Hereafter [Worm x Fate/Grand Order]

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter XX: Paladin at Thiers

The instant Saint Martha was gone, Siegfried collapsed to his knees, as though her presence was the only thing keeping him upright. He supported himself with his sword, the tip thrust into the ground, and his other hand clutched at his side, where his wound still persisted.

Rika squawked. "Hey, is he okay?"

"Fou, fou!"

The little menace leapt from off of her shoulder and scurried over to Siegfried, and as much as it sent a shiver down my spine to follow it, the rest of us took off and jogged over to Mash and Siegfried. At least for the moment, there didn't appear to be any other Servants nearby to worry about. For whatever that was worth, when the Tarasque had burned through so much of my swarm.

"Senpai!" Mash called as we approached.

"Good going, Mash!" Rika cheered, grinning, and then she turned to Siegfried worriedly. "This guy doesn't look too good, though."

"I'm…sorry, Master," Siegfried said, looking up at me with a pained expression. "Even just that much…took a lot more out of me…than I expected."

"You did well," I told him. "Exactly what I needed you to do."

He sighed, and something of a relieved smile broke out on his face. In a movie, that would have been the cliché moment where he died, having succeeded in his mission or rescued the princess, but fortunately, his form stayed solid and corporeal, and he seemed in no danger of fading away, just yet.

Yet. That was the part that worried me. That wound needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later, or else it was going to become a liability in short order. The very last thing we needed was to run into another pack of wyverns or one of Jeanne Alter's Servants and Siegfried be too weakened to fight back. The Armor of Fafnir would help, but the wound itself already proved that it was possible to get through that and deal a heavy blow.

"Is he okay?" Ritsuka asked, concerned.

"Jeanne Alter and her Servants wounded him, and because it's cursed, it won't heal," I summarized for the twins. "He won't be able to fight until we break the curse and heal the wound."

"I did everything I could," Jeanne lamented, "but I'm afraid…with my abilities as diminished as they are…"

"You can't break the curse," Mash concluded.

Beep-beep!

"— got through!" Romani said. "Thank goodness! That interference was really strong!"

"Doctor Roman!" said the twins together.

"Contract registered, by the way!" said Romani. "Saber class Servant, Siegfried, hero of the Nibelungenlied. It turns out your instinct was right on the money, Taylor! This is definitely a top class, Rank A Servant!"

He grinned.

"And two Spirit Origins have disappeared, as well! A-ah, we didn't detect the last one until moments before it was snuffed out, but you definitely managed to handle Saint Martha! Congratulations, everyone!"

With a quiet thump, Arash landed next to us. "Doctor."

"Arash Kamangir," Romani replied respectfully. "Thank you for looking out for everyone."

"Just doing my job," said Arash, smiling.

Romani looked over at something on his console. "Everyone's vitals are all in the green. No injuries, no one's hurt, and thank God, no one died. I'd call that a success. Although…"

Yes. "Although." There was no way he could have missed it, that little hitch.

"You can see it, right?" I asked.

Romani nodded.

"Siegfried's Saint Graph has some irregularities in it. Damage that predates the contract, along with some kind of status effect. Was there something that happened before you made contact?"

"It's a curse," Jeanne said sourly. "My other self… My evil counterpart and her minions inflicted it upon him. I can't lift it as I am."

"If it's lingering this long and managed to get through his Noble Phantasm," Romani hedged, frowning, "it's likely the result of a Noble Phantasm itself. You'd need either a specialized Noble Phantasm or else a bona fide saint to lift it… A-ah, I mean, n-not that you're not a saint, Jeanne —"

"Whatever history says of me, I don't think of myself as one," Jeanne interrupted, and then she sighed. "However, whether or not I am one, in my current state, I can't do anything more."

And without her, we were fresh out of the other two things, weren't we? Damn it.

"Maybe Emiya has something?" Ritsuka suggested tentatively.

"Emiya?" Arash echoed.

"Our emergency backup," I explained shortly. "An Archer class Servant who can reproduce Noble Phantasms, at the cost of lowered performance."

Arash, Jeanne, and Siegfried all reacted in a way I honestly should have expected: with surprise. In hindsight, being told a Heroic Spirit could make copies of the things that made other Heroic Spirits special wasn't something ordinary even among Servants. I had to start thinking of it like Tinkertech — even other Tinkers couldn't just casually reproduce a Tinker's work, and mass producing them was the Holy Grail of Tinkering.

And I just compared Emiya to Dragon in my head. I wasn't sure who should have been flattered more.

"I've never heard of such a Heroic Spirit before," Arash said.

"Neither had we," Romani told him. "As far as our records are concerned, he didn't exist before Taylor, Ritsuka, and Rika saw him in Fuyuki."

Arash shook his head. "You would think a Heroic Spirit with such a unique talent would be well-known."

"According to Emiya, his capacity for reproduction increased dramatically after his ascension — or rather, he couldn't just throw around copied Noble Phantasms willy nilly while he was alive, and large parts of his repertoire were only acquired during his summonings as a Servant," Romani said. "In any case, I could ask him, but I don't think he'll be able to help with this. Remember, he's limited to bladed weapons, and swords aren't really made for healing, you know?"

My lips pursed as an idea came to mind.

"You could ask him, but I'm not sure we need him," I said. "How easy is it to send him here, anyway?"

Romani scratched at the back of his head. "There's some sort of time differential between you guys and Chaldea. We can keep track of you and where you're heading, but even if it takes you a week to get somewhere, for us, it's a few hours to maybe a day or so. Da Vinci thinks the difference is going to get even more extreme the further back you go and the bigger the deviation from proper history."

"So?" Ritsuka prodded.

"I'm getting there!" Romani said. "It means that, when we're not in direct contact like this, it's harder to pinpoint your exact location at any given moment. Chaldeas is a little more accurate than a GPS, but for us, you guys are moving around like a car on a highway. That's why I'm sometimes late announcing the presence of an incoming Servant. By the time the sensors pick it up and I get the readout, you guys are already fighting. And that's when interference doesn't make connecting impossible to begin with."

I made a noise of understanding in my throat.

"So if you tried to Rayshift Emiya to us, there's no guarantee he'd even land in our general area. Rika might have to use a Command Spell just to bring him to us."

Waste one, I meant, and everyone picked up on that.

Romani nodded. "Basically, yeah."

"Why didn't you just say that?" Rika groaned. "That wasn't that hard to understand!"

"Wha — h-hey!" Romani squawked. "I'm doing my best here, you know! This isn't exactly my normal job!"

"Romani." I brought the conversation back around before it could devolve. "If we forget about bringing Emiya in for now, can you detect any other Servants to the west or east?"

"Hang on a second."

He went back to the monitor, showing us the side of his face as he looked away.

"It's far enough away that the resolution isn't great, but I'm definitely detecting the presence of at least one Servant west of you, at a city called Thiers, roughly one-hundred-twenty kilometers from your current location, and there might be one even further out past that. If it's even there, it's at least twice as far, so I'm sorry I can't give you anything more concrete."

I nodded. "And the one at Thiers, can you detect human vital signs in its general vicinity?"

Everyone turned to look at me, eyes wide.

"Oh my," said Jeanne. "That's clever."

"H-holy crap!" Romani said. "H-hang on a second, I'll — Da Vinci's going to cackle like a madman when she hears about this one!"

"Human vital signs?" Mash asked. "I don't understand."

"Aside from our team, there should only be two kinds of Servants here," I explained while Romani checked the sensors. "Those who are on Jeanne Alter's side, and therefore will be slaughtering every living person they come across, and those on the side of the French people, who will fight back and protect the innocent citizens. If there's a Servant at Thiers and a bunch of people still alive there —"

"Then that Servant is protecting them!" Ritsuka concluded.

"That's awesome!" said Rika. "I don't see how that helps us, though."

"Jeanne was obviously summoned to fight her evil self, the Dragon Witch." I nodded at her, and she grimaced, but didn't protest the point. "But here at Lyon, we found Siegfried, a dragon-slaying hero, specifically suited for killing Jeanne Alter's wyverns. There's no guarantees, but if the Servants summoned are responses meant to match the threat, then the Servant at Thiers just might be another dragonslayer."

"It could be Sigurd," Mash suggested.

Siegfried nodded. "It's possible. Though our legends are similar, he and I are two different Heroic Spirits. If the threat is dragons, he may have been summoned as well."

"Maybe," I conceded, because it wasn't impossible. "But if he wasn't, then there's one other dragon-slaying hero that might have been called."

"Saint George," Romani said. "I've got a reading, and your instinct was right again, Taylor. I can't get an exact number, but there are numerous human life signs located at Thiers. It looks like whoever the Servant is there is protecting the city along with all of the people inside it."

My lips curled into a small smile.

"Can you tell if it's Saint George or not?" Jeanne asked.

Romani shook his head. "I've already explained, I don't have that kind of resolution from this far away. Not without one of the Masters having seen the Servant with their own eyes. The only thing I can tell you from here is the general location. I'm sorry."

"It's not ideal," I allowed, because it really would have been better to know who or what we were dealing with for sure, "but it's better than what we had to go on five minutes ago. We don't really have much better in the way of options, right now, unless you want to take another shot at summoning?"

I addressed the last part to Romani, who grimaced.

"Even if we tried, there still isn't a guarantee that who you summon will be of immediate use," he said. "We already tried to summon Siegfried, right? Arash answered instead, and we found Siegfried later. So if we tried to summon Saint George and it turns out he's the one at Thiers, won't we just have filled up one of our open slots and increased the strain on you Masters unnecessarily?"

That wasn't exactly my thought process. But it wasn't completely off the mark, either.

"Then our next destination should be Thiers," I concluded. "Whether or not Saint George is there, the odds are good that the Servant there will be an ally. At the very least, we'll be able to rest and brainstorm the next step from there."

Arash nodded. "It'll be a nice break from camping out every night."

"Is it really that big of a deal?" Ritsuka asked. "Rika and I haven't really been feeling any strain from supporting Mash or anything. Right, Rika?"

"The only things strained are my legs!" Rika reported cheerily.

Very deliberately, I stopped myself from rolling my eyes.

"That's because Chaldea's doing most of the heavy lifting," Romani told them. "The more Servants you contract with, especially out in the field instead of inside Chaldea itself, the more you guys will have to pick up the slack with your own power. Right now, Ritsuka, Rika, you two are only supporting Mash, and Taylor is only supporting Siegfried and Arash. If you just kept summoning as many Servants as you could, you would definitely start to feel the strain. If they all started fighting the next time you ran into an enemy Servant, the drain might just kill you."

The twins both blanched. I didn't have any idea what they were imagining it would look like to be drained dry of magical energy, but the image in my head was of a desiccated corpse, sunken-cheeked and so brittle it flaked away at the slightest touch.

"Then, it seems our next course of action has been decided," Jeanne concluded. "We will make our way to Thiers in the hopes of finding another ally and work out our next step from there. Are there any objections?"

"I'm sorry," Siegfried mumbled. "You're going through all of this trouble for me."

I shook my head. "Getting help for you is one thing, but Thiers probably would have been our next stop anyway. We'll need as much help as we can get to fight Jeanne Alter and her army."

Siegfried's expression drew out into determination. "Then I won't let your efforts go to waste. Once my injury has been healed, Master, I will ensure the Dragon Witch is destroyed. This, I swear."

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Not for the first time, I lamented the lack of industrial era conveniences in fifteenth-century France. It probably wouldn't be the last. Without a car to take us there, the journey of a few hours became a few days, and while we didn't have as far to go as before, Siegfried's disability slowed us down by at least a whole day, so it still took us the better part of a week to go from Lyon to Thiers. It didn't help that the terrain got far less flat the closer to our destination we got, to the point where "rolling hills" was a frustratingly accurate description of the obstacles we had to cross.

And unfortunately, by the time the sun had set and we settled down at the end of the fourth day, we still had another few hours of travel before we could crest the final hill overlooking the valley Thiers was nestled into, which meant another night of camping out in the wilderness.

For a certain value of the word "camping," at any rate. We didn't have nice, expensive tents or comfortable sleeping bags, and the only things we had for pillows were our own clothing, which didn't exactly make for the most comfortable of rests. The only small mercy we had was that my powers let me keep things like mosquitoes from harassing us, and that meant we didn't have to wake up in the morning with unexplained bites swelling on every stretch of exposed skin.

Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, I was jealous of the Servants who didn't have to sleep. Jeanne did anyway, and so did Mash, but Arash was always taking the night watch to keep an eye out for us, and Siegfried didn't sleep, exactly, so much as he closed his eyes and tried to move as little as possible throughout the night.

Trying not to aggravate his wound was my guess. Or conserving magical energy. It might have been both at once.

That night, the twins fell asleep almost instantly. They were huddled up next to each other on the edge of our little bonfire, and despite how uncomfortable sleeping on the hard ground was, they were sawing logs without a care in the world.

With Arash off in the dark, staying away from the fire to maintain his night vision, and Siegfried set off to the side, engaged in his nightly imitation of a statue, it left Jeanne and I alone in a rare moment of solitude.

Not for much longer, I knew. I was handling it all better than the twins were, but walking all day still took a lot out of me, too. With food in my belly and my body aching from a long day, I'd be heading off to dreamland myself, soon. It took everything I had just to stifle my yawns.

"Do you think she was right?" Jeanne asked into the silence.

I blinked at her, uncomprehending. "Who?"

"My other self," Jeanne said quietly. "My…evil self. Jeanne Alter."

Oh. One of those conversations, then.

"About?"

"The reason my abilities are so diminished," Jeanne clarified. "Why I'm…not as strong as I should be." She was quiet for a moment longer, and then went on. "I know I said it so confidently back then, but… Could it be true that I'm the fake, and she's the real Jeanne?"

Wasn't that a loaded question?

"Do you think you're fake?" I asked.

"I…I don't feel like I'm fake, but…" She trailed off for a moment, then started again. "If I was nothing more than the idealized version of Jeanne that the people of France believed in, would I even know for sure?"

I didn't know how to answer that. I didn't really know that there was any good answer to begin with.

"I'm not sure what you're expecting me to tell you," I said. "It's not like I knew you when you were alive or anything. I can't say one way or the other which one of you feels and acts the way the real Jeanne d'Arc did while she was still living and breathing."

But I definitely knew that Jeanne wouldn't appreciate me telling her that I thought Jeanne Alter's way of thinking was more realistic. It felt more natural for someone to hate the people who abandoned her, to feel like everyone who turned their backs on her deserved to have everything she'd ever given to them ripped away. For the French, to whom Jeanne delivered everything, having everything destroyed was…not the appropriate response, but the one that matched what she'd done for their sakes.

What she'd sacrificed for their sakes.

Jeanne frowned miserably at the smoldering embers of our fire.

"But," I continued, "I've heard enough of the stories about her to know she didn't begrudge anyone for what happened. The English for their partisanship, maybe, the clergy who condemned her on every trumped up charge they could, probably, but not the people or the country she'd given up everything for."

It felt like a lie. It was all true, of course, and none of it was wrong, but people could change a lot in the moments of their death. As she burned at the pyre, it was entirely possible the real Jeanne d'Arc had cursed everyone and everything even remotely connected to it. Maybe it was even likely.

I didn't tell her that.

"Yes." Jeanne closed her eyes and bowed her head. "I accepted it, at the end. The English, the clergy, they tricked me into a false confession. But I knew…from the beginning, didn't I? I knew that I would never return to the simple life of a farm girl the instant I left home to seek out King Charles. I knew what I was giving up for my people and what it would cost me."

She clutched her hands to her chest.

"I remember the moment I knew what I must do," she said quietly. "I remember making the decision to leave. I remember it all. My mother's tears. My father's love. My brothers' embrace. The smiling faces of my countrymen, liberated. The jeers of the crowd as I burned." She pushed out her arms, as though throwing something into the flames. "I remember that final moment as I offered my body unto God."

A small smile pulled at her lips. "Those are all things the real Jeanne d'Arc did. Those are all things the real Jeanne d'Arc felt. Those are all the things I lived and felt."

She might remember all of that, too, I thought but didn't say. It felt like the wrong thing to say in that moment.

If someone told me that my Echidna clone was just as much a real person, a real Taylor Hebert, as I was, just because she had all of my memories, too, would I have been able to accept that? Could I say a dark mirror was equally as valid as the original?

No. And when you looked at it like that, Jeanne Alter was just as much Jeanne's dark mirror, a tainted reflection corrupted by Flauros' Grail.

Even if we said Jeanne Alter's feelings were valid, that didn't mean what she was doing wasn't wrong. Real or fake, she was still the enemy, and we had to stop her. Whether or not she was the genuine article would just make it more or less tragic.

"We should get some sleep," I said. "Tomorrow, we'll be meeting whoever is at Thiers. We can't afford to be exhausted, especially if they attack before asking questions."

"You're right." She offered me a radiant smile. "Thank you, Taylor. Your words helped dispel my doubts."

I gave her a smile and a nod, perfunctory. I didn't know how I'd really helped her when she mostly seemed to have talked herself around, but if she thought I'd helped, then I wasn't going to argue. Turning away from the fire, I settled down, pillowed my head beneath one arm, and closed my eyes. Jeanne did something similar.

A long breath eased out of my nostrils, and I tried to still my mind long enough to sleep.

It seemed only seconds later that I was waking up to the morning sun on my face, feeling like I hadn't much rested at all.

The fire had burned down at some point, and as I gingerly sat up, I found everyone mostly where I'd left them the night before. The twins had shifted and moved around a little, but Siegfried remained where he was, utterly still but for his even breathing, and next to me, Jeanne began to stir, as well, probably because she'd felt me moving.

Briefly, I closed my eyes and stretched out my senses, feeling out my swarm. I'd lost some in the night, of course, to predation and any number of other factors, but nothing major had disturbed them. Of course not, because it would have jolted me awake, but it never hurt to check.

A mental prod at the thread connecting me to Arash got me a silent affirmation back, a sort of wordless "I'm here" to let me know he hadn't been assassinated in the middle of the night. It only took a moment's concentration to send the order for him to make his way back from wherever it was he'd been keeping watch.

Now that everything else had been taken care of, I stood gingerly, sighing, and went over to wake up the twins. They were about as enthusiastic about getting up as I was, because as much as you could get used to sleeping on the ground and learn to live with the associated aches, those aches never stopped being new when you woke up to them in the morning.

Siegfried was roused with nothing more than a quiet grunt to show his discomfort. He stood slowly and carefully, mindful of his wound, but although I thought he must have fallen asleep sitting there for the entire night, he showed no signs that he'd ever even started to doze.

I would have bet that if I asked him, he would have told me that he'd been awake and on guard the whole time. I wasn't sure I could even doubt it.

Arash returned around that time, and a quick chat later, Romani sent us provisions for our breakfast — that showed up five feet in the air above Mash's shield. Small mercies that none of it was fragile enough to make a mess.

After a brief and largely tasteless meal (accented by some chocolate protein bars that were actually pretty good), we started up our journey again and continued our hike towards Thiers.

"Do you have any more information about the Servant in the city?" I asked Romani as we walked.

"Sorry, I don't," he answered. Static tinged his words around the edges. Without a ley line terminal, a stable connection to Chaldea seemed like it was too much to ask for, but Romani and his sensors were the only line of information about the Servant at Thiers and the larger movements by Jeanne Alter that we had.

"Nothing?"

He shook his head. "I can tell you that he doesn't seem to have moved outside of the city itself, and also that there doesn't seem to have been any significant drop in the city's human population, but even this far out, I'm just speaking in a general sense."

My lips pulled into a frown. "What about Jeanne Alter and her forces? Do we have any idea what they've been up to for the last week?"

Romani shrugged and sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Sorry, I can't tell you much there, either. I've been checking back in whenever you guys settle down for the night, but the best I can give you is that there's been movement by Servants. I couldn't tell you one way or the other what she's doing or why, only that she is doing something."

That was more helpful than nothing, and we stuck to that for a while, discussing different things she might have been doing and reasons she might have been shuffling her "troops" around. Probably trying to spare the twins' feelings, Romani kept things steered away from the obvious, that she was going out and burning down whatever town, village, or city caught her eye on any given day.

I didn't think the twins missed that, but neither of them brought it up themselves. They were inexperienced, not stupid.

Eventually, we found ourselves on a road that seemed to have been excavated out of the hillside, a relatively narrow pass that had a steep upward slope to the right, enough space for a decently sized merchant caravan to ride, and then another steep slope to the left. The drop was sheer enough that I didn't like the odds of us surviving uninjured if I or one of the twins fell down it.

"— at Lyon," Romani was saying. "I shouldn't need to tell you, but she definitely knows you were there and she definitely knows you killed Saint Martha and Phantom. The next Servant she sends is definitely going to be even harder to fight. You guys need to be on your guard. She might even send two."

"Being double-teamed is cheating," Rika muttered sourly.

"Doctor Roman," said Ritsuka, who had been mostly silent the rest of the conversation, "has anything happened at La Charité?"

Romani sighed, grimacing. At length, he reluctantly said, "There are no human life signs at La Charité, as of now."

Ritsuka scowled, staring hard at the ground. His fists clenched. Rika, too, looked miserable, and Mash had the appearance of a kicked puppy.

I didn't want to say that I'd told him so. This was one of those things I would have gladly been wrong about.

"That doesn't mean anything on its own," Romani added. "It's entirely possible that the people who evacuated all left for another town. They might have —"

"Doctor Roman," Ritsuka interrupted quietly. "Please."

Romani was silent for a moment.

"I'm sorry, Ritsuka."

Something chimed on Romani's end, and he lunged forward, eyes wide, and shouted, "Incoming Servant detected!"

We had barely a moment to register his words before something fell out of the sky like a ballistic missile.

"Master!" Mash shouted, and she threw herself in front of the group, her shield materializing in front of her.

The other Servant landed with a thunderous crash some twenty feet or so down the road, kicking up hunks of rock with the impact. They'd moved so fast that I hadn't even had time for my bugs to pick up their movement before they'd landed.

She, I realized as I took in her figure. Definitely a woman, dressed in a long, almost military-style coat, knee-high boots, and elbow-length gloves, all accented with small plates of gold armor and all predominantly white and blue with red piping. Her long, golden hair looked frankly ridiculous in a pair of tails that reached almost to her knees.

The most striking thing, however, was not her appearance nor the tiny lance she carried in one hand, but the blazing star of a shield strapped to her other. At its center was a gold ornament with eight points, but radiating out from those points were eight spokes of pure energy, light solidified.

For an instant, she reminded me of Glory Girl.

"Halt!" she said firmly, brandishing the glittering, crystalline head of the miniaturized thing she called a lance at us. "Take not one step further! If you value your lives, turn around and leave this place immediately!"

She tilted her head back, staring down at us imperiously. It only made my mental comparison to Glory Girl all the stronger.

"I am the Lancer class Servant, Bradamante!" she declared. "The town of Thiers and its people are under my protection! You're not welcome here!"

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

So this isn't perhaps the discussion a lot of people were expecting Taylor and Jeanne to have first, but I never found a good place for them to talk about the bugs, so it can't be helped, I suppose. Looking back, I tried to stretch out Orleans a little so that the team wasn't bouncing around nearly as quickly as they were in canon, but I didn't succeed as well as I wanted to, so for Septem, I'll have to look into fixing that. Give the team a little more time to breath between the major story beats.

Yes, you understood that implication correctly. Yesterday, I finished up the last chapter of Orléans — Chapter XXVII: Kyrie, Eleison.

Oh? You're saying I didn't address the elephant in this chapter? Yeah, I didn't want to deal with Elizabeth and Kiyohime, so they got put on the chopping block. Elizabeth kinda made sense with Carmilla in the Singularity, but since Carmilla is dead, that story beat is, too, and it made much more sense to have a French Servant (or at least Frankish, if I understand my European history right) show up in the French Singularity. Originally, I thought, "Maybe Charlemagne?" But he didn't work as cleanly and I haven't actually played Extella Link, yet. I'm not overly fond of Astolfo, so Bradamante got to go to bat, since her only feature in FGO NA so far is a single Christmas event.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter XXI: Divide and Conquer

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter XXI: Divide and Conquer

"Bradamante!" Romani exclaimed. "She was one of Charlemagne's paladins! His elite generals and most trusted agents! A-although, ah, strictly speaking, her legend is really more focused on romance than combat…"

"Who's there!" Bradamante swung her lance around and fell into a kind of half-crouch, like she was preparing for a fight. "Show yourself, foul devil!"

"D-devil?" Romani sputtered. "H-hey, I might not exactly be a saint, but I don't think I deserve to be called a devil! Incompetent, at worst! Maybe a little clumsy! W-wait, neither of those is a good thing either, are they?"

Briefly, I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath through my nose. "Romani…"

"Wait, I know what's going on!" said Bradamante. "You're a magus, aren't you? Well, I won't fall for your tricks! I'm immune to magic, so you might as well drop the invisibility and face me head on!"

Okay, that was enough of this nonsense.

I stepped forward, and Bradamante's lance swung back towards me. "Is it you? Are you the one responsible for this? I warn you, I've defeated many powerful mages in my time! You'll regret it if you think you can beat me!"

Standing behind Mash's shield, I fiddled with the communications device on my wrist, turned it from "sound only" to visual, and thrust my arm out over one of the spokes, just in time for Romani's startled image to pop up above it.

Romani blinked at Bradamante. "Ah, hello?"

She studied him silently for a long moment., eyes narrowed on his image, and Romani fidgeted nervously. At length, she lowered her lance, relaxed a little, and asked, "What's going on, here?"

Mash relaxed a little, too. Romani cleared his throat.

"Greetings, Lady Bradamante," he began formally. "I am Director Romani Archaman of the organization known as the Chaldea Security Organization. We are tasked with the Grand Order, that is, the preservation of mankind as a species, and it is our job to correct irregularities that threaten humanity's future. Irregularities such as the one you currently find yourself in, deviations from the proper course of human history."

Bradamante eyed him warily. "Director Archaman? Are you really the Director?"

Romani faltered. "Ah, well, t-technically I'm just the Acting Director," he admitted. "Director Animusphere is currently, um, indisposed."

"Indisposed?"

She didn't say anything else, but I could hear the skepticism in her voice, the suggestion that the Director must not be much of a Director if she couldn't even do her job, and I didn't know what she was thinking it was that kept Marie from her position, but it rankled.

"She's in suspended animation," I cut in coolly, "while we try and come up with a way to save her life."

I'd put up with enough of the doubts over the last two years. Marie wasn't the best Director out there. She was young, inexperienced, and she overcompensated for that by being overbearing and strict, but she'd put her neck out there for me and I wasn't about to let her be judged for the fact that she didn't have a body to be here for her job.

The stupidity of the double standard rankled the most. When she tried to do her job, the rest of the staff was frustrated that she was nosy and not that great at it, and now that she wasn't around, people were judging her for not doing it at all.

Bradamante frowned and pursed her lips. "I'm sorry."

The sincerity of the apology threw me off more than the apology itself. Maybe I was stretching that comparison to Glory Girl a little too far.

"The, ah, issue of Director Animusphere aside," Romani said diplomatically, "this is our main combat team. It's their job to actually go out and fix the problem. Lady Bradamante, just to confirm what you said earlier, can I assume you're the Servant we've been detecting who has protected Thiers this entire time?"

Finally, Bradamante relaxed entirely. "Yes. I've taken the people and city of Thiers under my protection. A Servant of the Dragon Witch attempted to force me out some time ago, but I dispatched him after a pretty intense fight."

"A Servant?"

"Ah, I didn't get his true name, sorry," Bradamante admitted sheepishly. "He wasn't a very talkative fellow. I think he might have been a Berserker, because he kept screaming the same word over and over again."

"That sounds like a Berserker, alright," Romani agreed. "Were there any identifying marks on him? Any visual cues that might have helped pin down his true name or at least his region or era?"

Bradamante shook her head. "I'm sorry, but there was some kind of effect that stopped me from seeing anything like that. I think it was his Noble Phantasm. The only thing I can tell you is that he was wearing plate armor."

"So he was a knight." Romani let loose a gusty sigh and sagged back into his chair. "That certainly narrows it down, doesn't it?"

"It wasn't one of the other Servants we ran into, at any rate," I cut in. "That description doesn't match any of the ones from La Charité, and I doubt there was any connection to Phantom at Lyon."

"It looks like you were right, Miss Taylor," said Mash. "Jeanne Alter has access to the Holy Grail, and she summoned more than just the five Servants we saw in La Charité."

Romani nodded. "Given what we know now, it's likely that she sends one or two Servants to handle cities that she doesn't particularly care about, but attacks in force whenever she decides it's personal. Places like Orléans and La Charité, which held some form of significance to Jeanne when she was alive."

I nodded, because I'd been thinking something similar. Jeanne grimaced and muttered, "Her hatred extends that far?"

"Did she send any wyverns to reinforce the Servant you fought?" I asked Bradamante.

"Barely a squadron. I took care of them without even breaking a sweat," she replied proudly. "They might as well have been children's toys!"

So whatever her legend might have focused on, she was at least competent enough to handle a Berserker and a few wyverns. I wasn't sure that was exactly a ringing endorsement, not without having seen what that Berserker had been capable of, but I could at least say she wasn't dead weight.

Already, I was thinking about how we might slot her into our own forces. It was probably a better idea to wait until I'd had a chance to see her in action, first.

"Have you encountered the Dragon Witch herself, yet?"

Bradamante faltered. "Ah, that… Sh-she hasn't been brave enough to attack me herself, so no! But I'm sure I could hold her off! I'll protect Thiers with everything I am!"

"Your courage does you justice, Lady Bradamante," Siegfried said warmly.

I glanced back at him. Right, I'd been getting caught up in the longer term plans. Taking care of his wound was more important, right now, and unfortunately, since the Servant protecting Thiers wasn't Saint George, that meant we still had some searching to do.

Bradamante peered around Mash and me, sizing up Siegfried with a discerning gaze.

"You have the bearing of a knight," she said, "but I don't recognize you or your armor. Would you tell me your name?"

"Well met." Siegfried inclined his head and bent his torso slightly. Only the barest twitching muscle in his jaw betrayed his pain. "I am Siegfried, Servant Saber. I was summoned to this era in response to the wyverns, but I have contracted with Chaldea to aid them in their quest to destroy the Dragon Witch."

"Siegfried!" Bradamante gasped. "Then that is the dragonslaying sword, Balmung! Oh, to meet such a famous hero! This is incredible!"

"He's also injured." I gestured to his wound. "Jeanne," and here, I pointed her out, to an awkward smile, "was summoned to defeat her evil counterpart, but she's so new as a Heroic Spirit that she's not strong enough to lift the curse."

"When we discovered there was a Servant in Thiers, we were hoping it would be Saint George, summoned to fight the wyverns like Siegfried was," Romani picked up. "Since he, too, is a saint, we thought he might be able to lift the curse and heal Siegfried's wound." He sighed again. "Unfortunately, it seems that he might not have been summoned after all, so that whole journey was for nothing."

A beat later, he seemed to realize the insult inherent in his words and scrambled to reassure her, "N-n-not that I think you're inferior or anything! It's just that you're not who we were hoping to find! Ack! I-I mean, I'm sure you've got your own strong points, it's just not what we needed right now!"

"Romani," I advised him, "unless you're really fond of the taste of your shoe, maybe you should quit while you're ahead?"

"Oh man…" Romani moaned. "I totally made a fool of myself, didn't I?"

Except… Bradamante, when I turned back to her, didn't seem offended at all. In fact, with her brow furrowed and her mouth drawn into a line, she looked more thoughtful than anything.

"You say he's been afflicted by a curse?" she asked.

That wasn't the question of someone just looking for clarification or wanting to make sure she had the story right. That was someone who might have a solution.

Maybe making the trek to Thiers wouldn't wind up being a waste of a trip after all.

Siegfried nodded. "I'm not entirely sure how it works, but I'm almost certain this is the lingering effects of a Noble Phantasm. It's the only thing strong enough to have done so much damage through my armor."

"Do you have an idea?" I asked her.

Slowly, Bradamante nodded her head. "If it's the lingering results of a Noble Phantasm, then it might be too much for even me to handle," she hedged, "but my other Noble Phantasm, my ring, Angelica Cathay, might just be able to undo the curse that ails Lord Siegfried."

That… Okay, no, I probably shouldn't get my hopes up. Finding Siegfried at Lyon had already been an incredible stroke of luck, offset by his wound. It would be convenient if Bradamante could get rid of the curse, but since when had things been convenient when it came to my life?

"How sure are you that it'll work?"

"W-well, it's not a guarantee," she admitted. "B-but there's one way to find out for sure, isn't there? In fact, I could do it right here, right now! No special ritual or anything required!"

A low, quiet rumble punctuated her statement, and we all turned to Rika, who smiled sheepishly and let out a slow, awkward laugh. "Do you think we could eat, first? Curse-breaking sure sounds like it works up an appetite, and I'm already hungry."

Mash sighed. "Senpai…"

And then another rumble sounded from her, and her face flushed as she hung her head so that her hair hid her flaming cheeks.

"M-maybe this isn't the place to be attempting to break Siegfried's curse," Mash said. "Miss Bradamante, do you think we could wait until we're in Thiers to try?"

"I…" Bradamante didn't seem to know what to say, for a moment, and then she beamed. "Of course! Yes, it's more than okay if we get lunch for you before we try to break the curse! There's no rush!"

Mash turned to me expectantly, like she was waiting for me to insist that we get it out of the way as quickly as possible. In a movie or a tv show, that would also have been the perfect moment for my stomach to let out a loud rumble of its own to prove them right.

It didn't. Not loud enough for them to hear, at least, because we'd had not much of a breakfast, not much of a dinner, and not all that substantial a meal the entire trip here. It wasn't really all that different from the sorts of things we'd had to eat in the aftermath of the Leviathan battle in Brockton Bay, when the city was limping on and stale rations were better than nothing, but that didn't mean I had ever enjoyed it, and even if they were nutritious, they rarely felt filling.

Yes, I was hungry, too. Fine, Mash, Rika, there wasn't any reason not to do it your way.

I held back my sigh and nodded. "Lunch first."

"Yes!" Rika pumped her fist. "I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse!"

"I don't think that will be on the menu," Bradamante said diplomatically. "But I'm sure we'll be able to find something to your liking! Please, follow me! When they see you're with me, the people of Thiers will welcome you with open arms!"

I wasn't so sure about that, given the current shape of things, but I could hope and extend a little trust her way, at least.

"We'll be in your care," Ritsuka said politely. It sounded rehearsed, or maybe perfunctory would be the better word. Like something he had been taught to say all his life, so it had become second nature.

Bradamante turned around and started back towards the city, and our motley crew fell into step behind her, weapons stowed into spirit form. By the anxious tightening of Jeanne's eyes, it seemed I wasn't the only one who was a little skeptical of Bradamante's claims of the townsfolk's hospitality.

But, another ten minutes or so of walking later, she was proven right. The outskirts of Thiers were relatively sparsely populated, but once we got into the town proper, more and more people were milling about the streets, going about their day, and they all stopped to greet us — Bradamante in particular — as we passed.

None of them cast us an unfriendly glance, despite Mash, Arash, and Siegfried decked out in armor and the twins and I dressed in strange clothes, with my one arm still stained a muddy maroon from that wyvern's blood. At worst, they ignored us entirely. Some of them greeted us with the same bright smiles and warm words they did Bradamante.

They weren't even suspicious of Jeanne. No one side-eyed her, looked at her strangely, or worse, turned, fled, and screamed about "the Dragon Witch" coming to kill them all. It made sense when I thought about it and remembered that this was fifteenth century France, not modern America. This era didn't have photographs or cameras to capture someone's image for later viewing, so the only way for someone who had never seen Jeanne to know what she looked like was to hear her described by someone who had, and human memory was imperfect at the best of times.

For that matter, without the internet or telephones or even newspapers, the only way information traveled was by word of mouth, and the further it had to travel, the less reliable it was. That game one of my teachers had us play back in middle school had made it abundantly clear just how easy it was for anything relayed between people to become completely distorted between the beginning and the end.

So we were led through the city completely unaccosted — for a certain value of the word "city." Built into the slope of the mountainside, Thiers was a spectacular sight, for sure, but it wasn't anywhere near as sprawling or populous as Lyon would have been, and it really was closer in size to La Charité.

That didn't detract from the view at all. From the top, looking down, I imagined it was a pretty spectacular sight, but even from near the bottom looking up, there was a kind of rustic beauty to a human town fused into the side of the mountain, built into the slope. Almost like the brick buildings had grown up out of the soil, sprouting from between the trees and the side of the river. Moss grew along the bottoms, and vines snaked their way up the walls.

The strange feeling twisting around in my gut as we made our way deeper in… It wasn't quite nostalgia, but I didn't have a better word to encapsulate that sense of a world we'd lost somewhere along the way, that simple beauty of a time that had long passed us by. The people living here, life was less complicated for them, less busy, wasn't it? Their days were full, but the hustle and rush of modernity were completely absent, and as I observed them all with my bugs, there seemed to be less weight pressing on their shoulders.

Maybe having to fix these Singularities and live in the long past for weeks at a time wasn't full of nothing but pitfalls.

Bradamante's route was winding and circuitous, but there didn't seem to be a straighter road into the city. I thought I could see one further to the south, but just from feeling it out with my bugs, it would have taken us longer to cross the more treacherous terrain to reach it than it was to just keep going the way we were.

"How long ago were you summoned, Lady Bradamante?" Romani asked.

"It's been almost a month," she answered.

Romani made a sound of understanding in his throat. "So you would have showed up around the same time Jeanne did. In other words, shortly after the Dragon Witch materialized."

Bradamante shook her head.

"I wouldn't know. I only know as much as the townsfolk do, and information about the Dragon Witch is fairly sparse. Most of it is just rumors, although it turned out to be true that she commands dragons, didn't it? Berserker came after her first couple attacks failed."

"And you defended the town in each case."

"That's right. A few wyverns weren't any trouble at all."

Romani hummed.

"Now that I think of it… Lord Siegfried, would you say you were summoned around the same time?"

"There's no need for such formality, Director Archaman," Siegfried said with a polite smile, only slightly strained. Although he tried to hide the discomfort of his wound, he still winced and flinched every now and again. "Any claims to royalty or nobility I might have had died with me. Now, I am merely Siegfried, the Servant Saber. Address me however it pleases you."

"Ah… Right." Romani grimaced. "In that case, since your weak spot is as famous as you are, maybe it's better to just call you Saber. Oh, uh, and it's okay if you call me Roman, too."

"I think it's safe to say that all of the stray Servants were probably summoned around the same time," I told Romani. "If they form a sort of autoimmune response to the problem, it only makes sense."

"It's difficult to say how much time I spent down in those dungeons," said Siegfried, "but if I was asked to guess… Yes. A month sounds about right."

"Then, if any Servant not summoned by the Dragon Witch herself was summoned around the same time…" Romani trailed off thoughtfully. "But you'd think we would've heard more rumors about them, wouldn't we?"

I shook my head.

"If they weren't summoned near someplace big enough to see lots of traffic, maybe not. Sieg… Saber only stood out because he was at Lyon."

"That's a good point…"

Eventually, Bradamante led us to a place in the city I should have expected: an old, weathered church made of timeworn stone that stood near the center of the city. In hindsight, we still didn't really have any money, and as far as privacy went, it would be easier to discuss whatever we needed to talk about here than inside an inn, where anyone who so much as passed the door could listen in. This was definitely the better idea.

Was it too much to ask to find a place with an actual bed, though?

"The local priest was kind enough to let me stay here," Bradamante explained as we went inside. "Even though I don't strictly need sleep, it's nice to have a place to relax a little. I'm sure he'll be glad to let you stay as long as you need, as well!"

"I don't think we'll be staying that long," I said mildly. "A day or two at the most."

"Even still."

The doors shut behind us with an echoing boom, and Romani's fingers flying over the keyboard filled the emptiness of the hall.

"Hey, this is an incredible stroke of luck," he said. "You guys are sitting right on top of a ley line terminal. Mash, if you set your shield down on a large enough empty spot, I can send you some food right away."

Rika groaned. "Not more ration bars!"

Romani chuckled. "Nope. You guys are gonna love this — I managed to get Emiya to cook you up a hearty stew! It should hold you over for quite a while!"

"Yes!" Rika cheered. "Oh god — is it bad to say that in a church? Oh well — I've gone too long without my gourmet chef! I need some of Emiya's cooking right away!"

Even I had trouble hiding my eagerness after hearing that. Mash all but scrambled to find a good spot to set down her shield, front facing upwards, and backed away.

"Ready when you are, Doctor Roman!" she reported brightly.

"Okay." The clack of more presses on his keyboard only drove the excitement higher. "In three… two… one…"

A magic circle lit up over Mash's shield, flashed, and an instant later, a large steel pot and a bevy of extra bowls and utensils appeared on the floor.

"Enjoy!" said Romani.

It wasn't quite a mad dash to dig into Emiya's cooking, but the twins were still almost fighting for first picks until Mash stepped in and lifted the pot onto a nearby table next to what must have been a donation box. When she lifted the lid, the aroma of a freshly cooked stew set even my own stomach to growling audibly.

Strictly speaking, I think the four of us wound up eating more than we should have, and Jeanne and Bradamante eventually joined us when what was there proved too much even for us hungry travelers, just so they could see what the fuss was about. The looks of surprised delight on their faces was satisfying on an entirely different level.

Yes, Emiya's food was that good. After weeks of rations and whatever Arash could hunt down for us on the road, it was like manna from heaven.

Once we had all had our fill and our used dinnerware was sent back to Chaldea, Bradamante turned our attention back to the issue at hand. "Now. Lord Siegfried, let's deal with that curse!"

Siegfried stepped forward and pulled aside his bodysuit. Bradamante let out a quiet gasp.

"That's a terrible wound!"

She took two long strides towards him and pressed one hand against it, muttering what might have been an incantation under her breath. Something on her finger glowed and glimmered, but it was hidden by the fabric of her glove.

None of us dared breathe. We all watched with baited breath and waited, hoping that this was it and our journey here hadn't been for nothing. For a moment, a jolt of nostalgia reminded me of Scapegoat healing me in the aftermath of the Echidna battle, his startled shock that I'd been fighting so intensely while essentially crippled.

Let this be that easy, I thought. Let this be all the more we had to do to get him cured.

But when Bradamante's mouth twisted into a frown, her brow knitted together, and she pulled away a moment later with a shake of her head, I wasn't surprised. I wanted to be, but I wasn't.

"It's too much for me to handle all at once," she reported, and I'd half been expecting her to say just that. "I'm sorry, but I can't lift the curse like this."

"I see," Mash sighed. "Thank you, Lady Bradamante. At least you —"

"All at once?" I asked immediately.

"I don't have the power to brute force it in one go," said Bradamante. "I could unravel it a little bit at a time over the course of…maybe a week, if I worked on it every day, but I can't afford to just pour magical energy into it until it breaks. I have to keep enough strength to fight, in case the Dragon Witch or her minions attack the city."

Siegfried nodded. "I understand."

"Sounds good to me," Rika blurted out. "A week-long vacation is just what the doctor ordered!"

"We can't really just sit around and wait for a week, but we could defend the city in your place while you recover your energy," Ritsuka offered instead. "If you break it all in one go, I mean."

"I'm okay with that," Arash chimed in. "In fact, that's a great idea, if you ask me."

"It… I think that could work, actually," Bradamante said with building hope and a slowly growing smile. "Yes. Yes! If you promised to watch over the city for…maybe five days while I recovered, then I could do it right this instant! Oh, it would be wonderful to have a team of heroes helping look out for Thiers with me! Especially a hero as great and noble as Lord Siegfried!"

Ritsuka nodded, and his face broke out into a wide smile. "Let's do that, then!"

"We can't," Jeanne interrupted in a strong but quiet voice.

The excitement died immediately.

"Miss Jeanne?" asked Mash.

"I'm sorry, Ritsuka, Rika," said Jeanne, gaining volume with every word. "I understand what it is you're trying to do, but we simply can't afford to stay in one place for too long. Not when it means the Dragon Witch has free reign to do as she pleases. Not when there is a single life that might be lost because of our inaction."

Her fists clenched tightly.

"We need to keep moving," she went on. "The sooner we find strong allies to help us fight her, the fewer people have to suffer. I'm sorry, Lady Bradamante, but Thiers is only one city, and it already has you to defend it. For the sake of the people of all of France, we can't spend any more time here than absolutely necessary."

Mash let out a quiet sigh. "Yes, Jeanne is right. I'm sorry, Master, Lady Bradamante. Our mission is too important to delay."

I remained silent, lips pursing as an idea of my own slowly percolated in my head. A way to fix all of our problems at once.

"H-hang on a second," Romani protested. "I get what you're saying, but it's not that bad if you take a break for a few days, you know! Your mental and physical health are important factors in fixing this Singularity too! Haste makes waste!"

"The more we lounge about, the more lives are lost to the Dragon Witch's cruelty!" Jeanne rebuked. "Rest is important, that's true, and I wouldn't begrudge a day or two of relaxation, but a whole week of indolence is too high a price to pay! Not when innocents are at stake!"

"W-wait, it wasn't just about relaxing!" Ritsuka hurried to say. "I was trying to compromise! Isn't it better that we cure Siegfried as quickly as possible before we move on?"

"If it spares the lives of the Dragon Witch's victims, then I will gladly suffer this injury for as long as I need to," Siegfried said solemnly.

"If we wait an extra week, then those Servants we're searching for might already be defeated before we arrive!" Jeanne added. "We can't afford to delay any longer than absolutely necessary!"

"Romani," I cut in, "how quickly do our Command Spells replenish?"

"One per day," he answered immediately. "Ah, but that's one per day in Chaldea. As long as you're in that Singularity, it'll really be more like one a week, from your perspective."

Better than I'd feared, worse than I'd hoped. The fact that we even got Command Spells back at all was convenient, but the rate at which we got them back after using them wasn't as fast as I would have liked.

That we couldn't use them as and when we pleased was probably a good thing, because it stopped us from getting too reliant on using them whenever things turned just slightly against us, made them more strategic and tactical. Right then, it just felt like a huge hassle.

"Can you still detect that Servant to the west of here?"

"Give me a second, I'll check," said Romani, and his chair squeaked as he turned away.

I hated what I was about to suggest. My stomach was twisting itself up into nervous knots just thinking about it. It went against every instinct I had, and I had to fight with my own tongue to keep from telling him to forget about it. To just let it be and we'd make do as we were.

But I knew better than that. As much as I hated it, this was the right move. It saved us time and effort, it got us more allies as quickly as possible, and it let us solve about three different problems with one stone — more, if the Servant to the west was someone who would be really useful.

"At least one," Romani said. "There might be more, but if there are, they're grouped too close together for me to get separate readings at this range."

"How far?"

"Another…two-hundred kilometers or so."

Damn it. Another fucking week of walking both ways.

I looked at Ritsuka, at Rika, at Mash and Arash.

It didn't make sense for us all to be sitting here, waiting while Bradamante slowly lifted Siegfried's curse. Not when there were other allies we could find out there who might be killed off if left to fight on their own. Against Dracul and the Dragon Witch, we needed to stack the deck with as many strong Servants as we could, and that meant someone needed to go and see who it was further west.

The only problem was…it didn't make sense for it to be me. If I went with Jeanne and we ran into trouble, I could summon Arash with a Command Spell. But if the twins stayed here with Mash and trouble came knocking, they had to make do with an injured Siegfried, Bradamante, and Mash, while Arash and I might not even know anything was wrong until it was all over, and we wouldn't be able to help at all.

But the alternative, then, was to send the twins and Mash with Jeanne and Arash. If trouble came knocking, I could call Arash back, and if they ran into trouble, he was already there. It wasn't perfect, but it gave us enough wiggle room that no one would be undefended for longer than it took to use a Command Spell.

It made more sense that way. I just had to let the twins out of my sight for the longest time since Fuyuki.

Damn it. Damn it all. There wasn't much of a fucking choice, was there?

I swallowed around my hesitation and said, "We're going to have to split up."

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

Taylor is a bit of a control freak. News at 11.

I don't actually have Bradamante in FGO. There was too much going on at the time for me to spare her any SQ, and she was at the very bottom of a list about ten characters long, so I'm not as familiar with her character as perhaps I would have liked to be when I wrote this chapter. I hope she came off accurate enough anyway — decent, a little skewed mentally, and distrustful of "magi."

Next chapter was a bit of a struggle. Nasu's Siegfried is kinda weird, mentally, so I had to meander around his point of view trying to make him feel canon without being useless.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Interlude S: Ally of Justice

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Interlude S: Ally of Justice

Hero of the Nibelungs, they called him.

What an empty, meaningless title. It was a title befitting a hero who had only ever answered others' prayers, who had only ever granted others' wishes, and who had only ever done as others asked of him. It was a fitting title for a hero who had only ever done what others had expected of him for the sake of others' ambitions.

That was not a hero. That was an errand boy.

And yet, despite having lived his life in such a manner and despite having died in such a manner, people had still seen fit to call Siegfried "hero." They had still seen fit to record his deeds and exalt him. They had still seen fit to laud him for what little he had truly accomplished.

It was a strange feeling, to know his own worth and yet to not feel worthy of it.

No, that wasn't quite it.

The things Siegfried had done and the deeds he had accomplished were indeed worthy of praise. Without a doubt, they belonged to a Heroic Spirit who had gone on great adventures and done great things. As the one who had achieved those glories, it wasn't wrong for him to be glorified, nor was it wrong for others to call him "hero."

It was simply that Siegfried did not feel particularly heroic.

He had helped all of those people and he had completed their requests, but that was only because he had the strength and they had the need. There hadn't been anything more behind it than that. Was it proper to truly call himself a hero simply because he had done for others the things they had been unable to do for themselves?

No, that wasn't quite it, either.

The problem was deeper than simple actions. After all, if you divorced what he'd done from his name, no one would disagree that the person who did those things and accomplished those feats was a hero. It followed that the dragonslayer, Siegfried, should then be called a hero himself, and that such a title was fitting.

The problem… The problem was that none of it had been of Siegfried's own will, for Siegfried's own desires, of Siegfried's own volition.

It would be wrong to claim that Siegfried regretted the things he had done while alive, but it would also absolutely be wrong to claim that Siegfried had died without regrets. No, perhaps it was precisely because he hadn't regretted any of it that had led him to regret his own empty legend, that of the hero the people had asked for who had fulfilled all of their wishes.

Siegfried had never done anything for his own sake. Or more to the point, he had coasted through his own life, agreeing to every request made of him, even the one that he had known would mean his own death, and he had never once acted to fulfill his own dreams and his own ambitions. Yes, how could you call someone a hero simply because he had never been able to turn down another's wishes, even to his own detriment?

If only it had not taken his own death to realize the emptiness of his life. If Siegfried had acted on his own will to fulfill his own desires, then perhaps nothing would have changed, but at least he could have claimed with pride that he was "Hero of the Nibelungs." Not a mere errand boy chasing down others' requests, but an ally of justice who had done right by all of the people, simply because he believed in its inherent righteousness.

Lady Bradamante let out a long breath, and her hand left his side. It didn't twinge anywhere near as much as it had even just a mere few days ago.

"My apologies, Lord Siegfried," she said as she always did. "I've done what I can for today, but it's still not done."

Siegfried smiled. It seemed he had been woolgathering while she worked.

"Don't worry yourself, Lady Bradamante," he said sincerely. "That you are lending us your aid is already something to be thankful for. Please, don't feel that you have to push yourself for my sake."

She offered him a sad smile. "You are too kind, Lord Siegfried. If it was someone like His Majesty, I'm certain he could have handled this in an instant." She gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Well, I can do at least this much! It may take me longer and more effort, but I swear to you, I will break this curse!"

Siegfried inclined his head. "Then I will gladly accept this kindness."

Bradamante let out a gusty sigh. "If only I could join you on your mission to fight the Dragon Witch. But I can't leave Thiers undefended to go off chasing after witches, not while its people still need me. Ah, not that I regret this at all!" she added hastily. "As a knight, there's no higher honor than protecting the people and their lives! Doubly so that they are the descendants of my own people and therefore my king's subjects! It's only…"

She looked away.

Ah, Siegfried thought. It was like that, was it?

"To be trapped in a single place, waiting for something to happen, that is its own brand of suffering, isn't it?"

Bradamante sighed again.

"It really isn't befitting my temperament," she agreed. "Charging forward into battle, facing my foes head on — that is the kind of woman, the kind of knight I am! A hundred wyverns, a thousand wyverns, an army of enemy Servants, I would gladly stare them all down across the battlefield!" She turned, and although there was nothing and no one there with them in the church, Siegfried got the sense that her gaze encompassed the entire city and all its people. "But that is not what Thiers needs me to be."

She turned back and offered him a smile. "So even if it chafes, I will continue to be this city's stalwart defender! That's why… I'm sorry that I can't simply break the curse in an instant."

"I understand," Siegfried said, returning her smile. "I'm sure my Master does as well."

Her smile fell.

"Ah…" She looked away. "Yes, if you say so, Lord Siegfried."

Yes, there was that, too, wasn't there? Siegfried wondered if she had even noticed, but he was certain Jeanne and Arash had both noticed it, and given how sharp his Master's eyes were, she had likely seen it too. The reason behind Lady Bradamante's distrust of their Masters eluded Siegfried, but the fact that she did indeed distrust them was obvious in the way she talked to and about them. Never outright suspicious, but always with a polite distance different altogether from the respect she gave the Servants.

Siegfried wasn't sure what to do about it. He wasn't sure there was anything that could be done about it, not without knowing the source of it.

Perhaps he should have asked Arash while the opportunity was still there. Now, it seemed that he would have to wait until the others returned to ask and see if his ally had any greater insight into the situation than he did.

The doors to the church swung open, and as though mentioning her had summoned her forth, his Master stepped inside, face flushed and brow damp with sweat from her "morning run." While he applauded the initiative in maintaining her fitness, Siegfried also had to lament how it left her unprotected to run through the streets every morning without a Servant to aid her if they were attacked.

He was less concerned about a wyvern or two than he was an enemy Servant, especially another of the Assassin class. He didn't expect a few lesser dragons to prove much of a threat to her, at least not one that she couldn't escape with relatively little difficulty, although when he'd said as much to Lady Bradamante a few days ago, she'd been shocked and appalled.

It was baffling that no one else seemed to have noticed. Was he the only one who knew the stench of the Dragonkind that clung to his Master's bloody sleeve? Was he the only one who recognized that for what it was?

Perhaps it was just a matter of like recognizing like. As a hero who had slain a dragon, he was more familiar than most with their particular mysteries.

"Good morning, Master," Siegfried greeted her.

"Morning, Siegfried, Bradamante," she replied. Her eyes immediately honed in on his wound. "How is it?"

Siegfried's hand moved to his wound of its own accord. It didn't pain him anywhere near as badly to touch it as it had for the past few weeks.

"Well enough."

"It's still going to take me a few more days," Bradamante told her.

His Master accepted this with a nod. Not happily, but as a matter of fact, a statement of truth, something which had to be considered, accepted, and worked around. She did not whine or complain, she shouldered it willingly and stoically.

And then she ran a hand through her hair and scowled.

"I'd kill for a shower, right about now," she muttered, so low he almost didn't hear it.

With a sigh, she sank onto one of the empty pews and threw her arms across the back, letting her head lull onto the wood as she looked up into the church's rafters.

"I guess it's kind of pointless to ask if the twins have gotten into contact, considering I'm the one with the communicator," she said wryly.

"They've only been gone three days, Master," Siegfried pointed out.

"Which means they should be coming across whoever that Servant is pretty soon," she replied. She spared a glance Lady Bradamante's way. "I know I said it before, but I do appreciate that. We've been going by foot most of the time since we got here, and I don't think we could have convinced that farmer to lend us a couple horses on our own."

Lady Bradamante smiled brightly. "It was no trouble! Though…" She trailed off thoughtfully for a moment. "It seems that it would have been an easy problem to solve, if you trusted yourselves to your Servants."

His Master snorted. "Chaldea's courses on Servants had one thing to say about having them carry us to and from our destinations."

"What's that?"

"Don't."

Siegfried couldn't stop a smile, and the short burst of air that hissed out of his nostrils wasn't quite a snort.

Lady Bradamante's brow furrowed. "Why not?"

His Master rolled her shoulders in what might have been intended as a shrug.

"It's considered an unnecessary drain on Chaldea's resources to have our Servants exert themselves for something so petty. If you're in such terrible shape that a little exercise and some walking is enough to wear you out, you have no business being a Master of Chaldea — or so the Director liked to say. At this point, though…"

She scowled.

"We might have to rethink that rule," she admitted sourly. "It was fine when we were crossing a city, but it's too much to ask for when we're crossing the French countryside. We waste too much time just getting from place to place."

And that there was one of the reasons why Siegfried was so certain that whatever misgivings Lady Bradamante had must have been unfounded. His Master was not a cruel or heartless woman, and she did not treat lives as currency.

"I'm sure Mash, Ritsuka, and Rika are fine, Master," he said reassuringly. "Arash would not allow any harm to befall them. They're in good hands."

His Master's scowl deepened. "I'm that transparent, huh?" she whispered under her breath.

Truth be told, his Master wasn't the only one feeling the wait. Although he spoke confidently about Arash's competence as a defender, if he was being honest, Siegfried was anxious as well. It felt like he had spent the majority of his time since his summoning cursed by the wound that still plagued him, and he had never felt so useless as he had hobbling at the tail of the party as they trekked towards Thiers in search of aid.

He, too, was ready to be rid of it and take the fight to the Dragon Witch. For the first time since his death, here was a moment, a conflict with clear right and wrong, and he was to be on the side of justice. And yet, he was cursed to sit it out, barely capable of walking without assistance, let alone fighting, powerless to do anything except wait for an opportune moment where he might fire off his dragon-slaying Noble Phantasm.

It rankled. There was a feeling of impotent frustration in his belly that threatened to boil over almost constantly, and it was tempered only by the knowledge that everyone was doing everything they possibly could to see it fixed as swiftly as possible.

As cold a comfort as it was, he couldn't do anything except accept it. It wasn't that he wasn't grateful, but he was ready to be rid of this wound and the curse that made it linger.

His Master let out a long, slow breath, and then she levered herself out of her seat and back to her feet with one limber motion.

"I might as well eat," she said. "Did the priest leave anything for me?"

"Ah, yes!" Lady Bradamante said. "There should be a bowl of porridge —"

Master honed in on it immediately and made a beeline for the thick, wooden bowl; Lady Bradamante faltered. "…right…over there."

That, too, had taken some getting used to.

Master picked up the bowl and grimaced down at the contents, like she had been personally offended. Although that bland, largely tasteless porridge was exactly the sort of thing Siegfried had eaten all his living life, having now tasted the food cooked by this "Emiya" for himself, he could understand the disappointment at having to go without it. He didn't need food at all, and yet he found himself craving just one more bite of the stew that he had been blessed with tasting.

"Barely two weeks since he took over the cafeteria, and Emiya's already spoiling me," Master muttered.

Despite her complaints, she took one of her metal spoons from the kit she carried and started eating.

"If you are so offended by the priest's generosity," Lady Bradamante said sourly, "then could you not simply have your Acting Director send you more of this Emiya's fare?"

Master shook her head and swallowed. "It's not that easy. A lot of the science and the magecraft stuff goes way over my head, but us just being here is already incredibly complicated and should probably be impossible. Sending food and supplies can be done, but there are limitations on how and where."

"Limitations?"

Master lifted one eyebrow. "Do you think I'm going to start trusting you with all of our secrets when you won't trust us?"

Lady Bradamante flushed, but didn't back down. "I trust you perfectly well!"

"Really?" Master stopped eating long enough to thrust out her hand; the red of her Command Spells stood out starkly on her skin, and it was juxtaposed by the maroon stain on her sleeve. "Then make a contract right now. Become a Servant of Chaldea and help us fix this Singularity."

Lady Bradamante grimaced and turned her head away, refusing to even look at Master's hand.

"I can't," she said. "The people of Thiers need me —"

"Because you think I'll use a Command Spell to force you to leave, right?" Master said, cutting across her. "Use whatever it takes to get my way and force you to fight for my goal without any consideration of your feelings, regardless of what it means for this city."

"Wouldn't you?" Lady Bradamante shot back. "After all, what use are these people against the good of all of France? My obstinance must be quite the obstacle for you, magus of Chaldea."

"How convenient that ivory tower of yours is," Master rebuked. "No one is as just and righteous as you, are they? We're just a group of selfish wizards who don't care about anyone but ourselves and accomplishing our own aims. We all think the ends justify the means, no matter how many people we have to trample on to get there. Is that right?"

"Ha!" Lady Bradamante scoffed. "Are you trying to claim that this is all about altruism? Magi are all as you just said: selfish, greedy, and self-centered. I've yet to meet a single one worth even half of my weakest, least experienced page!" A moment later, she hastily added, "Except Lord Merlin, of course!"

"You must not have met that many, then," said Master. "I've met at least three that I would call pretty decent people. One of them happens to be the closest thing I have to a best friend, these days."

"I suppose you count yourself among them?"

Master shook her head. "No," she said simply, and Lady Bradamante's indignant anger just deflated. "I'm a lot of things, but I don't know that 'decent person' is one of them. I was that kind of person you seem to think I am. I'm hoping I left that behind when I joined Chaldea —"

Master startled and turned away, vaguely in the direction the others had left to travel westward. "Arash?" she asked the air. "Is something happening?"

She fell silent, although by the furrowing of her brow, the conversation continued in her head as she spoke with Arash via the Master-Servant bond. A jolt shot through Siegfried's belly, an unusual sensation when paired with the persistent ache of the wound carved into his flesh.

Something was happening to the other team. Something unexpected, or at least something they had hoped wouldn't happen. An attack? Had another Servant been dispatched by the Dragon Witch to crush the others while they were all separated?

And here he and Master were, stuck in Thiers, him too weakened to help and her too far away to contribute at all.

A long moment of tense silence followed, although it couldn't have been any longer than perhaps thirty seconds. It felt like hours to Siegfried. At last, Master turned back to him, and without preamble, she declared, "The town the others went to is under attack."

"Is there anything we can do?" Siegfried asked immediately.

Master shook her head. "From here? No. We can at least keep track of what's happening, though. Romani!"

She held up her wrist and spoke into the communicator. An instant later, a harried Doctor Romani appeared.

"Taylor!" he said briskly. "I'm sorry, I can't talk right now, the others are —"

"Being attacked, I know," she cut across him just as swiftly. "Is there anything you can give me? Data, flow charts, profiles on the enemy, anything at all so I can keep track of what's going on?"

"R-right! Of course! Just give me a minute!" He turned away from the camera and started fiddling with something none of them could see. "Right, so, if I do this… N-no, that's not it… Maybe here… No, that's something completely different. Damn it, Da Vinci, this is your field, why is it up to me to try and mess with this stuff?"

Long seconds passed, but nothing changed except Master's patience, and her mouth drew into an ever tighter line. Eventually, she just shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

"Forget it, I'm going to get a look with my own —"

She cut off mid-sentence and gasped, stumbling backwards into one of the pews as her bowl clattered to the floor and spilled porridge over her boots. Her face had become pale and drawn, like all of the blood had drained away, and her mouth flapped open and closed with naked shock.

"That's…" she whispered, and it was the first time Siegfried had heard anything like awe or fear in her voice. "That's a dragon?"

Siegfried's gut clenched. "Master?"

"That's gotta be…almost twice as big as Behemoth," she said shakily. "If that thing breathed fire, would there even be a town left?"

Oh.

No, it couldn't be, could it? Of all the dragons that the Dragon Witch might summon to her aid… But it made a degree of sense that Siegfried did not want to believe. After all, if it was just a matter of a dragonslayer, then there were a number of Heroic Spirits who could have been summoned in response. However, that it was Siegfried himself who had been summoned instead…

It must be. For a woman who had already slain a dragon, what dragon would she fear but the greatest and evilest of them all?

"Master!" Siegfried seized her by the shoulders urgently, and he only just remembered to control his strength so he didn't crush her bones into powder. "Please, that dragon, describe it to me!"

They were two sides of the same coin, after all. Victim and murderer, inextricably linked by fate and destiny.

Master blinked up at him, but turned immediately to her communicator. "Romani!" she barked into it. "That dragon, is that —"

"The output far outclasses any of the wyverns you've come across so far!" the Doctor confirmed. "In terms of sheer magical energy and mana density, it puts even a top class Servant to shame! Taylor, that's the genuine article, a real dragon!"

"Master!" Siegfried insisted.

She looked him in the face, and then her eyes trailed down to the glowing marking etched into his chest. Siegfried let go of her and recoiled, because that all but confirmed it, didn't it?

"Siegfried," she began with quiet haste, "that mark on your chest, is that —"

"Yes," Siegfried said. "This mark is the mark of the blood of the dragon that I bathed in. It marks my Noble Phantasm, the armor of the evil dragon gained by killing it and taking its body as spoils. It binds us together, a symbol of our shared destiny."

"Then," she said, "a dragon that has a symbol just like that on its chest would be…"

Siegfried closed his eyes and inclined his head.

"That's correct, Master. That there is a dragon bearing this symbol on its chest attacking the others can mean one thing and one thing only."

He sucked in a deep breath. The wound just below his ribs throbbed, as though to remind him that he was in no shape to go charging into battle against the greatest enemy he had ever faced.

"The Dragon Witch has called forth my old nemesis," he said solemnly. "Once more, the evil dragon, Fafnir, now walks this Earth."

Master whirled about towards the doors, as though she was going to sprint to the other team's aid right then and there, but she spun back around halfway there and stalked down the aisle. A low buzz began to hum in the background from the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, as though the entire cathedral was about to come alive.

She looked down at her Command Spells, brow knitted together.

"If Arash used his Noble Phantasm," she began.

"It may be enough to defeat Fafnir, but it would at least force a retreat," Siegfried agreed. "Master, Lord Arash will do whatever he deems is necessary. There's no need to use your Command Spells."

His Master's restless energy matched his own. It was not in Siegfried to sit and wait, to be so passive when the enemy was clear and the goal unambiguous. He wanted to race off himself, to chase down the dragon and cast it from the sky with his Noble Phantasm. He wanted to be strong enough that he could do just that. Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, Jeanne, they were all in danger, and he was the only one strong enough to protect them from the evil dragon, if only the wound in his side was gone.

But he wasn't and he couldn't. The wound remained. He was stuck in this church, unable to do anything but wait.

"Romani!" Master barked instead into her communicator. "Send Emiya! Give them some kind of backup!"

"I-I can't!" the Doctor replied. "The interference from such a huge concentration of magical energy is throwing off our instruments! I can't guarantee exactly where he'll land!"

"Send him anyway!" Master snarled. "What good is holding onto emergency backup if you can't rely on him in an emergency? He just needs to get here! Rika can use a Command Spell to bring him closer if she —"

"I-incoming enemy Servant!" Romani shouted. "Location, he's on his way to Thiers, heading directly towards you!"

Lady Bradamante gasped.

Doctor Romani's image turned to Master with wide eyes.

"This Saint Graph reading — Taylor, it's Dracul."

Master jerked as though she'd been slapped, her mouth moving silently for a moment as she processed the news. The name meant little to Siegfried, because it wasn't one he immediately recognized.

But if the expression on his Master's face was any indication, he was not a foe to be taken lightly.

"Fuck."

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

Not totally happy where this landed, in some spots. Nasu's version of Siegfried feels kind of weird, and trying to get a handle on his mental state was funky. I did my best, but your mileage may vary. Also, yes, Emiya finally gets dropped into things. Fafnir is the kind of enemy you pull out all your trump cards for, after all.

Next chapter is the rematch with an old foe from earlier in the Singularity.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter XXII: Common Enemy

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter XXII: Common Enemy

Almost before the word had finished leaving my mouth, I started into motion and made briskly for the church's doors.

"Romani," I barked into my communicator as I went, "how much time?"

There wasn't much time, there couldn't be much time, not with Chaldea's sensors having such a finite range for picking up the smaller details. One or two miles out, that was all I had, and at a Servant's full on sprint speed, that wasn't much distance at all. He could be here and slaughtering his way through the townsfolk as I spoke, and that added an extra urgency to my steps.

"A minute, maybe two," Romani told me hurriedly. "The only reason we even have this much lead time is because we registered the readings from his Saint Graph during your last encounter."

Outside, as I pushed the door open with my free hand, I started to gather a swarm, mentally cataloguing the stuff that would be useful and setting aside everything that wasn't. It was the longest I'd stayed in one place since we'd first arrived in this Singularity, which meant I'd had much longer to start putting together some of my old tricks instead of just relying on sheer numbers and mass. Unfortunately, none of the stingers and the venomous bugs in my range were of any use against a Servant, so I had to reluctantly leave them all behind.

"What direction is he coming from?"

In the back of my head, I noted Siegfried and Bradamante following on my heels, both of them suited up in their full armor and with weapons at the ready. The latter of the two seemed to be paying particular attention to my abrupt briefing with Romani — of course. Probably the only reason she hadn't raced off to confront Dracul directly was the fact she didn't know where she needed to go.

How had she detected us so early that she could meet us before we even got into town? My only guess was that our larger retinue and the fact we'd had three (and a half? With Jeanne diminished, I had no idea how she read to a Servant's magical sixth sense) Servants had made us far easier to detect, but I didn't really understand it beyond "Servants can sense other Servants." Some could do it from farther away than others, although my sample size was tiny, so what the fuck did I know either way?

"North," said Romani, the word broken by a crackle of static halfway through.

Without even thinking about it, I spun on my heel and course corrected. Even then, I was building up a three-dimensional map of the city with my bugs, looking through for the quickest route northwards.

North, he said…

"That's from over the mountain."

"Strictly speaking, it's really more of a large hill than a mountain," Romani corrected, and then seemed to realize how stupid it was being pedantic about that right now. "B-but that's not the important part, you're right! What's important is that there's a whole city between you and him, and there's no time to evacuate everyone!"

"Which means we need to meet him halfway before he makes it all the way over the hill."

The advantage of high ground — for whatever that would wind up being worth in a battle between Servants — and no bystanders to get caught up in the fighting. The trees and foliage should also give me plenty of places to hide without being so far away that any help I could give would be entirely useless.

Not that I expected to be able to do much myself. Dracul had already proven my bugs were just nourishment to him, although how much was probably negligible. At the very least, being nearby would give me a good view of the fight, for a certain value of the word "view."

The only problem: getting up the hill quickly enough to beat Dracul to the top. Bradamante wouldn't do it, so there was only one real option, even if it wasn't ideal.

I whirled back around.

"Siegfried," I said, "we need to get to the top of the hill. We have about" — fuck it, best guess — "thirty seconds. Can you manage it?"

With his wound not yet fully healed and the curse not yet completely broken?

Siegfried smiled a confident smile and gave me a nod, and then his sword disappeared as he knelt down and offered his arms. Internally, I grimaced. The princess hold wasn't particularly dignified for the woman being carried, but for a Servant moving at the speed of a race car, it was almost certainly a lot safer than me clinging desperately to his back.

"Bradamante —"

But I hadn't even finished turning to face her before the wind of her passing whipped my hair about, left in her wake as she dashed up the streets at speed.

Still getting used to that kind of speed. Speedsters hadn't been exactly uncommon capes, but Brutes, teleporters, and fliers had been much more common by far. The only pure speedster coming to mind just then was Velocity, and he was nowhere near that fast.

Without any more delay, I spun back around and climbed into Siegfried's waiting arms. He wrapped one around my shoulders and looped the other under my knees, and I wrapped mine around his neck just to give myself at least the resemblance of control over what was about to happen.

"Ready," I told him.

His legs bunched up — I caught the faintest wince, just barely there, at the pain of his wound — and then he leapt into the air. My hair whipped about my head, but even though that made it hard to see, I could tell just by the positioning of my bugs that we had cleared easily thirty yards in one go.

We would be reaching the summit of the hill in no time at all.

I hadn't forgotten that the others were currently fighting Fafnir, another enemy of seemingly insurmountable strength. How could I, when Arash was still drawing a steady stream of magical energy from me, even if it wasn't all that much compared to what Cúchulainn had needed to fight the corrupted Emiya in Fuyuki? But I couldn't do anything for the twins and Mash and I couldn't change the outcome of that fight from here. I couldn't afford to distract myself worrying about it when the worst possible enemy was even now fast approaching, coming to kill us all.

Whether he would slaughter the townsfolk after killing me, Siegfried, and Bradamante wasn't even a question.

Another leap carried us further up the hill, and Siegfried had barely landed with deceptive softness before we left the ground again. The wind howled around me, biting at my exposed cheek. My stomach lurched with each jump, like I was at the bottom of a swing on a swingset. The whole world whirled about me — even with my eyes squeezed shut, the galaxy of lights that marked my bugs rushed past too quickly to grasp.

But even before we made it to the top, my power settled on the bugs that lived there, and I realized that we'd been too slow to move.

Dracul was already there. Waiting at the crest of the hill, looking down on the city. In one hand, he held his spear, and pinched between the fingers of the other was a single, ordinary fly, held in a grip like steel just strong enough to avoid crushing it.

He seemed to sense my presence in the fly, because he turned to it with a mad grin.

"Oh," he rumbled in that deep, dark voice of his, "there you are, clever Master. It seems I'll be seeing you shortly."

Dracul's already here, I told Siegfried across our contract's bond, because I didn't trust my voice to the wind. There was a hitch, the barest hesitation on his next landing, but he kept going regardless and gave me a nod I felt in the shift of his corded muscles.

Understood.

"Hurry along, now," Dracul said. "If you and your Servant take too long, I might not be able to contain my bloodlust. This fly won't be the only thing I crush while I wait."

With the slightest flex of his finger, the fly was squashed and my connection to it was cut. Through the eyes of the other insects crawling all about, I could see him shake the viscera from his hand, as though the blood and guts were of so little worth that they couldn't even take off the edge of his hunger.

Those bugs were also what let me see Bradamante come racing up the hilltop bare seconds later, brandishing her shield in front of her and keeping a vice grip on her miniature lance. She had eyes only for Dracul, and she was already tense and ready for combat when she came to a stop.

"No further than that!" she spat at him. "I am the Lancer class Servant, Bradamante! Paladin of Charlemagne! Thiers and all of its people are under my protection, and I won't allow you to take a single life today!"

"What a coincidence!" Dracul's grin split his face. "I, too, am a Lancer class Servant! Although you seem to have escaped the curse of Madness that my Master placed upon me during my summoning. Tell me, were you summoned by that human woman, or was it one of those brats she was shepherding back at La Charité?"

"I have no Master," Bradamante told him vehemently. "I kneel before no mage. My allegiance belongs only to my king and to the people of this city!"

I grimaced.

Set me down and keep going, I ordered Siegfried.

Of course, Master.

He came to a jarring halt at the end of the latest jump and carefully knelt down to let me find my feet. I stumbled a little trying to regain my bearings, but the instant I was confident I wasn't going to fall over, I took off in a sprint down the side streets and over my shoulder barked, "Go!"

Siegfried leapt like the wind, and I lost track of him from the sheer speed as I maneuvered my way closer to the fight behind the cover the city and its buildings offered me. Plans started to whirl up in my head as I sprinted, and while enough was different, I found myself comforted by the familiarity of the circumstances.

This was my element. This was where I thrived. The rush of blood thundering through my veins, the surge of adrenaline that set my thoughts into hyperdrive, the burn of my muscles as I raced towards the action, and the huff of my breath as I sucked down air. Skitter, Weaver, Khepri — whichever name I'd worn, whoever was standing beside me, whatever enemy stood against me, this had always been me at my best.

There was probably something incredibly sad about the fact I was more comfortable in the thick of combat than I was trying to be a good, understanding leader to a pair of teenagers, but that wasn't the time to think about it.

"You're one of the strays, then," Dracul purred. He chuckled, low and menacing. "That means you'll be all the easier to kill!"

Bradamante settled lower into her stance, leveling her lance at Dracul. "The only one who will die here is you!"

Dracul only laughed, tossing his head back as it pealed out of his mouth.

"Such fire! Such vitality! You will make an excellent appetizer until the main course shows herself!"

And at that moment, with all the grace of a cat, Siegfried landed in a crouch between them, clutching his massive sword with one hand. Slowly, he stood straight, flinching just the slightest from his wound.

But there was no quiver or doubt in his voice. "If you're referring to my Master, Dracul," he said confidently, "then you'll have to make it through me, first."

"Oh?" Dracul grinned. "You. Yes, you're the Servant we defeated at Lyon. You still cling to this false life, do you? I'm amazed. A wound like that would have killed any ordinary Servant. Tell me, does it still ail you?"

Siegfried grimaced, but very intentionally didn't let himself reach for his wound.

"Wound or not, I will defeat you all the same," he declared.

"I'm sure," Dracul said, voice dripping condescension. "Your Master — is she that woman from La Charité, then? She seems to have traded in. Did that Archer of hers get killed?"

Siegfried said nothing. Dracul seemed to take that for confirmation.

"A shame. I was looking forward to peeling the flesh from his bones myself."

"Don't ignore me!"

Bradamante rushed towards him and raced past Siegfried, snarling, but Dracul caught her tiny lance with the shaft of his own and held her there effortlessly.

"Of course I'm not ignoring you," he said as though he was speaking to a child. "That would imply that I even remembered you were still here. If you're going to offer yourself up to me on a silver platter, however…"

An ominous premonition tingled at the base of my skull. I didn't know exactly what he was about to do, but I knew enough to know it couldn't be allowed to happen.

STOP HIM!

Siegfried was already moving before I could even finish giving the order, and he bulldozed Bradamante out of the way, crashing into Dracul like a speeding train. Their momentum carried them ten, twenty, almost thirty feet, it had to be, and midway through their flight, Dracul's body erupted with dark spikes like he was some kind of human porcupine.

Siegfried grunted, but weathered the attack with barely a scratch, little more than a handful of papercuts that scored only the surface of his skin. Dracul couldn't hurt him, I realized suddenly. Armor of Fafnir negated everything that was B-Rank or lower, and everything higher got reduced by the same amount. Even with A-Rank strength, Dracul wouldn't be able to do anything more than minor, easily healed damage.

I made a sharp turn down a side road that led to the hilltop, a plan starting to form in my head, and my magic circuits churned as I focused on him and activated one of the spells loaded into my mystic code.

"First aid!" I chanted between breaths.

Immediately, all of the cuts sealed up as though they hadn't happened. The wound that plagued him still, however, remained unaffected at all, just as it had when Jeanne had tried to heal it. If I was a betting woman, that would be the only other place on his body where Siegfried would be vulnerable, right now.

Dracul broke out into laughter.

"So she is around!" His grin was all teeth. "Then if I kill the two of you, she'll have no choice but to show herself, won't she?"

"You won't touch her," Siegfried promised.

"As though you will have any say in that, once you're dead!"

"Ha!"

Bradamante leapt towards him from the side, aiming to take advantage of his focus on Siegfried, but Dracul swung his arm around, and from his palm, brackish black blood lashed out like a whip. She was thrown to the side and crashed through a tree, disappearing into the undergrowth.

Already, I was diverting some of my swarm to check up on her, but it quickly became apparent there wasn't a need, because she charged back out, completely uninjured. Her shield must have taken the brunt of the blow.

She and Siegfried attacked together, and Dracul met them both, deftly deflecting Siegfried's sword to the side as he stepped out of the way of Bradamante's lance. His hand came down over hers, and he used his superior strength to pull her off balance and push her into an overextension. He didn't punish her for it, though. He just watched her stumble and right herself.

Something was wrong with this picture. Siegfried, I could understand, because he was injured and definitely not fighting at his best. But Dracul should not be casually manhandling both of them, toying with them the way he was. Not when he was a Heroic Spirit better known for his tactics, strategy, and psychological warfare than his martial skill, compared to someone like Siegfried or Bradamante, both of whom would have focused more on direct combat in their legends.

My focus honed in on Bradamante.

Was it because she didn't have a proper Master? If being without a direct source of power was forcing her to be more conservative about how hard she fought and how much energy she spent, then it would make sense how someone who was being supported by a Grail could outperform her.

Or maybe I was just underestimating Dracul's skill as a fighter. A bit of focus brought up his spread of stats and skills, and while they didn't show him as particularly fast, he was sturdy, strong, and undoubtedly tricksy. They also told me almost nothing at all about how he fought or how good he was with an actual weapon.

Siegfried came around again, and in one fluid motion, Dracul blocked his sword and lashed out with his other hand to strike at Siegfried's wound with four sharp-nailed fingers. Siegfried gasped and stumbled backwards, fresh blood spurting from his side, directly into Bradamante. She squawked and diverted her blow from his back, but it cost her footing, and she barreled into Siegfried, taking them both to the ground.

Dracul only laughed as they both scrambled to their feet, licking red blood off of his fingers with a long, pink tongue.

"What's wrong, Saber?" Dracul taunted. "You're not fighting at your best. Perhaps that wound troubles you more than you're letting on."

"Wound or no wound, I will defeat you," Siegfried promised again.

"I said," Bradamante snarled, "stop ignoring me!"

She put on a spurt of speed, leading with her shield, and with a warcry, she fell upon Dracul, thrusting her lance directly for his chest.

Blood splattered across the forest floor. Bradamante gasped, and Dracul smirked at her, holding her lance by the crystalline green blade. Its point rested just above his chest, less than an inch away from the fabric of his clothing. The edge cut into the skin of his fingers, and small, red rivulets dribbled down it, but no matter how hard she pushed, it moved no closer to gouging out his heart.

"I'm giving you all the focus you deserve," he said. "If you want my attention so badly, then do something interesting, first."

He stepped to the side at the same time as he let go of her lance, and as she stumbled forward from the sudden lack of resistance, he delivered a punishing blow with his own lance that shook the trees and the ground itself and sent her flying. Red blood soared up into the air to mark her passing, and the crack of branches and whole trees snapping in her wake was like thunder.

Siegfried grimaced as Dracul turned back to him. One hand was gripping his sword like a vice, but the other was pressed to his side, clutched against his wound.

"Now then." Dracul's mouth split into another manic grin. "Where were we?"

Siegfried said nothing and just brandished his sword.

As I reached the edge of the city, I quickly turned and stepped off the beaten path into the trees.

Siegfried, I said as I ran. I've got a plan.

There was the minutest of pauses.

I'm listening, Master.

My feet pounded the earth, and I closed my eyes as I raced through the underbrush, ignoring the whip of branches and leaves that smacked me in the face. My bugs formed a map that let me navigate even still.

Dracul can't be killed with a single fatal blow. As long as his head's still attached, he's just shy of invincible, and I'm not sure taking his head off is even enough.

It should work, in principle, in theory. There had to be limits to what Battle Continuation, even at A-rank, would let him survive. The only reason I wasn't sure was because of his Shapeshift skill, because I remembered Dracula, and while it was supposed to be more limited in the daytime, he was supposed to be able to do things like transform into mist and escape attacks. He — the character, that was — had only actually been killed by a simultaneous decapitation and blow to the heart.

But without knowing for sure whether that held, there was one definite way of killing him.

So our best bet is to destroy him completely with your Noble Phantasm. I doubt he's going to give us the time to get that ready, though, so someone needs to distract him.

Siegfried's brow furrowed.

Not you, certainly, Master.

I shook my head a little, even though he couldn't see it.

We need Bradamante to make an opening. Look for it. The instant you see it, blow Dracul away. Until then, I need you to keep him busy. In fact…

I squinted open an eye and looked down at my pumping hands. The red on the back of one stood out to me.

Was it a waste? Maybe it was. Siegfried was strong enough and capable enough to hold off Dracul for at least a minute or two while I got Bradamante on board. But this wasn't the time to be skittish and hesitate, not when the other team was facing Fafnir and the only thing standing between Thiers and a violent death was a pair of Servants, one of whom was injured and weakened and the other who didn't have a Master to support her.

For how much I'd quibbled about using them when we didn't really need to, the decision was almost hilariously easy.

"By the power of my Command Spell," I said between breaths, "Saber, fight Dracul at your best."

On my hand, one third of the snaking tentacles flashed and faded away into vague smudges.

The change was immediate. Siegfried straightened, taller and more solid than he had been since we'd first found him in Lyon. His posture was stronger and surer, more like what I might have expected had we summoned him properly back outside Vaucouleurs. His wound still bled and it wasn't gone, but it didn't seem to bother him anymore, at least for the moment.

"Yes, Master," he said confidently.

"Getting your second wind?" Dracul mused, walking slowly like a stalking predator. "I see. Your Master must have done something, then. A Command Spell?"

"My Master is none of your concern, Dracul," Siegfried said as he took Balmung with both hands. "You won't get anywhere near her."

He launched forward with a devastatingly powerful swing of his sword that Dracul struggled to block, and I heard the ring of clashing steel even from where I was. I kept a selection of bugs watching, but put the fight to the back of my mind as I swung around the edges of it. I didn't need to know any better than I already did just how badly they outclassed me in every metric, I just needed to keep track of how well Siegfried was doing.

I found Bradamante dazed and barely conscious something like a hundred feet from the fighting. A wicked gash over her torso bled fresh blood and had come dangerously close to disemboweling her, snaking its way up from one hip, across her stomach, and over her ribcage under the left side of her bust. He had even torn into the muscle of her left bicep.

Her armor had to be magical, because there was absolutely no way the flimsy-looking cloth she was wearing had been enough to protect her from a full force blow by Dracul. Not when I was fairly sure it would have ripped through even my sturdiest costume with ridiculous ease.

Focusing on her the same way I had Siegfried, I fed magical energy into my mystic code and chanted off the spell.

"First aid!"

The wound sealed over until there wasn't even a faint pink line left, and Bradamante gasped to life, jerking upright. She blinked, and then immediately focused in on me.

"You!" She patted down the place where her wound had been, and her brow furrowed. "You healed me. Thank —"

"There's no time," I cut across her. "Siegfried is distracting Dracul, but unless he manages to get in a lucky shot and take Dracul's head off, we can't beat him like this. The only way we're going to protect Thiers and get out of this alive is if we work together to take him out."

Her eyes narrowed. "You want me to make a contract with you, become your Servant."

"It would make things easier," I told her, "but as long as you can use your Noble Phantasm without Chaldea's support, it doesn't matter. Can you?"

She hesitated. "Not consecutively," she admitted grudgingly, "but I should be fine to use it at least once."

I nodded briskly.

"Explain it to me," I said. "Quickly, in the simplest possible terms."

She hesitated a moment longer, and then she did. Nonsensically, despite the fact that she was a Lancer, it turned out that it was her shield, and the tiny lance was basically just a miniature mana cannon. She could combine the two to do extra damage, but the main attack was just a powerful charge with her shield.

A charge that not only did damage — and that alone may or may not be enough to defeat Dracul — but also stunned the enemy for a brief moment, not unlike a flashbang grenade. A moment where, say, another combatant might be able to guarantee a hit with his own Noble Phantasm.

It wasn't perfect. We were going to have to be exceptionally careful not to hit Bradamante in the process of killing Dracul.

The sound of clashing steel still rang out, and when I briefly turned my attention back to the fight more completely, things had returned to a more even footing. Dracul was struggling against Siegfried's punishing blows, but he forced Siegfried back and on the defensive even as I watched by targeting the grisly, half-healed wound, and that gave him enough room to protect himself from a finishing blow.

"Here's the plan," I explained hurriedly. "I'm going to grab Dracul's attention. I need you to hit him with your Noble Phantasm, and that should stun him long enough for Siegfried to deal the final blow. Got it?"

Her brow furrowed. "You want me to sacrifice myself?"

Someone save me from suspicious girl knights…

"No. Hit Dracul and keep going. Don't stop until you're way out of range, and even then, the instant you hear Siegfried call out his Noble Phantasm, put your shield between you and him, just to be safe."

Bradamante frowned, but accepted this with a slight nod.

"How do you mean to distract him?" she asked.

"You let me worry about that," I said. "You just charge in the direction I point and don't stop until the fighting does."

"…Fine," she said at length. "For the sake of defeating a common enemy, I will trust you just this once."

She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders, then lifted her shield in one hand, her lance in the other, and crouched down in a defensive stance.

"I'm ready."

The swarm I'd been slowly building in the background suddenly burst into motion, taking flight, and they swirled about with exaggerated drama, circling the other two Servants. They broke off their fight, both of them eyeing the thick collection of bugs that poured into the clearing, although Siegfried had already seen this sort of thing and was keeping half his attention on Dracul.

The swarm buzzed angrily.

"DRACUL," they droned menacingly in a discordant hum that shook the air.

Dracul laughed, delighted. A broad grin stretched over his face. "We meet again, woman! Are you going to retreat a second time and leave yet another city to my mercies?"

"NO RETREAT," my bugs boomed, and the swarm flew down to condense into a vaguely humanoid shape, a familiar trick of mine from back in my Skitter days.

Siegfried, I ordered him, disengage!

At the same time, I pointed directly at Dracul and I told Bradamante, "Straight that way. On my mark…"

The bug clone spread its fake arms, even as Siegfried leapt backwards. "IF YOU WANT ME, I'M RIGHT HERE!"

Dracul burst into motion as blood exploded from every pore of his body. He descended upon my bug clone like a ravenous beast, and the tendrils of his blood speared into my bugs, killing them in droves in an instant.

"Go!"

Bradamante thrust her spear forward, and a beam of light shot from the tip, through the foliage, and through my bugs' eyes, I watched it lance through Dracul's body.

"Bouclier —"

Her shield lit up like an exploding star, so bright that I had to squint my eyes almost closed just to keep from being blinded. She didn't seem to charge forward so much as take off like a rocket, like she was being reeled in by a high speed fishing line or something, and she crashed through every obstacle in her way. The trees that hadn't already been bowled over by her when Dracul flung her back were being crushed underfoot now.

"— de Atlante!"

From behind, a shell of light seemed to form in front of her, but seen through the eyes of my bugs as she passed, she was like a comet, streaming a rainbow of colors in her wake. Dracul had only a moment to be surprised as my bug clone dispersed, a mere fraction of a second, and then Bradamante smashed into him like a freight train and kept going.

It was an apt comparison. Dracul was trampled and knocked down, tumbling across the clearing chaotically, even as Bradamante kept running, using her shield like a battering ram to push through. When Dracul finally came to a stop, he looked like he'd been run over, because one leg was bent in sickening angles in at least three different places, one arm had been ripped clean off, including the shoulder joint, and half of his face had been torn apart.

Even so badly hurt that he had to be barely alive, he still tried to climb to his feet, clutching at his remaining eye with his ruined remaining hand. Bloodstained lips pulled back into a snarl.

"DAMN YOU!"

Siegfried, now! I ordered.

And Siegfried was already ahead of me, racing forwards with a blazing Balmung held in both hands. He got in close, but only close enough that Dracul couldn't escape, and he swung his sword in a devastating upwards blow.

"BALMUNG!"

The blazing blue beam carved first into the ground, gouging out a chunk of the earth, and quickly expanded into a wave of light that consumed Dracul whole and shot off into the sky. Even from where I was, I could feel the weight of it and see it race upwards, parting the clouds as it passed through them.

He'd controlled it, I realized a moment later. Instead of just letting it loose and obliterating everything in front of him for a mile, he'd swept it upwards so that the majority of the blast would sail harmlessly into the air, and in the process, he'd minimized the amount of damage done to the surrounding landscape.

When it faded, there was no sign of Dracul, none that I could find with a cursory look through my bugs, at any rate. It looked like that had been enough to kill him.

Enemy Servant neutralized, Master, Siegfried reported.

I let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding and took off at a jog to meet up with him. My magic circuits ached faintly from the amount of energy he'd chewed through to fire off his Noble Phantasm, but unlike with Cúchulainn in Fuyuki, I wasn't really feeling much strain. Guess I had Chaldea's reactors to thank for that one.

Bradamante was already there by the time I had maneuvered my way around the wreckage to meet back up with Siegfried, and she was looking out over the deep, thirty-foot long divot that was carved into the hillside, up at the parted clouds. With my own eyes, now, I could see Dracul, or rather the complete lack thereof. There wasn't even a splatter of blood remaining of him.

"We did it," she said quietly, and then she looked over at me and added, like she wasn't quite sure what to think of it, "together."

Siegfried let out a long breath, and then he grunted, pressing a hand to his freshly bleeding wound. For good measure, I spun up my circuits again and chanted, "First aid."

The wound didn't exactly seal over, but the bleeding at least slowed to a stop, leaving us basically where we'd been before the fight. Siegfried let out a tense sigh, like he'd gotten some relief but not all the way.

"Thank you, Master."

If only I could have done more. But this much, at least, was within the scope of my abilities.

"You helped me to protect the city," Bradamante said. "You could have run away. Lord Siegfried is injured. Retreating would have been the wiser option against such a fearsome enemy as the Lord Impaler."

It would have been. If it was just me and Siegfried here, it might have wound up our only option, no matter how much it would have stung.

"And you would have died," I replied. "You and all of the people in Thiers."

She nodded. "I would have." She turned back towards the city. "We would have."

She turned at last back to me.

"I've decided!" she declared. "Tomorrow, I'm going to push the rest of the way and break the curse on Lord Siegfried! In exchange, I'll be entrusting the protection of the people of Thiers to you!"

I felt my lips start to curl. "I'll —"

Master, Arash interjected suddenly.

"Hold that thought," I said to Bradamante.

Arash? I pushed back.

We survived, he explained shortly. We should be back at Thiers late tomorrow or early the day after.

What happened? I demanded.

Please, use my eyes for a moment, Master.

I frowned, but closed my own eyes and pushed myself towards him; a moment later, I was in a completely different stretch of forest, watching over a beaten down caravan consisting of the twins, Mash, Jeanne, and two new people who were dressed so uniquely that they could only be Servants. One was a man with long blond hair carrying a conductor's baton, of all things, and the other was clad in burnished copper armor with a white surcoat. The most striking thing about the second was the pauldron shaped like a dragon's head that was curved around one shoulder.

If that was who I thought it was… But who was the Beethoven wannabe?

Arash?

I can't explain everything right now, Master, he said. I can't afford to let my guard down that long. I'll explain everything when we return.

I hesitated.

If that dragon chases you down —

I will protect Ritsuka and Rika, Master, he promised. Whatever it takes.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

The realization that Dracul couldn't actually hurt Siegfried that badly really changed how I had to approach this chapter. The trouble was, Dracul is also pretty hard to hurt, so Balmung had to be involved, but Drac wasn't about to just let him fire it off and getting the distance necessary is harder in a battle between two relatively equally fast Servants.

This is not Siegfried's last moment to shine in this Singularity. It's not even really my favorite. The next one is a few chapters ahead, though.

Also, it looks like my math was off. We'll still keep going until Chapter 27 before I take that break, but chapter 27 is going to be Dec 4th. I dunno how I screwed that timeline up so badly, but apparently I did.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter XXIII: Requiem for a Queen

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter XXIII: Requiem for a Queen

I didn't wait for Arash and the others to make it back to Thiers to find out what had happened with their team while Siegfried, Bradamante, and I were busy taking down Dracul.

Of course not. Not that there wasn't any value in getting it directly from the horse's mouth, as it were, but in what world did it make sense to wait two or three days for a first person debriefing when you could get an after action report in minutes?

Instead, I did the smarter thing and went back to the church with Bradamante and Siegfried, and there, away from the townsfolk's prying eyes, I activated my communicator and contacted Romani.

The instant his image appeared, he gave me a quick once over before he turned back to his monitor and checked it to his satisfaction.

"Everything's green for you," he told me when he turned back to me. "Some slight stress on your magic circuits, but that's to be expected when you just got done fighting a Servant — uh, in the collective sense, I mean. Obviously, you didn't fight Dracul."

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, I deliberately didn't mention the thing with the bug clone. "Of course not."

"Speaking of, congratulations!" he said brightly. "You guys managed to take out Dracul! Man, I thought he was going to be an end boss or something! I was so sure that you were going to wind up fighting him at the very end, right as the Grail was within reach. Talk about a completely unbalanced enemy!"

An end boss? Seriously? Who was he supposed to be? Leet?

"Seriously, you guys overperformed," said Romani. "You especially, Siegfried. I don't want to even imagine how we would've beaten that guy without you there to take him out. You're a massive help."

"We did work really well together!" Bradamante said with a broad grin.

"I was only following my Master's orders," Siegfried demurred, but there was a small, satisfied smile on his face.

"Enough with the accolades, Romani," I said, dragging things back on track. "What happened with the twins and Mash? Arash wouldn't tell me anything because he didn't want to divide his attention."

"Ah." Romani's smile fell. "Yeah, I can see why neither of them has contacted you. Things were… They got a bit rough, over there."

"The dragon?"

"Exactly what you'd expect from the genuine article," Romani said grimly. "A colossal Spirit Origin, magical energy reactions off the charts, stats that would put even a Servant like Siegfried to shame. I know she's been summoning wyverns left, right, and center, but I honestly don't have any idea how she managed to drag something like that into this time period, let alone how she keeps it under control. It's so ludicrously out of her league that it should have squashed her flat the instant it showed up."

"No, it makes perfect sense," said Siegfried. "Fafnir and I share a destiny. A karmic bond, if you will. I can't say which of us was summoned first, but without a doubt, it's only natural that the other was brought here, too."

My brow furrowed and I turned towards him. "Then if we had summoned you…"

And Fafnir hadn't already been here, would we have inadvertently brought a terrible calamity down on this already beleaguered country?

Just imagining it hollowed out the pit of my stomach. What would we have been able to do, if a massive, winged beast big enough to swallow us all whole at once had suddenly appeared when we were trying to summon a dragonslayer? Running would've been pointless against something that huge that could also fly, and a maw that huge breathing fire would've easily wiped out even my biggest swarm, meaning distracting it would have been useless. Any of my bugs that got close probably would have burst, just the same as they did when I sicced them on that wyvern.

Without Siegfried, we would have died right then and there. With him, the only thing we could've done was cower behind Mash's shield and hope he could win.

Siegfried shook his head. "It's unlikely. A proper summoning performed by a proper Master shouldn't pose those sorts of risks, but neither of us would have been properly summoned. To begin with, I shudder to imagine a Master capable and twisted enough to summon Fafnir directly."

"Fafnir?" Romani asked, his voice an entire octave higher. "That was Fafnir, the evil dragon from the Volsunga Saga?"

"No," said Siegfried. "I cannot say for certain that there isn't some resemblance between the dragon Sigurd killed and the one I slew. However…" His fingers traced the mark emblazoned across his chest. "This mark identifies him. Only the Fafnir that died by my hands bears this same mark."

I waved it off impatiently. As long as we didn't have to worry about Fafnir resurrecting itself whenever Siegfried did anything, we had the space to figure things out.

"That's not the important part, right now. We can worry about Fafnir and how to deal with him later. Romani — what happened?"

"Fafnir…" Romani mumbled with horror.

"Romani!" I snapped.

He jolted. "Wha — oh. Right. I guess the twins wouldn't have told you anything yet, huh?"

"Told me what?"

"They ran into three more Servants in the town they went to," said Romani.

My brow furrowed.

"Three?"

"I know, we were only expecting one, right? I was as surprised as you were when they all popped up on our instruments."

"I saw the musician and the knight in copper armor," I said. "Who's the third?"

He blinked at me, bewildered.

"Saw?"

"Through Arash's eyes," I explained shortly.

"Oh," he mumbled. "Right. You can do that. I totally forgot."

As much as I liked Romani as a person, I couldn't wait until Marie was back in charge.

"Romani. Focus."

"Right." He sighed. "The third was Marie Antoinette, Rider class Servant. That musician you saw is Amadeus Mozart, Caster class Servant. The knight, you'll be happy to hear —"

"Saint George, right?"

Romani scowled. "I hate it when you do that. It's bad enough with Da Vinci."

I ignored him, pretending he hadn't said anything.

"Marie Antoinette and Mozart?" I said thoughtfully. "They were strays, right? No Master, probably summoned by the world's autoimmune response?"

"I'm not sure any of that is the proper term for those things," Romani said wryly, "but yeah. As far as we can tell, all three of them were summoned the same way as Jeanne and Siegfried were. And Bradamante, I suppose."

But why Marie Antoinette and Mozart, of all people? Siegfried, I could understand. He was a dragonslayer. Even if you took Fafnir out of the mix, it made sense for him to be summoned to deal with a bunch of dragons. Wyverns. Whatever. The same went for Saint George. They had a conceptual advantage against the enemy, and that gave them an edge that another Servant wouldn't have. Even Bradamante, lacking that advantage, was at least a knight who had earned some acclaim for her martial prowess.

What did Marie Antoinette and Mozart have, though? A musician who paved the way for a lot of the Classical musicians who came after him and a queen who was famous only for her death, remembered prominently for a single quote that might not even have been something she actually said. How were they at all useful against an army of wyverns?

Plus…

"I didn't see another Servant with them," I remarked.

I already had a suspicion why, though, as the sequence of events started to take form in my head, and when Romani grimaced, sighed even deeper, and raked a hand through his hair, I didn't need him to tell me to know what must have happened to her, even if I didn't know how.

"How did it happen?" I asked quieter.

"She stayed behind to protect the city while the others helped with the evacuation," Romani said. "Her Noble Phantasm was enough to buy them some time to escape, but…"

"Not enough to stop Fafnir indefinitely," Siegfried concluded solemnly.

As I'd thought. Marie Antoinette died for her country — again, if you thought about it a certain way.

"There's a reason he's considered the preeminent dragon from mythology," Romani confirmed. "Ritsuka and Rika…didn't take it that well. They were fast friends."

"That quickly, huh…"

Sometimes, that was all it took. They'd only been gone for about three days, which meant they probably had all of half a day to get to know her, but the twins didn't have my trust issues, and even thinking that, I wasn't so lacking in self-awareness that I didn't know Lisa had won me over almost as quickly. The tried and true bond might have taken longer, forged over about two months of fighting side by side in battles of the mostly life-threatening variety, but she'd had her hooks in me from nearly the beginning.

A pang of longing echoed in my gut, twisting my insides. God, I missed her.

It made what I was about to say feel all the crueler.

"We won't be able to give them much time to mourn. A day, maybe, two on the long end. Once they're back and Bradamante is stable enough to defend the city on her own, we'll be heading to Orléans to defeat Jeanne Alter and retrieve the Grail."

Romani blinked at me, bewildered. "Already?"

"Dracul was the heaviest hitting Servant that we know for sure they had," I said. "With him gone, her biggest threat is Fafnir." I turned to my newest Servant and gestured his way. "We have Siegfried and Saint George. Between them and Arash, Fafnir and the army of wyverns should be at least manageable, and even if she can summon more, it has to take time. During that window, she'll be vulnerable enough for us to take out. Without her, everything else should fall apart, and then we just have to find the Grail."

It wasn't like I hadn't given it any thought. Yes, I'd said before, we had no idea how many Servants she had at her disposal, and it was entirely possible for her to just summon more ad infinitum. But with the additional help of Emiya, we should have enough firepower to handle those, too, as long as none of them was another dragon-slaying hero and there wasn't another monster like Dracul.

Even if she did summon another powerful Servant… Honestly? Siegfried should still be enough. That cursed wound was the only thing that had kept him from dominating his fight with Dracul, because even with my Command Spell, it was still a detriment, a handicap. Once it was cured, he'd be the strongest Servant in this Singularity, I was sure of it.

We had an A-Rank Servant with a powerful Anti-Army Noble Phantasm, specially designed for killing dragons. We were much better off than we had been at La Charité.

Plus — I deliberately avoided glancing at Bradamante — if she decided to come along, that was just one more strong ally to rely on.

"I feel like you have to be missing a few steps in there somewhere," Romani said tightly.

"It's not going to be as easy as I make it sound," I acknowledged. "But we have two dragon-slaying heroes on our side, now. That's already more than I was hoping we'd find, back when we were first heading towards Lyon. Between now and then, we've defeated three more of her Servants, including the one that I was most cautious about. We could keep running around, trying to gather up more allies, but we might wind up going in circles while she rebuilds her army, and we'll be no better off then than if we go as soon as possible."

"What if the Grail isn't anywhere near her?"

Yeah, there was that little snarl, wasn't there?

I grimaced. "Then we'll be no closer to finding it if we wait and scour the countryside before taking her out."

"And if her base of operations isn't at Orléans?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there."

I wished I was as confident as that sounded. Truthfully, I wasn't sure it would be at Orléans, but I didn't have any better ideas, either. The best place to set up a fortified defensive position from which to guard a powerful wish-granting device would be someplace that was already conveniently fortified, so a castle in a place as meaningful to her as Orléans made sense.

But she could just as easily be in any other city with a castle. Lyon had at least one, and Paris probably did, too. The best we could do was visit each one in descending order of likeliness and let Romani do a scan, if we couldn't find it on our own.

The only problem with that was that it would likely take weeks or months, if we went by foot. Ugh. Yeah, there was no way I was letting us take one step into the Roman Singularity without a better idea of how we were going to get between towns and cities that didn't require us to walk the whole way.

Romani sighed and rubbed agitatedly at his head. "I wish I had a better solution, but I'm a doctor, not a tactician. I'm really not cut out for this sort of thing, so the only thing I can do is hope you know what you're doing, Taylor."

You and me both, Romani.

"It's already been almost a month," I said instead. "We still have another six Singularities to figure out and correct. We can't afford to spend a decade running around the French countryside."

"No," he agreed. "I guess you can't." He sighed again. "That's going to have to be one of the things we plan around in the future, isn't it? A month for you in that Singularity has only been about five days for us in Chaldea, and if Da Vinci's right, it's just going to get even more extreme as we go."

He shook his head. "Anyway. I'll send you guys the supplies you'll need to make the trip to Orléans. That's about three-hundred-and-twenty-five kilometers, so it's going to be another long trip."

Great. My feet were already aching.

"Romani. Don't tell the twins, just yet. I'll let them know when they make it back. Let them have the time to grieve, for now."

I could at least do that much for them, as paltry as it might have been.

Romani gave me a tired smile and mimed zipping his lips, and then his image flickered and disappeared. I collapsed onto a pew with a sigh, and the wood gave a loud creak beneath my weight as though in sympathy. The ceiling above offered no comfort, no advice or answers. Not like I had expected it to in the first place.

What a mess this whole thing was turning out to be. What did it say about me, that the more things went sideways, the more at home I felt?

I looked over at Siegfried. "Are you going to be okay with that? You're probably only going to get a day or two to recover before we have to head out, again."

Siegfried gave me a confident smile. "Don't worry, Master. A day or two will be more than enough. I will be back to top form long before the battle with Fafnir arrives."

Bradamante glanced back and forth between us, brow furrowed, but didn't say anything at all.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

A day passed in quiet worry for the twins and their group. Early in the morning, after I came back from my morning run through the city streets, Bradamante delivered on her promise and used her second Noble Phantasm to finally break the curse on Siegfried's wound, and almost immediately afterwards, she'd collapsed onto the nearest pew, utterly exhausted.

Siegfried, on the contrary, was fine only minutes later, and about half an hour after the curse was broken, he pulled back the hem of his bodysuit to reveal unmarred flesh. There wasn't even a scar to mark the ugly wound he'd received, although as a Servant, I guessed it didn't make sense for there to be one. As much as he looked like flesh and blood, as warm as his body was beneath my fingertips, and as solid as he had felt carrying me up through the city, he wasn't a living person. He was just a particularly corporeal ghost. He didn't scar because that wound wasn't part of his legend.

Bradamante remained mostly motionless throughout the day, resting to recover her energy. She had even, I realized when I went to check up on her once, fallen asleep, sprawled out on the hard wood of the pew as though it was a plush mattress, complete with temperature regulation.

Maybe Servants were just made of sterner stuff, since they weren't living people. God only knew how much trouble I'd had getting a good night's sleep since we'd dropped into this Singularity. The first thing I was probably going to do when we got back to Chaldea was throw myself on my bed and take a long, well-earned nap.

Contrary to my worst fears, we didn't get a visit from another Servant in the meantime. It seemed, at least for now, that the Dragon Witch either didn't care enough to avenge the loss of Dracul or, as I was hoping, simply didn't have another Servant she was willing to risk to try again. It was entirely possible that she might be regrouping and preparing to come and take us down herself, with Fafnir in tow.

Whatever the case, the rest of the day was quiet and unbothered by enemy action. There wasn't even a stray wyvern to interrupt things and cause trouble.

It was as the sun was setting, casting the city in a faint, orange glow as it sank behind the western hilltops, that Romani contacted me to let me know the twins and their entourage were on the outskirts of town — just in time for Arash to tell me the same thing.

Master, he sent to me. We've made it back.

"Hold on a moment, Romani," I told him, and Romani's mouth snapped shut. "That's them, now."

Siegfried shifted and sat up straighter, his attention now fully on me.

Any trouble? I asked Arash.

None, was his reply. It seems we managed to make a clean getaway. We weren't pursued at all on our way back.

A breath hissed out of my mouth, relieved.

Can you make it back to the church on your own, or should Siegfried and I meet you halfway?

There was a moment's pause, and then he said, We'll make it back to the church without issue, Master. We'll see you shortly.

After acknowledging that, I turned back to Romani and the others. An exhausted Bradamante sat up on her pew, blinking blearily at me.

"The others are back," I reported. "Romani, Arash says they didn't run into any of the Dragon Witch's other Servants and Fafnir didn't try to follow them."

Romani nodded. "That checks out, yeah. It's been a bit harder to separate them all out from each other with so many Servants packed together in a single group, but there wasn't any sign of enemy action that I could detect on their way back. They, ah, made the bulk of the trip pretty quickly, though."

My brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"They crossed a hundred kilometers in a little over sixty seconds," Romani said with a bit of a puzzled smile.

I blinked, sure that I must have misheard him. "What?"

Romani shook his head. "They wouldn't say what happened, when I asked," he told me. "They just said, 'Never again,' like they had just seen some horrible monster. I don't know what could have happened, though, since they didn't run into any other Servants. They didn't give me any more of an explanation than that. Even Emiya looked pretty shaken."

There was a story there, I was certain of it. If the twins and Mash wouldn't give it to me, I was sure that Arash wouldn't have any qualms explaining what had happened.

"You got Emiya out to them?"

"Rika had to use a Command Spell to call him closer, and by then, they'd already escaped the town, but yes," said Romani. He sighed. "I'm going to miss his meals. He was the only decent chef we had left."

"I'm certain Sir Emiya will be more content to have his martial skills put to use ending this Singularity," Siegfried said kindly.

Romani grimaced. "Sir Emiya? Man, I can't even imagine addressing him like that. Is that a bad thing? He's a Heroic Spirit, after all."

It sounded strange to me, too, although I didn't admit as much. Given what little I knew about Emiya was mostly related to his tactics, he didn't seem particularly knightly, so calling him like he was one just felt awkward.

"Well," Romani went on, "I guess on our end, it's only going to be for a day or two, depending on how much longer it takes you to wrap this up. Speaking of, are you absolutely sure about this, Taylor? What if she's expecting you and she's summoned a whole army of other Servants?"

"If we keep worrying about what-ifs without having any concrete idea what she's doing and where, then we'll be here forever," I told him flatly. "It's not like we've scoured the entire countryside, but Orléans is the one place we've avoided going completely. At the very least, it's worth a look, and we're not any worse off now than we would be if we waited a month."

Romani sighed. "The worst part is that I can't argue with any of that. You're right that we can't just let her continue to build power and raze the country until Thiers is the last stronghold or something like that, but at the same time, I really don't like the idea of you guys throwing yourselves into danger, even if I'm the one who sent the four of you into that Singularity in the first place. Five," he corrected. "I forgot about Fou."

I snorted. "Fou is the one in the least amount of danger," I said wryly.

Romani eyed me. "One of these days, I'll figure out what it is you two have against each other."

"The instant I can explain it, I'll tell you myself," I promised.

Once again, Romani sighed, and he glanced over at something on his monitor. "They're back," he informed me. "They should be at the door —"

Master, Arash said as a pair of knocks sounded from the door.

"— right now. I'll send you some supplies for your trip in the morning. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," I bade absently as the door swung open.

In walked Mash, who looked utterly exhausted, and then an equally downtrodden Jeanne, and behind her were the twins, haggard and tired, like soldiers coming off of the battlefield, and after the twins was the musician, Mozart, and the copper knight, Saint George. Emiya and Arash brought up the rear, and they closed the door behind themselves.

"Miss Taylor," Mash mumbled when she caught sight of me, and then her eyes landed on Siegfried and widened. "Ah, Mister Siegfried! You're looking much better!"

Siegfried smiled one of his understated smiles, a thing entirely of his closed lips and baring not the slightest hint of teeth. "Lady Bradamante undid the curse this morning. I'm back to normal now."

Saint George looked over and gave a small nod. "It seems my services aren't necessary, in that case."

"Your help against the Dragon Witch will be appreciated regardless," I said.

He nodded again. "And you shall have it."

Jeanne was the first to approach. "Romani told us that Thiers was attacked as well?"

"Dracul," I confirmed. "We managed to take him out through some clever maneuvering and Siegfried's Noble Phantasm. Take a seat, everyone. There's a lot to go over."

The group split up and each took to a pew. The twins and Mash sat together closer to where I was standing in the aisle. Emiya took a seat further back, hunched over and hands folded between his spread knees. Saint George eased himself down carefully, mindful of his armor. Mozart folded his legs and clasped his hands like some kind of old-timey gentleman. Jeanne sat in the pew directly across the aisle from the twins and Mash, while Arash stayed standing in the back, leaning over the back pew.

We traded stories back and forth about what had happened. The twins and Mash went first, although it was really Mash and Jeanne who did most of the talking. They went into more detail than Romani had, explaining about how they had met Marie Antoinette and Mozart on their way towards town — the twins both flinched at the mention of her — who themselves were wandering the countryside trying to shepherd as many refugees towards safety as they could, because neither of them was strong enough to face the Dragon Witch or her retinue.

"Despite everything, she could smile so brightly," Ritsuka muttered, staring at the back of the pew in front of him.

Then, chasing rumors of another Servant protecting the town westward of them, they made their way towards Périgueux, where they met Saint George. They stayed there overnight under the care of the Saint-Étienne friars, and they'd barely rolled out of bed in the morning to start talking about him helping Siegfried when Jeanne Alter showed up on her personal steed: Fafnir.

"I thought for sure that was the end of us," Mash confessed. "He was so massive, it was like he blotted out the sun."

If it had come to it, Arash admitted to me silently, I would have used my Noble Phantasm.

I glanced at him, but offered no reproach. It was, as harsh as it might be to say it, exactly what I would have expected him to do.

Jeanne Alter had tried to kill them, but working together, Mash and Jeanne's Noble Phantasms were enough to block the first attack, if only just. Saint George refused to leave as long as the townsfolk were still there, so together, while the civilians ran, they had managed to hold off Fafnir long enough to evacuate as many as they could.

Marie Antoinette stayed behind to distract Jeanne Alter long enough for the rest of them to escape. Her Noble Phantasm, Crystal Palace, had held strong while they fled into the forest. None of them had seen what became of her, but none of them had needed to. No one in the room was under any illusions about the fact she hadn't planned to make it out herself.

"I see," Siegfried said solemnly. "She was indeed a worthy queen of France."

I glanced at him askance, but managed to keep my mouth shut, because whatever she'd been guilty of during her actual reign, at least here, she had sacrificed herself for the people of her country.

"Maria would be delighted to hear you say that, Sir Siegfried," said Mozart with a smile.

From there, they had hurried as far away from Périgueux as they could as quickly as they could, and it was about then that Emiya had been Rayshifted into the Singularity. Rika was forced to use a Command Spell to get him to them as quickly as possible. After that, they made their way back to Thiers as fast as their legs would carry them, since they'd been forced to leave their horses behind.

"Romani said you guys crossed about a hundred kilometers in about a minute," I pointed out. "How did you manage that?"

Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash all shared a look and immediately clamped up. Jeanne had gone pale white and only gave me a smile and an awkward laugh. Emiya grimaced. Mozart looked away, hand over his mouth like the memory made him sick. Even Saint George turned his head down and remained silent.

When I turned to Arash for answers, he gave them to me telepathically: Emiya projected a large sled, and I shot an arrow attached to it while everyone held on. The landing was a bit rough, but the rest of it worked out as intended.

That was it?

I swept my gaze around the rest of them, who all looked like they'd been through Hell and come out the other side traumatized.

That was what they were all so tightlipped about? It didn't sound like that big of a deal.

"In any case," I said, "as I'm sure Romani told you, while you were dealing with Fafnir, Dracul attacked Thiers. Bradamante, Siegfried, and I worked together to take him out."

A moment passed in silence. The twins looked at me expectantly.

"That's it?" Rika asked. "B-but you didn't really tell us anything, Senpai!"

"There has to be more to it than just that," Mash agreed.

With a sigh, I launched into the story, a little less abbreviated, this time. There just wasn't much to tell, though. It really wasn't any more complicated than Siegfried keeping him busy, Bradamante hitting him with her Noble Phantasm, and then Siegfried finishing him off with Balmung.

"That means Berserk Assassin, Phantom, Saint Martha, and Dracul are all taken care of," I finished. "Which means that now is the best time to strike and beat her."

I laid out the plan, such as it existed. I played down the uncertainties, although I acknowledged they existed, and I set about explaining how we were going to deal with Jeanne Alter and her army. What to do if she summoned more Servants and wyverns, the important bits we needed to focus on. It was really more barebones than I liked, but no one protested.

"As soon as Bradamante is back on her feet and ready to defend Thiers, we're heading out," I said at the end. "We'll march to Orléans and end this, once and for all."

"Good," said Rika with vicious heat.

"The sooner we defeat her, the less people have to die," Ritsuka added with equal strength.

"My evil self has plagued this country for long enough," Jeanne agreed.

The rest of the Servants offered no arguments against it, and with our course decided, we broke for dinner, ate a bland but hearty stew Emiya concocted from our rations, and we all called it a night.

As we settled down to sleep in our borrowed cots and the city settled down with us, slowly and quietly, a sad, haunting melody began to play, echoing through the church's rafters and out the windows. I was about to reach out into my swarm to check on it, and then I recognized it and let it go. I wasn't so callous that I would go out and stop it. We all mourned in our own ways.

That night, four hundred years early, Requiem graced the country of France as Mozart said goodbye to its queen.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

What chapter are we on? Twenty-three? Twenty-three.

I never did get around to fleshing out the bottom a little bit more. Oh well.

I don't recall the town where Georgie boy was hanging out being named in canon, but I plotted out a route from Thiers to Bordeaux (which is the furthest west node in the Singularity in-game), and Périgueux was the largest settlement between them that was far enough to be "between" them without being so close that the distance was less significant. I had to check to make sure it was old enough to fit, but it's at least as old as Thiers and more populous besides.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter XXIV: Orléans

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter XXIV: Orléans

It was another two days before Bradamante fully recovered her reserves, which gave us another two days to plan out our assault on Orléans and come up with some contingencies in case we faced more resistance than we were expecting. We still knew frighteningly little about what we would find there, if we would find anything at all, and I hated exactly how blind we would be going in.

There wasn't much of anything for it, though. We had a map, which was obviously useful, but it didn't have a radar or motion tracker or whatever that tied Chaldea's sensor readings to us in real time. Da Vinci, Romani had told me, had it on her to do list, but the time differential between us and Chaldea and the fact that she was still dashing around like a madwoman as she tried to fix everything that was still broken and keep running everything that wasn't meant that it kept getting shunted down the list.

It would have been a useful feature to have, but even with it, what we could have picked up was limited. I hadn't forgotten that the sensor readings got less reliable the further away from Chaldea's primary reference points — that is, the twins and me — they tried to scan.

Still, even just a general idea of enemy movements would have been invaluable.

So, with that in mind, we had three main plans, or more like one main plan and two major contingencies. Plan A was simple: we went in, we attacked Jeanne Alter, killed her and Fafnir, and then we searched for the Holy Grail. If there were other Servants and wyverns there, well, we'd have to handle them, too, but between our current list of Servants, I was fairly confident that it wouldn't be too hard to handle. I just had to hope they didn't have anyone strong enough or with a conceptual advantage against Siegfried, seeing as he was our heaviest hitter, but the only one off the top of my head was Sigurd, and if he was here and on Jeanne Alter's side, we had a whole host of other problems on our hands.

I doubted it, though. If Jeanne Alter had someone that powerful on her side, the only places to put him would be guarding the Grail and the frontlines. The former was possible, but the latter more likely, and since we hadn't heard anything about him from anyone anywhere, I was willing to bet he wasn't here.

"Can we be sure of that?" Ritsuka had asked.

"There's a lot we can't be sure of," I had admitted. "But between the two of them, if I had Sigurd and Dracul at the same time, I would've kept Dracul back to defend the Grail and sent Sigurd out to crush the enemy. Whatever else she is, if Jeanne Alter is any part the real Jeanne d'Arc, she shouldn't be stupid."

Jeanne hadn't protested but for a worried crease of her brow.

Plan B was about as simple. If Jeanne Alter happened to not be home when we got to Orléans, we would methodically eliminate every possible hiding place for the Grail, preferably using my bugs to find it instead of sending in a person or a Servant and possibly tripping an alarm or something. If we could get the Grail, this whole thing would essentially be over and done with.

Hopefully, it would be that easy, but I had a niggling suspicion that it wouldn't be.

"History is robust," Emiya had told us, like a teacher imparting a lesson. "The fact that it requires something on the level of a Holy Grail to disrupt it should tell you that without the Grail, things will correct themselves on their own."

"Removing the Grail won't necessarily remove the Servants it summoned or undo the wishes made on it," I had pointed out. "Besides, it's entirely possible that Jeanne Alter never lets the Grail out of her sight, or that she leaves it heavily guarded. There was never going to be a chance of doing this without a fight."

Emiya hadn't disagreed.

"You sure are knowledgeable about this stuff," Rika had said.

Emiya's sardonic smirk had said everything and nothing at the same time. "When you've accumulated the level of experience I have, these are things you tend to pick up."

Plan C, if Jeanne Alter was gone and took the Grail with her, or even if securing the Grail wasn't enough to fix things, because we still weren't sure if it would be, then we were going to set up an ambush as best as we could and wait for her to return to base. I had spools of tightly woven spider silk rope I'd been weaving together over the past week for triplines and the like, although I had my doubts about their efficacy against Servants that were so blatantly superhuman.

"It's likely we won't be able to properly ambush her in any case," Jeanne had said.

"Servants can detect the presence of other nearby Servants," Siegfried agreed. "I'm sorry, Master, but she will almost certainly know we're there before we could possibly spring a trap."

"I'm not entirely sure it'll matter, one way or the other," I said. "She has Fafnir, and the one time she brought it to a fight, you guys ran away instead of fighting it directly. Her habit so far has been to throw her weight around whenever she does something instead of approaching things from a tactical or strategic standpoint. A hammer instead of a scalpel."

Ritsuka made a noise of understanding. "Like La Charité and Lyon and Périgueux. She's been relying on overwhelming force instead of cleverness."

I nodded. "If she thinks she's untouchable, then she might not care about being ambushed and just spring it. There's a thin line between confidence and arrogance, and she might just do us the favor of tap dancing across it."

Plan D… If it turned out she wasn't basing herself out of Orléans, we were going to have to start looking at other likely places. I doubted we'd have to, though. Romani had detected a "massive hotspot" to the north. The distance and general direction corresponded well with Orléans, and if I was a betting woman, I would say that Jeanne Alter was consolidating her forces, gathering them all in one place.

The only reasons to do that were to turtle up and hunker down to defend yourself or muster your forces for an all-out offensive. It could be either, but with her having lost so many of her Servants — four to us and at least one to Bradamante — I was fairly confident it was the former.

"Could Jeanne Alter — ah, the Dragon Witch — have set up her base of operations in Paris instead?" was Mash's question.

"That's also possible," I had conceded. "But it doesn't have the same meaning to her as Orléans. If it was just about tearing down France, taking and occupying Paris is probably more symbolic, but she's already proven it's just as much about a grudge she's holding onto as anything else."

"Orléans was the sight of my first major victory," Jeanne had chimed in. "Paris… If what happened to La Charité was any indication, the Dragon Witch would have burned it to the ground, as payback for my failure to liberate the city from the English during my life." She grabbed at her thigh. "Or for the wound I suffered in the attempt."

"Orléans is closer, anyway," I had added. "There's no reason to skip past it and go straight to Paris, so we'll have to check on it either way."

No one had disagreed.

So, with our course of action set, we spent one last night in Thiers. Through whatever sorcerous means let him recreate objects so faithfully, Emiya did us the incredible kindness of replicating a pair of inflatable mattresses. Jeanne and I shared one while the twins and Mash huddled up together on the other.

If anyone asked, I would of course deny it, but seeing them curled around each other was cute. Lisa might have called it "diabetes inducing" or something like that.

With Arash on the roof keeping watch and the rest of the Servants standing guard, I laid down next to Jeanne with a sigh and let myself relax into the relative comfort of the mattress. I was asleep almost instantly.

Morning came all too soon, and the five of us dragged ourselves out of bed to get ready for the coming day. There was a fire in the air that hadn't been there before, a sense of purpose and direction that had largely been lacking the rest of our time in this Singularity as we flailed about trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing.

Somehow, Emiya made our bland breakfast more appetizing. It wasn't anything gourmet and it paled compared to some of his finer fare, but somehow, he managed to make even rehydrated rations taste like something more than cardboard.

"Marry me, Emiya," Rika said through a mouthful of food. "I can't go another day without one of your home cooked meals."

Emiya smirked and said nothing.

When everyone who needed to eat had been fed and watered, I set the group about packing up our supplies, and when that was done, we gathered together outside the front of the church.

"There's a rule that we've been following ever since we got here," I explained to them. "Director Animusphere was of the opinion that Masters of Chaldea should be self-sufficient enough to handle any physical exertion that might be required of them in the course of their duties. She considered it a waste of resources and Chaldea's energy to have our Servants carry us everywhere we went."

Rika let out a disgusted groan. I pretended I hadn't heard.

"I don't disagree with the spirit of that rule," I went on, "and when and where it's feasible to get somewhere by walking, we're going to do that. But if there's one thing the last month has shown, it's that walking the whole way across the French countryside isn't feasible. To that end, we're going to speed things up a little so we can get to Orléans as quickly as we can."

I gestured to each of the Servants in turn.

"Arash is going to be on overwatch," I told them. "His job is to make sure we're not running into any ambushes and keep an eye out for enemy Servants. Jeanne, Mash, you're going to be carrying our supplies. For one reason or another" — mostly the fact that they were shorter than everyone except Rika — "it's better for you two to hold onto everything we need to take with us."

"Understood," Mash replied.

"You can count on me, Master," said Arash. "Nothing will even get close."

"Siegfried, you'll be carrying me," I continued. "Emiya, I'm entrusting Rika to you. Georgios, Ritsuka is with you. As for Mozart…"

I trailed off.

The man himself smiled and shrugged. "No need to explain. I understand perfectly. After all, I'm not a Servant born to particular physicality." He waved his hands dramatically. "It's simply not a part of my disposition."

At least I didn't have to explain. If I was being honest, Mozart was the one I had the least idea what to do with. He obviously possessed a Noble Phantasm and it obviously did something, he wouldn't be a Servant if that wasn't true, but I wasn't entirely sure what sort of role he could possibly play. It wasn't that there was no use for his skills or Noble Phantasm, it was just that he obviously wasn't a fighter and the only enemy I was really worried about facing was Fafnir.

I would probably think of something by the time we actually set about to fight Jeanne Alter. Ambushing her once Fafnir was dead and hitting her with a Noble Phantasm that drained and weakened her might be disorienting enough to make the final battle a cakewalk.

A tactic to tuck into my back pocket.

"We'll be keeping pace with the slowest of us," I said, leaving Mozart's words unanswered. "Getting us all there in one piece at the same time is more important than getting there as quickly as possible. Ideally, this should still take us less than three hours and we'll arrive outside the city right around noon. Any questions?"

Rika's hand shot up. "Please tell me we're going to have bathroom breaks, Senpai!"

Ritsuka let out a heavy sigh.

"If anyone needs to stop for any reason, we will." Come to think of it, being carried for three hours wasn't going to be incredibly comfortable, was it? It might slow us down, but it would probably be a good idea to set down and stretch our legs every now and again. "In fact, we'll take five to ten minute breaks every half an hour or so to keep us Masters from cramping up before we get there."

In spite of my first instinct to just keep going until we got there. But three hours being carried in someone's arms, unprotected from the winds as we raced up the road at sixty miles an hour, that sounded a lot more uncomfortable when I gave it enough thought. For future Singularities, I was going to have to see if Da Vinci could magic up a few sets of goggles for us to wear whenever we had to travel like this. And maybe some gloves and old-fashioned leather aviator helmets, like the kind biplane pilots wore, so we could keep our (mostly mine and Rika's) hair from getting blown all over.

I swept my gaze over the gathered group. "Any other questions?"

Nobody spoke up, this time. Good. That meant we'd covered enough last night that we didn't need to go into more detail now.

"We'll go by foot up the north road until we reach the hill," I announced. "Once we've passed the city limits, we'll mount up for the trip to Orléans. Make sure all your straps are secure and your share of the supplies is squared away. Whether everything goes perfectly or not, we won't be coming back to Thiers. Don't leave anything you'll miss."

Emiya chuckled and shrugged his shoulders. "Geez. You're really going to make me jealous there, Taylor."

"O-of who?" Rika squawked.

"Her," said Emiya, blasé. "It's not everyone who can say the famous hero Siegfried carried them across the French countryside."

By the looks he got, especially from Arash, nobody believed him for a second, and I couldn't help remembering his comment before we first Rayshifted here, about how I was probably a more compatible Master for him. I didn't call him out on it, for Rika's sake if nothing else.

Now wasn't the time for major interpersonal drama, anyway.

"Let's get going," I said instead. "We need to be there before sundown."

Our group left the church — and Bradamante — behind, and in a disordered column, we snaked our way through Thiers and up the road that went up the hill through the northern section of the city. Some of the citizens who had gotten used to seeing us in town, Siegfried and me in particular, greeted us kindly as we passed them by, but we didn't stay and chat. Rika responded to the one or two she recognized with cheerful replies, but even I could tell they were relatively subdued for her.

Once we reached the edge of town and the last building disappeared in the foliage behind us, it was time to start sprinting the rest of the way. I turned to the group and said, "Pair up."

There was a moment of dead silence, like no one realized what I meant, and then the twins awkwardly moved towards the Servant I'd assigned to carry them, like they weren't quite sure what they were supposed to be doing. Ritsuka made to climb astride Georgios' back.

"Bridal style, you two," I added as I tied my hair back at the nape of my neck. "The last thing you want to do is lose your grip and fall while Georgios and Emiya are running as fast as a speeding car."

Ritsuka blanched and Rika flinched, and as they figured things out with their rides, I turned to Siegfried and tucked my glasses safely away in my pocket.

Siegfried knelt down, and with a little fumbling, I climbed into his arms like I had just a few days before. When he stood, my stomach flopped in my gut as my feet left the ground. That was so much less comfortable when I actually had time to think about it instead of rushing into battle.

Already, it was obvious that this wasn't going to be a comfy ride through the countryside.

"Is everyone ready?" I called over in the direction of the others.

Vague assents answered me. Neither of the twins sounded particularly thrilled with this, but in lieu of better options, this was what we had.

God, I'd never wanted a car more in my life. Or better yet, one of Dragon's aircraft.

I patted Siegfried on the shoulder. "Go!"

We took off. Like sprinters at the sound of the gunshot, our group went from zero to sixty almost instantly, and behind Siegfried and me, I heard Rika's startled shriek and Ritsuka's yelp, and I had to swallow one of my own against the wind that suddenly buffeted me from the front. It whipped my hair about and bit like ice against the nape of my neck and my exposed cheek, and I had to close my eyes to keep them from watering.

It was even more disorienting that way. Bugs passed in and out of my range and control constantly. I barely had time to get a grasp on what was entering before it left, and the galaxy of lights under my eyelids shifted so rapidly and so constantly that it was almost enough to make me nauseous.

Three hours of this. Forget a car or a Dragoncraft. Right then, I would have gladly taken Atlas.

About ten minutes in, the surprise eventually gave way to monotony. My cheek had long since gone numb, and Rika's shriek had turned first to whoops of excitement and then to utter silence. The only thing to listen to was the howl of the passing wind, and even that was more a nuisance, a persistent itch I couldn't scratch, instead of something to distract myself with.

The steep hill in whose valley Thiers was built swiftly gave way to farmland, then to thin patches of forest, and again to more farmland. The further away we got, the smoother the land around us became, until the almost mountainous highlands of Thiers turned into gently rolling hills with shallow slopes and inclines that reminded me more of the American Northeast than not.

By the time our communicators beeped to let us know it had been a full thirty minutes, it wasn't soon enough by anyone's reckoning, and we had barely slowed to a stop before Rika all but leapt from Emiya's arms, crying, "Land!"

Ritsuka was a lot more careful about setting his feet back on the ground, but even he was obviously relieved to get a reprieve from the trip.

Gingerly, I climbed out of Siegfried's arms as he knelt down for me. If anyone noticed the slight unsteadiness of my legs, no one mentioned it. Probably because neither of the twins was particularly surefooted, either.

My glasses nearly fell from my fingers as I fished them out and put them back on. My hands were still somewhat numb from the wind chill.

"Do you need some assistance, Master?" Emiya asked, smirking.

Without looking, Rika flipped the bird at him, but all it succeeded in doing was to make him chuckle.

"Senpai," she began lowly, turning towards me, "I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with the Director. We absolutely shouldn't rely on our Servants for travel."

"Seconded," her brother mumbled.

I pressed my lips together tightly, but even though I agreed with her about how uncomfortable it was, saying so out loud probably wasn't the best idea. Besides, there simply wasn't anything to be done about it. We couldn't afford to take a week to get to Orléans, this time.

"Fifteen minutes," I said instead. "Eat a snack, take a drink, empty your bladder. If there's anything you need to do, now's the time to do it."

The twins acknowledged me with unenthusiastic grunts, and Rika fiddled with her hair, trying to comb down the flyaway tangle it had become with her fingers. I didn't see the point, since it was just going to get messed up again pretty soon.

"Stupid hair," she grumbled, "stupid wind, stupid me for having stupidly long hair…"

Emiya approached her with a shake of his head and extended a hand as though in offering. He mumbled something under his breath, and before our eyes, an aviator's helmet took shape in his palm, old and worn and positively ancient-looking.

Immediately, he had my full attention.

"Whoa," said Rika.

"You might only be trading one problem for another," said Emiya, "but this should help you at least keep your hair under control."

Rika took it gingerly, examined it from every angle for a minute or two, and then she slipped it on with comfortable ease. It was a perfect fit.

"This is amazing!" Rika grinned as she buckled the straps. "I feel like an old-fashioned dogfighter! Or, or, or like Amelia Earhart!"

"That's not a sword," I said cautiously, "or a bladed weapon."

And the mattresses last night hadn't been, either, come to think of it. I'd just been too tired to give it any more thought than to be grateful we finally had something comfortable to sleep on.

Emiya blinked at me, bewildered, and then understanding crossed his face and he nodded. "Ah," he said. "Yeah. It's not a replication, either."

He held out his hand, and a moment later, there was another aviator helmet there. He tossed it to me and I caught it, and it felt as real and faithful as it looked. Old, worn leather, steel buckles, a padded lining, complete with machine stitching. When I tried it on, it fit snugly but comfortably over my head.

"Strictly speaking, I'm not limited only to swords and bladed weapons," Emiya explained. "However, the cost for anything that doesn't fit that category goes up, and anything more mechanically complicated than a fishing rod is too far beyond me."

"So you couldn't make, say, a gun."

He shrugged. "I could probably project the individual parts, but the mechanisms are fiddly enough that I can't do the whole thing, and if I wanted to make sure everything worked right, I'd have to have the real deal right in front of me. At that point, what's the point of me making another one?"

I thumbed the helmet. "And this?"

He smirked.

"I'm particularly proud of that clever little trick. Armor is one of the hardest things for me to make, so instead of trying to replicate it wholesale, I cut some corners by substituting leather patterned after sword grips and steel from guards and pommels. The consistency is a little different, but the overall material is functionally the same."

Arash let out a whistle. "That's a nifty way of working around your limitations."

It really was, and once more, it reminded me of how I'd been as Skitter. Damn, Emiya really would have fit me well, wouldn't he?

Emiya shrugged. "I was never all that strong while I was alive, so thinking my way out of a fight was often the only way I managed to walk away with my head still attached to my shoulders."

"Know your opponent and know yourself and you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles," Mash recited.

Emiya looked at her, surprised. "You know Sun Tzu?"

"Ah." Her cheeks flushed a little. "I, um, I read a lot, growing up."

"That's not generally on the curriculum at most high schools," said Emiya wryly. "Military prep schools, maybe, but not regular high schools."

Mash shrank in on herself a little. "I was…homeschooled."

One of these days, I was going to get a better story of who, what, and how Mash had been "made" from… Definitely from Marie. The version I had was really far too sparse and sanitized for my liking.

"There's nothing wrong with that, Mash," Jeanne said kindly. "After all, I, too, was homeschooled. I never even learned to read properly while I was alive."

Mash blinked, and then understanding dawned across her face. "Ah, that's right, public education with a core curriculum only became the standard for children in most modern countries sometime in the nineteenth century. Before then, most people were tradesmen and learned basic skills from their family."

I let them talk for another few minutes and waited for Ritsuka and Rika to have their fill when the two of them reached for a bottle of water, and then I ordered the break to an end and told everyone to saddle up again. My glasses came off and went back into my pocket, but I still saw clearly enough to recognize Emiya projecting another helmet for Ritsuka to wear.

Once everyone was ready, we took off again. The rushing wind was marginally less of a pain with the helmet to protect my ears and keep my hair mostly contained, but the helmet did little for my exposed cheeks and hands and nothing at all for the discomfort of hanging from someone's arms for thirty minutes straight.

We stopped for a break another three times and passed at least four towns that we had to steer away from to avoid awkward questions, but on the last break, since we were making good time and weren't that far away from Orléans, the group made the decision to just push on through to the end. We were going to just make the extra seven miles in one go instead of stopping, and then we'd walk the final three. The twins weren't excited about that, and neither was I, if I was being entirely honest, but it gave us enough distance to make a stealthier approach than just rushing in would have.

Someone else, it turned out, had different plans.

It happened too fast for me to track. The disturbance passed my bugs at lightning speed, so quick that there wasn't any time at all for me to react.

Master! Arash shouted, but there wasn't any time for him to say anything else, either.

Emiya moved before I figured out what was happening, a blur of red and black moving so quickly that he stole the breath for Rika's scream, and then he was in front of us at the head of the pack. A flower of pink light with seven petals bloomed.

"RHO AIAS!"

And thunder struck it with the force of a hurricane.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

I almost forgot about this particular Servant, but this was as good a place for her to show up as any.

This is one of those areas where, in hindsight, it would have behooved both me and the story to have slowed down and stretched things out just a little bit more. For various reasons, it was not to be.

Also, it would absolutely be terrifying to be carried at 60+ mph without anything to anchor yourself except a pair of arms around your shoulders and knees.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter XXV: Felling the Sky Demon

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter XXV: Felling the Sky Demon

Our whole group came to a screaming halt, and my stomach jarred in my gut as Siegfried dug in his feet to bleed off his momentum so that we didn't come to an even more sudden and painful stop. My body still jerked in his grasp, and I scrambled to grab onto something as my whole body threatened to be violently thrown out of his arms.

Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow —

"What?" I gasped.

Romani was going to have to check us over, because I was pretty sure I had whiplash — fuck, my arms and legs were going to be mottled with bruises in the shape of Siegfried's fingers — don't throw up, don't throw up, don't throw up —

Focus.

Arash, I tried instead. What happened?

Enemy Archer class Servant, Arash replied. A really good one, too, to have seen us from this far away through the trees.

I blinked and craned my neck, fighting the swimming sense of almost vertigo. Whatever had struck Emiya's flower wall — an arrow, almost certainly, and what a powerful Archer our enemy must be to hit that hard with just an arrow — had made a mess of the ground beyond it, but it failed to penetrate past it. Rika clung desperately to Emiya's body, sideways somehow so that I could see her face from over his arm, and she looked completely and utterly terrified.

"Senpai!" Mash called as she slowed to a halt, brow wrinkled with concern.

Rika opened her mouth as though to speak, and then hastily slapped her hand over it, looking as nauseous as I felt.

"Mash," Emiya said sternly, looking at her from over his shoulder. "You're going to have to be faster on that. As our main line of defense, you can't let any attack escape your eyes, no matter how sudden or surprising."

"Y-yes!" Mash squeaked breathlessly.

Emiya's lips quirked. "Well, not that I can blame you. Even I almost missed that shot."

Arash, I began.

"Here, Master," Arash said, landing next to Siegfried and I.

"Wh-what just happened?" Ritsuka asked shakily.

"Let me down," I mumbled to Siegfried.

Obligingly, Siegfried knelt down and carefully lowered my legs to the ground until I could stand on my own. I turned immediately to Arash, trying to ignore the throbbing ache that was searing across my neck.

"What are we looking at?" I demanded without preamble.

My bugs were spread out, but whoever was shooting at us was too far away and out of my range.

Arash shook his head. "I didn't get a good look at her. I managed to get a quick glimpse when I tracked her shot back to its origin, but I can't tell you much other than the fact it's definitely a woman."

CRACK

Another arrow impacted Emiya's wall to mostly the same effect. Emiya grunted, but didn't show any other signs of stress.

Rho Aias, he'd called it. I didn't understand the significance of the "Rho" part, but Aias was the original Greek version of Ajax. Ajax the Great was said to have spawned a flower when he died, which probably had something to do with the flower motif of that barrier, but the exact connection escaped me. Seven petals? Maybe something to do with seven-leaf lucky clovers?

A thought for later.

"A female Archer…"

No one was coming to mind. The immediate answer was Artemis, but that was a goddess, and this far out from what Marie had called the Age of Gods, summoning a literal, actual goddess was supposed to be impossible, even with a Holy Grail.

But this whole situation was literally impossibility stacked on impossibility. It was probably a better idea to take absolutes like that with a grain of salt.

"She's powerful, Master," Arash warned me. Like I hadn't already figured that out for myself. "Skilled. I didn't have enough time to counter her first shot. I wouldn't want to go head to head with her if she got the jump on me."

Only if she got the jump on him? Probably not actually Artemis, then.

CRACK went the blow of another arrow crashing against Emiya's barrier. CRACK — CRACK went two more.

"She's getting impatient," Emiya warned. "I'm fine as long as it's regular arrows, but I don't want to be here when she decides to use her Noble Phantasm."

"What do we do?" asked Ritsuka.

"Fire back!" Rika snapped irritably. She still seemed upset about the sudden stop.

"I could draw her fire long enough for Sir Arash to counterattack," Georgios offered.

Mozart shrugged. "I'm afraid I won't be of much use here. If I go out, I'll just become a pin cushion."

I looked back to Georgios. "How long can you keep her distracted for?"

"As long as you need me," he replied confidently. "Defense is where I'm strongest."

My mind raced as my eyes swept to each of the Servants in our group, and the makings of a plan began to form in my head. It wasn't a great plan, not even a particularly good one, but for all that it was relatively simple, it was solid. Maybe the fact that it was so simple and uncomplicated was what made it a better plan in the face of an unknown Archer whose Noble Phantasm and skills were a complete mystery.

"Georgios, you're our distraction," I said hurriedly. "Go towards her, wait for the first shot, then break off in a different direction." I turned to Emiya and Siegfried one after the other. "Emiya, Siegfried, while she's distracted with Georgios, rush her. Straight on. Siegfried in front, block those shots when they come."

"Leave it to me," Siegfried said.

CRACK — CRACK — CRACK went the staccato of more arrows impacting the barrier. It still held strong.

"Sending an Archer into melee range?" Emiya smirked. "Are you sure that's the best idea?"

"Fuyuki," I retorted shortly, and his smirk faltered. "I've seen what you can do at close range." I turned next to Arash. "While she's focused on them, circle around and wait for an opening. Don't take the shot unless you're sure you can guarantee it'll kill her."

He nodded. "Understood."

At last, I turned to Mash and Jeanne. "You two will be our defense. If she decides to ignore everyone else, you need to block her shots."

Mash glanced at Ritsuka, and he gave her a firm nod. "We'll be counting on you, Mash."

Mash's face drew into a mask of determination. "I won't let you down!"

"I'm afraid I have to ask you to take point, Mash," said Jeanne. "My only defense is my Noble Phantasm, and in my condition, it must be my last resort."

"Right!"

"Everyone good?" I asked quickly, sweeping my gaze around them. Various assents were given, verbal and not, and I took that for what it was. "Right. Then after her next volley —"

A ghastly howl echoed off in the distance, and something much, much larger than an arrow raced through the foliage and into my range. It ping-ponged off of trees and branches without slowing or stopping, avoiding every obstacle and clearing every hurdle with effortless ease, and it moved so fast that I caught nothing more than a vague, black blur.

"She's coming!" I said urgently. "Go, go!"

The Servants took off instantly, with Emiya trailing behind as Rika scrambled to get out of the way. Mash dropped the bags she was carrying and strode forward, her shield manifesting in her hands between one step and the next. Jeanne fell into place slightly behind and to her right, and us three Masters huddled behind the two of them. Mozart positioned himself at the very back, his baton held at the ready.

The blur continued to move, eating up the distance with alarming speed. Some of that had to be down to her being able to keep going through the forest without slowing, because as I watched, Georgios, Siegfried, Emiya, and Arash all ran, bleeding off momentum every time they had to swerve around a tree or duck under a branch, and that limited how fast they could run.

Georgios broke off, moving the opposite direction of Arash, and the blur ignored him completely. She continued her rapid beeline for Siegfried and Emiya, like she had a personal grudge to settle with the one who had blocked her shots.

"Senpai," Ritsuka began.

"I see her," I told him. "She's ignoring Georgios completely."

"Did she see through our plan?" Jeanne asked.

I shook my head. "I don't know. Maybe? Or maybe it's just the influence of the Mad Enhancement she's under, gave her tunnel vision."

Like a rocket, she collided with Siegfried and Emiya, and the ringing of Balmung echoed even back to us with how much force she put behind — her claws? What?

As Siegfried braced himself with one leg, I closed my eyes and cast my vision through his, giving me an up close and personal look at our enemy. A curtain of grayish hair fluttered behind her, and her body was covered in patches of black fur instead of clothing. Her fingers ended in catlike claws that must have been harder than steel to not have broken against Balmung's flat. Almost comically, a pair of feline ears sat atop her head.

But the most striking thing — and most bewildering, too — was the massive head attached to her one arm at the shoulder, a flat-snouted thing with large, black tusks and beady yellow eyes that seemed to look straight at me even now.

An archer associated with a boar? Why did that sound familiar?

"Kill you," she seethed in a rough, hoarse voice. "Kill you! Kill you! Kill all of you!"

Emiya moved to the side, coming in to attack her from behind, but she leapt away to avoid the blow, and before my — Siegfried's — eyes, her left arm sprouted a black bow. She fired a lightning fast volley of at least two dozen arrows that were so black and so insubstantial that they seemed to suck in the light. Several of them hit Siegfried and were powerful enough to carve shallow cuts into his skin, but Emiya twisted out of the way to dodge all of the ones that sprayed in his general direction.

"Kill you!"

She landed with catlike grace on all fours and kicked off the ground towards Siegfried, but right as he moved to block her again, she suddenly swerved off course and made for Emiya.

"Shit!"

Emiya blocked her with the twin swords I'd seen his alternate use in Fuyuki, but they shattered under her strength and he was thrown backwards. Amazingly, it seemed like he'd planned for that, because his swords had barely been dropped before a more familiar black bow materialized in his own hands as much more mundane arrows formed in his grasp.

The unknown Archer threw herself out of the way of Emiya's own barrage, right into the path of Siegfried, who swung at her with Balmung. Metal screeched as she reached out with both hands and grabbed the blade, her claws scraping against the flat even as the edge bit into her palms. She didn't seem to care or even feel the pain of her wounds that leaked dark, brackish blood, her face still pulled into the same, perpetual snarl.

"Kill you! Kill you!"

Emiya fired another salvo. Even as I watched, the Archer's body shifted and morphed, and a large, wing-like shape burst from her back, interposing itself and absorbing every shot.

"What?" I said.

The expression on Emiya's face mirrored my own.

Another Servant with a Shapeshift skill? What, were they giving it away when Jeanne Alter summoned her Servants? "Here, come get your free Shapeshift skill for being summoned as Jeanne Alter's Servant!" Had Saint Martha and Phantom had it too and just never got the chance to use it?

I didn't have a connection to Emiya, so —

Arash!

I'm moving into position, Master, he reported. I don't have a good line of sight on her, though.

Damn it. The cover of the trees I'd been counting on to keep the Dragon Witch from seeing us until it was too close to matter was also keeping Arash from reinforcing Emiya and Siegfried.

Get as close as you need to.

And as he did, the fight continued. The Archer's new wing shifted and retracted, and Emiya's arrows dropped from it like discarded shreds of paper; they vanished before they even had the chance to hit the ground. She leapt back, and Balmung swept through the place she'd been with hurricane force. Emiya had to dodge out of the way to avoid the backlash, which gave the Archer more than enough time to throw herself at them again. She made for Emiya, forcing him to retreat even further, but rather than pursue, she planted one foot against the trunk of a nearby tree and bounced off of it towards Siegfried.

Siegfried wasn't prepared for it, but her claws scraped ineffectually across his stomach, dealing no damage whatsoever, and he brought Balmung back around to take off her head. She ducked under the blow with catlike agility, hair whipping about, and as she rose, her hand lashed out like a snake, aiming for his eyes.

He wasn't too slow, this time. Her claws stopped several inches from his face, her wrist held securely in the grip of one of his hands. From the vantage point of my bugs, I could see the cold, solemn expression on his face as he pulled on her trapped arm and brought Balmung across her torso with the other.

Brackish blood splattered across the forest floor, and when he let go of her wrist, the Archer collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath, but still somehow alive.

"Kill… you…" she rasped.

Slowly, she tried to climb to her feet, the black fur that served as her clothing shivering with each breath. A nasty cut was carved across her chest, and if she wasn't a Servant, it probably would have disemboweled her.

"I see," said Siegfried. "The only way the Dragon Witch could control you was to destroy you, leaving behind only a maddened beast."

He hefted Balmung and took hold of it with both hands.

"I'm sorry. The only thing I can do for you is to end your misery."

The meaty squelch of an arrow landing was quiet and almost unheard over the Archer's gasp, and then with a sigh, she sagged and fell to her knees, the metallic glint of an arrowhead sprouting from her chest. Behind her, Emiya let out his breath and his arms dropped, his black bow disappearing in motes of light.

"Ah," the Archer whispered. "Finally."

Her head tilted back and she looked up at the canopy of the forest above her.

"My eyes…are clear again…"

And with her next breath, her form dissolved and she disappeared.

"She's gone," I told the others, and they all relaxed as Mash let out a long sigh of her own.

"The others?" asked Jeanne.

"No injuries," I reported. "She attacked Siegfried, but she wasn't strong enough to hurt him. Emiya dealt the final blow."

"That's a relief," said Ritsuka.

Arash, I projected, connecting to both of my Servants, Siegfried, return. We need to regroup before we move on Orléans itself.

Understood, said Siegfried even as Arash responded with, I'm on my way.

"Rika," I turned to her, "are you good to keep going?"

I wasn't noticing any real strain from that short battle, and she was only supporting one Servant on her own compared to my two, so I doubted she was, either. Still better to make sure, though.

"Tip-top, firing on all cylinders!" she chirped, a bare second before her stomach let out a growl. Her cheeks flushed pink. "Although I definitely wouldn't say no to some of Emiya's cooking for lunch, first!"

My stomach was inclined to agree with her, I realized. Unfortunately, this wasn't the time or the place to stop for lunch. Not for a cooked one, at any rate. Not with Orléans right over the proverbial hill.

"We're too close to the city, they'd see the fire," I told her. Her face fell. "Get Emiya back here and grab a ration bar, if you're that hungry. He can cook you a full three course meal when we get back to Chaldea."

"Yeah, I got it," she said sourly. Underneath her breath, low enough that I probably wasn't meant to hear it, she added, "I wanted his cooking now…"

I pretended I hadn't heard it anyway. "Mash, grab a couple of ration bars."

"R-right!"

She went back over to the bags she'd discarded and started to rummage through them as I turned to address the rest of the group, the ones who needed to actually eat, at least, so really just the twins and maybe Jeanne.

"Anyone who's hungry, eat now, while we have a moment. There's no telling if the Dragon Witch noticed our fight with her pet Archer, so she could be —"

Beep-beep!

"En-emy movement detected!" Romani interrupted me. Static distorted the first word, but it was clear enough what he was saying. "I know you guys just got done fighting an enemy Servant, but the sensors are showing a massive magical energy response in motion!"

My heart skipped a beat. Immediately, my mind's eye conjured a massive beast taking off, each beat of its wings crushing everything beneath it with hurricane winds, so large that it cast the entire city in shadow.

"Fafnir's leaving Orléans, and he's headed straight for you!"

The twins gasped, and Mash dropped the bottle of water in her hands to the ground with a thud.

"Shit!"

I turned in the direction of Orléans, and my swarm began to contract and gather, pulling the stingers and the venomous creepy crawlies from their hiding places in preparation for a battle I knew they wouldn't be able to do anything about. Tarasque had eaten through a swarm just like this one with relatively little effort, and Fafnir was a beast at least ten times bigger and a thousand times more terrifying. I might as well throw water balloons at him, because those at least might be useful fighting his firebreath.

Siegfried, I sent his way, double time it! Jeanne Alter is on her way here, and she's bringing Fafnir with her!

I didn't wait for his confirmation.

"Mash, Jeanne, defense!" I barked out orders. "Ritsuka, Rika, get back! Can anyone get in contact with —"

Even as the words were leaving my mouth, I was reaching out with my swarm, and I noticed a familiar figure in coppery armor making his way back towards us. He must have turned back when he realized he was no longer being shot at. Whether to help or because he figured the fight was over, it didn't matter.

"Nevermind, he's on his way."

"Who's on his way?" asked Rika.

"Georgios!" said Ritsuka, having apparently realized what I was talking about.

"He's okay?"

"Like I said," I told them distractedly, "the enemy Archer ignored him."

I eyed the foliage to either side of the dirt road we were on. Should we take cover? No, probably not. We wouldn't fool Jeanne Alter for long, and the worst kind of cover to take shelter behind when a giant, fire-breathing dragon showed up was the very flammable trees. Staying out in the open went against every tactical bone in my body, but ironically, it was probably the safer option of the two.

"Master!"

Siegfried burst out of the forest like a rocket and came to a skidding halt in front of our group, kicking up clouds of dust. He held Balmung in one hand.

"You're our frontline," I said without preamble.

He inclined his head. "Of course."

I turned back to the communicator. "Romani, how soon?"

The crackle of static was my only answer, and then the connection cut. My heart skipped another beat as a sense of foreboding settled in my gut.

A sound like thunder rumbled and shook the ground, vibrating my bones and organs, and a gust of wind buffeted my swarm in the forest. A second later, another echoing blast of thunder reverberated through us and the ground beneath our feet, and a hurricane swept through the trees ahead, displacing every bug in its path.

"It's here!" Rika gasped.

I looked up just in time for the entire sky to be cast in shadow as a massive form blotted out the sun with its bulk, and overhead, the truly enormous form of Fafnir flew. A jolt of unfamiliar fear wormed in my belly as he passed, and the mere wind from his wingbeats nearly tore me off of my feet. Rika and Ritsuka both screamed, protecting their heads with their arms, and I had to throw one of my own up to shield my eyes.

Above, Fafnir made one gigantic circle, and then he turned and swooped back down. Even no longer directly beneath his wake, the force of being anywhere near his flight was still almost enough to bowl me over, and I had to brace myself just to stay upright.

For an instant, I remembered that fateful fight against Leviathan, struggling against the waves and having to find cover just to keep from being swept away. My bugs drowning, my body being battered and bandied about. A cape being washed away, just a few bare inches from me as I reached to pull her to safety.

Fafnir was on an entirely different scale than Leviathan, at least in terms of size. He was several times larger with a wingspan that put the Simurgh to shame, a rough, scaly body that looked hardier than Leviathan's had, and horns and fangs that would have made Behemoth jealous. His massive maw could have swallowed our entire group whole and still had room, and his tail was long enough that I wouldn't have been surprised if it reached all the way back to the city.

And emblazoned across his chest was the exact same symbol as the one on Siegfried's.

The whole world seemed to shake when he landed, and for the third time in less than a minute, I was almost thrown off my feet. Next to me, the twins clutched to each other like that was the only way they could keep themselves from fainting.

For once, I didn't blame them. I'd come up against a lot of different things in my career as a cape, many of them horrible or horrifying, but there was something visceral and instinctual to looking up at Fafnir and wanting to run. An ingrained response to flee in the presence of a larger, more powerful predator and hope you were fast enough to escape, or at least so insignificant as to be ignored.

Entire trees were crushed underfoot as the monster shifted and moved his forelegs, and he dipped his head to reveal a woman standing atop it, utterly tiny compared to him.

Jeanne Alter, the Dragon Witch.

"So," said Siegried lowly, clutching his sword with both hands. "We meet again, my old enemy."

"Well, would you look at that!" Jeanne Alter crowed. "You're still alive, my old leftovers? What a cockroach you are, that you keep surviving while everyone else dies around you!"

"I live and die for the sake of France!" Jeanne said boldly, like she wasn't facing down a massive dragon that could easily kill us all. "So long as France is in peril, I won't allow myself to be killed, especially by the likes of you!"

Jeanne Alter laughed. "I am you, you country bumpkin!"

"No," Jeanne said with utter certainty, "you're not. I can't say for certain who or what you are, Dragon Witch, but I can say with absolute surety that you are not Jeanne d'Arc."

The laughter cut off abruptly, and Jeanne Alter's expression turned murderous.

"I'm tired of looking at you, you eyesore," she sneered.

She lifted her flag, and behind Fafnir, a veritable swarm of wyverns rose into the sky from the direction of Orléans. They ignored us and took off in various directions, headed out into the countryside. No doubt, they were on a mission to kill and destroy as much of the remaining citizens of France as they could.

Arash! I sent urgently.

Already on it, Master, he replied.

From the forest behind the great dragon, arrows whistled out one after the other and shot down wyvern after wyvern. He wouldn't be able to get them all, but he'd hopefully get enough that we could end this whole thing before they had the chance to cause too much damage.

"Tch," Jeanne Alter snarled. "That Archer, again! Berserk Saber, get over there and crush him! Fafnir! That saint, those meddlesome wretches she's gathered around her, this entire nauseating country — burn it all down!"

Fafnir reared back, neck snaking, and he looked down at us with malintent in his serpentine eyes as an orange glow gathered in the back of his maw. A guttural growl rumbled in his chest as it expanded, and the sound of it vibrated the earth beneath us.

If that hit us, we were dead.

"Mash!" Ritsuka shouted.

I had a different idea.

"Siegfried!" I called to him.

Siegfried gave no sign he heard me, but he set his stance and planted his feet, and then he lifted Balmung above his head.

"FAFNIR!" he bellowed over the rumbling growl. "DO YOU SEE ME, WICKED DRAGON? I STAND BEFORE YOU ONCE AGAIN, AND I'M UNAFRAID! AS I SLEW YOU BEFORE, NOW I'LL SLAY YOU AGAIN!"

He twisted his grip on his sword's hilt, and blue light erupted from the blade into a towering pillar.

"SIEGFRIED!" Jeanne Alter howled.

"FALL TO THE EARTH!"

The dragon breathed. The sword swung.

"BALMUNG!"

A bomb detonated, that was what it felt like. Ritsuka and Rika both screamed, and even I let out a startled shout as the force of the two attacks meeting nearly tossed me off my feet yet again. I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep from being blinded, and even looking through the eyes of my bugs showed me only a bright white nova that drowned out everything else. Even from behind, the swarm that was at our backs only showed me our vague outlines against the backdrop of an overwhelming light.

When I could see again, both still stood, and Lord Chaldeas faded into nothingness as Mash gasped from the effort of protecting us. Siegfried's bodysuit had been ripped and torn at the sleeves, disintegrated all the way up to his elbows, but he was otherwise unharmed, and Fafnir was equally unscathed, glaring down at his nemesis. Jeanne Alter remained standing atop his enormous head, utterly livid.

My mind whirled as the realization sunk in, and I had to discard an assumption I'd been making thus far: killing Fafnir would not be as simple or as easy as having Siegfried use his Noble Phantasm. It was going to take more than just one, good blow from Balmung to finish off that dragon.

Or at least, if it was one blow, it had to be one uninterrupted blow while Fafnir was defenseless. As long as he could defend himself with his breath attack, Siegfried couldn't kill him.

I was hoping Siegfried would be our trump card to beat the Dragon Witch and her army of dragons, and he was, he just wasn't an instant win button like I had wanted him to be.

"You!" Jeanne Alter snarled. "Fafnir, crush him!"

The great dragon let out a thunderous roar as he lifted one meaty, bulky arm, wings spread wide in what might have been a threat display on a mundane animal.

"Siegfried!" I shouted.

"Don't worry, Master!" he shouted back. "This enemy is one I know how to defeat!"

The claws came down, and Siegfried moved between them, holding it off with the blade of his sword against the flat of what passed for the palm.

"You're weaker than I remember, Fafnir!"

Balmung lit up with blue light, and when Siegfried sliced its blade along Fafnir's hand, it cut through the scales effortlessly. Red blood splattered over the ground, and Fafnir reared back, roaring his pain as his head tossed to and fro.

"Have the Dragon Witch's shackles reduced you so?"

He kicked off the ground, racing towards the dragon's underbelly. Fafnir swatted at him with his other hand, but Siegfried leapt over the sword-like claws, and with Balmung glowing blue again, sliced into the scaly wrist like it was made of paper.

Small uses of his Noble Phantasm, I realized. Charging up the full thing took too much time and energy, so instead, he was enhancing his normal attacks with miniature charges, using his Noble Phantasm without actually using his Noble Phantasm.

"I'm not the cowering fool I was when I first slew you!" Siegfried yelled.

He landed, and his feet had barely touched the ground before he took off again, leaping like a rocket as yet more blue light trailed in the wake of his blade. He carved a line across Fafnir's chest, splitting the glowing symbol in half with a spurt of red blood.

"The reason why I don't remember our first battle — it's because I wasn't enough! My dreams were too feeble and selfish, born of the same greed that made you! I was nothing more than your pale shadow!"

One of Fafnir's massive paws came down, and with a reverberating clang that set my teeth vibrating, Siegfried cleaved away one of the sword-like claws. It flew through the air, tumbling and turning and spinning, and it carved a trench in the road until it came to a stop, buried halfway into the dirt.

"And so it was the wish of the people that brought you low, not my own strength! Their faith, their will, their hopes and fears — when my own strength failed, they led my blade into your heart!"

Blue light gathered around his sword.

"Now, of my own will, with my own strength, for the sake of my own justice, I will bring you down once more!"

And when he swept it up, a thin, blue beam arced out towards the dragon's head. Jeanne Alter screamed as one of the horns near her was severed, tumbling to the ground. Fafnir tossed his massive head, an angry roar bellowing out of his fanged maw that rumbled and shook the earth with his pain and fury.

"What are you doing, Fafnir?" Jeanne Alter screeched. "Kill him, you useless dragon! Kill him, now!"

Fafnir reared back onto its hind legs, and fire built up in its maw again as it prepared to breathe flames on us a second time. Siegfried planted his feet and lifted Balmung above his head in answer, and blue light spilled forth again, forming another massive pillar that reached up into the sky.

"Back!" I shouted at the others. "Get back!"

They didn't argue, and we made a break for it as quickly as we could. There was only enough time to get maybe thirty or so feet from the action, and even that might not be enough to completely escape the spillover from those two attacks meeting again.

"FALL, EVIL DRAGON!"

The world shook as the dragon breathed. Siegfried swung his sword.

"BALMUNG!"

"Lord Chaldeas!" Mash screamed, and as the two attacks met, her rampart formed a protective barrier in front of us.

I shut my eyes against the blast of light as the clashing blows exploded outwards again, casting my vision through Siegfried's eyes to watch for the right moment. Even he couldn't see quite properly, not so close to the epicenter of the explosion, but he could see well enough that the contest between him and Fafnir was less a single, instant eruption and more a brief push and pull as they tried to overpower each other.

But they were equal, or close enough to equal that the difference didn't matter. The potent magical energy between the two attacks mingled and ignited, and my magic circuits throbbed from the expenditure of so much power in such quick succession.

It wasn't over yet. Right here, right now, as the backlash washed over them both, that was when they were vulnerable, both of them, and that meant —

"By the power of my Command Spell!" I shouted against the howling winds. "Siegfried! Kill Fafnir with your Noble Phantasm!"

The second of the red marks on the back of my hand flared and faded, and no sooner had the words left my mouth than did another pillar of blue light scythe through the glare.

"Yes, Master!"

And like a guillotine, it came down on the evil dragon it had slain once before.

"BALMUNG!"

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

Siegfried gets a moment to shine! I went back through his interlude to fact check something and wound up with a plot point I could use in his fight against Fafnir. It didn't turn out perfectly how I wanted it to, but I think it turned out well enough for the purposes of the story.

Incidentally, "Berserk Saber" just sounds kind of weird, but Jalter can get pretty chuuni outside of Orléans, so maybe that's just a matter of her taste. Case in point, Summer Jalter's Noble Phantasm.

This chapter also put me in the mood to boot up Dragon's Dogma and go kill the Ur Dragon again when I finished it. Siegfried, you're cool.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter XXVI: A Desperate Wish

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter XXVI: A Desperate Wish

When the light of Balmung's final slash faded, I opened my eyes to Fafnir's death.

The great dragon's enormous head and serpentine neck had fallen to the ground, still and lifeless, his jaw dropped open to show the teeth as large as me, and it remained only half attached to the mangled torso. Scales had been peeled away, revealing raw flesh and the white of massive bone. The exposed meat was charred black where it hadn't disintegrated outright.

The chest itself had been carved open. The glowing symbol in the center was split, and I could see into the viscera to where the heart should have been but wasn't any longer, because it had been cleaved away by Balmung.

The greatest dragon to ever live was dead once more.

For an instant, I was tempted by the mad thought of stripping off and doing as Siegfried had done, coating myself in the blood of that dead dragon to make myself invincible, or perhaps digging into the flesh for some scrap, some meager heart string that might endow me with Sigurd's great wisdom. What an incredible resource that would be. How amazing to be so secure in my safety.

But the thought had no sooner entered my head than it was discarded. The risks were too great. Killing Fafnir once wouldn't have been possible at all without Siegfried. If I intertwined myself with the dragon as well, tied so much of myself to him the way Siegfried was, what would we do if the very act of me Rayshifting would bring Fafnir down on our heads again?

The decision was taken out of my hands. Even before my eyes, the great dragon's corpse began to dissolve, evaporating into the air in much the same way Saber Alter and the other Servants had, like he was decomposing in fast forward. Had he simply been another spirit, summoned to this time and place like Siegfried and the others, or was the world's corrective force removing him from this Singularity as something that didn't belong here and now, now that he was dead?

Another thought for later.

A burst of static announced Romani's reconnection.

"— eliminated!" he crowed. "Good job, everyone!"

"Romani," I said before he could go any further, "what happened to Jeanne Alter?"

Even as I spoke, I started moving my bugs to search for her, mentally noting the three Servants who were making their way back towards us. Arash had beaten Berserk Saber, the musketeer-looking Servant who had been with Jeanne Alter at La Charité, and Emiya had handily dispatched Mister Trench Coat, a Servant I hadn't seen before who had been wielding a broadsword that had well earned the "broad" part of the name. Georgios had been handling any wyverns that came within range.

But, when I looked up, the wyverns were retreating straight back the way they'd left. Maybe Fafnir's death had spooked them. It seemed even creatures so intensely magical had the mundane instinct to run away when the head honcho was beaten.

"She's retreating!" said Romani. "At speed! Her heading — she's going straight back to Orléans!"

Without disturbing my bugs? Was she — no, that made some sense. If she had any idea that I could sense her through them, then she had to avoid them as much as possible. The key to escaping pursuit was to break line of sight and get as much distance as possible as discreetly as possible, and for her, the easiest way to do that was to follow the road back to Orléans rather than cutting through the forest. Faster, too, if she didn't have to worry about tripping or dodging branches.

My feet made it three steps before my brain caught up with my instincts. Like the fact that I couldn't go anywhere on my own until Fafnir had finished disappearing and wasn't blocking off the whole damn road.

"Is there a castle in Orléans?" I demanded, and then immediately felt stupid. This place had withstood a protracted siege by the English up until Jeanne liberated it. "One that's better fortified than the rest of the city?"

At that moment, one after the other like they'd timed it that way, Arash, Georgios, and Emiya all came out of the trees and leapt up over Fafnir's dissolving corpse.

"Master," Arash reported, "enemy Servant —"

"I know, I saw," I cut across him.

Emiya huffed, smirking. "Well, that just takes the fun out of everything, doesn't it?"

"It takes some getting used to, for certain," Georgios agreed.

I pretended they hadn't said anything. "Romani?"

"H-hang on a second, I'm checking!"

"No need!" Jeanne took off at a run. She jumped over Fafnir's massive forelimb and called back to us, "I know exactly where she's going!"

Damn it, did she forget we all couldn't do stuff like that?

"Jeanne!" Ritsuka shouted. She didn't seem to hear him, because she definitely didn't stop.

I turned to the other Servants and swiftly started to deliver orders.

"Arash —"

"If it's okay with you, Master," he interrupted me before I could even begin, "I'm going to stay out here and handle the wyverns." He looked significantly towards the city and the mass of wyverns that was steadily streaming in that general direction. "It's only a matter of time before they get bold again and decide to head off on their own."

Fine, I could handle that. It wasn't a bad idea, even. Someone needed to handle the wyverns, it might as well be the guy who could let off ten-thousand arrows at once.

"I as well, Master," Siegfried chimed in.

Damn it, that one stung a bit more, and there wasn't any time to waste arguing about it.

"If it's alright with you," said Georgios, "I would prefer to fight the wyverns, as well. It seems appropriate to my particular talents."

Was everyone going to stay here and focus on the wyverns?

I turned to Emiya. "You staying back, too?" I snapped impatiently.

He shrugged. "I'm Rika's Servant. I go where she needs me."

Ritsuka snorted. "Is it bad to say he kind of has a point?"

"He does! And your place is in the kitchen, my dear house-husband!" Rika cut in.

Emiya grimaced, but this definitely wasn't the time for that, so I bit my tongue around the reprimand and turned to the last member of our group. Mozart smiled at me placidly.

"You?"

He shrugged, a fluid motion that looked more graceful than it had any right to. "I can't say I'll be much use against a swarm of dragons, so it seems you'll have to suffer my presence."

I gave him a short nod and finally got around to delivering my orders.

"Emiya, follow Jeanne. Make sure she keeps herself out of trouble, but try not to get so far ahead that we can't call you back if we need you."

Emiya slid a glance to Rika, but Rika just said, "Go forth, my house-husband of justice!"

He gave an exasperated sigh, but shrugged — like "what can you do?" — and burst into motion, leaping over the still dissolving corpse of Fafnir as he raced to catch up with Jeanne.

"Georgios, Arash, Siegfried, we'll leave the wyverns to you."

Nods answered me. "We can at least get you closer before we go," Arash added.

Good. Not as good as having one or more of them helping out with what was probably going to be the final battle, but I would take what I could get with one Command Spell left to me, right now.

I turned to what was left of my team. Mash, Ritsuka, Rika, the core we'd started this whole thing with. They looked a little frazzled from the experience of facing down Fafnir, but none of them looked ready to bolt or cower, so I counted that in my favor and gave an abbreviated motivational speech.

"This is probably it. We might not find the Grail immediately, but with Jeanne Alter out of the picture, that shouldn't be more than a matter of time. This is likely the final battle."

I didn't bother asking if they were ready. They didn't have the luxury to not be.

"Let's go."

"Right!" the three of them chorused.

I turned to the Servants, the ones we'd picked up along the way or called on ourselves. "Siegfried, with me. Arash, take Rika. Georgios, Ritsuka."

They gave varying one to two word assents, and then we all set into motion. Once more, I climbed into Siegfried's arms, and Arash and Georgios took one of the twins each. Mash and Mozart handled themselves, and with a burst of strength, we were carried up and over the half-gone corpse, clearing the entire thing in one go, to land on the other side.

The instant his feet touched down again, Siegfried took off, racing down the road much as we had been before we'd stopped to slow our approach. I shut my eyes against the wind and used my one free hand to keep my glasses pinned to my nose so that they didn't fall off. I heard Rika shriek behind us, but only the once, so I put it out of my mind and focused on other things.

At that speed, my range kept moving, and on the outer edges, I felt Emiya as he followed along the road that led to Orléans. Every second or two, he disappeared out of my range, but Siegfried was keeping pace well enough that I never lost track for more than a moment.

At length, we came to a small, narrow river and crossed over a wooden bridge, but Jeanne hadn't slowed down, and so Emiya didn't slow down and neither did we. Now, however, we started to see the burnt out husks of buildings, or at least I could see them through the brief glimpses of the surrounding bugs that remained living. The further we went, the more and more I saw, and the more and more parallels I could draw between what the Dragon Witch had done to Lyon and what she had done to Orléans.

There wasn't an Orléans.

All of the people inside of the city had been killed, slaughtered to a man, just like Lyon, and just like Lyon, the entire city had been razed to the ground. Orléans didn't seem to be a city so much anymore as it was a giant, blackened soot mark on the face of France, a burnt out divot that was too completely eviscerated to properly be called even a husk. More and more, I saw no remaining buildings, no signs of habitation, just smoldering dust and charred splinters too tiny to host a flea convention, let alone a family's home.

My swarm was rapidly thinning as the population dwindled in the harsh, inhospitable wasteland left behind from Jeanne Alter's wrath, so I pulled as many as I could from the back ends of my range and sent them off to follow us. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to grab anything particularly nasty, so I had to settle for the meager fliers that could make the trip before they fell from my grasp. Mostly, that meant varying assortments of flies — nuisances without much bite, of little use but as a distraction.

A good thing that was probably all I would have been able to do with them to begin with.

Eventually, we came across another river, or maybe the main body of the same river, because it was much broader and much larger than the previous one. On our side, the remains of some kind of stone structure stood, barely more than a few blackened bricks that really could have been almost anything. A much sturdier stone bridge stretched across, big enough for a carriage or a caravan, the main route into the city from this side.

Up above us, the army of wyverns circled, confused and in disarray. I didn't have any idea how long that would last, but unless they were much smarter and cleverer than I really thought they were, it wouldn't be all that long.

Here, Siegfried set me down, and a moment later, Arash and Georgios set the twins down, too. Mash jogged up to join us, panting a little from the effort of running the entire way.

"I'm sorry, Master," said Siegfried. "I'm afraid this is as far as I can take you."

Arash's bow materialized in his hands, and like it was some kind of signal, Balmung formed in Siegfried's. Geogios unsheathed the sword at his hip with a metallic rasp.

"We'll handle the wyverns out here," said Arash. "Master, taking out Jeanne Alter will be up to you. If the worst happens, however, don't be afraid to call for me."

"Or me," said Siegfried.

"Right."

There wasn't anything else to be said to that.

The five of us took off again, with me in front, the twins behind me, Mash behind the twins, and Mozart bringing up the rear. As we ran, behind us, Arash pulled back on his bowstring and loosed a barrage of arrows into the swarm of wyverns above us, catching several in vulnerable spots like the neck or wings and striking them from the sky.

It got the attention of the others, and just as they had in La Charité, they started to converge on the source of danger. A few stragglers saw our group and peeled off to follow us, but Arash discouraged that with some more well-placed shots, and the rest learned better than to pursue us very quickly indeed.

"We need to find Jeanne," Ritsuka said between breaths.

"And Emiya!" Rika added.

"And Emiya, too."

"There can't be too many places they could be," Mash said. "But if they went after the Dragon Witch, they might already be fighting her."

"They are," I told them. "But I know exactly where they went. It's the big building with the — well, you'll see."

"That's still weird," said Rika.

"Miss Taylor never did explain," Mash muttered.

I bit my tongue — metaphorically, because ow — and cut off the snappish retort I was ready to deliver. Again, omnipotent wish-granting device, perpetual motion engine, spirits of dead heroes brought back to life. Why was me controlling bugs the strangest part? For god's sake, we were running through a burnt out city in fifteenth century France. What part of this was supposed to be normal?

The run was longer than I would have liked, and the ground became even more uneven when we left the road and crossed where buildings used to stand so that we could make the trip faster. But where Emiya and Jeanne had made off to became very obvious in short order, because it was the only building still standing amidst the sea of ash and charcoal. There wasn't any simpler process of elimination than that.

It couldn't be called a castle, at least not by the medieval fantasy sense of the word, maybe not even technically speaking, either. It was actually much more like a palace or a mansion, a Gothic thing that looked like it had been carved out of marble, with sloped, tiled roofing and tall, looming windows cut into the sides. It loomed above us, overlooking the heap of burnt ashes that was the rest of Orléans, and even if it wasn't the fortified stronghold I'd been imagining for Jeanne Alter, it seemed appropriate thematically for her to choose a towering monolith at the center of town for her base.

We could see it in the distance from a long way off, and that meant we had to keep running for several minutes after we first sighted it. Eventually, however, panting a little, we did make it to the front door. We couldn't hear the fighting that must have been happening through the heavy front doors, but a diminished insect population had managed to escape the massacre that destroyed the rest of the town, so through the various creepy crawlies that lived in the walls, I could feel the vibrations and hear the squelches of the battle raging inside.

"This way!" I called to the group as I ripped the doors open, and they fell into step behind me as we entered, racing through the extravagant hallways.

I led them down the corridors, making a beeline for where Emiya was fighting an unknown Servant that summoned some form of biological construct. As we came closer, I could hear the noises with my human ears instead of just with my bugs, and when we rounded the final corner to stand in the open doors of the enormous room —

"What the hell is that?" Rika asked incredulously.

— it was to see Emiya fighting off a horde of starfish monsters roughly the size of human children. They were about four feet tall, a deep blue with green spots and lumps, and on their undersides, there were fleshy red feelers that lined every limb and led to a sharp-toothed mouth. They bled green blood and filled up the hall from side to side, forming a grotesque mockery of a battle line like the English used to do during the American Revolution. Twenty wide and five deep, there had to be almost a hundred of the things packed together across from Emiya.

And standing in the center of the formation, carrying a book that I was fairly sure had been bound in human skin, there was a mockery of a man equally as grotesque as his minions. With pallid, grayish skin, greasy black hair slicked back over his skull, and eyes that seemed two sizes too big for his skull, he cast a sickly image, and although his arms were strong and muscular, his body seemed far too small for the robes he wore.

"More interlopers, more interlopers, more interlopers!" he chanted in a rolling voice that just sounded off.

He shrieked something, and it might have been a command in some strange, incomprehensible tongue, because the line of starfish suddenly surged and rushed towards us with surprising grace, considering what they were. Mash pushed out in front of us and planted her shield.

"Master, stay back!"

"I won't let you hurt Jeanne!" the Servant shouted.

"Trace on."

A wall of swords formed in the air around Emiya, and they shot forth like bullets, ripping through the starfish with startling ease and meaty squelches that would have had a younger me losing my lunch. Green blood splattered over the floor and the walls, and the ruined chunks of flesh that fell to the ground stayed there only for a moment before swiftly dissolving into the air.

"Urk!"

Next to me, Rika turned away, and vomit splattered over the floor as she heaved up the remnants of the ration bar she'd eaten earlier. Her brother looked as nauseous as she was, but he managed to keep his food down as he rubbed soothing circles across her back.

Emiya landed next to Mash with catlike grace. "Sorry about that, Master."

"Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!" the strange Servant howled. His book glowed, and more of the starfish monsters clawed their way into reality, refilling the ranks that Emiya had thinned.

"W-what are those things?" Rika asked hoarsely. She gagged, but there wasn't anything else for her to throw up, so it was only a single dry heave.

"S-some kind of familiar," said Mash. "It seems as though he's using that book as a medium to summon them."

"Just so," Emiya agreed. His bow appeared in his hands, and he loosed a volley of arrows to strike down the wave of starfish that charged us. "In fact, I'd be willing to bet it's his Noble Phantasm. I'm not sure whether he's summoning those monsters or making them up as he goes, but either way, it seems like there isn't a limit on how many he can call upon, just a limit on how many he can feasibly fit in this room."

More monsters bubbled up from the aether.

I nodded. "And you sent Jeanne on ahead?"

My meager swarm gave me a disjointed view of their battle, and so far, it was looking pretty evenly matched. I didn't have any intention of letting it swing in the Dragon Witch's favor.

Emiya smirked. "Well, it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. This guy and I both operate on a similar principle, so I'm naturally the one best suited to handling him."

"Summoning?" Ritsuka asked.

"Raw numbers."

More swords appeared, and they shot off, mowing down the advancing starfish. More green blood splattered across the floor, and Rika and Ritsuka both looked queasy, but neither of them puked again.

The strange Servant shrieked again, and his ranks were restored instantly as more starfish clawed their way through the veil and took form.

"There's a slight delay before he can replenish his lost forces," said Emiya. He swung his arm out and cut down this wave of enemies, too. "I'm going to make an opening for all of you. Before he can summon more of those things, you need to make it past him and go help Jeanne. She needs it far more than I do."

"You'll catch up?" Rika asked.

"When I can." Emiya smirked. "It's surprisingly hard to kill this guy without risking the building's structural integrity."

"We'll leave this guy to you, then," I said.

He nodded. More starfish formed across from our group.

"After this next wave, make a run for it. I'll cover you and clear the way."

He raised a hand, and another wall of swords formed in the air. His arm dropped. "Go!"

And as those swords mowed down even more of the giant starfish, our group took off at a sprint with Mash out front to push through anything that survived to attack us.

"I won't let you!" the strange Servant howled, and with another shriek, he summoned yet more of those monsters to stand in our way. They surged forward to meet us, to drown us in their numbers and do whatever it was they were designed to do. My imagination didn't come up with anything pretty.

More swords formed, pointing not forwards but down, and they dropped like a thousand guillotines, killing the freshly summoned creatures gruesomely. The instant their job was done, the swords vanished into motes of golden light, and our way forward was clear.

"No!"

Sprouting from the remains of their fallen brethren, more starfish suddenly grew to block our way. Their teeth gnashed and their stubby feelers wiggled, and they made wet, gurgling sounds as they leapt at us like starving lions.

I lifted my arm, preparing to fire my measly six-shot Gandr to put them down.

But a pair of spinning blades — one black, one white — curved around our group and scythed through the starfish, cutting them all apart like so much wheat. Ritsuka and Rika were white-faced, but the both of them deliberately focused their eyes on the door we were headed towards and didn't let their eyes turn towards the carnage, even as green blood splattered over our feet.

The strange Servant shrieked again, but we crossed the threshold and left the room, racing down the empty hallway as he screamed after us. No more starfish abominations formed to attack us, so I had to trust that Emiya did indeed know what he was doing and could handle the issue himself.

Considering how easily he carved apart the things, once he managed to get close enough to attack that nutjob directly, I had to think it would all be over.

"Up the stairs, then left," I told everyone. "They're in the master suite."

We didn't slow down except to climb the stairs, and even then only because we had to, taking them as fast as we could. At the top of the stairwell, we made a sharp left and continued down the hall, and here and now, the metallic clang of Jeanne and her evil half fighting echoed out along the corridor.

"What an awful racket," Mozart mumbled.

"Is she…?" Ritsuka asked.

"They're both still alive," I confirmed for him.

"Then let's go help Jeanne!" said Rika.

The doors to the grand hall or master suite or whatever the proper term was were half ajar, and we burst through them so forcefully that they banged off the wall, dragging the attention of both women inside towards us.

"Jeanne!" shouted Ritsuka.

"Oh look," the Dragon Witch sneered. "Your little friends are here."

Jeanne looked back at us. "Ritsuka, Rika, Mash, Taylor." She sighed. "I'm sorry. I got selfish and ran on ahead without you."

"And we're very angry about that!" Rika said.

"But it doesn't matter!" Ritsuka added. "We're here now!"

The Dragon Witch laughed. "How quaint! They've come to throw themselves on the fire with you, you fake saint!"

"I never claimed to be a saint!" said Jeanne. "That was always a label other people put on me, of their own wishes. I am nothing more than a simple country girl who set out to protect the nation she loved with all her heart!"

Jeanne Alter snarled and swung her thin-bladed sword at her counterpart. Jeanne blocked it with the shaft of her flag, grunting.

"And the very people you saved threw you away the instant it inconvenienced them!"

"It's true that they let me die," said Jeanne. "The very thought of the Englishmen who treated me so poorly makes my blood boil even now! But simple anger and hatred are different things! No matter what, I never once carried hatred in my heart, because it was too full of all the memories I cherished that kept me going throughout every battle!"

She threw Jeanne Alter back, and Jeanne Alter grunted. "What are you nattering about now, you country bumpkin?"

"My family," Jeanne said simply. "My mother and father, my brothers, the farm we tended to every day. No matter how vividly I can recall the blood and suffering of the battlefield, the memories of those I loved were all the more precious and all the more vibrant. They were my shield against the cruelties of the world, and they helped me to keep going, even when I wanted nothing more than to give up."

She held out her hand as though offering it to her evil half.

"Isn't that why you're so furious? Because you long so desperately for those simpler, kinder days?"

And Jeanne Alter…flinched.

Jeanne's fingers curled and she pulled her hand back. "Or is it the very fact you don't have those memories that makes your rage so potent? Because you have nothing to shield yourself from the grief and the anger."

Jeanne Alter regained her bearings. "What does it matter?" But she was still off kilter. "Who needs those wretched memories? I'm still Jeanne d'Arc! The Maid of Orléans! The Dragon Witch! Memories or not, I'll kill you and this abominable country just the same!"

"Yes, you are," Jeanne said sadly. "And that's why…even if I have to kill you, I can't help but pity you, the me who never knew kindness."

"RAAH!" Jeanne Alter let out an inarticulate scream as she charged her counterpart, and Jeanne met her calmly, blocking the wild swings of her sword with the shaft of her flag — not easily, not effortlessly, but successfully all the same.

"Miss Jeanne!" said Mash.

She made to go and help, but my hand on her shoulder stopped her. "Miss Taylor! We can't just sit here and watch!"

"We aren't," I said hurriedly.

Rika grinned like a shark. "Senpai's got a plan."

Still getting used to being referred to that way, but whatever.

"We don't know how quickly the Dragon Witch can summon another Servant," I said, rushing through the logic. "She hasn't yet, but she still might. Mash, I need you to help Jeanne and keep her distracted. Mozart, your Noble Phantasm — the instant you see a good opening, use it to slow her down, make her weak. While she's vulnerable, Mash, hit her as hard as you can, and don't stop until she's defeated."

"Right!" said Mash. She turned to put our plan into action, but I stopped her again. "Miss Taylor?"

In one smooth motion, I yanked my dagger out of its sheath and handed it off to her. She took it, stricken.

"Don't worry about any of the other functions," I told her. "Just put the pointy end where it'll hurt when you need to finish her off."

She looked down at the dagger, uncertain, and I remembered then that Mash technically hadn't ever killed someone before, not even another Servant. For all that she'd fought several, it was always someone else who delivered the final blow, and everything else she'd killed was always a familiar or an undead or a wyvern, a relatively dumb beast that was too dangerous to leave be. Jeanne Alter was the first thing with self and agency that she was going to have to personally end.

Maybe it was too much for her. She was older than I was when I killed Calvert, but she was more sheltered, less worldly, and when I'd pulled that trigger, I was backed into a corner without that many other options.

"If it's too much," I started.

"No." She tightened her grip on the nano-thorn dagger. "I'll do what I have to."

She tucked it away inside a compartment in her shield, and then she turned away and leapt towards the fight. Jeanne Alter shrieked as she was forced to turn away from her counterpart and slash at Mash to avoid a crushing blow.

"You're in the way, you pest!"

"I won't let you hurt anyone else!" was Mash's retort.

Jeanne Alter's reply was swallowed by the resounding clang of her sword on Mash's shield, and now forced to face two opponents, she pulled out the flag she'd been carrying and used it in her off hand like a bo staff. With surprising skill, she wielded them both to fight Jeanne and Mash together, blocking one with the flag staff and attacking the other in the same breath with her sword.

"Go, Mash!" Rika cheered. "Kick her ass!"

It didn't feel any better now than it had every time before to have to stand in the back and watch the fight, knowing that there wasn't a way for me to meaningfully contribute. The swarm I had was tiny, miniscule compared to the vast clouds of bugs, the galaxy of insects I'd had access to over the past month during our trek through the countryside, and most of them were ordinary house flies to boot.

And now Mash had my only real offense. Well, there wasn't anything to be done about that, was there? As a Servant, anything she wielded instantly became a weapon for use against another Servant, and while Jeanne Alter wasn't as fast or as strong as Saber Alter had been in Fuyuki, she was still blindingly fast compared to an ordinary human like me, so trying to finish her off myself was just stupid.

It quickly became obvious that Jeanne Alter being slower and weaker than Saber Alter also didn't mean she was weak or slow, either. She was fast enough to keep up with both Jeanne and Mash simultaneously, no doubt in no small part due to the fact that Jeanne wasn't at her best to begin with and Mash was still learning how to use whichever hero was fused to her to its fullest potential. She blocked Jeanne with the staff of her flag, and with the other hand, she fended off Mash with punishing strikes of her sword that let off eardrum-shattering shrieks as they collided with the flat of Mash's shield.

But she was getting sloppier, because she was getting angrier. The angrier she got, the less precise her blows became and the less careful her steps were, the more energy wasted when she swung or turned or blocked. It wasn't enough to do her in, to make her miss a step or leave herself open.

It would be enough that just one more distraction would give Mozart the opening he needed.

"Mozart, are you ready?" I asked him.

"Whenever my chance materializes, I will take it," he promised.

I waited for a chance of my own, refusing to blink as I watched the fight. My right palm itched and tingled with phantom sensation. My skittering swarm in the walls stilled, peeking through the cracks to watch from myriad angles.

And then Jeanne Alter lashed out with a particularly strong blow, and Mash stumbled back a step from the force behind it, and as Jeanne Alter lifted her flag to bring it down on Jeanne like an ax, I saw my opportunity and took it. My phantom limb lashed out, found my target, and pulled.

Jeanne Alter staggered, dumbfounded, as the thread tying her flag to its shaft came undone, and the fabric unraveled to flap over her face.

I'd been trying to yank on the whole thing, startle her by pulling on it in an unexpected direction, but it seemed she was just too strong, because undoing the knot holding it all bound was the only thing I'd managed.

"Who did that?" she snarled, whipping her flag out of her face.

As her eyes found me, I palmed one of my final two runestones and smiled at her. Her rumbling growl was so loud I could almost feel it from across the room.

"You bitch!"

She lifted her sword as though she was going to strike me down from where she stood, but whatever she was about to do, I wasn't about to give her the chance.

"Jeanne, Mash, eyes!"

I threw my runestone as hard as I could, and Jeanne and Mash turned their heads away, squeezing their eyes shut. I shut my own, hiding in the corner of my elbow, watching the runestone soar through my bugs, and shouted, "Anfang!"

Jeanne Alter let out a blood-curdling screech as the runestone exploded and a bright light flashed, searing against my eyelids. I heard the whooping of her sword as she lashed out blindly around her, like she was trying to feel out where everyone was or cover for her weakness by forcing Jeanne and Mash to stay away.

Neither of them could get close. When I squinted my eyes back open, the two of them had backed away, safely out of range of Jeanne Alter's sword, watching her warily as they waited for her to wind down.

And Mozart stepped forward from the back of the group, breezing past us like a gentle wind, and raised his arms.

"Requiem for Death!"

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

I hope all of my American readers out there had an enjoyable Thanksgiving. If you missed the post earlier, I've decided not to mess around and just keep going straight until it's time for the Christmas break about a month from now, so Chapter XXVI today, Chapter XXVII next weekend, etc.

There's a disconnect between Taylor and her Servants, here. That's the difference between the "noble" heroes who see a personal conflict and decide they have no place interfering and a pragmatist like Taylor who doesn't care as much about "personal journeys" as she does making sure the job is done and done right.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter XXVII: Kyrie, Eleison

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter XXVII: Kyrie, Eleison

Mozart raised his baton, and a familiar, powerful melody whose name I had never known as a child echoed out as though an entire orchestra stood behind him, playing at full volume. Voices sang Latin verses in somber, reverent tones, violins strummed, and drums thundered, filling up the entire room.

I wasn't much of a music girl, but even I couldn't stop myself from feeling moved by the majesty and emotion of it all.

Jeanne Alter took it like a physical blow, staggering backwards, and she pressed her hands to her ears as though she could block out Mozart's Noble Phantasm just that easily. A ragged scream tore itself out of her mouth, her eyes squeezed shut, and she thrashed about like she was in the throes of some kind of psychotic break, tossing her head from side to side.

Jeanne and Mash weren't stupid. They saw the opportunity the same as I did, and they rushed towards her to finish the battle while she was distracted and weakened, taking advantage of the opening Mozart made for them.

Jeanne Alter, however, was determined not to go down that easily, and whatever Mozart's Noble Phantasm had done to her, she made up for it by being twice as tenacious. As Mash and Jeanne drew close, she lashed out with her sword, and a tongue of flame whipped out from the arc of her blade, forcing the other two to back away. Mash blocked it with her shield, but Jeanne had to retreat further back, because she had no defense like that aside from her own Noble Phantasm.

Mash tried to push further forward behind the cover of her shield, but Jeanne Alter kept swinging, and the air crackled with the gouts of flame that washed over the surface of the shield and kept the two of them at a distance. Eventually, even Mash was forced to step back and retreat from the sweltering heat that the rest of us could feel even from all the way across the room.

It looked like a massive effort of will, but panting for breath, Jeanne Alter forced herself to calm and stand straight, or at least as straight as she seemed able, right then. Her yellow eyes seemed almost to glow, and her lips curled as she pinned Mozart with a glare that seethed brimstone and hellfire. The floor around her ignited, and so did her sword as she lifted it up over her head.

"Oh dear," said Mozart.

And then a truck hit me and the twins, sending us back into the hallway and skidding along the carpet. My lungs seized in my chest as I gasped, struggling to stand as every survival instinct in my head screamed at me to get up before I was struck down.

For an instant, I was back in Brockton Bay, fighting against the current as Leviathan tried to scour both me and the city away beneath his waves and his water. I felt as I did then, desperately trying to gulp down enough air to stay alive and climb back to my feet.

Back inside the room, Jeanne Alter's sword came down.

"La Grondement du Haine!"

"Mozart!" Ritsuka choked out breathlessly.

Through the few bugs still inside the room that could stand the heat, I saw a wave of fire sweep across the floor, and when it reached Mozart, it split, encircling him in blazing red flames. Stakes rose out of the ground, and with nowhere to go and no place to dodge, Mozart wasn't able to avoid them.

My heart clenched in my chest as I watched, helpless to do anything else. One stake first, punching straight through his chest, then another from behind, skewering his thigh, then another, and another, and another. One, five, ten, an even dozen in total, they pierced through him one after the other, and then, as though to make extra sure to kill him if a dozen fatal blows wasn't enough, the circle of fire surged inwards and collapsed on his body, igniting him and the stakes both.

For a long handful of seconds, the moment hung, and his twisted mockery of a funeral pyre continued to burn. The heat of the flames washed over the twins and me. I felt it on my cheeks and my lips.

And then, with a heavy woosh, they vanished, leaving behind a few glowing embers and a sunburst scorch mark on the floor. There was no more sign of Mozart.

"He's…gone," Rika croaked.

On the far side of the room, Jeanne Alter stood, and she breathed heavily through clenched teeth. Her arms trembled and twitched. There was no triumph in her expression, only more inconsolable hatred and rage.

"You monster!" Ritsuka shouted hoarsely. "Orléans! La Charité! Lyon! Périgueux and Marie! Now Mozart! How many people are you going to hurt before you realize that this is all wrong?"

There's never enough, Ritsuka, I thought, trying to even out my breathing. Weakly, I managed to pull myself to my knees. Even if she killed the whole country, that still wouldn't quench her thirst for violence.

Because it was the entire reason she existed. I got it, now. Jeanne was right, back then. The Dragon Witch wasn't simply Jeanne's worst parts, magnified and brought to the surface. She was a dark reflection, all of the ugliness Jeanne had cast away so that she could save a country on the brink.

She couldn't be anything else, with a Noble Phantasm like that.

"Shut up!" Jeanne Alter spat back at him. "I'm getting sick and tired of you and that useless fake yapping at me about the poor, innocent people of France, and I've had it up to here with your little team of nuisances constantly getting in my way! You care about these traitorous swine so much? Then you can die with all of the rest of them!"

She lifted up her flag, banner fluttering, and smashed the butt of the staff down against the floor. The shaft glowed brightly for a brief moment, and then it raced down the length of it like a meter depleting. From the bottom, amorphous black shapes crawled along the ground, forming into pools of shadow.

And from these pools of shadow, four figures slowly rose, woven together from black ink like silhouettes cast in obsidian. One was the Assassin Arash had killed back in La Charité, one the unmistakable Saint Martha who had been defeated at Lyon, one was the Saber who had fought Arash just earlier today, and the last…

My heart skipped a beat.

"Dracul," I rasped.

None of them spoke. They didn't even seem properly there, like they were smoke bound together in the shape of Servants, familiar but also distorted. Their bodies were so hazy that I wasn't sure I couldn't see through them or if it was just a trick of the light.

"I don't have time for a proper summoning right now," Jeanne Alter said furiously, "so why don't you play with these shades while I get the real deal ready?"

She gestured with her sword. "Attack!"

The shades leapt into motion, and Jeanne and Mash moved to intercept them. The smoky simulacrum of Martha's staff slammed down on the shaft of Jeanne's flag, and Dracul's lance made a strange, weirdly off clang as it smacked against Mash's shield, but they were both stopped cold.

Assassin and Saber, on the other hand, ignored our two Servants entirely. They made their way towards us Masters instead, slipping around Mash and Jeanne while they were preoccupied with the other shades.

"Shit!"

I scrambled the rest of the way to my feet, trying to ignore the twinge of my diaphragm that was still getting over Mozart's desperate push to get us out of the way. One arm came up as my meager swarm poured out of the nooks and crannies of the room, seething through the cracks and the breaks and the gaps, and I braced with my other hand as my circuits churned and burned.

There wasn't time for anything special or clever, no rapidfire pulse of my measly Gandr, so instead, I supercharged it with double, triple, quadruple the energy I usually put into it, until an orb of crackling dark energy the size of a large softball clung to my fingertips. My swarm, I set about the shade of Saber, distracting him — her? I didn't fucking know — as a buzzing cloud while I took aim at Assassin.

"Gandr!"

My Gandr shot leapt from my hand with a sizzling fwoomp, and it impacted Assassin in the blink of an eye. I didn't expect it to do much more than buy me a few seconds to back up and use my final Command Spell to summon Siegfried, but against all odds, it sent her staggering and stumbling, like she had actually just taken a solid hit.

Had I…really just hurt her?

Beep-beep!

"Not the time, Romani!" I spat out.

"I'll be quick," he said hurriedly. "Whatever those shades are, they're not real Servants. They're not as fast, they're not as strong, and they can't use Noble Phantasms."

Oh.

A savage grin curled on my lips.

Well, that changed a lot, didn't it?

"Mash!" I shouted over at her. "They can't use Noble Phantasms! One good hit — use the knife!"

I pulled back my swarm and created a thin wall of chitin between us and Saber and Assassin, and then I turned to the twins, who were climbing to their own unsteady feet.

"Do you two know how to use the spells preloaded into those uniforms of yours?"

Rika nodded, wincing, one arm curled protectively around her gut, and Ritsuka added, "Da Vinci gave us a crash course when she had the time."

It would have to be good enough.

"Pace your shots," I told them. "We just need to keep those two shadow Servants distracted and busy long enough for Jeanne and Mash to take care of theirs. Got it?"

They both gave me a nod.

"Here they come."

Assassin had recovered enough, and she charged through my swarm, only to meet a pair of Gandr shots from the twins directly to the face (although one actually went wide). My swarm, meanwhile, dispersed out and honed back in on Saber, heckling her to keep her from coming to Assassin's aid. She lashed out with her rapier and cut down thin swathes of bugs with every swing, and it was only a matter of time until she beat me with sheer attrition.

The twins kept up their fire, smacking Assassin over and over again with staggered Gandr shots that splashed almost ineffectually against her body. After the first to hit her face, they'd switched to center mass, and Assassin hunched over the blows as though they were punches.

Eventually, the twins exhausted themselves, and they had to back up, panting for breath from the exertion of firing so many Gandr shots off so rapidly. They had bought us a measly twenty seconds.

Good job, you two.

Because those twenty extra seconds was all it took for Jeanne and Mash to finish off the two shades of Dracul and Martha — who disappeared without even the slightest splatter of blood from their wounds — and turn to engage the remaining two. Mash charged forward, shield in front of her, and as my swarm suddenly dispersed from Saber, she smashed into him like a freight train with a shout. Saber tumbled away and rolled across the floor to land in a heap against the wall, and Mash kept going, jumping up and slamming the bottom edge of her shield against Saber's neck in an absolutely brutal blow.

The shade of Saber vanished instantly. His head wasn't even severed; he just disappeared the instant Mash's shield hit his neck.

Jeanne targeted the shade of Assassin, leaping up, and gripping her flag with both hands, she brought the shaft down on Assassin with the full force of her strength. Assassin crumpled to her knees, unable to withstand the attack, and Jeanne followed up with a stab from the pointed head of her flag like she was wielding a spear.

Assassin couldn't recover in time to avoid it, and just like that, her shade was defeated as well. As the others had, she disappeared instantly, no blood or viscera from her wounds. Like she was nothing more than a shadow to begin with.

With all of the shades defeated, Mash and Jeanne turned back around to face the Dragon Witch, and she was absolutely livid.

"You!" Jeanne Alter seethed. "You, you, you, you, you! Why won't you just die, already!"

She lifted her sword up above her head again, and flames swirled around her feet. The heat became sweltering again, filling the room with an uncomfortable haze.

She was going to use her Noble Phantasm again.

"Mash!" I shouted.

But Mash was one step ahead of me, and she positioned herself between Jeanne and her counterpart, hefting that massive shield of hers.

"La Grondement —"

"Lord —"

"— du Haine!"

"Chaldeas!"

The wall of light formed in front of Mash, and the tongue of flame arced from Jeanne Alter, racing towards Mash. It collided with the wall of ephemeral bricks and broke into a line of fire, and from the flames came more stakes that crashed into Lord Chaldeas one after the other. Mash grunted and flinched with each blow, but the stakes broke against the ramparts and shattered, and with nothing to feed the fire, the flames guttered and died, ineffectual.

When Lord Chaldeas dissipated, both Mash and Jeanne were fine, and Jeanne Alter growled.

"Stop getting in my way!"

She lashed out with a tongue of flame, and Mash weathered the blow with her shield, then took a step forward. Jeanne Alter lashed out again, and again, and again, and Mash withstood them one after the other, steadily advancing through the fire with gritted teeth and sheer determination.

Finally, Jeanne Alter lost what little patience she'd had left.

"RAAAH!"

She leapt at Mash, abandoning her flag to grip her sword with two hands, and she brought it down in a single, powerful blow that crashed against Mash's shield with a thunderous clang that set my teeth on edge.

"Mash!" Jeanne shouted, worried.

But Mash discarded her shield, using its bulk to push Jeanne Alter's sword down and out of the way, and I saw the glint of something metallic in her hand as she stepped close in, too close for that sword to be of any use at all. Her arm wound back for a swing.

The nano-thorn dagger, I realized.

And then she thrust forward and buried it in Jeanne Alter's chest, right in the middle, where her armor didn't cover. Jeanne Alter stumbled back a step, a startled gasp tearing out of her mouth, but Mash pressed forward and took hold of the knife with both hands to push it deeper. A desperate shout ripped past her lips, like she was putting everything she had into one final attack.

Because she had to, just to keep going. She had to force herself forward, or else she would have pulled back and given the Dragon Witch time to recover.

So Mash kept going, kept pushing, just so she could hold onto the momentum and resolve to finish the job, and Jeanne Alter staggered back until she slammed back against the far wall. The sword she'd been holding clattered to the floor, and one arm scrambled for purchase on Mash's shoulder as the other reached reflexively for the handle of the knife buried in her chest.

For several long seconds, they stayed there, Mash's shoulders heaving from the adrenaline that was no doubt starting to drain from her limbs. Jeanne Alter gasped and grunted weakly, but was still clinging onto her life, whatever that was worth to a Servant.

"Mash," the real Jeanne mumbled worriedly.

As though some spell had been broken, Mash stumbled backwards, and with her iron grip on my dagger, the blade was torn out of Jeanne Alter's chest. She let out a ragged gasp and sagged, pressing both hands to the bleeding gash carved into her chest just to the right of her sternum. At that position and with that angle, it had to have hit what should have been her heart.

Mash, panting, took several more steps backwards until she was standing next to her shield. Her trembling fingers remained clutched around the hilt of my knife, and her gaze remained locked on Jeanne Alter's body, wary and ready for the fight to continue.

But Jeanne Alter didn't straighten and spit fire. Instead, she slid to the ground, and her form started to waver, becoming fuzzy around the edges like a blurry photo.

"You…" she seethed weakly. She managed to lift her head and glare, but it didn't seem aimed at any particular one of us so much as the whole group. "You worthless…scheming rats. You stupid…annoying…vermin. I have…the Holy Grail. How could I be beaten…by you motley rejects?"

Cautiously, I stepped back into the room and closer to Jeanne Alter, watching as she slowly became more and more incoherent, like she was struggling just to keep herself together and fighting a losing battle. The twins followed behind me, hesitant but hopeful.

"Did we beat her?" asked Rika. "Please tell me we beat her. The suspense is killing me."

"Yeah," I said quietly. "We beat her."

More confident now, I made my way over to Mash, and I dispersed what was left of my swarm to scope out the situation both with Emiya's fight and with the wyverns outside. When I got closer, I could see a stream of silent tears glittering on Mash's cheeks. She didn't even seem to notice them, or if she did, she was still going in spite of them.

"Jeanne Alter defeated," she said barely above a whisper.

Gently, I moved up beside her and reached down to the hand gripping my knife. It was slick with Jeanne Alter's blood.

"You can let go now, Mash," I murmured, carefully prying at her fingers. If they weren't covered with gloves, I was willing to bet her knuckles would have been stark white.

Mash gasped and suddenly let go, and I fumbled about to catch the dagger before it could fall and hurt one of us as she stumbled back as though the weight of what she'd just done had finally hit her. A glance showed her wide, horrified eyes and her gaping mouth as she gulped down breath after panicked breath.

The dagger made its way back to its sheath — that nifty function Da Vinci had added would hopefully get it clean without any further effort — and I stepped closer to Mash as the twins huddled around her, concern written across their faces.

"What's wrong with her?" Rika asked, wringing her hands.

"Senpai?" Ritsuka turned to me. "Is Mash going to be okay?"

"It affects everyone differently," I told them. "Their first kill." To Mash, I said. "Just breathe, Mash. Calm down. Pace yourself. Just breathe."

I tried to remember the training I'd been given. Dealing with trauma in the field was supposed to be something you didn't learn until you officially graduated into the Protectorate, but I'd had a couple crash courses during my time as a Ward, and I tried to remember what I'd been told back then.

Unfortunately, I was largely drawing a blank. All I could remember was breathing exercises and soothing words. My own experience killing Coil was largely useless, since I'd had a long time to come to terms with the inevitability.

"Deep breaths, Mash," I mumbled. "In through the nose, hold it for a few seconds, then out through the mouth."

Mash did as I told her, sucking in breaths through her nose, holding them as long as she could, and letting them out through her mouth. Slowly, her breathing started to calm and even out.

"That's it. Just like that."

Ritsuka, of his own initiative, reached out with one hand and started to rub circles around her upper back.

"Easy does it, Mash," he said soothingly.

Jeanne Alter chuckled bitterly. "Done in…by an amateur. At least the English…were professionals."

I pointedly ignored her, although Rika and Ritsuka spared her enough attention to give her silent glares.

Eventually, Mash's breathing evened out completely and she calmed down enough to steady herself.

"I'm… I'm okay," she said, sucking in one more deep breath through her nose. She nodded as though to convince herself. "I'm okay, Senpai."

"Are you sure?" said Ritsuka.

Mash nodded again, and in a stronger voice, said, "I'm okay, Master."

We all stepped back to give her some room. Ritsuka stayed close enough to keep a comforting hand on her back.

"You have good friends, Mash," said Jeanne kindly.

Mash smiled wanly. She wasn't okay, but she couldn't afford to fall apart right now, and I knew that so well that it almost hurt to look at. Hopefully, Romani would be able to help her more once this was all over with and we were back at Chaldea.

I stopped cold, my brow furrowing, and my swarm shifted and condensed as something moved through my net. It was small and fast and making a beeline through the hallways —

Emiya was chasing after it.

Wait, then that meant —

"Eh? Emiya?" Rika asked, befuddled. "Get out of the way —"

"Shit!"

I took one step, wrapping my arms as best I could around our entire group, and then I threw myself bodily with all my strength towards the side, as far away from Jeanne Alter as I could. Rika and Mash both squeaked and Ritsuka let out a yelp, and we all went down in a tumble of limbs, just in time for a blur to race in from the hallway and through the open doors like a whirlwind. Jeanne shrieked in surprise and dove out of the way, but it ignored her and went straight for Jeanne Alter.

"Jeanne!" the Servant Emiya had been fighting wailed. "Oh, Jeanne! Jeanne! Look at what's become of you! Look at what these horrible people did to you! Oh, Jeanne! Jeanne!"

"Gilles," the Dragon Witch mumbled.

"Gilles?" It was Jeanne who said it, not me, as she slowly pulled herself to her feet. Her brow knitted together, and a look of befuddled confusion drew her face tight.

"I couldn't do it, Gilles," Jeanne Alter said quietly. "They…stopped me. They wouldn't…wouldn't let me…destroy France. I couldn't get…revenge."

"Hush, Jeanne," Gilles told her gently as he stroked her cheek. "Hush, now. Sleep. Rest, and I'll take care of everything. I promise. I'll take revenge for you. When you wake, I'll have finished everything."

"Rest…" The Dragon Witch rolled it over weakly. "Yes… Yes, I…think I will. You're right. I can…leave everything…to you…"

And with a final sigh, she broke apart into particles of light and vanished, leaving behind —

Wait. Wait, wait, wait. No, hold the fucking phone. Are you telling me…

"So, that's how it is, then," said Jeanne. "Yes, that's about as I expected."

This whole time…

"And you… You are Gilles, but not the one I knew," Jeanne continued. There was something in her voice, some mix of sadness and anger. Disappointment, maybe.

"She had the Grail?" I demanded, trying to control my voice. "The entire time, Jeanne Alter was carrying the Grail around with her?"

We could have ended this entire fucking debacle back in La Charité? Almost as soon as we got here?

"No," Jeanne said as Gilles picked the Grail up gingerly. I was so focused on it and how utterly livid I was that I almost didn't notice Emiya arrive, hanging back in the hallway. "It's even simpler than that. You see, I began to suspect something was amiss earlier. It isn't to say I never harbored darkness in my heart, but I was not vengeful and I was not at any point consumed by my wrath. For that reason, the Heroic Spirit 'Jeanne d'Arc Alter' shouldn't exist, not in accordance with proper history."

"Your intuition is as formidable as ever it was," said Gilles. "Yes, it's true. The Dragon Witch is not an aspect of the Jeanne I loved in her life. She was instead the wish I made upon the Grail."

The walls hummed with the buzzing of my depleted swarm.

"We could have finished this entire thing a month ago?" I asked tightly.

"All those people who could have been saved…" Ritsuka whispered shakily.

"My feet want revenge," Rika muttered, sounding angry herself.

"She was never me at all, was she?" Jeanne asked Gilles. "She was nothing more than a fantasy you concocted."

Gilles whirled around to face her. "I wanted you! You, you, you, Jeanne! From the bottom of my heart, I wished that you would come back to us! To France! To me! But the Grail…" He sobbed, of all things. "The Grail, the Grail! It refused me! It refused to grant my wish! It refused to bring you back to life!"

His hands shook, and his voice swelled with fury. "So if I couldn't have the genuine article, I would have my own Jeanne! The Jeanne I carried in my heart, the Saint I followed throughout those battles — even if it was a fake, as long as I had you, then that was all that mattered!"

"All of this," I said lowly, "because you didn't know how to deal with your grief?"

That… That hit closer to home than I was really comfortable with.

"Who are you to judge me, girl?" Gilles snarled at me. "How could you understand my sorrow? My anguish? How could you understand the pain of losing your whole world so cruelly?"

"And that somehow justifies all of this?" I retorted. "You're going to take out your pain on the whole country, tear down everything she gave her life to build, and you think that's going to make it better somehow? Like it'll hurt any less when you're standing on the ashes of everything she loved?"

The buzzing of my swarm vibrated in the walls to punctuate my words. The twins glanced around a little nervously, like they were afraid they might get drawn into the crossfire when this devolved into a fight.

Fuck. Maybe that was just one of my hot buttons. I'd been there so many times before that grief and I were old friends, and having it shoved in my face like that just rubbed me raw.

"They don't deserve it!" he thundered. "They don't deserve the world she built! They don't deserve the happiness that they robbed from her! I won't allow them to have it!"

"Gilles," Jeanne broke in firmly. "Whatever you intended, you must have known I wouldn't abide your plans. No matter how tragic my ending, I would never have turned on the country and the people I loved so much."

Gilles took in a deep breath through his nose and reigned in his anger. I scowled and tried to ease mine, and in the walls, the buzzing lowered to a quiet hum.

"Yes," said Gilles. "Yes, of course. Of course you would forgive them. Of course you would never turn your back on this country. Of course you would keep loving it, even as it betrayed you. Your kindness, your compassion, those are the things I loved most about you. That's why… my wish… It was never for your sake, Jeanne. The revenge to be taken on this wretched country… IT WAS MY OWN!"

He threw his hands out. "I WILL DESTROY THIS GODFORSAKEN LAND!" he raved. "I WILL SLAUGHTER THESE GODFORSAKEN PEOPLE! THESE PEOPLE THAT TOOK YOU FROM ME, THE GOD THAT ABANDONED YOU, THE KING THAT LEFT YOU TO DIE! I'LL NEVER FORGIVE ANY OF THEM! EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAS TO BE WIPED FROM THIS EARTH!"

He pointed one bony, long-nailed finger at her. "AND IF YOU STAND IN MY WAY, THEN YOU'RE MY ENEMY AS WELL!"

Jeanne's face fell, and for a brief moment, she closed her eyes and grimaced, like she was in great pain. But when she opened them again, they were strong and resolute, and her face was etched with determination.

"If that is how it has to be…" Jeanne brandished her flag. "Then I will stop you myself!"

Gilles lifted up the arm holding the Grail. "HOLY GRAIL! GRANT ME THIS WISH! GIVE ME MY HEART'S DESIRE! I CALL FORTH —"

A meaty squelch cut him off, and he stumbled backwards. The Grail tumbled from his hands and clattered to the ground as he clutched at the long, twisted arrow that was burrowed in his chest, and even Jeanne gasped as his red blood splattered over the floor.

"No," he rasped. His knees gave out and he slumped against the wall, much the way Jeanne Alter had. "No, no…"

Feebly, he reached out for the Grail where it had fallen, but it was too far away and he didn't have the strength anymore.

"I was so close," he said. "So close. I… I could have done it… I could have had my…"

Jeanne stepped towards him, expression unreadable, and as she came upon his pitiful form, she knelt down next to him and gently placed her hands on his.

"It's over, Gilles," she told him softly. "This is enough, don't you think? It's time for you to get some rest."

"Jeanne," Gilles gasped.

"You believed in a simple farm girl, once," she said. "You were there by her side when she liberated this city. Even if this is what has become of you now, the man from that time was someone I cherished. That's why… I can't bear to see you in such pain."

She lifted her hand and gently cupped his cheek. Trembling, he reached up and cupped her hand with his.

"So rest, Gilles. You've done enough. It's time to lay down your sword and rest."

"Jeanne…" He sighed and leaned into her hand. "Ah, Jeanne. Even now, you look at me with such tenderness? After everything I've done… After everything… You really are…the Saint we never deserved…"

And in a flash of light, he burst apart into tiny motes that flickered and fluttered like fireflies. Gone.

I watched him disappear, even as Emiya slowly walked towards us. The scene of his goodbye was tender and heartfelt, but I was stuck on the rage and the despair and what a broken mirror I'd just been looking into.

Is that what I would have looked like, if Alexandria really had killed my friends? I couldn't imagine ever falling that far, not when I'd weathered losing my mother, my best friend, the man I might have loved, once upon a time, even my whole life and my entire world. Fate had thrown her entire hand at me, and I'd managed to wade through it and come out the other side.

But what if I hadn't?

"You," Jeanne addressed Emiya sternly.

Emiya shrugged. "If I didn't need to worry about all of you, I would have killed him before he even caught up with you. Do you want me to apologize for stopping whatever mad scheme he was cooking up in his head?"

Jeanne sighed. "No. As much as I might dislike it, you likely saved us a great deal of grief. Just because I agree with the necessity does not mean I have to approve, though!"

Emiya chuckled, scratching at the back of his head. A smirk curled his lips.

"Somehow, that sort of scolding feels familiar."

Beep-beep!

"Servant responses confirmed eliminated!" Romani said brightly. "All I'm seeing on the sensors now are the guys on our team and a whole bunch of wyverns! W-well, the wyverns will probably sort themselves out, won't they? So we can leave that to the native Servants and get you guys out of there. Do you have the Grail?"

Mash bent down and picked it up. "Holy Grail acquisition confirmed, Doctor Roman."

"That's another one taken care of," said Romani as he looked away to type something on his keyboard. "Confirming… And it looks like the proper timeline is starting to restore itself. Are you guys ready to get out of there and come home?"

"Boy, am I ever!" Rika said. She heaved a great sigh. "If I have to eat one more ration bar, I think I might just mutiny!"

Emiya chuckled.

"It'll be nice to be back at Chaldea again," Ritsuka agreed.

"You're leaving?" Jeanne asked.

"There are still six more Singularities," I told her. "It's our job to fix them."

She smiled. "I suppose I can't argue with that, can I? My own selfishness isn't worth all the lives you have resting upon your shoulders."

"I've prepared the settings to account for Arash and Siegfried," said Romani. At the mention of them, I checked in on them briefly to find them unhurt and still going strong. "When you Rayshift, they'll be brought along, too. I'm sorry, Mademoiselle Jeanne, but there's no time to alter the settings to bring you back, too."

Jeanne shook her head. "That's okay. Even if I can't join you in person, I'll be there with you in spirit. Just know that I'm cheering for you all the way."

"We won't let you down, Miss Jeanne," said Mash.

"I know you won't."

I turned back to Romani. "It looks like we're ready to go."

He nodded. "Okay," he said, "just give me a minute to make a few final adjustments… And get ready to Rayshift in five, four, three…"

"WAIT!" a familiar voice shouted. "WAIT, WAIT, WAIT! YOU CAN'T LEAVE YET!"

"Bwah?" said Romani, bewildered.

And through the hallway raced the familiar figure of Bradamante. She was soaked head to toe in splatters of red wyvern blood, panting like she'd just run a marathon, and she raced towards us like a bullet, skidding to a stop five feet away.

"Not without me!" she said.

"Bwah?" Romani sputtered again.

"Bradamante!" said Ritsuka. "You came after all!"

"I've been…thinking about it…ever since you left!" she huffed. "And I just knew…I was going to regret it…if I left things…like that!"

She let out a gusty sigh — "Phew!" — and then she straightened, showing off her best heroic pose. Droplets of blood flew off her spear and splashed the ceiling. "So I raced here as fast as I could, only everyone already beat the bad guys before I could do anything except kill some wyverns! There's no way I can let it go like that, so you guys have to take me with you and I can dazzle you next time!"

My brow furrowed. "Uh…"

Ritsuka turned to Romani. "Doctor Roman?"

"H-hey, it's not up to me!" said Romani, waving his hands about. "We're cutting it razor close right now to begin with, and it would take way too long for me to readjust the parameters of the Rayshift —"

"Oh, budge over, Romani!" said Da Vinci's voice, and Romani squawked as he was pushed out of his chair. Da Vinci smiled into the camera as she sat down at his monitor. "Don't worry, everyone! A genius like me can recalibrate the Rayshift in no time flat!"

Her fingers flew across the keyboard. Bradamante grinned, her teeth a sparkling white against the splash of maroon that coated one cheek.

"As long as I'm adjusting for one extra passenger, should I make it two, Jeanne?"

Jeanne blinked, thought about it for a moment, and then gently shook her head, smiling.

"No, it's fine," she said serenely. "I appreciate your offer, Miss Da Vinci, but France is my home. If you don't mind, I'd like to stay here and make sure everything gets back on track."

"Jeanne…" Ritsuka murmured.

"No need to look so sad!" Jeanne said brightly. "I told you, I'll be there with you in spirit! And who knows? The world called me back to help you correct one Singularity, so perhaps we'll meet again in another, and you can tell me all about the adventures you're sure to have in the meantime!"

Ritsuka's lips curled into a smile, and even I couldn't stop myself from smiling a little at her enthusiasm and cheer. It was almost infectious.

Yeah. The Maid of Orléans who inspired a nation… I could see that.

"If you're sure…" said Da Vinci.

Jeanne nodded. "I'm certain. We'll see each other again, I know it. So this isn't goodbye, it's just 'see you later.'"

"Yeah!" Rika agreed.

"Parameters set, calculations complete, calibrations all green. Rayshift in five…"

"Here we go!" Bradamante cheered with a pump of her fist. "Ah, I splashed myself in the eye!"

"Four… three… two…"

"Thank you," Jeanne said last. "All of you, for everything."

"One!"

And as a canal of stars opened beneath our feet, the last thing I saw was her smile.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

Bradamante had me grinning from ear to ear as I wrote out her lines at the end of this chapter. I wasn't even sure she was coming along for the ride, at first, but I tried it out and she slotted right in like nothing was the matter.

I know the Gilles fight was another anti-climax. But Jalter really is the main boss of this Singularity, and I didn't want to dilute that by having Gilles pull out something and somehow be a threat when Emiya, Jeanne, and Mash were all still there and good to go. Well, mostly. I'm going to try and avoid giving Mash and the twins a free pass out of PTSD, although I won't focus too heavily on addressing all of their problems and symptoms.

Re: the Shadow Servants, those serve a purpose, too. They felt a little clumsy as additions, but it was a convenient way of introducing an idea that I kinda just ignored in Fuyuki for the sake of making Fuyuki more compelling narratively.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter XXVIII: Return to Normalcy

 

[James D. Fawkes]

Chapter XXVIII: Return to Normalcy

The next thing I knew, I was upright with cool, artificial air clinging to my skin and a pervasive sense of claustrophobia that had my heart skipping a beat.

My eyes snapped open just in time for the glass panel that served as the door of my Klein Coffin to hiss and rise away, and I stumbled out with a desperate gasp as my pulse pounded in my ears. The environs of the Rayshift Chamber greeted me, but they seemed almost foreign after having spent over a month in medieval France, and my skin felt too tight on my body, like it was stretched over something that was supposed to be much bigger, much more expansive, so much —

Oh, I realized as I gulped down breath after breath. Yeah, that made sense, didn't it? Chaldea was as clean as clean could reasonably get. I'd gotten used to having that expanded proprioception again, that sense of inhabiting something more than just my frail human body, and now I was going back to having none of that.

Couldn't control bugs in a place that didn't have any, after all.

I steadied myself against the lip of my coffin with one hand, panting and trying to get used to the idea of being so miniscule, so much lesser again. It was hard when I felt so impossibly tiny now. Compressed, that was a good word, like I had been shoved back into a container that was a dozen sizes too small.

"Ugh," I heard Rika's voice say, "as glad as I am to be back, I wish the trip was easier on the stomach."

"It's definitely going to take some getting used to," Ritsuka agreed.

"I don't think there's anything to be done about it, Senpai," Mash answered.

"Maybe it would be easier if we just came back unconscious like we did with Fuyuki," Rika grumbled. "Sleep it off instead of toughing it out."

"Does that mean you aren't up for that three course meal you wanted, Master?" Emiya asked from somewhere nearby.

"Absolutely not!" Rika barked. "Back to the kitchen with you, house-husband! Back, I say! Mama needs her gourmet celebration feast!"

Emiya chuckled. "As you say, Master. How about a little taste of home, then? Tempura sound good?"

Rika was silent for a moment.

"…Oh my god, marry me."

"Rika!" Ritsuka yelped at the same time as Mash's scandalized, "Senpai!"

Does that count as necrophilia, since he's technically dead? the little Lisa in my head sniggered.

I didn't realize I'd said that out loud until Mash and Ritsuka both gasped. Rika cackled while Emiya coughed awkwardly into his hand.

My head swam a little as I shook it, but it helped to clear some of the fog and disorientation, so with a deep breath, I rolled my shoulders and stood straight.

"Pretty sure it's illegal, at any rate," I went on, doubling down. "You have to provide a birth certificate on the marriage license, and that's kinda hard for a guy who doesn't have one."

Emiya coughed awkwardly into his hand again and looked away shiftily.

…Oh, you've got to be kidding me. Is that why we didn't have any records of him as a Heroic Spirit? Because he technically hadn't become one, yet? I must be more out of it than I thought if I was actually entertaining that possibility.

The sound of a cleared throat broke into our little thing, whatever it was that was just happening, and that was when I realized Romani was there, tablet in hand and smile a little forced.

"Welcome back, everyone," he said. "It's good to see you're all in one piece. Ritsuka, Rika, Taylor, Mash, I'm glad you all came out of that mess unharmed."

"Fou!" the little beast chirped, appearing suddenly on Mash's shoulder.

"And Fou, too," Romani added.

"He's very lucky, isn't he?" Mash smiled tiredly and stroked Fou under his chin, earning her a purr. No, seriously, what was it? A cat, a dog, a squirrel? No one had ever given me a straight answer. "I guess he must have good survival instincts. He had to have hidden during all the action."

"Or maybe he just doesn't know when to die," I muttered under my breath. No one else heard me, but Fou's head jerked around and he pinned me with an unnerving, unblinking stare.

"In any case," said Romani, "I just got the data back from Da Vinci. The restoration of the timeline has gone off without a hitch, and everything has returned to its proper place. Congratulations on resolving the Orléans Singularity!"

The others exchanged exhausted smiles, and even I couldn't stop my lips from curling upwards a little. One down, six to go.

"Oh no!" Mash gasped suddenly, aghast. "We left our supplies sitting in the middle of the road outside Orléans!"

My eyes went wide as I remembered — we had. We'd discarded them when that Archer started attacking us and never had the chance to return for them because Jeanne Alter had attacked us with Fafnir almost immediately afterwards.

It had slipped my mind entirely in the aftermath of everything. Too much had happened one after the other.

"Ah, shit," Rika said, and she summed up my own feelings on the matter, too.

Romani winced. "I'm afraid there isn't much we can do about it, now. Even if it was feasible to send you back in, there's no guarantee the timeline hasn't already corrected itself and removed them as 'excess.'"

Mash sighed. "All of those supplies that everyone put together for us," she mumbled morosely, "and we just forget all about them in the middle of the road."

From behind us, Arash chuckled, and we all turned to look at him. "Don't worry so much, Mash."

He and Siegfried shrugged their shoulders, and as the straps I hadn't noticed before slipped down their arms, the packs with all of our supplies slid to the floor next to them.

"After the Dragon Witch was defeated, the wyverns started to disappear on their own," Siegfried explained. "Lord Arash and I thought it prudent to retrieve the supplies we were forced to abandon at the outset of the fight."

"Yes!" Rika cheered, fist pumping. "You guys rock!"

"It was no trouble," Siegfried assured us with a smile.

"We couldn't just leave all of that behind," Arash added, "not after all the hard work that went into making sure everyone was well-stocked."

"I'm sure everyone will breathe a sigh of relief to know their efforts didn't go to waste," said Romani. He changed the subject. "In any case, everyone, I think you've earned a good rest, for now. Emiya, I know you just got back, but it seems like the Masters deserve a reward for their good work. Do you think you could prepare that celebratory dinner like Rika asked?"

Emiya shrugged, chuckling, "If that's what my Master wants. Servants don't need sleep, so I don't see any reason why I can't go the extra mile and make something a little extravagant."

"Thank you," Romani said politely.

"I can already taste it," said Rika, and I thought I saw her drooling a little. "Emiya's cooking… Emiya's tempura… Ufufufu, it's gonna be so good…"

Her Servant shook his head, but took that as his cue.

"Might as well go get started," said Emiya, and he went to leave.

"Tem-pu-ra!" Rika chanted at his back. "Tem-pu-ra! Tem-pu-ra!"

Emiya lifted a hand and gave her a wave without looking back.

"Roger that, Master."

"Tem-pu-ra-ra-rah!"

"Arash, Siegfried," Romani turned to them next, "if you could get those supplies back to our…Acting Quartermaster, I would be grateful. I'm sure…whoever it is today would appreciate being able to unpack the stuff we can save for Rome."

Arash smiled. "No problem, Director Archaman."

Romani's cheek twitched. It seemed he was still getting used to being the guy in charge.

"I'd be glad to," Siegfried added.

They picked the bags they'd dropped back up and left after Emiya. My brow furrowed as I watched them go, because I wasn't sure how they were going to find the quartermaster when they'd never stepped foot inside of Chaldea before, but maybe Arash's Clairvoyance would show them the way. They didn't seem worried about it in any case.

"And you guys," Romani began, and his smile grew broader. "I'm really proud of you. All of you. There were some pretty tough battles you had to go through to make it to the end, and I was worried sometimes, but you all pushed on anyway and saved France. You performed better than I could have ever expected of you. Good job."

The others smiled again, proud of what they'd accomplished, and I was a little surprised to find I was proud of them, too.

"We kicked ass," Rika said with relish. Romani laughed.

"That you did." He turned to Mash. "Mash, we already handled the Grail you retrieved from Jeanne Alter and Da Vinci will deal with it from there, so the rest of you, take a load off for now and we'll have the more formal debrief later on. You've earned a break for now."

A collective sigh was heaved, although Rika's was the loudest and heaviest. Romani just laughed.

"Go on, get out of here," he said, shooing us with one hand. "It's going to take Emiya some time to cook something up, whatever he winds up making, so you have some time to get some rest, if you want. No need to stand around here waiting."

"No need to tell me twice!" Rika chirped, and she immediately started for the exit.

Ritsuka followed behind her a moment later, gently taking Mash's wrist with a soft, encouraging, "Come on, Mash. I'd bet you'd like to take a nice, hot shower."

"Thank you, Senpai," Mash told him, and she let him lead her away.

I shook my head and made to follow, because my bed was calling my name with a siren's song and I didn't have the strength to resist it.

"Actually, Taylor," Romani stopped me, "Da Vinci needed to talk with you about something. She's waiting for you in her workshop. I'm heading that way as well, so why don't we walk together?"

I eyed him, immediately suspicious, but I didn't have the energy or the desire to raise a stink, so I went along with whatever this was about to be. "Okay."

He tapped a few more things on his tablet, and then nodded at me and said, "Let's get going, then."

He walked towards the exit and I fell into step next to him, slanting glances at him from the corner of my eye as we made the trek to Da Vinci's workshop. He didn't give anything away, though. His expression was serious, but perfectly even, and he didn't even look my way as we went.

He didn't think he'd actually convinced me with that half-assed misdirect, did he? Ugh, I was way too spent for this subterfuge.

"What's this really about, Romani?" I asked halfway there.

His lips tightened, but he shook his head and quietly muttered, "Not out in the open. That's why we're going to have this talk in Da Vinci's workshop."

A frown tugged at my mouth, and I side-eyed him again, but I wasn't Lisa or Alexandria. I couldn't read his secrets in the lines of his face or the tightness of his expression.

Romani had been good to me, though, for all that he could be kind of bumbling and a little overprotective, so I guess I could at least extend enough trust to hear him out on whatever this was about.

Da Vinci's workshop looked like it came right out of the fourteenth century, complete with diagrams and miniature mockups of all of the original's famous inventions. In fact, almost the entirety of the interior had been redone and cast in a mimicry of what the original Da Vinci's workshop had likely looked like, way back when, with wooden flooring and rafters pasted on top of Chaldea's sterile tile, bookshelves against the far wall, and a pair of large, oaken tables sitting in the middle of it, complete with a set of chairs.

Da Vinci herself was waiting for us, tinkering away at some project or another that she set down as we entered.

"Ah, good, you're here," she said.

"What's this about?" I demanded. "And why here, exactly?"

"This is the most secure room in the entire facility," Romani explained simply. "The only place with a tighter lock and better warded against eavesdropping is the Director's office. We still haven't managed to get it open."

"Marisbury always was a paranoid man," Da Vinci added sardonically.

"So?" I prodded. "Whatever this is, it has to be serious if you didn't want the twins around to hear it."

The two of them shared a look, and something seemed to pass between them. If I'd had any remaining doubts that they were both in on this, that would have dispelled them.

"There's an unusual data volume in your readings," Romani began slowly.

My brow furrowed. "An unusual data volume?"

"Unusual is putting it somewhat mildly," Da Vinci interjected. "Frankly speaking, it should automatically disqualify you from Rayshifting entirely."

My heart skipped a beat, but I latched onto the particular wording of her sentence. "It should disqualify me?"

"We're having trouble reading it," Romani explained. "As in, it's somehow obscuring itself from our sensors. We can tell how big it is generally, for a certain value of that word, and we can tell that it's connected to you in some way that makes it basically impossible for us to safely remove, but we don't understand what it is or how it got there."

"And that's dangerous when we're undergoing an operation as sensitive as a Rayshift," Da Vinci added. "As I'm sure you're aware, we have to keep a constant eye on your presence during a Rayshift to prevent you from being excluded or erased by the Counter Force, and that means that knowing who and what we're observing is essential. An unknown factor like this is dangerous."

An unusual data volume that they couldn't read… There was only one thing I could think of that would explain that. So, my passenger really was back, then. Somehow, someway, it had reconnected with me and given me back my powers. The original ones, from back when I first triggered.

All things considered, maybe I'd never lost it in the first place, and there had just never been enough bugs around for it to latch onto. If bugs had been my only power, I probably would have been able to believe that.

"But you're not taking me off the team," I cut in, folding my arms over my chest.

The two of them shared a look.

"Whatever this data volume is," Romani said, "it's been mostly quiet. There's a constant degree of activity, and it got more intense during Orléans, but whatever it is, it's not interfering with the measurements that are actually vital to establishing your presence in Singularities."

"That's the only reason we decided to let it be," said Da Vinci. "If it had been entirely up to me, I would have taken you off the team in a heartbeat. This thing has been with you since you came back from Fuyuki, however, and since none of our simulations showed any problems based upon the data we collected when we brought you back, Romani decided that the risk was worth taking."

"And I'll stand by that decision," Romani chimed back in. "We needed her to get through Orléans. I don't think Ritsuka and Rika would have been able to handle it by themselves."

I pursed my lips. "So why are you bringing this up now?"

"Because we're in a better position now," Romani replied. "Things still aren't great, but we're starting to pull together a solid team of Servants and we can afford to give you some slack. If you're worried about your safety going into Rayshifts from now on, we can keep you in reserve and only send you in for absolute emergencies. You don't have to risk this becoming a problem that gets you killed."

This was starting to remind me of the Protectorate's insistence that I never attend a battle against the Simurgh. I hadn't liked it then, back when I couldn't do anything to change their minds, and I didn't like it now.

"I'm not going to just let the twins flounder on their own." I shook my head. "No, I'm staying on the main team."

Da Vinci's eyes narrowed on me. "You're not worried," she said, and it sounded like an accusation. "No, it's not even just that, is it? You know what this strange data volume is, or if you don't know for certain, you at least have some idea."

A muscle in my cheek jumped. Her eccentric personality sometimes made it easy to forget that this was a genius, an unparalleled mind who had been centuries ahead of the times back during the Renaissance.

"What makes you say that?"

"You're far too calm about it," she retorted. "You're not surprised to hear this, either. In fact, I'd wager… Were you expecting this sort of confrontation at some point?"

And now she was starting to remind me of Lisa, which only served to make me miss her all the more, right then.

"Not from you," I said simply, and then I elaborated. "The twins and Mash had some questions that I never answered in Orléans. There never seemed like a good moment to talk about it, and I honestly didn't know what to tell them."

"Does that have something to do with the sensors ghosts that were following you around?" Romani asked.

I looked at him, confused. "Sensor ghosts?"

"Wherever you went, there were little blips on our sensors that registered as you," he told me. "In a radius of about one third of a mile, if we're talking American measurements. They were too small and too weak to be human, so I chocked it up as a mistake in the sensors or a faulty repair job."

Da Vinci's smile was tight, like she was remembering something that pissed her off and was trying to hold in violence. "Of course it wasn't a faulty repair job. I was the one who did the repairs, after all."

Romani laughed awkwardly. "Right."

Sensors ghosts…in a radius of about one third of a mile? Considering my range…

"Are you talking about my bugs?"

There weren't many things that could be. But why would my bugs register as weak echoes of me? Everything was filtered through my passenger, so there shouldn't have been anything of me to "register" in them.

"Bugs?" Da Vinci and Romani asked simultaneously.

My lips pulled tight. "How much about my past do you know?"

Da Vinci didn't answer, just turned that narrow-eyed look on me again, but Romani said, "Almost nothing. Director Animusphere said something about a world of heroes and villains, but not much else. It sounded like something out of a comic book."

I snorted. If only things had been that idealistic. In comic books, the heroes and villains died and came back to life, fought against terrible enemies and eked out a decisive victory, suffered horrific injuries that should have crippled them, and got up to do it again the next day without any sign anything was wrong.

The real thing wasn't anywhere near that pleasant.

I glanced shortly at Da Vinci, and for a moment, I thought about concocting some lie or somehow dodging the question — out of the abundance of caution Marie had tried to instill in me almost two years ago — but Romani already had some idea, and if there was one person that he seemed completely incapable of keeping a secret from, it was Da Vinci. He had also, rather inconveniently, given away the most important part of the secret just now.

"The term we used was 'capes,'" I said, because there didn't seem a point in avoiding it now. "People with strange, supernatural powers who donned costumes and went out to do… Well, to commit crime and to fight it, depending on which side of the line you were supposed to be on." Although the labels turned out to not really mean anything, hadn't they? Hero and villain was more a matter of PR than deed. "I was one of them."

"What kind of supernatural powers?" Da Vinci asked carefully.

I shrugged.

"A lot of it might sound like magecraft to you." It certainly hadn't been hard to draw the parallels myself once I started learning magecraft. "We had Tinkers who built super advanced technology that no one could replicate, Thinkers who could pluck the secrets from your head by reading the lint on your jacket, Shakers who could bend space and change the world around them, Changers who could take on different forms, Brutes with super strength and superhuman durability, Movers who could fly or teleport, Breakers who bent the laws of physics over their knees… A whole gamut of things that we thought impossible before 1981."

"And you?" Da Vinci posed.

My lips twitched a little as I remembered Tagg's threat rating, how he'd thrown everything in the book at me just to make me seem more threatening. Maybe some part of that wasn't exactly wrong, but few people had pushed the limits of their powers quite as hard as I had.

"I was a Master," I told them. Romani winced, like he'd just got the punchline of a bad joke. "Which meant my power was controlling minions. Insects. Anything that gets called a creepy crawly, in fact, from house flies to black widows and everything in between."

"Oh geez," Romani muttered, low enough that we probably weren't meant to hear him. "Did the Director never realize what that was supposed to mean?"

Da Vinci nodded and made a noise of understanding in her throat. "That's why the sensor ghosts. They registered all of the bugs under your control as 'familiars,' so your presence was detected as a kind of echo in each of them." Her brow furrowed. "Wait. The radius covered one third of a mile. Exactly how many bugs can you control within that range?"

"Yes."

Lisa would be proud of the snark in that one.

Da Vinci's eyebrows rose. "You mean… All of them?"

"Anything bigger than a dust mite that doesn't have an endoskeleton. That includes crabs, by the way, for some reason. I lived in a coastal city and learned that one when I got close enough to the bay."

I'd never understood that one. Did crabs technically count as insects? If not, then what definition had my power been using when it adjusted its parameters for "bugs?"

"That's…"

She turned away and started muttering under her breath, hunched over and head bowed as she…used her fingers to do the mental math? Having a Thinker for a best friend had introduced me to some strange tics, but this one was a little new, even for me.

Romani looked at her and sighed. He ran a hand through his hair. "Well, she's got something she's trying to figure out… I guess you don't know anything about where these supernatural powers came from?"

I shrugged.

"I know more than most did, I guess," I hedged. "But even as much as I know is definitely only a tiny sliver of the whole story. The important bit is that they did have an external source that connects with the chosen host via the brain. That anchor is strong enough to reach through parallel worlds, so I wouldn't be surprised to find out it can even find me during a Rayshift."

Scion… I steered well clear of even mentioning his name. That was a can of worms I didn't want to open, filled to the brim with things I was still trying to get over even two years after the fact.

Romani's eyes went wide, and one of his hands drifted up to his forehead, right in the center, where two of his fingers touched — right where, on my forehead, there would be two tiny divots from the bullets Contessa had used to put Khepri out of her misery.

It occurred to me, then, that as my primary care physician in Chaldea, Romani would have seen and treated all of my wounds, back then. Including those two bullet holes.

"Can the connection be forcibly severed?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," I answered, just as quiet. Like admitting it would summon the specter of Contessa back to finish the job. "I thought mine was, when I woke up here."

Romani sighed. "Well, even if I knew what to look for, I'm not qualified to do brain surgery, so I can't offer to remove it for you —"

"I wouldn't accept, even if you did," I told him sharply.

"Which is about what I expected you to say," he said with a shake of his head, smiling a little. "Like I said, it isn't proving to be an issue, so we can leave it alone, if you don't want to try getting rid of it. I'm not going to say I don't have any reservations about it, but you'd know better than I do regarding this particular —"

"Haha!" Da Vinci cheered. "I've done it again!"

Romani let out a breath through his nose and briefly glanced at the ceiling like he was praying for patience, and then asked, "Can I ask what it is you've done, Da Vinci?"

She spun back around to face us, a triumphant grin on her lips.

"I've figured out a way to fix the problem of our Director's missing corpus!"

A jolt ripped through my stomach.

"Really?"

"You have?" Romani said, surprised.

Da Vinci nodded, her hands on her hips.

"It's quite the simple thing, actually," she explained smugly. One hand rose, like a teacher beginning a lecture. "Our biggest hurdle in building her a new body is biological material. Quite frankly, even if I repurposed the remains of both the Director and the rest of the staff, there was too much decay by the time we finally got everything cleaned up, so building a functioning body that didn't have a prohibitive number of issues wasn't possible. But! If I processed the material of enough biomass from living specimens, I could use a kind of printing process to recreate the necessary structures. The trick has been trying to find enough material of the right kind to form the structures properly."

"Wait a minute," said Romani. "I've heard of that. Hasn't there been talk of that kind of thing with modern medical science? Printing replacement organs for people in need of transplants? They can't figure out how to do it on Earth, though."

"The difference is, I'm a genius!" Da Vinci boasted. "Concerns like that are just obstacles to be overcome!"

I made the connection after a moment of thought. Panacea had done something similar, after all.

"You need my bugs."

"Just so!" said Da Vinci. "In the next Singularity, we'll have to take a moment when the team is resting to pull a portion of your bugs back to Chaldea. Small portions at a time, of course. Our food stores are too vital to risk a colony of ants or cockroaches getting into them while you're not here to control them, but I'm certain I could rig up some kind of containment device, and we should be able to pull them directly inside it."

My heart thundered in my chest, and I had to swallow around my own excitement.

"How long would it take you to make her a new body? How many bugs would you need?"

Da Vinci gave me a shrug and an awkward smile. "That part, admittedly, I'm not certain of. It will depend on the variety of insect we manage to find in Rome and how difficult it will be to overcome the current issues with the process. You said crabs also count for your powers, yes? Retrieving at least a few dozen of those will make fabricating the bone easier, but I can't be certain of any of it until I've started."

Oh. Some of my excitement died. I probably should've known better than to get my hopes that high.

But still. This was a more solid lead than we'd had after Fuyuki, and Da Vinci was a far better and more talented mage than I could ever have hoped to be. She figured out Defiant's nano-thorn dagger, after all. She'd figure this out, too. It was just a matter of time.

"Whatever you need, I'll get it for you," I promised. I owed Marie at least that much.

Da Vinci smiled. "Later," she said. "For now, I think we've resolved the main thrust of our previous concerns. Wouldn't you say, Romani?"

"Resolved might not be the right word for that," Romani began. "She gave us an explanation and there's nothing to be done, but the whole business kind of leaves a bad taste —"

"I said," Da Vinci cut across him pointedly, "wouldn't you say, Romani?"

Romani blinked. "Oh! Oh, yes. Ahem. Sorry, we pulled you aside without warning, Taylor. You must be exhausted. Why don't you go ahead and get a nap back in your room? I'll send someone over to get you up in time for dinner, okay?"

I forced myself not to smile and settled for a nod. "Alright. Sounds good."

I turned to leave.

"Good night," he called after me.

I stopped, considered that for a moment, and decided on a neutral, "Thanks."

As I walked away, I heard him say to himself, "Ugh, 'good night?' Why did I say that? It's the middle of the day…"

Never change, Romani, I thought fondly.

From Da Vinci's workshop, I made my way back to my room, walking the mostly empty halls. There was no sign of the twins around, but if they were as tired and mentally exhausted as I was, they had probably settled down for a nap of their own, and they'd earned it. Mash… I'd have to check on her later, see how she was coping with what happened there at the end. If I had to, I'd bring up the idea of therapy with Romani and Da Vinci, but I didn't know if we had one on staff and I wasn't sure Romani had the training for it.

Perhaps not so strangely, at that moment, I missed Doctor Yamada.

My room was the same as I'd left it when we began our journey into the French Singularity, but that was only natural. By Chaldea's reckoning, we'd only been gone about a week, even if it had been a month for me, Mash, and the twins. Of course nothing would have changed.

I stripped off my outer layer unceremoniously and dumped my jacket on the seat of my chair. My boots were left where I toed them off at the foot of my bed.

Compared to the cots I'd had to sleep on and the hard ground we'd camped out on, the basic mattress I threw myself onto was like a cloud. It felt like my head had barely hit the pillow, filled with vague hopes for the future born of Da Vinci's promises, and then I was out like a light.

— o.0.O.O.0.o —​

Spoiler: Notes

Some hints as to why Taylor hasn't been entirely forthcoming about her history to the twins and Mash. That'll be revealed more as we go along. Incidentally, the original line from Rika was, "...I want to have your babies," which would very much warrant the reaction she gets even more so, but it was decided to tone it down a little and make it a little more tame.

I'm striding a line with that "unusual data volume," because it really should be something that disqualifies Taylor from Rayshifting. But, desperate times and such the like. I hope those of you more hardcore Nasu fans can suspend your disbelief in this regard just a little bit further.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.

Next — Chapter XXIX: The Fourth Wall