even as bits of flesh were torn out of its tattered, pitted body.

    A¨ªfe! I said urgently.

    Her reply was terse. Almost¡­!

    ¡°HARKEN! THE TIME OF THE DRIFTING HATH COME!¡±

    Forneus¡¯ remaining eyes flashed. The spots of light grew brighter, and then beams, pillars of searing white shot up towards the sky with a loud, scintillating buzz that vibrated through my bones. Shouts of alarm sounded from the others around me, and I had to turn away and shield my eyes from the glare to stop from being blinded. A wash of hot air whipped my hair about and scorched my cheeks. Any bugs I still had left evaporated out of my range all at once, gone so suddenly that the shock of it nearly made me stagger.

    It ended almost as soon as it began, and when I tore my eyes open again, a panting Mash took a step back, her Noble Phantasm fading away from in front of the fort.

    Beyond her, there was nothing left of the town that had once populated the island. We and the fort behind us were the only things left of Morgan¡¯s Port Royal. Of Davy Jones and his fleet, nothing remained, nothing except some scraps of canvas and a few planks of charred wood. Every single one of his ships had been completely and utterly destroyed.

    ¡°Super Action Mom!¡± Rika shouted.

    ¡°A¨ªfe!¡± Ritsuka echoed her.

    A maroon blur suddenly shot out of the shallows and collided with Forneus with all the force of a runaway train.

    ¡°IMPOSSIBLE!¡±

    ¡°Did you think that would be enough to take me out?¡± A¨ªfe spat. One of her arms was gone completely, and half of her clothing had been burned away from her torso, leaving behind only a tattered black undershirt, but she was still alive. ¡°You¡¯re a thousand years too early to think something like that could kill me!¡±

    ¡°Fuck yeah!¡± Jeanne Alter called. ¡°Fuck him up, Super Bitch!¡±

    ¡°IMPUDENT WRETCH!¡±

    One of Forneus¡¯ eyes flashed, but another red blur smashed into him, and the blast of fire erupted some twenty feet away from A¨ªfe, completely off course.

    ¡°I, as well!¡± said Hippolyta, barely singed. ¡°We Amazons are made of tougher stuff than to be done in by a little fire!¡±

    She bounced off, falling back towards the fort and us, and like before, her feet barely touched the ground before she was off again, delivering another heavy blow that sent Forneus reeling. Opposite her, A¨ªfe did something similar, only her hits weren¡¯t nearly as devastating, because they weren¡¯t supposed to be. She was still preparing her Noble Phantasm, laying down runes like before, only this time, as though to add insult to injury, she was carving them directly into Forneus¡¯ flesh.

    ¡°Jeanne Alter,¡± Ritsuka murmured, so quiet that I almost didn¡¯t hear him. ¡°Just in case, I want you to get ready to use your Noble Phantasm.¡±

    She laughed lowly. ¡°So I can get the kill on that giant tentacle fucker? Master, don¡¯t try and get on my good side, I don¡¯t have one!¡±

    Battered from both sides, Forneus couldn¡¯t stop either of them, and without the distraction to slow her down, it was only a matter of moments for A¨ªfe to finish carving the last of the runes she needed.

    ¡°Hippolyta!¡± A¨ªfe shouted. ¡°Get clear!¡±

    Heeding her, Hippolyta rebounded from her latest attack, and instead of bouncing right back into the fight, she retreated, rejoining our group on the fort. She was glowing a little, her skin shining with an inner light, but it had worn her thin. Just from how fuzzy her body was on the edges, I wasn¡¯t sure how much longer she could have kept it up.

    On the other side of Forneus, A¨ªfe did the same.

    ¡°Mash!¡± I said urgently.

    ¡°That¡¯s your cue, Cinnabon!¡± Rika told her.

    ¡°Right!¡±

    Mash planted her shield again, took a deep breath, and shouted, ¡°LORD CHALDEAS!¡±

    The familiar blue rampart formed in front of the fort¡¯s curtain wall, just in time for A¨ªfe¡¯s voice to bellow from the other side, ¡°Ochd Deug Odin!¡±

    On Forneus¡¯ massive body, eighteen points of light lit up, and a moment later, they all ignited with a flash and a thunderous boom. Once more, I had to briefly close my eyes against it, hiding in my elbow.

    When I opened them again¡­

    ¡°No way,¡± said Rika. ¡°What does it take to kill this thing?¡±

    ¡­Forneus was still standing, an emaciated, ruined pillar of ripped, torn, and charred flesh, having lost at least half of its body mass. What remained behind was little more than a skeleton, a husk of the towering monstrosity, with all of its eyes gone and nothing left except raw, grotesque meat exposed to the open air. What hadn¡¯t been seared shut was leaking a veritable flood of black ichor.

    It wriggled. Steam rose from its wounds, and even before my eyes, I could see them starting to heal. We¡¯d thrown so much at it, and still, it managed to survive?

    ¡°Y-YOU¡­WRETCHED W-WORMS¡­ I-IMPUDENT V-VERMIN¡­ H-HOW¡­HOW D-DARE YOU¡­¡±

    ¡°Guess that¡¯s my cue!¡± Jeanne Alter said with sadistic glee. ¡°Alright, then! Time to shish kabob this thing!¡±

    She stepped over to the crenellations, planted one foot between two of the teeth, and pointed her sword at Forneus. A gigantic grin threatened to split her face.

    ¡°La Grondement du Haine!¡±

    A line of fire raced down the brickwork and over towards Forneus, and when it reached Forneus¡¯ seething base, it split and encircled it. I couldn¡¯t see it from my angle, but a moment later, when it must have connected on the opposite side, the fire flared, and then it rose into pillars of flame that stretched up towards the sky. Stakes in the shape of the pole of Jeanne Alter¡¯s flag erupted out of the remaining flesh, and then the pillars of flame twisted and swirled and drew inwards.

    Forneus¡¯ tortured screams were garbled and muffled behind the roaring fire, but still audible enough for me to hear them as the fire burned it. All of that thunderous volume was gone, and what came out instead must have been the equivalent of a whimper by comparison.

    The flames twisted tight, compressing down, and then imploded with a brief flash. For the who even knew what time in the fight, a wash of heat wafted over us, and then it was gone, and so was Forneus. All that was left was a mound of charred, blackened flesh that was even now evaporating, leaving behind steaming ichor on the ground.

    It was finally over.

 Chapter CX: Beyond the Sea

    Chapter CX: Beyond the Sea

    ¡°Come on,¡± I said to everyone.

    The battle might have been over, but there were still a few last things we needed to do before we could go home, so I turned around, away from the battlements, and made my way back down to the ground level. The others followed after me, falling in line with me and behind me as there was room, in no particular rush.

    By the time we exited the fort and cautiously picked our way across the ruined landscape, the remnants of Forneus were almost entirely gone, and from out of the lump of dissolving meat, a more human head of blond hair slowly resolved, attached to a body that was half disintegrated itself, with limbs missing and horrific burns mottled across what flesh remained.

    Jason.

    The body took in a sudden gasp. ¡°Medea,¡± he rasped weakly. ¡°Medea, where are you? It hurts! Fix me!¡±

    Medea sneered. ¡°How pathetic. Even now, you cling to me, after you were so ready to discard me?¡±

    From nearby, another body moved, and Medea the younger, charred, burned, and half-dead herself, tried to stand, faltered, and collapsed back to the ground, flopping onto her back. Her arms trembled with the effort, but she couldn¡¯t even push herself up to kneel, that was how bad off she was. Her entire front was covered in blood from the arrow Arash had put in her chest, staining her pale, lavender gown.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Lord Jason,¡± she said, just as weak. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t help you anymore.¡±

    ¡°Medea!¡± cried Jason, whose ears had been burned away, so he couldn¡¯t hear her. ¡°M-Medea, you useless witch! H-heal me! H-heal me! I-I don¡¯t want to¡­!¡±

    BANG

    A bullet passed right through him, ineffectual. It bit into the ground beneath him without doing anything at all.

    ¡°Shit,¡± said Drake. ¡°Forgot I need that fancy Grail to do that. Someone put that bastard out of his misery, would you?¡±

    Arash reached for his bow, but Atalanta was faster on the draw, and with an anemic spurt of blood, she blew a hole straight through Jason¡¯s heart. He gasped, sagged, and then disintegrated into sparkling dust. From his body dropped a golden chalice that clinked as it hit the ground, rolling to a lazy stop.

    Drake shook her head. ¡°All of this over that little trinket.¡±

    ¡°And the wish it promised,¡± said Arash.

    ¡°If it could even grant one,¡± Atalanta added bitterly.

    ¡°Personally, I¡¯m just glad it¡¯s over,¡± Orion said grumpily. ¡°I¡¯m ready to get out of this cute and cuddly body. It didn¡¯t get me anywhere near as many hugs as I thought it would.¡±

    ¡°Oh, Darling!¡± gushed Artemis. ¡°Our time together like this is almost over! And we didn¡¯t even get to go out on a date!¡±

    A complicated look crossed Atalanta¡¯s face, but she didn¡¯t comment on that nonsense at all.

    With Jason taken care of, Medea meandered away from the group and over towards her younger self, and I followed cautiously behind, waiting to see what she was going to do. She stopped short, looming over the battered body of Medea the younger, and for a moment, didn¡¯t seem to know what to do.

    ¡°Lord Jason,¡± I heard Medea the younger mumbling as I got closer, ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯m sorry, Lord Jason, I had no choice. I couldn¡¯t¡­¡±

    ¡°How pathetic,¡± Medea muttered scathingly. ¡°Even now, you¡¯re still fawning over him? Even after everything he did to us? How he treated us? How readily he cast us aside?¡±

    Medea the younger looked up at her older self, and with a simple kind of innocence, she said, ¡°Because I love him.¡±

    Medea pointed one long finger down at her younger self, lips curling into a snarl, and pink light bloomed on her fingertip. An instant later, Medea the younger¡¯s head vanished from her shoulders, and the body barely went limp before it started to disappear, flaking away into particles of light.

    Medea hunched over herself, shoulders bent inwards. ¡°Fool,¡± she whispered. ¡°We of all people should have known better. The gods use us as playthings and nothing more. Our love for Jason was never anything more than a convenient fiction for their amusement.¡±

    ¡°Whoa!¡± cried Rika. ¡°What was that all about?¡±

    ¡°Medea?¡± I tried.

    She turned to look at me over her shoulder, but before she even got a word out, her body started disintegrating, too, turning fuzzy around the edges as she began to fade away.

    ¡°You¡¯re disappearing!¡± said Ritsuka, alarmed.

    Medea laughed bitterly. ¡°Of course I am. I was only ever one half of a Saint Graph to begin with. Without that wretch to tether me in place, there isn¡¯t enough left of me to hold onto.¡±

    ¡°You can¡¯t stay?¡± I asked simply. I already knew the answer.

    ¡°I was barely here from the start,¡± she said. ¡°Even just healing Asterios was nearly enough to make me unravel, and now¡­¡±

    Now, just that single spell to kill her younger self was enough to do her in.

    ¡°I see.¡±

    As I expected then. Even if we made a contract, there wasn¡¯t enough of a stable Saint Graph to keep her manifested, so there wasn¡¯t any point.

    She turned to face me fully. ¡°For whatever it might be worth¡­¡± She grimaced briefly, like it pained her to even say the words. ¡°I¡¯m sorry¡­that I deceived you for so long.¡±

    ¡°The important part is that you helped us, in the end,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°Even if it took you a while to trust us¡­ Thank you, Medea, for being our ally.¡±

    Medea blinked at him for a moment, surprised, and then laughed a little, wiping at one of her eyes. ¡°Good grief,¡± she said. ¡°That¡¯s the second time in as many days. You people at Chaldea¡­ Maybe you really can pull this off after all.¡±

    And then, she was gone. Not a trace of her remained, not even the flutter of her cloak in the wind.

    ¡°HOY!¡± a voice cried, and when we all turned to look, the Golden Hind came sailing back around the island, undamaged and untouched by the fighting. Bombe waved from the wheel.

    ¡°The Golden Hind!¡± Rika cried. ¡°They made it out okay!¡±

    ¡°Thank goodness,¡± Mash sighed.

    ¡°Haha!¡± Drake crowed, grinning from ear to ear. ¡°Bombe, you wonderful, one-eyed bastard! I ain¡¯t never been happier to see you in all my goddamn life!¡±

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°Saint Graph confirmed eliminated!¡± Romani said proudly the instant I answered his call. ¡°That¡¯s Caenis, Herakles, Jason, and Medea! E-even that so-called Demon God is taken care of!¡±

    ¡°A-as expected!¡± Marie¡¯s voice said from off camera. ¡°That¡¯s just the sort of problem a Master of Chaldea is expected to handle!¡±

    Romani laughed awkwardly. ¡°I-I think that¡¯s a bit of a stretch, Director! I ¡ª ah.¡±

    He cut off, eyes turned not towards me, but off to the side, towards the curious gaze of King David. Romani¡¯s smile gained a nervous, forced edge.

    ¡°Da ¡ª King David,¡± Romani said respectfully. ¡°H¡­How do you do? Is¡­is something wrong?¡±

    ¡°Oh, don¡¯t mind me,¡± said King David. ¡°You just remind me of someone I know, that¡¯s all.¡±

    Romani¡¯s laugh was even more awkward now. ¡°Y¡­You don¡¯t say!¡±

    ¡°Doctor Roman,¡± said Mash. ¡°Queen A¨ªfe disappeared near the end. Is she¡­?¡±

    ¡°Her temporary form ran out of energy,¡± Romani answered, looking happy at the change of subject. ¡°Queen A¨ªfe herself suffered no damage. That¡¯s why Jeanne Alter disappeared, too. Both of them are fine.¡±

    Mash sighed. ¡°I see. That¡¯s a relief.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like everyone turned out okay then!¡± Drake said boisterously.

    ¡°Not everyone,¡± Euryale reminded her, and Drake¡¯s cheer dimmed. Euryale sighed. ¡°But let¡¯s be real, he wouldn¡¯t have known what to do with it if everyone suddenly started praising him for helping out, so maybe it¡¯s better this way.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not,¡± Ritsuka said firmly. ¡°Even if it was awkward and strange at first, we would have offered him the chance to come back with us. To see Chaldea for himself, and make new friends there.¡±

    Euryale blinked at him for a moment, bemused, and then shook her head ruefully. ¡°I think he would have liked that.¡±

    ¡°Speaking of,¡± Romani began.

    But that was the moment the Golden Hind pulled up at the ruined remnants of the docks, and Bombe leaned over the railing to shout, ¡°Ahoy, Cap¡¯n! That fight sure was something! Damn near wet meself when that giant sea monster showed up! We stuck around, we¡¯d¡¯ve been toast for sure!¡±

    ¡°Forget that!¡± Drake groused back at him playfully. ¡°That damn thing would¡¯ve taken out my ship!¡±

    The crew aboard laughed.

    ¡°Too true, too true!¡± Bombe agreed. ¡°So I¡¯m guessing it¡¯s a good thing we turned tail and ran when we did! And, hey, Cap¡¯n, look here! You¡¯ll never guess who it were we went and pulled out of the drink!¡±

    He stepped back far enough to push someone forward, and a thoroughly soaked, battered, but very much alive Sam Bellamy smiled at us hesitantly and gave a little wave.

    ¡°Hey, everyone. Surprise?¡±

    ¡°Sam!¡± Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, and even Drake all cried out at once.

    ¡°You sonnuva bitch!¡± Drake added, laughing delightedly. ¡°Scared the ever-loving shit outta me, you did!¡±

    ¡°Sorry, Cap¡¯n!¡± Bellamy said. ¡°Didn¡¯t mean to!¡±

    A gangplank was lowered, and the crew began to disembark, filing off the Hind to come and join our little group.

    ¡°We thought you were a goner!¡± Rika told Bellamy when he got close. ¡°Your ship got blown up and everything!¡±

    ¡°So did I!¡± Bellamy said, grinning. ¡°But I guess that thing¡¯s eyes were just so huge, it couldn¡¯t see me properly, so it missed and sent me into the sea!¡±

    ¡°I guess Forneus forgot to wear his glasses today,¡± said Ritsuka with a little smile.

    His sister socked him in the arm and gave him a pouty glare, as though reproaching him for telling a joke.

    ¡°So that¡¯s it, then?¡± asked Bombe, looking about at the devastation left behind from the battle. ¡°Is this here the end of this little tale? This screwy place about to flip back to normal?¡±

    ¡°Not quite,¡± Marie said sternly. ¡°Mash, there¡¯s still one more thing for you to do.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash. ¡°Yes, of course, Director.¡±

    Dutifully, she walked over a few steps, bent down, and picked up the Grail. ¡°Holy Grail recovered, Director.¡±

    There was a beep from the other side of the line, and Romani looked over at it. ¡°Confirmed. It looks like¡­ Yes, the era is beginning to correct itself now. The Okeanos Singularity has officially been resolved.¡±

    King David suddenly began to glow around the edges, and Bombe leapt back.

    ¡°Whoa! What in the seven hells¡­?¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± King David smiled. ¡°It looks like that¡¯s our cue, then. It¡¯s time for us Servants to leave as well.¡±

    ¡°That fast?¡± said Drake.

    ¡°Yes!¡± said Romani hurriedly. ¡°So if anyone there wants to make a contract and return to Chaldea with the team, they should do it now, while there¡¯s still time!¡±

    King David shook his head. ¡°No offense, but I just don¡¯t think it¡¯s a good idea. Maybe some other time, but for now, there¡¯s no opportunity for me there.¡±

    Atalanta snorted.

    ¡°I¡¯ll go on ahead,¡± said King David. ¡°In fact, it¡¯s probably for the best. The Ark is too dangerous to leave sitting around, you know?¡±

    ¡°It was irresponsible bringing that thing into this Singularity in the first place,¡± Romani grumbled under his breath.

    And then, King David vanished.

    ¡°Well, don¡¯t look at me,¡± said Orion, folding his arms. ¡°Frankly, I¡¯m just glad I won¡¯t be stuck like this anymore.¡±

    ¡°And we can go on a whole new adventure together!¡± Artemis said cheerily.

    ¡°H¡­have fun!¡± Ritsuka said politely.

    ¡°Next time we meet, hopefully I¡¯ll be in a lot cooler form than this,¡± said Orion. He sighed. ¡°Then maybe Mash will give me a kiss? Or a hug? Or ¡ª ack!¡±

    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°Darling,¡± Artemis said dangerously, squeezing him tight against her chest, ¡°I¡¯d be happy to give you any of those things, no matter what you look like!¡±

    ¡°Can¡¯t breathe!¡± Orion squeaked, even though he didn¡¯t actually have lungs. ¡°Can¡¯t breathe! A-Artemis, you¡¯re holding too tight!¡±

    They, too, glowed, fading away at the edges, and then vanished.

    Atalanta shook her head. ¡°Somehow¡­ Somehow, I have to pretend that didn¡¯t happen.¡±

    ¡°Do you want to come with us?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    She looked our group over, then shook her head again. ¡°Another time, perhaps,¡± she said. ¡°If you summon me properly, or if we encounter another again, I should like to get to know you all better before making a commitment like that.¡± She smiled, a small, understated little thing. ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, however¡­I think I wouldn¡¯t mind if you summoned me as a Servant.¡±

    ¡°Shame,¡± said Rika brightly. ¡°I¡¯ve had, like, a whole day to think up a bunch of cat puns!¡±

    Atalanta¡¯s smile twitched. ¡°On the other hand, maybe not.¡±

    A moment later, she, too, disappeared.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Arash suddenly. ¡°Right, Captain Drake, I almost forgot.¡± He reached towards his chest, golden light glittering around his fingertips, and after a second or two, the Grail he¡¯d borrowed formed there. He offered it back to her. ¡°I believe this one belongs to you.¡±

    ¡°Heh.¡± Drake accepted it, grinning ruefully down into the cup. ¡°You know, I almost forgot all about it, what with all that happened and all.¡±

    ¡°That woulda been terrible, Cap¡¯n!¡± said Bombe. ¡°There goes all our free food!¡±

    Morgan barked out a laugh. ¡°The greatest treasure in all the world, and Francis Drake almost forgot to take it back!¡±

    ¡°Whaddya talking about, greatest treasure?¡± Drake said. ¡°Gold, silver, money, that shit comes and goes like the wind! Won¡¯t turn any of it down, of course, but my treasure¡­¡± She grinned and looked over her crew, then towards the Golden Hind. ¡°Well, I already got plenty of that! Friends and family and crew, now that¡¯s what¡¯s real important! None of them are replaceable! Priceless!¡±

    Mash giggled. ¡°Somehow, Captain Drake, that sounds just like you! It makes sense that your wish on the Grail would be enough food and drink to satisfy your crew.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± Drake turned to Mash. ¡°Come to think of it, I never got to ask any of you. You been chasing that trinket around ¡®cause it¡¯s your job and you need to save the world and what-not, but what would you have wished for, if you had the chance?¡±

    Mash blinked. ¡°If we had the chance?¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Drake nodded. ¡°You must¡¯ve had something you want, right? I seen enough to know you folk aren¡¯t all business all the time. Somewhere deep inside, you must¡¯ve had some kind of wish you would¡¯ve made!¡±

    ¡°An endless supply of strawberries!¡± Rika announced. Her brother elbowed her in the ribs. ¡°Oof!¡±

    ¡°For me and Rika,¡± Ritsuka began, ¡°the only wish we have right now¡­ Well, the only way to make it come true is to finish fixing these Singularities. That¡¯s the only way we can save anyone.¡±

    Rika sobered immediately. ¡°Yeah. Mom and Dad and all our friends¡­ Sorry, Captain Pillows, one measly Grail won¡¯t be enough to make that one come true.¡±

    ¡°I guess¡­I¡¯m the same,¡± Mash said hesitantly. ¡°A-a wish on the Holy Grail¡­ Bringing back everyone we lost is the only thing I can think of.¡±

    Drake shook her head ruefully. ¡°Man, you guys don¡¯t make it easy, do you? You¡¯re all a bunch of goody two-shoes! Not a selfish bone in your bodies!¡± She glanced at me. ¡°And I suppose you¡¯re much the same, right? All about bringing back the folk you lost? Saving the world and everything?¡±

    I thought, for a moment, about Lisa. About Dad and Mom and our family home, filled with memories of happier times. About Brian and Alec and everyone else. The world I¡¯d given everything for, and the world I¡¯d had to give up when everything was said and done. If I could have the miracle of seeing them all again¡­

    ¡°Something like that.¡±

    Drake chuckled. ¡°Of course.¡±

    ¡°I hate to interrupt this bonding moment,¡± Romani began, ¡°but time¡¯s running out. We only have a few more minutes before this era gets corrected, so if anyone is making a contract and coming along, it has to be now!¡±

    Drake looked over at Morgan. ¡°Hear that? You planning on joining up with this lot? They may not look like much, but they¡¯re a dependable bunch.¡±

    Morgan laughed. ¡°Sorry, but I don¡¯t think there¡¯s much place for an old drunkard like me! I figure I¡¯ll stick around and see to it that this place goes back to rights.¡± He gestured around at the archipelago, as though to encompass it in its entirety. ¡°Least I can do, after stamping my bootprint on it the way I did.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not really my sort of thing either,¡± Euryale said lazily. ¡°A place where a bunch of heroes gather to fight for the future¡­ Ugh, just imagining it makes me feel out of place. I¡¯m not going there without a friendly face to tag along.¡±

    ¡°I guess we don¡¯t count as friendly,¡± Rika said dryly.

    Euryale smiled. ¡°Not even a little.¡±

    With everyone else accounted for, that just left two. I turned to the first. ¡°Hippolyta?¡±

    She sighed, but she was smiling slightly. ¡°Somehow, it doesn¡¯t feel like I managed to accomplish much of anything. I had to spend most of the battle biding my time to gather my strength.¡±

    ¡°You have nothing to apologize for!¡± Bradamante insisted. ¡°Queen Hippolyta, I, too, was unable to do much against that Demon God! You accomplished more than I did!¡±

    ¡°That may be so,¡± Hippolyta allowed, ¡°however, the truth is, if you contributed to even one other battle during your stay inside this Singularity, then you will already have done more than I have. Outside of this one battle, the only thing I was good for was scaring away those who thought they might find the Grail in this archipelago.¡± She nodded towards Morgan. ¡°And even there, truthfully, I was eventually replaced.¡±

    ¡°A fleet of warships is more intimidating than a single woman on a horse,¡± Morgan added wryly.

    ¡°Just so,¡± Hippolyta agreed. ¡°Therefore, if you members of Chaldea are expecting to face further battles in the future where someone like me might be of use¡­then I believe I would like to be of use to you for them.¡±

    ¡°That sounds like a yes,¡± said Rika. ¡°Is that a yes?¡±

    Hippolyta smiled. ¡°That¡¯s a yes.¡±

    ¡°Yes!¡± Rika pumped her fist.

    With that decided, I turned next to Bellamy. ¡°And you? Are you coming along?¡±

    He laughed. ¡°Ah, geez, I¡¯m sorry, guys! I would, I think I really would, but¡­¡± He looked over at Drake and smiled broadly. ¡°I¡¯ve already got a Captain to follow, you know? To the ends of the Earth, if she¡¯ll have me! Can¡¯t split my allegiances like that.¡±

    ¡°Fuck that!¡± Drake said immediately, and Bellamy staggered, gaping at her openly. ¡°Hey, Sam, don¡¯t you go using me like some kind of anchor! You¡¯re a damn good kid, and a great pirate besides! No matter what anyone says, you¡¯ll always have a place on this crew! Right, boys?¡±

    ¡°AYE!¡± her crew roared back at her.

    Drake nodded. ¡°Damn straight! But, Sam, you¡¯re still one of them Servants, ain¡¯tcha? Means when this place goes, you¡¯re going along with it, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Now, if that¡¯s the way you wanna go out, ain¡¯t no one here who can argue against that. It¡¯s your right as a sailor and as a man.¡± She jabbed a finger his way. ¡°But you don¡¯t owe me that! You don¡¯t owe anyone that!¡±

    She gestured first at her crew. ¡°Us lot? We¡¯re simple pirates. This here¡¯ll probably be the most meaningful thing we ever do, and there ain¡¯t no shame in that. Even if no one remembers it, we helped save the goddamn world!¡±

    ¡°AYE!¡± her crew roared again. Bombe added, ¡°You¡¯re goddamn right, we did! Big damn heroes, we were!¡±

    Then, she gestured at us. ¡°But these folk have a higher calling. They¡¯re not a bunch of scallywags chasing the next favorable wind, hoping it might find them an adventure. They¡¯re offering you an adventure me and my crew can only dream about, fighting for a cause ain¡¯t none of us can follow them on, and don¡¯t you dare turn that chance down outta some kinda obligation you think you have to me!¡±

    ¡°Captain,¡± Bellamy began thickly.

    Drake grinned. ¡°This future of theirs, it sounds like a helluva place, don¡¯t it? So as your captain, I¡¯m counting on you¡­to go and see what it¡¯s like, so that when we meet up on that Throne of Heroes place, you can buy this sea dog a drink and tell her all about it!¡±

    Bellamy¡¯s face spread into a watery smile, and teary-eyed, he gave her a salute. ¡°Aye, aye, Captain!¡±

    ¡°Alright!¡± Rika cheered. She thrust her hand out, Command Spells bright against her skin, one missing. ¡°Sam¡¯s joining the team! Officially!¡±

    Smiling, Ritsuka held his hand out next to hers, his Command Spells a contrast to Rika¡¯s. ¡°It¡¯s good to have you aboard, Sam. And you, too, Queen Hippolyta.¡±

    Hippolyta smiled and reached out to put her own hand over theirs. ¡°No need to stand on ceremony, Ritsuka. After all, very soon, you¡¯ll be my Masters, won¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Glad to have you, Hippo!¡± said Rika.

    Hippolyta gave an awkward little laugh. ¡°Maybe a little bit of ceremony, then.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t mind her.¡± I put my own hand in with theirs, the one with my Command Spells, like the twins had. ¡°She¡¯ll shop around for a little while before settling on a nickname she likes.¡±

    ¡°Like Captain Pillows,¡± Arash added.

    Hippolyta slid a glance at Drake¡¯s chest. ¡°I suppose so.¡±

    Bellamy set his hand down atop hers, grinning. ¡°Guess I should be happy I¡¯m just Sam, then!¡±

    ¡°Captain Moneybags just didn¡¯t fit!¡± Rika complained.

    ¡°Now,¡± said Romani, ¡°Queen Hippolyta, Captain Bellamy, if you¡¯ll repeat after me¡­¡±

    ¡°Our bodies shall rest under thy dominion,¡± Bellamy and Hippolyta intoned.

    ¡°And our fate shall rest in thy sword,¡± us Masters finished.

    A brief jolt of electricity shot up my arm, and a second later, there was a beep-beep from Romani¡¯s end.

    ¡°Contracts established,¡± Romani reported. ¡°Welcome to Chaldea!¡±

    ¡°They can get the orientation package later,¡± Marie cut in. ¡°Hurry up and recalibrate the Rayshift parameters!¡±

    ¡°On it!¡±

    He mumbled something about Da Vinci being able to do it faster, but nonetheless went to work.

    ¡°Whoa!¡± one of Drake¡¯s crew exclaimed suddenly, his body aglow. ¡°H-hey, what¡¯s happening? Captain!¡±

    ¡°Calm down!¡± Drake ordered. ¡°We just saw this, remember? This place is gonna disappear soon, so we all have to get sent back to where we¡¯re supposed to be first! You ain¡¯t gonna explode or nothing, so just calm your sorry ass down!¡±

    ¡°What she said!¡± Marie said. ¡°There¡¯s nothing unusual about it, so stop worrying! You won¡¯t even remember it happening when you get back!¡±

    ¡°The Director is comforting the pirates, Senpai,¡± Mash muttered to the twins.

    ¡°I wonder if that¡¯s technically against the law?¡± Ritsuka whispered back.

    The glowing pirate vanished. The other members of the crew shifted uneasily, looking at the spot he¡¯d just occupied. I supposed I couldn¡¯t blame them. Teleportation of any kind tended to be a little disorienting. I wondered if he really wouldn¡¯t feel anything when he arrived back where he was supposed to be in proper history.

    ¡°Ah, quit your worrying!¡± Bombe scolded them all. ¡°You heard the captain, and the mysterious future lady! It¡¯s just that we¡¯re being sent back home, is all!¡±

    ¡°Sorry, Boss Bombe!¡± one of the other crew members said. ¡°It¡¯s just spooky! Seen some crazy shit the last couple weeks, but that don¡¯t make this crazy shit less crazy!¡±

    ¡°Would it help if I sang you a song?¡± Bombe asked mockingly.

    The crew, contrary to his intentions, took his suggestions seriously, murmuring amongst themselves. Bombe¡¯s expression dropped. ¡°You¡¯re not serious.¡±

    ¡°Ah, why not?¡± said Drake. She walked over and plopped a hand on Bombe¡¯s shoulder. ¡°This here¡¯s the end of this wild adventure, ain¡¯t it? We all managed to come out of it alive and well, and there ain¡¯t no time for a proper celebration, is there?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a crying shame!¡± one of the crew added. ¡°We ain¡¯t never gonna get to taste that Emiya guy¡¯s food ever again!¡±

    The rest of the crew roared their agreement.

    ¡°So if we can¡¯t throw our friends here a proper party,¡± said Drake, gesturing back our way, ¡°seems to me there aren¡¯t too many ways we can give ¡®em a right and good send off, yeah?¡± She grinned at her crew. ¡°Whaddya say, boys? One more song to see these kind folk from Chaldea on their way home?¡±

    ¡°AYE!¡± the crew thundered.

    ¡°Well, hell,¡± Bombe said with an air of resignation. ¡°Guess I can¡¯t go and complain about that, can I? Wouldn¡¯t be proper and gentlemanly to say goodbye without even saying a goodbye!¡±

    ¡°If you were ever a gentleman, then me ma¡¯s a fish!¡± a voice called, to uproarious laughter from the crew.

    ¡°With how you swim, Kenway, she must¡¯ve had a gimpy fin!¡± Bombe retorted, to more laughter. He sighed. ¡°Well, let¡¯s see. What¡¯s a right and proper song for a send off like this? And who¡¯s gonna start us off?¡±

    ¡°Should probably leave it up to them,¡± said Drake, looking our way. ¡°Anything you guys want to hear? Not so sure most of our usual songs are fit for something like this, but if there¡¯s one in particular you¡¯ll be wanting to say goodbye on¡­¡±

    Ritsuka shook his head. ¡°I¡¯m not picky. Whatever you guys want to sing is fine with me.¡±

    ¡°Ooh!¡± Rika¡¯s hand went up. ¡°Can I volunteer someone?¡±

    ¡°Why not?¡± said Drake.

    A block of foreboding dropped into my stomach before Rika even started to turn my way, a big, broad grin on her face.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± she said, ¡°we never got to hear you sing! You said your dad was a dockworker, right? So there¡¯s gotta be a few you know!¡±

    Murmurs of agreement started amongst the crew. Almost unnoticed, another one of them glowed briefly, and then vanished.

    ¡°Rika,¡± her brother began.

    ¡°Please, Senpai?¡± Rika pleaded. ¡°Just the one song? You promised earlier that you¡¯d do one later, and this is our last chance! These guys won¡¯t even remember hearing it, if it¡¯s really that bad!¡±

    ¡°I promise I won¡¯t judge you, Master!¡± Bradamante added. ¡°It could never be any worse than mine! My brother once told me I have the singing voice of a dying cat!¡±

    My lips thinned. I was ready to just say no, because I¡¯d promised no such thing, only given a vague, noncommittal maybe to get her off my back about it, but a gentle nudge from Arash, as though to tell me I should go for it, stopped me.

    ¡°Fujima ¡ª Rika,¡± said Marie sternly, ¡°Taylor is the team leader. She doesn¡¯t have to ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Director,¡± I cut her off, ¡°it¡¯s fine.¡±

    Do you want to hear me sing that badly? I asked Arash.

    Not me, he replied, but Rika does. Why not indulge her just a little? What does it cost you?

    A bit of reputation, I thought, but then, no more than I might already have lost when I comforted her last night or when I hugged her on the beach. I couldn¡¯t be the perfect, unflappable leader after that no matter what, and maybe, to the twins, I never really had been.

    A look around showed the expectant gazes of the crew and the rest of the group, plus Arash¡¯s small, encouraging smile. They were so caught up in the idea of me singing that they hadn¡¯t noticed another two of their number disappearing.

    ¡°You really want to hear me sing that badly?¡± I asked. ¡°What about Ritsuka?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve lived with Onii-chan for my entire life,¡± Rika said. ¡°I already know how tone deaf he is.¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± her brother said indignantly.

    ¡°Plus, he joined in a few times during the partying,¡± she went one as though he hadn¡¯t spoken. ¡°So did Tii-chan, once or twice, and¡­and E-Emiya isn¡¯t here right now, or else I¡¯d make him sing, too, but Senpai¡­ This is my only chance, isn¡¯t it? Drake and Bombe and all the rest of the crew, they¡¯re not going to be around for us to sing with after this. There isn¡¯t a later anymore.¡±

    And even if ¡ª by some miracle ¡ª she managed to drag me into karaoke night or something in the future, that missing element wouldn¡¯t be there. Drake might be there, if we summoned her as a Servant at some point, but no crew, and it wouldn¡¯t quite be this Drake besides.

    I wasn¡¯t sure if Rika realized that would carry over to Nero, as well.

    ¡°Now I¡¯m curious,¡± said Euryale. ¡°She obviously won¡¯t be as good as I am, but I do believe she¡¯s the only person here whose voice I have yet to hear.¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor,¡± said Mash earnestly, ¡°i-it¡¯s not necessary if you really don¡¯t want to, but¡­I-I want to hear you sing, too.¡±

    There was no sign of guile on her face, no deception, no treachery, nothing like that at all. Mash said she wanted to hear me sing, and she meant it completely. No tricks, no ulterior motives, no judgment. If I said no, she would be disappointed, but she wouldn¡¯t moan or complain and she wouldn¡¯t try to guilt me into it.

    Ironically, that did the job better than she ever could if she¡¯d tried.

    Mash, I thought, if you could weaponize that look, I¡¯m not sure there¡¯s anyone who could say no to you.

    ¡°Fine,¡± I said aloud, trying to hold onto whatever scraps of dignity I could. ¡°Something I learned from my dad, right?¡±

    Rika grinned broadly, nodding so fast that it wouldn¡¯t have surprised me if her head flew right off. ¡°A dockworker¡¯s song! Something a pirate can appreciate!¡±

    ¡°AYE!¡± the crew agreed. What was left of it at least.

    A dockworker¡¯s song¡­ Not that I knew that many of them. There were a few I¡¯d picked up, but they were mostly drinking songs, which meant they had gradually started to make less sense the further into them the dockworkers got. None of them were appropriate for goodbyes, either.

    Ah. Except that one. And it was old enough that these pirates might even recognize it.

    I took a deep breath to steady myself as much to get the wind I needed, and as I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine the dingy little bar Dad had taken Mom and me to several times back when I was younger, before the first time my world ended. I remembered the lyrics to the song they¡¯d sung the last time I¡¯d been there.

    ¡°Of all the money that e¡¯er I¡¯ve had,¡± I began lowly, quietly, and a hush silenced the whole group as they waited with baited breath, ¡°I spent it in good company.¡±

    ¡°Oh geez,¡± Ritsuka whispered. ¡°This one always makes me cry.¡±

    ¡°And all the harm that e¡¯er I¡¯ve done, alas it was to none but me.¡±

    The irony made me want to laugh.

    ¡°And all I¡¯ve done for want of wit, to memory now I can¡¯t recall¡­ So fill to me the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.¡±

    ¡°So fill to me the parting glass,¡± Arash picked up, joining me so that I didn¡¯t feel quite so ridiculous, ¡°and drink a health whate¡¯er befalls. Then gently rise and softly call, ¡®Goodnight and joy be with you all.¡¯¡±

    ¡°Of all the comrades that e¡¯er I had,¡± Bellamy joined in, ¡°they¡¯re sorry for my going away.¡±

    ¡°And all the sweethearts that e¡¯er I¡¯ve loved,¡± sang Bombe, ¡°would wish me one more day to stay.¡±

    One by one, several more of the crew disappeared. I think I was the only one who noticed.

    Ritsuka, off key and worse than I ever feared I could be, chimed in with, ¡°But since it fell into my lot that I should rise and you should not¡­¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll gently rise,¡± Drake sang in a husky alto, lifting her Grail in toast, ¡°and softly call ¡ª¡±

    And louder than anyone else, Rika joined in with an exuberant, ¡°Goodnight and joy be with you all!¡±

    ¡°So fill to me the parting glass,¡± the crew chorused with us, even as several more of them vanished, ¡°and drink a health whate¡¯er befalls. Then gently rise and softly call, ¡®Goodnight and joy be with you all!¡¯¡±

    ¡°Rayshift parameters set!¡± Romani¡¯s voice called over the comms, but no one paid him any attention. ¡°We¡¯ve added Samuel Bellamy and Queen Hippolyta to the roster and accounted for their presence!¡±

    ¡°Oh, a man may drink and not be drunk,¡± sang Captain Morgan, lifting a tankard cheekily. I wasn¡¯t sure where he¡¯d gotten it and right then, didn¡¯t particularly care.

    ¡°A man may fight and not be slain,¡± Arash countered, grinning back at him.

    ¡°A man may court a pretty girl,¡± Bombe contributed.

    ¡°And perhaps be welcomed back again!¡± sang Drake.

    ¡°But since it has so ought to be,¡± I went, ¡°by a time to rise and a time to fall¡­¡±

    For a second, if I closed my eyes, I felt like I could almost see¡­

    But it didn¡¯t matter what I could almost see, because it wasn¡¯t there. There was no one else with us, just us, the crew, and our Servants.

    ¡°Rayshifting in three¡­¡±

    ¡°Come fill to me the parting glass ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Two¡­¡±

    ¡°Goodnight and joy be with you all!¡±

    ¡°One!¡±

    The world opened up beneath my feet, giving way to a canal of stars, and as I fell into it, being pulled along the path out of that Singularity and back towards the future, towards Chaldea, I heard it one more time, like a farewell, like a goodbye, the entire crew and everyone else left singing:

    ¡°Goodnight and joy be with you all!¡±

 Chapter CXI: Back to Base

    Chapter CXI: Back to Base

    For a moment that lasted an eternity, I didn¡¯t exist. I hung, suspended between thoughts, a fly in amber.

    And then, suddenly, I was stuffed back into my body, and I came to with a gasp, just in time to hear the whir of hydraulics and the hiss of my pressurized Klein Coffin sliding open. By the time my vision slid into focus and I could see again, I was looking out at the cool lighting of the Rayshift chamber. The air that rushed in to greet me was positively chilly by comparison to the almost tropical environment of the archipelago where I¡¯d just been, and goosebumps prickled up my arms as a shiver shuddered down my spine.

    My first step outside of my coffin almost saw me pitch over, head spinning from the sudden lack of bugs to map my surroundings, but once again, Arash was there to catch me and keep me on my feet. A hand found itself between my shoulder blades and rubbed soothing circles there to help ease the discomfort.

    At least the disorientation wasn¡¯t quite so bad this time. Losing large chunks of my swarm to Forneus and to things like Jeanne Alter¡¯s Noble Phantasm had made losing all of it to Chaldea¡¯s sterility a little less of a giant jump.

    ¡°Thanks,¡± I murmured to Arash.

    ¡°Anytime,¡± he replied with a smile.

    ¡°I¡¯m really starting to hate that!¡± Rika complained.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Master,¡± said Bradamante, ¡°I really wish there was something I could do to help you with that, but this isn¡¯t an enemy I can vanquish with my lance.¡±

    ¡°Is something the matter?¡± Hippolyta asked at the same time as I heard Bellamy utter a low, impressed, ¡°Whoa.¡±

    ¡°The process of Rayshifting can be somewhat¡­disorienting,¡± Mash explained shortly. ¡°At least, for those of us with physical bodies.¡±

    ¡°Implying, then, that Servants have no such trouble?¡± said Hippolyta.

    ¡°It¡¯s been like this the last two Singularities, too,¡± Arash told her. ¡°Us Servants are fine, but the Masters have to deal with a little bit of adjustment.¡±

    Which might have had something to do with the fact that we were being pulled across space and time like a yo-yo.

    ¡°It sucks!¡± Rika added petulantly.

    ¡°But I think it¡¯s been getting a little bit easier each time,¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Says you,¡± his sister groused.

    ¡°Fou¡­¡±

    My lips pursed. Of course that thing made it back with us. I didn¡¯t know why I¡¯d expected anything different.

    ¡°This place is so cool!¡± Bellamy said, grinning broadly. I watched him with a faint curl of amusement in my belly as he spun around like a child, arms thrown wide, taking in everything he could see. ¡°Awesome! So this is what the modern era is like? Man! Who would¡¯ve thought I¡¯d ever be standing here to see something this amazing!¡±

    In the background, I heard the door whir and whoosh open, but I seemed to have been the only one who noticed. Arash let me stand on my own now that the disorientation had passed enough that I didn¡¯t wobble even a little.

    ¡°It truly is impressive,¡± Hippolyta agreed.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t it just?¡± Bradamante said excitedly. ¡°Oh, wait until you see the simulator, Queen Hippolyta! A-and once it¡¯s all fixed up, too!¡±

    ¡°Of course!¡± said Marie as she strode into the chamber stiffly. ¡°Chaldea makes use of some of the most cutting edge technology on the planet! The advancements we made have pushed entire fields of study ahead by decades! Did you think it was just going to be a linen closet at the back of a university lecture hall?¡±

    ¡°Boss Lady!¡± Rika greeted brightly.

    ¡°Director Marie,¡± Ritsuka said with a smile.

    Mash gave a respectful nod. ¡°Hello, Director.¡±

    Bellamy, perhaps not sensing some of the condescension in Marie¡¯s tone, just laughed a self-deprecating laugh. ¡°Yeah, I had no idea what it would look like! When I was alive, the most complicated thing I could use was a pistol!¡± He tilted his head back, looking around again. ¡°A place like this, something tells me all of this stuff I¡¯m seeing is way more complicated than that.¡±

    ¡°W-well,¡± Marie blustered. ¡°It¡¯s a good thing you understand, then! Which means you know better than to go poking your nose in where it doesn¡¯t belong!¡±

    ¡°There are some places with really delicate equipment that the whole facility relies upon,¡± Arash said more diplomatically. ¡°The Director here has arranged orientation tours for new Servants to introduce them to what everything is and where it¡¯s safe to go, so for now, Sam, Queen Hippolyta, just follow the rest of us around until we can get you up to speed.¡±

    Bellamy gave him a thumbs up. ¡°Got it!¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± said Hippolyta.

    Marie huffed, but didn¡¯t comment. The faint burst of red to her cheeks stood out even more starkly against her pale skin than usual, and as I¡¯d noticed before, there was an unusual stiffness to the way she was holding herself. As she came closer, gravitating towards me first and foremost, her hands fidgeted, like she wanted to reach out and touch me, or maybe give me a hug, and her bottom lip looked swollen.

    Ah. My heart ached a little. And I hadn¡¯t been here to help her through this one. She was standing here and coherent, though, so at least it didn¡¯t seem like it had been as bad as it could have been. Small mercies.

    She gave me a once-over, twice, and her brow crinkled a little as she attempted to keep her anxiety off of her face.

    ¡°You¡¯re back,¡± she said, and it came out breathless and almost scared, as though saying the words out loud would make them a lie.

    ¡°Safe and sound, Director,¡± I replied.

    Her eyes lingered on me for a moment longer, and I held her gaze the whole time, doing my best to reassure her without words, and then she turned her attention to the others, giving them each a once-over, too. ¡°You¡¯re all back.¡±

    ¡°As if there was ever any doubt!¡± Da Vinci crowed as she walked in next. ¡°Romani might not be much of a programmer, but even he has the training necessary to calibrate the Rayshift settings to account for tagalongs, Director! I should know, I¡¯m the one who trained him!¡±

    That snapped Marie out of it. ¡°You are not!¡± she said indignantly. ¡°All non-Master staff members received that same training as part of the job training! It¡¯s part of your mandatory certification for every other position in Chaldea!¡±

    Da Vinci held up a finger, smiling coyly. ¡°Ah, but I¡¯m the one who revised that training when I upgraded the coding for it!¡±

    Marie scowled thunderously, and, sensing that this could very easily turn into an argument that might show her in a negative light to our new allies, I cut in before she could start, ¡°Director, was there something you needed us for, or are we allowed to go and eat¡­¡±

    I trailed off, floundering a little. How long had we been gone, exactly? I didn¡¯t think it had been quite two weeks, but it had been closer than not. Ten days? Eleven? So that was, what, about two-hundred-forty hours, give or take ¡ª

    ¡°Breakfast,¡± Da Vinci supplied helpfully. ¡°Here in Chaldea, you¡¯ve been gone a little over forty-eight hours, almost two days exactly. It¡¯s still technically the breakfast hours.¡±

    ¡°Breakfast, then,¡± I allowed. No reason to doubt Da Vinci¡¯s sense of time. She probably had the magecraft equivalent of an atomic clock hidden somewhere in her workshop.

    ¡°I could go for something to eat,¡± Ritsuka agreed. ¡°We haven¡¯t had anything since last night, and, well, we did just get out of a fight.¡±

    ¡°Me, too,¡± said Mash. ¡°Ah, if that¡¯s okay with the Director.¡±

    Marie opened her mouth ¡ª

    ¡°No, wait, we can¡¯t!¡± Rika cried suddenly. ¡°Boss Lady! We need to go to the Summoning Chamber right away! It can¡¯t wait!¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Marie snapped impatiently. ¡°Just who do you think you¡¯re trying to give orders to?¡±

    ¡°We need to bring back Emiya!¡± Rika insisted.

    All of the warmth in the room vanished, and every smile on everyone¡¯s face went with it. Even the ever-present upturn at the edges of Da Vinci¡¯s mouth had soured and become strained.

    ¡°Rika,¡± Marie began.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid that¡¯s not possible,¡± said Da Vinci.

    The breaking of Rika¡¯s heart was a visible thing. ¡°What? But you said that ¡ª !¡±

    Da Vinci shook her head ruefully.

    ¡°Excuse me, that was a little misleading,¡± she went on. ¡°Yes, Rika, it wasn¡¯t a lie to say that we could bring Servants lost in the field back using the FATE System ¡ª the whole system was designed specifically to make that sort of retrieval possible, in the case that we had any casualties. Marisbury and his team had certainly considered the likelihood of such a thing happening, especially in a Singularity, where any number of threats might present themselves. However¡­ You see, it¡¯s not as simple as just running down to the Summoning Chamber and chanting the incantation again.¡±

    ¡°I-it¡¯s not?¡± asked Rika. ¡°But¡­!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re attempting to summon a particular Heroic Spirit,¡± said Marie. ¡°You haven¡¯t forgotten what¡¯s necessary for that, right? Especially since it wasn¡¯t that long ago that we did the last one!¡±

    Rika¡¯s brow furrowed, confused, until her brother spoke up and said, ¡°Saint Quartz.¡±

    Marie grimaced and closed her eyes, looking like she was asking some higher being for patience. I didn¡¯t think mages were particularly religious, and Marie herself had never given any indication she worshiped a god of any kind, so for a brief moment, I idly wondered which one.

    ¡°Just so,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°I¡¯m afraid that while we can most certainly bring our dear chef back onto the team, it can¡¯t be done at the drop of a hat, so to speak. It¡¯s going to take a little more preparation than that.¡±

    ¡°How much preparation?¡± Rika demanded.

    ¡°Only a day,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°You see, from our perspective here at Chaldea, it¡¯s only been about two hours since he was¡­defeated by Herakles. There hasn¡¯t been much time at all to prepare things to resummon him. I know it isn¡¯t going to be easy, but you can wait just until tomorrow, can¡¯t you?¡±

    Rika¡¯s brow wrinkled. ¡°I¡­I guess so¡­¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re going to have to,¡± Marie told her sternly. ¡°After our last attempt at summoning, I refuse to take any chances! Everything that we can account for, we¡¯re going to account for!¡±

    ¡°Last attempt?¡± Hippolyta asked politely.

    ¡°Ah¡­¡± Da Vinci smiled a strained smile. ¡°Yes, you see, it wasn¡¯t quite¡­ Well, we were attempting to summon a particular Heroic Spirit, and I¡¯m afraid¡­¡±

    ¡°We didn¡¯t get who we were expecting,¡± Ritsuka finished for her.

    ¡°And yet, at the same time, we did,¡± said Da Vinci.

    ¡°Is¡­that a thing?¡± asked Bellamy, confused. ¡°I thought summoning was kind of a crapshoot anyway. Like, even if you fished a piece of my ship out of the sea where it sank, you might not even get me instead of the guy who originally owned it or something.¡±

    Like using a shard of the Round Table ¡ª and it had blown my mind to find out that was actually a thing that the Mage¡¯s Association had sitting around ¡ª and expecting to get just Gawain instead of Lancelot, Tristan, Mordred, Percival, or even King Arthur¡­herself.

    ¡°There are supposed to be ways around that,¡± Marie huffed.

    ¡°Chaldea has pioneered many improvements to help cut down on some of the randomness built into the spell,¡± Da Vinci said. ¡°Not merely catalysts, but mechanisms to ensure that the intended Heroic Spirit is the one who appears. Not¡­all of them have been successfully tested and ironed out, it seems.¡±

    ¡°Huh,¡± said Bellamy. ¡°Who were you going for, then? And who showed up instead?¡±

    ¡°Me.¡±

    Marie squeaked and startled, and so did Rika, as Jeanne Alter suddenly appeared amidst us, grinning savagely at their reactions. No one but Arash seemed to notice the little jump I did, too, because I wasn¡¯t expecting her to show up unannounced like that either.

    ¡°Sup, bitches,¡± said Jeanne Alter, and Marie¡¯s face twisted in expression of almost apoplectic fury ¡ª she couldn¡¯t even get words out, at first, as Jeanne Alter continued on blithely. ¡°My ears were burning, so I thought I¡¯d come down and see who was saying all sorts of bad things about me.¡±

    ¡°I thought we established you¡¯re not supposed to do that!¡± Marie said waspishly, once she¡¯d finally settled on what to be outraged about first.

    ¡°Huh?¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. ¡°That¡¯s a stupid rule. Why would I follow that?¡±

    Marie snarled. ¡°You¡­!¡±

    ¡°Jeanne Alter,¡± I said calmly. Her gaze swung over to me, lip starting to curl, like she was expecting me to scold her, too. ¡°Thank you for helping out against Herakles.¡±

    The difference between me and Marie, however, was that I had dealt with Imp before. I already knew that Jeanne Alter wouldn¡¯t respond to simple scolding. The harsher I tried to deal with her, the more belligerent she would become.

    ¡°W-well, of course.¡± Jeanne Alter huffed and looked away. A faint dusting of red sat on her cheeks, barely visible. ¡°I may not like you guys that much, but you¡¯re my Masters, so even if it¡¯s super annoying, I need you to stick around if I¡¯m gonna stick around. And, I mean, that guy was a demigod, right? I would¡¯ve killed him just on principle.¡±

    So the easiest way to defuse her was to give her positive attention instead. I thanked her, honestly, openly, and earnestly.

    ¡°Oh my god,¡± Rika breathed, eyes wide. ¡°No way. I thought it was just the Boss Lady, but Jalter, too¡­?¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Jeanne Alter demanded, annoyed. ¡°Me, too, what?¡±

    ¡°N-nothing!¡± Rika squeaked. ¡°J-just, uh¡­ Th-thanks for helping us out? It was super cool to see you turn Herk into ikayaki!¡±

    Jeanne Alter scoffed. ¡°Of course it was!¡±

    ¡°Did you come down here to make sure we made it back okay?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°What?¡± Jeanne Alter rolled her eyes. ¡°Of course not! Like I said, my ears were burning, so I came down here to make sure that no one was badmouthing me. Especially after I got the killshot on that muscle-headed asshole!¡±

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    A hand materialized behind her and landed an open-palmed smack to the back of her head. Despite the fact that it probably hadn¡¯t hurt all that much, Jeanne Alter flinched.

    ¡°Ow!¡±

    ¡°Your achievements are certainly to be lauded,¡± said A¨ªfe, ¡°but you were not the only participant of that battle. Your ¡®killshot¡¯ would not have been one without the combined efforts of the other Servants who wore Herakles down.¡±

    ¡°Tch. Pain in my ass,¡± Jeanne Alter sneered. ¡°It¡¯s not like I don¡¯t know that, you know.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m honestly amazed you guys managed to beat him at all,¡± Romani said as he walked in through the door. ¡°A Noble Phantasm like that just isn¡¯t fair. Twelves lives? A stock of eleven resurrection spells? Even for the greatest hero in Greece, that¡¯s just a little too far!¡±

    ¡°Right?¡± Rika agreed, nodding vigorously. ¡°It¡¯s like he went to the Noble Phantasm shop, picked up a totally sane one, then ordered ten more just in case he ran out!¡±

    ¡°I guess he stocked up on Phoenix Downs right before he got summoned,¡± Ritsuka said wryly.

    What? Phoenix Downs?

    Rika whirled about and mercilessly slugged him in the shoulder. ¡°I told you, you¡¯re not allowed to make the same kind of jokes as me! That¡¯s my job on this team!¡±

    Ritsuka, rubbing at the spot where she¡¯d hit him, just smiled and chuckled. It was another video game or cartoon reference of some kind, then.

    Romani sighed. ¡°Well, it¡¯s good to see you¡¯re all in high spirits, all things considered. And that you all came back in one piece, too.¡± He squinted at us warily. ¡°A-and¡­none of you made a deal with King David, did you? You listened to me when I said that was a bad idea, right?¡±

    ¡°You still haven¡¯t explained that one, Romani,¡± said Marie, annoyed.

    Romani laughed awkwardly. ¡°W-well, so, the thing about that is¡­ You see¡­ U-um, King David is¡­ What I mean to say¡­¡±

    He sagged. ¡°Listen, I¡¯ve got no excuse. Just trust me that it¡¯s a bad idea, okay?¡±

    Well, that wasn¡¯t suspicious at all, was it? And judging by how Marie was reacting, whatever that was all about, it wasn¡¯t something she was privy to as Director of Chaldea, which meant it probably wasn¡¯t something in his personnel file.

    Just which department had he been a part of at the Association anyway?

    ¡°We offered to bring him back to Chaldea with us, but he declined,¡± said Mash. ¡°Other than that, Doctor, our interactions with him were¡­actually quite limited. U-um, I don¡¯t think he made any offers to us while we were there?¡±

    ¡°None,¡± I confirmed.

    I wasn¡¯t sure what kind of offer he expected King David to have even made for us. What, was he supposed to try and sell us the Ark? The incredibly dangerous artifact that no one could safely touch?

    Romani sighed again. ¡°That¡¯s a relief. W-well, I was there when he turned down your offer for a Servant contract, so I knew about that much at least, but it¡¯s a good thing nothing happened the rest of the time either.¡±

    He looked down at the tablet in his hands, and then, very transparently, shifted the topic of the conversation.

    ¡°So we¡¯ve already taken care of the Grail you retrieved from the¡­Demon God, Forneus,¡± he said, ¡°and it shouldn¡¯t take too long to have that hooked into our systems. It¡¯ll be good to start having more of a surplus on our power grid. And the Okeanos Singularity is confirmed to have been resolved ¡ª which, I mean, of course you guys know that, you watched Drake and her crew being returned to their proper place in history.¡±

    ¡°In other words, you did your job, and you did it well,¡± said Marie. ¡°Despite a few¡­hiccups in the process, you succeeded in fixing things. As expected of Masters of Chaldea.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re proud of you,¡± Romani translated. ¡°Good job, everyone.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, Doc,¡± said Rika.

    ¡°Our next target will be the British Singularity,¡± he went on. ¡°This one will take place in southern England, although we¡¯re still narrowing down the exact era. But¡­we have some time before we¡¯re going to worry about that. I think we can afford to take a couple of weeks break, right, Director?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± said Marie. ¡°What, did you think I was going to send them off as soon as they got back? They¡¯ve earned at least a week or two of rest, after how quickly they resolved the Okeanos Singularity.¡±

    ¡°In the meantime, I¡¯m going to try and do some research on these so-called Demon Gods,¡± said Romani. ¡°I might have to try and use the SHEBA lens to get a better look at the era of King Solomon so I can see if it¡¯s possible to confirm whether or not they actually are related.¡±

    Flauros and now Forneus? If the pattern held and we started encountering one of them for each Singularity, then if they weren¡¯t actually related at all, they were at least borrowing the mythology, which, from my understanding, was almost as bad. At that point, it would be a distinction without much of a difference.

    ¡°Will that actually work, Doctor Roman?¡± asked Mash. ¡°Doesn¡¯t the SHEBA lens start to lose focus before the start of the Common Era? And the amount of energy required to look that far back¡­¡±

    ¡°We may have to cut back any plans for future Servant summonings to make it work,¡± said Marie, ¡°but with the new Grail we just acquired, we should have enough that it might be feasible.¡±

    ¡°But, Emiya!¡± Rika protested.

    ¡°Of course, we¡¯re going to summon him back first!¡± said Marie. ¡°But beyond that¡­ We¡¯ll have to run the numbers to make sure, but the amount of power needed to get a high enough resolution scan of that era to be worth the effort might make further summonings impossible, at least in the short term.¡± She grimaced. ¡°As much as it pains me to say it, discovering the origin of these Demon Gods that have gone through so much effort to throw history off course is more important.¡±

    ¡°Somehow or another, I¡¯ll make sure to find the necessary energy, Director,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°You¡¯re right, knowing more about our ultimate enemy is indeed more important than finding more allies to add to our roster.¡± She smiled. ¡°Provided, of course, that the pattern doesn¡¯t hold and the enemies in the next Singularity aren¡¯t even stronger than the last. I shudder to think what sort of Heroic Spirit could make Herakles seem weak by comparison.¡±

    ¡°Oh god,¡± said Rika, horrified, ¡°don¡¯t even joke about that, Da Vinci-chan!¡±

    ¡°Well, at the very least, we can assume that the Counter Force will provide the necessary assistance in the case that it winds up being true,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°After all, it provided us with a dragonslayer when we were faced with dragons¡­¡± She looked pointedly over at Bellamy. ¡°¡­and a sailor when we needed a ship, didn¡¯t it?¡±

    Bellamy blinked. ¡°Huh. I mean, I guess it did, didn¡¯t it? I never thought of it that way.¡±

    And it provided us A¨ªfe when we needed someone who could kill the most venerated hero in Roman history. But on the flipside, it had also provided us Stheno when we needed a god who could match Romulus¡¯ divinity, and that had been nowhere near as helpful.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think we should count on that always working out like that,¡± I said.

    ¡°Perhaps not,¡± Da Vinci allowed. ¡°Well, in any case, it¡¯s something we can worry about later. We still have a couple of weeks to plan the excursion into the British Singularity, yes?¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± said Romani, nodding along. ¡°So for now, I know you guys didn¡¯t have breakfast before that battle, and you¡¯re probably pretty hungry. Why don¡¯t you all¡­ Uh, the Masters and Mash, at least, go get something to eat from the cafeteria?¡±

    That sounded really good just then. Mine couldn¡¯t have been the only stomach that was growling and demanding food, and while it almost certainly wouldn¡¯t be anywhere near as good as Emiya¡¯s usual fare, at that point, I could¡¯ve gone for a bowl of soggy cereal.

    ¡°And our debriefing?¡± I asked, more as a matter of professionalism than because I actually wanted to stand there and go through it.

    ¡°We can handle that later,¡± said Marie. ¡°Of course, I¡¯ll also be expecting your after action reports, too, but those can wait a few days.¡±

    Rika groaned and Ritsuka grimaced, even as Mash said, ¡°Of course, Director.¡±

    ¡°Hey, it¡¯s proper procedure!¡± Marie snapped at the twins. ¡°You¡¯re Masters of Chaldea, aren¡¯t you? That responsibility doesn¡¯t end once a Singularity is repaired! There are other things that are expected of you!¡±

    ¡°Of course, Director,¡± Ritsuka echoed Mash, perfectly respectful, although he looked like he¡¯d just eaten a lemon.

    Impatient and a little irritated, Marie shooed us away. ¡°Go! Get something to eat, unless you want me to find something else for you to be doing!¡±

    Our group filed out of the room. I lingered for a moment, hesitating, my eyes tracing Marie¡¯s form as I scrutinized her for any sign of distress, but she was holding herself together well enough and I knew she wouldn¡¯t appreciate having her problems aired in front of everyone else. A little reluctantly, I turned and left with the others.

    Once we were out in the hallways, Mash let loose a sigh. ¡°Another Singularity resolved. We¡¯re one step closer to saving the world.¡±

    Ritsuka laughed a little. ¡°You know, that really does sound like something out of a manga or video game.¡±

    ¡°Finally!¡± said Rika, pointing at him. ¡°Someone gets it!¡±

    It probably said something about my perspective ¡ª and Earth Bet as a whole ¡ª that I couldn¡¯t really agree.

    ¡°Manga and video games?¡± asked Hippolyta.

    ¡°Modern entertainment,¡± I told her shortly. ¡°If you didn¡¯t get that information when we established our contract, then the orientation package from Chaldea will probably fill in the holes later.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡±

    ¡°Fou, fou!¡±

    My cheek twitched.

    ¡°I suppose it might sound a little unbelievable, outside of context,¡± Mash said thoughtfully. She scratched under Fou¡¯s chin absently, to the little gremlin¡¯s delight. ¡°But, things are already extraordinary, aren¡¯t they, Senpai? Less than an hour ago, we were singing with Captain Francis Drake and her crew after retrieving the Holy Grail from the Demon God, Forneus.¡±

    ¡°Point,¡± Ritsuka allowed with a smile and a little laugh.

    ¡°And Senpai finally sang along with us!¡± said Rika. ¡°Man, Senpai, I didn¡¯t know you had pipes like that!¡±

    My lips pursed, but I said nothing. Was that supposed to be a compliment? I¡¯d never really done much singing before, so I had no idea if it was even any good.

    ¡°Better than I was expecting,¡± said Bellamy, as though he was answering my question. ¡°I mean, you can¡¯t really compete with Euryale, right? But she was so hung up about it that I thought she was going to be as bad as Ritsuka!¡±

    Still wasn¡¯t sure if that was supposed to be a compliment. ¡°Better than I was expecting¡± and ¡°not as bad as Ritsuka¡± weren¡¯t the same as ¡°good.¡±

    ¡°Oh, come on!¡± Ritsuka complained, exasperated. ¡°I know I¡¯m not that great, okay? You guys don¡¯t need to harp on it!¡±

    Mash giggled. ¡°I think it¡¯s the spirit that matters, Senpai. It¡¯s, um, i-it¡¯s true, you weren¡¯t the greatest singer there, but your heart was in it! I¡¯m sure everyone else felt that, too!¡±

    Ritsuka sighed and sagged.

    ¡°Be thankful you never had to go to karaoke after school with him,¡± Rika said viciously. ¡°It¡¯s no wonder Minami broke up with you when you nearly blew out her eardrums on the first date.¡±

    Her brother favored her with an unimpressed look.

    Bellamy gave him a friendly, reassuring pat on the shoulder. ¡°Hey, don¡¯t worry so much about it! You might not be all that good at singing, but trust me, there were a lot of folks I sailed with who weren¡¯t all that much better. Captain Drake¡¯s crew was an exception, not the rule!¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± said Ritsuka flatly. ¡°That makes me feel so much better.¡±

    ¡°Well, I thought he was complete shit,¡± Jeanne Alter said snidely.

    Rika stuck her tongue out at her, and Jeanne Alter responded in kind. And then squawked when A¨ªfe slapped her over the back of the head again.

    Mash sighed wistfully. ¡°They really were a bunch of great people, weren¡¯t they? Even if they were all scoundrels, even if they all did many terrible things in history, and even if many people suffered as a result of their actions¡­ They were friendly and kind to us while we were there, and we couldn¡¯t have solved the Singularity without them.¡±

    ¡°Even the worst monsters in history had family and friends who loved them,¡± I said quietly.

    I suppose I technically fell into that category, too, didn¡¯t I? Maybe not on the extreme end, not compared to the worst of the worst who were all remembered for their atrocities, but no matter how necessary they were at the time, I¡¯d done plenty of things that many would have called cruel. Necessary evils were no less evil simply because they were necessary.

    ¡°Really, Master?¡± asked Bradamante, skeptical.

    ¡°Eva Braun married Hitler.¡±

    ¡°For his winning personality, I¡¯m sure,¡± Arash joked.

    Who knew? I only knew as much as the fact that she¡¯d married him and committed suicide with him, staying by his side to the very end. I couldn¡¯t imagine what she¡¯d seen in him, but history was rife with warlords, criminal kingpins, and genocidal madmen who nonetheless had somehow managed to have tender, loving home lives.

    Wonder if it made me better or worse to some degree or another that I hadn¡¯t managed that myself. Even at my worst, I wasn¡¯t anywhere near the same ballpark of monstrous as Hitler had been, but even he had somehow maintained a romance while ordering the deaths of over six million people.

    ¡°Whatever she saw, she saw something,¡± I said. ¡°Whether she was just that ignorant of how horrible he was or if she was just as bad at her core, they apparently loved each other enough to die together.¡±

    The twins traded dubious looks. I guess for my invoking of what Aisha had called ¡°Godwin¡¯s Law.¡± Yeah, Hitler was a bit of an extreme example, wasn¡¯t he? Ghengis Khan or someone a little further out of living memory might have been more appropriate, although Attila the Hun had a bit of a new twist to it after Septem.

    ¡°Still,¡± said Mash. ¡°Sailing with Captain Drake¡­ It was¡­fun, wasn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Which part?¡± asked Rika wryly. ¡°The one where we all sat around for days on end without much to do, or the one where she handed us a bunch of gold, then swindled us out of it in poker?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t lie,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°You enjoyed every minute of those poker games.¡±

    ¡°And Go Fish!¡± Mash added.

    Maybe this break would be a good opportunity for me to get to the bottom of the story behind why something as simple as a children¡¯s card game delighted Mash so much.

    ¡°Maybe.¡± Rika hummed. ¡°You know, though, as boring as a lot of that was, I think I want to do it again. Go sailing, I mean. Just take a trip to a bunch of new places, cruising around on a ship ¡ª maybe with a hunky boyfriend to hold onto me so I can shout, ¡®I¡¯m Queen of the World!¡¯¡±

    Somehow, that was about what I expected from Rika.

    ¡°Just make sure to watch out for icebergs,¡± Ritsuka told her dryly. Rika gave him an anemic punch to the shoulder as revenge, as though to remind him that he wasn¡¯t allowed to make references to pop culture.

    ¡°Icebergs?¡± asked Mash.

    Rika turned to her with horror. ¡°Oh my god. You¡¯ve never seen Titanic!¡±

    ¡°The ship that sank in the North Atlantic almost a hundred years ago?¡± said Mash. ¡°U-um, I¡¯ve read a few books about that¡­¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s this?¡± asked Bellamy. ¡°A movie about a sinking ship?¡±

    The twins traded a look, nodded to each other, and said, together, ¡°Movie night.¡±

    ¡°Movie night?¡± Bellamy echoed.

    Rika glanced back over at him. ¡°You guys can come, too. In fact, let¡¯s get everyone there! The more the merrier!¡±

    Maybe not Shakespeare. I doubted he¡¯d be able to keep from commenting on every scene and critiquing the storytelling. We probably wouldn¡¯t get through the first twenty minutes before everyone got sick of him.

    ¡°You¡¯ll have to clear it with the Director, first,¡± I said, and when Rika winced, I added, ¡°but I don¡¯t think she¡¯ll say no. As long as you¡¯re responsible about it.¡±

    ¡°Why bother?¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. ¡°Isn¡¯t there some stupid saying these days about asking forgiveness instead of permission?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°but if we do that, well¡­¡±

    ¡°Boss Lady¡¯ll chew us up and spit us out,¡± finished Rika. ¡°I like being unchewed, thank you.¡±

    ¡°I want to say the Director isn¡¯t that bad,¡± said Mash, ¡°but she would absolutely be upset if you tried something like that without clearing it with her first, Senpai.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll talk to her,¡± I promised. ¡°It¡¯ll be a¡­good way to decompress, after everything.¡±

    A good bonding exercise, too. I wasn¡¯t sure all of the Servants would appreciate a movie like Titanic ¡ª it had been popular enough to make its way over from Aleph, so I¡¯d already seen it ¡ª but I was sure that there were probably other movies that would capture the interest of those who didn¡¯t.

    I just had to hope that Rika wouldn¡¯t pick any of the superhero movies I¡¯d heard about, the ones based upon comic books. I didn¡¯t know that I could watch them and keep quiet when I knew the reality better than the fiction.

    ¡°Just¡­¡± Rika began, quieter than normal. ¡°Not until we get Emiya back.¡±

    I thought of the girl from a day ago, sitting all alone, looking at the darkening sky towards a horizon where the sun had long set, and how she¡¯d confessed her insecurities to me, her worries, her fears, her feelings of inadequacy. The terrifying certainty she¡¯d felt that her Servant would never forgive her for ordering him to fight to his death.

    There was only one thing I could say to that.

    ¡°Of course.¡±

    ¡°So he can hold your tissue box while you sob when Jack dies,¡± Ritsuka teased.

    ¡°Hey!¡± Rika squawked, slapping her hands over Mash¡¯s ears. ¡°Spoilers! Some people here haven¡¯t seen the movie yet, you know!¡±

    ¡°W-what?¡± Mash asked, confused.

    ¡°And besides,¡± Rika went on, ¡°I wasn¡¯t the one who ran out of the room shouting about cooties when Rose dropped her robe!¡±

    ¡°I was, like, five years old!¡± her brother protested.

    ¡°Oh?¡± said A¨ªfe, curious. ¡°Now this is starting to sound interesting.¡±

    I glanced over at her, remembering the romance novel she¡¯d been reading when I first found her in the library, what, a month ago now? Something like that? If she¡¯d found that an engaging enough read¡­

    ¡°I think you¡¯ll like it.¡±

    Especially the ending, where Rose went to sleep as an old woman and woke up young again on the Titanic with all of those who had died when it sank. She might appreciate that a lot more than the rest of us did, the idea that love could persist after death.

    ¡°Probably a good thing we didn¡¯t watch it before we left for the Okeanos Singularity,¡± said Arash. ¡°Might¡¯ve been bad luck to watch a movie about a famous ship sinking before we went out onto the ocean ourselves.¡±

    ¡°Oh man,¡± Rika groaned, ¡°you¡¯re gonna give me nightmares!¡±

    We continued on like that, tossing ideas back and forth, with the occasional joke thrown in for good measure, and hashed out a basic idea for a movie night where we could get all of the Servants and Masters together and sit down. Titanic was chief among the suggestions for what to watch, and Rika refused to hear a word otherwise, but what else we might watch afterwards wasn¡¯t as easily agreed upon.

    For that matter, we needed to find a room where we could all fit, because one of our bedrooms would be way too cramped, and the twins didn¡¯t know the facility well enough to make any suggestion except the gym. It became quickly obvious that this was going to be a lot more work and preparation than it seemed at first glance, so the movie night that Rika had originally wanted to have the day after we brought Emiya back wound up pushed back and postponed until we had a spot we could use.

    By the time we made it to the cafeteria, the only things we¡¯d wound up agreeing upon were that there would be a movie night sometime soon and Titanic would be the first thing we watched. Everything else was left up in the air at that point, because four of us had something much more important to occupy our attention then.

    Namely, food. I just had to hope Rika wouldn¡¯t burst into tears when it wasn¡¯t Emiya¡¯s.

 Chapter CXII: The Wages of Guilt

    Chapter CXII: The Wages of Guilt

    Breakfast turned out to be just as much of a disappointment as I think we were all expecting it to be. Marcus, who it seemed had either been nominated or volunteered to take over the job while Emiya wasn¡¯t available, undoubtedly tried his best, and he wasn¡¯t half bad, all things considered, especially since his normal position at Chaldea was in the engineering department. He was a decent enough cook, no doubt elevated by some of the recipes Emiya seemed to have left behind.

    What he wasn¡¯t, however, was Emiya. Not an entirely fair comparison to make, since Emiya was consistently blowing the socks off of everyone who ever got a bite of his food, but one that was unavoidable when we had all gotten used to eating like kings. Even when he hadn¡¯t had much at all to work with, somehow, Emiya made it work and made it work well.

    I¡¯d said it before, but we were screwed once we lost Emiya, and that prediction looked to be coming true, ameliorated only by the fact that we didn¡¯t intend to be without him for much longer. That knowledge probably helped Rika stomach her breakfast a bit better, but the miserable look on her face the entire time told me that she was all too aware that we still had lunch, dinner, and then at least another breakfast to go before we went down to the Summoning Chamber to bring him back.

    It was damning with faint praise, perhaps, but at least it was better than soggy cereal.

    The rest of the day was largely uneventful. Most of it was spent getting Bellamy and Hippolyta settled in, finding them rooms and introducing them to the other Servants that they hadn¡¯t had the chance to meet yet, then an informal tour of the main parts of the facility, like the library, the gymnasium, and the simulator.

    The simulator in particular seemed to fascinate them the most. They asked a lot of questions about what it could do and what its limits were, and as the one who had the most experience using it, it fell to me to answer those questions, although even I only knew so much. They were both disappointed to find out that it still needed a little bit of fixing before it could accommodate Servants.

    I could see that becoming a common issue as we contracted more Servants. Chaldea as a facility was fairly utilitarian in its layout, so even though we had an expansive library and such, the sterile white of the walls and floors and the suffocating nature of being unable to leave the building would probably drive more than one of them into the simulator just for the chance to visit places they weren¡¯t able to otherwise.

    I couldn¡¯t say I didn¡¯t understand the desire, though. I¡¯d spent two years here, so I was used to just how bland and impersonal most of the place was, but even I found myself wanting to stretch my legs and take a run through a park or the city streets, the way I had when I was younger, instead of a track or on a treadmill.

    Hippolyta, at least, also liked the gym. I made a mental note to check with Da Vinci about whether or not the machines were rated to handle a Servant¡¯s performance, because it could be a little problematic if Hippolyta accidentally broke one of them when she pushed it harder than it was capable of dealing with.

    A¨ªfe would probably be delighted to finally have a training partner, though. She might have found it fulfilling to put the twins through their paces every day, but eventually, she was going to want to stretch her own metaphorical legs, and Hippolyta seemed like she was on a similar wavelength. I¡¯d had the thought before, but they were either going to get along very well or not at all.

    After lunch, I begged off the rest of the welcoming committee and went to check in with Marie, who it turned out was still in the Command Room going over the data from the Okeanos Singularity. She looked much better than she had when we first came back ¡ª much less like she was standing on a precipice and holding onto the edge by her fingertips ¡ª a huge relief compared to how bad it could have been.

    There was still a tension in her shoulders that eased when I walked into the room and her eyes swung over to scan my face. I wondered how long it was going to take before those fears stopped haunting her and hated that the answer might be ¡®never.¡¯

    There were times when I thought Lev had died too quickly.

    ¡°Director,¡± I greeted her respectfully.

    ¡°Taylor,¡± was her somewhat less formal response. She glanced back at her console, filled with charts and meters and percentages for things that I didn¡¯t completely understand. ¡°Was there something you needed?¡±

    ¡°Ritsuka and Rika had an idea,¡± I told her, ¡°and I thought we should run it by you before making any promises about whether or not it¡¯s going to happen.¡±

    Her brow furrowed, confused. ¡°An idea?¡±

    ¡°They wanted to have a movie night,¡± I explained, ¡°as a sort of¡­bonding exercise with the Servants. I thought it a workable enough idea on its own, but we¡¯d need to find a place with enough room to accommodate all of us and get your permission to set everything up.¡±

    ¡°Hey, that actually sounds like a great idea,¡± Romani chimed in. ¡°What movie were they thinking about showing?¡±

    ¡°Titanic.¡±

    Immediately, he grimaced, no doubt thinking about the Singularity we¡¯d all just come back from, maybe even having that same thought about how it would have been bad luck to watch it before we left for Okeanos. One side of my mouth curled upward, and I said, ¡°It seemed appropriate.¡±

    ¡°I¡­can see how that might fit,¡± he allowed grudgingly, ¡°it just seems a little¡­a-ah, gauche, I guess?¡±

    ¡°Are you sure you even know what that word means?¡± Marie asked him dryly.

    ¡°I couldn¡¯t think of a better one, okay?¡± he lamented.

    ¡°Perhaps the first thing I should have asked,¡± I began, ¡°is whether we even have the movie on hand.¡±

    ¡°Of course we do,¡± Marie replied immediately. ¡°The library stores more than just books. We should have a record of just about every movie that¡¯s ever been made.¡±

    ¡°Wait, really?¡± asked Romani, surprised. ¡°We actually store movies down in the library?¡±

    Marie huffed. ¡°Of course! You¡¯re the Head of Medical, aren¡¯t you? You should know at least as well as I do the importance of the Masters¡¯ mental well-being in the success of the Grand Order! That includes safe means and methods of recreation in their downtime!¡±

    ¡°W-well, yeah, but, um,¡± Roman fumbled, ¡°it just¡­didn¡¯t seem like¡­something you cared about all that much, Director¡­?¡±

    Marie rolled her eyes. ¡°Don¡¯t be an idiot,¡± she scolded. ¡°The Masters¡¯ performance is a direct reflection on my competence as a Director. Of course I care that they¡¯re all in the best condition possible!¡±

    ¡°Do we have a place we could show it, then?¡± I asked. ¡°One big enough for a group of at least ten?¡±

    Marie¡¯s lips pursed, and she crossed her arms as one hand rose to her chin, her thinking pose. For a handful of seconds, she didn¡¯t say anything as she went through a mental list of viable rooms that fit the criteria.

    ¡°The auditorium might work,¡± she said at length, slowly and cautiously, ¡°but that might be too big for such a small group, so¡­ Maybe¡­¡±

    She sighed. ¡°I¡¯ll talk to Da Vinci,¡± she promised, and she sounded like she hated the idea that she even needed to. ¡°I¡¯m sure it should be feasible to use the same room where we conduct Master orientation, especially now that we¡¯re¡­n-not using it for that purpose anymore.¡±

    Because there were no new Masters in need of orientation, she didn¡¯t say, but I heard it all the same. In a different world, one where the sabotage hadn¡¯t happened but there were still Singularities in need of repair, it was probably where we would have conducted our briefings before and after each Singularity, but with only three Masters, the space was simply unnecessary. It was easier to just do them in the Command Room instead.

    I was about to leave it at that and turn to leave when I remembered something from Okeanos, a mental note that I¡¯d jotted down.

    ¡°Oh, Romani,¡± I said.

    He blinked over at me. ¡°Yeah?¡±

    ¡°Mash needs to learn how to swim.¡±

    He gave me a bewildered, incredulous look. ¡°She doesn¡¯t ¡ª¡±

    And then, he caught himself, and he grimaced. ¡°Right. Of course she doesn¡¯t know how to swim. It wasn¡¯t something that Marisbury considered important.¡±

    ¡°She doesn¡¯t ¡ª¡± Marie choked. ¡°And we sent her into a Singularity where she spent most of the time in a deviant ocean? One where we couldn¡¯t even have calculated something like the strength of the underwater currents?¡±

    ¡°Come to think of it, this shouldn¡¯t be a surprise,¡± said Romani. ¡°Mash told us she didn¡¯t know how to swim during the briefing the day before we Rayshifted them into the Okeanos Singularity, Director.¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t think she meant she didn¡¯t know how to swim at all!¡± Marie said hotly. ¡°But just¡­i-if she meant that she didn¡¯t even know the basics¡­!¡±

    Romani sighed and leaned back in his chair. ¡°It wasn¡¯t like we had much choice, Director. Mash¡¯s shield is an integral part of a number of functions we use to do things like contact the team and send supplies. We literally can¡¯t afford to keep her inside the facility during Rayshifts.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m well aware of that!¡± Marie snapped. ¡°But still! The idea that we sent her into a situation where her life may very well have depended on a simple skill like swimming and she didn¡¯t know how¡­!¡±

    She looked like she wanted to hit something, but in lieu of doing something so undignified, she leaned over her console, hunching, her fingers gripping the edge so tightly that her knuckles were an even starker white against her already pale complexion. Her hair hung down, hiding her face, but I could well imagine how she would be biting her bottom lip until it almost bled.

    ¡°I knew he had done plenty of deplorable things to her,¡± I heard Marie murmur, although I was sure I wasn¡¯t meant to, ¡°but just how is it that¡­even now, I¡¯m still¡­¡±

    From her other side, where she couldn¡¯t see him, Romani favored her with a sad, pitying look, the sort of resigned look of someone who knew just what Marie was doing to herself right now and knew that there wasn¡¯t anything he could say to make it better.

    Was there even anything? I didn¡¯t have the whole picture, not even close, but just from what I did know, it was readily apparent that Marisbury had treated Mash more like an experiment ¡ª a lab rat ¡ª than a person, with all of the ugly parts something like that would entail. I still needed to get the finer details out of the two of them, but I was a little leery of pressing too hard, because Marie had been absolutely inconsolable when she found out exactly what her father had done to Mash.

    One of the hardest parts of growing up was realizing your parents weren¡¯t perfect angels who always made the right choice and knew better than you did. Realizing that your father made Victor Frankenstein look reasonable and well-adjusted had to be even harder.

    ¡°For now,¡± Romani said, ¡°I¡¯ll sign off on it, Taylor. Officially, if I have to. Even if we didn¡¯t have much choice before, I think you¡¯re right to say that it¡¯s something we need to fix for the future. There¡¯s no telling when it might become an issue again, so it¡¯s better to get it out of the way now, while we still have the time.¡± He frowned. ¡°You know where the pool is, right? Not that too many people use it, since we¡¯re in the Antarctic and all¡­¡±

    I nodded. ¡°I know. I¡¯ll get her started on it tomorrow, while the twins are busy with their lessons.¡±

    Romani sighed. ¡°That should be fine. That way, they¡¯ll all be distracted until Da Vinci is ready to try bringing Emiya back.¡±

    A nifty side benefit.

    ¡°Treading water is the absolute minimum!¡± Marie barked suddenly. She was still hunched over her console. ¡°I expect her to at least be proficient at the breaststroke and the backstroke by the time we¡¯re ready to deploy you into the next Singularity, even if it won¡¯t be necessary there!¡±

    It wasn¡¯t like I was some kind of Olympic swimmer myself, but ¡ª

    ¡°Of course, Director.¡±

    It was one of those things you had to have a minimum level of proficiency in as part of the Wards. You didn¡¯t have to be a professional lifeguard, but you at least had to know how to swim and how to rescue someone who was drowning. I¡¯d never had to really use any of it myself, but I remembered enough that I thought I could teach Mash at least that much.

    With all of that taken care of, I bade Marie and Romani goodbye and left the Command Room, and I found there wasn¡¯t much else for me to do today. When I checked in with Arash to see how things were going with our new arrivals, the twins were still giving Bellamy and Hippolyta a tour of what they knew of the facility, but looked to have covered most of the essentials and were showing them around the dorms.

    I wondered where they were going to wind up picking their rooms. Chaldea had enough space for around five-hundred people, last I checked, which had left a lot of rooms empty even when we had our full staff and a complete roster of Master candidates. A¨ªfe, Emiya, Arash, and most of the other Servants had all picked out rooms that were within a relative spitting distance of us Masters, but El-Melloi II had chosen something a little more isolated ¡ª far enough for his own privacy, at a guess, and maybe enough for a workshop so that he wasn¡¯t disturbed in the middle of a project.

    Come to think of it, beyond the spells he¡¯d used to help us out in Septem and the basics he was teaching the twins, I didn¡¯t remember him ever saying what field he specialized in. Master¡¯s Clairvoyance hadn¡¯t helped either, because most of his skills and his Noble Phantasm were geared towards a backline support role and didn¡¯t have much application to magecraft at all.

    And now that I thought about it, he probably wouldn¡¯t tell me even if I asked. I was still keeping my powers and how exactly they worked from him, after all, and as far as I knew, Marie hadn¡¯t given him clearance to know. That was another thing I was going to have to bring up with her, how much I could tell the others about who I was and where I came from. Did those secrecy rules she had drilled into me still apply when one of our Servants was from an alternate timeline himself and wasn¡¯t particularly shy about the details of it? Two, even, if it turned out this wasn¡¯t Emiya¡¯s native timeline either.

    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    Even if they didn¡¯t, I wasn¡¯t sure how much I was comfortable sharing. How much I was willing to explain when ¡°aliens¡± was part of it and there was so much context that they would need just to understand where I¡¯d started.

    By the time I made it back, the group had split up and gone their separate ways. Ritsuka and Rika, with their duties as tour guides done, had slipped away to flop onto their beds and relax, and I couldn¡¯t blame them. A¨ªfe and Jeanne Alter had gone off to do something ¡ª what, I didn¡¯t know, but A¨ªfe was undoubtedly still keeping her eye on Jeanne Alter to make sure she didn¡¯t get up to anything mischievous ¡ª while Hippolyta and Sam had each picked out a room of their own.

    I caught up to Mash before she could go off to do whatever it was she was going to do with the rest of her afternoon.

    ¡°Oh,¡± she said when she saw me. ¡°Miss Taylor. You¡¯re back. Was there something you needed?¡±

    ¡°I talked to Romani and the Director,¡± I told her without preamble. ¡°Starting tomorrow, I¡¯m going to be teaching you how to swim.¡±

    She blinked at me, confused. ¡°You are?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s an oversight we should have taken care of before Okeanos, if we¡¯d known it was an issue we needed to address,¡± I said. ¡°Even if we¡¯ve resolved the Okeanos Singularity, however, that¡¯s no guarantee that being able to swim won¡¯t be relevant in a later Singularity. The Director¡¯s left it up to me to see to it that we shore up that hole in your skill set.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± She nodded, like that made complete sense to her. ¡°If Director Animusphere says so, then it must be important.¡±

    It probably did. Mash was not as single-minded about her duty as a member of Chaldea as I had been about stopping the apocalypse during my Wards days, but she was just as dedicated as Marie and I. With my conversation with Romani and Marie still fresh in my mind, I couldn¡¯t help wondering how much of that was actually Mash¡¯s choice.

    ¡°Fou,¡± the little gremlin purred suspiciously, but I ignored it. Mash appeased him by offering scratches under his chin.

    ¡°Are we starting right away?¡± Mash asked. ¡°I¡­don¡¯t think I have a swimsuit, Miss Taylor.¡±

    ¡°Chaldea has a stock of them, just in case someone should need one.¡± And failing that, I was sure Da Vinci could make one for her without too much trouble. Now, whether it would be at all appropriate for a learning environment instead of relaxing at a beach, that was a different question entirely. ¡°But no. We have the rest of the day off, so go ahead and enjoy it. We¡¯ll start tomorrow instead, while Ritsuka and Rika are having their next lesson with El-Melloi II.¡±

    I wouldn¡¯t put it past Da Vinci to make her a really flattering bikini¡­that Mash probably wouldn¡¯t be all that embarrassed about wearing, considering what she went around in as a Servant. That was already about as skimpy as a one-piece swimsuit anyway.

    ¡°Okay!¡± And then, she bent into a short bow, and I could only watch awkwardly as she said, ¡°Please take good care of me, Miss Taylor.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± I replied for lack of anything better to say.

    Just where was Mash picking up all of these Japanese mannerisms? Had Romani introduced her to anime at some point as some kind of ¡°fuck you¡± to Marisbury?

    ¡°You know where the pool is?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve never used it, but yes,¡± said Mash. ¡°Are we meeting up there?¡±

    ¡°Yeah. We¡¯ll find you a swimsuit that fits and then get you started.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll see you then, Miss Taylor.¡±

    And then she went off to enjoy the rest of her afternoon ¡ª doing what, I could only guess. Reading, maybe. I couldn¡¯t remember Mash ever showing an interest in video games, although I didn¡¯t put it past Rika to get her hooked on them, and while the fact we had movies probably also meant we had tv shows, I couldn¡¯t remember Mash ever being particularly interested in them either.

    It was a startling reminder about just how little I knew about Mash. Two years I¡¯d spent in this place, working fairly closely with her for most of it, and I wasn¡¯t even sure what her hobbies were. I¡¯d been content not to know, focused as I was on the things in front of me and the mission that had been handed to me.

    Maybe these swimming lessons would give me a chance to rectify that a little.

    I considered, for a moment, heading towards the library to do some research on England in preparation for the next Singularity, but I didn¡¯t remember Romani or Da Vinci ever saying what era it was going to take place in. It might not have been a problem for a country like America, with a scant two-hundred or so years of history, but the history of Britain spanned two-thousand years just in the common era, and getting any depth on a span of time that long was the sort of thing that took years of study.

    For another moment, I considered going back and checking with Romani and Marie to see if they had narrowed down a tentative date for when the next Singularity was going to take place, but after a few seconds of thought, I decided against it. As much as I might want to get a head start on things so I could be prepared for our next outing, things were going to be plenty busy enough in the coming days and we had all just gotten back from an intense fight against two near immortal Servants and another one of those monstrous Demon Gods.

    Just this once, I think, I could afford to give myself a break. There was an unfinished novel calling my name, and that was as good a way of spending the rest of my afternoon as any.

    So that was what I did. I went back to my room, pulled out my half-finished novel, reclined on my bed, and picked up where I¡¯d left off what had been for me almost two weeks ago.

    The next time I saw the twins and Mash was when dinner rolled around, and any semblance of a good mood Rika might have managed to build up in the hours since her little tour with Hippolyta and Bellamy in tow soured immediately almost the instant she stepped into the cafeteria. Marcus might have been trying his best, but it was yet another meal without Emiya, and no matter how hard Marcus tried, that wouldn¡¯t change.

    Even Mash and Ritsuka couldn¡¯t cheer her up, and all things considered, that was saying something. I couldn¡¯t think of anything to lift her mood either. The only thing that would make her happy was having Emiya back, because it wasn¡¯t just his food that she was missing, was it? She wanted her ¡°house husband¡± back.

    The only thing I could do was give her a slight nudge and a look of confidence, trying to assure her without words that she had nothing to worry about and Emiya would be back before she knew it ¡ª back, snarking, and perfectly happy to keep being her Servant.

    The small but genuine smile she gave me in return told me my message had been received.

    Climbing into bed later that night was a relief. It seemed the pattern would keep holding that the thing I wound up missing most during our deployments was just a good, quality mattress to sleep on, because a cot in a cramped cabin aboard a rocking ship was just nowhere near a modern, mass-produced bed.

    And also indoor plumbing. The ways and places that people relieved themselves before every house had a toilet didn¡¯t bear mentioning.

    The next morning, I woke up refreshed and feeling better than I had for most of my time on the Golden Hind, and after a morning workout ¡ª where I was joined by A¨ªfe, who was putting the twins through a lighter routine to ease them back into things ¡ª and a plain breakfast, I had the rest of the morning to myself.

    I thought about going back to my book again, but then I remembered Marie¡¯s reaction the day before to finding out Mash didn¡¯t know how to swim at all and her even worse reaction around the time I first joined to finding out what her father had done to Mash, and what needed to be done about that seemed suddenly quite clear to me.

    That was why, instead of going to my room, I made my way to Marie¡¯s office, where she would undoubtedly be filing some of the paperwork for our recent Rayshift and all of the resources we¡¯d spent doing it. Sure enough, when her door whooshed open, I found her at her desk, pouring over a sheaf of paper, with a pile of more organized into two foot-high stacks nearby.

    When she looked up and found me in her doorway, her brow furrowed. ¡°Taylor,¡± she said by way of greeting. ¡°Is there something wrong?¡±

    ¡°I talked with Mash yesterday afternoon,¡± I told her, ¡°and she agreed easily enough. I¡¯m going to start her swimming lessons later today, while the twins are with El-Melloi II.¡± And then I added, ¡°I think you should be there, too.¡±

    Marie startled. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°You should help me teach Mash how to swim,¡± I said plainly and bluntly.

    Marie flinched, her already pale face turning even whiter.

    ¡°Th-that¡¯s not¡­¡± she began. ¡°I-I couldn¡¯t possibly¡­th-there¡¯s too much for me to do! I¡¯m the Director!¡±

    I wasn¡¯t going to let her use that as an excuse.

    ¡°Two years ago, you took hours out of your day to help a crippled girl learn to walk and talk again,¡± I reminded her mercilessly. ¡°For six whole months, you supervised her recovery, despite also having other responsibilities that you needed to see to, and for almost eighteen months more, you took more time out of your day to teach her everything she needed to know to have a place in your organization ¡ª not just a place, but a coveted spot on your vanguard team.¡±

    ¡°Th-that was different!¡± Marie insisted. ¡°A-and back then, we still had a full staff!¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I allowed, ¡°but that¡¯s not why you don¡¯t want to do it, is it?¡±

    She flinched again, head dropping, and her bottom lip found its way between her teeth, as sure a sign as any that I¡¯d hit the nail on the head. I stepped closer, made my way up to her desk, and leaned in a little.

    ¡°I haven¡¯t forgotten what you were like when you found out what your father did to Mash,¡± I murmured softly. Her head jerked up to look at me. ¡°Back then, all that time you spent watching over me was as much a way of distracting yourself from having to think about it as anything else.¡±

    Her hands curled into fists. Even though she didn¡¯t say anything, that was an answer in its own way.

    ¡°I could tell you as much as I want that you¡¯re not at fault,¡± I went on, ¡°that Mash doesn¡¯t blame you for any of it, and I just have to watch the way she talks to you to know it, but that isn¡¯t going to stop you from feeling guilty about it, is it?¡±

    ¡°Th-the things my father did to her,¡± Marie said, voice quivering, ¡°and I had no idea¡­¡±

    And one of these days, I was going to get the full, unvarnished truth about what exactly those things were. My imagination conjured up images of the monstrosities Bonesaw had created back when the Nine visited Brockton Bay, but that didn¡¯t quite fit for obvious reasons, chief among them that Mash wasn¡¯t some cobbled together mass of twisted flesh.

    ¡°So you¡¯re just going to run away from it whenever someone reminds you?¡±

    ¡°I can¡¯t change any of it!¡± she burst out. She bit her lip so hard that it turned white, and her head fell again. ¡°I can¡¯t change any of it, and there¡¯s nothing I could possibly do to make it better. M-Mash¡­has every right to hate me, and the fact that she doesn¡¯t¡­¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯re just going to torture yourself?¡± I asked. ¡°Take all of that blame and turn it into guilt to make up for the fact that Mash doesn¡¯t hate you even a little bit? Like it¡¯s some kind of penance for your father¡¯s sins?¡±

    ¡°Somebody has to, don¡¯t they?¡± she demanded. ¡°And as his daughter¡­ As the one who inherited both his Magic Crest and his position as Director of Chaldea, it has to be me!¡±

    I wanted to call it twisted. To point out that, as I understood the sequence of events, Romani was here and taking care of Mash for longer than she was Director, and he, as a grown man and a medical professional, hadn¡¯t been able to stop whatever Marisbury had done to her, so even if Marie had known and tried to intervene, she wouldn¡¯t have been able to stop her father. That if, in that case, Romani couldn¡¯t be blamed for what Marisbury had done, then Marie couldn¡¯t either.

    But guilt didn¡¯t work on logic like that. It made excuses and invented reasons to be right, to justify its existence, and I wasn¡¯t Doctor Yamada. I couldn¡¯t coach Marie into forgiving herself.

    ¡°Then do something about it.¡±

    Her head jerked up again, and I met her gaze firmly.

    ¡°If you feel like you have to share some of the blame for what happened to Mash,¡± I went on, ¡°then actually do something to try and make things right. Your father only gave Mash the things she needed to be a member of Chaldea, right? The stuff she would need to do her job. So give her what she needs to be a person.¡±

    Marie¡¯s eyes turned down, towards her desk. ¡°I¡­ I don¡¯t¡­¡±

    I reached out and took one of her balled up fists, laying my hand over hers, and softer, I said, ¡°I can teach her how to swim. I have the training for it. So you¡­you can teach her how to enjoy it.¡±

    ¡°I¡­¡± Her voice trembled. ¡°I don¡¯t know if I can. I-I¡¯m not¡­ I-I¡¯ve heard what everyone says about me, b-behind my back. About how¡­how h-hard I am on everyone. How mean. B-but I don¡¯t¡­¡±

    I don¡¯t know how to be anything else, she couldn¡¯t finish saying, but I heard it anyway.

    ¡°Have you ever tried?¡± I asked gently.

    The furrow of her brow was more of an answer than anything she could have said aloud. I pulled my hand away from hers.

    ¡°I¡¯m not going to force you right now,¡± I told her. ¡°Take a few days, if you have to. But once she¡¯s got the basics down, I¡¯m not going to let you run away from this.¡±

    Slowly, I turned and walked away. I gave her ample time to call out to me, to stop me, to say anything else at all, but she let me leave without so much as another word. I couldn¡¯t see if she looked up to watch me go, and I didn¡¯t want to make myself look less confident by looking back to check, but the door whooshed shut behind me in an otherwise empty silence.

    For a moment longer, I stayed and listened, but of course, even if she started sobbing or something, the room was soundproofed, so I wouldn¡¯t have heard anything through that door anyway.

    The only thing I could do just then was leave and go about the rest of my day, so I did.

    Lunch was much the same as breakfast had been: not bad, better than what we¡¯d been eating back when we had the full kitchen staff, in fact, but missing the spark that was Emiya¡¯s cooking. Rika¡¯s opinion very obviously fell along the same lines, because again, she didn¡¯t look like she was enjoying it much herself.

    The anticipation hung in the air, heavy but unspoken. Emiya would come back, and all would be right in the world, or at least the kitchen and the cafeteria. It was just a matter of a few more hours and Da Vinci letting us all know, and then we could go back to feasting like royalty.

    Rika wasn¡¯t the only one looking forward to it.

    The hour and a half afterwards, I spent reading some more of my novel while I waited for my food to digest, and then, right around the time the twins would be heading off for their next lesson in the fundamentals of magecraft with El-Melloi II, I stuck my bookmark between the pages to save my place, set my book aside, and made my way towards the pool. The adjacent locker rooms first, more specifically, because I happened to be one of the people who had been issued a standard swimsuit by Chaldea.

    After all, I had been dropped off here with ¡ª quite literally ¡ª nothing to my name but the clothes on my back. Marie had offered to get me something more personalized, but quite frankly, I didn¡¯t care enough to bother. It meant something to me that she had offered, but it wasn¡¯t like I had an hourglass figure or a bust worth showing off, so a standard, solid color one-piece was fine.

    Of course, the one thing I hadn¡¯t been able to compromise on ¡ª literally hadn¡¯t had the luxury to compromise on it ¡ª was the swimming goggles with my prescription fitted into the lenses. It was by no means the biggest thing Marie had done for me, nor even the most expensive, but the fact that she cared enough for something that would have been so minor by comparison spoke more to her character than anything she might have said or done in her position as Director.

    I made sure to grab a swimsuit that looked like it would fit Mash while I was there. It wasn¡¯t like her standard outfit as a Servant didn¡¯t already give me a fairly decent idea of her proportions, so it wasn¡¯t hard.

    I also grabbed a pair of towels on my way out and padded down the hallway in my bare feet, trying to ignore the shivers that shuddered up and down my spine, because the room might have been fairly warm and humid, but the floors were still chilly.

    A voice up ahead told me that Mash was already there and waiting, so as I rounded the corner and came out into the room with Chaldea¡¯s Olympic-sized swimming pool, I held out the extra swimsuit.

    ¡°Mash ¡ª¡±

    Only whatever I¡¯d been about to say died on my tongue, because Marie, dressed in a dark, frilly one-piece decorated with an artistic rendering of the celestial spheres, already stood there with her. When they heard my voice, they both turned to me.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash. ¡°Hello, Miss Taylor.¡±

    ¡°¡­Mash,¡± I greeted her. I looked towards Marie. ¡°Director.¡±

    She didn¡¯t answer the question I didn¡¯t actually ask, she just acted like there was nothing at all unusual or strange happening. As though I hadn¡¯t all but threatened to drag her down here if she didn¡¯t muster the courage to come down here of her own volition.

    ¡°Well?¡± said Marie, a little impatiently. ¡°Now that we¡¯re all here, let¡¯s get started already!¡±

    I had to fight down a smile. I wasn¡¯t sure how successful I was.

    ¡°Of course, Director.¡±

 Chapter CXIII: Return of the Red Hound

    Chapter CXIII: Return of the Red Hound

    Mash¡¯s first swimming lesson went ¡ª as Alec or Aisha might have put it ¡ª swimmingly.

    It was not, having said that, without issue. Marie was a bit stilted and awkward for most of the time, like she didn¡¯t quite know how to properly interact with Mash, especially outside of her role as Director of Chaldea to Mash¡¯s subordinate position. It was undoubtedly made worse by her complicated feelings on the matter of what her father had done to Mash, because those would not be resolved simply by me commanding them to be resolved.

    If only it really could be that simple.

    It left me to pick up most of the slack, and for the time being, I was okay with that. We weren¡¯t going to be teaching Mash all she needed to know in a single afternoon, and Mash wouldn¡¯t be mastering any of it that quickly either. There was still plenty of time to work things out and get them both to a better place. Plenty more afternoons to help Marie work through her guilt.

    Two birds with one stone. My favorite kind of plan.

    The first thing I made sure to teach Mash was treading water, just because it was probably the most important skill to have when it came to swimming, doubly so when she would probably have that armor of hers on whenever the time came that she might need this. Everything else could come later, once she knew how to just keep herself afloat.

    Like that, the hours slipped by. Somewhere along the way, I felt the prickle of attention on the back of my neck, and I knew without even looking that Fou had decided to poke his nose in to watch. I ignored him as best as I was able, but the one time I chanced a glance over in his direction, he had on an oversized jersey that said ¡°LIFEGUARD¡± in bold, white lettering and a shiny black whistle hung from a string around his neck.

    I should have known better. The little gremlin was never too far from Mash, and while he seemed to like the twins well enough, too, I doubted he found their lessons with El-Melloi II particularly interesting. It was practically inevitable that he would follow her here to her swimming lessons instead.

    Although where he got the jersey, I hadn¡¯t the slightest clue. Maybe one of the deceased staff had a pet dog or something and Fou had gotten into the luggage while poking around the empty rooms? That sounded like a stretch. Marie had a general ¡°no pets¡± policy, and I had a hard time imagining a stuffy mage would go through the trouble of outfitting a familiar with something so banal. Romani or Da Vinci, on the other hand, I could easily see them getting something like that for Fou ¡ª or, in Da Vinci¡¯s case, making it for him herself.

    That was already more attention than I wanted to give the thing, though, so I put it out of my mind for the time being. The more energy I spent trying to figure out the thing¡¯s mystery, the more of a headache I gave myself.

    Eventually, the alarm I set before we started rang, signaling to me that we had an hour before dinner hours were supposed to begin, so I called an end to our lesson for the day so that we could all go and get cleaned up before we went to eat.

    Once we had all climbed out of the pool and toweled ourselves dry as best as we could, I turned to Mash.

    ¡°We¡¯ll pick this up at the same time tomorrow,¡± I promised her. ¡°For now, go ahead back to your room and get ready for dinner. We¡¯ll meet the twins in the cafeteria.¡±

    ¡°Okay!¡± Mash said brightly, as though she hadn¡¯t just spent an afternoon learning to swim. ¡°Thank you for the lesson, Miss Taylor! You as well, Director! I learned a lot today!¡±

    She gave me a short bow, and then, she turned and left. Fou blew his little whistle sharply, and then bounded after her, chirping, ¡°Fou, fou!¡±

    A moment later, they were both gone, and it was just Marie and me, alone by the pool. She meandered over towards me, her eyes still drawn to the hallway that Mash had just walked down, a slight tremble in her hand and a little wobble in her bottom lip the only signs of what must have been going through her head. The slosh of the pool and the hum of the motors circulating the water filled up the silence.

    ¡°I¡¯m proud of you for coming today,¡± I told her quietly.

    Her brow furrowed, troubled.

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t¡­¡±

    She struggled to find the words, floundering as her lips moved soundlessly.

    ¡°I know.¡±

    But I understood what she was trying to say anyway. Even if today had gone well, even if Mash had never at any point given a single hint saying that she held anything Marisbury had done against Marie, even if the only one who was forcing Marie to shoulder the blame was herself, a single lesson over the course of one afternoon wasn¡¯t enough to soothe her conscience. It wasn¡¯t that easy. It couldn¡¯t be changed that quickly.

    And again, I was well aware of that. I¡¯d known from the very beginning that this was the work of many long hours over the course of weeks or months.

    I reached down and gave Marie¡¯s hand a quick squeeze.

    ¡°But you came anyway. And that means something, even if it might not feel like it.¡±

    She didn¡¯t look entirely convinced. That was fine, too. Even if she didn¡¯t quite believe that this would help anyone, let alone her, as long as she was willing to try, that was what was important.

    I let go. ¡°Come on,¡± I said. ¡°What I said doesn¡¯t just apply to Mash. You and I both need to clean up before dinner, too, unless you want to walk into the cafeteria smelling like chlorine.¡±

    Marie shook her head. ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± she said. ¡°Even if it¡¯s inevitable that everyone will find out about these lessons, I refuse to suffer the indignity of everyone talking about how badly I smell afterwards!¡±

    She stalked off, and smothering a little smile, I followed after her.

    In the locker rooms, we took a minute to rinse off the worst of the pool water, then changed back into our normal clothes and went our separate ways ¡ª her to take another, more thorough shower in her own quarters, and me to do the same in mine. If they weren¡¯t already done, the twins should have been finishing up their lesson with El-Melloi II right around that time, but I didn¡¯t run into either of them on my way back to the Masters¡¯ dorms.

    By the time I made it back to my room, showered more thoroughly to get rid of the lingering scent that seemed stuffed up my nostrils, gone through my usual hair care routine (the one part of my appearance I put great effort into caring for, and probably always would), dried off, and gotten dressed again, the dinner hours were starting. After a quick check to see if Da Vinci had left me any messages (she hadn¡¯t), I left and made my way towards the cafeteria for my next meal.

    I wound up being one of the first ones there, right as Marcus started doling out the dinner menu, which meant that I was probably the first person to realize exactly how tired he looked.

    ¡°Trouble sleeping?¡± I asked him conversationally.

    It occurred to me that I hadn¡¯t made much effort to socialize with the rest of the staff, not even since the Sabotage. Even Sylvia and I were more acquaintances than anything else, colleagues who happened to have disciplines that crossed over to varying degrees. I couldn¡¯t even have said what her favorite color was.

    Some of that probably had to do with how busy everyone was keeping this place going. Twenty-ish people were trying to do the job of two-hundred, and that had to be spreading everyone thin. I had to wonder how many of those stimulants Romani had been handing out to the others on the staff instead of just using for himself.

    ¡°More like too much to do,¡± Marcus said wearily. ¡°I was just supposed to be helping out in the kitchen part time, but Emiya biting it when he did meant the only one who could do his job was me.¡±

    I made a noise of understanding in my throat. Yeah, that was about what I¡¯d expected.

    ¡°You won¡¯t be at it too much longer,¡± I promised him. ¡°We have plans to bring Emiya back as soon as possible.¡±

    Marcus smiled a tired smile. ¡°The only thing that¡¯s keeping me going.¡±

    I felt a little bad as he dished me up, knowing that I wouldn¡¯t be able to stop myself from comparing it to Emiya¡¯s food, and that wasn¡¯t fair. He probably knew everyone was doing that, too, and it couldn¡¯t have made doing his job here any easier.

    As though to prove a point to myself, when I sat down and started eating, I made sure to eat slower than normal, to take in the flavors, to savor them, to appreciate Marcus and his efforts to provide us with something that tasted good, even if it couldn¡¯t compare with Emiya¡¯s. And still, I couldn¡¯t help myself from being slightly disappointed when I found it missing something indescribable, an extra dimension that just set Emiya¡¯s meals apart.

    Forget losing him again at some point, which may have been inevitable. It was going to be nearly impossible to go back to eating anything else when this was all over and my job as Master of Chaldea was finished.

    Slowly, as the dinner hour stretched on, others began to filter in. Marie came first, as poised as she always tried to be in public, and accepted her food without comment. She decided to sit down with me, plopping into the chair directly across from me, and went about eating her food with a sour look on her face that spoke as clearly about her own disappointment as anything else could have. She gave her tray a glare that seemed to accuse it of insulting her taste buds.

    At some point, I think I was going to have to do something nice for Marcus. Maybe, once I got my terrarium or Da Vinci came through on those spider puppets, I could weave him a silk apron to wear.

    Eventually, the twins arrived, too, with Mash in tow (and the little gremlin perched atop her shoulder, as he seemed perpetually to be), and loaded themselves up with their own food, then came to sit down with Marie and me. They didn¡¯t say anything to anyone about it, but just from the way they ate and how unenthusiastic they were, they had the same opinions everyone else seemed to have ¡ª Emiya¡¯s food was just better.

    Rika especially was bummed out. She ate mechanically, distracted, to the point I wasn¡¯t sure she was even tasting what she was putting in her mouth. I knew why, of course, but there still hadn¡¯t been any word from Da Vinci.

    As though that thought had given Rika her cue, she turned to Marie and said, ¡°Hey, Boss Lady.¡±

    Marie turned back to her and favored her with a supremely unimpressed look. Rika soldiered on as though she hadn¡¯t noticed it.

    ¡°Did Da Vinci-chan say anything about getting Emiya back? That was supposed to be today, right? I was promised my house husband back!¡±

    Marie scowled, but made sure ¡ª deliberately ¡ª to swallow her food before speaking.

    ¡°It¡¯s not that easy to do a summoning, you know,¡± she said. ¡°There¡¯s a lot of preparation that goes into making sure the system is functioning properly, and no one wants to take any chances that this one in particular is going to go awry!¡±

    ¡°But I thought it was supposed to be easier to bring back guys we already summoned!¡± Rika protested.

    ¡°It is!¡± Marie jabbed her fork at Rika like it was her index finger. ¡°But easier isn¡¯t the same as easy! Plus, this is the first time we¡¯re going to be summoning back a Servant we already had a contract with, so there¡¯s a lot of things that we need to get straight so that we can make it even easier the next time! Calculations, calibrations, parameters ¡ª there¡¯s more than you can imagine that goes into ensuring the optimal result!¡±

    ¡°Next time?¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°You think we¡¯re going to lose more Servants in the future?¡±

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Mash murmured sympathetically.

    Marie¡¯s lips pursed. ¡°It¡¯s not like I like the idea any better than you do, but thinking that there won¡¯t be another circumstance where one or more of our Servants is defeated is just naive. Even if we miraculously make it through this without losing anyone ever again, it¡¯s better to be prepared just in case.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s fist clenched around his silverware. ¡°Then we¡¯ll just have to make sure that we get good enough that it never happens again!¡±

    Mash smiled and nodded her head. ¡°Right, Senpai!¡±

    ¡°Fou, fou!¡±

    Marie looked like she had something she wanted to say to that, but rather than let her rain on their parade, I gave her a gentle kick in the shin under the table, and when she hissed and turned to me, I cocked an eyebrow at her. Her mouth drew tight, but she relented and let the matter drop.

    Out of the corner of my eye, I spied Rika¡¯s troubled expression. Her thoughts about Emiya ¡ª about her worthiness as his Master ¡ª were written across her face, and although I¡¯d done my best to comfort her in Okeanos, I think it wouldn¡¯t be until Emiya himself said so that she¡¯d believe me.

    Dinner passed. One after another, more people came in and picked up their own trays from Marcus, sitting down to eat in solitary numbers. Even after we had all finished with our food and most of those who weren¡¯t either asleep or on duty had come and gone, we sat around the table, with the exception of Marie, who left almost as soon as she was done. None of us had any other obligations, and I was pretty sure the twins were too anxious about when the call would come from Da Vinci for us to join her in the Summoning Chamber to go off and find something to relax to.

    Maybe my presence there comforted them. Just the knowledge that I was there waiting with them. Sometimes, I guess, that was all it took to make you feel better.

    Eventually, Arash and Bradamante decided to join us, or maybe they¡¯d been there the entire time and just felt like they needed to ease some of the tension out of the group.

    ¡°Hey,¡± Arash said as he sat down beside me. ¡°Waiting to get the call?¡±

    ¡°Good evening, everyone!¡± Bradamante said as she sat down in Marie¡¯s vacated seat.

    ¡°Tii-chan!¡± said Rika, but it lacked a little bit of her usual cheer.

    ¡°Is today another Servant meal day?¡± Mash asked.

    ¡°Not yet.¡± Arash smiled a little sadly. ¡°And even if it was, I don¡¯t think most of us would be taking the chance to make use of it.¡±

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Sir Emiya¡¯s food really was exceptional,¡± Bradamante lamented. My cheek twitched as the others¡¯ expressions fell.

    ¡°Which is why we¡¯re all looking forward to having him back,¡± Arash added, looking pointedly in Bradamante¡¯s direction. ¡°Right?¡±

    She blinked, bemused. ¡°O-of course! A-ah, Master, I didn¡¯t mean to imply otherwise! Everyone is looking forward to having Sir Emiya back amongst us! Not just for the good food either!¡±

    ¡°Although that certainly doesn¡¯t hurt,¡± Arash joked.

    ¡°It¡¯s all right,¡± said Ritsuka with a wan smile. ¡°We all know you didn¡¯t mean anything bad, Bradamante. It¡¯s just¡­¡±

    He trailed off, so I finished for him:

    ¡°Taking losses is never easy.¡±

    He looked down at the table. The hand resting atop it curled and clenched into a fist.

    ¡°It isn¡¯t,¡± he agreed. ¡°Queen Marie and Mozart in Orl¨¦ans, Spartacus and Boudica in Septem, and then Emiya in Okeanos¡­¡±

    ¡°We were incredibly lucky,¡± Mash said softly. ¡°That we only had a single casualty in Okeanos, and against a foe like Herakles or Caenis¡­ But that still doesn¡¯t change the fact that we lost someone.¡±

    ¡°Because we just weren¡¯t good enough,¡± Ritsuka said bitterly.

    All of the blood left Rika¡¯s face, and she looked like she had just taken a punch to the gut by a heavyweight boxing champion.

    ¡°That¡¯s not true!¡± Bradamante insisted immediately.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t it?¡± Ritsuka demanded. ¡°In Orl¨¦ans, we didn¡¯t have Siegfried with us to kill Fafnir, so Queen Marie had to sacrifice herself so we could escape.¡± Bradamante flinched. ¡°Mozart died because we didn¡¯t react to Jeanne Alter¡¯s Noble Phantasm fast enough. Spartacus and Boudica, if we¡¯d just been faster or smarter or better Masters ¡ª¡±

    ¡°And if the Director had never trusted Lev Lainur, then the Sabotage would never have happened, and Team A would get to make all of those mistakes instead of you,¡± I interrupted him.

    ¡°That¡¯s not¡­!¡± he tried to protest.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t it?¡± I asked him calmly. ¡°All of the answers are obvious in hindsight, Ritsuka. When you look back with all of the hard won knowledge your experience got you, the right choice seems so much easier, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    I, better than most of those sitting at that table, knew that all too well. How easy it was to look back and say you should have done things differently. To realize you¡¯d given power to people who had only used it to hurt you, to realize you¡¯d given power to those who had already hurt you, just in the way you reacted to them.

    ¡°But that¡¯s not how it works,¡± I went on. ¡°You do the best with what you have in the moment. Whether that decision was right or wrong is something you can only think about after everything else is said and done.¡±

    Rika had a funny look on her face, but Ritsuka looked like he didn¡¯t like that answer at all. Like he couldn¡¯t accept it.

    ¡°Sometimes bad things happen,¡± Rika muttered, ¡°and there¡¯s nothing you can do about it.¡±

    Her brother grimaced and looked very much like he wanted to say something particularly mean, but managed to hold himself back. ¡°Hakuna Matata isn¡¯t the answer to every problem, Rika,¡± he said tersely.

    ¡°Maybe not,¡± Rika allowed quietly, ¡°but¡­ Isn¡¯t it enough that we tried our best?¡±

    ¡°And what if our best isn¡¯t good enough?¡± he shot back, and rather than rise back up against it, Rika wilted.

    ¡°Then you get better,¡± I told him, and the words seemed almost to cause him physical pain. Rika looked over at me. ¡°You get better, and you learn from your mistakes, and the next time you make one, you learn from that, too. You learn from your enemies, you learn from your friends, and you keep learning and keep getting better so that you don¡¯t make as many mistakes as you did the last time.¡±

    D¨¦j¨¤ vu. Hadn¡¯t I just had a conversation like this with Rika a couple days ago?

    ¡°And eventually, you stop making mistakes?¡± he challenged.

    If only.

    ¡°No. You just make different ones. And then you learn from those, too.¡±

    That didn¡¯t seem to be the answer he was expecting from me, but it didn¡¯t seem to satisfy him either. I think he might have been expecting me to claim that you eventually got good enough you never made mistakes, but¡­had he really not noticed any of mine?

    ¡°No one is expecting you to be perfect, Ritsuka,¡± Arash said kindly. ¡°You¡¯re only human. All of you, and even Mash. And if even the gods couldn¡¯t manage to do things right every time, why would any of us expect it out of you?¡±

    ¡°I think you¡¯ve been an excellent Master so far!¡± Bradamante put in enthusiastically. ¡°M-maybe, um, not the most¡­experienced, but excellent nonetheless!¡±

    Ritsuka didn¡¯t look entirely convinced, doubt etched into every line of his face, and then Mash set her hand gently atop his clenched fist.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t choose you because you were the most experienced Master, Senpai,¡± she told him. ¡°I chose you because¡­you two, the both of you tried to help me while I was crushed underneath that pillar, and you stayed with me even though it might have meant dying yourselves. Because you both took my hands that day¡­ That is why I chose you to be my Masters.¡±

    Ritsuka blinked and looked down at her hand, and slowly, he let his fist unfurl so he could take her hand in his. He gave her a grateful smile. ¡°Thank you, Mash. I¡¯m sorry I let myself forget.¡±

    ¡°Fou, fou! Fou-kyuu-fou fou!¡± the little gremlin chirped. Mash giggled.

    ¡°I think Fou is trying to say, ¡®make sure you don¡¯t forget it again!¡¯ Or something like that.¡±

    Ritsuka laughed a little. ¡°Of course.¡±

    ¡°Oh my god, you two make me sick,¡± said Rika. ¡°I¡¯m getting diabetes over here! Diabetes, I swear!¡±

    Both Mash and Ritsuka¡¯s faces flushed a bright red, and they pulled their hands apart as though a fire had suddenly sprung up between their fingers.

    ¡°She was talking to you, too, you know!¡± Ritsuka said.

    ¡°Sure,¡± said Rika. ¡°But I don¡¯t swing the sapphic way, so our relationship is entirely platonic. You, on the other hand¡­¡±

    Mash¡¯s face grew progressively redder, and even the tips of her ears were turning an interesting shade of pink.

    ¡°How do you even know that word¡­?¡± Ritsuka complained.

    I was kind of wondering that myself. At this point, however, I wasn¡¯t sure I could put anything past Rika. She definitely wasn¡¯t as airheaded as her behavior sometimes made her seem.

    ¡°Arash,¡± Bradamante whispered, so low that I almost couldn¡¯t hear it, ¡°do you really think¡­Mash and Lord Ritsuka¡­?¡±

    Arash chuckled lowly. ¡°Who knows?¡±

    At that moment, as though to relieve the tension that was building up inside of the room, all four of our communicators beeped to let us know we had a message. Impeccable timing, Da Vinci, I thought when I found her name on the sender¡¯s line.

    Let¡¯s bring our friend back, shall we? was all the message said, with a brief script underneath that read, Come to the Summoning Chamber at your earliest convenience.

    At our earliest convenience, she said. As though she wasn¡¯t well aware that we¡¯d been waiting on word about this for the entirety of the day. Trust Da Vinci to be coy about even the most serious of subjects.

    I could tell the instant Rika finished reading her own message by the sharp gasp she drew in, as well as the fact that she shot up out of her chair immediately afterwards as though her seat had suddenly caught fire.

    ¡°What are we waiting for?¡± she demanded eagerly. ¡°Let¡¯s go!¡±

    ¡°Rika!¡± her brother called out to her, but she was already racing towards the door, and it fell on deaf ears.

    ¡°Well,¡± said Arash wryly, ¡°I guess there¡¯s no reason to put it off, is there?¡±

    ¡°No!¡± Mash agreed, and she stood up, too, only she took the time to politely push her chair in before she took off on Rika¡¯s tail. ¡°Senpai! Wait for us!¡±

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka cried, but he didn¡¯t wait any longer to stand up and follow them either.

    ¡°Master!¡± Bradamante said. ¡°Wait for me!¡±

    Instead of standing, she just took spirit form, and an instant later, reappeared, already running after them ¡ª or, well, jogging, I suppose, since if she really tried, she would have outpaced them all. It left me alone with Arash, and I could only sigh. He smiled at me.

    ¡°Might as well join them, right?¡±

    ¡°Might as well,¡± I allowed, and I climbed up out of my seat, too.

    We followed a little more sedately. I would be a liar if I said I wasn¡¯t almost as eager as the twins to see Emiya brought back to us, for a multitude of reasons, and Rika¡¯s mental health wasn¡¯t far from the top of the list. Putting aside his culinary skills, and those weren¡¯t a small consideration on their own, he was a hero of the modern era who had managed to take off several of Herakles¡¯ lives all on his own, and he had access to a Reality Marble. Quite aside the power of such a thing, the very way we¡¯d used it against Herakles had proved that it was also capable of removing enemies from the field if we had no other way of beating them.

    He really was one of the best possible heroes we could have summoned, especially so early into our mission. The sheer number of problems he solved on his own¡­ Things would have been quite a bit rougher on us without him.

    I made my way out of the cafeteria and through the hallways at a brisk walk. I knew, the instant she heard they¡¯d been running in the hallways, Marie would have some choice words for the twins. I neither wanted to hear her chew them out nor get chewed out for the same thing myself, so I took quick strides but never anything more than that.

    ¡°Not going to run after them?¡± asked Arash as he kept pace with me.

    ¡°The Command Room is closer to the Summoning Chamber than the cafeteria is,¡± I explained briefly. ¡°The Director will make it there before any of them, and if I time it right, she¡¯ll be done scolding them by the time we get there ourselves.¡±

    He laughed. ¡°Smart!¡±

    The hallways were almost entirely empty as we walked them, still just as brightly lit as they had been when we woke up this morning, just as brightly lit as they were all day every day. We saw only one other person who passed us as we went, head bent down over a tablet as she took her work with her. Octavia, I think her name was. The few times I¡¯d run into her, it was often coming from or going to Da Vinci¡¯s workshop.

    Maybe it was about time I really started to get to know these people.

    True to my prediction, when the door to the Summoning Chamber whooshed open, Marie stood there near the platform where the array was centered, scowling thunderously and slightly red in the face. Ritsuka, Bradamante, and Mash looked appropriately chagrined, having just received a scolding, but Rika looked like whatever Marie had said went in one ear and out the other.

    ¡°Ah!¡± said Da Vinci, who was the first to notice me. ¡°There you are! Although I suppose your presence wasn¡¯t strictly necessary for this operation, was it?¡±

    ¡°I take it I didn¡¯t miss anything important?¡± I asked, dry as bone.

    Da Vinci smiled. ¡°Just the Director informing three naughty children about the rules regarding running in the corridors.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a safety hazard!¡± Marie said defensively. ¡°It might not be as large a concern with our numbers so reduced, but it¡¯s a matter of principle! And it still isn¡¯t safe to go running off everywhere!¡±

    ¡°But Emiya!¡± Rika protested as though this was itself a compelling argument.

    ¡°No need to fret, no need to fret,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°We should go over the procedure just to make sure we¡¯re all aware of how this will work, yes?¡±

    Rika crossed her arms and huffed petulantly.

    ¡°It will only take a minute or so,¡± Da Vinci reassured her. ¡°Now, summoning back a Servant whose Saint Graph is already recorded in the FATE System is a little different from summoning randomly or attempting to summon a specific Servant who hasn¡¯t been registered, but the basics of the ritual are essentially the same on your end, Rika.¡±

    ¡°Then what are we waiting for?¡± Rika demanded.

    ¡°A little clarification,¡± Da Vinci answered. ¡°You see, while we were making the preparations to bring back Emiya, the Director, the Vice Director, and I all discussed any¡­changes we might want to make to Emiya¡¯s contract.¡±

    ¡°Changes?¡± Ritsuka was the one to ask.

    ¡°Whether or not to adjust it so it was split between the three of you,¡± Marie said bluntly.

    Rika flinched, like someone had just slapped her in the face.

    ¡°We decided against it, eventually,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°We had several reasons, but ultimately, the most important one was that we couldn¡¯t be entirely sure how it might affect the summoning if we made tweaks like that. Better to play things on the safe side, yes? We want there to be as few risks as possible, especially after our last attempt got us¡­ Well, Jeanne Alter.¡±

    Marie grumbled something about ¡°that jerk from Fuyuki¡± under her breath, but I couldn¡¯t quite make it out.

    ¡°To that end,¡± Da Vinci went on, ¡°we¡¯ll also be utilizing a familiar resource to tip the odds further into our favor.¡±

    And she produced a familiar glittering crystal, light refracting like a rainbow through its many facets.

    ¡°Saint Quartz!¡± Ritsuka gasped.

    I could almost hear the gnashing of Marie¡¯s teeth as she choked down whatever it was she wanted to say.

    ¡°Just so,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°The system is already set up so that the data from Emiya¡¯s Saint Graph is loaded into the matrix ¡ª speaking of, Meuni¨¨re, you¡¯ve finished with that, right?¡±

    ¡°Ages ago,¡± the pudgy, blond technician behind the console replied a little shortly.

    Da Vinci nodded and smiled at Rika. ¡°So all that¡¯s left is for our star of the show to step forward and call our friend back!¡±

    She held out the Saint Quartz in offering.

    ¡°Ready to bring your house husband back?¡±

    Rika snatched the Saint Quartz from Da Vinci¡¯s hand without a second¡¯s hesitation.

    ¡°You bet your shapely behind!¡±

    ¡°Shapely?¡± Marie sputtered incredulously.

    Rika ignored her and stepped towards the summoning array, walking over to the platform upon which it sat, and only then did she hesitate, pausing a second in front of it. In her hand, she rolled the glimmering Saint Quartz around nervously, casting different colors through her fingers and over her arm.

    ¡°Well?¡± Marie demanded.

    It seemed enough to steel Rika¡¯s resolve, because she stepped forward and set the Saint Quartz in the middle of the array.

    ¡°Fortunately,¡± Da Vinci told us as an aside, ¡°since Emiya¡¯s Saint Graph is already stored and he already answered our summoning before, we won¡¯t need Mash¡¯s shield to act as a cornerstone for the ritual. Saint Quartz will be enough to form the backbone of his Spirit Origin, and the FATE System can fill in the gaps.¡±

    Rika stepped back over to the dais in front of the array, paused again, fidgeting, and looked over at Da Vinci.

    ¡°So I just¡­say the incantation, right?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± said Da Vinci patiently. ¡°Just like a normal summoning, Rika. You don¡¯t have to do anything special or unusual. It¡¯s just like the last few times.¡±

    Rika nodded, turned back around, took a deep, shuddering breath, and threw her hand out.

    ¡°H-heed my words!¡± she began, and if anyone else noticed the slight hitch in her voice, no one said anything about it. ¡°My will creates your body, and your sword creates my destiny!¡±

    Like a lightswitch being flipped, the array in front of her began to glow with a bright, pale blue light. It refracted through the Saint Quartz sitting at the center, casting an array of colors about the room and painting the ceiling and walls in rainbow splotches.

    ¡°If thou accedes to this will and reason, then answer me!¡±

    A phantom twin of the array lifted off the floor and into the air, searing a trio of afterimages into my eyes.

    ¡°I hereby swear that I will embody all the good in this world and punish all its evils!¡±

    And the glowing circle spun, throwing out wind and letting off a whine like a drill boring through steel.

    ¡°Thou the Seventh Heaven, clad in three great words of power!¡±

    The light of the circle sparked, flickering from blue to brilliant gold, and at the center, a shadow lifted off the ground, forming the vague silhouette of a man. A shrill beep from Meuni¨¨re¡¯s console was drowned out by the noise and went unnoticed by everyone else.

    ¡°Come forth from the Ring of Deterrence, Guardian of the Heavenly Scales!¡±

    The wind surged, and the spinning ring of light imploded, falling inwards towards the shadow. The silhouette gained color and form ¡ª black and red clothing, familiar bronze skin, the shock of white hair on his head.

    Emiya smirked and raised a hand in casual greeting.

    ¡°Yo!¡± he said. ¡°Looks like I died. Sorry about that, Master.¡±

    ¡°Emiya!¡±

    Half the room shouted it, but Rika¡¯s was the loudest as she leapt over the lip of the dais and threw herself into his chest.

    ¡°Oof!¡± Emiya blinked, looking down at her. ¡°Guess you must have missed my food pretty badly, huh?¡±

    ¡°It worked!¡± Mash cried happily.

    ¡°Welcome back, Sir Emiya!¡± Bradamante cheered.

    ¡°You jerk!¡± Rika shouted into his chest.

    Emiya cast his eyes about the room, confused. ¡°Well, I¡¯m not seeing any new faces, so I can¡¯t have been gone all that long. Since we¡¯re back at Chaldea, I¡¯m guessing you guys managed to finish solving the Okeanos Singularity without me?¡±

    ¡°Just yesterday, in fact,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°I think Rika would have mutinied if we didn¡¯t bring you back as soon as we could.¡±

    ¡°Goddamn right!¡±

    Emiya sighed and patted Rika¡¯s back awkwardly. ¡°I see. That¡¯s good, at least. Although I have to admit, I¡¯m feeling a little embarrassed. I never would have thought Hektor would be good enough to actually kill one of us, considering how much firepower we had to throw at him.¡±

    The room froze. Every smile began to fall as the implications of what he¡¯d just said made it through all of our heads.

    He thought Hektor had killed him? Had the summoning messed up and jumbled his memories, or¡­did he just not remember the battle at all? Meeting Jason, the fight against Herakles, him holding Herakles off while we tried to take down Jason?

    Slowly, Rika pulled away from him, stricken. ¡°You¡­don¡¯t remember what happened?¡±

    ¡°Ah. Yes.¡± Da Vinci sighed. ¡°I was afraid this would be the case.¡±

    And that said more about the situation than anything else ever could have.

    ¡°Amnesia,¡± I asked, ¡°or¡­?¡±

    ¡°Before I say anything, Emiya,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°if you would tell us the last thing you remember?¡±

    Emiya grimaced. ¡°We were talking with Medea about what to expect from Jason. How she¡¯d ripped herself out of her other self¡¯s Saint Graph, and that was why she was so weakened. Romani called to say something about not taking any deals from King David, and then¡­¡±

    He shrugged and shook his head.

    Da Vinci let out a breath. ¡°I see. That¡¯s what I thought.¡±

    Marie clicked her tongue, scowling. ¡°Even the FATE System isn¡¯t without flaws, is that it?¡±

    ¡°Director?¡± Mash asked. ¡°I thought¡­ The FATE System records Saint Graphs, doesn¡¯t it? Wasn¡¯t it designed to store their memories, too?¡±

    ¡°It does,¡± Marie replied, ¡°but it¡¯s not perfect. Even something so incredible has limits to what it can do.¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately,¡± Da Vinci agreed. ¡°As I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve all grasped already, Emiya¡¯s last memory is of the call Romani made shortly before your encounter with the Argo, and everything after that is missing. Of course, the conclusion we have to draw from this is ¡ª¡±

    ¡°The FATE System can only back up memories when the time differential between Chaldea and us inside the Singularity is stabilized,¡± I realized.

    Mash gasped loudly.

    ¡°What?¡± Rika demanded.

    ¡°Taylor has the right of it,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°The fact that it can already do such things as record the details observed via your Master¡¯s Clairvoyance is miraculous by itself, but I¡¯m afraid more in-depth data retention ¡ª such as a deployed Servant¡¯s memories ¡ª can only be recorded when the flow of time between that Servant and the FATE System itself is normalized. So you see, whenever we at Chaldea contact you via your communicators, your Servants¡¯ memories can be backed up in the FATE System, but anything that occurs after that will be lost if the Servant is¡­vanquished.¡±

    ¡°Oh my!¡± said Bradamante.

    ¡°So Emiya,¡± began Ritsuka, ¡°doesn¡¯t remember fighting Herakles?¡±

    Emiya¡¯s head whipped around. ¡°Herakles was there?¡±

    Da Vinci smiled sadly. ¡°I¡¯m afraid there you have your answer, Ritsuka.¡±

    So even if none of our Servants would ever be permanently lost, they could still lose parts of themselves if they died ¡ª memories of the battles we fought together, the bonds we¡¯d forged with one another. Sacrificing our Servants would never be entirely without consequences.

    Strangely, that made me feel better.

    Rika took a step back from Emiya. ¡°So you don¡¯t¡­¡±

    Emiya sighed and offered her a lopsided smile. ¡°Sorry, Master. But at least the fact that you¡¯re here means that you managed to defeat Herakles without me. Please tell me I at least managed to take a few of his lives in the process?¡±

    Rika¡¯s fists clenched, her hands shaking. ¡°Yeah!¡± she said with the falsest, most brittle smile I¡¯d ever seen on her face. ¡°You kicked his ass for sure!¡±

 Chapter CXIV: A Cinematic Experience

    Chapter CXIV: A Cinematic Experience

    Over the course of the next week, it became increasingly obvious that bringing Emiya back had not miraculously solved all of Rika¡¯s problems. Before, she¡¯d treated him with an easy camaraderie, teasing him, making jokes at his expense (that rarely failed to get a smile from him, too), and generally just acting as though he¡¯d been a part of our group since the beginning ¡ª and in a very real sense, he had. She had just warmed up to him faster than anyone else in Chaldea.

    But in the days after we brought him back, there was a distance between them that hadn¡¯t existed before. Fewer jokes, fewer smiles, less teasing on the overall. She had trouble even looking at him, and maybe it wouldn¡¯t have been a problem if he¡¯d come back with all of his memories intact and maybe it would still have been a problem even then, but the reality of the situation was that she had erected a wall, and I wasn¡¯t the only one who noticed.

    ¡°I was hoping it was just going to be a temporary thing,¡± Emiya confessed to me when I pressed him about it. ¡°A little awkwardness, you know? After all, it¡¯s not every day that someone comes back from the dead. Even Servants usually don¡¯t have memories of their previous summonings, not unless something happened that sticks with them even back to the Throne.¡±

    My lips pursed, and I chanced a glance over my shoulder, but this early in the day, there was only one other person in the cafeteria for breakfast, and he was all the way across the room, blissfully ignorant of our conversation.

    Under different circumstances, I might have let it be for a while longer. Left it up to the professionals to deal with. Working through her problems was something Rika really should be doing with a therapist, someone who was trained to deal with them and help her, someone who could teach her how to cope and how to move past them. The only thing resembling that sort of training that I really had was my own sessions with Doctor Yamada.

    But Chaldea was in bad straits. Everyone was pulling double, triple, or even quadruple duty, just to keep the place running, and one of those people also happened to be the only one left who did have the training to be a therapist.

    In these circumstances, keeping my nose out of things just wasn¡¯t a feasible option. For that matter, I was already involved, wasn¡¯t I? I¡¯d already given Rika my metaphorical shoulder to cry on in the aftermath of losing Emiya, so there was no reason not to insert myself further now in the name of getting this mess resolved.

    We could leave the question about exactly why and how much he remembered about his previous summonings for another day. This was more important.

    ¡°I know you don¡¯t remember what happened past that call,¡± I began, ¡°but you¡¯ve at least been told how everything shook out, right?¡±

    If Rika got angry at me later for interfering, then it couldn¡¯t be helped. I wasn¡¯t going to let strained team dynamics put anyone¡¯s lives at risk ¡ª especially when it would definitely make Rika feel twice as guilty.

    ¡°I¡¯ve been briefed on it, yeah,¡± he said. All the while, he slowly dished up a breakfast tray for me, dragging his metaphorical feet as much as possible. ¡°I fought Herakles, right? And died holding him off while the rest of you tried to take the Grail from Jason.¡± One side of his mouth hiked up. ¡°Only three lives, this time. I must be losing my touch.¡±

    ¡®Only three lives,¡¯ he said, as though he¡¯d been expecting to take more. I guess, when he could replicate Noble Phantasms the way he did, maybe that wasn¡¯t as farfetched as it sounded.

    ¡°Rika took it hard,¡± I told him. His smirk fell. ¡°She blamed herself for you dying. She thinks it¡¯s her fault you didn¡¯t last long enough for us to take the Grail and bring you back before Herakles could finish you off. Because she¡¯s the one who ordered you to hold him off as long as possible.¡±

    His brow furrowed. ¡°Is that so?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s afraid you blame her for getting you killed. She thinks that if she was a better Master, you could¡¯ve made it out of that alive and well.¡±

    He clicked his tongue. ¡°That¡¯s ridiculous. Herakles is one of the greatest heroes to ever live. He¡¯s a measuring stick for a lot of other Heroic Spirits, and most of them don¡¯t even come close. I already knew going into that fight that I probably wasn¡¯t going to be coming back from it. It was a bad situation all around ¡ª there¡¯s no way I could blame her for making the only call she really had. A better Master would¡¯ve made the exact same decision.¡±

    Well, considering the whole thing had been my plan from the beginning¡­ Yeah, I couldn¡¯t really refute that, could I?

    ¡°Have you told her that?¡± I asked pointedly. The look on his face told me that he hadn¡¯t. ¡°You should. I can tell her the same thing as many times as I want, but it won¡¯t mean as much coming from me.¡±

    If she believed me at all. Our little talk out on the pier seemed to have helped her with some of her insecurities, but the hit of realizing that our Servants would never come back from death completely intact had battered them since then. I couldn¡¯t fix that. Neither could any of our other Servants, because none of the rest of them had been killed and needed to be summoned back. We¡¯d only lost their diminished shadows, the ones that returned to the main body here in Chaldea the same way defeated Servants did to the Throne.

    The only one who could truly convince her that there were no hard feelings was Emiya.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure you give yourself enough credit, there.¡± He sighed. ¡°But you¡¯re probably right that this isn¡¯t something someone else can handle for me. If there¡¯s a problem between me and my Master, then it¡¯s up to me to fix it, isn¡¯t it.¡±

    ¡°You certainly can¡¯t leave it to Jeanne Alter,¡± I told him.

    Emiya chuckled and shook his head. ¡°I¡¯m not even sure what her solution might be, but it would probably be needlessly violent.¡±

    Maybe, but maybe not. It wasn¡¯t like A¨ªfe was reporting to me every day about what sort of things Jeanne Alter got up to under her watch, but the very fact that she hadn¡¯t come to me and told me about Jeanne Alter acting out said quite a bit about how she was actually behaving. And she¡¯d been remarkably helpful during the fight against Herakles and Forneus, too, which spoke just as well of her character.

    ¡°Probably.¡±

    Of course, her solution to Rika¡¯s problem would still probably involve convincing Rika to let her beat up on Emiya until everything was resolved or else copious amounts of property damage to our gym to let Rika work out her frustrations. Neither was an acceptable outcome.

    ¡°Whatever you¡¯re planning to do to fix things with Rika, don¡¯t put it off for too long,¡± I warned him. ¡°This isn¡¯t the sort of thing we can afford to let fester. The sooner the two of you get squared away, the better.¡±

    ¡°If that¡¯s an official order from the team leader, then I guess I don¡¯t have much choice,¡± he drawled. Apparently done dishing me up, he slid my tray a few inches in my direction. ¡°I might have to ask Marcus to cover for me again, but I¡¯ll find a moment to talk things out with Rika. You¡¯re right that I can¡¯t afford to let it sit for too long.¡±

    I accepted my tray and picked it up. As usual, everything on it, no matter how simple, looked positively delicious. ¡°You might have your chance later tonight. We¡¯ve finally got everything arranged to have that movie night Rika¡¯s wanted for the last week, so somewhere in all of that, you might be able to corner her for a talk.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll keep that in mind,¡± he said without committing to anything at all. ¡°Enjoy your breakfast.¡±

    ¡°Thanks.¡±

    I took it for what it was and let that be the end of the conversation, ferrying my tray to an empty table so I could sit down to eat. As expected, the food was just as good as it looked, and I allowed myself a small moment of indulgence to relish the fact that Emiya was back among us and his gourmet meals were back on the menu.

    Like I¡¯ve said so many times before. Screwed. And the brief two days we¡¯d spent without him to cook for us had proved me right.

    Because I¡¯d gotten there so early, I was done with my breakfast long before anyone else really filtered into the cafeteria. By the time the twins and Mash made their way in, fresh off a shower after their morning workout with A¨ªfe, I must¡¯ve been sitting there for half an hour, letting my food digest and thinking vaguely about half a dozen different things that I was going to need to take care of at some point in the future.

    Like the fact I still hadn¡¯t gotten a final word from Da Vinci about my terrarium. Or the spider puppet. Presumably, the fact that she hadn¡¯t said anything to me about either meant that neither was ready for one reason or another, although considering how many hats she was wearing these days, I might need to go and remind her.

    It was easy for stuff to fall by the wayside when you were quite literally one of the only things keeping Chaldea running at all, let alone so smoothly.

    I watched carefully as they all made their way up to Emiya to get served, keeping my eye on Rika in particular. Mash and Ritsuka didn¡¯t act anything like out of the ordinary, but the smile Rika plastered on her face and the half-hearted joke she must have told that got an equally half-hearted grin out of Emiya had to have been painfully weak.

    Just like she¡¯d been for the rest of the last week. If they didn¡¯t get that resolved soon, I might have to step in a little more directly than just giving Emiya a little push.

    And as she turned away from him, her tray in hand, the awkwardness and tension just bled out of her like sand through a sieve, leaving behind only a slight slump to her shoulders as the three of them meandered my way.

    ¡°Ugh,¡± Rika said as she plopped down into a seat at my table. Her tray thudded solidly as it hit the tabletop. ¡°It never feels like it gets any easier. Why does it never feel like it gets any easier?¡±

    ¡°Because she¡¯s always adjusting it,¡± her brother told her tiredly.

    Rika, halfway through cutting up an absolutely decadent blueberry pancake, stopped cold. ¡°She is?¡±

    Ritsuka gave her a skeptical look. ¡°You mean you really didn¡¯t notice? Every time we start to get used to it, she¡¯ll add a set of reps or another lap or two.¡±

    ¡°That bitch,¡± Rika said faintly.

    ¡°Senpai!¡± Mash scolded her sternly.

    ¡°She¡¯s really been making it harder this whole time?¡± Rika asked her brother, ignoring Mash.

    ¡°How did you not notice?¡± was his incredulous reply.

    ¡°Because I¡¯m too focused on not passing out in the middle to think about how many laps we do each day!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not going to be forever,¡± I told her, jumping into the conversation. ¡°Once she gets you to a baseline she¡¯s comfortable with, then she¡¯ll ease up and focus on maintaining your fitness instead of building it up.¡±

    ¡°You mean I¡¯m going to have to keep suffering like this for who knows how long?¡± Rika whined.

    ¡°Not too much longer,¡± I said. ¡°You two were already in pretty decent shape for your age before this whole thing started, and you¡¯ve been training with A¨ªfe almost every day for about two and a half months. Another couple of weeks will probably get you to where she wants you to be.¡±

    ¡°Weeks?¡± Rika squeaked. Even Ritsuka looked a little paler than he¡¯d been a minute ago.

    I raised an eyebrow at them. ¡°Considering most professional athletes train for years to get themselves into the kind of shape they need¡­¡±

    It was frankly incredible how far along they¡¯d come as quickly as they had. Neither of them had been couch potatoes by any stretch of the imagination, but daily physical education courses at school only did so much for your fitness. The fact that A¨ªfe was a professional teacher with a supernatural knack for training students was probably half the reason they were coming along as quickly as they were.

    ¡°And we don¡¯t have years,¡± Ritsuka concluded wearily. ¡°We have to finish fixing all of these Singularities¡­in a little under fourteen months.¡±

    Arash plopped down into the chair next to me. ¡°Well, you¡¯re making pretty good time on that front. Already halfway done, and it hasn¡¯t even been six months yet, right?¡±

    I glanced his way, but didn¡¯t comment. I hadn¡¯t noticed him come in, so either he¡¯d materialized in the corner somewhere out of sight and made his way over, or he¡¯d come in through the other set of doors.

    ¡°I guess we have been resolving the Singularities quickly so far, haven¡¯t we?¡± said Mash thoughtfully. ¡°It¡¯s only been about three and a half months since Singularity F, and yet we¡¯ve already fixed three more in that time.¡±

    They weren¡¯t wrong. Some part of me had been expecting things to take a lot longer, something more on the same timescale as Orl¨¦ans, which had been about a week of real time and a month inside the Singularity, but both Septem and Okeanos had been a lot faster and handled a lot quicker. Some of that was undoubtedly because we could cover the same sort of distances we¡¯d seen in Orl¨¦ans with a lot more speed, so we hadn¡¯t spent as much time traveling, but some of it also must have had something to do with the jump in power between them ¡ª both for our allies and for our enemies.

    ¡°There¡¯s no guarantee that pace will keep up going forward,¡± I told them. ¡°We still don¡¯t have anything past the next one pinned down beyond their general location, and if we have to face another one of those Demon Gods in every Singularity that¡¯s left¡­¡±

    Especially if they all wound up being the same size as Forneus. Flauros had been big, but once we adapted to his size and his attack patterns, landing a killing blow hadn¡¯t been particularly hard. If we faced them all out in the open from here on out instead of in a cramped palace, Emiya alone could probably handle each one without too much issue.

    But Forneus had proved that they could all be much bigger and much harder to kill than Flauros. If Forneus was closer to their standard size, then it was going to be an uphill slog each time.

    ¡°Ugh,¡± said Rika. ¡°Don¡¯t remind me of that. One tentacle monster was bad enough, two was already too much, but four more? I don¡¯t like ikayaki enough for that!¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t like it at all,¡± Ritsuka pointed out.

    ¡°Exactly! So the world needs to stop trying to make me into a clich¨¦! Or an h-anime protagonist! Next thing you know, we¡¯ll be fighting orcs in loincloths, and I just don¡¯t know if I can handle that!¡±

    ¡°H-anime protagonist?¡± Mash asked curiously. ¡°Orcs in loincloths?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s nothing,¡± Ritsuka rushed to say, cheeks faintly red as he hid his face behind a hand. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it, Mash. Rika¡¯s just being melodramatic.¡±

    And that reaction told me all I needed to know about exactly what Rika was referencing.

    ¡°I have a legitimate concern!¡± Rika insisted. ¡°Those things are so gross, and I really don¡¯t want to even imagine how much worse they can get!¡± She gave an exaggerated shudder. ¡°So many eyes!¡±

    ¡°Can we not?¡± Ritsuka asked her. ¡°I¡¯m trying to eat, Rika!¡±

    She stuck her tongue out at him petulantly, but turned back around to her own breakfast and dug back in rather than press the issue. Thankfully.

    ¡°In any case,¡± I began, ¡°you two aren¡¯t training to be Olympic athletes. Things will ease up for you soon enough.¡±

    ¡°Tomorrow isn¡¯t soon enough,¡± Rika grumbled into a mouthful of pancakes.

    My mouth twitched. ¡°If it makes you feel any better, the arrangements are all in place for your movie night. Unless you want to reschedule, we could all sit down after dinner and watch¡­Titanic is what everyone agreed on, right?¡±

    Rika¡¯s head shot up. ¡°What? No way! Everything¡¯s ready?¡±

    ¡°Everything¡¯s ready,¡± I confirmed. ¡°Of course, if you¡¯re feeling too tired to stay up and watch a movie tonight, then there¡¯s no reason we can¡¯t postpone ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Screw that!¡± she interrupted. ¡°I¡¯ve been waiting all week! There¡¯s no way I¡¯m gonna put it off for later!¡±

    And just like that, I¡¯d gotten her mind off of giant tentacle monsters and the training of her harsh taskmaster.

    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure everyone else will be excited, too,¡± said Mash.

    ¡°I know I am,¡± said Arash. ¡°It¡¯s one thing to get the information on what movies are and how they work from the FATE System, actually watching one has to be a whole lot better.¡±

    Rika¡¯s head bobbed as she nodded. A huge smile stretched across her face. ¡°For sure! Oh man, you guys have no idea what you¡¯ve been missing! Not just Titanic, we¡¯ve gotta find other stuff to watch, too!¡±

    ¡°Godzilla, maybe?¡± Ritsuka suggested slyly.

    ¡°Which one?¡± his sister asked. ¡°The new one, the one from the 90s, the OG from way back when? Oh! Maybe the animated one?¡±

    ¡°They made that many movies by the same name?¡± Mash asked, sounding somewhere between awe and disbelief.

    The twins shared a look. ¡°I mean,¡± Rika began, ¡°he¡¯s a cultural icon, Cinnabon. Of course they made a whole bunch of movies about him.¡±

    ¡°Some of them better than others,¡± Ritsuka added dryly.

    ¡°Up from the depths,¡± Rika sang quietly, and the tune tickled at something in the back of my head, long forgotten from childhood, ¡°thirty stories high¡­¡±

    Her brother reached out to poke her in the side, but she wiggled around it, grinning at him.

    ¡°That one doesn¡¯t count,¡± he said. ¡°That¡¯s a cartoon series, not a movie.¡±

    ¡°Still Godzilla, Onii-chan,¡± she replied smugly. ¡°Officially licensed and everything.¡±

    Ritsuka had no rebuttal for that, apparently, or if he did, he let it slide.

    ¡°We¡¯ll have to see what everyone else is interested in after the first one,¡± Arash stepped in gently. ¡°For tonight, though, I can go let the others know the plan. That sound good to you, Rika?¡±

    ¡°You bet!¡± said Rika.

    ¡°Everything¡¯s set up in the briefing room,¡± I told them. ¡°I think¡­about an hour after dinner should give us all plenty of time to get there and get settled in. If there are no objections?¡±

    ¡°None,¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Sounds good to me!¡± Rika agreed.

    ¡°No objections,¡± said Mash. ¡°I¡¯m looking forward to watching a movie with everyone!¡±

    I looked over to Arash and nodded. ¡°There you go.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll let the others know where and when,¡± he said, and then he stood and gave us a jaunty wave. ¡°See you then!¡±

    ¡°See you then,¡± echoed Ritsuka at the same time as his sister said, ¡°Later!¡±

    Arash took a step back, and then he vanished. It was a good thing Marie wasn¡¯t there right then, because she would have had a few choice words about it, but the fact she wasn¡¯t was probably why Arash felt safe enough to do it in the first place.

    ¡°You¡¯re supposed to eat popcorn while you watch a movie, right?¡± Mash thought aloud. ¡°I wonder if Emiya would be able to make us some?¡±

    Rika¡¯s smile became instantly fragile, and her brother, who knew her well enough that he had no doubt picked up on the tension between her and Emiya, winced.

    ¡°M-maybe he would!¡± she said. ¡°W¡­we¡¯ll have to ask him!¡±

    ¡°Y-yeah¡­¡± Ritsuka agreed awkwardly.

    Unfortunately, Mash¡¯s innocent question put a bit of a damper on the mood, and the rest of breakfast passed in relative quiet by comparison. Some stilted conversation was still made, and Mash seemed to sense that something wasn¡¯t quite right, but also didn¡¯t seem entirely sure what or why, only that it was something she¡¯d said that caused it.

    Eventually, our group broke up and went our separate ways for the rest of the morning ¡ª to relax before our much busier afternoons took up our time and attention. While the twins and Mash went off to do whatever it was they did to pass the time, I made a quick stop at Da Vinci¡¯s workshop to ask her about my terrarium or that spider puppet, but¡­

    ¡°Sorry, I don¡¯t have anything new to tell you on that front,¡± she said to me. ¡°In between everything else, I haven¡¯t had much time to dedicate to working on it, so I¡¯m afraid it¡¯s fallen a bit by the wayside. As for a terrarium, it¡¯s possible, but you would need to get permission from the Director to find a room, and then her approval for whichever one you decided upon.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡±

    I probably wouldn¡¯t have any trouble on that front. I didn¡¯t think Marie would have any reason to say no, so as long as I could find a room that was large enough and secluded enough, I should be set.

    Of course, then it would be a matter of finding bugs to populate it with. I didn¡¯t think Madagascar was in range of any of the Singularities we were going to be visiting in the future, not as far as we knew right now, so I might have to settle with something less impressive than my favored Darwin¡¯s Bark Spiders.

    Looking up what sort of bugs were native to Britain was probably a good idea, but finding out how much space I was going to have first was a better one.

    ¡°I¡¯ll get back to you on that.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll be waiting!¡± she said brightly.

    I was halfway out the door before I remembered to ask, ¡°Is there anything new on the next Singularity?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re still working on that,¡± she told me apologetically. ¡°We¡¯ve narrowed the source of the divergence down to southern England, and the level of deviance suggests that it¡¯s closer to modern day than the Septem or Orl¨¦ans Singularities, but it¡¯s going to be some time yet before we have finer details about what it looks like.¡±

    And so there was nothing for me to study right then, because southern England between the fifteenth century and now was still about six hundred years of history to cover and several thousand square miles at a minimum. Too much breadth to get any kind of depth without years of study, and anything I might try now had a very real possibility of being entirely useless.

    ¡°I see.¡±

    There was nothing else I needed to go over with her just then, so I bade her goodbye and left to go and sit down with another novel for now. I remembered hearing that was part of being in the military. ¡°Hurry up and wait.¡± Yeah. I¡¯d had a decent few experiences with that as part of the Wards, too. There just wasn¡¯t anything I could do about it.

    So, without much of anything else to do for the moment, I went back to my room and read until lunchtime, and about an hour after that, once my food had settled enough, it was time for Mash¡¯s next swimming lesson.

    Predictably, a certain ball of fur had decided to tag along again, oversized lifeguard jersey and all.

    ¡°Is he going to sit in on all of your lessons?¡± I couldn¡¯t stop myself from asking.

    ¡°Fou?¡± Mash looked over at him curiously. ¡°I¡­think he might. I¡¯m not sure if he has anything else to do, right now.¡±

    My lips thinned, but I didn¡¯t press the issue. He¡¯d been there for every other one of her lessons so far, and it didn¡¯t look like he intended to stop attending. For all that he¡¯d warmed up to the twins with remarkable speed, Mash still seemed to be his favorite person in Chaldea.

    ¡°Alright,¡± Marie said imperiously, and I had to look away from Fou as the lesson started. ¡°Before we start anything new, let¡¯s review what you¡¯ve learned so far!¡±

    ¡°Yes!¡± Mash agreed enthusiastically.

    She¡¯d picked up treading water fairly quickly, and proved that she had a solid enough grasp on it that the rest was time and practice, so now we were going to move onto the more complicated parts. I remembered learning the breaststroke ¡ª figuring out the timing on when to take a breath had been the hardest part.

    Nonetheless, Mash gave it her all, and what she lacked in skill, she made up for in enthusiasm. She gave it her all the entire way, as I¡¯d come to expect of her, and although there was no way she was going to master this in a single afternoon either, you wouldn¡¯t have known it from how hard she tried to. When the alarm rang to let us know we needed to go and get ready for dinner, she was even disappointed that we were done for the day.

    ¡°It¡¯s already time to stop?¡± she asked.

    ¡°For today,¡± I confirmed. ¡°We¡¯ve still got a long way to go, though, so your swimming lessons are nowhere near done.¡±

    ¡°Knowing when to take a break and when to stop for the day is just as important in swimming as it is any other aspect of your life,¡± Marie added imperiously.

    Mash nodded.

    ¡°Right! Of course, Director, Miss Taylor!¡±

    We climbed out of the pool and toweled dry, and before she left to go get cleaned up, Mash turned to us, gave us both a slight bow, and just as she had so many times before, said, ¡°Thank you again for teaching me how to swim!¡±

    Fou padded after her ¡ª somehow, it never managed to trip on that ridiculous jersey or slip on the wet tile ¡ª blowing his whistle to make sure she didn¡¯t leave without him.

    I made to follow so I could change and take my own shower to clean off the chlorine, but Marie¡¯s hand found my elbow and stopped me. When I turned back towards her, there was a troubled expression on her face. Her brow was furrowed, and I could see the storm brewing behind her eyes.

    ¡°Is something wrong?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s¡­something you should know about Mash,¡± she began ominously.

    Slowly, I turned to face her fully. ¡°Something I should know?¡±

    A jolt shot through my stomach. Was I finally going to be let in on some of the secrets regarding what Marisbury Animusphere had done to her?

    ¡°I¡¯ve¡­talked to Romani about her recently,¡± Marie said, somewhat vaguely. ¡°About what to expect going forward, and what it might mean for the rest of the team. It¡¯s¡­¡±

    She looked down and away, like she was ashamed, and apprehension gathered in my gut, churning about and spoiling my appetite. For several long seconds, she was silent, like she was mustering her courage for what she had to say. I sensed the blow coming before she delivered it, even if I didn¡¯t quite know what form it was going to take, so I didn¡¯t press her to continue, I just waited until she did.

    Finally, Marie looked back up at me, solemn and grim, and ripped off the Band-Aid.

    ¡°Mash only has about sixteen months to live.¡±

    And yet, somehow, what she actually said felt like a hammer blow to my stomach.

    ¡°What?¡±

    Marie grimaced and looked away again, and like she was talking to the air next to me instead of me myself, she went on, ¡°Because of the things my¡­th-the previous Director did to her, th-the treatments he did, the¡­the experiments he put her through, and the¡­the way he made her, Mash¡¯s lifespan was¡­never expected to match a normal human¡¯s. According to Romani¡­she¡¯ll live to see eighteen, but not much more than that.¡±

    Despite the warmth of the room, I felt cold. My hands shook, and clenching them didn¡¯t stop it. If I had a swarm in there with me, I had no doubt every single bug in it would have been buzzing.

    ¡°What does that mean, exactly?¡± By some miracle, my voice came out steady and betrayed none of the emotion swirling in my chest like a typhoon.

    Marie¡¯s lips drew into a thin line. ¡°For now, nothing. She¡¯ll¡­ She¡¯ll continue like normal as though nothing¡¯s wrong. For most of those sixteen months, even. But¡­ When she¡­ When the time comes, it¡¯ll be¡­ Fast. Sudden. Neurological dysfunction, complex organ failure, musculoskeletal deterioration ¡ª¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s going to literally fall apart.¡±

    I wanted to hit something. I wanted to hit something so badly that my fists trembled and the muscles in my arm twitched and flexed against my will. If Marisbury Animusphere was right there in front of me, I would have laid him out with everything I had, and I wasn¡¯t sure I could have stopped myself.

    But the only one there with me was Marie, and Marie didn¡¯t deserve that. Marie hadn¡¯t done anything to deserve that from me, even if she seemed to feel like she did. Even if I were so inclined to punish the daughter for the sins of her father, she was already doing that to herself enough that the realization hit me like a splash of cold water.

    ¡°¡­does Mash know?¡±

    ¡°Not yet,¡± Marie answered. She wrapped her arms around herself. ¡°But¡­¡±

    Yeah. But.

    ¡°She¡¯s not stupid. She¡¯ll figure it out on her own.¡±

    One way or another, likely when her arms and hands started shaking for no apparent reason. Damn it. Would she start having trouble speaking after that? Aphasia, like I had developed during Gold Morning? Dementia and Alzheimer¡¯s symptoms? Prosopagnosia, to the point she couldn¡¯t even recognize the Masters she cherished so dearly?

    ¡°He¡¯s putting it off right now¡­but Romani will likely tell her at some point, too,¡± said Marie.

    How cruel. To have to tell the girl who was his daughter in all but name that she was doomed to an early, miserable death, trapped in a failing body as even the simplest of tasks became impossible. Would he make it out of this without breaking himself?

    Marisbury Animusphere¡­how much misery you left behind you. Whatever hell he found himself in was too good for what he deserved.

    ¡°There¡¯s nothing we can do?¡±

    Marie shrinking in on herself told me the answer clearer than any words she could have used. Fucking¡­ A professional medical doctor, talented mages, and one of the greatest geniuses to ever live, and none of them had a solution to fix the problem of one girl¡¯s failing body? We could fucking time travel, and this was where we reached our limits?

    Fuck.

    ¡°Even if Da Vinci were to make a spare puppet body for her, the way she did me,¡± Marie said quietly, ¡°the things the¡­previous director did to Mash are¡­¡±

    Not something that could be fixed just by repairing her body. Not when the whole point of being a Demi-Servant was to bond a Heroic Spirit to her soul.

    Damn it.

    ¡°The twins¡­¡±

    Marie¡¯s grimace drew deeper. ¡°Knowing Romani, he¡¯ll tell them himself once we¡¯re closer to the¡­the end. When they might start noticing something¡¯s wrong themselves.¡±

    So that they didn¡¯t have this knowledge hanging over them for the next year. Some of the tension in my shoulders loosened. Yeah. Knowing what was going to happen to her this early might change how they interacted with her, how they treated her, and most importantly, how careful they were about their orders while inside the remaining Singularities. As harsh as it was, treating Mash like glass was the last thing any of us should do while on the job, and if they hesitated at any point because they were worried about how it would affect her in the long term, it could be devastating.

    Fucking¡­ Of course. And Mash would appreciate that least of all, especially if it resulted in one of us getting hurt.

    ¡°But you decided to tell me now?¡±

    ¡°Because¡­¡± Her gaze drifted over to the pool, and instantly, I understood. I took a step closer, leaned in until our foreheads almost touched.

    ¡°It¡¯s not your fault,¡± I told her.

    Her head hung. ¡°But it was my father who¡­!¡±

    ¡°And you¡¯re not your father.¡± I¡¯d tell her the same thing as many times as necessary. ¡°All things considered? I think that¡¯s a good thing. Because I¡¯m not sure Marisbury Animusphere would have cared, let alone told anyone.¡±

    ¡°He built Chaldea,¡± she said. ¡°Without him, none of us would be here. I can barely keep it from falling to pieces.¡±

    ¡°Marisbury already had his Team A,¡± I countered. ¡°He would have let me bleed out so he could use my corpse. Olga Marie saved my life. If I had to pick, she¡¯s the one I want for Chaldea¡¯s Director.¡±

    Her mouth wobbled. The sloshing of the pool water and the hum of the filter filled the brief silence.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know what to do,¡± she confessed in a whisper as though it was some terrible secret. ¡°He was my father and a better magus than I could ever hope to be, but¡­¡±

    But he was a monster who, whatever his intentions, had left a trail of suffering in his wake. He had run inhumane experiments in the hopes of creating a secret weapon, had ruined at least one life in the pursuit of it, and who knew how many more ¡°failed¡± test subjects hadn¡¯t even made it this far. Every time I found out something new about him, it was another atrocity he committed in the name of saving the world.

    Was that on purpose, Contessa? Were you trying to give me a new perspective on Cauldron, or was I supposed to be looking in the fucking mirror?

    ¡°Keep doing what you¡¯ve been doing,¡± I told her with confidence. ¡°Keep treating Mash like a human being, not an experiment, and whatever else you might be, you¡¯ll be a better person than Marisbury was.¡±

    Marie closed her eyes and drew in a deep, shaky breath. ¡°Is it really that simple?¡±

    Maybe not. But when there wasn¡¯t much else either of us could do for Mash in the first place¡­

    ¡°It has to be.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t a great answer, and Marie had her own doubts about it, I could see them in the expression on her face, but whatever they might have been, she didn¡¯t voice them. I wasn¡¯t sure I would have been able to alleviate them if she had.

    ¡°Come on,¡± I said, trying to change the subject as though my own gut wasn¡¯t still squirming. ¡°Dinner¡¯s soon, and we both still need to get cleaned up.¡±

    She let me lead her out of the room and into the locker room, and although a part of me didn¡¯t want to leave her alone at all after that talk, we had to go our separate ways to shower, dress, and get ready for dinner.

    Fuck, my appetite had evaporated. Even once I actually sat down almost an hour later, my tray filled with a platter of Emiya¡¯s finest, I found it hard to stomach actually stuffing any of it in my mouth. The twins and their conversation with Mash ¡ª more excited chattering about the movie we were going to be watching, I discovered when I took a second to pay attention ¡ª mostly flitted about my head like white noise. By the time I finished, I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d tasted a single bite of it all. It could have been a bland nutrient paste for all of the difference it would have made.

    There was no way Arash didn¡¯t notice, but he had the tact to avoid bringing it up in front of everyone else.

    I almost begged off even going to the movie with the rest afterwards, but if ever there was a surefire way to arouse the others¡¯ suspicions, that would have been it. So, even if I wasn¡¯t in the mood for it, I let myself be led to the briefing room with Mash and the twins, hanging just far enough at the back of the group not to get pulled into their conversation.

    By the time we reached our destination and the door to the briefing room slid open, most of the rest of our Servants had already arrived, waiting for us inside. A¨ªfe, Bradamante, Siegfried, even Jeanne Alter and El-Melloi II were there.

    ¡°Hot Pops!¡± Rika greeted him brightly. ¡°I didn¡¯t think you were gonna show!¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t get me wrong, Titanic isn¡¯t really my sort of movie,¡± he replied. ¡°At the very least, however, it should be interesting enough to see how the rest of this motley crew reacts to it, so I might as well stick around for that.¡±

    ¡°Getting soft in your old age, you geezer?¡± Jeanne Alter asked sardonically.

    ¡°I¡¯m not that old, you know,¡± he said, sounding annoyed. ¡°In fact, if we¡¯re talking chronologically, then I¡¯m technically one of the youngest Servants here.¡±

    Jeanne Alter leered. ¡°Whatever you say, Hot Pops.¡±

    He scowled.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry to interrupt,¡± said Siegfried, ¡°but would it be too impolite of me to ask what this movie is about? I understand there was something about a ship that sank a hundred years ago, but I wasn¡¯t under the impression we were watching a¡­documentary, I think is the proper term?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°It¡¯s more like a ¡®based on a true story¡¯ kind of thing, so it¡¯s really more of a¡­dramatized retelling, I guess you could call it.¡±

    The door whooshed open again. ¡°Don¡¯t forget about the romance,¡± Emiya said as he strode in, pushing a cart laden with cartons of popcorn. ¡°And the perpetual debate about whether or not Jack could have fit on that slab of wood with Rose.¡±

    A few weeks ago, Rika would have jumped in with some comment about it, but now, she just smiled awkwardly and said, ¡°Yeah¡­¡±

    ¡°Sir Emiya!¡± Bradamante said. ¡°You brought food!¡±

    ¡°Someone suggested that it¡¯s not really a movie night without popcorn,¡± Emiya drawled. He gestured to the cart. ¡°So I prepared enough for everyone.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± A newly familiar head of red hair leaned through the doorway behind Emiya. ¡°Everyone is already here, so¡­¡± Over her shoulder, Hippolyta called, ¡°Sam, it looks like this is indeed the right place.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Bellamy came up next to her and peered inside. ¡°I could¡¯ve sworn it was another door or two down the hall, but I guess that¡¯s why I¡¯m not the one leading the way, huh?¡±

    ¡°Indeed.¡±

    ¡°And with those two here,¡± said Arash as Bellamy and Hippolyta stepped into the room, ¡°that¡¯s everyone who said they wanted to come.¡±

    He looked at me, and the only thing I could really do was say, ¡°Then I guess we might as well get this started. Titanic is a long movie, after all.¡±

    He offered me a smile.

    ¡°Sounds good.¡± He turned towards the rest of the room and raised his voice. ¡°Hey, everyone! We¡¯re going to start the movie in a minute here, so why don¡¯t you all grab some popcorn and find a seat?¡±

    There was a moment¡¯s pause, and then all at once, the rest of them formed into a disorganized crowd around Emiya and his cart of popcorn, with a disgruntled Jeanne Alter forced to wait behind the twins, Mash, and a smug El-Melloi II. She looked ready to start a fight, but a stern glare from A¨ªfe scolded her into submission.

    While they all worked that out, I broke off from the group and went towards the front of the room, where a large screen had been repurposed into our own private theater, and got things ready. Marie, fortunately, had seen to most of what we needed already, or at least had enlisted Da Vinci in doing so, so it was fairly simple to turn everything on.

    Arash still decided to join me. ¡°No Shakespeare?¡± I murmured to him.

    ¡°I offered,¡± Arash told me just as quietly. ¡°He turned me down. Said something about how he already knew how the movie was going to end, so there wasn¡¯t any point in watching it.¡±

    If that was what he thought¡­ Well, there was no point in trying to order someone to enjoy a movie. And if we did, he¡¯d probably spend the entire time pointing out plot holes or inconsistencies, and then no one would enjoy it.

    Only once everyone else had been squared away, popcorn in hand and seats claimed, did I dim the lights and find a seat of my own ¡ª and with everyone else spacing themselves out so that they had enough room to be comfortable, no one questioned my decision to grab one on the fringes of the group. I wasn¡¯t in the mood for popcorn, but when Emiya offered me a carton, I accepted it just to avoid questions.

    With the push of a button, the movie started playing, and the studio logos went through their little animations. The chatter died down, and everyone settled in to watch.

    But even as the others enjoyed all of the twists and turns and those of us who had never seen it made sounds of surprise and interest in all the right places, my heart wasn¡¯t in it. The movie played, and for the most part, my eyes stayed on the screen, but I wasn¡¯t watching it. My gaze kept drifting to find the back of a specific head, her pale hair flashing different colors to match the action happening in the movie. My mind kept straying, thinking, wondering.

    Marisbury had wanted a weapon, no doubt. A machine whose purpose was to fulfill the Grand Order and who never gave much consideration to the world outside of that. Whether he cared that he¡¯d gotten something much more than that or not, I couldn¡¯t have said. I¡¯d never known the man, and some part of me was glad that I hadn¡¯t.

    However it had happened, his Demi-Servant project had birthed an earnest young girl, and she¡¯d grown into a kind, generous young woman with a spine of steel. In spite of him, it seemed, she¡¯d become a complete, whole person, a bit sheltered, but expanding her horizons almost constantly. Someone worth respecting, not because of the Heroic Spirit she played host to, but because she was a genuinely good human being.

    It just didn¡¯t seem fair that she would never get to grow beyond that.

 Interlude R(M) I: Prison of Dreams

    Interlude R(M) I: Prison of Dreams

    By the time the movie was over and the room emptied out, it was nearly midnight, and many an eye were wet. Those who had already seen the movie were much less affected, of course, but most of those who hadn¡¯t had been moved by the film¡¯s final few scenes, by Jack¡¯s death, and naturally, by what the movie had all but stated was their reunion in the afterlife.

    Ritsuka was glad he¡¯d had the foresight to bring along several boxes of tissues, because as they walked the halls back towards the dorms, Bradamante blew her nose loudly into a wad of them. Tears still streamed down her cheeks.

    ¡°It was so beautiful,¡± she sobbed. ¡°The way¡­at the end¡­ And then they were together again!¡±

    ¡°I told you!¡± Rika said triumphantly, although she, too, had teared up at those scenes, despite having seen the movie at least twice before.

    Ritsuka wondered if her own life and legend had anything to do with Bradamante¡¯s reaction. Her and her lover chasing after each other had been a huge part of it, right? So much had been happening the last several months that he¡¯d lost track of some of the details, so he was going to have to make sure to look them up to avoid upsetting her and saying the wrong thing.

    Even A¨ªfe wasn¡¯t immune to the emotion of the music and the cinematography, because she might have managed to hide it from everyone else, but Ritsuka had spied her wiping her own eyes a few times, and he was pretty sure he¡¯d heard a sniffle or two coming from her direction. Especially during the sequence when the Irish mother was telling her children about T¨ªr na n¨®g as the ship sank. Although¡­

    ¡°But I don¡¯t understand,¡± A¨ªfe insisted. ¡°There should have been more than enough room for the two of them on that door. And if they had huddled together atop it, they might have managed to stay warm long enough to be rescued!¡±

    Now that the movie was over, there were some parts of it that she didn¡¯t seem so willing to let slide. Ritsuka decided not to mention that several people over the years had proven, in one way or another, that A¨ªfe wasn¡¯t entirely wrong about her complaints. He thought it was better for his sanity not to validate her, at least in this case.

    ¡°Right?¡± Rika agreed.

    ¡°Welcome to the debate that has centered around this movie ever since its release almost two decades ago,¡± Emiya drawled. ¡°To my knowledge, people are still arguing about it.¡±

    Rika flinched, and her smile turned fragile. ¡°A-ah. Y-yeah, they kinda are.¡±

    Ritsuka glanced at her, worried, because he wasn¡¯t blind to what had been happening between his sister and her Servant, but there wasn¡¯t much he could do about it. If he tried to stick his nose in, she would dig in her heels, and then they¡¯d get nowhere for who knew how long.

    In the background, Bradamante blew her nose again loudly.

    ¡°I¡¯m wondering about the Heart of the Ocean,¡± Mash said thoughtfully. ¡°I think, a diamond that big, it would have incredible historic value, wouldn¡¯t it? But until the movie, I¡¯d never heard about it sinking with the Titanic.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s because it was made up for the movie,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°It was never real, it was just a plot device. Um, costume jewelry, I think is the right term.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash. ¡°I see. That makes sense.¡±

    ¡°If that had been me at the end there, I would¡¯ve taken that thing and shoved it down that asshole¡¯s throat,¡± said Jeanne Alter. ¡°For using that hunk of rock to frame the man I love and getting him killed!¡±

    ¡°I never took you for a romantic,¡± Emiya remarked.

    Jeanne Alter¡¯s cheeks pinked. ¡°Y-you know, hypothetically. If I were ever sappy enough to f-fall in l-love, I mean!¡±

    ¡°So then,¡± Mash began, ¡°does that mean¡­ Were Jack and Rose fake, too?¡±

    A¨ªfe gave her an incredulous look. ¡°You didn¡¯t realize it?¡±

    Mash sighed and shook her head. ¡°No. I just feel silly now.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s the reason Jack dies at the end,¡± said Senpai, sounding a little distracted. ¡°Because it fits the narrative James Cameron was trying to tell. It defeats the point of the story if they get to have a happily ever after.¡±

    She really was incredibly knowledgeable, wasn¡¯t she? Maybe it had something to do with how much time she spent reading, because she might not always have an answer to everything, but she seemed to have a lot of answers to a lot of things, and as useful as it had been to get them all out of tough spots the last several months, it was also a little frustrating.

    Were all of Team A¡¯s Masters just that good? It made Ritsuka feel a little inadequate, sometimes.

    ¡ª Have you ever envied someone?

    The world tilted. Chaldea¡¯s walls flickered and were, for a single instant, replaced with stone bricks. Ritsuka, startled, stumbled a step, but before he could even wonder what was happening, he was back amongst his friends and comrades, walking through Chaldea¡¯s halls and back towards their dorms.

    What?

    ¡°¡ª annoying,¡± A¨ªfe was saying. ¡°So he died because the writer decided he had to?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not an uncommon thing, in fiction,¡± said Senpai. ¡°Characters live or die based upon what the author has decided their role should be. Sometimes, they die to represent something instead, so even if they¡¯re in a situation where it might be possible to survive, they die anyway. To highlight whatever the author wants to highlight.¡±

    Weird, Ritsuka thought. He must have been more tired than he thought he was if he was starting to hallucinate.

    ¡°It was still sad that Jack died!¡± Bradamante said passionately as she clutched at another wad of tissue. ¡°The life they could have had together! The love they shared, despite only knowing each other for so short a time! E-even, u-um, th-the intimacy between them w-was¡­quite lovely!¡±

    Oh, that scene. Yeah, that was¡­ Well, the film had been rated PG-13 in America, so there wasn¡¯t technically anything wrong with a couple of seventeen-year-old kids watching it, was there? Although it had been funny when Bradamante squeaked and tried to cover his eyes.

    At least Rika hadn¡¯t decided to make any quips about how it ¡°wasn¡¯t anything he hadn¡¯t seen before,¡± especially since he didn¡¯t think the others had realized ¡ª as much as he¡¯d tried to avoid looking ¡ª that the steam and rose petals in Emperor Nero¡¯s bath hadn¡¯t been nearly as concealing as they must have assumed. And, well, A¨ªfe hadn¡¯t exactly been all that shy about showing off what she had.

    ¡°What¡¯s the matter?¡± Jeanne Alter sneered. ¡°Was a little skin too much for your sensibilities? Don¡¯t tell me you and your, what¡¯s his name ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Ruggiero,¡± Ritsuka supplied helpfully.

    ¡°¡ª never got up to a little hanky panky?¡±

    Bradamante¡¯s cheeks turned pink, and even the tips of her ears weren¡¯t spared. ¡°W-what my husband and I did together in the privacy of our own chambers is of no concern to anyone but ourselves!¡±

    ¡°The fact that there was so much cut short was kind of the point, though, wasn¡¯t it?¡± Arash put in. ¡°What Master was saying, then, is that Jack¡¯s death was meant to symbolize all of the lives that got cut short and all of the plans that ended early. Him living would have undermined all of that.¡±

    ¡°Even so!¡± Bradamante insisted stubbornly.

    The conversation continued all the way back to the dorms, and it never really went anywhere. Bradamante ¡ª a hopeless romantic at heart ¡ª refused to entertain the idea that Jack had to die, even if it was for the story, and A¨ªfe agreed with her that it was a dumb reason for anyone to die, even if it was just a story. Eventually, it meandered onto other things that had happened which one person or another disagreed with for whatever reason, and Senpai and Arash just kept reasonably explaining the narrative choices made by the script writer and the director, providing context that made those choices make sense.

    Arash was the one doing most of the talking of the two of them, though. Senpai wasn¡¯t silent, but she¡¯d been distracted the entire night, and whatever it was that bothered her, she hadn¡¯t said. She bore it without complaint and without comment, pretending as though nothing was wrong, and if Ritsuka hadn¡¯t spent the last several months working and fighting and training alongside her, even he might have been fooled.

    Senpai was like that. Too good at keeping things to herself, and too ready with excuses or distractions to deflect away whenever something hit too close to home for her. Just what kind of life had she really lived to make her so secretive and private? Just how much would they have to go through together before she finally let them see more than a few tiny, carefully selected parts of herself?

    ¡ª Have you ever faced someone with the talent, opportunity, or riches that you lacked, and grit your teeth at their good fortune?

    The world flickered again, and once more, Ritsuka stood in an unfamiliar place. Dank and depressing, cramped and miserable, a tiny room with walls of hewn stone stretched out on every side, but for a single, heavy iron door. Dim light filtered in, barely enough to fill the room, and a humid chill clung to his ankles.

    But once again, it disappeared, and Ritsuka found himself back in Chaldea, with its sterile lighting, its smooth walls and floors, and its spacious, expansive hallways. Blinking, he rubbed his eyes with one hand, but when he opened them again, nothing had changed. He was still in Chaldea.

    So maybe he was really tired then.

    Ritsuka half expected Senpai to glance at him, like she¡¯d noticed something was wrong, because she was really perceptive like that, but it never happened. Whatever was going on in her head must have been really serious.

    Along the way to the dorms, a couple of the Servants peeled off and went to do their own things for the night, like A¨ªfe and Bradamante. Emiya, too, left them, heading back towards the cafeteria, although not without glancing Rika¡¯s way with a frown and a furrow of his brow. If he¡¯d meant to talk to Rika at some point in the night, Ritsuka thought that he¡¯d missed his chance. She¡¯d started yawning halfway to the dorms, and that was as sure a sign as any that even her seemingly bottomless stores of energy were starting to run low.

    He hoped the two of them figured things out pretty soon. He hated seeing his sister so upset.

    Finally, down to just the Masters, Mash, Jeanne Alter, and Arash, they reached the section of the dorms set aside for the Masters, and Senpai, as one of the earlier candidates to be recruited, naturally had a room closer to the start of it. She bade them a quiet goodnight without ever letting on what thoughts were swirling around inside her head and went into her room. Her door whooshed shut behind her.

    Arash gave them a smile, a jaunty wave, and a quiet, ¡°Goodnight, you guys. See you tomorrow.¡± Then, he vanished from view, probably to keep an eye on Senpai during the night. As far as Ritsuka knew, he was one of the Servants that didn¡¯t bother sleeping, although what he did with his time at night aside from keeping watch on Senpai, Ritsuka didn¡¯t know.

    Maybe he played solitaire. Ah, but that required a deck of cards, didn¡¯t it? Senpai didn¡¯t look like the kind of person to keep that sort of thing in her room, so¡­ Maybe he borrowed one of her novels? Now that he thought of it, Ritsuka couldn¡¯t help but wonder. Just what did Arash do in his spare time?

    A mystery for another time.

    ¡°I¡¯m the last one to leave? How lame,¡± Jeanne Alter lamented. ¡°Whatever. I¡¯ll catch you dorks tomorrow. Or maybe not, who knows? I might have better stuff to do.¡±

    ¡°G-goodnight!¡± Mash tried valiantly, putting on a bright and fragile smile.

    ¡°Goodnight, Jeanne Alter,¡± Ritsuka said more earnestly.

    ¡°Yeah, yeah.¡± Jeanne Alter waved them off, and as she walked away, over her shoulder, she said, ¡°Sleep tight and all of that shit. Watch out for bed bugs and stuff.¡±

    Ritsuka couldn¡¯t help a lopsided little smile. She was prickly, and it wasn¡¯t easy to see past the surface when it so eerily resembled one of their enemies who had tried to kill them, but even if she tried to hide it, she really was warming up to them.

    If she had been with them from the beginning¡­ But the only reason she existed now was because the very act of fighting her in Orl¨¦ans had made it possible for her to exist outside of it. Or something like that. It really was kind of sad that she would have just disappeared and stayed gone in a world where they never summoned her.

    ¡ª The world is rife with inequality and evil, and so we weep as we mourn the dearth of justice and fairness. Have you not experienced it for yourself, o survivor? The cruelty of blind chance and fate?

    There was a flash of fire and heat, and this time, as the world skewed and sleek metal became coarse stone, Ritsuka couldn¡¯t stop himself from flinching. A scream came from somewhere off in the distance, somewhere far away, but it echoed through the stone and the iron slab that was the door. Flickering torchlight danced, and the shadows created macabre scenes along the wall, visions of suffering and torment.

    ¡°There is no need for you to answer,¡± an unfamiliar voice hissed next to his ear. ¡°Peer inside your heart and behold that which makes you human, the pus of man known as envy and avarice. It is the source of all sin, that which causes us to covet and begrudge, and even you cannot escape it. Do not turn your eyes from it, for denial will not save you.¡±

    Ritsuka gasped, spinning about ¡ª

    And Chaldea slid back into place as he jerked around.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± asked Mash, concerned.

    ¡°You okay there, Onii-chan?¡± Rika asked, eyeing him skeptically.

    Ritsuka blinked. He looked back behind him, down the long hallway, then behind Mash and Rika, where Jalter¡¯s retreating back had vanished from view. There was no sign of anyone else with them, no owner of any mysterious voice, just an empty hallway.

    Really, really tired, then.

    ¡°It¡¯s nothing,¡± he told them both, trying for a smile. It might have come out warped, though, and neither of them looked particularly convinced. ¡°Just¡­need to get some sleep. It¡¯s been a long day.¡±

    Rika snorted. ¡°I hear that.¡±

    ¡°Are you sure, Senpai?¡± Mash asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine, Mash,¡± he insisted. ¡°I¡¯m just a little tired. That¡¯s all. I¡¯ll be good as new tomorrow morning.¡±

    ¡°Just in time for our next torture session,¡± Rika added sarcastically. Privately, Ritsuka agreed, but if it meant he could do better and worry less in the future, he was willing to stick it out until the end.

    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    Mash still didn¡¯t look like she fully believed him, but she let it drop, and their group of three split off not much later. Mash went back to her own room, and Ritsuka and Rika went to theirs, throwing out a half-hearted ¡°goodnight¡± to each other before the doors whooshed shut behind them.

    Scrubbing at his eyes, Ritsuka somehow managed to shuck off his regular uniform ¡ª not the mystic code version Da Vinci had made for missions, because it felt too weird to wear that around so casually ¡ª and slip into a pair of pajamas. With a sigh, he flopped down onto his bed, landing face first on his pillow, and just enjoyed the cool sensation of his sheets against his skin.

    Before he realized it, he was drifting off to sleep.

    ¡ª Even the greatest of heroes are guilty of the sin of envy.

    Ritsuka snapped awake. The mattress beneath him was no longer the pristine, comfortable one he had fallen asleep on, but a ratty, threadbare cot that could barely claim the name. The musty smell of dust and mold and mildew slithered into his nostrils, and he had to wrinkle his nose against it just to keep from sneezing.

    He opened his eyes, blinking, but the darkened room of his Chaldea dorm where he had laid down was gone, and he instead found himself in a dank, dirty cell that vaguely resembled it, constructed with stone walls and wood and lit only by the flickering light of a handful of candles. Shadows danced across the surface of the rock, and somewhere nearby, water dripped down onto the floor in a steady rhythm.

    What?

    Slowly, Ritsuka pushed himself up off of the cot, and a tattered blanket made of what looked like canvas slid down from his shoulders. A glance showed him dressed in his official Chaldea uniform instead of the pajamas he¡¯d just put on what felt like mere minutes ago.

    Is this a dream?

    ¡°Are you finally awake, o Master of Chaldea?¡±

    Ritsuka squawked ¡ª it most certainly wasn¡¯t a girlish squeak, thank you very much ¡ª and tried to both throw himself backwards and spin around at the same time. All he managed to accomplish was to tumble off of the cot and onto the hard, cold stone floor, with that tattered blanket wrapped around his legs.

    He groaned and rubbed at his smarting elbow. It hurt, so¡­did that mean this wasn¡¯t a dream?

    An unfamiliar voice ¡ª the one that had startled him ¡ª chuckled, and footsteps clacked against the floor as a man stepped around the cot and loomed over Ritsuka with a nasty grin beneath the brim of a round hat. His flyaway hair seemed to flow in a nonexistent breeze, and his form flickered around the edges, like bursts of static were constantly leaping off of his body.

    The stranger knelt down, and his heavy cloak parted to show a suit that looked like it had come straight out of Victorian England. The first person Ritsuka thought of was Sherlock Holmes.

    ¡°Welcome, sinner, to the prison tower on the Isle of Despair,¡± he said with something like relish. ¡°This hell exists beyond love and hate, beyond justice and mercy, and therefore, anyone might find themselves imprisoned here ¡ª including you.¡±

    ¡°¡­This isn¡¯t Chaldea,¡± said Ritsuka numbly, ¡°and I¡¯m not dreaming.¡±

    In the distance, something let out a horrible shriek, tortured and agonized.

    The stranger grinned and chuckled again. ¡°Indeed not. You will find none of your usual allies here to aid you, not your precious friend, not your beloved sister, not your frighteningly competent senior, and most certainly not your director, that bumbling doctor, or that genius who never knew when to leave well enough alone. You are the only one here.¡±

    ¡°Except for you,¡± Ritsuka pointed out.

    The stranger¡¯s mouth opened wide and he belted out a laugh. ¡°Indeed! Indeed, I am here, as well! And I, who have lived this hell before, who have experienced all its terrible wonder and horrific glory, why, I¡­would be your Abb¨¦ Faria, wouldn¡¯t I? Well, not that I intend to be quite so generous to you.¡±

    Who? That wasn¡¯t a Sherlock Holmes character Ritsuka had ever heard of before, which¡­ Yeah, that probably meant that ¡ª

    ¡°You¡¯re not Sherlock Holmes, are you.¡±

    ¡°Indeed, I am not!¡± The stranger stood. ¡°Though, much like I imagine he must be, I, too, am a Heroic Spirit that does not belong in this world. Not too dissimilar from a certain friend of yours ¡ª and yet, far from the same at all.¡±

    Certain friend who didn¡¯t belong in the world ¡ª was he talking about Jeanne Alter?

    Another screech echoed, and it sounded closer than before. Ritsuka reached for the edge of the cot to adjust his position into something a little more comfortable and used that as a chance to glance over at the iron-barred door, but the stupid cot was too high up for him to see much of anything over it.

    The stranger tilted his head curiously. ¡°I see you may indeed have some inkling what it is I mean, but ¡ª have you truly not figured it out? Well, I suppose it doesn¡¯t matter at this stage, although you might find it far more important in the times to come.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s gaze swung back over to the stranger and met his wild eyes. It was like staring directly into a maelstrom of controlled chaos.

    ¡°Does that mean you know what¡¯s going on here, then?¡± Ritsuka asked the stranger.

    Something clanged, like claws on metal, and the sound of it echoed throughout the room, bouncing off the stone walls and reverberating like a plucked guitar string. The stranger ignored it entirely, like it was of no concern to him at all.

    ¡°Better than you, it would seem,¡± said the stranger. ¡°Far, far better! After all, you walked through the First Tower without even realizing it ¡ª did you enjoy it, by the way?¡± Ritsuka opened his mouth, more to ask what he was talking about than anything else, but the stranger shook his head. ¡°No, no, don¡¯t bother answering, I don¡¯t truly care either way. It was a reflex, you see, an involuntary impulse born of the dregs that remain of my sense of hospitality.¡±

    The stranger grinned and spread his arms. ¡°The Second Tower welcomes you! I do so hope this one is more to your liking!¡±

    BANG ¡ª the door to the room slammed open, bouncing off of the stone wall, and Ritsuka jumped, startled. When his head whipped around to see what had made the noise, a skeletal, indistinct figure stood in the doorway, hunched over and shambling. Glowing red eyes set in a translucent skull swiveled and immediately locked onto him, and something cold and harsh squeezed around Ritsuka¡¯s heart.

    The stranger turned, too, but his grin remained firmly in place, and he didn¡¯t seem at all bothered by the specter that looked mere moments away from lunging at Ritsuka, not even when it let out an ear-splitting shriek.

    In fact, he seemed pleased.

    ¡°And here they come now, the first of many!¡± the stranger crowed. ¡°Perhaps they envy the warmth of your soul! Perhaps they begrudge you the heart that still beats in your chest! You see, a number of the restless dead have gathered here, and the one thing they despise above all else, the one thing they covet above all else ¡ª it is the life that still burns within your breast!¡±

    The specter took a step forward, and it lifted ghastly arms as though to wrap its long, bony fingers around Ritsuka¡¯s neck. Ritsuka scrambled backwards, trying to put more distance between himself and the ghost ¡ª because if the stranger was right, then that was the only thing it could be ¡ª but the room wasn¡¯t all that large, and it didn¡¯t take long for him to hit the back wall.

    ¡°So it¡¯s just going to attack me? K-kill me?¡± Ritsuka demanded. ¡°It¡¯s not like I¡¯m here on purpose!¡±

    Honed instinct settled in, hard won from four Singularities and many days spent training. It washed away the surge of panic, leaving a cold, almost unnatural calm in its wake, and he did the only thing he could do and took aim with his hand, preparing a Gandr. One shot should be enough to take out a simple ghost, right? Center mass, just like Senpai had taught him, and that should do it, and if it didn¡¯t, be prepared to follow up with a second and a third.

    But¡­ If this was just the first ghost of many¡­

    How many Gandr shots could Ritsuka handle before he got overwhelmed? Would he be able to survive all of them until Chaldea figured out what had happened to him and mounted a rescue? Or would they hound him until he ran out of energy and couldn¡¯t fight back?

    The stranger laughed. ¡°Calm yourself, Master! This is only the beginning of things! There is still much more for you to discover ¡ª much of it quite trivial, in the grand scheme of the world. So trivial that they hardly bear mentioning! Right now, however, the one thing it is you must know ¡ª¡±

    The ghost stumbled forward, but the stranger leapt towards it faster than lightning, and with a single hand aglow with a light that seemed to suck in light, he struck the ghost ¡ª and instantly, it vanished. Whatever it had that passed for flesh was ripped apart by the stranger¡¯s attack, and everything else followed swiftly. It didn¡¯t even dissolve into motes like a Servant, it just evaporated like a mirage in the desert, erased.

    Ritsuka looked back over at the stranger with new eyes. To move that fast and take out that ghost so easily¡­ Yeah, this guy had already said he was a Heroic Spirit, didn¡¯t he? That meant that he had to be a Servant.

    And if he was a Servant that Ritsuka hadn¡¯t summoned and didn¡¯t recognize, that meant he had some sort of relationship to this place, didn¡¯t he? Whoever he was, he¡¯d been summoned here because this was some place he had a connection to, either in his life or his legend. Did that make him friend or foe? Was he an ally for saving Ritsuka¡¯s life just now? An enemy who needed Ritsuka for some nefarious plot or something?

    There were so many questions Ritsuka had, and none of them seemed to have answers.

    ¡°This,¡± said the stranger, ¡°is Hell. In the annals of your Chaldea¡¯s proper history, it was called Chateau d¡¯If, the prison tower where a certain young man was left to rot after being betrayed and falsely imprisoned. And I¡­¡±

    The stranger turned back to Ritsuka, and the large grin that Ritsuka was beginning to think was almost permanently affixed to his face stretched his lips once more.

    ¡°I am a Heroic Spirit, one you might perhaps have heard of, although it is of little consequence if you haven¡¯t. Shaped by rage, resentment, and hatred, given form by my bottomless fury and undying grudges, I have taken this form of an Extra Class Servant, and so, for now, you may refer to me as Avenger.¡±

    ¡°Like Jeanne Alter,¡± Ritsuka murmured. He narrowed his gaze on Avenger, but nothing appeared in his mind¡¯s eye. His Master¡¯s Clairvoyance didn¡¯t work, not even to reveal his Servant Class or physical abilities. It was as though it wasn¡¯t there at all.

    I guess I¡¯m really not in Kansas anymore, Ritsuka thought. If Chaldea¡¯s systems couldn¡¯t reach him here to provide even that most basic of functions¡­

    It looked like Ritsuka was going to have to rescue himself.

    Avenger¡¯s grin grew broader. ¡°So you have already encountered an Extra Class Servant like myself, have you? Haha! How twisted your experiences must be! But, that is also convenient. If you already understand that much, then perhaps you are better prepared to take on this challenge than I expected. You may yet manage to escape this place.¡±

    ¡°What does that mean?¡± asked Ritsuka. ¡°You said this is a prison tower. Chateau d¡¯If, right? But what exactly does that mean? How am I here when I fell asleep in Chaldea?¡±

    Avenger frowned. ¡°I already told you that I have no intention of being your Abb¨¦ Faria. However¡­I suppose I should at least tell you the barest of the essentials, shouldn¡¯t I? Very well, then. Ritsuka Fujimaru, your soul has been imprisoned here. If you wish to escape, you will have to pass through the seven Halls of Judgment and defeat their Lords. If you are defeated and killed, you die ¡ª yes, both here and your body in Chaldea. If you do nothing and seven days pass, then you die all the same.¡±

    Of course, Ritsuka thought. Because it wasn¡¯t ever going to be as easy as barricading himself inside this room and holding out for as long as he could. He really was going to have to rescue himself.

    ¡°And Chaldea?¡±

    ¡°Their voices shall not reach you here,¡± said Avenger, ¡°and yours shall never reach them either. As for whether they could ever send you aid¡­ Heh! Perhaps they might! But can you risk that they will reach you in time, when time itself flows so aberrantly in this place? After all, this is not the Chateau d¡¯If of proper history, even if it bears some resemblance to it. It could be that the seven days that pass here are mere hours to them, or it could be that these seven days last seven years!¡±

    Time was going to pass weirdly, out of sync with Chaldea¡­ Did that mean¡­?

    ¡°Is this¡­a Singularity?¡±

    Avenger grinned. ¡°Of a sort! It is a trap for the soul, meant to punish the sinful and grind them down to dust! A curse, concocted by your ultimate enemy, the master of those so-called Demon Gods, to drown his foe in the weight of their own regrets! Oh, but how did you get caught up in it like this, hm? Perhaps this was meant for someone else, and you were simply unfortunate enough to have been caught in the crossfire. Innocently imprisoned as a victim of circumstance! Now, doesn¡¯t that sound familiar?¡±

    A trap meant for someone else? Who could ¡ª

    Oh. Maybe it was a good thing this had happened to him, then. After all, Professor Lev ¡ª or Flauros was maybe the better way to say it ¡ª had already targeted Director Marie once, hadn¡¯t he? They had only just gotten her back. It would¡¯ve crushed Senpai to lose her again, Ritsuka was sure of it. After all, even if they tried to pretend their relationship was strictly professional, it was easy to see what good friends they were.

    Carefully, Ritsuka pulled himself to his feet, and under the guise of adjusting his clothes, he checked his communicator, only to discover that it was little more than a hunk of metal. It might have looked right and felt right, it had the same weight as the real thing and everything, but pushing any of the buttons did nothing. It didn¡¯t even turn on.

    The function to summon Shadow Servants wasn¡¯t working either, when he tested it. If it really was his soul imprisoned in this place and his body was back in Chaldea, then the clothes he was wearing weren¡¯t even really his mystic code, were they? So naturally, they couldn¡¯t do anything it could do, and he couldn¡¯t call on any emergency backup.

    Next, he focused on the threads that connected him to his Servants ¡ª but, although the tethers that bound them together still existed, it felt like there was nothing on the other end of them. Like they all just stretched out into a blank void, and there was no one to receive his messages. A phone that just kept ringing and no one ever answered.

    Mash? Ritsuka attempted half-heartedly. No response came. All of the things Senpai had drilled into him to do in case he was stranded somewhere without the rest of the team had failed.

    ¡°You said that the only way out of here was to defeat these seven Lords in each of the seven Halls of Judgment, right?¡± Ritsuka asked Avenger.

    ¡°Correct!¡± Avenger replied.

    ¡°Does that mean you know where to go and how to find them?¡±

    Avenger laughed. ¡°Also correct! I do indeed know where to go to face down the seven Lords of this wretched pit.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s mouth drew into a tight line. He was alone. He couldn¡¯t contact his Servants, he couldn¡¯t contact Chaldea, and he couldn¡¯t expect anyone else to find him and come to his aid. There was nothing and no one else for him to rely on, except for this suspicious Servant who had, admittedly, at least done him the kindness of explaining the situation and even saved his life once. It seemed, then, that what he had to do now was crystal clear.

    ¡°Then I¡¯ll trust you to lead the way.¡±

    Avenger laughed again and clapped his hands together. ¡°Good! In that case, for the duration of our stay in Hell, I shall temporarily serve as your Servant. Now, come, Master! The first Lord in his Hall of Judgment awaits!¡±

    Avenger spun on his heel and towards the door, and he walked to and through it with purpose. Ritsuka edged around the bed, taking a quick glance at the spartan room ¡ª it really was more like a cell ¡ª and followed him.

    Outside the cell was a hallway. Old-fashioned wooden torches lined it, held in rudimentary iron brackets, and cast flickering firelight across the floor. The walls were more stone brick, although there was some kind of plaster or clay that had once covered it, now cracking and falling away. More doors, no doubt leading to more cells, sat along the corridor at uneven intervals, made of rusted, pitted iron. They glittered dully with dark promise.

    Avenger led him down the hallway and its cobblestone floor, and as they passed each door, a low, tortured moan echoed from inside. Chains rattled threateningly, but when Ritsuka glanced cautiously through the bars, there was no visible occupant in any of them, only shadows and darkness and the vague threat of something lurking within them.

    ¡°Pay those poor wretches no mind, Master,¡± said Avenger. ¡°They, too, are trapped here, but unlike you, they are all long dead. There is no hope for them. They shall not be given salvation, no matter whether you attempt to offer it or not. All that is afforded to them now is despair and the voice to speak it ¡ª if you can call their inarticulate groaning speaking, that is!¡±

    Ritsuka grimaced.

    Avenger didn¡¯t actually say it, but Ritsuka heard the implication loud and clear: if he failed and died to these Lords, then he would just become another one of the restless phantoms bemoaning their fate, trapped in this prison for the rest of time. His body outside in Chaldea would wither and rot, leaving the others to carry on without him.

    Then he just wouldn¡¯t fail. It was that simple.

    They kept going, chased the whole way by a chorus of tortured moaning, but for how long, it was impossible to say. Time flowed weirdly, as though to show Ritsuka that Avenger was right when he¡¯d explained the way this place worked, and Ritsuka was never sure between one moment and the next whether mere minutes had passed or hours. For all he knew, they spent the better part of a day walking, and in the constant, flickering light of the torches, without any sun or moon or even a clock to mark the passing of time, he wouldn¡¯t have known one way or the other.

    ¡°We approach the first Hall, Master,¡± Avenger said suddenly, and Ritsuka looked forward to find they had reached a heavy iron door, a slab of metal with a tiny, barred slit for a window. When Avenger reached for a handle and twisted it, the whole door seemed to squeal and groan from the strain. ¡°Behold!¡±

    Without warning, Avenger threw the door open wide, revealing a large, circular room akin to an arena beyond it. He took a step inside, as though there was indeed something waiting for them, but to Ritsuka it looked completely empty. Just a big room with more stone brick and not a single sign of life within.

    ¡°The first challenge you must face!¡±

    A blackened sword slid out behind Avenger¡¯s head, and the blade twisted to aim the edge at his neck. Ritsuka stumbled back, heart skipping a beat, but he had enough presence of mind to shout, ¡°Look out!¡±

    The black sword swung, but Avenger heard Ritsuka quickly enough to duck under it and throw himself further into the room, spinning about. An ugly snarl curled his lips and contorted his face, and his eyes swiveled to land on something out of Ritsuka¡¯s sight.

    ¡°What¡¯s this?¡± Avenger demanded. ¡°The Lord of the first Hall of Judgment is Phantom of the Opera! You are not him, woman!¡±

    ¡°That loser?¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s heart skipped a beat again, but this time, for an entirely different reason.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know what my other self ever saw in him. He went down so fast, I hardly even had to try!¡±

    From the wall next to the door, hidden as she was just out of sight like an ambush predator, a petite woman in blackened armor and clothes stepped out and into view. In one hand, she held a flag like it was a spear, the banner bound tightly against the shaft, and in the other, she had an elegant sword that almost looked like it had been burned. Her pale blonde hair was cropped short, ending just above her shoulders.

    ¡°Jeanne Alter!¡± Ritsuka couldn¡¯t stop himself from shouting.

    Jeanne Alter looked back at him over her shoulder and sneered. ¡°Oh, it¡¯s you. Even in a shitty place like this, it looks like I can¡¯t escape you, can I, Master?¡±

 Chapter CXV: A Sleep Like Death

    Chapter CXV: A Sleep Like Death

    The next morning brought with it a headache. I woke up groggy with a dull pain lancing at the inside of my skull in between my eyebrows, just above the bridge of my nose. I was tempted to groan, roll over, and try to go back to sleep, but I¡¯d pushed through worse plenty of times before, so I allowed myself to do the former, but forced myself to forget about the latter two.

    It took an extra minute or two longer than usual, but eventually, I managed to convince myself to roll out of bed and start my day. The shock of the cold floor on my feet did nothing to help my headache ¡ª in fact, it only seemed to make it worse ¡ª but I was already up and standing by the time it registered, so I soldiered through and kept going.

    If this headache didn¡¯t ease up by the time I finished my morning routine, I decided I was going to go and bully Romani for some painkillers. He had to have some aspirin hanging around somewhere, right? Right. If only for Marie¡¯s sake, there was no way he didn¡¯t have a stash of it in his office or a bottle he carried around.

    Sorry, Romani, I was going to have to abuse your kindness.

    Getting ready was a slog, and I went through the motions slower than I had since my six month stint of physical therapy. More than once, I was tempted to just crawl back into my bed and stay there until I felt more like an actual human being again. It wasn¡¯t like it would have been the first time I skipped out on my daily workout, and there were going to be more mornings where I wouldn¡¯t be able to for one reason or another ¡ª particularly out on deployments, like Okeanos, where the space necessary didn¡¯t exist.

    I didn¡¯t let myself fall for it. It was easier to lose a habit than keep it, and I had no intention of falling out of shape.

    Right as I was slipping on my track shoes, however, an urgent knock came at my door, and I had to pause, bent over, in the middle of tying my shoelaces.

    ¡°Yes?¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor!¡± came Mash¡¯s voice, muffled but clearly stressed. ¡°There¡¯s an emergency! It¡¯s Senpai!¡±

    My stomach dropped, and I went back to my shoelaces with double the speed and effort. If the knot came out a bit sloppy and haphazard, oh well, because it just wasn¡¯t that fucking important.

    Half an eternity later, I crossed my room in three long strides and reached the door. It whooshed open to reveal a pale-faced Mash, brow furrowed and bottom lip swollen from how hard she must have been biting it.

    ¡°Explain on the way,¡± I told her briskly, and she nodded, then turned away and began the relatively short trek to where the twins¡¯ rooms had been set up, about sixty feet down the hallway. Just then, it felt like a mile.

    ¡°I-I was going to wake Senpai and Senpai up for their morning workout with Queen A¨ªfe,¡± Mash explained hurriedly, talking at about twice her normal speed. The rapid clip of our footsteps almost seemed to set her pace. ¡°Normally, I wake Senpai up first, since he doesn¡¯t take that much effort to get up, but this morning, I went to wake Senpai up first instead. I-it took a few extra tries to get her to commit to getting out of bed than usual, but once she was, I left to go wake Senpai up so she could get dressed and ready, except, when I knocked on his door, S-Senpai didn¡¯t respond.¡±

    I took an extra second to parse that out, replacing names where I needed to in order to make sense of it. Right then, I really hated Mash¡¯s tendency to address both of the twins using the same moniker, or even collectively, because it muddled the message and slowed down communication.

    ¡°At all?¡± I asked.

    Mash shook her head, biting her bottom lip again nervously. ¡°I-I knocked three times, which is usually more than enough to wake him up, but there was no response even after the third time, so I opened his door to make sure he was okay. H-he¡­looked like he was just sleeping, a-and when I checked his vitals, I couldn¡¯t find anything wrong with him, but no matter what I tried, he just wouldn¡¯t wake up! I-I even, um, tried splashing some w-water on his face, but it didn¡¯t have any effect.¡±

    He wouldn¡¯t wake up? Ritsuka wasn¡¯t a particularly light sleeper, but I¡¯d never had particular difficulty getting him up during deployment. Usually, all it took was a little shake of his shoulder and a whisper, and he was awake.

    If he wasn¡¯t waking up now¡­

    ¡°Have you contacted Romani yet?¡± I demanded.

    Mash gasped. ¡°Oh!¡±

    That was a no. Just this once, I was willing to let that slide, even though she should have known better.

    ¡°Call him, get him up here,¡± I ordered. ¡°Tell him to bring Da Vinci with him when he comes, and make sure he knows what¡¯s going on. I¡¯ll contact the Director.¡±

    Mash nodded. ¡°Right!¡±

    She lifted her arm and activated her communicator, and I turned away from her to do the same. A few button presses later, and Marie¡¯s voice came through it with a stern, impatient, ¡°What?¡±

    Considering how early it was, I may just have been waking her up. Or I might have caught her before she could grab a cup of coffee, because knowing her, she was probably up around the same time I usually woke up.

    ¡°There¡¯s an emergency down in the Masters¡¯ dorms,¡± I reported crisply. ¡°Ritsuka is unconscious and unresponsive. Mash is contacting Romani right now to apprise him of the situation, but according to her, his vitals are normal and there doesn¡¯t seem to be any sign of what might have caused this. I¡¯m en route to his room as we speak.¡±

    There was a moment of pause, barely more than an extra second or two.

    ¡°I¡¯ll be right there,¡± Marie promised.

    The connection cut. At the same time, Mash finished whatever she was saying to Romani, and she told me, ¡°Doctor Roman is on his way.¡±

    ¡°So is the Director,¡± I replied.

    ¡°He¡¯s contacting Miss Da Vinci,¡± Mash went on. ¡°She¡¯ll be there, too.¡±

    Good. Whatever this was, between Romani and Da Vinci, Ritsuka would be in the best possible hands.

    I silenced the niggling doubt that tried to tell me that it might not be enough, if this was what I was afraid it was.

    When we finally reached Ritsuka¡¯s room, the door was already wide open, and inside, Rika sat at her brother¡¯s bedside, clutching desperately at one of his hands. She was even paler than Mash, and she didn¡¯t even bother to look in our direction as we entered, so single-minded was her focus. She barely gave me a glance even as I stepped closer.

    There was nothing in the air, and that worried me. I wasn¡¯t the best at sniffing out magical phenomena ¡ª I hadn¡¯t quite fully developed that sixth sense for it a more experienced mage with more years of training might have had ¡ª but I was good enough that I probably should have been able to detect something.

    Nothing. Just the same ambient energy Chaldea always had, so constant that I had learned to tune it out. Whatever was affecting Ritsuka, it was either so subtle or so far removed from normal magic that it was essentially undetectable to me.

    The number of things that I knew of that could do that was frighteningly small.

    Rika stiffened a little as I leaned over the bed, but relaxed when she saw I was just checking Ritsuka¡¯s vitals. His pulse was normal. It was hard to tell without a thermometer, but his temperature seemed normal, too. His breathing was deep and untroubled, like he really was just asleep. If I didn¡¯t know any better, I might have thought that was all there was to it and tried to shake him awake myself.

    But his eyes were half-open. Glassy and unseeing, they stared off into the distance at something only he could see. When I lifted a finger and bounced it back and forth between the tip of his nose and three feet from his face, his eyes ignored it completely, remaining focused on whatever it was he was seeing. When I used the flashlight function on my communicator and shined the light in his eyes, his pupils didn¡¯t contract or dilate at all.

    The metaphorical lights were on, but nobody was home. My gut twisted. We¡¯d been operating mostly under the assumption that Flauros and his compatriots couldn¡¯t touch us in Chaldea, because if they could, then there was nothing stopping them from killing us all in our sleep before we knew what was happening, but if that assumption was wrong from the start¡­

    The question that I suppose naturally had to follow was why Ritsuka first, instead of going after Marie. She was the Director, after all, and they¡¯d already targeted her once before during the sabotage. Or was this them testing exactly how far into our base they could reach?

    Too many questions, not enough answers. It rankled, but there was nothing I could do right now after confirming what Mash had already told me. His vitals were normal, but he was completely unresponsive.

    This wasn¡¯t something I could beat by throwing a wall of bugs at it or having Arash plug it full of holes. Whatever was happening was something I just couldn¡¯t deal with. All I could do was step back and stand watch, waiting for the experts to make their way here and give a proper diagnosis.

    Fuck, if that didn¡¯t make me feel useless.

    I stepped back and folded my arms so that I wouldn¡¯t be tempted to fidget. Okay. Say this wasn¡¯t Flauros and his ilk. Who or what else would have the reach and the power to get us in the middle of the most secure facility left on the planet? So secure it had survived the purging of the rest of mankind?

    The trouble was, I didn¡¯t have any better answers. Sc¨¢thach had managed to break in via A¨ªfe¡¯s dreams, dragging us Masters into things ¡ª presumably through any number of bullshit abilities I knew she had just by interacting with her sister ¡ª but the number of Heroic Spirits on that level had to be just as small a number.

    That didn¡¯t mean that there weren¡¯t other ways. Using a supposedly weak set of powers to great effect was something I myself had to master as a cape, so there were probably several Heroic Spirits who weren¡¯t great at combat or at direct conflict, but who had methods and means available to them to attack from oblique angles.

    We had at least one of those ourselves, and he¡¯d spent his entire time since his summoning locked up in his room.

    The trouble was¡­what motive did any of those theoretical Heroic Spirits have? Sure, several Servants had been on the opposing side of our mission to restore proper history, but none of the ones I could think of off the top of my head really fit the bill for this particular kind of attack. Most of them had been frontline fighters more than willing to face us head on in pitched combat.

    Fuck. That just brought us back to these Demon Gods, didn¡¯t it? So was this their first salvo in a longer campaign, or was this a test for a larger attack?

    The only one who might be able to tell us that was currently laid out in his bed, unresponsive.

    A panting Romani burst through the doorway, calling out, ¡°We¡¯re here! What¡¯s the situation?¡±

    A moment later, Marie and Da Vinci joined him, the former equally out of breath and the latter for once frowning thunderously.

    ¡°Doctor Roman!¡± Mash exclaimed.

    Rika, at last, turned away from her brother, and in a hoarse, broken voice, told him, ¡°He won¡¯t wake up.¡±

    Romani frowned, and his brows drew together, furrowing, as he strode across the room. Without preamble, he took out his stethoscope, plugged the two prongs into his ears, and pressed the metal knob on the other end to Ritsuka¡¯s chest. Calmly, professionally, he went through the motions of checking each and every one of Ritsuka¡¯s vitals.

    Marie, meanwhile, came up to me and demanded, ¡°What happened?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I told her. ¡°I was getting ready for the morning when Mash knocked on my door and said Ritsuka wouldn¡¯t wake up. She said all of his vital signs seemed normal, but that she couldn¡¯t get him to wake up no matter what she tried. According to her, she even splashed some water on his face.¡±

    Marie grunted. Her thumbnail made its way into her mouth. ¡°We don¡¯t know what the cause is?¡±

    ¡°No.¡±

    ¡°Strange,¡± said Da Vinci. She looked around the room. ¡°I¡¯m not detecting any unusual signs of magical energy. This bears all the most obvious hallmarks of a curse, but there¡¯s no apparent method of delivery, nor even a culprit. No sign of external magical energy entering the room, no source of the curse inside.¡±

    ¡°Could it be,¡± I suggested, ¡°the Demon Gods?¡±

    Marie stiffened, and all of the color drained from her face as her eyes slowly went wide. Her teeth bit down on her nail so hard I was surprised it didn¡¯t crack immediately.

    Da Vinci hummed and grimaced. ¡°I¡¯m afraid there isn¡¯t really a way to be sure. It¡¯s not impossible, for certain, but it does raise a few questions, doesn¡¯t it? Such as, why now? Why not sooner? Why Ritsuka, one of our two rookie Masters, instead of you, Taylor, or the Director, or perhaps even Romani himself?¡±

    Marie¡¯s chest heaved, and her breaths came in great, gulping gasps as her entire body started to shake. Mash, the first aside from me to notice anything wrong, turned to her with concern, and looked ready to ask if something was wrong.

    ¡°Excuse us a moment, Da Vinci,¡± I said abruptly, and I seized Marie about her shoulders and swiftly steered her out of the room.

    We made it about five feet down the hallway before she nearly collapsed. If I wasn¡¯t there to hold her up, they would have found her on the floor, hyperventilating. I had to prop her up against the wall just to keep her standing.

    ¡°Breathe, Marie,¡± I said quietly. ¡°Slowly, now. In for seven, out for eleven. With me.¡±

    I took a long, deep breath, demonstrating, and then another, and another, one after the other, and finally, Marie started copying me, taking stuttered, abortive deep breaths that slowly got longer and deeper.

    ¡°That¡¯s it,¡± I told her soothingly. ¡°In. Slowly. Out.¡±

    Steadily, she started getting better and stopped hyperventilating, and the shaking and shivering of her body calmed beneath my hands. Color slowly returned to her face, although she remained paler than usual. It was at least better than being able to compare her complexion to the color of her hair.

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

    A choked, strangled sound came out of her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut. It might have been a sob, if she had let it make it any further.

    ¡°We¡¯re supposed to be safe from them here,¡± she whispered. ¡°Aren¡¯t we?¡±

    I could have told her a comforting lie, but she would have seen right through it, so all I could do was tell her, truthfully, ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±

    She shuddered, and I knew I couldn¡¯t leave it at that.

    ¡°But if it was that easy for them, then we would never have made it as far as we did,¡± I went on. ¡°Whatever this is? We have no idea what it cost them just to manage this much. How much time and effort they had to expend.¡±

    Because all magecraft lived off of that same principle. Equivalent exchange. It was entirely possible that the reason they hadn¡¯t tried before now ¡ª and maybe wouldn¡¯t try again ¡ª was because the cost was just too high. For all we knew, if this was indeed Flauros and Forneus¡¯ allies, this was the only shot they had.

    I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to bank on that, but it didn¡¯t mean that I was automatically wrong. Right now, we just knew far too little.

    What I¡¯d said, at least, managed to penetrate Marie¡¯s depressive spiral, although it wasn¡¯t as successful as I would have liked. Indecision warred across her face, like she wanted to believe I was right but wasn¡¯t sure if she dared. As though she was afraid to hope that there wouldn¡¯t be another instance of something like this happening again.

    I had to admit, I was scared of what might happen to her if I was wrong. If she couldn¡¯t even believe me when her demons started ganging up on her, then there weren¡¯t any outcomes to that which I really wanted to think about.

    Romani suddenly appeared from out of Ritsuka¡¯s door, sighing and running a hand through his hair. Hand still raised, he looked like he was going to throw his fist at the wall for a second, and then thought better of it, if only to spare himself the pain of busting up his knuckles.

    Carefully, I stepped back from Marie, watching out of the corner of my eye for instability, but even without me there to hold her up, she managed to stay standing. She wasn¡¯t okay, and maybe she wouldn¡¯t be until this whole situation was resolved, but she¡¯d calmed down enough that she wasn¡¯t about to collapse on us.

    ¡°Romani,¡± I said, and he turned to look at me, grimacing. ¡°Anything you can tell us?¡±

    ¡°Not much of anything new, I¡¯m sorry to say,¡± he replied. ¡°His vitals all register as normal. No signs of trauma, no injuries that I could find. Even his magic circuits are well within the margin of error for his baseline ¡ª except for some minor activity here and there, but what that could mean, I can¡¯t begin to tell you.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s activity in his magic circuits?¡± Marie asked, her voice shaking a little.

    Romani nodded. ¡°It¡¯s nothing at all like the strain we¡¯ve recorded for even the lightest of combat situations inside the Singularities, but there is some faintly elevated level of activity beyond the norm. Something we can¡¯t account for with day to day activity.¡± He sighed again. ¡°Like I said, though, I have no idea what that might mean. Da Vinci is currently doing her best to get a better look, but I don¡¯t know if she¡¯ll be able to figure out what¡¯s going on either.¡±

    ¡°I-if this is some kind of spell or curse,¡± Marie began, ¡°could it be his body¡¯s instinctive attempts at defense?¡±

    Romani grimaced and held a hand up to his mouth thoughtfully. ¡°It¡¯s¡­not impossible,¡± he said after a moment. ¡°The human body does have a sort of magical immune system ¡ª and of course, you already know that, Director. But if he¡¯s instinctively circulating magical energy through his circuits to fight off whatever this is, then it¡¯s a frankly miniscule amount.¡±

    ¡°That might be because whatever this is functions as an attack on the mind and spirit instead of the body,¡± Da Vinci said as she, too, stepped out of Ritsuka¡¯s room. Mash was right behind her.

    ¡°Rika?¡± I asked.

    Mash shook her head. ¡°She refused to leave Senpai¡¯s side.¡±

    As I probably should have expected. A glance back through the door saw her still in the same position, clutching at Ritsuka¡¯s motionless hand as though he would float away if she let go.

    ¡°So we¡¯ve got confirmation this is some kind of attack, then?¡± Romani asked.

    ¡°One designed specifically to affect his mind and his soul,¡± Da Vinci confirmed. ¡°It¡¯s why he¡¯s unresponsive. Whatever has done this to him has trapped him in a kind of prison. As long as he¡¯s there, he can¡¯t interact with us and we can¡¯t interact with him. For all intents and purposes, it¡¯s as though he¡¯s in a coma.¡±

    Romani grimaced again. ¡°That kind of curse is¡­¡±

    ¡°Uncommon,¡± Marie finished for him, still sounding a bit unsteady. ¡°This is leagues beyond something as simple as a Gandr. Something like that is what I might expect from an expert from the Association.¡±

    ¡°It couldn¡¯t be,¡± Mash said softly, ¡°d-demonic possession, could it? Like P-Professor Lev?¡±

    Any color Marie had managed to regain abruptly left her face again.

    ¡°No sign of that, thank goodness,¡± said Da Vinci. The entire group seemed to let out a metaphorical sigh of relief. ¡°In fact, all things considered, this may not be an external attack at all.¡±

    The air stilled.

    ¡°I-it can¡¯t be,¡± Marie breathed. ¡°You¡¯re not suggesting¡­someone inside the facility!¡±

    Another traitor, she didn¡¯t say, but I heard it loud and clear. But who? And why attack Ritsuka instead of simply finishing the job Flauros had started? Or even just sabotaging our Rayshift system so that we couldn¡¯t fix the Singularities in the first place? Hell, if Ritsuka himself was the target, then why bother with something as convoluted as this curse instead of just walking into his room while he was asleep and slitting his throat?

    I stilled as a thought occurred to me. Unless¡­

    ¡°That¡¯s not what I meant, no,¡± said Da Vinci, shaking her head. ¡°I mean that this may be a final act of revenge by Forneus, a sort of delayed curse on the ones who killed him. Although I do have to admit that reasoning might be a little flimsy, since Ritsuka himself is the only one who was affected.¡±

    ¡­the mental attack was the point, because this wasn¡¯t about hurting us or doing damage to the team, but something done solely for entertainment. A game played by a man who had been famous for his satire, all for the sake of his own amusement.

    He¡¯d been quiet all this time. Alone, bothering no one for months and showing up with the rest of the group only so he could grab some of Emiya¡¯s food on the designated Servant meal days. Was all that time spent planning, preparing for the right moment to have his fun?

    I was walking down the hallway before I even realized my feet had started moving.

    ¡°Taylor?¡± Romani called out to me. ¡°Where are you going?¡±

    ¡°To check on a hunch,¡± I replied shortly. ¡°Keep an eye on Ritsuka and let me know if his condition changes.¡±

    I didn¡¯t wait for a reply. Instead, I kept going at a fast walk, and I tugged on the thread connecting me to Arash, Arash?

    Here, he replied, and an instant later, he shimmered into existence next to me. ¡°I was there for the whole thing. Do you have an idea?¡±

    ¡°I might know who¡¯s behind this,¡± I told him. ¡°We might need to eliminate him, if he isn¡¯t willing to stop this on his own.¡±

    ¡°I understand,¡± said Arash, solemn. ¡°In that case, I¡¯ll handle it.¡±

    Without my bugs and with my knife still in my room? ¡°Good.¡±

    Although the lack of my knife might be better, in this situation. Easier to underestimate me when I didn¡¯t have a weapon on me, so Arash could get in a surprise attack before any traps or countermeasures were triggered.

    It took only a few minutes to arrive at the room Shakespeare had picked out for himself, and the door, unlocked, whooshed open to show what looked like a writer¡¯s office from about six hundred years ago. Shakespeare sat at his desk, feather quill twitching as he wrote, bent over whatever he was in the middle of penning.

    It might just have been whatever he was putting Ritsuka through at that very moment.

    ¡°Shakespeare.¡±

    ¡°Hm?¡± He looked up from his work, and his face lit up when he saw it was me. ¡°Oh! My dear, what a pleasant surprise! I admit, I wasn¡¯t sure when I would see you again, after I gave you that dagger of yours! Tell me, has it worked to your standards?¡±

    ¡°Well enough.¡± I wasn¡¯t sure if his attitude spoke of guilt, a lack thereof, or just general sociopathy. I stepped into his room, confident and sure. ¡°You can drop the act. I know what you¡¯ve been up to.¡±

    A classic interrogation technique: insinuate knowledge of the target¡¯s guilt without ever specifying exactly what you did or didn¡¯t know. They filled it in on their own and often wound up admitting to things because they thought you already knew about it all.

    ¡°Ah.¡± Shakespeare smiled awkwardly. ¡°You do, do you? I-I had wondered, but, well, you gave no indication before, my dear, so I had assumed¡­¡±

    ¡°That I¡¯d let you get away with it?¡±

    ¡°P-perhaps a tad foolish of me,¡± he allowed, ¡°but can you blame me? So much potential, so much to explore, all of it just waiting for me to tap into ¡ª how could I possibly resist? How could anyone have resisted, in my position?¡±

    I wanted to be surprised. I wanted to have been wrong. But the pieces had just fit together too neatly, and there really weren¡¯t that many people who could have done it.

    ¡°Because you should have known better.¡±

    ¡°Come, now, is it truly so bad?¡± he tried, spreading his arms. ¡°Yes, I suppose I should have gotten permission first, but no one has been hurt by it, have they? What harm does it do?¡±

    What harm does it do? Did he really just ask that?

    ¡°Your Master¡¯s in a coma and we don¡¯t know when or if he¡¯ll wake up,¡± I said furiously, ¡°and you¡¯re asking what harm it does to play around with his mind like that?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Shakespeare, sounding confused and alarmed, ¡°Master¡¯s in a coma?¡±

    He didn¡¯t know? But if he was the one who did it, wouldn¡¯t he have to? He¡¯d just admitted to it, hadn¡¯t he?

    My anger shorted out. Now I was confused, too. ¡°Yes. Someone has trapped him in some sort of spiritual prison that we don¡¯t know how to get him out of. Your Noble Phantasm ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± said Shakespeare, calming down. ¡°I see why you may have thought it was me, but I¡¯m afraid that whatever it is that has happened to Master, I played no part in it. Truthfully, I have not spoken with him in several days, as I was occupied with other matters. It seems that we both may have made assumptions about what the other was speaking of, and we both allowed ourselves to get, er, a little carried away.¡±

    And that did nothing to explain anything about what he¡¯d just said.

    ¡°If you weren¡¯t talking about what¡¯s happening to Ritsuka,¡± I said, ¡°then what were you talking about?¡±

    ¡°Oh. Yes, well¡­¡± His eyes flickered over to his bookshelf, to a section containing what looked like a multi-volume set. The images on the spines combined together to form the outline for a vaguely whale-like creature, leaving a trail of water droplets in its wake. ¡°It was¡­nothing of true consequence. As I said! No matter worth speaking of, truly!¡±

    I opened my mouth ¡ª

    ¡°In any case!¡± he said loudly and with obvious intent. ¡°You said my Master was comatose? Cursed, oh so tragically, by some fiend mimicking my Noble Phantasm? Then we must make all due haste to his side!¡±

    ¡ª and he bulldozed over anything I might have said, then disappeared into spirit form. My right arm tingled as though something intangible passed by me and through the door.

    He left, Master, Arash reported unnecessarily. Do we believe him?

    My lips pursed. ¡°For now. Let¡¯s see how he handles things with Ritsuka before we make any more judgments.¡±

    Arash didn¡¯t disagree, and I spun on my heel and left, pausing only long enough to glance back at the multi-volume set he obviously didn¡¯t want me to see, but my curiosity could be sated later. Whatever it was, it wasn¡¯t more important than Ritsuka, so as long as no one was currently being hurt by it, I could leave it be until another time.

    When I got back to Ritsuka¡¯s room, everyone had piled back inside, and it had consequently become somewhat cramped. Rika maintained her vigil, and I suspected she would until this whole situation was resolved, while Romani stood off to the side and Marie in the nearest corner, chewing on her thumbnail again. Shakespeare had evidently pushed his way to the forefront, because he leaned over Ritsuka, examining him, while Da Vinci watched closely.

    ¡°Hm,¡± Shakespeare hummed. ¡°The effects are quite similar. A copycat! An imitator! The fondest form of flattery! However¡­ Although the effect bears more than a passing resemblance to my Noble Phantasm, I¡¯m afraid that the mechanism is pure magecraft, and I, as a humble bard, can do little and nothing to unravel it.¡±

    Romani sighed. ¡°I was afraid of that.¡±

    ¡°At least we can cross something off of the list,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°There isn¡¯t anything else you can tell us, Shakespeare?¡±

    Shakespeare shook his head. ¡°Only that, if it does indeed so resemble my Noble Phantasm, there is likely nothing we can do from the outside. The curse must run its course before he will awaken. Whatever challenge awaits him in his dream, he must surmount it through his own efforts and will. A test of character! Of wits, virtue, and determination!¡±

    ¡°A test?¡± asked Mash. ¡°What do you mean, Mister Shakespeare?¡±

    ¡°Is it not obvious?¡± Shakespeare retorted. ¡°Something like this ¡ª it is not designed to destroy outright, but to crush the spirit! To erode the mind and soul with the weight of one¡¯s failures, inadequacies, and sins! A prison of despair!¡±

    Mash gasped, but it was nearly drowned out when Rika shouted, ¡°But Onii-chan hasn¡¯t done anything to deserve that!¡±

    ¡°A curse like this is rarely about what the victim deserves, Rika,¡± Da Vinci said patiently. ¡°No human being is without flaws or regrets, things about themselves or their pasts that they despise. Curses that attack their target based upon things like karma are specifically designed in such a way that no one can escape them fully, although their nature means that those who are relatively innocent can fight them off much more easily than, say, a mass murderer.¡±

    ¡°Or a politician,¡± Romani added with a kind of grim humor. No one laughed.

    ¡°There¡¯s really nothing we can do?¡± Marie demanded. ¡°We just have to sit here helplessly and hope the whole thing resolves itself?¡±

    She was shaking again, but it was slight enough that I think I was the only one who really noticed. If anyone else did, they didn¡¯t comment on it.

    ¡°Unfortunately,¡± Da Vinci said regretfully. She sighed. ¡°To fully examine this curse and come up with a method of countering it, I would probably have to use my Noble Phantasm, and right now, that¡¯s¡­¡±

    ¡°Being used to keep this place running,¡± I murmured.

    ¡°Twenty people really isn¡¯t enough to maintain a facility of this size on the day to day,¡± she said by way of agreement. ¡°And any specialists we might have had on the subject of curses, well¡­¡±

    ¡°We¡­lost them in the sabotage,¡± Romani finished for her. She nodded.

    ¡°So we¡¯re just going to sit around and wait for him to die?¡± Rika spat, tears glittering in her eyes. ¡°We¡¯re that fucking incompetent?¡±

    Romani looked away awkwardly, and Marie bit down on her thumbnail so hard that her lips pulled away from her teeth.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Mash said softly, ¡°I have faith in¡­Senpai. He¡¯ll make it through this. I know it.¡±

    But it didn¡¯t help at all.

    ¡°Faith won¡¯t bring him back!¡± Rika snarled.

    ¡°It will not,¡± Shakespeare said. ¡°But¡­perhaps there is something we can do.¡±

    Her head whipped around towards him so fast I thought I might have heard her neck crack.

    ¡°You said there isn¡¯t anything we can do from the outside,¡± she accused him.

    He nodded. ¡°Indeed, there is not. Woe! Nothing we might attempt to break the curse will have any effect upon it! That does not mean, however, that there is nothing at all we can do ¡ª if, that is, one were willing to brave the curse themselves and help him to break it from the inside.¡±

    At once, I made the connection ¡ª if the curse was similar to his Noble Phantasm, then theoretically, wouldn¡¯t it be possible to use his Noble Phantasm to send someone in to rescue Ritsuka?

    ¡°Whoa, no, hang on, back up a second!¡± Romani jumped on it immediately. ¡°There¡¯s no way I¡¯d approve of something like that! We already have one Master in danger here, there¡¯s no way we¡¯re going to risk a second one¡¯s life, too!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll do it,¡± said Rika without any hesitation whatsoever. ¡°Whatever it takes.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s too dangerous!¡± Romani insisted. ¡°Not to mention reckless!¡±

    ¡°We may not have much of a choice,¡± Marie said gravely. Her face was still ashen and her hands still trembled, but her brow was set and firm. ¡°W-we¡¯ve already lost so many people and most of the Master candidates. We¡­ We can¡¯t afford to lose even one more. Not when we still have so far to go.¡±

    ¡°All the more reason not to risk two!¡± said Romani.

    ¡°Fuck you!¡± Rika screeched, and by the widening of Mash¡¯s eyes, I wasn¡¯t the only one surprised by the sheer vehemence in her voice. ¡°We¡¯re a package deal! I¡¯m not gonna just sit here and twiddle my goddamn thumbs when he needs my help!¡±

    ¡°Rika,¡± Romani began.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid it can¡¯t be you, regardless,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°If something goes wrong and we lose both of you, then Mash¡¯s contract will be voided and we could quite frankly lose access to a number of essential functions for future operations. We can¡¯t send Mash for exactly that reason, too, although, as a Demi-Servant, she¡¯s at lower risk than you are.¡± She turned to Shakespeare. ¡°Does it matter if it¡¯s a Master or a Servant we send?¡±

    Shakespeare shrugged and shook his head theatrically. ¡°Who could say for sure? Although, as an entirely spiritual existence, it could be that a Servant would be more susceptible to such a curse. A mere bard could not say!¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Marie, ¡°you¡¯re right. A Servant would be more vulnerable to the effects of a curse like this, and the act of willingly subjecting himself to it would likely allow it to bypass any mitigating effects of a skill like Magic Resistance. Even if we sent one of our Knight Class Servants, we have to assume they¡¯d run into the same problems as a human would ¡ª or worse.¡±

    Da Vinci sighed. ¡°You have a very valid point there, Director.¡±

    There was a very deliberate knock on the door, and Arash leaned in through the doorway. ¡°Would my Robust Health help with that?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± both Da Vinci and Marie said simultaneously. Da Vinci went on, ¡°Since the curse directly attacks the mind and spirit instead of the body, skills which are meant to protect the sanctity of the body won¡¯t have any effect either. It was a nice try, Arash, but I¡¯m sorry.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t the worst idea, though. As callous as it sounded, we could afford to lose a Servant, as long as it wasn¡¯t Mash and as long as it was someone we could bring back later on, like we had Emiya. It might be safer to send one in to test the waters, but¡­

    I turned to Shakespeare. ¡°How many shots do we have at this?¡±

    Grinning, he held up a single finger. Only one. ¡°Once my Noble Phantasm takes effect, it won¡¯t end until it has run its course. Success or failure, the first person to enter to rescue Master will be the only person to enter. I will be able to provide a modicum of protection against the curse¡¯s worst effects, but only that, I¡¯m afraid!¡±

    So it was the worst case scenario, then. We only had one chance to make it work.

    ¡°We can¡¯t send any of the Servants,¡± Romani said, brow furrowing, ¡°and needless to say, we can¡¯t send the Director, either, or any of the technicians, since they¡¯re not trained for this. That only leaves¡­¡±

    ¡°The remaining Masters,¡± Marie concluded.

    Me and Rika.

    ¡°There! See?¡± Rika said. ¡°You don¡¯t have a choice! If it has to be one of the Masters, then ¡ª¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll go,¡± I said before she could.

    She whirled around towards me, but I didn¡¯t give her the chance to protest.

    ¡°It has to be one of the remaining Masters, and it can¡¯t be Rika, because we need Mash too much,¡± I went on. ¡°So I¡¯ll go.¡±

    ¡°No one is going!¡± Romani said insistently. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Rika, but it¡¯s just too dangerous, and I refuse to risk either you or Taylor on something that might just make this whole situation even worse! No, even if we can only send one of the Masters, that¡¯s all the more reason why we shouldn¡¯t!¡±

    Marie opened her mouth to say something ¡ª

    A¨ªfe suddenly appeared without any warning whatsoever, startling everyone in the room. She ignored the indignant squawks as I tried surreptitiously to calm the sudden jump in my heart rate, and without any preamble at all, she announced even more bad news:

    ¡°Jeanne Alter is missing.¡±

 Chapter CXVI: Missing and In Action

    Chapter CXVI: Missing and In Action

    ¡°What do you mean, she¡¯s missing?¡± Marie demanded immediately.

    ¡°Just as I said,¡± A¨ªfe replied. ¡°I¡¯ve searched her usual hiding spots and even tried using a rune to track her down, to no avail. It¡¯s as though she simply disappeared.¡±

    ¡°That shouldn¡¯t be possible,¡± Da Vinci said. ¡°I have a system set up to notify me in case a Servant¡¯s contract is terminated. I double-checked it after we found out Medea¡¯s Noble Phantasm could cancel them, and added provisions specifically for the circumstances where they might forcibly change hands. If something happened to her, I would have known about it the second it happened!¡±

    Romani was already flicking through his tablet, bent over the screen as he went through the menus faster than I¡¯d ever seen him go. Checking on the status of Jeanne Alter¡¯s contract, I realized ¡ª good.

    I did some checking of my own, reaching for the thread that connected me to her, because no matter what the result, it would tell me something that would be at least somewhat useful. Even no response was a response in its own way.

    A¨ªfe folded her arms. ¡°I¡¯m not lying.¡±

    ¡°But what you¡¯re saying doesn¡¯t make any sense at all!¡± Da Vinci insisted.

    But when I pushed along that thread, there was nothing there. A prod got me no reaction from Jeanne Alter, neither did the mental equivalent of a sharp tug, and when I tried to push my mind down along it so that I could peer through her eyes, my senses remained completely my own. Nothing happened.

    ¡°I just tried contacting her,¡± I announced.

    ¡°And?¡± asked Da Vinci.

    ¡°Nothing. I couldn¡¯t even borrow her eyes to see where she is or what she¡¯s doing.¡±

    If I compared it to a phone line, it was like it just kept ringing and no one ever answered. That the thread existed at all said that she was definitely on the other end of it, and there was no sense of anything blocking me off from her, but I wasn¡¯t getting through no matter what I tried.

    A¨ªfe arched an eyebrow, as though to say, ¡®See?¡¯

    Da Vinci¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°She could be deliberately blocking you ¡ª¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s not,¡± I cut across her. ¡°I¡¯m not sure that Jeanne Alter even knows how to stop me from borrowing her senses.¡±

    And if she did, she would probably be a lot more aggressive about it. The mental equivalent of slapping my hand away, as it were.

    ¡°It might be that you¡¯re both right,¡± said Romani. He held out the tablet. ¡°Look.¡±

    Da Vinci leaned over, peering down at the screen, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marie shift, as though she wanted to step over and look and then reconsidered because of how crowded it would be. Da Vinci¡¯s eyes went wide.

    ¡°What?¡± Marie asked impatiently. ¡°What is it?¡±

    ¡°The contract is still there,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°I was right, there¡¯s been no changes made to its status. But she¡¯s drawing elevated levels of magical energy from the reactor, almost like ¡ª¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s in combat,¡± I concluded.

    It sounded ridiculous to even suggest it, and yet it felt like the most obvious answer.

    Romani nodded. ¡°And I bet you, if we compared the bursts of increased energy expenditure with the fluctuations in Ritsuka¡¯s Magic Circuits¡­¡±

    ¡°They¡¯d match,¡± Da Vinci breathed.

    ¡°That¡¯s ridiculous!¡± Marie sputtered. ¡°You¡¯re not trying to insinuate that she¡¯s been caught up in this curse, too, are you?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s in there with him?¡± Rika yelped.

    ¡°Ohohoho!¡± Shakespeare chortled. ¡°The plot thickens! Not only Master was snared, but also a Servant who can herself be said to be made of curses and grudges! My, my, I wonder how this will play out!¡±

    ¡°Not helping!¡± Marie seethed at him. ¡°We¡¯re supposed to be s-safe here, aren¡¯t we? The enemy isn¡¯t supposed to be able to reach one of us, let alone two!¡±

    I looked over at Ritsuka¡¯s motionless body. Could Jeanne Alter really be stuck in that prison curse with him? But how? And why the two of them instead of anyone else in the facility? What did they ¡ª

    She delivered the final blow on Forneus, and Ritsuka was the one who summoned her Shadow self into Okeanos.

    That was it. That was the one thing I could think of that connected them and might be related to this curse. Nothing else leapt to mind, at least not at that moment.

    But could it really be that simple? And if it was, why had he been cursed by Forneus, but the rest of us had remained untouched after killing Flauros? A matter of preparation by the enemy? Because they had a better idea what we were capable of now, and therefore had more contingencies for if and when they were defeated? Or had Forneus¡¯ larger size meant more power for him to throw around, and that was why he had been able to throw a curse out as he died?

    No, wait. Maybe Flauros had thrown out a curse at his killer, but Altera was the one who technically finished him off, so it hadn¡¯t hit any of us. It would have simply run face-first into her Magic Resistance and slid right off.

    A stab of pain lanced between my eyes, as though to remind me that my headache hadn¡¯t actually gone anywhere, even if I¡¯d had other things to focus on.

    ¡°It would seem the only conclusion we can draw from the facts we have,¡± Da Vinci said. Marie flinched, biting hard at her lower lip. ¡°It is, technically, possible that she might have broken into one of our more secure areas, the ones that are warded against outside interference, and that could explain why A¨ªfe is unable to find her, as well¡­¡±

    ¡°But that¡¯s not part of her skill set,¡± I finished for her.

    Jeanne Alter was fire, brimstone, and violence. If she was capable of breaking into one of the secure areas on her own, then she wouldn¡¯t have done it without alerting everyone in the whole building when she did it. If she was trying to sneak into anywhere, then ironically, the only way she could do it was by announcing to everyone where she was.

    Da Vinci nodded. ¡°Exactly.¡±

    And if, despite all of that, she could still break into one of those areas without being detected, well, then we had an entirely different set of problems, didn¡¯t we?

    ¡°I think we can apply Occam¡¯s Razor on this one,¡± Romani said. ¡°As crazy as it sounds that we¡¯re calling it the simplest option, the most likely answer is that she is in there with Ritsuka, and that¡¯s why we can¡¯t find her.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s also possible that the reason she¡¯s in there with him is because she¡¯s the one behind the curse,¡± Da Vinci reasoned, ¡°but she¡¯s really more of a¡­blunt instrument, shall we say. This has a little too much¡­finesse to be her handiwork.¡±

    In other words, if Jeanne Alter wanted to curse someone, she¡¯d do it loudly, publicly, and without hiding exactly what she was doing and why she was doing it. If she was going to make you suffer, she wanted to make sure you knew it was her.

    ¡°What does this mean?¡± Mash asked.

    ¡°It means that we¡¯re not sending anyone in after them just yet,¡± Marie said.

    ¡°Director!¡± Rika began, shouting. She rose halfway out of her chair, and the only reason she didn¡¯t stand all the way up was probably because it would have meant either letting go of her brother¡¯s hand or yanking him up off the mattress.

    ¡°As long as we don¡¯t have to, we¡¯re not taking any unnecessary risks with anyone else¡¯s life!¡± Marie hissed back at her. That didn¡¯t satisfy Rika at all. ¡°Listen! We might not be able to tell what¡¯s going on by monitoring Ritsuka¡¯s vital signs, since his condition inside the prison isn¡¯t registering the way it would even during a Rayshift, but we can still monitor Jeanne Alter¡¯s condition ¡ª right, Romani?¡±

    Ah. That was a clever idea. A smart method of getting around our limitations.

    Romani grimaced. ¡°We¡¯ve¡­never been able to keep track of Servants¡¯ health the same way we do the Masters¡¯, since most of their organs aren¡¯t quite as important as a living human¡¯s are, but¡­we can keep track of her Spirit Origin¡¯s integrity and the level of magical energy she¡¯s using.¡±

    Mash gasped. ¡°So as long as she¡¯s okay, Master should be, too!¡±

    Provided the curse didn¡¯t keep them separate and Jeanne Alter wasn¡¯t corrupted by it ¡ª further, at least, considering her origins ¡ª then yeah, that should hold.

    ¡°Without knowing the structure of the curse and how it interacts with the human mind, it¡¯s not quite so simple,¡± Da Vinci hedged, ¡°but right now, it seems like the best option we have available. If things start to deteriorate, we can reconsider our other options, but without a better idea of what exactly is going on inside of that curse, we shouldn¡¯t rush to send in anyone else and risk losing either them or our only chance to mount a rescue operation. Right, Director?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Marie agreed. ¡°If we rush into things, then we might just make them worse. We need to know more about what we¡¯re getting into before doing anything else.¡±

    ¡°But Onii-chan¡­!¡± Rika protested.

    ¡°Right now, Rika, it¡¯s the best of a lot of bad options,¡± Romani said, grimacing. ¡°If things take a turn for the worse, we¡¯ll throw caution to the wind and do whatever it takes, but for now, give us some time to figure out what we¡¯d even be dropping you or Taylor into, okay?¡±

    Rika didn¡¯t reply, but the look on her face spoke volumes about her displeasure ¡ª she could have been screaming and shouting and come across tamer and less adamant. I didn¡¯t disagree with her position.

    Romani, Marie, and Da Vinci all had a good point. No intel was just as dangerous as bad intel, and working off of faulty assumptions built on a castle made of sand was just asking for something to go awry. The problem was, if things started to deteriorate, it was far too likely it would happen quickly, too quickly for us to intervene, and then we¡¯d lose Ritsuka for sure.

    I wasn¡¯t sure Rika would survive it if we did.

    ¡°Is this the official decision on the matter then?¡± I asked neutrally.

    Marie looked at me, grimaced at whatever expression was on my face, and then looked away, like she couldn¡¯t meet my eye as she said, ¡°Yes. For now, we don¡¯t know enough to attempt anything so extreme. Romani, you¡¯re in charge of monitoring him. If anything changes, let me know immediately. Da Vinci, obviously, you need to try and get us as much information about what¡¯s happening as possible. The more we know about this curse, the better prepared we¡¯ll be to unravel it when the time comes.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± said Da Vinci.

    ¡°Everyone else should return to their dorms,¡± Marie went on. ¡°Eat breakfast, while you have the chance, and stay nearby. Be ready for if things start to go bad so that we can respond as quickly as possible.¡±

    Shakespeare pressed a hand to his chest. ¡°And me, my good lady?¡±

    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    ¡°Of course you need to stay nearby,¡± Marie said like he was stupid for asking. ¡°Right now, you¡¯re our only method of interacting with this curse, so if the worst case scenario occurs, you need to be close enough that we can respond as rapidly as possible!¡±

    ¡°Of course!¡± Shakespeare bowed. ¡°Then I, too, shall stay here to look over my Master, so that I might observe ¡ª in exacting detail ¡ª any change in his condition! Why, it is my duty as his Servant!¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Shakespeare,¡± Mash said gratefully.

    ¡°Then you¡¯re all dismissed!¡± Marie said imperiously.

    It wouldn¡¯t be accurate to say that the room emptied out. Romani and Da Vinci were already slated to stay behind, and so was Shakespeare, but Marie left immediately, and Mash hesitated a moment, then she left, too, probably to go and eat some breakfast. I had little doubt she wouldn¡¯t be gone much longer than it took to do just that. I followed behind, shadowing Marie, because what I had to say to her wasn¡¯t for prying ears.

    Rika, surprising absolutely no one at all, stayed behind in Ritsuka¡¯s room. Eventually, depending on how long this lasted for, we were going to have to force her out of there and make her eat, just as a matter of her health. Hopefully, Ritsuka would wake up in a few hours and this would all blow over, but if he wound up in that coma for days, then we were going to have to get food into her one way or another.

    The instant Mash split off from us, I quickened my pace so that I could catch up to Marie, and lowly, so that only she could hear, I said, ¡°Director, can we talk?¡±

    She glanced at me, grimaced, but nodded and said, ¡°My office.¡±

    She led the way at a quick, clipped pace, walking fast but not so fast that she would look like she was rushing, and when we made it to her office, she opened the door without delay or preamble. I knew she was dreading this conversation ¡ª the fact that she had been studiously ignoring looking me in the eye said that loud and clear ¡ª but for one reason or another, she wasn¡¯t going out of her way to avoid it.

    I liked to think it was because we trusted each other that much. That she might not always like what I had to say, but she respected me enough to listen when I said it.

    That mutual trust and respect made it all the harder to round on her the instant the door whooshed shut behind me. ¡°You know this is a bad call.¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t,¡± she said, sticking to her guns. ¡°One Master¡¯s life is already at risk, and we can¡¯t afford to lose a second one! Not Rika¡¯s, for how it might affect her contract with Mash and how easily it could cripple so much of our infrastructure, and especially not yours!¡±

    On the one hand, I did get it. I was the ace Master on the team. The most experienced member left, the only remaining Master of Team A, and Marie had invested a significant amount of time, effort, and money in bringing me back from the brink the last time I¡¯d actually paid for my willingness to put everything on the line.

    I was also probably the only real friend she had in this place. The degree to which she leaned on me for emotional support was obvious, and I didn¡¯t need to be Tattletale to see it. The whole facility ¡ª what was left of it ¡ª could probably see it.

    On the other hand ¡ª

    ¡°Isn¡¯t it my decision whether or not I¡¯m willing to risk my life to save him?¡±

    ¡°As a human being, maybe!¡± she replied sternly, jabbing a finger at me. ¡°As the expert during deployment, even! But as a Master of Chaldea, inside this facility, under my employ? No! The one who makes these decisions is me, the Director, and I don¡¯t make them lightly!¡±

    And, normally, I could accept that. Marie had more than earned that much trust from me. But this wasn¡¯t a normal situation, nothing like anything we¡¯d trained for, and as much as I respected Marie, I knew her well enough to know that she didn¡¯t always make the best decisions when she was thrown into the deep end.

    ¡°Lightly or not, you¡¯re still making the decision to abandon him!¡± I shot back. ¡°We have the means to effect some kind of rescue, but you¡¯re refusing to use it!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not abandoning him!¡± Marie snarled. A brief flash of guilt jolted through my stomach, sour and curdling, but it wasn¡¯t enough to keep the next sentence out of my mouth.

    ¡°It sure looks like it!¡±

    ¡°Because I¡¯m not letting you try something that would be the equivalent of dangling you over a flaming pit on the off chance it even worked?¡±

    Yes, it was risky, and I knew that, I¡¯d known that from the instant the suggestion was even raised, but that didn¡¯t change one fundamental fact:

    ¡°It¡¯s the best option we¡¯ve got, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Because it¡¯s the only option, that also means it¡¯s the worst!¡±

    ¡°The only other thing I¡¯m hearing is ¡®wait and hope,¡¯ and that¡¯s the same as leaving him to die!¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know that!¡± Marie insisted, but it sounded flimsy to my ears.

    ¡°And you don¡¯t know that I¡¯m wrong!¡± was my retort. ¡°Ritsuka might not be a bumbling idiot, but he¡¯s still new to this, and he¡¯s an amateur mage at best! He¡¯s stuck in there fighting against a curse that Da Vinci is stumped by, and our newest and most volatile Servant is apparently stuck in there with him! We can¡¯t even be sure the curse will let them work together instead of pitting them against each other!¡±

    Marie¡¯s eyes flashed. ¡°Which means that the same thing could happen if you went in! It¡¯s one thing when he could probably just use a Command Spell to force Jeanne Alter to commit suicide if it comes down to it, but if you two are forced to fight each other and only one person can leave alive, then one of you is guaranteed to die!¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t do that,¡± I said. ¡°And neither would Ritsuka.¡±

    She scoffed. ¡°As if you would have a choice! If the only way to break it is to let it run its course, then the only option would be one of you dying so the other could leave, or else you both might be stuck until you both die!¡±

    ¡°Do you think I¡¯d let it get to that point? I¡¯ve been in tough spots like that before. I¡¯ve always found a way out.¡±

    ¡°And that¡¯s exactly why it can¡¯t be you!¡± she said. ¡°Ritsuka has the best shot alone against a karmic curse. He¡¯s an innocent kid who never did anything important before he came to work for Chaldea. All of the good and bad he¡¯s done before coming here was tiny, little stuff that doesn¡¯t mean anything. You¡­ You have too much history. Too many things you¡¯ve done that had too big an impact.¡±

    Quieter, as though to say the words would somehow make them more real, ¡°A karmic curse would destroy you. And even if it didn¡¯t, whatever was left behind might as well have been.¡±

    A cacophony of images flashed through my mind¡¯s eye, a highlight reel of all of the things I regretted, all of the deeds that had stuck to me like tar. I¡¯d managed to escape that baggage for so long just by refusing to stop moving forward, by pushing on stubbornly and refusing to lose sight of what I was striving towards. It wasn¡¯t the healthiest way of doing things, and I think some part of me had always known that on some level, but there just hadn¡¯t ever been time to really slow down and let myself deal with everything.

    Until it all caught up to me at the end. Until it was all suddenly over and there was nothing left for me to chase, nowhere left for me to run to. I¡¯d had to face it all and stare down my mistakes, realize that I couldn¡¯t really regret the end result, but the way I¡¯d gone about some of the things I¡¯d done wasn¡¯t how I wished I could have done it.

    Marie hugged herself, biting her bottom lip. ¡°Even if Shakespeare really could insulate you from the worst of it, that might not be enough. The karmic weight of that final battle alone¡­¡±

    ¡°You think I couldn¡¯t handle it?¡±

    That I hadn¡¯t already known exactly how heavy a sin I was going to be picking up with every decision I made in that fight?

    She hunched in on herself. ¡°I think that whatever came out the other side might not be you anymore.¡± She looked up at me. ¡°Or it might be a version of you that you tried to leave behind.¡±

    I¡­didn¡¯t quite know how to respond to that. A version of myself I had tried to leave behind? In what way? The young, frightened girl trying to tough her way through daily emotional torment by her former best friend and her tagalongs? The awkward newbie navigating her way through the minefield of what it meant to be a cape? The callous warlord doing whatever it took to look after her people? The driven leader too focused on the end goal to be a proper friend to her colleagues?

    The woman who sacrificed everything in order to save everything?

    Those were all parts of myself I¡¯d shed ¡ª or at least tried to ¡ª and I couldn¡¯t imagine a curse that targeted my worst regrets as doing anything else other than driving me further away from them. Throwing all of my mistakes in my face wouldn¡¯t do anything except reaffirm that I was right to turn away from being the person who made them.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t let that happen.¡±

    The look she gave me now was some Frankenstein mix between pity, understanding, and frustration. ¡°Sometimes, I forget that you¡¯re fairly new to all of this, too,¡± she said. ¡°Sixteen months of study ¡ª as though that¡¯s enough to cover fields of research with centuries of history and depth! Even the most gifted lecturer in the Clock Tower would have struggled to bring you halfway up to speed on everything you needed to know, so I guess it says something about my own abilities as a tutor that you came as far as you did.¡±

    My lips pressed into a tight line, annoyed.

    ¡°It¡¯s impossible to come out of a curse like that unchanged,¡± she went on. ¡°All the more so if it¡¯s one powerful enough to stump someone like that Da Vinci, it isn¡¯t enough to simply have an indomitable will. The more it has to work on, the more damage it does. If you subject yourself to that curse, Taylor, it will change you, if you even survive it. Adding you in as a variable might even affect Ritsuka¡¯s chances of surviving it.¡±

    It occurred to me, suddenly, what this argument was reminding me of. The difference was, Ritsuka wasn¡¯t a tiny little precog being drugged in a basement, and Olga¡¯s unwillingness to act seemed to have more to do with concern for me than a refusal to risk her own interests.

    ¡°So it¡¯s better to risk his life than it is mine?¡±

    ¡°When it¡¯s all but guaranteed to go wrong in some incredibly catastrophic way?¡± she said. ¡°Yes. I¡¯m not going to repeat myself again, so listen to me when I say that circumstances as they are now are actually the best for getting him out of this alive. Just about anything we try to do will only make things worse.¡±

    I didn¡¯t want to listen. I¡¯d spent the last several months having to sit in the back, take potshots whenever the opportunity arose, and let the Servants handle everything else, and I was tired of it. Tired of not being able to contribute as much as I wanted to, tired of not being able to do as much as I liked to affect the outcome of things. Tired of sitting on the sidelines.

    I wanted to plunge headfirst into this. To feel like I could actually make a difference by myself again, like not just my decisions, but my actions actually mattered and could accomplish something.

    But a niggling doubt remained. Something a dear friend had told me, the last time I¡¯d really felt like this and acted on it. About how I never really asked for help, just put people in positions where they had no choice but to go along with me.

    And I was¡­trying to be better than the girl who¡¯d done that.

    The fire guttered out in my belly. It left behind a kind of dreadful queasiness, a general sense of weighty unease that settled low in my gut and refused to budge.

    ¡°There has to be something we can do,¡± I said.

    ¡°Wait and hope,¡± Marie said wearily, ¡°that either Ritsuka has become strong enough to make it through this or Da Vinci will figure out how to break it herself.¡±

    My stomach churned. Was that really it? Sit around and just hope for the best? It felt so hilariously inadequate. My entire career as a cape, all of that training I went through, all of that tutoring, and now four Singularities resolved, and despite all of the stuff I¡¯d been through and everything I¡¯d ever done, the only thing I could do now was wait.

    If only Medea had been able to come back with us. Her Rule Breaker would have undoubtedly made short work of this curse.

    ¡°For now,¡± she went on, ¡°you should eat breakfast, if you haven¡¯t already, and then go back to your dorm. I can¡¯t stop you if you decide to take some time in the simulator or go stay with Ritsuka. I don¡¯t even need to remind you to stay out of Da Vinci¡¯s way, but she might need you to distract Rika so she can work without being interrupted.¡±

    ¡°And you?¡±

    She flinched. Yeah, she didn¡¯t actually think I hadn¡¯t been paying attention to her during this whole debacle, had she? This had hit a lot closer to home than she wanted anyone to realize, and it was frankly a miracle that she hadn¡¯t had a flashback to the sabotage.

    Without me to argue with about the merits of intervening in the curse, would she sink back into a mental spiral?

    ¡°I¡­have some paperwork to handle,¡± she said heavily. ¡°I still need to go over your after action reports for Okeanos and get them properly filed and finish up the forms for Emiya¡¯s second summoning. I¡¯ll¡­also need to prepare a report for this incident too, won¡¯t I?¡±

    If there was nothing else I could do to be of use¡­

    ¡°Do you want me to stay with you?¡±

    The sheer relief that radiated off of her was almost palpable. ¡°If¡­it¡¯s not too much trouble, I-I wouldn¡¯t mind that.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll go and get some breakfast, then grab a novel or something and come back here. Have you eaten yet?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± she said, shaking her head, ¡°but¡­¡±

    Yeah. I didn¡¯t really feel all that much like eating just then either, but I would no doubt regret it later if I didn¡¯t have at least something small for breakfast, even if it wasn¡¯t anything more than some applesauce and a glass of orange juice.

    ¡°I¡¯ll bring something back for you,¡± I promised. Some of the tension eased out of her body.

    ¡°Thank you.¡±

    As I left, she turned and trudged over to her desk with the air of a condemned woman marching to her execution. The mounting pile, it seemed, would only ever grow larger, no matter how much of it she got through, because I was pretty sure it was actually much smaller the last time I was in her office.

    The instant the door whooshed shut behind me, I was tempted to rush off and disobey, to grab Shakespeare and force him ¡ª although I wasn¡¯t sure I would even need to try very hard ¡ª to send me in to help Ritsuka. The urge was almost a tangible force tugging on the inside of my gut, like a fishhook wedged in my stomach as someone reeled in on the line.

    But I wouldn¡¯t get that far, even if I did try. I didn¡¯t have enough leverage, and I couldn¡¯t appeal to anyone¡¯s emotions or sense of pragmatism to go behind Marie¡¯s back, because unlike that cadre of PRT Directors who had been perfectly willing to throw me into a dark hole the instant I did something they didn¡¯t like or the various and sundry ¡°heroes¡± who had seemed determined to ignore everything I said and every suggestion I made, all of these people actually cared about me ¡ª and not, like the people at Arcadia once upon a time, because of who I knew and how. Romani, Da Vinci, and Marie had vetoed that option because it put me at risk, and while that wasn¡¯t the only reason, it had enough weight that I doubted I¡¯d be able to change their minds.

    How ironic. The one time where I might actually have wanted a transactional relationship with the people above me on the totem pole, and I had instead friendship and camaraderie. My younger self might have pinched herself a couple of times just to make sure she wasn¡¯t dreaming.

    I ran a hand through my hair, and my headache returned with a vengeance, as though to remind me of its presence again. I¡¯d forgotten to grab a few aspirin off of Romani while I had the chance.

    As much as I hated it, it really didn¡¯t look like I had too many options. It rankled, but there weren¡¯t any obvious avenues open to getting around all of the obstacles, and the stabbing pain between my eyes was making it hard to think too much about it. It seemed like the only thing I could do was wait around and hope that things worked out for the best, and when they took a turn for the worst, that the others would finally let me actually do something.

    I wasn¡¯t holding my breath.

    For now, it looked like the only thing I could really do was be prepared and get some food in my belly, so I set off down the hall to do just that. Maybe having one of Emiya¡¯s gourmet meals would help to improve my mood, because as it was, I had no idea how I was going to spend the next several hours while I sat around and waited.

    Although if this headache got any worse, the answer to that might be ¡°unconscious.¡±

 Chapter CXVII: Wait and Hope

    Chapter CXVII: Wait and Hope

    Unfortunately, even Emiya''s gourmet food wasn''t enough to distract me for very long. Between my somewhat lacking appetite and the headache that still hadn''t abated, I wasn''t even completely sure how much of it I really even tasted.

    A shame, considering the usual quality of Emiya''s meals, but maybe appropriate, given the circumstances. I think I would''ve felt bad if I actually got to enjoy it ¡ª it was one thing when your parents were telling you to eat your veggies because of all the kids who were starving in China and another when you were eating richly while a valued coworker and colleague was quite literally fighting for his life a few hallways away.

    Marie didn''t seem much better off. She ate robotically, and only about half of her tray at that, and then dove back into the paperwork piling up on her desk. Even that didn''t seem to hold her attention as completely as she would have liked, because I would periodically notice her read and reread the same piece of paper several times before she realized she''d done it and moved on.

    Through Muninn''s eyes, perched on a shelf in the corner of Ritsuka''s room, I watched Da Vinci and Romani work, more Da Vinci than anything. Romani stayed to monitor Ritsuka''s vitals throughout while she flitted back and forth between there and her workshop, ferrying different devices to and fro that she used to measure only she knew what.

    She didn''t seem to be having any luck in any case. The near-omnipresent smile that usually graced her face had been traded out for a furrowed brow and a tight-lipped grimace, and every hour that passed seemed to only make that furrow deeper.

    I think it might have been the first time I''d seen her well and truly stumped. Confused? Yes. Uncertain? Yes. But she was like Lisa, in that the instant you gave her anything to work with, even if it seemed so infinitesimally small as to be worthless, she could take it further and make leaps and bounds beyond what you might expect. It might have taken her almost two years, but she''d figured out Tinkertech, after all, and then replicated it. She''d more than earned the moniker of "unparalleled genius."

    This was the first situation I could remember where she didn''t have any idea at all where to start. And I think that might have been the most frightening thing of all, in all of this.

    Romani seemed just as helpless, but he was diligently keeping track of Ritsuka''s condition, just so he could be sure that nothing had changed for the worse. It made him seem slow and lethargic compared to Da Vinci, but that just meant that things were still going well enough that we didn''t have to worry about Ritsuka''s condition worsening. As long as he and Da Vinci remained calm, I could convince myself to do so, too.

    Rika, meanwhile, stayed by her brother''s side the entire time. I didn''t see her leave even once. Even when Mash brought her food, she just stayed there, tray sat across her lap, and mechanically ate a meal that she would normally have been gushing about.

    It was almost like she didn''t know how to function without Ritsuka.

    Like Dad. How he''d shut down after Mom''s death, barely going through the motions and almost incapable of taking care of himself, let alone me. How something in him was broken beyond repair when we lost her, and he never quite managed to completely pull himself together.

    Those two really loved each other, didn''t they? As though I needed any more proof that they were really close and cared for one another deeply.

    It was going to be really bad if he didn''t make it through this.

    Mash stayed, too, although not as obsessively as Rika. She watched and waited with a calm patience and serenity that gave no hint to what she must have been thinking underneath, but for the frown pulling down at the corners of her lips. Where Rika looked as though all the life had been sucked out of her, Mash remained stalwart and certain, like a knight holding vigil at her lord''s side, filled with unshakeable faith that he would eventually wake up.

    An appropriate comparison, if the Heroic Spirit inside of her was who I thought it was.

    The only one unaccounted for was Shakespeare, at least visually. I had no doubt that he was watching the whole thing transpire in spirit form, using the unique advantages it afforded him to both stay out of the others'' way and see everything as it happened from unique angles.

    There were no openings for me to exploit. I watched them all patiently, waiting for the moment when there would be a chance for me to slip in before anyone could stop me ¡ª and I still wasn''t even entirely sure I would pounce on it if it ever arose, when it would mean breaking Marie''s trust ¡ª but even if I''d been completely determined to follow that path, the chance never materialized. Romani and Da Vinci never left at the same time, meaning there was always someone there to stop me if I were to be seized by the impulse to bully Shakespeare into putting me under with Ritsuka.

    Maybe it was better that way. If the temptation didn''t exist, then there was nothing for me to be tempted by, and therefore I couldn''t convince myself it was worth breaking Marie''s trust for the chance to save Ritsuka. It could never be anything more than an idea in my head, an idle daydream without any real substance or intent behind it.

    A flash of guilt in my stomach made me look over Marie''s direction. She didn''t seem to notice my conflict at all, she was that consumed in what she was doing: distracting herself from the situation in the only way she knew how.

    It just made me feel worse about it. Like I was taking advantage of her.

    The morning passed like that in agonizing slowness, a morass of nothingness, anxiety, and guilt ¡ª guilt that I wasn''t doing anything to help Ritsuka, and guilt that I was thinking of how I would go behind Marie''s back to do it. I watched from the metaphorical sidelines, incensed and impotent, plagued by my inability to do anything and the knowledge of what it would cost me if I did.

    Marie had driven home quite clearly what that curse could do to me, how I was especially vulnerable because of my past, and that was why we couldn''t take any chances putting me under it, but in a way, I felt like I was already suffering from it. This was the stuff of my nightmares, the sort of thing I dreaded, and even though Ritsuka was the one who had been directly afflicted, it was obvious that the curse itself didn''t need to have touched any of the rest of us to reach us all the same.

    Lunchtime was announced by the chime of the antique grandfather clock sitting off to the other side of the office, and Marie stopped poring over her paperwork long enough to look over at it, frown, and rub tiredly at her eyes. Then, she checked her communicator for messages, as though I would have missed them, let alone her, and a moment later, her stomach rumbled.

    I still wasn''t really feeling in the mood for food either, but I knew better than to think it was a good idea to skip a meal, so I leveraged myself out of the chair I''d spent the last several hours in and told her, "I''ll go get us some lunch."

    "There hasn''t been any change?"

    I paused, cast my attention down Muninn''s sight with more scrutiny than before, and found that the scene looked almost exactly the same as it had for the rest of the morning. The only difference was that Romani had left at some point, leaving Da Vinci to loom over Ritsuka as she examined him with yet another contraption whose purpose and function I couldn''t even begin to guess.

    "It doesn''t look like it," I hedged, "but I''ll flag down Romani and see what he has to say."

    If he''d left the room in the first place, it was probably to go and get some food for himself. Given it was Romani? It was probably Da Vinci who had all but ordered him to make sure he ate so that he didn''t keel over while he was supposed to be keeping an eye on Ritsuka''s condition.

    Marie sagged, but nodded, biting her bottom lip until it turned white. She didn''t stop me as I turned to the door and left.

    Arash, I began, are you there?

    Always, he replied immediately.

    Stay here and keep an eye on her for me, just in case, I told him. I don''t want to leave her alone right now.

    Got it, he said, and I felt the skin on my prosthetic arm prickle as though he had walked past me and through the door.

    The halls felt emptier than usual as I made my way down to the cafeteria. They hadn''t been anything close to full ever since the sabotage, but I was more keenly aware than ever of exactly how barren the entire facility had become since we''d lost so many of our people.

    Because there was a very real possibility that we might lose another one very soon.

    The impulse to turn around and march back to the dorms was nearly overpowering, but I mastered it and forced myself to go the rest of the way towards the cafeteria instead, and when the doors opened and I stepped inside, the place felt even more empty, despite the handful of people seated about the room and eating their own lunches.

    Romani, coming back the other way with a tray of food in his hands, stopped when he saw me, blinking.

    "Taylor."

    I jerked my head over towards the side, and he frowned, but followed me to an empty table in the corner where no one was sitting. I didn''t sit, and although he set his tray down for the moment, neither did he.

    "Any change?" I asked him lowly, making sure that any eavesdroppers couldn''t hear. I could feel Emiya''s eyes on me, but unless he knew how to read lips ¡ª a possibility whose likelihood I realized only in hindsight ¡ª he shouldn''t be able to catch our conversation.

    Romani sighed heavily and seemed almost to age several years before my eyes. "No," he said quietly. "Which is kind of a good thing, if we''re looking at it from that angle. We''re still picking up on activity from his Magic Circuits and Da Vinci is still reading bursts of increased energy consumption from Jeanne Alter, but we''re no closer to unraveling this curse than we were a few hours ago. Frankly, the part that worries me the most is that Da Vinci, of all people, is struggling with it."

    Yeah. I''d had a thought like that myself not that long ago. Things always got scarier when the smartest person in the room had no idea what was going on, and it was always worse when it was also the smartest person you could think of.

    "A part of me wants to throw caution to the wind and have her use her Noble Phantasm," he admitted, "but it doesn''t do us much good to bring Ritsuka back if the life support functions shut off and kill us all in the process. You know?"

    Because she had to fulfill the roles of something like eighty or more people at once. If I looked at it from a cold, calculated angle, the fact that she was even working to help Ritsuka was itself taking her attention away from what could be vital functions the facility needed to keep going, and the longer she spent away from her duties, the greater danger she put the rest of us in.

    But if it was up to me? If we were sure enough that it would work, I think I would have had her use her Noble Phantasm to break the curse in a heartbeat. Despite the risks involved.

    "I guess not," I said neutrally. "Does that mean the plan hasn''t changed either?"

    Romani grimaced. "For now, yes. I''m sure you''ve already had this conversation with the Director, but there are too many risks involved to attempt something as dangerous as sending one of you Masters in to help rescue him. That¡­might have to change, if this goes on for long enough without any improvements in his condition, or if something goes wrong and we need to attempt an emergency rescue."

    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    About as I expected then. If I couldn''t convince Marie to let me try and rescue Ritsuka, when she knew me as well as she did and had at least the majority of my past, then there was no way I should have ever thought I could convince Romani or Da Vinci.

    "How long is long enough?" I asked calmly instead of pushing the subject.

    "The way things are going right now?" Romani sighed. "I guess it''s really going to start being a problem once we have to hook him up to an IV just to keep his body functioning. As much as I hate to even consider it, if things haven''t improved and we''re still no closer to an answer after two days, we may have to start looking at extreme solutions. No matter how much we dislike them."

    Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, that actually made me feel better. That the options they had shut down earlier had never been completely taken off the table, just shelved for a last resort.

    Good. It at least meant that they were still options and we hadn''t just given up on Ritsuka, because I wasn''t sure I could have ever looked at Romani the same way again if he had.

    "I see." I looked pointedly down at his tray of food. "I''ll let you get back to things, then. I came to the cafeteria to pick up lunch for the Director and myself."

    Romani grimaced. "Ah. I''m sure I don''t need to ask this from you of all people, but¡­keep an eye on her for me, would you? This has¡­hit close to home for all of us, after the sabotage and all, but she''s in the most delicate state of all of us right now, so I have no doubt it''s worse for her."

    "I know. I will."

    Although I thought he might have been underestimating how delicate a state Rika was in, too, considering this was happening while she was still trying to deal with the whole situation with Emiya''s death and return.

    Romani smiled a tight, tired smile, and then, he picked up his tray and left.

    A quick glance around the room showed no one had paid us any attention, for whatever that was worth when there were so few people there to begin with, so I made my way over to the counter, where Emiya was waiting. He greeted me, grim-faced.

    "Any news?" he asked.

    "You didn''t ask Romani?" I replied, honestly curious.

    He shook his head. "I trust you more to give me a straight answer, no sugar-coating."

    If that didn''t say something about his faith in me¡­

    "No change, so far," I said, "and no new information. They''re still working on figuring out what''s going on, so there isn''t a plan for fixing it yet." I met his eyes, then deliberately glanced to the side. "Does everyone already know about what''s happened?"

    He frowned, then started dishing me up a tray of food. "For two," I told him. "Make one for the Director, too."

    He paused for a moment, then slid my plate over, added another one, and lifted the tray up so he could stack a second beneath it. A neater solution than me trying to carry two large trays laden with food from here to Marie''s office.

    "The broad strokes," he said, answering my question. "It seems like the basic gist of things has managed to spread throughout the rest of the facility ¡ª only natural, considering how few people there are here ¡ª but as for the finer details, well, Mash let me know what was going on."

    As I should have expected. We hadn''t exactly told her that she needed to keep things a secret, so when she came here for breakfast alone and took a tray back for Rika, naturally, Emiya would have asked her what was going on, and Mash wouldn''t have seen any reason not to tell him. We were all comrades, here, all colleagues, allies in the same fight, so while there would always be details that were kept private and secret as a matter of course ¡ª like my history, for example ¡ª there were just too few people left to avoid most of them coming to know about most of what happened here.

    It occurred to me suddenly that Emiya himself might have a solution. After all, he had who knew how many Noble Phantasms in his Reality Marble. It was entirely possible that one of them was capable of breaking the curse on Ritsuka.

    "Emiya," I began, "can you break the curse?"

    He paused again, considering it, and grimaced. "Maybe," he hedged, "but I can''t be entirely sure of the side effects. I do have something that can negate curses and such, but I''ve never encountered one like Mash described, so if that curse is broken with that particular Noble Phantasm, it might wind up leaving his soul stranded outside of his body."

    My mouth snapped shut before I could even suggest anything. He''d shut me down before I could do more than open my mouth.

    "I''ll bring it up with Da Vinci and get her opinion on the subject," he promised. "But as for other solutions? That guy, El-Melloi II, he might have some idea, so if you track him down and tell him what''s going on, he might be able to help, if only to figure out what''s actually going on."

    I was ready to leapt into action and go search him out right then and there ¡ª finally, a lead on how we could actually help Ritsuka in a way that no one would have any objections to ¡ª but my stomach gurgled to let me know that I was still hungry. As though to remind me that Marie still needed to eat, too, and I hadn''t just gone to get food for myself.

    Except I didn''t have to do it myself, did I? I had people here I could rely on, allies who would help me if I just asked, so I could go and eat, and meanwhile, send someone to find El-Melloi II so I could ask him to help Da Vinci figure out what this curse was and how it worked.

    "I''ll ask and see what he has to say," I said.

    "And I''ll head on over myself as soon as lunch hours end," Emiya replied. He smirked a little and pushed the doubled tray over towards me. "Try and make sure she eats more of it this time, alright? It''s no good if our Director collapses from hunger in the middle of a tense situation like this one."

    A faint flicker of amusement sputtered in my belly, but died before my lips could do much more than twitch.

    "Will do."

    I picked up the trays, turned around, and left. The doors whooshed open to let me through, and I felt a few people glance my way, but no one stopped me or said anything about it in earshot.

    As I made my way back down the hallways and towards Marie''s office again, I reached out to Arash. Anything happen?

    A minor episode, he reported, but she''s okay now, so I don''t think it was anything you need to really worry about.

    And yet, I couldn''t help worrying. It proved something that I had already known was true ¡ª that Marie still had trouble when I wasn''t around, that she still had moments of self-doubt and weakness, still had those panic attacks that I''d had to help her through before, and she had to push through them without me. Alone, with no one to reassure her and no one to help her banish her demons.

    The most recent ones likely featured Ritsuka and all of the ways she could imagine things going wrong. Waking nightmares of him ¡ª or all of us ¡ª dying, struck by an unseen enemy from an angle we had all thought ourselves protected.

    But it wasn''t like there was anything I could do about that. I couldn''t be with her all day every day, and even if I tried, Marie herself would realize what I was doing eventually and sink deeper into self-loathing and depression. The stuff I was there for would disappear, but the ones I wasn''t there for would get worse, and they would be made all the more terrible by the fact she was pushing them down and away until she was alone.

    Maybe that was my karma. The world repaying me for all of the stuff I''d put Lisa through, once upon a time. That didn''t mean I had to like it.

    When I reached the door to Marie''s office, I had to maneuver the trays around so I could put my palm up against the scanner, and then, with a beep and a hydraulic his, the door slid open. Marie looked up from whatever she was poring over as I entered, and my eyes immediately found the faint redness rimming her own and the swollen bottom lip she must have been chewing on, the locks of hair out of place from where they were before.

    I made sure not to comment on them.

    "Courtesy of Emiya," I told her as I strode across the room. "He''s going to check in with Da Vinci to see if there''s anything he could do to help once lunch is over."

    To Arash, I added, I need you to go find El-Melloi II and brief him about what''s been happening. See if he has any ideas for how to help.

    "Help?" Marie asked, confused. "Emiya?"

    Got it, said Arash. I''ll head on over and bring him up to speed now, if you''re okay without me?

    Yes, I answered him, and then, to Marie, "His Reality Marble. I asked him if he had anything that might be able to break the curse, and he said that he wasn''t sure what he did have would work the right way."

    "I see," she said as she absently cleared a space for her tray. "Unlimited Blade Works¡­ I suppose it only makes sense that something capable of replicating Noble Phantasms might have a copy of a Noble Phantasm that could be useful here. But he''s not sure it would work the right way?"

    "That it wouldn''t leave Ritsuka''s mind and soul stranded." I didn''t comment as I felt the skin of my prosthetic prickle again ¡ª Arash leaving, no doubt. "From what he said, that''s the only part he''s not sure about."

    Marie grimaced and reached for her cup of tea to take a sip. "A Noble Phantasm that can break curses¡­ Negate them? Undo them? If it''s conceptual, then it shouldn''t be any trouble, but if it uses brute force¡­ On a normal curse, it wouldn''t be a problem, but this is different. It''s not entirely impossible that Ritsuka could wind up¡­ugh, I hate that I don''t have any other word for it ¡ª stranded."

    "Hence why he''s going to discuss it with Da Vinci before they try anything with it. Just in case."

    There was always going to be an element of risk, I thought as I set the tray down and started separating out the meals. Having said that, minimizing as much of it as possible was always better than jumping in without any plans or preparation the instant we saw something that might work, but by the same token, if you spent all of your time trying to make something as risk-free as possible, then your window of opportunity might just close.

    That, I suppose, was where our biggest difference of opinion laid, at least on the issue of rescuing Ritsuka. Marie didn''t want there to be any further risk at all, especially to me, and it wasn''t like I didn''t understand why, but I was too aware to not realize that what she wanted might be impossible to even achieve.

    Sometimes, there just wasn''t anything you could do to make something safer.

    When everything was set out, Marie immediately grabbed her utensils and dug in, brow furrowed thoughtfully as she ate on autopilot. I watched her chew ¡ª on both her thoughts and her food ¡ª as I sat down in one of those plush leather armchairs and ate my own meal, and beyond the occasional muttering that I never quite made out, she didn''t say anything else.

    Halfway through lunch, Arash sent me the mental equivalent of a poke, and I paused.

    Yes? I asked him.

    El-Melloi II''s onboard, he reported. I told him what we know so far, and he''s gone to help out Da Vinci and the good doctor.

    At this rate, that room was going to get very crowded. Even if half of it could go into spirit form, almost everyone there was going to either be materialized for one reason or another or simply couldn''t.

    As much as Rika might hate it, she might have to leave to make room for everyone trying to help Ritsuka. I didn''t foresee that conversation going particularly well.

    Good, I replied. Come on back over here. I want you to keep an eye on the Director when I take our trays back to the cafeteria.

    Understood, he said dutifully. On my way.

    After swallowing my next bite, I announced, "El-Melloi II''s gone to help out with Da Vinci."

    Marie stopped, fork halfway to her mouth. "He has?"

    "I sent Arash to tell him what''s going on, to see if he might have any ideas. Get a new perspective. As brilliant as Da Vinci is, she isn''t perfect, and she can''t think of everything."

    "I¡­suppose that makes sense," Marie said. She shoveled another bite into her mouth, and around her fork, continued, "Even if he himself doesn''t have anything to add, Zhuge Liang might be able to provide some kind of insight, too."

    Ah. So she''d finally gotten caught up to that point, had she?

    "At the very least, having a fresh pair of eyes or two might help Da Vinci come up with some new ideas, too."

    I wasn''t really holding my breath. In the end, I thought it would almost certainly come down to the original idea ¡ª sending one of us Masters in to perform a rescue ¡ª and this whole song and dance was mostly just a long, convoluted way of finding out that we''d had the right plan from the beginning.

    Who knew, though. Maybe Da Vinci really would magic up a solution ¡ª in a very literal sense ¡ª and this whole thing would be handled without me needing to do anything. I wasn''t sure how I''d feel about it if it did happen that way, but I guess it would be refreshing to have other people take care of the problem on their own.

    We fell back into silence as we continued eating, and while I finished off another of Emiya''s delicious meals, I cast my mind back down the thread connecting me to Muninn, inhabiting her senses much more fully than I had been the past while, and looked out into Ritsuka''s room. Nothing much had changed. Emiya and El-Melloi II were there now, making things even more snug than they''d been when I left with Marie, but they seemed no closer to finding a solution than they had been hours ago when this whole thing started. Rika and Mash were both still there, but where Mash had stepped back to make room, Rika was squished between El-Melloi II and the wall, still clutching to Ritsuka''s motionless hand like it was a lifeline.

    Shakespeare was nowhere to be seen, but I had no doubts that he was still there. This was probably the most exciting thing to happen around here since he was first summoned, and there was almost no way he would have missed it.

    I wasn''t sure how comfortable I was with that. He hadn''t caused trouble yet, but that wasn''t to say that he never would, and this whole incident proved exactly how disruptive he could be if he set his mind to it. I didn''t much like the ideas I came up with for what he might do if he ever got bored enough to actually try.

    One problem at a time, I guess.

    When we had both finished lunch, I gathered up our trays again, stacking them the way Emiya had when he handed them to me, and then, after telling Marie where I was going, I left and made my way back to the cafeteria. A prickle along the skin of my prosthetic as I walked through the door of Mari''s office told me Arash had returned to stand watch for me.

    The cafeteria was even emptier than before, now that lunch hours had passed. There was only one other person sitting in there, nursing a cup of coffee, one of the technicians whose name I had never gotten. It started with a "K," I think, but I wasn''t sure, and this wasn''t the best time to be chatting it up with someone I didn''t know.

    Marcus, however, was there, taking over for Emiya, with a pair of thick, yellow rubber gloves on his hands as he washed the dishes. I felt a brief flash of sympathy for him as I handed over my trays and plates, because I doubted this was what he thought he''d be doing when he signed up as an engineer at the Chaldea Security Organization. From high paid technician overseeing million or even billion-dollar cutting edge equipment to dish-washer in the cafeteria, I could only imagine how he felt about it under that tired smile.

    After leaving the cafeteria, I started to make my way back to Marie''s office, only to stop and reconsider about halfway there. I had the urge to turn around and head towards the dorms, to check in on Ritsuka and see how things were going, as though something would have changed in the half an hour or so it had been since I last checked.

    Instead, I pushed my senses into Muninn''s again, peering out of her eyes and into Ritsuka''s room from her perch, and my lips drew into a tight line. Nothing. No change.

    I continued back to Marie''s office, where I could at least feel somewhat useful by being there for her in case she had another episode.

    And as the hours passed in that posh room, sitting in that cozy, plush armchair, things remained that way. People came and went from Ritsuka''s room, going to get dinner, going to grab another gadget, going to take a bathroom break, or just leaving because they had nothing else to contribute. I watched it all with half of my attention, growing steadily more impatient, but unable to do anything about it.

    At least "no change" also meant "nothing else has gone wrong yet." It wasn''t a particularly comforting thought, but it wasn''t nothing either.

    By the time my eyelids were starting to droop and even Marie was yawning and rubbing at her eyes, the others had accomplished nothing except to go around in circles. Da Vinci remained just as baffled, El-Melloi II could offer nothing of substance, and Emiya had retreated back to the cafeteria, unwilling or perhaps simply forbidden from risking an unknown interaction between that Noble Phantasm he had talked about and the curse Ritsuka was under. Mash eventually had to go back to her own room to sleep, and Rika had nodded off in her chair, bent over Ritsuka''s bed, completely out cold.

    I hated to climb into my own bed when the crisis was still ongoing, but between the headache that had never quite gone away and the fewer hours of sleep I''d gotten the night before on account of staying up to watch a movie with everyone, I was feeling sluggish and tired and knew it would be better to sleep in my own bed than to suffer the crick in my neck that I would wake up with if I napped in that chair. So no matter how much I hated it, I bade Marie goodnight and made my way back to my room.

    The only solace I had as I laid down was that Romani had said we couldn''t afford to wait it out forever. Two days, that was the deadline he''d given. If nothing had changed by then, then we were going to have to start looking at more extreme options.

    All I could do until then was wait and hope that Ritsuka could hold out that long.

 Chapter CXVIII: Chateau dIf

    Chapter CXVIII: Chateau d''If

    Some part of me halfway hoped that I would be pulled out of my bed in the middle of the night by an impatient Romani or a grim-faced Da Vinci. That they would tell me there was no time for me to get dressed and ready, that we had to get moving as quickly as possible, and that they would hustle me down the hallway to Ritsuka''s room, where a sleepy Mash, a frantic Rika, a nervous Marie, and a grinning Shakespeare would be waiting for me. That I would be ushered into a hastily erected cot in the already crowded room and told to bring Ritsuka back, whatever it took.

    Some part of me felt guilty for wanting that at all. For wanting to put Marie through that when she was already trying so hard to keep it together in the face of all of the hardships she''d been through. For wanting Ritsuka to be in enough danger that we had to throw caution out the window. It wasn''t quite enough to drown out the other part.

    That night, I slept uninterrupted. No one came to drag me out of my bed and into an emergency rescue operation. I was free to dream, and so I dreamt, about an innocent blue-eyed boy who had been locked away in a prison that was impossible to escape with inmates who had all committed the most terrible, most heinous of crimes. A victim of circumstance locked away with murderers and rapists, gang lords and kingpins, terrorists and twisted psychopaths with delusions of grandeur, all the sorts of scum who probably deserved an unmarked grave as much as a cell.

    A lamb among wolves.

    I dreamt that I had to go in and save that boy. That I had to go into that hell alone, no backup and no assistance aside from Da Vinci''s voice in my ear, because she was the warden of that cesspit. That I had only a short window to get in and get out before I was locked up in there with all of those irredeemable villains, just as trapped as that boy was and probably infinitely more deserving of a place there.

    In the dream, I wore armor. A black bodysuit with sturdy white panels covering my vital parts, but only my glasses on my face. A band of metal around my wrist ¡ª my communicator ¡ª and my Last Resort strapped to my lower back, just below a compartment with all of my emergency supplies. A pair of ravens circled above my head and a buzzing swarm trailed behind me like a cloak as I navigated my way through, forced to face a gauntlet of my past foes.

    A blinded Fafnir, scales silver instead of black, weeping blood from the ruined sockets of his eyes, just as large as I remembered and yet somehow still fitting into the comparatively tiny cell with room to spare.

    A maddened Jeanne Alter in a gas mask, lobbing balls of fire that did strange things when they exploded, like twisting space and freezing the air and turning everything in range into glass.

    A portly Julius Caesar with a goatee and graying hair, cutting things with his sword from a distance as though every swing threw out invisible blades.

    On and on, I went, dispatching them one by one as I ran into them, searching for the lost boy, but I never seemed to find him. Every time I thought I caught a glimpse and chased after it, I found another enemy instead, someone or something else I''d had to face down at one point or another, often some Frankenstein amalgam of one or more completely unrelated enemies. Every time, I had to put them down ¡ª to kill them ¡ª before I could move on.

    Doctor Yamada, I thought later, would have had a field day.

    As dreams often did, it seemed to last forever. I never seemed to run out of enemies, and they were never quite exactly the same ones, even when there were variations on a theme. Lung with a familiar glowing tattoo stretching across his chest and impenetrable skin. Bakuda cackling as she waved a blackened sword and flung fire all about. Jack Slash with a splendid golden sword that he swung with expert grace.

    But eventually, the faces changed, and it stopped being my enemies ¡ª those old, from another life, and those more recent ¡ª that stood in my way. It started being more familiar faces, more friendly faces, people I''d never thought would really, truly turn against me.

    Somewhere along the way, it stopped being about finding that lost boy and became about getting out, about escaping this hell.

    The first to appear was Ritsuka in motorcycle leathers, smoke billowing from between his teeth and out of the seams in his clothing. My hands trembled as I found the weakness in the undersuit ¡ª the one I''d made with my own spiders ¡ª and slid my knife into his flesh.

    Then it was Rika in all black, wearing a mask depicting a grinning demon. I turned her daggers against her, and my only saving grace was not having to see her face when I pushed one up through her chin, in the soft spot behind her jawbone.

    Romani carrying a spear, decked out in a sleek, stylized set of power armor. I had to leverage decoys until I could get behind him and slip Last Resort through his jugular, grinding through his armor with nanothorns. Da Vinci, her body unfolding to reveal mechanical parts inside and weapons of all kinds wedged between them. They jammed, backfired, and exploded when I took advantage of a lapse in her attention to secret my swarm away in the vital mechanisms.

    A toddler wearing Mash''s face, with Mash''s eyes and hair, looking up at me, innocent and confused. But she was in the way, so my hand rose of its own accord, and a handgun that hadn''t been there before was suddenly in my grip.

    I watched myself put a bullet between her eyes. I wanted to scream.

    The last ¡ª and I knew it was the last, even if I had no idea how ¡ª was Marie, dressed in a skintight catsuit and a plain domino mask. She raised a pistol against me and grinned a wide, Cheshire grin, tinged with some kind of desperate mania.

    Oh, I thought as my bugs moved without my input, swarming her, drowning her, biting and chewing and killing her even as she choked and screamed and clawed at her face. This was what Marie meant before. About why I shouldn''t subject myself to that curse. What it would do to me. How it would hurt me.

    But it was too late, because it had snared me anyway.

    The realization jolted through me like a bolt of lightning, and I snapped ¡ª suddenly, vividly awake, chest heaving, breath coming in pants, my forehead plastered with cold sweat, in my bed back at Chaldea. The alarm beside me continued to blare, blasting out an annoying, discordant bleep that drilled into my head over and over.

    I groped for it blindly, slapping my hand around until I managed to hit the off button and silence the damn thing. The dark ceiling overhead stared down at me, illuminated only by the faint blue glow of the digital alarm clock, and no terrors arose from it to torment me with visions of the people I cared about dying by my own hands.

    For a long moment, I laid there and let my breathing calm and my heartbeat slow. The minutes passed me by like hours, and when I finally mustered the desire to look over at my clock for the time, it was to discover only about ten minutes had gone by, even though it felt more like fifty.

    A hand to my forehead came away damp and slimy, and my mattress pressed against my back with uncomfortable heat, like a humid summer day in Brockton, the kind right before a storm. A grunt tore itself from my mouth, and I convinced myself to climb out of bed and to my feet.

    The headache I''d had yesterday was gone, at least, but the images of my dream ¡ª my nightmare ¡ª still played out behind my eyelids whenever I closed my eyes. Marie''s screams and gags still echoed in my ears, and the gunshot that killed Mash resounded deep in my bones.

    Fuck. Was that really just a nightmare?

    I stripped off my soaked pajamas and pulled on my usual workout gear, leaving my discarded night clothes on the floor ¡ª I could care about them later, when my head was on straighter and I wasn''t having images of murdering my friends and coworkers playing out like a highlight reel on repeat.

    My door whooshed open, and I had to squint against the glaringly bright lights of the hallway as I turned and started towards the gym. No one had strictly told me I should avoid going about my daily routine, only that it would be better to be ready to go the instant something went wrong, so as my feet carried me along the memorized path, I pushed my attention down the thread connecting me to Muninn for a brief moment.

    Nothing had changed. Ritsuka still lay in his bed, unconscious but still breathing, and Rika remained at his side, hand still clutching his and her head pillowed on her other arm, bent over in her chair. Romani was nowhere to be seen, but Da Vinci was still monitoring him, frowning down at his body as she scrolled through something on one of Chaldea''s standard issue tablets.

    It seemed almost like she''d given up on trying to figure out what was going on, seated as she was in another chair. What she was doing on that tablet, I could only guess, but considering how integral she was to the functioning of this whole place, I had to imagine she was trying to handle at least some of her other responsibilities remotely.

    I pulled my attention back from Muninn, let her senses fade into the back of my mind. The urge to go there and bully Shakespeare into letting me into Ritsuka''s mental prison hadn''t disappeared, but some hesitation tempered it, an almost instinctual fear of what I would have to face if I did, like a child shying away from fire after getting burned.

    Fucking¡­ Was the dream really affecting me that badly?

    A sound of disgust snarled out of my throat, and I redoubled my pace, heading towards the gym at a fast walk now instead of more sedately the way I had been. I needed to work out, to distract myself, to feel the burn in my muscles and a different kind of sweat on my brow. Maybe practice a few of the martial arts forms I''d learned on a wooden dummy so there was something I could safely hit or punch a punching bag.

    Maybe I would find A¨ªfe there, and get some practice in with her own brand of martial arts. I had no illusions I would ever be throwing punches that obliterated whatever was in front of me or leaping twenty feet straight up into the air or anything, but picking up new techniques to use and new skills would always be useful to one degree or another, especially in this line of work.

    But when I made it to the gym, there was no sign of her, and she just wasn''t there. No twins to train, I realized, so she must have heard about what was going on with Ritsuka and figured there was no point in showing up to teach students who weren''t going to be there. I thought, for a moment, about reaching out to her across our bond and asking her to show up and spar with me, but I discarded it just as quickly as it came.

    I really wasn''t in the mood for picking up new techniques anyway. I wasn''t sure I''d retain any of it if she did show up and teach me some, so there was no point in wasting anyone''s time on it. May as well just get through my usual routine and see how I felt after that, and if I was just as miserable, then I''d beat up on the nearest acceptable target until I felt better.

    Not the healthiest way of doing things, maybe. But it was one I knew well and knew how to handle. How to make it work.

    So after warming up with a few stretches, I went over to the indoor track, set myself a mental distance of two miles, and let the pounding of my feet on the floor and the rhythm of my breath pull my mind away from the grisly images that were still lingering there like cobwebs.

    Two miles later, my mood wasn''t much improved. I felt a little bit better about everything, and the run had managed to distract me for the duration, but it hadn''t driven the memories of the nightmare from my head completely. They were still there, bubbling up, waiting to ambush me until after I''d finished, only slightly dulled from the sharp edges they''d had when I first woke up.

    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    A quiet snarl of frustration was all I let past my lips to show how it was affecting me, and I had just resolved to go another mile or two and then hit one or two of the weight machines when the band of metal around my wrist beeped to let me know I had a message.

    It was from Romani. Short, simple, and cryptic:

    There''s been a development. Come as soon as you''re able.

    I didn''t run as I made my way towards the door, forgoing the rest of my workout, but it was a close thing, and instead of waiting until I could make it all the way to Ritsuka''s room, I pushed my mind back down the thread connecting me to Muninn ¡ª to discover that, while I''d been working out, the room had filled up again. Romani, Marie, and even A¨ªfe and Emiya had all at some point joined the crowd. Rika was now wide awake and anxious, and Mash was biting her lip, fidgeting lightly.

    Muninn''s beak opened. "I''m here, and on my way. What happened?"

    Several people startled, looking wildly around before they realized exactly where my voice had come from, and Romani fumbled with his words as he tried to explain, "Ah, well, you see¡­"

    Marie cut across him and said simply, "During the night, both A¨ªfe and Emiya were affected by the curse and made contact with Ritsuka."

    Emiya coughed into his hand. "''Contact'' is one way of putting it."

    "We fought him," A¨ªfe said bluntly.

    In my real body, I stopped for a second as I processed what exactly she had just admitted to, and then redoubled my walking speed.

    "What?"

    "As I said," A¨ªfe replied. "Last night, as I slept, I found myself in a prison and was forced to fight Ritsuka and Jeanne Alter. Emiya appears to have experienced something similar."

    Emiya nodded. "It was the same for me. Whatever happened, I didn''t have much choice. I was forced to fight him and the Servants he had with him, for reasons I can''t quite explain."

    "Forced?" I asked, latching onto that particular part of it.

    Emiya and A¨ªfe both grimaced and said nothing, appearing reluctant to add anything more than that, which meant that there was something that they didn''t want to say. Something about whatever had forced them to fight Ritsuka and Jeanne Alter had touched a nerve, and neither of them seemed comfortable talking about what exactly that was.

    So it was probably really bad.

    "Coerced might be the better term," Emiya admitted reluctantly. "Although even that doesn''t really do it justice."

    That didn''t make it any better. What type of coercion would be strong enough to make a Servant fight against their own Master? Especially one they didn''t have any real problems with? Emiya might have been Rika''s Servant instead of her brother''s, but what could compel the both of them to actually fight Ritsuka?

    Then again, if it could put them into a suggestive state somehow, then it wouldn''t be all that different from my nightmare, would it? That feeling of having something else take control of my arm and pull the trigger ¡ª was that why they were so reluctant to talk about it? Because they hadn''t been able to fight against it any more than I had?

    "The curse appears to work as we first surmised," said Da Vinci, taking over the explanation. "According to Emiya and A¨ªfe, they were made to play the part of antagonists, forced into a role best fitting their own karma ¡ª not unlike, as you originally guessed, Taylor, Shakespeare''s Noble Phantasm. It''s a mental and spiritual trap designed to prey on the vices and worst impulses of its victims, reflecting their sins back upon them, with the aim of grinding them down through some combination of attrition and overload."

    If it was anything like that dream I''d had last night, I worried what that meant Ritsuka was being put through.

    She went on, "The strange thing, however, is that when I went over the logs for their locations last night, neither of them ever actually disappeared from Chaldea itself, even though Jeanne Alter has."

    Romani blinked at her. "They didn''t?"

    Da Vinci shook her head. "No. They didn''t even flicker."

    What did that mean, exactly? That they hadn''t been affected by the curse in quite the same way? Or was something else going on here?

    "That would mean that Emiya and A¨ªfe''s involvement was ancillary, wouldn''t it?" Marie said, brow furrowed in thought. "Instead of being affected by the curse directly, it was more like¡­their Spirit Origins were copied and used to fill out something that the curse itself couldn''t provide on its own."

    "Rather like my Shadow Servant system, yes," Da Vinci agreed. "Which gives us a kind of confirmation that Jeanne Alter and Ritsuka were the intended targets of this curse and that''s why they''re the ones currently trapped."

    "But if Queen A¨ªfe and Emiya were affected by it last night, even though the curse has already taken effect against Senpai and Jeanne Alter," said Mash, "doesn''t that mean any one of us could be drawn in, too? Including Senpai and Miss Taylor?"

    I stopped for a step or two again as the possibility percolated in my brain, a gnawing dread eating away at my belly. Last night, in that nightmare, when I''d felt like I was watching someone else pilot my body and hack away through strange combinations of all my friends and colleagues, past and present, could that instead have been exactly what Mash was talking about now?

    If it was, what did that mean for Ritsuka now? Had he come out of that okay, or had I unwittingly, unwillingly done him irreparable harm?

    "¡­not entirely impossible," Da Vinci was saying. "However, all things considered, I think it''s more likely the Servants will be the ones drawn in, because, as spiritual existences instead of living, physical bodies, they''re more susceptible to such a thing. I think I would expect Bradamante, Hippolyta, or Bellamy to be drawn in before anyone else, and even then, only in the same very temporary sense as Emiya and A¨ªfe were."

    She turned to Emiya and A¨ªfe. "Were you still able to use your Noble Phantasms?"

    A¨ªfe grimaced. "Not as effectively as normal. As a result of the¡­role I was made to play, much of my skill with it was robbed. It was part of why they were able to defeat me without casualties."

    "Then they''re both okay?" Rika asked with a desperate kind of hope.

    "Not entirely unscathed," A¨ªfe allowed, "but the last thing I remember of it, they were none the worse for wear."

    "Same," Emiya agreed. "Knowing as much as I do about how Servants work, it was almost like I''d been put under some kind of Madness Enhancement. Looking back on it, the logic behind my actions didn''t make sense at all."

    I bit my tongue to hold back from agreeing, even though it was essentially meaningless and had nothing to do with whether or not Muninn spoke.

    Da Vinci nodded. "Then one way or another, we can probably expect anyone else who gets drawn in to be similarly affected. For however small a comfort it might be, at least it should make things a little bit easier on Ritsuka and Jeanne Alter."

    That reminded me ¡ª

    "Wait," I interrupted. "Earlier, you said Ritsuka had Servants with him ¡ª plural ¡ª right?"

    Emiya nodded, too. "Yeah. Jeanne Alter, and then someone else, a man in a hat and Victorian era clothes. Cravat, cloak, and everything. He called himself ''Avenger,'' so he must have been another Extra Class Servant, but he didn''t use his Noble Phantasm or make any references to his living self, so I can''t say who it might have been."

    So I''d heard him right after all. A second Servant, and another Avenger, at that.

    "An Extra Class Servant?" Marie asked sharply. "How is that possible? Jeanne d''Arc is already irregular as a Ruler, and Jeanne Alter doesn''t make sense no matter how you look at it, so another Avenger shouldn''t be something that can happen!"

    "That, unfortunately, isn''t necessarily true," Da Vinci corrected her.

    Marie''s head swung around towards her. "What?"

    "It''s true, the original FATE System was built only to handle the standard seven classes," Da Vinci said apologetically, "but the mere existence of Jeanne Alter herself opens the door to the possibility of other Extra Class Servants. Whether it will stop at just Ruler and Avenger, well, I''m afraid I couldn''t say confidently right now, but by this point, we''ve already encountered two Extra Class Servants, and now Ritsuka has apparently met a third."

    Romani sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "That makes things a lot more complicated, doesn''t it?"

    "For now, no," Da Vinci replied, "but only as long as this new Avenger''s class doesn''t have some significance to what''s going on inside that curse."

    In my real body, my brow furrowed.

    Was I the only one who realized it? If this Avenger was appearing inside of a spiritual prison built from a karmic curse, then obviously he was related to it somehow, even if only tangentially. Did no one else think it was suspicious that Ritsuka would encounter a Servant like that in there at all? One none of us had ever seen before and one we hadn''t summoned ourselves?

    "Is there anything else you can tell us about this Avenger Servant?" I asked. "Or about the prison you were in while this was all happening?"

    Emiya frowned. "Now that you mention it¡­ He didn''t give away anything else about his identity, but I do remember him calling me a Lord of the Hall of Judgment, whatever that meant. He seemed to know a lot more about what was going on than the rest of us did. More than Ritsuka did, too."

    "The Prison Tower on the Isle of Despair," A¨ªfe added.

    "That sounds like a Noble Phantasm," Mash said before I could.

    It kind of did. And that made this Avenger immediately suspect ¡ª although, again, there was that pesky problem of motive and opportunity. Sc¨¢thach had proven it wasn''t impossible for Servants and Heroic Spirits to reach us here from beyond time and space, but it would have to be an extraordinary Heroic Spirit in order to do it. One with an especially powerful legend or an exceptionally strong Noble Phantasm.

    "Maybe we''ve been looking at this all wrong," murmured Marie, brow furrowed as she chewed on her thumbnail. "Maybe the curse isn''t a literal curse, but a conceptual curse created through a Servant''s Noble Phantasm. Prison Tower on the Isle of Despair ¡ª what Heroic Spirit is related to a prison on an island famous for how horrible a place it was?"

    "It couldn''t be Alcatraz, could it?" Romani suggested.

    "Too late," said Da Vinci with a shake of her head. "Alcatraz only started operation as a prison about a century ago, and all of its most famous prisoners were there in the 1930s and 1940s, not the Victorian Era. If it was Al Capone, I expect this Avenger would have been in a suit and a tie with a gun, not¡­ How did he attack, exactly?"

    "Blasts of energy," Emiya said. "Fired from his hands. The only thing I can think to compare them to is the Gandr curse, only this was on a completely different scale."

    "Like a materialized grudge," A¨ªfe agreed.

    An Avenger class Servant who fought by flinging around such potent curses that they could hit with physical force? How appropriate.

    Da Vinci''s brow furrowed. "That''s¡­ Actually, that makes a lot of sense, doesn''t it, if he''s an Avenger class Servant?"

    "Which would mean there was something he was avenging, wouldn''t it?" Mash said softly.

    "On Onii-chan?" Rika asked a little hysterically.

    "No," Marie snapped, in a voice that said, don''t be stupid, "in general! An event or circumstance in his myth, specifically! And that would mean¡­we''d be looking for a Heroic Spirit who might have been falsely imprisoned as part of his legend. One who would have reason to carry a grudge against the people who put him there, strong enough that he could naturally manifest as an Avenger, an Extra Class Servant!"

    Realization hit me like a bolt of lightning, and I actually stumbled a step in the hallway, although thankfully, there was no one around and it didn''t show through Muninn.

    There was no way, was there?

    "That''s not exactly a small list," said Da Vinci. "Even if we limited ourselves to the nineteenth century, there are plenty of famous people in Europe who would have fit the bill. If we expand that out ten or twenty years in either direction, we''d necessarily have to include people like Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI."

    "On an island prison specifically, though?" Romani asked skeptically. "Maybe Napoleon¡­ Although, was he ever imprisoned, or was he just exiled?"

    "Technically, no, it wasn''t a prison," said Da Vinci. "But since he was exiled to an island and forbidden from leaving, in a sense, that would count as a form of imprisonment, wouldn''t it? It''s certainly a well-known enough part of his history to form a Noble Phantasm upon, I would say."

    A Heroic Spirit famous for his acts of vengeance, one who had been falsely, unjustly imprisoned in an island prison somewhere during the Victorian Era in Europe, and it was so integral to his history that it had become a conceptual Noble Phantasm ¡ª which meant the prison itself was probably famous for how terrible and awful it was to be there. His grudges were powerful enough he could manifest them as a physical attack, and they hit like curses, like he was cursing the world that had created his horrific circumstances.

    Maybe it was a little bit vague, not much to go on at all, but¡­

    "Did he have a discernible accent?" Romani asked Emiya. "If we could at least narrow down the region, that would make this a lot easier."

    Emiya shrugged. "None that I could tell. Since we''re Servants, I''m not sure that even means anything."

    As much as I hated to say it, Orl¨¦ans had already proven it wasn''t impossible.

    The door to Ritsuka''s room whooshed open as I finally reached it, and I stepped inside as though I wasn''t still in my workout gear with my sweaty hair plastered to my forehead and neck. Everyone turned to look, so there was no better time for me to confidently announce, "I know who the Heroic Spirit is."

    Eyebrows rose and eyes went wide. Everyone seemed surprised to hear it.

    "You do?" Marie asked incredulously.

    "From just those few clues?" Da Vinci asked next, just as incredulous.

    "Yes."

    Although some part of me really wanted to be wrong. The rules had been stretching enough lately, and some part of me just wanted for things to go back to matching the lessons Marie had given me about how it was all supposed to work. For things to be simpler, less complicated, so that I didn''t have to constantly readjust my conception of what was possible and what wasn''t.

    But that had all gone out the door quite a while ago. It seemed like we found another exception every time we turned around.

    "Who?" Rika demanded with a furious hunger. "Who''s doing this to Onii-chan?"

    I turned briefly to Emiya and A¨ªfe. "The prison you were in, it was made of stone, right? Old, like the fort from Captain Morgan''s Port Royal."

    Emiya shrugged. "Seeing as I wasn''t there with you guys at the time¡­"

    Right, because he''d already been killed by Herakles by then.

    "Yes," A¨ªfe answered. "The walls and floor were made of stone, with crude iron bars to block any windows. The only light was provided via torches on the walls."

    Just like Port Royal''s forts, then, and that made sense, because prisons back then were often either just dungeons inside a castle or stone fort or else were repurposed forts stripped bare of any comforts. Alcatraz had started that way, too.

    "Definitely pre-industrial, then," Da Vinci murmured.

    "Who?" demanded Rika again, more urgently this time.

    It only made me surer of my conclusion. Because there was a prison in Victorian Europe set on an island. An isolated prison guarded by treacherous offshore currents that had been repurposed from a fort used by the French. Many political prisoners had found themselves trapped there in the wake of Napoleon''s exile, and it had become famous for how many people had been locked inside its walls with no hope of ever leaving ¡ª and famous even more so for one particular prisoner who had found himself there and later escaped to go on a rampage of revenge.

    This was one time where I hated being right.

    "The Prison Tower on the Isle of Despair," I said. "The name of that Noble Phantasm is Chateau d''If."

    Marie''s eyes went wide and her mouth fell open as Mash gasped and Da Vinci burst out, "You can''t be serious!"

    "And the Heroic Spirit it belongs to," I plowed on, ignoring the outbursts and the surprise, "is Edmond Dant¨¨s. The identity of the Avenger class Servant with Ritsuka is the Count of Monte Cristo."

    Because if the Phantom of the Opera could be real, why not him, too?

 Chapter CXIX: Demons of Despair

    Chapter CXIX: Demons of Despair

    An outburst of sound greeted my statement as everyone tried to talk over each other at once.

    "¡ª completely absurd ¡ª"

    "¡ª the fuck is that?"

    "¡ª thought he was just a character ¡ª"

    "¡ª fictional entity can''t possibly ¡ª"

    Around and around they went in a cacophony of sound, each of them trying to be heard, until A¨ªfe got fed up, and with a scowl, stuck her fingers in her mouth and blew out a shrill, piercing whistle. Everyone fell silent immediately.

    "One at a time," she said sternly, irritable, "unless you''d like to go back to being squabbling children?"

    Many a grimace and chagrined look was passed around, and in the wake of that scolding, for a moment, no one seemed to have the courage to speak up, until Rika asked, "Who''s this Count guy anyway?"

    Romani and Da Vinci traded more looks, like they were silently debating which of them should tell her, but was Marie who answered her. "The Count of Monte Cristo, otherwise known as Edmond Dant¨¨s. He was a sailor who got caught up in political intrigue during a tumultuous time in nineteenth century France, and after a pair of his rivals conspired to ruin him, he was unjustly thrown into Chateau d''If on trumped up charges without so much as a trial. After spending fourteen years locked up, he managed to escape, found a great treasure, and went on to get revenge against the people who ruined his life. He is essentially the archetypical avenger."

    The literature buff in me wanted to say something about how reductionist that summary was, but that debate wasn''t one worth having just now. If Rika wanted more details, we could cover the nitty gritty parts later on.

    "He''s also completely fictional!" Da Vinci protested.

    Rika''s brow furrowed. "What?"

    "Edmond Dant¨¨s is a character in a novel, Senpai," Mash explained patiently. "The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. He also wrote another famous novel, The Three Musketeers."

    Fuck. This meant that D''Artagnan and the others might just qualify, too, didn''t it? I didn''t know how I was going to handle that if we ever ran into them.

    "Then if he''s not real, how is he doing any of this?" Rika demanded furiously, and she waved her free hand in the direction of Ritsuka''s body.

    "We don''t know," Romani said honestly.

    "Does it even matter if he''s fictional?" I asked pointedly. "The Phantom of the Opera was supposed to be a fictional character, too, but he felt pretty real when he was trying to gut me like a fish. Why would Dant¨¨s be any different?"

    Marie and Da Vinci both looked as though they had swallowed something particularly sour, and Romani opened his mouth to reply, paused for a second as what I said made its way through his brain, and then scrubbed frustratedly at his head as he let out a gusty sigh. I could relate.

    "That''s actually a really good point," he admitted. "Da Vinci, is there any reason why Dant¨¨s couldn''t be a Heroic Spirit, when we already know the Phantom of the Opera qualifies? If it''s a matter of fame, I''m not sure there''s much difference between them, and if it''s a matter of age, aren''t they from around roughly the same time period?"

    "Given what we know, I suppose it''s not entirely impossible," Da Vinci said grudgingly. She looked like she would have been more comfortable if we''d actually been pulling teeth. She sighed and plastered on a blatantly fake smile, it was so strained. "Well. In the face of the facts we have, and in lieu of a better option, I suppose we don''t really have a choice but to assume that this really is the Count of Monte Cristo at work."

    "Next thing you know, we''ll be summoning Sherlock Holmes," Marie grumbled.

    And now that she''d said it, I was afraid she might be right. Would we find ourselves facing off against Professor Moriarty, too? It felt so ridiculous a part of me just wanted to stuff my fist into my mouth and scream. When I''d first read those books, I''d never for a second entertained the idea that I might have to actually meet the people in them.

    "So?" asked Rika. "What does it mean if it''s this Count Dant¨¨s guy?"

    Da Vinci''s mouth pulled into a tight line. "Unfortunately, not much at all. Knowing who the likely candidate for our mysterious Avenger class Servant happens to be doesn''t actually change our position, it just gives us a little bit of a better idea what we''re working with."

    "There''s also the question of motive," Marie pointed out. "Things made a lot more sense when we were assuming this was a curse put on Ritsuka and Jeanne Alter by Forneus just because they happened to be the ones responsible for delivering the killing blow. Edmond Dant¨¨s has no reason to want to hurt him or us at all, at least as far as we know, and this is our first time encountering him as a Servant instead of ink on a page."

    A frustrating point. Why would Edmond Dant¨¨s care enough about us one way or the other enough to trap Ritsuka in his Noble Phantasm? It wasn''t like he was an enemy Servant we''d vanquished inside of one of the Singularities, so we hadn''t denied him his chance to wish upon the Holy Grail.

    In the first place, Edmond Dant¨¨s had discovered the Monte Cristo treasure, and his story ended on what was essentially a happily ever after. What would he have to wish for?

    "Flauros proved that these Demon Gods have the ability to summon Servants on their own," I began slowly, piecing the thoughts together as I went, "or at least with the aid of a Grail, which they apparently have the ability to acquire whenever they like." Or manufacture. One Grail was already a miracle, but eight seemed too much to just find lying about. "Could Dant¨¨s have been summoned by Forneus at the last second for the purposes of trapping Ritsuka with his Noble Phantasm?"

    It was the only reason I could think of for Dant¨¨s to come after us in the first place.

    Marie, Da Vinci, and Romani traded looks again, glancing back and forth at each other dubiously, skeptically, like they didn''t have a better theory but didn''t happen to like that one either.

    "It''s not impossible," Marie allowed. "It''s even possible that he can''t manifest normally as a result of his Noble Phantasm, which might explain why we didn''t detect his Saint Graph at any point ¡ª and still can''t."

    "Chaldea has yet to register it with any of our systems," Da Vinci agreed.

    "It''s as good a theory as we have, right now," said Romani. "But it still doesn''t really matter one way or the other, does it? I mean, it''s not like it really makes that much of a difference whether it was a curse from Forneus or Dant¨¨s and his Noble Phantasm. The end result is still basically the same."

    Namely, that either way, we were equally unable to do anything about it. The only thing the curse being a Noble Phantasm changed was that it would be all the more impenetrable to the methods and means available to us. As far as we knew, the only way we had in was still Shakespeare''s Noble Phantasm, only now, he might be even less capable of shielding the person sent in from the effects of the prison curse.

    Damn it. I''d just all but guaranteed they wouldn''t send me in, hadn''t I?

    The cock of a hammer sounded in my ears, and the face of a toddler Mash flashed across my mind''s eye, and I had to blink and draw my lips tight to keep myself from reacting more obviously to it.

    "This is all the more reason we can''t afford to try sending someone else in on a rescue mission," said Marie. "Especially when we know that it can ensnare others who weren''t even affected by the curse originally."

    "What?" Rika shrieked. "But we know who the bad guy is now! There has to be something we can do! Right?"

    "If Dant¨¨s was in front of us, yes," Da Vinci said, not unkindly. "But if he can''t manifest normally outside of Chateau d''If, then we can no more reach him than we can Ritsuka. I''m sorry, Rika, but nothing has actually changed now that we have another idea of who might be behind all of this."

    Rika didn''t look at all happy to hear this, and I wouldn''t have been surprised to hear Ritsuka''s bones creaking in protest from how hard she squeezed his hand, but she didn''t seem like she had any new ideas either, so she couldn''t do anything except stew in her own helplessness. I think that was the most relatable she''d ever been to me.

    "Would it be possible to Rayshift into Chateau d''If?" Mash asked calmly.

    "Where?" asked Marie. "When? That''s half of our problem right now. We don''t have coordinates to even begin the calculations necessary to do something like that!"

    "Guess we can''t just treat this like an ordinary Singularity, then," Emiya mumbled.

    "Unfortunately not," Da Vinci agreed. "For now, we''re in essentially the same position we were in yesterday, just with a slightly better idea of what the situation looks like for Ritsuka. We''ll have to spread the information among the other Servants and staff so that they know to report it if they happen to be swept up in things while they''re asleep."

    And maybe, for someone like Bradamante, who didn''t have quite so many demons waiting in the dark, it might be possible for them to resist whatever compulsions Chateau d''If used to force the victims to play whatever sick and twisted role they''d been sized for. Maybe knowing what was happening would let them better fight against it, and they could break free to help Ritsuka solve whatever problem he needed to solve in order to make it out.

    I wasn''t sure it would be anywhere near that simple, though.

    "You said Dant¨¨s called you a Lord of the Hall of Judgment," I said to Emiya. "Is there more than one of those? Did he give any indication that there was some sort of number of them Ritsuka had to overcome?"

    Emiya frowned and shook his head. "I''m sorry. I don''t recall anything like that. If he ever said anything about a specific number of Lords, then it wasn''t within earshot of me." He held up a pair of fingers. "But I think we can say that Ritsuka has already faced down at least two."

    Him and A¨ªfe. Yeah, that made some degree of sense, didn''t it? Unfortunately, that didn''t help us too much. If this place was built around the prisoner conquering a specific number of challenges, knowing he''d already defeated two didn''t help us much when we didn''t know if there were a total of five or five hundred.

    I was going to have to go back and see if I could find any clues in the original novel. I didn''t recall there being a specific number of tasks Dant¨¨s had to do before he escaped, but¡­ Fourteen, one for each year he''d been imprisoned? It made as much sense to me as anything else, just then.

    It also sounded like a tall order ¡ª for anyone, really, but especially for someone like Ritsuka, who hadn''t had an entire career to prepare him to face down a gauntlet of powerful foes.

    "That doesn''t do us much good without knowing how many there are in the first place," Marie grumbled, echoing my thoughts.

    "If the same thing happens tonight with a different set of Servants, then it may be we know more of what''s going on tomorrow," Da Vinci reasoned. "Until then, however, I don''t think there''s much else we can do except prepare for the inevitable."

    Rika stiffened, eyes going wide and mouth dropping open with horror. I realized then that what she probably thought they meant by "the inevitable" was entirely different from what Romani had said to me yesterday about if and when we would have to finally take a risk and send someone into the curse with Ritsuka.

    "Yeah," Romani sighed. "As terrible as it is, we really can''t afford to put off more extreme solutions more than another day. If we don''t learn anything else by tomorrow, we may just have to resort to sending someone in on a rescue operation."

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    The relief hit Rika like a sledgehammer to the gut, and I watched it ripple through her, apparently unnoticed by anyone else.

    "What?" Marie demanded. "Romani, I didn''t authorize any such thing!"

    "Sorry, Director, I meant to talk with you about it earlier, but I just never got around to it," he replied apologetically. "Da Vinci and I discussed it, and it was the only thing we could come up with that wouldn''t mean automatically crippling our infrastructure."

    Marie''s expression turned thunderous, and she looked mere seconds away from descending into a furious tirade.

    So naturally, Da Vinci swooped in to defuse her. "It''s my fault, Director. I monopolized his time yesterday while I was trying to find out more about what the curse was doing to Ritsuka, so he never had the chance to speak with you about it. I''m sorry."

    Marie almost literally bit her tongue, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath to calm down, and tersely, she said, "We''ll discuss the issue in more detail later." The words seemed to physically pain her. "For now, is there anything else we need to bring up about the issue, or have we covered all of the relevant ground we can?"

    A long moment of silence passed. Rika looked back and forth between everyone, and her expression grew stormier with each second that went by.

    "So we''re just going to sit around and wait?" she demanded. "Again? We can''t do anything at all?"

    More guilty looks were traded between Romani and Da Vinci. It was Marie who stepped up and said, "We only have one chance to do anything to help bring Ritsuka back, so we absolutely have to make sure that we''re doing it right. The very last thing we want to do is to make anything worse. Especially when two Masters might be on the line instead of one!"

    Romani''s relief was palpable. "Exactly," he agreed. "We haven''t given up on Ritsuka, Rika. It''s just that we have to be extra careful when we don''t really know all that much about what we''re doing and how bad things might go if we cut the wrong wire¡­ Um, if you know what I mean."

    Marie''s face twisted into a grimace, and Da Vinci sighed and shook her head, exasperated.

    "For now," she said, "I think it would be best if we took some time to breathe and gather our thoughts. Most of us haven''t even had the chance to eat breakfast yet, yes?"

    As though on cue, Romani''s stomach let out an audible growl, and my own clenched and rumbled a quiet agreement. From the dusting of red on Marie''s cheeks, she was in the same boat, even if no one had heard it. She lifted a hand to her mouth and cleared her throat conspicuously.

    "An excellent suggestion!" she said a little more loudly than necessary. "None of us is any good to anyone if we starve to death, let alone Ritsuka, so if there''s nothing else we can do for now, we should eat and prepare for the moment when we can!"

    Romani smiled weakly. "Yeah, I think I can get behind that. Unless there''s anything anyone forgot to add?"

    Everyone looked around the room, but no one spoke up. Rika''s expression fell first, and then her head followed, leaving her hair to dangle over her face.

    "Then those of us who need to should eat while we have the chance," said Marie. "Da Vinci, I''m assuming you''re going to remain here and continue to monitor him? Can you do that without neglecting any of your duties?"

    "It''s a bit inconvenient, but I won''t have any problems," said Da Vinci. She held up her tablet and gave it a little wave. "There are some projects that were interrupted by this¡­situation, but none of them were time sensitive or vital. Everything else, I can handle from here as well as I would my workshop."

    I wondered, briefly, if one of those projects that had been put on hold was my spider puppet, but right then wasn''t the time to bring it up. Ritsuka''s continued well-being was just plainly more important than the convenience of another tool in my kit.

    Marie nodded. "We''ll adjourn for now. Of course, the instant anything changes, Da Vinci, I expect you to inform us, but until then, there''re still jobs that need doing, and they''re not going to wait for us to decide we''re ready to get back to them."

    Emiya sighed. "I guess that''s my cue to head back to the cafeteria, isn''t it? I didn''t give Marcus much of an explanation before I came here, so he''s probably wondering where I went off to and why."

    "Great," Romani grunted. "I guess that means a cup of coffee is the first thing on my list. No offense to Marcus, but even as your assistant, Emiya, he really doesn''t measure up."

    "Somehow, I don''t think it''s appropriate for me to respond on his behalf," Emiya drawled.

    "That''s it?" Rika asked, deathly quiet. "We''re¡­ We''re just supposed to sit on our asses for another day and hope nothing goes wrong? No¡­ No plan, no nothing?"

    "Hey, do you think any of us like this any better?" Marie spat. "It''s not like this is easy for any of the rest of us either, you know! You''re not the only one frustrated by how little we can do!"

    Rika''s head shot up, a thunderous scowl tearing across her face.

    "It''s because we have a plan that we''re not doing anything else, Rika," Romani said more patiently. "Because the plan is dangerous and risky and might cause more problems than it solves, so we have to be extra careful that we don''t mess up. Ritsuka may be your brother, but that doesn''t mean the rest of us don''t care about bringing him back in one piece, okay?"

    Rika looked away again. She didn''t say anything else, but the tremble in her limbs and the lines of tension threaded through her body told the tale of the storm that had to be raging in her gut. If she had my powers, with a full swarm gathered, the whole room would have been literally abuzz as a curtain of black chitin ripped itself apart.

    Romani sighed wearily. "Just¡­take breaks while you wait, okay? I know you might not feel like eating, but your body still needs food to survive, so it won''t do you any good to starve yourself, and it won''t do Ritsuka any good if you''re too weak to do anything when the time comes we have to send you in to help him."

    Rika didn''t reply to that either, but he seemed to take the fact that she wasn''t yelling or screaming or spitting metaphorical venom his way as an agreement. Marie, on the other side, scowled and crossed her arms, glaring, but didn''t rip into Rika either, and eventually, the tension got more awkward than anything else.

    A¨ªfe''s lips pressed tightly together, but rather than offer some sort of criticism or threaten some kind of punishment, she turned away from the group and vanished into spirit form. Marie''s glare shifted to the spot A¨ªfe had just vacated, and she looked very much like she wanted to lambast A¨ªfe for breaking the rule about materializing and dematerializing so casually, but didn''t want to feel stupid for yelling at what was now empty air.

    Emiya, for his part, grimaced and turned away, but he paused a second and glanced back over his shoulder ¡ª and then he, too, disappeared. I felt the prickle of the fine hairs on my prosthetic, as sure a sign as any that he had brushed past me. Marie''s glare swiveled to his now open spot, but she didn''t comment on it again for likely the same reason.

    Romani, who looked utterly exhausted, fidgeted uncomfortably for a few moments, and then awkwardly edged his way through the room and towards the door. He mumbled something about being back later, then ducked out unceremoniously.

    I followed after him, because if I was going to discuss my own little jaunt the night before, it wasn''t going to be in front of the whole group, and before I left, I sent Marie a meaningful look ¡ª a sort of nonverbal "we need to talk." She seemed to understand what I was trying to convey, because as I went through the door, I saw her jolt into motion and follow after me through Muninn''s eyes.

    When we''d made it far enough from Ritsuka''s room that no one would notice us talking, I sped up a little until I was even with him, and he was so tired-looking that I almost regretted having to open my mouth and say, "Romani, there''s something we need to talk about."

    He blinked and turned to me, confused, then glanced up and down the hallway. "Here?" he asked a little dumbly.

    I shook my head once. "In the Director''s office. It¡­might reveal some classified information."

    He blinked again, and then his brow furrowed as he looked behind me, where Marie was no doubt trailing and wearing an expression equally as solemn.

    "¡­This is going to be a ''drink the whole pot'' kind of day, isn''t it?"

    My brow twitched. At least that was better than dosing up on potentially illegal or illicit stimulants with who-even-knew what kind of side effects.

    Romani sighed. "Alright. I guess breakfast can wait a little bit longer." Wistfully, he added, "Emiya kind of needs some time to start cooking it anyway, doesn''t he?"

    We made our way together to Marie''s office, a bedraggled Romani, a solemn Director, and me with a carefully stoic affect. If the original two-hundred people were still around, we probably would have been turning some heads.

    As it was, the silence felt all the more conspicuous. The only thing in the hallway with us was our footsteps. We encountered no one else, although I wouldn''t have been surprised if Arash was still hovering about, watching over me.

    I thought about ordering him to leave¡­but I had no way of knowing how much of my past he''d already seen. The dream cycle was supposed to go both ways, but aside from a few small scenes, I had been mostly insulated from my Servants'' pasts ¡ª it might have been a consequence of splitting the contracts the way we did, although how that worked, I couldn''t have said.

    As my personal Servant, however, with me as his sole contractor, it was more than likely he knew more about my history than Romani did. Trying to hide more of it from him might have been moot. An exercise in futility.

    When we arrived at Marie''s office, she stepped up and opened the door for us, and we all walked inside. The instant the door was closed and we were as secure as we possibly could be, the both of them turned to me expectantly.

    "Alright," said Romani. "What''s this all about, then?"

    I pursed my lips and chose my words carefully. "I¡­may have already experienced the curse, much like A¨ªfe and Emiya did."

    Both of them reacted about the way I expected them to: their eyes went wide and their mouths dropped open as their eyebrows rose towards their hairlines.

    "What?" Marie managed to strangle out.

    "You¡­already experienced it?" Romani said, voice rising with panic. "When? How?"

    I thought about how best to cover this, but there really weren''t that many good options. Straightforward and honest was probably the best, if only because this was sort of like lying to your doctor ¡ª covering up symptoms only caused you more problems in the long run.

    "I thought it was probably just a dream, at first," was how I prefaced it. "But the way A¨ªfe and Emiya described their experiences in Chateau d''If made me reconsider. The patterns lined up too neatly. The structure of the dream, the part about being forced to play a role, all of it."

    The more I thought about it, the more the similarities jumped out at me. It explained everything so neatly.

    "You encountered Ritsuka?" Romani asked.

    For a moment, I hesitated. But there really wasn''t a nice or pretty way of saying this, and there wasn''t a way of sugarcoating it without lying outright. And if it was at all relevant to our rescue efforts, then I had to say it.

    "I killed him."

    "What?" Marie shrieked, drowning out Romani''s equally startled yelp. She turned to him. "Romani!"

    "Th-there were no abnormalities in his readings when I checked this morning!" Romani replied, just as panicked. "Everything was the same as it was yesterday when we first checked up on him! If she really did ¡ª" He turned to me almost desperately. "Taylor, are you sure?"

    My lips pressed together. "Do you remember the part about my world having superheroes and supervillains?"

    He shook his head frantically.

    "That doesn''t have anything to do with ¡ª"

    "It''s relevant," I cut across him.

    He scowled. "Fine. Yes. Now what did you mean, you killed Ritsuka?"

    "We had a prison," I began. "An inescapable supermax prison, where we sent the worst of the worst, the lowest of the low, the scum who were too dangerous to leave free but not so horrible that they got kill orders."

    "Kill orders?" Romani choked out.

    For some reason, his disbelief annoyed me. The Mage''s Association had hit squads they sent out to cleanse entire towns when some rogue mage threatened the secrecy of magecraft, and yet the idea of the government sanctioning the execution of people too dangerous to live was so hard for him to accept?

    "The Birdcage," Marie mumbled. I guess she really had seen everything, if she recognized it that easily.

    "Ritsuka was in there," I went on without addressing either of their words, "and I was going in to rescue him, having to fight figments of my past enemies along the way, only the deeper I went, the less it became about that. Eventually, it became about escaping. The figments of my enemies became twisted combinations of my friends and allies ¡ª past and present. I¡­had to fight him, only¡­it was like someone else was controlling my body."

    Marie''s face paled. Yeah. She knew the most out of everyone in this place about what I''d done. It figured she would catch onto that irony, too.

    "And¡­that''s when¡­" Romani trailed off, making an abortive gesture with his hand.

    "Yeah."

    "And after that," he asked, "you woke up?"

    I shook my head. "Not immediately. Chateau d''If wasn''t done with me yet."

    "There was more?" Marie asked, her voice an octave higher than normal.

    "Yes. I also¡­encountered each of you, only¡­changed the same way Ritsuka was. Merged with people from my past. You, Romani, you, Director, along with Da Vinci, Rika, and Mash. And I¡­"

    The cocking of a hammer clicked in my ears. I swallowed against it.

    "I was forced to kill each and every one of you. One after the other. All of you, inhabiting the bodies of my friends and colleagues from¡­before. Before Chaldea. Whatever was controlling me moved my hands on its own."

    And in its own way, that made sense. It wasn''t just ironic, it was poetic. Karmic. Like I was being punished for what I''d done as Khepri. If this curse ¡ª even if it was enacted by a Noble Phantasm ¡ª was supposed to work based upon our accumulated sins, well, what had happened was fittingly horrific.

    Paradoxically, however, Romani seemed to become less and less concerned with every word.

    "You said you started off in this inescapable supermax prison?" he asked, calmer than I thought this warranted. "That you were there to rescue Ritsuka?"

    "Yes," I answered. "But every time I thought I reached him, he disappeared before I could rescue him."

    He nodded. "Right. And when you reached the bottom and had nowhere else to chase him down, suddenly, you had to fight your way back out? Against everyone you knew and cared about?"

    "Yes."

    Punishment for abandoning them, no doubt. For going off to do everything my own way instead of trusting them to help me.

    "It can reach any of us it wants to," Marie muttered with an undercurrent of terror. "None of us are safe. Is¡­ Is it memetic, contagious, proximity based, or¡­?"

    Romani sighed. "I don''t think we''ll have to worry about that, Director."

    "What?" Marie snapped at him.

    "Taylor," said Romani, addressing me, "that wasn''t the curse. That was just a normal nightmare."

    My first reaction was to dig my heels in. To insist that I was right, he was wrong, and that he wasn''t taking this situation as seriously as he should be. After all, we didn''t really know the limits of this curse and how it could affect us, what vectors it might use to transmit itself from person to person. At the very least, Emiya and A¨ªfe proved that direct contact wasn''t necessary, because neither of them had visited Ritsuka yesterday, and Emiya didn''t even have a contract with him.

    But another part of me was just relieved. More than happy to accept the idea that it was my own psyche tormenting me and not some unreachable, untouchable enemy I couldn''t fight back against. Because that made it something I could weather and move on from instead of a problem I couldn''t solve.

    And it wasn''t like I hadn''t assumed it was a dream in the first place. It had just been visceral enough that I''d also been more than willing to believe it was more than that, especially when the details lined up with A¨ªfe and Emiya''s accounts of their time in Chateau d''If.

    I still had to ask, "Are you sure?"

    He heaved another sigh and ran a hand through his hair. "Obviously, with something like this, I can''t offer you any guarantees. But it makes the most sense, doesn''t it? Ritsuka is trapped in a place none of us can go to rescue him, fighting a battle none of us can help him with, and this will be the first time since you took over as leader of the team where he''s completely out of reach for you. I''m no expert on interpreting dreams, but¡­ Doesn''t that sound like what your dream was about?"

    It did. The entire dream, I''d been chasing after Ritsuka, and every time I thought I was getting close, he was suddenly out of reach. And when I''d reached the bottom and had nowhere else to go, it had switched, and I was forced to face the sorts of things I might have thought would await me inside that prison of dreams. The punishments that my mind concocted to fit the theme.

    So maybe it really was nothing more than a dream and I''d just blown it out of proportion. I''d overreacted, as it were.

    This would have been a great time for Chaldea to have Master-Stranger Protocols, though. Just to be absolutely sure. Because while I didn''t think I''d been influenced ¡ª beyond the obvious ways that nightmare had affected me afterwards ¡ª the reason those protocols existed was because you, the victim, could never really know for sure yourself.

    "Is there any way we can check?" Marie asked. "Just so we can be certain she hasn''t been affected?"

    "Not¡­immediately?" Romani said uncertainly. "I can give her a checkup to look for any of the obvious signs, but if we''re looking for the effects of this curse in particular, it''s probably something Da Vinci can be more thorough about. It''s not something I can just do right here, anyway."

    Marie nodded. "Your office, then?"

    "Ah¡­I¡­guess?" he answered. "I¡­don''t suppose I could go and get some breakfast first? None of us have eaten yet, after all."

    Marie''s reply was a withering glare, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed deep. Romani sighed for a third time.

    "That''s a no, then," he lamented. "Okay. I should have some data from when we Rayshifted them into Okeanos to serve as a baseline, so let''s go and get this over with."

    "Yes," Marie said sternly. "The sooner, the better."

    And when he didn''t instantly turn around and make for his office, she all but pushed him out of the door. Quite the feat, considering he was so much taller than her, so maybe he was even more tired than he looked.

    "Alright, alright, I get it!" he whined. "I''m going already! Geez! She''s been fine for the last three hours, I don''t think she''s going to keel over in the next five minutes!"

    "That''s no excuse to drag your feet!" was Marie''s response.

    I followed after them, a small, lopsided smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. A little bit of humor in this bleak moment, where we really were missing it.

    There wasn''t much else I could do, right then, so I could at least hope that the demons haunting my dreams were my own and not the machinations of some distant foe. I could handle a few bad dreams.

 Chapter CXX: Perils of Uncertainty

    Chapter CXX: Perils of Uncertainty

    I was given as clean a bill of health as could be expected. Neither Romani nor Da Vinci could find anything wrong with me, nor any sign of the curse that had afflicted Ritsuka ¡ª not, as Da Vinci had grudgingly admitted, that it necessarily meant anything, considering how much trouble they were having figuring out what was going on with Ritsuka in the first place ¡ª so the best either of them could give me was a solid "maybe."

    Unfortunately, it seemed like that would be the best I could expect anytime in the near future, so while it wasn''t exactly a definitive answer, neither of them could find any reason why they should shack me up in Ritsuka''s already crowded room like another patient in an epidemic. I was, for the moment, free to go about my day like normal and sleep in my own bed.

    Privately, I thought half the reason they didn''t want me in Ritsuka''s room, sleeping on a spare mattress for the duration, was because they were worried I might bully Shakespeare into putting me into that prison the instant I had a minute alone with him. The frustrating thing was that they weren''t entirely wrong to think so.

    Arash had, though, been given a sternly worded command from Marie ¡ª backed up by Romani ¡ª to alert someone if it seemed like I, too, was falling victim to this curse in a more obvious manner.

    I had to admit, I wasn''t sure what "more obvious" looked like in this case, except with Ritsuka''s current state as an example. Ritsuka had been acting a little bit weird in the waning hours of the night before this all happened, but looking back on it, nothing of it really jumped out as particularly unusual. It was all easily written off as fatigue, which was half the reason no one had caught this before it reached the point of actually snaring him.

    So there wasn''t much else for me to do. By the time I had been given a full and thorough look-over by both Romani and Da Vinci, the morning had waned, and so my first meal of the day was much more like an early lunch than it was a late breakfast.

    Obviously, a lot of stuff remained on hold for the time being, too. Emiya continued to cook and serve us breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but El-Melloi II''s lessons, A¨ªfe''s lessons, and all of the daily things the twins got up to were still called off until Ritsuka was awake and cleared to return to normal activities. Even the investigation into the next Singularity had been put on the back burner while Da Vinci and Romani tried to puzzle out what was going on and how to fix it.

    But as the day wore on, they didn''t seem like they were having any better luck than they''d had yesterday. There was no notification to the whole facility that Ritsuka had awoken, no frantic Marie arriving to tell me that the situation was resolved (or on the flipside, worsening), and no Mash knocking on my door to let me know that everything was okay again.

    Neither did I see any change watching through Muninn''s eyes. Every time I checked in on him, the only thing that was ever different was the position of the people inside of the room, who was staying in the room with Rika ¡ª usually Mash, and almost always Da Vinci, since she didn''t need to eat or sleep ¡ª and whether Rika herself had let go of Ritsuka''s hand long enough to eat something or use the bathroom.

    Unfortunately, another thing that hadn''t changed was my inability to do anything about it. I was no less helpless to do something than I had been before ¡ª I could only, as Marie had said yesterday, wait and hope. She and Da Vinci were right: knowing that the one ultimately behind all of this was Edmond Dant¨¨s, the Count of Monte Cristo, hadn''t made any difference whatsoever.

    It wasn''t the first time I''d faced an enemy like this, of course. I''d come up against more than one foe who liked to shift in and out of dimensions and across realities to either protect his one weakness or to avoid attacks altogether. Usually, however, there was still some kind of weakness to exploit, a chink in the metaphorical armor. Shadow Stalker being vulnerable to electric currents, for example, although they weren''t all as easy to take advantage of as carrying around a taser.

    The trouble with Dant¨¨s was that there didn''t seem to be any weakness to his Noble Phantasm at all. Not one we could exploit from the outside, at least. It had become something of a refrain at this point, but it really did seem like the only way to beat it was for Ritsuka to conquer the challenges himself.

    Worrying about that seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Ritsuka wasn''t incompetent, but there was a difference between that and running a gauntlet of Servants with no one to fight beside you except a belligerent ally who hadn''t earned your trust and the wolf in sheep''s clothing who had trapped you there in the first place.

    Things remained the same throughout the evening and into the night. By the time my energy started to flag and my usual bedtime snuck up on me, I''d spent the entire day waiting for something that never came, a moment that never arrived, and in the absence of anything else to do, the only thing left for me to do was to climb into bed and hope I woke up to either a better plan, or to find Ritsuka had broken the curse on his own.

    Four Singularities, each one where I spent most of the time sitting in the back and tossing out orders, and never in all of that had I felt as useless and helpless as I did then. It stuck in my gut like poison, but the nature of helplessness meant that all I could do was lie there and stew in it until I fell into a restless sleep.

    That night, there was no Birdcage to welcome me. No fruitless chase waiting for me. No having to sit and watch as my body was used to kill everyone I cared about even a little bit. If I dreamt of anything at all, then I couldn''t remember it come the morning.

    In some ways, it was disappointing.

    It made it easier to pull myself out of bed that morning, at least. There was no sweaty mess plastering my back to my mattress or horrifying images playing on repeat on the backs of my eyelids, so the only thing dogging my steps as I got ready to start my day was the same thing that had been on my mind the night previous.

    So as I peeled off my pajamas and started to pull on something more appropriate for an early morning workout, I let my body move on autopilot and pushed my mind down the thread connecting me to Muninn''s senses ¡ª only to find both El-Melloi II and Bradamante loitering about the room, speaking in hushed, quiet tones to Da Vinci. If that hadn''t been enough on its own, the agitation in their postures and the undercurrent of urgency in their voices would have told me the tale.

    Muninn''s beak opened. "Again?"

    The three of them stopped and turned to face Muninn, then each of them glanced in the direction of Ritsuka''s bed, where a lightly snoring Rika was sprawled across the free space of his mattress, just like she had been for the last two days. I noted the greasy hair in a distant sort of clinical way ¡ª that she might have eaten and used the restroom as needed, but she hadn''t taken the time or effort to keep up with her hygiene in other ways.

    Losing him really would wreck her. More, I think, than losing Emiya a hundred times ever could.

    "Yes," Da Vinci said, pitching her voice softly to avoid waking Rika. "It seems that Bradamante and El-Melloi II are the victims latest in line for this curse. They were just informing me about their experiences, and it appears to match up with what Emiya and A¨ªfe reported yesterday."

    "I''m sorry, Master," Bradamante said, just barely above a whisper. "I tried to resist it, I really did, but it was like someone else was in control of my body!"

    El-Melloi II grunted. The stick of an already eaten lollipop sat between his fingers, thoroughly and disgustingly chewed, such that the paper was frayed and soggy and it was entirely possible that he''d swallowed some of it in the process.

    "Same," he murmured sourly. "At least whatever was doing the controlling didn''t have the finesse to make proper use of my Noble Phantasm. Small mercies."

    Bradamante nodded. "Yes! It really was quite inelegant! In fact, it''s quite embarrassing just thinking about how clumsy I was!"

    So that brought it up to four. I noticed that Siegfried and Arash hadn''t yet been amongst them ¡ª a coincidence, or did the fact that they were contracted solely to me have something to do with it? The part that muddled things on that front was the inclusion of Emiya, who was Rika''s Servant, not Ritsuka''s, so if it had anything to do with who was contracted to who, why had he been dragged into things first? Was this curse going to go through our entire roster one by one ¡ª or two by two, I guess ¡ª or was it just going to keep to Servants whose contracts were shared between the three of us?

    God, I missed Lisa. She could at least have given me something to work off of. All of these uncertainties and guesswork were really starting to get under my skin.

    "At least this confirms that Emiya and A¨ªfe weren''t outliers," said Da Vinci. "However the inner mechanisms work, Chateau d''If seems to prefer pulling from the Servants currently within Chaldea itself. It might be safe to assume that it either can''t summon Servants of its own, or that doing so may be cost prohibitive."

    It might be safe to assume that it had those sorts of limitations?

    "You don''t think the choices it''s making have more to do with familiarity than with a limitation like that?"

    "That''s possible," said Da Vinci. "But in that case, it could make use of any of the Heroic Spirits the four of you encountered during your deployments, and we would have no way of knowing ¡ª except that we''ve established a measure of consistency now, haven''t we? After all, this is the second time in a row that Servants within the facility were used, and that seems to be a pattern."

    "So we just have to wait for everyone to finish doing their Mister Hyde cosplays?" a new voice interjected suddenly.

    Da Vinci paused and took the time to turn and offer Rika an apologetic smile. "I''m sorry, Rika, we were trying not to wake you."

    "Yeah, sure, whatever." Rika didn''t even take a second to appreciate the apology for what it was. "So is that it? This will all be over after Onii-chan and Jalter get through kicking out the¡­what, nine ghosts of Christmas past?"

    I stopped for a second halfway through pulling on my shoes. Nine ghosts for nine Servants. Ten, if we included Mash, and eleven, if we added Da Vinci. Mash might not count since she was a Demi-Servant instead of a regular one, and Jeanne Alter was already with Ritsuka, which would neatly leave nine, if Da Vinci really did count.

    Could it really be that simple, though?

    "It''s¡­a possibility," Da Vinci hedged.

    El-Melloi II grunted. "That count referred to me as the fifth Lord of Judgment, for whatever that''s worth. If we''re right that it can''t summon Servants independently and has to make use of the ones already here, then he''s already made it about halfway through ¡ª and handled two of the more challenging opponents that could have been thrown at him, too."

    But not all of them. A¨ªfe and Emiya were one thing, because if you turned them into entirely different fighters, then a lot of the threat either of them posed disappeared. Siegfried, however? He didn''t need any of his skills or his normal mindset to be a brick wall. Getting around his Noble Phantasm might wind up being the hardest part of Ritsuka''s journey through Chateau d''If.

    And if Da Vinci was thrown into the mess like I thought she might be¡­ Well, I wasn''t sure what that would look like. It wouldn''t be easy for him, that was for sure.

    "It was quite impressive!" said Bradamante. "He handled the battle against my, um, e-evil self? I-I''m not sure what to call it¡­"

    "If ever there was an appropriate time to call something a shadow Servant," El-Melloi II said wryly, "this is probably it."

    "Jung would have a field day," Da Vinci agreed.

    "Ten," I said, dragging things back on track. "You''re miscounting. Even if Ritsuka makes it through the rest of our team without getting hurt too badly, Dant¨¨s is still there at the very end. Whatever role he''s playing, we can assume that he''ll shed it once it''s outlived its utility."

    Da Vinci''s mouth drew into a tight line. "Two Avenger class Servants clashing at the very end of this all¡­ I suppose it''s appropriate, when you consider that the both of them are constructed almost entirely of grudges." She sighed. "And I''m going to miss the chance to observe such a thing! How unfair is that?"

    No more unfair than the fact that we had to sit on the sidelines like this.

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    "If we''re right, then you''ll at least get to see Dant¨¨s and what he''s capable of," I told her. "Do you think you''ll be able to keep your wits about you enough to look closer at things, if you do get snared at some point?"

    "I''ll do my best," Da Vinci promised, but she didn''t sound particularly confident. "Depending on how it manifests me in his dream¡­ Well, if I don''t get pulled in until the exact moment it''s time for Ritsuka to confront ''me'' as one of these Lords of Judgment, I may not have time to do much observing. Less so if the fight begins immediately and I have to fend off two Servants simultaneously."

    Somehow, I thought that she would still manage to catch more than all of the rest of our Servants had so far. That was Da Vinci for you.

    "And in the meantime? Do we still intend to send someone in to rescue him if this goes on for much longer?" I had to ask.

    "It may not be necessary," she said. "True, Ritsuka is still in very real danger, but if he continues at this pace, then it shouldn''t take him more than another three days to reach the end of whatever game Edmond Dant¨¨s is playing with him. Provided everything works the way we''re theorizing it does, and the more data points we receive from those caught up in its web, the more we can narrow everything down."

    It took me a second to realize the spider pun hidden in her statement, and in the privacy of my room, where none of them could see my face or hear my voice unless I projected it through Muninn, I let my face fall into my hands and groaned softly. Was that on purpose, or had Rika just rubbed off on me so much that I was seeing the puns now, regardless of whether they were intentional or not?

    "When," Rika began, "when will it be ''necessary,'' Da Vinci?"

    Da Vinci grimaced. "Romani will likely notice himself soon, but Ritsuka''s body isn''t just sleeping, it''s slowed down all of its metabolic processes, almost like he''s hibernating."

    "Hibernating?" Bradamante asked, incredulous.

    "Ritsuka isn''t a bear, Da Vinci," El-Melloi II pointed out.

    "He isn''t," she agreed, "and we can help replenish his fluids to push things out even further and more safely, but at the rate he''s going now, he could last the rest of the week before his physical health was in any danger of deteriorating."

    "A week?" Rika squawked, her voice cracking.

    "That''s too long!" Bradamante agreed.

    Romani had given it two days, not a week. There was no way I was going to agree to sitting on my hands doing nothing for another five days.

    "Da Vinci ¡ª"

    But she cut across me before I could finish.

    "I know," she said, "no one likes that idea. Frankly, just because it''s possible doesn''t mean it''s the best idea either. Having said that, we still don''t know anywhere near as much as I''d like to about this curse and what Chateau d''If looks like on the inside ¡ª because I very much doubt it resembles the real thing in any way except superficially ¡ª so I''d like to give it one more day to see if the pattern holds."

    In my real body, my lips pressed into a thin line. Muninn''s beak clacked. "One more day?"

    Da Vinci nodded. "So that we can see if another pair of our Servants is pulled into things. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern."

    The version of that saying that I was familiar with called it "enemy action," but either fit here, I guess.

    Marie and Romani would be happy about that, at least. Neither of them wanted to send anyone in after Ritsuka, so the longer the moment could be put off, the better.

    "One more day?" Rika echoed me. "And then we can go in and get him?"

    "If nothing changes?" said Da Vinci. "Yes. That''s why, Rika, I need you to make sure you eat well and get a good night''s sleep tonight. If it comes down to it and we have to send you in, you need to be at your best."

    Rika''s brow furrowed and her mouth drew into a tight line. She nodded. "Right!"

    At that moment, the door chose to slide open, and Mash walked in, carrying a tray in her hands and a smile on her face. "Good morning, Senpai! I brought you some breakfast!"

    And then, she saw El-Melloi II and Bradamante.

    "Ah!" she said. "El-Melloi II! Bradamante! G-good morning to you, too! Was¡­there something you needed from Senpai or Miss Da Vinci?"

    Da Vinci sighed again and smiled a lopsided little smile. "Good morning, Mash. They were just here to tell me about the little jaunt the two of them took last night."

    Mash gasped. "They were forced to fight Senpai, too?"

    "Yes," said Da Vinci. "It seems they had a similar experience to Emiya and A¨ªfe. It''s looking like it may be how this curse Ritsuka is under functions."

    "Mash!" Rika said, holding out her hands. "Food!"

    Mash blinked, and then hurried over to her. "R-right! Here you go, Senpai!"

    She presented the tray with its breakfast platter, and Rika almost ripped it right out of her hands, setting it across her lap and digging into the meal laid out on it with gusto. Mash watched it, bewildered, because she hadn''t been privy to the rest of the conversation that had just taken place.

    On her shoulder, the little gremlin''s ears twitched like a rabbit listening for a predator, and its head turned almost a full hundred-twenty degrees to pin Muninn with a beady-eyed stare.

    Fuck you, too, I thought irritably as my stomach rumbled. An inconvenient time for Muninn''s senses to be so close to the human norm.

    "Da Vinci," I said, "I''ll bring the Director up to speed and leave Romani to you."

    "Of course," she agreed.

    And I withdrew from Muninn, leaving her on autopilot as I put her in the back of my mind. Dressed and shoes neatly tied, I stood up from my bed, walked over to the door, and left.

    After smelling the food Mash had brought for Rika, it was tempting to head straight for the cafeteria and eat a meal of my own, but I''d just a moment ago promised to let Marie know what was going on, so I headed that direction instead. Despite my stomach''s opinion on the matter, food could wait a little while.

    When I got there and explained the situation, Marie was happy to hear the news and also very much not.

    "Two more Servants were trapped by this curse, at least for the duration of their role in it," she murmured thoughtfully. She had taken up her standard thinking pose, one arm cradling the elbow of the other as she held a hand up to her chin. Her urge to chew on her thumbnail was almost palpable. "Da Vinci thinks another two might become wrapped up in this tonight?"

    "She wants to see if it happens," I said. "If it becomes a pattern, then that might tell us more about how Chateau d''If works. If it needs specifically to draw on our roster of Servants or if it''s just coincidence that four of ours were already pulled into it."

    "And if it goes through our entire roster, she thinks it might be broken after that." Marie hummed. "It''s¡­not an unsound theory. But without more to go on, it''s going to be hard to prove even if things play out like she expects them to."

    Again, to have someone with a power like Lisa''s on hand¡­ I''d groaned to myself at the idea of Sherlock Holmes, but he might have been incredibly useful, just then. Da Vinci was a genius, but that could only carry you so far in a field that you had no training in. Hand her a wrench and a technical problem and I''d bet on her any day. Hand her a mystery and I wasn''t quite so confident.

    "Which is why she''s committed to sending someone in tomorrow."

    Marie grunted, and her nose wrinkled and her brow furrowed as she grimaced. "Yes, there''s that, too, isn''t there? Honestly, I don''t know what she''s thinking!"

    "We can''t afford to put it off forever," I told her. "Sitting around and twiddling our thumbs while Ritsuka fights for his life doesn''t sit well with any of us, and the only one who believes unconditionally that Ritsuka will pull this off on his own is Mash."

    "I know that!" Marie snapped. "But we''ve already gone over the risks involved, and while I can acknowledge that we might not wind up with any other choice, you understand why I don''t want to take risks like that, don''t you?"

    Because you''re a decent person, I thought, and I''d thought so before, that if she wasn''t, the person standing across from her might have been an entirely different Taylor Hebert.

    "And our normal Rayshifts aren''t just as dangerous every time we get sent into a Singularity?" I asked pointedly.

    "It''s different," she insisted. "At least then, we know something about what we''re sending you into! This¡­ If it even is Chateau d''If, then we don''t have the first clue what it looks like or how it works, just that it attacks the mind and soul and can conscript our Servants for whatever it does. I can''t accept sending anyone into that completely blind!"

    "Anyone," I said, "or just me?"

    Her brow furrowed. "Anyone. As the Director of Chaldea, you''re all my responsibility, which means if something happens and we send you into a trap, it''s my fault first and foremost!"

    "Except this really isn''t all that different from those Singularities, is it?" I said. "We know that this curse plays on karma and sins and punishes your regrets, and that''s already more than we know about any situation we Rayshift into normally. We didn''t know Drake was a part of Okeanos or that she had her own Grail until we met her ourselves, we didn''t know that Jason was the one behind everything ¡ª and Forneus was pulling the strings on him ¡ª and we didn''t know Davy Jones was involved either."

    Marie winced with every point I brought up.

    "We didn''t know A¨ªfe and Lancelot were in Septem," I went on. "We didn''t know Romulus had created his United Empire in opposition to Nero''s Rome. We didn''t know we were going to land so off course that we wound up on the other side of the continent. We didn''t know Stheno had been summoned as a kind of botched response to Romulus suppressing his own Divinity.

    "In fact," I concluded, "we know more about what''s going on inside Chateau d''If than we did any of the Singularities we were sent to before."

    "I get it," she said sourly. "I get your point. The difference is, the things we do know are just more reasons we should be really cautious about this. This is a trap, not a Singularity we''re going in to solve, and we''ve already discussed the reason why you should be the last person who takes any risks on it. And Rika and Ritsuka''s contract with Mash is just as important. In fact¡­" She looked like the very idea frightened her. "M-maybe the person who should be sent in to help him¡­should be me."

    With how much guilt she was carrying around about what happened to Mash? With how much she still blamed herself for the sabotage, as though she should have read Lev''s mind and realized he had been possessed by one of these Demon Gods? With how harshly she judged herself for every tiny mistake she made? Now I was the one who refused to let that happen. Not as a matter of competency, but just because her personality would make it all the harder for her to face the sins she carried, real, imagined, or exaggerated.

    Besides, there were several very good reasons why that idea had originally been shot down before anyone could even suggest it. Those hadn''t magically vanished in the past two days.

    "We''ll figure it out when the time comes," I promised her.

    She didn''t look reassured. I didn''t think she would be until this entire thing was over.

    A part of me wanted to stay and make sure she was okay, just keep an eye out on her, but as I''d said before, being so blatant about it would just make her withdraw and try to hide her problems, so the best thing I could do was to go about my day and offer her support more blatantly when it looked like she desperately needed it. To that end, I left her office once everything had been covered, with the promise that I would be back with breakfast after my morning workout.

    Arash? I asked as the door whooshed shut behind me.

    You don''t even need to ask, he told me. I''ll stick around and keep my eye on her.

    I wondered if it said something that I''d gotten so used to having him in my metaphorical ¡ª and maybe literal ¡ª shadow that I didn''t even bat an eye at the idea he had been hanging around enough to know what I wanted before I could even finish asking for it. Rika might not have been the only one who had gotten too used to the idea of having her Servant around to help out.

    The gym was the first place I went after Marie''s office, and I made sure to go through my morning workout at a normal pace. After that, I took a quick shower, dried my hair, got dressed in something a little more workplace friendly, and made my way down to the cafeteria, where Emiya was once more serving breakfast.

    "Two, again," I told him as I approached the counter.

    "Two it is," he agreed, and he stacked the trays up again as he started to prepare a pair of plates. "I''m assuming you''re the one most in the loop about what''s going on, so¡­ Any news on Ritsuka?"

    "El-Melloi II and Bradamante were drawn in," I said without ceremony.

    He paused for a second, then continued dishing up food.

    "The way I was?"

    "Yeah. Da Vinci thinks we should expect it to go through our entire roster before this is all over."

    He hummed. "Our entire roster, huh? Well, thankfully, it''s already gone through the two scariest Servants in the facility, although I do worry a little bit about what happens when they have to face Siegfried. If they have to face Siegfried. That guy¡­he just doesn''t have a mean bone in his body."

    That didn''t mean that Chateau d''If couldn''t give him one, at least for the duration of his stay in it.

    "If it comes down to it, Jeanne Alter isn''t a proper hero, so her Noble Phantasm should be more effective against his Armor of Fafnir," I said. "Dant¨¨s isn''t either, so that puts them at something of an advantage."

    Which wasn''t at all the same as saying they wouldn''t have any trouble, but if they had to face him before we could mount a rescue, that was all I could hang my hat on.

    Emiya grimaced. "I guess hoping it works out in their favor is all we can do for now. It''s tempting to go to Shakespeare and have him put me back in, but¡­ Well, I''m not in a rush to let that curse do what it did to me a second time. I don''t imagine A¨ªfe is either. There are some things that give even fearless Heroic Spirits pause."

    It must have been really bad to make even Emiya hesitate like that. If it was anything like that nightmare of mine, then it would have been its own unique kind of torture.

    When he was done loading up the plates, he pushed the tray over my way and smirked. "Compliments of the chef."

    I looked down at his apron. ''I AM THE LADLE OF MY SOUP,'' it said in big, bold letters. Given it seemed to be a pun on the incantation he''d used when he fought Herakles, it was all but certain now that he was making these himself. I made sure my face told him exactly how unimpressed I was.

    "If you''re fishing, you''ll have better luck casting your line in a different pond."

    He chuckled and shook his head, shrugging. "Can you blame me? With everything that''s been going on, my poor master has been neglecting me. At this rate, what little pride I have will wither away from lack of attention." Almost immediately, he sobered and heaved out a sigh. "And with this happening so soon after everything else, I haven''t had the time or the chance to patch things up with her. What rotten luck."

    Funnily enough, it felt familiar to me. So much had happened so quickly in my career that it was the downtime that threw me off the most.

    "You can''t put it off forever," I told him, "but you''re right to leave it alone for now. I don''t think Rika''s in the right headspace to try and deal with that, too."

    "Exactly my thinking," he agreed. "So I guess, for now, I''m just Chaldea''s humble chef." He tapped his apron. "I''ll take what I can get until that changes."

    I guess I couldn''t blame him for that.

    Tray in hand and food in tow, I made my way back to Marie''s office and saw myself in. Marie didn''t quite salivate when she saw what I brought back with me, but it was far closer a thing that she would ever have liked to admit.

    Nothing to report, Arash told me as I set her food down at her desk. This time, she was fine on her own.

    A slight pause was the only sign to give away that I''d heard him at all, and once I was sure that Marie was comfortably distracted with her breakfast, I replied, Good. Thanks for keeping an eye on her again.

    Even though that might have made her sound more like an unruly toddler than a grown woman. There wasn''t much of a better way to put it, though.

    No trouble, said Arash. I''d rather be doing something useful than twiddling my thumbs and staring at the wall.

    He really was my compatibility summon, wasn''t he?

    The rest of the day meandered on. Morning passed, lunch was eaten, then the afternoon crawled by like a snail. Every time I checked in on Ritsuka''s room, it was to find that the only thing that had changed was the people inside or the positions they took. Romani came and went, stopping in a few times throughout to check in on them the same way I was with Muninn, but with Da Vinci snugly ensconced in her chair and the situation as firmly in hand as it could be, considering the circumstances, he had other responsibilities to see to in the meantime.

    When I saw him at dinner, he looked tired and sluggish, like he was carrying an extra weight on his shoulders. He was practically slumped over his plate, and by the way he was playing with his food, he didn''t seem to have much of an appetite.

    Physician, heal thyself, indeed.

    Evening drew out into night, and after another long day of waiting and hoping and sitting around doing nothing, nothing had changed. There were no updates from Da Vinci and no reason to suspect anything had gone awry, but also no reason to believe anything would be any different tomorrow either. By the time I was ready to climb into bed, there was an air of surrender about the whole thing, like everyone had resigned themselves to the reality that the only thing we could do was take our chances on a rescue mission.

    Da Vinci''s almost omnipresent smile had fallen into grim acceptance. Whatever hope she might have harbored that this would resolve itself without interference seemed to have died a slow and terrible death.

    Before I went to bed, I practiced a few arguments in my head. Reasons why it should be me who was sent in and not Rika. Counterpoints to the issues that had been brought up before and which I knew would be brought up again the instant I offered to be the one to go in. The hardest one to convince was going to be Marie, and even the couple of things I had reluctantly chosen to hammer at her weak points might only wind up strengthening her resolve, but that was a chance I had to take.

    I went to sleep determined to face whatever Chateau d''If could throw at me. I was going to rescue Ritsuka no matter what it cost me. If I had to face down specters of my regrets and put them all in the grave, then I would just have to harden my heart and do it.

    The next morning, Ritsuka woke up.

 Chapter CXXI: No Worse for Wear

    Chapter CXXI: No Worse for Wear

    ¡°I feel fine,¡± Ritsuka said.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure you do,¡± Romani replied patiently. Fittingly, it carried the air of a doctor who had heard this sort of thing from patients who most certainly weren¡¯t. ¡°But we¡¯re still going to make sure you actually are, okay? Breathe in.¡±

    Ritsuka obeyed, taking in a long, slow breath, and then letting it out just as slowly. Romani held the knob of his stethoscope in place for the duration, and once Ritsuka had gone through his first breath, moved it.

    ¡°Again.¡±

    Again, Ritsuka obeyed, although the expression on his face told the tale of his impatience and frustration.

    Several more times, Romani repeated this cycle, and Ritsuka acquiesced each time. He didn¡¯t seem to be having any trouble breathing at all ¡ª or sitting up for the tests, or standing and walking, which he¡¯d done on his own to get here to Romani¡¯s office. In fact, he seemed so entirely unaffected by his ordeal that it was like he¡¯d gone to bed the night before, gotten a normal night¡¯s sleep, and gotten up in the morning like nothing had happened.

    Romani did a few other tests, checking things like Ritsuka¡¯s blood pressure, his reflexes, his vision, his hearing, and generally anything it seemed he could think of that didn¡¯t require specialized equipment, all the while Da Vinci hung in the background, running her own tests through some combined function of her staff and tablet. Ritsuka passed each with flying colors, and by the time he¡¯d run through the entire gamut, Romani¡¯s brow was furrowed, his mouth was pulled into a line, but he looked confused and frustrated, not concerned.

    ¡°Well,¡± he said, ¡°at least medically, I can¡¯t find anything wrong with you. A little anemic, somewhat dehydrated, and your electrolytes are low, but that¡¯s to be expected after you spent three whole days completely unconscious. Other than that, you¡¯re perfectly healthy.¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t notice any lingering damage spiritually, either,¡± Da Vinci noted. She sounded somewhat puzzled by it, too. ¡°Nor even remnants of that curse in your Magic Circuits. It¡¯s just as Romani said, Ritsuka: you¡¯re perfectly healthy, and frankly speaking, I don¡¯t have the slightest clue as to why or how.¡±

    ¡°Great,¡± he said. He slanted a look over in our direction. ¡°Is this really something everyone needed to be here for, though? I thought there was that thing called doctor-patient confidentiality.¡±

    ¡°In civilian circumstances, you might be correct,¡± Marie said sternly. ¡°However, Chaldea isn¡¯t a strictly civilian organization, which means anything about your health that can affect your performance in the field is directly my concern!¡±

    ¡°And mine, as your team leader,¡± I added.

    Even if I¡¯d been shooed out of the room, I would¡¯ve asked Marie about it at the first possible opportunity, and she would¡¯ve told me herself.

    ¡°If you think I was going to just wait outside after what you put me through, you¡¯ve got another thing coming, buster!¡± said Rika, and although it came out with her usual humor, there was an underlying shakiness to her voice.

    If she let him go anywhere but the bathroom alone for the next week, I would be surprised.

    ¡°I¡­guess I didn¡¯t need to be here,¡± Mash admitted reluctantly. ¡°But¡­ Senpai¡­¡±

    She had been worried, too. Even if she¡¯d had every confidence that he would manage to make it through everything on his own and come out the other end alive and well, it didn¡¯t mean she hadn¡¯t been at least a little concerned. I had to wonder how much she¡¯d buried it and how badly it had burned to know that there was something so dangerous that she couldn¡¯t protect him from with her shield.

    Ritsuka sighed.

    ¡°Are there any more tests you need to run?¡± he asked, resigned.

    ¡°Without getting invasive?¡± Romani asked.

    ¡°If we were going to find something, we should have found it by now,¡± Da Vinci said. ¡°At this point, any test we could do to look deeper would be essentially pointless.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s shoulders sagged a little, and some of the tension left his body.

    ¡°So¡­ So that¡¯s it, then?¡± Rika asked hesitantly. ¡°He¡¯s¡­ He¡¯s okay? There¡¯s nothing wrong?¡±

    ¡°Against all expectations,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°yes, Rika, he¡¯s okay.¡±

    ¡°Thank goodness.¡± Rika sighed, and putting on a trembling smile, said, ¡°H-he¡¯s the only brother I¡¯ve got, you know! I¡¯ve spent almost eighteen years breaking this one in, I don¡¯t want to have to break in a new one!¡±

    None of us missed the fragility of that smile, but none of us commented on it either. The last few days had been rough on all of us, but Rika most of all.

    Ritsuka grimaced. ¡°So does¡­that mean we¡¯re done here?¡±

    Romani shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t see why not ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Hold it!¡± Marie said. ¡°The examination might be over, but there¡¯s no reason we should waste any time getting through the debriefing!¡±

    ¡°Debriefing?¡± the twins echoed.

    ¡°Director,¡± Romani began, ¡°don¡¯t you think we could cut them some slack and maybe do this someplace a little more ¡ª¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve already lost precious time!¡± Marie insisted. ¡°Now that you¡¯ve confirmed he¡¯s in good health, we need to find out what happened to him while the memory of it is still fresh!¡±

    Her stomach chose that moment to growl loudly, and her cheeks flushed pink.

    ¡°None of us has had a chance to eat yet,¡± Romani said reasonably, ¡°maybe we should all get some breakfast first and ¡ª¡±

    Jeanne Alter suddenly appeared in the room with us, startling a shout out of everyone. ¡°Sup, bitches!¡±

    Marie shrieked. ¡°I¡¯ve told you to stop doing that!¡±

    ¡°Yeah, and I¡¯ve ignored you every time,¡± Jeanne Alter replied, grinning, and then ignoring Marie¡¯s indignant snarl in turn. She looked over to Ritsuka. ¡°There you are, Master. Looks like you managed to make it out of there just fine. That¡¯s too bad.¡±

    Ritsuka smiled. ¡°Thanks to you, yeah. You really pulled my butt out of the fire there.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± Jeanne Alter barked out a laugh. ¡°Goddamn right! You would¡¯ve been toast without me!¡± She gave an irreverent wave. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯m gonna get out of here before I catch something. Try not to get into any more life or death situations anytime soon, okay? I won¡¯t always be there to rescue your sorry ass!¡±

    And as suddenly as she appeared, she left.

    ¡°Stop doing that!¡± Marie shouted at the door.

    ¡°She¡¯s already gone, Director,¡± Da Vinci said.

    Marie huffed. ¡°It¡¯s the principle of the thing! Ugh, that Servant is more trouble than she¡¯s worth!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not so sure about that,¡± I said, and I turned Ritsuka. ¡°I¡¯m guessing we were right and Jeanne Alter wound up inside Chateau d¡¯If with you?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± he said. ¡°She really did save me.¡±

    And evidently cared enough about him to come and check on him afterwards. He must have made some kind of impression upon her during their time together in there.

    ¡°She did?¡± Marie and Rika said simultaneously.

    ¡°So she fought beside you, Senpai?¡± Mash asked.

    ¡°Until the very end,¡± he confirmed.

    Romani looked to Da Vinci, who could only shake her head, and then back at Ritsuka. ¡°I think you¡¯d better start at the beginning, Ritsuka.¡±

    Rika nodded. ¡°Forget breakfast! Story time now!¡±

    Ritsuka grimaced and leaned back on the table he was sitting atop. ¡°Alright,¡± he said. ¡°So I thought I was just really tired at the time, but I guess this whole thing started that night we watched a movie together¡­¡±

    And he told us all about his time in Chateau d¡¯If. About how he¡¯d started having hallucinations that night while we were on our way to our beds, and when he¡¯d laid down to go to sleep, he¡¯d woken up in a prison cell. About the man in the hat and cloak with the flyaway hair who called himself an Avenger Servant and explained the situation to him. About trying to contact Chaldea and summon shadow Servants to help him, only to find out none of it worked. About agreeing to forge a temporary contract with Avenger ¡ª Edmond Dant¨¨s, it must have been ¡ª and fight his way out. About the so-called Lords in the Halls of Judgment who were there to test him, and how the first one had already been killed by Jeanne Alter when they arrived.

    ¡°Phantom of the Opera?¡± Marie asked. ¡°Not Emiya?¡±

    Ritsuka shook his head. ¡°Emiya wasn¡¯t until later. The Phantom of the Opera was supposed to be the first Lord of Judgment, according to Avenger.¡±

    ¡°Then our numbers might have been off, too,¡± Da Vinci said thoughtfully. She sighed. ¡°Well, it was only ever a guess to begin with, so I suppose I can¡¯t feel too bad about it.¡±

    ¡°Keep going, Ritsuka,¡± I told him.

    ¡°Well,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°things almost broke out into a fight, at first, but I managed to keep them from trying to kill each other, and with the first Lord of Judgment dead, we went back to my, um, cell¡­¡±

    Where he¡¯d taken a rest for a while until it was time to face the next Servant that had been dragged into things ¡ª Gilles de Rais, or as Rika had called him a while back, Mister Starfish.

    ¡°And Jeanne Alter didn¡¯t take his side?¡± said Marie, brow furrowed.

    ¡°She didn¡¯t even seem tempted,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°She, um, actually seemed to have a lot of fun setting his starfish monsters on fire. From the way she was laughing, I mean.¡±

    Of course she did. Although she might have been built on the original Jeanne as a core, Jeanne Alter also seemed to be her opposite in a number of different ways. Fitting, seeing as she was Gilles de Rais¡¯ edgy revenge fantasy made flesh.

    ¡°I¡¯m curious, though,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°Was he acting abnormal in any way? Did he seem stronger or weaker than he was when you fought him back in Orl¨¦ans?¡±

    ¡°About¡­the same, I guess?¡± Ritsuka answered uncertainly. ¡°If he was any different, I didn¡¯t notice it. And Jeanne Alter and Avenger didn¡¯t have any trouble fighting him, but then, he wasn¡¯t all that impressive when we fought him back in Orl¨¦ans either, so¡­¡±

    So they¡¯d beaten him without too much of a fight. Between Jeanne Alter¡¯s flames and Dant¨¨s¡¯ concentrated curses, they made short work of all of his summoned monstrosities, and Gilles himself hadn¡¯t been able to put up too much of a fight, not as a Caster, although more of one than a Caster should have been capable of.

    Probably because he¡¯d been a knight earlier in his life. Those skills didn¡¯t just vanish into thin air, even if his Caster form put more of an emphasis on his descent into madness and the occult.

    Nonetheless, they¡¯d still beaten him, and then they¡¯d gone back to Ritsuka¡¯s cell to rest again before facing the next Lord of Judgment. According to what Dant¨¨s had told him, they had to start from there each time, even if the path they followed through Chateau d¡¯If was different for each of the Lords of Judgment.

    On their way to the next fight, however, and the third Lord of Judgment, they¡¯d found a woman there in the prison with them.

    ¡°A woman?¡± Romani asked, bewildered.

    ¡°And you didn¡¯t think that she might have been an enemy Servant?¡± Marie demanded.

    Ritsuka shrugged and smiled a little awkwardly.

    ¡°She was alone and she sounded so scared,¡± he answered a little sheepishly. ¡°Maybe she really was playing us from the very start, but¡­ When I talked to her, she seemed genuinely confused and frightened. She didn¡¯t even remember her name or how she got there.¡±

    My lips drew tight. On the one hand, there were plenty of people who could lie that easily with a straight face and tell a convincing sob story without giving anything away, and in a world like this, there were even people who could hypnotize themselves into believing they really were helpless and weak until the moment came for them to put their plan into action and stab you in the back. Especially in a place like Chateau d¡¯If, or Dant¨¨s¡¯ Noble Phantasm version of it at least, being suspicious of anyone in there was the safest thing to do.

    On the other hand¡­ That willingness to help a random stranger out of the kindness of his heart was the thing that had convinced Mash to make him and his sister into her Masters, hadn¡¯t it? In a very real sense, it was the only reason the twins were still alive, and without that trait, neither of them would have made it this far.

    ¡°You said she might have been playing you from the very start,¡± I chose to focus on. ¡°Does that mean she turned out to be an enemy later on?¡±

    Ritsuka winced. ¡°Ah. Yeah, about that¡­ U-um, so, before we get to that, there¡¯s some other stuff that happened first, and we should probably keep going in order¡­¡±

    Marie sighed. ¡°Fine,¡± she said sourly. ¡°We¡¯ll get to that when we get to that. If we start jumping around, then things will just get confusing, so you might as well just tell us everything in the order it happened.¡±

    Stolen story; please report.

    The tension in Ritsuka¡¯s shoulders eased a little. ¡°So we decided to bring her along, and since she said she couldn¡¯t even remember her own name, Avenger gave her the name Merc¨¦d¨¨s ¡ª¡±

    I couldn¡¯t stop myself from snorting. Dant¨¨s hadn¡¯t even really tried to hide it, had he? He might as well have waved a giant flag with his identity emblazoned across it. It would have been more subtle.

    ¡°¡ª and made me responsible for her,¡± Ritsuka went on, either not noticing or ignoring my reaction. Then again, not everyone had a literature professor for a mom, so maybe it was more obvious to me than it had been to Ritsuka. ¡°Then, we went on to fight the next Lord of Judgment¡­¡±

    In other words, Emiya, who apparently went on and on about the selfishness of trying to save everyone you could and tried as much to browbeat them into submission as he did actually trying to kill them with his weapons. As Ritsuka described it, nothing Emiya said to them was necessarily wrong, but it had felt like those words were designed for and aimed at someone else.

    Considering how tight-lipped he¡¯d been about it a few days ago, I somehow doubted that he¡¯d be willing to admit who that person might be.

    Through the combined efforts of both Avengers, they managed to beat Emiya ¡ª made easier, or so Ritsuka claimed, by his erratic behavior ¡ª and returned back to his room to rest again. Time moved strangely in Chateau d¡¯If, according to Dant¨¨s, so it was hard to tell exactly how long they spent doing anything, but after relaxing for a little while to regain some energy, they left to fight the next Lord of Judgment. This time, it was A¨ªfe, as expected.

    Also as expected, A¨ªfe had acted just as strangely as Emiya. Ritsuka said that she¡¯d held back to a massive degree, trying to prolong the fight, and cackling like a madwoman every time they landed a solid blow. She was louder and more deranged if they drew blood, and uncharacteristically sloppy, and that combination had made it easier to beat her than if she¡¯d been fighting normally and taking them seriously the whole time.

    ¡°Even like that, though, Avenger had to use his Noble Phantasm to beat her,¡± said Ritsuka.

    Immediately, half the room perked up.

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Romani, ¡°his Noble Phantasm?¡±

    Ritsuka blinked. ¡°Um, yeah? Like I said, even if she was holding back and fighting so weirdly, it was still A¨ªfe. She¡¯s way too tough for us to beat without going all out ourselves.¡±

    Marie¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°Were we wrong, then?¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I said, although I was the one who originally suggested the theory that the curse was the result of his Noble Phantasm. I could have been wrong, of course, but¡­ Ritsuka hadn¡¯t corrected us when we referred to the place he¡¯d been trapped as Chateau d¡¯If.

    Ritsuka looked around at us. ¡°Wrong about what?¡±

    ¡°We were under the impression that the place you were trapped inside was a manifestation of a Noble Phantasm,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°The Chateau d¡¯If of Edmond Dant¨¨s, to be more specific. The Count of Monte Cristo.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°No, I don¡¯t think so. At least, he never gave me any reason to believe he was the one behind it. Avenger might not have told me everything, but he never actually lied to me, as far as I can tell.¡±

    So maybe my first guess had been more correct, and Dant¨¨s had been drawn in because of his connection to Chateau d¡¯If. The prison itself, then, would have just been a construct to give shape and form to the curse itself. A shell it used to strengthen its structure by borrowing the name and identity of a famous prison.

    ¡°You said he used his Noble Phantasm,¡± I said. ¡°Did you get a good look at what it did?¡±

    Ritsuka nodded.

    ¡°He called it Enfer Chateau d¡¯If,¡± he answered. ¡°And it was, um¡­ Well¡­¡±

    ¡°Well, what?¡± Marie asked impatiently.

    Ritsuka hesitated. ¡°It was¡­like something out of an anime. Like Dragon Ball or something.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± Rika blurted out abruptly. She slapped her hands over her mouth, cheeks blossoming with pink.

    ¡°How do you mean?¡± asked Romani.

    ¡°He created afterimages,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°He moved so fast that he was¡­ I think he was actually attacking from multiple places at the same time. It was like there were six or seven Avengers all firing blasts from all around A¨ªfe, that was how fast he moved.¡±

    If I ignored the ridiculousness of that ¡ª and on the face of things, maybe it wasn¡¯t quite so extraordinary compared to things like Herakles and his Godhand that gave him twelve lives ¡ª then that would ¡ª somehow ¡ª be a Noble Phantasm based on Chateau d¡¯If. Since a Noble Phantasm was the crystallization of a legend or a deed into a weapon, armament, or a blessing that somehow reflected that legend, he shouldn¡¯t have another one related to the same part of his myth.

    In that case, it really would seem that Dant¨¨s had been dragged into the curse because it had borrowed the structure of the original prison as a base. The name of the Noble Phantasm even confirmed that it was Dant¨¨s, and I¡­could deal with the implications of that later, on my own time.

    ¡°Ultra high speed movement,¡± Da Vinci murmured. ¡°Perhaps related to his escape from the inescapable? A conceptual Noble Phantasm rather than one with a more physical basis? Interesting.¡±

    At least one of us had some theories for how that could work out.

    ¡°Well,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°it was enough to defeat A¨ªfe, and that made four Lords of Judgment, so we went back to my, um, my cell again¡­¡±

    And while he was resting with the mysterious Merc¨¦d¨¨s, Dant¨¨s went off on his own for a while with the excuse of ¡°scouting.¡± Ritsuka didn¡¯t seem particularly suspicious of that idea, but I doubted Dant¨¨s was actually off doing any such thing. Maybe he¡¯d gone to prepare the stage for the last few Lords of Judgment, or maybe he¡¯d gone to try and investigate how and why Jeanne Alter had been pulled into things without being twisted the way our other Servants had been.

    Whatever the case, Dant¨¨s eventually returned and they went off to tackle the fifth Lord: El-Melloi II, who reportedly spouted something about taking the entire world for himself so that he could fulfill the dream of his king. That one, I admit, threw me off a little, because as far as I knew, the current ruling monarch of England was a queen, and more than that, he¡¯d never struck me as particularly patriotic. Never so much as a ¡°God save the Queen!¡± had passed his lips in the entire time I¡¯d known him.

    Motivations aside, he¡¯d fought them tenaciously, like a man literally possessed (and in a way, I guess he was), but they brought him down, too, and went back to the cell again, which was getting deeper and deeper into the prison with each ¡°day,¡± according to Dant¨¨s. I took that to mean that Ritsuka was getting closer and closer to the end, although I hadn¡¯t ruled out the possibility that the whole thing was a farce and Dant¨¨s had misled him into fighting in order to pull him deeper into the trap.

    Either way, of the Servants we knew about, that only left Bradamante, who, it turned out, was indeed the next Lord, only instead of being some strange, twisted version of herself¡­

    ¡°It was like we were talking to a different person,¡± Ritsuka told us. ¡°The way she spoke, the words she used, even, um, no offense to Bradamante, but the confidence in her voice, too, it was all really different.¡±

    ¡°How so?¡± asked Da Vinci.

    ¡°Well¡­¡± Ritsuka hesitated. ¡°She honestly sounded¡­more like Jeanne than herself.¡±

    ¡°Huh?¡± was Romani¡¯s eloquent response.

    ¡°But, like,¡± said Rika, ¡°wasn¡¯t Jalter right there with you?¡±

    Ritsuka shook his head. ¡°I mean the original Jeanne. The one we met in Orl¨¦ans. It, um, also pissed Jeanne Alter off pretty badly, too, because she noticed it as well.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡± Marie began. ¡°That¡­shouldn¡¯t be possible. If there was some kind of connection between them, then maybe something like that could be done, but aside from being over six hundred years apart, they wouldn¡¯t even have spoken the same language.¡±

    Da Vinci hummed. ¡°In the broadest sense, they¡¯re both French, but the Director is right, that¡¯s a very tenuous connection. Are you sure it wasn¡¯t just a coincidence?¡±

    Ritsuka shrugged helplessly. ¡°Some of the stuff she said about anger and hatred,¡± he said, ¡°it reminded me of what she said to Jeanne Alter in Orl¨¦ans. That¡¯s why I said she sounded a lot like Jeanne.¡±

    Or at least enough to convince him that she was, somehow. I had to admit, it sounded a little out there to me, too, but maybe I was too used to people using projections and puppets and human minions ¡ª considering I¡¯d fought a number of such people over my career ¡ª to care all that much about the how and the why.

    ¡°There¡¯s a lot we don¡¯t know about how Chateau d¡¯If works,¡± I said, metaphorically waving it all off, ¡°so I don¡¯t think the mechanics of it really matter. She said she still fought you, Ritsuka, or the person possessing her body did.¡±

    Ritsuka nodded. ¡°Yeah. She was, um, a little clumsy, honestly. Like she wasn¡¯t used to the weight of her lance. Maybe she was expecting it to be longer and heavier?¡±

    Rika snorted and slapped a hand over her mouth. ¡°N-no,¡± she mumbled from between her fingers, sounding like she was fighting down a laugh, ¡°I won¡¯t. That one¡¯s too easy!¡±

    I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, even as Ritsuka¡¯s expression became pinched and pained.

    ¡°It made the fight easier,¡± he went on, as much to move past that as anything else, it seemed. ¡°She didn¡¯t even use her Noble Phantasm.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps because she didn¡¯t know how,¡± Da Vinci thought aloud. ¡°Or maybe because she didn¡¯t have permission.¡±

    Romani sighed. ¡°Alright. I guess we¡¯re just going to assume that it really was Jeanne d¡¯Arc using Bradamante¡¯s Spirit Origin then.¡±

    Marie looked like she agreed and didn¡¯t like it one bit.

    ¡°A-anyway,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°That made six Lords of Judgment, so we went back to take a rest before the last one¡­¡±

    And along the way, since Jeanne-in-Bradamante¡¯s-body had already revealed so much of it, Dant¨¨s had laid his identity and his story bare. How he considered himself a separate person from the Dant¨¨s who lived, achieved his revenge, found love and peace again, and died. The Avenger Servant in that prison, that mockery of Chateau d¡¯If, was not Edmond Dant¨¨s, but the wrathful Count of Monte Cristo, because he could never let go of his anger and hatred so long as he existed. It defined him ¡ª and so, he could not be Dant¨¨s, because Dant¨¨s had moved on long before his death.

    I guess I understood his logic better than anyone else in the room. In his position, if I had made it to the Throne, been summoned as Skitter, in my worst moments, I didn¡¯t think I would have considered myself the same Taylor Hebert that I was right now. The person I¡¯d become after everything was over.

    If that made any sense.

    When they arrived back in the cell, it was to find the woman, Merc¨¦d¨¨s, gone, and no trace of her left behind inside the room.

    Marie sighed. ¡°She was the last Lord of Judgment, wasn¡¯t she?¡±

    Resignation made her voice heavy. Ritsuka nodded sheepishly.

    ¡°We never did find out her real name,¡± he said, ¡°but yeah, she was waiting for us in the last Hall of Judgment, and we had to fight her. She didn¡¯t use a Noble Phantasm, but, um, she did summon all of the restless wraiths in the prison to fight beside her, so I guess that was kind of like a Noble Phantasm in a way¡­¡±

    ¡°But you still beat her,¡± said Mash. ¡°Right, Senpai?¡±

    ¡°It was harder than I was expecting,¡± Ritsuka admitted, ¡°and she said a lot of similar things to Avenger as Jeanne did while she was possessing Bradamante, but yeah, we beat her. After that¡­¡±

    He hesitated. I thought I knew why, because if it was just as simple as defeating the seventh Lord, then there was no reason for him not to just say ¡®and then I woke up.¡¯ The fact that he hadn¡¯t told me that my earlier hunch was right.

    ¡°You had to fight Dant¨¨s.¡±

    Ritsuka grimaced. ¡°¡­Yeah. He was the last obstacle. Only one living human had ever escaped Chateau d¡¯If, he said, so of the two of us, one had to win and escape, and the other had to stay behind and become the next Abb¨¦ Faria.¡±

    A shiver went down my spine, unnoticed by anyone else. Only one could escape. So if I had given into my frustration and forced my way into things, would that have meant that it really would have come down to one of us having to kill the other to make it out? Would I really have to have either killed Ritsuka, soak my hands in his blood, or let him kill me in order for just one of us to escape?

    In going to rescue him, would I have doomed at least one of us to end up dead? The answer to that was a frighteningly possible ¡®maybe.¡¯

    Romani rubbed at his brow as though warding away a headache. ¡°The next Abb¨¦ Faria?¡±

    Ritsuka shrugged. ¡°I didn¡¯t really understand it either,¡± he said, ¡°but I knew that it meant we had to fight, so¡­ We fought. And it was hard, but together, Jeanne Alter and I managed to defeat him, although¡­¡±

    Ritsuka looked away and trailed off, leaving the thought hanging.

    ¡°Although¡­?¡± Romani prompted.

    Ritsuka shook his head. ¡°It¡¯s nothing. After we defeated him, Dant¨¨s told us it was all a trap laid by the King of Mages, and I was just the one unfortunate enough to have been caught up in it. He reached through the Demon God at the end of Okeanos and¡­ Honestly, I didn¡¯t get all of the details, but since I was the Master who summoned Jeanne Alter and she delivered the final blow, I guess I was the one who got affected.¡±

    And that lined up neatly with my own theory on the issue. It would even explain why Jeanne Alter wound up pulled along for the ride, since she was the one who actually did land that final blow on Forneus. Maybe, since she was already technically dead, she hadn¡¯t counted as someone who could ¡®live and escape,¡¯ and that was why she¡¯d been able to leave at the end without consequence.

    ¡°And since the curse took on the structure of Chateau d¡¯If, it was only natural that it acted as a catalyst to summon the Count of Monte Cristo,¡± said Da Vinci. She nodded. ¡°Yes, that makes sense, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    It did. That part also lined up with one of the theories I¡¯d had running, back before I¡¯d come to the conclusion it had to be Edmond Dant¨¨s who was tagging along with Ritsuka. Everything tied up together in a little bow ¡ª and with the Lords of Judgment vanquished and Dant¨¨s himself defeated, Ritsuka could wake up and return to us, none the worse for wear.

    But only because I hadn¡¯t gone in after him. Only because I had listened to Marie¡¯s and Da Vinci¡¯s and Romani¡¯s judgment for long enough for him to save himself.

    ¡°And that was it?¡± asked Marie. ¡°That was all the more there was to it? There weren¡¯t any other tasks you needed to complete before you were free?¡±

    Ritsuka shook his head. ¡°None. After Avenger was defeated and faded away, Jeanne Alter started to disappear, too, and I woke up.¡±

    ¡°Took you long enough!¡± Rika said, still a little shaky. ¡°If I¡¯d been the one in that stupid prison, I¡¯d have done it all in one night!¡±

    Ritsuka laughed a little. ¡°I¡¯m sure.¡±

    ¡°At least everything turned out okay.¡± Mash sighed. ¡°I knew you could do it, Senpai.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s cheeks burned red, and he ducked his head. ¡°Thanks, Mash.¡±

    ¡°Well, it answered most of our questions.¡± Marie grunted. ¡°But still! That we all got so careless we didn¡¯t even consider the idea the enemy would cast curses on us as they died!¡±

    ¡°To be fair, Director,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°I¡¯m not sure we could have done anything even if we had thought of it. After all, we couldn¡¯t detect this curse, could we? Not even after it had already sprung into action, so to speak, and taken Ritsuka hostage.¡±

    Marie didn¡¯t look happy to admit that she had a point. Her face had pulled into a sour, disgruntled expression.

    ¡°We still don¡¯t know if the enemy can do this more than once,¡± I said, ¡°let alone what it might have cost them to do it this time. At the very least, we can be on guard for something like this happening in the future.¡±

    It didn¡¯t mollify her, exactly, but some of the tension left Marie¡¯s body.

    Romani, however, looked troubled.

    ¡°Ritsuka,¡± he began, ¡°you said that Dan¡­that Avenger referred to this all as a trap laid by the King of Mages, right?¡±

    Ritsuka nodded. ¡°That¡¯s right. I tried to ask more about that, but he told me that it was dangerous to use his True Name so casually, so he wouldn¡¯t really tell me much more than that.¡±

    Romani¡¯s lips drew into a tight line.

    ¡°And between that and the Demon Gods, I suppose that confirms the identity of our ultimate enemy, doesn¡¯t it?¡± said Da Vinci.

    It did, come to think of it. Not that we¡¯d had a plethora of candidates who fit the bill before, but that particular title kind of narrowed it down. The only one it could be was ¡ª

    ¡°King Solomon,¡± Romani murmured, ¡°but¡­ Why on Earth would a Heroic Spirit like that do something like this? It just doesn¡¯t make any sense at all.¡±

    ¡°Maybe he was summoned by a Master somewhere else who made him do all of this,¡± Ritsuka suggested.

    Romani¡¯s wasn¡¯t the only expression to twist. It was Marie who said, ¡°If you knew anything at all about just how powerful a Heroic Spirit he was, the idea that he would obey a Master to do anything he didn¡¯t want to would sound just as ludicrous to you as it did to the rest of us.¡±

    ¡°Yes, the why of it does present us with a mystery of its own, doesn¡¯t it?¡± Da Vinci mused. ¡°Unfortunately, we could sit here for days, and I¡¯m not sure we would have any better idea than we do right now. It might be prudent to put that off until we can try and look back into that era with SHEBA and determine just if and how these so-called Demon Gods are connected to him.¡±

    Several stomachs ¡ª including my own ¡ª chose that moment to rumble, as though to remind all of us that we had put off eating breakfast to hear Ritsuka¡¯s tale.

    ¡°And those of us still living have yet to eat breakfast,¡± Da Vinci added. ¡°I think we can put this discussion off for a little while, yes? Why don¡¯t all of you go and get something to eat? It won¡¯t do any of us any good if you all collapse from hunger ¡ª especially if our resident physician happens to be one of them!¡±

    Marie grimaced. Faint splotches of pink still decorated her cheeks. ¡°A-a good idea! For now, as Director, I¡¯m officially adjourning this discussion!¡±

    ¡°Time for food!¡± Rika cheered. She leapt out of her chair.

    ¡°I wonder what Emiya made for breakfast this morning?¡± Mash thought aloud. Some of Rika¡¯s cheer evaporated immediately.

    ¡°Y-yeah! I bet it¡¯s really good!¡±

    Mash turned to Ritsuka. ¡°Do you think he would make something special to celebrate your safe return, Senpai? Maybe he might cook something Japanese again, like okonomiyaki or oyakodon.¡±

    Ritsuka hummed thoughtfully as he slipped his shirt back on and hopped down from the impromptu examination table. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I think I¡¯m in the mood for something different, right now. Maybe he could make me some French toast?¡±

    My cheek twitched. I had to fight down a smile.

    ¡°I¡¯m certain he¡¯d be all too happy to, if you asked,¡± said Da Vinci.

    We started filing out of the room, the twins and Mash first, Marie and Da Vinci following behind, and me behind them. Romani, however, lingered, brow furrowed, staring intently at the wall as though it held the answers to the meaning of life. Breakfast looked like the last thing on his mind, just then.

    I hesitated at the door. ¡°Romani?¡±

    He blinked, and like a drowning man surfacing for air, pulled himself out of whatever hole he¡¯d dug or whatever spiral his thoughts had led him down. He plastered on a painfully fake smile.

    ¡°Coming!¡± he said with false cheer. ¡°Yeah, I think some food would be great, right now!¡±

    I didn¡¯t call him on it. Something about what we¡¯d learned troubled him. Maybe, given how much he seemed to know about King David, he was a big fan of King Solomon. There were certainly worse people to hero worship, or at least I would have said so before all of this started, so finding out that the guy you looked up to was a genocidal maniac couldn¡¯t have been a good feeling.

    ¡°It can¡¯t actually be true,¡± I heard him whisper to himself on our way out, ¡°can it?¡±

    Unfortunately, it seemed like Romani, just like I had, was having to learn the hard way that your heroes were rarely as heroic as you liked to believe they were.

 Chapter CXXII: Parole Party

    Chapter CXXII: Parole Party

    Waiting for us in the cafeteria was a large banner proclaiming, "Welcome back, Ritsuka!" in the same sort of big, bold font you might expect from a birthday party. It hung from the ceiling, attached there through no visible means I could immediately see ¡ª I think Marie might actually have had a stroke if someone had gone as far as to drill in hooks to hang it from ¡ª and suspended above a set of tables that had been pushed together to form one longer table. To disguise this, someone had thrown a tablecloth over them, which was itself decorated with patterns of stars and confetti.

    Maybe someone really had originally made it for birthday parties. I couldn''t see Marie approving, which would definitely be a good reason for me to never have seen it before.

    Sat atop the table were a series of plates, one for each chair arrayed around it, and at the one end was a cart bearing a large cake. "Congratulations!" was written upon it in curling capital letters, blue on white, and multicolored streaks raced away from them like an explosion, ending in little starbursts at seemingly random distances.

    Also, every single one of our Servants was there, and I think the only reason why the rest of the staff hadn''t been brought along was because some of them actually had jobs they needed to be taking care of and some of them were in need of sleep.

    "What the ¡ª" Marie began.

    As though she had been waiting for just that moment, Jeanne Alter blew on the noisemaker clenched between her teeth, and it bleated loudly like a deflating balloon.

    Marie growled, "Why you¡­!"

    Around her noisemaker, Jeanne Alter smirked.

    "Is this all for me?" Ritsuka asked in a small voice.

    "Of course, Master!" Bradamante answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

    "Don''t read too much into it," El-Melloi II warned. I wasn''t sure how he could stand here and say that with a straight face.

    "It''s a bit slapdash," said Arash, smiling, "but yes, it''s all for you, Ritsuka."

    "It was his idea," said A¨ªfe, jerking her thumb at Arash. "He said that we should do something to celebrate the fact you came out of your ordeal safe and sound, and El-Melloi II said that sounded like some kind of party."

    "You make it sound like I was the one who suggested it," El-Melloi II said sourly. "I was just making an observation."

    "But it was a very good observation!" Bradamante insisted.

    "So I brought the idea to Emiya," said Arash, "and he suggested bringing all of the Servants in for it, since none of us could do anything to help you out when you needed it. This was the least we could do."

    "Speak for yourself," drawled Jeanne Alter. "While you sorry shits were sitting around going, ''oh, woe is me, for my Master is trapped and cannot escape,'' I was in there with him taking asses and kicking names."

    "I think the phrase is actually kicking asses and taking names," Siegfried interrupted politely.

    Jeanne Alter grinned. "I know what I said."

    "And we all agreed," said Hippolyta. "To make up for our inability to come to your aid, we would host a party for you celebrating your triumphant return. Even those of us who are not properly your Servant decided it was the best way to make it up to you."

    "After all," Sam added, "we''re all on the same team, here, right? You might not hold everyone''s contract, Ritsuka, but these guys are all your friends and comrades."

    "People who have fought alongside you," said A¨ªfe. "People who have shed blood on the same battlefield, fighting the same enemies."

    "Some more metaphorically than others," muttered El-Melloi II.

    "So even if we were a little rushed," Arash concluded, "it comes from the heart."

    Ritsuka''s eyes watered. He looked like he was holding back tears. "You guys¡­" he said hoarsely.

    "And you didn''t think to ask permission?" Marie demanded furiously. "This is a public space! You can''t just go hanging whatever decorations you like wherever you want! People have to eat here!"

    Arash winced. "Ah. Well, about that¡­"

    "I think we can let it slide, in this case," said Romani. He looked at Marie. "Don''t you, Director? After all, nothing was destroyed and no one was hurt by this."

    Marie scoffed and folded her arms. "It''s the principle of the thing!" she insisted sourly.

    "The thing that amazes me," said Da Vinci, "is how you all got this put together so quickly! We hadn''t even announced Ritsuka''s recovery to the rest of the facility yet, but you''ve already decorated here ¡ª if somewhat sparsely ¡ª and prepared a cake for the occasion."

    "That would be my doing!" Shakespeare proclaimed proudly. He bent into a theatrical bow. "When Master awoke earlier this morning, I set about informing all who would listen about his safe return from the jaws of death! The harrowing tale of his adventures through the perilous Chateau d''If and the horrors that awaited inside of it! His courageous triumph over impossible odds in the most treacherous prison ever forged by man!"

    I wonder how much of it he embellished. There was no way he''d stayed around for the whole story, not to make it here quickly enough for Emiya to bake a cake. Not unless he''d been doing something he should have told us about, like using his Noble Phantasm to watch what was happening to Ritsuka inside of that curse.

    That would have been very handy to have while we were all worrying about whether or not Ritsuka would even come out of that thing alive, let alone intact.

    Da Vinci shrugged. "Well, that explains that, I suppose."

    "Or enough of it, at least," Romani agreed. He looked about the room. "I don''t see Emiya, though. He''s the one who made the cake, isn''t he?"

    "I''m finishing breakfast!" Emiya called from the kitchen. "No one touch the cake yet! You''ll spoil your appetite!"

    Rika, who looked like she''d been eager to dive into the cake, let out a long, disappointed groan. "What are you, my mom?"

    "It would be an upgrade from house-husband!"

    Romani laughed even as Rika poked her tongue out in the direction of the kitchen. "I''m all for having your dessert before dinner, Rika, but considering how little you''ve been eating the last few days, I think this one time you really should listen to Emiya."

    Ritsuka blinked and looked over at Romani. "How little she''s been eating?"

    "Ahaha!" Rika laughed awkwardly. "It''s nothing, Onii-chan! Just a joke! He''s kidding!"

    "We were all worried, Senpai," said Mash, completely ignoring the look of mounting panic that was stretching across Rika''s face. "But Senpai was worried most of all. She refused to leave your side the whole three days, except for, u-um, you know, the n-necessities."

    Ritsuka turned to his sister, whose face had at first gone white, but was now so red that the only thing she could do was try and hide in her hands. It did nothing to hide her ears, however, the tips of which were red enough to make her hair seem pale and washed out.

    "She did?"

    "She was the first to volunteer when we started suggesting methods of mounting a rescue operation as well," Da Vinci told him, and by the smile curling her lips, she knew exactly what she was doing to Rika.

    "And she was very angry with us when we decided we couldn''t afford to jump into that sort of thing without being sure it was the right decision," Romani added.

    "Stop!" Rika moaned.

    "Your sister cares about you a great deal, Ritsuka," said Arash, smiling, "so make sure you always come back to her, okay?"

    Ritsuka smiled and nodded. "Yeah!"

    Rika just groaned, hunching over as though she could disappear into her palms. "You''re all the worst!" she said through her hands.

    I didn''t think it was very funny, but several people, including Romani and Da Vinci, smiled and laughed at the interplay. Maybe there were some old biases sneaking back in, but it felt a little too much like Winslow and the times when Emma had used the secrets I''d confided in her against me. Particularly the stuff about my mom.

    Of course, Emma was long gone, and I didn''t even know if Sophia had survived Gold Morning. Madison? I hadn''t heard anything about her since before Leviathan. The people were long since irrelevant, and their petty school politicking inconsequential, but that didn''t mean I couldn''t remember how it had felt at the time to be on the receiving end.

    It turned out, however, I didn''t need to step in on Rika''s behalf, because someone else did it for me.

    "I''m going to butt my nose into things here," Emiya announced as he wheeled another cart laden with food towards the table, "and save my poor Master from some well-deserved teasing. Breakfast is ready ¡ª a bit heavier than usual for a morning meal, but those of you with stomachs that don''t just convert whatever you eat into magical energy, you might thank me later when it''s time for the cake."

    Like some kind of caterer, he went about placing plates of delicious smelling food at each of the chairs arrayed around the table, saying all the while, "Circumstances have thrown our usual Servant meal day schedule off course, so I took the liberty of bending things around for today. There''s enough for everyone."

    "And exactly enough chairs around this table to sit everyone," Da Vinci noted wryly.

    "Of course," said Emiya. "There''s a lot of things I don''t care about as a Heroic Spirit, but if there''s one thing I''ll take pride in, it''s my cooking. You should know by now that I don''t halfass it."

    "Next time, ask permission before you adjust the schedule," Marie ordered grumpily. She picked out a chair and slid into it, and that seemed to be the cue for everyone else as well, so we all picked out a spot to sit down for breakfast.

    As I should have expected, there were exactly enough chairs for all of us, and not one spare or missing.

    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    "Apologies, Director," said Emiya, "but Ritsuka''s recovery was sudden, so this entire thing is short notice. There wasn''t any time to ask permission to alter the schedule."

    "Which is exactly why I''m letting it slide, this time!" she replied.

    Emiya chuckled. "Of course, Director."

    "I can''t say I have any experience with modern food," said Hippolyta, "but it looks quite tasty."

    "Oh, just wait!" Bradamante gushed from beside her. "Sir Emiya''s food is on a completely different level! I promise you, once you''ve had a taste, you''ll be spoiled for anyone else''s food, no matter how good they are."

    "I don''t know if I''d go that far," said Bellamy from her other side, "but this guy''s definitely good. I had a chance to try his food before, back in that Singularity, and man, he could cook for royalty!"

    "High praise, coming from the Prince of Pirates," said Emiya.

    A huff of air escaped my nostrils, not quite a snort, and when a plate was set down in front of me, I picked up my utensils and dug in.

    It was just as good as always. The way the chicken all but disintegrated in my mouth, the tangy flavor of the sauce that clung to the rice, the finely diced mushrooms that gave it that little extra burst ¡ª I wouldn''t say so out loud, but just for this, I was glad to have Emiya back.

    I had to get his recipes before this was all over. I was only a halfway decent chef, had never made anything particularly complicated, but a halfway decent chef following instructions from a guy who could cook like this would still beat out pizza and takeout any day of the week.

    As we all ate, the group descended into a murmur of disjointed conversations, each person striking up a conversation with their neighbors as they enjoyed another amazing meal made by Emiya. Da Vinci, Romani, and Marie had put their heads together and were discussing something quietly, casting the occasional furtive glance at the rest of the group. I was sure I would find out what that was about later. Shakespeare had enraptured Bellamy and Hippolyta (and Bradamante, by virtue of how close she was to the other two) with a dramatic retelling of Ritsuka''s adventures in Chateau d''If, completely with exaggerated motions of his fork and knife, as though he was waving about a sword.

    There was almost certainly something going on there that he hadn''t told us about earlier. If he really had hid from us exactly how closely he could observe what was going on, then I was definitely going to have to have a talk with him. Maybe when I went to see what that multi-volume book set was all about and why he didn''t want me to look too closely at it.

    El-Melloi II, A¨ªfe, and Siegfried, however, seemed content to simply eat and watch the rest of us. El-Melloi II had even set his lollipop off to the side on his plate while he ate, and I couldn''t help wondering what his meal had to taste like with that sugary flavor still sitting on his tongue.

    Arash, fittingly, had chosen to sit next to me, smiling a little, his eyes glittering as he took in the atmosphere. Satisfied at a job well done, if I had to guess, and I suppose he really had earned it, since he had basically put this all together.

    You really arranged all of this for Ritsuka''s sake? I asked him as I ate my own meal.

    He paused, glancing at me, and then kept eating. For Ritsuka, but also for everyone else, he replied. Things have been tense, and no one was able to do anything about what was happening. With the simulator still unable to account for Servants and Noble Phantasms, there weren''t many ways for us all to blow off steam.

    And so he''d come up with this, a way for everyone to get a bit of a cathartic relief from that pressure. A way to bring the whole group together and unite everyone for an hour or two where they could let loose a little, and maybe do a bit of bonding.

    I wished I''d thought of it. That this sort of thing came as naturally to me as it seemed to him.

    Thank you, I told him.

    He glanced at me again and smiled. Anytime, Taylor.

    Once breakfast was over and we''d all had our fill, there was a bit of a lull, where everyone just talked about one thing or another. Ritsuka wound up telling the story of what had actually happened to him in Chateau d''If, sans Shakespeare''s embellishments, complete with snide remarks from Jeanne Alter. Everyone took it in stride, like she wasn''t doing anything unusual, because in a way, she wasn''t.

    It was frankly kind of remarkable. How she''d gone from an outsider to part of the group that quickly and easily, just because she''d been there to help Ritsuka when the rest of us couldn''t. A single battle in Okeanos, one night watching a movie together, and an adventure with her Master ¡ª like that, she was an ally, and everyone seemed to have come to accept her eccentricities as part of her personality.

    During the whole thing, A¨ªfe only reached over to smack her on the back of the head once.

    And now that it was over, we were laughing about it. Telling jokes. Just a day ago, most of us hadn''t been sure if he was going to even survive, and now, everyone smiled and grinned and congratulated him for his bravery and daring, as though there had never been any doubt that he would conquer every one of the trials of Chateau d''If and come back to us. It honestly felt a little surreal.

    But I guess these were all Servants. Heroic Spirits. The resurrected remnants of the exalted dead. Although the details were new, each and every single one of them had done stuff like this before and triumphed over it, including me. None of them were truly frightened or appalled ¡ª even if Bradamante and Mash gasped at the appropriate points ¡ª because once upon a time, they''d had adventures just like it.

    I guess it was true what Arash had said to me before. That it wouldn''t be long before the twins had stories of their own to tell, tales of their own daring-dos that would capture attention and captivate the mind of the listener. I think a part of me had expected that I would be there for all of them.

    Once Ritsuka had finished telling the tale of Prison Tower on the Isle of Despair ¡ª I had a feeling that was going to be the official title on the report when it was filed ¡ª Emiya reappeared with a large, flat knife and declared that it was time for cake, to much enthusiasm. He cut the cake we''d seen earlier into perfectly even slices, one for each of us, and then started passing them out to everyone at the table.

    (Mash fed a little bit of hers to her perpetual goblin. It was probably too much to hope for that the thing would get sick, and as much as we hated each other, I didn''t dislike Fou enough to wish his vomit on Mash and her clothing.)

    Naturally, Emiya was a good baker, too. I didn''t think I could say it was quite as good as the meals he made, but it wasn''t at all bad either. Sweet, but not too sweet, with just enough icing to enhance the flavor without making you sick of it by the time you finished eating. Simple, but satisfying.

    Eventually, however, our little party had to come to an end, and Marie stood up and smashed her hands together loudly. The entire table fell silent.

    "Alright," she said when she was sure she had everyone''s attention, "we can''t stay here all day, because some of us have responsibilities we have to get back to ¡ª"

    Romani sighed.

    "¡ª so I''m officially calling an end to this!" She turned a stern look on Ritsuka. "I''ll be expecting a report on the entire incident to go along with your report on the Okeanos Singularity. Everyone else," she added, "you can return to your normal routines until it''s time for the briefing on the next Singularity, as long as you aren''t cluttering up the cafeteria!"

    "In other words," Emiya chimed in, smirking, "you don''t have to go home, but you can''t stay here."

    Rika groaned and immediately turned to El-Melloi II, "Hot Pops!"

    "You''ve already missed out on three days of lessons," he said mercilessly, predicting her request, and when her face fell, a grin curled on his lips, "so I don''t see what one more day will hurt."

    Rika''s face lifted with hope, and her mouth pulled wide.

    "I won''t make you train on a full stomach," A¨ªfe said, "but I fully expect to see you in the gym tomorrow morning, you two. You especially, Ritsuka, to make up for what you lost in bed for the last few days."

    Rika''s smile died again almost as soon as it was born, and she sagged in her chair. "Ugh!"

    Ritsuka only sighed. "Right. I''ll make sure we''ll be there."

    A¨ªfe nodded. "See that you do."

    She and El-Melloi II were the first to leave, followed shortly by Siegfried, who offered a short, but earnest, "I am glad to see you recovered, Lord Ritsuka," before he went. Shakespeare made his "exit, stage left!" shortly afterwards, cackling to himself about what a great story this whole thing would make. Hippolyta politely excused herself not long after, and then Da Vinci, Romani, and Marie all went, too.

    "As fun as this has all been, there were several projects I happened to be in the middle of before this fiasco," Da Vinci said, "so I''m going to get back to those now. Ciao, everyone!"

    And she was gone.

    "Yeah, I guess we do have things we kind of need to get back to, huh?" Romani said with the air of a man walking to his death. "Man, even being Vice Director has a lot of responsibilities attached, doesn''t it?"

    "You''re the only one qualified for the position," Marie told him. "It''s only natural that I should give you that sort of responsibility."

    Romani laughed self-deprecatingly. "Well, when you put it that way¡­"

    "You can do it, Doc!" Rika cheered for him.

    "Fou-fou! Fou-kyu-kyu fou fou!" the gremlin echoed. Mash scratched under his chin, to his delight.

    "Fou is saying, we believe in you, Doctor Roman," she translated. "So give it your best, okay?"

    Romani smiled. "With an endorsement like that, I guess I don''t have any other choice, huh?"

    Marie looked as though she very much wanted to roll her eyes, but managed to suppress the impulse at least long enough to make it out into the hallway first.

    With most of us gone, there wasn''t much reason to hang around, so with a promise to see the twins and Mash later on for lunch and then dinner, I excused myself and left.

    It was tempting to head off to the library and try to look up some more information about King Solomon and his Demon Gods, but I was pretty sure I''d exhausted what little there was a while ago. Looking back on it, it was entirely possible that the reason I was having so much trouble finding anything that wasn''t locked behind Marisbury''s access codes was because Flauros had removed or destroyed anything really important while he was here hiding in Lev''s body, to make sure that we had as little to go on as possible and couldn''t prepare for a direct confrontation. It was the sort of thing I would have done in their place.

    Frustrating. Doubly so because there wasn''t anything I could do about it one way or the other.

    I''d missed my morning workout, so I resolved to catch up on it later in the afternoon once my food had had a chance to digest and went back to my room to sit down with a novel. Without anything else to do much research on, it was the only thing I really could do with my time.

    After the panic and the agony of waiting that the last few days had been, it felt a little odd to go back to the mundanity of life at Chaldea between deployments. I''d spent almost the entirety of the last three days on metaphorical pins and needles, so it was kind of strange to lose that urgency and that undercurrent as I went about my day.

    Although I wouldn''t say I''d forgotten about that dream I''d had, the one about racing through the Birdcage to rescue Ritsuka. That¡­ If Doctor Yamada was around, I would have probably gone to her about it, just to make sure the air was clear and so was my conscience, but since the only person even resembling a mental healthcare professional currently in Chaldea was Romani, who was overworked on the best of days, there wasn''t much I could do except try and convince myself that everything was fine and it didn''t mean anything. Just the stress getting to me.

    I wasn''t sure what it said that the dream had smushed together my past and my present the way it had and I honestly wasn''t sure I wanted to know. It probably just meant I missed my friends, and I already knew that. I didn''t need a psychiatrist to figure that out.

    Nonetheless, by the time dinner rolled around, nothing had happened. There was no new emergency making a play for our attention and no one had been ensnared by a curse by any of the enemies we''d defeated during our times deployed. Aside from that morning, it was a completely normal day at Chaldea, and I was actually kind of glad it wound up so boring.

    I still left Muninn on the shelf in Ritsuka''s room, just to make sure he didn''t relapse overnight. Everyone seemed to have forgotten she was there, and I would keep her there until I was sure there wasn''t anything to worry about ¡ª a day, maybe two or three on the long end ¡ª then, I''d retrieve her without anyone being any the wiser.

    I made sure to look away during private moments, of course, by deliberately turning my attention away from Muninn''s senses whenever he started reaching for any of the buttons, zippers, or hems on his clothing. Just because I was worried about him after the ordeal of the last few days didn''t mean I was going to completely disregard his privacy.

    Fortunately, nothing happened. Muninn didn''t alert me to any abnormalities throughout the night, and Ritsuka went to bed and woke up without any trouble at all. It seemed the curse really was well and truly broken.

    I snuck Muninn out the next morning while he was training with A¨ªfe. Just so I wasn''t tempted to leave her in there for another week.

    The day after Ritsuka woke up from his coma, things had returned completely to normal. We all went back to our routines ¡ª a morning workout in the gym, supervised by A¨ªfe, followed by a hearty breakfast cooked by our resident professional chef, and then a few hours of relaxation until lunchtime, and later on in the afternoon, while the twins were off having a lesson in magecraft fundamentals with El-Melloi II, Marie and I met Mash at the pool for another swimming lesson.

    As he had every day since they started, Fou decided to tag along, still in that ridiculously oversized jersey and still with that annoying whistle of his. It was hard to say exactly how intelligent that thing was, but I was beginning to suspect that he was doing it just to get on my nerves. The frustrating part was that it was working.

    On the bright side, Mash was coming along well and picking up how to swim with speed. Considering that was the main point behind these lessons, I decided I was going to take my wins on that front where I could. Let the little gremlin have his fun, as long as Mash was having hers. I''d dealt with a lot pettier nonsense from people who really knew how to hurt me, so I wasn''t going to let him get to me.

    Sorry, Fou, but if you were trying to get under my skin, you were going to have to try a lot harder than that.

    Soon enough, it was time to call it quits for the day again, and the three of us climbed out of the pool to dry off. I would never say so aloud, but despite how classy and tasteful her swimsuit was, Marie looked a little silly in her swim cap and goggles. Like the stereotypical aliens in pre-cape B-movies almost, although I suppose I probably didn''t look all that much different.

    It gave me a distraction not to think about Mash, now that Ritsuka''s issue was dealt with, so that I didn''t have to remember how much Marisbury had taken from her and how much would be taken from her in the not so distant future.

    "It really isn''t as hard as I was afraid it would be," Mash commented cheerfully.

    "You''re doing well," I told her. "You''re a real natural at this, Mash."

    She smiled at me. "That''s only because I have such great teachers, Miss Taylor. You and the Director seem to know just how to explain everything so I can understand it!"

    Privately, I didn''t really think that was true. I was trying to teach her by mimicking the lessons the Wards had way back when, but as with most government programs, those lessons had only been designed to cover the bases and nothing more. If I hadn''t already had a decently solid foundation, I didn''t think I would have learned much of anything in them, and the fact that Mash was getting as much out of my own poor imitations as she was had to have had as much to do with her own talent as it did Marie shoring up my gaps.

    A complicated expression crossed Marie''s face. "And¡­you''re having fun?"

    Mash blinked for a second, and then she smiled again. "Yes, I think I am! I know it''s an important skill I need to have in case a situation arises during a deployment inside a Singularity, but it''s actually really fun, too!"

    The shrill blare of a sports whistle blew, and the little gremlin came trotting up to us, letting out another sharp trill with every bounce of his paws as he bounded over. Mash, unbothered, reached down to let him jump up onto her arm and hop up to her shoulder.

    "Don''t worry, Fou," she told him, "I know you''d come to rescue me if I was in trouble."

    I tried to imagine it jumping into the pool to waddle out and rescue a struggling Mash, and the mental image was so ridiculous that I actually wanted to laugh.

    "It''ll be dinnertime soon enough," I announced. "We should all go clean up and get ready."

    "Of course!" said Mash. She gave me and the Director a polite bow. "Thank you for another lesson, Miss Taylor, Director! I look forward to our next one tomorrow!"

    "Tomorrow," I echoed.

    And she turned around and left. Fou looked back at me from his perch, pinning me with his beady little eyes for a few seconds, and then turned back around and ignored me as he and Mash disappeared down the hallway.

    For a long moment, Marie and I stood there in silence, interrupted only by the sloshing of the pool and the hum of the filter and pumps.

    Then, haltingly, Marie said, "It''s¡­"

    She trailed off. I didn''t need her to finish. Not when I was having the same conflicted thoughts, wanting to be happy for Mash but struggling because I knew what awaited her in about a year and a half. The shadow that clung to these moments of simple joy.

    "Yeah."

    There was nothing else either of us could say, so we left the pool room and went back to our own rooms to shower and get ready for dinner. Expectedly, when I walked into the cafeteria about an hour later, it was to find Emiya had made another delicious meal, and I sat with the twins and Mash as we all ate and enjoyed it, them tired from their lesson with El-Melloi II and me pleasantly worn out from my own lesson with Mash.

    At least this much could be relatively uncomplicated. Rika and Emiya, it seemed, still hadn''t managed to patch things up between them, but I gave them some leeway on account of what the last half a week had been like and resolved to give them another few days to work things out. If and when I needed to intervene, well, I''d work out the details then. Something told me it wouldn''t be as simple as locking them in a room together until they ironed everything out.

    Halfway through dinner, four communicators chimed, and I shared a confused look with the twins and Mash as we all answered it to find a message from Da Vinci. Short, simple, and perfectly vague, it read:

    I have a surprise for you all tomorrow! But I''ll need your Mystic Code modules first, so please bring them down to my workshop before bed tonight, okay?

    I glanced at the twins, but they just looked back at me, equally befuddled, no more aware of what this surprise might be than I was.

    Whatever it was, knowing Da Vinci, it would either be incredibly thoughtful or incredibly ridiculous. Or maybe both at once.

 Chapter CXXIII: Standing on Golden Sands

    Chapter CXXIII: Standing on Golden Sands

    The next morning, a message from Da Vinci was already waiting for me on my communicator, letting me know that we had the day off from all other obligations and should report to the Command Room after breakfast. From the way it was worded, it had been sent just the same to all four of us ¡ª the Masters and Mash ¡ª and when they saw it, I had no doubt that the twins would roll over and go back to sleep for another hour or so, since it meant they wouldn''t have to spend the morning working out under A¨ªfe''s tutelage.

    Whatever this surprise was, I guess Da Vinci was expecting it to take up most of our day today. Had she finally fixed the simulator for Servants so we could have an entire day of stress-testing it? I''d been meaning to work in a few scrimmage matches whenever that happened, so one could only hope.

    Nonetheless, I didn''t see any reason why I should set aside my own morning routine, so I got up, got dressed for a workout, and then went to the gym, where I found Hippolyta, of all people, trying out the weight machines. She glanced up at me as I entered, then went back to doing her reps.

    "Does that even do anything for you?" I couldn''t help but ask.

    "Speaking strictly, no," she said, and she didn''t sound the least bit stressed or winded. "As a Servant, my strength will not increase, no matter how many repetitions I do or how much weight I lift. But there is a degree of¡­catharsis, I believe the word might be, to exercising like this. I''ve always found it to be a calming experience, although I confess that there is something different about modern methods of training."

    Yeah. I had to imagine that the ancients probably mostly did body weight exercises, with some drills run in full kit so that their warriors could get used to the feel of moving in armor and carrying weapons. If they did any kind of weight lifting, it was probably some kind of free weights ¡ª either crude ones, considering the metalworking of those times, or improvised.

    "I wasn''t aware those were rated for Servants," I said.

    "Truthfully, they are not," she replied, "so I must take great care to ensure I don''t cause any damage. That, in itself, is also a form of exercise, and considering that the time might come where I must rescue one of you, my Masters, it is all the more worthy one to pursue."

    My wrist throbbed with remembered pain from the time I woke Mash up and she grabbed my arm without controlling herself. It wasn''t the only time she had accidentally injured me, but the others were mostly when she was trying to push me out of the way of an attack and didn''t have the luxury of being gentle.

    How fragile us Masters must seem to our Servants, that we could be injured or maimed by a single careless shove. I''d heard a few Brutes talk that way, too, way back when. About how one of the first things they had to learn after getting their powers was how to avoid hurting people without meaning to.

    To Hippolyta, I said, "I agree. Remind me to tell you sometime about the egg exercise."

    She paused, brow furrowing. "Egg exercise?"

    Guess I was going to tell her about it now.

    "An exercise for learning to control super strength," I said. "It involves carrying an egg around and trying to avoid breaking it. I''m not sure we have any eggs to spare for it, though, so you might not be able to try it."

    "Perhaps not," she agreed. "I will have to ask that Servant in the kitchen ¡ª Emiya, was it? He may be able to tell me if Chaldea can spare the resources necessary."

    Or he might be appalled at the idea of wasting good food like that. It could be interesting to see what kind of face he would make when she asked.

    "Maybe a water balloon instead, then. We''ll have to see if that would work the same way."

    "Maybe," she allowed. "I defer to your experience on the matter, since you are more familiar with it than I."

    Yeah. Maybe not. We''d have to do some tests to make sure it could still be done with something like that. Worst case scenario, Emiya made a few and wasted a tiny bit of mana for us to find out that there really wasn''t a good substitute for eggs.

    I let Hippolyta get back to her own exercise and went over to the track to get mine in, running my usual number of laps plus three more, and then did a pair of cooldown laps so I didn''t crash. Then I went about the rest of my routine, and like that, an hour passed.

    Afterwards, I bade goodbye to Hippolyta and went back to my room for a shower to rinse the sweat off, dried my hair, did the rest of my ablutions, and right around 9:30, I made my way to the cafeteria for breakfast.

    As expected, the twins and Mash were already there and sat down, along with the day shift technicians and staff, so I went up to the front, where Emiya was already dishing me up a tray of food. Like he''d been waiting for me to step through the door.

    "Good morning," he said with a smile.

    "Morning," I replied. Blueberry pancakes today, crisp on the edges and browned to perfection ¡ª it was a wonder Rika hadn''t demanded chocolate ones yet. "Any idea what Da Vinci''s surprise is?"

    Since it seemed like she''d told all of the Servants, considering she''d gotten A¨ªfe and El-Melloi II to cancel their daily lessons with the twins.

    He smirked. "Even if I did know, I think I''d leave it a surprise. I will tell you, though, that I think everyone will enjoy it."

    If he wanted to play it that way¡­

    "And your talk with Rika?"

    His smirk fell and he sighed, dropping a few strips of bacon onto my plate.

    "It''s been hard to find the right moment," he admitted sourly. "Especially with everything that happened over the last several days, there just hasn''t been a good time to take her aside and discuss such a heavy issue."

    "You can''t put it off forever," I told him. "You need to get this handled before we deploy into the next Singularity."

    Or else I would take matters into my own hands. If I couldn''t force them to sit down and talk somehow, then as much as it would suck to go without his food, I would talk to Marie and Romani and get him taken off the team for the duration. This sort of baggage could get one or both of them killed, and I wasn''t about to let them carry it onto a mission.

    "I know," he agreed grudgingly, grimacing. "Maybe I''ll get my chance later on today. We''ll see. If not¡­" He sighed again. "I''ll figure it out."

    Gingerly, he set a glass of orange juice on my tray and said, "Enjoy your breakfast."

    "Thanks."

    I took my tray and meandered over to the table with the twins and Mash, and as I sat down, I asked, "Enjoy your morning off?"

    "Senpai!" Rika greeted.

    "Good morning, Senpai," said Ritsuka.

    "Good morning, Miss Taylor," Mash said.

    "Ugh, I don''t know what strings Da Vinci-chan pulled, but I owe her a big, sloppy kiss!" Rika groaned. "Another morning off from Super Action Mom''s training ¡ª I don''t care what the surprise is, that makes it all worth it!"

    What was it I had told them a while back? "The more you sweat in peace¡­"

    Rika stuck her tongue out at me. "After the last few days I''ve had, I just want to relax for a few days more. Is that so bad?"

    Maybe not. But something told me that if we let her, Rika would spend her entire time relaxing, and then she''d be complaining the next time we had to climb a mountain or run through a city.

    "Well," I said, "you have one more day off, so enjoy it while you have the chance."

    "Oh trust me," Rika said throatily, "I plan on it."

    Breakfast was demolished in short order, and the four of us lingered for a short while afterwards, just letting the food settle in our bellies, but all too soon, another message from Da Vinci arrived, letting us know we were expected in the Command Room shortly. We took our trays back to Emiya, who accepted them and set the dishes aside to be washed, and then made our way in the direction of the Command Room for whatever Da Vinci''s surprise turned out to be.

    "Do you know what the surprise is, Senpai?" asked Ritsuka as we walked.

    "Sorry," I told him, "not a clue."

    "Knowing Da Vinci-chan, it''s some sort of new gadget," Rika said, and then she lit up. "Oh! Oh! Do you think she actually got me a giant robot? That would be so cool!"

    "Somehow, Senpai, I don''t think the Director would approve of something like that," Mash said with an awkward smile.

    Not even if we had quadruple our budget. Marie would see something like that as a complete waste of both time and resources, although considering some of the designs I''d seen in Da Vinci''s sketches ¡ª the historical ones, from when she''d still been alive and male ¡ª I could see it as a personal project she took on just to prove she could do it.

    And being entirely fair? If she had enough supplies and resources for it, I had no doubt she could. She''d reproduced Tinkertech. If anyone could build a functional giant robot, it was Da Vinci.

    "I can still dream!" Rika insisted.

    Of a world where she piloted giant robots into battle against legions of the exalted dead brought back to life? If that was what her dreams were like, maybe she''d been getting into some of Romani''s hidden stash.

    It couldn''t be bad seafood when we had Emiya on staff.

    Before long, we found ourselves at the Command Room, and the door whooshed open to admit us. Da Vinci, Romani, and Marie were already there, and as she turned towards us, Da Vinci smiled broadly.

    "Good morning, everyone!" she greeted us.

    "Morning!" Rika replied.

    "Good morning," Ritsuka, Mash, and I all said, with them tacking on a polite, "Miss Da Vinci."

    "I''m sure you''re all wondering just what it is I have in store for you today," she said, "and the simple answer is¡­vacation!"

    What?

    "Vacation?" the twins echoed.

    "Isn''t this¡­already technically time off, Miss Da Vinci?" asked Mash.

    "True, the four of you are, technically speaking, free of obligations to Chaldea in between your deployments to Singularities," said Da Vinci. "However, practically speaking, you''re on call all hours of the day, since you physically can''t leave the facility and may be forced to deploy if an emergency arises, and that can be a bit¡­rough, don''t you think?"

    Yes, it could be, and even if we were technically in our off time between Singularities, the reality was that we still spent a lot of that time training and preparing for the next one, so it wasn''t really the same. I wasn''t sure how she intended to rectify that, though. We could set the simulator to account for just about any place, real or imagined, but that wasn''t quite the same as actually being there ourselves.

    "What do you mean by vacation, exactly?" I asked.

    "I''m glad you asked!" Da Vinci said brightly. "You see, when you repair a Singularity, technically speaking, you''re not destroying it. Although the aberrant factors are corrected and returned to their proper place in history, the Singularity itself ¡ª and its geography ¡ª technically remains intact. There just, well, hasn''t been any reason to bother with them after the fact. Not much point in sending you to fight a few remaining wyverns in Orl¨¦ans or explore an empty Rome in the Septem Singularity, is there?"

    "Wait," said Rika, "we can go back?"

    "For a given value of back," said Marie. "It''s not like we have any interest in these Singularities once history has been set to right. A-and we''d still have to justify the Rayshift in our reports, for that matter!"

    "But we can go back!" Rika insisted. There was an undertone in her voice that was hard to identify ¡ª something between hope and desperation. "Right?"

    "I''m afraid that Emperor Nero won''t be in the Singularity any longer, Rika," Da Vinci said gently. "She, like everyone else who was dragged into it, will have returned to where she was supposed to be. It isn''t possible for you to simply pop in for a visit and go see her."

    Rika deflated.

    "However," Da Vinci went on, "as for the things inside that Singularity, there shouldn''t be any trouble there. Fauna that didn''t belong but technically have no place in proper history either might remain behind, so if we ever needed to gather things like food, well, it turns out that''s not as big a problem as we originally feared."

    Great news, as long as no one minded eating crab or wyvern for a while.

    "What does this have to do with our vacation?" I asked her. "Are you sending us back into one of these Singularities?"

    Da Vinci smiled again. "Exactly! Romani, the Director, and I were discussing it yesterday, and this is an excellent opportunity both to test the stability of Rayshifting into these cleared Singularities and to give all of you the chance to stretch your legs ¡ª so to speak ¡ª without the pressure of a mission looming overhead. To that end¡­"

    She pulled out a folded pile of clothing, atop which sat a quartet of modules fit for our upgraded Mystic Codes.

    "I''ve added a pattern to your Mystic Codes! And, Mash, I made one for you, as well!"

    "A new pattern?" Rika asked excitedly as she swiped one of the modules. Immediately, she snapped it into place on hers and started fiddling with the settings.

    The rest of us took ours more calmly, and Mash accepted the pile of clothes with a polite, "Thank you, Miss Da Vinci."

    "Well, I can''t imagine you brought a change of clothes for every occasion to an internship," Da Vinci said wryly, "especially one taking place in the middle of Antarctica. So I took the liberty of designing for each of you ¡ª"

    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

    Rika pressed a button, having evidently discovered the setting for the new pattern, and in her haste and eagerness, seemed to have forgotten how the Mystic Codes changed designs, because a moment later, her standard issue uniform morphed into glittering particles that flowed up and down her body. Flashes of creamy skin shone through the cloud, there and gone before any details could be glimpsed, and a second or two later, the pattern settled.

    Into a bikini.

    "¡ª a swimsuit!"

    Rika, realizing exactly what she had changed into, squeaked, face bright red, and tried to cover herself with her hands. Unsuccessfully, considering the most important parts were already covered.

    "Senpai!" Mash squeaked.

    "Don''t just do that in the middle of the Command Room!" Marie barked sternly. "Especially when you don''t know what you''re changing into!"

    "Rika!" Ritsuka shouted, embarrassed, as he covered his eyes.

    "Don''t look!" Rika cried. "Don''t look!"

    A couple of the technicians who had turned to see what the commotion was about turned away, their own faces burning. Meuniere looked like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

    Romani sighed. "She''s going to be wearing it on the island anyway," he said, "so it''s not like we won''t see her in it then, but¡­I guess it''s not the same thing, is it?"

    Although he wasn''t technically wrong¡­

    "You don''t go parading around the facility in your boxers, do you?" I asked.

    He laughed awkwardly. "Point taken."

    "Stop trying to cover yourself and change back already!" Marie snapped at Rika.

    Hiding as much of herself behind her arms and legs as she could, a hunched, frankly silly looking Rika fumbled with the module of her Mystic Code for several long seconds before she finally managed to hit on the correct setting. A moment later, after her orange-striped bikini dissolved into another silvery cloud, she was once more dressed in her standard issue uniform, which did nothing at all to make her feel better about exposing herself in front of almost the entirety of her coworkers.

    "Oh my god," she muttered, burying her face in her hands, "oh my god¡­"

    Romani cleared his throat in the uncomfortable silence that followed. "W-well. So that''s it, then. We''ll be sending the four of you back into the Okeanos Singularity for the day, so that you have, um, a chance to¡­to relax, and, um, that''s why the¡­swimsuits¡­and¡­yeah¡­"

    Da Vinci sighed.

    "Officially speaking, you''re there to investigate what remains behind after a Singularity is corrected," she said with a wan smile, "while we test the stability of Rayshifts inside of them. Unofficially, however, this is just a vacation day for all of you. Try to have fun, okay?"

    "Will the Director be coming along?" Mash asked.

    Da Vinci and Romani shared a look, grimacing.

    "No," Marie answered stonily. "It''s impossible for me to Rayshift, remember? Even if this isn''t technically my¡­o-original body, that hasn''t changed. Besides," she added, "someone has to stay here and make sure this place runs smoothly, don''t they? It may as well be me!"

    Privately, I thought that she also didn''t want to be seen by the twins in her swimsuit, so even if she''d had the ability, I didn''t think she would have come with us. She would have come up with some excuse ¡ª maybe even the same one she just used ¡ª to stay behind and avoid it.

    It wasn''t like she had anything to be ashamed of. She wasn''t some busty bombshell, but she had way more going on than I did, at least. I think she just had¡­rigid ideas of what was proper amongst her subordinates and what wasn''t, and that got in the way of a lot of things.

    Part of me wanted her to branch out a little and let down those walls. Me being her only real friend in Chaldea wasn''t a burden, but having more people for her to rely on wasn''t ever going to be a bad thing. Another part of me fondly thought that she would never change, because she just took herself and her position that seriously.

    "Is there anything special we need to do?"

    "Nothing," said Da Vinci. "I''ve already taken the liberty of picking out a familiar island for you to relax on, and everything is already arranged for your arrival. We just have to get you there now, like any other Rayshift."

    "Last one there''s a rotten egg!" Rika suddenly proclaimed, and then she turned around and raced out of the Command Room like the devil himself was on her heels.

    "How many times do I have to tell you? No running in the hallways!" Marie shouted after her, but if Rika heard her, she gave no indication at all.

    Of course. It was just an excuse to get out of the room after she embarrassed herself. I understood that impulse a lot better than I cared to admit.

    "Director," Ritsuka began, grimacing.

    Marie sighed. "Go!" she said, shooing him away. "This is supposed to be your vacation day, isn''t it? That means that every extra minute you spend here is another one you''re missing out on to relax!"

    Ritsuka smiled and nodded. "Of course, Director."

    He made it one step before Marie barked at him, "But no running! Where do you think you are, a playground? Walk there, like a Master of Chaldea!"

    The complicated expression I spied on Ritsuka''s face said he didn''t understand what one had at all to do with the other, but he obeyed and followed Rika out of the Command Room at a brisk walk, Mash on his heels. I wasn''t sure he wouldn''t break out into a run the instant he was out of sight.

    I turned back to Marie. "Director."

    "It applies to you, too," she told me. "Aren''t you at least as deserving of a day off as those two are? I expect you to relax and enjoy yourself, even if it''s only for today!"

    I couldn''t stop myself from smiling a little. "Of course."

    So I turned back around and followed the twins, or more like just headed the same way they went, since I was walking and they very definitely were not, despite Marie''s warnings. It meant they were already there and waiting by the time I made it down to the Rayshift chamber, loitering about while I made my way there.

    Almost the instant I was through the doors and inside the chamber proper, they whooshed shut behind me, and from the floor, four large tubes arose. Our coffins.

    The PA system crackled.

    "It should be just like a normal Rayshift," Romani''s voice announced, "so all you have to do is step inside your coffin and we''ll send you off. There''s no objective for you to chase this time, so just relax and sit back, okay?"

    Easy for him to say, I thought, when he didn''t have to climb into one of these things. I didn''t think I was ever going to get used to it, not when the Locker had affected me the way it had.

    Nonetheless, the twins and Mash were evidently starting to become accustomed to this little ritual, because there was almost no hesitation as they climbed back inside their own coffins, leaving me the last and slowest one to get in. I hated that my claustrophobia ¡ª well-earned, I would say ¡ª made this more of an ordeal than I would have liked, but it wasn''t like I had much in the way of choice.

    I was supposed to be relaxing, I thought as I leaned back, taking a deep breath and trying not to think about how tight a space the thing actually was. Getting all stressed out about this kind of defeated the point, didn''t it?

    I closed my eyes so I didn''t have to watch the lid slide down and leave me in darkness, but that didn''t mean I couldn''t hear it. I sucked in another deep breath to try and calm my heart a little.

    A familiar, computerized voice announced:

    UNSUMMON PROGRAM START

    SPIRITRON CONVERSION START

    An equally familiar chill swept down my body, starting at the crown of my head and ending at the soles of my feet.

    RAYSHIFTING STARTING IN 3¡­

    2¡­

    1¡­

    My coffin opened up beneath me, and from behind my eyelids, I saw the streams of light as I fell down through a canal of stars. From some great distance away, the final words reached me.

    ALL PROCEDURES CLEARED

    GRAND ORDER COMMENCING OPERATION

    For an eternity, I hung, suspended between moments, stretched out between eternities ¡ª and then, suddenly, my feet jarred as I landed on something soft with a sound like scattering beads. Warm heat pressed down against my head and the back of my neck, gentle but insistent. The slosh of rolling water filtered softly into my ears.

    When I opened my eyes again, I was on a beach. White sand stretched out around me, far enough in every direction that the bugs in the forest in the distance were only just under my control, and in front of me, blue ocean undulated as weak waves lapped lovingly at the shore, kicking up streaks of pale white foam.

    Up above, the sun shone brightly, casting the entire place in a balmy warmth. A gentle breeze wafted in from the sea, tickling my nostrils with the salty scent of brine.

    "Hey!" came Rika''s voice from off to the side. "I recognize this place! This is the beach where we met Captain Pillows!"

    It was, I realized almost as soon as she said it. More accurately, this was the first island we''d come ashore on, and this was the beach where we landed after commandeering that pirate ship at the very beginning. Further on, deeper in, there had once been a camp through that forest and beyond a narrow valley, and Captain Drake and her crew had called that place their paradise, until we came along.

    Beep-beep!

    "Rayshift successful!" Romani proclaimed happily. "All readings are in the green, no anomalies or errors¡­everything went perfectly, everyone!"

    "There is one thing, but it shook out basically as I expected," said Da Vinci. "Everyone, if you were expecting to take advantage of the time dilation that exists in Singularities, I''m sorry to tell you that you won''t be able to. Looking at the data now, even when you aren''t in direct contact with us, time should flow at the same rate in there as it does out here, so one day for you will be one day for us. Sorry, but it''s only a single day''s vacation, this time."

    "Ugh!" Rika groaned. "Really? I was hoping to get, like, a whole week off!"

    "I''m afraid it''s a natural consequence of your own success, Rika," Da Vinci told her apologetically. "The entire reason the time dilation exists is because the Singularity diverges from proper history. Without that divergence ¡ª without Jason and his Grail pulling things out of place ¡ª the things that make that Singularity divergent aren''t divergent enough to cause a significant drift. Good news, if something does find its way into that Singularity and causes problems, we can respond with support and reinforcements immediately. Bad news, it means that you can''t get a whole week''s worth of vacation in a single day."

    Rika blew a raspberry like the mature adult she was.

    "It''s okay, Da Vinci," said Ritsuka. "She''s just upset that she can''t cheat the system."

    "It''s not cheating if I''m just taking advantage of somebody else''s rules!" Rika insisted.

    Maybe she really had been taking my lessons to heart after all.

    Even though it was sound only, I could hear the smile in Da Vinci''s voice as she said, "Don''t worry, Rika, I have one more surprise for you all!"

    Was she¡­? I guess she wanted me to act all shocked, but¡­

    "Another surprise?" asked Mash. "But I thought the vacation was the surprise, Miss Da Vinci."

    "Who said there was only one?" Da Vinci said smugly. "I can give you as many surprises as I want, as long as no one spoils any of them!"

    "Is this the part where we dramatically reveal ourselves?" asked an entirely different voice.

    "Not if I knew you were there from the beginning," I said as I turned around with the rest of the group to find ¡ª

    "Emiya!" Rika cried. "Tii-chan!"

    "And you''re all wearing¡­what, exactly?" I couldn''t stop myself from asking.

    ¡ª our entire roster of Servants, all dressed down from their usual armor into something more befitting a beach party. Arash was in trunks and a gaudy blue Hawaiian shirt, Bradamante in a one piece with cutouts around the middle, Jeanne Alter in a black and red bikini with flame motifs, Siegfried in a pair of black trunks with an open button up shirt that showed off most of his chest (and a pair of glasses, for some reason), A¨ªfe in one of sexiest and yet most tasteful bikinis I had ever laid eyes on, Shakespeare in a t-shirt and trousers, Hippolyta in some sort of sarong or something in lieu actual bikini bottoms, and Bellamy in what looked like a scuba suit, complete with a pair of goggles resting on his forehead.

    Emiya, carrying an absolutely enormous picnic basket, wore a pair of shorts, a tank top, and a dark shirt, unbuttoned. In the back, like he was trying to go unnoticed, El-Melloi II held an enormous beach umbrella and smoked a cigarette. He had on a short-sleeved button up, a black v-neck, and a pair of shorts, but what looked most out of place on him were the flip-flops he was wearing on his feet.

    I wasn''t sure how to feel about any of what I was seeing just then. I think I would have felt better if they were all just wearing some kind of swimsuit instead of¡­all of that.

    "Da Vinci thought it was only fair if the rest of us got a chance to enjoy some sunshine, too," Arash said, smiling. "So she, ah, magicked up some clothes for us to wear for the occasion."

    I wanted to groan at that horrible pun.

    "That was terrible," Jeanne Alter said for me with a sneer.

    "And just because you''re on vacation today doesn''t mean you''re skipping lunch." Emiya hefted his gigantic picnic basket pointedly. "So she sent us along with some food for later."

    Of course. It wasn''t a beach party without sandwiches and finger food, was it?

    "It was hard work, making sure everything was ready to go in just one day," Da Vinci said proudly, "but I managed to get everything done for all of you in time for this vacation day. Food, supplies, sunscreen, beach towels, everything and anything you could possibly need to enjoy a day out on the beach."

    Arash gestured helpfully to the enormous box I already knew was there, just behind the group, which must have contained those supplies that no one else was already carrying. Rika raced over to it and all but ripped it open, rummaging about inside of it as she looked through to confirm that Da Vinci had been telling the truth. She gasped.

    "You really did think of everything!"

    And from out of the box, Rika lifted a large, unwieldy machine that she struggled to keep a grip on. Was that¡­?

    "A snow cone machine?"

    "Snow cone?" Mash echoed, confused.

    "There''s a cooler in there, too!" Rika declared. She had to balance the base of the machine against one of her thighs just to keep from dropping it, but it was slipping down slowly and steadily anyway.

    "It''s technically November here in Chaldea," Da Vinci explained, "and while I''m sure the three of you are used to temperatures being colder that time of year, Rika, Ritsuka, Taylor, it''s also summer in the southern hemisphere, so there''s no reason you can''t enjoy a frozen treat. If you''re having any trouble, I''ve left an instruction manual on how to use it. It should be in there with the other supplies."

    Rika looked like she was going to try and fish it out, adjusting her grip on the machine and very much in danger of dropping it, until Ritsuka sighed and walked over. "Hold on," he told her, "you''re going to hurt yourself."

    All he managed to accomplish was to get himself tangled up with her, the both of them holding a portion of the machine precariously between them and trying not to drop it as they maneuvered around in an attempt to lift it more stably.

    "I''m sure you''ll figure things out," Da Vinci said, amused. I wasn''t so sure about that. "In any case! It is now 10:09 am. I think it only fair to give you all a good eight hours or so to enjoy yourselves, so we''ll be Rayshifting you all back around 7 pm. That''s 1900 hours, Mash."

    Mash, who had opened her mouth, closed it again before she could ask the question.

    "We''ll contact you again about half an hour before then, so that you have time to clean everything up. Until then, everyone, have fun! Don''t do anything I wouldn''t do!"

    "Wait!" Marie''s voice interjected, but the line cut before she could say anything.

    "There''s a joke in there, but it''s only half as funny without her," Emiya drawled. A squawk from over by the twins drew a sigh out of his mouth, and he set his enormous basket down to make his way over to them. "Here, you two, let me handle that, you''re going to drop it¡­"

    "I''ll get a table set up for it," Arash volunteered.

    "Bring me a towel over when you get the chance," El-Melloi II told him, and then he broke off to find a section of the beach where he could set up his oversized umbrella.

    As though that was some kind of signal, the others separated, with Shakespeare heading over to that big box so he could grab a table of his own and a folding chair to sit beside it, and most of the rest meandering over to join Mash and me.

    "Hey!" Bellamy greeted me with a smile.

    "Hey, yourself," I answered lamely.

    He took it in stride. "Who would''ve thought we''d be coming back to this place so soon after we left it, huh? It''s just too bad Captain Drake isn''t here with us to enjoy it!"

    Knowing her, she''d already have been drunk.

    "Yeah. Too bad."

    "So we could listen to more of her god-awful singing?" Jeanne Alter said sardonically. A¨ªfe''s hand slapped the back of her head. "Ow! Stop doing that!"

    A¨ªfe arched an eyebrow. "Since when did you even hear Captain Drake sing?"

    Jeanne Alter''s lip curled.

    "It feels a bit strange," Hippolyta said, and Jeanne Alter choked off before she could even get started. "We Amazons lived on an island ourselves, and it''s true, there were often celebrations and festivals, but¡­" She picked at the cloth of her top. "If ever we braved the water, we would scarcely have bothered with something like this."

    "Oh," said Mash. "Yes, I suppose things like swimsuits wouldn''t yet have been designed, would they? When people in those times went swimming recreationally, they would have done it, um, n-naked, wouldn''t they?"

    Hippolyta smiled. "Quite."

    "Oh!" Bradamante said excitedly. "Oh, Mash! You have a swimsuit now, too, don''t you? Let''s see it, let''s see it!"

    "That''s right. Um." Mash looked down at her clothing, a standard issue Chaldea uniform, just like Rika''s, and the module that attached to it. "I-I guess¡­ If we''re going to have a tropical vacation for today, I¡­might as well dress the part, r-right?"

    "Fou!"

    The little gremlin appeared from somewhere, like he''d been hiding out in the shadow of her hair, and leapt off of her shoulder to land in the sand. It looked up at her expectantly, and Mash offered it a weak smile.

    "If even Fou thinks so, then I suppose I have no reason not to."

    She took a deep breath, and then pressed the buttons on the module, and in a cloud of silver dust, her clothing dissolved, shifting, morphing, and then settling a moment later into a white one piece trimmed in magenta with a decorative bow in the center of her chest and a skirt that fell tastefully down to the tops of her thighs.

    I felt my eyebrows rise. Okay, Da Vinci, you got a pass for this one. I wasn''t expecting it to be as tasteful and conservative as that while still being flattering.

    "Oh my gosh, Mash!" Rika squealed, and she raced back over to us. "It''s so pretty! Wow!"

    "Isn''t it?" Bradamante agreed. "Lady Da Vinci is truly an artist!"

    Considering that was what Da Vinci was most famous for¡­

    "I mean, I guess it''s okay," Jeanne Alter said petulantly. "Not as cool as mine, of course."

    "I mean, adding flames to something makes it ten times as awesome!" Rika agreed, and Jeanne Alter blinked, stunned, like she hadn''t expected Rika to agree with her.

    "Queen A¨ªfe, and you, too, Bradamante, both of your swimsuits are beautiful as well," said Mash. "Miss Da Vinci¡­she really captured the essence of all of us with these designs, didn''t she?"

    "Perhaps she has." A¨ªfe slid a glance my way. "But of those of us here, there is still one of us who has yet to don her swimsuit even once, isn''t there?"

    My lips drew tight. I thought I''d gone unnoticed, for a second there. I guess it was too much to hope for.

    "Oh," said Mash. "That''s right! Miss Taylor, and Senpai, too! You have swimsuits as well, don''t you?"

    "A-hehehehe," Rika laughed awkwardly. "I think everyone''s¡­already seen mine, though¡­"

    If I''m going to wear one, so are you.

    "Then there''s no point being shy about it now, is there?" I said pointedly.

    Rika''s cheeks burned.

    Without looking, I checked up on what everyone else was doing, and in the meantime, while we''d been talking, Emiya had successfully gotten the snow cone machine up and running and had moved on to setting up a grill. Since I hadn''t seen it anywhere in that box, I had to assume he''d projected it again, and it wasn''t like he hadn''t done something like that before in Septem and Okeanos, so it was a sucker''s bet.

    Ritsuka, meanwhile, had gone with Arash and El-Melloi II to get spots laid out to relax on, with towels unfurled across the sand, safely away from the tides.

    It looked like I wasn''t getting out of this either. Fine.

    I reached for the module attached to my Mystic Code and went about adjusting the settings until I found the one for my new swimsuit, whatever it was. Then, before I could second guess myself, I bit the bullet and pressed the buttons, and my uniform dissolved against my skin.

    It wasn''t like we hadn''t bathed together before. Whatever Da Vinci had designed for me, it wouldn''t be showing more skin than I had back in Septem, when we all hopped into the bath with Emperor Nero.

    A moment later, the dust settled ¡ª quite literally ¡ª and my swimsuit took form. I chanced a look down at it, ready to hate what I found, but¡­ Huh. Maybe Da Vinci really did know what she was doing after all.

    "Senpai, too!" Rika groused. Almost angrily, she found the setting for her own swimsuit and turned it on. "Geez! Everyone with these stupidly cute swimsuits running around! There''s enough cheesecake and beefcake on this beach to start a modeling agency!"

    The bikini was expected. At this point, I didn''t think Da Vinci would have let me get away with a one piece. It was tasteful, though. It didn''t try to show off cleavage that I didn''t have, and although it had less fabric than my usual sports bra, it covered me about the same. And the bottoms weren''t a glorified thong, which was always a plus.

    I had to work with these people. I didn''t want them ogling my ass.

    After a moment of silvery dust flying about, Rika was once more in her own swimsuit, and now that we weren''t in the middle of the Command Room with all of our coworkers, colleagues, and superiors, it felt a little more appropriate to appreciate the design. A little plain, if I was honest, although not quite as plain as mine, but the vivid orange stripes actually went very well with her hair, and if anyone had ever wanted proof that yes, Rika did attend her training sessions with A¨ªfe, and yes, those sessions were producing results, well, there it was. It wasn''t the average teenage girl who sported that kind of muscle definition, after all.

    For several long seconds, Rika stood there, waiting, fidgeting a little under our scrutiny, and belatedly, I realized she was looking for approval.

    "It suits you, Rika," I told her, for lack of anything better.

    But the giant smile that broke out on her face was real and genuine, and you might have thought she''d just won a beauty contest.

    "It really does, Senpai," Mash agreed.

    "Lady Da Vinci outdid herself!" Bradamante added, and okay, that might have been laying it on a bit thick.

    "She really did," Bellamy agreed. "I mean, you''re all pretty enough in your normal clothes, seeing you like this makes it really hard to look away!"

    "Aw, shucks, you guys!" Rika laughed bashfully. And then, abruptly, she said, "Hey, what are we all standing around for? This is a beach vacation! Sand, sun, surf! We shouldn''t be gossiping like old ladies at the park!"

    "Who''s gossiping?" Jeanne Alter drawled. "I''m just waiting for you idiots to stop gawking at each other so we can actually do something."

    "Exactly!" Rika grinned. A second later, it took on a mischievous slant. "So¡­"

    Suddenly, she spun around on her heel and raced off towards the shore. Over her shoulder, she called, "Last one in is a rotten egg!"

 Chapter CXXIV: Little Drop of Peace

    Chapter CXXIV: Little Drop of Peace

    Rika¡¯s words acted like some kind of signal, or maybe permission, because a scant few seconds after she shouted them, Bradamante and Mash jolted into action and sped after her, racing towards the surf.

    ¡°Senpai!¡± Mash called after her. ¡°Wait! Don¡¯t just run off on your own!¡±

    ¡°Master, wait for me!¡± Bradamante agreed.

    They stayed within human limits, so Rika still wound up the first in the water, splashing in the calm, shallow waves, but Mash and Bradamante weren¡¯t all that far behind and joined her, shrieking when she turned around, bent over, and threw a handful of water at them. And once the surprise wore off, they started laughing and splashed her back.

    If I didn¡¯t know any better, I might have seen them and thought they were just a couple of ordinary girls, out having fun at the beach.

    ¡°Well?¡± said A¨ªfe, and it took me a second to realize she was talking to Jeanne Alter and not me. ¡°I can see it clearly, no matter how much you try to hide it. Aren¡¯t you going to join them?¡±

    ¡°W-what?¡± Jeanne Alter blustered, ruined by the faint splotches of pink on her cheeks and the shudder in her voice. ¡°What do you take me for, a child? W-who even wants to do something like play on the beach, anyway?¡±

    A¨ªfe huffed a breath through her nostrils and gave Jeanne Alter a shove, sending her stumbling a few steps forward. Jeanne Alter squawked indignantly.

    ¡°Hey! Cut it out, Super Bitch!¡±

    ¡°You claim you are not a child, but shying away from things simply because they are called childish is itself the epitome of childishness,¡± said A¨ªfe. ¡°Go. Don¡¯t miss this chance simply out of your own stubbornness. Seize it with both hands.¡±

    Jeanne Alter flushed vibrant red. ¡°Fine!¡± she spat. ¡°I don¡¯t have to stand here and listen to your stupid drivel! I¡¯m gonna go do whatever I want, and not because you told me I should!¡±

    A¨ªfe arched an eyebrow. ¡°Is that so?¡±

    ¡°You bet your fat Celtic ass!¡±

    And Jeanne Alter whirled away, storming down the beach towards the water. ¡°Hey!¡± she shouted at the others. ¡°Who said you bastards could start without me, huh?¡±

    I looked over at A¨ªfe. ¡°You handled her quite well.¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s angry and rebellious and lashing out to hide her insecurities,¡± A¨ªfe said plainly. She closed her eyes briefly and let out a short sigh. ¡°Despite his impish nature, Connla never reached this point, but¡­ As I understand it, this is the way of teenagers.¡±

    I thought, for a moment, about my own teenage years, my time when I was fifteen and scrambling desperately for some control over my life. An escape from the world that was trying to grind me down. How that had led me to fighting Lung, to Lisa and the Undersiders, and to everything that followed.

    Maybe I wasn¡¯t quite the best example of teenage rebellion. Most teenagers didn¡¯t take over a city in every way that mattered, after all, or kill pillars of society, and they most certainly didn¡¯t unravel a supervillain¡¯s plan to take over that same city.

    But when I looked at it that way, I guess, in a very real sense, Jeanne Alter was a completely new person who had sprung up, fully formed, as a nineteen-year-old girl, trying to discover her identity and who she was now in light of the original Jeanne¡¯s existence and the fact her purpose in the world ¡ª destroying the France the original had saved ¡ª was no longer possible for her to fulfill. Figuring out who you were and what your place was in the world was supposedly the big conflict a normal teenager tackled, or so I¡¯d heard.

    Although A¨ªfe taking the reins as her mother figure was something I honestly hadn¡¯t expected.

    ¡°Things must have changed greatly, because I certainly can¡¯t recall any of my younger sisters behaving in such a manner,¡± said Hippolyta.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± said Bellamy. He hummed thoughtfully. ¡°Then again, I was still a teenager when I signed up for the navy, and acting like that would¡¯ve gotten you thrown in the brig until you started behaving. I guess things are different these days.¡±

    ¡°Peace will do that to you,¡± A¨ªfe replied.

    Hippolyta smiled a little. ¡°I suppose it would. I have to confess, however, that I¡¯m not sure I understood that last thing you said to her. If you¡¯ll pardon me for saying so, it didn¡¯t sound much like you, for how little I know of you yet.¡±

    It had sounded a little uncharacteristic, yes, and also a little familiar.

    A¨ªfe huffed another breath. ¡°With little else to do in our free time, I¡¯ve taken to reading, when there¡¯s nothing else to occupy my attention. One of the books I read, for all that I wasn¡¯t particularly moved by it, the author said something to that effect.¡±

    Ah. ¡°C.S. Lewis.¡±

    I thought I recognized it.

    ¡°The same,¡± A¨ªfe confirmed.

    ¡°Come to think of it, Sam,¡± I said, ¡°you might like it. Voyage of the Dawn Treader especially.¡±

    Maybe I should introduce him to Stevenson¡¯s Treasure Island, too. It might wind up a case of the reality making it hard for him to enjoy the fantasy, but if not, I could see him getting a kick out of a pirate adventure novel like that.

    Bellamy blinked at me. ¡°You think so?¡±

    ¡°Remind me to pick it out for you from the library when we get back to Chaldea.¡±

    He smiled. ¡°Sure thing!¡±

    ¡°Whatever its origin, it¡¯s a poignant piece of wisdom,¡± said Hippolyta. ¡°So I think that I, too, shall take your advice and, as they say these days, let loose a little.¡± She glanced at A¨ªfe. ¡°Will you be joining us?¡±

    ¡°Shortly, I think,¡± said A¨ªfe. ¡°Perhaps I¡¯ll convince Emiya to help us arrange a game of some kind. I¡¯ve heard there¡¯s a sport practiced at the beach called volleyball, and it might be interesting to try it.¡±

    Deliberately, I didn¡¯t look at her bikini or at Hippolyta¡¯s¡­waist wrap thing. We were certainly dressed for it, weren¡¯t we? Maybe if we set up a boys versus girls thing, although that might get a little awkward with the Servants being so blatantly superhuman.

    Hippolyta smiled again. ¡°I look forward to it.¡±

    And with those parting words, she broke off, and at a sedate, calm pace, went over to join Mash, Rika, and the others as they played about in the water.

    ¡°I¡¯m gonna go do a little exploring further out,¡± Bellamy announced, and he punctuated this by pulling his goggles down over his eyes, then offered us a grin. ¡°Gimme a shout when it¡¯s lunchtime. You guys weren¡¯t kidding about how great Emiya¡¯s food is!¡±

    I wondered if that meant he had revised his opinion of that wyvern meat they¡¯d fed me back when we got separated in Okeanos. It tasted a whole lot less exciting when you had something actually good to compare it to.

    ¡°I can do that.¡±

    He gave a jaunty little wave, then raced off down the beach, kicked off the sand into a long jump that would have made an Olympic gold medalist green with envy, and disappeared beneath the waves with a splash.

    ¡°And you?¡± A¨ªfe asked me.

    Well, I could have thrown everything to the wind and raced down to the beach to join in on the fun, but right then, I didn¡¯t really want to. Maybe a little later on. For the moment¡­

    ¡°This is a vacation, isn¡¯t it?¡± I asked rhetorically. ¡°I¡¯m going to go relax and lie down. Maybe catch some sun, while I have the chance to enjoy it.¡±

    After all, England wasn¡¯t particularly famous for its bright, sunny days, and even if it was, we weren¡¯t going to have the time to just soak it up and enjoy it while we were working. This was probably going to be my last chance in a while, so I was going to take advantage of it.

    Taking the time to just relax¡­ It felt kind of novel. Almost wrong, even. And yet¡­

    ¡°I see,¡± said A¨ªfe, nodding. ¡°I suppose you¡¯ve earned it, haven¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡­I guess even I could benefit from it every now and again.

    ¡°We all have. After all, we¡¯ve done the incredible task of resolving four Singularities in less than six months. I¡¯d say we deserve a chance to just kick back and relax.¡±

    And all of us Masters had come out of it without a single major injury. That spoke well not only of us for our competence, but also the dedication of the Servants who fought for us and protected us, and by that metric, every single one of us deserved the break we were getting now. None of us could have come this far alone.

    A¨ªfe gave me a strange look. ¡°Yes, I suppose we have. All right, then. I suppose I¡¯d best go and make sure they all behave themselves.¡±

    Now who wasn¡¯t being honest with herself? Although I wasn¡¯t sure A¨ªfe even really knew how to relax like this, now that I thought about it, not when there was something for her to take charge of and chaperone.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be too hard on them.¡±

    A¨ªfe grinned, all teeth. ¡°I make no promises.¡±

    But that was as good as confirmation by her standards, so I let it be and left her to go and join the fun. I made instead for the line of towels that had been laid out further up and away from the water, where El-Melloi II had sat down and reclined, puffing away at a cigarette. The umbrella he¡¯d brought was big enough to cover all but his ankles and feet, throwing the rest of his body into shade, and not too far away from that, upwind to no doubt avoid the smoke, Shakespeare sat at a little table, nose firmly buried in a book.

    I guess I should have expected that. If I¡¯d known what Da Vinci¡¯s surprise had entailed, I might have grabbed one of my own to sit down with and enjoy.

    Set up nearby was Emiya, who was already cooking snacks on that grill of his, and just far enough to avoid the smoke from that were Arash, who was getting himself a snow cone, Siegfried, who hovered close by, like he wasn¡¯t quite sure what to do with himself during a vacation like this, and Ritsuka, who was already in the process of eating one. Strawberry or watermelon flavored, by the pale pink of it, or maybe something more esoteric. I hadn¡¯t really experienced it for myself, but living in Brockton, with as high an Asian population as we had, I¡¯d seen some very oddly flavored sweets advertised in specialty shops on the Boardwalk.

    Like sakura flavored chocolates. I had no idea what those were even supposed to taste like.

    ¡°Hey, Senpai,¡± Ritsuka greeted me as I came closer.

    I gave him a nod. ¡°Ritsuka.¡±

    Arash glanced at me over his shoulder briefly, and he and Siegfried both offered their own greetings.

    ¡°Morning,¡± I responded in kind.

    I spared Ritsuka a quick once-over. At some point, he¡¯d changed into his own swimsuit, a pair of blue and green trunks and sandals and not much else. I didn¡¯t know how good a shape he¡¯d been in before, but he¡¯d filled out quite a bit under A¨ªfe, and I didn¡¯t let myself think about it too much more than that because he was almost four years my junior and still a minor, so the idea of ogling him felt a little too weird for me.

    ¡°Enjoying your snow cone?¡±

    Ritsuka blinked down at his half-eaten treat and smiled back at me. ¡°Yeah. It¡¯s been a while since I¡¯ve had one, so I¡¯m trying to eat it slowly.¡±

    Come to think of it, how long had it been since I¡¯d had one, too? I couldn¡¯t remember. At least before Gold Morning, probably even before I joined the Wards. Had it really been over four years?

    As though he¡¯d sensed my thoughts, Arash said, ¡°I¡¯ll make this one for you then, Master. What flavor do you want?¡±

    You don¡¯t have to, I thought about telling him, but knowing him as well as I did, the response I got would probably be something like, ¡°But I want to,¡± so there really wasn¡¯t any reason to protest, was there?

    ¡°Surprise me.¡±

    ¡°Alright!¡±

    He topped up the cone he was already holding, then reached for bottles next to the machine and drizzled red syrup over the top with flourish. Once the ice had turned a pale shade of red, darker than Ritsuka¡¯s, he set the syrup aside, turned around, and handed it over with a smile. ¡°One cherry snow cone.¡±

    I accepted it with a simple, ¡°Thanks.¡±

    Job done, he turned back around to make his own. The machine whirred lowly and ponderously as it churned the ice and ground it down into fine flakes.

    The first bite tasted like childhood, and the chill sent a shiver down my spine that only halfway had to do with how cold it was. For a moment, I was reminded of summer days, walking beside a cherished friend, eating our snow cones together as we chatted about inanities that I couldn¡¯t remember anymore.

    Right then, more than anything in the world, I wanted Lisa to be there.

    So I turned to Ritsuka and said, ¡°Not going to join your sister?¡±

    ¡°In a minute,¡± he said. ¡°I just wanted to make sure the snow cone machine was working first.¡±

    ¡°I told you it was fine,¡± Emiya called over without turning around.

    Ritsuka laughed a little. ¡°Yeah, but this way I get to eat a snow cone, too.¡±

    Emiya shook his head. ¡°You really are her brother,¡± he drawled.

    Ritsuka just smiled and didn¡¯t deny it at all. He busied himself with eating his snow cone, watching his sister play around in the water with Jeanne Alter, Hippolyta, Bradamante, and Mash as A¨ªfe supervised their group. If his gaze wandered a few times towards A¨ªfe, well, I didn¡¯t call him out on it. She was a very attractive woman wearing a very sexy swimsuit, and it flattered every part of her, including her backside, and frankly, I was a little jealous of exactly how good she looked.

    He seemed to have more eyes for Mash than anyone else, though. It made the knowledge of what would happen to her all the more tragic.

    Should I encourage him to take a shot while he had the chance? Even if it could only end one way, he might be grateful for the experience later on, just for having the chance to have it.

    Maybe not, though. I didn¡¯t recall there being any prohibitions in Chaldea¡¯s rules against dating coworkers, especially when we were all cooped up in a single facility in the middle of Nowhere, Antarctica, with essentially zero outside dating prospects, but there was a reason it was generally frowned upon.

    I should probably discuss it with Marie first, just to make sure she wouldn¡¯t put her foot down about it. Even if it wound up being against the rules, I might be able to convince her to relax them, just in this particular case, for Mash¡¯s sake.

    Ritsuka finished his snow cone before me, and when he was done, he crumpled up the paper cone and threw it in a trash bag that had been set up next to the table the machine was on. Idly, I wondered what would happen to anything we left behind when we went back to Chaldea. The era had already been corrected, as I understood it, and this place was what was left after that, so theoretically, any trash or knick knacks we forgot to take back with us would just sit here, wouldn¡¯t they? Unless and until we came to pick them back up?

    Something else I was going to have to ask about. Da Vinci would probably have the answer to that one.

    ¡°Alright,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°I¡¯m going to go and join the others. See you later, Senpai.¡±

    ¡°Later.¡±

    And he made his way down the beach. Rika, when she realized he was going to play with them, shouted, ¡°Onii-chan! Just in time! We¡¯re gonna play Marco Polo and we needed someone to be Marco!¡±

    ¡°So of course,¡± he said with an air of resignation, ¡°you decided it had to be me.¡±

    ¡°Yup!¡±

    Despite his apparent reluctance, he didn¡¯t protest being roped into the game, and it wasn¡¯t long before they had him dunked and blind, calling, ¡°Marco!¡± as the girls waded out of the way, replying, ¡°Polo!¡±

    For a brief moment, I had to smile as I thought about the possibility of us actually summoning Marco Polo and how he might react to the knowledge that his name was being used for a game like that. Exasperated, maybe. Conflicted, probably. For your name to outlive you by so many centuries, only to be used for something completely and totally unrelated to your life¡¯s work¡­

    Well. It wasn¡¯t like every historical figure was remembered wholly and accurately, were they?

    ¡°He¡¯s changed a little,¡± I commented to Arash.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Arash replied. ¡°He¡¯s a little more confident than before. I guess his experience in Chateau d¡¯If really had a big impact, didn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Such an experience would change anyone,¡± Siegfried agreed.

    So it seemed. After all, it was his first time being on his own as a Master, completely without support from me, Mash, Rika, or any of the staff at Chaldea. He¡¯d had to figure things out without us and fight through a gauntlet of challenging enemies without any safety net there to catch him if he fell. And in spite of how daunting that must have been, he succeeded and came out the other end.

    In light of that, I guess it wasn¡¯t so surprising that he felt surer of himself than he had before going into it.

    ¡°They have to grow up sometime,¡± Emiya drawled from his grill.

    It probably said something about my life that the first response to find its way to the tip of my tongue was about how it had taken long enough. But I swallowed it, because that wasn¡¯t fair to the twins. They¡¯d come a long way since Fuyuki, but it didn¡¯t change the fact that their lives had been far more normal than mine had ever been before that.

    The pride was probably to be expected. The trace of melancholy that followed it wasn¡¯t.

    When I was done with my snow cone, I did as Ritsuka had, crumpled up the paper cone, and threw it in the bag of trash. I took a brief glance at what Emiya was cooking ¡ª skewers of some kind, with sweet-smelling balls of dough on them ¡ª before I turned towards my original destination and went over to the towels that had been laid out.

    El-Melloi II glanced at me, but he made no comment as I chose a towel far enough away to avoid smelling like his tobacco later and sat down.

    ¡°Enjoying that while you have the chance, are you?¡± I asked him.

    ¡°Until I can convince the Director to let me smoke in my room?¡± he asked. ¡°Of course. A lolly isn¡¯t the same thing at all.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m surprised you haven¡¯t picked up a vice like that yet,¡± he said. ¡°If for no other reason than to deal with the stress of doing a job this big and important.¡±

    ¡°I know better,¡± I told him. ¡°My parents impressed on me from a very young age the hazards of things like that.¡±

    And living in Brockton Bay, I¡¯d seen enough vices of all kinds to be turned off by the very idea. Who needed a drug abuse resistance program in your school when your city had the Merchants to show you exactly what and why you should stay away from the stuff?

    Well. If Winslow had ever had a program like that, at least. I wasn¡¯t sure some of the kids there wouldn¡¯t have taken it in entirely the wrong way. What was that kid¡¯s name again? Smokey? No, something else, but it had been so long and him so small a part in my life that I couldn¡¯t quite remember just then.

    ¡°Responsible parents,¡± El-Melloi II noted. ¡°Imagine that. And yet, they still wound up with a daughter like you.¡±

    A brief huff of air left my nostrils. ¡°Are you saying I¡¯m not responsible?¡±

    He glanced at me again. ¡°Maybe too much so,¡± he allowed. ¡°You know, that sort of thing is just as bad for your health as these things are.¡±

    He waggled his cigarette.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I agreed. It had nearly gotten me killed enough times in my career, to say nothing of recently. ¡°But they also taught me the importance of standing up for what¡¯s right.¡±

    And Winslow and the rest of my career had hammered that lesson home with particular weight. As much as I might have suffered at the time, it was hard to imagine what kind of woman I would have grown into without those events to shape me. If it meant that I wouldn¡¯t have become what I¡¯d become at the end and everyone and everything I cared about died, well, that wasn¡¯t a trade I was interested in making.

    If it meant I wouldn¡¯t have been here to save Marie from being sucked into Chaldeas by Flauros, all the more so.

    El-Melloi II grunted. ¡°Well. I guess it could be a whole lot worse.¡±

    ¡°It could. I could have joined a shadowy international conspiracy group that controlled the world economy.¡±

    His eyebrow twitched. ¡°If you¡¯re going to screw with me, the least you could do is make up something believable.¡±

    ¡°Who said I was making anything up?¡±

    He didn¡¯t seem to have a response to that, so he clenched his mouth shut and looked away, taking a furious pull of his cigarette.

    With a sigh, I laid back on my towel, but I couldn¡¯t even try to properly relax because the sun was right in my eyes, like it was personally out to ruin my vacation. El-Melloi II hadn¡¯t brought more than a single umbrella, it seemed, so that was going to be a problem ¡ª

    A pair of dark tanning goggles landed on my stomach. I glanced over at Emiya in time to see him turning back around to his grill.

    ¡°Thanks.¡±

    He shrugged. ¡°You looked like you could use them.¡±

    I traded out my glasses for the goggles as a column of ants marched a bottle of sunscreen over, then lathered my front and as much of my back as I could reach, making sure to get underneath the fabric my swimsuit, too, because I knew my science well enough to understand that a flimsy strip of cloth wasn¡¯t enough to stop UV rays from reaching my skin.

    It would¡¯ve been easier to get those parts totally naked, but there wasn¡¯t a convenient shower or changing room to go into, and El-Melloi II at least did me the courtesy of pointedly looking away, even if he wouldn¡¯t have seen anything revealing.

    Done, I laid back again, let my muscles loosen, and as my platoon of ants marched the bottle of sunscreen back where it belonged, I closed my eyes and allowed myself to enjoy the gentle heat of the sun on my skin.

    ¡°That¡¯s never not going to be creepy,¡± El-Melloi II muttered. I didn¡¯t bother to dignify it with a response.

    I drifted. The sounds of laughter and fun from the others playing on the beach washed over me, background noise to the waves lapping at the shore and the sizzle of Emiya¡¯s snacks, and somewhere along the way, I dozed off.

    An hour or two must have passed as I lay there, just sort of existing, my thoughts a floating, freeform stream of nothingness and vapor. In a distant way, I kept track of events through my swarm, the fliers attracted to Emiya¡¯s cooking but avoiding the smoke, the crabs that felt the vibration of every passing foot, the colony of ants that were expressly forbidden from partaking in any of the sugary treats we¡¯d brought with us. It was all handled without my direct attention, left on autopilot for my passenger to deal with, but the basic gist all hovered just on the edge of consciousness.

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    Arash had gone off to make a sand castle, taking Siegfried with him, and was doing an admirable job, while El-Melloi II eventually climbed to his feet and went for a walk, still puffing on his cigarettes. The games down in the water changed and evolved, cycling through a handful that I recognized and a few I didn¡¯t. It was almost comical to see Ritsuka wrestling with Rika, trying to push her off of Hippolyta¡¯s shoulders as he sat on Mash¡¯s while Jeanne Alter jeered from the sidelines.

    I guess it didn¡¯t quite work in the opposite direction, not when Servants were so superhuman.

    At different points, they drifted over to the grill, picking up the skewers Emiya was making and munching on whatever that snack was, then going back to what they were doing before. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and that made it all the easier to just lie back and enjoy myself as well.

    Eventually, however, I was disturbed by something intruding on my calm, a parade of familiar presences that were slinking up from deeper in the ocean. Drawn, I realized as the film started to fade from my mind, by Bellamy¡¯s adventures in scuba diving and the fuss kicked up by Rika and the others playing in shallower waters.

    The instant that they entered my range, however, and my awareness as a result, they also entered my control, although they felt a little¡­slippery, for lack of a better term.

    ¡°Hey, Emiya?¡± I called over without opening my eyes.

    ¡°Yeah?¡±

    ¡°How do you feel about crab?¡±

    He made a face, a kind of grimace. ¡°When you say crab¡­¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a small colony of those phantasmals from before coming up to say hello.¡±

    ¡°You have control over them, don¡¯t you?¡± he asked. ¡°Couldn¡¯t you just send them away?¡±

    ¡°I could.¡± Down below, under the water, I made one of the crabs wave a claw at Bellamy, who let out what would have been a startled yelp on dry land. A torrent of bubbles rose towards the surface. ¡°But they¡¯d probably just come back the instant they were out of my range.¡±

    Emiya sighed. ¡°When you say a small colony, exactly how many are we talking about?¡±

    So far?

    ¡°About twenty.¡±

    Some of them bigger than the others, some of them smaller than that one I¡¯d first discovered on that beach. Taking a guess, their size corresponded to their age, so the bigger ones were older and the smaller ones younger.

    ¡°That¡¯s not too bad, I suppose.¡± He hummed. ¡°Well, if you want my thoughts on it, just keep them far enough inside your range to control them, but don¡¯t bring them too close. As much as I¡¯m sure my Master would love the chance to eat crab again, the lunch menu has already been set, and we brought more than enough to satisfy everyone.¡±

    Yeah, that was probably the best solution. As long as nothing dragged me too far inland on the island, it shouldn¡¯t be too hard to keep that colony of phantasmal crabs near the edge of my range and safely away from everyone else.

    Well. Everyone aside from Bellamy, at least. He seemed determined to take as much advantage of the fact that Servants didn¡¯t need to breathe as he possibly could while he could.

    The sun moved slowly across the sky above us, and sometime around maybe one o¡¯clock in the afternoon, Emiya projected an enormous picnic table, and then he started cooking something else on that grill of his, pulling supplies out of that enormous picnic basket as he needed them. The smell wafted over my way, drifting into my nostrils, and I couldn¡¯t have stopped my stomach from rumbling if I tried.

    It was a relief when he opened his mouth and shouted, ¡°LUNCH!¡±

    As though he had cast some kind of spell, the others all but dropped what they were doing and made their way over at speed, with El-Melloi II dropping his cigarette into the sand and pretending he wasn¡¯t almost jogging back. I leveraged myself up more sedately, but even I couldn¡¯t keep myself from adding a little haste as I replaced the goggles Emiya had given me with my glasses and stood.

    Sam, I sent to Bellamy, it¡¯s lunchtime. Come on back.

    On my way! he replied. Don¡¯t start without me!

    It turned out that what Emiya had been cooking was hamburgers. Loaded with spices and fixings and far more flavorful than any burger I¡¯d ever eaten before, but a hamburger nonetheless. He served up each of us one at a time, and we all sat down at the large picnic table to eat, where communal trays of chips and vegetable platters were arrayed for us to enjoy.

    ¡°So good!¡± Rika moaned when she bit into hers.

    ¡°Sir Emiya¡¯s food is excellent, as always!¡± Bradamante agreed.

    Silently, I agreed, too. Fugly Bob¡¯s would¡¯ve gone bankrupt just for the recipe Emiya had used, because if they¡¯d had it, they would have become a national hit.

    ¡°I mean, it¡¯s good, I guess,¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. No one was fooled.

    ¡°It¡¯s similar to something I ate when I was alive,¡± Siegfried said, ¡°but with much more flavor and far more enjoyable.¡±

    ¡°If there¡¯s one area where the modern world excels, it¡¯s in its food,¡± said A¨ªfe.

    ¡°Modern food is amazing!¡± Bellamy proclaimed.

    ¡°Although even there, this guy really stands out, huh?¡± added Arash.

    ¡°So this is a hamburger¡­¡± Mash said thoughtfully.

    ¡°Do you like it, Mash?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    She smiled and nodded. ¡°Mm! It¡¯s heavy, with a robust flavor! I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve had anything quite like it before!¡±

    ¡°I had to get a bit creative with the meat,¡± Emiya revealed. ¡°Naturally, Chaldea doesn¡¯t stock up on beef patties, so I had to make my own, and I figured, no reason not to make them a little bit healthier in the process. Glad to hear everyone likes them.¡±

    Rika suddenly stopped eating. ¡°These are tofu burgers?¡± she demanded, aghast.

    ¡°Not that healthy,¡± Emiya told her with a smirk. ¡°They¡¯re a mix of beef, turkey, and pork. I figured you¡¯d mutiny if I made them with a meat substitute instead.¡±

    ¡°Goddamn right!¡± said Rika. ¡°No self-respecting chef makes tofu burgers! It¡¯s blasphemy!¡±

    ¡°Against which god?¡± her brother asked, amused.

    ¡°My tastebuds!¡±

    ¡°Now, there¡¯s some blasphemy,¡± Arash teased.

    Everyone enjoyed their lunch, and Emiya, who had made more while we ate, proved to have made the right decision, because several people went back for seconds, Rika among them, of course. I might have made a comment about her waistline and how many laps she was going to have to run to work off that second burger, but I had a second one myself, so there was no room to talk.

    Once we¡¯d all had our fill, we sat around together for a little while, letting our food digest. I wasn¡¯t sure the Servants strictly needed to, since their bodies didn¡¯t quite work the same way as a living person¡¯s, but even if they were just keeping us Masters company, they stayed and we all chatted about inanities. Bellamy in particular regaled us all with stories about what he¡¯d found while he was out scuba diving, and I had to school my face to keep from smiling when he mentioned the crabs that had waved at him and followed him around.

    Arash and Emiya cast me amused glances, both of them knowing that I was the one behind that. I confessed to nothing.

    After our food had had time to settle, the others started to talk about what to do next, and that was when A¨ªfe slyly suggested a game of volleyball.

    ¡°Hey, yeah!¡± said Rika, turning to Emiya, and for the moment, she seemed to have completely forgotten her problems with him. ¡°You can make a volleyball net for us, right? And a ball, too!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m beginning to regret letting you all know the true depths of my skill,¡± Emiya drawled. ¡°But yes, Master, I can make the stuff you need to play volleyball.¡±

    ¡°How are we going to set up the teams?¡± asked Ritsuka. ¡°With Servants involved, well¡­¡±

    I looked meaningfully at Hippolyta. ¡°It might be a good way for any of you who have trouble with it to practice controlling your strength.¡±

    She nodded. ¡°It might.¡±

    ¡°Boys versus girls?¡± suggested Arash.

    ¡°That might be a little lopsided,¡± said Emiya, looking out at each of the people present.

    ¡°I can sit out the first match!¡± Bradamante offered. ¡°Um, if everyone else wants to play, that is¡­¡±

    ¡°I think Shakespeare is going to be sitting out regardless,¡± I said.

    ¡°But of course!¡± the man in question agreed. He gestured down at his body. ¡°Do not let this idealized physique fool you, for I am no sportsman! Nay, such pursuits are ill-suited to my temperament!¡±

    ¡°You can count me out, too,¡± said El-Melloi II. ¡°If you lot want to play around in the sand, be my guest.¡±

    That left Emiya, Arash, Siegfried, Bellamy, and Ritsuka. With Bradamante willing to sit out at least the first match, the girls¡¯ team would have A¨ªfe, Hippolyta, Mash, Rika, and me, if I decided to join in. Five versus five.

    ¡°Then if Tii-chan isn¡¯t playing the first match¡­!¡± Rika turned to me expectantly, having come to the same conclusions I had.

    For a second, I considered declining and going back to my towel to relax some more, but¡­ What the hell. Why not?

    ¡°Sure.¡±

    ¡°Five on five,¡± said Emiya. ¡°Sounds fair enough. Alright, give me a minute to get everything set up then.¡±

    ¡°What am I, chopped liver?¡± drawled Jeanne Alter.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Rika lamely. ¡°You didn¡¯t say anything, so I wasn¡¯t sure you were interested¡­¡±

    ¡°I can sit out as well, if she truly wants to play,¡± Hippolyta offered.

    Jeanne Alter scoffed. ¡°Nah. It sounds lame anyway.¡±

    But the way she eyed the beach made the words ring hollow. The trouble with that was that calling her out on it then and there would probably just make her dig in her heels. The look in A¨ªfe¡¯s eye told me she planned on handling it.

    Once the remains of lunch were cleaned up, the picnic table vanished into thin air as though it had never been there in the first place, and then Emiya left his grill behind to venture out onto the beach and find a good space to put the net. Different from a normal volleyball net, the one he set up was longer, with more reach and a wider net, and once it was firmly in the sand and didn¡¯t look like it was going to collapse, he went around and started placing little flags to mark the boundaries, creating a far larger ¡°field¡± than normal, too.

    Probably accounting for Servants, in that case. Smart of him.

    With the net set up, we split into our teams, with Shakespeare and Bradamante both staying put and watching while El-Melloi II went back to his towel and sat back down. Jeanne Alter went off to do her own thing, pretending she wasn¡¯t paying any attention to us, even though her eyes kept wandering towards the field.

    When we were all ready, Emiya produced a ball in much the same fashion as he produced anything, smugly gave us the privilege of serving first, and A¨ªfe, perhaps feeling a bit vindictive, decided she was first up.

    What followed could only vaguely be called volleyball, and even then, only in the absolute loosest sense of the word. It started off fine, with everyone keeping things within human limits to the best of their abilities and only a few mishaps early on when someone got too excited and put a little too much oomph behind the ball.

    But as the afternoon wore on, things got competitive, and ¡°within human limits¡± got tossed to the side. The spikes got harder and more vindictive, the serves went farther, and if it wasn¡¯t for the larger field Emiya had set up, most of them would have gone out of bounds. They even broke the ball once or twice, forcing Emiya to replace it.

    ¡°Boulder-shattering spike¡± sounded silly and stupid until someone did it who could actually shatter boulders. Then, it became silly and stupid because it shattered the ball.

    I wasn¡¯t sure who started it, but A¨ªfe and Hippolyta were only too happy to reciprocate, and things eventually devolved to the point where us Masters couldn¡¯t do much of anything except serve the ball and, on the occasion one of the other players remembered we weren¡¯t quite as strong as the rest of them, hit back what was set up for us.

    ¡°I think my arm is going to fall off!¡± Rika complained at one point, and I had to agree with her. The only reason I was any better off was because I was making judicious use of my First Aid spell in between rounds.

    Of course, if that was the way they wanted to play the game, then I was only too happy to take advantage of it, too, so instead of using my real, flesh and blood arms, I started making use of my prosthetic¡¯s phantom limb, and seeing the expression on Emiya¡¯s face when I returned the ball without actually touching it was priceless.

    Eventually, A¨ªfe managed to cajole Jeanne Alter into joining, and Hippolyta conspired to help by begging off, saying she wanted to take a break for a game or two, leaving the girls¡¯ side outnumbered.

    ¡°Fine,¡± Jeanne Alter said, and although her words were exasperated and bored, subtleties in her body language gave away how much she was looking forward to it. ¡°I guess I can give you losers a hand.¡±

    ¡°We got Jalter, we got Jalter, we got Jalter!¡± Rika cheered.

    Jeanne Alter sneered. ¡°Goddamn right, you do!¡±

    Like that, we spent the next couple of hours, with A¨ªfe and Hippolyta trading off turns every other game, and the sun in the sky made its slow, ponderous journey from east to west. Eventually, after what must have been at least half a dozen games of volleyball without any clear winner, we all decided to call it quits for the day, because the twins were getting tired and I wasn¡¯t exactly fresh-faced anymore either.

    Conveniently, the only thing we had to do to clean up after ourselves was to let Emiya dismiss his projections. All the rest of us had to do was get out of the way.

    ¡°Man, that was brutal,¡± said Ritsuka with a sigh. ¡°Remind me to never play a sport with Servants again. I don¡¯t think my body can take it.¡±

    ¡°Noted,¡± I said, because it was a sentiment I could agree with whole-heartedly.

    ¡°Sorry about that,¡± said Arash, laughing a little sheepishly. ¡°I guess we all got ahead of ourselves there and took things a little too seriously.¡±

    ¡°It started off well, but by the end of it¡­¡± Hippolyta lamented.

    ¡°It started to get fun,¡± said A¨ªfe, grinning that shark-like grin of hers.

    Of course she really got into it once things kicked up a notch. I didn¡¯t know why I would have ever thought differently.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to get myself a snow cone to cool down,¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Get one for me, too!¡± Rika said. He grimaced.

    ¡°I¡¯ll come with you, Senpai,¡± Mash told him. She looked my way. ¡°Miss Taylor, do you want one, as well?¡±

    Why not? It would be nice to have something cool to snack on after so many intense rounds of volleyball. ¡°Sure. Cherry is fine.¡±

    She smiled. ¡°Of course! We¡¯ll be right back!¡±

    As they made their way back to the snow cone machine, Emiya looked at me and asked, ¡°So how¡¯s the colony of crabs doing?¡±

    Rika suddenly went ramrod straight. ¡°Crabs?¡±

    ¡°Keeping to themselves,¡± I said as I turned my attention back on them more fully. I¡¯d mostly left them to their own devices in the background. My brow furrowed. Somehow, the bigger ones had gotten a bit closer without my noticing. ¡°They don¡¯t seem to¡­¡±

    Something prodded the edges of my range, something larger than all of the others and thrice as slippery as the biggest one already under my control. I pulled the ones I had closer towards the beach and further away from the unknown, but that only seemed to make whatever it was more curious, and it went from the outer edges to firmly within my range, skittering along ¡ª

    My vision skewed and my brain turned, and a gasp tore itself out of my lips as my sense of balance suddenly pitched in the wrong direction.

    ¡°Senpai!¡±

    ¡°Master!¡±

    Several voices cried out, and when I came back to myself, I realized I had fallen to my hands and knees, but something still felt¡­off. Like I had too few limbs, like my body was too light, and there was a weight that I was supposed to have resting on my back. Protection from the elements, from predators, a shell to guard my weak point.

    What?

    The larger crabs in the water suddenly wrenched themselves against my yoke, moving erratically, even as I tried to still them. The largest presence, the one that had just stepped into my range, was completely outside of my control. I could feel it, could feel the legs that moved along the sand as it came towards us ¡ª towards me ¡ª the enormous shell that it wore like armor, the huge claws capable of rending steel as easily as bone, the eye stalks that swiveled as it marched, but I couldn¡¯t do anything to so much as slow it down.

    It was angry. I could feel it. Furious that someone had taken control of its colony, and all the more furious that someone had tried to take control of it. Him. The patriarch of the phantasmal crabs.

    ¡°S-s-s-someth-thing¡¯s c-coming,¡± I managed. My lips felt wrong. Unnatural. Because it still felt like I should have more limbs and a differently shaped body.

    In a flash, Arash was out of his ridiculous getup and back in his armor, bow already in hand, and while Emiya didn¡¯t go that far, a pair of familiar swords settled into his grip.

    ¡°Something?¡±

    I opened my mouth, but all that came out was an unintelligible gurgle.

    I was too naive. I¡¯d thought, once I took control of the phantasmal crab back in Okeanos, that it was as simple as that and even something so clearly magical would fall under my control just as easily. But that thing, even as a phantasmal, hadn¡¯t been particularly strong, and probably not particularly old.

    The patriarch had to be ancient. Ancient, and too much for even my passenger to wrangle easily.

    ¡°It¡¯s here!¡± said Hippolyta.

    And from out of the surf, as the water pulled back, a massive form emerged. Taller than a human, tall enough, when combined with his shell, to equal Herakles, and bulky enough to outmass him three times over, it was a hermit crab. Its claws were as long as my torso and almost as big around, and its body was the color of charcoal, with large, black eyes that swiveled about and took in all of us, and when they landed on me, its entire body tensed with rage.

    ¡°What the hell is that?¡± Rika demanded hysterically.

    ¡°P-p-p-patria-arch.¡±

    ¡°Damn,¡± muttered Emiya. ¡°To be that big, it¡¯s gotta be at least a thousand years old.¡±

    Older. Far, far older. The sense of scale was skewed, but I got the impression that he was at least two-thousand years old, putting him solidly from the Age of Gods.

    The patriarch surged forward, skittering across the sand with surprising speed for his size, making a beeline straight for me.

    ¡°Looks like he¡¯s not going to give us much choice!¡± said Arash.

    ¡°Then we¡¯ll just have to kill it!¡± said A¨ªfe.

    ¡°Fuck yeah!¡± Jeanne Alter crowed as her sword manifested.

    Arash didn¡¯t contradict her, he just immediately fired off a volley of arrows ¡ª and they all broke against the patriarch¡¯s skin the same way they had against Caenis and Herakles. He just had that much power behind him.

    A¨ªfe kicked off of the sand and raced towards the patriarch. She lashed out with a powerful punch, one that would have smashed any of the other crabs in my range into mush. The patriarch wasn¡¯t fast enough to get out of the way, so he ducked down, withdrawing all of his vital parts into his shell and leaving that the only thing A¨ªfe could hit.

    Against all expectations, it held. A web of thin, hairline cracks spread from the point of contact, but it didn¡¯t break.

    ¡°Holy shit,¡± breathed Rika. ¡°He actually took a punch from Super Action Mom!¡±

    Like lightning, a claw lashed out from within the shell, and A¨ªfe dodged it, but not quickly enough to avoid him scoring a thin cut along her leg.

    ¡°Tch,¡± she scoffed as she landed. ¡°A thousand years, Emiya? You¡¯re too conservative. This one might have been around when the Curruid died.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t say,¡± Emiya said. ¡°Well, never let it be said that I was afraid of doing a little crab fishing.¡±

    He threw out his swords, and as they scythed towards the patriarch, he projected another pair. As the first swerved back around, he swung the set in his hands in a powerful downward chop. The patriarch, instead of risking it, stayed huddled inside of his shell, and although Emiya managed to score a set of deep scratches into it, like A¨ªfe, that wasn¡¯t enough to make it through.

    ¡°Keh!¡± Emiya grunted. ¡°It doesn¡¯t look like any one of us will be able to finish him off alone, does it?¡±

    ¡°Not as long as he¡¯s hiding inside that shell,¡± Hippolyta agreed.

    ¡°Then either we pry him out of it,¡± Siegfried said, ¡°or we break the shell!¡±

    He descended from above as Emiya moved out of the way, bringing Balmung down with a shout, but the blade skidded off the surface instead of biting through it. The force behind the blow sent up a shower of sand and forced the patriarch deeper into the beach, but otherwise didn¡¯t seem to do much to him.

    ¡°I¡¯m not done yet!¡± Siegfried roared, and blue light lit up Balmung¡¯s blade as he charged up a miniature use of his Noble Phantasm. ¡°Take this!¡±

    Balmung slammed into the shell like a battering ram, leaving behind blackened scorch marks on the surface, and although the patriarch didn¡¯t seem any more injured by this than the first blow, there was enough force and power behind it to send him flying off further down the beach.

    A¨ªfe appeared suddenly in his path. ¡°Nice serve!¡±

    And with her foot alight with runes, she smashed the shell with a bone-rattling kick. I could feel it not only through the patriarch, but in the vibrations that shuddered through the air. The patriarch went soaring upwards and into the sky, tumbling.

    ¡°Then I¡¯ll spike it!¡± Hippolyta declared, and she leapt up into the air, her fist aglow with power, and slammed it into the shell. I could feel it starting to crack.

    Propelled by the blow, the patriarch shot back towards the ground, and Bradamante raced to meet him. ¡°Me, next! Bouclier de Atlante!¡±

    She surged forward, a cone of light forming around her as she went, and right as the patriarch was about to land, she bashed the shell with her shield, deepening the spider web of cracks formed from A¨ªfe¡¯s first punch. The patriarch went tumbling back into the air, spinning about so dizzyingly that I myself felt nauseous.

    ¡°Burn!¡± Jeanne Alter cackled as she threw gouts of flame that washed over the shell. The temperature inside spiked. ¡°Burn, burn, burn!¡±

    A set of cannons suddenly materialized, floating on nothing. ¡°Fire!¡± Bellamy cried, and with a belch of smoke and flame, the cannons fired. Two shots missed entirely, but the third and then the fourth hit the patriarch, and I could feel the shell beginning to finally give way. ¡°Mash, you¡¯re up next!¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Jeanne Alter squawked. ¡°I wasn¡¯t done yet!¡±

    ¡°Right!¡±

    Mash charged forward with a yell, shield materializing in her grip, and she leapt up and bashed the patriarch with all of her strength. The patriarch went flying off towards the water, trailing bits of reinforced chitin as the shell finally broke open and shards fell away, but even like that, he wouldn¡¯t leave my range and we¡¯d be right back where we started soon enough.

    ¡°Guess it¡¯s up to me to finish it,¡± Emiya said. Bow in one hand, he held out the other, and a familiar spiraling sword formed there. ¡°My core is twisted in madness.¡±

    He set the sword along his bow like an arrow, and as he pulled back on the bowstring, the sword itself streamlined, thinning down into a pointed metal shaft. He took aim out towards the sea, and then ¡ª

    ¡°Caladbolg!¡±

    The air howled as the modified sword left his bow, leaving behind a spiraling trail as it went, and out above the water, the patriarch disappeared. In a flash of light and a ball of fire, his presence vanished utterly from my senses, and the instant it did, I could breathe and move and my body felt normal again. When I climbed back to my feet, gone was the sense that the shape of my body was wrong and the feeling that there was a heavy shell resting on my back.

    ¡°I am never playing volleyball with them ever again,¡± Rika announced.

    I didn¡¯t blame her.

    Mash jogged back over to us, shield dematerialized again, still in her swimsuit. ¡°Enemy defeated, Master.¡±

    ¡°I can see that,¡± Rika said. ¡°You guys, uh, didn¡¯t leave anything behind, did you?¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s the saying, Master?¡± asked Emiya smugly. His bow vanished. ¡°There¡¯s no kill like overkill? Well, at least this one was easier than Herakles.¡±

    Rika smiled a fragile smile. ¡°Y-yeah. Something like that.¡±

    ¡°Oh!¡± Mash gasped. ¡°Miss Taylor, I¡¯m sorry! I dropped your snow cone!¡±

    Of all the things to be worried about¡­

    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± I told her. ¡°I¡¯ll get one myself, this time.¡±

    ¡°And I need to get mine again, too,¡± Mash lamented. ¡°I had to drop both of them.¡±

    ¡°I think I¡¯ll have one myself,¡± said A¨ªfe. She looked pointedly at Jeanne Alter. ¡°No reason not to try the whole experience, is there?¡±

    Somehow, I didn¡¯t think ¡°the whole experience¡± usually involved killing sea monsters.

    ¡°Tch.¡± Jeanne Alter scoffed. ¡°Whatever. I¡¯ll try one of those stupid things.¡±

    ¡°Me, as well,¡± Hippolyta added, sounding more interested than I thought a snow cone really warranted.

    It was just shaved ice, sugar, and fruit juice.

    Bradamante nodded excitedly, so eager she was almost bouncing. ¡°Yes! I think I¡¯d like to try one, too!¡±

    Arash smiled and offered, ¡°I¡¯ll show you how to use the machine, it¡¯s not hard.¡±

    And so our group went off to grab snow cones. Rika made to join us, but Emiya stopped her, murmured something I couldn¡¯t make out, and led her away, further down the beach, where they could have some privacy.

    Ah. Finally going to have that talk, was he? Guess I wasn¡¯t going to have to intervene after all. There went my emergency plan of tying them up in silk thread and locking them in a closet until they hashed everything out.

    I kept cursory track of them as the rest of us got our snow cones, but didn¡¯t eavesdrop, just made sure things didn¡¯t devolve. I could at least do them that courtesy. It was tempting to start paying closer attention once they started getting emotional, but as long as they stayed relatively calm, I was determined not to pry.

    When they returned to the group something like half an hour later, Rika¡¯s eyes were red and her nose was stuffy and she was sniffling, but she was also smiling and so was Emiya. Good. They¡¯d worked through things, then. Time would tell if there were still things they needed to discuss or say to each other or more problems to address, but for now, it looked like they were back to normal again.

    The hour grew later. In the aftermath of all the excitement, everyone settled down and actually relaxed as the sun drew ever closer to the horizon. To tide us over until dinner, Emiya cooked up some more snacks, some more of those things he made on skewers earlier in the morning, and passed them around to each of us.

    The instant I bit into mine, I recognized it. He¡¯d made the same thing back in Septem, if I was remembering right, back when we first met Emperor Nero. It was the same treat that had convinced her she absolutely had to have him as her personal chef, and then Rika had gotten into a mock sword fight with her using loaves of bread.

    As the sea turned gold and the sun started to set, our communicators chimed, and when I went to answer it, Da Vinci was there.

    ¡°Hello, hello!¡± she said. ¡°As promised, everyone, this is your scheduled call to let you know we¡¯ll be bringing you back to Chaldea in half an hour! Time to start packing up! Anything you leave behind stays behind!¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Da Vinci,¡± I replied.

    ¡°No trouble, no trouble,¡± she said. ¡°Ah, but I did see that you ran into some of your own earlier. The data on that was quite something! It¡¯s good to see you handled it without needing us ¡ª or the use of a Command Spell.¡±

    If a single giant crab gave us that much trouble, then we had much bigger problems to deal with.

    ¡°It really was something,¡± said Mash. ¡°Who knew that a Phantasmal of that rank was still around here in this Singularity?¡±

    ¡°A shame there wasn¡¯t anything usable left of it,¡± A¨ªfe added. ¡°I might have been able to work with a mystery that ancient.¡±

    ¡°I think the Director might have had a fit if you brought any of it back,¡± Da Vinci whispered conspiratorially.

    Not quietly enough, however, because in the background, Marie¡¯s voice shouted, ¡°Hey!¡±

    ¡°Well, I won¡¯t keep you any longer,¡± Da Vinci said lightly. ¡°Remember, half an hour. Don¡¯t forget anything!¡±

    And then the connection cut. For a moment, in the silence that followed, no one moved or spoke, like we were all reluctant to end our day of vacation.

    ¡°Well,¡± Emiya drawled at length, ¡°we might as well get everything cleaned up and packed away. Don¡¯t want to leave anything important behind.¡±

    With a sigh, I levered myself up off of my towel. ¡°Right.¡±

    Like that was a signal, the others got into motion and started packing up. El-Melloi II folded up his umbrella, and the towels were shaken out and rolled into cylinders for easier storage. Emiya¡¯s grill vanished, and so too did all of the things he¡¯d projected to go along with it, like the plates and the utensils, and he set about getting the leftover food squared away inside that gigantic picnic basket he¡¯d carried here.

    It didn¡¯t actually take that much time or effort to get everything put away. Since much of it had been projections of Emiya¡¯s in the first place, it was mostly just the towels and such the like that needed folding and stuffed back into the box they¡¯d come in, and all told, it only took us about ten minutes before we were all packed up and ready to go home. For us Masters and Mash, we didn¡¯t even need to do all that much to get changed back into our regular wear. It was just a few presses of a button or two, a moment of whirring silver dust, and then back to normal.

    While we waited for the next call from Da Vinci, we lingered, loitering about the beach and soaking up the last few minutes of our vacation that we could. El-Melloi II in particular was off to the side puffing away on the last cigarette he would get to enjoy for a while precisely because he knew this was the last chance he¡¯d have for the foreseeable future.

    It was Rika who separated from the rest of the group, plodding down to the shoreline, just far enough from the water to keep her feet from getting wet. She stared out at the setting sun as it painted the sea in beautiful pastels, something wistful in her posture and the way she stood.

    Funny how sunsets seemed to do that to people. Maybe it was the day ending that made so many so introspective, made them think about the things they didn¡¯t give any attention during the daylight hours. Maybe it was just a cultural thing born of all those rom-coms that set heartfelt, emotional scenes to a setting sun.

    Mash, being the kind of person she was, was the first one to get concerned.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± she asked tentatively.

    Rika didn¡¯t answer right away. She didn¡¯t give any indication that she¡¯d even heard Mash at all, she just kept staring out at the ocean.

    ¡°Rika?¡± her brother tried instead. ¡°Everything okay?¡±

    Rika took a deep breath, and then ¡ª

    ¡°Yo-hohoho, yo-hoho-ho. Yo-hohoho, yo-hoho-ho.¡±

    Ritsuka groaned.

    ¡°Gather up all of the crew,¡± she sang quietly, ¡°it¡¯s time to ship out Binks¡¯ brew. Sea wind blows ¡ª to where, who knows? The waves will be our guide. O¡¯er across the ocean¡¯s tide, rays of sunshine far and wide. The birds, they sing, of cheerful things in circles passing by.¡±

    It sounded like another sea shanty, but not one she¡¯d sung while we were with Drake and her crew and not one I was familiar with. Given Ritsuka seemed to recognize it, it probably came from another movie or tv show I¡¯d never heard of before.

    ¡°Gather up all of the crew, it¡¯s time to ship out Binks¡¯ brew. Pirates, we eternally are challenging the sea. With the waves to rest our heads, ship beneath us as our beds, hoisted high upon the mast, our jolly roger flies.¡±

    No one spoke to interrupt her, and like that was permission, she kept going.

    ¡°Gather up all of the crew, it¡¯s time to ship out Binks¡¯ brew. Wave goodbye, but don¡¯t you cry, our memories remain.¡± Halfway through, her voice cracked, but she soldiered on as though it hadn¡¯t. ¡°Our days are but a passing dream, everlasting though they seem. Beneath the moon we¡¯ll meet again, the wind¡¯s our lullaby.¡±

    And when the last verse was over¡­

    ¡°Yo-hohoho, yo-hoho-ho. Yo-hohoho, yo-hoho-ho.¡±

    She let the final refrain hang, and for several long seconds, stood there, staring out at the ocean. The slosh of the waves crashing against the shore filled the silence.

    ¡°Say, Onii-chan?¡± she asked. ¡°Do you think Captain Drake would have liked that one?¡±

    Ritsuka sighed and offered her a sad smile. ¡°Of course. She would¡¯ve loved it.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a song about pirates,¡± I added dryly. ¡°She would¡¯ve made it her crew¡¯s anthem.¡±

    Rika giggled, reaching up with one hand to wipe at her eyes, and when she turned around, her usual grin was firmly in place.

    ¡°Yeah! For sure!¡±

 Chapter CXXV: Hurry Up and Wait

    Chapter CXXV: Hurry Up and Wait

    The vacation turned out to have been something of a stroke of genius ¡ª accidental or otherwise ¡ª because the general good mood that followed it lasted through the next week, at least for the Servants and us Masters, and it even seemed to have lifted the spirits of the technicians and crew as well. Like watching us relax had vicariously eased their own burdens and lifted a weight off of their shoulders.

    It wasn''t quite the first time since the sabotage, but there was a lightness in the air that infected everyone.

    But as things moved back into the normal day-to-day operations at Chaldea and we all went back to our routines, things slowly became business as usual. Ritsuka and Rika were back to morning sessions with A¨ªfe in the gym and afternoon sessions with El-Melloi II. Mash''s swimming lessons continued, and although she adapted to them and picked things up quickly ¡ª likely helped in no small part by the fact that she had mine and Marie''s individual attention instead of having to share it with a whole class of students ¡ª she was not suddenly an Olympic swimmer after just a couple weeks of instruction.

    I was confident, however, that she could at least manage to make it safely back to land if she got dropped into a body of water. Like, say, that bay near where we''d landed in Septem. Whether she''d do quite so well if she was dropped into the middle of the ocean with nothing but a heading, well, that I was less sure of, but she would at least be better off than us Masters would be, courtesy of the strength and endurance granted to her as a Demi-Servant.

    In the meantime, I dove back into learning A¨ªfe''s runes. My progress on them had stalled and they''d somewhat fallen to the wayside, first with all of the focus I''d put into helping Marie recover after she got her body back and then with the minor crisis of Ritsuka being trapped in that curse, but with my time now more my own and enough space to focus on them, it seemed like a good enough moment to get back to them, and A¨ªfe was only all too happy to oblige.

    As the days wore on, however, and November came closer and closer to ending without any news about what to expect from the next Singularity, my patience started to wear thinner. We still had a little over a year to resolve the remaining four Singularities ¡ª a year to do the same task we''d completed in less than half that time already ¡ª but I didn''t like the idea of getting anywhere near close to our supposed deadline.

    As it turned out, when I brought the issue up to Marie a few days before Thanksgiving, she didn''t like it either.

    "Of course it''s frustrating," she said a little impatiently. "I don''t like it either, but we had to put investigating the next Singularity on hold for a while so we could look back into the Age of Gods to determine if there really was a connection with King Solomon."

    "Did you find anything out?" I asked her.

    She pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a gusty sigh, leaning on her desk. One of the piles of paper wobbled a little, but stayed upright. "Da Vinci is the one handling the bulk of the data," she admitted, which explained what Da Vinci had been up to the past few weeks, too, "but from my understanding, no. So far, based upon observations by the SHEBA Lens, there''s no evidence of any historical deviation in the era of King Solomon."

    And that was confirmation of a kind, wasn''t it? Whoever or whatever was behind all of this, the best case scenario, they were either using King Solomon''s name or had summoned him as a Servant. Although how they would have forced the compliance of a Heroic Spirit who came in damn near the top of the list for Casters, that part I still wasn''t clear on. Command Spells could only go so far in binding a Heroic Spirit that could probably unravel them with a glance and a raised eyebrow.

    Whatever the case, they''d cast a curse on Ritsuka from across time and space using one of their Demon Gods ¡ª as a familiar, I had to assume, and the fact that they were using one of those things as a familiar said quite a bit, too. We had to assume that our ultimate enemy, however they related to King Solomon, was probably close to his level of power and ability. At the very least, they had some method of controlling him, but what that was, we might not find out for quite some time.

    "What does that mean, going forward?"

    "Dant¨¨s could have been lying," she said first, but she didn''t sound like she really believed that, "but the other possibility is that whoever concocted this entire plot somehow summoned and bound King Solomon as a Servant. We''ll have to look into how they might have accomplished that, because the idea that someone could summon a Servant without a system like ours or a Holy Grail System like Fuyuki''s is already a matter of concern."

    As I''d thought, then.

    "And the British Singularity?"

    Marie grimaced. "Da Vinci is still collecting the data on the issue of King Solomon, just to be as thorough as possible, so we likely won''t have any more information about the next Singularity for at least another week. We still haven''t managed to narrow it down beyond the general location and a loose timeframe, but we''ve at least managed to rule out anything before the eighteenth century."

    That was still a lot of history to cover, though. A lot had happened in the past three-hundred years, and stuff like preventing the Industrial Revolution or destroying Britain before America could enter the Second World War were just the first two things I could think of that might be the focus of a Singularity there. There was still at least a hundred years of history that fit in-between those, too, with several important events happening that could easily have changed the shape of the world as we knew it now.

    I''d skim over things to try and pick out more likely candidates on my end, but in terms of in-depth study, I still didn''t have enough to work with. Combing through the major events of a single decade in England was something that could be done in a month, but three centuries was too much for that little time.

    In the meantime¡­

    "If we''re expecting to take another few weeks before we''re ready to tackle the next Singularity, it might be a good idea to arrange some more¡­community events to break up the monotony."

    Marie''s brow furrowed. "Community events?"

    "Since Da Vinci still hasn''t found the time to fix the simulator for Servants," I reasoned, "another movie night or two might give everyone something to do besides wait or kill time."

    Marie''s lips pursed. "For the moment, we still don''t have much use for the briefing room," she said slowly, "so there isn''t any real reason why something like that can''t be done¡­"

    I was sensing a "but" in there somewhere.

    "Is there a reason why we shouldn''t?"

    She sighed.

    "No, it''s nothing," she said. "If you think it would help everyone to have another movie night, then I''ll trust your judgment. You have my permission to set it up whenever you like."

    It wasn''t nothing, I could tell that plainly and I think anyone else would have been able to as well, but I wasn''t quite sure what it could be. It wasn''t like we''d left a mess behind last time and no one had needed to use the room while we were in there. It wasn''t even like there was something else we were meant to be doing that we''d had to clear our schedules for in order to sit down and watch that movie a few weeks ago.

    Unless she was thinking about ¡ª ah.

    "Ritsuka is fine, Marie," I told her patiently.

    "I know that!" she snapped back at me. "I know that th¡­the incident afterwards had nothing at all to do with the movie you all watched the night before! I know that¡­any trigger that might have caused that curse to activate would already have been tripped long before now! I''m perfectly aware that there''s no reason at all to¡­to w-worry that something else might happen! Even so, I¡­!"

    Her eyes squeezed shut and her bottom lip wobbled a little. Her grip on her pen tightened until her knuckles turned bone white.

    I''d thought she was doing better when she didn''t have any trouble with us Rayshifting into Okeanos for that vacation day, and maybe on the day to day, she was. None of that meant that she would never have a bout of irrational fear or another panic attack ever again, or that it would be safe for her to take down the dreamcatcher that was, to my knowledge, still hanging above her bed.

    That whole incident must have been like finding out about the sabotage all over again. A punch to the gut just when she might have started to feel safe again.

    "Even so¡­" she whispered.

    I sighed. "I know."

    She took a shuddering breath and visibly gathered herself. Like she was climbing a ladder, her back straightened and her shoulders squared, and even if some part of her was still fragile on the inside, what was projected outwards was an image of strength.

    "I don''t have any problems with you and the others watching movies together in the briefing room whenever you have down time," she said, and her voice barely quivered. "The only conditions I have are that I be informed of times when you plan to do that and everyone keeps their communicators on."

    "Of course, Director." The only place I went without my communicator these days was the shower, although I guess Okeanos had proved that they were actually waterproof, hadn''t it?

    "Was there anything else?" she asked, all business.

    "Have you eaten breakfast yet?"

    Her stomach gurgled, and her cheeks flushed a pale pink.

    "I-I was just about to, actually, before you came in!" she answered.

    Liar, I thought, but I didn''t call her on it. She''d probably been so caught up in her paperwork that she''d forgotten about it entirely. The only reason she''d eaten regularly for most of those two years before the sabotage was because she''d been so dedicated to making sure I had enough myself.

    "I''ll get out of your hair, then," I said, "so that you can go and get some food. I need to ask Da Vinci about a few things anyway."

    With that said, I left Marie''s office behind and made my way down to Da Vinci''s workshop. I hadn''t yet picked out a room for a terrarium or even really talked to Marie about it, but that was partly because I didn''t really have anything to fill it with yet. For the most part, there wasn''t even a point in having a huge swarm hanging around Chaldea, because even if I managed to cram all of it into that coffin with me, it was largely pointless when I would just be building up a new one once I arrived most of the time anyway.

    So having a small, carefully selected swarm would be best. Something that had real utility, something I could leave here and use for supplementary tasks, like weaving lines of silk rope for me to use in the field. Unfortunately, while I''d found a few Black Widows while we were in Septem, we hadn''t had a place to put them at the time, so I''d had to leave them behind.

    What would be most convenient would probably be having a few spider puppets that could do the job just as well. Easier to care for, less need to feed them or worry about them dying off on me if they were left alone for too long. The question was whether or not we had the supplies and Da Vinci had the time to really make them, and if the former was a problem, then I could grab another bunch of bugs for her to use as raw materials.

    The latter, unfortunately, I couldn''t really do anything about. Da Vinci was an important, irreplaceable asset in Chaldea, probably the one largely responsible for the fact it was still running at all, let alone so effectively, and if she just didn''t have the time to dedicate to building me more puppets, then the only options I really had were to leave it be or try and make them myself.

    I wasn''t particularly confident I could manage to make something like that on my own. Something workable? Maybe. Something as elegant, sturdy, or functional as Huginn and Muninn? Not a chance.

    Da Vinci was, predictably, hard at work when I arrived at her workshop, with her back to me as she poured over whatever was on her workbench, although the door was, as usual for her, left wide open. I lifted my hand, but before I could rap my knuckles against the wood to let her know I was there, she tilted her head to the side and said, "Yes? Was there something you needed, Taylor?"

    I didn''t think I would ever get used to being on the receiving end of that.

    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    "A couple of different things," I said. "The Director said something about you handling the data for the scan of King Solomon''s era."

    She nodded. "That''s right. I''m running it through a few programs to look for subtler anomalies, but so far, there hasn''t been anything. If King Solomon truly is involved the way Edmond Dant¨¨s claims he is, then it doesn''t seem like it has anything to do with his own native time, which means that it really could be occurring from any point ¡ª even, theoretically, a time before his own life, although that''s actually harder than it might sound."

    Right. Because the only way to summon a Heroic Spirit whose legend hadn''t occurred yet using a catalyst that would one day have a connection to them was either accidentally or using some form of Clairvoyance to peer into the future. Not impossible, in other words, but incredibly difficult. That part wasn''t that hard to grasp.

    "So the only answer we have is that it would have to be King Solomon as a Servant."

    Da Vinci held up a finger and looked at me over her shoulder with a smile. "Or someone who is doing a very convincing job of pretending to be him! It''s too soon to say with certainty, especially as we have yet to actually encounter the man himself, but yes. Barring truly extraordinary circumstances that would surprise even a genius like me, those seem to be our only possibilities."

    Nothing I hadn''t already known or talked about with Marie.

    "And the next Singularity?" I asked.

    "As I''m sure you''ve already discussed with the Director, that''s still an ongoing investigation as well," said Da Vinci. "Another week, and we might be able to glean more information about what to expect, perhaps even narrow down a more exact era and location. I wouldn''t place any bets that we''ll be deploying you before December, but almost certainly before Christmas."

    Longer than a week, shorter than a month. I was hoping she might have had more for me than that, but I guess that was just wishful thinking.

    "One other thing," I said. "That spider puppet you said you were working on. Have you finished with it yet?"

    She paused briefly, hands stilling for a short moment, and I knew the general shape of the answer before the words even left her mouth.

    "Ah," she said awkwardly. "Yes, well, I''m afraid¡­that''s taking a bit longer than I''d hoped it would." She sighed, stopped, and turned around, offering me an apologetic smile. "Things have been a bit busier than normal the last few weeks, and examining King Solomon''s era for discrepancies became something of a priority, you understand."

    "I understand."

    That didn''t mean I had to like it. Investigating our ultimate enemy was important, and I would never have suggested that what was ultimately a personal project was more important than that, but I''d been waiting on that spider puppet for about a month now, and she was usually so fast completing projects that it felt all the more unusual that it would take her this much time and effort to get it done.

    Although I suppose a lot of different factors had been combining and piling up on her metaphorical plate, including Ritsuka''s three day coma and the preparations to send us all on that vacation, and before all of that, summoning Emiya back to Chaldea. A lot had been happening since we got back from Okeanos. Things had been busier than they were between, say, Septem and Okeanos or Orl¨¦ans and Septem.

    "On the subject, however," she said, "I''d like to do some maintenance work on your beautiful ravens ¡ª check the wear and tear after two Singularities, if you will, even if you didn''t have much cause to use them in Okeanos ¡ª so if you could see to it that they''re brought down here sometime in the next few days, that would be great."

    My lips pursed, and my first instinct was frankly to be a little insulted, because I took care of my ravens as much as I could. But gut reaction aside, I''d just admitted that Da Vinci was far better at the job of creating and tuning puppets of that kind of quality, and they were her work to begin with. I hadn''t noticed any dip in their functioning, but if she caught something before it became a problem, then that was all the better.

    "Of course," I said. "I''ll bring them down later, after lunch, as long as that works for you."

    Da Vinci smiled broadly. "That will be just fine, thank you. Was there anything else you wanted to address?"

    "No, that was it."

    Even if she hadn''t really done much more than confirm what Marie had already told me.

    Da Vinci dipped her head and went back to her workbench. "Then I''d best get back to work. Ciao ciao, Taylor!"

    "Yeah. And maybe take a lunch break sometime."

    She might not need to eat, but if she was going to harp on Romani about it, then she could at least take her own advice and relax every once in a while.

    She chortled. "I suppose it''s about time someone gave me a dose of my own medicine, isn''t it?"

    "Servant meal days aren''t just for everyone else."

    "Perhaps not!" Da Vinci shook her head. "Well, I can''t complain if I''m getting on Romani''s case about exactly the same thing, can I? Alright, Taylor, since it''s you who said so, I suppose there''s no reason for me to starve myself, even if it is metaphorically."

    "Then I won''t have to order A¨ªfe to drag you in by the ear."

    "Heaven forbid!" she said with a laugh. "No need for me to become another one of her strays, yes?"

    She waved me off with a smile, and I turned around and left as she returned to whatever it was she had been working on when I entered. I went back to my room to kill some time with a novel until lunch, and when the alarm I set for myself went off, set it down to go and eat.

    Emiya dished me up something I didn''t recognize, but by the smell, it was probably something Mediterranean. I was sure it would be just as good as anything else he''d made.

    "Everything good between you and Rika?" I asked him casually.

    He paused midway through fixing my plate, but his smile didn''t droop even a little.

    "I''m sure you noticed," he told me, "but I took her aside on that vacation and cleared the air with her. I''m not sure we''ll be able to tell whether everything is back to normal until our next deployment, but it certainly seemed to go well, at least to me."

    To me, too, because she seemed back to her usual self now, but it was good to hear it straight from him.

    "I see. That''s good, then."

    "For now," he reasoned, "the only thing I can do is have trust in my Master. Even if she is overly reliant on my food and calls me her house-husband every now and again."

    "Be thankful it''s not as catchy as most of her other nicknames," I told him dryly.

    He chuckled. "There is that, isn''t there? Tii-chan isn''t bad, but at least she doesn''t call me Hot Pops."

    Or Queen Booty. Or Captain Pillows. By that metric, I guess "Senpai" was something I could live with just fine, too.

    When my tray was completely loaded up, I bade him goodbye and went to find myself a seat in the almost empty cafeteria, and it wasn''t too much longer before the twins and Mash meandered in and up to Emiya''s counter. The words mostly just washed over me like white noise, but I paid particular attention to Rika''s interaction with him, her body language, her expression, examining everything to look for the slightest sign of unease.

    But there was none. A couple weeks after she and Emiya had that talk, and she seemed completely back to normal, as though nothing had ever happened. You might have thought that nothing was ever wrong.

    I looked away and did my best to smother a smile. I was glad I hadn''t had to intervene more directly. A little nudge to move things along, but they''d otherwise eventually handled things themselves. No invasive meddling necessary.

    Once they had all gotten their food, they made their way over to my table and sat down with me.

    "Lunch!" Rika declared gustily. She clapped her hands together, bowed her head, and said, "Itadakimasu!"

    Her brother echoed her quietly, and then they started to eat. A strange little ritual, one they didn''t always seem to observe. I assumed it was the equivalent of saying "Grace!" right before you ate, a quick way of saying, "Thanks for the meal!" without involving a long prayer when everyone was just hungry.

    I was already halfway done, so I finished before them and sat for a moment, watching them enjoy their food. Poor Marcus, I thought. Always upstaged by Emiya, no matter how hard he tried.

    Maybe he preferred it that way, though. Cooking for a staff of twenty people, all of them running themselves ragged to keep this place going, all of them eating meals in staggered waves, only a Servant could possibly have the stamina to keep up with that. No wonder he''d looked so haggard and tired for that brief stint where he''d had to handle the load by himself.

    "How do you guys feel about another movie night?" I eventually asked.

    The twins both paused, Rika halfway through chewing and Ritsuka with his fork raised and his mouth open, and they shared a look.

    "It sounds good to me," said Ritsuka as his sister quickly chewed what she had and swallowed ¡ª and then choked a little from trying to go too quickly.

    After she''d gulped down a sip of her drink, she rasped, "Can we invite everyone along again?"

    "Oh," said Mash. "You meant another group movie night, Miss Taylor?"

    "I''ve talked to the Director, and she okayed it," I told them. "As long as we ask permission beforehand and don''t interrupt anything important, we can have as many movie nights as we want."

    "Really?" Rika asked. Her eyes almost sparkled.

    I nodded. "Really."

    "Oh, wow!" she gushed. "Okay, okay, what should we watch first? We already did Titanic, and that''s a hard act to follow. Maybe another Cameron movie?"

    "Not Avatar," her brother was quick to say.

    Avatar? I think I vaguely remembered hearing something about that from Aleph, but I''d never seen it myself.

    Rika grinned. "Yeah, not sure a bunch of heroes who fought monsters and stuff would want to watch a bunch of giant blue people fight corporate greed. Row, row, fight the powah!"

    "If we''re going to watch something like that, I''d say Dances with Wolves," Ritsuka suggested.

    His sister stuck her tongue out at him. "You would."

    "Dances with Wolves?" asked Mash.

    "A movie about a guy who gets a frontier post after heroism in battle and falls in love with the culture of the native tribe in the area," Rika rattled off. Her lips pursed for a moment. "There''s an American Singularity later, right? Maybe we should save that one for then. Before or after?"

    "I guess¡­it would depend on when the Singularity is taking place?" Ritsuka hedged. "I mean, it''s not like that movie is all that historically relevant, but it had to get at least some of the details right, right? So it might be useful to watch that before we go in if the Singularity is set in the same time period."

    "Point," Rika allowed. She suddenly perked up. "Oh! Oh! I know! Man, why didn''t I think of that before? It was sitting right in front of me the whole time?"

    "What?" said Ritsuka.

    She turned to him. "Terminator."

    He grimaced as though he''d just smelled something particularly foul. "Really?"

    "Come on!" she said. "How could we skip out on that? It''s, like, one of the most relevant movies we could possibly watch at this job!"

    Maybe it was, but that didn''t mean I wanted to watch it again myself.

    "Are you sure you don''t want to save that one for after we summon Emperor Nero?" I asked her slyly.

    Her eyes went wide, and as though I''d just cast some kind of spell, she reversed course so fast I was surprised she didn''t give herself whiplash.

    "No, we''re not watching Terminator yet!" she insisted. "In fact, I don''t even want to hear about it again until Best Buddy is here!"

    Ritsuka sent me a thankful look, like I''d just spared him some terrible fate. To be fair, I suspected Bradamante would come out of Terminator throwing the lines around the same way Rika did, and I think I spared everyone by convincing her to put it off for later.

    One pop culture machine was enough, thank you.

    "How about The Princess Bride?" I suggested. As long as you don''t butcher the lines again, I didn''t add.

    Rika lit up. "Oh! Yeah, sure! That''s a great one! Hey, hey, do you think Siegfried will like that one? He''s a knight in shining armor, isn''t he?"

    Not in the way you think he is. "Maybe."

    "The Princess Bride?" Mash echoed curiously. "What''s that about?"

    "Oh!" Rika gushed. "Oh, you''ll like it too, Mash, I just know it! See, it''s got all the things a good movie needs ¡ª action, romance, a revenge plot, sword fighting, a duel to the death ¡ª"

    And she went on to explain the movie in broad terms, somehow managing to avoid giving out all but the most basic of spoilers for anything more than the first five minutes of it. Mash listened, enraptured, and even the little gremlin on her shoulder seemed interested in hearing about it.

    I took my chance to slip away and return my dirty plate and tray to Emiya, then left the cafeteria to start the rest of my afternoon. As I went, I reached out along the thread to Arash and gave him a mental prod, Arash?

    Yeah? he replied. Something you needed?

    We''re having another movie night tonight, I told him. Same time, same place. Let the others know?

    Sure, he said. I''ll make the rounds and let the others know we''re having another movie night. Was there a specific one decided upon, or are we leaving it a surprise?

    The Princess Bride, I said, but if anyone wants to be surprised, that''s up to them.

    Will do. And when he ended things there, I eased out of our connection and continued on my way. Huginn and Muninn were delivered to Da Vinci without any fuss.

    About an hour or so later, it was time for another swimming lesson with Mash, and I had to admit, there was an added level of convenience to being able to change into a swimsuit with a press of a few buttons. The bikini Da Vinci had made for me might not have been the most appropriate for a teaching environment, but as a matter of professionalism, I would have cared more if I had a whole class instead of just a single student.

    It wasn''t like Mash and Marie weren''t wearing their own personalized swimsuits, after all. Mash seemed to have taken quite the liking to the one Da Vinci had made for her, and since Marie had worn the same one since the first lesson, no one had any room to criticize.

    Naturally, Fou was there again as well. I ignored his presence as best as I was able.

    An extra layer had been added ever since Marie had first told me about what was going to happen to Mash. Something bittersweet, like knowing your days with a person were numbered and being unable to do anything to change it, and I guess in a very real sense, that was exactly how things were, because a year and a half from now, Mash was going to be gone, and it felt like tomorrow. Even if your time with any given person was always going to be limited, the uncertainty of when and how made the inevitable feel far off and distant. Having a deadline, on the other hand, shoved it all in your face.

    If I''d known that my time with Lisa, Brian, and the others was going to be so short¡­ Well, given how things were back then, maybe I wouldn''t have done much of anything different at all. But I would have cherished that time I did have all the more.

    After Mash''s swimming lesson was over ¡ª as she had every time since we started, she thanked us at the end as though we were doing her some great favor ¡ª Marie and I went our separate ways to get washed up for dinner. I made sure to leave last, after that ball of fur in its ridiculous jersey had already trotted off after Mash, just so I didn''t have to feel its eyes on the back of my neck.

    Dinner itself, of course, was as excellent as always. Emiya had made something a bit lighter than usual, perhaps as a nod to the fact that we were all going to be snacking on popcorn not too long afterwards, but Rika inhaled it with her usual gusto and delight, as excited about the food as she was to have another movie night with everyone. She was practically vibrating in her seat.

    Maybe we should come up with a list, I thought as I watched her. A checklist of all the most important cultural icons in film, from both Eastern and Western culture, although that meant I would probably have to sit through at least one or two of the famous Kurosawa films that I had heard so much about and maybe one of Rika''s anime.

    The former might not be so bad. The latter, well¡­ I guess I didn''t have a frame of reference beyond her jokes, now that I actually thought about it. Japan had been devastated by Leviathan, so some of the things that gained popularity here and in Aleph had just never happened, and that left me without any real idea about the quality of Japanese animation ¡ª how much of Rika''s obsession was nationalistic pride or her age, in other words, and how much of it was these things being genuinely good.

    Mash, at least, seemed eager to watch another movie, too, although she wasn''t as¡­animated about it as Rika was, and while Ritsuka similarly was much more subdued, he seemed to be looking forward to it as well.

    So about an hour after dinner, it wasn''t a surprise to see the three of them there first, already waiting in the briefing room. They turned towards Arash and I as the door whooshed open, a giant grin stretching across Rika''s face.

    "Arash!" she called. "Senpai!"

    "Someone''s excited," Arash said, amused.

    "Are you kidding me?" She giggled. "I get to share some of my favorite movies with everyone! Sprinkle some fairy dust on me and I''ll fly!"

    Ritsuka rolled his eyes, smiling, but Mash only blinked. "Fairy dust?"

    "Peter Pan," I told her.

    Recognition lit up in her eyes. "Oh! Yes, there was something like that, wasn''t there? With Tinkerbell."

    "First star on the right, and straight on ''til morning."

    I was a 90s kid. Disney was part of my DNA. And then, of course, Mom had made sure to introduce me to the original play written by J.M. Barrie, because there was no way she was going to let that pass without it. You only got half the experience if you just watched a watered down, streamlined movie version.

    I had to wonder if Romani had managed to sneak in any of those movies to show her under Marisbury''s nose. He was braver and cleverer than I''d given him credit for if he actually had.

    The rest of the group slowly filtered in over the course of the next ten or so minutes, and just like he had last time, Emiya wheeled in a cart containing cartons of popcorn for us all to eat. Arash was taking care of setting things up for the movie this time, so I joined the crowd jockeying for one of those cartons and made sure to grab one for Arash to have, too.

    It took a few minutes for everyone to settle down and find a seat. I wound up a couple rows back from the front, with Bellamy to one side and a spot reserved for Arash on the other, and once we were all snuggled in and ready to go, Emiya turned off the lights and Arash hit play. The screen turned briefly black, and then it began to glow as a nameless tune filled up the sudden silence.

    The briefing for the next Singularity couldn''t come soon enough, I thought as the movie started and the studio logos played across the screen, but at least for now, watching movies with all of us here together wasn''t a bad way to spend the time until then.

 Interlude NF: A Scholar and a Gentleman

    Interlude NF: A Scholar and a Gentleman

    The year was 1888, and the city of London was shrouded in mist.

    Any Heroic Spirit summoned across time and space from the Throne of Heroes would not have thought this unusual. As existences already atemporal in nature, knowledge of at least a broad overview of events following their original deaths was a part of their domain, something which they possessed as a matter of course, and therefore the fact that Victorian London was prone to bouts of thick fog would be considered a given. There would be nothing strange about it at all.

    Indeed, because of the circumstances of the time, neither would the natives have thought anything of it, not normally. London was rather famous for its thick fog, something that any who lived there for any appreciable amount of time would come to accept as simply a part of life in the city.

    These thick fogs also provided a level of convenience. Harder for people to notice the strange and unusual when they couldn''t see more than a few feet in front of their faces, and therefore, it was easier to hide things such as the sudden appearance of one who ought not be there. There need not be any attempts to obfuscate the summoning of a Heroic Spirit when such a thing was already obfuscated, allowing a Servant to appear to correct an aberrant situation without anyone the wiser.

    For Caster, this was the case, for he arrived suddenly and without warning in an empty street, called forth to aid in the restoration of proper human history. One moment, there was only a stretch of air filled with silvery mist, and then the next, he appeared in a flash of light and a burst of energy, sprouting up fully formed like he had simply shot up out of the ground.

    And the instant he had completely manifested, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose as though it was the first breath he had ever taken ¡ª only for his entire face to wrinkle as his lips curled in disgust.

    "What''s this?" Caster muttered. He held the sleeve of his robe up to his nose and mouth as though that would be enough to ward away the stench. "How utterly foul. What sort of fellow would coat an entire city with a fog so thick with magical energy? Really, now. Have you no respect for these poor people?"

    A burst of wind whipped up around Caster, sending his long robes flapping, tousling his hair, and nearly ripping the hat right off of his head. The fog was blown back, creating a pocket of clear air almost a dozen feet across in every direction and granting him a reprieve from the toxic fumes that would have choked an ordinary human to death in mere minutes. He heaved a sigh of relief, glad to be rid of the thick, cloying mist, but it was short-lived, because only a handful of seconds later, the fog encroached again, sinking through the pocket he had opened and attempting to smother him beneath its gentle weight.

    Caster scowled. It made his thick beard and mustache droop and gave him the appearance of a disappointed headmaster.

    "I see," he said to no one in particular. He was used to talking to himself. It helped to keep his thoughts in order, although it had annoyed his wife endlessly. "So it''s like that, is it? What an insidious little plot you''ve got going on here. After all, no one would have any reason to believe anything amiss at all until people started dying, and even then, well, that isn''t particularly unusual for those who have suffocated underneath this cruel trap, is it?"

    There was, of course, no answer, for he was quite alone on that street, although he hadn''t actually expected one either. No, no, that would be far too convenient, wouldn''t it? The mastermind behind all of this must have blanketed the entire city in this poison, and unless whoever it was happened to have some kind of mechanism for feeling out people who disturbed the mist ¡ª a not impossible proposal, Caster acknowledged to himself ¡ª the likelihood that this dastardly fellow was anywhere near Caster at all was exceedingly low. Infinitesimal, in fact.

    Of course he would not be able to confront the source of this evil so soon. Whoever they were was probably miles and miles away, hidden away from easy reach as their plan unfolded beneath them. To imagine they were anywhere nearby ¡ª or if they were, that they would present themselves to him and face his scorn directly ¡ª would be folly of the highest order.

    London was not a small city, after all. At this point in history, it had already possessed a population in the millions, although perhaps, thought Caster, that number might have been substantially reduced, depending on how long this mist had been choking the city and how quickly the population had wizened up and realized it may have been safer indoors.

    "Even then, that might not have been enough," Caster murmured. He clicked his tongue. "If this mist permeates even the people''s homes, then it may be that it is already too late to save them."

    It was cruel either way. To be locked inside your home and unable to leave for fear you might die in the fog''s poison, or for the poison to be so toxic that even your home was no longer a safe haven from its creeping tendrils. Whoever had concocted this situation was truly diabolical, a villain worthy of scorn and certainly deserving of whatever punishment might be meted out in response.

    As a matter of professionalism¡­ Well, hopefully, Caster would find someone better suited to punishing the wicked and vanquishing evildoers. Another Servant, perhaps, one for whom this sort of thing was more familiar, because he doubted that there weren''t others that had been summoned for the same purpose as his and things were dire indeed if there weren''t.

    If it was absolutely necessary¡­ He''d cross that bridge when he got to it, as the saying went. If at all possible, not at all.

    "Well," said Caster, rolling his shoulders and setting his brow, "no use standing around here all day, is there? I might as well see if there''s aught I can find about."

    And so he set off down the street, or as best as he could, given the thickness of the fog. Periodically, he blew open a pocket of clean, fresh air, as much for his nose as for the sake of getting his bearings, but for the most part, he was limited to using what few landmarks he could make out through the mist and the stones beneath his feet to keep track of where he was heading.

    Even this was not all that useful. The fog was so thick that a lamppost less than twenty feet away was nothing more than a vague blob, a shadow cast along the fluff. Only barely could he make out the shape of his own shoes, let alone the street he was walking along, and that made it quite difficult to determine where he was or where he was going at all.

    It was rather unfortunate that the knowledge he''d been granted during the course of his summoning hadn''t been so convenient as to include a map of London itself, and doubly unfortunate, therefore, that he had never visited the city at any point while alive, and as a result hadn''t even the slightest inkling of its layout. A native Londoner might have been able to navigate these streets with his eyes closed.

    "Now," murmured Caster, "if this had been Paris¡­"

    It had undoubtedly changed in the intervening years between his death and this current era, but even so, it would have been more familiar than this. If this aberration had taken place there, had focused there, at least he might have been able to trust his sense of direction more than now.

    Perhaps it was better that it wasn''t, however. Having to see his home in such a state might have been more than he could bear.

    Eventually, Caster managed to stumble his way towards what could only have been a residential apartment building, and deciding that it bore investigation whether or not any people still lived in this place, he made his way towards the door, lifted one hand, and rapped his knuckles sharply but relatively gently against the door. It wouldn''t do to knock the thing down, after all, not if it was the only thing protecting the people inside from the dangers of the outside.

    There was no answer. There was, however, a sudden flurry of activity in the building beyond, and the shutters that had been fastened tightly rattled as the inhabitants checked to make sure that they had not come loose. Faint footsteps along creaking floorboards told the tale of someone rushing about, perhaps trying to find a place to hide, but they eventually went silent, and several minutes later, Caster remained alone at the door. No one ever arrived to greet him.

    A little rude, perhaps, but understandable. It confirmed for him, at least, that some people had managed to survive and find shelter in their homes. How many, it was impossible to say, and it would be long, tedious work to confirm each individual building had at least one surviving occupant ¡ª longer, Caster thought, than he could afford to spend on it. London was host to millions of people, it bore repeating, and therefore thousands of homes that he would have to check individually for people still living.

    It was heartening to know that there were survivors at all. The numbers didn''t necessarily matter, except as an accounting of the blood on the perpetrator''s hands, and any number was unforgivable when it meant lives ruined that would otherwise have been spared.

    "I see." Raising his voice a little, he called to the people inside, "Pardon my intrusion! I meant no harm! I merely wanted to confirm that there were still people in London!"

    Again, there was no answer. Not even someone sneaking up to the shutters to crack them open and take a peek out at him.

    It said as much about the circumstances as anything else had yet.

    Caster left the apartment behind and started walking again, aimless. Unfortunately, the fact that there were survivors in the city did him no favors, even if it eased some of the burden on his shoulders. It didn''t change the fact that he hadn''t the slightest clue what he should be doing or where he should be looking if he wanted to find whoever it was that had created this fog. He couldn''t even ask any of the citizens if they might point him in the direction of where it had originated.

    Perhaps if he were to take spirit form and slip inside one of these buildings¡­

    No, no, that wouldn''t do any good. It would only frighten the good people hiding there, and if he were to suddenly appear in their midst, why, they might decide to take their chances out in the fog and run to their deaths outside. It would be counterproductive at best, outright harmful at worst, and cruel no matter how he looked at it.

    The choice might eventually be taken out of his hands, however.

    "It''s not like I can wander around London until I find something, after all," he muttered.

    The thing to do would be to follow the flow of magical energy to its source so that he might discover the person behind all of this. That same magical energy was too thick, however, and it permeated everything. With enough time and a place to work, determining whence this mist originated should still have been possible ¡ª child''s play, even ¡ª but having to rely solely on his senses and his sensibilities as a magus, there was just too much in the air all around him to trace a pathway.

    As though it had been designed specifically for the purpose of confounding the senses, magical or mundane. Given the culprit was most likely another Caster of some kind, that was a frighteningly likely possibility.

    Frustrating. And the fact that this mist was being allowed to persist meant that the Mage''s Association was either unable or unwilling to do anything about it. If he had a better understanding of the city''s layout, that might have been the first place he should attempt looking, but with things as they were, he couldn''t even have hoped to see the infamous Tower of London, let alone a cultural landmark as famous as Big Ben.

    If this whole thing had been going on for long enough¡­ Perhaps "unable" would be the better bet, especially if this was the work of another Caster. If he were the one behind all of this ¡ª although what madness could have possessed him to do such a thing, Caster couldn''t imagine ¡ª then neutralizing the Mage''s Association would be one of the necessary steps to completing it. Depending upon how expedient the culprit was, it was possible there were simply countermeasures in place to prevent intervention or¡­

    "Or eliminating the Association was but a single step in this fiend''s plan," Caster muttered aloud.

    Ruthless, cruel ¡ª and yet, undoubtedly effective. Caster had no love for the Association and the Clock Tower, and he most especially had no taste for their politics and their obsession with lineage and history, especially when the likes of Leonardo da Vinci proved that rare geniuses of exceptional talent very well could exist outside of carefully cultivated bloodlines, but he would not have wished death upon them all.

    And yet, death may have been visited upon them all the same.

    "An avenue for investigation," Caster decided, "should the opportunity arise that I might examine those circumstances more closely."

    Until that chance came by, however, the only thing he could really do was investigate the city some more. He sighed, his shoulders sagging.

    "If only the Counter Force had seen better fit to summon me within closer range of allies, if any here truly exist. This aimless wandering is getting me nowhere fast."

    Quite literally. With things the way they were, it was impossible to tell if he was getting closer to the center of the city or farther away, and for that matter, whether that was a good thing or not. There was no way to be certain when he hadn''t the faintest clue what else he should be searching for in the city or where any potential allies might have decided to set up a base of operations ¡ª or, indeed, whether they would even be the sort to do so. Berserkers were a notoriously fickle sort, often driven by confusing motives or nonsensical world views, when they were even coherent enough for such a thing at all.

    A Berserker that rampaged mindlessly was like as not to kill him as it was to kill the enemy. A small mercy, perhaps, that there had yet to be any signs of such a thing summoned to this place. Caster was certain he would have heard such a reckless beast by now, if only from the ruckus it would cause as it flailed around the city.

    "I suppose I can afford to look about for some time yet," Caster mused. He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky, but it was just as impossible to tell the time of day as it was to see past the length of his arm. The only thing that he could be at all sure of was that it was daytime and not night. "At some point, however, I''m going to need to find a place to stay, if only because the enemy is more likely to be active at night. Although with this mist¡­"

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    It would be the perfect way for an Assassin to hide, wouldn''t it? Fantastic. That was another thing he was going to have to worry about. Being ambushed as he investigated things would be an unpleasant experience to top off this already vile situation. Assassin Servants were such a pain to deal with, especially when you were the target.

    Well. As long as this theoretical Assassin didn''t have a way of guaranteeing an instant kill, that might wind up working out in Caster''s favor. Even if only because it would give him some information about the sorts of enemies he might be forced to confront.

    Caster sighed again. "It''s going to hurt either way, though¡­"

    There was nothing for it. He was just going to have to hope that the theoretical Assassin was only theoretical. That way, he could avoid the whole situation.

    In any case, provided he didn''t run into any enemy Servants anytime soon, then he would have to put his misgivings aside and use spirit form to find a residence of some sort to stay in ¡ª empty, obviously, because he wasn''t about to evict any of the survivors of this place; that would be unnecessarily cruel ¡ª maybe make a temporary workshop to use while he searched. Depending on whether or not he ever found any more Servants bound for the same purpose as him, that workshop might wind up being more or less permanent.

    It wasn''t like he''d been given a timeframe to work in, after all. Obviously, the people of the city couldn''t afford for him to take too long, but it might wind up taking weeks or months to solve this problem, especially if it was more entrenched than he hoped.

    "And if it crippled the Mage''s Association," he concluded grimly, "it''s not likely to be something I can handle with a flick of my wrist."

    The worst kind of problem.

    Caster continued on without delay, and deciding to be less conservative than he had been thus far, he cast a spell that formed a small ball of light that lazily orbited his head, pushing away the fog. It didn''t give him much more visibility than he''d had before, not with the mist as oppressive as it was, but even that little bit was helpful in keeping better track of his surroundings.

    The first order of business once he had a workshop set up would be to craft a device that could do this more reliably. It would not, unfortunately, be powerful enough to let ordinary humans go about outside without consequence, not with the amount of time he was likely to have to make it, but it would at least be enough to make it somewhat easier to navigate the city.

    "There you are, you bastard!"

    Caster whirled about just in time to see a vague blur leap off of a nearby rooftop ¡ª but not fast enough to avoid the blade of the sword that slashed across his chest and threw him backwards like a ragdoll. A spurt of blood trailed behind him, splattering across the street, and he crumpled onto the cobblestone with a meaty thud. The blur landed with a metallic clank, humanoid in shape, all gleaming silver and red cloth.

    For a moment, there was silence.

    "Tch!" the stranger scoffed, voice echoing behind a helm of medieval plate. It was impossible to tell whether it was male or female with that helmet on. "I know that wasn''t enough to put you down, so stop pretending and stand up already!"

    Caster sighed, and slowly, he leveraged himself up, climbing back to his feet.

    "Was that really necessary?" he asked as though a grisly gash was not carved into his chest, still weeping blood. "That sort of violence is simply uncalled for."

    Red light crackled along the wound, and in an instant, it was gone, replaced with perfectly healthy flesh. A moment later, the robes that had been cut stitched back together as well, leaving Caster as though nothing had happened at all, and he patted down his clothes to brush away the dust.

    "Uncalled for?" barked the stranger. "Say that to the people of this city! I''d say this shit is pretty uncalled for!"

    Caster paused.

    "Ah," he said simply. "That would make you a Servant called here by the Counter Force ¡ª to fix this problem, as it were. Going by that armor, a Saber, correct?"

    It would certainly explain the unkind welcome. A bit more brash than one would expect of a knight, admittedly, but there were plenty of chivalric romances featuring headstrong protagonists with a tendency to attack first and ask questions only afterwards.

    The stranger ¡ª Saber ¡ª shifted. "Yeah, that''s right." Saber brandished their sword at Caster threateningly. "And the fact you know that, that makes you the guy behind this crazy fog, doesn''t it? You Casters are always ruining people''s lives without a care in the world, and here''s the last place I''ll let that happen again! You''ve got one chance to put an end to this, and then my sword''s gonna convince you!"

    But, Caster thought, wasn''t that what Saber was already doing? He wisely decided not to say anything about it.

    "Alas, I''m afraid that is beyond my power," said Caster, "because it seems you and I were both summoned here for the same purpose."

    Saber paused again, helmet tilting to the side a little. "You''re shittin'' me."

    Caster hummed. "I imagine your circumstances were something like this: you arrived in the city with no warning and little in the way of information, only the directive to fix this problem ¡ª no more than a few hours ago?"

    Saber took a second, but eventually said, "Yeah, that''s right."

    "And without any direction or any idea how to go about doing what it is you were called here for, you settled for wandering, hoping you might stumble upon either allies to help you in your quest or some clue about where you might find your enemy ¡ª correct?"

    Saber was silent for another few seconds, processing this. "Shit." They let their sword droop, arm relaxing and falling back to their side. "So you don''t have any idea what''s going on either, huh, Gramps?"

    Caster deliberately ignored the nickname. Perhaps if he didn''t respond to it, it wouldn''t stick?

    "Unfortunately, I''ve discovered little in the short time since my summoning," said Caster, "save that there are indeed at least some survivors among the populace. How many lives this mist might have claimed, I cannot say. Indeed, whence this mist came, how long it has lingered, and what its purpose might be, I''m afraid I haven''t been able to uncover. I can only offer a guess ¡ª at best."

    Saber grunted. "Damn. So this is stumping you, too, huh?"

    "Without the time or the resources to do a proper investigation¡­" Caster let the thought trail off suggestively before moving on. "Assuming the mist itself is not the end goal, it is likely intended to obscure the culprit''s location and activities. To veil their misdeeds from us and hide from scrutiny, allowing them to do as they like without consequence."

    "Yeah, but if that''s all he wanted, that bastard didn''t have to go this far," said Saber. They made a sound of disgust that echoed through the helmet and came out sounding warbling and dissonant to Caster''s ears. "This shit''s so toxic, it feels like it''s trying to melt my goddamn tongue off!"

    "A valid point," Caster acknowledged with a nod. "Of course, it''s also possible that the toxicity is an unintended side effect. Of the artificial mist mixing with this era''s native atmosphere, as it were."

    After all, London had faced several such challenges over the course of its later life, although smog so poisonous was admittedly several decades early at this point. It only meant that enough of the factors were in play that the wrong nudge in the wrong place could have had the same end result.

    "What''s it matter whether he did it on purpose or not?" Saber demanded. "He''s still doing it!"

    "Another valid point," Caster agreed. "However, whether this is negligence or malice greatly changes what we might expect from our ultimate foe, and indeed, how reasonable he might be."

    Although the callousness required to continue whatever plan this enemy was enacting even after discovering the effect it had on the city spoke ill of their personality, whoever it was, and cast many doubts on their reasonableness. Perhaps it was a runaway effect? Impossible to rein in once it started?

    Saber was starting to get to him. There was no reason to leap to the defense of someone who had already gone far enough to require correction from the Counter Force as direct as the summoning of multiple Servants.

    "Who cares how ''reasonable'' this guy is?" Saber said. They brandished their sword demonstrably. "He''ll be real reasonable either way with three feet of steel in his gut!"

    Caster grimaced. "Quite."

    At least he seemed to have found someone who would be only too happy to handle the more violent bits of this deployment. If all Caster had to do was find the enemy and point Saber in their direction, well, that would suit him just fine, and he could put up with a few eccentricities until then.

    "In any case," said Caster, changing the subject, "perhaps it might behoove us to move on and attempt to find the perpetrator? Failing that, we might at least encounter more allies who could assist us, or perhaps find an empty building to use as a sort of home base."

    Saber''s helmet bobbed, clinking off the gorget and the oversized pauldrons of their armor. "Yeah. The sooner we can find this bastard, the better!"

    And together, they set off, venturing forth into the city and along the road. Saber, it turned out, was actually fairly short, once Caster actually paid attention to it. The armor likely added a few inches of height, and it most certainly gave them a larger silhouette, creating a shape that seemed taller and more imposing than it actually was.

    Perhaps Saber was a younger knight? One who had hit his prime early and favored a more youthful physique as a result? It would certainly explain the brash attitude and the tendency towards violence as the first solution.

    "Say," said Saber as they walked, "you''re a Caster, right?"

    "I am."

    Perish the thought of a warrior attempting to fight in robes like his.

    "So who does that make you, then?" asked Saber. "I don''t know that many Casters, but you sure as hell ain''t either of the two I know best. That pervert would be throwing flowers all over the place, and my¡­that witch would have gone straight for the palace and parked her ass on the throne."

    A pervert and a witch? Caster would have thought those great clues about Saber''s identity, provided Saber wasn''t so irreverent. Those descriptors were like as not to be colored by Saber''s own perceptions of those people as anything else, and that made them nearly useless.

    But¡­

    A pervert and a witch, hm? And a knight who had encountered two magi ¡ª or at least spellcasters ¡ª one certainly female and one presumably male, and knew them well enough to address them with such epithets.

    Not enough to go on, but it was a good start.

    "And you?" Caster countered. "I''m certain that helmet of yours offers a degree of protection, but none so potent and important as your identity. You''re going to ask me my name without even the willingness to show your own face?"

    Saber''s head tilted towards the side. "Fair enough."

    And that was that, at least for the moment.

    "So what else did you find out then?" asked Saber, changing the subject again.

    "As I said, very little," replied Caster. "Much of it only supposition. However, if our enemy is indeed, as I suspect, another Caster, then I believe it very likely they have already eliminated the Mage''s Association of this era. Failing that, they have at least been neutralized in some form or fashion. It is the only explanation I have for their apparent inaction in the face of this threat."

    Saber nodded. "Makes sense. I guess if I was up to no good like this, the first thing I''d do was make sure there wasn''t anybody around who could stop me, yeah?"

    "Precisely."

    "Guess that means we can''t expect any help from those louts," said Saber. They shrugged. "Eh. Probably better off, anyway. Less reason to worry about being stabbed in the back, right?"

    Caster huffed a short laugh. "Yes, I suppose there is that, isn''t there?"

    "And you haven''t seen any other Servants yet?"

    "Just you," Caster told them. "Granted, I haven''t been here all that long myself, so it''s entirely possible there are others, and they''ve simply been summoned to a separate part of the city."

    Provided they hadn''t been eliminated by the enemy. After all, it was entirely possible that this was the work of a coalition rather than a single Caster Servant, and they might not find the answer to how many enemies waited in the wings until they confronted all of them.

    Saber made a sound of vague agreement. "Maybe. Or maybe we''re some of the first ones here."

    "Maybe we two will be the only Servants summoned to deal with this," Caster pointed out.

    "Heh!" He could almost hear Saber''s savage grin. "Maybe we will! After all, the two of us can handle this whole thing by ourselves, can''t we? Who needs anyone else!"

    Caster allowed himself a small smile. "Your confidence is inspiring, if nothing else."

    Saber laughed, delighted. "You think so? I guess that makes sense, Gramps!"

    Although why or how, Saber didn''t elaborate. Perhaps something to do with their identity. Caster decided not to pry for the sake of maintaining the current camaraderie between them.

    They continued on for several minutes in relative silence. Saber''s armor clanked with every step, drowning out the quieter clop of Caster''s shoes, but beyond that, there were no other sounds. It was as though the city had been deserted.

    For a second time, Caster wondered how many of the millions of London''s inhabitants had managed to make it to safety and how many had died. The streets should have been filled to the brim, and yet they were entirely empty. As though the entire population had suddenly been scooped up the instant the mist touched them, transported to some far away place.

    It might have said something that they had yet to encounter any bodies. There must have been at least a few who died before everyone cottoned on to what was happening, and he rather doubted anyone would take the time to retrieve the corpses if it meant braving a corrosive fog, but rather fortunately, there were not bodies lying all about the streets, left to sit and rot.

    Of course, that itself supposed that the enemy Caster had no need of those selfsame bodies. A necromancer would neatly explain that lack, and would also offer an explanation for the callous disregard for the lives of the citizenry. Not definitive proof, but another possibility to consider.

    If there was perhaps one silver lining to the situation, it was that the enemy appeared to have no interest in directly damaging the city. There was no telling what prolonged exposure to this mist would do to the infrastructure, but aside from that, everything else seemed to be remarkably intact ¡ª what Caster could see of it, in any case. Admittedly, that wasn''t as much as saying so made it sound.

    "Hey, Caster," said Saber at length, "do you have any idea where we''re going?"

    "Not a one."

    "Ugh." Saber''s shoulders sagged. "I was going along with it because I thought you might have some idea of where we were headed."

    Caster hummed. "If you have a better grasp of the city''s layout, then I would gladly hand the lead over to you, Saber. I''m afraid I know nothing more about our destination than the goal of it."

    "Ah. Well," Saber said awkwardly. "M-maybe I don''t¡­know where we''re supposed to go either. It''s not like I''m from this era, after all! I mean, obviously, right?"

    "Obviously," Caster agreed. He pursed his lips. "Perhaps the better idea would have been attempting to find the river ¡ª Thames, I believe it''s called ¡ª and following that through the city. On the other hand, if I had done that, I don''t believe I would have encountered you, so it''s entirely possible we might miss potential allies if we were to limit our investigations merely to the riverside."

    Saber sighed, deep and exasperated. Behind the helmet, it sounded like a hurricane.

    "Damn it. There''s no good answer, is there?"

    "Unfortunately not. And were we to split up¡­"

    Saber made a frustrated sound high in their throat. "Yeah. Good luck finding each other again."

    "And if the enemy has an Assassin on their side," said Caster, "then it would be the perfect opportunity to stage an ambush."

    "Ha!" Saber scoffed. "Like I''m afraid of a measly Assassin! They send one after me, I''m sending it back ¡ª in as many pieces as I can!"

    Whether it was simple bravado or hard-won confidence, Caster couldn''t have said with absolute certainty. At the very least, however, Saber seemed to honestly believe so, and to have become a Heroic Spirit summoned in one of the Knight classes, a category already overflowing with strength and skill from across millennia of myths and legends, perhaps it truly was well-earned.

    "Speak for yourself," Caster said, smiling slightly. "Not all of us are made for direct combat, you know. If an Assassin ambushes me, I''m done for."

    Saber laughed. "Right, right, sure, sure! That''s what you need me for, right? Don''t worry, Gramps, I''ll protect you!"

    "What a relief!" Caster sighed theatrically. "It looks like I''m in good hands!"

    Saber puffed out their chest, thumping a gauntleted fist against the thick plate.

    "The best!"

    A shrill, terrified scream suddenly rent the air, cutting through the moment of levity like a knife. Saber and Cast froze and turned to each other, sharing a startled look, even though one of them was wearing a helmet ¡ª

    "Shit!"

    ¡ª and then they took off, racing towards the sound as it died away.

    "It came from over there!" Saber shouted.

    "I know!"

    They dashed through the mist, following the hazy road further out ¡ª out and towards the slums, Caster realized, because he and Saber had unintentionally been heading that direction. The buildings looming out of the fog rapidly became less opulent, more ramshackle, and the street beneath their feet lumpier, less smooth. The people out here, it stood to reason, would be far less capable of waiting in safety for the mist to pass, and so hunger or thirst would inevitably drive them out into danger sooner than those more fortunate with access to greater resources.

    There was no second scream. Caster feared he already knew what that meant.

    Saber put on a sudden spurt of speed, rounding a corner and turning towards the alleyway beyond. "Here!"

    They stopped, frozen.

    The stench hit Caster first as he came up behind them, a coppery tang that stung his nostrils and clung to the roof of his mouth, and when he, too, rounded the corner, he was not at all surprised to find a large pool of blood already seeping across the ground. A body lay, limbs askew haphazardly, in the middle of it, a red stain darkening a ragged dress and eyes staring sightlessly back at him. A curtain of brown hair haloed the head.

    And upon the neck, there was carved a line of red, a gash that wept sluggish blood. The heart had already stopped.

    Caster cataloged further wounds, rips in the bodice across the torso that showed rents in the flesh beneath, and in an instant, deduced that while the slash across the neck had been the killing blow, all the rest would have been just as fatal. Liver, kidneys, the abdominal aorta ¡ª the killer had been thorough and ruthless, targeting nearly every vital organ below the ribcage. Likely, by the time the poor woman had the chance to open her mouth and scream, she was already dying. Cutting her throat was probably as much to shut her up as anything else.

    A flutter of cloth drew Caster''s attention from the corpse, and another figure in a black cloak leapt out of their hiding spot, running towards the other end of the alleyway. Attempting to escape.

    "Get back here, you bastard!" Saber roared, and they leapt towards the culprit with furious intent.

    But the figure in the cloak was slippery, dodging around Saber''s wild blow and juking back and forth with jerky, unpredictable movements as they tried to slip around the corner. Saber was too angry and wasn''t thinking clearly ¡ª they followed after the figure, slashing, hacking, throwing refuse and discarded miscellanea about with every swing, but always just slightly too slow and too far behind to land a clean blow. The fog couldn''t have been helping things.

    It was only inevitable that the figure in the cloak would outmaneuver them, hopping deftly up to plant a foot in the center of Saber''s horned helm, and then using that as a stepping stone to leap over them and make a run for the far turn at the end of the alleyway. The sudden shift in weight threw Saber off balance, sending them stumbling into the brick wall. It would provide just enough time and leeway for an escape, off into the mist where tracking would be impossible.

    Caster didn''t intend to let the killer go without consequence. He clapped his hands together. Red light flickered between his fingers.

    "I''m afraid you won''t be leaving that easily."

    And the alleyway roiled.

 Chapter CXXVI: Great Expectations

    Chapter CXXVI: Great Expectations

    Another week went by, and then two, and November melted into December without much happening and no news about the upcoming Singularity. Thanksgiving came and went unremarked ¡ª I think I was the only American in the facility, or at least the only one left of the people who remained ¡ª and I didn¡¯t bother raising a stink about it because I just didn¡¯t have anything to celebrate.

    A more religious person might have said that, in the aftermath of the sabotage and losing so many people, that was the most important time to be thankful for what you still had. The people you hadn¡¯t lost. The life that hadn¡¯t been taken from you when it so very easily could have been. And being entirely fair, it wasn¡¯t like I wasn¡¯t glad that we¡¯d managed to rescue Marie and the twins and Mash and Romani had all made it through.

    Okay, yes, I was thankful for all of that. That I didn¡¯t have to try and do this alone, with no one but Romani and Da Vinci for support. That the twins were around to plan movie nights for us every week and Emiya was there to cook us good food and that I had Arash, whatever I might have thought of him when he was originally summoned.

    But celebrating everything I was thankful for could wait until we¡¯d won and I could be sure that everyone else I¡¯d ever cared about was safe. Maybe then, I¡¯d pitch the idea to Marie and we could all celebrate our success in whatever time we had left before the real world had to intrude.

    In the meantime, I relaxed with my books and with the almost meditative feeling that came with my morning workouts, and I spent time watching pop culture classics with my other teammates while we waited. If part of that involved having to listen to Rika make yet more references after the fact and having to watch her, Bradamante, and Bellamy toss lines from those movies back and forth on the way to bed, well, it wasn¡¯t the worst thing imaginable.

    Rika was getting back some small slice of a normal life ¡ª hell, we all were ¡ª and I could suffer a bit of silliness for that.

    In any case, it wasn¡¯t until December 7th that we all got the notification letting us know to report for the briefing on the next Singularity. If I had to use a single word to describe how I felt, it would be ¡°finally.¡± As much good as I thought that extended break had done for all of us, I couldn¡¯t have been the only one who was feeling a bit anxious to get to the next step. I was ready for the next deployment.

    My workout that morning passed in a blur, and so did the shower I took to wash off afterwards. Even breakfast, despite how good it was, was something that I only half paid attention to, I was just in that much of a rush to find out where we¡¯d be going into which era and when.

    Unlike the mess that was Okeanos, this time, we were going to be going to a real place with defined geography and a structured geopolitical situation. I could actually get some research in to know what to expect of the circumstances, and without the logistics of keeping and feeding a swarm on a boat in the middle of the ocean, I could actually build one up to use, and maybe I could actually be a little more active in the fighting. Even just causing a distraction at the right moment was more involved than Okeanos had really let me be.

    The twins seemed to share my opinion, at least a little bit. I didn¡¯t think it was fair to say they were eager to get back to work, but compared to how they¡¯d been at the beginning of all of this, they might as well have been chomping at the bit. I guess, with four Singularities now behind them, they were more prepared mentally to tackle the dangers that awaited us and more confident in their ability to do so.

    Was it too pretentious to say that I was proud of how far they¡¯d come, as though I was the one solely responsible for it? Maybe.

    What it meant was that we were all fresh and ready to find out what we¡¯d be facing in the British Singularity by the time breakfast was finished and we needed to make our way to the Command Room, where Marie, Da Vinci, and Romani were all waiting. All of the Servants ¡ª from A¨ªfe to Shakespeare ¡ª were present as well, and if our roster kept growing with every deployment the way it seemed to be, I had a feeling we might just wind up having these back in the briefing room again, if only to have a space that was more dedicated to that purpose.

    Marie¡¯s gaze swept across us as we entered, passing from face to face, and if I hadn¡¯t known her as well as I did, I would have said she was waiting for one of us to turn tail and run. Instead, she just nodded.

    ¡°You¡¯re all here,¡± she said. ¡°Good. Let¡¯s begin. First, with the issue of King Solomon¡¯s seventy-two demon gods. Da Vinci?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡± Da Vinci stepped forward. ¡°Having completed as thorough an examination of that era as was logistically and technologically possible for us right now¡­ As I told Taylor a couple weeks ago, there was no indication of anything wrong. Although we¡¯re still largely blind on the issue of the structure regarding the remaining Singularities, we can rule out every single one of them as having any connection to the time of King Solomon. That era remains intact as a staple of proper human history, and nothing has changed about it since the Grand Order began in earnest.¡±

    From the expressions on the others¡¯ faces, this wasn¡¯t exactly¡­welcome information, although most of them didn¡¯t look all that surprised. It wasn¡¯t news for me either, considering I¡¯d already asked about it, but having it reaffirmed after a closer look was still valuable.

    ¡°For that matter,¡± she went on, ¡°not just the issue of Singularities, but nothing unusual was discovered in the era of King Solomon. There¡¯s no sign at all that he made any use of the seventy-two demon gods, such as you might expect if he¡¯d cast them off into the future for some nefarious plot. We went over everything with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, so if anything like that had ever happened, we would definitely have detected it. The fact that we haven¡¯t¡­¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash, picking up Da Vinci¡¯s train of thought. ¡°The only way it could work is if he was summoned as a Servant.¡±

    Da Vinci nodded. ¡°Also the conclusion we came to on the issue. Of course, as we said before, King Solomon is a Caster of the highest caliber, so the idea that there¡¯s someone out there powerful enough to force him to obey is¡­ Well¡­¡±

    The word she probably meant to use was ¡®terrifying.¡¯ Or maybe ¡®shocking.¡¯ But for me, the idea felt familiar. After all, half of my career had been spent hitting out of what was supposed to be my weight class, wasn¡¯t it? Fighting an uphill battle against a powerful enemy wasn¡¯t exactly new ground for me.

    Honestly, it was actually about what I would have expected. An ultimate enemy that could corral numerous existences on the same level as Flauros and Forneus, let alone seventy-two of them? The idea that it could have been someone easily beaten was laughable.

    Romani sighed. ¡°It¡¯s not pretty. Functionally, it doesn¡¯t really matter if they have the real Solomon at that point or are just using the association of his name or something. What little we know about them already means we have to treat the threat seriously.¡±

    Jeanne Alter snorted. ¡°You mean we weren¡¯t before?¡±

    ¡°Of course we were,¡± Marie ground out, glowering at her. ¡°But there¡¯s a difference between preparing for a completely unknown enemy and one whose abilities and limits you might have a better understanding of!¡±

    So in some ways, it would actually be better if it was King Solomon.

    ¡°Of course, even there, we¡¯re a bit limited,¡± Da Vinci admitted. ¡°Hopefully, we¡¯ll be able to gather more information over the next couple of Singularities. If the time comes where we do have to confront him directly, then it would be best to have a better idea of what we might be up against, yes? I imagine, in any case, that strong anti-magic armaments would be useful at that point, but that¡¯s a problem for a later date.¡±

    ¡°If the pattern holds, then whoever this person really is, they¡¯re likely hiding out in one of these remaining Singularities,¡± Romani added. ¡°So try and be careful in case you ever do find him, okay?¡±

    ¡°Right!¡± the twins and Mash all said.

    ¡°And when we¡¯ve got him dead to rights,¡± said Rika, ¡°we¡¯ll shove a boot up his ass!¡±

    ¡°Or a sword,¡± Jeanne Alter chimed in, grinning savagely.

    ¡°Think we¡¯ll have room to ram a ship up there while we¡¯re at it?¡± asked Bellamy.

    ¡°And a lance!¡± Bradamante chirped, thrusting her arm into the air as though to act the deed out right there on some imaginary enemy.

    Hippolyta sighed.

    I was just glad that we hadn¡¯t watched The Lord of the Rings movies yet, especially not recently, because that would have been a prime moment for someone to derail things further with yet more references.

    ¡°It won¡¯t be that easy!¡± Marie snapped. ¡°He¡¯s called the King of Magecraft for a reason, you know!¡±

    ¡°And we have plenty of ways around any spell he might throw at us,¡± said A¨ªfe calmly. ¡°If that is indeed who we ultimately find ourselves facing at the end of all of this.¡±

    His Noble Phantasms were what I would be more concerned about, but what they might even look like, I couldn¡¯t even begin to imagine. Something to do with splitting the baby in half? Whatever it was, I had to think it would be impressive for how much he was being hyped up.

    ¡°Hopefully, it won¡¯t even come to that,¡± said Romani. I wondered just how much he actually believed it. ¡°For now, let¡¯s discuss the next Singularity.¡±

    He reached over to his console, and with a few deft presses of the keyboard, he brought up the map of the remaining Singularities. Another few presses zoomed into the British Isles, where a large, bold dot sat near the bottom right, not quite on the eastern shoreline but not too far inland either. In fact, now that I thought about it, that should correspond right around the area of ¡ª

    ¡°London?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Marie. ¡°The next Singularity is going to be somewhat different from your previous deployments. Unlike Okeanos, you won¡¯t be making journeys over large bodies of water to different islands, and unlike Septem or Orl¨¦ans, you won¡¯t be traversing large swathes of the European continent. This time, the entirety of the Singularity appears to be centered on London ¡ª and only London.¡±

    My brow twitched. Only London? That seemed like a positively tiny amount of land compared to what we¡¯d become used to. After all, the last three Singularities had covered miles and miles of territory, so much of it that it had taken weeks to cover in Orl¨¦ans and was only made shorter in Septem thanks to A¨ªfe and Boudicca, and now we were suddenly going back down to a single city?

    ¡°My feet are saved!¡± Rika exclaimed.

    Was there a reason behind it that we couldn¡¯t see, some metric that governed how big a Singularity was based upon how much it was trying to change, or was it just completely arbitrary?

    ¡°Like Fuyuki?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Emiya¡¯s cheek twitched, but if he meant to say anything, he held his tongue. Marie¡¯s face paled. I could practically see the flashbacks racing through her head, and right then and there, I couldn¡¯t do anything about them. My hands itched to curl into fists, but through an effort of self-control, I kept them loose.

    ¡°Oh,¡± murmured Mash, completely oblivious, ¡°yes, that was the last time we had to deal with a Singularity of a similar size as this one, wasn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid that the size of the Singularity has nothing at all to do with the severity of the deviation,¡± Da Vinci said with an apologetic smile, ¡°or with how important the event being overturned is in relation to human history.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not the size of the ship, it¡¯s the motion of the ocean,¡± Rika added mischievously.

    The sudden shift in Marie¡¯s face from stark white to bright red was almost alarming.

    ¡°Quite,¡± Da Vinci agreed.

    ¡°You¡­!¡± Marie began, but before she could get anywhere, Bellamy interrupted.

    ¡°Well, yeah, but I¡¯m not sure what that has to do with anything?¡± he said.

    Emiya snorted, but it was Arash who leaned over and whispered the answer into Bellamy¡¯s ear, and it was actually kind of funny watching his own cheeks turn red.

    ¡°Oh.¡±

    I glanced at Rika, but she wasn¡¯t looking at me. I had no idea if she¡¯d done it on purpose or if it was a complete accident, but that little moment of irreverent humor had managed to distract Marie. I was going to have to do something nice for her later.

    ¡°In any case, don¡¯t think that things will be easier or the mission shorter just because the Singularity covers less land,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°The size of the Singularity really only reflects the reach of the Grail¡¯s influence, and that is only truly a measure of the focus of the one holding it. After all, Romulus and Flauros wanted to uproot the entirety of Nero¡¯s Rome, and Gilles¡¯ wish was revenge on all of France. It should be more concerning that the enemy¡¯s focus is solely on London, not less.¡±

    Quietly, while everyone was listening to Da Vinci, Marie took a deep, calming breath and visibly pushed her anger away.

    ¡°Exactly,¡± she said. ¡°This isn¡¯t a vacation, so I expect you all to treat it with the seriousness it deserves!¡±

    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    ¡°Sure, sure,¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. ¡°So get on with it already. What¡¯re we gonna be doing in this shitty city anyway?¡±

    Marie scowled and looked like she wanted to say something particularly acidic in response, but Romani came to the rescue and kept everything on track.

    ¡°The circumstances are still largely a mystery to us, as they usually are before we deploy you,¡± he explained patiently. ¡°As far as the details we do have, however, we can at least tell you the era you¡¯ll be Rayshifting into ¡ª the nineteenth century, during the Industrial Revolution. Specifically, the year 1888. As for what event might be the target of this particular Singularity, well, to be frank¡­¡±

    ¡°We have no idea,¡± Da Vinci concluded with an incongruent smile. Like she hadn¡¯t just told us that they didn¡¯t have any clue at all about what we were supposed to be fixing on our next deployment.

    Romani sighed. ¡°None at all. If we¡¯re talking about major events that could disrupt the proper course of human history, there honestly really aren¡¯t any that happened in London in the year 1888. It would be a different story if we were talking about the rest of Europe or even America, but that¡¯s beyond the scope of this Singularity, so there¡¯s no point in talking about them.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s possible that it¡¯s not a specific event that is being overturned, but the entire era itself,¡± Marie said, and it sounded like an argument they¡¯d had before. ¡°London was a large part of the Industrial Revolution, a technological boom that revolutionized many fields and resulted in the world we know today. If something were to occur that halted that progress, it could set mankind back by a hundred years or more.¡±

    That felt too broad when Orl¨¦ans and Septem had been so narrowly focused despite the amount of ground they covered, but considering the fact that we didn¡¯t really have any better ideas, I couldn¡¯t say she was wrong.

    ¡°So we don¡¯t have any idea what to expect?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°None,¡± said Romani. ¡°We can measure the era and the geography just fine, but even accounting for the usual inaccuracies we have to deal with, this one is giving us even more trouble. There¡¯s something interfering with our sensors, so we can¡¯t get even a glimpse of what¡¯s happening on the ground inside. We¡¯re basically totally blind.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like business as usual to me,¡± Rika commented, and while I hated to agree with her, she wasn¡¯t wrong. We¡¯d gone into every Singularity so far without much of any idea what to expect, at least beyond a few vague theories about what was being thrown off course, and this one wouldn¡¯t be any different.

    ¡°Hey!¡± Marie squawked. ¡°Chaldea has some of the most cutting edge technology on the planet! If our sensors can¡¯t detect it, then nothing else can!¡±

    ¡°From the outside, at least,¡± Romani added.

    She shot a glare at the side of his head, as though to say, ¡®You¡¯re not helping!¡¯

    ¡°It¡¯s an unfortunate reality of the nature of Singularities,¡± Da Vinci said. ¡°Having said that, if the distortion persists, then it¡¯s also entirely possible that our ability to assist you from here will be impacted, too. In a very real sense, you might be almost entirely on your own once you arrive. There is good news, however!¡± she went on brightly. ¡°Because it¡¯s so much closer to the modern era, the time differential will be much smaller! As long as we can reach you, we¡¯ll be able to respond much faster than the last few Singularities!¡±

    ¡°W-well, I suppose that is good news,¡± Mash hedged, trying to sound positive.

    ¡°Fou¡­¡±

    But even the little gremlin on her shoulder didn¡¯t sound very convinced.

    ¡°You said something about a distortion?¡± I asked.

    Da Vinci sighed. ¡°Unfortunately, there¡¯s not much we can say about it beyond that. There is definitely something inside the Singularity that is interfering with our sensors and instruments, and depending upon what it is, it might also wind up interfering with our ability to contact you and provide real-time assistance, but there won¡¯t be any way to know until you¡¯re inside, and by that point¡­¡±

    By that point, it would already be too late to do much to account for it, so it would be safer to assume the worst and prepare for it accordingly. In that case, we should probably assume that we wouldn¡¯t be able to contact Chaldea at all until the very end. We should go into this expecting that we would be cut off from all outside help ¡ª all outside help.

    ¡°Will our ability to summon ¡®Shadow Servants¡¯ be impacted at all?¡±

    Da Vinci gave me a helpless shrug. ¡°It shouldn¡¯t be. Considering the function is intended to be completely independent of Chaldea¡¯s response times and the time differential, I can¡¯t imagine the situation being so dire that you wouldn¡¯t be able to utilize that function. But even so, I can¡¯t offer you any guarantees either.¡±

    ¡°So it would be better to take along a well-rounded team, just in case something does make it impossible to call in reinforcements,¡± Arash concluded.

    ¡°Well-rounded, he says,¡± Emiya remarked with humor. ¡°One could argue that you and I are already enough to fulfill that particular requirement, don¡¯t you think?¡±

    ¡°If you think you¡¯re staying here and making me eat British food for however long we¡¯re in there, you¡¯ve got another thing coming!¡± Rika told him.

    He chuckled, shaking his head. ¡°I suppose there¡¯s that, too. My Master sure is a demanding one.¡±

    ¡°It goes without saying, Emiya and Arash will be deployed as usual,¡± said Romani. ¡°Especially in a place like London, precision will be more important than raw damage output, although having at least one member on the team who can do both would definitely be ideal.¡±

    ¡°I do have less indiscriminate options, you know,¡± said Emiya. ¡°Caladbolg isn¡¯t the only Noble Phantasm in my arsenal.¡±

    ¡°The fact you can say those words with a straight face is no less ridiculous now than it would have been when we first met,¡± said A¨ªfe. Emiya just smirked at her.

    ¡°The concern isn¡¯t only a matter of destructive potential, it¡¯s also a matter of close quarters,¡± Marie said sternly. ¡°It¡¯s entirely likely you might have to engage the enemy inside a building, or even the sewers. The worst thing you could do is bring the entire place down on the Masters¡¯ heads!¡±

    I grimaced at the mental image. It would be bad enough having to go through the sewers, but to be stuck down there, buried under rubble¡­

    ¡°I-I should be able to protect them in that case,¡± said Mash, ¡°but getting out from under it afterwards¡­¡±

    Emiya sighed. ¡°Well, it¡¯s not that I don¡¯t have anything that can work around that, but if the space is limited, then my ability to guarantee a killing blow goes down.¡±

    ¡°Almost like you¡¯re compensating for something,¡± Jeanne Alter said snidely.

    A¨ªfe smacked her on the back of the head again.

    ¡°Ow! Fucking¡­stop that!¡±

    ¡°Behave,¡± said A¨ªfe.

    Jeanne Alter scoffed.

    ¡°Jeanne Alter,¡± Ritsuka said suddenly.

    She looked over at him. ¡°What? You gonna reprimand me, too, Master?¡±

    Ritsuka shook his head. ¡°No. I¡¯m saying we should bring you along.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Marie shrieked. At the same time, Romani, Mash, and Da Vinci all clamored to offer their own misgivings.

    ¡°Ritsuka, I¡¯m not so sure that¡¯s a good idea ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª might not work out the way you think ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª sure about that, Senpai?¡±

    ¡°Why not?¡± Ritsuka asked, cutting through the protests. Marie, Romani, Mash, and Da Vinci all stopped. ¡°She¡¯s a close range combatant who can hit hard and has a powerful Noble Phantasm that can be used indoors without risking the building coming down on top of us.¡±

    Marie, Romani, and Da Vinci all stared at him, silent, like they didn¡¯t know what to say to that. It wasn¡¯t like it wasn¡¯t well-reasoned either. Putting aside any concerns about her personality, which themselves could be worked around, all of the things he¡¯d just said were spot on.

    ¡°But she¡¯s¡­¡± Mash began, but trailed off.

    ¡°What?¡± Jeanne Alter demanded. ¡°I¡¯m what?¡±

    Mash didn¡¯t say anything. Jeanne Alter sneered, her upper lip curling.

    ¡°Come on, Sugar Tits. What am I? A bad guy? A villain? Huh?¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± Bellamy said, trying to step in, ¡°no one¡¯s saying that, okay? It¡¯s not like my past is squeaky clean either. I was a pirate, remember?¡±

    ¡°None of us have perfectly clean hands,¡± said Hippolyta. ¡°Very few Heroic Spirits ascended because of their peace-mongering ways, and those of us already here are not among them.¡±

    ¡°But none of you are getting this treatment,¡± Jeanne Alter pointed out, and when neither of them could deny it, she turned back to Mash. ¡°So? Say it already! What am I?¡±

    ¡°You were our enemy,¡± Mash finally said, so quiet it was almost a whisper, ¡°and I¡­¡±

    I killed you, she didn¡¯t finish, but I couldn¡¯t have been the only one who heard it in the silence. Ritsuka and Rika were there, too, and they knew just as well as I did what it had cost Mash to plunge my knife into Jeanne Alter¡¯s heart.

    Jeanne Alter grinned nastily, but when she spoke, there was an undercurrent of bitterness there. ¡°Yeah? That how it is? My old self fought against you, so that automatically means you can¡¯t trust me, huh?¡±

    Mash bit her lip and looked away, ashamed, and Jeanne Alter seemed ready to take that as confirmation, like she was about to turn away and storm out, and that would definitely hurt any progress we¡¯d made with her since she showed up.

    ¡°No,¡± I jumped in, attempting to defuse the situation, ¡°it meant that we couldn¡¯t be sure that we could when we first summoned you.¡±

    ¡°But that¡¯s not the case anymore,¡± said Ritsuka before I could go any further. I almost bit my tongue on what I¡¯d been about to say. ¡°After all, it¡¯s only because of you that I¡¯m still here, isn¡¯t it? And we couldn¡¯t have beaten Herakles or Forneus without you there to help.¡±

    ¡°Right!¡± Rika agreed. ¡°First time I¡¯ve ever heard of where saving our butts meant throwing the fire around instead of pulling us out of it!¡±

    I resisted the urge to glance over at her, because that one sounded a little weak, but I guess she couldn¡¯t always have a zinger or a really cheesy reference to pull out.

    Mash sighed heavily, but managed to muster a fragile, apologetic smile. ¡°Yes. I¡¯m sorry, Jeanne Alter. Whatever happened in Orl¨¦ans, you¡¯ve more than proven yourself since then. I-I¡¯d be¡­happy to fight alongside you in this next Singularity.¡±

    I didn¡¯t miss the worried look Romani sent her, but he wisely kept from bringing up any of that baggage, especially in front of the rest of the team.

    ¡°So it¡¯s settled, then!¡± Da Vinci said a little too brightly. ¡°The team deployment will consist of the Masters ¡ª Taylor, Ritsuka, and Rika ¡ª with Emiya, Arash, and Jeanne Alter!¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re not sending anyone else?¡± Bellamy asked.

    ¡°For the moment, no,¡± Da Vinci replied. ¡°The normal concerns we have about overburdening the Masters still remain, and with the situation being what it is, it would be better for them to be able to make contracts with local Servants chosen by the Counter Force specifically to deal with the circumstances inside the Singularity. If it turns out we here at Chaldea won¡¯t be able to offer any other support once they¡¯re inside, it¡¯s all the more important that the assistance they do get is specialized. Does that make sense to you?¡±

    Bellamy nodded. ¡°Yeah. Sorry. Guess a guy with a big ship isn¡¯t that useful when there isn¡¯t an ocean to cross, huh?¡± He sighed. ¡°Would¡¯ve been nice to see what London looked like almost two-hundred years later, but I guess I can always go back after everything¡¯s over, right? Just like that last Singularity.¡±

    Marie opened her mouth, probably to chastise him for thinking we¡¯d spend the money for something so trivial, so I stepped in before she could and told him, ¡°We¡¯ll see what we can arrange later.¡±

    I gave Da Vinci a meaningful look, and she nodded. ¡°Right. First, we have to clear the Singularity. Vacations can wait until afterwards. Does anyone have any other questions before we move on?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± said Emiya, ¡°a very important one, in point of fact: will we have to worry about a confrontation with the Mage¡¯s Association?¡±

    Marie grimaced. ¡°That¡¯s¡­actually a really good point.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Rika said, confused. ¡°Aren¡¯t they¡­you know¡­like the rest of the world? I thought we didn¡¯t have to worry about them until this was all over!¡±

    ¡°The Association is over fifteen-hundred years old,¡± El-Melloi II explained. He grunted. ¡°The Director is old enough that no one is sure he¡¯s even human anymore, and most of the families can trace their lineage back more than a thousand years. The whole place is even built on top of¡­¡± He stopped and seemed to think better of whatever it was he¡¯d been about to say. ¡°Nevermind. Point is, the Association¡¯s headquarters is in London, known as the Clock Tower. If this Singularity covers the entirety of London, then it¡¯s entirely possible that the Association of that era could get involved in some way.¡±

    ¡°Hence my question,¡± said Emiya. ¡°No doubt, some of them would be more than willing to lend us a hand. Perhaps we might even discover a Master or two contracting one of the local Servants. But there are some of them who would without question attempt to interfere and stick their noses in where they don¡¯t belong, even if it meant dooming the rest of the world.¡±

    A shiver went down my spine. And if they found out about me and where I¡¯d come from, what my life had been like, and what was parked in my brain, how many of them would be perfectly willing to screw Chaldea and the Grand Order over just for a chance to peek at what made me tick?

    It was like Marie had told me so many times over the last couple years. It wasn¡¯t what I could do that was so special, it was how I could do it, and there were plenty of less scrupulous magi who would very much like to pull me apart to see it at work. See my Corona and play games to test my connection to my passenger.

    ¡°I wish I could say otherwise, but you¡¯re probably right about that,¡± Romani lamented. ¡°Not everyone there is going to be like that, but there are at least a few who would do exactly what you¡¯re describing if they thought they could get away with it.¡±

    ¡°Even throwing my name around might not be enough to stop them,¡± Marie muttered, frustrated.

    El-Melloi II frowned, working his jaw thoughtfully. ¡°I¡¯m not so certain about that, Director. It wouldn¡¯t work on everyone, but at least for the sorts they¡¯re most likely to meet, introducing themselves as your representatives might afford them not only a degree of immunity from scrutiny, but also a level of political clout amongst certain factions. The word of the Barthomeloi would carry enough weight to protect them in that case.¡±

    ¡°And with the backing of two giants in the Aristocratic Faction, most of the rest of the families would fall in line.¡± Emiya made a sound of understanding in his throat. ¡°I guess that¡¯s as close to a guarantee as we¡¯re going to get, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately,¡± Da Vinci agreed ruefully. ¡°Chaldea in its current form would be completely unrecognizable to the Association of a hundred years ago, so even if you tried to claim you were acting under our current authority, it wouldn¡¯t hold much weight with them.¡±

    Of course not. Chaldea as we knew it now was largely the result of Marisbury Animusphere¡¯s efforts. The version from twenty years ago looked nothing like it did now, let alone a hundred, so using its name would get us nowhere at all.

    If I could give him credit for anything, it was getting this place up and running. Even if I hated his guts for the other stuff he¡¯d done, I could at least respect that.

    ¡°Great,¡± Rika groused, ¡°so we¡¯re gonna have to worry about a bunch of jerks getting in the way while we¡¯re trying to save their lives?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Rika, but it can¡¯t be helped,¡± was the only reply Da Vinci could really give.

    A thought suddenly occurred to me. ¡°Da Vinci,¡± I said, ¡°what happens if they find out about Mash?¡±

    Marie sucked in a sharp breath as Romani¡¯s eyes went wide, and even Da Vinci herself hadn¡¯t seemed to have thought about that possibility.

    ¡°Oh,¡± Mash murmured. ¡°That¡¯s right. I¡¯m a Demi-Servant. The Association ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª are absolutely not allowed to get their hands on her!¡± Marie snarled.

    Her sudden vehemence took several people off guard, including a number of the bridge staff who had been studiously pretending to ignore us this entire time and now turned to stare. Mash looked at her with stunned surprise.

    ¡°D-Director?¡±

    ¡°Listen!¡± Marie said, and the heat in her voice seemed to take even Jeanne Alter aback. ¡°Whatever happens, the Association isn¡¯t allowed to get their grubby little paws on anyone on this team, do you hear me? Not Mash, not Taylor, not anyone! If they don¡¯t want to take no for an answer then¡­then¡­you have full permission to do whatever it takes to stop them! Whatever it takes!¡±

    She was completely serious, I realized. She really was giving us carte blanche to protect ourselves.

    ¡°You don¡¯t mean,¡± Ritsuka began, but Marie didn¡¯t let him even finish.

    ¡°Yes!¡± she said. ¡°Use lethal force, if you absolutely have to! As Masters of Chaldea, your lives are infinitely more important to the Grand Order than a random magus from the nineteenth century!¡±

    Both the twins and Mash looked at her with wide eyes and open mouths, and even Romani¡¯s eyebrows had climbed up towards his hairline ¡ª but at least one of us was taking this license to kill with a bit more excitement than I thought it warranted.

    ¡°Ha!¡± Jeanne Alter grinned nastily. ¡°Boss Lady, now you¡¯re speaking my language! A chance to kill some pretentious English fucks? I¡¯m actually looking forward to going on this thing!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not saying you can do whatever you want whenever you want!¡± Marie insisted, jabbing a finger at Jeanne Alter. ¡°But if someone is actively attempting to interfere in your mission and can¡¯t be reasoned with, then they¡¯re an enemy, and I¡¯m telling you to treat them as such!¡±

    Jeanne Alter¡¯s grin only got wider. Christmas was still a few weeks away, if we were even going to have a chance to celebrate that this year, but Jeanne Alter looked like she¡¯d just gotten everything she wanted.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Director,¡± Arash said, ¡°none of us will let anything happen to our Masters. Not as long as we¡¯re still around.¡±

    Marie huffed. ¡°Good!¡±

    The twins shared a dubious, hesitant look, no doubt disturbed by the idea that they¡¯d just been given permission to kill anyone who got in their way, no matter who it was. I couldn¡¯t say I didn¡¯t share some of that hesitation. It was one thing to do it in the heat of the moment when your back was against the wall or when your enemy was technically a ghost, but it was another thing to know it was coming and not balk at the idea of actually ending another person¡¯s life.

    If it came down to it¡­ Well, we¡¯d see how cooperative our hypothetical magus felt trussed up in silk and covered with spiders. I¡¯d found a lot of people were a lot more afraid of that than dying, so they might not be quite so recalcitrant after I introduced them to my swarm.

    ¡°Guess I should be glad you¡¯re not dragging me along for this ride,¡± El-Melloi II grumbled. ¡°I¡¯m still paying for the last time I was involved in another Lord¡¯s death. I don¡¯t need another debt saddled on my back for that.¡±

    ¡°You are?¡± asked Mash.

    He arched an eyebrow. ¡°You don¡¯t remember? I already told you guys. I¡¯m just holding the seat. The proper heir of the El-Melloi lordship is someone else entirely.¡±

    However it was that worked. Clock Tower politics had always sounded positively medieval when Marie described them to me.

    ¡°Hopefully,¡± Romani cut in, voice strained, ¡°you won¡¯t encounter anyone like that and this will all wind up theoretical. Either way, Ritsuka, Rika, and even you, Taylor, a fully trained magus from the Association is going to be just better at magecraft than you, so no matter what, you should leave the situation to your Servants to handle.¡±

    ¡°Y-yeah, uh¡­¡± Rika turned to Emiya with a brittle smile. ¡°I-I¡¯m just gonna do that and leave it to you, okay?¡±

    Emiya shrugged. ¡°If that¡¯s what you want, Master, then it¡¯s fine by me.¡±

    ¡°Master¡­¡± Mash began hesitantly. Ritsuka gave her a reassuring smile.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Mash,¡± he said. ¡°I trust you to protect us, no matter who the enemy is. And if¡­if we can¡¯t convince them with words, then we¡¯ll just have to hit them with the back of your shield until they give up, right?¡±

    Mash¡¯s mouth drew into a wide smile, and she nodded, ¡°Right!¡±

    My lips drew into a thin line, but I didn¡¯t agree. I¡¯d never had the chance to really test myself against a real magus, not one that was honestly trying to hurt me, but it felt like Romani was underestimating exactly how effective my swarm could be, especially when the enemy wasn¡¯t a Servant that could only be harmed by something that was at least magecraft adjacent.

    That didn¡¯t mean I was going to get into an honor duel or anything. That was just plain stupid.

    ¡°Is there anything else we need to worry about going into this?¡± I asked.

    Marie, Romani, and Da Vinci all looked to each other, like they were waiting for one another to speak up and add something. When none of them seemed to have anything else they wanted to address, Marie turned back to us and told me, ¡°That should be everything. Unless there¡¯s something else anyone had any questions about?¡±

    This time, it was the Servants¡¯ turn to all trade looks back and forth, and so did the twins and Mash. When none of them spoke up again, Marie took that for confirmation that we were all good to go.

    ¡°Right!¡± she said imperiously. ¡°You have one week to prepare! On December the 14th, the Masters, Emiya, Arash, and Jeanne Alter will be deployed into the London Singularity to correct the deviance in proper history! Dismissed!¡±

 Chapter CXXVII: London Bound

    Chapter CXXVII: London Bound

    The next week was spent in preparation. For the twins, that meant that nothing much changed, because their lessons continued ¡ª somewhat lighter than before, but they continued nonetheless ¡ª and so did Mash''s swimming lessons. I doubted she would need them too much in the upcoming London Singularity, but on the off chance someone fell into the Thames, it would be good if she was able to rescue them ¡ª or herself, if an enemy decided to fling her into it.

    That rescue swimming I''d added to the lesson plan might just come in handy.

    For me, however, things were a lot busier. I spent most of my free time poring over everything I could get about London in the year 1888 and the late 19th century in general, from the political climate to the expected environmental conditions and everything in between, and to my frustration, I found exactly what I''d been told already: that in London in particular, nothing of all that much importance had happened that year. Nothing that our enemy would be interested in overturning, at any rate, which meant nothing we were going to have to pay special attention to preserving or restoring.

    As ridiculous as it sounded, aside from the Jack the Ripper case, 1888 was a relatively uneventful year for London.

    My lessons in rune magic with A¨ªfe continued in the meantime, but frustratingly, I hadn''t come very far. It really was like trying to learn a new language, a hieroglyphic language of ideograms whose meaning change based upon context, with conjunctions and contractions and grammar that felt extremely alien to me, and it had the added caveat that a mistake could blow me to pieces before I even realized something was wrong.

    By the day of our deployment, it felt like I''d gotten mostly nowhere. I had memorized the majority of the shapes and could reliably carve a number of singular runes without too much trouble, but the meanings of each individual rune were a bit harder to keep straight, and when it came to combining them, I was nearly hopeless.

    Better than the twins, apparently, but I had two years of magecraft training on them, so I would hope I was at least good enough to have a leg up on them.

    But it meant that gaining more skill was just a matter of practice and memorization, and until I had truly mastered the fundamentals, there wasn''t much else she could teach me. Unfortunately, while learning to combine and synergize runes was like learning a language, it wasn''t one that could be spoken, and so it wasn''t one I could become more familiar with by immersing myself in it. In that sense, it was more like coding than regular language, and while I hadn''t been incompetent at that, I was never a professional programmer either.

    Once more, I couldn''t stop myself from lamenting that A¨ªfe had been summoned without her tutelary aspects. Being taught by a goddess of learning in her full glory would probably have made this child''s play.

    In lieu of being able to do it myself and improvise more during deployment, I asked her instead to spend some of her free time making us more flashbangs. I still had some that I hadn''t used during Okeanos because so much of the fighting had been done on Drake''s ship ¡ª meaning people, but especially us Masters, could have been knocked overboard by a blinded crewmate or injured by a flailing enemy, because of how close quarters everything had been ¡ª but keeping up a stock of them was a good idea and the twins should be carrying some around, too.

    The doubloon that I''d almost forgotten about went into my desk. It wasn''t lost on me how ridiculously valuable it was, not only as a collector''s item, but also monetarily and as a catalyst for summoning Drake in the future. If I came out of this thing intact and didn''t get whisked away by the Association once it was over, maybe I could find a museum that was interested in buying it from me.

    The silk lines I''d woven in the background in Okeanos every chance I got were also packed away in my supplies. They weren''t strong enough to do much of anything, not against a Servant at least, and since they weren''t Black Widow silk, let alone Darwin''s Bark Spider silk, I wasn''t sure how well they''d hold up against anything else, but I was sure they''d come in handy at some point or another. Better to have them and never use them than need them and not have them.

    Hopefully, I''d be able to get that spider puppet soon, and if not, then we''d find a good population of Black Widows in the American Singularity for me to bring back for my terrarium. Since Marie had given me permission, now it was just a matter of finding a good room where I could set it up, one with a strong bounded field that would keep whatever I brought into it docile and inside while I was on deployment.

    The last thing I wanted was for one of those Black Widows to wander off and wind up biting Marie or one of the technicians. Da Vinci would probably be able to cook something up, but it would be better if she didn''t have to, and somehow, I didn''t think Romani was stocked up on antivenin.

    For now, however, by the time the 14th rolled around, I was as ready to go for the next Singularity as I could be. I had armed myself with as much as I feasibly could in the time I had, including as much knowledge of the location and time period as I could find, and if the pattern held from the last few Singularities, it would all wind up entirely useless.

    But that was familiar in its own way. It wouldn''t be the first time I was forced to think on my feet and come up with a plan from nothing, and I was almost certain it wouldn''t be the last either.

    With the deployment set for eleven o''clock, getting up at eight gave me three hours to put on the finishing touches, so when my alarm went off, I rolled out of bed and made my way immediately to the shower. Like I always did right before we Rayshifted, I skipped out on the morning workout and instead went straight to breakfast after washing up, where Emiya was still getting some last minute cooking in before he handed the reins over to Marcus, and he gave me a relatively light meal ¡ª in consideration of how rough Rayshifting could be on us mere mortals.

    "Ready for the next mission?" I asked as he piled my plate up with pancakes.

    "If I said no, would that excuse me from going?" he asked wryly.

    "I think Rika would have some choice words about that."

    He chuckled lowly. "No doubt. She''s not my most ravenous customer, nor my most demanding, but she''s doing her level best to try."

    More hints about his past? He''d said something like that before, too, and if I pried, he''d probably dodge around the subject again. Well. He was entitled to a secret or two, I guess, as long as it didn''t come back to bite us later. It wasn''t like I had much room to talk on that front.

    I really was going to have to have that discussion with Marie. Especially with all that had been said about running into the Mage''s Association in this next Singularity, getting clarity on what I couldn''t and maybe shouldn''t tell anyone else about my past was going to be important. Depending on what happened, telling the twins and Mash something might wind up unavoidable.

    "You''ve spoiled us."

    "It can''t be helped." He shrugged. "I wasn''t going to stand back and leave Marcus to carry the weight on his own, so there was nothing to be done about it."

    Nothing to be done, indeed. For all that we''d been suspicious of him when he was first summoned, he kept proving that he was one of the best Servants we could have possibly called so early on into our Grand Order.

    When he''d loaded up my tray, he bade me to "enjoy your breakfast," and went back to his duties as I stepped away to find an empty table.

    ''Find an empty table.'' As though that had been anything resembling a difficult task for the past four months.

    I made sure to eat slowly and savor my meal, knowing that keeping my stomach settled was going to be important in a few hours. I was about halfway through when the twins and Mash came in, making a beeline for Emiya, and got their own breakfast trays, and then they came over to my table and sat down with me.

    "Good morning, Miss Taylor," Mash said serenely.

    "Morning, Senpai," the twins muttered, still a little drowsy.

    "Fou," the gremlin on Mash''s shoulder chirped stiffly.

    "Good morning," I replied to the three of them. I ignored the gremlin entirely.

    "Man," Rika complained, "I got almost no sleep last night."

    "Yeah," Ritsuka agreed. "I kept worrying I was going to forget something when we Rayshifted."

    "Right?" said Rika. "It''s crazy that it''s actually kinda easier when we do the whole briefing thing right before we go!"

    I allowed myself a little smile, hiding it by ducking my head to pretend I was looking down at my food. Things really had changed, hadn''t they? Just a couple months ago, the idea of Rayshifting into another Singularity had terrified them, and they''d been quiet and withdrawn as a result. Now? You might have thought they were planning a camping trip and worried they were going to forget the tent.

    "At least we''re not carrying those e-bikes that Da Vinci made around," Ritsuka reminded her. "It''s just one city, so we can walk everywhere instead."

    Rika grunted. "Ugh. Don''t remind me. Orl¨¦ans was the worst, but at least in Septem we had Super Action Mom and Queen Booty to drive us around. Having to walk all over the place is gonna suck!"

    "It could be worse," I told her.

    "Worse?" Mash asked curiously.

    "Senpai, no!" Rika said frantically, waving her hands and shaking her head. "Don''t tempt Murphy!"

    "It could be like Fuyuki," I said, ignoring her antics. "On fire."

    Rika groaned and dropped her head into her hands. "Now you''ve done it!"

    "I think if something like that had happened, Miss Da Vinci and the others would have noticed it, Senpai," Mash said, smiling awkwardly. "I''m sure there''s nothing to worry about."

    Ritsuka glanced at her dubiously. "I mean¡­there was that distortion they were talking about¡­"

    "No!" Rika moaned into her palms. "Murphy, spare us! They know not what they do!"

    I rolled my eyes.

    "Fou-kyu-kyu fou."

    "See?" said Mash. "Even Fou is saying everything will be alright!"

    I wasn''t sure that was what that thing had said at all.

    "I''m glad someone here has faith in us, at least," Arash said as he plopped down into the chair next to mine.

    "Arash! Good morning!" said Mash.

    "Morning, Mash."

    I glanced over at him. "The others?"

    "Will be there to see us off," he replied. "Bradamante was a bit bummed she wouldn''t be going on this one, but she did get her shot last time, so she can''t bring herself to complain about it."

    Ritsuka made a sound of understanding in his throat. "I understand why we can''t, but I kind of wish we could just bring everyone along."

    How much easier things might be if we could.

    Rika sighed and let her hands drop. "I don''t look good as a mummy!" she announced.

    "A lot of us feel the same way," said Arash. "That''s why some of them are envious of Emiya and me, since we get to go along on every deployment. Siegfried won''t say so, but he''s really looking forward to when it''s going to be his turn."

    He phrased it as a statement, but he turned to me as he said it like it was a question. I hummed.

    "I''ll bring it up with the Director. She and Romani are ultimately the ones deciding who gets deployed based upon the circumstances of the Singularity."

    "I''ll make sure to pass that along," Arash promised. "But the Shadow Servant system that Da Vinci made helps. Even if they can''t be there for more than a single fight, being able to help at all makes being stuck here more bearable."

    Hence why A¨ªfe was completely content not to jockey for a slot. She had gotten the chance to fight both Caenis and Herakles in the last Singularity, and even if her Shadow form was a copy of a copy, the memories of those fights were likely no less intense for it. She was also likely to get more such chances in the future, as and when we faced a situation that called for her particular set of skills.

    Maybe not so much on this one, though. If we wound up fighting indoors as much as Da Vinci seemed to think we would, then she would be extremely hampered in close quarters and unable to fight at her best.

    "I''m glad," said Ritsuka. "Sitting around here while we go off to fight must be pretty boring, so even if it''s something like that, it has to be better than nothing."

    Arash nodded. "Yeah." He smirked. "It might help to have the simulator working for us again, too. That, however, is looking like something we''re just going to have to wait for a little bit longer."

    "Speak for yourself," Rika said petulantly. "The instant that thing can handle Servants again, Senpai''s going to drag us into a scrimmage match, just you watch!"

    I arched an eyebrow at her. "You don''t think we''re overdue for another exercise?"

    "Never is too soon!" was her stubborn reply.

    "I think it might be nice to have a team exercise like that," Mash said diplomatically. "Wouldn''t it? Just have a friendly match together with everyone without any stakes or real consequences, where we can go all out without anyone getting hurt. It might help me figure out more about the Heroic Spirit inside me!"

    I slid a glance her way as Rika said, "You''re a sweet summer child, Cinnabon, because Senpai''s team exercises are¡­ well¡­"

    "Traumatizing," her brother finished for her.

    Rika nodded. "Yeah! Exactly!"

    I looked over at Arash, who looked back at me meaningfully. So I guess we were still keeping it secret, then. I knew it was something he had said Mash should figure out for herself, but there was going to come a point where it just got ridiculous. Hell, we''d already met another Knight of the Round Table, and he''d basically said the same thing, if not in so many words. If we met another, would they say that Mash needed to discover who she was playing host to on her own? That it was some spiritual journey she needed to complete to fully inherit his powers?

    I backed down and the moment passed. Mash continued smiling, oblivious to the silent conversation Arash and I had just had.

    There was a limit to how much I was willing to go along with that. I could let it go for now, and as long as it didn''t get in the way, I guess I could keep letting it go for the foreseeable future. But if the fights kept getting harder and the enemies more bullshit, there was a point where keeping that secret was going to do more harm than good.

    "I don''t think Taylor would put you guys through the exact same sort of exercise a second time," Arash said like nothing had happened. "And besides, you''re better Masters than you were back then, aren''t you? It should be easier now if you had to do something like that again."

    The twins traded a doubtful look. "See," began Rika, "you say that, Arash, but¡­"

    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    "¡­the first lesson we learned from Senpai was not to underestimate Senpai," her brother concluded.

    I couldn''t stop the snort that ripped its way out of my nostrils.

    "Senpai," Mash breathed like a sigh.

    "Yeah," said Arash, smiling brightly, "I learned that lesson pretty fast, too."

    "Fou-kyu-fou fou-kyu." Its beady little eyes stared at me doubtfully, and I wasn''t going to engage with whatever nonsense it had just spouted, for the sake of my own sanity as much as anything else.

    "As long as that''s not the only lesson you learned from me," I said mildly. I pretended not to notice the look the twins exchanged with each other.

    I finished my breakfast far ahead of everyone else, and as the conversation lulled and the twins dug into their breakfasts in earnest, I excused myself and took my dirty plate and glass back up to Emiya, who accepted them and passed them off to Marcus to be washed.

    "Ready to go?" I asked him.

    "When the time comes," he said. "For now, I''m just making sure that Marcus is a little better equipped while we''re gone. I''ll be on time, the same as I always am."

    I had no reason to doubt him, so I just accepted him at his word. This was the same sort of song and dance he did before each of our other deployments, after all.

    I was just out the door and starting to make my way back to the dorms to do a last minute check on everything when my communicator beeped to let me know I had a message. When I checked it, Da Vinci''s neat script greeted me, reading:

    I know it''s last minute, but I have something for you! Come to my workshop as soon as you can!

    Spinning on my heel, I turned in the other direction and started off for Da Vinci''s workshop instead, wondering what she had for me. Maybe my ravens? She still hadn''t given them back after she asked me for them over a week ago, and I''d been getting kind of impatient about it over the last several days. After all, ravens and birds in general weren''t a particularly unusual sight in a city like London, so they''d stand out a lot less than they would have in Okeanos, which meant they''d have a lot better utility in this next Singularity.

    Although it might be a bit of a risk if the Association caught sight of them. I didn''t really know how easily magi could identify another''s familiars, but Marie had explained that any proper magus would be able to track the flow of magical energy between mage and familiar with some effort, so it was entirely possible they might get taken out like that.

    Unless I kept them high enough. I wasn''t clear on how sensitive magi in general were to the flow of magical energy, but a raven several hundred feet in the air was likely far enough away to escape notice.

    Maybe it wasn''t just that, though. Maybe Da Vinci had finally finished that spider puppet.

    A thrill jolted through my stomach.

    Now, that would be useful.

    When I reached her workshop, it was to find Da Vinci flitting about, going to and fro across the room like a busy bee and adjusting various things, rifling through one pile of trinkets or another, and moving objects around whose purpose or function I had no earthly idea might be.

    "Not helping out with the Rayshift?" I asked her.

    Without looking over at me, she smiled and answered, "I trust the technicians to handle the bulk of the work for that by now. They''ve certainly had quite a bit of practice since this all started, no?"

    Not enough to make emergency adjustments, apparently, because whenever we needed to do that, Da Vinci herself was the one to do it. I suppose, when you wanted to make sure something done on the fly was done right, you needed the professional who understood all of the settings and the programming to be the one to do it.

    "Besides," she went on, "I''ll be going to check their work shortly. If there are any mistakes, I''m sure I''ll catch them without any trouble."

    She was meticulous enough that I had no trouble believing it.

    "You wanted to see me before that, though."

    She nodded. "I did! I do have to apologize that it took longer than I expected it to, but I''ve been working on several projects for the future ¡ª a new function to the FATE System that we''ll be testing after this deployment, but it''s a surprise, so don''t tell anyone ¡ª so I only just finished it last night."

    She went off to one corner of the room and picked up a bag, then came back over towards the workbench in the middle of the room, where I joined her. When she set the bag down and nudged it over towards me with a simple, "here," I picked it up myself and immediately felt the extra weight. Considering what I''d been waiting for from her, there wasn''t much else it could be.

    "My ravens?"

    "Yes!" Da Vinci said proudly with another nod and a smile. "The bag, of course, I noticed had suffered some water damage in the Okeanos Singularity, and in hindsight, I should have planned for that from the beginning, so I''ve waterproofed it now! If you find yourself taking another dip, say, in a certain river, for example ¡ª although I would very strongly suggest against it, considering how badly polluted it was in that era ¡ª then you can at least expect your dear Huginn and Muninn to remain dry."

    That was a good upgrade. Not that I was planning on jumping into the Thames, because she was right about exactly how horrible an experience that would be, but if some other asshole decided to fling me into it or into another river or lake or something in a future Singularity, at least I wouldn''t have to dry the bag out afterwards.

    But¡­

    "Was this all you needed to give me?"

    ¡­that couldn''t have taken her a whole week to manage, could it? And if it had, why had she needed my ravens then?

    Da Vinci''s smile broadened, stretching out her cheeks. "Of course not! No, no, the bag was a simple enough fix, it took me only about ten minutes to get that done. The real change, Taylor, was an upgrade I gave to your ravens. You remember you gave me that wonderful dagger of yours, yes? With the nanomachines that are built to chew through whatever they make contact with. Well, as you might imagine, considering I managed to repair it in the first place, I also reverse-engineered how they work!"

    My brow furrowed. Was she saying¡­she put that same function into my ravens? Where, their claws? Their beaks? That¡­didn''t sound as useful as she might be imagining it was.

    "You did?"

    She nodded again. "I did! It took a little bit more effort to create my own from scratch and adjust their functionality, but I''m sure you''ll say the effort was more than worth it! You see, from using them to create your new mystic codes, I also learned how to make them repair other materials. I''m still working on ways to safely integrate them into human flesh, let alone Servants'' spiritual bodies, so I''m afraid that will have to wait a while longer, but for your ravens¡­"

    Her eyes gleamed.

    "Your ravens," she said, and her smile was so broad it looked ready to split her face in half, "I''ve included a self-repair function. A core module about half the size of a pea, hidden in each of their vertebrae, that will use nanomachines to repair any damage your ravens happen to take. Rather ingenious, no?"

    Holy shit. "Really?"

    A self-repair function? One that was embedded in every single section of the spine, so that it couldn''t be destroyed just because one particular segment happened to be damaged?

    "Yes!" Da Vinci said brightly. "Originally, it was going to be a single core module each, but that would be too easy to accidentally disable, wouldn''t it? No, no, better to make it act like bone marrow, so that as much of the skeleton as possible featured redundant modules to enable them to repair themselves ¡ª even other damaged modules! As long as those ravens of yours aren''t completely obliterated, then a little time and mana will let them be right as rain!"

    My fingers curled into the fabric of the bag. It was her job, I knew that. She was here to support the team, to keep things running, and to make sure our equipment was the best she could possibly make it. She would probably have done something like this for any of the Masters, if there were still any left besides me and the twins, just like she had made those new mystic codes for the three of us.

    But it still felt special. Like a personal gift made just for me.

    "Thank you."

    She waved it off. "It was no trouble, truly! Why, if it wasn''t for you and that incredible knife, I wouldn''t have been able to make something like that in the first place! Really, I think I should be the one thanking you. Or perhaps whoever it was who happened to make that knife."

    Another time, the unsubtle dig for information might have annoyed me. But on the back of such good news ¡ª that Huginn and Muninn were becoming ever closer to indestructible ¡ª I couldn''t help but to smile, because¡­

    "You would have liked them. And they, you, I think."

    Da Vinci sighed, but didn''t stop smiling, and shrugged. "It was worth a shot, I suppose."

    The idea of what they could have gotten up to together, on the other hand¡­ Well. They would have made an absolutely terrifying team. Just thinking of what they could have come up with working together was frankly a little dizzying to imagine.

    I tried to banish the image of Ritsuka in power armor from my head, but it refused to go away completely.

    "Was there anything else?" I asked her.

    She shook her head. "Not right now, I''m afraid. I''ve been trying to work on that spider puppet of yours, but the spinnerets are a little finicky. It''s taking more effort than I expected to get them working properly and producing silk of the correct consistency and tensile strength. Once I''ve gotten it figured out, however, you should be able to make just about any kind of silk you could imagine, including braided threads of it, in fact."

    It was disappointing to hear, but if it was as versatile as she was implying, then I could afford to wait until it was finished.

    "Can you make more than one?"

    "With the amount of resources I have left from what we gathered for the Director''s new body?" She hummed thoughtfully. "Perhaps a total of ten. I realize it''s not much compared to what you''re normally used to commanding out on missions, but I think the sheer utility of each one will more than make up for it, yes?"

    Maybe not as much as she might think. No matter how high the quality of the silk was, I still ran into the inevitable problem of trying to use it on a Servant that wouldn''t be particularly impressed by it, but at the very least, it would make it easier to weave cloth for whatever purposes I might need.

    "What about venom options?" I asked instead.

    "Ah," said Da Vinci. "I suppose that''s not off the table either. It wouldn''t be actual venom, but making a potion that could mimic the effects and placing it into an internal reservoir¡­ It would mean having to refill that reservoir periodically after using up the stored potion, but it''s not outside the realm of impossibility. Did you have something specific in mind?"

    "A tranquilizer," for use on more human enemies so we didn''t have to resort to more lethal measures, "and something like sphingomyelinase D, designed specifically to disrupt spiritual bodies," for use against Servants.

    Da Vinci winced. "You''re certainly not holding back, are you? I can''t promise that anything like that I cooked up would be all that effective against Servants, but I can assure you that it would at least do something."

    "That''s fine."

    I was under no illusions that I could so easily kill a Servant, even with access to something like that. But if it could distract them? If it could slowly unravel their body while they fought, slowing them down and weakening them? Against a Servant who didn''t have a way of resisting its effects, it could give us an edge that we might not have otherwise had.

    It was, at least, more than I could do currently. If we ever ran into another situation like Okeanos, where a swarm of any appreciable size was all but impossible to build, then having something useful would help me feel a little less useless.

    "It''ll take a little longer, but it should definitely be doable." Da Vinci glanced at something on her staff. "For now, however, I think you and I have other responsibilities we should be seeing to, yes?"

    I checked the time. A little over an hour until we were scheduled to Rayshift into the London Singularity ¡ª plenty of time to get a few last minute things done, if I''d had any, but I could take the hint she was trying to give me well enough.

    "Right. I''ll see you in about an hour."

    Gathering up the bag and slinging it over my body, I turned around to leave.

    "See you then!" she called after me.

    At the door, I paused and looked back at her. "Da Vinci?"

    "Yes?"

    "Thanks again."

    She smiled at me. "It was no trouble, Taylor."

    I left her workshop behind and made my way back to the dorms for a final equipment check. Not that I expected to find anything missing or out of order, but it was a way to occupy the time for a little while, and when that was done, I let myself relax and cracked open the latest novel I was reading. Trying to get as far in as I could before I had to put it down for who knew how long.

    Before I knew it, most of the hour had passed and my alarm was going off, so I marked my place, set the book aside, and grabbed my things, and then I left my room and made my way towards the Command Room for the final briefing. Halfway there, Arash greeted me with a wave and a smile, then fell into step with me as we walked.

    "So," he said. "London, huh. Can''t say I''ve ever been."

    "Considering the time period, I''m not sure you''ll find it all that interesting."

    "Yeah?"

    "It was prone to fog," I told him, "and smog, from industrial waste and other kinds of air pollution. All of the environmental hazards made people sickly and weak and cut down on the life expectancy of the average Londoner. Up until things got so bad that the government had to start putting in actual environmental protections in the 1950s, it was a miserable place with a whole host of problems, and considering the time period, I don''t hold out any hopes that it''s going to be all that pleasant."

    I had no idea exactly how bad it was going to wind up by the time we got there, but Brockton had had its fair share of rundown spots smeared with human waste and unwashed druggies either high or looking for their next fix. If London wound up anywhere near that bad, the smell was probably going to stick in my nostrils for weeks afterwards.

    "Sounds like a fun place to vacation," Arash teased with a chuckle.

    I wasn''t sure that was quite the right way to put it.

    "I''m not sure ''fun'' is the word I''d use."

    "Maybe not," he allowed, "but there''s going to be a lot of people there, isn''t there? I''m sure, for them, it''s their home, and whatever we''re there to fix, we''ll be saving all of them from it, won''t we?"

    For a second, I stopped, because he actually had a point. Victorian London might be a cesspool of inequality, pollution, and a whole host of other problems, but for the people living there, it was home, and for most of them, the only one they''d ever known. A lot of them wouldn''t want to live anywhere else, no matter how bad it got.

    Not even if a Biblical sea monster came in and wrecked it.

    "You''re right," I admitted. "So I guess we''ll just have to be careful not to do too much damage while we''re there, won''t we?"

    Even if it was all fixed after everything was over, even if no one would remember what happened once it was all corrected, that didn''t make it any less cruel to disregard the people in the city or their homes.

    Somehow, I doubted the enemy was going to be quite so considerate.

    Just as we were about to turn down the hall to the Command Room, however, Arash suddenly shifted into spirit form without any warning whatsoever, and I turned to where he''d been, bewildered. Before I could even open my mouth to ask, he reached across our bond and told me, Just keep going, Master.

    My brow furrowed, but I listened, and when I rounded the corner, I realized what he must have seen coming before me, and my gut clenched to see Marie hunched over herself just outside the door to the Command Room. I walked up to her, making no effort to muffle my footsteps, until I stood even with her.

    "Marie?" I asked quietly.

    She didn''t answer right away, didn''t even look at me or acknowledge I was there at all, and for several seconds, she was silent.

    Then, so quietly I almost didn''t hear her, "What if¡­"

    She trailed off. I didn''t need her to finish, not when I already knew what she was trying to say.

    "It won''t," I told her confidently, low enough that no one inside the Command Room could hear me. "Nothing will go wrong with the Rayshift. The twins, Mash, and I will be okay. You, Romani, and the rest of the staff will be okay. We''ll all be fine."

    "But they¡­" she bit out. "The curse¡­ What if we''re not¡­"

    Not as safe as we think we are?

    Her hands were curled tightly around her tablet, so I reached out and gently nudged her hip with my knuckles.

    "And even with that curse, we still beat them just the same, didn''t we? Ritsuka and Jeanne Alter came out of it none the worse for wear," I pointed out. "They threw everything they had at us, and the only thing that stuck is something they can''t do again. Because if it was that easy, they would have done it already. Especially after how many of their plans we''ve ruined."

    For another few seconds, she was silent.

    "What if you''re wrong?" she asked. "What if¡­if they''re just biding their time?"

    "We have a dragon-slayer. A Celtic warlord. A knight in shining armor. A demigod. A modern hero who can mass produce Noble Phantasms. And the greatest genius of the past thousand years is micromanaging the entire facility. Anything they try to throw at us? We''ll beat it. They''re not catching us by surprise again."

    I wasn''t sure she was convinced. I wasn''t sure she could be, not until those niggling doubts were proven wrong.

    I leaned closer. "And now, we need our Director. She''s the one holding us all together."

    "Is she really?" Marie asked tremulously. "She can barely hold herself together! Romani is¡­"

    "Romani wasn''t doing much better," I said, remembering how many days he''d spent shuffling around like the walking dead. "And there''s at least one person here who wouldn''t be if it wasn''t for you. I''ll remind you of that as many times as you need me to, Marie, because the only reason I made it this far is because of you. You believed in me when no one else did, so now I''m going to believe in you even when you don''t believe in yourself."

    She took a shuddering breath, and like it was some terrible secret, whispered, "I don''t deserve it."

    For a single instant, a black, terrible hate erupted in my gut ¡ª at Marisbury, at Lev and Flauros, the ones who had done this to her ¡ª and I extinguished it with the cold, visceral satisfaction that they were all gone and couldn''t come back. She wasn''t free of them, and she wasn''t free of the wounds they''d inflicted on her, but they couldn''t inflict fresh ones.

    "I don''t believe that," I told her, "and no one else here believes it either. They''re all in the next room ¡ª" I nodded my head towards the door ¡ª "waiting for their Director to lead them. We can''t start without her. Is she ready to go?"

    She sucked in another shuddering breath. "I have to be¡­don''t I?"

    She squared her shoulders back and straightened her spine, pulling one more deep breath in through her nose, and then she set her face into one of fierce confidence. It was a mask so fragile that I thought it might have broken if I reached out to touch it.

    "I''m right behind you."

    I stepped back to give her space, and she nearly faltered right there, but she took a bracing breath, lifted her head, and turned towards the door. When she walked ¡ª all false bravado and borrowed strength ¡ª the door whooshed open ahead of her, and I followed in her wake, there to catch her if she fell.

    She didn''t. There was a moment of hesitation the instant she stepped into the Command Room, and then something almost magical happened and she fell into the role of Director like it was natural.

    "Romani!" she snapped off.

    Romani turned to her, and like nothing was wrong, offered her a smile, "Ah, good morning, Director!"

    All of the other Servants, who were already gathered and waiting, echoed him, some (like Bradamante) more enthusiastically than others, and we all exchanged pleasantries. We''d barely finished and Marie didn''t even have a chance to ask about anything before the twins and Mash arrived and walked through the door ¡ª with the gremlin in tow, of course. Arash brought up the very rear, catching my eye for a brief moment, as though promising to keep the secret of what had just happened.

    "Good morning, everyone!" Mash greeted brightly.

    A chorus of "good morning" answered her, and once it had died down, Marie cast an eye out at the assembled group, like she was reassuring herself that we were all there and healthy. I doubted I was the only one who noticed her gaze linger a few extra seconds on Ritsuka.

    "Good!" she said, and her voice barely trembled. "We''re all here. Then we can begin!" Her voice gained confidence and strength as she went. "First off, we''ll go over what to expect of the upcoming Singularity¡­"

    And she recapped what we''d discussed in the previous briefing: that our destination was London, during the year 1888, and that the Singularity encapsulated only the city itself. That there was a distortion affecting the sensors, but with the new information that it subsided in what would be the early morning, so we had enough of a grasp of the shape of things to know that the layout of the city remained as it had in proper history. That the circumstances, as always, were unknown, and our job was to correct whatever had been thrown off and retrieve the Holy Grail at the center of things. That we should be especially careful of the Mage''s Association of that era and had full permission to do whatever it took to protect ourselves from any of their predations.

    "As was decided upon before, we''ll be sending the Masters together with Mash, Emiya, Arash, and Jeanne Alter," Marie concluded. "If you have any questions, you should have asked them a week ago!"

    In the background, El-Melloi II snorted and Emiya huffed a quiet laugh. No one spoke up to ask anything. Marie nodded.

    "Good! Then it''s time for the next deployment. Everyone, get to your positions! Team A, to the Rayshift Chamber!"

    This time, I definitely wasn''t the only one to notice the slip.

    "Right!" the twins and Mash said.

    "And get Sherlock Holmes autograph for me if you can!" Romani called after us.

    Mash sighed.

    "I''m afraid that''s going to be quite difficult, Romani," Da Vinci said, amused. "He''s a fictional character, remember?"

    "Oh. Right¡­"

    "Don''t worry," Jeanne Alter tossed back at him, smirking, "I''ll make sure to get his autograph for you, Doc!"

    Romani plastered on an awkward smile. "R-right, thanks!"

    "Good luck, Master!" Bradamante bade us. "And Master! A-and Master, too! And Lady Mash, as well!"

    The door whooshed shut behind us, and together, we made our way down to the Rayshift Chamber. It looked no different from any of the other times we''d been inside of it, with four pods, four coffins, jutting up out of the floor, lids raised for us Masters and Mash. Da Vinci, who had followed us down, told us, "Just like before, everyone. No new procedures you need to worry about, so just step inside and get ready to Rayshift."

    Rika sighed. "No new procedures means it''s going to be just like the last four times."

    "I guess it''s a good thing we didn''t have a big breakfast then," said Ritsuka. "Aren''t you glad I stopped you from getting seconds?"

    Rika stuck her tongue out at him, and Da Vinci chuckled.

    "Sorry we can''t make things a little easier on you," she said, smiling.

    "What''s the matter, Master?" Jeanne Alter asked, grinning. "Scared of a little metal tube?"

    "You would be too if you had to worry about your stomach rebelling every time you Rayshifted," Rika grumbled.

    The intercom crackled to life. "What''s taking you so long? Get in your coffins already!"

    Ritsuka grimaced, but obeyed, moving towards his coffin. "That sounds really weird out of context."

    "Everything does," I commented as I went over to mine. I tried not to think too much about climbing inside of it as I did, because if I spent too long and too much thinking about being inside a small metal tube ¡ª

    Stop thinking about it, I told myself. It didn''t help.

    "London bridge is falling down," Rika sang to herself while she got into hers, "falling down, falling down¡­"

    Da Vinci chuckled again as she made the rounds, checking that we were each secured inside our coffins ¡ª it felt like she barely looked me over before moving on ¡ª and then she was gone. The massive doors rumbled shut behind her. The lid to my coffin slid down, the lock whirred and clicked, and then the glass turned opaque and I was left in the darkness, alone but for my ravens hugged to my chest in their bag.

    I shut my eyes tight, but it did little to help the clawing, irrational fear scrambling for purchase in my gut. Fuck, I hated that this still got to me like this.

    Once more, the intercom crackled to life.

    UNSUMMON PROGRAM START

    SPIRITRON CONVERSION START

    A chill swept down my body, just as it always did, and despite the echoes of trauma that were still gnawing at my insides, a jolt of excitement leapt through my belly.

    Passenger? Are you ready?

    There was no response. There was never a response. I had little doubt that it still heard me.

    RAYSHIFTING STARTING IN 3¡­

    2¡­

    1¡­

    Bright light swept up and down my coffin, and a moment later, I fell ¡ª out through a hole in reality, along a canal through a sea of stars. The twinkling lights passed me by as streaks of glittering white.

    ALL PROCEDURES CLEARED

    GRAND ORDER COMMENCING OPERATION

 Chapter CXXVIII: The Misty City

    Chapter CXXVIII: The Misty City

    Every time, I struggled to really encapsulate the experience of Rayshifting. To capture what it was like in a way that could be expressed through words, as though that was really possible.

    Whatever else I thought of her, there were times when Alexandria was right. That sometimes, language was limited. Sometimes, there weren¡¯t any words to say what you wanted to say.

    For a moment, Taylor Hebert didn¡¯t exist. I was alive and dead at the same time, vacillating between them as a second stretched into an eternity that compressed back into a second. I was aware that I wasn¡¯t aware, conscious of the fact that I wasn¡¯t conscious, my mind spread out across infinity as the world fell away and the universe opened up like a flower in bloom. I was the honey bee exploring its petals, flitting about from galaxy to supernova to black hole.

    And that was all complete nonsense. The fact that I could even remember that glimpse behind the curtain of reality enough to say anything at all about it probably had something to do with my passenger, but the why and the how of it, I could only guess. If I let myself be honest about it, it was probably just my human brain trying to make sense of something that I didn¡¯t have the ability to really grasp, like the flow of entropy in reverse or something.

    Gravity suddenly reasserted itself, and I landed on solid ground with so little warning that my body almost pitched over from the shock of it. There was no impact, not really, which felt incredibly strange when everything my senses told me said that my knees should be aching and my feet throbbing.

    ¡°Is it just me,¡± Rika said weakly from nearby, ¡°or was that one way worse than normal?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not just you,¡± her brother replied.

    ¡°Maybe the distortion affected the calculations for the Rayshift?¡± Mash suggested.

    Rika groaned. ¡°At least tell me we¡¯re still in London and not Paris or something!¡±

    I opened my eyes. High above in the sky, the midday sun shone down on us, bright and glaring, and there, up there with it ¡ª

    Mash gasped. ¡°The ring of light!¡±

    ¡ª was the same phenomenon we¡¯d seen in Orl¨¦ans and Septem, although I didn¡¯t remember checking for it in Okeanos. If it was here, too, then I had no doubt it must have been, even if we hadn¡¯t ever looked to make sure.

    Down below, however, here on the ground with us¡­

    ¡°It¡¯s definitely London,¡± I said confidently.

    ¡­a faint mist hovered over the street, thin and moist and nipping at our ankles. To be expected, for a city that was famous for being foggy and miserable, and those structures in the distance, barely more than vague blobs from here, looked like they could have come out of a history textbook. I took in a breath ¡ª and almost gagged.

    ¡°Oh, god, what¡¯s that stench?¡± Rika said, disgusted. ¡°Did someone let one rip? Onii-chan, was that you?¡±

    Ritsuka sent her an annoyed glare. ¡°Yes, Rika, that was me. I had some expired milk with breakfast today, and that¡¯s why it smells so bad.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m just saying!¡±

    This was too much for something as simple as someone passing gas. Not only was the smell utterly horrid, the stench of it burned in the back of my throat, clinging to my sinuses. From how bad it was, I wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if someone had told me my nose hairs had been singed off.

    Mash gave an experimental sniff, grimacing, and had to hold a hand up to her nose. ¡°It¡¯s sulfur,¡± she said, muffled by her palm. ¡°Given the time period, it¡¯s probably pollution as a result of industrial waste, Senpai.¡±

    ¡°This is definitely London,¡± said Emiya. There was something almost wistful in his voice. ¡°I guess, even over a hundred years later, it doesn¡¯t change that much, does it?¡±

    ¡°So it¡¯s just as shitty a hundred years from now, huh?¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. Her nose wrinkled as she looked about.

    Emiya chuckled. ¡°I guess that¡¯s one way to put it.¡±

    ¡°It could be worse,¡± Arash said, smiling. ¡°It could be on fire, right?¡±

    Rika groaned as Ritsuka laughed a little. Jeanne Alter grinned. ¡°I can fix that if you want, Master.¡±

    ¡°Sorry, no,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°We¡¯re here to save this city, right? We can¡¯t do that by burning it to the ground.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a lot of problems you can fix by burning them down,¡± Jeanne Alter insisted, and then she shrugged. ¡°But whatever. Don¡¯t say I didn¡¯t offer if you change your mind later.¡±

    Beep-beep!

    When I answered my communicator, a burst of static was the first thing to greet me, and I winced against the noise as it screeched out.

    ¡°¡­hear me?¡± Da Vinci¡¯s voice asked, tinny and warped. ¡°¡­distortion¡­linked to the fog¡­some way.¡±

    ¡°Da Vinci-chan?¡± Rika said. ¡°You¡¯re breaking up!¡±

    ¡°And not a tunnel in sight, right?¡± Ritsuka teased her. She stuck her tongue out at him.

    ¡°We¡¯re¡­trouble hearing you,¡± Da Vinci said. ¡°The fog¡­disrupting¡­communications. The thicker¡­harder¡­us to reach¡­¡±

    The distortion was linked to the fog, and it subsided in the early morning, but presumably came back in the afternoon and into the evening. I glanced at the mist, which wasn¡¯t especially thick right now, but it was chilly and felt like it was stealing the warmth from my body whenever it snuck up my pants legs and touched my bare skin.

    They¡¯d also said in the briefing that the time differential between this Singularity and Chaldea was much closer to one to one, so if we Rayshifted out of Chaldea in the late morning, then that was about what time it should have been in London, too, wasn¡¯t it? So this wasn¡¯t the mist being driven back, this was the fog rolling back in.

    ¡°We understand, Da Vinci,¡± I said as slowly and clearly as I could. There was no way to be sure how much of it she even heard.

    ¡°The fog¡­thicker¡­we speak,¡± Da Vinci went on. ¡°Once¡­thick enough¡­be impossible. We¡­able to¡­contact¡­at all. You¡¯ll¡­your own.¡±

    ¡°¡ª isten!¡± Marie¡¯s voice interjected. ¡°¡­only way¡­stay in contact¡­you¡­Ley Line Terminal! Find¡­soon¡­possibly can!¡±

    The line fizzled and abruptly disconnected. My brow furrowed, but after several seconds, my communicator remained silent.

    ¡°Uh, guys?¡± Rika said uncertainly. ¡°Is it just me, or is that fog getting thicker?¡±

    She pointed down the road and into the distance, where the mist was slowly growing ¡ª both more opaque, thicker, and also upwards, slowly creeping up the brickwork of the nearby buildings like a blanket being pulled over the city.

    Brockton wasn¡¯t immune to its own bouts of fog, but I¡¯d never seen one come on this quickly. With just how fast it was thickening and expanding, it wouldn¡¯t take long at all for it to reach us, too, and if it kept growing thicker, it was entirely possible for us to lose track of each other if we let ourselves get separated.

    Worse, the insect population was distributed¡­weirdly. In the nearby homes, they thrived, as expected of a city that had problems with cleanliness and had just recently installed a proper sewer system. Out on the streets, however? There was nothing. Not a single bug of any kind was outdoors, and any that could stretch that definition only stretched it by hiding out under enclosed stairways. It was almost as though they were afraid to come out into the fog.

    Was this a natural London thing, the sort that happened on its own in normal history, or was the fact this fog was linked somehow to the distortion that was disrupting our communications with Chaldea a sign that this wasn¡¯t in any way natural, but instead the actions of some other force? Could it have something to do with the entire reason we were here in the first place?

    Immediately, I reached for my supply pouch and pulled out a length of silk cord.

    ¡°Group up!¡± I ordered the rest. I kept an eye on the fog, and alarmingly, it was expanding even faster now than it had been a minute ago.

    That all but confirmed it. This was almost certainly enemy action.

    ¡°Ritsuka, Rika, Mash,¡± I said as they all gathered towards me, and I handed the other end of the thread to Ritsuka, ¡°tie yourselves off so we don¡¯t get separated. Everyone, stick together. The last thing we want is for anyone to get lost. The fewer Command Spells we need to use to make sure we¡¯re all in the same place, the better.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Jeanne Alter laughed. ¡°Are you afraid of a little fog?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Emiya said grimly, ¡°that¡¯s no natural fog. The Director said the distortion subsides every morning and then builds up again afterwards, right? And Da Vinci said the fog is linked to the distortion. Normal fog isn¡¯t nearly that regular, which means ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Something else is causing it,¡± Arash concluded, and now he was on guard, too. ¡°Emiya, can you take point? I¡¯ll cover the rear.¡±

    ¡°Screw that!¡± said Jeanne Alter, and she pushed her way to the front of the group, flickering in and out of spirit form to bypass the cord us Masters were tying to our belts. ¡°I¡¯ll take point, you pansies!¡±

    She drew her sword.

    ¡°Let¡¯s see how this big, scary fog feels about a little fire!¡±

    She swung upwards, and a gout of flame leapt from the path of her blade ¡ª only to fizzle out almost the second it hit the incoming fog bank. As though personally offended, the fog closed in faster, and the first wave of it tickled at my shoes and ankles.

    ¡°What the fuck?¡± she squawked. She gestured at the fog bank. ¡°You idiots saw that, too, right?¡±

    ¡°Definitely not natural,¡± Emiya said with a grimace. ¡°I think we¡¯ve found our first clue about what¡¯s going on in this place.¡±

    ¡°Which means it has a source,¡± I said, mind already working. ¡°If it¡¯s not natural, then it¡¯s like you said: that means someone or something is creating it. The question is where, why, and how.¡±

    ¡°If this fog really is covering the whole city, then I don¡¯t think it¡¯s going to be easy to answer those,¡± said Arash.

    On that, he had a very good point. It was a lot of ground to cover, and if my sense of how socioeconomic stratification worked in a city like this was any good, then the fact we seemed to be in the poorer section of town meant we were likely closer to the outskirts of the city than the center.

    And the fog? It looked like it was coming from somewhere much closer to the center. Deeper in, towards the more affluent sections of town. There were a lot of places that could correspond to, but there were already a few that I could think of that we should probably start searching. Like Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London, or even Big Ben, depending on how high up they needed to be to get this fog really rolling.

    ¡°At least it looks like we have a heading.¡±

    Rika did a double take. ¡°Wait. You want to go into the fog?¡±

    The ¡®are you nuts?¡¯ was implicit.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°That makes sense. If the fog is coming from that direction, then whoever is behind it is probably somewhere over there, aren¡¯t they?¡±

    ¡°Exactly.¡±

    ¡°Alright,¡± said Rika, sounding very unenthusiastic, but resigned to it anyway. ¡°Looks like we¡¯re going into the creepy fog then. Where anything could jump out at us. At any moment. And we¡¯d never see it coming.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t need to worry, Master,¡± said Mash. ¡°No matter what happens, I¡¯ll protect you.¡±

    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

    ¡°And we¡¯re here, too,¡± Emiya added.

    That was when the fog hit us properly, slamming into our group like a wave and washing over us in an instant. I took in a sharp breath at the sudden bracing cold that hit my cheeks ¡ª and nearly pitched over sideways as my knees threatened to buckle underneath me.

    ¡°Oh god,¡± Rika gagged, and my own throat convulsed reflexively, ¡°it¡¯s worse! I didn¡¯t think it could get worse!¡±

    My eyes watered, and I held a hand up to my face to cover my nose, but it didn¡¯t help. The rancid smell invaded my nostrils and slithered down the back of my throat, burning all of the soft tissues as it went. It was bad enough that I wasn¡¯t sure exactly how metaphorical that was.

    ¡°Oh dear.¡± Mash held her free hand up to her nose and mouth, too, but it didn¡¯t look like it was helping her any more than it did me. ¡°This is¡­ Could it be that this is the result of the enemy making the infamous London smog worse? I-I don¡¯t think it was supposed to get this bad for another sixty years.¡±

    ¡°Fou¡­¡± the little gremlin said pitifully, burying his snout in her neck. Vindictively, I thought he probably had it the worst out of all of us.

    ¡°It figures London would be this fucking toxic,¡± said Jeanne Alter, nose wrinkled in disgust. ¡°Ugh. Why did I even agree to come along for this one?¡±

    ¡°Is it even safe for us to be out in this?¡± Ritsuka asked, his voice muffled by his own hand.

    My vision blurred. I blinked the tears out of my eyes, but it didn¡¯t clear up entirely. The fog was so bad it was burning my eyes, too. Fuck. Were we going to have to put up with this for the entire time we were here? Or were we going to have to limit ourselves entirely to the times when the fog subsided and the air was clear enough for us to breathe without any trouble?

    ¡°Maybe not.¡± My lungs seized, but I fought down the urge to cough. It wouldn¡¯t help in this situation. ¡°But we don¡¯t have anywhere to set up a base yet, and we can¡¯t use one of these houses for that, so we need to go deep¡­deeper into the city.¡±

    Ritsuka nodded. ¡°Yeah. I don¡¯t think any of these people would appreciate us just barging in, would they? We should try to find an empty building. Maybe a bakery or something? Bread is better than no food at all, right?¡±

    None of that was wrong, but I didn¡¯t bother to correct him right now, not when I felt another cough trying to force its way out of my chest. No matter what, we were probably going to have to inconvenience someone, it would just be better if that someone happened to live in more secure housing. Somewhere with more space, where an extended family wasn¡¯t all cramped together in an apartment meant for much fewer people, and where the roof wasn¡¯t in any danger of falling in on our heads.

    Rika shivered. ¡°Do you think we could find someplace with indoor heating? Or at least a fireplace?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Rika,¡± Emiya told her. ¡°I have a few things I can make to heat the place up, if we need it. I think the important thing is to just find someplace safe, first and foremost.¡±

    ¡°Y-yeah,¡± I managed to grit out. ¡°So let¡¯s¡­let¡¯s get moving.¡±

    ¡°The sooner we can get out of this fog, the better,¡± Arash agreed.

    ¡°Tch.¡± Jeanne Alter scoffed. ¡°I¡¯m still taking point.¡±

    ¡°And Mash will be right behind you,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°Right, Mash?¡±

    Mash nodded firmly. ¡°Right!¡±

    So we started walking ¡ª slowly, but walking nonetheless. We followed the road in the direction the fog had arrived from, and although it was harder without any bugs out on the streets to give me a sense of where everything was, the bugs in the nearby houses still provided a kind of runway to give me a sense of where the housing ended and the streets began. It wasn¡¯t anywhere near as complete a map of my surroundings as I¡¯d gotten used to in places like Brockton or Chicago, and for Orl¨¦ans and Septem, it couldn¡¯t even come close, but it was more than I¡¯d had in Chaldea, Fuyuki, and most of Okeanos, so that was already an improvement.

    The fog, unfortunately, never dissipated. In fact, I was pretty sure it was getting thicker as we went, and while the thread connecting us made it so none of us Masters got separated, it got harder and harder to see with my actual eyes what was going on in front of us. Not only because the fog was so thick, but because my eyes were almost constantly watering from the sting of whatever was in that fog, and my vision kept deteriorating.

    The burn in my throat and down into my chest didn¡¯t get any better, either. Eventually, no matter how much I tried to keep it down, the urge to cough won out, and I had to stop and give into it.

    Naturally, everyone else stopped with me. If they hadn¡¯t heard me hacking, then the sudden tension in the silk line probably would have gotten their attention.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°I-I¡¯m fine,¡± I managed around the feeling of glass scraping my esophagus.

    Emiya and Arash traded a look, no doubt about me. I wasn¡¯t sure how much anyone else believed me either.

    ¡°Are you okay, Rika?¡± her brother asked her.

    ¡°I-I¡¯m fine,¡± she said, although she sounded miserable. ¡°That might change if I have to smell this for too long, though. Ugh. I thought the Rayshifting was bad!¡±

    ¡°Are you okay, Senpai?¡± asked Mash.

    Ritsuka nodded, grimacing around his hand. ¡°It really does smell horrible, but besides that, I¡¯m okay. We need to keep going, don¡¯t we?¡±

    ¡°The sooner we get out of this shit, the better,¡± Jeanne Alter muttered testily.

    I nodded, ignoring the way my vision swam a little, and swiped at my eyes to try and wipe away the reflexive tears. Frustratingly, it didn¡¯t really help.

    ¡°Let¡¯s¡­ Let¡¯s go.¡±

    We started moving again. Mercifully, it turned out that the fog wasn¡¯t consistent all throughout, because we did occasionally hit spots that were thinner where things let up a little bit, but the opposite was also true, because we ran into spots that were thicker, too, and all the worse for it. I tried not to show it, especially since the twins were handling it so well ¡ª I was proud of them for that, I really was ¡ª but the smell was giving me a headache, and in those thicker spots, it was bad enough to make me dizzy.

    This had to be worse than how things were in proper history. I¡¯d read that the people of London faced all sorts of health problems in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, about their sickly nature, their weaker constitutions, and their pallid complexions, how their growth was stunted, and how thin and feeble they tended to be, but there was a world of difference between any of that and living with this every day for their entire lives.

    It explained why everyone seemed to have retreated indoors, at least. They must all have realized that there was something off about this, something unnatural, and whether it was prudence or superstition, that had driven them off the streets and into their homes.

    It wasn¡¯t long before I had to stop and cough again. This time, it felt like one of my lungs was trying to force its way up my throat as my chest convulsed.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka asked again, a note of concern in his voice.

    ¡°It¡¯s ¡ª¡±

    But before I could get the word out, I was seized by another fit and had to bend nearly double, covering my mouth with my hand. Something warm and wet splattered onto my palm, and frustrated and disgusted, I flicked my hand jerkily and flung the phlegm off onto the ground. The only thing I could taste in my mouth was the acrid sulfur that was clogging up my nose and clinging to what felt like every single one of my tastebuds.

    Master? Arash prodded across our bond gently. Are you sure you¡¯re alright?

    I tried to look over at him, but in the fog, with this patch as dense as it was and my eyes still incessantly watering, all I saw was a vague blur of mottled colors that matched him and his armor.

    No, I admitted only to him, but there¡¯s nothing we can do about it right now, is there?

    I couldn¡¯t even tell if he frowned or not.

    ¡°Maybe it¡¯s an allergies thing?¡± Rika suggested. ¡°I mean, this sucks and I¡¯m gonna be smelling this for weeks after this is over, but Senpai¡¯s the only one so bad off. Onii-chan and I are okay.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s that,¡± Mash said quietly. ¡°This mist¡­it¡¯s so full of magical energy that I¡¯m not sure I could even tell if a Servant walked right past us.¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s not wrong,¡± Emiya agreed. ¡°As Servants, we¡¯re fine, but for living human beings, this could be dangerous. Her reacting more strongly might have to do with anything from the composition or quality of her magic circuits to her elemental alignment being a poor matchup, and without the Doctor or Da Vinci to tell us what the sensors are saying, there¡¯s no way to know for sure one way or the other.¡±

    Mash checked her communicator, but after a second or two, there was nothing on the other end. ¡°I can¡¯t reach Doctor Roman or Miss Da Vinci. It seems the fog really is making it impossible for us to contact them.¡±

    My lips pulled down, and with a bit of effort and the mental snap of a spider¡¯s thread, I started circulating magical energy through my magic circuits. It didn¡¯t help as much as I was hoping it would, only made the breathing a little bit easier, but it would be better than nothing.

    Embarrassingly, my knees shook a little as I straightened back up, but if anyone realized it, no one commented on it.

    ¡°Check the map Da Vinci made for us, if you can,¡± I told Mash. My voice came out a lot rougher and more breathless than I would have liked. ¡°The Director said¡­that we needed to find a Ley Line Terminal. Da Vinci should have them¡­have them marked out.¡±

    ¡°Oh!¡± said Mash. ¡°That¡¯s right! The Director did say that!¡±

    We all waited for several seconds as she did just that, and I could see the blurry play of light on the fog from the holographic display projecting up above her wrist, but not the map itself. Even if I¡¯d pulled up my own, I doubted I would have been able to see it, not with my eyes constantly watering and my vision so blurry.

    It took more effort than I would have liked to admit to keep my breathing even and calm all the while. Even circulating energy through my circuits, I still felt the urge to cough, and it hadn¡¯t done anything at all for the disgusting tang in my mouth and the burning in my throat and chest. The dizziness hadn¡¯t gone anywhere either.

    ¡°¡­The closest one is a little further ahead, to the southwest, near the river,¡± Mash said at length. ¡°We¡¯re currently about halfway between there and Whitechapel, and if we had kept going straight westward, we would have missed it entirely.¡±

    A shiver went down my spine. Whitechapel, on a foggy afternoon, in London, 1888. Not only was it entirely possible we could have run into the real thing ¡ª less of a concern with how many Servants we had ¡ª but if there was a better catalyst for the summoning of Jack the Ripper, I couldn¡¯t think of it.

    ¡°Be¡­be careful,¡± I managed to get out, choking down another cough. ¡°It¡¯s¡­entirely possible we could¡­run into Jack the Ripper.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Jeanne Alter barked, laughing. ¡°You¡¯re scared of an ordinary little serial killer?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Ritsuka answered before I could, coming to what must have been the same conclusion. ¡°The Whitechapel murders took place in 1888, so¡­ With a Holy Grail already in the mix, that means the original could accidentally summon his future self as an Assassin, couldn¡¯t he?¡±

    ¡°Damn,¡± said Emiya. He sighed. ¡°And no doubt, an Assassin Jack the Ripper would probably get some kind of bonus in foggy conditions, wouldn¡¯t he? This really is the perfect set of circumstances to summon a guy like him ¡ª which means we¡¯re almost guaranteed to run into him.¡±

    ¡°That makes it all the more important we find that Ley Line Terminal as soon as possible, doesn¡¯t it?¡± said Arash. ¡°I don¡¯t know about you, Emiya, but even a guy like me is having trouble seeing through this fog. We¡¯re out in the open and we¡¯re vulnerable. If we¡¯re ambushed, we might not even see it coming.¡±

    ¡°Shut up,¡± Jeanne Alter snapped.

    Emiya sighed. ¡°Jeanne ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Just shut up and fucking listen!¡± she hissed back at him.

    The group fell into silence for a long moment. I held my breath, gritting my teeth as I forced down another coughing fit, and strained my ears ¡ª there.

    Clank, was the sound of something metallic moving in the mist. Clank-clank-clank, was the creak of joints and the clatter of footfalls on the road. I tried to peer in the direction of the noise, but between the fog and my watery eyes, I had no hope of making anything out a foot in front of my face, let alone further down the street.

    ¡°What is it?¡± Rika whispered.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± her brother murmured back. ¡°It doesn¡¯t¡­sound human, does it?¡±

    ¡°How can you tell?¡± she asked incredulously.

    ¡°I mean¡­¡±

    ¡°No, he¡¯s right,¡± Arash whispered. ¡°Whatever it is, it¡¯s bipedal, but the way it echoes says that there¡¯s nothing soft underneath to absorb the sound.¡±

    I was, quite suddenly, hyper aware of the bag slung around my chest and the two ravens inside it. Da Vinci¡¯s quality, of course, made it hard to distinguish them from the real thing, and when they were deployed in their normal forms, anyone who examined them wouldn¡¯t find anything at all to suggest they weren¡¯t regular birds.

    ¡°Puppets?¡± I muttered.

    But not all puppets were up to that same standard. An average puppet user had puppets that might look right on the outside ¡ª maybe, because even that wasn¡¯t a guarantee ¡ª but underneath, they were basically just mannequins with ball joints and different mechanisms inside that made them function. Hell, ceramics might have been cheaper to use, but there was never anything that said a puppet¡¯s exoskeleton couldn¡¯t be made of metal, was there?

    Marie had even told me once of a magus who liked to design his puppets with clockwork gears. When I¡¯d asked Da Vinci about it, she told me that wasn¡¯t particularly unusual. There were plenty of magi who were still stuck far enough in the past that they had what she called ¡°steampunk sensibilities.¡±

    The clanking suddenly stopped, and for a few seconds, everything was quiet again ¡ª and then, just as suddenly, it started up again, faster, louder as it approached at speed. Somewhere in mist, there was an indistinct blob, but things were so bad I couldn¡¯t even tell if it was anything other than my imagination.

    Arash suddenly pulled out his bow, nocking an arrow and firing it with such speed that I couldn¡¯t track the individual motions, and with a metallic thunk, it slammed home into that blur. Whatever-it-was collapsed ¡ª appropriately ¡ª like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and it slid to a stop in front of our group, clattering all the while as its lifeless limbs flailed about wildly.

    ¡°What the hell is that?¡± Jeanne Alter demanded loudly.

    ¡°It¡­looks kind of like a person,¡± Mash hedged, ¡°but at the same time¡­¡±

    ¡°Not,¡± Ritsuka agreed.

    I closed my own eyes, pushing down the thread that connected me to Arash so that I could borrow his, and looked down at the¡­thing.

    Mash was right. It did look kind of like a person. But only kind of. It had a human shape, with two arms, two legs, a head, a torso, a pelvis. There was even a pair of swells on its torso to suggest the shape of a bust, to lend it a feminine profile. It stopped there, though, because it didn¡¯t have eyes, only a set of shallow indents on either side of a thin protrusion that was probably meant to represent a nose. The arms were also far too long, reaching down to its knees, and the piping on its torso gave it an exaggerated set of ribs.

    A single arrow protruded from its bald head, cracks spider-webbing out from the point of impact, and what leaked out of the wound looked more like oil than blood.

    It looked, in other words, the way I would have expected a fully articulated human puppet to look, one that was unfinished. No eyes, no skin, no finer details, only an exoskeleton and interior mechanisms. You couldn¡¯t have mistaken it for an actual person if you tried, not even in silhouette.

    Clank-clank-clank

    ¡°There¡¯s more!¡± Emiya barked, and no sooner had he said it than did several more identical things leap out of the mist, sharpened fingers extended like claws. With dizzying speed that did nothing for my own spinning head, Arash whipped his bow around and unleashed a barrage of arrows into the group.

    Two of them went down, collapsing much like the first had, with holes punched through what would have been a number of vital spots on a human being, and a third lost an arm as the red ball that formed its shoulder joint splintered and exploded, but it kept coming. Emiya finished it off with a pair of brutal cuts from his favored twin swords, separating the head from the shoulders and the torso from the pelvis. It clattered lifelessly to the ground.

    But there were several more behind it, making for a total of at least ten, and a sneering Jeanne Alter swept her sword in an arc through the air, commanding them, ¡°Burn!¡±

    A gout of flame leapt from her blade ¡ª and with a slight sizzle the only warning, the mist in front of her ignited with a BOOM that nearly threw me and the twins off of our feet. Even Jeanne Alter was forced back a step as Emiya and Arash stumbled under the unexpected force of it.

    ¡°The hell?¡± Jeanne Alter said, her voice an octave higher than normal.

    ¡°Watch it!¡± Rika shrieked.

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t on purpose!¡± Jeanne Alter bit back. ¡°The fuck just happened?¡±

    With a clatter, the bits and pieces of the remaining puppet-things landed and tumbled down the road, scattering oil and shattered shards all over. In the brief pocket of free air the explosion had blown open, we could at least see enough to tell that she had gotten all of them with that.

    ¡°Probably a reaction to the magical energy in the fog,¡± Emiya said, grimacing. He made a show of massaging what I assumed was one of his ears. ¡°Those flames of yours are more like a curse than regular fire, so they¡¯re more volatile than normal, too. When you¡¯re not trying, they can fizzle out in a mist like this, but when you put some effort into it, well¡­¡±

    She snarled, ¡°Are you saying this is my fault?¡±

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t before, but if you¡¯re going to be so sensitive about it ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Guys!¡± Arash interrupted. He pointed at the puppets¡¯ remains. ¡°Look! You¡¯re seeing this, too, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    Emiya moved, bending down next to one of the ¡°dead¡± puppets and inspecting it. From what I could actually see, he had to be reaching out to touch it, running his fingers over the parts. A moment later, he said, ¡°They¡¯re degrading. Corroding right before our eyes. I¡¯d expect to see this sort of damage after months of exposure to the elements, not a few minutes.¡±

    ¡°So it wasn¡¯t just me,¡± Arash said grimly.

    Abruptly, Emiya stood back up. ¡°We have to get out of this mist as soon as possible. Mash, how are you feeling?¡±

    ¡°Ah¡­I-I¡¯m fine?¡± said Mash. ¡°The smell hasn¡¯t gotten any better, but I¡¯m learning to deal with it.¡±

    ¡°Master?¡±

    ¡°I dunno about learning to deal with it, but I¡¯m okay, too,¡± Rika answered. ¡°Ugh. Food¡¯s gonna taste weird for a while, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m okay, too,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°But I won¡¯t complain about getting out of this fog as soon as we can.¡±

    Emiya turned to me last. I couldn¡¯t make out the expression on his face, but I assumed he was grimacing. ¡°It looks like Taylor¡¯s the only one being hit hard by this. We need to get her inside and contact the Doctor to see what sort of damage we¡¯re looking at.¡±

    A flash of annoyance curdled in my belly. ¡°I¡¯m ¡ª¡±

    But the urge to cough won out again, and I couldn¡¯t even finish my sentence before it interrupted me. No matter how hard I tried to hold it back, I failed, and I wound up hacking violently again, chest convulsing as my body tried to expel the acrid mist clinging to my throat and lungs.

    I held my hand over my mouth, as much to muffle the sound as a matter of courtesy, and something warm and wet splashed over my palm again. Ugh. And it was thicker this time, so it wouldn¡¯t be as easy to get rid of. It wasn¡¯t like I could just wipe it off on my shirt. That was disgusting.

    ¡°Is that blood?¡± I heard someone whisper.

    What?

    With an effort of will, I pushed the next cough down and managed to hold it back long enough to pry my eyes open and look down at my hand ¡ª a deep, vivid red was splattered all over my palm, with thin strands climbing in ropes up and down my fingers and flecks smeared into the joints. My mouth was so thoroughly coated in the misty grime that I couldn¡¯t even taste the coppery tang.

    Oh.

    Another fit seized me, seized me so violently and forcefully that I had to bend double as I coughed. My throat quickly went from ragged and sore to distressingly numb, and more wet heat hit my lips and palm.

    But unlike before, the coughing didn¡¯t stop. Every scant breath I managed to suck down only made it worse, only made me cough more, and my already dizzy head started to spin as my lungs began to burn and my knees lost their strength. The tips of my fingers and toes tingled, numb.

    Maybe¡­

    My shoulder jarred and my other palm stung from the impact, and it was only that sudden jolt of pain that made me realize I¡¯d fallen onto my hands and knees, still hacking.

    ¡°Master!¡±

    The arm holding me up trembled. My blurry vision grew dark around the edges, slowly creeping inwards. Everything tunneled in on the cobblestone street beneath me.

    ¡­I¡¯m not okay.

    I didn¡¯t even feel it when I hit the ground.

    ¡°Senpai!¡±

 Chapter CXXIX: Sword and Sorcery

    Chapter CXXIX: Sword and Sorcery

    I had no idea how long I was out for. It could have been hours, it could have been days, and in some atrophied part of me that didn''t often see the light of day, I could admit that I wasn''t sure I was going to wake up at all. Coughing up blood like that usually wasn''t a good sign, and in a world without Panacea or another healer of similar talent, there weren''t a lot of ways to fix it. Not if less than an hour of exposure was enough to do that much damage.

    I didn''t dream. I didn''t revisit old memories. My life certainly didn''t flash before my eyes. I was out completely and utterly, and I had no sense of my own self, let alone what was happening outside of my own head. I couldn''t even feel the phantom skitter of my swarm.

    Eventually, however, awareness started to return to me. For a time longer, I floated on a cloud, neither awake nor fully asleep, drifting along painlessly and thoughtlessly through a gentle doze. The world passed me by in a wordless, motionless hum, and I had only the vaguest impression of warmth to my one side and something pressing up and down along my body.

    How long I spent like that, I had no idea either. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, it could have been days. On the distant edge of my mind, my swarm buzzed, going about the usual business of bugs inside of homes, and the hum of their activity formed a kind of comforting cocoon of stability around me.

    Some time later, a smell prickled at my nose, a familiar smooth smell that another long-buried part of me associated with a happier time, with love and comfort and tender kisses on the crown of my head, and the lone pair of tears that carved a trail down my temples and into my hair served as the jolt to pull me back to consciousness. I took in a sharp, halting breath ¡ª and that, free of the urge to cough up my internal organs, finished the job.

    "She''s waking up!" someone said.

    The pressure I''d been feeling across my back and thighs solidified into fabric and cushioning, and I reached out blindly with my hands ¡ª one smacked into the back of what must have been some kind of furniture and the other flailed in the open air. The unexpected lack triggered a panicked reflex, and one of my legs kicked out, sliding down and landing with a heavy thunk on a wooden floor.

    A couch. I was laid across a couch.

    "Easy, now," a gentle, wizened voice said as a strong hand leveraged itself behind my back to help me up. "No need to rush, my dear girl, no need to rush."

    My eyes blinked open, and I looked up into the bearded face of a man who had to be somewhere in his fifties or sixties, with silvery hair down to his shoulders and a kind smile gracing his mustached lips.

    Some part of me burned at being treated like an invalid, but I had no idea where I was or who this man was, so I let him help me sit up, and in the process, I discovered I was in a living room of some kind. A¡­parlor, I think was the term the British used. Behind the stranger was a roaring fireplace, complete with the most stereotypical red rug patterned in gold, a mantle clock (of course), and wallpaper so Victorian that it was almost physically painful to look at. To the left, a chair and a footstool, the cushions made with a jade green fabric.

    And to the right ¡ª

    "Senpai!"

    ¡ª the twins and Mash, looking so relieved that Rika seemed to be on the verge of tears.

    "You''re okay!" they all said.

    "You gave everyone quite the scare," the older man said. "Luckily, your friends were able to bring you to me before any permanent damage was done. I was able to fix you up without any trouble."

    I looked at him, trying not to make it obvious as I took in the entirety of his appearance. "You?"

    He didn''t dress like a Victorian Englishman. The burgundy robe ¡ª or perhaps it was a cloak ¡ª fastened at his right shoulder, the squat, felt hat of the same color that looked like some kind of cross between a beret and a chef''s toque, the tunic that fell below his knees, the old-fashioned breeches and leather shoes, it all looked like it belonged more at a Renaissance fair than a Victorian parlor.

    That meant he was almost certainly a Servant. Based upon the outfit alone, I was willing to bet Caster, although something else wasn''t impossible. The lack of a visible weapon didn''t mean he wasn''t a Saber or a Lancer.

    Beep-beep!

    "Taylor!" Marie said almost as soon as I answered. Her eyes raked me up and down, looking, no doubt, for the slightest sign that anything was still wrong, despite the fact that she had sensors to read out my vitals that could tell her that better than my appearance ever could.

    I didn''t begrudge her it, though. Seeing something for yourself was always more reassuring than looking at dry readouts on a screen or sheet of paper. Considering how much I''d had to deal with it myself on her behalf the last couple months, I knew better than most just how helpless she must have felt watching my vitals plummet while unable to do anything about it.

    "Director."

    "Thank goodness!" said Romani, pushing his way into the frame. "That was dangerously close, you know! When your vital signs started to drop, I was afraid¡­" He caught himself and cleared his throat. "I-I mean, there was some concern about your health once the fog proved to be more poisonous than we expected. None of us were expecting for you to be affected that quickly, a-and we couldn''t reach you to warn you about what was happening."

    While he monopolized attention, no one else seemed to notice Marie''s face contort as she bit her lip and closed her eyes, head hanging. She must have been gripping her workstation with white-knuckled hands.

    This time, her fears weren''t unfounded, and this time, I was the cause of her distress. I wanted to offer her some kind of comfort or reassurance, but not only was I not entirely sure what I could do, now wasn''t the time or place, and I couldn''t reach through the hologram and give her hand a squeeze to let her know I was still here.

    "Yes," said the stranger, "that mist is quite insidious, isn''t it? Unfortunately, there hasn''t been much we could do about it in the short time that we''ve had to work on the issue."

    "Ah¡­" Romani coughed into his hand awkwardly. "Th-that''s right, there''s also that to worry about, isn''t there? U-um¡­ Lord¡­Caster¡­?"

    The stranger laughed gently and smiled. "No need for such formalities. To answer the question I believe you were attempting to ask, yes, I am a Servant of the Caster class. I''m an alchemist by trade."

    "A-and the other one?" Marie asked. She still hadn''t lifted her head back up.

    "Other one?" I cut in.

    "Ah," said Caster. "Yes, I suppose you were unconscious, weren''t you?"

    "We ran into another Servant on the way here," Ritsuka explained. "She''s the one who led us to this apartment. It just, well, also happened to be the same one we needed to go to, because it sits directly on top of that Ley Line Terminal Director Marie told us to find."

    "W-we were pretty lucky!" Rika sniffled. "Th-this guy was already here, so we¡­"

    She trailed off. A familiar hand landed on my shoulder.

    "We didn''t need to go looking for a doctor," Arash told me. "Caster here was able to heal you on his own."

    Convenient, that we''d run into a Caster who could heal people and deal with the damage the fog had done to me. Or was that another instance of the Counter Force arranging circumstances so that events went a certain way in furtherance of its end goal?

    I hated that the answer was probably "yes," even if it all tended to work out in my favor.

    How long was I out? I asked Arash.

    Not long, he answered. Only a few hours. Caster did quick work.

    A short glance at the clock on the mantle confirmed it; if it was still accurate, then it was a little after four in the afternoon.

    "I see." I turned back to Caster. "Thank you for your help."

    "It was no trouble at all," he demurred. His lips pulled down into a frown. "It was the least I could do, quite frankly, considering how little I''ve been able to do for the townsfolk here in London. I''ve been quite spectacularly useless since my summoning, if I''m being completely honest. It was good to finally have something good I could accomplish."

    A new face appeared suddenly at the threshold leading to the next room over, a mop of blond hair pulled into a messy ponytail. "Hey! I thought I heard that lady is awake?"

    "Sir Mordred!" Mash yelped.

    My head jerked over towards the new person sharply. Mordred? As in the infamous traitor who led to the fall of Camelot and the death of King Arthur? That Mordred?

    Caster sighed. "And here''s the ''other one'' you were asking about."

    "Mo-chan!" Rika greeted one of mythology''s most notorious villains.

    Mordred smirked.

    "Yo."

    And in walked another King Arthur doppelganger, from her height straight to her body type, only she was dressed even more ridiculously than Emperor Nero. Hell, she wasn''t even really wearing a shirt, just a strip of cloth over her breasts and a pair of detached sleeves that covered most of her arms, and the less that was said of the cutout skirt and the chaps she wore on her legs, the better.

    I think it said something about my experiences so far that I wasn''t much fazed by it, after the initial moment of surprise. It really couldn''t compare, after all, to the bondage gear Spartacus had worn, and it was actually more conservative than Altera''s¡­I honestly didn''t have any words for whatever it was Altera had worn.

    I could at least compliment her physique. She didn''t have quite as much tone as A¨ªfe, but the ridiculousness of her outfit showed off a lean, muscled body that was very obviously used to combat.

    Also, she was female. And I suppose that made sense, considering King Arthur was a woman, but that just brought up the question of how Morgan had gone about making a "son" for King Arthur without King Arthur having the necessary parts. I wasn''t sure I wanted an actual answer to that, though, all things considered, because I was fairly sure it would just give me a headache.

    "What''s up?" she greeted me. "Guess you''re all better now, huh? You looked like shit when I first saw you."

    "She found us while we were carrying you here," Ritsuka told me. "At first, she threatened to fight us when she thought we were trying to attack this place ¡ª"

    "Hey, you lot looked suspicious!" Mordred protested. "Ain''t just anybody who''d be running about in the mist like that!"

    "¡ª but once she saw Arash carrying you, she helped us fight off another wave of those¡­we''re calling them automata, right?"

    "That''s the name Da Vinci gave them," Romani confirmed.

    "She helped us fight off another wave of those automata and led us back here, so Caster could heal you," Ritsuka finished. "On the way, she introduced herself as Sir Mordred, a Knight of the Round Table."

    "Also a Saber class Servant," Mordred added proudly, grinning.

    "I see." I turned my head to look over at the threshold. "And the third?"

    There was a pause, and everyone else looked over there, too, and then a few moments later, a breathy sigh sounded from the next room and a man who actually looked like he belonged in this time period ¡ª wearing a vest, an overcoat, and a nice shirt, complete with a cravat fastened at the base of his neck ¡ª walked in, smiling apologetically.

    "Damn," muttered Mordred, "been a while since I''ve seen someone do shit like that."

    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

    "My apologies for hiding myself away," the man said. "It wasn''t my intention to deceive you, simply to avoid overcrowding you in your convalescence."

    "He was here, too," Rika said unnecessarily. "This place is his apartment, so I guess he''s our landlord for now."

    "Your host, more appropriately. It is only proper that I might offer my home to you in your quest to restore this city to its proper state." He pressed a hand to his chest. "I am Doctor Henry Jekyll, scholar and scientist. I have some talent with chemicals and elixirs, though I''m afraid I''ve little skill in actual magery, and I''m not a Heroic Spirit as these two fine people are."

    Mordred snorted. "Fine people, he says."

    My brow furrowed. "Jekyll?"

    As in Jekyll and Hyde? That Henry Jekyll? The character from Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson?

    "Yeah," Romani said. "We noticed that, too, when Mash and the others made contact after being given permission to use the apartment to access the Ley Line Terminal. There doesn''t appear to be any relation to the character of the same name from the novel. For now, it seems that it''s just a strange coincidence."

    I wasn''t sure about that, but¡­ He didn''t have the presence of a Servant, and when I tried to examine him with my Master''s Clairvoyance, I came away with nothing.

    "At least he''s not making us pay rent," said Rika. "Which is great, because I didn''t exactly bring any money with me."

    "Your companions were kind enough to inform me of the circumstances of your presence here," Jekyll said. "That is why, as I said, it seemed only proper to offer you my home for the duration, since your purposes align with those of Sir Mordred and our mutual friend."

    "You may as well refer to me as Abraham," said Caster. "There seems little point indeed in hiding behind my class title. It is, I confess, a little gauche as well."

    "Abraham," said Mash, surprised, "as in, the father of Isaac from the Bible?"

    "Huh," said Rika. "You don''t look like an Abe to me."

    "I''m afraid I''m not quite that old, my dear," Caster said good-naturedly. "Truthfully, I''m not even sure history remembers me properly, so it may not do you much good to look up my story. I wound up famous for the parts of my life that people really had no business knowing."

    So that was how he was going to play it, was he? Fine. I could let it go for now.

    I closed my eyes and leaned back on the couch, using that as cover to reach out along the thread connecting me to Jeanne Alter. Through her eyes, I saw the world outside and the thick fog that still permeated everything, covering the streets and blotting out the midday sun. She must have been standing guard, but I wasn''t sure how much good it would do, considering she didn''t seem any better able to see in that fog than I had been.

    "Emiya and Jeanne Alter are keeping watch?" I asked Rika.

    It was Arash who answered me. "As much as they''re able to with the fog being so thick."

    "Barring an Assassin, the bounded field I set up should warn us of an incoming enemy with plenty of time to spare," Caster said confidently. And then, he sighed. "Unfortunately, Sir Mordred and I can say for certain that there is at least one Assassin wandering the streets, so it''s not entirely out of the realm of possibility."

    Mordred scowled. "Yeah. Slippery bastard. They killed a woman in the street a few days ago and then managed to escape us when we ran after them." She clicked her tongue. "Can''t even remember what they looked like is the frustrating part. Some kind of skill or something that makes you forget everything about ''em after the battle is over."

    "Wait, really?" asked Rika. "That''s cheating!"

    "You can''t remember anything about them at all?" Ritsuka asked.

    "Not a thing," Mordred replied.

    That was¡­inconvenient. So this mysterious Assassin could walk up to us without anyone realizing who they were and stab any one of us in the back? Maybe I really would have to introduce Master-Stranger Protocols to the team. That didn''t sound as bad as Nice Guy or as absolute as Imp''s powers were, but I could definitely think of half a dozen ways to abuse something like that. We might just have to have a policy of automatically assuming anyone new we met in the city was an enemy.

    That was going to do a number on everyone''s nerves.

    "It means that our elusive Assassin is something of an enigma," Caster said. "Indeed, they could be anyone and anywhere, and we would not know we had encountered them until after the fact, and by then, all memory of their appearance would be gone."

    Unfortunately, I couldn''t think of any other way around an ability like that right now. Not without knowing if it could erase more than just a person''s memories. Because if it erased all records, including electronics and written reports, then even writing their appearance down on my arm wouldn''t work.

    "Let''s work back up to that," I began. "You said this Assassin killed a woman in the streets a few days ago."

    Caster nodded. "Yes."

    "Meaning you''ve been here at least that long."

    "That''s correct."

    "So how long has this fog been around then?"

    Caster grimaced. Mordred muttered, "Too fucking long already."

    "Today will be the fourth day," said Jekyll. "For the past three nights, the fog has descended upon the city in the afternoon and persisted until the next morning. The newspaper stopped reporting after the first day."

    "Newspaper?" the twins and Mash all echoed.

    "Yes," said Jekyll. "I have it here."

    He went back into the other room for a moment and picked something up off of his desk, and when he returned, he was carrying a folded paper that he handed over to me. The twins and Mash crowded around, leaning over so that they could read it, too.

    On the front page, I was greeted at the top with an artist''s rendering of the British Museum in ruins, the Grecian columns lying in rubble and the edifice crumbling to the ground. The headline grabbed attention by demanding an answer to the question of who could possibly have destroyed such a cultural landmark, and the article itself spouted some xenophobic rhetoric that was all but useless in determining the actual culprit.

    There were other articles on the first page, however, including one warning about the dangers of the fog and bidding the people of London to stay indoors if they had weak constitutions, and further in, there was another headline, smaller than the main one at the top but still much larger than the surrounding text:

    TRAGEDY IN WHITECHAPEL

    I didn''t read the whole article, but what I skimmed of it confirmed what the headline basically already told me: the Ripper murders were already in full swing. Whether or not the fog would stop him or just accelerate them by using them as a catalyst to summon himself as a Servant, we wouldn''t be able to answer just yet. Not for sure.

    But I had a feeling that we already knew. After all, our mysterious Assassin had been caught in the act of murdering a woman on the streets, hadn''t he? And he had a skill or a Noble Phantasm that made people forget what he looked like after he escaped from battle, to the point where, as far as we could tell, his defining feature right now was that he had no defining features.

    At least it seemed we''d had the luck to avoid him when we first got here. If the others had had to fight him while I was slowly being poisoned by the fog, then things could have turned out really bad.

    "Wait," said Rika, "Whitechapel? Onii-chan, isn''t that where you said that Jack the Ripper guy was going around killing people?"

    "Yeah," Ritsuka replied. "I guess¡­he really has already started killing, hasn''t he?"

    "Well, I do have some good news for you guys," said Romani. "If that newspaper is accurate, I don''t think you''ll have to worry about the Mage''s Association sticking their noses into things. The entrance to the Clock Tower is located in the British Museum, and if it''s been destroyed, then they might just be stuck inside for the entirety of your deployment."

    "A bit of a double-edged sword," said Caster. "True, it removes the possibility that a magus of a particularly unscrupulous nature might interfere in our purpose here, but it also affords the culprit a degree of freedom of action that they might not otherwise have had, were the Association able to intervene."

    I was more inclined to agree with Romani, that this was good news. The longer I could put off dealing with the Association and its politics ¡ª especially where my very existence was concerned ¡ª the better.

    "It''s not impossible that a few magi might have had offsite workshops and avoided being trapped," Marie said, and although her expression was painfully fragile, she''d regained enough of her composure to speak clearly. "All the more so if they''re less orthodox and practice magecraft that the Association itself might frown upon. If you do happen to meet a magus, the absolute last thing you should do is trust him."

    "A good point," Caster agreed. "For now, however, all merely theoretical. It might perhaps behoove us all to discuss something with more immediate ramifications¡­?"

    "Yes," said Jekyll. "The mist."

    Marie''s face settled into a hard mask. "What do you know?"

    "About the source and the culprit, not as much as we would prefer," Jekyll answered. "They have proven elusive and difficult to locate, despite our best efforts."

    Mordred scoffed. "Bunch of scared little pansies, hiding behind the fog so we can''t stop ''em from doing whatever they like."

    Jekyll nodded at Caster. "Abraham, however, should be able to provide you with somewhat greater detail."

    "Yes," said Caster. "Firstly, allow me to clarify: the mist itself does not persist indefinitely. It subsides for several hours in the morning, allowing the citizenry of the city to leave their homes long enough to procure sustenance and refill their larders. If this continues for long enough, that will be essential to maintaining their health and well-being, because after noon, the mist begins to return, and shortly thereafter, it extends to cover the majority of the city, forcing everyone indoors to avoid certain death."

    "As Miss¡­?" Jekyll tilted his head my way.

    "Taylor."

    "As Miss Taylor has discovered," said Jekyll, "the mist itself is a virulent toxin. It is difficult to say how many have also learned this lesson in so personal a manner, but a rough estimate would calculate that several thousand unfortunate souls have already departed this mortal coil, with particular concentration occurring in the less affluent sections of the city. Those, in other words, who lack the housing necessary to take shelter from the fog and those whose homes are not secure enough to prevent it from encroaching."

    "The poor died first," I concluded grimly. As it always was.

    Jekyll smiled. It didn''t meet his eyes. "Quite."

    "The problem lies in the density of magical energy in the fog itself," Caster continued. "It means that ordinary methods of protection ¡ª face masks and such the like ¡ª offer little to no protection whatsoever. Magi might be able to resist for longer, and perhaps those with sturdier constitutions might weather the damage better, but eventually, they too will succumb. I said that the brief window in the mornings offers a bit of a reprieve, but if this goes on too long, then the city itself will slowly suffocate, and London as a whole will be lost."

    "London, covered in a toxic fog," Mash muttered. "Something like this is supposed to happen next century, in the 1950s, but it''s also happening now, almost seventy years early."

    "Which means this is almost certainly the result of whoever is using the Grail," said Ritsuka.

    Almost certainly. How they were using it, well, that part wasn''t necessarily immediately obvious. It was tempting to jump straight to the fog, but it was possible that the fog was a Noble Phantasm of some kind or some sort of large scale magecraft meant to obscure what the Grail was actually being used for. I was leaning a little more towards that, since someone had gone to such an effort to keep the Mage''s Association uninvolved.

    "That is most likely," Caster agreed. "Fortunately, this has only been going on for about three days now. We''ve all arrived here early enough that it is still possible to prevent a greater tragedy than the lives already lost."

    "The fog, however, is not the only trouble which we have already encountered," said Jekyll. "The autonomous constructs, Abraham?"

    Caster grimaced. "Ah. Yes, there are those, as well. I believe you referred to them as automata earlier¡­?"

    "The mechanical puppets, you mean," I said.

    "I''m afraid that is only one type of autonomous construct wandering the fog," Caster told us. "There are also¡­I believe the term for them in the future is ''robots.'' We''ve taken to calling them Helter Skelter ¡ª"

    I kept my face schooled, because I was sure, whatever the reason they''d chosen that name, it had nothing to do with that particular serial killer.

    "¡ª and they have been found fighting alongside both these automata you''ve encountered and a collection of grotesque homunculi, according to Sir Mordred."

    "They ain''t that tough," Mordred added with a grunt. "More of a pain in the ass than anything else. They go down quick enough when I put my sword through them, same as anything else."

    If we were assuming that meant she didn''t have to use her Noble Phantasm to defeat them, then ¡ª a quick look at her stats told me ¡ª it shouldn''t be that hard for any of our Servants to take them down, too. She might have a bit of a skewed perspective on it, though. The only one of our Servants who could match her blow for blow in raw strength was Siegfried, and all her other stats were at least above average, too.

    "So they''re probably meant as a distraction," I said. "Something to bog people down and get their attention if they can survive in the mist long enough to be a problem."

    "And while they''re distracted," Ritsuka continued my thought, "the Assassin can come up from behind and pick them off." He looked over at me. "We''re¡­assuming this Assassin is Jack the Ripper, right?"

    So he''d picked up on that after all.

    "We are," I confirmed. "But that doesn''t mean it''s a guarantee."

    I was willing to bet it was, though. Again, the fact that a woman had been targeted by this Assassin and killed for seemingly no reason, coupled with just how perfect a catalyst the current circumstances were, made it feel exceedingly obvious. It was only the fact that it was so obvious that made me suspect it could be anyone else at all.

    "Tch." Mordred sneered. "That explains why the bastard likes hanging around me so much. One of these days, I''ll catch him before he can slip away."

    "You''ve fought him before?" asked Ritsuka. "Multiple times?"

    Mordred grunted. "More often than I''d like. Seems like he''s got it in for me. Dunno why he hates me so much, but if he''d just stick around long enough instead of cutting and running the instant I start fighting back, maybe I''ll ask."

    If this was Mordred''s usual wear, then I would''ve been tempted to say Jack was after her because she was¡­well, female. Servants could selectively materialize their gear, however, so I was decently sure that Mordred went out on patrol in full armor. Unless Jack had some kind of skill that let him determine a person''s sex even when they were hiding it, I doubted Mordred''s equipment had anything to do with it.

    "The¡­homunculi and Helter Skelter are new," said Romani, "but the rest of that matches with our data on this end, too."

    "Is that all the more information you have?" asked Marie.

    "I''m afraid so," said Caster ruefully.

    "The rest, I fear, are merely obvious conclusions based upon what has already been said," Jekyll added. "The city has not been abandoned, but neither the government nor Scotland Yard seems equipped to handle the situation, not even to shore up the city''s food supply. They will like as not be of little aid in the coming days."

    Mordred grinned. "Meaning we gotta handle it without them. Fine by me. They woulda just gotten in the way anyway."

    "That goes without saying," Marie said. "Ordinary humans have no business getting involved in fights between Servants. Having the authorities wandering around would have just been a hindrance."

    "Although convenient in other ways," said Romani. "As it stands, uh, unless Doctor Jekyll happens to have enough food in stock to feed everyone¡­"

    Jekyll grimaced and eyed the four of us. "If¡­it was only one or two extra mouths¡­"

    Romani sighed. "Yeah. So it looks like we''re going to have to dig into our food supplies to make sure the four of you can eat properly on this one. After all, I don''t think supermarkets existed in that time period, so it''s not as easy as popping down to the corner store every morning, is it?"

    Caster stroked his beard thoughtfully. "And any food left out in their stalls when this all started has most certainly rotted by now. Yes, I suppose you will inevitably have to supply food for your comrades from your own stores."

    "That brings up an important point," I said. "We''ve been assuming so far that we''ll be working together, since we all seem to have the same goal, but I''d like to get some confirmation. Abraham, Doctor Jekyll, Sir Mordred, can we trust that you''ll help us to retrieve the Holy Grail and correct this Singularity so that proper history can be restored?"

    "But of course," said Caster.

    Mordred grinned toothily. "If you can keep up with me, then I guess I ain''t got any problems with lending you lot a hand."

    "With the situation so dire, I fear it would be folly to deny any assistance," said Jekyll, "and so I will provide any help that I can towards achieving your goal, even if I can''t promise it will be particularly substantial."

    Romani sighed, relieved. "And our lucky streak continues."

    "Lucky?" Marie hissed at him, but not quietly enough to avoid the microphone picking it up. "You think one of our Masters almost dying within the first hour is lucky?"

    "No, no, of course not!" Romani said, holding up his hands. "I''m just saying, for every Singularity so far, they''ve found allies pretty quickly, and I''m glad London is the same! That''s all I meant!"

    Marie didn''t seem placated, and her brow remained furrowed and her eyes furious, but she let it drop and subsided.

    "So what now?" asked Rika. "We''ve got Mo-chan, Abe, and Two-face¡­" She grimaced and turned to Doctor Jekyll. "Sorry, that one''s too mean, I''ll come up with a better one."

    Jekyll blinked at her, confused. "I¡­suppose it''s no trouble?"

    "Anyway," said Rika, "we''ve got the team together, so what do we do next?"

    I frowned, and to Caster and Jekyll, asked, "You weren''t able to find any clues about the fog''s origin point? None at all?"

    "None," Caster confirmed. "Sir Mordred and I went to the river yesterday to collect samples for testing, but the fog is so saturated with mana that it''s leaked into the water, and the mana is so diffuse that determining a point of origin is nigh on impossible."

    "Which means we''re going to have to go out and look for clues the hard way, right?" Ritsuka concluded, resigned.

    "I''m afraid so," said Caster ruefully. "As things stand, the only way it seems we might gather the intelligence necessary to determine the culprit''s hiding place is to manually search the most likely spots in the city where he might have positioned himself."

    "The whole city?" Rika asked, horrified.

    Depending on whether or not we found him in the most obvious spots? It might wind up being closer to that than not.

    "If we have to."

    Rika looked at me with exaggerated despair, like I''d just told her that Santa Claus wasn''t real.

    "On the subject of gathering intelligence and searching for clues, I have a request for you, Mister Ristuka, Miss Rika, Miss Mash," said Jekyll. "First, to confirm, the three of you were unaffected by the mist, yes? That is, none of you experienced the effects of prolonged exposure that your companion here suffered?"

    "None," said Ritsuka.

    "We''re fine, Doctor Jekyll," said Mash.

    "Somehow, their contract with Mash has granted Ritsuka and Rika some kind of poison resistance ability," Romani informed him. "I''m sure there''s a limit, but they should be fine to go out in the mist for at least short periods."

    Jekyll nodded. "Then if I might impose upon you, I would like you to accompany Mordred on a small errand. I have cultivated a small intelligence network over the last few days, you see, and one of my collaborators has been out of contact since this morning. If the four of you could see to it to ensure his continued good health, I would be incredibly grateful."

    The twins shared a look, then the both of them looked briefly at me, but I didn''t give them any sign that they should say no, so they turned back to Jekyll and nodded.

    "Sure, we can go check on this guy for you," said Rika. "And hey, maybe he''ll have something for us to look into, so we don''t have to search the whole goddamn city!"

    "Who are we going to check up on?" Ritsuka asked.

    "I''m grateful," Jekyll told them with a smile. "He''s a bit of an eccentric, but Victor Frankenstein is a good man and a valuable friend. Ensuring that no ill has befallen him would be a godsend."

 Chapter CXXX: Artificial Human

    Chapter CXXX: Artificial Human

    "There wasn''t any other choice," Marie said. "It had to be this way."

    "It''s fine, Director," I said evenly.

    "After all, there isn''t a method currently available to us to let you safely traverse that fog," she went on. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as she was me. "It was too dangerous. The only thing it would have accomplished was to put your life at risk."

    Right then, it was just pissing me off. "It''s fine, Director."

    "Sometimes, calculated risks are necessary for the success of the Grand Order," she continued heedlessly. "But this would have just been needless. There was no tangible gain to be achieved, so this was only the natural decision."

    I felt her eyes on my head.

    "You understand, don''t you?"

    I did ¡ª and I absolutely hated it. It wasn''t that any of it was wrong. The only known threat out in the fog ¡ª aside from the homunculi, automata, and Helter Skelter (that really was a terrible name) ¡ª was a singular Assassin who preferred ambush tactics and didn''t stick around after they failed. The twins had three Servants with them, one of whom was a Knight of the Round Table, and even if she was only half the Servant Lancelot and King Arthur had been, she would still be incredibly powerful. The other two were another Knight of the Round Table (even if Mash didn''t know it yet) and a guy who could replicate Noble Phantasms, which he had used last Singularity to kill Herakles thrice over.

    And if things got dicey, they could summon aid from any of the several other Servants who had stayed behind at Chaldea.

    They were in good hands. The best I could feasibly have given them, if I had to stay behind no matter what.

    Meanwhile, I couldn''t step foot outside in the fog without exposing myself to a poison that could and would kill me in under an hour, unlike the twins, who seemed completely immune to it. If I went, I would be a liability. If I lasted long enough to make it all the way to Frankenstein''s apartment, it was a decent bet I wouldn''t last long enough to make it all the way back here, where Caster could heal me.

    I''d escaped permanent damage the first time, but the second time, I might not be so fortunate. Even if the team didn''t get lost on the way back while they were lugging around my unconscious body, there was a very real possibility that I''d die before Caster could heal me ¡ª choking on my own blood as the fog ate away at my lungs. Not just Marie, that would devastate the twins, too, having to carry that burden going forward.

    Just so that I could be there when they did a wellness check on a guy who might have overslept or something? I''d danced on some tightropes in the past, but there was taking a risk like that because you didn''t have any other choice, and then there was stubbornly charging into something you knew had a decent chance of killing you just so that you could feel useful.

    And yet¡­

    "I do."

    ¡­I hated the fact that I couldn''t do anything except sit here and wait for them to come back. I couldn''t even send one of my ravens with them ¡ª I''d felt Huginn and Muninn''s interiors start to disintegrate the instant I let them out into the fog ¡ª and it burned in my gut that I was so completely useless and impotent.

    Once again, I was helpless to do anything meaningful at all. This time, at least, there was a better support apparatus to help Ritsuka, and he wasn''t on his own by any stretch of the imagination. Truthfully, the only thing at all comparable about the Prison Tower fiasco and the situation now was my own inability to contribute, but that didn''t help my stomach twisting itself into frustrated knots or the nervous energy that was sending my swarm into a frenzy of activity ¡ª all safely out of sight, of course, so the only one who had any inkling about what was going through my head was the one who knew me best.

    I looked up at Marie. Nervous fear was written into every line of her face.

    Please don''t hate me, that expression begged.

    And I couldn''t. I didn''t like all of her decisions. Some of them even pressed buttons that I''d been trying to even out over the last few years, to apparently little success. But I knew her better than I ever had most of the superiors I''d had to work under as a Ward, and that made it all the easier to understand where those decisions came from ¡ª and harder to blame her for them.

    Some of the fight drained out of me. It left behind a sour weariness, hollow and empty in my gut, and that was only made worse by the knowledge that even if I''d thrown all of those concerns out the window and gone anyway, I would have been too busy trying to stay upright and breathing to actually contribute.

    "I wouldn''t worry about your friends," said Caster. "Sir Mordred may be somewhat¡­rough around the edges, but she is a formidable warrior and surprisingly reliable, given her reputation. She will see them to Frankenstein''s mansion safely."

    I cast a glance his way. And then there was him. Abraham, huh. I wondered if the twins actually bought that or were just going along with it for the sake of being polite.

    "The twins are competent in their own right," I said, and the bitter taste they left behind had less to do with the words themselves and more to do with what they were: surrender. An admission of defeat. "They can handle themselves."

    "They''re Masters of Chaldea, after all," Marie added half-heartedly.

    So why did it feel so much like I was abandoning them? Or maybe like I was being left behind?

    Because it wasn''t in me to sit around and let others do the fighting for me.

    Fortunately, there was a very convenient distraction sitting on the table in the study, just off to the side of the parlor I''d woken up in, and it had a big, red dot slowly moving along it. I gestured down at the diorama of London, so realistic that I half-expected there to be little people moving about inside the buildings.

    "Explain this to me again."

    It was probably painfully transparent, but Caster did me the favor of indulging me.

    "A clever little bit of ingenuity, if I''m allowed to toot my own horn," he said. "Regretfully, without more complete access to the city''s ley lines, I''m somewhat limited in the degree of detail I can accomplish ¡ª the buildings and general infrastructure are complete, but life signs are a bit harder to detect, and therefore it wasn''t so easy to use this map to pinpoint the perpetrators'' location."

    If only things could have been so convenient. All we would have had to do was look for where the Servants were sitting and go there, and we could have been done with this whole Singularity in a day or less.

    But if it had been that easy, Caster would probably have done it himself already. At the very least, I imagine he would have pinned down the Assassin and taken care of that problem, if only he could have.

    "And the red dot is Mordred and the others," I said the obvious.

    "A specially designed beacon, meant for the purposes of working with this map," Caster confirmed with a nod. "It is not impossible for it to have been stolen or lost, I''ll grant you, but Sir Mordred is not so careless to have discarded it. If she loses it in the course of battle, well, that would be a different conversation altogether, so perhaps it would have been better to give it to one of your compatriots."

    "An oversight I''m sure you will rectify upon their return," said Jekyll. "It would be more effective to simply fashion such a beacon for every one of them, would it not? In the case that the worst comes to pass and they were all separated, I mean to say."

    Caster stroked thoughtfully at his beard. "As you say, Doctor. I confess, when I created the thing in the first place, I didn''t anticipate needing more than the one. You Chaldeans arriving when you did was quite unexpected."

    "You didn''t think to have redundancies?" Marie asked sharply.

    Caster sighed deeply. "Alas, I''m but a humble alchemist, Madam Director. Matters of strategy are for those better suited for battle than the bookshelf. Were you to ask a question regarding the intricacies of the material transmutation of one substance into another ¡ª say, the ever popular lead into gold ¡ª then I could lecture intelligently upon the subject for days. Ask me about the proper formations for a battle against an entrenched enemy in their stronghold¡­"

    He shrugged helplessly.

    "¡­You have a point," Marie admitted grudgingly.

    Fortunately, while it would have been useful if he were also an accomplished strategist and tactician, we already had enough of those on our team that it wasn''t crippling that he was so clueless.

    "We can fix that later," I said, because it really was something we should probably address as soon as the others got back. "For now, tell me more about this Frankenstein you''re sending them to check up on."

    Caster turned to Jekyll. "Doctor?"

    "Yes, well¡­" Jekyll cleared his throat. "Victor is a collaborator of mine, a valued member of the information network we established in the wake of this damnable fog. He is a Swiss scholar who emigrated here some time ago, a true magus, in every sense of the word. Whether he meant to join the Mage''s Association, I fear I could not possibly speak to, although I''ve no doubt he had the talent necessary. I''m given to understand that his grandfather served as the model for some novel or another, although the facts of the matter are somewhat¡­muddied, shall we say."

    "Tch," Marie scoffed, muttering under her breath. "Another fictional character who turns out to have been real, huh¡­ Is that a distortion of this Singularity or a matter of proper history?"

    Frankly, I was wondering the same thing. I didn''t know what I was going to do if one of Jekyll''s other collaborators turned out to be a couple from the countryside named Mister Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, or worse, their great grandson. At this point, the smart bet might actually be to put money on D''Artagnan showing up in one of these Singularities.

    "On matters more personal, I''m afraid I can tell you little and nothing," Jekyll said. "Not merely as a matter of respect for his privacy, but also from the fact that I myself cannot lay much claim on it. Victor and I¡­our relationship is quite cordial. Before this crisis, we had little reason to interact beyond the niceties."

    "Wait," Marie interjected, "you said this Victor Frankenstein is a proper magus, right? Even good enough to have earned a spot in the Association?"

    "From my understanding, yes," answered Jekyll. "Although I confess that I myself am a poor judge of a mage''s talent ¡ª or, indeed, the lack thereof."

    Marie chewed on her bottom lip, brow furrowing. "Which means his workshop will be properly defended, as any true magus would."

    I straightened, even as Caster''s eyebrows rose towards his hairline. "Oh," he muttered, "yes, that is something of a concern, isn''t it?"

    My lips drew tight. "And we have no way of contacting the others to let them know."

    Marie grimaced, pained. "No. Not as long as the fog is interfering with our communications."

    If they had taken Jeanne Alter with them¡­ But the decision had been to split the teams up the way we did for balance more than anything else. With Mordred on their team, they had strong close range offense, good ranged offense in Emiya, and strong defense in Mash, which balanced well with leaving Jeanne Alter and Arash here with me and Caster. It wasn''t a perfectly even split, but it didn''t leave either side with a glaring weakness.

    Except for our inability to communicate between the teams. The better option next time ¡ª and god, I hated that I knew there was going to be a next time ¡ª would be to send Arash instead of Emiya. Not only for the communications, but also to give me eyes and ears on the situation, even if I couldn''t be there to help directly.

    "What''s done is done."

    I thought about sending Arash out anyway¡­but no, there wouldn''t be much sense in that. I wasn''t worried so much about weakening our position here, because frankly, with the sorts of firepower I could bring to bear in an emergency, it wasn''t much of a concern, but rather that I''d be sending him out blind without anything more than a vague direction to head in. With all of my swarm relegated to their sequestered indoor corners, I couldn''t even tell if the other group had left my range yet, let alone how far along they were.

    We''d been here less than a day, and I already fucking hated this Singularity.

    "I wouldn''t worry overmuch in any case," said Caster. "While I''ve no doubt that Victor is a talented magus, it is a rare breed indeed that can do grievous harm to two Knight class Servants ¡ª and that peculiar girl, that Shielder, I''m certain she''s the type to never let any harm befall her Masters, isn''t she?"

    Sometimes to her own detriment. "She is."

    Caster nodded. "Then I believe the worst they will have to deal with is a little scare and nothing more. I''m sure it''ll make an entertaining story when they return."

    Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

    He was probably right. Hell, Mordred being the type of person she seemed to be, she would probably just bust down the front door if she had to and completely ignore whatever tricks and traps Frankenstein had laid out. I could remember Alexandria doing something like that as well, only she''d done it as a show of power and dominance and not because she was invulnerable and just didn''t care.

    In some ways, that would make Mordred easier to deal with. More straightforward. For all that the legends tended to paint her as something of a schemer, she actually seemed a lot more blunt than I might have expected.

    "Are we expecting them to run into anything else?"

    Both men frowned. "Aside from the Helter Skelter and the automata¡­"

    "The only other threat whose identity we can speak of intelligently is Assassin," said Jekyll. "That is to say, the one we suspect is this Jack the Ripper character from the newspapers. It is, I confess, not impossible ¡ª indeed, not even improbable ¡ª that the culprit behind this fog has further allies complicit in his atrocities, but as we have yet to encounter them in any capacity, we could not say with any degree of certainty who they are or whether they might be likely to attack Mordred and your comrades directly."

    A long-winded way of saying he didn''t know. I guess the people of the Victorian era really had spoken just like they did in the books. Dickens hadn''t lied to me.

    Either way, the others were all beyond our reach, for now. We could brainstorm ideas for where to go after they got back, but it would be better to wait until they had gotten back before we started making any further plans. Especially if they brought back important information that changed our plans up on us, made them unworkable.

    "Then the only thing we can do for now is wait." I turned to the hologram of Marie. "Director ¡ª"

    "We''ll keep an eye on their vitals from here," she said, anticipating me. "If anything changes or they get into a major fight, I''ll contact you and let you know what''s happening."

    Even if I wouldn''t be able to do anything about it from here.

    "Thank you."

    A moment later, the image flickered out and vanished. Caster regarded the space where her image had just been with naked interest, stroking thoughtfully at his beard.

    "Mankind has come quite a ways, indeed," he remarked. "To think, not only a method and means of inserting compatible candidates into aberrant space-times like this one, but also of communicating with them from across eras. Even the greatest minds of my era would never have dreamed such a thing would be possible a scant few hundred years into the future. To have the capacity to summon Heroic Spirits to act as familiars in the resolution of these Singularities, as you call them, frankly, you''re stacking miracles on top of miracles."

    "I''m sure the Director would be quite happy to receive a compliment like that from an esteemed mage like yourself," I said slyly.

    Caster laughed, self-deprecating. "Oh, I don''t know about that," he demurred. "Truthfully, I don''t think I''m all that remarkable. Had history forgotten me as completely as I expected it to, why, I don''t believe I would have become a Heroic Spirit at all."

    So he was still going to play at that game, was he? It looked like he was going to hold that secret as tightly as he could for a while longer yet. Subtlety probably wouldn''t pry it out of his fingers.

    "Nonsense, Abraham!" Jekyll exclaimed. "Why, the sorts of things I''ve seen you accomplish just in the few short days we''ve been working together seem all the more remarkable to me, to think that they were feats you accomplished centuries ago! Why, I am humbled, truly, to say I ever met you!"

    "I think you''re giving me too much credit," Caster said with an awkward smile. "But thank you for having said so, Doctor Jekyll, even if none of it is anything special."

    "Master," a new voice said, and in from the kitchen walked a pale-haired woman in a maid outfit. She carried a metal tray in dainty, alabaster fingers. "I''ve finished preparing your tea."

    "Ah," said Caster. He accepted a cup of fine china from the tray, and next to those cups, her skin looked all the more like delicate porcelain. "Thank you, Ren¨¦e, that was excellently timed."

    "Of course," the maid, Ren¨¦e, said.

    She made a circuit through the room, and Jekyll and I each took our own cup of tea from the tray in turn, offering our thanks (and receiving a completely blank look in return). Her expression was flat and lifeless all throughout, not a hint of a smile or any kind of expression at all. I couldn''t even tell whether she hated being a glorified maid or not, because even her tone of voice was level, even, and completely without emotion.

    It was my first time seeing an honest-to-god homunculus. I still wasn''t quite sure what to make of her.

    When she was done, she asked, still in that completely flat voice, "Should I set about preparing dinner next?"

    "That would be lovely, thank you," said Caster.

    Ren¨¦e the homunculus gave him a short, respectful bow, mechanically precise, then turned and left the room. I watched her go until she left my field of view and disguised it by taking a long sip of the tea she''d brought us. Earl Grey with bergamot and orange peels, lightly sweetened, and the flavors exploded on my tongue like a warm caress. The familiar scent of it wafted into my nostrils, echoing what I''d smelled when I woke up earlier.

    It reminded me of Mom.

    Jekyll smiled around his own cup. "Nothing of note, he says, as a perfectly sculpted homunculus arrives with tea brewed to absolute perfection. There is a difference, my friend, between humility and willful blindness to one''s own accomplishments."

    Caster coughed awkwardly into his hand. "And I suppose it would do me no favors to admit that she was my first such creation, would it?"

    Jekyll shook his head disbelievingly.

    Caster sighed, looking down into his cup as he swirled his tea about. "I confess, I never had much use for homunculi when I was alive. The nature of my studies was solitary," he admitted. "I never even took an apprentice. My wife was always more than capable a hand, if I ever needed any assistance, and creating a life for the sole purpose of serving as an aid seemed¡­excessive."

    He glanced over at the threshold, through which Ren¨¦e had disappeared. Vague sounds of kitchen work echoed softly over it, of pots and pans being arranged on the stove.

    "Of course, I seem to have become a bit of a hypocrite," he lamented. "Perhaps I''m simply making up for a missed opportunity, seeing as I never had any children myself." As an aside, he said, "The realities of marrying a woman nearly a decade your senior. My wife was nearing fifty by the time we pledged ourselves to one another."

    For a man who had already gone to such efforts to obscure his true identity, he was doing a poor job of hiding the finer details. I felt like Marie would have had him pinned down just with the few bits and pieces he''d already given me, or at least would have had enough to go on to figure out who he was with just a little bit of research.

    If he was going to dangle it in front of me like that, then he really had no reason to complain if I took his bait.

    "Abraham," I began calmly, "your true name isn''t Abraham at all, is it?"

    His hand froze, cup of tea halfway to his mouth, and he blinked at me incredulously. "Oh my."

    "Is it not?" asked Jekyll, bewildered. "Abraham, is this true?"

    "You''re a sharp one, indeed," said Caster. He set his cup down on its saucer with a gentle clink. "If you would do me the favor of indulging me, what makes you so sure of that?"

    My lips pursed. "Call it a hunch."

    And he had just validated it.

    "A hunch, you say." He sighed. "I suppose that''s good. If it was something more substantial than that, I''m afraid I may have had to resort to silencing you."

    A beat passed in tense silence. My fingers curled tighter around the porcelain cup, and I reached down along the thread to Arash, preparing for the worst.

    "I''m joking, of course," he said. "Goodness me, but you are wound quite tightly, aren''t you? No, no, my dear, I''ve never killed a man before in my life, let alone in cold blood, and I have no intention of starting now simply because I''m technically dead. I''m quite the philanthropist, you see, as gauche as it may be to say it so frankly, and you might be able to go so far as to call me a pacifist."

    Jekyll laughed an awkward, fake laugh. "A poor jest, Abraham ¡ª ah, I suppose that isn''t truly your name, is it?"

    "You may as well continue using it," said Caster. "The question implicit in your previous statement, dear girl ¡ª I have no intention of sharing my true name at this junction. I''ll have to ask you to forgive my caution, for I know not enough of the enemy''s capabilities and would prefer they were able to confirm as few of mine as feasibly possible. That I am an alchemist is plain, and so there is little reason to hide it, but in the wake of my death, my name and my contribution to the furtherance of the field became a little too famous."

    A famous alchemist whose name had spread after the fact, whose name had become so attached to the field, in fact, that he had become all but synonymous with it. There were only a handful of those about, and the clothing¡­looked about right for that period. I wasn''t well-versed in all of the people who fit the bill, but his name had at least come up often enough during the broader spectrum of my magecraft lessons with Marie for me to recognize him in particular.

    It was a bit funny, though. I would have expected Paracelsus von Hohenheim to look a little younger.

    "Fine," I said. I forced my hands to relax, loosening my grip on my teacup. "I won''t push."

    Especially since I had already figured it out. Just the confirmation that his name wasn''t really Abraham would have been more than enough of a clue.

    Caster smiled gratefully. "Thank you."

    A knock came from the threshold, and Arash peeked his head in. "Hey. Things are pretty quiet outside, so I figured I''d poke my head in and see how things are going."

    He''d probably felt me take our bond in a tight grip a moment ago and come to investigate. It''s fine, I told him, projecting my thoughts down the thread connecting us. Just a misunderstanding.

    And a joke in very poor taste.

    "Ah," said Caster, clicking his tongue, "forgive me. If I had known you would be joining us, I would have asked Ren¨¦e to pour another cup."

    "Oh ¡ª no, don''t bother her on my account," said Arash. He slipped into the room casually and came to join us at the diorama, subtly placing himself between me and Caster. As though nothing was wrong, he reached out with a finger to trace a path through the streets, but his finger was too big and the streets too small by scale to fit. "It looks like they''re making good progress. But¡­that''s dinner I smell, right? They''re going to be late for that."

    "I''m sure Rika would prefer Emiya''s cooking anyway."

    Arash laughed, smiling. "I''m sure she would!"

    "A shame," said Jekyll. "Ren¨¦e is quite the excellent chef. If her tea is brewed to your liking, then her cooking will no doubt land quite comfortably on your palate."

    I had to wonder if he would be quite so confident in that if he had the chance to taste anything Emiya had made. It bore repeating that I had yet to eat better than when I ate something Emiya cooked, and when literal emperors agreed with you, it was a hard bar to pass.

    "At least our friends don''t seem to be running into much trouble," said Caster. "Their pace is consistent enough that I don''t believe they''re encountering anything more bothersome than a few automata here and there. You are right, Arash, that they won''t be returning to us in time for this evening''s repast, however. Poor Ren¨¦e will be quite disappointed."

    Would she? I wondered about that. Maybe, being her creator, he could see more into her and her personality than I could, but I had yet to see much of one. Although her movements were smooth and perfectly human, not at all janky and stilted, her mannerisms were eerily robotic.

    "I imagine so," said Jekyll. "She appeared positively delighted to have company after the dreadfully stifling past few days. I''m sure, however, that there will be plenty of opportunity for her to display her prowess in the coming days. Unfortunate as it is, there does not look to be a speedy resolution to our current situation forthcoming."

    Or maybe Jekyll could see it, too. I just had to take their word for it, I guess, since I''d known her myself less than an hour.

    I looked back down at the diorama, tracing the path the group had taken from here out to their current location and the mansion near Soho that was their destination.

    "Abraham," I said, "is this the most direct path they''re taking?"

    Caster peered down at the diorama, looking at it from above the tip of his nose. "Why, yes, it is indeed. I suppose I didn''t pay it much attention before, considering Sir Mordred was often out on patrols instead of performing a specific errand, but that is quite the direct route to be taking through an impenetrable fog. Her intuition seems quite developed."

    As good a way of putting it as any, I guess. That might prove useful later on in navigating this place, especially since it also seemed like I wouldn''t be able to use my bugs for the same purpose.

    I pushed away the flash of annoyance that curdled in my gut.

    Would it prove just as useful in finding the hiding places of the Servants behind this whole mess? Somehow, I thought things would already have been resolved by now if that was the case, so maybe it was a matter of not getting lost when she knew the destination. Not quite as useful, but it would still be something that could come in handy for moving through the mist that was choking the city.

    A way around it would be to limit ourselves to investigating during the morning hours, when the mist cleared out, but a different sort of problem might arise from that.

    "Do you think whoever is behind all of this would change their pattern if we started going out in the mornings and staying in after the fog rolled in?" I asked Caster.

    "Hmm." Caster hummed thoughtfully. "That is not so easy a question to answer. Firstly, we cannot know for certain exactly how much the enemy knows about our own movements. For example, is there some sort of sensory component attached to the fog? Are they using it to gather information? Are they aware, therefore, of where we ourselves are located?"

    And if they were, was it enough for them that we ¡ª some of us, at least ¡ª weren''t able to leave when the fog was out without risking our lives, and that was why they hadn''t tried a direct attack, or was Assassin their attack dog, meant to distract us while the true masterminds worked?

    But if they weren''t, if they couldn''t use the mist like some kind of sonar or something, then that would mean Assassin was their scout, and the automata, homunculi, and (ugh) ''Helter Skelter'' were patrol groups. Not there merely to keep us occupied, but also to give the mastermind a way to keep track of what was going on outside his workshop.

    I guess that came down to another question: if Caster could come up with this map of the city using less than ideal access to the ley lines, then were the enemy''s Servants as good as he was, or were they far less capable? Could they create something similar with higher fidelity and greater resolution, able to track every living person in the city, or not?

    "Secondly," Caster went on, "would there be something stopping them from changing up their pattern, some limitation in whatever method they might be using to generate this fog, or is the fact they let it dissipate in the mornings a sign of something else? Much as I hesitate to ascribe good will to people willing to hold an entire city hostage, regardless of how many victims it creates, we should at least acknowledge the possibility that leaving the mornings free is a means of giving the populace a chance to procure supplies, provisions, or fulfill needs that can''t be met indoors."

    Yeah, that was a problem, too, wasn''t it? I could easily see it being a problem with their fog generator, that they couldn''t leave it going indefinitely. Whether it needed time to cool off or recharge, that would still leave us with the same window every day, even if they kept it running for as long as they safely could.

    I didn''t think it was out of the kindness of their hearts. That one, I discounted immediately.

    "So the only answer you can give is ''I don''t know,'' huh," Arash thought aloud.

    Caster shrugged helplessly.

    "It would be worth it to try anyway," I said. "Whether they do something in response will tell us just as much as what they do in response. If there''s some reason why they can''t keep the fog going constantly, then they might try and send their own forces after us ¡ª and that means we might not even have to try looking that hard to find them."

    And if leaving the mornings free was a deliberate choice¡­I wasn''t quite sure what that would mean, right now. Since Astrology was a legitimate form of magic, it was entirely possible that the time of day was important somehow in their goals, and forcing them to change up their patterns would disrupt them in some way.

    "As long as you take care to limit your exposure," Caster said somewhat sternly. "Don''t think that just because I''m capable of reversing the damage you don''t need to worry about what it''s doing to you. That sort of recklessness is just as dangerous as any action from the enemy."

    My cheek twitched. So even Caster was going to be like that, was he?

    "I''d worry more about Ritsuka and the others," said Arash. "They''re the ones who are going to be taking the biggest risks, aren''t they? With Assassin out there and everything."

    Caster grimaced. "As ridiculous as it sounds, Sir Mordred should help them stay out of trouble."

    Jekyll lifted his cup to his mouth to hide his smile and his quiet chuckle.

    "Master," Ren¨¦e''s voice called softly. "Dinner is ready."

    Caster glanced at the clock, and his eyebrows rose. "Dear me," he said, "six o''clock already? My, but the past few hours have flown by!"

    Jekyll looked down at the diorama. "And the others shall reach Victor''s mansion anon. Most excellent. Shall we adjourn for dinner, so that we might be prepared to hear from him as soon as they''ve sorted the whole business out?"

    My stomach clenched, gurgling silently. Come to think of it, I hadn''t eaten since breakfast, had I?

    "A good idea."

    Caster clapped his hands together, smiling broadly. "Then no need to tarry any longer, is there? Come, come. I promise you, Ren¨¦e''s cooking won''t disappoint!"

    As it turned out, he wasn''t wrong. Dinner was had in a small dining room on the other side of the parlor, a room I could already tell from the first time I set foot in it would become very crowded with Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, and presumably Mordred joining us, and once we all sat down, Ren¨¦e served us up a hearty stew.

    I wasn''t sure I could say it was as good as anything Emiya could make, but for a homunculus who emoted about as much as a rock, it was better than I would have expected. Certainly better than anything I could make, which wasn''t that high a bar to clear, I suppose, so I wasn''t sure that said much of anything at all.

    But I had barely finished and relaxed a little in my chair to let it settle in my belly before my communicator beeped, and knowing there weren''t many reasons for Marie to contact me before the twins got back, I answered it immediately.

    The instant I did ¡ª projecting her solemn face up over the dinner table ¡ª she wasted no time in telling me, "There''s been an altercation at Frankenstein''s."

    I straightened in my seat. The food in my belly squirmed uncomfortably. "An altercation?"

    Were Frankenstein''s defenses really strong enough to give Emiya, Mash, and Mordred trouble? Or was the reason Frankenstein had gone silent because the enemy had gotten to him first?

    "What about Victor?" Jekyll asked urgently. "Does he still live?"

    Marie grimaced. "Victor Frankenstein was already dead by the time the team arrived at his mansion," she said with great weight. "They engaged and dispatched his killer, a Caster class Servant calling himself Mephistopheles."

    Like the demon in Faust? Something like that appeared here in London? Or¡­ No, if they''d faced an actual demon, Marie wouldn''t have been anywhere near this calm.

    Jekyll let out a sound akin to a deflating balloon. "So he''s dead, then."

    "I''m sorry," Marie said, perfunctory. If he heard her at all, Jekyll gave no sign.

    "And Sir Mordred and the others?" asked Caster.

    "All uninjured. Mephistopheles was vanquished without issue." Marie turned her attention back to me. "There''s more. After defeating Mephistopheles, the team decided to investigate Frankenstein''s mansion for clues about why he was targeted and any information he might have gathered, and they found a note, listing the conspirators behind the fog as P, B, and M. Frankenstein believed these people to all be Servants."

    P, B, and M? That was it? He couldn''t have given us more to work with than that, like actual names?

    "Only the initials?" murmured Caster, stroking his beard as his brow furrowed in thought. "I suppose it''s more to go off of than we had before, but¡­ Perhaps the ''M'' referred to this Mephistopheles character?"

    Maybe. We still didn''t know enough to be absolutely sure, but I wasn''t ready to assume that one of the perpetrators would throw himself in the line of fire and get killed less than a day after we arrived. Villains with plots grander than getting high tended to be more careful than that, unless they were confident they''d already won or could take down whoever came to stop them.

    "They also found something else," Marie continued. "An inheritance left behind by the original Victor Frankenstein, his grandfather, locked away in a coffin, hidden in a backroom off of the library."

    A coffin? As in, an actual, made-for-burial coffin? What, like out of some B-movie from the 1930s?

    "You don''t mean ¡ª"

    "Yes," Marie said before I could even finish talking, "just like in the novel, a complete, functioning artificial human."

    Frankenstein''s monster.

 Chapter CXXXI: The Modern Prometheus

    Chapter CXXXI: The Modern Prometheus

    I¡¯d been expecting¡­ Well. Something straight out of the novel. A patchwork man, inhumanly tall and gangly, with mismatched limbs and surgical scars all over his body. Not quite the lumbering, green-skinned, square-headed figure from the older movies and pop culture derivatives, complete with bolts jutting out of his neck and a forehead you could run advertisements on, but something anyone could see and recognize as Frankenstein¡¯s monster. Unmistakable.

    What arrived in tow with the twins and Mash¡­

    ¡°Remarkable. She¡¯s simply remarkable,¡± Jekyll muttered as he circled her. ¡°To think, a creation such as this was possible! To imagine that Victor¡¯s grandfather accomplished such a feat itself beggars belief, but that she might be so well preserved that she retains her youth decades later¡­¡±

    ¡­looked nothing like that. In fact, she was so far in the opposite direction that I really shouldn¡¯t have been surprised, because this sort of thing had been happening so frequently that it probably would have been more surprising if she did match the mental image I¡¯d had. If it weren¡¯t for the metal horn jutting out of her forehead and the¡­I think those were electrical transformers protruding from behind her ears, then she would look like an ordinary teenage girl.

    The superhuman strength, at least, I could confirm, because those transformers had to be heavy. Not impossibly heavy, but a normal person would eventually have wound up slouching from the strain of holding them up.

    ¡°Moreover, she¡¯s perfectly proportioned,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°No sign of malformations or incongruency. Indeed, she seems to be a single cohesive unit ¡ª with the unaided eye, why, I can¡¯t discern so much as a single blemish¡­¡±

    He reached out, hand moving towards ¡ª

    My arm shot out before I could think anything of it, like a reflex, and I took a firm hold of his wrist. He blinked and turned his head towards me.

    ¡°Doctor,¡± I said with affected calm, ¡°maybe you¡¯d like to take a moment and think about what exactly you were about to touch.¡±

    His brow furrowed, and then he looked first to his hand and his outstretched fingers, and then to the embarrassed and uncomfortable young woman whose chest he¡¯d been about to grope. By the chagrin on his face as he pulled his hand back ¡ª and I let it go ¡ª he realized the mistake he¡¯d been in the middle of making.

    ¡°Ah,¡± he said. ¡°Yes. How¡­uncouth of me. Forgive me, madam, I meant no offense.¡±

    She made a grunting sound, something completely without words or syllables.

    ¡°She said it¡¯s fine,¡± said Mordred. ¡°As long as you understand and don¡¯t try again. That¡¯s what I got out of that, at least.¡±

    ¡°He tries that on me, and I¡¯m flash-frying him,¡± Jeanne Alter promised.

    ¡°I think Doctor Jekyll has learned his lesson,¡± said Ritsuka.

    Jekyll nodded. ¡°Most certainly!¡±

    ¡°You can understand her?¡± I asked Mordred.

    Mordred made a face. ¡°Kinda. ¡®S hard to explain. More like I understand her meaning than the actual words, ya know?¡±

    ¡°You can¡¯t understand her either, Senpai?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Was I supposed to?

    ¡°It seems the one thing the good Doctor Frankenstein neglected to install when he reconstructed her was a functional voice box,¡± Emiya said. ¡°She can vocalize, but syllables and sentences don¡¯t seem like something she can quite manage.¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± the girl grunted, but nothing more articulate than that.

    ¡°Quite the oversight,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°Perhaps the good doctor¡­was not so fond of the idea of his creation talking back.¡±

    Her head dropped, and her bangs flopped down over her eyes as her lips drew into a tight line. Not a happy memory, then. Not one she liked thinking of.

    I never would have thought I¡¯d be saying this about Frankenstein¡¯s monster, but¡­I could relate.

    ¡°Does our new friend here have a name?¡± Arash asked, not unkindly.

    She looked up at me, met my eyes with something pitiable and fragile on her face, something I couldn¡¯t quite describe with words. What passed between us might be called understanding, but I wasn¡¯t sure I could rightly go that far. I felt almost like¡­like I was looking at a reflection, two years out of date, and yet, she didn¡¯t look anything like that at all.

    She was trapped in her own head. Unable to properly communicate, but able to grasp at least most of what we were saying. She didn¡¯t have words, she couldn¡¯t sign properly, let alone in ASL, and I doubted she could write even her own name. She was, for all intents and purposes, mute and illiterate.

    But something of her meaning was still conveyed. The longing, the attachment, the bitterness, and yet the desire for affection. Yeah. The monster in the novel had never chosen a name for himself, but if he had, if he had never completely shed his yearning for his creator¡¯s affection¡­

    ¡°Fran,¡± I said confidently, ¡°right?¡±

    Surprise stretched across her face, followed shortly and swiftly by delight and something akin to happiness. She nodded firmly and eagerly. ¡°Uhn!¡±

    Ritsuka blinked. ¡°Whoa.¡±

    ¡°Holy shit, how did you do that?¡± Rika exclaimed.

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­the name she chose when we found her,¡± Mash said with numb disbelief. ¡°Miss Taylor, how did you know?¡±

    How, indeed.

    ¡°I think I understand what you meant, Sir Mordred,¡± I said. I dodged the question, because I wasn¡¯t sure I had a good answer myself. ¡°She can¡¯t talk, but that doesn¡¯t mean she can¡¯t express herself in other ways.¡±

    Mordred nodded. ¡°Yeah.¡±

    It would make communicating with her a little more difficult, though. Most people didn¡¯t truly understand what it was like to be unable to use words like that, to be completely incapable of talking in any real sense, but I could remember all too vividly the isolation of it, the people talking about you and around you but rarely ever to you and almost never with you.

    Very few people really understood what it meant to be alone in a crowded room.

    ¡°An interesting specimen, nonetheless,¡± said Caster, stroking his beard. ¡°Not a homunculus, by her coloration and general demeanor, and yet not a Heroic Spirit either. Doctor Jekyll was quite correct to be so astounded ¡ª Doctor Frankenstein must have been quite the genius to achieve something so remarkable.¡±

    ¡°No, seriously!¡± Rika insisted. ¡°How? First Cinnabon, then Onii-chan, and now Senpai, too!¡±

    I turned to Ritsuka. ¡°The Director said you found her in a room off of the library, hidden away in a coffin?¡±

    Ritsuka nodded. ¡°Yeah. After we took care of the Caster who killed Doctor Frankenstein, we found her while we were looking through the rest of the mansion. The only other important thing we could find was the note he left behind. Everything else was just¡­¡±

    He shrugged. Like he didn¡¯t quite know how to describe it.

    ¡°Various forms of magecraft paraphernalia, Miss Taylor,¡± Mash supplied. ¡°Sir Mordred investigated his workshop, since her Magic Resistance is so high, but ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Didn¡¯t find shit,¡± Mordred said bluntly.

    Mash sighed. ¡°Yes. That.¡±

    I suppose it would have been too easy for us to find the answers to every single one of our mysteries less than twenty-four hours after we arrived here. I wasn¡¯t sure I would have trusted it if they did find something in his workshop that listed out all of the perpetrators and every single one of their plans. It was more likely it would have been a plant than the genuine solution.

    ¡°The note?¡±

    Ritsuka reached into his pocket, rummaged about a bit, and then produced a folded up scrap of paper. When he handed it over to me, I unfolded it and read through the short, hastily scrawled message on it:

    I¡¯ve learned of a certain plot. Its name is ¡®Project Demonic Fog.¡¯ Though its present state is still unknown, the three leaders of the project are ¡®P¡¯, ¡®B,¡¯ and ¡®M¡¯, can cast spells beyond human wisdom. Probably Heroic Spirits.

    Out of some vain hope that there would be more, I checked the other side, but I¡¯d already known that it was going to be blank, so I tried not to be too disappointed.

    I passed the scrap off to Caster, who read it himself and eventually passed it over to Jekyll. He scanned it quickly, then sighed.

    ¡°So Victor truly has been killed, has he?¡± he asked, crestfallen. ¡°There was no mistake?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Ritsuka answered solemnly. I couldn¡¯t help wondering just how personal their confirmation of his death had been.

    Jekyll shook his head and handed the piece of paper back to Ritsuka. ¡°I had best inform the rest of the network,¡± he said ruefully. ¡°I¡¯m certain they will all want to hear of this development, though I can¡¯t say that we¡¯ll be able to find a replacement at all, let alone with speed. Please excuse me.¡±

    He left the parlor and disappeared further into the apartment. I kept track of him as he went, until he eventually wound up in a small study with an antique radio, although for this era, it was probably state of the art. It was situated atop a desk, and he sat down in a chair in front of it to start the task of contacting the other agents in his network.

    Fran made an inquisitive sound in the back of her throat.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Mash. ¡°Doctor Jekyll said that they weren¡¯t very close, but he does seem pretty sad that Doctor Frankenstein is dead. Maybe he cared more than he was willing to admit.¡±

    ¡°People grieve in their own ways,¡± I agreed. A bitter part of me had to acknowledge that sometimes, that included falling apart.

    ¡°Come on!¡± Rika complained. ¡°Are none of you going to answer me? How are you guys doing that?¡±

    I didn¡¯t say anything, for a lot of different reasons. Not only because I couldn¡¯t really explain it myself, but because the one theory I did have ¡ª that the shared experience of being voiceless made it easier for me to catch nuance the others might not ¡ª didn¡¯t just touch on things I didn¡¯t want to talk about, but also ran headlong into Ritsuka and Mash being able to do it, too, and died an ignoble death.

    Ritsuka, with the sort of smugness all big brothers took with their younger siblings, told Rika, ¡°I guess it¡¯s just something you either have¡­or you don¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°Senpai!¡± said Mash, scandalized.

    ¡°Hey!¡± Rika squawked.

    And Fran lifted a hand to her mouth to stifle a breathy sound that might have been her version of a giggle. It was overshadowed by Mordred¡¯s loud, boisterous laughter.

    ¡°Ha! Good one!¡±

    ¡°Not you, too!¡± Rika whined. ¡°Stop teaming up on me! I don¡¯t know how to start my own club, or how to play Blackjack, and don¡¯t even get me started on the hookers!¡±

    ¡°W-what?¡± Mash gasped. ¡°B-blackjack? H-hookers?¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s that got to do with anything?¡± asked Mordred, confused.

    Ritsuka sighed. ¡°It¡¯s from a tv show.¡±

    Naturally. At least she was in a good enough mood to make jokes. It meant that whatever she¡¯d seen at Frankenstein¡¯s mansion wasn¡¯t bad enough to be all that traumatizing, and while the twins couldn¡¯t be called innocent by any stretch of the imagination at this point¡­some part of me wanted them to retain whatever little bit of it they had left.

    Unfortunately, we were on the job. This wasn¡¯t the time to relax just yet.

    ¡°Let¡¯s talk about P, B, and M,¡± I said, and the mood instantly sobered again. ¡°The Director said that the Caster you fought introduced himself as Mephistopheles. Did he give you any other clues about what was going on?¡±

    The twins and Mash traded looks, frowning at one another.

    ¡°Not really,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°Honestly, he was kind of¡­¡±

    ¡°Screwy,¡± Rika finished for him. ¡°And not like literally screwy, like he had bolts in his head or something ¡ª¡± Fran¡¯s hand made it halfway up to her head before she froze and let it drop again. ¡°¡ª but screwy like he had a few bolts loose.¡±

    ¡°He had a twisted personality,¡± Mash said. ¡°At the end, he said something about¡­how lucky I was, that I had more chances to turn on my Master. And I would never!¡±

    The very idea of it seemed to horrify her.

    ¡°Nah, you got him pegged, Shieldy,¡± said Mordred. Shieldy? What was up with that nickname? ¡°That guy wasn¡¯t right. He might be the kind of guy to stab his Master in the back, but you ain¡¯t got that sort of thing in you.¡±

    ¡°Man, and I missed it!¡± Jeanne Alter complained. ¡°Damn, that fucker sounds like a riot!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re forgetting something,¡± Emiya interrupted. ¡°He said he was there to recruit Frankenstein, remember? And Frankenstein refused, right up until the very end.¡±

    ¡°And it got him killed,¡± said Arash.

    ¡°So it seems.¡±

    Although it begged the question of how he¡¯d found out as much as he had, and why he hadn¡¯t written out the culprits¡¯ full names. P, B, and M? If he knew that much, then didn¡¯t he know their full names already?

    Or maybe he¡¯d been writing the note for himself, with the intent of sharing his findings through the radio later. In that case, I guess it made more sense not to write out the full name if he didn¡¯t need it. It was just incredibly inconvenient for us that he hadn¡¯t.

    ¡°P, B, and M, hm?¡± Caster said thoughtfully. ¡°I¡¯m afraid that doesn¡¯t narrow the field quite as much as we would like.¡±

    Especially, I thought, since Paracelsus was standing in the room with us. On the list of famous magi who might qualify for the Caster class, there wasn¡¯t exactly a huge list of names under ¡®P.¡¯ B and M weren¡¯t exactly all that much better, with the exception of the big names, like Merlin and Morgan le Fey, but neither of those had the prime candidate less than ten feet away from me.

    Caster¡¯s lips pursed. ¡°Unless we¡¯re not assuming that this Mephistopheles character wasn¡¯t the ¡®M¡¯ mentioned in the note? I confess, the only major suspect I would have is Morgan le Fey.¡±

    Mordred snorted. ¡°Nah, I already checked. I told you, remember? If that bitch was here, she¡¯d have parked her ass in the palace and stayed there. Didn¡¯t see hide nor hair of her when I went to look.¡±

    Emiya huffed out a short chuckle. ¡°No family reunion here, I suppose.¡±

    Mordred grinned a sharp grin. ¡°Thank God for that!¡±

    It made me wonder exactly how far and what sort of relationship Emiya had had with King Arthur. That she¡¯d been his Servant, if I remembered right, was something we¡¯d already gotten confirmed, and that he¡¯d been in love with her, well, his reaction in Septem pointed that way. But had she reciprocated? Had they fallen in bed together? How intense and passionate had their relationship been?

    With Mordred right there might not be the best of times to go asking that, though. Even if the myths hadn¡¯t been entirely right, and we¡¯d gotten plenty of evidence that not everything lined up over the past several months, there hadn¡¯t been any sign that Mordred¡¯s part in things was any different than how the legends said it was. Her relationship with King Arthur was, at the very least, complicated.

    Caster shrugged and shook his head. ¡°Then, I must admit, I don¡¯t have much in the way of other suspects.¡±

    Ritsuka grimaced and shared a look with his sister. ¡°That¡¯s about where we are, too,¡± he said. ¡°We couldn¡¯t really think of too many people who could fit those initials.¡±

    It occurred to me, suddenly. ¡°Medea.¡±

    Ritsuka and Rika shared another look.

    ¡°Medea of Colchis?¡± asked Caster, surprised. ¡°I suppose, but¡­ Why on Earth would someone like her be here?¡±

    ¡°You could say the same of Faust¡¯s demon,¡± I pointed out.

    ¡°Touch¨¦,¡± Caster allowed with a slight dip of his head.

    ¡°Would we really see her again so soon?¡± asked Ritsuka. ¡°On the enemy¡¯s side again, too?¡±

    Caster blinked. ¡°You mean to say you¡¯ve faced her before?¡±

    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    ¡°Yes,¡± answered Mash. ¡°During the last Singularity, Okeanos¡­both her younger self and older self were present, although those were extenuating circumstances.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t say,¡± Caster murmured thoughtfully.

    It wasn¡¯t necessarily a bad point. If we looked at it in broad strokes, the Singularities we¡¯d solved so far had Servants that largely followed the theme of each Singularity. Aside from Fuyuki, which was a deviation of an actual Grail War, Orl¨¦ans had Heroic Spirits with either strong ties to France or to dragons, Septem had been sprawling and diverse ¡ª much like the Roman Empire had been ¡ª with Heroic Spirits connected either to the place they¡¯d been summoned or the Empire itself, and Okeanos had featured both pirates and Heroic Spirits from seafaring legends. Both our side and the enemy¡¯s had tended to follow that pattern.

    The trouble was, the mythology of Britain was largely dominated by King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table ¡ª as evidenced by the one standing not too far away, leaning on the wall next to fireplace with her arms crossed. If we were willing to go so far as trusting Mordred, then Morgan le Fey wasn¡¯t here, and I couldn¡¯t think of any reason why Merlin himself would be all that interested in coating the whole city in fog.

    ¡°We might not even be looking at a magus at all,¡± said Emiya. ¡°The Caster class isn¡¯t solely a place for them, after all.¡±

    Ah.

    ¡°Shakespeare.¡±

    Ritsuka hummed. ¡°So we might be looking for an author or something instead.¡±

    Mordred snorted. ¡°You think some guy with a pen made that fog out there?¡±

    In one, smooth motion, I unsheathed my Last Resort, and everyone jolted in surprise ¡ª even more so when I tossed it over to Mordred, who caught it deftly.

    ¡°Huh,¡± she said, examining it and rolling it around in her hand. ¡°The hell is this, exactly?¡±

    ¡°The original knife was made by an inventor I happened to know, back before Chaldea,¡± I told her, and that was all I was giving her about that part. ¡°After we summoned Shakespeare, I gave it to him and asked him to use his Enchant skill to make it stronger. What you¡¯re holding now is the end result.¡±

    She scrutinized the blade with a frown, like she was looking for what made it so special. Unless she decided to turn it on, I didn¡¯t think she was going to find it.

    ¡°She used it to kill a dragon back in Orl¨¦ans!¡± Rika blurted out.

    Caster goggled at me openly, and Mordred arched an eyebrow at me. ¡°No shit?¡±

    ¡°It was technically just a wyvern,¡± Mash corrected, ¡°b-but yes. Miss Taylor, u-um, stabbed it through the eye.¡±

    ¡°Damn,¡± said Mordred, and she actually sounded impressed. ¡°That¡¯s pretty hardcore, not gonna lie. Wouldn¡¯t¡¯ve expected it outta someone as squishy-looking as you.¡±

    She tossed my Last Resort back, and using the tiny ant I¡¯d secreted into one of the nanothorn ports, I snatched it out of the air just as deftly and easily as Mordred had, disguised the ant crawling up the knife and into my sleeve with a twirl of the blade to reverse my grip on it, then slid it back into its sheath. I could¡¯ve just used my phantom limb, but it might have looked less impressive, especially if she could sense it.

    ¡°Alright,¡± she went on. ¡°So maybe we¡¯re looking for a famous author guy instead. We got any ideas for that, too?¡±

    Ritsuka sighed. ¡°Unfortunately ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª not really?¡± said Rika. ¡°I mean, we¡¯re two kids from Tokyo, you know? English literature wasn¡¯t the biggest thing we were learning back in high school.¡±

    ¡°I know a little bit,¡± Ritsuka amended. ¡°But, um, the classics were never really my favorites, so I can¡¯t really say.¡± He gestured over towards me. ¡°Senpai¡¯s mother was a literature professor, though, so she might have some idea.¡± He added, ¡°Maybe Mash, too?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m flattered that you think so, Senpai,¡± said Mash, ¡°but¡­¡±

    Yeah.

    ¡°John Milton,¡± I listed, ¡°the Bront? sisters, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, J.M. Barrie, Thomas Malory, Herman Melville ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Okay!¡± said Rika. ¡°Okay, we get it! There¡¯s a lot of famous authors!¡±

    My mouth twisted into a frown. Strictly speaking, one or two of those had been more philosophers than novelists, but they¡¯d had enough of an impact on Western thought and society that I was willing to include their less fictional writing as being close enough. J.M. Barrie might have been too close to the modern day, though, but I was never entirely certain where exactly the cutoff point was supposed to be.

    ¡°A difficult position to be in,¡± Caster noted. He tossed me another dubious glance, like he wasn¡¯t sure what to make of me anymore. ¡°If we look for magi, we don¡¯t have a large enough list to speak much of, but if we look outside of those scant few famous mages, we suddenly find ourselves with more options than we can feasibly investigate.¡±

    ¡°And it might not even be an English writer,¡± Arash added. ¡°I¡¯m sure there were several foreign writers who had a lot to say about British colonialism, too, who might have a reason to want to choke London like this.¡±

    ¡°If we broaden things that far, we¡¯ll be talking about half the world,¡± said Emiya. He sighed and carded a hand through his hair, rubbed at his scalp. ¡°India alone would have us here talking possibilities for days.¡±

    Mahatma Gandhi could have been on that list, too, in fact. He was famous enough, but I wasn¡¯t sure if he was too modern to count.

    ¡°There was one other clue,¡± I reminded them. ¡°¡®Can cast spells beyond human wisdom.¡¯ If Doctor Frankenstein was as true and talented a mage as Jekyll is convinced he was, then at the very least, our perpetrators can make it look like they¡¯re incredibly talented magi.¡±

    ¡°And that just puts us back at square one,¡± Ritsuka lamented.

    ¡°Yes, it does,¡± Mash agreed ruefully.

    Jeanne Alter sneered. ¡°So that whole spiel just now was a complete waste of time?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°It means that if P, B, or M is a writer, they probably wrote fantasy. Something that was impressive enough to make Frankenstein think what he did.¡±

    Unfortunately, while that did eliminate people like the Bront? sisters, and Mary Shelley was just unlikely, considering the subject of her work was here in the parlor with us, it didn¡¯t narrow the list down to something as convenient as a single name. Milton, Melville, and Malory were still in the M section, for example, and all three of them would pose a problem if they were involved.

    I didn¡¯t really want to have to go toe to toe with Moby Dick. Or¡­toe to flipper. Whatever.

    Admittedly, I was a little relieved that there wasn¡¯t a ¡°T¡± in the list, because that would have meant Tolkien could be a suspect, and the idea of what the One Ring might do if it was even halfway real was actually kind of frightening. Fortunately, I think we would have seen Sauron¡¯s tower and burning eye first, even through this fog.

    ¡°I guess that means it¡¯s still a mystery, for now,¡± Ritsuka said tiredly. ¡°Until we find out more, we¡¯ll just be going around in circles.¡±

    ¡°Uhn¡­¡± Fran murmured lowly, disappointed.

    ¡°It won¡¯t be forever,¡± I assured her. ¡°Eventually, we¡¯ll find whoever is behind all of this and put a stop to them. Doctor Frankenstein won¡¯t have died in vain, and those responsible for his death won¡¯t get away with it.¡±

    This didn¡¯t seem to satisfy her, exactly, but the grim line of her mouth said that she was looking forward to it. Whatever her relationship to her creator and his family, it seemed she at least liked them enough to mourn their deaths.

    ¡°For now,¡± said Caster, ¡°the hour grows late, and I dare say we shan¡¯t be sending out any more expeditions ¡ª not when this will be Assassin¡¯s most opportune time, where they are most advantaged. We here have already eaten, but I¡¯m sure the rest of you must be famished.¡±

    As though to answer him, Mash¡¯s stomach growled, and her cheeks bloomed with pink. ¡°S-sorry! It¡¯s just, we really haven¡¯t eaten since this morning, and while a Demi-Servant like me doesn¡¯t need food as much as a normal human, I-I still get hungry.¡±

    ¡°Uhn!¡± Fran grunted, bobbing her head.

    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°I guess you probably haven¡¯t eaten in a really long time either, have you?¡±

    Fran shook her head.

    ¡°Maybe not even ever,¡± I added. Her creator probably hadn¡¯t been particularly attentive about that sort of thing, not if he locked her up in a coffin for several decades.

    Rika grinned. ¡°Oh, man, have we got a treat for you!¡± She turned to Emiya. ¡°We need some gourmet food! Stat! Can¡¯t you see the poor girl is skin and bones?¡±

    Emiya sighed. ¡°Yes, of course, I¡¯ll see to it right away. I suppose I should have known better than to keep you waiting this long as it is. Any requests?¡±

    Rika nodded sagely. ¡°That¡¯s a good question!¡± To Caster, she asked. ¡°Whaddya got to eat ¡®round these parts?¡±

    And for some reason, she saw fit to put on an exaggerated Texan accent.

    ¡°Well¡­¡± Caster stroked his beard. ¡°Doctor Jekyll¡¯s pantry should be close to fully stocked, although I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m not so familiar with its contents that I could tell you what that means. Various forms of meat and poultry, one would assume, in at least enough supply to last a few days, as well as assorted grains and other such things.¡±

    Emiya shook his head. ¡°I¡¯ll figure something out as I go. I¡¯m sure he¡¯ll have something that I can make, even if it¡¯s drowning in salt.¡±

    I could feel my blood pressure spike, and I wasn¡¯t even going to be eating it. Maybe I should warn Marie and the technicians to watch out for coronary distress and large increases in cholesterol, considering how much lard the English tended to cook with in this era.

    He waved a hand and vanished into spirit form, disappearing from the group. We¡¯d all gotten used to it enough that no one batted an eye at his leaving.

    ¡°Aren¡¯t¡­you an alchemist?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°Yes, of course,¡± said Caster immediately. ¡°But I¡¯m afraid it was my wife who was always more talented in the culinary aspects of domestic life. My meals always tended to be a bit more¡­basic.¡±

    I paused, listening to the conversation with half an ear as I gathered a larger swarm in Jekyll¡¯s study, because I¡¯d just heard something important.

    ¡°Huh,¡± said Rika. ¡°I thought alchemy began in the kitchen.¡±

    Caster broke out into laughter. ¡°My dear girl, whoever gave you that idea? No, no, alchemy has its origins in the metallurgical practices of the ancient Egyptians, and that study eventually made its way into Europe, where magi married it with the principles of Western magecraft. Strictly speaking, the alchemy of the modern day, at least that which the orthodox magi of the Clock Tower practice, little resembles what it was originally.¡±

    ¡°Fullmetal Alchemist lied to me?¡± Rika despaired dramatically.

    Caster blinked at her, confused. ¡°I¡­suppose it must have,¡± he allowed cautiously.

    She moaned. ¡°Next you¡¯re going to tell me that homunculi aren¡¯t actually made from the Philos ¡ª¡±

    ¡°SHIT!¡± came Emiya¡¯s voice, followed immediately by the sound of a metal pot clattering to the floor, and the twins and Mash both startled, looking in the direction of the kitchen. Caster¡¯s face pinched into an expression of embarrassed regret.

    ¡°Ah,¡± he said ruefully. ¡°Yes. Perhaps I should have warned her.¡±

    A moment later, Emiya reappeared across the threshold, ducking under a cast iron pan that came dangerously close to hitting Jeanne Alter, who squawked and jumped out of the way.

    ¡°What the fuck?¡±

    ¡°Watch where you¡¯re throwing that, you madwoman!¡± Emiya barked back over his shoulder. ¡°You¡¯re going to hurt someone!¡±

    Ren¨¦e stalked in after him, hefting another large pan that she wielded like a sword. Her expression was just as cold and emotionless as it had been before, but there was an air about her that I would have called furious.

    ¡°Master,¡± she reported flatly, ¡°this thief was attempting to steal food from the pantry.¡±

    Mordred busted out into laughter.

    ¡°Hey!¡± said Rika. ¡°He¡¯s not a thief! He¡¯s a house-husband! He earns his keep!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the part of this you¡¯re objecting to?¡± Emiya demanded incredulously. ¡°She actually hit me with the first one, you know! I can show you the damn bruise!¡±

    ¡°It didn¡¯t actually hurt all that much, did it?¡± Arash asked, curious.

    ¡°It¡¯s the principle of the thing!¡±

    ¡°Forgive me, Ren¨¦e, I should have told you,¡± said Caster. ¡°This man is another one of our guests, a Servant in their service, and it seems that he is the designated cook amongst them. He was just going to make a meal for his comrades who haven¡¯t eaten yet, and I¡¯m afraid, in my carelessness, I forgot to tell you. My sincerest apologies, my dear.¡±

    Ren¨¦e froze, turning from Emiya to regard Caster, and for several long seconds, she just stared. Her expression was too opaque to make out what she must have been thinking. And then, with just the barest hint of confusion, she asked, ¡°I have to let him use the kitchen?¡±

    ¡°For now,¡± Caster answered, smiling gently. ¡°Perhaps tomorrow, you might cook them all a breakfast that convinces them of your singular talent, but for tonight, well, I wouldn¡¯t want to ask you to make another meal after you spent so much time and effort preparing the last one so recently.¡±

    For several seconds more, Ren¨¦e was silent again, and I thought I saw a tiny tremble in the fist clutching the pan like it was a weapon. At length, she asked, ¡°Do I have to?¡±

    Caster nodded. ¡°Just for tonight.¡±

    She closed her ruby red eyes for a moment. ¡°Very well,¡± she said. Stiffly, she relaxed into a less combative posture, clutching the handle of her pan in her hands as she folded them in front of her. ¡°If that¡¯s what you order, Master, then I shall allow him into the kitchen.¡±

    She turned her frigid stare back over to Emiya.

    ¡°For tonight.¡±

    Still stiff as a board, she spun on her heel and left the room, and the instant she was out of sight, Emiya heaved a heavy sigh. Mordred, still laughing, doubled over, wheezing and clutching her gut with both arms.

    ¡°You could have warned me you had a homunculus hanging around doing the dishes,¡± Emiya rebuked Caster.

    ¡°Yes, I should have,¡± said Caster. ¡°I suppose I owe my apologies to you, as well. I would, of course, be only too happy to introduce you all now. However¡­¡± He sighed. ¡°Dear Ren¨¦e seems to be in quite the mood, so I¡¯m afraid they¡¯ll have to wait for later.¡±

    ¡°Hold on,¡± said Rika, ¡°that was a homunculus?¡±

    Caster¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°Yes. I¡­suppose you¡¯ve never seen one before?¡±

    Rika slumped, grimacing, and wiped both hands down the sides of her face.

    ¡°Fullmetal Alchemist lied to me,¡± she moaned. ¡°Again!¡±

    ¡°Did it?¡± said Caster, still confused. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, my dear, but I¡¯m afraid who or whatever this Fullmetal Alchemist is must have been quite misleading about the true nature of alchemy.¡±

    In his study, Jekyll stood from his chair, disentangling himself from his radio.

    ¡°Don¡¯t mind her,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°She¡¯s just suffering the consequences of shaping her understanding of magic from anime and manga.¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Rika said indignantly.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry so much, Master,¡± Emiya told her reassuringly. ¡°Most first generation magi never get the chance to correct that mistake. You¡¯re doing just fine.¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t make me feel much better,¡± she groused.

    He huffed a low chuckle. ¡°Fine, fine, I know just how to cheer you up.¡± He cast a glance at Caster. ¡°Provided that woman doesn¡¯t try to throw me out again.¡±

    ¡°I would expect her to watch you closely,¡± said Caster, ¡°but despite her own feelings on the matter, she¡¯ll listen to me and she won¡¯t bar you access ¡ª tonight, at least. Although she might not look it at first glance, she can be¡­quite territorial.¡±

    Emiya huffed out another laugh. ¡°Somehow, that feels familiar.¡± He grinned. ¡°Well. It¡¯s not the first time someone has tried to boot me out of the kitchen. I don¡¯t intend to let her succeed.¡±

    ¡°If she tries to throw another pan at you, next time, do us all a favor and block it with that huge head of yours,¡± Jeanne Alter drawled.

    ¡°Next time,¡± he promised, ¡°I¡¯ll do something even more impressive.¡±

    On that note, he disappeared again, back to the kitchen, presumably. Off to the side, Mordred¡¯s laughter finally died down into weak giggles.

    ¡°Oh, man,¡± she said, still grinning broadly. Tears glittered in the outer corners of her eyes. ¡°That was great. A big, strong Archer class Servant, chased around the house by a little homunculus! Wielding a pan!¡± She swiped the tears away with her thumbs one at a time. ¡°Damn. I needed that.¡±

    Mash sighed. ¡°At least no one got seriously hurt.¡±

    ¡°Except for his pride,¡± Ritsuka added dryly.

    ¡°Come in, Doctor Jekyll,¡± I said without looking.

    Everyone startled, turning to look at an equally stunned Jekyll, who stood in the threshold with his hand raised to knock and announce his presence. Awkwardly, his arm fell back to his side, but he was too busy blinking at me to notice it at all.

    ¡°Doctor Jekyll!¡± said Mash.

    ¡°Never going to get used to that,¡± Ritsuka murmured.

    ¡°Nope,¡± his sister agreed quietly.

    ¡°Ah, yes, I¡­¡± Jekyll began uncertainly. ¡°Please¡­pardon my intrusion.¡±

    He walked into the room haltingly and hesitantly, less sure of himself than he¡¯d been before. My lips thinned. That absolute proprioception was incredibly useful, and throwing people off guard with it could give me the upper hand in negotiations on occasion, but I forgot sometimes how easily it could freak out even my allies.

    Arash, as he was wont to do, helped smooth things out. ¡°Everything¡¯s going well with your information network, I assume?¡±

    ¡°Yes, I¡­¡± Jekyll cleared his throat. ¡°They were saddened, of course, to hear the news of what happened to poor Victor, but fortunately, the enemy hasn¡¯t yet seen fit to seek any of them out. The circumstances of that may yet change, of course, especially as we attempt to uncover the source of this foul plot, but for now, poor Victor seems to have been the only one to suffer for his part in this investigation.¡±

    ¡°Mephistopeles said he was there to recruit him,¡± Ritsuka told him.

    ¡°Truly?¡± said Jekyll. ¡°It may be that none of the others will find themselves garnering such attention then, because if any of my collaborators have a single iota the talent for magery Victor possessed, they have not seen fit to inform me. In fact, perhaps that is all for the good. So long as it remains secret ¡ª even from me ¡ª then the others might yet remain unmolested.¡±

    Mordred scoffed. ¡°Tch. That means it¡¯s gonna be up to us to do the heavy lifting, huh?¡±

    ¡°What?¡± said Jeanne Alter. ¡°Scared of a little hard work?¡±

    ¡°Ha! Hell no!¡± said Mordred, grinning again. ¡°In fact, I like it this way better! Less people getting in my way!¡±

    Jeanne Alter sneered. ¡°That¡¯s too bad. I think I¡¯m actually starting to like you.¡±

    ¡°Doctor Jekyll,¡± I said, interrupting whatever that was before it could take off, ¡°was there something else from your network that we needed to know about?¡±

    Jekyll hesitated again, uncertain. ¡°There¡­was, in fact. A trifling matter, I would say, only, as we have no other leads as of the current moment, I considered the possibility that it might provide us another avenue of investigation. Even if it bears no fruit at all, we would still be providing aid to the people of the city, helpless as they are against such threats.¡±

    ¡°Aid?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Jekyll nodded. ¡°There has been¡­an incident, shall we say,¡± he said. ¡°Or rather, a series of incidents, all of them noteworthy not for their location or indeed the people affected, but because they seem to share a common cause. A theme, if you will, a rhyme or rhythm, a singular perpetrator utilizing a pattern of behavior.¡±

    ¡°A MO,¡± I summarized.

    Jekyll didn¡¯t recognize the term. ¡°MO?¡±

    ¡°Modus operandi,¡± Mash explained dutifully. ¡°It¡¯s a term used by some police forces for things like the method and means criminals use to commit crimes.¡±

    ¡°Ah ¡ª an apt description.¡± Jekyll nodded. ¡°In this case, the modus operandi of our perpetrator is to slip indoors and assault the people inside. For what reason, I could not possibly fathom, but according to the collaborator who brought this to my attention, there have been no major injuries nor any fatalities, and the culprit is said to be a large¡­book.¡±

    My brow furrowed. People were being attacked by a book?

    ¡°Book?¡± the twins echoed.

    ¡°Uhn?¡± Fran grunted, sounding just as confused.

    ¡°My reaction was much the same, I assure you,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°I received confirmation, however, thrice over, and in no uncertain terms. The one behind these dastardly assaults is a book, described to me as roughly the size of a small child.¡±

    Caster stroked his beard thoughtfully, frowning. ¡°Perhaps a grimoire of some kind? I struggle to imagine where it might have come from, however. Unless some poor unfortunate came across it by accident and activated the owner¡¯s defensive enchantments.¡±

    Unfortunately, I didn¡¯t have any better ideas. It wasn¡¯t the most out there thing I¡¯d ever dealt with, but on the list of possible familiars a mage might choose, Marie had never put a book, of all things.

    ¡°Where is this happening?¡± I asked.

    ¡°The only cases yet discovered are in the Soho area,¡± said Jekyll. I glanced over at the clock on the mantle, which read nearly half past nine. Jekyll saw my look and nodded. ¡°Yes, I came to that conclusion as well. To make the journey to Soho, investigate these matters fully, and return to the apartment would be the work of several hours, and it is already quite late enough as it is.¡±

    And while it wouldn¡¯t be the first time I stayed up late and went out adventuring into the early hours of the morning¡­I wouldn¡¯t be the one going out, since the fog was still a problem. The twins and Mash would be, and even if I was a bit generous and said it only took them four hours to go and take care of this thing, they still wouldn¡¯t be back here and getting to sleep until three or four o¡¯clock.

    I needed them well-rested so we could go out in the morning while the fog was thin or nonexistent. Nobody would be working at their best after a long day and just a few hours of sleep.

    ¡°These cases are not urgent, however,¡± said Jekyll, ¡°so I considered it the wiser course to leave it off until the morrow, after we all have had a chance to rest our eyes.¡±

    ¡°I think we can all agree to that,¡± said Ritsuka, looking around at the rest of our group for objections. ¡°Right?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± I answered. ¡°No reason to rush off this late at night if it isn¡¯t life or death.¡±

    ¡°Thank goodness!¡± Rika cried.

    ¡°What?¡± snapped Mordred. She pushed herself away from the wall. ¡°Screw that! If you lot aren¡¯t going to get off your asses and go, then I¡¯ll just do it by myself!¡±

    She looked ready to storm off and do just that.

    ¡°No need for that, Sir Mordred,¡± Caster chided, and this made her stop long enough for him to continue, ¡°it¡¯s not about willingness to act, it¡¯s about the realities of the situation. Our Assassin is still out there, remember, and the dark of night is the most advantageous time to strike.¡±

    ¡°So?¡± Mordred blustered. ¡°I¡¯ll just kill ¡®em myself, next time they show up!¡±

    ¡°But it has been a long day,¡± Caster said reasonably. ¡°Why, only a few short hours ago, weren¡¯t they rushing here to see their dying friend healed? Much has happened for them in so little a time, and to push them out the door again on another quest would be to invite Assassin to take advantage, wouldn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Tch.¡±

    Mordred swung back the other way like a pendulum. ¡°Yeah, I guess so.¡±

    ¡°And you are not an endless font of energy yourself,¡± said Caster, peering at her knowingly. ¡°Without a proper Master, you, too, must spend time to rest and restore your energy, so that you are ready when the time comes to confront the enemy. Your eagerness does you credit, but tearing off after every lead the instant it presents itself can cause problems of its own.¡±

    ¡°Alright,¡± said Mordred, annoyed, ¡°alright, already! I get it! Geez! We can go out tomorrow! You happy now?¡±

    Caster smiled. ¡°Yes, in fact.¡±

    ¡°Then it¡¯s settled,¡± I said. I turned to Jekyll. ¡°We¡¯ll start looking into this mysterious book of yours tomorrow morning. For now ¡ª¡±

    Emiya¡¯s voice echoed from the dining room.

    ¡°Dinner!¡±

 Chapter CXXXII: Knight of Treachery

    Chapter CXXXII: Knight of Treachery

    We went to bed almost immediately after the twins, Fran, and Mash finished eating. Conveniently, Jekyll¡¯s building was three stories tall and otherwise unoccupied, so what might ordinarily have been a much tighter squeeze was instead more than enough room to accommodate all of us. Most of the Servants didn¡¯t need sleep, of course, but Mash insisted on being nearby the twins, Fran didn¡¯t want to be on her own, and Mordred ¡ª who had no Master and spent the most time active and fighting ¡ª needed time to rest and recover some of her energy, so somehow or another, we all wound up sprawled out across the parlor of the second floor apartment.

    It was frankly a little ridiculous looking. Looking at all of us, you might have thought it was one, gigantic sleepover party. If you ignored the obvious incongruencies, like Fran¡¯s transformers and Mash¡¯s armor.

    Somehow or another, it all worked out, and despite how prime a target we represented together, no Assassin snuck in during the night and no other Servant materialized to attack us. I was beginning to think that maybe there really wasn¡¯t a sensory aspect to the fog, that the enemy didn¡¯t have any idea we were all here and together. Either that, or they weren¡¯t confident enough in their success to try it.

    Either of those options was good. Given that waves of automata, homunculi, and Helter Skelter didn¡¯t show up to even probe our defenses, I was more inclined to believe it was the former.

    We were woken the next morning by Arash and a sour-faced Emiya to the smell of breakfast, and when we went down, it was to discover that Ren¨¦e had cooked the entire thing ¡ª explaining perfectly Emiya¡¯s less than stellar mood.

    What seemed to offend him more was that she was actually really good at it.

    A spread of a typical English breakfast awaited us in the dining room, with bowls of porridge set out for us, garnished with strawberries and blueberries and seasoned with cinnamon, and strips of bacon, slabs of fish drizzled in a buttery sauce, and all of this finished off with a slice of toasted bread. There was more than enough for each of us, and there was honestly so much to it that I could almost feel the weight I was going to gain just from eating it once.

    Damn if it wasn¡¯t good, though. Even Rika had to stop after the first few bites, stare down at her food with horror, and whisper ¡ª like the very idea of admitting it out loud was an offense to whatever god she might have believed in ¡ª ¡°It¡¯s so good¡­!¡±

    That more than anything else seemed to upset Emiya the most. I guess he¡¯d gotten used to being our personal chef so much that the idea he could be replaced had never entered his mind.

    Ren¨¦e, on the other hand¡­ If there was a way to describe the air about her, despite her perpetually stoic expression, it was like the cat that ate the canary. Smug was the word for it. Self-satisfied. And I guess she had every right to be.

    Once we¡¯d eaten, we wound up with about half an hour to digest our food and check in with Marie and Romani, and right around eight o¡¯clock, we got the news from Arash: the fog was starting to clear out, the way it did every morning. If we were going to go out and investigate the case of the mysterious magical book assaulting random citizens, then there was no better time than now, while we could beat the fog and didn¡¯t have to worry about it killing me.

    We would only have about four hours before we had to rush me back here. If we couldn¡¯t make it in time, then we would just have to find the nearest (hopefully unoccupied) apartment to claim for the day and maybe send Mordred back here with whatever we managed to find while we were out. If things proved urgent enough, the twins and Mash could venture out without me and continue the investigation while I waited.

    Fuck, planning around this fog was a pain in the ass. This Singularity was quickly making its way up the list for the one I hated most.

    With our time so limited ¡ª or mine, at least ¡ª we had to get ready quickly. Fortunately, the twins had long since picked up the skill to dress and ready with speed, courtesy of our previous deployments and long practice. If the Ritsuka and Rika of Fuyuki could see how far they had come in just a few months, they might have fainted of disbelief.

    We also made sure to mark the apartment on our maps, so that we wouldn¡¯t get lost ¡ª and so, in case the fog did pick back up before we could make it back on our own, everyone would still be able to find the place.

    ¡°Just to confirm,¡± I said to Jekyll as we did our last few checks. ¡°We shouldn¡¯t expect to find the automata and homunculi involved in whatever¡¯s going on with this book. They don¡¯t go inside, they strictly stay out in the mist.¡±

    ¡°That is correct,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°Our analysis and observation of their behavior thus far has shown that they avoid entering any of the residences in the city. Indeed, they seem utterly unconcerned with what goes on inside of any building, even this one where we ourselves now sit. They patrol the streets and do little else of note.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not in their programming,¡± Mordred said with a grimace, like it left a bad taste in her mouth. ¡°They just do what their creator made them for and that¡¯s it. Like puppets on strings.¡±

    She seemed to despise the very idea.

    ¡°An¡­apt comparison, Sir Mordred,¡± said Caster.

    ¡°It means they don¡¯t go inside and hurt anyone, though,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°So there is that, at least. It makes things a little easier if the only ones we have to worry about protecting are ourselves.¡±

    Indeed. The fewer bystanders we had to be concerned about, the easier it would be to investigate ¡ª both the Singularity and these incidents with the magic book. If we were particularly fortunate, none of the book¡¯s victims would have any major problems either and the whole thing could be taken care of quickly and easily. That way, we could have enough time to look into what was going on with the Singularity itself.

    ¡°There is, of course, no way for us to currently determine if or in what way this magical tome is connected to Project Demonic Fog,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°It may be that it is entirely unrelated, a third party in this situation with motives, methods, and end goals that exist to us equally as enigmatic as the perpetrators behind the fog itself. If it is at all possible to ascertain that with any degree of certitude, it would be most helpful.¡±

    ¡°Tch,¡± Mordred scoffed. ¡°What, like there¡¯s gonna be someone else hanging around the place causing a mess? Nah, mark my words. This has something to do with that Assassin that¡¯s popping up all over the place.¡±

    Entirely possible. We¡¯d find out for ourselves once we got down to things and had a chance to investigate.

    ¡°But this book hasn¡¯t been killing anyone, has it?¡± Ritsuka wondered aloud. ¡°Right, Doctor Jekyll?¡±

    ¡°Thus far, the victims have only been rendered unconscious,¡± Jekyll answered. ¡°Although they have yet to recover, there have not been any signs that any damage of the more permanent variety has been inflicted, and so I can only say that you are correct, Ritsuka, none of the victims have yet died.¡±

    ¡°Small mercies,¡± said Arash. ¡°Things are bad enough right now as it is, and they¡¯re only going to get worse. The fewer bodies at the end of this all, the better.¡±

    ¡°That don¡¯t mean nothing,¡± Mordred said stubbornly. ¡°That Assassin, they¡¯d do something just like this to lure us in for an ambush.¡±

    If the magical book was related in any way to that Assassin and they were both part of the conspiracy behind this place¡­yes, that was also entirely possible. Especially if one of the conspirators really was a famous author, then the book might be his Noble Phantasm. But ¡ª

    ¡°If it¡¯s a trap, then we¡¯ll spring it,¡± I said. Hopefully, without the fog to make things harder, with enough forewarning we wouldn¡¯t get caught with our pants down. ¡°We¡¯ll find out for sure either way once we get there and start looking around. Is there anything else we need to know, Doctor Jekyll?¡±

    He shook his head. ¡°At the moment, nothing of consequence. You know all that I have to tell you, and I can arm you with nothing more at this time than my hope for your safe return.¡±

    ¡°Heh.¡± Mordred grinned. ¡°Like we¡¯ll need it!¡±

    ¡°Considering the amount of firepower we¡¯ll be walking around with,¡± Emiya said, leaving that thought to hang meaningfully.

    ¡°That book won¡¯t know what hit it!¡± Rika said confidently.

    ¡°Not unless it¡¯s a manga,¡± Ritsuka added slyly, and his sister did the mature thing and stuck her tongue out at him.

    When we were all suited up and ready to go ¡ª including Mordred, who donned a suit of armor that actually did a pretty good job of disguising the fact she was a woman ¡ª our group stepped outside and into the dim morning light. The sky above was cloudy and overcast, and the sun struggled to pierce through the thick cloud cover. The street looked as though a film had been cast over the entire city, leaving the entire place cool and dark as though the sun hadn¡¯t even risen yet.

    That cloud cover was probably the remnants of the fog, bled off from when it let up like this in the mornings. Or maybe it was just London¡¯s infamous gloom. I didn¡¯t really care about the difference when the result was the same.

    It was better than having the entire street covered in mist, at least. I could see further out than three feet in front of my face, for one thing, and the streetlamps actually accomplished their intended purpose, for another. For how long was the question.

    Four hours, give or take. That was how much time we had, and if we wanted to keep everyone together as much as possible, that was when we had to be back here at Jekyll¡¯s apartment.

    ¡°Took your sweet-ass time,¡± Jeanne Alter drawled by way of greeting. ¡°We getting out of here or what?¡±

    ¡°While the roads are clear, yes,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ll need you to stay here, though.¡±

    She whipped her head around to look at me so fast I thought I heard her neck crack. ¡°What? The fuck I am!¡±

    I¡¯d expected a reaction like that.

    ¡°We need a line of communication with Jekyll and Abraham in case we can¡¯t beat the fog back here,¡± I explained my reasoning. ¡°And someone to do the fighting if they get attacked while we¡¯re away.¡±

    ¡°So?¡± she said. She gestured at Arash and Emiya. ¡°Just leave one of those two asswipes here!¡±

    The two of them traded a look. Emiya arched an eyebrow at Arash, who shrugged.

    ¡°You¡¯re the only one we all have a contract with, Jeanne Alter,¡± said Ritsuka, getting to it before I could. Like he¡¯d predicted her response so well that he already had it all prepared. ¡°You¡¯re the only one we can all contact, if we need to. It has to be you.¡±

    ¡°Tch.¡± Jeanne Alter¡¯s lip curled.

    ¡°It¡¯ll be different in the afternoons,¡± I told her. ¡°Then, Emiya will be staying behind and you¡¯ll be going out with everyone.¡±

    ¡°Hold on,¡± said Emiya, ¡°when was this decided?¡±

    My brow furrowed. Shouldn¡¯t the reasoning have been obvious? All of the most immediate problems we¡¯d be facing with logistics had been essentially spelled out to us last night, in big, bold lettering.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash, ¡°because Miss Taylor can¡¯t go outside in the fog, and with it interrupting communications, the only way for us to stay in contact is to use Emiya and Arash as go-betweens.¡±

    ¡°Exactly.¡±

    Emiya sighed. ¡°Well. I guess I can¡¯t argue with that logic. Not unless my Master gives me a countermanding order.¡±

    He slid a glance at Rika, who smiled back at him.

    ¡°I expect a hot meal ready and waiting for me every night when I come home,¡± she said sweetly.

    Emiya¡¯s shoulders sagged, defeated, and he shrugged, shaking his head, as though to say, ¡®what can you do?¡¯

    ¡°See?¡± Ritsuka said to Jeanne Alter. ¡°It¡¯s just for the mornings. And I¡¯m sure there¡¯ll be plenty of things for you to set on fire in the afternoons.¡±

    ¡°Tch.¡± Jeanne Alter scoffed again, rolling her eyes. ¡°Don¡¯t try to sweet talk me, because it won¡¯t work. I¡¯ll stay here and guard this shitty apartment, but only because there probably won¡¯t be anything interesting going on anyway. Burning a stupid magical book would just be boring. It probably won¡¯t even scream.¡±

    She jerked her thumb at the door, where Fran lingered, looking out at us with a furrowed brow.

    ¡°What about her? I hope you¡¯re not expecting me to babysit.¡±

    ¡°Uh,¡± Fran grunted, low and hesitant, now that attention had been brought to her presence. ¡°Uh-uh¡­uhn¡­¡±

    ¡°What, you¡¯re lonely?¡± said Mordred. ¡°Just sit tight and wait. We¡¯ll be right back.¡±

    Fran grimaced.

    ¡°She¡¯s worried,¡± I translated. I didn¡¯t add the more personal part ¡ª that she worried we might not come back, that something bad might happen to the only people who had yet shown her kindness ¡ª out of courtesy.

    ¡°Uhn¡­¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re coming right back after we investigate this magical book thing,¡± Ritsuka reassured her. ¡°And with Arash, Emiya, Mash, and Mordred all here, there¡¯s nothing that can hurt us, so we¡¯ll all be back before you know it.¡±

    ¡°Damn straight!¡± Mordred agreed.

    Fran didn¡¯t seem entirely convinced, but when we turned to leave, she made no move to stop us or join us, she just stayed in the doorway, watching us go. Like she was afraid to let us leave her sight, or we¡¯d vanish into smoke.

    Fortunately for everyone involved, nothing of the sort happened. The fog didn¡¯t suddenly surge back into existence, which put more weight on the idea that the makers couldn¡¯t sense anything through it, and once we¡¯d safely made it a whole block away from the apartment, I let Huginn out of my bag so he could take to the air and keep an eye out for any incoming fog. In the background, I started to gather a meager swarm, as large of one as I dared, with how quickly the situation could turn against us.

    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

    Mordred, of course, led the way, since she knew best where we needed to go. She took point out in front and we all fell into step behind her.

    ¡°I feel kind of bad leaving Fran behind like that,¡± Mash confessed once we were out of earshot.

    ¡°I know what you mean,¡± Ritsuka said. ¡°Doctor Jekyll, Abraham, Ren¨¦e, and Jeanne Alter are all there, but none of them can understand her, and none of them are¡­well¡­¡±

    ¡°Particularly personable?¡± Arash offered.

    Ritsuka shrugged, grimacing.

    ¡°Homunculi aren¡¯t well-known for their people skills,¡± Emiya drawled.

    ¡°You¡¯re just jealous because she¡¯s actually a pretty good cook,¡± said Rika. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, you¡¯re still my house-husband. Your place in my heart is secure.¡±

    He shook his head. ¡°Of course.¡±

    ¡°Even if she managed some kind of black magic and made porridge taste good!¡±

    A complicated expression crossed Emiya¡¯s face, like he wasn¡¯t quite sure what he should say to that or how seriously he should take her. It wouldn¡¯t surprise me to find porridge on his breakfast menu at some point in the future in some kind of attempt to prove he could do the same thing just as well as Ren¨¦e could.

    ¡°We should only be gone for a few hours,¡± I said, and didn¡¯t add the caveat, as long as we can beat the fog back to the apartment. ¡°She¡¯ll be fine.¡±

    ¡°Still,¡± Mash mumbled.

    ¡°Bah! She¡¯s a big girl, stop your worrying!¡± said Mordred. ¡°Focus on the task ahead! We¡¯ve gotta find a goddamned magical book! What kind of nonsense is that? Ain¡¯t nothing I¡¯ve ever seen before, I¡¯ll tell you that!¡±

    Mash¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°Come to think of it, there were a lot of monsters in the Arthurian romances, weren¡¯t there? Did you ever fight any of them, Sir Mordred?¡±

    Mordred¡¯s face broke out into a grin. ¡°Loads! Aw, man, you don¡¯t have any idea, do you, Shieldy? Even with that guy riding sidesaddle, huh? The Knights of the Round Table fought all sorts of nasty critters hanging about in those days! Dragons and giants, too!¡±

    ¡°And lions and tigers and bears?¡± Rika asked. The reference, of course, flew right over Mordred¡¯s head, and she completely ignored Ritsuka¡¯s quiet groan.

    ¡°All sorts!¡± Mordred confirmed, still grinning. ¡°Thick woods, steep mountains, deep caves ¡ª places like that, where mankind never goes? Prime place for monsters and phantasmals to sit their asses down and claw out a space. And on occasion, they¡¯ll come down to some village or town or something and make a mess.¡±

    ¡°Leaving you to handle mopping them up,¡± Emiya concluded.

    ¡°Not like we can leave it to regular townsfolk or simple guardsmen, right?¡± Mordred agreed. ¡°Ordinary humans are just food to stuff like that. If a griffon or a dragon is terrorizing the countryside, who else are you gonna send but one of the Knights of the Round Table? Man, we fought all sorts of crazy shit like that!¡± Her grin broadened. ¡°You ever meet that lunkhead, Gawain, make sure to ask him about the Green Knight. The look on his face is priceless!¡±

    ¡°Green Knight?¡± asked Rika. ¡°What, did he paint himself green or something? Walk around with branches in his hair?¡±

    Mash grimaced. ¡°Yes, Senpai,¡± she said reluctantly, ¡°but also¡­not really¡­¡±

    ¡°Remind me later and I¡¯ll tell you the story,¡± I said to Rika. She gave me a cheeky salute.

    ¡°Roger, roger!¡±

    And now another Prequels meme. As long as she didn¡¯t start complaining about how coarse and rough sand was, I could deal with it.

    God, she really was rubbing off on me, wasn¡¯t she?

    ¡°Like I said,¡± Mordred said. ¡°All sorts of crazy shit lives out in the deep woods and forests, and we killed a whole bunch of ¡®em, back in the day. Oh.¡± Her grin disappeared and her brow furrowed. ¡°And them. Those crazy bastards. The Picts.¡±

    ¡°The Picts?¡± Ritsuka echoed.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Mordred said grimly.

    ¡°I¡¯ve read that we really don¡¯t know much about them, even in our time,¡± said Mash. ¡°Just about the only thing we¡¯re sure of is that they were a tribe in Scotland, once.¡±

    A complicated look crossed Mordred¡¯s face. ¡°They weren¡¯t¡­really a¡­tribe or anything like that, but¡­ How should I put this¡­¡± She worked her jaw back and forth. ¡°To be a tribe, you kinda hafta be human, first, you know? And they were¡­more like¡­¡±

    ¡°Faeries?¡± I offered. Mordred shook her head.

    ¡°Faeries still make sense,¡± she admitted grudgingly. ¡°They¡¯re twisty as fuck and all sorts of bad news, but you still kinda know what you¡¯re working with if you know anything about them. The Picts were like¡­something out of a crazy story. Your era has those movie things, right? With flying disks and little green men and stuff like that?¡±

    All of us turned to her incredulously, because I wasn¡¯t the only one who thought the implication was ridiculous.

    ¡°You¡¯re saying the Picts were aliens?¡± Emiya asked, unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

    Mordred¡¯s face cleared and she nodded. ¡°Yeah! Aliens! That¡¯s a good way to describe them!¡±

    ¡°What, really?¡± said Rika. ¡°Like, honest-to-goodness aliens? Take me to your leader, Earthlings, and all?¡±

    Mordred snorted. ¡°They weren¡¯t nowhere near that nice and polite, but yeah. Like they really didn¡¯t just fucking belong.¡±

    I¡­wasn¡¯t sure how to take that. Ritsuka and Mash didn¡¯t look like they were any better off, and Rika still looked faintly surprised, like she was still processing it and hadn¡¯t quite come to grips with it yet. For once, I didn¡¯t blame her. I¡¯d been introduced to a lot of stuff that had changed how I saw the world since I woke up in Chaldea, but the idea that aliens ¡ª or something like them, at least ¡ª had been on Earth 1500 years before Scion showed up was still unusual.

    Fortunately for me, a convenient distraction decided at that moment to stomp its way through the outer edges of my swarm.

    ¡°Heads up,¡± I said sharply as I turned towards the group lumbering our direction. ¡°More of those automata are on the way.¡±

    Everyone refocused, the Picts forgotten for the moment. Mash¡¯s shield materialized immediately. ¡°Master! Orders?¡±

    ¡°How close?¡± Ritsuka asked me.

    ¡°Far enough away that we could go around them, if we wanted to.¡±

    Although we didn¡¯t really know whether they had some kind of sensors built into them either, did we? It wouldn¡¯t surprise me if they did, as a method of navigating the fog, especially since they didn¡¯t seem to have traditional sensory organs as it was anyway.

    ¡°No,¡± Ritsuka said immediately. ¡°This is the only time anyone has to go outside and find food, right? We can¡¯t let those things hurt them just because it would be easier for us.¡±

    Not to mention it would take us longer to take a detour around them than it would to just bowl through them anyway. It wound up being better for everyone if we just kept going and took them out on our way to Soho.

    ¡°Then we¡¯ll take them out,¡± I agreed.

    We kept going, continuing the same direction and taking the same route we had been before, and as the group of automata came further into my range and touched denser regions of my anemic swarm, I sent Huginn further out to get a more human look at the things. As it turned out, it wasn¡¯t just automata in the group, because interspersed among them were also masses of twisting flesh shaped into vaguely humanoid silhouettes, with large, muscular arms, hulking torsos, and no neck to speak of. They had three, beady little protrusions on what was probably supposed to be the head that might have been eyes, if I was being particularly generous.

    And at the back, lumbering after the rest with hissing hydraulics, was what I could only describe as a robot. Bulky, clunky, nowhere near as elegant as most of Dragon¡¯s works, but undeniably mechanical. Each of them carried what looked like a large meat cleaver.

    Fuck. If the twisted meaty things were the grotesque homunculi, then those were the things everyone was calling Helter Skelter, weren¡¯t they? Ugh, I wished we had a better name for them.

    ¡°They have more of those robots and homunculi with them, too,¡± I warned everyone.

    ¡°Any sign of that Assassin?¡± Emiya asked.

    I spread out my swarm, feeling out the area as best I could, and up above, Huginn cast his gaze about, looking down with a literal bird¡¯s eye view, but no. There were no other mysterious figures skulking about in the area, either following the patrol group we were about to run into or trailing us to wait for a moment of ambush.

    ¡°None.¡±

    ¡°Tch.¡± Mordred scoffed. ¡°Watch that bastard show up halfway through the fight outta fucking nowhere. Slippery sonuvabitch.¡±

    ¡°Someone should keep an eye out, just in case,¡± Ritsuka suggested.

    ¡°Arash?¡±

    Arash nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll handle it.¡±

    Emiya chuckled lowly. ¡°I guess it does make more sense for me to handle the electronic maintenance, so to speak.¡±

    ¡°Because you¡¯re a house-husband?¡± asked Rika. Emiya¡¯s cheek twitched.

    ¡°Something like that,¡± he answered vaguely.

    It wasn¡¯t much longer before we could hear the incoming group, and whatever senses or sensors they had, they seemed to detect us, too, because they sped up almost as soon as the first clunks reached our ears and came right towards us. The slap of meaty feet, the clink of fine porcelain, and the clang of bulky metal clattered across the street, and moments later, they came around a curve in the road and into sight.

    There were twelve, total. Four of each, like their group had been specifically designed just for that number.

    ¡°There they are!¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Go!¡± I barked.

    ¡°You don¡¯t fucking ¡ª¡± Mordred launched herself forwards in a flash of red lightning ¡ª ¡°give me orders!¡±

    Her sword sliced clean through the first automata, cleaving it from shoulder to hip, and it fell to the ground in two pieces, inert.

    The others followed in her wake. Mash set herself in front of us Masters, shield held out defensively, and Emiya leapt towards the group himself, his familiar twin blades forming in his hands. He came down on one of the homunculi, slicing neatly through its flesh with a pair of ugly cuts, but all that seemed to do was make it angry, because it swayed back from the blow and lashed out with a pair of hands that were more spirals of merged tendrils than actual fingers.

    But the fact I had such an easy time following them meant that they weren¡¯t anywhere near as fast or as strong as a Servant, and Emiya dodged out of the way, severing one of the arms at what would have been the elbow and then diving in for another powerful cut at the torso. Nearby, Mordred darted in and dismantled another of the automata. Even if it saw her coming, it was too slow to get out of the way, and it went down just as easily as the first.

    Ironically, it was some of the first enemies in our way since Fuyuki that I would actually have been able to meaningfully damage, and there wasn¡¯t much room for me to actually try. The homunculi were hardier than the automata, but once Emiya figured out what worked on the first one, it was much faster and easier for him to take down the next.

    Mordred? Mordred had it even easier. I guess it only made sense, considering her stats, but she ripped through everything in her way with ease.

    Not much room wasn¡¯t the same as no room, though. I wasn¡¯t entirely sure how much my Gandr would do against something that wasn¡¯t biological, but it wasn¡¯t the only thing in my arsenal, so while Mordred and Emiya tore through the automata and homunculi like paper, I helped along the edges, using my prosthetic¡¯s phantom limb to yank them into more advantageous positions. If either of them noticed that their targets were suddenly off balance and unable to even think of dodging or pulled further into the path of their swords, they gave no indication.

    For how little it was, it felt good. Meaningful. Next time, I would have to test it and see if the homunculi were as vulnerable to my bugs as people were, but without any obvious orifices to shove a swarm into, probably not.

    The last to go down were the robots. The Helter Skelter. They were slower than either the homunculi or the automata, but they made up for it by being hardier. Their outer plating was less like an exoskeleton holding all of their internals together and more like armor, and while it dented and crumpled under Mordred¡¯s strength, Emiya had much less success. While she whaled away at one with her sword and Emiya tried to whittle away at another with his pair, I secreted a platoon of insects into the third and fourth, looking for vulnerabilities.

    There weren¡¯t any. None that I could damage that easily, at any rate, because the wiring and the mechanisms were all metal, and none of my bugs had the jaw strength to bite through something like that on their own. If I got enough in there, I could gum up the joints¡­but with how conservative I had to be about my swarm, it might be a bit of a waste trying to slow down something that was already fairly slow and easy to hit.

    Instead, I had Huginn sweep low, open his beak, and fire off a sizzling round from his mana cannon. I got a front row seat ¡ª two of them, in fact, because my bugs let me judge the impact ¡ª to exactly how effective it was.

    ¡®Not very,¡¯ was the answer. The metal heated up significantly where it hit, but it would take something like two dozen shots for the temperature to reach high enough to start warping the material. The plating was simply too thick.

    Unfortunately, my shot also got its attention, and it broke off from lumbering towards Emiya ¡ª who was still trying to find a good weak spot on his ¡ª and Mordred ¡ª who had finished off the first one and was working through her second ¡ª to head towards us.

    ¡°I think you got its attention, Senpai!¡± Rika said.

    ¡°Mash!¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Right!¡±

    Mash leapt towards it, and they met in the middle with a clang as she brought the full weight of her shield down upon its body. It was only half as effective as one of Mordred¡¯s blows, however, and she succeeded in leaving only a large dent behind in its armor. It struck out at her in retaliation, swinging around a large cleaver that looked half its size, and Mash weathered the blow with the front of her shield.

    For however sturdy they were, at least the Helter Skelter didn¡¯t seem anywhere near as physically strong, even with as much weight as they were carrying around. Mash didn¡¯t even flinch.

    Huginn swooped back in and fired off another shot, distracting it, and it turned its head towards him long enough for Mash to take advantage of its inattention and land another blow with her shield. She targeted one of the joints, attempting to wedge the edge of her shield in between the head and the torso, probably trying to separate them. Even if the central processor was in the torso instead of the head, the head was where the cameras serving as its eyes were set. It was a good strategy.

    Unfortunately, the gaps in the Helter Skelter¡¯s body were relatively tiny. Whoever had built them had designed them with overlapping plates, and while that made their movements stiff and stilted, it gave them enough protection that targeting the weak spots was hard for something that wasn¡¯t thin and sharp, like a blade.

    Fortunately, I happened to have the solution to that problem.

    I took off from the group, racing towards where Mash and the Helter Skelter were, and my free hand reached down to grasp the hilt of my Last Resort as I pulled it from its sheath.

    ¡°Senpai!¡± Rika cried after me. ¡°Not again!¡±

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka called. ¡°Protect her!¡±

    ¡°Yes, Master!¡±

    Mash backed away from attacking and took a more defensive posture, and the Helter Skelter, primitive as it was, took that as a cue to go on the attack. It didn¡¯t seem to even notice me as it lifted its enormous arm again and took another swing at Mash, who blocked it again with her shield effortlessly.

    Even if she hadn¡¯t had its attention, I had enough bugs inside of its body to know exactly how it was moving and how it was going to move. I could feel the mechanisms, the hydraulics compressing and decompressing, the gears grinding and churning. If my bugs had let me dodge around other capes just by having them sit on top of my enemy¡¯s limbs, then this was the equivalent of having bugs inside their muscles.

    The Helter Skelter noticed me at the last second. It broke off attacking Mash to turn to me, but it was child¡¯s play to duck and weave around its clumsy attempt at a chop, and I slid behind it, flipped my grip on my knife, and plunged the tip in the small space between the head and chest. On a human, it would have been straight through the jugular vein. A flick of a switch turned on the nanothorns, and with a low hiss, they ate through the metal and the mechanisms like they were butter.

    The Helter Skelter flailed. It swung its arm and cleaver around in an attempt to knock me off, but I saw it coming a mile away and jerked my knife free to avoid it, carving a smooth, nasty gash through it and severing several of the mechanisms controlling that same arm simultaneously. The flailing arm locked up, and the shoulder loosened, leaving it to fall limply and uselessly towards the ground. It swayed like a giant pendulum.

    ¡°Now, Mash!¡± I said as I backed away.

    Mash didn¡¯t miss her cue, and with a rising shout, she slammed the edge of her shield into the gash I¡¯d created. The Helter Skelter teetered over and then fell backwards onto the stone street with a thunderous thud. Mash followed it, putting all her weight and strength behind her shield until the groaning metal gave way and its head popped off and rolled away.

    The body still moved. The remaining arm waved about impotently, smacking the ground and doing nothing except scuffing the stonework. The legs wagged about, like it was trying and failing to climb back to its feet.

    Another pass of my Last Resort severed the mechanisms controlling the other shoulder, and that fell impotently onto the road, too, leaving me free and clear to kneel down, shove my knife deep into the internals, and keep going until I hit the vital processor at the center of its chest. The instant the nanothorns chewed threw that, the whole thing locked up and stopped moving.

    Whoever had made these things wasn¡¯t as elegant as Dragon and hadn¡¯t packed anywhere near as much hardware into them. They weren¡¯t even on the same level as her lowest tech suits. But I could at least give them credit for having figured out that it was better to place the central control unit for a robot in its chest instead of its head. The head was just too obvious a target.

    Humans were like that. We tended to think of things that looked anything like us as being like us. We saw faces in random rock formations and patterns in the snow. Putting the central control of a robot in its head was the thing that made the most sense to people, so putting it in the chest, which could be better protected and wasn¡¯t as obvious, was the smarter choice.

    With the Helter Skelter defeated and disabled, I stood and stepped back, using the bugs still inside it to keep searching through the internals. Looking for other weak points. This thing had to run on some kind of engine or battery or something, so if that was easier to target than its ¡°brain,¡± it would be easier to take down in the future.

    ¡®Easier.¡¯ As though that hadn¡¯t been easy enough as it was. The automata were a bit too fast and nimble to try that on, and the homunculi were a bit too dangerous until I could figure out how to distract them with my bugs, but the Helter Skelter? I could probably have taken it out on my own. Mash just removed any difficulty there had been to it.

    Any sign of the Assassin? I asked Arash.

    None, he answered. If they¡¯re hanging around somewhere, they¡¯re doing too good a job staying hidden. It doesn¡¯t look like they¡¯re going to ambush us.

    Or maybe they were just cautious of taking on four Servants at once, especially without a clear shot at any of the Masters. Given that I couldn¡¯t find anyone out of the ordinary with my swarm, however? I was willing to bet they weren¡¯t even here.

    At that moment, the final Helter Skelter went down with a weighty thud, shaking the stonework beneath my feet, and Mash reported, ¡°E-enemy combatants defeated, Master!¡±

    ¡°Good job, Mash!¡± Ritsuka called over to her.

    She smiled. ¡°Thank you, Senpai!¡±

    ¡°Good job?¡± Mordred echoed. She whirled about, snarling. ¡°You fucking call that a good job?¡±

    Mash blinked, bewildered. ¡°I-I¡¯m sorry?¡±

    Mordred swung her sword around, pointing the tip at Mash, and I stepped back cautiously, watching the scene unfold as my mind raced through where this could be going.

    There¡¯d been talk during my lessons about how Servants couldn¡¯t truly escape the destiny of the Heroic Spirits that they were formed from, but¡­ Did that mean that Mordred would be so trapped by her own legend that she couldn¡¯t help turning on her allies?

    ¡°That,¡± said Mordred, voice barely more than a growl, ¡°that just makes it worse! You two, you¡¯re similar enough that it pisses me the fuck off, but even with that bastard inside of you, this is the best you¡¯ve got?¡±

    Ritsuka, opposite to me, came closer, as though to bolster Mash with his presence. Rika wasn¡¯t far behind him, and she was watching the whole thing like I was, eyes wide and smile completely gone. Behind Mordred, Emiya was tensed up, too, fingers curled tight around his pair of swords.

    ¡°Is something wrong?¡± Ritsuka asked carefully.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± said Mordred. ¡°That was pathetic. Pathetic! Even with just that shield, that bastard would¡¯ve taken those things out like it was nothing, and Mash couldn¡¯t even handle one on her own! You telling me you don¡¯t see anything wrong with that?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Mash said miserably. ¡°The Servant who entrusted these powers to me, he didn¡¯t teach me anything about how to use them or even tell me his true name.¡±

    Mordred waved that off with a scoff. ¡°Of course he didn¡¯t! Handing you the answers just stunts your growth! But you said you¡¯ve already gone through four of these Singularities, right? You should be stronger than this by now!¡±

    ¡°Hey, she¡¯s fought plenty of super strong stuff!¡± Rika said indignantly. ¡°Like giant tentacle monsters! Especially the giant tentacle monsters! She¡¯s plenty strong!¡±

    ¡°Plenty strong ain¡¯t gonna cut it!¡± said Mordred. ¡°You don¡¯t even know how to properly use that Noble Phantasm yet, do you? You can¡¯t just react to shit that comes your way, you have to be one step ahead of both yourself and your enemy at all times!¡±

    A flash of red lightning. A blur of motion and sound as the street cracked and splintered. Mordred vanished from her spot, suddenly in front of Mash, sword swinging, and Mash only barely reacted in time to parry the blow and send that sword off course.

    Paradoxically, Mordred grinned. ¡°Nice! That¡¯s a little more like it, Shieldy!¡±

    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Ritsuka demanded. ¡°Mordred!¡±

    ¡°Stay right there, Ritsuka!¡± barked Mordred. ¡°You, too, all of the rest of you! This is between me and Mash, so don¡¯t you dare interfere!¡±

    My eyes narrowed. Arash?

    Yeah? he replied.

    You said it¡¯s something she has to figure out on her own, right? I asked him.

    ¡­Yeah, he answered, almost reluctantly. The way she said it was a little blunt, but Mordred¡¯s point isn¡¯t wrong. Mash won¡¯t reach her full potential if the answers are just handed to her.

    But it looked like I wasn¡¯t the only one who was impatient about the issue. It was just that the person forcing the issue happened to be someone who knew Galahad better than I did, and was therefore more qualified to handle it than me.

    More qualified. Mordred, the knight who betrayed King Arthur and Camelot and set it all on the path to destruction. As weird as it sounded, it was the truth.

    ¡°Sir Mordred¡­¡± Mash muttered, brow furrowed and mouth set in a grim line.

    Keep a close eye on things, I decided. We¡¯ll only intervene if it looks like she¡¯s in real danger.

    Got it, Arash confirmed.

    Fuck, if it didn¡¯t make me feel like a complete bitch, though.

    ¡°Come on,¡± said Mordred. ¡°Put up that shield, Mash. I¡¯m gonna batter it to pieces until you learn exactly how you should be using it!¡±

    She grinned. A savage thing of hunger and teeth, like a lion about to pounce on a gazelle and rip it apart.

    ¡°By the time I¡¯m done with you, even that bastard will have to look at you and nod his goddamn head in approval!¡±

 Chapter CXXXIII: Fairy Tale Ending

    Chapter CXXXIII: Fairy Tale Ending

    I didn¡¯t really like the idea of just letting Mordred whale on Mash until she was satisfied that she¡¯d accomplished whatever her actual goal was. Forgetting the matter of trust ¡ª and it wasn¡¯t an insignificant issue, even if Mordred hadn¡¯t really given us a reason to mistrust her before this ¡ª it felt a little too much like bullying. Like I was standing back and letting Mordred pick on Mash because Mash didn¡¯t measure up to the Heroic Spirit living rent free inside her body, and sitting on the sidelines refusing to do something was a thousand times worse than sitting on the sidelines unable to do anything.

    There were a few things that made it easier, though. Bearable. One, the fact that we were halfway through clearing these Singularities and Mash still didn¡¯t have much more than a basic grasp of the Heroic Spirit inside of her. From her words, Mordred seemed intent on addressing that. Two, neither one of them was taking this one-hundred percent seriously. The fact that I could still follow the action spoke to that more than anything else.

    It wasn¡¯t to say that Mash wasn¡¯t trying her best and Mordred wasn¡¯t pushing her. Both of those things were happening. But they weren¡¯t moving as fast as I knew Mordred at least could and no one was going for killing blows with any real intent to harm.

    If I forgot about how this had started and what Mordred had said beforehand, then it would have looked like a sparring match. Or maybe a lesson.

    The only trouble with that was that I didn¡¯t know what would mean the lesson was over. Was Mordred just waiting for something only she could see, or was she waiting for Mash to land a clean hit? First blood, as it were?

    Beside me, Arash remained calm and stoic. He hadn¡¯t yet seen anything that would require him to jump into the fight. In the back, watching just as intently, Emiya clutched to his twin swords, eyes wide open and unblinking. I didn¡¯t know if he had come to the same conclusion on his own, or if Rika had given him silent orders not to intervene, but the fact that she wasn¡¯t screaming at him to get off his ass and do something said that, at the very least, he¡¯d given her a speech about why this needed to happen.

    They broke apart, and the fight entered a brief lull. Mordred grinned, still raring to go, and Mash stood opposite her, chest heaving.

    ¡°Come on!¡± Mordred jeered. ¡°You can do better than that! That asshole has just been sitting around doing nothing, hasn¡¯t he? Get him up and put him to work already!¡±

    Mash said nothing, staring back with brow furrowed and mouth drawn into a tight line.

    ¡°Or maybe¡­¡± Mordred¡¯s eyes wandered over to Ritsuka. ¡°Ya need a bit of motivation, huh?¡±

    Red lightning crackled over her limbs, and beside me, Arash tensed, getting ready to intervene ¡ª Mordred appeared to teleport, crossing the distance in what looked like a single step, sword raised to deliver an overhand chop. Ritsuka gasped, throwing himself out of the way just a fraction of a second too slow.

    ¡°What ¡ª¡± Emiya barked, jerking into motion himself.

    ¡°Master!¡±

    But Mash beat everyone there, body aglow with power as she put everything she had into a tackle that slammed into Mordred head on. Mordred was thrown away, tumbling down the road with a clatter and bending the post of the streetlight that stopped her almost a full ninety degrees.

    Emiya descended on her immediately.

    ¡°¡ª the hell are you doing?¡±

    He pinned her, foot pressing down on her breastplate, and he rested the edges of his blades threateningly against her throat.

    ¡°You lunatic!¡±

    Rika and I were the only ones who didn¡¯t panic. Maybe because we¡¯d both seen this tactic before, way back when, when C¨²chulainn used his Noble Phantasm to force Mash into using hers, as incomplete as it was. Targeting Ritsuka was the only thing that had worked back then ¡ª and frustratingly, it seemed to be the only thing that still worked now.

    ¡°Master!¡±

    The instant Mordred was out of the way, Mash turned back to Ritsuka, worried, doing her best to keep both him and Mordred within her field of view.

    ¡°Are you okay, Senpai?¡±

    ¡°That,¡± Ritsuka groused as he picked himself back up, ¡°wasn¡¯t any more fun the second time than it was the first.¡±

    ¡°Second?¡± Arash and Emiya echoed simultaneously.

    Over on the ground, Mordred burst out laughing. ¡°Knew that would do the trick! Geez, Mash, you sure made me work for that one, didn¡¯t you?¡±

    Emiya¡¯s brow furrowed, and he looked between the two of them for a second or two as he put the pieces together. Then he shook his head, heaved out a disgusted sigh, and pushed himself back and off of Mordred¡¯s body. Mordred climbed to her feet as though nothing had happened. She rolled her shoulders.

    ¡°Back in Fuyuki, the Caster we teamed up with, C¨²chulainn, he tried something similar, to similar effect,¡± I explained for the benefit of Emiya and Arash.

    ¡°Fuck,¡± Mordred said sourly. ¡°You mean I wasn¡¯t the first to have an idea like that? Man, that blows. Some other fucker stole my idea!¡±

    ¡°At least you didn¡¯t use your Noble Phantasm,¡± Rika said blithely. ¡°I still have flashbacks to Cu¡¯s giant, burning manwood.¡±

    I grimaced and Ritsuka groaned. ¡°If you were going to try and help, couldn¡¯t you have done it during the fight, in an actually helpful way?¡± he asked her.

    ¡°I mean, this was a shounen power up sequence,¡± Rika reasoned. Like it was obvious. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to distract anyone and interrupt the power of narrative mumbo-jumbo. And hey!¡± She gestured at Mash. ¡°It worked, didn¡¯t it?¡±

    Putting aside the questionable phrasing, it actually had. Not just as some internal thing, like Mash had unlocked a font of knowledge and skill she hadn¡¯t had before, but externally, because she actually had more armor on, now. At her wrists and knees, and her chestplate actually covered her stomach now instead of leaving a glaring spot open. Some of the holes had been filled in.

    It still wasn¡¯t a full set, not like Mordred¡¯s. It didn¡¯t cover anywhere near as much of her body as I thought it should. But it was more than she¡¯d had five minutes ago, and that was¡­something.

    Had Mordred known this was going to happen?

    ¡°Oh.¡± Mash looked down at herself, twisting and turning so she could check her back, too. ¡°I¡­suppose it did, didn¡¯t it?¡±

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°What the hell is going on?¡± Marie demanded immediately. ¡°Mordred! Just what did you think you were doing to Mash!¡±

    ¡°Oof! Don¡¯t glare at me like that!¡± Mordred said, head ducked and grinning sheepishly. ¡°Yeah, I know, I went a little overboard! Geez! I¡¯m sorry, okay? I just didn¡¯t have any better ideas!¡±

    ¡°Not attacking Mash would have been a better one!¡± Marie rebuked her. ¡°Or targeting Ritsuka either!¡±

    ¡°Hey, hey, it was a mock fight!¡± Mordred said defensively. ¡°No one was ever in any real danger, and Mash knew it, too! Right, Mash?¡±

    Mash sighed. ¡°For the most part.¡± And then, she added sternly, ¡°B-but going after Senpai, I really thought you meant it! You scared me!¡±

    ¡°Ah, geez,¡± said Mordred. ¡°I wasn¡¯t gonna actually hurt him that bad. Just a broken bone or two, you know?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not good either!¡± Marie and Mash said together in stereo.

    ¡°Alright!¡± said Mordred. ¡°Alright! I¡¯m sorry! Stop yelling at me, will you?¡±

    ¡°Director,¡± I said diplomatically, and Marie¡¯s attention turned my way. ¡°Considering the circumstances, I think we can overlook this incident.¡± I turned to Mordred and pinned her with a hard stare. ¡°On the understanding that it doesn¡¯t happen a second time.¡±

    Mordred scoffed. ¡°What, like I¡¯m gonna make a promise like that? As long as Shieldy here doesn¡¯t backslide or start moping, I won¡¯t need to kick her ass into gear again. Got that, Mash?¡± she added in Mash¡¯s direction.

    ¡°O-of course!¡± Mash agreed immediately.

    Marie scowled thunderously, but since it was me who said so, she deferred to my judgment. ¡°Fine. Just this once, I¡¯m going to overlook it.¡± Her glare could have frozen a steak. ¡°But if it happens again, don¡¯t hesitate to reprimand her however you have to! We¡¯re not so desperate for allies that we can afford to make allowances for an unreliable one!¡±

    ¡°Oof!¡± Mordred said, clutching her gut with one hand. ¡°Man, you sure don¡¯t pull your punches, do you, Director Lady? If you were here in person, I might have to actually challenge you to a duel!¡±

    ¡°L-let¡¯s avoid those!¡± Romani said from behind Marie. He leaned over her so he could get his face into view, something that Marie didn¡¯t look particularly happy about. ¡°After all, we¡¯re all allies here, aren¡¯t we? A-and it¡¯s not like that, uh, mock fight didn¡¯t have any results! It¡¯s actually pretty incredible, when you look at it!¡±

    ¡°It is?¡± Mash and Ritsuka both said.

    ¡°What kinda gains are we looking at here, Doc?¡± asked Rika.

    ¡°For starters, the quality of her Saint Graph has doubled,¡± Romani answered, and everyone with the exception of Mordred looked at him with surprise. That little mock fight had done that much for her?

    ¡°Really?¡± asked Mash. ¡°I suppose I do feel a lot stronger than I did before.¡±

    ¡°Mash went Super Saiyan!¡± Rika announced ¡ª to groans from Emiya and her brother and a curious look from Arash, who was just as clueless as I was.

    Mash tilted her head quizzically. ¡°Super Saiyan?¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡± Romani nodded. ¡°Her magical energy output has increased, too, and her parameters have all been adjusted upwards. Not a full rank-up across the board, but pretty close, and two of her skills have increased in potency as well. Man, Da Vinci is going to have a total field day with this data!¡±

    If we could expect increases like that with any consistency, then I would have been happy to have everyone go around having mock fights all over the place. That was a big change for such a little fight.

    ¡°Wow,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°So it actually did work that well, huh? I guess Mordred knows what she¡¯s doing, after all.¡±

    Mordred huffed. ¡°Of course I do! I¡¯m a Knight of the Round Table, you know!¡±

    ¡°But I still don¡¯t know the true name or real Noble Phantasm of the Heroic Spirit inside of me,¡± said Mash.

    ¡°Course not,¡± said Mordred as though it should have been obvious. ¡°And even if you did, that bastard isn¡¯t one to just hand his full power over. You¡¯ve still got a long way to go before he¡¯ll be convinced you earned it, you¡¯re just a lot closer now than you were before.¡±

    Because she stood up to Mordred and protected Ritsuka? I¡­wasn¡¯t sure how any of that connected to Mash proving herself to the guy riding around in her head, but then, I didn¡¯t know what sort of metric he was judging her by to begin with.

    ¡°I¡­suppose this fiasco wasn¡¯t a total waste of everyone¡¯s time and energy,¡± Marie admitted grudgingly. She might have been more comfortable getting her teeth pulled. ¡°Still!¡±

    ¡°I got it the first time,¡± Mordred said, sounding more annoyed now. ¡°You keep harping on it, and you¡¯re gonna piss me off.¡±

    Unfortunately, this seemed like a situation unique to Mash, and a one-off at that. And the more time we spent doing that, the less time we had to get to Soho, investigate the magical book, and get back to Jekyll¡¯s apartment.

    ¡°Was there anything else you needed, Director?¡± I asked her.

    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    She frowned, but seemed to take the hint. ¡°Not at this time. Continue your investigation. And remember, even if we can¡¯t contact you through the fog, we can still monitor your movements and your condition without any trouble. We¡¯ll know if anything happens!¡±

    ¡°Right!¡± Mash and Ritsuka nodded.

    Rika snapped off a salute. ¡°Roger that, Boss Lady!¡±

    The connection cut and the hologram winked out.

    ¡°So?¡± said Mordred as soon as Marie was gone. ¡°How are you feeling, Mash? That little tiff knock something loose, or is that asshole still being stingy? That¡¯s what all of that shit they were just peddling means, right?¡±

    Mash sighed. ¡°Yes, it did help. It¡¯s¡­hard to describe, but¡­ It¡¯s almost like¡­¡± She smiled. ¡°A shackle on my heart was removed. Thank you, Sir Mordred.¡±

    ¡°Ah, shut up!¡± said Mordred. ¡°It was just pissing me right the fuck off, that was all, you calling yourself a Demi-Servant and going around like that! ¡®S long as you¡¯re good now, let¡¯s just move on, yeah?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said before anyone else could cut in and drag things out longer. Emiya in particular looked like there was something on his tongue that he was trying his hardest not to say. ¡°We have a little over three hours to reach Soho, find out what¡¯s going on with this magic book, and get back to Jekyll¡¯s apartment. Sir Mordred, since you know the way best¡­¡±

    She waved it off. ¡°Yeah, yeah, I know. Let¡¯s go see what all of the hubbub about this magical book is about, so we can get back to fixing this whole mess.¡±

    And so we did. With Mordred in front, we made our way towards Soho, walking through the streets of London.

    It was tempting to pull what we had in Orl¨¦ans and have our Servants pick us up and carry us, or maybe call up A¨ªfe and have her take us there in her chariot, but the latter was out immediately because of the lack of room. It might have been possible with Mordred in spirit form, but she couldn¡¯t exactly give us directions like that without a contract, and fitting five of us into that one chariot would be a tight squeeze.

    The instant this whole magic book thing was resolved and we had a minute to relax a little bit, I was going to push the issue of at least a temporary contract with Mordred and Caster. It had screwed us over one too many times before.

    As for the former, that had its own problems. For one, it didn¡¯t seem anywhere near as straight a shot here as it did there. City streets could follow some fairly neat lines, but they could also be labyrinthine when you weren¡¯t familiar with them, and the only one here who had any real idea where we were going was Mordred. For another, those twisty turns would also make it supremely uncomfortable to take them at speed, and no one wanted us Masters losing our breakfast from the turbulence.

    At least this wasn¡¯t like Orl¨¦ans or Septem. Walking was still ¡°the long way,¡± but it wasn¡¯t hours, days, or weeks of walking, and that made it easier and less of a problem.

    We did run into another patrol group on our way there, but they were taken care of just as easily as we did the first group and dispatched quickly. They weren¡¯t even all that much of a speed bump on the metaphorical road, and they were more annoying to have to step over their remains than they were actually fighting them.

    There was the question of if they reported in or if the enemy would notice their absence, but I wasn¡¯t sure they had the intelligence for the former or that they were important enough for the latter. To have made this many in just a few days ¡ª provided they hadn¡¯t had weeks or months to set up the preparations and only set them in motion recently ¡ª they had to have some method of mass production, whatever it was.

    I suppose that was fitting for the Industrial Revolution. Annoying, but fitting.

    Our arrival in the Soho area happened without any fanfare to a section of the city that looked much like the rest of it. If it wasn¡¯t for the people I could see huddled in their apartments with my bugs, the whole place would have seemed abandoned, like a ghost town.

    ¡°Well, here we are,¡± said Mordred. ¡°This is Soho. Where do we wanna look first?¡±

    A good question.

    ¡°Did you find anything strange on your way to Frankenstein¡¯s mansion yesterday?¡± I asked.

    Emiya huffed. ¡°If only it were that easy.¡±

    ¡°We took a different route to the mansion, and there wasn¡¯t anything strange until we got there and fought Mephistopheles,¡± Ritsuka answered. ¡°Plus, we don¡¯t know when exactly this magical tome appeared, right? So we might have been on our way back when it started attacking people.¡±

    Both of those were good points. It would have been only too convenient if we could have crossed out the route they took to Frankenstein¡¯s mansion as already having been investigated, but without knowing the exact time and place of the first case ¡ª or even the first reported case ¡ª that was unfortunately too much to ask for.

    My bugs would make looking around a little easier, but if this magical book returned to being an ordinary book when it wasn¡¯t attacking people, then I probably wouldn¡¯t be able to tell it apart from any other book. The only thing that might give it away would be its size.

    A small child? Most books weren¡¯t anywhere near that big. But ¡°most¡± wasn¡¯t ¡°none.¡± I¡¯d keep an eye out as best I could as we went forward.

    ¡°Well, Doctor Jekyll said that he heard about this thing from one of his collaborators, right?¡± Rika suggested. ¡°Maybe we should check in with him, then. Or her. They¡¯re supposed to be in an antique bookstore somewhere around here, aren¡¯t they?¡±

    ¡°No nickname for Jekyll?¡± Emiya teased.

    ¡°It¡¯s so hard!¡± she complained melodramatically. ¡°I can¡¯t come up with any good ones! Two-Face is just mean, and Glasses is too generic! It needs to be zippy and witty and nothing I think of works!¡±

    ¡°A whole new take on first world problems,¡± Ritsuka joked. Rika stuck her tongue out at him.

    It was as good a suggestion as any. Without a ¡°scene of the crime¡± to check out and a trail to otherwise follow, the next best thing, as my investigative training with the Wards told me, was to talk to the witnesses or informants who originally reached out. In this case, Jekyll¡¯s collaborator. I wasn¡¯t going to hold my breath, but he should at least be able to tell us a little more about what was going on.

    ¡°A good idea, Rika,¡± I said, and Rika¡¯s face broke out into a smile at the compliment. ¡°Let¡¯s talk to this collaborator and see what he has to say about this magical book.¡±

    So we set off to find this antique bookstore, and as we walked, I explored as much of the surrounding buildings as I could without spooking anyone inside them. A lot of them were mostly vacant, it turned out, because they were apartments sat atop businesses, so the bottom floor was a bakery or a tailor or a restaurant or a bar ¡ª a pub, as the British called it.

    These people, I think, were the best off out of everyone in the city. They had better access to food, and although it would hurt their business in the long run, the long run shouldn¡¯t matter with us there to fix the Singularity.

    I came across several victims in the area, or what I assumed were victims. They were still and unresponsive, but when I had a few bugs cautiously investigate, I couldn¡¯t find any obvious wounds or injuries. It was like they¡¯d simply fallen asleep and wouldn¡¯t wake up. Like something out of a fairy tale.

    She will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a sleep like death. Only it wasn¡¯t Sleeping Beauty, but something else entirely.

    A thought occurred to me, and I paused in my stride only a moment before continuing on. Arash glanced at me, but no one else seemed to notice.

    Charles Perrault wrote the original fairy tale we knew as Sleeping Beauty, one of many he penned. He didn¡¯t come up with it, because there had been several traditions using the same basic framework, but his combined version, the one the Brothers Grimm later used ¡ª much like Wagner¡¯s Der Ring des Nibelungen ¡ª was the one best remembered and the version Disney based the movie on. I wasn¡¯t sure that was enough on its own, but¡­

    P, B, and M. And I¡¯d said before that one of our mystery culprits could very well be an author famous for writing fantasy. Charles Perrault would definitely qualify. A Noble Phantasm that enacted scenes from the fairy tales he wrote would be all too fitting for this situation.

    Something wrong? Arash asked me suddenly.

    My lips drew tight. A hunch. I might know who the Heroic Spirit behind this magic book is.

    He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye again. Oh?

    Keep your eyes peeled for fairy tale creatures, I told him. If I¡¯m right, then the book is just a tool for summoning them, and the man controlling it might not be anywhere near here.

    The question then would be whether he was actually controlling it at all or if his Noble Phantasm¡¯s whimsical nature would give it some degree of independence. One way or the other, it was likely we¡¯d have to find out firsthand.

    And the others? Arash asked.

    If he knows we¡¯re onto him, we might spook him, I reasoned. If we can secure the bookstore, then we can discuss it there.

    He gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.

    Our second day, and we might already be confronting one of the three masterminds behind this thing. Ever since we met A¨ªfe in Septem, things had started moving much faster than they had in Orl¨¦ans, but this would be even faster than usual.

    It didn¡¯t take too long to reach the bookstore, and from the outside, it looked about as abandoned as the rest of the city did. The windows were shuttered and the door was shut, but that didn¡¯t stop me from seeing into the rooms within using my swarm. Also like much of Soho, the place was mostly vacant, and there were only two people inside. One was an elderly man sleeping peacefully in the apartment on the second floor, and down on the ground floor ¡ª

    My brow furrowed. A kid? Locked up in a bookstore?

    As Huginn alighted along the rooftop across the street, Mordred wasted no time in pushing the door open and charging inside like she owned the place.

    ¡°Yo!¡± she shouted into the dark building. ¡°We¡¯re looking for someone working with a guy named Doc Jekyll! Anyone in here know anything about that?¡±

    ¡°Finally.¡±

    The kid I¡¯d noticed a minute ago hopped down off of a chair that was too tall for him, tucking a book that must have been half his size under one scrawny arm. He looked maybe ten years old, if that.

    ¡°You idiots sure took your time getting here, didn¡¯t you? I was getting sick of waiting around for you to show up. I was so bored I even read an absolutely atrocious novel series, and let me tell you, the author deserved to be tarred and feathered. That plot was a crime against humanity.¡±

    But the voice that came out of his mouth was the smoothest baritone I¡¯d ever heard. He could have read the phonebook and had women swooning.

    ¡°Holy cow,¡± said Rika, eyes wide. ¡°He¡¯s pouring honey in my ears, but all my eyes see is jailbait!¡±

    ¡°What?¡± said Mordred, confused. ¡°Hey, brat, you¡¯re not the only one here, are you? Don¡¯t tell me that you¡¯re the collaborator!¡±

    ¡°In point of fact, I am not,¡± said the boy. This was one of the rare times I was going to agree with Rika, because the incongruity of such a deep voice coming out of an actual child was off-putting. ¡°The only one here, that is. The elderly shopowner is asleep in the apartment above us ¡ª one of the victims of the magical tome that I¡¯m sure Jekyll must have told you about.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash kindly. ¡°Is he your grandfather? Don¡¯t worry, we¡¯ll find out how to save him.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no relation,¡± the boy denied immediately. ¡°He was just kind enough to give me a place to stay while I worked. I¡¯ve no more attachment to him than that debt of gratitude. That¡¯s all.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t tell me,¡± Emiya said. ¡°You¡¯re the collaborator, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± said the boy. ¡°I¡¯m one of Jekyll¡¯s collaborators, and I was the one who alerted him to the situation occurring here in Soho. Considering the circumstances, you sorry lot must be the rescue squad he sent. What a motley crew you are.¡±

    He adjusted his thickly rimmed glasses with one tiny finger, and it only served to make him look even younger.

    ¡°Although I suppose four Knight classes make for quite the cavalry,¡± he allowed, and it took some effort to keep the grimace off of my face. Was that pun intentional? ¡°I was expecting that Caster to come along, though. Someone like him would have an easier time seeing through the circumstances, such as they are.¡±

    He didn¡¯t really have the presence of one, but¡­

    ¡°You¡¯re a Servant, too.¡±

    A ripple of surprise washed over the rest of the group. The only one who didn¡¯t look at all surprised was Arash.

    ¡°Wait, really?¡± said Rika.

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± the boy said again. He smirked at me. ¡°You have a sharp intuition, don¡¯t you, Miss?¡±

    ¡°But I can¡¯t sense him at all!¡± Mash protested. ¡°Even though he¡¯s right in front of me, I can¡¯t tell that he¡¯s a Servant!¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± Mordred said, eyeing him suspiciously. ¡°You¡¯re not another Assassin, are you?¡±

    An Assassin that revealed himself to us when I was the only one who even knew he was there?

    ¡°Don¡¯t be absurd,¡± said the boy. ¡°Technically, I¡¯m a Caster, but I¡¯m not one of those mage types that throws around magic spells. The reason why you can¡¯t sense my presence is because I have no combat aptitude at all. I¡¯m just an author. The only thing I¡¯m good for is writing a book.¡±

    So I was right. Shakespeare set the precedent, but there was nothing to say that other authors couldn¡¯t be Caster class Servants, too. I wasn¡¯t sure it really fit, considering they didn¡¯t seem to have much if any magical aptitude, but I wasn¡¯t sure what other class they would fit into either. Shakespeare had been quite clear that the last place he wanted to be was the battlefield.

    ¡°Just like Shakespeare,¡± Ritsuka murmured.

    ¡°So there are other authors summoned in the Caster class,¡± Mash said thoughtfully. ¡°Um, if it¡¯s not too rude of me to ask, could you tell us your true name?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not like it puts me at a disadvantage to tell you,¡± the boy said sensibly. ¡°If you got it in your head to kill me, the only thing I could do is run away. It¡¯s the same reason why I haven¡¯t tried to deal with this magical tome myself. So ¡ª yes. My name is Andersen. Hans Christian Andersen. If you want to know anything else, I suggest reading one of my books.¡±

    Mash gasped. ¡°Oh! H-Hans Christian Andersen, one of the most famous fairy tale authors in the world! You wrote stories like The Little Mermaid and The Little Match Girl!¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯ve heard of me, after all,¡± the boy ¡ª Andersen ¡ª said with a nod. ¡°If you¡¯re going to ask for an autograph, I¡¯ll save you the time and tell you to come back later.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash, ¡°um, n-no, I wasn¡¯t¡­ I mean, I¡¯ve read a fair few fairy tales, yes, b-but I wouldn¡¯t say they were my favorite thing to read¡­¡±

    Andersen didn¡¯t seem particularly bothered by this. ¡°Just as well. We have business to deal with, don¡¯t we?¡±

    We did.

    ¡°The magical tome?¡± I suggested.

    ¡°Right,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°We were hoping you could tell us more about what¡¯s going on?¡±

    ¡°What more is there to say?¡± said Andersen. ¡°It¡¯s a magical tome that has taken to attacking the people of Soho and putting them into an enchanted sleep. Already, a large portion of Soho¡¯s citizenry has fallen victim, and it¡¯s only been active since late yesterday. It moved fast.¡±

    ¡°Half the people of Soho in only a single night?¡± said Arash. ¡°That is fast. Although¡­you said it hasn¡¯t killed anyone yet, right?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± the boy answered. ¡°That would defeat the purpose, wouldn¡¯t it? Of course it hasn¡¯t killed anyone yet. That might change if those people don¡¯t wake up in time, but the goal isn¡¯t murder in the first place, although, in a way, it wouldn¡¯t be wrong to say it¡¯s seeking out sustenance.¡±

    ¡°Sustenance?¡± Rika parroted, looking grossed out. ¡°What, like it feeds on dreams?¡±

    ¡°El-Melloi II said that eating people¡¯s souls is a way for Servants and other spiritual beings to gain energy,¡± Ritsuka said. ¡°Is it trying to build up energy for something?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re on the right track, but you¡¯ve stopped at the wrong station,¡± said Andersen. ¡°Tell me, why do you think it¡¯s a book in the first place? What reason would it have for appearing like that?¡±

    My brow furrowed. ¡°You¡¯re saying that it¡¯s hiding its true form.¡±

    As a matter of conserving power, or so that it could better blend in? As much as a magical book could blend in, at any rate.

    ¡°I¡¯m saying that it doesn¡¯t have a true form,¡± Andersen countered. ¡°Of course not. The book itself is a Reality Marble. That¡¯s why, even if that book was right here in front of you, nothing you did would affect it at all.¡±

    ¡°A Reality Marble?¡± Mash gasped.

    Was that even possible?

    ¡°Wait, aren¡¯t those supposed to be, like, super rare?¡± said Rika. ¡°As in, there¡¯s only a handful of mages who ever figured it out?¡±

    I looked at Emiya. He grimaced and shook his head. ¡°I can¡¯t speak about any but my own. I only know the basics of how they work in general and how Unlimited Blade Works functions in specific.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re still thinking of it the wrong way,¡± said Andersen. ¡°I didn¡¯t say that the book has a Reality Marble, I said that it is one. Its entire existence is predicated upon the world that exists inside of it.¡±

    ¡°Stop dicking around!¡± Mordred finally snapped. ¡°What the fuck does this all mean and why does it matter?¡±

    ¡°You mean you can¡¯t figure it out on your own?¡± Andersen jeered. ¡°Come, now. I¡¯ve given you all the clues you need, you troglodyte. Surely you can at least put them all together by yourself, can¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Why, you¡­!¡± Mordred snarled, and she made to lunge at Andersen, but Mash put herself between them and held her back.

    ¡°Out of the way, Shieldy!¡± said Mordred. ¡°Forget about that stupid book, I¡¯m gonna wring his little neck, first!¡±

    ¡°W-wait!¡± Mash said. ¡°Sir Mordred, please, stop! I-I know it might be frustrating, but he¡¯s our ally!¡±

    A frustrating one, but an ally nonetheless. I couldn¡¯t say I appreciated his being so roundabout with this stuff, but¡­

    ¡°I don¡¯t care!¡± said Mordred.

    A book that was a Reality Marble. A Reality Marble was an inner world based upon the owner¡¯s world view. This book appeared seemingly at random, and it had gone around putting people to sleep because it needed them for some reason. Something related to magical energy, but not, specifically, for the purposes of eating their souls. It wasn¡¯t trying to murder anyone.

    The part I kept getting stuck on was the fact it was a Reality Marble. How? Why? Normally ¡ª inasmuch as you could apply that term to them ¡ª a Reality Marble was a reflection of the wielder. Their inner self, taken to its furthest extremes, to the point where they built an entire world around it. The manifestation of the core of their being, supplanting reality itself.

    Reflection. Inner self. Supplanting. A Reality Marble that was an existence unto itself, invulnerable because it was choosing the form of a book.

    Was¡­that even possible?

    ¡°It¡¯s a Servant,¡± I said.

    Everyone stopped and turned to look at me. Andersen grinned.

    ¡°Like I said,¡± he replied. ¡°You have a sharp intuition, don¡¯t you, Miss?¡±

    ¡°Hold on,¡± said Rika, ¡°I feel like you just said something really ridiculous! Hot Pops would probably be losing his shit right now!¡±

    ¡°Because these circumstances are ridiculous,¡± said Anderson. ¡°But ¡ª you¡¯re only half right. The reason it appears as a book, the reason it¡¯s invulnerable in that state, the reason why it¡¯s putting the people to sleep ¡ª they¡¯re all the same. The book, as it is, is just a clump of magical energy. It cannot manifest a physical form ¡ª a body ¡ª without a Master to serve as its reflection. Once it has found someone to be its Master, it will become a fully fledged Servant, and it will be vulnerable.¡±

    It was a good thing Marie wasn¡¯t on the line right now. This was already trying my patience and stretching my disbelief, and I didn¡¯t need her here right now sputtering about how impossible that was.

    ¡°Why didn¡¯t you just say all that in the first place?¡± Mordred complained.

    ¡°Do you start reading a book at the end?¡± Andersen shot back. ¡°Beginning with the conclusion is the work of an amateur!¡±

    ¡°Fuck you!¡± Mordred snapped back.

    Arash, thankfully, got things back on track. ¡°Do you have any idea where this book is now?¡±

    ¡°None,¡± said Andersen. ¡°It was here, in this very bookstore, for a time, but it slipped away in the middle of the night. If you¡¯d gotten here sooner, you could have dealt with it then.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Ritsuka allowed, ¡°but maybe not, too. If we had come last night, we might have been too tired to fight it at our best.¡±

    ¡°Tch.¡± Mordred scoffed and looked away.

    ¡°I would suggest, however, checking further west,¡± said Andersen. ¡°No doubt, by now, it¡¯s already exhausted all of its options in this area of Soho and moved on. If you¡¯re lucky, you might catch it in the act.¡±

    As much as he could, as small and young-looking as he was, he looked down his nose at us.

    ¡°Do try not to miss it, this time. It would be a waste for you to come all the way here for nothing.¡±

 Chapter CXXXIV: Queenâ€™s Gambit

    Chapter CXXXIV: Queen¡¯s Gambit

    We left the bookstore without as much as we¡¯d been hoping to come away with. Not, having said that, that I¡¯d been expecting to have all of the answers handed to us quite so quickly or easily, but it would have been convenient if Andersen had been able to give us more concrete directions or a more specific place to start looking than ¡°further west.¡±

    That much, at least, felt familiar. ¡°Convenient¡± and I generally weren¡¯t on speaking terms.

    ¡°So I¡¯m not the only one who noticed that he didn¡¯t actually tell us how to beat the book thing, right?¡± Rika asked once the door had closed behind us.

    So she¡¯d caught that, too, had she?

    ¡°No, you¡¯re not.¡±

    ¡°Maybe he didn¡¯t actually know,¡± Ritsuka suggested.

    ¡°Betcha he didn¡¯t,¡± Mordred agreed sourly.

    ¡°The only way to beat something that doesn¡¯t have a natural form is to give it one, huh,¡± Emiya drawled. ¡°For an author, that¡¯s a surprisingly insightful conclusion about something the average magus would struggle with.¡±

    ¡°It really isn¡¯t a natural conclusion to come to, is it?¡± said Mash. She sighed.

    ¡°Fou,¡± the little gremlin commiserated. It pawed at her cheek like it was comforting her.

    Yet another moment that made me wonder exactly how intelligent it was.

    I checked my communicator for the local time to find we only had about two and a half hours left before the fog started to roll back in. We¡¯d already used up almost half of our allotted time, and the rest of it was only going to continue to tick away.

    ¡°We might as well start looking,¡± I said. ¡°We only have an hour and a half before we need to start thinking about finding a place to stay or making our way back to Jekyll¡¯s.¡±

    Mordred scoffed, but she went along with the rest of us as we started west, towards the further end of Soho, the only lead we had right now on where to find this mysterious Reality Marble book. I still thought Marie would flip out once we got to that part of the report ¡ª or, depending on how closely she was monitoring things, might be already ¡ª and I could imagine Da Vinci complaining about how that wasn¡¯t how things were supposed to work.

    The last two years had been a lot of that for me, and even the last four had featured a lot of stuff that upended everything I thought I knew about the world, but even I could admit that we were running into more of it now than ever before.

    Back in the bookstore, Andersen waited until we¡¯d gone halfway up the block before vanishing. I was pretty sure I knew exactly where he had gone.

    If he wanted to follow us, then fine. But if he thought he was being sneaky about it, he was in for a rude surprise later on.

    ¡°So the only way for this book to gain a physical form we can actually damage is for it to find a Master,¡± Arash thought aloud. ¡°Do you think he wanted us to help it find one, or has it already found one?¡±

    ¡°He didn¡¯t talk about it like it had,¡± said Mash. ¡°But he didn¡¯t offer any suggestions for whether we should help it or not.¡±

    ¡°Seems kinda mean, if you ask me,¡± said Rika. ¡°I dunno if a book can have feelings, but I¡¯d be pretty upset if a bunch of jerks showed up and helped me find a friend just so they could do me in.¡±

    It really depended on its temperament. Andersen had said it wasn¡¯t malicious, but the fact that it was causing as much damage as it was without intending to hurt anyone was a problem of its own. Something that hurt people because it didn¡¯t recognize good from bad was just as dangerous as someone who could and did it anyway, and while that didn¡¯t mean it was deserving of death, it didn¡¯t mean we would necessarily have the option to attempt reforming it.

    ¡°We might not have a choice,¡± I pointed out. ¡°You¡¯re right, we don¡¯t know if this thing can have feelings, but if it¡¯s belligerent, then we¡¯ll have to deal with it like a threat.¡±

    ¡°Maybe Andersen meant for one of us to become its Master,¡± Ritsuka put forth. ¡°Two birds with one stone, right?¡±

    I wondered about that. If that was his plan, I wasn¡¯t sure why he hadn¡¯t come out and said it. Then again, he¡¯d been painfully obtuse about revealing the facts of what it was and how it worked to begin with, so maybe he¡¯d intended for us to figure it out ourselves in the first place.

    I hated what it might say about other authors summoned as Servants that both of the two we¡¯d encountered so far were some degree of insufferable. Never meet your heroes, right? Even if I¡¯d already had enough experience with that sort of thing that it shouldn¡¯t have been surprising, I couldn¡¯t help being disappointed.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I allowed. ¡°It depends on how much it¡¯s willing to cooperate. We might not even be able to communicate with it.¡±

    ¡°A talking book really would be a new one, even for me,¡± Emiya said with a slight smirk.

    ¡°Can¡¯t say I¡¯ve ever encountered that sort of thing before either,¡± Arash agreed.

    ¡°You guys wouldn¡¯ta lasted five minutes in Britain,¡± Mordred commented.

    Emiya arched an eyebrow and made a show of looking around. ¡°Technically¡­¡±

    ¡°Shaddup,¡± said Mordred, annoyed. ¡°You know exactly what I mean!¡±

    If what she had said earlier was anything to go by, I wasn¡¯t sure she was entirely wrong. It wasn¡¯t like I didn¡¯t have my own experience with ¡°aliens,¡± but I still hadn¡¯t quite figured out what she meant about the Picts being aliens, too. Literally, metaphorically? Was it an analogy or comparison? They were like aliens, but not actually aliens? I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted an answer.

    If it turned out the Association had a fleet of flying saucers they were hiding in the basement¡­I didn¡¯t want to know that either. Maybe because I¡¯d had enough ¡°it¡¯s actually aliens¡± to last a lifetime, and things hadn¡¯t exactly panned out for the better the last time that one was thrown my way.

    ¡°Whatever the case, we have to find it first before we can do anything about it,¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll be keeping an eye out for it, but if it can take spirit form the way a regular Servant can, then I might not be able to find it using my usual methods.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± said Ritsuka grimly. ¡°That makes it a lot harder to find it in a place like this, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°It does.¡±

    It would have been so much easier if it was just a regular magic book that had been animated by some spell or another. The fact that it was a Servant ¡ª incomplete or not ¡ª made things even less clear cut.

    Maybe one of these days we¡¯d actually meet a Servant in a situation that fit within the neat lines Marie had originally laid out for me when she was catching me up on how this all worked.

    ¡°Usual methods?¡± Mordred asked.

    ¡°Senpai controls bugs,¡± said Rika. She made a strange gesture with her hands, waggling her fingers, that I thought was supposed to represent a bug skittering across the ground.

    Mordred looked morbidly fascinated. ¡°Oh yeah? Izzat how you knew Jekyll was there the other night? You were watching him through some kind of bug?¡±

    ¡°When did I ever say I stopped?¡± I replied mysteriously.

    The morbid fascination tipped over into mild disgust. ¡°So even now, you¡¯re¡­¡±

    She made a gesture of her own with one hand, one I couldn¡¯t quite make heads or tails of, but I still got the gist of what she was asking.

    ¡°Always.¡±

    Lisa would have been proud.

    ¡°Damn,¡± said Mordred, sounding grudgingly impressed. ¡°Dunno how useful that would be in a fight ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Trust me,¡± Rika said with a haunted look, ¡°you don¡¯t want to.¡±

    ¡°¡ª but I bet it makes scouting out a place super easy, huh?¡±

    ¡°Not always,¡± I said. ¡°But in a place with a large enough population of bugs, you could say I see everything.¡±

    ¡°And suddenly, I have never been more glad that Chaldea is in Antarctica,¡± Rika said.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Ritsuka darkly. ¡°Would Professor Lev have gotten away with the Sabotage if Senpai had been able to see him doing it?¡±

    Whether he meant them to or not, his words cast a pall over the conversation, and any lightheartedness fled. Even the little gremlin riding on Mash¡¯s shoulder seemed to express some sort of grim acknowledgement of what he¡¯d said.

    ¡°Fou¡­¡±

    The only one unaffected was Mordred, who, having no idea what we were talking about, obviously didn¡¯t understand anyone¡¯s reaction to it.

    ¡°So does that mean you can see everyone else around here?¡± she asked. ¡°All the folks in their houses and what-not?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± I answered. ¡°So far, I count one-hundred-thirteen victims of this magical book. All unconscious, no obvious wounds, except the ones they got when they suddenly fell asleep in the middle of their parlor.¡±

    Mordred let out a low whistle.

    ¡°The further away from the bookstore we get, however, the fewer I¡¯m finding,¡± I added. ¡°So either the book is getting more selective ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª or it¡¯s found a Master,¡± Ritsuka concluded.

    I nodded. It probably wasn¡¯t the only other explanation, but I didn¡¯t have much better in the way of alternatives. I found it more likely that the first explanation was the better one, that the book was narrowing its criteria, getting pickier about the people it tried to attach itself to, but that was supposing that it had enough conscious thought to attempt something like that. Among the things Andersen had told us, he had never specified whether the book was more like an artificial intelligence ¡ª a program running on a code that could narrow its search parameters as it went ¡ª or an animal, driven by a base instinct to find a Master.

    If it was getting more selective, however, then either it was narrowing down its parameters for finding a Master or it was getting weaker the longer it went without one. One of those was better news for us than the other.

    The deeper into Soho we went, the more accurate my statement became. What was first nearly every home afflicted by unconscious, comatose inhabitants became every other home, and then every few homes, and then at last there was a single trail for us to follow, a string of apartment buildings scattered along a line where at least one unresponsive victim was laid out.

    Eventually, however, even that stopped, and I was left with a cold trail. I let the group go on until we reached it by foot, but even by then, there was no next victim in line, no new person who had been put to sleep and left to dream until they died. We¡¯d hit a dead end.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka said curiously.

    ¡°Is something wrong, Miss Taylor?¡± asked Mash.

    ¡°That¡¯s it,¡± I said simply. ¡°We¡¯re at the end of the trail. There are no more victims past here.¡±

    I lifted one hand and pointed to the last apartment and unerringly towards the elderly man asleep within. Everyone followed the direction of my fingertip and looked at the building, an unassuming thing that looked just like the ones next to it, like they had all been built as a single, contiguous unit that stretched from one street to the next.

    Discreetly, Huginn landed on a nearby rooftop.

    ¡°No more, as in, no more at all?¡± Rika asked.

    What kind of question was that?

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    Mordred squinted, first at the building, and then at me. ¡°You sure about that?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure.¡±

    Within my range, at least. But too much farther, and we would be leaving Soho. If the trail continued at all, it went further out into the western end of London and way farther than we could afford going with the time we had left. We still had to worry about making it back to Jekyll¡¯s apartment before the fog rolled in, after all.

    Much as I hated it, we couldn¡¯t afford to keep chasing a lead that led us all over the city. At the very least, I had to head back and make sure I didn¡¯t get caught in the toxic fog.

    ¡°Well, that¡¯s great,¡± said Rika. ¡°What do we do now? I didn¡¯t bring any Scooby Snacks, and Fou isn¡¯t exactly a hunting dog, is he? Sorry, Fou. No offense.¡±

    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    ¡°Fou kyu-fou-fou.¡±

    ¡°Should we go inside and investigate?¡± suggested Ritsuka. ¡°Unless you¡¯ve already found some clues, Senpai.¡±

    Frustratingly, I hadn¡¯t. Just like all the rest, there weren¡¯t any signs of a struggle or a fight, and the only sign that anything was even wrong was the fact that the old man was sprawled out across a rug instead of his bed, snoring away.

    A better mage might have been able to follow the traces of magical energy to track down our mysterious book, but that was never a skill I had mastered as thoroughly as I would have liked.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t bother him if you don¡¯t have to,¡± a new voice said, and my heart skipped a beat. ¡°Mister Fredrickson is a really cranky old man, and he hates meeting new people.¡±

    We all whirled about to find a little girl standing on the side of the road just a handful of feet away from our group, maybe eight years old at the oldest. She smiled at us innocently, rocking back and forth on her heels to the sound of her wooden sandals clacking on the stone.

    When the hell did she¡­?

    ¡°Merlin¡¯s beard!¡± Rika breathed, one hand pressed to her heart.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± the little girl said. ¡°Was I not supposed to say anything?¡±

    ¡°No, you just surprised us,¡± said Ritsuka, although his eyebrows hadn¡¯t quite managed to settle back down yet.

    That was putting it mildly. Had I just not noticed her because I didn¡¯t have as dense a swarm on the streets as I normally would have? But where could she have come from that she made it all this way without me picking up on her?

    The little girl raised the wide sleeve of her robe ¡ª her kimono, if I was remembering the term right ¡ª up to her mouth to stifle a giggle.

    ¡°Sorry about that,¡± she apologized. ¡°I didn¡¯t mean to scare anyone. It¡¯s just that you all looked lost.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re not lost,¡± grunted Mordred. ¡°We just¡­hadn¡¯t figured out where to go next.¡±

    The girl tilted her head with a little smile. ¡°Isn¡¯t that what being lost means?¡±

    Surreptitiously, I spread my swarm out a little more, searching for where she might have come from, but everyone was accounted for. All of the people I¡¯d found earlier were exactly where they had been ten minutes ago. It was as though she had simply appeared from thin air.

    My brow furrowed. Jack the Ripper? Did he have some sort of shapeshifting skill on account of how he could be ¡°anyone,¡± or was there another Assassin walking around who was masquerading as a little girl? With Presence Concealment hiding her presence, it would make perfect sense as an explanation for why she could stand right in front of us and no one could feel that she was a Servant.

    Or maybe I was being paranoid. But on the off chance I wasn¡¯t¡­

    Arash, I said cautiously, keep an eye on her.

    His head twitched minutely, like he barely stopped himself from looking in my direction. You don¡¯t think¡­

    I don¡¯t know, I admitted. But I don¡¯t know how else she snuck up on us.

    Because the only thing I could think of was a Servant using spirit form.

    His lips tightened briefly, and a moment later, he was all smiles. ¡°We know where we are, Miss, but we¡¯re just not quite sure where we¡¯re supposed to go now. We¡¯re looking for something and we¡¯re having trouble finding it.¡±

    The girl titled her head again. ¡°Looking for something? It¡¯s dangerous out here in the fog, you know.¡±

    Mordred scoffed. ¡°Nothing we can¡¯t handle.¡± She glanced in my direction. ¡°Most of us, anyway.¡±

    I ignored the dig entirely. ¡°We¡¯re trying to find a very special book.¡±

    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t you look for a book in a bookstore?¡± the girl asked. ¡°Or maybe on a bookshelf? Or even in a library?¡±

    If it wasn¡¯t for the completely guileless expression on her face, I might have thought she was mocking me. Maybe she still was, but in that case, she was one hell of an actor.

    ¡°It¡¯s a magical book!¡± said Rika. She made gestures with her hands and arms, like she was pantomiming a large box. ¡°About yea big or so! I dunno if it has legs or not ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Andersen didn¡¯t say, did he?¡± Ritsuka thought aloud. ¡°Does that mean it flies somehow?¡±

    ¡°¡ª but it¡¯s been running around causing trouble, and we¡¯re here to stop it!¡±

    ¡°A giant book that can run around?¡± said the girl. ¡°I¡¯ve never seen anything like that before. Are you sure that¡¯s real?¡±

    The twins shared a look. ¡°Apparently, it¡¯s been going around and putting people to sleep,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°That¡¯s why we have to find it. If all of those people sleep for too long, then they¡¯ll never wake up.¡±

    ¡°That sounds terrible,¡± said the girl, although she didn¡¯t sound all that upset. If she really was a regular little girl, then maybe she didn¡¯t believe us. ¡°I don¡¯t think I can help you, but Papa might know something.¡±

    Papa?

    ¡°Papa?¡± the twins parroted, unknowingly echoing my own thoughts.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash, ¡°are you here with your father?¡±

    The girl nodded happily. ¡°Papa says he¡¯s here on business, so he can¡¯t always play with me, but Papa is really smart and knows lots of stuff. He might be able to help you find this magical book you¡¯re looking for!¡±

    Trap, my instincts all but roared at me. But just as loudly, they also shouted, opportunity. If this girl was anything other than what she looked like, then whoever or whatever her ¡°Papa¡± was, he was very likely P, B, or M. She would lead us into a trap, but a trap that also put us within striking distance of one of this Singularity¡¯s masterminds.

    Without any other leads, this was too good a chance to pass up. The magical book could wait ¡ª or maybe it wouldn¡¯t, because it had been captured by her ¡°Papa,¡± and that would be an incredible stroke of luck. Two birds with one stone.

    ¡°Where is your papa?¡± I asked.

    I doubted we¡¯d be that lucky, but in lieu of better options right now, I was going to jump on this one. The only real alternative seemed to be wandering aimlessly until we found something.

    She lifted a hand and pointed. ¡°Over there.¡± In the exact opposite direction she¡¯d come from. More and more, it seemed she was probably a Servant of some kind. ¡°He¡¯s busy right now, so I came out on my own because I was bored.¡±

    I made a show of glancing in the direction she pointed the way everyone else did. If I was remembering right, the only thing down in that direction was Buckingham Palace and the surrounding greenery.

    So unless her so-called father had picked out an apartment along the way, he¡¯d set himself up in the palace. Out of ego? Or maybe because it was easily defensible and sturdier than a good portion of the other options.

    It also didn¡¯t follow the magical tome¡¯s trail, but considering we didn¡¯t have more of a trail to follow, that might not wind up mattering.

    ¡°Do you think he¡¯ll have time to talk to us?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°Oh, loads of time,¡± said the girl. ¡°He can¡¯t do his business out in the fog, can he? That would just be silly.¡±

    ¡°I guess you do need a clear head to get anything done,¡± Rika said sensibly, and I bit back a grimace at the pun.

    ¡°Then we might as well see what he can tell us.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Mordred demanded.

    ¡°Got any better ideas?¡± Emiya asked pointedly. ¡°It¡¯s our only other lead for now, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Tch.¡± Mordred scoffed. ¡°This guy had better have something good to say, or I¡¯m kicking your ass.¡±

    Noted, I didn¡¯t say. There was no point in dignifying that with a response. ¡°Alright,¡± I said instead, speaking to the girl, ¡°let¡¯s go see your papa.¡±

    The girl smiled at me. ¡°Okay!¡±

    And then she very nearly skipped away, heading off in the direction she¡¯d pointed. We followed after her, and as we walked, Ritsuka edged closer to me.

    ¡°You sure about this one, Senpai?¡± he asked lowly. ¡°The Restoration would¡¯ve been over ten years ago at this point, so it¡¯s not impossible she and her father really did come here, but¡­¡±

    It took me an extra second to remember he was talking about the event that had been mentioned back in Fuyuki, the one that ended Japan¡¯s isolationism, and I was a bit embarrassed to admit that whether or not it was possible in terms of the proper timeline hadn¡¯t even been on my radar of things that made a kimono-wearing Japanese girl in London suspicious. Now that he brought it up, however, I had to agree: even if it wasn¡¯t impossible so soon after Japan opened up trade with the West, it might have been more unlikely than not.

    ¡°It¡¯s entirely possible that she is what she says she is,¡± was my answer, but the way I said it conveyed my own skepticism, and that seemed to be enough for Ritsuka. He nodded, frowning, and drifted back closer to his sister and Mash.

    The girl led us on southward through Soho, navigating the streets so deftly that she could have been mistaken for a native, or at least taking the twists and turns so confidently that someone who had never been there couldn¡¯t tell the difference. Where she was leading us to, I still wasn¡¯t quite sure, and I became less sure the further we went.

    A quick check of my map while she wasn¡¯t looking confirmed my suspicion ¡ª if she was leading us to Buckingham Palace, then she was taking a very roundabout route. Did she want us to approach from the front, to make it look the most impressive? While that wasn¡¯t impossible, it didn¡¯t quite feel right either.

    Had her ¡°Papa¡± actually picked out an apartment instead of squatting in the palace? That was¡­less predictable, but there was a kind of safety, a security in not doing what everyone would expect you to, and that meant he might be cleverer than I originally gave him credit for.

    Eventually, we left Soho and stepped into St James¡¯s, the district that sat northward and slightly to the east of Buckingham. The girl took a sharp turn and led us down another straight road for a while, and then, without any warning whatsoever, made another sharp turn down another road. When we came up behind her and rounded the corner, suddenly, there in the distance, there were trees and greenery. An island of vegetation amidst the brick and stone.

    ¡°Not much farther now!¡± the girl sing-songed over her shoulder. ¡°Papa is right up ahead!¡±

    ¡°About goddamn time,¡± Mordred grumbled.

    I stretched out into my swarm, searching around the place for a man waiting in ambush for us to pass by, but there didn¡¯t seem to be anyone like that, even though every instinct was screaming that there should be. There were no more victims around either, and there hadn¡¯t been any new ones on the way down. The people in this area of the city were all healthy, awake, and going about their days, as much as they could without leaving the house.

    Some of them, as much as they could without leaving their beds, but I tried not to pay too close attention to the marital bed. Who was doing the horizontal tango with who wasn¡¯t at all relevant to our investigation.

    There were less productive ways of dealing with boredom, I guess.

    Anything? asked Arash.

    No, I replied. You?

    Not seeing anything out of place on the rooftops, he said. Whatever¡¯s going on here, they¡¯re doing an excellent job of being subtle.

    Just what we needed. The smart ones were always the biggest pain in the ass to deal with.

    ¡°So what¡¯s your papa like anyway?¡± Rika asked.

    ¡°Hmm,¡± the little girl hummed. ¡°That¡¯s a toughie. Papa is really fun when he¡¯s really fun, but he¡¯s also really scary when he¡¯s really scary. But he¡¯s a really good person, deep, deep down inside!¡±

    ¡°He doesn¡¯t hit you, does he?¡± asked Mash, worried.

    The little girl laughed. ¡°Don¡¯t be silly! Papa¡¯s fists are for self-defense!¡±

    Rika struggled for a moment, but crumbled after only a few seconds. ¡°So would you say that they¡¯re for ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Rika, no,¡± her brother tried. In vain.

    ¡°¡ª Kung Fu fighting?¡±

    Ritsuka sighed, and I very much wanted to as well. The little girl, on the other hand, just looked back at Rika, utterly clueless.

    ¡°Of course they are,¡± she said. ¡°Papa is an expert at that sort of thing.¡±

    Ritsuka blinked and looked back at her. ¡°He is?¡±

    ¡°Yup!¡±

    I filed that little tidbit away. It might have been gotten in a bit of a backwards way, but that was actually fairly useful information. So if this mysterious ¡°Papa¡± really was one of the culprits behind this whole Singularity, P, B, or M, then that meant he was someone who had some martial arts training. Perhaps an author who had gone to war at some point before writing his works down, maybe one whose writing had been inspired by his experiences on the battlefield.

    If I could ask without tipping the girl off, I would have had Da Vinci on the line right then and there to have her cross reference famous authors who also happened to have military service in their backgrounds. Right then, however, it would probably spook the girl, and if she really was a Servant, then tracking her would become just shy of impossible the instant she took spirit form.

    If she was an Assassin? All the more so.

    Still, no suspect materialized as we walked, either literally or figuratively. If her papa was hiding somewhere, or even if he was going about a normal life in her absence, then I couldn¡¯t find him at all. There wasn¡¯t anyone suspicious in my range.

    In a way, that itself was suspicious. It was entirely possible that ¡°Papa¡± didn¡¯t actually exist and she¡¯d just invented him as a means of luring us out here and towards her trap. It was also entirely possible that this really was our mysterious Jack the Ripper using a shapeshifting skill to hide in plain sight, although the choice of a young Japanese girl in a bright pink kimono made that one feel less likely.

    We didn¡¯t make any more turns, and instead, the girl led us straight towards that stretch of greenery, that small oasis of vegetation, too small to properly be called a park, but large enough and secluded enough for a person to hide in quite easily. A wrought iron fence that looked like it came straight out of a regency novel stretched around the whole thing.

    ¡°Just up ahead!¡± the girl assured us.

    She continued up to a pathway that led into the foliage, an entrance through the fence marked by twisting metal arches, paused long enough to look back at us with a smile, and then went inside.

    My lips pursed, and I stopped a few feet from where she¡¯d gone in at, staring at the trees and the grass that lay beyond. She couldn¡¯t have made it more obvious how much of a trap this was if she¡¯d tried.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± asked Ritsuka. There was something guarded in his expression, something worried and alert, despite how willing he seemed to go along with everything.

    So I wasn¡¯t the only one who knew we were walking into a trap.

    ¡°Is something wrong, Miss Taylor?¡± asked Mash.

    A quick check showed we still had a little over two hours before the fog was supposed to roll back in. It should be plenty of time to spring this and make it back, but we¡¯d have to be careful to make sure we had enough time to make the trek to Jekyll¡¯s safely.

    ¡°No,¡± I said eventually. ¡°It¡¯s nothing.¡±

    There was something I was missing. I knew that even as we followed the girl into that tiny little forest. But what it was, I couldn¡¯t put my finger on it. Maybe it was the absence of a bounded field, or at least one I could detect, because if there was a place for her and her papa to set up an ambush, this was it.

    And yet, there wasn¡¯t one. There wasn¡¯t even any sign of one.

    Up above, Huginn circled, looking down. But even with a literal bird¡¯s eye view, I couldn¡¯t find anything that looked off or wrong, with the sole exception of the fact that ¡ª

    Wait. There was someone else out here. A man, it looked like, coming from the opposite direction of us and entering this little park from that end. Was her papa real after all?

    ¡°Is this where we¡¯re meeting your papa?¡± I asked the girl.

    ¡°Of course!¡± the girl said. ¡°The best place to have a tea party is out in the park, isn¡¯t it? I wanted to have it in a bigger park, but Papa says that bigger place near the castle is too conspicuous.¡±

    ¡°He does, does he?¡±

    So if he really existed, her papa was definitely one of the smart ones.

    ¡°Obviously, he doesn¡¯t know how to have a proper tea party,¡± Rika joked with complete seriousness.

    ¡°Right?¡± the little girl agreed. ¡°But it¡¯s okay, because the important part of any tea party is the guests. And all of you make such wonderful guests indeed!¡±

    I cast around, looking for any clues, but just like it had been before, nothing seemed unusual. The little park was the same stretch of greenery, shrouded by tall trees with expansive canopies, the same path we were walking through them, and in front of us, at what had to be the very center of the park, a large, lopsided table with chairs set out for everyone. A spread of various snacks and finger foods was arrayed across the surface of its white cloth.

    That part was the only part that seemed strange. A table out in the middle of the park? Hers, presumably? Was this a trap meant specifically for us, or had she intended to get whoever she could reel in?

    ¡°You can meet my friend, too!¡± the girl said. ¡°I invited her to join us, so she should be here soon!¡±

    Arash glanced at me. Do we think her friend¡­?

    I don¡¯t know, was the only answer I could give. Could we count on something that convenient? When we couldn¡¯t even be sure that this girl wasn¡¯t a Servant herself?

    None of this smelled right, and I could point out all of the things about this that were raising red flags, but what the truth was behind it all, that part remained frustratingly elusive. That she was still going through with this when we had four Servants on our side had to be one of the most confusing parts.

    Assassins were supposed to be the weakest class, at least in terms of fighting other Servants, and we had two Archers and a Saber, all of whom excelled in close range combat. You had to have a really good trick up your sleeve to expect to come out of a fight against them the winner by yourself.

    ¡°I can¡¯t wait!¡± said Rika.

    The girl led us to the table and the chairs around it, and she daintily took a seat at one of them, seemingly at random, imploring us to join her. The twins shared a look, then looked at me, and when none of us had a good reason not to play along, we all took a chair of our own and sat down with her.

    The high-backed plush armchair I chose wound up surprisingly comfortable and not at all rickety, despite its appearance.

    ¡°Papa will be here soon,¡± said the girl. ¡°While we wait, why don¡¯t we all have some tea and snacks?¡±

    Without waiting on us, she took the nearest teapot ¡ª of which there were several, spouting puffs of steam ¡ª and poured herself some tea into a teacup that looked like it had come from an entirely different set of fine china from the teapot. In fact, looking around, I wasn¡¯t sure there was a single matching set anywhere on the table.

    She also grabbed a slice of some kind of thin, spongy cake, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and started eating it with a fork. As though we really were just sitting down in a garden having a tea party in Victorian England.

    In a sense, I guess we were.

    The twins seemed less eager to join in, a little nervous, but after a second, they picked their own cups and poured their own tea, because unlike me, they apparently didn¡¯t have to worry about being poisoned, thanks to their contract with Mash. I poured a cup for myself just to be polite, but didn¡¯t drink any of it, because I didn¡¯t have that convenience.

    ¡°Really?¡± Mordred complained. She was the only one still standing. ¡°We¡¯re gonna do this now?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s the best lead we¡¯ve got, isn¡¯t it?¡± said Arash.

    ¡°A pretty sorry state of affairs on its own,¡± Emiya added, looking down at his own teacup. ¡°But the only other place for us to go is back to Jekyll¡¯s to see if he has any new information for us.¡±

    We were probably going to have to go and check out what had happened to the Mage¡¯s Association, too, at least at some point, but I was happy enough to put that off for now. The less cause we gave them to stick their noses into things, the better.

    ¡°Tch.¡±

    She didn¡¯t look happy about it, but Mordred eventually did sit down, grudgingly, and moodily poor herself a cup of tea. And then she let it sit there and didn¡¯t touch it, like she had just done it in the first place to observe propriety and proper manners.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash suddenly, looking down at her teacup in surprise. ¡°This is actually really good.¡±

    ¡°It is,¡± said Rika. ¡°It tastes just like my favorite brand of milk tea, but ¡ª hey, I never put any milk in it!¡±

    ¡°Mine¡¯s oolong,¡± Ritsuka said. His brow furrowed. Troubled. ¡°Exactly the way I usually make it, too.¡±

    ¡°Of course it is,¡± the little girl said. ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t it be, when you¡¯re the one who poured it?¡±

    That¡­ Was that supposed to make some kind of sense?

    Arash? I asked, since I wasn¡¯t stupid enough to risk trying my own. His Robust Health skill should be enough protection for him.

    ¡°Chai,¡± he said thoughtfully, ¡°with fruity undertones and a hint of honey. But tea wasn¡¯t around back when I was alive, at least not where I was, so I¡¯m not that familiar with it as a drink.¡±

    ¡°I should hope you like it, at least,¡± said the girl. ¡°If not, why did you pour it at all?¡±

    ¡°Why, indeed,¡± Arash said with a lopsided smile.

    If she really had poisoned the tea and was disappointed that it wasn¡¯t working, the girl gave no sign. The smile on her face was so firmly affixed that it was actually kind of creepy because of who it reminded me of.

    I was suddenly glad that I hadn¡¯t dared to try the tea myself.

    ¡°Sorry we¡¯re late!¡± a new voice announced, and my spine went ramrod straight as another person I hadn¡¯t seen coming appeared from out of the foliage, trotting up towards the table. ¡°We had some important business to take care of!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re just in time!¡± the girl said brightly. ¡°Come, come, say hello to everyone else! We¡¯re all just waiting on Papa, now!¡±

    The new person was a small girl, around the same age as the kimono girl, robed in a raggedy black cloak with tattered ends. A shock of white hair fell haphazardly around her face and cheeks, framing green eyes sharp as knives and doing a very bad job of hiding several thin, ugly scars that stretched across her face.

    There was, ironically, something about her appearance that immediately put me on edge. Not a presence or an air about her so much as an instinctive sense of something writhing just under the surface of that childish face.

    ¡°We hope you¡¯re not mad,¡± the new girl said contritely. ¡°We were supposed to be here sooner, weren¡¯t we?¡±

    ¡°Oh, we¡¯re all mad, here,¡± our host said pleasantly. ¡°This whole world is mad, you see, and so are we. Quite mad. But we¡¯re not angry, no, so come on, take a seat, Jackie. There¡¯s more than enough room.¡±

    She smiled, cherubic, and poured some more tea in a cup at the seat next to hers.

    ¡°Welcome to Alice¡¯s tea party!¡±

 Chapter CXXXV: Itsy Bitsy Spider

    Chapter CXXXV: Itsy Bitsy Spider

    The name of the new girl sent alarm bells ringing in the back of my head ¡ª but I¡¯d barely had a moment to even start thinking of what it might have meant before it was derailed as a wave of something washed over that entire little tea party, sweeping out across the grass and the trees in a ripple so faint that it was more conspicuous in its gentle, wispy touch than it could have been if it was a hurricane. It touched each and every one of us, and yet left no mark behind, inflicted no wounds, and had no obvious effect that was immediately noticeable.

    The little girl smiled innocently the entire while, passing that cup of tea over to the newcomer, and she gave no indication at all that she¡¯d even done anything, let alone what it was.

    ¡°Thank you!¡± the newcomer said brightly. She accepted her teacup and the saucer it was set on, picked it up, and took a sip. Her delight stretched the scars on her face. ¡°We really like it!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m glad you do,¡± the little girl said politely. ¡°I poured it extra special, just for you.¡±

    My companions seemed less sure of what to think of this, eyeing the newcomer uncertainly ¡ª and in the case of the surliest, with open suspicion ¡ª but none took an aggressive posture. Guarded, at best, cautious, but not openly hostile. If any of them had noticed what the little girl had done with that wave of whatever-it-was, they didn¡¯t show a hint of that either.

    Some kind of bounded field? But if that was what it was, then what did it do? My bugs, my swarm, the raven puppet still flying overhead, none of those seemed to have been affected by it, and my control over them was just as strong as it had ever been. It had to be something subtler, something that gave her an advantage in a way that wasn¡¯t immediately obvious.

    Maybe it activated on a contingency, or maybe it was just supposed to prevent the people at the table from fighting.

    ¡°Now,¡± said the little girl, ¡°we¡¯re only missing one more person. Then, our tea party will be complete!¡±

    ¡°One more person?¡± the redhead of our group asked.

    ¡°Papa, of course!¡± was the answer. Silly, was the unspoken word that followed. ¡°He should be here soon, and then we can all have fun together!¡±

    ¡°Yay!¡± the newcomer cheered. ¡°What kind of fun? Are we cutting anyone open? Are we going to go and find Mama?¡±

    ¡°Cutting anyone open?¡± squeaked the armored girl across from me. ¡°W-what?¡±

    ¡°Fou,¡± said the monster sitting on her shoulder.

    ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯d call that fun,¡± the boy next to her mumbled into his teacup.

    ¡°Whose Mama?¡± the redhead asked. ¡°Who is Mama, actually, now that I think of it?¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± said the newcomer, and again with the plural pronouns. ¡°That¡¯s why we have to go and find her.¡±

    Multiple personalities? No, that didn¡¯t quite track, did it? The plural didn¡¯t fit. Schizophrenia? Possible. More likely. If her life was as violent as her scars suggested, then it made sense, too, because mental illness had been poorly understood in this era, and her treatment would have made the situation worse. It explained the sociopathic suggestion of cutting someone open, too.

    She reminded me of someone in that regard, but I couldn¡¯t quite put my finger on who. It sat on the tip of my tongue, and I couldn¡¯t get it off.

    ¡°Creep,¡± muttered the blonde in armor, arms folded. ¡°What kinda nutjob makes a game of cutting someone open?¡±

    My brow furrowed. It still wouldn¡¯t come. I couldn¡¯t think of it. The memory was important to me, for all of the worst reasons, but it was still important. There was no way I could have forgotten it. Not when the experience had been seared into my brain. It was unforgettable.

    So why couldn¡¯t I remember the damn name?

    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m taking a hard pass,¡± said the redhead. ¡°I like my insides to be my insides, and if there¡¯s one rule I¡¯ve made sure to always keep in mind, it¡¯s that the funny gal is the first to go.¡±

    ¡°That would require you to actually be funny,¡± the boy said wryly.

    The redhead sulked. ¡°Yeah, well, who even asked you, anyway¡­¡±

    My heart shuddered. It felt familiar, this sensation. This sense of knowing something, knowing that I knew it, but being unable to actually prove it. Familiar, and also terrifying. Why did I feel so certain that if I picked up a book or looked at a computer screen, the words written on them would be illegible to me?

    A voice intruded on my thoughts. Master? Is everything okay?

    My head turned to meet the worried gaze of the dark-haired, bronze-skinned man who was sitting next to me, and I realized, suddenly, that I couldn¡¯t remember his name either. When I cast my gaze around the table, the dread twisting at my gut grew and pulled tighter, because I couldn¡¯t remember any of their names. Not the surly man with the tan and white hair, not the redhead, not the brunette, not the girl in dark armor, and not the blonde in silvery armor. If I reached for their names, my mental grasp slipped off of them like water over a stone.

    It hit me like a bolt of lightning, and my gut squirmed.

    ¡°You,¡± I said to the little girl, ¡°what did you do?¡±

    The blonde in armor stilled, and then her arms unfolded as she leaned forward a little, suddenly intensely interested.

    The little girl blinked at me innocently. ¡°Me? Why, I¡¯m not sure what you mean.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± said the redhead. ¡°What¡¯s with the sudden hostility, lady?¡±

    The albino with a tan straightened now, too, and next to me, the dark-haired guy¡¯s eyes narrowed as his brow drew down.

    ¡°Yes, you do,¡± I said, and around us, the grass buzzed as the entirety of my swarm expressed the fury slowly boiling in my chest. ¡°I¡¯m not going to ask you again.¡±

    The newcomer with the scars looked around, curious, like she was trying to find the source of the noise. The little girl in her kimono, however, just smiled at me.

    ¡°You catch on pretty fast, Miss,¡± she said. ¡°I thought at least one of you would fade away completely before anyone figured it out.¡±

    The girl in armor with the monster sitting on her shoulder gasped. ¡°F-fade away?¡±

    ¡°Hey, now,¡± said the blonde. ¡°What¡¯re you saying, here? What¡¯d you do to these guys?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not going to tell you,¡± the little girl said. ¡°Why should I? Servants like you don¡¯t play my games.¡±

    The tan albino scowled and took on an aggressive posture, hands curling around invisible swords. ¡°I don¡¯t remember any of us saying you had a choice in the matter.¡±

    She wasn¡¯t at all intimidated. ¡°Too bad! If you¡¯re not playing with me, then you don¡¯t get any guesses!¡±

    The blonde slammed her hands down on the table hard enough to rattle all of the cups and spill tea all over the white tablecloth, snarling, ¡°Why, you little¡­!¡±

    The boy with blue eyes took in a sharp breath. ¡°My name. I can¡¯t remember it.¡±

    ¡°Pssh, what?¡± the redhead laughed. ¡°Are you serious? That¡¯s silly! Who just forgets their name like¡­¡±

    Her brow furrowed. ¡°W-wait. Isn¡¯t it¡­ But¡­¡± She shot up out of her seat, head turning this way and that as though she¡¯d dropped something and couldn¡¯t find it. ¡°I can¡¯t remember mine either!¡±

    The newcomer giggled and rocked in her seat, absolutely delighted. ¡°We¡¯ve never played this game before,¡± she said, ¡°but it¡¯s a lot of fun!¡±

    ¡°Senpai!¡± said the armored girl. ¡°Y-you mean to say, you really can¡¯t remember your name?¡±

    ¡°Nope!¡± answered the little girl. Her cheer was utterly incongruent to the situation. ¡°Here in the Nameless Forest, that¡¯s the first thing that goes! And then you lose your sense of self, and last, you lose your whole being! But there is a way to beat it, you know.¡±

    She smiled a big, bright smile, so big that it threatened to split her face in half.

    ¡°All you have to do is remember your name!¡±

    As though it was that simple. I could already see a possible way around it, if we had nametags on our clothing or our names written down on our hands or a piece of paper, but that required us preparing ahead of time for this thing. I had to assume it wasn¡¯t as easy as just having any of our companions call our names, or else it would have been hilariously simple to beat it.

    But there was an even more obvious option.

    Or, I thought, since this Nameless Forest is yours, all we have to do is kill you, right?

    There was a certainty behind that thought. A weight, like it was a fact, not just me guessing. It was backed up by another certainty, one whose origin I couldn¡¯t place but felt just as firm: whatever this girl was, the one thing she wasn¡¯t was an ordinary little girl.

    An image flashed briefly across my mind, as though to lend more weight to the idea, of a young girl with blond hair and green eyes, dressed in a black gown and veil that glittered as though they were inlaid with thousands of tiny emeralds.

    My swarm gathered together, clumping up and buzzing as they formed into groups like battle lines. Through a million faceted eyes, I stared at the little girl in her fancy pink robe, ignoring the newcomer, who watched the entire thing, fascinated, and the boy and girl who, like me, had forgotten their names and my name and climbed up their chairs to avoid my army.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got a better idea,¡± I said as I went to work. Like a reflex, my spiders had set to weaving thin lines of gossamer strand and sneaking up to place them in strategic areas while everyone listened to the flies and gnats and wasps that were so much more obvious. ¡°Either you undo this yourself, or you¡¯ll be forced to undo it. I¡¯m not picky about which.¡±

    Paradoxically, the girl wasn¡¯t threatened at all. She just smiled again, completely unperturbed.

    ¡°Oh,¡± she said. ¡°We¡¯re going to play this game, now? I know how to play that one! I¡¯m really good at it, too!¡±

    She clapped her hands together, and power gathered, swirling about her body.

    ¡°And as if in uffish thought he stood ¡ª¡±

    Shit.

    ¡°Stop her!¡± I shouted, even as my gathered swarm surged. I wasn¡¯t even sure who would obey me, if any of them even would. I just knew that whatever she was about to do was bad and we couldn¡¯t let her finish it.

    ¡°¡ª the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tulgey wood ¡ª¡±

    The table was suddenly upended, exploding upwards, and the abruptness of it had me falling backwards and over my chair ¡ª the other two much the same as me ¡ª even as I sent in my bugs to bite and sting and do whatever they could. The dark-eyed man in his teal armor stumbled back, the arrow he¡¯d notched on a bow he pulled out of nowhere flying up and into the sky, off course, while the tan albino stumbled and rolled.

    The blonde, the one who¡¯d thrown the table up to begin with, manifested a large broadsword and cut the table in half, kicking off the ground towards the little girl.

    ¡°¡ª and burbled as it came!¡±

    My bugs stung and bit and buzzed and swarmed, and none of it did anything at all to the girl, who continued on like nothing was happening. They couldn¡¯t even find purchase in her flesh. The blonde, who was the only one who would reach the girl in time, angled her arm back and aimed the point of her sword for the girl¡¯s throat. Her thrust was lightning fast, heralded by sparks of actual red lightning.

    It skidded off, gouging out a chunk of flesh as it went, and purple blood flew through the air, sizzling as it splattered onto the grass. More of it dribbled down the thick, massive arm that had appeared in front of the girl to protect her, running down over the base of the jagged, branch-like spikes that jutted back over the forearm.

    Standing over the little girl was a giant. Its fists were the size of small boulders and its body bulged with muscle. The head was vaguely human-shaped, but it was almost entirely smooth except for the jagged, lipless gash that formed its mouth and the round sockets that glowed with yellow light. A lopsided crown of spikes jutted away from its skull, and a pair of even more lopsided wings ¡ª far too small for actual flight ¡ª with more spikes for feathers protruded from its back, stiff and unmoving.

    The presence slammed into me a bare second later, an alien weight that felt like nothing I could remember. My heart beat a rapid tattoo inside my chest. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and every part of me screamed that this thing was wrong, that it didn¡¯t belong, that it was something that shouldn¡¯t ever exist.

    ¡°What the fuck?¡± the blonde exclaimed.

    The massive creature was so large that it looked like it would lumber about inelegantly, but its fist lashed out with such speed that she didn¡¯t react in time to avoid it, and her armor screeched as that enormous hand caught her right across the chest. The force of the blow flung her back and away, and the other armored girl let out a shout as she was nearly bowled over.

    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°And if we¡¯re going to play that game,¡± said the little girl, ¡°then I just had to invite my friend to play with us! Isn¡¯t that right, Jabberwocky?¡±

    Shit, I thought again and beat a hasty retreat from them both as my swarm came up to form a smokescreen. One of those massive fists swung around again, and every single bug that came into contact with its skin disintegrated like so much steam.

    The tan albino came in with a pair of falchions, one black and one white, sweeping them down across the monster¡¯s chest. The wounds they carved were shallow and completely ineffective, and he barely had time to bring his swords up in a guard before the thing¡¯s retaliatory blow shattered them like cheap glass.

    A flurry of arrows landed in its chest, but a contemptuous swipe of its arm broke the shafts like kindling, and the wounds were already disappearing even by then.

    Strong, sturdy, and it even had regenerative powers. The combination twigged onto something, but the memory slipped through my fingers like sand through a sieve, and whatever connection my brain had been trying to make fell away, unrealized. Another thing the little girl¡¯s trick had taken from me, and I was getting really fucking tired of that really fucking quickly.

    I reached out, fumbling for the thread I could feel, the thing the dark-haired archer must have used a minute ago to contact me, and I pushed every bit of my singular thought down it: Call my name!

    Halfway through preparing another barrage of arrows, he stopped, eyes flitting over in my direction. Whatever he thought of my Hail Mary play, he didn¡¯t let on, and without arguing or hesitating, he opened his mouth and said, ¡°Taylor Hebert!¡±

    And like a film had been removed from my brain, everything cleared. The memory I¡¯d been grasping for a moment ago ¡ª of Herakles, storming through everything we¡¯d thrown at him, of Lung, fleshing bubbling as his wounds healed and his body grew, of a great golden man shrugging off everything thrown his way ¡ª clicked back into place. The familiarity of that feeling, of slowly losing myself and forgetting the names of my friends, twisted up my stomach, becoming something black and furious.

    Fucker, I thought viciously. If I could have set that girl on fire with my eyes alone, I would have done it right then and there.

    I wasn¡¯t sure it was going to work, and I was never so happy that I¡¯d been wrong. This whole thing had already gone to shit, and it would have been even worse if we¡¯d had to try and fight while we couldn¡¯t even remember our teammates and what they could do.

    Emiya, having caught on, abandoned his attempt to reengage the Jabberwocky long enough to shout, ¡°Fujimaru Rika! Fu ¡ª¡±

    But before he could get any farther than that, the Jabberwocky zipped across the distance, and he only barely managed to dodge well enough to avoid a direct hit. Even the glancing blow, however, clipping his ribs with force that would have pulverized mine, was enough to send him sprawling and rolling across the ground.

    ¡°No fair!¡± the little girl said, pouting. ¡°That¡¯s cheating! Servants aren¡¯t allowed to help if they don¡¯t play the game, too!¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Rika protested. ¡°You¡¯re the one who didn¡¯t tell us the rules until you¡¯d already forced us into playing your stupid game!¡±

    Arash drew back on his bow and took aim at the undefended girl ¡ª a Servant, she had to be, if she was pulling monsters like this out of thin air ¡ª but the Jabberwocky seemed to teleport to return to her side, blocking them all again. Those that didn¡¯t break on the spiky protrusions jutting out from its wrist didn¡¯t seem to even hurt it, let alone impede its movement.

    ¡°Senpai!¡± said Mash, huddled defensively in front of the twins. ¡°Master!¡±

    ¡°O-oh!¡± said Rika. ¡°Right! U-um, Fujimaru Ritsuka!¡±

    And Ritsuka startled as everything rushed back to him. Good. That meant we were all back to normal, so we didn¡¯t have to worry about losing anyone to the Nameless Forest anymore.

    Mordred suddenly flew across the distance, sparks of red lightning crackling across her body. ¡°I¡¯ve had enough¡­of your fucking games!¡±

    She swung down with thunderous force, and the Jabberwocky caught her sword in one of its massive hands, wrapping its thick fingers around the blade and completely ignoring the edge cutting into its flesh. Sizzling blood dribbled down its arm and to the ground, and it left behind blackened, charred patches of grass where it landed.

    ¡°That¡¯s okay,¡± said the little girl. ¡°Jabberwocky likes this game better anyway, don¡¯t you, Jabberwocky?¡±

    The monster didn¡¯t answer.

    ¡°If she doesn¡¯t want to play, go ahead and kill her.¡±

    The burning eyes glowed, and the Jabberwocky pulled Mordred forward by her sword. Off balance, she wasn¡¯t able to dodge when it reached out with its other hand and wrapped its thumb and index finger around her neck, lifting her up off the ground. She dangled, gurgling for breath and kicking her legs about in a desperate attempt to find leverage that wasn¡¯t there.

    ¡°Mo-chan!¡± Rika cried.

    Arash! I ordered. He predicted me and fired another brace of arrows, aiming for the gaps between the Jabberwocky¡¯s joints to try and force it to drop her, but it ignored them the same as it had every other attack we¡¯d thrown its way.

    In hindsight, the comparison to Lung wasn¡¯t quite so apt as the others. At least you could actually hurt Lung if you wounded him badly enough. Even if it wouldn¡¯t keep him down for long, it would still slow him for at least a few seconds.

    Shit. What other options did we have to break her free? Arash couldn¡¯t hurt the Jabberwocky badly enough to force it to let her go, Mash didn¡¯t have the raw strength necessary to do it either ¡ª not if it was completely unfazed by Mordred¡¯s ¡ª and even if we called in backup, I wasn¡¯t sure we had anything with enough power behind it without resorting to Noble Phantasms.

    Did this thing even have a heart or a brain for us to target?

    ¡°Go, Emiya!¡± Rika shouted.

    And he appeared in the air above them, holding another pair of his favored swords.

    ¡°Trace, Overedge.¡±

    They doubled in size, and the spines fractured and split, forming feathery spikes along the back edge. Emiya brought them down in a single chop, aiming for the sole obvious weak point on the monster¡¯s arm: its wrist.

    I snapped off a single spell right before they hit. Momentary Reinforcement!

    The blades bit into the Jabberwocky¡¯s flesh, slicing cleanly through the red skin and whatever served as muscles and tendons underneath. Even with my extra spell to give his blow more strength, however, the mutated swords made it only about halfway through before something gave, and the blades cracked and shattered like so much glass.

    But it was enough. The fingers wrapped around Mordred¡¯s neck loosened, and she wrenched herself free, kicking at its elbow to force the rest of its grip away. The instant she was back on her feet, her own sword lit up with a crimson light, and she yanked the blade down the hand holding it viciously. Two fingers and a thumb went flying, severed ¡ª but even this much, the Jabberwocky seemed utterly unconcerned by. It swiped at Mordred as though to grab her again, and when she ducked, it nearly got her just by the ponytail.

    Already, its nearly severed wrist was almost fully healed and its fingers had half regrown. Herakles himself would have been jealous of how quickly it regenerated from damage.

    Raw strength on a cutting edge wasn¡¯t enough. Even what I assumed was Mordred charging up a miniature use of her Noble Phantasm didn¡¯t give it a second¡¯s pause. So if raw brute force wouldn¡¯t bring this thing down and my bugs didn¡¯t do anything to it at all, there was still one more thing to try before we called up one of the others to blast it with a Noble Phantasm and try taking it out with overwhelming force.

    Arash, I began, pushing down the thread connecting us. My hand went for my knife, my Last Resort, which was ironically becoming less and less of a last resort these days. Maybe a swarm of nanomachines could cut through that tough hide better than the edge of a single blade.

    Wait, I thought, where did the other one, Jackie, go?

    Something disturbed the ground behind me in my shadow, and I didn¡¯t wait, didn¡¯t even take a moment to think about it, I just threw myself out of the way. As I rolled over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse ¡ª first with my eyes and then with my bugs ¡ª of a large knife that was really closer to a short sword stabbing through the area that would have been one of my kidneys.

    I landed in a crouch, one hand still curled around the hilt of my own knife. I wasn¡¯t sure how much good it was going to wind up doing me.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Jackie. Her smile stretched her face, pulling at her scars. ¡°It looks like you know how to play this game, too, don¡¯t you, lady? Maybe you¡¯ll make a good Mommy, after all.¡±

    Behind me, the Jabberwocky swung wildly at Mordred, who was forced to dodge, and then flung the remains of the table we¡¯d been sitting at into Emiya with enough force to knock him back. Mash was still standing defensively in front of the twins, holding up her shield to protect them while the others engaged the monster directly.

    It was Arash who descended upon Jackie with force, wielding one of his arrows like a dagger again, pointed tip gleaming. Jackie dodged back nimbly, taking quick, light swipes at him as she went, and Arash blocked them all as he let her retreat, face hard and stern.

    It was obvious now that she was a Servant of some kind. To disappear like that, there were only so many ways it could be done with so little preparation, and going into spirit form as a way to escape notice so cleanly was the only one I could think of for someone apparently so young. That she could slip even from the notice of our Servants at so close a range meant that there was only one class of Servant she could possibly be.

    Assassin.

    Jackie giggled. ¡°You want to play, too, Mister? That¡¯s not nice. You need to wait your turn!¡±

    Her eyes gleamed.

    ¡°We won¡¯t take long. Promise.¡±

    And with all of the other clues, it wasn¡¯t hard to figure out which Heroic Spirit she was. Frankly, running around and calling herself ¡°Jackie¡± was basically advertising it, and if it hadn¡¯t been for the Nameless Forest messing with my head, I was sure I would have figured it out the instant I heard her name.

    ¡°Jack the Ripper.¡±

    Although how and why such a famous serial killer was a little girl who hadn¡¯t even hit puberty yet, I didn¡¯t know, and I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to. It was just another bit of weirdness that didn¡¯t make sense amongst a pile of it that had been stacking up over the course of the last few months.

    ¡°That¡¯s us!¡± Jackie chirped. ¡°We are the fire, the rain, the power¡­ So please, won¡¯t you just die?¡±

    Her body lit up with a dark, fizzling miasma, a seething energy that radiated off of her and filled the air like a grudge. The edges of her knife ¡ª knives, it turned out, because she¡¯d drawn another one from underneath the tattered hem of her cloak ¡ª shone like freshly polished steel. I didn¡¯t wait any longer to pull out my knife and toss it to Arash, who dropped his arrow and snatched it out of the air, then settled into a defensive stance.

    ¡°Maria,¡± Jackie began lowly, ¡°the Ripper!¡±

    She zipped across the distance, making straight for Arash, and led with her right hand and the knife she held therein. Arash readied himself to block and make a counter blow, his thumb moving towards the switch that would activate the nanothorns.

    But at the last second, Jackie juked to the side, landing lightly on one foot, and Arash must have realized what I did, because he flung himself between us ¡ª

    And Jackie juked back the other way, leaving him off balance and out of place.

    I tried to move, to dodge, to do something, anything, to stop her, but everything moved too slow. My bugs wouldn¡¯t be fast enough to form a screen, my body felt sluggish and slow, and by the time the impulse to dodge made it down to my legs, I knew I would already be dead.

    Jackie came towards me, rushing, nothing more than a blur of black and a mass of accumulated hatred. Instinct told me it wouldn¡¯t take more than a glancing hit, not for a curse that potent.

    ¡°Fou!¡±

    A pair of tiny feet slammed into my side like a freight train, and by the time I registered the blow, I was already flying out of the way. My body tumbled across the grass, my vision flipping and rotating between the greenery, the tree canopy, the sky, and the ground, but through my bugs, I could watch as Jackie¡¯s knife made contact, catching the little gremlin midair.

    Blood splattered, splashing a red smear across the grass, and Fou went flying, too, looking like nothing so much as a particularly furry baseball as he soared off into the bushes and disappeared from view.

    The idea that the thing could be killed so easily was somehow strangely disappointing.

    I came to a stop, but the world still spun and my head felt like I¡¯d been stuffed into a washing machine. If I tried to stand up like that, I would probably have pitched over sideways.

    That was fine. I didn¡¯t need to be standing or use my own body to act.

    ¡°Fou! Miss Taylor!¡± Mash shouted. Jackie swerved around and made to come directly after me, the miasma dissipating from around her body, but Mash came in from the side and swung that massive shield around.

    Jackie disengaged, hopping backwards, and eyed both her and Arash. I could almost see her weighing her chances and trying to decide whether she liked her odds of winning enough to stay and try.

    After a moment, she smiled. ¡°Oh well. We¡¯ll play with you guys again some other time! Bye-bye!¡±

    She gave us all a cheeky wave, and then vanished into spirit form. Arash leapt towards her, my dagger flashing ¡ª but Jackie was already gone, and I felt the skin of my prosthetic arm prickle, like a sudden gust of wind had blown past me. Arash and Mash both looked around, eyes searching the trees and the park around us for any sign, but there was none.

    Slowly, with my head still a little dizzy, I picked myself up, waiting for her to come back and try again, but she didn¡¯t. It seemed like she really had just left, just like that.

    It gave us room to turn our focus back to the battle against the Jabberwocky, which hadn¡¯t taken a turn in our favor during our fight with Jackie. Emiya and Mordred were still doing their best to whittle away at it, and Emiya had even taken to targeting the little girl specifically, but all that managed to do was to keep the Jabberwocky from moving away from her. It didn¡¯t change the fact that the damn thing was still shrugging off everything they could throw at it, including having its head cut off, because Mordred had managed that while we were distracted.

    It hadn¡¯t worked. Its head had just grown back. I had to assume that meant bringing in A¨ªfe and having her use G¨¢e Bolg to target its heart and other vital organs would be similarly useless, so it might be that the only way to kill it was to destroy the whole thing at once. Siegfried and Balmung would do the trick.

    The only trouble with that was that there were a bunch of buildings with a lot of people inside them not that far away, the reason, I was assuming, or at least one of them, why Emiya hadn¡¯t resorted to his own more destructive tactics. The other was probably because we were all right there and would be caught in the blast.

    The little girl peered over at us, head swiveling back and forth, one hand shading her eyes. She made a vague sound of disappointment, like she didn¡¯t even notice the brace of arrows from Arash that her monstrosity blocked from hitting her.

    ¡°Jackie left?¡± she asked. ¡°That¡¯s too bad. I was looking forward to playing with her some more, too!¡±

    ¡°You keep using that word,¡± Rika complained, ¡°but you have a really weird definition for it!¡±

    ¡°Playing is playing,¡± the little girl said sensibly, like she was stating the obvious. ¡°It¡¯s okay. Jabberwocky has plenty of energy left, so we can keep playing for a long, long time! And if you feel like you¡¯re being left out¡­¡± She smiled. ¡°I have other friends you can play with, too!¡±

    A chill went down my spine. Other friends? If she had the Jabberwocky and Alice¡¯s tea party, then would the next thing she pulled out be the Bandersnatch? Would it be just as impossible to kill as the Jabberwocky seemed to be?

    From the looks on their faces, the others were wondering much the same thing. Even Emiya, who had confidently faced down Herakles, seemed uncertain about the prospect of facing more monsters out of fairy tales.

    ¡°What the hell?¡± Mordred said. ¡°There¡¯s more of the fuckers?¡±

    B-b-b-b-be-beep! B-b-b-b-be-beep! B-b-b-b-be-beep!

    My brow twitched. My alarm, the one I¡¯d set to let us know we had to drop what we were doing and head back to Jekyll¡¯s. I shut it off without saying anything, but¡­

    There was no way. Had we really spent an entire hour and a half out here with her?

    ¡°Let¡¯s see,¡± the little girl said thoughtfully. The Jabberwocky loomed over her stoically, burning eyes staring out unblinkingly. ¡°Who else should I bring out to join the fun? There are oh so many friends who would like to meet all of you, I¡¯m sure, and it¡¯s so hard to pick between them.¡±

    ¡°None!¡± Rika rushed to say. ¡°I-I vote none! I¡¯m fine with just Jabberwocky! There¡¯s more than enough of him to go around!¡±

    ¡°Too much, in fact,¡± Emiya murmured.

    ¡°But you Masters are being left out,¡± the little girl said. ¡°That¡¯s not fair at all. Maybe a few Trump Soldiers will be enough to keep you company for a while!¡±

    ¡°Alice!¡± a new voice barked, and I startled as something moved in the underbrush, a person that had been close enough to watch the whole thing and who had somehow managed to avoid disturbing my swarm as he came closer. ¡°Stop playing around with them! Finish it already!¡±

    The little girl, Alice, heaved a sigh. ¡°Oh well. If Papa says so, then I guess it¡¯s time to finish you all off. Jabberwocky ¡ª¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t, if I were you,¡± I said.

    However it was he¡¯d managed to disappear from my notice between entering the park and speaking, the fact that he¡¯d spoken had broken whatever spell he¡¯d been using, which meant I could see him now with my swarm. It was only too easy to surround him with everything that was already in the trees and grass near him, to bring Huginn down and through the leaves, unnoticed, and perch him where I could see the mysterious ¡°Papa¡± with eyes that were easier to parse with sharper vision.

    Funnily enough, he actually could have passed for her father, down to the long, straight black hair and the Japanese robe he wore like a coat over his business suit.

    Alice tilted her head curiously. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t?¡±

    I pointed unerringly towards the mysterious man, and as I did, I pulled up my more visible swarm, a writhing mass of flies and mosquitoes and wasps, and had them all fly about, gathering like a cloud around the patch of forest where her ¡°Papa¡± had been hiding.

    The man stilled, eyes darting about, and then visibly calmed himself, taking deep, slow breaths, and for an instant, I almost lost track of him again. It was like he very nearly blended into the scenery.

    But Huginn was there, and Huginn did not blink. Whatever spell he was using did not make him invisible.

    ¡°Unless you don¡¯t care what happens to your Papa, that is.¡±

 Chapter CXXXVI: A Tale for Someone

    Chapter CXXXVI: A Tale for Someone

    It was familiar in all of the worst ways, like a bad habit I thought I¡¯d kicked, only to find it wasn¡¯t that easy to escape. The fact of the matter was, however, that we didn¡¯t have a plethora of options. Could we have eventually worn the Jabberwocky down? Maybe. Probably, even. No one had taken any serious injuries yet, and we had four Servants on our side. If it came down to a battle of attrition, then even without a method of killing the thing safely, we could probably just wear it down.

    But that became less certain if Alice brought out more monstrosities who couldn¡¯t be killed simply by cutting off their heads or gouging out their hearts. Too, we didn¡¯t have infinite time to be spending on this, and even if no Assassin materialized to try and kill me on the way back, I wasn¡¯t going to cut and run and leave the twins to try and handle this on their own. I wasn¡¯t going to pull Arash away from the fight to escort me back to Jekyll¡¯s either.

    It helped that Alice wasn¡¯t an innocent bystander caught up in things by bad luck, and also that there was a lot more at stake here than a few thousand bank notes in a vault. It was much easier to soothe my conscience with the knowledge that this was very much an enemy, and this little girl wasn¡¯t at all a little girl.

    ¡°You¡¯re breaking the rules of the game,¡± Alice said petulantly.

    ¡°I¡¯m not playing,¡± was my cold answer.

    Alice tilted her head, frowning, and her hands moved ¡ª

    ¡°Bring out any more of your ¡®friends,¡¯ and I¡¯ll drop every bug I have on your ¡®Papa,¡¯¡± I warned her. ¡°You need him if you want to stay in this era, don¡¯t you?¡±

    She might also be in league with the people behind this Singularity. Her ¡®Papa¡¯ might be P, B, or M, and with the paltry amount of magical energy he was letting off ¡ª to sustain her, no doubt ¡ª it was entirely possible that they weren¡¯t the initials of the Servants, but the Masters who commanded them.

    Or the pawns of one of the Demon Gods.

    ¡°Meanie,¡± said Alice. ¡°Do you treat all of your books so roughly?¡±

    My brow furrowed. Did she just imply¡­

    ¡°¡­you¡¯re a book?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°You¡¯ve gotta be shittin¡¯ me,¡± said Mordred. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me, this tiny bitch is that magical tome we¡¯ve been looking for!¡±

    ¡°You were looking for me?¡± asked Alice.

    ¡°They¡¯re right?¡± Rika exclaimed, eyes wide.

    ¡°You were too late,¡± a familiar voice said, and Andersen materialized at the back of the group, well and far enough away to run if the Jabberwocky went after him. ¡°That would certainly explain why the trail went cold ¡ª it looks like it went and found a Master already. Although what it says about the owner¡¯s mind that a grown man produced a little girl, well¡­¡±

    Thank you for putting that thought in my head, I didn¡¯t say, and the part that I had to admit I found somewhat concerning was that he might have been right.

    Or maybe she had been formed in the image of his daughter. I could see the family resemblance, after a fashion. That was slightly less creepy than the alternative.

    ¡°Just what are you trying to insinuate, there?¡± ¡®Papa¡¯ snapped from his hiding spot.

    ¡°Nothing more than the obvious,¡± Andersen replied.

    ¡°Rude!¡± Alice said.

    ¡°You¡¯re right, it is,¡± I interrupted, jumping on the point. ¡°We should all be having this conversation face to face, shouldn¡¯t we, ¡®Papa?¡¯¡±

    I punctuated this with a buzz from all of the bugs surrounding him in the grass and the trees and an aggressive caw from Huginn. Her ¡®Papa¡¯ flinched, lip curling, and then adopted a thunderous scowl, head swiveling as shrewd eyes searched for a way out. A warning shot from Huginn¡¯s mana cannon near his feet disabused him of that line of thought.

    ¡°That was me being polite.¡±

    ¡°Trust me,¡± said Rika, ¡°you don¡¯t want to know what impolite looks like with Senpai!¡±

    ¡°I think I might have some idea,¡± ¡®Papa¡¯ muttered.

    Nonetheless, he gathered himself and as much of his dignity as he could, and then he strode out of his hiding spot among the trees and over to join Alice, close enough that the Jabberwocky wouldn¡¯t have to move much to protect him. He eyed me the entire time, looking away only to glance at the parts of my swarm still buzzing about to keep attention away from the more clandestine things the less noticeable ones were up to.

    If he tried to escape, he was going to find all of the exits a figurative minefield of spiderwebs to trip him up. All but the one we would be using to get out of here.

    ¡°Fuck me,¡± said Mordred. ¡°He¡¯s just a regular guy.¡±

    ¡°And he¡¯s Japanese,¡± Ritsuka noted.

    ¡°Huh,¡± said Rika, nonplussed. ¡°Go figure.¡±

    ¡°If you think that changes the situation at hand, you¡¯re naive,¡± he said. ¡°Sharing a nationality doesn¡¯t automatically make us comrades, and if you think your age means I¡¯m going to treat you any more lightly than I would any other enemy, then I¡¯ll gladly walk over your corpses without a second thought.¡±

    He meant it, too. There was no indecision or hesitation in his body language. Most people were just posturing when they said something like that, putting on a strong face to unnerve their enemies, and very few actually meant it. I¡¯d had too much experience with those who actually did to be so easily fooled by a little bravado.

    This guy wasn¡¯t bluffing.

    Could he be an Association magus, one caught outside of the Clock Tower when the entrance was destroyed? If he was, that only made him all the more dangerous.

    ¡°If you think it¡¯s going to be that easy,¡± Emiya began lowly.

    ¡°It¡¯s not,¡± said Arash.

    ¡°You¡¯re not in much of a position to be making threats like that anyway,¡± I told him. ¡°What I said a minute ago stands ¡ª if Alice tries to summon more of her ¡®friends,¡¯ then I¡¯m going to drop everything in this clearing on you, no questions asked.¡±

    ¡°And then Jabberwocky turns you into a pulp!¡± Alice said brightly.

    Not if I brought Siegfried in at the exact same moment. That split second where he was protecting me would be a split second where Alice was vulnerable, and that was more than enough time and space for Arash or Emiya or even Mordred to cut her down, too.

    ¡°Hold on,¡± said Ritsuka, holding up his hands. ¡°Before we all start promising all of the ways we¡¯re going to violently kill each other, maybe we should know what it is we¡¯re fighting about in the first place.¡±

    ¡°What kind of stupid question is that?¡± said Mordred. ¡°He¡¯s here for the Holy Grail, ain¡¯t he? One of those conspirators or whatever.¡±

    The man¡¯s head turned to her. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Mash, ¡°Senpai has a point. We don¡¯t need to fight if the only thing we¡¯re fighting over is the fact that we¡¯re fighting.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure that made sense in your head,¡± the man muttered, more to himself than anyone else, it seemed.

    At that moment, a familiar ball of fluff chose to strut casually out of the foliage, pause only long enough to spit out a glob of red blood, and then keep walking as though nothing was wrong.

    ¡°Fou!¡± Mash cried.

    ¡°What the hell,¡± I heard Emiya whisper. ¡°Did that thing just walk off getting hit by a Noble Phantasm?¡±

    ¡®Papa¡¯ seemed to agree with him, eyeing the little furball with a disturbed look on his face.

    ¡°That thing?¡± Mordred asked him. ¡°Why? Haven¡¯t you seen it do something like that before?¡±

    No. No, we hadn¡¯t. And yet, somehow, I couldn¡¯t bring myself to be surprised. Just a minute ago, even, I thought it would be disappointing if it died to something like that. The idea that it came out the other side apparently uninjured felt more like it was expected.

    The little gremlin trotted up to Mash and let her pick him up. ¡°You¡¯re okay!¡± she said happily.

    ¡°Fou-kyu fou-fou,¡± it said. As though, it was no big deal.

    The interruption, at least, allowed a break in the tension, and as much as all of the ways Alice had violated us pissed me right the fuck off, after that moment to break my train of thought, I could admit that Mash and Ritsuka had something of a point. I didn¡¯t think they were necessarily right, but the fact we didn¡¯t even know ¡®Papa¡¯s¡¯ name meant that there was a chance they weren¡¯t wrong.

    But this would get really messy if it turned out he actually was one of those Association magi who didn¡¯t mind the idea of vivisecting people while they were still alive to find out how they ticked.

    ¡°Now that we¡¯re not all at each other¡¯s throats,¡± I began, ¡°let¡¯s take a minute to clarify a few things, Papa. Your name would be a good start.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Andersen agreed. ¡°So that I never have to hear that word leave her lips again.¡±

    The mystery man raised an eyebrow coolly. ¡°And why should I be the one to introduce myself first? From my perspective, the whole lot of you are the strangers here.¡±

    I had to give him at least some credit for his nerve. It took guts to ask our names after his¡­Servant? Familiar? Noble Phantasm? Whatever she was ¡ª took them away from us not that long ago.

    Wait. Alice. Jabberwocky. Alice¡¯s tea party. Trump Soldiers. Fuck me, Alice¡¯s Adventures in Wonderland. How had I missed that earlier? Did that make him Lewis Carroll? In that getup? The guy was known to have been pretty eccentric, but I hadn¡¯t thought that eccentric.

    ¡°You already got them a few minutes ago,¡± I told him calmly. ¡°Unless you expect me to believe you weren¡¯t paying attention when we shouted them out.¡±

    ¡°So I did,¡± he said, ¡°Taylor.¡±

    If he was expecting a reaction out of me, I didn¡¯t give him one. I¡¯d played head games with people plenty more skilled at it than he was.

    When he got nothing out of me, he turned to the twins one at a time, ¡°Which would make the girl Rika and the boy Ritsuka.¡±

    Noticeably, he didn¡¯t address any of the Servants. I didn¡¯t know if that said something about what he thought of them, or if he didn¡¯t want to single out the one name he definitely heard ¡ª Emiya¡¯s ¡ª because it would make it all the more obvious he didn¡¯t know the others.

    ¡°Pleased to meet you,¡± Ritsuka said politely. ¡°And you are?¡±

    A sour look crossed the man¡¯s face, and for a long moment, he didn¡¯t answer. After several lingering seconds, however, he eventually said, ¡°Tohsaka. Nagato.¡±

    Notably, not P, B, or M, and also notably, not the name of any famous author I¡¯d ever heard of before. By the looks on the twins¡¯ faces, not the name of any famous Japanese author either.

    Emiya, however, very obviously had, by the complicated expression on his face. ¡°Let me guess,¡± he said, sounding like he was dreading the answer. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t happen to be the Second Owner of a little town called Fuyuki, would you?¡±

    The others turned to him with surprise. Tohsaka¡¯s was filled with a healthy dose of suspicion. ¡°You know of me?¡±

    ¡°After a fashion,¡± was Emiya¡¯s cryptic answer.

    ¡°Wait a minute,¡± said Rika. ¡°Second Owner of Fuyuki¡­as in that swanky mansion we spent the night in back in Singularity F?¡±

    I was honestly a bit surprised she remembered that. The twins had both been incredibly green back then, and I hadn¡¯t been sure how much of what Marie and I had told them during that fiasco had stuck and how much had gone in one ear and out the other.

    The answer was, at least enough for her to remember where we¡¯d stayed the night while we were there. And if this guy really was the Second Owner of Fuyuki ¡ª presumably from this time period ¡ª then he was almost certainly the Master of this relationship, as I¡¯d suspected.

    ¡°Wait,¡± Tohsaka demanded hotly, ¡°you bastards stayed in my house?¡±

    ¡°Says the man squatting in a vacant apartment in London,¡± Andersen pointed out.

    ¡°It was¡­a bit of an emergency situation,¡± Ritsuka said apologetically.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry we intruded,¡± said Mash, bowing slightly.

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t make it better!¡± Tohsaka spat.

    ¡°Emiya and I weren¡¯t there at the time, if it helps,¡± Arash offered.

    ¡°Like hell it does!¡±

    ¡°I swear,¡± Emiya murmured, so quiet that I wasn¡¯t sure anyone else heard him, ¡°it runs in the family, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    And of course, if I asked what he meant by that, he wouldn¡¯t give me anything but the vaguest of answers, would he? This was what everyone else felt like whenever they asked me about my past, wasn¡¯t it?

    ¡°Hang on,¡± said Mordred. ¡°What¡¯s this about staying in his house, now? When was this?¡±

    I checked the time, and it was rapidly running out. We needed to high tail it back to Jekyll¡¯s immediately, and we didn¡¯t have time to stand around and explain all of the nuances of everything we¡¯d spent the last four months doing. That would, naturally and from the beginning, include everything that happened in Fuyuki and why we were there.

    ¡°There¡¯s no time,¡± I said briskly. ¡°We need to make our way back to base before the fog rolls in. We can talk about this on the way.¡± I looked pointedly at Tohsaka. ¡°Unless you want to take us back to wherever you¡¯ve been staying and discuss it there.¡±

    His lips drew into a thin line, and that was how I knew my gambit was successful. If his workshop or whatever he had that passed for one was well-defended enough to give him the advantage in a fight against all of us, he would have had Alice lead us there instead of this park. The fact he didn¡¯t want to jump on the chance to have us on his home turf meant neither he nor Alice would be any better off there than they were here.

    ¡°Fine,¡± he said. ¡°We¡¯ll go back to your base, and you can explain on the way why I had a bunch of rats scurrying about my house.¡±

    A quick glance at Alice with my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance confirmed what I¡¯d come to suspect: despite having no apparent presence as a Servant, she was indeed a Caster, and her true name most certainly wasn¡¯t Alice.

    So however being a book worked, she wasn¡¯t Alice¡¯s Adventures in Wonderland.

    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

    ¡°I mean, I know we were there uninvited,¡± Rika said petulantly, ¡°but I don¡¯t think it¡¯s fair to call us rats.¡±

    No, but I¡¯d heard a lot worse.

    ¡°Then let¡¯s go,¡± I said, pretending Rika hadn¡¯t spoken. ¡°Saber, you can lead the way. Ritsuka, you¡¯re in charge of explaining.¡±

    And if they try anything on the way back to Jekyll¡¯s, I told Arash privately, then don¡¯t hesitate to deal with them.

    His lips pulled into a grim line. Got it.

    ¡°Saber?¡± Mordred complained. ¡°What¡¯s with the formality all of a sudden? I mean, felt a little weird having you call me Sir Mordred, but at least with Shieldy, it kinda made sense.¡±

    Tohsaka¡¯s cheek twitched, the only sign he recognized her name, and I had to fight down a response ¡ª the agitated spiders skittering in the trees went unnoticed by everyone else ¡ª because she¡¯d just defeated the point of trying to hide her identity in the first place.

    ¡°Sir Mordred, then,¡± I allowed. ¡°If you would?¡±

    ¡°Fine, fine,¡± she groused. ¡°Feels like a waste of fucking time to go back this soon, but I don¡¯t need the tongue-lashing Boss Lady¡¯ll give me if I let you die out here, so I guess we¡¯re going back.¡±

    She turned halfway, then stopped and eyed the Jabberwocky. ¡°Yer not bringing that thing along, are ya?¡±

    Alice blinked and looked up at the massive creature standing sentinel over her. She smiled and waved at it. ¡°Bye-bye, Jabberwocky! We¡¯ll play again later, okay?¡±

    The Jabberwocky didn¡¯t acknowledge her at all, or even react to her words. Just, suddenly, it started to fade away, disappearing not into glittering dust like a Servant would, but dissolving away into nothingness like a smudge being erased from an artist¡¯s canvas. When it was gone, Alice skipped over to Tohsaka and smiled up at him like a real little girl would at her father.

    ¡°Ready to go, Papa!¡± she chirped.

    Knowing what she was now, it just seemed creepy.

    With all of that settled, we set off, and if I tagged both Alice and Tohsaka with a few bugs to keep an eye on them, no one else seemed to notice. If they noticed Arash taking up the rear of the group, I wasn¡¯t sure, but all it would have done was hammer home the lack of trust between us. I was okay with that. The surveillance you didn¡¯t notice was always more important than the surveillance you saw outright.

    The guy had plenty of hair for me to hide a few bugs in. I thought it might even have been longer than mine.

    ¡°So,¡± Ritsuka began as we walked. ¡°We¡¯re part of an organization called Chaldea, and our job here is to come fix things when someone changes history and creates a Singularity¡­¡±

    He¡¯d gotten better at explaining things. Tohsaka obviously had some questions, and he wasn¡¯t quite prepared to accept everything on its face, but Ritsuka took it all in stride and answered all of his concerns smoothly and as completely as he could. It turned out that ¡ª after going through four Singularities and sitting through weeks of lectures from El-Melloi II ¡ª he could answer them very smoothly and completely.

    Of course, Tohsaka wasn¡¯t exactly happy about any of those answers either.

    ¡°You have to be kidding me,¡± he said sourly. ¡°I knew there was something wrong with this place after the Clock Tower got ransacked, but the idea that some guy is out there messing around with history and dropping Holy Grails all over the place sounds like something out of a bad joke.¡± His mouth twisted. ¡°And now you¡¯re telling me it¡¯s 1888? Like the past hundred years never happened?¡±

    Hundred years?

    ¡°What year did you think it was, exactly?¡±

    Beep-beep!

    ¡°And now there¡¯s this,¡± Tohsaka griped as I answered my communicator. I ignored him as a courtesy, because I still didn¡¯t trust him, but if he was telling the truth, he was getting a hell of a culture shock.

    ¡°Director?¡±

    ¡°Nagato of House Tohsaka,¡± Marie said formally, addressing him instead of me. She was in her serious director mode. ¡°Second Owner of Fuyuki City and manager of the spiritual grounds therein.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re this director of theirs, I assume?¡± Tohsaka said in lieu of answering.

    ¡°I am,¡± Marie replied. ¡°Olga Marie Animusphere, current head of the Animusphere and Director of the Chaldea Security Organization.¡±

    Tohsaka¡¯s eyes narrowed. ¡°You¡¯re a Lord of the Clock Tower, then.¡±

    ¡°I am.¡± She addressed me, next. ¡°Taylor, turn on the visual component.¡±

    ¡°Yes, Director.¡±

    With a little bit of fiddling, the hologram flickered to life, and Tohsaka flinched to find himself suddenly face to face with Marie. After he¡¯d had a moment to be startled, however, he actually looked at her and his brow drew down.

    ¡°You¡¯re young,¡± he said as a statement of fact.

    ¡°My father, the previous head and director of our organization, was assassinated by the same people behind this assault on the proper course of human history,¡± Marie said, and she didn¡¯t even wince. She¡¯d probably been prepared to hear exactly that from him. Maybe she¡¯d even rehearsed this in her head before she called. ¡°As a result, I had to take over for him far earlier than anticipated. You will find, however, that my youth has no bearing on the importance of my position, my organization, or my authority in these matters.¡±

    Tohsaka smiled thinly. It didn¡¯t reach his eyes. ¡°So it seems. What did you want to discuss, Director Animusphere?¡±

    ¡°Firstly, to confirm,¡± Marie began. ¡°For you, prior to the formation of this Singularity, the year was 1795 AD, correct?¡±

    ¡°Correct.¡±

    Marie¡¯s lips pressed together. From behind and to her side, Romani leaned into the frame and murmured, ¡°That means that he would have been pulled into the London Singularity over one-hundred years out of place. We might have been looking at the wrong axis when we measured the Singularity¡¯s deviation.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Marie said tersely, ¡°thank you, Vice Director Archaman. I wasn¡¯t aware of that.¡±

    Romani was not so clueless that he didn¡¯t catch her tone, and he wisely chose to back away and out of frame again instead of annoying her even more.

    ¡°So I¡¯m not supposed to be here either,¡± Tohsaka noted. ¡°Does that mean, what, that I¡¯ll be ¡®corrected¡¯ once this is over, just like everything else in this place?¡±

    ¡°Papa will go away?¡± asked Alice. There was something in her voice that made my spine stiffen.

    ¡°Provided the Singularity is resolved and the Holy Grail removed, the Counter Force will return you to your proper place in history as though nothing at all happened,¡± Marie answered. ¡°That includes your memories of these events and the circumstances involved. For you and all of the people in this Singularity, nothing will have changed. Your life will go on as it was meant to, for all intents and purposes, undisturbed.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡±

    What he thought of that, I wasn¡¯t sure. His face gave nothing away. Neither did Alice¡¯s face, although I was sure she must have had some sort of opinion on the matter. Would she fight the issue in order to remain with her ¡®Papa,¡¯ no matter what it cost us or anyone else, or if he ordered her to work with us, would she obey without argument? There was no way to tell yet.

    ¡°Pursuant to that matter,¡± Marie went on, ¡°I would like to negotiate the assistance of you and your Servant in resolving this Singularity. Although the circumstances won¡¯t allow me to compensate you personally for your services, your family may be rewarded on your behalf after the Grand Order has been completed.¡±

    ¡°Because any money you paid me directly would simply vanish when everything was returned to its proper place,¡± Tohsaka murmured to himself. Louder, he said, ¡°You¡¯re unexpectedly straightforward, Director Animusphere. You didn¡¯t even make the attempt to trick me into accepting money I would never receive.¡±

    ¡°Of course not,¡± Marie said, as though the very idea was ridiculous. ¡°I am not some penniless magus selling her blood to whoever wants it. Attempting to deceive you in an effort to avoid paying a debt owed is beneath me.¡±

    ¡°So it is,¡± Tohsaka agreed.

    ¡°Hang on,¡± said Rika. ¡°When you say he¡¯s gonna be compensated for working with us, do you mean he¡¯s gonna get the same kind of pay as us Masters do?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± was the answer Marie gave her. ¡°Although he would technically be an independent contractor, he would also be working as a temporary Master of Chaldea. It¡¯s only right that he¡¯s paid on the same scale as any other Master would be.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s eyebrows rose, and Rika let out a low whistle. ¡°Damn. He could make a lot of bread with that much dough.¡±

    Emiya groaned softly, and Marie¡¯s cheek twitched, but she managed to keep her expression calm and professional. Tohsaka, on the other hand, just looked confused.

    ¡°Bread? Dough?¡±

    ¡°Ignore that,¡± I told him. ¡°While the Director is willing to sign you on as a provisional Master for the duration of the Singularity, I have a few reservations.¡±

    ¡°You do?¡± Marie, Tohsaka, and Mash all said at once.

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said. ¡°In particular, there¡¯s the problem of that other Servant that showed up to your tea party. Alice seemed to know who it was. She even called¡­¡± My brow furrowed. ¡°Called¡­¡±

    Called¡­who by name? For that matter, what had Alice called by name, and what was that name? There was another Servant there at the tea party, I could remember that much, but the details were gone. Voice, age, hair color, every identifying feature I could think of. Not out of reach, the way my name had been in the Nameless Forest, but just gone, like someone had taken a scalpel and carefully excised each and every detail with the precision of a surgeon.

    I could even remember coming to a conclusion about the Servant¡¯s identity, using the name Alice had called them as a springboard. The logic behind it was still there. But every part that had involved something about the Servant in question had been removed from my memory.

    ¡°¡­I can¡¯t remember their name.¡±

    Mash, Ritsuka, and Rika all gasped. ¡°Neither can I,¡± Mash said.

    ¡°Nothing,¡± Ritsuka agreed.

    ¡°Me, three,¡± said Rika. ¡°I know I heard it and I know I knew it, but someone poured a little too much brain bleach in my ear or something, because poof, it¡¯s gone!¡±

    ¡°I hate to add to the alarm,¡± Emiya said gravely, ¡°but I¡¯ve been affected, as well.¡±

    ¡°Same,¡± Arash chimed in.

    Marie rounded on Alice. ¡°You¡­!¡±

    ¡°¡®S not her, this time,¡± Mordred interrupted. ¡°I said yesterday that there was an Assassin going around who erased memories and stuff, didn¡¯t I? My guess, that¡¯s who we met at that tea party. Once they left, everything we knew and learned about ¡®em got erased. We were just too distracted to notice right away.¡±

    The Assassin she¡¯d mentioned yesterday¡­so Jack the Ripper, then. The fact I could still puzzle it out was a good sign, because it meant my thought patterns hadn¡¯t been manipulated. A Stranger instead of a Master. Thinking it and coming to that conclusion didn¡¯t magically restore the bits of my memories I was missing, though, so whatever skill or Noble Phantasm erased information about them was more like a delete button than a spell of forgetfulness or hypnosis to repress the memories.

    ¡°Director,¡± I said, ¡°was any data recorded by Chaldea during that fight?¡±

    ¡°Of course.¡± She turned away from the screen and looked down at her terminal, typing away rapidly. ¡°It¡¯s¡­¡±

    Her brow crinkled.

    ¡°Gone. The data on the other Servant you encountered earlier is gone. Parameters, skills, Noble Phantasms, even basic things like height, weight, and sex, they¡¯re all missing.¡±

    ¡°It even works on Chaldea,¡± Ritsuka murmured, sounding impressed.

    ¡°That¡¯s cheating!¡± Rika complained.

    Alice giggled. ¡°Of course it is. Assassins never play by the rules, never ever.¡±

    ¡°This isn¡¯t a game!¡± Marie snapped.

    Alice just smiled, unperturbed.

    ¡°Of course it isn¡¯t,¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°But this answers your question, doesn¡¯t it? The one you were trying to ask. After all, there¡¯s no reason to erase our memories of them if we were in league with this Assassin of yours, is there?¡±

    Except there was no way to prove that his memories of Jack the Ripper had been erased, and even if they had, it didn¡¯t mean that they weren¡¯t working with him. It would be an effective way to gain our trust if it just so happened that he and Alice had both had their memories of the mysterious Assassin erased the same way we had. I even had a way around any confusion it might cause ¡ª a simple passphrase would be enough for them to identify each other as allies.

    ¡°I guess not,¡± I said mildly. ¡°After all, it takes a special kind of person to team up with a serial killer like Jack the Ripper.¡±

    Tohsaka reacted ¡ª not by stiffening or freezing, like he might have if he¡¯d been found out in a lie, but with confusion and annoyance.

    ¡°A serial killer?¡± he echoed. ¡°Hey, Alice, just who did you invite along to that tea party, anyway?¡±

    ¡°A friend I met on the street,¡± Alice answered simply. ¡°Jackie was very, very lonely.¡±

    As though that was reason enough to make friends with a serial killer famous for the murders of several women who also happened to be psychotic enough to treat the whole thing as a game with the police. Someone like that would have fit right in with the Nine.

    I guess it made sense that Tohsaka wouldn¡¯t know anything about the Ripper murders, though. If he really was from a hundred years ago ¡ª by the count of this era we were currently in ¡ª then he was a hundred years too early to have heard about them. He was likely long dead by the time they happened.

    Although with magi, you never really knew, did you?

    ¡°I suppose it¡¯s only natural that loneliness attracts loneliness,¡± Andersen said.

    Tohsaka pinched the bridge of his nose, grimacing. ¡°Most normal girls bring in stray cats or dogs,¡± he muttered. ¡°This one? Brings in homicidal murderers she meets on the streets.¡±

    Calling a murderer homicidal was technically redundant, but I let it slide without comment.

    ¡°I have a few more questions aside from that,¡± I said.

    ¡°What is this, a formal inquiry?¡± Tohsaka said under his breath.

    ¡°It¡¯s a job interview,¡± I replied, and he grimaced when he realized I¡¯d heard him. ¡°Before you were dragged into this Singularity, I¡¯m assuming you were in London yourself. Why?¡±

    ¡°I was meeting an associate from the Clock Tower,¡± Tohsaka answered simply. ¡°I¡¯m not sure you could call him my teacher, since the only thing he likes to do is hand me busywork every now and again, but I paid his tab once upon a time ¡ª¡± For some reason, Alice found this quite funny. ¡°¡ª and he decided to repay me by teaching me magecraft.¡±

    ¡°Wait a second,¡± said Marie, ¡°you¡¯re telling me that you got a sponsor from the Association just for helping him pay a bill? Just like that?¡±

    ¡°Sorry to disappoint you, but whatever was going through his mind, I haven¡¯t the first idea,¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°Frankly, I¡¯m not sure he didn¡¯t just decide it on a whim as a way to pass the time.¡±

    ¡°Wow,¡± said Rika. ¡°That¡¯s some crazy luck. A complete rando decided to teach you magic just because you saved him a couple bucks? In what world? Aside from this one, I mean.¡±

    ¡°It does sound pretty incredible,¡± Mash agreed. She had barely stopped petting Fou since things calmed down, like she had to reassure herself the thing was still alive.

    ¡°Quite the career change,¡± said Andersen, ¡°going from a martial artist to a mage. Too bad you¡¯re only mediocre at both.¡±

    Tohsaka¡¯s cheek twitched, but he managed not to rise to the bait, no matter how much he very obviously wanted to.

    ¡°I have a feeling I already know the answer,¡± Emiya began reluctantly, ¡°but do you happen to know this man¡¯s name?¡±

    Tohsaka made a sound in the back of his throat. ¡°He called himself Zelretch.¡±

    My head whipped around so fast my neck cracked, and Marie startled, too, choking out, ¡°Th-the Wizard Mashal?¡±

    A True Magician? One of the handful of guys who could do stuff that wasn¡¯t supposed to be possible with magecraft, no matter how long or hard you studied or how much effort you put in?

    Most importantly, the one guy Marie told me I should do my absolute best to avoid meeting?

    Emiya just sighed. ¡°Yes, that¡¯s the answer I thought I was going to get.¡±

    ¡°Who?¡± the twins asked. Mordred looked like she had the same question.

    ¡°Y-you¡­!¡± Marie sputtered, but she couldn¡¯t seem to form the words beyond that.

    ¡°A very scary man,¡± Emiya said dryly. ¡°I¡¯m sure that El-Melloi will be only too happy to tell you all about him if you ask after this is over. For now, I think the most important thing you need to know is that he¡¯s a very important and very powerful member of the Association.¡±

    ¡°Could he be here, too?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Marie¡¯s face paled, and she looked like the very idea terrified her. For as frightened of the man as she seemed, however, I had to admit that the idea of having that kind of power on our side was appealing.

    ¡°If he is, then he stood me up,¡± Tohsaka said flatly. ¡°I waited for six hours at the Association, and the only reason I wasn¡¯t caught up in that mess was because I left before the place could come down around my ears.¡±

    As long as he wasn¡¯t one of those magi who would vivisect me ¡ª or Mash ¡ª of course. Sort of, ¡°as long as he¡¯s on my side, I want him here, but he¡¯s the last person I want to fight.¡± Funnily enough, I¡¯d been on both sides of that particular concern.

    ¡°It¡¯s more likely he¡¯s just not here, then,¡± I said, and Marie sagged against her console, relieved. ¡°We probably would have met him by now if he was.¡±

    Because I couldn¡¯t imagine he wouldn¡¯t have come looking to investigate our Rayshift, or failing that, that he wouldn¡¯t have gone to handle whatever had happened at the Association. At the very least, we weren¡¯t being cautious about hiding our fighting, so with all of the magical energy being thrown around, he likely would have come looking for that.

    Tohsaka grunted. ¡°So you¡¯re saying I waited for nothing.¡±

    ¡°It looks that way.¡±

    ¡°Then it seems like my only real options are to stay out of things and hope you all resolve them or help you fix them myself,¡± he said. He grimaced. ¡°If I¡¯m being honest, this whole mess sounds like more trouble than it¡¯s worth, but it¡¯s not like sitting around and waiting is going to do me any good. If he¡¯s not here, then I have no reason to stay either, so the sooner I can get back to my own time, the sooner I can get back to my own life. Right?¡±

    I guess it was as good a reason as any to join up with us. It wasn¡¯t impossible that he was out for the Grail or working with the masterminds behind all of this, but if he was a first generation magus the way he claimed, then he might not even truly understand all that much about the Grail and how it functioned, let alone what he might be able to do with it. There was the question of how much he would even care if he did.

    If he was taking orders from P, B, or M, well, that wasn¡¯t easy to answer either. If he didn¡¯t have anything he wanted the Grail for and he really had just been pulled along accidentally, then why he¡¯d follow their orders was another question I didn¡¯t have an answer to.

    For now, I suppose we could extend a little bit of trust to him. Andersen and his Human Observation skill hadn¡¯t thrown up any red flags yet, after all, and he¡¯d been willing enough to come along to see the whole ¡®magical tome¡¯ thing through to the end.

    ¡°There¡¯s just one more question you need to answer,¡± I told Tohsaka.

    ¡°And that is?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Your Servant¡¯s true name. It isn¡¯t Alice.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Marie agreed. ¡°As a show of good faith, it¡¯s only right that you share the true identity of your Servant. It¡¯s against Chaldea¡¯s policy for Masters to hide their Servants from each other.¡±

    Did it count when half of us were technically hiding Galahad¡¯s identity from Mash?

    ¡°First time I¡¯m hearing that one,¡± said Rika.

    ¡°It¡¯s not like it¡¯s ever come up before,¡± her brother pointed out. ¡°We¡¯ve never even had a reason to try.¡±

    ¡°Point.¡±

    Tohsaka looked down at Alice, at the Servant wearing the face of what I was becoming more and more convinced was his daughter. She just smiled back up at him.

    ¡°If we¡¯re going to be working together, then I suppose it doesn¡¯t make much sense to keep it from you, does it?¡± he thought aloud. ¡°Fine. Alice, go ahead and introduce yourself ¡ª properly, this time.¡±

    ¡°If Papa says so,¡± Alice agreed. She inclined her torso into a short bow. ¡°Hello. Pleased to meet you, everyone. I¡¯m a Tale for Someone.¡±

    She beamed.

    ¡°My true name is Nursery Rhyme. Please take good care of me, okay?¡±

 Interlude TN: Ensou

    Interlude TN: Ensou

    Tohsaka Nagato was a lot of things, but the one thing he certainly wasn¡¯t was a fool.

    Some might have said so, for he did not notice immediately that something was wrong, but no honest man could truly blame him for having missed the initial signs. After all, his acquaintance with the man known to him only as ¡°Zelretch¡± was truly not much more than that, because he had not been lying when he said the teachings imparted unto him were often simply assignments in self-study.

    There were any number of reasons, therefore, why this man could have been late to their meeting. It would not even be the first where he had not shown himself at all, and only sometimes were those lessons in and of themselves about how to detect the presence of a magus in an area where he appeared not to be.

    It was annoying to come all the way to London, of course, only to find it would be one of those lessons. It had been from the start. Nagato was simply unable to do anything about it. Who would he complain to? Someone else in the Association? When they weren¡¯t looking at him as though he was a particularly foul piece of scum scraped off of the bottom of someone¡¯s shoe, they whispered to each other about how long it would take him to break.

    He had even heard several of them make bets on the subject, as though his apparently inevitable suffering was some kind of sport to spectate.

    How crass. The least they could have done was wait until he was out of earshot to say such things, but he suspected that their saying them where and when he could hear was a part of their mocking. What a farce. An institution purportedly dedicated to preservation and furtherance of the study of magecraft, and they played petty politics and dealt in flagrant stereotypes.

    How learned these magi truly were.

    Nothing had seemed unusual, therefore, when Zelretch did not appear, even after some hours of waiting. Nagato had simply accepted it as it was and left to return to his apartment ¡ª not a moment too soon, it seemed, because as he found out only later, the Association¡¯s headquarters had been assaulted.

    Whether the lower levels and their occupants remained alive and unharmed, Nagato could not say, and frankly, he couldn¡¯t even have said why he cared that much. It wasn¡¯t like many ¡ª if any at all ¡ª would thank him for his assistance, even if he happened to save their lives. For that matter, they would surely be better off extracting themselves, if he was so inferior to the lot of them.

    Perhaps it was just a matter of common decency. Nagato was no saint, but even he could be compelled to do the right thing simply because it was the right thing to do.

    He knew it would be the height of stupidity to attempt an investigation of his own, however. He was an amateur at best ¡ª there was no shame for him in admitting that his daughter was the one who overflowed with talent for the mystic arts ¡ª and any being that could catch the Association and its Enforcers off guard was far beyond him. The only thing sticking his nose in where it didn¡¯t belong would accomplish was seeing it lopped off.

    He liked both his head and his nose precisely where they were, thank you very much.

    With the benefit of hindsight, this attack was not the first sign, but it was the most obvious. Something was amiss in London, something dangerous and deadly and something which Nagato very clearly should not interfere in.

    If he had been uncertain before, however, then the mist, of course, dispelled all doubt. He hadn¡¯t even made it out the door of his rented room before he realized how dangerous it would be to step out into the fog that rolled in over the city, blanketing everything beneath its insidious touch. The thick magical energy inside of it had nearly burned the fine hairs off of the backs of his hands.

    Even an amateur like him could feel that much.

    The unfortunate reality, however, was that this self-same mist made it impossible to leave the city. It choked commerce, including any form of transportation, and Nagato would not be surprised if all of the horses had died within the first few hours. Leaving the city within the timeframe of the scant four hours afforded to the citizenry every morning was simply nonviable ¡ª a fact made all the clearer when the next morning¡¯s paper reported that contact had been lost with the government outside of London.

    It seemed that whatever was behind these things did not want anyone ¡ª not even Nagato ¡ª to leave. Why? It was impossible to say, only that this particular insistence left him with precious few options. In the end, staying put and waiting for things to resolve themselves wasn¡¯t one of them. Much as he didn¡¯t want to, he had to get involved more directly.

    That was, of course, easier said than done. The fact that he couldn¡¯t afford inaction under the circumstances didn¡¯t change his own powerlessness to do much of anything. He was one man, a single amateur magus of little note, and while he could defend himself, somehow, he didn¡¯t think whoever was behind all of this would be particularly impressed with his skill in the martial arts.

    In that sense, Nursery Rhyme was a godsend. If he hadn¡¯t stumbled across her wandering aimlessly through the streets, then he might have spent weeks trying to find clues about what exactly was going on. Doubly so, since a few hours later, she led him to a group of strangers in strange clothing who seemed to have a much better grasp of what was going on than he did.

    Tohsaka Nagato was many things, but he was not a fool.

    ¡°¡ª wild that he survived it,¡± said the redhead, the girl calling herself Rika. ¡°Fou¡¯s been through some pretty crazy stuff with us, but he just took a Noble Phantasm to the face and walked it off a few minutes later!¡±

    ¡°Th-that was scary,¡± the girl in dark armor, Mash, said. She was petting the little creature riding her shoulder like it was her lifelong companion. ¡°I thought Fou had really been hurt that time, but¡­maybe Jack¡¯s Noble Phantasm just didn¡¯t work that well on him?¡±

    The last part, she addressed to the blue-eyed boy, Ritsuka, who could only shake his head. ¡°Sorry, Mash, but I can¡¯t remember any details about that either. Everything about Jack the Ripper is gone.¡±

    ¡°It would make sense, if you think about it,¡± the tan-skinned Emiya added. ¡°After all, the legend of Jack the Ripper is all about his female victims. It would be completely in line with that if his Noble Phantasm was only truly effective against women.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s why you get to fight him, next time!¡± Rika chirped. Emiya only sighed.

    ¡°Me and my big mouth¡­¡±

    ¡°Scared?¡± Mordred mocked, grinning. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Emiya, I¡¯ll protect you from the big, bad serial killer! Just you watch, next time, I¡¯ll cut ¡®em right in half!¡±

    ¡°I feel safer already,¡± Emiya replied dryly.

    ¡­Although he might have to wind up revising that later. It remained to be seen whether these Chaldea folk were truly that remarkable. To look at them, they seemed like a ragtag group without much of a clue, but they had at least managed to hold off the Jabberwocky long enough to force his surrender, so perhaps there was something to them after all.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure when we can expect to see him again,¡± said the dark-haired Arash. If the Chaldean Masters looked out of place because their clothing was too finely woven and too perfectly crafted to exist in the current era or in Nagato¡¯s native era, then the likes of Arash and Mordred stood out for the opposite reason.

    Honestly, they looked a little silly, walking about the streets of London like that. That was why Nagato was trying to keep a little bit of distance from them, as though he could convince anyone who might be peeping through their shutters that he wasn¡¯t associated with them in any way.

    ¡°He doesn¡¯t seem to like a fight where he has any chance of actually losing,¡± Arash went on. ¡°After his Noble Phantasm failed and Mash came to back me up, he ran away instead of staying to fight.¡±

    ¡°Not so surprising,¡± said the boy with the unusually deep voice, Andersen. Another Servant, although his presence was so weak it was virtually nonexistent. ¡°Were you expecting an Assassin, who specializes in surprise attacks and underhanded tactics, to jump at the chance to fight two Knight class Servants? Don¡¯t be absurd.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a good point, too,¡± Arash agreed.

    ¡°He¡¯s an ambush predator,¡± the mysterious Taylor added. ¡°Don¡¯t expect honor duels or fair fights. You¡¯re right, Arash. If and when he shows up again, it¡¯ll only be when he¡¯s absolutely sure he can get the kill without dying himself. Although¡­¡±

    Her head didn¡¯t turn and she didn¡¯t look anywhere except ahead, but a chill went down Nagato¡¯s spine and he got the distinct impression that her attention had turned towards him and his Servant. Like a great serpent eyeing a mouse and deciding whether or not it was hungry enough to chase it.

    ¡°Although?¡± Ritsuka asked curiously.

    ¡°Do you have a plan, Senpai?¡± asked Rika.

    ¡°No, it¡¯s nothing,¡± Taylor said. Like a cloud passing in front of the sun, Nagato sensed her attention shift away. ¡°We might be able to set up an ambush of our own to catch Jack, but the last place we want to do something like that is anywhere near the apartment.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± said Arash. ¡°He might try going after Jekyll and the others if he feels cornered. And if he escapes from that, we¡¯ll have led him right to our main base in the city. The enemy would know exactly where to find us.¡±

    ¡°Assuming they don¡¯t already,¡± Taylor said. ¡°But for now, since we can¡¯t know for sure, let¡¯s assume they don¡¯t. It¡¯s best to ¡ª patrol squad up ahead.¡±

    She shifted so suddenly that it almost caught Nagato off guard. In one instant, mid-sentence, her voice became hard and cold, clinical. The great serpent coiling tightly without warning.

    ¡°Their numbers?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°Four each, just like last time,¡± Taylor rattled off. ¡°Automata, Helter Skelter, and homunculi.¡± She checked the metal band around her wrist. ¡°We have enough time to deal with them.¡±

    Ritsuka and Rika both nodded. ¡°Then let¡¯s,¡± said the boy.

    ¡°I wanna see what Mash¡¯s power up looks like!¡± the girl added with a savage grin.

    ¡°I won¡¯t disappoint!¡± Mash promised.

    ¡°Patrol squad?¡± asked Nagato.

    The cloud moved. The sun shone briefly upon Nagato again, Taylor¡¯s attention turning once more his way. It was unsettling that she could do it without once actually looking in his direction.

    ¡°The masterminds behind this Singularity have taken to sending out squads to patrol the city and distract anyone who might try to stop them,¡± she answered. ¡°Two types of mechanical¡­golems, I guess you could call them, and a type of mass-produced homunculus. They¡¯re no match for Servants, but if these guys are halfway competent, then they¡¯re keeping track of where each group patrols and using it to monitor our own movements.¡±

    ¡°They really don¡¯t look like proper homunculi,¡± said Emiya as though he felt compelled to defend what a proper homunculus should be. ¡°Or act much like one either.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± said Nagato, although he really didn¡¯t. Vaguely, he understood the concept of what a homunculus was, but he was fairly sure he¡¯d never seen one before, and he certainly had never once encountered a mechanical golem.

    And yet, they were being constructed and ordered about by the masterminds behind this twisted place? Nagato had always known that Servants were incredible, but to think they could dream up such things and bring them to life so easily was startling.

    As though he hadn¡¯t already known that he was in far over his head. His own Servant had conjured fantastical creatures from nothing, after all, and it didn¡¯t seem as though that pattern was going to stop anytime soon.

    Better to be involved and seeing this whole thing resolved faster than sitting about doing nothing, however. Waiting around for someone else to fix things and save him felt just a little bit too¡­inelegant.

    Minutes later, the creatures they had been talking about appeared on the street, but they were heard far sooner, from the delicate clinking of the puppet-like automata to the lumbering thuds of the Helter Skelter. The meaty thump of the grotesque homunculi was nearly silent by comparison.

    ¡°What the hell are those?¡± Nagato demanded.

    But if the creatures hadn¡¯t noticed their group before, then his shocked shout was enough to draw their attention, and the assembled collection of monstrosities turned fully towards them with menacing intent.

    Great. If there had ever been the chance of a surprise attack, then his reaction had ruined it entirely. Damn it, Nagato, why were you such a screw-up?

    ¡°Couldn¡¯t you have held that in?¡± Andersen lamented.

    ¡°This is just what I needed!¡± Mordred cackled as she kicked off and raced down the road. ¡°A bunch of shit I don¡¯t have to worry about breaking!¡±

    Emiya and Mash followed her lead, but Arash hung back with the rest of the team and fired arrows from his bow instead. Nagato half-expected Taylor to lunge into the fray and start hacking away at something with that little knife of hers, but she stayed back as well instead.

    ¡°We¡¯re not sure who¡¯s making them,¡± Ritsuka admitted as though a fight wasn¡¯t happening nearby. His eyes, however, remained firmly on the action. ¡°Just that the enemy masterminds, P, B, and M, are the ones responsible for them being out here, and those three are probably Servants, too.¡±

    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

    ¡°P, B, and M?¡± More nonsense from the future?

    ¡°The initials of the enemy masterminds,¡± Taylor clarified for him, ¡°according to one of the native collaborators here. Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t do us the courtesy of spelling out their names, so we don¡¯t know who exactly they actually are.¡±

    ¡°I-I see. And you didn¡¯t ask him to tell you more about them?¡±

    ¡°Kinda hard to do that, seeing as he¡¯s dead,¡± said Rika flippantly. ¡°Go, Mash! Smash ¡®em to pieces!¡±

    And further down the road, Mash and the others were doing exactly that. Mordred was bashing around the thick, mechanical monstrosities with heavy strikes that dented the metal, and Emiya and Mash focused on the sleeker, more fragile automata, which were breaking much more easily under repeated abuse. The bulky homunculi, being apparently made of softer flesh, went down from precision strikes by Arash¡¯s arrows, and the man himself fired so quickly that Nagato honestly couldn¡¯t see individual draws.

    It was another side of Servants that Nursery Rhyme hadn¡¯t shown him. Somehow, he couldn¡¯t picture her doing anything at all like the others, because the idea of her jumping in and throwing punches against those things seemed frankly comical.

    Something wrong, Papa? an intrusive voice asked inside his own head.

    Nagato did his best to keep his face schooled and his discomfort buried. It¡¯s nothing.

    How did he explain that he felt out of his depth more than he ever had before? Zelretch had opened up his world to a whole new realm of possibilities, giving Nagato and the Tohsaka a new path to explore towards the future. Martial arts? Magecraft? Why not both? He had been shown things he could only have dreamed about before, and especially in the early days, it had felt like too much.

    Now, yet more things had appeared to confuse him. Servants, Singularities, Holy Grails. Demon Gods and devastated futures. The world had grown only larger in the last few days, in the last few hours, and yet it had shrunken in equal measure. Never before had he seemed smaller than he felt now.

    In that regard, he might actually be thankful that this would all disappear from his memory once it was over, but¡­

    Yes. But.

    All too quickly, the fight was over, and the Servants returned to the rest of the group. Mordred had a relaxed, satisfied air about her, like smashing the enemy creatures to bits had served to temper her mood, and even Mash seemed pleased with herself.

    ¡°Good job, Mash,¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Thank you, Senpai!¡± Mash replied. ¡°It really did feel a lot easier than it was last time!¡±

    ¡°What¡¯d I tell ya?¡± Mordred crowed. ¡°See, now that you¡¯re acting like a proper Servant, you¡¯re actually starting to fight like one!¡±

    ¡°I guess Mo-chan really did know what she was doing!¡± Rika said.

    Mordred laughed. ¡°I guess so, huh? Never done something like that before, but my instincts are top notch! Only makes sense it worked, don¡¯t it?¡±

    Taylor¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°You¡¯ve¡­never done anything like that before?¡±

    ¡°Nah! You kidding?¡± Mordred shook her head, ponytail flapping. ¡°Me, a teacher? Like hell I¡¯m gonna sign myself up for something like that! ¡®S not in my, whatchamacallit, temperament.¡±

    ¡°One need only spend a few minutes with you to realize that,¡± Andersen said. Mordred made a rude gesture in his direction.

    ¡°Even so,¡± said Mash. ¡°Although the method might have been somewhat, um, q-questionable, you still helped me, Sir Mordred. I¡¯m grateful.¡±

    Mordred grunted. ¡°Ugh. Geez. Don¡¯t mention it, okay? You¡¯re making it weird now.¡±

    Mash bowed her head to hide the smile on her lips. ¡°Of course. Sorry.¡±

    Even Nagato could tell it lacked sincerity.

    As the group moved on and came upon the remains of the things, Nagato paused long enough to toe the pieces of one of the destroyed machines. As expected, he couldn¡¯t make anything of it, neither the method of its construction nor the means by which it achieved locomotion. Whatever it was, it was far in advance of his era, and on his own, he wouldn¡¯t have had a hope of figuring out its origin or its maker.

    The less that was said about the automata, the better. For all that it was ¡°simpler¡± than the Helter Skelter, it seemed even more mystical and inexplicable. At least the Helter Skelter¡¯s internal mechanisms hinted at how it might manage to walk about, even if the particulars eluded him. The automata seemed moved entirely by some outside force, and so they were most likely built by some magus of one stripe or another.

    The homunculi made the least sense. They were humanoid, but their structure was completely alien. No mouth, no apparent eyes or olfactory organs, no primary or secondary sex characteristics¡­ It was almost like the creator had taken the silhouette of a man and filled it in with strips of some organic compound. The only other thing about it that seemed human was the red blood leaking from its wounds.

    ¡°There are more of these things?¡± Nagato asked.

    ¡°We encountered them before on our way to Soho,¡± answered Taylor. ¡°Beyond that¡­¡± She looked towards Mordred. ¡°Sir Mordred?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, these things are all over the place,¡± Mordred confirmed. ¡°I¡¯ve spent most of the last couple days thinning out their numbers, but it seems like whoever¡¯s making ¡®em just keeps making more. Dunno what else he might be using ¡®em for, though. It ain¡¯t like I¡¯ve found them building something or anything like that.¡±

    ¡°Maybe they really are only meant to be a distraction,¡± Taylor theorized.

    ¡°What from is still the question we don¡¯t have an answer to,¡± Arash added. ¡°Still. At least they aren¡¯t all that hard to beat. If they were a match for us Servants, then I¡¯d say we were really in trouble.¡±

    ¡°Does that mean I can play next time, too?¡± asked Nursery Rhyme. She looked to Nagato for permission. ¡°Can I, Papa?¡±

    If only she didn¡¯t look so much like his daughter, it would have been easier to treat her like a tool to be used. Instead, every time she spoke and looked at him, he was reminded of another little girl who was waiting for him to return home, and the only way to order her about firmly was to make sure he couldn¡¯t see her face. His only saving grace was that she wasn¡¯t using his daughter¡¯s name, too.

    ¡°As long as you don¡¯t overdo it. You need to make sure you have the energy, just in case Jackie comes back.¡±

    ¡°Hmm,¡± Nursery Rhyme hummed thoughtfully. ¡°Maybe I¡¯ll just use some Trump Soldiers, then. That ought to be enough for a few weaklings like that.¡±

    Taylor¡¯s attention turned towards the both of them again, and Nagato pushed down the urge to flinch away from the intensity of it. The woman was something like ten years his junior and surrounded by the superhuman, so how was it that she managed to come off as the most dangerous person in the entire group?

    Maybe it was the bugs. Nagato¡¯s skin still crawled whenever he remembered the massive swarm that she had commanded and the threat of what she would use it for if Nursery Rhyme stepped out of line.

    And yet, despite how much she unnerved him, she and her group were still his best bet for making it back home. What a tangled mess this whole thing was.

    ¡°Maybe we should just let you handle the next group when we find them,¡± Taylor eventually allowed.

    ¡°Fine by me,¡± Mordred said flippantly. ¡°I¡¯m feeling pretty relaxed after that last one, so if someone else wants a shot at ¡®em, I¡¯ve got no problems letting them take a few swings.¡±

    Nursery Rhyme giggled, delighted. ¡°Oh, goodie!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s unnerving, sometimes,¡± Andersen murmured, so quiet that Nagato almost didn¡¯t hear him, ¡°just how easily she can act her apparent age, despite the fact she¡¯s just a book.¡±

    Sometimes, Nagato thought, even he forgot it.

    Their group continued on, and never once did they ever approach the river that cut through the middle of the city. Instead, they made a beeline almost perfectly due east as the sun above them inched across the sky, and in the distance, the first beginnings of the familiar fog started to creep in, slinking over the streets and slithering along the stone.

    Fortunately, they encountered no more of those strange mechanical monsters or twisted creatures, so Nursery Rhyme didn¡¯t get a chance to ¡°play¡± with any of them, and it wasn¡¯t long at all before they came upon an apartment building much like those around it ¡ª well ahead of the incoming fog. This one, however, was set apart by the woman standing guard by its front door, although she wasn¡¯t exactly ¡®standing¡¯ guard, since she sat, chin propped up on one hand, on the steps leading up to the door.

    By the blackened metal armor she wore, just as out of place as Arash and Mordred, she could only be another Servant. Her presence wafted over Nagato like heat from a fire, and if she had combusted right there in front of him, he could not say he would have been surprised.

    ¡°¡®Sup,¡± she said as they approached. Her pale yellow eyes raked him over like hot coals, then moved onto Nursery Rhyme, and one eyebrow rose as her upper lip curled. ¡°Who are these two new fuckers?¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Rika said, grinning. ¡°Language, missy! There¡¯s a kid present!¡±

    ¡°Yeah?¡± the woman drawled. ¡°And I give a shit¡­why, exactly?¡±

    Nursery Rhyme smiled, and she looked up at Nagato, tugging on one of his sleeves. ¡°Papa,¡± she said, all sugar and innocence, ¡°what¡¯s a fucker?¡±

    The new woman¡¯s face froze, then twisted with something like panic. Rika, who Nagato had since tentatively pinned as a bit of a jokester, rounded on her immediately. ¡°Look at what you¡¯ve done!¡±

    ¡°H-hey, I didn¡¯t mean to¡­!¡± the woman protested.

    Mordred, off to the side, burst out into laughter, doubling over and clutching her gut through her armor. Out of the corner of his eye, Nagato saw Emiya hide a smile behind his hand, and even Arash had to look away to try and keep a straight face. Ritsuka chuckled under his breath and Mash giggled quietly.

    ¡°A bad word, Alice,¡± Nagato decided to say. Playing into jokes like that wasn¡¯t really something he liked doing, but if a little prank like this got the more foul-mouthed among them to speak a little more elegantly, it was all to the better. ¡°You absolutely shouldn¡¯t use it, especially in polite company.¡±

    ¡°Okay!¡± Nursery Rhyme said brightly. ¡°If you say so, Papa!¡±

    It only sent Mordred into another fit of laughter.

    ¡°W-whatever,¡± the new woman said. Faint splotches of red colored her pale cheeks. ¡°S-so just who are these two fu¡­fudgers, anyway?¡±

    ¡°Tentative allies,¡± Taylor answered. Her attention turned back Nagato¡¯s way briefly, along with her head, but was gone again just as quickly. ¡°We found them while we were investigating the magical tome for Jekyll¡¯s collaborator.¡±

    The woman¡¯s eyes settled on a point behind him. ¡°And the pipsqueak in the back?¡±

    ¡°The collaborator himself,¡± was the immediate reply.

    ¡°No sh¡­¡± Her gaze flickered briefly to Nursery Rhyme. ¡°No sheets?¡±

    ¡°Sheets?¡± Rika echoed, smile threatening to split her face in half.

    ¡°Don¡¯t mind me,¡± said Andersen. ¡°I merely came along for the ride. It was safer for me than trying to make the trip on my own.¡±

    ¡°Hey, yeah,¡± said Rika, turning to him. ¡°Why did you come back with us, Andy?¡±

    Andersen¡¯s face twisted. Apparently, he didn¡¯t particularly like the nickname she had just saddled him with. Nagato had a hard time feeling sympathy for the man who had suggested he was some kind of sexual deviant simply because the form Nursery Rhyme had taken mimicked his daughter¡¯s.

    ¡°If you gave Doctor Jekyll the information in the first place,¡± Ritsuka murmured thoughtfully, ¡°you must have already had a way of contacting him, after all.¡±

    ¡°Yes, well.¡± Andersen cleared his throat into his fist. ¡°When I said that the shopkeeper of that bookshop had generously allowed me to stay, I¡­perhaps might have been exaggerating somewhat.¡±

    ¡°Exaggerating?¡± Taylor demanded. ¡°Exaggerating, how?¡±

    ¡°He¡­didn¡¯t even¡­know I was there,¡± Andersen admitted reluctantly. ¡°Obviously. How could he, when the magical tome had already put him to sleep? I had to sneak in through the back door.¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯re a freeloader,¡± Rika concluded.

    ¡°It¡¯s not like I could stay out on the streets,¡± Andersen grumbled. ¡°And no matter which apartment I decided to stay in, I would have been intruding, since most of Soho had already been put to sleep. It was unavoidable.¡±

    ¡°Unavoidable, he says,¡± Mordred said with relish. ¡°You were a pretty cocky little brat to be talking the way you were when you were just a squatter taking advantage of a man who literally couldn¡¯t tell you no.¡±

    Before Andersen could muster a reply, the door to the apartment creaked and swung open, revealing an older gentleman with a full head and beard of silvery hair. He looked down at their assembled group.

    ¡°I thought I heard people talking,¡± the man said in a wizened voice. ¡°It seems your group has returned ¡ª with more comrades, to boot. My, but it is quite fortunate that the upper floors are vacant. We¡¯re developing quite the troupe, aren¡¯t we?¡±

    ¡°Abraham,¡± Taylor greeted him with a nod, and then gave another to the armored woman as she stood from the step, ¡°Jeanne Alter. This is Nagato Tohsaka, a magus who got caught up in this Singularity. The girl is his Servant, Nursery Rhyme, and the boy in the back is another Servant, Hans Christian Andersen.¡±

    ¡°Charmed,¡± Nagato said politely, and only afterwards realized it could have counted as a pun.

    ¡°A magus, huh?¡± Jeanne Alter regarded him with a devilish grin, and the blazing pyre of her aura grew large enough to engulf him. ¡°He one of those Association bastards we have permission to shish kebab?¡±

    Nagato took a step back. Sweat began to bead at his temples.

    ¡°Oh!¡± Nursery Rhyme smiled brightly and clasped her hands together. ¡°Are we going to play again? Jabberwocky might make a teensy-tiny little mess if we¡¯re doing it right here, though!¡±

    ¡°Dear me!¡± muttered Abraham.

    ¡°No,¡± said Ritsuka firmly. ¡°They¡¯re our allies now. Director Marie has officially licensed him as a temporary Master of Chaldea.¡±

    The woman called Jeanne Alter sneered. ¡°That so?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Taylor confirmed. ¡°The Director decided that having another Master on hand ¡ª even a temporary one ¡ª would help to bolster our forces and make solving this Singularity easier. I won¡¯t tell you to treat him like you would one of us, since he doesn¡¯t hold your contract, but he¡¯s our ally now.¡±

    An instant later, the flames of Jeanne Alter¡¯s presence banked, and she turned away, apparently disinterested.

    ¡°Whatever. Now that you guys are back, my shift¡¯s over, right?¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Taylor agreed. She looked meaningfully up the street, towards where the mist was beginning to gather in the distance. ¡°We should get back inside. We can explain the rest of what happened to Jekyll at the same time.¡± She turned briefly to her own Servant. ¡°Arash?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll keep an eye on things out here,¡± Arash promised. Taylor nodded.

    ¡°Thank you.¡±

    ¡°In the meantime,¡± said the man called Abraham, clapping his hands together, ¡°Ren¨¦e should be finished preparing lunch shortly. I imagine you all must be famished.¡± He slid a look towards Nagato. ¡°And there is no better way to greet a new friend than to offer him a well-cooked meal, is there?¡±

    Rika grimaced. ¡°Ugh. On the one hand, that lady really is a good cook. On the other hand, my loyalty to my house-husband should be absolute, and I feel like I¡¯m betraying him!¡±

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Mash breathed as a sigh.

    ¡°Rika is complaining about good food,¡± Ritsuka said with a smile, ¡°the world really must have ended.¡±

    Rika squinted at him. ¡°See, I can¡¯t tell if you¡¯re making a joke or not, because the world actually ended and that¡¯s why we¡¯re in this whole mess to begin with.¡±

    ¡°I hate to admit it, but my own feelings on the issue are somewhat complicated,¡± said Emiya. ¡°Quite frankly, it should be a bit of a relief not to have my talents reduced to the quality of my cooking, but¡­ Perhaps I¡¯ve simply gotten used to the idea of that particular responsibility being mine.¡±

    ¡°My apologies,¡± said Abraham as he stepped back to allow them entrance. ¡°But as the closest thing she has to a father, I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll forgive me for siding with Ren¨¦e on the issue of cooking.¡±

    ¡°Naturally,¡± Emiya agreed.

    The group meandered into the apartment, with the exception of Arash, who, in a feat of superhuman strength and athleticism, leapt up onto the roof of the building to stand guard. Nagato and Nursery Rhyme were the last to enter, and she looked up at him as the seconds dragged on.

    ¡°Papa?¡±

    Nagato¡¯s lips drew tight. ¡°It¡¯s nothing.¡±

    And he entered the apartment. The door clicked as it shut behind him, a note of finality, as though to cut off any possibility of going back on his decision to team up with these people.

    In the end, there wasn¡¯t any other choice. Perhaps, just perhaps, it would have been possible for him and Nursery Rhyme to come out of that fight the victors, if only he had kept his cool and remained in harmony with his world instead of losing his patience. What it would have meant for him and the rest of the world, however, well, that was a bit of a trickier question. If the whole explanation they had given him was completely correct, then he would have doomed all of humanity, including his daughter.

    The only way he could have avoided that inevitable result was by taking the Grail for himself and making his own wish. If the original deviation was undone in such a manner, wouldn¡¯t the Singularity be solved that way just as well? Perhaps. There was no way to be sure, was there? It was all conjecture. Theory. He could just as well make things worse.

    Tohsaka Nagato was many things, but he was not a fool. If he could not win this Holy Grail War by defeating an alliance of several Masters supporting several Servants, then it seemed only natural to him that he should join them and help them to accomplish their goal of securing the Grail and correcting this twisted world.

    And at the end of it all, when the day was saved and the enemies defeated, when the opportune moment arose, when the Grail was in front of him and ripe for the taking, perhaps¡­

    Yes. Perhaps.

 Chapter CXXXVII: A Measure of Trust

    Chapter CXXXVII: A Measure of Trust

    Jekyll¡¯s parlor wasn¡¯t at all designed to host so many people at once, but somehow or another, we managed to squeeze our way in. Us three main Masters wound up squished together on the sofa where I¡¯d woken up, with Mash in a chair next to it, Tohsaka in another chair on the opposite side, Jekyll in yet another chair, and everyone else essentially forced to stand, which left Mordred to lean against the nearby wall, arms folded across her chest. With what I¡¯d seen of her personality so far, I didn¡¯t put it past her to think it made her look cool.

    Even Fran had come to join us, despite how little she would be able to contribute to the whole conversation. I guess she just wanted to be involved, to see justice done to the men and the conspiracy that had killed Frankenstein. I couldn¡¯t fault her for that.

    Andersen, at least, had conveniently marched off into the adjacent study and claimed it as his own, ignoring anything Jekyll said against it. Things would progress much more smoothly without a biting comment from him every now and again, and the less I had to think about why such a famous author had manifested in a form that looked barely old enough for middle school, the more comfortable I was.

    Once everyone had settled in, Ren¨¦e arrived with a tray containing a steaming teapot and enough teacups for everyone, announced that lunch would be ready in half an hour, and then left, all with the same stoic, unaffected expression on her face. I thought I might have detected an undercurrent of excitement, however. At the chance to feed so many people at once? I could only guess.

    The tale of the mysterious magical tome didn¡¯t take all that long to tell, and the story of our following Nursery Rhyme and the confrontation that came afterwards didn¡¯t take that much longer. It wasn¡¯t as though the circumstances required all that much explanation, so the basic essentials of what had happened and why we¡¯d done what we¡¯d done were all that was necessary to cover what we¡¯d accomplished and how it was we¡¯d made an ally of Tohsaka.

    ¡°I see,¡± Jekyll said when it was all over. I took the chance to sip at my tea and soothe my throat a little. ¡°Then it would appear the case of the mysterious magical tome has been resolved, hasn¡¯t it, if¡­not in quite the manner I expected when I made the request that you investigate it. I suppose I ought to be grateful, in the very least, that no one was truly harmed by it. All¡¯s well that ends well, I believe the phrase is?¡±

    ¡°Something like that,¡± Ritsuka agreed.

    ¡°It would have been perhaps more ideal if no fight erupted in the first place,¡± said Caster, stroking his beard thoughtfully, ¡°but I suppose the essential point is that indeed no permanent harm was done.¡±

    ¡°Not for lack of trying,¡± Mordred said bitterly.

    ¡°If it¡¯s an apology you¡¯re looking for, then you can have one,¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°If I¡¯d known exactly who you all were, then I wouldn¡¯t have attacked you like that. But I¡¯m not going to apologize for attempting to deal with what I assumed at the time was a group of enemies. I¡¯m sure someone like the esteemed Sir Mordred can understand a concept like a preemptive strike.¡±

    Mordred¡¯s lips curled.

    ¡°You¡¯re lucky.¡± But it was Jeanne Alter who drawled out those words. ¡°If I was the one there, you would¡¯ve been a f¡­¡± She faltered over the word, glancing once more at Nursery Rhyme, who looked back at her innocently. ¡°¡­fudging crisp.¡±

    Rika smothered a giggle behind her teacup. Jeanne Alter tried to maintain her facade of disdain, but her censoring herself had robbed her of any momentum and she just wound up looking like she was trying too hard.

    ¡°If you were there,¡± Nursery Rhyme said brightly, ¡°maybe Mister Bandersnatch could have come out to play, too!¡±

    Jeanne Alter shifted, and half the room tensed in response. ¡°Yeah? That right?¡±

    ¡°Bad assumptions were made and people almost got hurt,¡± Ritsuka said firmly, before things could kick off, ¡°but the important part is that we¡¯re all here, we¡¯re all okay, and we¡¯re all allies now, right?¡±

    Deliberately, I avoided glancing at Tohsaka. ¡°Right,¡± I agreed. ¡°So there¡¯s no point in jumping down each other¡¯s throats about the mistakes we made.¡±

    The tension didn¡¯t quite drain out of the room, but the metaphorical knives were put away and everyone settled back down. A fight had been averted, at least for now.

    Good job, Ritsuka, I thought. He was getting better at handling clashing personalities, and that was going to be only more important going forward. Especially if they kept going back out in the afternoons while I was stuck here in the apartment because of the fog.

    ¡°Plus, you know,¡± said Rika, ¡°this room¡¯s kinda cramped. If you guys start a fight, this whole place is going up. I like being un-exploded, you know?¡±

    And considering that the mist was back in full force, that would be bad for at least me, Tohsaka, and Jekyll, even if everyone else would be varying shades of fine. There wasn¡¯t anyone in this room who wasn¡¯t aware of that.

    Jeanne Alter snorted.

    ¡°Thank you for thinking of my home,¡± Jekyll said politely.

    ¡°No prob,¡± replied Rika. ¡°We gotta live here, too, you know. At least for now. Going apartment hunting in this city would be a nightmare.¡±

    Ritsuka sighed.

    ¡°The next thing we need to worry about is how we¡¯re going to continue our investigation,¡± I said, bulldozing past the joke. ¡°We might have an extra Master now ¡ª temporary or not ¡ª but it doesn¡¯t mean much if we don¡¯t have anything or anywhere else to look. Jekyll, has there been any developments with your network that we need to know about?¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately, I¡¯m afraid the answer to that is no,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°Things have been quiet since you left. Reports have been coming in, of course, that the victims of the magical tome have been awakening ¡ª something I can only assume might be laid at the feet of Mister Tohsaka and the lady Nursery Rhyme ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Alice,¡± Nursery Rhyme interrupted with unusual firmness. ¡°My name is Alice.¡±

    Jekyll blinked and glanced at her, but took it in stride. ¡°Something for which I assume we might thank Mister Tohsaka and Miss Alice. Beyond that, however, there have been no new reports of any phenomena which might be called unusual. All I can speak to is the expected patrols of our masterminds¡¯ favored foot soldiers, and of course, they pose no threat to the populace as long as the good people of the city lock doors and avoid the streets.¡±

    ¡°More of these homunculi, Helter Skelter, and automata, I¡¯m assuming,¡± Tohsaka said.

    ¡°Indeed,¡± Caster confirmed. ¡°It continues to be a small mercy that they don¡¯t enter homes and assault the people inside. That much, at least, we can be thankful for.¡±

    ¡°Ungh,¡± Fran grunted. ¡°Un, un, ungh.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I answered her. ¡°We didn¡¯t find any more clues about P, B, or M.¡±

    Her lips drew tight, but her body sagged, disappointed, and she glared down at the floor. I sympathized, but I hadn¡¯t really expected any better. The magical tome having some kind of connection to them was a longshot to begin with, and the instant Andersen had explained what it was and how it worked, I¡¯d already ruled out the possibility.

    It would have been too convenient to find the answer less than a whole day after we got here.

    ¡°What do we actually know about these masterminds?¡± Tohsaka asked.

    When I glanced at him, his lips thinned and the skin around the corners of his eyes tightened. Yeah, I didn¡¯t exactly trust him either, but that was fine. It wouldn¡¯t be the first, second, or last time I found myself in a situation where I needed to team up with someone I didn¡¯t fully trust. Most of my career had shaken out like that, one way or the other. It was old hat by now.

    The only thing I needed to trust was that our interests aligned. For that, I just needed to look to the little girl sitting next to him.

    ¡°We¡¯ve already told you what we know,¡± I said to him. ¡°Right now, we really don¡¯t have anything to go on, aside from the note Frankenstein left for us to find.¡±

    Tohsaka grunted. ¡°So just that they¡¯re probably Servants. Not even a hint about their classes either, huh?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°We¡¯re assuming there¡¯s at least one Caster for, well, I think it¡¯s pretty obvious why?¡±

    ¡°Not sure where else you¡¯re getting a fog machine that can cover the whole city,¡± his sister added wryly.

    ¡°It could be a Noble Phantasm,¡± Mash added uncertainly, ¡°but, well¡­¡±

    ¡°Who and how would be the obvious question,¡± said Emiya. ¡°It¡¯s not impossible that the mist has something to do with Jack the Ripper. A Noble Phantasm like that would make sense for someone like him.¡±

    ¡°Just one problem with that,¡± said Mordred. ¡°You think that guy would stop in the mornings or stick to a schedule all polite-like the way things have been so far?¡±

    I wanted to have an argument for that, but frustratingly, the memories of his fighting style and personality were also among the things I¡¯d lost in the aftermath of the end of the fight. The only thing I could remember clearly was the use of a Noble Phantasm, because Fou had taken the hit for me for some inexplicable reason, even if what it was and how it worked were cleanly excised, and while there was a general rule in Chaldea¡¯s primer about how the average Servant had only a single Noble Phantasm¡­

    Yeah. I didn¡¯t even need to look at Emiya to see someone in the room who broke that rule. If I started looking back at the previous Singularities, that rule got even more laughably wrong. While it wasn¡¯t a bad rule of thumb, I¡¯d run into too many exceptions to assume it applied to Jack the Ripper, too.

    ¡°It¡¯s not impossible,¡± Caster said. ¡°After all, the legend of Jack the Ripper is one of an unrepentant madman who was surprisingly meticulous in his killings. It isn¡¯t out of the realm of possibility that he might have a Noble Phantasm of this sort and the temperament required to use it in the manner we¡¯ve seen so far, particularly if it¡¯s being treated as a game with the populace.¡±

    ¡°But it¡¯s unlikely,¡± I said. ¡°And it doesn¡¯t fit with the evidence we have so far. Whatever Project Demonic Fog is, I think we can safely assume that Jack the Ripper doesn¡¯t feature in it as a central figure, let alone the lynchpin to its success.¡±

    Ritsuka sighed. ¡°Hence the fog machine. Yeah. I¡¯m not an expert, but I can¡¯t think of anyone else who might have fog as a Noble Phantasm.¡±

    Neither could I.

    ¡°And that¡¯s why you think there¡¯s a Caster of some kind involved,¡± Tohsaka noted. ¡°I¡¯d ask what it is you¡¯re assuming they want to use this fog for in the first place¡­but I¡¯m going to guess you don¡¯t have any ideas about that either.¡±

    When none of us had an answer that would satisfy him, he let out a deep sigh.

    ¡°Great.¡±

    Nursery Rhyme awkwardly patted his thigh as though to offer him comfort, but it didn¡¯t seem to help.

    It was to this general atmosphere that Ren¨¦e returned a minute or so later, and in the same monotone voice I¡¯d gotten used to from her, she announced, ¡°Lunch is ready, Master.¡±

    ¡°Very good. Thank you, Ren¨¦e,¡± said Caster. He drained the rest of his tea, then to us, he said, ¡°I think it would do us all some good to fill our bellies with food, and once we have had our fill, we can return to such dour topics. Wouldn¡¯t you all agree?¡±

    My stomach rumbled quietly in my gut, and next to me, I heard both of the twins¡¯ answering grumble, as though their own were agreeing with mine. With the mist outside keeping me confined to the apartment and nothing pressing to otherwise occupy our attention, there was no reason not to cut the conversation short for the moment and put some food in our bellies.

    ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± I said. ¡°Maybe a little time and a meal will help give us a different perspective on things.¡±

    ¡°An excellent idea!¡± said Jekyll, smiling broadly. He stood. ¡°Come, come! Mister Tohsaka, I can¡¯t say as I have the foggiest idea what sort of food to which you might be accustomed ¡ª having never been to the Orient myself, you understand ¡ª but I¡¯m certain Ren¨¦e¡¯s cooking will be quite the treat!¡±

    Tohsaka climbed to his feet, too. ¡°Well, when you put it like that, I suppose it¡¯s only polite to take you up on such a generous offer.¡±

    ¡°My good man,¡± said Caster, ¡°if you trust me on nothing else, let it be this: you won¡¯t regret it.¡±

    We all filtered out of the parlor and into the even more crowded dining room, which felt much more cramped than it had the night before, when it was just me, Caster, Jekyll, and Arash, or even this morning, when we¡¯d had the twins, Mash, Emiya, and Fran there, too. Despite the vanishing space in the room itself, however, there were exactly as many spots as we needed for each of us to sit down and eat.

    ¡°No Andersen?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Mister Andersen has elected not to partake,¡± Ren¨¦e answered me stoically. ¡°He requested that he not be disturbed.¡±

    ¡°His loss,¡± said Mordred. ¡°Pipsqueak can go hungry, for all I care.¡±

    I wondered why, but didn¡¯t give it too much thought. Maybe he just liked taking advantage of the fact that he didn¡¯t need to eat as a Servant. Who knew?

    Lunch was a warm and hearty soup, great for coming in from the chilly streets of London, where the constant fog blocking the sun had sapped away any real warmth that might have been left in the city. It was not bad enough to freeze, but the heat of the soup settling in my belly was a comfort all the same.

    It didn¡¯t hurt that it tasted good, too. Ren¨¦e really was a good cook. Different than the kind of meals Emiya preferred to make, but no less quality for that.

    ¡°It¡¯s not fair!¡± Rika complained. ¡°My house-husband is supposed to be the best there is, and yet¡­!¡±

    ¡°A new challenger approaches, huh?¡± her brother teased. She groaned, but at no point did she stop eating.

    ¡°The soup is wonderful, Miss Ren¨¦e,¡± Mash said politely to the homunculus in her maid outfit.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± Ren¨¦e replied, completely deadpan, but there was a satisfied air about her as we ate. If she smiled, it wasn¡¯t while I was looking.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    There were miniature cakes that went along with the meal, wedges of sweet bread with some kind of fruit spread sandwiched between the upper and lower layers, and it was kind of strange to eat them, because I was pretty sure I had read about them somewhere in one of the classics. Trippy, that was a good word, but then, my whole life the last few months had been meeting one figure from myth and legend after another. Eating a snack that could have come from the pages of Pride and Prejudice was a little pedestrian by comparison.

    We sat around for a little while after we were done eating, satisfied, and let our food settle. Mash continued to nibble on a second of those miniature cake wedges, and Mordred looked like she would have leaned back and put her feet up on the table if she wasn¡¯t sure that it would get her yelled at.

    At length, Tohsaka heaved out a sigh. ¡°Alright,¡± he admitted. ¡°It was a little different from what I¡¯m used to eating, but it was just as good as you promised it would be.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Mister Tohsaka,¡± said Ren¨¦e, still monotone. ¡°I¡¯m grateful for your kind words.¡±

    Tohsaka didn¡¯t seem quite sure how to take that, whether she was serious or not, and considering I¡¯d said before that she emoted about as much as a rock, I couldn¡¯t blame him for the confusion.

    ¡°An excellent meal, Ren¨¦e,¡± Caster told her. ¡°Thank you for all of your hard work.¡±

    ¡°Truly,¡± added Jekyll.

    ¡°I am glad that I can be of service to you, Master,¡± said Ren¨¦e.

    Turning back to the rest of us, Caster continued, ¡°Now that we¡¯ve all had some time to digest ¡ª both our food and what we discussed earlier ¡ª shall we continue where we left off?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡± I sat up a little straighter, and so too did the twins and Mash. ¡°Let¡¯s.¡±

    Even Mordred stopped slouching in her chair.

    ¡°I believe we left off on the matter regarding avenues of investigation, yes?¡± said Caster.

    ¡°Namely, the lack thereof,¡± Emiya added.

    Caster smiled grimly.

    ¡°Quite.¡±

    ¡°You mentioned attempting to track the Caster through the magical energy spread throughout the city?¡± I suggested.

    ¡°One that bore little fruit, I¡¯m afraid,¡± said Caster regretfully. ¡°As I explained before, the mist has made it too diffuse to attempt tracking it back to an origin point. I fear if I attempted to follow it all the way, I would find myself walking in circles.¡±

    ¡°So if we were to get rid of the mist, it might be possible to find the Caster behind it,¡± Mash concluded, and then she let out a sigh. ¡°Unfortunately, the only way to do one is to do the other, so doing either one winds up being impossible, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    A real chicken and the egg problem. We needed to find the Caster to get rid of the mist, but we needed to get rid of the mist to find the Caster. In the process of doing one, the other would be accomplished as a matter of course, which really meant that we needed to find a different way of doing one or the other first.

    ¡°Is there another way we could track this Caster down?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Caster stroked his beard thoughtfully. ¡°There might be,¡± he allowed, ¡°but the question of managing it is another matter.¡±

    My brow furrowed and I leaned forward a little. ¡°If you have any ideas¡­¡±

    ¡°An idea, yes, but it might be a little bit of a stretch,¡± Caster admitted. ¡°You see, so far, I¡¯ve been content to let Sir Mordred do what she will with the Helter Skelter and such and raised no concern about her treatment of them ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Didn¡¯t hear you complaining when I offered to go out and thin their numbers a little,¡± Mordred grunted.

    ¡°¡ª but depending on their composition and the methods of their construction, I might be able to find traces of their creator upon them and use that to locate a¡­source, if you will, for where it is they¡¯re all coming from. They would have to be relatively intact, however,¡± he added swiftly. ¡°As you might imagine, bringing one of them in whole and undamaged is a bit of a tall order.¡±

    Especially with Jekyll in the apartment, I saw immediately. He was an ordinary human, after all. If Mordred dragged one of those Helter Skelter or automata into the apartment, still fully functional and everything, then it might very well do a lot of damage not only to the apartment itself, but also to Jekyll.

    ¡°I mean, they weren¡¯t giving us much of a choice,¡± said Rika. ¡°Kinda hard to be nice to a bunch of robots trying to kill all humans when you happen to be one of those humans.¡±

    ¡°Now you¡¯re going to ask me not to kill murderous robots?¡± Jeanne Alter drawled, disgusted.

    ¡°Technically, murder is defined as one human being killing another,¡± Ritsuka said, ¡°so robots can¡¯t actually be murderous, can they?¡±

    Rika turned to her brother, horrified, and demanded, ¡°Why were you the one who thought of that first? It should have been me!¡±

    Jeanne Alter and most of the rest of the room were just varying shades of confused, so Rika said to Ritsuka, ¡°Put I, Robot on the list, Onii-chan.¡±

    ¡°Before or after Terminator?¡±

    ¡°After. Duh. You have to watch the classic before you dig into the junk food.¡±

    I focused on the more important part.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure it would be a good idea to try bringing them back here anyway,¡± I said. ¡°If you could use them to track down their creator, Abraham, that would be useful, but we don¡¯t have any idea how closely he can monitor them. If any of them have a tracker of some kind built into them, then we¡¯d be leading him and his allies right back to us.¡±

    ¡°If they don¡¯t already know exactly where we are,¡± Emiya pointed out.

    I acknowledged it with an incline of my head. True, it was entirely possible that P, B, and M already knew where we were and who we were, down to our names and the address of Jekyll¡¯s apartment, and I¡¯d had a thought about that before, but¡­

    ¡°If they do know, they don¡¯t seem to be doing anything about it, do they?¡±

    They weren¡¯t attacking us where we sat, they weren¡¯t keeping tabs on us ¡ª at least visibly ¡ª and there didn¡¯t seem to be any ambushes lying in wait for us to come and go. All things considered, when I asked the question whether they were aware of where we were and biding their time or completely unaware, the latter answer seemed more likely.

    But it still paid to act as if they knew where we were at all times. There were some dangers to preparing to face an enemy who was less competent than you assumed they were, but if you were expecting to fight a Thinker, it was better to find out you were wrong later than to wind up dancing to their tune.

    ¡°Miss Taylor makes a good point,¡± said Mash. ¡°We¡¯ve had to fight those automata and Helter Skelter several times now, but it doesn¡¯t seem like they¡¯re looking for us in particular.¡±

    ¡°If they were, wouldn¡¯t they be waiting for us right outside the apartment?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Caster leaned back in his chair, stroking his beard thoughtfully. ¡°And while I¡¯ve been monitoring you, it doesn¡¯t seem as though they¡¯ve been paying any special attention to the areas where you¡¯ve already felled some of their number. Hm. Perhaps they truly have no idea where we are, nor do their puppets even have the intelligence to search for us competently.¡±

    Alternatively, none of what we were doing was more than a minor inconvenience for them. I would have thought we would face a reprisal of some kind for taking out that Caster, Mephistopheles, when Ritsuka and the others went to investigate Frankenstein¡¯s silence, but unless Jack the Ripper had been sent after us as retribution, P, B, and M seemed completely unconcerned to have lost a Servant from their roster.

    ¡°Ungh,¡± Fran said throatily.

    ¡°That is a question,¡± I allowed. ¡°But if they attacked the Clock Tower, they might have gotten the information on Frankenstein there.¡±

    Assuming that the attack on the Association had more than just the purpose of keeping them from interfering. I knew that if I¡¯d been in their shoes, it would have been a good chance to look for information on persons of interest to keep an eye on.

    ¡°Sorry to interrupt,¡± said Tohsaka, ¡°but you can actually understand what she¡¯s saying?¡±

    ¡°Right?¡± Rika nodded vigorously. ¡°See, I¡¯m not the only one who can¡¯t understand her! I¡¯m not the weird one, here!¡±

    ¡°That last part¡¯s up for debate,¡± Ritsuka said.

    Rika stuck her tongue out at him.

    ¡°It¡¯s hard to explain, Mister Tohsaka,¡± Mash told him politely. ¡°It¡¯s not¡­understanding a language of words so much as it is¡­understanding her intent. I¡¯m sorry, but I really can¡¯t explain it any better than that.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s still a shit explanation,¡± said Jeanne Alter. Mash winced.

    ¡°I don¡¯t see anyone else offering a better one,¡± Mordred chimed in. ¡°It¡¯s something that can¡¯t be explained. Nothing more complicated to it than that.¡±

    And I wasn¡¯t about to start explaining that my own stint of aphasia brought on by letting a biokinetic play around with my brain during an apocalyptic battle for the fate of mankind made it easier to understand what Fran was trying to say. That was a can of worms I would prefer to open up never.

    ¡°Tohsaka,¡± I said, changing the subject, ¡°you were there at the Association not long before it was attacked, weren¡¯t you? Aside from your missing mentor, was there anything else that stood out to you as unusual about that day?¡±

    Tohsaka grimaced. ¡°I¡­can¡¯t say that there was, not at the time, at least, but¡­¡±

    But that didn¡¯t mean there wasn¡¯t something there that he hadn¡¯t paid any mind at the time. The human senses took in a mountain-load of information in any given moment, I remembered hearing somewhere, and everything that didn¡¯t jump up and down and scream in your face got filtered out as a matter of course.

    I turned to Mordred next. ¡°Sir Mordred? While you were out patrolling, did you look to see what happened at the Clock Tower?¡±

    ¡°Huh?¡± Mordred blinked at me. ¡°Uh, yeah. Yeah, Jekyll and I checked in on that shithole the other day. Abraham asked us to look into it. Whole place was demolished, couldn¡¯t get in or out. If anyone¡¯s left down there, they¡¯re stuck down there.¡±

    ¡°I thought it might provide us some clues,¡± said Caster, ¡°so I asked Mordred and Doctor Jekyll to investigate while I constructed my little replica of the city. Unfortunately, they could tell me little that the newspaper had not already informed me of.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡±

    It may wind up being a dead end, but¡­I didn¡¯t see too much in the way of options. For the moment, aside from wandering about the city and looking for clues, we seemed to have run out of avenues of investigation, or at least ones that were obvious. We couldn¡¯t rely on Jack the Ripper to show up at some convenient moment where we could capture and interrogate him, and P, B, and M didn¡¯t look to have any interest in us specifically. There was no telling when or even if they would attempt to pressure another of Jekyll¡¯s informants, so if we waited for that, we could wind up waiting for days or weeks for something that wasn¡¯t going to happen.

    Right now, there were two routes we could go to try and find out more about the enemy and what they were doing. Luckily, we could do both at the same time, and we didn¡¯t even have to split up the group to do them.

    ¡°One of the things we¡¯re going to have to do is take a closer look at the Clock Tower for clues about what the masterminds did there and what else they might have wanted to accomplish while they were destroying it,¡± I said.

    Some part of me hated the necessity. The longer I could stay out of the sights of the Association  and any of its members who might view me as a curiosity to be dissected, the better. Unfortunately, it was one of the only leads we had.

    ¡°Do you believe there might have been more beneath the surface than our eyes perceived?¡± asked Jekyll.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I admitted. ¡°But it¡¯s a possibility we can¡¯t overlook.¡±

    ¡°Especially if that¡¯s how they found out where Frankenstein lived,¡± Ritsuka added.

    ¡°Uhn!¡± Fran agreed.

    Jeanne Alter chuckled, grinning nastily, ¡°Oh, no way I¡¯m missing out on this one. Especially if any of those pretentious English p¡­¡± She glanced at Nursery Rhyme, and her grin twisted into a grimace. ¡°¡­pansies tries anything fishy.¡±

    Nursery Rhyme just smiled at her innocently. At this point, I wasn¡¯t sure that she wasn¡¯t doing it on purpose to mess with Jeanne Alter.

    ¡°So I get to do some archeology in the British Museum?¡± asked Rika. ¡°You¡¯re not going to make me put on a tank top and a pair of short-shorts, are you?¡±

    ¡°A tank top and short-shorts?¡± Mash repeated, as confused as I was. Emiya and Ritsuka seemed to get what she was talking about, but everyone else seemed clueless.

    ¡°No.¡± Don¡¯t be ridiculous, I managed not to say.

    ¡°Oh, good,¡± said Rika, breathing an exaggerated sigh of relief. ¡°I mean, don¡¯t get me wrong, I¡¯m cute as the dickens, but I ain¡¯t got nothing on Lara Croft.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s grimace said that he didn¡¯t like the mental image she¡¯d just given him.

    ¡°So we¡¯re going to look through the wreckage of the Clock Tower and see if we can find any clues,¡± he said, trying to distract himself. ¡°Are we¡­going to enter the Clock Tower itself? The Association¡¯s headquarters?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll see,¡± I answered. ¡°It¡¯ll depend on how difficult it is for us to make it down there, how long it might take to clear a path inside, even with our Servants there to do the heavy lifting. We may have to rely on the Director to lead us through once we get inside.¡±

    I watched Tohsaka the entire time, looking for any signs of panic or distress, any indication that he knew what we would find down there and didn¡¯t want us searching for it. Nothing. The grimace on his face was of someone who knew there was a tedious or distasteful task ahead and knew there was no avoiding it.

    He didn¡¯t even try to dissuade us from it, convince us it was too dangerous or to try something else. It still wasn¡¯t proof that he was absolutely trustworthy or that he wasn¡¯t hiding anything, but for now, it seemed like I was worrying over nothing.

    Maybe I really was being overly paranoid.

    ¡°In any case,¡± I went on, ¡°it¡¯s not the only lead we can pursue. Abraham, I know you came up with a handful of those trackers for us to hold onto while we were out. If you can, I¡¯m going to need at least a few more. A few dozen, if you can manage it.¡±

    He blinked at me. ¡°It¡­shouldn¡¯t be that much trouble to accomplish, no,¡± he allowed, ¡°but¡­ What is it, exactly, that you plan on using them for?¡±

    ¡°Right now, we don¡¯t know much about the enemy¡¯s patrol groups except that they exist,¡± I explained patiently. For the benefit of the entire team, not just him. ¡°If they have predetermined routes, if another group is sent out to replace one that we eliminate, if their routes rotate or change hourly or daily ¡ª knowing all of these things would let us avoid them and make it faster and easier to get around the city. But if they return to their master and his home base, where the fog machine might be ¡ª¡±

    ¡°We could track them back to it!¡± Ritsuka concluded suddenly.

    And then attack it while they were least expecting us. If we wanted to be even more cautious, we could set up a temporary base right next door, and during the grace period in the mornings, I could explore the enemy base with my bugs without P, B, or M being any the wiser. Hell, maybe I could even sabotage their fog machine without any of us having to go anywhere near it.

    ¡°Exactly.¡±

    Forgetting my little stint with the fog when we arrived, this could wind up being the easiest and safest Singularity we ever cleared. The fastest, too, behind Fuyuki.

    ¡°Clever,¡± Emiya said approvingly.

    ¡°Damn,¡± said Jeanne Alter. ¡°We could fu¡­¡± She glanced at Nursery Rhyme again. ¡°¡­fudge them up before they even knew what hit ¡®em.¡±

    ¡°You keep talking about fudge and I¡¯m gonna want some,¡± Rika remarked.

    ¡°I¡¯m not the one who brought a kid back to this place,¡± Jeanne Alter muttered mutinously.

    ¡°Brilliant!¡± said Jekyll, beaming. ¡°An excellent plan!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s certainly feasible,¡± Caster agreed. ¡°I¡¯m afraid that making enough trackers for you to accomplish it won¡¯t be quickly done, but¡­ A day or so? If not tomorrow, then the day after, depending on exactly how many you would like me to make.¡±

    I was honestly hoping it would have been a little faster. Having said that, it wasn¡¯t like we were necessarily going to manage to tag every single patrol group in a single morning to begin with.

    ¡°We don¡¯t have to do it all at once,¡± I reasoned. ¡°Depending on what results we get with the first group, we might not even have to do it more than once.¡±

    ¡°And in the meantime, we just sit around and wait to see if they¡¯ll lead us to their masters?¡± Mordred asked skeptically.

    ¡°In the meantime, we¡¯ll investigate every lead we can find,¡± I countered. ¡°And if we don¡¯t have any leads, then yes, we sit around and wait. From this point on, the fewer patrol groups we engage and destroy, the better.¡±

    ¡°Which means less fighting,¡± said Mash.

    ¡°Goddamn.¡± Jeanne Alter clicked her tongue and folded her arms. ¡°There goes all the fun.¡±

    ¡°You said it,¡± Mordred agreed.

    ¡°Then I guess we just have to hope that Doctor Jekyll¡¯s network can find more leads for us to follow,¡± said Ritsuka.

    Jekyll nodded. ¡°One would hope. At the moment, however, I¡¯m afraid that there has yet to be any new information passed amongst us. The magical tome ¡ª excuse me, Miss Alice ¡ª was the last lead on any further strange happenings within the city itself. The rest has been little more than reports of the movements of these patrol groups. In other words, nothing which we have not already learned.¡±

    ¡°If your informants could note down any patterns they might see in these patrols,¡± Tohsaka began meaningfully.

    Jekyll inclined his head. ¡°I shall endeavor to see it done.¡±

    ¡°So what about the Museum?¡± asked Rika. ¡°Are we waiting, or¡­?¡±

    It might have been safer to do the one plan first and then check the Clock Tower to see what we could find¡­but when following the path of the patrol groups could take several days to set up and record their patterns ¡ª if there even were any ¡ª it just didn¡¯t make sense to wait. Doubly so, if it meant we might miss clues or if there was a trail that only got colder the longer we waited.

    ¡°We¡¯ll wait until tomorrow morning,¡± I said, ¡°when it¡¯s safe for Tohsaka and me to come with you. Whatever Abraham has done by then, we¡¯ll work with along the way.¡±

    Tohsaka grimaced. ¡°Well. I suppose I¡¯d better earn my keep, shouldn¡¯t I? Even if I¡¯m only a temporary Master of Chaldea, I guess this is just part of the territory.¡±

    ¡°That suits my purposes just fine, as well,¡± said Andersen, striding into the room as though he¡¯d been waiting for that exact moment. He hadn¡¯t, I knew, but his sense of timing was impeccable. ¡°Sorry to inconvenience you, but since our destination is the same and our goals align, I¡¯m going to have to ask the lot of you a favor.¡±

    He adjusted his glasses with a single thin finger, pressing the bridge further up his nose. The lenses glinted in the light.

    ¡°Take me with you to the Clock Tower. There¡¯s a certain theory I need to confirm, and it may just hold the secret to the nature of this Demonic Fog.¡±

 Chapter CXXXVIII: Murderer on the Misty Morn

    Chapter CXXXVIII: Murderer on the Misty Morn

    After lunch, we left the dining room and went about to find ways to occupy the afternoon. Ritsuka decided that he and Mash should go out on patrol with Mordred once his food had time to settle, and Rika ¡ª somewhat reluctantly ¡ª decided to go with them.

    ¡°Who¡¯s gonna look out for you if I¡¯m not there?¡± was the painfully transparent excuse she used. I guess she was still feeling that helplessness from the Chateau d¡¯If fiasco, and while he¡¯d proven that he could take care of himself and didn¡¯t need me holding his hand, I could relate to that.

    I still hated being stuck in the apartment while the others went out. But I had a ready and convenient method around that limitation, so I told the both of them, ¡°Take Jeanne Alter with you.¡±

    Neither of them had any trouble with that and agreed readily. Jeanne Alter, of course ¡ª

    ¡°Thank God,¡± she said with exaggerated relief. ¡°If I had to stick around this fu-fudging place with the twerp while you guys went out and did the fun stuff, I was gonna light something on fire.¡±

    ¡ª was only too happy to go with them. Having to censor herself around Nursery Rhyme ¡ª who I was becoming more and more certain was playing up the innocent little girl act as a prank on Jeanne Alter for just that reason ¡ª was very obviously taxing her nerves, and she wanted to be able to speak however she liked just as much as she wanted to get out and stretch her legs.

    Mordred, of course, was just fine with it. She seemed to have found something of a kindred spirit in Jeanne Alter, which made sense, because they were both rowdy, foul-mouthed, and violent. I didn¡¯t want to be anywhere near them if and when they ever got into a serious argument. I wasn¡¯t sure the building they were in would survive the ensuing chaos.

    It probably wouldn¡¯t be a good idea to bring Mordred back to Chaldea with us. Not without the simulator up and running for Servants, where they could work out any issues safely and securely without threatening to bring the roof down around us.

    While we were on the subject, however, I made sure to bring up the idea of forming a contract with Mordred as I¡¯d promised myself I would once all of the excitement was over from our earlier investigation. I half expected her to balk at the very notion, like her rebellious nature made the thought of ever taking orders from a Master utterly repulsive, but she surprised me.

    ¡°Sure.¡±

    ¡°Just like that?¡± I couldn¡¯t stop myself from asking.

    ¡°Yeah. Why not?¡± she replied, completely nonchalant. There was no hesitation at all. ¡°Ain¡¯t like I got a reason to say no. You guys are pretty chill, and you know how to handle yourselves in a fight ¡ª that shit with that dagger of yours was fucking epic, by the way ¡ª so I don¡¯t gotta worry about you getting your asses mowed down because you did something stupid. And having a Master means I don¡¯t gotta worry so much about using too much energy and disappearing. Takes a load off my mind, you know?¡±

    ¡°I think I do, yeah.¡±

    So just like that, we formed a temporary contract with Mordred. I wasn¡¯t sure it would end up becoming permanent, but funnily enough, she¡¯d convinced me that she wouldn¡¯t have any objections to it when the time came for us to head back to Chaldea. Aside from my concerns about her rowdy nature causing problems later on, I found I didn¡¯t have many objections to it either. Not when it gave us yet another strong Servant, one that could give Siegfried a run for his money in a lot of ways.

    I was sure A¨ªfe could keep her in line, if it came down to it. She was already mothering Jeanne Alter. What was one more rough, rebellious teenager?

    By the tight grimace on Caster¡¯s face, however, he wouldn¡¯t be quite so willing to accept even a temporary contract from us, and I was starting to wonder why it was he trusted us so little. Maybe he just had enough of an independent streak that he didn¡¯t like the idea of taking orders from a Master, especially when I had to assume he had access to as much energy as he needed via the ley line we were sitting on top of in Jekyll¡¯s apartment.

    Or maybe it was something more sinister. Paracelsus started with a ¡®P,¡¯ after all, and what better way to keep track of your enemy¡¯s movements and plans than to be there as they made them? He¡¯d even given us a false name that had no connection to either his real one or any of the initials in the note Frankenstein had left.

    Thinking back to it, he hadn¡¯t done anything overtly suspicious when we found that out. Hadn¡¯t been surprised, hadn¡¯t panicked, hadn¡¯t reacted particularly strongly at all, even to the information that Mephistopheles had been killed. He¡¯d just taken all of the information in stride ¡ª and then been helpless in suggesting other identities for P, B, and M.

    It was nothing to act on, not yet, but it was plenty of reason to keep a closer eye on him from then on. And make sure, importantly, that I was never alone in the room with him.

    Hopefully, I would wind up being wrong and find out I was just being paranoid. Until I found out one way or the other, however, the only thing I could do was be extra cautious around him.

    About an hour after we finished lunch, the twins set out with Mordred, Mash, and Jeanne Alter and stepped into the foggy streets. That left me with Arash still on the roof as overwatch, Emiya there with me to act as a relay in case the twins ran into something, Fran just as unable to do anything with the mist still in play as I was, Jekyll, Caster, and Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme.

    I also had a map I could use to follow their course through the city, Jeanne Alter¡¯s senses to borrow, and a Director to inform of the situation and our plans going forward.

    Marie wasn¡¯t particularly happy to find out we were going to be exploring the Clock Tower as much as we could for clues, but as much as it bothered her, we didn¡¯t have a plethora of places to look or very many leads to follow.

    ¡°The frustrating thing is that I know we don¡¯t have any better options,¡± she groused.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± I agreed. ¡°P, B, and M haven¡¯t left us much of a trail to follow.¡±

    She chewed on her lip for a moment. At length, she said, ¡°My orders from before still stand. The safety of the team and the success of the mission are far more important than the life of any single individual inside the Singularity, no matter who it might be.¡±

    And we had full permission to do whatever it took to keep everyone on the team safe from anyone in the Association who might take interest. Yeah. The fact we had been given carte blanche to use lethal force if we had to was something that still surprised me. I wasn¡¯t sure it wouldn¡¯t come back to bite us when this was all over and the UN and the Association started pulling up our records of what happened in each Singularity.

    But that was a concern for later, the future. We had to get to the point where it was something we actually had to legitimately worry about. After all, if we didn¡¯t fix this and all the other Singularities, there wouldn¡¯t be a UN or Mage¡¯s Association to rake us over the coals for killing a Clock Tower Lord in self-defense, would there?

    On the other hand, depending on how thorough P, B, and M had been when they attacked the Clock Tower and how extensive the damage was to the whole place, there might not be anyone else we had to worry about. It wasn¡¯t impossible that more people had escaped the way Tohsaka had, just by being off site when everything went down, but we hadn¡¯t run into anyone like that yet and we might not ever.

    I suppose we would find out soon enough, one way or the other.

    ¡°Just be careful,¡± Marie bade me. ¡°Even if there aren¡¯t any magi to get in the way, the attack on the Clock Tower could have let any number of dangerous things loose. There¡¯s no telling what you might encounter when you go to investigate.¡±

    ¡°Of course, Director.¡±

    And then, the connection cut, and the only thing left for me to do was monitor the team¡¯s progress through their patrol. Fortunately, they weren¡¯t going too far afield. It looked like they were making a circuit around the apartment, looking out for anything suspicious and taking out any patrol groups that got closer than we wanted. When I peeked in on them through Jeanne Alter¡¯s eyes, things didn¡¯t look very exciting. It was mostly just fog, fog, and more fog. Again.

    That fog was really starting to piss me off. Drake¡¯s ship being what it was and resources being as important as they were at sea, keeping a swarm of any meaningful size had been something I hadn¡¯t dared to risk, but at least then I¡¯d been able to contribute a little bit more in other ways. Being stuck inside the apartment and being unable to see anything outside of it was stifling.

    Tohsaka expressed interest in the map, and Caster was only too happy to explain it. The chatter gave me something else to distract myself with while I watched and waited, and while it wasn¡¯t much, it was better than being stuck in the silence, unable to do anything except listen to Mordred and Jeanne Alter swear and Rika crack jokes.

    The sooner we took care of whatever was making the fog, the better. A part of me was even hoping that the Singularity would still persist afterward, that it wouldn¡¯t be so easy to fix this whole mess, if only so that I could see some more action before everything was over.

    The twins and their group returned late in the afternoon, although the only way to really tell exactly how long they¡¯d been out was the clock on the mantle in the parlor. The report they gave on what had happened while they were out and what they¡¯d seen was essentially as I¡¯d expected it to be, with all the long stretches of aimless walking that entailed, and while they¡¯d come across another patrol group or two, those were easily taken care of.

    Also as expected. Jeanne Alter and Mordred were both strong Servants with high stats and good performance. A bunch of puppets, homunculi, and robots weren¡¯t going to be much of a threat.

    No sign of Jack the Ripper, though. Maybe he was just being cautious and hadn¡¯t wanted to take his chances on the group as they were. Taking on a single Servant and Master pair was one thing for an Assassin, but taking on three might have been a little too much for him to risk.

    Whatever the case, he hadn¡¯t shown up, which meant they hadn¡¯t had a chance to deal with him or try taking him out, so that was a concern we¡¯d have to keep in the back of our minds for later. Of course it couldn¡¯t have been as convenient as getting rid of him so quickly and easily.

    For dinner, Emiya ¡ª with Caster¡¯s help ¡ª convinced Ren¨¦e to surrender the kitchen again, and he made us a spread of somewhat more Eastern and Mediterranean dishes, as though he was trying to counterbalance her decidedly English fare for breakfast and lunch. We ate well and enjoyed it, as we usually did, and after spending a few hours to refine and rehash our plans for investigating the demolished British Museum in the morning, we arranged ourselves as we had the night before in the apartment above Jekyll¡¯s, only with the added presence of Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme to make things an even tighter squeeze, and went to sleep so we could get up and beat the mist tomorrow.

    Of course, the next morning ¡ª

    ¡°What the hell?¡±

    ¡ª that all ran headlong into a thick fog choking the streets outside our windows. It was just as bad as it had ever been, so thick that I couldn¡¯t even see the front steps from the second floor window, and the sun above was blotted out, leaving behind only the faint suggestion of its presence. My throat burned with remembered pain just looking at it.

    ¡°Hey, Senpai,¡± said Rika a little nervously, ¡°this counts as them changing up their patterns, right?¡±

    It did. And there was nothing for me to do about it. If I walked outside in that, I already knew exactly what would happen to me, and I wasn¡¯t eager to be coughing up my lungs again. The only way I was leaving the apartment today was if I had a death wish or if I was lucky enough that they¡¯d flipped things around and the afternoon would be blessedly clear.

    I didn¡¯t think I was going to be lucky.

    Tohsaka clicked his tongue. A grimace pulled tight at his lips. ¡°We can¡¯t go and investigate the Clock Tower today.¡±

    No, we couldn¡¯t. Not unless we were willing to split our team in half and let the twins go on their own with the others while he and I stayed here, and while there was merit in the idea, it seemed to me that forcing us to either abandon our plans or modify them like that was the goal of this whole thing in the first place.

    P, B, and M wanted us to send the twins out to the Clock Tower without me or Tohsaka there to support them. Whether that was because they wanted to take advantage of the split to attack the twins or to attack us here in the apartment, or even both at the same time, that part we couldn¡¯t know until they acted upon it.

    ¡°So it seems.¡±

    Divide and conquer. It was one of the oldest strategies in the book.

    On the other hand, uncertainty and indecision were dangerous and deadly tools, too, weren¡¯t they? Sun Tzu said something about that, if I remembered right. About the power of misdirection and misinformation, convincing your enemies to doubt their own decisions so that they made the wrong one.

    That one was also a familiar playbook. It had been a while since I was the one on the receiving end. I didn¡¯t like it now any better than I had before.

    ¡°Are they trying to stop us from investigating the museum?¡± Ritsuka wondered aloud.

    ¡°But how did they know?¡± Mash asked him. ¡°Are they watching the apartment after all? Are we being spied on?¡±

    ¡°Fou¡­¡± the little gremlin murmured.

    How, indeed. There were only so many possibilities. Could they sneak a ¡°bug¡± around me into the apartment? While we were all out yesterday? Maybe. Probably, even, if they picked the right place to hide it. My bugs could find a lot of things and gave me an incredibly complete picture of the world around me, but they weren¡¯t infallible. Much as I tried to give the impression otherwise, I was perfectly capable of missing things.

    But the idea that they could get around both me and Caster was harder to believe. With an Assassin, maybe, but the only one we knew they had was Jack the Ripper, and he was at Alice¡¯s tea party yesterday. There was a window, so it wasn¡¯t impossible¡­

    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    Occam¡¯s Razor, however, gave me a different answer.

    But then, why heal me, Caster? I asked him silently. The answers I came up with to that one felt flimsy, because he could just as easily have claimed there wasn¡¯t anything he could do to save me. If he really was the ¡°P¡± in P, B, and M, then he could have been rid of both an enemy Master and an enemy Servant in Arash in one fell swoop, and the twins might not have ever realized it.

    I needed to see how he reacted. What he thought we should do about the problem. How strong his opinion on it was. If he suggested that we split the team and send the twins to investigate ¡ª if he was insistent upon it, in fact ¡ª then that was probably the last thing we should do.

    Beep-beep!

    When I answered it, Marie¡¯s voice crackled out of my communicator. ¡°We¡¯ve analyzed the fog outside,¡± she said without preamble. ¡°It sounds ridiculous, but it¡¯s even more toxic than the normal fog you¡¯ve been dealing with so far.¡±

    ¡°Never going to get used to that,¡± Tohsaka muttered to himself.

    ¡°Even more toxic?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Marie answered, dead serious. ¡°Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, and of course, Servants should still be just fine and experience mild discomfort at the very worst, but, of course, that means ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Tohsaka and I absolutely can¡¯t go outside,¡± I finished for her.

    ¡°Right. Even a few minutes of constant exposure will be enough to¡­¡±

    To kill us, she didn¡¯t say, but I heard her all the same. I¡¯d already suspected that was the case, but the confirmation gave more weight to the idea that this was definitely a strike at us. Either they really did want to separate us, or there really was something at the Clock Tower they didn¡¯t want us to see.

    Maybe it was both. The worst kind of trap was the one where you played into the enemy¡¯s hands no matter what you did.

    ¡°Damn,¡± said Emiya, lips pulled tight. ¡°And even if I projected a gas mask¡­?¡±

    ¡°Unless it was designed specifically to deal with a situation like this, it wouldn¡¯t help,¡± Marie told him, shooting the idea down instantly. ¡°If it¡¯s a completely ordinary gas mask, it wouldn¡¯t do anything at all.¡±

    Emiya grimaced. ¡°Well, there goes that idea.¡±

    ¡°Da Vinci is working on a solution,¡± was the ray of hope she offered us. ¡°But she¡¯s not finished with it yet, so it might be another day or more until it¡¯s ready to send to you.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Good news, I wasn¡¯t going to be stuck inside for the rest of the Singularity every time the fog rolled in. Bad news, it was still going to be another day or two before I had a way of safely stepping outside into that fog. ¡°Was there anything else, Director?¡±

    There was a pause. At length, Marie said, ¡°Not at this time. I shouldn¡¯t need to tell you, whatever caused this change in the enemy¡¯s patterns, you need to be extremely careful.¡±

    ¡°We know,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°Thank you, Director.¡±

    ¡°Good.¡± And the connection cut.

    ¡°So what now?¡± Rika asked into the silence that followed. ¡°I mean, this is usually the part where someone says, ¡®let¡¯s split up, gang,¡¯ but I¡¯m all out of Scooby Snacks and Fou¡¯s too small to pass for a Great Dane anyway.¡±

    ¡°Fou!¡± the thing protested. Like she hadn¡¯t made a similar joke just a day ago.

    ¡°We should continue this downstairs with Abraham and Doctor Jekyll,¡± I said instead of addressing any of that. ¡°Maybe Doctor Jekyll¡¯s network has more information for us to work with.¡±

    ¡°A good idea,¡± said Ritsuka. Someone¡¯s stomach gurgled, and he added, ¡°We should probably eat breakfast while we have the chance, too.¡±

    ¡°We should,¡± I agreed.

    So we climbed down the stairs and to Jekyll¡¯s apartment on the floor below, where Jeanne Alter waited for us, sprawled out on the couch in the parlor. She looked like nothing so much as a particularly lazy housecat.

    ¡°¡®Sup,¡± she greeted us. ¡°You guys see that fu-freaky mist, too?¡±

    Nursery Rhyme giggled.

    ¡°We did,¡± I confirmed. ¡°Abraham and Doctor Jekyll?¡±

    I asked more for the benefit of the twins and everyone else.

    ¡°In the dining room,¡± said Jeanne Alter, ¡°waiting for breakfast.¡±

    ¡°You can eat with us, too,¡± Ritsuka told her. She waved him off.

    ¡°Gimme a holler when it¡¯s ready. I¡¯m too cozy to get up right now.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t in the mood to fight with her about it right then, and perhaps sensing that, no one else raised a stink about it either. Let her laze about for now. She¡¯d have plenty of chances to earn her keep in the days ahead.

    ¡°At least we weren¡¯t the only ones who noticed,¡± Tohsaka said as we made our way towards the dining room.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure how you could miss it,¡± Rika remarked. ¡°It¡¯s gonna hit you in the face the second you open a window.¡±

    The only reason I had missed it before we got up in the morning was because the fog from last night had probably never dispersed. My swarm had never gone out since we came in for lunch yesterday, so there wasn¡¯t anything for me to notice until we got up.

    I doubted the enemy knew any of that, because the only people who knew my limits were back at Chaldea, but it was frustrating nonetheless. They¡¯d managed to sneak past me entirely by accident.

    ¡°Good morning,¡± Jekyll and Caster greeted us as we came in. They were already seated around the oblong table in the dining room, sipping cups of tea.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran echoed, hunched over her own teacup.

    ¡°Good morning,¡± I replied, and the others echoed me to varying degrees and in varying ways.

    ¡°Ren¨¦e is in the kitchen cooking as we speak,¡± said Caster. ¡°Breakfast should be ready shortly, so why don¡¯t you all take a seat?¡±

    I wasn¡¯t much in the mood for breakfast either, but all the same, there still wasn¡¯t anything I could do about it, so there was no reason to go about skipping a meal. If Caster really was a spy, best not to give him any reason to suspect I even suspected him either, so I had to act like nothing was wrong.

    I picked the same seat in the middle of the table that I¡¯d been using since we got here and sat down. The twins and Mash took that as their cue and found seats of their own, and Tohsaka was last, picking a seat to my left. On the opposite side of him, Nursery Rhyme hopped up into her own chair and promptly went about swinging her legs about like the child she appeared to be.

    Emiya stayed standing, arms folded, behind Rika.

    I took the chance to pour a cup of tea for myself. Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme were the only other ones to follow suit.

    ¡°I take it you¡¯re already aware of the fog?¡± asked Caster, jumping right into things.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°We saw it when we woke up this morning,¡± Ritsuka explained.

    ¡°Thick enough that Senpai probably can¡¯t cut it even with her super knife,¡± Rika added.

    ¡°An unfortunate development,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°Shall I assume this will cause an unavoidable delay in your investigation?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡± I watched Caster carefully out of the corner of my eye. ¡°One way or another, it seems that P, B, and M don¡¯t want us looking into whatever happened at the Clock Tower.¡±

    Caster stroked his beard thoughtfully, frowning. If he really was a spy, he had one of the best poker faces I¡¯d ever seen, because he gave nothing away. ¡°You think they intended that from the beginning?¡±

    ¡°Do you think they didn¡¯t?¡±

    Caster sighed. ¡°Regretfully, I don¡¯t have any better ideas, and yours has merit. The question of how and when they learned of our intentions to look into their attack on the Clock Tower linger, of course, but¡­¡±

    Notably, he didn¡¯t suggest there was a spy. I wasn¡¯t sure anyone else was thinking it either, even if it was the most obvious explanation to me.

    ¡°Perhaps we are overthinking it,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°It need not be a direct action intended to stymie our specific efforts today, but instead a general tactic employed by the adversary now that one of their Servants has encountered your presence here directly. You fought with Jack the Ripper himself yesterday, did you not?¡±

    ¡°So Jack told them about us, and they decided they couldn¡¯t afford to let us do whatever we wanted in the mornings,¡± Ritsuka translated.

    That¡­was actually entirely possible. Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash had already run into and killed one of their Servants, that Caster, Mephistopheles, but Jack the Ripper was the one who fought us and escaped. It may have been that P, B, and M didn¡¯t have any idea we were even here until that moment and had originally assumed Mordred was the one who killed him and wrecked their patrol groups single-handedly.

    I wasn¡¯t going to bet on it, though. I couldn¡¯t afford to.

    ¡°Holy shit,¡± Rika said with something like awe. ¡°We really are meddling kids!¡±

    Only if you decided to really stretch the definition of ¡°kids.¡± Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash might have been underage, but everyone else in the group was legally or physically an adult.

    Ren¨¦e appeared at that moment, announcing that, ¡°Breakfast is ready, Master.¡±

    ¡°Let us table this discussion, for now,¡± said Caster. ¡°Since it appears no one will be going anywhere this morning, there¡¯s no rush to have everything figured out right this instant. We should enjoy breakfast first.¡±

    No one had any objections to that, and while I still wasn¡¯t really in the mood to eat ¡ª and this could very easily be a ploy to buy himself some time ¡ª I reluctantly agreed. While Ritsuka went to get Jeanne Alter, Ren¨¦e went back into the kitchen and returned shortly thereafter with another spread of English breakfast that we all dug into, a little more subdued than the day before.

    It was still good, of course, but it seemed mine weren¡¯t the only thoughts that were heavy with the implications of what was going on.

    ¡°Another excellent repast, Ren¨¦e,¡± Doctor Jekyll said politely when we were finished.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran agreed.

    ¡°Thank you, Doctor Jekyll, Miss Fran,¡± Ren¨¦e replied in that same monotone. I wasn¡¯t sure whether I imagined the slightest curl at the edges of her lips.

    ¡°Onii-chan,¡± Rika announced, troubled, ¡°I think I¡¯m having an existential crisis.¡±

    Ritsuka sighed. ¡°It¡¯s okay to like people¡¯s food other than Emiya¡¯s, Rika.¡±

    ¡°Blasphemy!¡± she insisted.

    ¡°Against your tastebuds?¡± I suggested.

    Rika¡¯s mouth opened, snapped shut, and then, sulkily, she crossed her arms and told me, ¡°It¡¯s no fun when you ruin the joke like that.¡±

    ¡°Or maybe you just need new material,¡± Ritsuka said dryly.

    She stuck her tongue out at him.

    Caster cleared his throat pointedly. ¡°Regarding the issue at hand, namely this fog ¡ª¡±

    But Andersen chose that moment to appear in the doorway, solemn-faced and grim. ¡°Jekyll,¡± he said without preamble, ¡°one of the other collaborators just made contact. They said they needed to speak with you urgently.¡±

    Jekyll stood from the table, folding his napkin more out of ingrained habit than anything else, it seemed, and said, ¡°Please excuse me, my friends, while I see to this matter. I shall return anon.¡±

    ¡°Maybe your collaborator will have some idea about what¡¯s going on,¡± Tohsaka suggested slyly.

    Jekyll offered a smile. ¡°We can only hope.¡±

    He dropped his napkin on the table next to his plate, skirted his way around the table, and left for the office where he kept his radio. I kept tabs on him the entire way with my swarm, positioning enough bugs in the room to listen in on the entire conversation, or at least Jekyll¡¯s half of it.

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you all a sorry lot,¡± said Andersen.

    ¡°You didn¡¯t see the fog?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°What kind of question is that?¡± Andersen replied. ¡°Of course I did. I would have to be blind to miss it.¡±

    ¡°It means we can¡¯t afford to risk investigating the Clock Tower just yet,¡± Mash explained. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Mister Andresen, but that also means we can¡¯t take you with us right now.¡±

    Andersen arched an eyebrow. ¡°And? Are you going to continue stating the exceedingly obvious, or will the merely obvious do?¡±

    ¡°Damn, you¡¯re a mouthy little fu-freak, aren¡¯t you?¡± Jeanne Alter drawled, stumbling mid-sentence again.

    How long was Nursery Rhyme going to keep that going?

    ¡°We can take you, Mister Andersen,¡± the girl in question offered innocently. ¡°I have a lot of friends who can go with us! You¡¯ll be extra safe! Promise!¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Andersen rejected her immediately. ¡°I prefer books that can be read, not ones that talk back to me. I would stay as far away from you as possible, but unfortunately, here, at least, that¡¯s only as far as the other side of this apartment.¡±

    ¡°Harsh,¡± Rika remarked.

    ¡°There¡¯s no need for that,¡± Tohsaka agreed, and he actually sounded angry. ¡°Didn¡¯t your parents ever teach you proper manners?¡±

    In his office, Jekyll sat down in his chair and affixed a set of old-fashioned headphones around his ears, then leaned forward and spoke into the just as old-fashioned microphone. The voice coming out the other end was too tinny and muffled to make out the words, but the tone of voice was at least clear enough for me to make out how frantic the guy was.

    ¡°You¡¯re getting too attached,¡± Andersen rebuked him. ¡°You haven¡¯t forgotten that she¡¯s not really your daughter, have you? She¡¯s just a book. There¡¯s such a thing as loving something like her too much.¡±

    ¡°You little¡­!¡± Tohsaka snarled.

    Mordred chose that moment to materialize in the dining room with us.

    ¡°Yo!¡± she greeted us all. ¡°You guys looked out the window yet? That mist is crazy!¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Ritsuka answered her. ¡°It looks like we won¡¯t be able to go out today and investigate the Clock Tower.¡±

    Tohsaka, taking advantage of the distraction, forced himself to calm down and ease back into his seat.

    ¡°What?¡± Mordred complained. ¡°Why? It¡¯s just a little fog!¡±

    ¡°Not all of us are so fortunate that we can survive that little fog,¡± Tohsaka reminded her coolly.

    ¡°Tch.¡± Mordred scoffed. ¡°So? Just stay here then, pansies. The rest of us can handle it just fine without you holding us back!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not going without Papa,¡± Nursery Rhyme said firmly.

    Mordred waved it off. ¡°Wasn¡¯t asking you, pipsqueak.¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran grunted. ¡°Uh-uhn.¡±

    ¡°Of course you¡¯re staying here, too,¡± Mordred replied. ¡°You ain¡¯t got a single lick of magic resistance, and the less people we have to protect down there, the easier it¡¯ll be to get in and find what we need.¡±

    ¡°Sir Mordred might be saying it a little bit¡­indelicately,¡± Caster began, trying to cool tempers before they could get too hot, ¡°but it is a viable option, is it not? Four Servants is already quite the intimidating force ¡ª sorry, Mister Andersen, I should say five.¡±

    ¡°Leave me out of it,¡± Andersen said bluntly. ¡°I can¡¯t even throw a proper punch, so don¡¯t even bother accounting for me when you start tallying up your combat strength. I¡¯ll just be staying out of the way while everyone else does all of the fighting.¡±

    ¡°Am I the only one who knows you¡¯re not supposed to split the party?¡± Rika asked rhetorically.

    ¡°Can we afford to miss the chance, though?¡± Mash wondered. ¡°If P, B, and M really are trying to hide something in the Clock Tower, then the longer we wait, the longer they have to find someplace else to hide it.¡±

    ¡°You might be right,¡± Ritsuka agreed.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s a risk we want to take,¡± Emiya said gravely. ¡°Considering some of the things I know for sure are hidden down there, it would be a better idea to go in at full strength.¡±

    ¡°Scared of a few specimens in jars?¡± Jeanne Alter mocked him.

    ¡°I¡¯m more worried about the ones that might have gotten loose,¡± he shot back.

    I jolted up suddenly in my chair, spine snapping straight. Fuck. Of all the ways to get confirmation that this was definitely a trap of some kind.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°Is everything all right?¡± asked Caster.

    ¡°Ritsuka, Rika, Mash,¡± I began. My head turned jerkily, eyes jumping from person to person as I took a mental accounting of everyone in our group. ¡°Take Sir Mordred, Jeanne Alter, and Emiya and get ready to go. The rest of us will be staying here.¡±

    Jekyll was already leaping out of his chair, barely taking the time to rip his headphones off of his head before he rushed out of his office and back this way.

    The question was, a trap for who? The people who were going, drawn away by the emergency, or the people who were staying, who couldn¡¯t or wouldn¡¯t leave the apartment while the fog was still choking the streets? If I was the one planning things, it would have been both. Like I said before, divide and conquer. Take out both groups while they were separated and unable to go to each other¡¯s aid.

    Whether they had the forces for it was another question, but it was better to assume that they did. At least one more for each of P, B, and M.

    ¡°What happened?¡± Ritsuka asked immediately, all business.

    A breathless Jekyll stumbled into the room before I could give him an answer, face ashen and expression grim. His glasses were slightly askew.

    ¡°My friends, I bear the most terrible of news,¡± he announced hurriedly. ¡°One of my collaborators has just informed me ¡ª Jack the Ripper has appeared once again, only he is not targeting the poor unfortunate women of the streets, but Scotland Yard itself! He is assaulting it as we speak and sparing no one!¡±

    Eyebrows rose, eyes went wide, and mouths dropped open. Even Caster looked taken aback, like he hadn¡¯t expected this at all. A sign of a change of plans he hadn¡¯t been notified about, or proof that he wasn¡¯t a spy after all? There was no way to be sure just yet.

    ¡°Well,¡± said Emiya, summing up the situation, ¡°shit.¡±

 Chapter CXXXIX: Paracelsus

    Chapter CXXXIX: Paracelsus

    There was no debating and no protesting. The twins didn¡¯t waste any time gathering up everything they needed, slipping their shoes on, and rushing out the front door. They didn¡¯t even allow themselves to take things at a slower pace, because the instant they were clear and out into the streets, Emiya and Mash picked the twins up and leapt off at full speed so that they could make the best time possible, Mordred out front leading the way and Jeanne Alter pulling up the rear.

    As expected, the instant they were outside and stepped into the fog, communications with them dropped to nothing. There was no way for us to get into contact with them now, not even if we had to. We were completely cut off from each other.

    It was an incredible gamble. I wasn¡¯t sure if any of them had picked up on it and realized my intent, or if the rush had driven any such thoughts straight out of their heads before they could even form, but either way, there was no mention made of the danger I¡¯d put myself in and no attempts to talk me out of it.

    All for the better. The fact that no one else had said anything meant that Caster would be none the wiser, too. If he thought me completely unprotected, if he believed that I didn¡¯t suspect him of an ambush or a sneak attack, then he wouldn¡¯t have any reason to pass up this chance and he would be all the more surprised when I flipped it back on him.

    That was why it was essential that we had never used the Shadow Servant function in front of him and never mentioned it in his presence. A play this risky could never have worked without at least one trump card held in reserve to pull on him if he tried anything.

    But that was also why I took as many other precautions as I could, under the circumstances. I kept my bond with Arash under the tightest of grips, ready to call on him in an instant, ready to use a Command Spell, too, if it absolutely came down to it. I kept several bugs on several key points of Caster¡¯s body, looking out for suspicious or violent movements ¡ª if he so much as twitched in the wrong direction, I was ready to react.

    More importantly, I made sure to keep Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme between us at all times. If things devolved quickly enough, I wasn¡¯t sure how much help that would wind up being, but of the two of them, I could at least trust the Servant to react faster than either Tohsaka or I could. It wasn¡¯t the best buffer and it wasn¡¯t the most reliable one either, but it was still a roadblock between me and Caster. As long as it slowed him down at all, the extra second or two it would give me was more than enough to work with.

    An extra second or two could be the difference between life and death, after all, and I knew that better than I think anyone else in our group did. It was a lesson I wasn¡¯t sure the twins had fully learned yet, but I was sure, by the end of all of this, they would.

    At least immediately, however, nothing happened. Jekyll and Andersen stayed with the rest of us as we meandered into the study and the map located within it, but Ren¨¦e went back to whatever duties she had outside of cooking as though nothing was wrong. Cleaning the house, probably, all things considered. Outside of her stoic affect, she certainly acted a lot like a maid.

    For all of the rest of us, however, there wasn¡¯t much else we could do except gather around Caster¡¯s map and watch the others¡¯ progress. With Arash informed about the situation ¡ª concerned as he naturally was to watch the twins rush out of here with most of our team ¡ª all I could do was wait. Wait for them to make contact and fight Jack the Ripper, wait for Caster to spring whatever trap he was planning to spring. As I had seemed to be doing a lot of lately, wait.

    I didn¡¯t even dare to take the risk of looking through Jeanne Alter¡¯s eyes to keep track of what the others were doing. Anything at all that might have even the slightest chance of delaying my reaction when the trap was sprung was too dangerous to risk, so I had to stay confined to my own head, or as much as I ever was with my swarm, at any rate.

    At least it wasn¡¯t a completely helpless and useless wait, like things had been during the Chateau d¡¯If fiasco. It was nearly as nerve-wracking, but it was a familiar kind of nerve-wracking, the kind that felt like an old friend that I hadn¡¯t seen in a while.

    I knew that didn¡¯t say the most flattering of things about me or the life I¡¯d lived, and it said even worse things about Brockton Bay and Earth Bet, but one way or another, I found a kind of comfort in it. A strange comfort, but a comfort of a kind nonetheless.

    It looked like I hadn¡¯t quite managed to shake those old thought patterns from a past life.

    ¡°Of course, everyone else finds this as suspicious as I do, right?¡± Tohsaka asked. ¡°That this fog just so happens to coincide with Jack the Ripper¡¯s attack on Scotland Yard?¡±

    ¡°Uhn?¡± Fran asked.

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Caster plainly. ¡°This whole scenario has likely been imagined as some sort of plot ¡ª perhaps not by Jack himself, but by the nefarious masterminds behind the whole of this situation. What it is they intend to accomplish with this, well, I¡¯m afraid I couldn¡¯t say, but whatever their goal, it is safe to assume that the current circumstances are in service of it.¡±

    I wondered if that was his attempt at throwing off suspicion, making himself seem uninvolved, or if he really meant it and I was still just being paranoid. I wasn¡¯t quite sure what I was going to do if this whole thing blew over without him making a single attempt at doing anything to any of us.

    ¡°It must be as you say, Abraham,¡± Jekyll agreed. ¡°That this is intended to lure our compatriots out is clear, but for what purpose, it is indeed difficult to extrapolate upon. It may simply be that this is a means of distracting us all from their true purpose as they destroy or abscond with whatever it is they sought in the bowels of the British Museum, or perhaps they are intent upon furthering their nefarious schemes while Jack the Ripper holds our attention as far away from them as possible. Knowing so little of their personalities or purposes here makes it impossible to say with any certitude the ultimate purpose behind this attack.¡±

    Tohsaka¡¯s eyes narrowed on the map. ¡°Do you think they meant to get us, too?¡± he asked me.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I said simply.

    And maybe they had. How much did they really know about us and what we were doing here or who among us was unable to brave the fog for fear of drowning in their own blood? If Caster really was one of them, the mysterious ¡°P¡± in the elusive P, B, and M, then the answer should have been ¡°more than enough.¡±

    But even if I suspected, it still wasn¡¯t something I knew for sure. And if he wasn¡¯t? Then it was not only possible, it was probable that they had no idea of our exact numbers or that only some of us were completely unaffected by the fog that choked the city every afternoon and night.

    It was like we¡¯d been discussing the day before. We didn¡¯t know what they did or didn¡¯t know, so any combination at all was entirely possible.

    ¡°I can¡¯t say I like the idea of sitting around here waiting for something to happen,¡± said Tohsaka, ¡°but I guess drowning on dry land isn¡¯t a particularly elegant way of dying.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure¡­Alice is grateful for your discretion,¡± Caster said politely.

    ¡°As long as Papa is okay, that¡¯s all that matters,¡± Nursery Rhyme confirmed.

    Tohsaka grimaced, and more to himself than anyone else, it seemed, muttered, ¡°I just don¡¯t like feeling like an invalid either.¡±

    Something the two of us could actually agree on.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran agreed with a sullen nod.

    I cast a glance at Jekyll. There was no way of knowing if he had been subverted, provided Caster was who I thought he was, but there was no sense in endangering his life if and when things kicked off if he just happened to be in the metaphorical wrong place at the wrong time. It was better to make sure he was safe and out of the way, and I could keep track of him through my swarm so that if he was a sleeper agent, I could see him coming before he came after us.

    ¡°Doctor Jekyll,¡± I began, ¡°since we can¡¯t keep in contact with the others on our own, maybe you should get back on the radio with your collaborators and keep tabs on things that way.¡±

    Jekyll blinked at me, and then adjusted his glasses. ¡°An excellent suggestion, Miss Taylor. While all of you remain here to watch their progress through the city via this map, I shall endeavor to likewise apprise myself of their conditions throughout their encounter with the dastardly Jack the Ripper via my contact in the area. Although the fog may prove a frustrating impediment, any information that might be gleaned would be of use, and so I shall impose upon my network once more to monitor the situation as it unfolds.¡±

    And if I was wrong, then he and his collaborators would at least give us a better view of what was happening than the impersonal little dots on the map could.

    With a polite, ¡°please excuse me,¡± Jekyll left the room and went to the little office where his radio was set up, then sat back down in the chair and slipped those old headphones back onto his ears.

    I made sure to tag Ren¨¦e better, too, now that Jekyll was out of the way. There was no way of knowing exactly how she had been tuned when Caster made her ¡ª I¡¯d heard tales around Chaldea of homunculi maids with superhuman strength, meant to act as both tutor and bodyguard to a family¡¯s heir ¡ª but I had few doubts that she would side with him in everything.

    The only one that left was Fran, and I couldn¡¯t find a good reason to convince her to leave the room that wouldn¡¯t immediately raise Caster¡¯s suspicions, so the only thing I could do was make sure the group was arranged so that I was between her and Caster. I tagged her the same way I did Jekyll and Ren¨¦e, and surreptitiously started attaching gossamer lines of thin, nearly invisible silk to her limbs so that I had points of leverage if I needed to pull her out of the way.

    How attached I¡¯d grown in so little time. Alec would have been laughing his ass off about how sentimental I¡¯d gotten over something that didn¡¯t really mean anything at the end of the day.

    And with my web laid out, like a spider, I sat back and waited for my prey to get caught, to snag himself in the threads I¡¯d woven in his path. Patiently, giving nothing away, I watched the twins and their group make their way towards Scotland Yard with my own eyes and watched Caster and the others in our group with every other sense I had.

    Caster didn¡¯t fall for my bait. Even as the twins reached their goal and the motion of the dots on the map showed the fight that broke out almost immediately once they got there, he didn¡¯t suddenly leap into action. The only reaction he had to any of it was for his brow to furrow.

    ¡°That¡¯s it, then,¡± he murmured. ¡°They¡¯ll have encountered Jack the Ripper now ¡ª look, you can see how they¡¯re fighting.¡±

    ¡°Or the general gist of it, at least,¡± Tohsaka muttered softly.

    Nursery Rhyme sighed. ¡°I really wanted to play with Jackie again.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure we¡¯ll find more friends for you to play with later,¡± Tohsaka told her.

    ¡°I know,¡± she said simply. ¡°But it won¡¯t be the same as playing with Jackie. Jackie is ¡ª¡±

    Master! Arash shouted across our bond. I didn¡¯t even have time to respond to him and ask what was happening before he shimmered into existence above us and landed, almost catlike, on the floor nearby. Tohsaka startled.

    ¡°What the ¡ª¡±

    Caster shifted as something thunked into the roof above us, coming from what must have been Arash¡¯s perch up there. I realized what must have happened then ¡ª he¡¯d dodged the attack by going into spirit form and dropping through the building.

    ¡°Trouble,¡± Caster said sharply, eyes wide, brow furrowed, and mouth drawn into a thin line. He was looking in the direction of the wall, as though he could see through it and out into the fog at whatever was out there.

    ¡°Enemy Servant,¡± Arash rushed to clarify. ¡°A new one, Archer class, uses a crossbow ¡ª¡±

    In the parlor, a window shattered thunderously, shards of glass tinkling as they bounced across the hard wood of the floors, and the flutter of cloth was nearly lost in the thump of someone landing nimbly in the middle of the room. I whirled about to face the intruder, vaguely aware of Arash spinning about to face the same way and drawing an arrow like it was a dagger.

    ¡°Hello, again.¡± A mop of gray hair lifted to reveal piercing green eyes set in a face marred by several scars. From beneath the tattered hem of a worn and ragged black cloak, the tip of a wickedly curved knife glinted. ¡°Will you be our mommy, this time?¡±

    Nursery Rhyme gasped. ¡°Jackie!¡±

    ¡°Jackie?¡± Tohsaka parroted, echoing my own thoughts. ¡°W-wait, then that means¡­!¡±

    The dots connected. A to B to C, all in a neat row, and an uncomfortable realization bloomed in my stomach like a poisonous flower. This must have been the same Servant that tried to kill me at Nursery Rhyme¡¯s little tea party yesterday, the one who had hit Fou with a Noble Phantasm and come alarmingly close to actually killing me. As ridiculous as she looked and as little sense as it made for a notorious serial killer to take the appearance of a prepubescent girl, a quick glance with my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance confirmed it ¡ª and even that would probably get erased if she escaped us again.

    But if Jack the Ripper was here at the apartment, just who was it that the twins and the others were fighting right now?

    Jackie tilted her head to the side. ¡°Alice is here, too.¡± She smiled, cherubic, innocent, like she was just another girl meeting up with a friend. ¡°Sorry, Alice, but we can¡¯t play right now. We¡¯ll come by and play later, okay?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid that won¡¯t be an option,¡± Caster said, voice frigid. His face could have been carved from stone. ¡°You escaped me once before some days ago, but you¡¯ll find that you won¡¯t be quite so lucky today.¡±

    ¡°Sorry, Mister Caster,¡± Jackie said. ¡°We¡¯re not here for you either.¡±

    Her eyes flickered back in my direction, and that was all the warning I had before Arash scooped me up into his arms and leapt into the air in that tiny little apartment. I couldn¡¯t do anything else, so I tucked my arms and legs in as tightly as I could to avoid hitting them on anything as Arash somersaulted, pushed gently off of the ceiling, and landed on the opposite side of the parlor, right on the threshold to the tea room.

    Jackie wasn¡¯t fooled. She aborted her initial charge towards me, towards where I¡¯d just been standing, spinning on the balls of her feet and turning on a dime with an agility that I¡¯d come to expect out of someone like A¨ªfe, and she came back the other way, cloak flapping behind her. That Arash managed to spin around himself, dropping me back to my feet so abruptly that I stumbled trying to stay standing, and still managed to be quick enough to meet Jackie¡¯s knife with one of his arrows spoke of how fast he was, too.

    In a burst of motion, they separated, and Jackie¡¯s feet barely landed back on the wooden floor before she was moving again, a flurry of action and violence. She was too fast for my eyes to track her as anything more than a vague blur of black cloth, but I could see her aftermath, the dents and cracks she left on the walls and ceiling as she bounced off of them and the furniture that splintered from the sheer force of her tiny feet using them as leverage. I didn¡¯t have time to even attempt putting up threads of silk to try and slow her down.

    Invariably, she came towards me, again and again and again, like every failed attempt was just reason to try harder, but unlike the park, where there was so much free space for her to use to juke off to the side and feint, here, in the apartment, everything was too small and confined. I didn¡¯t even flinch, because Arash was there to block her every time, and the closest she came to actually touching me was my hair being ruffled by Arash¡¯s swings.

    On the other side of the parlor, watching from the threshold to the study, Tohsaka took a step back. This was probably the first time he¡¯d gotten a really good look at exactly how fast and impressive Servants were, and I had a tiny thread of sympathy for how out of his depth he must have been feeling.

    It was Jekyll, however, that I paid a bit more attention to, because he¡¯d noticed the commotion and was standing up to come and investigate, and the last thing I wanted right then was for him to get caught up in the fighting unnecessarily.

    ¡°Stay here,¡± I had a few bugs whisper to him, and he jumped, looking around for who could have spoken. ¡°Let us handle this. Focus on the other fight.¡±

    Jekyll looked spooked, but sat back down. ¡°If¡­you¡¯re certain¡­¡±

    ¡°I am.¡±

    Hesitantly, he picked up his headphones and slipped them back over his ears. It was as much as I could ask for. How well he managed to keep his attention where I needed it to be, I couldn¡¯t be sure, and I didn¡¯t have the space to worry about it.

    Jackie broke off from Arash, landing in a crouch on the remains of what had once been the couch I¡¯d woken up on, and she stared him down with unblinking green eyes. Arash held position in front of me, although the arrow he¡¯d been using as a dagger had very clearly seen better days. There were enough cuts carved into the shaft that it was a miracle it hadn¡¯t been chopped into a dozen pieces.

    ¡°You¡¯re getting in our way,¡± Jackie said eerily. She tilted her head to the side, not unlike a praying mantis. ¡°That¡¯s okay. We brought a friend along, too.¡±

    Arash jolted like he¡¯d been stabbed.

    ¡°Shit!¡± he cursed.

    More glass shattered, and Arash dove to the side ¡ª not to avoid the bolts that whistled through the windows, smashing the glass as they went, but to throw himself into the path of them, arms raised to protect his face and head. They burrowed into his unprotected arms, but the important ones bounced off of his chestplate and clattered to the floor.

    Bolts. I recognized them. They were made in an older style, like something out of the earliest days of crossbows, but there were only so many ways to make bolts for a crossbow, and I¡¯d seen my share before both from Shadow Stalker and from Foil.

    And they¡¯d been aimed at me. Arash had said there was an Archer out there using a crossbow, hadn¡¯t he?

    In the space opened up by those bolts, Jackie surged towards me, and I backpedaled, pulling my knife free as I put everything I could ¡ª anemic though my swarm was ¡ª between us.

    But at the last second, the floor of the threshold rose upwards into a thick wall, blocking me off from the parlor completely. Jackie bounced off of it, leaving only a spider-webbing crack behind that crept up across the wood. A moment later, the crack sealed over as though it was never there.

    ¡°I suppose I should have expected as much from a simple murderer like you, one who never had cause or opportunity to face a magus before,¡± Caster said, stepping forward. ¡°I would have at least expected your Masters to explain it to you, however. Did none of them ever tell you not to face a mage in his workshop?¡±

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    Jackie didn¡¯t reply, just turned around and eyed Caster curiously. As soon as Caster entered the parlor, a wave of bolts flew through the broken windows ¡ª where the mist outside was beginning to creep in, I was alarmed to note ¡ª but Arash ripped out the ones in his arms and scooped up the ones that had bounced off of his armor and threw them to knock the new ones out of the air. Caster glanced briefly towards their origin, but paid them no more mind than that.

    Now there was the question. Was Jackie a sacrificial lamb, meant to throw us off the scent of the real perpetrators, or was this Caster¡¯s honest face, staring down his real enemies? As much as my original suspicions felt completely justified, there was a point where I had to admit that the ruse would be too outlandish to be worth doing. When you had an Assassin with as much of an advantage in the current circumstances as Jack the Ripper had, it seemed like a silly decision to make her into a sacrificial pawn to draw suspicion away from yourself.

    ¡°On that note,¡± said Caster, ¡°I have a few questions I¡¯d like you to answer in regards to your allies. Specifically, if you would be so kind as to tell me a bit more about what it is they¡¯re after.¡± Another wave of bolts flew towards him, but Arash manifested his bow and shot them all out of the air. Caster grimaced and looked out the window. ¡°And perhaps you could tell your Archer friend outside that it¡¯s quite rude to interrupt.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re weird,¡± Jackie announced bluntly. ¡°Why would we tell you anything?¡±

    She suddenly rushed towards him, lashing out with one of her knives and aiming straight for his heart. Caster didn¡¯t even try to dodge, he just grabbed it by the blade and completely ignored the fact that she nearly sliced his fingers off in the process.

    ¡°Yes,¡± he drawled, ¡°I suppose there is that consideration, isn¡¯t there?¡±

    Arash, I ordered across our bond, take care of the Archer. Caster can take care of himself.

    Arash didn¡¯t hesitate. Yes, Master.

    The next wave of bolts, Arash shot out of the air much the same as the last couple, and on top of it, fired off a more deliberate shot at something outside the apartment. Based upon the angle, it was something on the roof of the building across the street from ours.

    I sent a probing group out from that very same building, but everything that ventured out into the mist died almost immediately. They gave me only a brief glimpse of a shimmer in the fog, which was essentially useless.

    Whoever the other Archer was, Arash seemed to see him just fine, because he leapt out of the broken window and into action, and that was where I lost track of him, because I couldn¡¯t send any bugs to follow. He didn¡¯t seem to need the help, at least, so I was going to have to leave it in his hands and trust he could handle it on his own.

    ¡°Are you well?¡± a familiar monotone asked from next to me. I paid Ren¨¦e nothing more than a quick glance to let her know I¡¯d heard her.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± I told her simply.

    Another point in Caster¡¯s favor. If I really hadn¡¯t noticed her coming, she could very well have attempted to ambush me. It wouldn¡¯t have worked, but he didn¡¯t necessarily know that, did he?

    In the parlor, Jackie pulled her dagger free, and Caster let her go. Red light poured from his wounds, and when it was gone, so were they, as though his fingers had never even been cut.

    Jackie didn¡¯t seem to know what to make of that.

    ¡°I see,¡± said Ren¨¦e. ¡°If you aren¡¯t wounded, then there¡¯s no need for me to attend to you. Please excuse me.¡±

    As Ren¨¦e stepped out of the tea room and went back towards the kitchen, Fran stepped slowly out from behind Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme. Her mouth pulled into a tight line, and sparks of electricity started to build along the transformers sticking out from behind her ears.

    ¡°Stay back, if you would, Miss Fran,¡± said Caster. ¡°There¡¯s no need for you to involve yourself.¡±

    Fran¡¯s lips drew into an even tighter line, but she listened to him and retreated back behind Tohsaka. ¡°Uhn¡­¡±

    The sparking electricity died away before she could even make any use of it.

    ¡°Alice,¡± Tohsaka murmured, ¡°isn¡¯t there anything you could¡­?¡±

    ¡°Sorry, Papa,¡± Nursery Rhyme said apologetically. ¡°Jabberwocky and the Bandersnatch would both make an awful mess in a tiny house like this. They¡¯re too big to play inside.¡±

    How inconvenient. So did that mean she and Tohsaka were going to be mostly useless unless we were fighting outside?

    ¡°We seem to be at something of an impasse,¡± said Caster. ¡°You don¡¯t want to say anything about your allies or your masters, and I¡­ Well, I¡¯ve never had any children I needed to discipline, so I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t have any experience in it.¡± He settled a hard look on Jackie. ¡°But if you¡¯re intent on misbehaving, then it seems I don¡¯t have any other choice except to learn.¡±

    Slowly, he lifted his hands up, and then he pressed them together, fingers interlaced, as magical energy swelled within him so strongly that I could feel it even from where I was.

    ¡°Do bear with me,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m not quite certain what level of force I should be using, especially against a Servant. I may be a little bit rougher with you than I mean to.¡±

    He said something then ¡ª an incantation, it had to be, in a language I didn¡¯t recognize that sounded only vaguely like Latin ¡ª and the broken couch Jackie was standing on came alive. The wooden frame grew into arms, then into hands, and they reached for her as though to take hold of her and bind her to their remains. Jackie leapt away, across the room, far enough that the morphing couch couldn¡¯t grab her.

    But the instant she landed, the shards of glass from the window she¡¯d originally broken came together and jutted up into needles, piercing through her shoes and feet in a spray of blood. Jackie let out a startled yelp and ripped herself free of them, leaving more blood behind as she stumbled back towards me until she was pressed up against the wall that had been raised to protect me.

    She glanced briefly down at her wounded and bloodied feet, but didn¡¯t seem particularly concerned with the damage. For a Servant, I guess it was basically a flesh wound.

    ¡°That wasn¡¯t nice,¡± she said to Caster.

    ¡°I did warn you that I haven¡¯t any practice with this,¡± Caster replied. His lips drew into a tight line. ¡°And, well, you are a murderer. Whether you wear the face of a child or not, those knives of yours have already claimed the lives of several women, just in the last few days, haven¡¯t they?¡±

    The thick wall glowed, and I took several steps back as it morphed and twisted just like the couch had, a pair of arms reaching out from the surface to take hold of Jackie. I got a front row seat to the way the wall thinned out ¡ª the principal alchemy worked on as a craft. You could change something¡¯s composition, its shape, its structure, but you weren¡¯t creating material from thin air. You had to take something from one place to put it into another.

    Jackie ducked under this set of arms and dodged out of their reach, too, and bounced off of the ceiling, then threw herself at Caster. Caster didn¡¯t even bother moving, because he simply didn¡¯t have to, not when everything from the furniture to the room itself came alive to aid him. It formed shields to block her strikes, coiled around her limbs like snakes whenever she landed, roiled and raged to upset her footing so that she stumbled.

    It wouldn¡¯t be right to say he was playing with her, but he was very obviously trying not to kill her outright. Was he giving her an opening to escape by forcing her to retreat when she finally realized she couldn¡¯t win, or was he trying to pin her down so that we could get some actual answers out of her about the ones holding her metaphorical leash?

    ¡°Stop it!¡± Jackie finally shouted. She dodged backwards, and when a piece of what had once been the back of a chair tried to snag her leg, she chopped it off with what looked like a large butcher¡¯s knife. ¡°Stop getting in our way! We¡¯re not here for you, old man! Mister P said our mommy would be here! We just want her!¡±

    What?

    ¡°Mister P?¡± Tohsaka echoed.

    ¡°He told you that you would find your mother here? This¡­Mister P?¡± asked Caster.

    ¡°So just show us where our mommy is and stop bothering us!¡± said Jackie.

    That was confirmation, of a sort, that she was working with our apparent masterminds, and on top of it, that one of them had apparently sent her here. Not Caster, it looked like, because he wasn¡¯t the ¡°P¡± we were looking for, but someone else who apparently knew Jackie well enough that he knew how to motivate her.

    Of course, the question that had to follow was whether ¡°P¡± had meant to strike at one of us in particular, hence the ¡°mommy¡± thing, or if this whole thing had just been him manipulating Jackie through her¡­ Could I call it a psychosis? Did it still count when Servants could be so defined by their pasts that they could get stuck in mental ruts whenever they were summoned?

    Whatever. Not important. The better question right now was, could I manipulate Jackie¡¯s¡­fixation was a good enough word, to get her to hand over more information on the enemy?

    Maybe it was a bit of a stretch, but¡­ It worked on Altera, hadn¡¯t it? Did I really have all that much to lose by giving it a shot?

    ¡°Caster,¡± I called, pitching my voice to carry through the wall that was still in front of me, ¡°let me in.¡±

    He hesitated. ¡°Are you sure about this?¡±

    No. But that hadn¡¯t ever stopped me before, had it?

    ¡°I think Jackie might respond better to a woman¡¯s touch,¡± was the answer I gave. If he noticed that I didn¡¯t actually answer his question, then he didn¡¯t give any indication.

    Caster grimaced, but after a moment, he did bring down the wall, and for the first time since the fight began in earnest, I got to see the mess of the room with my own human eyes. The strange shapes jutting out of every wooden surface, the glass needles splattered with blood, the utterly ruined furniture strewn about the whole place.

    It was kind of incredible what kind of damage they¡¯d managed to do in only a minute or two.

    I could have said it looked like a hurricane had been through the apartment, but that only covered the mess, not the twisted limbs reaching out from the floor and walls and ceiling, midway through the motion of grabbing for someone who wasn¡¯t there anymore. Jekyll was probably going to have a fit when he saw it all.

    For just a moment, I missed an old friend. I wasn¡¯t even sure I had the right to call him that, after¡­everything.

    I took only one step across the threshold and into the chaos, affecting complete nonchalance to all of it, and focused in immediately on Jackie, who was watching the whole thing warily, confused.

    Vaguely, I remembered something from my Wards days about approaching children on their level, so I took a careful and cautious knee, making sure to keep my knife out of view. I wasn¡¯t stupid. This was a gamble, but I wasn¡¯t going to completely disarm myself. That was why I was also keeping a stranglehold on the Shadow Servant function and was completely ready to cast an Emergency Evasion on myself.

    ¡°Hello, Jackie,¡± I said to her calmly. ¡°We weren¡¯t ever properly introduced, were we? My name is Taylor.¡±

    She didn¡¯t seem to know what to make of that. ¡°Hi¡­¡±

    ¡°You said Mister P told you that you would find your mommy here,¡± I began slowly and deliberately. ¡°Do you know what she looks like?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Jackie answered simply. ¡°That¡¯s why we have to find her. The only way for Mommy to be Mommy is if we find her.¡±

    ¡°Mister P didn¡¯t tell you what she looks like either?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Jackie. ¡°He just told us she might be here.¡±

    So they weren¡¯t trying to take out a very specific individual as much as they were just trying to get all of us they could. A bit of a relief, in some ways, and also a confirmation ¡ª as though we needed it now ¡ª that they knew where we were. How much they knew beyond that¡­

    Well, Jackie probably didn¡¯t have any idea.

    ¡°Did Mister P tell you anything else? About what he was going to be doing while you were here or why you needed to bring your Archer friend?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Jackie said again. ¡°He just went off somewhere with another us and said we might need friends to play with everyone else while we looked for Mommy.¡±

    ¡°Another you?¡±

    Did she have a duplicating power or something? I didn¡¯t see it on her when I checked, but if it was like Medea and she got split right down the middle or something¡­

    ¡°Another Jack,¡± she clarified. She tilted her head to the side. ¡°We don¡¯t know where he came from or why he calls himself Jack. We¡¯re Jack. But he¡¯s also Jack? We don¡¯t understand.¡±

    Could¡­there be more than one Jack the Ripper? I¡­guess it wasn¡¯t impossible, was it? An original murderer and a copycat, that wasn¡¯t unheard of at all. If there was never a distinction made between them, both could end up on the Throne, couldn¡¯t they?

    ¡°Does Mister P have any friends? Mister B or Mister M?¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± said Jackie. ¡°He never met with anyone like that. Mostly, he just told us we could go play and look for Mommy whenever we wanted, but only when it was misty out. We were never allowed to make our own mist before today.¡±

    Which explained quite a bit about her habits. And yes, I hadn¡¯t forgotten about the fog slowly creeping in through the window. I didn¡¯t know whether it was a function of the fog or if Caster¡¯s bounded field was at work, but it seemed to be having a hard time gaining traction.

    ¡°What about the mist?¡± I asked her. ¡°Is he making the fog that covers the city every day? Did he ever say what he needed it for or why?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± answered Jackie. ¡°He said something about Angry Body, but he never told us what it was for.¡±

    Angry body?

    The look on Caster¡¯s face said he might have some idea what she was talking about, but he had the good sense not to say anything out loud in front of her. Not when it had any chance at all of making it back to her Master.

    Jackie tilted her head at me. ¡°We¡¯ve answered your questions, Taylor. Will you be our Mommy now?¡±

    I did my best to keep my face impassive. Arash? The other Archer?

    Got him, was Arash¡¯s reply. He was slippery, but not that good at direct combat. I¡¯ve been keeping an eye on things from out here. Do you want me to take out Jack?

    Standby, I told him. Wait for my say so.

    Understood, he said.

    ¡°Come here, Jackie,¡± I bade her.

    Jackie hesitated for only a moment, and then slowly began to make her way over to me, picking carefully through the rubble.

    When Jackie was finally in front of me, so close I could reach out and touch her, she just stood there, like she wasn¡¯t sure what to do. Frankly, I wasn¡¯t sure I did either, right then. It would have been easier to just have Arash put an arrow in her heart from outside.

    On the off chance she managed to dodge, however, that would start the fight up again instantly. She might manage to slip away in all of that.

    ¡°You¡¯ve never had a mommy before, have you?¡± I asked Jackie.

    ¡°No,¡± she said simply. She didn¡¯t explain it any more than that.

    ¡°That¡¯s okay. I¡¯ve never been a mommy before either.¡±

    Did the orphans from after Leviathan count? I wasn¡¯t sure they should. I hadn¡¯t been anywhere near attentive enough to be a proper parental figure, mostly because I hadn¡¯t had the time to devote to it.

    But I could remember what having one felt like. What my own mother had said and how she¡¯d treated me.

    ¡°First things first,¡± I said, ¡°put away the knives, Jackie. If I¡¯m going to be your mommy, then you don¡¯t need them right now.¡±

    Hesitantly, she did exactly that, slipping the pair of knives she was carrying back into the holsters hidden under that tattered cloak. She looked up at me through her fringe, curious and halfway seeking my approval.

    ¡°Good.¡± I leaned towards her a little, like I was sharing a secret. Out of the corner of my eye and with my bugs, I saw Caster tense. ¡°Have you ever had a hug before?¡±

    Jackie shook her head slowly.

    ¡°Would you like one?¡±

    After a brief second, Jackie nodded. I held out my left arm in invitation ¡ª and Jackie stepped into it, pressing herself up against my chest. Awkwardly, stiffly, like she didn¡¯t quite know how she was supposed to be giving someone a hug or how she was supposed to get one.

    The easiest way to trap someone was to convince them there wasn¡¯t a trap for them to walk into.

    ¡°Is she going to kill Jackie?¡± Nursery Rhyme asked Tohsaka, so quiet that I only heard her through my bugs.

    ¡°That¡¯s what it looks like,¡± Tohsaka muttered back.

    ¡°That¡¯s too bad,¡± Nursery Rhyme whispered, the way one talked about the neighbor¡¯s pet goldfish dying. ¡°Jackie was pretty fun to play with.¡±

    For the first time since he told us about it, I was beginning to understand why Andersen held her in such contempt. Nursery Rhyme didn¡¯t even seem to care.

    Carefully, cautiously, so as not to spook her, I wrapped my arm around Jackie and pulled her in closer, and Jackie took in a sharp breath, then slowly, as though she didn¡¯t know what to do and wasn¡¯t sure she was doing it right, she lifted her arms and wrapped them around my ribs. After a second or two, she relaxed and let herself melt into me, face pressed against my shirt, to top of her hair tickling my chin.

    And that was when I lifted my other arm, reversing my grip on my knife, and angled the tip just so, so that it would neatly and cleanly pierce her heart. A quick kill, too fast for her to react to anything.

    ¡°Mommy is so warm,¡± Jackie murmured into my chest.

    A flash of memory jolted through my head, the image of a little girl, immortalized at the moment of her death, as my bullet passed through her head. The last child I¡¯d had a hand in killing, one of the things I regretted the most, even knowing there weren¡¯t any better options.

    And just like then, I¡­

    I¡­couldn¡¯t do it.

    My hand trembled. I knew the right course of action, that a Servant like Jackie was too volatile, too mercurial, and had spent too long being the enemy¡¯s to trust her, so the only thing I should do was plunge my knife into her chest and be done with it. It might not be what she deserved, but even if she was just a child, she was a child long dead, and there was nothing I could do to save that child. Her fate, her suffering, was already history, and history was what we were here to preserve.

    But I¡­

    A sigh heaved out of me.

    Goddamn it. Fuck whoever it was that kept trying to put me in situations like this, because the first time was bad enough and I didn¡¯t need to have it thrown in my face over and over again.

    I couldn¡¯t save Aster. I couldn¡¯t even save Jackie, not really, but¡­

    I changed the angle of my knife and wrapped my other arm around Jackie.

    ¡°Jackie,¡± I muttered to her, ¡°do you promise to be a good girl?¡±

    ¡°Mmhm.¡± She nodded her head into my chest. ¡°I¡¯ll be whatever Mommy needs me to be.¡±

    And against all reason and logic, that was enough. My Command Spells burned for a brief moment, cementing the contract. The Assassin Servant, Jack the Ripper, became mine.

    Carefully, I loosened my grip. ¡°Now,¡± I said quietly, ¡°there¡¯s something I need you to do for me, Jackie. Could you get rid of this mist? It¡¯s dangerous for Mommy to breathe that in.¡±

    She tilted her head back and blinked up at me, then smiled, completely guileless. ¡°Okay!¡±

    I let her go carefully, cautious not to make any sudden moves. We were hopefully past the part where I really needed to worry about that, but I didn¡¯t want to take any chances. My Servant or not, Jackie was still volatile, and until I learned her habits and her personality better, it was best to err on the side of caution.

    Jackie stepped back from me and gave me enough clearance to move, although she didn¡¯t look incredibly happy about that. She didn¡¯t complain, at least, and took a moment to look out through the window.

    Slowly, I stood. My clean knife slid home into its holster. Outside, the mist began to dissipate and vanish, rapidly clearing away as though it hadn¡¯t been anything more than an illusion.

    ¡°Not the way I thought this was going to go, I must admit,¡± Caster muttered to himself, stroking his beard.

    ¡°Jackie is staying!¡± Nursery Rhyme cheered, smiling. Jackie smiled back.

    ¡°Alice is staying, too!¡±

    A moment later, Arash came in through the already broken window and landed on the floor.

    ¡°Enemy Servant eliminated,¡± he announced. He glanced around the room, pausing only a second on me, and then on Jackie. He gave her a smile. ¡°And it looks like we have a new friend. Hi, Jackie. My name is Arash. It¡¯s nice to meet you.¡±

    Jackie glanced at me as though for permission, and I gave her a little smile and a nod, for lack of any better way of handling it. The instant I did, she beamed and turned back towards Arash, ¡°Hi, Arash! It¡¯s nice to meet you, too! And, um, I¡¯m sorry for fighting you yesterday.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± Arash told her, still smiling. ¡°Yesterday was yesterday. Today, we¡¯re friends, aren¡¯t we?¡±

    Jackie nodded. ¡°Mm!¡±

    ¡°Hold on a second, Jackie,¡± I told her. She looked over at me curiously.

    She didn¡¯t even seem to realize that her feet were still bleeding.

    ¡°First Aid.¡±

    She gasped, looking down at her feet. ¡°Mommy healed my feet!¡±

    How would Mom have answered that? ¡°You¡¯re welcome, Jackie.¡±

    She threw herself at me and wrapped her arms around my middle, oblivious to the way both Tohsaka and Caster stiffened, expecting the worst. ¡°Thank you, Mommy!¡±

    Awkwardly, I patted her on the head.

    Beep-beep!

    I answered my communicator, and when I did, Rika¡¯s face appeared in the air above my wrist. ¡°Yes?¡±

    ¡°Ah, Senpai!¡± she said, surprised. She turned away from me and towards something only she could see. ¡°Onii-chan, we got through! It worked!¡±

    A moment later, Ritsuka and Mash¡¯s faces joined hers. ¡°Miss Taylor!¡±

    ¡°Senpai.¡±

    ¡°Ritsuka, Mash.¡± I didn¡¯t hear any fighting going on in the background. ¡°You took care of things at Scotland Yard?¡±

    They all grimaced.

    ¡°Ah,¡± said Ritsuka. He looked like he didn¡¯t know how to explain it all, or maybe like he didn¡¯t want to.

    ¡°We encountered a¡­being of some kind calling himself Jack the Ripper,¡± Mash reported, ¡°but he was more like a¡­a Demi-Servant than a regular Servant, Miss Taylor. He, um¡­¡±

    ¡°His body didn¡¯t disappear when he died,¡± Ritsuka said bluntly.

    Mash closed her eyes. ¡°Y-yes, that.¡±

    ¡°I threw up!¡± Rika announced cheerfully.

    ¡°There was other stuff that happened, but, Senpai,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°we found out who P is. He was there with Jack.¡±

    I straightened a little. Caster and Tohsaka, both having heard and had their interests peaked, meandered over towards me to hear things better. The little girl attached to my hip looked up upon hearing her name, curious.

    ¡°You did?¡± I asked. ¡°He was?¡±

    ¡°He said his name was Paracelsus.¡±

    My brow twitched, the only reaction I couldn¡¯t manage to hold back. I forced myself not to look in Caster¡¯s direction.

    Then who did that make him?

 Chapter CXL: Merits of Mercy

    Chapter CXL: Merits of Mercy

    ¡°You¡¯re sure about that?¡± I couldn¡¯t stop myself from asking.

    ¡°Positive,¡± Ritsuka answered. ¡°I checked with Master¡¯s Clairvoyance before he teleported away ¡ª Caster class Servant, Paracelsus von Hohenheim.¡±

    ¡°I was too busy barfing, so I can¡¯t say for sure,¡± Rika added unnecessarily.

    ¡°Troubling,¡± Caster said, frowning. ¡°I had feared it might be the case, but some part of me had hoped I was wrong.¡±

    ¡°Do you know him, Abraham?¡± Mash asked.

    Caster gave a small shake of his head. ¡°By reputation only. In terms of history, he and I were separated by nearly a hundred years, so I never had the¡­pleasure of making his personal acquaintance.¡±

    I had to admit, I wasn¡¯t sure what to make of it yet. I¡¯d been so sure of my conclusion before, but ¡ª come to think of it, Paracelsus had died young, hadn¡¯t he? I¡¯d forgotten about that until now. He¡¯d never made it to fifty, let alone the sixty-ish look of Caster, so my original conclusion had been flawed from the start.

    But if that was the case, if Caster wasn¡¯t Paracelsus at all and the real Paracelsus was already confirmed to be on the enemy¡¯s side, then who was Caster?

    ¡°Did you admire him?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    Caster grimaced. ¡°I¡¯m afraid not. He was¡­something of a radical, you might say, and while I can applaud his motivations and even his goals, his methods were¡­a little too thoughtless.¡±

    Tohsaka cleared his throat. ¡°If it¡¯s not too much trouble, perhaps someone might explain who this Paracelsus person is for those of us who know nothing about him at all?¡±

    Ritsuka shook his head. ¡°I don¡¯t really know much about him either.¡±

    ¡°Ditto,¡± said Rika. ¡°I know a Von Hohenheim, but something tells me this ain¡¯t the same guy. They don¡¯t look the same, for one thing.¡±

    How had Marie put it when she was explaining this guy to me?

    ¡°He¡¯s the father of modern alchemy.¡± And didn¡¯t that do interesting things to Caster¡¯s face? ¡°He standardized the system used by almost all alchemists since, and he created the mystic code known to modern magi as the Azoth Sword. You might call him a genius.¡±

    Rika sighed. ¡°Senpai gave really short exposition again.¡±

    What, was she expecting me to give them his life¡¯s story? I only knew the most important parts to begin with.

    ¡°There isn¡¯t much else to say, Senpai,¡± said Mash. ¡°Paracelsus von Hohenheim is credited with numerous advances in medicine, particularly in the field of toxicology, and magi knew him as a talented alchemist. He spent quite some time abroad in Europe, and he was a physician for a while, but in terms of his impact on history, that¡­wasn¡¯t quite as important.¡±

    I remembered there being a rumor about the philosopher¡¯s stone, but if it had ever been confirmed, Marie hadn¡¯t known, or at least hadn¡¯t said. It wasn¡¯t like he would have been the only alchemist in history rumored to have made one, but the fact he¡¯d died so young made me think it was less than likely.

    ¡°Now that we are certain he is in play,¡± said Caster, ¡°it would be fairly safe to assume that the grotesque homunculi we have seen about the city are his creations, although what in the world would possess him to do such a thing ¡ª or, indeed, to participate in this travesty ¡ª I cannot even begin to speculate.¡±

    ¡°I can,¡± Mash said quietly. Her lips drew into a tight line and her eyes fell. ¡°We¡¯ve encountered this sort of thing before, remember, Senpai? Miss Taylor? Back in Fuyuki, and even in the previous Singularity, Okeanos, normally just and righteous Heroic Spirits doing things that no one would ever believe they would do.¡±

    Ah.

    ¡°You think there¡¯s another Demon God involved.¡±

    Mash didn¡¯t hesitate. ¡°Yes.¡±

    She was probably right. We¡¯d had exactly this sort of discussion once before, about King Solomon, and while a man said to have brought seventy-two demons to heel being corrupted by anything else felt a little bit like a stretch, the principle was the same. Medea the younger from the last Singularity and the altered Servants from Fuyuki proved that it was very possible.

    ¡°It¡­makes sense, doesn¡¯t it?¡± Ritsuka said a little uncertainly. ¡°Back in Fuyuki and Septem, there was Professor Lev ¡ª Flauros ¡ª and in Okeanos, another Demon God, Forneus, that the other Medea summoned using the Grail¡­¡±

    That left Orl¨¦ans as the outlier, but if Flauros had been punished as he claimed he was for our success there, then it was safe to assume the only reason we hadn¡¯t run into one was because it was in another Singularity. It left the question of whether or not Forneus had been responsible for more than one, though, but Singularities weren¡¯t linear. The time between them wasn¡¯t fixed or set. Forneus could have been here before showing up there.

    Having said that¡­

    ¡°It might be better to assume we¡¯re going to encounter one before the end of this.¡±

    ¡°And it¡¯s the one responsible for corrupting Paracelsus,¡± Ritsuka concluded.

    ¡°Most likely.¡± On the subject of him, ¡°You said he teleported away?¡±

    Ritsuka nodded. ¡°Yeah. It¡¯s¡­ All things considered, we didn¡¯t think anything like that was possible without using the Grail, so that means we can be sure of it now, right? P, B, and M have it.¡±

    ¡°Or a Command Spell!¡± Rika interjected. ¡°Which, okay, whoever¡¯s got him on speed dial is getting that from the Grail anyway, so I guess it¡¯s all the same.¡±

    ¡°Even for a Caster of his caliber, teleportation would be a mystery well beyond him,¡± Caster supplied helpfully. ¡°Yes, it would be safe to assume that ¡ª however it was accomplished ¡ª whatever form of spatial transference he used would have involved the Holy Grail in some form or fashion.¡±

    Tohsaka twitched. ¡°What did he look like?¡±

    ¡°A dreamboat,¡± Rika answered immediately.

    Ritsuka grimaced, then offered a more coherent answer. ¡°Tall, lean, middle-aged. He had long black hair, no beard, and he wore a white robe.¡±

    ¡°As bishounen as bishounen gets!¡± Rika added.

    I looked at Risuka, and he sighed. ¡°It means ¡®pretty boy.¡¯¡±

    Tohsaka, on the other hand, heaved out a sigh of relief. It occurred to me, suddenly, that teleportation was technically covered under the umbrella of the Second True Magic, so he might have been afraid that his mentor was working with the enemy for some reason. That wasn¡¯t impossible, I suppose, but not something he should have been worried about when Ritsuka already confirmed his identity with Master¡¯s Clairvoyance.

    On the other hand, I thought, rubbing my thumb across Jackie¡¯s shoulder, it wasn¡¯t like we hadn¡¯t already gotten plenty of proof that our clairvoyance wasn¡¯t foolproof. I was more inclined to believe that the guy they encountered was the real deal, though.

    ¡°If Paracelsus is the one responsible for the homunculi,¡± Mash said, ¡°that means that B and M have to be the ones making the other things, don¡¯t they? The Helter Skelter and automata.¡±

    ¡°One would assume,¡± said Caster. ¡°Whatever else he was, Paracelsus was not a¡­I believe the modern term is engineer. That is, he had no talent for inventing mechanical devices.¡±

    ¡°Close enough.¡±

    ¡°It is not impossible that the automata and the Helter Skelter have the same origin,¡± Caster went on, ¡°but they have different¡­design principles, shall we say. They are constructed in vastly different configurations using quite different mechanisms. I think it safe to assume that their creators are different people as well.¡±

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I allowed. Probably, even. People tended to fall into patterns once they got comfortable with a certain way of doing things, and even someone smart enough to not only build, but mass produce fully functioning robots was not an exception to that. Two different designs likely did mean two different designers.

    But it might be dangerous to assume that B or M didn¡¯t have something else up their sleeves, even before we started talking about potential Demon Gods running around.

    ¡°Hey!¡± Mordred¡¯s voice called from behind the twins and out of sight. ¡°You guys done yapping yet? My ass is getting sore from sitting around doing nothing!¡±

    The twins grimaced and turned back to me. ¡°We¡¯ll talk more once you get back,¡± I assured them. ¡°For now ¡ª¡±

    I closed my eyes for a moment, pushing my mind down the thread connecting me to Jeanne Alter, and I borrowed her sight, just long enough to see everyone, all of them, all healthy and uninjured. If they¡¯d been hurt at all in the fighting, then the wounds had already been treated with First Aid.

    ¡°¡ª keep an eye out on your way back. Just because you made it through that fight without getting hurt doesn¡¯t mean they won¡¯t try again.¡±

    Ritsuka and Mash both nodded, faces resolute. ¡°Right!¡±

    ¡°Hang on a second,¡± Rika said, ¡°um, what are we supposed to do with maybe-not-Jack¡¯s body? I mean, I¡¯m no undertaker, and the guy was a serial killer, sure, probably, maybe, kinda-sorta, but I feel all kinds of funny about just leaving him hanging around out here, you know?¡±

    My lips pressed tight. If we were in a better spot and had more security, I honestly would have liked to have Da Vinci look into things and see how it was the enemy had managed to make what sounded like a Demi-Servant, but that wasn¡¯t really an option here. I certainly wasn¡¯t going to ask the twins to carry the corpse back with them, not if it was as badly damaged as they were implying it was, and as far as they¡¯d come in the last few months, I didn¡¯t think they were ready for something like that.

    But we couldn¡¯t leave it where the enemy could retrieve it, and that automatically meant tossing it into the Thames was out, too. There wasn¡¯t time for a proper burial ¡ª or a place for it, for that matter ¡ª which really only left one option.

    ¡°Burn it, and then make your way back here. Just be careful not to set the whole city on fire.¡±

    None of them looked particularly comfortable with that idea, but none of them tried to argue against it either.

    ¡°I think I might have something for that,¡± Emiya¡¯s voice came from the background. ¡°This wasn¡¯t what it was made for, and my copy is only a degraded shadow of the real deal, but it should be enough to burn a single body without doing any damage to the infrastructure.¡±

    ¡°As long as you don¡¯t ask me to light the matches,¡± Rika said, relieved.

    ¡°We¡¯ll handle things here and then come back right away, Senpai,¡± Ritsuka promised, although he naturally didn¡¯t sound very enthusiastic. ¡°Please let everyone else know we¡¯ll be back in time for lunch.¡±

    ¡°Although whether we¡¯re going to want to eat it is a different question,¡± Rika muttered. As though to punctuate that statement, the line cut, and their images disappeared.

    ¡°They¡¯re gone,¡± Jackie said, mystified.

    ¡°We¡¯ll see them again in about an hour,¡± I told her.

    ¡°Uhn?¡± Fran asked, peeking out of the study.

    ¡°Yes, it¡¯s safe to come out now.¡±

    ¡°Uhn?¡±

    ¡°That was Ritsuka and Rika, yes,¡± I answered. ¡°You heard them?¡±

    She nodded. Good, it meant I didn¡¯t need to explain things.

    I turned to Caster. ¡°Abraham¡­¡±

    I wanted answers, but if it came down to forcing the issue, I wanted to have at least one Servant with high level magic resistance between us first, so I decided I was going to wait until Mash and Mordred had returned. Instead, I made a show of looking around the devastated parlor and the various structures jutting haphazardly out of every available surface.

    ¡°¡­you should probably get this place back in order before Jekyll comes out of his office.¡±

    Caster grimaced. ¡°Yes, I suppose I should, shouldn¡¯t I?¡±

    He pressed his hands together again, muttered another incantation, and before my eyes, everything that had happened in his short battle with Jackie was undone. Every jutting arm, every glassy spike, every broken piece of furniture, it all wound back like a clock in reverse. Splinters returned from whence they came, cushioning stuffed itself back through ripped fabric, and then the fabric itself was stitched back together until I couldn¡¯t tell it had ever been ripped. Snapped legs reattached themselves without a hint of a seam, the bent fire poker straightened, and even the cracks in the walls and ceiling sealed over. The wallpaper reapplied itself as though it had never been torn.

    Almost like an afterthought, the window Jackie had come in through and smashed repaired itself and was whole again, good as new. With that, it was like the fight had never happened in the first place.

    I¡¯m sure it would have wowed the twins ¡ª maybe not now, but earlier on for sure ¡ª but even though I couldn¡¯t help being a little bit impressed, I had frankly seen more incredible things long before coming to Chaldea. Most of them hadn¡¯t been quite so benign.

    ¡°Wow!¡± said Jackie.

    But some of us were apparently more easily impressed. Tohsaka¡¯s expression was carefully blank, and in some ways, that was as much an indication that he was impressed too as him shouting it would have been.

    ¡°Ahh¡­¡± Fran breathed, head swiveling to take it all in.

    ¡°Not my most inventive work, I¡¯ll admit,¡± Caster said ruefully. ¡°There is a certain advantage in speed for simple shape transformation, however, and it made for quite the easy cleanup, didn¡¯t it? Frankly, I¡¯ve never had to use my alchemy for combat before this deployment, so this is all rather new to me.¡±

    He was doing a fairly decent job for someone who had never used magic in a fight before a few days ago. Whether it would carry over into larger scale combat in a larger room or outside, in a place where he hadn¡¯t set up his workshop, that was a different question, and I guess only time would tell. A Shaker who could turn the entire battlefield into his weapon was the sort of thing that could control the outcome of a fight from start to finish.

    But Tohu and Bohu were my standard for that, and I wasn¡¯t sure that city-killing monsters were a fair comparison for someone a lot more human in scale.

    ¡°Mister Abraham is really smart,¡± Nursery Rhyme said with a smile.

    Jackie nodded. ¡°He sure is! He almost caught us before, too!¡±

    Tohsaka¡¯s cheek twitched. ¡°Alright, am I the only one who¡¯s going to bring it up?¡± he asked, jabbing a finger at Jackie. ¡°Why are we keeping that around? It¡¯s a serial killer, and an enemy Servant, too!¡±

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°Papa!¡± Nursery Rhyme scolded him. ¡°That¡¯s a mean thing to say!¡±

    Jackie scowled, pressing herself tighter against my hip.

    ¡°Now that you mention it¡­¡± Caster began meaningfully.

    ¡°Was an enemy,¡± said Arash. ¡°Now that the contract is set, she¡¯s an ally.¡±

    ¡°Do you really think so?¡± Tohsaka countered. ¡°It was happy enough to try cutting us to ribbons fifteen minutes ago, and you think a few words and a little bit of wishful thinking is enough to make it our friend?¡±

    ¡°The fact that we could establish a contract means she was never properly brought onto the enemy¡¯s side,¡± I said.

    ¡°So she was working for them because she wanted to instead?¡± Tohsaka shot back, interrupting me. ¡°Because that definitely makes it better!¡±

    ¡°We just wanted to find our Mommy,¡± Jackie muttered.

    ¡°However they convinced her to follow their orders, the fact of the matter is that we¡¯ve deprived them of a powerful ally,¡± I said calmly. ¡°And frankly, if you think that she¡¯s anywhere near the worst person I¡¯ve ever worked with or fought alongside, then I¡¯ll tell you that you must have lived a remarkably sheltered life.¡±

    In terms of scale and sheer carnage, Bonesaw made Jackie look like an angel, and by the end of things, she¡¯d turned herself around ¡ª or at least been in the process of it ¡ª and I had nearly trusted the girl who had attempted to play Frankenstein with my brain to actually play Frankenstein with my brain. Only nearly, because Panacea had been there to do it quicker, easier, and cleaner.

    ¡°That¡¯s a poor excuse for using someone like her to assuage your guilty conscience,¡± Andersen interjected. He stepped out of the study as though he¡¯d just come from the other room, but he underestimated my bugs, because I knew he¡¯d only just materialized.

    Whether he¡¯d been watching everything in spirit form or not, I couldn¡¯t say, but I was willing to bet I knew the answer anyway.

    ¡°I shouldn¡¯t need to tell you that sparing her won¡¯t change what you¡¯ve already done in the past,¡± he went on callously. ¡°You¡¯re not stupid enough to believe that you can erase that sin by adopting a child that has already died and been forsaken. Nothing can fix the things that were broken a long time ago.¡±

    Human Observation A. I¡¯d forgotten he had that skill. I guess I should just have been thankful that it wasn¡¯t a higher rank, or else he might have managed to read my whole life story like an open book, instead of being able to hone in on certain portions of it when they presented themselves.

    Right then, I was glad that we¡¯d never made any attempt to forge a contract with him. My skin crawled just thinking about how much ammunition he would have over me if he had seen some of the worse parts of my life through the dream cycle. Even the vague generalities he was speaking in now were hitting closer to home than I would have liked.

    If he¡¯d actually said Aster¡¯s name, I wasn¡¯t even sure how I would have reacted to it.

    ¡°Hold on,¡± said Tohsaka, ¡°just what are you trying to say here? That the only reason she made a contract with that thing is because there was a time when she made the opposite choice?¡±

    I kept my face impassive, even as the bugs in the attic began savaging each other. ¡°No. What happened in my past has no bearing on my decision to bring Jackie into the fold. You¡¯re reaching, Andersen.¡±

    So drop it.

    But he didn¡¯t, of course, and even if he could have heard my thoughts, he probably wouldn¡¯t have. His eyes narrowed on me.

    ¡°You¡¯re good at hiding your tells,¡± he said. ¡°Most of the time, at least. Presenting that impassive wall makes you feel in control of the situation, of yourself, doesn¡¯t it? But however you manage that air of calm, it¡¯s not perfect, not all the time. You were fully prepared to kill Jack the Ripper, even in the form of a child ¡ª and yet, when the time came to actually do it, your hand shook and you faltered.¡±

    Jackie stiffened and looked up at me. ¡°Mommy?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not being fair,¡± Arash came to my defense. ¡°Are you trying to say it would have been better to kill Jackie? Listen to yourself.¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s a Servant,¡± Andersen said bluntly. ¡°Equating eliminating a Servant with the act of killing a living person is foolhardy. A Heroic Spirit ¡ª even one as twisted and evil as Jack the Ripper ¡ª has already had their life set in stone. Changing any of it isn¡¯t possible.¡±

    Later, I remembered that he wasn¡¯t actually completely right. The fact that one of A¨ªfe¡¯s previous summonings had left so indelible a mark that her Master had appeared in her dreams proved that particularly strong impressions and powerful memories could carry over and influence the Heroic Spirit on the Throne.

    Right then, however, A¨ªfe was so far from my mind that I didn¡¯t even think of it.

    ¡°And yet, she¡¯s perfectly willing to be an ally,¡± I said coolly. ¡°You seem to think you know so much about me, Andersen, so if you know as much as you think you do, then you should know that I was given a second chance myself. Are you telling me I shouldn¡¯t pay it forward? That I should pass up on someone just because they¡¯re not neat and tidy and perfectly good, as though any hero ever was?¡±

    ¡°As though you can trust her?¡± said Andersen. ¡°Will you still think she¡¯s worth trying to save when you wake up with her knife in your gut?¡±

    ¡°That won¡¯t happen,¡± said Arash.

    ¡°Frankly, I¡¯m surprised you care so much, Andersen,¡± I said. ¡°I thought you liked stories that had sad, tragic endings. Stories where the main character died or some other terrible fate befell them. They were more real to your own life experiences, weren¡¯t they?¡±

    His cheek twitched. I pounced on it. ¡°Did you think I¡¯d never read The Little Match Girl? Or that I didn¡¯t know anything about your history? My mother was a literature professor. I¡¯ve known about you since I was six. For how keen your eyes are, you¡¯re not somehow immune to being blinded by your own past. The fact you couldn¡¯t hack it as an actor doesn¡¯t mean everyone else has to fail, too.¡±

    ¡°And the fact you killed one innocent child does not make every other that finds itself on the other end of your blade innocent, too,¡± he snapped back at me.

    A heavy silence fell upon the room like a blanket, smothering everyone and choking the conversation to a halt. Jackie was uncertain, looking between me and Andersen, but Nursery Rhyme watched with morbid curiosity and Tohsaka was appalled. Caster, at least, for whatever it was worth, didn¡¯t immediately jump to judging me, but Arash didn¡¯t seem at all surprised.

    I guess he¡¯d seen as much through the dream cycle. The fact that he hadn¡¯t ever started to treat me any differently was¡­something of a relief.

    ¡°Like I said,¡± I spoke into the silence, ¡°for how insightful you are, you¡¯re surprisingly blind. I¡¯m not going to pretend that what I¡¯ve done doesn¡¯t impact my decisions. I¡¯m not even going to deny that I¡¯ve done things I regret or things that I don¡¯t wish I could have changed. If you¡¯re trying to tell me that my decision to make a contract with Jackie instead of killing her was made because of one of those things, then you¡¯re not telling me anything I don¡¯t already know. So what?¡±

    Tohsaka blanched, flinching away. ¡°You¡¯re telling me you actually ¡ª¡±

    I pinned him with a stare, and coldly told him, ¡°Her own mother thought a quick death was kinder than what would have happened to her otherwise. I made the only decision that made sense with the information I had at the time. That doesn¡¯t mean I didn¡¯t hate every second of it.¡±

    ¡°Uhn¡­¡± Fran murmured, eyes hidden behind her bangs.

    I turned back to Andersen. ¡°I¡¯m not stupid. I¡¯m well aware of what Jackie is and how dangerous she is. I know better than to think that she¡¯s some poor, misunderstood little girl that everyone thinks is far worse than she actually is.¡± I¡¯d tried to kill Bonesaw, after all, and she wasn¡¯t much older at the time than Jackie was now. ¡°But I¡¯m willing to give her a chance anyway, if she¡¯s willing to give it an honest shot.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t sure I could say I owed it to anyone. But if I did, I think I owed it to that girl at the end of the world, the one with her mind slowly falling to pieces, who sat in the dirt, barely able to string a thought together, and regretted some of the things she¡¯d done.

    And maybe, on some level, I owed it to Theo, too.

    Jackie clung tighter to me. ¡°Mommy is Mommy, as long as she¡¯s Mommy. We don¡¯t care why.¡±

    Paradoxically, Andersen¡¯s face broke out into a grin. ¡°Ah, self-awareness. You¡¯d be surprised how rare a trait that winds up being. Fine.¡± He turned away, and over his shoulder, tossed, ¡°Go ahead and take your chances with her. As long as you¡¯re willing to take responsibility for whatever happens, then I have no more objections.¡±

    He vanished and went off to do¡­whatever it was he was going off to do. Frankly, I was just glad he¡¯d left. I¡¯d had enough of having my decisions and my past picked apart for one day.

    ¡°So that¡¯s it?¡± Tohsaka asked. ¡°We¡¯re just going to move on like none of that happened?¡±

    ¡°If you have any concerns about working with us,¡± I said, ¡°I¡¯m sure the Director would be happy to address them. If you don¡¯t think you can continue working with Jackie and me, then your contract with Chaldea can be renegotiated and annulled, and you can go on your way while we solve this Singularity.¡±

    As Aisha might have said, suck it up, buttercup. I didn¡¯t want to lose another Master and Servant, especially not one as versatile and powerful as Nursery Rhyme, but it was more important that we could all work together than just having more firepower, so if we had to cut him loose, then we had to cut him loose.

    And I wasn¡¯t feeling particularly charitable just then, which might have had something to do with it.

    Tohsaka grimaced, but between his discomfort and the temptation of the money he ¡ª or his family, rather ¡ª was going to be receiving for helping us, the money won.

    ¡°Fine,¡± he said. ¡°If you want to get yourself killed, then I guess I can¡¯t stop you. If you need me, I¡¯ll be in the study.¡±

    He spun on his heel.

    ¡°Papa,¡± said Nursery Rhyme, ¡°I can stay and play with Jackie, right?¡±

    Tohsaka stopped mid-stride, and for a moment, fought with himself again. Eventually, grudgingly, he said, ¡°If that¡¯s what you want.¡±

    ¡°Yay!¡± she cheered. ¡°Jackie, we can play!¡±

    Jackie hesitated and looked up at me. ¡°Mommy?¡±

    I tried my best to give her a smile and patted her gently on the head. ¡°The apartments on the floors above us are empty. As long as you two don¡¯t make a mess or hurt yourselves, you can go and play in them.¡±

    Jackie¡¯s face broke out into a smile. It stretched at the scars that marred her cheeks, but made her look more her age. ¡°Yay! Alice, let¡¯s go play!¡±

    She raced towards the stairs, and a giggling Alice followed after her. The clomp of their footsteps was rapid and loud, and I thought, if it was Mom, she probably would have chastised them for running up the stairs.

    I didn¡¯t have it in me just then to try.

    ¡°I suppose,¡± Caster began into the silence that they left behind, ¡°I should attempt to persuade you, as Andersen did, but I don¡¯t think I would have any more success than him.¡± He sighed. ¡°And if I¡¯m entirely honest, for all of Jackie¡¯s history, I¡¯m not certain I could kill her in cold blood either.¡±

    I didn¡¯t say anything. I wasn¡¯t sure what I should have said to begin with. Thank him? For not telling me I should kill Jack the Ripper, no matter what form she took?

    In the end, I didn¡¯t have any better response. ¡°Thank you.¡±

    Jekyll chose that moment to appear on the threshold. ¡°Is aught the matter? I heard an awful commotion, and then what I believe to be an argument just now. Has everything been resolved?¡±

    ¡°Everything¡¯s fine, Doctor,¡± said Arash, smoothly taking over so that I could have a moment to center myself. ¡°We contacted the others, too, and they¡¯ll be on their way back soon.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Jekyll glanced over at Tohsaka, but Tohsaka mercifully said nothing and didn¡¯t even notice, he was focused so intently upon Caster¡¯s diorama. ¡°I suppose that makes the information in my possession rather superfluous, seeing as you will no doubt already heard it from the source. I confess, I meant to come and investigate the ruckus the very instant it reached my ear, but a mysterious voice told me I should put it from my mind and continue monitoring the situation at Scotland Yard.¡±

    ¡°That was me,¡± I told him. ¡°I thought it would be safer for you to stay out of the fighting.¡±

    Jekyll frowned and pushed his glasses back up his nose with the fingers of one hand. ¡°Then there was a fight which took place?¡±

    I breathed a long breath out through my nostrils and prepared to get into it, but Arash did me the favor of explaining everything again, with an aside here and there from Caster for context, and I wound up having to do nothing except find a seat on the couch and sag into it. During the course of the explanation, Jekyll eventually found the chair closest to the study, and Caster wound up sitting in the one on the opposite side. Arash stood behind me, hands resting gently on the back of the sofa, and Fran joined me.

    ¡°A perilous situation, indeed,¡± said Jekyll when it was all done. ¡°At least it can be said that all concerned parties emerged healthy and intact, although¡­¡±

    I really didn¡¯t want to have to rehash that argument again. Andersen had dug into some old wounds, and they were still bleeding enough that I didn¡¯t want to let someone else even come close to them right now.

    I was already dreading the conversation I was going to have to have with Marie.

    ¡°If you want to explain to Jackie why she has to die,¡± I told him bluntly, ¡°then she¡¯s upstairs. You can do the deed, if you think it¡¯s necessary.¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran added doubtfully. ¡°Uh-uhn.¡±

    ¡°Ah, perhaps not,¡± Jekyll said immediately, surrendering. Whether he didn¡¯t think he had the stomach to do it himself or if he just didn¡¯t think he would be physically capable of it, I didn¡¯t really care at that moment. ¡°I shall simply have to trust that your judgment is sound and your decision to spare her correct. Regardless of her¡­questionable nature, there is no doubt that she will make for a formidable ally in the current circumstances.¡±

    I didn¡¯t let myself sigh, but I did let myself finally relax a little. I was going to need it for the inevitable blowup that was going to happen when everyone else got back and we had to explain it all again.

    Strangely enough, though, I thought the twins and Mash would probably side with me. They might not have shied away from doing what they had to since Septem, but none of them was ever eager to kill, even against Servants.

    Although I worried they might make an exception in Jackie¡¯s case.

    ¡°We¡¯ve picked up plenty of strange and unusual allies the last few Singularities,¡± Arash said. He ticked them off on his fingers. ¡°Emperor Nero, Asterios the Minotaur, Queen Boudica of the Iceni, Captain Morgan, Francis Drake ¡ª¡± He switched hands. ¡°¡ª Medea of Colchis, Hector of Troy, Jeanne d¡¯Arc, Stheno, Sir Lancelot¡­¡±

    ¡°Uhn¡­?¡± Fran asked.

    ¡°Nowhere near it,¡± I told her.

    I think Spartacus was going to top my list for our strangest allies for a long while.

    ¡°I believe I understand your point,¡± Caster said. He sighed and sagged into his chair. ¡°Compared to some of the deeds of those men and women, a few murders on the streets of London isn¡¯t all that grand an evil, even if it is¡­distasteful.¡±

    ¡°Jackie might be able to help us navigate the city better, too,¡± Arash pointed out. ¡°She might even know a few places where Paracelsus and the others hid a few things, even if she didn¡¯t realize it at the time.¡±

    Caster nodded. ¡°Such as the location of their Angrboea, whatever it is. Not the j?tunn from Norse mythology, surely, although what sort of device would warrant such an ominous name, I¡¯m afraid I can only speculate, and poorly, at that.¡±

    ¡°Angrboea?¡± asked Jekyll.

    ¡°What Jackie referred to as Angry Body,¡± answered Caster. ¡°She knew precious little more than that, however, and so we do as well. I considered that it may be the name of their device that is producing this fog, but¡­frankly, a name like that is too much for something as simple as a fog generator, even one as poisonous and insidious as this one.¡±

    ¡°Maybe we¡¯ll find something at the Association when we investigate that,¡± Arash suggested.

    Caster nodded. ¡°Perhaps. Until we know more, however, all we have is a name, and that isn¡¯t much to go on at all.¡±

    No, it really wasn¡¯t.

    I chanced a look at the clock sitting on the mantle above the fireplace, just as perfectly restored as everything else in the parlor had been. It would take the twins and Mash about an hour to get back from Scotland Yard, and it would be another hour or so until lunchtime. Hopefully, by then, my appetite would be back and I wouldn¡¯t have to shovel mouthfuls of ash into my stomach.

    ¡°Doctor Jekyll,¡± I began, ¡°was there anything else from any of your other collaborators? Any¡­news about something happening or a report of a sighting of some mysterious figure or something?¡±

    Jekyll¡¯s lips pursed. ¡°I fear not, Miss Taylor. I have heard little and nothing from the rest of my network, only the relevant information regarding the incident at Scotland Yard. If aught else has occurred in the interim, I have not yet been informed.¡±

    I nodded and levered myself out of my seat on the sofa. ¡°Then I¡¯m going to go take care of something while we have a minute to spare.¡±

    Arash raised a hand. ¡°I¡¯ll hold down the fort while you¡¯re gone.¡±

    I turned towards the study and made to leave. Fran halfway stood up from her seat, questioning me with, ¡°Uh-uhn uh-uh-uhn?¡±

    Arash reached over to gently place a hand on her shoulder. ¡°I think this is something she can handle on her own, Fran. She¡¯ll be back in a few minutes.¡±

    Or so I hoped.

    Tohsaka glanced up at me as I passed through the study, his lips thinning, but he turned away without a word and I made it to the stairs unmolested. With Jackie and Nursery Rhyme playing on the third floor, it left the second mercifully free and as private as it was going to get, so I picked my way across the scattered bedding we¡¯d been using during our stay and found the most remote corner I could, a dusty room on the opposite side above where the dining room was on the floor below.

    Marie answered immediately, and without preamble, gave me a simple, one-word order: ¡°Explain.¡±

    I couldn¡¯t stop myself from grimacing. ¡°You already heard the argument I had with Andersen, didn¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Andersen isn¡¯t your Director,¡± Marie replied. ¡°He doesn¡¯t have to write up in reports that his ace Master made a contract with Jack the Ripper.¡±

    I had the urge to look away from her gaze, like a child being scolded. I suppressed it, channeled it into the bugs in the walls as they all engaged in a massive fight, ripping into one another and tearing off limbs and antennae.

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t how I planned on things going,¡± I admitted ¡ª only to Marie, only ever to Marie. ¡°I was ready and prepared to kill her once she told us everything we asked her for, but¡­¡±

    But I couldn¡¯t bring myself to do it again. No matter how bloodstained Jackie¡¯s hands were, at that moment, she hadn¡¯t been anything more than a vulnerable child within arm¡¯s reach.

    ¡°So Andersen was right,¡± Marie concluded.

    More than he had any right to be. ¡°Yes.¡±

    Marie¡¯s lips drew tight and her brow knitted together. She looked as though she¡¯d taken a bite of something particularly sour.

    ¡°Romani would say you¡¯ve been emotionally compromised,¡± she said. ¡°So would Da Vinci.¡±

    ¡°I know.¡±

    ¡°If we still had a full team, this would be grounds to have you recalled,¡± she went on. ¡°Placed on leave, pending a psychiatric evaluation.¡±

    ¡°I know.¡±

    The last thing Chaldea needed was an emotionally unstable Master. It wouldn¡¯t have been enough to get me thrown off the team, but it would have people looking closer into things that neither of us wanted them looking into. There was only so far Marie¡¯s authority as a Director extended with the UN and the Association.

    Quieter, Marie said, ¡°No one else knows about¡­her. About what happened. I can¡­bury this until the London Singularity is resolved, but Da Vinci will almost certainly go through the records when they¡¯re filed. I can¡¯t stop her without making her more suspicious. I can¡¯t delete anything without leaving an obvious hole.¡±

    ¡°I know.¡±

    And inevitably, Da Vinci would confront me about it. She wouldn¡¯t be satisfied with my silence or Marie¡¯s order to drop it. Some part of my past was going to come out.

    I suppose it was only a matter of time. That I¡¯d managed to dodge it for over two years was already itself a miracle.

    At length, Marie asked, ¡°Do you regret it?¡±

    I didn¡¯t even need to think about it.

    ¡°No.¡±

 Chapter CXLI: Fixation

    Chapter CXLI: Fixation

    ¡°What the fuck is that doing here?¡±

    In hindsight, maybe I should have expected Mordred¡¯s reaction to be the most extreme. She had, after all, encountered Jackie the most out of all of us, every single time as an enemy, and had spent several days dealing with guerilla tactics that would frustrate a straightforward person like her.

    ¡°Never seen a little girl before?¡± Jeanne Alter leered.

    ¡°You need your head examined?¡± Mordred asked. ¡°That¡¯s no little girl, anymore than the other one is!¡±

    Jackie glared back, eyes narrowed, and I could almost see her imagining all the ways she would like to cut Mordred up. I laid my hand on her shoulder, both as a form of support and as a kind of leash to keep her from lashing out.

    Emiya¡¯s face was contorted into a complicated expression, and Mash stared with undisguised apprehension.

    ¡°Everyone, this is Jackie,¡± I said as though I was introducing an actual little girl to the group instead of an infamous serial killer. ¡°Jackie, the foul-mouthed blonde is Mordred.¡± Mordred scoffed and Jeanne Alter chuckled. ¡°The other foul-mouthed blonde is Jeanne Alter.¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Jeanne Alter squawked.

    I started pointing the rest of them out. ¡°That¡¯s Mash, Emiya, and then Ritsuka and Rika.¡±

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Rika began hesitantly, ¡°is that¡­?¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s eyes had already narrowed and his brow had already furrowed. My stomach did a funny little twist ¡ª no doubt, he had already started looking at her with his Master¡¯s Clairvoyance, skipping the step of asking me entirely.

    And then he surprised me by stepping forward, crouching down to put himself on Jackie¡¯s level, and offering his hand with a smile.

    ¡°It¡¯s nice to meet you, Jackie.¡±

    Jackie looked up at me, and when I gave her a short nod, she smiled back and took his hand in hers, so much smaller that it seemed all the more ridiculous that she could even hold those knives of hers.

    ¡°Nice to meet you, too.¡± And then, she added, more because she seemed to think she should than because she honestly meant it, ¡°We¡¯re sorry about yesterday.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± Ritsuka said, and Jackie¡¯s smile brightened.

    ¡°Okay! We won¡¯t!¡±

    ¡°No, seriously,¡± said Mordred, irritated, ¡°what the actual fuck? We¡¯re just going to ignore the serial killer in the room?¡±

    Jackie stuck out her tongue at Mordred, which was actually a bit of a relief, since it was such a normal child thing to do. If I was going to be her designated mom for the duration of our contract, then normal little girl behaviors were probably ones I should encourage.

    ¡°Tohsaka and Andersen brought up the same thing,¡± I began calmly, ¡°and I¡¯m going to point out the same thing to you now: we¡¯ve worked with people who have way higher body counts and who have done equally questionable things. Technically, you¡¯re one of them, Mordred.¡±

    ¡°Tch.¡± Mordred¡¯s lips curled. ¡°You trying to say I¡¯m just as bad?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m saying we can¡¯t afford to be picky about who we decide to work with and who we don¡¯t,¡± I said. My thumb ran comforting circles over Jackie¡¯s shoulder. I wasn¡¯t sure which of us I was comforting. Maybe both. ¡°The fact that I could forge a contract with Jackie proves that the only reason she was working with Paracelsus and the others was because they were promising her what she wanted. She was only too happy to join when I told her I could give it to her instead.¡±

    Emiya snorted. Mash looked appalled. Rika was morbidly curious.

    ¡°And, uh,¡± she started, ¡°what, exactly, was that?¡±

    Jackie pressed herself against my hip. ¡°We just wanted Mommy.¡±

    Rika blinked, nonplussed. None of the others seemed quite sure how to take that either. I rubbed along Jackie¡¯s arm.

    ¡°Jackie?¡± She looked up at me. ¡°Now that we¡¯ve got you introduced to everyone, you can go ahead and go back to playing with Alice. Mommy¡¯s going to handle the rest, okay?¡±

    Jackie smiled and nodded. ¡°Okay!¡±

    And she raced off again, taking the stairs two or three at a time as she sped up them like a bullet. Once again, I had a sort of strange sense that I should scold her for running inside the apartment, and once again, I pushed it down and pretended it wasn¡¯t there.

    Once she was gone, I turned back to the others, who still looked confused.

    ¡°All she wants is someone to be her mother,¡± I told them. ¡°How that connects to her being Jack the Ripper or any of the Ripper murders, I don¡¯t know. I wanted to build up a little more of a rapport before asking.¡±

    ¡°And¡­Senpai is going to be her mother?¡± Rika asked, sounding like the idea was too absurd for her to believe it.

    I arched an eyebrow at her. ¡°Are you volunteering? I thought you were too young to be a mother.¡±

    ¡°I am, I am!¡± Rika rushed to say. ¡°But, Senpai, you¡¯re¡­¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­what?¡±

    She didn¡¯t finish her sentence. She seemed to have thought better of whatever it was she¡¯d been about to say, and while I wouldn¡¯t have blamed her for saying I wasn¡¯t mother material ¡ª I¡¯d have been the first to agree with her just a few hours ago, and I still would now ¡ª it looked like she¡¯d decided not to say it. For fear of insulting me, I guess.

    ¡°A stone cold bitch,¡± Jeanne Alter finished, because she evidently feared no such thing.

    Ritsuka sighed. I didn¡¯t let it bother me, which ironically probably proved her point, but I¡¯d heard worse many, many times before. It just didn¡¯t compare.

    ¡°So that¡¯s it?¡± asked Mordred. ¡°You adopted a murderous tyke bomb, and the rest of us just hafta suck it up and work alongside it?¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran grunted.

    ¡°It¡¯s got nothing to do with that!¡± Mordred snapped.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure you¡¯re in any position to complain about who you have to team up with either,¡± I pointed out. ¡°Last I checked, you were here for the same reason we are, aren¡¯t you? If you want to save London while there¡¯s still a London left to save, you need all the help you can get. If Jackie can lead us to Paracelsus or one of their bases, then doesn¡¯t that mean we need her?¡±

    Mordred scowled thunderously, and then she let out another scoff, upper lip curling, and halfway through turning, she vanished into spirit form.

    ¡°Sir Mordred!¡± Mash cried, but there was no response. Mordred had left.

    ¡°Should¡¯ve expected that,¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. ¡°The English just don¡¯t know when to admit they¡¯ve been beaten.¡±

    Technically, Mordred would¡¯ve been a Briton, because the English as even Jeanne would have known them were hundreds of years after Arthur¡¯s reign, but that was neither here nor there.

    ¡°And you?¡± I asked her.

    ¡°What, like I¡¯m gonna throw a hissy fit just because you picked up a total psycho?¡± Jeanne Alter rolled her eyes. ¡°Come on. You remember who you¡¯re talking to, right? I¡¯m no angel either.¡± She grinned nastily. ¡°If anything, I should be complaining that you brought in someone who can compete with me for who¡¯s the best murderer!¡±

    Right, I should¡¯ve expected as much. Because she¡¯d been on our side and been remarkably well-behaved for something close to two months now, it was easy to forget that ¡ª however it was she¡¯d come to exist in Chaldea ¡ª she originated as Gilles de Rais¡¯ vengeful wet dream.

    ¡°Mordred will be back,¡± Ritsuka said. ¡°She¡¯s just going out to blow off some steam.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure about that, Senpai,¡± Mash said worriedly. ¡°But, if you say so, then I¡¯ll just have to hope you¡¯re right.¡±

    ¡°And you guys?¡± I asked them now. ¡°Jackie isn¡¯t exactly a normal Servant, so I¡¯d understand if you were worried about having her on the team.¡±

    The twins shared a look.

    ¡°I mean, it¡¯s kinda weird,¡± said Rika, grimacing uncomfortably. ¡°Like, really weird. Maybe it¡¯s because the only thing we know about her was that she tried to kill you yesterday and she¡¯s been fighting Mo-chan since she got here, and oh yeah, she was a serial killer when she was alive, can¡¯t forget that part ¡ª¡±

    ¡°It might take some adjustment,¡± Ritsuka cut across her, ¡°but most of Senpai¡¯s decisions have worked out for the better. We¡¯ll do our best to get along with her.¡±

    Emiya crossed his arms and dropped his head, heaving out a heavy sigh. ¡°You guys really are a unique bunch, I¡¯ll give you that. Making enemies of renowned philanthropists, teaming up with both a serial killer and one of the most famous traitors in all of history¡­but I suppose there¡¯s nothing for it.¡± He slanted a look over at the wall, where Arash had silently stood and watched the whole thing. ¡°And if I¡¯m honest, the fact that the guy over there is giving this whole situation his endorsement would make me feel just silly raising a stink about it.¡±

    Arash offered him a crooked grin. Emiya shook his head.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to head to the kitchen,¡± he announced. ¡°That bloodthirsty maid and I have worked out something of a deal, so I¡¯m going to make sure she makes good on it. If I have to share that kitchen, I¡¯m at least going to have it shared fairly.¡±

    He made to leave.

    ¡°Go, house-husband!¡± Rika cheered. ¡°Justice for my stomach! Justice for my tastebuds! Never surrender! Ganbatte!¡±

    Gun-what, now?

    Emiya lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave, and then disappeared.

    ¡°Ufufufufufu,¡± Rika chuckled throatily. ¡°If I can get them to share, that¡¯s twice as much awesome food for me! No matter what, I win!¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran murmured.

    ¡°Keep eating so much, and you won¡¯t fit through the door,¡± Ritsuka warned.

    ¡°Worth it!¡±

    I looked at Mash last. ¡°And you, Mash?¡±

    She blinked at me. ¡°I-I don¡¯t want to take sides, Miss Taylor. Um, both Emiya and Ren¨¦e are incredible chefs, so I don¡¯t want to say one is better than the other.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m always going to be on Team Emiya,¡± Rika said, nodding sagely, hands on her hips. ¡°But even I have to admit, that crazy lady does English food better, and I think, why not have both? I shouldn¡¯t have to choose, so I won¡¯t!¡±

    ¡°I meant about Jackie,¡± I clarified.

    ¡°Oh¡­¡± Mash looked down. Her lips pulled tight. ¡°W-well, it¡¯s just¡­ How should I put this, Miss Taylor¡­¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s okay not to be okay with this, Mash,¡± Arash said, finally speaking up. ¡°You don¡¯t even really have to trust her. Just trust that I¡¯m keeping an eye on her, and keep all your focus on protecting everyone from the enemies that attack from the front. Okay?¡±

    Mash shook her head. ¡°No, I¡¯ll¡­I¡¯ll try to trust Jackie. If Senpai, and Senpai, and Miss Taylor, and even Arash think so, then I can do at least that much!¡±

    Sometimes, I really did have to wonder how a man as cold, callous, and absolutely calculating as Marisbury was could have had any part in creating someone like Mash. She wasn¡¯t perfect and she had her flaws, but having a hundred of her around in the Protectorate and the PRT could have changed so many things about how my life went that I couldn¡¯t even imagine what things might have looked like.

    ¡°And that¡¯s why I call you Cinnabon,¡± Rika declared.

    Even if the way she said it was a little strange, the sentiment behind it managed to be perfectly right. Mash really was the best of us.

    I took a deep breath. ¡°Alright. Now that we¡¯ve got that covered, let¡¯s go over what happened ¡ª on both of our ends.¡±

    ¡°Urk.¡± Rika grimaced. ¡°I-I¡¯m gonna leave this one up to you, Onii-chan. I dunno if I can get through it all the way without having to puke again.¡±

    Ritsuka sighed, but the look on his face told me that he didn¡¯t blame her for it. He didn¡¯t seem all that eager to talk about it either.

    ¡°Like Doctor Jekyll said,¡± he began, ¡°when we got to Scotland Yard, the¡­other Jack the Ripper and the man calling himself P ¡ª Paracelsus ¡ª were already there and most of the police and detectives were already dead¡­¡±

    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

    Ritsuka wove a tale of being far, far too late, arriving at the scene only after nearly everyone had been killed. No one had recognized either of the culprits, but both had been only too happy to introduce themselves, like it was some kind of honor duel or something and they were obligated to spout out their names.

    Paracelsus, he¡¯d already described earlier, but the other Jack was new, a man dressed to match the era with black mist seeping out of his body from every orifice, almost like some demented, Victorian era Grue. Paracelsus had reportedly lamented that the experiment was a failure, because being made a Demi-Servant with a mindless homunculus as a host had degraded both his skills and Noble Phantasms to the point of near uselessness.

    Only ¡®near¡¯ uselessness, because after Mordred sliced off his arm in one blow, he had apparently transformed into some kind of demonic beast with more than enough strength to put up a good fight. Whether that was the result of a Shapeshift skill like Nursery Rhyme¡¯s or a Noble Phantasm, I didn¡¯t like the picture it painted of what it might have looked like at full power.

    Like ours, however, the fight hadn¡¯t actually lasted that long. Between Emiya, Mordred, and Jeanne Alter, the other Jack had simply been too far outmatched and went down quickly. After Paracelsus revealed that this other Jack hadn¡¯t been anywhere near full strength, he teleported away, having apparently gotten whatever it was he wanted from Scotland Yard. Even if his goal had only been to distract part of our team, he hadn¡¯t quite failed, even if I doubted he, B, and M had planned for me to take in Jackie.

    It wasn¡¯t impossible that they had, but even I had to take a step back and call it paranoid just for how many things needed to go just right and how many things they would have had to know about me in particular for it to even work. If they knew that much, if they had another way of knowing that much, then there wasn¡¯t any need for her to be their spy in the first place.

    Once Ritsuka was done, it was my turn to explain, and I didn¡¯t really have much to say either. The fight had been short and relatively simple, although the casual use of alchemy was apparently enough to impress the twins.

    ¡°Holy cow, he¡¯s basically Old Man Ed!¡± Rika exclaimed, and I didn¡¯t bother to ask what she meant by that.

    I skipped over the part where I hesitated to kill Jackie, although I did feel a little guilty about wording things in such a way as to imply suborning Jackie had been my plan from the beginning. Arash definitely took notice, by his frown, but didn¡¯t contradict me.

    The twins didn¡¯t need to know about Aster. Not now. If I had my way, not ever.

    ¡°Once the contract was established, all I had to do was ask,¡± I finished. ¡°Jackie dispersed that mist all on her own, which means she made it all on her own. After that, you contacted us, and the rest, you already know.¡±

    ¡°We weren¡¯t even sure it was going to work,¡± Ritsuka admitted. ¡°But Rika thought it was worth a shot once the mist started disappearing, so that¡¯s why we made the call.¡±

    ¡°Smart of you,¡± I praised Rika.

    She smiled bashfully, cheeks pinking just the slightest. ¡°I mean, the mist was why we had no reception in the first place, right? So it just made sense we could call again once it was gone. Like we just got out of a tunnel!¡±

    ¡°Still,¡± I said, ¡°good job.¡±

    Rika¡¯s smile grew larger.

    ¡°What now, Miss Taylor?¡± asked Mash. ¡°Now that Jackie is on our side, does that mean the fog will disappear for good?¡±

    Somehow, I doubted it. The way Jackie had phrased things made me think that her mist was just a supplement, and even Caster thought that the enemy¡¯s ¡®Angrboea¡¯ mechanism, whatever it wound up being, was somehow related to the regular fog that kept appearing every afternoon.

    It would have been a lucky break if it was just as simple as getting Jackie on our side, but I wasn¡¯t going to count on that.

    ¡°There¡¯s not enough time for us to make it all the way to the Clock Tower and back before the fog is scheduled to roll back in,¡± I reasoned, ¡°and there¡¯s no telling when Mordred will be back, so we¡¯ll eat lunch and see what happens afterwards. If there isn¡¯t any fog this afternoon, then we¡¯ll go investigate the Association and what happened there, see if we can pick up any clues, just like we originally planned. If the fog comes back again, we¡¯ll save that for tomorrow and limit ourselves to the standard patrols we¡¯ve been doing the past couple of days.¡±

    And hopefully, whatever Da Vinci was making would be ready for me to use tomorrow, so that I wouldn¡¯t have to stay behind while everyone else went out. As a happy little bonus, I wouldn¡¯t have to put up with Andersen¡¯s presence on the way over until then, and by that point, I think I was going to have cooled off enough not to want to drown him in bugs.

    ¡°Sounds like a solid plan to me,¡± said Arash. ¡°Just so you know, though, Master, I think Abraham¡¯s going to want to come with us when we go investigate the Clock Tower. He hasn¡¯t said anything about it yet, but I got that feeling from him ever since our mysterious P was confirmed to be Paracelsus.¡±

    My lips pressed into a thin line. ¡°He wants to come along, does he?¡±

    And yet he was still hiding his true name from everyone? Even though everything said that he himself couldn¡¯t be Paracelsus, he had to realize how suspicious that was, didn¡¯t he? Did he really think we were just going to let him get away with it the entire time we were here?

    ¡°Like I said, he hasn¡¯t said as much or anything,¡± Arash hedged, ¡°but that¡¯s the sense I get from him. From the way he talked earlier, I think¡­he wants to confront Paracelsus himself.¡±

    For someone he apparently hadn¡¯t ever known personally, that sure sounded plenty personal to me. Or maybe it was just a matter of professional pride, from one alchemist to another, because I guess that wasn¡¯t outside the realm of possibility either. I¡¯d known a few people like that.

    Still.

    ¡°If that¡¯s what he wants, he¡¯s going to need to give us more than that,¡± I said.

    Ritsuka blinked and turned to me. ¡°More?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re past the point where hiding his name the way he is can be called a reasonable precaution. If we¡¯re going to continue working with him and go so far as to trust him with our backs, then I think it¡¯s about time he told us what his true name really is.¡±

    Arash frowned. ¡°You sure you want to burn that bridge, Master?¡±

    ¡°I mean, Abe¡¯s pretty chill, isn¡¯t he?¡± Rika agreed. ¡°Is it really that big a deal that we don¡¯t know his real name?¡±

    ¡°We know Paracelsus is P,¡± I pointed out. ¡°That still leaves B and M. I had more orientation courses about various Heroic Spirits than the two of you did, and even I¡¯m not confident I could rule out every alchemist with enough fame who matches his description. If we want to be absolutely sure he isn¡¯t leading us around by the nose, then we need to know who he really is.¡±

    ¡°Trust, but verify,¡± Ritsuka concluded.

    ¡°Exactly.¡±

    There was still too much that didn¡¯t make sense for him to be an actual enemy. The one glaring thing I kept coming back to was his decision to heal me, when if he was an enemy, he could have just let me die, but there was still a mountain load of other things that didn¡¯t fit the pattern either.

    If he really was on our side, though, then why was he so damn hesitant to actually share his name? It was starting to get a little ridiculous. The only place in the city more secure than this apartment currently was happened to have been reduced to rubble.

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure I agree that it¡¯s really as much of a problem as all of that, Senpai,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°but if you think it¡¯s really something we need to do, then okay. How do you want to handle that?¡±

    I slid a glance at Mash meaningfully. ¡°Preferably, with at least one Servant who has high level Magic Resistance between us and him. If you¡¯re right and Mordred is back before too long, then we can get her help and confront him after lunch has had some time to settle. A good meal might make him a little less confrontational.¡±

    ¡°You won¡¯t need to go quite that far,¡± Caster said suddenly, materializing at the threshold of the tea room.

    My eyes narrowed. ¡°You were eavesdropping.¡±

    ¡°Not intentionally,¡± he said apologetically. ¡°While this apartment is somewhat more spacious than the one I lived in during my own life, I¡¯m afraid it¡¯s not quite so big that your voices don¡¯t carry quite easily. I didn¡¯t hear the entirety of your conversation, but I came to investigate when things got heated with Sir Mordred earlier, so I believe I must have heard the majority of it.¡±

    ¡°Sorry, Abraham,¡± Ritsuka said, ¡°but Senpai does have a bit of a point. I understand why you might want to keep your identity a secret, but everyone else has shared theirs already, so you understand why it¡¯s a little suspicious to keep hiding it even now, right?¡±

    Caster heaved a sigh. ¡°Perhaps I have been somewhat overly cautious in regards to my identity. However, as embarrassing as it is to say so myself, I really did become quite a bit more famous than I ever could have wanted to be after my death. Long, long after my death, in fact. Even the popular culture of your era hasn¡¯t let my name ¡ª or my deeds ¡ª fade into obscurity.¡±

    ¡°Wait a second,¡± Rika said suspiciously, ¡°a famous alchemist from medieval Europe who keeps showing up in pop culture? You can¡¯t be¡­¡±

    Hold on, was Rika really going to be the one who figured this whole thing out, just because she was more clued in on pop culture than I was?

    ¡°I confess, some part of me had planned for the reveal to be a bit more dramatic than this,¡± said Caster, reaching down the front of his tunic. ¡°Perhaps when we stood face to face with Paracelsus, and I castigated him for his crimes and his cruelty, I might reveal the truth then, or perhaps at the final battle, when the last enemy was before us, he might recognize me for my work and curse me and my name. Alas¡­¡±

    From under his tunic, he pulled out a golden chain, and dangling from the chain ¡ª

    ¡°¡­it seems that simply showing this to you so unceremoniously will have to do.¡±

    ¡ª was a crucifix. Not a simple one, like I might have imagined someone from his era would carry, because for all that the cross itself was plain with a fleur de lys on every spoke, it was what was wrapped around the cross that was special: a snake, coiling first around the base, almost like a caduceus, and then arcing up and over the other three, with its head resting just below the leftmost spoke. Two small, red gemstones sparkled from where its eyes would be.

    Even I could recognize that.

    ¡°As much life and money as you could want!¡± Rika breathed. ¡°Holy crap! Oh my god, you¡¯re ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Nicolas Flamel,¡± I said.

    He was right, he was incredibly famous. History hadn¡¯t let his name die, and every now and again, people like Rowling would revive it and introduce him to another generation. The Association might have considered Paracelsus a more impactful figure, because he¡¯d helped to standardize the form of alchemy modern alchemists practiced, but in terms of whose name resounded louder, Flamel matched him, at the very least, and it might not have been wrong to say he really was the more famous of the two.

    Flamel smiled wryly and stuffed the pendant and chain back down under his tunic. ¡°As I said, entirely too famous.¡±

    There was just one problem.

    ¡°I thought it was all made up by some guy in the 1600s.¡±

    That was the historical consensus, as far as I knew. That Flamel had been a real person and may actually have dabbled in alchemy, but that he was ultimately just a scribe and a bookseller with no special talent for it. Marie had never mentioned him as anything more than that.

    ¡°Functionally, the end result would still be the same,¡± said Flamel. ¡°But no. My deeds and my accomplishments are very much real, and although some of them have been¡­embellished in the details, largely true to life.¡± He sighed wearily. ¡°It was quite vexing to find out that so much of what I had attempted to keep private eventually wound up common knowledge. I suspect someone with a grudge may have acquired my research notes and attempted to discredit me.¡±

    ¡°Or things were arranged specifically so that you would gain enough fame to become a Heroic Spirit,¡± I said, because I didn¡¯t put it past an entity like the Counter Force to do such a thing.

    Flamel grimaced. ¡°Perhaps,¡± he allowed. ¡°I suppose it¡¯s immaterial, in the end.¡±

    ¡°So you really did create the Philosopher¡¯s Stone?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    Flamel¡¯s grimace pulled tighter.

    ¡°As I said, some of the finer details have received some embellishments,¡± he said. ¡°Particularly in regards to the book of magic I¡¯m said to have been given ¡ª it¡¯s true, my studies in magecraft did largely come from a manuscript that found its way into my possession, but the one in particular for which I am remembered was not in fact written until many years after my death. Rather difficult for me to learn everything I knew from it, isn¡¯t it? Nonetheless¡­¡±

    He held out his hand, and upon his palm appeared a rather large, thin leather bound book. It couldn¡¯t have been more than a few dozen pages thick, and the cover made up at least half of its bulk. A title was embossed on the front in gold lettering, although since it was written in French, it was basically gibberish to me.

    ¡°History says I had it,¡± Flamel continued with a note of irony, ¡°and so I must have it. Quite recursive, really.¡±

    ¡°Does that really contain the secrets of the Philosopher¡¯s Stone?¡± Rika asked in an almost reverent whisper.

    ¡°Once more, embellishments.¡± The book vanished. ¡°The Codex does indeed possess some incredible forms of magecraft within, but it is neither as extensive nor as exceptional as it has been purported to be. That, I¡¯m afraid, is largely down to the fact that a number of the spells inside it have already ceased to be extraordinary by the standards of even this era, let alone your own.¡±

    ¡°So, no Philosopher¡¯s Stone?¡± Rika asked, disappointed.

    Flamel smiled wryly. ¡°I¡¯m afraid eternal life is not something which can be handed out like candy, my dear girl. Nor, for that matter, should infinite wealth be, or else the consequences of introducing such large sums of gold into the world would destabilize entire nations.¡±

    He wasn¡¯t exactly wrong, and all of that gold was essentially worthless to us in Chaldea while the rest of the world was incinerated, but I did have to admit that it might have been convenient to be able to forge counterfeit coins in the upcoming Singularities we would have to correct. As a bonus, they would all disappear when the deviation was corrected, so we technically wouldn¡¯t have changed anything we weren¡¯t supposed to.

    I had a feeling the Elixir of Life could have been used to resuscitate the rest of Team A, too, and being functionally immortal while we were out and throwing ourselves into life-threatening situations sounded convenient, as well.

    Deliberately, I avoided looking at Mash.

    It might even have been able to stop the inevitable and let Mash live more than another year.

    ¡°But you healed me, a few days ago,¡± I pointed out to him. ¡°Is there some kind of limit to what kind of damage you can heal? Like broken arms, concussions, organ damage? Neurological disorders?¡±

    Everyone looked at me, bewildered by the sudden line of questioning, everyone except Arash, who I had no doubt knew exactly what sort of fate was awaiting Mash in a year¡¯s time and understood what I was trying to ask without saying it directly.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid what happened to you was just about the limit of my ability to heal,¡± Flamel admitted. ¡°I could say I understand the theoretical process of mending flesh, but truth be told, I am not and never was a physician. My understanding of the human body is woefully incomplete, and so I would not be up to the task of more generalized healing.¡± He gestured to his chest, where the Flamel which bore his name no doubt rested. ¡°What I did to you was an extension of the process known as fixation, that is, rendering a substance to an inert, nonreactive state. Removing the interaction with the fog made it a simple matter of restoring the damaged tissue to its previous condition.¡±

    Arash made a sound of understanding. ¡°So it wasn¡¯t actually healing, it was more like you were just turning back the clock a little.¡±

    Flamel nodded. ¡°Just so. Burns from fire or acid, neurological damage from a lightning strike, transformations of the flesh caused by curses, those are the sorts of things my Noble Phantasm would allow me to reverse, so long as the person is still living. Surgical removal of an organ, however, cuts from a blade, or contusions to the flesh caused by blunt force¡­¡± He frowned. ¡°Truthfully, I have not attempted such a thing, but I have a sense that it would all fail. They are not reactions as alchemy understands them.¡±

    And without knowing exactly what Marisbury did to Mash, there was no way for me to even posit a hypothetical for what I might need him to fix. Damn it.

    ¡°It was worth a try, Senpai,¡± Ritsuka tried to reassure me. ¡°We¡¯ll just have to hope we find someone else who can heal the other Masters.¡±

    The twins didn¡¯t yet know about what was going to happen to Mash, so I did my best to keep that off of my face.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± said Fran.

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t seem like it, no,¡± Mash said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Fran. If, u-um, Mister Flamel¡­?¡±

    ¡°It might perhaps to be better to stick with Abraham, my dear, or failing that, simply Caster,¡± said Flamel. ¡°No need to worry about accidentally revealing my name to the enemy if you never use it, is there?¡±

    No, I guess not, and that felt both familiar and nostalgic at the same time.

    ¡°If Caster didn¡¯t offer before, I don¡¯t think it¡¯s possible,¡± Mash continued. ¡°Miss Da Vinci might be able to help you, but, well¡­¡±

    Yeah. Add giving Fran a functioning voice box to the list of projects Da Vinci had on her plate. It wasn¡¯t going to happen anytime soon, so as sad as it was, there wasn¡¯t much point in even asking. Plus ¡ª

    ¡°She¡¯d have to come here to perform the surgery,¡± I added. ¡°Without a Master here to provide her energy, I don¡¯t think that¡¯s possible. I¡¯m sorry.¡±

    ¡°Seriously,¡± Rika muttered petulantly. ¡°Is no one ever going to explain that? It¡¯s not fair!¡±

    ¡°Does this change our plans at all?¡± Arash asked.

    ¡°No,¡± I answered immediately. ¡°Unless Caster changed his mind about coming with us?¡±

    I slanted a look his way. Flamel sighed.

    ¡°Loath as I am to commit violence of any kind,¡± he said, ¡°it would perhaps be for the best if I did, in fact, join you in your investigation. If, as I suspect, Paracelsus makes an appearance again¡­¡±

    His lips pulled down into a scowl. His brow furrowed, eyes narrowing beneath the lines of silver that were his eyebrows.

    ¡°I should like to hear it from his own lips, why it is he has chosen this despicable course of action. If nothing else, so that I might have peace of mind when we cast him from this era and back to the Throne from whence he came.¡±

 Chapter CXLII: Lost History

    Chapter CXLII: Lost History

    By the time lunch rolled around, Mordred hadn¡¯t returned yet, and the fog began to roll in once again. When I gently asked Jackie if she had anything to do with it, she had just given me a clueless shake of her head and said, ¡°Since it hurts Mommy, we won¡¯t use our mist ever again unless Mommy says it¡¯s okay.¡±

    Like it was that simple. Frankly, it was a little off-putting how she could be so innocent and guileless, and yet still somehow she was Jack the Ripper. The incongruence was almost dizzying.

    It meant, of course, that our original guess was right, and the fog had nothing to do with Jackie and everything to do with our masterminds. Whether Flamel¡¯s reluctant suggestion that it had something to do with this Angrboea thing that was supposedly important to their plans held any water, that part we still didn¡¯t have any idea about. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised, but I wasn¡¯t going to hedge any bets until we had a better grasp of things, and that might not happen until we were face to face with the thing.

    If and when we ran into Paracelsus again, I¡¯d have to see if he was feeling chatty enough to reveal that for us. If he was willing to give his name away the instant he met any of us in person, then I put decent odds on getting at least something out of him if we just tried.

    We all sat down to a hearty lunch, cooked by Emiya. He and Ren¨¦e had apparently worked out a system, whereby she got to make breakfast, he got to make lunch, and they worked on dinner together. I suspected Flamel had intervened somewhere in there to convince her to relinquish that much, because I noticed her standing just outside the dining room while we ate, eavesdropping, and although I made sure to keep the bugs out of the kitchen and the pantry as much as possible as a matter of courtesy and hygiene, the singular specimen I had tagged her with remained since I first put it there.

    I doubted she would have shown any expression, but I think I was getting enough of a grasp on her personality that I could imagine she must be stewing in envy for having her role taken, even if it was only once a day.

    Fran, of course, had been with us for long enough to have picked up at least a few table manners, but Jackie was almost completely uninterested at first, like she knew what food was but didn¡¯t see the point. When she saw Nursery Rhyme and me both enjoying our meal, however, curiosity got the better of her, and she decided to try it ¡ª and then she couldn¡¯t stop.

    ¡°It¡¯s really good!¡± she declared. ¡°We like it a lot!¡±

    ¡°My house-husband is the best!¡± Rika agreed.

    ¡°Mmhm!¡± said Jackie.

    Unfortunately, as one might expect of a girl who looked like she¡¯d grown up on the street, Jackie had no idea how to properly use the utensils that had been set out at her place at the table, she was just shoveling it all into her mouth as quickly as she possibly could. When I thought about what Mom would have said, the word slipped out of my mouth before I could even think about it.

    ¡°Manners, Jackie.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t just Jackie, it was the whole table that stopped to turn and stare at me, with the exception of Fran and Arash. I tried not to pay them and their stares any mind as I set my own silverware down and reached over to correct her, because now that I said something, I had to commit to the motherly act.

    In for a penny, in for a pound. Ironically, this was probably the most appropriate place to use that expression, and yet, Jekyll might not even recognize it if I said it out loud.

    ¡°Eat slowly,¡± I told her as I adjusted her grip on her fork. ¡°Make sure you chew it all properly. That way, you can enjoy it for longer. Savor it.¡±

    ¡°Okay¡­¡± Jackie said a little bashfully. She didn¡¯t start eating again right away, and when I went back to my own meal, she watched me intently through her bangs, and then slowly copied how I was eating.

    ¡°That just happened, right?¡± Rika muttered to her brother.

    ¡°I¡­think so, yeah,¡± he replied, equally as quiet. ¡°Unless you and I are sharing the same dream ¡ª ow!¡±

    ¡°Nope,¡± said Rika, having just pinched his arm, ¡°you¡¯re awake.¡±

    At this point, I thought, he really should have expected that.

    We all ate our fill and hung about in near silence for several long minutes afterwards, just letting our food digest, before we went back to doing our own things. Jekyll returned to his study and his radio to contact his network again, and Tohsaka did his best to avoid us, because it seemed he was still sour about our disagreement from a few hours ago. Jeanne Alter and Arash decided to go outside to stand watch, the latter out of duty and the former because at least it might mean some action if a patrol group stumbled across us.

    Andersen, fortunately, looked like he had decided that discretion was the better part of valor. I still wasn¡¯t particularly happy about him or any of the things he¡¯d said earlier, so I was actually kind of grateful that he was giving me so much space. He might not have been a paragon of common sense or courtesy, but I appreciated the fact that he had at least some.

    As the afternoon wore on, there was still no sign of Mordred returning. Her tracker was still showing on the map, putting her somewhere in the general vicinity of Whitechapel, but when I peered through her eyes, all I saw was the foggy streets of London.

    ¡°She¡¯ll be back,¡± Ritsuka repeated. ¡°She just has a bit of a temper, you know? She needs to work it off.¡±

    ¡°As long as she doesn¡¯t decide to use Mash as a punching bag again,¡± Rika said.

    ¡°I-I really don¡¯t think it¡¯s going to be that bad, Senpai,¡± Mash tried, but she didn¡¯t sound all that convincing.

    Most of the afternoon, we spent finetuning our plans for tomorrow morning, but it was mostly just rehashing what we¡¯d already decided we were going to do, since all of our plans had been made last night and they hadn¡¯t really changed. The only things we had to account for now were the presence of Jackie and Flamel and their coming with us, and that was a simple enough thing that we didn¡¯t really need to make any adjustments to accommodate their coming along.

    Finally, Mordred returned, but by the time she finally came back in through the front door, it was nearing dinner time, and the smell of cooking food permeated the apartment as the faint clatter of pots and pans echoed in the background. The clock on the mantle ticked away, nearly silent by comparison.

    ¡°Mo-chan!¡± Rika greeted her brightly.

    ¡°Sir Mordred,¡± said Mash, ¡°I¡¯m glad you¡¯re okay.¡±

    ¡°Always so polite with you,¡± Mordred groused. ¡°What, like a couple of tin cans and a few gangly puppets were gonna hurt me? Come on! I¡¯d die of shame!¡±

    ¡°Welcome back,¡± I said calmly. She looked over at me, her face twisted into a sour expression, ready and willing to get right back into things where we left off, and I glanced at her only long enough to meet her eyes impassively. Whatever she got out of that, it was enough to drain the fight right out of her.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± she said at length. ¡°Guess so.¡±

    ¡°Did you find anything else out while you were on patrol?¡± Ritsuka asked her.

    ¡°Nothing new,¡± she replied. ¡°Just a patrol group or two sniffing around, nothing I couldn¡¯t handle.¡±

    I thought about bringing up the fact that we were trying to avoid destroying too many of those so we could use them to try and map out the enemy¡¯s movements, patterns, and locations, but in the interest of keeping the peace, I decided to keep my tongue. Until Flamel had enough trackers for us to make use of ¡ª and with me the only one able to safely place them without drawing their attention to us and defeating the point ¡ª it wasn¡¯t worth starting a fight over it.

    ¡°Our plans haven¡¯t changed,¡± I told her. ¡°Tomorrow morning, while the fog is gone, we¡¯re going to investigate the Clock Tower and see if there¡¯s anything there for us to find. Jackie, Flamel, and Andersen will be coming with us.¡±

    Mordred didn¡¯t exactly look happy to hear this, but she didn¡¯t try to start a fight about it either. ¡°Right.¡±

    And that was all the more she said about it. Maybe for her, it really was that simple.

    Not much later, it was time for dinner, and those of us who either wanted or needed to eat sat down at the dining room table that was quickly becoming crowded. Jackie chose the seat next to mine again, and she seemed to like her second meal just as much as she had her first. What really seemed to delight her, however, was me correcting her whenever she started getting messy or sloppy, like the simple act of me showing her proper manners was the best thing ever.

    To her, maybe it was. I still hadn¡¯t quite figured out how to ask her exactly how a girl her age became an infamous serial killer, or why she used plural pronouns when referring to herself. Dissociative Identity Disorder? I only knew enough about that to know what it was called and the very basics of what could cause it, but even what little I knew didn¡¯t feel like it really fit.

    After dinner, we made sure everyone was on the same page about what was happening tomorrow, including Andersen, Tohsaka, Flamel, and even Jackie. How much she understood or cared, I wasn¡¯t sure either, but she seemed frighteningly sharp, despite her childish appearance and mannerisms, so it was entirely possible that she understood everything and only cared insofar as caring would please me.

    In that way, she reminded me a little bit of Alec. Less of a sociopath than him, but frighteningly willing to attach herself to me just because I was showing her some basic kindness and simultaneously apathetic about everything else.

    I suppose I shouldn¡¯t have expected much else from Jack the Ripper.

    We went to bed early so that we could be up early, and that was about where we ran into our first major snag with Jackie, because she wanted to sleep in the same bed as me. That wasn¡¯t itself an issue, but¡­

    ¡°No knives in bed,¡± I told her.

    Her eyes narrowed on me almost mutinously. In the background, the twins watched the spectacle with a kind of bewildered curiosity, and even Mash couldn¡¯t help staring.

    Pulling on memories of sleepovers in my childhood, where Mom had never had to say something quite that ridiculous, I let myself bend just a little bit.

    ¡°You can bring one knife to bed,¡± I allowed, ¡°but it has to stay sheathed and under your pillow so that you don¡¯t hurt yourself.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not her who needs to be worried about getting hurt,¡± Tohsaka muttered. I ignored him.

    ¡°One knife,¡± I said, staying firm. ¡°The rest have to go into spirit form. Unless you want to stay up on guard duty with Arash and Jeanne Alter.¡±

    Jackie pouted, but under this threat in particular, she caved. ¡°Fine¡­¡±

    And instead of keeping one behind, all of her knives dematerialized, followed by her cloak, leaving her in¡­ Well, frankly, I felt kind of uncomfortable describing that as clothing, because a pair of panties, stockings, and a waistcoat were more like things you wore with the rest of your clothes, not as your clothes.

    Mash squeaked, face turning red.

    ¡°Holy cow,¡± said Rika as her brother turned away, his ears burning. ¡°That¡¯s what she was wearing under that cloak? Who dressed her?¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran grunted.

    Who, indeed?

    For the sake of everyone¡¯s sanity, I took off my uniform¡¯s shirt and draped it over her like a nightgown. It fit her like one, too, so large that she was veritably swimming in it, but it only took Jackie giving it a tentative sniff before she was snuggling up in it with a smile, muttering to herself, ¡°Mommy¡¯s scent¡­¡±

    I didn¡¯t feel like unpacking that just then, so I decided to pretend I hadn¡¯t heard her. The picture that what little I knew was painting about her life wasn¡¯t a pretty one.

    Jackie was only too happy to wrap herself up in my shirt and bury herself into my chest when we all lied down, and as ridiculous as it would have sounded to me just a few weeks ago, I had to imagine we really did look just like mother and child. Another thing that I could wait until later to unpack, when I had more time and space to think about it.

    We slept quietly and peacefully. Jackie didn¡¯t wake me up even once during the night, and the next morning, I found her exactly where she¡¯d settled in, with one of my arms thrown almost protectively over her small shoulders. When I looked down at her, her face was calm and peaceful, marred only by the vivid scars cutting across her cheeks.

    Another moment where it seemed impossible that this was the infamous Jack the Ripper. And yet, less than a day ago, she¡¯d been trying to carve me open with one of those knives, and less than two days ago, she¡¯d nearly succeeded. I didn¡¯t need the reminder that appearances could be very deceiving.

    As though she sensed me looking, Jackie blinked open her eyes and looked up at me with a smile, ¡°Good morning, Mommy.¡±

    Pure, innocent, guileless. That was probably the most dangerous part about her.

    ¡°Good morning, Jackie,¡± I replied. I wasn¡¯t sure if the smile I gave her in return was quite so genuine or quite so open, but at least some part of it was real. It made her happy either way.

    Slowly, the others woke up around us, and when everyone was awake and lucid enough, we climbed out of bed and got ready for the day, which meant taking my shirt back from Jackie. I told her she should put the cloak back on, too, to better hide her knives from the enemy, and privately, I made a note to ask Da Vinci if it would be possible to get her something more substantial to wear.

    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

    I didn¡¯t understand all of the technical bits about how spiritrons worked, but the fact that they could be manifested into something substantial enough to touch in the form of Servants and their gear meant that Da Vinci should be able to do something. Even if it was just a pair of shorts, that would be enough to make me more comfortable about Jackie¡¯s clothes.

    Breakfast was just as good as it was yesterday. Ren¨¦e seemed almost proud to hear us enjoy it, not necessarily in her expression or her posture, but in the air she carried about her and the way she stayed in the dining room to watch us eat. When Flamel complimented her on an excellent job, I could have sworn I saw her lips curl up just the slightest on either end. Her ¡°thank you, Master,¡± had an undertone of warmth, when I strained my ears to listen for it.

    Maybe she wasn¡¯t as cold and frigid as she seemed to be.

    With our food eaten and the sky outside slowly brightening enough to pierce the cloudy gloom, there was no time to waste, and those of us who were going to the Clock Tower made the preparations we needed. Months of practice made us quick and ready to go in just a few minutes.

    ¡°Ah, yes, I almost forgot,¡± Flamel said as we were just about to leave. ¡°One moment, my friends, one moment.¡±

    He went back into the adjacent study, and returned a few seconds later with a matchbox containing a handful of trinkets, each no larger than a pea. Small enough, in other words, for my bugs to carry one without any issue.

    ¡°The trackers you requested,¡± Flamel said by way of explanation. ¡°Only a dozen or so, I¡¯m afraid, but they should function as required, so if you can affix them to the enemy patrols¡­¡±

    ¡°They¡¯ll do just fine,¡± I told him as I accepted the box. I made sure it was closed before slipping it into my equipment pouch. I turned next to Jekyll. ¡°Keep an ear out, Doctor Jekyll. Jeanne Alter will be here to protect you, Fran, and Ren¨¦e, so you just need to make sure to stay in touch with your network.¡±

    ¡°Yay,¡± Jeanne Alter droned, ¡°how fun¡­¡±

    ¡°I shall leave myself in your hands, Miss,¡± Jekyll said to her politely. Jeanne Alter only rolled her eyes.

    ¡°Whatever¡­¡±

    ¡°Uhn¡­¡± Fran mumbled miserably.

    I knew she wanted to come along, but there was no point. It would be risking her life for no reason, because she wasn¡¯t a Servant and didn¡¯t really have a place fighting them.

    ¡°We should be back before lunch,¡± I went on. ¡°We¡¯ll contact you and let you know if anything changes.¡±

    Jekyll nodded. ¡°I appreciate your thoughtfulness. I shall endeavor to stay apprised of any developments within the city.¡±

    ¡°Make sure you tell us right away if alligators pop up out of the sewers!¡± Rika said.

    Jekyll was appropriately bewildered. ¡°A¡­alligators?¡±

    ¡°Ignore her,¡± I said. ¡°The only place where alligators live in the sewers is New York City.¡±

    That didn¡¯t seem to help him at all, and to be fair, it hadn¡¯t been intended to. My target was much shorter and had red hair.

    ¡°Wait, that¡¯s true?¡± Rika burst out. ¡°I thought that was just a conspiracy theory! An urban legend!¡±

    Andersen chuckled. I ignored them both.

    ¡°Come on. The sooner we get out there, the safer we¡¯ll be coming back.¡±

    ¡°Senpai!¡±

    We set off. The Clock Tower ¡ª the British Museum ¡ª was quite a ways away, although not, in the grand scheme of things, the farthest distance we¡¯d yet traveled from Jekyll¡¯s apartment. We¡¯d technically gone at least as far following Nursery Rhyme south of Soho, only this time, we had a bit of an advantage in that we could go in as straight a line as possible. Not a perfectly straight line, no matter how convenient that would be, but straighter than the alternative, which would save us some time and energy.

    We already had the place marked out on our maps, so it wasn¡¯t strictly necessary, but Mordred, as was usual, took the lead, and once we were far enough away from the apartment not to lead any of the patrols back by accident, I let Huginn out and sent him up into the sky to give me a bird¡¯s eye view of things.

    ¡°The headquarters of the Association is near Regent Park,¡± Mash said. ¡°Senpai¡­ We¡¯ll have to be careful. There¡¯s no telling if other magi made it out when the entrance was destroyed. We might be accosted.¡±

    ¡°Director Marie did say we could use lethal force,¡± Ritsuka said quietly.

    ¡°Just hit ¡®em with the back of your shield, Cinnabon,¡± said Rika. ¡°See if they think messing with us is a good idea then!¡±

    ¡°Papa,¡± said Nursery Rhyme, ¡°does that mean I have to hit them with the back of my sleeve?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t you start on that now, too¡­¡± Tohsaka mumbled.

    Jackie looked up at me. ¡°Mommy?¡±

    ¡°Nonlethal, if you can help it,¡± I told her, answering her unasked question. ¡°But whatever it takes, if you can¡¯t. If it¡¯s us or them, then it should always be us.¡±

    She beamed, as though she¡¯d just been told she could have her favorite treat after dinner if she behaved. ¡°Okay!¡±

    ¡°Hearing that more often doesn¡¯t make me like it any better,¡± Ritsuka said under his breath.

    Me, neither. But I¡¯d heard enough horror stories about what magi could do to you when they thought of you as a slab of interesting meat to understand that there wasn¡¯t always a neat, safe, PG-13 way of dealing with people like that. I¡¯d also heard enough of those stories ¡ª and dealt with enough troublesome capes in my career ¡ª to know that you couldn¡¯t always deal with them as simply as knocking them down with a hard blow or two to something soft and vulnerable.

    Good thing I had several silk lines prepared in my equipment pouch.

    ¡°That won¡¯t be necessary,¡± Flamel said. ¡°Should we encounter any problematic elements, then it will be a simple enough task to neutralize them. There¡¯s no need to resort to more¡­final solutions.¡±

    Considering how easily he¡¯d chased Jackie around that tiny apartment parlor, maybe he was right.

    The trek to the British Museum wound up taking us about an hour, all told, through winding streets and many turns, and there were several times we had to take a detour to avoid one or more patrol groups. It cut into our time a little, but it also gave me the opportunity to use my swarm and place a tracker in each group ¡ª I chose the Helter Skelter, because with all of the nooks and crannies inside their thick, metal carapaces, they were the ones where the tracker was easiest to hide, and there weren¡¯t enough in the matchbox to put more than one to each group right now.

    Later on, we could follow their movements and see if they would lead us back to their creator. I wasn¡¯t ready to get my hopes up just yet, but it would make things a whole lot easier if we didn¡¯t have to scour the whole city for these guys.

    When at last we made it to the entrance gate ¡ª

    ¡°Holy cow,¡± said Rika, ¡°it really is nothing but rubble!¡±

    ¡ª it was to find both the gate itself and the building beyond smashed to pieces. The wrought iron bars had been twisted and mangled to the point that some of them had snapped clean off, leaving the entrance wide open for us to go in ourselves, and the palatial Romanesque columns had been reduced to nothing more than chunks of rock.

    It was like someone had taken a wrecking ball to the whole place and hadn¡¯t stopped until nothing was left standing, not even a single brick. No mural, no fresco, not even the wooden doors had been left intact. Everything was in so many pieces that even the magi of the Association would have had to put in serious work for months just to fix it all.

    ¡°Looks just like it did the last time I was here,¡± Mordred said grimly. ¡°Rubble, ruin, and not a single thing else. Damn, those guys were thorough.¡± She glanced over at Tohsaka. ¡°You might be the only survivor to make it outta that mess, just ¡®cause you weren¡¯t there when it all went down.¡±

    Tohsaka grimaced, staring intently at the ruin. I imagined he must have been thinking the same, and how lucky it was that he¡¯d decided to leave when his mentor was late instead of staying and getting caught up in all of it.

    Beep-beep!

    Marie¡¯s face appeared midair.

    ¡°Director.¡±

    But she wasn¡¯t looking at me, she was looking at the ruins of the British Museum. Her face was an inscrutable mask, but the tension in her muscles, the narrowing of her eyes, and the thin line of her mouth told me that her thoughts were troubled. By which part of this, I didn¡¯t know for sure, because her feelings on the Association were complicated, but it couldn¡¯t be easy having to face the reality that something you had taken for granted, something that felt like it would remain forever, no matter what happened, had been utterly destroyed.

    ¡°¡­We¡¯re not picking up any life signs,¡± she said at length, her voice grave.

    ¡°It seems like whoever did this was exceptionally thorough,¡± Romani added from somewhere out of frame. ¡°Obviously, our scanners can¡¯t quite reach through some of the bounded fields protecting the deeper sections of the Clock Tower, but¡­¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Marie, ¡°if they went this far, then it¡¯s likely they managed to get down there, too.¡± She closed her eyes for a brief moment. ¡°But it looks like they didn¡¯t manage to breach Spirit Tomb Albion. If they had access to that place as well, then things would have been a lot worse off.¡±

    ¡°Spirit Tomb Albion?¡± the twins parroted.

    ¡°The Association¡¯s most closely guarded secret,¡± Marie answered them. She glanced their way long enough to lance them with a glare. ¡°And that¡¯s all you¡¯re getting about it! Since the enemy doesn¡¯t have access to it, you don¡¯t need to know any more than that! Got it?¡±

    Rika saluted. ¡°Roger, roger!¡±

    ¡°It may not be for lack of trying,¡± said Emiya, stepping closer to examine the mangled remains of the front gate. ¡°Frankenstein was convinced these guys are Servants because they do stuff that modern magi wouldn¡¯t be able to, but that doesn¡¯t mean they have the skill or finesse to dismantle all of the Clock Tower¡¯s protections. Whoever came through this gate, for example, used sheer brute force, not alchemy or magecraft.¡±

    ¡°Hm.¡± Flamel stepped over to join him, running his fingertips over the damage gently. ¡°You have something of a point there. No traces of magical energy applied to the metal, so whoever did this knocked it down with raw power. Perhaps Paracelsus and his compatriots have another Servant working for them.¡±

    I looked down at Jackie. ¡°Jackie? Do you know anything?¡±

    Jackie shook her head. ¡°The only Servant we knew about was Robin, and he was there with us yesterday morning.¡±

    ¡°Robin?¡± I asked.

    ¡°The guy with the cloak and crossbow,¡± Arash said. ¡°I¡¯m not sure he had the strength for something like this. Or the temperament. He did everything he could to avoid a straight fight.¡±

    There was only one Heroic Spirit I could think of with a name like that, but without a better look at him, I wasn¡¯t sure I could confidently say Robin Hood had attacked us yesterday. I wasn¡¯t sure why he would go along with this scheme either, but if an altruist like Paracelsus could be twisted by who or whatever was really behind Project Demonic Fog, I guess a hero like Robin Hood could be, too.

    ¡°Is he still around?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Arash just shook his head.

    ¡°Let¡¯s keep going,¡± I said. ¡°The Clock Tower is an underground facility, right? We need to find the entrance.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± said Marie.

    As a group, we started across the courtyard. Right down the center, there was a pathway that had been set out for tourists and visitors of the museum, and we used that, but on either side, there were patches of what must once have been well-managed lawns. They were now marred by what looked like a set of enormous footprints, resembling the Helter Skelter, only bigger and much, much heavier.

    Had our mystery Servant made a larger model? Maybe. All things considered, it was entirely possible that the costs of making the bigger one had made mass-producing it too expensive in terms of resources, so there was only the one we had to worry about, maybe two. I didn¡¯t think there would be more than three at the maximum.

    Whatever the case, they didn¡¯t look to be here now. Forget my swarm, with footprints that size, there was no way they were hiding amongst the rubble without any of us seeing them.

    There were steps leading up to where the front entrance would have been, but we couldn¡¯t go up more than the first two before having to navigate around the debris ¡ª shattered slabs of whatever stone the building had been made from, some nothing more than tiny pebbles and some twice as large as a person.

    ¡°It¡¯ll be a ways inside,¡± Marie told us. ¡°There¡¯s supposed to be a bounded field protecting the entrance from those who aren¡¯t magi, but with how badly damaged everything is, that might have been destroyed, too.¡±

    ¡°Which means we¡¯ll have to excavate it, won¡¯t we?¡± Mash asked.

    Rika let out a miserable groan.

    ¡°Looks like a job for you Knight Classes,¡± said Andersen. ¡°Time for you to put that ridiculous strength of yours to good use.¡±

    ¡°You planning on sitting this one out, pipsqueak?¡± asked Mordred.

    ¡°Unfortunately, this body of mine is ill-suited for physical labor,¡± Andersen replied, although he didn¡¯t sound all that sorry. ¡°And even if I wanted to, my strength is too low to meaningfully contribute. The most I could do is pick up a few pebbles.¡±

    Mordred grunted rather than admit he had a point.

    ¡°It won¡¯t be necessary,¡± said Flamel. ¡°It¡¯ll be the work of but a moment to clear the way, once we know where to look.¡±

    Remembering how he¡¯d transformed the apartment¡¯s parlor, yeah, if he could do something like that here, it really wouldn¡¯t take all that much effort. There was just one thing we had to worry about.

    ¡°Should we expect any other defenses on the way in?¡± I asked Marie.

    ¡°Around the main entrance, no,¡± she answered. ¡°But the dorm rooms and workshops will no doubt be personalized according to the original inhabitants, so if the facility is intact enough, you¡¯ll have to be careful not to trigger any of their bounded fields.¡±

    ¡°Mm.¡±

    As I probably should have expected. This was the Clock Tower, after all, home of some of the most talented magi in the Western world, at least a few of whom happened to also be old school aristocrats. It was only natural that they would prize their security more than even the average magus.

    As long as the entrance was clear, we could hopefully avoid trouble with the rest. Frustratingly, however, I was having trouble finding it with the handful of bugs I had out looking for it. The fact that my bugs weren¡¯t technically familiars in the way magi traditionally understood them might have something to do with that. For that matter, the Clock Tower didn¡¯t seem to have been spared exposure to the fog, because I wasn¡¯t finding much in the way of living bugs under our feet either.

    We started picking our way across the wreckage, finding whatever footing we could, because none of it was even and very little of it was sturdy. The floor itself, at least, didn¡¯t seem to have been directly damaged, instead having fallen victim to the columns and bricks as they came down. There were a few cracks here and there that I spotted with my meager swarm, but it was impossible to tell one way or the other whether they¡¯d been made when the rest of the building collapsed or if the larger Helter Skelter had made them when it came through.

    Lisa would have been so incredibly useful just then.

    ¡°Where should we start?¡± Mash asked, looking around uncertainly. ¡°Director, there¡¯s no way we could clear out this entire area and still have enough time to investigate before the fog comes back.¡±

    ¡°No need,¡± Marie said. ¡°Based upon Chaldea¡¯s records of the Clock Tower, the entrance should be ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Magical energy reaction detected!¡± Romani suddenly shouted. Marie whirled about to face him.

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s coming from ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Master!¡± Mash shouted.

    She threw herself in front of the group right in time for the floor to explode some twenty feet away, throwing up bits and pieces of the destroyed building into the air. I raised my arms protectively in front of my face more on reflex than anything else, but I needn¡¯t have bothered, because whatever came close enough to actually hit us pinged off of Mash¡¯s shield harmlessly.

    ¡°Mommy?¡± Jackie asked.

    ¡°I¡¯m okay, Jackie,¡± I reassured her.

    ¡°Us, too,¡± Ritsuka added.

    There was no time to check on anyone else. At that exact moment, the hole that had been opened up in the floor spewed out a veritable deluge of ¡ª

    ¡°Books?¡± Rika asked incredulously. ¡°But I didn¡¯t bring my library card!¡±

    ¡°Alice,¡± Tohsaka barked, ¡°are any of these ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Books are books and Servants are Servants,¡± Nursery Rhyme replied simply. And without a hint of irony, too.

    The books swirled about not unlike my swarm, spilling out of the hole and twisting up into the air into a cloud of flapping leather and fluttering paper. They gathered together in something like an undulating battle line, bouncing up and down and hovering almost defensively over the hole they¡¯d come out of, almost like something out of an old Hitchcock movie.

    But, importantly, none of them seemed to be a Servant, nor even particularly intelligent. There didn¡¯t even seem to be a mind behind them.

    ¡°I¡¯m not detecting a Saint Graph!¡± Mash reported. ¡°Senpai! These are just ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Grimoires,¡± Marie said, eyes narrowed. ¡°Research journals left behind by magi. But why are they¡­ Could it be, they were animated by the fog?¡±

    ¡°Who cares?¡± said Mordred. ¡°They¡¯re in our way, ain¡¯t they? That means that what we gotta do is real simple!¡±

    A brace of arrows leapt through the air and unerringly struck half a dozen of the books. Leather cracked and split, pages ripped and tore, and scraps of paper and parchment floated almost gently to the ground. Mordred¡¯s head whipped around towards Arash.

    ¡°Hey!¡± she squawked indignantly.

    But the books shifted. They all aligned, flipping open like wings spreading so that the broad side of each page faced us. The font of power that rose like a tide told me exactly what was about to happen.

    Fuck.

    ¡°Destroy them!¡± I ordered.

 Chapter CXLIII: Grand Ritual

    Chapter CXLIII: Grand Ritual

    By the time the words left my mouth, it was already too late to stop them.

    A wall of searing energy leapt from the books all at once, and I had to drag Tohsaka behind the shelter of Mash¡¯s shield as Rika squeaked and huddled there with her brother. The sound was drowned out a moment later by the thunderous roar of a hundred simultaneous blasts landing, some on the ground far behind us, some on the surface of Mash¡¯s shield, and some around us like a carpet bombing run.

    Our Servants didn¡¯t have the same trouble. Mordred and Arash both had high enough Magic Resistance to mostly ¡ª if not completely ¡ª shrug the whole thing off, while Emiya leapt above the wall of energy and Nursery Rhyme batted what came her way aside with the voluminous sleeves of her kimono as though it really was that simple. Flamel himself just raised a wall of his own from the debris, and although it didn¡¯t weather the barrage as well as Mash¡¯s shield, it held enough to protect him.

    Jackie? She made a game of dancing between the blasts, jumping from foot to foot with an agility that an Olympic gymnast would envy.

    If I needed any more proof that there wasn¡¯t an ounce of real intelligence behind this, however, that was it. That first salvo was all they had, and they had to build up to it if they wanted to fire off another wave, leaving all of them essentially defenseless in the meantime. It wasn¡¯t even smart enough for me to compare it to an automated defense system.

    I leaned out from behind the cover of Mash¡¯s shield, and as the Servants began tearing their way through whatever books they could reach, I took aim of my own and fired up my circuits.

    Gandr!

    The books all scattered like sheep before a pack of wolves, each of them trying to get out of the way of the incoming attacks, but they were predictable. My shot landed without any difficulty at all, ripping apart a book and singing its pages. They weren¡¯t particularly durable either, if that was all it took.

    The twins caught on after my second shot, and they took up defensive positions, too, aiming at the mass of magical tomes.

    ¡°Gandr!¡± chorused out, and the three of us fired in staggered waves. Not every shot landed, but for every one that missed, one of the Servants cleaned up after us.

    All told, it only took about a minute to clear out the attacking books. If Arash and Emiya had a chance to fire from a bit further out, then it probably wouldn¡¯t have taken even that long. By the time we were done, the only thing left of the entire lot was some scraps of paper, a few shreds of leather, and bits of ash.

    ¡°All of the books have been eliminated, Senpai,¡± Mash reported when it was over.

    ¡°Magical energy response has gone silent,¡± Romani reported. At some point, they¡¯d switched over to audio only, probably to avoid getting motion sickness from the camera following my arm. ¡°No sign of any more books.¡±

    ¡°Tch,¡± Mordred scoffed. ¡°And I didn¡¯t get to do much of anything. Stupid floating books.¡±

    ¡°I should probably chastise you, simply on principle,¡± said Andersen. ¡°As an author, I absolutely should be offended, but¡­¡± Of all things, a giggle escaped his lips. ¡°There was something incredibly cathartic about watching all those books get destroyed. This might be my favorite memory. My true self on the Throne will want to keep this one for sure.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t the only one who gave him a strange look, and when he realized so much attention was on him, he cleared his throat purposefully.

    ¡°Right,¡± he said. ¡°Let¡¯s get going. The pathway down is clear now, right? There should be nothing stopping us. We can continue our investigation unimpeded.¡±

    ¡°¡­Right.¡±

    ¡°Do we need to stage an intervention?¡± Rika whispered to her brother.

    ¡°You know,¡± he whispered back, ¡°I¡¯m not sure.¡±

    And somehow, I found myself agreeing, with the sentiment if not with the course of action. There was¡­obviously something there that Andersen didn¡¯t want to talk about, but it didn¡¯t seem to be getting in the way of anything, so I didn¡¯t want to talk about it either. We were on a tight enough schedule as it was, and none of us here was qualified to play therapist, least of all me.

    But a small part of me that sounded suspiciously like Lisa wanted to point out to him that he had his own issues, too. I squashed it mercilessly.

    Fortunately, the explosion of books had cleared out the path down, and by some miracle, they hadn¡¯t damaged the stairs on their way out, so we could enter without any further trouble. To our continued good fortune, there was nothing waiting for us at any point on the staircase either, but that was counterbalanced by the fact that at the bottom was a hallway that wasn¡¯t quite big enough to fit our entire group side by side, so we had to arrange ourselves in a column.

    Unfortunately, the hallways were all cool stone and wooden torches, with walls that curved up into the ceiling instead of meeting it at right angles, casting strange shadows. When combined with the thick, moist air and the complete, dead silence, it gave off the feeling of entering a dungeon in some horror movie or something.

    ¡°Quite the dreary place, isn¡¯t it?¡± Flamel commented.

    ¡°The Association¡¯s headquarters is still largely confined to that underground complex in that era,¡± Marie told him. ¡°It¡¯s only over the course of the next hundred years or so that the facilities expanded out into campuses around London and developed into a more normal atmosphere.¡±

    I reached out to touch one of the walls. My fingertips came away damp.

    ¡°It looks like even this place wasn¡¯t protected from the mist.¡±

    ¡°If that was what brought those books to life in the first place,¡± Ritsuka suggested leadingly.

    ¡°Yeah.¡±

    Then this was just confirmation. As we¡¯d expected.

    We traveled down the corridor, following it straight along as it curved and swerved, almost labyrinthine in its sameness. It never seemed to end, and it was uniform all the way through, broken up only by the occasional doorway or a branch off to another identical hallway. I think we very easily could have gotten lost down there without Marie guiding us, except for the fact that every other pathway was blocked off by more debris, as though someone had deliberately curated a path for us to follow.

    After three turns and every hallway essentially funneling us only one way, there was no way I could be the only one to notice.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Ritsuka began.

    ¡°Yeah. I see it, too.¡±

    Emiya hummed. ¡°What are the odds that every other route we could take is blocked off?¡±

    ¡°Slim,¡± Flamel agreed. ¡°And yet¡­¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re headed the right way,¡± Andersen said. ¡°Or so it seems, at least. None of those other paths had any trace of a bounded field protecting what lay beyond them.¡±

    I didn¡¯t like it, the implication that we were just following the path someone else wanted us to follow, particularly since we didn¡¯t have any idea why they might want us to follow it ¡ª except that one of those other paths might have what we were looking for and they didn¡¯t want us finding it. The thin swarm I¡¯d sent out hadn¡¯t proven that out, but the circumstances hadn¡¯t let me get as much coverage as I would have liked, so it was entirely possible I was missing things.

    I looked back over my shoulder.

    ¡°Arash?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll double back and poke my head in a few to check them out,¡± he said, predicting me.

    ¡°Go.¡±

    He gave me a quick salute and a smile, then vanished into spirit form.

    ¡°We smell blood,¡± Jackie said into the quiet that followed. Her head swiveled about. ¡°Lots of people died down here.¡±

    ¡°No fucking kidding,¡± said Mordred.

    ¡°Language!¡± Tohsaka snapped, and Nursery Rhyme giggled.

    Mordred just sneered. ¡°Fuck you.¡±

    ¡°I haven¡¯t seen any bodies, but,¡± Ritsuka began, ¡°I guess the Association really was wiped out.¡±

    ¡°Or else they all retreated further down into a more secure section of the Clock Tower,¡± Marie added. ¡°¡­But at least some of them must have died in the initial assault. There¡¯s no telling how many.¡±

    Enough that whoever might be left had abandoned the place without any care for the damage being done. Either from callousness or desperation, and with the Association, I guess it really could have been either one.

    ¡°You never explained what it is you were looking for down here, Mister Andersen,¡± said Mash.

    He hadn¡¯t, except to say it might explain the mist and how the Servants who had manifested related to it. We were technically down here to investigate what had happened to the Association, but beyond the exceedingly obvious fact that they all seemed to have been killed, we weren¡¯t able to do much of that because of the debris.

    ¡°Didn¡¯t I? Information, of course,¡± Andersen said as though it was obvious. ¡°Specifically, of the sort that only the Mage¡¯s Association would keep. That is to say, on the nature of Servants and how they¡¯re summoned.¡±

    Marie made a noise of understanding. ¡°Then you¡¯re going in the right direction. There¡¯s a library ahead, if you take the next right.¡± She huffed. ¡°But if you wanted to know how Servants worked, you could have just asked! Chaldea¡¯s library should contain all of the information you need!¡±

    And if it wasn¡¯t in the library, then chances were that Da Vinci had the answer.

    ¡°Even so, Madam Director, this is something I would like to read for myself, not have read to me,¡± said Andersen. He adjusted his glasses. ¡°Call it a quirk of mine, if you have to. The only way I¡¯ll retain the information properly is if I see it with my own eyes.¡±

    Marie muttered something uncharitable under her breath, but the microphone didn¡¯t quite pick it up, so I didn¡¯t catch exactly what she said.

    True to her word, however, when we took the next right and continued down the hallway ¡ª once again, the only pathway available to us ¡ª we eventually found the only intact door we had yet encountered since we came down here. Even someone like me could tell immediately that it was warded, and that only seemed to excite Andersen.

    ¡°Yes!¡± he said eagerly. ¡°The buzz of magical energy ¡ª a warded entrance to a library! It¡¯s entirely up to chance, of course, whether the information I¡¯m looking for is in here, but if it¡¯s anywhere¡­!¡±

    He made for the doorway, but I held my arm out in front of him. ¡°Hold on a second.¡±

    Andersen looked up at me, brow furrowing, and I ignored him to cast my mind down the thread connecting me to Arash. Anything?

    A few workshops, he said, a dorm room, here and there, and one pathway that leads somewhere too far away for me to risk following it all the way, but no, nothing important. Whoever is trying to lead us wherever they want us to go, either they¡¯re trying to help us or they laid a lot of red herrings.

    Either one was completely possible. And if they specifically wanted us to enter the library¡­

    Come back, I ordered. Let¡¯s see what it is we¡¯re being led into.

    ¡°Arash didn¡¯t find anything,¡± I said aloud. I let my arm drop. ¡°Sir Mordred, since you have the highest Magic Resistance among us, you¡¯re going through the door first. Mash will be right behind you.¡±

    ¡°Tch,¡± Mordred scoffed. ¡°Using me as a human shield, huh? Yeah, guess I can¡¯t blame ya. Fine.¡±

    ¡°You said you were bored,¡± I pointed out, ¡°and you are the only one here in full plate.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡±

    ¡°Try not to break anything,¡± Andersen said, only halfway teasing.

    ¡°Just watch me.¡±

    The doorknob squeaked as Mordred turned it, and the hinges of the heavy wooden door squealed as it opened, but as she stepped through the doorway and into the library beyond, nothing happened. No spell triggered and attempted to immolate her or anything like that. It was completely unremarkable.

    Mordred grinned at us over one shoulder. ¡°Looks like it¡¯s safe.¡±

    She stepped further in, and Rika sucked in a sudden breath ¡ª but still, nothing happened. There wasn¡¯t even the slightest flicker of magical energy in the air.

    ¡°The ward protecting the door was probably just meant to preserve the books inside,¡± Marie explained. ¡°It¡¯s a fairly standard measure, especially if the books are rare, old, and definitely if they¡¯re both.¡±

    Mash was next, and she gasped as she entered, head turning this way and that. ¡°Oh wow¡­!¡±

    And still, nothing happened. It looked like it was as safe as it was going to get, so the rest of us slowly filtered in through the doorway. What lay beyond was¡­actually the most normal looking part of the place we¡¯d yet ventured to, a large, sprawling library that had an appearance not too dissimilar from Chaldea¡¯s, only smaller. It was lit by gas lamps, only they were the most consistent gas lamps I¡¯d ever seen, casting a steady light across the wooden shelves and the books preserved therein.

    If you had told me it was the oldest room in the Clock Tower, the only reason I wouldn¡¯t have believed it was because I knew there were older rooms and older places, because it looked like I had just stepped into a medieval university. It was all antique wood, glowing gold in the lamplight, and geometric patterns in the floor tiling, with books that had been hand bound and pages that had been hand cut and even a few shelves that were filled entirely with scrolls. The entire place had been built long before the Industrial Revolution had brought with it the machinery necessary to ensure perfectly standardized construction, and yet was still built to the perfectly exacting measurements one would expect of a master craftsman.

    With a pang, I couldn¡¯t help the thought that Mom would have loved it.

    Andersen made a beeline for one of the shelves immediately, but he¡¯d barely pulled one of the books down before he froze.

    ¡°Oh,¡± he said. ¡°That will be a problem.¡±

    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    ¡°Is something wrong?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Andersen nodded gravely. ¡°The ward on the door, it¡¯s preventing these books from leaving this room.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± said Marie. ¡°Of course it is! Most of those books are first editions or hand-written research journals, hundreds of years old! Did you really think the Association would let just anyone come in and walk away with them?¡±

    Mordred groaned. ¡°So we have to stand here and wait until he finds the book he¡¯s looking for and then reads it?¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯re that eager for something to do, then guard the door,¡± Andersen told her.

    ¡°Tch,¡± she sneered. ¡°You¡¯re not my Master, don¡¯t tell me what to do, Pipsqueak.¡±

    Nonetheless, she turned around and went back to the doorway, then folded her arms and leaned against the wall just outside of it. She looked like nothing so much as a disgruntled security officer grudgingly settling in for overtime, only this one happened to be all of five feet tall and wearing plate armor.

    ¡°Sir Mordred has something of a point,¡± I said, addressing Andersen. ¡°We don¡¯t have time for you to sit here all day and go through these books one by one. We have to be back at the apartment before noon.¡±

    ¡°See?¡± Mordred called. ¡°She agrees with me!¡±

    ¡°It won¡¯t take anywhere near that long, I assure you,¡± said Andersen. ¡°In fact, I¡¯m fairly certain I should be able to find what I need fairly quickly. We¡¯ll be out of here before the end of the hour, I promise you that.¡±

    And as though that was the final word on the subject, he went back to the book he¡¯d picked out and flipped it open. He¡¯d barely started reading it, however, before snapping it shut, placing it back on the shelf, and pulling down another one. This one, too, he flipped open, turning pages so quickly that even someone like me, who read recreationally and finished books pretty fast, had trouble believing he was seeing more than a single word on each page.

    Somehow, however, it seemed to be enough, because he¡¯d gone through several pages in less than ten seconds, then decided that this wasn¡¯t the one he was looking for either and shut it with another muffled thump. It was replaced a second later with yet another book, and okay, if he was really getting through those that quickly ¡ª or at least finding out whether or not it was the book he was looking for that quickly ¡ª then while he wouldn¡¯t get through the entire library in a day, it might be enough to at least narrow down where he needed to search fast enough to find the right one.

    ¡°Wow,¡± said Rika. ¡°I¡¯ve heard of speedreading, but someone hooked this guy up on nitro or something, because I¡¯ve never seen someone read that fast. And I¡¯ve seen Onii-chan cramming for entrance exams!¡±

    Ritsuka didn¡¯t say a word, but the look he gave her spoke volumes for how unimpressed he was by the unflattering comparison.

    ¡°Perhaps I might assist him,¡± Flamel said, meandering over towards another bookshelf. ¡°I confess, I myself have something of an¡­academic curiosity about the subject of Servants and their summoning.¡±

    ¡°Feel free,¡± Andersen said without looking up. He went through another book, then put it back and grabbed what must have been his tenth in less than a minute. ¡°But if you find the right one, make sure you share it with me. I need to make sure I don¡¯t miss anything relevant.¡±

    ¡°Of course.¡±

    And Flamel joined him, meandering over to the opposite side of the library and picking up one of the books seemingly at random. I guess they each intended to search a side and meet somewhere in the middle by the end of it, in the hopes that they could cut down the possibilities as efficiently as possible.

    Well. That was Flamel¡¯s logic, I was sure. I wasn¡¯t at all sure that Andersen had thought that far ahead.

    ¡°So¡­¡± Rika began uncertainly, ¡°what do we do, then?¡±

    What, indeed. Considering we didn¡¯t exactly have much else to do, we might as well lend them a hand.

    ¡°Pick a shelf and start reading,¡± I said simply.

    Rika groaned. ¡°I was afraid she was going to say that!¡±

    ¡°Cheer up, Master,¡± Emiya told her, smiling wryly, ¡°many hands make light work, and all that.¡±

    Rika made a rude gesture in his direction, and Tohsaka squawked indignantly, as though Nursery Rhyme really was his daughter and he was trying to keep her from learning bad habits. I wondered how often he actually, really forgot and how much was a sort of reflex to her appearance, like being a father had gotten him used to censoring his and others¡¯ behavior when around children.

    Speaking of¡­

    ¡°Jackie?¡± I said.

    Jackie looked up at me. ¡°Yes, Mommy?¡±

    ¡°Why don¡¯t you and Alice go explore for a little bit?¡± I suggested to her. ¡°See if you can find out anything else about what happened down here. Just don¡¯t go so far that you can¡¯t make it back here fast enough when it¡¯s time to go.¡±

    Jackie smiled. ¡°Okay!¡±

    ¡°Hey, don¡¯t I have a say in that?¡± Tohsaka demanded. ¡°I¡¯m a Master of Chaldea, too, aren¡¯t I? However temporarily! Shouldn¡¯t I be the one giving orders to my own Servant?¡±

    I looked at him, resisting the impulse to arch an eyebrow. ¡°My mistake. Do you have any objections to sending Alice out with Jackie to investigate the situation throughout the rest of the Clock Tower, Tohsaka?¡±

    There was a moment of silence, and then he glowered, seeming as much upset about the fact he didn¡¯t have anything to say as he was about not being asked. ¡°¡­No. Alice, go with Jackie. Tell me immediately if you find anything suspicious.¡±

    ¡°Okay, Papa!¡± Alice said brightly. She went over to join Jackie, and then the two of them left the room, giggling to each other all the while, as though they really were exactly what they looked like. They passed a returning Arash on the way out, who stepped to the side to let them by, and Mordred, who watched them go distrustfully.

    ¡°I miss anything?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Nothing important,¡± I told him. ¡°We¡¯re trying to find the right book for Andersen now. We were all about to pitch in to see if we couldn¡¯t make this go faster.¡±

    ¡°Under protest,¡± Rika grumbled.

    ¡°I see,¡± said Arash. ¡°Well, no reason why I can¡¯t chip in and make this go faster, is there?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s such a thing as being too gracious, you know,¡± said Andersen without looking up from his book. He snapped it shut again and replaced it. ¡°If you¡¯re always willing to help out, then it¡¯s only a matter of time until someone takes advantage of you.¡±

    Arash didn¡¯t even flinch, he just smiled. ¡°I know. But there¡¯s never anything wrong with helping people, is there?¡±

    Emiya was the one who startled, and then he sighed, ¡°Damn. I should know you well enough by now to expect a line like that out of your mouth, but it still caught me by surprise.¡±

    Andersen just chuckled. ¡°More self-awareness. It¡¯s starting to make sense to me why it was that you were the one that girl summoned.¡±

    Now we were officially starting in on territory that I didn¡¯t want touched.

    ¡°Come on,¡± I said. I picked a bookshelf at random and walked over to it, grabbing the first book that caught my eye. ¡°The sooner we find what we¡¯re looking for, the sooner we can get out of here and get back to the apartment to plan our next move.¡±

    ¡°That one, I can actually agree with,¡± said Rika. She went to find a bookshelf of her own to explore, and her brother followed suit, and shortly thereafter, so did Mash. Arash chose one closer to me, and Emiya went over to join Rika. It left Tohsaka to pick one somewhere in the middle.

    With all of us on the job looking for this book, the room fell into a relative silence, broken only by the flutter of pages being turned, the soft thump of books closing, and the hiss of them being taken from or returned to their shelves. It quickly became apparent to me, however, that at least us Masters would be almost completely useless for finding the book Andersen wanted, because we just couldn¡¯t check them and go through them anywhere nearly as quickly as he and Flamel were, and even Flamel wasn¡¯t nearly as fast as Andersen himself.

    I wasn¡¯t sure if the twins realized it, too, and I didn¡¯t say anything. Better that we were doing something and feeling at least somewhat useful than to have to stand around and wait the entire time with nothing to do except watch and hope it would be over quickly. At least I had other things I could do simultaneously, like sending my bugs out to explore as many of the nearby rooms as sat within my range.

    Even that wasn¡¯t particularly useful, though. What wound up hidden behind the collapsed doorways and the piles of debris was only corpses, sitting out and left to rot in the aftermath of whatever had rampaged through here. Surely not the same overlarge Helter Skelter that wrecked the British Museum, if only because it wouldn¡¯t have fit down here in the tunnels, but whatever it was hadn¡¯t left behind any identifying marks or clues to find, so I really wasn¡¯t finding anything out that we hadn¡¯t known before.

    This entire Singularity seemed to exist for the sole purpose of frustrating me.

    How long we stayed there looking, I wasn¡¯t sure. Not long enough to run into the timer I¡¯d set to let us know we needed to make our way back to Jekyll¡¯s apartment, but the minutes felt interminable, and after the first few books, the others started to run together. It was all mostly over my head to begin with, talking about concepts that I barely understood, if I understood them at all, and written like a collegiate textbook in the best cases, and the nonsensical rambling of a lunatic in the worst.

    The guy who talked about how to preserve the brain for study so that the subject could remain fully conscious throughout read like he could have been Bonesaw¡¯s long lost uncle, and two pages of it was two pages too many.

    Some of these had to be way too old to be what we were looking for, though. One of the scrolls I found was written in Ancient Greek, and it took a few seconds for Chaldea¡¯s translation program to convert it into something intelligible for me. I had to double check when I realized it had been written by Pythagoras, a treatise on the use of symbolism in formulcraft and its relation to Kabbalah, and I had to admit, it made too much sense that he was actually a mage all along.

    I was starting to get desensitized to the nonsense. I wasn¡¯t sure if that said more about me or my circumstances.

    ¡°Aha!¡± Andersen suddenly shouted. ¡°I found it!¡±

    Everyone startled and turned to look at him.

    ¡°What?¡± asked Rika, who sounded like she had just been about to doze off.

    ¡°The relevant text ¡ª and some interesting books on other topics, as well,¡± he said, grinning broadly. ¡°Not only the burning question that has plagued me since my summoning, but also some more personal matters that I took the chance to read up on.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Marie, her voice rising with each word, ¡°you wasted time looking up more than just what you needed?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Andersen answered. ¡°Incidentally, I should thank you for giving me the time to do that. I wouldn¡¯t have ever gotten another chance at this.¡±

    ¡°How long ago could we have been out of here?¡± Rika despaired.

    ¡°You¡¯re on a time limit!¡± Marie agreed. ¡°This is no time for recreational reading!¡±

    It might have been remarkable that the two of them were actually of the same mind on the issue if I wasn¡¯t thinking much the same.

    ¡°Perhaps it might be for the best to simply get directly to the point?¡± Flamel suggested.

    ¡°Yes, of course,¡± said Andersen. ¡°Brevity is the soul of wit, and all that. So. The relationship between Servants and Heroic Spirits is something of a paradox, don¡¯t you think? Heroic Spirits are beings both real and fictional, those who existed as historical fact and those whose existences cannot be confirmed after everyone who could feasibly have witnessed them is gone. Servants, however, are ¡®real¡¯ beings, manifested in a container called a Class, able to interact with the world and with people. Something like that, however, could not possibly be accomplished by the power of a human being alone, could it? The amount of magical energy necessary to make it possible boggles the mind.¡±

    ¡°We know this already,¡± Marie said, annoyed. ¡°Yes ¡ª the FATE System is what Chaldea uses to summon Servants, based upon the Holy Grail Ritual from Fuyuki. The Classes we use are derived from that model.¡±

    ¡°Are they?¡± Andersen challenged. ¡°The ritual of summoning Heroic Spirits into containers called Classes and making them compete for the prize of the Holy Grail ¡ª doesn¡¯t that idea strike you as strange at all? To put that much effort into bringing things into this world that shouldn¡¯t properly belong, only to force them to fight each other to the death, wouldn¡¯t it simply be more efficient to use the gathered magical energy to, as they say, cut out the middleman?¡±

    ¡°Not necessarily,¡± a new voice chimed in.

    ¡°Miss Da Vinci!¡± Mash cried at the same time as the twins said, ¡°Da Vinci!¡±

    ¡°Oh my,¡± said Andersen. ¡°Do I actually have the pleasure of speaking with the one and only genius of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci?¡±

    ¡°You do,¡± said Da Vinci, sounding amused. ¡°Your theory isn¡¯t necessarily wrong on its face, Mister Andersen, but it¡¯s missing a degree of context. The system of the Fuyuki Grail isn¡¯t designed solely for the purpose of gathering the energy of the Heroic Spirits to fuel it, but rather, when the defeated Servants return to the Throne of Heroes after a wish is made, the minute hole they leave in their wake is the intended function of the Grail in the first place. That is, by pushing through that hole and outside the world, it is possible not only to bend the rules that normally govern reality, but for a magus to reach the Akashic Records.¡±

    ¡°It is?¡± Marie asked incredulously. ¡°But my father ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Wished for no such thing, no,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°The results of the Fuyuki Holy Grail War which Marisbury Animusphere participated in have been wiped from the records, but I think we can safely say that he would not have achieved the dream of all magi and then walked away empty-handed, if at all.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Tohsaka, ¡°are you saying there was a Holy Grail War in Fuyuki?¡±

    ¡°Just the one, according to our records,¡± was the answer he was given. ¡°It occurred far after your time, Mister Tohsaka, and there isn¡¯t anything you could do to change the outcome, so there¡¯s no point in worrying about it.¡±

    Tohsaka scowled, unsatisfied.

    ¡°But therein lies the problem, doesn¡¯t it?¡± said Andersen. ¡°The creators of the Holy Grail War and the system that makes it possible, how was it that they stumbled onto the idea of using Servants in the first place? It¡¯s something of a counterintuitive leap, isn¡¯t it? And these Singularities ¡ª you¡¯ve said that the Counter Force intervenes, summoning Servants to resolve the issue. Presumably, by using the mechanism of these Holy Grails to create a loophole of sorts. But what if that¡¯s not it at all?¡±

    ¡°Of course it isn¡¯t,¡± said Marie, and she definitely sounded annoyed now. ¡°Did you think this was going to be some incredible revelation? Just how incompetent do you think we are? The Servant summoning ritual was originally a ritual for the purpose of summoning what we know of as Grand Servants, Heroic Spirits of incredible power meant to tackle the greatest of threats to human survival. The ritual used in Fuyuki ¡ª and therefore our own ritual used by the FATE System ¡ª is just a derivative, meant to call easier, cheaper Servants for the sole fact that only the Counter Force itself has the power necessary to call a Grand.¡±

    Andersen deflated, but Rika was immediately on alert. ¡°Wait, what? So then, why haven¡¯t we met one of these Grand guys yet? I¡¯ve faced enough tentacle monsters, thank you very much!¡±

    That was a good question. And unfortunately, when I gave it any thought, I was pretty sure I had the answer.

    ¡°Because despite everything,¡± I said, ¡°these Singularities still aren¡¯t a great enough threat to warrant it.¡±

    I thought of a golden man, firing blasts of golden light, of an army arrayed against him, fighting desperately just to survive long enough to find a way to defeat him. Of a single young woman in the middle of all of that, barely able to string any thoughts together other than whatever it took to win.

    If even that hadn¡¯t brought a Grand Servant to the field, then something that could be handled without needing to sacrifice anywhere near that much wouldn¡¯t bring one out either.

    ¡°Unfortunately, Taylor has the right of it,¡± said Da Vinci apologetically. ¡°Everything you¡¯ve encountered so far is something that ordinary Servants could handle, even if it required multiple at once to deal with. The sort of situation that would require a Grand Servant¡¯s intervention¡­ At that point, Chaldea would essentially be relegated to sitting on the sidelines and watching. Any efforts you could put out would be ineffective.¡±

    ¡°So this entire time,¡± said Andersen, wiping a hand down his face, ¡°I could have just asked¡­¡±

    ¡°I told you,¡± said Marie, ¡°Chaldea¡¯s library would have any information you needed about Servants and how they work! That wasn¡¯t just an empty boast!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Mister Andersen,¡± said Mash.

    Andersen grunted, and Flamel sighed. ¡°It seems that this trip of ours was just a waste of time, then.¡±

    I wouldn¡¯t go that far.

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t,¡± I told him. ¡°We might not have found the cause of the Association¡¯s elimination, but we¡¯ve discovered several important things. Firstly, whoever came here did, in fact, come to destroy the Association, and they succeeded at least well enough to send the rest into hiding. Secondly, someone else may have come down here after them, knowing that we would eventually come to investigate, and they led us directly to this room.¡±

    ¡°The question that we have to ask then is why,¡± said Emiya. ¡°What do we think they wanted us to do in here?¡±

    It was tempting to call it a trap, but if it was one, it was a very poor trap. Nothing had happened once we got past the animated grimoires that came out of the entrance, so either the goal was to funnel us away from the points of interest ¡ª not impossible, but seeming increasingly less likely every minute that I explored the rooms around us ¡ª or to keep us on track for whatever it was we were supposed to find in here.

    The trouble was, if there were two different parties involved in all of this, and one of them happened to be on our side but didn¡¯t want to make contact for whatever reason, then what exactly were we supposed to find? Was this it? The book Andersen was looking for, the one that detailed the nature of the summoning ritual? Or was there something else?

    It felt like a reach, like I was looking too far into things for something that wasn¡¯t there, but on the off chance a mysterious ally had led us down this path, then how the hell were we supposed to know what we were meant to find?

    ¡°¡­I can¡¯t think of anything,¡± Ritsuka admitted.

    ¡°Nope!¡± Rika agreed. ¡°You¡¯d think Mystery Man could¡¯ve put up a neon sign or something, because I¡¯ve got no idea!¡±

    Flamel sighed. ¡°Unfortunately¡­¡±

    Yeah.

    ¡°Maybe just us realizing there was someone else helping from the outside was the point,¡± Arash suggested.

    I didn¡¯t have any better ideas.

    Jackie? I said, reaching down the thread connecting me to her. Bring Alice and come on back. It¡¯s time to go.

    Okay, Mommy! Jackie replied.

    ¡°Whatever the case, we can¡¯t afford to spend all day in here looking for something that we might not find,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ll head back to the apartment and use the afternoon to track ¡ª¡±

    Movement outside suddenly caught my attention, and I turned my mind fully to Huginn¡¯s senses, looking through his eyes to find out what had decided to poke around the area.

    I didn¡¯t need to look too hard. He wasn¡¯t even trying to hide.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± asked Ritsuka. ¡°Is something wrong?¡±

    Standing outside the ruins of the museum, waiting just inside the mangled gate and staring up at the wreckage and the rubble, there was a man. Middle-aged, handsome, with long, black hair and a white robe. He was surrounded on all sides by a platoon of Helter Skelter, automata, and homunculi, but especially the homunculi, all looking larger and more grotesque than all the others we¡¯d dealt with up until now.

    He was exactly how the twins had described him, almost exactly how I¡¯d pictured him in my mind.

    ¡°Heads up,¡± I said sharply, ¡°we¡¯ve got company.¡±

    Paracelsus von Hohenheim.

 Chapter CXLIV: Wayward Student

    Chapter CXLIV: Wayward Student

    It would be an exaggeration to say that Paracelsus didn¡¯t move as we made our way back out of the Clock Tower¡¯s bowels, but not by much. He was unquestionably waiting for something, and the obvious answer was us, because the idea that he would be meeting one of his coconspirators out in the open like this in the middle of the morning before the mist rolled in was frankly laughable.

    And if he was confident enough to do that, then there was something else going on that we really needed to be worried about.

    No one else materialized, however. Paracelsus remained alone with his troupe of mindless underlings, watching the museum expectantly. It didn¡¯t take much thought to conclude that he knew we were down there, although I wasn¡¯t quite sure how. Had we tripped an alarm they left behind somehow? Were he and the others alerted the minute we went down into the Clock Tower? With Flamel on our side, there shouldn¡¯t have been any way we could miss something like that, but I guess if it was subtle enough, then maybe it really could fly right under our radar.

    ¡°Is he still there?¡± Ritsuka asked as we walked.

    ¡°Yes,¡± I answered. ¡°He hasn¡¯t moved.¡±

    ¡°So the bastard really does know we¡¯re down here,¡± Mordred concluded.

    ¡°It looks that way.¡±

    ¡°A spy?¡± muttered Tohsaka.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be absurd,¡± Andersen replied. ¡°Every single person here is dedicated to the cause of resolving this Singularity,¡± he slanted a meaningful look at Jackie, ¡°or at least dedicated to the cause to which their Master is dedicated.¡±

    Jackie just gave him a queer look, like she didn¡¯t quite understand what point he was making.

    ¡°Perhaps not that kind of spy,¡± Flamel said, ¡°but we would be neglectful to continue assuming that the enemy does not have collaborators here among the London populace, much like we do.¡± He grimaced. ¡°Or perhaps they simply added a layer into the bounded field protecting the entrance, and were alerted when we crossed it.¡±

    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t have noticed it?¡± Mash asked curiously. There wasn¡¯t a single accusation in her voice.

    ¡°Not necessarily,¡± Flamel allowed. ¡°And even if I had, I think I would have assumed it was a natural part of the Association¡¯s defenses. They are indeed a paranoid lot, after all.¡±

    At this point, I guess the how of it wasn¡¯t quite important. I wanted to be able to say that we could judge it based upon if or how he reacted when we left the Clock Tower, passing through the boundary again, but with the museum destroyed, he would be able to see us without any help from an alarm placed upon the entrance.

    It wasn¡¯t impossible that there was a traitor amongst us, but most of the group, I could personally vouch for, and most of the rest, they were contracted with us, which meant they couldn¡¯t be the enemy¡¯s Servants. The only real exemptions were Flamel and Andersen, but at this point, Flamel had passed up so many opportunities to screw us over I had trouble even mustering the desire to suspect him, and Andersen¡­

    Well, a good spy did his best to ingratiate himself with his targets. Andersen hadn¡¯t been shy about any of his opinions at any point since we¡¯d first met him, and he¡¯d been perfectly willing to get on my nerves as he pleased. That really only left Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme, but they¡¯d been in our presence so constantly that they hadn¡¯t had a chance to make contact and report in with Paracelsus.

    The most likely explanation was that we really had just tripped some kind of alarm that they¡¯d hidden too well for us to notice. Occam¡¯s Razor.

    ¡°How do we want to handle this?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    A good question. If the only objective was to get out while his attention was elsewhere, or even just eliminate him as quickly as possible, then there were a couple of different ways we could do that. Split up the party, send one of our Archers out to set up a nest, and have him distract or eliminate Paracelsus before we even made our way all the way to the end.

    But that wasn¡¯t our only objective.

    ¡°You said he volunteered his name when you fought him,¡± I began, ¡°that he talked about his fake Jack being a failed Demi-Servant attempt.¡±

    ¡°He did,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°He didn¡¯t tell us everything, but he gave us more than I would have expected him to, Senpai.¡±

    ¡°Three whole paragraphs of exposition,¡± Rika added unhelpfully. What was that supposed to mean, three whole paragraphs?

    Whatever. That wasn¡¯t the point.

    ¡°Then I think we should give him another chance,¡± I went on. ¡°See if we can¡¯t get him to talk more about his allies and their plans for Project Demonic Fog. Maybe he¡¯ll even give us their names.¡±

    Mordred snorted. ¡°You really think he¡¯s gonna do something that stupid?¡±

    ¡°They always start monologuing, Mo-chan,¡± said Rika. ¡°It¡¯s, like, Villainy 101 or something. ¡®First thing: explain your plan to the good guys whenever you have the chance.¡¯ No one¡¯s read the Evil Overlord list!¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a list?¡± Tohsaka asked incredulously.

    Rika nodded sagely. ¡°Of course!¡±

    ¡°I think we lose nothing by giving it a try,¡± I said, getting things back on track. Nothing except the element of surprise, but Paracelsus didn¡¯t even seem to notice Huginn, so there were plenty of ways we could keep a few aces in the hole and spring them on him the instant a fight was on the verge of breaking out.

    ¡°Sounds like it¡¯s worth a shot to me,¡± said Arash.

    ¡°We¡¯ll do whatever Mommy says,¡± said Jackie.

    Emiya huffed a short breath. ¡°Alright. I¡¯m not sure even this guy will be that forthcoming about his secret plans, but if it works, then I won¡¯t have any complaints. Do we have a plan for how we¡¯re going to do that?¡±

    In fact, I did.

    ¡°The first thing we¡¯re going to do,¡± I said, ¡°is test exactly how accurate his information is. If he can¡¯t actually tell how many people we had with us ¡ª Servants and Masters alike ¡ª when we came in, then that gives us plenty of opportunity to set up an ambush of our own¡­¡±

    I laid out the basic principles of the plan as we walked, making sure to keep a close eye on Paracelsus all the while. Thankfully, however, it seemed he wasn¡¯t able to hear what we were talking about, because he gave no indication he was eavesdropping on our impromptu planning session, which would hopefully mean that we could catch him by surprise from the start.

    In fact, he didn¡¯t react at any point as we kept walking back down the damp, stone hallways of the Clock Tower, not until we got to the end and started making our way back up to ground level. Whatever else he and his allies might have done when they were wiping out the Association, it seemed that they hadn¡¯t left more than a token effort behind to keep track of anyone who came to investigate it.

    That gave us something of an advantage.

    So when we came up out of the stairwell that connected the British Museum to its magical underbelly, several of our Servants had turned to spirit form and Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme stayed behind, hiding on the stairs just out of sight. If we could get the opportunity to pull attention away from the museum, the two of them could sneak out and pin Paracelsus¡¯ group between us.

    Of course, Paracelsus himself had to make that just a little bit harder by stepping closer to talk, with his platoon following in lockstep, although he at least did us the courtesy of letting us get clear of the rubble instead of forcing us to stand in it. An enemy with manners ¡ª would wonders never cease?

    ¡°It seems that it truly was your group that came here today,¡± he said. His voice was surprisingly deep, because his appearance made him seem soft spoken. ¡°Perhaps that was to be expected. It was inevitable that you would come to investigate the events that took place here.¡±

    ¡°Paracelsus,¡± Ritsuka said evenly.

    Paracelsus looked us over, his eyes honing in on me. ¡°And it seems you have brought with you more allies of yours ¡ª another human, another Master? Unfortunate, and yet fortunate. Our attempt to thin your numbers has evidently failed, and yet I am glad another life was not lost unnecessarily.¡±

    What?

    ¡°Strange talk from the man responsible for all of the death in this city,¡± I said, giving nothing of my thoughts away. ¡°Aren¡¯t you returning to the scene of the crime right now yourself?¡±

    ¡°Eliminating the Association was an unfortunate necessity,¡± he said solemnly. ¡°Their interference would have caused too many problems. I regret that it was unavoidable, but my responsibility is only tangential. I was not involved. I¡¯m sorry all the same.¡±

    Then he obviously wasn¡¯t the man behind the Helter Skelter. Not that I¡¯d really thought so to begin with, because it just didn¡¯t fit his skill set, but confirmation was always useful. Of the remaining two, the homunculi were far more likely to be creations of his than the automata.

    ¡°It was B or M, then,¡± said Ritsuka, more a statement than a question.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    But Paracelsus didn¡¯t give away more than that so effortlessly. Whether he realized we were trying to get information out of him and was only giving us the stuff that he thought was useless or if he really didn¡¯t know we were fishing, it could have gone either way. His expression wasn¡¯t exactly a poker face so much as he was just a bit¡­spacey. Like his mind wasn¡¯t all the way there in that moment.

    ¡°Forgive me for interrupting,¡± said Flamel, stepping forward to the front of our group, ¡°but you offer something of a conundrum, Paracelsus. Your actions in this place comport neither with your words nor with what history remembers of your character. You are, in a word, off.¡±

    Paracelsus blinked at him for a moment, and then took in a sharp breath through his nose. ¡°Master.¡±

    He dipped his head respectfully.

    ¡°Master?¡± the twins and Mash all echoed simultaneously. I had to do the swarm equivalent of biting my tongue to keep myself from joining them.

    ¡°I thought you didn¡¯t have any students,¡± Emiya accused, eyeing Flamely suspiciously.

    ¡°I did not,¡± said Flamel. ¡°Moreover, I was already dead for the better part of a century before the man known as Paracelsus von Hohenheim was born. This will be the first time we have ever shared the same air, let alone words with each other.¡±

    Did he mean another kind of Master, then? It wasn¡¯t conventional, and I didn¡¯t think they had Command Spells the way we did, but we¡¯d seen Servants serving as Masters for other Servants in previous Singularities by virtue of possessing that Singularity¡¯s Grail.

    The thought fell flat. Again, Flamel might not have proven himself above suspicion, but he¡¯d had ample opportunity to actually do something suspicious, and he hadn¡¯t taken any of them. There was a point where I was going to have to just call it paranoia to jump to the worst possibility every time something even slightly questionable popped up.

    ¡°Forgive me for my presumption,¡± Paracelsus said. ¡°It is true ¡ª you and I have never spoken before today, nor even met face to face. But¡­I know you well, through your works. It was only thanks to what I learned from you, my great master, that I was able to achieve the wonders of my lifetime.¡± He pressed a hand to his chest, fingers splayed. ¡°My advances in alchemy, and indeed, even the crafting of the Philosopher¡¯s Stone, they were all made possible only through extensive study of your research.¡±

    ¡°Philosopher¡¯s Stone?¡± the three parroted again.

    ¡°But you said you never made one!¡± Rika protested, turning to Flamel.

    I thought the more interesting implication was that Paracelsus had made one. Did that mean he was stashing it somewhere in this Singularity or on his person? Were they using it to supplement the Grail, wherever they were hiding that?

    If we found it, could we use it to heal Team A and the rest of the injured Master candidates?

    ¡°I never said that I didn¡¯t investigate the subject,¡± Flamel corrected gently. Firmer and to Paracelsus, he continued, ¡°If that is all true, then you must have somehow found and accessed my unpublished notes. I had assumed the Association neither knew nor cared what I had studied and discovered over the course of my life. It is becoming all the more apparent to me, however, that they seem to have gone to great effort to preserve my works.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± was Paracelsus¡¯ simple answer. ¡°It was your Treatise on the Process of Refinement through Fixation that inspired me to devote myself to the craft of alchemy. Had I not read that, I¡¯m not certain I would have followed the same path through life. My every success thereafter can be laid at your feet.¡±

    Flamel, contrary to this praise, only seemed embarrassed. ¡°I never expected that particular work to see the light of day. I never got around to cleaning up the draft or incorporating all of my notes, and, well, quite frankly, at that point, I had already decided that all of my accomplishments would die with me.¡±

    ¡°And yet, if your research had been more widely known, there is much good it could have done for the world,¡± Paracelsus argued, and the dull look gave way to incensed passion. ¡°Imagine ¡ª every person alive with a Philosopher¡¯s Stone, who could live for as long as they desired and for whom money was no concern. Disease ¡ª eradicated! Poverty and starvation ¡ª a thing of the past! Mankind would have all of the tools necessary to break free of their endless suffering!¡±

    ¡°People choose precisely the things which are worst for them,¡± Rika muttered.

    Flamel looked at Paracelsus sadly. ¡°My dear boy, that is exactly why the Philosopher¡¯s Stone should not exist.¡±

    Paracelsus came up short. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°The world you speak of may eventually have come, but it would have been a terrible, horrific struggle in the interim,¡± Flamel explained. ¡°The already privileged would have hoarded the wealth and longevity for themselves and left the rest of mankind to scrounge for the scraps. Every economy the world over would have collapsed, and an all new kind of fiefdom would have arisen in the aftermath. War and famine on a scale never before seen would have erupted, and countless lives would have been lost.¡± He sighed. ¡°A world where the Philosopher¡¯s Stone could be mass-produced would have been a nightmare.¡±

    My lips pulled to one side. How ironic that I would find someone with the same outlook on people that I had in a man who had never once in his life had to fight for it ¡ª although, I suppose, he had been in Paris for the majority of the Hundred Years¡¯ War, hadn¡¯t he? Maybe his life hadn¡¯t been so relatively carefree after all.

    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°But the world that came out the other side would be a paradise!¡± Paracelsus seemed almost to be pleading with Flamel, begging him to see things from his point of view. ¡°The overall state of the human condition would be one of peace and prosperity! No more suffering, no more inequality, no longer a need to fear an inevitable end!¡±

    ¡°There will always be inequality,¡± Flamel said solemnly. ¡°There will always be suffering and pain. All you would have done would be to increase the gap between the fortunate and the unfortunate and cause untold damage to innumerable bystanders. The end result you imagine is nothing more than fantasy.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Better to ease that suffering in more realistic manners. Contribute to the overall welfare in smaller ways so that the world is not plunged into greater chaos.¡±

    Paracelsus¡¯ face shut down again. ¡°I see. Then no matter what, you would have opposed us. There is no world where you and I might have joined forces for the betterment of mankind.¡±

    Once again, I had to do the swarm equivalent of biting my tongue. Betterment of mankind? Just what was he trying to do that he thought this Singularity could accomplish anything of the sort? Was he always that delusional, or had his Master ¡ª if it was a Demon God the way we were assuming ¡ª messed with his head that badly?

    ¡°The costs are simply too great,¡± said Flamel. ¡°Moreover, I cannot even begin to fathom how this Project Demonic Fog of yours could ever be for the betterment of mankind. Paracelsus ¡ª whatever path it is you walk now, it is a cruel and callous path, lined with the bodies of the dead and soaked in the blood of the innocent.¡±

    ¡°That is true. There is no way that this could ever result in anything except suffering,¡± Paracelsus acknowledged. ¡°In that case, perhaps it is all for the better that you are here. Yes ¡ª my own mind has already been compromised. My thought processes are all in disarray. My logic is flawed. I cannot close my eyes to the obvious: the process which we have used to suborn other Servants has already been used on me.¡±

    My eyes narrowed on him, even as he closed his own for a brief moment. So there was a process of some kind, a procedure. We¡¯d been assuming that there had to be something they were doing to convince the likes of Paracelsus to obey whatever mad scheme had been cooked up to destroy this era, but did they have more than one?

    After all, the Jeanne Alter of the Orl¨¦ans Singularity had simply slapped Madness Enhancement on everyone and called it a day. This, whatever it was that had been done to him, seemed¡­not necessarily more subtle, but softer. Less brute force.

    ¡°If the Demon God is named Nazara, I¡¯m quitting,¡± Rika muttered.

    Her brother groaned softly.

    ¡°Master Flamel,¡± Paracelsus began, ¡°you have already given me much throughout my life, and I owe you a debt that I could never hope to pay. Even still, I must beg you to do this one more thing for me, though I have no right to make such a selfish request.¡±

    A dagger ¡ª really more of a short sword, with a broad, double-edged blade and a hilt wrapped intricately in leather ¡ª materialized in his hand, and he brandished it.

    ¡°Chastise your wayward student,¡± he said, eyes clearer than they had been since he started talking. ¡°Punish me for straying from your wisdom and your teachings. You, more than anyone else, have the right to correct my sins and my transgressions, and so it must be you who does it.¡±

    Flamel heaved a deep sigh. ¡°And so, it falls to me to take responsibility for your deviancy, as the one who set you on the path you have walked, is that what you mean to say? Very well.¡±

    He stepped further forward and away from the group, towards Paracelsus, almost like some strange mimicry of an Old West duel. I resisted the urge to frown. Of all the people I would have thought would engage in that sort of thing, he was pretty close to the bottom of the list. Had he forgotten what our plan was?

    ¡°Flamel?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    Flamel paused, and over his shoulder, said, ¡°Forgive me, my friends. I know this is a terribly selfish request in light of the circumstances, but all the same¡­I would like you to let me handle this myself.¡±

    ¡°Abe¡­¡± Rika said softly.

    It wasn¡¯t like we could stop him, if he really got insistent about it. We hadn¡¯t formed a contract, so we couldn¡¯t force the issue with Command Spells, and after this was all over, I think it would be safe to say we could trust him as much as we could ever trust him. For now, however, he was entirely self-reliant.

    Damn it. Fine. If it was going to happen anyway, better to present a unified front against the enemy, because there was no telling if either of the other two were watching. If it was me, I know I would have been.

    ¡°How sure are you that you can beat him?¡± I asked. I wished I could have done it silently, to maintain that image of unflappable surety.

    ¡°Absolutely,¡± he answered confidently. Quieter, he added, ¡°I don¡¯t believe he intends to fight me seriously. I think, perhaps, that he wants to be defeated.¡±

    Maybe he did. Paracelsus wasn¡¯t exactly incoherent, but he seemed at war with himself ¡ª espousing both an idealistic vision of saving mankind, and a sentence later, admitting that Project Demonic Fog wouldn¡¯t do anything of the sort. If there was some¡­internal war taking place between his natural inclinations and whatever conditioning the enemy had subjected him to in order to make him obey, then maybe all he wanted was someone to put him out of his misery.

    I wasn¡¯t going to take my chances on that, but at least Flamel was asking us to let him handle it instead of going off without even discussing it first and forcing us to adapt around him. In that regard, he was already being better about this than A¨ªfe and C¨²chulainn had been.

    Jackie, I said, reaching down the thread connecting me to her, wait until I give the order. Sit back and watch until then, okay?

    Okay, Mommy! Jackie replied. I wished I could peek through her eyes, but she was in spirit form, so she didn¡¯t have eyes to peek through just then.

    Aloud, I said, ¡°Handle this quickly. We can¡¯t waste the whole day on a single fight.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Flamel said. He walked further forward, putting distance between us and him. ¡°I have no intention of dragging this out any further than absolutely necessary. Needless suffering accomplishes nothing.¡±

    ¡°Tch,¡± said Mordred, and she let her sword drop heavily so that the tip struck the ground. ¡°Guess that means I gotta sit this one out. Never woulda expected Gramps of all people to go for this kind of thing.¡±

    ¡°Senpai,¡± whispered Rika, ¡°is this really okay? After all, the plan¡­¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± I lied.

    ¡°This is something he has to do himself,¡± Ritsuka added.

    Maybe so. But the instant the Helter Skelter decided to interfere, so were we.

    When Flamel stopped, there was something like twenty feet between him and Paracelsus. Plenty of space for a human, but for a Servant, they might as well have been standing nose to nose.

    ¡°Well?¡± he said, his voice as hard and firm as it had been when we fought Jackie yesterday. ¡°You were the one who wanted this, Paracelsus. I assume, then, that you wouldn¡¯t mind if I make the first move?¡±

    ¡°It is only proper,¡± Paracelsus agreed.

    That was all the more warning Flamel gave him, because he suddenly clapped his hands together, red light flowing from between his fingers, and the ground around him leapt into motion, roiling, bulging, and finally, surging up and out as the stone twisted and lengthened as thought it was wet clay. Paracelsus threw himself to the side and swept his short sword upwards. I saw nothing except the glow of the jewel in his weapon¡¯s hilt, but the thin, pointed end of Flamel¡¯s stone pillar ¡ª aimed to pierce where Paracelsus¡¯ head had just been ¡ª was cut off and fell to the ground with the crack of heavy stone.

    ¡°Superb!¡± said Paracelsus. ¡°Material transformation with such speed and precision ¡ª but, Master, surely something so basic cannot be the best you can do!¡±

    He spouted an incantation in a language I didn¡¯t recognize, and the gem in the hilt of his dagger glowed again, a fraction of a second before a beam of light shot out from the tip like a laser. The ground in front of Flamel rose in a familiar way, becoming a wall, but Flamel didn¡¯t wait behind it for the laser to strike. Instead, the ground beneath his feet moved and flowed in a wave of motion, a bulge rising up and moving to the side with Flamel atop it. He rode it like a surfer and let it carry him around his own wall, avoiding the beam that burrowed through it, and came to a stop to the left of his enemy.

    The broken wall shifted and morphed, warping. A pair of arms, a solid base with a rotational mechanism, a long shaft like a runway. The stone changed color, turned a honeyed brown and became wood so that the arms could flex, and a string wound around the shaft and met at the end of either arm as a pointed arrow formed along it.

    In less than a second, a ballista stood where the wall had just been.

    It took aim at Paracelsus and fired in the same motion, and Paracelsus spat out a hasty incantation as he swung his sword around again. The gem glowed a third time, and a whirlwind whipped up, tugging at the grass and the Helter Skelter, strong enough I could feel it from where I was standing. The arrow was only barely knocked off course, flying up and over his shoulder instead, and one of the Helter Skelter flew back as the heavy bolt punched clean through its front chest plate and out the back.

    Paracelsus just smiled. ¡°Exquisite! Yes, that is more impressive! Shape transformation, material transmutation, remote locomotion ¡ª and all with such speed! As expected of a master alchemist!¡±

    Flamel grimaced and paused. ¡°I see. Your Azoth Sword ¡ª it is a conduit for your elemental magecraft. Combined with your own talent for reciting your incantations with such speed, you can act and react nearly instantly. Your reputation is well-earned, Paracelsus.¡±

    So he had noticed it, too, the way the gem glowed every time Paracelsus cast a spell. I wasn¡¯t quite sure how I could have told him if I had to, not without Paracelsus noticing me do it.

    ¡°I¡¯m honored by your praise,¡± said Paracelsus. ¡°It is to be expected that a magus as talented as you are would be able to see through me so quickly.¡±

    ¡°Not nearly so incredible as you make it sound,¡± said Flamel. ¡°Merely simple logic and basic observation. There are only so many ways to get around the normal limitations of spellcasting, after all.¡±

    ¡°Indeed.¡± Paracelsus lifted his sword and pointed it at Flamel. ¡°O¡¯ Flame.¡±

    A burst of fire exploded right next to Flamel¡¯s ear, and he gasped, flinching away from it, but not fast enough to avoid the brunt of the damage as he staggered to the side. The entire left side of his face was an angry red, with his beard burned away and singed and his eye fused shut. His ear had been rendered little more than a stump, leaking red blood.

    ¡°Flamel!¡± Rika cried, alarmed. Her brother didn¡¯t say anything, but his hands balled into tight fists.

    But Flamel seemed entirely unconcerned, glaring out of his remaining eye, and I remembered what he¡¯d said about how his Noble Phantasm worked. There was no way something like this would be enough to beat him.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Flamel grunted, ¡°I suppose that is the next logical step, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    Red light flowed over his skin, and before our eyes, his wounds disappeared and his face returned to normal, beard and all. Even the damage done to his clothing was undone, vanishing without a trace.

    The gem glowed ¡ª ¡°O¡¯ Wind¡± ¡ª and Paracelsus swung his sword. Flamel threw himself to the side, and an invisible blade sliced clean through his cloak instead of his chest. He turned the action around and pressed his hands to the ground. Red light shone from his hands again, and the stone around Paracelsus rose up again in the shape of bars like a cage. They twisted around, spiraling, and pulled tighter ¡ª

    ¡°O¡¯ Earth.¡±

    ¡ª but the gem glowed from between the gaps, and the bars fell away as their bases cracked and crumbled. Flamel¡¯s lips moved, and although I couldn¡¯t hear it from where I was standing, my brain supplied the sound of his tongue clicking.

    He didn¡¯t waste time on expletives or recriminations. Instead, one hand swept to the side, and the bars fused back to the ground as their bases became steel plates and they themselves turned into chains with spikes upon every link.

    A sweep of the sword. ¡°O¡¯ Fire.¡± The chains were engulfed, heating rapidly until they were cherry red. ¡°O¡¯ Water.¡± And just as suddenly, they were doused in water, hissing as steam billowed off of them. ¡°O¡¯ Wind.¡± The chains were whipped about and torn from their anchors, then thrown away from Paracelsus, impotent.

    Back and forth, they went, trading attacks almost like they were taking turns. Paracelsus wielded the elements as though they were an extra limb (or four), throwing balls of fire, blades of wind, and spears of ice with simple, one-word incantations, but Flamel didn¡¯t seem to have the same sort of luxury. He stuck to transforming and transmuting the material around him, turning the ground into pillars that lashed out across the distance like fists, dust into gunpowder that ignited in a cloud around Paracelsus, and the melted remnants of Paracelsus¡¯ ice into a minefield of jagged grass.

    None of it worked. They each countered the other with casual indifference, blocking what they didn¡¯t want to deal with, dismantling what they didn¡¯t want to block, and dispelling what could be easily dispelled. It was like watching a tennis match where the ball was constantly changing form, and neither side had any trouble hitting it back to the other¡¯s court.

    And then Flamel tried something a little more complicated again, forming a cannon out of the stone at his feet that belched out flame and smoke and a cannonball that broke and shattered into hundreds of deadly fragments as they flew across the distance. Paracelsus simply waved his sword and said, ¡°O¡¯ Earth,¡± and they disintegrated into a puff of dust that peppered his robe and slid off.

    A brief moment of stillness passed.

    ¡°So that¡¯s how it is, is it?¡± Flamel said, grimacing. ¡°Good grief. I¡¯m not a young man anymore, you know. Asking me to put my all into this is just unreasonable.¡±

    His lips pulled back into a snarl, and he pushed down on the ground as though he was trying to dig his fingers through the solid stone. Red light crackled, grew brighter, and as an enormous surge of magical energy spewed out of Flamel in such quantities that it washed over me like a wave, bolts of it jolted all across the courtyard ¡ª to no apparent effect.

    For a brief second, the world held its breath.

    And then the earth beneath us shook (¡°What¡¯s happening?¡± Rika squeaked) and the museum behind us rumbled as though the echo of its collapse was only now reaching us. The twins turned around to look, but I resisted the urge to use my own eyes and instead had Huginn turn his to see what it was that was going on behind me.

    The broken columns melted, the smashed brick turned to sludge, the fragments of shattered glass liquefied, and they all flowed up and towards the center like molten lava, congregating on a central point. Where they met, a shape began to form, first a pair of feet from the toes up, then ankles and calves, then a familiar armored skirt, a cuirass shaped like a chiseled man¡¯s chest with swirling patterns swooping in lines across the pectorals and abs, a pair of bare arms and forearms protected by bracers emblazoned with the Flamel in stark relief.

    ¡°Holy shit, Gramps,¡± said Mordred.

    ¡°He really is Old Man Ed!¡± Rika burst out.

    In the hands, a rounded shield as large as the torso also depicted the crucified snake and a long shaft ending in a bladed point ¡ª a spear. Next, a neck, thickly corded with muscle, a face, hidden by a helmet, with a plume finely detailed to capture every strand of the horse¡¯s hair.

    A Spartan.

    ¡°Incredible,¡± breathed Paracelsus. ¡°The level of detail for something made with such speed¡­¡±

    Thirty feet tall, made entirely of whatever stone had comprised the museum, with panes of glass for eyes, and carved with such detail that Michelangelo himself would have been jealous, a fully armored warrior who would have looked right at home in ancient Greece. My mind immediately supplied the name Achilles and an image of a handsome face framed by locks of blond hair.

    ¡°Even such talented magi as you and I would require more time than this to create a homunculus of any worth!¡± said Flamel. ¡°But animating mere stone is something even an amateur alchemist can do, don¡¯t you think? Sometimes, however, the very basics are more than enough!¡±

    The stone groaned and the ground shook as the statue came to life, stepping forward with heavy, ponderous footfalls. The enormous legs, each thick enough that Herakles himself wouldn¡¯t have been able to wrap his arms all the way around them, lifted up, and even did us the courtesy of stepping over us with such care as to avoid even the chance of hitting anyone. It marched wordlessly into the courtyard and towards the fight, slow, but with so much weight behind it that even a glancing blow might have shattered all of the bones in my arm or snapped my neck. Every step vibrated up my legs and into my chest, and my glasses threatened to slip from my nose entirely.

    ¡°You wanted me to chastise you, Paracelsus!¡± said Flamel. ¡°So stand still and accept your punishment!¡±

    The living statue raised its enormous spear, more akin in size and heft to the very pillars whose remains it had been made from, and it thrust it directly towards Paracelsus, who seemed to realize only as it came hurtling towards him that this was probably something he should worry about.

    ¡°O¡¯ Earth!¡±

    A wall of stone several feet thick rose like a shield, but at the last possible moment, the head of the spear shifted, glinting, and became what looked like solid steel. It punched through the wall without any effort at all, and Paracelsus was thrown backwards by the force of it, tumbling across the ground to the feet of one of the Helter Skelter.

    Flamel pressed the attack. ¡°And now¡­!¡±

    ¡°Sword ¡ª¡±

    Paracelsus rolled about, wasting no time on the effort to climb to his feet, and instead remained on his side, gripping his sword with both hands and pointing the tip at the giant. Magical energy surged. Balls of light formed around the shaft of the blade, swirling until their colors bled together into a singular white ring.

    And we were right in the firing line.

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka shouted, having already seen what I saw.

    Mash threw herself in front of us as quickly as she could, leading with her shield.

    ¡°Lord ¡ª¡±

    The energy gathered on the tip of the blade, blindingly bright.

    ¡°¡ª of Paracelsus!¡±

    ¡°Chaldeas!¡±

    The rampart of Lord Chaldeas had barely finished forming before a tornado of multicolored light slammed into it, ripping straight through the giant statue as though it was made of tissue paper. A thunderous bong echoed, and Mash¡¯s grunt was lost in the furor as she strengthened her weak footing. I had to squint and turn my head away from the blast, but Huginn had no such trouble, watching everything from such safety.

    Fine, I thought, if you¡¯re going to drag us into this like that, then no more sitting on the sidelines. I pushed my mind down the thread connecting me to my newest Servant. Jackie? Go.

    Okay! she replied brightly.

    The light had barely faded and Paracelsus was still trying to scramble to his feet when she descended like a wrathful angel, one blade in each hand and aimed to cleave him open like a Christmas turkey. By some miracle, Paracelsus managed to stumble out of the path of her attack, then parry the follow up with his sword.

    ¡°Jack the Ripper?¡± he gasped. ¡°Then, yesterday, when we lost contact with you and Robin Hood ¡ª¡±

    A meaty squelch cut him off, and blood spurted across the courtyard, painting the gray stone in sickly red.

 Chapter CXLV: The Spy Who Loved Me

    Chapter CXLV: The Spy Who Loved Me

    Whatever Paracelsus had been about to say died. It was swallowed by the spurt of blood that surged out of his mouth instead, and he bent over, clutching almost reflexively at the thin shaft of stone that had pierced straight through his chest and punched out the other side.

    The fact that he was still standing at all said something about the resilience of Servants and their bodies, because a normal human taking a wound like that would have collapsed from the shock. Instead, Paracelsus had the strength remaining to press his hand to the wound and feel the rock spear that had skewered him, enough presence of mind to look at the blood and stare, like he couldn''t quite believe that it was his own.

    "My apologies for resorting to such an underhanded tactic," said Flamel, slowly straightening. "A bit uncouth of me, perhaps, but I must admit, you are indeed an uncommon intellect. My own alchemy has been transformed to some degree by the later perception of the art, but even so, the refinement in your technique is obvious."

    "You took our kill," Jackie said, pouting.

    "Quite the opposite," Flamel rebuked her, "because you attempted to take mine. I can only assume that was your Master''s doing."

    He glanced at me reproachfully.

    "We were dragged into the fight," I said unrepentantly. "I wasn''t about to let him get in a second shot at us."

    I wasn''t quite sure that the first one hadn''t been an accident, a matter of coincidence more than intent, but I also wasn''t quite willing to take the chance that it had been on purpose. Not when the enemy was tossing around an A+ Noble Phantasm.

    Flamel grimaced and sighed. "As much my fault as his, I''m afraid. I didn''t take quite enough care to ensure that the rest of you were entirely out of the line of fire."

    "You shouldn''t blame them, Master," Paracelsus managed to rasp out. "Even if the manner was not as I desired¡­this outcome¡­was the only proper outcome that should have resulted."

    Flamel turned back to him. "So this truly was what you intended from the beginning, then. You wanted to lose."

    With blood flowing down his chin and spreading in an ugly stain across his white robe, Paracelsus smiled a serene smile. "It is¡­the correct way of things," he said. "Evil must be vanquished¡­and good must triumph¡­over it¡­"

    I schooled my face to keep my thoughts from showing. Maybe it should have been obvious from the impassioned speech he''d given just a few minutes ago, but for the genius who had built an entire school of magecraft ¡ª if not, it seemed, truly single-handedly ¡ª he was surprisingly naive.

    If Flamel thought so as well, he held his tongue, too. Probably for the better. A wound like that would absolutely cause irreparable damage, and that meant we didn''t have time to toss around recriminations and call our only source of information an idiot.

    Andersen materialized suddenly, stepping closer to the action. "Have you returned to your senses, O Alchemist?"

    "My eyes are¡­clearer than they have been¡­since my summoning," Paracelsus answered.

    If that was true¡­

    "Then we have a few questions we''d like to ask you," I said.

    "Yes," Flamel agreed, jumping on my point, "such as how it was you were summoned and became a part of this¡­conspiracy to drown London in fog."

    "I was summoned¡­the same as you were," said Paracelsus. "The same as¡­all Servants in this era were. I¡­came from the fog, from¡­the Grail."

    What?

    "But you''re one of the three masterminds behind Project Demonic Fog," said Ritsuka, asking what I wanted to ask, "aren''t you?"

    Paracelsus shook his head. His body flickered, a sure sign that we didn''t have much time left. "Only¡­tangentially. The others¡­came first. I was¡­made their conspirator, their¡­accomplice. They¡­twisted my mind towards¡­their goals, the same as¡­they have done with¡­every other Servant in their employ."

    B and M, presumably. But if it was true that the Grail came first, then the fog, and then the Servants, in that exact order, then who had come up with Project Demonic Fog in the first place? What was their end goal? Just what part of history were they trying to destroy? Was it B or M who originally had the Grail, and which of them had summoned the other?

    We were assuming that another Demon God was involved somewhere in all of this. In that case, which of the two of them was it, and what wish had the Grail been used to grant?

    "Did you know their names?" I asked him.

    The how and the why didn''t matter so much right now as the who. Means and motive were both things we could guess with some degree of accuracy just by knowing the names of our enemies, precisely because they were Servants.

    "Yes," said Paracelsus. "Project Demonic Fog is¡­the product of the one you¡­know as B, but¡­it is M who¡­you must truly watch out for. He is ¡ª"

    One of the Helter Skelter suddenly burst into motion, and Jackie and Flamel both threw themselves out of the way as it lifted off the ground and rocketed across the distance using jets of¡­ Was that steam?

    Arash and Emiya both riddled it with a volley of arrows, Emiya''s aimed at joints and Arash''s aimed at dealing as much damage to the limbs as possible. One wave hit the shoulder, and the arm holding its cleaver went limp as the legs broke, the jets of steam cracking and bursting. It landed with a thud and slid impotently, the metal screeching as ground against the stone.

    Several more moved a bare instant afterwards, angling obliquely, and they turned together to unleash another barrage of arrow after arrow that crippled them the same way. They all crashed down much like the other one had, a few of them swinging their one functional arm like a toddler throwing a tantrum, impotent.

    No one but me noticed ¡ª through Huginn''s eyes ¡ª the one coming up in the shadow of the first, hiding in the cloud of steam it had left behind.

    "Arash!"

    I wasn''t fast enough. Even as his name left my mouth, the Helter Skelter was bearing down Paracelsus, its massive cleaver raised to strike.

    It was Mordred who reacted first, bursting into motion and rocketing across the distance like she had a pair of jets attached to her hips herself. She swung her broadsword with brutal strength, and the raw power behind the blow took the thing''s head right off in one go.

    But she was already too late. By the time she reached it, it had already swung its massive cleaver-like blade. Paracelsus, still affixed to the spot by the stone spear and too wounded to have attempted an escape if he wasn''t, could only let out a gasp as it slashed him viciously from shoulder to hip and finished what Flamel had started.

    Mercifully, we at least didn''t have to watch him get disemboweled. He had already vanished before anything more than yet more blood could be spilled, and even that vanished with him.

    "Damn it!" Mordred howled. "FUCK! Sonnuva¡­!"

    The rest of Paracelsus'' mockery of an honor guard suddenly came to life, and they all turned towards us with obvious intent. Even if Paracelsus had made the homunculi, it was obvious that they, the Helter Skelter, and the automata all inevitably answered to the same person, and whoever that was very much wanted us gone and out of the way.

    "Tohsaka!" I called out to him. "Get up here!"

    "Mash!" said Ritsuka. "Take them out!"

    "Right!" Mash answered.

    "You heard him!" Rika told Emiya. "Turn that scrap into a heap!"

    "That one isn''t even funny!" Emiya replied.

    They all leapt into action as Andersen pulled back and Flamel made a cautious retreat closer to our position. Mordred needed no order and no permission, because she lashed out furiously, smacking the nearest Helter Skelter around with her sword and bashing it into as many pieces as she could. Conveniently for her, that happened to be the one whose head she had already taken off, and only once it was a ruined mess in too many pieces to ever function again did she move on to another one.

    Jackie, I ordered silently, focus on the homunculi. You should have an easier time of cutting into them.

    If you say so, Mommy, Jackie replied, and then she turned her attention to the hulking masses of twisted flesh interspersed between the bulky mechanical robots that the others were focused on fighting.

    It was not a particularly even fight. It might have been much harder if we were limited to just one or two Servants, especially if we had only had Mash there, forced to split her focus between all of the enemies and protecting us Masters from them. We had more than enough Servants, however, with more than enough strength between them to easily handle the entire group and corral them away from us.

    When a familiar winged, crowned monster burst out of the entrance to the Clock Tower and barreled into the fray, swinging its enormous fists around and turning everything it hit into pulp, it turned what had been a surety into a foregone conclusion. Any remaining sense of uselessness I had could only evaporate in the face of it, because our force was simply so overwhelming that my involvement would have been a drop in the bucket.

    It was a bit of an unusual feeling. I was used to being the underdog, so carrying the metaphorical big stick was just a little bit surreal.

    The whole thing was over in less than a minute, and all that was left behind of the entirety of the group Paracelsus had brought with him was a bunch of scattered parts, hunks of chalk white meat, and splatters of red bloodstains. They had all been destroyed, completely and utterly.

    "Damn it!" Mordred said again, and although she was much calmer now than she had been in the immediate aftermath of Paracelsus disappearing, she was very clearly still furious. "Of all the fucking luck! That bastard ¡ª he was just about to tell us what we needed to know, and then he got his ass killed!"

    "Sir Mordred," Flamel began.

    "I know, Gramps!" she snapped back at him. "Just fucking¡­pisses me off, that''s all. We were so fucking close¡­"

    I knew the feeling. Agreed with her, even. Paracelsus had been about to hand us one of the biggest breaks imaginable in our investigation of this Singularity, and his "allies" had killed him to keep him from telling us right as he was going to say it. The answer to one of the most important questions we had ¡ª snatched right out from under our noses.

    There was a reason a colony of ants was tearing each other apart in the nearest apartment.

    "He confirmed a suspicion of mine, at least," said Andersen. "As convenient as it would have been to have the most important answers here ¡ª no, at least he did me the favor of validating my thoughts about the origin of Servants inside of this Singularity. It might not be as much as we wanted, but it''s not nothing."

    "Your suspicion?" asked Tohsaka as he came up out of the Clock Tower.

    "That Servants arise from the fog," Andersen said. "Yes ¡ª have you not noticed? Not a single one of the Servants that were summoned inside of this Singularity can claim to have arrived during these hours of the morning, when the fog has subsided. Each and every one of us appeared inside the city when the fog was at its height. Ergo, another suspicion of ours has been confirmed, namely ¡ª"

    "Whatever they''re using to make the fog," Ritsuka concluded, "it''s connected to this Singularity''s Grail."

    Mordred''s face scrunched up with confusion. "I thought we knew that already."

    "We suspected it ¡ª good job, Jackie," I said as Jackie returned to my side. She preened under the praise, smiling as though she wasn''t covered in blood. "Because we didn''t have any better explanations. This confirms it. And it means that whatever machine they decided to name Angrboea, it''s likely involved somehow, too."

    I guess I was going to have to introduce her to the concept of a daily bath later on. Washing off blood and guts wasn''t exactly the same thing as washing off mud and dirt, but it was similar enough that I shouldn''t have any trouble getting her clean.

    "I''m still not entirely convinced of that," Flamel said sourly.

    "We can discuss it more back at the apartment," I said. "It''s about time we should be heading back."

    Flamel looked like he wanted to argue for a second, but then he nodded, "Yes, I suppose we should."

    "Tch." Mordred scoffed. "Already? All we did was look at a bunch of stupid books!"

    "We can go out on patrol later on," Ritsuka promised, and while this didn''t satisfy her completely, it at least tempered her frustration a little.

    "After lunch," Rika added. "All that reading made me hungry! Mama wants food!"

    "I''m sure Ren¨¦e will be happy to make something for you, Senpai," said Mash pleasantly.

    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

    But she had forgotten that, at least in this one particular area, Emiya was actually fairly competitive.

    "Like hell she is," he said, scowling. "I''m the one who gets to make lunch, remember? I already have to surrender to her in the mornings for breakfast and share the kitchen for dinner, I''m not going to let her get away with taking lunch, too!"

    "Then we had better return to Jekyll''s with all due haste, hadn''t we?" said Flamel. "I''m sure dear Ren¨¦e will be only too happy to assume your spot, should you be delayed by too long a time."

    Emiya definitely didn''t find the thought comforting. "There''s no time to waste, Master. We need to get back to the apartment as fast as we can."

    "Fine," Mordred said grudgingly. "Let''s get out of here so that you guys don''t collapse on me. The last thing I want is to listen to the earful I''m gonna get from the old nag if you guys up and croak on my watch."

    We grouped up again, crossing the pitted and destroyed courtyard and all of the body parts and pieces of metal that littered it, and when we reached the gate, Flamel stopped.

    "A moment, if you will," he said. "This won''t take but a few seconds."

    He pressed his hands together, muttering an incantation, and red light glowed from between his fingers. The corpses ¡ª both meat and mechanical ¡ª didn''t disappear, but the things he''d done with his own alchemy earlier melted away and returned to their original state, to what they''d been before his fight with Paracelsus. He even went as far as to turn his statue back into rubble and fix the damage done to the courtyard before we''d ever arrived.

    When he was done, he let his hands drop and sighed. "There. It isn''t much, but it''s the least I could do."

    "Won''t all of this just get corrected once this Singularity is resolved?" Tohsaka asked. "There wasn''t really a need to go that far, was there?"

    "Perhaps not," Flamel agreed. "But it seemed appropriate, as a matter of common courtesy. It was a trifling effort, and so it cost me little to do the people of London this kindness."

    And it spoke well of his character, too. At the end of the day, it was a mostly meaningless gesture and it wouldn''t stick, because the museum being destroyed would itself be corrected when this was all over, but doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing was something I could appreciate.

    Flamel turned back around. "Now. We were returning to the apartment, yes? I appreciate your willingness to indulge me, but no more need to dawdle. Let''s be on our way."

    As we exited out of what was once the ruined gate ¡ª now repaired and left ajar for us to leave through ¡ª an echoing caw broke the silent streets and a crow suddenly took flight from a nearby rooftop, wings flapping. My head spun to watch it go, and I tracked its path westward in the direction of, as best I knew it, nothing important.

    There was just one problem.

    "Arash," I said calmly, "that''s not Huginn."

    Arash needed no other explanation. He materialized his bow and an arrow, drew back on the bowstring, and let it loose. In the distance, the arrow sprouted from the crow''s body, and it gave one desperate flap in an attempt to maintain its altitude before falling like a stone.

    Mash gasped, scandalized. "Miss Taylor!"

    "It disappeared when it hit the ground, Master," Arash reported.

    As I''d thought. Some kind of familiar, then.

    "Not here, Mash," I told her. "Back at the apartment. I''ll explain there."

    Mash looked torn.

    "Come on, Mash," said Ritsuka. "I''m sure Senpai will explain everything once we get back to the apartment. There was a reason why that crow was dangerous."

    Sometimes, I really did have to marvel at the twins'' trust in me. Even the Chicago Wards had had their misgivings about some of my decisions.

    Eventually, Mash sighed and gave in. "Yes, Senpai."

    So after I retrieved Huginn, we made our way back to Jekyll''s apartment, avoiding all of the patrols that were interspersed along the route. Those that already had one of Flamel''s trackers placed in their midst were left alone entirely, and those that didn''t have one, I snuck a tracker into until I ran out completely.

    I had some hope that they would work the way I''d intended for them to when I asked Flamel to make more, and one or more of the patrol groups would eventually lead us right to the masterminds, to B and M, now that Paracelsus was taken care of. On the other hand, I wouldn''t be at all surprised if it all wound up being a wasted effort. This Singularity seemed like it was designed specifically to frustrate me, after all.

    I did have to wonder, though, if the others had some way of manufacturing more of those grotesque homunculi or if their supply was now entirely limited since he was gone. If that was the case, they might wind up making more Helter Skelter and automata to compensate, and I¡­wasn''t entirely opposed to that, honestly. More places to hide more of Flamel''s trackers, and that meant that I could get a better idea of the things happening throughout the city as a whole than with my bugs and their much more limited range.

    Provided the patrol groups actually had regular routes, of course. But whether or not they did would tell us some things about the enemy, too.

    It took another hour, all told, for Jekyll''s apartment to come back into view, and we made excellent time, arriving with nearly half an hour to spare. Jeanne Alter and Fran were both there out front, sitting on the steps and waiting for us.

    "Sup, losers," Jeanne Alter greeted us. "Bet you had shit loads of fun."

    Mordred snorted. "Not that much. Spent most of the time either dodging around those patrols or reading fucking books."

    "Yeah?" said Jeanne Alter. "More fun than sitting here for the past three hours. But I guess it''s not as bad as being a nerd."

    "Illiterate bumpkin," Andersen said, looking down his nose at her. It might have been more effective if he wasn''t half her size.

    Jeanne Alter sneered. "At least I''m not stuck in the body of a toddler."

    Andersen''s lips pursed and his eyes narrowed.

    "Now, now," said Flamel, trying to placate the both of them, "we''re all allies here, aren''t we? No need to antagonize each other."

    "Uhn?" Fran asked.

    "Not as much as we hoped," I told her. "We should talk more inside. Jeanne Alter, you can come in and hear about what we learned while Arash stays to keep watch. Thank you for protecting the apartment."

    "Geez, you don''t need to make a big deal about it," Jeanne Alter said. "All I did was sit around and stare at a few fu ¡ª" her eyes immediately went to Nursery Rhyme, and then to Jackie. "¡ª fudging bricks for a couple hours."

    "You''re still doing that?" asked Mordred, sounding somewhere between disgusted and amazed.

    "Shut up," Jeanne Alter snapped back. "We can''t all be uncouth barbarians tossing profanities at everything that talks back. Some of us have some fu-freaking class."

    Mordred snorted and shook her head. "Sure. Whatever you say, Dragon Bitch."

    "Dragon Witch," Jeanne Alter hissed. "Dragon Witch, you sack of ¡ª"

    "Come on," Ritsuka interrupted. "We should get inside before the fog comes. Senpai and Tohsaka still can''t be outside in it for more than a few minutes."

    "I know that already," Jeanne Alter drawled. "Geez. You guys are the ones dragging this out, you know."

    But she got up from her seat and went inside without further comment, so the rest of us followed behind her the same way, leaving only Arash behind to take up sentry on the roof. The instant we were back inside the apartment, however, and the door shut behind us, Emiya broke off from the group and made for the kitchen.

    "I''m going to get lunch made before that woman can use the excuse to push me out," he announced. "Any special requests, Master?"

    "As long as it tastes good!" Rika replied.

    Emiya gave her a wave over his shoulder and vanished. The fact there wasn''t any commotion said that Ren¨¦e was keeping to their deal, however unhappy it made her.

    "It seems he truly does take his craft seriously," Flamel commented, amused.

    "He really does," said Ritsuka. "You should see him at Chaldea. He might be an Archer, but you wouldn''t know it to see him at a stove."

    Or to look at his ridiculous aprons. He still hadn''t topped the "ladle of my soup" one, if only because I now understood the joke behind it, and it was hard to beat that one out.

    Flamel hummed. "We all have our hobbies, I suppose."

    "You''ve returned," Jekyll said as he entered the parlor. "With good tidings, one would hope? Was your venture successful?"

    "In a manner of speaking," Andersen said bitterly. "Although not in the way I''d wanted it to be."

    I was willing to blame that one on his own stubbornness. We could have saved a lot of time and energy if he''d just explained what he was looking for in the first place, and we could''ve spent more time instead on investigating the damage to the Clock Tower.

    Not that I expected we would have found too much just looking at a bunch of rubble. None of us was Lisa, after all. But nothing said we couldn''t have gotten lucky and picked up another clue or two by sheer chance.

    "Before that, Miss Taylor," said Mash, "you said you''d explain why you killed that crow once we returned to the apartment."

    Naturally, that got Jeanne Alter''s attention. "Say what, now? You did what?"

    "Technically, Arash was the one who killed it," Rika pointed out, "but Senpai''s the one who gave the order, so I guess it counts."

    "No shit," said Jeanne Alter.

    "Language!" Tohsaka hissed.

    Jeanne Alter rolled her eyes and flipped him the bird. Tohsaka didn''t appreciate that very much either.

    "Mash," I began, driving the conversation back on track, and instead of answering her question directly, I asked her, "when was the last time you remember seeing any native fauna since we got here?"

    Mash took in a breath and opened her mouth, then had to pause and think about it for a second, her brow furrowing. After a second or two, her mouth closed again, and the furrow of her brow deepened as the cogs turned and she slowly came to the conclusion I''d intended from the beginning.

    "I haven''t," she said, and she sounded troubled. "Since we''ve arrived here, the only animal I''ve seen is Huginn¡­isn''t it? Um, one of Miss Taylor''s puppets, that is."

    "Huginn?" asked Flamel.

    "And Muninn," I told him, laying a hand on my bag. "Yes ¡ª I named them after Odin''s ravens. It seemed appropriate, all things considered."

    And I just wasn''t particularly good at coming up with names for stuff. Huginn and Muninn had been part of the primers on Germanic myths and legends at Chaldea, and they''d seemed like as good a set of names as I was ever going to get.

    "I haven''t seen any animals either," Ritsuka said. "Just Senpai''s puppets, like Mash said." He reached out and gave the little gremlin a scratch and fondly added, "And Fou, of course."

    "Fou!"

    "So?" said Mordred. "What''s that gotta do with killing that crow?"

    "No natural fauna would mean that any we encountered would automatically have to be our enemy''s familiars," Tohsaka said, and he glanced over at me, "was your thought process, right?"

    Essentially¡­

    "Yes."

    He grimaced and heaved out a sigh, wiping a hand down his face. "Which means they know exactly how many of us there are and what we look like, now."

    Presumably¡­

    "Yes."

    It would be better to assume that they did. It wasn''t out of the realm of possibility that they had before this, of course, because they''d known enough to send Jackie and Robin Hood to Jekyll''s apartment, but at this point, they had gotten a very clear and very good look at our entire group, with the exception of Jekyll himself, Ren¨¦e, and Fran.

    There was no telling how long they''d been watching us for either. I hadn''t noticed the crow until it took off ¡ª something that never would have happened if most of the more useful fliers hadn''t been wiped out in this place, frustratingly enough ¡ª so it was entirely possible that whoever was behind it had seen everything from us arriving at the museum to Flamel''s fight with Paracelsus. It might even be why Paracelsus had come to confront us in person in the first place.

    "Mommy''s so smart," said Jackie. "We didn''t even think of that."

    I reached out and gave her a gentle pat on the head, and she smiled, pleased.

    Mordred scowled furiously. "Fuck." She folded her arms across her chest. "And those fuckers stopped us from finding out anything else about them when that Paracelsus guy was spilling his guts."

    Tohsaka favored her with a sour look for her language, but Flamel just stroked at his beard.

    "That does put us at something of a disadvantage," he said thoughtfully. "What they intend to do with it, on the other hand, well, that one''s a bit of a trickier question, isn''t it?"

    I wasn''t the only one who wondered what exactly he meant by that. Both the twins and Mash were giving him the same look I was. "How do you mean?"

    He blinked at me, then looked up at the ceiling as though it had the answer written on it. "Well," he began, "if Victor''s estimates were correct, then our two remaining masterminds would also themselves be Servants of the Caster class ¡ª a conclusion, I will add, further supported by the presence of a familiar watching over Paracelsus at the Clock Tower, if your own theory is correct."

    Ah. I could see where he was going with that now.

    "And we have several Knight Class Servants, which are famed for their high levels of magic resistance."

    Although Mordred was still the only one aside from Mash who could just shrug off almost any spell thrown her way. Both Emiya and Arash''s magic resistance were much lower and much less absolute.

    Flamel nodded. "Precisely. It''s entirely possible that B and M ¡ª whoever they truly are ¡ª send as many of their Helter Skelter, homunculi, and automata as they can in an attempt to overwhelm us with sheer numbers, but it''s also entirely possible they leave us be for the simple fact that they are unwilling to risk engaging so many enemies who can simply ignore anything and everything they might attempt to use against us."

    I wasn''t sure we could count on that. Putting faith in the reasonableness and logic of a pair of psychopaths trying to destroy the entire city seemed like a bit too much of a stretch. On the other hand, since we didn''t know where they were, they could essentially wait us out by staying put and working on their master plan out of sight.

    I really hoped those trackers panned out.

    "Uhn," Fran muttered despondently.

    Yes, that did put us basically back at square one, didn''t it? One of the masterminds was dead, but if he''d been telling the truth, then he wasn''t really the most dangerous of them, and he hadn''t contributed much of anything to Project Demonic Fog. The other two were still somewhere out there in the city, and right now, we didn''t have much of an idea where.

    "Was your investigation at the museum truly so fruitless?" Jekyll asked.

    "We didn''t even have to go," Mordred said. She jerked her thumb at Andresen. "This guy just wanted to know how Servants work, and the putz didn''t even realize all he had to do was ask the Boss Lady to find out. We spent, like, an hour down there in those musty old catacombs for nothing."

    "Not nothing," Andersen corrected her tersely. He adjusted his glasses with a finger, mouth drawn tight. "While it is true that some time might have been saved if I had simply asked the experts at Chaldea for the relevant information, there was some other information I discovered during my reading. Namely, someone was down there before us and organized the books to save us time so that I might find the one I needed quicker and easier."

    "We already knew that," I pointed out.

    "Yes, but the specifics are the important part," he said. "Whoever it was that went down there before us, he knew where to find the information I wanted, and he even went through the trouble of arranging the books in such a way that I would find everything else I wanted before discovering my main interest. To wit, whoever it was that went down there, they knew we would be coming, they knew why we would be there, and they arranged things to accommodate us when we did."

    That¡­actually was a bit of a concern. Not impossible, of course, nowhere near it, and all things considered, maybe not even all that special. I knew enough precogs ¡ª enough precogs who were powerful enough ¡ª to be as impressed and disturbed as Mash and the twins were. But precogs of that level were still rare, even among Heroic Spirits, and Servants who did have precognition that powerful tended to be Casters.

    And when our enemies were likely to be Casters, too, I didn''t like our odds of having those two categories overlapping.

    "So they were¡­helping us?" Ritsuka asked doubtfully.

    "Sounds like an ass-backwards way of doing it," Jeanne Alter remarked.

    "So it would seem," said Andersen. "Of course, why it is they would decide to do so obliquely instead of meeting with us directly, well, that''s a question I don''t have an answer to. Nothing I can think of satisfies all the criteria available."

    A thought occurred to me. Could it really be that convenient?

    "Unless they''re a spy."

    Nearly every head turned my way again.

    "A spy?" Mash asked.

    "That¡­would explain the refusal to meet us face to face," Andersen muttered.

    Rika suddenly perked up. "Oh! Oh! Hey, we''re in England, right? London, even! This is the perfect place for British Heroic Spirits to show up, isn''t it?"

    "Yes¡­" Ritsuka said slowly.

    "That''s how it works, Senpai," Mash agreed.

    "Although not a guarantee," Flamel added, gesturing down at himself, "as I myself demonstrate."

    Rika''s mouth drew into an enormous grin. "Then if we''re looking for a spy in Britain, I know the perfect one!" She held out her hands, shaping one hand into a gun and holding it with the other, then swung her arm around and aimed it at each one of us in turn. "He''s got a license to kill, and a smile to die another day for! He''s the man with the golden gun, and he uses it to deliver a quantum of solace, because diamonds are forever, but the world is not enough, because you only live twice!"

    Mash just looked confused, but Ritsuka slapped a hand to his face and groaned.

    "What?" asked Mordred, totally lost.

    "Don''t worry," Jeanne Alter told her with a leer, "you get used to it."

    This did not, however, make Mordred feel any better or less confused. In fact, it did the opposite.

    "Rika," I began patiently, "I don''t think we should expect an appearance by James Bond."

    She gestured almost desperately at Jekyll, "But Doctor Jekyll''s right here," and then at Fran, "and so is Frankenstein''s¡­!" But she seemed to realize what she''d been about to say and trailed off awkwardly. "Um¡­you know¡­"

    "Uhn," Fran grunted.

    "I''m sure Senpai meant nothing by it," Mash reassured her.

    "She''s a bit airheaded like that," Ritsuka mumbled into his palm.

    "I''m sorry?" Jekyll said. "I confess, I''m not entirely certain what my presence proves or disproves about the subject."

    "Nothing concrete."

    Why figures from out of literature were appearing was something we still didn''t have an answer for, and I wasn''t sure we were ever going to get them. The thought that I didn''t want to acknowledge was that ¡ª as much as I might have said otherwise ¡ª it was actually entirely possible for Bond to show up here.

    I just didn''t want him to.

    "Disregarding the possibilities of fictional spies," Andersen began, and he lanced Rika with a very deliberate stare, "it''s not entirely out of the question that there is a spy for us in the enemy''s camp, but that still doesn''t satisfy the problem of how they knew what we would be looking for clearly enough to lay it out for me to find."

    Some part of me wanted point out that Rika had a very good point about supposedly "fictional" characters appearing here in this Singularity, and she hadn''t even gone as far as to hit the most obvious one, Nursery Rhyme, who was an entire genre of fiction personified, but in the interest of keeping things on track, I suppressed the urge.

    No matter how good it would feel to pull one over on him this time. I wouldn''t say I was holding a grudge, but the memory of his prodding and needling from yesterday still stung a little.

    "Unless they meant it to be a hint," Flamel pointed out, "perhaps to inform us of the nature of the fog and its relationship to the appearance of Servants."

    My lips drew into a tight line. "None of this helps us figure out what the enemy is up to and where. Whoever this spy is or isn''t, he may have helped guide us to what we were looking for in the Clock Tower, but he didn''t give us any information about where B and M are hiding and what they want to do with the fog. We shouldn''t expect him to hand us all of the answers to what we need."

    "But he may deliver us that information in the future, or arrange for us to receive it through some other means," said Andersen.

    And the rats in the sewers might grow wings and fly from exposure to the fog. I wasn''t about to hold my breath.

    "We''ll cross that bridge when we get to it," I said.

    "Don''t you mean burn it down?" Jeanne Alter drawled.

    I ignored her. "But until then, the only thing we can do is act like it won''t happen, so we need to continue our investigation like normal. Doctor Jekyll, is there any news from your network?"

    Jekyll blinked at being addressed so abruptly. "Ah ¡ª that is to say, no, I''m afraid there have not been any new reports, only the standard fare regarding the patrols of Helter Skelter. If aught else has occurred outside the norm, my network has yet to hear of it."

    Not ideal, but it was about what I''d expected.

    "Then we can go over other points of interest in the afternoon and watch the map to see where those patrol groups go," I went on. "In the meantime¡­"

    I turned around towards the tea room, and as though I''d planned it all to perfection, Emiya appeared there, holding a tray of beef sandwiches. The spices he''d used tickled my nose, sharp enough to cut.

    With a grin, he announced, "Lunch, everyone!"

 Chapter CXLVI: Legacy of a Checkered Past

    Chapter CXLVI: Legacy of a Checkered Past

    Lunch was eaten with much enthusiasm and enjoyed by everyone involved. Ren¨¦e was the only one unhappy with it, because she wasn¡¯t the one who made it, and if Emiya was just a little bit smug, anyone who noticed it was wise enough not to comment on it and worsen her mood.

    The one who seemed most excited was Jackie, who ate just about everything that was put in front of her like she had never had a proper meal before, and aside from what she¡¯d had so far with us, she probably hadn¡¯t. The only comparison I could make to how she must have grown up was the orphans and the kids I¡¯d taken responsibility for after Leviathan, left alone and destitute with no reliable source of any food, let alone something as rich as Emiya¡¯s usual cooking.

    Maybe, unlike those kids, she hadn¡¯t had anyone to take her in. Andersen had said her suffering was a thing of the past, something I couldn¡¯t change, so maybe he knew even better than I did what she¡¯d had to deal with and how it had killed her young enough to render her forever a child.

    A part of me wanted to ask, but another part loathed the idea and dreaded having to put up with whatever condescending remark he might have to make in the process, like suggesting that I had gotten in over my head because of my own trauma. The more practical side of me won, just as a matter of the fact that it would probably be better to ask Jackie herself instead of going behind her back. Frankly, I wasn¡¯t sure she would be all that emotionally tangled in giving a response.

    I imagined she might deliver her whole life story as a matter of fact. Like it had happened and it was all over with, so what did it even matter anymore? I could even relate to that; the bullying had been terrible and awful when it was happening, but looking back on it now, it felt like it had happened to someone else entirely, as though fifteen-year-old Taylor Hebert was some strange and fantastical creature, and somewhere between that ill-fated bank robbery and the moment I pulled the trigger and killed Coil, she had simply ceased to exist. I was what had crawled out of her remains like a moth from a cocoon.

    I shelved it for later, when there could be a private moment away from everyone, and decided instead to simply enjoy the food and pretend I had any idea whatsoever about how to be her mother.

    Once we¡¯d all had our fill and there was nothing left but crumbs, as Emiya and Ren¨¦e carried off the plates and utensils to be washed, the rest of us eventually found our way back to the study and the map contained therein. Displayed on it was a collection of dots clustered in a single building ¡ª us ¡ª and a smattering of other dots representing the enemy patrols.

    In the time since they¡¯d all initially been marked with a tracker, they had obviously moved and spread out across the city. There were, of course, entire swathes of the city that were completely barren of any sign of them, but as for the rest, they had all gone to different sections, and there didn¡¯t seem to be much mixing between them.

    A thought occurred to me then, and I stared down at the moving dots as though they could answer me: did these Helter Skelter even need maintenance, or were they completely, fully autonomous?

    Presumably, if they needed repairing and refueling at any point, then they would have to return to their creator for an oil change and a tuneup, so to speak, and when that happened, we should be able to track them back to him. If they were completely independent, however, and were left to go until they couldn¡¯t anymore? Then we were back to square one.

    I¡¯d been operating under the assumption that these things were all disposable. That ¡ª unlike any of the Tinkers I¡¯d known throughout my career ¡ª if their creator cared about them at all, it was for their utility as a distraction and their ability to gather information, considering how many there were clomping around the streets. I should have thought of it earlier, that simply because they were mass-producible didn¡¯t mean their creator wouldn¡¯t be attached to them or need to put in extra work to keep them going.

    Unfortunately, without context, any point on this map was the same as any other. Even tracking them to see if they visited any common points separately or together would only give us a direction to look and not much more.

    ¡°Let¡¯s go over what we have so far,¡± I said to the group.

    Rika perked up. ¡°Oh, are we doing a recap episode? I usually sleep through those or skip ¡®em!¡±

    Her brother gave her an exasperated look and a sharp poke in the side, and she squeaked and squirmed away from him. Having gotten used to their byplay, I pretended nothing had happened.

    ¡°Recap episode?¡± Mordred echoed, confused.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran grunted doubtfully.

    Anyway.

    ¡°When we ¡ª us from Chaldea ¡ª Rayshifted into this Singularity, we dropped in out near Whitechapel.¡± I pointed to the spot on the map, or the general area of it at least, where we had first shown up. ¡°We encountered automata out in the fog. Their weak presence out in that direction tells us that B and M are likely not out there and don¡¯t care about that section of the city.¡±

    Mordred cast a suspicious eye at Jackie. ¡°Then why were you out there?¡±

    Jackie just looked back at her, completely unbothered. ¡°We were born there,¡± she answered simply. ¡°It was home.¡±

    I wondered exactly how she meant that. Jack the Ripper was born there? Jackie herself ¡ª the human who formed the Heroic Spirit ¡ª had been born there? The Assassin Class Servant, Jack the Ripper, had materialized there upon being summoned? Maybe all three.

    Ritsuka looked at Jackie, expression somewhere between understanding and sad. I wasn¡¯t sure whether I should be happy or not that he could still be surprised by the unfair cruelty of the world.

    Impulse made me reach out and lay a hand on Jackie¡¯s shoulder, and she leaned into me, smiling and content.

    ¡°We should probably check again to see if anything¡¯s changed in the last few days,¡± I went on, ¡°but I doubt that it has. Sir Mordred, we¡¯ll leave that to you.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, sure,¡± she said casually. ¡°Ain¡¯t that hard. I can take care of it, no problem.¡±

    ¡°You get the shit job,¡± Jeanne Alter jeered.

    Mordred just grinned. ¡°Better than sitting around here, innit?¡±

    Jeanne Alter flipped her the bird, and Tohsaka scowled thunderously even as Nursery Rhyme giggled.

    ¡°We¡¯ve already investigated most of Soho,¡± I said quickly. My finger swung around to point to that section of the city next. ¡°First, when Ritsuka and Rika¡¯s team went to investigate Victor Frankenstein¡¯s disappearance and found Fran ¡ª¡± Fran¡¯s hands curled into fists as her lips thinned into a tight line ¡ª ¡°and later on when we were investigating Andersen¡¯s magical tome.¡±

    ¡°Me and Papa!¡± Nursery Rhyme said brightly.

    And I really didn¡¯t want to think too much about the experience of being at her mercy. The Nameless Forest ¡ª what a horrifying thing.

    ¡°There were some patrol groups out there, but otherwise, no sign of activity by the enemy. Unless Andersen has anything to add?¡±

    I turned to look at him, but he grimaced and shook his head.

    ¡°My own investigations were limited,¡± he said. ¡°The matter of chief concern for me was the magical tome.¡± He slanted a meaningful glance over at Nursery Rhyme, who just tilted her head and smiled back at him innocently. ¡°Most of my time was spent trying to avoid direct conflict with it, so the focus of my attention was narrow.¡±

    I hadn¡¯t expected much else. It wasn¡¯t impossible that he¡¯d been holding out on us, letting us come to our own conclusions organically instead of giving us the information directly, because that seemed to be the way he liked to do things, but he hadn¡¯t shown any hints of that in this case.

    ¡°We were also doing patrols around this area in the afternoons,¡± Ritsuka reminded me. ¡°We¡­didn¡¯t really have to deal with too many enemy patrol groups either, although there were some.¡±

    ¡°Mostly those doll things,¡± Mordred said with a grunt. ¡°Automata¡­or whatever. A few of them Helter Skelter, but not as many.¡±

    ¡°That may change now that Paracelsus has been eliminated,¡± I warned, ¡°but for now, they don¡¯t seem to have much interest in our location either. We¡¯ll have to make sure to keep a close watch for any shifts in the next day or two.¡±

    Rika nodded. ¡°Right, cause they lost a guy. They might swear revenge and come after us in a climactic battle where they reveal that actually, they¡¯re not lefthanded and they¡¯ve been fighting with a handicap the entire time.¡±

    ¡°¡­Right.¡±

    I was pretty sure I got the gist of what she was saying, at least.

    Flamel hummed. ¡°Given what we learned from Paracelsus earlier, it¡¯s not impossible they might replenish their ranks of the Servants they have already lost. If Servants are being summoned by the fog itself, only to be captured and¡­adjusted by the enemy, it may be that their numbers have grown since Frankenstein first recorded the initials of the three original masterminds.¡±

    Or maybe there had always been more than three Servants on the enemy¡¯s side and P, B, and M had just been the ones puppeting the entire thing. It may even be a combination of both, since Nursery Rhyme proved that Servants were still appearing, even several days into this thing.

    ¡°Even if we assume you¡¯re right, that may not be as large a problem as it sounds,¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°After all, it¡¯s entirely random, isn¡¯t it? The Heroic Spirits summoned may have a connection either to the situation or the location, but that doesn¡¯t guarantee they¡¯ll be able to help the other two push their plan forward.¡±

    He had something of a point. That didn¡¯t mean that any of these hypothetical Servants would be pushovers we didn¡¯t have to worry about. The last thing we needed was to have King Arthur actually show up on the enemy¡¯s side again, although ¡ª I deliberately avoided looking at Mordred ¡ª we did technically have someone on our side with an advantage against her, didn¡¯t we?

    ¡°We have no way of knowing,¡± I said. ¡°Until we encounter them, we won¡¯t have any idea if or how many other Servants they¡¯ve managed to subvert in the last few days from anywhere within the city.¡± Maybe that was even the real purpose behind their patrol groups: keeping an eye out for new Servants materializing from the fog. ¡°That also means we should be doing the same thing. If more Servants actually are being summoned every day, then they could be helpful for us, too.¡±

    ¡°We haven¡¯t seen any, though,¡± Mash said. ¡°Does that mean that there aren¡¯t actually that many being summoned by the fog?¡±

    ¡°Or that they¡¯re all being snatched up before we even see them,¡± Ritsuka added grimly.

    There was just one snag with the idea, though. ¡°Maybe. But if they were picking up new Servants every day, then there wouldn¡¯t be any reason for them to avoid fielding those Servants against us. The fact we haven¡¯t encountered any others ¡ª no, more to the point, Paracelsus came after us himself earlier, and he didn¡¯t have any other Servants with him. If they had enough others to back them up, then there was no reason why he wouldn¡¯t have brought more than just a bunch of Helter Skelter and homunculi.¡±

    ¡°Or they¡¯re all a bunch of weaklings,¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. She jerked her thumb over at Andersen. ¡°Like the pipsqueak over there.¡±

    Andersen adjusted his glasses, scowling. ¡°We can¡¯t all be violent thugs.¡±

    ¡°Ha! That the best you got?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m an author,¡± Andersen said. ¡°Give me some time.¡±

    ¡°Write something worth reading, and maybe I will,¡± Jeanne Alter shot back viciously.

    ¡°Enough,¡± I said sternly, ¡°or am I going to have to put you both in the corner and make you go to bed without supper?¡±

    Jeanne Alter looked at me and very maturely stuck out her tongue.

    ¡°Oof,¡± Rika said. ¡°She¡¯s only been a mom for a day and she¡¯s already pulling out the mom cards!¡±

    Jackie giggled.

    ¡°Are we¡­still assuming the B or M might be famous authors, Miss Taylor?¡± Mash asked.

    Thank you for getting us back on track, I didn¡¯t say, and instead, ¡°We can¡¯t rule it out. But at this point, we might have to expand our view of what can classify as a Caster and look at inventors and others who don¡¯t fit the mold of more traditional heroes, too.¡±

    Because I still couldn¡¯t figure out the robots. What? Why? How? Who could possibly be the Heroic Spirit making them and what did he have to do with robots in the first place?

    Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, Flamel, and Tohsaka all nodded thoughtfully, but Fran froze, brow furrowing, and she grimaced, looking down and away.

    ¡°Fran?¡± I asked her. ¡°Is something wrong?¡±

    She looked back up at me, hesitated, and looked away again. ¡°Uhn¡­¡±

    ¡°Did you think of something?¡± Mash asked.

    ¡°Uhn¡­Uh-uhn,¡± Fran replied, uncertain. ¡°Uhn uhn uhng-uhn.¡±

    My mouth drew into a tight line. ¡°I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s a good idea to bring you along with us.¡±

    ¡°Is that what she said?¡± Rika said incredulously.

    ¡°We¡¯ve got more than enough Servants to protect us all,¡± Ritsuka said, turning to me. ¡°And, Senpai¡­ We don¡¯t have any more leads right now, do we? Since we looked into the Clock Tower earlier and didn¡¯t really find any clues down there.¡±

    My lips drew tighter. He wasn¡¯t wrong. It wasn¡¯t that there weren¡¯t other places for us to look, and we still didn¡¯t know whether or not the trackers would wind up panning out for sure, but in terms of a solid direction to go, we didn¡¯t really have any right now and more might not ever materialize. Not if all the enemy needed to do was bide their time and wait.

    Whoever had sent out that crow to watch us was almost certainly a mage of some kind, but they would probably be a lot more subtle next time. And if they were anything like a traditional mage, then there was almost no way they would come and confront us themselves, not unless they had set things up in their favor as much as possible.

    Of course, I would have said much the same about Paracelsus.

    ¡°I¡¯m willing to take responsibility for her,¡± Mordred said suddenly. ¡°Course, that means I won¡¯t be able to fight as hard as before, but if I gotta be the one to protect her, I¡¯m up for it.¡±

    Fran smiled. ¡°Uhn.¡±

    At the end of the day, pragmatism had to win here. ¡°If you really think you can do it, then we can give it a try.¡±

    ¡°Okay, timeout,¡± said Rika, jabbing her fingertips into the palm of her opposite hand to form a T. ¡°For those of us who don¡¯t speak adorable, what are we trying, here?¡±

    Tohsaka breathed out a sigh and muttered, ¡°I thought I was the only one.¡±

    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

    ¡°Amazing what personal experience does for your capacity for empathy, isn¡¯t it?¡± said Andersen. ¡°On the other hand, the other one, I can¡¯t explain at all. I suppose some people are just born like that.¡±

    ¡°Fran thinks she might be able to track the traces of magical energy in the Helter Skelter,¡± Ritsuka explained to his sister. ¡°She¡­hasn¡¯t really said why or how, just that she¡¯ll tell us once she knows for sure.¡±

    Beep-beep!

    When I answered my communicator, Romani¡¯s face appeared in the air. ¡°Romani?¡±

    ¡°About that,¡± he began, and then backtracked. ¡°Ah, sorry to interrupt without any warning, but this seemed like as good a time as any to tell you guys about this, so I think it¡¯s okay, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°It has to be.¡± Marie leaned over his shoulder, face serious. ¡°We¡¯ve been running an analysis of these¡­Helter Skelter you¡¯ve been encountering, because they¡¯re way out of the norm for that era of London, and the sheer number you¡¯ve seen should be impossible to manufacture in the timeframe we know about. We can¡¯t explain everything, but we do have some information on their construction.¡±

    ¡°You do?¡± Mash asked.

    Romani nodded. ¡°Yeah. Putting aside the time constraints, the amount of materials necessary to build that many robots with the sort of articulation and locomotion you¡¯re seeing in those Helter Skelter is just plain ridiculous. There¡¯s no way to do that with any sort of subtlety. We should have detected it by now if they were being built manually in a factory or something, and frankly, the idea that any factory from Victorian London could mass produce those things is just all kinds of impossible, as well ¡ª¡±

    ¡°The point,¡± Marie cut across him, ¡°is that we¡¯ve looked into the discrepancies and structure and ran our theory by Da Vinci, who agreed with us: whoever is creating those Helter Skelter, they¡¯re using a Noble Phantasm to do it, because the Helter Skelter are a part of it.¡±

    A ripple of surprise ran through the entire group.

    ¡°No shit,¡± said Jeanne Alter. Tohsaka himself was too stunned to even think about reprimanding her.

    ¡°But wait,¡± said Mash, ¡°Miss Taylor¡¯s knife was able to cut through them!¡±

    It had. As though their plating was ordinary steel, in fact.

    ¡°It¡¯s because the units you¡¯ve encountered so far are simply mass-produced drones.¡± Da Vinci¡¯s image appeared suddenly in the upper corner of the hologram, sitting over Romani¡¯s shoulder opposite of Marie. ¡°Their mystery is roughly equivalent to what Shakespeare managed to bestow upon Taylor¡¯s Last Resort, and so in terms of how they interact, it should be the same as if they were both ordinary materials. Because that knife is designed specifically for dealing with heavy armor and unusually sturdy materials, it was able to deal with the Helter Skelter¡¯s armor without much issue.

    ¡°However,¡± she added, ¡°if you had attempted to do the same thing to the gray colored Helter Skelter accompanying Paracelsus earlier, you likely would have had a much harder time.¡±

    I could only think of one reason why she would say so.

    ¡°Because much more time and effort went into making it, so it¡¯s a higher quality model.¡±

    Da Vinci smiled. ¡°Esatto! So far, I¡¯ve identified three distinct variations of the Helter Skelter, distinguished by their differing colorations. The bronze ones are most common, and therefore the weakest. The green ones are slightly less common, but they make up for it by being a full tier higher than their counterparts, in terms of strength and durability. The rarest and most powerful of the whole lot are the gray ones, and that¡¯s why you¡¯ve encountered only one or two of them up to this point.¡±

    ¡°And they¡¯re all part of the master¡¯s Noble Phantasm?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Marie.

    ¡°More specifically,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°they are both the product of the Noble Phantasm and its manifestation. It¡¯s a beautiful thing, really. Unfortunately, that makes it troublesome, as well. The owner is likely limited only in the amount of magical energy he has access to. Otherwise, he can make as many Helter Skelter as he likes for as long as he likes. And if the Grail truly is in his possession¡­¡±

    ¡°Then the only limit is how long it takes to make each one,¡± Tohsaka concluded, horrified.

    ¡°How frighteningly effective,¡± said Andersen. ¡°With a force like that at his disposal, it¡¯s no wonder the Association was destroyed so easily.¡±

    ¡°And the culprit could escape without ever having to appear in person,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°Verily, he might act through his proxies with impunity and engage his foes at truly extreme distances, never once needing to risk his own life and limb. An enemy such as that would be all but untouchable.¡±

    ¡°So what?¡± Mordred asked, unbothered. ¡°They¡¯re not that strong. We handled them pretty easily earlier today, didn¡¯t we?¡±

    ¡°We have no idea how long it takes to make each one!¡± Marie snapped. ¡°If the Servant using it only needs a single hour to create one of the highest tier Helter Skelter, then he could have made an entire army of them by now, and the reason you haven¡¯t seen more than a handful is because the rest are guarding the Grail!¡±

    And that was only assuming it took an hour. It could take more, but it could also take much less. If he could pump out the gray Helter Skelter every five minutes, then it was entirely possible that whoever he was really did have an army of them guarding the Grail.

    ¡°So what?¡± Mordred repeated. ¡°They ain¡¯t that strong. If everyone else is too scared to fight ¡®em all at once, then I¡¯ll just turn ¡®em all into scrap by myself.¡±

    Marie¡¯s eyes flashed.

    ¡°A concentration of power like that would be detectable, wouldn¡¯t it?¡± I asked, cutting across them both. ¡°Have Chaldea¡¯s sensors picked anything like that up while we were out investigating?¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately not,¡± Romani answered. ¡°Forgetting about the fog for a minute, we¡¯re pretty sure the other two guys are Casters, right? If they¡¯re set up anywhere, it would be on top of a ley line, and in that case, it would be like sitting in its shadow. Even with our sensors, detecting the difference would be way too much to ask for.¡±

    Marie grimaced and closed her eyes for a moment, taking in a deep, calming breath. ¡°Unfortunately, this is the limit of the assistance we¡¯re able to give you from here. As you get closer, we may be able to offer more information, but until then, you¡¯ll have to continue the investigation using your own wits.¡±

    Rika let out a despairing moan. ¡°We¡¯re going to have to do more running around? My headless chicken impression is pretty good, but not that good!¡±

    ¡°The benefit of practice, no doubt,¡± Andersen drawled. Rika stuck her tongue out at him.

    ¡°I do have some good news,¡± Da Vinci said with a smile, and then apologetically, added, ¡°though not, I¡¯m sorry to say, Rika, anything that would help you find the culprits in possession of the Grail. Mash, if you would be so kind as to set up your shield and prepare for a supply drop in the parlor, I have a present that needs to be delivered.¡±

    ¡°O-oh!¡± said Mash. ¡°Yes, of course, Miss Da Vinci!¡±

    She squeezed her way out of the group and hurried back to the parlor, manifesting her shield as she went, and then, when she looked out across the room, she hesitated and turned back towards us. ¡°U-um¡­ There isn¡¯t enough space to set my shield down.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s perfectly fine, Miss Mash,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°If the furniture happens to present an obstacle to you, then I give my full permission to you to move it as needed. I only request that you return the room to its previous state afterwards.¡±

    Mash smiled. ¡°Okay! Thank you, Doctor Jekyll.¡±

    She set her shield off to the side of the fireplace, leaned up against the mantlepiece, and then reached out to take gentle hold of the couch so that she could lift it up and move it backwards.

    ¡°Here,¡± said Ritsuka, and he sidled out past the group to go and join her, ¡°let me help, Mash.¡±

    She favored him with a smile as he joined her, taking hold of one side of the sofa so that she wasn¡¯t trying to awkwardly manage the whole thing by herself without damaging it.

    ¡°Thank you, Senpai.¡±

    ¡°No problem, Mash.¡±

    Rika chuckled, low and quiet, grinning as she watched them move the furniture together.

    ¡°Fu-freaking domestic,¡± Jeanne Alter murmured.

    ¡°They¡¯re cute together,¡± Nursery Rhyme said. ¡°Don¡¯t you think so, Papa?¡±

    Unfortunately, she didn¡¯t try to keep her voice down at all, and Ritsuka nearly dropped the chair he had grabbed while Mash stumbled on thin air. The tips of their ears were both burning, but they pretended they hadn¡¯t heard her.

    ¡°Good grief,¡± Tohsaka said.

    ¡°Watching them hurts,¡± Andersen agreed.

    Because you never had much luck in love either? I didn¡¯t say. No need to start a petty fight, right now.

    Once the furniture had been moved out of the way, Mash set her shield up in the space that had been opened up and stepped back. Hers and Ritsuka¡¯s cheeks were both still faintly red, and they deliberately avoided looking in each other¡¯s direction, but they gave no other sign that Nursery Rhyme¡¯s innocent question had bothered them.

    I wondered if it really was so innocent.

    ¡°R-ready, Miss Da Vinci,¡± said Mash.

    ¡°Director, that¡¯s your cue,¡± Da Vinci said. ¡°I¡¯ve already arranged everything else, so all that¡¯s needed is for you to send it.¡±

    Marie, whose lips had been steadily pulling into a tighter and tighter line, startled, and then turned to the side. The sound of her fingers tapping was only barely picked up by the microphone. ¡°R-right. Coordinates¡­have already been set. Parameters are all adjusted. Rayshifting in three, two, one¡­¡±

    There was a brief flash of light. A magic circle lifted up off of the surface of Mash¡¯s shield, glowing brightly, and then, a moment later, was replaced by a small box. It thumped gently as it landed.

    Mash stepped over and bent down to pick it up, handling it gently in case it was something fragile.

    ¡°This particular gift is meant for Taylor,¡± said Da Vinci.

    I looked back at her. ¡°Me?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡± Da Vinci smiled. ¡°The Director did tell you, didn¡¯t she? It took a little longer than I would have liked it to, all things considered, but I wasn¡¯t about to let a little fog beat me, no matter how virulent a toxin it is.¡±

    My heart leapt in my chest. The gas mask that would let me go outside during the afternoons.

    ¡°You finished it?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Da Vinci said smugly as Mash handed the box over to me (¡°Here, Miss Taylor.¡±), and I tried not to seem too eager as I accepted it. ¡°If I¡¯d had access to better resources, I would have had it finished in a single afternoon. With our situation as it is, however, I had to improvise a little, so there was nothing to be done except to cannibalize a project or two and use whatever I had lying around.¡±

    I stopped just short of opening it. ¡°Whatever you had lying around?¡±

    Not one of my spider puppets, surely. I¡¯d been looking forward to finally having some of those.

    ¡°A few resources I wasn¡¯t otherwise using,¡± Da Vinci clarified. ¡°Go on. Open it. I guarantee you, you¡¯ll be pleasantly surprised.¡±

    I hesitated for only a second longer, then undid the latch holding it closed and flipped open the lid. I was half-expecting to find some sort of medieval fantasy version of a gas mask, like a clockwork take on the sort of thing a firefighter would wear, with brass gears and tanned leather and some sort of miniaturized pulley system that worked the filter. Something that would have fit right in amongst the famous pages of Da Vinci¡¯s sketches.

    That wasn¡¯t what I found inside that box. Instead¡­

    ¡°Da Vinci, this¡­¡±

    ¡­a familiar pair of polarized white lenses looked back at me, shifting through iridescent colors in the flickering light of the fireplace and the gas lamps. They contrasted starkly against the black fabric they were set in, but complemented the false mandibles along the jawline that gave it an almost insectoid appearance.

    ¡°Like I said,¡± said Da Vinci, like she hadn¡¯t just handed me a piece of my past, ¡°I had to work with what I had lying around. Conveniently, that happened to be something of yours you no longer had a need for, so I didn¡¯t need to worry about adjusting the sizing or the fit, only about adding the functionality necessary to filter out the fog and the magical energy inside of it. I hope you don¡¯t mind.¡±

    It was my old mask. The one I¡¯d worn at the end of the world, when everything had started falling to pieces and all the lines had started to blur. I hadn¡¯t worn it since then, except for that simulation with the twins ¡ª hadn¡¯t even looked at it myself in nearly two years.

    ¡°No.¡± I lifted the mask out of the box. I wasn¡¯t sure how to feel about it. After all, it was a relic of the person I used to be. The idea of wearing it again was both nostalgic and dreadful. ¡°You¡¯re right, I didn¡¯t need it anymore. I already told you that you could do whatever you wanted with it.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t quite the same as I remembered it, of course. There were vents along the mandibles, angled down, and a new piece over the mouth and nose with perforations that revealed the filter beneath it, but Da Vinci, artist that she was, had designed them to fit the rest of the aesthetic. Anyone who had never seen it before would have thought the additions were a part of the original mask.

    ¡°Dear me,¡± murmured Flamel, ¡°what a frightening visage.¡±

    ¡°Fitting, though, all things considered,¡± Andersen added. I didn¡¯t exactly have room to argue, considering the thing was something I made to begin with.

    ¡°Wait a minute,¡± said Rika, ¡°I¡¯ve seen that before!¡±

    ¡°You have?¡± Marie demanded.

    Rika nodded. ¡°Yeah! During Senpai¡¯s Caster simulation thing a couple months back! It was part of the costume she was wearing!¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s brow furrowed, and he leaned over to get a closer look. ¡°Now that you mention it¡­¡±

    Mash blinked. ¡°It is?¡±

    Rika nodded.

    ¡°I thought it was just a scary costume she made up for that simulation,¡± she said. ¡°But I guess it was based upon a real thing?¡± He brow furrowed, too. ¡°Hey, wait a minute! That costume was super scary and super weird and I¡¯ve never seen it before in my life! Why is it based upon a real thing? Does that mean that the rest of it was real, too? Senpai, I have so many questions!¡±

    I was just going to shut it down and avoid the question, but a thought occurred to me, and even if I didn¡¯t think it was my usual way of dealing with things, it was too perfect, too quintessentially Alec for me to simply not use it.

    ¡°Call it the legacy of a misspent youth.¡±

    A beat passed, and then Mordred broke out into cackles. Marie¡¯s face, meanwhile, had settled into something conflicted, like she couldn¡¯t decide whether she was supposed to be mortified by my answer or satisfied that I¡¯d managed to dodge the question.

    She wasn¡¯t the only one with a reaction like that. Most of the rest of the group was just confused. They didn¡¯t have any of the context for when and where Rika had seen my mask before or why it might be strange for me to have one, so all they could do was wonder what in the world was going on and what I meant about the legacy of a misspent youth. Arash was the only one who would probably have understood exactly how truthful I was being, and he wasn¡¯t there at the moment.

    ¡°I suppose it¡¯s not the years, it¡¯s the mileage, isn¡¯t it?¡± Andersen muttered.

    For once, something we could both agree on.

    ¡°Regardless,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°the filter on that mask should keep you safe from the fog, as long as you secure it properly. Since it¡¯s yours to begin with, I imagine you already know how to do that, so I won¡¯t bother giving you instructions on how. Regrettably, there wasn¡¯t enough time for me to do anything with the lenses, so while they are indeed still a match for your prescription, I couldn¡¯t add an infrared function or anything of the sort to make it easier for you to see in the fog. I¡¯m sorry.¡±

    Frankly, I hadn¡¯t been expecting anything like that in the first place, so there was nothing for me to be disappointed about.

    ¡°It¡¯s fine.¡±

    Although now that she¡¯d brought it up, it would actually have been pretty incredible to have something like that added to the lenses. Something that could see magical energy would be unimaginably useful, if calibrated specifically to look for dense concentrations of it ¡ª like, say, a Servant¡¯s spiritual core.

    ¡°Is Mommy going to wear that?¡± Jackie asked curiously.

    I offered her a small, patient smile. ¡°Later, when we go back outside.¡±

    For now, the mask went back into the box, and I redid the latch. Without anywhere else to put it for the moment, I just held onto it, tucking it against my hip. Somehow, it felt heavy, like a weight pulling down on my fingers, and yet it couldn¡¯t have weighed all that much more than it had originally.

    It was just a mask, I told myself. Silk, chitin, nylon, glass, and whatever Da Vinci had added for the filtration. It shouldn¡¯t be any different to wear it again now than it had been a few months ago.

    To Da Vinci, I asked, ¡°You included the Ley Line Terminals on the map you programmed into our communicators, right?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± she answered. ¡°It might be a bit difficult to navigate your way to them in the fog, but the location data should be accurate to that era.¡±

    ¡°Hold on!¡± said Rika. ¡°Seriously! Senpai, that costume! That¡¯s way too good to be a Halloween costume! That¡¯s real silk, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Spun by real spiders,¡± Andersen added.

    ¡°Drop it,¡± Marie said tersely.

    ¡°But,¡± Rika began.

    Her brother set a hand on her shoulder. ¡°Maybe later, Rika. I don¡¯t think now is the time.¡±

    Rika subsided, pouting. ¡°It¡¯s never the time,¡± she muttered, crossing her arms petulantly. ¡°Is it ever going to be later?¡±

    Maybe not. With everything that had happened so quickly after Okeanos, I¡¯d forgotten to ever ask Marie about it, but if her reaction here was any indication, then what she¡¯d originally told me about keeping my past as much a secret as possible seemed to still be relevant. Rika¡¯s curiosity might never be sated.

    Some part of me was relieved. Some part of me felt just a little bit guilty.

    ¡°Regarding the ley lines,¡± said Flamel into the awkward silence that followed, ¡°if your data should, for whatever reason, prove inaccurate, I should be able to map them myself here.¡±

    He gestured to the diorama.

    ¡°Did you ever investigate them before we arrived?¡± I asked.

    ¡°In person, no,¡± he said, shaking his head. ¡°However, I sent Sir Mordred to look into their locations, as a matter of eliminating possible places for the enemy to have been hiding.¡±

    Mordred grunted. ¡°Didn¡¯t find shit out there. Buncha Helter Skelter and some of them homunculi, but no Servants or nothing.¡±

    ¡°They could be underground,¡± Romani murmured thoughtfully.

    We all turned to him. ¡°Underground?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    Romani blinked. ¡°Ah. Well, um, building underneath London can get a bit dicey, at least for normal construction, because of the high water table, but that doesn¡¯t mean underground structures are impossible or anything. I mean, the Clock Tower kind of proves that, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Most of that is Association propaganda,¡± Marie told us all. ¡°It would be inconvenient if the city started trying to build down into spaces where the Clock Tower already exists, so the Association has been convincing people for centuries that the ground isn¡¯t stable enough to support extensive subterranean structures.¡±

    ¡°Wait, really?¡± Romani asked incredulously.

    ¡°It¡¯s not that there isn¡¯t some truth to it,¡± Marie admitted. ¡°But you do realize how deep the Clock Tower goes, don¡¯t you? For that matter, just how far it stretches beneath London! If it was completely impossible to build anything beneath the city, then something like that would never have existed!¡±

    I wasn¡¯t sure she was giving enough credit to the magi who built it, just based upon the kinds of things I¡¯d seen Shakers do in the past, but it wasn¡¯t a fight worth picking, so I didn¡¯t. She probably knew better about the subject than I did anyway.

    ¡°Then we have another lead,¡± I said. ¡°Sir Mordred will check on Whitechapel and see if the enemy¡¯s presence has changed there in the past few days. Once she¡¯s returned from that, we can take Fran out and have her see if she can follow the trail of one of the Helter Skelter and lead us to whoever is behind them. Depending on how that goes, we¡¯ll return to the apartment for dinner, and time permitting, investigate one of the Ley Line Terminals afterwards. Any objections?¡±

    No one spoke up. I nodded and turned to Mordred.

    ¡°Then, Sir Mordred, you should leave as soon as you can. We¡¯ll be waiting here to hear your report.¡±

 Chapter CXLVII: Enemy in the Mist

    Chapter CXLVII: Enemy in the Mist

    Mordred was gone for about an hour, and we watched her path through the city on Flamel¡¯s diorama, the circuit she did throughout Whitechapel. She stopped several times, although without any other signs of enemy presence, there was no way to know if she was stopping to fight or just to look at something for clues.

    Either way, when she came back, all she could tell us was, ¡°Nothing. A few of them automata things and a homunculus or two, but that was it. Place is like a ghost town.¡±

    It was nothing that we hadn¡¯t expected. It wasn¡¯t like there was anything of interest in Whitechapel anyway, nothing aside from maybe the real, living Jack the Ripper, but an ordinary serial killer wouldn¡¯t have made it onto the enemy¡¯s radar to begin with.

    ¡°Then we¡¯ll go with Fran¡¯s idea,¡± I replied simply.

    No one objected.

    Since we were all basically ready to go, it only took a few minutes to put on the finishing touches, and then we were gathered at the front door.

    ¡°I believe I¡¯ll be staying here, this time,¡± said Flamel.

    ¡°You are?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Flamel nodded. ¡°Quite frankly, I¡¯m not the sort to engage in violence, and I would prefer to leave the fighting to those better suited to it. I¡¯m far more comfortable here.¡±

    ¡°But you came with us to confront Paracelsus,¡± Mash pointed out.

    ¡°A unique situation,¡± said Flamel. He grimaced. ¡°I was originally there to help your investigation into the Association¡¯s destruction, if you¡¯ll recall, and while I had intended to confront Paracelsus if he showed himself to us, it was not the main goal of our outing earlier. I will, I think, join you when you go to investigate the ley lines,¡± he added, ¡°but if your goal is to face the Servant behind the Helter Skelter, then I think you would be better served taking all of your own Servants instead of me.¡±

    ¡°So I don¡¯t have to stay behind again?¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. ¡°I think I might actually like you, Gramps.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll be here, as well,¡± Tohsaka reminded us. ¡°After all, there was only one mask in that package, wasn¡¯t there? Since it¡¯s still not safe for me to go out in the fog, Alice and I can stay behind with him.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll be grateful for your presence,¡± said Flamel.

    ¡°As will I,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°Seeing as I myself am in no way a suitable combatant against a Servant and haven¡¯t the talent as a mage to otherwise aid in your investigation, I shall busy myself with keeping abreast of my network¡¯s information and leave the defense of this apartment to Mister Tohsaka and Abraham.¡±

    Leaving us free to take Jeanne Alter, Arash, and Emiya to look for the mysterious B or M ¡ª whichever he was ¡ª and hopefully deal with him. Wouldn¡¯t that be convenient? Taking out two of the enemy masterminds on the same day.

    ¡°I¡¯ll be staying back, as well,¡± said Andersen. ¡°You don¡¯t need me, so there¡¯s no point in me going. I¡¯ll accomplish just as much here as I would going with you.¡±

    ¡°Fine by me,¡± said Mordred. ¡°One less person I have to worry about protecting.¡±

    If it was meant to be condescending or demeaning, Andersen didn¡¯t seem to care.

    ¡°Exactly.¡±

    Frankly, I was glad not to have to deal with him either. Whatever else he was, accomplished author or not, his personality and his tendency to needle at things he should just leave well enough alone got on my nerves.

    It would have been easier to handle if he could actually fight. Or even if he could just pull bullshit out of his stories the way Nursery Rhyme could.

    With the groups decided upon, the only thing left to do was for our group to get out the front door, and the only thing stopping us from doing that was me. My mask. I had to wear it if I wanted to go out into the fog.

    I still¡­wasn¡¯t quite sure what to think about it. About what it might mean to have another tether to my past, like it didn¡¯t want to let me go. The person who had originally owned it wasn¡¯t someone I wanted to be again.

    But there was no helping it.

    For a moment, I stared down at the cloth and chitin, at the iridescent lenses, and then I decided I had waffled over it long enough and lifted the thing up and over my head. My glasses came off, the arms folded and slid into my shirt like a clip, and pulling the mask over my head was so frighteningly familiar and nostalgic that my hands handled the adjusting and the fitting on autopilot as though no time at all had even passed.

    Like riding a bike. I didn¡¯t want to admit it, but some part of me was afraid that falling into old habits would be just as easy ¡ª easier, even, with this thing on my face.

    When I looked through the lenses again for the first time in over two years, the world that greeted me was a bit muted. The colors weren¡¯t as sharp, the lights weren¡¯t as bright, the darks weren¡¯t as dark. The wonders of polarized lenses, designed to reduce glare and protect from intense light. Maybe Da Vinci could see to doing something for my glasses, too, although I wasn¡¯t sure how effective that would be when they didn¡¯t wrap around my face the way the mask did.

    ¡°That,¡± said Rika, ¡°is somehow even freakier than the last time.¡±

    ¡°Looks kinda strange to me,¡± said Mordred, peering at me queerly. ¡°Don¡¯t fit with that uniform of yours at all.¡±

    Because it was never meant to.

    ¡°Let¡¯s get going,¡± I said. Even to my ears, it came out altered and buzzing, distorted by Da Vinci¡¯s addition.

    ¡°Okay,¡± said Rika. She gave me a wary look. ¡°That¡¯s¡­totally not creepy at all. No siree. Not one bit.¡±

    ¡°As long as it works,¡± said Arash.

    ¡°Maybe she¡¯ll scare the enemy, too,¡± Emiya suggested slyly.

    I turned to him, but he couldn¡¯t see the look I gave him through the mask, so the effect was ruined.

    ¡°We think it looks cool,¡± said Jackie. I couldn¡¯t not reach out and give her a pat on the head to show my thanks for her support.

    If only being a mom could always be that easy and that simple.

    With my mask secured and me protected from the fog, there was nothing else stopping us from leaving, so we all made our way to the front door.

    ¡°Bye-bye, Jackie,¡± Nursery Rhyme waved. ¡°See you later.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll see you later, Alice,¡± Jackie replied with a wave of her own.

    ¡°A moment, please,¡± Ren¨¦e said as she strode in from the tea room purposefully. ¡°Before you go¡­¡±

    She held out a small bundle, a square-shaped something wrapped up in a cloth napkin, and presented it to us.

    ¡°I believed it would be to your benefit to take something to snack on for your patrol, to tide you over until supper,¡± she explained, still monotone. She turned red eyes on Emiya like a challenge. ¡°Please take them with you.¡±

    Emiya bristled, having obviously seen something in her words that he took as an insult, but whatever it was, he managed to hold his tongue.

    Ritsuka and Rika shared a look, looking down at themselves helplessly and gesturing to their pockets, which were entirely too small to fit what I was sure were more of those pastries she¡¯d made before. I wasn¡¯t any better off, seeing as my equipment pouch was filled with other resources and didn¡¯t have room.

    It was Mash who accepted the bundle delicately and with grace. ¡°Thank you, Miss Ren¨¦e,¡± she said. She tucked it away in a compartment situated in the back of her shield. ¡°I¡¯m sure they¡¯re delicious.¡±

    Ren¨¦e offered a shallow bow. ¡°Take care,¡± she bade, still in that same monotone that had become characteristic of her. Somehow, it didn¡¯t make her sound less sincere.

    With those final, parting words, we left, stepping out onto the streets of London and the fog that awaited us therein. Fran gagged for a moment on the smell and the suffocating thickness, but didn¡¯t have any trouble with it aside from that.

    Of course not. She¡¯d been fine when the twins, Mash, and Mordred brought her back from Frankenstein¡¯s mansion, so it only made sense that ¡ª however it was she was able to do it ¡ª she could survive the mist just fine now as well.

    ¡°Never smells any better,¡± Rika said miserably.

    ¡°Hopefully, we can get rid of it soon,¡± her brother said.

    If our luck held out.

    ¡°Come on,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ll find a patrol group with Helter Skelter in it and Fran can try tracking the owner from there.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like a plan,¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran agreed.

    So we started out and away from the apartment. Unfortunately, with the fog in full force, I couldn¡¯t just start looking around the streets with my bugs, which meant we had to go looking the old fashioned way, and that was naturally made all the harder by the fact that there was so little visibility.

    How had they gone on patrols the last few days like this? It had looked so easy and purposeful from watching the map.

    Fortunately, however, Da Vinci¡¯s improvised gas mask proved just as effective as she promised. I breathed and breathed easily. The fog did nothing to me, and better yet, the filter made it so that I didn¡¯t even have to deal with the smell. In stark contrast to how we¡¯d arrived here just a few short days ago, I was completely unbothered, and although I felt the friction of the fog against my skin and under my clothes, rubbing up against my magic circuits like static electricity, it was nothing more than a little discomfort, easily ignored.

    Not once did I feel the urge to cough. Not once did my eyes water. I was perfectly protected.

    I¡¯m going to have to try and do something nice for Da Vinci later.

    What I could give her that would compare, well, that one was something I was going to have to give some thought. What did you get for the woman who had everything?

    We wound up wandering for the better part of an hour, just stumbling through the fog, and while my bugs couldn¡¯t help us more directly, having them come in and out of my range in their various configurations kept us from going in circles. Instead, we took a meandering sort of line through the city, weaving back and forth from street to street to cover as much ground as we could, and keeping our eyes and ears out for any sign of a patrol group with Helter Skelter in it.

    We were halfway to Soho by the time we finally found one. A standard sized squad of the sort we¡¯d been seeing ever since we started actually exploring, with four of each kind of enemy, plodding through on some unknowable route looking out for¡­what, we still didn¡¯t know for sure.

    I wished we¡¯d had the chance to ask Paracelsus about it before he was killed.

    ¡°Master!¡± said Mash, who was the first of us to detect them. Unfortunately, she also alerted them to our presence, and the whole group turned towards us, the Helter Skelter lumbering out of the fog as the automata spun about dashed with gangly speed.

    ¡°Take them out!¡± Ritsuka ordered her.

    ¡°Right!¡±

    ¡°My fucking pleasure!¡± Jeanne Alter crowed.

    Even easier than they had yesterday, our group mowed down the enemy. Six Servants against four Helter Skelter, four automata, and four homunculi could only have ended one way to begin with, and although Mordred was a little more cautious with Fran along, the whole team was still far outmatched, and it was the work of less than a minute to wipe them all out.

    It helped that most of the Helter Skelter were only the bronze ones Da Vinci had talked about earlier. The weakest ones with the flimsiest armor, Mash with her recent upgrade, Mordred with her own incredible strength, and Jeanne Alter, who could deal a killing blow to Herakles, all cut through them like a scythe through wheat. The automata shattered, limbs scattered as their joints snapped. The homunculi were sliced clean through as though they were made of paper, leaving behind splatters of red blood on the stone streets. The Helter Skelters¡¯ armor crumpled like cheap plastic.

    The only exception was the single green Helter Skelter, what must have been the ¡°leader¡± of the group, and now that Da Vinci had explained what their colors meant, the presence of one green one in every group made a whole lot more sense. I hadn¡¯t paid much attention to that before, but thinking back on it, I was pretty sure each patrol we¡¯d run into had had a green one in it.

    Even that one, however, only lasted a few fractions of a second longer than any of its lower quality cousins. More of a problem, I thought, in larger concentrations, but with only a single one in the entire squad, handled just as easily as the rest.

    ¡°Man, that was way too fast,¡± Mordred complained when it was all over. She let her sword fall to rest against one shoulder with a metallic clink. ¡°Having you guys along to fuck them up just makes this way too easy. Especially now that Shieldy over there has stopped pussyfooting around.¡±

    ¡°I-I¡¯m sorry?¡± Mash squeaked.

    ¡°What¡¯d you expect, British?¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. ¡°They¡¯re cheap knockoffs in London. Of course they suck.¡±

    If they were French, they would have surrendered, I imagined Aisha sniggering. I did my best to keep the smile from sprouting on my face.

    ¡°Fuck off with that shit,¡± Mordred groused. ¡°And it ain¡¯t your fault, Shieldy. This was always gonna get easier when I wasn¡¯t handling it solo. ¡®S how teams are supposed to work, innit? Many hands and all that shit.¡±

    ¡°I do have to wonder if the enemy will eventually run out of homunculi without Paracelsus there to make more,¡± Emiya remarked idly. ¡°Or maybe he built a vat of some kind to mass produce them.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll have to destroy it if he did,¡± said Arash.

    That would require us finding it first, and frankly, if he hid it well enough and far enough away from the enemy¡¯s Angrboea machine, whatever that thing wound up being, then we might never actually stumble across it. It might just be something we had to write off and let the correction of the era fix ¡ª provided it even existed, of course.

    ¡°We¡¯ll deal with that if and when it comes up,¡± I said. ¡°For now¡­¡± I gestured to the broken heaps that were once Helter Skelter. ¡°Fran, is this good enough for you to work with?¡±

    Fran¡¯s lips drew into a tight line, and she picked her way over to the scrap gingerly, then crouched down and started to examine the pieces, rolling them over with her fingertips. She didn¡¯t even seem to notice the oil leaving black smears on her white gloves and splotches on the fabric of her white dress.

    Now that I thought of it, she was actually wearing a wedding gown, wasn¡¯t she? What a twisted man the original Frankenstein must have been to put his creation in a dress like that, especially if everything else about her backstory was true to the novel.

    A minute or two passed before Fran nodded. ¡°Uhn.¡±

    She stood and straightened, then thrust her arm out to the left and at an angle, one finger extended. A black smudge on her fingertip was like an arrow. ¡°Uhn.¡±

    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    I followed the direction she was pointing, did some mental calculations. If I was right, then she was pointing in the general area of Westminster, which meant that we might have been mere miles away from this thing when we were following Nursery Rhyme and we hadn¡¯t ever realized it.

    ¡°Alright,¡± said Mordred, grinning. ¡°What¡¯re we waiting for? Let¡¯s go!¡±

    ¡°Wait a moment,¡± I told her. To Fran, I asked, ¡°Are you sure you can follow that the whole way?¡±

    Fran grimaced, and her finger fell. ¡°Uhn¡­ Uh-uhn¡­¡±

    That was what I thought.

    Rika turned to her brother, who translated, ¡°Maybe.¡±

    I accessed my communicator and pulled up the map function. ¡°We¡¯ll have to triangulate it. That should give us a much more accurate location.¡±

    Mordred¡¯s nose scrunched up. ¡°Triangulate?¡±

    ¡°Take separate vectors, preferably a good distance apart, and calculate where they intersect by forming a triangle,¡± Rika explained. ¡°Easy-peasy!¡±

    I wasn¡¯t the only one who turned to look at her.

    ¡°What?¡± she said, crossing her arms defensively. ¡°It¡¯s just math. It¡¯s not that hard.¡±

    ¡°Compared to English, right?¡± Ritsuka teased her.

    ¡°Grammar rules are a pain in the ass!¡± Rika complained dramatically. ¡°I spent a whole year dreaming in participles, adjectives, and dependent clauses!¡±

    ¡°Trust the English to come up with the most fucked up language in the world,¡± Jeanne Alter said sardonically.

    ¡°Fucking Angles,¡± Mordred agreed.

    ¡°I mean, that¡¯s kinda the point of triangulation,¡± Rika said, but the joke went completely over Mordred and Jeanne Alter¡¯s heads.

    ¡°We¡¯ll make our way into Soho and find two more groups.¡± I marked our current position on the map, so that we could use it later, and then drew an arrow away from it in the direction Fran was pointing. ¡°If Fran can do the same thing with them that she did with these ones here, then we can see where they all cross over and that¡¯ll give us a much smaller area to look through.¡±

    ¡°See?¡± said Rika. ¡°Triangulation, triangulation!¡±

    ¡°Whatever,¡± said Mordred. ¡°If it helps us find this thing, then I guess we can do it that way. Just seems like a waste of time to me.¡±

    ¡°Uhn¡­¡± Fran mumbled.

    ¡°The less we argue about it, the faster we¡¯ll get it done,¡± I told Mordred.

    ¡°I get it, I get it,¡± she groused. ¡°So let¡¯s just go and do it already!¡±

    Since she was the only one with any complaints about it ¡ª although Jeanne Alter did have a dry comment about how boring it was to chase down a bunch of tin cans ¡ª we set off from there to find two more patrol groups with Helter Skelter whose remains Fran could use to help pinpoint where the main controller was. As I said, however, we tried to put some distance between them so that we could get a more accurate triangulation, and that took us into Soho proper first, along a familiar route that we had traveled down just a day or two ago.

    Of course, it looked a whole lot different covered entirely in the fog, especially since that made it hard to see any of it at all, so it might have been a bit more accurate to say I recognized the colonies inside the buildings around us and the shapes they revealed through their movements. The street itself looked largely the same as the rest of the city, and the fog obscured most of the rest.

    Happily, I also discovered that the people of Soho had since recovered from the enchanted sleep Nursery Rhyme had put them all in, including the elderly man who owned the bookstore where we¡¯d first met up with Andersen. I had to admit, it was at least a little tempting to leave a note or something to let him know he¡¯d had a squatter sitting in his store for at least a few hours. Andersen would probably be mortified.

    It might give him a heart attack to have something like that appear so suddenly and inexplicably, though, so I decided against it. Even if it would have served Andersen right.

    For whatever reason, it turned out that Soho was still relatively empty. There hadn¡¯t been much in the way of patrol groups on our first time through, and that carried over, because we had a hard time finding another Helter Skelter to dismantle for Fran. Eventually, however, we heard the telltale plodding, the delicate plinking, and the lumber thumps, and all we had to do was follow those to find what we were looking for.

    Just like all of the other patrols we¡¯d encountered up until then, four of each, led by a green Helter Skelter. They went down much the same, too, handled just as quickly and as easily as every one of them so far. They just didn¡¯t stand a chance against a group made of so many Servants.

    Somehow, that made it easier to accept that I didn¡¯t have much chance to do anything either. Not that I couldn¡¯t have done anything, but that the enemy was so contemptuously weak for what and who we had on hand that it would have been a waste of my time and energy to even bother. It was just faster, easier, and less effort for the Servants to handle everything.

    ¡°Damn,¡± said Mordred. ¡°That wasn¡¯t any better. Those things just folded way too easily.¡±

    ¡°Now you¡¯re just starting to sound like Super Bitch,¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. Mordred looked over at her, arching an eyebrow.

    ¡°Who?¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s talking about Queen A¨ªfe, who is back at Chaldea right now,¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Probably a good thing we left her behind,¡± Emiya said wryly. ¡°These things wouldn¡¯t even have been much of a warmup for someone like her.¡±

    But there were other times and places where having her already here with us might have been a bit more convenient. On the other hand, if A¨ªfe had managed to defeat the Jabberwocky somehow and killed Nursery Rhyme, we wouldn¡¯t have picked up Tohsaka and made an ally here, would we?

    I tucked the thought away and turned to Fran. ¡°Fran?¡±

    Fran nodded. ¡°Uhn.¡±

    She stepped up to the largest pile of scrap that remained of the Helter Skelter and knelt down as she had before, inspecting the pieces gingerly with the tips of her fingers. It provided a strangely incongruent scene, like she was afraid of dirtying her hands, and yet she still didn¡¯t seem at all bothered by the greasy black stains being left behind on her gloves and gown.

    After a minute or so, Fran stood back up and pointed unerringly to the left and slightly behind us.

    ¡°Ah, uhn, uhn,¡± she said.

    I pulled up my map again and marked our current position, then added another arrow. When I imagined the lines that extended out from those arrows, I could already see the place where they would intersect. Somewhere in Westminster, just a few blocks away from where we¡¯d fought Nursery Rhyme and fallen into her trap.

    But I wanted one more data point to use, just so we could be absolutely sure where we were going. Having that third point would give us the exact angles of our triangle, after all, just in case Fran¡¯s direction wasn¡¯t as exact as we would like it to be.

    ¡°One more,¡± I said as my arm dropped. ¡°Somewhere about halfway between here and Hyde Park should do.¡±

    Mordred grunted. ¡°Sooner this is over with, the better. I hope one of those mastermind bastards is waiting at the end of this ¡ª I¡¯m gonna need something to beat up on by the time we¡¯re done, I just know it.¡±

    ¡°Barbarian,¡± Jeanne Alter jeered.

    ¡°Ain¡¯t like you¡¯re any better,¡± said Mordred. ¡°You¡¯re bored out of your mind, too, ain¡¯tcha?¡±

    Jeanne Alter scowled and huffed, but didn¡¯t deny it.

    We set off again, making our way westward through Soho and towards Hyde Park. I made sure to look in on all of Nursery Rhyme¡¯s victims as we went, checking to make sure they had all managed to break free of her spell, and I found that all of them had. They had all come out of the whole thing none the worse for wear, and I had to wonder if they even realized what had happened to them or if they had all decided it was some kind of bad dream or nightmare or something.

    It was probably better for them to keep living in ignorance if they had. Easier to live with it if they dismissed it as the result of bad seafood or something and never had to really face the real danger they¡¯d been in.

    Eventually, right on the western edges of Soho ¡ª and therefore very close to the last of Nursery Rhyme¡¯s former victims ¡ª we found our third patrol group, all but identical to the previous two. This group, too, was led by a single green Helter Skelter.

    The enemy had to know we¡¯d killed Paracelsus already, didn¡¯t they? So did they really have some other way of producing more homunculi, or were they just going to use what they had until they ran out without any care at all for the resources they would be bleeding in the process? If we knew the answer to that, then it would tell us quite a bit about B and M and how they thought. If this went on long enough, we would find out sometime in the next couple of days.

    The fact that the group was the same as all of the previous ones also meant they were handled just about as easily as the previous ones. Six Servants really did make for a ridiculous advantage in combat, even if Jackie wasn¡¯t exactly a frontline fighter or anything, and it was a bit refreshing to be the one with overwhelming firepower for a change.

    ¡°There,¡± Mordred said when it was over. ¡°There¡¯s your third group. That gonna be enough for you?¡±

    ¡°Fran?¡± I asked leadingly.

    Fran picked her way through the wreckage over to the remains of the green Helter Skelter, then bent down as she had before and spent a minute or two carefully sifting through the parts with her fingertips. Once she had found what she was looking for, she turned her head, looking back over her shoulder, and lifted one arm.

    ¡°Uhn.¡±

    Her finger pointed unwaveringly towards where I knew Westminster to be. I brought up the map again, adding the third dot and the third vector, and then I drew straight line from each dot until they intersected right along ¡ª

    My lips drew into a line.

    You have to be kidding me.

    Jeanne Alter peered at the map. ¡°That where we¡¯re going next?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    Emiya looked at it, too, and he made a noise in his throat as his brow drew down. ¡°That¡¯s¡­what I think it is, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Not that far from where we fought Nursery Rhyme,¡± Arash noted.

    ¡°Where we first met Mommy,¡± Jackie said fondly, as though she hadn¡¯t tried to kill me back then. I didn¡¯t bring up that part.

    ¡°Wait, really?¡± said Rika. ¡°So we coulda taken care of this, like, two days ago?¡±

    ¡°Yes, we could have.¡±

    She groaned dramatically. ¡°Oh, man!¡±

    That wasn¡¯t the part that had me so annoyed. No, the part that bothered me was the oversight, because this made it obvious I¡¯d fallen into a bit of a mental trap. My thinking had been that anyone willing enough to screw over humanity by using the Grail to create this Singularity and arrogant enough to want to make a statement about their own power would choose as base of operations the greatest symbol of political power in the city ¡ª specifically, the most famous seat of the Queen of England¡¯s power, Buckingham Palace.

    No matter how much actual authority she commanded these days, the Queen was still technically the ruler of Britain. What better way to make a statement about conquering the city or your own importance than sitting on her throne? It was the obvious choice. Mordred had even gone and checked it out herself, because she considered it the only place her mother would be if Morgan le Fay had actually been summoned.

    But if it was so obvious, then maybe it was too obvious, in which case, the next best thing would be¡­

    ¡°That¡¯s not what I meant,¡± said Emiya. ¡°That building right there, where all of the lines meet, that¡¯s ¡ª¡±

    ¡°The Palace of Westminster.¡±

    Where the Houses of Parliament met. In other words, where the real decisions of the British government were made. It might not have been as flashy or as big a statement as Buckingham Palace was, but it was the place of true political power in the city.

    Mordred made a face. ¡°What?¡± she said, drawing out the word. ¡°There¡¯s more than one palace in this city?¡±

    ¡°London is almost two-thousand years old,¡± Emiya pointed out. ¡°There¡¯s several.¡±

    Mordred¡¯s expression became pinched. ¡°Shit.¡±

    ¡°Bumpkin,¡± Jeanne Alter said with a leer.

    ¡°Fuck you,¡± was Mordred¡¯s eloquent reply.

    And Jeanne Alter, of course, just had to say, ¡°You¡¯re not my type.¡±

    Mordred scoffed, and instead of letting them keep going, I interrupted with, ¡°There¡¯s no telling if they¡¯ve been at the House of Parliament the entire time. It¡¯s possible that their base is mobile, and B or M rotate it every day or two, just in case we could trace its location. They might not be there tomorrow.¡±

    ¡°And then we¡¯d be back to square one,¡± Ritsuka concluded grimly.

    And we¡¯d have to triangulate the location a second time, hoping that they hadn¡¯t packed up and moved everything to the complete opposite side of the city. It was what I would have done in their shoes to keep the enemy chasing something that was constantly just out of reach.

    ¡°Right.¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran grunted sourly.

    ¡°Then we don¡¯t have any time to waste, do we?¡± said Mash. ¡°We need to get down there as soon as we possibly can. The sooner we defeat B and M and retrieve the Holy Grail, the sooner the people of London can return to their normal lives.¡±

    ¡°Shit,¡± said Mordred. ¡°Well, when you put it that way, Shieldy, what are we waiting for? Let¡¯s go see what these sick fucks are up to down there.¡±

    So we did. Mordred led the way, of course, and I made judicious use of the map we had to make sure that we didn¡¯t go off course, but between that and Mordred¡¯s intuition, we managed to avoid wandering off course. Navigating in the fog hadn¡¯t become easier, but it was doable, if only because we had an actual destination in mind this time.

    As we approached the building from the north side, however, both Mordred and Mash began to slow, and the rest of us, sensing that there was something we were missing, slowed to match them.

    ¡°Is something wrong, Mash?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    Mash pressed her lips together tightly. ¡°I¡­it¡¯s hard to tell with the fog so full of magical energy, Senpai, but¡­up ahead, I-I think¡­there¡¯s a source of magical energy.¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Mordred agreed quietly. ¡°I¡¯m getting that feeling, too. Whatever¡¯s over there, it¡¯s putting out a lot of power right now. That¡¯s the only reason we can even notice ¡®em.¡±

    I grimaced.

    ¡°We could go look, Mommy,¡± Jackie offered.

    I thought about it for all of a split second, but ¡ª

    ¡°No,¡± I told her. ¡°If we can notice him, then there¡¯s no way he can¡¯t notice us, too, not with how many Servants we have all in the same place. Going after him as anything other than a group won¡¯t end well.¡±

    Mordred nodded. ¡°Bastard¡¯s waiting for us to come to him.¡±

    So the absolute worst thing we could do was walk into his trap without any plan whatsoever. A harder thing to manage when we didn¡¯t have much of any idea what we were dealing with, but there were ways around that.

    I gave Jackie a gentle tap on the shoulder and leaned down.

    ¡°Backtrack and circle around the building,¡± I murmured to her. ¡°Hide on the roof and wait for my say-so, okay?¡±

    Jackie nodded seriously. ¡°Okay, Mommy.¡±

    I gave her an encouraging squeeze, and with nary a flutter of her cloak, she vanished into spirit form and was gone. The skin of my prosthetic arm tingled as she passed.

    ¡°Sending her around to flank them, huh?¡± Emiya said, barely above a whisper.

    ¡°She¡¯s not a frontline fighter. Better to play to her strengths.¡±

    As a happy coincidence, it put her in the least danger, too.

    ¡°Tch,¡± Mordred scoffed. ¡°Well, whatever. As long as she doesn¡¯t steal my kill, she can go fuck off, for all I care.¡±

    ¡°Your kill?¡± Jeanne Alter teased. ¡°You¡¯ll have to get in line, bumpkin. This guy¡¯s mine.¡±

    Mordred grinned savagely. ¡°Then I guess whoever gets to ¡®em first gets the kill, bitch.¡±

    Jeanne Alter grinned back. ¡°Try and keep up.¡±

    Frankly, if I had my way, I think I would have had Arash or Emiya just find a building a safe distance away, and then take whoever or whatever it was out from there. Quick, clean, and effective. With the fog, however, that simply wasn¡¯t possible.

    ¡°Mash,¡± I said, ¡°be ready. If this guy attacks first, you¡¯re our first line of defense.¡±

    Mash glanced over to me, but nodded. ¡°Right! Senpai, Miss Taylor, I¡¯ll protect you!¡±

    ¡°I know you will, Mash,¡± Ritsuka replied warmly.

    ¡°Emiya,¡± Rika began, for once serious, ¡°that goes for you, too.¡±

    Emiya huffed out a quiet laugh. ¡°It goes without saying, Master.¡±

    Around the building, we slowly went. To our right, the open street, with streetlamps lit and guttering flames attempting desperately to push back against the oppressive mist that strangled their light. To our left, a wrought iron fence jutting up from a concrete base, and beyond it, the shadowy silhouettes of towering spires. Just barely visible beyond them was the stone edifice of the House of Parliament, with blackened recesses where the windows must have been, sucking in what little light made it that far.

    The main building was all but invisible. The dark roof was nothing more than a vague splotch of gray that disappeared into the mist.

    Eventually, the fence curved, swerving away from the street and towards the building itself, and we had little choice but to follow it until the main structure of the palace slowly resolved out of the fog. Arched doorways were cut out of the stone nearby, curving into a sharp point in the center, and led into little alcoves that protected the heavy wooden doors from the weather. An unlit lamp hung in each one, casting them all in shadows, as though to say that the entire place had been vacated.

    ¡°We¡¯re getting closer,¡± Arash warned.

    And beneath the suffocating blanket of the fog¡¯s dense mana, I still couldn¡¯t feel anything else. I wished I could let out my ravens to check, or even pull a swarm together to get a feel for our surroundings, just so I knew what we were going to be getting ourselves into.

    But I couldn¡¯t, and both for the same reason. I couldn¡¯t wait for this fog to be gone.

    At the very least, I had a decent enough view of the interior of the building. The bugs inside awoke to my command and flitted about, surveying each room, examining the furniture and the carpeting and the empty spaces between ¡ª and finding nothing. Having no idea what it was supposed to look like at this point in history, I couldn¡¯t have made as bold a claim as to say that it had been left the way it was the last time Parliament had met here, but at the very least, I wasn¡¯t finding any obvious signs of a workshop or the other trappings of a mage.

    That, however, when combined with the presence we were creeping towards, was the obvious sign of a trap. The only trouble was, for B or M to have set this up as a trap for us, they would have had to know that at least one person in our group could track their Helter Skelter back to them, and we ourselves hadn¡¯t been sure about it until a few hours ago. Flamel had suggested the idea, of course, but up until today, we hadn¡¯t ever committed to it.

    Could they have mocked up some sort of beacon to distract us and then placed it here in that short a time? It felt like asking a bit much from anyone, even a Servant. Not impossible, not when the meaning of that word had become so narrow over the past five years, but it would mean our enemy was more dangerous than I had hoped they would be.

    ¡°They¡¯re not inside,¡± I announced to everyone.

    Mordred looked at me askance. ¡°What? Like they¡¯re standing around in the courtyard or something? They expecting a fucking honor duel?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s going to be that convenient,¡± Emiya drawled.

    ¡°It¡¯s more likely to be a trap,¡± Arash added.

    ¡°Then we spring it,¡± Ritsuka said confidently.

    No one argued. It seemed we were all generally of the same mind about how to handle whoever or whatever was up ahead, even if only just to get rid of the obnoxious fog.

    Not too far from where the fence curved in, the building did the same, creating a sharp corner for us to turn. When we reached that corner and turned it, however, we found waiting for us ¡ª

    ¡°Holy crap, it¡¯s huge!¡± Rika exclaimed.

    ¡ª an enormous Helter Skelter, black as pitch and three or four times as large as any of the others. In sheer size, it couldn¡¯t compare to the Demon Gods of the last two Singularities, and in terms of monsters I¡¯d faced, Leviathan was taller still, but was still twenty-something feet tall and proportioned to match. Just looking at it, I had to think it was the extra large one that left those tracks at the Clock Tower.

    That armor plating was going to be a lot more of a pain in the ass than any of the other ones we¡¯d fought.

    And as though her words had been its cue, its gears whirred and its limbs jerked as it awoke from whatever sleep mode it had been in. It turned its massive head our way, the lenses set into its faceplate gleaming menacingly. Its arm moved, lifting up a massive cleaver that resembled more some sort of industrial cutting machine than a handheld weapon. Gouts of steam gushed out from between the plates of its armor, hissing almost like a snake about to strike.

    ¡°Oops,¡± Rika squeaked sheepishly.

 Chapter CXLVIII: Steampunk Fantasy

    Chapter CXLVIII: Steampunk Fantasy

    There was no time to reprimand Rika for her mistake ¡ª and in truth, her outburst might not even have made much of a difference anyway ¡ª because the giant Helter Skelter lurched into motion with surprising speed. Steam gushed out of ports along its body, and impossibly, its feet left the ground. Not much, not by far, but enough that another burst of steam from the jets in its back pushed it forward far, far faster than something that size had any right to be.

    "Senpai!" Mash shouted. She leapt forward ahead of the group, flinging her shield in front of herself protectively to deflect the enormous cleaver.

    Despite the sheer difference in their sizes, she succeeded. The cleaver bounced off of her shield like a bullet ricocheting, but Mash was flung backwards with equal force and slammed into the ground so hard that her knees buckled. She had to cling to her shield just to keep herself from collapsing.

    "Mash!" Ritsuka cried.

    "Go!" I shouted.

    Arash, Mordred, and Jeanne Alter leapt into action, two of them going towards the Helter Skelter and the other retreating back to get a better angle.

    The ringing metallic screech as their swords and arrows failed to do more than leave a few faint scratches behind was enough to put my teeth on edge. Even the Servants winced, and the twins both slapped their hands over their ears.

    "I''m sorry!" Rika managed to squeal.

    "Master!" Emiya barked.

    Rika startled. "R-right! Go, Emiya! Turn that scrap into a heap!"

    I was already slipping back to a safe distance as Emiya leapt into the fray, mind awhirl with different tactics to attempt against the enormous Helter Skelter. Several of them, I had to discard out of hand, especially when Emiya utterly failed to leave more than a scratch as well.

    Brute strength looked like it was out. Despite their best efforts, no one was leaving behind much more than scratches, and those were being casually ignored by the thing. Even Mordred''s prodigious strength, nearly a match for Herakles himself, couldn''t carve deep enough to make it all the way through the armor and into the delicate mechanisms beneath.

    A flashbang? I hadn''t had much use for those in this Singularity, for a multitude of reasons, and I thought it was probably too risky to try it against this Helter Skelter, too. No one had told me that whatever sort of camera or whatever it was using for vision would be vulnerable to sudden and intense light, and it might not even be using the normal human analogue. It could be using sonar of some kind ¡ª although I doubted someone in our group wouldn''t have picked it up in that particular case ¡ª or infrared to see through the mist, or maybe it went a little sideways of that and detected concentrations of magical energy, designed to filter out the mist as background.

    It was a robot that seemed to run on some kind of steam engine. I wasn''t ruling anything out that wasn''t immediately obvious.

    Gandr was out, as were my ravens, for mostly the same reason as each other. Ignoring the damage Huginn and Muninn would suffer in the meantime, the Helter Skelter I''d tried to use them on before had proven that the plating on the smaller versions was already too thick to be appreciably damaged by their mana cannons or my dinky Gandr.

    Master''s Clairvoyance on this thing failed, which only proved that it wasn''t a Servant, just another of the robots scaled up to massive proportions. I didn''t think it had Magic Resistance, but for all practical purposes, no spell I or the twins could throw at it would do anything useful.

    "Spirit and technique, flawless and firm."

    Emiya backed away before I could come up with a plan of action, but only long enough to throw his pair of swords like boomerangs at the Helter Skelter. They bounced off of its armor ineffectually, but he already had another pair in hand.

    "Our strength rips the mountains. Our swords split the water."

    He threw this pair, too, to similar effect. The enormous Helter Skelter didn''t even seem to notice them, for what little that was worth when the thing had no face and no expression and no body language to speak of.

    "Our names reach the imperial villa."

    As the first two pairs rebounded and swerved back around, he made a third pair and rushed in. Between his first step and the last, they grew twice their size, and the familiar feathery spikes jutted out of the spines.

    "We cannot hold the heavens together!"

    With all of his strength, he brought them down upon the Helter Skelter''s armor, right on either side of the neck. The same technique we''d seen him use against Caligula, cutting through his impressive armor, bit into the Helter Skelter''s thick plate the way nothing else had so far ¡ª and still, it didn''t go all the way through.

    Emiya grimaced. "Shit."

    The Helter Skelter''s jets spewed more steam, and it spun with speed, using that spin to give weight to its cleaver in a sideways swipe instead of going through the whole motion of lifting and swinging its arm. Emiya threw himself backwards, but Mash threw herself in the path of the cleaver in the same moment, and once more, while she was tossed back by the force behind the blow, her defense was enough to push the Helter Skelter back, too.

    What a ridiculous thing it was. But I guess, if the gray Helter Skelter were the elite versions, strong enough that they might even be able to give a Servant pause in great enough numbers, then this thing must have had even more time and effort poured into its creation. A day? Two? Whatever the case, that time and effort had obviously been well-spent, because it was shrugging off everything we''d thrown at it so far.

    Silk lines were also out. I didn''t have any fliers to carry it, nor spiders to attach it, and with how much weight that thing had to throw around, I would have needed to weave a whole web around it to manage anything of worth.

    Another volley of Arash''s arrows bounced off of the chestplate.

    My knife? Maybe. But even if it could slowly chew through that armor, I had a feeling it would be a slow, painful process. An option, but it was the long game, and there were a number of things that could go wrong.

    "Shit!" said Mordred, echoing Emiya. "Good job, Shieldy! Hey, Emiya, whatever that was, it didn''t work!"

    "I can see that!" he retorted.

    "Not like you have much room to talk!" Jeanne Alter said. She rushed in, taking aim for one of the jets in the lower legs, but her sword simply scraped against the armor and skidded off, leaving behind another scratch. "Damn it!"

    "What was that about having room to talk?" Mordred mocked.

    "Shut up!"

    I could try and bring in A¨ªfe. Her Thunder Feat might manage to do something against that thick armor plating, although whether it would be enough to deal significant damage without needing every ounce of energy she had was another question entirely. Having her tear a hole in the plate would at least give us an in to the internals, something to target more effectively, and we could take it down that way.

    But I didn''t want to use the limited number of charges for summoning Shadow Servants that we had unless we really had to. If we burned one now, then with the amount of time it took to recharge, I might regret using it now when I had need of it later.

    It was an option on the table, but we had another one that didn''t spend a finite resource.

    "Everyone, back up!" I shouted.

    Jeanne Alter, I projected in the same moment, I need you to use your Noble Phantasm on that thing.

    She grinned. "Alright! Let''s heat things up a little, then!"

    She swung her sword up, pointing it towards the sky, and a flame burst into life in front of her. The others, either sensing what was about to happen or understanding the gist enough to know they needed to get out of the way, did exactly that and broke off. The Helter Skelter spun in place, like it didn''t know who it should chase after first.

    "This is the howl of a soul filled with hatred!" Jeanne Alter crowed with malicious glee.

    Her sword came down.

    "La Grondement du Haine!"

    The flame erupted, and a line of fire leapt across the ground between her and the Helter Skelter, blazing over the distance with a heat so intense that I could feel it even from where I was, safely out of the danger zone. The Helter Skelter tried to dodge, using its steam jets like thrusters to push to the side, but the line of fire curved to follow, and even if it was far too fast for something its size, it wasn''t nimble enough to keep dodging the way Herakles had.

    The instant it reached the Helter Skelter, the fire split and circled around it, growing into pillars of flame that dwarfed the thing three or four times over, a great gout of heat and light that I was sure the entire city must have been able to see. Beneath my mask, beads of sweat formed and were absorbed into the fabric, joining the spots where the mist had condensed against my skin.

    The mist''s friction against my magic circuits had nothing on the intensity of Jeanne Alter''s Noble Phantasm.

    The pillars of flame spun and swirled, and although we couldn''t see them through the haze and the blinding display, the sound of the characteristic stakes erupting out of the ground and the screech as they punched into ¡ª and hopefully through ¡ª the Helter Skelter were far too loud to be drowned out.

    Jeanne Alter looked delighted.

    "Fuck," said Mordred. "A little more warning would''ve been nice, ya know."

    Get ready to use yours next, I told her, and she grimaced.

    "You really think this thing''s that sturdy?" she asked aloud.

    I wanted to be wrong, but ¡ª

    "Yes."

    The maelstrom of fire died down a few seconds later, and as I''d been afraid, it revealed the Helter Skelter intact. Not undamaged, because those stakes had done their job, punching holes throughout the Helter Skelter''s legs, but still in good enough shape that it was moving. Haltingly, jerking around as the damage done to its body and its mechanisms turned the stilted, robotic motions of its limbs erratic, but still moving.

    The real point, however, was that its armor was a bright, cherry red. I wasn''t sure how much I could trust regular physics to apply to something a Servant had made, product of a Noble Phantasm or not, but if it did, then the heat would have warped a good deal of its structure. It would be at its weakest right now, and that meant that it would be easier to punch through than before.

    I took a scant second to look through Jackie''s eyes and make sure she was out of the line of fire, and that confirmation was all I needed to know that it was safe to do the next part.

    "Mordred, go!"

    "Heh!" She grinned. "So you''re letting me off the chain¡­huh!"

    She took hold of her sword with both hands, squeezing the hilt. What I''d originally thought of as ornamentation along the bottom of the blade sprang out as though attached to a hinge, and sparks of electricity leapt up and down the whole thing as red light flowed out and upwards. I was reminded, for an instant, the way King Arthur had used Excalibur back in Fuyuki, but this was an order of magnitude less intense than that.

    "I''m the only one¡­who gets to fuck up this country!" Mordred shouted. "So take your knuts and your bolts, and go back to wherever you fucking came from!"

    The red light surged.

    "Clarent ¡ª"

    She swung.

    "¡ª Blood Arthur!"

    A beam of red light leapt from the path of her sword. The wind howled, the ground shook, and the Helter Skelter was consumed, but the beam continued on, and it struck the House of Parliament behind the Helter Skelter. If the Helter Skelter couldn''t stop the beam, then a building of mere stone and glass couldn''t have hoped to, and so the beam kept going, rising up and into the sky. It punched a hole into the oppressive cloud cover, allowing a brief glimpse of the afternoon sun that had been choked by the fog for the better part of the last week.

    And then it was over, and there was no more giant Helter Skelter. A massive divot, exactly the size of the beam, had been gouged out of the pavement, leaving behind a blackened scorch mark, and an even larger section of the House of Parliament was simply missing, as though it had been erased.

    Rapidly, that was disappearing. The tunnel of clear air that had been seared through the fog was filling back in the same pace as before.

    "I-I think it''s dead," Rika said.

    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    "I''m¡­not detecting any trace of the Helter Skelter anymore, Senpai," Mash reported.

    Fran agreed with her customary, "Uhn."

    "What the fuck?" Jeanne Alter demanded. "The fuck was that? You trying to show me up, you bumpkin?"

    "Not my fault you weren''t able to follow through," Mordred said smugly.

    "But you did destroy our current best lead," Emiya said. He glanced over her direction. "Right?"

    Mordred''s smirk fled her face instantly. She jerked a thumb at me. "Only because she told me to."

    Emiya turned to me, arching an eyebrow.

    "It wasn''t giving us much choice."

    Although there wasn''t any guarantee we would''ve been able to do anything with it even if we had managed to disable it without destroying it. All of Fran''s earlier looks into the smaller versions had only led us here.

    He acknowledged that point with nothing more than a short nod. "That still leaves us back at square one, though."

    "Maybe not," said Arash, and without explaining any more than that, he picked his way over and across the divot, towards where the giant Helter Skelter had been. Eventually, he wound up far enough that I lost him in the fog.

    For what felt like several long minutes, we waited. What he might have seen or what he thought he might find, I had no idea. The remains of that giant Helter Skelter? Even if it hadn''t been completely destroyed, it wasn''t like the guy who made it had conveniently left his name under the hood somewhere.

    Despite that, however, I trusted Arash''s instincts enough to know that there had to be something. Whether it was usable or not was a different question.

    "Arash?" I asked.

    "Found something!" his voice called.

    The twins shared a look, and then looked at me, and all I could offer them was a small shake of my head before I went over in the direction Arash had gone. It didn''t turn out too hard to find him, however, even in the fog, because all I had to do was follow that scorched divot. The twins and the others followed me in turn.

    Arash was picking through a pile of scrap when I reached him, crouched down to the ground. Bits and pieces of metal had been flung about by the blast of Mordred''s Noble Phantasm, small chunks and hunks barely big enough to fit in my palm, and they formed a scattered trail towards the House of Parliament. At a guess, they were the parts that were in places protected by its armor plating well enough not to get instantly destroyed.

    That any of it managed to survive not one, but two Noble Phantasms was already remarkable.

    "Goddamn," said Mordred, looking down at the bits of metal strewn about. "That fucker really built his shit to last, didn''t he?"

    "What was that about following through?" Jeanne Alter jeered.

    Mordred grunted. "Fuck off with that," she grumbled.

    "It might be better that you didn''t manage to destroy it completely," Arash said. He dropped the shard he''d been examining and moved on, bending back down when he found another piece big enough to be worth something.

    I joined him, walking over to another chunk of plating that was big enough to have something etched into it, and squatted down to pick it up. Carefully, of course, because it was a shard of jagged metal, and while we had our First Aid spells, there was no need to spend energy on them as long as I took care not to get myself cut.

    As though seeing me had been a cue of some kind, Ritsuka jolted and came over, too. "Let''s go," he said to the others. "More people looking will make it go faster, right?"

    "Uhn!" Fran grunted.

    Mash nodded. "Right!"

    Jeanne Alter rolled her eyes. "Fine," she said with the air of someone about to do something she hated.

    "Afraid you''ll cut yourself?" Mordred teased her.

    Jeanne Alter flipped her the bird.

    "It''s all fun and games until someone chips a nail," said Rika, but she came over, too, and we all picked our way across the trail.

    It was slow going. A lot of the pieces left behind were just tiny fragments, no bigger than my thumbnail, and hard to distinguish from a pebble in the mist. Occasionally, however, there was a piece of piping, a thick shard of the armor plating, or some fragment of the internal mechanisms that was too damaged and too small to figure out what it had been used for.

    For a Noble Phantasm ¡ª and the product of one ¡ª the Helter Skelter were remarkably complete. Every part seemed functional instead of decorative, and frankly, without being a mechanic or an engineer myself, I couldn''t have said what any of those parts was for. At the very least, however, the evidence I had so far suggested they ran on some kind of steam power, and I wished Da Vinci was there to explain whether that was in addition to or as a replacement for whatever magical energy had been used to form and animate them to begin with.

    "Hey!" Rika exclaimed suddenly. "I-I think I found something!"

    When I looked over, she was brandishing something, a hunk of material about the size of an old satellite phone from the 90s and nearly as thick. Rika, crouched near the arched doorway that would lead into the building, had found it after it must have bounced off of the doors or something.

    The rest of us abandoned whatever paltry scraps we''d been sifting through and went over to her, and she held it out for us all to examine. "See?" she said. She ran her fingertip across it, pointing to something that had been etched into the metal. "It''s hard to make out, but it''s there!"

    I squinted down at it, but the writing was faint and the fog and the scorch marks made it hard to find the individual letters. The engraving was far too shallow, and between being hit by two Noble Phantasms, it may have been warped.

    Ironically enough, if it had been in braille, I probably would have been able to read it just fine.

    "Definitely something there," said Arash. "Let me get a closer look?"

    Rika nearly shoved it into his hands. Arash took it, faintly amused, and bent his neck down to get a better look.

    "A, r, l, e, s," he said slowly, "and then I think there''s a space between them. The second word is B, a, b, b, but the rest is cut off. Beneath that is a date, AD 1888."

    "Arles babb?" Mordred asked, confused. "The hell is that? You sure you''re reading that right?"

    "Maybe not."

    He handed it over to her, and she took it, squinting down at the lettering with a look of concentration. "A, r, l, e¡­ Fucking¡­ Damn. That really is what it says."

    She gave it back to him, frustrated.

    "It''s missing at least a few letters," said Arash, "from both the first and second names. The date, on the other hand, that''s all there is to it. No day or month, just the year."

    "A date of manufacture," Emiya murmured thoughtfully.

    "Looks that way."

    And, presumably, the name of the man who made it. I couldn''t say I recognized it, however, and I couldn''t fit the name of anyone I did know about from this era with the steam-powered robots clunking about the city. On the other hand, I couldn''t think of anyone who fit the mold when I looked at it from the lens of who could have made those robots, so maybe that wasn''t the best metric to be using to fill in the blanks.

    "Arles Babb," I echoed, but saying it didn''t magically conjure up the missing letters that would make it make sense. "A Caster with a Noble Phantasm that makes robots. We don''t think he''s a mage, so he must have been some other kind of¡­intellectual to make it to the Throne ¡ª"

    Mash gasped. "Charles Babbage!"

    Who? From the looks on everyone else''s faces, no one else had any idea who that was either.

    Except for Fran, who had gone ramrod straight, eyes wide and mouth dropped open. "Uhn?"

    Mash nodded. "That''s who it must be!" she said. "Charles Babbage! He was a famous scientist and mathematician of this era, a-although he died almost twenty years ago from the current date, so he must be a Servant!" She looked down and then across to the divot, where the Helter Skelter had been destroyed. "I-it even makes sense that he made the Helter Skelter. Steam-powered machines were his specialty! He even made a rudimentary computer using one!"

    This guy made a steam-powered computer in the mid-1800s?

    "Definitely a Heroic Spirit," Emiya agreed, sounding impressed.

    "Is that really that big a deal?" Mordred asked.

    "It''ll be another hundred years before computers start to become commonplace in family homes," I said. "Another twenty from there before they get small enough and powerful enough to carry around in your pocket."

    Although that was massively simplifying things and I simply didn''t know enough about the history of computing to give more detail than that. A sudden pang stabbed me in the gut ¡ª Defiant and Dragon could probably have explained all of those things, down to the date and functionality of each advancement.

    "Alright," said Mordred, grudgingly impressed, "maybe this guy''s a big deal, then. Doesn''t explain what he''s doing here and now."

    A good point. If we assumed that Babbage was the B in P, B, and M, then it wasn''t a stretch at all to assume that this fog, it wasn''t a fog at all, it was steam, cooled by the air as it spread through the city. The question we had to ask from there was why he was making it in the first place. What did he hope to accomplish?

    An equally pertinent question, was it even his idea at all, or had the mysterious third player, M, who Paracelsus had warned us was the most dangerous, put it in Babbage''s head? Maybe the only thing he''d actually done to Babbage was convince him to bring his fantasy world to life, a world populated by steam-powered mechanical monstrosities, where all of his greatest creations flourished.

    "Let''s take a break," I said, and the suddenness of my suggestion had everyone looking at me askance. "We''ll go inside and talk about this there. Away from prying eyes."

    Understanding flitted across their faces.

    "Yeah," said Ritsuka, "we''ve been doing a lot of walking. Let''s get off our feet for a few minutes."

    "Oh!" said Mash. "And I have Miss Ren¨¦e''s snacks here, too! We can eat those!"

    Emiya''s brow twitched, but if anyone else noticed, no one commented on it, and he said nothing himself.

    Jackie? I projected down along our bond. Come on back.

    Okay, she replied simply.

    So we left that particular section behind and made our way a little further on, entering the Palace through a set of wooden double doors that wasn''t directly beneath a section that had been destroyed by Mordred''s Noble Phantasm. We stepped first into an entrance room, and then beyond that into a hall with high, vaulted ceilings. Statues of famous Englishmen, none of whom I recognized on sight, lined either side, and reliefs were carved into almost every wall, broken up only by paintings of what I assumed were yet more famous scenes out of British history.

    Some depicted men in coats of chainmail, shields hung across their back and banners flying, with what I assumed was probably Richard the Lionheart standing triumphantly in the middle of it all. Some depicted coronations or knightings or some other sort of diplomatic function, with men in tights and women in medieval gowns. The others, I couldn''t even guess at, so I didn''t even try.

    Jackie reappeared amongst our group then, startling several of the others. Mordred swore up a storm, and spent several minutes afterwards grumbling about how much she hated surprises.

    It felt a little silly, but I didn''t protest when Jackie slipped her hand into mine, like we were a pair of tourists there to see where the metaphorical magic happened.

    I led the others through the halls and the corridors, deliberately avoiding the rooms where all the bugs had died from contact with the fog, and eventually, we wound up in a dining hall, a narrow room with a long table at its center. If I thought Jekyll''s apartment had the most stereotypical Victorian wallpaper, then this room had gone out of its way to prove me wrong, because the red, gold, and green paisley pattern looked like it had sprung directly out of a regency romance, and the paintings hanging on the walls and the golden wood paneling only made it even worse.

    Mom would have loved every second of it.

    "Damn," said Rika. "If this is the kinda place you eat when you''re in government, I gotta become a senator or something."

    As if it was that simple.

    "Here is fine," I said. I pulled my mask off, ran a hand through my hair, and slipped my glasses back on. "Mash?"

    "Yes!"

    We all took a seat around the table, and from inside the compartment in her shield, Mash produced the wrapped bundle Ren¨¦e had given her before we left the apartment. When she untied the knot and unfolded the fabric, it was to reveal more of those jam sandwiches, sprinkled with powdered sugar.

    "Oh!" said Rika, grinning. "Those were really good!"

    "They really were," Ritsuka agreed with her.

    Emiya''s brow twitched again. "I-is that so¡­ Maybe¡­I''ll have to ask her for the recipe."

    And it sounded like the very idea caused him physical pain.

    Mash started to pass them around. Even though the Servants didn''t need to eat, Ren¨¦e had packed enough for all of us to have one, with a few leftovers for anyone who wanted seconds. One of them wound up in front of me, but I passed it over to Jackie first, who smiled at me and said, "Thanks, Mommy!"

    The smile and the pat on the head were becoming almost routine. I wondered which of us was really teaching the other how this parenting thing worked properly.

    "So," I said as I accepted my own little sandwich. Conveniently, the plates and utensils had been left out when this place was abandoned. "Charles Babbage. What do you know about him, Fran?"

    Fran, halfway to biting into her own sandwich, froze for several long seconds.

    The twins and Mash, all three noticing the lack of a response, turned to her. "Fran?" asked Ritsuka.

    Slowly, miserably, Fran set her sandwich back onto her plate, uneaten. "Uhn," she said at length, staring down at the tablecloth. "Uh, uh, uh-uhn. Uhn."

    Modred grunted and leaned back in her chair, taking a huge bite of her sandwich. "So that''s how it is, huh? Figures. Ain''t nothing in this fucking place is simple or easy."

    Rika''s hand rose.

    "She knew Babbage," I answered before she could say anything. "Back before her creator locked her up. She even met him in person."

    "Uhn," Fran confirmed. "Uhn, uh, uh, uh-uhn. Ah¡­uhn¡­"

    "It''s how she''s been able to use the Helter Skelter to find the central control node we just destroyed," Mash translated. "She''s not following the magical energy so much as she is the traces of Babbage''s presence they contain."

    Fran''s mouth drew into a miserable line. "Uh, uh, ah, uh, uhn."

    "That doesn''t matter," I told her. "Paracelsus already explained it. Whoever he is, M has been twisting the minds of all the Servants he recruits. Whether Babbage would do something like this doesn''t change the fact that M could make him."

    And if M could make an esteemed, learned mage like Paracelsus, a genius in his own right, submit and dance to his tune, then someone like Babbage, a man who ¡ª presumably ¡ª had no actual talent for magecraft and no magic resistance to fall back on, wouldn''t be able to even resist. As callous as it might be to say so, he simply didn''t have the right skills to try.

    Maybe we shouldn''t be splitting up so much anymore. M''s hypnosis may not be subtle in anyone we had yet seen suffer under it, but that didn''t mean he wouldn''t be able to subvert one of us if he got us alone.

    Fran didn''t try to deny what I''d said, but it didn''t make her any happier either.

    "Besides, this guy''s a Servant, ain''t he?" said Mordred. "You should know what that means by now. He''s not the man you knew. He''s just a restless ghost who''s been twisted up by some fucker who thought it would be a fun way of screwing with history." She took another bite of her sandwich, then brandished the remainder at Fran, and with a full mouth, continued, "If anything, yer doing him a favor, yeah? The real Babbage, I bet he''d be pretty disgusted with what this version of him is getting up to! He''d wantcha to fix it up and set the record straight!"

    Despite how she said it, this was what got through to Fran, and she firmed up, mouth thinning into a determined line.

    "Uhn!"

    I turned to Arash, and like I didn''t already know the answer, I asked, "Do you still have that hunk of the control unit we destroyed?"

    "Sure."

    He produced it from one of the pouches hanging from his hips and set it down on the table, well away from any food.

    "Do you think you could use that to track Babbage?" I asked Fran.

    She hesitated. "Uh-uhn. Uhn¡­"

    My lips thinned. Only a "maybe," huh? I wasn''t inclined to think she was deliberately holding back, if only because she had to have had at least some idea of who we were tracking down when she pointed us this way in the first place and had still done it. The fact that they had led us here instead of to Babbage himself, however, gave me a pretty good idea why she was so uncertain.

    Ritsuka sighed. "It can''t ever be that easy, can it?"

    Almost of its own accord, my mouth quirked up on the one side. Was that pattern recognition after four Singularities and all of the associated bullshit, or was I really rubbing off on him that much?

    "Hey, now," said Arash. "We still have a lead, don''t we? Why don''t we give it a shot before we start talking about how bad things are?"

    "Even if it doesn''t pan out, it is still a lead," I agreed.

    "Yay for optimism?" Rika offered half-heartedly. Jeanne Alter snorted.

    "Well, I guess we don''t have anything to lose by trying," Ritsuka hedged.

    "Even if we don''t find Babbage himself, we still managed to find one of his high spec models and took it out," said Emiya. "Well, it''s not what we might have wanted, but it''s still an accomplishment."

    "Come on," Mordred complained, "what the hell is with all of that? Where''s the support? Fran''ll totally make it work, I know it!"

    Ironic that someone like Mordred was the one being most supportive.

    "Yes!" said Mash. She turned to Fran. "Don''t worry, Fran! It might be hard, but I know you can do it! You''ll find Professor Babbage for us, I just know it!"

    Fran nodded. "U-uhn! Uh-uhn!"

    "The power of positive thinking!" Rika cheered, throwing up her arms.

    "Finish your sandwich first, or else it''ll go to waste," I told her.

    "Ah!" She scooped up the last remaining bit of sandwich on her plate and shoveled it into her mouth. A pleased whine vibrated out of her throat. "So good! Emiya, you really gotta get the recipe from Ren¨¦e!"

    The smile he gave her was painfully fake. "I''ll¡­see what I can do."

    "So what happens when we do find this guy?" Jeanne Alter asked around a mouthful of her own sandwich.

    "Ain''t it obvious?" Mordred said. "We kick his tin can ass!"

    "I know what you want to do to him," Jeanne Alter drawled. "I was asking the people with more than one brain cell."

    Mordred grunted. "Fuck you."

    "Told you, you''re not my type, British."

    "If the spell he''s under is anything like the one that was used on Paracelsus, he might be able to slip us bits of information around the margins," Arash suggested.

    They might not be that coherent, though. Too, it bore repeating that Paracelsus was an accomplished genius mage, and while Babbage was no less intelligent, unless there was something in his past that never got recorded in history, he didn''t have the magical know-how to fight a Master effect as strong as M''s.

    "I don''t think that''s something we should rely upon," Emiya hedged.

    "It''s worth a shot, though, isn''t it?" said Ritsuka. "If it doesn''t happen, then it doesn''t happen, but if Fran can find him, then trying to break through M''s spell might work, too."

    It was a lot of ifs to stake the investigation on, and while I didn''t have a precog to tell me the odds on each one, I had a feeling they weren''t particularly high. That was familiar in its own right, the sort of thing I''d been dealing with my entire career, and my time at Chaldea hadn''t done much to prove it wrong.

    But I''d also spent my career beating those odds. I''d threaded that needle more than once, and more than once in these last few months, the world had conveniently dropped just what I needed in my lap. Maybe Fran would find Babbage, and maybe Babbage would be strong enough to resist just long enough to tell us what we needed to know to find and defeat M, whoever he was.

    "It is," I agreed.

    And if it didn''t work, we still had other avenues of investigation to pursue. The trackers on the Helter Skelter patrols, the ley lines. We weren''t pinning our hopes entirely on one thing succeeding.

    I finished the last of my own sandwich and swallowed before saying, "We''ll take a few minutes to let our food settle before ¡ª"

    Something dropped suddenly from thin air down the hall from us, a massive form whose landing made the floor beneath our feet tremble, and everyone felt it.

    "What the heck was that?" Rika squeaked. "Who let the T-Rex out of her pen?"

    My bugs surged into the hallway, abandoning subtlety to get as good a look at whatever it was as I could. Another Helter Skelter, steel gray, with golden accents. The lenses of its cameras were red, and unlike all of the others before, it wielded some kind of enormous mace that was almost as big as Helter Skelter itself. It lifted the mace as though it weighed nothing at all and pointed the end of the head ¡ª straight in our direction.

    If it was far enough away to avoid having its presence detected immediately, then it wasn''t far enough that any of our Servants could miss the magical energy it was gathering.

    Silverware clattered. Plates fell to the floor and smashed. Mash leapt out of her seat.

    "Master!"

    "Get down!" I shouted as I seized Jackie and pulled her into my arms, then threw myself to the floor.

    A bare second of stillness, a heartbeat ¡ª

    And then a hurricane smashed through the doors like a cannonball.

 Chapter CXLIX: King of Steam

    Chapter CXLIX: King of Steam

    Over everything else, I didn¡¯t hear Mash shout the name of her Noble Phantasm or Emiya summon the Aias, but the fact that I could only feel a gentle gust of wind told me that ¡ª even if it sounded like the entire building was coming down ¡ª one of them had gotten in place in time to protect us. We were safe, or as safe as we could be.

    For a long moment, however, all I could hear was the screech and the grind of a jet of compressed air battering away at our defenses. It deafened me, the same way the blast itself had blinded me to everything between that Helter Skelter and this room, and the steam itself was so full of magical energy that it was killing my bugs as the excess billowed out and filled up the whole hallway.

    The seconds stretched, but eventually, the attack petered out. The steam, however, continued to creep through the building, and I was keenly aware what would happen to me if it was the same as the fog that was coating the city.

    There would be no Flamel to reverse the damage this time. We were halfway across the city, and even carrying me as fast as he possibly could, I doubted Arash would get me back to the apartment in time.

    My glasses had fallen off when I landed, and I felt around blindly for my mask as I called in the bugs I¡¯d pushed out and into the corners of the room as a matter of courtesy to the others. My fingers found only carpet and the wood of chair legs.

    A pair of small hands reached up from under me, lifting up and over my head, and then pulled a familiar fabric down over my face. When I could see again with my own eyes, I looked down at Jackie through my mask¡¯s lenses and met her own eyes, made softer by the muted colors that filtered in. Something like concern marred her face.

    A wave of gratitude washed through me.

    ¡°Is Mommy okay?¡± she asked.

    I should be asking you that, I thought. But if I had made it through that unscathed, then a Servant like Jackie probably wouldn¡¯t have even felt it.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    As I climbed back to my feet, the others were doing the same, and the barrier of Lord Chaldeas flickered and faded. Mash huffed out a heavy breath, like she¡¯d been holding it in the entire time.

    ¡°W-what the heck?¡± Rika asked into the deafening silence. ¡°Who even does that?¡±

    Jeanne Alter unsheathed her sword and turned to the ruined doorway, where the entire wall had been ripped away by the blast. ¡°Somebody who really wants to fucking die!¡±

    Mordred materialized her own sword and snarled, ¡°Get in line!¡±

    ¡°I-it¡¯s another Helter Skelter,¡± said Mash.

    ¡°So?¡± Mordred snapped.

    ¡°Only this one is¡­different.¡±

    Mordred sent her a dangerous, wide-eyed glare. ¡°So?¡±

    ¡°So,¡± I said calmly, ¡°it just used a Noble Phantasm.¡±

    Ritsuka caught on first, straightening with a look of alarm. ¡°Which means it¡¯s ¡ª¡±

    ¡°LISTEN!¡± a voice suddenly boomed, vibrating through the floor and shaking the walls. In the hallway beyond, the Helter Skelter spewed steam from the vents underneath its plates and took lumbering steps towards us. ¡°Listen well, interlopers! I am the King of Steam! I am he who returned from beyond death to create this world of my fantasies! I am he who has returned in this era to grasp the future that I was once denied!¡±

    ¡°Sure likes to hear himself talk, doesn¡¯t he?¡± muttered Emiya.

    ¡°Shush!¡± Rika hissed at him. ¡°He¡¯s monologuing!¡±

    For this, I was going to agree with Rika. There was still too much information we were missing, and if letting this guy talk was going to get it for us, then we could afford to lend him our ears until he got violent again. If we were lucky, he might spill everything, and just like that, we would have all of the enemy¡¯s secrets and plans laid bare.

    ¡°Let him,¡± I told everyone. It got me a few looks from Mordred and Jeanne Alter, but although no one relaxed, no one jumped into the fight either.

    ¡°The world I once imagined has lived on inside of me, realized,¡± the Helter Skelter, who could only be Babbage himself, continued, ¡°but it is not enough. It is not nearly enough. Behold my greed, for I continue to desire more. Behold my tenacity, for I struggle and toil even beyond the grave. Behold my idealized form, clad in the steel of my resolve. Behold, and make peace with God, for you shall soon be with Him.¡±

    ¡°The fuck we will!¡± said Mordred, taking a threatening step forward.

    More steam shot out from underneath the Helter Skelter¡¯s faceplates. The red lens that formed the central eye focused on us as he came closer. ¡°You, interlopers from the proper course of history. You rabble who would deny me. I know your purpose here. I know your goals. If you would seek to undo this world of steam, then you need to destroy the mastermind responsible ¡ª in that case, you need look no further. I am the one that Victor called ¡®B.¡¯ I am Charles Babbage, and I will make the world of my dreams reality.¡±

    The closer he got, the more his presence stood out, and when I narrowed my focus upon him, his name and his abilities unfolded in my mind¡¯s eye. Charles Babbage, Caster Class Servant, with¡­the highest strength and constitution stats I¡¯d ever seen on a Caster.

    Modifiers? Two of them on three different stats? The only place I¡¯d seen something like that before was Asterios.

    ¡°Uhn!¡± Fran stepped forward, but Mordred threw out an arm to stop her from running straight to Babbage. ¡°Ah, uhn, uh-uhn, uhn!¡±

    ¡°Yes!¡± Mash agreed. ¡°Professor Babbage, you understand what you¡¯re doing, don¡¯t you? What this Singularity is and what it means!¡±

    Another burst of steam. Quieter, Babbage said, ¡°You are¡­Victor¡¯s daughter, are you not? His finest creation, craving a love he refused you. Yes, I¡­I understand well. That this dream of mine, it comes at the expense of mankind¡¯s future. The incineration of humanity¡­¡±

    ¡°Uhn!¡± Fran said urgently. ¡°Ah, uh, uhn, ah, ah, uhn!¡±

    ¡°Seriously!¡± Rika seethed under her breath. ¡°How many does this make it? Is it just going to be me and Tohsaka by the end of it?¡±

    ¡°Fucking right?¡± Jeanne Alter agreed.

    ¡°I know,¡± said Babbage. ¡°What happened to Victor¡­it was a tragedy, but a necessity. He should have understood¡­ No, no, of course he understood. Scholars such as us exist for the sake of humanity, for our dreams shape the future. We have a responsibility to those yet unborn and the generations to come. That is why he¡­why he had to¡­¡±

    He trailed off. For several long seconds, he was silent. Jeanne Alter and Mordred, both of whom had remained at the ready for the fight, shared a bewildered look with each other, and then with Ritsuka, who could only shake his head, equally as confused.

    Arash? I asked.

    Here, he replied. I¡¯m ready the second he makes a move, but I¡¯m not sure how well my arrows will do against that armor.

    I wasn¡¯t sure either. Arash¡¯s arrows were powerful, could shatter stone as easily as they pierced flesh, and had been strong enough to punch through the scales of the wyverns in Orl¨¦ans. Babbage, however, had clad himself in his Noble Phantasm, and whether it was a suit of armor he was wearing or if he was like some Victorian version of Dragon, the end result still left him with a lot more defensive power just by virtue of that alone.

    ¡°Did he have to die?¡± Babbage asked, and if it wasn¡¯t for the echoing, reverberating quality his armor gave it, I wasn¡¯t sure we would have heard him. ¡°No, no, of course Victor had to die, he was¡­standing in the way of my dream. Yes, and that was why¡­ But why would Victor stand against me? He, best of all of us, should have understood the importance of our work. What it means for the future.¡±

    ¡°Is he¡­talking to himself?¡± Jeanne Alter asked.

    ¡°We think something¡¯s wrong with him,¡± Jackie said.

    There was. B and M were supposed to be the masterminds behind this whole thing, but it seemed like my earlier thought was being proven out: the idea for this fog may have been Babbage¡¯s, but the mysterious M, whose identity we still didn¡¯t know, was the one who brainwashed him into going through with it. I was looking at a victim of Mastering who didn¡¯t have any of the protocols the PRT had come up with to fall back on to pull himself out of it, however flimsy they might have been in practice.

    ¡°Professor Babbage,¡± I began, trying to strike the difficult balance between firm and gentle, ¡°there is no future anymore. Your Project Demonic Fog is helping to destroy it.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Babbage said immediately, ¡°no, that can¡¯t be right, I¡­ But it has to be. A dimension of steam that covers the entire world, there¡­can be only one result. Yes, and I¡­I have to see it. I need to see it. To make it a reality. Even if it costs¡­ Even if it¡­¡±

    ¡°Uhn!¡± Fran protested. ¡°Ah, ah, uhn, uh-ah, uhn!¡±

    ¡°Yes, I¡­I am an inventor,¡± Babbage agreed. ¡°I create¡­for the good of mankind. To further a path¡­into the future. My dream is¡­ No, no, personal ambitions cannot¡­cannot trump the importance of the e-end goal! H-h-history has a-already determined that¡­the w-world I envisioned was not¡­n-not the correct path! M-my dream¡­can only ever be a dream!¡±

    He lifted his massive mace.

    ¡°Shit!¡± Mordred cursed and made to leap forward.

    But with a crash, Babbage slammed it into the wall, smashing the wooden boards and sending splinters pinging off the surface of his armor. And then again, and again. The whole palace seemed to shake under the strength of each one.

    ¡°H-h-how dare you!¡± Although the faceplate of the Helter Skelter had no mouth, the snarl was audible in his voice. ¡°How dare you! T-t-to use my Angrboea against me in this fashion! To use my d-d-dream against me! To t-t-twist my mind towards your c-cruel ambitions! E-e-even now, I feel your f-fingers intruding upon my thoughts, M! Y-y-you have even stolen your t-true name from my lips! I am not a toy you can wind up and play with to your heart¡¯s content!¡±

    With a final slam, he left his mace stuck in the demolished section of the wall.

    ¡°L-listen, interlopers!¡± Babbage said. ¡°There is not¡­not much time! The source of this mist¡­the k-keystone for Project Demonic Fog, my Angrboea, you will find it deep¡­deep under¡­ under¡­ u-under¡­¡±

    He fell silent, and for a long moment, said nothing more. Like a machine that had been powered down, a robot whose batteries had run out suddenly.

    But unless his legend had changed his nature so drastically ¡ª not an impossibility, I had to admit, not when faced with all of the other Servants I had yet met and how their own legends had changed them ¡ª he was neither of those, he was a Heroic Spirit. A Servant. And Servants didn¡¯t simply shut down when they ran out of power, they disappeared. When none of us had done anything to bind him or stop him, there was only one thing that could force him to stop for no apparent reason.

    A Command Spell.

    ¡°Okay,¡± said Mordred, ¡°what the fuck is happening now?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s rebooting,¡± Jeanne Alter drawled, ¡°what¡¯s it look like?¡±

    ¡°Fuck you,¡± Mordred snapped back.

    ¡°No,¡± said Ritsuka, looking disturbed, ¡°that¡¯s not what¡¯s happening at all.¡±

    Mash chanced a glance back over her shoulder. ¡°Master?¡±

    ¡°M just hit his shutoff switch,¡± Rika said grimly. ¡°Get ready, Cinnabon. I think the Big Bad¡¯s about to assume direct control.¡±

    Mash¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Mash!¡± shouted Ritsuka.

    Mash¡¯s head whipped back around, just in time for her to shove her shield up to protect her face as Babbage¡¯s massive metal fist swung for her head. The echoing metallic bong was loud, discordant, and set my teeth on edge, and Mash slid back several feet from the force of the blow. A burst of steam hissed out from the Helter Skelter¡¯s armor plates.

    ¡°P-Professor Babbage!¡± Mash gasped.

    ¡°Uhn!¡± Fran tried. ¡°Ah, ah, uhn!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s no use, Fran!¡± said Mordred. She kicked off the floor and raced towards Babbage, flying past Mash with her sword raised. ¡°That¡¯s not Babbage anymore!¡±

    The clang of her sword striking the armor and bouncing off was just as loud in so confined a space, and Babbage responded by ripping his giant mace free of the wall and swinging it around at her without a care for the damage he was doing to the building. Somehow, Mordred managed to dodge it, but only by a hair¡¯s breadth.

    ¡°Uhn?¡±

    ¡°Command Spell,¡± Emiya said with a grimace. ¡°Looks like M got tired of letting Babbage talk and decided to shut him up before he could give too much away.¡±

    ¡°Uhn!¡±

    It may have been cruel, but from a pragmatic point of view, it was the only option he had for keeping us from finding out more. If your coalition depended entirely on you controlling your minions, then when that control started to slip, the only thing you could do was apply a stronger method.

    I hated what it reminded me of. After all, I¡¯d done something similar. When the capes I was controlling during Gold Morning started to stroke out from the stress of my control, I¡¯d pulled in Canary to pacify them. The principle was the same ¡ª and no less ugly now that someone else was using it, no matter their end goal.

    ¡°So it¡¯s just like Paracelsus,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°The only thing left we can do for him is¡­¡±

    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    Put him out of his misery.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    Fran let out a plaintive moan.

    ¡°Shit.¡± Jeanne Alter¡¯s grin belied her words. ¡°Well, if we¡¯ve got no other choice!¡±

    ¡°Try not to bring the building down around us,¡± said Emiya as he materialized his swords at last.

    ¡°No promises!¡±

    As Babbage lurched back into motion, Emiya, Jeanne Alter, and Mordred all leapt towards him to engage, and us Masters could do nothing except retreat as far into the room and away from the action as we could. It was too crowded for us to do anything else, to try something as ordinary as a Gandr shot that I already knew wouldn¡¯t have hurt Babbage anyway.

    Even if the table in the center hadn¡¯t taken up a good portion of the room, the space was cramped. A fight between humans could have happened there, but a fight between capes wouldn¡¯t have worked so well, let alone a fight between Servants.

    What followed was the strangest Servant fight I¡¯d yet seen. As was befitting of that huge, clunky armor, Babbage was fairly slow, and although he had enough agility to swing his massive mace around and respond to attacks, he only really had speed in short bursts. That didn¡¯t matter so much when his armor was so thick, because even Mordred¡¯s prodigious strength wasn¡¯t leaving much behind except scratches and shallow dents, and those didn¡¯t slow him down at all.

    Of course, that also meant that Jeanne Alter and Emiya weren¡¯t doing much damage either. Their swings didn¡¯t even hit as hard as Mordred¡¯s so they might as well have been swinging butterknives at Babbage for all the effect they were having. Arash¡¯s arrows didn¡¯t fare any better, because they mostly just bounced off.

    Babbage also didn¡¯t need to be that fast. When the entire place was so small, there was almost no room for any of our Servants to maneuver. Mordred and Jeanne Alter could dive in at the same time and attack from opposite angles, but Emiya couldn¡¯t squeeze in between them, and there was barely enough space for Arash to aim for what should have been the vulnerable joints and gaps in the armor plating.

    But Babbage had a third advantage. Namely, he could swing and miss all he liked without a care in the world for how much damage he was doing to the structure of the building around us, because it didn¡¯t matter to him if the roof came down on top of him. Even if he was buried alive, he wasn¡¯t really alive, so he could just go into spirit form and phase through the rubble to escape.

    Us Masters, of course, didn¡¯t have the luxury. If the palace collapsed on top of us, then there was a good chance we¡¯d either get injured or die.

    ¡°Mommy?¡± Jackie asked.

    ¡°Stay with me, Jackie,¡± I murmured to her. Louder, I said, ¡°Retreat!¡±

    Several heads turned my way. ¡°Senpai?¡± Rika asked, confused.

    ¡°We need to take this outside,¡± I told her bluntly. ¡°Jeanne Alter, Mordred, Arash, cover us!¡±

    ¡°The fuck?¡± Mordred grunted. She took a heavy blow on the flat of her sword, distracted for a split second by the order, and was knocked back for the effort.

    Ritsuka, who seemed to have caught on, said, ¡°Mash, you, too!¡±

    ¡°Ah, crap!¡± said Rika. ¡°Emiya!¡±

    ¡°Got it!¡± Emiya said.

    I took Jackie by the hand and turned around, then led her to the opposite end of the room from Babbage and through the leftmost door that would take us on the shortest route back outside. The twins and Fran were hot on my heels, with Mash not far behind us, covering our retreat as the others slowly gave ground to Babbage and led him in our direction.

    The eerie part was the fact that he didn¡¯t make a sound, but for the movements of his armor. No shouting, no cursing, no promises of retribution or violence. Just a calm, implacable machine, dead set on murdering us.

    In that regard, he reminded me of Leviathan. It wasn¡¯t a comfortable thought.

    I gave a moment of consideration to the large room halfway down the other end of the building that had to be where one or both Houses of Parliament met, but even if it was much bigger than the dining room we¡¯d just left, it didn¡¯t have enough room that I would be comfortable with anyone firing off a Noble Phantasm inside of it without endangering our lives. Outside was safer. No ceiling to fall down on our heads, no walls to collapse and bury us.

    Through the hallways, I led our group, keeping track of everything as best I could to make sure Babbage was following and wasn¡¯t gearing up for another use of his Noble Phantasm. He made it harder with his armor. Every now and again, bursts of pressurized steam would jet out of vents hidden beneath the plates and just above the joints, and any bugs caught in them were flash-fried and expelled. My swarm had already been tiny by comparison to my usual numbers, and I was losing what little I had to send against him before I could explore his suit enough to figure out a weakness.

    Mostly, it seemed that it didn¡¯t really have any. It was, after all, essentially the same as the other Helter Skelter, it was just of a much higher quality. It shared the same vulnerabilities, except I was dead sure that my Last Resort would be just shy of useless in cutting the mechanisms that controlled the arms.

    Marie and Da Vinci had said that the Helter Skelter were both the product and manifestation of a Heroic Spirit¡¯s Noble Phantasm ¡ª Babbage¡¯s Noble Phantasm. I figured it was safe to assume that his armor was the same, and if it was even sturdier than the high spec Helter Skelter we¡¯d found outside, then it was going to take a lot to get through it.

    Last time, it had taken two Noble Phantasms to put it down, although Mordred¡¯s might have been enough on its own. It was probably a good idea to give Jeanne Alter and Mordred a break to recover their energy, so that only left a couple of options, and if M was paying enough attention to what was going on to use a Command Spell to stop Babbage from talking, then there were still a few secret weapons we should probably keep secret from him.

    ¡°Emiya!¡± I called back as I ran. ¡°The instant you have a clear shot ¡ª¡± What was the incantation he¡¯d used again? Right. ¡°¡ª twist your core in madness!¡±

    I could practically hear Emiya¡¯s neck crack from how quickly his head spun. ¡°What? Master ¡ª¡±

    ¡°You,¡± Rika said between breaths, ¡°heard her! Senpai has¡­a plan!¡±

    We came upon the last stretch of hallway and raced down it to the echo of our footsteps on the tile and the rumble of Babbage barreling through everything in his way, splintering doors and tearing chunks of stone out of the walls. I had a stray thought about having to pay for the damages to the UK government, and what Marie might have said when she got the bill.

    It probably wouldn¡¯t have been pretty or calm.

    The doors that led outside loomed ahead of us, and I realized suddenly as I ran that we couldn¡¯t afford to slow down to open them normally. Babbage might not have been fast over long distances or turns, but he was still fast enough to chase down ordinary humans if we gave him enough of a chance.

    Jackie, I thought at her, the doors!

    ¡°Yes, Mommy!¡±

    I let her pull her hand free of mine, and faster than I could ever hope to be, she sped over to the doors at the end of the hallway. She didn¡¯t even bother opening them the way I¡¯d intended for her to; instead, she pulled out her knives and slashed the hinges like they were made of butter, to the sound of a horrific metallic shriek, and then hit the wood hard enough to send them flying outwards and onto the pavement outside.

    Good job! I praised her.

    Her smile lit up her face.

    Because she had opened the way, we didn¡¯t slow down at the doorway and ran straight through it and out into the open, into the fog. The burn of my magic circuits from the dense energy in the air joined the burn of my muscles from the run, but it was easily ignored, and we kept going, across the sidewalk and out towards the street. The twins followed my lead.

    It was only once we were clear enough of the building to avoid any falling debris that I came to a stop and spun around. The twins were a little startled at the suddenness of it, but came up beside me and turned, too, with Fran in tow. Our Servants followed us out, still taking potshots at Babbage, still firing ineffective arrows in the case of Emiya and Arash, but they had to break off when Babbage himself stopped just shy of coming through the doorway.

    ¡°Shit,¡± said Mordred as she settled herself defensively in front of Mash. ¡°Think he¡¯s onto us? Or did that M bastard order him to defend that place?¡±

    ¡°The fuck do you think?¡± Jeanne Alter said. ¡°That son of a bitch isn¡¯t stupid enough to think we¡¯d just leave things be because his wind-up toy doesn¡¯t leave the fucking building. He¡¯s up to something.¡±

    ¡°Uh-uh-uhn,¡± Fran suggested.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± I allowed, although I personally doubted it. Babbage had no Magic Resistance whatsoever, and he wasn¡¯t particularly famous for his indomitable will, the way some heroes were. There was only so much he could do to fight a Command Spell.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I don¡¯t think that¡¯s it at all,¡± Arash said grimly.

    ¡°Emiya?¡± I said.

    Emiya let out a breath almost like a sigh, then shifted his stance and held out a hand. Above his palm, the wireframe structure of a sword took shape, then slowly filled in, gaining detail, color, and form. A blue-wrapped hilt, a golden guard, a blade that spiraled towards its point like a drill. When it had finished, he gripped it by the pommel and set it along the string of his bow.

    ¡°Wait!¡± said Rika. ¡°He¡¯s doing something!¡±

    In the shadow of the doorway, Babbage lifted his mace again, and I thought for a fraction of a second that he was going to smash the entrance of the building, as though it could slow him down if he really wanted to follow us out. For that fraction of a second, I entertained the possibility that Fran was right and he really was fighting back against M¡¯s orders.

    That went right out the window when he pointed the head in our direction and an ominous glow began to shine through the hollowed barrel that went down the length of the thing.

    Shit.

    And between the fog drifting into the building and the intense concentration of magical energy gathering, I couldn¡¯t even try something like clogging up the barrel with my bugs.

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka said urgently, preempting me.

    ¡°Yes, Master!¡±

    She rushed to the head of the group, past Mordred and Jeanne Alter, and planted her shield in front of her.

    ¡°Lord Chaldeas!¡±

    The familiar rampart formed as a barrier in front of the shield ¡ª just in time for another hurricane to slam into it with enough strength to rip apart the pavement in its way. A vortex of swirling steam stretched back, connecting Lord Chaldeas to that narrow barrel in Babbage¡¯s mace, and it howled as it tried to grind away at the barrier and consume us.

    Lord Chaldeas had weathered worse, however, from stronger, more intimidating Heroic Spirits. Attila the Hun and her impossible sword hadn¡¯t been able to break through it without effort, and to date, she was the only one I¡¯d seen who had been able to do it. Babbage¡¯s Noble Phantasm was never going to be strong enough to compare to that. The only thing that managed to reach us was a stiff breeze.

    In the space between the start and the end, Emiya drew back on his bowstring. The sword set there streamlined and narrowed until it resembled an undulating arrow.

    ¡°My core is twisted in madness,¡± he muttered like a prayer.

    The swirling vortex of steam petered out and slowly died, and once it had dissipated, so too did Lord Chaldeas. Babbage didn¡¯t even have a moment to try anything else ¡ª the instant the barrier disappeared, Emiya barked, ¡°Caladbolg!¡± and the arrow leapt from his bow with a burst of wind that blew my hair back.

    There was no travel time. To me, it seemed like the arrow left the bow and slammed into Babbage in the same moment, detonating like a bomb. A massive explosion rocked the building, shook the ground beneath our feet, and swallowed up the entire front of the palace in front of us in a bright, blue blaze. Every bug that I had left in that range abruptly vanished, too quickly to even feel the heat of the blast that killed them.

    The boom echoed an instant after Caladbolg detonated, and Rika squealed as the backlash washed over us, whipping my hair about, and if it hadn¡¯t been for my mask, biting at my skin. I still felt it on my bare hands.

    As the light faded, the extent of the damage done was revealed, and if Mordred had shaved off a large chunk of the upper floors when she destroyed the high spec Helter Skelter earlier, then Caladbolg had carved out a section three or four times the size and left a crater behind to match. The entire front of the building six hallways wide and three deep had been obliterated, including the room where we¡¯d been eating our snacks not that long ago.

    I realized suddenly that Emiya probably could have obliterated Flauros on his own with something like this, if only it wouldn¡¯t have caught us in the crossfire. He must have planned for Caladbolg to go through Flauros¡¯ flesh so that the building behind him could act as a backstop and Flauros¡¯ bulk would protect us from the blast, it just hadn¡¯t worked the way he¡¯d intended at the time.

    At the center of the devastation was Babbage, or rather what was left of him. The entirety of the right arm had been seared away, taking with it both his mace and a large chunk of the head, right leg, and the chest plate. Much of the head itself was still red hot and almost molten, with the edges wavy and melted, and the entire right half of the ¡°skirt¡± that hung down over the upper legs was just gone.

    A liquid of some kind was flowing freely down the side that had been so badly damaged. It was hard to tell whether it was blood or oil or some mixture of both.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran said mournfully.

    ¡°Holy cow,¡± said Rika. ¡°He actually survived that? Where can I get me some armor like that?¡±

    ¡°Shit, that guy¡¯s fucking durable,¡± Mordred agreed.

    ¡°I-i-interlopers,¡± Babbage stuttered out, and it fluctuated with each syllable, like his speaker system was failing. The red eye at the center of his head flickered. ¡°Listen¡­l-listen carefully. My Massive Steam Engine Angrboea¡­u-utilizes the Holy Grail as a p-power source. If you w-w-wish to right this twisted world, y-you must¡­must destroy it, before it spreads b-beyond the city. You will find it¡­deep u-undergr ¡ª¡±

    There was no warning. Mid-sentence, as he was about to tell us the secret location of his machine, he suddenly exploded in a spectacular flash of light, sound, and heat. Bits and pieces of his armor flew in every direction, and I threw up my hands to protect my face as Rika squeaked and Ritsuka gave a shout of alarm.

    But Arash interposed himself between me and the blast as Emiya did the same for Rika and Mash raised her shield to protect both of the twins as best as she could. Mordred put herself in front of Fran for the same reason.

    It was over fast, but the echo of the shockwave rang in my ears for several long seconds afterwards.

    ¡°Anyone hurt?¡± I asked.

    ¡°U-uhn!¡± said Fran.

    ¡°I-I¡¯m okay!¡± Rika said. ¡°J-just, uh, w-waiting for my soul to catch up with my body!¡±

    ¡°Same, Senpai!¡± her brother added.

    From her place between me and Arash, Jackie piped up with, ¡°We¡¯re okay, Mommy.¡±

    ¡°Thank goodness!¡± said Mash.

    And since the Servants all seemed fine, too, that meant that no one had been hurt by the explosion. Only, it seemed, Babbage, who was nowhere to be seen when I peered past Arash to the spot where he¡¯d been a moment ago. There didn¡¯t even seem to be shards of his armor laying around. They would have disappeared when he did.

    I wondered if the other Helter Skelter had vanished, too, and I wasn¡¯t sure if I wanted them to. It ruined the plan to track them back to their base, a plan that might have gone up in smoke with Babbage just a second ago anyway, since their creator would no longer be around to do maintenance in the first place.

    ¡°Damn,¡± said Jeanne Alter, ¡°what a sore loser. Fucker blew himself up instead of going quietly.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think that was it at all,¡± Emiya told her grimly.

    ¡°No,¡± I agreed, ¡°it wasn¡¯t.¡±

    It was too convenient that he would self-destruct just as he was about to reveal the location of Angrboea, and there was only one person who benefited from it. So, just like he had earlier when he used a Command Spell to force Babbage to attack us to keep him from telling us the same thing he had just been about to, M had used another Command Spell to force Babbage to commit suicide. By detonating whatever his suit had used as a power source? That was my guess. It was the only explanation I had for the sudden explosion.

    ¡°M, again,¡± Ritsuka said darkly.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran growled.

    ¡°Think so?¡± Mordred asked. She didn¡¯t sound surprised or skeptical.

    ¡°In a normal Holy Grail War, it was the intended purpose of Command Spells in the first place,¡± Emiya revealed. ¡°That is, to force your Servant to commit suicide at the end once the rest of the competitors had been eliminated. This wouldn¡¯t be the first time a Master has used Command Spells for that purpose, and it won¡¯t be the last. It¡¯s just the first time you guys have had to see it.¡±

    Deliberately, I didn¡¯t mention that I had hoarded my Command Spells for just that purpose with some of our more dangerous Servants I hadn¡¯t been sure we could trust ¡ª one of them was right there with us.

    ¡°That¡¯s fucked up,¡± said Jeanne Alter.

    Mordred glanced meaningfully at Jackie, who didn¡¯t seem to notice.

    ¡°At least he¡¯s gone, though, right?¡± said Rika. ¡°I mean, for Command Spells to work, you have to have a contract between a Master and Servant, right? So if he has the Grail, M can just print Command Spells and use them to force Babbage to do whatever he wanted. It¡¯s sad that things had to go this way, but it wasn¡¯t like we had a choice, did we?¡±

    She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as she was anyone else.

    ¡°Uh-uhn, ah, uhn,¡± Fran mumbled.

    Rika wasn¡¯t wrong, though. There really wasn¡¯t much else we could have done. Without Medea and her Rule Breaker, we had no way of breaking his contract with M and saving him from being forced to do M¡¯s bidding. In that sense, yeah, putting him out of his misery was the only viable option we really had. If we had tried to let him go, it would have just meant having to face him again later.

    That probably wasn¡¯t much comfort to Fran, though, and while it meant we were down another of the enemy masterminds, we¡¯d also lost a source of information about exactly what was going on here. The information about Angrboea was useful, and the things implied about M in the way Babbage talked weren¡¯t nothing, but the most important part was something that we still hadn¡¯t gotten.

    Deep under. I thought he was about to say ¡°deep underground,¡± but he might have been trying to tell us ¡°deep in the Underground,¡± because that did exist in this era. Not as extensively as it would later, but it was still there, and still extensive enough that it would take a lot of time to comb the entirety of it for clues.

    ¡°So what now?¡± said Jeanne Alter. ¡°Now that the tin can is out of the way, that just leaves the last guy, right? The head honcho himself? Chief motherfucker of this whole shebang?¡±

    Fran glowered at her, no doubt upset about how callously Jeanne Alter was treating the issue of Babbage.

    ¡°For now,¡± I said, ¡°we head back to the apartment. Decompress, eat some dinner, let Jekyll and the others know what happened here and what we found out. After that¡­¡±

    We didn¡¯t necessarily have to search the whole Underground, though. We had a few other clues that would help us narrow down where to look, particularly since a machine that was powered by the Holy Grail would be letting out a lot of energy. The fact that something like that wasn¡¯t even a blip on Chaldea¡¯s sensors told us that there were really only a few places it could be, and conveniently, we¡¯d already been planning to look in those places. We just now knew to look under the streets instead of in the buildings on top of them.

    ¡°We plan out how we¡¯re going to track M down so we can stop him from expanding this Singularity.¡± I turned to Fran. ¡°And we¡¯ll make him answer for what he did to Babbage, too.¡±

    Her mouth set into a grim, determined line, and she nodded. ¡°Uhn!¡±

 Chapter CL: Beneath the Surface

    Chapter CL: Beneath the Surface

    The fog made it hard to tell the time of day with any reliability, but the setting of the sun was still an obvious thing just by the waning of what light managed to pierce through the gloom. By the time we made it back to the apartment, that light was almost entirely gone, and the gas lamps that lined the streets were the only beacons we had in the dense mist.

    Mordred, at least, didn¡¯t seem to need them to find her way back. I had to wonder if her Instinct skill really was just that infallible.

    When we walked in through the front door, Flamel greeted us with a smile. ¡°You¡¯re just in time,¡± he said. ¡°Ren¨¦e finished supper mere minutes ago. Mister Tohsaka and Alice have already retired to the dining room, as has Doctor Jekyll.¡±

    A sour look crossed Emiya¡¯s face. ¡°I want to complain, but the terms of our deal never covered what to do if one of us was unavailable, so I have no one but myself to blame.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s always tomorrow!¡± Rika said brightly. He snorted.

    True to Flamel¡¯s word, Tohsaka, Alice, and Jekyll were all waiting in the dining room, plates set out and waiting with half of a dinner spread already sitting in front of them. As our group stepped into the dining room, Ren¨¦e chose that moment to appear from the kitchen, carrying a silvery platter with yet more food.

    She showed no surprise to see us. She just looked up, eyes roving over each of us in turn, and blinked.

    ¡°You¡¯ve returned,¡± she said as though she had known the exact second of our arrival well in advance. ¡°I see. My apologies, Mister Emiya, but as I could not be sure when to expect you, I had no other choice than to prepare supper without you.¡±

    Emiya sighed and waved it off. ¡°It¡¯s fine. I would have done the same if our situations were reversed, so it would be hypocritical of me to blame you for it.¡±

    I might have been imagining it, but I thought I saw Ren¨¦e¡¯s lips twitch and threaten to smile, there and gone so quickly that I wasn¡¯t sure it had happened at all. She gave a short incline of her head and set the platter she was holding down on the table. To us, she said, ¡°I hope you enjoy your meal all the same.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure we will,¡± Ritsuka said politely.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Mash agreed brightly. ¡°You¡¯re an excellent cook, after all, Miss Ren¨¦e!¡±

    ¡°You flatter me,¡± Ren¨¦e demurred in her characteristic monotone.

    ¡°If you¡¯re all done fluffing her ego,¡± said Tohsaka, ¡°can we actually get around to eating now?¡±

    ¡°Yes, of course,¡± Ren¨¦e said immediately. ¡°I shall go and bring the rest of the food presently.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll go help,¡± Emiya added. Ren¨¦e froze for a second, but said nothing against it and made no comment as he followed her into the kitchen.

    As for the rest of us, we each found our usual seats, with Jackie next to me on one side, Arash on the other, and the twins sandwiched between Mash and Fran. Once Emiya and Ren¨¦e returned with the rest of the food, we all started dishing ourselves up and picking out whatever we thought was good.

    There wasn¡¯t as much meat as there had been the last few days. I wasn¡¯t sure anyone else really noticed, because Ren¨¦e had done as good a job as she had always done, but I figured immediately that Jekyll¡¯s stores of perishables must have been starting to run low. With no idea how long it would take us to finish this Singularity and take out the last mastermind, M, and no idea that we had dealt with Babbage already, she must have been rationing what was left.

    How many people in the city were even that fortunate? Not enough that we could afford to waste any time, I thought.

    I did my best not to think about it too hard and enjoyed dinner for what it was worth. No one else, at least, had any complaints, and certainly not Jackie. I had the thought that we were spoiling her, and then immediately squashed it with the reminder that this was the richest food she¡¯d ever eaten and probably the most stable source of food she¡¯d ever had. She could do with some spoiling.

    After dinner had been eaten, we sat around for a few minutes and savored dessert, and once everything had a chance to settle, it was time to get down to business.

    ¡°Now,¡± said Flamel, ¡°if you would, perhaps you might explain what it is you managed to discover during your investigation this afternoon?¡±

    The twins shared a look, then looked at me, and I just looked back. ¡°Ritsuka?¡±

    Taking the hint, he sighed and gathered himself, then launched into the story of what had happened, ¡°Well, we managed to find several groups of Helter Skelter, and it turned out that Fran could use them to find the source¡­¡±

    He explained our trek across London and our eventual destination in Westminster, then the fight with the high spec Helter Skelter, the break we took afterwards in the House of Parliament, and finally, Charles Babbage. Naturally, of course, he had to talk about what we had learned about Angrboea and the mysterious M, including how he had first brainwashed Babbage, and then when that started to fray around the edges, how he had resorted to using Command Spells, one to force Babbage to fight us and a second to make him self-destruct.

    Jekyll, Flamel, and Tohsaka all looked disturbed by the information.

    ¡°Two Command Spells, you say,¡± Flamel murmured, stroking his beard. ¡°And Professor Babbage, of course, being neither an accomplished mage nor possessing the Magic Resistance necessary, could not fight either one. Worrying, that our final mastermind is so secure in his position that he would use two such rare resources in such quick succession.¡±

    ¡°Being as I am no accomplished mage myself, I cannot much say aught of substance regarding such things,¡± Jekyll began, ¡°but if it is as rare and valuable a resource as you indicate, then it would seem to me that M¡¯s willingness to spend them in such a frivolous manner would speak either to desperation or plenty.¡±

    ¡°Maybe both,¡± I said. ¡°I think it¡¯s a safe assumption that M, whoever he is, is currently in the same place as Angrboea.¡± It wasn¡¯t a guarantee, but I was willing to stake my guess on it. ¡°Even if he had other Servants at his disposal, there¡¯s no way he¡¯d be eager to risk a confrontation with all of us at the same time.¡±

    Especially not if he was outnumbered. Right now, buying time was more to his advantage than ours, and the more time he had to prepare, the harder it would be for us to take the fight to him.

    ¡°Do we still not know who this M even is?¡± asked Tohsaka.

    ¡°Unfortunately, no,¡± said Arash. ¡°Babbage told us as much as he could, but he also said that one of the things M did was erase his true name from Babbage¡¯s mind. That first initial is still all we have.¡±

    At this point, given what we knew? My suspicion was that M was the famous villain, James Moriarty, if only because we¡¯d had enough supposedly fictional characters show up that I had to acknowledge the possibility that he would be very real. There were only two things that gave me any reason to think otherwise, one being that we¡¯d seen neither hide nor hair of Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, or any other opponent that would almost certainly be summoned to fight against him. The other was that Moriarty, who I was fairly sure would be a Caster of some kind, wouldn¡¯t be the kind of Caster capable of casting spells ¡°beyond human wisdom,¡± at least not the traditional kind expected of a magus.

    There were too many holes in it for me to be confident enough to share that theory, so I kept it to myself.

    ¡°Then, I assume that our original plans remain largely unchanged?¡± Flamel asked. ¡°That is, it is still your intent that we should investigate the ley lines for signs of the enemy tomorrow?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± I answered. ¡°We just happen to have a better idea of where we should be looking along those ley lines than we did earlier today.¡±

    Rika¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°We do?¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± her brother said. ¡°What Babbage said about Angrboea being ¡®under¡­¡¯ You think he meant under the ley lines, Senpai?¡±

    ¡°Not just underneath them,¡± I told them both, ¡°but in the Underground.¡±

    Flamel sucked in a breath.

    ¡°What?¡± said Jeanne Alter. ¡°What the f-fudge are you talking about?¡±

    ¡°Oh my,¡± said Flamel. ¡°That¡­would certainly explain why it is we have yet to detect their presence. It¡¯s ingenious, really, especially as the first and most obvious place would be the Clock Tower.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Jekyll agreed, ¡°yes, it most certainly would be. Although our foe is a dastardly villain worthy of the greatest scorn and condemnation, I must admit that he is also a clever fellow. Even I would not have thought to look there.¡±

    ¡°If it¡¯s not too much trouble,¡± Tohsaka began, ¡°maybe someone would like to explain it to the rest of us? Just to make sure we¡¯re all on the same page.¡±

    ¡°The London Underground is a subterranean railway system,¡± Mash explained. ¡°Although it would later be expanded upon to reach more areas of the city, the original structures were first built in the nineteenth¡­u-um, this era, I mean, and should be accessible¡­in several places, actually, including one nearby.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a subway,¡± Rika said, sounding impressed. ¡°Wow. Didn¡¯t know they built those this far back.¡±

    Jekyll gave her a strange look. ¡°A¡­subway?¡±

    ¡°Eat fresh,¡± Rika replied immediately. Her brother gave her a sharp poke in the side. ¡°Ow!¡±

    ¡°A more modern word for what Mash just described,¡± I explained shortly. ¡°Does that answer your question, Tohsaka?¡±

    Tohsaka grimaced, but after a moment, reluctantly said, ¡°Well enough, I suppose.¡±

    He looked like he wanted to ask what a railway was. Since he was from the 1790s, at a guess, he¡¯d probably never even seen a train before, probably never even heard of one ¡ª if they¡¯d even been invented yet ¡ª and since I didn¡¯t really want to try and explain it, I let it slide.

    I turned back to Flamel. ¡°Do you still plan on coming with us?¡±

    He hummed. ¡°Yes. Not merely because ¡ª as a Caster and a magus ¡ª I am the best suited to the task, but also¡­ Well, quite frankly, I find that I, too, would like to see the face of the man behind this catastrophe. I would like to know his name and his reasoning for this madness, and to see him brought to justice for it.¡±

    Tohsaka clicked his tongue. ¡°Does that mean I¡¯ll be staying behind again?¡±

    Someone obviously needed to, just in case it turned out we couldn¡¯t find M and Angrboea before we had to stop and come back, but if it turned out that we were headed out to the final battle tomorrow morning, then I wanted a Servant like Nursery Rhyme there to help. Especially if we really did have to face another Demon God at the end of it all.

    The question that had to follow that, of course, was who would be staying behind if not Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme. A quick glance across our gathered group didn¡¯t give me a great answer, but¡­if I thought about it from the perspective of who could deal the most damage to another of those Demon Gods, there was one Servant who would obviously have trouble, just because he couldn¡¯t safely use his Noble Phantasm.

    He could double as a secure line back to the apartment, too.

    I turned to Arash. ¡°If Tohsaka and Alice are coming along, then we¡¯ll need you to stay behind and protect Doctor Jekyll, Fran, Ren¨¦e, Andersen, and the apartment.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± he said, ¡°I can do that.¡±

    ¡°Uhn!¡± Fran protested. ¡°Ah, uhn, uhn!¡±

    I had sort of implied that, hadn¡¯t I? I hadn¡¯t made any promises outright, of course, but I could see how the way I¡¯d worded things earlier would give her that impression.

    ¡°You don¡¯t have a good way to defend yourself,¡± I told her. She grimaced, but didn¡¯t have an argument to prove me wrong.

    ¡°If that¡¯s all you¡¯re worried about, I can protect her again,¡± Mordred offered. ¡°It¡¯s no skin off my nose.¡±

    ¡°Look at you, the loyal guard dog,¡± Jeanne Alter jeered. Mordred flipped her the bird in response.

    ¡°I¡­think we¡¯re probably going to need you at your best,¡± Ritsuka hedged. ¡°Fran¡­¡±

    ¡°I can protect her,¡± Mash interjected. Ritsuka blinked.

    ¡°You can?¡±

    Mash nodded firmly. ¡°Yes. It¡¯s true, I¡­still don¡¯t know the true name of the Noble Phantasm belonging to the Heroic Spirit inside of me, even though this is our fifth Singularity. I-I understand that¡­as long as that¡¯s the case, I¡¯m not performing at my best. But¡­¡± She set her mouth and squared her shoulders. ¡°Senpai. If it¡¯s too much for me to protect even one extra person, then there wouldn¡¯t be any reason for me to be here. If a single extra burden is too much, then I wouldn¡¯t even deserve to be your Servant in the first place!¡±

    ¡°Look at you!¡± Mordred grinned. ¡°Now you¡¯re starting to act like a proper Servant, Shieldy! Man, even that shield bastard has to be looking on with envy right now!¡±

    Twin spots of pink bloomed on Mash¡¯s cheeks. ¡°You really think so, Sir Mordred?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure of it!¡±

    I wasn¡¯t quite sure how much to trust Mordred¡¯s judgment of Galahad, but I could at least admit that she definitely knew him better than we did, so there wasn¡¯t much choice.

    ¡°If you¡¯re sure, Mash¡­¡± Ritsuka said.

    Mash nodded again. ¡°I am! Master, I will protect Fran, along with everyone else!¡±

    ¡°Go, Cinnabon!¡± Rika cheered.

    ¡°Fou-fou!¡± the little gremlin cried. It had been quiet the last while, but I guess it was too much to hope that it had gotten lost out in the fog.

    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    ¡°Then Fran, Tohsaka, Alice, and Flamel will join us in our investigation tomorrow morning,¡± I allowed. ¡°We¡¯ll begin with the nearest station and work our way west. I¡¯m sure Da Vinci will have a map we can use to navigate it.¡±

    ¡°Oh, goodie!¡± said Nursery Rhyme. ¡°Do I finally get to play?¡±

    ¡°It certainly looks that way, doesn¡¯t it?¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°Of course, if the investigation runs too long, then we¡¯re going to have to return to the apartment before the fog rolls in, won¡¯t we?¡±

    ¡°Unless Da Vinci has another gas mask you can use, yes.¡±

    His lips drew tight. We both knew that she wouldn¡¯t. It wasn¡¯t that she couldn¡¯t, but that our supplies were stretched thin enough that she would need to jump through a lot of hoops to find the resources needed to make a spare. I could see Marie approving of it as a matter of pride, but that was why Da Vinci probably wouldn¡¯t even have brought up the possibility.

    Tohsaka sighed. ¡°Fine. If that¡¯s the way it has to be, then I guess I have no right to complain.¡±

    Jackie tugged on my sleeve. ¡°Are we coming along, too, Mommy?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± was my immediate answer. Jackie smiled.

    ¡°Yay!¡± she said. ¡°Alice, we¡¯re all going together!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s going to be oh so much fun!¡± Nursery Rhyme agreed.

    What a strange definition of fun she had. If you just looked at her, she didn¡¯t look all that strange, but she had a tendency to speak softly and infrequently, and when she did speak, it was often something that only seemed unusual because of the context in which it was said.

    In that sense, she kind of reminded me of Glaistig Uaine.

    With the responsibilities divvied up, we spent the rest of the night preparing so that we could once more maximize the time we had in the morning before the fog came back. Part of that, of course, was reaching out to Da Vinci, who was only too happy to provide us with the map we needed of the Underground, with helpfully labeled markers that showed the entrances across the city.

    ¡°I know you only asked for the data from that era,¡± was what she said, ¡°but I included the lines that would be added over the course of the next hundred years as well, just in case. They¡¯re outlined in yellow so that you know which ones are which. Hopefully, you won¡¯t need them.¡±

    It was good that she¡¯d thought ahead and given us that, too, but I could only hope that we wouldn¡¯t need them. This was going to be a big enough pain in the ass to investigate as it was, and adding yet more routes on top of it would only make it more so ¡ª and stack on more hours we had to spend searching them.

    We also touched base with Marie and Romani to let them know what we¡¯d found out and where we were planning on going next. They¡¯d already known that we had defeated Babbage, of course, because they could see it on their sensors, but neither of them was particularly happy about the idea of sending us down into the Underground.

    ¡°It¡¯s not that it¡¯s going to be all that much harder to track you or anything,¡± Romani told us, ¡°but I have to admit, I¡¯m not super excited about you guys going down there when this M guy could just drop the ceiling on you.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, Doc,¡± said Rika, ¡°I was trying real hard not to think about that!¡±

    Romani laughed awkwardly. ¡°Sorry?¡±

    Marie wasn¡¯t any more pleased, but she consoled herself with the fact that us investigating the ley lines meant that we should be able to contact Chaldea more easily if we happened to need some assistance.

    ¡°So don¡¯t hesitate to ask!¡± she ordered sternly. ¡°The most important thing is still that all of you survive to continue the Grand Order, which means no unnecessary risk-taking!¡±

    ¡°Of course, Director.¡±

    And as expected, Da Vinci didn¡¯t have a spare gas mask for Tohsaka to use tomorrow.

    ¡°I¡¯m many things, but I¡¯m afraid a miracle worker isn¡¯t one of them,¡± she told us apologetically. ¡°If we had the resources to spare, then I think I could have one ready for you in the morning, but I¡¯m sorry to say that I¡¯m stretched a little too thin to make one from scratch right now. I do, however, have something else for you.¡±

    Rika perked up. ¡°Another present? Nose plugs? Air freshener? A hermetically sealed helmet?¡±

    ¡°Gesundheit,¡± Ritsuka said sardonically. She stuck her tongue back out at him.

    ¡°Nothing that can help you with your fog situation, sorry,¡± Da Vinci replied, laughter in her voice. ¡°It should help with the problem of keeping in touch with the others at the apartment, however, so once more, Mash, if you would¡­¡±

    When the room was cleared and her shield set down, the magic circle formed and the Rayshift deposited another box, this one even smaller than the one that held my mask. Inside of it turned out to be a set of metallic wristbands, one for Jekyll, one for Ren¨¦e, and one for Tohsaka.

    ¡°Since you¡¯ve had to split up so often, it seemed prudent to leave a more reliable method of communication behind, just in case something happens,¡± Da Vinci explained. ¡°We¡¯ll need you to return them once the Singularity is resolved and the deviations start being corrected, but for now, the Master candidates they originally belonged to¡­aren¡¯t using them at the moment.¡±

    Mash and Ritsuka both sucked in sharp breaths, and any trace of a smile fled Rika¡¯s face. They understood what Da Vinci was implying, although the others didn¡¯t ask for details. Whether out of courtesy or simple lack of interest, I couldn¡¯t say for sure.

    Tohsaka had to fiddle with his a little before he figured out how to put it on, but Jekyll examined his curiously instead of fitting it around his wrist immediately.

    ¡°You have my thanks, Miss Da Vinci,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m certain that this device will prove its usefulness in the coming days.¡±

    ¡°If you need any help figuring out how to use it, Taylor or Mash should be able to explain it,¡± Da Vinci said. ¡°I¡¯m afraid the instruction manual is usually delivered during orientation and couldn¡¯t be miniaturized in time, so I¡¯ll have to put the burden on their shoulders. My apologies.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s fine.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s no trouble, Miss Da Vinci.¡±

    And with everything taken care of for the moment, that was it. Those were all the preparations we could put into our outing tomorrow morning, at least with the supplies and support we had access to then and there. The only other things Marie, Romani, and Da Vinci could do were wish us luck and promise to watch our progress closely.

    When ten o¡¯clock rolled around, we all got ready for bed, then climbed the stairs to the second floor. This time, Jackie didn¡¯t put up much of a fight at all about dematerializing her knives, and she was only too happy to snuggle up in my arms as though she really was my daughter.

    If she came back with us once this was all over¡­ Yeah, she probably wasn¡¯t going to want to have her own room, was she? I¡­wasn¡¯t quite sure how to feel about that. I wasn¡¯t sure what it would mean to be her mother on a longer term basis or how I would handle it. She was generally pretty agreeable now, but if she started acting more like a child her age in other ways? How did I punish her?

    That was a bridge I¡¯d cross when I came to it.

    That night, I slept strangely well, and if I dreamed, then by the time I woke up the next morning, I remembered none of it. I was the first up out of our group, but not by long, because Jackie woke almost as though she¡¯d set an alarm to my circadian rhythm, and she was only too happy to give me a smile and say, ¡°Good morning, Mommy.¡±

    ¡°Good morning, Jackie,¡± I replied.

    The others slowly followed, waking up one by one as I was getting dressed, first with Tohsaka, then Ritsuka, then Mash, then Fran, and finally, Rika, who groggily asked for ¡°five more minutes¡± and was mercilessly told that if she wasn¡¯t up in time for breakfast, then she wasn¡¯t getting any. She climbed out of bed very quickly after that.

    The power her stomach held over that girl, at least when it came to Emiya¡¯s ¡ª and now Ren¨¦e¡¯s ¡ª cooking.

    By the time we all made our way down the stairs, the smell of breakfast was strong in the air, and Rika was very much awake, as though that alone was enough to invigorate her. She was nearly vibrating with her excitement.

    ¡°Last night was boring,¡± Jeanne Alter complained when we entered the parlor, which I took to mean that nothing had happened while we were asleep.

    ¡°Thanks for keeping watch,¡± Ritsuka told her.

    She scoffed and waved him off, a roll of her wrist over the back of the sofa. ¡°Not like I had anything better to do around here. Let me know when breakfast is ready. I¡¯m too comfy to get up right now.¡±

    ¡°Will do,¡± Ritsuka said.

    The rest of our alliance was waiting for us in the dining room, already sipping on a morning cup of tea, and Flamel, Jekyll, and Mordred all gave us a greeting of their own when we came in. Mordred¡¯s, naturally, was a simple, ¡°Yo!¡±

    We all took a seat, and when Ren¨¦e came out of the kitchen several minutes later carrying a silvery platter, Jeanne Alter entered the room shortly thereafter, unwilling to miss the chance at a good meal.

    Breakfast, of course, was delicious, and enjoyed by everyone except Emiya, who never seemed to want to admit that Ren¨¦e was anything approaching as good a cook as he was. We spent a few minutes afterwards letting our food settle and digest, but after that, it was time for us to get going and begin the day¡¯s investigation.

    Fortunately, it didn¡¯t take long for everyone to put on the finishing touches, like slipping their shoes on or checking to make sure they had all of their equipment and such, and I tucked my mask into my equipment pouch. I was definitely going to need it later on, if we didn¡¯t find anything before the fog rolled in, at least, but there was no point in wearing it before then, and I was honestly more comfortable leaving it off.

    I wasn¡¯t the person I¡¯d been even two years ago, when I first gave it to Da Vinci, and I didn¡¯t really want to be.

    ¡°I¡¯ll keep an eye on things here,¡± Arash promised. ¡°Stay safe, everyone.¡±

    ¡°Of course.¡±

    The one who should be saying something like that was me. After all, most of our Servants were going to be coming with us, and it would really only be him and Andersen to protect the apartment. Considering Andersen being Andersen, what that actually meant was that Arash would be the sole defender.

    But as much as that bothered me, if this really was the final battle, then we couldn¡¯t afford to leave behind anyone else.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Arash!¡± said Rika. ¡°We¡¯ve got Cinnabon with us, and Jalter, and Mo-chan! The bad guys won¡¯t know what hit ¡®em!¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re here, too, you know,¡± Tohsaka grumbled.

    ¡°And Tohsaka and Alice,¡± Rika added.

    Arash chuckled. ¡°Then I¡¯ll leave my Master in everyone¡¯s capable hands.¡±

    ¡°I won¡¯t let anything happen to Miss Taylor,¡± Mash swore.

    Emiya chose that moment to appear, walking out of the tea room and crossing the parlor. ¡°Looks like I¡¯m the last one to show up.¡± He held up another square-ish package, wrapped in a linen napkin, pinching the knot between his thumb, middle, and forefinger. ¡°That maid had another gift for us to take with us. More of those cakes, by the smell of them.¡±

    He handed it over to Mash, who accepted it gingerly. ¡°Oh,¡± she said. ¡°Miss Ren¨¦e is very thoughtful, isn¡¯t she?¡±

    She carefully placed it in the compartment in her shield, normally used to hold the Grails we retrieved.

    ¡°It¡¯s her way of showing affection,¡± Flamel revealed.

    ¡°You guys done flapping your gums yet? C¡¯mon,¡± said Mordred. ¡°We¡¯re burning daylight. Let¡¯s just get this thing going already.¡±

    ¡°Right.¡± I brought up the map again, then changed the mode over so that the overlay of the London Underground routes sat above it in glowing, gently curving lines. ¡°The nearest station isn¡¯t that far off.¡± I pointed out the small, swollen dot, one of several that sat along the length of each of those lines. ¡°It¡¯ll only take us a few minutes to reach it. If everyone else is ready, we can go now.¡±

    There were no objections, so we filed out of the house and into the street, a comically large group with comically mismatched people ¡ª three knights in shining armor, a man in a cloak and Renaissance era breeches and tunic, three people dressed in futuristic slacks (a skirt, in Rika¡¯s case) and shirts, a man in a kimono over a business suit, a young girl who could have been that man¡¯s daughter, wearing a flowery pink kimono, a girl in a dirty wedding gown, a man in futuristic body armor, and a girl in a dirty, tattered black cloak.

    ¡°Fou!¡±

    ¡­And a gremlin that didn¡¯t know when to keel over and die.

    Unfortunately, it was still something like fifty years too early for him to get hit by a car crossing the road, so I guess I just had to keep putting up with his presence. At least he was more interested in riding on Mash¡¯s shoulder than trying to ride on mine.

    I could give him that much for saving my life the other day.

    The streets, however, were still as empty as they had been the past several days, and so there was no one to give us strange looks or cross to the opposite side of the street to avoid our group. Likely, they were all still terrified to leave their houses, despite the clear morning, for fear that the mist might return at any moment and smother them. I couldn¡¯t say that I necessarily blamed them, but I didn¡¯t know how long they could afford to keep avoiding the outside when everyone¡¯s supplies must have been running low by this point.

    All the more reason to finish this as quickly as possible, something we¡¯d known since we first arrived here.

    True to my word, it didn¡¯t take us long at all to make our way to the first station leading down into the Underground, and it was only a couple of minutes of walking before we arrived at a five or six story building that looked like it had been constructed at the same time as the British Museum using much the same materials. The base was some sort of marbled brown stone, but the rest of the building that sat on top of it was a familiar, creamy off white color, leading up into an overhang that jutted out over the windows of the fourth floor and a blocky roof covered in grayish blue tiles.

    On the bottom floor was a large entryway, broad enough across for four people to comfortably walk through side by side, five if they squeezed together, and it led almost immediately into a stairway that descended below the pavement and beneath the ground. The sign hanging above it read, ¡°Mansion House Station.¡±

    ¡°This is it,¡± I announced.

    ¡°Oof,¡± said Rika, peering into the darkened stairway, which was much narrower. ¡°Spooky, spooky. This M guy really knows how to pick his underground bases. Are you sure Bond isn¡¯t around, Senpai? ¡®Cause this is giving me major Bond villain vibes.¡±

    My cheek twitched. ¡°Yes.¡±

    Although at this point, not as sure as I wanted to be. If we ever did encounter James Bond, then Rika would never let me live it down.

    ¡°Scared?¡± Jeanne Alter teased.

    ¡°It¡¯s a healthy fear. Healthy!¡± Rika insisted, and then she smiled. ¡°But I¡¯ve got a bunch of really strong people here with me, so if this is where we gotta go, then I guess this is where we go. At least it isn¡¯t as spooky as that Clock Tower place.¡±

    ¡°Although I¡¯m not sure you have to worry about something strange jumping out at you any less,¡± Emiya drawled.

    Rika gasped, and even Mash looked worried.

    ¡°I¡­never read about anything like that, but,¡± she began, ¡°is there really something strange down in the Underground?¡±

    ¡°Normally, no,¡± I said. I gave Emiya an unimpressed look. ¡°But since we don¡¯t know who M is or what his skillset is, we should keep our guards up, just in case he¡¯s left a few nasty surprises around for us to stumble across.¡±

    ¡°As long as there are no alligators,¡± Rika said vehemently.

    Ritsuka huffed a short laugh. ¡°Isn¡¯t that supposed to be New York?¡±

    ¡°You never know!¡±

    ¡°Mash,¡± I said, ¡°Jeanne Alter, you go down first, then Mordred and Fran, then Ritsuka, you and Rika. Jackie and I will be after you, then Tohsaka and Alice, and Emiya and¡­Abraham will bring up the rear.¡±

    No one had any objections to the order I¡¯d chosen, so we took a minute to rearrange ourselves into it, and then Jeanne Alter and Mash entered the station and began their way down the stairs, weapons held at the ready. The rest of us followed, and in the quiet, the clack and clang of our footsteps and our equipment jostling echoed off of the walls.

    The stairway started dark, but not long down it, gas lamps began appearing, but only about half of them were actually lit. The others, it seemed, were either damaged or simply out of whatever oil they burned.

    Midway, Jackie reached out and tugged on my sleeve, whispering up at me, ¡°Mommy, what¡¯s an alligator?¡±

    Ahead of me, Rika snorted and stifled her laughter behind her hands. I pretended not to hear her.

    ¡°A very big lizard,¡± I told Jackie, ¡°with very sharp teeth and very strong jaws. They don¡¯t live anywhere near here, though, so there won¡¯t be any down where we¡¯re going.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Jackie. ¡°Okay.¡±

    Contrary to Emiya¡¯s teasing, nothing jumped out at us, and we made it to the bottom of the stairs without being accosted by any sort of enemy, not even one of the automata. I snuck some bugs down with us, marching them down in places where none of the others were looking, just to avoid creeping anyone out. It was a sparse swarm, but it would hopefully be enough to give me a better sense of my surroundings while we were out looking.

    Waiting at the bottom was a railway platform, lit by more gas lamps. It stretched out to either side, lined with brickwork, and dropped steeply to the tracks that sat at the center. On the opposite side was another platform much the same as the one we found ourselves on, leading back up to the other side of the station. Naked steel beams ran across the ceiling, lined the entire way with large rivets and supported by more steel beams that formed pillars between the two sets of tracks. They were interspersed with thinner concrete pillars.

    A pair of tunnels ¡ª or perhaps more accurately a single tunnel that ran through the platforms ¡ª stretched out in either direction, one easterly and heading towards Whitechapel and one westerly, bound for Westminster. The gas lamps lit the platforms well enough, but their light died not far into the tunnels, making it impossible to see what hid in the darkness beyond.

    The air was more humid than I¡¯d been expecting, carrying with it a damp chill that reminded of the fog, but I probably should have realized that it would be. The entrances to the Underground were not shut, had no doors to close, so there was nothing stopping the fog from descending down into it. And if the fog originated from somewhere down here? Then of course it would linger, just because there was no sun to cook it off.

    At least it was too diminished to do anything. No friction on my magic circuits at all, so the magical energy in it was too thin to start eating away at my lungs again. It was just a wet chill in the air and nothing more. Small mercies.

    ¡°This is creepy,¡± Rika muttered.

    ¡°I¡¯ve never seen a subway so empty,¡± Ritsuka agreed quietly. They came from Tokyo, so I didn¡¯t imagine they¡¯d ever seen one that had no people in it at all.

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t look like the trains are running either,¡± Emiya noted. ¡°Which I suppose makes sense, considering no one seems willing to leave their homes.¡±

    ¡°It means we won¡¯t have to worry about trying to avoid them,¡± I said.

    Not that I¡¯d thought we would, but it was a nice thing to have it confirmed. No people in the station looking to go anywhere meant no trains we had to dodge.

    ¡°So?¡± said Mordred. ¡°Which way?¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran grunted.

    I spared the easterly tunnel only a short glance and dismissed it just as quickly. There were no Ley Line Terminals in that direction, and more than that, the enemy¡¯s presence in Whitechapel had been so sparse that I wasn¡¯t willing to even think it was a ruse meant to draw our attention elsewhere in the city. For M to be that confident in himself that he would eschew a stronger defensive line didn¡¯t line up with what we knew so far, sparse as that was.

    That really only left one direction.

    West it was.

 Chapter CLI: Down in the Underground

    Chapter CLI: Down in the Underground

    I never wanted a night vision mode in my mask more than I did as we walked down that westerly tunnel.

    The sparse swarm I¡¯d brought down with us helped, but I had devoted them mostly to looking for any signs of secret entrances to villainous lairs, which meant they were mainly exploring the walls of the tunnel, not the floor. It helped to keep me oriented in the right direction instead of drifting to either side, but it made me effectively blind to anything that might have been on the ground to trip me up.

    The flashlight function on our communicators also helped, but us Masters were sandwiched in the center of the column of our Servants, and armor like Mordred¡¯s and a shield like Mash¡¯s cast long, large shadows on the floor. The night blindness inherent in using flashlights only made the contrast starker, but it wasn¡¯t like there was enough light from any other source for us to navigate by anyway. We left the gas lamps from the station platform behind quickly enough that they might as well have been candles, and none of the maintenance lights were lit.

    ¡°Creepy,¡± Rika muttered, but with how her voice echoed off the tunnels, she might as well have shouted. ¡°I¡¯m getting some serious flashbacks to Senpai¡¯s School of Caster Trauma.¡±

    I resisted the urge to arch an eyebrow at her. She wouldn¡¯t have seen it anyway.

    ¡°School of Caster Trauma?¡± Tohsaka asked, bemused.

    ¡°Rika and I were¡­last minute picks for the Master roster,¡± Ritsuka explained as diplomatically as he could. ¡°We didn¡¯t get the full training course in time and barely had any orientation before things went¡­wrong. Senpai had to give us some extra training between deployments.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± Tohsaka said in a way that made it clear he really didn¡¯t understand.

    ¡°So she did a scary Caster simulation thingy,¡± Rika added. ¡°To show us how scary it is to fight a Caster in their lair.¡±

    ¡°It was impressive,¡± said Emiya. ¡°I suppose there¡¯s a reason why Taylor is the senior Master on this team, although it does make me curious where she got such experience.¡±

    Even if I was inclined to share, I wasn¡¯t quite sure how I would have gone about explaining it properly, so the only thing I could tell him was, ¡°It¡¯s the way my powers are built. It¡¯s just a coincidence that I happen to benefit from time and a place to set up as Casters and magi do.¡±

    No one else seemed to know where to go with that or what question they wanted to ask for more detail, so for a minute or two, the conversation died and we kept trudging along. Eventually, however, as the topic faded, Mash found something else to focus on and broke the silence.

    ¡°It¡¯s very quiet down here,¡± she said softly. ¡°And the magical energy is¡­very sparse.¡±

    ¡°Except for what¡¯s coming from the remnants of the mist,¡± said Emiya.

    ¡°It¡¯s not a very fun place to play,¡± said Nursery Rhyme. ¡°There¡¯s nowhere to hide for Hide and Seek.¡±

    And no sign that anyone had been down here at all since this whole thing started, let alone M and the other masterminds. It wasn¡¯t impossible that they had been using the Underground as a way to sneak around the city without running the risk of us finding them, whether on accident in the fog or on purpose during the morning hours, but if they had, they hadn¡¯t left a trail behind for us to follow.

    Of course, I wasn¡¯t sure I would have trusted it if they had. It would have felt too much like a trap. If it really was Moriarty at the end of all of this, then I wouldn¡¯t have dared to walk into it, just because I knew better than to think I could outsmart the guy famous for being the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes.

    ¡°Tch.¡± Mordred scoffed, clicking her tongue. ¡°This M guy could¡¯ve at least done us the favor of leaving a sign out or something. ¡®Secret lair over here!¡¯ or some shit like that.¡±

    ¡°Because you need it spelled out for you, British?¡± Jeanne Alter mocked.

    ¡°Fuck you,¡± Mordred replied irritably. ¡°I hate all of this cloak and dagger bullshit.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± Jeanne Alter laughed. ¡°Aren¡¯t you the one who rebelled against your pops and overthrew the whole kingdom while he was off in Rome or whatever?¡±

    ¡°Fuck off!¡± Mordred snarled. ¡°This and that aren¡¯t even in the same goddamn universe! I did what I did because it was the only fucking shot I had at winning. When the time came to fight my father, at least I had the balls to go up and do it to his goddamn face!¡±

    She wound back her foot and planted it solidly in the nearest rail, and the metallic bong vibrated through the whole tunnel, bouncing off of the walls until it was like a chorus of vibrating steel. I wasn¡¯t the only one that winced, but I might have been the only one who noticed the huge bend in the rail she left behind.

    ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m here,¡± she went on heatedly. ¡°The only one who has any right to destroy Father¡¯s country is me! This fucker ain¡¯t got no right to go and try this shit, not while I¡¯m here to say he can¡¯t! He needs to step back and get in fucking line or come up to my fucking face and ask my goddamn permission!¡±

    ¡°None of us likes the situation as it is,¡± I said neutrally. I didn¡¯t judge what she was saying ¡ª our motives were different and the situations weren¡¯t anything at all alike, but I had taken over a portion of my home, too, and done some things I wasn¡¯t exactly proud of to keep it running. Some of that probably counted as rebellion against a lawful authority or whatever. ¡°But hiding and biding his time serves M far better than it does us. All he has to do is run out the clock, while we have to find him before supplies run out and the city dies. There¡¯s nothing we can do to change that when we aren¡¯t even sure who he is.¡±

    ¡°I know!¡± Mordred snapped, and then she gritted her teeth and looked away, scuffing her foot against the ground. ¡°Just¡­pisses me off, is all. Reminds me of¡­someone I don¡¯t like.¡±

    ¡°Someone you don¡¯t like?¡± Tohsaka asked.

    She shot him a dirty look. ¡°Who do you fucking think?¡±

    It took me a second to actually put the clues together, but when I thought back to what she¡¯d said when we first brought up the topic of who M might be and someone suggested Morgan le Fey, it seemed obvious. Of course, because what child who had a good relationship with her mother referred to her as a bitch?

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­actually in the dark on this one, Mo-chan,¡± Rika said, raising her hand. ¡°Who¡­exactly are you talking about?¡±

    Mordred¡¯s brow furrowed, and she grimaced, glancing back at Tohsaka. She looked like the idea of saying it out loud physically pained her, so I reached down across the bond of our temporary contract.

    Want me to explain it? I asked.

    Nah, was all she gave me as a reply. The tone she conveyed, however, was reluctant and grudging, like she knew she needed to be the one to do it but hated the fact that it had to be her.

    ¡°My fucking egg donor,¡± she eventually said, but you might have thought she was getting a tooth pulled for how much she gritted it out.

    ¡°Egg donor?¡± Mash and Ritsuka echoed.

    ¡°Wait, wait,¡± said Rika. ¡°We¡¯re talking about Mama Morgana, right? The lady who, uh¡­ Actually, now that I think about it, how does that work? Since King Arthur was secretly a girl and everything.¡±

    I honestly wasn¡¯t sure I wanted the answer to that.

    ¡°If there¡¯s one thing you should understand about Arthurian Britain, Master,¡± Emiya drawled, ¡°it¡¯s that so much of what went wrong boils down to the meddling of two mages who never learned to leave well enough alone.¡±

    ¡°One of them just happened to be a bitch who never got over herself,¡± Mordred muttered darkly.

    ¡°Fou fou-kyu fou fou,¡± the little gremlin agreed just as darkly.

    ¡°That¡­doesn¡¯t explain as much as I think you think it does,¡± Rika said.

    It didn¡¯t, but Emiya was remarkably touchy about the subject of King Arthur, and I had enough tact to know that ¡ª even if he actually had an answer ¡ª asking him about the sex life of the woman he loved wasn¡¯t exactly the sort of thing you just did. Especially if she was his Servant and he saw it through the dream cycle, because that had to be incredibly awkward, and even more so to bring it up with her.

    The thought brought me up short. Oh god, had Arash seen what I had gotten up to with Brian?

    I felt my cheeks and the tips of my ears warm, and I was suddenly incredibly thankful both that Arash wasn¡¯t there with us and that it was too dark for anyone to see it and ask, because there were a lot of things I wasn¡¯t sure I should say about my past, but that was one of the things that I was taking to my goddamn grave. Lisa knowing had been an unavoidable hazard of her power, but my sex life was definitely not something I was going to talk about to the twins and Mash.

    Emiya shifted. ¡°Shh.¡±

    Rika looked back at him over her shoulder. ¡°Did you actually just ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Master!¡± he hissed, and something in his tone must have reached Rika, because her mouth snapped shut and everyone came to a sudden halt.

    A few seconds of silence passed. All I could hear was the sound of my heart beating and my breath slowly leaving my nostrils.

    And then, I heard it, a soft, distant clang as something or someone carelessly hit one of the rails. Carefully, I sent some of my bugs out and had one land on each of the rails. The vibration that I would have struggled to feel with my own fingertips was like the world shaking to them.

    ¡°We¡¯re not alone,¡± I whispered.

    ¡°Should we shut off our flashlights?¡± Ritsuka whispered back.

    In a different situation, it wouldn¡¯t have been a bad idea. It was just that the lack of light probably impacted us more than it did the enemy, seeing as we had no idea how it was the Helter Skelter, automata, and homunculi were navigating the mist this entire time. They certainly seemed to have had some idea what they were doing and where they were going, so echolocation or infrared or something along those lines might have been a functionality built into them from the beginning.

    It felt like none of those should be things that a nineteenth century mathematician knew enough about to recreate, but I had no idea how long magi had had access to spells that could do the same thing, so who even knew at this point?

    Instead, I said, ¡°Can any of you sense the presence of another Servant?¡±

    ¡°Outside of our happy little group?¡± Jeanne Alter asked.

    ¡°No,¡± said Emiya. ¡°They might still be too far away for us to sense properly yet, but I think the more likely answer is simply that this is another one of the enemy¡¯s patrol groups. After all, if M is hiding out down here somewhere, this is where it would make the most sense to have them, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    Maybe. But there were all sorts of bluffs and double bluffs and triple bluffs that you could start to get into when you asked a question like that, such as trying to convince your enemy that there wasn¡¯t anything of interest down in the Underground by making it seem completely undefended. There were always risks and tradeoffs to gambits like that, so often the one that most people might find the safest was to have a defensive force protecting you just on the off chance someone did come to investigate or attack.

    Of course, if you had some sort of Stranger ability or illusion-based power to hide your secret lair, then leaving your base otherwise defenseless was the right choice. Did this confirm, then, that M had no such thing? Maybe.

    ¡°I don¡¯t sense a Servant either, Miss Taylor,¡± Mash said. ¡°The remnants of the fog down here don¡¯t seem very strong, so I don¡¯t think it¡¯s hiding.¡±

    ¡°More of those Helter Skelter?¡± Tohsaka suggested.

    ¡°Maybe.¡±

    Or an Assassin with Presence Concealment. But an Assassin who made a mistake like that was either a very bad one or a very good one, and right then, it didn¡¯t make much difference. We needed to keep going that way no matter what.

    ¡°Ain¡¯t what I would¡¯ve liked,¡± said Mordred, ¡°but I got some steam to blow off, so it¡¯s all the same to me. Let¡¯s go smash ¡®em!¡±

    ¡°Speaking my language, British,¡± said Jeanne Alter.

    ¡°Just keep an eye out,¡± I told them both. ¡°It might be a trap.¡±

    ¡°Might be?¡± Rika echoed incredulously. ¡°Senpai, we¡¯re literally trying to sneak into the bad guy¡¯s Bond lair to steal the Macguffin out of his Doomsday machine! This whole thing is a trap!¡±

    ¡°Mash,¡± Ritsuka began, pretending she hadn¡¯t spoken, ¡°you, too.¡±

    Mash nodded firmly. ¡°Right!¡±

    ¡°Only sane woman,¡± Rika grumbled to herself. ¡°Only one in the entire group, I swear.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t that her point was necessarily wrong, it was just that it didn¡¯t make a difference if it wasn¡¯t. M wasn¡¯t going to come out and have a duel with Mordred if we went to Trafalgar Square and issued a formal challenge and he certainly wasn¡¯t going to hand over the Grail if we asked nicely.

    So we started walking again, our feet crunching the blackened gravel that coated the ground and the light of our flashlights swaying back and forth with each step. My bugs continued feeling out the walls, looking for any inconsistency as they had before, with a smaller contingent spreading out ahead of us, out of the light of our flashlights, running a screen for whoever or whatever might be waiting for us.

    When, some minutes later, they finally came into my range, a breath hissed out of my nostrils. I wasn¡¯t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed, because while it would have been nice to stumble across another Servant or M himself down here just that easily, it would have felt a little too easy, and if it wasn¡¯t M but another one of his patsies, then we¡¯d just be giving ourselves away.

    ¡°It¡¯s a patrol group,¡± I announced. ¡°Three homunculi, three automata. No Helter Skelter.¡±

    Mordred¡¯s mouth twisted into a scowl. ¡°Damn, that¡¯s no fun.¡±

    Flamel stroked his beard. ¡°Perhaps, without Babbage to make more, the enemy is being somewhat more selective regarding the deployment of the remaining Helter Skelter. They require quite a bit more, after all, than the construction of homunculi, especially if Paracelsus produced them en masse in vats.¡±

    ¡°Ew,¡± said Rika.

    ¡°How did you think he made them?¡± Jeanne Alter asked her. ¡°Planting a few seeds in the ground and watering them for a day or two?¡±

    Rika stuck her tongue out at Jeanne Alter.

    ¡°Take them out quickly,¡± I ordered Mordred. ¡°We can¡¯t waste any time playing around with them.¡±

    ¡°Yeah, yeah,¡± she replied. ¡°Not like they¡¯re that much fun to mess around with anyway. Fuckers are too weak for that. I¡¯ll be sure ¡ª¡± she kicked off the ground and raced down the tunnel ¡ª ¡°to crush ¡®em real fast for ya!¡±

    ¡°Hey!¡± Jeanne Alter squawked as she raced after Mordred. ¡°Who said you could go off and do it by yourself, you bitch!¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± Rika said in their wake, ¡°I can¡¯t decide if they¡¯re Naruto and Sasuke or Zoro and Sanji.¡±

    Who?

    ¡°More like Legolas and Gimli,¡± her brother said.

    Oh.

    The rest of us followed more sedately, but only because us Masters were only human and couldn¡¯t run anywhere near as fast as our Servants could, and the Servants sticking with us weren¡¯t willing to leave us behind. It wasn¡¯t long before the echoes of battle bounced back to us off of the walls, the crash and screech of the automata¡¯s bodies cracking and shattering beneath the edges of Mordred and Jeanne Alter¡¯s swords, and quieter, the meaty squelch of the homunculi being cleaved into pieces just as easily and just as brutally.

    By the time the rest of us arrived on the scene, it looked more like a battlefield or the floor of a slaughterhouse. Hunks of bloodied flesh were strewn all over, washed out by the stark light of our flashlights, and shards of whatever it was the automata were actually made of were scattered like pieces of broken pottery. A finger there, a smashed head there, half of a limb over there, creating a morbid tableau that looked more like the aftermath of a Slaughterhouse Nine attack than a battle.

    Mordred and Jeanne Alter stood at the center of it. Splashes of blood from the homunculi ran in ropes and splotches over their armor, but of course, neither of them was at all hurt.

    ¡°See?¡± said Mordred, grinning as she turned to us. The blade of her sword rested against her shoulder, stained with blood and oil. ¡°Like I said. Easy!¡±

    ¡°Never doubted you for a second!¡± said Rika. She deliberately avoided looking at the carnage on the ground.

    ¡°No Helter Skelter whatsoever,¡± Flamel remarked. ¡°Hm. Perhaps I was more right than I thought I was, and M truly does intend to use them as little as possible.¡±

    ¡°They were Babbage¡¯s inventions in the first place, weren¡¯t they?¡± Ritsuka reasoned. ¡°Without him, any that M has around are now all he can use, so it makes sense that he would be more careful about using them.¡±

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    I¡¯d had a similar thought before. In the midst of all of our other preparations, I¡¯d forgotten to check the map to see if their trackers had moved or if they¡¯d simply dropped ¡ª useless ¡ª to the ground when the Helter Skelter vanished with Babbage¡¯s defeat. The fact we hadn¡¯t run into any on our way to the Underground said nothing, since we hadn¡¯t run into any patrol groups sheerly because it was so close to the apartment.

    ¡°It begs the question, however: how many Helter Skelter does M have left?¡± Flamel said. ¡°For that matter, what level of quality are they? The common types, the middling command units, or the elites that we¡¯ve seen so rarely? Perhaps the latter are the only ones I could see as being truly worth keeping in reserve.¡±

    ¡°We shouldn¡¯t make any assumptions just yet,¡± I said. ¡°The Ley Line Terminal isn¡¯t too far ahead of us. Let¡¯s see if there¡¯s anything for us to find there.¡±

    So we continued on, stepping past the gore and the mess and further down the tunnel. I kept my anemic swarm looking, of course, but the further we went, the more I was convinced that we¡¯d chosen the wrong line to investigate. That one patrol group wound up being the only one we encountered, and I wasn¡¯t sure if that was because M had realized where we were and pulled back to stay hidden or simply because he really hadn¡¯t dedicated that much of a force to patrolling the Underground.

    Before I knew it, we¡¯d reached the next station, and although I¡¯d known what we would find because of what I had ¡ª or rather, hadn¡¯t ¡ª seen with my bugs, that didn¡¯t make me any happier to find it completely empty and untouched. At the center of the station, sandwiched between the two platforms, I stopped and announced, ¡°This is it.¡±

    It looked a lot like the one we¡¯d come from. Similar design, similar architecture, only no steel girders forming pillars through the center. The signs posted on the walls and hanging from the ceiling said ¡°Temple Station.¡±

    Technically, the center of the Ley Line Terminal was actually a bit further northward, but London had strong ley lines, and this particular Terminal was absolutely massive, stretching out from the British Museum all the way to the middle of the river. If Ley Line Terminals could be compared to stars, then normal Terminals were, to my understanding, like main sequence stars, and this one was a supergiant.

    This wasn¡¯t technically the closest we could get to it on this line, but I had enough range to see where the closest point was, and there wasn¡¯t anything else there either.

    ¡°Nothing,¡± Ritsuka noted. ¡°Is he just not here?¡±

    ¡°This particular Ley Line Terminal is rather large, is it not?¡± said Flamel. ¡°We may have more luck investigating it closer to the center ¡ª that is, along the railway that crosses closest to the Mage¡¯s Association.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s the next line we¡¯ll investigate,¡± I confirmed. ¡°For now, the next station is in Westminster, closer to Buckingham Palace and the House of Parliament. After that, there¡¯s another Ley Line Terminal near the St. James¡¯ Park Station. We¡¯ll look there next.¡±

    ¡°This is starting to look more like a wild goose chase,¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°Are you sure Babbage wasn¡¯t leading you on?¡±

    No. The only thing that made his hint credible was the fact that he¡¯d had to fight so hard to give it to us, and even that could have been a ruse or an act he was forced to put on. The trouble with that was the obvious problem, namely ¡ª

    ¡°It¡¯s the only lead we have, right now. Unless you have any suggestions?¡±

    I looked back at him over my shoulder, but he just grimaced and looked away. Alice heaved out a sigh. ¡°At this rate, there won¡¯t be anyone for us to play with today.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s okay, Alice,¡± said Jackie. ¡°We can have another tea party later.¡±

    My lips thinned, but that was all I let show on my face. As long as it wasn¡¯t the same kind of tea party that had nearly gotten me and the twins killed.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure Ren¨¦e will be happy to make some tea for you, if you ask,¡± I said.

    Jackie smiled up at me. ¡°Mm! We want to try some tea from Mommy sometime, though!¡±

    A pang of old pain curdled my insides, but I still promised her, ¡°I¡¯ll have to make you some the way my mom made it for me when we get the chance.¡±

    ¡°We can¡¯t wait!¡±

    We pressed on, going further down the line, and it wasn¡¯t long at all before we left Temple Station and its gas lamps behind us. Once more, we had to turn to our flashlights to see anything at all, and there wasn¡¯t really much to see. It was just tunnel and tracks, stretching on and into the dark, past the light of our flashlights.

    It took us another half an hour to reach the next station, and this one seemed to be made almost entirely of naked concrete. Concrete walls, a concrete ceiling, concrete pillars. Several signs declared it to be Westminster Station, and several more pointed to different exits, each of them with different labels, like ¡°Westminster Abbey¡± and ¡°House of Parliament¡± or ¡°Big Ben,¡± all of the famous London landmarks.

    ¡°Hey, wait a minute,¡± said Rika. She squinted over at one of the signs. ¡°Weren¡¯t we just around here yesterday?¡±

    ¡°We were,¡± I told her. ¡°We fought Babbage and the high spec just a block or two from here.¡±

    She grimaced, then shook her head and gave an exaggerated shrug. ¡°Well, I guess it could be worse. If this guy was right under our feet the whole time, I would¡¯ve been pissed!¡±

    A sentiment I agreed with.

    ¡°We could have checked for M down here on our way back to the apartment yesterday,¡± Mash mumbled, and while she wasn¡¯t wrong, I didn¡¯t think it would have been the best idea to try.

    If M really had been down here and we came to investigate it yesterday, then we might have walked right into his lair, and into any traps he might have set to defend it. Frankly, it was better we were doing this with Flamel here, because at least he was a competent Caster. The only thing we would have been able to do to avoid getting destroyed by whatever defenses M might have was huddle behind Mash and Mordred and hope their Magic Resistance and Mash¡¯s shield could protect us.

    ¡°We didn¡¯t have Abraham with us yesterday,¡± I said, summarizing my thoughts.

    Flamel smiled. ¡°I¡¯m flattered you regard me with such esteem, my dear. I only hope I might live up to it.¡±

    So far? He¡¯d done a pretty good job of it.

    I checked my communicator for the time and had to hold back a scowl. ¡°We¡¯ll look into the next Terminal, then the rest of us will leave through St. James¡¯ Park Station to check the Piccadilly line. Tohsaka, do you think you can make it back to the apartment with just Alice?¡±

    Tohsaka¡¯s lips pursed, and he looked back the way we¡¯d come from, at the dark tunnel that seemed to swallow up the light of the lamps. Eventually, he said, ¡°It shouldn¡¯t be any trouble. I trust Alice to protect me in case we run into anything on the way back.¡±

    Nursery Rhyme smiled. ¡°Nothing will happen to Papa while I¡¯m there!¡±

    I didn¡¯t expect them to run into anything at all, and even so, I didn¡¯t like sending him back with just her, but it would be inconvenient to have to split the group up even more. If M had picked up any other Servants that we didn¡¯t know about, then splitting up could get someone killed.

    There was just nothing for it.

    We left Westminster Station behind and continued west down the tunnel, and once more, it wasn¡¯t long at all before the light of the gas lamps faded behind us and the only thing we had to navigate with was our flashlights. We ran into another group of automata and homunculi, but having so many Servants on our side was just overkill, and they were all taken care of with the usual ease I¡¯d come to expect.

    It still took some getting used to, being the one with overwhelming force. I¡¯d been on the backfoot, the underdog, for so much of my career that it was just strange. Surreal. In a good way, but still.

    The next Ley Line Terminal was situated right near where Westminster Abbey was on the surface, and I¡¯d almost come to expect the fact that there was nothing there for us to find. No hidden doors that led into a secret tunnel, no false walls or secret passageways, not even an illusion cast over a hole in the tunnel that opened up into a hidden lair. By the time my real body and the rest of the group made it there, I had already explored every part of it that I could and come up empty.

    The rest of the team wasn¡¯t any happier to find that out either.

    ¡°Man, what a ripoff!¡± Rika vented. ¡°Hey, Senpai, are you sure Babbage was trying to tell us to look in the Underground instead of underground? Because, like, if he was trying to tell us to start digging in the nearest park, I¡¯m gonna be real upset! Boss Lady will be getting my manicure bill!¡±

    ¡°Calm down, Rika,¡± her brother said. ¡°There¡¯s more than one tunnel for us to search. Just because we didn¡¯t find anything in this one doesn¡¯t mean we won¡¯t in one of the others.¡±

    ¡°Are we really gonna have to search all of them?¡± Rika asked, dismayed.

    Mash and Ritsuka traded grimaces. They didn¡¯t look any more thrilled by the idea than she was.

    ¡°We¡¯ll see,¡± I told her. I had some small hope that the next line would be the right one, just because it got so close to that huge Terminal that sat under the Clock Tower.

    Rika groaned. ¡°We are, aren¡¯t we?¡±

    ¡°Fucker just can¡¯t make it easy for us, can he?¡± Mordred said sourly.

    If it really was Moriarty, then no, he really couldn¡¯t.

    As expected, there was nothing else between that spot and the next station either, and a short while later, we came upon another set of platforms, lit by yet more gas lamps. It looked much like the others before it, at least in structure, with pale, yellowish brickwork along the walls, although the coloring might have had as much to do with the lighting as anything else. Linoleum tiles patterned the stairwells in small, palm-sized squares.

    I hadn¡¯t realized linoleum was that old as a material. Or was this an instance of the more modern Underground bleeding into the past?

    Signs around the platforms declared that this was St. James¡¯ Station, our last stop in this tunnel.

    Tohsaka, spying the signs, let out a grunt. ¡°I suppose this is where we¡¯re meant to part ways, then?¡±

    I turned to face him. ¡°Yes. You shouldn¡¯t have any trouble making it back to the apartment, but there¡¯s enough leeway that you can contact us if something goes wrong and we can send Mordred or Jeanne Alter to help out.¡±

    He eyed the two of them, one of whom gave him a disinterested glance when her name was mentioned and the other of whom shot him a grin. ¡°Lucky me,¡± he said.

    ¡°Don¡¯t rush,¡± I warned him. ¡°Take your time and be careful. You should have at least half an hour to spare by the time you make it back to the Mansion House Station.¡±

    ¡°Of course. I might not be much of a magus, but I¡¯m not stupid.¡±

    He turned around, fiddling with his borrowed communicator for a moment, and then the flashlight function flared to life and cast an intense, bright circle along the ground.

    ¡°Let¡¯s go, Alice,¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°The last thing we want to do is be caught down in this place when the fog rolls in again.¡±

    ¡°Coming, Papa!¡± Nursery Rhyme said brightly. She gave Jackie a wave. ¡°Bye-bye, Jackie! See you later!¡±

    Jackie waved back. ¡°Bye, Alice!¡±

    I tugged on the bond connecting us. Jackie.

    She looked up at me.

    I want you to follow them in spirit form, I told her. Just to make sure they get back okay on their own. Let me know if they run into any trouble.

    She smiled. Okay, Mommy!

    She vanished, presence and all, and a shiver swept down my spine at just how easily she had slipped from my senses. A vague tingle in my prosthetic was the only sign I had that she passed me by, because every other trace of her was gone the instant she shifted to spirit form. The only saving grace was that she had no reason to use her Information Erasure skill on us.

    Presence Concealment was a terrifying ability.

    ¡°Come on,¡± I said to the rest of the group. ¡°Let¡¯s look through at least one other line before we stop and eat those snacks Ren¨¦e made for us.¡±

    We climbed up onto the platform one at a time, although the Servants made the jump with an enviable ease. I missed my flight pack, just then, and the convenience it gave me of being able to just skip the obstacle of anything taller than my ribs. After that, it was up the stairs and back out into the gloomy light of midmorning London under a cloudy sky.

    From what I heard of it, London without the fog machine mucking things up wasn¡¯t usually much better.

    I made sure to gather up my anemic swarm and secret as much of it as I could into as many hiding places as I could get away with as we climbed the stairs. It wouldn¡¯t let me do much, but at least I would be able to carry them from line to line and use them in each one.

    We came out on the other side of Buckingham Palace from where we¡¯d originally fought Nursery Rhyme, with St. James¡¯ Park between us and our next destination, and while it would have been quicker and easier if we could have taken a path straight through the park, the lake that spanned a large portion of it made that impossible. We had to take a route around it instead, swinging to the west and coming within spitting distance of the palace itself.

    It was a bit convenient in another way, in that, if somehow Mordred had been wrong and M had indeed taken up residence there, we got close enough for the sensors to pick up on it. Unfortunately, however, there was no sudden call from Romani or Marie to alert us to a Servant¡¯s presence or a massive magical energy response. It was hard to see, but there weren¡¯t even any lights on in the windows or guards hanging around the perimeter. It seemed that Buckingham Palace really was completely empty.

    ¡°Man, I wish we could visit,¡± Rika said as we passed by. She cast a long, wistful look through the bars of the wrought iron fence surrounding the place. ¡°I¡¯ve always wanted to meet the Queen. I hear she¡¯s a tough old bird.¡±

    Nobody tell her that Queen Victoria was notorious for her healthy sex life, I thought wryly.

    Emiya snorted. ¡°Thinking your job at Chaldea might earn you a knighthood, Master?¡±

    ¡°You never know!¡± Rika said defensively. ¡°All you gotta do is defend the realm and stuff, right? Isn¡¯t that what we¡¯re doing right now? Technically, kinda-sorta?¡±

    ¡°I think modern knighthoods are mostly just fancy titles, Senpai,¡± Mash said apologetically. ¡°But, maybe Queen Victoria really would have given us knighthoods, if she knew why we were here! I-I think so, at least¡­¡±

    Knighthoods for an American, two Japanese kids, a¡­whatever nationality Mash counted as, and a bunch of ghosts of heroes past? I wasn¡¯t sure how that one would get explained in the paperwork.

    ¡°Pretty sure I could give ya one, if you really want it, Master,¡± Mordred said, grinning. ¡°¡®Course, you usually have to be a squire for a few years first, and I ain¡¯t exactly King of Britain right now, but unless Father shows up, I think I¡¯m the closest thing you¡¯re gonna get.¡±

    Rika winced. ¡°Uh, I-I think I¡¯m gonna take a rain check on that, Mo-chan. Besides, it was a stupid idea anyway. It¡¯s not like I could take the certificate into school and show everyone I got knighted by Queen Victoria in 1888!¡±

    ¡°No one would believe you in the first place,¡± Ritsuka added with a smile.

    Mash giggled and Fran chuckled.

    We took a right at the palace, kept going for a little while, then went left onto a footpath that traced the outer edge of the Green Park and stayed on that until the next station came into view ahead of us. It was cut out of the gently sloping hillside, a ramp leading down into a white stone facade, framed on either side by sturdy walls. The words ¡°Green Park Station¡± were emblazoned on a sign above an open entryway, and above it, standing at the apex of the hill, there was another structure, sort of like a large bus stop. A quick look with my anemic swarm revealed a staircase that led down into the hill, and then further down into the station itself.

    We entered unmolested, with no sign of any sort of resistance, and descended down the stairs into a much more cramped platform. The previous line, the District Line, had been two railways running in parallel, but the Piccadilly Line was a singular railway, and that made the tunnel and the station much smaller and a much tighter fit. If the trains were still running, then it would have made it a much more dangerous bet to jump down and follow it.

    Fortunately, we weren¡¯t going to go anywhere near as far with this one as we did with the District Line. The Piccadilly Line took a pretty sharp turn right around the area of the British Museum, and it intersected with the Central Line close enough there for us to hop over to a nearby station on Tottenham Court Road and investigate the Central Line east of the Museum. There was no point in following the Piccadilly Line as far north as it could go ¡ª there was nothing up there we cared about, as far as our investigation was concerned.

    So that was what we did. We went east along the Piccadilly Line, navigating awkwardly through the tunnel with our flashlights out and trying to keep a good enough eye on the tracks that we didn¡¯t stumble over them. Having my swarm, as anemic as it was, helped me to keep my footing sure, but without it, I was sure I would have been tripping every third step or so.

    Mordred and Mash had the worst time of all of us, of course. Mordred, because she was in that suit of armor that seemed so especially designed to give her a larger, more masculine outline, and Mash because of her shield, which became more of a hindrance than a help with everything being as close quarters as it was.

    It meant that it took us about forty-five minutes to go from Green Park to Holborn, forty-five minutes where nothing attacked us, nothing jumped out at us, and we found nothing of interest.

    ¡°Geez!¡± Rika complained. ¡°Where is this guy? My shoes are gonna wear out at this rate! I¡¯m gonna need new shoes! I¡¯m billing him for them!¡±

    ¡°I¡­don¡¯t think that¡¯s how your Mystic Code works, Senpai,¡± Mash hedged.

    ¡°It¡¯s the principle of the thing!¡± Rika insisted.

    ¡°We¡¯ll eat Ren¨¦e¡¯s snacks and take a short break at the next station, Rika,¡± I promised.

    She groaned. ¡°Ugh!¡±

    ¡°Uhn, uh-uhn,¡± Fran said sympathetically.

    ¡°And I still can¡¯t understand what you¡¯re saying!¡± Rika said, frustrated.

    ¡°Uhn¡­¡±

    She sulked the rest of the way to Russell Square. It was, fortunately, only about half as far from Holborn to there as it was from Green Park to Holborn. On the other hand, we took our time as we scoured the tunnel, and there was still no sign of M, his underground (or Underground) base, or Angrboea. Even when we passed straight through the influence of that enormous Ley Line Terminal, we found nothing.

    Could he have been further north? Maybe. Could he have been further west than we wound up going? Possibly. But unless he could move his machine around at will and had free access to teleportation, neither of which were necessarily impossible, getting his patrol groups in place over as and where we¡¯d encountered them the last few days would have been too much of a hassle if he was too far away from Westminster and Soho. Those were, after all, where we¡¯d found the largest concentrations of his forces, and where we¡¯d fought Mephistopheles, Paracelsus, the high spec Helter Skelter, and Babbage.

    He was somewhere along one of these lines that went through central London. I was sure of it. The only trick was finding out which one.

    Russell Square Station was much like Holborn and Green Park, and like the rest of the stations on the Piccadilly Line, fairly small. It had only a single railway line, so it had a single platform, and aside from the signs directing people about, it looked much the same, too. I just wished our search along the way had been a little more fruitful than the others had been.

    True to my word, we took a little break and sat down on the stairs, until Emiya produced a small table and some chairs for us to sit at. They all, at least, looked like they belonged in this era, like something out of a historical drama, with plush, velvet padding and finely carved wooden frames. Mash retrieved Ren¨¦e¡¯s cakes from the compartment in her shield, and Emiya even went so far as to add plates and silverware for us to use, too.

    Rika was the most obviously grateful for the break, but Mash, Ritsuka, and even Fran couldn¡¯t hide from me their own relief as they sank into their chairs. I guess we had been at this for close to three hours now, and three hours of walking in the dark wasn¡¯t exactly fun.

    Speaking of which¡­

    Arash, I said, giving a gentle yank on the line of our bond, Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme should be arriving back at the apartment soon. Once they¡¯re settled in, come and meet up with us.

    Nursery Rhyme and her fairy tale nonsense should be more than enough to protect the apartment. The Jabberwocky had stood up to the combined might of everything we¡¯d thrown at it, after all, and basically shrugged it all off.

    Got it, Arash replied. I¡¯ll catch up with you guys as soon as I can.

    With that taken care of, I went back to my cake and let myself relax and enjoy the sweet burst of sugar and fruit that exploded on my tongue with every bite.

    We sat and rested for a few minutes once we were all done eating, but after that, it was time to get back to work. I had less than an hour before I¡¯d have to pull out my mask and put it on as the fog rolled in, so the longer I could go without it, the happier I would be.

    Russell Square Station opened out into an ordinary street about a block northeast from the British Museum, not far from another small park appropriately named Russell Square, and the Tottenham Court Road station was only a street or two southwest of the Museum. It was not nearly as much of a hike as it could have been, although we had to pass by the ruined remains of the Museum to reach it.

    I wasn¡¯t sure what I was expecting, but for there to be no sign of the scraps we¡¯d left behind of the Helter Skelter that had accompanied Paracelsus wasn¡¯t quite it. Had they really just disappeared when Babbage died? It seemed that way. If they were an expression of his Noble Phantasm, then without him here, there was nothing to sustain them, was there?

    That just left the question of exactly how Angrboea was still around. I guess Babbage had built it entirely independently of his Noble Phantasm. If he¡¯d just constructed it from resources inside the Singularity itself, then we¡¯d have to destroy the machine to make it stop and manually retrieve the Grail that served as its power source. We just had to find it first.

    The next station on our list was in a large building sat on the corner of an intersection, but just across the street from that building was another entrance, just a set of stairs that descended into the pavement and disappeared beneath the sidewalk.

    ¡°This is it,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ll take this line east and look for the Ley Line Terminal along the way, then come out at the Bank Underground station and head back to Jekyll¡¯s for lunch.¡±

    And try to figure out where the hell else M could be. There was another Terminal to the west along this line, but aside from trying to avoid attention, I couldn¡¯t see why he would have gone there instead of the biggest Terminal in the city.

    ¡°Right!¡± Mash and the twins said, echoed by Fran¡¯s, ¡°Uhn!¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s go kick this bastard¡¯s front door in!¡± Mordred agreed.

    ¡°And burn the house down while we¡¯re at it,¡± Jeanne Alter added for good measure.

    ¡°I think the scariest thing to happen this entire Singularity is the two of them getting along,¡± Emiya drawled.

    Mordred and Jeanne Alter both flipped him the bird. The funnier part was that they didn¡¯t seem to realize they¡¯d done it in eerie synchronicity, like they were two people sharing one brain.

    Alec and Lisa probably would have had a witty line for them about that, something to tease them about just how closely they¡¯d mirrored each other. They really were getting along way better than I would have expected before we came to London, especially considering how prickly Jeanne Alter was in general.

    Without further ado, we stepped down and into the station. I let my swarm back out surreptitiously, dropping them in unnoticeable clumps out of view, and set them to spreading out. At the bottom of the stairs, in the station proper, I expected there to just be another normal subway station, just like the ones before it. Linoleum tiles or bricks of whatever pale stone had been used in its construction, maybe some steel beams riddled with rivets the size of chicken eggs.

    What I found instead, however ¡ª

    ¡°What the hell?¡±

    ¡ª was a forest of branches and thorns.

    Mordred asked the question that was on the tip of everyone¡¯s tongues:

    ¡°What the fuck is this?¡±

 Interlude RF: Once Upon a Dream

    Interlude RF: Once Upon a Dream

    Homunculus. The term used to denote an artificial human, made through the process of growing a complete individual from a single donor. They were not born. Rather, they were created, often fully formed, and in the rare instance where they began as an infant, their aging accelerated so that they were fully grown in a short time. Days, sometimes. Weeks, maybe. Usually, it was just hours. It was almost unheard of for a homunculus to develop at a rate commensurate with an ordinary human.

    Despite the term used to refer to them, however, they were not much at all like humans. They came into being possessing all of the knowledge required for their existence, and yet had souls as pure as a newborn child, completely uncontaminated by the stain known as experience.

    They did not age, and they were malleable enough to take on nearly any form required. Whatever role was necessary, they could fulfill, whether that was maid, tutor, caretaker, lover, or assistant. They were, after all, created with everything necessary to fulfill those roles, including superhuman strength or magic circuits more powerful than any naturally born magus. Yes ¡ª everything, except the will, the desire, and the concept of rebelling against it.

    Naturally, for something that was considered so useful, there had to be drawbacks. As incredible a being as a homunculus was, its lifespan was often measured in the single digits. Even well-made and expertly sculpted homunculi did not often live to see more than two decades of life, and making it even that far was just shy of miraculous.

    Some didn¡¯t live longer than two months.

    This was all knowledge that Nicolas Flamel possessed, and was therefore part of the reason he had never crafted a homunculus before, considering it an act of cruelty to create something so short-lived and pitiful. Naturally, it was, as a result, also something which Ren¨¦e knew, as well. Her creator had gifted her with all of the knowledge necessary for her existence, including the fact that it would be a short one.

    A human being who was as old as she looked might have raged, might have snarled and shouted and screamed at the injustice of it. For Ren¨¦e¡­ No, likely for any other homunculus as well, it was simply fact, and she hadn¡¯t the anger or the sadness to complain.

    She had been created as a blank slate, and her creator had poured his knowledge into her, filling her with all sorts of things that were not necessary to her existence. What need did a homunculus have to know the principles of alchemy when she herself would never use it? What reason was there for her to know and understand the philosophical underpinnings of human morality? What purpose was there to the fond memories of a kindly woman preparing a delicious meal?

    None. Although she acted in such a way, she had not been created to be the apartment¡¯s maid. In the first place, it wasn¡¯t necessary. Doctor Jekyll was a perfectly acceptable cook. Nicolas Flamel needed neither food nor drink to sustain himself. There was nothing so desperately in need of cleaning that she should do any of the other housework either. In the end, the Chaldeans came, and even the things she did for the occupants of that apartment became superfluous.

    And yet, she did them anyway. She performed these unnecessary tasks because her life was filled with unnecessary things.

    It was the only thing she could think to do to show her gratitude for the life she had been given ¡ª even if it was so incredibly short.

    And it became shorter every day. With every stride the Chaldeans made in unraveling the world Ren¨¦e had come to know, her time came closer to ending. Every enemy vanquished became another nail in her coffin, another of the tethers binding her to this world severed. First, Paracelsus, the ¡®P¡¯ in the note left behind by Victor Frankenstein, and then, later on in the same day, Charles Babbage, the ¡®B¡¯ in that self-same note. Jack the Ripper was suborned and Robin Hood defeated outright. The magical tome was made into an ally less than a day after it appeared.

    There was now only a single mastermind left. Presumably, after he was defeated, the world would be set to rights, and as an aberrant being never meant to exist in this time and this place ¡ª yes, she too would disappear, wouldn¡¯t she? As though it was nothing more than a passing dream, this existence of hers would vanish, leaving behind no record, but for whatever memories the Chaldeans took back with them.

    Eventually, even those would fade, wouldn¡¯t they?

    Were Ren¨¦e a human being, she might have attempted to delay the inevitable. She might have poisoned the Chaldeans¡¯ food, just enough that they might be bedridden for a few days. She might have arranged an accident that would put one or more out of commission. Anything, everything which might forestall the end of her path.

    She did none of those. Instead, when the day came for the Chaldeans to venture down into the Underground with her creator, she did as she had always done ¡ª always, for the scant few days she had even existed ¡ª and prepared them food for breakfast. She fed them, she watched them eat and enjoy it, and then she went an extra step and prepared snacks for them to take along with them a second time.

    There was no point in getting angry. There was no point in raging against the circumstances. Yes ¡ª Ren¨¦e had already known that her existence would be a short one and that her life was measured in days rather than months. Allowing herself to indulge in such things would only waste what time she did have.

    She could only watch them leave and take what pleasure she could in the unnecessary tasks she completed every day.

    After they were gone, she returned to the kitchen and continued the process of cleaning up after herself and the others. Pots and pans were washed to a spotless shine, plates scrubbed clean, silverware meticulously scoured for any remnants of the meal, all until any sign they had even been used was thoroughly and completely erased.

    Like that, the time passed, and before she knew it, an hour had gone by. Setting aside the towel and other implements she used in the process, she went about arranging the kettle, filling it with water, and putting it on the stove to boil. While the water heated, she retrieved the tea leaves from where she had put them away and prepared the correct amount to accommodate the teapot.

    When the water was ready and the kettle whistled, she took it from the stove and poured it over the tea leaves inside the teapot, then let it sit to steep for a few minutes. In the meantime, she procured a tray, a teacup, the sugar bowl, and a pitcher of cream.

    She could have prepared the tea exactly the way he liked it, and she had done so before, but this time, she did not. Doctor Jekyll preferred to sweeten his tea on his own.

    When everything was ready, she arranged it all on the tray, then lifted it by the handles and made her way out of the kitchen, through the dining room, through the parlor, then into the study, where Doctor Jekyll stood alone. He stood over the map that had been made by Nicolas Flamel, watching the progress of the others, even though he only saw them as dots moving about the streets. He was fiddling with the band of metal that now encircled his wrist, although he didn¡¯t seem to realize he was doing it.

    For a moment, her own eyes roved over the map of their own accord, landing on a particular building it depicted and the pathway through the streets that connected it to the apartment, and then she put it out of her mind.

    Mister Andersen must have taken up the office again, Ren¨¦e thought, and filed it away. Mister Andersen did not seem to appreciate the life he had been given, even though it was just as temporary as hers. He cared little for eating meals or drinking tea, as though such things were alien and unnecessary to his existence.

    She, who had so little experience and only the knowledge gifted to her, had no right to judge.

    ¡°Doctor Jekyll,¡± Ren¨¦e said, and he startled, so deep in thought was he that he hadn¡¯t heard her coming. ¡°I¡¯ve brought you tea.¡±

    His eyes trailed down to the tray she carried and the teapot that rested at its center. Little puffs of steam escaped the spout at the end, wafting up with an aroma that Ren¨¦e believed could be called pleasant.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Doctor Jekyll, and he offered her a smile. ¡°Yes, that would be wonderful, Ren¨¦e. Your thoughtfulness is much appreciated.¡±

    ¡°It was no trouble,¡± she demurred.

    She set the tray down on the nearby desk, careful not to disturb the vials and flasks that already sat there, and stepped back as Doctor Jekyll turned away from the map and came over to make himself a cup. As she always did, she took careful note of the process and the preferences displayed as he added a pair of sugar cubes and then a generous helping of cream, then poured in the steaming tea.

    Even if it was knowledge she might only use for another day or two, or even only a few hours, she cataloged it all the same.

    She wondered, had the woman in her borrowed memories been the same? Had Perenelle Flamel found some joy in tending to her husband¡¯s needs? Had it brought her happiness to see Nicolas smile at every meal?

    No answer was forthcoming. Perenelle was not there to tell her, and Ren¨¦e was not yet experienced enough to divine one for herself. She did not know the shape of happiness, nor whether Perenelle had ever been happy, and she did not quite know how to ask her creator. In the first place, he had already given her so much, and she didn¡¯t think she had any right to ask for more.

    ¡°Brewed to perfection, as always, Ren¨¦e,¡± said Doctor Jekyll. He took another sip of his tea. ¡°Mm ¡ª I confess my jealousy. Would that it were I had the talent for cooking that you do, although perhaps it is for the better that I do not. I am certain there would be a much greater demand on my time were it so.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m pleased you¡¯re enjoying it,¡± Ren¨¦e said politely. ¡°Please excuse me. I will return later to retrieve the teapot and tray.¡±

    ¡°Put it out of your mind, my dear,¡± Doctor Jekyll told her. ¡°Go ¡ª see to whatever it is that you must see to, and I shall return these things to their proper places once I have sated my appetite.¡±

    Ren¨¦e gave him a short bow, but didn¡¯t acknowledge his words otherwise. She would return for the teapot and tray regardless, because it was a part of her role in the apartment, a part of what gave her life whatever paltry meaning it had. She could not allow herself to lose yet more of that, not after Emiya had come and taken the lunch away from her ¡ª and very nearly the evening meal, too.

    Perhaps this was the thing known as pride. Ren¨¦e wasn¡¯t sure, but she thought it might be.

    On her way back through the house, Ren¨¦e turned her head and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece above the fireplace and blinked at the ticking hands.

    ¡°Oh,¡± she said softly. It was that time again.

    If she was human, she might have rushed to the kitchen in a hurry, but as she was not, not quite, she did not. She returned at her usual pace, and when she made it back to the kitchen, she procured a small bowl, then reached into the pantry and retrieved a wooden container from a special spot on the shelf. Emiya had been strictly forbidden from touching it, and she had threatened him with eviction if he laid so much as a single finger upon it.

    Because of her creator¡¯s wishes, she had given in and allowed him to ¡°assist¡± her with dinner and make lunch on his own, but even then, there was a limit to what she was willing to accept.

    Inside the container was a mixture of dried meats and fruits. As an unfortunate consequence of the current circumstances, there wasn¡¯t any fish available and she couldn¡¯t go to the market to acquire some, so she¡¯d had to make do with what could be spared from the pantry and the icebox.

    Using a spoon, she scooped up some of the mixture and placed it in the bowl, and then she got out another bowl and filled it with water. The container of dried meat went back on its proper shelf, and then she picked up both bowls and made her way back through the house to the front door. As quietly as she could, she eased the door open and stepped out into the open air.

    A chill clung to the city, even without the fog there to deliver it, and when she looked up into the sky, heavy clouds blocked out almost all of the light. The fog that had lifted now sat above them, choking the city in an entirely different way, and it cast a pall over the empty streets.

    Ren¨¦e had never seen the sun before, and she was certain she never would. She wondered, was that supposed to make her sad? Was she supposed to be angry for the missed opportunity? She wasn¡¯t sure. How could she miss something that she had never witnessed before and never would? The idea seemed ludicrous.

    But¡­maybe it might have been nice to experience it, just the once. To know, before she disappeared, what it was like to feel the sunlight upon her cheeks and know if it was as warm as she imagined it would be.

    A questioning noise interrupted her before she could think any deeper on the subject, and when she looked down and over to the right, a curious cat looked back at her, head tilted. Its striped orange fur stood out as a splash of color against the gray streets and the drab houses that surrounded them, bright even in the gloom.

    What meaning there was behind its mannerisms and vocalizations, she didn¡¯t know, because it wasn¡¯t something that her creator had shared with her. She¡¯d heard, however, that there were people who could speak to animals and communicate with them as easily as though they were humans. What was that like?

    Of course, she would never know. If Nicolas Flamel possessed the knowledge of how to bestow such an ability on her, he had not done so.

    ¡°Hello, Pierre,¡± she greeted the tomcat. She walked down the steps and knelt down so that she could place both of the bowls she carried next to the bottom stair, then took just a single step back.

    The cat took a cautious step towards her, then lifted his head and sniffed the air. His green eyes zeroed in on the dried meats and fruits, knowing, as he must have, exactly what they were, and after taking another tentative sniff to confirm it, he raced over and buried his snout in the bowl. His tail stayed raised, swaying gently back and forth.

    The cat she had named Pierre ate ferociously, gulping down large mouthfuls of his meal. Any reticence he¡¯d had before was entirely gone.

    ¡°It seems you were hungry this morning,¡± Ren¨¦e commented. She held her skirt against the backs of her knees and sat down on the stairs, watching, observing. Pierre didn¡¯t seem to notice her at all, but for the slight pause when she moved, and otherwise disregarded her presence entirely.

    Another unnecessary thing. There was no need for her to feed this cat every morning, nor was there any such need for her to conceal the act from the other occupants of the apartment. From what she understood of things, everything in London would be restored to its proper place once the last mastermind was vanquished and the Holy Grail was retrieved, not just her and her creator. The same force that would see her erased would undo any good she did for this stray cat. Whatever fate awaited him in the proper course of history would not be changed in the slightest by her actions now.

    Why, then, did she bother feeding him? Ren¨¦e¡­didn¡¯t have an answer for that. She didn¡¯t know how to explain it. She didn¡¯t have the words. She didn¡¯t even know where the impulse came from or why. This was not the gratitude she was showing her creator for giving her so much, and yet it was still so vitally important that she could not have brought herself to stop.

    What was it about this creature that compelled her to aid him? None of the data that had been given to her on morality and ethics felt like it properly explained anything, and yet she could not find another reason inside of her.

    Was she¡­defective?

    The thought stuck in her belly like grease on a pan, refusing to be dislodged. Was the fact that she could even feel that way another sign of her flawed nature? Nicolas Flamel was a genius of unparalleled talent for his era, but there was a limit to the miracles even he could perform. Had something gone wrong in the process? Or had her exposure to the fog ¡ª miniscule as it had always been ¡ª done some irreparable damage to her functioning?

    Once again, she didn¡¯t have an answer. The very idea that she might be compromised, that she could fail at the only things that gave her purpose, sat like a block of ice in her chest, cold and numbing and spreading slowly out to her limbs.

    She was saved from those troubling thoughts when Arash appeared suddenly beside her as though he had been there all along, so subtly and so silently that Pierre didn¡¯t even seem to notice. It was only his presence, the metaphysical weight he carried that radiated off of him like heat from the stove, that told her he was there.

    ¡°Hungry this morning, isn¡¯t he?¡± Arash said conversationally. When Ren¨¦e turned to look, an easygoing smile stretched his lips.

    ¡°Yes, it seems so,¡± she replied.

    ¡°I guess, with all of the markets shut down and the food in them long since spoiled, he doesn¡¯t have much choice about where and what he eats,¡± Arash went on. He crouched down, elbows on his knees, and hunched over to watch Pierre. ¡°I¡¯m a bit surprised that he¡¯s the only stray that comes over here every day, but¡­with the fog, he might be the only one who was clever enough to escape indoors when it rolled around.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps,¡± said Ren¨¦e.

    In truth, she had not considered that. In that case, he might be all alone. All of his family, all of the other strays, his offspring, if he had any, they might all have died while he survived. Ren¨¦e might be the only kind face he ever saw, day in and day out, and the scraps of food she could spare might be the only food he ate.

    Stolen story; please report.

    That was¡­

    ¡°Well,¡± said Arash, ¡°I can¡¯t say my Master would be thrilled to find out some of our food supplies are being used for something like this, but I don¡¯t think she would stop you either, no matter what she says about it.¡± He grinned at her over his shoulder. ¡°She¡¯s a bit dishonest like that. She might seem blunt and stoic, but there¡¯s a lot under the surface that most people never realize is even there.¡±

    Finished with his food, Pierre turned next to the bowl of water and started lapping it up with his tongue, downing what he could as though he had not had a drink since the night before when she fed him last.

    ¡°¡­Should I tell her, then?¡±

    Arash shook his head. ¡°Not yet. As long as it¡¯s not critical, there¡¯s no need for anyone else to know, so it can just be our little secret. That work for you?¡±

    Something in Ren¨¦e¡¯s chest eased.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    When he was done drinking, Pierre licked his lips and looked up. Green eyes turned and regarded Arash warily, and Arash held out a hand, palm up and fingers loose. Pierre approached with caution, taking one halting, hesitant step at a time, and when he was close enough, stuck his head out to sniff at Arash¡¯s palm.

    After a moment, he must have recognized Arash, because he leaned forward, and Arash took that as a sign of permission, reaching out with his fingers to scratch behind Pierre¡¯s ears. It wasn¡¯t long before Pierre was purring, a soft rumbling sound that echoed in his chest and throat, and Ren¨¦e took more mental notes.

    Arash only indulged Pierre for a minute or two, and then pulled his hand away and stood, ignoring Pierre¡¯s curious look. To Ren¨¦e, he said, ¡°I think that¡¯s a long enough break for me. The fog will be coming back in about an hour from now, so Tohsaka and Alice are on their way back while the others keep looking. Once they¡¯re here, I¡¯ll be heading out myself to catch up with my comrades, so you and Doctor Jekyll will be in Tohsaka and Alice¡¯s hands.¡±

    ¡°I understand,¡± Ren¨¦e replied.

    With a smile and a jaunty wave, Arash disappeared again, returning to his perch on the roof. Ren¨¦e¡¯s gaze lingered where he¡¯d been for a moment longer, and then she turned back to Pierre, who had watched without an apparent care. She did not think that was necessarily normal behavior for a cat, but animals were supposed to have superhuman senses, so perhaps, to him, Arash¡¯s disappearance was not a matter of any concern.

    Cautiously, tentatively, Ren¨¦e leaned over until her body pressed up against the railing and held out her hand, palm up, exactly the way she had seen Arash do. Pierre¡¯s eyes turned and traveled from her face down her shoulder and the entire length of her arm, and for a moment, he simply stayed where he was, his tail swaying slowly and lazily back and forth behind him. Then, however, he stepped forward, and instead of sniffing her palm, he ducked his head under her knuckles and nuzzled the back of her hand. His head rubbed back and forth, as though there was some substance just behind his ears that he was trying to smear all over her skin.

    For a few seconds, Ren¨¦e froze, having expected Pierre to regard her with the exact same caution as Arash, but after the surprise faded, she twisted her hand around and did as Arash had. She gently dug her nails into the thick, orange fur until she felt the surface of his skin, and then she started scratching. She did not know exactly how much force to use, and so she took extra care to avoid pressing too hard and hurting Pierre.

    As he had with Arash, Pierre began purring. The sound of it was soft and low, but the vibrations traveled up her fingers and palm, and there was something about it that was somehow soothing. Was this why humans took animals in as pets? Did this inexplicable feeling provide some kind of benefit to a person? Ren¨¦e could not say for sure, and yet she thought it must be so, because whatever this feeling was, it was pleasant.

    It was not until many minutes later that she realized she was smiling.

    Pierre was not entirely idle as she scratched. He moved his head to and fro, presenting different areas to her fingers, and she obliged him. He seemed particularly pleased to have his chin attended to, although the hollows she could feel through the skin at the base of his ears appeared to be his favorite spots, and she paid special attention to them.

    Ren¨¦e must have spent another half an hour there with Pierre, enjoying giving him attention as much as he enjoyed receiving it. She could not simply sit outside on the stairs and pet a cat all day, however, no matter how pleasurable it was to simply run her fingers through his thick fur, and so she reluctantly pulled her hand away. The smile on her lips faded.

    Pierre made an inquisitive sound in his throat, looking up at her.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Pierre. I simply cannot spend more time with you, right now. There are things I must do.¡±

    Pierre backed away as she stood and retrieved the pair of bowls, one now completely empty but smeared with dried saliva and the other only half as full as it had been before. She turned back to the apartment and took the stairs up to the door, and when she looked back, she almost expected Pierre to be there at her heels, trying to follow her inside.

    The feeling inside of her when he did not could only be disappointment. Sour and unpleasant, but not nearly as much so as that moment when her creator had insisted she share the burden of cooking the meals with Emiya.

    ¡°Dinner will be at five o¡¯clock, Pierre,¡± she told him. ¡°Do not be late. Miss Taylor cannot see you, do you understand?¡±

    ¡°Mmrow!¡± Pierre replied as though he truly did, and then he turned away and trotted off back down the street. It wasn¡¯t long before any trace of him was gone, disappearing down the nearest alleyway. Where he spent his days when he was not with her, she didn¡¯t know. Perhaps he was not nearly so lonely as she had assumed. Perhaps he enjoyed his solitude, and it was only her presence ¡ª and Arash¡¯s ¡ª that he craved at all.

    Inside the apartment, she returned to the kitchen, sparing only a single glance along the way to see that Doctor Jekyll had returned to the map, nursing his cup of tea. The bowls she carried were swiftly washed and dried and put away, and immediately, because the time was fast approaching, she began to prepare lunch.

    Excitement squirmed in her belly the entire time. There was no Emiya there to take it from her. He was still out, seeing to his proper place: the battlefield. There was no one to shunt her off to the side and take over what was hers.

    By the time she was finishing up lunch ¡ª she had made it far more extravagant than perhaps she should have, all things considered ¡ª the front door to the apartment had opened and Tohsaka and Alice had returned. She left the kitchen and went to the parlor to greet him, where he and his Servant had only just made it inside.

    ¡°Mister Tohsaka,¡± she called to him politely, ¡°lunch has already been prepared.¡±

    He blinked at her, brow furrowing, and glanced behind him. What or who he might have been expecting there, Ren¨¦e could not have said, because the only one with him was Alice.

    ¡°I suppose I could eat,¡± he said at length.

    ¡°Naughty Papa,¡± Alice giggled behind one of her sleeves. ¡°It¡¯s not nice to eat without the others, you know!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s already been made,¡± Tohsaka reasoned. ¡°No sense letting it go to waste, is there?¡±

    ¡°I shall prepare a place for you at the table,¡± Ren¨¦e told him. ¡°Please retrieve Doctor Jekyll and inform him that lunch is about to be served.¡±

    ¡°No need,¡± Doctor Jekyll¡¯s voice came from the study, and a moment later, he stepped into the parlor. ¡°I was myself about to confer with Mister Tohsaka on what he and our comrades might have found during the course of their investigation ¡ª or, as it appears, what they might not have found.¡±

    Tohsaka grimaced. ¡°There¡¯s not much to say, unfortunately. Wherever this M person is hiding, we didn¡¯t find him.¡±

    ¡°That truly is unfortunate,¡± Doctor Jekyll said. ¡°I assume, in that case, that the others must have continued on without you¡­¡±

    Ren¨¦e left them to discuss the investigation as she returned to the kitchen. The French onion soup she had prepared ¡ª a recipe she had originally intended for Nicolas Flamel to sample first ¡ª was arranged and divvied up, and she placed the cups upon saucers, to catch any spillage that might flow over.

    By the time she had loaded everything up on another tray and brought it out into the dining room, Doctor Jekyll, Mister Tohsaka, and Miss Alice had all found themselves seats at the table, still talking. The instant they saw her, however, they broke off, and Doctor Jekyll favored her with a smile.

    ¡°Unless my nose is deceiving me, I do believe I smell onion soup!¡±

    ¡°It is.¡±

    She gave him his first.

    ¡°Thank you, Ren¨¦e,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m certain it will be delicious.¡±

    ¡°It was my intention that Master Flamel would be the first to sample this dish,¡± she told him. ¡°However, since he has yet to return, it seems that it will fall to you, Doctor Jekyll, Mister Tohsaka, Miss Alice. Please, enjoy.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure your father would be more than happy to hear you planned on making this just for him,¡± Tohsaka said, and halfway through setting his own saucer and cup down in front of him, she stilled as something inside of her trembled.

    ¡°Ren¨¦e?¡± Doctor Jekyll asked, worried. It was enough to break through to her, and as though nothing was wrong, Ren¨¦e finished the motion, and then turned to set Miss Alice¡¯s meal in front of her.

    ¡°Yes,¡± she heard herself say, ¡°I¡¯m certain he would be.¡±

    Once everything had been set out and they were already to begin eating, Ren¨¦e dipped her head into a short bow and said, ¡°Please excuse me.¡±

    She didn¡¯t wait to hear what they might have said. She returned to the kitchen immediately, and it was only her precise and careful nature that allowed her to set the tray back down gently, that let her keep the tremor shaking her insides from traveling out to her hands and arms.

    Father. The word echoed inside of her, bouncing around her head and heart like a rubber ball. Her father would have been happy to hear that she planned on cooking a French meal solely for his sake.

    She looked down at her hands, at the pale, white skin that covered her, unblemished and perfect. No scars, no flaws, and too pale by far to have come from either Nicolas himself or from his wife, Perenelle. If she were to look in the mirror, she would find red eyes and silvery hair, neither of them a match for the darker hair and blue eyes of a much younger Nicolas and Perenelle. In no way did she resemble either of them.

    And yet¡­

    Father. It sent another tremor through her. He had never used that term to describe his relationship with her and neither had she, but as her creator, was that not what he was? The process of creating a homunculus like her was not the same as the process behind normal human conception and procreation, but it was not altogether dissimilar either. From a sample of his own genetic material, he had sculpted her form, and he had filled her head with so much of his own knowledge.

    Was he not her father, then?

    ¡°Ren¨¦e Flamel,¡± she whispered, tasting the words on her tongue.

    Inside of her, her heart thudded against her ribs. Something warm that she did not have the words or the experience to describe spread throughout her belly. She thought it might have been happiness.

    ¡°Ren¨¦e Flamel,¡± she said again.

    Was it¡­truly okay? Or was it too presumptuous of her to assume the name of her creator? Was it really, truly appropriate to consider herself his daughter and he her father? Or¡­

    She pressed one hand against her chest and felt her beating heart.

    ¡­was she just a useful tool for ¡ª

    The crack of splintering wood and the crash of shattering glass ripped her from her thoughts, the commotion so thunderous and violent that the very floor beneath her feet trembled. Shouts of alarm from the dining room answered it, Doctor Jekyll¡¯s and Mister Tohsaka¡¯s, and the sound of their footsteps was almost drowned out by the slow, heavy thud of something absolutely massive plodding along the floor.

    ¡°Sweet, little doll,¡± Nicolas Flamel¡¯s voice lilted, ¡°won¡¯t you please come and see me?¡±

    Ren¨¦e froze. It¡­couldn¡¯t be. He was with the Chaldeans¡­wasn¡¯t he?

    Miss Alice¡¯s voice called out a reply, but Ren¨¦e couldn¡¯t make out the words over the thudding of her pulse in her ears. Even as something equally as large and equally as weighty charged out of the dining room, her body began to move on its own, turning away from the countertop and walking steadily out of the kitchen and into the dining room.

    The meaty sound of two bodies colliding and smacking together echoed, and Ren¨¦e jolted, nearly twisting her ankle from how quickly she came to an awkward stop. As though a fog had cleared from her mind, she blinked, and there, standing in the tea room and facing the parlor, Mister Tohsaka and Doctor Jekyll stood, Miss Alice in front of them with a delighted smile on her face.

    ¡°Go on, Jabberwocky!¡± she said brightly. ¡°Time to play!¡±

    The whole house seemed to rumble, and it took Ren¨¦e a second to realize it was laughter.

    ¡°Where are you, my sweet?¡± her father called. ¡°Come, now. I¡¯m waiting for you.¡±

    Once more, Ren¨¦e could not stop herself, and her legs carried her through the dining room and into the tea room. Mister Tohsaka and the others didn¡¯t even seem to realize she was there until she turned the corner and began walking towards the parlor, where ¡ª

    That¡­was not Nicolas Flamel.

    The spell was broken the instant Ren¨¦e laid eyes upon it properly, a gargantuan creature easily twice her size and five times her weight. Thick, beastly legs held aloft a massive torso rippling with muscle, and enormous arms hung down to its knees, so long they touched the floor as it hunched over, too tall to stand straight. They ended in hands the size of dinner plates with long, thick fingers, tipped with sharp, black claws. Triangular ears twitched atop a gigantic head, swiveling this way and that and large enough that they must have been able to hear a pin drop halfway across the city.

    A second creature slammed into the first, a bulky thing nearly as big with skin like leather, dyed a shade of vibrant, purple-ish red, and jagged wings jutting out of its back. It punched the first monster with enough power to shake the floorboards, but despite how much strength had to be behind each blow, the first monster remained unfazed.

    The huge snout opened, revealing two rows of razor sharp teeth, each longer than Ren¨¦e¡¯s fingers, and a glob of drool dripped down over its black lips. A rumbling laugh barked out of its throat, shaking the thick, dark gray fur that covered it from head to toe. It lifted its arms and dug its claws deep into the flesh of the second monster, holding what must have been Alice¡¯s Jabberwocky as though it was nothing more than a child slapping impotently at its chest.

    ¡°Come to me, my sweet,¡± it crooned in Nicolas Flamel¡¯s voice. ¡°Don¡¯t you love me? Don¡¯t you love¡­¡±

    Slowly, the head turned, and one large, round eye found her, pinning her in place beneath its glowing, yellow gaze. The black lips pulled into a broad grin.

    ¡°¡­your father?¡±

    Ren¨¦e took one step back, like a jerk reflex. The compulsion to continue forward and into the monster¡¯s arms snaked around her mind, constricting, overpowering, but her eyes did not lie to her, and the simple knowledge that what stood in the parlor had never and could never have been Nicolas Flamel freed her before the hypnosis could take hold.

    Instead of being angry, the monster laughed again, a deep, rumbling sound that squeezed Ren¨¦e¡¯s heart in her chest.

    ¡°So be it,¡± the monster said, and it did not bother to disguise itself this time. The voice that tumbled out of its mouth was dark and deep and terrible, a thing of malice and violence that taught Ren¨¦e true and visceral fear for the first time in her short life. ¡°If you will not take the final step yourself, then I shall simply have to snap you up with my own two hands.¡±

    The enormous arms flexed, muscles bulging, and with a horrifying wet sound akin to the crackling pop of burning firewood, the Jabberwocky was torn in two. Purple blood gushed from either half, splattering all about the furniture and the walls and the ceiling until the entire room was painted in it. The monster dropped the separate halves of the Jabberwocky onto the floor, letting them fall contemptuously where they may, and as its enormous head turned to regard Ren¨¦e with both eyes, it began to stalk towards her. Every footfall was like thunder, shaking the entire house. Its grin promised a violent and horrific death.

    Listen to me, Ren¨¦e, the memory of Nicolas Flamel¡¯s voice echoed in her ears. This is the only direct command I will ever give you: no matter what, your safety is paramount. Whatever troubles might come our way, no matter how grim the outlook, you must prioritize your own life. Even over mine.

    I understand, she replied to the words said many days ago. She was his greatest work. She was not allowed to die.

    She took another step back and began to turn ¡ª

    And the monster, sensing her retreat, suddenly lurched forward, arms outstretched to snatch her right up off of her feet. Doctor Jekyll shouted something in alarm, and so did Tohsaka, but Alice was silent and unperturbed.

    The black claws fell short, coming close enough to tear a line through her blouse, but otherwise missing her. Behind the monster, the Jabberwocky¡¯s halves had reached out and taken hold of its legs, and even as she watched, the two halves were slowly sliding back towards each other, tendrils of purple blood reaching across the gap and forming bridges. It was literally pulling itself back together.

    Ren¨¦e, knowing that she only had moments before the monster ripped itself free, turned away and fled. Behind her, Tohsaka called out, ¡°Alice! Stop messing around and kill it already!¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re trying, Papa!¡± Alice replied, and for the first time since they had started staying in the apartment, there was something like concern in her voice.

    Ren¨¦e did not wait. She rushed through the dining room and towards the kitchen, and from there, to the back door that led out behind the building. It seemed almost to fly open on its own when her hand fell upon the doorknob, and a moment later, she was outside, where a thick fog waited for her, suffocating and poisonous.

    But she was a homunculus made by Nicolas Flamel. It was the effort of a second¡¯s concentration to pull in the magical energy inside the fog and circulate it through her own magic circuits, using basic alchemy to purify it and creating a zone around her that was clean and safe for her to breathe in.

    In her head, the memory of the map bloomed, and she rushed out into the street, looking back and forth as she oriented herself. The apartment was no longer safe. Whatever monster had been unleashed was not something which would be dealt with quickly or easily, and worse, it was after her. She needed to remove herself from the situation and get to safety, and if, in the morning, this world persisted and had not yet been fixed, then she could use the band around her wrist to contact the Chaldeans for further assistance.

    Right now, the most important thing was that she couldn¡¯t die. She wasn¡¯t allowed to. If she wanted to ensure that remained the case, then the only place she could go was the safe house, Nicolas Flamel¡¯s contingency for the case that everything went wrong. He had made her memorize the route, and so it was now only a matter of ¡ª

    ¡°Stay where you are, my dear,¡± a voice commanded, and Ren¨¦e froze. Had the monster moved on? Had it killed Mister Tohsaka, Miss Alice, and Doctor Jekyll that quickly and followed her?

    What appeared out of the mist, however, was not the hulking beast that had smashed in through the apartment¡¯s front wall, but instead something much smaller. It began as a silhouette, a shadow against the fog, maybe half her height and a quarter her size. Something metallic jangled as it stepped closer, and slowly, it resolved into something solid and concrete. Green eyes peered out at her from underneath the broad brim of a hat ¡ª

    ¡°Pierre?¡±

    It was an orange-furred cat, the same one she had seen just a few hours ago, dressed in the finery of a medieval aristocrat. A pair of thick, leather boots covered the entirety of its hindlegs, done up with brassy buckles that jingled with every step, and it walked upright like a man.

    ¡°Yes, that is the name by which you knew me, Mademoiselle,¡± said Pierre, ¡°but I am afraid it is not the one for which I am best known. If it pleases you, you may call me Puss in Boots, or the Master Cat. Truthfully, it matters little to me.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re¡­¡±

    It should have been more incredible. It should have. Logically, she knew that cats couldn¡¯t speak, that they didn¡¯t wear clothes, and that they most certainly didn¡¯t wear such large, cumbersome boots, and yet the order of the world very clearly told her that this was the proper way of things. There was nothing unusual about a talking cat, as long as it was this particular talking cat.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid I need you to come with me, Mademoiselle,¡± said the cat. Puss, she corrected herself, not Pierre.

    Ren¨¦e took a step back. If she took off running, then maybe she could ¡ª

    ¡°This does not need to end in bloodshed,¡± the cat told her suddenly, ¡°but my master is not particular about your condition.¡± He held out a single one of his paws, and long, sharp claws glinted in the mist as they sprang suddenly out of his flesh, long and sharp enough that Ren¨¦e was certain they could carve her open with ease. ¡°Whether I bring you or your corpse does not matter to him.¡±

    For an instant, Ren¨¦e considered simply overloading her magic circuits and letting the magical energy in the air rampage and ignite inside of her body. The resulting cascade would kill her for certain, but it might be enough to kill Puss, too.

    But it was not a guarantee, and the very last thing she should do was hand over her father¡¯s work so freely. Destroying herself was not a viable option unless she knew that it would destroy whatever part of her they were looking to use.

    And also ¡ª

    Prioritize your own life.

    ¡ª she would be disobeying her father¡¯s only direct command.

    As though sensing her decision, Puss smiled. ¡°Good girl. Come along, Mademoiselle. We should not keep my master waiting.¡±

    He stepped to the side, gesturing off into the fog with his paw, a mockery of a gentleman. Ren¨¦e did not miss the glint of his claws, a subtle threat and promise of what would befall her if she attempted anything which he did not approve.

    There was no other option, none that would not cause her father even more distress, and so Ren¨¦e walked, allowing herself to be led away.

 Chapter CLII: A Thorny Path

    Chapter CLII: A Thorny Path

    The station should have looked much the same as all of the others, different maybe in degrees or in the exact aesthetics, but largely the same in structure. Stairs leading up and out onto the streets above, a platform for people to stand and wait on for their train to arrive, and a track that passed through, disappearing down tunnels that led in opposite directions.

    Those features weren¡¯t entirely gone, but they had been taken over. The linoleum tiles had cracked and broken, pushed out of the way. Wooden paneling lay, splintered and shattered, where it had been pried away from its mounting. The exterior walls themselves were crumbling and unstable, as though there was only one thing holding them in place and it wasn¡¯t brick or mortar.

    What had caused all of this damage wasn¡¯t some sort of fight that might have taken place down here, and it wasn¡¯t because something that was simply too big had squeezed its way through or because something with too much weight or strength had carelessly stampeded through. No, the source was instead a thick forest of branches, a winding, twisting grove of gnarled brown wood and long, wickedly sharp thorns. They punched clean through every surface, sprouting from stone and brick and wood alike, curling out and around the edges of the tunnel with a deceptively affectionate embrace. Each was at least as thick around as my arm and often thicker, undulating, curving, and twining together as though they had been woven that way by some sort of forest god.

    I¡¯d heard of this sort of thing before, about how powerful nature was, that tree roots could grow so insistently and so ponderously that they could punch through brick walls and bore through cement, given enough time. Buildings could be compromised by stuff like that, with load-bearing walls cracking and breaking as the roots of a nearby tree worked their way through.

    But this? This would have been dozens, hundreds of trees, such was the number of branches. There were so many that the tunnel was more bramble and branch than stone, with only a narrow pathway on the floor clear enough to permit passage. Even then, the thorns were so large and so sharp that a single moment of carelessness could see one carving through you, and if you fell on one, you might be lucky to walk away at all, let alone without suffering some major, debilitating wound. They were like knives, jutting out several inches and ending in a tip so thin I wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if they could even get through armor.

    All of a sudden, I wanted the rest of my costume. Those points were thin enough that they might manage to make it through even the tightly knitted weave of my spider silk bodysuit, but it would be better protection than our current mystic codes were.

    ¡°Branches?¡± Ritsuka murmured incredulously.

    ¡°What the hell?¡± said Rika. ¡°What kind of fairy tale bullshit is this?¡±

    A very good question. We hadn¡¯t ever ruled out the possibility of Charles Perrault having been summoned, except that the masterminds were P, B, and M, and we had already met and defeated both P and B: Paracelsus von Hohenheim and Charles Babbage. The only one left should be M.

    Of course, they¡¯d also had Robin Hood on their side, if only for a short while, and Mephistopheles. There was nothing to say they couldn¡¯t have other subordinate Servants hanging around, but that ran into the question of how they could support so many Servants and power their Angrboea machine at the same time with a single Holy Grail. The Grails had a lot of power, but they also still had limits.

    ¡°Romulus¡­did something like this, too, didn¡¯t he?¡± Mash pointed out.

    It was a good counterpoint. Rika¡¯s comment had made me jump straight to Perrault, but simply because Perrault seemed the most obvious didn¡¯t mean it was automatically him. It didn¡¯t even need to be a Caster of any kind, not when Romulus had a Noble Phantasm that made a whole tree grow from nothing. It was just more likely to be a Caster than not.

    ¡°Uhn.¡± Fran stepped forward and reached out with one hand, as though to touch one of the enormous thorns.

    My own hand snapped out and grabbed her wrist before she could even dare.

    ¡°Don¡¯t,¡± I warned her firmly. ¡°It¡¯s definitely possible that the thorns will curse you if you prick your finger on them, and they might even be cursed to make you more likely to prick your finger, too. Don¡¯t chance it.¡±

    Chastened, Fran pulled her hand back towards her body and eyed the thorns with a new ¡ª and very healthy, if you asked me ¡ª dose of suspicion.

    ¡°Oh no,¡± Rika moaned. She pressed her hands to her cheeks like she was trying to hide behind them. ¡°Please, please, please don¡¯t tell me the Servant behind this is Walt Disney! My childhood won¡¯t be able to survive it!¡±

    That was another possibility. But, ¡°I doubt it.¡±

    Rika let out a groan of relief.

    ¡°We should be careful anyway, right, Senpai?¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°We¡¯re¡­ Are we still going to investigate this tunnel?¡±

    He looked down the crowded tunnel, made tighter and less accommodating by the brambles and thorns that twisted and twined across almost every available surface, and cast a doubtful gaze on the treacherous path that led through them. Yeah, I wasn¡¯t really jumping for joy at the thought of that either.

    Unfortunately, there was just one problem.

    ¡°Right now, this is the only lead we have. None of the other lines had anything like this in the tunnels.¡±

    And that made this particular tunnel all the more suspicious. After all, what purpose was there in having this mess of branches with thorns long and sharp enough to skewer a lion if you weren¡¯t protecting the location of your main base? Especially when the other lines hadn¡¯t had anything other than a token patrol force.

    It wasn¡¯t impossible that this was a red herring. But it would have required so much time and effort that I had a hard time imagining someone would waste it all on a show piece meant only as a distraction.

    ¡°I knew she was going to say that!¡± Rika lamented. She jabbed a finger at me sourly. ¡°Listen, Senpai! I¡¯m never gonna forgive you if this turns out to be some plot by Walt Disney, I really won¡¯t!¡±

    I really didn¡¯t think it was going to be Walt Disney ¡ª Perrault was just way more likely ¡ª but now that she¡¯d been so insistent on it, a niggling doubt was festering.

    Fuck. Could it be Disney?

    ¡°The fuck is Walt Disney?¡± Jeanne Alter asked.

    Rika whirled about towards her, horrified. ¡°Oh my god,¡± she whispered, ¡°we never showed you¡­! When we get back, we have to have a movie marathon! The entire Disney Renaissance, back to back to back!¡±

    Mordred snorted.

    ¡°You know, Master, now I¡¯m not sure I want to,¡± Jeanne Alter said sardonically.

    Rika gave a theatrical gasp. ¡°Don¡¯t say that!¡±

    ¡°Enough goofing off,¡± I said, and the mood sobered almost immediately. ¡°We don¡¯t have too much longer before the fog starts to roll back in, and if it really does make it down here, it¡¯s going to be all that much harder to see what we¡¯re doing and where we¡¯re going. We need to get as far as we can before then.¡±

    Jeanne Alter eyed the nearest twisting weave of branches. ¡°Sure you don¡¯t want me to just burn it all down? Would solve our problems there pretty quick, don¡¯t you think?¡±

    Some of them, but not all of them.

    ¡°Not without choking us all in smoke and reducing our visibility even more. We also don¡¯t want M and his cronies finding out we¡¯re coming when their defenses are burned down right in front of them.¡±

    ¡°Tch.¡± Jeanne Alter scoffed. ¡°Yeah, whatever. Let¡¯s just get going then.¡±

    It took a lot of care to maneuver around the brambles and branches, doing our best to avoid the reach of the thorns, and that extra caution made us slower than we had yet been the entire day. Every footstep had to be measured and observed to ensure the floor was clear enough to walk upon, every inch forward meticulous and purposeful. It was not enough to simply watch for the presence of an enemy waiting up ahead or far behind, we had to make absolutely sure that no one misstepped or tripped, that no one fell and hurt themselves on the wicked thorns.

    Just getting across the platform and down onto the tracks was a challenge. With at least half of the lamps destroyed by the encroaching foliage, most of the light we had came from our flashlights, and those were focused beams. They did not and could not light up a whole room, just because they weren¡¯t designed like that.

    Once we did manage to safely climb down onto the tracks, it meant that we had to walk in a narrower column, too. The very center of the railway seemed clearer than the rest of it, thankfully, but that wasn¡¯t the same thing as being completely clear and it didn¡¯t mean that the rest of the railway was anywhere near as clear.

    Morbid curiosity had driven me to look up some of those ¡°life after people¡± videos ¡ª it had seemed relevant back when I was fighting an apocalypse whose shape and scope I knew nothing about ¡ª and this¡­didn¡¯t quite look like that. Not enough greenery down here, not enough fauna making it home, and not enough water built up in the deeper parts. But it looked fairly close.

    Eventually, after far more time and effort than I would have liked, we managed to start down the tunnel heading east, following along towards where the Ley Line Terminal would be at its strongest, closer to the center. Flamel, near the back of the line, chose to reach out and lay a hand upon one of the branches before I could do anything to stop him, and I turned abruptly.

    ¡°Caster?¡±

    The rest of the group stopped with me. Flamel didn¡¯t answer for a few seconds, and then pulled his hand away.

    ¡°Merely investigating the structure of these branches,¡± he explained shortly. ¡°I imagine you needn¡¯t have me tell you, but they¡¯re not natural constructs. Whoever created these forged them out of magical energy, not unlike, I imagine, how Charles Babbage created his Helter Skelter.¡±

    ¡°You saying they¡¯re not real, Gramps?¡± Mordred asked.

    ¡°Essentially, yes,¡± he replied. ¡°They are, to be more specific, not natural fauna whose growth has been controlled and accelerated through alchemy, nor any kind of magical plant I have ever had the pleasure of examining. They are more akin to projections. They have the same consistency, texture, and structure as natural vines, but they are made entirely of ether. Were you to chop them up or otherwise disrupt their structure, the disconnected components would eventually disappear.¡±

    So one way or another, they were the creation of someone¡¯s Noble Phantasm. I didn¡¯t think, however, that his comparison was quite right. The Helter Skelter had been built using Babbage¡¯s Noble Phantasm, not summoned into existence by it. If this was at all what I thought it was belonging to who I thought it belonged to, then it would be more like the Jabberwocky, wouldn¡¯t it?

    In that case, could we even do appreciable damage to it at all? Or would it just regenerate, even if we hacked it to bits?

    Jeanne Alter¡¯s mouth pulled into a grin. ¡°Does that mean it¡¯s safe to burn it all up after all?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said firmly before Flamel could give an answer. ¡°We don¡¯t know that it can¡¯t just repair itself, so all you might wind up doing is wasting time and energy and filling up the tunnel with smoke.¡±

    Jeanne Alter¡¯s expression could only be called a pout.

    ¡°Guess chopping it up won¡¯t do any good either,¡± Mordred commented, eyeing a particularly thorny branch. ¡°Damn. Fucking sucks. Couldn¡¯t have made things easier on us, huh?¡±

    ¡°Given the amount of magical energy that must have gone into their manifestation, I believe it would be a good bet to say that these branches are indeed self-repairing,¡± said Flamel. ¡°Anything which we might attempt to do to them will be reversed in short order.¡±

    Emiya huffed a short chuckle. ¡°I suppose that¡¯s to be expected, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Can M and his allies sense our location through them?¡± I asked what I felt was the most important question.

    Flamel frowned. ¡°It is difficult to say. It is not impossible, but on the whole, I find it somewhat less likely. I can say, at the very least, that they do not drain magical energy from any who come into contact with them, nor do they seem to be cursed.¡±

    I guess that was the best I was going to get.

    ¡°All the more reason to avoid them as best we can.¡±

    Because even if they weren¡¯t any more dangerous than what they looked like, getting stabbed through by one of those thorns still wouldn¡¯t be pleasant. For anyone.

    Flamel inclined his head. ¡°As you say.¡±

    We continued on, trudging down the tunnel and doing our best to keep every part of our bodies as far away from the thorns as possible. It didn¡¯t get any easier as we went, but fortunately, it also didn¡¯t really get any harder. Where the branches poked up through the floor seemed entirely random, but beyond that, they didn¡¯t get denser and harder to avoid the further we went.

    That had its own downsides, of course, because that meant that we didn¡¯t really have any indicators to tell us that there might have been a secret base hidden behind that particular gnarl of branches or that this one was guarding a hole in the wall. With the branches themselves causing so much damage bursting through the tunnel¡¯s structure, we couldn¡¯t even use the damage as a clue for where the secret lair might be, because it was just spread out that much.

    That might have been half the point. Double up not only protecting your hidden base, but also disguising the entrance in a way that was difficult to distinguish from the rest of the tunnel.

    Even my bugs were having trouble. They could circle the branches just fine without any issue, but when I had some try to squeeze into the break in the walls and follow the branches back to their source, they ran into something that stopped them. Not a physical thing, like concrete or bedrock or whatever the tunnel might have been dug through, but a kind of invisible barrier that blocked their way.

    ¡°There¡¯s something else,¡± I announced.

    I got glances and looks from just about everyone, but since I didn¡¯t stop walking, no one else did either.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka asked curiously.

    ¡°Are we¡­not alone down here?¡± Rika asked next in a hushed fake whisper.

    I was a little annoyed, doubly so when I realized that you could technically say there were a bunch of ghosts with us.

    ¡°Wherever these branches come from, they¡¯re forming some kind of bounded field or barrier,¡± I answered. ¡°I can¡¯t get any bugs past them and into the walls to follow them back to their source.¡±

    Flamel hummed. ¡°If there is a bounded field, it is not directly affecting the tunnel itself, although¡­ Perhaps it is an effect of the vines themselves? Whatever Noble Phantasm constructed them might perhaps have imbued them with some sort of effect to ward off intruders.¡±

    He was probably right about that. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more that started to make sense, because hadn¡¯t there been something in one of Perrault¡¯s fairy tales about something very similar?

    ¡°Where¡¯s Lord Hashirama when you need him?¡± Rika muttered. Her brother rolled his eyes.

    ¡°It may also be that the vines themselves form the boundary for a bounded field that isolates the tunnel itself from other points of connection,¡± Flamel went on. ¡°That is to say, it may be that we could search this tunnel for a century and never find M¡¯s secret lair because the bounded field formed by the vines disconnects the entrance from the tunnel itself until the moment M needs to enter or leave.¡±

    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    ¡°So we could be wasting our time down here looking for something we¡¯ll never find,¡± Mordred clarified.

    ¡°Yes,¡± was Flamel¡¯s blunt answer.

    That¡­was actually a much less comfortable possibility, and yet one that I had to admit was very much plausible. If M really was Moriarty, then I didn¡¯t see how he could manage a bit of magecraft quite so high level or intricate, but not only was that another way for the forest from The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood to be interpreted, if M was some other kind of Caster who really could perform what Frankenstein had called ¡°spells beyond human wisdom,¡± then he could specialize in anything at all, including such a powerful and intricate bounded field.

    In fact, an expert at botanical magecraft ¡ª much as I struggled to think of any that would qualify as a Heroic Spirit, outside of a druid ¡ª would mean there was no need to think Perrault was present at all, and in some ways, that was scarier. It was one thing when we were looking at the effects of a Noble Phantasm that might have to play by the rules of the fairy tale it came from, another when it was all a series of carefully crafted spells that didn¡¯t have any such rules dictating their limits.

    ¡°Let¡¯s hope you¡¯re wrong,¡± I said. I was talking as much about his theory as I was mine.

    ¡°Ah, yes, of course, it would be better if I was,¡± he said, backtracking. ¡°I was merely hypothesizing, and that was one of the possibilities that I thought provided a plausible answer for our current predicament.¡±

    ¡°So what I¡¯m hearing is that we should burn this shit down,¡± said Jeanne Alter.

    Flamel shook his head. ¡°Again, I¡¯m afraid that would be an ineffective tactic. For that matter, your flames might not be capable of inflicting any appreciable damage to these vines at all, let alone something permanent or debilitating.¡±

    She leered back at him. ¡°What, you scared to try?¡±

    ¡°Terrified!¡± Flamel said with a lopsided smile. ¡°The amount of magical energy necessary to form these vines across this entire tunnel is frightening, and the only idea more frightening is what might happen were you to attempt to burn them away. If there was a reaction and I wasn¡¯t fast enough to stop it, a large portion of London might go up in the aftermath ¡ª taking us with it.¡±

    There was a moment of silence.

    ¡°Y-yeah, um, let¡¯s¡­not do that,¡± Ritsuka said. ¡°I¡­kind of like living, you know?¡±

    Mordred huffed a short chuckle. ¡°If it was just me, I might¡¯ve said just to do it. I¡¯m a Servant, so who gives a fuck if I gotta die to take out the enemy, right?¡± She glanced back at us Masters. ¡°But you Chaldea folk still got more work to do after this, don¡¯tcha? Can¡¯t go blowing you lot up into the sky, now can we?¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t bring my jetpack,¡± Rika confirmed.

    ¡°Don¡¯t have a damn clue what that is!¡± Mordred replied brightly.

    I refrained from commenting. Rika didn¡¯t know it, but if Da Vinci had made our current mystic codes and their ¡°cushion¡± functions using what I was pretty sure she had, then she was technically wearing a part of my own flight pack. So in a way, she had indeed brought her jetpack.

    Unfortunately, Flamel¡¯s theory appeared to bear out the longer we walked. With the pace we had to take, I had plenty of time to squish my bugs into as many crevices and cracks as I could find, and the same thing greeted me each time: an impassable wall that blocked them from going any further than maybe an inch into the walls. Every part of the tunnel beyond the tunnel itself was inaccessible to me, and to some extent, I was starting to worry.

    If the only entrance to M¡¯s base was down here in this tunnel but the only way to reach it was to wait until he came out himself, then what were we supposed to do? We could set up an ambush or something, sure, but we had no idea if or when he would ever have to leave, because as a Servant, he didn¡¯t need to worry about logistics like food or water. As long as he had the Grail, he could sit and wait us out.

    The one thing I could cling to was Angrboea. His steam machine had to have an outlet somewhere in order to release the fog out into the city, and wherever that outlet was, it would at least be some kind of lead on the location of this secret base.

    My alarm suddenly went off, announcing the schedule of the fog rolling in. I reached over to the metal band of my communicator to turn it off ¡ª and I¡¯d barely done so before streams of white mist began jetting out of the walls.

    ¡°The fog!¡± Mash shouted, alarmed. ¡°Miss Taylor!¡±

    But I was already scrambling for my mask, holding my breath as I jammed it on. My glasses came off and fell somewhere to the tinkle of what might have been breaking glass, but I was far more concerned with getting my mask in place and making sure it was on correctly at that moment, so I couldn¡¯t give it the attention it would have needed otherwise.

    Thankfully, time hadn¡¯t dulled the practiced motions much, so by the time my lungs started to burn for fresh air, it was safe for me to breathe in. The filter in my mask took care of the toxins in the fog and all I got was sweet oxygen.

    My bugs weren¡¯t as lucky. They were dying en masse, overloaded by the dense energy in the mist when the poison wasn¡¯t enough to do them in on its own.

    ¡°There are vents in the walls!¡± Emiya announced.

    ¡°I-is that a normal part of the tunnel construction?¡± Mash asked.

    I didn¡¯t really know. I wanted to say there must have been something in the walls and the floor to drain things like water in the case of flooding or circulate the air, but I¡¯d never had to really think of it before, so I couldn¡¯t say.

    ¡°Whether it is or not, it is apparent that this is how M and his co-conspirators have been delivering the fog throughout the city,¡± Flamel said as he bent down. He straightened back up a moment later. ¡°It is likely that our ultimate enemy had Professor Babbage connect all of the vents throughout the city to a single network and has been using it to pump the mist to every section at once, or at least every section in this part of London.¡± There was a brief flash of red light, and then he handed me my perfectly intact glasses, adding, ¡°Your glasses, my dear girl.¡±

    I took them from him and folded them up, placing them in the safety of my utility pouch.

    ¡°Thanks.¡±

    ¡°It was no trouble.¡±

    ¡°When we first arrived, the mist came from the western part of the city moving east,¡± a new voice said, and Arash materialized at the back of the group.

    ¡°Arash!¡± Mash, Ritsuka, and Rika all exclaimed.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mordred. ¡°It¡¯s just you. Geez. A little warning next time, yeah?¡±

    ¡°I thought there was a rule about that or whatever,¡± Jeanne Alter agreed snidely.

    ¡°Sorry about that,¡± Arash apologized. ¡°I brought someone else with me, too.¡±

    A tug on my shirt pulled my attention down, and I met Jackie¡¯s big, green eyes.

    ¡°We saw the mist,¡± she said. ¡°Is Mommy okay?¡±

    I set my hand on her head reassuringly, since she couldn¡¯t see my smile. ¡°I¡¯m fine, Jackie. The mask Da Vinci gave me is working perfectly.¡±

    Tohsaka and Alice? I asked Arash.

    Safely back at the apartment, he replied. I didn¡¯t leave until I was sure they were inside and uninjured.

    I gave him the smallest of nods. Good.

    ¡°It might look super creepy, but I¡¯m not gonna lie, I¡¯m super jealous,¡± said Rika. She pinched her nose shut, grimacing. ¡°This stuff still smells super disgusting.¡±

    ¡°Hopefully, this is the last day we¡¯ll have to put up with it,¡± her brother said, but he didn¡¯t sound all that hopeful.

    I guess he¡¯s not going to be holding his breath, I thought, and then was immediately glad that my mask could hide my grimace, because that was terrible. It seemed Rika really was rubbing off on me.

    ¡°It¡¯s already killed the bugs I managed to bring with me,¡± I told them all. I swung my arm around, shining my communicator¡¯s flashlight across the breadth of the tunnel. ¡°Even if I could have found the vents before ¡ª and I wasn¡¯t having any luck with that ¡ª I can¡¯t anymore.¡±

    ¡°Giving more credence to my theory about the nature of these vines,¡± Flamel said grimly.

    ¡°That¡¯s what it looks like, yes.¡±

    And I hated it. Because things would get a lot harder and a lot more inconvenient if it was true.

    ¡°So what does that mean for us?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    As much as I hated to admit it, I wasn¡¯t quite sure. If we had any idea of where M¡¯s secret base was¡­ Without so much as a general direction, however? Then even if we started doing the dangerous and desperate stuff like having Mordred and Emiya fire off Noble Phantasms indiscriminately, we¡¯d have to destroy half the city just to have a chance of maybe hitting him. Maybe, because half a degree off on any axis could see us missing him entirely.

    And if that failed, we would have exhausted two of our heaviest hitters and left ourselves open to counterattack. Or M could just sit back and leave us to spend hours or days sorting through the rubble for a Grail that wasn¡¯t there, hoping that we could find it before he could finish whatever he was planning.

    ¡°We keep going,¡± I said for lack of anything better. ¡°We check the densest point of the Ley Line Terminal, and then we continue down to the station we were going to leave from to begin with.¡± I looked over my shoulder at Flamel, ¡°Caster, are we close enough now that you could track the energy in the fog to its source?¡±

    Flamel¡¯s lips drew into a thin line. ¡°I¡­perhaps. I can at least make the attempt. Yes, this early in its deployment and this close to its point of origin, I do believe I could determine the general direction from which it came.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Then we¡¯ll leave that to you.¡±

    ¡°No pressure!¡± Rika added.

    With our only lead further on, we had to keep going, so we did, now with Arash and Jackie in tow. They caught on without us needing to explain to avoid the thorns, maybe because they¡¯d seen us doing it while they were catching up and figured it out on their own. The addition of two new people, however, didn¡¯t do us any favors in speed, and so, between all of the other factors we were already having to work around, a journey that would have taken us half the time or less on any of the other lines wound up taking way longer than it should have.

    By the time we¡¯d reached the point on the Central Line closest to the Association¡¯s enormous ley line, we¡¯d spent the better part of half an hour just getting there.

    ¡°This is it,¡± I announced when we reached it. ¡°Anyone seeing anything?¡±

    Flashlights swung around, casting beams of focused light across every section of the tunnel, from the floor to the walls to the ceiling, and after the initial casual look showed nothing of interest, a series of slower, more careful inspections followed. Not only us Masters and Mash, but also the Servants, particularly the Archers with their eagle-eyed vision, scoured the entire section for any hints, clues, or signs of something out of place.

    The branches didn¡¯t make anything easier. Under the harsh light of our flashlights, they cast deep, dark shadows, sharp lines that cut the light from the dark like a blade. A softer, more diffuse lighting would have been better, something more like the gas lamps back at the platform or more modern fluorescent lights, but even if I¡¯d been confident enough in my runes to attempt it, the only place to carve them was the branches. Needless to say, I wasn¡¯t going to risk that.

    ¡°I don¡¯t see anything,¡± Ritsuka announced.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran agreed.

    Rika shook her head. ¡°Nada. This guy could¡¯ve at least done us the favor of putting up a sign or something, you know, like, ¡®bad guy lair ahead¡¯ or something.¡±

    ¡°Just like Sir Mordred said earlier,¡± Mash said with a sigh.

    ¡°Woulda made it a helluva lot easier,¡± Mordred grunted. ¡°Can¡¯t see shit in this place.¡±

    ¡°Be a whole lot easier to see down here if all these branches were on fire,¡± Jeanne Alter suggested bluntly.

    ¡°No,¡± half a dozen different people said at once in just as many tones.

    ¡°I don¡¯t taste good extra crispy!¡± Rika added.

    ¡°Alright, alright,¡± Jeanne Alter grumbled. ¡°Killjoys, the whole lot of you.¡±

    ¡°Not sure any extra light would help all that much,¡± Arash remarked. ¡°If there¡¯s some kind of secret entrance hidden here, then it¡¯s hidden well enough that I can¡¯t find any sign of it. You, Emiya?¡±

    ¡°Much as I hate to admit it, I can¡¯t claim any better,¡± said Emiya sourly. ¡°If there is some kind of entrance to a secret base here, then it¡¯s hidden so well that it¡¯s indistinguishable from the tunnel, just as you said.¡±

    ¡°Caster?¡± I asked Flamel. ¡°Had any luck?¡±

    ¡°Some,¡± he said, ¡°but not as much as we would have liked. I¡¯ve been following the flow of magical energy as we go, and as you might imagine, it¡¯s becoming somewhat harder as the fog gets thicker. I can say,¡± he added, ¡°that this general area is¡­not quite correct, but not wrong either. Wherever our elusive M has situated himself, it is fairly nearby, and so there should be some sign of his location nearby as well. Unfortunately¡­¡±

    ¡°If it¡¯s here, it¡¯s hidden behind the branches,¡± I concluded, and so thoroughly that even the best two pairs of eyes on the team couldn¡¯t find it.

    He nodded. ¡°Yes.¡±

    Fuck. That was the very last thing I wanted to hear, right now.

    ¡°We¡¯ll mark this spot on the map.¡± I hated having to say it even as the words left my mouth. ¡°We¡¯ll check and see if the branches continue on as far as the St. Paul¡¯s station, and then figure out a plan of action before we come back this way.¡±

    Because even if M was somehow hiding the way in, I was as sure as I could be that it was here somewhere. Knowing how far these branches reached, however, would still tell us something about our enemy, because it boggled the mind to imagine that even a particularly powerful Caster could have such enormous reach without having support from the Grail.

    ¡°We could try cutting it,¡± Jackie offered. ¡°Our knives are very sharp, Mommy.¡±

    ¡°If we try that, Mordred will be the one chopping,¡± I told her. ¡°She has magic resistance, so if something goes wrong, she doesn¡¯t have to worry about being hurt.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± Mordred barked a short laugh. ¡°That all I¡¯m good for, these days? Taking hits that¡¯d lay someone else out?¡±

    ¡°Maybe if you weren¡¯t so good at it, British,¡± Jeanne Alter shot back.

    Mordred grinned. ¡°Guess that just means I¡¯m a better hero than the rest of you!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re a better something, that¡¯s for sure.¡±

    ¡°Oh my god, just kiss already!¡± Rika cried. ¡°Get it over with!¡±

    The reaction, of course, was predictable ¡ª

    ¡°What the fuck did you just say?¡±

    ¡°With her? No way!¡±

    ¡°You know,¡± Emiya said contemplatively, ¡°now that you mention it, Master¡­¡±

    Both Mordred and Jeanne Alter whirled about to face him, and together, they demanded, ¡°You tryna pick a fight, you bastard!?¡±

    And when they realized what they¡¯d done, they turned to each other, surprised, and their cheeks flushed red. Rather than keep fighting, they deliberately turned away from each other and tried to pretend nothing had happened.

    The round of quiet chuckles was likewise ignored, as though refusing to acknowledge them would somehow erase the whole incident from everyone¡¯s memories.

    Unfortunately, the rest of the tunnel was much like all the sections that came before it. The branches didn¡¯t thin out as we went, but the fog did, at least a little. The further we got from that central point so close to the British Museum and its Ley Line Terminal, the thinner the mist got, although it was rapidly thickening as it chased us back east. Like Arash said, it was just like it was when we first Rayshifted into this Singularity, starting in the west and moving eastward throughout the city.

    If we had set up our own base in Buckingham, I imagine it would have rolled in from the north.

    It convinced me all the more that M was hiding out somewhere near there. The only trick was figuring out exactly where, and with the branches in the way, we didn¡¯t have much in the way of options on that front. If they really did disconnect the entrance to M¡¯s base from the tunnel itself until he had a reason to leave it, then the only thing we could really do was get rid of the branches.

    Hours seemed to pass before we finally came upon the St. Paul¡¯s station, that was how much the combination of the branches and the fog slowed us, and it was much the same as the last one: overgrown with branches that jutted out of nearly every surface, creating a veritable jungle for us to cross. The signs, the bricks, the floors, they were all ruined and wrecked with twisting brown brambles jutting out of them and crossing over each other in chaotic tangles. Down the other end of the tunnel, they continued on into the darkness, far enough at least that the light of my flashlight couldn¡¯t reach the end of them.

    Whoever this Caster was, I had to hope that he was a pushover in direct combat, because if his offense was as good as his defense, then he might be a lot more trouble to deal with than anyone since Herakles and Caenis.

    Just getting up onto the platform safely turned into something of an adventure, and there was no way for us to do it except for one at a time. Our Servants, at least, could give us a literal helping hand, since they could just jump or even turn into spirit form instead of physically pulling themselves up, but we had to take even more care climbing up here than we had getting down on our way in.

    After spending so long taking so much care and having to watch for the branches and thorns, it was a relief to climb the stairs of the station and walk out back onto the streets. It was marred, of course, by the fog, but there wasn¡¯t much of anything we could do about that, and the only solution would see the whole situation solved anyway.

    ¡°Never thought I¡¯d be relieved to see the foggy streets again,¡± Emiya remarked.

    ¡°Right?¡± Rika agreed.

    Arash hummed. ¡°Have to admit, it¡¯s a bit of a relief after crawling through all of those branches.¡±

    Mordred snorted. ¡°Doesn¡¯t change our problems, though. How are we gonna take out that M bastard if we can¡¯t even get to him?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s becoming more diffuse as it spreads, but the flow of magical energy in the fog only led one way while we were down there,¡± said Flamel. ¡°I do believe we had the correct location, so at this point, it may only be a matter of¡­smoking him out, so to speak.¡±

    A slow grin began to grow on Jeanne Alter¡¯s face.

    ¡°Do you have any ideas how to go about doing that?¡± I asked him.

    ¡°None, I¡¯m afraid, that would be easy to enact,¡± he answered apologetically. He stroked his beard in thought. ¡°If we knew where, specifically, the location of the entrance was, then perhaps¡­ With so much material to work with, however, the effort required would be prohibitive. Even were we to forge a contract right here and now,¡± he added for good measure, as though predicting my thoughts, ¡°the strain supporting such an endeavor would put on all of you would make engaging M afterwards a difficult proposition.¡±

    ¡°You did a lot of really incredible stuff at the museum, though,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°Wasn¡¯t all of that pretty costly, too?¡±

    Flamel shook his head.

    ¡°Simple shape transformation is not nearly as difficult as it may have seemed on the outside,¡± he said. ¡°In fact, the most draining thing I have yet done since my summoning was the creation of the diorama you saw in the study. For that matter, against Paracelsus, I was working with ordinary stone and glass, whereas these vines are likely the manifestation of a Noble Phantasm. It is far harder for me to attempt inserting my own mana into someone else¡¯s spell and twist it to my liking than it is to work that ordinary stone into a spear or a statue.¡±

    ¡°Like trying to change the path of a river with a rock,¡± Mash muttered.

    Flamel nodded. ¡°Just so. With enough rocks, I might forge a dam. Unfortunately¡­¡±

    You needed too many rocks for a single person to find the effort worth it.

    ¡°Fuck,¡± Mordred grunted.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran agreed.

    ¡°So what I¡¯m hearing here is,¡± Jeanne Alter began, ¡°the only thing we can do is burn it all down.¡±

    Flamel grimaced, but didn¡¯t deny the point.

    ¡°If we set up a bounded field around the point, could you contain the fire there?¡± I asked.

    ¡°I¡­do believe that¡¯s possible, yes,¡± Flamel said. ¡°The opening that would give us might not be overly large, but disrupting the structure for long enough should at least allow us to determine the location of the entrance.¡±

    Jeanne Alter¡¯s grin gained teeth, so broad it threatened to split her face in half.

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t do that, if I were you.¡±

    We all startled, whirling about towards the source of the smokey, unfamiliar alto that had just spoken. But there was no one there, no sign of another person aside from us, not even a vague silhouette looming from out of the fog. Another Assassin? But revealing herself would have torn away any semblance of Presence Concealment, wouldn¡¯t it?

    ¡°On the roof!¡± said Arash, pointing, and when I followed the direction of his finger, I found the shape of a large bird perched upon the roof of a nearby building, peering down at us. A lump of foreboding settled in my stomach like ice.

    It was a crow.

 Chapter CLIII: Londinium Hostage Crisis

    Chapter CLIII: Londinium Hostage Crisis

    ¡°Welcome ¡ª or should I say, a pleasure to finally meet you, Chaldeans.¡±

    The crow¡¯s beak moved, and from out of its mouth came that smokey alto, a husky voice that dripped culture and condescension in equal measure. I didn¡¯t recognize it, although that wasn¡¯t really saying much, only that it didn¡¯t belong to anyone we had yet met either here in London or any of the previous Singularities.

    ¡°You know who we are,¡± Emiya said with an undercurrent of accusation. His wasn¡¯t the only body that was tense and rigid, so on guard that he would have seemed more relaxed behind actual fortress walls.

    The crow tilted its head. ¡°I should hope so. After all, I¡¯ve spent oh so much time with you these last few days, and yet you never did me even the courtesy of a simple hello. Quite rude of you, don¡¯t you think?¡±

    ¡°The crow the other day,¡± Ritsuka murmured, having realized the same thing I had.

    The crow was completely disposable, or at least replaced easily enough that there functionally wasn¡¯t a difference. The one Arash had shot down had disappeared completely by the time it hit the ground, so if this one was the same, then it wouldn¡¯t set her back much if we destroyed it, too.

    ¡°Not the first time I had the pleasure of seeing all of you in action, but I¡¯m afraid it may be the last,¡± said the crow.

    And if I asked, there was no way she would tell us exactly how long she¡¯d been watching us for. The answer would likely be ¡°since the moment you arrived,¡± and that was either true or an attempt to psych us out. It didn¡¯t make that much difference about what she knew either way.

    ¡°You said that you wouldn¡¯t burn down any of the branches if you were us,¡± I said bluntly.

    The crow ruffled its feathers. ¡°My, my, where are your manners, young lady? Did your mother never teach you to observe the niceties? Why, we haven¡¯t even yet been formally introduced, and you want to talk business already?¡±

    Jackie bristled on my behalf, hands reaching for her knives, and I stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. If she noticed the slight tremor in my fingers, the only visible sign that remark had hit a little too close to home, then she didn¡¯t say.

    It was the shock of it more than anything else. I thought I¡¯d gotten over shots at my mom a long time ago. Maybe I¡¯d just been thinking about her so much the last few days that it left me a little more sensitive to them.

    ¡°If you¡¯ve been watching us as long as you say, then you already know our names,¡± I told the crow. It felt a little silly talking to one like it was a person, which I guess was how others must have felt when talking to me through Huginn or Muninn. ¡°So it seems to me like the one being rude here is you, who hasn¡¯t revealed her name to us yet.¡±

    ¡°Hey, yeah!¡± Rika agreed.

    A throaty chuckle rumbled out of the crow¡¯s throat. ¡°Oh, but you are a clever one, aren¡¯t you? I suppose, in the spirit of fairness, I can at least do that much, can¡¯t I? Very well. If you must have a name, you can call me M. That should be more than enough for you, seeing as you never properly gave me your own names, did you? Especially as you¡¯ve been using a fake one for Mister Flamel over there.¡±

    Flamel startled, and the crow honed in on it immediately, turning its head to look his way.

    ¡°Oh yes,¡± it said, victoriously smug, ¡°your little attempts at subterfuge were all for naught, I¡¯m afraid. Even were they not so painfully obvious, your indiscretion with dear Paracelsus revealed the truth all on its own. The fact you allowed him to shout your true name to the world was quite the oversight ¡ª all to the better, at least for my benefit.¡±

    <ol>

    <li> As in, the mastermind behind all of this? Wasn¡¯t it supposed to be a man, or¡­had I just simply made that assumption because of my Moriarty theory?</li>

    </ol>

    ¡°Uhn!¡± Fran growled, taking a step towards the crow. Uselessly, because there wasn¡¯t anything she could do to it that would accomplish anything meaningful, not when we¡¯d already killed one. ¡°Ah, uhn, uhn, ah-ah, uhn!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right!¡± said Mash. ¡°If you really are M, then that means you¡¯re the one responsible! Not only did you turn both Professor Babbage and Paracelsus into monsters, you even forced him to commit suicide!¡±

    ¡°Regrettable,¡± M said, ¡°but necessary. Poor Professor Babbage¡­ Why, if he had just done as he was supposed to instead of allowing sentiment to get the better of him, he would still be here now, watching his world of steam come to fruition. That¡¯s the trouble with men like them: they tend to grow a conscience.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± said Mordred, ¡°you keep dancing around the whole thing. Why shouldn¡¯t we just burn down that whole damn forest down there?¡±

    ¡°Oh, and now I¡¯ve forgotten my manners!¡± M gasped melodramatically. ¡°Dear me, how ever did I let myself get carried away? Please allow me to correct my mistake. The reason why you might want to avoid burning any of my forest of thorns away is because I¡¯m ashamed to admit that I could not guarantee poor Ren¨¦e¡¯s safety if you did.¡±

    Behind my mask, my eyes widened. She had Ren¨¦e?

    Flamel moved first, before anyone could stop him. By the time Emiya even thought of reaching for his bow or the implication sank in deeply enough to make anyone else shout, he was already pressing his hands together, red light flowing from between his fingers, and the rooftop warped, flexed, and contorted. The tiles snaked up the crow¡¯s legs and pulled taut like shackles, and the stone rose up and wrapped around the body, holding it tight.

    The suddenness of it killed everyone else¡¯s reactions, and in the stunned silence that followed, Flamel¡¯s quiet fury echoed like thunder.

    ¡°What,¡± he ground out like a glacier, his face a rictus of anger so intense it almost burned to look at, ¡°have you done to her?¡±

    The crow cackled again, as though it wasn¡¯t held fast under the threat of being violently crushed. ¡°Why, nothing!¡± said M, still smug. ¡°Yet. You see, while the whole lot of you were quite happy to go gallivanting across the city searching for my little hideaway, you left your dear princess all but undefended. It was child¡¯s play to arrange for a¡­distraction of your comrades and take your precious daughter while their attention was elsewhere.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re lying,¡± I accused her.

    ¡°Am I?¡± But she sounded amused, not threatened or angry or defensive, as she might have been if she really was lying. ¡°I suppose you¡¯ll find out for yourselves soon enough, won¡¯t you? After all, that cozy little apartment you¡¯ve been playing house in isn¡¯t all that far from here, is it? You will see with your own eyes that she¡¯s no longer there.¡±

    My mouth drew into a tight line. Calling someone¡¯s bluff only worked if they were actually bluffing. An enemy who only ever told you the truth was one of the most terrifying.

    So what the hell had she done to keep Nursery Rhyme and the Jabberwocky busy thoroughly enough and long enough to sneak in and grab Ren¨¦e?

    ¡°Where have you taken her?¡± Flamel demanded.

    ¡°Where else but my secret lair? Where she will stay, with me, until my work is done and there is no more need for her.¡± And then, all traces of humor vanished, and M¡¯s voice became cold and hard. ¡°Hear me well, Chaldeans. Abandon this course and your precious princess will remain unharmed. She need not suffer even so much as a pricked finger. If, however, you insist upon violence, then violence shall be visited upon your dear Ren¨¦e. After all, I don¡¯t truly need her ¡ª alive, that is.¡±

    And with this final line, the crow erupted into flames, burning away until not even ash remained of it. M¡¯s sadistic laughter, on the other hand, still echoed for several seconds afterwards, and it wasn¡¯t truly gone until all traces of the crow had vanished.

    There was a bare second of silence, a heartbeat, as we all absorbed what had just happened, but the instant it passed, Flamel was moving, marching away from the group with purpose.

    ¡°Gramps!¡± Mordred called.

    ¡°Do not try to stop me!¡± he all but snarled back at her. ¡°I¡¯m returning to the apartment ¡ª whether you accompany me or not doesn¡¯t matter to me, as long as you don¡¯t get in my way!¡±

    He stormed off, and we all had no other choice but to follow him. Emiya, surprisingly, was at the head of the group, the first to fall into step behind Flamel, and the intense look on his face was nearly as worrying as the uncharacteristic rage on Flamel¡¯s.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Ritsuka began.

    ¡°I know,¡± I told him.

    ¡°Uh-uhn,¡± Fran grunted.

    ¡°We have to check on Miss Ren¨¦e,¡± Mash said quietly, to avoid drawing Flamel¡¯s attention. ¡°If¡­she really has been kidnapped¡­¡±

    Then we had to go after her.

    M couldn¡¯t have spelled out for us any clearer that this was a trap. She might as well have had her crow carry a placard and everything announcing it. The trouble was, even if it was a trap, what other choice did we have? Were we just supposed to leave Ren¨¦e to whatever fate M had cooked up for her? Because I doubted any of us believed that she wouldn¡¯t hurt Ren¨¦e as long as we just stayed out of her business.

    My hands curled into fists, and I had to force myself to relax them.

    Fuck that shit. I hadn¡¯t let it go with Dinah, and I had no intention of starting here now. Besides, it wasn¡¯t like that was a viable option to begin with. M was an enemy we had to defeat no matter what, the last of this Singularity¡¯s masterminds, and supposedly the one who had started it all. One way or another, we had to go after her and defeat her and take the Grail she was using to perpetuate both this Singularity and this fog.

    ¡°Then we¡¯ll rescue her,¡± I said, like it was a law of the universe and couldn¡¯t be questioned.

    The twins nodded, and so did Mash. ¡°Yeah.¡±

    ¡°And tear this M lady a new asshole in the process,¡± Mordred added.

    ¡°Bleeding hearts, the whole lot of you,¡± Jeanne Alter said, but she didn¡¯t try to convince us otherwise.

    It took us ten long minutes to make it back to the apartment, and when we got there ¡ª

    ¡°Holy shit,¡± Rika swore quietly.

    ¡ª it was to find both the front door and a large portion of the wall smashed in, like someone had fired a tank shell at it without any care for the damage. The windows had been shattered, the brickwork utterly obliterated, and through the gaping wound left behind, we could see the wrecked parlor, with the furniture destroyed and scattered about the floor, bits of stuffing from the cushions strewn about and left to lie where they¡¯d fallen, shards of wood from the couch and chairs lying in jagged chunks.

    A closer look, however, showed deep gouges in the facade around the enormous hole, as though some creature with long, sharp claws had ripped its way through with sheer strength. Further inside, we¡¯d find more along the walls and the floor, carved into the wood paneling. Of that, I had no doubt.

    Flamel stopped short as the full scope of the damage became clearer, sucking in a short, sharp gasp that was so quiet I wasn¡¯t sure I hadn¡¯t imagined it. Then, he rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time as though he had forgotten that he was a Servant and could simply return to spirit form to make things faster, and through the remains of what could only have been the front door.

    We couldn¡¯t do anything else except follow him, picking our way across the rubble not unlike how we had at the British Museum.

    ¡°Ren¨¦e!¡± Flamel shouted into the apartment. ¡°Ren¨¦e, please, come out this instant!¡±

    She did not appear. There was only the ringing silence of his fading echo.

    ¡°Oh no,¡± Mash whispered.

    ¡°Ren¨¦e!¡± he tried one more time.

    ¡°Abraham!¡± Jekyll¡¯s voice called, and he stepped into the threshold of the tea room. His cravat had been wrapped around his nose and mouth to form a makeshift mask. ¡°Thank goodness, you¡¯ve returned!¡±

    Behind him, Tohsaka and Nursery Rhyme slowly and cautiously came into view. None of them looked any the worse for wear, at least not physically, but Tohsaka¡¯s expression was hard and stony and grim.

    ¡°Doctor Jekyll,¡± Flamel began hurriedly, ¡°Ren¨¦e, is she ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Gone,¡± said Tohsaka.

    ¡°There was an assault upon the apartment, Abraham,¡± Jekyll explained. ¡°An awful creature, a monster straight out of the depths of Hell, it broke through the front door and caused the awful mess you see before you. Mister Tohsaka and Miss Alice engaged him, but I fear, in the chaos, dear Ren¨¦e went missing. We attempted to find her with the resources we had available, but alas, since we cannot safely venture out into the mist¡­¡±

    He gestured to the broken window and the devastated front wall, where the fog hovered, just barely inside. There seemed to be some sort of force holding it at bay, much like when Jackie and Robin had attacked us. Confirmation, of a sort, that Flamel¡¯s bounded field was keeping it out, because I didn¡¯t have a better explanation that didn¡¯t rely on more good will than I was willing to ascribe to M just then.

    Flamel staggered as though he had taken a heavy blow, hand pressed to his heart. ¡°She really was taken!¡±

    ¡°I can only offer my sincerest apologies, Abraham,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°If I had just realized the enemy¡¯s intent sooner ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Would that it were so easy as to blame you,¡± Flamel said. He squeezed his eyes shut, grimacing. ¡°But I have gravely underestimated our enemy¡¯s cleverness and cruelty. I thought it so ingenious¡­¡±

    I turned to Jekyll. I didn¡¯t dare to take off my mask, not until Flamel fixed the damage. ¡°You mentioned a monster?¡±

    He nodded. ¡°A terrible thing, twelve feet tall, with arms that reached the floor and a beastly maw filled with the sharpest teeth. It had eyes like hellfire and claws fit to rend a man in two, and it was clad in fur of the blackest night.¡±

    ¡°A werewolf?¡± Rika asked incredulously. ¡°You were attacked by a werewolf?¡±

    ¡°I¡­suppose it bore a passing resemblance to such a thing, yes,¡± said Jekyll.

    Rika groaned. ¡°Dracula in Orl¨¦ans, and now Frankenstein and the Wolfman in London! What next, Godzilla?¡±

    ¡°Uhn¡­?¡± Fran said uncertainly.

    ¡°She¡¯s being melodramatic,¡± Ritsuka said apologetically. ¡°Doctor Jekyll, was this, um, werewolf a Servant?¡±

    Jekyll grimaced and shook his head. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I couldn¡¯t say for sure, Ritsuka. It had uncommon strength to have made such a mess of the apartment, and the Jabberwocky¡­¡±

    ¡°Got torn to pieces,¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°I¡¯m not sure it was a Servant either, but it was powerful enough that even Alice¡¯s Jabberwocky couldn¡¯t do anything more than keep it occupied until it decided to leave. There was¡­also something rather unsettling about it. It had a unique ability to mimic others¡¯ voices ¡ª including yours, Flamel.¡±

    ¡°It mimicked my voice?¡± Flamel echoed incredulously. ¡°What on Earth¡­¡±

    ¡°Before we continue,¡± I began, ¡°it might be better if we could have this conversation without prying ears listening in. Caster, if you could fix the damage¡­¡±

    Flamel jolted. ¡°Yes¡­ Yes, of course, forgive me the oversight.¡±

    He pressed his hands together the way I¡¯d seen him do every other time before, and then red light flowed out from between his fingers, and the room slowly shifted like someone had pressed the reverse button on a video. Stuffing packed itself back into the cushions, then the cushions themselves knitted the tears closed, and the shards of wood slithered back into their proper places, all seamlessly. The pieces of shattered glass leapt back into their frames and sealed over without a single crack, and the bricks and dust sprang back into the shape of a wall, followed shortly by the wooden paneling and all of the rest.

    By the time the front door snapped into place, it was once more as though nothing had ever happened. Finally, I could take off my mask and put my glasses back on.

    ¡°Done,¡± Flamel announced unnecessarily.

    I gave a brief nod and turned back to Jekyll and Tohsaka. ¡°You mentioned something about mimicking voices.¡±

    Tohsaka grimaced. ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°It wasn¡¯t¡­used on us, exactly. It didn¡¯t seem to see the need. Brute force was doing the job just fine. Its target seemed to be Ren¨¦e, and when it called to her, it had some kind of hypnotic effect. She came walking towards it like she was in some kind of trance.¡±

    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    ¡°Did it hurt her?¡± Flamel asked, pained.

    ¡°No,¡± Tohsaka answered. ¡°Although whether or not it tried is a different story.¡±

    ¡°It sought her out, Abraham,¡± Jekyll said. ¡°The instant it laid its terrible gaze upon her, it dispensed with all pretense of playing with the Jabberwocky and attempted to lay its hands upon her. Fortunately, the Jabberwocky is quite the hardy fellow, and it managed to hold onto the beast long enough to disrupt its hold on her and allow her to escape. After that¡­¡±

    ¡°She vanished!¡± said Nursery Rhyme. ¡°I didn¡¯t let her into Wonderland, so she could be anywhere!¡±

    This didn¡¯t do anything to make Flamel feel better.

    ¡°And when she fled,¡± Flamel said, closing his eyes tightly, ¡°she must have run right into the enemy¡¯s arms.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Jekyll said again.

    ¡°Can¡¯t say I¡¯ve heard of a werewolf that could be a Heroic Spirit,¡± Emiya said thoughtfully. ¡°Unlike Dracula, there isn¡¯t really what you might call a prototypical werewolf, at least not one that has a name.¡± He glanced at Arash. ¡°You?¡±

    Arash shook his head, frowning. ¡°Afraid not.¡±

    ¡°I knew a guy kinda like that, once,¡± Mordred said. ¡°Or, well, I knew of a guy kinda like that. Never had the chance to meet him face to face or nothing, though. Doesn¡¯t even sound like him either.¡±

    ¡°Maybe the murder tyke has some idea,¡± Jeanne Alter said, looking over at Jackie.

    But Jackie just shook her head and said, ¡°We never met anyone like that with Mister P.¡±

    ¡°And somehow,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°I don¡¯t think monster movie villains make it to the Throne of Heroes.¡±

    ¡°Not unless the story they¡¯re based on was enough first,¡± Emiya agreed.

    ¡°It looks like Perrault might be here, after all.¡±

    ¡°Who?¡± the twins both asked.

    ¡°He wrote the original form of several very famous modern fairy tales,¡± Mash explained. ¡°Later on, several of them were compiled and edited by the Brothers Grimm, some of them with many details altered or expanded upon.¡±

    ¡°Doesn¡¯t ring a bell,¡± said Rika.

    ¡°You¡¯ve heard of them before,¡± I told her. ¡°Wasn¡¯t Doctor Jekyll¡¯s description enough? A giant wolf with huge claws, huge eyes, huge teeth, and who could mimic others¡¯ voices?¡±

    The moment the lightbulb went on in Rika¡¯s head was visible. ¡°The Big Bad Wolf! Little Red Riding Hood! My, Grandma, what large teeth you have!¡±

    ¡°Wait, really?¡± her brother said incredulously.

    All the better to eat you with, I thought but didn¡¯t say. Frankly, I hadn¡¯t realized it at first either. Maybe because I¡¯d been thinking of fairy tales earlier, however, it seemed like the thing that made sense, especially when we had the living embodiment of nursery rhymes right here in the same room with us.

    ¡°It was one of our early theories about P, B, and M,¡± I did say. ¡°The Father of Fairy Tales. The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, whose castle was defended by a forest of thorns. Little Red Riding Hood, who, in the original version, was eaten by the wicked wolf and never rescued.¡±

    ¡°Oh dear,¡± said Nursery Rhyme. ¡°Never rescued? He¡¯ll be invincible, then.¡±

    What?

    ¡°What do you mean, invincible?¡± asked Tohsaka.

    ¡°Stories are stories and dying is dying,¡± said Nursery Rhyme matter-of-factly. ¡°Beings born of stories have to live and die by their stories. If the wicked wolf was never killed, then by definition, he can¡¯t die, can he? Jabberwocky is the same way! The only way to kill him is to use the vorpal sword! Otherwise, the only thing you can do is hope he runs out of energy before you do!¡±

    The pieces began to slot into place, the bits that didn¡¯t make sense before now fitting into the puzzle.

    ¡°That¡¯s so hax!¡± Rika complained.

    In fact, I¡¯d had a thought about it before, hadn¡¯t I? About how the forest of thorns could be easier or harder to deal with depending on whether it had to follow the rules of the story it came from. And what if it did? What if everything that came out of Perrault¡¯s Noble Phantasm had to obey the rules of the story it had originated from? Everything in it had to die the way it was killed, and every bit of magic had to obey the laws written into the tale?

    ¡°I¡­ You know, Rika? You¡¯re right,¡± said her brother. ¡°It is hax.¡±

    Nursery Rhyme giggled, pleased.

    In that case, burning it down might not accomplish much of anything. Maybe it would have opened up a short window for us to go through, or maybe it would have just remained completely impervious, regenerating so quickly that we wouldn¡¯t have been able to squeeze a fly through, let alone ourselves. But that cut both ways. If the magic of the forest of thorns had to follow the rules of Sleeping Beauty, then they were there to protect the princess and would open the way for her rescuer.

    And M had just made the mistake of kidnapping the closest thing we had to a princess: the only daughter of a rich Parisian alchemist who had created her to fill the hole of the child he and his wife could never have. Perrault couldn¡¯t have written a better backstory if he tried.

    ¡°No,¡± I said, ¡°this is actually good news.¡±

    Once again, everyone turned to look at me, incredulous.

    ¡°What?¡± Mordred said. ¡°You hit your head or something?¡±

    ¡°Or something,¡± Jeanne Alter said.

    ¡°Um, the way they said it isn¡¯t the best,¡± Mash began, ¡°but are you sure, Miss Taylor? M-maybe¡­you really did hit your head recently?¡±

    ¡°I mean, Senpai¡¯s usually got something cooking in that head,¡± Rika said, prefacing the rest, ¡°but, um, I have¡­no idea where she¡¯s going with this one.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not looking at it from the right angle,¡± I told them all. ¡°First of all¡­¡±

    I fiddled with my communicator for a second, opening up the communications link with Chaldea. A moment later ¡ª beep-beep ¡ª and Marie¡¯s face appeared in the air.

    ¡°What did you need?¡± she asked me immediately.

    ¡°You¡¯ve been keeping up with the developments on our end?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± she answered, sounding only slightly annoyed that I had even bothered asking. ¡°Flamel¡¯s homunculus has been kidnapped by the last of the supposed masterminds of this Singularity and taken to her workshop, where the steam engine behind the fog, Angrboea, is presumably being kept as well, fueled by the Holy Grail.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m glad no one was injured, at least!¡± Romani¡¯s voice called from the background.

    ¡°Read the room!¡± Marie hissed back at him.

    First, there was a question I should probably ask, as much for Flamel¡¯s peace of mind as to confirm the concept would work out the way I thought it would.

    ¡°Do you still have a read of her vital signs?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Marie, looking over at something on the side. ¡°There¡¯s some anomalous activity in her magic circuits that we can¡¯t explain, almost like she¡¯s cycling energy through them, but there¡¯s been no signs of any damage done to her physical body. Whatever else she might have taken her for, M hasn¡¯t hurt¡­Ren¨¦e yet.¡±

    And just a little bit, Flamel relaxed. ¡°Yet,¡± he emphasized. ¡°There is no guarantee things will stay that way.¡±

    Marie frowned. ¡°No, I suppose there isn¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°Director,¡± I said, ¡°the fact you can still read her vitals also means you can still track her location, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    Surprised understanding rippled across the rest of the group.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Marie answered simply.

    ¡°And you could forward that to our maps here?¡±

    Marie¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°Yes, we could.¡± Her eyes narrowed on me. ¡°You¡¯re going to rescue her.¡±

    There was a note of disapproval in her voice. A lingering prejudice, if I had to guess, about homunculi and their worth, or maybe just the insistence on something that was ultimately pointless, since Ren¨¦e would disappear with the Singularity.

    That didn¡¯t make rescuing her any less worth doing.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Rika, ¡°don¡¯t we already know where Ren¨¦e is? That¡¯s the whole reason we were down in that creepy thorny subway tunnel, wasn¡¯t it? To find M¡¯s super secret lair?¡±

    ¡°We know where we think they are,¡± I clarified. M had done plenty of things to convince me we¡¯d been on the right track, but it was never confirmed. ¡°But that doesn¡¯t mean we were right. Director?¡±

    She didn¡¯t look entirely happy about it, but after a moment, Marie turned away and started typing at her console¡¯s keyboard. A few seconds later, there was a beep on my communicator, notifying me of the update. When I loaded up the map, there was a stark, red dot, right next to the marker for the spot where we¡¯d thought the entrance to M¡¯s lair would be.

    ¡°The reading is coming from deep underground,¡± Marie explained. ¡°We have no data showing anything in that area except for untouched earth, so whatever is there, it doesn¡¯t exist in our records from proper history.¡±

    ¡°Oh my god,¡± Rika whispered, ¡°she really did build a Bond lair!¡±

    My cheek twitched, but I did my best to pretend she hadn¡¯t said anything. I didn¡¯t want to have to explain the memory that triggered of another villain who had done something similar. Too much to unpack.

    ¡°That¡¯s not very far from the spot we were investigating,¡± Mash noted.

    ¡°So we were on the right track,¡± I concluded. ¡°And M has done us another favor ¡ª if Perrault really is involved and the forest of thorns is his, then this gives us a direct line right past their defenses. We won¡¯t have to do anything except waltz right up to the entrance and walk in.¡±

    Jeanne Alter groaned. ¡°Seriously? You telling me we¡¯re not going to burn any of it down anymore?¡±

    ¡°Sorry to disappoint.¡±

    ¡°Ugh!¡± she grunted, crossing her arms over her chest and looking away. She glared at some spot on the wall, as thought it might burst into flames just from her looking at it long and hard enough.

    ¡°M gave us the way into her own base!¡± Ritsuka breathed. ¡°Senpai, that¡¯s¡­!¡±

    ¡°Just what we needed to put an end to all of this,¡± Arash finished for him.

    ¡°And when the Singularity disappears, everything inside of it that doesn¡¯t belong will disappear, too,¡± Marie said, voice hard. ¡°For those things which have merely deviated from proper history, they¡¯ll be restored to their place. Those things which don¡¯t belong but which are products of events inside the Singularity will simply be erased. All of you know that already, so then you have to know that rescuing Flamel¡¯s homunculus is pointless.¡± Over the protests of the twins and Jekyll, she added, ¡°Even if you managed to rescue her despite being at the heart of the enemy¡¯s power, her lifespan will only be measured in hours! At best!¡±

    ¡°Director!¡± Romani protested.

    ¡°You know that as well as I do!¡± she snapped back at him. ¡°The mission and the safety of our team¡¯s members takes priority over any life inside the Singularities, no matter who it is! That doesn¡¯t change just because they make friends with the people in there!¡±

    ¡°That might be true,¡± Ritsuka began, ¡°but Director Marie ¡ª !¡±

    ¡°Director.¡± My voice cut through the argument like a knife, and I met her eyes straight on. ¡°Does the length of her lifespan dictate the value of her life itself? Is she worth less simply because she won¡¯t live as long?¡±

    Marie faltered. She knew exactly what I was driving at. ¡°That¡¯s¡­! The circumstances aren¡¯t remotely¡­!¡±

    ¡°Is Ren¨¦e¡¯s life less valuable simply because it¡¯s short?¡± I asked again.

    For a few tense seconds, she couldn¡¯t formulate a proper response, her mouth moving but no sounds making it past her lips. What I could only imagine were her sensibilities as a mage must have been fighting her morals as a decent person, and the inability to reconcile them played out across her face in a series of rapidfire battles.

    Eventually, she bit her lip and hung her head, unable to hold my gaze. ¡°No. You¡¯re right. A person¡¯s value can¡¯t¡­can¡¯t be measured by something as simple as the length of their lifespan.¡± Her head shot up, expression fierce. ¡°But that doesn¡¯t mean you¡¯re allowed to go doing something stupid like sacrificing your life for her!¡± She glared at each of us in turn. ¡°That goes for the rest of you, too! I mean it! You¡¯re not allowed to die, do you understand?¡±

    ¡°Yes, Director!¡± the twins and Mash all echoed at once.

    She looked at me, so I had to say, ¡°Of course.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid,¡± Flamel began gravely, ¡°that there is another concern that we must take into account.¡±

    ¡°Another concern?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    Jekyll shifted, alarm on his face. ¡°Abraham, are you sure?¡±

    Flamel heaved out a quiet sigh, but didn¡¯t answer him directly. Instead, he dropped heavily into the nearest chair, and he looked every bit of his age.

    ¡°I have not been entirely honest with you, my friends, as I¡¯m sure I¡¯ve proven numerous times throughout our partnership in this Singularity,¡± he said slowly. ¡°I have concealed, misdirected, or outright obfuscated a number of details, not out of malicious intent, but rather an abundance of caution. I would say it was not my intent to deceive you, but if I¡¯m being completely honest, it was. For the sake of also deceiving the enemy at times, but not always.¡±

    ¡°What are you saying?¡± Marie demanded.

    ¡°I did not make Ren¨¦e on a mere whim,¡± he told us, ¡°nor was she created solely to serve the purpose of rendering domestic aid to us here in the apartment. I would not be so callous as to bring a life into this world for the sole sake of easing such mundane tasks ¡ª I am not so irresponsible as to ignore the moral and ethical quandaries that presents, and such cruelty would, as I would hope I¡¯ve proven, sicken me.¡±

    My mind raced, trying to follow the line to where it was going to end, but none of the possibilities seemed reasonable. He had already proven that he wasn¡¯t on M¡¯s side, and what would be the point of M kidnapping Ren¨¦e if they were allies anyway, but leaving Flamel here? For that matter, he didn¡¯t display any of the signs I¡¯d come to associate with the Servants twisted by M¡¯s hypnosis. He was too clear-headed.

    So what could he be talking about?

    ¡°Wait a minute!¡± Romani shoved himself into frame, shouting at the camera. ¡°You¡¯re not saying what I think you¡¯re saying, are you? Nicolas Flamel! Are you insane? How irresponsible could you possibly be?¡±

    ¡°Romani!¡± Marie snarled, trying to push him back. He stubbornly clung to his place. ¡°Get a hold of yourself!¡±

    ¡°It seemed to me the best option available,¡± Flamel admitted. ¡°Hiding something so valuable in something so obvious as a safe or some sort of box would only invite the enemy to steal it, however well-protected I might try to make it. Hiding it on my person risked it being lost in battle or the enemy twisting my mind to deliver it to them. Then, where was the best place to hide the most valuable treasure in the world, but inside the body of what many would consider the most disposable tool a magus could possess?¡±

    Wait. Was he saying¡­?

    ¡°You absolute madman,¡± Emiya said, stunned, having apparently come to the same conclusion I had.

    ¡°The Philosopher¡¯s Stone,¡± Ritsuka whispered. ¡°You hid it inside of Ren¨¦e!¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Marie shrieked.

    Flamel gave a solemn nod.

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡±

    ¡°Cruel,¡± said Rika, something like betrayal on her face. ¡°Abe, you made Ren¨¦e just so you could hide the Stone? Haven¡¯t you ever heard of the Mirror of Erised?¡±

    ¡°Rika,¡± her brother began wearily.

    ¡°It worked for Dumbledore, didn¡¯t it?¡± Rika demanded.

    ¡°Dumbledore didn¡¯t have to make the Mirror from scratch!¡± Ritsuka pointed out. Rika opened her mouth to argue, but couldn¡¯t seem to find a hole in his logic and had to close her mouth, thwarted.

    ¡°Gramps,¡± said Mordred, her voice trembling a little as she spoke, ¡°you telling me that you made that psycho maid just so you could hide your fancy doohickey?¡±

    Flamel¡¯s head drooped, and he stared downwards as he slowly wrung his hands, as though he could squeeze the guilt out of his joints by doing so. ¡°Please don¡¯t misunderstand. It was a calculated decision, but it was not made with malice aforethought. Even we Servants summoned here were not aware of what would occur when this Singularity was corrected, only that it needed to be corrected.¡± He folded his hands together almost like he was praying. His fingers were shaking. ¡°One way or another, I was certain Ren¨¦e would outlive me. I made arrangements with Doctor Jekyll to see to her disposition, once everything was over.¡±

    Mordred took a threatening step towards him and snarled, ¡°Stop treating her like she¡¯s a tool in whatever game you¡¯re ¡ª¡±

    Flamel surged out of his seat, and his voice rang out like thunder, rattling the gas lamps in their fittings. ¡°DO NOT MISTAKE NECESSITY FOR APATHY!¡± He swung his hand as though cutting through some invisible substance, and his chair wobbled from the unrestrained force, even though he didn¡¯t touch it. ¡°I fully accept the cruelty of my choices, but at no point have I ever treated her as though she was any less than the daughter I¡­!¡±

    The fire left him suddenly, and he sagged, dropping back into the chair with the entirety of his weight. The wood creaked beneath him, but he didn¡¯t seem to notice as his head fell into his hand.

    ¡°I gave her everything I could,¡± he croaked, voice cracking. ¡°The knowledge she would need to continue on, the alchemical skills to pursue magecraft, if she should choose to do so, and memories¡­memories of my dear Perenelle, so that she might have some semblance of an understanding of what it¡¯s like to have a mother.¡±

    ¡°You gave her everything you could, except a father who could be there for her as she learned to live on her own,¡± Arash said, not unkindly.

    To this, Flamel had no response. He didn¡¯t even try to offer one.

    No one else seemed to notice the miserable look on Fran¡¯s face.

    ¡°Shit!¡± Mordred spun around, stalking across the parlor, and when she got to the other side, she stopped, running a hand through her hair. She seemed desperate to find an outlet, but none were presenting themselves, and I didn¡¯t think she dared to leave and miss out on whatever decisions we might make without her. ¡°Fucking¡­shit!¡±

    ¡°What a mess,¡± Emiya breathed.

    It wasn¡¯t pretty, but there was at least one issue that had to be addressed first and foremost.

    ¡°Is there a way to separate the Stone from Ren¨¦e?¡± I asked Flamel.

    ¡°Not safely,¡± he answered quietly. ¡°And even if it could be done without killing her outright, the Stone itself is what will ensure she could live a normal lifespan. Without it, she is as short-lived as any other homunculus.¡±

    An ugly realization bloomed in my head. ¡°That¡¯s why M said she doesn¡¯t need her alive.¡±

    Flamel looked up, grim-faced. The wrinkles in his skin looked deeper and darker than they ever had before. ¡°Yes. I don¡¯t know how it is that she came to the conclusion that Ren¨¦e is the one in possession of the Stone, but that she knows is almost a certainty. Her choice to target Ren¨¦e in particular leaves very little room for doubt.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no choice, then,¡± Marie said suddenly. ¡°You have to rescue her.¡±

    The twins and Mash both spun around to look at her, surprised. ¡°Director Marie?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t misunderstand me!¡± she snapped at them. ¡°It¡¯s not a question of wants or morality anymore, it¡¯s a matter of strategic objectives! M already has access to a Holy Grail, and she¡¯s using that to fuel a steam engine that can cover the entire city! A Philosopher¡¯s Stone isn¡¯t quite on the same level and doesn¡¯t have the same breadth when it comes to utility, but it¡¯s absolutely something that shouldn¡¯t be in the enemy¡¯s hands!¡±

    And while Marie was selfish enough and pragmatic enough to tell us to abandon an ally to save our own skins, she wasn¡¯t so callous as to tell us to kill someone ¡ª homunculus or not ¡ª just because it would be easier than saving them.

    ¡°Then it is all the more prudent for us to make haste and begin our assault upon the enemy¡¯s stronghold,¡± said Jekyll.

    I wasn¡¯t the only one who turned to look at him askance, having caught the implication.

    ¡°You don¡¯t intend to come with us.¡±

    Into the fog that would kill him as surely and as quickly as it would me without my mask?

    ¡°In fact, that was exactly my intent,¡± Jekyll replied. He offered a lopsided smile. ¡°You have not determined to leave Mister Tohsaka and Miss Alice behind again, have you? It would seem to me the wisest course of action when preparing oneself for a decisive battle against the enemy would be to marshall your forces in their entirety. Though I can lay no claim to great strategic genius, to leave important allies behind when they would be better placed upon the frontlines smacks of folly, to me.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re forgetting that you and I can¡¯t go out into that fog without dying within a few minutes,¡± Tohsaka said bluntly.

    ¡°And you¡¯re an ordinary human!¡± Marie agreed. ¡°There¡¯s nothing you could do to help!¡±

    ¡°I have forgotten no such thing,¡± Jekyll rebuked them both. He adjusted his glasses. ¡°There are still several details of great import that I myself have allowed to remain secret between us, and it seems to me now that as we are all revealing all of the cards we have to play, concealing them is pointless, and even more so, counterproductive.¡±

    ¡°What are you trying to say, Doctor Jekyll?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°Abraham¡¯s Noble Phantasm,¡± he said bluntly. ¡°To my understanding, it could be used to reduce the reactivity of the fog that is smothering the city and render safe a section of space large enough for us to walk, can it not? In that case, Mister Tohsaka and I need not concern ourselves. We will be perfectly protected.¡±

    It¡­ Actually, yes, if I understood how it worked correctly, then it could be used that way. Not easily, but it was definitely possible.

    ¡°That might get pretty tiring without a Master to help him out,¡± Arash remarked.

    Jekyll nodded. ¡°Indeed it might. I suppose it is fortunate, then, that it is not a concern.¡±

    Hold on.

    ¡°Doctor,¡± said Flamel, ¡°are you sure?¡±

    ¡°I think the time has long since passed where I might sit about this apartment and wonder at your success,¡± Jekyll answered firmly. ¡°I would like to see for myself the face of the person who has done this to the city so that I might know the villain in all of her terrible glory.¡±

    So the reason Flamel was so hesitant to form a contract with us¡­

    ¡°I haven¡¯t the fortune to possess these Command Spells that seem so vital to proper collaboration,¡± said Jekyll. He straightened, taking on an air of imperiousness. ¡°Nonetheless, Abraham, consider this my first and only order to you as your Master, and give it therefore all due weight: deliver us all to M¡¯s lair safely, so that we might confront the dastardly villain trying to destroy this city.¡±

    Flamel inclined his head. ¡°Of course, Master.¡±

    A moment of silence passed, and then a chorus of several voices shouted at once.

    ¡°WHAT?¡±

 Chapter CLIV: Victorian Fairy Tale

    Chapter CLIV: Victorian Fairy Tale

    The reveal that Jekyll was, in fact, Flamel¡¯s Master didn¡¯t really faze anyone that much after the first few seconds, but Marie had enough outrage to make up for it. The twins and Mash took it mostly in stride, after they had a moment to be surprised, and Mordred didn¡¯t seem to care all that much in the face of all the other things that were currently on our collective plate. Emiya even accepted it like all of the puzzle pieces had suddenly fit together neatly, and Arash might just have figured it out on his own and kept quiet out of respect for Flamel and Jekyll¡¯s privacy, because that was the kind of person he was.

    Jeanne Alter, of course, didn¡¯t really care, Jackie didn¡¯t understand what the big deal was, and Nursery Rhyme was as placid and serene as she almost always was.

    Marie, however, was furious, to the point that Romani had to step in to get her to calm down, although he himself wasn¡¯t too happy either. Not before she started tossing around recriminations about how much the deception put our mission at risk and a few accusations of sabotage, but both Jekyll and Flamel took those on the chin, like they¡¯d been expecting exactly that sort of reaction.

    Maybe they had been. Neither of them was naive enough to believe that we would have just let it slide and moved on. We had taken them into our confidence, made them a part of our mission, crucial and critical as it was, and to some degree, they had abused that trust.

    I couldn¡¯t find it in myself to be too angry with them. I wanted to be, but I¡¯d spent most of the last few days suspicious of Flamel to one degree or another, and while knowing this sooner might have avoided some of that, it might just have made me suspicious of Jekyll, too.

    Either way, we couldn¡¯t afford to spend the entire afternoon on it. Emiya went and made us a quick lunch while we all cooled down, and once that was eaten ¡ª in a very awkward silence ¡ª we had to get ready and leave again.

    I hadn¡¯t said so out loud, but I had a new suspicion about who M was. With Perrault all but confirmed to be involved and the forest of thorns from The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood on full display, my theory was that the Demon God in charge of making this Singularity had twisted Perrault to his cause the same way Medea the younger had been, leaving the creations of his Noble Phantasm to handle all of the more challenging aspects of managing things.

    If that was the case, then M might just be the queen from the same story, the prince¡¯s mother, with ogre in her blood, who grew resentful of the Sleeping Beauty and her children and demanded each night to eat one of them. If I was right, then we literally couldn¡¯t afford to wait until the morning anyway, even if we had been tempted to, because Ren¨¦e might not last the night.

    And on a more practical note, I didn¡¯t want to find out what might come of the evil queen if she swallowed the Philosopher¡¯s Stone in Ren¨¦e¡¯s body. I was sure that it would be nothing good.

    Fortunately, Flamel¡¯s Noble Phantasm proved as useful as Jekyll had suggested it would be, and when we stepped out into the mist, the only thing that made me want to gag and cough was the smell. The effects of his Noble Phantasm canceled out both the underlying toxicity and the volatile magical energy, but the rancid scent was only marginally improved from what I remembered of it when we first arrived.

    It was tempting to put on my mask, but we needed as united a front as we could get, and with moods soured by any or all of the things that had come up in the aftermath of Ren¨¦e¡¯s kidnapping, we needed that unity desperately. It wasn¡¯t pleasant to go without my mask, but as a show of solidarity with the rest of the team, I did.

    ¡°I guess it was too much to hope for, that this odor would have been taken care of, too,¡± Tohsaka muttered disgustedly.

    ¡°I¡¯m gonna spend the first three days back at Chaldea huffing scented candles,¡± Rika agreed, no more pleased than he was.

    Jackie looked up at me, concerned. ¡°Mommy?¡±

    The only thing I could really do was give her a reassuring smile and tell her, ¡°It¡¯s okay, Jackie. It¡¯s working.¡±

    This didn¡¯t seem to satisfy her, so she stayed glued to my side for the rest of the trip ¡ª close enough to grab my mask in an emergency, I noted with a strange sense of pride ¡ª but she didn¡¯t kick up a fuss about it either.

    It seemed to take twice as long to get back to St. Paul¡¯s Station as it had getting from there to the apartment an hour ago, no doubt owing to our group being so much larger and so many of us having to huddle around Flamel, but we got there without running into any enemy forces and no sign of M¡¯s crow. Not, of course, that we could have seen it if it was perched motionlessly somewhere nearby, not with the fog being as thick as it was, but there were no overt signs of its presence.

    I was going to assume she was watching us anyway. There were always dangers to assuming your enemy was more competent than they were, but underestimating the enemy was always worse, in my experience. Better to act as though she saw everything we were doing.

    By the time we made it to the staircase leading down into the Underground, there was no indication of any further enemy action. The brambles and thorns, however, were still just as present as they had been when we left, and it was no less hazardous making our way down into the station. It was made all the more so by the fact that Jekyll, Tohsaka, and I had to stick so close to Flamel so that he had to exert himself as little as possible.

    ¡°Still think we should just burn all this shit down,¡± Jeanne Alter muttered mutinously.

    ¡°If we¡¯re right about what¡¯s going to be waiting up ahead, then you¡¯ll have plenty to burn before this is over,¡± I told her.

    She rolled her eyes. ¡°You know what they say about promises, Master.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t make one you can¡¯t keep,¡± Rika chirped.

    ¡°Exactly.¡±

    Somewhere in there, Ritsuka seemed to recognize a pop culture reference, but whatever it might have been, he didn¡¯t feel like sharing, so I let it drop. No one else looked to be all that interested in pursuing it either.

    The mood was just that dour.

    Like the trip to the station, climbing down off of the platform and trekking through the tunnel proved just as slow and cumbersome, and if our pace had been slow earlier, then it was positively glacial now. Fortunately, nothing had changed down here either, so there were no new growths for us to watch out for or closed off passages to stymie our progress. Just the same forest of thorny branches jutting out of every possible surface like some kind of warning to stay away ¡ª and now, to leave Ren¨¦e to whatever ultimate fate M imagined for her.

    We didn¡¯t heed it, of course, for all of the obvious reasons.

    It took us the better part of another quiet hour to finally reach the spot we¡¯d originally marked off, the place where we had been stumped before, and a quick check of the map and the location of Ren¨¦e¡¯s communicator showed that we were not that far from her. She was, however, still some one-hundred-fifty meters below us.

    ¡°We¡¯re here,¡± I announced.

    Everyone stopped and looked around. Flashlights swung, passing beams of intense light over each of the walls, but the tangle of branches remained stubbornly unmoved. No entrance had magically opened up for us.

    ¡°You sure, Senpai?¡± asked Rika doubtfully.

    ¡°Thought this shit was supposed to just open up for us or whatever,¡± Mordred agreed.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure,¡± I said.

    A moment of uneasy silence passed, and everyone kept looking. Fruitlessly, because there was no sign of a passageway or a break in the branches. Nothing had changed from when we were last here.

    ¡°Maybe¡­it was actually further along the line?¡± Mash suggested.

    Maybe. I¡¯d chosen this spot originally because it was the closest to the center of the Associaton¡¯s Terminal, so I could very well be wrong. The problem was, this was also the closest we were to Ren¨¦e¡¯s position on the map; going forward or back would just take us further away.

    ¡°Maybe she was just talking shit out of her ass,¡± Mordred muttered darkly.

    Tohsaka hissed an admonishment for her language, but as she always had, she ignored him completely.

    ¡°Maybe¡­it¡¯s like a spell, and it needs an incantation,¡± Ritsuka suggested.

    That¡­actually wasn¡¯t a bad idea. In fact, we had an example of that sort of thing right here, didn¡¯t we?

    ¡°Like when Alice summons the Jabberwocky,¡± said Tohsaka, realizing the same thing I just had.

    ¡°The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,¡± Nursery Rhyme recited.

    ¡°An excellent suggestion, Ritsuka,¡± Jekyll praised. ¡°I fear, however, that it may find itself running afoul of a singular obstacle that we might find difficult to surmount. Are there any amongst us who is so familiar with the story that he might recite from memory the relevant passage?¡±

    No one answered. Not even me. It had been too long, and my memory of the exact wording was fragmented and useless. I remembered the story beats and the plot points, not the prose itself.

    ¡°You¡¯ve gotta be shitting me,¡± said Jeanne Alter. ¡°Are you saying that we have to go to a library and check out a book before we can get to the final battle here? Seriously?¡±

    Unfortunately ¡ª

    ¡°¡®Your Highness,¡¯ said he,¡± a new voice announced, ¡°¡®more than fifty years ago I heard my father say that in this castle lies a princess, the most beautiful that has ever been seen. It is her doom to sleep there for a hundred years, and then to be awakened by a king''s son, for whose coming she waits.¡¯¡±

    The tunnel writhed and squirmed, the branches twisting and churning, recoiling like shadows from the light.

    ¡°This story fired the young prince. He jumped immediately to the conclusion that it was for him to see so gay an adventure through, and impelled alike by the wish for love and glory, he resolved to set about it on the spot.¡±

    They pulled apart in the middle, spreading wide and bunching up at the sides until the section of tunnel they had concealed was laid bare. There was enough space between them for two of Babbage¡¯s Helter Skelter to stand side by side.

    ¡°It¡¯s working!¡± Arash declared.

    ¡°Hardly had he taken a step towards the wood when the tall trees, the brambles and the thorns, separated of themselves and made a path for him. He turned in the direction of the castle, and espied it at the end of a long avenue.¡±

    And at last, the lines between the bricks glowed, and then the bricks themselves swiveled, turned, and spun inwards, folding away into each other and sinking through the wall to form an entrance, an entryway through the wall. At the bottom, more bricks unfolded outwards, forming a staircase that led down and into another tunnel, tall enough and wide enough that even Asterios could have easily squeezed into it and comfortably made his way through.

    What lay at the bottom, it was impossible to see. The stairway turned or swerved or something somewhere deeper down, and the flashlight on my communicator simply wasn¡¯t strong enough to reach it.

    ¡°Whoa,¡± Rika whispered.

    ¡°Okay,¡± said Jeanne Alter, reluctantly impressed, ¡°I have to admit, that¡¯s pretty cool.¡±

    Mordred snorted. ¡°That? It¡¯s a parlor trick. You ever meet Gawain? Ask that guy about Rigomer. Makes this look tame.¡±

    ¡°The method of protection is unique, but the tunnel itself is fairly standard,¡± Flamel agreed. ¡°Mister Andersen. I was wondering where it was you had gotten off to.¡±

    The thump of his oversized book snapping shut echoed in the quiet of the tunnel, and Andersen stepped closer to the group, into the light of our flashlights. They glinted off his glasses as he adjusted them.

    ¡°Mister Andersen,¡± said Mash, ¡°how did you know?¡±

    ¡°I followed them, of course,¡± Andersen said. ¡°When Ren¨¦e fled the apartment, I trailed her in spirit form. That mangy cat and his master never even sensed me ¡ª one of the perks of being a Servant with such a pathetically weak Saint Graph. I might as well have been a fly on the wall for all the attention they paid me.¡±

    ¡°Cat?¡± asked Arash, brow furrowing.

    ¡°The eponymous Puss in Boots, as he introduced himself,¡± Andersen confirmed. ¡°He dressed pretty smartly for a cat, but then I suppose that¡¯s part of his story, isn¡¯t it? While the wicked wolf chased her off, Puss waited for Ren¨¦e on the street and coerced her cooperation through threats. At that point, it wasn¡¯t hard to guess just who was involved. A forest of thorns? A monster wolf that could mimic others¡¯ voices? A talking cat that used its wits and the promise of violence to get its way? As a fellow author of fairy tales, the answer couldn¡¯t have announced itself to me more clearly if it was carrying a sign.¡±

    Arash grimaced, a look of pained regret twisting his face. ¡°Let me guess, an orange tabby?¡±

    Andersen smiled thinly. ¡°From the sound of it, you had the chance to meet him, too. You shouldn¡¯t punish yourself too harshly. That cat¡¯s entire story is about how he used trickery and deception to take his master from a penniless orphan to a prince of the kingdom. There¡¯s no shame in being tricked by him.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t the only one who looked Arash¡¯s way.

    ¡°Arash?¡± Mash asked.

    ¡°Ren¨¦e¡¯s been sneaking food to an orange tabby for the past couple of days,¡± he admitted. ¡°It looked and behaved like an ordinary cat, so I assumed it was just a clever stray and left it alone, but¡­¡±

    But it obviously wasn¡¯t.

    ¡°So even someone like you can get taken in by a good enough conman,¡± Emiya remarked.

    Arash sighed. ¡°It seems so.¡±

    If Puss was another one of M¡¯s spies, then there was likely quite a bit more about us that she knew than I was really comfortable with, although exactly how much was up in the air. Our numbers, for sure, and at least some of our identities, as she had demonstrated. It didn¡¯t really change anything, but it was still frustrating that she knew so much about us and all we had were guesses based upon logical conclusions.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    At least we could confirm Perrault was among the enemy¡¯s forces. Not only because the forest of thorns opened the way it had, but because a talking cat calling itself Puss in Boots all but cemented it.

    ¡°I¡¯m guessing you¡¯re coming along,¡± I said to Andersen. At least he¡¯d finally been helpful. I could give him a little leeway for that.

    He smiled another thin smile. ¡°After I had to go all the way back to that bookshop just to make sure I could be here with the correct passage to make sure you could all get through? If I¡¯m going to have to sit around and accomplish nothing else for the rest of this farce, then I might as well do it where I can see whether or not I¡¯m doomed.¡±

    ¡°How noble of you!¡± Jeanne Alter said with a nasty grin.

    ¡°We¡¯re grateful for your help, Mister Andersen,¡± Ritsuka said diplomatically.

    ¡°You can repay me by winning,¡± Andersen said bluntly. ¡°Put an end to this mess so we can all go home and call it a day.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Flamel replied grimly, ¡°yes, I suppose we ought to, hadn¡¯t we? After all, that which doesn¡¯t belong in this era has no place in it. It must be removed, no matter what.¡±

    ¡°Abe¡­¡± Rika murmured.

    ¡°Fuck that,¡± Mordred said immediately. ¡°We¡¯ll figure something out. First, though, we gotta go and kick some pretentious bitch¡¯s ass. We can worry about everything else after we¡¯re sure there¡¯ll be an after to worry about.¡± She huffed. ¡°Once this bitch is in the ground, we can focus on the important stuff. Like finding someplace for Ren¨¦e to stay after all the rest gets booted back to where it belongs.¡±

    ¡°Uhn!¡± Fran agreed.

    If only it could be that simple.

    ¡°Then let¡¯s get going,¡± I said.

    No one disagreed, and we filed into the tunnel and down the steps in much the same order as we¡¯d been going. Mash and Mordred took point, as both our first line of defense and our strongest close quarters offense, the best response we had if we were ambushed. Arash and Nursery Rhyme took up the rear, with us Masters squished in the middle, Tohsaka, Jekyll, and me crowded around Flamel.

    The stairs went down quite a ways, curving eventually into a gentle spiral that we couldn¡¯t do anything except follow. There was no way to tell exactly how much farther down they went either, as it was a single tunnel down and there wasn¡¯t some giant shaft that let us see exactly how deep the spiral stretched. It was not like they showed in the movies, where a look over the side showed an enormous drop down into a dark pit. It was only a single hallway that looked as though it was some magical gateway to another world, and all we had to do to reach it was to go all the way to the bottom.

    I kept an eye on the map the entire way, watching the distance between us and Ren¨¦e¡¯s communicator slowly shrink. Flamel probably thought he went unnoticed every time he glanced over at it anxiously, but I didn¡¯t comment on it. It wasn¡¯t like he didn¡¯t have a reason.

    What I really wanted to know was how Angrboea connected to everything. How did the vents all reach this far? How did they all pump steam out from the machine and into the air? How had they been made? Were they constructed at the same time as this underground lair, all in the span of a few days? The logistics of it made my head spin.

    Most importantly, if we had to disable the machine and disconnect it from whatever system it was using before we could retrieve the Grail, how did we do that? I wasn¡¯t sure we would have an answer until we were looking right at it.

    Eventually, the stairway reached an end, and we found ourselves walking into a tunnel not all that dissimilar from the ones that the Association had excavated beneath the British Museum. Walls made of stone bricks that curved up into the ceiling, cast iron braziers that contained wooden torches, eternally burning ¡ª a feat, considering the fog still oozed through the corridor, leaving the walls and floor damp and slippery.

    ¡°Incredible,¡± said Mash. ¡°There are¡­no records of this place in proper history. Could it be that this was part of some national secret, or¡­did M construct all of this herself?¡±

    I guess I wasn¡¯t the only one wondering about that.

    ¡°It¡¯s rather like a castle, isn¡¯t it?¡± said Andersen. ¡°Built upside down, stretching towards the center of the Earth instead of up towards the sky.¡±

    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t that mean we¡¯re technically standing on the ceiling?¡± Emiya pointed out.

    Andersen grimaced. ¡°¡­Maybe not quite that way, since that would mean the floor would be curved for some nonsensical reason, but I think the comparison stands.¡±

    Considering who we were pretty sure we were going to find up ahead? Yes, a fairly apt comparison. It even made a further degree of sense if Perrault had simply manifested Sleeping Beauty¡¯s castle underground, connecting it to a tunnel that Babbage might have helped construct. We would have just descended through one of the towers, in that case.

    It seemed a little far-fetched, but I didn¡¯t have much in the way of better ideas.

    The ever-present steam made it hard to see much of anything too far ahead of us, but as we walked, the clinking of the automata further on was too distinctive to miss.

    ¡°Guess M wasn¡¯t stupid enough to leave this place completely undefended!¡± Mordred said, and barely had the words left her mouth before she was racing off to crush them all.

    ¡°Sir Mordred!¡± Mash called after her, and she looked ready to give chase until Ritsuka set a hand on her shoulder.

    ¡°Let her handle it on her own,¡± he told Mash. ¡°She needs to blow off some steam, and she can handle it by herself.

    Through the fog came the sounds of battle, but especially the distinctive clatter of the automata breaking beneath Mordred¡¯s strength and their shattered pieces tumbled across the stone floor. Mash relaxed and heaved a sigh.

    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± she said. ¡°It sounds like it¡¯s just some automata. Sir Mordred can deal with them on her own.¡±

    ¡°Gotta hand it to British,¡± Jeanne Alter drawled, ¡°she sure knows how to smash some weak little dolls to bits.¡±

    A few moments later, the sounds of battle came to a sudden stop with one, last warble skidding across the floor, and then Mordred returned, completely untouched but somewhat less tense than she had been a minute ago.

    ¡°Coast is clear,¡± she announced gruffly. She flicked what must have been some oil off of her sword with a single rough swing.

    With the enemy guard taken care of, we kept going, passing the remnants of her skirmish along the way. Bits and pieces of a number of automata ¡ª all of them too destroyed to properly count ¡ª were strewn about all over, jagged and cracked. A hand with its too-long fingers laid there, a sculpted impression of lips and a nose laid over there, a thigh that had been snapped in half, a crumpled torso with huge chunks ripped out, an entire arm. Mordred hadn¡¯t been gentle with them.

    No one commented. The mood was still fairly dire, and none of us could blame her for working off some of her frustration after everything.

    The corridor we were walking through eventually emptied out into a grand entrance hall, an enormous thing stretching up something like sixty feet with a vaulted ceiling. To our one side, there was what would have been the main entrance of a castle, with large windows whose curtains were drawn. The little we could see through the gaps showed only black earth outside. To our other side, there was a staircase, a short one with broad steps that reached up to another set of doors and then split to travel up both sides of the wall and towards balconies that overlooked the rest of the hall.

    What else might be up there, I couldn¡¯t see. The fog obscured the finer details, and if not for that, then the lack of any light except the torches would have done much the same.

    The final route was across from us, another hallway leading on someplace else.

    ¡°Crap,¡± said Rika. ¡°Multiple choice. I always sucked at those questions.¡±

    My immediate, visceral reaction was to ask how, but this wasn¡¯t the time or the place.

    ¡°And now the obvious question,¡± said Flamel, ¡°which door do we take?¡±

    Which door, indeed. I felt like the corridor across from us almost certainly had to be a waste of time. If it led anywhere at all, then it wouldn¡¯t lead to anywhere that had enough space to accommodate Angrboea. If we went left and up the stairs, those doors probably led into the great hall, and that was probably more than big enough to contain the giant steam machine. Whether or not Ren¨¦e would also be there, that was a harder question.

    I wished I could use my bugs. They would have made exploring this place a whole lot easier.

    The last option was the main entrance, which would no doubt take us ¡°back outside.¡± What that might mean, I could only imagine. Maybe nothing. Maybe the door would open up and there wouldn¡¯t be anything but dirt on the other side, or maybe it wouldn¡¯t open at all because the dirt was in the way.

    It seemed like the easiest one to test.

    ¡°We¡¯ve done most of the rest in reverse, haven¡¯t we? Come down from the tower where Sleeping Beauty rested and into the castle¡¯s hall,¡± I said confidently. ¡°We¡¯ll try the main entrance first.¡±

    ¡°As reasonable a supposition as any,¡± Jekyll agreed.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran grunted, doubtful.

    Most of the rest were just as dubious about it, but no one contradicted me, so we walked out into the entrance hall and made for the large front doors.

    ¡°Father!¡± Ren¨¦e¡¯s voice suddenly cried. ¡°Father, please!¡±

    Flamel startled and spun around. ¡°Ren¨¦e?¡±

    He made to follow it, but Arash¡¯s hand found his arm and held him back.

    ¡°Don¡¯t!¡± he cautioned Flamel. ¡°Remember what we¡¯re up against! Has Ren¨¦e ever called you ¡®Father¡¯ before?¡±

    Realization sparked in Flamel¡¯s eyes. ¡°She hasn¡¯t.¡±

    A low, dark chuckle reverberated throughout the hall, and Mash gasped, leaping up and into the air above us. My head swiveled and my neck bent to follow her, but I only caught a faint glimpse of something huge falling from the ceiling before the only thing I could see was Mash¡¯s legs and backside.

    The screech of something sharp dragging down the surface of her shield screamed in my ears like nails on a chalkboard, and whatever it was bounced off as the force of the collision threw Mash back the way she¡¯d come. She landed behind us, none the worse for wear.

    That was when I got my first look at the wicked wolf.

    Calling him a werewolf wasn¡¯t inaccurate. The hindlegs were definitely canine, with the characteristic second joint and everything, curved backwards, with a tail that lazily swung back and forth like a pendulum, but the torso was incongruently human, with a broad, enormous chest and shoulders that spanned twice the width of his lower body. His long arms were half again as long as they should have been, with humanoid fingers and thumbs and wickedly long, sharp claws. His head, meanwhile, was just as huge, with a maw large enough that it looked like he could indeed have swallowed a little girl in one go and teeth long and sharp enough to gnaw through her bones.

    He reminded me of Lung, half-transformed, only covered head to toe in dark fur instead of silvery scales. It was the eyes, however, that made him look truly terrifying, a shade of poisonous yellow so bright they seemed to glow and ringed on the edges with bright orange, making them look as though they were made of fire.

    ¡°Clever little lamb,¡± rumbled the wolf. His eyes swiveled, taking us each in at once. ¡°Ah, and if it isn¡¯t the morsels from earlier! It seems you¡¯ve brought me a larger meal, this time. How kind of you to feed this poor, starving wolf!¡±

    ¡°Alice!¡± Tohsaka barked.

    ¡°¡ª and burbled as he came!¡± Nursery Rhyme finished.

    The Jabberwocky sprang into existence already in motion, leaping toward the wicked wolf without a sound. It attacked immediately and without hesitation, landing a series of rapid blows ¡ª that accomplished absolutely nothing, because the wolf didn¡¯t even flinch.

    ¡°This again?¡± the wolf complained. ¡°I can¡¯t eat empty air, little morsel.¡±

    But Nursery Rhyme was already calling upon another of her monsters. ¡°¡ª shun the frumious Bandersnatch!¡±

    What came forth next was both similar and yet nothing like the Jabberwocky. Compared to the surprisingly humanoid Jabberwocky, in fact, it was far closer to an animal, some bizarre cross between a dog, a cat, and a lizard. It moved on all fours with long, feline legs, and yet it crouched low to the floor like some kind of reptile and leapt from place to place like a frog. Folds of skin wrinkled along its neck, and a head crowned with jagged, mismatched spikes bared a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth.

    Mottled green and black skin flickered in the light of the torches as it moved, bouncing from place to place almost as though it was teleporting, and it came at the wicked wolf from behind, neck lengthening and extending as it sank those fangs as deep as it could into the wolf¡¯s shoulder. The instant it had latched on with its jaws, the rest of its body followed, neck retracting, until it had attached itself to the wolf, sharp claws sinking in wherever they could find purchase.

    ¡°More trinkets?¡± the wolf thundered. ¡°More toys? I hunger, little morsel! I will have you all!¡±

    ¡°Tohsaka!¡± I barked at him. Remember the plan! I didn¡¯t say, because I didn¡¯t need to.

    ¡°Right!¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°Alice!¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Papa!¡± Nursery Rhyme said. ¡°My friends and I can keep him here! It¡¯s time for you to go and rescue the princess! Make sure you give her a kiss to wake her up, okay?¡±

    Tohsaka¡¯s face flickered through several different emotions before settling back on solemn determination. ¡°Right. Alice¡­ I¡¯m ordering you not to die, got it?¡±

    She giggled. ¡°Of course!¡±

    Mash covered us as we turned back to the doors. Together, Emiya and Arash reached for the handles to open them.

    ¡°Still not sure we should be leaving her behind,¡± Ritsuka muttered.

    ¡°The Jabberwocky, the Bandersnatch, and the wicked wolf are all creatures of fantasy,¡± Flamel explained. ¡°If they can die at all, then they must die in accordance with how their stories say they died. Otherwise, all that can be done is to hold them off until either they or their master runs out of the energy to sustain them.¡±

    ¡°Then we¡¯d better be fast,¡± was all Tohsaka said in reply.

    The massive doors opened inward with a creak, and I half-expected a ton of dirt to come tumbling through the door, but what waited on the other side wasn¡¯t solid earth, it was¡­

    ¡°Another tunnel?¡±

    ¡°How did they dig all of these tunnels so gosh-darn fast?¡± Rika demanded.

    ¡°You won¡¯t escape ME!¡± the wolf howled from behind us.

    The sound of ripping flesh and the wet splat of blood landing on the ground echoed, and Emiya turned back first out of all of us, hand reaching up as though to grasp something on his back (¡°Trace, on!¡±), and suddenly, he was holding¡­an ax?

    By the time I turned around to watch the path of his throw, the ax had already left his hand and hit his target, cutting deep into the wolf¡¯s shoulder.

    The wolf howled.

    ¡°KILL YOU!¡± he roared. ¡°KILL YOU, KILL YOU, KILL YOU!¡±

    The Jabberwocky got in his way before he could even try, but the wolf ignored its punches the same as before, digging his claws into the Jabberwocky¡¯s flesh and wildly tearing chunks away.

    ¡°Jabberwocky!¡± said Nursery Rhyme. ¡°The ax! Use the ax!¡±

    And it did, grabbing the handle of the ax ¡ª so tiny looking in its massive fist ¡ª and yanking it free. The wolf let out another furious howl as blood spurted from the wound, but he didn¡¯t stay still to let the Jabberwocky swing the borrowed ax his way, instead throwing himself backwards so quickly he almost appeared to teleport. Almost as an afterthought, he ripped the Bandersnatch off of his back and threw it so hard against the wall that the entire hall quivered.

    The ax wound, however, was not so quick to close and vanish nor so swiftly ignored, and I wasn¡¯t the only one who realized it.

    ¡°Emiya!¡± Rika began.

    But Nursery Rhyme twisted to look back at us, waving over her shoulder with a smile. ¡°Thanks for the ax, Mister Emiya! Take good care of Papa and go teach that lady a lesson, okay?¡±

    Right. Because even if we killed the wicked wolf, it would only be a delay. It was not a Servant, and therefore it didn¡¯t have a Saint Graph and wasn¡¯t summoned the way a Servant would be. It could very easily be summoned back, forcing us to waste time and energy to face it every time, and the only way to get rid of it for good was to eliminate Perrault. There was no point in fighting it ourselves and no point in trying to kill it.

    I grabbed Rika by the wrist and pulled her along, and she yelped before falling into step. Ahead, Mordred charged into the tunnel and towards the ominous glow that emanated from further in, and the rest of us followed in roughly the same formation we¡¯d been using, with Arash and Mash bringing up the rear. Arash peppered the wicked wolf with arrows as he went, but they accomplished almost nothing, and the rare few that penetrated past the fur were easily ignored. The wicked wolf had eyes only for Nursery Rhyme and her Jabberwocky. The Bandersnatch might as well have been a gnat buzzing around his head.

    Past the huge double doors, there were a couple of stone steps, but we practically flew down them and onto the dirt floor that made up the tunnel. Unlike the corridor we¡¯d walked through and the winding flight of stairs we¡¯d descended before, this was all roughly hewn rock and packed earth, not all that dissimilar from the cavern in Fuyuki that had housed the Great Grail, where King Arthur had waited for us.

    The instant Mash was clear, the doors swung shut with a bang.

    It was tempting to look back ¡ª Rika and Ritsuka both did, glancing over their shoulders ¡ª but I focused on the tunnel ahead and the glow that awaited at the end of it. The fog was still there, but not quite as dense as it had been everywhere else. Not so thin that I would have dared to step outside of the radius of Flamel¡¯s protection without my mask on, but thin enough that it was easier to see the tunnel around us once our flashlights were turned on.

    Ten, twenty, thirty, fifty feet passed in total, and then a gate loomed ahead of us, jutting out of the rock incongruently. It matched the castle hall and the corridor with its curved ceiling, but it looked odd, like it had been buried beneath millennia of sediment and only this part, the gateway itself, had been excavated.

    Another thirty feet disappeared beneath us, and then we were through. On the other side ¡ª

    ¡°Whoa, wait, this looks way too familiar!¡± said Rika.

    ¡ª a massive cavern easily a match for the one in Fuyuki and at least the size of the one beneath Mount Etna. The eerie glow came from some point in the distance, where a massive shape loomed through the darkness and the steam, an enormous, thousand-armed construct with a body the size of a small house and tubes that connected it to the ceiling.

    ¡°It¡¯s just like the Grail cavern in Fuyuki,¡± Mash breathed.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Emiya agreed, suspicious, ¡°yes, it is.¡±

    And standing in the way, waiting for us¡­

    ¡°Welcome, Chaldeans.¡±

    ¡­a pair of cold, yellow eyes above a thin-lipped smile appeared from out of the fog.

    ¡°I do believe I made you a promise, didn¡¯t I?¡±

 Chapter CLV: The Evil Fairy

    Chapter CLV: The Evil Fairy

    ¡°Poor, poor Ren¨¦e,¡± said M as she slowly stalked closer, little more than a tall, lean silhouette against the fog. There was a mocking lilt to her voice, a false concern so transparent that it fooled no one at all. ¡°It seems that her companions ¡ª indeed, even her dearest father ¡ª care not at all for what becomes of her.¡±

    Flamel moved before the words even finished registering in my brain, and the ground rippled as pillars of stone shot up from the cavern floor and surrounded M in a prison until the only thing visible was her face. The instant she was caught, they transformed into steel, creating a kind of twisted sarcophagus.

    ¡°Abraham!¡± Jekyll cried, alarmed.

    ¡°You will tell me what you did with Ren¨¦e,¡± Flamel snarled. ¡°Now.¡±

    ¡°How rude,¡± said M calmly. ¡°Is this how you treat all of your hosts as they come to welcome you into their homes? Have you no manners at all?¡±

    Green light poured out from around her face.

    ¡°From dust you were born, and dust you shall become,¡± she intoned dramatically. Her words tumbled together so quickly that it was almost hard to pick out the individual ones. ¡°Behold your magic, for now it is undone!¡±

    Cracks formed in the surface of the steel trap, spilling more green light out into the air, and then the entire thing exploded, throwing clumps of dirt ¡ª not steel ¡ª out in every direction and clearing the air around her. For a moment, a handful of seconds that might not last longer than that, there was nothing obscuring her at all.

    Finally, we got a good look at the person we were dealing ¡ª

    My thoughts ground to a halt.

    ¡°Ho-lee fuck,¡± Rika said breathlessly. ¡°Maleficent!¡±

    And it was. She looked distinctly more real than the last time I remembered seeing her, but the high cheekbones, the ruby red lips, the devilish horns that jutted up from her head, the black robes, they all looked like they had been ripped right out of the 1959 movie.

    ¡°W-what?¡± Mash squeaked.

    ¡°That¡­shouldn¡¯t be possible,¡± said Emiya, just as spooked as I was.

    ¡°It seems I need no introduction,¡± M said lightly, smiling. ¡°But you look quite disturbed ¡ª perhaps a less intimidating form might better suit the situation?¡±

    She spread her arms, her robe billowing around her.

    ¡°A pleasing face masking fury and rage,¡± she nearly sang, voice deep and resonant, ¡°now abandon it for wisdom and age!¡±

    And just like that, the lean, youthful visage melted away, cheeks drooping and skin sagging as she grew forty years in less than four seconds. Her body shrank and filled out until she was hunched over her staff, gripping the top with gnarled hands. Deep wrinkles formed around her mouth and her eyes, crow¡¯s feet so prominent they looked carved from stone.

    ¡°Would this be more to your liking?¡± she asked, voice thinner and reedier. ¡°As close to the description given as can be, sparse though it was, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    She was just like the wicked wolf. No, that was obvious the instant I realized who she was, because even though Rika called her Maleficent ¡ª a neat and tidy M name to fit with what we knew about the conspirators behind this Singularity ¡ª I knew the story behind the movie. The basics had been done right, for sure, but once you got past her introduction and the first few acts she performed in the movie, Maleficent started to become more and more a creation of the animators, directors, and storyboarders than Perrault himself.

    ¡°You shouldn¡¯t exist,¡± I found myself saying before I could stop myself.

    Because the evil fairy in The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood had only had a single role, had shown up to the celebration of the princess¡¯s birth, taken offense at both not being invited and at the hastily arranged accommodations being substandard compared to the other fairies, and then cast the curse on the infant princess. After that, she disappeared from the tale, forgotten. She hadn¡¯t even been given a name, but then again, in Perrault¡¯s version, I didn¡¯t think any of the characters had one.

    The aged cheeks pulled into a cold smile. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t I? And yet, whether you think so or not, here I am, aren¡¯t I?¡±

    ¡°You will find,¡± Emiya murmured, echoing something that he had said what felt now like a lifetime ago, ¡°that most Heroic Spirits will be mellowed out and moderated by how perspectives changed over the years.¡±

    A chill swept down my spine. He¡¯d said that to Rika about C¨²chulainn to help her understand that the Servants we met weren¡¯t going to be flies trapped in amber, perfectly preserved exactly as they had been in life, but evolving people changed by the advance of social equality and societal expectations. Heroic Spirits could be changed by their legends and by what people thought of those legends centuries later, even if those changes completely distorted the original myth.

    I should have considered that sooner.

    The evil fairy laughed and was consumed by green fire, her cackles echoing, and a moment later, the tall, slender form of Maleficent stood before us again.

    ¡°And how fortunate for me that is,¡± she said gleefully. ¡°Why, I think I should thank that man for having bestowed upon me such a precious gift. His name was¡­Walt, wasn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s possible,¡± Ritsuka managed to say, although it came out a little shaky.

    ¡°A shame,¡± said the evil fairy. ¡°But I think, instead, that you all will served as fine substitutes ¡ª¡±

    A gout of flame suddenly leapt across the distance, growing larger as it did and consuming the evil fairy in her entirety. The remaining magical energy in the thin fog that still lingered about ignited, too, and I had to wince and fight the urge to close my eyes and turn away as the pyre burned.

    But the flames turned green, and that echoing laughter rang out as they slowly died away. The evil fairy stood there as she had before, completely untouched and sneering triumphantly at us.

    ¡°Fuck,¡± said Jeanne Alter. ¡°That bitch isn¡¯t even singed.¡±

    ¡°Wanna try that again?¡± Mordred asked dryly.

    ¡°Fuck you, British.¡±

    ¡°Fire?¡± the evil fairy crowed. ¡°How pedestrian! How quaint! Why, I might even have felt that ¡ª if it were thrice as hot, that is!¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s another creature of fairy tale,¡± Flamel said grimly. ¡°We will find, I think, that she is equally impervious to our attacks as the wicked wolf was. The only way to kill her would be to do so in the same way she died in her story.¡±

    And she didn¡¯t die in her story. She was so much closer to a plot device than a proper character that no other mention had been made of her once she performed the function for which she existed, and only a vague implication that may just have been imagined by the literary scholars hinted that she might have been the crone whose spindle the princess had pricked her finger upon.

    Even if we accepted that as truth, so what? The crone hadn¡¯t died either.

    ¡°There¡¯s something I¡¯m not getting,¡± said Rika, lowly and for once serious. ¡°If she¡¯s M, and M is the mastermind who did all of the funky indoctrination stuff to Mister P and Babbs, and she¡¯s just another fairytale¡­thing from that other guy¡¯s NP, then¡­ Who¡¯s really behind all of this?¡±

    A very, very good question, and one I wasn¡¯t sure I had the answer to. M was, supposedly, the one twisting all of the other Servants to do her bidding, but if she was, in the end, just another manifestation of Perrault¡¯s Noble Phantasm, then who or what had twisted Perrault to begin with? Another one of those Demon Gods? I didn¡¯t have a better answer.

    If so, where was it hiding? In Angrboea?

    ¡°Well?¡± said the evil fairy. ¡°Care to try something else? Poor Ren¨¦e is waiting for her rescue, and, why, I seem to be the only thing standing in your way, aren¡¯t I?¡±

    ¡°Abraham,¡± Jekyll muttered, ¡°have you aught else we might attempt?¡±

    ¡°We¡­could try running down her stock of magical energy,¡± said Flamel, ¡°but if she is connected directly to the Grail, then¡­¡±

    Then she had functionally infinite energy to call upon. Even if we obliterated her entire body in one go ¡ª without doing any significant damage to the cavern, that was, and risking our own lives ¡ª then she might just reform like nothing had happened. Balmung could definitely destroy her, and so could A¨ªfe¡¯s Thunder Feat, Mordred¡¯s Clarent Blood Arthur, Jeanne Alter¡¯s La Grondement du Haine, and just about every large scale attack we had.

    But would she stay dead? Would she actually die if we killed her?

    On the other hand, she wasn¡¯t a Servant, not really. She was the product of Perrault¡¯s Noble Phantasm, and that meant Perrault had to be around here somewhere. The easiest and safest way of getting rid of her would be to simply get rid of Perrault. She and the wicked wolf would both just vanish once he was gone, leaving the path to the Grail free and clear.

    The only trouble was, Perrault himself might be hooked up to the Grail, and she was still standing in that path, so we needed some way to remove her from it, or at least some way of getting around her in the meantime. A distraction to keep her busy instead of brute force to take her out and hope she stayed out.

    Arash abruptly spun around, arms blurring as he fired off a barrage of arrows behind us, and a furious yowl told me who he was aiming at before I even turned to look. An orange tabby in nobleman¡¯s clothes threw himself out of the way, managing to avoid all but the trio of arrows that ripped his cloak to shreds.

    ¡°You were careless, Puss,¡± the evil fairy scolded him.

    ¡°My apologies, Madam,¡± the cat said in a faint French accent. He slowly stalked around our group, keeping himself turned towards us the entire time and ready to dodge again if he needed to. Arash kept his bow aimed at the cat, but held back on attacking again. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I could not contain my bloodlust at the very last second. That Archer¡¯s sight was much too clear.¡±

    The evil fairy hummed. ¡°No matter. It would have been convenient, had you managed to take out one of their Masters, but it makes no real difference, in the end.¡±

    Another enemy¡­but at least this meant that we knew where Puss was. We wouldn¡¯t have to worry about him ambushing us now that he was in plain sight.

    ¡°Huh,¡± said Rika, like she was asking about the weather. ¡°Hey, Arash, that¡¯s the guy who kidnapped Ren¨¦e, right?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s him,¡± Andersen answered. ¡°That hat, those clothes, those boots, there¡¯s no mistaking Puss in Boots this close up.¡±

    Rika nodded. ¡°Right. Emiya? Kill him.¡±

    Emiya didn¡¯t even hesitate. In a single blur of movement, he¡¯d nocked an arrow on his bow ¡ª a simple looking longsword, reshaped into a thin shaft of metal like some kind of giant needle ¡ª and pulled back on the string. Puss didn¡¯t even have time to react before his head simply vanished in an explosion of blood and gore, leaving the rest of him to fall to the ground limply.

    ¡°Holy shit!¡± Jeanne Alter burst out, delighted.

    ¡°Damn,¡± said Mordred. ¡°Didn¡¯t know you had it in you.¡±

    ¡°M-Master?¡± Mash asked, surprised.

    ¡°You know that¡¯s not going to accomplish anything,¡± Andersen said.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Rika admitted. ¡°But it made me feel better.¡±

    ¡°It was cathartic,¡± Flamel agreed grimly.

    ¡°How utterly ruthless of you,¡± the evil fairy said with a smile. She glanced over at the headless cat. ¡°Puss. Stop playing around and pull yourself together.¡±

    The body suddenly leapt gracefully back to its feet, landing on all fours, and an instant later a new head had formed, blossoming from the bloody neck like a flower in bloom. Puss rolled his head and shoulder as though working out a kink, and then with a sigh, stood back up on his hindlegs.

    ¡°Now, was that truly necessary?¡± he asked, exasperated. ¡°Even if it is not a permanent wound, I happen to quite like my head, thank you. It is my best feature.¡±

    ¡°At least you didn¡¯t piss him off,¡± Ritsuka muttered.

    So if we couldn¡¯t kill either of them or deal any real, meaningful damage, then a distraction really did seem to be our only option.

    Arash, I asked him silently, do you see Ren¨¦e or Perrault over there anywhere?

    He frowned and squinted through the fog towards Angrboea, and a moment later, told me, Not clearly, no. There¡¯s a lot going on over by that giant steam engine, so they could be anywhere over there.

    Great. Another consideration: we couldn¡¯t just toss every Noble Phantasm with a blast radius at them unless we wanted to risk Ren¨¦e¡¯s life, too, nevermind what might happen to the Grail if it got caught up in things by accident. We had to be more precise than that.

    The third thing I needed to keep in mind: Jekyll, Tohsaka, and I couldn¡¯t leave Flamel¡¯s side, and a group that big wasn¡¯t going to sneak around them without being noticed. Mash wasn¡¯t exactly stealthy either, and having the twins rush off with our best defense when we might need it would be dangerous at best and fatal at worst.

    If all we needed was Perrault dead, however, then we didn¡¯t strictly have to be the ones doing it. As long as he died, that was all that mattered. It didn¡¯t have to be one particular knife that did the job, let alone mine.

    ¡°Flamel,¡± I said lowly, ¡°can you keep up your Noble Phantasm while you fight, or is it too much for you?¡±

    He grimaced. ¡°It would be better not to split my focus. My apologies ¡ª I allowed my temper to get the best of me when we first laid eyes upon her and unnecessarily put you at risk.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t okay, but it was understandable. I couldn¡¯t blame him for flying off the handle when the evil fairy showed up, especially with her mocking. Not when Ren¨¦e¡¯s life hung in the balance. Not when she was responsible for kidnapping Ren¨¦e in the first place.

    Maybe she was pushing a few of my buttons, too.

    ¡°Then don¡¯t push yourself.¡±

    ¡°I thought Doctor Jekyll was his Master,¡± Tohsaka muttered.

    ¡°I have no business commanding a battle,¡± said Jekyll lowly. ¡°If it would see this business done and settled, then I will gladly submit to her judgment on the matter.¡±

    Good. No need to worry about him trying to countermand me, then.

    Jeanne Alter, I projected down our bond.

    She twitched, lip curling, but gave no other obvious signs that she¡¯d heard me at all. Yeah?

    I need you to relay a message to Ritsuka and Rika, I told her. We¡¯re going to keep Maleficent and Puss distracted, so we need to treat this battle like we¡¯re taking it seriously.

    For a moment, she didn¡¯t respond. What do you mean by ¡°seriously?¡±

    Everything is on the table except large scale Noble Phantasms, I said bluntly.

    Her cheek twitched, threatening a smile. Now you¡¯re speaking my fucking language. Sure, I can let the dweebs know.

    ¡°Plotting, are you?¡± asked the evil fairy knowingly. A cruel smile curled her lips. ¡°Very well. I suppose I can afford you a moment to realize the hopelessness of your situation. But only a moment.¡±

    ¡°You are too generous, Madam,¡± Puss demurred, ¡°but if that is your wish, then I suppose I cannot convince you otherwise.¡±

    The evil fairy chuckled lowly. ¡°Never let it be said that I am not magnanimous.¡±

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    Puss¡¯s muzzle curled into a passable imitation of a grin. ¡°Perish the thought!¡±

    The relaying of the plan was entirely visual. Without a direct line, I could only watch the expressions on the faces of the others ¡ª first the twins, then Emiya, Mordred, and Mash ¡ª as they traded back and forth on the details, such as they were. I took those few seconds to contact Arash.

    I¡¯m going to send Jackie on ahead to take care of Perrault, I told him, and he stilled, finger twitching on the bowstring. While she searches for him and takes him out, we¡¯ll be keeping Puss and the evil fairy¡¯s attention entirely on us, however we can.

    Got it, he replied, and then predicted me. I¡¯ll make sure Puss doesn¡¯t go running off after her either.

    I gave a slow, shallow nod. Good.

    Aloud, I said, ¡°We don¡¯t have any other choice. We have to go through her if we want to find Ren¨¦e and take back the Grail. We can¡¯t afford to destroy either, so no Anti-Army or Anti-Fortress Noble Phantasms.¡±

    Deliberately, I let myself be loud enough that the evil fairy and Puss could both hear us, but not so loud that it would seem intentional.

    ¡°Right!¡± said Mash. ¡°We have to rescue Miss Ren¨¦e!¡±

    Mordred clicked her tongue. ¡°No Noble Phantasms? That¡¯s how it¡¯s gonna be, huh?¡±

    ¡°She doesn¡¯t ask for much, does she?¡± Emiya agreed dryly, adding to the ruse.

    ¡°What¡¯re you two complaining about?¡± Jeanne Alter drawled, readying her sword. ¡°A handicap is going to make this fun!¡±

    ¡°For a total nutjob, maybe,¡± Andersen muttered.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± said Fran. ¡°Uhn uh-uh-ah uhn?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I told her.

    ¡°Uh-uhn,¡± was her reply, grudging but understanding. She might be superhuman, but being merely superhuman wasn¡¯t enough in a battle between Servants.

    Jackie, I saved for last, while we¡¯re keeping them busy, I need you to sneak away and go over towards that big machine. You need to find a Servant in there ¡ª a man with a book, probably hooked up to it ¡ª and kill him. It¡¯s the only way we can defeat that fairy and Puss.

    Jackie nodded to me. Okay, Mommy! We understand!

    ¡°Done?¡± asked the evil fairy archly. ¡°Then let us, as they say, start Round Two.¡±

    She raised her hands and held her staff high above her head. ¡°Scorching heat with deadly aim, now carry on the winds a ball of flame!¡±

    A swirling ball of fire formed swiftly in front of the head of her staff, growing from a baseball to a beach ball almost instantly, and as the final word left her lips, it shot towards us like a cannonball. Mash threw herself forward and blocked the entirety of it with a grunt as it washed over the surface of her shield, licking at the edges almost greedily.

    ¡°She just cast Fireball!¡± Rika yelped.

    ¡°Yeah?¡± said Mordred. ¡°Then I¡¯m gonna cast sword!¡±

    As though that was a signal, everyone else leapt into action, Puss first and foremost. With a yowl, he charged our way, claws extended like knives, and Emiya met him, discarding his bow for his favored pair of twin swords.

    They were not evenly matched. Even from the start, it was obvious that Puss, for all his talents, was an ambush predator used to using surprise and brute force to take down his enemies, ripping them apart with his claws. Emiya might not have had the same level of skill as someone like A¨ªfe or Hippolyta, but it was still more than Puss had, and so whatever difference there might have been in physical ability, the gap between their skill levels closed it.

    That didn¡¯t mean that Puss was easily taken down either, though. He seemed to favor alternating between hit-and-run tactics and sudden, vicious assaults, swiping for every vital point he could with his razor sharp claws before retreating to try again. Against a human or a Caster who couldn¡¯t fight back, it probably would have been that simple, just because he had so many sharp weapons attached to each of his paws, but Emiya was also the sort of fighter who preferred to wield multiple weapons at once.

    Mash, of course, stayed back, always between us and the enemy so that she could block anything aimed our way at a moment¡¯s notice. Mordred and Jeanne Alter, on the other hand, gladly took the fight to the evil fairy, rushing to follow her as she backpedaled away from us so smoothly that she looked like she was gliding.

    ¡°Light, attend to me and become my shield!¡± she incanted. ¡°Storm, cast judgment upon my foes afield!¡±

    A translucent barrier formed in front of her, a curved pane of green light large enough to have protected our entire group and then some, and Mordred and Jeanne Alter crashed into it, only to suddenly rebound as wind burst out of the pane and sparks of electricity shot up their swords and into their bodies.

    They both landed and rolled, Mordred digging her hands into the dirt to bleed off momentum and Jeanne Alter using her sword as a sort of brake as it carved a gouge.

    ¡°Fuck!¡± Mordred cursed furiously. The hand on her sword suddenly spasmed, and her gauntlet creaked as she forced herself to grip the hilt even tighter. ¡°The more shit I see you do¡­the more you remind me of someone I really don¡¯t like!¡±

    ¡°Save your mommy issues for later, British!¡± Jeanne Alter snapped at her.

    ¡°Fuck you!¡±

    Again, they leapt towards the evil fairy, and again, the shield bounced them backwards with a burst of wind and the sizzle of lightning, leaving Mordred¡¯s already messy hair to start to stand on end. Jeanne Alter seemed at least slightly better off, but no less frustrated.

    A quick surge of mana and a brief second to aim sent a Gandr shot directly at the barrier, testing it, but as I expected, I didn¡¯t get anywhere. It splashed uselessly against the pane of light and dissipated, ineffective. So it didn¡¯t just block brute force, it was just a general shield meant for protection, and there weren¡¯t any tricks we could use to overwhelm it.

    ¡°Was that supposed to do anything?¡± Jeanne Alter asked me snidely. I didn¡¯t bother to offer a response.

    A third time, the two of them kicked off the ground, Mordred putting even more strength behind her sword now so that it crackled with the red jolts of her mana burst and Jeanne Alter adding flame to her swing, but just like the last two times, the pane of light took them without complaint and threw both Servants back. The evil fairy laughed maliciously, smug.

    ¡°Finding things a bit difficult?¡± she asked mockingly.

    ¡°Of course she has some of that fairy bullshit, too!¡± Mordred groused. ¡°Fucking of course she does!¡±

    She is called the evil fairy, I thought but didn¡¯t say. It wouldn¡¯t help. And technically speaking? It didn¡¯t matter. Our goal wasn¡¯t to kill the evil fairy to begin with.

    Fran suddenly leapt into motion, sprinting away from the group without any warning whatsoever. It caught even me by surprise, and by the time I reached out to try and hold her back, she was already halfway to the evil fairy¡¯s barrier.

    She wasn¡¯t a part of our planning session, I realized, so she didn¡¯t know that we didn¡¯t actually have to get through that barrier at all.

    ¡°Fran!¡± Mash and the twins called after her.

    Mordred¡¯s head spun around, but Fran was already past her, and she scrambled to follow. ¡°What the fuck do you think you¡¯re doing?¡±

    ¡°Uhn!¡± was all Fran said.

    She planted her hands against the barrier, and the gust of wind blew her back as she struggled to stay standing, but the burst of electricity traveled up her arms ¡ª and directly into the transformers nestled behind her ears. They hummed and glowed, whining for a split second, and then settled back down again.

    The realization of what she was trying to do jolted in my stomach.

    ¡°Mordred, Jeanne Alter!¡± I ordered. ¡°Keep her steady!¡±

    ¡°You outta your fucking mind?¡± Mordred snapped back at me. ¡°She¡¯s gonna get herself killed!¡±

    ¡°Just do it!¡±

    ¡°Rah!¡± Fran shouted, rushing back towards the barrier again.

    ¡°Shit!¡±

    Mordred and Jeanne Alter raced to follow, and this time, when Fran placed her hands on the barrier, they dug in their heels and braced her by her shoulders. The wind whipped up and tried to force them away, throwing their hair all over the place, and the lightning crackled as it zapped Fran over and over again, but they all held strong.

    And the jolts of electricity continued to flow up Fran¡¯s arms, some splitting off and sparking over Mordred¡¯s armor and Jeanne Alter¡¯s fingers, but most of it traveling up into the transformers on Fran¡¯s head. They spun up, whirring and grinding, glowing as they soaked up the electricity like a sponge, and Fran set her shoulders as her arms strained. I couldn¡¯t see it from behind them, but I could imagine her gritting her teeth.

    Long seconds passed as they struggled against the push of the barrier, more and more lightning flowing into Fran¡¯s transformers, and they continued to whine, louder and louder with each passing second, glowing brighter and brighter. There had to be some kind of limit, I knew, and I had no doubts that Fran knew that just as well, but when she would reach it and what that limit was, I had no idea.

    Then, suddenly, the transformers opened up all the way, revealing spinning wheels of white plasma, and Fran let out a growing shout.

    ¡°GRAH!¡±

    And a veritable lightning storm burst out of her hands as all of the electricity she¡¯d been absorbing was abruptly released in the opposite direction. A blinding flash lit up the cavern, bright as the sun and probably just as hot at the epicenter, and the crash of shattering glass was almost drowned out by the thunderous, echoing BOOM that shook me down to my bones.

    The evil fairy¡¯s startled shout, however, came in loud and clear.

    I was still blinking away the spots in my vision when she pulled herself back to her feet, disheveled and furious.

    ¡°You wretched worm!¡± she howled. ¡°How dare you!¡±

    She lifted up her staff again, energy flowing into the bejeweled head, but Mordred gave her no chance to incant and raced across the distance. Faster than fast, she planted the blade of her sword in the evil fairy¡¯s gut, tip first, splattering red blood across the cavern floor.

    ¡°Not so fast, bitch!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s my line, British!¡± Jeanne Alter crowed as she came down from the other side. She lopped off the evil fairy¡¯s arm, leaving the sleeve and the staff to go flying. ¡°Not so tough without your fancy-schmancy magic, are you?¡±

    ¡°ENOUGH!¡± the evil fairy roared, and she exploded into green fire, throwing both Mordred and Jeanne Alter away. The flames licked at her body as her severed arm slowly reformed, but her expression remained furious and incandescent.

    ¡°If you insist on being such a nuisance,¡± she hissed, ¡°then we shall see how you knights in your shining armor fare against a foe more fearsome than your petty skills can match!¡±

    She threw up her hands and her arms, and the green fire grew brighter and hotter until I could feel it on my face even from where I was. The evil fairy became nothing more than a silhouette against the backdrop, a shadow cast upon the wall of fire with glowing eyes.

    ¡°With sharp teeth and cruel horns and wings in flight, armored in scales as black as the night!¡± her voice rang out, echoing and resonant. ¡°My breath becomes fire, my nails become spears, now turn into the monster born of men¡¯s fears!¡±

    The silhouette grew, larger and larger and larger, until it towered over us in a way that was frighteningly familiar. The arms thrown to either side twisted and morphed, becoming wings as the neck elongated and the horns expanded and lengthened. The eyes became like twin pits of molten flame as her torso stretched outwards, and the billowing cloak spread out and lengthened into a pair of gigantic legs and a long, serpentine tail.

    Fuck. Damn it, Disney, if you were going to pick a villain to change so much from her original depiction, couldn¡¯t you have chosen a character from a completely different fairy tale?

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Rika. ¡°Oh, oh, oh, I remember this part!¡±

    ¡°So do I,¡± her brother said, ¡°although right now, I¡¯m really wishing I didn¡¯t!¡±

    ¡°Oh dear,¡± said Flamel. ¡°That¡¯s not good.¡±

    ¡°Abraham?¡± asked Jekyll.

    A booming sound echoed through the cavern, and with a sweep of her wings, the evil fairy revealed her new form in all its terrible glory. Standing nearly as tall as Fafnir had, with glistening scales black as pitch and a deep, purple underbelly, where the evil fairy had once been was now a massive dragon. Her maw was filled with teeth at least as long as I was tall, sharp and bone white, and her claws were dark and curved like the blades of scythes, digging deep furrows into the ground. Her presence filled the entire cavern, suffocating and malevolent, pressing down on me like a knife against my throat.

    Haloed in the ominous light glowing from Angrboea, she looked far more like the evil dragon of legend than Fafnir had.

    ¡°What the fuck is this?¡± Mordred screamed. ¡°How the fuck did you do that?¡±

    A booming echo bounced off of the cavern walls, staccato and barking, and it took me a second to realize it was the evil fairy¡¯s laughter.

    ¡°Fuck me,¡± said Jeanne Alter, ¡°she turned herself into a goddamned dragon!¡±

    ¡°Th-this isn¡¯t a part of the original fairy tale!¡± Mash insisted.

    ¡°Wait, really?¡± asked Rika. ¡°Disney lied to me!¡±

    The evil fairy breathed in, chest expanding as it filled with air, and her head reared back as more green fire licked at the corners of her mouth. Magical energy surged and condensed into a point somewhere in what had to be her lungs. Her intent was obvious.

    ¡°Mash!¡±

    But if it was obvious to me, it was obvious to Ritsuka, too, who called out to Mash urgently.

    ¡°Right!¡±

    Mash planted her shield in front of the group. ¡°Lord Chaldeas!¡±

    And the familiar rampart formed, building itself brick by brick until a translucent curtain wall stood between us and the evil fairy. No sooner had it finished forming than did the evil fairy¡¯s head snap forward, mouth flying open, and the flames building in her throat were unleashed upon us in a torrent, a line, a stream of fire like napalm. It washed over the surface of Lord Chaldeas, so hot that I could feel some fraction of the heat even behind that protection, but the flames that could probably have melted my flesh from my bones splashed impotently against the barrier and spread to the sides before flickering into nothing.

    For several long seconds, the stream kept going, but eventually, the evil fairy had to run out of breath and it petered out, leaving her to glare with her baleful eyes at the shield that had blocked her attack. With a snarl, she swung her massive claws at it instead, and a cacophonous screech split the air, but it was no more effective than her firebreath had been.

    Of course not. She might have looked more the part of the evil dragon of legend, and she even had a degree of the metaphysical weight behind her, but at the end of the day, Fafnir had still been more. Facing up against him had been the first time I¡¯d been really, truly frightened of an enemy for a long time, and a puffed-up fairytale villain in the shape of a dragon just didn¡¯t inspire the same kind of terror.

    ¡°Hey, Senpai?¡± Rika said somewhat nervously. ¡°Now might be a good time to get Sieggy in on the action, don¡¯t you think? You know, since dragons are kinda his specialty?¡±

    ¡°Sieggy?¡± Jekyll asked, bewildered.

    It wasn¡¯t the worst idea, but ¡ª

    ¡°It won¡¯t mean anything,¡± I told her. ¡°She¡¯s not a real dragon. She¡¯s a character from a fairy tale. Balmung can¡¯t kill her.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t you remember?¡± Andersen added. ¡°A creature of fairytale can only be killed by what killed them. Even if you brought a hero like Siegfried here to fight her, he won¡¯t be able to do anything more than what Mordred and that pyromaniac are doing.¡±

    So there was no point. We weren¡¯t trying to kill her, just keep her busy until Jackie found Perrault. Bringing Siegfried in to fight her would just be wasting a charge of our Shadow Servant system that we might wind up needing here fairly soon.

    Past Lord Chaldeas, the evil fairy sucked in another breath, more fire licking at the edges of her mouth.

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka cried again.

    Another blast of flame slammed into Lord Chaldeas, and in the light it provided, I could see the beads of sweat beginning to form on Mash¡¯s forehead as she continued to hold the barrier up. A keening groan was strangled in her throat, but she didn¡¯t let our defense falter for even a single second.

    ¡°I-I¡¯ll hold on for as long as I can, Senpai!¡± Mash reassured him.

    How much longer that was, however, might not be all that long. Maintaining a Noble Phantasm as strong as Lord Chaldeas for an extended period of time couldn¡¯t be easy, and the amount of energy she had to pour into it to keep it steady was probably going to get very expensive very quickly.

    ¡°Hey, fairy bitch!¡± Jeanne Alter¡¯s voice called. ¡°You screwed up big time turning yourself into a dragon, you know!¡±

    The stream of fire cut off, and the evil fairy¡¯s massive head turned her hellfire eyes to Jeanne Alter, a snarl rumbling in her throat. Jeanne Alter just grinned.

    ¡°Because me? I¡¯m the Dragon Witch. Your scaly ass is mine.¡±

    She leapt at the evil fairy, and the dragon recoiled, a roar ripping out of its maw as it tried to maneuver away. What the evil fairy had traded for in raw power, however, she had lost in speed and dexterity. She could wiggle, she could writhe, she could twist and turn, and if she got in the air, she could probably match a modern passenger jet for speed, but here, in this cavern, unable to get too high or too far without smashing into the roof of the cavern or into its walls, there was a limit to how quickly she could maneuver.

    Jeanne Alter landed on her shoulder, and then went further up and climbed the back of the scaly neck. The evil fairy thrashed and tried to throw her off, but couldn¡¯t, because Jeanne Alter just stabbed her sword into the scales to keep herself steady and attached and used it like an ice ax. No matter how hard the evil fairy tried, tossing her head back to and fro, flapping her wings in some vain effort to smack her loose, Jeanne Alter clung on and kept going.

    Eventually, she reached the head, and she reached out to take hold of each of the pair of crooked horns.

    ¡°Now,¡± she commanded, ¡°heel, you ginormous bitch!¡±

    But it didn¡¯t work, not completely. The evil fairy fought the order with everything she had, massive body twitching and muscles bulging as she forced herself to move as though wading through molasses. It seemed to take enormous effort to do just that much, like her whole body was being weighed down by gravity and she was struggling to keep her bulk from collapsing in on itself. Her huge jaw worked, sparks of flame wafting from out of her throat and the corners of her mouth, but never building back up again to a full blast.

    How long would it last, I had to wonder. The evil fairy wasn¡¯t enough of either a fairy or a dragon to be completely controlled, and as long as she could continue to draw on more power from the Grail, she might be able to force the issue by releasing a huge burst of energy to throw Jeanne Alter off.

    With a gasp, Mash let Lord Chaldeas fade, panting as her arms shook.

    ¡°That¡¯s not going to hold her forever,¡± I said.

    ¡°It just needs to hold her for long enough, right?¡± Ritsuka countered.

    ¡°It may not,¡± Flamel warned. ¡°If she has been clever enough to manage as much as she has, then once she has calmed down, she will contrive a method of escape. It may be as simple as transforming back into her natural form.¡±

    And there was no telling if she didn¡¯t have some sort of spell set up to hurt Ren¨¦e that she could use the instant she had her wits back about her. I should have considered that sooner, because she very well might have put something in place to punish us if we pushed our luck or the odds started to turn against her.

    ¡°Wait!¡± said Rika. ¡°Wait, wait, wait! I think I know how to kill her!¡±

    ¡°Uhn?¡±

    Ritsuka shook his head. ¡°We aren¡¯t trying to kill her ¡ª¡±

    ¡°For good, I mean!¡± Rika clarified. ¡°Look, the dragon thing isn¡¯t something she can do in the OG fairy tale, right? That¡¯s what you said, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°The evil fairy doesn¡¯t even have a name in the original story,¡± Andersen told her.

    Rika nodded. ¡°Then the rest of this, it¡¯s all stuff she can do because Disney added onto her, isn¡¯t it? In that case¡­!¡±

    She could be killed the same way as she died in the movie?

    My first reaction was to deny it. The literary purist in me didn¡¯t even want to entertain the idea. But when I put that first instinct aside¡­

    ¡°Maybe,¡± was all I said.

    ¡°We¡¯ve got nothing to lose by trying,¡± said Arash.

    We really didn¡¯t.

    ¡°Go for it, Rika.¡±

    Her grin was bright enough to light up her face.

    ¡°Mo-chan! Come quick!¡± she called over to Mordred.

    Mordred jogged back over to us, keeping an eye on the struggling evil fairy as she did, and when she reached us, she said, ¡°What? Make it quick. That don¡¯t look like it¡¯s gonna keep.¡±

    ¡°I need you to do your best knight errant impression!¡± Rika said swiftly. ¡°I¡¯m gonna say an incantation, and then I need you to throw your sword straight at Maleficent¡¯s heart!¡±

    Mordred did a double-take, eyeing Rika with utter bewilderment. ¡°Throw my sword? You outta your mind?¡±

    ¡°Just trust me!¡± Rika insisted.

    She had some obvious reservations about it, but reluctantly, Mordred did as Rika said and held out her sword, waiting as she watched the evil fairy strain. Rika held her hands out to the blade of Mordred¡¯s Clarent, fingers splayed as though she was about to deliver a blessing.

    ¡°Sword of truth, fly swift and sure,¡± she breathed out, ¡°that evil may die and good endure!¡±

    Mordred did another double-take. ¡°What?¡±

    Rika just pointed at the dragon. ¡°Throw it!¡±

    Mordred hesitated another second, and then, as the evil fairy drew back, groaning and shaking its head, pulled her arm back, braced herself, and threw her sword like a javelin.

    Against all sense and reason, it flew straight, tip first, and pierced the dragon¡¯s heart.

    The reaction was immediate: the dragon reared back, the paws of its front legs grasping desperately at the wound even though they were too large to grip the much smaller sword, and a loud, agonized roar ripped out of its throat, half massive, furious beast and half dying, tortured woman. The cavern around us shook with the sound, vibrating, and for a second, I thought all we had accomplished was to make her even angrier than she had been.

    And then the dragon fell, collapsing as though all its strings had been cut, and landed with a weighty thud on the cavern floor, sending the ground beneath us to trembling. It laid there limply, eyes closed and acid green tongue lolling out of its mouth, as a large pool of purple blood slowly grew beneath it.

    Just as she had been in the movie, the evil fairy had been defeated.

 Chapter CLVI: â€œMâ€

    Chapter CLVI: ¡°M¡±

    For several long seconds, the evil fairy simply laid there, a grotesque tableau, like some kind of mockery of a butterfly pinned to the ground. Purple blood continued to seep across the cavern floor, slowly and steadily.

    ¡°I-it actually worked?¡± Ritsuka asked, stunned.

    ¡°Fuck me, it did,¡± Mordred agreed.

    I could hardly believe it either. The reasoning had been sound enough, sure, but some part of me still hadn¡¯t thought that there was any way the evil fairy could be killed by relying on something that flimsy ¡ª especially when the ¡°incantation¡± Rika had used wasn¡¯t even a spell she had cast, it was just a bit of poetic nonsense from the movie. There was no way it should have worked the way it did.

    And yet, it had.

    ¡°It worked!¡± Rika cheered. ¡°It really, actually worked! Senpai! Onii-chan!¡±

    Jeanne Alter hopped down off of the horned head and strode back over our way. ¡°Ugh, killjoys, the lot of you. I almost had that bitch.¡± She grimaced down at the smear of purple splattered across her boots and tried to wipe it off in the dirt. ¡°Her blood couldn¡¯t even be red either. What a disappointment this whole thing turned out to be.¡±

    The dragon¡¯s body suddenly shifted, and we all nearly jumped at the shock ¡ª but it was just shrinking, the wings and the scales flaking away like so much steam. No longer lodged in anything, Mordred¡¯s sword, Clarent, fell to the ground with a clatter. She went over and retrieved it, inspecting it for any chips in the blade or other damage.

    ¡°Hope all of that shit made sense to someone,¡± Mordred said gruffly. ¡°Thought I¡¯d gotten used to that sorta thing, but you mages keep pulling more stuff outta your asses that throws me for a loop.¡±

    ¡°I must admit, Sir Mordred,¡± said Jekyll, ¡°that I had not much of an inkling what was happening just now either. The fundamental principle, I believe I understand as well as I ever expect to, but the specifics elude me.¡±

    ¡°Trust me,¡± Andersen said dryly, ¡°you¡¯re better off not knowing. At least this way, you don¡¯t have to come to terms with how ridiculous that entire sequence was. Walt Disney ¡ª if I ever have to meet the man myself, then I¡¯m going to have a few choice words for how he reinterpreted all of these fairy tales. Good grief.¡±

    ¡°We should hurry,¡± Flamel said abruptly. ¡°We need to find Ren¨¦e ¡ª she must be here somewhere ¡ª before Perrault conspires to reconstitute the evil fairy again ¡ª¡±

    ¡°You vermin,¡± the evil fairy growled feebly, and before our eyes, her body slowly picked itself up off of the ground. An enormous, gaping wound bled more purple blood down her front, struggling to close, but against all odds, she was still alive. ¡°You worthless, wretched scum.¡±

    ¡°Holy crap,¡± said Rika, ¡°she¡¯s still alive like that?¡±

    ¡°You didn¡¯t really think it would be that simple, did you?¡± Andersen scolded her. ¡°Whatever she might look like and whatever name she might use, that creature is not the ¡®Maleficent¡¯ you think she is!¡±

    ¡°It was worth a shot, wasn¡¯t it?¡± Rika squawked.

    Because Disney had introduced both strengths and weaknesses to her, but at the end of the day, she was still the evil fairy from the story, not Maleficent from the movie. The wound she was even now trying to heal was proof that those influences were not nothing and that they could change her, but at the core, her story was the story Perrault had penned, not Disney.

    Damn. I knew it couldn¡¯t have been that easy.

    ¡°The bitch doesn¡¯t know when to stay down,¡± Jeanne Alter said, brandishing her sword.

    ¡°She really does remind me of that witch way too much,¡± Mordred agreed.

    ¡°You will¡­all of you¡­rue the day you set foot in this era!¡± the evil fairy snarled. She lifted up her staff, an ominous light glowing from the rounded head. Even I could feel the amount of magical energy she was gathering for that.

    ¡°Stop her!¡± Flamel commanded urgently.

    And it couldn¡¯t be for anything good.

    ¡°Arash!¡±

    A brace of arrows leapt across the distance, cutting through the air, and they landed with unerring accuracy in several blows that would have been fatal ¡ª if she wasn¡¯t a creature from a fairy tale. She ignored them completely, like they weren¡¯t even there, even though the shafts jutted out of her flesh like the quills of a porcupine.

    The fact that they were pushed out almost immediately probably had something to do with how contemptuously she treated them.

    ¡°A roving titan from beyond the skies,¡± she began, voice thready but venomous, ¡°with strength that space and time defies ¡ª¡±

    Mash choked. ¡°E-even something like that?¡±

    ¡°Now sate your hunger with this meager treat ¡ª¡±

    But mid-sentence, she stumbled on the air, gasping, and clutched desperately at her wounded heart. Eyes wide, she spun about, reaching out towards the giant steam engine desperately with her one free arm.

    ¡°No!¡±

    And just as suddenly, burst apart into motes of glittering dust, vanishing before even a single one could land on the ground. The magical energy she had been gathering just dissipated, seeping out into the atmosphere until it had diffused back into the air.

    In the wake of her disappearance, a moment of silence passed, and was interrupted ¡ª

    Beep-beep!

    ¡ª by Romani, who frantically demanded, ¡°¡ª summon a black hole? A singularity within a Singularity?¡±

    What?

    He was pushed aside bodily by Marie, who scolded him, ¡°That wasn¡¯t funny, Romani! That was no joking matter!¡±

    ¡°I-I wasn¡¯t joking!¡± his voice protested. ¡°She seriously, actually tried to summon a black hole inside that cavern! How does a character from a fairy tale even know what that is, anyway?¡±

    The evil fairy¡­actually tried to summon a black hole here? Of all things? Just¡­how would that have worked with her plans? Wouldn¡¯t it have destroyed everything in the cavern, including both Angrboea and her creator, Perrault? Even if she could have survived the black hole itself, she would have been committing suicide by destroying her link to the world, so what was the point of that?

    Or maybe, like Bakuda, she had some method of controlling its size and strength, a method of modulating it so that it only sucked us up and then evaporated. In that case, maybe it wouldn¡¯t have been such a stupid move after all.

    ¡°What would happen if there was a singularity inside a Singularity?¡± Ritsuka asked seriously.

    It was Romani who said, ¡°The whole thing might have collapsed from the paradox! The entire spacetime might just have unraveled!¡±

    A shiver went down my spine. And we would have been screwed either way. The thing that got me was, how were we meant to have stopped her, considering how quickly she got the incantation off and the fact that she had just ignored our actual attempts? If even Rika¡¯s little trick with Mordred¡¯s sword hadn¡¯t worked, would trying to take her head off ¡ª even if only to delay her ¡ª have slowed her down at all?

    I hated that I didn¡¯t have an answer.

    ¡°Director,¡± I said, ¡°have Ren¨¦e¡¯s vital signs changed at all?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Marie answered. ¡°They¡¯ve remained steady this entire time.¡±

    Flamel released a gusty sigh, as though he was breathing out all of the weight that had been pressing down on his shoulders this entire time. ¡°Thank goodness.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Then we¡¯ll contact you once we¡¯ve rescued her and secured the Grail.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll be waiting for your report,¡± Marie replied as though it was a foregone conclusion, and then the line cut out. I worried for a second how much of that confidence was a front she put on, but there was nothing I could do to help her right now except finish this up and bring the team back home safely.

    ¡°Pardon my curiosity,¡± said Jekyll, ¡°but if it isn¡¯t too much trouble for me to inquire, what, precisely, is this object you refer to so simply as a black hole?¡±

    My lips pulled into a line. How to explain this one?

    ¡°It¡¯s a distortion in the fabric of space and time,¡± Mash preempted me. ¡°An object formed when a massive enough star dies and collapses inwards under its own weight, forming a region where gravity is so strong that even light can¡¯t escape its pull. At the center is what¡¯s called the singularity, an unobserved spacetime where all known laws of physics are believed to break down, and the term for which these Singularities are named.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t the only one who looked at her, a little surprised she knew so much about it.

    ¡°You are,¡± Flamel said, pausing to choose the next words carefully, ¡°remarkably well-informed on the subject, my dear.¡±

    Mash blinked at him, and then her cheeks pinked a little as she seemed to realize what she¡¯d said. ¡°Ah, y-yes, well, um¡­ Most¡­of my time growing up was spent reading, so I guess you could say I have a very eclectic knowledge base. I don¡¯t know that much about it, really, it¡¯s just that I was curious about the origin of the term we use for these circumstances.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s way more than I know,¡± Rika opined. ¡°What I know about physics can only fit in a high school textbook.¡±

    ¡°Because if it¡¯s not from an anime, movie, or video game, you don¡¯t care enough to look it up on the internet,¡± Ritsuka added. Rika stuck her tongue out at him, as she was wont to do.

    ¡°Goes to show what happens when you lock someone up in a box for most of her life and don¡¯t give her much else to do but read,¡± Andersen commented.

    The mood sobered. Ritsuka in particular looked tempted to say something nasty to Andersen, but held his tongue.

    ¡°Let¡¯s go rescue Ren¨¦e,¡± Arash said, trying to get our minds off of Mash¡¯s circumstances by focusing on the task at hand.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    Emiya chose that moment to rejoin us. ¡°That cat disappeared on me mid-fight, so I¡¯m guessing the plan worked.¡±

    ¡°It did.¡±

    ¡°Someone¡¯s did, at least,¡± Rika grumbled petulantly.

    Jackie? I asked.

    ¡°Here, Mommy!¡± Jackie chirped, suddenly beside me as though she had been there all along. I wasn¡¯t the only one startled, nor the only one who jolted a little in my surprise, but no one commented on it because she had snuck up on all of us.

    ¡°You found Perrault, then?¡±

    She nodded.

    ¡°We found a man with a big book inside the Angry Body machine,¡± she answered succinctly. ¡°He didn¡¯t move even when we stabbed him, but he disappeared so he must have been the right guy, right, Mommy?¡±

    A quick glance up and down her cloak showed no bloodstains, which wouldn¡¯t have necessarily been an indication of much of anything if Jackie actually cared about keeping blood off of her clothes, but the fact that the evil fairy, Puss, and presumably the wicked wolf had all disappeared afterwards meant that she hadn¡¯t just killed some random person. Whether or not it actually was Perrault would be impossible to prove now, but since our enemies had vanished, it functionally didn¡¯t matter.

    I nodded. ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± Then, since I didn¡¯t have any better ideas for how to reward her, I defaulted to what I¡¯d been doing the last few days and gave her a few gentle pats on the head. ¡°Good job, Jackie.¡±

    Jackie didn¡¯t seem all that picky, like she didn¡¯t care what kind of validation she received as long as it was validation. She preened under the attention, smiling a very open, childlike smile.

    ¡°What about Ren¨¦e?¡± Flamel asked worriedly.

    ¡°Jackie? Did you find Ren¨¦e while you were looking through that machine?¡±

    Jackie nodded. ¡°We found that nice lady who cooks that good food, too, but she was sleeping and trapped inside the machine, and we didn¡¯t know how to get her out. Mommy wants her in one piece, right?¡±

    The alarmed look that Jekyll and Flamel were both sending me might have been funny in different circumstances.

    ¡°Yes, Jackie, we don¡¯t want to hurt Ren¨¦e.¡±

    Jackie nodded again. ¡°We thought so, so we left her alone for Mommy and Mister Flamel to rescue her.¡±

    Flamel heaved out another sigh. ¡°Thank goodness.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m happy for you,¡± Ritsuka told him.

    ¡°As am I,¡± Jekyll agreed.

    ¡°Thank you for your kind words,¡± said Flamel, and then he turned to Jackie. ¡°My dear, could you be so kind as to lead us to her?¡±

    Jackie looked to me for permission, and I nodded, so she looked back to Flamel and said simply, ¡°Okay. We¡¯ll lead you there.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m very grateful.¡±

    We hadn¡¯t even made it a single step before a familiar voice called, ¡°There you are, Papa!¡±

    We all turned to find Nursery Rhyme skipping our way, completely untouched and uninjured, like she hadn¡¯t just been engaged in a fight with a monster wolf big enough to make a try at swallowing her whole. Then again, she would be, wouldn¡¯t she? After all, she had her Jabberwocky and her Bandersnatch and who knew what else to draw on, and if she ever had to fight directly, she was probably in pretty big trouble already.

    ¡°Alice,¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°You¡¯re okay.¡±

    ¡°Yup!¡± she said brightly. ¡°We played with Mister Wolf for a while, but he didn¡¯t want to follow any of the rules of our games, so I was glad when he vanished with a poof all of a sudden. Jabberwocky was getting tired, and Bandersnatch wasn¡¯t strong enough to hold him back. Plus,¡± she wiggled her thumbs, ¡°he doesn¡¯t have thumbs the way Jabberwocky does, so he can¡¯t hold an ax.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± said Tohsaka. ¡°Well, the important part is that you made it out of that fight without getting hurt, so I suppose the rest of it doesn¡¯t really matter.¡±

    Nursery Rhyme giggled. ¡°But I am really tired, Papa!¡± She held out her arms. ¡°Piggyback ride?¡±

    Tohsaka grimaced, and for a moment, looked like he intended to refuse her, but then his will visibly crumpled and he heaved out a sigh of longsuffering. ¡°Fine.¡±

    He turned around and bent down, offering his back to his Servant, who let out a delighted, ¡°Yay!¡± and climbed astride him as though she really was nothing more than an ordinary little girl. Rika, watching, tried to muffle her sniggering, and Ritsuka hid his smile behind his hand as Mash smiled openly.

    Emiya, on the other hand, didn¡¯t bother hiding his smirk or his quiet chuckles, and neither did Jeanne Alter or Mordred. Tohsaka gamely ignored them all, even as his cheeks pinked and his face twisted into a miserably embarrassed expression.

    ¡°Up we go!¡± Nursery Rhyme cheered as Tohsaka stood back up.

    Jackie gave me a considering look, so the only thing I could do was promise her, ¡°Maybe later. Rescuing Ren¨¦e comes first.¡±

    Jackie bobbed her head in a nod. ¡°Yes, Mommy.¡±

    ¡°Jackie made it!¡± Nursery Rhyme said.

    Jackie smiled and said, ¡°Alice made it, too!¡±

    And for just that moment, they looked like ordinary girls again ¡ª but only for that moment.

    With the entirety of the group gathered together again, Jackie led us off towards the giant steam engine that dominated the center of the cavern, and the closer we got to it, the more obvious it became exactly how large it really was. It wasn¡¯t something you might see in a museum, displaying the first steam engine ever created, nor was it a larger, bulkier model meant to serve as the heart of an old-fashioned train. No, it was much, much bigger than that, an enormous steel dome with holes spaced throughout to leave room for stacks that jutted out of them, large enough to fit an entire house inside several times over. The whole assemblage towered over us, so tall that even Servants might not be able to make the jump in a single go, not without transitioning into spirit form.

    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    Inside of that steel dome, there was the main machinery, and insulated by the outer structure, it was humid and a good ten degrees hotter than the cavern itself. Some of the stacks belched thick, hissing steam from the tops, but others stretched further up and connected to a kind of scaffolding that formed the structure for a network of pipes that disappeared into the ceiling. These, no doubt, were the method Babbage was using to pump the fog out into the city, the vents that had blown steam almost right into my face earlier.

    I couldn¡¯t have explained how it all worked. There were belts that whirred and turned the wheels, and the wheels turned the gears, and the massive chambers contained and compressed the heated steam, that much was obvious enough, but what each mechanism did and how each of the individual functions came together to produce the end result, I had no idea.

    ¡°I¡¯ll give him credit for one thing,¡± Emiya murmured. ¡°That Babbage really knew how to build a steam engine.¡±

    ¡°It really is incredible,¡± Mash agreed. ¡°It¡¯s just like¡­the Fuyuki Great Grail. There¡¯s so much magical energy, it¡¯s no wonder the fog is so toxic to normal humans. This is, without a doubt, more than enough mana to summon so many Servants.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t see Ren¨¦e anywhere, though,¡± Ritsuka said.

    ¡°She¡¯s this way,¡± Jackie told him, and led us around the machinery.

    ¡°Make sure not to touch anything,¡± I warned the twins. ¡°This is a steam engine. It¡¯s going to be very hot.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t say,¡± Rika muttered, eyeing the metal as though it was a snake that would snap at her and bite.

    Angrboea wound up being three main steam chambers, one in the center sandwiched by one on either side, and on the one end, they all connected down to what I would guess would normally have been the most basic part of the engine, the chamber where wood or coal was burned to heat the water into steam. Instead, however, fastened into a strange contraption just in front of it ¡ª

    ¡°Ren¨¦e!¡± Flamel exclaimed.

    ¡ª was a familiar white-haired woman, apparently unconscious. She was, bizarrely, dressed in some kind of strange, white gown trimmed in gold, arms thrown out to the sides as though she had been crucified, and a red glow surrounded her body.

    ¡°That can¡¯t be,¡± said Emiya, sounding spooked. ¡°The Dress of Heaven?¡±

    ¡°It is not,¡± a new voice announced from behind us. ¡°It is nothing more than my half-hearted attempt at recreating it. For all my talents, however, it seems that replicating such a thing is simply impossible without the Winter Saint herself.¡±

    We all spun around, startled, surprised to find that a man had snuck up on us somehow, completely unnoticed. My first thought, absent of any logic, took in his clothing ¡ª from the ascot to the tweed jacket to the long coat ¡ª and wondered how a civilian had managed to get down here with us. Immediately after that, however, I knew he couldn¡¯t be, not if he could actually answer Emiya about something no one else here seemed to know anything about.

    Also, his hair was blue. He didn¡¯t seem like the kind of man to dye it, not by the look of his face, so that meant it had to be a side effect of some kind of magecraft. Kadoc had those kinds of marks, too, because his eyes were just too bright an amber to be natural and I doubted his hair was gray for any of the usual reasons.

    Was this¡­another mage from the Association? One that had escaped the attack, just like Tohsaka had? Or¡­

    My eyes narrowed on him.

    ¡­was he in on the entire thing?

    ¡°Hold on a second,¡± said Emiya. ¡°That blue seaweed hair¡­ I¡¯ve seen that before, a lifetime ago. You can¡¯t be¡­¡±

    ¡°M,¡± I guessed.

    Red eyes turned first to Emiya, and then to me, dispassionate, like I was just barely worth noticing. Despite being surrounded by Servants, he didn¡¯t seem at all concerned by their presence.

    ¡°I am the one your ally, Victor Frankenstein, referred to as M, yes,¡± said M. ¡°The mastermind behind this entire farce of a Singularity, the leader of Project Demonic Fog. My name¡­is Makiri Zolgen.¡±

    If he was expecting any of us to recognize it, none of us did, and if that disappointed him, he gave no indication of that either.

    Mordred took a threatening step towards him, brandishing her sword. ¡°So you¡¯re the one trying to destroy London, is what I¡¯m hearing you say, bastard!¡±

    ¡°Not London,¡± said Makiri. ¡°Not merely London, no. A single city, even one so prominent, would not be enough to unmoor this Foundation of the Human Order. No. Project Demonic Fog is a plan to destroy all of Britain. Only then can this pillar be broken and the course of proper history destroyed in accordance with my king¡¯s wishes.¡±

    ¡°King¡­?¡± Mash said softly. ¡°Then, just like Professor Lev, you¡¯re¡­!¡±

    ¡°A disciple of the King of Mages,¡± Ritsuka concluded.

    Did that mean he was possessed by one of those Demon Gods, too? If he was, then the very last thing we could do was let him take the Grail out of Angrboea and use it to summon its true form.

    ¡°So you¡¯re another one of Solomon¡¯s lapdogs,¡± I said, trying to get a rise out of him. Maybe it would make him chatty enough to reveal more about what King Solomon was up to and why these Singularities were even happening. ¡°Here to make sure everything goes to plan, I¡¯m guessing.¡±

    But his expression didn¡¯t change, but for taking a brief moment to close his eyes. I would have called it resignation if he emoted in any other way, but the rest of his face remained placid.

    ¡°If you have already deduced that much, then there isn¡¯t much more for me to say,¡± said M. ¡°You betray your ignorance, however, to speak his name so freely. Now that you have drawn his attention here, my own course of action has been set in stone.¡±

    Drawn his attention¡­? Hold on. Was Solomon so powerful that just saying his name was enough to summon him?

    ¡°You might be a mage, but you¡¯re still just human, aintcha?¡± said Mordred. ¡°Whatcha gonna do with my sword in your heart?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s human?¡± Jekyll asked, surprised.

    ¡°You didn¡¯t notice?¡± Mordred retorted. ¡°This guy, he ain¡¯t got no presence as a Servant. He¡¯s standing right in front of us, ain¡¯t even bothering to try and hide, and he¡¯s got none of that weight you¡¯d expect from a Servant.¡±

    ¡°Being fair¡­¡± Andersen began meaningfully.

    ¡°If he¡¯s a Servant that can hypnotize Professor Babbage and Paracelsus, then he¡¯s nowhere near as weak as you are,¡± I said bluntly.

    He winced. ¡°Harsh,¡± he allowed, ¡°but a fair point.¡±

    Mordred¡¯s face screwed up. ¡°Shaddup. Even without all of that, my gut tells me, this guy¡¯s completely human. Alive, even. Whether he¡¯s part of this era properly or got yanked forward like Tohsaka did, well, that part I¡¯m less clear on.¡±

    Judging by his clothes, I was willing to bet on the former.

    ¡°And yet,¡± Mash said, indignant, ¡°you¡¯re willing to destroy the era you live in, Makiri Zolgen?¡±

    ¡°Of course, I tried to resist,¡± Zolgen said ruefully. ¡°But it was useless from the beginning. There was no point. The future has been incinerated. The past has been incinerated. The present has been incinerated. Whether I resisted or not, that could not be changed. Our king has already decreed that it must be so, and so it is so. Attempting to fight against him was futile. No matter what I did, these things were immutable.¡±

    ¡°And so, you contrived of this mad plan to use the Holy Grail in conjunction with Professor Babbage¡¯s machinery to drown London ¡ª to drown Britain ¡ª in fog,¡± Flamel concluded grimly. ¡°I see. There is a madness to it, but I understand. There is only one other question I have, Makiri Zolgen: what purpose does Ren¨¦e serve in this plan of yours?¡±

    ¡°Is it not obvious?¡± Zolgen replied. ¡°Your brilliance is well-known, Nicolas Flamel. Your crafting of a Philosopher¡¯s Stone is a matter of record at the Association. That you would not have one upon your summoning? Inconceivable. That you would hide it? The clearest choice, in your circumstances. Then, where else would you have hidden it than in the homunculus you crafted? For that very purpose, I would assume. A clever ruse, but obvious to anyone familiar with your history.¡±

    Flamel¡¯s face drew into a deep scowl. ¡°I did not ask you to enumerate my failures, Zolgen, nor my strategic and tactical missteps. I asked you, for what purpose did you kidnap my daughter?¡±

    ¡°Why else?¡± said Zolgen. ¡°To use the Philosopher¡¯s Stone inside of her to amplify the output of Angrboea and accelerate the progress of Project Demonic Fog. For those purposes, the homunculus herself is unnecessary, so long as the Stone remains intact.¡±

    But this was the wrong thing to say, because Flamel slapped his hands to the ground and a pillar of stone thrust up and out fast as lightning, catching Zolgen in the chest. He was flung, bodily and violently, backwards, tumbling out of one of the openings in Angrboea¡¯s massive shell. Flamel followed him immediately.

    ¡°Abraham!¡± Jekyll called, but Flamel was too angry to listen to reason and all the rest of us could do was race to keep pace with him as he stormed towards Zolgen.

    ¡°Your logic is reprehensible,¡± Flamel seethed, ¡°your choices indefensible, and your treatment of Ren¨¦e unforgivable! Makiri Zolgen! A mage of your caliber will not have been done in by that! Stand and face my judgment!¡±

    For a second, Zolgen was still, and then he slowly pulled himself back to his feet, hair disheveled and clothing scuffed and dirtied, but aside from a trickle of red blood from one side of his mouth, uninjured.

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Zolgen. ¡°At this point, there is nothing left to say, is there? The time for words has passed. With the power of my king, I shall destroy the whole lot of you, and then the final Heroic Spirit will be summoned and Project Demonic Fog completed.¡±

    A brace of arrows ¡ª two volleys, one from Arash and one from Emiya ¡ª slammed into Zolgen, and as a human and not a Servant, the sheer power behind them lifted him up off of his feet and threw him back even further, blood trailing in his wake. It happened too fast for me to see much more than the initial hit landing center mass, but given how good our Archers were at hitting their targets, I had no doubts they¡¯d been aimed at vital points like his heart and lungs.

    This time, Zolgen did not tumble as he had from Flamel¡¯s first blow. Instead, his body simply flew across the distance as though it had been picked up and tossed by a giant hand, not unlike people did when getting shot by high powered weapons in the movies. He landed on his back with a thump, splayed out like a cadaver in a morgue.

    ¡°Well, that was anticlimactic,¡± Rika said.

    ¡°Futile,¡± Zolgen¡¯s voice rasped.

    ¡°He survived that?¡± Rika squeaked.

    ¡°Jackie!¡± I ordered. ¡°Hurry!¡±

    ¡°My king has already¡­unleashed the evil lurking in my heart!¡±

    Jackie leapt towards Zolgen¡¯s body, dashing across the distance as a black blur and pulling out a pair of her knives as she went, but she was already too late. Before she could reach him, Zolgen¡¯s body expanded to twice its normal size and then exploded, flesh ripping apart as something inside of him tore its way out of his skin. A black mass of writing, leathery flesh, rapidly growing larger and larger before our eyes.

    Jackie, not knowing what was happening or what else to do, could only retreat and come back to my side, eyeing the lump warily.

    ¡°It¡¯s another Demon God!¡± Rika announced unnecessarily.

    ¡°What?¡± Mordred demanded. ¡°You know what the fuck that is?¡±

    ¡°Fuck me,¡± Jeanne Alter groused, ¡°another one?¡±

    ¡°My god in heaven,¡± Jekyll breathed.

    ¡°What¡­what is this?¡± Flamel gaped.

    Fran gaped up at it. ¡°Ah¡­ah¡­¡±

    The mass of flesh began to elongate, reaching up towards the cavern ceiling, and the black, leathery skin split, opening up spiraling rents in the surface through which raw, red flesh glistened and massive red eyes began to protrude. The magical energy seething off of it was so potent and so thick that the innards seemed to glow with it, casting an eerie light across the steam that was still being pumped out by Angrboea.

    ¡°What have you done to yourself?¡± Tohsaka whispered.

    ¡°Magical energy response intensifying,¡± Mash reported. ¡°The reading matches our previous encounters with Flauros and Forneus. Senpai¡­that really is another Demon God!¡±

    ¡°So we were right,¡± Ritsuka concluded grimly. ¡°There really was another one controlling this Singularity. That means¡­it¡¯s also responsible for messing with Paracelsus and Babbage¡¯s minds.¡±

    And twisting them into evil caricatures of themselves, bent on destroying all of the things they would have wanted to protect.

    ¡°Yeah.¡±

    A deep, rumbling groan thundered through the cavern, and the ground beneath our feet shook with the force of it. A crash from somewhere above announced the Demon God smashing into the ceiling, leaving bits of dirt to fall down around its bulk like dust. It seemed entirely unconcerned as its massive eyes swiveled as though attempting to focus on something much, much too small for it to properly see.

    ¡°Please don¡¯t be Nazara,¡± Rika muttered, hands clasped as though in prayer, ¡°please don¡¯t be Nazara, please don¡¯t be Nazara¡­¡±

    At some point, when we weren¡¯t, you know, about to face another huge monster and could safely talk, I was going to have to get the story behind that particular reference out of her, if only because she seemed to take it so seriously.

    ¡°BARBATOS,¡± thundered the Demon God (¡°Yes!¡± Rika breathed, barely audible over its booming voice. ¡°Thank god!¡±). ¡°THAT IS THE NAME OF THE EVIL THAT LURKED INSIDE OF ME. BARBATOS, THE DEMON GOD, ONE OF SEVENTY-TWO. I SHALL USE THIS ABOMINABLE FORM AND ITS OVERWHELMING POWER TO DO AS I MUST, CHAMPIONS OF PROPER HISTORY, AND CRUSH YOU ALL.¡±

    Every single one of its eyes suddenly swiveled towards us, and I knew what was coming, what was about to be unleashed on us ¡ª

    ¡°Master!¡±

    ¡ª but so did Mash, and as a Demi-Servant, she was just faster on the uptake and faster to move. By the time my mouth was starting to open, she had already thrown herself in front of us, raising her shield, and like she was daring Barbatos to try and get past her, she shouted:

    ¡°LORD CHALDEAS!¡±

    The familiar ghostly rampart formed not a moment too soon, because a series of explosions rocked its surface and sent the ground beneath our feet quivering. Oily black smoke jetted backwards in thick plumes, happening too quickly for one to disperse before the next took its place. Mash let out a soft grunt with each one, but the barrier never fractured and never wavered. Every hit was blocked perfectly and flawlessly.

    Eventually, however, the bombardment had to stop, leaving behind a faint ringing in my ears. There was no better time to take control of the situation and arrange the counterattack than that reprieve.

    ¡°Nicolas!¡± I called over to him. I retrieved my mask from my equipment pouch and swiftly set about getting it on. ¡°Get Ren¨¦e out of that thing! That¡¯ll hopefully delay whatever he¡¯s attempting to do with Angrboea!¡±

    Flamel startled, looking at me incredulously, like he was surprised that I wasn¡¯t surprised. I guess he hadn¡¯t realized exactly how much experience the last four Singularities had bought us. Much as I hated it, this was now the third Demon God we¡¯d had to face, and I imagined that ¡ª seeing as Barbatos had basically confirmed there were seventy-two in total ¡ª we¡¯d have to face more of them going forward.

    ¡°Tohsaka!¡± Ritsuka said, picking up where I¡¯d left off as I pulled my mask over my face. ¡°Stay with him! You can¡¯t go out in the fog!¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t need to remind me!¡± Tohsaka snapped back. ¡°Tch! But fine! Alice, lend them a hand!¡±

    ¡°Okay, Papa!¡± Nursery Rhyme chirped.

    ¡°Emiya!¡± said Rika. ¡°Time to pull out the big guns!¡±

    ¡°Without bringing the whole cavern down around us, you mean?¡± he snarked back.

    ¡°Duh! You got anything in that magic bag in your noggin that can do that?¡±

    He smirked. ¡°Heh. One or two I can give a try, I suppose.¡±

    ¡°You guys have seriously seen something like this before?¡± Mordred asked.

    ¡°Twice,¡± said Jeanne Alter. ¡°Killed them, too. Try and keep up, British.¡±

    ¡°Keh! You ain¡¯t nearly as hot shit as you think you are, Bumpkin!¡±

    ¡°A VALIANT EFFORT,¡± Barbatos boomed. ¡°BUT ULTIMATELY, POINTLESS. YOUR END IS INEVITABLE. ALL YOU ACCOMPLISH NOW IS TO DELAY IT. THERE IS NO FUTURE WHERE YOU SUCCEED, EVEN IF YOU DEFEAT ME HERE. THE FATE YOU SEEK TO DENY HAS ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± crowed Jeanne Alter. ¡°He¡¯s pulling out the whole goddamn playbook! What¡¯s that you said it was, Master, something about an overlord list?¡±

    ¡°Evil Overlord List!¡± Rika clarified. ¡°And I¡¯m glad he hasn¡¯t read it! This would be a whole lot harder if he had!¡±

    ¡°Go!¡± I ordered them, cutting across the commentary. Mordred and Jeanne Alter traded one more look, then took off, racing towards Barbatos. ¡°Ritsuka! We¡¯re going to need some reinforcements!¡±

    ¡°Right!¡± Ritsuka answered with a nod, and clenched his fist. Lines of light raced up and down his uniform. ¡°A¨ªfe!¡±

    I followed my own advice and fed the starter charge into my own mystic code. ¡°Siegfried!¡±

    ¡°Hippolyta!¡± Rika added, joining in unexpectedly.

    ¡°Come forth!¡±

    A trio of magic circles bloomed across the cavern floor, and from them, a familiar trio of Servants arrived, shadows lifting up off of the ground and filling in until A¨ªfe, Hippolyta, and Siegfried stood in front of us.

    ¡°Another one of these things, huh?¡± A¨ªfe asked as soon as she appeared.

    ¡°So it would seem.¡± Siegfried lifted his sword. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Queen A¨ªfe, but I¡¯m afraid this one will be mine to kill.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± A¨ªfe barked. ¡°If you want to make it a competition, then I¡¯m happy to oblige!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid that support will be all I can do for this one,¡± Hippolyta said apologetically. ¡°Nothing in my arsenal can deal damage with a wide enough spread to meaningfully hurt that thing, so I¡¯m fine if all I manage to do is distract it for you.¡±

    You can¡¯t use Balmung at full power, I told Siegfried, and then to A¨ªfe, I added, Our best bet is likely to be Ochd Deug Odin. Can you keep the blast contained enough to stop it from destroying this whole place and burying us down here?

    ¡°Of course,¡± she answered aloud. ¡°Give me enough room and I¡¯ll burn this one up, too.¡±

    ¡°It seems I shall have to endure this handicap,¡± Siegfried said. ¡°Queen A¨ªfe, I shall clear the way for whatever it is Master asked you to do.¡± He smiled. ¡°However, if I should kill this creature on accident, I trust there will be no objections?¡±

    A¨ªfe¡¯s lips pulled up into her familiar shark-like grin. ¡°I can¡¯t wait for the day you and I get to go head to head for real.¡±

    Siegfried¡¯s smile grew wider. ¡°I look forward to that, as well.¡±

    ¡°We shall have to make a day of it,¡± said Hippolyta, ¡°because I would like the chance to test myself against the both of you as well.¡±

    ¡°Go!¡±

    And they raced off, too, running to join in on the action, where Mordred and Jeanne Alter were cutting into Barbatos ¡ª to not much effect at all. As expected, this one was just like the previous ones, and it was simply too big for ordinary sized swords and basic weaponry to do much damage. Despite Arash¡¯s arrows being strong enough to shatter boulders and Mordred¡¯s raw strength being enough to give Herakles a run for his money, they were using paring knives to cut into a thick oak. They were doing so little damage that Barbatos was frankly ignoring them, and even Hippolyta would take a minute or two to ramp up to the point where her fists did anything meaningful.

    Barbatos did, however, take notice of our increased numbers.

    ¡°MORE SERVANTS?¡± he rumbled. ¡°I SEE. SO YOU HAVE CONTRIVED SOME METHOD OF INDEPENDENTLY CALLING UPON SERVANTS TO WHOM YOU ARE CONTRACTED, STORING PATTERNS OF THEIR SAINT GRAPHS FOR RAPID DEPLOYMENT. HOW NOVEL. AS EXPECTED OF A GENIUS LIKE LEONARDO DA VINCI.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± squeaked Rika. ¡°He knows Da Vinci-chan?¡±

    ¡°BUT TRINKETS AND CLEVER PLOYS WILL NOT BE ENOUGH TO SPARE YOU WHAT IS TO COME.¡±

    The eyes all swiveled and turned our way again, and Mash gasped out, ¡°Lord Chaldeas!¡± a second time, deploying her Noble Phantasm to block the next series of explosions.

    ¡°Nicolas!¡± I barked back at him, because he was still just standing there, staring, apparently unaware that we had to stay right where we were to protect him and the others and he was just forcing us to do that longer. ¡°Stop standing around and go! You have a daughter to rescue, don¡¯t you?¡±

    At last, Flamel jolted, and this seemed to get through to him. ¡°Yes,¡± he said, ¡°yes, of course. Forgive me, I lost myself for a moment there. Doctor Jekyll,¡± he addressed his Master, ¡°with me, if you would. I believe I will have need of your assistance.¡±

    ¡°Of course, Abraham, of course,¡± Jekyll replied, just as spooked.

    They hurried off back into Angrboea¡¯s massive shell, disappearing into the steam as Tohsaka trailed behind them. Jekyll only gave one, last glance over his shoulder at Barbatos, eyeing the monstrosity with some mix of disbelief and terror.

    ¡°¡ª and burbled as he came!¡±

    The Jabberwocky formed in midair, loping off to join the fight.

    ¡°¡ª frumious Bandersnatch!¡±

    And a short moment later, the Bandersnatch followed it, skittering across the ground not unlike a bug or some kind of giant lizard. They attacked with fists and claws, ripping into Barbatos and his leathery flesh and tearing out fistfuls at a time.

    Even these additions weren¡¯t enough to make much of a dent, of course, but they weren¡¯t useless. In fact, Barbatos was healing a lot slower than either Forneus or Flauros had, and that was when I realized the key difference between him and them: he didn¡¯t have the Grail. As powerful as he was and as much magical energy as he had, Barbatos wasn¡¯t supplementing his power with the Grail, and therefore wasn¡¯t able to heal as quickly or dish out powerful attacks in as rapid succession.

    Which meant he should be a lot easier to put down.

    Taking hold of all of our Servants¡¯ bonds at once was an unusual feeling, and my mind felt a little thinner than I was used to, like I was spreading myself out too far, but it didn¡¯t stop me from managing it.

    Retreat, I ordered them all. Back up and make some space. Jeanne Alter, use your Noble Phantasm and burn that thing to a crisp.

    Ha! Jeanne Alter crowed as though she couldn¡¯t realize that I was the only one who could hear her. I win, motherfuckers! This one¡¯s mine!

    Various assents from the others followed, completely ignorant of her smug declaration, and no one protested. They all knew what was at stake, and they all knew the limits we were working under.

    A moment, a few, scattered seconds as the rest of our team put some distance between them and the giant pillar of flesh. The enormous eyes watched them go, tracking each of them simultaneously without seeming to care about what they were doing or trying to stop them. And then, a surge of magical energy lit up in the middle of the cavern like a candle in the dark ¡ª

    ¡°La Grondement du Haine!¡±

    ¡ª and Barbatos was engulfed in flame.

 Chapter CLVII: King of the Storm

    Chapter CLVII: King of the Storm

    Pillars of fire shot up around Barbatos¡¯s bulk, expanding, twisting, and as they reached the ceiling, the steam above ignited, too, in a whoosh of flames that cast a bright light across the entire cavern. Down below, on the ground, we were buffeted by waves of hot air that blew our hair all about, but with the mist much thinner around us, the magical energy wasn¡¯t dense enough to cause a chain reaction.

    Embarrassingly, I¡¯d forgotten about the fact that denser mist exploded on contact with Jeanne Alter¡¯s flames. It wasn¡¯t, however, as though we¡¯d had a plethora of options for taking Barbatos down, so even if I¡¯d remembered, I might have tried it anyway.

    Whether or not the additional energy from the fog boosted Jeanne Alter¡¯s Noble Phantasm, there was no way for us to know. The twisting tornado of fire swelled and condensed and spun, and over the roar of the flames and the howl of the igniting steam, it was impossible to hear the squelch of the cursed stakes stabbing into Barbatos, but I couldn¡¯t imagine them doing much damage on their own. It was the fire I¡¯d been counting on to begin with.

    For several long seconds, Barbatos burned, and I squinted through my lenses, watching the dancing flames, eyes searching for the slightest hint of a counterattack ¡ª but it never came.

    And then the Noble Phantasm petered out. The pillar of fire died from the bottom up, lifting towards the ceiling like a curtain rising on the next act, until all that was left were a few flickering embers that licked at the rock and dirt above us before finally winking out. In their wake stood Barbatos, a charred husk of what he¡¯d been before, the leathery outer flesh seared away and the raw, red inner flesh blackened. Many of the eyes had burst and melted either through the sheer heat or from a combination with the stakes that had pierced through them from below.

    But he was still there, still standing. Even as I watched, his wounds were slowly healing, the burns steadily being replaced by what counted for healthy flesh. The eyes reconstituted one by one. It was still not as fast as Flauros or Forneus had been, hooked up to a Grail as both of those were when we fought them, nor even as fast as Herakles had healed when he resurrected, but what he lacked in speed, he made up for in stamina.

    ¡°POINTLESS,¡± Barbatos rumbled. In spite of his rough shape, his voice still boomed. ¡°NO MATTER HOW SPIRITED YOUR RESISTANCE, IT IS ULTIMATELY FUTILE. EVEN IF YOU DEFEAT ME, YOU WILL HAVE ACCOMPLISHED NOTHING. YOU HAVE ALREADY LOST, CHALDEA, AND NO AMOUNT OF STRUGGLING WILL AVAIL YOU.¡±

    His eyes swiveled about, and each one focused on a different Servant, flashing with surges of magical energy. Explosions ripped across the cavern, a staccato of cracks and booms as Barbatos nipped at our Servants¡¯ heels with his massive Mystic Eyes. He chased them around, firing off one blast after another, but his wounds hampered him to some degree, because he only rarely scored a hit, and when he did, it was fairly easily ignored.

    Magic Resistance was such a convenient skill.

    He wound up targeting us a few times, too, but Mash blocked them effortlessly with her shield. However little they could do to our Servants, I had no doubt that us squishy human Masters would be killed or maimed by a direct hit, and I was in no hurry to prove it.

    Well, that didn¡¯t work, Jeanne Alter told me. It came across as an accusation. What now, Master? He¡¯s still flapping his gob and tossing his firecrackers all over the place.

    It wasn¡¯t like we¡¯d run out of options just because her Noble Phantasm hadn¡¯t worked. We just needed to deal more damage before he could completely recover from his wounds ¡ª run down his stamina by preventing him from regaining his strength. Just like the previous two Demon Gods, this one looked like it was a battle of attrition.

    A¨ªfe, I said instead of addressing Jeanne Alter directly. How long?

    Not long, she answered me simply. I only need to finish placing the runes.

    So we just had to buy her time to do that.

    I yoked the bonds of my other Servants again, ignoring the brief moment of disorientation and reaching all of them simultaneously. We need to buy time for A¨ªfe to set up her Noble Phantasm. Keep his attention off of her until then.

    Dunno if you noticed, but the last one didn¡¯t do much, Mordred responded.

    It¡¯s making him waste energy to heal himself, I told her. The more damage we do, the quicker he¡¯ll burn through what he has and turn back into Zolgen.

    If you say so. She didn¡¯t sound like she really believed me, but if she had any better ideas, she wasn¡¯t sharing.

    They dove back into the fighting, getting up close and hacking away at whatever parts of Barbatos were within reach. Like before, it wasn¡¯t much, because Barbatos was simply too big to be meaningfully hurt by an ordinary-sized sword, no matter how much strength was put behind it, and the ranged support from Emiya and Arash wasn¡¯t doing that much either. That was what I¡¯d expected, though. The important part was that he wasn¡¯t paying anywhere near as much attention to what A¨ªfe was doing, only pursuing her with the same effort he was putting into the others.

    It felt a little strange, honestly. We were doing our best with what we had available under the circumstances, because we had to worry about accidentally caving the whole place in and ¡ª ironically ¡ª protecting Angrboea while Flamel rescued Ren¨¦e, but Barbatos seemed to be acting almost¡­perfunctorily. Like this was a job and he was only doing what he absolutely had to, not like he was honestly and truly trying his best to kill us.

    ¡°It didn¡¯t work,¡± Ritsuka said. ¡°So he really is just like the last two. That means we have to whittle him down, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°A¨ªfe¡¯s setting up Ochd Deug Odin,¡± I revealed, and he nodded like he¡¯d been expecting that. ¡°The others just have to keep Barbatos busy in the meantime.¡±

    ¡°Kinda basic,¡± said Rika, ¡°but, hey, that makes it really easy to follow! Emiya!¡±

    ¡°I heard!¡± Emiya responded. ¡°Not sure how much of his attention I have without pulling out the stuff that might get us all killed, but I¡¯ll do what I can!¡±

    ¡°What he could¡± turned out to be mostly more of what he¡¯d already been doing, with the addition of some carefully chosen weapons that hit a little harder, but nothing anywhere near the scale of the Caladbolg I¡¯d seen him use several times before nor Caladbolg itself. They dealt more damage to Barbatos, eating away larger chunks of his flesh, but none of them was devastating enough to do more than whittle away at the massive pillar that was the enemy.

    That was to be expected, I guess. Emiya was a versatile and powerful Heroic Spirit with an impressively vast and equally versatile collection of weapons at his disposal, but when he had to worry about killing us all by collapsing the cavern, then there was only so much he could do. If we were a mile away out in the open? Barbatos would have already been dead.

    And as Emiya and Arash fired barrages of arrows, the others danced around, dodging and weaving through the detonations and the fire and cutting into Barbatos with every chance they got. A¨ªfe, meanwhile, bounced around, steadily circling that huge body and cautiously picking moments where she wasn¡¯t being attacked to lay down the runes needed for her Noble Phantasm. Barbatos didn¡¯t even seem to notice what she was doing, and whether that was his own lethargic negligence or the others¡¯ distractions at work, I wasn¡¯t quite sure myself.

    The seconds ticked by, punctuated by the sounds of the explosions from Barbatos and his mystic eyes and the squelch of his flesh being cut and pierced. Every wound inflicted upon him bled black ichor, and the pool beneath him slowly spread and seeped across the ground. In the mask, I couldn¡¯t smell it, but the memory of the stench was seared into my nostrils, and that was enough to force my nose to wrinkle.

    ¡°You know, I¡¯d forgotten how bad that stank,¡± Rika complained quietly.

    ¡°Almost makes you wish the fog down here was strong enough to cover it up,¡± Ritsuka agreed.

    ¡°Please don¡¯t even joke about that, Senpai!¡± Mash said, strained.

    The fact that they could joke about it so easily told me that they must have noticed it, too, how different this felt from the previous fights. Maybe it wasn¡¯t my imagination, then. Maybe Barbatos really wasn¡¯t trying as hard as he could be to snuff us all out.

    At last, A¨ªfe finished her circuit, coming back around to the front to plant the final rune. ¡°Everyone,¡± she shouted, ¡°get back! This is my ¡ª¡±

    ¡°DID YOU THINK I WOULDN¡¯T NOTICE? HOW NAIVE.¡±

    Every single one of his eyes suddenly turned towards A¨ªfe, and they flashed a brilliant white as a surge of magical energy rose up out of nowhere. All of the concentrated power of every explosion ripped apart the same space, and although A¨ªfe had sensed something wrong, she wasn¡¯t fast enough to escape the entire barrage at once. It caught her before she could get clear, and her body disappeared beneath the echoing BOOM and searing light.

    ¡°A¨ªfe!¡± the twins and Mash all called in concert.

    Arash, I hurried to ask, is she ¡ª

    Yes, he answered before I could finish, but she didn¡¯t come out of that unscathed.

    When it was over, a maroon lump laid some thirty feet away from the initial blast, an entire arm and leg missing as red blood fell sluggishly from the burnt stumps. A cool relief mixed with worry in my gut, churning into an uncomfortable mess. That hadn¡¯t killed her, and even if it had, it wouldn¡¯t have meant much since her main body was still back at Chaldea, but that had to hurt and there was no way she could continue fighting in that condition.

    ¡°Super Bitch!¡± Jeanne Alter called.

    A¨ªfe struggled to push herself up and got no farther. The damage to the rest of her was healing ¡ª courtesy of her runes, no doubt ¡ª but the arm and leg remained gone and showed no signs of restoring themselves. It would be a miracle if she could make it back over to the rest of her runic array, all the more so if she could do it without drawing Barbatos¡¯s attention so he could finish her off.

    ¡°ADMIRABLE,¡± Barbatos allowed, ¡°BUT ULTIMATELY, JUST AS POINTLESS AS ALL OF YOUR OTHER EFFORTS. ALL YOU HAVE DONE IS DELAY THE MOMENT OF YOUR DEMISE ¡ª BY NOTHING MORE THAN A SCANT FEW SECONDS.¡±

    Once more, his eyes turned to A¨ªfe, and I considered, for a moment, using a Command Spell to get her to safety ¡ª

    ¡°FUCK YOU!¡±

    An enormous gout of flame struck Barbatos before I could try, washing over his one side and sending flickering sparks across the rest of him. Before the first one had even died down, a second struck, just as big and just as intense, and several of the eyes in the direct path of the fire burst open from the heat, spewing more of that black ichor to the ground.

    Barbatos¡¯s attention turned, and every eye now focused on Jeanne Alter. ¡°IF YOU ARE DETERMINED TO OFFER YOURSELF UP FOR JUDGMENT FIRST, THEN I SHALL OBLIGE YOU, YOU ABERRANT ANOMALY.¡±

    But before he could gather the energy to blast her the way he had A¨ªfe, Hippolyta came upon him from the opposite side, and her fist struck him like a meteor, popping the eye she hit instantly. His entire mass was jolted by the blow, undulating as the force washed up and down from the point of impact, and for a second, I wondered if he would teeter over and fall like a tree. I wasn¡¯t sure that he even could.

    Hippolyta landed for all of a second, bracing herself against the ground, and as Barbatos swayed back towards her, she leapt up again and swung her leg around in a roundhouse kick that would have made every martial artist in every cheesy kung fu movie I¡¯d ever seen green with envy. The smack of the collision was absolutely thunderous, echoing off of the ceiling and walls of the cavern until it sounded like she¡¯d kicked him a hundred times at once.

    Arash, I began quickly, get A¨ªfe and take her back to where she was putting that last rune. Hurry, while the others are keeping Barbatos busy.

    Got it, he replied, and then he vanished from beside me into spirit form, gone.

    Unless there was some sort of serious discrepancy in power or some conceptual bullshit going on, Barbatos shouldn¡¯t be as hard to put down as Forneus without the Grail to bolster him. Ochd Deug Odin, and maybe a second use of Jeanne Alter¡¯s Noble Phantasm, and that would be enough to defeat the Demon God, leaving us to get whatever else we could out of Zolgen before he died.

    It should be that simple. I wanted it to be that simple. But I couldn¡¯t shake the sense that there was something going on here that I wasn¡¯t seeing.

    Hippolyta continued battering Barbatos with punches and kicks that hit with ridiculous power, her presence growing stronger and weightier with each second as her own Noble Phantasm pushed her closer and closer to the realm of the gods. Jeanne Alter hit him back with more bursts of flame, although none as big or as hot as the first two had been, leaving Siegfried to chip away at the margins and do his best not to get in their way.

    Barbatos might have tried to unleash another of those powerful blasts, but he wasn¡¯t being given the time or the chance to focus like that. The blasts he was firing kept going wide, thrown off course by the shock of Hippolyta¡¯s blows, and instead of hitting any of his intended targets, they ignited against the far walls, the floor, and the cavern ceiling. They carved gouges into the rock and the dirt, throwing up debris that, at worst, peppered Mash¡¯s shield.

    It sounded like an artillery barrage, like something out of one of those old war movies Dad used to watch, and I had no doubt that it probably looked like that was what was happening, too, just from all of the divots that were going to be left behind when this was all said and done. I was glad, at least, that the only part of it that seemed to be bothering the twins was the noise, that they were just wincing whenever one happened a little too close and not flinching away or screaming.

    And while the rest of our team kept Barbatos from mounting either a proper defense or offense, Arash hefted A¨ªfe up, slinging the stump of her arm over his shoulder so he could half-carry her limping, hobbling form back to where she¡¯d been about to plant that final rune.

    ¡°ENOUGH!¡±

    A hundred explosions suddenly went off all at once in a cacophony of light and sound and force, throwing the others away from Barbatos as though they had all slammed into some sort of forcefield. They all went flying, but none of them were really hurt beyond some superficial burns and a bit of scuffing on their armor, so each of them was able to roll to their feet and bleed off the momentum effortlessly.

    Barbatos wobbled and straightened, a slight, swooping curve to his body that wasn¡¯t there before, and the eyes all flashed again, lashing out with more explosions against everyone, including us. It smashed into Mash¡¯s shield with an echoing, reverberating GONG, and I had to grit my teeth against the sound and force my eyes not to squeeze shut reflexively, squinting against the abrupt flash.

    Jeanne Alter, Hippolyta, and Siegfried were forced to dodge, all of them leaping out of the way, because each had a dozen eyes focused on them and that many blasts going off at once might not be quite so easily brushed off.

    And then magical energy began to surge through the air around Barbatos as glittering lights rose up around his body, interspersed throughout the entire cavern. The memory of a similar spell flitted through my mind ¡ª and the devastation it had wrought in its wake.

    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka called. ¡°Noble Phantasm!¡±

    Mash braced herself against her shield.

    ¡°HARKEN!¡±

    ¡°Lord ¡ª¡±

    ¡°THE TIME OF THE DIVERGENCE HATH ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Balmung!¡±

    Siegfried appeared suddenly in front of Barbatos mid-leap, sword lifted high over his shoulder and alight with bright, brilliant blue energy, and so swiftly that it left flickering images behind in my eyes, he swung it down.

    A beam of light swept down. It carved straight through Barbatos and all of his leathery flesh, searing away everything it touched like a white hot scalpel, and when it reached the bottom, it detonated in a wave of power that gushed outwards and consumed the entirety of Barbatos¡¯s bottom half. For a moment, a scant few heartbeats, the flash blinded us to what happened at the epicenter.

    I¡¯m sorry, Master, Siegfried told me. I¡¯m afraid this was all I could do for you like this.

    The connection snapped like a worn thread, disappearing ¡ª the shadow of Siegfried, possessing only enough energy to use his Noble Phantasm once, vanished and took the memory of this fight back to his proper self in Chaldea.

    When the light faded, Siegfried was gone, as expected, and Barbatos was not, not entirely. What remained was a mangled mess, a half-melted pile of black and red and a handful of giant eyes, reduced to less than half of his original bulk. The wounds were already beginning to heal as new flesh bubbled up to take the place of what had been lost, but it wasn¡¯t any faster than it had been earlier. Even if we left him alone, it would probably take several minutes to restore himself entirely.

    Whether Barbatos was just that hardy or Siegfried had been just that rushed, I couldn¡¯t have said.

    ¡°Damn!¡± said Mordred. ¡°Motherfucker¡¯s still not dead? What¡¯s it take to kill this bastard, anyway?¡±

    ¡°This.¡±

    Down below, barely able to sit up straight, A¨ªfe carved the final rune she needed, and all around Barbatos, in the spots where she¡¯d marked the previous runes, they all began to glow as their power swelled. Arash retreated as quickly as he was able, leaving her behind to activate her Noble Phantasm alone, because she was too close and too injured to survive it.

    The remaining eyes all swiveled to look at her, far too late to do anything about it.

    ¡°I-INSOLENCE ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Ochd,¡± said A¨ªfe, ¡°Deug Odin.¡±

    The power of the runes focused inwards and detonated like a bomb, and for the second time in less than a minute, a flash of bright, intense light filled up the cavern. The thunderous boom of the explosion rippled out and splashed against the hastily erected form of Lord Chaldeas, washing over us as a hot wind and tossing my hair about, even as the cavern around us shook as though threatening to collapse on us. I had to close my eyes against the brightness, because even my polarized lenses couldn¡¯t filter out all of the searing light.

    In the midst of it all, the thread connecting me to A¨ªfe¡¯s shadow disappeared, too.

    When the rumbling stopped and it was safe to open my eyes again, there wasn¡¯t much of Barbatos left. The massive pillar of flesh had been large enough to match a skyscraper, as tall as a building and at least as wide around, but in the wake of A¨ªfe¡¯s Noble Phantasm, what remained behind was barely big enough to have filled my old living room. The eyes, of course, were gone completely, leaving only a misshapen lump of charred black meat that was, even as I watched, slowly beginning to shrink.

    ¡°If that didn¡¯t do it, I¡¯m filing a complaint!¡± said Rika.

    ¡°With who?¡± her brother asked incredulously.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know! I¡¯ll think of something!¡±

    Fortunately, she didn¡¯t have to. The hunk of Barbatos that was still left was evaporating, much the same as the previous two Demon Gods had, so that combination looked to have done it. The fight was over.

    Now, we just had to pry whatever information we could out of Zolgen, if he was still in good enough shape to answer a few questions before he died.

    ¡°Is it finished?¡± Flamel asked, and when I turned to look, he, Jekyll, and Tohsaka were climbing out of the shell of Angrboea, Ren¨¦e held in his arms like a princess out of a fairytale ¡ª a fitting comparison, all things considered.

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said. ¡°Ren¨¦e?¡±

    Flamel looked down at her, lips pulling into a brief grimace. ¡°Only unconscious, thank god. She should wake up shortly, none the worse for wear.¡±

    ¡°And the Stone?¡±

    He glanced at me sharply, but didn¡¯t rebuke the question. ¡°Still intact. Whatever method Zolgen was using to access it and enhance Angrboea, it seems to have left no permanent damage on either Ren¨¦e or the Stone.¡±

    Good news, then. It may not have been the most critically important goal that we¡¯d come here for, but rescuing Ren¨¦e was one of our goals and half the reason we¡¯d come as quickly as we had with as little preparation as we¡¯d done.

    ¡°What about the Grail?¡± asked Ritsuka, preempting my next question.

    Flamel winced. ¡°Ah, yes, well¡­ That, I¡¯m afraid, is somewhat more difficult a question to answer. It was not difficult to find, exactly, but extricating it from the machine without risking some kind of catastrophic failure, well¡­¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately, none of us has any idea how to remove it from the steam engine,¡± Tohsaka said bluntly. ¡°Safely, at least. Flamel tried to disable the reaction creating the steam so we could just pull it out, but it didn¡¯t really do much of anything.¡±

    ¡°A rather vexing limitation,¡± said Jekyll.

    ¡°So what?¡± said Mordred as she and the others gathered towards us. ¡°Just rip the damn thing out. Ain¡¯t that hard to do, is it?¡±

    ¡°Spoken like a true mindless brute,¡± Andersen remarked.

    ¡°British has a point,¡± Jeanne Alter agreed. ¡°Can¡¯t we just grab the thing and go? Fight¡¯s over, so that¡¯s all that¡¯s keeping us in the cesspit, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°It is not over yet,¡± Zolgen rasped. He pulled himself from what little remained of Barbatos, beaten, battered, and covered in blood and black ichor, but definitely alive.

    ¡°Bastard!¡± growled Mordred. ¡°Don¡¯t you know when to stay down and give up?¡±

    ¡°There should¡­still be¡­enough fog in London,¡± Zolgen said, voice thready. ¡°Enough to¡­complete my plans.¡±

    ¡°Plans?¡± echoed Ritsuka.

    Wait. He¡¯d said something about that earlier, hadn¡¯t he? The goal of Project Demonic Fog was to spread the steam from Angrboea not only out into London, but across the entirety of Britain, drowning everyone in the mist. He¡¯d also mentioned something else, though, about ¡ª

    ¡°Yes,¡± he hissed. ¡°Come forth, final Heroic Spirit! Come forth, King of the Storm! Come forth and fulfill your purpose on this Earth!¡±

    ¡°Bastard!¡± snarled Mordred. ¡°Don¡¯t you dare!¡±

    She leapt across the distance in a flash of red lightning, sword swinging around, and Zolgen was just too slow to avoid her taking his arm straight off in a spray of blood and gore. The sheer force of it sent him spinning, but he had barely hit the ground before he was back up again. A gesture of his remaining arm made the meaty bits of Barbatos still lying about explode, transforming midair into a swarm of creatures that looked like giant hornets, and they threw themselves at Mordred.

    Mordred put an arm up to protect her face as they swarmed her, but a volley of arrows from Arash took out one group and a set from Emiya tore apart the other.

    But in the scant seconds it took, Zolgen continued his chant.

    ¡°Th-thou art bound in a cage of madness, and I am the summoner who holds thy chains!¡± he said, voice rising. ¡°The Seventh H-Heaven clad in the great words of power ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Wait!¡± Ritsuka cried. ¡°That¡¯s a summoning incantation!¡±

    ¡°Stop him!¡± I ordered, and I didn¡¯t particularly care who obeyed it.

    Mordred leapt back into motion, even as Jeanne Alter raced to beat her from the opposite side. Preceding them both, Arash and Emiya both fired another volley of arrows at Zolgen, all of them center mass, and all of them devastating enough that the stump of his severed arm and an entire half of his chest disappeared in another spray of blood and viscera.

    ¡°¡ª come forth from the Ring of Restraint, Guardian of the Heavenly scales!¡±

    But Zolgen ignored them completely, and a scant moment before Mordred¡¯s sword came around and lopped his head off, the final words of the incantation cut through the air like a knife, even as Zolgen¡¯s broken body collapsed to the ground while his head went flying off into the distance.

    For a long, tense moment, there was only silence as we all waited for the other shoe to drop.

    ¡°Did¡­¡± Rika began. ¡°Did¡­we stop him in time?¡±

    ¡°That wasn¡¯t¡­the full incantation,¡± Ritsuka reasoned.

    ¡°But he added the lines for Madness Enhancement onto the end,¡± I said.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran grunted. ¡°Uh-uhn ah uhn.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t tempt fate,¡± Andersen admonished.

    From behind us, Angrboea suddenly rumbled, shaking the cavern beneath our feet, and Mash gasped as we all turned to look.

    ¡°M-magical energy reaction!¡± she rushed to say. ¡°Senpai, it¡¯s a Servant summoning! The magical energy in the fog must have served as a substitute for the magic circle and the rest of the incantation!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s possible?¡± Tohsaka demanded incredulously.

    ¡°It¡¯s powered by a Holy Grail!¡± Rika shot back. ¡°I¡¯m not counting anything out!¡±

    A presence filled the cavern just as suddenly, a powerful, oppressive presence that settled around us like a heavy blanket, and the glow from inside of Angrboea intensified. From somewhere inside of it, the sound of a horse neighing echoed, bouncing off of the metal shell until it took on a haunting, unnatural quality that landed uneasily in my gut.

    ¡°What the¡­¡± Jeanne Alter began. ¡°A fucking horse? That¡¯s the big, bad Heroic Spirit that bastard was summoning?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Hippolyta. ¡°It is nothing more than this hero¡¯s steed. After all, both Queen A¨ªfe and I have horses of our own, do we not?¡±

    So this was going to be a Rider? Given our location¡­ But, no, Zolgen had called out to the ¡°King of the Storm,¡± and I¡¯d never heard of Gawain getting that kind of epithet at any point in his life or legend. Drake, maybe? It would be ironic for us to have to face her again when she¡¯d been our ally in the last Singularity, but there was that anecdote about her being the leader of the Wild Hunt. That¡­didn¡¯t explain the horse, though. Drake was a pirate captain with a ship, not a horseman in the cavalry.

    ¡°Here they come!¡± Mash said urgently.

    The words had barely left her mouth before a black shadow leapt out of one of the massive holes in Angrboea¡¯s shell, a four-legged shadow with a rider astride it, arcing up through the air almost as though it could fly, even though it had no wings. The neighing echoed again, and the shadow¡¯s arc curved down until it landed some distance away, behind where Zolgen¡¯s corpse sat.

    All of us turned to face it, our flashlights swinging around until the beams focused in on the dark shadow and revealed ¡ª

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Mordred, sounding unnerved. ¡°I know that horse!¡±

    ¡ª a horse carrying another knight in armor. Black fur, black accouterments, but a white mane and silvery armor plates. The contrast gave it a menacing look, only made worse by the wild, red eyes that gleamed beneath the sculpted helmet that protected its face. The rider, by contrast, was decked out entirely in dark colors, from dark, purplish plate that was so dark it was almost black to the black bodysuit and the black lance in their hand, jagged red spikes jutting out along its length. The armor itself had been patterned and shaped to mimic the appearance of a dragon, with the chestpiece, greaves, and gauntlets all edged in carefully crafted scales and spiky horns protruding from the back of the helm.

    The dragon¡¯s head turned to regard our group, and from the dark line of its open maw, the rider looked out at us, completely shadowed.

    ¡°That lance, too!¡± Mordred went on. ¡°It can¡¯t be¡­¡±

    ¡°Care to share with the class?¡± Jeanne Alter snarked.

    Mordred took a step towards the new Servant and snarled, ¡°Are you here to punish me for failing to protect your precious Britain? Huh, Father?¡±

    ¡°Father?¡± several voices parroted incredulously, unknowingly echoing my own thoughts.

    It¡­couldn¡¯t be, could it? That¡­looked nothing like the King Arthur I remembered from Fuyuki.

    ¡°Hold on!¡± said Rika. ¡°Salter was shorter than me, and that lady¡¯s gotta be almost as tall as Onii-chan!¡±

    My eyes narrowed. Unless it wasn¡¯t the same King Arthur. Heroic Spirits could manifest in multiple ways, depending not just on what point in their life they¡¯d been summoned from but also what class they¡¯d been summoned into. It was entirely possible ¡ª

    Her stats bloomed in my mind¡¯s eye as my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance stripped the mystery bare. Lancer. In hindsight, that should have been obvious, considering she was lugging around that huge lance. In which case¡­

    ¡°Rhongomyniad.¡±

    Mordred flinched. ¡°Shit. That ain¡¯t what I remember it looking like when it got shoved into my gut, but if that really is Father, then that¡¯s the only thing that lance could be.¡±

    ¡°Is¡­is that really King Arthur?¡± Mash wondered. ¡°She¡­really doesn¡¯t look anything like the version we fought in Fuyuki.¡±

    ¡°Without a doubt, that¡¯s Rhongomyniad,¡± Emiya said grimly, ¡°so without a doubt, that¡¯s King Arthur, although¡­ You¡¯re right, Mash. That armor, that physique, those are things the King Arthur of proper history as we know it never possessed, which would automatically mean ¡ª¡±

    My gut twisted. ¡°She¡¯s from an alternate timeline.¡±

    ¡°One where she preferred her lance to her sword, one would assume,¡± said Andersen. ¡°How twisted. And so she clung to it, even on her deathbed, and became inscribed into the Throne of Heroes as the King of the Storm, the ruler of the Wild Hunt. An unsightly ending for such a noble figure.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a thing that can happen?¡± Rika demanded.

    ¡°Have you forgotten, Master?¡± Emiya drawled. ¡°That El-Melloi II and I are both technically from an alternate timeline ourselves. The Throne of Heroes exists outside of time and space, and therefore every hero from every timeline exists upon it simultaneously. It¡¯s just that the further you get from your own timeline, the harder it is to summon one of those Heroic Spirits. But harder isn¡¯t the same thing as impossible.¡±

    Upon her massive steed, the rider¡¯s helmet slipped away into the aether, and a familiar face was revealed from beneath ¡ª older, leaner, more mature, but still the strikingly beautiful visage of the King Arthur we¡¯d met in Fuyuki. She swept a yellow-eyed gaze across our entire group, taking in each of us individually without a single word, only to eventually land on Mordred, who instantly stepped back and fell into a defensive stance, sword raised. The pointed tip of her black lance, left to droop towards the ground, raised to point at us.

    ¡°Get ready!¡± Mordred barked at us. ¡°There¡¯s no talking with this one! No, that¡¯s King Arthur, ready to slay her enemies! She¡¯s already decided to kill us, no matter what!¡±

    ¡°J-just like that?¡± Mash squeaked. ¡°But she hasn¡¯t even said anything to us yet!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right, Shieldy!¡± Mordred said grimly. ¡°You can run, if you¡¯re scared! Heh! That lance is just as powerful as Excalibur, so I wouldn¡¯t blame you if you were scared of it! But if you turn your back to her, there¡¯s a chance¡­ No, you¡¯re definitely gonna get blasted to bits!¡±

    A sudden presence, even bigger and heavier than King Arthur¡¯s, swept through the cavern like a gust of hot wind. Dense magical energy gathered, so thick and so intense that it was visible, swirling like a twister around Rhongomyniad and condensing down upon the surface of the lance until it glowed like a beacon of black flame. It seemed to eat the light, sucking in the beam of our flashlights, and yet it was simultaneously bright enough to cast dancing shadows around its wielder.

    Mash gasped. ¡°Massive magical energy reaction! Master, this is just like ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka ordered urgently. ¡°Use your Noble Phantasm! Now!¡±

    Mash didn¡¯t hesitate. She thrust herself between us and King Arthur and slammed her giant shield into the dirt, even as Hippolyta, Jeanne Alter, and Mordred rushed to get behind it, and shouted out its name.

    ¡°Lord ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Rhongo,¡± King Arthur muttered as though chanting a curse.

    ¡°Chaldeas!¡±

    ¡°¡ª myniad.¡±

    The world ended. That was what it felt like. The swirling, condensed vortex of power that had gathered into King Arthur¡¯s lance exploded out in our direction, blasting into the translucent rampart of Mash¡¯s Noble Phantasm with more force and power than anything since Altera, since Saber Alter back in Fuyuki. It slammed into us like a typhoon, lashing out at the barrier with whorls of dark light that seemed as though they were trying to eat away at the brickwork.

    The cavern trembled and shook around us, but it was impossible to hear over the deafening roar that drowned out every other sound. Even when I slapped my hands over my ears, it was as though the howling torrent existed on some other plane, ripping through dimensions until it reached my eardrums at full volume.

    And then Lord Chaldeas began to crack, bleeding vents of black energy, and I sucked in a sharp breath.

    A flash of red light from the side, and there was Ritsuka, one of his hands held out, mouth moving but the words inaudible over the commotion. In front of us, Mash braced herself, pushing one foot further back for better leverage, and the translucent barrier became more solid, more real, the cracks sealing over as though they had never been there.

    The end came so suddenly that my ears rang in the aftermath, and before I knew what was happening, the torrent of power was gone and all that was left in its wake was a deafening silence. It took several seconds before I could properly hear Mash panting as Lord Chaldeas flickered and faded away.

    ¡°Ho¡­¡± Rika began. ¡°Holy shit.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d forgotten what it¡¯s like to be on the other end of something like that,¡± Emiya agreed.

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka said, taking several steps towards her.

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­I¡¯m okay, Senpai,¡± said Mash. She braced herself up against her shield. ¡°That was¡­stronger than I was expecting, but thanks to your Command Spell, I-I was able to hold it off.¡±

    ¡°Good job, Shieldy,¡± Mordred praised.

    A hand tugged on my sleeve, and I looked down to meet Jackie¡¯s worried eyes. ¡°Mommy? Are you okay?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m fine, Jackie,¡± I told her, not entirely a lie. ¡°Just¡­¡±

    Remembering what it was like to face Altera and that one, terrifying second where she was about to kill us all.

    ¡°King Arthur¡¯s gone,¡± Arash announced.

    A ripple of surprise washed over the group.

    ¡°Wait, what?¡± said Rika. ¡°Did she just blow herself up, just like that? This wasn¡¯t the final boss fight?¡±

    Arash shook his head. ¡°No.¡± He pointed to the side. ¡°She left that way.¡±

    We all turned to follow his finger and found ¡ª

    ¡°Holy¡­¡± Rika whispered for the second time in as many minutes.

    ¡ª an enormous trench gouged out of the cavern. Rock, dirt, everything in the path of the blast had been scoured away, leaving an enormous trail that led back the way we¡¯d come. It curved slowly and gently upwards, carving through the tunnel we¡¯d entered through and then continuing on, and it left behind a massive hole large enough to sail a ship through where once all of that had been just minutes ago.

    Further on, whatever else Rhongomyniad had destroyed was cast in shadow, making it impossible to see too far out, but¡­ No, I didn¡¯t even question it. I knew. She hadn¡¯t just carved a path back the way we¡¯d come through the evil fairy¡¯s castle, she¡¯d carved a path back up to the surface. The amount of rock she had to have chewed through to do it, the amount of damage she must have done to the city, not only to the Underground but to the houses and the streets and everything that was above us, I hadn¡¯t seen that sort of widespread devastation caused by a single attack in over two years.

    But that had to carry with it a chilling realization, one that had terrible implications for the fight we were about to get ourselves into.

    ¡°She wasn¡¯t even aiming at us.¡±

 Chapter CLVIII: The Lightning and the Storm

    Chapter CLVIII: The Lightning and the Storm

    It was a chilling realization, that all of that power and all of that destruction, all of it so powerful that it had taken reinforcement from a Command Spell for Mash to block it, and it hadn¡¯t even really been aimed in our direction, not really. We¡¯d just happened to be in the line of fire when this new version of King Arthur decided she didn¡¯t feel like taking the long way back up to the surface. Collateral damage, as it were.

    Then again, King Arthur had managed to carve out something like a decade of relative peace amongst the chaos of Dark Ages Britain. You didn¡¯t do that without learning how to kill two birds with one stone whenever the opportunity presented itself.

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­not the only one getting Fuyuki flashbacks, right?¡± Rika said, and there was a jitter to her voice that betrayed her nervousness. ¡°Because I remember what we had to go through with Salter, and this is giving me serious Salter vibes!¡±

    I shook my head, and it was jarring enough to help me center my thoughts back on the moment instead of the shock of just how powerful that lance really was. ¡°There¡¯s no time. We have to ¡ª¡±

    Beep-beep!

    A surge of annoyance squirmed in my belly, but I answered my communicator anyway, because ¡ª

    ¡°¡­hear me?¡±

    ¡°Director.¡±

    ¡°We got through!¡± Romani¡¯s voice cheered, crackling with an undercurrent of static.

    ¡°You¡¯re doing that shit now?¡± Mordred demanded furiously.

    ¡ª Marie wouldn¡¯t contact us at a time like this unless it was urgent.

    ¡°Listen!¡± Marie said urgently. ¡°We¡¯ve got a heading for that Lancer Servant who just destroyed half of Soho!¡± Ritsuka choked at the implication of how many people must have died. It might not have held a candle on Gold Morning, but I couldn¡¯t blame him for it. ¡°She¡¯s en route to Buckingham Palace, where there¡¯s an abnormally large concentration of steam!¡±

    ¡°If she activates Rhongomyniad there, it¡¯ll cause a cascading chain reaction!¡± Romani rushed to add. ¡°The fog will eat up all of the magical energy she unleashes and multiply like a virus! All of Britain will be covered in a matter of hours!¡±

    ¡°Then what are we fucking waiting for?¡± Mordred roared.

    ¡°Director,¡± I began hurriedly.

    ¡°Go!¡± Marie preempted me. ¡°We¡¯ll stay on the line for as long as the connection holds and update you if anything ¡ª¡±

    She didn¡¯t even get to finish.

    ¡°Magical energy reaction in the giant steam engine, Angrboea!¡± Romani reported suddenly. ¡°Director, it¡¯s ¡ª¡±

    The boom of thunder and the crackle of lightning echoed throughout the remains of the cavern, and above us, bolts of vivid blue electricity jolted out of the holes in Angrboea¡¯s shell. Some of them leapt upwards, bouncing from puff of steam to puff of steam until they reached the ceiling, and some of them arced around and danced across the surface of the metal shell. Magical energy swelled so steeply that I could feel it completely unaided.

    Mash gasped. ¡°Servant detected!¡±

    ¡°¡ª a chain summoning!¡±

    ¡°Get back!¡± Mordred barked, just in time for a bolt of lightning to stretch down from above and strike the ground close enough that the charge in the air made the hairs on my neck and hands stand on end. The accompanying flash was so bright that I flinched away from it reflexively, even as our Servants moved to place themselves between us Masters and the newcomer.

    And as though he had been carried down from the heavens by that bolt of lightning, another Servant stood there, a man in a double-breasted purple suit who wore a long coat over his shoulders like a cape.

    ¡°Hahahaha!¡± his voice boomed. He threw back the coat dramatically, revealing a strange gauntlet on his right hand that looked like a cross between medieval armor and a power transformer. ¡°You called upon me, did you not? You called upon I, lightning itself, who surpassed Indra and Zeus! I, the man who harnessed the power of the gods and forged a new myth for mankind! I, Nikola Tesla, have appeared before you in answer!¡±

    ¡­What? Nikola Tesla? That inventor that everyone said had secretly invented free energy and was killed to prevent it from getting out and sabotaging corporate profits or whatever?

    ¡°We don¡¯t have fucking time for this!¡± Mordred snarled. She pointed the tip of her sword at Tesla. ¡°Sparky! Quick fucking question, and if you get it wrong, I¡¯m chopping your goddamn head off! You here to destroy Britain and spread the fog or not?¡±

    ¡°Destroy Britain? Spread the fog? What madness has gone unchecked before my arrival?¡± said Tesla. He turned, head jerking around to stare up at Angrboea, and he scowled. ¡°Hmph! I see! Then this machine is the device intended to see that to fruition, is it? How unsightly! How craven that a fellow inventor would allow his technology to be used for something like this!¡±

    He held up his hand, and bolts of electricity danced up and down the bronze-colored gauntlet on his right arm as he gathered magical energy. ¡°In that case, the only appropriate response would be ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Are you mad?¡± Flamel demanded furiously, and he stomped the ground with one foot as red light flashed along the soil.

    Several things happened at once. An enormous slab of rock lifted off of the cavern floor and jerked several dozen yards away from Angrboea, carrying with it all of us. Arash had to wrap an arm around me to keep me from falling flat on my face, and Mash squeaked as she did the same for Ritsuka, Emiya did the same for Rika, and the Jabberwocky and Bandersnatch held Jekyll and Tohsaka in place.

    Jackie, fortunately, clung to me like a limpet, so there was no need to fear she¡¯d been left behind.

    At the same time ¡ª

    ¡°System Keraunos!¡±

    ¡ª the whine of a spinning turbine, the crack of thunder, and a bright flash of light filled the entire cavern. Less than a heartbeat later, the sound of rending steel and shattering glass drowned out everything else, and my polarized lenses dimmed the light just enough that I could barely see the forks of electricity that lashed out, packed so tightly that they looked almost like a beam of plasma, and struck Angrboea with enough power to rip the giant shell surrounding the main machine apart.

    ¡°Holy¡­¡± Rika whispered. ¡°That guy almost killed us! On accident, even!¡±

    ¡°Of all the reckless¡­!¡± Flamel agreed.

    Tesla had not, it turned out, completely destroyed the steam engine, though not for lack of trying. The giant shelled had been peeled away like some kind of mockery of an orange, revealing the main body of the machine beneath, and the pipes and vents reaching up to connect to the network that pumped the fog out into London had all blown apart similarly, ripping along invisible faultlines and curling backwards like something out of a cartoon. The parts of the shell still intact enough to count for it were riddled with deep fissures where the energy had torn through it, just not with enough power to do more than crack it.

    Angrboea itself was¡­not entirely nonfunctional, but two of its three chambers had ruptured, spewing hissing steam out into the air, and leaving only a single chamber to focus the steam into the deadly fog that coated the city. Without the network it used to pump that steam out into London proper, it would take much longer to spread.

    Just as importantly, seeing him use it up close like this had let me examine it with my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance, and that gave me a very good look at System Keraunos, Tesla¡¯s Noble Phantasm, the representation both of all his deeds in life and all of the mythologizing that had sprung up around him after his death.

    The first EX rank Noble Phantasm we had ever encountered.

    Not all EX rank Noble Phantasms are equal, I could remember Marie explaining to me. Some of them, she said, were only marked the way they were because the concept underpinning them was too esoteric to rank so cleanly. That was why things like Reality Marbles got automatic EX rankings in Chaldea¡¯s system, just because their limits were so impossible to measure that they didn¡¯t fit on the scale.

    And then there were the ones that earned that ranking honestly, the ones whose underlying mystery was so powerful that it broke the scale. Things that didn¡¯t just rewrite the rules of reality, but ripped them apart. Things that had been built from the remains of an ancient god or channeled their Authority to lay waste to entire countries at once. Things that were so inviolate that they made the Siberian look weak and vulnerable.

    The idea that Nikola fucking Tesla had one of those was so profoundly mind-boggling that it made me want to scream about the ridiculousness of it all.

    ¡°Bastard!¡± Mordred shouted over at Tesla. ¡°What¡¯s the fucking idea? You almost got us with that!¡±

    ¡°My apologies!¡± Tesla boomed. ¡°I allowed my distemper and my pride as an inventor to get the better of me! Next time, I shall endeavor to inform you before making use of my Noble Phantasm!¡±

    ¡°Next time¡­!¡± Mordred snarled.

    ¡°Can it, British!¡± Jeanne Alter snapped at her. ¡°We¡¯ve got somewhere we need to be, don¡¯t we? Boss Lady, that psycho bitch is still heading towards the palace, isn¡¯t she?¡±

    ¡°Y-yes!¡± Marie ground out. She sounded like she wanted to start yelling at Tesla, too. ¡°There¡¯s¡­another Saint Graph reading that we don¡¯t have any record for that looks like it¡¯s intercepted her, but her overall direction hasn¡¯t changed. She¡¯s already made it nearly halfway there as it is!¡±

    Another Saint Graph? So another Servant had been summoned? What, another chain summoning, piggybacking off of both King Arthur and Tesla? Was Project Demonic Fog really that close to being finished, or was the situation really that close to catastrophe that the Counter Force was throwing everything it could at the situation to stop it from ending badly?

    Neither possibility was good news, not for us, not for what it meant for how bad things were. But the addition of two more Servants to fight an enemy like that wasn¡¯t an unwelcome one.

    ¡°Then we need to get moving,¡± Ritsuka said determinedly.

    ¡°Yes, we do.¡± I turned to Tesla. ¡°If you can work with us without almost killing us again, then stay with us and help us stop the last Servant who was summoned to destroy this era. If you don¡¯t think you can manage it, then run your energy down and disappear to save us the trouble.¡±

    ¡°Ouch,¡± Emiya said with a wince.

    It was blunt, but we didn¡¯t have time to observe all of the niceties and sweet talk him into helping. Either he joined up now and lent a hand or he stayed out of trouble until it was all over, and if he made it to the end, I could apologize for being so brisk later.

    ¡°Hmph!¡± said Tesla. ¡°My understanding of things is that you and your group are here on the side of proper history, yes? You are here to protect London and Britain from the dastardly plans of whoever it was that built this monstrosity? In that case, it would make us allies in a common cause, and I would be remiss to ignore the wisdom of those who have been fighting this battle from the start!¡±

    I was going to take that as a yes and assume he was going to help us fight King Arthur, and I turned to address our own group. ¡°We don¡¯t have time to do this the long way. Arash, Emiya, Mash, just like back in Orl¨¦ans.¡±

    Rika grimaced. ¡°Oh man. This is gonna suck.¡±

    ¡°Orl¨¦ans?¡± Jekyll asked curiously.

    Instead of answering his question directly, I addressed Nursery Rhyme, ¡°Can you carry Tohsaka with the Jabberwocky?¡±

    She smiled broadly. ¡°Like a princess?¡±

    If she wanted to think of it that way, then, ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Hold on!¡± Tohsaka began.

    But this wasn¡¯t a debate, this was logistics, and I wasn¡¯t going to turn it into an argument.

    ¡°Us Masters are always going to slow the Servants down if we try to get there on our own,¡± I told him. ¡°The only way we can keep up is if they carry us, and Flamel has to carry Ren¨¦e, Sir Mordred ¡ª¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got Fran,¡± she volunteered.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran grunted gratefully.

    ¡°Andersen ¡ª¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m too short in this body to carry an adult like you or Jekyll,¡± Andersen said bluntly, before I could even explain exactly that.

    ¡°Although it would be really funny to watch you try,¡± Rika added.

    ¡°Jackie can¡¯t carry you for the same reason.¡±

    ¡°We could,¡± said Jackie, ¡°but we couldn¡¯t promise it would be comfortable, Mister Tohsaka.¡±

    ¡°Queen Hippolyta ¡ª¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t have much magical energy left,¡± the woman in question admitted. ¡°In fact, I may disappear before we even arrive at the site of the battle.¡±

    Her Noble Phantasm must have taken a lot out of her.

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Jeanne Alter, aggrieved, ¡°that means I have to carry the Doc, don¡¯t it? Fucking¡­damn it.¡±

    ¡°I shall ferry the good doctor there myself, if need be,¡± Tesla said as he came to join us. ¡°It is no trouble at all!¡±

    ¡°It¡­seems I shall be in your care, then,¡± Jekyll said hesitantly.

    Tohsaka eyed Jeanne Alter for a moment, and then scowled. ¡°Fine.¡±

    ¡°Yay!¡± Nursery Rhyme cheered, giggling. ¡°Jabberwocky, let¡¯s go! Papa gets to be a princess!¡±

    ¡°Then if there are no objections¡­¡±

    There weren¡¯t any. Half of us had faced this sort of problem before and knew the score and the other half didn¡¯t have any better ideas, so no one could argue the plan.

    ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±

    We grouped up, and the Servants picked up their assigned passenger with varying levels of ease. Mash, Emiya, and Arash, of course, had no problems, since we¡¯d done this back in the Orl¨¦ans Singularity to travel over a much greater distance, but Tohsaka wasn¡¯t very excited to have the Jabberwocky pick him up, Fran and Mordred had to figure out how to work around Mordred¡¯s armor, and Jekyll was very obviously not all that comfortable being carried around by another man like that.

    Once we were all settled, however, the group took off, with Mash, Arash, and Emiya setting the pace as they raced up the bottom of the hole that King Arthur¡¯s lance had gouged out of the earth. We rose steadily on the incline, and the true extent of the damage started to become obvious the further up we went.

    The tunnel we had originally entered on the Central Line had gone south towards Westminster a short ways before spiraling directly downwards and into the evil fairy¡¯s castle, and the front doors of the castle itself had opened out into a northwards tunnel that led into the giant cavern. All told, by the end of it, Angrboea itself was only fifty yards or so northwest of being directly under Holborn Station and something like two-hundred meters below the city streets.

    And the tunnel carved by Rhongomyniad went all the way up those two-hundred meters, erasing everything in its path with callous indifference. The hole in the ground that we came out of was large enough to have fit Lancelot¡¯s Joyeuse Garde comfortably and then some, including everything from the curtain wall to the keep.

    The last time we had seen devastation on a scale anything like this, Altera had erased almost the entirety of Romulus¡¯s fake Rome.

    When we came out of that tunnel, it was onto the remains of a devastated street that sat on the edge of the gaping maw in the ground. Looking over Arash¡¯s shoulder, I had a perfect view of the enormous hole that had been gouged out of the city, including the halfway collapsed buildings that sat along the outer edges and hinted at exactly how much damage had been done.

    ¡°All of those people¡­¡± I heard Ritsuka whisper, horrified.

    ¡°Director,¡± I began into my communicator.

    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°There!¡± Rika cried, pointing into the distance, and when I turned to follow her finger, I saw what she must have seen ¡ª flashes of golden light in the distance, heralding jolts of electricity that leapt up into the sky. They were too far away still to really hear the fighting itself, but the crack and sizzle of each bolt as it made its journey upwards was still loud enough to echo like buzzing static.

    ¡°Well, what are we fucking waiting for?¡± Jeanne Alter said, and she took off before anyone could even think to try and stop her.

    ¡°Go!¡± I ordered. The word hadn¡¯t even finished leaving my mouth before the rest of our group leapt after her, following her lead as she jumped from rooftop to rooftop, bypassing the streets entirely. Beneath us, the jarring and sudden drop in insect life told even more of the tale of what had happened when Rhongomyniad ripped through the city streets. How many had died, huddling in their homes to escape the fog, starving and completely unaware of what was coming.

    The only way for us to help them now was to fix this Singularity and get history back on track, and there was only one more enemy standing in the way of that.

    As we got closer to the fight, the metallic ring of clashing steel rang out like bells, growing louder and harsher every second. The bursts of magical energy became just as obvious not a second later, sharp and sudden surges as the two Servants attacked each other with what had to be everything shy of their Noble Phantasms.

    That, at least, was a small mercy. This Lancer version of King Arthur wasn¡¯t hooked up to a Grail, not directly, and that meant that she couldn¡¯t just throw around her Noble Phantasm whenever she wanted to. She had to build up to it, ration her magical energy, so we didn¡¯t have to worry about her spamming it at us until she wore away at our defenses enough to score a killing blow. And if she had to save enough to make sure she could set off the fog above Buckingham Palace, then that was even better.

    We just had to make sure we were ready for when she did fire off her Noble Phantasm again.

    Arash and all the others brought us to an abrupt halt as the rooftops ahead of us stretched behind a yawning gap, and down below, instead of more buildings, there was ¡ª

    St. James¡¯ Square, I realized. This was where we¡¯d fought Nursery Rhyme, only it looked like a tornado had ripped through it, tearing up trees and twisting the wrought iron fencing into knots. And there, now, an entirely new fight was taking place, with King Arthur on one side, still mounted upon her horse, and on the other, a¡­blond man in slacks, a button-up shirt, and dress shoes, wielding a giant, golden ax? What?

    ¡°GOLDEN!¡± the blond man shouted, and with the crackle of more electricity, he swung his ax down heavily. King Arthur was forced to dodge, to the indignant protest of her horse, which twisted out of the way and contorted in a way that couldn¡¯t have been comfortable for a horse.

    ¡°The hell is that guy?¡± Mordred demanded.

    I wished I had any idea. A quick look said Berserker, but the way he dressed was way, way too modern for a Heroic Spirit with stats as strong as his were. He could have had an arm-wrestling match with Herakles.

    ¡°Who the fuck cares?¡± Jeanne Alter shot back, and then she leapt towards the fray. ¡°HEY, YOU ENGLISH BITCH, TIME FOR SOME GOOD, OLD-FASHIONED REVENGE!¡±

    ¡°Shit!¡± Mordred waffled for a second, looking back and forth between Fran in her arms and Jeanne Alter jumping into the fight, and eventually settled on setting Fran down so she could follow. ¡°Wait for me! That¡¯s my revenge you¡¯re getting in the middle of!¡±

    Seriously? Now, of all times?

    Hippolyta gave me a look, grimacing, and all I could do was nod and watch her follow after the other two. If she was that low on energy, then she would have seconds at best before she faded away and we had to resummon her. There was no point in splitting hairs about her running on ahead.

    ¡°Mash,¡± said Arash, ¡°it¡¯s going to be dangerous down there, so I¡¯m relying on you to keep the Masters safe.¡±

    Mash nodded. ¡°Right!¡±

    ¡°Heh!¡± Emiya chuckled. ¡°You know, for a pair of Archers, we sure seem to get into a lot of close range fights!¡±

    ¡°It can¡¯t be helped!¡± Arash replied.

    And then we were down on the street below, looking into the ruined mess of what had once been a small park, with Mash hurriedly setting Ritsuka down so she could place herself at the front of the group.

    ¡°So what¡¯s the plan?¡± Rika asked as soon as we had all climbed down from our ¡°rides.¡±

    ¡°We wear her down until someone can make the killing blow.¡±

    ¡°Simple,¡± Rika remarked. ¡°I like simple! Simple is hard to screw up!¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t have any better ideas?¡± Tohsaka asked grumpily.

    Several. They required a lot more coordination than we¡¯d had time to plan for, though, so there was no point in trying any of them, not when it didn¡¯t need to be any more complicated than just waiting for the opportunity to show itself and take her out.

    ¡°Keep it simple, stupid,¡± Ritsuka summarized for me.

    Tohsaka looked vaguely insulted. So I clarified: ¡°It¡¯s a modern saying about the importance of avoiding overly complicated plans when something easy and simple will work and work better.¡±

    It didn¡¯t exactly mollify him, but at least he didn¡¯t look like we¡¯d just cursed at him or something.

    Apprised of our plan, basic as it was, Emiya and Arash both leapt away in opposite directions to seek out vantage points on the buildings that surrounded the park, although Tesla ¡ª who was also an Archer for some reason instead of a Caster like Babbage ¡ª stayed closer to us. He watched the fight with narrowed eyes and a thin-lipped frown.

    It wasn¡¯t like there was much room for him to do anything. The fighters were dancing around each other so tightly that he risked hitting one of ours as much as he might have been able to hurt King Arthur, and although Arthur wasn¡¯t managing to hold Mordred, Jeanne Alter, Hippolyta, and the new Berserker off with quite as much ease as Altera had, her fighting style was more refined and her lance had more reach than Altera¡¯s sword, as long as Altera¡¯s sword stayed the length and shape it was supposed to.

    Her horse was also ludicrously agile. I would have thought that riding it would have limited her mobility some, forced her to engage in frontal, direct assaults the way cavalry had traditionally been used, but that thing had to be breaking several laws of physics with how quickly and nimbly it could change directions without snapping its knees or tumbling over.

    How jealous Dragon would have been to see something like that. Or maybe inspired to tinker up some new, more ridiculous piece of tech for her Dragoncraft.

    Worse, King Arthur¡¯s armor was incredibly sturdy, and for how ornamented it looked, it had apparently been exquisitely designed. Emiya¡¯s arrows just disintegrated outright, and Arash¡¯s were bouncing off, deflecting off the surface of her chestplate without doing any damage at all. If I didn¡¯t know any better, I would have thought that her armor was also a Noble Phantasm, and it would have fit ¡ª

    No, wait. Something like this had happened back in Fuyuki, too, hadn¡¯t it?

    Arash, I asked him, are your arrows actually hitting her armor at all?

    There was a moment of silence from his end, and another brace of arrows flew from his bow. King Arthur barely paid them any mind as she dodged around another swing from Mordred and out of the path of a gout of flame from Jeanne Alter, and they all bounced off of her armor again as though each one wasn¡¯t powerful enough to shatter stone.

    No, Arash answered. They¡¯re being deflected before they even make contact.

    I was afraid of that.

    ¡°She¡¯s using her Mana Burst skill to blunt any attacks that come her way.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Rika complained. ¡°That¡¯s cheating!¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± he brother said, ¡°didn¡¯t Saber Alter do that against C¨²chulainn¡¯s Noble Phantasm back in Fuyuki?¡±

    ¡°She did.¡±

    And she¡¯d managed to offset enough of the damage to buy herself the time to heal and use Excalibur against us. Only the Lancer version¡¯s skill was twice as effective as Saber Alter¡¯s had been, and that must have been more than enough for her to match Berserker¡¯s equally ridiculous raw strength.

    I might have miscalculated. With her Mana Burst skill that high and her magical energy capacity nearly as high as Saber Alter¡¯s had been, it was entirely possible that she could use her Noble Phantasm in rapid succession. Not constantly, maybe not even consecutively, but quickly enough that she could overwhelm us if we weren¡¯t prepared for it.

    ¡°It¡¯s incredible,¡± Mash said quietly. ¡°Saber Alter had so much magical energy because she was drawing power from the Holy Grail that Professor Lev left behind inside the Singularity, and yet, even without that, she still has so much power.¡±

    ¡°Goddammit, stay still!¡± Mordred shouted.

    King Arthur remained completely silent as she dodged Mordred¡¯s blow into what should have been the path of Berserker¡¯s ax, but that lance came back around and deflected the ax into the ground, kicking up a plume of dirt and carving another crater into the already ruined park. Jeanne Alter coming up behind her was sent flying backwards by a kick to the gut by the horse, like it was so in tune with its rider that it knew exactly what to do.

    Maybe it did. I¡¯d never asked A¨ªfe or Hippolyta ¡ª and there she went, vanishing halfway into her next attack ¡ª but at high enough levels of that Riding skill, did the steed become like an extension of the rider? Considering how much conceptual nonsense Servants had going for them, it wouldn¡¯t have surprised me.

    ¡°Hmph,¡± Tesla harrumphed. ¡°Heroic Spirits of the Earth and Heaven are indeed quite powerful, but this era is an era of mankind. The only Heroic Spirits that belong in this era are those who embody the brilliance of man!¡±

    Bursts of static leapt between the fingers of his metal gauntlet as though to punctuate his statement.

    Fran grunted, ¡°Uhn. Uh-ah-uh-uhn. Uh-uhn?¡±

    ¡°Now that you mention it,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°the fog is starting to thin a little bit, isn¡¯t it? Maybe Mister Tesla broke something important in Angrboea earlier.¡±

    Tohsaka twitched, but I barely paid it any mind, because it¡­was, actually. Along the outer edges and closer to us, the fog was starting to thin out, and the shapes of the buildings around us were becoming clearer, until it was actually possible to distinguish the edges of the rooftops and even make out the brickwork on some of the closer ones. Strangely, though, the fight itself was only getting harder to see. The lines were becoming fuzzier, the colors more muted, almost like¡­

    ¡°Thank god,¡± said Rika. ¡°That smell sucks so much.¡±

    No. Son of a bitch, she didn¡¯t fucking need the Grail, did she?

    ¡°Back up!¡± I ordered. ¡°Mash, get ready!¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor?¡± she asked, confused.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°She¡¯s absorbing the fog!¡± I told them. ¡°That means she can use it to ¡ª¡±

    Across the park, each of the red spikes jutting out of King Arthur¡¯s lance suddenly shattered, and the shaft of the lance began to spin. A swirling vortex of black light started to form, growing larger, brighter, and more violent as it picked up steam ¡ª both figuratively and, as I had just realized, literally.

    And she pointed it not at any of our Servants, not at Mordred or Jeanne Alter or even the Berserker that were harrying her, not even at Arash or Emiya, but instead, she pointed it at us, at their Masters, the ones holding their metaphorical strings and keeping them in this world. Whatever Madness Enhancement had done to her, it hadn¡¯t been enough to rob her of her tactical and strategic acumen, that much was for sure.

    Mash hurried to plant her shield in front of the group. ¡°Lord ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Mash!¡± Ritsuka shouted, holding out his hand again. His Command Spells glowed bright red. ¡°Protect us with your Noble Phantasm!¡±

    ¡°Chaldeas!¡±

    And the familiar rampart formed, creating a protective barrier that would shield us from the incoming blast. It covered me, the twins, Fran, Tohsaka, and even the Jabberwocky and Bandersnatch that had been standing silent guard over Nursery Rhyme, who had kept them in reserve the entire fight.

    All except for Tesla, who walked out in front of it like it wouldn¡¯t get him killed.

    ¡°Mister Tesla!¡± Mash cried.

    ¡°What are you doing, Sparky?¡± Rika squawked. ¡°You¡¯re gonna get yourself killed!¡±

    But Tesla just laughed. ¡°Killed? By something like this? Don¡¯t be absurd!¡±

    Jolts of electricity crackled along his body, bouncing up and down between him and the ground before focusing on his gauntleted right arm. A ring of bright, purple plasma spun above his palm as he lifted up his arm and aimed for King Arthur, pulling into a tighter, smaller ball as it got faster and faster. The high-pitched whine of a Tesla coil grew louder and louder.

    ¡°O ancient hero,¡± he said, shouting over both the sound of his own Noble Phantasm charging and the whirlwind of Rhongomyniad doing the same, ¡°fall back into slumber! Now is the time we humans weave our own mythos!¡±

    ¡°Rhongo ¡ª¡±

    ¡°System ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª myniad.¡±

    ¡°Keraunos!¡±

    Mordred, Jeanne Alter, and Berserker all got clear just in time as the beam of plasma lashed out and met the vortex of black light in the middle. Bolts of lightning leapt out from the point of collision, and the two blasts seemed to hang in the air for a moment, a single heartbeat where they were perfectly equal and perfectly matched, unstoppable force against unstoppable force.

    But that much raw power being tossed around couldn¡¯t simply fizzle out when they met. The moment ended, and both blasts detonated with the force of a bomb, and an earth-shaking BOOM echoed across the park, loud enough and forceful enough to shatter the windows of every house within what had to be a mile in every direction. The backlash swept over us, nowhere near enough to do much of anything to Lord Chaldeas but more than enough to toss our hair about in the wind.

    When the light faded and the dust started to settle, Lord Chaldeas fading away from in front of us, what was left behind was an enormous crater that took up most of the space where the park had been, a divot in the ground where once there had been grass and trees and pavement. Even the remnants of the gateway and the iron fence had been utterly destroyed, leaving nothing behind at all.

    Tesla was unharmed. Drained and panting from the effort of using such a powerful Noble Phantasm, but he hadn¡¯t been injured in the exchange of blows. Unfortunately, neither had King Arthur, whose face remained impassive. Whether she was shocked at having been countered or if it had all been some kind of tactical ploy to remove Tesla from play, at least for the moment, there was no way to tell. Her face could have been carved from stone.

    ¡°You¡¯re open, Father!¡± shouted Mordred as she leapt at King Arthur, sword raised. The prongs on the bottom flared out again, and red light flowed up the blade. ¡°Clarent ¡ª¡±

    King Arthur didn¡¯t dodge. Instead, she closed the distance in a flash, moving so fast that she seemed to teleport to Mordred, and her lance lashed out ¡ª

    ¡°MO-CHAN!¡± Rika cried even as Fran let out a shout.

    ¡ª stabbing straight through Mordred¡¯s armor and into her gut. The rest of what Mordred had to say was cut off by the blood that spurted out of her mouth instead, and as she reached for the shaft of the lance impaling her, the light surging up her sword flickered and died.

    ¡°Guh!¡±

    King Arthur lifted Mordred up with her lance, gazing pitilessly at the girl who had attempted to overthrow her in life, and didn¡¯t seem to have any feelings at all about it. She might have been looking at a fly she was about to swat for all of the emotion she showed. Mordred made an attempt to swing her sword, but she didn¡¯t have enough reach; the tip swiped impotently at thin air, missing King Arthur¡¯s face by at least six inches.

    I made a judgment call. ¡°Mordred, come here!¡±

    One of my Command Spells flashed and faded, and Mordred suddenly vanished from the tip of Rhongomyniad and reappeared in the middle of our group. She fell to the ground with a gasp, landing with a clatter on her back instead of upright on her feet.

    ¡°You bitch!¡± Jeanne Alter snarled, leaping back into the fight herself.

    ¡°Not golden!¡± Berserker agreed as he, too, rejoined the melee.

    The cadence of the earlier battle returned, only one short from how it had been. Of course, King Arthur seemed to have an even easier time without Mordred there to split her focus with. One less enemy for her to worry about.

    Maybe not for long, it turned out, because Mordred climbed to her feet without too much difficulty. Blood poured from her wound, but she didn¡¯t seem to be in any danger of disappearing anytime soon. With her Battle Continuation, I guess it was going to take a whole lot more than that to take her out.

    ¡°Damn it, that smarts!¡± Mordred ground out through gritted teeth. ¡°That bitch ¡ª she knew exactly what she was doing when she aimed for that spot!¡±

    ¡°Mo-chan!¡± Rika said. ¡°U-um, shouldn¡¯t you be, you know, taking it easy?¡±

    ¡°Heh!¡± Mordred spat out a glob of blood. ¡°I¡¯m not going down that easy! Father¡¯s going to have to work for it if she wants to kill me a second time! It ain¡¯t gonna be as simple as stabbing me in the same spot with that fucking spear!¡± She winced. ¡°Though, yeah, this is gonna bite me in the ass later on. Damn it. I left myself open.¡±

    ¡°With a wound like that¡­¡± Flamel said grimly.

    ¡°She has Battle Continuation,¡± Ritsuka explained simply. And then he pointed a hand at her and incanted, ¡°First Aid!¡±

    I wasn¡¯t sure how much good it would do for such a severe wound, but, ¡°First Aid!¡±

    Belatedly, Rika joined in with a late, ¡°First Aid!¡±

    As the healing effects washed over her, Mordred breathed a little easier. They did not, it needed to be said, heal the wound completely, but it shrunk a little and the edges softened, and I think that was about as much as I could have expected with what we had on hand. Just then, Medea would have been incredibly useful to have with us, or failing that, knowing the runic spell A¨ªfe used to heal herself.

    That was going to have to be the first set I mastered. As useful as the flashbangs could be, being able to heal more severe wounds was going to be more important going forward.

    ¡°Thanks, guys,¡± Mordred said tightly, grinning ruefully. ¡°That oughta be enough¡­for me to at least finish out this fight!¡±

    ¡°So hasty,¡± Flamel said with a deep sigh. ¡°The others have things handled for the moment, so the least you could do is let me fix you up before you go running off to get yourself killed.¡±

    He shifted his grip on Ren¨¦e just enough to let him reach out and place his hand on Mordred¡¯s armored shoulder. She looked back at him, surprised. ¡°Gramps?¡±

    ¡°Human flesh is rather more complicated to deal with,¡± Flamel said, brow furrowed in concentration. A red light began to glow beneath his fingers. ¡°Servants, however, are shells of magical energy given form by the structure of their Saint Graphs, and so it should be a simple enough thing to repair the damage to that shell by reconnecting the severed ends¡­¡±

    Whether it was as simple as he said or not, the difference didn¡¯t turn out to matter all that much, because Mordred¡¯s wound slowly closed, and the bloody hole in her gut disappeared, replaced with smooth, healthy skin. She took in a sharp breath almost like a gasp, and when he was done and pulled his hand away, she patted the spot with hers, amazed.

    ¡°Fucking nice,¡± she said with a toothy grin. ¡°You¡¯re something else, Gramps!¡±

    He gave her a wry smile. ¡°I try.¡±

    A moment later, her shattered armor filled back in, too, because of course, it was also made of magical energy, so it was as simple as filling in the gaps to repair it. She was as good as new.

    Mordred straightened, at ease, and hefted her sword. ¡°Alright! Time to get back out there and kick Father¡¯s teeth in!¡±

    ¡°Wait.¡±

    She jerked to a halt before she could even really get moving. ¡°Yeah?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got a plan.¡±

    Her brow furrowed. ¡°Thought you already had one of those. It weren¡¯t going super great, was it?¡±

    I buried the flash of annoyance. ¡°A new plan, then. Arthur seems to have it in for you in particular, so I want you to get her attention as much as you can.¡±

    Granted, that stab to the gut wasn¡¯t much to go on, not when Arthur hadn¡¯t paid any special attention to Mordred aside from that, but it could very easily have been a stab to the throat, and that would have been a whole lot more dangerous and a whole lot more instantly fatal. That she had recreated the wound that had originally killed Mordred instead couldn¡¯t have been a coincidence.

    ¡°Yeah?¡± said Mordred, unconvinced. ¡°And what am I doing that for, exactly?¡±

    I reached out and laid a hand atop Jackie¡¯s head, and she looked up at me curiously.

    ¡°So that Jackie can sneak up behind her and kill her while she¡¯s distracted.¡±

    Understanding dawned in Mordred¡¯s eyes, and slowly, that toothy grin of hers stretched across her face.

    ¡°Alright,¡± she said. ¡°Can¡¯t say I¡¯m all that fond of the idea of someone else getting my kill, but if Father wants to play dirty, I say, fuck it, let¡¯s play fucking dirty. Right, Master?¡±

    Against the greatest king Britain had ever known, wielding a Noble Phantasm easily capable of wiping the whole damn city off of the map? One she was perfectly willing to use strategically and tactically to achieve multiple objectives at once, and one she wasn¡¯t afraid to use to take out us Masters instead of targeting the Servants?

    Yes, absolutely, I was willing to fight dirty. Forget about all of that ¡ª the fate of the world was at stake, and the future of all of mankind hung in the balance. We couldn¡¯t afford to pass up a chance to end this, however we wound up doing it.

    ¡°Right.¡±

    ¡°Just be careful, Mo-chan,¡± Rika said. ¡°Command Spells don¡¯t grow on trees, you know! We can only rescue you like that a few more times.¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran grunted. ¡°Uh-uhn-uhn.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± Mordred turned back towards the fighting. ¡°Just make sure that murder tyke is ready to go, yeah? I¡¯ll keep Father distracted, but she can¡¯t halfass it if you really want this to work!¡± She glanced back at Jackie. ¡°Got that?¡±

    Jackie tilted her head. ¡°It¡¯s misty. It¡¯s night. We¡¯ll be attacking from her blindspot. We won¡¯t miss.¡±

    ¡°See that you don¡¯t!¡±

    And with that parting line, she raced back off into the action, blazing a trail through the fog as a streak of red light. King Arthur, as though she had been waiting, met her furious charge with a swipe of her lance, and the cadence of the fight shifted once more.

    A moment later, Jackie disappeared from my side.

    This was it. We had a plan. We knew what the enemy was capable of. Now all we had to do was execute it.

    Hopefully, it really would be that simple.

 Chapter CLIX: Station of the Grand

    Chapter CLIX: Station of the Grand

    Simple wasn¡¯t the same thing as easy. Against a different kind of enemy, the original plan ¡ª wearing her down and taking the killing shot the instant she was too slow to react ¡ª would have gone off without a hitch anyway, but King Arthur continued to draw in power from the fog. She was replenishing her magical energy as quickly as she expended it, and as long as Angrboea still worked, she had functionally infinite power to throw around. Wearing her down in any reasonable timeframe was literally impossible.

    But now that we knew she could draw on the fog for energy, we just had to make sure she never got enough space to charge up her Noble Phantasm again. A tall order, maybe, but we had three Servants keeping her occupied in melee, one resting to recover his own energy, and two Archers who had a clear enough line of sight to take aim the instant she tried anything ¡ª there was no way Emiya, now that he¡¯d seen her do it himself, would let her have the chance again.

    For all of the advantages we had now, though, she was still King Arthur, and between her raw power, her ability to ignore most hits by blunting them with her ridiculous stores of energy, and her skill as a warrior, she was holding up better than she had any right to. Maybe it had something to do with having been summoned in Britain, in London, even, where her mythology was at its strongest and so much of the culture accepted her as being the greatest in all of history.

    Either way, it was uncomfortably similar to watching Behemoth fight. The way she shrugged off whatever hit her, the way attacks would just glance off of her without doing anything at all, the way she was just a bottomless well of energy. Not completely the same, not even really close, but any comparison to an Endbringer wasn¡¯t a good thing.

    King Arthur did, however, focus much more on combating Mordred than on anyone else. It was almost like the fact that Mordred had been healed and came back to rejoin the battle none the worse for wear insulted her, and to some degree, it seemed to make her more reckless. She wasn¡¯t dodging as many attacks from Jeanne Alter as she had been, instead taking them on her armor and letting them dissipate against the wall of mana that was exuding from her skin, all so that she could pay more attention to her¡­whatever Mordred was to her.

    The legends said son, but although Mordred would probably get pissed at being called her daughter, she didn¡¯t have any trouble with female pronouns, so¡­

    Not important. I could think about that later.

    The problem was, even though she was focusing more on Mordred, King Arthur still wasn¡¯t really leaving any openings. Her letting Jeanne Alter or Berserker¡¯s attacks hit her was always calculated, a slight shift so that the blow would strike at the best spot on her armor to take it, and any attack that would hit someplace more vulnerable was actually dodged or parried instead.

    There was, however, one attack that would definitely leave her open, and with her focusing more on Mordred now, maybe it would be possible to pull off.

    I tugged on my connection to Mordred: Be ready to disengage. Make sure you don¡¯t get caught in Jeanne Alter¡¯s Noble Phantasm.

    It was impossible to see Mordred¡¯s expression from this angle, and things were too intense for her to take the time to glance back at me over her shoulder, but the tense response I got was, Got it. Hope you know what you¡¯re doing.

    Next, I connected to Jeanne Alter and asked, Do you have enough energy left for your Noble Phantasm?

    What are you even asking? she replied immediately. Of course I do!

    Then back up and hit King Arthur with it, I told her. We need to create an opening to get her with something that¡¯ll stick.

    She didn¡¯t scoff, but her response was an abrasive, Like my Noble Phantasm won¡¯t do that!

    But she didn¡¯t say no, and a moment later, she broke off from the fighting and put some space between her and the battle. At the back of the ruined mess of what was once a park, she lifted her sword, and a ring of flame burst to life around her feet.

    ¡°This is the howl of a soul consumed by hatred!¡± she cried.

    ¡°Hey, Golden Guy!¡± Mordred called. ¡°Hem her in!¡±

    ¡°You got it!¡± Berserker agreed, which was surprisingly coherent of him. Then again, his Madness Enhancement was only Rank E, so whether it even did anything at all was a good question.

    Mordred went in low, aiming a powerful swing not for Arthur herself, but for the horse¡¯s legs, too low for Arthur to block or deflect the blow (a swift and smart ¡°Momentary Reinforcement!¡± from Ritsuka gave weight and strength to her attack). The horse leapt backwards with more of its impossible grace, and Berserker followed it back, one of the segments of his ax glowing and sparking as he hefted it up over his shoulder.

    Up in the sky, through the clouds of fog that still settled over the city like a pall, thunder rumbled, and when Berserker swung his ax down in a heavy blow that would have been more than enough to cleave the horse¡¯s head clean off ¡ª ¡°Golden Spark!¡± ¡ª a bolt of bright yellow lightning leapt down from the sky and struck the head of the ax right as it slammed home.

    Arthur obviously knew better than to let herself get hit by a Noble Phantasm like that, and she and her horse were just fractions of a second too quick to get hit by Berserker¡¯s ax and the lightning bolt that it called down.

    But Berserker had aimed to miss intentionally, and Arthur¡¯s horse landed ¡ª

    ¡°La Grondement du Haine!¡±

    ¡ª right in the path of Jeanne Alter¡¯s flame.

    There was no time for them to escape, not that they didn¡¯t try. The trail of fire had already surged forth, already found its target, and by the time Arthur realized what she had just landed in, it was too late. Right as her horse was leaving the ground again, gouts of flame leapt up into the air around her like prison bars, caging her in, and while that might not have been enough on its own, the stakes that erupted out of the ground and stabbed straight through the horse¡¯s chest and legs like fish hooks were.

    The horse that had remained mostly silent this entire battle let out a distressed whinny, but as the pillars of fire blazed higher and hotter and closed in, more stakes surged up and stabbed into its body as red blood spurted from its wounds. Both horse and rider disappeared behind a curtain of flame, and seconds later, as the roar grew to a fever pitch, the horse¡¯s cries fell silent.

    But before the flames could bank and die, King Arthur appeared from within them like a dragon from Hell, flying out of the twister of fire as embers licked impotently at her armor. Her horse was gone, and magical energy so dense it was visible clung to her armor as she sped towards Jeanne Alter so quickly she was little more than a blur.

    ¡°Shit!¡±

    Rhongomyniad stabbed for Jeanne Alter¡¯s gut the same way it had Mordred¡¯s, and Jeanne Alter had to scramble out of the way ¡ª

    ¡°Emergency Evasion!¡± Rika shouted.

    The spell carried Jeanne Alter to safety, and instead of goring her, Arthur¡¯s spear went through empty air. Arthur, however, didn¡¯t let up, and she followed Jeanne Alter with more attacks, more frenzied and more furious than anything we¡¯d yet seen from her.

    ¡°You really fucking pissed her off with that!¡± Mordred called as she gave chase. ¡°She loved that horse like it was family!¡±

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t my fucking idea!¡± Jeanne Alter shot back. She had to dodge another jab, this one aimed at her throat. ¡°Shit!¡±

    ¡°Alice,¡± Tohsaka said, ¡°send the Jabberwocky. Give them a hand.¡±

    ¡°Okay, Papa,¡± Alice agreed. ¡°Jabberwocky, go play!¡±

    And just like that, the Jabberwocky leapt into the fray, too, bearing down on Arthur like a grizzly bear. Arthur treated it contemptuously at first, planting Rhongomyniad in its chest right where its heart was supposed to be, but Jabberwocky, as expected, completely ignored the damage and swung one of its massive fists at her head. She was forced to dodge back and away, and I could only imagine she didn¡¯t try and take it head on because she was smart enough not to take a hit from something whose strength she didn¡¯t know anything about.

    Mordred and Berserker pressed the advantage, and without her horse, she was much easier to corral and had a much harder time keeping ahead of everyone. She was still avoiding taking any strong hits and could still let weaker ones fizzle against her armor, but Mordred, Jeanne Alter, Berserker, and now the Jabberwocky could get in closer, where her lance struggled because it wasn¡¯t meant for combat at that range.

    When a bad dodge saw her land awkwardly on the lip of the crater Rhongomyniad and Tesla¡¯s Noble Phantasm had created, I knew there was going to be no better opportunity.

    Jackie, now!

    And as Arthur made a desperate, broad swipe to cover her moment of vulnerability, a small shape appeared from behind her, radiating a dark and malevolent aura, more like a curse than anything else. A shiver went down my spine ¡ª it felt familiar, even though I¡¯d never seen it before in my life.

    ¡°Maria,¡± Jackie whispered, but her voice carried anyway, ¡°the Ripper.¡±

    Arthur tried to turn and defend herself, but Jackie ducked low beneath the lance and stabbed one of her knives deep ¡ª not into Arthur¡¯s armored belly or chest, but underneath the armored skirt and into a vulnerable thigh, where the sturdy plates didn¡¯t cover.

    On a living person, it would have been a dangerous blow, especially if it severed the femoral artery. On a Servant, however, something like that would have been brushed off without too much trouble, little more than an annoyance.

    But Maria the Ripper wasn¡¯t a physical attack, it was a curse. It didn¡¯t really matter where the knife struck, only that it did strike.

    And Arthur staggered. Red blood surged out of her mouth, and her entire body trembled as she struggled to stay standing. Another cough saw more blood spill past her lips, and she covered it with one hand as though that would be enough to keep it all in. How much damage Jackie had done with that, I could only begin to imagine, because I knew if that had hit me or Rika, regardless of where, we would have been dead instantly.

    At nighttime, in the mist, against a female target? That was as strong as Jackie¡¯s Noble Phantasm could be.

    My gut squirmed. I¡¯d been counting on it being an instant kill, in fact, but Arthur wasn¡¯t dead. For that matter, she wasn¡¯t even fading. I knew that she was made of sterner stuff than me or Rika just as a matter of her being a Servant and a Heroic Spirit from a magic-heavy legend. Was her Magic Resistance really so incredible that she could survive that, however badly it had injured her?

    It didn¡¯t wind up mattering. Mordred, seeing her chance, leapt in, sword crackling with bolts of red lightning as light surged up the blade. As Jackie leapt out of the way, Mordred came down ¡ª

    ¡°Clarent Blood Arthur!¡±

    ¡ª and unleashed the full might of her Noble Phantasm directly into Arthur¡¯s face.

    For a moment, a brilliant flash lit up the ruined park, casting a glow on the fog as the blast blew it back and created a pocket of clear air. The thunderous boom of Mordred¡¯s Noble Phantasm detonating against the already destroyed ground echoed and shook the remains of the street where us Masters were standing, and I squinted against the glare that was too bright even for my mask to completely dampen.

    When it was over, Mordred stood alone in a divot carved into the ground, one much smaller than I would have expected, given how destructive her Noble Phantasm had proven to be in the past. Crackles of red electricity danced around the dirt and over her arms and shoulders, fading completely a few seconds later. Of King Arthur and her incredible lance, there was no sign. She had been erased ¡ª even her powerful Mana Burst skill wasn¡¯t enough to completely deflect a blast from a weapon whose use against her was so intrinsic to its function that its claim to fame was the fact it had killed her.

    ¡°S-Servant response dissipating,¡± Mash said into the quiet that followed. ¡°King Arthur has been confirmed defeated, Master.¡±

    Ritsuka breathed a sigh of relief. ¡°Thank goodness. That¡¯s the second time we¡¯ve had to kill her.¡±

    ¡°That so?¡± Mordred hefted her sword up and let it drop weightily against her shoulder to a metallic clink. ¡°Ha! Guess that makes us even, don¡¯t it? I mean, I probably had to kill Father in a Grail War or something at some point, but far as I know, this is the second time for me, too!¡±

    ¡°Do we get a free knighthood if we have to do it a third time?¡± Rika asked.

    Mordred turned back to us and grinned. ¡°Far as I¡¯m concerned, you lot¡¯ve already got one!¡±

    ¡°I thought you had to be a squire for ten years first or whatever,¡± Jeanne Alter said.

    ¡°If I¡¯m the one making the rules, who gives a fuck?¡± was Mordred¡¯s simple response.

    ¡°Golden!¡± said Berserker. ¡°That lady was tough, but you guys came up with a really smart plan to put her down!¡±

    ¡°It was mostly Senpai¡¯s idea,¡± Ritsuka demurred, ¡°but you were a big help, ah¡­Berserker?¡±

    ¡°Ah, right, we haven¡¯t done the introduction stuff yet! My bad! That¡¯s not golden!¡± Berserker grinned and slung his ax against his shoulder much the same as Mordred had her sword. He jabbed one thumb at his chest, specifically towards the gap between the undone upper buttons that showed off his pecs. ¡°Name¡¯s Kintoki, Sakata Kintoki! But you can just call me Mister Golden, if you want!¡±

    The name meant nothing to me, but it very obviously did to Ritsuka and Rika, who gaped at him.

    ¡°Kintoki?¡± Rika squeaked. ¡°Of Minamoto no Raikou¡¯s Four Heavenly Kings?¡±

    The so-named Kintoki just grinned broader. ¡°That¡¯s me!¡±

    ¡°But you¡¯re¡­!¡± Rika gestured helplessly at him, up and down his body. ¡°I mean, that¡¯s¡­!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re dressed like Yakuza,¡± Ritsuka said bluntly, and now that he said it, I could see it, too.

    ¡°Ah, that¡­¡± Kintoki¡¯s head turned to the side, although where he was looking was impossible to tell with those dark sunglasses. And were those¡­? Was he¡­blushing? ¡°Well, it might be way, way, way after the time I was alive, but modern clothes are really golden, you know? I coulda shown up in my old getup, but I like this getup better. Plus, they¡¯re way more comfortable, too!¡±

    ¡°Hahaha!¡± Tesla laughed suddenly. ¡°Even ancient Heroic Spirits from the time of Phantasmals have to acknowledge the superiority of modern man! Exquisite! Extraordinary! Sakata Kintoki, I, Nikola Tesla, approve of you as a fellow hero!¡±

    Kintoki just grinned again. ¡°Golden, lightning man!¡±

    Were they¡­becoming friends?

    Romani interjected before I could really decide whether or not that would be a good thing. ¡°Good job, everyone! King Arthur has been defeated, the mastermind behind Project Demonic Fog and this entire Singularity, Makiri Zolgen, is, uh¡­a-also defeated, and the fog itself is starting to dissipate! That¡¯s another Singularity resolved!¡±

    ¡°All that¡¯s left is to recover the Grail,¡± Mash said.

    I wasn¡¯t the only one who grimaced, because apparently, the twins had also forgotten about that part, too. We¡¯d been in such a rush to follow after Arthur that we hadn¡¯t had the time to try and disconnect the Grail from Angrboea, and in hindsight, maybe we should have had someone stay behind and do that, because it could very easily have summoned another Servant for us to fight, couldn¡¯t it?

    ¡°Ugh,¡± said Jeanne Alter.

    ¡°I can take care of it,¡± Arash offered as he and Emiya returned from where they¡¯d been perched.

    ¡°You sure about that?¡± asked Emiya. ¡°You¡¯re not exactly an engineer, are you?¡±

    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

    Arash didn¡¯t fight back. ¡°Hey, if you think you can do the job better, I¡¯ll gladly leave it to you. You¡¯re right, I don¡¯t know the first thing about the bits and bobs in a machine like that, but as long as we just need to get the Grail out, I didn¡¯t think it would matter whether or not Angrboea breaks in the process.¡±

    ¡°It shouldn¡¯t,¡± Flamel chimed in. ¡°As the Grail is the main source of its power, removing the Grail itself should solve the problem and disable the machine without issue.¡±

    ¡°What are you guys talking about?¡± asked Romani. ¡°You already have the Grail, don¡¯t you? It¡¯s right there with you.¡±

    A stunned silence followed, and something uncomfortable squirmed in my gut. Everyone, including the Servants, looked just as surprised as I felt.

    ¡°U-um, don¡¯t you?¡± Romani said awkwardly.

    The twins turned to me. ¡°Senpai?¡±

    I shook my head. I hadn¡¯t grabbed it, the twins hadn¡¯t grabbed it, and none of the Servants had grabbed it ¡ª not that they¡¯d told me, at least, and the only one who I thought might have been tempted to sneak off with it was Jeanne Alter ¡ª because, again, we¡¯d been in a rush.

    ¡°Don¡¯t look at me,¡± the woman in question said, canting her hip to the side. Her lips curled. ¡°You think I¡¯d still be standing here if I had one of those things on me? This place is a shithole, and the fog only made it worse.¡±

    ¡°Abraham¡¯s focus was solely on Ren¨¦e throughout the entirety of this predicament,¡± said Jekyll. ¡°There was not a one single moment where he might have taken such liberty as to procure the Grail for himself ¡ª indeed, neither he nor I have much use for such a thing.¡±

    ¡°Hey, hey, I can¡¯t say I get all the stuff that¡¯s going on,¡± said Kintoki, ¡°but it ain¡¯t golden to go pointing fingers at all your friends, you know!¡±

    ¡°The way he said it was weird, but this guy has a point,¡± Mordred agreed. ¡°We really gonna start fingering each other now that everything else is all said and done?¡±

    ¡°Phrasing,¡± Ritsuka groaned. ¡°Phrasing, please, Sir Mordred.¡±

    In fact, the only person who didn¡¯t look at all surprised by this turn ¡ª

    ¡°Tohsaka?¡±

    ¡ª was our own temporary Master.

    He took a step back, mouth drawn into a tight line and brow furrowed, but all it did was draw everyone¡¯s attention to him. Next to him, Nursery Rhyme¡¯s face was set in stone, and the Bandersnatch hovering behind her suddenly seemed a whole lot more like a threat than a last line of defense.

    ¡°Well, fuck,¡± said Mordred. ¡°Even I didn¡¯t see that one coming.¡±

    ¡°Nagato Tohsaka,¡± Marie¡¯s voice came across the communicator, cold and authoritative. ¡°As a provisional Master of Chaldea ¡ª¡±

    ¡°As a magus, I would¡¯ve thought you would understand best, Director Animusphere,¡± Tohsaka interrupted her. ¡°The dream of all magi isn¡¯t something that can be achieved with half-hearted efforts. You have to be prepared to sacrifice whatever it takes to reach it.¡±

    ¡°You¡­!¡±

    ¡°Tohsaka-san,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°are you really going to do this, knowing everything at stake?¡±

    ¡°You remember what that thing¡¯s for, right?¡± Rika added. ¡°You know, how it¡¯s the whole reason we¡¯re here and everything?¡±

    Tohsaka¡¯s eyes narrowed on them. ¡°You two, on the other hand, I wouldn¡¯t expect to understand. You¡¯re not proper magi, so you just don¡¯t get how important this is. Even the oldest bloodlines have been waiting centuries for a chance like this to fall into their laps, and the Tohsaka are so new we don¡¯t even have a proper Magic Crest yet. This isn¡¯t something I can afford to pass up.¡±

    ¡°But this entire time, you¡¯ve been helping us out,¡± Mash said. ¡°The Director even made you a Master of Chaldea!¡±

    ¡°Temporarily,¡± Tohsaka emphasized. ¡°And it wasn¡¯t like I had much choice, did I? Investigate on my own and hope I got somewhere, stay in my borrowed apartment and wait for things to blow over ¡ª those aren¡¯t great choices, are they? And then you said the enemy was using a Holy Grail to create this¡­Singularity, and you expect me to just let this chance slip away?¡±

    ¡°The Grand Order,¡± Marie began heatedly.

    Tohsaka scoffed. ¡°What do I care about your Grand Order? I¡¯ve been a member of your organization less than a week, and everything I¡¯ve done as part of it will be erased the instant I give up this Grail and let you leave. I know my own limits ¡ª this is the only chance I have at giving my family the prestige of accomplishing the ambition of every family in the Association, including yours, Lord Animusphere!¡±

    ¡°Even if it destroys the world?¡± I asked him calmly. He twitched.

    ¡°Will it?¡± was his response, but his cool tone couldn¡¯t hide the uncertainty he¡¯d just revealed to me. ¡°The instigator behind this whole mess is dead. Whatever he might have been using the Grail for, my wish has nothing to do with this era or perpetuating his schemes to destroy it. I should be able to use it without worrying about the consequences, shouldn¡¯t I?¡±

    Maybe. I had to admit, it wasn¡¯t impossible. If he made a wish and the wish took him out of the Singularity, then maybe it really would resolve everything neatly and still get him what he wanted. But¡­

    ¡°Are you willing to stake the future of mankind and all of history on that?¡±

    He wavered, but it wasn¡¯t quite enough. Too impersonal, I guess. Too large to feel immediate and real enough to convince him. So after a glance at Nursery Rhyme, I picked something that would hit closer and drove the point home without any mercy at all.

    ¡°Are you willing to stake your daughter¡¯s future on that?¡±

    The line of his mouth drew even tighter, and he stared at me, unblinking, like he could prove me wrong just by glaring through the lenses of my mask. For several long, tense seconds, the possibility hung in the air, and the question remained unanswered. Several of the Servants, including Emiya, Jeanne Alter, and even Tesla, slowly began to prepare themselves for another fight, eyeing the Jabberwocky and Bandersnatch for any sudden movements.

    And then, Tohsaka heaved out a heavy sigh and reached into the huge, oversized sleeves of his overcoat.

    ¡°Papa?¡± asked Nursery Rhyme, looking at him with wide eyes. There was something fragile in her voice.

    ¡°Sorry, Alice,¡± he said without looking at her, like he couldn¡¯t bear to meet her gaze. ¡°At the end of the day, I guess I really can¡¯t be that selfish.¡±

    Somehow, from inside those sleeves, he produced a familiar-looking golden chalice, a Holy Grail much like all of the others we¡¯d collected so far. Some of the tension in the air eased.

    ¡°W-wait!¡± Romani said suddenly. ¡°M-magical energy reaction, but it¡¯s not coming from the Grail! A Servant manifest ¡ª no, hold on, that¡¯s not it at all! These readings, this is more like a Rayshift!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not possible!¡± Marie barked at him. ¡°Only Chaldea possesses that technology! No one else should have access to it!¡±

    But someone did, didn¡¯t they? No, in the first place, how else had these Demon Gods managed to insert themselves into these Singularities if they didn¡¯t have some method of doing it that must have looked an awful lot like Rayshifting? How had Lev ¡ª Flauros ¡ª gotten to Fuyuki from Chaldea and from Fuyuki to Rome? Or Forneus in Okeanos?

    ¡°I-I don¡¯t know how it¡¯s happening, but it is!¡± Romani insisted.

    And if these so-called Demon Gods could do it, then it stood to reason ¡ª

    Mash gasped at the same time as a shiver shuddered down my spine. Something like instinct, some deep and ingrained thing that I couldn¡¯t explain, made me whirl about towards the other end of the park. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

    And there¡­

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Mash said, ¡°s-something strange is¡­!¡±

    ¡­there was a shadow in the mist, hovering in the air, and yet walking. It approached us, dragging the weight of an entire ocean around it, and as it did, the Servants all spun about, too, probably sensing the same thing I had.

    ¡°Wh-who¡­?¡± muttered Ritsuka.

    ¡°My name was uttered here, in this fetid place, and so I have come,¡± a deep, resonant voice said, coming from the shadow. ¡°Come to investigate who would have spoken of me so casually, and yet I have found only the source of my recent disappointments. Fuyuki, Orl¨¦ans, Rome, Okeanos ¡ª the failures of King Arthur, Gilles de Rais, Romulus, and Jason, thwarted as they were by some persistent pests. And now even Zolgen has failed to accomplish his assigned task.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± Marie demanded. ¡°Romani! What happened to the visual feed?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know!¡± he answered. ¡°SHEBA won¡¯t stabilize! Can you hear me, everyone? Whatever is happening, we can¡¯t offer you any support! We can listen, but that¡¯s it!¡±

    So we were on our own.

    ¡°It seems that guy wasn¡¯t kidding around,¡± said Andersen. ¡°The head honcho himself decided to come down off his throne to check on things, just because we happened to say his name.¡±

    Mash gasped again. ¡°Which means¡­!¡±

    King Solomon.

    ¡°I see,¡± said the shadow, Solomon. ¡°Then it¡¯s to be expected that only your voice reaches them. Chaldea ¡ª a nuisance that doesn¡¯t understand when its time is over. You scurry about, hidden in your hovel and protected even from my sight, a lone boat aimlessly sailing the void in the desperate hopes that you might prevent the inevitable. It is for that reason alone that you have managed to come as far as you have.¡±

    The mist parted, and a man stepped out, walking on the air as though it was solid ground. Pitiless red eyes cast a contemptuous glance around our group. There was no mirth on his face, no hatred, simply callous indifference, like we weren¡¯t even worth the time or the effort.

    It shouldn¡¯t have bothered me. I¡¯d spent so much time having people look down on me that it shouldn¡¯t have fazed me in the slightest, and I¡¯d faced down Scion, spat in his face, and twisted a metaphorical knife in his heart until he lost all will to live. And yet¡­

    Why couldn¡¯t I stop shaking?

    ¡°A pathetic collection of misfits,¡± Solomon said, and although his face remained impassive, there was scorn in his voice. ¡°Third rate Heroic Spirits commanded by mediocre Masters, somehow able to overcome the challenges placed in their way.¡±

    ¡°Who the fuck are you calling third rate?¡± Mordred snarled, taking a threatening step forward. Solomon paid her only a contemptuous glance.

    ¡°If you value the scant moments you will have to continue this farce of a second life, then you will know your place,¡± he told her. ¡°Perhaps one such as you has no inkling of the difference in our magnitudes, but the ones holding your leash at least should understand ¡ª the gulf that exists between us cannot be bridged, no matter how many Command Spells you expend in the effort.¡±

    ¡°Someone¡¯s big for his britches,¡± said Jeanne Alter mockingly. ¡°Even if you are one of those Grands or whatever, you¡¯re still a Servant, aren¡¯t you? That means even someone like you has a guy holding your leash somewhere. Bark-bark, puppy.¡±

    Solomon glanced at her, and instantly, she was thrown back by an explosion that went off right in her face. She landed hard on the ground, rolling, but was up again an instant later, glaring but spooked.

    ¡°I shall allow your impertinence only the once,¡± Solomon said in warning. ¡°Do not mistake me for another of you again, you delusional fantasy. I am indeed a Heroic Spirit ¡ª but I had no need of something as pathetic as a Master to summon me. I revived myself within my own body. The man who stands before you is Solomon in the entirety of his glory, unfettered. An ordinary Servant like you is nothing more than an ant to me.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s possible?¡± Rika squeaked.

    ¡°So it¡¯s true, then,¡± said Andersen. ¡°You really are one of those Grand Servants. Grand Caster, am I right?¡±

    ¡°Indeed,¡± Solomon said matter-of-factly.

    ¡°What do you want?¡± I managed to get out.

    ¡°Want?¡± Those eyes turned on me, and I felt suddenly both naked and vulnerable, exposed. It occurred to me that he could probably kill me in an instant, before I even knew what was happening, with nothing more than a glare. ¡°Should it not be obvious? On a whim, I came here to see for myself the disruption to my plans, and I found a few rats scurrying about. It seems there was no cause for me to concern myself. Although you have come this far, my Noble Phantasm is undisturbed. You have truly accomplished nothing.¡±

    ¡°Noble Phantasm?¡± Romani¡¯s voice came. ¡°W-wait, hang on! That means¡­those bands of light in the sky!¡±

    ¡°That it took you this long to realize the truth shows your incompetence,¡± Solomon said scornfully. ¡°How pathetic. Even your mages are third rate.¡±

    A shadow suddenly loomed out of the remnants of the mist behind him, and a pair of knives aimed for his neck. Ritsuka and Rika both gasped as they realized what I did ¡ª but not what it would mean.

    ¡°Jackie, no!¡±

    But I was too late. Solomon didn¡¯t even look at her, he just lifted hand, snapped his fingers, and an explosion ripped through the air behind him. Jackie was sent flying off to the side in a trail of smoke, and despite how close she was when it happened, not a single hair on his head was disturbed.

    I was moving before I could even think about what I was doing.

    ¡°Senpai!¡±

    And Arash stopped me, wrapping his arms around me and holding me back. From doing what, I still wasn¡¯t sure. It wasn¡¯t like I had any hope of hurting Solomon. A guy who could cast spells like that wouldn¡¯t even blink from my Gandr, and even if I had my swarm here and at the ready, he probably had something to handle that, too.

    For the first time since he arrived, Solomon¡¯s lips curled into a smirk.

    ¡°Oh?¡± he said. ¡°How interesting. It seems even someone like you is capable of change, after all. Sentiment, guilt, and misplaced affection ¡ª you have become even more pathetic in these last two years, Taylor Hebert.¡±

    He knew. The thought turned my insides to ice, but¡­ No. Of course he knew. Solomon was said to have been given wisdom by God, and however that would be manifested as a Heroic Spirit, it was probably some sort of Clairvoyance ability. The idea that Flauros had attempted to target me specifically during the Sabotage said that he and his king must have known enough about my past to find some part of it worthy of notice, although what they thought I could have done that I wasn¡¯t already doing, I had no idea.

    Later. I could think about that later. First ¡ª

    ¡°First Aid!¡±

    Jackie was still alive, I knew it just because my Command Spells hadn¡¯t stopped aching yet, so I could still help her, even if it was only this much.

    ¡°First Aid! First Aid! First Aid!¡±

    But that was all I could do. Even with the contracts split between the three of us, we¡¯d just come off of back to back to back battles again, all of them intense, and I only had so much energy left to spare. All I could do as my breath misted in front of me was reach out along the bond that connected us and ask, Jackie?

    We¡¯ll be okay, Mommy, was her answer, weak but there. Something inside of me trembled, caught between worry and relief.

    ¡°It¡¯s ironic that you called her pathetic ¡ª that glass house of yours must be sturdier than it looks,¡± Andersen said. ¡°You talk a big game, Solomon, if that¡¯s even who you really are, but you¡¯re essentially just hijacking the same system used to summon us so-called lesser Servants, too, aren¡¯t you? After all, Grand Servants are meant to fight the very kind of threat you represent to the future of mankind. They exist to protect humanity from the monsters that aim to destroy it, and that says something about you and why you chose to manifest the way you did. It takes a special kind of desperation to subvert that very system in order to prevent it from working against you.¡±

    Solomon¡¯s head snapped around, and he regarded Andersen with his full attention. ¡°Those eyes of yours are troublesome, you insignificant worm. Allow me to reward your insight appropriately.¡±

    He lifted one hand, finger outstretched and pointing at Andersen ¡ª and instantly, Andersen exploded into a fine red mist, gone before anyone even realized what was happening. Under the oppressive weight of Solomon¡¯s presence, the surge of magical energy was so suffocated that I couldn¡¯t even feel it.

    ¡°Mister Andersen!¡± Mash yelped.

    ¡°Bastard!¡± shouted Mordred.

    But before she could do more than that, an electric whine rose to a sudden fever pitch, and Tesla lifted his own arm, aiming his bronze gauntlet directly at Solomon.

    ¡°I have heard enough!¡± Tesla barked. ¡°Solomon, King of Mages, pinnacle of the Heroic Spirits of the Earth! On behalf of mankind, I reject you and your schemes! A dazzling future awaits, and I cannot allow you to destroy it!¡± A ball of plasma formed between his splayed fingers, connected to his fingertips by streams of lightning. ¡°Now return to sleep! System Keraunos!¡±

    The ball of plasma exploded into a beam, large enough and intense enough to consume Solomon in his entirety and wipe him off of the map.

    ¡°Futile.¡±

    And the instant it came into contact with him, it fizzled and died, simply dissipating into the air with sparks of static that danced briefly before disappearing. Solomon¡¯s finger swung about to point now at the stunned Tesla, who looked as surprised as I was that his EX Noble Phantasm hadn¡¯t even left a goddamn scratch.

    ¡°No way,¡± Rika breathed. ¡°He just no-sold an EX NP!¡±

    As though it was nothing more than a puff of air. Even Herakles wouldn¡¯t have been able to do that.

    ¡°Now accept your reward for your defiance.¡±

    At the last second, Tesla attempted to dodge, throwing himself out of the way ¡ª but midair, he exploded much the same as Andersen had, leaving behind no trace of his presence. He, too, had been killed just that quickly and easily.

    Behind Solomon, Kintoki suddenly appeared, ax crackling with jolts of electricity as he brought it down, aiming to take Solomon¡¯s head.

    ¡°Golden Spark!¡±

    Solomon caught the segmented blade with one hand as though it was nothing more than a paperweight. He completely ignored the bolt of lightning that leapt down from the sky and struck the axehead ¡ª it didn¡¯t even seem to do anything more than ruffle his long, white hair ¡ª and that same finger that had cast the spells that killed Andersen and Tesla was pressed gently against Kintoki¡¯s chest.

    ¡°Damn,¡± Kintoki had time to say, ¡°not gold ¡ª¡±

    And then he was gone, too, killed just as simply and casually as the others. Just like that, three Servants, two of them strong enough to stand up to King Arthur in one way or another, had been destroyed.

    ¡°Shit,¡± said Mordred, foot sliding back a step. ¡°This bastard wasn¡¯t kidding. He really is on a completely different level.¡±

    Solomon¡¯s finger swung around again, and all of us recoiled, knowing now exactly how easily he could erase any of us if he decided upon it. Everyone looked terrified, even the Servants who knew they could just be summoned back ¡ª not for themselves, I realized, but because they might not be able to do anything at all if he decided to kill any of us Masters ¡ª and I couldn¡¯t blame them.

    I¡¯d only faced an enemy like this twice before, and neither of them was a comfortable comparison. First, Behemoth in New Delhi, and the way he carved through the defenders with bolts of lightning and blasts of lethal radiation, absorbing whatever was thrown at him and turning it back around. And the second¡­

    Second was Scion. Implacable, unflinching, completely unfazed by almost all attacks thrown his way. How he could obliterate you on a whim with a flick of his finger, and how he erased anything from a single man to the entire east coast of the US with the same contemptuous ease.

    For a second, a flash of familiar despair, I remembered hovering in the aftermath of a battle and the terrible thought that maybe it would be better to just let my flight pack run out of fuel and plummet to my death instead of continuing when it felt like we had no hope of surviving, let alone winning.

    The finger lowered, and Solomon let his arm drop. ¡°There¡¯s no point in wasting the time or energy to wipe you all out here. You believe you have accomplished something of worth, but the five Holy Grails you now have in your possession are nothing more than mere trinkets. As thanks for the favor you performed for me two years ago, Taylor Hebert, I shall allow you and your comrades to leave now with both those trinkets and your lives.¡±

    My mind ground to a halt. Favor? ¡°What?¡±

    Was he actually saying¡­that killing Scion had actually helped him somehow?

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka asked, confused. I couldn¡¯t even look at him, because how did I answer that? How could I answer that? What could I possibly say that would explain the situation when I wasn¡¯t even really sure what the answer was myself?

    ¡°You¡¯re going to let us go, just like that?¡± Emiya asked, unnerved. His hands clenched tightly to his bow, so tightly that his knuckles were bone white.

    ¡°Just like that,¡± Solomon agreed. Some part of me was relieved, because it meant we would have time to plot and plan and find a way of actually beating him. ¡°There is no need to concern myself with you rabble until you have stolen all of the Grails from all of the Singularities ¡ª an impossible feat, considering what awaits you in the next one. But ¡ª hmph. My gratitude only goes so far. If you manage the miracle of resolving all of the Singularities I have so meticulously prepared, then I will deal with you personally.¡±

    His face split into a broad grin. ¡°Even so, it will require a miracle! Truly, a miracle from God Himself! My final gift to you, Taylor Hebert, the final token of my gratitude ¡ª when you die in the next Singularity, you shall die comforted, for you will have finally returned home! Make your peace with your demons there and accept your end!¡±

    And just as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone. Just a flash of light, and then the space he had occupied was empty.

    ¡°Ma¡­magical energy response dissipating,¡± Romani said into the silence. ¡°King Solomon has¡­left the Singularity.¡±

    But the weight of his words stayed behind.

 Chapter CLX: Philosopherâ€™s Legacy

    Chapter CLX: Philosopher¡¯s Legacy

    In the aftermath of Solomon¡¯s disappearance, there was a long moment of silence as we all absorbed what had just happened. The complete dismissal of our having corrected five of his Singularities. The fact that he had killed three Servants so easily and utterly ignored two Noble Phantasms hitting him directly. The nonsensical bit about repaying a favor I had apparently done him without ever realizing it.

    Even if Scion¡¯s death had been an essential part of making his plan work, so what? What could I have done differently? Leaving Scion alive and letting him wear away at all of humanity across countless parallel worlds was never an option, and just the suggestion itself was laughably ridiculous.

    But I had no idea what else he could have meant.

    ¡°That was him?¡± Tohsaka asked into the silence, voice trembling. ¡°That guy was the one behind all of this? The one who made this Singularity and all of the others?¡±

    It was only the presence of a swarm ¡ª however meager and however quickly they were starting to die as the remnants of the fog seeped in through broken windows ¡ª that let me keep my voice steady. ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± He looked down at the Grail in his hands, the one he¡¯d been about to hand over to us. His brow furrowed. ¡°He called it a trinket. A powerful device capable of granting any wish you can think of, and he called it nothing more than a trinket.¡±

    The implication hung in the air ¡ª that Solomon was so powerful that he had no need of any of them, they were just mundane tools he used for the job he needed done. It wasn¡¯t any more comfortable a thought than the knowledge that he had ignored two Noble Phantasms as though they hadn¡¯t even hit him ¡ª

    Jackie.

    ¡°Jackie!¡±

    This time, Arash let me go, and I took off in the direction I¡¯d seen her body go flying, skirting around the large crater formed from Tesla and Arthur¡¯s clash and doing my best to avoid the divots pockmarking the remains of the park. It was harder without a swarm to keep track of where they were, but if I stumbled a couple of times, I didn¡¯t care enough to be more than frustrated that they were slowing me down.

    I found her further in, resting against the stump of a shattered tree that had no doubt been destroyed during the melee between Arthur and the others.

    ¡°Jackie.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re here, Mommy,¡± she replied, looking up at me with a faint smile.

    She was missing an arm. Her already tattered cloak had been ripped to shreds, but the rest of her was either unharmed or had been healed by my First Aid spells, leaving only the burnt stump that disappeared halfway down to her left elbow into glittering dust. Ropes of dried and drying blood splattered up and down what remained and painted her black clothes even darker, but she seemed in no danger otherwise.

    I fell to my knees next to her, unsure of what to do. A thousand conflicting impulses warred inside of me, some of them familiar and some of them strange and alien in ways I couldn¡¯t explain. I didn¡¯t know what I was supposed to do here. A flash of memory of days of skinned knees and papercuts said to pull her into a hug and kiss her head, but another part of me shied away, even though I¡¯d spent the last couple of nights with her curled up in my arms.

    In some ways, it would have been easier if she was looking up at me with teary eyes complaining about how much it hurt. The answer to that one was so easy even I knew what it was.

    Instead, I reached out with one hand and laid it atop her head, as though to reassure myself that she was still there. Lamely, I said, ¡°You¡¯re okay.¡±

    She nodded and leaned into my fingers. ¡°Mm.¡±

    ¡°Can you stand on your own?¡±

    ¡°We think so,¡± she answered.

    I shuffled back a step to give her room, and she climbed to her feet without much issue, stumbling only once when she tried to put weight on the arm that wasn¡¯t there. The fact that it was gone seemed more like a frustration and a surprise to her than a painful wound, and she was almost pouting when she said, ¡°One of our arms is gone, Mommy.¡±

    It was another one of those instances where she was simultaneously both the child she looked like and yet also completely incongruent with it.

    ¡°It¡¯ll be fine,¡± I told her, remembering Boudica. ¡°It might take a little while, but we¡¯ll get you fixed up before you know it.¡±

    Da Vinci would have an answer, and I clung to that. We didn¡¯t have a powerful ley line beneath a mountain leaking more magical energy than I could use in a lifetime, but I was sure she could come up with some way of speeding up Jackie¡¯s recovery once we got back to Chaldea and the whole clusterfuck that had just been dropped on us was taken care of.

    Fuck. What did he mean, I could finally return home? Was there even anything left of Brockton Bay on Earth Bet? And even if there was, how was that related to the next Singularity?

    I put the questions from my mind for the moment. I didn¡¯t have any answers to them, not right now, and until there was something I could do about them, I couldn¡¯t afford to let them distract me. We had a Singularity to finish correcting.

    I stood back up and offered a hand to Jackie, and she was all too happy to take it with her remaining one, smiling, like she hadn¡¯t just lost an arm trying to kill the most powerful mage in history.

    Everyone¡¯s eyes immediately zeroed in on Jackie when we made it back to the group, and whatever their feelings were, however complicated everything was, Ritsuka still let out a sigh of relief. ¡°Jackie¡¯s okay, then.¡±

    Tohsaka goggled at him. I couldn¡¯t blame him for that. Servants were complete bullshit, but stuff like being able to regrow lost limbs with enough time and energy wasn¡¯t exactly advertised on the list of things that were obvious about them.

    ¡°That can¡¯t be a comfortable state to be in,¡± Flamel remarked.

    ¡°We¡¯ll figure something out,¡± I said vaguely.

    Notably, Rika didn¡¯t have a quip prepared. I guess Solomon had spooked her just as badly as he had the rest of us.

    ¡°Not¡­to put too fine a point on things,¡± Romani¡¯s voice interrupted, ¡°but¡­¡±

    ¡°Y-yes,¡± said Marie, and although she was trying her best to sound stern and authoritative, the slight tremor in her voice gave her away. ¡°Nagato Tohsaka. Your contract as a Master of Chaldea ¡ª¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t need to go that far,¡± Tohsaka cut her off. ¡°I get it. Even if this thing could grant my wish, that guy¡­ This is way over my head. If I took this and he decided to come back for it, then there¡¯s nothing I could do except die.¡±

    He thrust it into Ritsuka¡¯s hands, who fumbled with it for a second because of how unexpected and sudden it was, and then pulled his hand away as though it burned.

    ¡°Take it,¡± he said bitterly. ¡°It¡¯s not worth the cost I¡¯d have to pay to make use of it, so the only thing I can do is hand it off to you so you can do¡­whatever it is you do with these things. I¡¯m ready to go home and get back to my life.¡±

    Ritsuka handed the Grail over to Mash, who accepted it and carefully stashed it in the compartment inside her shield. A moment later, a beep sounded over the communicator.

    ¡°H¡­Holy Grail retrieved,¡± said Romani. ¡°The era should¡­begin to correct itself, now.¡±

    ¡°Here.¡± Tohsaka fussed with the band on his wrist for a second, and once he had it off, he shoved this over to Ritsuka, too. ¡°That¡¯s also property of Chaldea, isn¡¯t it? I won¡¯t have any use for it now.¡±

    ¡°Ah, thank you?¡± Ritsuka said uncertainly.

    Jekyll¡¯s head jerked, and he set about removing his own borrowed communicator. ¡°Mine, as well. Although it seems we had not much use of it in the end, there seems little point in attempting to keep it for myself. It will merely be corrected like all else in this¡­Singularity, yes?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Marie as Ritsuka accepted Jekyll¡¯s communicator. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t be able to keep it no matter what. That just leaves one more.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s head turned to Flamel, and so did mine, Rika¡¯s, and Mash¡¯s, and he hesitated. ¡°Yes,¡± he said, ¡°about that. I¡­realize that my earlier deception will have done me no favors in regards to your esteem, but I would hope that I might impose upon you¡­ That is, if it is even possible, and I confess that I haven¡¯t the knowledge to say one way or the other ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Master?¡±

    Flamel broke off with a gasp. ¡°Ren¨¦e?¡±

    She stirred in his arms, eyes fluttering open, and as she looked up and realized where she was, she stiffened, fingers frozen halfway through the motion of clutching at his cloak.

    ¡°My¡­apologies,¡± she said immediately. ¡°I¡­did not mean to inconvenience you, Master, but I could not¡­ Please, allow me to stand. I don¡¯t mean to be such a burden.¡±

    ¡°You silly girl,¡± said Flamel, but he was smiling as he looked down on her. ¡°You are not a burden to me, never a burden. And even if you ever had been, it is one I knowingly took upon myself. There is nothing for you to apologize for.¡±

    ¡°I allowed myself to be kidnapped,¡± Ren¨¦e said as though she had committed murder.

    ¡°You followed my order,¡± Flamel corrected her. ¡°You could not have known that Puss in Boots was waiting for you to do just that, and he could very well have¡­ No, no, my dear, the important thing is that you survived. None of what happened can be blamed on you, and I won¡¯t hear a word otherwise, do you understand?¡±

    Ren¨¦e looked down, refusing to meet his eyes. ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Are you certain you¡¯re well enough to stand?¡± Flamel asked.

    Ren¨¦e nodded. ¡°I believe so, yes.¡±

    Carefully and gently, Flamel set her down, first her legs, and as she found her footing, he kept his other arm around her shoulders to hold her steady. Only once she was standing surely and confidently did he let her go, hovering and ready to catch her if she showed a single moment of weakness.

    She turned to the rest of us and bowed her head, dipping into a curtsy. It looked a little strange in the white dress Zolgen had stuck her in, at least compared to the maid uniform she¡¯d worn before.

    ¡°Forgive me,¡± she said. ¡°I caused all of you an inconvenience.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not your fault,¡± Ritsuka told her.

    ¡°We would¡¯ve had to fight those guys anyway,¡± Rika added. ¡°And¡­actually, the only reason we managed to get to them is because they kidnapped you, so¡­ It feels kinda weird to say it, but it was kinda a good thing we had to come rescue you?¡±

    ¡°Ironic,¡± said Emiya. ¡°The only reason we managed to get the Grail at all was because they got greedy and decided to kidnap you.¡±

    Ren¨¦e stilled again, and the tiniest of furrows marred her brow. ¡°The Grail has been retrieved.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± I said. ¡°Tohsaka grabbed it for us while the rest of us were rushing to chase an enemy that was summoned at the last second. Mash has it now, and the Singularity is being corrected.¡±

    Tohsaka glanced at me askance ¡ª and so did several other people ¡ª but didn¡¯t contradict me or admit that he¡¯d originally taken it for selfish reasons. Frankly, the only part that really mattered to me in the end was that he had given it up, so I didn¡¯t feel the need to rehash that part now.

    ¡°I see,¡± said Ren¨¦e, and she gave nothing of her thoughts away. I thought I sensed a thread of uncertainty from her anyway. ¡°This will be goodbye, then.¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± said Fran.

    ¡°That,¡± Flamel interjected, ¡°is what I was meaning to discuss a moment ago. Director, it is possible, is it not, for Servants contracted with your Masters to return with you to your era? That is, Jackie and¡­ Forgive me, Sir Mordred, I don¡¯t mean to assume¡­¡±

    Mordred made a sound in her throat. ¡°Ain¡¯t like I got anything better to do. ¡®Sides, if I stick around this place, I¡¯m just gonna go poof like everything else, ain¡¯t I? You guys want me, I guess I could stay with ya.¡±

    ¡°Who says we¡¯d want you?¡± asked Jeanne Alter.

    ¡°Wasn¡¯t asking you!¡± Mordred shot back, but it lacked any heat.

    ¡°Sure,¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°I think Super Action Mom¡¯s gonna adopt another kid,¡± Rika agreed.

    ¡°She can sure fucking try!¡± Mordred said with a savage grin.

    The twins looked to me, and it said something about their trust in me that they were still looking my way like that even after everything Solomon had said to try and break it. The twinge of guilt that squirmed in my belly was soundly ignored.

    ¡°Do you think you can handle being a Servant of Chaldea?¡± I asked Mordred. ¡°Taking orders from us in battle, waiting sometimes months between deployments, and not being able to join every one of them?¡±

    ¡°What, you think my life was just one adventure after another all the time?¡± Mordred replied. ¡°Yeah, I can handle all of that. Long as you don¡¯t fuck me over, I can do all of that just fine.¡±

    Into my communicator, I said, ¡°Romani.¡±

    ¡°Adjusting Rayshift parameters,¡± he said, ahead of me. ¡°I¡¯m accounting for¡­Jackie and for Sir Mordred.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Flamel, ¡°about that. Director Animusphere, would it be possible for you to take one more with you?¡±

    Ren¨¦e¡¯s head spun towards him. ¡°Master?¡±

    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    ¡°Residents of a Singularity belonging to proper history can¡¯t be retrieved from a Singularity,¡± Marie explained, ¡°not just as a matter of mechanics, but as a matter of principle. Our job is to restore history to its proper course, not alter it by¡­kidnapping our favorite historical figures.¡±

    For a second, I had a wild image pop into my head of a tied-up George Washington slung over Mash¡¯s shoulder as a mob of colonials chased after her. I didn¡¯t have any idea why I thought of that, but the image was so ridiculous that it managed to brighten my mood just a little.

    ¡°Ah,¡± said Flamel, ¡°but if, like a Servant, the person in question does not belong in the era being corrected or even in any era of proper history? If, more to the point, the person in question was born in that Singularity as a result of the actions of a person who does not themselves belong in that era and would not otherwise have been born without that intervention ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Then yes,¡± Marie answered. ¡°Chaldea could accept that person as a¡­temporal refugee, of sorts.¡±

    ¡°Abraham,¡± Jekyll began.

    ¡°Forgive me, Doctor, for not attempting to include you in this,¡± Flamel told him. ¡°As it seems, however, both you and Miss Fran happen to belong in the category of people who belong to proper history ¡ª if not, as the case may be, necessarily this era in particular. I imagine Mister Tohsaka has likewise banished any thoughts of being spirited away to the future so that he might see what becomes of it.¡±

    ¡°And abandon my daughter? I¡¯m more responsible than that,¡± said Tohsaka.

    Marie huffed, but if she had any comment about his statement, she held her tongue. I was grateful ¡ª the ensuing argument wouldn¡¯t have been productive or useful at all.

    ¡°You need not apologize, Abraham,¡± said Jekyll reasonably. ¡°I have no illusions about my place amongst these fine folk and their institute dedicated to preserving the proper course of events ¡ª or lack thereof, in point of fact. Only, I worry that there is one person whose thoughts you might not have taken into account before deciding upon this course of action.¡±

    Flamel heaved a sigh. ¡°You¡¯re right.¡± He turned to Ren¨¦e. ¡°Ren¨¦e? I would like for you to go back to Chaldea with these people.¡±

    Her lips pursed just a little as her brow drew just the tiniest bit down. ¡°Have I¡­displeased you in some way, Master? I¡­know you said that it was not my fault, but I still¡­¡±

    She hesitated, glancing over at us. Ah. She didn¡¯t know that we knew about the Stone hidden inside of her.

    ¡°The only mistake was mine,¡± Flamel told her gently. ¡°I believed myself too clever ¡ª that no one would suspect me of hiding my Philosopher¡¯s Stone inside of you, indeed, that no one would have any reason to suspect such a thing so long as they did not know my true name. As Makiri Zolgen and his conspirators proved, however, I was very much a fool to think that it could last under scrutiny, let alone that none might ever suss it out. The ruse was doomed the instant Paracelsus declared my name for all to hear.¡±

    Ren¨¦e¡¯s fingers curled in the fabric of her dress, and her eyes dropped to look at some spot somewhere in the middle of his chest. ¡°Then why¡­¡±

    Flamel offered her a kind smile and reached out to set both of his hands upon her shoulders. He leaned in as though sharing a secret with her. ¡°Because I want a better future for my one and only daughter than to let her simply vanish into the mist with the rest of this twisted London.¡±

    Ren¨¦e¡¯s head jerked up, and the most intense expression I had ever seen on her face pulled her mouth open and her eyes wide. ¡°M-Master?¡±

    ¡°I confess, I haven¡¯t much experience with fatherhood,¡± Flamel admitted. ¡°Dear Perenelle¡¯s Magic Crest was cursed, you see, and by the time we married, she had long since given up on the idea of children. Even so, I think I can state with confidence that any father worthy of being called one would wish his child to live a long, happy, prosperous life, and you cannot do that if you disappear with everything else that is removed inside this Singularity. My only regret is that I won¡¯t be able to witness it for myself.¡±

    ¡°You,¡± she began, ¡°don¡¯t intend¡­to come along?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Flamel. ¡°Doctor Jekyll is my Master, and although he might not be the most competent of mages, I intend to honor my contract with him and stay until he has been safely returned to his proper place in history. Too¡­¡± He sighed. ¡°The Philosopher¡¯s Stone is a great temptation. So long as the people of Chaldea keep its existence within you secret¡­¡±

    He lanced a meaningful look at each of us Masters.

    ¡°We will,¡± Ritsuka promised.

    I kept silent. That wasn¡¯t a promise I could make. Unless Da Vinci or Marie ordered all mentions of it erased from the records of this Singularity, then the Association would find out, it was just a matter of time.

    If Flamel realized any of that, he gave no indication. ¡°¡­then the only method by which I might be forced to make one is the leveraging of your life against me. Better to avoid that situation entirely.¡±

    ¡°Master¡­¡± Ren¨¦e said softly.

    ¡°I have given you everything I could to prepare you to live a life of your own,¡± he told her. ¡°What you do with it once you are free to live it, I have no right to say. Only that you are my legacy, Ren¨¦e. The greatest work I ever completed. I think, if she had ever been blessed with the chance to meet you herself, to love you as I have come to, then Perenelle would agree with me.¡±

    Ren¨¦e¡¯s head dropped again, and her fingers, still curled in her dress, trembled. Off to the side, Rika sniffled and wiped at her eyes.

    ¡°If,¡± Ren¨¦e said hesitantly, ¡°if that is what you want, then¡­¡±

    ¡°It is,¡± Flamel said. ¡°The only thing I might wish for upon the Holy Grail.¡±

    ¡°Goddamn,¡± Mordred muttered, sounding jealous.

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran agreed, forlorn.

    I had to admit, I was a little jealous, too. It wouldn¡¯t be wrong to say that my dad and I had started drifting apart long before I got my powers, but my career as a cape ¡ª first as a villain, then as a Ward ¡ª hadn¡¯t done us any favors, and much like with Brian, I hadn¡¯t had the courage to check if he¡¯d made it out of Brockton during Gold Morning. I still didn¡¯t know if he had survived or if I¡¯d been orphaned entirely two years ago.

    If I had gotten the chance to hear him say something like that so earnestly and tenderly¡­ It wouldn¡¯t have magically fixed things, but it would have been a strong start.

    ¡°I¡­don¡¯t mean to interrupt,¡± said Romani, ¡°but we¡¯re running low on time, here. Am I including Ren¨¦e in the Rayshift or not?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Ren¨¦e said, ¡°please, Doctor Romani.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Romani replied, ¡°I¡¯ll¡­ Director? A-are we¡­?¡±

    Marie was quiet for a moment, but then, ¡°Do it.¡±

    Flamel heaved out a quiet sigh and stepped backwards with a sad smile. His fingers lingered, trailing down her arms, and Ren¨¦e lifted them, letting him catch her hands with his.

    ¡°I cannot promise you their success,¡± he told her, near a whisper, ¡°nor that every moment you spend in the world from which they come will be wondrous and filled with happiness. Life, as I¡¯m sure you have learned by now, is not nearly so simple nor so easy. But I want you to promise me that you will not wallow. Think of me, remember me fondly, but do not allow my memory to hold you back. Your future is yours now, Ren¨¦e. The only thing I can ask of you is to seize it and discover the woman you want to become. Whoever she is, I¡¯m sure I will be just as proud of her as I am of you now.¡±

    ¡°Ah, geez,¡± Rika whispered, wiping her eyes on the back of her sleeve. ¡°Right in the feels!¡±

    Ren¨¦e¡¯s lips pressed together tightly, bottom one wobbling just the slightest. She didn¡¯t cry, but there was the slightest tremor in her voice when she said, ¡°I will.¡±

    When he let go of her hands and stepped further back, she turned slowly towards us, pausing for a short moment, and then took fistfuls of her dress and curtsied again, dipping her head.

    ¡°Please take good care of me.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± said Ritsuka immediately.

    ¡°It might not be much,¡± Mash began, ¡°but I¡¯m sure everyone at Chaldea will give you a warm welcome, Ren¨¦e!¡±

    ¡°H-hold on,¡± Emiya murmured to himself, ¡°does this mean¡­I¡¯m going to have to keep sharing the kitchen?¡±

    Rika gasped. ¡°It does!¡± she answered, delighted. ¡°Oh, man! My tastebuds are gonna be spoiled rotten by the end of this, and I¡¯m gonna love every second of it!¡±

    Emiya sighed heavily, and Arash chuckled at his predicament, but his heart wasn¡¯t entirely in it. I think the knowledge of what Solomon had said still sat with him, the way it did me. The weight of it was like a thick blanket smothering the back of my mind, always there, lingering and oppressive.

    There was going to be a reckoning after this. How soon, I wasn¡¯t sure, but there wouldn¡¯t be any escape from it. Hopefully, I could get to Marie first and finally ask how much of her original prohibition regarding my past still applied and how much we were going to have to share with everyone else. I wasn¡¯t sure I was going to like the answer, whatever it turned out being.

    ¡°Nagato Tohsaka,¡± Marie said, interrupting whatever else might have been said, ¡°regarding your contract with Chaldea.¡±

    Tohsaka sighed. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me. You want to renegotiate it? Now, when I don¡¯t have any other choice?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t insult me!¡± Marie bit out, temper short. There was no way she hadn¡¯t realized the same things I had, and it couldn¡¯t have done any favors for her patience. ¡°I¡¯m just telling you, we¡¯ve entered the details into our records. Your head of house, whoever that happens to be in this era, will be compensated for your assistance in accordance with both the standard base pay along with the hazard modifier for Singularity deployment.¡±

    ¡°Hazard modifier?¡± Tohsaka asked.

    ¡°Extra pay for dangerous work,¡± I answered for her. ¡°You get more money for doing something that has a high risk of injury or death. How much more depends on the job and the employer, but Chaldea is generous.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re working to repair proper history, after all,¡± Marie added. ¡°It¡¯s only natural that you be compensated properly. Or, in this case, your heir.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Tohsaka let out a long breath. ¡°Well. I suppose that¡¯s something I can take comfort in before I get sent back to where I¡¯m supposed to be.¡±

    Idly, I did have to wonder exactly how much money his family was going to get. Presumably, with the hazard pay included, it wouldn¡¯t be pennies, but it definitely wouldn¡¯t be anything like what the twins and I could reasonably expect.

    ¡°Miss Director,¡± said Nursery Rhyme, who had been quiet all this while, ¡°can we go with Papa?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Marie said immediately. ¡°Even if we wanted to arrange for something like that, it¡¯s not possible. Rayshifting can only function because Singularities are fundamentally unobserved areas of spacetime. Actual time travel is beyond anything we could accomplish without Lord Zelretch.¡±

    ¡°And he¡¯s not here,¡± Tohsaka concluded. ¡°Tch. Although he probably did arrange for me to be here for this, didn¡¯t he?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a possibility.¡±

    ¡°So Papa is going to leave me behind?¡± asked Nursery Rhyme.

    Tohsaka sighed again and turned to face her fully, kneeling down to her eye level. ¡°I can¡¯t take you with me, Alice.¡±

    ¡°But you could stay here,¡± she insisted. ¡°If you had the Grail, then we could stay here together, forever and ever. We can take it back, Papa. There are so many friends who could help us.¡±

    Several people stiffened, including Mordred and Emiya, whose hands slowly drifted out, ready to summon his favored blades. No one moved to attack just yet, but they were ready for it if the fight broke out again.

    ¡°I can¡¯t,¡± Tohsaka told her. ¡°As wonderful as you¡¯ve been the last few days, there¡¯s another little girl waiting for me to come home. You¡¯re a Servant, Alice, you¡¯ll be fine without me. Someone else will summon you someday and you¡¯ll have loads of fun with them, I¡¯m sure. You can play all your favorite games together and throw tea parties every day. But that little girl waiting for me back home won¡¯t ever have another papa without me. I can¡¯t leave her behind to stay here with you.¡±

    Jackie tugged on my hand and whispered, ¡°Could we take Alice back with us, Mommy?¡±

    It wasn¡¯t impossible, I had to acknowledge. If it was possible to Rayshift her back with us, then the contract with Tohsaka would be broken after we left this Singularity and there was nothing stopping us from making a new contract with her. She could become a Servant of Chaldea, and I had to admit, with the Jabberwocky and Bandersnatch and all of the other things she had access to, she¡¯d be a fairly strong one, especially for a Caster.

    I wouldn¡¯t say that I didn¡¯t have any reservations. I still remembered the trap she¡¯d laid for us back when we first met, and the lingering resentment and fear of how easily she¡¯d almost killed all three of us Masters probably wasn¡¯t going to disappear anytime soon. But if I could recruit the girl who was responsible for so much of the torment I¡¯d suffered during high school to fight the end of the world, if I could even entertain the idea of letting Bonesaw tinker with my brain, then I think I could learn to let go of those feelings and work with Nursery Rhyme, too.

    ¡°Tohsaka,¡± I said, ¡°if she wants to, Alice can come back to Chaldea with us. Jackie would love the company.¡±

    ¡°We would!¡± Jackie agreed easily.

    ¡°H-hold on!¡± Marie sputtered.

    ¡°Is there anything that would stop that from working, Director?¡± I asked before she could gather steam.

    Grudgingly, Marie had to admit, ¡°No. There¡¯s nothing that¡­says it¡¯s impossible to bring her back. B-but still!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± Nursery Rhyme said. ¡°Miss Director, Miss Taylor, you don¡¯t need to worry about making special arrangements for me.¡± She turned to Jackie and offered her an apologetic smile. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Jackie. It would be fun to go with you and play lots of games and have a tea party every day, it really would! But¡­¡±

    She turned back to Tohsaka.

    ¡°¡­just like Mister Flamel said, Papa is my Master. I want to stay here with him until the very end. If that¡¯s okay, Papa?¡±

    Tohsaka let out a long, slow breath through his nostrils, closing his eyes briefly, and he favored her with a small smile. ¡°Yeah. I guess I can give you at least that much, can¡¯t I? I¡¯d be a very poor papa if I didn¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Jackie, ¡°that¡¯s too bad. We were looking forward to playing with Alice.¡±

    I squeezed her hand. ¡°You still might get the chance.¡± I gave Nursery Rhyme a pointed look, although she couldn¡¯t really see it through my mask. ¡°After all, there¡¯s no reason we couldn¡¯t summon her to Chaldea ourselves later on.¡±

    ¡°Maybe!¡± Nursery Rhyme agreed brightly. ¡°And when that happens, we¡¯ll be best friends forever, Jackie! But for now¡­I guess this is going to be goodbye.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Romani said, ¡°and we¡¯re running very short on time, so if everyone who¡¯s coming back is accounted for? Right?¡± He didn¡¯t wait longer than a second or two for an answer. ¡°Then we have to do the Rayshift now. The Masters, Mash, Emiya, Arash, Sir Mordred, Jackie, Miss Ren¨¦e, Jeanne Alter, if you have any final words to say, now¡¯s your last chance.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± said Flamel, ¡°thank you for reminding me, Doctor Romani, this will just take a moment.¡±

    He strode swiftly over to me and dropped down on one knee, holding his hands out to Jackie. ¡°If you would give me your hand for a moment, dear girl, I¡¯ll see about that arm of yours.¡±

    Jackie looked up at me for guidance, and I gave her an encouraging nod, so she slipped her hand out of mine and held it out tentatively for Flamel. Flamel took it gently in his own, his hands so much larger than hers and so much older, and then he whispered an incantation. The stump of Jackie¡¯s other arm began to glow with red light, much the same as all of Flamel¡¯s other spells, and then the flesh began to fill back in rapidly. It built up like Lego blocks, stacking one on top of the other so quickly that I didn¡¯t have time to even be grossed out by the flashes of bone, muscle, and sinew as they rebuilt themselves.

    A second or two later, and her arm was back, good as new. Jackie gasped and lifted it, marveling at it as though it was some new and interesting thing that she had never seen before.

    ¡°Our arm¡¯s back!¡± she breathed excitedly. I gave her a nudge, and when she looked up at me, I nodded towards Flamel. It took her an extra second, but then she turned to him and said, ¡°Thank you, Mister Flamel!¡±

    He stepped back, smiling kindly. ¡°Think nothing of it, think nothing of it at all. It was the least I could do as thanks for finding Ren¨¦e for me earlier.¡±

    ¡°That it, then?¡± Jeanne Alter asked; she¡¯d been surprisingly considerate, so far. ¡°We¡¯re done with all the mushy stuff, it¡¯s time to go home?¡±

    And I would have to face the inevitable deluge of questions everyone would no doubt have about Solomon and what he¡¯d said about me, to me, along with all of the things those implied. I still wasn¡¯t sure I had an answer to any of it, let alone one that I was comfortable giving to the rest of the team and our paltry collection of technicians.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    I guess I just had to hope that Marie would have a better idea of what to do about all of this than I did. At the very least, she might be able to convince everyone to put the issue off long enough for the two of us to sit down and plan out what all could be said and what all we had actual answers to. I think that was the most I could have hoped for, under the circumstances.

    ¡°Okay,¡± said Romani, ¡°I¡¯m locking down the parameters now. Everyone who¡¯s coming back is accounted for and registered in the system.¡±

    Mordred turned to Fran. ¡°Guess this is it, huh. Sorry we¡¯re leaving out of the blue like this. Ain¡¯t really time for me to think of a proper goodbye or nothing, you know?¡±

    ¡°Uhn,¡± Fran said with a nod. ¡°Uh-uhn, ah-uh-uhn. Uh-uhn!¡±

    ¡°Yeah, doesn¡¯t really feel all that satisfying either, does it?¡± Mordred agreed with a grim smile. ¡°At the end of the day, we got that M bastard, but even if he¡¯s the guy who did all of that to Babbage and Paracelsus, he was just a pawn, too, wasn¡¯t he? We couldn¡¯t even touch the head honcho.¡±

    ¡°Bastard didn¡¯t even fight fair,¡± Jeanne Alter grumbled.

    ¡°We¡¯ll be seeing him again,¡± Emiya said, and it came out like a warning, ¡°one way or the other. At the end of all of this, if nothing else.¡±

    And hopefully, we¡¯d have a plan of action to take the fight to him next time. Whatever it was that let him shrug off two Noble Phantasms had a weakness, it had to, we just had to figure it out first.

    Mordred nodded. ¡°Yeah!¡± She grinned and thumped her free hand against her chest to the clang of her armor. ¡°And when that time comes, I¡¯ll shove my sword up his ass and make him regret ever doing that to Babbage! Alright, Fran?¡±

    ¡°Uhn!¡± Fran nodded firmly.

    ¡°Rayshifting in five¡­¡±

    ¡°Bye, everyone!¡± Nursery Rhyme waved. Next to her, Tohsaka gave us a respectful, solemn nod.

    ¡°Four¡­¡±

    ¡°Farewell, my friends,¡± said Jekyll, offering us a smile. ¡°May fortune smile upon you until the end of your journey.¡±

    ¡°Three¡­¡±

    ¡°Goodbye, Ren¨¦e,¡± Flamel told her softly, ¡°and never forget that I love you.¡±

    ¡°Two¡­¡±

    ¡°Father!¡± Ren¨¦e cried in a sudden burst of emotion. I wasn¡¯t the only one surprised when she threw herself into his arms, wrapping her own around him in a tight hug. Even Flamel himself looked startled.

    ¡°One!¡±

    ¡°Thank you! Thank you for everything!¡±

    And then the world opened up beneath my feet, and the misty remains of that London park vanished into nothingness.

 Chapter CLXI: Hanging Questions

    Chapter CLXI: Hanging Questions

    Coming back from London was one of the first times I wasn¡¯t in a rush to stumble out of my Klein Coffin. My senses returned to me just in time to hear the lid lift away with the hiss of hydraulics and let the cool lights of the Rayshift Chamber shine across my face, but for several long moments more, I stayed there, unmoving, trying to get my thoughts in order and dreading the questions I knew were coming.

    I didn¡¯t think even Marie would be able to stop them this time. Not after the enemy behind it all had called me out by name and thanked me personally.

    ¡°Mommy?¡± a worried Jackie asked.

    A sigh heaved out of my nostrils, weighty and weary. There was no avoiding it. Standing there inside my coffin was just delaying the inevitable, and those questions wouldn¡¯t just magically disappear if I waited long enough and wished for it hard enough.

    When I opened my eyes, she was hovering outside my coffin, brow furrowed and peering up at me with naked concern.

    ¡°I¡¯m fine, Jackie,¡± was the answer I gave her, even though I was anything but.

    At least my procrastinating had given me enough time to reorient myself from the sense of being crammed back into my too small, too human body, so by the time I stepped out ¡ª with Arash there to offer me a helping hand, because of course he was ¡ª my footing was much surer than the rest of me was. I did my best not to let it show on my face.

    The twins and Mash, of course, were already outside and waiting out the disorientation, and Emiya was helping a confused Ren¨¦e out of the spare coffin that must have been arranged for her in order to bring her back from London. An errant thought wondered how long they were planning on playing up the rivalry and how much of it was still honest when he seemed to have grown so attached to her. I hadn¡¯t forgotten how he was one of the first people to rush back to the apartment when we found out she¡¯d been kidnapped.

    ¡°So this is Chaldea, huh?¡± said Mordred, head swiveling as she looked around the room.

    ¡°Home sweet home,¡± said Rika, although it lacked some of her usual pep. I guess even she was still feeling the weight of everything that had happened at the end.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure someone will arrange a tour for you and Jackie later on,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°For now, though¡­¡±

    Mordred heaved out a sigh of her own. ¡°Yeah. We got some shit to talk about, don¡¯t we?¡± Her head turned my way. ¡°Like why that guy called you out by name.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±

    And while it wasn¡¯t the whole truth, it was still the truth. I didn¡¯t know why Solomon thanked me. I had some idea, but only an idea, and it wasn¡¯t like any part of Gold Morning had happened for his sake at all.

    ¡°Bullshit,¡± Mordred growled.

    ¡°Don¡¯t get your panties in a knot, British,¡± said Jeanne Alter, apparently leaping to my defense. ¡°I¡¯ve been around here long enough to get a sense that this bitch doesn¡¯t lie all that often.¡± She grinned at me. ¡°She just doesn¡¯t always tell the whole truth.¡±

    Fuck you, too.

    But no one spoke out to correct her, which said more than enough about where they stood on the issue.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°we¡¯ve been willing to respect your privacy so far because, well, it wasn¡¯t really any of our business and we didn¡¯t really need to know. We didn¡¯t have any right to pry.¡±

    ¡°No matter how much the curiosity was killing me,¡± Rika added. ¡°The cat had nothing on me, you know?¡±

    ¡°But the King of Mages talked to you and called you by name,¡± Ritsuka went on. ¡°He thanked you and said you did him a favor. At the very least, Doctor Roman and Director Marie need to know ¡ª¡±

    ¡°And what makes you think I don¡¯t already?¡± Marie¡¯s voice interrupted as she strode into the room. Her shoes clacked thunderously against the floor. ¡°I told you a long time ago, didn¡¯t I, Ritsuka, Rika? Taylor is a candidate with an accomplished record that I personally recruited to be a Master of Chaldea. Is there any part of her history that you think I don¡¯t know about?¡±

    Romani, trailing behind her, said, ¡°But it¡¯s only you, Director. Her unredacted files are locked behind your permissions. If we hadn¡¯t managed to¡­bring you back, Da Vinci and me wouldn¡¯t have any idea what was going on either. In fact, we still don¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°There comes a point where the secrecy starts to affect unit cohesion,¡± Emiya chimed in. He shrugged. ¡°I have to admit, it worries me a little, too.¡± He jerked a thumb at Arash. ¡°That guy probably knows enough that he can keep going just like this, and even if he didn¡¯t, he¡¯s not the kind to protest. That¡¯s not going to stop the rest of us from wondering, just what secrets is Taylor protecting that even the enemy knows about before we do?¡±

    ¡°Coming from you, that¡¯s rich!¡± Marie seethed. ¡°There¡¯s still so much we don¡¯t know about you, Emiya, because you haven¡¯t told us any of it! Not even about your Reality Marble!¡±

    ¡°The difference is, the King of Mages himself didn¡¯t call me out in front of everyone,¡± Emiya countered.

    ¡°You ¡ª !¡±

    ¡°Hey, hey, let¡¯s not start a fight,¡± said Arash, holding up his hands placatingly as he stepped between the two of them. ¡°Listen, we¡¯re all allies here, aren¡¯t we? We¡¯re all here to correct the Singularities and beat the King of Mages so that history can be put to right. He¡¯s the only one who benefits from us being at each other¡¯s throats.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯m saying,¡± Emiya replied, folding his arms over his chest. ¡°Most of us have been here long enough to believe there has to be some kind of explanation for all of this that makes sense, but most of us have our own doubts about things, too, and that bastard just brought them all to the forefront. ¡®Stop asking and forget about it¡¯ isn¡¯t going to work anymore.¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor was the first person to suspect Flauros was a demon possessing Professor Lev,¡± Mash muttered, and when we all turned to look at her and she realized she¡¯d said that loud enough to be heard, she scrambled to excuse it. ¡°Ah, n-not that I think that means she¡¯s in league with them or anything! After all, Miss Da Vinci said that was what she suspected, too! It¡¯s just¡­¡±

    She trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished. Ritsuka picked it up for her. ¡°It¡¯s just that we don¡¯t understand, Director, and this isn¡¯t¡­really something we can just let go. Not when there¡¯s so much at stake.¡±

    None of it helped Marie¡¯s temper, but she struggled for something to say, some excuse that wasn¡¯t just a tyrannical ¡°I¡¯m the Director and you¡¯ll do what I order you to do!¡± because that wouldn¡¯t have helped anything and she knew it. The trouble was, they all had fairly good points, and this wasn¡¯t something that could just be waved away with empty platitudes and hollow reassurances. This was a real problem that couldn¡¯t just be ignored until everyone forgot about it or soothed with a few honeyed words.

    I wasn¡¯t sure even Lisa could have navigated her way out of this one without having to give ground.

    I¡¯d known it before, but this had all just driven the point home: there was no getting around it, I was going to have to tell them something about what had happened. We had been through too much together for me to let my own secrets destroy this team now.

    ¡°I¡¯m not going to tell this more than once.¡±

    Marie¡¯s head whipped around so fast that I wasn¡¯t sure I hadn¡¯t heard her neck crack. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re only going to get the relevant details as it is,¡± I went on, ¡°so if you¡¯re expecting my life story, you¡¯re going to be disappointed.¡±

    Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash all shared looks.

    ¡°That¡¯s fair,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°We just want to understand, Senpai. That¡¯s all.¡±

    There were some things that I just didn¡¯t want him to understand. Some things that were just too dangerous for him to understand. Like I¡¯d thought ages ago, ignorance might not be the perfect shield, but the twins couldn¡¯t be forced to tell anyone the things that they themselves didn¡¯t know, and Mash¡­

    Well, Mash might not live long enough to face interrogation by the Association. That might have been the sole upside to her situation.

    ¡°Take an hour to relax,¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ll meet up in the orientation room. I¡¯ll¡­try to explain what little I¡¯ve guessed at then.¡± I turned to Marie. ¡°Director, we need to talk.¡±

    Her mouth drew into a thin line. ¡°Yes, it seems like we do.¡±

    I guess it was finally time for her and I to hash out what it was safe for me to tell the twins now that El-Melloi II ¡ª and since they knew each other, apparently Emiya, as well ¡ª had admitted he was from a parallel world.

    I turned next to Arash. ¡°Can you take care of Jackie in the meantime?¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± he said immediately.

    ¡°Mommy?¡± asked Jackie. ¡°Is something wrong?¡±

    I crouched down to her level and gave her the best smile I could muster, just then. I wasn¡¯t sure it was a very good one. She probably saw right through it.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Jackie, but I have to take care of this now,¡± I told her patiently. ¡°I¡¯ll see you later, okay? I just need you to be a good girl for Arash until then.¡±

    ¡°Okay,¡± said Jackie, although she still seemed a little worried. ¡°We will.¡±

    ¡°Excuse me,¡± said Ren¨¦e, speaking up for the first time since we got back, ¡°is there someplace I should be? I am¡­not entirely sure these matters concern me.¡±

    Marie glanced at her and grimaced. Grimly, she muttered, ¡°One way or another, they probably will.¡±

    Emiya sighed. ¡°I¡¯ll see about getting her settled in. Are there any restrictions I need to worry about when it comes to finding her a room to stay in?¡±

    ¡°I should probably see about getting her a proper physical, too,¡± Romani mumbled to himself. He scribbled something on his clipboard, then stopped, hesitating. ¡°Although homunculi aren¡¯t really my specialty, so maybe I should hand that one off to Da Vinci¡­¡±

    ¡°For now, she can stay in a room near the Masters,¡± Marie answered. ¡°Seeing as her¡­personal effects right now are limited, there¡¯s no reason we can¡¯t move her later on if we have to.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± Ren¨¦e reached for her wrist, fiddling with the communicator that she still had on. ¡°Now that the¡­Singularity in London has been resolved, should I not return this device?¡±

    ¡°Keep it for now,¡± Marie told her shortly. ¡°You¡¯re going to need one, and we can worry about reformatting it for your personal use later.¡±

    Ren¨¦e stopped and let her arms fall. They landed in front of her, her hands folding together as though that was her most natural state. ¡°I see. I understand, Director.¡±

    Marie looked at her for a moment longer, lips slowly pulling into an even deeper frown, and then she turned around and started back towards the door ¡ª her eyes paused on me for only fractions of a second, but it was long enough for me to get her message. I fell into step behind her, and an unnerving silence followed us out into the corridor.

    The trip back to her office was similarly silent, accompanied only by the clack of our shoes against the tiles beneath our feet, and she said nothing the whole way there. Not even to grumble under her breath about the circumstances or vent about people questioning her authority, which was as much of a sign as anything about how much this all was stressing her out.

    It was a relief, then, when the door to her office loomed ahead of us, sliding open when she input her keycode, and we stepped out of the cold, sterile white of the rest of the facility and into the warmer, softer environs of her own personal space. The familiar sight of a stack of paperwork piled high on her desk was almost comforting.

    Only once the door had whooshed shut behind us did she finally let loose a growl and reach up to grab fistfuls of her hair. ¡°This is a catastrophe!¡±

    ¡°I know.¡±

    ¡°Not only did we find out that our suspicions were correct and Solomon himself was the one behind this whole farce ¡ª¡± she swung one arm out violently ¡ª ¡°but he had the audacity to thank you for helping him!¡±

    ¡°I know.¡±

    ¡°And two years ago!¡± she continued on, ranting. ¡°The others might not have any idea what that means, but you and I know damn well that there weren¡¯t exactly any other options, were there? What, were you just supposed to let that golden lunatic do whatever he wanted and kill whole timelines?¡±

    ¡°I know.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not like you did it for him either! You didn¡¯t even know he existed before this, before Chaldea!¡± She gestured in a wide, sweeping arc at the office around us, as though to encompass the entirety of the facility. ¡°If it helped him at all, it was a coincidence! Mere chance! A happenstance of fate!¡±

    ¡°I know.¡±

    She grunted and pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes. ¡°And now he¡¯s left a mess behind for us to try and clean up! There¡¯s a reason so much of your past was classified, for my eyes only! I never even told Lev¡­!¡±

    The words died on her tongue, and her shoulders slumped. A heavy sigh wheezed out of her mouth, and when she spoke again, it was quieter, softer: ¡°What are we supposed to do with this?¡±

    I didn¡¯t know. But¡­

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure we have too many options.¡±

    She favored me with a glare out of the corner of her eyes, mouth drawn into a tight scowl. ¡°I refuse to let that overblown familiar dictate Chaldea¡¯s policies.¡±

    I didn¡¯t like it either. Doing anything the enemy wanted us to do was never going to be something that sounded like a good idea to me, especially when we knew so little of the actual plan behind it. Unfortunately, if the goal had been to create a rift between me and the rest of the team ¡ª or worse, between me and Marie and the rest of the team ¡ª then clamming up and refusing to answer the others would be playing exactly into it.

    And I couldn¡¯t say it enough times, but letting a rift form in the team this far into things, after all we¡¯d been through together, was absolutely not an option.

    ¡°Telling them nothing isn¡¯t an option anymore,¡± I said. ¡°Whether it¡¯s what he wants or not, he¡¯s forcing our hand on the issue. And it¡¯s not like¡­¡±

    I let a breath out through my nose. How to put this?

    ¡°It¡¯s a miracle we¡¯ve managed to keep as much secret as we have,¡± I settled on. ¡°But I¡¯ve been meaning to ask you for a while now, ever since El-Melloi II ¡ª and Emiya by proxy ¡ª revealed they¡¯re from a parallel world themselves: how much do we really need to keep secret anymore?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be absurd,¡± she snapped at me. ¡°Servants are one thing, but living human beings? It shouldn¡¯t be possible to move through parallel worlds ¡ª not without Lord Zelretch and the Kaleidoscope ¡ª and that very knowledge would be enough to draw attention from the Association that I refuse to let fall on you!¡±

    I wasn¡¯t really sure what anyone could possibly learn about Doormaker or Doctor Haywire or whatever portal power Contessa had used from examining my body, but I wasn¡¯t so ignorant that I didn¡¯t recognize that the source of my powers would be equally enticing a mystery for some.

    But okay. For the sake of argument, I was willing to concede that the whole parallel world part should stay secret, and so should my passenger. Da Vinci¡­might figure something out somehow, because she was a genius and I didn¡¯t put it past her, but I trusted her enough to keep whatever she discovered to herself. Romani¡­about as much so, but only because he was too decent a person to reveal something that could put my life in danger.

    ¡°Then we keep the things secret that might bring the Association sniffing around,¡± I allowed. ¡°But if any of that does come out, one way or the other ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Not if I ¡ª¡± Marie began.

    I cut across her. ¡°That guy was perfectly willing to reference an event that only two people in this entire universe should know about. Do you think there¡¯s anything that would stop him from spilling it all, if he thought he had a reason to? In front of all of our monitoring equipment, which will record every word he says and preserve it for the UN and the Association to comb over later.¡±

    Marie¡¯s eyes flashed dangerously. ¡°Everyone here knows what¡¯s at stake. If something like that happens, Da Vinci can edit the data to delete any compromising information, and the rest of the staff can be sworn to secrecy.¡±

    That was all well and good, but it didn¡¯t solve the human issue.

    ¡°It won¡¯t delete the information from Rika and Ritsuka¡¯s minds,¡± I told her. ¡°Or from the technicians¡¯ either. And if they know, then the Association can find it out from them, one way or the other. What I¡¯m asking is, would your name still have enough weight to protect us, if it wound up being Chaldea against the world?¡±

    Marie bit her lip, and for a moment, she was silent. Her eyes darted back and forth, like she was playing a series of events out in her mind, rapid fire. When she looked back at me several long seconds later, her brow knitted together with worry.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she finally admitted. ¡°There¡¯s no way the Association and the UN won¡¯t have questions after this is all over. The very secret of magecraft may be threatened as a result of¡­all of this, and against that, with the expectation that I should have been able to prevent all of this from happening¡­¡±

    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    She bit her bottom lip again, chewing on it between her teeth.

    ¡°You couldn¡¯t have done anything to stop it,¡± I said. ¡°Lev was a respected member of the organization, and he betrayed all of us.¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t¡­!¡± She cut herself off, taking a deep, shuddering breath, and in a smaller voice, she continued, ¡°That won¡¯t make a difference. Chaldea and its mission are my responsibility. I might even¡­¡±

    She closed her eyes briefly, eyelids fluttering, and the words seemed to cause her physical pain. In a whisper, she finished, ¡°I might even be removed as Director.¡±

    ¡°None of us here would accept that,¡± I said immediately.

    ¡°It wouldn¡¯t matter,¡± she said, grim and resigned. ¡°The resources the Association would bring to bear against us are more than any of us here could hope to overcome. For that matter, if they learn of any of this, then that means that they¡¯re already here and already have access to the facility.¡±

    ¡°The Association,¡± I began deliberately, ¡°doesn¡¯t have Servants.¡±

    Carefully, I drew out the shape of a rune on the surface of the nearest chair, just enough to demonstrate my point. On its own, of course, it was just me drawing shapes with my finger, but if I¡¯d gone through the whole process, it would have been one of A¨ªfe¡¯s Primordial Runes, the kind that the Association itself would kill to have access to.

    Marie¡¯s eyes watched me. Her mouth slowly pulled into a tight line.

    ¡°As part of the process of investigating us,¡± she told me, ¡°the first step would be to order us to stand down and cancel any active Servant contracts.¡±

    That was probably true. In their position, it was probably what I would do, too, although I would never make a demand like that without the ability to enforce it or a way to get around the problem first.

    ¡°And how are they going to make us do that?¡±

    Her lips pulled into a tighter line, but she didn¡¯t have an immediate answer. I wasn¡¯t sure there was one. Just between the Servants we already had on hand, this place was a fortress, and they could trap the entire place with any number of spells that the Association couldn¡¯t possibly have a counter for.

    I wasn¡¯t ignorant of the problem with that way of doing things, though. This wasn¡¯t like Brockton when the Undersiders took it over. Unless we could exploit the Singularities indefinitely, the big threat the Association and the UN could level against us was to starve us out. And even if we could hold out forever, it would mean none of us could ever leave without being snatched up instantly.

    We were also out here in the middle of nowhere. I wasn¡¯t sure if even our Servants had a solution for it if someone decided to drop a nuke on us to solve the problem.

    ¡°It¡¯s a worst case scenario,¡± I allowed. ¡°Better to try and keep the sensitive stuff under wraps. We¡­might have to tell Da Vinci and Romani, but if you¡¯re saying that we can¡¯t risk the twins and Mash knowing even now, then we¡¯ll keep the stuff about the source of my powers and my¡­refugee status secret. So we tell them¡­what, exactly?¡±

    Marie¡¯s lips pursed. ¡°An unspecified crisis. We¡­need to avoid too much detail, but there are enough things like that happening across the world every decade or so that we can get away with telling them a few details. Just¡­not everything. Not about the true scope of¡­of Scion and his rampage. Or what it took to kill him.¡± She let out a short breath from her nostrils. ¡°And maybe a hint about your origins. Something that they can infer on their own without having more than a suspicion when the questions come.¡±

    It was going to take more than that, I sensed, but¡­fine. I could edit the story selectively and give the cliff notes version. I wasn¡¯t sure yet exactly how much I was going to share, exactly how much detail I could go into. Was there a way to talk about the passengers and Scion without revealing everything I¡¯d learned in those final days? Probably.

    Okay. Maybe we could do this after all.

    ¡°And Romani and Da Vinci?¡± I asked.

    She frowned deeply. ¡°It¡­may become unavoidable,¡± she admitted reluctantly. ¡°No, but first¡­ What he said about the next Singularity. He specifically mentioned you going home and making peace with your past. I¡­ If that¡¯s what I think it means, then we might have to tell at least Da Vinci more of the story.¡± She sighed, exasperated, and pinched the bridge of her nose. ¡°At that point, she might have enough information to start making guesses anyway, and it would be troublesome if she came to the wrong conclusions.¡±

    Basically as I¡¯d been thinking, then. I nodded. ¡°Then we should see about preparing the orientation room.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s¡­one other thing,¡± Marie said. ¡°Or, well, not related to this specific subject exactly, but¡­ The homunculus, Ren¨¦e. The Philosopher¡¯s Stone she has inside of her.¡±

    ¡°What about it?¡±

    Marie didn¡¯t answer me, not immediately. Instead, she looked away from me and said, ¡°No, it¡¯s nothing. I need to talk to Da Vinci about it first. There¡¯s no point in even bringing it up before then.¡±

    I was tempted to push, to get her to say what was on her mind, because it was obviously important if she tried to talk about it here and now, but we¡¯d come far enough that I thought I could trust her to talk to me about it after she learned whatever it was she needed to know. She¡¯d told me about Mash, after all, and what Marisbury¡¯s experiments meant for her, and that was as deep and troubling a problem as it got.

    ¡°Later, then.¡±

    She nodded and promised, ¡°Later.¡±

    The conversation wasn¡¯t entirely over and not everything had been resolved, but I knew we were probably going to have to have multiple talks about the inevitability of what happened to us and Chaldea once all of the Singularities had been fixed and Solomon was beaten. The Association would have too many questions for any of it to be as simple or as easy as just answering everything we could as honestly as possible.

    Those were concerns for later, though, and we left her office with that vague plan solidified enough that I felt confident I could give the twins and the Servants something workable. We walked through the empty halls in silence again and made our way to the orientation room, and by the time we got there and the door opened, several Servants were waiting for us, including El-Melloi II, A¨ªfe, Siegfried, and Hippolyta.

    Marie, seeing them, wasn¡¯t exactly pleased, but wasn¡¯t exactly surprised either. ¡°You¡¯ve been informed, then?¡±

    ¡°About the King of Mages and what he said? Yes,¡± said A¨ªfe.

    ¡°Needless to say, some of us want these questions answered, too,¡± added El-Melloi II, sour-faced and solemn. ¡°Even if the reason why we¡¯re getting them isn¡¯t the most desirable.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Master, but it¡¯s not a matter of trust,¡± said Siegfried.

    ¡°It¡¯s a matter of strategy,¡± said Hippolyta. ¡°Whatever this secret is, it is obvious to me that its keeping is meant to divide us. That is only possible so long as we don¡¯t know the truth of the matter. Even magi understand that a secret loses power when it is no longer a secret.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Marie clicked her tongue. ¡°It¡¯s not like you weren¡¯t going to be told anyway, so it doesn¡¯t matter.¡±

    And that seemed to be enough to satisfy them, at least for the moment. They didn¡¯t try to justify their curiosity again or make any demands, so it looked like they were content to wait.

    Slowly, the others filtered in, the other Servants, the twins and Mash, Da Vinci and Romani, and Arash and Jackie, who peeled off from him and came up to join me at the front of the room. I didn¡¯t have it in me to reprimand her and order her to go sit with the others so that I could get this over with, so I let her stay there, so close that she was practically clinging to my side.

    Once everyone was assembled and the door had hissed shut, Marie stepped forward.

    ¡°You all know what this is about,¡± she said imperiously. ¡°You all know why we¡¯re here. If you have any questions about what you¡¯re about to learn, hold it to the end. The fact that the King of Mages forced us into this situation doesn¡¯t change the fact that most of this was classified and for good reason. Got it?¡±

    No one spoke, but she got a lot of nods, and when she was satisfied with that, she nodded herself and turned to me to give me the metaphorical stage. I took a deep breath.

    ¡°Four years ago, I was told a¡­prophecy, of sorts, that a madman would start the end of the world,¡± I began. ¡°Not how or why, not what the end of the world would mean, exactly, just that it would be the end of the world and a lot of people would die. I spent the next two years preparing for it as best as I could, trying to hunt down the madman, trying to cut off any avenues he could use to do it, trying to prepare in case he succeeded.¡±

    I thought about explaining powers a little, but it seemed¡­ Well, it wasn¡¯t necessary information. It was context, but little more than fluff. There wasn¡¯t a point in trying to explain Earth Bet in all its wonderful, horrid eccentricities.

    Unless Solomon was being more literal about the next Singularity than I hoped. Then this was all going to implode and I didn¡¯t know what the fuck I was supposed to do about that.

    ¡°Like me, the madman had powers,¡± I went on. ¡°I didn¡¯t know how he would or could use them to destroy the world, but I had enough confidence in the person who told me the prophecy to trust that he could do it, however he did it. At the end of the day, nothing I did to prepare wound up mattering.¡±

    That might not have wound up being completely true, now that I thought about it. All of those attempts to contact my passenger might have played some hand in how everything had ended once it was all over. There was just no way to tell with any kind of certainty.

    ¡°Two years ago, that madman woke up a god.¡±

    There were several sharp intakes of breath and more than one wide-eyed stare. Romani was the only one who didn¡¯t seem completely surprised, although he was still surprised enough to look stricken, and El-Melloi II had gone chalk white, fingers trembling around the stick of his lollipop.

    Shakespeare, on the other hand, simply laughed like he had just heard the funniest joke.

    ¡°Wait a minute,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°you don¡¯t mean that metaphorically, do you? You¡¯re talking about an actual, honest-to-goodness god, in the flesh!¡±

    Marie glared her way and looked ready to offer some choice words for the interruption, but I just went with it.

    ¡°Or close enough that the distinction didn¡¯t matter,¡± I agreed. ¡°That madman convinced that god to go on a rampage, and a¡­lot of people died. I was nearly one of them.¡± I wasn¡¯t, I decided, going to show them where Scion had cut me in half, not the least of which because there wasn¡¯t even a scar to show for it. ¡°The battle lasted five days while we scrambled for a way to keep that god from killing everyone. I was¡­one of the leaders in the fight, I guess you could say, and the one who figured out that his weakness was the fact he¡¯d chosen to take a human form.¡±

    ¡°And then you killed him,¡± said Ritsuka, like he¡¯d seen it coming.

    I wasn¡¯t sure that I had. At that point, it might have been an act of patricide more than anything else.

    ¡°Not myself,¡± I said instead. ¡°The best you could say was that I gave the order that landed the final blow. At the end of the day, I was just the person in charge of the group that managed to do it.¡± When they seemed to be expecting more, I continued, ¡°That¡¯s it. That¡¯s the only thing that happened two years ago that I can think of that the King of Mages would thank me for.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± Bradamante blurted out, and then she backtracked. ¡°I-I mean, not that it¡¯s nothing, Master! It¡¯s certainly an impressive accomplishment, especially for someone from the modern day! B-but I suppose it¡¯s¡­not what I was expecting.¡±

    If she thought being party to killing a god wasn¡¯t impressive enough, then I had no idea what she¡¯d been thinking I was going to admit to. Would a whole pantheon have sounded better to her? Beating Thor in arm-wrestling or shoving Zeus¡¯s lightning bolt up his ass?

    ¡°The part that I¡¯m still not clear about is where and how all of this happened,¡± said El-Melloi II gruffly. ¡°For that matter, something like that is a big enough deal that I would think there¡¯d be news about it all over the place, if only from whatever story the Association ¡ª or the American equivalent, at any rate ¡ª invented to cover it all up.¡±

    I¡¯d been afraid he would say something like that. I didn¡¯t have a good excuse, and maybe it was okay if I didn¡¯t.

    ¡°I thought you were from a parallel world,¡± I said, stalling a little. ¡°You and Emiya both.¡±

    El-Melloi II grimaced.

    ¡°No, no,¡± said Rika, ¡°I didn¡¯t hear about this either! A-and, hey, Senpai, is this that natural disaster you were talking about before? The one that made it impossible for you to finish high school?¡±

    She¡¯d remembered that, had she? My lips pulled into a grimace and I couldn¡¯t stop myself from awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot as I took an extra second to word my response.

    ¡°No. This and that were two separate things.¡± As a kind of apology, I added, ¡°And, strictly speaking, we¡¯re getting pretty close to the stuff I shouldn¡¯t be talking about.¡±

    Ritsuka and Rika both looked frustrated. I couldn¡¯t blame them, and I had to look away and focus on a point vaguely to their left so I couldn¡¯t see their faces. But how many times could I tell them that keeping this stuff compartmentalized was as much for their own safety as mine? How many times before they stopped believing it was that and not me jealously guarding my secrets like a miser might his gold?

    ¡°There is one question that remains at the forefront of my mind, my dear!¡± Shakespeare spoke up. ¡°Yes, verily, a question that you might say is of most urgent import! How was it you came to be at Chaldea?¡± He grinned broadly. ¡°That is to say, just how did you come to be from some unnameable place ¡ª in America, one would presume ¡ª and arrive here, at the bottom of the world itself?¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash. ¡°That¡¯s a good point. I¡­don¡¯t remember Miss Taylor ever actually arriving at Chaldea. Just¡­one day, she wasn¡¯t there, and the next, Director Animusphere was introducing her to the rest of Team A.¡±

    That¡­that one, I didn¡¯t have a good answer for. Strictly speaking, I hadn¡¯t been conscious for any of it, but Marie had told me enough ¡ª and I could have guessed the rest on my own ¡ª to have a decent picture of what happened.

    Shakespeare, you bastard.

    ¡°I¡­¡±

    I wasn¡¯t conscious for it, that was as good as admitting something was fishy. I don¡¯t know, that was only the truth in the strictest, most technical sense. Neither was a good answer.

    ¡°She was dragged into my office half-dead by a woman who never introduced herself,¡± Marie said, coming to my rescue. ¡°The reason you didn¡¯t see Taylor until she was being introduced was because the only people who were even allowed to know she was on-base were the ones treating her wounds.¡±

    Mash blinked, astonished. ¡°B-but that would have been all over the facility! Everyone would have been talking about it!¡±

    ¡°There aren¡¯t many ways of crossing large distances like that,¡± Marie admitted, ¡°but they do exist, Mash, as I¡¯m certain this last Singularity and Tohsaka¡¯s circumstances should remind you. What method the woman used, she never explained, and I never had the chance to ask. I was too focused on making sure that Taylor survived.¡±

    For which I was incredibly thankful. People were getting to see more and more of the Marie I knew, but I didn¡¯t think anyone really, truly understood exactly how much she¡¯d done for me. Not all of it, at least.

    ¡°Hang on,¡± said Mordred, ¡°what does this supposed god have to do with that Solly guy and his favor?¡±

    Romani¡¯s face twisted into a grimace, like what he¡¯d just heard physically pained him. It was Da Vinci, however, who answered:

    ¡°It should be obvious, shouldn¡¯t it? Based upon what he said about the Grails and his complete lack of concern about the resolved Singularities, perhaps the Singularities themselves are only a means to an end.¡± She hummed. ¡°He confirmed that the rings of light in the sky inside every Singularity so far are his Noble Phantasm, didn¡¯t he? It may be that he doesn¡¯t actually need to overturn history completely on its own, only that it would serve his purposes if he did. No, no, if those rings of light are his Noble Phantasm and they¡¯ve been inside every Singularity since the beginning ¡ª¡±

    She cut off suddenly. ¡°I¡¯ll need to investigate this,¡± she changed course. ¡°But, yes, if it¡¯s not the propagation of the Singularities themselves that are the goal of their existence but their existence itself is necessary for the deployment of his Noble Phantasm ¡ª whatever he¡¯s using it for ¡ª then if the world were to end before he could put all of them into place and enact the incineration, his entire plan would fall apart, wouldn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°So by saving the world, I saved his plan.¡±

    That was all I¡¯d been able to come up with, too. I¡­still wasn¡¯t entirely sure how, since we still didn¡¯t really know what his plan really was or how it was meant to work, but the only explanation I had was that Scion destroying everything would have ruined Solomon¡¯s plans.

    ¡°Essentially,¡± Da Vinci agreed. ¡°Unless you¡¯re going to say that you made contact with him at some point during those events or that the fight against this god of yours activated some key part of his scheme.¡±

    ¡°Not that I¡¯m aware of.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Rika, ¡°so Solly was actually just fucking with us?¡±

    ¡°Language,¡± Jeanne Alter hissed at her mockingly. Rika ignored her entirely.

    ¡°What the fuck! Seriously?¡±

    ¡°What does this mean for us now, though?¡± asked Ritsuka. ¡°That guy¡­he also mentioned something about you going home and making peace with your past or something, didn¡¯t he?¡±

    I was completely honest when I told him, ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±

    None of them looked satisfied to hear that. Unfortunately, this one wasn¡¯t a matter of secrets and keeping sensitive information private, because I really couldn¡¯t make more than wild guesses.

    ¡°We still don¡¯t have anything like a full grasp on what the next Singularity will look like,¡± Marie chimed in. ¡°The only thing we know for sure is that it¡¯s located on the North American continent and seems to originate from somewhere on the east coast.¡±

    Ritsuka nodded. ¡°And Senpai is American.¡±

    ¡°And I was born on the east coast, yes.¡±

    Brockton Bay didn¡¯t even exist in this world, and by all accounts, it never had, so I avoided mentioning it entirely.

    ¡°It seems kind of simple that the answer would be so straightforward,¡± Emiya said suspiciously.

    ¡°But until we know more, we can¡¯t say anything else about it,¡± said Arash. Emiya just shook his head and sighed.

    Hippolyta let out a sigh of her own. ¡°This just leaves us with more questions, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°And no way to answer them except to wait for more information to present itself.¡± A¨ªfe levered herself out of her seat. ¡°Well. If that was all, Director, then I don¡¯t see a need for me to stay.¡±

    ¡°It was a little disappointing,¡± Bradamante agreed awkwardly.

    ¡°At least it was three paragraphs of exposition, this time,¡± said Rika.

    ¡°I¡­I suppose it was!¡±

    ¡°If you don¡¯t have any questions, then feel free to leave,¡± Marie said. Rika opened her mouth, and Marie shot her a glare. ¡°And if you¡¯re just going to ask for more about Taylor¡¯s background, then you can leave now, too!¡±

    Rika¡¯s mouth snapped shut and she mimed pulling a zipper across her lips.

    ¡°Well then,¡± said Da Vinci, climbing up out of her own seat, ¡°I suppose I might as well return to the projects I was working on.¡±

    ¡°Hold on,¡± said Marie. ¡°Da Vinci, Romani, there¡¯s more we need to discuss, so you two aren¡¯t going anywhere!¡±

    Emiya huffed. ¡°Hint received. Come on, Master.¡±

    ¡°Fine,¡± Rika grumbled. ¡°I expect dinner ASAP, though!¡±

    ¡°Of course, of course¡­¡±

    Slowly, the group filed out the same way they came, vanishing off back to whatever and wherever they¡¯d been before. Mash lingered, coming up to me.

    ¡°Yes, Mash?¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor,¡± she said quietly, ¡°that fight¡­ That was when you lost your arm, wasn¡¯t it?¡±

    The port for my prosthetic gave a sympathetic throb. ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°And that was also¡­¡± She shook her head. ¡°Nevermind. Miss Taylor.¡± She bent forward in a respectful bow. ¡°Thank you for saving the world. I¡¯m glad Director Animusphere managed to find someone so experienced to be a Master.¡±

    And then she turned and jogged off to catch up with Ritsuka, who had turned to look for her just outside the door when he realized she wasn¡¯t still there.

    For a long moment, I stood there, unsure of exactly how to feel. It wasn¡¯t like I¡¯d gone into Gold Morning and fought Scion for the glory of it. Getting praise or accolades had been the furthest thing from my mind the whole time. I¡¯d done it because it had to be done, because I wasn¡¯t willing to roll over and die, and because there were people I happened to care about who would have died if I didn¡¯t.

    Being thanked for it was¡­ I didn¡¯t know what to do with that. Because no one had ever thanked me at the end either, not that I think I would have been able to understand it if they had. In fact, I wasn¡¯t sure anyone had ever really thanked me my entire career, with the exception of maybe Dinah and some of the people I¡¯d looked out for after Leviathan.

    It was¡­a strange feeling.

    Eventually, it was just me, Da Vinci, Romani, and Marie in the room, and Arash had taken Jackie in hand again with the promise that I¡¯d be with her soon. Once the door had whooshed shut and we were alone, Da Vinci said, ¡°You needed something, Director?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Marie, glancing first at me, then at Romani. ¡°Romani knows some of this already, of course, but¡­¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re going to give you as much of the full story as we can,¡± I told her bluntly.

    And so we did. We spent the next hour or so going into as much detail as we dared, explaining the scope of what Earth Bet had been like as much as was possible. The Endbringers, the nature of powers and how they worked, the game of cops and robbers that so many capes had lived by up until the moment they didn¡¯t. There was so much I had to just leave out, just because it was too much to go into all at once.

    Eventually, however, we had to get to the final part, the most important part, the one that had so much weight that keeping it a secret kept finding the worst possible moments to try and crush the team.

    I had to explain Scion. Everything I knew about him, everything he¡¯d been capable of, how much damage he¡¯d done and how close Earth and all its branches had come to total annihilation.

    And the only thing Da Vinci could do¡­

    ¡°Oh dear,¡± she said faintly. It was the smallest she had ever sounded, like a goldfish that suddenly found itself stranded in an ocean whose bottom seemed to stretch on forever.

    ¡­was stare at me, wide-eyed and pale-faced, as the enormity of it all threatened to drown her.

 Chapter CLXII: Christmas in Chaldea

    Chapter CLXII: Christmas in Chaldea

    As though to mock my concerns about telling more of my past to the twins and our Servants, things went relatively back to normal after our little impromptu debriefing. We settled back into the routines we¡¯d been living for most of our time in Chaldea ever since this all started, including the brief reprieve from training given as a grace period for us Masters to write and file our reports on what had happened during our most recent deployments.

    Ren¨¦e fit neatly into our group with almost no effort whatsoever. As though she had belonged there the entire time, she wound up taking care of the kitchen with Emiya, who seemed to have resigned himself to her presence in what was usually his space, and Marcus was only glad that there was someone else to handle things so that he could go back to his normal position in the organization. Someone had even found her a spare uniform to put on, and she took to it like it had always been hers, wearing it with the same grace and air she had worn that maid uniform we had first seen her in.

    Mordred, of course, had wiggled into her own niche and disappeared for hours at a time into El-Melloi II¡¯s room. Not to screw around, as I might have expected of a rowdy, upfront personality like hers, but ¡ª as I discovered when curiosity got the better of me one day and I checked in on them ¡ª to play racing games together. They were apparently quite evenly matched, at least judging by how intensely they both focused on the game.

    It was actually kind of funny to see what was supposed to be this dignified Lord of the Clock Tower lounging about in a t-shirt and shorts and cussing at the screen as he mashed the buttons on his controller. Almost as funny as imagining the look on Marie¡¯s face if she ever found out.

    Jackie, meanwhile, had been given her own room right next to mine, but somehow or another, she always wound up sleeping in my bed with me every night. It¡­probably wasn¡¯t the healthiest of things to indulge her like that, but at least for the moment, I didn¡¯t have any idea how I was supposed to convince her to stay in her own room. I imagined that if I tried to frame it as her needing to be able to sleep without me while I was out on deployment, then she would just say something about how that was why she needed to get as much time with me as she could until then, and I didn¡¯t have a good answer for that one.

    At least there wasn¡¯t a fight about keeping her knives out of the bed. I hadn¡¯t needed to ask her since that first time, and she was only too happy to shed most of her clothing and gear if it meant sleeping in one of my shirts at night.

    The only people who still seemed to be having trouble digesting what Marie and I had told them were Da Vinci and Romani, and being fair, they had been told a lot more with a lot greater detail than the rest of the team. After almost a whole week, however, I was starting to get a little bit concerned.

    With everything that had been going on and all of the things on my mind, I didn¡¯t even realize what day it was until I stepped into the cafeteria and found a Christmas tree ¡ª fully decorated ¡ª propped up in the one corner. String of red and green lights hung above the countertop where Emiya was dishing up breakfast, blinking off and on in alternating patterns and branching out from a bristly wreath.

    When I meandered up to him and gave the lights a pointed look, Emiya couldn¡¯t do anything more than offer me a shrug and say, ¡°My dear Master thought the place could do with a little festive cheer, so I indulged her and projected a few things to brighten up the room.¡±

    Ah. I looked back at the Christmas tree. Once again, the mystery of his limits deepened, although I suppose some lights and a plastic tree weren¡¯t anywhere close to the most complicated things I¡¯d ever seen him reproduce.

    At least the cleanup would be easy. I think Marie would have had a lot more to say if it was going to leave a lot more of a mess behind.

    ¡°And what did the Director think?¡± I asked him.

    ¡°That it was fine as long as it didn¡¯t stay up past New Year¡¯s,¡± he answered. He filled up my plate as we talked. ¡°I told her it was just for a couple of days anyway.¡± He smirked. ¡°She did call it a colossal waste of magical energy, though. For the pittance it takes to keep these up that long.¡±

    A huff of air slipped out of my nostrils, not quite a snort. Changing the topic, I asked, ¡°And Ren¨¦e?¡±

    ¡°Yes, Miss Taylor?¡± Ren¨¦e replied, turning away from what she was cooking long enough to look my way. ¡°Is something the matter?¡±

    ¡°Just wanted to make sure you¡¯re settling in okay,¡± I told her.

    She nodded. ¡°The machinery here is more advanced than what I was working with in London, but¡­Emiya has been gracious in helping me to adjust.¡±

    She wasn¡¯t being openly hostile about it, and in fact, she still spoke largely in the same sort of calm monotone she¡¯d been using since we met, but I thought I detected a bit of suspicious confusion. Just in that pause alone.

    Emiya sighed. ¡°As you can see, there¡¯s a bit of what I guess you could call culture shock, but as expected of Nicolas Flamel¡¯s daughter, she¡¯s a surprisingly quick study.¡±

    There was a tortured, metallic screech from further back in the room as Ren¨¦e¡¯s hand slipped, but by the time my eyes flicked over towards her, she had already corrected herself, staring studiously at the skillet she was working. The tips of her ears had turned vaguely pink.

    ¡°I think she¡¯s still getting used to that part, too, though,¡± Emiya muttered so that only I could hear.

    So it seemed.

    When he finished filling up my plate, he handed the tray over to me with a smirk and an almost mocking, ¡°Merry Christmas.¡±

    I realized why when I looked down to see the Christmas tree-shaped pancakes piled up on my plate. Little chocolate chips dotted them in neat rows, creating the illusion of ornaments hung upon the branches.

    The unimpressed look I gave him only served to make his smirk bigger.

    Rather than continue a fight I would probably lose even if I won, I left him behind and went to find myself a seat. It was only as I was sitting down that I was a little stunned to realize this particular table had somehow become my usual table somewhere in the last month or two. Not because I liked it or because it was the most convenient table, but because ¡ª the part that really got me ¡ª it was the table the twins and Mash liked to sit at, too.

    When had that happened?

    ¡°Mommy?¡±

    I jolted out of my thoughts and turned to Jackie ¡ª right, I¡¯d told her to meet me at the table while I went to get my food ¡ª giving her the best reassuring smile I could. ¡°It¡¯s nothing, Jackie, just getting lost in my thoughts.¡±

    Jackie nodded, and then asked, ¡°Are Mommy¡¯s thoughts scary?¡±

    I did my best to fight down a much more genuine smile, and didn¡¯t quite succeed. ¡°Some people might think so.¡±

    ¡°Some people are stupid,¡± Jackie announced with all of the confidence a child her age could possess.

    ¡°They are,¡± I agreed. I turned back to my plate. ¡°Now let¡¯s have some breakfast. Emiya gave me enough for both of us.¡±

    Jackie¡¯s eyes lit up, and so did her face a minute later when she got to eat a bite of the chocolate chip pancakes, because whatever else she might have been, she was a little girl and she had a sweet tooth like one. Worse, as a Servant, she didn¡¯t have to worry about things like calories or cavities or proper nutrition, so I couldn¡¯t even honestly tell her that she had to eat her vegetables if she wanted to grow up big and strong.

    That thought¡­soured things just a little. Jackie was a Servant. She was never going to grow up. She would never become older than she was right then and there, and no amount of healthy foods or tender nurturing would change that in any way. She would, always and forever, be exactly the age she was now.

    I hated Andersen for being right, just then.

    I couldn¡¯t save Jackie. I was over a hundred years too late to even try. Nothing I did would make any difference for the little girl recorded on the Throne, whose fate was already set in stone, immutable. Then, in that case, the only thing I could do was try and give her the childhood she had apparently never had. To give her the mother she craved and desired above everything else so that when the day came she returned to the Throne, these memories might provide some comfort to that little girl.

    If that involved spoiling her a little, then oh well. That was the one upside to this whole thing: I didn¡¯t have to worry that she would turn into a bratty teenager somewhere down the line.

    Right as I was biting into my own pancakes, the door whooshed open and a familiar trio walked in together.

    ¡°Hashire sori yo,¡± Rika sang, ¡°kaze no you ni! Yuki no naka wo, karuku hayaku!¡±

    The words were gibberish to me, but the tune sounded suspiciously like Jingle Bells, only reinforced when Rika got the chorus just in time to reach Emiya and ¡ª thankfully ¡ª stop so that she could get her breakfast. Emiya complied with what I could only describe as a faint, vaguely exasperated smile.

    Ritsuka, too, looked resigned. If she¡¯d been singing the entire walk over here, then he had my sympathies.

    ¡°Merry Christmas!¡± Rika bellowed as she picked up her tray. ¡°Ho ho ho!¡±

    The expression on Ritsuka¡¯s face begged the ground to open up and swallow him whole, but no such thing happened on their walk over to the table. Rika, either completely oblivious or completely unconcerned, only beamed at me as they approached, and while her brother and Mash took their seats, she boomed again, ¡°Merry Christmas, Senpai! Ho ho ho!¡±

    ¡°Rika,¡± Ritsuka began, sounding exhausted ¡ª and it wasn¡¯t even ten o¡¯clock, ¡°are you going to say that to everyone we meet today?¡±

    ¡°But it¡¯s Christmas Eve!¡± Rika protested.

    ¡°You¡¯re not even Christian!¡± he pointed out.

    ¡°I¡¯m a firm believer in the holy spirit of gift giving!¡± she insisted, and then a thought occurred to her and she turned to me with a gasp. ¡°Wait a minute! Senpai, do you think Santa Claus is real? Like, is he a Servant?¡±

    I opened my mouth to offer an immediate denial, then had to stop and think about it for a second, because fuck me, he probably was, wasn¡¯t he? Saint Nicholas was a real person, after all, and he had been mythologized enough that there was undoubtedly a Heroic Spirit that had formed from his legend. Even if so much of it had wound up the inventions of later peoples and was founded on thin air, Dracul had proven that a bunch of people believing in something hard enough could twist that Heroic Spirit into something completely different.

    Goddamnit. Santa Claus was real, wasn¡¯t he?

    I reached up with one hand and pinched the bridge of my nose beneath my glasses, because there went another part of something I had accepted as fact being upended by the fucked-up, nonsensical bullshit that was Servants. Rika, naturally, took this as confirmation.

    ¡°He is!¡± she squealed, absolutely delighted. ¡°Oh, oh, do you think his sleigh really travels faster than light? Is Rudolph real? Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen? Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen?¡±

    With every word, Mash only seemed to get more confused, but Rika continued on blithely, completely oblivious.

    ¡°Do you think he¡¯ll deliver presents tonight?¡± she asked me, like I had any idea. ¡°Can we set up a camera and catch him in the act, or does he have some kind of Presence Concealment bullshit that lets him avoid detection? Oh! Would that make him an Assassin Servant, then? But what does he assassinate? Milk and cookies?¡±

    ¡°Servants have to be summoned,¡± Ritsuka told her, ¡°remember?¡±

    Rika held up a finger. ¡°Unless! The Counter Force thingy summons them to do a job! Right? Like Mo-chan and Abe and Super Action Mom!¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think the Counter Force is going to summon Santa Claus just to deliver some presents for you, Rika,¡± I managed to say.

    ¡°Why not?¡± she demanded. ¡°We¡¯ve been busting our asses fixing these Singularities, haven¡¯t we? I don¡¯t think having Santa show up and give us some gifts is that much to ask by comparison!¡±

    ¡°Because morale generally isn¡¯t something that the Counter Force really takes into account when it summons Servants,¡± I said.

    ¡°It isn¡¯t?¡± asked Rika. ¡°I mean, shouldn¡¯t it be, though? I feel like my morale is pretty important to the survival of the human race, you know!¡±

    Maybe so, and maybe inside the Singularities, there might be some consideration paid to the personalities of the Servants and how well they¡¯d be able to handle the situation. But outside of that?

    I shook my head. ¡°The Counter Force isn¡¯t a person or a god or anything like that. It¡¯s more like a¡­machine or an algorithm. It¡¯s always going to throw the least amount of power at something as it can, and that means that¡­things it might consider frivolous, like summoning Santa Claus to deliver presents to less than a hundred people, would be something it considers a waste of resources. It won¡¯t even think of the effort as worth it.¡±

    Rika pouted, and under her breath, muttered, ¡°It should.¡±

    If she actually meant that, this would have been an entirely different conversation.

    Of the group, Jackie wound up being the one who enjoyed breakfast the most, although I had to admit that the ridiculous chocolate chip Christmas tree pancakes made me feel a little bit more like that little girl who had lost her mom nearly a decade ago now. Not enough to behave as childishly as Rika did, but enough that the gooey warmth in my belly wasn¡¯t entirely the chocolate, balanced out by the pang of melancholy that sat alongside it ¡ª an old wound that I had to keep reopening for Jackie¡¯s sake.

    Once we split up, I went back to my room and spent the rest of the morning putting the finishing touches on my after action report for London. Jackie seemed all too happy to park herself in my lap and watch, even if it couldn¡¯t have been the most engaging of things to sit there as I typed away in relative silence.

    There was so much we were going to have to sanitize from some of these reports just to keep the Association off of everyone¡¯s backs. I guess I just had to hope that Da Vinci and the other technicians were good enough at their job that no one picked up on the bits that got censored or outright removed, like the Philosopher¡¯s Stone inside of Ren¨¦e. Or Solomon calling me out in front of everyone.

    For lunch, Jackie and I went back down to the cafeteria and met up with the twins and Mash again, and Rika was much more subdued than before, slouching and grumbling about having to do her report. Ritsuka, for what it was worth, didn¡¯t look any more thrilled about it than she was, but he didn¡¯t complain. It seemed my point about the importance of keeping the records straight so that we could avoid some trouble later on had been taken to heart.

    After lunch, I went down to the gym and got in a run and a light workout to make up for the bit of slacking I¡¯d been doing for the past few days, with Jackie cheering me on from the sidelines. To cool off, it was down to the pool for Mash¡¯s next swimming lesson, and Jackie, it turned out, wanted to join in and learn, too.

    Unfortunately, although Chaldea had many different sizes of spare swimsuits, none of them had been made with a girl her size and age in mind.

    ¡°Your clothes will get all wet,¡± I told her. ¡°We¡¯ll have to talk to Da Vinci about making you a swimsuit first.¡±

    Jackie just tilted her head, confused, and with the sort of logic only a child could have, asked, ¡°So if we take off our clothes, we can swim?¡±

    Somewhere behind me, Marie ¡ª who had been wary of Jackie¡¯s presence the entire time ¡ª sputtered indignantly and spat out incoherent protests about decency and nudity and how it wasn¡¯t proper.

    For the sake of avoiding the aneurysm Marie would probably have, I set my hands on Jackie¡¯s shoulders before she could do what I thought she was about to and dematerialize her clothing.

    ¡°We don¡¯t swim naked,¡± I told her firmly but gently. ¡°Okay, Jackie? We¡¯ll get you a swimsuit and you can learn to swim like Mash, we just have to talk to Da Vinci first. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Okay?¡±

    Jackie pouted, but accepted it with a disappointed, ¡°Okay.¡±

    Fou blew sharply on his whistle as though calling foul. I was incredibly tempted to flip him the bird, but I managed to master the impulse and ignore him. That leeway he¡¯d earned for saving my life only went so far, though.

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    Despite Marie¡¯s obvious discomfort, however, nothing else worth talking about really happened. It was just another swimming lesson among the many we¡¯d given Mash so far, although how much longer they would really be necessary was becoming a serious question. Mash wasn¡¯t exactly taking to the water like a fish, but she was learning pretty fast, and soon enough, the only thing left would be for her to practice, practice, and practice some more.

    ¡°I think I¡¯d like to try swimming for real,¡± she said when we started wrapping up, ¡°next time we get the chance to have a beach vacation. A-ah, as long as the Director is okay with that, I mean!¡±

    A complicated expression crossed Marie¡¯s face, but all she gave Mash was a vague, ¡°We¡¯ll see.¡±

    After drying off and getting changed back into my usual clothes, I set off to Da Vinci¡¯s workshop with Jackie in tow. No reason to put it off, this time, and I¡¯d been meaning to ask her about getting Jackie something else to wear to begin with.

    Of course, she turned out to be hard at work when I got there, or at least so distracted by her thoughts that she didn¡¯t react until I lifted a hand and knocked loudly and firmly on the wall outside the room. Her eyebrows rose when she saw it was me, but she was all smiles an instant later when her eyes trailed down to find Jackie next to me, looking around with wonder.

    ¡°Taylor,¡± she said by way of greeting. ¡°What can I do for you today?¡±

    ¡°A couple of different things,¡± I told her. ¡°First off, Jackie wants to learn how to swim, but Chaldea doesn¡¯t have any swimsuits in her size, so I figured you¡¯re the person to ask about getting one made to fit her.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°Yes, yes, a simple enough thing to do, I could have it done in an afternoon. The rest?¡±

    ¡°Second¡­¡±

    My lips pursed, and I looked down at Jackie. ¡°Jackie, could you take off your cloak?¡±

    Jackie looked back up at me curiously, but didn¡¯t ask why before the tattered black mess shimmered and vanished, leaving her in¡­well, a waistcoat, stockings, and panties. Da Vinci¡¯s eyebrows rose again.

    ¡°I was wondering if you could make something a little more¡­appropriate for her to wear,¡± I said. ¡°Something she could take in and out of spirit form and wear normally all the time.¡±

    ¡°But we like our clothing,¡± Jackie complained. ¡°It¡¯s comfortable.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not something a girl your age should be wearing,¡± I answered immediately. Glenn would¡¯ve had a stroke if he¡¯d ever seen her with the cloak off. ¡°It¡¯s not something a girl should be wearing into battle at any age, and I¡¯m sure Da Vinci can make you something just as comfortable that¡¯s a lot warmer and a lot nicer.¡± I looked back at Da Vinci. ¡°Right?¡±

    ¡°That¡­shouldn¡¯t be too hard,¡± Da Vinci agreed. ¡°In fact, it would make for another excellent test of a system I¡¯ve been working on for the past few months, so it wouldn¡¯t be any trouble at all to make Jackie a¡­spiritron dress. Compared to some of the other things it¡¯s meant to do, in fact, it would be trivial.¡±

    Jackie still didn¡¯t look quite convinced.

    ¡°Just give it a chance,¡± I whispered to her. ¡°For me, okay?¡±

    ¡°Okay, Mommy,¡± Jackie said reluctantly.

    To Da Vinci, I said, ¡°Thank you.¡±

    ¡°No trouble, no trouble at all,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°Was there¡­anything else?¡±

    Yes, actually.

    ¡°Any word on my spiders?¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± Da Vinci smiled apologetically. ¡°There were a few¡­distractions during your last deployment, so I was forced to put off finishing them. Not too much longer, you have my word on that, but not yet.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll look forward to it.¡±

    I was fine enough with leaving it there and going on my way, but¡­

    I hesitated. ¡°Da Vinci. Do you¡­have any questions for me?¡±

    She blinked at me. ¡°About your¡­circumstances, such as they were?¡±

    ¡°About anything we went over last week.¡±

    Whether or not I really wanted to answer any questions about it all, Da Vinci just¡­knew too much for me to leave anything hanging. Better she had as much context as she needed before and in case she ran into something where it was relevant, because the worst thing she could do was plan for something she didn¡¯t know enough about and send me into a battle with a flamethrower against a pyrokinetic.

    Da Vinci huffed and shook her head, smiling wryly. ¡°Nothing you need to concern yourself with, Taylor. I¡¯ll admit, I¡¯ve been¡­ Well, it¡¯s taken some adjusting. Hearing that every parallel world ¡ª or at least a decent number of them ¡ª came very close to being destroyed was a bit of a shock, as you must know, almost as much so as finding out that the perpetrator was some kind of alien god. I¡¯ve¡­had to adjust my understanding of reality.¡± She laughed a little, self-deprecating. ¡°My living self might have had a heart attack learning just half of it!¡±

    I wasn¡¯t sure what to say to that. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±

    But she just shook her head again. ¡°Things are what they are, and neither you nor I have the power to change that. I must admit, however, that it has gone a long way to explaining the Director¡¯s confidence in you. You might not be particularly noteworthy as a mage, but had he still been alive at the time, I think even Marisbury might have found your record impressive enough to warrant a spot on Team A.¡±

    She meant it as a compliment, but knowing as much as I did about Marisbury and all of his evils, I couldn¡¯t bring myself to think of it as one. Frankly, I thought it was more likely that he would have just cracked my head open to see if he could figure out how my powers worked and if they could be replicated. Whatever it took to ensure that his pet project against the end of the world worked out the way he wanted it.

    ¡°Maybe.¡±

    Da Vinci seemed to realize she¡¯d touched a bit of a nerve, because she winced just the slightest. I didn¡¯t really want to hear her apology, however, not the least of which because it wouldn¡¯t mean all that much when she hadn¡¯t had any part in any of it anyway, so I tried to cut the conversation off there. ¡°I¡¯ll get out of your hair and leave you to whatever it was I interrupted. But if you do have any questions, you know where to find me.¡±

    She nodded and turned back to what she¡¯d been working on. ¡°I do.¡± Over her shoulder, she offered a wave. ¡°Ciao!¡±

    ¡°Later.¡±

    Jackie and I left her workshop behind, and I led her back to my room for a little while so we could pick up the book I¡¯d been reading to her where we left off. At some point over the next week or so, I was going to have to figure out some way of keeping her occupied while I tried to learn runes from A¨ªfe, and at the rate things were going, I might have to start paying Arash to babysit Jackie for me for a few hours every day.

    Not that I could picture him complaining. He took to everything with an enviable aplomb.

    When dinnertime rolled around, I set the book aside and we traveled back down to the cafeteria to eat, where I found¡­

    ¡°Merry Christmas!¡±

    ¡­almost the entirety of the remaining staff mingling, including most of the Servants. Lines of popcorn on strings had been hung about the place ¡ª Rika was, in fact, still in the process of slinging one around the Christmas tree in the corner ¡ª and red and green tinsel decorated the walls. Festive tablecloths depicting snowmen, Santa Claus, reindeer, or any of a number of holiday characters had been flung over every table, and banners were draped across the walls with ¡°Merry Christmas!¡± in big, bold lettering.

    The smell of roasted turkey hit me a second after the decor did, assaulting my nose with the memories of Christmases past. Dad, Mom, Emma, the Barneses, all of us gathered around a table as all of the clich¨¦s played over the radio.

    It had been nearly ten years since the last time I¡¯d properly celebrated Christmas.

    ¡°Unsightly, isn¡¯t it?¡± Marie asked, and I was startled to realize she¡¯d somehow crept up next to me without me noticing. The sour expression on her face might have been a pout on anyone else. ¡°Romani and Rika and that Archer of hers planned this behind my back. By the time I realized what was going on, everything had already been set up and there was nothing I could do.¡±

    I looked at her, and quietly, I asked, ¡°Would you have said no?¡±

    Her grimace was an answer all on its own. ¡°It¡¯s the principle of the thing! I¡¯m the Director, they should have asked my permission!¡±

    ¡°Sorry, sorry!¡± Romani said as he meandered over. By the smell, the mug in his hand contained eggnog. ¡°Rika asked, and I thought, well, there wasn¡¯t any harm in it, was there? It¡¯s an easy way to keep up morale, and if there was a time to do it, you can¡¯t do much better than Christmas, can you?¡±

    ¡°You might be the Vice Director now,¡± Marie grumbled, ¡°but you should still have asked!¡±

    ¡°Sorry, Director,¡± he said a little more sincerely. ¡°It won¡¯t happen again.¡±

    She let out a short, throaty sigh, as though a groan and a grunt had married halfway out of her chest. ¡°There¡¯s nothing to be done, at this point. Just¡­enjoy it while you can, Romani.¡±

    Romani gave her a lopsided smile. ¡°As you command, Director.¡±

    And then he wandered off again.

    ¡°That guy,¡± she groused when he was gone. ¡°Can¡¯t he be a little more responsible?¡±

    I thought about saying something, but I could recognize when Marie was complaining for the sake of complaining, or even when she was doing it because she thought she was supposed to. I¡¯d known her for long enough to see that.

    I¡¯d also known Theo, if less well. They weren¡¯t exactly the same, not even anywhere near it, but the hallmarks of a family ¡ª a father ¡ª with high expectations and a low tolerance for failure were, in some ways, universal.

    ¡°It¡¯s only for a day or two,¡± I told her instead. I gave Jackie¡¯s hand a squeeze, as though to reassure myself that she hadn¡¯t wandered off. ¡°It¡¯ll be good for morale.¡±

    ¡°Ugh,¡± Marie said, but she didn¡¯t contradict me. She didn¡¯t try to stop me either as I got in line to grab some food, because it was dinnertime, I was hungry, and the smell of turkey was trying very hard to tempt me.

    It was the liveliest I¡¯d seen the cafeteria since the Sabotage. The room wasn¡¯t filled ¡ª of course not; even with all of the Servants we¡¯d brought back and summoned, the total number of people in the facility number less than forty, and the cafeteria was meant to accommodate almost half of the original staff size at once ¡ª but it was far closer than it had been any other time the better part of the last half a year. And what we lacked in raw numbers, people like Shakespeare, Mordred, Bradamante, and Rika made up for with their presence and boisterous personalities.

    Even six months ago, it would have been surreal to see a famous pirate like Sam Bellamy chatting with Siegfried or Mordred bickering with Jeanne Alter while A¨ªfe watched them both for the slightest sign of misbehavior. Bradamante regaled Hippolyta and several technicians with a story from her past, swinging a half-eaten drumstick around as though it was her lance. Sylvia had apparently cornered El-Melloi II and gotten him to actually talk; I wondered if a version of him existed here in this timeline, and if she knew that version personally.

    When it was my turn to be served, Emiya dished me up a generous helping of turkey ¡ª slathered in gravy ¡ª a rich stuffing, a few slices of ham, and a spoonful of candied yams. It looked and smelled like it could have come straight out of a Christmas movie.

    And then he prepared a second tray with nearly as much food, adding some buttered vegetables on the side, and this, he gave to Jackie, who took it with wonder.

    ¡°Enjoy,¡± was all he said to us, smiling.

    When we sat down at my usual table, we did. We very much did.

    Marie, Romani, Ritsuka (whose plate was loaded up with fried chicken instead of turkey), and Mash eventually came to join me, although Rika was apparently too wound up to eat, because she meandered around the room, wishing everyone at every table a ¡°Merry Christmas¡± and ¡°Happy Holidays.¡± As she got closer to our table, I realized she was dressed up like an elf, the North Pole kind from that stop motion Christmas special that always seemed to find its way onto TV at Christmas time, complete with a pair of shoes that had bells attached to the toes.

    I guess I should be glad at least that she never started caroling, ¡°We are Santa¡¯s elves!¡± I wouldn¡¯t have put it past her to have memorized that song.

    By contrast, Mash seemed utterly overwhelmed.

    ¡°I-is this how Christmas parties usually are in Japan, Senpai?¡± she asked Ritsuka, watching the goings-on with wide eyes.

    He snorted. ¡°No. Japan celebrates Christmas more as a way to go out and party than as a religious holiday. A lot of people use it as an excuse to hang out with friends.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Mostly, it¡¯s really more of a couple¡¯s thing than anything else. It¡¯s a really popular time for love confessions for that reason.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± asked Mash. ¡°But Senpai is so¡­¡±

    She looked over at Rika, who had drawn one group of technicians ¡ª some of whom seemed to have gotten drunk on the eggnog ¡ª along with Bradamante into a rendition of We Wish You a Merry Christmas, even though Bradamante didn¡¯t seem to know any of the words. At some point, Fou had even joined in, squeakily chirping along, with an oversized Santa hat flopping about on his head.

    ¡°Rika is Rika,¡± was Ritsuka¡¯s response. And it wasn¡¯t exactly a bad one either. He peered over at me. ¡°I¡¯ve heard it¡¯s very different in America, though.¡±

    Mash looked over to me now curiously.

    I thought about explaining the corporate exploitation and commercialization of Christmas in America, how it had long since become a way for big store chains to milk money out of people by convincing them to spend that money on things they wouldn¡¯t normally buy, but there was no need to ruin the mood, so I didn¡¯t.

    ¡°It varies from family to family,¡± I said instead. ¡°Some people think it corrupts the original meaning of the holiday to do anything except get together with family and go to church. For the most part, though, it¡¯s just a chance for people to splurge a little and buy gifts for the people they care about. Usually parents for their children, people for their friends and coworkers, or relatives for their nieces and nephews.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash. ¡°We¡¯ve never done anything like that here before.¡±

    Come to think of it, we really hadn¡¯t, had we? I¡¯d never really considered that before. I was still trying to put myself back together for what would have been my first Christmas here, and last year, it just¡­passed me by before I knew it.

    ¡°This is Chaldea,¡± Marie grumbled, ¡°not a shopping mall.¡±

    ¡°Partly, that¡¯s because we were never trapped here during Christmas time before this year,¡± Romani said with a sigh. ¡°But partly, it¡¯s because there isn¡¯t anywhere you could go to buy a present for anyone, and having them shipped in is just too much of a hassle. And, well¡­¡± He coughed into his fist. ¡°The Director¡­thought it was frivolous.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s because it is,¡± Marie replied, and then she let out a sigh of her own, spearing a chunk of turkey with her fork. ¡°But under the circumstances, I¡­guess I can let it slide. Just this once.¡±

    ¡°Thank you, Director,¡± Ritsuka said earnestly, and the honest gratitude in his voice made Marie¡¯s cheeks pink.

    ¡°B-but only just this once!¡± she insisted. ¡°It¡¯s one thing when it¡¯s such a major holiday, but I won¡¯t allow random parties that make a huge mess out of my Chaldea!¡±

    Ritsuka still smiled. ¡°Of course, Director.¡±

    Marie huffed and went back to her meal.

    The party went on for several hours. Romani got up from our table to refill his mug several times, and every time, he came back with his face just a little bit redder than it had been before and his lips just a little bit looser. The expression on Marie¡¯s face as she watched him told me that he would be getting an earful tomorrow, or maybe as soon as she had enough privacy to dress him down. I could already imagine the lecture about his duties as Vice Director and how he couldn¡¯t let himself get swept up in the moment just because it was Christmas.

    Rika eventually made it over to the table with some food, proclaiming, ¡°Merry Christmas!¡± as she sat down, and then she dug in with gusto and shoveled her meal into the bottomless pit she called her stomach.

    ¡°I won¡¯t be able to eat regular KFC at Christmas ever again after this!¡± she proclaimed.

    ¡°I¡¯ll have to see if Emiya can give us a recipe to take back home with us,¡± her brother said, amused.

    Rika could only complain, ¡°It won¡¯t be the same!¡±

    And once she was done eating, she relaxed into her chair with a sigh. ¡°If this is what Christmas dinner is like in America, I¡¯m moving there once we¡¯re done with high school.¡±

    ¡°What about college?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    Rika¡¯s face twisted, and she allowed, ¡°After college, then. Or maybe I go to college in the States? Ugh, but I¡¯d have to get into, like, Harvard or Yale or something. Mom and Dad would shout my ear off if I went to school ten thousand kilometers away just for some good food.¡±

    Mash opened her mouth to say something, only to pause as her brow furrowed. ¡°From Tokyo to Boston, Massachusetts, that¡¯s¡­actually very close to the correct distance. Senpai, d-did you really just guess that?¡±

    Rika blinked, astonished. ¡°Actually¡­yeah. And I got that right entirely on accident? Huh. Look at me go, Ma and Pa, I¡¯m a math genius! Or would that be geography? Think that¡¯s enough to get an acceptance letter from Harvard once this is all over?¡± She grinned. ¡°Oh, man, imagine Mom and Dad¡¯s faces if I got into a college I never even applied to!¡±

    Romani snorted into his eggnog.

    ¡°I just want to see Mom and Dad again,¡± Ritsuka said somberly. His sister agreed with a solemn nod.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be stupid,¡± Marie told them. ¡°Of course you will. We¡¯ve already made it this far, haven¡¯t we? Whatever else is waiting for us, we¡¯ll make it through it just the same.¡±

    The twins broke out into smiles, and they both nodded. ¡°Right!¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve got Senpai here, after all!¡± Rika added.

    ¡°And you, too, Senpai,¡± Mash said. She smiled brightly. ¡°With the three of you, and the Director, and Doctor Roman, and Miss Da Vinci, we¡¯ll overcome whatever stands in front of us, I just know it!¡±

    ¡°And whenever we¡¯re in danger,¡± said Ritsuka, placing his hand over hers, ¡°you¡¯ll be there to protect us, too.¡±

    She nodded. ¡°Of course!¡±

    The moment lingered. For just a second too long, Ritsuka and Mash stared into each others¡¯ eyes ¡ª and then, suddenly, seemed to realize what they were doing, and Ritsuka pulled his hand away as though he had been burned. Faint splotches of red decorated both of their faces.

    Jackie tugged on my sleeve, and when I looked to her, she asked me, ¡°Does Mommy have a mommy, too?¡±

    Half the table turned to me, waiting for my reaction, and I felt their eyes as I offered Jackie a little smile and told her, ¡°Not anymore. She died¡­about seven years ago, now. A car accident.¡±

    Jackie nodded, all serious, and in the guileless way only a child could, said, ¡°Mommy must¡¯ve been really sad.¡±

    I felt my lips twist into something bittersweet. ¡°Yes. Yes, I was.¡±

    And in some ways, I hadn¡¯t ever really stopped. I got better. I moved on. But if taking care of Jackie had taught me anything, it was that I still had a lot of baggage attached to Mom¡¯s memory, still had a hole in my life that fit her size and shape, even if the edges had softened. I wasn¡¯t sure it would ever go away.

    A moment of awkward silence stretched. In the background, the buzz of the party continued on, completely oblivious.

    ¡°I¡¯m gonna go see if Emiya has any Christmas cake!¡± Rika blurted out, and just as abruptly, she stood. Ritsuka stood up a second later.

    ¡°I¡¯ll go with you,¡± he said, and then they both hurried back to the counter and Emiya, retreating from the conversation and its weight.

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­sorry,¡± Romani said.

    I gave him a look, a quirk of my lips and a raised eyebrow. ¡°For what? It happened years ago, before we even met.¡± Before I even came to this world, I didn¡¯t say, although there was no way he could have missed the implication. ¡°What do you have to be sorry for?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± he said, forcing a laugh. ¡°I guess you¡¯re right.¡±

    When ten o¡¯clock rolled around, I excused myself and led Jackie back to my room, and as the door whirred shut behind me, I felt suddenly exhausted, like the mere act of being present around so much activity had drained me of my energy. Jackie watched me go through my usual nighttime routine, and by the time I was ready to crawl into bed and sleep, she had already dismissed her normal clothes ¡ª knives and all ¡ª and slipped on the shirt of mine she¡¯d been using as a nightgown for the past week.

    Mothers the world over probably would have been extremely jealous of how well-behaved Jackie could be. I distinctly remembered putting up a fight almost every night when I was her age, because I wanted to read another chapter, and another chapter, and just one more chapter, and Mom, being older and wiser, knew that if she let me, I¡¯d stay up all night reading.

    Jackie put up no such struggle, climbing into my bed with me and snuggling up into my arms as I turned the lights out. It seemed incredible, but somehow or another, I¡¯d gotten so used to her being there that maybe it was me who would have trouble going back to sleeping alone next time we went on deployment.

    For several long minutes, I simply lied there, looking out into the dark. Something vaguely like regret swirled in my stomach, mild and tempered by the reality of the situation and the limitations that came with it.

    ¡°Jackie?¡± I murmured at last.

    Jackie shifted in my arms, her hair tickling my collarbones. ¡°Yes, Mommy?¡±

    ¡°I know there was never really a chance to even try and look for something, but¡­ Was there anything you would have wanted for Christmas?¡±

    Her fingers curled around my arm, gentle but firm. The closest thing to a hug she could give me like that.

    ¡°No. We have everything we could have asked for already.¡±

 Chapter CLXIII: Bonds of Friendship

    Chapter CLXIII: Bonds of Friendship

    Christmas Day dawned like any other day in Chaldea ¡ª cold and desolate, with my alarm clock the only thing that told me it even was daytime. I woke up with a sharp intake of breath through my nostrils and was greeted by the unique smell that was Jackie: the hint of acidic sulfur masked by the faded scent of the lavender body wash that had never offended me enough to request something more personal.

    Looks like she¡¯s due for another bath soon. The thought drifted across my mind, barely formed, and I let it linger and fade so that I could lie there and enjoy the warmth of Jackie¡¯s body for a few moments longer.

    For just a second, I missed Brian. It had been four years since he and I had been anything, done anything, or had the breathing room to do something as sentimental as cuddle, but some part of me wanted him there. Even if I couldn¡¯t make any claims of the true love you saw in the movies, he¡¯d been a lot of firsts for me, and that had to mean something.

    But he wasn¡¯t, and I suspected that any chance of having that again was long gone ¡ª had died on Gold Morning, if not the day I turned myself in to the Protectorate. As much as I tried not to think about it, two years had given me enough perspective to realize that he had probably never made it past that battle on the oil rig. The story of his quitting the battle to find some small peace before the end, likely nothing more than a kindness to soothe my worries.

    I missed him all the same. Maybe more so because that ship had sailed and sunk and vanished into the tides.

    In my arms, Jackie shifted, and her hair brushed against my chin as her head turned. ¡°Good morning, Mommy.¡±

    ¡°Morning, Jackie,¡± I murmured into her hair, and for another minute or two longer, I stayed there.

    Eventually, however, I had to get up and get out of bed, because as tempting as it was to lay there with Jackie and just¡­be, neither my bladder nor my stomach would agree to that, and my responsibilities would not simply disappear because I wanted them to.

    So, reluctant as I was, I rolled out of bed, slipping my glasses on as I levered myself to my feet. Once the lights were on, I turned back to my bed to redo the sheets as Jackie climbed out of it herself, and had to stop, because sitting innocuously on my desk was a box, plain and brown and unremarkable, but for the ribbon wrapped around it and the tag that read ¡°Merry Christmas!¡± in Da Vinci¡¯s familiar, slanted script.

    I couldn¡¯t help the breath that hissed out of my nostrils, something that might have become a sigh one day. ¡°Of course you did.¡±

    ¡°Mommy?¡± Jackie asked curiously.

    ¡°Although I don¡¯t know how you managed to get it in here without waking either of us up,¡± I told the air dryly.

    Knowing Da Vinci, she¡¯d just say that something like that was simple for a genius of her caliber, and that was such a non-answer that it wasn¡¯t even worth wasting the breath to ask. The actual answer probably involved familiars, because those might not have enough energy in them to wake either me or Jackie up, although I guess I couldn¡¯t rule out Da Vinci inventing some needlessly complicated pseudo-teleportation spell involving Imaginary Number Space or something else that would go straight over my head.

    When I went over to my desk, I found a note slipped under the ribbon wrapped around the box, and unfolding the note revealed more of that slanted writing characteristic of Da Vinci¡¯s hand. It read:

    Dear Taylor,

    You¡¯ll have to forgive me for playing coy with you yesterday. I have to admit, your spiders were already done, and I could have handed them over at the time without any reservation. I thought it might be more fitting, however, to hold onto them for another day more so that you might have at least one present to unwrap on Christmas. Now more than ever, it is important to keep everyone¡¯s spirits up, don¡¯t you think? I¡¯m sure Saint Nicholas will forgive me for playing the role of Santa Claus just this once.

    Da Vinci, of course, could not see the eyebrow that rose towards my hairline nor the wry smile that tugged on my lips or the little shake of my head, but she probably knew me well enough to guess my reaction anyway. I kept reading:

    You¡¯ll find enclosed in this package the ten spider puppets I promised you. Although they don¡¯t have all of the functions of your ravens and won¡¯t be quite as resilient ¡ª even with the self-repair function that I naturally included ¡ª they shouldn¡¯t be altogether that much different from what you¡¯re used to. I imagine it won¡¯t take you more than an afternoon to figure out how to make use of them. Just take care not to lose them too quickly! They won¡¯t be easy to replace!

    Regarding your requests, I made two variants. The first has the venom you suggested to me, a potent toxin specialized in breaking down the bonds between Spiritrons. It will not, of course, perform too well against Servants with high levels of Magic Resistance, but if you find yourself against an Assassin, Caster, or Berserker that you can¡¯t simply sweet talk into changing sides, it should be of at least some use. The second variant has that tranquilizer, with similar caveats. I¡¯m sure you will be able to work around these limitations.

    How might you tell the two of them apart, you ask? An excellent question! I¡¯m certain the answer will be readily apparent once you see them with your own eyes.

    The venom, of course, will need refilling, but our dear alchemist friend provided some much needed inspiration, and it will be as simple as feeding them as you would any other spider. The food will be alchemically converted into the appropriate venom. Genius, no?

    Merry Christmas, and try not to have too much fun with them!

    Leonardo da Vinci

    I wouldn¡¯t have described my use for the puppets as ¡®fun,¡¯ but that didn¡¯t stop my fingers from trembling a little as I set aside the note and carefully undid the knot tying the ribbon together. My stomach did funny little jumps in my gut and my heart thudded anxiously in my chest, and it took a lot of willpower not to just rip into the package instead of gently disentangling the ribbon and slipping open the lid.

    Sitting inside the box was a small cluster of familiar critters, spiders that looked so close to real I could have mistaken them for the real thing, except there was something just a little bit off that made it obvious they weren¡¯t. I couldn¡¯t quite place my finger on what it was, but there was something that stuck in my head, begging me to notice, and if I was being entirely honest with myself, I think I was the only one in the facility aside from Da Vinci who would even have been able to tell.

    Each puppet was about the size of an American quarter, motionless, and while one set was a rich, muddy brown with a faint, yellow pattern atop their abdomen, the other was a deep, glossy black with an almost nostalgic red hourglass. Da Vinci¡¯s way of ensuring I could tell them apart, if I had to guess, which meant the ones that looked like Black Widows were the ones with the lethal venom and the ones that looked more like a common wolf spider had the tranquilizer.

    With the snap of a mental thread, I reached down into the box and gently prodded them one after the other with a small tendril of energy ¡ª and as though a switch had been flipped, they suddenly sprang to life, and their bodies came under my control. Every detail of their function filtered through my mind, from the reservoirs that mimicked venom sacs to the miniaturized engines that processed magical energy as fuel and the stomach-like storage space that would convert food into either more venom or silk.

    Da Vinci really outdid herself with these. Huginn and Muninn were amazing, but this¡­

    ¡°What is it, Mommy?¡± Jackie asked curiously.

    ¡°A Christmas present from Da Vinci,¡± I answered her simply.

    The puppets obeyed my commands as easily and smoothly as any swarm I had ever had, climbing up my fingers and arm the same way any spider would have, and I relished the familiar feel of their legs dancing across my skin. Up my shoulder, across the back of my neck, through my hair, weaving their way into so many places I could hide them. Da Vinci had even gone above and beyond and reinforced their legs so that they could jump as well and as far as any jumping spider could ever dream, which meant that so many avenues opened up for how I could make use of them during a deployment.

    Right about then was when I realized I was smiling. I was going to have to do something special to thank her for this, although I had no idea what.

    For now, though, there was no reason to carry them around with me and risk someone mistaking them for a normal spider ¡ª however silly that might have been, considering we were in Antarctica ¡ª so I let them climb back down my other arm and back onto the desk. It might be better to put them back in the box, just as a matter of convenience, or else display them on my desk the way an athlete might his trophies.

    The box was probably¡­ Oh?

    ¡°The spider puppets weren¡¯t enough, huh?¡± I asked the air. Da Vinci wasn¡¯t there to answer me.

    From the bottom of the box, I pulled out what I¡¯d originally mistaken for cushioning, and as it cleared the brown cardboard, it unfolded out into a t-shirt, a black thing with gray stripes down the arms and the Chaldea logo on the left sleeve. On the front was a line of text:

    I saved the world and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

    A laugh ripped itself out of my mouth before I could stop it. Of all the things she could have put on a t-shirt, that was what she went with? I guess it wasn¡¯t entirely out of character for Da Vinci, but I would have figured Rika would be the one to go with something like that. Certainly, Romani and Marie wouldn¡¯t have picked it out. In fact, I didn¡¯t think Marie would have even approved of something like this, just because it was too flippant.

    Alec, on the other hand¡­ Or Aisha or Lisa. Any of those three probably would have thought it funny.

    God, but we¡¯d never even had a single Christmas together, had we? So much had happened so fast.

    You know what? It was Christmas. There was nothing important for us to do today and everyone was relaxing, so even if Marie might not have approved, I was going to wear this today. Just this once.

    I set the t-shirt aside, then quickly got changed into my workout gear.

    ¡°Alright, Jackie, let¡¯s go.¡±

    ¡°Coming, Mommy!¡± Jackie replied, and dutifully followed me out of my room.

    About an hour later, we returned, me sweaty and grimy, and took a shower together. I made sure to wash her hair really well, and remembering how much my own mother harped on it when I was a kid, got behind her ears. Jackie really seemed to like having her hair washed, or maybe just that I was the one who was doing it, even if she was generally ambivalent to the idea of bathing in general.

    Then again, I guess most kids were. I didn¡¯t remember fighting it much myself, but in our younger years, Emma had been a bit of a brat about it.

    Once we were clean and dried and ready to face the day, I pulled on one of the few pairs of jeans Marie had bought for me ¡ª merely so that I didn¡¯t have to wear my uniform every day ¡ª and slipped that t-shirt on over my head.

    ¡°Time for breakfast,¡± I told Jackie.

    She smiled and nodded. ¡°Mm! We really liked chocolate chip pancakes! Can we have some more?¡±

    I made no promises. ¡°We¡¯ll see what Emiya is cooking this morning,¡± I said instead. ¡°It¡¯s Christmas Day, so maybe he made something special.¡±

    ¡°We can¡¯t wait!¡± Jackie said brightly.

    Five or ten minutes later, when the cafeteria door whooshed open and we stepped inside, it was to find the decorations from the previous night still up, from the lights to the strings of popcorn to the Christmas tree over in the corner. Jackie seemed more fascinated with them than anything else, head swiveling as she looked around at them all again.

    ¡°Is this what things are like every Christmas?¡± she asked me curiously.

    ¡°In some places, for some people,¡± I answered her. ¡°My family was never wealthy, but we got by, and my dad¡¯s coworkers¡­¡± The echo of a rowdy bunch of dockworkers sang Christmas carols in my ear. ¡°Well, we¡¯d go down to the union¡¯s headquarters on Christmas Eve and celebrate with them, and have a more private party with just the three of us and my best friend and her family the next day. When Mom died¡­¡±

    The tradition had died with her. Dad and I hadn¡¯t gone to all that many of the dockworkers¡¯ Christmas parties in the years after that, and then Emma¡­ Well, having the Barneses over on Christmas Day had stopped happening, too. Dad had never asked why, but I guess he just hadn¡¯t been in any place to think too hard about it.

    Jackie accepted all of this with a nod, and then hesitated a moment before asking, ¡°Would Mommy¡¯s mommy have liked me, too?¡±

    For a heartbeat, I didn¡¯t have an answer to that, because there was so much context to Jackie and her situation that I wasn¡¯t sure Mom would have been able to wrap her head around it, but once she knew the whole story? Once she understood what Jackie was and why she was the way she was? Once she¡¯d had time to adjust to the idea of Heroic Spirits and Servants and a little orphan girl who must have carved her way through London¡¯s slums and underworld in search of a woman to love her?

    ¡°Of course,¡± I said to Jackie, even though I wasn¡¯t entirely sure it was the truth. ¡°She would have loved you.¡±

    And if not at first, then once she saw how important Jackie was to me, I think Mom would have come around, too. Maybe with caveats, maybe with some reservations, but she would have at least tried.

    Whether it was completely true or not, Jackie smiled broadly ¡ª appropriately, all things considered, like a kid on Christmas morning.

    As we walked further into the room, a familiar voice called out a cheery, ¡°Good morning, and merry Christmas!¡±

    At the usual table where we the Masters ate, Arash lifted a mug in greeting and offered a smile. Instead of heading directly for Emiya and food, I redirected over to him, and Jackie followed along dutifully.

    ¡°Morning,¡± I said.

    ¡°Morning!¡± Jackie echoed, waving at him.

    He looked meaningfully down at my shirt and arched an eyebrow. ¡°Rika?¡±

    ¡°Da Vinci,¡± I corrected.

    ¡°Really?¡± He shook his head. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t have thought that fit her style of humor. It¡¯s a nice shirt, though.¡±

    ¡°Comfy, too,¡± I said. It was a little unfair exactly how many things Da Vinci was just too good at.

    He laughed. I nodded to his mug. ¡°Eggnog or coffee?¡±

    ¡°Eggnog,¡± he said. He took a sip of it. ¡°It¡¯s the Christmas season and this is a Christmas drink, isn¡¯t it? I thought I¡¯d give it a try. And, well, even if Servants can get drunk, my Robust Health means I¡¯m immune, so there¡¯s no danger either way.¡±

    If only our contract had let him share that with me. London would¡¯ve been a lot less of a hassle.

    ¡°Sorry I didn¡¯t get you anything,¡± I told him.

    He smiled. ¡°Well, I can¡¯t say I would¡¯ve said no to a silk shirt to wear around the facility, but this whole Christmas thing is new to me anyway, so it¡¯s not like I was expecting anything.¡±

    Ah. Right. Even if he¡¯d been provided knowledge of the holiday and its importance, his story predated Christ, as I understood it, so he had no personal or religious attachment to it. The feasting and the partying probably wasn¡¯t anything new, because celebrations like that had existed for as long as civilization had, but the rest of it must¡¯ve seemed pretty strange to him.

    ¡°Do you want me to grab you a tray?¡±

    He shook his head. ¡°I might eat dinner again tonight, but I think yesterday was more than enough for me to enjoy the festivities.¡± He tipped his mug again. ¡°For now, I¡¯ll make do with my eggnog.¡±

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Suit yourself.¡±

    So Jackie and I left him and headed up to the counter where Emiya was waiting. He was already preparing a tray ¡ª stacked on top of a second one ¡ª with two plates. This time, the pancakes had been shaped into thick, fluffy squares, and somehow or another, he had cooked them so that there were plus-shaped grooves, so that when syrup was poured into them, it looked like a wrapped present. More chocolate chips spaced randomly throughout gave the appearance of wrapping paper.

    Now he was just showing off.

    Like he could read my mind, he smirked at me as he handed the stacked trays over and said, ¡°Enjoy. And merry Christmas.¡±

    ¡°Merry Christmas,¡± I replied dryly.

    With our breakfast acquired, Jackie and I made our way back to the table with Arash, and we were just about to sit down when the doors whooshed open again and the twins came in with Mash in tow. Rika spotted us immediately and waved, and then did a double-take when she saw my shirt.

    ¡°Holy cow!¡± she gushed, stunned. ¡°Da Vinci-chan actually did it!¡±

    I paused for a moment and looked down.

    ¡ª all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

    Suddenly, it all made a whole lot more sense.

    ¡°This was your idea?¡±

    Rika nodded, and a grin grew on her face, so broad it threatened to split her head in half. ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure she¡¯d actually do it, you know! Senpai saved the world and everything, so I said to Da Vinci-chan, you know, it kinda sucks that Senpai didn¡¯t even get rewarded for that before coming here, but wouldn¡¯t it be funny if that was on a t-shirt?¡±

    Her brother slapped a hand to his face, groaning into his palm. ¡°Really, Rika?¡±

    ¡°What?¡± She turned to him, defensive. ¡°It¡¯s not like we can hand her the key to Tokyo or anything! Even if we could leave, we¡¯re just two kids. Who would even believe us?¡±

    ¡°¡­The UN?¡± At her raised eyebrow, however, Ritsuka sighed. ¡°No, you¡¯re right. Even if they believed it, there¡¯s no way the UN would want that public. It would cause a mass panic.¡±

    You have no idea, I didn¡¯t say, and I honestly hoped they never would.

    ¡°W-well, it¡¯s a nice shirt, even if the, um, text isn¡¯t exactly¡­¡± Mash trailed off, unsure of how to finish that.

    ¡°It is,¡± I agreed. ¡°Comfy, too.¡±

    And taking the out as it was offered, Mash turned to Jackie with a smile and said, ¡°Good morning, Jackie!¡±

    ¡°Good morning, Mash,¡± Jackie replied in kind, and then she went back to her pancakes.

    Rika, of course, didn¡¯t miss them. ¡°Oh man, chocolate chip pancakes again? And they¡¯re so fluffy!¡±

    ¡°Honestly, I want to know how he gets them to look the way they do,¡± said Ritsuka.

    You and me both. But Emiya wasn¡¯t likely to share anytime soon, except maybe with Ren¨¦e.

    Oh. Damn. We should¡¯ve gotten something for her, shouldn¡¯t we? I wasn¡¯t sure what we could have possibly come up with, stuck there as we were, but Da Vinci could at least have cooked something up, couldn¡¯t she? I¡¯d have to ask later. A late present was still better than no present at all.

    ¡°We¡¯ll have to try and come up with a present we can get for Ren¨¦e,¡± I said aloud, and a ripple of surprise went across the group, followed shortly by a wave of frustrated shame.

    ¡°Ah, geez,¡± said Rika. ¡°I completely forgot! After everything with Senpai, we didn¡¯t even get her a welcome present or throw her a welcoming party! We didn¡¯t even set out the welcome mat!¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t have a welcome mat,¡± Ritsuka pointed out.

    ¡°It¡¯s a metaphor, Onii-chan! A metaphor!¡±

    ¡°I know.¡± He heaved a sigh. ¡°And you¡¯re right. We really should have done something to welcome her to Chaldea. After all, she¡¯s stuck here until this is all over, isn¡¯t she? The least we can do is make her feel at home.¡±

    ¡°Miss Ren¨¦e has already been here a week,¡± said Mash worriedly. ¡°Do you think it¡¯s too late, Senpai?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s never too late!¡± Rika declared stubbornly. ¡°We¡¯ll think of something, and it¡¯ll be so amazing that Ren¨¦e will cry tears of joy!¡± Her stomach grumbled. ¡°After we go get our pancakes and eat!¡±

    ¡°No rush,¡± I told them. ¡°I think it¡¯ll be more meaningful if it¡¯s something well thought out and heartfelt instead of a plan we slapped together in five minutes.¡±

    The three of them nodded. ¡°Right!¡±

    ¡°But breakfast first!¡± Rika added.

    So they went up to Emiya, who was only too happy to serve them up some pancakes of their own. I watched them the entire time ¡ª Rika at least seemed to be able to contain herself not to mention coming up with a present for Ren¨¦e while Ren¨¦e was cooking less than ten feet away, but this might be a lot easier if we could get some of the Servants in on it.

    Unfortunately, by the time we had all finished eating and the breakfast hours started to wane, we hadn¡¯t come up with much in the way of good ideas. The only thing we really knew about Ren¨¦e was that she enjoyed cooking, or at least took it as part of her responsibilities so dearly that she couldn¡¯t relinquish it even now, and while some premium cookware might be appreciated, it felt a little selfish when it was also something that would benefit us directly and a little redundant when Emiya probably had something just as good or better in his repertoire.

    If we were going to get Ren¨¦e a gift, it should be personal and thoughtful, something that was solely hers in a world where the only thing she really owned was her name. Something that had real meaning and couldn¡¯t just be replicated by a bit of Emiya¡¯s projection magic, something that she could cherish and take with her when this was all over.

    So as the morning wore on without any better suggestions, I called an end to the brainstorming session and charged the twins with talking to some of the other Servants for ideas while I handed Jackie over to Arash for a few hours. Mash, I gave the day off from her swimming lesson, on the logic that today was a day for her to relax and enjoy herself. If she wanted to go swimming on her own and get some practice in without Marie and me giving formal instruction, then that was entirely her prerogative.

    Marie didn¡¯t have any objections when I let her know.

    ¡°No, you¡¯re right,¡± she said. ¡°As important as it is that Mash learns to swim properly, she¡¯s also¡­¡±

    Yeah.

    Marie cleared her throat. ¡°I-it¡¯s just as important that she has a chance to have fun when she can! After all, it¡¯s the least I can do to make up for everything that my father¡­¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not responsible for your father¡¯s sins,¡± I reminded her. She wasn¡¯t any more convinced this time than she had been before. ¡°But I¡¯ve already told you that, just like I¡¯ve already told you that if you still feel guilty, then the best way to make it up to Mash is to keep doing what you¡¯ve been doing and treat her like a human being with thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs of her own.¡±

    When I brought up the subject of Ren¨¦e¡¯s welcome present, however, Marie didn¡¯t have any better ideas than the twins and I had. I hadn¡¯t really expected her to, but I at least managed to wrangle permission to throw her a party, just as long as it wasn¡¯t in the cafeteria.

    ¡°Use the orientation room,¡± she suggested. ¡°Since it seems like that¡¯s where we¡¯re doing everything these days and it¡¯s already been used for movie parties, you might as well keep using it for any other celebrations or whatever.¡± Under her breath, she muttered, ¡°It¡¯s certainly not going to be used for its original purpose anytime soon.¡±

    ¡°Of course, Marie.¡±

    I tried asking a few others, of course, but Siegfried wasn¡¯t much help (¡°I¡¯m sorry, Master, but I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t think of anything that would interest her.¡±) and neither was Hippolyta (¡°We Amazons had something of a different manner of celebrating our members, and I don¡¯t think Ren¨¦e Flamel would appreciate them quite the same way.¡±), but although A¨ªfe didn¡¯t have any suggestions either, she at least pledged the use of her runes, if we needed them.

    ¡°I may not have my sister¡¯s raw talent with them, but I should at least be able to help with something so small,¡± she promised.

    Da Vinci, unfortunately, couldn¡¯t really give me an answer either.

    ¡°Mm, homunculi aren¡¯t quite the same as humans, but it¡¯s not to say they¡¯re incapable of developing feelings or preferences on certain matters,¡± she told me thoughtfully. ¡°It might be that she would appreciate some time in the simulator with her father¡­but on the other hand, the fact that it would only be a simulation of her father instead of the real thing might wind up being upsetting.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t have any other ideas?¡± I asked.

    She smiled slyly at me. ¡°It occurs to me that the best way of determining what sort of present a person might like is simply to ask her. If you¡¯re subtle about it, she won¡¯t even know that you¡¯re intending to get her a present, and, well, I¡¯m certain someone like you knows how to be subtle, don¡¯t you, Taylor?¡±

    Was she expecting me to play at humility?

    ¡°Yeah, I suppose I do.¡±

    It was, at least, helpful advice, so after lunch ¡ª wherein it turned out the twins hadn¡¯t had much more luck than me ¡ª I waited until Ren¨¦e left the cafeteria for her afternoon break and approached her in an empty hallway, doing my best to hide my real intentions behind the perfectly reasonable guise of making sure she was adjusting well to the organization.

    ¡°It seems like you¡¯re settling in well,¡± I told her conversationally.

    She stopped, blinked, and turned to me, halfway through her step. ¡°Oh. Miss Taylor. Forgive me, I didn¡¯t realize you were there.¡±

    ¡°Heading back to your room?¡± I asked.

    She shook her head slightly. ¡°No. I¡­thought I might visit the library. My father gifted me knowledge of alchemy as it was in his time, and I was¡­curious how it might have changed.¡±

    A book on alchemy? Not¡­ No, probably not. Not when any book I could get her would come straight out of the library to begin with. It might be worth it to ask Da Vinci to copy a couple of them, though, so that Ren¨¦e could have her own copies. I just thought it felt a little too cheap to make that the present itself.

    ¡°Have you had any problems adjusting?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± said Ren¨¦e. ¡°Everyone here has been¡­quite kind to me. The technology of this era has been somewhat confusing, but I am¡­adapting, I believe would be the term.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s nothing you want, then?¡± I pressed. ¡°Nothing that would make things more comfortable for you? Nothing you wanted to do or see, if you had the chance?¡±

    She hesitated. ¡°I¡­ Am I¡­allowed to change my room?¡±

    Please don¡¯t tell me Rika has been blaring music late at night.

    ¡°Is there something wrong with it? Where it¡¯s located?¡±

    She shook her head. ¡°The location does not concern me, only that it seems¡­sparse. Impersonal. I¡­no, forgive me, I wouldn¡¯t want to insult the Director¡¯s kindness.¡±

    ¡°The Director won¡¯t be insulted,¡± I assured her. ¡°She¡¯s more concerned with making sure you¡¯re fitting in and comfortable than whether or not you like the decor.¡±

    Ren¨¦e still didn¡¯t emote as plainly as a normal person, but the slight downturn of her lips was still visible. ¡°Then¡­am I allowed to¡­I believe the word that would fit here is ¡®personalize¡¯ my room?¡±

    ¡°However you see fit,¡± I told her, and then added, ¡°within reason. Major remodeling is something that you would need to get explicit permission from the Director for.¡±

    Ren¨¦e¡¯s brow furrowed a little. ¡°Remodeling?¡±

    ¡°Knocking down walls, moving light fixtures, rerouting the plumbing, that sort of thing.¡± But it looked like I had a good idea to work with, now I just needed some more details and a little planning. ¡°What were you thinking, in terms of personalizing things? Something like Jekyll¡¯s apartment?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡± She looked down at her hands, fingers working over each other. ¡°I¡­know that it has been corrected and we can¡¯t return there ¡ª¡±

    ¡°The apartment itself is still there,¡± I told her. Her eyebrows rose just the slightest, and her eyes widened just a little, and her lips parted but barely ¡ª for her, stunned surprise. ¡°And we can go back to it, if you want, to visit. It¡­ Doctor Jekyll and your father and everything he built won¡¯t be there, but the Singularity and the apartment are both still available for short trips.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± she said neutrally. ¡°It¡­might not be the same, but I think I would like that.¡±

    From her, that might as well have been desperate begging.

    ¡°I¡¯ll see what I can do. Was there anything else?¡±

    She hesitated again. ¡°It¡­might seem silly, but¡­I would like to see the sun. Would there be a way for me to leave the facility, if only for a few minutes?¡±

    ¡°No.¡± But there might be a way around that. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but the facility itself is the only thing keeping us from being incinerated like the rest of mankind. Even the Servants aren¡¯t allowed to risk stepping outside, because no one is sure what would happen if they did.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Ren¨¦e didn¡¯t look happy to hear this, but she accepted it all the same. ¡°I understand, Miss Taylor. Thank you for telling me.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll talk to the Director and see what we can do about making your room more comfortable for you,¡± I promised her. ¡°For now, though, try and enjoy the rest of Christmas while you can. It¡¯s supposed to be a holiday, after all.¡±

    A faint smile, so small it was barely there, crossed her lips. ¡°I shall try.¡±

    As I left her, a plan started to form in my head, or at least the basic structure of one. It was going to take a lot of work to pull off, definitely permission and help from Marie and Da Vinci, and we were probably going to need to find a way to keep her occupied long enough to get everything finished, but I think it would be worth it in the end.

    I didn¡¯t even make it back to my own room before my communicator chimed with a message from Da Vinci.

    Masters, it read, please report to the Summoning Chamber. I have one last present for you all.

    A quick check on Jackie showed her still with Arash, so I let them go and did an about face to make my way to the Summoning Chamber. I ran into the twins along the way there, and Rika was almost vibrating from excitement. A huge smile threatened to split her face in half.

    ¡°It¡¯s time!¡± she giggled eagerly. ¡°It¡¯s finally time!¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t know that we¡¯re summoning Nero for sure,¡± her brother tried to tell her.

    But Rika wouldn¡¯t have any of it. ¡°Don¡¯t try to ruin my Christmas, Onii-chan, because I won¡¯t let you!¡±

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Mash tried this time, ¡°if it isn¡¯t¡­¡±

    ¡°It will be!¡± Rika insisted. ¡°For sure! Definitely! Don¡¯t try and use logic, because I¡¯m not listening!¡±

    Mash and Ritsuka both looked at me for help, but I couldn¡¯t give them anything more than a little shrug and a shake of my head. It wasn¡¯t like I had any secret information about this, so I couldn¡¯t have told them one way or the other if Rika was right or wrong. It wasn¡¯t like there was any other Servant we were scheduled to try summoning either, unless we were going to make another attempt at Jeanne since the last one gave us Jeanne Alter.

    Da Vinci, Marie, and Romani were already waiting for us when we arrived at the Summoning Chamber, along with the familiar pudgy blond technician, although Romani didn¡¯t look to be in the best shape. He winced at every loud sound and squinted at every light, and there were dark circles under his eyes.

    Ah. It seemed he had a little more eggnog than he should have yesterday.

    Rika¡¯s attention, however, zeroed in on the platform at the center of the summoning array, where a familiar crooked red and black sword had been set in the place of honor.

    ¡°YES!¡± Rika cheered, throwing her hands up in the air.

    ¡°Settle down!¡± Marie snapped at her.

    Rika ignored her. ¡°We¡¯re bringing back Best Buddy! Best! Christmas! Ever!¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s not get ahead of things, Rika,¡± Da Vinci said with a smile. ¡°We have to do the actual summoning first.¡±

    ¡°Right!¡± Rika¡¯s head bobbed up and down. ¡°Right!¡± She looked around. ¡°Everything¡¯s ready to go, right? We don¡¯t have to do anything special, right?¡±

    Marie gave me a sour look, like I had let an overexcited puppy off of her leash, and all I could give her in return was an arch of my eyebrow. There was no way she hadn¡¯t already known that Rika would be excited about summoning Nero, and she should have expected that it would go something like this.

    Da Vinci shook her head. ¡°No, no, nothing special we need to do for this one. Ah ¡ª except for the one, last item we need to ensure that it will indeed be Emperor Nero who arrives. Director, if you will?¡±

    ¡°Right.¡± Marie nodded and stepped forward into the middle of the room, in front of us Masters. When she held out her hand, sitting on her palm was the familiar flickering gem that we knew colloquially as Saint Quartz. ¡°Just like our last summoning, we¡¯ll be using a Quasi-Spiritron Crystal to determine the outcome more reliably.¡±

    Rika reached out to take it, but Marie jerked her hand back before she could. ¡°However!¡± Marie went on. ¡°We¡¯re still not entirely sure why things didn¡¯t go as planned the last time, so it¡¯s been agreed that we¡¯re going to try and eliminate some of the variables this time. That¡¯s why, instead of having all three Masters performing the summoning ritual and splitting the contract, we¡¯re going to have the contract held solely by the Master with the strongest bond with Emperor Nero.¡±

    She held out the Saint Quartz again.

    ¡°You, Rika.¡±

    This time, Rika hesitated before she reached out and took it. ¡°So,¡± she began nervously, ¡°if something goes wrong, this time ¡ª¡±

    ¡°It shouldn¡¯t,¡± Da Vinci told her, not unkindly. ¡°Last time, we performed the summoning using the bond you Masters had with Jeanne D¡¯Arc to influence the result, and the only reason we could come up with for why it summoned Jeanne Alter instead is because the bond each of you shared with her was too different to reconcile. How that gave us Jeanne Alter is still a little¡­questionable, but none of our other theories can be confirmed either, so we don¡¯t have any better ones.¡± She smiled. ¡°This time, the only bond involved will be yours, Rika. And we also have a catalyst and Saint Quartz. The odds of things going wrong are so infinitesimal that they¡¯re essentially nonexistent.¡±

    Rika swallowed and looked down at the Saint Quartz. ¡°If¡­you say so, Da Vinci-chan, then I guess I just have to trust you.¡±

    Da Vinci chuckled a little. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t worry too much, Rika. Unlike certain other catalysts we loaned out from the Association, that sword has no connection to any other Heroic Spirit. Even without your bond, summoning Emperor Nero would be all but a guarantee.¡±

    Rika opened her mouth to say something, then closed it a second later. ¡°Alrighty.¡± She nodded. ¡°Let¡¯s do this thing.¡±

    ¡°Mash?¡± Romani said quietly.

    ¡°Yes, Doctor,¡± Mash said with a nod of her own, and she stepped up to the platform, materialized her shield, and set it down in the center of the array. When she stepped back, Rika stepped forward, set the Saint Quartz down, and then stepped back to the dais and stayed there, fidgeting a little.

    ¡°Meuniere?¡± Da Vinci asked the technician at the console.

    ¡°All green,¡± he replied. ¡°We¡¯re ready to go whenever she is.¡±

    ¡°Very good,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°Rika? Whenever you¡¯re ready.¡±

    ¡°Right!¡± Rika nodded. ¡°Right. Okay. Yeah. Waiting on me.¡± She took a deep breath, then let it out in a huge, gusty sigh. ¡°Waiting on me.¡±

    ¡°No pressure,¡± Ritsuka said wryly.

    Rika turned halfway around to stick her tongue out at him and blow a raspberry.

    ¡°Focus!¡± Marie barked. ¡°Stop being so childish!¡±

    I have expected Rika to protest and say, ¡°he started it!¡± but she proved me wrong and instead spun back around. ¡°Right!¡± she said. ¡°Right, right!¡±

    She sucked in another deep breath, and then threw out one of her hands.

    ¡°Heed my words!¡±

    The array flashed and lit up as though waiting. Flickering rainbow lights refracted through the Saint Quartz.

    ¡°My will creates your body, and your sword creates my destiny!¡±

    The array lifted up off of the shield and the floor and hung in midair, then slowly began to spin.

    ¡°If thou accedes to this will and reason, then answer me!¡±

    Faster and faster, the lights spun, and as a wind began to pick up, whipping outwards as it swirled, a grinding noise echoed throughout the chamber like the whirring of a massive set of gears.

    ¡°I hereby swear that I will embody all the good in this world and punish all its evils!¡±

    Faster, and faster, and faster, until the light of the array became a single band of light orbiting the center. The Saint Quartz rattled and wobbled.

    ¡°Thou the Seventh Heaven, clad in three great words of power!¡±

    And as the light of the circle flickered from blue to gold and the ring spun so quickly that it seemed to triple, the Saint Quartz at the center fractured, split, and dissolved. A silhouette sprouted up in its place, a shadow cast in three dimensions like a hologram.

    ¡°Come forth from the Ring of Deterrence, Guardian of the Heavenly Scales!¡±

    The wind blasted outwards as the light of the ring collapsed inwards towards the shadow, and the shadow itself gained form and color ¡ª red cloth, golden armor, pale skin, blonde hair, and a twin to the sword sitting in its place of honor. One hand lifted, fingers splayed, and pressed against her chest above the¡­rather generous bust that looked as though it could spill out of her top at any moment.

    ¡°Saber Class Servant, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, fifth emperor of Rome!¡± she proclaimed proudly. ¡°I have come now to grace you with my presence! Mm-mm! You should definitely be ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Best Buddy!¡±

    And without waiting for Nero to finish her introduction, Rika threw herself off of the dais and enveloped Nero in a hug.

 Chapter CLXIV: Twelve Days of Christmas

    Chapter CLXIV: Twelve Days of Christmas

    For a moment, Nero froze, eyes wide and confused, and Rika, perhaps sensing something wrong, pulled back.

    ¡°Best Buddy?¡± she asked uncertainly.

    ¡°I¡­¡± Nero began. ¡°That¡­that term. Why do I¡­?¡±

    She grunted suddenly and stumbled back, clutching at her temple with her free hand as her lips pulled back into a snarling grimace and her eyes squeezed shut. Rika stepped back, too, and I could practically see her spirits fall as the reality of the situation sank in.

    ¡°Oh no,¡± Mash murmured softly. ¡°Emperor Nero doesn¡¯t¡­¡±

    ¡°It was never a guarantee,¡± Marie said quietly. ¡°The only thing that made it at all possible in the first place was the nature of Singularities themselves, and the fact that it seemed to be only a partial summon or some kind of¡­incomplete Demi-Servant means that it was a longshot either way.¡±

    Rika made a nearly silent distressed sound in her throat. ¡°So she doesn¡¯t¡­?¡±

    ¡°It seems that there is at least some form of sentiment,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°but what might exist beyond that, I¡¯m afraid only Emperor Nero can tell us.¡±

    Rika took a tentative step forward again. ¡°Best Buddy? You in there?¡±

    Nero¡¯s eyes snapped open. ¡°That¡­that term! I know it!¡± she said. ¡°How do I know it? How do I know you?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t you remember?¡± Rika asked, and there was something desperate in her voice. ¡°The baths? The bread? Fighting for my house-husband? Fighting Romulus? Super Action Mom and Queen Booty? Sparty?¡±

    Nero looked around the room like a cornered animal, eyes swiveling back and forth. ¡°I¡­¡±

    ¡°Rika,¡± said Ritsuka, and when Rika looked back at him over her shoulder, he held out one hand and waggled his fingers. ¡°Ba-la-la-la-la-la-la.¡±

    This obviously meant something to Rika, because her eyes went wide and her eyebrows rose up towards her hairline, and she whipped back around.

    ¡°Here!¡± She thrust her hand out, fist closed. ¡°Remember?¡±

    Nero hesitated, brow furrowing until her forehead wrinkled, and then she pulled her hand away from her temple and cautiously and slowly reached out. Gently and uncertainly, she pressed her knuckles against Rika¡¯s, and then her face morphed with wonder and surprise. A moment later, it became delight, and her mouth pulled into a broad, familiar grin.

    ¡°Mm-mm! Best Buddy!¡±

    ¡°Yes!¡± Rika shrieked, and this time, when she launched herself at Nero, Nero caught her with a laugh, letting her sword fall from her fingers. ¡°You¡¯re back, you¡¯re back, you¡¯re back! Oh man, I¡¯ve missed you!¡±

    ¡°Of course I¡¯m back!¡± Nero proclaimed confidently. ¡°Emperor Nero could never forget such precious friends, not when they helped her save Rome, and especially not her Best Buddy!¡±

    ¡°How did you know that would work?¡± Marie asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t,¡± he admitted. ¡°But I figured it was worth a shot.¡±

    ¡°Ritsuka!¡± Nero burst out, turning that grin to each of us in turn. ¡°And Mash, and Taylor!¡±

    Her eyes went down to my shirt, and her brow furrowed again as she read the words printed on it. Her smile turned into a thunderous scowl.

    ¡°Is that so?¡± she demanded. ¡°Mm-mm!¡± She turned to Romani. ¡°Shame on you, Director Romani!¡± Romani could only blink at her, nonplussed. ¡°And you as well, Lady Da Vinci! And¡­¡±

    When she came upon Marie, she stopped and scrutinized her, and eventually declared, ¡°I do not know you, but I must assume you are equally as guilty! Mm-mm! Do you not understand the value of your team?¡±

    Marie gaped at her, indignant and stunned into silence. Her mouth moved, but no words made it past her lips.

    Rika snorted and broke out into laughter while Ritsuka groaned and dropped his head into his hands. I had to be the one to break it to her and tell her, ¡°Nero, it¡¯s a joke.¡±

    She stared at me, uncomprehending. ¡°A joke?¡±

    Rika was still laughing too hard to provide context, so it fell on me again.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know where or when it started,¡± I told Nero, ¡°but some time ago, people started wearing t-shirts like this one that said, ¡®I did such-and-such and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.¡¯ It¡¯s just meant to be funny.¡±

    ¡°I¡­hehe¡­I told Da Vinci-chan she should make one for Senpai,¡± Rika said, still giggling.

    ¡°I see,¡± Nero said, nodding, although I wasn¡¯t sure she really did.

    ¡°I think Director Marie understands exactly how valuable her team is,¡± Ritsuka said. ¡°After all, she¡¯s the one who recruited Senpai and made her leader, and Senpai did save her life back in Fuyuki.¡±

    Nero¡¯s head swiveled, stopping on each person around the room, and her brow furrowed again. ¡°Director Marie? I¡¯m confused. Was not Director Romani the leader of this organization?¡±

    Romani coughed into his fist. ¡°Technically speaking, I was only ever Acting Director while Director Animusphere was, uh, indisposed. Although I was made Vice Director for some reason, so I guess my position didn¡¯t change that much.¡±

    ¡°And now there is a Director Animusphere?¡± Nero complained.

    ¡°Olga Marie Animusphere!¡± Marie finally snapped. ¡°Lord of the Clock Tower, and most importantly for you, Director of Chaldea!¡±

    ¡°Emperor Nero,¡± Da Vinci cut in gently, ¡°you should have received an information packet when you were summoned that filled you in on some of what has happened since last you saw the Masters in Rome.¡±

    Nero nodded. ¡°Yes! And I see that you have managed to resolve two more of these Singularities! Mm-mm! Without me at your side, at that!¡±

    ¡°A lot of things¡­happened after Rome,¡± I settled on, understatement of the century as it was. ¡°Not everything went to plan, and we wanted to make sure we got the right person when we summoned you.¡±

    ¡°Who else would you have gotten?¡± Nero asked, confused.

    All things considered? Maybe the Whore of Babylon. How it connected to the Nero we knew, I had no idea, but there had been parallels made by earlier historians that could very well have skewed the summoning results.

    ¡°There¡¯s no way of knowing. We¡¯re still not sure why our last summoning went the way it did, so we took all of the precautions we could to make sure we got the right person this time.¡±

    Nero¡¯s brow furrowed suspiciously. ¡°I suppose that makes sense¡­¡±

    ¡°More importantly, Best Buddy, you¡¯re just in time!¡± said Rika, grinning broadly. ¡°Dinner will be ready soon, and Emiya is cooking up an absolute feast for Christmas!¡±

    ¡°Christmas?¡± Nero asked.

    Somehow, Rika¡¯s grin grew even broader.

    Twenty minutes later, as she looked around at all of the decorations strung about the cafeteria and the crowd of people conversing and waiting around for dinner, Nero nodded to herself, ¡°Ah, Christmas! I understand now! Mm-mm! But I confess that you never seemed to me to be a Christian, Rika. My apologies if I offended you during your stay in Rome!¡±

    ¡°Eh,¡± said Rika, awkwardly shifting her shoulders. ¡°It¡¯s not¡­really¡­ I mean, there are Christians in Japan, Best Buddy, but that¡¯s not really why most of us celebrate the holiday there. I¡­don¡¯t know if Onii-chan and I even technically belong to any religion?¡±

    ¡°We weren¡¯t baptized or anything,¡± Ritsuka confirmed. ¡°And we don¡¯t observe any religious holidays, aside from Christmas, I mean.¡±

    Nero looked at them curiously. ¡°Then why do you celebrate Christmas?¡±

    ¡°The presents, of course!¡± Rika proclaimed, and then, almost sheepishly, ¡°Although we¡­don¡¯t really have too many of those, this year.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t?¡± asked Nero.

    ¡°We can¡¯t exactly go shopping for presents here, can we?¡± I pointed out.

    Nero scowled and drew herself up to her full ¡ª and not very impressive ¡ª height. ¡°That simply will not do! Mm-mm! This cannot be a proper celebration if something so essential is missing! We will simply have to ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Emperor Nero!¡± Arash said as he came closer. ¡°It¡¯s been a while, but you look just the same as the last time we met!¡±

    ¡°Arash!¡± Nero beamed. ¡°And you look hale, as well! Oh?¡± Her eyes homed in on Jackie, who trailed after Arash. ¡°And who is this? You appear to be another Servant, but you must be quite incredible to have become a Heroic Spirit so young!¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re Jackie,¡± Jackie answered simply. ¡°Mommy¡¯s Servant.¡±

    Nero¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°Mommy?¡±

    I held out my hand, and Jackie skipped over with a smile, reaching out to grasp it with her own. Nero appeared only more confused, so I clarified, ¡°We encountered her during the last Singularity as a Stray Servant, the same as Queen Boudica, Spartacus, and A¨ªfe. All she wanted was someone to be her mother, so it was a fairly easy choice to recruit her.¡±

    ¡°Mommy is the best,¡± Jackie said with all of the confidence only a girl her age could have.

    ¡°I see!¡± Nero nodded. ¡°I suppose the bond between Master and Servant takes many forms! Mm-mm! It was only unexpected!¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± Rika said suddenly, ¡°you didn¡¯t get the chance to meet everyone else, did you? I mean, you got to see Tii-chan for a few minutes as everything was wrapping up, but everyone else was back here while all of that was going down! And Hot Pops is still here, too!¡±

    ¡°Miss Ren¨¦e wasn¡¯t here at the time either,¡± said Mash.

    ¡°Oh man,¡± Rika gushed, ¡°if you thought Emiya¡¯s food was great, wait until you get a load of what happens when those two team up!¡±

    ¡°Those two?¡± Nero asked.

    ¡°We¡¯ve been bringing back Stray Servants after each Singularity whenever they agree to stay on with us,¡± I explained. ¡°In London, we met a homunculus created by a Servant there, Nicolas Flamel, and since she didn¡¯t exist in proper history, the only place for her to go was with us.¡± To the twins, I added, ¡°Sam, Jeanne Alter, and Hippolyta weren¡¯t around during Septem either.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash. ¡°No, they weren¡¯t, were they?¡±

    ¡°Sam? Hippolyta? Jeanne Alter?¡± Nero echoed.

    ¡°Servants we met in Okeanos,¡± Ritsuka told her. ¡°They came back with us after we corrected it. Jeanne Alter is the Servant we summoned after we got back from Rome, and she¡¯s the reason why we had to wait to summon you, because she wasn¡¯t the Servant we were trying to summon, although, in a way, she kind of was, too.¡±

    The first part, Nero understood well enough, but the second part only confused her more.

    ¡°Father!¡± Mordred¡¯s voice cried, interrupting. ¡°After everything, you decided to show your face here?¡±

    We all whirled about to see her coming towards us fast like an approaching storm, fully decked out in her armor and her sword in her hand, snarl curling on her lips. She only had eyes for Nero.

    Nero, sensing the hostility, manifested her sword and brandished it. ¡°Father? Mm-mm! I sired no children, mysterious person, and I certainly don¡¯t recognize you!¡±

    This was the wrong thing to say, because it only pissed Mordred off more. ¡°You¡­! Do you despise me that much that you still refuse to even acknowledge ¡ª !¡±

    ¡°Sir Mordred, wait!¡± Mash urged, placing herself between the two and holding out her hands to placate the furious Mordred. ¡°This isn¡¯t King Arthur!¡±

    ¡°Outta the way, Shieldy!¡± Mordred growled at her. ¡°That¡­! That¡­¡± Her brow furrowed, and over Mash¡¯s shoulder, she gave Nero another look, eyes traveling first to that ridiculous sword, then to the sheer, translucent dress, and finally stopping on the generous bust. ¡°You¡¯re¡­not my father.¡±

    ¡°I should think not!¡± Nero agreed.

    ¡°This is Emperor Nero,¡± Mash explained, still staying between them, just in case. ¡°We mistook her for King Arthur the first time we saw her, too. Although we can¡¯t say how, there¡­might be some relation, and that¡¯s why they look so similar.¡±

    Mordred grunted. ¡°Ugh. Damn it. And there I went letting myself get all hot and bothered. Fucking of course.¡± (¡°Phrasing!¡± Rika choked out as she held back a giggle. Mordred ignored her.) She sighed and relaxed, letting her sword and armor vanish. ¡°Sorry about that. You kinda look like someone I don¡¯t get along with, and I kinda¡­ What¡¯s that modern phrase? Hopped the gun?¡±

    ¡°Jumped the gun,¡± I corrected her.

    Mordred nodded. ¡°That.¡±

    Nero relaxed, too, letting her own sword vanish. ¡°I shall forgive it! Mm-mm! Emperor Nero is as magnanimous as she is generous!¡±

    Mordred huffed a chuckle and grinned. ¡°Definitely not my father. It¡¯s fucking spooky, though. You lined ¡®em up next to each other and put ¡®em in the same armor and I ain¡¯t sure I coulda told the difference.¡±

    Wisely, no one mentioned that the same could be said of her, because if Mordred did her hair up the way Arthur did and put on the same clothes, no one would¡¯ve been able to tell them apart until one of them opened her mouth.

    ¡°You know,¡± said Rika thoughtfully, tapping her chin with one finger, ¡°now that you mention it, do you think Jalter kinda looks like that, too?¡±

    My brow furrowed, and in my head, the image popped up, unbidden, of Jeanne Alter dressed in King Arthur¡¯s gear. I wouldn¡¯t have said so before, just because Jeanne Alter¡¯s hair was a little too wild and a bit too wavy near the bottom to match, but if I compared them with Mordred as a sort of midway point, then I really could start seeing similarities to their facial structures. Differences, too, but the shape of the jaw and the set of the eyes were¡­actually eerily close.

    By the disturbed look on Ritsuka¡¯s face, he had realized it, too.

    We were saved from having to think any more deeply about it by the ringing of a bell, and Emiya¡¯s voice called out to the entire cafeteria, ¡°Dinner hours are officially starting! If you¡¯re ready to eat, then come and get the first batch while it¡¯s hot!¡±

    Nero gasped. ¡°Food! Mm-mm! More importantly, Emiya¡¯s food!¡±

    And that was all it took for her and Rika to race towards the front of the line before it could form, leaving the rest of us behind to watch them. My stomach rumbled to let me know that I was hungry, too, and several of the technicians who had decided to take the chance to take a break from their posts and eat were gathering behind those two, just as eager if not just as excitable about it.

    I gave Jackie¡¯s hand a squeeze and offered her a smile. ¡°Let¡¯s get something to eat, too, hm?¡±

    Jackie smiled and nodded, proclaiming, ¡°Mister Emiya makes really good food! We like it!¡±

    More sedately, the rest of us joined the line leading up to the counter where Emiya served Christmas dinner, and even from the back of it, I could smell the rich aroma of the feast he had prepared, easily the equal of what he and Ren¨¦e had made yesterday. Jackie was a veritable ball of excitement next to me, almost vibrating, but she was better behaved about it than any girl her apparent age had any right to be and didn¡¯t complain a single bit about the wait.

    That didn¡¯t mean she didn¡¯t stare intently at our stacked trays when it was finally our turn and Emiya started dishing food up for us. She could have bored a hole through them if she had Mystic Eyes, and judging by the faint look of amusement on Emiya¡¯s face, he knew it, too.

    Once we were seated and everything was sorted out, Jackie looked tempted to inhale it all as quickly as she could, and it seemed to take every ounce of her self-control to maintain the manners I had instilled in her in London and savor every bite. Even I had to admit that it was cute.

    Rika and Nero, on the other hand, didn¡¯t appear to have any compunctions about it. They abandoned all pretense of politeness and ate eagerly, as though this was to be the last meal either of them ever had.

    It was a good thing we didn¡¯t eat quite this richly every day. I didn¡¯t think there was an exercise regimen in the world ¡ª near godly teacher or no ¡ª that would keep Rika from putting on a dozen or two pounds by the end of this.

    Around us, people slowly filtered in and out, and eventually, even the other Servants came in to grab a tray of their own, enjoying the chance to taste yet more of Emiya and Ren¨¦e¡¯s cooking. Several of them stopped by long enough to greet Nero, or in some cases, to meet her for the first time, and some of them were stopped by Nero when she recognized them.

    ¡°Court Mage!¡± she called out to El-Melloi II, and he had to stop, a look of exasperated annoyance scrunching up his face.

    ¡°We¡¯re not in Rome anymore,¡± he told her bluntly, ¡°which means I¡¯m not your court anything anymore, Emperor Nero.¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t matter!¡± Nero told him imperiously. ¡°I am Emperor Nero! I am Rome! Where I am, Rome is also!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not the way that works,¡± he tried, but she wouldn¡¯t have it.

    ¡°It does! Mm! It works that way because I said it does!¡±

    Rika found this incredibly funny, or at least found some form of schadenfreude in El-Melloi II¡¯s frustration, because she laughed all the way through their bickering and was still giggling to herself after El-Melloi II gave up and stalked away with his tray to find the furthest table from ours that he could.

    Bellamy, on the other hand, rolled with it a lot more easily.

    ¡°Hey!¡± he said as he approached us. ¡°New Servant, right? Nice to meetcha! Name¡¯s Sam, Sam Bellamy.¡±

    ¡°It is your honor!¡± Nero declared, but Bellamy just laughed it off.

    ¡°Yeah, I guess it is,¡± he agreed easily. ¡°Emperor Nero, right? I¡¯ve heard a couple of things about you from Rika and the others, all of them good, don¡¯t worry.¡±

    Nero nodded. ¡°Naturally! There are only good things to hear about me, after all! Mm-mm!¡±

    Eventually, Marie and Romani came in, but only long enough to grab a tray and a mug of coffee before heading back to work. ¡°We¡¯re going over the data from the summoning with Da Vinci,¡± Marie informed us. ¡°If we can figure out what factors made this summoning different from the last one, then they should become more reliable in the future.¡±

    ¡°Should, anyway,¡± Romani added. ¡°It¡¯s all fine when you¡¯re trying to summon King Arthur using her sheath that you excavated from a lake in Cornwall, but when all you have is a shard of the Round Table, it might not be possible to narrow down who shows up or what class they have.¡±

    The sour look on Marie¡¯s face told me she hated that he was right.

    ¡°You guys are working on Christmas, Boss Lady? Doc?¡± Rika asked, aghast. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Of course we are!¡± Marie told her. ¡°Magi have known that gods of all forms exist since the Age of Gods, but mankind isn¡¯t dependent on their good will anymore, so why would we bother observing their religious practices? Especially when there¡¯s important work that needs doing!¡±

    Because that was the kind of person she was. Marie didn¡¯t know how to give anything less than her all to anything she set her mind to, but that made things all the worse when it combined with the toxic mess of her self-esteem. I was going to have to talk to Da Vinci about doing something nice for her ¡ª should already have done so, in fact, if not for the aftermath of the bomb Solomon had dropped in our laps a week ago.

    ¡°That¡¯s what it means to be the Director, Rika,¡± I explained. ¡°You work even while your employees are celebrating.¡±

    Rika pouted theatrically, and then declared, ¡°I¡¯ll find a way to infect you with the Christmas spirit, Boss Lady, just you watch!¡±

    Like the day before, the dinner party continued long into the night, and although the celebrations never got truly out of hand, that wasn¡¯t to say that things didn¡¯t get¡­rowdy, for lack of a better word. Somewhere along the way, harder alcohol got introduced and the eggnog got set aside. An arm-wrestling tournament got set up, if it could really be called a tournament, and Siegfried, Hippolyta, A¨ªfe, Mordred, Jeanne Alter, and even Bellamy wound up taking turns trying to beat each other.

    It was, if nothing else, an interesting study in how compatibility could affect the outcome of a battle between Servants. Sam put up a valiant effort, but lost to everyone because his strength was so much lower than theirs, while everyone else was mostly evenly matched in terms of raw strength, but Mordred and Jeanne Alter both lost to Siegfried without much contest, because Siegfried had both attributes of a dragon and was a dragonslayer. The latter gave him an advantage over Mordred, who had dragon attributes she must have inherited from King Arthur, and the former gave him an advantage over Jeanne Alter, whose status as a ¡°dragon witch¡± increased his own performance.

    By the number of expletives that left their mouths, neither of them was either happy or willing to accept defeat gracefully. Polite to a fault, Siegfried offered an apology and a smile every time, but naturally, that only pissed them off even more and made them struggle even harder to beat him.

    By the expletives from the crowd that gathered to watch and the money that changed hands, it looked like several people had made bets on the matches, too.

    It was good to see everyone in such high spirits, that even in the midst of everything happening and the terrible circumstances, the crew manning our metaphorical ship could still find moments of levity and joy.

    It made me wish I¡¯d done better by the Chicago Wards, once upon a time.

    As the night drew on, what had started as a dinner feast turned into a proper party, and Rika managed to draw Nero, Bradamante, and even Mordred into singing Christmas carols with a couple of the technicians. I even caught Jackie humming along, bobbing her head to the tunes and smiling, and it was such an innocent, carefree moment that I wisely chose to pretend I didn¡¯t notice.

    Eventually, real life had to intrude, and the cafeteria started to empty out as the partygoers left the merrymaking behind to return to either their shifts or their beds, because everyone knew that Marie wouldn¡¯t accept any excuses for slacking off tomorrow, no matter what today was.

    That was when Rika had the brilliant idea of finishing things off with a movie marathon.

    ¡°What are you even planning to watch?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°Christmas movies! Duh!¡± Rika replied with a roll of her eyes. ¡°What else do you watch on Christmas? I wanna see if I can get any of these hardened badasses with Tiny Tim!¡±

    ¡°Tiny Tim?¡± Nero asked.

    Rika shook her head. ¡°Nuh uh, not telling! You have to watch the movie to see! If I spoil it, then it won¡¯t be the same!¡±

    ¡°Originally,¡± Mash explained, ¡°it¡¯s from a book called A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Shush!¡± Rika pressed her finger to Mash¡¯s lips, and Mash blinked, crossing her eyes to look down at Rika¡¯s hand. ¡°You can¡¯t just go spoiling a classic like that, Cinnabon! It won¡¯t have the same impact!¡±

    El-Melloi II grunted, then looked around at the Servants still gathered and smirked. ¡°Know what? I¡¯ll actually agree with Rika, this time. It¡¯ll be interesting to see how all of these great warriors respond to movies like that. Make sure to include Frosty,¡± he added.

    ¡°Oh man,¡± Rika bemoaned, ¡°I should have made a list!¡±

    And that was how we wound up meandering over to the orientation room ¡ª Ren¨¦e in tow ¡ª while Arash made a quick trip down to the library to find a handful of movies for us to spend the rest of the night watching. I thought about taking a pass and just going back to curl up in my own bed with a book, but this was Jackie¡¯s first ¡ª and even if we fixed all of the Singularities and defeated Solomon, maybe even only ¡ª Christmas, and it seemed almost cruel to deprive her of the essential experience I¡¯d had as a child of snuggling up with your family and watching a Christmas movie or two.

    We wound up watching It¡¯s a Wonderful Life, then, of course, A Christmas Carol, and Frosty the Snowman. Jackie was enthralled the entire time, her eyes glued to the screen as she leaned back in my lap and snacked on caramel flavored popcorn.

    Perhaps as I should have expected, none of the Servants got particularly teary-eyed over the sad moments in any of the movies, none of them except Nero, who loudly blew her nose several times throughout the night, but It¡¯s a Wonderful Life seemed to hit Ren¨¦e like a truck. No one else seemed to hear the soft, plaintive whines she let out at several points, not over the audio from the movie itself, and I think the only reason I heard it at all was because she was sitting so close to me.

    The tears, however, were going to be harder to ignore, but she didn¡¯t seem to be trying particularly hard to hide them.

    By the time the credits rolled for Frosty the Snowman, it was well past midnight, and I begged off staying for the next movie ¡ª The Santa Clause, because of course Rika would like that one ¡ª to take Jackie to bed for the night. Arash helpfully offered to escort us back to my room, and at that point, I didn¡¯t have the energy to say no, so he walked back with us.

    As she had every night, Jackie snuggled into my arms, mumbled a quiet, ¡°Goodnight, Mommy,¡± and I wasn¡¯t sure I hadn¡¯t already fallen asleep before I could get out my own, ¡°Goodnight, Jackie.¡±

    The next morning, I was awoken suddenly when Marie burst into my room without knocking and announced, ¡°They¡¯re gone!¡±

    ¡°What?¡± I asked her blearily, still half-asleep.

    ¡°The twins, Mash, and Emperor Nero,¡± she answered frantically, ¡°they¡¯re gone! They¡¯re not in the facility!¡±

    That jolted me into wakefulness, and I shot straight up in my bed. ¡°What?¡±

    Marie looked like she had barely woken up herself, such was the state of her hair. ¡°They¡¯re gone!¡± she said for the third time. ¡°There was an unplanned Rayshift in the middle of the night ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Unplanned Rayshift?¡± I demanded.

    Had they¡­? No, no way. No matter how forceful a personality Nero was and no matter how prickly Jeanne Alter could be, no one in the facility right now would threaten violence to get their way, not to their friends and allies.

    ¡°Mommy?¡± Jackie murmured.

    My head whirled around towards her. ¡°Go back to sleep, Jackie,¡± I told her as gently as I could. ¡°I just have to take care of something real quick, and then I¡¯ll be back.¡±

    ¡°Mm¡­¡±

    Carefully, I extracted myself from the blankets and out from under Jackie, and when I climbed out of bed, I met Marie¡¯s eyes and jerked my head towards the door. It was only once the door was closed behind us and we were several yards down the hall that I stopped and turned to her again. ¡°Unplanned Rayshift?¡±

    She nodded jerkily.

    ¡°It was logged in my terminal this morning,¡± she revealed, rushing through the explanation as though she needed to get it all out in one breath. ¡°Last night, at 4:15 am, Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, and Emperor Nero performed an unscheduled Rayshift into the London Singularity. No note, no permission, and no reason stated, just that they went!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡±

    Reckless, I wanted to say, except that Nero had a whole skill in her kit dedicated entirely to, ¡®I can do whatever I want because I¡¯m emperor!¡¯ I couldn¡¯t even say it would be entirely out of character for her either.

    ¡°Is one of the Grails missing?¡± was the next thing I asked.

    But Marie shook her head. ¡°That¡¯s the first thing I checked! All of the Grails recovered from the Singularities are accounted for, and nothing else seems to be missing ¡ª although, of course, I haven¡¯t had the chance to check everything, so there¡¯s no telling if they took anything else!¡±

    She looked five seconds away from a freakout, so I set my hands on her shoulders and told her, ¡°Breathe, Marie.¡±

    She did, taking large, gulping breaths until I could visibly see her start to calm down. I made sure to keep my voice steady and even when I asked, ¡°Romani?¡±

    ¡°Still asleep,¡± she answered. A flicker of annoyance crossed her face and her lips pulled into a short, tight scowl. ¡°I sent him a message as soon as I found out, but he hasn¡¯t responded.¡±

    Considering my clock had said it was only about 7:30, that was probably to be expected. He didn¡¯t tend to be up before nine on most days, and ten was more common.

    ¡°Da Vinci?¡± I asked next, because that was the last person who could have set any of this in motion without further help.

    Marie¡¯s brow furrowed, and she admitted, ¡°I¡­hadn¡¯t gotten around to asking her yet.¡± She stuck her thumbnail in her mouth, chewing on it with her front teeth. ¡°But why would she possibly¡­?¡±

    ¡°Only one way to find out, right?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Marie, her voice tightly controlled.

    But Da Vinci turned out to not be in her workshop when we got down there, so we had to go looking in the Command Room next, and it was lucky that she turned out to be there, because we would have had to start pestering her with messages if she wasn¡¯t. When the door to the room whooshed open, she turned from the Director¡¯s console and greeted us with a smile.

    ¡°Taylor,¡± she said, ¡°Director Animusphere, good morning, and I suppose a good Boxing Day, if you happen to celebrate it.¡±

    Oh, fuck me, don¡¯t tell me¡­

    ¡°Did you authorize an unscheduled Rayshift last night?¡± Marie gritted out immediately.

    Da Vinci laughed awkwardly. ¡°Ah, yes, I suppose I should have remembered that all such records are automatically forwarded to the terminal in your office, Director, especially since I¡¯m the one who programmed that system in the first place. An oversight on my part.¡±

    Marie looked like she wanted to reach out and strangle her, and it was only by taking in a deep, calming breath that she managed not to growl when she said, ¡°So you did, then. You¡¯re the one who let them Rayshift in the middle of the night for no reason whatsoever ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Not for no reason,¡± said Da Vinci, holding up a finger. ¡°You see, the four of them came down to my workshop last night¡­oh, I want to say it was around three o¡¯clock? Mash, of course, seemed much aggrieved about the whole situation, and Ritsuka appeared reluctant to engage in any shenanigans without permission, but Rika and Emperor Nero were quite adamant that it was something which needed to be handled with all due haste, and, well, I didn¡¯t see any harm in giving them a little¡­hand, if you will.¡±

    Later, I blamed the fact that I was woken up so suddenly and unexpectedly for the fact that I didn¡¯t put the dots together until just then, but when I did, I couldn¡¯t help but to let out a sigh.

    ¡°You sent them Christmas shopping, didn¡¯t you?¡±

    Because of course she did.

    ¡°What?¡± Marie demanded flatly.

    ¡°Yes, yes, exactly,¡± said Da Vinci, nodding with a smile. ¡°Another oversight, I think, that it didn¡¯t occur to any of us that we should have done so sooner, but then, our dear friend gave us quite a bit to think about, didn¡¯t he? I thought it only appropriate that they should be allowed to rectify that, as an apology for allowing myself to forget it as well.¡±

    ¡°Without,¡± Marie ground out, ¡°asking me?¡±

    ¡°Better to ask forgiveness than permission,¡± Da Vinci replied liltingly.

    ¡°That¡¯s not¡­!¡± Marie clenched her jaw shut and squeezed her eyes closed, and I could practically hear her counting backwards from ten in her head.

    ¡°In all seriousness, Director,¡± Da Vinci went on, ¡°I thought you deserved your sleep and there was no need to bother you with this. I¡¯m sorry I didn¡¯t get your permission first, but Rika and Nero seemed determined enough that I thought their next stop would be your room if I told them no. My apologies if I overreached my own position.¡±

    ¡°The UN is who we¡¯re going to have to answer to,¡± Marie said. ¡°Frivolous Rayshifts¡­ I¡¯m the one who will have to answer for them!¡±

    ¡°I think they¡¯re going to have bigger concerns than whether or not we stayed strictly on budget,¡± I told her. ¡°And it¡¯s important to maintain morale. Isn¡¯t that why you let us have that beach vacation after Okeanos?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­!¡± different, I could tell she wanted to say, but it died in her mouth and transformed into a sigh. She pinched the bridge of her nose as though to stave off a migraine. Of Da Vinci, she asked, ¡°When exactly are they expected to return?¡±

    ¡°Not too long, not too long,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°In fact, I¡¯m expecting to hear from them sometime within the next hour or so. Likely sooner ¡ª they¡¯ve already been gone longer than three, after all.¡±

    She let the words hang for a moment, as though waiting, like she was expecting the console to suddenly chime and let her know the others were on their way back. When, several long seconds later, no such thing happened, she let out an awkward chuckle.

    ¡°Aha-ha¡­ Of course, no need for the two of you to stick around and wait,¡± she said. ¡°You may as well go about your day as normal ¡ª I¡¯m certain a good breakfast would not go amiss, would it? No need to deprive yourselves! I can handle bringing Rika, Nero, and the others back without your assistance.¡±

    You just want Marie to have a chance to cool down first, I thought wryly, although I was tempted to agree with Marie that this shouldn¡¯t have been done without her permission, or failing that, without Romani¡¯s. It was just that Romani likely would have agreed to let them go, too, and even if she didn¡¯t want to admit it, Marie would eventually have let herself be convinced, as well.

    I should probably have a talk with Rika when they got back¡­but there was no way Marie was going to let them go without giving them a dressing down, so I could just be there afterwards to give them that ¡®I¡¯m disappointed¡¯ stare Mom had used on me and Emma when we were kids.

    ¡°You¡¯re right, Da Vinci,¡± I said, ¡°we¡¯ll go do that.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Marie hissed at me.

    I leaned in, placing a gentle hand on her wrist, and murmured to her, ¡°There¡¯s nothing for us to do right now, not unless you have a way of punishing Da Vinci that would actually work.¡±

    She grimaced, squeezing her eyes shut again. Yeah. It wasn¡¯t like we had any Command Spells to use or pay to dock, and frankly, Da Vinci¡¯s work was so integral to the continued functioning of the facility that we couldn¡¯t exactly put more limits on her resources either. The only currency we had with her was mutual respect.

    If she was just a little bit more whimsical, that might actually have been scary.

    ¡°Fine.¡± Marie glared at Da Vinci. ¡°But next time, ask permission! I don¡¯t care if you have to wake me up for it, I shouldn¡¯t be finding out about this sort of thing from the logs in my office console!¡±

    ¡°Of course, Director, of course,¡± Da Vinci promised.

    Marie huffed, and then let me pull her gently out of the room. The instant the door whooshed shut behind us, she cursed, ¡°Damn it! After everything that¡¯s happened, don¡¯t they understand how important it is to make sure¡­!¡±

    ¡°Come on,¡± I told her quietly. ¡°Let¡¯s go get some breakfast. You¡¯ll feel better after some food and coffee.¡±

    For several long seconds, she didn¡¯t move, and then she whispered, ¡°I just¡­¡±

    Her hands trembled. I carefully wrapped one of mine around one of hers. ¡°I know. But the twins aren¡¯t Lev. They¡¯re just a couple of teenagers. Teenagers do dumb stuff, sometimes.¡±

    ¡°The fate of the world ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª is a heavy thing,¡± I cut across her softly. ¡°Yell at them about it later, if you want, but I meant what I said about maintaining morale. We can¡¯t all stay cooped up here for the next year without some way of releasing the pressure.¡±

    She didn¡¯t have an immediate reply to that, so I pulled away. ¡°Come on. Breakfast first. You can be angry at the twins later, if you still feel like it.¡±

    Marie heaved out a heavy sigh, and she didn¡¯t fight me as I gently led her along. By the time the cafeteria was within sight, her mood seemed to have improved, and she seemed mostly back to normal, or at least enough that none of that fragility and worry was visible on her face or in her posture.

    I took that as a good sign that what I¡¯d said had gotten through to her. I think she needed this as much as the twins did, and I was going to have to see about picking something up for her while we were scoping out Jekyll¡¯s apartment for the renovations to Ren¨¦e¡¯s room.

    Once we reached the cafeteria door, I turned to her and said, ¡°I¡¯m going to go and get properly dressed, then I¡¯ll come right back.¡±

    She looked me up and down, taking in the shorts and oversized t-shirt I wore as pajamas, and her lips thinned as she nodded. ¡°Good idea. It may be a lost cause with those technicians in the Command Room, but that¡¯s no excuse not to be presentable.¡±

    Considering she was the one who dragged me out of bed like the world was ending? I decided not to say anything about it, though, and just left her there to return to my room. I hadn¡¯t even had a chance to put my shoes on, and now that I wasn¡¯t hurrying out to find out what had happened, I was suffering for it on the cold tiles.

    If I hurried to get back to my room as quickly as I could, well, there wasn¡¯t anyone wandering the halls to see me, so no one could chastise me for it.

    When I got back to my room, it was tempting to just climb back into bed and snuggle back up with Jackie, but Marie had only woken me up about half an hour early, so I gave it up and just turned off my alarm, then reached over and shook Jackie awake.

    ¡°Time to get up, Jackie.¡±

    She stirred, rolling over and turning her head so she could see me, and she offered me her usual smile. ¡°Good morning, Mommy. Was something wrong?¡±

    Almost against my will, I gave her a smile back. ¡°Good morning, Jackie. A couple of troublemakers decided to sneak out last night, that¡¯s all. The Director was angry because no one asked her permission.¡±

    ¡°Are they in trouble?¡±

    A short laugh huffed out of my nostrils. ¡°Yes, I think they will be.¡±

    As Jackie pulled herself out of bed, I shucked off my pajamas and slipped into a t-shirt and a pair of jeans ¡ª not the shirt Da Vinci had delivered yesterday, because that would send entirely the wrong message. I was going to have to move my usual routine into the afternoon to account for the disruption, but that wasn¡¯t a big deal, so I didn¡¯t give it any more thought than that.

    Jackie, of course, just needed to pull my shirt up and over her head and manifest her usual gear. Being a Servant really did have its own conveniences like that.

    I made sure to grab my communicator before we left, then took Jackie to the cafeteria for breakfast. By now, the decorations had all been taken down or dismissed, and when we stepped in through the automatic door, what greeted us was the bare cafeteria. No more popcorn on strings, no more festive tablecloths, no more lights hanging above the counter where Emiya served the food.

    Marie, of course, was already sitting down and nursing a cup of coffee, her breakfast half-eaten, because her mood hadn¡¯t improved much. With the counter clear, however, that meant that Jackie and I could go up and get food right away, and Emiya was already preparing another double-stacked tray as we approached.

    ¡°The Director seems to be in a bit of a mood this morning,¡± he commented.

    ¡°You hadn¡¯t heard?¡± I replied. ¡°Your Master and Nero decided to drag her brother and Mash into some last minute Christmas shopping. In London. At four in the morning.¡±

    Emiya winced. ¡°Ah. And let me guess: no one asked Director Animusphere for permission before they went gallivanting off into a Rayshift.¡±

    ¡°She didn¡¯t find out until she checked the logs on her console this morning.¡±

    He sighed. ¡°Well. I suppose I¡¯ll be in the market for a new Master soon. Could I ask you to pick up another Archer¡¯s contract?¡±

    ¡°I think one is more than enough for me.¡±

    He chuckled. ¡°How heartless! Am I that expendable now that there¡¯s another chef in this kitchen?¡±

    ¡°I wonder.¡±

    Ren¨¦e paid us a glance, but nothing more than that before she went back to cooking. Emiya finished dishing me up and sent me on my way with his usual, ¡°Enjoy.¡±

    I had barely sat down and portioned out my plate from Jackie¡¯s when both my and Marie¡¯s communicator¡¯s chimed, notifying us of a message from Da Vinci. It read simply:

    They¡¯re back and heading your way!

    That was all the warning we had. Less than ten seconds later, the door whooshed open to admit Nero, dressed in ¡ª

    ¡°Just what do you think you¡¯re wearing?¡± Marie sputtered, rising from her seat.

    ¡ª a <u>Santa Claus outfit</u></a>, complete with a green ribbon tied in a bow at the collar. From the knot of the ribbon hung a sprig of mistletoe and a brassy bell that jingled as she walked.

    She ignored Marie completely. ¡°Ho-ho-ho! Merry Christmas! Santa Nero has come to deliver presents!¡±

    When she stepped aside, gesturing behind her, Rika, Ritsuka, and Mash all came in, dressed in similarly themed Christmas wear, only they were designed to look like elves. They carried boxes in their arms, some of them wrapped up, some of them little more than cardboard that had been hastily taped shut and had names scribbled across the front.

    They all looked utterly exhausted, although Rika still managed to have some pep in her step and cheer in her smile.

    ¡°It¡¯s not Christmas anymore!¡± Marie insisted, slapping her hands against the table. Her silverware clattered on her tray.

    ¡°I am emperor and I say it is! Mm-mm!¡± Nero said stubbornly. ¡°The festive spirit of Christmas must continue on, for I arrived too late to properly enjoy it!¡±

    ¡°You¡­!¡±

    I laid a gentle hand over one of Marie¡¯s, and when she whirled around to face me, I calmly said, ¡°I think ¡ª just this once ¡ª we can allow it. On the understanding, of course,¡± and I slid a look Rika¡¯s way, ¡°that everyone asks for permission first, before trying something like this again.¡±

    ¡°R-right!¡± Rika laughed nervously. ¡°Totally! For sure! W-we¡¯ll definitely ask Boss Lady next time we want to do something like this! Promise! Pinky swear!¡±

    I could practically hear Marie¡¯s teeth grinding together, but she did subside. ¡°As long as we have that understanding.¡± Her eyes flashed, and she pinned Rika with a glare this time. ¡°But if it happens again, I won¡¯t be anywhere near so lenient!¡±

    ¡°G-got it!¡± Rika squeaked.

    ¡°You said something about presents?¡± I asked mildly.

    ¡°Y-yes!¡± Mash piped up, and she looked over the boxes in her arms, struggling to try and read the names scribbled on them around their bulk. ¡°U-um, we couldn¡¯t get something for everyone, but we did manage to find a few things. I-I¡¯m not sure whose we should give first, though¡­¡±

    ¡°Maybe Ren¨¦e¡¯s?¡± Ritsuka suggested. He struggled against a yawn for a moment, then lost, before continuing. ¡°I think hers was the most important present we picked up.¡±

    ¡°An excellent idea, Elf Ritsuka!¡± Nero declared. ¡°Mm-mm! Ren¨¦e Flamel, come forward! Santa Nero has a present to deliver to you!¡±

    There was a moment of awkward silence, and then the door to the kitchen opened and Ren¨¦e walked out. Emiya¡¯s ridiculous aprons had apparently infected her, because on the front of her apron was a cartoonish depiction of an electric mixer with smoking prongs. Beneath it, there was the line, ¡°This kitchen ain¡¯t big enough for the both of us!¡±

    Because of course he had given her something like that.

    ¡°A present?¡± Ren¨¦e asked.

    Nero nodded. ¡°Yes!¡±

    She turned about and reached for the box that looked like it had been most haphazardly prepared, little more than a simple cardboard thing with ¡°To: Ren¨¦e, From: Santa Nero,¡± scrawled messily in sharpie on the side. With incongruent care, she lifted it out of Ritsuka¡¯s arms, slowly turned back around, and presented it to Ren¨¦e.

    ¡°Merry Christmas! Ho-ho-ho!¡±

    Ren¨¦e accepted the box gingerly, and for a moment, stood there, confused. After a few seconds, she asked, ¡°What¡­am I meant to do with this?¡±

    ¡°Open it!¡± Rika told her. ¡°Careful, though, it¡¯s fragile!¡±

    So Ren¨¦e carefully set the box down upon the nearest table, examined it for a second, and then ran a fingernail across the tape holding the box closed. I couldn¡¯t have been the only one whose eyebrows rose when it proved sharp enough to cut through the tape as though it was a finely honed blade.

    I guess when Flamel said he¡¯d given her all of his alchemical knowledge, he really had given her all of it.

    Slowly and cautiously, Ren¨¦e peeled back the box¡¯s flaps, and then the wads of tissue paper that had been stuffed in on top, and when she finally saw what was inside of the box, she gasped.

    ¡°This is¡­¡±

    As though lifting the most delicate of glass, she pulled from the box a simple china teacup, rimmed in gold and decorated with floral patterns.

    Hold on a second. Weren¡¯t those¡­?

    ¡°Everything else was corrected once the Singularity was resolved,¡± said Rika, completely serious and gentle, ¡°but when we went back to Doc Jekyll¡¯s apartment, everything that was there before we showed up was still there. Abe didn¡¯t leave anything behind except you, but we figured, if there was one thing there that would mean the most to you, it was that tea set.¡±

    Ren¨¦e¡¯s fingers curled around the cup, and when she looked back up at Rika, the first open, honest smile I had yet seen graced her face. A pair of lone tears fell from her eyes and down her cheeks.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± she said, voice trembling. ¡°It¡¯s wonderful.¡±

 Chapter CLXV: Auld Lang Syne

    Chapter CLXV: Auld Lang Syne

    Ren¨¦e¡¯s was not the only present the twins and Nero had picked up while they were in London with Mash, and over the course of the day, they went about delivering each one to all of the people they had found something for.

    Romani was surprised but very pleased to receive a first edition copy of A Study in Scarlet, although it was not ¡ª to my private relief, because I didn¡¯t want to imagine how they might have pulled it off ¡ª autographed. Apparently, they had found it in the bookstore where we met Andersen and figured Romani would like it.

    I had to admit, I was just the tiniest bit jealous. Mom would have been over the moon to get something like that, and just imagining her reaction was enough to make my heart ache.

    To his exasperation, Marcus received a cast iron skillet, as though to tease him that he would never truly escape his duty in the kitchen. Sylvia, by contrast, was given a woolen shawl, for lack of any better ideas what to get her, it seemed. Meuniere was delivered a box of chocolates from downtown London, which he took with a complicated expression on his face. Was he trying to lose weight? I had no idea.

    To Da Vinci, they gave one of Victor Frankenstein¡¯s research journals, apparently recovered from his mansion ¡ª or what was left of it. What, if any, use she might get out of it, only Da Vinci could know, but she seemed delighted all the same.

    Every one of the other technicians received something, too, but they were often simple souvenirs, owing to the fact that none of us knew the rest of the staff as well as we maybe should have. Despite that, they all seemed happy to get something, because of course, us Masters weren¡¯t the only ones feeling the stuffiness of being stuck in one place day after day.

    If it was possible for them to join us for a day out at the beach in Okeanos, I would have suggested it. Unfortunately, all of the people who were Rayshift compatible were either already Masters or still frozen in suspended animation inside their Klein Coffins. The technicians didn¡¯t have the luxury of getting out of the facility even through a loophole like that.

    Of course, Rika was impulsive, but she wasn¡¯t stupid, because the last person to receive a present was Marie, who opened the box given to her with some degree of trepidation and uncertainty, only to discover a selection of gourmet teas ¡ª straight from Queen Victoria¡¯s personal collection, as Rika told it. She wove a harrowing tale of dodging past the security measures of the palace and picking locks to find the right room with the right set of teas, only for her brother to chime in and tell us that all of the doors had been unlocked and there were no security measures to bypass. Naturally, since there wasn¡¯t anyone there to guard it.

    Marie found it hard to be angry after that. She tried to be because she felt like she was supposed to be, but she had already delivered her scolding and made her point, so she went easy on them and just reminded them that they needed to ask permission next time instead of going off on their own, no matter what Da Vinci said.

    Not to be outdone, Da Vinci called me to her workshop around lunchtime that day to pick up Jackie¡¯s bathing suit. I had no idea why I¡¯d been expecting a boring, normal, standard issue one-piece, but what she produced was a tasteful, fairly conservative two-piece, with green and white stripes and cute little frills on the top and bottom. I wasn¡¯t even sure I could properly call it a bikini, because it really didn¡¯t look like what I imagined when I thought of one.

    The costume change for her normal clothes, however, was going to take a little bit longer. I couldn¡¯t say I wasn¡¯t impatient, because it felt strange to have Jackie walk around in that tattered cloak all the time, but I couldn¡¯t exactly let her take it off either.

    After all of that, however, things started to go back to normal, or as normal as they ever got at Chaldea. It was a bit weird to have Jackie following me around almost everywhere I went, but somehow or another, she slotted herself into things almost as though she had been there all along. She cheered me on during my morning workouts, ate breakfast every day with relish, took showers with me to clean off the grime and wash her hair, watched silently during my runic lessons with A¨ªfe, and joined in with Mash¡¯s swimming lessons in the afternoons.

    Even Mordred fit in fairly easily, too. She was a little antsy, of course, because she was waiting for the simulator to be fully fixed so that Servants could cut loose against each other without putting anyone or anything in danger, but she found other ways of occupying her time while she waited, such as those racing games she played with El-Melloi II.

    Like that, another five days passed, and before I knew it, it was New Year¡¯s Eve. The last day of 2015 had officially arrived, and I had to admit, I was a little proud of how much we¡¯d managed to accomplish already. Five of the eight Singularities had been resolved. Not without problems, not without setbacks, not without close calls, but we¡¯d made it this far and everyone we¡¯d started this with was not only alive and kicking, but still in one piece (if we discounted Marie¡¯s few months of an extreme¡­out of body experience). Six months ago, I might not have believed that was possible, certainly not with what I¡¯d had to work with.

    But we¡¯d still done it. We were halfway through our Grand Order and no one had died since the Sabotage.

    It turned out that I wasn¡¯t the only one in relatively good spirits that day, because the twins seemed keen on celebrating the new year, too.

    ¡°I thought¡­New Year¡¯s¡­was a¡­big deal¡­in America, too,¡± Rika told me as she caught her breath after her morning workout. A¨ªfe had apparently decided to push them twice as hard to make up for having a week off after we got back from London, with the additional excuse of working off the cake and all of the good food they¡¯d had over Christmas.

    I took a sip of water to cover up the chance to gather my thoughts, and I guess she had something of a point. I had plenty of memories ¡ª all of them from before Mom died and Dad fell apart ¡ª of going out to see fireworks and then coming home late at night and staying up to watch the ball drop. Often, Emma was there with me, and we had dinner with the Barnes family before we all went out together.

    As a girl, I hadn¡¯t really understood what we were celebrating, I guess. Just that people went around shouting, ¡°Happy New Year!¡± at each other and blowing noisemakers like they were trumpets. I still wasn¡¯t sure I understood what the big deal was.

    ¡°I guess it is,¡± I decided on, ¡°I just never really thought about what everyone was celebrating.¡±

    ¡°In Japan,¡± Ritsuka told me haltingly, although he was coping better than his sister, ¡°it¡¯s about¡­new beginnings. Starting¡­starting over. Leaving everything¡­everything from the last year behind.¡±

    Huh. I guess¡­that was kind of what it was about in America, too, wasn¡¯t it? How many times had I heard the phrase, ¡°New year, new me?¡± Or all of the stink raised about New Year¡¯s resolutions? How so-and-so was going to lose weight, or eat better, or exercise more, or spend more time with family?

    At least as many times as I had heard about those same resolutions being broken, I thought with mild amusement.

    ¡°Maybe it¡¯s not so different, then,¡± I said, and took another sip of water. It never tasted so sweet as after a good workout. ¡°Although I wouldn¡¯t say it¡¯s the most important holiday in the country either.¡±

    ¡°That might have something to do with how much more prominent religion is in the West,¡± Mash said thoughtfully. ¡°It only makes sense that holidays like Christmas and Easter would be more important than New Year¡¯s in places where Christianity has a stronger foothold, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, I guess it does.¡±

    ¡°Come on, Ritsuka, Rika!¡± Nero called out as she passed by on her way through another lap. Somehow or another, she¡¯d found a pair of bloomers, a light sweatshirt, and a sweatband and had taken to doing the morning runs with the twins. ¡°Surely that isn¡¯t all you have, is it? Mm-mm!¡±

    Rika let out a long, loud, tortured groan.

    I left them behind with a chuckle and went to get my shower. After I was washed, dressed, and fed, however, it was time for my own lessons with A¨ªfe in the art of runic magecraft, and it was there that I received some less than welcome news.

    ¡°You¡¯re plateauing,¡± A¨ªfe told me bluntly.

    ¡°What?¡±

    You could do that with a language? A skill, sure, because there was always a limit on how good you could get at anything, but at a language, which was a decent chunk of how runic magecraft worked?

    A¨ªfe¡¯s lips pursed and she shook her head. ¡°Perhaps that wasn¡¯t quite the correct word to use. You are still improving, but your pace has slowed, likely because there is little space for you to safely practice these combinations within the facility itself. The lack of opportunity to experience the results of your efforts has resulted in an inevitable stagnation.¡± She let out a frustrated sigh. ¡°And without my tutelary aspects, the only path forward for you is time and practice.¡±

    A sour feeling curdled in my gut. Time and practice could mean months or years, time that we didn¡¯t have. ¡°There¡¯s nothing we can do?¡±

    She regarded me thoughtfully for a moment with narrowed eyes, and at length, said, ¡°Perhaps in the simulator, there would be space enough for you to practice different combinations and arrays without risking actual damage to yourself or your surroundings, but without the ability of us Servants to accompany you, I wouldn¡¯t be able to offer instruction.¡±

    So no matter what, how much help she could give me was incredibly limited. The simulator, at least, was a problem that could be fixed, was in the process of being fixed, and one that several people were anxiously waiting on. It looked like I was now going to be one of them, more so than I had been before.

    ¡°I¡¯ll talk to Da Vinci,¡± I promised her.

    After we got as much done as we could, I got lunch with Jackie and the twins, then sent Jackie off with Arash and went to do just that.

    It turned out that Da Vinci had been wanting to talk with me, too.

    ¡°Oh,¡± she said when I arrived at her workshop. ¡°Well, that¡¯s convenient, isn¡¯t it? It looks like there¡¯s no need for me to send for you now, is there?¡±

    ¡°You wanted to talk to me?¡± I asked her. ¡°About what?¡±

    Jackie¡¯s costume change, or had she made more puppets for me?

    ¡°This one also requires the Director¡¯s presence, so we¡¯ll have to wait for her to arrive,¡± said Da Vinci with a shake of her head. ¡°In the meantime, what was it you wanted to ask me about?¡±

    And just what did we need Marie here to talk about? I had to wonder.

    ¡°The simulator, actually,¡± I said, letting it lie for now. I was going to find out soon enough anyway. ¡°I know you¡¯ve been working on it as much as you can on the side, considering all of the things you have on your plate, but it¡¯s starting to become more of an issue now that we have as many Servants around the place as we do.¡±

    Da Vinci nodded sagely. ¡°Ah. Yes, it¡¯s becoming something of a sticking point, isn¡¯t it? With so many famous warriors in one place, it was only natural that they might want to test themselves against one another. If I might be honest,¡± she said lowly, like she was sharing a secret, ¡°I¡¯m frankly surprised that Queen A¨ªfe hasn¡¯t yet paid me a visit demanding that I finish fixing it as soon as possible.¡±

    I didn¡¯t mention that A¨ªfe had taken up reading romance novels as a way to pass the time, and that was probably why she wasn¡¯t being so insistent about it. No need to mention it if she didn¡¯t want everyone to know. I¡¯d promised her, after all.

    ¡°I think the arm wrestling tournament from last week proves that she¡¯s not the only one looking forward to it,¡± I said instead.

    ¡°Oh, certainly,¡± Da Vinci agreed with a shake of her head. ¡°Unfortunately, there have been so many projects vying for my attention that I haven¡¯t been able to give the simulator as much focus as everyone seems to want, so progress has been somewhat slow-going. As important as morale is, there are some projects that are simply more important than others. One happens to be something for which Jackie¡¯s new clothes will serve as a bit of a proof of concept,¡± she added. ¡°I think, if that one happens to work out as I hope it will, then everyone will agree it was time well spent.¡±

    Something that everyone would be excited about, and giving Jackie a change of clothes was the proof of concept? I tried to imagine what that might be, but nothing particularly incredible came to mind, so I had no idea what she could mean.

    But, although Da Vinci had made some questionable decisions before, I trusted her enough to give her the benefit of the doubt. Whatever she was cooking up might not wind up being quite as incredible as she was making it sound, but it would definitely be something we all agreed was worth the time and effort she spent on it, that much I was certain of.

    ¡°What does that mean for the simulator, then?¡± I asked.

    She hummed. ¡°Mm, I¡¯m not sure exactly when I¡¯ll have it all fixed up and ready for Servants to have fun, but if I had to put an estimate on it¡­the middle of January, sometime? Before the end of the month, for sure, but a stricter timeline is hard to talk about.¡±

    I could see plenty of people getting a bit impatient about that, but another couple of weeks wasn¡¯t that much time, all things considered. There had to be some way or another we could let the Servants blow off steam without needing the space for them to safely go all out and start throwing around Noble Phantasms. Maybe an actual wrestling tournament? It was going to need some thought.

    Marie chose that moment to arrive, and Da Vinci looked past me to greet her with a respectful, ¡°Director.¡±

    ¡°Da Vinci.¡± Marie¡¯s eyes flickered to me for a brief moment, then back to Da Vinci. ¡°You finished with the physical, then?¡±

    Physical?

    ¡°I have,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°Between myself and Romani, we know enough about the human body and its functioning to gather more than enough data, and I¡¯ve gone through all of it myself ¡ª double and triple checked it, even, just so that I could be absolutely sure I didn¡¯t overlook anything.¡±

    ¡°And?¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s this about?¡± I asked them both.

    Da Vinci glanced at me, and by way of answering, answered Marie. ¡°And I¡¯m as certain as I can be that the idea itself has merit. It would be possible to extract the Philosopher¡¯s Stone from Miss Flamel and use the Elixir made from it to resuscitate¡­if not all of the currently cryogenically preserved Masters, then at least several key members of Team A.¡±

    My heart skipped a beat in my chest. Extracting the Stone from Ren¨¦e? Was that what Marie had wanted to talk about last week, only to cut herself off and say we would talk about it later?

    ¡°Wodime? Akuta? Pharmrsolone? Peperoncino?¡± Marie asked bluntly.

    ¡°All stable enough that we could likely maintain their physical well-being long enough during the thawing process to administer the Elixir to heal their wounds,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°The idea has merit, Director, as I told you it likely would when you first asked. The stone is not so awkwardly placed inside of Miss Flamel¡¯s body that we would have to worry about damaging it when we removed it. However¡­¡±

    Marie closed her eyes and let out a breath through her nostrils. ¡°Let me guess. Extracting the Stone itself might be enough to kill her.¡±

    My shoulders hitched.

    ¡°It¡¯s too completely integrated into her body to expect the surgery to go without any complications,¡± Da Vinci confirmed. ¡°I¡¯m certain that I could remove it without killing her outright, and it should be well within my capabilities as a magus to preserve her life as long as possible while we make use of the Stone¡­but I¡¯m not sure that I could reintegrate it without causing longer term problems or endangering her life.¡±

    Marie nodded. ¡°I thought so.¡±

    ¡°And that¡¯s why we won¡¯t take the risk,¡± I said, staring at her face, ¡°right?¡±

    Marie¡¯s brow scrunched up, and her mouth twisted into a scowl. ¡°What do you take me for? It might not have been directly stated, but we agreed by taking her in that we would look after her! I¡¯m not going to break that promise, implicit or not, just because it¡¯s inconvenient, no matter how inconvenient it actually is!¡±Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    She sounded indignant and offended at the very idea, and the tension in my shoulders eased. Yeah. For a second there¡­ But no. Even if she was a magus, first and foremost, Marie was a decent person. The young woman who had nearly destroyed herself from the guilt of what had been done to Mash, who still suffered the scars and shouldered a burden that didn¡¯t belong to her, who had chosen to save me instead of letting me bleed out on her office chair, that young woman wouldn¡¯t have been so callous and cruel as to kill another person simply because her life happened to be inconvenient.

    ¡°Of course not, Director,¡± I agreed easily.

    ¡°If only Nicolas Flamel had agreed to come back, as well,¡± Da Vinci lamented. ¡°Well. Not that he didn¡¯t have a very valid argument against it.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s why we¡¯re going to scrub every mention of the Philosopher¡¯s Stone from the records,¡± Marie said seriously, and then she backtracked. ¡°No, actually, don¡¯t. Only alter the records that list Ren¨¦e Flamel as having the Stone inside of her. Then change the later records to imply that it was stolen by Makiri Zolgen and destroyed when Angrboea was. Make it look like it¡¯s gone and we never had it.¡±

    ¡°It may not protect her for very long, once it¡¯s time for the accounting,¡± Da Vinci warned, ¡°but of course, Director. I¡¯ll give it the same treatment I did the part about the King of Mages owing Taylor a favor. As far as our data is concerned, it never happened.¡±

    And as long as no one ever had reason to suspect otherwise, there should hopefully be no need to worry about any of the technicians ¡ª or Ritsuka and Rika, for that matter ¡ª being questioned about it. The Association would have no reason to suspect anything, let alone something like this, or that we would have ever let Ren¨¦e keep the Stone for herself instead of using it for the betterment of the mission.

    ¡°Good!¡± Marie said.

    It wasn¡¯t flawless. Like Da Vinci said, it probably wouldn¡¯t hold up long under scrutiny, but if it came to that, there had to be somewhere we could hide Ren¨¦e until everything blew over. Hair dye and a pair of contact lenses could disguise her as a regular technician, if we had to, and we could say that the homunculus, Ren¨¦e Flamel, had died, then smuggle her out using a dead technician¡¯s name before anyone realized what had happened.

    ¡°She¡¯s in good health, otherwise?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Better than most of the people in this facility,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°which¡­in hindsight, perhaps isn¡¯t saying much, considering there¡¯s only about twenty living humans here. I can at least say that all of her bodily functions are working perfectly ¡ª that Philosopher¡¯s Stone is certainly the real thing, that¡¯s for sure. Just as her father said, she should expect to have a normal human lifespan, although I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if she winds up living to a hundred or more.¡±

    ¡°Not unusual, for a magus of particular talent,¡± Marie added. ¡°As long as she does nothing else to draw attention to herself, we might actually be able to keep her hidden from those vultures at the Association.¡±

    ¡°With any luck,¡± Da Vinci agreed.

    With any luck. Personally, I thought we were going to need a contingency plan, but there was plenty of time to come up with ideas for how to keep everything that we wanted under wraps from the Association and the UN under wraps.

    Inevitably, some of it would still come out, but at that point, it was a matter of damage control, not secrecy. We¡¯d have to deal with those problems as they came.

    As I left Da Vinci¡¯s workshop, with the assurances that neither would the Philosopher¡¯s Stone inside Ren¨¦e be taken from her nor would finally fixing the simulator for Servants take longer than a few more weeks, I had to wonder if Romani knew. No, he probably did. Romani was a lot of things, but he wasn¡¯t stupid, and Marie was no stranger to keeping secrets, but this wasn¡¯t something I expected she would have kept from him.

    The entire reason why he wasn¡¯t there for that conversation was probably because he had spoken out against the very idea when Marie must have originally brought it up. After what happened to Mash, I couldn¡¯t see him condoning it, even if it had been possible to remove the Stone from Ren¨¦e safely.

    There was a bit of a sting to go along with the fact that no one had decided to consult me about the issue before now¡­but then again, in hindsight, the Stone and its removal was clearly what Marie had been about to bring up last week, and she¡¯d let it drop because, as she said, there wasn¡¯t a point in talking about it, about our options, if we didn¡¯t even know whether or not it was possible.

    I owed her the benefit of enough doubts to let that one go.

    With all of that settled for the moment, I headed back to my room and asked Arash to meet me at the pool with Jackie.

    It was¡­cute, watching her learn with Mash, watching Mash help her and gently correct her on the things that Mash herself had already learned in our previous lessons. With Mash¡¯s coloration, it was almost like watching a teenager teach her younger sister how to swim, or maybe her younger cousin, and it was a splash of normalcy ¡ª no pun intended ¡ª when so little of Mash¡¯s life had been in any way normal.

    Not even the little gremlin blowing on that whistle of his as though crying foul could taint that.

    How much of it would remain with Jackie when she went back to the Throne¡­I didn¡¯t know. I wasn¡¯t sure I wanted to know. Whatever the answer wound up being, I doubted I would find out for myself, and so it didn¡¯t really matter. I¡¯d already decided that I was going to try and make as many happy memories for Jackie as I could so that at least some of them could provide some small comfort to that little girl who would never truly be saved, and I wasn¡¯t planning on going back on that.

    I¡¯d done plenty of things worthy of recrimination, but¡­that, I think, was something Mom would have been proud of me for.

    After the swimming lesson was over and done with, Jackie and I went back to my room to get cleaned up, and I decided to give Jackie a bit more spoiling by drawing a hot bath for her while we took a quick shower to wash away the chlorine from the pool. By the time she tentatively climbed in and sank down to the bottom, with foamy bubbles floating around like little islands in the steaming sea, the only thing missing was a big, yellow rubber duck.

    Another thing to talk to Da Vinci about making. Or to see if someone else was holding onto one who¡­didn¡¯t need it anymore. Hadn¡¯t I seen Fou playing with one at some point? I couldn¡¯t remember for sure.

    It took a few minutes, but eventually, Jackie learned to relax and just enjoy the heat. I wasn¡¯t sure that it had the same sort of soothing effect on Servants, whether they could get stiff muscles that soaking could ease and loosen, but I guess it must do something for them, or else A¨ªfe wouldn¡¯t have had such a good time at the baths in Rome.

    ¡°We¡¯ve never had a bath before,¡± Jackie told me later as I was drying her off.

    ¡°You haven¡¯t?¡± I asked her as though I was in any way surprised.

    ¡°Mm-mm.¡± She gave a shake of her head, and little droplets of water splattered over my arms from her not-quite-dry hair. ¡°We never had a mommy or a home, and the rain was too cold to wash off in.¡±

    For a moment, sitting there, toweling her dry, I froze and tried to imagine it, how terrible it must have been to spend the entirety of her very short life on the streets of an uncaring, poverty-stricken London. What it must have been like to be a child in a world that pretended she didn¡¯t exist and sneered down at her in the rare moments it had to acknowledge she was anything more than a lump of discarded rags. Even the images I conjured up from my experience in the aftermath of Leviathan couldn¡¯t possibly have done it justice.

    ¡°Well, now you have both,¡± I told her, ¡°and if you want to have a bath every day, you can have a bath every day.¡±

    ¡°Mm!¡± Jackie hummed warmly.

    By the time we were both dried and dressed, the dinner hours had officially begun, so we left my room together and made the trek down to the cafeteria, only to discover as we walked in that another, new set of decorations had been plastered to the wall and around the room.

    They were not, at least, as extensive as the Christmas decorations had been. No strings of lights above the counter where Emiya served up his food or lines of popcorn hung about, nor was there a tree in the corner with baubles and bulbs hanging from it or festive tablecloths slung over every table. Instead, it was an incredibly simple, if not also incredibly gaudy, sign that hung on either of the far walls that said, ¡°HAPPY NEW YEAR¡± in bright blue and gold lettering and a digital clock affixed above Emiya¡¯s counter ¡ª counting down, I realized a second later, to the end of the year.

    ¡°Marie¡¯s going to throw a fit,¡± I murmured to myself.

    ¡°Mommy?¡± Jackie asked me curiously.

    I gave her a smile and reassured her, ¡°It¡¯s nothing, Jackie.¡±

    There weren¡¯t as many people there as there had been for the Christmas party. In fact, at a quick eyeball of the attendees, it was actually just the people who would have been eating at that hour anyway. It was just the presence of some of the Servants ¡ª and more would undoubtedly be joining in the next couple of hours, I was willing to bet on that ¡ª that made it look like there were more people there than actually were.

    The conversations, however, were more lively than usual. It hadn¡¯t even been a full week since the Christmas party, but I guess when there were so few universal holidays to celebrate, it made sense to enjoy the ones you could when you could.

    Arash waved at us from a table, a large bowl of¡­some dish I didn¡¯t recognize sitting in front of him, and Jackie raised a hand to wave back at him.

    Emiya greeted us with a smile as we approached the counter. ¡°Evening, ladies. Up for trying the house special tonight?¡±

    Jackie tilted her head, confused. ¡°House special?¡±

    ¡°Toshikoshi soba,¡± said Emiya. ¡°The traditional Japanese New Year¡¯s meal. I thought my Master and Ritsuka might appreciate a little taste of home.¡±

    Of course. I really should have expected that.

    ¡°What¡¯s in it?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Fried shrimp ¡ª tempura ¡ª buckwheat noodles, soy sauce, and spring onions, plus,¡± he added, ¡°a secret spice mixture of my own creation.¡± He shrugged. ¡°If that¡¯s not to your liking, then Ren¨¦e cooked something a little more Western to suit your tastebuds. I¡¯m not going to force my own traditions on everyone simply because my Master is homesick.¡±

    I pursed my lips and thought for a second, then turned to Jackie. ¡°What do you think, Jackie?¡±

    ¡°We want to try it,¡± she told me.

    I turned back to Emiya. ¡°Then I guess we¡¯ll try it.¡±

    He smiled.

    ¡°Two bowls of toshikoshi soba, coming right up!¡±

    And he brought out two large bowls that looked just like Arash¡¯s, filling them first with noodles and a broth, then soy sauce, a reddish brown paste that had to be his spice mixture, chopped spring onions, and topped it with crispy fried shrimp. He set them on the usual stacked trays, then finished it off with two pairs of chopsticks and handed the trays off to me.

    There were no forks or spoons anywhere in sight.

    ¡°Enjoy!¡±

    ¡°Thanks.¡±

    Back to the usual table we went, and when we sat down, Arash greeted us with a simple, ¡°Happy New Year.¡±

    ¡°Happy New Year!¡± Jackie replied.

    ¡°Any good?¡± I asked him.

    He glanced down at his bowl, where only the dregs of the broth remained, and shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s different. Can¡¯t say I¡¯m used to it, but I can see why it would be such a popular seasonal dish.¡± He offered us a smile, like telling a secret. ¡°If I¡¯m being honest, figuring out the chopsticks was the hardest part.¡±

    ¡°Really?¡± said Jackie, all childish innocence.

    A breath huffed out of my nostrils, not quite a laugh and not harsh enough for a snort, and I reached down to take her hand. ¡°Here,¡± I told her, ¡°let me show you.¡±

    Lucky for me that I¡¯d eaten enough Thai and Chinese in my life to know how to use them. Not in Brockton, at least not in my teenage years ¡ª most of those restaurants were solidly in ABB territory, where Dad would never have let me set foot ¡ª but in Chicago, there¡¯d been plenty of nights with the Wards where we¡¯d eaten takeout like that.

    As she always had, Jackie took my instruction and corrections like gospel, carefully practicing as I showed her the proper way to use chopsticks, how to grip them, how to use them to grip food, the positioning that let you make the most of your finger strength. I had no idea if it was really the ¡°proper¡± way of using them, and frankly, I didn¡¯t really care all that much.

    I was just getting to my own and about to take my first bite when the door whooshed open to admit a quartet of familiar faces.

    ¡°Happy New Year!¡± Rika exclaimed as she stepped inside. And then she stopped, tilted her head back, and sniffed theatrically. ¡°Hey, is that toshikoshi soba I smell?¡±

    ¡°Good nose!¡± Emiya called over from his counter.

    Rika gasped and rushed over, a gigantic smile on her face. Ritsuka and Mash followed her more sedately, smiling at her antics.

    A few minutes later, they sat down with us, steaming bowls standing proudly on their plates, and with a pair of ¡°Itadakimasu!¡± from the twins, broke their chopsticks apart and dug in.

    ¡°So good!¡± Rika moaned immediately. Not for the first time, as though she was having a completely different experience than the rest of us. ¡°It¡¯s been so long since I had toshikoshi soba!¡±

    ¡°Exactly one year,¡± her brother remarked, and then went back to his food.

    Rika didn¡¯t let it faze her. ¡°You can¡¯t ruin this for me! Emiya¡¯s toshikoshi soba on New Year¡¯s Eve¡­this is paradise!¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know if I¡¯d go that far, Senpai,¡± said Mash, smiling, ¡°but it is good, isn¡¯t it? Like all of Emiya¡¯s cooking.¡±

    ¡°I cannot say I have ever had something like this before, but it is excellent!¡± Nero proclaimed.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know how she¡¯s going to survive without that guy,¡± Ritsuka said.

    Rika groaned, then slammed a fist against the table. The cups and bowls all rattled. ¡°No! I won¡¯t let myself get down! Not today, not with this food!¡±

    Ritsuka and Mash chuckled, and even I couldn¡¯t stop myself from smiling a little.

    ¡°What do you think, Miss Taylor?¡± Mash asked me.

    What did I think?

    ¡°It¡¯s good,¡± I settled on. ¡°A bit different, but good.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t stupid enough to think that most Chinese restaurants in America had anything on an authentic Chinese meal made with traditionally sourced ingredients, but it wasn¡¯t so different as to be completely unfamiliar.

    Ritsuka looked to Jackie next. ¡°Do you like it, Jackie?¡±

    ¡°Mm!¡± She nodded her head, slurping up the rest of the noodles in her chopsticks, then chewing and swallowing before she responded. ¡°The only food we¡¯ve had like it before is Mister Emiya¡¯s, but we like it! It¡¯s good!¡±

    ¡°An endorsement if ever I¡¯ve heard one,¡± said Arash with a smile.

    As we ate, more people filtered in and out of the cafeteria. Marie and Romani eventually came in, too, and Marie¡¯s eyes narrowed at the decorations and she grumbled a little, but ultimately she let it pass.

    ¡°As long as it¡¯s just for tonight,¡± she muttered as she sat down to join us. Unlike Jackie, Arash, and me, she¡¯d elected for something a little more European. ¡°I can overlook it, just because this is probably why he asked to make a trip to the Septem Singularity earlier today.¡±

    ¡°He did?¡± Mash asked, surprised.

    Marie nodded and took a somewhat needlessly savage bite of the slab of cod on her plate. ¡°He said he wanted to make fresh seafood tonight, and unlike some people,¡± she paused to give Rika and Nero a pointed glare, ¡°he actually asked permission!¡±

    ¡°He went to Rome?¡± Nero gasped. ¡°And he did not think to take me and my best buddy along with him?¡±

    ¡°He stuck to the French coast,¡± said Marie. ¡°He never went anywhere near Rome itself. And he just went there for supplies! He wasn¡¯t there to enjoy the scenery!¡±

    Nero looked ready to keep up the argument, so I defused the situation by pointing out, ¡°Your food is getting cold.¡±

    Nero gasped again and dug back into her meal with renewed enthusiasm. I had to wonder if Rika had taught her how to use chopsticks or if she was using her absolutely ridiculous Imperial Privilege ability to make up for it ¡ª what an utterly and absurdly mundane thing to use such a powerful skill for.

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m glad we established that bringing back supplies from these Singularities was even possible,¡± Romani said. He¡¯d chosen to eat the same dish as the rest of us, and was surprisingly adept at using chopsticks. ¡°It makes keeping our stores topped up much less of a concern, and also lets us have fresh food every now and again, too.¡±

    He slurped up some noodles, and nearly choked, dropping his mouth open so he could fan it with his other hand. ¡°Owowow! Hawt, hawt!¡±

    What a child he could be sometimes.

    As the evening wore on and the big, digital timer slowly crept closer and closer to zero, more and more people made their way into the cafeteria to grab a meal and socialize. El-Melloi II wound up in some sort of in-depth discussion with Sylvia and a few of the other technicians who I knew were magi. Mordred and Jeanne Alter somehow became embroiled in an eating competition and wound up downing several bowls of Emiya¡¯s noodles. Somehow or another, we eventually had most of the people still in the facility crowded into the cafeteria.

    For a given value of the word ¡®crowded,¡¯ at least. The people we¡¯d lost that day months ago left behind gaping holes, patches of emptiness sitting in-between the islands of activity.

    Somewhere along the way, the dinner hours ended and Ren¨¦e wheeled out a massive cake big enough for everyone to have at least one slice. Like the maid she had dressed as in London, she cut an even slice for everyone and delivered them and a fork to each person, accepting every ¡°thanks¡± demurely and politely.

    She even went so far as to brew cups of tea to wash it down with. Jekyll would have been absolutely delighted.

    As midnight drew near, Emiya brought out a stand with a massive TV sat atop it, complete with a DVD player on the shelf below, and while he set it up right beneath the timer, someone started passing around noisemakers, enough for the whole group. Jackie and I both accepted one, and when Jackie looked at it like it was some sort of alien creature, I nudged her, held mine up to my lips, and blew to demonstrate.

    I wasn¡¯t the only one who thought it was incredibly cute to watch her blow her own with wonder on her face. The sound that squealed out of Rika¡¯s mouth could have been mistaken for a mouse dying. And if Jeanne Alter watched us out of the corner of her eye so she could see how it was done? No one else said anything about it, so I didn¡¯t either.

    Finally, the timer ticked down to fifteen minutes, then ten, and Emiya began to play whatever it was he¡¯d set up. The TV flickered on, and then we all got a spectacular view of Times Square, crowded with cheering people. The camera panned around, taking wide shots of the whole area, and then changed, flickering through closeups of different groups of people as they smiled and waved, dressed in coats and beanies to keep warm. Up in the corner, the date ¡ª December 31, 2012 ¡ª stood out like a beacon.

    ¡°Archival footage I found down in the library,¡± Emiya muttered to us as he took a seat. ¡°Thought it might help set the mood.¡±

    It did. The timer crept slowly towards zero, and the closer it got, the quieter the room became until the only sounds came from the TV, and then the people on the screen stopped, too, looking upwards as the camera swiveled towards the jumbotron.

    One minute, then thirty seconds, then fifteen, then ¡ª

    ¡°Nine,¡± the people on the screen chanted, ¡°eight! Seven! Six!¡±

    The numbers on the jumbotron flickered and contorted in time with their chanting.

    ¡°Five! Four! Three! Two! One!¡±

    A deep, resonant buzz resounded, and as the people on the screen shouted and cheered, the whole room around me erupted into noise.

    ¡°Happy New Year!¡± the people on the TV screamed, but it was overshadowed by the people in the cafeteria who all shouted, ¡°Happy New Year!¡±

    Rika and Ritsuka blew loudly on their noisemakers, and so did so many of the others. Emiya was one of the few who refrained, just smiling to himself, but Arash got fully into it and blew on his noisemaker just as loudly as the twins did, and so did Jackie, gulping down breath after breath so that she could blow her noisemaker again and again.

    ¡°Happy New Year!¡± the people on the TV kept cheering, and as though they refused to be outdone, the technicians cheered even louder. Nero, who got entirely too swept up in the moment, was the loudest.

    I took the opportunity to pull Jackie into my side for a quick hug, and I was rewarded with her looking up at me just in time to blow her noisemaker right in my face.

    Marie was one of the few people not really participating. She stared at the screen with a complicated expression on her face, like she didn¡¯t know how to feel about it all, like she didn¡¯t know whether she was allowed to celebrate with the rest of us or had to be the stern director she had gone to so much effort to present herself as.

    I leaned over to her, reached out, and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. ¡°Happy New Year, Marie,¡± I told her quietly.

    The mournful, bittersweet melody of Auld Lang Syne hummed in the background.

 Chapter CLXVI: Lingering Regrets

    Chapter CLXVI: Lingering Regrets

    ¡°I think we¡¯ve left it to fester for long enough,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°don¡¯t you?¡±

    It wasn¡¯t what I¡¯d been expecting when this meeting was originally called in Marie¡¯s office, but in hindsight, I¡¯d had a reprieve from this for long enough that I should have seen it coming. Marie and I both knew that the topic being broached was inevitable, just as inevitable as the discussion on Scion had been, but we¡¯d both been comfortable enough with pretending it wouldn¡¯t happen for as long as Da Vinci and Romani would let us.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Romani said with a sigh. He gave me a grim smile. ¡°I really am sorry about this, Taylor, but it just isn¡¯t something we can brush off and bury.¡±

    ¡®As long as they would let us¡¯ wound up being one more week, just under three weeks since the London Singularity had been resolved, long enough for me to nurture some vain hope, no matter how small, that it would just disappear without a mention. Unfortunately, whatever they acted like, Romani and Da Vinci took their roles and responsibilities in the organization too seriously to just let it slide.

    I wanted to cross my arms. Some instinct from those days in Winslow to close myself off and shield myself from what was to come remained behind, and the spider puppets and Huginn and Muninn were not large enough of a ¡®swarm¡¯ to fully shunt my emotional cues into. It took an effort of supreme will to keep my arms down by my sides, even if I couldn¡¯t stop my hands from clenching.

    ¡°Let¡¯s just get it over with,¡± I said stonily.

    ¡°You¡¯re aware that I already know all of this,¡± Marie said. She looked back and forth between Romani and Da Vinci. ¡°That, as director, I already knew about it when I recruited her two years ago.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not surprised, at least,¡± Da Vinci answered. ¡°Even so, Director, you must be aware that there are protocols for this. We¡¯re already bending a number of them simply to account for the fact that we only have an effective roster of three Masters.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s why we¡¯re having this meeting,¡± Romani added. ¡°If the rest of Team A was still¡­available, then we would¡¯ve put Taylor on psychiatric leave, pending a full evaluation.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m aware of the protocols,¡± Marie ground out. ¡°Ugh. Fine. Ask the questions, then.¡±

    ¡°Well. Um, first¡­ Context?¡± Romani turned to me. ¡°Da Vinci showed me the records, including the argument you had with Hans Christian Andersen. You mentioned something there about how this¡­child whose death you were involved in ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t sugarcoat it,¡± I bit out. ¡°I killed her, Romani. That¡¯s more than just being involved in her death.¡±

    Romani grimaced, lips drawing into a tight line. ¡°¡­this girl you killed, then. When Andersen confronted you about it, you said that her own mother had decided that a quick death was kinder than what was going to happen to her. Can you elaborate on that?¡±

    For a moment, I didn¡¯t answer as I considered my words, how I should respond, how I should explain this. In that regard, the fact that we had already told him and Da Vinci as much of my past as we had, even if we¡¯d had to skim over a lot of the finer details, made it a little bit easier. It meant I didn¡¯t have to explain quite as much or dig into too many old wounds.

    Eventually, I settled on, ¡°Do you remember the madman I told you about? The one who set off Scion?¡±

    ¡°You said that he called himself Jack Slash,¡± Da Vinci supplied. ¡°In hindsight, obviously some kind of derivative of the infamous Jack the Ripper ¡ª an irony that I¡¯m sure escapes none of us here.¡±

    Someone up there must have been laughing for sure. Fighting a man who called himself Jack Slash with his ¡°adopted¡± daughter Bonesaw, only to later adopt Jack the Ripper in the form of a prepubescent girl? If you¡¯d told me that two years ago, I wouldn¡¯t have believed it.

    ¡°He was the leader of a roving band of serial killers,¡± I said. ¡°They called themselves the Slaughterhouse Nine. Over the twenty-something years they were active, they depopulated a number of small towns, killed, maimed, and tortured thousands of people at the low end. When I was fifteen, they decided to pay my city a visit in the aftermath of another disaster, while everyone was still picking up the pieces of their lives and trying to get the city back on its feet.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± Romani choked out. ¡°Depopulate?¡±

    I looked him straight in the eye. ¡°There was a reason why being a member of the Nine meant you received an automatic kill order, Romani. I called Jack Slash a madman, but only because the word terrorist implies what he did had some sort of political or ideological reason behind it, and his motivations were never that deep.¡±

    That was why I couldn¡¯t call him a mass-murderer either, and my Wards training had informed me that serial killers often had a method to their madness, like the age of the victims, or gender, or hair color, or even the method of killing. Jack Slash was none of those things. He was just a psycho who liked to pick people apart and watch what crawled out of the remains, and if he wasn¡¯t entertained, then he just killed them.

    I didn¡¯t want to imagine how many Bonesaws there must have been, how many kids he¡¯d played with, only to kill them when they failed to trigger with something that he deemed worth his attention. Just what I did know about him was fucked up enough without trying to figure out exactly how he¡¯d ruined each life he touched.

    ¡°More than twenty years of activity, you said,¡± Da Vinci murmured. ¡°That¡­must have been quite the record. In the tens of thousands, at the minimum. And he¡­had something to do with this child you say you killed?¡±

    ¡°After what you just heard, you haven¡¯t figured out that he was responsible for the whole thing?¡± Marie huffed.

    I could appreciate the sentiment, but it didn¡¯t erase the sin. Aster¡¯s name was still in my ledger, and nothing could change that, no matter how I treated Jackie or what anyone said to try and shift the blame.

    ¡°Responsible or not, I still pulled the trigger,¡± I pointed out.

    ¡°The circumstances matter!¡± Marie argued hotly.

    ¡°But they don¡¯t change what happened. I still made the choice, I still shot her.¡±

    But Marie wasn¡¯t willing to let it drop there.

    ¡°And what would it have changed if you hadn¡¯t? Even in the best case scenario, she still winds up dead, doesn¡¯t she? At least with the way things went, it was quick and painless! That monster would have slit her throat and made you watch her drown just so that he could enjoy your suffering!¡±

    Not mine. Jack hadn¡¯t ever considered me someone worth paying much attention to ¡ª whatever the reason, he hadn¡¯t ever seemed to think of me as particularly interesting. Theo, however? Yes. Jack absolutely would have tortured Aster as a sort of twisted punishment for Theo failing their wager.

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t absolve me ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Stop!¡± Romani cut in. ¡°Stop, the both of you!¡±

    My mouth snapped shut. Marie¡¯s did, too, although she didn¡¯t seem all that happy to let him take control of the conversation.

    ¡°Look,¡± he said, ¡°it¡¯s obvious you both have your own feelings about this whole thing, but Da Vinci and I still don¡¯t have the full picture! Can¡­can we at least get that far before we start arguing about the morality of it?¡±

    Marie grimaced, and I was sure my own expression must have mirrored hers. Neither of us said anything, but Romani took our silence as agreement and heaved out a sigh. ¡°Okay. Okay. This Jack Slash guy, what does he have to do with why you killed this girl?¡±

    I took a slow breath and let it hiss out of my nostrils, then picked up where I¡¯d left off: ¡°While the Nine were in Brockton Bay, Jack met with a boy my age, and for whatever reason, made a¡­kind of a bet with him. Theo was his name. Jack gave Theo two years to become a hero and kill him, and if Theo failed, Jack would kill one thousand people as punishment, ending with Theo¡¯s younger half-sister, Aster, and then Theo himself.¡±

    Some part of me still wondered why Jack had even bothered, what he¡¯d seen in Theo that was more entertaining than any other kid he¡¯d killed or hero whose throat he¡¯d slit. Most of me didn¡¯t care, because the why didn¡¯t make a difference to the outcome either way.

    ¡°Two years later, as we were hunting down Jack and the Nine, Aster was kidnapped by one of Jack¡¯s henchmen.¡±

    ¡°Ah.¡± Da Vinci closed her eyes briefly. ¡°And so the young girl you killed ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡± And the worst part was that it hadn¡¯t meant anything. The world still ended. Gold Morning still happened. Aster died for nothing. ¡°One of the Nine was a person they called Gray Boy. His power let him make¡­what I guess you¡¯d call stable self-contained time loops.¡±

    ¡°Time travel?¡± Romani squeaked.

    ¡°Not really. He couldn¡¯t go back in time and make changes or anything like that. He touched you, and he could set the duration of the loop. Once you reached the end, you reset back to the beginning of the loop, even as the rest of the world kept moving. The only thing that didn¡¯t reset was your mind.¡±

    It was Da Vinci¡¯s turn to heave out a sigh. ¡°Let me guess: he used this incredible power to torture people. Off the top of my head, I imagine he started the loop by introducing some form of pain, so that when the loop reset, the wound would be fresh. The pain would be new.¡±

    I probably should have expected that Da Vinci would figure it out without me needing to explain it all.

    ¡°He did it to Aster¡¯s mother,¡± I confirmed, ¡°and then threatened to do it to Aster herself if she didn¡¯t get Aster to settle down and cooperate.¡±

    ¡°Fuck!¡± Romani said for the first time I could remember, and he turned away, pacing across the floor with sudden energy as he raked a hand through his hair. ¡°God! That¡¯s¡­!¡±

    ¡°This shouldn¡¯t be news to you!¡± Marie snapped at him. ¡°There are plenty of magi who would do something just as horrific, if they thought it would further their research!¡±

    ¡°I know that!¡± said Romani, snapping back at her. ¡°That doesn¡¯t make this any easier to listen to!¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think we need to hear the rest of it regardless,¡± said Da Vinci, and she gave me a sympathetic look. ¡°I think I largely see the shape of things as it is ¡ª but to confirm, Aster was trapped with a collection of mass-murderers, almost certainly doomed to a fate worse than death, and the only option you had available was a mercy kill, yes?¡±

    It would have been so easy to let it go at that¡­but no. Romani and Da Vinci already had so much of my story and so much of the truth. As convenient as it would have been to let the lie stand, I couldn¡¯t, not now.

    ¡°We didn¡¯t know exactly how Jack was going to cause the end of the world,¡± I said by way of answering. ¡°Only that he would be the catalyst that set it off. That he would say something or do something to someone that would spark the end. And Aster¡­ Aster¡¯s mom had powers. That meant it was likely that Aster would, too, and that she would get them younger than her mother did.¡±

    Da Vinci sucked in a breath. ¡°Oh. And you thought¡­¡±

    ¡°One of the Nine was a girl they called Bonesaw,¡± I answered quietly. ¡°She was six when Jack¡­recruited her.¡±

    ¡°Six?¡± Romani whirled around. ¡°Six? There was a kill order out on a six-year-old? The government sanctioned the killing of a six-year-old?¡±

    ¡°That six-year-old went on to do things that would have made Doctor Mengele look like a saint!¡± it was my turn to snap. ¡°Six years later, she splayed out one of my teammates ¡ª still alive and conscious ¡ª with his limbs flayed and his organs spread out over a walk-in freezer! So that she could memorialize him as one of her art pieces! And then she tried to do elective brain surgery on me so she could play with my powers and see what made them tick! At what point do you think I¡¯m allowed to stop thinking of her as another one of Jack¡¯s victims and start treating her like another of his pet monsters?¡±

    Romani¡¯s mouth snapped shut. To this, he didn¡¯t seem to have an answer, or at least it wasn¡¯t one he was comfortable giving, and the expression on his face said so even more clearly than his silence. I took a deep breath, as much to give myself some space from my own temper as anything else.

    ¡°I had to make a split second decision,¡± I eventually managed to say, steering the conversation back away from Bonesaw. ¡°I knew I wasn¡¯t going to get Jack or Bonesaw, not with the gun I had on me, not in the time I had, and not with what was between me and them. So I took out who I could, the people I knew would cause us the most trouble in a future fight ¡ª an emotion sensor and manipulator named Cherish, a sound manipulator named Screamer ¡ª and Aster was¡­¡±Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

    Collateral wasn¡¯t the right word. Calling her a bonus didn¡¯t fit either. I wanted to claim that the decision had been a deliberate one, that I¡¯d decided I was going to give her the mercy of not having to live through whatever else the Nine would do to her, but the reality of the situation was that it had all been about the momentum. It had been a split second decision, made in the moment, and even still, I had hesitated.

    But that hesitation hadn¡¯t stopped me from going through with it.

    My fingers curled into fists. Shook.

    ¡°When I told Theo what happened, he said it was for the best.¡±

    Romani looked stricken, and Marie closed her eyes for a moment, lips drawn into a line so thin and tight that they turned as white as the rest of her face. Even Da Vinci wasn¡¯t entirely unaffected, her entire visage a cast of mournful sympathy.

    I wasn¡¯t any better. Aster had been put away in a box ¡ª left there ever since the moment it happened. There hadn¡¯t been any time to face it, to come to terms with it and feel its full weight. Too much had happened too quickly. The world had needed me before I could own up to what I¡¯d done.

    It was for the best. That was always the part I hated most, that Theo had never blamed me for making that choice. That he hadn¡¯t ever cursed me for killing Aster, not even a little, just accepted it as something that couldn¡¯t be fixed.

    ¡°And so, when faced with a little girl looking for a mother to care for her, you couldn¡¯t bring yourself to kill her the way you killed Aster,¡± Da Vinci concluded.

    My throat felt raw, as though the admission had to be dragged out of me the whole way. ¡°Yes.¡±

    She sighed. ¡°It¡¯s certainly an emotional vulnerability,¡± she reasoned. ¡°I¡¯m sure an argument could be made that it might be enough to see you suspended, under normal circumstances. But, current circumstances being what they are, I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s a major enough issue that we need to consider that now. Romani?¡±

    For several long, drawn out seconds, Romani didn¡¯t answer. ¡°No,¡± he said eventually. ¡°It¡¯s¡­¡±

    He raked a hand through his hair again, and then he regarded me with a lopsided frown. ¡°I¡¯m not naive,¡± he said, as though justifying himself to us. ¡°The sort of thing you said this Bonesaw girl did, there are magi who do that sort of thing, too. Whatever this¡­world of superheroes you come from was like, Taylor, the only thing that really changed as a result is that people could do that sort of thing out in the open. That sort of ugliness exists in any world where people exist, too.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not wrong,¡± Marie agreed grimly, thinking, no doubt, about what her own father had done to create Mash.

    ¡°I guess I just¡­wanted to believe you never had to face that kind of ugliness,¡± Romani said. ¡°That there was still some kind of innocence to someone so young. Stupid of me, I know,¡± he added, ¡°considering the kind of shape you were in the first time I saw you.¡±

    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not as though we should expect you to come into contact with a plethora of Servants who take the form of children,¡± said Da Vinci, and then she smiled ruefully. ¡°Although, having said so, we weren¡¯t exactly expecting Jack the Ripper to be a prepubescent girl either, were we?¡±

    Romani sighed, scrubbing at his scalp. ¡°I¡¯m not sure it makes much difference, in the end,¡± he admitted. ¡°If they had been in Taylor¡¯s shoes, Ritsuka and Rika¡­might have attempted to recruit Jackie, too. I don¡¯t think they could have ordered any of the Servants to kill her, although I don¡¯t think Emiya or Mordred would have flinched at actually doing it, orders or not.¡±

    ¡°Certainly Jeanne Alter wouldn¡¯t,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°I suppose that¡¯s all missing the point, though, isn¡¯t it? The question isn¡¯t whether the Servants were capable of committing the act of killing another Servant, even one that takes the form of a child, the question is whether Taylor¡¯s unwillingness to do so in that one instance is grounds to have her suspended from the team.¡±

    ¡°The circumstances were unique enough that we shouldn¡¯t expect them to happen again,¡± said Marie, and she tilted her chin up, as though daring them to contradict her. ¡°After all, Taylor didn¡¯t hesitate to attack Nursery Rhyme with lethal intent, did she?¡±

    I hadn¡¯t. Maybe because, when it came down to it, Nursery Rhyme¡¯s mentality was wrong enough to twig some association in my mind with the likes of Bonesaw. She hadn¡¯t had the same sort of guilelessness to her that Jackie had, and more to the point, she had never been so defenseless that she had ever been at my mercy, so it had been easier to see through the guise of a young girl and to her inhuman core from the beginning.

    ¡°I can¡¯t say I¡¯m not worried that something like this won¡¯t happen in the future,¡± said Romani, ¡°especially since this is right after we had to talk about why the enemy ¡ª whatever face he might be wearing ¡ª thanked Taylor for doing him a favor ¡ª¡±

    Marie leapt at it. ¡°We¡¯ve already gone over ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Having said that,¡± Romani said, talking over her loudly, and the expression on Marie¡¯s face might have killed a lesser man, ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡­like the message it would send if we say that Taylor should have killed a child, Servant or not, without flinching. As much as I would say that this is evidence she¡¯s emotionally compromised, I also agree that this¡­probably isn¡¯t a set of circumstances that we should expect to see repeated.¡± Quieter, he added, ¡°We all have our traumas and our blindspots. If we expected our Masters to be perfect, unfeeling machines, then none of the candidates would have made it on the team in the first place.¡±

    Against my will, one corner of my mouth curled upwards.

    Romani cleared his throat. ¡°Anyway. What I¡¯m trying to say is¡­I don¡¯t think this is grounds to have her suspended.¡± And then, he sighed. ¡°Honestly, I¡¯m not sure the twins would let us get away with it if we tried.¡±

    ¡°A very important point,¡± Da Vinci agreed, amused. ¡°Well, I suppose it¡¯s not as though I was going to vote to suspend her myself anyway, so there¡¯s no point in being obstinate for the sake of obstinacy. I think we can consider the issue tabled for now¡­?¡±

    No one contradicted her. Who would have? Romani had already put in his vote, and Marie had been on my side from the beginning. It was such a weird feeling that I was almost tempted to vote against myself, just so that there was someone there who would.

    Da Vinci nodded. ¡°Good. And now that we¡¯ve gotten that issue cleared up, I believe I shall see myself out and return to my projects. Always more work to be done, yes?¡±

    ¡°Ugh,¡± Romani grunted. ¡°H-hey, I don¡¯t suppose we could stand around and argue some more, could we? M-maybe another few hours?¡±

    Marie made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat. ¡°Not a chance. You¡¯re the only one left qualified to be Vice Director. If you didn¡¯t want the responsibility, you shouldn¡¯t have taken over for me while I was¡­¡± The words caught in her throat. After a few seconds, however, she managed to squeeze out, ¡°i-indisposed.¡±

    ¡°No good deed goes unpunished, huh?¡± he lamented.

    The meeting broke up, and one after another, we filtered out of Marie¡¯s office. Da Vinci returned to her workshop to continue what had been interrupted, and Marie and Romani went back to the Command Room and their own responsibilities.

    I was left alone, lingering in the hallway, a complicated knot of emotion swirling in my chest like a swarm of angry bees.

    With the rest of my morning clear until lunchtime, I¡­didn¡¯t quite know what to do. Somehow or another, though, I wound up back at my room, where I found Jackie napping on my bed. I wasn¡¯t too proud to admit that I was startled when Arash spoke up next to me:

    ¡°We played Tag for a little while in the gym,¡± he told me softly. I wasn¡¯t sure if he¡¯d just appeared or if he¡¯d approached and I¡¯d been so absorbed in my thoughts that I hadn¡¯t noticed. ¡°She tired herself out enough that she didn¡¯t kick up a fuss when I brought her back here for a nap.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± I said quietly, and then I stepped back out of the doorway and let the door whoosh shut. Without another word, I took several long strides down the hall, just to put enough room between me and Jackie that I wouldn¡¯t accidentally wake her.

    Perhaps sensing something amiss, Arash followed after me, and he softly asked, ¡°Master?¡±

    When I stopped, I wasn¡¯t quite sure what I wanted to say. The conversation in Marie¡¯s office stuck in my mind, and the contents festered in my chest like tar. Even so, I guess¡­the whole thing had brought up something that I had been fine with leaving well enough alone for a while now, and now that it had, I couldn¡¯t just shove it away for another day anymore.

    So much of my past had been coming to light lately. So many things that had been left buried for two years ¡ª some of them for very good reasons ¡ª were being dug up and shown the light of day. With so much about the next Singularity, one that we already knew would take place in America, in the United States, still a mystery, there were so many things that might yet wind up revealed, no matter how desperately I wanted to leave them where they were.

    It felt like I didn¡¯t have any other choice than to ask him, ¡°How much do you already know?¡±

    I felt his eyes on the back of my head like lasers. ¡°About?¡± he asked cautiously.

    ¡°My past. My life before¡­¡± I made a half-hearted gesture at the hallway around us. ¡°This.¡±

    ¡°Not everything,¡± he answered, still in that same tone, ¡°but probably more than you¡¯d want me to.¡± Without letting me say anything, he went on, ¡°The dream cycle cuts both ways, that¡¯s true, and I won¡¯t pretend I¡¯ve been staying awake every night just because regular Servants like me don¡¯t really need sleep, but what I get is¡­fragments. Pivotal and important moments that stick out in your memories because of how much they meant to you. Couldn¡¯t tell you all of the science stuff behind it, but people forget a lot of stuff day over day, you know? It¡¯s more like a highlight reel than a movie.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t sure whether or not I was supposed to be relieved. It was an answer, but it also felt like a little bit of a copout, and maybe that wasn¡¯t fair. Arash might not have told me everything, and he might have kept plenty of things to himself, but he was pretty straightforward with me. He always had been. If he didn¡¯t say anything, it was out of respect for my feelings, my privacy.

    But I had to ask, ¡°Aster?¡±

    A moment of pregnant silence followed. Then, quietly, solemnly, he gave me a simple, ¡°Yeah.¡±

    In some ways, it was a bit of a relief. That I didn¡¯t have to explain it to him or try to justify what happened. If he saw Aster, what happened to Aster, then he must have seen what led up to it, the consideration that went into it, the hesitation when I actually had to pull the trigger.

    I wasn¡¯t sure how much that hesitation counted for, not when I¡¯d still gone through with it, but I had to believe it meant something. That, whatever it meant, Arash could see it, too.

    Finally, I turned to face him and met his gaze straight on. ¡°Gold Morning?¡±

    This time, he didn¡¯t give me anything more than a nod. No judgment, no condemnation, not even approval or pity, just confirmation that he had seen me at my worst ¡ª and, some mad fool might say, my best ¡ª and that was it. He didn¡¯t offer praise or scorn, just acknowledgment that it was something that had happened and he¡¯d seen it.

    A part of me wanted to ask what he thought of it, what his opinion was ¡ª but, really, I wasn¡¯t sure I needed it, and I wasn¡¯t sure I even wanted it. He understood, I knew he did, because he was also someone who had given everything he had, no matter what it cost him, to save his people and put an end to the conflict. What did the exact scale matter, what did the precise motivations even mean, when we were cut from the same cloth at the end of the day?

    I might have wondered if he resented me for getting to continue on even after giving up everything, but that just wasn¡¯t the kind of person he was.

    ¡°I see.¡±

    He smiled, a small, honest thing, without guile. Unprompted, he told me, ¡°It answered the question I¡¯m sure everyone¡¯s been asking since Orl¨¦ans, though.¡±

    It took me an extra second or two to realize what he was saying: why was it that Arash appeared when I tried to summon a Servant there not long after we arrived?

    My lips curled, too, not quite a smile, not quite a smirk. ¡°I guess it did.¡±

    And that was where we left it, because that was all the more that really needed to be said. In some ways, it reminded me of how things had been with Rachel, how much had passed between her and me with so few words actually exchanged, and I was grateful for it. I had already dragged up the memories once today, and I didn¡¯t want to have to do it again, to try and explain myself when I wasn¡¯t sure any explanation could really make what had happened and what I¡¯d done excusable.

    Understandable, maybe. But for whatever he¡¯d said at the time, I didn¡¯t think Theo would have been able to do it, too, and whatever box he¡¯d shoved it all into at the time, whatever mask he¡¯d put on to become the person he needed to be in that moment, I wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d ever actually forgiven me for making the choice I had.

    Arash went off to do his own thing for the day, and I turned back around and went back to my room, slipping through the door as quietly as I could manage. Jackie was still napping on my bed, fast asleep, completely ignorant of that exchange, short as it was, that had happened not that far away. She didn¡¯t stir, not even as I stripped off my socks and shoes and shucked off my top layer, leaving the white, gray, and orange jacket draped haphazardly over my chair.

    When I climbed back into bed with her, however, that was when she noticed me, and in the dark, she asked, ¡°Mommy?¡±

    ¡°Go back to sleep, Jackie,¡± I whispered to her.

    ¡°Mm. Okay.¡±

    I pulled the sheets up and covered us both, and as she snuggled up against me in her usual way, I pulled her close and wrapped my arms around her, took a deep breath and smelled the scent of the shampoo I¡¯d been using to wash her hair. Something inside of me was wounded and aching, and as my eyes prickled, I squeezed them closed and pulled Jackie closer, held her tighter.

    But I couldn¡¯t escape the face of another little girl, frozen in a rictus of confused terror as she struggled to keep herself from crying.

    It had been a long time since I last gave any real thought to actually being a mother. Having kids of my own had been so far off for a full half of my life, first because I was way too young, then because I was just trying to survive high school, and then because the end of the world was looming and I just didn¡¯t have the time to even worry about whether I would get to be old enough to have the chance.

    And now¡­ I wasn¡¯t sure I deserved the chance. Forget about whether or not I would make it to the end of the Grand Order and come out intact enough to even try, I could only think that any child of mine would be fucked up. That I was too fucked up to raise a normal kid who lived a normal life and grew up to worry about normal things, like dates and boys and acne. That I had done too many fucked up things to even deserve a shot at a happily ever after like that.

    Maybe that meant that Jackie would be the closest thing I¡¯d ever have to a daughter of my own.

    And if that was the case, I guess we deserved each other, didn¡¯t we? Me, the woman who had killed a little girl, regardless of the reasons why, and her, the little girl who had killed women in search of love. Both of us were monsters, but I guess we could be each other¡¯s monsters, and if the world said that was more than we deserved, then it could fuck off.

    I tilted my head down, buried my nose in Jackie¡¯s hair, and took another deep breath, letting the smell of her shampoo soothe my nerves.

    ¡°Mommy?¡±

    ¡°Yes, Jackie?¡± I murmured against her head.

    ¡°We love Mommy,¡± she said like it was a fact of the universe. ¡°Because Mommy is Mommy and that¡¯s all we care about, no matter what Mommy did before she was Mommy.¡±

    My heart froze in my chest, and for a wild, frenzied second, a dozen questions chased themselves through my head. Did she know about Aster? How much had she seen? How much of my life had the dream cycle shown her? Was it a mistake to let her sleep with me every night, or was it inevitable that she would have eventually seen it all anyway?

    But she didn¡¯t try to escape me. She didn¡¯t pull away. She stayed in my arms, snuggled up against my chest, completely at ease. Because whatever she saw, whatever she now knew I was capable of, and despite having heard mere moments after making our contract that I had been preparing to kill her, all she cared about was that I was her mother.

    Total acceptance, the way only a child could have.

    Something hot dribbled down over the bridge of my nose and dripped onto the pillow. The wound inside of me bled, and as it did, it took the pain with it, leaving behind a pleasant, hollow ache.

    ¡°Thank you, Jackie.¡±

 Interlude R(F) II: Simulator Scramble

    Interlude R(F) II: Simulator Scramble

    Life for Fujimaru Rika had settled into something resembling a new normal over the course of the last five months. The circumstances had not become any less ridiculous or crazy than they had when it all started back in August ¡ª in fact, Rika would say that they had, in some ways, become even crazier and more ridiculous ¡ª but there was something to be said for letting it all go and embracing the crazy for what it was.

    Which wasn¡¯t to say that she was going to stop being the only sane woman in the loony bin anytime soon, but she thought that she had gotten enough of a handle on things that she wasn¡¯t nearly as surprised as she would have been when something new and even more stupidly crazy happened.

    And then it turned out Senpai was even more of a badass than anyone had thought and killed a god before coming to Chaldea. Talk about something to put on your resum¨¦, right?

    Rika wasn¡¯t sure how much room she had to talk, though, not when her new best friend was an emperor from back when Rome was going out and laying claim to every bit of land they could march an army through, and not when part of Rika¡¯s resum¨¦ could now legitimately include things like stopped an evil witch from destroying medieval France or helped kill three giant tentacle monsters.

    The real crime was that the second one somehow didn¡¯t qualify her to be a magical girl.

    ¡°I even have a transformation sequence and everything!¡± she muttered furiously to herself.

    ¡°Did you say something, Senpai?¡± Cinnabon asked.

    ¡°Nothing, nothing!¡± Rika waved it off.

    ¡°¡ª last thing to go over,¡± Da Vinci-chan was explaining. ¡°The only feature still remaining that I haven¡¯t managed to finish implementing yet is the realistic simulation of magical energy usage. That means, yes, as far as the simulator is concerned, you will all have limitless magical energy, so until I can finish the coding to simulate your individual limits and the costs of spells, fighting for Servants, and Noble Phantasms, try to keep in mind that you¡¯ll technically be stronger than usual, okay?¡±

    ¡°So we can cut loose as much as we want, huh?¡± Mo-chan asked, grinning broadly. ¡°Nice! A chance to really stretch my legs!¡±

    ¡°Are there any other restrictions we need to know about?¡± Senpai asked Da Vinci-chan.

    Da Vinci-chan shook her head. ¡°Not that I can think of at the moment, no. Any and every Servant should be perfectly capable of using the simulator now, just the same as the Masters have been since we finished the preliminary repairs. Oh ¡ª now that I think about it, yes. I just said you have essentially unlimited magical energy, but don¡¯t think that means you can just keep firing your Noble Phantasms off one after the other. The simulator can¡¯t simulate the limits of your magical energy just yet, but that doesn¡¯t mean the program can handle the load of rendering so many esoteric effects in such rapid succession.¡±

    ¡°Hear that, British?¡± Jalter drawled. ¡°You¡¯re going to have to rely on a more complicated strategy than ¡®blast it until it stops moving¡¯ if you want to beat any of us in there!¡±

    Mo-chan just kept grinning. ¡°Right back atcha!¡±

    ¡°Could it even simulate Rome?¡± Best Buddy asked. ¡°Every street, every brick? Mm-mm!¡±

    ¡°Down to the temperature of the baths,¡± Da Vinci-chan confirmed. ¡°Although I regret to inform you that any relaxation you derive from it will be entirely mental. Nothing that happens inside the simulator will have any effect on your actual body, Emperor Nero.¡±

    Best Buddy nodded sagely. ¡°I see!¡±

    Da Vinci-chan smiled. ¡°And now that we¡¯ve gotten all of that out of the way, what do you say to a test drive, hm? Would anyone like to give it a go and see how well the repairs work?¡±

    Half of the Servants looked ready to jump at the opportunity, especially Super Action Mom, Hippolyta (Rika still needed to find a good nickname for her that worked), and even Sieggy ¡ª but it was Senpai who thoughtfully said, ¡°It has been a while since we¡¯ve had a chance to do one of our simulated battles, hasn¡¯t it?¡±

    Terror gripped Rika¡¯s heart for a second, and when she turned to her brother, he stared back at her with equally wide eyes.

    ¡°H-hang on!¡± Rika hated how her voice squeaked. ¡°W-we don¡¯t have to jump right into that, do we? We can let Mo-chan and Super Action Mom and Jalter have their fun first, can¡¯t we?¡±

    Senpai smiled, and Rika had never seen a more terrifying expression on her face. ¡°We can do both.¡±

    We¡¯re doomed, thought Rika. Doomed, I tell you! Doomed!

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Cinnabon, and like the traitor she was, ¡°and this time, I can take part, too, can¡¯t I?¡±

    That¡¯s not going to make it any better! Rika wanted to say. But gosh darn it, Cinnabon just looked way too innocent, which didn¡¯t make any sense, because she¡¯d seen what Senpai¡¯s last simulated exercise was like. She knew the Hell they were about to walk into.

    ¡°It will certainly be entertaining,¡± said Da Vinci-chan, smiling.

    ¡°Glad to know you enjoy it so much,¡± Senpai drawled, and then she turned and swept her gaze out across the room. With narrowed eyes, she took in each of the people present and did some sort of calculation in her head.

    And then, with a nod, she sealed their fates. ¡°Mash and two other Servants. Anyone who is contracted either to one of you or all three of us, and I¡¯ll stick to the same limits.¡±

    Oh no. There was no stopping it now, was there?

    ¡°The scenario?¡± Onii-chan asked, brave fool that he was.

    Senpai smiled again. ¡°The same one as last time. We¡¯ll see how far the two of you have come since Orl¨¦ans.¡±

    Oh shit. She was really taking this seriously, which¡­ Well, it was Senpai, so Rika probably should have expected that to begin with. Senpai never did anything by halves.

    ¡°Anyone?¡± asked Rika.

    ¡°Anyone,¡± said Senpai. ¡°I¡¯ll even let you pick first.¡±

    Mash and two other Servants, and they got first choice of everything. Rika looked at the gathered group, so many badasses that would make the version of this they went through back then child¡¯s play.

    Somehow, however, Rika didn¡¯t think Senpai would let it be as easy as wiping the base off the map with Mo-chan¡¯s Clarent or A¨ªfe¡¯s Ochd Deug Odin.

    Sorry, Best Buddy, she thought apologetically. But if we wanna win this, we¡¯re gonna have to throw our hardest hitters at it and hope it works.

    Rika turned to her brother. ¡°Onii-chan? You pick one ¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ª and you pick the other,¡± he agreed.

    It didn¡¯t make actually choosing any easier, not when they had several really good Servants to choose from. With so many frontline attackers on the team, any one of them could have filled in the role, although each of them had their strengths and weaknesses. Like Mo-chan being¡­ Well, Rika didn¡¯t want to hurt her feelings, but just watching Siegfried made Mo-chan look like she was a toddler swinging around a stick and playing pretend. Which wasn¡¯t to say that Mo-chan was bad, just that she didn¡¯t have the same level of raw skill as someone like Sieggy or Super Action Mom.

    And being fair, it was hard to argue about skill when you had the kind of raw strength Mo-chan did. Plenty of guys would probably get tossed around like ragdolls, no matter how skilled they were.

    What Mo-chan could do that Super Action Mom couldn¡¯t was throw out loads of widespread damage at once. Super Action Mom¡¯s Ochd Deug Odin took a while to set up, and her chariot had to build up speed and didn¡¯t have a huge area of effect, whereas Mo-chan just had to charge up her sword and swing it.

    Despite that, though, when she thought about what Senpai might bring to the field, Rika could only make one real choice.

    ¡°Emiya!¡± she declared confidently.

    He blinked at her. ¡°Wait, really?¡±

    She just nodded and kept her lips tightly shut. Senpai was right there. No need to explain the reasons why or the strategy in plain view of the enemy.

    ¡°Then I¡¯ll pick Jeanne Alter,¡± Onii-chan said.

    ¡°Huh?¡± Jalter drawled. ¡°You sure about that?¡±

    Onii-chan nodded, too. ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Shit, really?¡± Mo-chan complained. ¡°Thought we were gonna get the chance to really cut loose!¡±

    ¡°Mm-mm!¡± Best Buddy said. ¡°What about the rest of us? My magnificent self especially!¡±

    ¡°Sorry, Mo-chan,¡± Rika said. ¡°Sorry, Best Buddy.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll be having scrimmage matches regularly until it¡¯s time to prepare for the next deployment,¡± Senpai told everyone, and while there were a few disgruntled faces and a little bit of grumbling, that was enough to placate most of the rest. Senpai cast a glance around and then announced, ¡°Then I¡¯ll bring Siegfried and Arash.¡±

    Wait, really?

    Sieggy inclined his head. ¡°Of course.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± said Arash, and he offered Rika, Ritsuka, and Mash a playful smile. ¡°I¡¯ll try not to go too hard on you guys.¡±

    ¡°Isn¡¯t that supposed to be my line?¡± Jalter shot back.

    Da Vinci-chan clapped her hands together, and with a smile, she said, ¡°Now that the teams are decided, such as they are, if everyone would get settled in? Those of you who aren¡¯t going to be participating, you can watch from the display at the front of the room.¡±

    Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, Emiya, and Jeanne Alter all made their way to the ¡®pods¡¯ they were going to use to access the simulator, with Jalter trailing behind ¡ª because she probably didn¡¯t know how to use them, Rika realized ¡ª and Sieggy and Arash making for their own pods. Senpai, however, went up to Da Vinci-chan, and a feeling of foreboding settled, cold and dreadful, in Rika¡¯s gut as their heads leaned together. Senpai whispered something that Rika couldn¡¯t hear, and then Da Vinci-chan nodded and whispered something back.

    That couldn¡¯t be good. No way, no how. Rika had a very distinct feeling she was going to be finding out what that was all about the hard way.

    When they were done with their little pow-wow, Senpai came over and climbed into her own pod, reclining into the seat. Rika let herself do the same, trying to dispel the nervous jitters in her belly.

    ¡°Loading up the scenario now,¡± Da Vinci-chan called.

    As she did so, the VR visor slid down over Rika¡¯s eyes, and the real world was replaced by black in every direction. The back of the chair reached up to cradle the nape of Rika¡¯s neck, and it had been so long that she had almost forgotten what it felt like.

    ¡°Booting up the simulation in three¡­two¡­one¡­¡±

    The last word had barely left Da Vinci-chan¡¯s mouth before Rika suddenly found herself back on the streets of Fuyuki, her real body left behind. Senpai was already there, dressed up in that costume from the first time, that same mask she¡¯d used in London hanging from one hand, and between one blink and the next, the others appeared, too, first as basic wireframes, then as smooth, untextured gray models, and finally perfect representations of the real people they were meant to be.

    The only other one changed was Mash, who was fully decked out in her skimpy armor and shield.

    ¡°Fuyuki again, huh?¡± Emiya said as he looked around. ¡°How nostalgic.¡±

    ¡°Familiar, too!¡± Rika chirped. ¡°I¡¯m having flashbacks to the last time already!¡±

    ¡°This isn¡¯t the first time I¡¯ve used the simulator,¡± Cinnabon murmured, ¡°but it¡­still amazes me how real it looks. It looks just like I would expect Fuyuki to look, u-um, if it hadn¡¯t been on fire when we were first here.¡±

    ¡°It would kind of defeat the point if it couldn¡¯t do at least that much, wouldn¡¯t it?¡± said Arash.

    Cinnabon hummed. ¡°I guess so¡­¡±

    ¡°Speaking of nostalgic,¡± said Rika, ¡°I see Senpai¡¯s back in her creepy duds! Hey, does that mean we¡¯re actually going to get an explanation for where they came from?¡±

    ¡°I can control every kind of bug there is, including spiders,¡± said Senpai wryly. ¡°Where do you think this came from?¡±

    Oh, another one of those answers without answers. Rika was sure Onii-chan must have realized it, too, but¡­ Gosh darn it, it technically was an answer, wasn¡¯t it? Senpai! That¡¯s not fair! Stop doing that!

    ¡°So we really are just doing the same thing as last time, only with Servants now?¡± Onii-chan asked.

    ¡°Gee,¡± Jalter drawled sarcastically, ¡°I wonder what happened last time? It¡¯s almost like I wasn¡¯t there!¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor pretended to be a Caster class Servant,¡± Cinnabon explained simply, ¡°and then she made Senpai and¡­Senpai try to fight her in her, um, her lair.¡±

    ¡°It went about as well as you¡¯d expect,¡± Emiya added with a faint smirk.

    ¡°No kidding?¡± Jalter asked. ¡°There a recording of this shit so I can go back and watch it?¡±

    ¡°No!¡± Rika rushed to say. ¡°No, of course there ¡ª¡±

    ¡°There is,¡± Senpai interrupted.

    ¡°Lies and slander!¡± Rika insisted.

    ¡°Ask Da Vinci when this is over.¡±

    Rika could only groan miserably. Cinnabon chuckled quietly, the traitor.

    ¡°To answer your question, Ritsuka,¡± said Senpai, ¡°yes, this will largely be the same as our last simulation, just with Servants. There are only two more changes ¡ª first, I won¡¯t limit myself to Shinto this time. The entire city is fair game. Second, I asked Da Vinci to fiddle with the code a little. For the duration of this exercise, the simulator will treat me like an actual Servant this time.¡±

    Rika wasn¡¯t the only one startled by this.

    ¡°H-hold on!¡± Onii-chan stuttered. ¡°You mean, like, physically and everything?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Senpai said. ¡°The rules of last time apply ¡ª I won¡¯t engage physically, and all you have to do to win is to get a single decisive hit in on me, either by yourselves or with Emiya, Mash, or Jeanne Alter. You will even have all of the functions of your standard mystic codes to do it. However, my spells and my attacks will hit harder, and they will be able to hurt those three, too. If all three of them are disabled or if they¡¯re unable to stop me from getting to you, you lose. Got it?¡±

    No, no, don¡¯t got it! Don¡¯t got it! Who cranked the difficulty setting up to high?

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Master,¡± Cinnabon said confidently. ¡°I¡¯ll protect you.¡±

    But Senpai just smiled, and like she had been taking lessons from Darth Vader, said, ¡°You¡¯ll certainly try.¡±

    And then Senpai pulled her mask on, and the transformation was complete. In the light of the streetlamps, the eyes seemed almost to glow, and for a second, Rika could believe she really was looking at a Servant. She hadn¡¯t given Senpai enough credit last time ¡ª the whole thing was creepy, but when she imagined it belonging to a Heroic Spirit instead of a living person, it fit all too well.

    ¡°Half an hour,¡± Senpai told them, her voice accompanied by the undercurrent of a thousand angry bees buzzing. ¡°Then, you have to come and find me.¡±

    Just like last time, a swarm of bugs so thick it was like a cloud of chitin rose up and consumed her, and when it dispersed, both Senpai and her two Servants were gone. They might as well have vanished into thin air.

    ¡°Master,¡± Cinnabon began.

    Rika held up a finger. ¡°Shush!¡±

    Cinnabon¡¯s mouth snapped shut. Several long moments passed in eerie silence, and Rika listened, waiting for any sign, straining her ears for the rustle of cloth or the whip of wind from a passing body or even just the clap of a foot on a nearby rooftop. Onii-chan did the same, slowly turning his head, eyes swiveling back and forth.

    Finally, after a solid minute or two of nothing, Onii-chan said, ¡°I think she¡¯s out of range by now.¡±

    Emiya cast his own eyes about, peering into the dark. ¡°No sign of any crows on the rooftops.¡±

    ¡°And I can¡¯t sense any Servants nearby,¡± Cinnabon added. ¡°Senpai, do you think Miss Taylor would bend the rules that far? She didn¡¯t spy on you last time, did she?¡±

    ¡°Last time, she only stuck to what was in her range, didn¡¯t she?¡± said Emiya. ¡°I¡¯m not sure we can count on that now. If she¡¯s playing the part of a Caster Servant seriously enough to give herself a Servant¡¯s strength, then that sort of limit won¡¯t exist on how far she can send a familiar to spy on us.¡±

    ¡°Murphy, I know I don¡¯t pray to you often enough, but please spare us!¡± Rika said.

    Seriously. Were they asking Senpai to make this harder on them?

    Cinnabon sighed. ¡°Senpai¡­¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think it matters one way or the other,¡± said Onii-chan. ¡°If she¡¯s spying on us, we don¡¯t know, and we have no way of stopping her, do we?¡±

    ¡°Not like it would change anything anyway,¡± Jalter agreed. ¡°We¡¯ve gotta go after her one way or the other, don¡¯t we? It¡¯s not like she doesn¡¯t know we¡¯re coming.¡±

    Emiya huffed, but didn¡¯t disagree. ¡°That brings up another salient point, though. Last time, she limited herself to Shinto and went to the old civic center. This time, she has the whole city to hide in. Do we think she¡¯d hole up in the same spot again?¡±

    ¡°We could burn it down and find out,¡± Jalter suggested in what she probably thought was a very sly manner.

    ¡°No,¡± said Onii-chan, ¡°but I guess it couldn¡¯t hurt to check. Where were the other Terminals again? The one on the mountain and¡­¡±

    ¡°That swanky mansion belonging to Tohsaka¡¯s great-great-great-great-something-great-grandkid,¡± Rika chimed in. ¡°Which, hey, that place had nice beds, that¡¯s where I¡¯d go.¡±

    Not where she expected Senpai to be, though.

    ¡°There was also the one at the old Catholic mission,¡± Cinnabon added. ¡°I¡¯m¡­not sure there¡¯s enough room for a Servant fight there, though.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d be surprised,¡± Emiya drawled. ¡°Being entirely fair, however, I don¡¯t think she would choose the church. It might not exactly be cramped, but I remember how this went last time. There¡¯s nowhere near enough space for her to really plant her flag.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Onii-chan nodded. ¡°And that just leaves the mountain, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s the obvious choice,¡± Emiya agreed. ¡°And with what she has on hand, it¡¯s also the most dangerous one for us.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s definitely where she went, then,¡± Rika said sourly.

    ¡°Still,¡± said Onii-chan, ¡°we should probably check on the other ones before we commit to the mountain.¡±

    ¡°I can handle that on my own,¡± Emiya said confidently. He slid a look her way. ¡°That is, as long as my Master agrees, of course.¡±

    Rika nodded. ¡°Yeah. Senpai is tricky, so we¡¯ll make sure she isn¡¯t in those other places first, then swing by that swanky mansion on our way to the mountain. Don¡¯t go getting into trouble though, Buster! If you spot anything funny at the church or the civic center, you get your keister back here pronto!¡±

    Emiya chuckled a little. ¡°Of course.¡±

    Before she knew it, the rest of the thirty minutes Senpai had allotted them passed, and the alarm that rang on their communicators let them know it was time. As they shut them off, Emiya gave a nod and said, ¡°Right, I¡¯ll be back in a few minutes then.¡± And with a crooked smile, ¡°Try not to get into too much trouble in the meantime.¡±

    He was gone before anyone could reply, disappearing like a mirage and leaving Rika to huff and mutter, ¡°Jerk! You didn¡¯t even give me enough time for a comeback!¡±

    ¡°Want me to burn him for you when he gets back?¡± Jalter asked with a nasty grin. ¡°Just a little?¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s not,¡± Onii-chan rushed to say. ¡°We¡¯re supposed to be in this together against Senpai, aren¡¯t we? If we start fighting each other, we¡¯ll just make this whole thing harder on ourselves.¡±

    ¡°What he said,¡± Rika agreed, jabbing a thumb at her brother.

    Jalter shrugged. ¡°Have it your way.¡±

    Several more long minutes passed as they waited. Rika had the thought that she could check what was happening through Emiya¡¯s eyes, the way Senpai had done with Arash sometimes, but no, if Emiya was in spirit form the way he¡¯d left, then he didn¡¯t actually have eyes for her to look through, did he? She didn¡¯t really want to find out what happened if she tried like that, because the best case she could think of was ¡®nothing¡¯ and the worst was ¡®acid trip.¡¯

    Eventually, however, Emiya returned, reappearing amongst them as though he had condensed out of the mist mid-jump.

    ¡°Nothing,¡± he reported. ¡°Both the church and the civic center were completely empty. I wouldn¡¯t put it past Taylor to have left a familiar or two behind there to watch for us, but I couldn¡¯t sense the presence of any Servants or spells in either place, and there weren¡¯t any traps that I could find.¡±

    ¡°So it¡¯s like we thought, then,¡± said Onii-chan.

    ¡°The Tohsaka mansion or the mountain,¡± Cinnabon concluded. ¡°Senpai ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± Rika chimed in. ¡°Definitely the mountain.¡±

    ¡°How would you put it, Master?¡± asked Emiya wryly, a small smile on his face. ¡°She¡¯s set it to hard mode?¡±

    Rika did the super mature thing and stuck her tongue out at him. Emiya chuckled.

    ¡°Well, what are we waiting for?¡± Jalter demanded. ¡°If we know where she is, then let¡¯s get our asses in gear!¡±

    Onii-chan nodded. ¡°You and Mash will go first.¡±

    ¡°And Emiya will bring up the rear,¡± Rika finished for him.

    With their destination set and their formation decided, they began the trek across the city and towards the mountain in the distance, and they only got a few blocks before the obvious problem became obvious to all of them.

    ¡°It¡¯ll take us hours to get there if we walk!¡± Rika moaned.

    Her brother agreed. ¡°In hindsight, there might have been a reason why we started this right after breakfast instead of sometime after lunch.¡±

    And just like that, the formation fell apart, because the only way they were going to make good time was if the Servants picked up Rika and Ritsuka and carried them to at least the foot of the mountain. Or if they grabbed a pair of bicycles from somewhere or something, but it wasn¡¯t like there was a conveniently placed bike shop on the route through the city.

    So Cinnabon picked up Onii-chan ¡ª and if they were both a little red in the face, Rika could only chuckle menacingly beneath her breath; blackmail material ¡ª and Emiya swept Rika up into a princess carry. Jalter, of course, refused to carry anyone, but that was fine, they didn¡¯t need her to, and it left her free to take point in case Senpai tried anything tricky with Arash or Sieggy.

    Like that, things went much faster. Rika felt a little stupid for not realizing it right away, but it wasn¡¯t like they¡¯d woken up that morning prepared to hop right into the simulation, not the way they had when the last one was scheduled, so she let herself off easy and thanked herself for being so understanding.

    In a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken them, they found themselves at the Tohsaka mansion, and a quick inspection proved that nobody was home. As they expected, Senpai wasn¡¯t going to constrain herself to such a small house, not when she got more terrifying the more space she had to spread out through, so they picked right back up and made for the mountain. It only took another few minutes to reach the base of the stairs, with the steps leading up into the dark peak above, framed by trees whose leaves seemed black in the gloom.

    When they came to a stop, Cinnabon let Onii-chan down immediately, but Emiya paused for a long moment, brow furrowing.

    ¡°Worrying,¡± he said at length, and then he cautiously set Rika down on her own feet. ¡°I thought for sure that guy would fire a shot down at us from above, but he didn¡¯t even take a single one on the way over.¡±

    ¡°¡­Is Senpai not on the mountain, then?¡± asked Onii-chan.

    ¡°I wonder,¡± said Emiya mysteriously, and then clarified, ¡°It¡¯s not impossible that she could have set up a workshop down in the sewers, but in terms of where a proper Caster would choose to make a workshop, the Ley Line Terminals are just too good to pass up. Which is to say that it¡¯s not impossible,¡± he added, ¡°but I would be very surprised if she decided to break the mold of the character she¡¯s supposed to be playing.¡±

    Worrying, Rika thought, just like Emiya had, but that was a bridge they¡¯d have to burn down when they got to it. She didn¡¯t put it past Senpai to change things up on them like that without saying so, but until they knew for sure, there was nothing to be done about it.

    ¡°Guess we get to go up the creepy stairs and find out,¡± Rika said grimly.

    Emiya nodded. ¡°Right. Mash, you¡¯ll definitely want to keep your eyes peeled. If we¡¯re going to get attacked, the stairs are the place it¡¯s going to happen.¡±

    Cinnabon nodded back, face resolute. ¡°Right!¡±

    And so they began their climb up the stairs and into the dark. Rika and her brother turned on their flashlights, shining them up on the steps in front of them. Jalter and Cinnabon cast long, dark shadows that danced with every step.

    ¡°The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout,¡± Rika sang quietly to herself. ¡°Down came the rain and washed the spider out¡­¡±

    Onii-chan gave her an exasperated look, but didn¡¯t comment on it, and eventually, Rika got tired of singing it on repeat, leaving the whole group in silence as they climbed. The sound of their footsteps, the rustle of their clothing, and the gentle, simulated breeze blowing through the trees were their only companions on the trek.

    Eerily, nothing happened then either. Rika kept expecting something to happen, a gigantic joro spider to leap out at them or something, but as they went, reaching landing after landing on their way to the top, they were entirely unbothered. It was almost like Senpai really wasn¡¯t on the mountain, which would suck, because then they would all have to go back down those stairs. Rika could freely admit she was in much better shape than she had been back in Fuyuki when they first made the climb, but that didn¡¯t make the idea any more fun.

    About halfway up the mountain, Onii-chan stopped and looked around, and ahead, Jalter and Cinnabon stopped, too, when they realized he had.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± said Cinnabon.

    ¡°The cavern that leads to the Grail,¡± Onii-chan began, ¡°it was somewhere around here, wasn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°What?¡± asked Jalter, confused.

    ¡°It was,¡± Cinnabon answered. ¡°Off on a side path, through the bushes.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s the way you came while you guys were here, huh?¡± said Emiya. ¡°I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s where she¡¯d go. If she was looking to get into a contest of who could throw around the most power, maybe, but there aren¡¯t many ways to trap that cave. The temple at the top of the mountain is where a more typical Caster would make her base.¡±

    ¡°But that¡¯s exactly why she¡¯d be there,¡± said Onii-chan.

    ¡°You lost me,¡± Jalter told him bluntly.

    It took Rika a couple of seconds to realize what he was talking about, and when she did, it was like a lightbulb going off in her head. ¡°Wait a minute. You¡¯re thinking, just like last time ¡ª¡±

    Onii-chan nodded. ¡°Yeah. She¡¯ll leave a decoy in the most obvious spot and hide her real self down in the ¡®basement.¡¯ And while we¡¯re distracted fighting the decoy¡­¡±

    ¡°She¡¯ll catch us with a sneak attack!¡± Rika concluded. ¡°Oh, man, and we would¡¯ve walked right into it, too, if Onii-chan wasn¡¯t so smart!¡±

    Onii-chan ducked his head, embarrassed, and murmured, ¡°You would have thought of it, too.¡±

    Maybe. But it probably would have taken her a bit longer to catch it, and Rika was perfectly willing to admit it. The Rika of five months ago was a completely different person, so painfully ignorant and naive about how all this stuff worked that it made the Rika of now cringe, but Onii-chan was still the smarter of the two of them. He still got this stuff better than she did.

    Maybe those RTS games he liked so much had paid off, she thought with some wry humor.

    ¡°So how do we want to do this, huh?¡± Rika asked. ¡°I mean, I¡¯m all for going straight after Senpai and turning this all back around on her, but if we do that, won¡¯t Sieggy and Arash just drop in on us from behind?¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Cinnabon, ¡°we don¡¯t know where they are, do we?¡±

    ¡°I have a hunch,¡± Emiya drawled. ¡°Something I forgot about earlier, but this mountain has a kind of naturally formed bounded field that surrounds the temple. Any Servant trying to pass through it by going over the walls or through the forest will be weakened, so the only way to get in is to use the front gate.¡±

    Rika and Ritsuka both groaned when they realized what that would mean.

    ¡°Siegfried will be guarding the front gate,¡± Onii-chan lamented.

    ¡°Doing his best Gandalf impression,¡± Rika agreed. She could even imagine him with a long, gray beard to match his hair, planting his sword in the ground and declaring, ¡®You shall not pass!¡¯ Which made them the Balrog in that scenario, but without the flaming whip and all that stuff.

    A horrible thought occurred to Rika suddenly. Oh god, could Senpai program a Balrog into this simulator? No one could ever be allowed to suggest it. Never ever.

    ¡°Gandalf impression?¡± Jalter asked.

    Cinnabon, however, seemed to get the joke, because she giggled. ¡°S-sorry. It¡¯s just, um, I-I can¡¯t imagine Siegfried in a robe and wizard¡¯s hat, it doesn¡¯t suit him at all.¡±

    Rika made a mental note to see if she could convince Sieggy to actually dress up like Gandalf. Halloween had passed without much happening, but maybe if it was just for an hour or two, Boss Lady wouldn¡¯t be too upset?

    ¡°She means that Siegfried won¡¯t let us past the gate,¡± said Emiya. One does not simply walk into Mordor, Rika thought, but held her tongue. ¡°If we want to get into the temple itself, we have to either lure him away from it ¡ª a tall feat, even for someone like A¨ªfe ¡ª or beat him outright, and that isn¡¯t any easier.¡± He grimaced. ¡°And that¡¯s not including Arash, who could be anywhere right now, and I doubt Taylor would keep him in the same place as Siegfried.¡±

    ¡°Unless she wants us to think she¡¯s up at the temple,¡± Onii-chan pointed out. Emiya could only acknowledge the point, although he didn¡¯t look like he agreed.

    ¡°Ugh,¡± said Jalter. ¡°All of this planning and counter-planning and ¡®does she know that we know that she knows¡¯ bullshit is getting annoying. What are we actually going to do about it?¡±

    Rika and Ritsuka shared a look, a shrug, and then a nod. Neither of them had any better ideas, it seemed, so there was really only one thing to do.

    ¡°We spring the trap,¡± said Rika simply.

    ¡°Jeanne Alter is the best matchup we have for Siegfried, so she¡¯ll go with us and Mash to the temple gate,¡± said Onii-chan.

    ¡°Meanwhile,¡± Rika picked up, ¡°Emiya will head on down to the cavern, and once we have Sieggy occupied, he¡¯ll go after Senpai.¡±

    ¡°Arash will¡­probably be there.¡± Neither of them was sure, so Onii-chan didn¡¯t sound super confident about it. ¡°And if he¡¯s not, then Mash will protect us from wherever he might fire from. We¡¯ll¡­just have to hope she can, at least.¡±

    ¡°I will,¡± Cinnabon said confidently.

    ¡°And if she isn¡¯t up at the temple or down in the cavern?¡± asked Jalter.

    Ritsuka and Rika shared another look. Then we have absolutely no idea where she is.

    ¡°We¡¯ll burn that bridge when we get there,¡± Rika said.

    Jalter huffed, but a slight grin still curled at the edges of her mouth. Apparently, the easiest way to get a smile out of her was to suggest burning something.

    ¡°Then let¡¯s quit yapping and do this thing,¡± she said brusquely.

    Rika turned to Emiya. ¡°Emiya?¡±

    He nodded. ¡°Got it.¡±

    And then he split off, heading for the Grail cavern to wait for them to engage Siegfried, and the rest of them marshaled themselves and picked up where they¡¯d left off. Cinnabon and Jalter stayed at the front, even though it left the fine hairs on the back of Rika¡¯s neck on end. Arash could be anywhere, and Rika hadn¡¯t forgotten that moment in the forest back in Septem, when an arrow from miles away stopped that Tiberius guy in his tracks.

    But that wouldn¡¯t be fair, would it? Senpai had said the rules were mostly the same, so putting Arash on the other side of the city would be against the rules¡­right?

    Rika wished she was confident about that.

    Up the mountain they went, trees rustling ominously as they passed, and still, there was no sign of Senpai at all. Not a single spiderweb, not the caw of one of her ravens or the flapping of their wings, not the buzz of any bees. As creepy as the civic center had been when all the bugs started pouring out of the place, it was the lack of them that was creepier, the total silence left by their absence.

    Finally, the top of the temple gate loomed in the distance, a boxy, stalwart figure with familiar tiles for roofing that gave it almost an armored look, like a samurai. As they got closer, more and more of it was revealed, from the walls that disappeared into the surrounding forest to the wooden doors shuttered and barring their way, and there, at last, standing in front of them like some sort of temple guardian¡­

    ¡°My apologies, intruders. I cannot allow you to go any further.¡±

    ¡­was Siegfried. In the dark, the bodysuit melded together with the shadows, leaving his hair, his armor, and his sword to gleam like shards of moonlight.

    ¡°Didn¡¯t know we needed your permission, Dragon Boy!¡± Jalter jeered.

    ¡°All the same,¡± said Sieggy. ¡°My Master has entrusted me with the guarding of this gate. You shall not be allowed entry.¡±

    Jalter just grinned. ¡°We¡¯ll see about that. What do you say, Master?¡±

    ¡°Go!¡± shouted Onii-chan.

    The instant the word left his mouth, the fight began. Like a rocket taking off, like a jet going supersonic, Jalter leapt off the steps and crossed the distance instantly, so fast that, to Rika, she might as well have teleported. To Siegfried, however, that still wasn¡¯t fast enough. Balmung moved as though magnetized, placing itself in the way of Jalter¡¯s sword. The resulting CLANG was so thunderous that Rika was sure Senpai must have heard it from down in the cavern.

    Go! Rika echoed to Emiya.

    Got it! the reply came immediately.

    ¡°I won¡¯t go easy on you,¡± Siegfried said calmly. ¡°Since this is just an exercise and no one will be hurt, the fact that we are allies normally won¡¯t stay my hand.¡±

    ¡°Took the words ¡ª¡±

    Jalter¡¯s sword lit on fire, and with an ear-splitting metallic screech, she dragged her blade down Siegfried¡¯s, throwing flames directly into his face.

    ¡°¡ª right out of my mouth!¡±

    But Siegfried stepped through them as though they were nothing, bringing his own sword around with such ponderous weight that Jalter couldn¡¯t even keep her footing. Despite blocking the blow, she was thrown back almost as far as she had originally leapt, and as she stumbled to a stop, Mash tensed, ready to jump in to block the follow up attack.

    It didn¡¯t come. Siegfried remained where he was, standing just in front of the gate, Balmung brandished and ready to keep going.

    ¡°Tch,¡± Jalter scoffed. ¡°Tough bastard, aren¡¯t you? I can see why my other self decided you were way too much trouble to keep around.¡±

    Siegfried¡¯s only reaction was a slight narrowing of his eyes, a subtle tightening of the skin that Rika wasn¡¯t entirely sure wasn¡¯t a trick of the light, dark as it was.

    ¡°Your other self had the help of several other Servants to incapacitate me,¡± he said calmly. ¡°Without them, you alone have no hope of succeeding.¡±

    ¡°Fuck you!¡± Jalter howled, and she kicked off again, blazing sword trailing a line of fire behind her.

    Siegfried blocked again, effortless, and ignored the flames entirely. Jalter, obviously trying to avoid a repeat of that first exchange, didn¡¯t go for anything fancy and didn¡¯t let up, swinging her sword in a series of slashes so quick that they looked like they were all happening at once. The cacophony of their ringing steel filled the silent forest, and Rika did her best not to wince as it rose to a fever pitch that made her ears hurt. The only way she had any hope of following the action was by watching their feet, keeping track of how they stepped to gauge who was coming out the better of each attack.

    Unfortunately, it was mostly Siegfried. Jalter danced around, changing up her angles and the direction of her swings, feet and legs bouncing around on the landing, while Siegfried mostly stood there, sliding one foot back or putting one foot forward to keep his leverage, but never moving anywhere near as much. He was like a human fortress, stalwart and impenetrable. A single person could never hope to pierce through his defenses, not without something meant just for that.

    Senpai had picked her Servants well.

    And then came a pause, a moment of reprieve, as Jalter pulled back her sword, snarled, and shouted, ¡°Try this one on, asshole!¡±

    She pushed forward with a lunge, the tip of her sword angled down and inwards, towards Siegfried¡¯s gut, fire flickering around the blade like curses. Siegfried twisted out of the way and used Balmung¡¯s huge blade to deflect hers out and away from his body ¡ª but Jalter spun on her heel and stepped in with her other foot as though she had planned for just that, and with both swords pinned between their bodies, she reached out with her hand and grabbed a fistful of his hair.

    ¡°You¡¯re the Dragon-Blooded Hero, right?¡± she asked silkily. ¡°So that means¡­as the Dragon Witch, you have to obey me!¡±

    Siegfried¡¯s eyes went wide, and he tried to pull away, jerking his head back. Jalter just sneered. ¡°None of that, now! Heel, Dragon Boy!¡±

    ¡°You will find,¡± Siegfried ground out. Blue light began to seethe from the jewel in the hilt of his sword, surging up the blade, ¡°that it will take far more than that¡­to make me bend my knee.¡±

    ¡°Shit!¡±

    Jalter threw herself to the side in a desperate attempt to get away, but she wasn¡¯t fast enough ¡ª not even when Onii-chan tossed a hasty ¡°Emergency Evasion!¡± at her ¡ª and when Balmung swept across where her belly had just been, a thin arc of pale blue light cut the air. Blood flew even as a line of trees off to the side shook and fell, cleanly sliced through, and Jalter landed hard on her shoulder, tumbling down the steps until she came to a stop on her back. Red darkened her left side, seeping into the black of her clothes and making them darker.

    But she had managed to avoid the worst of it. Between her own dodge, Onii-chan¡¯s spell, and the protection offered by her armor, the damage wasn¡¯t nearly as bad as it could have been. If she had taken it all directly, it might have been enough to actually kill her.

    ¡°First Aid!¡± Rika and Ritsuka shouted. The pair of spells was enough to knit the wound back together, and Jalter groaned as she pulled herself back to her feet. Mash stepped out, shield raised, to protect her for that vulnerable moment, but Siegfried didn¡¯t attack.

    ¡°Bastard!¡± Jalter gritted out through her teeth. ¡°Miniature charges of that stupid sword of yours? What a cheap trick!¡±

    A sudden buzz replied, chittering, staccato, and it took a second for Rika to realize ¡ª it was laughter.

    ¡°SO YOU SAY, AFTER ATTEMPTING TO SUBORN MY ALLY THROUGH HIS DRAGON¡¯S BLOOD,¡± the chorus of a thousand fluttering wings spoke. ¡°THERE ARE NO RULES IN BATTLES TO THE DEATH. IF THAT WAS ENOUGH TO DEFEAT YOU, THEN YOU MAY AS WELL SURRENDER ALL THOUGHT OF SECURING THE GRAIL HERE AND NOW.¡±

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Onii-chan whispered.

    ¡°Gotta be,¡± Rika agreed, because she remembered this trick from back during their last simulation. It was just as creepy then, too.

    ¡°Get real!¡± Jalter snapped. She didn¡¯t seem to know which direction to aim her words, because Senpai¡¯s buzzing seemed to come from all around them, which didn¡¯t say anything good. Last time, she had nearly drowned Rika and her brother in an entire tsunami of bugs. ¡°You think some flies and this dork are enough to make me quit? Do I look like that much of a pansy to you?¡±

    The buzzing laughter again. ¡°VERY WELL. IF YOU¡¯RE THAT DETERMINED TO DIE TODAY, THEN I SHALL SIMPLY HAVE TO OBLIGE YOU.¡±

    Master! Emiya¡¯s voice suddenly echoed through Rika¡¯s skull. It¡¯s a trap! Taylor is ¡ª

    But before he could finish, the mountain beneath their feet rumbled and rocked as though in the throes of an earthquake, and his voice cut out, gone, like the line had just snapped mid-sentence. The trees shook and quivered, and Rika and Ritsuka both had to plant their feet and widen their stances to keep from falling over, even as Mash planted her shield to brace herself. After a second or two, however, it was over, and the mountain quieted.

    Mash gasped, head spinning from side to side. ¡°What was ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Emiya?¡± Rika asked. In her mind, she echoed, Emiya? What happened?

    There was no response.

    Emiya! she tried again. Only the silence of her own mind answered her. Rika¡¯s heart lurched in her chest.

    No, no, no, not again! She just got him back not that long ago. Did she really get him killed a second time?

    ¡°Emiya¡¯s not responding!¡± she announced to everyone. She didn¡¯t really care if they heard the panic in her voice, just then.

    Mash and Onii-chan both turned her way with shock. ¡°Something happened to Emiya?¡±

    The fluttering bugs chuckled again. ¡°YOUR FRIEND WAS POKING HIS NOSE WHERE IT DIDN¡¯T BELONG. HE SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED THAT IT MIGHT GET CHOPPED OFF.¡±

    Another time, Rika might have been able to appreciate the pun, but just then, no witty response was forthcoming. She had forgotten, for those handful of seconds, that this was just a simulation, nothing more than an incredibly realistic wargame. The only thing her head had room for was making sure Emiya¡¯s loss wasn¡¯t meaningless.

    And against a guy like Siegfried, the only way to win was overwhelming firepower.

    ¡°Jalter!¡± she ordered. ¡°Use your Noble Phantasm!¡±

    Jalter grinned nastily. ¡°With pleasure!¡±

    Flames lit up around her feet. As they surged and grew hotter and brighter, she lifted up her sword high over her head. ¡°This is the howl of a soul filled with hatred! La Grondement ¡ª¡±

    ¡°NONE OF THAT, NOW.¡±

    Something whistled past Rika¡¯s ear, and she had no time at all to even wonder what it was, because in the same instant, an arrow sprouted from Jalter¡¯s back. Red blood splattered across the stones and surged out of her mouth, cutting off what she¡¯d been about to say.

    ¡°S¡­sonnuva¡­!¡±

    Arash, Rika realized. But to hit anyone from that angle, he had to be halfway across the city. The only one who could have even seen a shot coming from that far away was Emiya, and he¡­

    ¡°Master!¡± shouted Mash, and she moved ¡ª backwards, behind them, to deflect not a single arrow, but what had to be a dozen more, all of them plinking off of Mash¡¯s shield like raindrops but hitting with the strength of cannonballs.

    ¡°M-mother¡­¡± Jalter rasped, stumbling as she tried to regain her strength. A dark stain was spreading across her clothes, growing larger by the second.

    A sudden figure appeared atop the temple gate, casting a deep shadow. The wings of a familiar contraption spread wide, giving her a broader, more imposing shape, and in the darkness, it was almost impossible to see anything else about her aside from the glowing yellow eyes and the bone-white armor plating that showed through here and there. One hand was lifted, aiming the finger of a finger-gun ¡ª not at Rika or her brother, but Jalter.

    ¡°Emergency ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Gandr.¡±

    But before Rika could finish her spell, Senpai cast another, quicker one, and it took Jalter straight in the head like a bullet.

    ¡°¡­fuck¡­¡±

    An instant later, Jalter was gone, too.

    ¡°Jeanne Alter!¡± shouted Onii-chan.

    How had it all gone so wrong so quickly?

    ¡°I DO BELIEVE THAT¡¯S MY VICTORY, CHALDEA.¡±

    The thought of retreat briefly entered her mind, but¡­ No. Not yet!

    ¡°Onii-chan!¡± Rika shouted. ¡°Together!¡±

    And so they both raised their hands, taking aim at Senpai, because it was the only thing left they could do.

    ¡°Gandr!¡±

    A pair of answering shots screeched down from above, canceling out both spells, and a familiar pair of ravens swooped low, landing to either side of Senpai like an honor guard.

    There was no winning anymore. They had to run, into the trees, break line of sight and get out of Senpai¡¯s range ¡ª

    Something fluttered, soft and featherlight, against the side of Rika¡¯s neck, just below her ear, and she froze. For one, horrible moment, she remembered what had happened last time, the spider that had bitten her and rendered her paralyzed.

    The bite didn¡¯t come. The barrage of arrows ended. Up on the temple gate, Senpai sat down and said, ¡°I think that gets the point across.¡±

    And as the touch against her neck vanished, a simple, ordinary moth fluttered out in front of her as a second flew away from Onii-chan.

    ¡°So tell me.¡± Senpai slipped her mask off. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you think to call for reinforcements?¡±

 Chapter CLXVII: Roman Holiday

    Chapter CLXVII: Roman Holiday

    ¡°Another excellent simulation, Taylor,¡± said Da Vinci, smiling. ¡°Bravo. The traps might have been¡­somewhat basic, but for the limitations you had to work under, quite wonderfully done.¡±

    The debriefing after the simulation was over was fairly quick. In truth, the twins hadn¡¯t done all that much wrong. They sent Emiya out to scout the possible locations I could have chosen to secure as my base of operations, then put a plan into action on the last possible hiding spot they had originally accounted for, and even theorized that I could listen in on planning session and come to the only conclusion they could have with what they had on hand themselves.

    They had even remembered and learned from our last simulation and used knowledge from the Fuyuki Singularity to figure out that I was likely to eschew the temple entirely and hide out in the cavern instead. I was¡­actually kind of proud of them for that, and for the subsequent decision to send Emiya in to attack ¡°me¡± directly while they distracted Siegfried up at the temple.

    Strictly speaking, they had made just about every right decision they could have, under the circumstances, and the only real failure had been their inability to realize that when I said they had access to the full breadth of their mystic codes, I meant all of it, including the Shadow Servant function. Not that I could entirely fault them for not realizing that they would have it inside the simulation, but they¡¯d missed the hint I¡¯d dropped for them at the start, and if they hadn¡¯t, they probably would have been able to actually win.

    Unfortunately, that was the only winning move I¡¯d left them. The rest of the simulation had been built entirely to be unwinnable and to punish them using their knowledge of my previous tactics and strategies, because the enemy wouldn¡¯t be that easily read and there were dangers to overthinking the enemy¡¯s plans. Expecting me to be under the mountain in the cavern was one of their biggest mistakes, and it had¡­unintentionally cost Emiya his ¡°life.¡±

    I felt bad about that.

    ¡°You don¡¯t think I was too harsh on them?¡± I asked, watching the door they had left through. Jeanne Alter in particular had thrown me a nasty look as she went, evidently very displeased with how I had taken her out.

    Because ¡°losing¡± Emiya again had very obviously hit Rika hard, and while she¡¯d tried to hide it, her quietness during the debrief spoke volumes. If it had been intentional, I might have been able to address it better, but frankly, I¡¯d underestimated exactly how potent it would be to remove the ¡°flash¡± component from A¨ªfe¡¯s flashbang rune spell and layer them across the tunnel.

    They hadn¡¯t seen it, but the twins and Mash weren¡¯t the only ones startled when the mountain started shaking like it was about to erupt.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be absurd,¡± Marie huffed. ¡°We¡¯ve already solved five Singularities, and the next three won¡¯t be any easier. If they forget to take advantage of everything available to them in the future, it¡¯s going to cost them a lot more than some hurt pride!¡±

    ¡°A bit blunt, Director, but a very valid point,¡± said Da Vinci. She sighed. ¡°As hard as Rika took it when we lost Emiya back during Okeanos, I¡¯m afraid she¡¯s going to have to get used to the idea that we might take more casualties in the future. With how easily Sakata Kintoki and Nicola Tesla were dispatched at the end of the last Singularity, it¡¯s frankly a bit of a miracle that the King of Mages decided not to kill anyone else on our team.¡±

    It was my turn to sigh. She had a bit of a point. Solomon killing Andersen so easily was one thing ¡ª Andersen wasn¡¯t a fighter, and it wouldn¡¯t have taken much to do him in anyway ¡ª but Kintoki was a powerful warrior from Japan¡¯s era of mystics, a figure straight out of myth, and the mythologizing of Tesla had turned him into an incredible Servant, too. They had both stood up to that Lancer version of King Arthur, after all, and played some part in her defeat.

    And Solomon had killed them both so casually that it was frankly no less terrifying now than it had been then. That Jackie had survived¡­ No, it was probably some kind of joke on his part. As though he was proving that I had become ¡°more pathetic¡± since Gold Morning by showing how much I cared about her.

    Fuck you, I thought darkly. I forged my weaknesses into strength, and he just sat behind his power like he was untouchable. Invincible.

    Scion must have thought so, too.

    ¡°Ugh, don¡¯t remind me,¡± Marie groused. ¡°Either one of those two would have been incredible additions to Chaldea, and yet they both died before we could establish a contract and record their Saint Graphs in the FATE System for future summoning!¡±

    Especially when one of them had an EX Noble Phantasm. That hadn¡¯t become any less ridiculous, and having that on our side would probably have been gamechanging against future Demon Gods.

    ¡°Yes, well, it¡¯s not as though we didn¡¯t record any data about them at all,¡± said Da Vinci with an awkward smile. ¡°I want to say we should still be able to use it to summon them in the future, even if it wouldn¡¯t be quite as much of a guarantee¡­but our track record with summoning the Heroic Spirits we intended to summon hasn¡¯t been all that stellar, has it?¡±

    ¡°At this point, anything less than three Quasi-Spiritron Crystals might be too little to even consider,¡± Marie agreed grumpily.

    Da Vinci¡¯s smile became more genuine. ¡°Why, Director, I thought you considered Saint Quartz to be a valuable and very limited resource! Too limited and too valuable, in fact, to spare more than the absolute bare minimum when using them to summon a Servant!¡±

    Marie made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. ¡°Just because I¡¯m acknowledging the realities of our circumstances doesn¡¯t mean my opinion has changed! Ideally, a simple catalyst or a recorded Saint Graph pattern should be enough, but even if the FATE System is working properly enough now to guarantee that we can actually summon Servants and get results, that doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m satisfied when they aren¡¯t the results we wanted.¡±

    Da Vinci raised a hand. ¡°Message received, Director. I¡¯ll see if I can narrow down the variables some more and try to refine the FATE System into what it was originally intended to be, but I have to be completely honest and tell you that I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s possible. At the end of the day, even the Fuyuki Grail System it¡¯s based off of wasn¡¯t always guaranteed to summon the exact Servant the Master wanted.¡±

    ¡°Which is why I¡¯m not insisting on it harder,¡± Marie agreed grimly. ¡°That we managed to summon Emiya back properly and got the correct Emperor Nero when we attempted to summon her are the exceptions at this point, not the rule.¡± She lanced Da Vinci with a hard stare. ¡°Having said that, I¡¯m still expecting you to put in your best effort when it comes to narrowing down the variables that messed up our previous attempts! Even if the most you can do is tell us that there¡¯s nothing else we can do, that¡¯s still more to go on than what we have now!¡±

    ¡°And it¡¯s on my list of things to investigate,¡± Da Vinci promised. ¡°Unfortunately, at the moment, the next Singularity is still taking priority, and on that front, I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t have any more news for you than I did a week ago.¡±

    Marie grunted unhappily. ¡°Any estimates? A timeline for when we could expect to know more?¡±

    ¡°For the time being? No.¡± Da Vinci shook her head. ¡°There is too much in flux with the Singularity and its formation right now. Truthfully, Director, it might take me another month to get anything of worth. It¡¯s resisting our efforts to scan it that much.¡±

    Marie clicked her tongue. ¡°So we still don¡¯t have any idea what that bastard meant when he told Taylor that she could put her demons to rest or whatever.¡±

    ¡°No, I¡¯m afraid not.¡±

    Truthfully, I worried that the Singularity being so elusive and hard to pin down had more to do with what was in the Singularity than with how it was forming. There was one thing I could think of that would make observing its location and time period difficult, because the only thing that made sense for what Solomon had said was that I would be seeing some old faces in the next Singularity.

    A passenger or two could definitely skew the readings, the way mine did for my Corona. The only trouble was that I had no idea how that would work in a space-time already as twisted and messy as a Singularity, because passengers weren¡¯t limited to a single reality the way we humans and Servants were. It shouldn¡¯t be possible for them to get trapped like that.

    Not unless Solomon was even more powerful than he had let on in London.

    Da Vinci turned to me. ¡°In any case, Taylor, how did things perform? I realize you didn¡¯t have much opportunity to test out what it was like to have a Servant¡¯s strength and speed inside that simulation, but since you were playing the role of a Caster, I suppose that¡¯s only to be expected.¡±

    ¡°It felt¡­¡± Good was a word for it. For how little I¡¯d gotten to test the limits of it, it had felt like I was so much lighter and sprier, and frankly, I thought it was probably better that I didn¡¯t try it too often. It would get to my head. ¡°About how I expected. Charging up that Gandr and making it strong enough to take out Jeanne Alter was¡­effortless.¡±

    Like I could have done it a hundred times over and fired them back to back without breaking so much as a sweat. And being able to leap up to the top of the temple gate, relying on my flight pack only to stabilize my landing? Intoxicating. It was easy to see why Brutes often felt so confident in a fight.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry I couldn¡¯t calibrate a faster reaction time for you,¡± Da Vinci said apologetically, smiling, ¡°but even though your body¡¯s physical limits are easy enough to modify in the simulation, I¡¯m afraid that is a limitation of your brain and central nervous system ¡ª and there¡¯s a limit to how far I can adjust those.¡±

    Because it was still just a simulation, and my reaction time still ran off of the speed at which my neurons could fire. Yeah.

    ¡°Still,¡± she went on, ¡°it¡¯s good to know it worked properly. That will be useful in calibrating future simulations, should we summon or contract a Servant in the future whose strength and speed might change under specific circumstances. Monstrous Strength and such the like.¡±

    I shifted. ¡°I did have a question about one of the things I asked you for before we started.¡±

    Da Vinci cocked an eyebrow and waited for me to speak.

    ¡°If the twins had actually attempted to use the Shadow Servant function of their mystic codes, would it have worked, or was I lying to them?¡±

    Marie¡¯s face twisted into a complicated expression, but Da Vinci only laughed.

    ¡°Just who do you take me for, exactly?¡± she asked pompously. ¡°I am Leonardo da Vinci, Taylor! Uomo Universale! Programming the simulator to keep the other Servants on the sidelines unless and until they were summoned as ¡®Shadows¡¯ was child¡¯s play! Of course it would have worked!¡±

    I guess it wouldn¡¯t have mattered if it didn¡¯t, but it was good to know. The mere act of trying ¡ª whether or not it succeeded ¡ª would have been enough for me to let them have the victory.

    ¡°Stop being overly dramatic,¡± Marie snapped at her. ¡°You¡¯re not talking to a new recruit, remember? Both of us know full well exactly how capable you are.¡± Under her breath, she added, ¡°As though I could ever forget it.¡±

    Because she owed her life to Da Vinci¡¯s genius. Twice over, even, both with storing her soul in an Unregistered Spirit Origin and then with crafting a puppet body for her to inhabit that was so realistic it was essentially indistinguishable from her real body.

    ¡°Sorry, sorry,¡± said Da Vinci, although she didn¡¯t sound particularly sorry, ¡°it¡¯s just been a while since I¡¯ve had the chance to do something like that. Hard to play up my talents when everyone here is quite familiar with how impressive I am, yes? Although I¡¯m sure Emperor Nero would be suitably impressed, were she to find herself faced with an example of my genius. Perhaps Hippolyta might as well, given that she hasn¡¯t had a chance to see the full extent of it yet.¡±

    ¡°Good luck with that,¡± said Marie. ¡°Now, I¡¯ve got a job to return to, and so do you, Da Vinci. Are we done here?¡±

    ¡°Ah, one last thing,¡± said Da Vinci, holding up a finger. ¡°You see, Emperor Nero has requested that a proper communal bath be installed in the facility, so that she might enjoy a taste of home, as it were. I thought it prudent to ask you for permission before making any promises.¡±

    Marie¡¯s mouth twisted and her face contorted, nose scrunching up and brow furrowing, but after a moment, grudgingly and quietly, she allowed, ¡°I guess it¡¯s not like we don¡¯t have the rooms to spare, do we?¡±

    ¡°All things considered¡­¡± Da Vinci left the sentence hanging.

    Marie heaved out a deep, heavy, soul-weary sigh, like she just didn¡¯t have the will or the energy to fight about it. ¡°Fine. If you can find somewhere in the facility where it won¡¯t disrupt anything or endanger any of other important functions, then Nero can have her bath.¡± The words looked like they physically pained her. ¡°And until then, she has permission to make trips into Septem to bathe in her own baths.¡±

    Abruptly, she held up a finger of her own. ¡°But only once a week! I¡¯m willing to let that slide, but daily Rayshifts into an already resolved Singularity for no reason other than to bathe is just too frivolous and I won¡¯t allow it!¡±

    A thought occurred to me. ¡°Why not today?¡±

    Marie looked at me, startled. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s no reason why not, is there?¡± I said, explaining my reasoning. ¡°Things have been¡­slow since we got back from London, and we had to spend a large part of our time there cooped up in Jekyll¡¯s apartment anyway. It would do everyone a lot of good to have a chance to get out, stretch our legs, and relax away from the facility for a little while every now and again.

    ¡°In fact,¡± I went on, because now that the idea had come, it made more and more sense the more I thought about it, ¡°if the Singularities start taking long and longer to pin down confidently enough for us to deploy, then it might be a good idea to make regular excursions into the already resolved ones.¡±

    Da Vinci¡¯s eyebrows rose almost as though to match the deepening furrow of Marie¡¯s. ¡°If you¡¯ll forgive my surprise, it¡¯s a bit unexpected to hear that from you, Taylor,¡± she said. ¡°Not that I think you¡¯re a sourpuss or anything, but you¡¯ve been quite insistent on making sure the twins get the proper training and education, including Mash¡¯s swimming lessons. Hearing you suggest regular vacations is¡­a bit out of character.¡±

    Maybe it was. But I could remember a time two-and-a-half years ago, back in my time with the Chicago Wards, where I¡¯d been so focused on training and preparing that I hadn¡¯t made time to relax at all. Even if they¡¯d all mostly gone along with it, those Wards had hated me for it, and I wasn¡¯t unaware that several of them had had relationships strain and fail as a result of my dogged persistence.

    Like Ava. Cuff. I hadn¡¯t pried, but I hadn¡¯t been blind to how her and her boyfriend had split because of how little time I¡¯d let her have to just¡­go out and be with him.

    I was trying to be better than I was back then. A better person, a better friend. Learn from my mistakes and regrets, because at the end of it all, one of them had been how little time I¡¯d let myself just be a normal person and do normal things with the people I cared about. It was one of the reasons I¡¯d suggested having regular movie nights, too.

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t as important when we were deploying a week or two after coming back from our last one,¡± I said. ¡°But the time between our deployments is getting longer. From Fuyuki to Orl¨¦ans was two weeks, but from Orl¨¦ans to Septem was six, and so was Septem to Okeanos and Okeanos to London, and now you¡¯re saying it might be another month ¡ª or more ¡ª until we know enough about the next one to make the Rayshift into it. Keeping up morale is just as important as keeping our edges sharp.¡±

    ¡°Our New Year¡¯s party was just two weeks ago,¡± Marie pointed out, ¡°and we had a two-day Christmas party just a week before that! If people need to stretch their legs, then the simulator is functional enough to even accommodate Servants now.¡±

    ¡°But that¡¯s not the same as actually going out,¡± I argued. ¡°Sure, it¡¯ll help, and maybe we need to let the rest of the staff know they can use the simulator like that, too, since they can¡¯t Rayshift, but Rika and Ritsuka have been putting their lives on the line the same as I have. Don¡¯t they deserve to go out and see the world that they¡¯re risking everything to save?¡± And then I drove the point home mercilessly. ¡°Doesn¡¯t Mash?¡±

    Whatever Marie had been about to say died in her throat.

    ¡°We still need to visit London to get the plans for Ren¨¦e¡¯s room, too,¡± I continued.

    ¡°That I can actually do using the simulator,¡± Da Vinci corrected, but not unkindly. ¡°It will still be necessary to keep her occupied for a day so that I can complete all of the renovations to her room, and while that, too, could be done in the simulator, I think it might be better for her to revisit London and¡­say her goodbyes, as it were.¡±

    Marie squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, and then heaved out a sigh. All of the fight had left her completely. ¡°Fine. We can schedule future vacations for the Masters to make, and¡­you can go out today to Rome. That doesn¡¯t mean,¡± she added firmly, ¡°that it¡¯s going to be a weekly or daily thing. We might be a lot better off now than we used to be, but even with so many Grails, there¡¯s still a limit to how often we can Rayshift! That¡¯s not exactly cheap, you know!¡±The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    ¡°I know.¡±

    And I knew I was adding to the things she would have to account for when this was all over. I didn¡¯t plan on putting more into that burden than I had to, so I would keep to my word and to her stipulations, and I would make sure that the twins did, too.

    But¡­there was a lot I was going to have to say my own goodbyes to when this was all over. Things that I was going to miss. People I was going to miss. And¡­maybe it was selfish, but I didn¡¯t want the only memories I had of our time together to be us fighting against the end of the world and staring at the same white walls between every battle.

    Half an hour later, Romani blinked at us, nonplussed. ¡°Really?¡±

    He wasn¡¯t the only one casting Marie surprised looks, but if Marie noticed the technicians and their glances, she didn¡¯t make any sign of it.

    Who was I kidding? Of course she noticed.

    ¡°Yes, really,¡± Marie told him. ¡°Is it really that surprising?¡±

    ¡°Well, no, I guess not, just, um, that it¡¯s coming from you, Director,¡± Romani stumbled over his own words. At Marie¡¯s thunderous look, he rushed to say, ¡°N-not that I think it¡¯s a bad idea or anything! Or that you¡¯re cruel or heartless or anything like that! I-in fact, I think this is a really good idea, a-and I¡¯m honestly kind of ashamed I didn¡¯t think of it myself!¡± To himself, he asked, ¡°Why didn¡¯t I think of it myself? Especially after the beach vacation a couple months ago!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not heartless, Romani!¡± Marie snapped at him.

    ¡°And I said that I don¡¯t think you are!¡± Romani replied, trying to placate her. ¡°I¡¯m just¡­ Yeah, it¡¯s a bit surprising, Director. I-it¡¯s certainly doable for us, but¡­the UN and the Association are going to question it. W-we won¡¯t be able to pretend that we¡¯re checking the viability of it this time, a-and there¡¯s only so many times we can blame it on Emperor Nero¡¯s whims before that excuse starts getting suspicious, too!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not an idiot, either!¡± Marie told him, and quieter, head drooping, ¡°I¡­already know that the Association is probably going to replace me. The fact that I¡­let this happen under my watch¡­!¡±

    I stepped closer to offer my solidarity. ¡°Lev Lainur tricked everyone.¡±

    ¡°But I¡¯m the Director,¡± she bit out. ¡°Responsibility for it is on my shoulders, no matter what. I¡­¡±

    She took a shuddering breath, squared her shoulders, and cast a quick glance around the room, but if the rest of the staff had heard her admit that she was going to lose her position when this was all over, none of them gave any indication. Smart of them, all things considered.

    ¡°The most important thing for us to do outside of deploying inside the Singularities is to see to the Masters¡¯ mental health,¡± she said stonily. ¡°We don¡¯t have the luxury anymore of relying on multiple teams to pick up the slack if something happens to the main team, so our job as those who stay behind is to support the Masters in whatever way we have to. If the Association has a problem with that,¡± she added, fire seething into her voice, ¡°then I¡¯ll tell them exactly what I think of their penny-pinching!¡±

    Someone on the crew coughed, trying to hide a startled laugh, and Marie rounded on him immediately. ¡°What?¡±

    Dead silence answered her. No one at their stations dared turn around and admit to having been the one to laugh, although I was pretty sure it was Meuniere. Marie swept her gaze around the room for several tense seconds, and then let it drop. She turned back to Romani.

    ¡°Make the arrangements,¡± she ordered. ¡°It¡¯s almost lunchtime, isn¡¯t it? We¡¯ll give them the afternoon to relax in Rome. We can afford to do at least that much.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± said Romani, nodding. ¡°I¡¯ll get everything set up for that, Director. I¡­guess Marcus is going to have to help Ren¨¦e with dinner, if Emiya is going to be out for the afternoon.¡± Off to the side, one of the technicians groaned and hung his head, and Romani looked over at him, ¡°Sorry, Marcus. At least you won¡¯t be alone, though, right?¡±

    ¡°Of course, Doctor,¡± said Marcus, although he didn¡¯t sound particularly enthusiastic about it. I had some sympathy. He thought he¡¯d escaped kitchen duty when, first when Emiya showed up, and then again when we brought Ren¨¦e back with us, but it was proving to be inescapable.

    ¡°I¡¯ll let the twins and Mash know at lunch,¡± I promised.

    Romani sighed. ¡°That¡¯s a load off of my shoulders, at least. Thanks, Taylor. But I guess that leaves it to me to let the rest of the Servants know, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°I think, between me, Ritsuka, and Rika, we¡¯ll manage,¡± I told him wryly.

    Of course, as expected, when the twins found out that we were going to be heading back to Rome for a dip in Nero¡¯s bath, Rika was immediately excited.

    ¡°No fooling?¡± she asked me disbelievingly. ¡°But I thought we failed your test or whatever! This sounds like a reward, Senpai!¡±

    ¡°For your hard work,¡± I clarified. ¡°We¡¯ve cleared five Singularities in five months. The Director thinks that deserves a break, every now and again.¡±

    I¡¯d told them a while back that, as Masters, they had one of the highest pay rates in the whole organization, and Rika had said something about being a millionaire before she was twenty. I¡­probably should have mentioned back then too that ¡ª with things the way they were ¡ª she was unlikely to see much, if any, of that money when this was all over. We were going to be so wrapped up in inquiries and investigations that I doubted anyone would make good on our wages, let alone the hazard pay.

    Rika turned to Nero, who had taken to sitting with us at meals, even when she wasn¡¯t supposed to be eating anything. ¡°Did you hear that, Best Buddy? We¡¯re going back to Rome, to the baths!¡±

    ¡°Mm-mm!¡± said Nero, smiling broadly. ¡°It seems that even your Lady Director must acknowledge the superiority of Roman bathing! These tiny ¡®showers¡¯ are indeed ill-suited for one such as myself and my cherished companions!¡±

    ¡°Are we going along, too, Mommy?¡± Jackie asked.

    I offered her a smile. ¡°Of course.¡±

    It was¡­admittedly, one of the reasons I had suggested it to Marie. The tub in my room¡¯s adjoining bathroom was tiny, barely big enough to fit me, let alone both of us at once, and Jackie¡­ She deserved the chance to experience that enormous bath in Rome. To enjoy it, as we had back during Septem.

    There was so much that I wouldn¡¯t be able to show her here in Chaldea, and even with the simulator, so much that she would be missing out on. I wanted her to have at least this.

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°all of the Servants are coming along, too, right?¡±

    ¡°Yeah.¡±

    His face twisted into an awkward expression. ¡°And the baths¡­will still be coed, won¡¯t they? Like they were last time?¡±

    Rika squeaked. ¡°Oh.¡±

    Mash¡¯s face slowly began to redden, starting at the tips of her ears and spreading across her cheeks.

    ¡°We all still have our swimsuits from when we went to the beach,¡± I said reasonably. ¡°There¡¯s no reason why we can¡¯t wear those. It¡¯s not like we¡¯re going to the baths to actually get clean or anything, so it¡¯s not like we have to be completely naked.¡±

    ¡°Th-that¡¯s right!¡± Mash hurried to agree. ¡°S-Senpai, we can wear our swimsuits again!¡±

    Ritsuka looked relieved, too. ¡°Yeah. We can, can¡¯t we? It¡¯s, um, definitely better than worrying about everyone being naked.¡±

    ¡°I thought you had to be when you went to the hot springs in Japan,¡± I pointed out.

    ¡°Most hot springs aren¡¯t coed,¡± Ritsuka informed me. ¡°So, um, it¡¯s really not all that different from being in the changing rooms at school. Everyone just minds their own business and makes small talk.¡±

    That¡­wasn¡¯t my experience with the changing rooms in school, but I guess my experience wasn¡¯t typical. Most people didn¡¯t have to worry about a group like the Trio dogging their every step and doing whatever they could to make their life miserable, so I guess for most people it was like Ritsuka said: you got changed, you showered if you felt dirty enough after swim class or whatever, and everyone just pretended that they weren¡¯t surrounded by a bunch of naked people.

    ¡°Some places let you wear a swimsuit into the hot spring,¡± Ritsuka added, ¡°but for most places, yeah, you have to be naked, and, um, like I said. Not coed.¡±

    ¡°Mm-mm! Such strange customs you have in this future!¡± Nero said. ¡°Why hide the beauty of the human form? True, not everyone can be as magnificent as I, but that is no reason to hide yourself in shame!¡±

    ¡°Blame the Church,¡± I said dryly.

    Nero took it entirely seriously and nodded. ¡°It seems they have much to answer for indeed!¡±

    ¡­I was just going to leave that one be.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± I said, ¡°I don¡¯t have a connection to all of the Servants here, so I¡¯ll have to leave a couple of them in your hands, you two.¡± On second thought, at least one more, too. ¡°Jeanne Alter, as well.¡±

    The twins winced. ¡°Uh, yeah, Senpai, probably a good idea,¡± said Rika. ¡°She¡¯s, um, still kinda pissed at you, you know.¡±

    ¡°She was saying something about cheap shots,¡± Ritsuka agreed.

    Yeah, I figured. That was why I was going to give her some room to be angry for a little while, and why I was leaving her up to them.

    ¡°Hopefully, she¡¯ll cool off in the baths.¡±

    Ritsuka and Rika shared a look and didn¡¯t seem to think that was likely. In all honesty, I thought that they were probably right. She was an Avenger, after all. If what Ritsuka had said about Dant¨¨s was to be trusted ¡ª or more to the point, if Dant¨¨s himself was to be trusted ¡ª then she was entirely built on grudges and grievances, and it wouldn¡¯t be easy for her to let go of them.

    Maybe I was going to have to let her get even somehow to make up for it, because I wasn¡¯t sure an apology would do. It was an exercise, and while it had been sneaky and underhanded, I didn¡¯t regret it, and that would no doubt be obvious to her.

    Once we were done eating, our group made its way back to our rooms to get ready, contacting each of our contracted Servants to let them know about the trip to the baths and that everyone was invited. Surprisingly, a couple of them turned us down ¡ª Shakespeare, as Ritsuka reported, expressed no interest in the idea, and El-Melloi II bluntly informed me that he had had more than enough of Rome while he was there.

    Everyone else, however, was more than happy to join us, in no small part, it seemed, because it was a chance to get out of the facility for a while.

    The ability to simply reach down the bonds connected to us made it the work of only a few minutes to let everyone know about the trip, so it was really only about half an hour after we were done with lunch before we were all heading to the Rayshift Chamber, all but us Masters already dressed in their swimsuits. Marie and Romani were waiting for us there, already facing the door when we came in, and their eyes swept over the assembled group, taking note of who was there and how many of us there were.

    ¡°Is this everyone?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Billy Shakes and Hot Pops are staying home on this field trip,¡± Rika informed him.

    Marie¡¯s eyebrow twitched, but she had long gotten used to Rika¡¯s eccentricities, so the nicknames slid by without comment.

    Romani tapped something out on his tablet as Marie nodded, and she said, ¡°We¡¯ll discuss future trips at a later date, but for now, you¡¯ll have the afternoon in Rome to relax however you see fit. I expect, however,¡± and she lanced a meaningful glare at the more rambunctious members of our group, ¡°that you¡¯ll keep property damage to a minimum. Everything has already been corrected, so any damage you do to the city or its surroundings would require our intervention to fix for any future use we might have!¡±

    ¡°Why¡¯re you looking at me?¡± Mordred complained.

    ¡°She¡¯s looking at all of us, British,¡± Jeanne Alter told her. ¡°But hey, you know what they say about guilty consciences and all that.¡±

    ¡°Fuck you!¡±

    ¡°What the Director is trying to say,¡± Romani chimed in, ¡°is if you want to be able to enjoy the baths in Rome again later on, try not to make a mess while you¡¯re there, okay?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll keep these two in line,¡± A¨ªfe promised.

    Mordred gave her a look, lip curling. ¡°The fuck is that supposed to mean?¡±

    ¡°ANYWAY!¡± Romani said loudly. ¡°The longer we stand around like this, the less time you guys¡¯ll have, so let¡¯s get you set up and send you on your way, shall we?¡±

    Mordred grumbled, but didn¡¯t protest, and the twins, Mash, and I all found our usual coffins and climbed in. It¡­still wasn¡¯t comfortable, but sheer repetition was making it easier, and as the lid slid closed over me, I closed my eyes and took deep breaths to try and keep myself calm.

    Thankfully, it wasn¡¯t long before the huge doors whooshed closed with the hiss of hydraulics, and then a voice was announcing, ¡°Rayshift in three¡­two¡­one!¡±

    The world fell away, and I dropped through a canal of stars, traveling through the infinite cosmos on a journey that lasted forever and no time at all. The next thing I knew was my feet slamming into a solid surface, jarring me back to reality, and when I opened my eyes, I found myself standing in front of a familiar enormous mansion.

    It looked much the same as it had the last time we were here months ago. There were, of course, no people around, so the rest of the city around us was eerily silent, but the building itself looked untouched, as though it had been perfectly preserved in the moment of our leaving at the end of Septem. But for the complete lack of people around to give it life, we could have been visiting the day after we were last here.

    Nero gasped. ¡°It really is still here!¡±

    ¡°I guess they really can put us where they mean to sometimes,¡± Rika snarked.

    ¡°Our off course landings probably have something to do with the Grail,¡± said Mash. ¡°In that case, it makes sense that there wouldn¡¯t be any trouble getting us to the right spot without it here, wouldn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°Too bad it doesn¡¯t work the other way around,¡± said Ritsuka with a bit of humor.

    If it did, then we never would have met A¨ªfe, and there were a lot of fights that might have been a lot harder as a result.

    ¡°Wow!¡± said Bellamy as he slowly turned to take it all in. ¡°So this is Rome, huh?¡±

    Emiya gave him a nudge. ¡°If you¡¯d prefer to walk around and take in the sights¡­¡±

    Bellamy laughed. ¡°Maybe later! I haven¡¯t had a hot bath in ages, so I want to see if it¡¯s as good as everyone says it is!¡±

    ¡°Me, too!¡± Bradamante agreed. ¡°I was only here for the very end of the fighting, so I never got the chance to experience the baths for myself!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re in for a treat,¡± said A¨ªfe. She slid a sly glance Nero¡¯s way. ¡°Right, Emperor Nero?¡±

    ¡°Of course!¡± said Nero. ¡°Come, come! Mm-mm! Allow me to show you all the glories of Roman hospitality!¡±

    She strode off and into the villa, giving us all a very good look at her¡­ Yeah, that was probably what I should have expected of Nero. How she¡¯d gotten Da Vinci to make her something like that so quickly, I had no idea, but there was no way she would have worn an ordinary one-piece or a regular bikini, not if there was something more extravagant that did a better job of flaunting her ¡°magnificent self.¡±

    ¡°Wow,¡± said Rika. ¡°Best Buddy didn¡¯t just bring the cake, she brought the whole factory.¡±

    Ritsuka let out a pained groan.

    Emiya chuckled. ¡°Stay strong, Ritsuka.¡±

    The look Ritsuka turned his way said better than any words could exactly how unimpressed Ritsuka was with that comment.

    As we followed Nero into her mansion and through the hallways towards the baths, Bellamy¡¯s head continued to swivel. The others who hadn¡¯t been here during Septem and had never been here in life looked around, too, but he was the only one who wore his awe so openly, gawking at the murals and the frescos and the architecture.

    Jeanne Alter and Mordred were impressed, too, but they didn¡¯t seem to want to admit it. Hippolyta, by comparison, had the polite interest of an art snob who was faintly amused by the works of modern artists, the kind that privately thought they were little more than rough scribbles on a canvas.

    It wasn¡¯t long before we wound up back in the apodyterium, where we paused only long enough for us Masters to switch out into our swimsuits, and then Nero led us into the baths proper. The heat and the steam hit me long before we actually stepped out into the room, and the faint perfume not long after.

    ¡°Behold!¡± Nero proclaimed, throwing her arms wide. ¡°The cornerstone of Roman culture!¡±

    It too looked much the same as it had the last time we were here. Even though it had been months and even though there wasn¡¯t anyone here to maintain it, the bath water was still hot and the rose petals were still fresh, and most importantly, the water was still clean. When things were corrected at the end of the Singularity and people were returned to their proper places in history, it seemed that ¡ª just like with the other things that got left behind in London and Okeanos ¡ª anything that didn¡¯t belong and had nowhere else to go remained as it was, including El-Melloi II¡¯s little spell to keep this place fresh.

    That was the only explanation I had for anything, at least.

    ¡°It¡¯s big,¡± Jackie whispered.

    ¡°This is it?¡± Jeanne Alter asked. ¡°Don¡¯t we have a pool bigger than this back home?¡±

    I wondered if I was the only one who noticed her wording.

    ¡°Sacrilege!¡± Rika said with a theatrical gasp. ¡°You call yourself a woman and yet don¡¯t know about the wonders of a soak in a hot bath?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t, and even I know better than to pass this one up, Bumpkin,¡± said Mordred.

    ¡°Hey!¡± squawked Jeanne Alter.

    A little ball of white fur suddenly raced past all of us and leapt into the tub, squeaking, ¡°Fou fou-kyuu!¡±

    And it landed with a splash, sinking below the water for a brief moment before it resurfaced and tossed its head back.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash. ¡°It looks like Fou came along again.¡±

    ¡°See?¡± said Rika, gesturing. ¡°Even Fou knows just how good a hot bath is!¡±

    ¡°That he does!¡± Nero agreed.

    ¡°Alright, alright,¡± said Jeanne Alter, ¡°I¡¯ll get in the stupid bath and see what all of the fucking fuss is about!¡±

    I looked down at Jackie and gave her a little smile. ¡°Come on. No sense standing around all day, is there?¡±

    She smiled back up at me. ¡°Mm!¡±

    Loath as I was to follow the little gremlin¡¯s lead, I led Jackie over to the edge of the tub and eased myself in, enjoying the heat of the bath as it seeped into my skin. Once I was all the way in, I reached out, took Jackie under her arms, and carefully set her on the interior ledge on the inside of the bath ¡ª intended, I had to assume, for guests to sit on and relax without worrying about drowning, and likely also meant as a step to make it easier to get in and out.

    As though that was the signal and permission for everyone else, the rest of the group followed in my wake, and everyone else climbed in to join me and Fou. I settled down in the meantime, using the ledge as a seat like I had the last time we were here, but Jackie was just a little too short to do that and keep her head above the water, so I sat her down on my lap.

    Jackie made a curious sound in the back of her throat, but once she got settled in herself, she relaxed and leaned back against me, resting her head against my shoulder. Something akin to instinct had me wrap my arms around her loosely, enough to keep her steady without smothering her.

    ¡°We like this better than the bath at home,¡± she told me quietly, like it was a secret. ¡°This way, Mommy can stay with us in the bath, too.¡±

    Unbidden, a small smile curled at the corners of my lips, and I let myself relax, too, leaning my own head back against the lip of the tub. ¡°Mm.¡±

    ¡°There is no bath like a Roman bath!¡± Nero announced from somewhere to my right. ¡°Mm-mm!¡±

    ¡°You got that right!¡± Rika agreed. ¡°God, I missed this! Hot showers just aren¡¯t good enough! You know, I think the last time we were here was the last time I had an actual bath?¡±

    ¡°Careful, Master,¡± Emiya teased her. ¡°If you relax too much, your soul might leave your body.¡±

    ¡°Worth it! Totally worth it!¡±

    ¡°Oh, wow,¡± I heard Bellamy say. ¡°Man, even the best baths had nothing on this back in my day. Emperor Nero really wasn¡¯t lying. This is the best!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s too bad we don¡¯t have a jacuzzi,¡± said Rika. ¡°Hey, Emiya, do you think if we went back to the Fuyuki Singularity, we¡¯d find some place that still had a hot tub in stock? One with underwater jets and everything?¡±

    ¡°If it¡¯s a hot tub you want, I¡¯m sure that Da Vinci could come up with something, Master.¡±

    ¡°Poor Da Vinci,¡± said Arash, laughter in his voice. ¡°Just when she has one project finished, we hand her another one.¡±

    ¡°Shit,¡± Jeanne Alter muttered, sounding upset. ¡°This¡­actually is pretty nice. Damn it.¡±

    ¡°Just wait until you get the chance to have someone pampering you while you relax,¡± Rika said knowingly. ¡°Whole other experience, that. Man, what I wouldn¡¯t give to have a spa day. First thing I¡¯m gonna do when this is all over is book a resort for a whole day and let someone turn me into Play-Doh.¡±

    ¡°Play-Doh?¡± asked Mordred, confused.

    The chatter slowly faded into background noise, and I let out a long sigh as the water eased aches I had forgotten even existed. The heat of the bath and the sweet scent of whatever perfume had been laced through it filled my head with a pleasant fog, and for just a little while, I could forget about the looming threat of the next Singularity and what might await us there. I could forget about all my worries and problems. I could forget about the end of the world.

    Right then, it was just me, the little girl I¡¯d adopted, and a group of people that¡­were probably the first real friends I¡¯d made in almost two years. And that was enough.

 Interlude S (CT): From the Sidelines

    Interlude S (CT): From the Sidelines

    Sylvia was a classically trained magus, with all of the pitfalls that implied. She knew the basics of magecraft, had been taught all of the fundamentals expected of her as a magus of the modern era, and her talent had been exceptional enough to first get her a placement in the Clock Tower¡¯s halls of academia, and then later at the Chaldea Security Organization itself.

    As a magus, however, ¡°above average¡± was considered the bare minimum at the Clock Tower, and by the time she had joined Chaldea, all of the important, groundbreaking work had already been done. There was no SHEBA for her to contribute to, no CHALDEAS which might need her expertise to complete, no LAPLACE for her to help calibrate. She was merely one middling magus among several who had thought she might make a name for herself in a place where she would be as a giant among hunched and hobbled masses.

    Chaldea was only too happy to disabuse her of the notion.

    Looking back on it now, she was embarrassingly arrogant about it all. She had thought she would come in from the Clock Tower, where she was just another fish in an enormous pool of talent and genius, and be a shark among minnows. She had come in to be a Master candidate, trusting that her skills would place her in their vaunted vanguard and earn her the prestige of being so important a member of the team.

    And then her test results came back and showed she was completely incompatible with the Rayshift technology. At that point, it didn¡¯t matter whether she had the capacity to be a top tier Master or not, irrespective of the FATE System¡¯s notoriously finicky nature, because being a Master candidate at all meant having enough compatibility with Rayshifting to actually deploy when the time came. Sylvia hadn¡¯t even bothered to check her grading, because there was no point. Even if it had told her she was a top tier Master candidate, it would have just been an insult to injury, salt in the wound.

    She could have left, after that. But she didn¡¯t have anywhere else to go anymore, not after she left the Clock Tower so full of the certainty that she would make it at Chaldea, so she settled for an ordinary position on the staff. It was a humbling experience, and in hindsight, maybe the one she needed the most at the time.

    Sylvia might not have been early enough to contribute to any of the big projects, but she was, however, early enough to be on the staff when Marisbury was still around. She had the chance to watch his hand-picked candidates fill out the roster for Team A, and also the chance to watch his daughter, Olga Marie Animusphere, apply for the same position Sylvia herself had¡­and flunk out just as badly.

    It was hard not to feel some sympathy for the girl ¡ª nearly a decade younger than Sylvia was ¡ª not when she knew exactly what Olga Marie was going through. She had heard on the grapevine in the Clock Tower how her father had even abandoned her training in order to focus on an apprentice who showed more promise and talent, the selfsame Kirschtaria Wodime who came to be the leader of Chaldea¡¯s Team A.

    Sylvia could only imagine how much that must have stung.

    Of course, it was hard to hold onto that sympathy when Marisbury died suddenly and Olga was all but thrust into the position of filling his shoes, a job she turned out to be very bad at ¡ª and something for which she made everyone under her who ever even shared the same air as her suffer. Any sympathy Sylvia had for all of the misfortune that had befallen Olga Marie Animusphere died a swift death the first time she was berated for not being up to standard by even the slightest bit.

    What did it matter if she was two minutes late on a deadline, or a day behind on this particular piece of a project? It wasn¡¯t like Sylvia¡¯s work was all that important. She was another cog in a machine, as easily replaced as anyone except for people like Romani Archaman, Kirschtaria Wodime, or Lev Lainur. She wasn¡¯t even on the main Command Room staff, she was just a substitute who got stuck with the graveyard shift.

    It wasn¡¯t like Olga had much room to talk either. Everyone could see she struggled under the weight of being Director, and some of the decisions she made were nonsensical or obvious attempts to fill shoes way too large for her. The influx of other Master candidates was just one example amongst many, because you only had to look at the profiles and compatibility results on all of them to see that there was no way any of them measured up to people like Wodime or even Kadoc, who was the most lackluster member of Team A.

    Everyone could also see just how much she leaned on Lev Lainur to keep herself afloat, and that was its own kind of pathetic. It didn¡¯t take long at all for people to start muttering about how the only reason Olga Marie Animusphere even got the position of Director was because her father was Marisbury Animusphere, the previous one. Sylvia¡¯s own patience had been worn too thin to even think about coming to Olga¡¯s defense, to the point where she let herself join in and whisper her own grievances to her colleagues.

    ¡°Although I guess that didn¡¯t last forever, did it?¡± Sylvia muttered to herself.

    ¡°What was that?¡± said Duston. ¡°You say something, Sylvia?¡±

    ¡°Hm? Oh. Nothing,¡± she told him. ¡°Just thinking out loud.¡±

    ¡°Not like there¡¯s much else for us to do right now, I guess,¡± he allowed. ¡°The readings on the next Singularity are still fluctuating too wildly to make any sense of, which means we just get to sit here and pretend we understand what we¡¯re looking at.¡±

    ¡°Mm.¡±

    Sylvia took a chance and looked at the large, glass windows that overlooked the Rayshift Chamber, and in the reflection, the Director¡¯s terminal remained empty. Both that flake, Romani, and Olga Marie were still consulting with Da Vinci.

    It had felt obvious, comparing the two, why Marisbury had all but tossed his heir aside. Marisbury had been possessed of a keen intellect and a firm hand, and both had let him steer Chaldea with confidence and competence. Olga had floundered every step of the way, and every month that passed, she seemed less and less in control of either herself or the situation.

    There had even been a stretch where she had spent what seemed like weeks at a time locked up in her quarters. Why, Sylvia didn¡¯t know, but on the rare moments she had shown her face, Olga was gaunt, haunted, and seemed frightened of her own shadow. She¡¯d had trouble looking anyone in the eye and avoided Mash like the plague for no apparent reason.

    Some of the others ¡ª the ones who had been at Chaldea since Marisbury first took it over ¡ª seemed to have some idea, but none of them had thought to share it. Sylvia had guessed that it had something to do with how Mash had been made, because the fact Mash was a designer baby made specifically for the Demi-Servant program wasn¡¯t a secret, but Sylvia wasn¡¯t privy to the details.

    Olga was a magus regardless. Whatever those details were, they shouldn¡¯t have bothered her one bit. A real magus dedicated to the craft wouldn¡¯t have even flinched.

    ¡°Marisbury certainly didn¡¯t,¡± Sylvia said under her breath. This time, Duston didn¡¯t seem to hear her.

    Just when that looked like it was over, Olga started disappearing again for days at a time, and even Professor Lev hadn¡¯t known where to or why. Sylvia thought it was suspicious that Romani and even that Da Vinci were disappearing at the same time, but what they all could have been vanishing to do together, Sylvia had no idea.

    The fact that it lasted for the better part of six months was all the more suspicious, and all the more frustrating. Here they all were, all of these technicians, operators, Master candidates, and even the janitorial staff, they were all doing their jobs, and yet the Director couldn¡¯t even be bothered to be responsible enough to show up and lead them every day?

    Maybe Marisbury had been right to leave Olga behind and pursue a more talented magus to be his apprentice. That was the general sentiment everyone had been feeling at the time.

    Of course, Sylvia hadn¡¯t thought much of it when Olga introduced her own, final addition to Team A to everyone ¡ª either of the decision itself or of the Master candidate they were being shown ¡ª except to derisively snort at the transparent attempt to actually contribute something of substance to Chaldea and its functioning. Taylor Hebert, a laughably common, ludicrously mundane name, so painfully much so that there was no way she was from a proper magus family.

    And she was an American to boot.

    Was that what those six months were for? Preparing that new ¡°Master candidate¡± to act the way she was expected to? How ridiculous.

    The only thing at all noteworthy about her aside from how completely forgettable she was as both a human being and a Master candidate was how sparse her personnel file was. Granted, Sylvia¡¯s clearance wasn¡¯t the highest, but the parts of it that weren¡¯t completely redacted were so vague and useless that Sylvia had immediately written it all off at the time as a pathetic attempt at hiding Hebert¡¯s origins so no one could criticize them.

    Well, that, and the fact that her potential as a Master was ludicrously high. Higher than several members of Team A, in fact, and her Rayshift compatibility was up there with Kadoc¡¯s.

    But, Sylvia had thought, if Olga Marie was banking on those qualities to make up for an otherwise lackluster and mediocre Master candidate, then the stresses of being Director had obviously gone to her head and made her delusional. She wasn¡¯t the only one who thought so among the staff, and several of the other mages had shared similar opinions.

    Even the fact that something about her made the normally unflappable Beryl Gut nervous wasn¡¯t really more than a curiosity.

    The rest of Team A hadn¡¯t apparently thought much of her either. Kadoc had been resentful to have her on the team ¡ª rightfully so, Sylvia thought at the time ¡ª and Pepe had been friendly enough to the girl. Wodime had even been professional enough to acknowledge her and welcome her onto the team.

    But the indifference of Akuta, Daybit, and Ophelia spoke volumes, because if Taylor Hebert was really good enough to be among them, then she should have gotten more than silence or polite professionalism.

    Mash didn¡¯t count. Mash was friendly with everyone.

    And then she started doing stuff like facing down Medusa by herself and saving the Director in Singularity F and carving out a wyvern¡¯s brain in Orl¨¦ans, and suddenly, Sylvia began to realize that Director Olga Marie might have known something that she hadn¡¯t shared with the rest of the staff, something she hadn¡¯t even shared with Lev Lainur. Something so secret and so important that Olga Marie was the only one in the whole organization, the whole facility, who knew what it was, aside from Hebert herself.

    Even now. Even after everything. It was startling and almost scary how little they actually knew about Hebert and her past, what she had accomplished that had convinced Olga Marie to make Hebert into her ace Master.

    ¡°Do you think it¡¯s true?¡± Sylvia asked Duston.

    Duston turned to her, arching an eyebrow. ¡°Hm? Do I think what¡¯s true?¡±

    ¡°Hebert,¡± Sylvia clarified. ¡°Do you think she actually killed a god?¡±

    Duston¡¯s mouth twisted, pulling and slackening as he thought about what to say. He wasn¡¯t unattractive, Sylvia thought idly in the back of her mind, but then, she¡¯d been stuck for almost six months with him and only a handful of other men, so that might have something to do with it when she wouldn¡¯t have given him a second glance a year ago.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he eventually decided upon. ¡°It certainly seems very fantastical, but¡­ Well, you mage types would know better about that sort of thing than I do.¡±

    Yes, she did, which was what made it sound all the more ludicrous. The Age of Gods was long over. Even into the modern era, there were certain ways to seek out the aid and influence of the Divine Spirits who remained of the ancient deities, but they were far and few between, and at least as hard as summoning a Heroic Spirit. A living god, complete with a divine corpus, in the modern era? Unheard of.

    But if such a thing could exist, then¡­Sylvia didn¡¯t know. Logically, the mystery behind its existence would be weaker by virtue of manifesting in the Age of Man, where the world was ruled by the laws of physics and not the Authorities of gods. It would be easier to kill, weaker, not nearly as dominating as it would have been in the ancient past.

    Modern man was also weaker, however. Where once there might have been demigods like Heracles who possessed the power to fight back against an actual god, now there was no such thing. The act of fighting and killing a god would be all the more impossible.

    Then again, the briefing had said Hebert hadn¡¯t actually done the deed, she¡¯d just led the fight. Maybe that was the secret. It was a lot less incredible if she had commanded a Servant with a legend of godslaying, although that also begged the question of where the Servant had come from in the first place. Some variant of Holy Grail War? There were rumors that lesser rituals were being performed around the world, although by the time Sylvia had joined Chaldea, she hadn¡¯t heard anything conclusive.

    ¡°The enemy certainly seems to think it¡¯s true,¡± she said.

    A dark look crossed Duston¡¯s face. ¡°All things considered, I¡¯m not sure we want to trust what Sol¡­what the King of Mages says. Not when we¡¯re the only ones standing in the way of his plans.¡±

    ¡°Then what was the point of the briefing the Director gave us?¡±

    Duston¡¯s lips pursed. ¡°I guess there has to be some truth to it, then,¡± he admitted. ¡°And in that case¡­I think it¡¯s better we have something like that on our side than not, right? Don¡¯t get me wrong,¡± he added, ¡°the Fujimarus are doing their best, but¡­¡±

    Yeah. Without Hebert, there was no telling what battles they might have lost instead of winning. If she hadn¡¯t noticed the game Nursery Rhyme was playing, would the others even have figured it out before the Nameless Forest got one or both of them killed? It wasn¡¯t that there were countless examples of that sort of thing happening, but there had been enough moments where things might have gone completely differently if someone as cunning and experienced as Hebert had proven to be wasn¡¯t there to tip things in Chaldea¡¯s favor.

    Even in Fuyuki alone¡­ Sylvia liked Romani Archaman well enough as a human being, and he¡¯d done a decent job as Director for the month or two where he¡¯d been forced into the position, but everyone had been able to see how much it wore on him. How thin he¡¯d been spreading himself to try and keep up with the responsibility of managing what was left of the organization. How essential Da Vinci had become to keeping both him and the rest of them from falling apart at the seams.

    The man already swore by that Magi¡îMari nonsense. Sylvia shuddered to imagine how much he might have come to rely on that ¡°wisdom¡± in order to carry himself forward if he¡¯d been forced to shoulder the burden of command on his own for another six months.

    ¡°I almost wish they hadn¡¯t told us,¡± said Octavia from Sylvia¡¯s other side. She hadn¡¯t even realized anyone else had even been listening. ¡°It was fine enough when we could just write her off as being more experienced from whatever happened in her mysterious past. What are we supposed to tell the Association when this is all over?¡±

    ¡°I imagine we¡¯ll all be forced to sign a Geas Scroll or something along those lines,¡± Sylvia said. ¡°You heard the Director. She¡¯s sure that the Association will force her to resign in the aftermath, which means we can¡¯t expect her name to offer us any kind of protection. There¡¯s no way she¡¯ll let her ace Master get Sealed that easily, though.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Octavia agreed. ¡°She¡¯ll definitely find a way to protect Hebert, and now we¡¯ve got a practitioner of Primordial Runes in the facility. If she wants to keep us from talking, she definitely has options.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± said Duston, ¡°you¡¯re a mage, too, aren¡¯t you, Octavia?¡±

    Octavia tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear, embarrassed. ¡°For what that¡¯s worth. Most of the magi who joined Chaldea were just second sons and heirs to minor families. You might not understand it, Duston, but before the first Singularity was detected and the final Master candidates chosen, Chaldea was considered just another observatory. No one cared and no one put much stock in Lord Animusphere¡¯s vision.¡±

    Thinking of Team A, Sylvia added, ¡°With a few notable exceptions, of course.¡±If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    Octavia shrugged, a half-hearted lift of one shoulder. ¡°No one came here for the prestige of it, is what I mean. CHALDEAS, SHEBA, LAPLACE, those were all pet projects, and the only reason they were finished in the first place is because Lord Animusphere had so much money to invest in them that people like¡­Lev Lainur showed up to help make them real.¡±

    Money could fill in where passion and drive failed, Sylvia thought wryly.

    ¡°Point is,¡± said Sylvia, ¡°Hebert was right that there¡¯s going to be a lot of questions when this is all over, and the Association won¡¯t care that Lev Lainur pulled the wool over everyone¡¯s eyes, including Marisbury¡¯s, or that this whole thing is a plan spanning over two millennia. They¡¯ll blame Olga Marie for what happened, so her position as Director is probably one of the first things that¡¯ll go, and then they¡¯ll strip this place bare trying to figure out how it could happen under everyone¡¯s noses.¡±

    ¡°And we¡¯ll all be brought in for questioning,¡± Duston concluded, scowling. ¡°And without the Director there to shield us¡­¡±

    None of them were going to get out of this unscathed.

    It wasn¡¯t the first time Sylvia had thought about it, and it chilled her insides every time. The Association tended to be overly pragmatic about a lot of things, but like any major organization, it also had internal politics. Olga Marie might lose just about everything when this was all over, but she was still a Lord, and she would still be afforded the protections of her own position.

    The rest of them? No-names and heirs to minor families. It was entirely possible that they would all just disappear once the ¡°official¡± inquiries were finished. The Fujimaru twins had talked about going back to their lives in Tokyo, returning to school, graduating, going to college¡­

    Maybe, maybe, it would be enough. The combination of the UN having eyes on everything, the obvious assumption that Mash and Hebert, as the remaining members of Team A, had carried the team through everything, and just the lack of anything otherwise interesting about them. Maybe the Association would question them and let them go, with the standard caveats about maintaining the secrets of magecraft.

    But Sylvia wouldn¡¯t have bet on it.

    ¡°Almost makes you wonder if it¡¯s even worth it, huh?¡± she asked with a mirthless smile.

    Duston¡¯s scowl deepened. ¡°Just doesn¡¯t seem right. If we make it through this, those kids will be responsible for saving the world ¡ª eight different times, if you count each Singularity separately ¡ª and that¡¯s the thanks they¡¯ll get?¡±

    ¡°Maybe we should keep that Jack the Ripper around,¡± said Octavia. ¡°I can¡¯t imagine she¡¯ll be all that happy if the Association tries to take her mommy from her.¡±

    And maybe someone should take one of the Grails they had recovered and use it to make sure nothing bad happened to any of them.

    Well. As long as they could¡­edit the records to keep the more outlandish parts a secret, there was a chance they could all squeak past the Association¡¯s interrogators, and if that had occurred to Sylvia, then Da Vinci had probably already thought of it and was working behind the scenes to put it into action. Sylvia had never thought much of her ¡ª and the fact it was a her in the first place was one of the reasons why, because the logic behind that decision had never made a lick of sense ¡ª but she had proven incredibly reliable in the last few months, regardless of her almost whimsical personality.

    ¡°There¡¯s probably some sort of plan,¡± was what she said aloud. ¡°But if it¡¯ll be enough to satisfy the Association, well, that part, I¡¯m not so sure on. And if it includes any of us instead of just the Director¡¯s favorite Master ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be ridiculous,¡± Octavia cut across her, uncharacteristically snappy. ¡°You¡¯ve been here at least as long as I have, Sylvia, so there¡¯s no way you¡¯ve missed it. How the Director¡¯s changed since Hebert came along. Whatever else she might think of us, we¡¯re the Director¡¯s people, and she takes care of her people, doesn¡¯t she?¡±

    Sylvia¡¯s mouth clicked shut. Octavia wasn¡¯t wrong. The Director had changed since Hebert came onto the scene, and she¡¯d changed even more after Hebert saved her life in Fuyuki. Not completely for the better, but then, Sylvia couldn¡¯t exactly blame the woman for being a little off-kilter after having her entire world ripped down around her ears.

    As pathetic as her dependency on Lev had been, she had depended on him. And then he¡¯d not only tried to destroy her family¡¯s legacy, he¡¯d killed her and nearly condemned her to a fate worse than death.

    Even for a magus, that sort of thing wasn¡¯t easy to just walk off. Marisbury might have been able to, but then again, he¡¯d supposedly committed suicide, so what did Sylvia really know about his mental fortitude, in the end?

    ¡°For that alone, none of the rest would matter to me,¡± Duston said. ¡°The Olga Marie who first took the job as Director here was spiraling, and if something hadn¡¯t happened to change that, she might not have even made it all the way to Fuyuki. But¡­I don¡¯t know if¡­if bringing Hebert up to speed and preparing her to be a member of Team A helped distract her enough to get her head on straight or if that was just the project she needed to feel like she could handle the job. Either way, Hebert was a good enough influence that the Director we know now is¡­ Well, not a completely different person, but much better for it.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t that Sylvia disagreed, but¡­ She sighed. ¡°I just wish the Director was a little less of a hard-ass about it.¡±

    Octavia giggled, and Duston¡¯s huff was deliberately intended to disguise the chuckle he got out of it.

    ¡°She¡¯s¡­what, twenty-one? Maybe twenty-two?¡± said Duston. ¡°Honestly, I¡¯ve seen the type before. They come in, spitting fire and pissing brimstone, because they¡¯re young and feel like they¡¯re in way over their head, so they have to be extra hard and extra strict so that people don¡¯t treat them like the kids they are.¡±

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you just in your thirties, old man?¡± Meuniere asked from Duston¡¯s other side, because apparently, none of them was being as quiet as they thought they were.

    ¡°Pretty sure I¡¯m still the oldest person on the staff,¡± Duston replied with a grunt. ¡°And isn¡¯t that just an indictment of this whole thing? I¡¯m more than young enough to find a girl and settle down someday, but somehow I¡¯m the most senior person still alive in this place aside from maybe the Doctor.¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t the years, it¡¯s the mileage,¡± Sylvia quipped. It earned her another giggle from Octavia.

    ¡°If that¡¯s the case, then I think Hebert is probably the oldest one here,¡± Meuniere said wryly. ¡°Man, some part of me wants to take a peek at her unredacted personnel file, and then I think about all of the secrets I¡¯m going to be sworn to once this is all over, and I wonder if it¡¯s worth it to see the rest.¡±

    ¡°If even Lev didn¡¯t get to see the whole thing, I don¡¯t think any of us has a chance,¡± Sylvia drawled. She shook her head. ¡°I don¡¯t know what rock the Director dug her out from under, but I think it¡¯s pretty obvious there was a whole circus under there with her.¡±

    ¡°Didn¡¯t you read the whole briefing?¡± asked Octavia.

    Sylva arched an eyebrow her way. ¡°Did I miss something? I thought the whole thing about killing a god was pretty clear on its own.¡±

    Octavia looked around, like she was worried an Enforcer was stalking the Command Room and looking for the slightest reason to Seal them all, then leaned closer, as though sharing a secret, and whispered, ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure Hebert isn¡¯t from¡­around here.¡±

    ¡°Around here?¡± said Duston, bemused. Sylvia leaned closer, interested.

    ¡°The wording that was used to describe how Hebert wound up in Chaldea without anyone noticing her arrival,¡± Octavia clarified. ¡°Chaldea is one of the most secure facilities on the planet. There aren¡¯t many ways to bypass its security, or even to reach it, but if you have a method of crossing great distances without having to travel the intervening space between them¡­¡±

    ¡°You think the Wizard Marshal is involved?¡± Meuniere yelped, voice an octave higher than normal.

    Octavia hissed, glancing around again, but no one materialized to drag them all off for interrogation. ¡°Listen,¡± she whispered, ¡°even Da Vinci herself is still working out how to safely traverse the Sea of Imaginary Numbers, and she¡¯s nowhere near a breakthrough. At least the Operation of Parallel Worlds is something we know is possible.¡±

    That¡­put a different sort of spin on things, didn¡¯t it? The Wizard Marshal wasn¡¯t particularly known for being meddlesome, but there were times when he put his thumb on the scale. Sylvia struggled to think of particular examples ¡ª except, really, the stories about the Wizard Marshal often had more to do with how much of a wreck his students turned out to be whenever he picked up an apprentice.

    It said something that he was still the singular holder of the Second True Magic.

    ¡°You think he brought her here?¡± Sylvia asked incredulously.

    ¡°He approved of it, at least,¡± Octavia answered confidently. ¡°If he did anything directly¡­ Well, Tohsaka didn¡¯t know for sure in London either, did he?¡±

    ¡°He works his work in mysterious ways,¡± Duston muttered wryly. ¡°It¡¯s been a hot minute since I heard that sort of thing.¡±

    We¡¯re not the Church, Sylvia wanted to say, but she got his point. At the end of the day, all they were doing was tossing around a theory based upon what little evidence they had. If Zelretch himself had gotten involved in Hebert¡¯s placement in Chaldea, then the only one who might have had any evidence at all was the Director herself, and she had already gone to great lengths to hide it.

    And if Zelretch wasn¡¯t involved, but the Operation of Parallel Worlds still was, somehow¡­then it was all the more important that the Association never found out. They¡¯d snatch Hebert up in a heartbeat to find out how she had crossed the boundaries between parallel worlds without the Wizard Marshal to do the deed. There was no way the Director didn¡¯t already know that, and if she knew about it, there was no way she wasn¡¯t already trying to figure out a way around it.

    Octavia was right about one thing, at least. Whether or not the Director considered all of them her people, she obviously thought as much about Hebert, and she was holding onto Hebert jealously. She wouldn¡¯t let her prize Master go easily, and if there was one thing she was likely to put up the hardest fight for against the Association, it was Hebert.

    Especially after Fuyuki.

    Maybe it was better that all they had were theories. After all, if they never knew for sure, then they could never tell the Association, and being as none of them was anything special as a magus, the Lords of the Clock Tower were just as likely to dismiss their theories as uneducated rumor mongering as they were to actually take them seriously.

    ¡°If the Wizard Marshal actually is involved,¡± said Sylvia, and it was a big if, ¡°wouldn¡¯t his word solve this whole problem in the first place?¡±

    Octavia, who evidently hadn¡¯t considered that angle, grimaced and had to allow, ¡°Maybe. But no one knows why he does anything, so there¡¯s nothing to say he¡¯d do anything about it either way.¡±

    And that put them squarely back in the ¡®works his works in mysterious ways¡¯ nonsense, which was about as helpful as it sounded.

    Duston sighed. ¡°However it is she got here, I¡¯m glad she¡¯s here. I don¡¯t even want to think how much more of a mess the Director would be without her influence.¡±

    ¡°Or what it would be like to have the Doc as our full-time director,¡± Meuniere added.

    Ugh. ¡°Could you imagine?¡± Sylvia agreed. ¡°Romani is a nice enough guy, but he¡¯s a total flake. Do you remember what he was like when he was Acting Director? At any given moment, he was five minutes away from collapsing.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a joke in there somewhere about the burden of command,¡± Duston said wryly. ¡°At least he seems to be handling it better when he doesn¡¯t have to do it all alone.¡±

    ¡°So is the Director, now that you mention it,¡± Octavia remarked. ¡°Although I think Da Vinci is still the one holding this whole place together.¡±

    ¡°I guess you¡¯re the one who would know better than most of us,¡± said Meuniere. ¡°What, with you being her official assistant and all.¡±

    Octavia shook her head. ¡°Her gofer, you mean. Some days, I¡¯m not sure how much she actually needs me and how much she just wants someone to talk to down in her workshop.¡±

    ¡°Aside from Romani?¡± teased Sylvia.

    But Octavia just grimaced and rolled her eyes. ¡°I don¡¯t know how that rumor started, but it¡¯s definitely not true. Trust me ¡ª not a single longing glance between them, in either direction. They¡¯re so platonic that I¡¯m honestly kind of jealous. Plus,¡± she went on, ¡°when would either of them have the time? I¡¯m decently sure that Da Vinci doesn¡¯t sleep, and Doctor Roman is still catching up on his from back when he was dosing himself with stimulants.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s called a quickie for a reason,¡± Syliva quipped. Octavia looked disgusted.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t Romani married anyway?¡± asked Meuniere. ¡°He doesn¡¯t show it off, but I know he still wears the ring on his finger. You can see the lump through his gloves.¡±

    ¡°If he is, then she¡¯s dead,¡± Duston said, and the humor died swiftly. ¡°No one still here has been giving him googly eyes, so either she died in the Sabotage or she was outside the facility and got caught in the Incineration.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know about that,¡± said Sylvia. ¡°You¡¯ve been here the longest out of all of us, Duston. Has he ever taken leave and left base? He¡¯s stayed at the facility for the entirety of my tenure. I¡¯ve heard of waiting and long-distance relationships, but spending the better part of a decade away from each other without even a conjugal visit is asking a bit much, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°So she probably was on base for the Sabotage,¡± Meuniere concluded somberly. He hid his face by turning back to his console. ¡°Which means even fixing everything and defeating the King of Mages won¡¯t bring her back.¡±

    Just like everyone else who had died. A shiver swept down Sylvia¡¯s spine, and she was suddenly keenly aware of the fact that she was only sitting where she was because the person her position had originally belonged to had been blown into tiny chunks of charred meat.

    And so were the rest of them. The only reason any of them were in the Command Room and vital for the functioning of Chaldea and its systems was because their predecessors were all gone, and gone for good. The only reason they were there was because of either sheer, dumb luck or because they hadn¡¯t been important enough to take out with everyone else.

    Sylvia had never been so glad to be mediocre.

    A quick look at the clock showed that Sylvia¡¯s shift was technically over, and she used that as an excuse to leave the conversation. She stood abruptly, logging out of her terminal, and then stretched to work out the kinks.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± she announced, affecting nonchalance, ¡°my shift¡¯s over, so I¡¯m going to take this chance to relax. None of us is ever going to get the chance to try out the real deal, so I¡¯m going to go to the simulator and enjoy a nice, hot bath in Rome.¡±

    Meuniere sighed. ¡°Lucky! I¡¯m still on duty for another four hours.¡±

    ¡°It might not be quite the same as actually bathing in the Emperor¡¯s palace,¡± said Duston, ¡°but at least that means you don¡¯t have to think about how many orgies took place there before you.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Sylvia, smirking, ¡°don¡¯t you think it might be kind of hot to screw around together in the middle of Nero¡¯s palace? In her bath, among all those rose petals?¡±

    Duston made a face. ¡°No offense to present company, but I¡¯ve seen way too much to ever think of hooking up with a mage now. I don¡¯t see it ending well for me.¡±

    Sylvia shrugged, unbothered. ¡°Oh well.¡±

    Not like she¡¯d been all that serious in any case. She had no doubts that Da Vinci would respect their privacy if any of them did decide to shack up and do the horizontal tango, either in their rooms or in the simulator, but she also wasn¡¯t under any illusions that the simulator wouldn¡¯t keep a record of who did what while they were inside it.

    Office romances were also a terrible idea. Having to work with the guy you were dating was hard enough; harder still was having to work with your ex, and it wasn¡¯t like they could be transferred to a different division or quit at this point.

    It was just¡­ Well. The last six months had been hectic and busy. She hadn¡¯t had a chance to do anything with anyone and barely had a moment to herself that wasn¡¯t eating or sleeping. A tryst in the simulator, where everything felt real but nothing had any lasting consequences, that would be a great way to scratch the itch and release some pent up stress.

    Maybe she could program an¡­aid into her little excursion. The simulator could do¡­NPCs was the term, right? No muss, no fuss, no aftercare.

    Making good on her promise, Sylvia left the Command Room behind, stopping in the cafeteria only long enough to grab a quick lunch ¡ª Emiya and that homunculus, Ren¨¦e, their cooking was as good as it always was, even when it was just a ham sandwich. With a full belly, she made a beeline through the halls and corridors of Chaldea and to the almost theater-like room that played host to Chaldea¡¯s state of the art simulator, complete with immersive VR technology.

    Sometimes, Sylvia wondered about how much money must have been thrown into all of these things. Any single project under Chaldea¡¯s umbrella would have been enough to bankrupt a small country, but the amount of money needed to fund all of them together was so staggering that Sylvia couldn¡¯t even imagine a rough estimate.

    No wonder Marsibury had needed a wish from the Fuyuki Grail War to make it happen. The entire Aristocratic Faction in the Clock Tower could have pooled their collective resources and still not have had enough to fund the Chaldea that she saw every day.

    The door to the simulator room whooshed open to permit Sylvia entry, and she made it one step inside before she realized she wasn¡¯t alone and froze.

    ¡°Hebert?¡±

    Olga Marie¡¯s ace Master stopped whatever she was doing and looked up from the simulator console, face framed by a curtain of wavy black hair. Paradoxically, the glasses always made her look fiercer, maybe something to do with the way they put a stark border around the shape of her eyes.

    ¡°Sylvia,¡± was Hebert¡¯s greeting, curt but polite, like two coworkers meeting each other unexpectedly in the streets. It was, in hindsight, an apt enough comparison.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± said Sylvia. ¡°I didn¡¯t realize you were going to be running another simulation with the Fujimarus this afternoon.¡±

    Which meant her dreams of bathing in Rome¡¯s famous baths were going to have to wait. Damn it.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Hebert, and she gave a little shake of her head. ¡°No, nothing like that. Jackie just wanted to take another bath in Rome.¡± She gestured to the little girl by her side, who Sylvia only then realized was even there. ¡°It¡¯s not quite the same as actually going there, but I figured it was close enough.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡±

    For a moment, the silence stretched, and Sylvia¡¯s tongue felt like it was glued to the roof of her mouth. It seemed an almost Herculean effort to get it unglued and ask, ¡°Do you mind if I come along?¡±

    For another moment, Hebert regarded her strangely, head tilted just a little, like she was mulling the question over. Sylvia considered that she may have wanted to have that bath in private, with just Jackie, like some sort of strange mother-daughter bonding thing, as though that wasn¡¯t Jack the Ripper she was pampering.

    Sylvia had to guess that, compared to a god who had apparently been prophesied to end the world, a serial killer in the form of a prepubescent girl probably didn¡¯t seem all that intimidating.

    At length, Hebert gave her a small smile. ¡°Sure. Why not?¡±

 Chapter CLXVIII: Spirit Refinement

    Chapter CLXVIII: Spirit Refinement

    January melted into February without any word at all about what we would be facing in the next Singularity, or even when and where exactly it would be taking place. No updates came our way to let us know the date of our deployment so that we could make our preparations or when we might expect a briefing on whatever information might have been gleaned about the mysterious American Singularity.

    For Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, and even most of the Servants, there wasn¡¯t much immediate concern. They had some worries, yes, but between the simulator finally being able to account for Servants, movie nights that let them all experience modern entertainment, weekly Servant meal days where the Servants got to enjoy first rate cuisine cooked by Emiya and Ren¨¦e, and also weekly trips into Rome to enjoy the baths in Nero¡¯s palace, everyone had some way of blowing off steam that helped them deal with the nerves and the boredom.

    I seemed to be the only one who struggled to keep it out of my mind. No matter how many scrimmage matches we had in the simulator to practice our synergy and hone our minds to the task of managing our Servants, no matter how often we relaxed in the baths ¡ª whether in Rome itself or in the simulator¡¯s ridiculously accurate recreation ¡ª and no matter how great the food that was served to us every day, I couldn¡¯t shake the sense of foreboding.

    Damn him, but Solomon¡¯s words refused to leave me be. What did he mean when he said I could finally return home? Was he just talking about going back to America, or was he specifically referencing Earth Bet? What about making peace with my demons? Was I going to meet some people from my past ¡ª old friends, old foes ¡ª or had he set things up so that I was going to encounter a Servant who could do to me what he¡¯d attempted to do with Ritsuka after Forneus was killed in Okeanos?

    Those questions intruded on nearly every moment in Chaldea, whether I was chatting with Sylvia in the simulator, giving Mash swimming lessons that she was increasingly outgrowing, or reading to Jackie. The part that made it all more maddening was that the only way to answer those questions was to know what we were going to be dealing with in the next Singularity, and without any new information, all I could do was stew in them and worry.

    There was no way the others wouldn¡¯t notice, but I brushed off their concerns as gently as I could. I couldn¡¯t explain to them the depths of my problems, and while Da Vinci, Marie, and Romani now all knew about as much about my past as they reasonably could, none of them could really help, and whenever I asked for news, Da Vinci could only grimace, shake her head, and tell me that there wasn¡¯t any.

    I did my best to distract myself. I redoubled my rune training with A¨ªfe, I pushed that extra little bit during my morning workout, I tried to keep my focus on Jackie and giving her the childhood she hadn¡¯t been given while she was alive, but all that really managed to do for me was make sure I was tired enough at the end of each day to fall asleep quickly.

    It got bad enough that Marie dragged me into her office one morning in early February and told me, in her stern, ¡®I am the Director and you will listen to me¡¯ voice, ¡°Stop it.¡±

    Of course, I didn¡¯t quite realize what she was talking about, not at first. ¡°Stop what?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re catastrophizing,¡± she said, the hypocrite that she was. ¡°Stop it. All you¡¯re doing is driving yourself up the wall, and you¡¯re no good to anyone if you go mad wondering what that bastard meant when he said all of those things to you.¡±

    ¡°I think it¡¯s a legitimate concern. Don¡¯t you?¡± I countered. ¡°If he was telling the truth, if we really are going back to Bet for the next Singularity, if I have to deal with everything I left behind after Gold Morning ¡ª¡±

    ¡°If,¡± she cut across me snappishly. ¡°If, if, if! That¡¯s the problem, we don¡¯t know what the King of Mages meant by any of it. The only thing we know for sure about the next Singularity is that it¡¯s taking place in America.¡±

    ¡°And he called me out specifically!¡± I argued back, voice rising. ¡°By name! That¡¯s twice, now, after Flauros himself said that I was one of the targets he was hoping to get rid of in the Sabotage ¡ª you didn¡¯t forget that, did you?¡±

    Because I certainly hadn¡¯t. It was one thing when I was just a Master on Team A, as valid a target as Wodime or any of the others by virtue of my position, but it was another thing entirely when the enemy outright said that he¡¯d gone out of his way to single me out in particular. After London, after Solomon all but did the same, I wasn¡¯t going to wait for the third time to start assuming enemy action.

    ¡°Of course I didn¡¯t!¡± she rebuked sharply. ¡°Just like I haven¡¯t forgotten that he¡­he targeted me specifically, too! But if you kill yourself worrying over whether or not the next Singularity is tailored for the sole purpose of eliminating you where all of their other efforts failed, then you¡¯ll have done their job for them, and we will be down our best Master!¡±

    ¡°Well, what else could he have meant?¡± I demanded of her, even though I knew she didn¡¯t have any real response to it. ¡°Huh? Why tell me I was going home and settling my demons? Why focus on me at all, to the point where he called me out for getting soft?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know!¡± she barked back at me. ¡°But what I do know is that it won¡¯t do you any good to spend every day for the foreseeable future driving yourself insane with the same questions! You should know better than anyone else ¡ª you work with what you have and count your blessings when you get more! If you can¡¯t get your head on straight and remember that, then maybe you really should sit the next deployment out!¡±

    The shock of it stole the breath from my lungs and the words from my lips. A ringing silence followed, broken only by the huff of the two of us catching our breath, and I had to take a step back, examine her, from the angry flush of her cheeks to the glare she was boring into my head and the heave of her chest as she gulped down air, and realize that she¡¯d meant every word.

    ¡°You¡¯re serious.¡±

    For a second, she looked like she¡¯d surprised even herself, and then she scowled and said, ¡°I am. Your decision to contract with Jack the Ripper was one thing ¡ª even if it was an entirely emotional decision, it was still tactically and strategically sound ¡ª but you¡¯re no good to anyone if you can¡¯t focus on what¡¯s in front of you.¡±

    That¡¯s the problem, I wanted to say, I am focusing on what¡¯s in front of me. Except she had a point. Maybe not the one she¡¯d tried to make, but the larger, more important one: until we knew more about the next Singularity, worrying about its exact shape was just a waste of time and energy.

    The trouble was, just saying so and admitting it didn¡¯t change anything. I¡¯d already known I was worrying too much and that there wasn¡¯t anything I could do about it. Having Marie bring it up when I was already well aware wouldn¡¯t magically make it so that I could ignore it all and it wouldn¡¯t miraculously banish the questions from my mind. Focusing on the here and now, on what was in front of me, and on what I could change with what we knew hadn¡¯t helped.

    ¡°You don¡¯t think I¡¯ve been trying?¡± I finally asked her quietly. ¡°I¡¯ve been doing everything I can to get it out of my head ¡ª and the only thing that accomplished was to bring us here, didn¡¯t it?¡±

    Her brow drew down, furrowed, and her lips thinned into a line. She crossed her arms over her chest. ¡°What is it that you¡¯re really afraid of, then?¡±

    It was blunt, but I preferred blunt, and right then, I think I needed it, because¡­ What was I really afraid of facing in Bet, if that was where the next Singularity took place? What could I have to deal with that really worried me, more than anything else, more than just¡­being back in a place that had made me into a person that I wasn¡¯t exactly proud of anymore?

    I¡­wasn¡¯t sure I really knew. God, there were so many answers. So maybe it was about all of the things I might have to face that changed depending on the when of the Singularity, just as much so about the where. And if I thought about it like that, what was my worst case scenario? What would be the biggest problem for me to face if we wound up back on Bet?

    My immediate thought was having to go back to the time when I was at my darkest, when I was at my most ruthless, when I did things that, in hindsight, I really did wish I¡¯d done differently. Dinah had once told me that if I¡¯d stayed in Brockton, stayed an Undersider, I would have gotten meaner, darker, crueler, but I wasn¡¯t exactly ashamed of that person. I couldn¡¯t say I liked her, Skitter the warlord, not exactly, because she was who she needed to be at that place and that time to do the things that needed doing and face the problems that needed facing.

    Weaver, then? No, of course not. Weaver was a lot of things, but she wasn¡¯t¡­ There wasn¡¯t anything really offensive about her. What I regretted about her, about that time of my life ¡ª if ¡®regret¡¯ was even the right word ¡ª was how focused I¡¯d been on the end of the world and how little room I¡¯d left for anything else in my life. It wasn¡¯t something I had a problem owning up to or admitting, and I¡¯d like to think I learned from that part of me.

    So what about Taylor? Boring, ordinary Taylor, suffering at the hands of a trio of petty kids with their petty cruelties. It was laughable ¡ª what was there to be afraid of? Sophia? I¡¯d come to terms with her pettiness, her smallness, long before I ever sat down in front of her during Gold Morning. Emma? I mourned the girl who was once my best friend, but the bitch who had taken her place was someone whose death I barely noted, that was how little it had all mattered to me at the end. Madison? I honestly couldn¡¯t say I knew or cared what had become of her after I joined the Wards. I couldn¡¯t muster more than a mild curiosity about whether or not she had even survived the end of the world.

    And the rest of their little high school troup was so forgettable that I didn¡¯t even remember all of their names. Julie? Julia? I think there was someone like that hanging onto their coattails. Everyone else was just faceless blobs, and maybe that wasn¡¯t fair and maybe that wasn¡¯t right, and maybe I should have been more scared of what that might mean for how much I might have lost as Khepri, but they were just¡­hangers-on. Interchangeable cogs in the Trio¡¯s sophomoric machinery. Petty and forgettable.

    I guess, then, that it wasn¡¯t really my past that I was scared of facing if we had to go to Earth Bet. No, not at all. The problem was¡­ The problem was¡­

    ¡°What happened,¡± I began, almost a whisper, ¡°after the end?¡±

    It took Marie only a second to make the connection. ¡°After Gold Morning.¡±

    I gave her a jerky nod. ¡°After the world was saved and Scion was defeated and Contessa brought me here¡­ What happened? Who made it out of all of that? Who died? Did¡­ Was everything okay after that, or did something else happen, something that I could have been there to help with, or something that I inadvertently caused by doing things the way I did, and¡­everyone that was left¡­¡±

    I¡¯d fought against the end for a lot of reasons. Some of them were completely selfish, like a refusal to just lay down and accept the end, or bullheaded, like a refusal to be one of those petty bastards who sat on the sidelines and watched people get hurt, or prideful, or any number of less than noble motivations, and some of them had been as simple as having friends, family, and people I cared for whose deaths I couldn¡¯t accept, couldn¡¯t just sit back and watch.

    ¡°What I¡¯m scared of,¡± I eventually decided upon, ¡°is that it all meant nothing. That I did all of that, gave up so much, sacrificed so many things and left behind so many people, and all I managed to do was delay the inevitable.¡±

    It had been more than two-and-a-half years now. If they all managed to pick themselves back up, sort out all their major problems, and survive for that long, then they were probably okay for the long term. But what if they hadn¡¯t? What if we went back to Earth Bet to find nothing but a wasteland and a bunch of mass graves to mark where all of my family and friends had succumbed to the hardships of trying to eke out a life in the aftermath of the apocalypse?

    What if I¡¯d managed to save every other Earth out there, except for my own?

    And that thought, more than anything, bothered me. Alec was gone, killed by Behemoth before the final showdown even kicked off. Brian was¡­probably gone, and I¡¯d come to terms with that. Learned to live with it, even if some part of me clung to a tiny shred of hope. But my dad? Did he make it out? I was pretty sure Lisa and the rest of the Undersiders had survived Scion. Were they still okay? Even if I had to accept never seeing them again, I could deal with that knowing that they were safe, as safe as they could be.

    What if they weren¡¯t?

    ¡°¡­I¡¯m not sure it would do any good to try looking at Earth Bet with LAPLACE,¡± Marie said at length. ¡°In the first place, it might not be the correct Earth to look at. There were portals left behind that people had access to, right? Things were bad enough that the survivors might have migrated to another Earth, and there¡¯s no way we can spare the power necessary to go searching. For that matter, if all of human history has been incinerated as part of¡­the King of Mages¡¯ plan, then¡­¡±

    Then there might not be anything to find in the first place. There wouldn¡¯t be anything to observe except whatever the incinerated Earth looked like. Would it even be possible to look back over the last two years and see what had happened before the Incineration, but after Gold Morning, or would it just be a blank void painted over retroactively?

    Fucking¡­time travel nonsense.

    ¡°I don¡¯t have any better ideas,¡± I admitted.

    She heaved out a sigh, expression miserable. ¡°There isn¡¯t really anything we can do. Unless¡­¡± She slanted a guarded, uncertain look my way and hesitated for a brief moment. ¡°Unless you wanted to sit out the next Singularity.¡±

    It said something about the whole mess that the situation was that the thought of it tempted me, if only for a split second. But no. That wouldn¡¯t solve anything. That would just be me running away from things like a scared little girl hiding from the monster under her bed.

    ¡°The twins have come a long way in the last six months,¡± I said by way of answering, ¡°but no matter how far they¡¯ve come, they¡¯re not prepared for dealing with Earth Bet. Not even if we briefed them on everything to expect,¡± I added, and Marie¡¯s lips drew into a tight line. ¡°Especially not if it¡¯s Bet after Gold Morning. Teacher would have a trap laid out for them within a week.¡±

    Fuck, that just occurred to me. What if Teacher was the one with the Grail? Bad enough having to deal with his normal bullshit, what about if he had Servants around to help? I didn¡¯t even want to imagine what kind of shitshow that would be.

    With my luck, he would have half a dozen Casters and put them all to work fortifying whatever hole he squirreled away in. There might not be any other option than to raze it all to the ground and pick through the pieces after it was over, and that felt like its own kind of failure.

    ¡°If you¡¯re sure,¡± she said.

    ¡°I am.¡±

    From the beginning, there hadn¡¯t been any other choice. As they were now, I think the twins of today could have handled Fuyuki, Orl¨¦ans, and probably Septem without me. They¡¯d come a long way since those first days fumbling around in the forests of France. But Earth Bet? A Singularity where all of the worst parts of my home were thrown at them with Servants in the mix? No. There were just too many things that could blindside them and get them killed.

    Marie didn¡¯t try to change my mind. She didn¡¯t, as Da Vinci would have, leave the offer open and tell me I could take it at any time. She knew me too well for that.

    ¡°Then there¡¯s nothing else we can do, is there?¡± she said grimly. She shook her head. ¡°Still. I¡¯m telling you ¡ª no, as your Director, I¡¯m ordering you, Taylor! Stop worrying about it and focus on the things you can change now! If our worst fears are eventually confirmed, then we can deal with them then!¡±

    It wasn¡¯t that simple, it couldn¡¯t be that simple, and Marie knew it, too. Even so¡­

    My lips quirked up into a small smile. ¡°Of course, Director.¡±

    Naturally, it was harder to put into practice than that. I did my best over the next couple of days to not worry about the future, to not think about what might be waiting for us in the next Singularity, and to some extent, talking about it with Marie seemed to have helped. The questions didn¡¯t disappear and the worries didn¡¯t vanish, but it was easier to set them aside and continue on with life in Chaldea while we waited.

    ¡°Did the Director¡¯s pep talk help?¡± Arash asked me one morning.

    ¡°Some,¡± was the only answer I could give him, because I wasn¡¯t at all surprised he knew about it. ¡°But it was never going to be that simple to fix it all.¡±

    He hummed an acknowledgement. ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, I hope you wind up being worried over nothing.¡±

    ¡°Yeah. Me, too.¡±

    I had some faint hope that just knowing one way or the other would help me to put everything in order. That it was the uncertainty, the not knowing for sure that we would be going to Earth Bet, that made it so unbearable, and that once I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I really was going to have to go back and face all of the things I¡¯d left behind, I¡¯d be able to look it straight on and start making plans. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    But some part of me dreaded what that would mean, too. We¡¯d done everything we could to protect my past and keep it out of the records, to keep anyone from having to lie or hold the secret when this was all over, and just telling them the cliff notes version of Scion already felt like stretching that. Marie had even dropped the slyest of hints about the fact it all happened on an alternate Earth without ever actually saying so, giving us all the ability to pretend no one knew for sure.

    If the next Singularity really was Earth Bet, however, then there wouldn¡¯t be any avoiding it. So much would have to come out, just so that the twins and Mash could be fully briefed on what to expect on the ground. The only things that might remain, the only shield we would all have against the Association¡¯s questions, would be the full knowledge of what Scion was and how passengers worked, as much as Marie and I actually understood them. Those last few secrets might make all the difference.

    And Solomon might just decide to fuck us all over at the end and spill all of it to everyone in earshot, just because. Provided, of course, that the next Singularity didn¡¯t do it sooner, but since he was behind it in the first place, I guess that was basically the same problem, wasn¡¯t it?

    Until we knew for sure one way or the other, though, I just¡­had to be okay. Copacetic. Hope for the best, but prepare for what may wind up being inevitable.

    It was February the twelfth ¡ª a Friday, for whatever that meant anymore ¡ª when next I heard anything at all from Da Vinci. Our usual group had just finished eating lunch, and we were all lounging about while our food digested and making small talk.

    ¡°Ugh,¡± Rika complained. ¡°That was super mean, Senpai! Why did you make us face off against Salter again? I was fine forgetting how close we all came to getting pasted!¡±

    Well, maybe Rika didn¡¯t consider it small talk.

    ¡°It puts things into perspective, doesn¡¯t it?¡± I answered her. ¡°Shows you how far along you¡¯ve come since we first faced her back in Fuyuki.¡±

    And they had. They¡¯d been clumsy and uncertain back then, but watching them tackle the challenges of the first Singularity with the benefit of more confidence and more experience had just highlighted how much they had improved over the past six or so months.

    ¡°It did seem a lot easier than I remembered it being,¡± said Ritsuka. He favored Mash with a smile.  ¡°Of course, Mash has gotten better since then, too.¡±

    The tips of Mash¡¯s ears turned a dark shade of pink, and she ducked her head. It did nothing to hide the pleased smile that tugged the corners of her mouth upwards.

    ¡°It¡¯s only because Senpai has done such a good job as my Master,¡± she demurred. ¡°And¡­because Sir Mordred helped, too. Without her, I might never have unlocked any more of the powers belonging to the Heroic Spirit inside of me.¡±

    ¡°Well, she definitely seemed happy enough to fight against King Arthur,¡± Ritsuka said.

    She certainly had. I¡¯d been tempted to deny the chance outright and make the twins fight King Arthur with just Mash and maybe Emiya, but in the interest of giving them a fair shot, I¡¯d let them pick the one other Servant they could take with them. Mordred had all but demanded it be her, and the twins had been fine with it. I hadn¡¯t seen a reason to say no.

    ¡°Still kinda wish you¡¯d let us have C¨²,¡± Rika muttered petulantly. ¡°Even if it was just a fake, I owe him a bop on the noggin.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think the simulator can give him enough of a personality to take and follow orders,¡± I said, because it was one thing to make an enemy that acted based upon the data from when we actually faced her and another to program an interactive companion who could follow complex commands. ¡°We¡¯ll have to test that and see if it¡¯s even possible to command Servants that don¡¯t go in with us.¡±

    Or I could just ask Da Vinci. She was the one who fixed and maintained the thing, so if anyone had any idea, it would have to be her, wouldn¡¯t it?

    ¡°I guess it does kinda ruin it if he doesn¡¯t actually react when I hit him,¡± Rika allowed reluctantly.

    ¡°What did Mister C¨² do?¡± Jackie asked curiously.

    Rika grimaced, and she shared a look with Ritsuka, and they both glanced my way, like they knew what I would do if they tried to explain everything to Jackie. Being entirely fair, I was decently sure Jackie would understand all of it, because she must have seen things just as bad while living on the streets.

    Prostitutes and the homeless were even more susceptible to that kind of violence than the average woman walking down the street.

    That was when our communicators all beeped, featuring a message from Da Vinci ¡ª ¡®I have a surprise for you, so please come to the Summoning Chamber at your earliest convenience!¡¯ ¡ª and from the looks on everyone else¡¯s faces, they had all gotten the same message.

    ¡°The Summoning Chamber?¡± said Ritsuka, confused, and confirming that his message was the same as mine.

    He looked to me for answers, I didn¡¯t have any better idea what this could be about than he did. Rika, however, suddenly perked up, smiling broadly.

    ¡°Oh!¡± she said. ¡°Oh, oh! Do you think we¡¯re gonna summon Captain Pillows?¡±

    ¡°Captain Pillows?¡± Jackie asked.

    Ritsuka opened his mouth, paused for a moment, and then said, ¡°You know, we just might be?¡±

    ¡°And you can introduce Captain Drake to that song you sang at our beach vacation!¡± Mash added enthusiastically. Ritsuka, however, groaned.

    Rika nodded. ¡°Yeah!¡±

    Beep was the sound of another message arriving to each of our communicators:

    Please bring Jackie and A¨ªfe with you as well!

    Rika¡¯s face fell. ¡°Does that mean¡­no Captain Pillows?¡±

    ¡°Maybe¡­?¡± Ritsuka offered half-heartedly.

    I reached down my bond to A¨ªfe. We need you to meet us at the Summoning Chamber.

    Got it, she replied, no questions asked. I¡¯ll be there shortly.

    To the twins, I said, ¡°Well, there¡¯s only one way for us to find out, isn¡¯t there?¡±

    So we left the cafeteria behind and made our way to the Summoning Chamber together, Jackie tagging along. She didn¡¯t ask any questions either, just trusted that, whatever was going on, there wasn¡¯t any need to worry.

    With Da Vinci¡­ Well, no, I couldn¡¯t say that trust would be misplaced, could I? As eccentric as she acted, she was also just as reliable. She wasn¡¯t really that much of a mad scientist.

    A¨ªfe, Marie, Da Vinci, Romani, and even Meuniere were already waiting for us when the doors to the Summoning Chamber whooshed open to admit us, and Da Vinci greeted us all with a smile.

    ¡°Good afternoon, everyone!¡± she said. ¡°Sorry to interrupt whatever you might have been in the middle of, but something I¡¯ve been working on quite a bit over the last couple months has finally borne fruit, and there seemed to be no better time than the present to share it with you all!¡±

    ¡°This isn¡¯t another summoning?¡± asked A¨ªfe.

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid not,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°Although the last one went as smoothly as we could have hoped, we¡¯re not looking to expand our roster more just yet. No, no, I¡¯ve called all of you here ¡ª and you and Jackie in particular, Queen A¨ªfe ¡ª for something else entirely.¡±

    Marie and Romani, at least, seemed to have some idea what she was talking about. ¡°Wait,¡± said Romani, ¡°does that mean you actually finished it? I thought you were still expecting it to take another month or two!¡±

    ¡°I was ¡ª a month ago,¡± said Da Vinci, smiling and wagging a finger at him. ¡°Since then, I¡¯ve been hard at work, and I¡¯m proud to say that I¡¯m fairly sure I¡¯ve managed to refine the process well enough for use. I wouldn¡¯t have brought everyone here otherwise.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re serious,¡± said Marie, brow furrowed. ¡°It¡¯s actually ready?¡±

    ¡°All that is left now is to test it,¡± Da Vinci answered. ¡°Hence why I asked both Jackie and Queen A¨ªfe to come.¡±

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m lost,¡± said Rika. ¡°What are we talking about, exactly?¡±

    So was I. What was it that A¨ªfe and Jackie had in common that this thing, whatever it was, affected them both?

    ¡°A system for the editing of Saint Graphs,¡± said Da Vinci, still smiling.

    Mash gasped. ¡°That¡¯s possible?¡±

    Da Vinci¡¯s smile tightened, and she made a strange gesture, lifting first one shoulder, then the other, and then back and forth like she was juggling an invisible ball. ¡°To a degree,¡± she eventually admitted. ¡°We won¡¯t be doing anything drastic, such as altering classes or anything like that, but in theory, we should be able to make smaller changes. For example¡­¡±

    She tapped her staff, and above the faceted gem in its top, a hologram appeared, depicting ¡ª

    Jackie gasped. ¡°That¡¯s me!¡±

    ¡ª Jackie, dressed in something far more modest than her current outfit. Large portions of her current clothing remained, including the tights she wore on her legs and the black vest, but more layers had been added to cover up her skin. A knee-length skirt with a slit up either side to keep her range of motion, a pair of biking shorts to cover her upper legs and that thong, and a dark gray shirt with sleeves that ended just below her elbow, tied off there with maroon-colored ribbons, which matched the silk cravat fastened with a brooch around her neck. Even the bandages had been replaced by sleek, black gloves, giving her an almost professional look.

    ¡°I went through a few designs before settling on one that didn¡¯t fundamentally alter her existing clothing,¡± Da Vinci explained. ¡°If need be, we can make further changes, but since this is also a proof of concept, I thought it better to limit things a little. What do you think?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s good,¡± was the only answer I could give her, because it really was. I looked down at Jackie. ¡°What do you think, Jackie?¡±

    Her response was a broad smile. ¡°We like it!¡±

    ¡°Would you like to try it on?¡± asked Da Vinci.

    Jackie looked to me almost like she was asking permission, and when I gave her a nod, she turned back to Da Vinci and gave a nod of her own. ¡°Mm!¡±

    Da Vinci gestured to the plinth that served as the base of the summoning system with a sweep of her arm. ¡°Then if you would step this way, Jackie? I realize that you haven¡¯t had the chance to experience the FATE System for yourself, but I assure you, all you need to do is stand on the platform.¡±

    Jackie left my side and made her way over to the raised base where the other summonings had been performed, and she hesitated for a bare second, then hopped on up to stand in the center. Near me, Mash made an abortive motion to follow her, but stopped before she could go more than a single step.

    ¡°Miss Da Vinci?¡± she asked. ¡°Don¡¯t we need my shield?¡±

    ¡°Not for this, no,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°In fact, in the future, I should be able to perform this function remotely in my workshop, if and when we need to make use of it again. For now, however, Jackie is already here, and we¡¯re not performing a summoning, exactly, so much as using the system¡¯s infrastructure to edit the data contained in her Saint Graph. Meuniere, if you would?¡±

    Over at the console, Meuniere nodded. ¡°Right! The module is loaded, the design has been received, Saint Graph stability shows no signs of deviation or damage, and spiritron flow is optimal. Modifying Spiritron Dress in three¡­two¡­one¡­¡±

    He pressed a button on the console, and Jackie let out a gasp as the platform beneath her feet lit up in the familiar design of the magic circle we¡¯d seen at every summoning. Three rings of light rose up around her, hovering, and then spun about with a familiar grinding noise as they whirled. Jackie¡¯s cloak and hair fluttered in the wind, and it was strong enough to lift my hair up just a little, too, like a stiff breeze on an autumn day.

    And then, suddenly, the rings collapsed inwards, and Jackie¡¯s body disappeared beneath their light. I squinted against the glare, but it was as though Jackie herself had become a being of light and energy, because all I could see was a vague silhouette in her shape and size.

    Before my eyes, that silhouette morphed and changed, and the ragged cloak shrank away as though it was being absorbed into her body. The thin beams of her arms thickened and grew, undulating in the wind, and the flapping hem of the cloak hugged closer to her thighs ¡ª the skirt taking form, I realized, as the sleeves must have on her arms. A pair of tendrils grew from just under where her elbows were meant to be, wiggling and writhing.

    A few seconds after it began, it ended, and the light faded into color and flesh. There, standing on the platform, was Jackie, only now she was dressed in the outfit from Da Vinci¡¯s hologram, down to the ribbons that tied her sleeves to her forearms.

    Jackie looked down at herself, twisting and turning to try and see her new clothes. The familiar shapes of her sheaths remained, and so did the vest and the tights, but now, nearly every inch of exposed skin had been covered. Not only was she more modest, but now she was stealthier, because I could only imagine how easily she would blend into the shadows now, especially at night.

    ¡°It worked,¡± Marie breathed, sounding stunned.

    ¡°Oh my god!¡± Rika gushed. ¡°She looks even cuter in person! Like a little Victorian murder machine!¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know if I¡¯d put it that way,¡± Ritsuka hedged, ¡°but yeah. Definitely better than what she was wearing before.¡±

    Jackie turned to Da Vinci, and Da Vinci smiled and gave her a nod. ¡°That¡¯s it, Jackie. You can come back down from there now.¡±

    And Jackie hopped down from the plinth and rushed over to me, throwing out her arms so that I could see the entire thing at once. ¡°Mommy? Do you like it?¡±

    I gave her a smile. ¡°You look good, Jackie.¡± I nodded over in Da Vinci¡¯s direction. ¡°Now, what do you say?¡±

    She gave Da Vinci a bright, megawatt smile. ¡°Thank you, Miss Da Vinci!¡±

    ¡°It was no trouble, Jackie,¡± Da Vinci said smoothly, amused by the byplay. ¡°No trouble at all.¡±

    ¡°So how do I fit in this?¡± A¨ªfe asked, although she seemed like she had something of an idea. ¡°This thing¡­it can¡¯t give us access to other Noble Phantasms, can it?¡±

    Da Vinci¡¯s tight smile made a reappearance. ¡°Unfortunately, not in its current iteration. It might not even be possible without needing to resummon you directly from the Throne, and I¡¯m sure we would all prefer to keep that as an option of truly last resort, wouldn¡¯t we?¡±

    A sigh hissed out of A¨ªfe¡¯s nostrils. ¡°Then why am I here?¡±

    ¡°Because,¡± said Da Vinci, ¡°while I can¡¯t add a Noble Phantasm into your Saint Graph, I can, shall we say, tweak your skills to give you access to a version of one of your Noble Phantasms, of a sort. Now that Jackie has proven the concept of editing a Saint Graph is possible, shall we see if it would be possible to reach into the Throne and use the data there to modify the appropriate skill?¡±

    Wait, what?

    ¡°Th-that¡¯s possible?¡± Mash asked incredulously.

    Romani coughed into his fist. ¡°Theoretically¡­¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s actually you who proved it, Mash,¡± said Da Vinci, smiling at her.

    Mash blinked. ¡°I-I did?¡±

    Rika gasped. ¡°When she went Super Saiyan!¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right!¡± Da Vinci agreed. ¡°During London, when you unlocked further depths of the power belonging to the Heroic Spirit inside of you, you unlocked a new skill and increased the strength of the ones you already possessed. You underwent what I have decided to term a ¡®Saint Graph Readvent¡¯ ¡ª Ascension, if you want something short and pithy.¡±

    She gestured to the plinth again. ¡°What we¡¯re going to attempt to do here with A¨ªfe is essentially the same thing ¡ª we¡¯re going to modify her Saint Graph by tapping into the Heroic Spirit on the Throne and remapping certain parts of the data there onto her current data.¡±

    That was¡­ That was very easily a game changer, if it worked out the way Da Vinci was saying it would. We already had several very strong Servants, and if we could increase their strength like this, then that was going to make a big difference in the caliber of enemies we could handle in the future. It could even be the thing we needed to find and exploit Solomon¡¯s weakness, whatever that wound up being.

    But it also sounded too good to be true.

    ¡°What¡¯s the catch?¡±

    Da Vinci held up a finger. ¡°The catch is similarity. There¡¯s going to be a very hard limit on exactly how far we can modify and strengthen a Servant¡¯s existing Saint Graph. A¨ªfe, for example, I¡¯m afraid we won¡¯t be able to do more than once, if only because her Saint Graph is already approaching the limits of what she can do as a Rider. However!¡± She smiled again. ¡°I think your one skill, Discernment of Potential, functions closely enough that we should be able to restore some degree of your tutelary aspects, Queen A¨ªfe.¡±

    Just like that, she dropped another bombshell on us and told us all that the one thing that had been missing from A¨ªfe the entire time could be replaced. Even A¨ªfe looked stunned. ¡°You¡¯re sure of that.¡±

    It was phrased like a statement, but it sounded like a question.

    ¡°This is largely untested, so very little of it is sure,¡± Da Vinci said carefully. ¡°I¡¯m confident enough in our success, however, that I wouldn¡¯t have suggested it otherwise. In any case, the worst case scenario is that we fail, and then we will simply be where we were before, won¡¯t we?¡±

    It still sounded too good to be true. Not everything had to be like that moment of desperation where I had Panacea play around with my Corona, but it was still hard to believe that there weren¡¯t any drawbacks to this situation at all.

    ¡°If I need to make it an order, I can,¡± Marie said. ¡°It shouldn¡¯t need to be said how much this could change things if it works. This isn¡¯t the time for hesitation.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ll have to forgive my skepticism, Director,¡± A¨ªfe replied coolly. ¡°It isn¡¯t every day when things you believed impossible become possible.¡±

    ¡°Ah, but Queen A¨ªfe,¡± said Da Vinci, lips curling into a grin that looked half manic, ¡°that¡¯s precisely the kind of Heroic Spirit I am! One who makes the impossible into the possible! If you cannot trust in the process, then trust the hand that crafted it!¡±

    A¨ªfe looked at her and met her gaze, and for a long moment, they stared at each other in silence, one stony-faced and one still grinning. Finally, A¨ªfe¡¯s lips pressed together and she gave a nod, and then she marched over to the plinth where Jackie had just been standing. She stepped onto it and turned around, crossing her arms.

    ¡°Whenever you¡¯re ready.¡±

    Da Vinci made her way over to the console and gently nudged the technician there out of the way, telling him, ¡°I¡¯ll handle it this time, Meuniere, if you please.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± said Meuniere, stepping aside, ¡°if you say so.¡±

    Da Vinci¡¯s staff vanished into spirit form, and so did her oversized mechanical gauntlet, and she set both hands on the console¡¯s touch screen. Her fingers danced across its surface, tapping away with a speed that would have made professional typists green with envy.

    ¡°Beginning the procedure now,¡± she announced, and as she did, the magic circle designed into the platform lit up again, casting A¨ªfe in a pale, white glow. ¡°Establishing baseline parameters. Heroic Spirit ID: A¨ªfe. Mythological origin: the Ulster Cycle, Ireland. Servant Class: Rider.¡±

    The glowing circle flashed, and just like with Jackie, a trio of rings rose into the air around A¨ªfe and hung there as though waiting for permission.

    ¡°Establishing connection to the Throne of Heroes,¡± said Da Vinci. A moment later, her console beeped. ¡°Connection established. Target Noble Phantasm: Aite L¨¢echrad. Skill to target for modification: Discernment of Potential. Composite skill identification: Wisdom of the Great Teacher. Synchronizing with Heroic Spirit A¨ªfe.¡±

    Once again, as they had with Jackie, the rings of light spun, and a wind kicked up around them, tossing my hair about ¡ª mine and everyone else¡¯s in the room. Faster and faster and faster they went, and the wind grew stronger and stronger with them as a high-pitched whine filled the whole chamber. The light from the rings seemed to seep out of them like running ink, streaking towards A¨ªfe and sinking into her skin, but they were moving so fast that I wasn¡¯t sure I wasn¡¯t imagining it.

    And then, at last, they collapsed inwards and towards her body, coating her like glowing paint. Unlike with Jackie, however, her silhouette didn¡¯t change and her clothing didn¡¯t morph. Her shape remained exactly the same.

    Slowly, the glow began to fade, revealing exactly the same woman underneath. The faint echo of that high-pitched whine, however, was a little slower to leave my ears.

    ¡°Synchronization complete!¡± Da Vinci said triumphantly. ¡°Skill modification: success! Connection to the Throne of Heroes terminated.¡± She looked towards the platform with a smile. ¡°Well? How do you feel?

    A¨ªfe didn¡¯t answer immediately. Instead, she took a slow, deep breath, letting it seethe out of her mouth like a sigh.

    Abruptly, her face stretched into the shark-like grin I¡¯d seen on her so much in Septem, all edges and teeth. ¡°Say, Master,¡± she said almost coyly, ¡°you wanted to learn how to use my runes properly, didn¡¯t you?¡±

    She looked at me, her eyes glittering. ¡°How would you like to give it another try?¡±

    <hr>

    SKILL RANK UP!

    Discernment of Potential: B ¡ú Wisdom of the Great Teacher: A+

    A skill that denotes one¡¯s status as a great teacher who has raised many students. With the exception of burdens of the body such as divinity and those particular of certain heroes, almost all Skills can be displayed with a proficiency up to the level of A Rank. Towards those she recognizes as possessing latent potential, it is also possible to endow these skills upon others, including living humans. Furthermore, the farther away from A¨ªfe¡¯s own natural talents or those of her student a skill is, the more effort must be exerted to display it at a respectable level.

 Homemade Chocolate

    Chapter CLXIX: Homemade Chocolate

    It was not, it turned out, quite as simple or as easy as it sounded, something that I should have expected from the beginning. Despite being a very noticeable and very potent upgrade over her previous skill, it didn¡¯t come without caveats or without limitations. We couldn¡¯t, for example, just teach everyone in the facility the martial arts of the ancient Celts whose techniques had let her obliterate Flauros and punch an enormous hole through the side of Romulus¡¯ palace, even though that would have been an incredible advantage over the enemy.

    She couldn¡¯t even teach me how to do that.

    When I stood across from her and tried my very first Thunder Feat, she caught my fist as though I was a little girl playing pretend.

    ¡°It¡¯s as I expected,¡± she said. ¡°No, I can already see it here and now. Even if we spent the next ten years honing your body to the absolute limit, you will never be able to perform the heights of my martial arts.¡±

    ¡°Because I¡¯m a modern human,¡± I concluded.

    She nodded. ¡°Yes.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t unexpected. If the myths were as true as all of these Heroic Spirits existing implied they were, then human limitations had changed drastically over the last two thousand years. Back then, men and women could push the boundaries and break through the limits of the human body through sheer effort. They could learn to do things like leap thirty feet straight up in the air or throw punches whose shockwaves could kill a hundred men at once.

    The vertical jump height record for modern man ¡ª I looked it up later, just for reference ¡ª was fifty inches.

    ¡°Not all of the techniques would be useless to you,¡± A¨ªfe told me. ¡°However, the furthest reaches that would have been called mastery during my life will forever be beyond you.¡±

    ¡°Even if I enhanced my body with runes?¡± I challenged.

    ¡°Even then,¡± said A¨ªfe. ¡°Your body may be enhanced, but it won¡¯t change the power of your spirit, the magical energy you have access to. Those limitations are harder to break.¡±

    I heaved a breath out of my nostrils like a sigh.

    Another limitation: the skills she taught weren¡¯t just magically downloaded into your brain the way certain kinds of Trumps could do back on Earth Bet. They had to be taught to her students through time and effort as any skill had to be, it was just that the time and effort required was drastically reduced. Things that could take years to learn could be learned in weeks. Things that might require decades of focused study could be learned in mere months.

    ¡°Let¡¯s focus on runes then,¡± I decided. ¡°Those, at least, are something I can learn to master.¡±

    She nodded. ¡°Of course.¡±

    So that¡¯s what we did. From the gym, we went to the room we¡¯d been using for me to learn runes since the start, a specially prepared workshop in all but name, and she and I dove back into the subject in a way we hadn¡¯t for nearly two months.

    Five minutes in, I could see the difference. The way she taught me changed. The approaches, the techniques, the structure of the lesson. I couldn¡¯t say it was night and day from how we¡¯d been doing it before, but it was easy to tell that things weren¡¯t the same as they had been before.

    And with those changes, the magic of runes opened up to me in a way they hadn¡¯t since I started. The parts that I had been struggling with became¡­not simple, but far easier to grasp. I could see the mistakes I¡¯d been making, the bad assumptions that had sabotaged me before, and within the first half an hour, I could see where and how I¡¯d screwed up in that last Caster simulation with the twins. I¡¯d totally bungled that array that had nearly destroyed the whole mountain when Emiya tripped it, because duh, creating a chained explosive wasn¡¯t as easy as removing the flash from a flashbang and layering it across the ground in a daisy chain.

    I felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner.

    By the time we were wrapping up the lesson, I¡¯d even figured out how to improve upon my flashbangs, the clumsy imitations I¡¯d made of the ones first C¨²chulainn and then A¨ªfe had given us in Fuyuki and Septem. Tweaks that would increase the potency of the flash and the bang to more effectively stun the enemy while reducing the actual damage they did when they went off, and then tweaks that went in the opposite direction and turned my flashbangs into outright grenades.

    It was still going to take me a while to master them. I wouldn¡¯t be pulling off some of the really crazy, really wild stuff for weeks or months yet, I could already tell that after that first lesson, but healing? Enhancing my clothes so it was more like I was wearing armor? Giving myself a boost to my strength and speed? Those were all simple enough that I could have them down pat well enough to use them in the next Singularity with confidence.

    I was going to have to see if it was possible to weave runes into my clothes. See if A¨ªfe knew how to do it, so I could make an undershirt and maybe a pair of leggings that could at least keep me alive if an enemy Servant ever tried to stab me.

    Imagining what we could do if all of our Servants had the ability to use these runes ¡ª or her martial arts, for that matter, and punch all our problems away ¡ª had me turning to her and suggesting the idea. What if Emiya and Arash could use the Thunder Feat? What if Jeanne Alter could carve runes with her flames?

    But A¨ªfe gave me a complicated look and told me:

    ¡°It¡¯s not that simple.¡±

    ¡°How so?¡± I asked.

    ¡°There are several things that make it infeasible,¡± she explained. ¡°Firstly, it would be difficult for their Saint Graphs to support too many additions like that. If it was even possible for them to acquire whatever skills they liked, then the bloat would quickly increase the cost of supporting them in the field. The extra strain on you Masters would see all three of you struggling to deploy us nearly as freely as you do now, and the energy provided to our shadows using Da Vinci¡¯s system would run out much faster. That is why I never planned on using this modified version of my Noble Phantasm to acquire any skills permanently.¡±

    Ah. And so any enemy that couldn¡¯t be taken out quickly enough ¡ª like a strong Servant with support from a Grail or another one of those Demon Gods that we were almost certainly going to be seeing more of going forward ¡ª would be able to outlast us and wear us down through sheer attrition.

    If we had tried this idea before facing Herakles, then we might have just lost to him.

    ¡°Secondly,¡± she went on, ¡°skills that are further from my expertise or sphere of influence are harder to acquire and would need more energy, to the point that they may not be worth it. Ask me to teach you swordplay or spearmanship, and it would be easy. Ask me to teach you the subtle art of infiltrating an enemy stronghold without being detected, and it would be a struggle to reach even basic competency. This matter of compatibility goes in the opposite direction, as well. Trying to teach Mordred stealth would like as not be a futile effort.¡±

    Rika must have been rubbing off on me, because the absurd image of Mordred dressed like a ninja popped into my head.

    ¡°It probably would be, yeah.¡±

    A¨ªfe smirked briefly, probably thinking something very similar, and then it died as she finished with, ¡°And lastly, on the matter of Servants specifically¡­ Da Vinci¡¯s genius cannot be understated, but there was a cost to building this skill by merging it with my Discernment of Potential. As a Noble Phantasm, it would have been much more like an Authority of teaching, applicable to all. As it is now, however, it is built upon potential, and Servants do not have anywhere near as much as living humans do.¡±

    What? ¡°What do you mean, Servants don¡¯t have as much potential as living humans do?¡±

    ¡°Because we are dead,¡± she told me bluntly. ¡°The Heroic Spirit A¨ªfe has already lived her life. Her story is long since over. It isn¡¯t impossible for us to grow and change ¡ª but you already understand, don¡¯t you? In order for anything to carry over between this version of me and the next, something so important and so impactful must occur that it must stand out amongst the countless memories of an infinite number of summonings.¡±

    Understanding dawned on me. Oh. Heroic Spirits were not calcified, that much I¡¯d known for a while, but while time and shifting social standards could change them in ways both subtle and glaring, the core of who they were was set. They were history, and only something like a Holy Grail had the power to change history.

    So it looked like any fantasies I might have had about turning each of our Servants into unstoppable warriors with the ability to overwhelm any threat that came their way would have to remain just that: fantasies. The only way Arash would be shattering boulders anytime soon was with his arrows, and he could already do that.

    As disappointing as it was, that hope hadn¡¯t had long to live and take root, so it was relatively easy to let it go. No plans had yet been made that accounted for our Servants all being one man armies ¡ª any more than they already were, at least ¡ª and no changes had been made to any policies or technology to accommodate them. The only thing that had been dashed were vague daydreams of invincibility.

    ¡°What about Mash?¡±

    A¨ªfe considered the question for a moment, brow furrowing in thought. It took her several long seconds to answer: ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be impossible. Mash may be a Demi-Servant, but at her core, she is still a living human being. Teaching her martial skills to aid her in combat may interfere with her growth, however, if they conflict or replace the skills and innate knowledge of the Heroic Spirit inside of her that she hasn¡¯t awoken yet.¡±

    ¡°If only Galahad could be so cooperative,¡± I said dryly.

    ¡°If only,¡± A¨ªfe agreed. If she hadn¡¯t known who was freeloading in Mash¡¯s body before then, she gave no indication. ¡°Mash¡¯s journey is one she must complete on her own. Even if we don¡¯t like it, we are not the ones who determine how far along it she is and how much farther she has yet to go.¡±

    And so if we wanted to help her, we had to be very careful that we didn¡¯t stymy her growth or offend Galahad¡¯s exacting standards. Great. That was going to require a lot of careful planning and maybe some collaboration with Da Vinci and Marie, who¡­come to think of it, might not even know that it was Galahad that Mash was playing host to.

    ¡°We¡¯ll figure it out,¡± I told her. ¡°In the meantime, it looks like you¡¯ll have to make do with just the twins and me.¡±

    She smirked. ¡°I suppose at least one of you is attentive enough to learn all you can. Rika, on the other hand¡­¡±

    Considering how much the girl bemoaned having had to learn English, I guess it made a kind of sense that she wouldn¡¯t be too eager to subject herself to learning an even harder and more obscure one. I would have been a bit more sympathetic if it wasn¡¯t runic magic that the entire Department of Archaeology in the Clock Tower would sell their firstborns to have.

    Over the next several days, I noticed my proficiency in runes steadily increasing ¡ª not, unfortunately, as quickly as I would have liked, but more than fast enough to outpace how things had been going before. That wasn¡¯t a hard thing, so saying, because I¡¯d been all but stalled for the better part of the last two or three months, and even so, I didn¡¯t have many complaints about it.

    It could have been going faster, of course it could, and putting them all together into complicated arrays that wouldn¡¯t just explode in my face was going to take at least a few weeks more to grasp in any respectable way, but I was finally progressing again. My impatience could be mollified at least a little by that.

    According to A¨ªfe, the twins were even starting to catch up with me. I guess the fact that both the runes and their own native language was logographic might have been helping them, now that A¨ªfe had some of her tutelary aspects back to aid the process.

    There was still no news yet on the next Singularity, so the next interruption to my routine came on February the fourteenth, roughly half a week after Jackie got her new clothes and A¨ªfe her new skill. The day started as normal, with me getting up, going for a workout in the gym, then heading back to my room for a quick shower with Jackie ¡ª and in hindsight, she had taken to daily bathing with an ease and comfort that I was grateful for ¡ª and then we went together to the cafeteria for breakfast.

    That was, of course, when I discovered that the cafeteria had been decorated. Again. Paper hearts in all kinds of sizes were plastered over the walls, some red, some pink, some white, with some grouped together and others standing alone. The tables had been draped with tablecloths that depicted more hearts. Heart-shaped paperweights sat in rows down the middle of each table, holding the tablecloths in place and serving as anchors for bright red heart balloons that had things like ¡°Be Mine¡± and ¡°Love You¡± written on them in cursive. Bowls of candy hearts sat out on either end of each table.

    There were even red ribbons tied around the back of every chair, knotted into huge, floppy bows that just so happened to form the vague shape of a heart.

    If I hadn¡¯t already figured it out, the big banner hanging above the counter where Emiya was serving food proclaimed, ¡°Happy Valentine¡¯s Day!¡± in bold, capital letters would have told me exactly what was going on.

    It dawned on me that this couldn¡¯t just be Emiya¡¯s work. He was versatile and he could do more with projection magic than his supposed limitations hinted at, but I just couldn¡¯t imagine him doing all of this or sneaking around at night in between the shift changes while the place was empty and putting up all of these decorations. He wasn¡¯t incapable of practical jokes, but this just didn¡¯t seem his style, and thinking back on it, the Christmas and New Year¡¯s decorations hadn¡¯t either.

    But I knew two people in this facility who would do something like that, and who would get a kick out of it. One of them was content to spend most of his time in his room writing more stories. The other was talented enough, motivated enough, and skilled enough to pull it all off on her own, and more than willing to tweak Marie¡¯s nose for the fun of it if it was all harmless.

    So when I walked up to the counter and greeted Emiya, the first thing I said was, ¡°This is Da Vinci¡¯s work, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    Emiya blinked at me for a moment, and then smirked. ¡°Finally figured it out, did you?¡±This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

    I felt stupid for not realizing it sooner.

    And then, just to rub it in, Emiya loaded up my plate with a stack of heart-shaped pancakes. Fuck you, too, I thought, although not with much heat, but with Jackie there, I held my tongue. She¡¯d heard worse, I was sure, but the very last thing I needed right then was her picking up a swearing habit, guileless as she was.

    I settled for a glower to let him know exactly how amused I was, but it just made him smirk wider, sadist that he was. See if I came to his rescue the next time Rika tried to rope him into some shenanigans.

    To go that extra little mile, it turned out when I bit into them that they were chocolate chip pancakes. Jackie, at least, was delighted, eating them with a big smile and enthusiasm, and it wasn¡¯t that they were bad, but I wasn¡¯t all that interested in Valentine¡¯s Day or all of the things that came with it. I hadn¡¯t been for a while, first because the Trio had used it as a way to torment me and later because there just hadn¡¯t been anyone I was interested in celebrating it with, and the latter part hadn¡¯t really changed.

    Thankfully, the pattern of the last two years held. None of the technicians in there with me tried to hand me a box of chocolates, and frankly, most of them looked like they felt just as awkward as I did about the whole thing. I didn¡¯t think any of them were dating, but aside from the occasional shared bath in the simulator with Sylvia, I didn¡¯t talk much to any of them either. A consequence of our schedules generally not aligning anywhere except for here in the cafeteria, to some extent.

    I was grateful that I didn¡¯t have to handle the awkwardness. If someone did hand me Valentine¡¯s chocolate, I wasn¡¯t sure how I was supposed to react or what it was even supposed to mean.

    Of course, then Ritsuka and Rika had to march into the cafeteria and throw that all out the window. The former carried a stack of plain white boxes tied shut with red ribbons, and he followed the latter around as she started handing them out to everyone there in the cafeteria. They circled the entire room, gifting a box to every person there, including Emiya and Ren¨¦e (and she looked utterly bewildered, or at least as much as she ever did).

    Eventually, they came up to me, and with a smile, Rika held out a box each to me and to Jackie and said, ¡°Happy Valentine¡¯s Day!¡±

    I eyed the boxes skeptically. ¡°¡­Thanks?¡±

    Rika blinked at me, brow furrowing, and looked at the boxes as though she didn¡¯t understand why I wasn¡¯t taking them. I¡­wasn¡¯t sure why she was even handing them to me in the first place. Jackie, maybe, because who passed up the opportunity to hand a kid sweets? And the fact that she¡¯d gone about handing them out to everyone told me this definitely wasn¡¯t some sort of confession or something like that.

    Did friends gift chocolate to each other on Valentine¡¯s? It had been so long¡­

    Ritsuka coughed into his hand. ¡°It¡¯s obligation chocolate.¡±

    What? ¡°Obligation chocolate?¡±

    ¡°Chocolate you give to coworkers and friends,¡± he clarified. ¡°Usually, it¡¯s just from girls to boys, but everyone¡¯s been working so hard for us the last six months that Rika thought this would be a good way to show her appreciation.¡±

    Oh. I accepted the boxes of chocolate, setting one aside for Jackie and leaving one for myself. I could take it in the spirit it was meant, because it didn¡¯t look like it was more complicated than that and there was no reason to make it more complicated.

    ¡°You don¡¯t agree?¡± I asked, because I noticed that he was just carrying them and Rika was the one giving them all away.

    It was Ritsuka¡¯s turn to blink for a moment, confused, and then the lightbulb went off and his head bobbed. ¡°Oh, no, that¡¯s not how it works. Valentine¡¯s Day is for girls to give chocolates to boys. White Day is the opposite, where boys return the favor. I¡¯m¡­not sure that nuance will translate all that well, so I guess I have until next month to think about whether or not I should do anything, too.¡±

    Ah. I¡­think I was understanding what he meant. So in Japan, girls gave boys chocolate on Valentine¡¯s Day, and on White Day, boys gave chocolate to girls. Obligation chocolate was for friends, coworkers ¡ª classmates, too, presumably ¡ª and I was guessing that there was a special kind of chocolate between couples or someone you were trying to woo.

    ¡°Emiya made these for me,¡± Rika confessed. I paused, looking over to the counter, where Emiya continued cooking, completely ignorant.

    ¡°He didn¡¯t show you how to make them yourself?¡±

    Rika grimaced. ¡°Ugh. No offense, Senpai, because I like you and all, but I don¡¯t swing that way, remember?¡±

    ¡°Honmei chocolate is for couples and confessions, and it¡¯s special because you make it yourself, from the heart,¡± Ritsuka added helpfully, giving me the term for that special chocolate just for lovers.

    Ah. I eyed the boxes of chocolate still in Ritsuka¡¯s arms. ¡°Have you given the Director or Romani theirs yet?¡±

    ¡°Not yet!¡± Rika chirped, and then she giggled. ¡°I¡¯m saving them for last so I can savor the expression on Boss Lady¡¯s face!¡±

    ¡­Yeah, that was Rika. Maybe I should warn Marie what to expect so she didn¡¯t think one of her Masters was sweet on her? Romani would probably get it right away, though, so I wasn¡¯t as sure that he needed the warning, and Da Vinci might turn it around on Rika. Maybe I should also send Muninn down to Da Vinci¡¯s workshop so I could get a front row seat on that.

    A thought occurred to me. Hold on a minute. ¡°Did you rope Mash into this, too?¡±

    The two of them shared a look, casting each other a sidelong glance. ¡°Actually,¡± Ritsuka began, ¡°now that you mention it¡­¡±

    ¡°We haven¡¯t seen Cinnabon all morning,¡± said Rika. ¡°Which is strange, because she¡¯s usually the one waking us up. It¡¯s not like her to be tardy to the party.¡±

    I think I might know why.

    It was more surprising that Rika hadn¡¯t given it any thought, all things considered. She knew her brother and Mash were slowly orbiting each other, had teased them on it several times over the last few months, in fact, and had all but given the whole thing her seal of approval. Given that Mash had at least some understanding of Japanese culture and traditions ¡ª more than I did, at least ¡ª I was decently sure that she was preparing some of that honmei chocolate for Ritsuka, and that was why she was nowhere to be found.

    It¡¯s unexpectedly bold of her, though, I thought, amused. I figured it was going to take a bigger push to get the two of them to finally make something of what had been hanging in the air between them, or maybe that they would slowly meet each other in the middle at some point.

    In hindsight, Valentine¡¯s Day was actually a pretty good excuse for her to make a move.

    Good for you, Mash. I just hoped it turned out okay. The both of them were still so young, but this might wind up being the only chance Mash had at anything like an actual romance, and if¡­if we were going to lose her anyway by this time next year, then I wanted it to be a happy romance. Something she could smile about to the very end.

    Unbidden, Marisbury floated up to the center of my thoughts again, and a familiar flash of hate curdled in my belly and soured any pleasant feelings there.

    ¡°Mm!¡± Jackie, of course, was already digging into the chocolates the twins had given her. There was even a little brown stain on one corner of her mouth. ¡°We like this chocolate! It¡¯s very good!¡±

    ¡°Glad you like it, Jackie!¡± Rika chirped.

    Laying a gentle hand over Jackie¡¯s the way my mother would have was becoming so familiar that I didn¡¯t even need to ask the memory of Mom how to do it anymore. ¡°If you eat all of it right now, you won¡¯t have any for later.¡±

    Jackie stopped mid-chew, blinking down at the open box and the heart-shaped treats within. ¡°Oh.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure Emiya or Ren¨¦e would be glad to make you some more, if you asked,¡± Ritsuka told her.

    Some part of me wanted to say, ¡®but if all you eat is chocolate all day, you¡¯ll get fat and rot your teeth out,¡¯ except that wasn¡¯t true since she was a Servant, and the rest of me was too caught between bewildered and amused at the realization of how instinctively I¡¯d been ready to grasp at that to actually get it out. I knew I¡¯d been acting more motherly to Jackie than I¡¯d ever known I was capable of, but had it really gotten that far that I was pulling up the traditional bits of motherly wisdom that easily?

    I wasn¡¯t sure if Servants could get a sugar high, and so I wasn¡¯t sure it was true when I said it, but I still said, ¡°But you¡¯ll give yourself a stomach ache if you eat all of that chocolate at once, so save some for later, Jackie.¡±

    Jackie took this as though it was the gospel truth and nodded. ¡°Okay, Mommy. We will.¡±

    Very seriously, very deliberately, and very carefully, she closed up the box of chocolates and set it aside. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if she wound up rationing them over the course of the next week or two, which would be quite a bit more self-control than I¡¯d ever had at her¡­physical age. Emma and I would have snuck it into my room or hers and gorged ourselves until we were sick, complete with the knowing look from our mothers later on when we complained of a stomach ache.

    I guess some part of me still missed those days.

    ¡°Are you done with breakfast?¡± I asked Jackie.

    Hurriedly, she grabbed her glass and downed the rest of her orange juice in one go, and when she set it back down on her tray, a wet strip of pulp sat above her upper lip like a mustache. Brightly, she answered, ¡°Now we are!¡±

    I couldn¡¯t stop myself from smiling and wondering if this was what it had been like for my mom back when I was a little girl as I gathered up her tray and mine, stacking the plates so I could stack the trays. The twins watched me closely.

    ¡°Now that I think about it,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°what did Emiya and Ren¨¦e make for breakfast this morning?¡±

    ¡°Heart-shaped chocolate chip pancakes,¡± I told them both.

    A low, quiet, almost inaudible growl came from the general direction of Rika¡¯s middle, and she closed her eyes and let out a tortured groan. ¡°Oh man, breakfast. Chocolate chip pancakes. Senpai, you have no idea how terrible it was to have to package up all of these chocolates without taking a single one!¡±

    ¡°I can imagine,¡± I said, amused.

    I delivered the used trays and plates to Emiya, who took them without a word, having apparently paid no attention to the whole thing. He was half-distracted keeping an eye on the next batch as Ren¨¦e worked her magic with bacon further back in the kitchen.

    I returned to my table and the others just in time to hear Rika say to her brother, ¡°Come on, Onii-chan! Let¡¯s go get the rest of these delivered so I can come back and have breakfast!¡±

    ¡°You could just take a break and have breakfast first,¡± I suggested to her.

    She closed her eyes again, shuddering as her mouth pulled into a tight grimace, and then turned to me, ¡°No! I will be strong! Strong, I tell you! Giri-choco delivery first! Business before pleasure!¡±

    ¡°Which tells you how seriously she¡¯s taking this,¡± Ritsuka quipped from the other side of her.

    I suppose it did, considering how much she loved Emiya¡¯s food.

    ¡°Onward, Onii-chan!¡± Rika cried, turning to the door with one finger raised high above her head. ¡°It¡¯s time to finish delivering this year¡¯s giri-choco, so that I can come back and eat my house-husband¡¯s delicious food!¡±

    And she began marching towards the door. Ritsuka trailed after her with a smile, saying, ¡°Right, right, of course¡­¡±

    Before they could make it that far, however, the door whooshed open of its own accord, permitting Mash to rush through. The instant she caught sight of Ritsuka, her eyes went wide and her mouth opened into a huge smile.

    ¡°Senpai!¡± she said, hurrying over to Ritsuka. ¡°Senpai, there you are! I¡¯ve been looking all over for you!¡±

    ¡°Mash?¡± said Ritsuka, confused.

    ¡°Something wrong, Cinnabon?¡± Rika asked, and then shook her head. ¡°No, wait, tell me on the way! We¡¯ve got chocolate to deliver this Valentine¡¯s Day! Hoho ¡ª um, wait, come to think of it, does Cupid have a trademark laugh? Or a catchphrase?¡±

    An instant later, the sweet smell of chocolate hit me like a sledgehammer, invading my nostrils, overpowering and so strong that it drove out every other smell in the cafeteria. The tang of chocolate clung like a film to the back of my throat, and for an instant, I had to fight down a gag.

    Both of the twins noticed, too, because their noses wrinkled.

    ¡°What the heck?¡± Rika said, recoiling. ¡°You, uh, take a bath in Wonka¡¯s chocolate sauce, Cinnabon?¡±

    ¡°Are you okay, Mash?¡± Ritsuka agreed. ¡°It really, um, smells like you were baking a lot of chocolate. You didn¡¯t burn yourself, did you?¡±

    Mash shook her head. ¡°Nevermind that right now! Senpai! Senpai, there¡¯s something really important I have to tell you!¡±

    ¡°How important is important?¡± asked Rika. She gestured to her brother¡¯s arms and the boxes he was still carrying. ¡°Because we kinda have something to take care of, so if it can wait until we¡¯re all sitting down and enjoying my house-husband¡¯s amazing cooking¡­¡±

    Mash shook her head again. ¡°It can¡¯t wait! Senpai, I really have to tell you right now!¡±

    Something was off about this whole thing, because I¡¯d never heard Mash so frantic before, except when someone¡¯s life was on the line.

    ¡°O¡­kay,¡± said Ritsuka, sounding perplexed. ¡°What¡­ What¡¯s so important, Mash? Did something happen?¡±

    Mash began, ¡°It¡¯s ¡ª¡±

    The cafeteria door whooshed open again, this time to admit Nero, who rushed in, brandished her sword at Mash, and shouted, ¡°Stop right there, imposter!¡±

    ¡°Imposter?¡± the twins said, echoing my own thoughts.

    Immediately, I looked over Mash again, something cold settling in my belly. My hand inched towards my knife, and a subtle glance downward showed my Command Spells, all three of them there and restored after that final battle in London. If it came down to a fight, I was as ready as I could be.

    There wasn¡¯t anything obviously amiss, though. Mash looked like Mash. She sounded like Mash. She dressed like Mash, wore her hair like Mash, wore glasses like Mash, spoke like Mash, even addressed Ritsuka and Rika the way Mash would. There was not a single thing about her that didn¡¯t resemble Mash, down to the strands of hair that fell down and almost entirely covered her one eye.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Mash tried again.

    ¡°Don¡¯t listen to her, Senpai!¡± an identical voice called, and through the door this time came ¡ª

    ¡°Two Cinnabons?¡± Rika blurted out incredulously.

    ¡ª another Mash, panting as she hurried to follow Nero. The only difference between this new Mash and the Mash we¡¯d been talking to until now was the armor and the shield, because she was decked out in her Servant form instead of the civilian clothes she normally wore around the facility.

    ¡°Mash!¡± Nero announced. ¡°Good! As you can see, I found the imposter!¡±

    ¡°Th-thank you, Emperor Nero!¡± the second Mash said earnestly.

    ¡°It was no trouble! Mm-mm!¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s going on, here?¡± Ritsuka demanded.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± said the second Mash, pointing at the first, ¡°that me isn¡¯t the real me! It¡¯s a fake!¡±

    ¡°What do you mean, a fake?¡± I asked, because I wasn¡¯t sure how that would work. Or, well, I had a few ideas, but they all led back to Da Vinci, who supposedly was too low on supplies to do something like make another full scale puppet.

    The second Mash backtracked, and then started to explain, ¡°W-well, um¡­I-I was¡­I was¡­making some chocolate, and, um, that is¡­¡±

    What did making chocolate have to do with anything?

    ¡°Senpai,¡± the first Mash began again, ¡°it can¡¯t wait, I have to tell you right now, before it¡¯s too late!¡±

    But that, more than anything, made me believe the first Mash really would be the imposter, of the two of them. She ¡ª it? ¡ª was too focused and too rigid in the way she talked, because the second was the one who was actually answering questions and responding to us. The first seemed almost obsessed, like she had a singular thought in her head that she needed to get out before she could think of anything else.

    Slowly, I started to move, trying to get a clearer line of sight that wouldn¡¯t put anyone else in harm¡¯s way if I had to react quickly. The cafeteria was entirely too cramped a space to fight in ¡ª and wasn¡¯t that a strangely familiar thought? A lifetime ago, an asshole on a power trip had forced me into a similar position, only with far more innocent people at risk.

    ¡°Tell me what?¡± said Ritsuka, still confused.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± said the first Mash, ¡°I really ¡ª !¡±

    ¡°No!¡± the second Mash shouted, trying to drown out the first¡¯s voice. ¡°Please, stop! Don¡¯t say another word! I-I¡¯m not ready!¡±

    ¡°I really do ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Enough of this!¡± Nero barked, and before anyone could stop her, she crossed the distance as a blur, the point of her sword leading.

    ¡°What the hell are you doing?¡± Ritsuka squawked, backpedaling.

    ¡°Best Buddy?¡± Rika yelped.

    But they were too slow. I was too slow, because I was on the wrong side of the twins with no swarm to put in the way, no ravens to snap off a blast from their cannons, and no Arash there to jump in and intervene. I hadn¡¯t managed to get clear enough for a good shot.

    Arash! I shouted down our bond, already knowing that he wouldn¡¯t arrive fast enough.

    I threw myself to the side, but by the time I had angled myself into position for a Gandr that might make Nero back off, it was too late, and whatever else the first Mash was going to say died on her lips as Nero¡¯s jagged sword thrust into her chest from behind, bursting out of the front in a spray of blood that splattered all over Rika and Ritsuka. Some of it even made it all the way over to me, and cool, wet flecks landed on my cheeks and across my nose.

    Rika, coated head to toe in dripping red, screamed.

 Chapter CLXX: Chocolate Commotion

    Chapter CLXX: Chocolate Commotion

    Pandemonium broke out in the cafeteria as everyone reacted at once. The legs of chairs screeched as their occupants leapt to their feet. Shoes squeaked as people rushed to stand. Nearly a dozen voices rose in shout, clamoring for attention until the only thing I could hear was a loud, indistinct buzz, because the individual words were lost in the commotion.

    Rika was still screaming. Ritsuka was shouting, too, and it sounded like accusations or demands for answers. Even Emiya had come out from behind the counter to investigate, eyes wide and intense as he took in everything and tried to put the pieces together on his own.

    And then the ¡ª fake ¡ª Mash who had been stabbed disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a large, chocolate heart with an enormous crack down the middle that leaked red ooze like blood. For a heartbeat, it hung in the air where she had been, and then gravity took hold of it and it fell to the floor, shattering with a crack and splattering the floor with more red.

    There was a precious few seconds of pregnant silence as everyone tried to wrap their heads around it and what it might mean, and then they all broke out again, alarm replaced by confusion as each of them wondered ¡ª loudly ¡ª just what the hell was going on.

    I was the only one who got to see Emiya¡¯s face cycle through surprise, suspicion, understanding, exasperation, and then resignation. It seemed he had some sort of idea what might have just happened.

    With one hand, I took aim at one of the heart-shaped balloons that sat above the tables, and with the other, I braced my arm to steady it. A quick Gandr snapped off of my fingertips and fizzed across the room, and then a loud POP echoed above all of the yelling and distracted everyone for a precious few seconds.

    In the brief reprieve, I raised my voice and told them all, ¡°QUIET!¡±

    Silence fell over the cafeteria, broken only by Rika¡¯s panicked breathing and the subtle sounds of cooking coming from the kitchen. How Ren¨¦e managed to keep her focus with everything going on, I had no idea, but just then, I found it admirable.

    One finger outstretched, I reached up to my face and swiped off one of the droplets that had landed on me, held it beneath my nose to give it a careful sniff ¡ª sweet and fruity, not metallic and visceral. Only once I was sure that it most certainly wasn¡¯t blood did I chance licking it off of my finger, because I had a hunch that I wanted proven one way or the other.

    I wasn¡¯t disappointed.

    ¡°Cherry syrup?¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Rika squeaked incredulously, and then she dragged her fingertips through the red splashed across her own face and stuck one in her mouth. Her eyes went wide as dinner plates. ¡°I-it is cherry syrup! W-what the fuck?¡±

    ¡°Of course it is!¡± Nero proclaimed like she had known it all along. ¡°What else would it be? Mm!¡±

    I turned to the only other person that seemed to have any idea what was going on. ¡°Mash. Explain.¡±

    Jackie thought I didn¡¯t notice her as she snuck over to the broken chocolate heart to sample the ¡°blood¡± that had spilled all over, but I was going to be having a conversation with her about eating off of the floor later, when this catastrophe wasn¡¯t in the middle of freaking out all of the Masters and a third of the technicians.

    ¡°O-of course, Miss Taylor.¡± Mash closed her eyes briefly and sighed, like the whole thing had exhausted her already. ¡°W-well, like I said a minute ago, I was¡­u-um¡­m-making some chocolate for¡­well¡­for¡­¡± The tips of her ears almost glowed from how pink they were turning, and she stalwartly refused to look in Ritsuka¡¯s direction. ¡°I-I was¡­um, mostly finished, and I was just about to start wrapping them up when¡­Mister Shakespeare arrived at my room.¡±

    Ritsuka let out a low groan so that I didn¡¯t have to, because I was already starting to see the shape of what had happened and how it had led to this.

    ¡°Let me guess,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°he¡¯s behind all of this?¡±

    Mash nodded meekly, staring at the ground in front of his feet instead of directly at him. ¡°He, um¡­said some things about how chocolate is the flavor of love, a-and how a¡­y-young lady¡¯s a-affections were nothing to laugh at, and how¡­how sincerity so b-beautiful deserved to be rewarded, even if no one else recognized it for what it was. I¡­don¡¯t think I understand all of what he meant, but then¡­¡±

    ¡°Then he turned your chocolates into fake Servants,¡± Emiya concluded knowingly.

    Mash nodded again, and then abruptly gained urgency. ¡°That¡¯s why¡­we have to find all of them! S-Senpai¡¯s chocolate might have been the m-most important, but I made chocolate for the other Servants, too, so that they didn¡¯t feel left out! A-and the Director, and Doctor Roman, too! I-it was just, um, S-Senpai¡¯s chocolate that we¡­ we had to find first, and Emperor Nero agreed to help me as soon as she heard what was going on!¡±

    By now, Ritsuka¡¯s face had slowly started to turn red, too, because he wasn¡¯t so ignorant or oblivious that he couldn¡¯t read between the lines of what Mash was and wasn¡¯t saying. Whether he understood all of it or not, however, he kept his silence and didn¡¯t let himself ask.

    Maybe he was afraid of being wrong, of what it would mean to take the risk and have it fall apart. Or maybe he just had better sense than to bring it up now, of all times, when we had more important things to focus on.

    A consciousness brushed up against mine. Master?

    Crisis averted, for the moment, I told him, but there¡¯s a problem we¡¯re going to need to take care of soon and fast.

    Understood, was his reply.

    ¡°How many of these¡­chocolates did you make, Mash?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Enough for all of the Servants, and then for the Director, Miss Da Vinci, and Doctor Roman,¡± Mash answered. ¡°So¡­th-thirteen more, total, Miss Taylor!¡±

    Thirteen more. Presumably, each one would make for its intended recipient, and while the one that had just been destroyed hadn¡¯t shown any indication of superhuman ability or Servant strength and speed, that didn¡¯t mean the others wouldn¡¯t have anything like that. We should probably assume that they were going to be stronger than they looked and put up a fight to get to the person they meant to deliver their Valentine¡¯s to, if only so that we wouldn¡¯t be surprised if they did have something like that.

    ¡°Ritsuka?¡± I turned to him. ¡°Shakespeare?¡±

    Ritsuka shook his head, frowning. His cheeks and ears were still faintly red. ¡°He¡¯s not responding. I think he knows that we know.¡±

    It was tempting to tell him to use a Command Spell so that we could force Shakespeare here to put an end to this quickly, but I wanted to save that as a last resort. Firstly and primarily, because I wasn¡¯t sure he even could; if I was remembering right, a lot of stuff he could do was self-sustaining once it got going and had to ¡°run its course.¡± We¡¯d waste a Command Spell bringing him here, and then another to make him stop something he couldn¡¯t stop, and in that time, who knew what sort of havoc his chocolate monstrosities could wreak?

    ¡°Fire and forget¡± spells were named aptly.

    Secondly, I knew Marie well enough to know she would want to punish him over this when she found out. Knowing her so well, I was pretty sure that one of those punishments would be forcing him to clean up the mess he made, and I had to admit, that idea appealed to me on some level, too. I wasn¡¯t proud of the bit of vindictive satisfaction I got from imagining him in overalls swabbing the floors with a mop.

    If we truly couldn¡¯t find Shakespeare without a Command Spell, then we could cross that bridge when we came to it. Until then, we had some chocolate Servants to hunt down first.

    ¡°Jackie,¡± I said, and she froze, like she realized she had been caught, ¡°you¡¯re with me and Arash. Ritsuka, take Mash and try to find Shakespeare. Emiya, I need you to go fill in Da Vinci, since no one here has a contract with her, while Rika and Nero go and help Romani.¡±

    ¡°As emperor, it is me who should be giving the orders! Mm-mm! The only one who should command Emperor Nero is her praetor, her best buddy!¡± Nero said pompously. She immediately followed it up with, ¡°But you have long since proven your acumen, so I shall allow it!¡±

    ¡°Master?¡± Emiya asked.

    ¡°You heard her,¡± said Rika. ¡°Da Vinci-chan. Go.¡±

    Emiya sighed and quickly undid the knot tying his apron around his back, slipped it off over his head, and tossed it onto the nearest table. Over his shoulder, he called, ¡°Ren¨¦e!¡±

    A familiar head of white hair appeared at the counter where Emiya normally served food. ¡°Yes?¡±

    ¡°I have something I need to take care of, so you¡¯re in charge of the kitchen for now,¡± he told her. ¡°I¡¯ll be back later.¡±

    If Ren¨¦e was excited to have the kitchen to herself, she didn¡¯t show it, not obviously. She just nodded and said, ¡°Of course.¡±

    With that taken care of, I gave the order to everyone: ¡°Go!¡±

    We all left through the cafeteria doors, and the instant we were outside them our group split up, each of us heading in a different direction. Immediately, I reached out for the bond connecting me to each of my Servants, both those I shared with the twins and those who were only contracted with me.

    Be alert, I relayed to all of them, trying my best to ignore how thin my mind felt. It was better than when I¡¯d tried it in London, but not by much. Imposters are currently loose in the facility. If you come across a doppelganger, it¡¯s just chocolate animated through magecraft. Destroy it while doing as little damage to the facility as possible.

    There were several affirmatives from A¨ªfe, Siegfried, and Hippolyta, who didn¡¯t need anything more than that from me to act, but Bellamy, Jeanne Alter, and Mordred weren¡¯t at all satisfied and asked for answers instead. I didn¡¯t have the time or the focus to offer them the full explanation just then, so I kept it simple.

    It¡¯s Shakespeare¡¯s work, although that didn¡¯t seem to answer things for them well enough either. He turned Valentine¡¯s chocolate into fake Servants. They¡¯re delivering themselves to you. If you¡¯re not sure if you¡¯re seeing the real deal or not, give them a small cut. Their blood is cherry syrup, not blood. You¡¯ll get the full explanation later.

    Grudgingly, in the case of Jeanne Alter and Mordred, they let it go at that with the promise to collect, and I eased my grip on those bonds. The rebound actually made me stumble mid-step, but Arash appeared next to me and steadied me.

    ¡°Chocolate Servants?¡± he asked, bemused.

    ¡°Later,¡± I promised him, too. ¡°The Director?¡±

    He shook his head, and when I took off, he and Jackie kept pace with me. ¡°I haven¡¯t seen her all morning. Do you want me to go look for her?¡±

    As tempting as it was¡­ ¡°No. The fake Mash didn¡¯t fight back, but we have no idea what these chocolate Servants are capable of. Since we¡¯re probably going to have to face three of them on our own, I¡¯d rather we didn¡¯t split up.¡±

    Arash nodded and didn¡¯t try to convince me otherwise, so as we ran, I reached for my communicator and tried to connect to Marie¡¯s. The handful of seconds it took before she answered me felt like an eternity.

    ¡°Yes?¡±

    ¡°Where are you?¡± I asked her immediately.

    ¡°What?¡± was her confused reply.

    ¡°I¡¯ll explain when we get there,¡± I said shortly. ¡°Where are you?¡±

    ¡°The Command Room,¡± she said. ¡°Where else would I be?¡±

    It would honestly have been more convenient if she had been in her office. That door was easier to lock and more secure. But it was also convenient, since we¡¯d been heading vaguely in that direction already.

    ¡°If you can, lock the door until I get there,¡± I told her.

    ¡°What? Why would we lock the ¡ª hey, who do you think ¡ª w-what the hell is going on here?¡±

    ¡°D-doppelgangers?¡± Romani¡¯s voice yelped in the background. There was a commotion that I linked to the technicians, although it was impossible to make out who was there and what they were saying.

    Shit. Of course the chocolate Servants already had a lead on us, because it couldn¡¯t be easy, could it? What a clusterfuck.

    With one smooth motion, I unsheathed my knife and tossed it to Arash. ¡°Jackie, Arash, go on ahead to the Command Room!¡±

    They accepted my order silently, taking off at speed and leaving me behind.

    ¡°T-Taylor!¡± Marie¡¯s voice squeaked through my communicator. ¡°Th-there¡¯s another me, and another Romani here!¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t engage!¡± I said firmly. ¡°They¡¯re made of chocolate, but we have no idea what they¡¯re capable of, no matter what they look like!¡±

    ¡°CHOCOLATE?¡± Marie sputtered, halfway between apoplectic and bewildered. ¡°W-what do you mean, they¡¯re made of chocolate?¡±

    ¡°Shakespeare made them out of Valentine¡¯s chocolates.¡±

    ¡°Shakespeare?¡±

    ¡°Mash can tell you more later.¡± If she didn¡¯t spontaneously combust of embarrassment first, anyway. ¡°We already dispatched one in the cafeteria. Emiya is going to let Da Vinci know what¡¯s going on while Ritsuka and Mash hunt down Shakespeare. We¡¯re trying to avoid using a Command Spell if we don¡¯t have to. Nero and Rika went to find Romani; if they¡¯re not with you, they¡¯re probably checking his office, first.¡±

    My footsteps were the only ones I could hear anymore. Arash and Jackie had long since left me behind.

    ¡°The other Servants?¡± Marie asked.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

    ¡°I¡¯ve already contacted all of the ones I can to let them know what to expect.¡±

    ¡°All of the ¡ª just how many of these chocolates are there?¡±

    ¡°Thirteen.¡±

    ¡°Thirtee ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Director Animusphere!¡± Marie¡¯s voice sounded, and it was distant enough that I realized right away it was the doppelganger. ¡°I have something I need to tell you! It¡¯s really important, so it can¡¯t wait!¡±

    My mind short-circuited for a second. What? I thought Mash had only meant to confess to Ritsuka. He was the one she obviously had romantic feelings for. She had never given any indication whatsoever that she felt that way for Marie, not even once. Not a single longing glance behind Marie¡¯s back, not one wistful sigh.

    Had I missed it somehow?

    ¡°Don¡¯t!¡± Marie herself said. ¡°Not another word! I won¡¯t hear it!¡±

    ¡°Doctor Roman,¡± Romani¡¯s voice began ¡ª his doppelganger now, it had to be. ¡°I have something incredibly important I need to tell you, and it can¡¯t wait a second longer!¡±

    ¡°Director Animusphere,¡± said her doppelganger, ¡°I know something happened that affected the way you looked at me. I wanted you to know, whatever it was that I did wrong, I¡¯m sorry. I know I¡¯ve made a bunch of mistakes, but I try my hardest every day, and I think you¡¯re doing an amazing job as Director! I wouldn¡¯t want anyone else leading us through the Grand Order!¡±

    Marie ¡ª the real Marie ¡ª choked. I could only imagine what must have been going through her head, what those words meant to her. Knowing as I did how much her father¡¯s sins in regards to Mash had weighed on her, how much she struggled with the expectations of being Director of Chaldea ¡ª both her own and those of the staff ¡ª this must have been hitting way closer to home than she was comfortable with.

    ¡°Doctor Roman,¡± said Romani¡¯s doppelganger, ¡°I know taking care of me all of these years can¡¯t have been easy. You had an important job as the Head of Medical, and having to look out for me at the same time must have been so hard on you. That¡¯s why, I want you to know that I appreciate everything you¡¯ve ever done for me! I don¡¯t know what it¡¯s like to have a father, but I like to think, if I could have had one, I would have wanted him to be a lot like you!¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± Romani said softly, so quiet that I almost didn¡¯t hear it. ¡°Oh, Mash¡­¡±

    There was another commotion, the rustle of cloth and the hum of steel cutting through the air, and then a crack like wood snapping. Marie screamed.

    ¡°What the hell?¡± Romani demanded.

    ¡°Director?¡± I asked urgently.

    We¡¯ve dispatched the chocolates, Master, Arash told me, and I had to grimace. If only we¡¯d been fast enough to get the chocolates before they got to the door and started all of this.

    ¡°Sorry for the mess, Director,¡± Arash said aloud. She didn¡¯t seem to hear him, still screaming. ¡°They were a little more fragile than I was expecting them to be.¡±

    ¡°Marie!¡± I shouted into my communicator. ¡°Marie, listen! It¡¯s not real blood! It¡¯s just cherry syrup!¡±

    ¡°CHERRY SYRUP?¡± she screeched, an octave higher than normal. She was still freaking out.

    ¡°Cherry syrup,¡± I repeated. ¡°Deep breaths, Director. It¡¯s not blood. It¡¯s cherry syrup. That doppelganger you just saw was an illusion. It was just a piece of chocolate.¡±

    Marie heaved in deep, hard breaths, gulping them down as she tried to get herself under control. I wished Arash had managed to reach them before she had ever laid eyes on her copy, because if she was reacting this badly, then he had probably just unintentionally dredged up the trauma of what had happened to her during the Sabotage.

    I knew probably better than anyone else in the facility how much that sort of thing stuck with you, how hard it was to dislodge.

    ¡°Director,¡± I said, calm, even, and gentle, ¡°it was just chocolate. Lev isn¡¯t here. Flauros is dead. No one¡¯s hurt, everything¡¯s fine, just breathe for me. Can you do that?¡±

    I had no idea how effective this all was, and I barely knew what I was doing, but somehow or another, it seemed to be helping. Marie¡¯s breaths were coming out slower and less harsh, steadily evening out into something that wasn¡¯t likely to make her faint and sounded less like a panic attack.

    ¡°That¡¯s it.¡± I closed one eye and looked through Arash¡¯s, which was a bit disorienting to do while I was running through the hallway, but I¡¯d had loads of practice. ¡°Just keep breathing. In for seven, hold for five, then out for eleven.¡±

    What I saw looked almost like a murder. Marie and Romani hadn¡¯t been drenched as badly as Rika and Ritsuka had been, but ropes of red stained them from the hips on down, with tiny flecks splattered like drops of red ink over their faces and torsos. Little dots here and there that were only noticeable since Romani¡¯s coat was white and I was looking for them.

    Romani looked disturbed ¡ª seeing his exact double get killed couldn¡¯t have been easy ¡ª but Marie was almost bent double, clutching at the edge of her console¡¯s desk to keep herself from keeling over. Her face was drawn into a rictus of terror, and her chest heaved with every breath, but I¡¯d become intimately familiar with her breakdowns and what they looked like and it seemed that we¡¯d managed to avert this one.

    ¡°Just like that,¡± I told her as soothingly as I could. ¡°All you have to do is focus on breathing. In, hold, then out. In, hold, then out.¡±

    In the background, most of the technicians had leapt out of their seats and were now pressing themselves against their own consoles in an effort to put as much distance between themselves and the carnage as possible. Even Sylvia, who normally seemed fairly imperturbable, looked as though the whole thing had hit a nerve.

    ¡°Arash!¡± Arash¡¯s voice suddenly called.

    ¡°Jackie!¡± Jackie¡¯s voice echoed.

    ¡°I have something really important I need to tell you!¡±

    My teeth ground together. Fucking¡­shit. Could they have had worse timing than this?

    Arash whirled around, a motion so fast and so abrupt that it threatened to unsettle my stomach, and with familiar speed, he manifested his bow, drew back, and fired off a pair of arrows. Before they could even make it through the doorway, the pair of doppelgangers took an arrow each to the chest, right in the heart, and the illusion popped like soap bubbles. Another pair of chocolate hearts fell to the floor and split open, spilling more cherry syrup.

    The one saving grace was that Jackie and Arash were already there and standing between everyone else and the door. I was sure there was some sort of complicated psychological theory that explained why, but Servant on Servant violence was easier for everyone to deal with, made only easier by the fact that the action was further away than the fake Marie and Romani had been.

    Marie still hadn¡¯t quite managed to calm down by the time I finally made it to the door and finally saw with my own eyes the sickly puddles of red splattered across the floor. If there was one thing I could be thankful for, it was that they weren¡¯t drying quite like blood did. Instead, the syrup was turning a paler shade of brown, highlighted with islands of vivid red where the concentration was thicker.

    I wasn¡¯t sure it said anything good that I was familiar enough with the exact color of dried blood to tell the difference so easily, but it was four years too late to do anything about that.

    Stepping around the puddles was a bit of work. Either Shakespeare¡¯s modifications had vastly increased the amount of cherry syrup his chocolate doppelgangers could hold or Mash had stuffed her chocolates almost to the brim, because that looked like a full pint from each chocolate, which was frankly ridiculous. Between the puddles themselves and the splatters that exploded out of them, there was almost no place in the doorway for me to safely place my feet.

    Nearly every eye in the room swiveled around to look at me as I entered, and when I said, ¡°Director,¡± even Marie flinched away, shutting her eyes tightly ¡ª so that she didn¡¯t have to watch my heart get gouged out by an arrow, I realized.

    ¡°Romani,¡± I greeted him, and he recoiled, bracing for the same thing.

    So I did the only thing I could think to do and ended the call on my communicator, then opened a line to Rika instead. ¡°Rika. Romani is here in the Command Room with the Director.¡±

    ¡°Oh, goodie,¡± Rika¡¯s voice said from my wrist, relieved. The entire room seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief when they realized I wasn¡¯t another of the chocolate fakes. ¡°I was getting kinda worried, you know, since he wasn¡¯t in his room or anything. We ran into the Best Buddy Choco Servant, bee-tee-dubs, so there¡¯s that taken care of.¡±

    One, two, three¡­ That made five out of Mash¡¯s thirteen chocolates. The rest, fortunately, were all something the other Servants could handle on their own, I would think, especially if they didn¡¯t fight at all and went down in one hit the way all of the ones I¡¯d seen so far had. Probably not a good idea to bank on that, but¡­

    ¡°Any trouble?¡± I asked.

    ¡°Nope!¡± Rika replied. ¡°It went pop without a fight! I think I¡¯m gonna need some serious therapy after this, though, and I won¡¯t look at chocolate the same way ever again! But otherwise, you know¡­no trouble.¡±

    Good. Hopefully, that trend would continue and this could all be over and done with before lunchtime, although I wasn¡¯t sure anyone would be in the mood to eat for a while after this.

    ¡°Mark off that location for later, then go join Emiya and Da Vinci,¡± I told her. ¡°Once everything¡¯s secure there, meet up with Ritsuka and Mash and help them look for Shakespeare.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re not gonna deal with the rest of the Children of the Candy Corn?¡± she asked.

    Children of the¡­ What? Was that another reference? Nevermind. It wasn¡¯t important. I got the gist of it either way.

    ¡°I¡¯ll check in on them and see if their doppelgangers have given them any trouble, but if they haven¡¯t been fighting back, then no one should be having a hard time taking them out,¡± I said. ¡°In the meantime, we need to find Shakespeare. If he could do this to Mash¡¯s chocolates, there¡¯s nothing to say he couldn¡¯t do it to all of the sets you¡¯ve been handing out today, too.¡±

    Apparently, this hadn¡¯t occurred to anyone else, because there was a pregnant pause before Rika let out a low, horrified, ¡°Oh, crud.¡±

    Exactly.

    The call ended with a short beep, and when I turned my attention back to Marie fully, she had calmed down at least enough to demand, through gritted teeth, ¡°What¡­exactly¡­is going on?¡±

    ¡°Jackie,¡± I said sharply, and Jackie, having bent down to dip her fingers into the cherry syrup left behind by Marie and Romani¡¯s fakes, froze. ¡°We don¡¯t eat off the floor. Understand?¡±

    ¡°Yes, Mommy,¡± Jackie mumbled reluctantly. Of all the times for her to act her apparent age, it just had to be now, didn¡¯t it?

    To Marie, I said, ¡°Mash made Valentine¡¯s chocolates for Ritsuka, all of the Servants, and apparently for you and Romani as a way of showing her appreciation to everyone for everything they¡¯ve done over the course of the last six months,¡± or longer, it seemed, in the case of Marie and Romani. ¡°Somehow or another, Shakespeare involved himself and brought the chocolates to life so that they could literally deliver themselves to their intended recipients. In addition to the first one that was destroyed in the cafeteria, Mash told us that there were thirteen more, one for each of the Servants, Da Vinci, you, and Romani.¡±

    With every word, the terror that had gripped Marie slowly dissipated, and it was quickly being replaced with indignant anger. By the time I finished, her brow had furrowed. ¡°But not for you?¡±

    I blinked. What? I¡­guess I hadn¡¯t really given it any thought. And Mash had said she was only mostly finished, so maybe she¡¯d meant to make more for other people and just hadn¡¯t had the chance before Shakespeare stuck his nose in.

    Marie shook her head. ¡°Not important, nevermind. You said Shakespeare is behind this?¡±

    ¡°Ritsuka attempted to contact him when this all started, and he didn¡¯t answer,¡± I said by way of answering. ¡°If he¡¯s not guilty and there¡¯s some kind of imposter running around the facility, he¡¯s not doing a very good job of convincing anyone.¡±

    Marie reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose, but after a second, seemed to realize what she¡¯d just done and looked down at her red-smeared hand with a grimace, still stained with flecks of syrup. Two red smudges now stood out on either side of her nose, bright against her pale skin. With obvious disgust, she tried to ignore it and soldier on.

    ¡°And the other chocolates?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve destroyed five. Unless they get violent and prove to be stronger than they seem to be, the rest of the Servants should be able to handle the remaining eight,¡± I said, and then added, ¡°But as you heard me say to Rika, that¡¯s not to say there won¡¯t be more that show up. Rika has been handing out boxes of chocolate to the staff for Valentine¡¯s day, so if Shakespeare gets his hands on them, there¡¯s nothing stopping him from a repeat performance.¡±

    Romani was the one who heaved out a heavy sigh. ¡°Ah, geez. That¡¯s just what we need right now, a bunch of chocolate Servants running around and terrorizing everyone.¡±

    Marie didn¡¯t look any more pleased by this idea than he did. I said nothing. Privately, I wasn¡¯t sure if it would be quite as bad as this first batch was, but only because I wasn¡¯t sure what Emiya had put into the chocolates he made for Rika to hand out and how much of the cherry syrup spilling out all over the place was because of how Mash made her chocolates and how much was what Shakespeare had done to bring them to life.

    They would cause too much trouble regardless.

    ¡°I¡¯ve already alerted all the Servants contracted to me, and Ritsuka and Mash are looking for Shakespeare.¡±

    Marie grunted. ¡°As much as I want to lock down the entire facility, Chaldea is too large. He could be anywhere ¡ª hiding in spirit form, even!¡±

    I wished there was a better answer to that, but, ¡°That¡¯s why I told Ritsuka to use Command Spells as a last resort.¡±

    Marie scowled, no happier about wasting such a valuable resource ¡ª renewable or not ¡ª than she was about the rest of the situation, but she didn¡¯t have any better ideas for how to find him, and that only soured her mood further. She had to take a deep breath to recenter herself and focus.

    ¡°Obviously, the first priority is the elimination of these¡­chocolate Servants,¡± she said, ¡°and then finding Shakespeare so he can either explain himself or reveal the imposter.¡± She huffed. ¡°I¡¯ll be sure to think up a suitable punishment for this nonsense ¡ª for frightening the¡­the staff and for causing such a commotion with this prank! Next¡­¡±

    She turned her scowl down at the mess still drying on the floor and all over her skirt, hose, and shoes.

    ¡°We need to get this mess cleaned up. Forget about tracking it everywhere, it¡¯s a safety hazard!¡±

    Remembering the idea I¡¯d had earlier, I mentioned it to Marie, ¡°Maybe we could get two birds with one stone and make Shakespeare clean it up.¡±

    Marie¡¯s eyes flashed, and I could see immediately that some part of her very much liked that idea. No magic, no Noble Phantasms, no one allowed to help him, just a bucket and a mop and good, old-fashioned elbow grease. For someone like Shakespeare, manual labor was probably something he abhorred.

    But she shook her head. ¡°For the rest of the facility, maybe,¡± she said. ¡°But for such high traffic areas like the Command Room and the cafeteria? Absolutely not! We can¡¯t afford to wait on him to clean up some of the most vital rooms in Chaldea!¡±

    A fair point. It was also probably bringing up a lot of unpleasant memories for several people to have what looked an awful lot like bloodstains plastered over the floor, so maybe my initial instinct wasn¡¯t the best solution to our current problem. I didn¡¯t really have any better ones, though. How did you punish a Servant? They didn¡¯t need sleep, they didn¡¯t really get tired the way living humans did, they didn¡¯t need money for really anything except a handful of luxuries that weren¡¯t strictly necessary ¡ª

    Ah. Luxuries. It felt like disciplining a rowdy child, much more than anything I¡¯d had to do with Jackie so far, but in lieu of other options, I guess taking away some of his privileges really was the only other way for us to punish Shakespeare.

    Later. For now¡­

    Beep-beep!

    As though he had read my mind, Ritsuka contacted me, and when I answered my communicator, his voice came from the other end. ¡°Senpai.¡±

    ¡°Ritsuka,¡± I replied. ¡°Any luck with Shakespeare?¡±

    Ritsuka heaved out a sigh. ¡°He didn¡¯t even try to hide. He was in his study, frantically scribbling away in a book titled, ¡®The Chocolate Lady¡¯s Commotion: The Curious Case of Mash Kyrielight.¡¯ Mash wasn¡¯t¡­very happy with him.¡±

    Her and half of the facility by this point. Most of the Servants were probably fairly ambivalent about the whole thing, but the staff? Especially those who got a front row seat to his chocolate fakes running around and had to deal with cherry syrup going everywhere? He hadn¡¯t won himself any points.

    ¡°Is he still there?¡±

    ¡°He was going to try escaping, until I threatened to burn a random book from his office every hour that he stayed in hiding.¡±

    ¡°The travesty!¡± Shakespeare¡¯s voice cried from the background. ¡°The inhumanity! What sort of monster threatens a man¡¯s collection of literature? What sort of monster threatens a man¡¯s life¡¯s work? Master, how cruel!¡±

    I allowed a very small part of me to sympathize with Shakespeare, just for a moment, over the books that had all been threatened, and then I let it die.

    ¡°We¡¯ve dealt with the two meant for Romani and the Director, and also the two meant for Jackie and Arash. Rika and Nero should be on their way to you by now,¡± I told Ritsuka.

    ¡°Right,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°What do you want us to do with Shakespeare for now?¡±

    I could have given him an answer myself, but I turned instead to Marie and put it in her hands. ¡°Director?¡±

    Marie¡¯s lips drew into a tight line, and careful of the mess still on the floor, she stepped closer to me so that she could speak into my communicator without having to yell from halfway across the room.

    ¡°Keep him there,¡± Marie ordered sternly.

    ¡°Director?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°You have permission to use a Command Spell, if you have to,¡± Marie said. ¡°But whatever happens, Shakespeare is not to be allowed to leave that room until this is settled. I¡¯m coming down there myself.¡±

    Shakespeare let out a strangled moan of despair, and Ritsuka did his best to pretend it wasn¡¯t happening. ¡°Of¡­of course, Director Marie!¡±

    With that settled, Marie spun about and barked, ¡°Romani!¡±

    Romani jolted as though he had been shocked. ¡°Y-yes, Director?¡±

    She gestured to the room, to the mess on the floor and outside the door. ¡°I¡¯m leaving you in charge of the cleanup here! I expect you to handle it quickly!¡±

    ¡°Of course, Director!¡± said Romani, echoing Ritsuka.

    Marie whirled back about to face me. ¡°Let¡¯s go,¡± she said. ¡°The sooner we deal with this, the sooner this whole fiasco can be over with.¡±

    We marched out of the Command Room, Marie in the front and Arash and Jackie trailing behind me, leaving Romani to handle things in there for now. By the look on her face and the set of her shoulders, Marie would not let this slide easily. One way or another, she was going to extract her pound of flesh from Shakespeare for this, and by the end of it, he would hopefully have learned his lesson about pulling this sort of thing in the facility on all of us.

    I was just glad it had been handled so quickly. I could easily imagine a situation where the chaos lasted a whole day or more and we ran around aimlessly trying to figure out who was attacking us and how they¡¯d managed to get into Chaldea, cutting down dozens of chocolate doppelgangers, all wearing the faces of friends and allies and spilling secrets left, right, and center. A Stranger nightmare straight out of the Protectorate¡¯s handbook of worst case scenarios.

    Fortunately, as weird as it was to say it, this one time, we¡¯d lucked out.

 Chapter CLXXI: Double Feature

    Chapter CLXXI: Double Feature

    Shakespeare¡¯s punishment wound up being several different things all bound up together. Firstly, he had to clean up the mess left behind by his self-delivering chocolates, using nothing more than a mop, a bucket, and his own physical strength. Secondly, he was on two weeks¡¯ probation, wherein he was not allowed to eat meals on Servant meal days, write anything down except for the purposes of communicating with someone else in the facility, or attend movie night with the rest of us. He also had to write letters of apology to all of those affected by his antics, with the caveat that his probation would be extended if he didn¡¯t finish them before it was scheduled to end.

    It was even reinforced by Command Spell, just to show exactly how serious Marie was about all of it. Ritsuka, who might normally have spoken up and made a case for being kinder, gentler, and more understanding, went along with it without any protest.

    Someone else might have called Shakespeare¡¯s punishment a little excessive, but anyone who understood what had happened should have come away with the truth of the matter: Marie was making an example out of him. There were plenty of allowances being made for the various personalities in the facility ¡ª it was half the reason Da Vinci had even gone so far as to focus any attention on getting the simulator back up and running in full ¡ª and she was perfectly willing to accommodate the needs and desires of our staff and Servants, as and when it was feasible.

    Like Nero¡¯s weekly trips to Rome for a bath, or the fact that she was allowing Da Vinci to build a Roman bath inside the facility just for Nero¡¯s sake, or the fact that everyone was basically allowed to do whatever they wanted with their room as long as they didn¡¯t break anything that would be harder to replace, like the plumbing or the wiring.

    There were limits to those allowances, however. Bickering and solving disputes in the simulator were one thing, because it was just unreasonable to expect everyone to get along all of the time without any friction, but playing cruel pranks for your own amusement or abusing those privileges would have consequences, and Marie wasn¡¯t afraid to dole them out if she had to.

    If I was honest, I would have expected Jeanne Alter or Mordred to be the first ones to really act out. The fact it was Shakespeare instead was a bit of a surprise.

    Naturally, he didn¡¯t accept his punishment with any particular grace. It was Shakespeare; of course he was melodramatic about it, spouting nonsense that sounded like it came straight out of one of his plays. Anyone listening might have been forgiven for thinking he was Mercutio, lamenting the tragedy of his own early death and cursing his misfortune.

    He still obeyed. I think he understood just how big of a misstep he¡¯d made, no matter what his motivation might have been at the end of the day, and just how easily his head could have been on the literal chopping block instead of the metaphorical one. The fact that most of the other Servants had been kind of annoyed by the whole episode ¡ª with a few notable exceptions, like Bellamy, who looked like he wanted to say something but didn¡¯t dare, and Jeanne Alter, who didn¡¯t seem to know whether she was supposed to be angry or not ¡ª didn¡¯t help his case at all.

    Either way, he might not have taken his punishment without complaint, but he did take it, and it seemed to stick well enough. Once the whole thing passed and the miniature crisis was resolved, things went essentially back to normal.

    Mostly. If Ritsuka and Mash had been hovering around each other before, then having Mash¡¯s feelings all but broadcasted through the whole cafeteria had only made it worse. It didn¡¯t seem to affect their ability to perform together, not as our skirmishes in the simulator proved, but when they were together in a room with nothing else to distract them, there was a sort of¡­gravity between them. Like a pair of stars being slowly pulled into each other¡¯s orbit, never quite making it far enough in to actually collide together.

    If it impacted their ability to work together, then I would have stepped in and forced them to air everything and resolve it all. Since it hadn¡¯t yet gotten to that point, however, I felt weird about the idea of interfering in their¡­whatever it was that was really going on between them.

    Even Rika seemed uncertain how to navigate around this new dynamic of theirs, because she hadn¡¯t teased them about it at all. That was probably a good thing; I think Mash¡¯s face might actually have combusted if she did.

    It honestly would have been easier if they had decided they both liked each other and started making out. Maybe not less awkward, because I didn¡¯t need to live in a world where they were late to team meetings or behind schedule because they lost track of time sucking each other¡¯s tonsils out, but I would have had a better idea of how to handle them.

    In any case, the chaos and nonsense that had come with Valentine¡¯s Day left with Valentine¡¯s Day, and February slowly started to slip away. Every day, I waited for word on what would be waiting for us in the next Singularity and dreaded the possibility that it really might be Brockton Bay and Earth Bet.

    Talking to Marie had helped at least some. But the not knowing was still the worst part of it. The speculation. The uncertainty. Not knowing what I was going to find when we Rayshifted and whether anything more than the desolate remains of Scion¡¯s rampage would greet me.

    On top of that, we had gone through the other five Singularities in less than five months as an average, and now two more had already passed and we didn¡¯t even know what to expect of the next one, not a time period, not a location, nothing at all aside from the vague nonsense Solomon had tossed in my face at the end of London. A whole other year had seemed like such a long time back when we were getting ready to deploy there, and yet now it seemed to be slipping away from us without much progress at all.

    Forgetting entirely about the next Singularity¡¯s contents and what we would face there, it worried me that we were taking so long to find out what to expect. The time between deployments seemed to grow longer between each one, and where we had gone into Orl¨¦ans only a couple of weeks after Fuyuki ¡ª just long enough to get back on our feet after the Sabotage ¡ª now the stretch between London and America seemed interminable.

    After the American Singularity, there would be just two more for us to face. Two more, and we could reverse the Incineration and save the world. But if Flauros was to be believed, we only had until December 31st, until the first stroke of midnight on the last day of the year, and if it took us anywhere near this long to find and prepare for those last two Singularities, that might not be enough time to do it all.

    I didn¡¯t see any reason for him to lie, not right then. He¡¯d been certain of his victory, and the only purpose it would have served would be to make us hurry where we should wait and take our time. When it was taking this long just to pin down the time and place of each Singularity to deploy into, what would be the point?

    ¡°Now!¡± shouted Ritsuka. ¡°Jeanne Alter! Your Noble Phantasm!¡±

    A miasma of dark energy surged to life around Jeanne Alter, and it sparked into hellish crimson flames that, even in a simulation, were so hot I could feel them even from where I stood. Jeanne Alter lifted her sword, pointed it tip-first at Altera, and with a vicious grin, announced, ¡°La Grondement du Haine!¡±

    At a point beneath the blade, the flames surrounding her gathered, and then they lashed out in a line and slithered across the empty plateau like a snake. Altera made a valiant attempt at dodging and avoiding it, but it swerved and curved to follow her, tracking her unerringly like a heat-seeking missile.

    There had to be a distance limitation or something, some point at which the magical energy required to keep it going would either dissipate or become so costly that Jeanne Alter couldn¡¯t maintain it, but we hadn¡¯t found it yet. Mostly because the majority of the opponents we faced were close range fighters who were inside that range and therefore vulnerable, but at some point, we should test it ¡ª once Da Vinci got the simulator set up to accurately track and simulate magical energy usage.

    Despite her best attempts, Altera couldn¡¯t dodge forever, and the AI wasn¡¯t quite smart enough to think of simply getting too far away for the flames to follow. Eventually, a mistimed landing caught her, and the fire split to encircle her in pillars of blazing flame. They twisted and turned and spun, and we all had a single moment, a split second, to see the first stake as it thrust up and through her foot before the walls closed in.

    Altera did not scream. Neither had Jeanne Alter, but the Jeanne Alter we¡¯d faced was the one currently standing in front of Ritsuka and not a simulated version; she had cursed at us instead, cussing up a storm about cheap shots and sucker punches. Whether the real Altera would have screamed, I wasn¡¯t sure, but I was thinking she wouldn¡¯t. She hadn¡¯t, after all, when G¨¢e Bolg stabbed her through the heart, no matter how painful it must have been.

    When the flames cleared, there was no sign of Altera. I hadn¡¯t been sure if the version we fought could have survived Jeanne Alter¡¯s Noble Phantasm, even with the Grail healing her wounds, so I¡¯d erred on the side of caution and decided no.

    ¡°That was the bitch you faced in Rome?¡± Jeanne Alter asked, lip curling. ¡°She wasn¡¯t so tough.¡±

    ¡°That was a bit easier than I remember it being,¡± Ritsuka agreed. He looked over at me. ¡°Senpai?¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t take it easy on you, if that¡¯s what you¡¯re asking,¡± I told him. ¡°But the AI can only mimic her based upon what data Chaldea collected during our battle, so there are limits to how creative she can be and how skillfully she uses what she has.¡±

    All we could do while we waited was train, prepare, and relax so that we didn¡¯t stress ourselves out too much. Going back and fighting the enemies that had given us so much trouble before seemed like a worthwhile way of teaching the twins how to think on their feet a little faster and coordinate better with the Servants in our roster.

    From next to me, Marie added, ¡°She would have been more faithfully replicated if we had a fuller scan of her Saint Graph, but seeing as she was never registered as a Servant of Chaldea and therefore never completely recorded by the FATE System, this is the best you can expect.¡±

    ¡°What?¡± Jeanne Alter demanded. ¡°You¡¯re saying this was easy mode? Fucking bullshit!¡±

    ¡°You have access to all of the non-classified records, the same as any other Servant!¡± Marie snapped back at her. ¡°You can replay the battle any time you want and see exactly how powerful she was as an enemy!¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Rika, ¡°we can do that? For real, just pop in a recording of the fight and play it back like a movie?¡±

    ¡°Yes!¡± said Marie. ¡°Didn¡¯t you¡­¡± She stopped, grimaced, and dragged a hand down her face. ¡°Ugh. No, of course you didn¡¯t. We were in such a rush over Singularity F that the new inductees were never given the full orientation course, were they?¡±

    The twins exchanged a look, and Rika said, ¡°I mean, we were just pushed through a bunch of tests and thrown into a match in the simulator before we met Mash. That¡¯s why we were falling asleep on you, Boss Lady.¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± Ritsuka said, nodding his agreement. ¡°We never did apologize to you for that, Director. We didn¡¯t mean to disrespect you.¡±

    ¡°Probably better that you didn¡¯t,¡± Marie admitted grudgingly. ¡°Me throwing you out¡­was probably the only reason you two weren¡¯t there with the rest of the Master candidates when¡­¡±

    When the bombs went off and all the rest of us were either killed or incapacitated. And then I would be carrying the weight of this entire venture on my shoulders alone. I was glad that I wasn¡¯t, if only because I had a buffer between me and the more boisterous personalities, like Nero.

    ¡°It might not have gone the way we all wanted it to, but I¡¯m glad that things happened the way they did,¡± Mash said. She gave the twins a smile. ¡°After all, if Senpai hadn¡¯t been there to find me in the Rayshift Chamber, I might not have survived long enough to form a contract with them and become a Demi-Servant.¡±

    ¡°Aw, shucks, Cinnabon!¡± said Rika, pretending to scuff her foot bashfully. Her smile gave her away.

    ¡°Ugh,¡± said Jeanne Alter. ¡°And here I thought I was going to have one over on Super Bitch and the others.¡± She scoffed. ¡°At least I don¡¯t have egg on my face from trying to claim I soloed the big, bad Attila that everyone had trouble with before.¡±

    ¡°Mash has also undergone a¡­¡± What had Da Vinci called it? ¡°Saint Graph Ascension since then.¡±

    ¡°I-I don¡¯t think it made me that much stronger, Miss Taylor,¡± Mash demurred humbly. ¡°A-and anyway, it¡¯s not really a competition, is it? This was all about seeing how far we¡¯ve come since we faced these enemies, so the only people we have to be better than are the ones who faced her the first time.¡±

    ¡°Well said, Mash,¡± Marie agreed.

    In that regard¡­ Well, yes, they had done better than when we first fought Altera. I wasn¡¯t sure that was quite as high a bar to clear as it might have been otherwise, though. Not only because of the AI¡¯s limitations, but also because it was an enemy we¡¯d already faced and overcome, so there was nothing the simulation could have thrown at them that they didn¡¯t already know about.

    It was a frustrating problem. The AI could only mimic what we ourselves had seen, which meant there weren¡¯t many ways for it to surprise us, and that would breed complacency. Skirmishes between our current roster really would be more worthwhile than going back and running through a gauntlet of our old enemies.

    ¡°Sure, sure, rainbows and unicorns, sugar, spice, and everything nice, friendship is the real magic,¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. ¡°Are we loading up another simulation, or is this party done with?¡±

    If A¨ªfe was there with us, she probably would have given Jeanne Alter a slap to the back of the head.

    I checked the time. ¡°It¡¯ll be dinnertime, soon,¡± I announced. ¡°I think we can call it here for today. We¡¯ll save Herakles and Caenis for another time.¡±

    The twins let out twin sighs of relief.

    ¡°Not gonna lie, I¡¯m not looking forward to that,¡± Rika admitted. ¡°Herk and the Sea Urchin just had so much hax, it was super unfair.¡±

    ¡°Sea Urchin?¡± her brother asked her.

    ¡°Because she¡¯s got a prickly personality?¡± Rika said. Ritsuka made a face, not entirely convinced by her logic, and while I could see where she was coming from, I wasn¡¯t either. Rika wasn¡¯t oblivious to it. ¡°Look, I couldn¡¯t come up with anything better, okay? We knew her for, like, five minutes, and when she wasn¡¯t talking down to us, she was cussing up a storm.¡±

    ¡°Hey,¡± said Jeanne Alter, sounding annoyed, ¡°just what are you trying to imply with that?¡±

    To cut off the argument before it could really gather steam, I pulled the metaphorical plug on the simulation, and whatever Rika might have been about to say in response died before it could even make it out of her mouth. The Spanish plain we¡¯d been standing on vanished around me in a blur of dissolving pixels and static, taking everyone else with it.

    A moment later, I came back to myself in the simulator room, and despite the fact that my mind told me I had spent the last couple hours standing, walking, or even running around our old battlefields, my body was stiff and sore from sitting around so motionlessly for that entire time. I had to roll my shoulders and stretch as I climbed out of the VR pod to relieve some of the tension.

    I was going to take a nice, long bath before going to bed tonight. It might not be quite as good as the one in Rome, but Jackie and I could make do with the tiny tub in my room¡¯s adjoined bathroom, because a shower just wasn¡¯t going to cut it today.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    As though summoned by my thoughts of her, Jackie appeared at my side and greeted me with, ¡°Welcome back, Mommy.¡±

    ¡°Hi, Jackie,¡± I greeted her in return, smiling a little. ¡°Did you like watching our exercises?¡±

    Jackie nodded. ¡°It wasn¡¯t as fun as being there ourselves, but we got to see some of the bad guys Mommy fought before. Some of them were pretty scary.¡±

    ¡°Trust me, kid,¡± El-Melloi II said like some kind of grizzled veteran, ¡°that Altera was a lot more terrifying in person.¡±

    ¡°Although the trick we used to beat her was kind of silly in hindsight,¡± Arash added. He smiled. ¡°Don¡¯t you think? Shouting ¡®Attila!¡¯ at her from every angle sounds like something that should have failed miserably.¡±

    ¡°We were fortunate that it did not,¡± Siegfried agreed. ¡°I¡¯m only sorry that I couldn¡¯t have been there myself to lend my aid, however paltry it might have been.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t sell yourself short, Lord Siegfried!¡± Bradamante insisted. ¡°I¡¯m certain you would have contributed greatly to the battle!¡±

    ¡°She was a most formidable foe! Mm-mm!¡± Nero said. ¡°Any aid at all would have been welcome!¡±

    ¡°Hold on, back up a step,¡± Jeanne Alter butted in. ¡°Did I just hear that bullshit right? You tripped up that Attila bitch by shouting her name at her?¡±

    ¡°Yeah, Arash is right, it does sound kind of silly now, doesn¡¯t it?¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°It was because she wasn¡¯t using the name Attila that I thought it might mean something if we did,¡± I reasoned. ¡°We were low on options and trying to find something that would stick. It just turned out that the name Attila was traumatic for her, for whatever reason. She never had the chance to explain why.¡±

    ¡°Maybe when we see her again, Senpai can ask,¡± Rika said slyly.

    I wasn¡¯t sure I could imagine that. Would she even remember that was how we beat her in Rome? Would she hold a grudge? Without knowing how strongly that fight had impacted her, there was no way to say.

    ¡°You think we¡¯ll see her again, Senpai?¡± Mash asked.

    Rika shrugged. ¡°Eh. I give it fifty-fifty. The Law of Narrative Conservation says she¡¯s gotta show up at least one more time, doesn¡¯t it?¡±

    The Law of what?

    ¡°You¡¯re making that up,¡± Jeanne Alter accused.

    ¡°Am not!¡± Rika defended herself immediately.

    ¡°I think what Senpai is talking about is Chekhov¡¯s Gun.¡± Mash paused long enough to sigh. ¡°But that¡¯s something that only exists in fiction, so I¡¯m not sure what that has to do with whether or not we¡¯ll ever meet Altera again.¡±

    Rika gave her an incredulous look. ¡°We¡¯re living lives out of a fantasy novel, Cinnabon. I¡¯m not ruling anything out!¡±

    As silly as she could get, there were times when I felt the exact same way. Not, of course, that our lives were run by narrative conventions or whatever, but that so much ridiculous stuff had happened that I didn¡¯t know why I was ever surprised by anything anymore, because everything seemed possible at this point.

    ¡°Speaking of narratives and fantasies,¡± I began; it wasn¡¯t the smoothest segue, ¡°have you picked a movie for tonight, Rika? It¡¯s your turn, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    Panic crossed Rika¡¯s face. ¡°Oh crap, I forgot all about that!¡±

    ¡°Say it ain¡¯t so,¡± Ritsuka teased her. Jeanne Alter sniggered.

    Rika ignored them and turned to me. ¡°Senpai!¡± She pressed her hands together as though praying. ¡°Uh, class dismissed?¡±

    I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. ¡°Sure. Just make sure you don¡¯t skip dinner.¡±

    ¡°Blasphemy!¡± Rika chirped, and then grabbed Nero by the wrist and dragged her out of the room. ¡°Come on, Best Buddy, we¡¯ve gotta go find a movie to watch for later on tonight! Something amazing, something incredible, a real classic!¡±

    ¡°Of course!¡± Nero agreed, and she didn¡¯t resist.

    In their wake, Ritsuka let out a sigh. ¡°I should probably go and make sure she picks something good instead of something incredibly niche. You coming, Mash?¡±

    ¡°O-oh!¡± Mash gave him a smile, cheeks tinged just the slightest bit pink. ¡°Yes, of course, Senpai!¡±

    They left, following after Rika and Nero, and once they were gone, Jeanne Alter scoffed. ¡°Those two are so obvious, even I can see it.¡± She raised her hand in an irreverent wave. ¡°I¡¯m going to go kill some time until dinner. Give me a holler when it¡¯s time to eat.¡±

    She vanished into spirit form, and Marie¡¯s mouth drew into a tight scowl, but she held her tongue ¡ª thinking, probably, that there was no point in scolding someone who probably wasn¡¯t even still there. The skin of my prosthetic prickled as Jeanne Alter passed me by.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Siegfried. ¡°She¡¯s gone. I was hoping we could spar together once or twice, but it seems like that won¡¯t be happening.¡± He looked towards Arash next. ¡°Lord Arash, if there¡¯s nothing else competing for your time, could I trouble you¡­?¡±

    Arash smiled a friendly smile. ¡°Sure, I don¡¯t see why not. Come to think of it, we¡¯ve never had a chance to go toe to toe before, have we?¡±

    Siegfried returned the smile. ¡°We have not. Despite being an Archer, your skills with a blade are something to behold. I look forward to testing them against my own.¡±

    ¡°Would a threeway perhaps be out of the question?¡± Bradamante asked almost hesitantly.

    El-Melloi II choked on his own spit. ¡°Ph-phrasing, Bradamante. Please think of the phrasing.¡±

    ¡°The more, the merrier,¡± Arash said, ignoring the innuendo entirely. Bradamante smiled so broadly that it could have lit up the room.

    El-Melloi II looked very much as though he was regretting all of his life choices, or maybe like he was praying to some god or another for deliverance. ¡°I¡¯m leaving,¡± he announced, and then without saying anything else or waiting for a response, he left. Off to play video games back in his room, I assumed, or maybe take a smoke break. It went both ways with him.

    ¡°Just remember not to overload the simulator!¡± Marie ordered the Servants.

    The three of them offered acknowledgements of varying respectfulness, and then Arash went over to the console and started setting up the scenario. ¡°Spanish plains?¡± he asked the others. ¡°Mount Etna? I think London¡¯s a little too crowded, so it¡¯s probably better to pick a place where we have a lot of room to move around, but I¡¯m not sure we want to just have flatland for as far as the eye can see.¡±

    ¡°Perhaps the Alps?¡± suggested Siegfried. ¡°It¡¯s been quite some time since last I saw my homeland. It might be nice to return there for our match.¡±

    ¡°I have no complaints!¡± Bradamante said.

    Seeing that they had everything in hand, Marie left, and I took Jackie¡¯s hand and led her out of the simulator room after Marie, heading off towards the library. There was a Dickens novel that I hadn¡¯t finished reading to her yet; that was as worthwhile a way of spending the next hour and a half as any other, especially since Jackie seemed enamored with Oliver Twist. I think she enjoyed the fantasy of an orphan finding a family amongst the people who cared for the mother he never knew.

    The parallels did not escape me either.

    Sometimes, it still felt strange to have Jackie in my life. To read to her as my mother had read to me when I was a little girl, using the same books I had been raised on. To treat her like she really was my daughter who would one day grow up, go off to college, fall in love, and have kids of her own. To be her mother.

    If you could see me now, Theo, would you hate me? Envy me? Curse me? Or would you smile and say you were happy for me?

    I think he was one of the ones I dreaded having to face in a world after Scion. I wouldn¡¯t shy from it, because I deserved whatever condemnation he might have for the whole Aster situation, but bonding with Jackie had given me just a glimpse of what sort of pain he must have experienced then, and I¡­I wasn¡¯t sure if it would be worse or not if he did just forgive me for it.

    When dinner rolled around, I marked our place in the book, set it aside, and together, with A¨ªfe trailing behind us to obfuscate her own reading habits, Jackie and I made our way to the cafeteria, where several of our Servants were already waiting to partake in their weekly meal. With a thought, I reached down the line connecting me to Jeanne Alter and told her, Dinnertime.

    Yeah, yeah, was her reply. If it was possible for mental voices to sound distracted, hers did. I¡¯ll be there in a minute.

    I wondered what she did with her free time, but decided against peeking through her eyes to look. As long as it didn¡¯t endanger anyone, it really wasn¡¯t any of my business, so there was no need to invade her privacy like that. I also didn¡¯t relish the thought of catching her in the middle of some passionate, personal stress relief.

    If that was what she was doing, I just hoped she washed her hands afterwards.

    Jackie and I had already gone up to Emiya, gotten our trays and our meals, and we were halfway through dinner by the time the twins and Mash came through the door, only a few minutes behind Jeanne Alter. By that point, most of the other Servants who regularly ate were already there and eating, too, with the obvious exception of Shakespeare, who wouldn¡¯t be allowed a meal again until next week, when his punishment was supposed to be over.

    When they sat down at the table with us a few minutes later ¡ª Rika sinking into her chair with a relieved sigh ¡ª I asked her, ¡°Did you get your movie picked out?¡±

    ¡°Yup!¡± she chirped. ¡°It¡¯s a double feature, and Jackie is definitely going to like the second one!¡±

    ¡°We will?¡± asked Jackie, completely guileless.

    ¡°For sure!¡± Rika put a finger to her lips and winked. ¡°Although the first one might be a little scary, so make sure to stay close to your mama, okay? And keep it a secret! I want it to be a surprise!¡±

    ¡°Okay,¡± Jackie said simply, and then she went back to her food.

    I turned an arched eyebrow Ritsuka¡¯s way, expecting that he would offer some kind of explanation. He didn¡¯t disappoint.

    ¡°They were shown together when they first aired in Japan,¡± he told me. ¡°The second one¡­it¡¯s usually meant to soften the blow from the first one¡¯s ending.¡±

    Didn¡¯t that sound ominous? I hadn¡¯t heard of anything like that before myself, so I had to assume it was either a Japanese thing that probably hadn¡¯t made it to America on Earth Bet thanks to Leviathan¡¯s attack or it was something that didn¡¯t exist on Bet at all because of the divergences.

    ¡°Have you seen either of them before?¡± I asked Mash. In hindsight, it was probably a bit of a stupid question, because movie watching wouldn¡¯t have been on Marisbury¡¯s list of things necessary to the success of his Demi-Servant project and I wasn¡¯t sure how much Romani had actually been able to sneak past him or how much Marisbury had even cared to stop Romani in the first place.

    Mash shook her head. ¡°I¡¯ve never seen either movie before myself, but Senpai explained them to me, and they sounded interesting. I¡¯m looking forward to it!¡±

    Rika gave me a leer and let out a low chuckle. ¡°I wanna see if I can get Senpai to shed a tear or two.¡±

    Amusement bubbled up in my stomach, and I felt my lips curl up just the slightest. Did I really seem so unflappable that she would start crowing victory over misty eyes and a sniffle? Even after everything that had happened at the end of the last Singularity, when Solomon himself called me out for ¡®getting soft?¡¯

    This girl could have such strange priorities, sometimes.

    The rest of dinner was finished without incident. When Marie showed up, the twins asked her if she would be at the movie night tonight to watch their double feature with us and the Servants, but Marie begged off, citing her work and the importance of pinning down the details of the next Singularity as quickly as possible. No amount of pleading from Rika was enough to persuade her otherwise, and when Rika turned to me for help, I couldn¡¯t bring myself to give it.

    Much as I agreed that Marie needed to take time to herself and relax in-between all of her work, this time, I wanted answers too much to press the issue. The sooner we knew what we would be facing for sure, the sooner we could prepare for it, and the more time I had to brace myself for the demons I was going to have to lay to rest.

    Sorry, Rika. Not this time.

    After dinner, there was about an hour and a half to kill before movie night started, so I took Jackie to the gym and we took a long, slow, two-mile walk around the track to work off some of the delicious food we¡¯d just gotten done eating. I needed it more than she did, of course, but as ever, Jackie seemed happy enough just to spend time with me, and we chatted about inanities as though we were normal people with normal lives taking a stroll through the park together.

    When the time came, we made our way to the orientation room, where the twins, Mash, Emiya, and several other Servants had already gathered. As the twins and Emiya got the equipment set up and everything prepared, Jackie and I grabbed a large bucket of popcorn to share from Emiya¡¯s makeshift ¡®concession stand¡¯ and found ourselves a pair of seats from which to watch the movies, settling in to wait.

    Slowly, the rest of the moviegoers filtered in, until everyone who was going to be there was there, and Rika turned to address us all with a big grin.

    ¡°Hey, everyone!¡± she said. ¡°We¡¯re gonna do things a bit different tonight! This one¡¯s a double feature, and the faint of heart better grab a tissue box to go with their popcorn, because the first one¡¯s a tearjerker!¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s not lying,¡± Emiya agreed, not looking up from what he was doing. ¡°I¡¯ll admit, I¡¯m not sure it¡¯ll land the same way in a crowd like this, but I saw this back when I was a kid, and, well¡­¡± He huffed a short, dry chuckle. ¡°Let¡¯s just say it hit closer to home than I thought it would.¡±

    No one seemed to know what to make of that, and with her piece said, Rika grabbed a bucket of popcorn for herself and then found a seat of her own. When everything was set up, Emiya dimmed the lights and pressed play.

    The screen came to life, and a moment later, displayed the customary screen cards crediting the studio and publisher who had produced the film ¡ª if I was reading that right, this had been made back in 1988, which meant it was older than I¡¯d thought it would be. When those went away and the movie began, it opened up on a shot of the face and torso of a young, teenage boy, dressed in an old military uniform that looked a size or two too large for his frame and drawn in soft creams, beiges, and tans. A voice that had to be his began narrating, setting the stage of a Japan amidst the final days of World War II.

    My first instinct was to roll my eyes, because of course Rika chose an animated movie, that should have been her obvious choice. It quickly became clear, however, that even if the movie was animated like a Disney film, it was definitely not aimed at children, or at least not solely, and it wasn¡¯t one of those mindless action shows people like Greg Veder had been into, even if the protagonist happened to be a teenage boy.

    No. It was ninety minutes of tragedy, depicting the consequences of war on a civilian populace, the consequences of neglect, pride, and nationalism, and probably most damning of all, the utter lack of care a society could have for those most vulnerable. As I watched, a young, teenage boy, not even really old enough to care for himself, struggled to care for his younger sister, struggled to find something to cling onto amidst upheaval and uncertainty, and struggled against the harsh realities of his situation.

    If Rika had known my past better than she did, I might have thought she had chosen this movie deliberately to draw parallels with my own life, because there were a number of them, none of them particularly comfortable. It was all too easy to substitute the burnt out husks of those wooden huts with the skeletal shells of concrete, steel, and shattered glass left behind in the wake of Leviathan, the young boy and girl with Aidan or any of the other orphans I had never given enough time to back then, the unsympathetic aunt with those desperate, starving people I had done my best to provide for.

    And the film did not shy away from showing the inevitabilities of those circumstances, because without a government willing and able to rescue them, without a caretaker who could provide for them, and without someone like me ¡ª like Skitter the warlord ¡ª to come in and fill in the holes in their support structure, there weren¡¯t many good outcomes. The reality of a situation like that was the one that made it onto the screen.

    They died.

    First, the girl, who had gotten so hungry and so desperate that she started eating rocks, and then, eventually, the boy, too, alone in a crowded train station, body and spirit both so withered that he just gave up. The only caveat the movie gave was their spirits meeting afterwards, sitting together on a hillside and overlooking a sprawling modern cityscape.

    Something glittered in the corner of my eye, and when I reached up ¡ª

    Oh.

    I guess you do win this one, Rika.

    ¡°Always gets me,¡± Rika said wetly, paying me no attention at all. Mash, next to her, sniffled loudly, clutching at a wad of tissues. Even Ritsuka wasn¡¯t dry-eyed.

    For a moment, as the credits rolled, the entire room was silent but for the accompanying music. Jackie had said nothing the entire film, but her hand held one of mine in a grip so tight and firm that I might have needed a crowbar to even begin prying her off. When I looked down at her, she was staring intently at the screen, face blank, eyes unblinking, and it took me a second to realize, trembling.

    I gave her hand a squeeze, and as though that was a pressure valve, the tension seethed out of her body like steam until she was sitting limply in her chair, still staring at the screen. I could only imagine the sorts of parallels she had to be drawing to her own life, the traumas that must have been playing out behind her eyes.

    And then the screen turned deep, vivid blue, and an upbeat pipe of some kind started playing as a vague blob creature with a single, googly eye and two rabbit-like ears protruding from his head marched from one side to the other. As he went, little white dots dropped behind him, blooming into more of the same creature. They morphed and contorted in time with the music, briefly taking the shape of what I vaguely recognized as Japanese characters.

    The image turned abruptly orange, with cartoony logs, cinderblocks, rocks, and all sorts of random things bobbing from spiderwebs that suspended them from the top and bottom of the page. A title card declared, ¡®My Neighbor Totoro¡¯ in blocky, rounded lettering.

    ¡°Hey, let¡¯s go! Hey, let¡¯s go!¡± a woman¡¯s voice sang, the complete opposite of the previous movie¡¯s ending. ¡°I¡¯m happy as can be!¡±

    I forced myself to relax into my seat and let my brain turn off, absently rubbing soothing lines on the backs of Jackie¡¯s knuckles. On the screen, a little girl in a pink dress and a sunhat marched from one side to the other, followed by an enormous caterpillar, then a grasshopper, and every time the girl reappeared, something new trailed after her.

    This was more what I expected from an animated movie chosen by Rika. It might wind up cutesy and silly and maybe a little ridiculous.

    But right then? I think I needed cutesy, silly, and ridiculous. And if Jackie climbed into my lap a few minutes in, burying herself in my arms, no one made any comments about it.

 Chapter CLXXII: Ominous Visions

    Chapter CLXXII: Ominous Visions

    The world around me was on fire.

    Sweltering heat ripped the moisture from my lips and tongue, trying to smother me beneath its oppressive weight. My breaths came shorter and heavier, but it seemed as though I couldn¡¯t get enough of it no matter how much I sucked down. Sweat broke out under my arms, across my scalp, between my toes, but it dried almost instantly. I wasn¡¯t sure that I wouldn¡¯t find steam rising off of me if I looked down at my body.

    Beyond the edge of my roof, the flames rose like hellfire, trapping me. They cast ominous, flickering shadows on the buildings across the street, curling apparitions that reached up the brick as though clawing for purchase to pull themselves out of the pit they called home. Through the oily, black smoke that streamed up and into the sky, they looked only like vague, threatening shapes in the dark, illuminated by the blaze.

    My heart hammered in my chest, beating a tattoo against my ribcage. My foot slid back a step, but I already knew I had almost no options. The fire escape behind me would be no such thing. The chalk dust? Useless at best, counterproductive at worst. The EpiPens were no better, because even if I could get close enough to use them, what were they even going to do?

    My hand found a thin, pen-like tube, thumbing the safety switch and resting a finger on the trigger. There was no guarantee it would be any better, but a canister of pepper spray was the only weapon I had against the inevitable right now. My remaining bugs were dying in their thousands ¡ª my greatest weapon, the swarm of insects that obeyed my commands, was being whittled away with every passing second.

    A pair of enormous hands appeared on the edge of the roof, sparking and ablaze, and they gripped it so hard that it bent beneath them. A head came next, then a torso, covered in layers of overlapping silver scales that danced with flickering yellows and oranges and barely recognizable as human. A single, smoldering eye glared out of the distorted maw of the face, glowing and molten.

    I pressed the trigger on my pepper spray. A burst leapt out of the thin tube, and a ball of fire erupted briefly on the hulking, muscular shoulder, ineffective.

    ¡°Fuck,¡± I hissed, frantically fumbling with the device as a leg swung over the lip of the roof. I adjusted my aim, doing my best to point it in the direction of that glowing almond through the haze and the heat.

    Another ball of fire ignited, uselessly, against his face, but the pepper spray did its job and the monster howled, reeling as he clutched at his wounded eye. It wasn¡¯t enough ¡ª he didn¡¯t stumble backwards and tumble over the edge of the roof as I had desperately hoped he might. But it still bought me a moment¡¯s reprieve.

    ¡°Muh¡­Mother¡­fucker!¡± the monster screamed, hauling himself the rest of the way up.

    There wasn¡¯t going to be another chance or a better chance, so I turned, spinning on my heel, and sprinted towards the fire escape. It was the only option I had, the only hope of making it out of this: pray that I had bought myself enough time to slip down it and run, that the scant few seconds would give me enough leeway to slip out of his grasp.

    A brief flash lit up the roof around me, and then a wave of heat and flame caught me from behind and nearly knocked me off my feet. I stumbled, skidding along the gravel, and slammed into the lip of the roof right by the fire escape. A short, frantic pat down assured me that I hadn¡¯t been set ablaze myself ¡ª neither my clothes nor my hair had caught fire.

    If this roof had been made with tar, I probably would have gone up in a puff of smoke.

    The monster slowly stood, still clutching his face with one hand, and he lashed out blindly with another wave of flame. I had to curl in on myself, knees pressed to my chest and arms over my head, to weather the worst of it. Biting my bottom lip so hard it bled was the only way I could keep myself from letting out a sound as it washed over me.

    With a limp, the monster moved, taking one slow, halting step at a time. The head, attached to a long, thick neck, turned from side to side, searching the dark.

    ¡°Cock. Sucker,¡± the monster seethed. ¡°Move. Give me something to aim for.¡±

    Indecision froze me, and I held my breath and stayed as still as possible, frantically trying to come up with a way out. The monster continued searching, stopping every few seconds to blink once or twice, and I realized with horror that the pepper spray was starting to wear off. It would be a minute, at best, before he could see well enough to distinguish me from the shadows.

    What could I do? I still had the pepper spray, but even if I got him again, he was close enough now that he might just bathe the whole roof in fire and bake me alive before I could do anything else. If I just tried to make a run for it, he would probably blast me in the back before I could get anywhere.

    There¡­weren¡¯t any other options. He was too hot ¡ª so hot that my bugs fried before they could even get close. Even if I¡¯d had the foresight to carry a knife or a collapsible baton, getting into melee with a monster that big and strong was just suicide by another term.

    The droning mass of my remaining swarm rose into the air around the building, and I surged to my feet, hoping they would mask the sound enough for me to pull it off as I swung my hand and the tube of pepper spray around. The monster¡¯s head whipped about to face me, staring straight into the line of my attack and giving me the best target possible. My finger pressed the trigger at the same time as he threw a wave of flame ¡ª

    Pain scorched the nerves in my arm, and this time, I couldn¡¯t hold in the scream that was pulled from my lips as the tube of pepper spray exploded from within. The force of the explosion sent me tumbling backwards, the backs of my knees slamming into the lip of the roof, and my stomach swooped low in my gut as I tipped over. I didn¡¯t even have the time to realize I was looking up at the sky before ¡ª

    I jolted up in my bed, panting, chest heaving and sweat pouring down my face and neck. My hair clung to my cheeks and forehead, slimy and disgusting, and my front and back were both soaked through as though I¡¯d run a marathon.

    For a few seconds, I could still feel the crack of my neck snapping and my skull splitting open on the asphalt, the brief burst of pain before the shock numbed it. The uncaring stars above still swam in my vision.

    But the phantom pain and the queasy twist of my gut and the ghostly pressure at the base of my neck slowly faded as the images melted away, slipping through my mental fingers like sand. The echo of panic and fear churning in my stomach and chest seeped out of me like sweat, leaving only the familiar environs of my room in Chaldea. There was no Lung there to burn me alive, no Brockton Bay outside my door, waiting to welcome me back to its own brand of Hell. That life, that world, had been left behind over two years ago now.

    Slowly, my heaving lungs began to calm, and the pants eased into something more natural and less frantic. The cooling sweat and dissipating adrenaline left me chilled and shaking.

    I had just woken up from a nightmare, hadn¡¯t I?

    ¡°Mommy?¡± Jackie¡¯s voice asked me quietly. In the dark, I had no hope of seeing her clearly. ¡°Is everything okay?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m fine, Jackie,¡± I murmured back to her. ¡°I just¡­had a bad dream, that¡¯s all.¡±

    She shifted in place next to me, and I felt the mattress dip as she hoisted herself up into a sitting position. Her breath wafted against my sweaty chest, warm where my skin felt cold.

    ¡°Was it scary?¡± she whispered.

    I couldn¡¯t help the anemic chuckle that huffed out of my mouth, not when my nerves were still a little raw. ¡°Not now that I¡¯m awake, but it seemed very scary when I was sleeping.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± She reached up and pressed a hand to my chest, and I wasn¡¯t sure what she was doing until she informed me, very seriously, ¡°Mommy¡¯s heart is still beating a little fast.¡±

    A puff of air burst out of my nostrils, not quite sharp enough to be a snort, and I placed my hand over hers. ¡°I¡¯m fine, Jackie. It was nothing serious.¡±

    Although I very much doubted I would be getting back to sleep anytime soon. When I glanced at my clock, the numbers 7:38 glared back at me in pale, moonlight blue. It was only about half an hour before I would normally get up anyway.

    I sighed anyway. Even missing just half an hour usually left me feeling a little foggy for a while. There was just nothing to do for it.

    Giving her hand a little squeeze, I gently pried it away from me and told her, ¡°I¡¯m going to get dressed so we can go to the gym. If you want to stay in bed for a few more minutes, that¡¯s okay.¡±

    ¡°Mm. Okay.¡±

    I slid out of bed, and when her hand slipped out of mine, she shifted and laid back down, breathing in deep and then letting it out as a sigh. While I stripped off my pajamas and pulled on my workout gear, she laid there in the dark, lounging and relaxing.

    All of the teenager with none of the sass, came the thought. It sounded a lot like Lisa.

    Once I was dressed appropriately, I got Jackie out of bed, and she dragged herself out almost reluctantly. Not fighting me, not putting up a struggle, but as though my bed was so comfortable that she didn¡¯t want to leave it. When I offered to let her stay there while I went through my morning routine, however, she outright refused to be left behind.

    If she was actually going to grow up one day and have to move out and live on her own, that sort of clinginess would have been concerning. For someone who was perpetually somewhere around nine years old, however, and whose entire life had been ruled by some form of attachment issues, I guess it was really to be expected.

    In hindsight, my mentioning of the Little Match Girl to Andersen had probably been more appropriate than I¡¯d thought at the time.

    Despite my dream, there was nothing unusual or concerning about my morning workout. Jackie cheered me on as she usually did, utterly ignoring the twins and Nero as they joined me and acting like I was in the running for first place in some race or another. Nero, at least, seemed to take that as some kind of challenge, which was kind of silly, really, since she was a Servant and could just start lapping me whenever she felt like it. It was all the more ridiculous that she kept herself within normal human limits instead, huffing and puffing as she tried to keep pace with me without relying on the superhuman speed all Servants possessed.

    When it was over, we went our separate ways to clean up for breakfast, and between the workout and the shower, the majority of the fog from my missing sleep was cleared away, leaving me with just the thoughts about what I¡¯d seen in that dream.

    It was not, obviously, how things had actually happened. Lung had come very close to killing me on my first night out, that much was true, but I had never had the chance to try shooting him in the eyes a second time with my pepper spray. The Undersiders had shown up before it got that far, distracting him and knocking him out long enough for Armsmaster to arrive and administer his special tranquilizer. I hadn¡¯t fallen, broken my neck, and cracked my skull open. Aside some singed hair, the worst injuries I¡¯d taken that night were to my pride and my dignity.

    In spite of everything, some small part of me was still offended that everyone had just assumed I was a villain that night. It wasn¡¯t a rational feeling.

    I was wary of the idea of strange, inexplicable dreams, especially since the last two times they¡¯d happened had involved getting sucked into A¨ªfe¡¯s to help her fight Sc¨¢thach and Ritsuka falling victim to a curse that had probably been meant for me. Those two instances had proven that ¡ª whatever I¡¯d said to Marie to help calm her down ¡ª there were avenues the enemy could use to attack us through our dreams. How easily it could be done was another question, but it remained possible.

    Having said that¡­ We¡¯d watched a movie last night about a city being firebombed and the victims of that cruelty, and I¡¯d spent the last month or two worried about what Solomon had meant about me returning home in the next Singularity. On the balance of things, I was more inclined to assume those things had mixed in my head to produce that twisted vision of my first night out. A nightmarish what-if where there hadn¡¯t been any Undersiders to swoop in and rescue me, leaving me to fight Lung on my own.

    It was enough to distract me at breakfast, enough that I paid no attention to the twins and Mash and what they were talking about, up until one of them mentioned my name.

    ¡°Hm?¡±

    Rika¡¯s expression fell. ¡°Weren¡¯t you paying attention, Senpai?¡±

    ¡°Sorry, just¡­¡± A brief breath hissed out of my nostrils. ¡°I didn¡¯t sleep well, that¡¯s all. Had a bad dream.¡±

    Immediately, the tension at the table ratcheted up several notches, and Jackie was alarmed, looking around at them with wide eyes, because she hadn¡¯t been here for the whole Dant¨¨s fiasco, right. She had no idea that my dream could have been anything more than a dream.

    ¡°It was just a dream.¡± They didn¡¯t look entirely convinced. A flash of annoyance sparked in my belly. ¡°Really. You showed us a tragic movie about two kids suffering and dying from the horrors of the deadliest war in human history, and you didn¡¯t think anyone might have a nightmare afterwards?¡±

    Rika winced and let out an awkward laugh. ¡°A¡­hahaha, yeah, that¡­might not have been my best decision. Maybe¡­I should¡¯ve gone with something like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke first? I just¡­wanted Senpai to realize, not everything I watch is meant for kids and teenagers! Anime can talk about some really serious, really deep stuff, too! It¡¯s not all laser eyes and giant robots and the power of friendship!¡±

    On that front, at least, I could admit that she¡¯d succeeded. Beyond her wildest dreams, even.

    ¡°Consider me convinced,¡± I told her dryly.

    ¡°Maybe next time, you¡¯ll listen to me instead of insisting you know better,¡± Ritsuka added for good measure.

    Rika laughed awkwardly again.

    ¡°Anyway,¡± I said, steering the topic back on track to¡­whatever they had originally been talking about. ¡°What was it you wanted from me?¡±

    ¡°R-right!¡± Rika jumped on the lifeline I¡¯d given her. ¡°So, um, Boss Lady said that we could go into London today and help Ren¨¦e figure out what she wants to do with her room! I was just wondering if¡­you would be coming along, Senpai. Maybe you could bring Jackie along and let her see her home again?¡±

    ¡°Our home is where Mommy is,¡± Jackie proclaimed, simple and blunt.

    Rika winced again. I wasn¡¯t sure how much she knew about Jackie¡¯s past or her circumstances, but it was almost assuredly less than I knew. I couldn¡¯t remember ever explaining to the twins how it was that the infamous Jack the Ripper could be a prepubescent girl, and I still hadn¡¯t found a good moment to broach the subject with Jackie herself to find out more than that.

    Although I had experienced a few vague dreams about wandering the dilapidated streets of London¡¯s poorest districts. Nothing really worth talking about or with all that much detail, but enough to lend some more weight to what I already knew and suspected about Jackie¡¯s past.

    The idea of going back to London itself wasn¡¯t¡­exciting, not really, although it might be an opportunity to check that bookstore where Andersen had been hiding out to see if I could find something worth picking up. A first edition copy of one of Dickens¡¯ works would have made Mom ecstatic, and I had to admit, the idea of owning one made me feel a little closer to her.

    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, ¡°I don¡¯t see why not.¡±

    A smile broke out over Rika¡¯s face, and a smaller one mirrored it on Ritsuka and Mash, too.

    ¡°Absolutely not,¡± a familiar voice said from behind me.

    ¡°Boss Lady!¡± Rika squeaked.

    A look over my shoulder showed Marie, stern-faced and serious, with her arms crossed and everything.

    ¡°Why not?¡± asked Ritsuka, a little braver.

    ¡°There¡¯s been a development, regarding the next Singularity,¡± Marie informed us all bluntly. My heart leapt in my chest. ¡°As team leader, Taylor needs to be here to be briefed on it.¡±

    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t we be here for that, too, then?¡± Ritsuka pointed out.

    Marie¡¯s eyes flashed as she glanced at him, and she didn¡¯t hesitate at all to tell him, ¡°The rest of the team will be given the details as and when they become relevant. This¡­preliminary briefing is going to cover a lot of things that you don¡¯t need to know and a lot of things that may not be relevant as we learn more. There¡¯s no point in telling you anything that doesn¡¯t concern you.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s brow furrowed, and that furrow became deeper and deeper the more Marie talked.

    ¡°Relevant?¡± Mash murmured.

    ¡°This is about what that Solly guy said,¡± Rika concluded, scarily perceptive, ¡°isn¡¯t it?¡±

    Marie¡¯s cheek twitching was telling. ¡°Like I said,¡± she replied, deflecting transparently, ¡°you¡¯ll be given all the information you need once we¡¯ve decided what that is. As Taylor is both the team leader and our only American Master, her input is an important part of our considerations going forward. She needs to be a part of this briefing. You three don¡¯t.¡±A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

    She continued, ¡°For right now, your time would be better spent helping Ren¨¦e Flamel decide on the layout for her room. Since you may be deploying within the next couple of weeks, there¡¯s no reason to put that off any longer.¡±

    ¡°It is about what the King of Mages said,¡± Ritsuka deduced. He let out a ragged, frustrated sigh. ¡°Fine. There¡¯s something about Senpai¡¯s past that you need to keep secret, so that¡¯s why you don¡¯t want us there, right? I might not like it, but I understand the reasoning, at least.¡±

    ¡°Senpai,¡± Mash said sympathetically. ¡°Even the other members of Team A¡­ We didn¡¯t know everything about their lives either. The only one who knew who everyone was and where they came from was Director Marisbury.¡±

    ¡°But none of their personal histories might mean life or death for us,¡± he pointed out, and he¡­wasn¡¯t entirely wrong.

    Even so¡­ Even so, this was confirmation, wasn¡¯t it? Brockton Bay. Earth Bet. Somehow or another, our next Singularity involved my home. I¡­wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d decided how I was supposed to feel about that yet, mostly because I still didn¡¯t know what form it would take. What it would mean to ¡®return home¡¯ and face my demons.

    Marie grimaced, and then softened just a little, letting out a quiet sigh of her own. ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, Ritsuka,¡± she said wearily, and she sounded thirty years older, just then, ¡°you might just find everything out anyway. All of those things were kept from you as much for your own protection as for Taylor¡¯s, because you couldn¡¯t be forced to tell a secret you didn¡¯t know, and yet¡­¡±

    Solomon was forcing our hand. He had laid a trap down meant specifically for me, and we would have no choice but to walk right into it. Because he only had to win once. We had to win eight times.

    ¡°It might not be a satisfying answer, but there it is,¡± Marie went on. ¡°So yes. What we¡¯re going to discuss at this preliminary briefing is details of Taylor¡¯s past and how they might be relevant to the upcoming Singularity. You wouldn¡¯t want your life put under a microscope, would you?¡±

    It was Ritsuka¡¯s turn to grimace. ¡°No, I guess not.¡±

    Marie nodded. ¡°You¡¯ve fought beside Taylor for five Singularities. The least you can do is respect that she doesn¡¯t want hers passed around this facility like gossip either, can¡¯t you?¡±

    And it was left at that. Neither of the twins protested anymore about being excluded from this ¡®preliminary briefing¡¯ I was going to be part of, although neither of them seemed all that happy about it either. Grudging, maybe, understanding of why they were being excluded, but not happy about it.

    The rest of my breakfast tasted like nothing. I might as well have been eating ash, for all that I tasted anything that made its way into my mouth. Rika might have called it a tragedy, because Emiya¡¯s food had never disappointed, but the knowledge of what was waiting for me robbed me of any enjoyment just then.

    After breakfast, the group broke up. The twins and Mash went to get ready to Rayshift into London with Ren¨¦e, and while Arash took care of Jackie, I went to my rune lesson with A¨ªfe. I should have known better than to think she wouldn¡¯t realize immediately that I had something on my mind.

    ¡°You¡¯re distracted,¡± she said bluntly about ten minutes in.

    I blinked and turned away from the runic array I was carefully constructing ¡ª to be judged by A¨ªfe herself before I attempted to make it for real ¡ª to look her directly in the face. Her eyes were narrowed on me.

    Taking that as a question, she pointed at the array sketched out on the sheet of paper I was using and told me, ¡°Half of your set here is inverted when it shouldn¡¯t be. You haven¡¯t made a mistake like that since your first month.¡±

    When I checked, I found she was right, and I let out a frustrated sound in the back of my throat, disgusted with myself. I shoved the sheet of paper away, because I was distracted, and there was no point trying to create an array that would explode in my face from the outset, and then I slumped back in my seat.

    A¨ªfe watched me, lips pursing and brow furrowing. ¡°There¡¯s something on your mind,¡± she said, stating the obvious again.

    I considered brushing it off, just for a moment, but even if she wasn¡¯t going to find out eventually anyway, I think I could say I trusted her enough to be upfront and honest with her.

    ¡°There¡¯s been a development on the next Singularity,¡± I began without preamble. ¡°The Director is going to be briefing me about it later, but¡­there¡¯s only so many things it could mean.¡±

    ¡°Ah,¡± said A¨ªfe. ¡°An answer to the question of just what it was the King of Mages prepared for you in the next Singularity. Are you worried?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d be lying if I said I wasn¡¯t.¡± For all of the reasons that I had already told Marie about weeks ago. ¡°There just isn¡¯t anything I can do about it, is there?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± A¨ªfe agreed, ¡°I suppose not. Hm. There¡¯s no point in continuing if you can¡¯t maintain your focus, so perhaps we would be better spent helping to clear your head instead of bashing it against the wall.¡±

    I wanted to deny it, to tell her that I could force myself to focus, but¡­that would half defeat the point, wouldn¡¯t it? I was more likely to make more mistakes if I was forcing myself than if I was honestly and completely focused.

    ¡°What did you have in mind?¡±

    ¡°Practical application,¡± she said, mouth slowly pulling into a familiar grin. ¡°Shall we make our way to the simulator?¡±

    It was better than trying to make my eyes look at a bunch of symbols swimming across a sheet of paper. ¡°Sure.¡±

    That was how I spent the rest of my morning lesson with A¨ªfe: in the simulator, practicing the use of the runes and getting a feel for how they might work when I used them out in the field. It became all the more obvious to me that I still had a long way to go before I was anywhere near A¨ªfe¡¯s level, but I was improving, and I could be satisfied enough with that for now.

    Afterward, I met up with Jackie and Arash for lunch, and Jackie and I enjoyed a meal together in relative silence. Ren¨¦e, I discovered, was missing from the cafeteria, and the twins and Mash were nowhere to be seen. They must have already made the Rayshift into London, I realized, and they might wind up staying there for the better part of the day. Emiya, at least, had stayed behind, so poor Marcus wasn¡¯t saddled with the responsibility of manning the kitchen all by himself.

    It was not long after I finished eating that I got the message I¡¯d simultaneously been dreading and waiting for, a simple, single line of text from Marie telling me to report to her office.

    I had no idea what my face must have looked like, but Jackie stayed with Arash again without protest, and I left them behind to make my way to Marie¡¯s office. My gut squirmed uncomfortably, doing funny little loop-de-loops the whole way, and little bursts of nausea followed in their wake.

    When I stepped in through her office door and it whooshed shut behind me, the click of the lock felt like finality.

    Romani, Marie, and Da Vinci were all already there, of course, sitting around the table off to the one side of the room, and they looked away from whatever it was they had each been doing when I entered.

    ¡°Taylor,¡± Marie said by way of greeting. ¡°Good. You¡¯re here.¡±

    ¡°Director.¡±

    I walked over to join them, and so that I wasn¡¯t the only one standing, I took the empty seat to Marie¡¯s right, putting me directly across from Da Vinci.

    ¡°Now that we¡¯ve all arrived,¡± Da Vinci began, ¡°I think it time we started discussing what it is we are all here for, yes?¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Romani agreed. ¡°The development with the next Singularity. Da Vinci, you¡¯re the one who understands it best, so I guess it¡¯s up to you to explain it.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± said Da Vinci as though it was obvious. ¡°Then I should begin with what the problem was to begin with, shouldn¡¯t I? As I¡¯m sure everyone here is already aware, pinning down the time and location of a Singularity is not as easy a task as it might initially seem. Director, of course, you were¡­unavailable when we first discovered the presence of a further seven Singularities in the wake of Fuyuki, but Romani and Taylor have already seen the map, and therefore already know that we have at least a general idea of the location of all of them. Wouldn¡¯t you say so?¡±

    It had been months, over half a year since I had seen the whole map, but¡­ ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Only the general location, however,¡± Da Vinci went on. ¡°The task since then has been finding the exact era and locality for each Singularity and its core. The further the Singularity deviates from the course of proper history, the harder it can be to determine its timeframe and focal point. That is why we¡¯re still having trouble with the last two Singularities, as well. It¡¯s possible ¡ª likely, even ¡ª that it will take a similar amount of time for us to determine the specifics of where and when they take place well enough to Rayshift the team into them.¡±

    ¡°These are all things we already know,¡± Marie pointed out impatiently.

    Da Vinci held up a finger. ¡°I¡¯m merely ensuring that we are all on the same metaphorical page, Director. Now, the obvious conclusion that would have to be drawn from this is that the American Singularity is also one that deviates significantly from proper history, but you would actually¡­ Well, you would actually be both right and wrong.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Marie, ¡°just what is that supposed to mean, Da Vinci?¡±

    ¡°I mean that half of the trouble of pinpointing the time and location of the American Singularity is because it¡¯s fluctuating,¡± was her answer.

    What? ¡°Fluctuating?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s possible?¡± Romani blurted out.

    Da Vinci nodded gravely, her smile tight and grim. ¡°As strange as it might sound, the readings we have of the Singularity don¡¯t show us a singular era being affected, but two. The first is 1783 AD, shortly after the American war for independence. In fact, depending on the exact date, it may even be before the war was officially concluded with the Treaty of Paris.¡±

    1783? That¡­actually made a whole lot of sense, when I thought about it. The formation of the United States of America was a major historical event. Throwing that off course or preventing it entirely could have dramatic ramifications for proper history. I could see that being a Singularity in its own right, where we had to go in and ensure that America actually became America.

    But she said two eras.

    ¡°And the second?¡±

    She looked directly at me as she said, ¡°2011.¡±

    All of the air abruptly left my lungs, and I felt suddenly like a deflated balloon. There it was, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Somehow, someway, my life and my world were a part of this whole fiasco, and I wasn¡¯t going to have any choice but to face it head on.

    There was a single spark of hope I could hold onto. ¡°2011? Not 2013 or 2015?¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Romani, ¡°why is that significant? What would two or four years make a difference?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s the difference between whether or not Scion is a factor,¡± Marie answered for me. ¡°In this case¡­2011 would be two years before he was killed.¡±

    Which meant we might have to wind up dodging his attention. Fuck. How were we supposed to do that?

    A sudden jolt of fear struck my gut, and I looked down at the table between us, nightmare scenarios springing to life in my head. Worse. Were we going to have to fight him again? Fight him and hope we could pull out the same miracle we had the first time? So many things had to go right back then, so many details that would be impossible to recreate. Could we even attack his weakness if he wasn¡¯t already off kilter from everything else that had happened first?

    I¡¯d been forced to destroy myself to eke out victory last time. I didn¡¯t know if I could do it a second time, if it would even work the same way or if it would be a pointless sacrifice.

    ¡°Scion would not be a factor,¡± Da Vinci said immediately.

    I looked up at her sharply. ¡°What do you mean by that?¡±

    ¡°I mean that the creature you know as Scion is what we would term a quantum observer,¡± Da Vinci explained. ¡°The reason the Wizard Marshal, Zelretch, did not involve himself in London directly is because to place himself inside of a Singularity would mean it was no longer an unobserved knot of spacetime. It would have become a Universe of Record. Our mission would have failed before it even began.

    ¡°Similarly,¡± she continued, ¡°that means that the presence of Scion inside of the Singularity would itself have made it a Universe of Record, and we would have failed the instant it stabilized enough for us to scan it clearly enough to get a reading on its timeframe and location. It¡¯s impossible for me to say how, but by all accounts, Scion himself will not be a concern for us during this next Singularity. I daresay it would have defeated the point of the King of Mages¡¯ plan.¡±

    A knot of tension eased between my shoulders. So we wouldn¡¯t have to defeat a monster that was virtually indistinguishable from a god. That¡­that was good news. And when I thought about it more, it made sense. Solomon had thanked me, and the only reason we had come up with was because I had taken care of Scion for him. Why would he purposefully undo that if Scion was somehow a threat to his plans?

    ¡°But then, why is it fluctuating?¡± Romani asked, confused.

    Da Vinci could only shrug. It seemed that she didn¡¯t know either.

    ¡°We know that these Singularities are fundamentally unstable,¡± Marie said slowly and carefully. ¡°According to the records, there weren¡¯t that many anachronisms in the Orl¨¦ans or Septem Singularities, with the exception of some of the Servants themselves, and they covered all of Europe, whereas the London Singularity covered only the city itself, but had far more anachronistic elements in it.¡±

    ¡°I see where you¡¯re going with that, Director, but I¡¯m afraid that doesn¡¯t quite track,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°After all, by that logic, the American Singularity would cover only a single city itself, and yet the data shows it encompasses almost the entirety of the North American continent.¡±

    Marie huffed and scowled, but didn¡¯t have a response to that.

    ¡°Could it be a matter of time instead?¡± Romani suggested.

    ¡°How do you mean?¡± asked Da Vinci.

    He grimaced and leaned over, propping his elbows up on his knees. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s taken us a lot longer than usual to get a read on this one, so maybe the fact that it¡¯s had so long to develop is the reason why it¡¯s fluctuating like that?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not impossible,¡± Da Vinci agreed. Her index finger tapped thoughtfully on the armrest of her chair. ¡°It would be incredibly difficult to prove, however, and it may wind up being disproven by the very next Singularity. Either way, it¡¯s a theory we might not be able to conclusively find an answer to until long after the fact.¡±

    Marie sank even further into the cushions of her armchair, frustrated. ¡°So no matter what, there¡¯s nothing we can say for sure about what¡¯s causing the fluctuations in the readings of the American Singularity.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Director, but there isn¡¯t.¡±

    ¡°What else do we know?¡± I asked.

    There was a lot that we were simply going to have to find out onsite, just because ¡ª as I hadn¡¯t forgotten ¡ª Chaldea¡¯s sensor suite couldn¡¯t get reliable ground data without us Masters there as a reference point. But surely there had to be more than just a vague date ¡ª or dates, rather ¡ª for us to go off of.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure I don¡¯t need to remind you that a large part of the information we gather in each Singularity is dependent on the Masters¡¯ presence inside that Singularity,¡± Da Vinci began, ¡°but as a curious matter of note, it¡¯s turned out that the focal point of each Singularity has in some form or fashion been related to how and why they formed ¡ª with the¡­notable exception of Okeanos, of course.¡±

    Her staff materialized in her other hand, and she held it out above the surface of the table. The massive geometric crystal in its head flashed, and then a map was projected onto the table itself, showing a flattened image of the world. Eight points of light pulsed, each of them corresponding to one of the Singularities, I realized.

    ¡°The Orl¨¦ans Singularity initially diverged, as far as we¡¯ve been able to determine, in Orl¨¦ans itself,¡± said Da Vinci, and she tapped each point as she named it. When tapped, the point swelled and brightened, highlighted, and a circle stretched out to encompass what the Singularity itself had. ¡°The Septem Singularity is harder to say for sure, mostly because we never found out where and when the first divergence truly occurred, but it wouldn¡¯t be difficult to imagine that Romulus was first summoned somewhere near the city of Rome itself.¡±

    She briefly tapped the one in the Caribbean. ¡°Okeanos was caused by the interaction of two Grails, so its actual geography resembled no real space counterpart on Earth, but based upon the data we have and the origin point of the Singularity when we Rayshifted you in, it¡¯s likely it originally formed somewhere in this general vicinity of the North Atlantic Ocean.¡±

    The one in Britain was the smallest. When she tapped it, it didn¡¯t grow at all.

    ¡°London being so small makes it hard to determine if the pattern holds,¡± she hedged, and then she moved over to America, and the map zoomed in to show the point that sat on the Northeastern coast. When she tapped that point, it suddenly expanded, covering the entirety of the United States and a good portion of Canada, with the exception of Hawaii and Alaska. ¡°But if I¡¯m right ¡ª and despite my genius, it is entirely possible I¡¯m wrong, no matter how unlikely ¡ª then the focal point of the American Singularity, its point of origin, is¡­¡±

    The point she¡¯d originally tapped, however, remained there, a beacon amidst the orangish circle that denoted the territory inside the Singularity.

    ¡°¡­here on the Northeastern coast. Curiously enough, according to our maps, there isn¡¯t actually anything of interest in this area, just mostly empty coastline and woodland. I¡¯m guessing, however,¡± and here, she looked directly at me, eyes fierce and challenging, ¡°that on Earth Bet, this would correspond to the city of Brockton Bay. Wouldn¡¯t it?¡±

    I closed my eyes briefly and took in a slow breath. There it was, the final coffin nail.

    ¡°Yes, it would.¡±

    ¡°Hold on,¡± said Romani, ¡°I thought that¡­whatever it might have been that was wearing the King of Mages¡¯s face needed the events of Taylor¡¯s life to go essentially as they were supposed to. Are you trying to tell me now that he was lying and he¡¯s trying to mess with the history of her timeline, too?¡±

    ¡°He was lying?¡± Marie began, outraged. ¡°He forced us to divulge essential details of her history on a lie?¡±

    Da Vinci shook her head. ¡°That, I¡¯m afraid, I can¡¯t tell you. All things considered, this may have been part of his original plan to remove Scion from the field to begin with. There¡¯s no way to say with any certainty, and the King of Mages himself most definitely won¡¯t be telling us his true intentions anytime soon. What I can say, however, is that there¡¯s something odd about the focal point of this Singularity.¡±

    She tapped the hologram twice, and movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. When I looked up at the upper left corner of the map, I noticed a date ¡ª 1783 AD ¡ª and I must have missed it before when it said 2011 AD. This time, when Da Vinci zoomed in on the focal point of the American Singularity, it was further south, what had to be maybe a hundred miles south of Boston, and sitting just barely out into the water, something like a mile or less out from the shoreline.

    ¡°Cape Cod?¡±

    ¡°Cape Cod Bay, to be precise,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°The odd thing is, when the fluctuation occurs, there¡¯s a sort of¡­echo of the focal point, located out in Cape Cod Bay. Why and how, I couldn¡¯t begin to guess.¡±

    Neither could I. Frankly, while the basic premise sounded like it made sense, when I looked at what she¡¯d actually given us for evidence, it started to look flimsy.

    I was willing to believe that Brockton Bay would be involved in this next Singularity somehow or another, especially if Solomon was looking to screw with me in particular, but I couldn¡¯t think of anything that happened in 2011 that was important enough to cause catastrophic damage if it was changed without being so important it would completely change the outcome of Gold Morning.

    ¡°Are you sure that¡¯s even how this works?¡± I asked her. ¡°You said it yourself, you¡¯re mostly basing this whole thing about focal points on Orl¨¦ans. That¡¯s the only one we know with any certainty started where you say the focal point was.¡±

    She smiled tightly. ¡°As sure as I can be. Much as I might not like to admit it, this is largely conjecture based upon a singular data point. As I said earlier, it is entirely possible that I am, as they say, barking up the wrong tree.¡±

    ¡°It might even be that the focal point is nothing more than the location of the Grail at the moment the Singularity gained enough stability to be detectable,¡± Marie pointed out.

    Da Vinci winced. ¡°That is also¡­entirely possible.¡±

    Romani sighed and ran a hand through his hair, flopping backwards in his chair as he lamented, ¡°So at the end of the day, no matter what we do, there¡¯s still a limit on how much information we can gather on a Singularity before sending the Masters in.¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately,¡± Da Vinci agreed. ¡°In either case, whatever the cause for the fluctuations and the displaced echo of the focal point, the one thing that I¡¯m afraid we can say for certain is that ¡ª for better or worse ¡ª it seems that the next Singularity is going to take place not here in this world¡¯s timeline, but in proper history as Taylor knows it.¡±

    ¡°Earth Bet.¡± Going home, indeed. Fuck Solomon.

    She nodded.

    ¡°Even with the improvements and calibrations we¡¯ve made to the sensors over the last several months, it still won¡¯t be possible to say for sure what that will look like, not completely and not until you¡¯ve Rayshifted into it,¡± she hedged. ¡°I should still be able to get a decent enough look at the projected landing zone to tell you something about what to expect when you get there, however.¡±

    That was better than nothing, I guess. And 2011¡­ At least that would mean that all of my fears about what might have happened to everyone after Gold Morning wouldn¡¯t become anything more than vague worries I never had to face. I could live with that. I had lived with that for the last two and a half years. I¡¯d learned how to be okay with the not knowing and the uncertainty.

    Having to see my younger self, the younger, less worn, less traumatized versions of my friends, well, that part I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d fully come to terms with yet.

    ¡°I appreciate that, Da Vinci.¡±

    ¡°You know what this means, don¡¯t you?¡± said Marie quietly. When I turned to her, she stared back at me, lips pulled into a tight line and face grim. ¡°The twins and Mash. The rest of the staff. Everyone left in the facility. We¡¯ll have to tell them everything.¡±

    A block of ice dropped suddenly into my stomach.

    Fuck.

 Chapter CLXXIII: Parahumans 101

    Chapter CLXXIII: Parahumans 101

    By unanimous agreement, it was decided that we could not simply drop all of this news on everyone immediately ¡ª a small mercy, that I wasn¡¯t going to be forced to dig up the past I¡¯d thought dead and buried on such short notice. It still took another hour of discussion before we settled on when to do the briefing, how much time we could afford to take to prepare all of the relevant information for everyone.

    A week. It felt both like an eternity and yet no time at all.

    But we were already so far behind where we wanted to be, in terms of our timeline. After America, there were still going to be two more Singularities, and if we put off this one for too long, then we might not have enough time to find the last two, prepare for them, and resolve them, especially if the time differential wasn¡¯t on our side.

    Marie was already allotting two weeks for final preparations for Rayshifting, after the briefing, and if we included that week of getting the briefing ready, then that was going to put our deployment at the end of March. A week didn¡¯t feel like enough time, but it was all we could afford to lose.

    I spent a good portion of that week in Marie¡¯s office with her. Romani and Da Vinci joined us occasionally, but they had responsibilities that they had to see to, and with Marie busy with me while we pieced together what we should and shouldn¡¯t say, a lot of her responsibilities had no one else to fall to but Romani.

    Someone had to keep the facility running smoothly. If it couldn¡¯t be Marie, then she had to delegate it to the only people left who had the experience and the authority in the organization to do so.

    The twins and Mash were almost certainly suspicious of my spending so much time with Marie like this, and every day when I saw them at breakfast, their curiosity got the better of them. Every time, I had to tell them the same thing:

    ¡°It¡¯s to do with the next Singularity. You¡¯ll find out what¡¯s going on in a few days.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t a satisfying answer, and I could see that it wasn¡¯t a satisfying answer, just by the expressions on their faces, but it wasn¡¯t like I could just drop everything on them in the middle of the cafeteria either. It wasn¡¯t the time or the place for topics that dense and that heavy.

    Even the Servants started to notice. Arash almost certainly had some idea of exactly what was going on, but I had cut my lessons with A¨ªfe back to every other day instead of every day, done the same with Mash¡¯s swimming lessons, and was leaving Jackie with Arash for hours at a time, and she definitely wasn¡¯t happy about that.

    The only thing I could tell her was, ¡°Mommy is helping prepare for the next Singularity, Jackie. It¡¯s not for forever, I promise.¡±

    She made me pinky swear, and I had no idea where she had even picked that up, but she snuggled up even more at bedtime as though she was making up for the lost time during the day. I let it pass for no other reason than because it was the only way I could apologize to her.

    I didn¡¯t doubt that the technicians were starting to catch on, too. Sylvia and I regularly used the simulator together to enjoy the Roman baths in the only way we could without actually Rayshifting ¡ª seeing as Da Vinci still hadn¡¯t finished Nero¡¯s request amidst all of the other things pulling at her attention ¡ª and my absence had almost certainly been noticed.

    And while Sylvia was a magus and knew how to keep secrets, she was also a woman who hadn¡¯t been able to talk to anyone else aside from her coworkers for over six months. It was almost a guarantee that the others knew by now, too.

    There wasn¡¯t anything to be done about it. They were all going to find out soon enough, and all I could do was bear the stares and the curiosity and the suspicions in the meantime.

    Only once did I question the entire thing.

    ¡°Are we sure about this?¡± I asked Marie one day midway through the week. We were in her office at the time, papers strewn all about as we scribbled notes about relevant details and what didn¡¯t need to be said. Marie¡¯s hair had been messy and unkempt from the number of times she had scrubbed at her scalp, frustrated, to the point her characteristic braid had come undone on the one side.

    I knew it was a stupid question before it had even finished leaving my lips.

    Dark bags hung like blackish crescents under her eyes when she turned to look at me, skin paler than usual and as white as the paper we were writing on. Her bottom lip was swollen from how much she had been chewing on it, and the thumbnail on her left thumb was a worn, jagged mess streaked with dried saliva.

    She only told me what I already knew. ¡°We can¡¯t send the others in unprepared. They have no idea what¡¯s waiting for them or what to expect from Earth Bet, and even if that didn¡¯t get them hurt or killed, they would find out everything eventually anyway.¡±

    And it was that simple. Yes, we could keep hiding it and try to smother the information, but what would be the point? The instant they saw their first cape fight, the jig would be up, and I would be forced to tell them at least something about what was going on. Worse, we didn¡¯t know when in 2011 we were going to be Rayshifting into, which meant it was entirely possible we could find ourselves caught up in the middle of the Nine¡¯s attack on Brockton Bay.

    Nothing could prepare you for what that looked like and what they were like, but I could at least warn them not to trust Bonesaw or Crawler and not to listen to Jack fucking Slash.

    So if they were going to find out anyway, if I was going to be forced to explain all of this one way or another, better to do it now, when we were getting ready and had the time and space to be comprehensive, instead of hoping it didn¡¯t bite us in the ass later when we didn¡¯t have a choice and were scrambling to catch everyone up.

    I left it at that and went back to work, because I thought it was settled. Marie apparently didn¡¯t.

    ¡°When this is all over,¡± she said, unprompted, ¡°I¡¯m going to call in a favor from Lord Zelretch. I don¡¯t care what it takes or what he asks for. When the Association comes to investigate, I will make sure that you can retire to whichever parallel world you want.¡±

    And where will that leave you? I didn¡¯t ask. Or the twins, or any of the technicians who would very soon know things that the Association would be very interested in learning? She should know better than to think I was just going to up and abandon everyone so I could save my own skin. I couldn¡¯t be the person who stood by and let an atrocity be committed simply because it was inconvenient for me to risk myself to stop it. Never, not ever again.

    I didn¡¯t have anything more than vague ideas yet, but there were plenty of options in my arsenal to bring to bear against anyone who thought they were going to do whatever they wanted with us all.

    Over the course of that week, we started off with just about everything and every detail we could think of, both about Earth Bet and my life, and we slowly pared it all down to the important stuff, the stuff that the team needed to know going in. A lot of the parts of my life were, thankfully, left by the wayside. No one needed to know about my history, about how my Trigger Event occurred, they just needed to know that Trigger Events existed and how they worked, how important deescalation was when someone was freaking out and probably not in full control of powers they just got.

    Some part of me also worried about what it would mean for the twins to be on Earth Bet. If a passenger started paying attention to them and thought they might make good hosts. It was enough that I would have to worry about myself when this was all over, I didn¡¯t want them to be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives, too, expecting some pitiless mage with more curiosity than morals to snatch them up in broad daylight.

    My Skitter phase was unfortunately relevant details. If we landed in Brockton in the aftermath of Leviathan, then the fact we might run into my younger self was very relevant and very important, because she was much less likely to be measured than I was, caught up as she was in both dragging her city back from the brink and earning enough trust from Coil to free Dinah.

    If we were lucky¡­ If we were lucky, then we would find Brockton in the calmer period, after the Nine had left and after I had turned myself in to the PRT, when things had settled down enough that there wouldn¡¯t be any real chance of having to deal with the major players or facing down me at my worst.

    I wasn¡¯t betting on us being lucky.

    The more we carved out of the briefing plans, however, the more that seemed to be left. Did we need this? Yes. Then we had to explain this, and this, and then that, too, just to make sure. Would that be important? Probably, so we needed to make sure that we included some context about how that would impact things and what it might mean during our deployment.

    In the end, we had enough to go over that I wasn¡¯t sure we would be able to cover it all in a single session, and frankly, I¡¯d had to root through history lessons that I wasn¡¯t sure I even remembered properly anymore. I couldn¡¯t even be sure exactly how much it would all be relevant, because we still had no idea what the fluctuations in the readings meant and how they might manifest in the Singularity.

    We could even be looking at something completely ridiculous. Like all of the citizens of modern Brockton Bay stuck in the middle of whatever might have been in the city¡¯s place in 1783, in which case there was no telling how things would have settled by the time we deployed.

    It wasn¡¯t an excuse to leave anything out. No ¡ª the twins and Mash, all our Servants, even the technicians who would be watching the situation unfold from here in Chaldea, they were all going to get as complete a picture as we could give them, and what that would mean for the aftermath of this crisis, we were going to have to deal with that later.

    The day of the briefing, I skipped my morning workout and went straight to breakfast instead. Marie, predictably, was already in the cafeteria and eating slowly, although she looked like she was having trouble keeping it down. I couldn¡¯t blame her. A bundle of nerves sat uncomfortably in my own belly, twitching and squirming like a colony of earthworms.

    Emiya, perhaps sensing my mood, dished me up my breakfast silently. The smile he usually gave me was nowhere to be seen ¡ª he stared instead directly at me, as though he could read my thoughts if he looked straight at my forehead. I had never been so self-conscious about the almost invisible scars still left from what Contessa had done to me at the end of it all.

    Whether he saw them or not, I had no idea. Whether he¡¯d ever questioned where they could have come from, I didn¡¯t know that either. The only person I could remember deliberately showing them to was Medea, in that church on Captain Morgan¡¯s Port Royal.

    Marie didn¡¯t react at all when I sat down across from her at the table the twins and I usually used, not even when I mutely gave Jackie her own tray and portion. Even Jackie, just then, seemed to have some idea of the weight that hung about our shoulders, glancing at us with childish concern.

    I didn¡¯t know what she had already seen in her dreams, but she was going to learn more about my world soon enough.

    ¡°Are you ready?¡± I asked Marie lowly. She stopped eating, and her mouth drew into a tight line as her brow crinkled and the hand holding her fork slowly drooped back down to her plate. A glob of brown syrup dribbled and dripped, drawing a gossamer line back down to the puddle neatly set to one side.

    ¡°I have to be,¡± she replied quietly, ¡°don¡¯t I?¡± She closed her eyes for a brief moment, a sigh hissing out of her nostrils, and then they snapped back open and she narrowed them on me. ¡°And shouldn¡¯t I be asking you that? It¡¯s not my life and my world whose history is going to be shared around like the latest Clock Tower gossip!¡±

    She wasn¡¯t wrong. But, while I wasn¡¯t and had never been excited at the idea of baring so much of myself and my past to everyone in the facility, the need for secrecy had always been an artifact of Marie¡¯s world, of the magi, and that was largely the reason I¡¯d kept it for so long to begin with. To protect both myself and the twins from the inevitable fallout of everyone knowing where I¡¯d come from, because I had firsthand experience with someone who cared more about satisfying their own curiosity than the people they¡¯d have to maim and kill to do so.

    I didn¡¯t think that decision had ever been wrong. If I had the choice, I would hoard as many of my secrets as I could, just to keep the wolves at bay and eyes off of us all. The questions once this was all over were inevitable, but the fewer questions to be asked, the better off everyone here would be. It just wasn¡¯t really my decision anymore.

    ¡°There¡¯s nothing I can do about it,¡± I said. ¡°It¡¯s like you said, it¡¯s all going to come out one way or the other, so we might as well do it now instead of scrambling to bring everyone up to date after something happens inside the Singularity.¡±

    The answer didn¡¯t make her happy, and it didn¡¯t make me happy either, but that was the truth of the matter, and neither of us could fight it. This was the hand Solomon had dealt us, and no matter how much it galled us, we had to play it. This was his game.

    And it was like I¡¯d thought a long time ago, a lifetime ago, now: I hated that trope in fiction, of teams breaking up and people fighting each other over simple misunderstandings because no one communicated and too many people kept secrets they didn¡¯t need to keep. If Solomon expected us to tear each other apart over my secrets, then just as a matter of giving him the middle finger, I would have spilled it all. Because fuck Solomon.

    We finished breakfast quietly. Neither of us had much else to say, and if I knew Marie as well as I thought I did, she was stewing in worries about the briefing. Not that I was much better, because I had my own concerns, too. About everyone¡¯s reactions. About how it might change team dynamics. About whether or not Rika could keep her mouth shut about it in the future.

    That last one might not have been entirely fair or accurate.

    After breakfast, Marie and I left the cafeteria long before the twins or Mash showed up and headed together to the orientation room, where the briefing was going to take place, so that we could get everything we needed prepared. Jackie was allowed to accompany us and stay in the room, as long as she was quiet and didn¡¯t interrupt us while we worked.

    The minutes flew by. The hour and a half that had been allotted for us to get everything ready vanished like water in a desert, and it felt like no time at all before we were waiting for everyone to show up so that we could begin.

    Perhaps predictably, most of the Servants showed up first. They didn¡¯t need sleep, they didn¡¯t really get tired, and they didn¡¯t need to eat, shower, or relieve themselves, so it was only natural that most of them could show up on time or even early. Shakespeare, perhaps somewhat worryingly, was the first to arrive, in fact, and he found a seat in the back, parked himself there, and settled in, watching with wide-eyed expectation and an air of eagerness.

    Uneasiness squirmed in my belly. He wasn¡¯t contracted to me, so there was no way he¡¯d experienced the dream cycle and seen my past that way, but he gave me the uncomfortable sense that he knew more than he¡¯d ever let on. The how concerned me as much as the possibility itself did, because the only times Marie and I had ever shared anything about my past or my world had all been in secure places that he shouldn¡¯t have been able to access, not without alerting someone that he was there.

    After Shakespeare, the others began to trickle in. A¨ªfe, Hippolyta, Arash, Siegfried, Bradamante, Mordred, Emiya, El-Melloi II, Jeanne Alter, and then Nero appeared last, accompanied by the twins and Mash. They all found seats, because there were plenty to go around, with Nero, Mash, and the twins clustered together almost as though they meant to draw strength from one another for what came next.

    But it didn¡¯t end there, because several technicians ¡ª all the ones who could be spared, if only because they weren¡¯t on duty just then ¡ª showed up, too, to the apparent surprise of Rika, Ritsuka, and Mash, who all craned their necks to watch the unexpected arrivals pick their way through the room to find a spot they were comfortable with.

    Once everyone who was supposed to be there had walked through the door and sat down, Marie stepped forward and cleared her throat, and immediately, the entire room fell silent and turned to face her, attentive. A stray thought wondered if Ritsuka and Rika were remembering that fateful day at the beginning of all of this, when they had been thrown out of the orientation for falling asleep on her, and if they were being especially alert because of it.

    ¡°All of you should have at least some idea of why you¡¯re here,¡± Marie began in a strong, clear voice. She swept her gaze across the room. ¡°For the sake of clarity, however, let me reiterate it: recent developments have given us a better look at the next Singularity, and therefore a clearer image of what to expect from it. Although there is much we still don¡¯t know about what might be waiting on the ground ¡ª and won¡¯t know for certain until the Masters have Rayshifted into the Singularity and given us the ability to look closer ¡ª given what we do know and what information we do have, there are certain things that are almost sure to appear.¡±

    Capes, I heard, even though no one else did.

    ¡°To that end,¡± she continued, ¡°we¡¯ll be conducting this briefing to bring everyone up to date about what we know so far and what to expect going forward. Yes, that includes the technical staff, because this is information they will absolutely need to know in order to monitor the situation as it develops. Those who couldn¡¯t be here for this briefing will be briefed separately, so no one is being left out.¡±

    She took a deep, bracing breath. ¡°Furthermore¡­ It appears we finally understand to at least some degree exactly what the King of Mages meant when he said that Taylor Hebert, the leader of our team of Masters, would return home and have a chance to lay her demons to rest.¡±

    Murmurs broke out, but Ritsuka¡¯s hand rose, and Marie looked towards him sharply. ¡°Yes?¡±

    The murmurs quieted. ¡°Are Doctor Roman and Da Vinci part of the group that will hear about this later?¡± he asked.

    ¡°They¡¯ve already been briefed,¡± Marie answered bluntly. ¡°This is all information they have already received, so they¡¯re currently handling their normal responsibilities.¡± She glanced around the room. ¡°Any more questions, or can we actually get started?¡±

    No one else dared to raise a hand or speak out. Marie nodded, and then she turned to the enormous windows behind her. With the click of a remote, the clear glass turned into an absolutely gigantic screen, and depicted on it was the North American continent in all its glory. As Da Vinci had shown us before, a blazing orange point sat on the northeastern coast, and a hazy film covered the rest of the country, from east coast to west coast, along with a decent chunk of Canada.

    Up in the left hand corner, ¡°2011 AD¡± glared, bright and clear.

    ¡°This is the American Singularity,¡± Marie announced. ¡°As you can see, the Singularity itself covers the entirety of the continental United States, with the exception of Alaska, as well as a large portion of southern Canada. This is the most stable reading of the Singularity we¡¯ve been able to manage with the sensors. As you can see, the Singularity occurs in 2011 AD. This, however¡­¡±

    She pressed another button on the remote, and for a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, however, the image began to flicker. The Singularity itself remained the same, but the date in the upper left corner changed to 1783 AD and back again, and every time it did, the bright, orange dot on the northeastern coast moved just the slightest.

    Marie looked back at the assembled group. ¡°This is the Singularity over the course of the last forty-eight hours. As you can see, there were fluctuations at apparently random intervals, wherein the sensors read the era of the Singularity as 1783 AD, the year the American war for independence concluded.¡±

    ¡°What the shit?¡± Mordred said loudly. ¡°The fuck is that supposed to mean?¡±

    ¡°At this time,¡± Marie began, pitching her voice to drown out anyone else, ¡°we don¡¯t know what is causing these fluctuations or what they mean. Without the Masters inside the Singularity to act as points of reference, higher resolution scans aren¡¯t possible.¡± She lanced Mordred with a short glare. ¡°As someone should have explained to you already!¡±

    Mordred grunted, but A¨ªfe, who was sitting behind her and Jeanne Alter with both of them in reach, laid a heavy hand atop her head before she could mouth off. Mordred¡¯s expression contorted with frustration, and then she scoffed quietly and let it drop.

    Ritsuka raised his hand again, and a flash of annoyance crossed Marie¡¯s face, but she still looked at him and asked, ¡°Yes?¡±

    What now, she didn¡¯t say, but I was sure most of the room still heard it.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    ¡°Is this going to change anything about how we handle the next Singularity?¡± was his question. ¡°Like who is deployed and where?¡±

    Marie¡¯s lips drew tight. ¡°We¡¯re still discussing our options for how to approach the issue, but no. We have no intention of splitting the team up or sending you in through separate Rayshifts. Everyone who is being deployed will be deployed at the same time during the same Rayshift.¡±

    It was a smart question, I thought. Rayshifting separately, so that one team wound up near the echo to investigate that and one team wound up in Brockton Bay, that wasn¡¯t a completely terrible idea, if you knew nothing else about the situation. It was just that splitting us up for this one in particular was the worst possible idea I could think of.

    ¡°Anything else?¡± asked Marie.

    Mash¡¯s hand rose. ¡°Director, what event in 2011 do we think the King of Mages might be attempting to overturn?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not like anything all that interesting happened in America that year,¡± El-Melloi II added, just a little too loudly to avoid notice.

    Marie¡¯s brow twitched, but¡­ ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± she had to admit, but she made it sound less like an admission of ignorance and more like a simple, unavoidable fact. ¡°None of it makes any sense with what the King of Mages told us at the end of the last Singularity, so none of the theories Da Vinci, Romani, Taylor, and I came up with fit. It may even have something to do with the fluctuations, but that isn¡¯t something we can say with any confidence either.¡±

    She turned back to the gigantic screen and pressed more buttons on her remote. First, the image froze on the 2011 map, and then it zoomed in to the bright, glowing dot. Marie looked back at the assembled group and gestured to the dot with her off hand.

    ¡°We¡¯re not sure how or why,¡± she went on, ¡°but this point is important to the Singularity. Whether it¡¯s the point where the divergence occurred or the point where the Grail was located at the moment of the Singularity¡¯s formation, we don¡¯t know. Da Vinci wants the team to investigate to see if we can narrow it down.¡±

    She pressed another button, and what looked like a satellite image of the area was overlaid atop the original map.

    ¡°A forest?¡± Jeanne Alter muttered, not realizing how easily her voice carried in the room. ¡°Are we going to be literally barking up the fucking trees now?¡±

    Marie took a bracing breath and didn¡¯t acknowledge her at all, which may have been Jeanne Alter¡¯s preference, because her cheeks had gained a slightly red tint. ¡°This is the map of this area according to proper history as we know it, and that is exactly why it¡¯s relevant to this briefing. We have reason to believe that this Singularity is based upon an alternate timeline, one still considered within the scope of proper history, where this area is host instead to a coastal city called Brockton Bay.¡±

    She clicked one more button, and even though I knew it was coming, a funny little jolt shot through my stomach when that forest and beach were replaced by a sprawling city. Even though the image was far too zoomed out to see individual buildings, I knew it well enough that I could have pointed out all of the landmarks by memory. The docks, the Boat Graveyard, the PRT HQ, the rig that had been repurposed into the Protectorate ENE¡¯s HQ, even the singular pixel that should have denoted my house.

    Sylvia, ironically, was the first person to pick up on the implication, and she shot out of her seat. ¡°H-hold on a second, Director Animusphere! You can¡¯t possibly be suggesting¡­!¡±

    ¡°I am,¡± Marie answered calmly. ¡°This timeline is referred to as Earth Bet, and has been observed and verified by Laplace. The briefing on all the information you will need regarding this timeline and this city, however, will be delivered by Chaldea¡¯s firsthand source, who was brought here after helping to avert the apocalyptic event known locally as Gold Morning.¡±

    Every eye in the room turned to me as Marie handed over the remote. ¡°Taylor?¡±

    I took a bracing breath of my own and accepted the remote. The weight settled in my hand like lead. ¡°Thank you, Director.¡±

    Several voices suddenly rose, shouting questions and disbelieving statements that I couldn¡¯t make out. A number of the Servants, however, particularly Arash, A¨ªfe, and Siegfried, did not seem at all surprised, and Shakespeare only watched with an ever widening grin, like he was feeding off of the drama.

    Rika, loudly enough to be heard over the rest of the commotion, squealed, ¡°Senpai¡¯s an isekai protagonist!¡±

    It was A¨ªfe who stood up from the group and brought her hands together with a sound like a thunderclap that echoed off the walls and seemed to vibrate the floor beneath our feet, and everyone winced and fell silent. I gave her a nod to show my appreciation.

    ¡°Thank you.¡± My stomach squirmed as I turned to face the rest of the group, who were all wearing varying expressions of disbelief, surprise, suspicion, and betrayal. I soldiered past it and started. ¡°Let me begin by talking about divergences, and how Earth Bet is different from history as the rest of you know it. There are several minor differences that I¡¯ve noticed, such as the Protestant Reformation that doesn¡¯t seem to have occurred here, but the most important one occurred in May of 1982, the appearance of the first recorded parahuman, discovered floating above the Atlantic Ocean. He encountered a cruise liner, introducing himself only as Scion.¡±

    I half-expected someone to jump to their feet again, exclaiming about the ¡®god¡¯ I had been forced to talk about in the aftermath of the London fiasco, and only belatedly did I realize I had never actually named him back then. Instead, Ritsuka raised his hand and asked, ¡°What¡¯s a parahuman?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s also a part of the briefing,¡± I acknowledged. ¡°It¡¯s a term for those who develop special powers during a moment of crisis we called a Trigger Event. Someone facing life or death in a fight might develop superstrength, for example, and someone trapped in a fire might suddenly find himself a pyrokinetic. Someone running away from danger might develop superspeed or the ability to expand the space around her.¡±

    El-Melloi II lurched forward in his chair. ¡°Hold on. You¡¯re saying this happens spontaneously?¡±

    I chose my next words carefully, because we were still skirting around the issue of passengers. It was one of the rabbit holes Marie and I had agreed to avoid going down.

    ¡°As far as anyone knew at the time, yes. Only parahumans themselves knew that the cost for their sudden powers was having to experience the worst, most traumatic moment of their lives.¡±

    ¡°One bad day,¡± Ritsuka murmured, although it was so quiet that I wasn¡¯t sure I even heard him right. Rika¡¯s head swiveled towards him, eyes wide.

    It was overshadowed by El-Melloi II leaping to his feet. ¡°That¡¯s absolutely¡­!¡± And then something seemed to occur to him and he blanched, staggering so hard so quickly that he had to grab the back of the seat in front of him to stay standing. ¡°The first parahuman, that god you helped to kill ¡ª they¡¯re one in the same, aren¡¯t they?¡±

    I¡¯d been hoping to avoid having to reveal that part, especially since it wouldn¡¯t be relevant to the Singularity itself, but¡­ ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Wait!¡± Rika squeaked. ¡°I thought you said that mad-guy person only woke that god up two years ago?¡±

    ¡°Shut up, Rika!¡± El-Melloi II hissed at her, to her shock, and then pinned me with a glare. ¡°That god, Scion, he¡¯s also the one responsible for the existence of all other parahumans, isn¡¯t he?¡±

    El-Melloi II really was cleverer than I ever gave him credit for. ¡°He is.¡±

    El-Melloi II¡¯s fingers curled tightly into the back of the seat he was clutching. The fabric squealed in protest. ¡°And you,¡± he said, and I could already tell the question he was about to ask, ¡°you¡¯re a parahuman, too, aren¡¯t you? That¡¯s how your powers work. They¡¯re not magecraft, not normal magecraft at any rate. They¡¯re the fragments of that god¡¯s power, handed out like candy to gullible kids too desperate to say no.¡±

    It felt dangerous to admit it, especially to a Lord of the Clock Tower, but if we encountered my younger self and especially as the data started pouring in over the course of the Singularity, then the truth was unavoidable.

    ¡°That¡¯s right.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± There was no mirth in it as El-Melloi II flopped back into his seat, pressing one hand to his forehead. ¡°Of all the explanations there could have been¡­! Let me guess.¡± The grin on his face looked almost deranged. ¡°That madman who ¡®woke up¡¯ this god of yours and caused its rampage, he was one of these parahumans as well, wasn¡¯t he?¡±

    ¡°He was.¡± There was no point in hiding that now. ¡°On the surface, his power was the projection of bladed weapons along the path of the cut, but underneath that, the core was¡­transmission, is how I would put it. His power let him know what to say to other parahumans, how to manipulate them, how to manage them. It¡¯s how he knew exactly what to say to set Scion off.¡±

    ¡°Scion isn¡¯t the point of this briefing,¡± Marie interrupted sharply. Her voice contained a note of warning, aimed at El-Melloi II. ¡°There was no trace of his presence inside the Singularity, so the exact circumstances of his existence and the events of his rampage aren¡¯t relevant.¡±

    Drop it, she said without saying.

    ¡°El-Melloi,¡± I said, backing her up, ¡°this briefing would be very different if Scion was something we had to worry about. If you want anything more than that, then we¡¯re already at the limits of what I know about him.¡±

    It wasn¡¯t even strictly a lie. He¡¯d already guessed the broad strokes well enough that the only things left I could have told him were finer details, like what passengers were and the fact that Scion was some sort of alien superorganism. Those, however, might put me even more at risk than this much already would.

    ¡°That¡¯s how it is, huh?¡± El-Melloi II huffed out a sigh. ¡°Heh. Whatever I might have been expecting, this certainly wasn¡¯t it.¡±

    ¡°Senpai,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°even if¡­Scion isn¡¯t there, the madman who made him rampage will be, won¡¯t he?¡±

    So he¡¯d caught that, had he?

    ¡°Yes,¡± I answered. ¡°Whether or not we¡¯ll encounter him at any point can¡¯t be said for sure, not when we don¡¯t know when in 2011 we¡¯ll find ourselves, but that brings me to the next topic: who we can expect to help us, who we should avoid, and who will almost certainly try to kill or subvert us.¡±

    A click of the remote, and the image on the window behind me changed to a chart. On the x-axis, a division between ally and enemy, and on the y-axis, hero and villain. Another click ¡ª Slaughterhouse Nine, sitting firmly in both enemy and villain categories.

    ¡°That madman, Jack Slash, runs one of the most dangerous groups in the continental United States on Earth Bet,¡± I explained. ¡°The Slaughterhouse Nine are a roving band of psychopaths who revel in torturing and killing. In the almost thirty years they¡¯ve been active, they¡¯ve depopulated entire towns and brought whole cities to their knees. I realize this might not mean much to the Servants here, so let me be clear: there was no higher purpose, no ideology, no reason more complicated than the simple fact that they enjoyed the act itself. Jack in particular enjoyed pulling people apart psychologically, like a kid pulling the wings off of flies just so he can see all of the ways they squirm and struggle.¡±

    Most of the Servants seemed only mildly concerned, with the exception of the noble types, like Siegfried and Bradamante, whose expressions were hard and stony. The twins and Mash, however, looked disturbed, although not entirely surprised. I guess they¡¯d seen enough that this wasn¡¯t going to make them flinch.

    It probably helped that the Avenger sitting near them had, in another life, depopulated entire cities, too, and we had accepted her into our ranks anyway.

    ¡°As of 2011, other members of the Nine included Bonesaw, who liked to turn people into ¡®art¡¯ pieces by doing things like flaying them alive and spreading their skin out to look like butterflies,¡± I went on, ¡°or stitching multiple people together to create a human hydra, as well as Crawler, whose power has mutated him into a monster the size of a minivan with acid spit and other adaptations to make him more lethal. Shatterbird has control over silicates, and her power can propagate after use to affect an entire city. The Nine often announced their presence by having her shatter every piece of glass in the city.¡±

    ¡°For real?¡± Jeanne Alter asked. She even sounded a little envious. ¡°Shit. That actually sounds kinda badass.¡±

    I pinned her with a stare. ¡°In a world where a large number of our modern amenities contain silicon in some form or fashion, it¡¯s also exceptionally deadly. The reason you should care, Jeanne Alter, is because every single one of these people would gleefully kill us Masters, and they have a large enough toolkit that they might be able to do it, if you don¡¯t take them seriously.¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t think I couldn¡¯t just torch them and be done with it?¡± she challenged.

    ¡°I think that if you give him the chance, Jack Slash will open up Ritsuka¡¯s throat first,¡± I told her bluntly, and even Mash flinched at that one. ¡°Each and every single member of the Nine is bad enough and has committed enough atrocities to earn a Kill Order. That means that the US government put out a bounty on them, and anyone who kills a member of the Nine can claim it, no matter who they are or what they¡¯ve done in the past. I will say it again: none of them would hesitate for a single second to try and kill us, and they have plenty of ways to try.¡±

    Jeanne Alter looked ready to argue more, but as she had with Mordred, A¨ªfe set a heavy hand on Jeanne Alter¡¯s head and spoke over her, ¡°You called them the Slaughterhouse Nine, so I¡¯m assuming there are more members than just those four.¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Yes. There¡¯s also Mannequin, the Siberian, and Burnscar, and depending upon when we arrive, Cherish and Hatchet Face, as well¡­¡±

    I detailed the rest of the Nine and the things I could remember about them, going over their powers as completely as I could. I gave everyone descriptions, too, so they knew exactly who to look out for and what they were looking at if we ever encountered the Nine. The twins were appropriately horrified when I finally told them what Bonesaw looked like.

    ¡°Twelve?¡± Rika demanded, her voice an octave higher than normal. ¡°There was a bounty out to kill a twelve-year-old?¡±

    ¡°A twelve-year-old who makes Doctor Mengele look like a saint,¡± I reminded her. ¡°One who will hum and sing to herself as she cuts you and your brother in half and sews you two together so that you never have to ever be separated again. Without anesthesia.¡±

    That shut her up quickly. She even looked faintly green at the idea, matched by her brother¡¯s pale face and nauseous expression.

    ¡°Fortunately,¡± I said, ¡°if we arrive before or after June, then our odds of actually meeting Jack and the Nine are much, much lower. After June would be better for us. The Nine went into hibernation for two years after that.¡±

    I clicked the remote again. Next to the Slaughterhouse Nine, another name appeared, The Fallen.

    ¡°The Fallen are a kind of doomsday religious cult. They worship a trio of monsters that we called Endbringers, and style themselves after one or the other based upon which sect they belong to¡­¡±

    Mostly, my warnings about the Fallen had to do with being wary of kidnapping attempts, because I¡¯d heard of a number of Wards who had been snatched up and brainwashed by the Fallen, forced into their ¡®families¡¯ as breeding stock. I¡­wasn¡¯t sure how much they would have to worry about that, if only because they weren¡¯t actually capes and the Fallen might lose interest in them specifically once they realized the mystic codes were basically tinkertech. It was something they needed to be on guard for regardless, just in case.

    But mentioning the Endbringers even so obliquely meant that I had to cover them, too, and there had to come a point where the facts that I took for granted on Earth Bet started to sound outlandish to some of the people there.

    It was Sylvia who leapt to her feet, this time, as I was in the middle of detailing the powers of the Endbringers and how unstoppable they were. ¡°Hold on! These don¡¯t sound like¡­like more of these parahumans, they sound like Phantasmals! No ¡ª Leviathan? Simurgh? Behemoth? Those¡­those are the names of Divine Beasts! In the modern world! They should be on the Reverse Side!¡±

    Neither of the twins asked about the Reverse Side, which I suppose meant that their lessons with El-Melloi II had gotten pretty far. But the other handful of magi among the technicians seemed to be equally disturbed and equally incredulous.

    I tried not to think about the eager look on some of the Servants¡¯ faces. A¨ªfe in particular looked like she was daydreaming about going up against Behemoth or Leviathan and seeing exactly how invincible they really were.

    ¡°They¡¯re not Divine Beasts,¡± I said, ¡°although you¡¯d be forgiven for thinking they were. I couldn¡¯t tell you why they were created the way they were, but the reason we gave them the names that we did was because they looked like monsters out of mythology.¡±

    Something like terror crept into Sylvia¡¯s face, and she tilted her head down, and lowly, asked, ¡°Created?¡±

    My lips drew into a thin line, and for a moment, I debated the wisdom of it, and then I clicked the remote. On the chart, several names filled in. Under Villain and Ally, Undersiders was one, as well as Accord, although he was frankly more tentative than I would have preferred, and Faultline, even though she was even more tentative than Accord. Coil went under Villain and Enemy, along with Empire Eighty-Eight, The Teeth, and Azn Bad Boys.

    Then, the Protectorate, Dragon, and The Guild popped up under Hero and Ally, with the Triumvirate singled out from the rest. I saw Siegfried stir at the name ¡®Dragon,¡¯ but even though his curiosity must have been burning a hole in his gut, he held it in without interrupting.

    ¡°Near the beginning of the appearance of parahumans, there was a small group that called themselves the Protectorate,¡± I began. ¡°They consisted of four members: Legend, whose power involved shooting lasers with esoteric and exotic effects, Alexandria, the ¡®flying brick¡¯ for whom all later fliers with superstrength got labeled an ¡®Alexandria package,¡¯ Hero, who could create things like jetpacks and hoverboards and laser pistols, and Eidolon, whose power was to pull on other powers from a pool. They were four of the strongest parahumans to ever live, and until the Siberian literally tore Hero in half, everyone thought they were invincible.¡±

    I hesitated for a moment, but only a moment. ¡°During Gold Morning, Eidolon pressured Scion in a way no other parahuman could, so Scion used a form of Clairvoyance to see how he could defeat Eidolon with the least amount of effort. He used only four words: you needed worthy opponents.¡±

    It took a moment for the implication to sink in, for her to draw all of the right conclusions from what I¡¯d said, what I hadn¡¯t said, and the context of the whole conversation. Why else bring it up when talking about the Endbringers if it wasn¡¯t relevant to the topic? Because it was relevant. It was connected.

    That was when the surprise and the horror kicked in.

    ¡°He created them?¡± she said in a small voice. ¡°He ¡ª a human had the power to create three monsters on the level of Divine Beasts?¡±

    ¡°Whether he created them or just awoke them is something I¡¯ve never been clear on,¡± was the answer I gave her. ¡°Either way, he was responsible for their existence, somehow or another. A¡­friend of mine had a theory, that maybe they were originally a kind of weapon Scion would use to keep us in line, and Eidolon probably woke them up accidentally.¡±

    El-Melloi II chuckled lowly. ¡°Why not? A god with a handful of pet Divine Beasts. The only thing strange about that is the fact it took place in the modern day.¡±

    I didn¡¯t have an answer for that. The truth would mean telling them about the passengers and the Entities to which they belonged, and we weren¡¯t going to be doing that.

    A¨ªfe leaned forward in her chair. ¡°Should we expect to come to blows with any of these Endbringers of yours?¡±

    To that, I could only tell her, ¡°I can¡¯t say for sure. Their normal habit is to attack once every three months or so, but there¡¯s no way to know until we get in there how the Singularity might have affected them. If we do encounter them¡­¡±

    It wasn¡¯t the worst case scenario, but it was up there.

    ¡°¡­we¡¯ll call in as many reinforcements as we can to distract them while us Masters retreat to safety as quickly as possible.¡±

    A¨ªfe clicked her tongue and sat back, not entirely satisfied.

    ¡°B-but that means¡­!¡± Mash gasped. ¡°Miss Taylor! You said they destroy entire cities at a time!¡±

    ¡°And a good day when one of them attacks is one in four of the defenders dead,¡± I replied. ¡°A bad day sees upwards of fifty percent casualties. We can send in our Servants to help, Mash, but the first priority in that situation is making sure the Masters survive. The Singularity can be fixed, the people who die saved by correcting it, but if one of us dies, we can¡¯t be brought back.¡±

    This didn¡¯t seem to sit right with Mash either, but she settled down uneasily. Ritsuka set a comforting hand on her arm, as though to let her know that he felt the same way. When he spoke up, however, his question was entirely different, ¡°Senpai, those names on that chart, some of them look like gang names, so I can understand why we wouldn¡¯t expect them to help, but what about the others in the ¡®hero¡¯ column?¡±

    Oh, good, an easier question. ¡°The Triumvirate is the name given to the original members of the Protectorate after Hero was killed, and the Protectorate became the name of the government-backed hero organization. They handled villains and villainous gangs in cities where parahumans were more prominent. We can expect they¡¯ll help us to at least some degree or another, even if only to house us and transport us across the country as necessary.¡±

    That¡­might have been a little bit of a white lie. I wasn¡¯t sure how much of an in I had with the Protectorate or the PRT, and if we showed up while my younger self was in the height of her villain era, the answer might wind up being none at all. At the very least, however, I knew enough of the big names personally enough to get my foot in the door, and that might be enough to get us at least an audience.

    ¡°Likewise, the Guild and Dragon are technically speaking connected, since Dragon is a major member of the Guild. Different from the PRT, the Guild more often takes on larger, more serious threats instead of focusing on single cities or territories. They¡¯re also not officially government backed, which means they have a little more leeway in how they handle things, even if Dragon is also a government contractor and an honorary member of the Protectorate.¡±

    Finally, Siegfried¡¯s curiosity got the better of him. ¡°And what is this Dragon you speak of, Master?¡±

    ¡°The world¡¯s preeminent Tinker.¡± And then, realizing they wouldn¡¯t know the term, I added, ¡°Ah, that is, someone whose powers specialize in the creation of exotic technology. The hallmark of what¡¯s called tinkertech is that it¡¯s usually impossible to replicate with modern technology, and Dragon is considered the world¡¯s greatest Tinker because her power is to replicate tinkertech.¡±

    ¡°Something like that wonderful knife of yours, perhaps?¡± Shakespeare asked knowingly. His grin threatened to split his face.

    If he was expecting me to deny it, I disappointed him. ¡°It was a collaboration between her and a fellow Tinker who she was friends with, Defiant. He specialized in miniaturization and made the nanothorns, and she helped another Tinker named Masamune create a limited batch of them. I received one.¡±

    ¡°And these¡­Undersiders?¡± said Bradamante, her distaste clear in her voice. ¡°Accord? Faultline? You have them listed as both villains and allies, Master.¡±

    ¡°Faultline is a mercenary,¡± I told her bluntly. ¡°She¡¯ll go wherever the coin is, and I have a few answers she¡¯s been looking for. Accord is¡­prickly, but he can be convinced to work for the betterment of mankind. He came up with a solution to world hunger, and then quit when the government refused to even attempt it. The Undersiders¡­¡±

    God, how could I even explain that one? There was so much history, so much bundled up with all of that, so much that was far too tangled to explain properly here and now. How could I even begin to explain everything we¡¯d done together and why?

    ¡°They¡¯ll depend,¡± I settled on. ¡°If we show up too early, then they won¡¯t be able to help us. If we show up past June, however¡­¡± It¡­wasn¡¯t a guarantee, but, ¡°Then we can reach enough of an understanding with them to get at least some assistance while we¡¯re in Brockton Bay.¡±

    Bradamante didn¡¯t¡­seem exactly happy with that, but she accepted it with a stiff nod. She¡¯d spent enough time here with the likes of Jeanne Alter, Sam Bellamy, and Mordred to understand by now that you accepted help wherever it came from, as long as it was honest.

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Rika, and she almost jumped out of her seat, ¡°wait, wait, wait! Defiant, Accord, Faultline? Eidolon, Hero, Legend? People getting superpowers from one bad day? Gangs of villains running around, terrorizing cities, while a league of heroes set out to stop them from robbing banks and pushing old ladies into traffic? A costume that looks like it came off the cover of a DC comic book? Senpai¡­you were a superhero!¡±

    It was a lot more complicated than that, but, ¡°Yes. Yes, I was.¡±

    There was no pride, no bragging, just simple fact. Yes, at one point, I was a superhero, however roundabout the route to it wound up being.

    ¡°Holy shit,¡± said Jeanne Alter, stunned. ¡°For real?¡±

    ¡°For real.¡±

    ¡°Oh my god!¡± Rika squealed. ¡°Senpai was a superhero!¡±

    Right then, El-Melloi II looked like he regretted ever coming back with us.

 Chapter CLXXIV: No Capes

    Chapter CLXXIV: No Capes

    The briefing took the better part of the rest of the day. There was simply too much to cover, too much of it that would be intensely relevant to our upcoming deployment, and the cat was already out of the bag. In fact, that just made it easier to talk about all of this stuff, because once I got the broader strokes out of the way, the minutiae was just adding onto all of the things I¡¯d already shared.

    I went over Trigger Events in more depth, to give everyone an idea of what to look for and what they looked like and how to calm a situation down when one was involved. I gave them more examples of how the Trigger Event could influence the power that resulted from them, pulling a bit on some of Lisa¡¯s theories, some of my own personal experience, and some of the stuff I had learned either during my stint as a Ward or directly from Cauldron at the end of the world.

    I emphasized the importance of keeping a cool head, both when faced with someone else¡¯s Trigger Event and to help them avoid having one of their own. The Servants, I wasn¡¯t sure could even have a Trigger Event, and even if it was technically possible, Servants by definition had already experienced the worst moments of their lives. Some of them, like Hippolyta, hadn¡¯t survived it. The twins, however, and probably even Mash, they could absolutely trigger, and while Rika seemed a little excited at the idea of having superpowers, the cost was too steep for any of us to be comfortable with.

    And that was without getting into the quagmire that would result if one or both of the twins was a cape at the end of all of this. Better to give the Association as few targets as possible. Cut down on the curiosity of people with way too many ways to fuck us all over.

    The major players and their powers were also things I went into more detail about, particularly those we were almost certainly going to deal with, and when I had the knowledge, I even gave a brief overview of the personalities behind those powers. If we had to interact with Accord at any point, then knowledge of his neuroses was going to be essential to managing him and avoiding an unnecessary conflict. If we ever ran afoul of Coil and his mercenaries, this was how his power worked, so we should then assume that we were experiencing the version of events where he thought he was going to get what he wanted.

    Naturally, fleshing out the profiles of the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine was a part of that, too. Bonesaw being a biotinker with access to cybernetic enhancements and engineered bioweapons, Mannequin having enclosed himself into a system of hardened ceramic spheres and kitted them out with weapons. Crawler being sturdy and adapting to whatever didn¡¯t kill him outright. Burnscar being a teleporting pyrokinetic. Cherish having the ability to sense and manipulate the emotions of other people within a very large range. Siberian being a projection that bent the laws of physics over her knee, but with a completely normal master controlling her.

    Hatchet Face was ironically the easiest. His power worked entirely off of shutting down others¡¯ powers, so the only one he would have any advantage over was me. No one else was reliant on a passenger to do anything, and frankly? I was willing to bet my knife would work on him just fine.

    Of course, all of that necessitated eventually explaining the system of threat categories the PRT used to classify parahuman powers, with all of the obvious caveats that the system wasn¡¯t perfect and it wasn¡¯t meant for talking about how a power worked, only what it did.

    The look on Rika¡¯s face at the possibility of having to memorize those threat ratings and what they meant was¡­actually a little funny. I did my best to reassure her ¡ª I didn¡¯t remember everyone¡¯s threat ratings, in no small part because I hadn¡¯t thought I would need to after leaving Earth Bet and also because the shorthand was meant for teams of PRT troopers, not for other capes who were going to be in the thick of the fighting.

    ¡®Brute 6¡¯ didn¡¯t really tell you much about how to actually fight Lung, it just let you know that trying to out muscle him wasn¡¯t it.

    Eventually, we had to break for a late lunch, and as Emiya left the room to go and get everything ready for us, I heard him mutter to himself, ¡°A superhero, huh. Looks like I¡¯m never escaping that, am I?¡±

    He was gone before I could ask for an explanation, and in the lull of my presentation, everyone started talking. The general buzz made it hard to really tell what they were all talking about, but I had a sinking suspicion I knew exactly what the technicians were discussing with each other, just from the looks they sent my way every now and again.

    I was from a parallel world. There was no way the implications of that and what it would mean for both everyone here and for what would be coming after the final Singularity was solved and human history was restored weren¡¯t on their minds. The magi in the group, at least, they had some idea, and I couldn¡¯t blame them for worrying ¡ª it was one thing for a Servant to come from a parallel world. Heroic Spirits existed outside of normal time and space, after all. But for a living person to cross over without assistance from someone like Zelretch or one of his artifacts? And to admit to it in front of a group of people who could and very likely would have to tell the UN and the Association when this was all over?

    How bad were things, really, that both Marie and I were willing to lay those cards on the table? And just as importantly, how were they going to get out of it in the aftermath, when the accounting came due?

    I doubted any of them found comfort in whatever answer they imagined.

    The Servants all seemed much less impressed. Some of them had very obviously seen enough of my life in their dreams over the course of these long months to already have a solid idea of what I had gone through, but while the rest were surprised, El-Melloi II and Emiya were the only ones who really seemed to get all of the implications of what I was telling them all about. Small wonder when they were both modern humans with at least enough knowledge of magecraft to understand just how impossible my arrival to this world was supposed to be.

    Eventually, Emiya returned with lunch: a selection of sandwiches and finger foods, stuff that would make the least mess and be easiest to eat on the spot. He even projected a table and chairs for Marie and me to sit down at, and Jackie stayed by my side, as though to offer me whatever comfort she could. He used the opportunity to lean in close to me, murmuring lowly enough that the only ones who could have caught it were Marie and Jackie.

    ¡°Rika and Ritsuka probably didn¡¯t pick up on it, and maybe they won¡¯t,¡± he said, ¡°but your powers coming back was a surprise, wasn¡¯t it? So you were expecting them to be gone. If they came from that god, Scion, then is he really dead?¡±

    I couldn¡¯t stop my head from snapping around towards him, and neither could Marie, whose eyes were wide and intense, but I was measured enough to pitch my own voice for his ears only, too, ¡°Yes. Powers come from fragments of himself. Any fragments that weren¡¯t destroyed when he was killed stay around. My powers being gone¡­was something entirely unrelated to that.¡±

    His lips pulled tight, but he accepted it with a sigh. ¡°There goes that theory, then. My other was that he cursed you as he died and that¡¯s why you thought they were gone.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± was all the more I said about it. It was a kind of mercy, never made it past my lips. That pitiful girl confessing her regrets at the end of all things was a secret I didn¡¯t intend to share.

    Mercifully, he left it at that. Maybe he realized I wasn¡¯t going to say anything more about it and maybe he just had enough tact to realize it was a sensitive topic. Either way, he went back to the cart he¡¯d brought in and started distributing food to the rest of the room.

    Several of the technicians didn¡¯t look like they particularly wanted to eat ¡ª I didn¡¯t blame them ¡ª but they knew better than to skip out on something, especially when it was made by Emiya or Ren¨¦e, and I had deliberately front loaded the worst parts of life on Earth Bet so that no one would be at risk of revisiting their last meal.

    After lunch, I dove back into things with the Empire and the ABB, telling everyone about the sort of climate to expect in each of their territories and what the local politics were like between them. Several people seemed bemused and offended that a Neonazi group had such a foothold in an American city, because they probably didn¡¯t understand how economic desperation among poor whites led to scapegoats and the blame game, but it was Rika and Ritsuka who looked bewildered and frankly a little insulted when I explained the ABB.

    ¡°Azn Bad Boys?¡± Rika complained loudly. ¡°What are they, twelve?¡±

    The idea of a pan-Asian gang confused them more than anything. I guess they would know better than I did how poorly the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans all got along, to say nothing of the Vietnamese and other ethnic groups whose names escaped me at the time. I remembered enough of the history to know that they had once all been separate, smaller gangs, all jockeying for supremacy.

    But when a raging dragon told you to shut up and play nice together, it was hard to argue.

    When the topic of Lung came up, Siegfried had to interject, all but begging, ¡°Master, if we should find ourselves up against this enemy, I would like for you to call upon me to face him.¡±

    ¡°If the situation calls for it,¡± I promised him.

    Bakuda got some incredulous objections.

    ¡°Hold on a second,¡± said Rika. ¡°Her power was to make bombs? A supervillain with a Japanese name that basically means ¡®Bomb¡¯ made bombs? Does she have no sense of her cultural heritage?¡±

    I didn¡¯t tell her that I wasn¡¯t even sure Bakuda had been Japanese, let alone purely.

    ¡°You might be thinking too narrowly,¡± I told her. ¡°Tinkers create exotic technology. When I say she was a Tinker who specialized in bombs, I don¡¯t mean things that just go boom and blow you to bits, I mean that they could do things like induce mind-numbing pain without physically hurting you or turn all organic matter in range into crystal. Several of her bombs were used against Leviathan and did things like create slow fields or time-frozen zones.¡± I paused to let that sink in, and then continued, ¡°But her tenure in the ABB was measured in weeks. As long as we don¡¯t get dropped in during mid to late April, we won¡¯t encounter either her or Lung.¡±

    By the time we finally finished covering all of the most essential parts of Earth Bet, it was approaching dinnertime, and a number of people were starting to look overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff we¡¯d had to go over. By that point, my throat was sore and my voice was starting to get thready and hoarse. I made a mental note to ask Romani for a lozenge or a cough drop or something, and a cup of tea with ginger and honey would definitely be a good idea, too.

    Fortunately, while we had originally talked about the idea of briefing everyone about the plan for Rayshifting into the American Singularity, Marie took a good, hard look at everyone in the room and decided that we should end it there.

    ¡°We¡¯ll stop for today,¡± she announced, to the relief of all of the technicians as well as the twins and Mash. ¡°The briefing for the plan to Rayshift into the American Singularity will occur in two days¡¯ time, after everyone has had some time to come to terms with the information we¡¯ve gone over today. If you have any questions,¡± she added with a note of warning in her voice, ¡°I¡¯ll accept them at my office. Do not ask me or Hebert in the middle of the Command Room or the hallways.¡±

    She addressed this to the whole room, but had eyes in particular for Rika and Nero.

    ¡°Lastly,¡± and now it sounded like a threat, ¡°I shouldn¡¯t need to say this, but none of what you learned today will be in the official records once the American Singularity is resolved. The Association and the UN are absolutely not allowed to find out about any of this.¡±

    Dead silence answered her. Some of the Servants seemed disinterested ¡ª Mordred and Jeanne Alter in particular didn¡¯t give it any weight, and they cared so little for authority in general that some faceless organization across the world probably wasn¡¯t all that threatening ¡ª but the technicians, especially the magi, felt the weight of it. They understood the gravity even better than I did, and why it was she was so deadly serious about hiding all of this from the bodies that were ostensibly responsible for our oversight.

    Satisfied, Marie nodded. ¡°Dismissed.¡±

    And the group dispersed, everyone filing out of the room and going their separate ways. A number of them didn¡¯t even show up for dinner an hour later, still digesting everything. I couldn¡¯t blame them. It was a lot to try and wrap your head around, and I¡¯d had the benefit of growing up taking a large amount of it for granted. The twins and Mash, too, were still coming to terms with everything, because even the infinitely exuberant Rika was quiet, subdued, and thoughtful as she ate, chewing as much on her thoughts as she was on her food.

    I ate in the cafeteria as much as a show of confidence and strength as camaraderie, like I wasn¡¯t afraid of anyone¡¯s judgment and I wasn¡¯t going to shy away from their questions and their stares. And there were a lot of stares, I could practically feel them boring into the backs and sides of my head as I sat there, so much so that they actually made me feel a little self-conscious about the dimpled bullet scars that marked Contessa¡¯s ¡®mercy,¡¯ but none of them seemed willing to test Marie¡¯s command to save their questions for a more appropriate venue.

    It was, naturally, Rika who proved she didn¡¯t give a rat¡¯s ass about it.

    ¡°So, like,¡± she began slowly, releasing the words between bites as though they were contained in her meal instead of her mind, ¡°I know you said Trigger Events are bad, Senpai, but¡­ How, um¡­ How bad are we talking?¡±

    ¡°Rika!¡± her brother scolded sharply. But the question was already asked and the damage already done.

    I paused for a moment, let my fork ¡ª still with a bit of breaded chicken speared on the tines ¡ª droop back down onto my plate, and I began with, ¡°First off, the one thing you should never do with a cape is ask them about their Trigger.¡±

    Rika perked up a little. ¡°Cape? Is that, like, slang?¡±

    To my chagrin, I realized that was something we hadn¡¯t managed to cover in everything else. Somehow or another, ¡®cape¡¯ as slang for a parahuman had slipped under the radar, and being fair, it wasn¡¯t like it was the most relevant bit of information either. Either way¡­

    ¡°Yes,¡± I told her. ¡°It¡¯s slang. A catch-all term for a parahuman, regardless of which side of the law they operate on. I¡¯m sure I don¡¯t need to explain where it comes from ¡ª¡±

    ¡°No capes!¡± Rika blurted out suddenly in a strange accent. It earned a groan from her brother and a bewildered look from Mash, but I ignored her and kept going.

    ¡°¡ª and I¡¯m sure I don¡¯t need to explain why you shouldn¡¯t prod at the most traumatic events of another person¡¯s life just to satisfy your curiosity. They¡¯re shitty enough without other people demanding you recount yours just because they can¡¯t keep their nose out of your business.¡±

    ¡°Which means don¡¯t ask Senpai about hers,¡± Ritsuka added sternly.

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t gonna!¡± Rika replied defensively, indignant. She grimaced. ¡°I mean, gonna be real honest here, Senpai, I don¡¯t think I want to know what gives someone the superpower to control all the bugs, because somehow, I don¡¯t think it was as simple as Sally dropping a centipede on your head.¡±

    The mental image threatened to pull a smile from me. ¡°No. No, it wasn¡¯t.¡±

    I debated with myself for a second, using my food as a cover to give myself a few seconds, and then figured, there wasn¡¯t any harm in it. It hadn¡¯t been relevant to everything everyone had needed to know in the briefing, so we simply hadn¡¯t covered it, but if it was just a matter of curiosity, it was a safe enough topic.

    ¡°Trigger Events are¡­complex,¡± I decided on. ¡°There are any number of factors that can result in any number of powers. Immediate, physical danger often leads to things like superstrength and invincibility, whereas a need to escape it can create superspeed or other movement-based powers. For Thinkers and Tinkers, it¡¯s about a problem that you aren¡¯t able to solve or a question you can¡¯t answer. For Masters ¡ª people whose powers center around creating or controlling minions of whatever type ¡ª it¡¯s about isolation. Feeling like the world has abandoned you and no one is coming to your rescue. Feeling like no one can even be bothered to care if you were to suffer and die miserably. It¡¯s about being alone, even in a crowded room.¡±

    I took a breath and shoved the Locker back into the dark corners where it belonged. To the twins and Mash, I gave a lopsided smile, little more than a quirk of my lips.

    ¡°It¡¯s about being given the power to make friends when you don¡¯t have any.¡±Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash softly. ¡°That sounds¡­so sad, Miss Taylor.¡±

    The only thing I could do was shrug. ¡°It¡¯s part of being a cape, Mash. There¡¯s nothing I can do about it anymore. Besides,¡± I went on, ¡°I haven¡¯t been that person in a long time. It honestly feels like it happened to a completely different person.¡±

    A moment of relative silence passed. The clink and clang of Emiya and Ren¨¦e in the kitchen and the soft buzz of other conversations filled the space left by the conversation.

    And then, because of course it would be Rika again, ¡°So what kind of situation creates a guy who can turn into a raging dragon?¡±

    Ritsuka groaned again, dropping his face into his hand, and Mash let out a sigh and breathed, ¡°Senpai¡­¡±

    ¡°What?¡± said Rika. ¡°It¡¯s an honest question!¡±

    A huff of air escaped my nostrils, not quite a snort, not quite a laugh. ¡°I¡¯ll be honest with you, Rika. I don¡¯t have the slightest clue.¡±

    Somehow or another, that little exchange managed to lighten the whole mood, and the three of them started asking me tentative questions about life on Earth Bet. Nothing serious or heavy or even really all that relevant to our upcoming deployment, but simple stuff, basic stuff, like whether we¡¯d had smartphones and electric cars ¡ª we had ¡ª or cackling villains trying to take over the world ¡ª String Theory was a fun one to explain, although I wasn¡¯t sure they took the threat of knocking the moon out of orbit seriously ¡ª or whether there were any villains still going around robbing banks.

    The last one, I answered simply, just because I didn¡¯t want to go into the whole¡­thing about my villain era in the middle of the cafeteria, but I did use the Undersiders as an example of what those sorts of small-time villains looked like.

    It was honestly a bit freeing, being able to talk about it so openly. I¡¯d had to keep quiet about it all for so long that I¡¯d forgotten what it was like to just be able to discuss any of it with anyone aside from Marie.

    Rika wound up insisting that we had to watch a movie that night, just the five of us, and the briefing had been heavy enough and taxing enough on my emotional reserves that I didn¡¯t fight her on it, so once we had all finished eating, Rika led us all off to her room and told us to make ourselves comfortable, then vanished off somewhere. Ritsuka and Mash insisted that Jackie and I take the bed, and then went and retrieved a bunch of pillows to make themselves comfortable with on the floor.

    Eventually, some twenty minutes later, Rika returned and wheeled in a familiar AV cart, the same one Emiya had used for New Years¡¯, set it up so that we all had a good view, turned on the movie ¡ª all I managed to glimpse of the case was a large, stylized lowercase ¡®i¡¯ ¡ª and plopped down on the other side of her brother.

    When I saw the title card, I wanted to roll my eyes ¡ª The Incredibles had come over to Bet from Aleph, but I had never bothered to watch it, because it bombed. Everyone who had seen it considered it a failure, from my classmates to the usual panel of movie critics whose words all of the news stations took as gospel, a cheesy movie about superheroes in a box office absolutely inundated with the genre.

    And as I watched it, I could see why some people might have come to an opinion like that. The Incredibles wasn¡¯t much of anything at all like the realities of Earth Bet. That¡­actually turned out to be one of its charms, however, because the characters were all flawed with realistic struggles and problems, and I couldn¡¯t help but think that Mister Incredible and Elastigirl would have fit right in during Bet¡¯s Golden Age of superheroes.

    Edna Mode actually startled a laugh out of me when I finally got the reference Rika had made earlier.

    It was a nice fantasy, and I found myself thinking, as Jackie and I climbed into bed, that it would have been nice if Earth Bet had been more like the world of The Incredibles. A world like that wouldn¡¯t have created Skitter, or Tattletale, or the Slaughterhouse Nine, and there would have been no need for someone like Khepri to save the world. Even if a little girl still lost her mom in a tragic car crash and still got powers, maybe she could have been a hero from the start and found a place for herself among other heroes who lived up to the name.

    But it was only a fantasy. Reality wasn¡¯t quite so kind.

    The next day or so was relatively quiet. There was an almost imperceptible shift in the facility that told me when the rest of the staff had seen the recording of that original briefing, a change in the way they regarded me whenever I happened to pass them in the hall or the cafeteria. I couldn¡¯t go much of anywhere without feeling their eyes on me, the way they looked at me as though they had never seen me before.

    I¡¯d known it was coming. The story of Earth Bet was too huge a paradigm shift to expect that everyone would simply continue on like it was business as usual. Everything they thought they¡¯d known ¡ª about me in particular, but also about Marie and what was truly possible in a vast multiverse ¡ª had been upended, and it would take some time for them all to come to terms with it.

    Sylvia avoiding me still hurt more than I expected it to.

    Two days after the first briefing, however, the second was scheduled, and so I went about my morning routine like normal. I got in my morning workout, with Jackie cheering me on as she usually did from the sidelines, and it was a bit of a relief that Nero, Mash, and the twins had all fallen back into that routine with me as though it was just another day in Chaldea. Afterwards, I took a shower with Jackie, then met the twins and Mash in the cafeteria for breakfast.

    ¡°I can¡¯t wait for Da Vinci-chan to finish making that Roman bath,¡± Rika confessed over her food with a sigh. ¡°Best Buddy gets to go into the simulator and relax, but I have to get a boring old shower if I wanna get clean!¡±

    ¡°You still have two more chances to take a dip in the real Roman bath before we deploy for real,¡± I reminded her.

    ¡°Sure,¡± she allowed, ¡°but that doesn¡¯t help me today, does it?¡±

    No, I suppose it didn¡¯t. Despite her grouching, however, her mood didn¡¯t seem to match, because she still enjoyed her food with her usual gusto. She was just complaining for the sake of complaining.

    After breakfast, I had a short lesson with A¨ªfe, who proclaimed that I was ¡°coming along well,¡± and while that wasn¡¯t as good as I would have liked it to be, I had already learned so much just from the last month or so that I could be fine with that for now. As nice as it would have been to have mastered her runic magic before we ever went to America, the pace I was on now was still far better than it had been since she came back with us after Septem.

    At 10:30, however, it was time for our second briefing, this one less on the situation inside the Singularity and what to expect and more about the plan for how to tackle it once we got in there. Marie, Romani, and Da Vinci were already present by the time I made it to the orientation room, waiting for everyone else to arrive, and the twins and Mash weren¡¯t that far behind me. We all found seats while the Servants filtered in, slowly filling up the rest of the chairs around us and beside us. Jackie, of course, claimed the seat right next to mine, like she had to stay as close as possible for as long as she could because she wouldn¡¯t be able to soon enough for who knew how long.

    Once we were all present and accounted for, Marie nodded to herself, took a bracing breath, and began: ¡°Today, we¡¯re going to be going over the plan for how to handle the American Singularity. If you have any questions about what we went over during the previous briefing, then this isn¡¯t the place to ask. You should have brought them to me yesterday.¡±

    A couple of chuckles answered her, even though she was completely serious, and even Romani couldn¡¯t help the smile that curled his lips. But for a twitch in her cheek, Marie gave no indication that it bothered her, and she pressed a button on that same remote again. The observation window behind her darkened and turned into a screen. Another press brought up two images, the same map, side by side, only with 1783 AD in one¡¯s upper left corner and 2011 AD in the other¡¯s corner.

    ¡°You should all already be familiar with this map, since you saw it only two days ago,¡± she continued. ¡°As we explained then, these two versions display the fluctuations in the readings, with one showing the focal point of the Singularity in 2011 and the other showing an echo in 1783. At this time, we still don¡¯t know what these truly represent, so the only thing we can do is make our best guesses.¡±

    ¡°I cannot promise that they will wind up being relevant to your investigation in the American Singularity,¡± Da Vinci chimed in. Marie pursed her lips, but didn¡¯t say anything. ¡°However, they¡¯re still our only real point of reference, so we don¡¯t have any better ideas of where to start.¡±

    ¡°To that end,¡± Marie said, ¡°our plan is to Rayshift you as close to the echo as we can without running the risk of dropping you into the water.¡± She clicked on the remote again, and the 1783 map zoomed in on the ¡®echo¡¯ of the focal point. ¡°Here, at Cape Cod, east of the bay. From there, you should be able to investigate the echo by sending a Servant out to check if there¡¯s anything of interest, and we¡¯ll be using our sensors to examine your surroundings as best as we can.¡±

    ¡°It might not amount to anything,¡± Romani warned. ¡°We¡¯re¡­kind of hoping that you might be able to find a clue about why the fluctuations are happening at all, but this really could turn out to be a wild goose chase, so don¡¯t take any more risks than you have to, okay?¡±

    ¡°What, you think we can¡¯t handle whatever might be out there?¡± Jeanne Alter drawled. ¡°Scared of a little squid, Doc?¡±

    ¡°Not unless something has gone horribly wrong,¡± Da Vinci answered with some amusement. A faint smile graced her face. ¡°Most of what you should expect of the local fauna are cod, striped bass, bluefin tuna, and haddock.¡± And a little mischievously, she added, ¡°Feel free to do some fishing while you¡¯re there, though. It would certainly be an excellent chance to stock up on some more supplies, and for Emiya to cook up some absolutely delicious recipes.¡±

    Emiya huffed an amused breath and muttered, ¡°It¡¯s almost like that¡¯s all I¡¯m good for, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°You bet your boots,¡± Rika teased in a whisper.

    Mash raised her hand, and when Marie nodded her way, asked, ¡°How long are we expected to spend investigating the, um, echo, Director?¡±

    ¡°Ideally, it won¡¯t take you more than an hour,¡± Marie said. ¡°Provided communications remain stable, we may ask you to circle around the other side of the peninsula to see if there¡¯s anything of interest over there, but if there¡¯s nothing there, then you should proceed along the coast and towards Brockton Bay.¡±

    ¡°If we do lose communications, though,¡± Romani added, ¡°then make sure you find the local ley line first and reconnect with us at Chaldea, okay?¡±

    Reconnect the umbilical cord, I thought but didn¡¯t say. It wasn¡¯t quite fair, and if something did go wrong with the Rayshift, then the first thing Marie would want was for us to check in and make sure everything was okay.

    Ritsuka raised his hand now, and Marie acknowledged him with a nod, too. ¡°What if the Rayshift is off target and we land somewhere else, like we did in Septem?¡±

    Marie grimaced, and she looked like she hated admitting that it was even possible for it to happen again, but still told him, ¡°Then you should all make your way as quickly as you can to the echo, especially if you wind up separated somehow. The most important part is that you Masters remain together and safe, so if all else fails, that will be your agreed upon meeting spot. Understand?¡±

    She addressed it to all of us, and us three Masters and Mash dutifully answered her with, ¡°Yes, Director.¡±

    Well, Rika still called her ¡°Boss Lady,¡± but there wasn¡¯t any helping that, it seemed. Marie, who had long grown used to Rika¡¯s personality, let it slide without so much as a curl of her lip or a twitch of her brow.

    ¡°If you can,¡± Da Vinci interrupted, ¡°I would like you four to establish an exact date as much as possible, especially if you can get one from near the echo and one from Brockton Bay. There¡¯s no telling exactly how these fluctuations will influence the state and overall appearance of the Singularity, so it would be helpful in establishing an understanding of the situation if we knew whether those fluctuations actually changed the timeframe of the Singularity itself.¡±

    ¡°Hold on,¡± said El-Melloi II. ¡°You¡¯re not expecting to find that it¡¯s flip-flopping between 1783 and 2011, are you?¡±

    My brow furrowed. How would that even work? What, go to bed in a city in 2011 and find ourselves camped out with the Revolutionary Army when we woke up the next morning?

    ¡°It¡¯s a possibility, however unlikely,¡± Da Vinci answered. ¡°I want to see instead if the fluctuations have something to do with a temporal deviance instead of a localized one. In the Fuyuki, Septem, and Orl¨¦ans Singularities, things were mostly as we would have expected from those eras, with people and places that looked essentially as they were supposed to. In London, however, people and places were being pulled from a hundred years out of date in either direction, and if that¡¯s happening in America as well, then that will tell us something about what we might expect from the last two Singularities.¡±

    And whether we should expect to see things that didn¡¯t belong, beyond just those immediately brought there by either the Counter Force or the Grail.

    ¡°That¡¯s why you guys need to be super cautious until we get a handle on what¡¯s happening,¡± said Romani. ¡°You¡¯ll be fine if the whole country is from 2011, but there¡¯ll be a lot of questions if you wind up face to face with a bunch of colonial Americans from the late eighteenth century. The last witchcraft trial in the USA was in 1878, and they might just jump on the first scapegoat they can find, you know. So be extra careful, alright?¡±

    ¡°My order from the last Singularity still holds,¡± Marie said, voice hard. ¡°The lives of the Masters are paramount. No other life in these Singularities is anywhere near as important, so if any of the locals are a threat, you deal with them however you have to.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Boss Lady,¡± Rika chirped. ¡°Mash knows how to use the back of her shield! No Founding Fathers will be harmed in the solving of this Singularity!¡±

    Red spread across Mash¡¯s cheeks and the tips of her ears, and she let out a miserable, ¡°Senpai¡­!¡±

    Marie looked like she was ready to explode at Rika, but at the last second, she visibly reined herself in and forced herself to calm down, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

    ¡°Be that as it may,¡± she said evenly, ¡°lethal force is still authorized. Whatever steps you need to take to defend yourselves, do it.¡±

    ¡°Most of those guys were British back then, weren¡¯t they?¡± Jeanne Alter asked. A grin curled the corners of her mouth. ¡°Permission to kill a bunch of English fucks if they try and screw us over? Sounds like fun to me, especially since everyone I killed in London wasn¡¯t even from there.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not going,¡± Marie said sharply, and that took the wind right out of Jeanne Alter¡¯s sails.

    ¡°What?¡±

    Marie grimaced and nodded to herself. ¡°This is as good a time as any to bring that subject up. Obviously, our standard setup will remain, so Emiya, Mash, and Arash will all be part of the initial Rayshift. Several other Servants have expressed interest in deploying outside of the Shadow Servant system, including Siegfried ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Who has not had the chance to leave the facility beyond the occasional vacation since he first arrived,¡± Da Vinci added as though reminding everyone. Marie nodded at her.

    ¡°However,¡± Marie went on, ¡°considering the situation as it currently stands, we¡¯ve decided that it would be better if at least one of the Servants sent was a contract shared between all three Masters. That way, in case all communications go down for whatever reason and the team is separated, it would be possible for all of the Masters to communicate using that Servant as a go-between.¡±

    Arash raised his hand. ¡°If Siegfried wants to go that badly, I can volunteer to stay behind, Director.¡±

    Before Marie could say anything, Siegfried shook his head and told him, ¡°No, please don¡¯t, Lord Arash. You have been by Master¡¯s side for far longer than I. If anyone would deserve to stay beside her through the end, then it would be you.¡± To Marie, he added, ¡°I only ask that, should the need arise for another Servant to be sent, mine would be the first name for consideration. I¡¯m sorry if that¡¯s presumptuous of me, Lady Director.¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t,¡± she assured him, ¡°but that¡¯s not a promise I can make. Who is sent when will depend on the circumstances at the time and nothing else.¡±

    Ritsuka raised his hand again, and when Marie nodded his way, he asked, ¡°Are we expecting to encounter that many Stray Servants, Director? No offense to Senpai and America, but, um, it¡¯s kind of young as a country, isn¡¯t it? Does it have that many legends to draw from for Heroic Spirits?¡±

    Paul Bunyan, Billy the Kidd, Wyatt Earp, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, hell, I wouldn¡¯t have bet against Betsy Ross, although I had no idea what she would look like as a Servant when most of her legend consisted of ¡®sewed the first American flag for George Washington.¡¯ That was supposing that the Strays all had to be Americans to begin with, when part of what made America what it was happened to be all of the cultures that had combined and mixed inside of it. It was entirely possible we could see Heroic Spirits from all across time and space, from English to French to Russian to Japanese, Chinese, or even African.

    Harriet Tubman. That was another one.

    ¡°You¡¯d be surprised,¡± I answered before Marie could.

    ¡°If there¡¯s one thing that previous Singularities have proven, it¡¯s that there aren¡¯t any hard and fast rules about who can or can¡¯t be summoned, so long as they have some connection to the land, the people, the era, or even a Servant already present,¡± Marie agreed. She was probably thinking of Flamel with that last one. ¡°Given the number of cultures and peoples that have emigrated to the United States, there¡¯s no way to be sure what sort of Servants you might encounter. That¡¯s why we¡¯re still only sending a single extra Servant with you from the start.¡±

    El-Melloi II grunted. ¡°Then that limits the pool of who can be sent pretty significantly, doesn¡¯t it?¡± He glanced at Nero. ¡°Sorry, Emperor Nero, but it looks like you¡¯ll be getting left behind this time.¡±

    ¡°Mm-mm! I cannot say that I am at all happy to hear that!¡± Nero said sourly. ¡°However, the Director Lady¡¯s words make much sense, and it is a poor emperor who does not heed the wisdom of others more knowledgeable on a given subject! Mm-mm! Or else you might not have had a job, Court Mage!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not¡­!¡± El-Melloi II began, and then he gave up and heaved out a sigh. ¡°Forget it. Nevermind.¡± To Marie, he asked, ¡°So? Who¡¯s going, then? I hope you¡¯re not intending to send me. I don¡¯t much like the idea of having to trek across the entire continental US if you¡¯re all wrong about that focal point and its importance.¡±

    Rika let out a strangled sound of distress, a groan that got caught high in her throat and came out through her nose more than her lips. ¡°I didn¡¯t even think about that!¡± she bemoaned, horrified. ¡°My legs! I can already feel them aching! And my poor feet, too!¡±

    Even her brother had to grimace, imagining the amount of walking involved. I arched an eyebrow at both of them. ¡°You two do remember that this is 2011, don¡¯t you? Planes, trains, and cars?¡±

    The twin looks of relief that crossed their faces was almost funny.

    ¡°Only if it really is 2011 the whole way through,¡± El-Melloi II pointed out, and it was my turn to grimace, because he had a point. ¡°And even then, only if you¡¯re lucky enough to get to stick to major cities instead of having to visit tiny towns in the middle of nowhere.¡±

    And just like that, the horror was back. Mash herself didn¡¯t look all that thrilled either, although she seemed more resigned than the other two were. I couldn¡¯t say I was really looking forward to the idea of walking across the whole country on foot either, so if we absolutely had to, I was going to suggest stealing a wagon or something. If we didn¡¯t have any other options, anyway.

    ¡°We¡¯ve also taken that into consideration,¡± said Marie. ¡°That¡¯s why we¡¯ll be sending A¨ªfe along with the team in the initial Rayshift. As both a powerful frontline combatant and a means of transportation via her chariot, she was the obvious choice.¡±

    She also hadn¡¯t been on an actual deployment since Septem, come to think of it. The fact she wasn¡¯t chomping at the bit like Siegfried probably said something about how successful the Shadow Servant system was.

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, though,¡± said Da Vinci with a smile. ¡°I¡¯ve been working on upgrading those e-bikes you originally took into Septem. They should be ready for you to take with you into America, too, just in case.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m gonna look like Chun Li by the time this is over!¡± Rika lamented. ¡°I won¡¯t be cute and cuddly at all!¡±

    Who?

    Ritsuka, this time, wasn¡¯t the only one who got the reference, because Emiya chuckled quietly and El-Melloi II¡¯s face twisted with something like disgust. Romani might have, too, because he coughed a laugh into his fist and turned his face away, like he was trying to hide a grin.

    ¡°Hey, hey, what¡¯s wrong with Chun Li?¡± Mordred demanded.

    ¡°What isn¡¯t?¡± drawled Jeanne Alter, who seemed like she was doing it just to stir up shit.

    Mordred drew up in her seat, snarling, ¡°You ¡ª !¡±

    ¡°IN ANY CASE,¡± Marie said loudly, speaking over them both, and Mordred grudgingly settled back into her seat, glaring at Jeanne Alter¡¯s smug grin, ¡°the team will first investigate the echo, and then the focal point itself directly. Depending on what is or isn¡¯t found, the investigation will continue as the circumstances dictate. The Masters will be accompanied by Mash, Emiya, Arash, and A¨ªfe, and the Rayshift will be in twelve days, on the morning of March 29th. If there are no other questions?¡±

    She cast a steely look around the room, as though daring someone to ask something or start something again, and when complete silence greeted her, she nodded.

    ¡°Good!¡± she said. ¡°Then make whatever preparations you deem necessary over the course of the next week and a half. Dismissed.¡±

    And the briefing ended there.

 Chapter CLXXV: No Plan Survives

    Chapter CLXXV: No Plan Survives

    The three months since we had returned from London had seemed to drag on interminably, drawing out like a long, slow sigh after all of the hectic action, frantic emotion, and exhausting drama of our last day inside the Singularity. It had felt like trudging through mud, like every step of progress had to be dredged up from the muck with strenuous effort, and each one made the next slower and more difficult. The haze of uncertainty ¡ª of not knowing when it would end and when we would next make the journey to another Singularity ¡ª had hung about with the weight and persistence of the toxic fog we had been forced to brave for the entirety of the London deployment.

    By contrast, twelve days was nothing. They dwindled rapidly, evaporating away like so much steam, and every preparation I made felt rushed and inadequate, like there just wasn¡¯t enough time to get it all right and done properly. If I thought about it, actually stopped and considered every step I made, then I had to admit that I was being as meticulous and careful as always. My i¡¯s were dotted, my t¡¯s crossed, all of my buttons buttoned and all of my zippers zipped, but that feeling of being rushed wasn¡¯t a rational one, and so it wasn¡¯t so easy to quell with logic and reason.

    Outside of that, things still continued like normal. I got up in the morning, took Jackie to the gym for my morning workout ¡ª taking a moment afterwards to enjoy watching the twins chase after Nero on the track ¡ª then took a shower before breakfast. Afterwards, I had a lesson with A¨ªfe, trying to perfect my runic magecraft as much as possible in the quickly vanishing time before the next Singularity, then had lunch with the twins and Mash, and in the afternoon, gave Mash another swimming lesson.

    Someone else might have eased off of those during those last few days to give everyone a chance to relax and breathe before our next deployment, but¡­

    ¡°America has numerous lakes, rivers, bays, and other bodies of water,¡± Marie explained when Mash brought the topic up. ¡°If it was important for you to know before the London Singularity because you could fall into the Thames and drown, then it¡¯s even more important now! The last thing we need is for you to get swept out by the tide at Cape Cod, or to drown in the Mississippi River! That¡¯s why, we absolutely have to make sure you¡¯re as prepared as you can be, Mash.¡±

    ¡°Of course, Director!¡± was Mash¡¯s reply. ¡°I-I wasn¡¯t being lazy, I was just curious! Lord El-Melloi II¡­told Senpai and Senpai that they could have the last week off of lessons, so that their minds could be properly centered on the upcoming Singularity. That was all.¡±

    ¡­Marie wasn¡¯t that someone. And, if I was being entirely honest, neither was I. Fortunately, while an extra week and a half wasn¡¯t anywhere near enough time to master a new skill at all, even with A¨ªfe¡¯s new ability accelerating progress, Mash had already become quite a proficient swimmer. I wouldn¡¯t say she could swim like a fish, but compared to how she was when we first started teaching her, she might as well have been.

    So, in a way, our lessons with her in the afternoon were less lessons and more opportunities for us all to unwind a little and have a bit of fun. No matter how thinly veiled an excuse they were, however, Marie would never admit that it was as much a way for her to blow off steam as it was us actually refining Mash¡¯s ability to swim.

    Meanwhile, the spider puppets Da Vinci had given me danced about my room and wove. Fed on a diet of my magical energy and whatever I could smuggle out of the cafeteria, they spun lines of silk and, thread by thread, crafted a replacement for the costume I had (metaphorically) handed over to Da Vinci when I was first dropped here after Gold Morning.

    I could have asked for the original back, whatever might have been left. But I didn¡¯t need the whole thing, and the original lacked the literal magic I was putting into the new one. The only advantage the original had was the flight pack, and as far as I knew, that had long ago been dismantled and cannibalized for one of her projects.

    Every night, I went to bed with Jackie, and she cuddled up to me, burrowing herself so snugly up against me that it was like she thought I would disappear in the middle of the night. The only thing I could do to reassure her ¡ª and to brace myself for what it was going to be like sleeping on my own again, without the comfort of her presence ¡ª was to wrap my arms around her and hold her there.

    I¡¯d thought she was going to be the one who would have the most trouble with my leaving on deployment and her having to stay here, but I¡¯d had the thought before that it might be the other way around, and I was becoming more and more certain of that by the day. How attached I¡¯d become, although I guess I¡¯d warmed up to the Undersiders even faster, hadn¡¯t I?

    I couldn¡¯t say I regretted it.

    Two days after the briefing, us Masters were granted one, final trip into the Septem Singularity to soak in the Roman baths, as though to give us something to look forward to once the American Singularity was resolved, and then Marie told us all that there wouldn¡¯t be another before our deployment.

    ¡°No!¡± Rika cried dramatically, clutching at her chest as though her heart had exploded.

    ¡°It¡¯s not the end of the world!¡± Marie said waspishly, but it was a very poor choice of words, because even Rika stopped playing around and stared at her, unable to believe the pun. It was only after a second or two that Marie realized it herself, and she scrambled to backtrack. ¡°I-I mean, it¡¯s not that big of a deal! You¡¯ll have plenty of opportunities to bathe again once you get back! But we¡¯re about to Rayshift all of you into a new Singularity, and even if we have the energy to spare now that you¡¯ve retrieved so many Grails, we need to do all of the calibrations to make sure you wind up where and when you¡¯re supposed to!¡±

    ¡°For once, you mean?¡± Ritsuka said, and the look on his face showed his regret before Marie even whirled to face him with a furious glare. ¡°S-sorry, Director, I didn¡¯t mean¡­ Um, it just kind of¡­slipped out.¡±

    Marie grunted, then heaved out a sigh. Her letting it go was a visible, almost tangible thing, and no matter how annoyed she sounded, it lacked heat when she said, ¡°Just enjoy it while you have the chance. It¡¯s going to be a while before all of you will be able to do something like this again, so make the most of it, and then prepare yourselves for the next Singularity. If you have any complaints, then the only ones you¡¯ll be able to blame are yourselves, so take responsibility like a proper Master.¡±

    It was a testament to how far we all had come that she let it go at that. The Marie at the start of this all would have ¡ª had ¡ª been far harsher with them and far less forgiving, but the twins weren¡¯t the only ones who had grown over the course of the last several months and the last two deployments. People were finally getting to see the Marie I had known since I first showed up here, a woman of determination and pride who was very capable of being a good leader, if she just learned to trust others to do their jobs and stopped berating herself for the slightest failures.

    We did as she told us to and savored our bath that day. When it was time to leave and return to Chaldea for dinner, several people dithered and dawdled to put it off, well aware that it would be some time before the opportunity arose again for us to take another dip. Nero might have outright refused to leave, if Rika had agreed to stay with her, but fortunately, Rika had enough sense not to try something like that.

    The rest of our allotted twelve days disappeared with speed. I did everything I could to prepare myself for returning home, back to Brockton Bay, back to Earth Bet, both mentally and physically. I double, then triple checked my ravens, Huginn and Muninn. I made sure the spider puppets Da Vinci had made for me were full up on their venom so that they could be ready to go without further feeding. I continued weaving for as long as I possibly could, down to the very last moment I could get away with it. I sat myself down and did my best to convince myself that ¡ª whatever happened inside of the Singularity ¡ª the events of my life on Earth Bet had happened and were over, and they were set in stone. Nothing we did and no one we encountered would change what had, for me, already happened.

    It didn¡¯t work quite as well as I wanted it to. It had been a relief, to some degree, to find out that we were going to be going to the Brockton Bay of 2011, before Gold Morning, before Scion, before any of my friends had to face the aftermath of the apocalypse, but in other ways, I dreaded it. Because it was an Earth Bet where I didn¡¯t belong, where Taylor Hebert, Master of Chaldea, twenty years old, had no place.

    This was not going to be a happy reunion. I was not going to simply drop in on everyone, smile, and tell them it had been a while, but I was happy to see them. If they recognized me at all, it wouldn¡¯t be the person I was now, it would be the person I was to them then. I had¡­done a lot of growing myself since those days.

    And Lisa¡­ There was no way she wouldn¡¯t notice. The scars on my forehead were faint, but not invisible. It would only be a matter of time before she put all of the pieces together and realized what inevitably waited for her in the future, and I knew what it would do to her to know there was nothing she would be able to do to stop it.

    But, equally so, there was nothing I could do to get around that. Sparing my feelings, sparing Lisa¡¯s feelings, those considerations simply paled in the face of the stakes and the enormity of our mission. No matter how much it hurt, if we needed the Undersiders¡¯ help, then there wouldn¡¯t be any avoiding it, not even for me and my best friend.

    I wouldn¡¯t call that a comfort, because it didn¡¯t make me feel better. But it let me come to terms with the reality of it all, and the sheer fact that we wouldn¡¯t have a choice made it easier to settle. We would do what we had to do and that was all there was to it.

    The morning of the Rayshift arrived much the same as any morning in Chaldea: the halls outside were lit, but my room was dark, and the floor was cold. For several long moments after turning my alarm off, I laid there with Jackie, basking in her presence, memorizing the warmth of her in my arms, both inside and out. I could only stare out into the looming shadows of my room, wanting to stay in the comfort of my bed but knowing that I couldn¡¯t.

    Finally, I heaved out a sigh and extricated myself, slipping out of bed and letting my feet drop to the chilly tiles below. A shiver shuddered up and down my spine, tingling across my shoulders and to my elbows, and I ignored it as best as I could as I went about getting ready. A shower was in order first, which helped warm me up a little and wake me up the rest of the way. I might have stayed under the hot spray a little longer than necessary, letting it soak into my skin and pretending that it was washing away all of my worries and concerns.

    By the time I got out, Jackie was still in bed. She was just lying there, although I didn¡¯t think she was sleeping. A pang of sympathy struck me ¡ª she didn¡¯t want to watch me go, so she was going lay there as long as she could get away with. It wasn¡¯t the same, but I remembered doing something similar after Mom died. Just¡­lying in bed, numb, staring into nothing and feeling like it would just be a bad dream if I waited long enough to wake up.

    I let her be and kept getting ready. There was no reason to force the issue. And besides, I would be a hypocrite if I tried to pretend that I wasn¡¯t going to miss her dearly, too.

    When I left to go eat breakfast, Jackie still lay there, and she remained behind as the door whooshed shut behind me. It felt strangely lonely and cold out there in the hallway by myself, but a deep breath helped brace me against it and I walked away.

    I wouldn¡¯t say it didn¡¯t hurt a little that she wasn¡¯t going to say goodbye, but I knew why she wouldn¡¯t want to.

    The cafeteria was as it always was the morning of a Rayshift, with a smattering of the less essential personnel sat down in scattered seats across the room and all of the on-duty technicians conspicuous in their absence. Emiya greeted me grimly at the counter where he served up the food, and he prepared a light breakfast for me, something that wouldn¡¯t be unsettled when we Rayshifted in just a few short hours.

    ¡°Is Ren¨¦e comfortable taking over for you while we¡¯re gone?¡± I asked him.

    ¡°She is,¡± he answered. A little smirk curled his lips. ¡°I think she¡¯s looking forward to it, actually. It¡¯ll be the first time she¡¯s really had the kitchen to herself since we got back.¡±

    And the first time she¡¯d be able to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner on her own since we showed up at Jekyll¡¯s apartment. I wondered if she felt a little stifled by having to share the kitchen with Emiya, but I¡¯d seen Marcus struggle under the weight of trying to prepare food for the entire facility and every shift, so she might wind up being grateful to have Emiya back after we cleared the American Singularity.

    When he finished dishing me up, I went over to the usual table and sat down to eat, trying to enjoy the food as best as I could. It wasn¡¯t much longer before the usual trio of the twins and Mash appeared at the door, much more subdued and much more serious than usual. Even Rika wasn¡¯t as bright and enthusiastic as she normally was, something that Emiya definitely noticed as he served them their own breakfast.

    They found me once they all had their food and picked seats, dropping heavily into them as though a great weight was weighing them all down. I suppose I couldn¡¯t blame them. We were about to go on another harrowing, life-threatening adventure, and their heads had been filled to the brim with warnings about exactly how dangerous a world they were about to enter. It must have been at least as daunting to them as it was to me, if for entirely different reasons.

    ¡°No Jackie this morning?¡± Ritsuka asked conversationally.

    ¡°She¡¯s still in bed,¡± I told him.

    ¡°She is?¡± asked Mash, brow knitting together with worry. ¡°Is she okay, Miss Taylor? Um, I didn¡¯t think Servants could get sick, but¡­¡±

    ¡°She¡¯s¡­¡±

    I tried to think of a delicate way to put it. It wouldn¡¯t be fair to say she was moping or throwing a tantrum, because both of those trivialized and infantilized her feelings when they were anything but childish and trivial. At the same time, it wasn¡¯t a crippling depression either, although I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if we came back after everything was over to find out she had spent our entire deployment lying in my bed and sleeping like a hibernating bear trying to weather the winter in peace.

    ¡°Coping,¡± I decided on. ¡°With the fact that she¡¯s going to have to be without me for the first time since we made our contract.¡±

    Had it really been months already? I suppose it had. Sometimes, it still felt new and fresh and confusing, but there was a comfort in the routine of spending every day and night with her not far away.

    ¡°I guess she has spent every day with you since we recruited her back in London,¡± Ritsuka said thoughtfully, glancing towards the ceiling as though it would confirm his thoughts. ¡°She¡¯s probably going to be pretty lonely here without you.¡±

    ¡°Tii-chan can take care of her while we¡¯re gone,¡± Rika suggested reasonably. There wasn¡¯t a trace of a joke anywhere. ¡°Dunno if she ever had any kids, though. Kinda hard to get up to hanky panky when you and your beau are chasing each other across France all the time.¡±

    And there it was.

    ¡°I¡¯ll have to see if she¡¯s up to it.¡± A pause, and then I asked the heavy question. ¡°Are you three all prepared for the Rayshift?¡±

    They shared a look between the three of them.

    ¡°As prepared as we can be,¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t we be asking you that, though?¡± said Rika. ¡°I mean, this Singularity, Solly made it just to mess with you, didn¡¯t he? There¡¯s gotta be something crazy going on there.¡±

    I hadn¡¯t forgotten, but I wasn¡¯t about to let that keep me from going. I wasn¡¯t about to shirk away from what needed to be done just because the evil mastermind behind this whole thing had called me out in particular.

    ¡°It won¡¯t be the first time someone has tried to kill me, or even the first time I¡¯ve walked into a trap meant just for me.¡±

    I¡¯d escaped those times, too.

    The twins shared a dubious look, but Mash just turned a grimly determined expression my way and said, ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Miss Taylor. Whatever the King of Mages has prepared, I¡¯ll protect you, and Senpai, and Senpai, and everyone!¡±

    Ritsuka favored her with a smile, but it was Arash¡¯s voice that proudly told her, ¡°Well said, Mash.¡±

    ¡°Arash!¡± Rika cried as he sat down next to me.

    ¡°Morning, everyone,¡± he said with a smile. ¡°Just thought I¡¯d stop by and check on everything before we got going.¡±

    Jackie? he asked me, and a brief flash of annoyance curdled in my gut. Was I going to have to answer that question another dozen times this morning?

    Still in bed, I told him. She¡¯s¡­not dealing well with having to stay behind.

    Ah, he said with something like understanding. I guess someone like her wouldn¡¯t do so well with separation, would she?

    He wasn¡¯t looking for an answer, because we both already knew it, so I just pursed my lips and went back to my food.

    ¡°We¡¯re as ready as we can be,¡± Ritsuka told Arash.

    ¡°Although I¡¯m really kinda wishing we¡¯d taken notes during our Parahumans 101 seminar,¡± Rika added. ¡°I think I¡¯ve got my Blasters and my Shakers mixed up, and what¡¯s the difference between a Brute and a Striker if they¡¯ve both got superstrength anyway?¡±

    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

    ¡°Hopefully, it shouldn¡¯t matter too much,¡± I said to her. ¡°If we run into any capes, just treat them like enemy Servants and let Arash, Emiya, or A¨ªfe handle things. We shouldn¡¯t be getting involved in the local politics, not unless it turns out one of them has the Grail.¡±

    ¡°Ugh,¡± said Rika, ¡°Neo-Nazis with the Grail. Something tells me that won¡¯t end up working out too great.¡± She stuck her finger under her nose and adopted a grumpy expression. ¡°If we see a Servant dressed like a German officer with a funky mustache, I¡¯m just gonna tell Emiya to nuke ¡®em and call it a day.¡±

    ¡°Oh dear,¡± said Mash, ¡°do you really think¡­?¡±

    ¡°With some of the shit we¡¯ve seen, Cinnabon?¡± Rika said. She let her hand drop and sighed. ¡°I really, really don¡¯t think that¡¯s out of the question.¡±

    She was probably right. I didn¡¯t know that we would ever face Hitler as a Servant, or even that if the E88 had the Grail that they¡¯d be so bold as to summon him, but if Saint Nicholas was someone I had to admit would be a Heroic Spirit, then even Hitler, vile as he was, had the fame and the legend to make it.

    It suddenly occurred to me that ¡ª if he was there ¡ª it was very possible that we might find gas chambers in Brockton Bay, put to terrible purpose against anyone the E88 decided ¡°didn¡¯t belong¡± in the city. It was entirely possible he would even depose Kaiser and take control of the gang for himself and start a Fourth Reich.

    God, that would be a fucking mess.

    ¡°If we do come face to face with Hitler,¡± I said, ¡°then Arash, no negotiating. Kill him immediately.¡±

    Because there were at least three people I cared about that would be on his list, and I wasn¡¯t going to take any chances. If Brian, Aisha, or Rachel had already suffered under his nonexistent mercies by the time we arrived, then I wasn¡¯t even going to give him the chance to beg.

    Arash looked at me askance, faintly surprised, but didn¡¯t contradict me. ¡°Of course, Master.¡±

    ¡°Oof,¡± said Rika, staring at me. She shivered theatrically. ¡°I felt the ice from over here, Senpai.¡± She shoved another bite of her waffle into her mouth. ¡°Not that I can blame you. I¡¯m gonna tell Emiya the same thing before we leave.¡±

    Ritsuka sighed. ¡°I feel like I¡¯m supposed to say something about how we can¡¯t turn away any ally we might find in the Singularity, but¡­¡±

    ¡°Would the Counter Force¡­even summon someone like that?¡± Mash wondered.

    I wished I could have said no, but the traitor who had brought Camelot to its knees and mortally wounded King Arthur was waltzing around the facility with us and playing video games against El-Melloi II. As villains went, the scale wasn¡¯t the same, but the principle was.

    There were some limits that even I wasn¡¯t willing to push, though.

    When I was done eating, I stood up and told them, ¡°Make sure you¡¯ve got everything you need to bring along with you before we go,¡± and then took my tray up to give back to Emiya. Then, I took my own advice and went back to my room to grab Huginn and Muninn and my spider puppets.

    Jackie was still in bed when I walked back in through the door, lying there in the dark in the same position she¡¯d been in when I left. I navigated my way through the room, grabbing the bag I carried my ravens in, and loaded them up. Once they were secured snugly inside, I loaded the spiders into one of the side pockets and secured them, too, hiding them among the creases and the folds. My knife and its holster went in their usual place, strapped in tightly, and lastly, I retrieved a singular glove made of shimmering silk. Rolling up my sleeve, I pulled it on my arm, and it went halfway up to my elbow. When I checked it, twisting my wrist back and forth, the slightest glimmer reflected in the light suggested the shape of the runes woven into the design.

    Hopefully, they wouldn¡¯t be necessary. But if they worked as I expected them to, then the next step was an undersuit to wear beneath my uniform, one that could protect me better than any suit of armor I had ever made for any of my costumes.

    When I had everything I was going to take with me, I padded over to the bed and sat down next to Jackie. With my other hand, the one without the glove, I reached out to her gently and brushed a few strands of gray hair away from her cheek.

    ¡°Jackie?¡±

    Green eyes opened, yellow as freshly cut grass, and she regarded me from under the fringe of her bangs. ¡°Mommy¡¯s leaving without us.¡±

    I held back a sigh. ¡°I am. And I¡¯ll be gone for a while, but it¡¯s not forever, okay?¡±

    She tucked her head closer to her chin. ¡°We know,¡± she mumbled. ¡°We still don¡¯t want you to leave us behind.¡±

    I gave her a small smile.

    ¡°I¡¯ll be back before you know it,¡± I promised her. ¡°And¡­¡± The idea came to me in a flash. ¡°And once the Singularity is repaired, we can go back together and get a big bowl of ice cream to share. With chocolate, and sprinkles, and anything you want. And I¡¯ll tell you all about Brockton Bay and what it was like growing up there. I¡¯ll even take you to meet my mom, how about that?¡±

    She peered up at me with big, doe eyes. ¡°Really?¡±

    I extended the pink finger on my left hand. ¡°Promise.¡±

    She reached out and hooked her own pinky around mine, and very solemnly, we shook on it. A little smile curled her lips when it was all done.

    ¡°Be a good girl while I¡¯m gone,¡± I told her softly, and then I made to stand.

    ¡°Okay,¡± she replied. ¡°Mommy?¡±

    I paused and turned back to her. ¡°Yes, Jackie?¡±

    Without any hint of shyness or hesitation, she said, ¡°We love you.¡±

    My heart skipped a beat, and almost without any input of my own, my mouth said, ¡°I love you, too, Jackie.¡±

    And it was barely a surprise to realize that I meant it.

    Seized by an impulse, I leaned over and pressed a kiss to Jackie¡¯s right temple, and to see the way she smiled, you might have thought I hung all the stars in the sky just so that she could look up and admire them.

    If Theo could see me now¡­ It might have just rubbed salt in the wound. How much would it have hurt him to see me do with Jackie the sorts of things he must have done with Aster?

    Jackie didn¡¯t protest when I stood up from the bed, although she snuggled a little deeper into the blankets, as though to ward off the cold left in the wake of my absence. It made me want to bundle her up and take her along, and a little voice in my ear that sounded very familiar told me that I probably wouldn¡¯t have to try very hard to convince Marie to let me take her along.

    Every time I thought I¡¯d gotten used to it, something happened that made me surprised at how attached I¡¯d gotten to Jackie so quickly.

    But I wasn¡¯t going to abuse my friendship with the Director of Chaldea to get my way just because I was going to be a bit lonely at night for the foreseeable future, so I turned and left the room without another word. The door whooshed shut behind me, and I took a breath to brace myself, then adjusted the strap of my bag and began resolutely down the hall. I refused to look back at any point, knowing that my will might just crumble if I let myself dare to think about it too much.

    I really was going to miss her.

    Alone, I walked Chaldea¡¯s empty corridors, accompanied only by the clack of my shoes on the white tiles beneath my feet, and I made my way through the halls towards the Command Room, where the final pre-mission briefing would occur and the goodbyes would all be said. I met nothing and no one, not even the white little ball of fluff that I was almost certain would somehow find his way into the Singularity with us, as he had every other time before since Fuyuki.

    Maybe this time¡­ But no. If only for Mash¡¯s sake, because she loved that little gremlin for some reason, I would try to put up with its presence, no matter how strong the urge to punt it into the bay became.

    It was almost a surprise when I finally came upon someone standing in the middle of the hallway, just steps away from the doors to the Command Room, a familiar head of silvery hair hunched in on itself. In hindsight, however, I probably should have expected it. Even though she¡¯d been doing so well the last several months, even though she hadn¡¯t had a major breakdown or a panic attack since we¡¯d come back from London, we were about to head out on our most dangerous deployment yet.

    It would have been more surprising if she had carried on as though nothing was wrong.

    ¡°Marie?¡±

    For a moment, she didn¡¯t respond, and I slowed as I approached her as though she was a wounded animal. Her shoulders hitched as I drew nearer, and when I came to a stop next to her, her head ducked further down.

    ¡°You¡¯re going again,¡± she said quietly. ¡°All of you. This is¡­this is your next deployment. The sixth Singularity.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve done this before,¡± I told her gently. ¡°It¡¯s the same ¡ª¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not!¡± she burst out. ¡°It¡¯s not the same! It¡¯s not the same at all! This time, you¡¯re¡­!¡± She trailed off for a second, and then began again, still refusing to look at me, ¡°This Singularity¡­isn¡¯t the same as the last five. It¡¯s not just enemy Servants you¡¯ll be facing this time, and it¡¯s not just people you¡¯ve never met before who don¡¯t know anything about you, you¡¯re¡­¡±

    What was I supposed to say? She wasn¡¯t wrong. This wasn¡¯t the same as the other Singularities. This one was personal, with people I knew. People I cared for, people I despised, people I could never forgive and people I could never raise a hand against. It wasn¡¯t just a place or a time I¡¯d read about in a history book or in the pages of some myth or legend. It was going to hit far closer to home for me, just because it was home, a home I thought I¡¯d lost two and a half years ago.

    This was a trap, just for me. Whether it was meant to make me give up or simply to make me drop my guard for the finishing blow, it didn¡¯t matter. It was a trap and I was about to walk into it.

    ¡°I¡¯ll come back,¡± I promised. To you, I didn¡¯t say, because she wasn¡¯t the only one who would be waiting for me. ¡°I¡¯m not going to stay behind just because it¡¯s Brockton Bay and Earth Bet.¡±

    Without warning, she whirled about and threw her arms around me, and I was so shocked that the only thing that made its way out of my mouth was a squeaky gasp high in my throat.

    ¡°You¡¯re not allowed to die,¡± she breathed into my ear. Her arms shook. ¡°Whatever happens, whatever you find, whoever is waiting for you there. You¡¯re not allowed to sacrifice yourself. Not again. I still¡­ Chaldea still needs you. There¡¯s still another two Singularities that we have to solve. So you can¡¯t die there. Understand?¡±

    After a moment to get over the surprise, I wrapped my arms around her, too, pretending not to notice the way she trembled. Into her ear, I murmured, ¡°Of course, Director.¡±

    She held me for a moment longer, as though to reassure herself that I was there and real and I wouldn¡¯t simply disappear into thin air the moment she turned away, and then she heaved out a quiet sigh and slowly let me go. As she stepped back, I let my own arms fall. I didn¡¯t comment on the slight redness in her cheeks or the tips of her ears, but she looked far more composed and far more sure of herself.

    Marie cleared her throat. ¡°Good. I expect all of you Masters to return completely unharmed at the end of all of this, so I¡¯m going to be angry if you do something reckless and foolish.¡±

    One side of my mouth ticked up against my will. ¡°Of course, Director.¡±

    She nodded, apparently satisfied, and then turned and walked to the door to the Command Room. She hesitated for only a single step, a hitch in her stride right before she got to where the sensors would detect her presence, and then continued towards it. It slid open with the low hiss of hydraulics, and I fell into step behind her as we walked in.

    Everyone else was already waiting for us on the inside, including all of the other Servants ¡ª minus Shakespeare ¡ª and Da Vinci. As a group, they turned when they heard the door open.

    ¡°Director Animusphere,¡± Da Vinci greeted us, ¡°Taylor. Good. That means we should all be ready now.¡±

    ¡°The calibrations have been finished?¡± Marie asked imperiously, falling into the role of Director far more easily than she ever had before.

    ¡°There¡¯s still some uncertainty, but the last fluctuation was an hour ago, and we¡¯re not expecting another for an hour more,¡± Romani reported. ¡°There¡¯s no better time to do the Rayshift than now.¡±

    ¡°If we wind up on the other side of the country again, I¡¯m filing a complaint with HR,¡± Rika said brightly.

    Romani shrugged and shook his head helplessly. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Rika, but this time, we can make even fewer promises about dropping you in the right place.¡±

    ¡°I do have a solution for just such an occasion, however,¡± Da Vinci chimed in. She retrieved a box from off of the Director¡¯s console, much smaller than the last time she¡¯d pulled out something new for us, and from inside, she produced a strange tube-like structure. It was maybe six inches long, and just thick enough around to look like it would be comfortable to grip, made of a cool, matte black metal, maybe aluminum or titanium.

    ¡°What the heck?¡± said Rika. ¡°I thought you said you were making those e-bikes better! That¡¯s got no wheels at all!¡±

    ¡°Hold on,¡± said Ritsuka, who had apparently realized something his sister had not. ¡°Da Vinci, that¡¯s not what I think it is, is it?¡±

    Da Vinci smiled secretly. ¡°Perhaps. You see, the problem with the previous design was its bulk. It was simply too inconvenient for all of you to carry around, especially across the breadth of an empire the size of Rome.¡±

    ¡°The only thing about Rome deserving of scorn!¡± Nero added. ¡°Mm-mm! Even so glorious an empire can be difficult to navigate when it is so large!¡±

    ¡°Quite,¡± Da Vinci agreed. ¡°So I needed to make them more compact, more¡­travel-sized, you might say. To that end, as I worked on the system we used to change Jackie¡¯s outfit and give A¨ªfe a little boost, I took what I learned to make a¡­Spiritron Bike, if you like. All it takes is a little application of magical energy, a twist of the main bar like so, and¡­¡±

    She held out the tube, and before our eyes, a shape shimmered into existence, building itself up from the skeleton of some sort of machine one layer at a time. A motor first, I realized after a second, because then came the frame, the wheels, more plates of that sleek black material, even a tinted windshield that curved up over the tube that was now a handlebar ¡ª

    Wait. Really, Da Vinci?

    ¡°It¡¯s a Lightcycle!¡± Rika gasped.

    El-Melloi II groaned. ¡°Of course it¡¯s a Lightcycle.¡±

    ¡°A what?¡± Jeanne Alter asked from the group.

    Rika grinned and told her, ¡°Oh, we have so got to show you guys Tron when we come back! Both the OG and the sequel!¡±

    ¡°If someone were to suggest that I took inspiration from such a thing, I could not deny it,¡± Da Vinci said coyly. ¡°In principle, this is quite similar to a form of magecraft known as Shell Projection. Fortunately, although that tube might seem like a simple device, it contains the same battery that powered the previous version, only miniaturized. Although you will still need to feed it a steady supply of magical energy to maintain its form, the drain will be quite negligible. Frankly, your Servants require more energy to stay materialized hour over hour, so you should be able to get quite the mileage out of these.¡±

    A moment later, the bike disappeared entirely, leaving behind only the tube it had started out as, and from inside the box, Da Vinci produced a rounded piece of the same material, shaped perfectly to accommodate the tube. When she slipped it through the semi-circular loop, it slid right in with ease, held snugly and securely. On the other side was a clip, sized for our belts. A harness.

    ¡°The holster is designed with you Masters and your uniforms in mind,¡± she continued. ¡°I won¡¯t promise that it¡¯s impossible for you to lose these, but they¡¯re secure enough that you¡¯ll be fine as long as a Servant doesn¡¯t rip them off of your belt. And if you should find yourself in a situation where you need transportation but don¡¯t have access to your normal methods, then at least these will mean you don¡¯t have to walk the breadth of the North American continent.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not looking forward to riding across it either, Da Vinci-chan,¡± Rika said dryly, but she took the holstered tube when it was handed to her and attached it to the back of her belt after a little bit of fiddling.

    ¡°It can¡¯t be helped,¡± Romani said as Da Vinci reached into the box and gave another one to Mash, then to Ritsuka, and finally one to me. ¡°It would be convenient if the focal point of the Singularity really was where the Grail first manifested and it didn¡¯t move far from there, but it¡¯s entirely possible that we¡¯re wrong and the Grail has already been moved to another location.¡±

    I accepted my own ¡®Lightcycle¡¯ and set about rigging it on my belt. Fortunately, it really wasn¡¯t that complicated, it was just harder to do when I couldn¡¯t really see what I was doing.

    Ritsuka sighed. ¡°And now that you¡¯ve said it¡­¡±

    ¡°You jinxed us, Doc!¡± Rika bemoaned.

    Romani could only shrug helplessly.

    ¡°To reiterate,¡± Marie began, ¡°we¡¯re going to Rayshift a team consisting of Taylor, Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, Arash, Emiya, and A¨ªfe into the American Singularity, as close to the 1783 echo in Cape Cod Bay as we can safely manage. Your initial goal is the investigation of this echo, and if there¡¯s no trace of the Grail, to investigate the initial focal point next. Like before, the objective is the neutralization of the era¡¯s deviant history and the retrieval of the Holy Grail. Any questions?¡±

    ¡°Yeah,¡± said Rika. ¡°Can we file a complaint if we wind up in, like, Chicago or something?¡±

    Marie¡¯s cheek twitched, and she rephrased it, ¡°Any relevant questions?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s plenty relevant!¡± Rika protested, but she went ignored, and she didn¡¯t push the subject further. No one else spoke out as Marie¡¯s gaze swept the gathered group. She nodded.

    ¡°Good. Finalize whatever last preparations you need, then Team A should head down to the Rayshift Chamber for deployment. It is¡­¡± She checked her communicator. ¡°10:13. The Rayshift will commence at 10:30. You have that long to grab whatever last minute thing you need and make your way to your Klein Coffin. Dismissed.¡±

    ¡°And make sure you all come back!¡± Romani added. ¡°Don¡¯t take any unnecessary risks, okay?¡±

    A couple of the Servants turned to Spirit Form and disappeared, although whether they left or not, I had no idea. Most of them stayed so that they could see us off and watch the Rayshift for themselves. Having already said my goodbyes to the one who really needed to hear them, I turned around and left the Command Room, although I saw Rika and Nero share a tight hug out of the corner of my eye and Ritsuka drift over to Jeanne Alter.

    It was almost funny how quickly those two seemed to have bonded. But then, they went through Solomon¡¯s prison curse together, hadn¡¯t they? There wasn¡¯t anything quite like life or death combat to endear you to the one fighting beside you.

    I made my way to the Rayshift Chamber with Arash and A¨ªfe dutifully following in my wake, although the twins and Mash weren¡¯t quite that far behind (¡°Good luck, everyone!¡± Bradamante called at our backs). It wasn¡¯t long before I found myself in front of the heavy blast doors that had, once upon a time, locked me in to doom me to what I had thought would be a slow, agonizing death. They whirred open to admit us, revealing beyond them the cool, dimly lit room with its cavernous ceiling and smooth floor.

    Like last time, four coffins jutted out with lids raised, waiting for us to step inside them. My heart skipped a beat in my chest, but I swallowed past the nauseous, almost instinctual jolt of dread and made my way over to mine. The twins and Mash all did likewise, though they climbed in with far less trepidation than I did.

    I hated it, but this was the scar left over from a lifetime ago. I would, I thought, always have some level of claustrophobia, likely for the rest of my life. Some scars took longer to heal than others, and some never quite healed at all.

    I still stepped inside and let myself fall backwards into the cushioned harness, adjusting my bag to prevent my puppets from being squashed. My heart thudded traitorously in my chest, and all I could do was close my eyes and take deep breaths to try and calm it. It didn¡¯t stop the uneasy shiver down my spine or the prickle of the skin on my arm.

    Hydraulics hissed. I didn¡¯t have to open my eyes to know that the lid had closed over my coffin, trapping me inside. A tendril of cold fear still sliced through my stomach like a knife.

    ¡°All coffins secure, Director,¡± Da Vinci¡¯s voice called, muffled almost to the point of being inaudible.

    A moment later, the big blast door whooshed shut again, so huge that I could still hear it clearly and feel the slight tremor beneath my feet. The intercom crackled to life almost the instant she was gone, and a familiar computerized voice recited:

    UNSUMMON PROGRAM START

    SPIRITRON CONVERSION START

    A chill swept down my body, from the crown of my head down to the tips of my toes, and a thread of excitement warred with the general sense of dread I had about returning to Earth Bet.

    Passenger? I asked the void. Are you ready to go home?

    There was no response, not even now, of all times.

    RAYSHIFTING STARTING IN 3¡­

    2¡­

    1¡­

    A bright light lit up my coffin, so bright that it seared through my eyelids, and then I was falling through a hole in reality, traveling along an invisible path through a canal of stars that twinkled as I passed. For a moment, for an eternity, Taylor Hebert ceased to exist, and I was one with the universe. I was the thrum of a neutron star, the melody of a spinning black hole, the flash of heat and plasma of the solar wind.

    ALL PROCEDURES CLEARED

    GRAND ORDER COMMENCING OPERATION

    And then the world erupted with the sounds of battle.

 Chapter CLXXVI: Contact with the Enemy

    Chapter CLXXVI: Contact with the Enemy

    For a moment, I didn¡¯t exist. I stretched between nothingness and infinity like a speck of stardust swirling around the Milky Way, a thing without thought or form pulled along by gravity and the weft and weave of the fabric of space and time. I was union and harmony, the song of stars and the chorus of answering planets, all spinning around an unstoppable force called inevitability.

    And then I came back to reality with a jarring thud, landing on my feet with the entire weight of my body, and my stomach lurched in my gut from the shock of suddenly having a body again. The breath wheezed out of my lungs, and as a galaxy of lights bloomed behind my eyes anew, my ears rang and popped.

    Wait. No, that wasn¡¯t right. My ears weren¡¯t ringing, not from the shock of landing the way we had or suddenly having ears again to hear with. That crack and pop, that wasn¡¯t my ears adjusting to the change in air pressure, that was ¡ª

    ¡°Master!¡± Mash said urgently, and Ritsuka¡¯s head spun about to look at her, still disoriented and getting his metaphorical feet under him. ¡°Nearby, there¡¯s¡­!¡±

    ¡ª gunfire.

    ¡°H-hold on!¡± Rika sputtered. ¡°I know America¡¯s got more guns than people in it, b-but I didn¡¯t expect us to land in the middle of a shootout!¡±

    I stretched out with my swarm, feeling around the area for any sign of what might have been happening. The clearing we were in was relatively calm, and we¡¯d landed in the middle of what looked like some kind of nature trail, a rudimentary dirt road cleared for foot traffic or maybe the occasional bike, but not anything larger or more ambitious. We were surrounded on nearly all sides by trees, bushes, and a shrub here and there, dense enough to be called a forest but not so dense as to be impossible to navigate.

    It reminded me of that nature camp I¡¯d gone to what felt now like a lifetime ago, back after Mom died and I was trying to get my head back on straight. That ill-fated nature camp that marked the last time Emma and I had ever spoken as friends.

    My search wound up fruitless. Nothing. Whatever and wherever that fight was happening, it wasn¡¯t close enough for me to get eyes on it, which absolutely didn¡¯t mean that we couldn¡¯t get hit by a stray shot if whoever was fighting happened to aim wide and miss. I wasn¡¯t sure how bulletproof our mystic codes were, and I also absolutely didn¡¯t want to test them if we didn¡¯t have to.

    The first and most important upgrade I was going to have to do when we got back and I could get more weaving done was making us undersuits the way I had the Undersiders and the Chicago Wards once upon a time, and then turning them into suits of armor using runes. That was far more important than making myself another handful of flashbangs.

    ¡°Those don¡¯t sound like any modern firearm I¡¯ve ever heard of,¡± Emiya commented with narrowed eyes. ¡°Single-action rifles of some kind, maybe¡­? The only people I know who use that sort of thing in this day and age are hunters and snipers.¡±

    ¡°Eep!¡± Rika squeaked, and she tried to cover her face with her arms.

    ¡°We¡¯re not in the middle of it,¡± I told her, although I wasn¡¯t sure how much of a comfort it really was, ¡°but if we can hear them, they¡¯re not that far away either. Far enough, at least, that I can¡¯t see them with my bugs. Arash.¡±

    I slung my bag around and found the zipper, sliding it open with a single, long motion. Huginn and Muninn were strong enough and sturdy enough that I wasn¡¯t worried about anything short of an anti-tank rifle doing serious damage to them, and this was the first time in a long time that we were in a position I could safely use them to actually scout the situation.

    ¡°I¡¯ll go on ahead,¡± Arash agreed immediately, as though he¡¯d read my mind.

    ¡°Mash, take point,¡± Ritsuka said, picking up where I was going with that. He was still a little pale, but he didn¡¯t seem ready to let that stop him.

    ¡°Right!¡± Mash said with a confident nod.

    Arash leapt towards the direction of the fighting, vanishing mid-jump so that his toes barely had the chance to ruffle the leaves of a nearby shrub before he was gone. Mash hefted her enormous shield and turned to face that direction, too, placing herself at the front of the group.

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Rika, incredulous and looking around the group like we were all crazy, ¡°we¡¯re going towards the fighting?¡±

    ¡°Should we not?¡± A¨ªfe asked, lips curling into a bloodthirsty smile.

    ¡°Not just because they¡¯re fighting!¡± Rika insisted. ¡°I¡¯m allergic to bullets, Super Action Mom!¡±

    A perfectly good point, and not a wrong one under normal circumstances. However¡­

    ¡°Rika,¡± I said calmly, ¡°who¡¯s fighting, and what are they fighting about?¡±

    For a second, she just stared at me dumbly, not entirely sure what I was getting at, and then her eyes slowly went wide. I could almost see the cogs turning in her head, the moment the lightbulb turned on and she realized exactly what I was implying.

    ¡°The Grail,¡± she said, almost a whisper.

    ¡°It¡¯s not a guarantee,¡± I allowed, ¡°but we weren¡¯t supposed to land anywhere near the site of a major battle or anything like that.¡±

    ¡°Not that that means much,¡± Ritsuka murmured. Even if I did kind of agree with him, I let it slide without comment.

    ¡°We¡¯re near the coast, at least,¡± said Emiya. He tilted his head back, looking in the direction Arash had gone. ¡°If you enhance your nose a little with some reinforcement magic, Master, you should be able to smell it. That briney scent ¡ª we¡¯re only a few miles out from the ocean.¡±

    Ritsuka seemed to do exactly that, lifting his own nose into the air and taking a few sniffs. His nostrils flared and his nose wrinkled. ¡°He¡¯s right. It¡¯s not quite the same, but it smells like that time Mom and Dad took us to the beach.¡±

    ¡°Well then, what are we waiting for?¡± said Rika. She whirled about, pointing off after Arash and towards the source of the gunfire. ¡°Let¡¯s go! We¡¯ll make this the shortest Singularity yet!¡±

    ¡°Fou, fou!¡± the little gremlin said, popping up from out of nowhere. I suppressed the shiver of revulsion that tried to shudder down my spine like a reflex.

    Rika rolled with it without missing a beat. ¡°See? Even Fou agrees! Onward!¡±

    Emiya gave me a look. I extracted my ravens from the bag and didn¡¯t even look back at him as I said, ¡°You heard her. Let¡¯s go.¡±

    Huginn and Muninn unfolded from their storage forms and took off, flapping their wings and going almost straight up as they sought the height to give me a better look at the distance. Emiya, watching them go, huffed with a half-smirk.

    ¡°Who¡¯s taking orders from you? I just wanted to make sure my Master didn¡¯t get whiplash if you tried to rein her in.¡±

    With my ravens free and everyone up to speed, there was nothing else keeping us in that spot, so we all took off towards the sounds of battle. Mash, of course, led the way, with her shield out in front, and she bulldozed through the foliage, making a path for us to follow in her wake.

    It wasn¡¯t quick or easy, although it was probably quicker than taking the path around and hoping it got us to the right place. It was awkward and clumsy and even painful at times, rushing through the bushes and trees and trying not to twist an ankle on the roots or the uneven ground. Mash wasn¡¯t taking the time to absolutely snap and break whatever got in her way, leaving some of them to whip back around at the people behind her.

    Emiya, fortunately, had put himself there, and he carved those branches away with his pair of twin swords, sparing the rest of us the pain of having to deal with them ourselves. It did not, unfortunately, prevent anyone from getting a face full of leaves from the branches he cut down, but it was better than getting bowled over by a huge branch swinging back around and taking you in the chest like a sledgehammer.

    Midway through our romp in the forest, a presence brushed up against my mind. Master, said Arash, you¡¯re going to want to see this.

    What is it? I asked him.

    I think I¡¯m looking at the consequences of that fluctuation Da Vinci was talking about, he answered. Those are gunshots you¡¯re hearing, all right, fired from muskets, of all things.

    My brow furrowed, but I didn¡¯t dare take a second to look through his eyes. The moment of disorientation ¡ª however short ¡ª would be dangerous just then.

    But¡­ Muskets? Really? Were we wrong? Was this not Earth Bet at all, and Solomon really had just been screwing with us? Had we prepared so much and spilled so much of my history to everyone for nothing more than the worst practical joke in history?

    The idea rankled, settling in my gut, sour and heavy, but as much as that was definitely a possibility, it didn¡¯t feel right. There was no way. The only reason Solomon would have had to mislead us about what we would face here in this Singularity was because there was something worse than what we were expecting. I couldn¡¯t let my guard down that quickly or that easily.

    Something else, Arash continued. There¡¯s at least two Servants here, on opposite sides, from the looks of things. I¡¯m not sure which side is the side we should be coming down on and which side is the enemy, if either one fits that neatly.

    A Servant battle? Then who was firing the muskets?

    I took a large step over a particularly large, gnarled root, slapping my hand against the trunk of the tree to which it belonged to push my balance back into equilibrium, and kept running. The musketeers?

    The instant I thought of it, a possibility occurred to me, and a funny jolt shot through my belly. God, were we about to come face to face with D¡¯Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis? I thought we¡¯d finished with that bullshit after London. Hadn¡¯t we encountered enough ¡°fictional¡± Servants already?

    They¡¯re one side, Arash told me. Look like settlers from the eighteenth century. They¡¯re fighting ¡ª get this ¡ª a bunch of Celtic warriors in chainmail with spears.

    What? What the hell?

    What? I repeated, projecting it for him this time.

    That¡¯s why I said you¡¯re going to want to see this, he answered. I¡¯m not sure what to make of what I¡¯m seeing right now.

    I wasn¡¯t either, and I couldn¡¯t even see it yet. I¡¯d had a front seat to plenty of strange and bizarre things, and they had only gotten worse in Chaldea correcting these Singularities, but a bunch of Celts in chainmail wielding melee weapons battling colonial era Americans with muskets was farther out there than I¡¯d been expecting to find in this Singularity.

    Hold position, was the order I gave. There¡¯s no point taking sides when we don¡¯t know which one is which.

    Roger that, Arash replied, and then his presence retreated from my mind and left me alone to my thoughts as I ran and panted.

    My instinct was to side with the Colonials. If this was somehow the result of the fluctuation between 2011 and 1783, then the English settlers from the eighteenth century should have been the side that belonged to proper history. But the celtic warriors from medieval Britain could only have been the doing of some Servant or another, because they had no place in America in any era, and that meant that there was no way of telling who was who and what they were fighting about.

    Mordred had been one of the ones helping us in London, after all, and the final battle had been against a version of King Arthur. Once Servants got involved, the normal lines got thrown out the window.

    It felt like we ran for ten or twenty minutes, dodging around the trees, bushes, and shrubs with clumsy grace as Mash bashed her way through whatever stood in her way. Finally, however, light shone through up ahead, and Mash burst out of the tree line and into the open air, and around the edges of her shield, I could see tufts of grass and an expanse of pure, white sand. And beyond that, in the distance, the dark, steely blue of the open ocean.

    But when I came out of the forest myself, stumbling to a stop, I could at least see what lay beyond it and past Mash¡¯s form, and the cacophony of gunfire and shouting was all the louder and clearer. In the stretch of land, some three hundred feet between the edge of the woods and the beach, there was a pitched battle. The crack of guns being fired, the roar of men charging at one another, the desperate shouting of orders and cries of pain.

    ¡°What the hell?¡± Rika whispered as though she had read my mind.

    For an instant, I thought I was looking at something out of a weird fantasy movie, because that was the only place they all belonged together. On the one side, men in a motley collection of colors, all of them darker and muted, dressed in coats and breeches with tricorn hats and clean-shaven faces. They grouped together in haphazard, disorganized lines, firing, and then crouching down to reload as the next group stood to shoot. The crack of gunfire came from them, and their muskets spat smoke that drifted lazily into the air like a fog.

    I wasn¡¯t the biggest history nerd out there, but¡­ Local militia, maybe? They certainly didn¡¯t have the look of an actual army, although with the supplies the Colonials had during the Revolution, that wasn¡¯t saying much.

    Across from them stood a group that didn¡¯t belong in 1783, and belonged even less in 2011: burly celtic warriors with bare, thickly muscled arms. They wore shirts of chainmail that covered only their torsos and upper thighs over fur tunics and coarse, woolen pants. Cloaks were draped over their shoulders, and iron helms protected their heads, leaving free only their thickly bearded faces and untamed red hair. At the front of the group stood these men, carrying spears and swords with rounded, wooden shields, and these they apparently used in an attempt to block the musket balls being shot their way, to at least some success, judging by the pits and holes that dotted the reinforced wood.

    At the back of their group, however, there were thinner men with broader shoulders and leaner physiques, blond hair wild and faces clean, and they wielded bows and a full quiver each of arrows.

    Between the two groups, more than two dozen bodies already laid on the ground, blood staining the grass and the sand, but even a quick glance showed that the militiamen were losing. As I watched, they retreated another dozen feet, trying their best to keep enough space between them to stay out of range of the reach of those spears. It did nothing to protect them from a volley of deadly arrows that hit their targets with lethal accuracy, killing almost half a dozen more men.

    It was in the space between these two groups where the Servants fought, and it was obvious because it was the hardest action to follow. I caught glimpses of a pair of spearmen ¡ª Lancers, they had to be ¡ª exchanging blows with lightning speed. The clang and crack of their weapons meeting was almost enough to drown out the rest of the fighting, and they stayed still only long enough to appear as twin blurs, opposing streaks of black and red.

    But they never stopped moving. They were constantly in motion, exchanging so many blows so rapidly that the chorus of their strikes seemed more like one, continuous sound than the staccato of the Colonials firing their muskets. Half the way I was distinguishing one from the other was the sharp bursts of magical energy that accompanied each stab and swing, intense and powerful.

    ¡°Master,¡± said Mash uncertainly, ¡°who are we supposed to help?¡±

    Ritsuka, equally as unsure, turned to me for answers. ¡°Senpai?¡±

    I didn¡¯t have any. My instinct was still to assume the musketeers were the ones we were supposed to be siding with, but we just didn¡¯t know enough about the situation. My bugs landed easily on each group, which said at least that neither side was so rich in magical energy that it overwhelmed my swarm¡¯s more fragile bodies, although that didn¡¯t necessarily mean anything either.

    Arash appeared next to me, startling the twins and Mash a little. ¡°Neither of the Servants is American or English, for what that¡¯s worth,¡± he announced. ¡°One is definitely Celtic from before the era of firearms, and the other would look Indian, if it wasn¡¯t for the hair and skin tone.¡±

    ¡°Indian?¡± Rika asked, voicing the question I was about to. She held a hand up behind her head, fingers splayed. ¡°Like¡­?¡±

    She flapped her hand in front of her open mouth, and my brow twitched. Where the hell had she learned that stereotype? Forgetting about that, why would a member of one of the native tribes be helping the English settlers from 1783?

    ¡°Like from India,¡± said Arash, addressing the stereotype not at all. ¡°With a presence like that, I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if he was one of the demigods from the old myths.¡±

    It was hard to tell when I was surrounded by the presence of several other Servants myself, but it was there, that presence he was talking about. A subtle heaviness in the air, a gentle weight that pressed on my shoulders, as though the Earth¡¯s gravity had become just the slightest bit stronger. I might not have even noticed it if Arash hadn¡¯t said anything.

    A demigod from Indian myth? Damn it, I didn¡¯t have as firm a grasp on that one as I would have liked. Indian mythology was so extensive that I hadn¡¯t ever quite gotten a handle on all of the heroes involved.

    ¡°The question is,¡± said Emiya, ¡°what the hell are the two of them doing here?¡±

    ¡°Aside from fighting?¡± Rika asked sarcastically.

    ¡°Yes,¡± was Emiya¡¯s dry response, ¡°aside from fighting.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t think they¡¯d answer if we asked, Senpai,¡± Mash said.

    ¡°Fou-fou kyu,¡± the little gremlin agreed. It even nodded sagely.

    ¡°Do we interfere?¡± A¨ªfe asked. There was a note of eagerness in her voice, poorly hidden, and she eyed the battle with hungry eyes.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know if we should,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°If we stick our noses in, they might just all gang up on us so that they can go back to fighting each other.¡±

    And while Mash could certainly defend all of us from whatever the Celtic soldiers and militiamen could throw our way, it didn¡¯t mean we would get any closer to finding out what the hell was going on here. If the Servants turned around and ganged up on us, we still had the numbers advantage, but Altera, Herakles, Caenis, and King Arthur had all proven that there were Heroic Spirits who were strong enough, skilled enough, or just plain powerful enough to hold their own against multiple Servants at once.

    But I also didn¡¯t see how we had much choice otherwise. Without knowing which side was on the side of proper history and solving this Singularity, either side losing could be bad for us, especially in terms of establishing contact with the people who were supposed to be our allies here.

    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    ¡°A¨ªfe,¡± I began, ¡°Arash, I want you to split up those two Servants and force them to stop fighting.¡±

    Rika made a noise in her throat. ¡°Looks like you¡¯re on defense today, Emiya.¡±

    Emiya huffed a chuckle as A¨ªfe and Arash both readied to jump in. ¡°Of course ¡ª¡±

    Before they could do anything at all, however, the water near the shore surged, and a man appeared from beneath the surf, clutching something to his chest. He ignored the fighting and turned towards the militiamen, racing up the beach and across the sand and sprinting over to their lines. The instant they caught sight of him, the archers in the back of the group of Celtic warriors immediately began to target him, firing volley after volley of arrows at his retreating back and ignoring the musketeers entirely.

    Mash startled and gasped, pointing after the mysterious diver. ¡°Master! That¡¯s¡­!¡±

    Beep-beep!

    My communicator turned on of its own accord before I could even think of answering it. Marie¡¯s voice, tinny and broken, shouted, ¡°The Gr¡­l! He -as¡­ail!¡±

    My heart skipped a beat. What?

    ¡°He¡¯s got it!¡± one of the militiamen hollered, loud enough to pierce the cacophony of noise. ¡°He found the Grail!¡±

    As though some spell had been broken, the fighting Servants came to a halt, resolving into two distinct figures. One wore golden armor on his arms and legs and carried a shining golden spear, but most of his body remained protected only by what appeared to be a thin black bodysuit. Pale, white skin stretched up from its haggard collar and across taut pectorals, and an admittedly handsome face was topped with an untidy mop of hair just as white. Two enormous wheel-like things floated behind his shoulders ¡ª what they were for, I had no idea ¡ª connected by a sort of ragged, shawl-like thing that hung between them like a cape or mantle.

    The other was very obviously the Celtic warrior, because he wore a form-fitting bodysuit similar to what we had seen on Sc¨¢thach and under Connla¡¯s baggy clothes. Black with swooping red lines, it covered his entire body but for his head and hands. Silvery metal armor protected his shoulders and shins, and hair the color of ash hung in tangles and tufts about his head. He was also very tall, although nowhere near as tall as Herakles, and built like a brick wall, carrying a wicked, jagged spear that was as tall as he was.

    And if he was the Celt, then the other man had to be the Indian. He turned eyes like moonlight our way, and then looked behind him, to the man dressed like all the other militiamen who cradled something gold and gleaming in his arms.

    Could that really be the Grail? Here, that easily, that quickly? After how much we had prepared for this Singularity and how much I¡¯d fortified myself for what I would have to face here, the idea that it could all be over that quickly felt fucking cheap.

    A quick glance with my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance showed three Servants: the two Lancers, both of them about even in terms of ability, and the man with the supposed Grail, a Rider whose best stat was his constitution.

    ¡°It seems that my comrade has found the treasure we were searching for,¡± said the Indian. His voice was calm and clear and even. ¡°In that case, there is no more need for the two of us to play around anymore.¡±

    ¡°He saved us the trouble, you mean,¡± said the other Lancer, voice rougher and almost gravelly. ¡°I have no intention of allowing him to leave with that Grail.¡±

    ¡°No way,¡± whispered Rika. ¡°That really is the Grail? So fast! We just got here!¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t forget that we might just have solved the Orl¨¦ans Singularity that quickly, too, if we had known Jeanne Alter had the Grail when she attacked us in La Charit¨¦,¡± Ritsuka murmured.

    ¡°I would expect nothing less of a hero such as yourself,¡± said the Indian. He looked back at the militiamen again, and in a tone that brooked no argument, told them all, ¡°Retreat. Take the Grail back to headquarters. I will cover you.¡±

    ¡°You will try!¡± said the other Lancer, and he leapt towards the Indian, spear first. The Indian blocked him easily, deflecting his spear away, and the dance began again as they clashed back and forth.

    Behind them, the group of militiamen broke ranks and began a fighting retreat, firing shots to dissuade the celts from pursuing as they turned and ran. The one with the Grail, Rider, took off at a run, and then he whistled, sharp and high and loud. Ahead of him formed a horse, a stallion in full tack, ready to go. He was going to escape.

    Make him drop the Grail, I ordered Arash.

    Got it, he replied.

    In one, smooth motion, he formed his bow, drew back on the string, and nocked an arrow. Next to me, the twins startled.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°All we care about is the Grail,¡± I answered.

    Ritsuka¡¯s brow drew down and his face pulled into a grimace.

    There was no time for an argument. Right as the Rider leapt up and onto his horse, Arash let loose his arrow, and Rider had barely landed in the saddle before that arrow bloomed from his shoulder. He let out a cry, and for a second, it looked like he really was going to drop the Grail from that single shot alone.

    But he firmed up his grip, gathered magical energy, and before I could give the order for another shot, shouted, ¡°Midnight Ride!¡±

    Instantly, the horse took off like a rocket, going from nearly stationary to breaking the sound barrier in the blink of an eye. Like a comet, like a meteor, horse and rider streaked away, leaving behind a trail of magical energy so dense it was visible to the naked eye. Arash fired after him, loosing arrow after arrow, but miraculously, they all fell short or missed. All I could do was watch from a dozen different angles as he fled, disappearing towards the horizon, heading northwest as little more than a smear of vague color. Every bug I tried to attach to him slipped off, and every shot I fired from my ravens curved around him to hit the ground instead.

    In a few seconds, he vanished even from Huginn and Muninn¡¯s field of view.

    ¡°Arash?¡± I asked.

    Arash shook his head. ¡°He¡¯s gone. Whatever that Noble Phantasm is, it made it impossible to hit him once he activated it.¡±

    Damn it. There went our chance to end this thing so quickly.

    Once more, the fighting broke off, and the Celtic Lancer landed back in front of his group with a scowl and a click of his tongue. He eyed the spot where Rider had disappeared with a narrow glare. ¡°Bastard. Should¡¯ve known that he was hiding a Noble Phantasm like that. No other reason they¡¯d send a Servant that weak out to get something that important.¡±

    ¡°Heroic Spirits are those who have ingrained their deeds into the consciousness of mankind,¡± said the Indian Lancer, still cool as a cucumber. He didn¡¯t even sound smug, more like he was admonishing the other¡¯s disrespect. ¡°Even those who appear worthless still accomplished something worthy of praise and adulation. Rider may be no great warrior, but that does not mean he is not a true Heroic Spirit.¡± He titled his head. ¡°Do you still intend to pursue my allies, Lancer? On my honor as a hero, I cannot allow you to slaughter them needlessly.¡±

    The Celtic Lancer grunted and let out a sigh. ¡°Nah. No fucking point in that. It¡¯d just be me being petty.¡± He cracked a bloodthirsty grin. ¡°But I¡¯ll still take your head anyway!¡±

    He cocked his arm back, and magical energy surged as his spear erupted into poisonous red flames. They licked the air, tongues of almost liquid fire leaping from the blade and the shaft both, so sweltering that I could feel them even from where we were standing.

    ¡°I see,¡± said the Indian Lancer. ¡°Very well. Don¡¯t take this as an insult, Lancer, but I won¡¯t need my spear to stop your Noble Phantasm. After all¡­¡±

    ¡°L¨²in ¡ª¡±

    Magical energy surged in the Indian Lancer now, and ridiculously, it gathered into a point, a ball of flame in front of his face. ¡°A true hero kills using only his eyes!¡±

    ¡°¡ª Celtchair!¡±

    ¡°Brahmastra!¡±

    The flaming spear flew, the ball of fire erupted into a beam. They both streaked across the distance, bright and eye-searing and loaded with power. Somewhere in the middle, they met and clashed, and dripping flame splattered like acid across the ground as the spear collided head on with the beam of fire and stopped. For an instant, for a heartbeat, they hung in the air, each one pushing back against the other and bleeding power and energy dense enough to ignite the grass around them, and then, against all sense and reason, the spear was deflected, spinning up and up end over end, to land point-first in the sand.

    The beam continued on, and it struck not the Celtic Lancer, but had been thrown far enough off course to hit the squad of Celtic warriors behind him. It carved through nearly half a dozen like a hot knife through butter, passing more easily through their flesh than any bullet and killing them instantly, and exploded against the ground behind the last, throwing up clods of dirt, grass, and sand.

    A tremor of unease squirmed in my gut, because where the fuck had that come from? These two were supposed to be fairly evenly matched, weren¡¯t they? And yet this guy had easily overpowered a Noble Phantasm without breaking a sweat?

    The Celtic Lancer stood frozen, mouth pulled into a tight grimace but eyes wide and wild, like he would die if he dared to blink. I saw his hand twitch as though to reach for a spear that was beyond his grasp, but he made no move to retrieve it.

    A Noble Phantasm that made him stronger than he should have been, it had to be. Something like Lancelot¡¯s Arondight or Babbage¡¯s armor, something that pushed him beyond the limits of what he could do normally. Maybe something like King Arthur¡¯s Mana Burst, something that could only be used in short spurts. That would explain the discrepancy.

    ¡°Fortune smiles upon you, Lancer,¡± said the Indian Lancer. He dipped his head into a short, respectful nod. ¡°Until we meet again. I look forward to our next match.¡±

    And just like that, he vanished, disappearing into spirit form. The militiamen he¡¯d been protecting were long gone, having taken the chance to flee while they could, although they weren¡¯t so far away that a Servant couldn¡¯t have run them down if he wanted.

    ¡°Tch.¡± The Celtic Lancer scoffed. He didn¡¯t seem inclined to go chasing after anyone. ¡°You were just playing with me the entire time, weren¡¯t you? Bet you were the main hero in your country¡¯s big legend.¡±

    He walked over to retrieve his spear, and it was only as he reached out to yank it from the sand that I saw the red, blistering burns that decorated his knuckles and arm nearly up to the elbow. Wounds from his battle with the other Lancer, or was I right to think that his own Noble Phantasm could inflict damage to him?

    Something to file away for later.

    ¡°Did¡­¡± Rika began. ¡°Did¡­that other guy stop tall, dark, and handsome¡¯s spear by firing a laser beam from his eyes?¡±

    ¡°You weren¡¯t seeing things, Master,¡± Emiya told her. ¡°That¡¯s exactly what happened.¡±

    ¡°Oi!¡± Lancer called, and it was obvious he was talking to us, because he turned our way. ¡°Not that I¡¯m not grateful for that shot you took at the pissant who stole the Grail, but you certainly don¡¯t look like anyone I know is on my side.¡± He brandished his spear at us. ¡°So what is it you lot wanted with that Grail, eh? Come to steal it out from under my queen¡¯s nose, is that it?¡±

    All of us tensed and prepared for a fight, and my mind ran through half a dozen different scenarios. We still didn¡¯t know whose side was which, but a hot-blooded guy like this might not listen to us until we knocked him around a bit. The trouble was, he wasn¡¯t alone, and while the militiamen had been able to kill a few of the warriors grouped up behind him, that didn¡¯t necessarily mean they were weak enough that us Masters could deal with them safely.

    A¨ªfe was the only one who remained relaxed.

    ¡°Put that spear away before you stab yourself with it,¡± she drawled as she stepped to the front of the group. ¡°Unless you want to test your luck against me again. I¡¯ll be glad to show you just how much I¡¯ve improved since the last time I beat you into the ground.¡±

    Lancer¡¯s eyes landed on her and immediately went wide. The tip of his spear drooped in shock as his grip slackened.

    ¡°Lugh¡¯s balls,¡± he said, disbelieving, and then a broad grin broke out across his face. ¡°I don¡¯t believe my eyes! A¨ªfe, you ferocious bitch, you¡¯re actually here, too?¡±

    ¡°You know him?¡± I asked her.

    She glanced at me with her trademark grin, and instead of giving me a direct answer, asked me back, ¡°Do you think there¡¯s a warrior in all of ¨¦ire who hasn¡¯t been on the other end of my sword, either in training or in combat?¡±

    ¡°She put me on my ass more than once back when she was just a wee thing with a chip on her shoulder,¡± Lancer revealed. ¡°Heard she eventually went back and started teaching upstarts how to hold the right end of a sword. I certainly felt a whole lot better about myself once people started whispering her name like the devil. You and that crazy sister of yours, that is.¡±

    Almost as an afterthought, he turned back to his group long enough to tell them, ¡°Ah, stand down, you poor bastards, this one¡¯s way outta your league. No reason to give her cause to dirty her gloves on your faces.¡±

    The whole group took this order as gospel and relaxed, releasing tension from their bows and their sword arms, although they didn¡¯t, I noticed, sheath their weapons yet. There was something almost¡­mechanical about their actions, something vacant about their eyes and their gazes, as though they weren¡¯t all entirely there.

    I wasn¡¯t sure what that meant yet. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Until we knew how and why a bunch of warriors from what looked to be the Dark Ages had wound up in America ¡ª either 1783 or 2011 ¡ª I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d get an answer.

    Lancer approached casually, slinging his spear up and over his shoulder. ¡°Have to say, I wasn¡¯t expecting you, of all Heroic Spirits, to show up, A¨ªfe, although maybe I should have. A smarter man might¡¯ve known you would¡¯ve come eventually, seeing as Sc¨¢thach and two of her brats are here, too.¡±

    A¨ªfe stilled, and immediately, the air around her shifted to something sharp and dangerous. ¡°Sc¨¢thach is here?¡±

    ¡°Fucked if I know why,¡± said Lancer. ¡°Don¡¯t rightly know where she went off to, either. Especially since her two brats are both up with the cheese queen.¡±

    ¡°Cheese queen?¡± the twins both said at once.

    Given the context¡­ ¡°You mean Medb?¡±

    Lancer glanced at me only long enough to rake a look up and down my body, as though sizing me up for how much of a threat I was. ¡°That¡¯d be the one. The other other crazy bitch from our little family of fucked up stories.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Rika, still confused, ¡°why are you calling her the cheese queen?¡±

    ¡°Because of how it¡¯s said she died, Senpai,¡± said Mash. ¡°Furbaide wanted revenge for his mother¡¯s death, so he killed Queen Medb while she was bathing by, um, by hurling a wedge of cheese at her from his sling.¡±

    It did sound ridiculous, but a lot of the old mythologies were filled with nonsense like that, so at this point, I didn¡¯t even bat an eye.

    Rika, on the other hand, turned to Mash, disbelief written all over her face. ¡°You can¡¯t actually be serious, Cinnabon.¡±

    ¡°She is,¡± said A¨ªfe, and instead of explaining any further, immediately asked Lancer, ¡°Her two brats? There are only a handful I can think of that she would dare to leave unattended in Medb¡¯s clutches.¡±

    ¡°The Hound and his bosom pal,¡± said Lancer with a nod. Bosom pal? I could only think of one hero who met that description for C¨²chulainn.

    Rika¡¯s head whirled around towards him, and the demand she looked like she¡¯d been about to make for more detail died a swift death in the face of an old friend¡¯s presence. ¡°C¨²¡¯s here?¡±

    Lancer¡¯s eyebrows rose. ¡°You¡¯ve met him before, then?¡±

    ¡°As a Caster,¡± I answered, ¡°several months back.¡±

    Lancer¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°A Caster, eh? Can¡¯t say I¡¯d expect that outta him, of all people.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Well, if that¡¯s how you knew him, sorry to say you¡¯ll be disappointed when you see him again. He ain¡¯t much for conversation, these days.¡±

    A¨ªfe picked up on it the same time I did. ¡°He¡¯s a Berserker?¡±

    The disappointment in her voice was palpable.

    ¡°Got it in one,¡± he confirmed. ¡°Ya might get a word or two outta him, but mostly all he does is grunt and groan.¡±

    Oh. That was¡­ I was honestly a bit surprised to find that I was disappointed, too. I guess¡­some part of me had been looking forward to seeing him again, despite how much of a horndog he was.

    ¡°Which means if I socked him one good, he wouldn¡¯t even understand why,¡± Rika lamented. She hadn¡¯t forgotten her promise from Septem, it seemed.

    Lancer gave her a queer look, eyes roving up and down her body, and in a skeptical voice, he asked, ¡°He make a pass at you, girl? Have to say, you don¡¯t look like his usual type.¡±

    Female and breathing? I didn¡¯t say.

    ¡°Nope!¡± Rika said brightly. ¡°I just owe him one!¡±

    ¡°Guess you¡¯ll just have to keep owing him one, then,¡± said Lancer.

    ¡°It explains why he would side with Medb, at least,¡± said A¨ªfe. ¡°That boy in his right mind doesn¡¯t want anything to do with her.¡±

    ¡°It explains Ferdiad, too,¡± Emiya added. ¡°As I remember it, he was already on Medb¡¯s side, so having his best friend there would just be more reason to stay, wouldn¡¯t it?¡±

    Lancer sized him up. ¡°Spoken almost like you were there, friend.¡±

    ¡°Not at all.¡± Emiya shrugged. ¡°I just know a little bit about Irish mythology. Once you¡¯ve been on the other end of that spear enough times, it seems more prudent to know what you¡¯re dealing with.¡±

    ¡°Ha!¡± Lancer shook his head. ¡°True, that. So you must¡¯ve fought him in some scuffle or another. What, one of them Grail Wars or something?¡±

    Emiya¡¯s mouth curled up into a half-smirk. ¡°Something like that.¡±

    Lancer saw the evasion for what it was and huffed a short chuckle.

    ¡°Speaking of the Grail,¡± I began. Lancer¡¯s smile died.

    ¡°Aye, I suppose we ought to get back to that one, eh?¡± he said grimly. ¡°Not to ruin our happy little reunion here, A¨ªfe, but how did you and this group here get caught up in all of this nonsense?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re here to fix it,¡± I said, watching his face. His brow furrowed, confused.

    ¡°Fix it?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re part of the Chaldea Security Organization,¡± Mash told him dutifully. ¡°Our job is to Rayshift into aberrant spacetimes called Singularities to retrieve the Grail causing the distortion and restore proper history to its correct course.¡±

    ¡°We put right what¡¯s gone wrong!¡± Rika chimed in like she was reciting a slogan. Ritsuka¡¯s expression was aggrieved and resigned.

    Lancer¡¯s reaction, however, was¡­not what I¡¯d hoped or what I¡¯d feared. It didn¡¯t match any of my expectations, actually. He didn¡¯t close off and become more guarded, as I would have expected if he was on the side of whatever or whoever had caused the Singularity to form, but neither did he immediately open up like he¡¯d just met comrades in his solemn duty either. Instead, he seemed only more confused.

    He breathed out a heavy sigh and shook his head. ¡°That¡¯s all beyond my ken, I¡¯ve to say. What¡¯s what with all of this nonsense is just me trying to swim with the sharks. You want to talk about what¡¯s all to do about this crazy shit, you¡¯ll need to go and see Medb and the Boss ¡ª and as an Ulsterman, let me say, I never thought those words would ever have left my mouth.¡±

    ¡°Your boss?¡± Ritsuka asked.

    ¡°The guy running our little army,¡± said Lancer. ¡°He¡¯s holding our sad, little family of misfits together, telling us where to go and what we need to do while we¡¯re there. When we heard those shits from out west were looking into what might¡¯ve been a Grail out here, he sent me to see if they really found something or if they were just sniffing for scraps. He¡¯s the one who knows what we¡¯re doing and why we¡¯re here, so if there¡¯s anyone who can tell you lot about what¡¯s going on in this little corner of hell, it¡¯ll be him.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like a pretty important guy,¡± said Arash.

    I could already think of a few people it might be, in fact. Legend or Chevalier, maybe, if it was a cape. Maybe Armstrong if it was a PRT director. As an American, I should probably have been embarrassed that I dismissed the idea of the President out of hand, but I didn¡¯t even remember who that was supposed to be right now, so unless this was one of the ways where the fluctuations influenced things and it was Washington himself, I was discounting him.

    ¡°Only reason why things haven¡¯t gone any more to pot than they already are,¡± Lancer confirmed.

    ¡°So how do we go about meeting him?¡± asked Emiya.

    Lancer jerked his head to his right, our left. ¡°You¡¯ll be wanting to head north. Probably a good idea to make a stop off in, what¡¯s it, Boston? Yeah. Little place called the Black Rose, in the heart of the city. Talk to the bartender, he¡¯ll get ya in contact with the guy in charge up there, an uptight twat by the name of ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Accord,¡± I concluded, already dreading it. The instant he mentioned Boston, I had almost expected it, because this couldn¡¯t be Earth Bet without him running things up there.

    Lancer gave me a considering look. ¡°That¡¯d be him. You¡¯ve heard of him, then.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s got a reputation,¡± was the only thing I said. It seemed to be enough.

    ¡°Well,¡± said Lancer, ¡°he might be a right bastard, but he knows what¡¯s what. Half the reason the Boss can keep things going is because he¡¯s got that little shit on a leash. You want to talk to the Boss and Medb? He can get you a meeting.¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor,¡± Mash murmured.

    I wanted to sigh. Yeah. Any hope I might have had about avoiding the trappings of my past was now well and truly dead.

    ¡°We¡¯ll do that, then,¡± I said. ¡°Who should we say sent us?¡±

    Lancer blinked, and then shook his head. ¡°Wife¡¯d have my head for that one,¡± he muttered to himself. Then, louder, ¡°Name¡¯s Celtchar. Might not be as big a name as the Hound or his ilk, but I was ¡ª am ¡ª a warrior of Ulster. Well met, the lot of ya.¡± He jerked his head at the group still waiting silently behind him. ¡°Now, if none of ya have any more questions for me, I¡¯ve got to get this sorry lot back home and let the Boss know that the Westies made off with the Grail and sent their bigshot to come get it.¡±

    ¡°Thanks for your help,¡± Ritsuka said honestly.

    Lancer ¡ª Celtchar ¡ª shook his head. ¡°Weren¡¯t no trouble.¡± He waved a hand goodbye and turned away, and to the group of Celtic warriors, he shouted, ¡°Oi, you sorry sacks of shit! Pick your asses up off the ground and let¡¯s get moving! Boss needs to hear what happened here, and right quick!¡±

    We watched him go, staying silent the entire time as he led his troupe of Celtic warriors away. Only once he was out of earshot ¡ª and out of range of my bugs ¡ª did we huddle together and discuss our options.

    ¡°So?¡± said Emiya. ¡°Where does this put us?¡±

    ¡°We have a lead,¡± Ritsuka opined.

    ¡°For what that¡¯s worth,¡± A¨ªfe warned, crossing her arms over her chest. ¡°The young man I knew wasn¡¯t the type to lie or mislead, but Medb wasn¡¯t the sort to take orders or follow someone else. Whoever this boss of theirs is, she might have subverted him for her own purposes by now.¡±

    ¡°This is the lady who was super upset that C¨² didn¡¯t ravish her, right?¡± said Rika.

    A¨ªfe nodded. ¡°The same.¡±

    ¡°She sounds kinda screwy to me,¡± was Rika¡¯s opinion.

    ¡°Different times, different standards,¡± Emiya reminded her.

    Rika didn¡¯t budge. ¡°Still.¡±

    ¡°If we knew where Rider went with the Grail,¡± Mash said, trailing off.

    ¡°Fou, fou¡­¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± said Arash, shaking his head. ¡°I know he went west, but with the Grail in hand, he could cross the entire continent before needing to rest.¡±

    ¡°He could be halfway to Hollywood right now,¡± Rika added. She grimaced. ¡°Ugh. He might get to meet Arnold before me, and that¡¯s so not fair.¡±

    ¡°If we don¡¯t know where he¡¯s going, then we can¡¯t really follow him, can we?¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°So we really only have the one lead for now.¡±

    As much as I might not have been incredibly happy about it¡­ ¡°Hold on a second.¡±

    Muninn swooped low, and the twins startled as she opened her mouth and snapped out a sizzling shot towards a nearby tree. The crow roosting there squawked and cawed indignantly, taking flight to avoid the shot and then, flustered, flying away.

    That didn¡¯t work the first time, it¡¯s not working a second or third, I thought at whoever was controlling it.

    ¡°We¡¯ll go north,¡± I said. I ignored the raised eyebrows. ¡°If Accord is the only way we¡¯re getting a meeting with Medb and Celtchar¡¯s boss, then Accord is who we need to talk to.¡±

    I just had to hope he was in a more reasonable mood than usual.

 Chapter CLXXVII: The Black Rose

    Chapter CLXXVII: The Black Rose

    We did not immediately set off to go and meet with Accord, and it had nothing at all to do with how little I was looking forward to dealing with his particular neuroses again. Instead, Arash and I went over to the shoreline, and with the colony of crabs that called the bay home to help me see what was down there and where to send Arash to look, we started investigating the seafloor at the bottom of the bay.

    Meanwhile, the others set about laying the dead militiamen to rest by digging out a trench where they could bury the bodies. It was a poor grave, and we couldn¡¯t even give them the dignity of a memorial that listed all of their names, in no small part because we simply didn¡¯t know any of them, but the twins felt that it was a better use of their time than just waiting around for Arash and me to scour the bay for any hint of where and how the Grail might have come to be there.

    The celtic warriors, on the other hand, had disappeared. Like a puff of smoke or a waft of steam, their corpses had vanished, leaving behind only splotches of blood on the sand and dirt that were in no way big enough to account for how much of it they should have lost from their wounds. Even the ones killed by Lancer¡¯s eye laser were gone, too. But for those drying stains, they could have been nothing more than mirages that we had all seen.

    If we had needed confirmation that they had been created or summoned somehow by another Servant, that would have been more than enough to convince me. The bloodstains were the only part that didn¡¯t make sense, but I didn¡¯t have any other explanation for that, so I wrote it off for the time being.

    Unfortunately, the search wasn¡¯t going very well. There were plenty of things that were sitting on the bottom of the bay, from discarded soda cans and plastic bottles to planks of rotting wood and torn sails, but none of them provided any sort of explanation for how and why this era¡¯s Grail had wound up down there instead of in the hands of whoever it was that had kicked this Singularity off.

    ¡°The King of Mages certainly wouldn¡¯t have simply dropped it down there,¡± said Da Vinci. I resisted the urge to shift my feet; the circle of runes A¨ªfe had carved into the sand to stabilize our connection was exceptionally fragile for it, and I didn¡¯t want to disrupt them. I wasn¡¯t confident I could recreate the sequence by myself if I had to. ¡°Merely throwing such a powerful magical artifact into an era isn¡¯t enough to cause a Singularity. Someone or something making a wish upon it that alters the proper course of events has to occur first, and that obviously can¡¯t happen if the Grail is sitting at the bottom of a bay.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure why else it would be down there.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t finding much in the way of other clues, and Arash¡¯s silence told me that he was having about as much luck. Even assuming that Rider had taken a straight line to and from the Grail, the water had already all but erased his tracks, and nothing else of interest remained alongside them. The only things that I was really finding were the scattered bits of shipwrecks from the unfortunates who had sunk over the decades, and that told me nothing.

    Then again, if it had been in the hands of a Servant, then any other evidence would have vanished when they did, wouldn¡¯t it? There wouldn¡¯t be anything else for us to find to begin with.

    ¡°Mm,¡± Da Vinci hummed. ¡°If there was a struggle with the Grail before the Singularity¡¯s deviations truly began to take hold, then it might have been lost in the fighting.¡±

    ¡°Could it have been intentional?¡± Marie¡¯s voice asked. ¡°An act of sabotage?¡±

    ¡°How do you mean, Director?¡± Da Vinci said curiously.

    Marie was silent for a moment. ¡°We know that this Singularity in particular is targeted. At Taylor, specifically. If the original culprit who possessed the Grail was conspiring with the King of Mages, then could they have thrown the Grail into the bay in the hopes that it would be that much harder for us to find and retrieve it?¡±

    Oh. That¡­would actually be kind of devious. Maybe not feasible, depending on what the Grail might have been used for, but if the goal was simply to create a Singularity and let it run itself into the ground, then theoretically, Solomon¡¯s conspirator could just set up all of the dominoes and then toss the Grail into the ocean. It would be much harder to find, in that case, and that would definitely have stymied any efforts on our part. Without the echo we had tracked to the bay, we could have run around for weeks or months without having any idea where it was.

    But¡­

    ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s the case,¡± I said.

    ¡­if it was that simple, it could have been done before, too.

    ¡°You don¡¯t?¡± said Marie.

    ¡°Even Flauros didn¡¯t just throw the Grail into the Mediterranean, back in Septem,¡± I reasoned. ¡°It would have been the easiest way to screw us over ¡ª summon Romulus and all those other Servants, and while everyone was fighting, lock the Grail in a chest, weigh it down with concrete, then sail out into the Atlantic and drop it over the side. He chose to hold onto it instead.¡±

    ¡°Because it¡¯s the pairing,¡± Da Vinci explained. ¡°A deviation is normally corrected without issue by the Counter Force, and a Grail is just a wish-granting device on its own. One or the other isn¡¯t enough to cause a Singularity. Both acting in concert is what makes one form, and so both are necessary for one to form at all. Were we to remove the aberrant forces in this era, then the Singularity should eventually be corrected without further intervention. Of course,¡± she added, ¡°as long as a Grail is present, then it is also possible for it to cause further deviations should it land in another¡¯s hands before the Singularity is resolved, and that is one of the reasons we¡¯ve had you do both in every deployment so far.¡±

    Marie made a noise of understanding high in her throat. ¡°Then the King of Mages would want to ensure that the deviations that occur continue according to his plan. Leaving the Grail unattended anywhere outside of his or his proxy¡¯s control would risk failure.¡±

    ¡°Exactly,¡± said Da Vinci. ¡°If the Grail is simply abandoned at the earliest convenience, then he would lose any chance of correcting for the meddling of outside forces ¡ª us, in this case, or any Servants summoned by the Counter Force.¡±

    A familiar presence brushed up against my thoughts. ¡°Hold on.¡±

    Did you find anything? I asked Arash. He had left my range somewhere in the middle of the conversation, but the last I had seen of him with my crabs, he was heading directly across the bay.

    Nothing, he replied. I went all the way across to the peninsula, and there weren¡¯t any clues that I could see about why the Grail might have been down here.

    I clicked my tongue. Come back, then. There¡¯s no point in spending the next month scouring the bay.

    Roger, he said, and then his presence retreated.

    ¡°And yet,¡± I said aloud, ¡°for whatever reason, the Grail was down in the bay, and two different groups came here to retrieve it.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Da Vinci agreed, ¡°that is certainly strange, isn¡¯t it? Unfortunately, at this time, I don¡¯t have any concrete theories about why.¡±

    ¡°If he is who he claims he is,¡± Romani chimed in, and he put particular emphasis on that uncertainty, ¡°then he¡¯s not sloppy enough for this to be a mistake. This was intentional, even if we don¡¯t know why.¡±

    I was inclined to agree. Solomon and his agents had been thorough enough that they had nearly managed to end the Grand Order before it could even really start, and it was only dumb luck and a bunch of factors they couldn¡¯t possibly have accounted for that put us in a good enough position to get as far as we had. If Solomon was willing to let the Grail lie at the bottom of the Cape Cod Bay, then either he had a reason for letting it stay there or it being there didn¡¯t inconvenience his plans enough for him to care.

    Either of those was bad news for us.

    ¡°Whatever the reason is, I don¡¯t think we¡¯re going to find our answers here,¡± I said. ¡°The focal point echo was a dead end. If it was anything at all, then that Rider rode away with it.¡±

    Da Vinci hummed. ¡°On that point, I do believe you¡¯re right.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re going to Boston, then?¡± asked Marie.

    I nodded, even though they couldn¡¯t see it. ¡°It¡¯s the only lead we have that we can follow, right now.¡±

    By default, that made it the best, no matter how sorry a state of things that was.

    ¡°I don¡¯t need to tell you to be careful,¡± said Marie.

    ¡°Of course.¡±

    ¡°Taylor,¡± Romani said suddenly, ¡°don¡¯t forget that this isn¡¯t your Earth Bet, okay? Whatever and whoever you meet, they¡¯re not going to be exactly the same people you remember.¡±

    A flash of annoyance curdled in my gut like sour milk. ¡°I know.¡±

    I hadn¡¯t forgotten, and whether that satisfied him or he just sensed that I didn¡¯t want to continue that line of conversation, he let it drop there, and with a simple, ¡°Good luck,¡± the connection dropped. I took an extra second to peer out over the bay, at the steely gray waters that churned and sloshed gently, but they had no more answers for me than they¡¯d had before, so I turned away, stepped out of the circle of A¨ªfe¡¯s runes, and went over to join the others.

    They had not had to dig a pit for the bodies entirely by hand, of course, because they had managed just fine with a combination of Emiya¡¯s projections and A¨ªfe¡¯s rune magic, but they had moved the bodies the old fashioned way, and somewhere along the way, the grave had become something more like a kiln. I remembered suddenly that they had cremated the bodies of the policemen and the fake Jack the Ripper at Scotland Yard in London, and in light of that, the grim, determined set of the twins¡¯ faces made a whole lot more sense.

    ¡°Senpai,¡± was how Ritsuka greeted me, apparently the first to see me walking over.

    ¡°Cremating them, then?¡± I asked.

    His lips drew into an even tighter line. ¡°It¡¯s¡­easier and faster than trying to bury them, although¡­not as respectful of their culture.¡±

    I remembered something vague about how Christians could not enter Heaven if their bodies were destroyed beyond recognition, but not where I¡¯d heard it from or if it only belonged to a specific denomination. It was moot, too, if these people were from 1783 properly and would simply get corrected once this was all over.

    ¡°There¡¯s something else, too,¡± said Emiya. He tossed me one of the muskets, and I caught it a little clumsily. When I looked it over, I couldn¡¯t find anything out of place or anything, but I wasn¡¯t exactly an expert on firearms, so I had no idea what I was looking for in the first place. It looked like a regular old musket to me.

    ¡°Is there something wrong with it?¡±

    He clicked his tongue. ¡°Or something a little too right with it, maybe. It¡¯s been modified. The exterior might look like a standard long rifle, but the interior has been adjusted to fire a modified slug instead of a musket ball. To give you a little bit of context, the Mini¨¦ ball wasn¡¯t thought up until the 1840s, which would already put this thing about 60 years ahead of its time, even if you don¡¯t count the percussion lock that wasn¡¯t invented until the 1820s, but¡­¡±

    I looked at him. ¡°But what?¡±

    He sighed. ¡°Somehow or another, the rifling has been converted into a magnetic coil.¡± He gestured to the lock. ¡°When the hammer hits the lock, it causes a pin to complete a temporary circuit, sending an electric charge up the barrel.¡±

    My brow furrowed. ¡°This is a coil gun?¡±

    ¡°Right?¡± Rika agreed. ¡°What kind of sci-fi bullshit is that?¡±

    That¡¯s not sci-fi bullshit.

    ¡°That¡¯s tinkertech.¡±

    Emiya¡¯s eyebrows rose. ¡°You mean the sort of thing that can only be made by people whose powers let them make technology decades or centuries ahead of the modern era?¡± His eyes trailed down to the rifle in my hands. ¡°It would certainly explain the parts that don¡¯t make any sense. Like the battery that delivers the charge, because I couldn¡¯t make heads or tails of that. Or how gunpowder can be used as a lubricant.¡±

    ¡°Wait, what?¡± said Rika. ¡°Gunpowder as a lube?¡±

    He shrugged. ¡°It makes even less sense to me, Master. Something in the design of the coil turns the gunpowder into a kind of insulator, preventing heat transfer between the slug and the barrel. That¡¯s why there was still smoke: the gunpowder absorbed the heat from the barrel and the slug so that neither was warped when it fired.¡±

    Strange and nonsensical in parts, but somehow forming a cohesive, functional whole ¡ª a hallmark of Tinkertech. If I¡¯d needed more convincing, that would have done it.

    I tossed it back to him, and he snatched it out of the air easily. ¡°Da Vinci will want to take a look at that once we find a good Ley Line Terminal to set up a magic circle. I don¡¯t think she¡¯ll find anything revolutionary about it ¡ª¡± Rika snickered to herself. ¡°¡ª but she should find it interesting how the Tinker enhanced a rifle from the¡­¡± And I just got the joke. ¡°¡­the Revolutionary War.¡±

    Emiya didn¡¯t protest; he slung the rifle over his back, slipping into the leather strap fastened to the end of the barrel and the stock. He fidgeted a little, looking almost comical wearing his strange mishmash of modern, futuristic, and old-fashioned gear, complete with a muzzle-loaded rifle peeking up from next to one ear.

    He smirked at me. ¡°It¡¯s almost nostalgic.¡±

    I didn¡¯t bother asking why. I was more focused on the rifle ¡ª who could have enhanced it, and why? There were only a few Tinkers in the world who could do anything like mass production, but just about any good Tinker could do a job like this with enough time and a well-stocked lab. Coil, after all, had supplied a small private army with tinkertech rifles that fired lasers, so the idea that someone else could do something similar wasn¡¯t at all strange.

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    The stranger part was the people who had them. I could see the logic behind using those rifles as a base ¡ª it would require less training for the soldiers who used them ¡ª but the bigger mystery was still the soldiers themselves, and why they were the ones chosen to wield them. Convenience, or desperation?

    There were still too many questions we didn¡¯t have the answers to just yet.

    I went to check the time, but whatever had caused the fluctuations was apparently messing with the local time, too, because it kept flickering between numbers with no rhyme or reason. The sun, at least, didn¡¯t lie, because I might not have been an expert on how to tell time by it, but I at least knew enough to tell whether it was before or after noon.

    ¡°Let¡¯s finish this up and get moving,¡± I told everyone. ¡°We¡¯re about fifty miles south of Boston, so it¡¯s going to take us at least an hour to get there on the bikes.¡±

    Rika groaned.

    ¡°Not A¨ªfe¡¯s chariot?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    It would be faster, but¡­ ¡°Better to keep as low a profile as we can for now. We still don¡¯t know for sure who¡¯s on our side, so the less we advertise our presence and our Servants, the better.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure that isn¡¯t a losing battle,¡± said Emiya, gesturing down at himself. He had something of a point, but at least in his case, that was easily fixed.

    ¡°Put on a mask before we enter town, and everyone will think you¡¯re a cape,¡± I told him, which seemed to throw him off quite a bit. He opened his mouth to argue the point, but after a moment of silence, shut it again.

    We went back to the pyre we¡¯d been building, and with the whole group working on it now, it was much faster than it had been before. It only took another twenty minutes or so to have all of the militiamen piled up together in that sad little pit, and as I carved a rune into the dirt that cleaned my hands when it burned, Emiya projected a large, crude sword that looked like nothing much more than a hunk of crude, molten iron. The only other thing really remarkable about it was the glowing knotwork pattern stretching from the hilt to the tip of the blade.

    He stabbed this blade into the pile of bodies and solemnly intoned, ¡°Laevatein,¡± and then immediately leapt back as the sword ignited and burned the corpses so rapidly that they were already blackening between one blink and the next.

    I glanced at him, and he took this as an invitation to explain: ¡°It¡¯s a crude recreation barely worthy of the name, but it¡¯s the sword Surtr used to wipe most of Scandinavia clean. The real deal is no joke, but just about the only thing this one is good for is cleaning up a battlefield.¡±

    I was done being surprised by the sorts of things he could make with his Reality Marble, so I let it pass without comment. There were probably a few other areas where something like that would be useful, but this wasn¡¯t the time or the place to be discussing that with him.

    The bodies burned away quickly. The flames of Laevatein ate the flesh, bone, and cloth with a voracious hunger, reducing the pile stacked in the pit to a thin layer of ash in a matter of just a minute or two, and then they died away, as though they had no interest at all in the grass or the trees or anything else around us.

    It was only in their wake that I realized how hot they must have been, because even standing something like twenty or thirty feet away, patches of sweat cooled on my brow, my neck, and under my arms the instant they were gone.

    Next to me, the twins and Mash all clasped their hands together as though in prayer and briefly bowed their heads. Even Arash muttered a quick benediction. I watched them awkwardly, unsure if I should bother or how I would have shown these militiamen that sort of respect. The moment passed before I could find an answer.

    ¡°Ready to go?¡± I asked them instead.

    ¡°Yeah,¡± said Ritsuka. Even Rika¡¯s nod was more subdued than usual.

    I pulled up the map of the area on my communicator and zoomed in to show them. ¡°We¡¯re here,¡± I said, pointing to the dot that showed our location, and then I panned back west. ¡°We¡¯ll have to backtrack a little, but there should be a road for us to follow a little ways from where we landed. We¡¯ll follow that north ¡ª¡± I panned up this time ¡°¡ª and up to Boston. It should take us about an hour to reach the city.¡±

    ¡°Where we¡¯ll stop to get something to eat,¡± said Rika, ¡°right?¡±

    With what money, I wanted to ask, because even if I¡¯d still had my money from way back when, I wasn¡¯t sure it would have been accepted, but I settled instead for, ¡°We¡¯ll figure something out when we get there.¡±

    That was enough to mollify her for the moment, so we began the hike back to our landing zone, back through the path of broken trees and sliced branches we¡¯d taken through the woods to reach the fighting. It was, naturally, much less frantic and much less frenzied than it had been on the way out, and I got smacked in the face by leaves and twigs a whole lot less, too.

    It didn¡¯t take too long at all for us to get back to where we¡¯d first landed when we Rayshifted in, although the only way to tell that it was even the same spot was the path we cut through the woods leaving it. Going the other way, however, took us much longer, because that convenient path didn¡¯t exist, so we had to pick our way through, stepping over tree roots and between shrubs and bushes, ducking under low-hanging branches, and just generally dealing with the hazards that came with nature unchecked.

    Fortunately, we weren¡¯t in the Amazon, so the foliage wasn¡¯t so thick as to be virtually impassable and the canopy of the trees reaching up above us wasn¡¯t so oppressive as to completely smother almost all of the light coming through the leaves. It was all easily manageable, more annoying than an actual struggle. The real nuisance was going to be the chill of a New England autumn, a familiar nip in the air that grew more pronounced the further from the beach we got. Some of the trees had even begun to change color, with patches of leaves that had shifted from bright green to yellow, orange, or red.

    I wasn¡¯t sure how much the twins knew about that sort of thing, but it was actually a useful bit of information. Unless the fluctuations were having effects that were that drastic, it told me that we had actually landed sometime in late September, maybe early October, and if that was true, then both the Nine and Coil would be long gone by the time we made it up to Brockton. Leviathan¡¯s attack was already a matter of history, and so too would Behemoth¡¯s attack on New Delhi. We were in the grace period between attacks, because the next one wasn¡¯t until November.

    A thought occurred to me, and the realization hit me so hard that I actually stopped for a moment as the implications washed over me, reeling.

    ¡°Something wrong, Master?¡± asked Arash, who was walking behind me.

    I hesitated for only a second, and then kept walking. ¡°No,¡± I told him. ¡°Nothing.¡±

    But if all of that had happened, then the Teeth and the Fallen should have attacked Brockton, too. Cherish ¡ª the newest Butcher ¡ª should be locked up and shipped out to sea, stuck at the bottom of the ocean with nothing to do but think about her fate. Alec¡­ Alec should be dead, but more¡­immediately relevant to our situation, Accord should be, too. Victims of Behemoth¡¯s attack in New Delhi, one way or the other.

    And yet we were going to see Accord, to get his help contacting whoever it was that was keeping everything together inside this Singularity. Accord, who was supposed to have been killed by a rogue Yangban cape in July.

    Something wasn¡¯t right here, and I didn¡¯t know what. It was autumn here in this Singularity, and yet the deviation to the world as I knew it had occurred at least a month or two back, and I had no idea what all of the implications of that were. Not now. Not yet. And by the time I did, it might already have come back to bite me.

    We really needed to talk to Accord now. We should probably stop by the nearest internet cafe, too, or failing that, I needed to swipe a smartphone at the earliest chance I got. However we could get caught up on recent events, we needed to do that as quickly as we could.

    The trip through the forest to the other side took the better part of an hour, just from how slowly we had to make our way through it, but eventually, we came out the other side to a small, two-lane road that cut straight through and went north to south. The yellow lines down the middle were bright and fresh and well-maintained, and telephone poles stretched up and down the one side. Black power lines dangled above our heads as we stepped onto the asphalt, and unlit streetlights extended out like arms reaching out across the road to shelter nighttime travelers. A paved sidewalk went along the opposite side.

    ¡°Celty said north, right?¡± asked Rika. Ritsuka grunted, grimacing.

    Celty?

    ¡°Right.¡±

    I reached down and behind me for the small tube attached there in its harness, and it slipped out with a little bit of effort. For a moment, as the twins and Mash did the same with their own, I could only stare down at it. How had Da Vinci said it worked, again? A twist and a little bit of magical energy ¡ª

    There was a loud click, and parts suddenly began manifesting in thin air, building themselves from the tube out. An engine block, the piping, the skeletal frame of a sleek, futuristic motorcycle, and then the seat formed underneath me, forcing my knees and feet apart. Seconds later, the exterior willed itself into existence, and a smooth, black chassis sat between my legs, complete and ready to go. Perfectly balanced, too, which was not a feature Da Vinci had bothered to explain to us.

    I just hoped it looked a whole lot more intentional than it was.

    ¡°Oh man, these things are so cool!¡± Rika squealed. Hers looked a lot bigger by comparison, but she was also much shorter and quite a bit smaller than me, so I guess that made sense.

    ¡°They really are,¡± Ritsuka agreed, sounding like he hated to admit it.

    Come to think of it, Da Vinci hadn¡¯t given us a max speed for these things, had she? I wondered if she¡¯d improved them from the original design, made them faster. I doubted, of course, that we would be racing along at the sorts of speeds A¨ªfe¡¯s chariot could get up to, but it would be convenient even if they were just in the same ballpark.

    A twist of the tube ¡ª now a pair of handlebars ¡ª revved the engine, and a pane beneath the windshield suddenly lit up with a display that showed things like the battery life and the speedometer in bright, easily read white numbers. There was even a map that had apparently synced up to my communicator with a pre-planned route for us to take. And when I put a foot up on the pedal, a helmet formed magically over my head, just as sleek and futuristic as the bike itself.

    Now you¡¯re just showing off, I thought at Da Vinci.

    Seeing me, Rika copied it, and a helmet of her own formed, the visor opaque and sturdy. I could still hear her voice when she said, ¡°So cool!¡±

    I turned to Emiya. ¡°Think you can keep up?¡±

    He smirked. ¡°I¡¯m sure I¡¯ll manage.¡± He thumbed the strap crossing over his chest. ¡°Someone has to carry this thing, after all.¡±

    I was tempted to offer to do it myself, but if it got him unwanted attention, it was easier for him to slip away than any of us. Better he keep ahold of it then.

    As Mash got saddled into her own bike ¡ª vanishing her shield and most of her armor and tucking Fou in as safely as she could manage in front of her ¡ª Arash and A¨ªfe both transitioned into spirit form, and soon enough, we were all ready to go.

    ¡°We¡¯ll take this road straight into downtown Boston,¡± I told them. ¡°Try and get the lay of the land on our way to the Black Rose to talk to the guy who can get us a meeting with Accord. And see about getting something to eat,¡± I added to appease Rika.

    ¡°Got it!¡± the twins and Mash all said together.

    I lifted my other foot onto the other pedal, and with a lurch and a spurt of sudden speed, we took off, our bikes little more than a gentle, motorized hum as we started up the road. Under the helmet that covered my head, the sounds of the world around us became background noise, something distant and far away.

    It became obvious within the first hundred feet that Da Vinci had once again outdone herself. I wasn¡¯t exactly an expert at what it was like to ride motorcycles, but the experience on those lightcycle ripoffs was smoother than it had any right to be. Out of an abundance of caution, I started out slow, and the twins and Mash all followed my lead, but as I picked up speed, the ride stayed just as comfortable and just as smooth as it had started out.

    It was almost like we were gliding down the road, and it occurred to me that ¡ª having taken apart my flight pack and studied the antigravity functions well enough to incorporate them into our mystic codes ¡ª it was entirely possible that her next innovation for these things would be just that. In the next Singularity, we might just be riding hoverbikes around the place, like something out of Star Wars.

    Considering the sorts of tinkertech I¡¯d seen over the course of my career as a cape, especially the latter portions of it, that wasn¡¯t anything truly extraordinary, but the twins would probably be a lot more impressed. Just the thought of Rika freaking out over how cool they were was enough to bring a faint smile to my face, in spite of everything.

    By and large, the journey up to Boston wound up being boring and unnoteworthy, because the bulk of it went straight through woodland and suburbia more than anything else, and there was nothing for us to see except trees and cookie cutter houses. Eventually, the road we were using turned into a highway, and our pace was forced to slow to accommodate traffic. Some part of me even expected to be stopped by the local police, just because our bikes stood out that much. They must have looked like tinkertech, and by the definition most people used, I guess they technically were.

    But nothing. No one accosted us. Not the police, not another Servant, not even the local Protectorate. The trip was completely uneventful.

    After the better part of an hour, we entered the city of Boston itself. The shorter, smaller residential buildings and businesses fell behind us as the towering skyline of the Boston cityscape loomed ahead. Houses and humble apartment complexes gave way to parking garages, office buildings, corporate headquarters, and the marble of centuries old courthouses and government buildings. The uniformity of siding and shingles transformed into a hodgepodge mess of brick and mortar standing beside glass and concrete, a meeting between the Boston of decades long gone and the Boston of the modern era.

    The layout was completely different and the buildings entirely unfamiliar, but in some ways, it felt like coming home. I guess I really was a city girl at heart.

    It was around there when the highway narrowed into something cozier and less expansive, although not any less crowded or busy. People on the streets paused to look at us, pointing our way ¡ª at our bikes, more specifically ¡ª and pulling out their phones so they could catch a picture or record a video of our passing. Several paid special attention to Mash in her eye-catching outfit, and didn¡¯t seem to notice how uncomfortable it made her, how her posture became rigid and she shrank away from their gazes.

    I wasn¡¯t sure the twins noticed either, but that might have been because they were getting attention of their own and didn¡¯t seem to know how to handle it. Maybe I should have prepared them better for the idea that capes were local celebrities, even the ones no one knew about ¡ª especially the ones no one knew about.

    There was nothing I could do about it just then. What, was I supposed to get up, take off my helmet, and start yelling? Or maybe I should have brought down a Biblical swarm to scare them all off and risk blowing our cover and getting more attention than a few idiots with their phones? As cathartic as it might have been and as much as the others might have appreciated it, those weren¡¯t options.

    If, however, some of the more egregious ones that were taking zoomed-in shots of Mash¡¯s backside found themselves being harassed by a fly or two or chased around by a wasp, well, that was just bad luck for them, wasn¡¯t it?

    It was somewhere approaching noon by the time we pulled up to a narrow, ten story building, a base built from white stone or concrete supporting red brick the rest of the way up. The facade was a dark, emerald green, clashing with the bright, firetruck red of the door, and spaced with tall, narrow windows that showed a dark, cozy interior. Two sets of signs hung over the storefront, black backing with soft, metallic gold letters. The set on the left said ¡°Spirits and Ale¡± above ¡°R¨®is¨ªn Dubh,¡± and the set on the right said ¡°Steaks and Seafood¡± above ¡°The Black Rose,¡± where the ¡®o¡¯ had been replaced by a blooming rose. A sign next to the door proclaimed, ¡®Live Irish music 7 nights a week.¡¯

    One final sign jutted out over the sidewalk, claiming:

    THE BLACK ROSER¨®IS¨ªN DUBHPROUDLY SERVINGGUINNESS SINCE 1976

    I dismounted my bike, and the instant I cut the thread of magical energy I¡¯d been feeding it the entire time, the whole thing evaporated and left me with nothing more than the tube I¡¯d started with. Even the helmet was gone.

    ¡°Well, we¡¯re definitely in the right place,¡± Rika said as she and the others dismounted, too. ¡°And look! Steaks and seafood! Hey, we can eat and talk to that bartender guy at the same time! Two birds with one stone!¡±

    Fou hopped down right before Mash¡¯s bike disappeared. A pity it hadn¡¯t fallen off somewhere along the way and gotten lost in the wilderness.

    ¡°How are we going to pay for it, though?¡± Ritsuka murmured. ¡°We don¡¯t have any money, do we?¡±

    That brought Rika up short, and she turned to me, ¡°Uh, do you think this Accord guy would be willing to front us some dough? I didn¡¯t bring my credit card.¡±

    ¡°Not without asking for a favor.¡±

    And owing Accord a favor wasn¡¯t the best of ideas. I was going to have to think of a way to get him to help us that didn¡¯t involve putting us in his debt.

    Rika, oblivious to my thoughts, turned back to her brother, ¡°Hey, Onii-chan, did you trim your toenails last night?¡±

    Ritsuka balked, looking back at her incredulously. ¡°No. Why?¡±

    ¡°Well, we gotta make money somehow, don¡¯t we?¡± she reasoned. ¡°And if there¡¯s one thing the internet has taught me over the last few years, it¡¯s that feet pics sell like hot cakes!¡± She glanced at Mash and a large grin broke out over her face. ¡°And hey, maybe if we record you and Mash painting each other¡¯s toenails, we can go viral! We¡¯d be raking in the dough!¡±

    But Mash wasn¡¯t paying any attention. She was instead staring intently at the pub, her brow furrowed and her eyes narrowed, and her voice was hard and guarded when she said, ¡°Master, there¡¯s a Servant nearby. No, they¡¯re inside here, I¡¯m sure.¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s head whipped around towards her. ¡°A Servant?¡±

    ¡°I can feel it, too,¡± said Emiya as he rounded the corner. The twins both jumped, startled, but I had seen him manifest in the alleyway behind the Black Rose, in the shadows where no one was looking, so I¡¯d been expecting him. ¡°No doubt about it.¡± He cocked a lopsided smile. ¡°Makes sense, though, doesn¡¯t it? If this guy is in league with Celtchar and Medb, then it¡¯s only natural there¡¯s a Servant around keeping an eye on him.¡±

    That was one theory. It wasn¡¯t the only possibility, though.

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Rika, looking at him askance, ¡°when did you get changed?¡±

    ¡°This?¡± Emiya looked down at himself theatrically, at the unbuttoned black shirt, the white undershirt, and the blue jeans he had donned instead of his usual getup. A pair of sunglasses hanging from his collar completed the look, transforming him from Servant to tourist. ¡°Thought it would make it easier to blend in. It means I don¡¯t have to put on a ridiculous mask, too.¡±

    He had even disguised the rifle, packing it away in a long, metal tube that he had slung over his shoulder. Anyone who gave it some thought would probably realize ¡ª if not exactly, then in general ¡ª what was in it, but on a passing glance, it wouldn¡¯t raise any eyebrows.

    ¡°Ugh,¡± said Rika. ¡°And now I feel like the one standing out. We should¡¯ve asked Da Vinci-chan to make us a casual setting for our mystic codes, just for occasions like this.¡±

    ¡°You can bring it up with her later,¡± I told her.

    ¡°Don¡¯t think I won¡¯t!¡±

    Privately, I agreed that she had a point. Fitting in had been a concern I¡¯d had in just about every Singularity since Orl¨¦ans, but this one was arguably the one where it would have been most important.

    ¡°We need to meet with this guy either way, right?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°Unless you want to go running around on a wild goose chase after the other guy,¡± said Emiya.

    It really was the only lead we had, at the moment.

    ¡°Just be on your guard,¡± I said for the benefit of everyone. ¡°And don¡¯t make any threatening movements towards the bartender.¡±

    Rika snapped a salute. ¡°Roger that, Senpai! This is your show!¡±

    Maddeningly, I could only hope she was wrong about how much. This was already more familiar than I wanted it to be.

    We stepped in through the front door and were greeted immediately by a middle-aged man standing at a podium in a black polo shirt. Ironically, his nameplate said ¡®Greg.¡¯ He looked us all over, stopping on Mash to do a double take, and after a few seconds of awkward silence, he asked, ¡°Do you have a reservation?¡±

    I didn¡¯t bother to bullshit him or bargain, I just said straight up, ¡°Celtchar sent us.¡±

    His eyes went wide and his face turned several shades paler, and stammering, he told us, ¡°Y-yes, o-of course, r-right this way. You¡¯ll be w-wanting to talk to Archer ¡ª can¡¯t miss him, just¡­just go straight on back to the bar.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t the only one who caught the name and gave the man a second look that had him ready to faint. Archer, huh. As names went, it wasn¡¯t impossible, but what were the odds? Too low for my liking.

    Greg said nothing as we walked past him and into the pub itself, only sighing once we were all inside and no longer his concern (he jumped a little when the little gremlin strutted past, offering him only a short nod and a brief, ¡°Fou,¡± as it followed us in). The handful of patrons enjoying their lunch paid us no mind, and we walked back along the shiny, wooden divider that separated the dining area to the bar. A row of chairs stretched from one end to the other, and the entire back wall was lined with bottles of various spirits and vintages, separated only by a series of black and white photos of men whose faces I didn¡¯t recognize. Famous sons of Ireland, if I was guessing, just because that would be on brand for an Irish pub in America.

    The entire place seemed to be built from a rich, dark wood, and the soft, yellow lighting gave it the feel of an old Irish pub going back a hundred years or more, which was probably the whole point. There were, however, touches of modernity: the large, flatscreen TVs that were mounted along the walls, depicting some soccer game or another, and the glowing, red EXIT sign, and the fire alarm affixed to the one wall.

    And the man standing behind the bar, polishing a tall glass with a white cloth, fit right in, wedged neatly between both worlds. Older, maybe sixties, with his gray hair elegantly swept and styled across his head like a Victorian gentleman and a thick mustache above his upper lip, he dressed in a dark gray dress shirt under a sleek black vest and a green apron, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A silky blue tie was tucked neatly beneath the apron and the vest, and blue eyes like chips of ice looked us up and down behind a pair of wireframe glasses. Sizing us up.

    I didn¡¯t miss the way his eyes lingered on Emiya and Mash, the brief moment where they narrowed on the metal tube hiding the rifle we¡¯d confiscated. He was far more than just a simple bartender.

    ¡°Good afternoon,¡± he greeted us in a smooth, cultured English accent. ¡°How can I help you good people today?¡±

    And he was, without a doubt, a Servant.

 Chapter CLXXVIII: Bargaining Chip

    Chapter CLXXVIII: Bargaining Chip

    If there was any doubt in my mind that Archer was a Servant, then a quick glance at him with my Master¡¯s Clairvoyance dispelled it completely. An Archer class Servant ¡ª and that was all we had. Skills, Noble Phantasms, those were all still obscured, still complete unknowns, and his face was so generically European that there were any number of historical figures he could have been from the last two hundred years. We had nothing else to go on, except for that English accent, and even that was virtually useless.

    A Servant working under Accord. I should have expected it the instant Celtchar suggested we come here.

    ¡°We need to set up a meeting with Accord,¡± I told him. I watched his face and his expressions closely, but I could have been standing across the room and seen the way he froze in place. ¡°We heard that you can arrange that for us.¡±

    Archer eased back into motion, resuming what he¡¯d been doing and adopting the easygoing air he¡¯d possessed when we walked up. His gaze, however, was just a little bit sharper than it had been before.

    ¡°Did you, now?¡± he said, affecting nonchalance, as though he really was nothing more than a simple bartender. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t be of service to you in that regard. I¡¯m not sure where it is you heard I could do such a thing, but even if it were so, Mister Accord is quite notorious for being rather¡­exclusive with his clientele. One does not simply request a meeting with the man who runs Boston.¡±

    Who told you about me and what do you want? He might as well have shouted it.

    ¡°We met Celtchar down south,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°He told us Accord could help us with our mission, and you could get us a meeting with Accord.¡±

    Archer paused again, a momentary hitch in the motion of polishing the glass in his hands that was already sparkling clean.

    ¡°Is that so?¡± Archer said mildly. ¡°I suppose that does rather explain a few things, doesn¡¯t it? Such as how it is you managed to waltz right in here so easily. Dear Greg looks as though Satan himself arose up out of the ground demanding entrance.¡±

    Mash and Rika both glanced back at Greg, but Ritsuka didn¡¯t take the bait and kept his gaze on Archer. When Archer set the glass down on the bar with a heavy thud, he didn¡¯t jump a little the way they did either. A part of me was strangely proud of him.

    ¡°Very well, then,¡± said Archer. ¡°Let¡¯s talk business, shall we? And on the first order ¡ª what should I get for the five of you?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re underage,¡± Ritsuka said immediately.

    ¡°Onii-chan!¡± cried Rika.

    Archer smiled, and there was something predatory in the way it curled his lips. ¡°Come, now. You came to a bar and you weren¡¯t prepared to imbibe a little?¡±

    ¡°We also don¡¯t have any money,¡± Ritsuka said.

    Archer¡¯s eyebrows rose. ¡°My, but you are in desperate straits, aren¡¯t you, young man? It seems you came here quite ill-prepared, with not a penny to your name and making demands quite outside your apparent station. Throwing Celtchar¡¯s name around has been enough to get you this far, that much is true, but I¡¯m afraid it won¡¯t be enough on its own to get you much further.¡±

    Emiya clicked his tongue, folding his arms. ¡°Tit for tat, is that it?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re not mercenaries for hire,¡± I said immediately and coldly, shutting down the idea before it could take root.

    Archer shook his head. ¡°As I said, Mister Accord is quite the busy man, and he would not spare much thought to a group coming calling, not even throwing around an¡­ally¡¯s name. Unless, of course, you could provide him some reason why perhaps he should.¡±

    ¡°Is the end of the world not a good enough reason?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Once again, Archer froze, and slowly, his head turned Ritsuka¡¯s way, eyes unblinking. ¡°Oh my,¡± he said, although he still sounded calm and in control. ¡°That¡¯s quite a bold assertion to make, young man. Do you mean to imply you¡¯re here to stop it? You¡¯ll have to forgive me, but Mister Accord would find that quite a bit harder to believe than even I do.¡±

    ¡°The fact that they¡¯re in the company of Servants doesn¡¯t lend that a little bit of credence?¡± asked Emiya.

    ¡°Those dastardly folk out to the west would be as well, wouldn¡¯t they?¡± Archer said silkily, mustache twitching in what might have been a small smirk. ¡°Though I must admit, it would be quite bold of them to send you after Mister Accord so brazenly. I wouldn¡¯t have thought they had the courage to attempt something so¡­desperate.¡± His eyes narrowed on us, and something cold and sharp filled the air. The tension in the entire room ratcheted up a notch, and everyone in our group felt it, stiffening. ¡°Although not perhaps as foolhardy as it might at first glance seem. It is eminently possible, after all, that Celtchar did not give up his name willingly.¡±

    So many instincts urged me to engage, to fight, to respond to the hostility with my own hostility, but I forced myself to relax, to ease back against the sudden pressure, and almost conversationally, said, ¡°So he didn¡¯t stop here himself, then.¡±

    Archer¡¯s gaze turned to me, and there was something a little more cautious and a little less hostile in his eyes. ¡°You believed he might?¡± he asked carefully.

    ¡°He didn¡¯t say,¡± I answered, ¡°only that he had to report back to his boss about what happened with the Grail.¡±

    Instantly, Archer went ramrod straight, and the narrowed eyes flew wide open. ¡°The Grail, you say?¡± he said. ¡°And just what happened with the Grail that he thought to report on it to his boss?¡±

    Instead of answering, I closed my mouth and leaned back from the bar, and after a moment, Archer¡¯s surprise faded into resigned understanding. He huffed a short laugh, more at himself than anything else, it seemed. ¡°Not for my ears, is it?¡±

    ¡°You are just a bartender, aren¡¯t you?¡± I said nonchalantly. Behind me, Emiya quietly chuckled.

    ¡°Touch¨¦,¡± said Archer. ¡°Very well. I shall inform Mister Accord that guests have arrived bearing relevant information regarding the Grail. I¡¯m sure he¡¯ll arrange a meeting with you and your compatriots at his earliest convenience. In the meantime¡­¡±

    He slid a glass my way, a tall thing with a long, thin stem and a slanted, oblong bowl, half full of a dark, red wine that looked more like blood than anything else. I hadn¡¯t seen him pour it.

    ¡°Compliments of the house,¡± he said smoothly. And then he reached under the bar to pull out a stack of thin, laminated menus, slapped them down atop the bar, and spread them out cleanly so that one wound up in front of each of us. ¡°Do feel free to peruse the menu while you wait. If your information is legitimate, then I¡¯m quite sure Mister Accord will only be too happy to cover your tab.¡±

    After that, he stepped away, calling out across the room, ¡°Greg, my dear boy! I¡¯m afraid the bar will be closed for the rest of the day! Urgent business, of the kind that I simply must handle immediately ¡ª you understand, yes?¡±

    ¡°Ah ¡ª y-yes, of course!¡± Greg called back.

    ¡°Good lad,¡± Archer murmured, and with that taken care of, he left, taking the stairs up to the next floor. I picked up the menu, leaving the glass of wine untouched, but with my bugs, observed Archer as he went about securing the room so that he could make the phone call to Accord.

    ¡°Ah, thank you!¡± Mash said belatedly. If Archer heard her, he didn¡¯t reply.

    ¡°Is it just me, or did that guy seem kinda squirrely?¡± Rika muttered so that only we could hear. Despite her words, she still picked up the menu, although she didn¡¯t look it over immediately. She was still watching the stairway where Archer had gone.

    ¡°It¡¯s not just you,¡± Ritsuka replied quietly. He, too, picked the menu that had been set out for him, and he started reading it, looking over the options. ¡°That guy¡­ I think that¡¯s the first time since Fuyuki that we¡¯ve met a Servant who actually tried to hide his true name.¡±

    ¡°Abe,¡± Rika pointed out instantly.

    Ritsuka grimaced. ¡°Aside from him, I mean.¡±

    ¡°It could be that this Accord is not so loyal to this mysterious boss as he pretends to be,¡± said Emiya. ¡°In that case, Archer hiding his name is in preparation for his inevitable betrayal¡­or that¡¯s what I think, at least.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯ll depend on who it is that¡¯s holding his ¡®leash,¡¯¡± I said. ¡°The Accord I knew really only cared about one thing, and everything else was in service of achieving it.¡±

    Which was not the same as saying he could be easily controlled, only that we, as the Undersiders, had known what levers we could use to convince him to play ball with us without making a mess of things. How that worked inside a Singularity, well, that would depend on whether he believed he was even in one. Convincing him of that might be the hardest part.

    If we could get him on our side, however, that would be a massive boon ¡ª provided, of course, that it was the real Accord and not a pretender making use of the name. It wasn¡¯t like that would have been the first time something like that happened, and I could think of several reasons why someone would want to, starting with covering up his actual death so that there wasn¡¯t a power vacuum.

    Ritsuka glanced at me. ¡°If this is the real Accord, then what should we expect? You said a couple of things about his powers when we had that briefing, but not so much about what he¡¯s like as a person.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s a supervillain, right?¡± Rika added. ¡°Which means presentation.¡±

    She was referencing something, but I didn¡¯t recall if I¡¯d seen it yet. We¡¯d been watching a lot of movies the last few months.

    ¡°More than you know.¡± I took a second to think about it, to gather my thoughts and consider how to word it. ¡°Accord is¡­prickly. Particular. He likes the world to be a certain way, to have a certain order. He can react pretty violently to things that disrupt that order or clash with his harmony. It might not be all that inaccurate to say it¡¯s a lot like OCD.¡±

    Rika groaned. ¡°He¡¯s not a hoarder, is he?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said. ¡°In fact, he¡¯d find the mere idea of living like that to be physically repulsive, and he¡¯d probably use his power to concoct a doomsday device that wiped it off the map.¡±

    Rika snorted and Ritsuka chuckled a little bit, and even Mash let herself smile, but it was all wiped away when they realized I wasn¡¯t joking.

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Rika, ¡°you¡¯re serious about that, Senpai?¡±

    ¡°Like I said, he can react pretty violently. He¡¯s not above having people killed for interrupting a business meeting, for example, or even for just speaking out of turn. He¡¯s that obsessive about it.¡±

    Ritsuka turned dubious eyes on his sister, and she recoiled defensively. ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Maybe you should sit this meeting out,¡± he suggested tactfully.

    ¡°What?¡± she squawked. ¡°I can totally keep my mouth shut! That¡¯s me, Miss Quiet! No jokes, no nothing! Totally zipped!¡±

    ¡°He might be offended by your hair,¡± I told her bluntly, and she clutched suddenly at the long, red locks that fell in gentle waves down the back of her neck.

    ¡°What about my hair?¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s cute! It¡¯s adorable!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s asymmetrical,¡± I cut in. ¡°The first thing you¡¯d have to do is remove the scrunchie and comb it down, maybe pull it into a ponytail to make it look more professional. How long has it been since you last got it evened out?¡±

    She opened her mouth, paused, and then, sounding horrified, asked, ¡°That matters?¡±

    ¡°I have Da Vinci do mine every six weeks or so,¡± I said. ¡°A single hair or two out of place might not mean anything as long as it¡¯s not too noticeable, but I would still make sure it¡¯s brushed to perfection, just to be sure, and if you¡¯ve let it go too long without getting everything evened out by a barber, that¡¯s something he might notice and freak out about.¡±

    ¡°I could probably do a decent job for her, if I had to,¡± said Emiya, ¡°but it might be better to find a local shop and have it done professionally.¡±

    Even so, I wasn¡¯t sure it was a good idea. Rika¡¯s personality was¡­loud. She was bubbly and she stood out. I thought that no matter how much she tried to fit herself into a mould for meeting him, he would find something about her to hate, even if it was just the way she fidgeted when she was nervous. It was probably better to remove her from the situation entirely for her own safety, so that Accord couldn¡¯t find anything objectionable about her to use as an excuse.

    ¡°I think it might be smarter if you and her do some investigating while Ritsuka and I meet with Accord,¡± I said instead. ¡°There¡¯s a lot we still don¡¯t know about what¡¯s going on here, so checking out the situation on the street and maybe picking us up a few local phones might be a better use of your time.¡±

    And less dangerous for Rika, I didn¡¯t say.

    ¡°You might be right,¡± Emiya agreed, frowning. He cast a subtle look around the pub. ¡°Back in the briefing, you said Accord was just a local crime boss, right? And yet, by all accounts, he¡¯s the one running the city right now, isn¡¯t he?¡±

    That was another thing, yes. Local government collapsing during a catastrophe wasn¡¯t unfamiliar to me, not as someone who had lived in Brockton after Leviathan came through and devastated the city, but there was obviously some form of larger scale government in this Singularity, and it wasn¡¯t the federal government. What had happened to put Accord in charge here, and what did that mean for the situation for the rest of the country?

    ¡°Not you, too, Emiya!¡± Rika complained. ¡°Hey, I can totally be quiet and sit still! I really can!¡±

    ¡°That doesn¡¯t mean that you should have to,¡± I replied reasonably. ¡°There¡¯s no shame in the fact you aren¡¯t cut out for tense political negotiations. If you¡¯re just going to be sitting there and trying not to move or speak the whole time anyway, shouldn¡¯t you be out doing something else more productive?¡±

    She pouted. ¡°Ugh. The stupid thing is, I know you¡¯re playing me, Senpai, but you¡¯re also right.¡±

    ¡°I guess that means I¡¯ll be leaving the others to you, Mash ¡ª¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t give full names or a complete list of our forces,¡± I cut in sharply. ¡°Not in a pub owned by Accord where we have no idea if or how many people might be listening in.¡±

    ¡°Right.¡± Emiya shook his head ruefully. ¡°Heh. When I think about it like that, I almost pity this guy if he tries to start something.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± said Mash confidently. ¡°I won¡¯t let anything happen to Miss Taylor or Senpai.¡±

    Emiya smiled. ¡°Good girl.¡±

    It got a small smile and a pleased flush out of Mash.

    ¡°Do we think Accord will have another Servant with him?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°Almost certainly,¡± I said. ¡°If Accord is as critical to keeping everything running smoothly as Archer and Celtchar implied, then there¡¯s no way a single Servant is all he has protecting him. That¡¯s not even counting his Ambassadors ¡ª but those are less of a problem to our team, so I¡¯m not quite as worried about them.¡±

    Citrine and Othello should still be around, at the very least, although with so much unknown and so much that seemed out of place for the world of Earth Bet as I knew it, it was entirely possible that the rest of them had managed to escape getting killed by the Nine. In fact, until we knew where and when the divergence was centered, it might be better to assume that they were still around.

    ¡°And if he knows we have Servants on our side¡­¡± Mash began.

    I nodded. ¡°Then he¡¯ll definitely bring one or two of his own. It¡¯ll tell us something about what kind of forces he has at his disposal, at least.¡±

    ¡°And Master and me?¡± asked Emiya. ¡°What should we be on the lookout for?¡±

    I glanced his way, thinking about it for a second. ¡°The Teeth,¡± I decided on, ¡°as well as a Tinker named Blasto. He should actually be dead by now, but it¡¯ll tell us a few things if he¡¯s still alive. Don¡¯t confront him if you do find him, because he¡¯s not really a big problem. The Teeth, however, are much more of a concern. Again, they should have moved on by now and made their way up to Brockton, so if they¡¯re still in Boston, that means something changed.¡±

    And it changed maybe even as far back as Leviathan. It sounded absurd to me, but that might just be the divergence: Leviathan choosing another target to attack instead of Brockton Bay. It just seemed silly that something like that was enough to throw off the course of proper history enough to cause a Singularity.

    ¡°Do we avoid them, too?¡± he asked me.

    ¡°As much as you possibly can, yes. The Butcher is a problem we don¡¯t want to be borrowing,¡± I said, thinking of how a fight between them would go. If it was just Emiya, I didn¡¯t think he¡¯d have too much of a problem, but with Rika in the line of fire, the last thing we needed was a big brawl with the Butcher and her little group of psychopaths. I also didn¡¯t want to think of what might happen if the Butcher died, because the last thing we needed was for that inheritance to pass to me. ¡°Just prioritize Rika¡¯s safety. Don¡¯t get into any fights you don¡¯t need to. And above all else, never kill the Butcher. Remember the briefing I gave on their powers and how they work.¡±

    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    Emiya turned to Rika. ¡°Does that work with you, Master?¡±

    ¡°Hey, I¡¯m all for punching the teeth out of the Teeth,¡± said Rika, ¡°just as long as I¡¯m not in range of whatever bullshit they start flinging around afterwards. So if Senpai says we¡¯re just on a scouting mission, that works for me. I¡¯ll do my best Snake impression.¡±

    Ritsuka paused and looked upwards thoughtfully. ¡°Does that make Doctor Roman Otacon?¡±

    A look of sheer delight crossed Rika¡¯s face, and her mouth pulled into an enormous smile. ¡°It does, doesn¡¯t it!¡±

    ¡°Wh-who?¡± Mash asked uncertainly, unknowingly echoing my own thoughts. Another reference that only the twins seemed to get ¡ª and Emiya, who chuckled quietly.

    Rika set a heavy hand on Mash¡¯s shoulder, and very gravely, told her, ¡°Cinnabon, when this is all over, we¡¯ll have to introduce you to the wonders of video games and all of the glories they contain.¡±

    My insides squirmed, even as Mash hesitantly said, ¡°O-okay¡­?¡±

    The twins still didn¡¯t know. Mash had maybe a year left, maybe less, and no one had seen fit yet to tell them anything at all about what would happen or why. Romani, there was such a thing as sparing them the pain of having that knowledge hang over them for the rest of the Grand Order, but wasn¡¯t this getting to be a bit unreasonable?

    A brush against my prosthetic, setting the fine hairs on end, as though a hand reaching out to offer me comfort. Arash ¡ª no, of course he must have figured it out, too. Whether or not he knew the specifics, his eyes were too sharp not to realize something was amiss.

    ¡°We can worry about that later,¡± I said, shoving that uneasy feeling in my gut as far away as I could. ¡°For now, pick something off of the menu for lunch.¡± I gave them all a brief glance. ¡°And I shouldn¡¯t need to remind any of you, no alcohol.¡±

    Ritsuka and Mash agreed easily, but it was intended mostly for Rika, who groaned and grumbled, ¡°Spoilsport.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re not missing out on much,¡± Ritsuka told her.

    ¡°Still,¡± Rika pouted.

    I didn¡¯t tell them that standard poison cleansing spells ¡ª ones that El-Melloi II likely taught them a long time ago ¡ª should have been enough to fix any of the pitfalls of alcohol. Better not to encourage bad habits, so if they hadn¡¯t figured it out and no one else had told them, I wasn¡¯t about to.

    And then, we all turned our focus entirely to the menus Archer had given us, perusing them for the lunch options. It was quite a bit more extensive than I would have expected, given everything. The Black Rose wasn¡¯t exactly tiny, but compared to some of the bars and banquet halls I¡¯d been to for one function or another as a kid, it was downright cramped, and yet it had a menu more than varied enough to make it seem all the more professional. Not nearly all of it was strictly Irish either, although I wasn¡¯t sure what I¡¯d been expecting. Different versions of haggis all the way through? Or maybe that was Scottish¡­

    It was some twenty minutes before Archer finished his discussion with Accord, and given Accord, it wouldn¡¯t have surprised me to find out it had been timed down to the second. When he was done, he returned immediately, descending the staircase and sliding back behind the bar with a grace and ease that belied his apparent age.

    I¡¯d never bothered to ask Flamel how much that actually influenced him as a Servant. It hadn¡¯t seemed relevant at the time, but face to face with another Servant who likely matched him for age, it seemed all the more pertinent a detail now.

    ¡°I¡¯ve spoken with Mister Accord,¡± Archer announced.

    ¡°And?¡± said Ritsuka.

    ¡°He is a very busy man,¡± Archer replied. ¡°As he would be, if you truly believe the rumors that he is in fact the one running this city. Quite understandably, he has a strict schedule and many concerns that require his attention during the day, and it is very, very difficult to arrange a meeting with him on such short notice. He is¡­particular, you might say, about things being done in the proper order, and he prizes discipline in his¡­associates and subordinates.¡±

    Emiya huffed and muttered, ¡°He really is obsessive-compulsive, huh?¡±

    But for a sideways glance, Archer ignored him.

    ¡°Ordinarily,¡± he went on, ¡°Mister Accord would not even entertain meeting with you so suddenly and unexpectedly, and you would be required to perform some small task before arranging a meeting at a more suitable time through the proper channels ¡ª as a way of showing your respect for his time, of course.¡±

    ¡°What kind of small task?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Archer¡¯s mustache twitched in what might have been a smirk.

    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m afraid it¡¯s not for me to say.¡± His voice, however, contained only the slightest trace of his amusement, so faint that I might not have noticed if I wasn¡¯t looking for it. ¡°The task is entirely at Mister Accord¡¯s discretion, and so it could truly be anything. It is not, however, something with which you fine people need concern yourself, because he is willing to forgive the slight in light of the information you claim to possess.¡±

    Of course. The Grail was simply too big a draw for even Accord to pass up a chance to learn more about it. With something like that, he would have been able to pull his plan off almost instantly, wouldn¡¯t he? A utopia exactly as he imagined it, where all of his grand ideas could be brought to fruition with no more effort than the stroke of a pen.

    A world like that would no doubt have created a Singularity, too. All the more reason to make sure he didn¡¯t try and get his hands on it, and the trick to that would be convincing him that he wouldn¡¯t actually get what he wanted.

    ¡°When does he want to meet, then?¡± I asked.

    Archer slid me a glance. ¡°As I said, a meeting on such short notice would ordinarily be impossible. However, because of the sensitive nature of the information, he was willing to make room in his schedule this afternoon. Three o¡¯clock, sharp. He will be quite¡­displeased if you are late.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll be there,¡± Ritsuka promised.

    ¡°Excellent!¡± Archer clapped his hands together and smiled. ¡°Now, Mister Accord has also instructed me to see to your accommodations in the meantime, as a show of goodwill. For today, your meals will be, as they say, on the house.¡± From seemingly nowhere, he produced a pen and a pad of paper. ¡°What would you like to order?¡±

    The twins looked to me to go first, almost like they were asking for permission, so I took the lead and slid my menu back towards Archer. ¡°I¡¯ll start off with the Caesar salad,¡± I said as though this really was an ordinary restaurant, ¡°and for the main dish, a Celtic Chicken Sandwich.¡±

    The scratch of pen on paper was nearly drowned out by the murmur of the other patrons behind us as Archer scribbled my order down.

    ¡°Ditto on the salad,¡± said Rika, ¡°but make my sandwich a Black Rose Burger!¡±

    ¡°M-me, too!¡± said Mash. ¡°Um, I¡¯ve always wanted to eat a hamburger.¡±

    ¡°Did mine not count?¡± Emiya asked, amused.

    Mash shook her head. ¡°N-no, it was really good, Emiya! B-but I don¡¯t have anything to compare it to, so I¡¯d like to try another one. Um, no offense!¡±

    Emiya chuckled. ¡°It¡¯s fine, Mash.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll go with the Hearty Onion Soup,¡± said Ritsuka, ¡°and then a Roisin Dubb Club.¡±

    Archer dotted the final period with a nod and a solid stab of his pen, stuffed both into a pouch on the front of his apron, and then, wearing an absolutely immaculate customer service smile, told us, ¡°Excellent choices! I¡¯ll deliver these to the chef and let him know you¡¯re at the front of the line. In the meantime¡­¡±

    He procured three more glasses, these ones tall and sturdy and meant less for wine and more for regular drinks. One by one, he dipped each below the bar, and with a gurgle, filled them up from the tap. When he was done, he slid each one to one of the others, and it was only a handful of seconds before three fizzing drinks sat in front of the twins and Mash.

    ¡°Coca cola with a splash of rum for the adventurous lady,¡± he said smoothly, nodding towards Rika and her glass of bubbling black. Then, to Ritsuka and his glass of bright green, ¡°A Midori Sour for the gentleman.¡± Lastly, to Mash and her pink drink, ¡°And a Dirty Shirley for the young lady looking to dip her toes.¡±

    Archer spread his arms gregariously. ¡°Enjoy!¡±

    And then he walked away again. The twins and Mash, instead of diving in immediately, looked to me again, almost like they were asking permission. In fact, I think they were.

    Internally, I sighed.

    ¡°Go ahead,¡± I told them. ¡°Just drink it slow and stop if you start to feel tipsy. Ritsuka, Mash, you two especially. Drunk is the last thing you want to be when we have to meet Accord later.¡±

    That made them hesitate a bit more, but they still reached out and took tentative sips of their drinks, and they seemed to like them well enough, by the surprised delight on their faces. I would have been more worried about poison ¡ª half the reason I hadn¡¯t touched the wine Archer had poured for me ¡ª but they had weathered the toxic fog in London with nothing more than complaints about its smell, the same toxic fog that had nearly killed me inside of half an hour.

    My bigger concern really was them getting drunk.

    The three of them nursed their drinks while we waited, and eventually, we wound up taking seats at the bar instead of standing around. Some twenty minutes later, Archer returned carrying a large silver platter, and when he lifted the lid, the smell hit me, and my stomach gurgled as though it had just realized at that moment exactly how hungry I was.

    By the sly grin on his face, Archer knew it, too.

    He distributed our meals and we dug in, starting with the appetizers and salads, and enjoyed our lunch all the more so because it was free. Archer stayed the whole time, just a few steps away, pretending he wasn¡¯t keeping an eye on us as we ate. He was even courteous enough to let us take a few minutes for our food to digest once we were done eating before coming back over to retrieve our plates.

    ¡°Oh, man, that hit the spot!¡± Rika said, pleased, as she reclined in her chair as much as she was able.

    Emiya at least had the sense not to tease her about whether or not it was better than his food in front of Archer.

    ¡°Your meals were to your liking, I take it?¡± Archer asked demurely.

    ¡°It was really good, yes,¡± said Mash. ¡°Thank you, Archer.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll be sure to pass your compliments on to Mister Accord,¡± said Archer.

    ¡°On that subject,¡± I began, ¡°where are we supposed to be meeting him?¡±

    ¡°There are many places where Mister Accord conducts matters of business and state,¡± Archer replied, ¡°but for matters such as this¡­¡± He retrieved his pen and notepad and began scribbling down directions in a tidy, looping cursive. ¡°The John F. Kennedy Federal building is a fifteen minute walk from here ¡ª ten, if you don¡¯t dawdle. You have¡­¡± He paused to check his watch. ¡°Almost two hours before your meeting with him.¡±

    He ripped the sheet off the pad with a single smooth motion and held it out to me, an almost mocking smile on his lips, ¡°I trust that is enough time for you to find your way there?¡±

    Emiya shifted, but I didn¡¯t rise to the bait, and I took the piece of paper without hesitation. ¡°Of course. Thank you, Archer.¡±

    If he was put off by my lack of reaction, he didn¡¯t show it. ¡°Not at all,¡± he said. ¡°In fact, this has been a genuine pleasure. If your negotiations with Mister Accord end¡­amicably, then I will see you later for dinner. After all, Mister Accord did say all of your meals today are on the house.¡±

    ¡°How generous.¡±

    And with Accord, it was either a blatant attempt at some other game or an honest expression of goodwill, maybe even both at once. Denying him might be considered enough of an insult to sour things if we wound up needing his help again.

    ¡°We¡¯ll be sure to take him up on it,¡± said Ritsuka.

    We left the Black Rose with full bellies and exactly what we¡¯d entered for, but nowhere to really go where we could talk more privately, so I turned left and led the group down the street to the open marketplace, where we could blend in as we walked. Only once we were safely there and just another part of the sparse crowd did I open up the topic of what to do next.

    ¡°Mash,¡± I said, ¡°do we have any idea where the nearest Terminal is?¡±

    Mash blinked. ¡°Um¡­¡± She looked around, head swiveling back and forth. ¡°There¡¯s¡­actually one nearby, Miss Taylor.¡±

    That brought me up short, and I nearly twisted an ankle forcing myself not to stop walking. ¡°There is?¡±

    Mash nodded and pointed off to the right. ¡°Yes! In¡­that direction.¡±

    I followed her finger to the long, marble building that bisected the large marketplace, specifically to the rounded dome that sat in the middle like a smaller, greener version of the famous capitol building in DC. An interior view granted by my bugs showed a narrow corridor running through the center, surrounded on both sides by boutiques and open air restaurants and various other shops that wouldn¡¯t have been out of place at the mall in Brockton.

    ¡°Well, that¡¯s convenient,¡± said Rika. She wasn¡¯t wrong.

    ¡°Come on,¡± I said, and we made a beeline for it. Fortunately, there weren¡¯t that many people out and about, owing either to the cold, the time of day, or maybe the day of the week, so we didn¡¯t have to fight a crowd to make it first inside the building and then down the comparatively cramped hallway, which was still wide enough to fit all of us walking side by side without issue.

    Our luck ran out, however, when Mash stopped abruptly in the middle of that dome and said, ¡°It¡¯s here. This is the Terminal, Miss Taylor, Senpai.¡±

    The banner of text above us, declaring, ¡®This building has served the people of Boston as the central marketplace of the city since its dedication in August, 1826,¡¯ seemed almost to mock us.

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Rika, ¡°right here, right here?¡±

    Mash nodded. ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°But we can¡¯t do that in public!¡± Rika cried, and her brother winced and looked around, glancing surreptitiously about the place. We were alone enough that her outburst hadn¡¯t been heard, but several people in adjacent shops paused and glanced our way, then lost interest when there wasn¡¯t any more shouting.

    ¡°We can, actually,¡± I said, and when Rika gave me a weird look, I went on, ¡°El-Melloi II taught you how to make bounded fields to keep out innocent bystanders, didn¡¯t he?¡±

    Understanding lit up their faces, and Rika shook her head, lamenting, ¡°Why didn¡¯t I think of that?¡±

    And so they set about doing just that. I wasn¡¯t sure the secrecy was really all that necessary, to be honest ¡ª it would all likely have been written off by the locals as capes doing cape things ¡ª but the privacy it afforded would be convenient. It would also mean that we didn¡¯t have to worry about any of those locals putting in a call to the Protectorate or whatever forces Accord had replaced them with.

    Once the site was secure and our privacy assured, Mash set down her shield in the middle of the hall and we contacted Chaldea. Marie¡¯s face appeared above the shield, a familiar blue hologram with all the colors nearly washed out.

    ¡°What did you need?¡± she asked immediately, all business.

    I explained the situation to her as quickly as possible, bringing her up to date on our objectives, our progress towards them, and our plans, and then the inevitable snag that we probably should have considered much earlier.

    ¡°We¡¯re going to need some local currency,¡± I told her. ¡°Accord is footing the bill for our lunch and maybe our dinner as a matter of courtesy, but I¡¯d really prefer not to put ourselves too deep in his debt by relying on him and his money for everything going forward, and I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s a good idea to try tapping into my younger self¡¯s account.¡±

    ¡°Wait,¡± said Rika, ¡°Senpai has a bank account at this age? Weren¡¯t you, like, fifteen in 2011?¡±

    Without looking over at her, I explained vaguely, ¡°Protectorate heroes are government agents, Rika, a form of law enforcement. You didn¡¯t think we did that for free, did you?¡±

    Rika opened her mouth, paused for a second, and then muttered, ¡°Now that you mention it¡­¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Rika,¡± Romani chimed in from off screen, ¡°I thought the same thing, at first.¡±

    ¡°Depending on the point of divergence, that account might not even exist,¡± Marie added sensibly. Her lips pursed. ¡°I¡¯ll talk to Da Vinci. I have an idea, but I need to run it by her to see if it¡¯s possible.¡±

    ¡°How long do you think it will take, Director Marie?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    Marie shook her head. ¡°The time differential for this Singularity is¡­inconsistent. Just like that echo point, it keeps fluctuating, so there¡¯s no way of saying for sure. But even if it remains exactly as it is right now, it should only take a few hours for us to arrange, so if you can find another Ley Line Terminal or just return to this one, we should have an answer for you by your dinnertime.¡±

    That was¡­better than I¡¯d feared, but worse than I¡¯d hoped. In an ideal world, they would have had a solution for us before we even called them, but in an ideal world, we would have had a lot more backup and whole teams¡¯ worth of Servants to help solve these Singularities. With things the way they were, a few hours was actually a pretty good turnaround.

    ¡°Then depending on how things go with Accord, we¡¯ll contact you again either before or after dinner,¡± I decided.

    ¡°Understood,¡± Marie agreed with a nod, and then hesitated a moment. She worried her bottom lip. ¡°I¡¯m sure I don¡¯t need to tell you to be careful. You know best of all that Accord is¡­¡±

    Neurotic. A basketcase. Homicidally obsessive-compulsive. As likely to kill us if we did anything he didn¡¯t like as he was to make demands as restitution for any perceived insult.

    ¡°Yeah.¡±

    And also more than capable of setting up a Rube Goldberg device to catch us with later. Hopefully, we would only have to deal with him once.

    Marie grimaced, but let the point drop, and the hologram winked out, disappearing. Mash bent down and picked her shield back up, then turned to me, ¡°What now, Miss Taylor? Without any money, we¡­¡±

    Didn¡¯t have many options for how to get anything we might need, from food to lodging to passage through a toll booth, if it came to that.

    ¡°I trust the Director and Da Vinci to come through for us,¡± Ritsuka said confidently, and then he sighed. ¡°But for now, we can¡¯t really do anything, can we? A-ah, in a way that¡¯s legal, I mean.¡±

    ¡°We could always knock over a drughouse, couldn¡¯t we?¡± Rika said blithely. Mash and Ritsuka both looked at her incredulously, and she folded her arms defensively across her chest. ¡°What? It¡¯s not like any of that money was earned legally to begin with! And they¡¯ll get it back when this Singularity is corrected, won¡¯t they?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not the worst idea,¡± I allowed.

    ¡°S-Senpai!¡± Ritsuka choked out.

    ¡°But if any of them exist here in Boston,¡± I went on, ignoring his outburst, ¡°they¡¯ll more than likely belong to one of three groups: Accord himself, Blasto, or the Teeth. Considering Blasto likes to grow his own supply, probably the Teeth or Accord.¡±

    ¡°Oh.¡± Mash breathed a sigh of relief. ¡°A-and we really don¡¯t want to steal from Mister Accord right before we meet with him, do we?¡±

    ¡°It would sour negotiations, yes,¡± I answered dryly. A hum vibrated in my mouth. ¡°If we knew where it was, we could visit the public library and do some research there, but it¡¯s out of my range at the very least.¡±

    The building where we were going to meet Accord wasn¡¯t, on the other hand, although it was pushing the edges, but I was being very careful about how much I dedicated to feeling it out. Catching Accord¡¯s attention with my bugs ¡ª especially when I wasn¡¯t sure if he had ever met my younger version to recognize the power ¡ª wasn¡¯t part of the plan.

    ¡°I might be able to help a little with that,¡± Arash said as he rounded the corner.

    ¡°Arash!¡± Rika and Mash cried.

    ¡°Enjoy your clothes shopping?¡± I asked him dryly.

    Because he had slipped into one of the nearby boutiques to grab a turquoise button-up and a pair of jeans, ditching his armor for the sake of blending in. With the sleeves rolled up the way they were, he¡­actually looked kind of dashing. I was honestly surprised that the girl he had chatted up at one of the shops hadn¡¯t tried to slip him her number.

    I was less surprised that he¡¯d swiped them in the first place. Unlike Emiya, he couldn¡¯t magically make a change of clothes to fit in.

    ¡°It¡¯s for a good cause,¡± he said with an apologetic grin. ¡°More importantly, I found something we can use to navigate the city while we¡¯re here.¡±

    And he held out a folded up piece of paper, crisscrossed with lines and names ¡ª it was a map, I realized. One that would presumably tell us where all of the major landmarks and most important buildings were so that we weren¡¯t running around blind and didn¡¯t have to try and get stolen phones working.

    I wasn¡¯t Lisa. I couldn¡¯t know someone¡¯s unlock code just by staring at their keypad for a few seconds.

    Carefully, Arash unfolded the map, and then set it down on the nearby table and smoothed out the wrinkles until it was mostly flat. Unerringly, his finger traced across the paper and landed on a point.

    ¡°There.¡±

    We all crowded around the table and leaned over, peering down at the map, where the words Boston Public Library sat just above his fingertip. Even A¨ªfe had materialized, safe in the privacy of the bounded field.

    ¡°And we,¡± he said, dragging his finger across the paper, ¡°are over here.¡±

    He tapped a point several inches away, almost three miles, going by the map¡¯s scale, labeled Quincy Market. It would take us close to an hour to reach it on foot, although significantly less so if we rode the bikes. The trouble was, we just didn¡¯t have time to go there and start doing research, not at the risk of missing our meeting with Accord. We needed to be as presentable as possible, and I needed to coach Mash and Ritsuka in how to act around Accord.

    I started to make adjustments to the plan in my head. Rika wouldn¡¯t know what to look for, not the way I would, but she could at least find out about a couple of very specific things. And if she could find those things in the library, then there wouldn¡¯t be any need to scout out suspected hideouts for the Teeth or any of the other local gangs, and therefore no need to risk getting into a fight with the Butcher or anyone else who was more trouble than they were worth.

    It wasn¡¯t what we were here for. If something happened right in front of me, I wasn¡¯t sure I could stop myself from interfering, but I had at least enough sense to know better than to pick a completely unnecessary fight.

    ¡°Alright,¡± I said. ¡°Here¡¯s how we¡¯re going to do this. Rika, you take Emiya and go to the library. I want you to look up a few things so we can get an idea of what¡¯s happening here. Specifically, I want you to see what you can find on the Teeth, Blasto, and other gangs here in Boston, and then the Undersiders up in Brockton Bay.¡±

    ¡°Ugh, studying,¡± said Rika with a grimace. When I arched an eyebrow at her, she quickly folded. ¡°Fine, fine. The Teeth, Blasto, the gangs in Boston, and the Undersiders in BB. Got it.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll keep it in mind, too,¡± Emiya added. I nodded to show my appreciation.

    ¡°Arash will keep an eye on things from the nearest rooftop with a good view inside the JFK building,¡± I continued, ¡°while A¨ªfe, Mash, and Ritsuka will accompany me to our meeting with Accord. A¨ªfe should stay in spirit form in case we need surprise reinforcements, but the rest of us are going in normally.¡±

    ¡°I may not like it, but I can understand the reasoning,¡± A¨ªfe affirmed.

    ¡°Don¡¯t¡­we still have over an hour before our meeting with him?¡± Ritsuka asked uncertainly.

    I grimaced. ¡°We¡¯re going to need it.¡± Looking him straight in the eye and hoping I could convey the gravity of the situation, I told him, ¡°I¡¯m going to need to give the two of you a crash course on how to deal with Accord.¡±

    And hope that he hadn¡¯t gotten any worse than the last time I had to negotiate with him.

 Chapter CLXXIX: An Accord

    Chapter CLXXIX: An Accord

    ¡°The most important thing to remember is not to speak out of turn,¡± I told Ritsuka and Mash. ¡°Only speak when spoken to. If he doesn¡¯t address you directly, then err on the side of caution and let me talk instead. Don¡¯t fidget, don¡¯t slouch, do your best to sit straight the entire time.¡±

    ¡°Wow,¡± said Rika. ¡°This really sounds like being sent to the principal¡¯s office.¡±

    I did my best not to react, because when I thought about it that way, she had something of a point. It was just that going to the principal¡¯s office tended to be far less lethal than meeting with Accord.

    ¡°I-I wouldn¡¯t know, but, um, this Accord sounds very strict, Miss Taylor,¡± said Mash.

    ¡°I¡¯ve already explained to you why.¡±

    ¡°You did,¡± Ritsuka agreed, ¡°but somehow, it seemed like something a lot easier to deal with until you started talking about what not to do in front of him.¡± He smiled weakly. ¡°Is it¡­too late to back out?¡±

    ¡°If you two don¡¯t think you can do this, then I can meet with him alone,¡± I allowed, because it was better if they were completely committed and confident than uncertain and hesitant. Being nervous would make it more likely they would do something that triggered Accord, not less.

    ¡°But then, if something happened, there wouldn¡¯t be anything I could do to help,¡± Mash said softly.

    And that seemed to firm up Ritsuka¡¯s resolve, because his back straightened and he said, ¡°We can do this, Senpai. If Accord has more Servants, then the last thing we should do is send you in alone.¡±

    Ironically, alone might be when I was safest. It would be easier to keep the situation from devolving, although maybe not as much so as when I had held all the cards in that meeting shortly after my identity had been blown by Tagg.

    ¡°I know you can, Ritsuka,¡± I said instead. ¡°That¡¯s why we¡¯re going over all of this. It won¡¯t be the same as actually having to face him yourself, but we¡¯re going to do what we can to prepare you guys for what he¡¯s like.¡±

    ¡°Suddenly, I¡¯m glad I¡¯m not going with you guys,¡± Rika said dryly. ¡°Studying might be boring, but at least the computer isn¡¯t gonna get on my case about slouching.¡±

    I was as good as my word. In the hour of time we had to spare, I drilled them on Accord¡¯s habits and eccentricities to the best of my abilities, and even put them through a handful of mockups under the cover of that bounded field. Whether or not the security cameras could see us, I didn¡¯t know, and it didn¡¯t really matter. Anyone watching ¡ª provided they weren¡¯t all closed circuit to begin with ¡ª would only have seen a group of people sitting at a couple of benches and talking.

    By the time two o¡¯clock rolled around, we were as ready as we possibly could be and Mash and Ritsuka were as prepared as I could possibly make them in the time we had. There was still an hour before our meeting with Accord, but I was giving us enough leeway to make it to the JFK building, get through security, and put any finishing touches we needed to get ready.

    ¡°Do you remember what I asked you to look up?¡± I asked Rika before we split up.

    She blinked at me for a second, nonplussed, and then recited, ¡°Uh, the Teeth, Blasto, the gangs in Boston, and the Undersiders in Brockton?¡±

    I nodded. ¡°Good.¡± Turning to Emiya, I asked, ¡°Can you project me a hairbrush?¡±

    ¡°Sure.¡± In a flash of light, he had one, a simple purple thing that looked like it had belonged to a teenage girl, and he handed it over to me. I shoved it into my utility pouch, and in the same motion, retrieved a nondescript black hair tie. ¡°Any particular reason you wanted one?¡±

    ¡°To make sure we¡¯re all presentable while we wait for the meeting time,¡± I answered bluntly as I tied my hair back into a low tail. ¡°I wasn¡¯t kidding about having hairs out of place earlier.¡±

    Emiya¡¯s eyebrows rose towards his hairline, but he didn¡¯t protest. ¡°It should last more than long enough, so feel free to dump it in the trash or whatever when you¡¯re done with it.¡±

    ¡°Noted.¡± I unstrapped my Last Resort and its sheath, and these, I handed over to A¨ªfe. ¡°I want you to meet us inside instead of going in with us. I¡¯ll ask for this back then, after we¡¯ve made it through security.¡±

    She accepted it with an approving nod. ¡°Smart.¡±

    And then, back to Emiya and Rika, I said, ¡°We¡¯ll contact you once the meeting¡¯s over and we¡¯ll all meet back here to contact Chaldea. Hopefully, things will go well and we can head back to the Black Rose for dinner.¡±

    Rika gave me a mock salute. ¡°Roger wilco, Senpai!¡±

    ¡°Just don¡¯t get into any trouble,¡± Ritsuka told his sister.

    She snorted and grinned at him. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t that be my line? I¡¯m just going to the library. You¡¯re the one about to go and bargain with a supervillain ¡ª imagine what Mom would say to that!¡±

    Ritsuka¡¯s lips curved into a smile. ¡°I¡¯m not sure she¡¯d believe any of what we¡¯ve been through, but I think that part definitely wouldn¡¯t be the one she struggled with most. I¡¯m not the one who¡¯s best friends with a Roman Emperor.¡±

    ¡°Oh my god, could you imagine the look on her face when I introduced them?¡± Rika said with laughter in her voice. Her grin slowly died. ¡°Seriously, though. Don¡¯t you dare get hurt, Onii-chan. I only have the one brother.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry, Senpai,¡± said Mash. ¡°I¡¯ll protect both Senpai and Miss Taylor no matter what.¡±

    Rika smiled again, a little more subdued but no less honest. ¡°I know you will, Cinnabon. Just don¡¯t think you¡¯re allowed to get hurt either, okay?¡±

    ¡°Looks like you¡¯ve put the fear of God in them,¡± Emiya commented to me. ¡°All of this over a neurotic guy with a big brain.¡±

    ¡°Good,¡± was my reply. ¡°Accord came up with a plan to solve world hunger and became a villain when the government refused to even entertain it. No one here should underestimate all of the ways he could screw us over if we piss him off even the slightest.¡±

    He hummed. ¡°Well, when you put it that way¡­¡±

    As ready as we were ever going to be, we made our way down to the other end of the Quincy Market and parted ways there at the exit. Rika and Emiya split off to head southwest for the library, and the rest of us went north towards the JFK building. Older buildings of red brick passed by on our right while newer buildings of concrete and glass stood like monoliths on our left. At the end of the street where it split into left and right turns, we crossed over to the other side and went left, and it wasn¡¯t long before we could see a set of revolving glass doors. They sat deeper into the facade of the building, hidden beneath a slab of stone that jutted out and declared, ¡°John F. Kennedy Federal Building.¡±

    ¡°That was closer than I was expecting,¡± Ritsuka murmured, because it really had only taken us a few minutes to make the trip.

    ¡°Not yet,¡± I told him. ¡°This is the employee entrance.¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± he said. ¡°And even if he let us in, Accord probably wouldn¡¯t like it if we tried to get in through there, would he?¡±

    No. No, he wouldn¡¯t.

    We continued on until we reached the end of the building, and then rounded the corner and went until we came around to the front, where some sort of abstract sculpture stood on three legs in the center of the plaza. The words ¡°PUBLIC ENTRANCE¡± were printed on the glass behind it, along with an arrow pointing towards a set of doors.

    Here, Arash slowly spun in a circle, eyes raking over the skyline behind us, and when he completed a circuit, he nodded to himself, turned to me, and pointed at a towering black building not far away. ¡°I¡¯ll set up atop that building,¡± he said. ¡°It should give me a good vantage point on just about any room you might be in.¡±

    ¡°Right.¡±

    A¨ªfe watched him go until he ducked behind a tree, his stolen clothes dropping limply to the ground as he slipped into spirit form to make the rest of the journey. ¡°It seems that¡¯s my cue, as well.¡±

    ¡°See you inside,¡± said Ritsuka.

    With a nod, she leapt up and onto the roof of the JFK building, leaving just me, Mash, and Ritsuka there alone.

    ¡°Are you ready?¡± I asked the two of them.

    They both nodded, resolute. ¡°Mm!¡±

    So we stepped inside, through the revolving doors, off of the concrete slabs and onto marbled tile. We were met immediately by the sight of security ¡ª officers in white shirts and black pants with brassy badges and guns, thin archways with unlit light bulbs that could only be metal detectors, and cameras mounted high on the walls so they could watch every angle at once. For an instant, every eye turned our way, scrutinizing us, examining every detail, and then slid off when we made no threatening movements.

    Or so they wanted us to think. Most of them were still watching us warily, trying to pretend they weren¡¯t keeping us ¡ª and especially Mash ¡ª squarely in view. An unavoidable hazard. She just stood out too much in that undersuit, even without the armor. Fortunately, it was also easy enough to mistake it for something else, so even on Earth Bet, the first assumption probably wasn¡¯t anything near the truth.

    We made it through the metal detectors without any trouble, thanks to my decision to hand my knife over to A¨ªfe, and meandered our way over to the reception desk. A woman in a crisp pantsuit sat behind it, hair immaculately styled and makeup subtly and tastefully applied. Somehow or another, she seemed vaguely familiar.

    ¡°Can I help you?¡± she asked politely in a clear, melodious voice.

    It took me an extra second, a moment of awkward silence that made Ritsuka and Mash glance my way, but¡­

    ¡°We have a meeting with Accord,¡± I said at length. ¡°For three o¡¯clock.¡±

    ¡­that was Citrine, wasn¡¯t it?

    The woman froze, and for a handful of seconds, she was still, staring intently at my face, as though searching for something. My heart skipped a beat in my chest, and I wondered if she would recognize me, if she had indeed met my younger self, and what that might mean for us going forward, but the moment passed and she gave no indication one way or the other. Her gaze swept briefly across to Ritsuka and Mash, and then turned back to the console in front of her.

    ¡°Yes, of course,¡± she said in her best customer service tone. ¡°I was told there were going to be more of you.¡±

    ¡°Our other members had things to attend to,¡± I said smoothly. ¡°I¡¯m sure Accord understands¡­efficiency. No need to crowd our entire group into the room when the three of us can cover everything we need to discuss.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± she said, and then she typed something in with smooth, precise motions of her fingers, practiced and elegant. ¡°Please proceed ahead to the waiting area. Someone will be along to retrieve you when Accord is ready to meet with you.¡±

    ¡°Of course.¡±

    When I stepped away, Ritsuka and Mash lingered for a second or two more, sensing that something that might just have happened but not knowing what, then followed after me. The woman at the reception desk didn¡¯t watch us go, not with her eyes, but I felt her attention on us the entire way as we made our way down the hallway.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka whispered to me.

    ¡°It¡¯s nothing, Ritsuka.¡±

    Or at least I hoped it was. I wasn¡¯t sure what it would mean if that was Citrine, but I hadn¡¯t found any other obvious signs of the Ambassadors in the building yet, and that alone was enough to make me suspicious. It was possible that Accord had them out in the city taking care of other things, but if he was confident enough that he didn¡¯t have even one of them here in the building with him, that made me a little nervous.

    There was no way Accord didn¡¯t have some kind of protection with him in the building. If none of the Ambassadors were here, then that was all but confirmation that there had to be another Servant of some kind in here. And, of course, Archer hadn¡¯t warned us at all.

    We wound up in a kind of antechamber with more than half an hour to spare, so I beckoned Mash and Ritsuka over to me and retrieved the hairbrush Emiya had made for me. With an expression of longsuffering, Ritsuka allowed me to make some kind of order out of his hair, smoothing out the mess left behind by his helmet from our trip over. Once I was done with him, Mash dutifully lined up for her own turn, although her hair cooperated a lot more easily than his.

    I wasn¡¯t a stylist, but I managed something at least presentable. It was the best I could do just then.

    A¨ªfe? I asked, reaching down the thread that connected us.

    Here, she replied, and she appeared suddenly from around the corner, out of view of the security cameras. She handed my knife back over to me, and I handed the hairbrush over to her. As I fastened my Last Resort back into place, she crushed the hairbrush, and it vanished into golden motes.

    A moment later, she had gone into spirit form. She disappeared from sight, but her presence sat among us like a light blanket, only noticeable because I was familiar with it.

    We waited in silence for several long minutes as the clock ticked, and neither Mash nor Ritsuka seemed eager to break it. They fidgeted a little nervously, eyes darting to check the time every minute or so, and I had to resist the urge to do the same.

    Finally, however, Ritsuka spoke up. ¡°What can we tell him?¡±

    It was a good question. And mindful of the fact that Accord was probably watching us some way or another, I answered, ¡°As much as we need to. Accord isn¡¯t an enemy we want to have, if we can avoid it. The more he knows, the better he¡¯ll be able to help us.¡±

    He eyed me for a few seconds, and a little uncertainly, he asked, ¡°¡­everything?¡±

    An old lecture about the importance of reputation sat on my tongue, but that was from a lifetime ago, and even if we told Accord everything we¡¯d done over the past nine months, the only people whose word we had was our own. We wouldn¡¯t be able to prove any of it, and that meant we would just come off as inflating our importance.

    ¡°If we need to,¡± I settled on. ¡°As and when we have to. Don¡¯t just throw it all out from the beginning.¡±

    Grimly, Ritsuka nodded.

    ¡°Isn¡¯t Accord supposed to be an ally, though?¡± Mash asked. ¡°Miss Taylor and Director Animusphere¡¯s briefing had him under the ¡®ally¡¯ category¡­¡±

    ¡°If our objectives align,¡± I told her. ¡°We¡¯re still trying to find out what¡¯s going on here, and until we know who this supposed boss of his is or what they wanted the Grail for, we can¡¯t be certain of anything.¡±

    Are you listening, Accord? I wondered silently. This wasn¡¯t us coming here to put ourselves in his debt, this was us coming to see if we could have a mutually beneficial partnership. The information we could give him was just as important to him as the information he could give us was to us. We weren¡¯t going to fall in line for him.

    At exactly three o¡¯clock, a woman appeared from down the hall, dressed almost exactly like the lady at the reception desk, with her black hair neatly pulled back into a tight bun. She looked the three of us over and said, ¡°Accord will see you now.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± I said.

    ¡°Thank you,¡± Ritsuka added.

    The woman simply nodded and said, ¡°Please follow me.¡±

    She turned around and began to walk away, heels clacking with each carefully elegant step, and our group fell into step behind her as she led us down the hallway she¡¯d come from. I nudged Ritsuka as we walked, muttering to him, ¡°Eyes forward, head back, shoulders squared.¡±

    Ritsuka adjusted his posture immediately, lips pulling into a brief grimace, and then he carefully smoothed his expression over into something flat and neutral. It looked almost unnatural on his face, because I¡¯d gotten used to seeing him with a little smile curling just the slightest at the corner of his lips.

    Mash tried to do the same, but she didn¡¯t quite manage it, and she wound up looking more serious and focused than calm, with her brow drawn down just a little, her eyes wide open, and her mouth pulled into a tight line.

    It was the best I could hope for, given they didn¡¯t have a swarm to dump their emotional cues into. I just had to hope they would be able to maintain their composure throughout the meeting so that Accord could keep his.

    The woman ¡ª who hadn¡¯t ever given us her name, but might have been another of Accord¡¯s Ambassadors ¡ª led us down a hallway with vivid blue carpeting and around several corners, past a number of displays that looked like they belonged in a presidential museum, and eventually we arrived at the door to an office. She knocked politely on the door frame, and then announced, ¡°Sir, your three o¡¯clock is here.¡±

    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    A voice I hadn¡¯t heard in what felt like a lifetime replied, ¡°Send them in.¡±

    The woman took a careful step back, then turned precisely, stepped to the side, and gestured through the doorway.

    ¡°Single file,¡± I whispered at Mash and Ritsuka. They nodded stiffly and minutely, as though they were afraid to make too large or too sweeping a movement.

    I stepped into the office first, and Ritsuka came after me, followed shortly by Mash, and I was greeted immediately by what looked like a senatorial office, with a large, wooden desk that could have come directly from the Capitol Building down in DC. The walls were plastered with neat lines of pictures belonging to what had to be the people who had called this office home at one point or another going back decades, including a couple I recognized, many I didn¡¯t, and a few old enough to have been taken in the earliest days of cameras.

    And sitting at the desk, dwarfed by its massive size, was the familiar figure of Accord, dressed in his usual fashion ¡ª a crisp, white suit and an intricate mask whose parts moved to mimic his facial expression. His back was straight and his hands were folded primly atop the desk, and he would have seemed far more dignified and elegant if he didn¡¯t look like a child pretending at his father¡¯s desk.

    My attention, however, was immediately drawn away from him and to the other person in the room, a tall, sturdy figure with broad shoulders and an aged, weathered face. As though to contrast the pristine white of Accord¡¯s professional business attire, this man wore a silky red Chinese tunic, the kind that fastened up the side and had flaps down the front and back that hung nearly to the ankles. A shock of short gray hair sat atop his head, and he stood with his arms folded behind his back.

    If he was wearing a mask, I would have mistaken him for one of the Yangban.

    As we entered the room and stepped forward towards the desk, Accord stood up from his chair, leaned over, and extended his hand.

    ¡°Good afternoon,¡± he said politely.

    I took it and shook. Despite his stature, his grip was strong and firm. ¡°Thank you for agreeing to meet with us.¡±

    Following my example, Ritsuka and Mash shook Accord¡¯s hand, too, mimicking me and offering the same polite, ¡°Good afternoon,¡± that he had. With that ritual observed, Accord gestured to the three chairs arranged across from his desk and bade us, ¡°Please, sit. Make yourselves at home.¡±

    I took the middle one, letting myself sink back into it, but keeping my feet firmly on the floor and my back straight. Once more, Ritsuka and Mash followed my lead, with him on my left and her on my right. A¨ªfe¡¯s presence settled between us, situated so that she could rush to either my or Ritsuka¡¯s defense at a moment¡¯s notice. I wasn¡¯t sure I didn¡¯t imagine the way the stoic man standing behind Accord flicked a glance her direction.

    Could he sense her there, even in spirit form? It was a discomfiting idea.

    ¡°As I¡¯m sure Archer has told you, I would not ordinarily have entertained your group on such short notice,¡± said Accord as he sat back down himself. He folded his hands in front of him on the desk again, and it did not look any less ridiculous than it had before. ¡°The information he claimed you possessed, however, is of great interest to me, and so I am willing to bend my standards in this case. He did not, I must confess, tell me your names.¡±

    ¡°We did not tell them to him,¡± I said calmly, choosing my words with delicate care. ¡°Our organization, our objectives, and our identities are all critical information, and giving them out freely to potential enemies can be quite dangerous, to say nothing of doing so in public.¡± As an addendum, I said, ¡°I¡¯m sure a cape such as yourself can understand.¡±

    ¡°I can understand your reasoning, yes,¡± he acknowledged. ¡°You have, however, come to me with promises of information, and you seem to be under the impression that I might be of assistance in carrying out this mission of yours. Archer has informed me of as much. I might perhaps be able to help you without knowing the true nature of this mission, but the question of my willingness to do so would then be a matter of concern. If you are so reticent to even tell me the vaguest of details, you should understand that such a thing would give me cause to believe it might not be in the interests of myself or my organization to assist you.¡±

    He wasn¡¯t going to let it go, and I¡¯d known as much going into this, but this was how cape negotiations were ¡ª push and pull, give and take, posturing and presence. Give away as little as you can freely and make the other side fight for every scrap so that they could never be certain what you really wanted.

    I made a show of frowning, and then pretended to give in. ¡°Very well. If you insist on knowing our names and goal before going further, then I think we can afford to share that much. My name is Taylor Hebert.¡± No reaction, not a flinch, not a curious tilt of his head, not even a shift of his mask. The name meant nothing to him. ¡°To my left is Ritsuka Fujimaru.¡±

    Ritsuka inclined his head respectfully. ¡°Pleased to meet you.¡±

    ¡°To my right is Mash Kyrielight.¡±

    Mash did the same. ¡°I¡¯ll be in your care.¡±

    And if my name meant nothing to him¡­ Did that mean the divergence went as far back as his moving to Brockton? No, that should be obvious by the fact that he was still here in Boston. Was it instead as far back and as meaningful as the Slaughterhouse Nine¡¯s attack? Were the Undersiders still in charge of the Bay, ruling their own little fiefdoms in the aftermath of Leviathan, having never had to contend with Jack Slash and his merry band?

    Later. Rika might find something out at the library.

    ¡°Our goal here on Earth Bet is to correct a distortion in the course of proper history,¡± I went on. ¡°To be more exact, an¡­outside force is meddling in events as they are meant to happen, and that meddling is causing problems that can¡¯t simply be ignored. We have already corrected five other such distortions.¡±

    Accord froze, and only belatedly did I realize that my description was vague enough that there was another conclusion that could be drawn about who and what we were there to deal with. An outside force meddling with the proper series of events as they were supposed to go? Shit. If I¡¯d heard that after Echidna, I might have thought that was Cauldron.

    ¡°What sort of distortion are you speaking of?¡± Accord asked tensely. The man behind him shifted minutely, stance widening just the slightest.

    ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± I answered evenly, trying to hide the fact that I knew what landmine I¡¯d just come very close to stepping on.

    A shift in Accord¡¯s posture. ¡°You don¡¯t know?¡±

    ¡°In some cases, the distortion is obvious fairly early. If, for example, we are deployed into a series of islands that does not and cannot exist naturally on any map, then the fact that something has gone wrong is self-evident.¡± Although Okeanos hadn¡¯t been as straightforward as it seemed at first glance. ¡°Conversely, being deployed into the French countryside would tell us nothing on its own, and only through independent investigation would we be able to discover that Jeanne d¡¯Arc had risen from the grave to exact her revenge on the people who abandoned her to the English. At the moment, Earth Bet is somewhere in the middle.¡±

    For several seconds, Accord¡¯s mask whirled, the parts moving and turning as it cycled through a number of expressions. I had to think it accurately reflected his thoughts as his mind raced through all of the implications in what I¡¯d told him, because there was no way he hadn¡¯t picked up the clues I had dropped for him.

    Finally, he spoke: ¡°Jeanne d¡¯Arc rose from the grave to seek revenge, you say, and yet even if it was possible, she could certainly not take revenge upon people long dead, and I have heard of no such thing occurring.¡±

    Here was going to be the tricky part.

    ¡°You would not,¡± I told him. ¡°History, you see, is normally quite robust. As it was explained to me, minor events can be changed or altered, and as long as the broad strokes remain the same, there is no need for intervention. To continue with the example of Jeanne d¡¯Arc, as long as England did not win the Hundred Years¡¯ War and completely take over France, then the exact details of how the French beat back the English aren¡¯t important. It¡¯s only when the specter of France¡¯s savior returns and destroys France herself that things start to deviate enough to cause problems ¡ª and even that can be corrected without our intervention, provided there isn¡¯t something in place to stop it.¡±

    Accord leaned forward on his elbows. ¡°What might this ¡®something¡¯ you speak of be?¡±

    ¡°The same thing whose very mention was enough to convince you to meet with us on short notice,¡± I said. ¡°The Holy Grail.¡±

    Immediately, his body language closed off, became defensive, so before he could start planning ways to eliminate us, I pushed through. ¡°When a wish is made on a Grail that causes a significant enough distortion in the proper course of history, that moment in time coalesces into a sort of knot called a Singularity. By nature, these Singularities are inherently unstable. They are unobserved knots of space-time, meaning they aren¡¯t acknowledged as a legitimate series of events. If they reach the point where they can stabilize and become a part of actual history, then the results would be¡­catastrophic.¡±

    I wished we had Da Vinci with us just then. She would be better at explaining all of this.

    ¡°If this revenant Jeanne d¡¯Arc was an example born of experience,¡± Accord said stiffly, ¡°then what you are speaking of would be time travel.¡±

    ¡°I couldn¡¯t explain to you why it¡¯s not, only that it isn¡¯t technically,¡± I admitted, ¡°but from our perspective, that¡¯s not the wrong way of looking at it.¡±

    Accord was silent for a moment, and I had to consciously force myself not to fidget or twitch by feeding the impulse into the bugs deeper in the building, where Accord couldn¡¯t or hadn¡¯t managed to exterminate them. The seconds stretched, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see both Mash and Ritsuka shifting nervously. The only thing that stopped me from hissing a reprimand at them both was the knowledge that doing so would only make it worse.

    ¡°Your clothing,¡± Accord said at last, ¡°is unusual but not especially futuristic. The devices on your wrists are obviously some form of technology, but it does not seem far removed from current technology, and that would not preclude the work of a Tinker either. How far into the future have you arrived from?¡±

    ¡°Five years,¡± I said, and he twitched. ¡°We deployed from March, 2016. The technology that allows us to do so is considered one of a kind.¡±

    Let him think that we had our own Tinker at our beck and call. It wasn¡¯t even strictly wrong, even if Da Vinci hadn¡¯t actually been responsible for most of the technology Chaldea used on the regular. The fact she repaired it all and kept it running smoothly made the difference unimportant, in my eyes.

    ¡°You said that the distortion that formed this Singularity is somewhere between obvious and subtle,¡± he said. ¡°I would have you explain what you meant.¡±

    ¡°Time does not normally skip back and forth two-hundred-and-thirty years,¡± I answered. He straightened ¡ª so he had noticed something. Did that mean those Revolutionary era soldiers weren¡¯t a one-off? ¡°The sensors used to determine the era and location of this Singularity detected wild swings between 2011 and 1783. The exact ramifications of that are still a matter of investigation, but the Revolutionary War era militia that Celtchar was fighting down south provided some clue.¡±

    What that clue was and what it meant, we still didn¡¯t know, but Accord didn¡¯t have to know that.

    ¡°We do not, however,¡± I went on, ¡°as yet know much of anything about what wish might have been made on the Grail or how that wish is causing the circumstances we have seen. We¡¯re still trying to determine what caused the divergence and what that divergence was, and Celtchar told us that you could arrange for us to meet with the one responsible for holding civilization together amidst all of the chaos caused by the Grail.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Accord said slowly, ¡°yes, I suppose I could arrange just such a meeting. Tell me, in order for your mission to be complete, is the removal of the Grail a necessity?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Mash before I could get the word out, and Accord¡¯s head snapped around to look at her as his mask contorted into a look of barely contained fury. ¡°The Grail must be removed for the Singularity to be corrected. Once the Grail has been retrieved, the Counter Force will remove all aberrant factors and restore everyone and everything inside of the Singularity to their proper place in history. It will be as though nothing ever happened.¡±

    Accord took a slow, deep breath, and against all of my expectations, managed to calm himself down. The pieces of his mask clicked and shifted back into a stoic, neutral expression, and his voice was even and cordial when he spoke again, ¡°When you say that all aberrant factors will be removed, what precisely do you mean?¡±

    I bit my tongue, and Mash was silent for a moment, then realized that he was addressing her directly. ¡°Ah, I-I meant that all things and people that don¡¯t have a place in proper history will be, um, e-erased, for lack of a better term, and everyone and everything else in the Singularity will be reset to their natural time and place.¡±

    If her stuttering and stumbling bothered him at all, Accord didn¡¯t show it, and I could barely believe my eyes. Every time anyone had hit one of his buttons in our first meeting together, he had looked like he wanted to reach out and strangle them, but now, he seemed almost entirely unbothered.

    ¡°I assume that means that, for me, circumstances would revert to the state of affairs as they were at the moment of the divergence?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Yes,¡± I answered. ¡°Wherever and whenever you were at the moment the wish was made that caused this Singularity to form, you would return there. Life would continue on for you and everyone else as though it had never happened. History would be restored to how it was meant to be.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± was all he said. ¡°I assume, in that case, that if the Grail were to be retrieved by a third party and a new wish made upon it, the end result would still require your intervention? You cannot simply undo the current damage and allow another to make use of it?¡±

    He wanted it, and he wanted it desperately. Whether he was desperate enough to try to steal it, either from us or from whoever currently had it, I wasn¡¯t sure. No, I was sure, because I had no doubt he was cooking up plans in his head right now, but if he would keep going when he knew the price of them, that part I was a little less certain of.

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± I said like I didn¡¯t know exactly what he was thinking. ¡°The Grail doesn¡¯t belong to this era ¡ª it was placed here by that outside party I mentioned ¡ª and as long as it remains, the Singularity can sustain itself and grow. The Grail must be retrieved and taken into our custody so that proper history can reassert itself.¡±

    What he might have thought of this information, he didn¡¯t say, and his mask remained stoic; he swiftly moved onto the next topic, leaving that one behind.

    ¡°You mention this outside party,¡± he said, ¡°and yet I notice you have not yet given it a name. What does it gain from creating these Singularities?¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know.¡± I hated to admit that to him, because it weakened our position, but a lie would be found out one way or another. ¡°We know his name, but to say it out loud would draw his attention upon us, and the consequences of doing that here and now might be fatal. He didn¡¯t do us the courtesy of explaining the purpose behind all of this, only that it did serve his purposes somehow.¡±

    ¡°He shrugged off everything we threw at him,¡± Ritsuka added quietly, and Accord¡¯s head slowly swung over his way like a pendulum, ¡°and then he killed three Servants with a snap of his fingers.¡±

    ¡°Whatever his goal is,¡± I continued as though Ritsuka hadn¡¯t spoken, and hopefully any ire from Accord was drawn back to me with his attention, ¡°he made it clear that the only requirement for his victory is for there to be a single Singularity remaining by January 1st, 2017. At that point, his plan will be complete and even our organization won¡¯t be able to stop him. Mankind as a species will cease to exist.¡±

    I looked directly into the eye sockets of Accord¡¯s mask. ¡°When we told Archer that it was a matter of the end of the world, we weren¡¯t lying.¡±

    Slowly, Accord leaned back in his chair, and he spent a handful of seconds in thought. ¡°You have offered me plenty of fanciful claims,¡± he began slowly, ¡°but I must admit that they fit the fact patterns I have observed, despite the¡­holes that exist in some of them.¡±

    I held my tongue; he wouldn¡¯t appreciate the interruption, and we had already hit a few of his buttons. I wasn¡¯t about to risk it.

    ¡°I will admit that I find it suspicious how convenient those facts seem to be for you,¡± he said carefully. ¡°They could very easily be a ruse through which you intend to acquire the Grail for yourselves. It is not, after all, an insignificant prize, and if the legends surrounding it are any indication, one that many have coveted for the better part of two millennia.¡±

    I took the risk to cut across him. ¡°We already have five Grails in our possession, if we simply wanted it for its wish-granting capabilities. We could put you in contact with Director Animusphere or Leonardo da Vinci, if you wanted further verification.¡±

    A tensing of his shoulders was his only reaction to my rudeness.

    ¡°Nevertheless,¡± he went on as though I hadn¡¯t said anything, ¡°there are signs to which I cannot simply close my eyes. The Triumvirate¡¯s absence is keenly felt, and my own contacts of a more exclusive sort have fallen silent.¡±

    ¡°The Triumvirate is gone?¡± I couldn¡¯t stop myself from asking.

    The implications of that¡­

    ¡°Yes,¡± Accord said tersely, the tension in his shoulders winding tighter. ¡°They and Scion simply vanished. As it happens, these¡­distortions of which you speak began nearly concurrently with their disappearance.¡±

    ¡­were staggering. Had they been killed? Had they simply been elsewhere when the Singularity formed, escaping its hold by sheer coincidence? Or was there something more behind their disappearance ¡ª and Cauldron¡¯s as well, for that matter, because I hadn¡¯t missed that one either.

    ¡°When?¡± And the second I realized my mistake, I tacked on, ¡°did they disappear?¡±

    Accord leaned back in his chair, tilting his chin up just a little. ¡°I have already given you several pieces of relevant information, as a show of goodwill for your own forthrightness. I have not forgotten, however, what it was we were originally meeting to discuss.¡±

    The Grail. Of course. Its current whereabouts ¡ª as much as we knew them ¡ª had been the information that originally got us this meeting so quickly.

    I took a breath and leaned back myself, forcing my body to relax by letting my tension bleed into my swarm. ¡°We can still tell you what we know about the Grail and its current location, of course,¡± I said evenly, ¡°but that information has obvious value exceeding details that we could find from a quick internet search.¡±

    Accord hummed thoughtfully.

    ¡°True,¡± he allowed. ¡°By the same token, however, your information only goes for a premium as long as I myself do not readily have a method of obtaining it independent of you. I¡¯m certain that I could discover it merely by making contact with my associate, who would most assuredly inform me of any such critical developments.¡±

    ¡°The problem you run into with that sort of thinking is that it only holds as long as your¡­associate doesn¡¯t also have a reason to seek out the Grail,¡± I countered. ¡°In that case, you having an independent source of information is all the more vital, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    Whoever it is, it¡¯s an alliance of convenience, I thought. The instant the Grail entered the equation, you had a very good reason to go behind their back to get what you want.

    Like he said, mythology was rife with people who had sought out the Grail, and equally as much so with the tales of what they¡¯d done to secure it. I wasn¡¯t sure even my warnings about the end of the world had been enough to convince him over to our side, but whether he wanted the Grail for its own sake or to hand it over to us, he wasn¡¯t beyond betrayal of his ¡®boss¡¯ to get it.

    ¡°Perhaps it would be,¡± he replied, tone neutral. ¡°Are you volunteering your services in that regard?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m saying that we should have common cause,¡± I said. ¡°The Grail cannot grant you a wish without distorting history, something which will result in the extinction of mankind, meaning that it is in your interests to see our mission succeed. As allies naturally share relevant information with each other, there would be no need for tit for tat or negotiation, because we would share resources in pursuit of a mutual goal.¡±

    The mask whirred and clicked, and Accord¡¯s mechanical visage regarded me with an almost disappointed look.

    ¡°I had you pegged as the practical sort, a pragmatic woman,¡± he said. ¡°Now, however, you spout idealism as though it is a currency I might spend.¡±

    ¡°Is it any more idealistic than a plan to end world hunger?¡± I shot back.

    He froze. The mask spun through a number of configurations, landing on none in particular for several seconds, and then it closed off into something flat, almost as though someone had set it back to its factory default.

    ¡°I suppose it is not,¡± he said finally. ¡°Very well. You said you had some information on the Grail, but that you had something you desired of me, as well. Might I hear what it was?¡±

    Ritsuka and Mash both let out a long, slow breath as quietly as they were able, as though they¡¯d spent the last several minutes holding it in. Neither Accord nor I acknowledged it, although I was certain he¡¯d heard. Had something happened beforehand that made him mellow out a little?

    ¡°As I said before, we need to meet with your associate, the one who is holding things together here,¡± I said. ¡°You said yourself that it would be possible for you to arrange that for us.¡±

    ¡°You did say that,¡± he said with a nod, ¡°and I did say as much myself, didn¡¯t I?¡±

    ¡°As for the Grail,¡± I went on, ¡°Celtchar fought another Lancer class Servant while a Rider dove into Cape Cod Bay to retrieve the Grail. How and why the Grail came to be there, we don¡¯t know yet, but Rider raced off with the Grail in hand, heading due west, and only once his allies were safely away did Lancer retreat. We spoke with Celtchar afterwards, and it was by his suggestion that we came to you in the first place.¡±

    Accord paused a moment, seemingly taken aback. ¡°I see. If you¡¯re right, then it would mean the Grail is in the hands of the western faction.¡±

    ¡°Celtchar didn¡¯t say much,¡± Ritsuka interrupted. ¡°Can you tell us about them?¡±

    Accord¡¯s expression shuddered, pieces of his mask vibrating for a moment as he fought down whatever violent impulse arose inside of him, and a little curtly, he said, ¡°My understanding of their structure and organization is unfortunately far too rudimentary to be of much use to you. You would be better off asking that question of Coil, who is more directly engaged with them upon multiple fronts.¡±

    Dread sank into my belly like a stone. I already knew the answer before I even asked, ¡°What does Coil have to do with this?¡±

    Accord regarded me plainly. ¡°Should it not be obvious? The one who is currently maintaining the essential pillars of civilization here in the east, the one who is leading our own Servants in combat against the western faction, and the one whose auspices sustain every aspect of life here, they are all one in the same.¡±

    Shit. Fuck. This was one time I really didn¡¯t want to be right.

    ¡°That person is Coil.¡±

 Chapter CLXXX: Strange Bedfellows

    Chapter CLXXX: Strange Bedfellows

    If Accord had any idea what that reveal meant to me, then he didn¡¯t show it, and I did my best not to let him see. If Mash and Ritsuka noticed how much it had shaken me, then they wisely buried their concerns until later, and that lack of reaction more than anything helped me to keep my head about me as we went through the rest of the meeting ¡ª hammering out the finer details of our meeting with Coil ¡ª and bid our polite goodbyes to Accord.

    ¡°If everything you told me today is true, then it seems the appropriate thing to do would be to wish you a quick and safe resolution to these circumstances,¡± he said. ¡°I shall endeavor to impress upon Coil the same sentiment.¡±

    ¡°Thank you,¡± I told him, ignoring the sour taste in my mouth. ¡°Your help is most appreciated.¡±

    Once more, we all stood, and then he shook each of our hands again before we left. Once we were out of sight of the office door, I secreted a few bugs into the room in innocuous places, just enough eavesdrop, as we walked away.

    Accord didn¡¯t disappoint. A few minutes passed as we made our way back towards the building entrance ¡ª stopping only long enough for me to pass A¨ªfe my knife again, so that awkward questions weren¡¯t asked ¡ª but once we were out of earshot and seemingly too far away to even hope of spying on him, Accord turned to his companion in the red tunic.

    ¡°It occurs to me, Assassin,¡± he said, ¡°that you, too, are one of these Servants, summoned forth in this fight over the Grail. I must ask ¡ª are they correct? Is the Grail a trap which will doom mankind if left to fester in this place, and only they are capable of ensuring the continuation of the human species?¡±

    Assassin hummed and took his time answering, voice careful and ponderous. ¡°No Heroic Spirit of proper history would deny that their mission is just and their path righteous. There is much about this place which would seem incongruent with proper history as it should be, and so setting it to rights would appear the correct course, as they claim it to be.¡±

    ¡°Despite your saying so,¡± said Accord, ¡°there are Servants in this¡­Singularity who are fighting against just such a cause. Are they truly so selfish that they would doom humanity for such a trifle when their success can only be transient?¡±

    ¡°Perhaps so,¡± Assassin rumbled. ¡°I could give you a vague answer and claim some nonsense about how each must have their reasons, and for some, it would even be true. The allure of the Grail, as you observed so astutely earlier, has captivated many men across many eras. If we were to ignore those who seek the Grail for their own pleasures, however, then the question you must ask is thus: if Chaldea¡¯s mission is just and righteous and no Heroic Spirit of proper history would deny it, why would they have cause to stand against it?¡±

    ¡°I shall assume your question is rhetorical and your answer is forthcoming,¡± said Accord.

    Assassin huffed a dry chuckle. ¡°Indeed, it is. The answer should be obvious and elementary: because not all of these Heroic Spirits believe these folk are capable of seeing their mission through. Some of these Servants that fight against the restoration of proper history do so because they believe that their path ¡ª even if it is less just, less righteous, and goes against the strictures of proper history as it was written ¡ª is more certain of success.¡±

    ¡°You mean that there are Servants whose goal is to supplant a failed future,¡± Accord clarified.

    ¡°Whether or not their success would achieve the intended outcome is another matter,¡± Assassin agreed. ¡°Who can say with certainty? These magi certainly have their sound theories rooted in logic and experience, but equally so, even the greatest of them would not be infallible, or else you and I would not be here and their mission would be entirely unnecessary.¡±

    ¡°Your point is well-taken,¡± said Accord. ¡°Are you one of these Servants, Assassin, looking to supplant the proper course of events with one of your own vision?¡±

    Assassin shook his head. ¡°Such things are beyond the scope of my purpose here. My singular goal is your protection, from all threats that might present themselves. Whatever path you choose to follow of your own will, I will respect it and act accordingly.¡±

    Accord made a noise in his throat and turned away from Assassin. ¡°Your loyalty is appreciated. For now, however, there is business to which we must return, not the least of which being that Coil will need to be contacted and the meeting arranged. Further data about the situation as it stands will certainly be of interest, particularly regarding its source.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure you¡¯re right,¡± said Assassin.

    As Accord picked up the phone on the desk and began dialing a number, I let the office slip from my focus to the back of my mind. Experience told me that I wouldn¡¯t get much of use from listening in on the conversation, not from Coil¡¯s end, so unless and until Accord said something else interesting, there was no need to keep a close ear on what was happening in his office.

    Only once we had stepped out of the doors of the JFK building and back into the afternoon sunlight did Ritsuka allow himself a moment to heave out a sigh.

    ¡°That was intense,¡± he said. ¡°You were right, Senpai, that guy is wound tighter than a snare drum.¡±

    ¡°He actually wasn¡¯t as bad as I was expecting him to be,¡± I commented. Ritsuka and Mash both turned to me with surprise.

    ¡°Really?¡± said Mash, disbelieving. ¡°But there were several moments in there, Miss Taylor, where he really looked like he wanted to hurt us.¡±

    ¡°But he didn¡¯t demand recompense for any slights,¡± I replied, ¡°and he didn¡¯t freak out about anyone speaking out of turn or starting sentences with conjunctions or anything like that. He was a lot calmer and more reasonable than I expected.¡±

    I wasn¡¯t sure why. I hesitated to call it Assassin¡¯s influence ¡ª I¡¯d only gotten a quick glimpse at him as we were leaving, because I hadn¡¯t wanted to give either of them the impression I was sizing him up and judging our chances, and I hadn¡¯t seen enough to judge ¡ª but Mash and the twins proved that it was possible in at least some circumstances for Servants to share the benefits of their skills with their Masters. London would have been a lot harder if they couldn¡¯t.

    If Assassin had some sort of mental skill to do with calming minds or controlling tempers, then that might explain how Accord was so¡­maybe mellow wasn¡¯t the right word, but it was the best one I had.

    ¡°That¡¯s¡­¡± Ritsuka tried, but never finished the thought.

    ¡°At least we achieved what we were here to do, right?¡± Mash offered.

    Right. Even if the result wasn¡¯t what I¡¯d been expecting and fit into some of the circumstances for my worst case scenarios, we¡¯d gotten our meeting with Accord¡¯s ¡®boss.¡¯ How ironic that ¡ª four years later ¡ª I was being forced to work with Coil again for the greater good.

    If that was all a part of Solomon¡¯s plans, then I had yet another reason to see him put back in the ground where he belonged.

    ¡°We should head back to our meeting point and see if Rika¡¯s had any luck, too,¡± I said instead.

    Ritsuka sighed. ¡°Knowing her, she got distracted watching cat videos or something and Emiya¡¯s the one who did all the research.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll see,¡± I said instead of agreeing with him. ¡°She only had about an hour and a half to look, so she might not have found much of anything anyway.¡±

    That one might be my fault. I should have specified before sending them off ¡ª I just wanted the cliff notes. More detail would be better, but the important part was just having a general gist of where everyone was and what had happened to them, so I didn¡¯t need a three page essay on eating habits and arrest records.

    We left the JFK building behind and made our way back to the Quincy Market where we¡¯d contacted Marie, and midway there, Arash rejoined us, dressed once more in the clothes he¡¯d abandoned when he went to take up his perch on the top of that building. He slotted back into the group as though he¡¯d never left.

    ¡°Things went well, I take it?¡± he said conversationally as we walked.

    ¡°As well as could be expected,¡± I answered neutrally.

    ¡°He¡¯s going to get us a meeting with his boss,¡± Ritsuka elaborated, ¡°and it looks like he¡¯s going to be on our side. We tried asking about the western people, too, but he couldn¡¯t give us much information about them.¡±

    ¡°It looked like he really wanted the Grail,¡± Mash added, ¡°but I think we managed to get through to him.¡±

    ¡°For now, at least, it seems like Accord¡¯s siding with us and proper history,¡± I agreed.

    ¡°Sounds like good news,¡± Arash concluded. Ritsuka and Mash, having obviously sensed something in my reaction to Coil¡¯s name, hesitated and glanced my way.

    ¡°For the most part, yes.¡±

    But this wasn¡¯t the time or the place to be talking about Coil and my problems with him, so I pushed it off to later, and we continued our short trip back to that round room where we¡¯d set up the bounded field for our own privacy. It was, fortunately, still standing when we got back, but it was weak enough and hastily erected enough that I expected it would fade away overnight without any intervention from us.

    Once we were sequestered back under its protection, we contacted Rika with our communicators. Sound only, of course, since that would have been awkward for her to explain in the middle of a public library.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± her voice echoed.

    ¡°We¡¯ve finished our meeting with Accord and we¡¯re back at the meeting place,¡± I told her without any preamble. ¡°Gather up whatever you managed to find and come on back.¡±

    ¡°A-ah,¡± she said. ¡°R-right, um, yeah. Give us¡­about half an hour?¡±

    ¡°That should be plenty of time to finish up over here,¡± Emiya¡¯s voice chimed in.

    ¡°Right, yeah.¡± Rika sounded a lot more confident. ¡°Half an hour, Senpai.¡±

    Ritsuka and Mash traded dubious looks.

    ¡°Half an hour,¡± I repeated back to her. ¡°See you then.¡±

    The instant the connection cut, I turned to Mash. ¡°Let¡¯s contact the Director and update her about what¡¯s going on.¡±

    Mash blinked. ¡°Without Senpai?¡±

    ¡°Whatever Rika found out is more important for us than for everyone back at Chaldea. And it won¡¯t change what we have to do next, only how we go about doing it.¡±

    Mash didn¡¯t look entirely convinced, but she set up her shield again as A¨ªfe shimmered into existence, and I used it to open a line back to Marie. An instant later, her image flickered to life above Mash¡¯s shield, a familiar wash of blue.

    ¡°Yes?¡± Marie asked as soon as we were connected.

    I filled her in on everything that had happened in our meeting with Accord, from the agreement we¡¯d reached with him to the presence of the unnamed Assassin class Servant he apparently kept as a bodyguard and the hints of strange behavior that might have had something to do with that same Servant¡¯s contract.

    Marie listened stoically, although her face drew into a scowl when she heard who we were going to be meeting with in the coming days. Since she knew so much more of my life and my history, she had a better grasp on exactly what I was thinking about it and why.

    ¡°Are you sure about this?¡± she asked me when I was done. ¡°Him, of all people¡­¡±

    I thought about toughing through it and pretending otherwise, but the truth slipped out before I could convince myself to maintain that image of imperturbability in front of Ritsuka and Mash. ¡°No. But it¡¯s not like we have much choice, do we? Cauldron and the Triumvirate are both gone, and Accord is deferring to him. Coil might be our best bet for solving this Singularity and getting history back on track.¡±

    ¡°Not if he wants the Grail for himself,¡± Marie said firmly.

    Oh, I was almost certain that he would. Something like that would be an incredible temptation for someone like him, and if there was anything I could count on when it came to Coil, it was his greed and his callous disregard for others. He would do whatever it took to get what he wanted, and damn everyone who got in his way.

    Fortunately, he also had enough sense to know when the stakes were too high to play around with. If he had to choose between indulging in his greed and dooming the world or showing restraint so that he could get what he wanted later, he was farsighted and level-headed enough to choose the latter.

    ¡°If the alternative is losing in the long run, then he¡¯ll play ball and cooperate with us,¡± I said, even though it left a bad taste in my mouth. ¡°We can trust his self-interest, if nothing else.¡±

    ¡°And if he finds out that you killed him in proper history?¡± Marie asked.

    Ritsuka and Mash both looked at me with wide eyes, mouths dropping open just the slightest. The questions were going to come ¡ª I knew they would, and there was no avoiding that ¡ª but in the moment, I pretended not to notice.

    ¡°Then I¡¯m going to have to kill him again,¡± I said, ignoring the even more startled looks it got me. ¡°There are available replacements who can do his job. If all else fails, I¡¯m sure Accord would be happy to take his place and pick up the slack.¡±

    Marie¡¯s lips thinned, and she didn¡¯t exactly look happy about that, but she let it go. She knew as well as I did that a Coil who was determined to make a nuisance of himself wouldn¡¯t let the matter drop, so we wouldn¡¯t be able to afford to let him attempt screwing us over as many times as he liked.

    ¡°What about our money problem?¡± I asked, changing the subject. ¡°Do we have a solution for that yet?¡±

    Marie¡¯s grimace drew tighter. ¡°We¡¯re working on it. Da Vinci came up with an idea,¡± and from the way she said it, it was a better idea than Marie¡¯s was, ¡°but it¡¯s going to take at least another hour for her to finish it.¡±

    In other words, long enough that we might as well think about taking up the offer to eat at the Black Rose again, since it would be free. That was part of the plan anyway, but we were going to have to be thinking about where to stay for the night, too, because there was no way I wanted to risk camping out here in the open surrounded by security cameras, forget about how cold it might get.

    ¡°We¡¯ll stick around here then and go over what Rika and Emiya found,¡± I decided. ¡°We¡¯ll contact you again before heading back to the Black Rose for dinner, Director.¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± she agreed, glancing briefly at something to the side. ¡°Fortunately, there don¡¯t seem to be any unknown Spirit Origins nearby, so you shouldn¡¯t encounter any trouble.¡±

    One would hope. It was entirely possible that the Teeth or Blasto had access to Servants themselves, but until we knew that they were even still around, there was no point in catastrophizing. We could deal with them as they came.

    Once the call ended, Mash and Ritsuka turned to me expectantly, and all I could do was heave a sigh. ¡°Wait until Rika gets back. She¡¯s going to want to hear this, too.¡±

    Although they didn¡¯t look like they wanted to, they did, and we grabbed seats at the nearby benches to sit down and wait. It wasn¡¯t long, however ¡ª with the clock just shy of 4 pm ¡ª before Rika and Emiya entered the Quincy Market and meandered down the path towards us. I was the only one who didn¡¯t startle when she suddenly walked up and dumped a thick blue binder on the table we were sharing.

    ¡°Tada!¡± she declared.

    ¡°What¡¯s all of this?¡± Ritsuka asked, peeling the cover back curiously.

    ¡°Everything we could find about the Teeth and stuff!¡± she answered proudly. ¡°News articles, wiki pages, discussions on this weird forum called PHO ¡ª the works!¡±

    ¡°Fou, fou!¡± the gremlin chirped as it followed her in.

    Ritsuka blinked and turned to Rika incredulously. ¡°Really?¡±

    Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

    I pulled the binder over my way and started leafing through it, and I could admit I was a little bit surprised to find everything she had said there would be.

    ¡°Yup!¡±

    Ritsuka didn¡¯t look like he believed it. ¡°And you did all of this yourself?¡±

    ¡°A-ah.¡± Rika faltered. ¡°Mostly. Mostly by myself! Emiya, um, helped a little, I guess.¡±

    ¡°To keep it organized, more than anything,¡± Emiya said as he came up behind her. ¡°Master¡¯s instincts were right, but as expected, she doesn¡¯t have the training for intelligence gathering, so I had to steer her onto the right path a little.¡± He smirked and arched an eyebrow Rika¡¯s way. ¡°Although Master was surprisingly competent on her own.¡±

    ¡°Hey, hey,¡± Rika huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. ¡°Just what¡¯s that supposed to mean, Emiya?¡±

    ¡°Merely that I underestimated you,¡± he said smoothly. ¡°It seems I should have known better, after working with you for these past four Singularities. You¡¯re not just a pretty face and a bundle of cheer.¡±

    Rika regarded him with narrowed eyes and an exaggerated scowl.

    ¡°This is more thorough than I was expecting,¡± I admitted, and a lot more than I thought you¡¯d find in the time you had.

    Rika groaned. ¡°Not you, too, Senpai! I¡¯m not that dumb, you know!¡±

    Ritsuka opened his mouth, but Mash shoved an elbow in his side, and all that came out was a sharp puff of air.

    ¡°I meant that I didn¡¯t think you¡¯d find this much in that short an amount of time,¡± I told her. ¡°You did good, Rika.¡±

    She smiled brightly. ¡°Thanks!¡± And then she leaned over, propping herself up on the table. ¡°So, so? How did the meeting with the big guy go?¡±

    Mash and Ritsuka traded a look, and he said, ¡°Well, we got our meeting with the boss, at least.¡±

    Rika¡¯s brow furrowed. ¡°I¡¯m sensing a ¡®but¡¯ in there.¡±

    This time, the two of them turned to me, waiting. I could only heave out another sigh. ¡°The big boss in charge of everything is Coil.¡±

    The furrow of Rika¡¯s brow grew deeper. ¡°I thought he was a bad guy and we totally weren¡¯t supposed to go anywhere near him.¡±

    ¡°You had him listed as an enemy on the chart when you gave that briefing,¡± Emiya supplied.

    ¡°Because I didn¡¯t expect him to be running the resistance to whatever forces are making use of the Grail,¡± I said. ¡°Given what I knew of him, I fully expected he would be someone we would have to fight sooner than teaming up with, but whatever my expectations, it seems he¡¯ll be an ally, at least for now.¡±

    ¡°And the part about killing him?¡± Ritsuka asked pointedly. No accusation, more of a demand for answers.

    I didn¡¯t bother trying to talk circles around it or avoid it. It was better if they knew the sort of man we were going to have to work with. ¡°He tried to kill me ¡ª twice in the same day, in fact ¡ª and almost succeeded. He didn¡¯t give me much choice other than to put a bullet in his head so he couldn¡¯t try again, and even then, he had to screw everyone over by releasing a monster he¡¯d been keeping in his basement before he died. Yes, Ritsuka, if he finds out he¡¯s doomed either way, then we need to be fully prepared for him doublecrossing us.¡±

    ¡°Even if it means killing him,¡± Ritsuka concluded, and there was the accusation.

    It was Arash who answered for me: ¡°It¡¯s just like the Director said for the last Singularity, Ritsuka. Our mission ¡ª and the lives of you Masters by extension ¡ª is more important than any individual inside these Singularities. If Coil attempts to sabotage us¡­ No, more than that, if he¡¯s a Master and becomes our enemy, then we might not have any other options.¡±

    All trace of humor had disappeared from Rika¡¯s face, and Mash stared down at the table, her mouth drawn into a miserable line. Even Ritsuka couldn¡¯t maintain eye contact, and his gaze wound up sliding down and landing on the binder.

    ¡°I know that,¡± he admitted, ¡°but still. Isn¡¯t there a way we could beat him without¡­?¡±

    Without killing him, the words hung, despite being unspoken.

    ¡°I-I don¡¯t¡­¡± Mash began, but her voice trailed off and she didn¡¯t continue her thought. I could imagine what it was anyway. The first and last time she¡¯d had to kill a person ¡ª Servant or otherwise ¡ª was Jeanne Alter back in Orl¨¦ans, and while she seemed to have bounced back from it at least enough to tolerate the version who now called Chaldea home, it had still left its mark on her.

    ¡°If it comes down to it, I¡¯ll handle it,¡± Arash said. ¡°So you guys don¡¯t have to worry about it, alright? You guys won¡¯t have to give the order or carry it out. It¡¯ll be on me.¡±

    I slanted a glance his way, and without looking at me, he said, You, too, Master. Just leave it up to me.

    Even if it wasn¡¯t necessary, I guess I appreciated the sentiment. Better to leave it there, I thought, than dredge up old feelings and try to explain the complicated mess that was my thoughts on having to kill Coil in the first place.

    I pulled the binder closer and went back to perusing the sheets of paper bound inside of it. There were even color coded dividers separating each of the topics I¡¯d asked Rika to look up, because she¡¯d apparently put a lot of effort into this.

    ¡°So you managed to find everything I asked for?¡± I said, changing the subject.

    Rika blinked, and she took an extra second to catch on. ¡°U-um, yeah, kinda? Some stuff had a lot more stuff and some stuff didn¡¯t have all that much, so I did the best I could.¡±

    The best she could wound up being pretty good. Blasto, as I should have expected, was a fairly thin subject. There were only a few sheets of paper dedicated to him, detailing mostly a series of drug sales that the sleuths on PHO had taken to tracking, and there wasn¡¯t much else. Accord, it seemed, was too busy and too important now to pay him much attention, because he might have been pushed around a little, but he hadn¡¯t been stamped out and no major campaigns had been waged against him.

    Honestly, the most interesting part was the drug busts, a handful of police reports detailing truly staggering amounts of marijuana that had been seized. That, on the other hand, I could believe was Accord¡¯s doing. It definitely fit his way of doing things.

    There were a few other small-time gangs that had apparently cropped up and swiftly been put down over the last few months, but that didn¡¯t tell me anywhere near as much as I would have liked. There was a list of names and their known activities, including their last known location and everything, but the sharp dropoff each of them suffered told me that they had been snuffed out, one way or the other. There were even a few arrest records that matched up with the rise and fall of a couple of them.

    It was too consistent to tell me anything about the divergence, however, which only meant that ¡ª between Accord and the Teeth ¡ª no one had wanted the competition to flourish.

    The Teeth, on the other hand, were a different story. At some point in May or June, they had apparently left Boston, although no one was sure of an exact date, and then abruptly disappeared. The Butcher and all of their capes had simply fallen off the map, and in the aftermath, any remnants left behind were ruthlessly squashed. Reports were mixed, but some of them detailed a man who bore a striking resemblance to the Assassin in Accord¡¯s office, and some of them described speedsters who could only be other Servants. PHO had erupted in theories about a new gang or hero team, although those had died down when these mystery figures disappeared once any trace of the Teeth had been erased.

    Servants on loan from Coil, no doubt, sent to pacify resistance and smooth out Accord¡¯s transition to the local power here in Boston. How they¡¯d managed to handle the Butcher without simply making a new one, none of the reports or theories knew for sure, but I didn¡¯t doubt that Coil had come to a solution similar to the one we¡¯d used to trap Cherish. A single good Caster would do the job easily.

    It gave us a little bit of a better idea of the timeline, at least. If Servants were here in May or June, then that was confirmation that the divergence went back at least that far. And since the last post was dated September 27th, I was going to hazard a guess and say that was today.

    ¡°The ones who took out the Teeth were almost certainly Servants,¡± I said, looking to Rika. ¡°Were there any descriptions you could find about what they might look like? Clues about who we might be dealing with?¡±

    Rika shook her head. ¡°They were all over the place. I gave up after page two and just printed everything out.¡±

    Frustrating, but there wasn¡¯t anything we could do about that.

    Lastly, on the subject of the Undersiders¡­

    ¡°Is¡­this all there was?¡±

    ¡­a handful of sheets of paper, sparse and threadbare. Most of it was rumor mongering, news reports about robberies or attacks on local villain teams in Brockton Bay that people thought might be them, used to bolster theories about what they were up to.

    Rika shrugged. ¡°Sorry, Senpai. Those Undersiders are ghosts, and not like the spooky kind either. Nobody had any idea what they were up to or where they went.¡±

    ¡°Choice of words aside, she¡¯s not wrong,¡± Emiya agreed. ¡°They had a few dedicated followers, but most people seemed to agree: they were a small-time group that fizzled out or died, although no one took credit for it.¡±

    There was no attack on the Forsberg Gallery, no war in the streets fought against the Nine, no takeover of the city in the aftermath of Leviathan ¡ª there might not even have been an attack on Brockton by Leviathan ¡ª no villain team-up against the ABB, no bank robbery. There were a litany of smaller crimes that could have been them, but the only one I was sure they actually did was the Ruby Dreams job, the very same one that had put us on a collision course that fateful night in April.

    A horrible thought occurred to me, and my heart pounded in my chest: what if they never met me? What if Coil was too distracted by his shiny new Grail, and they all died fighting Lung and Oni Lee? What if they made it through that by the skin of their teeth somehow, and then they were disposed of once Coil had the Grail and no longer needed them?

    Two little words that terrified me more than anything else. What if?

    I went back through the posts a second time, but they didn¡¯t show me anything new. There was nothing. A single thing that I knew they¡¯d done, and a bunch of ghost stories that might have been Grue or Bitch or Regent. That was all I had to go on.

    It wasn¡¯t enough. The possibilities for what could have happened were enormous, because I just didn¡¯t know enough about what had been happening in Brockton Bay. This was just too little to go on.

    I should have asked them to broaden their search, I thought regretfully. I¡¯d thought¡­ But that was the problem. I¡¯d thought that I could place where we were and what was happening solely on what the Undersiders had been doing, and without them as a milepost, I was blind.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± asked Ritsuka, brow furrowed with concern. ¡°Is something wrong?¡±

    My head spun with thoughts, chasing each other around and around in circles. Possibilities, nightmare scenarios, questions without answers. Too much, I didn¡¯t tell him. There¡¯s so much wrong that I don¡¯t even know where to start.

    Focus. I had to focus. One problem at a time. Sitting here and catastrophizing wouldn¡¯t help anyone or solve anything.

    ¡°One way or the other, we have to head to Brockton,¡± I told them all. ¡°Where we go from there¡­¡±

    I didn¡¯t know. I didn¡¯t know at all. If Coil had killed the Undersiders, and yet we had to work with him to resolve this Singularity and get history back on track¡­

    One problem at a time, I told myself again. ¡°¡­we¡¯ll figure it out once we know more about what¡¯s been happening.¡±

    Ritsuka wasn¡¯t the only one who didn¡¯t look convinced, but I checked the time, and as though to prove the clock right, my stomach let out a low growl.

    ¡°For now,¡± I said, running from the subject like a coward, ¡°it¡¯s after five, so we should head back to the Black Rose and get some dinner.¡±

    The twins traded a look, something passing between them silently, and dubiously, Rika said, ¡°If you¡¯re sure, Senpai.¡±

    Beep-beep!

    Da Vinci¡¯s image appeared in the air, trademark smile firmly in place. ¡°Before you do that, I have something that should make your time there in America quite a bit simpler.¡±

    ¡°I like simpler,¡± Rika said.

    ¡°Is this related to our money problems?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°It is, indeed,¡± Da Vinci said. ¡°The Director, you see, thought it might be convenient to use¡­ Well, to cut a long explanation down to its essentials, Singularities release a sort of quantum spiritron that plays something of a role in your presence inside one. She thought it might be possible to turn some of them into counterfeit money for you to use, but it would be quite inconvenient to carry around rolls of hard cash in your pockets, wouldn¡¯t it? To that end, I came up with a bit of a more convenient solution. Mash, if you would?¡±

    ¡°Ah!¡± Mash leapt out of her seat. ¡°Right, of course!¡±

    She strode quickly back over to the center of the room and placed her shield back down, and then stepped back. A quick flash of light and a small surge of energy later, a box slightly larger than a chequebook sat atop of it innocently.

    ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± Rika said skeptically. ¡°I was kinda expecting something more than that.¡±

    ¡°You might be singing a different tune once you look inside,¡± Da Vinci told her knowingly.

    Mash bent down, retrieving first the box and then her shield, and she brought it back over to us to hand it to Ritsuka. He took it and slid the lid off, blinking down at the contents, then reached in and pulled out ¡ª

    ¡°A debit card?¡± said Rika, confused.

    ¡°It has your name on it,¡± her brother said, passing the first one over. As Rika examined hers, he pulled three more out of the box, one each for me, Mash, and Ritsuka, and he handed each one off to the person they were labeled for.

    When I took mine, it didn¡¯t seem like anything special. It looked like an ordinary bank card, with the Chaldea logo printed on the front in black against a silver background, and the only thing differentiating them from each other was whose name was printed in blocky lettering on them. Heavier and less fragile, like it was made of some other material instead of simple plastic, but in just about every other way, completely indistinguishable from something I might have picked up at a local bank branch.

    ¡°Of course, there¡¯s no such thing as a Chaldea bank, not in that era nor in this one,¡± Da Vinci acknowledged. ¡°Technically speaking, there aren¡¯t any funds for all of you to draw on, so I suppose it¡¯s quite fortunate that those aren¡¯t ordinary bank cards, isn¡¯t it? I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve noticed by now that they¡¯re significantly heavier than normal ¡ª that¡¯s part of why. You see, although you can use them as you would any ordinary debit card, what those cards do is create ¡®ghost¡¯ money.¡±

    Ah. I think I understood where she was going with this.

    ¡°Ghost money?¡± Mash echoed, confused.

    ¡°Something tells me Casper¡¯s got nothing to do with this, Da Vinci-chan,¡± Rika said wryly.

    Da Vinci chuckled. ¡°Indeed not. As I said, you can use these cards like normal debit cards, and when you do, they will convince the card reader that the payment has gone through without any problems. You will ¡ª almost literally, in fact ¡ª be creating money from nothing. As far as anyone else is concerned, you will be making a completely legitimate purchase.¡±

    This would almost certainly never work on an Earth Bet where Watchdog was still a thing, and definitely not when Number Man was still around to handle finances and make sure the numbers lined up. Here, however, where Cauldron was missing in action and Coil was the one holding civilization up in at least this part of New England¡­ Maybe it would actually work.

    ¡°This sounds really illegal,¡± Ritsuka said.

    ¡°Oh, it certainly is,¡± Da Vinci admitted. ¡°The UN will confiscate them without a doubt, and government watchdog organizations will probably spend the next ten years scrutinizing your every purchase to make sure you¡¯re not using them once this is all over. For now, however, as a matter of operational success, I think the rules can be bent in this case.¡±

    ¡°What if we get caught?¡± I asked.

    ¡°They work in tandem with your mystic codes, so it¡¯s not as though simply anyone can make use of them whenever and wherever they like simply by having one or the other,¡± Da Vinci explained. ¡°And in the worst case scenario where the federal government sends agents after you¡­ Well, that would still give us a point of contact with whatever remains of the federal government, wouldn¡¯t it?¡±

    Not a very amicable one, I thought, although she wasn¡¯t entirely wrong. If the government was still in a strong enough position to arrest us for bank fraud amidst everything else, then that would tell us quite a bit about what was going on and give us an angle for contacting more legitimate authorities than a supervillain.

    If it came down to it and no one in the government wanted to believe us or help, then our Servants broke us out and we were fugitives who had to rely on the likes of Coil and Accord to continue our mission, and that would just put us back where we were now, wouldn¡¯t it?

    I pocketed my card, slipping it into my utility pouch with the rest of my tools. ¡°Thanks for this, Da Vinci.¡±

    ¡°Just don¡¯t go on a spending spree,¡± Da Vinci teased. ¡°People are still going to notice if you drop a hundred thousand dollars on a new car, you know!¡±

    Rika¡¯s cheeks colored as though she had been planning exactly that, and a huff of air made it out of my nostrils, not quite a snort. She didn¡¯t think we were going to be able to take a Ferrari back with us, did she? There was no way Marie would have let her get away with it.

    With her piece said, her gifts delivered, and the explanation given, Da Vinci let us go and the connection dropped.

    ¡°Well,¡± said A¨ªfe into the silence, ¡°that will certainly be convenient, won¡¯t it?¡±

    At least for now, anyway. I wasn¡¯t sure what we were going to do if the fluctuations bore out and we found ourselves in an 18th century town, but I suppose in that case, we¡¯d have to see if Emiya¡¯s counterfeiting ability was up to snuff.

    ¡°It feels a little weird,¡± Ritsuka admitted, ¡°but I guess it¡¯s better than having to steal money from people, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°I still say we could have hit a drug house,¡± Rika opined; she tucked her own card away, ¡°but this is a pretty cool thing, too. And, hey, bright side ¡ª no need to worry about being pulled over by a drug sniffing dog!¡±

    ¡°Fou, fou-kyu!¡± the little gremlin agreed.

    Mash sighed, but slipped her own card into the storage compartment of her shield. ¡°It feels dishonest using something like this, but I guess it can¡¯t be helped.¡±

    ¡°We can worry about it later,¡± I said. ¡°For now, let¡¯s go get some dinner.¡±

    No one protested that idea, especially when Ritsuka and Rika¡¯s stomachs both growled to show they were hungry, too, and so in the twilight of the setting sun, we made the short trek back to the Black Rose. Greg ¡ª still on duty at the front door ¡ª gave us one look and immediately let us inside.

    I wondered if he¡¯d been told we were working with Accord now or if Celtchar¡¯s name still carried enough weight to get us in a second time.

    The bar in the back was much busier now than it had been at lunchtime, but there was still enough space for Archer to gesture to a stretch empty enough for all of us to take a spot with relative privacy. We all picked seats and sat, leaving only A¨ªfe to remain in spirit form this time, the only one who didn¡¯t have the clothes to walk in without drawing immediate attention.

    Note to self: one of the things we were going to have to make sure we had was casual clothes for everyone. The convenience was simply too big an issue to leave alone.

    After a few minutes seeing to the other customers ¡ª serving up drinks with a grace and aplomb that I might have thought him an actual bartender in life ¡ª Archer meandered over to our end of the bar. He retrieved another set of menus, but with a deft sleight of hand, slipped something in mine before he slid it over. He leaned forward just a little as he pinned me with an intense stare.

    ¡°Regarding your business with Mister Accord from earlier,¡± he murmured, barely audible amongst the buzz of other voices. And then he straightened, leaving behind a small slip of paper tucked neatly in the edges of my menu. I leaned forward, surreptitiously dropping my own hand over it, and Archer¡¯s mouth eased into a smile even though his eagle eyes remained sharp.

    ¡°Now,¡± he said, ¡°I believe I told the lot of you earlier that your meals for today are covered, yes? What would you like to order?¡±

    Ritsuka and Rika both glanced my way, eyes shooting to my hands, and picking up on what must have happened, they acted like normal.

    ¡°Actually,¡± said Ritsuka, turning back to his own menu, ¡°I think I want to try something different, this time. Can I start off with some curry chips?¡±

    Archer whipped out his notepad again, twirling the pen around with a deft motion of his fingers. ¡°Certainly!¡±

    ¡°Jameson wings for me!¡± Rika chimed in.

    And as the others ordered their food, I lifted my hand and glanced down at the slip of paper. In Archer¡¯s neat, looping cursive, there was an address, two different phone numbers ¡ª one marked with an ¡®A,¡¯ the other with a ¡®C¡¯ ¡ª and a time and date. Noon, three days from now, at an office building in downtown Brockton Bay.

    My fingers twitched, but I managed to control myself enough not to crumple the note.

    Our meeting with Coil.

 Chapter CLXXXI: No Place Like Home

    Chapter CLXXXI: No Place Like Home

    The first thing I noticed was the warmth.

    For a long moment, there was only the vague sense of comfort, of something soft cradling me and something equally as soft covering me in a blob of gentle heat, and I laid there for some time, completely relaxed. I forgot that I was on deployment inside a Singularity instead of safely ensconced in my room at Chaldea, surrounded by my books and my tea collection and all of the familiar comforts of life as I had known it for the last two-and-a-half years. I was comfortable, I was at peace.

    Slowly, however, the details began to fill in. The easy pressure of a soft mattress at my back, the limp weight of a bedsheet and blanket both pulled up to my shoulders to ward away the autumn chill. The soft rasp of air moving through the vents. The insistent touch of the early morning sun peeking through the curtains and dancing upon my eyelids. The dance of my swarm as they went about their lives as best they could as the weather changed and shifted.

    The tickle of hair brushing against my chin.

    Abruptly, I was catapulted to full wakefulness, and my eyes snapped open to stare at the blurry colors of an unfamiliar room. An expanse of off-white stretched above me, painted in pale golds by the sunlight streaming in through the window. My mind raced through the night before, providing me an explanation for why I was lying in a bed in the Hyatt Regency hotel, why Mash was in the bed a few feet from mine, and why I was wearing a complimentary set of pajamas instead of my uniform.

    There was no explanation, however, for why the freshly laundered bedclothes smelled faintly of sulphur, why strands of hair were tickling my chin, why a tiny arm was thrown over my stomach, and there most definitely wasn¡¯t an explanation for why Jackie¡¯s head was tucked into my shoulder as she slept cuddled up against my side.

    I pressed my eyes shut tight, but it didn¡¯t change anything. She was still there, little breaths of air puffing against my collar and through the gaps in the buttons of my pajamas.

    I gave her a squeeze, and into her hair, murmured, ¡°Jackie.¡±

    ¡°Mm.¡± A hum vibrated out of her nostrils, and she shifted against me, pressing her cheek deeper into my shoulder. Equally as quiet, she replied, ¡°Good morning, Mommy.¡±

    As though there was nothing at all wrong with this picture and it was the same as every other morning we¡¯d woken up together in my bed.

    ¡°You¡¯re not supposed to be here,¡± I told her.

    She shifted, pulling herself tighter against me and squeezing as though she was afraid I might disappear if she let go. ¡°We know,¡± she admitted. ¡°But we didn¡¯t know how long Mommy was going to be gone, and we hated the idea of being away from Mommy, so we snuck into the Rayshift Chamber and Mommy¡¯s coffin.¡±

    The shiver in my coffin, the way the skin of my prosthetic arm had broken out in goosebumps ¡ª she¡¯d been here from the beginning, I realized. All the way back when we first arrived, up through our meeting with Celtchar, Archer, and later Accord, and at no point at all had she been noticed ¡ª of course not, as long as she remained in spirit form and didn¡¯t do anything to make herself known. Her Presence Concealment was high enough that she could have followed us around indefinitely.

    A wry thought pointed out that she could easily win any game of hide-and-seek she played.

    And after slipping under the noses of easily half a dozen Servants without any of them apparently any the wiser, completely dodging the attention of everyone from Arash to Marie to Da Vinci, she had gotten herself ¡®caught¡¯ by climbing into bed with me. Naturally, long after it would have been feasible to consider the option of sending her back.

    ¡°You realize how much trouble you¡¯re in, right?¡± I asked her.

    There was a moment of silence and hesitation, and then she nodded against my chest as though to hide herself from my anger.

    That was probably the worst part, because I wasn¡¯t really that angry. Annoyed, yes. Frustrated, a little. But more than anything, I was resigned, because I probably should have expected something like this and there wasn¡¯t really anything I could do about it right now. It was honestly more trouble than it was worth to pack her up and send her back to Chaldea, and frankly, all things considered, having an Assassin around who could so thoroughly escape notice might wind up coming in handy in the future.

    Especially if we had to face Jack and the Nine at some point. Her Presence Concealment might even be good enough to slip past Cherish, if it came to that.

    ¡°We¡¯ll discuss your punishment later,¡± I whispered to her, and she nodded against me again meekly. ¡°Okay. Time to get up, then.¡±

    Perhaps to avoid digging herself into an even deeper hole, Jackie didn¡¯t protest even the slightest, although the sudden rush of cool air that slammed into me when I threw the covers off made me rethink my choice for just a second. Only a second, however, because the importance of our mission trumped my comfort, so instead of bundling myself back up and lying back down to snuggle with Jackie, I forced myself to swing my legs around and off of the bed and stand up. The floor, at least, was carpeted, a small mercy that meant I didn¡¯t have to deal with the shock of cold tiles. Jackie climbed out of bed behind me.

    ¡°Why don¡¯t you head into the bathroom and get ready to get showered?¡± I suggested. ¡°I¡¯ll be with you as soon as I wake up Mash.¡±

    Jackie nodded. ¡°Okay, Mommy.¡±

    She padded quietly over to the doorway that led to the ensuite bathroom, and I took the few steps over to the other bed and leaned down to take a gentle hold of Mash¡¯s shoulder.

    ¡°Mash,¡± I whispered to her. ¡°Time to wake up.¡±

    ¡°Mm,¡± Mash hummed into her pillow, and then, abruptly, she gasped and jerked around, taking swift hold of my wrist with almost bruising force. ¡°Miss Taylor! There¡¯s¡­!¡±

    ¡°Mommy?¡± asked Jackie, peeking out from the bathroom.

    Mash¡¯s head turned towards her, and understanding slowly dawned on her face. ¡°O-oh. Um, hello, Jackie. Good morning.¡±

    ¡°Good morning, Mash,¡± Jackie replied politely.

    Mash turned back to me, a confused question plain on her face, so I told her, ¡°She stowed away during the Rayshift and has been following us around since the moment we arrived.¡± And with some humor, I added, ¡°Apparently, she couldn¡¯t resist climbing in bed with me last night, or else we still wouldn¡¯t know she¡¯d tagged along.¡±

    ¡°I see.¡± Mash sighed. ¡°Director Animusphere isn¡¯t going to be happy about that, is she?¡±

    ¡°Probably not.¡± But that was for me to handle. Jackie was my Servant, after all, so her punishment was naturally for me to see to, the same way Shakespeare had been for Ritsuka.

    A glance at the clock showed it was almost nine in the morning, so everyone would have gotten more than enough sleep by this point. ¡°You should go get the twins up. Jackie and I are going to grab a shower, and you can get one when we¡¯re done. We¡¯ll be leaving for Brockton after breakfast.¡±

    Mash nodded. ¡°Right.¡±

    As Mash climbed out of her own bed, I went and joined Jackie in the bathroom, shucking off my complimentary pajamas while Jackie just dematerialized her clothes. We stepped into the shower together, setting the water just hot enough to be soothing and relaxing, and set about washing up. I tried not to think about who might have been doing what in there before me, if only because there was no way a hotel like the Hyatt Regency didn¡¯t clean their rooms to a mirror shine.

    While we washed, I reached down the thread of my bond with Arash and asked him, Did you know Jackie was here the entire time?

    There was a pause. Then, She was, was she? I thought I noticed something earlier, but there was no ill intent, so if we were being followed, I didn¡¯t want to spook them.

    You still should have told me, I said.

    Yeah, sorry, I really should have, he agreed. I didn¡¯t say anything because it was only a vague suspicion.

    A vague suspicion from someone like him went a whole lot further than he seemed to think it did, but I had put my trust in him enough times to let it slide. That he had decided not to say anything meant that even that vague suspicion was a lot vaguer and a lot flimsier than it sounded.

    You can make it up to me by ordering breakfast for ten o¡¯clock, I told him.

    A burble of mirth not my own came across the bond. Aye-aye, Captain.

    Once Jackie and I were as clean as we were going to reasonably get, we came out of the bathroom ¡ª dressed in the Hyatt¡¯s complimentary bathrobes, because they were apparently sparing no expense for ¡®Accord¡¯s associates¡¯ ¡ª to find Mash waiting her turn.

    ¡°Senpai and Senpai are up, Miss Taylor,¡± she reported dutifully. ¡°I told them you were getting a shower, and Senpai thought that was a good idea, so they¡¯re taking turns right now, too.¡±

    ¡°Good job, Mash,¡± I said. ¡°Speaking of, feel free to take your turn now.¡±

    ¡°Of course.¡± She gave me a short bow; I¡¯d gotten so used to her incongruently Japanese mannerisms that I barely noted it. ¡°Please excuse me.¡±

    And into the bathroom she went. A minute or so later, I heard the shower turn on again and the patter of water hitting the tile. Before I could sit down, however, there was a knock at the door, and when I went over and answered it, Emiya stood there, holding a hairdryer in one hand. He lifted it in offering.

    ¡°Figured you might need this,¡± he said, ¡°seeing as Master asked for one, too.¡±

    I accepted it with a simple, ¡°Thanks,¡± and he went back to the other room. I wondered if he was relieved or not that we would be going down to the Hyatt¡¯s in-house restaurant for breakfast, seeing as that also came with our rooms, meaning that he wasn¡¯t going to have to cook for once.

    By the time I had finished drying my and Jackie¡¯s hair, Mash was stepping out of the bathroom, also dressed in one of those complimentary bathrobes, and she blinked at the sight of the hairdryer.

    ¡°Emiya¡¯s work,¡± was all I had to say for her to understand.

    It was almost quarter to ten when we left our room and met up with the others in the hallway, all of our (relatively meagre) supplies packed away and ready to go. Ritsuka and Rika looked as though they¡¯d had one of the best sleeps of their lives, such were the relaxed expressions on their faces, and since neither of them seemed at all surprised to see Jackie, Mash had evidently explained her presence earlier.

    We meandered down the hallways and the plaid-patterned carpet to pick up the breakfast trays that had been prepared for us, courtesy of Arash calling it in earlier, and went down to the lounge and restaurant to sit at one of the fancy, polished wooden tables to eat. Several other guests were there with us, side-eyeing our group and especially Jackie in her quasi-Victorian clothing, but other than some murmurs, no one made anything of it.

    Undoubtedly, we would have normally needed a reservation just to be seated, but Accord had gone several extra miles to see to our comfort while we were here in Boston. If nothing else, I could give the man credit for this: he did nothing by halves.

    After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel ¡ª not without some regret from the twins, of whom Rika lamented the luxuries we were going to be missing out on later ¡ª leaving behind only a note to Accord expressing our gratitude for his generosity.

    Just because he¡¯d been surprisingly level-headed and calm during our meeting didn¡¯t mean I was willing to trust the apparent absence of his neuroses. Better to observe the niceties, just in case.

    Once we were back outside, it was time to mount up again. As I reached for the metal tube that was my miraculous e-bike, I addressed the twins and Mash. ¡°Brockton Bay is about another hour north of here, give or take, closer to an hour and a half if the traffic is bad. We¡¯ll be taking the most direct route there straight through, so if you need to make a stop for some reason, let A¨ªfe know and she can contact the rest of us to pull over.¡±

    ¡°Senpai, I¡¯ve got a question!¡± Rika¡¯s hand shot up into the air. When I nodded to her, she asked, ¡°Why are we headed straight there two days before our meeting?¡±

    ¡°So we can do some on-the-ground reconnaissance,¡± I answered. ¡°There¡¯s a lot that we still don¡¯t know about what¡¯s going on, but Brockton is apparently at the center of all of the important stuff right now, so the state of the city itself will tell us a lot about our¡­contact¡¯s position and how much help we can reasonably expect.¡±

    Ritsuka and Mash shared a look, but if either of them had any thoughts about what I¡¯d said, neither of them gave voice to it.

    ¡°I guess that means the rest of us get to follow along out of sight,¡± said Emiya. He shrugged. ¡°Well, I don¡¯t suppose it matters that much, now that Da Vinci has her hands on that rifle.¡±

    Right ¡ª we¡¯d almost forgotten to pass that on last night. It was a bit embarrassing that we¡¯d had to make an extra call before checking in at the Hyatt just so we could send it in for analysis.

    ¡°You should still stay close,¡± I told him. ¡°If Brockton really is the bastion of proper history against the Singularity, then there¡¯s no way there aren¡¯t more Servants hanging out in and around the city.¡±

    ¡°What she said,¡± Rika echoed.

    Emiya accepted this with a nod. Privately, as a twist of the tube and a trickle of magical energy formed my bike and helmet, I reached out to Arash and said, While we¡¯re heading to Brockton, I want you to go west.

    He paused. West?

    We still don¡¯t know much about what¡¯s going on with these fluctuations, but I have a hunch I want you to check out, I explained. To the west of here are two towns, Lexington and Concord, that played fairly major parts in the Revolutionary War. Check them out, see what¡¯s going on with them, but don¡¯t engage if you run into another Servant.

    Right, go sightseeing and get out, he said. After a moment, he asked, What are you expecting to find there?

    My lips drew into a tight line, hidden behind my helmet, and I could only admit, I don¡¯t know.

    ¡°Got it,¡± he said aloud. He pinched his shirt between his thumb and index finger and gave it a tug. ¡°Mind if I leave these clothes with you? They¡¯ve kinda grown on me.¡±

    Why not? ¡°There should be enough room in my bag. Just be mindful of the spiders.¡±

    ¡°Right.¡±

    For just a second, he dematerialized, and as his outfit dropped, he rematerialized and caught it. I shifted in my seat to give him access to my bag, and with a slip of the zipper, he stashed them inside, and then disappeared again.

    ¡°Stay with me, Jackie,¡± I ordered. She nodded.

    ¡°Okay, Mommy.¡±

    And as she vanished, too, I turned back to the others, all helmeted up and straddling their own bikes. ¡°Ready to go?¡±

    Three heads nodded back to me, and with no more reason to delay, we wheeled our bikes out into the street, and with me in the lead, took off. The familiar comforting weight of A¨ªfe and Emiya¡¯s presence stayed, but Arash almost immediately peeled away in the other direction, heading towards two of America¡¯s most historic sites.

    At ten-thirty in the morning on a weekday, traffic in Boston was ¡ª perhaps unsurprisingly ¡ª fairly light, so it didn¡¯t take us long at all to make our way back to the highway and start north on I-95. Even accounting for that, however, other vehicles were shockingly sparse, and there were long stretches of time where it was just the three of us and an endless, open road leading off towards the horizon.

    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

    Shouldn¡¯t there have been more people? Granted, I wasn¡¯t anything like an expert on interstate travel and how common it was on the day to day, but it felt like there should have been a lot more people on the road with us than there were. Transports taking goods north and south at the very least, ferrying furniture or fruits, lumber or steel, or even just packing crates full of the latest smartphone.

    The way Accord and Celtchar had made it sound, life had continued on largely uninterrupted thanks to Coil¡¯s efforts. Had they oversold it? Or was there something I was missing?

    As it turned out, yes, there was something I was missing, or rather, there was something missing that should have been there, because we made it maybe twenty miles outside of Boston before we hit a snag that also happened to be a clue: the highway abruptly turned from asphalt and pavement to a rough, dirt road cutting through the woods. No warning, no transition, just a sheer drop into the dirt as though someone had cleaved away a portion of the road with one of Defiant¡¯s knives writ large.

    I pulled up to a stop right in front of where the highway suddenly gave way, baffled. The twins and Mash pulled up next to me.

    ¡°Whoa,¡± said Rika. ¡°That¡¯s, uh, not supposed to be like that, is it?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± I said, ¡°no, it isn¡¯t.¡±

    Looking closer showed that someone had clearly tried their best to even things out and keep the highway open. The dirt road that stretched between the two disconnected parts of pavement ¡ª because I could see further on, maybe a mile or two away, where the highway reappeared ¡ª had been leveled off as best as could be expected so that the drop wasn¡¯t so jarring, and it had also clearly been done with modern equipment, too. In fact, I was willing to bet that this dirt road had been cleared through the forest around us specifically for the purposes of connecting one side of the highway to the other.

    But that made it obvious this was a recent ¡ª and temporary ¡ª solution. I wouldn¡¯t have been at all surprised to find out Accord already had a plan in the works to rebuild the missing section of highway.

    ¡°It¡¯s strange,¡± Mash murmured. ¡°It¡¯s true that this area is supposed to be largely woodlands according to our maps, but¡­it¡¯s almost like there was never a trace of North American industry here. Like a puzzle piece that shouldn¡¯t fit, but the edges match anyway.¡±

    ¡°What could have caused something like this?¡± asked Ritsuka.

    ¡°I mean, it¡¯s not like this is the first time something like this has happened, is it?¡± Rika pointed out. ¡°It¡¯s just that last time it was more people than places. Tohsaka was from the 1790s, remember?¡±

    ¡°Oh,¡± said Mash. ¡°So then this¡­ The instability caused by the Grail is making different eras bleed into each other? Miss Da Vinci would probably have a better idea, but I suppose it makes sense.¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a difference between a couple of people popping up decades or centuries from where they¡¯re supposed to be and whole sections of geography,¡± I said.

    ¡°Unless it has something to do with the size of the Singularity,¡± said Ritsuka. ¡°Orl¨¦ans and Septem covered a lot of space, but compared to this one¡­ I don¡¯t think either of them are even close.¡±

    Maybe. It might even explain the fluctuation between the eras on the sensors, because if the sheer size was causing more irregularities, then it might manifest that way. I just wasn¡¯t sure it quite explained everything as neatly as it seemed at first glance.

    A pressure on the edge of my mind begged my attention. Master, you¡¯re going to want to see this.

    I think you¡¯re going to want to see this, too, I replied.

    A pause. You found something?

    A stretch of land where the highway just disappears, I told him. You?

    ¡­Maybe something related, he said. Borrow my eyes for a minute?

    My lips pursed. ¡°Hold on a moment,¡± I said aloud.

    And then I closed my eyes and projected my mind down the thread connecting me to him. In an instant, I was looking out at the world as he saw it, and for a second, I wasn¡¯t even sure what I was looking at. But as I peered closer, letting myself take in all of the details while he swept his gaze from one side to the other ¡ª

    ¡°What the hell?¡±

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka asked, concerned.

    This is Lexington? I demanded.

    His head turned, and he focused on a sign so that I could see it. The words on it said, ¡®Welcome to Lexington, Massachusetts.¡¯

    It is, he confirmed.

    But it couldn¡¯t have been. Lexington was a historic site, that was true, with several historic buildings and memorials commemorating the Minutemen and the militia and their contributions to the Revolution, but it was still a modern town. It should have pavement and plumbing and power lines, cars and SUVs and traffic signs, aluminum siding and cookie-cutter shingles and boring taupe paint jobs. It was not Boston, but it wasn¡¯t a time capsule from the nineteenth century either.

    What I was seeing was none of that. The roads were dirt all the way through, as though they had never even heard of asphalt, without a single traffic sign or pickup truck in sight. The houses looked as though they had been plucked right out of Colonial times, constructed of brick and stone and wooden slats, and there were no concrete driveways, only worn, dusty paths framed by untamed grass. There wasn¡¯t a single power line or telephone pole anywhere, not a solitary sign of a water meter or light bulb.

    That was to say nothing of the people meandering about and seeing to their daily tasks, dressed like figures in a reenactment troupe or actors in a documentary, all rough wool and dark, muddy colors. White ascots and shirts with ruffled sleeves, dark brown coats, vests, and pants that cut off just below the knee, with only the occasional splash of color in the form of muted blues and greens. Everything that needed to be fastened was fastened with a button or a leather cord, because there were no zippers. No cellphones or sneakers either.

    It was as though someone had taken Colonial era Lexington and placed it where modern Lexington was supposed to be.

    I wasn¡¯t sure what I was expecting when I had Arash head out to check on Lexington and Concord, but this¡­wasn¡¯t quite it. A hunch that something was going to be out of place or off ¡ª this was quite a bit more than that.

    Was this what was causing the fluctuations in Chaldea¡¯s readings of this Singularity? Or¡­was whatever caused those fluctuations the same thing that was causing this, too? Those militiamen, did they have something to do with this, or were they victims trying to do what they thought was right as the very world around them shifted and changed into something alien and impossible?

    I wished just then that Arash had a camera, or maybe a smartphone. Some way of capturing this on film so that we could go back and comb over it later to look for more clues.

    Head onto Concord and see if it¡¯s like this, too, I ordered Arash. We¡¯ll meet back up in Brockton and¡­try to figure some of this out.

    Understood, he replied, and then his presence retreated from my head.

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka tried again. ¡°Is something wrong?¡±

    ¡°Miss Taylor?¡± Mash echoed him.

    ¡°Fou¡­¡± the little gremlin grumbled from in front of her.

    ¡°It¡¯s nothing. We¡¯ll talk about it later,¡± I said, brushing their concerns off. ¡°For now, let¡¯s keep going. As long as a T-rex doesn¡¯t pop out of the bushes, offroading for a few minutes shouldn¡¯t be a problem.¡±

    ¡°Wait, is that actually something that can happen?¡± Rika squeaked. ¡°Is it actually a thing that we might run into Rexy?¡±

    Rexy? Really? Had someone actually named the T-rex from Jurassic Park Rexy?

    ¡°Come on,¡± I said instead of dignifying that question, and my bike purred as it lurched back into motion.

    ¡°S-Senpai!¡± Rika called from behind me. ¡°Wait, Senpai!¡±

    The drop onto the dirt road was rough, rough enough even with our magical e-bikes that the lack of other traffic made a whole lot more sense, because for something that weighed several tons and wasn¡¯t designed for it, it would undoubtedly have played merry hell on the suspension. The dirt road itself, however, was smooth enough that the ride across it wasn¡¯t all that bad. Da Vinci really knew what she was doing when she made these things, that was for sure.

    Despite the fact that I¡¯d been joking with Rika and didn¡¯t expect to actually be attacked by a T-rex, I kept an eye out with my swarm the whole way, because a bear or something could still decide to try and take a bite out of us for encroaching on its territory or whatever. No such thing happened, and we made it to the other side, where the asphalt road reappeared again, without being accosted. Our bikes pulled up the drop, and then we were back on pavement and driving away from that break in the highway.

    Fortunately, it turned out to be the only such thing we encountered on our way up to Brockton. The rest of the way there was interrupted only by Arash prodding me to let me know that Concord, much like Lexington, looked as though it had come straight out of the late eighteenth century. He had, as he told me, elected not to get too close, so that he didn¡¯t startle anyone, dressed as he was in armor centuries out of date by their standards.

    It was another clue, but I still didn¡¯t know what it meant. Not for sure. Maybe Coil would be able to help and tell us more, maybe not, and I wasn¡¯t sure how much I was willing to trust whatever he said to begin with.

    As I¡¯d promised, a little under an hour and a half after we¡¯d left Boston, the Brockton Bay skyline appeared on the horizon, looming over us and stretching up towards the sky. Around us, the foliage began to drop away, replaced by squat buildings and small businesses. A pizzeria, a dry cleaner¡¯s, old buildings that looked like they had been constructed back when the city was smaller and everything was shorter.

    At a traffic stop, I swung my bag around, reached inside, and pulled out my ravens. We were far enough from the biggest part of the city that there weren¡¯t enough people around to really notice something that would so obviously scream ¡®cape!¡¯ to the average denizen of Brockton Bay.

    It wasn¡¯t long after that, however, before we entered downtown proper, and a city much more like Boston grew up around us, tall buildings made of glass, concrete, and steel that stretched towards the sky. The barren highway became a bustling city street, with pedestrians out and about living their daily lives, phones to their ears or briefcases in hand as they stepped out for a quick lunch. Brockton Bay¡¯s rich and successful, the upper class, the upper middle class, all of the people who could afford to live in the most expensive part of the city without ever having to look at the people further north who were struggling to get by.

    If I found a good spot, I could probably even pick out the Medhall building, where Kaiser and all of his friends had jobs during the day while they pretended to be champions of the poor, white underclass at night. Or the Rig, if it was still standing and hadn¡¯t been washed ashore by Leviathan, or even the PRT HQ. Maybe Fugly Bob¡¯s would still be open, and I could introduce Rika to the Challenger Burger and all of the other greasy, unhealthy guilty pleasures that place called food.

    Look at me, getting all nostalgic.

    Another presence prodded my mind, and I took hold of that tendril and asked, Something wrong?

    Rika is wondering where we go from here, A¨ªfe told me, and if we¡¯re going to be spending the night in a hotel again.

    Beneath my helmet, my lips pursed. It was a fair question, and with the hacked cards Da Vinci had provided us, we really could have gone to the most upscale hotel in the city to enjoy the next few days. It wasn¡¯t like Brockton didn¡¯t have its own version of the Hyatt Regency or other, equally fancy places in Downtown. Coil might even be generous enough to foot the bill the way Accord did, if only to keep up the appearance of generosity and magnanimity he had apparently cultivated over the last few months.

    But¡­

    No, I replied. We aren¡¯t going to stay at a hotel, but I have an idea for where we can go.

    ¡­those were all places we could be tracked to. They left a trail that could be followed, and if Coil had other Assassins in his employ, we would basically be asking him to spy on us. As Jackie had proven, as long as they stayed out of sight, we might not ever know they were there.

    Better to choose someplace unexpected, someplace that wasn¡¯t so obvious and wouldn¡¯t let him know we were here before the day was out. Someplace that would let us in first and ask questions afterwards, where my face would be enough to get us inside.

    I hadn¡¯t missed the fact that none of the stuff Rika found on the Undersiders even mentioned a bug-controlling cape, let alone the name Skitter. Either this Coil had never met me, or he had done something to remove my younger self from the picture already, and we were going to have to find out which fairly quickly.

    We headed further into the city, and like it had been in Boston, once we got to areas of denser population, people all over started to notice us in our sleek, futuristic e-bikes. Phones came out, and pictures were being taken, especially every time we had to stop for a traffic light. Without a fight going on, we weren¡¯t quite drawing a crowd, but we were riding around on what was obviously Tinkertech, and people weren¡¯t any less capable of noticing that here than they had been back in Boston.

    The twins and Mash weren¡¯t comfortable with the attention, but the fact I was ignoring it told them that they should, too, so they tried to put it out of their minds and focus on following me. I could tell, just from watching them with my ravens and with my bugs, that they weren¡¯t entirely successful, but there was nothing I could do for them just then.

    They¡¯d never really had to deal with something like this before, had they? Fuyuki had been empty of everything except us and the Servants, Jeanne Alter had left a trail of devastation and dead bodies in her wake in Orl¨¦ans, Nero had largely absorbed any admiration directed our way in Septem, Okeanos had just been a bunch of pirates who treated us like comrades, and London had forced all of the citizenry to stay indoors or risk death. Being the center of attention for a bunch of gawking onlookers was new for them.

    Maybe it was better that way. If they let it all get to their heads, then they¡¯d be in for a rude awakening once this was all over and the Association came knocking.

    We went further north, traveling through the center of the city and meeting no other Servants and spying no signs of capes hanging about, and eventually, the tall, towering office buildings fell behind us and we found ourselves once more among older, squatter buildings made of brick and wood. The trappings of urban living gave way to something a little more suburban, and as we started riding through neighborhoods and residential areas, our pace slowed just a little.

    I wondered if the twins had caught on yet. It was true, I hadn¡¯t come out and said it directly, but if we weren¡¯t going to stay at a hotel in the middle of the city, then where else would we find a place to settle down for the night without leaving it entirely? Had I been too subtle, or had us heading out here into the suburbs clued them in?

    Some part of me even felt guilty. For the twins, it would still be months and months and maybe the better part of another year before they could even hope to glimpse their parents¡¯ faces again. They wouldn¡¯t get to go home until the Grand Order was completed, Solomon was stopped, and the world was saved, and by the time they did, with Mash¡¯s fate on their minds, they might not even be able to enjoy it.

    When I looked at it that way, this was just selfish. Convenient, but selfish. Right then, however¡­ I guess I wanted to be a little selfish, because this was the closest I would get to closure for the foreseeable future.

    It wasn¡¯t even really the same person. Dad, my dad, had gone through so much more, had come face to face with everything I was and all of the things I¡¯d done, and he wasn¡¯t perfect, we were never perfect, but all of the masks had been stripped away and the wounds had finally been given some air to start healing.

    My dad¡­might already be dead. So even if it was selfish, just once, I¡­wanted to pretend.

    The further we got from Downtown, the poorer the neighborhoods became, although they were still very clearly well off enough to afford the amenities of modern American life ¡ª clean, running water, electricity, things like that ¡ª and eventually, they started looking more and more familiar. I stopped having to check the street names or double-check which turn to take, because I already knew, and a powerful sense of¡­something kept growing inside of me.

    Nostalgia? Longing? I couldn¡¯t give it a name.

    By the time we arrived on a street I could have navigated with my eyes closed, my heart was thudding in my chest, and anticipation bubbled uncomfortably in my stomach. Scenarios bloomed in my head, and I imagined different ways this could all go. What should I say first? How should I explain things? Somehow, it didn¡¯t seem as simple as, ¡®Hi, Dad, long time no see.¡¯

    I never did figure it out. Nothing I came up with seemed good enough to cut through the awkwardness, and if my younger self was there instead of at school or in Chicago, that would only make things stranger, wouldn¡¯t it? At worst, I was four years older and a whole lot more jaded than my sixteen-year-old self would be, and there was no way he wouldn¡¯t notice, wouldn¡¯t cotton on.

    Would his first move be calling the PRT? Was¡­there a PRT still here, with Coil in charge?

    All too soon ¡ª and yet not soon enough ¡ª we pulled up to an old house that must have been built at least fifty years ago, and it looked it. Not run down, not dilapidated, but clearly not as new or as well-maintained as some of the better homes closer to Downtown, and clearly in need of a few minor repairs here and there.

    I bet that front step still creaks, I thought with a kind of fond exasperation.

    In peeling letters, half worn away by the elements, the mailbox said, ¡®HEBERT.¡¯

    ¡°We¡¯re here,¡± I announced.

    My bike evaporated beneath me, dropping me unceremoniously on the pavement as it took my helmet with it, and I mentally mapped what I remembered of the inside. It would be a little cramped having to accommodate the four of us ¡ª five, that was, if Jackie stayed materialized ¡ª but I was sure Dad could be convinced. My younger self might be frustrated at having to give up the hiding places secreted in the basement, but in the worst case, we could spruce things up down there and have enough space for our team to sleep in.

    Maybe it would be better if I went alone first. Explained things. It was going to be a lot to take in no matter ¡ª

    ¡°Senpai?¡± Ritsuka¡¯s voice cut into my thoughts. I turned back to him; he was still on his bike, still had his helmet on, but even muffled a little, the concern in his tone was clear. ¡°Are you sure?¡±

    ¡°Sure¡­?¡±

    He pointed to the side, and I followed the direction of his finger to the other side of the driveway, where a wooden post had been driven into the dirt a few feet from the sidewalk. An aluminum sign hung from it, green and gold ¡ª my heart skipped a beat.

    ¡®FOR SALE,¡¯ it said, in big, bold lettering. A smaller sign dangling below the first listed the name and number of what could only be a real estate agent.

    My feet started moving before the rest of me caught up, and the swarm that had been resting and going about its daily lives surged into action. The ants that lived in a colony beneath the neighbor¡¯s backyard, the nest of wasps hiding behind a treehouse three houses down, all of the spiders and creepy crawlies hidden away in the walls of my childhood home ¡ª they answered my call and converged upon that old, residential home, squeezing through the cracks and the gaps to begin searching in ways my eyes alone couldn¡¯t.

    ¡°Dad?¡±

    I took the front steps two at a time, avoiding the one that creaked more by coincidence than intent, and slammed into the front door ¡ª locked. Of course it was locked. One of those oversized things real estate agencies put on the doors of houses dangled from the knob, and I reached out with my gloved hand, activated the runes woven into the silk, and crushed it like so much cheap plastic. The pieces clattered to the porch.

    ¡°DAD, ARE YOU THERE?¡±

    For a second, I fumbled with the doorknob, too, until I remembered the simple unlocking spell that was one of the basics of magecraft, and then it opened with a click. The door swung inwards suddenly and violently, leaving me to stumble into the darkness of the front hall, with the spindly shapes of the railing that led upstairs looming out of the gloom. A thick layer of dust had settled upon it, a gray film that dulled the luster of the polished wood.

    There were no lights on. None in the living room, none in the kitchen, none streaming down from upstairs. The entire place was cast in shadows, a pall that smothered the whole house beneath its weight, heavy and oppressive.

    My feet took me further into the house, guided more by the sense of my swarm than by sight, and the more my bugs explored, the deeper the pit in my stomach became. Sheets had been draped over the furniture. The refrigerator was silent and empty. The furnace was cold and dark. Curtains were drawn across all the windows. The pictures that had been framed and hung from the walls or sat propped up on tables were gone. All the miscellaneous items that people left out as they went about their daily lives had been gathered up and disposed of, leaving only the furnishings that might entice a new owner to buy the property.

    Even the bedrooms had not been spared. All of my belongings ¡ª all of the journals that I had once kept of the Trio¡¯s daily injustices, all of my clothes, all of the trinkets I had gathered over the years ¡ª were gone, missing. Dad¡¯s room was the same, just an empty casket housing the barest remains of personality in the color of the walls and the antique wood of the chest of drawers.

    There were no signs that anyone lived here, no signs that anyone had for at least a month.

    ¡°Dad?¡±

    Silence was the only answer.