Theodicy (Fate/Zero, SI!Caster)
- Thread starter DiscovAres
- Start date
- Location
- Oklahoma
Tbh, this is the best way I've seen someone try to convince Artoria, not counting shirou.
Not_Interesting
The Munchkin of Megastructures
- Location
- In your walls(the walls between realities)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That is honestly the agreed concensus about Apoc...wasted potential with the Cardboard protag that was Sieg. I really wish Momo and Biker Dad Sisigou were the Protagonists instead.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
…
Man, Caster will have so much fun when he finds out he was basically correct in every way.
As for Artoria… the ideals of Medieval European chivalry as ascribed by a Japanese writer to a legendary ruler who looks like a sixteen years old girl ( because of course ) never really interested me that much. Which made that castle scene in Zero fall even flatter on its face, you know the one I'm talking about. Gilgamesh and Alexander are the the last damn people who should have a say on what it means to be a king.
I feel like Urobuchi has grown from the experience though.
Anyway. A love triangle between Guinevere, Lancelot and Artoria on all sides is a popular fandom interpretation, so it's basically canon.
Trying to convince her that she did the best she could to assuage the impossibility of accomplishing her Wish is a bit self-indulgent on Caster's side, though that's not a bad thing necessarily. But, you know, he's not beating allegations of secretly still being Gilles that way.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
What do you mean, exactly? He's consciously lying to Tiffany about the Third Grail War not involving Avenger corrupting the Grail to keep her invested in winning. I get that Apocrypha is caused by 'a Third so different to the one that happened', and I, the author, now know that the divergence was Einzbern summoning a Ruler instead of an Avenger, but otherwise, I'm suddenly very worried I've missed something. Again.
Last edited:
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Ah, no, I just quoted the end of the segment that caught my interest in particular, the one where Caster absolutely correctly expounds on the mechanics of Grail's corruption while still harbouring hope that his wish will work.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That'll be the Dwarf Fortress kind of FUN I take it?
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
The best kind.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Garden of Avalon is something I recommend to really look at how the Knights (and Merlin) around Arturia thought about her, their lives and general lore. I feel the Author managed to capture their relationship quite well.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ooh, wow, haha. He is just mixing up a whole bunch of stuff. You don't see SI's that forget or mix up details that often, usually it's outright ignorance.
Kiritsugu...tough guy to handle writing interactions with given what little we have and separating Urobuchi's suffering-schtick from the mess, but I think you did a pretty good job so far.
Really liked Irisviel showing some competence and enjoying her heritage and magecraft education as opposed to being the token naive nice girl.
Artoria was nicely handled. Properly Artoria. I'm hoping our man can maintain a good relationship with her.
Kiritsugu...tough guy to handle writing interactions with given what little we have and separating Urobuchi's suffering-schtick from the mess, but I think you did a pretty good job so far.
Really liked Irisviel showing some competence and enjoying her heritage and magecraft education as opposed to being the token naive nice girl.
Artoria was nicely handled. Properly Artoria. I'm hoping our man can maintain a good relationship with her.
The anime was sub-par compared to the manga and LN. Jeanne is downright attractive in the manga, and Sieg is a lot more sympathetic...less dumb stuff in general too.
Last edited:
DragonUnitOmega
Akechi/Fem!Akira gives me life
- Location
- Inaba
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Etc
First off, thoughts on interlude are:
...wait. Who's this girl that is looking an old fr—Wait that's Prelati?! SHIT. ...so. Who's ready to see SI freak out about this and probably think something along the lines of "i dont remember this from fate/zero?!?!"
YEAAAAHHH TAIGA IS HEREEE. Okay for that scene...but still! YEEEEEESSSS! She's my favorite Fate/stay night charcter, so it's always a treat for me to see her. Hmm. Though with this encounter, I wonder if that means in this world, since she isn't inspired to be a teacher, and her encounter with Assassin led to her thinking about doing everything in her power to train, then maybe she'll actually be a world class kendo practitioner-what-have-you, not letting, iirc, the embarassment of being disqualified due to her tiger keychain stopping her. Or something like that. It's been a while since I saw Hollow Ataraxia.
Aaaand...I, too, am also curious who Assassin is speaking to. Considering the way Assassin referred to everyone that appeared in the interlude, that rules out all of them as this Grandmaster. The most obvious candidate is First Hassan but then why would he want reports? He is mainly the "final test" for Hassans. ...i wonder if it's actually zelretch or something. Food for thought later I guess.
And now for the newest chapter and...
Damn it.
the last part was such a highlight it's hard to think about the rest of it
And by that I mean: the conversation between Saber and SI!Caster was so...I'm not sure what is the right word for it, but I can describe how it felt. It felt like seeing something you had hoped for come true. I got to see Artoria talk about her regrets and someone attempt to soothe them. Perhaps that someone isn't the right one to do so, yet still, that someone persists, because like me, maybe I might not truly understand her perspective, but I care about how she felt because of what she had, all she had done, to the best of her capabilities and the best of her intentions. I got to see someone tell her, like I wish I could, that it's okay. Perhaps you might never let go of that guilt, I'll be honest I doubt she ever "truly"will, but at least she knows. She knows she truly was loved, not just as the Once and Future King, but as the person who gave her all for all the she loved. I was close to tears as SI!Caster continued...
And then Artoria said "northern lodestar" and I just broke.
That was the keyword that just opened the floodgates to my tears, because now this heartfelt interaction has my memories of Lostbelt 6: Avalon le Fae overlayed on it, which I love; memories of a story from Fate/Grand Order, which had my heart ache; memories of another northen lodestar, which I adore, and I can't tell if that's a good thing, as it means your understanding ofthe character is thorough enough you know her themes ans imagery, or a bad thing, as one might view it as my memories taking away the merits of this piece standing on its own. All I can say for sure that I was a crying mess and that this is one of my favorite scenes now, if not my most favorite so far. And I can only hope describing it can convey just...how much that just hit me.
...wait. Who's this girl that is looking an old fr—Wait that's Prelati?! SHIT. ...so. Who's ready to see SI freak out about this and probably think something along the lines of "i dont remember this from fate/zero?!?!"
YEAAAAHHH TAIGA IS HEREEE. Okay for that scene...but still! YEEEEEESSSS! She's my favorite Fate/stay night charcter, so it's always a treat for me to see her. Hmm. Though with this encounter, I wonder if that means in this world, since she isn't inspired to be a teacher, and her encounter with Assassin led to her thinking about doing everything in her power to train, then maybe she'll actually be a world class kendo practitioner-what-have-you, not letting, iirc, the embarassment of being disqualified due to her tiger keychain stopping her. Or something like that. It's been a while since I saw Hollow Ataraxia.
Aaaand...I, too, am also curious who Assassin is speaking to. Considering the way Assassin referred to everyone that appeared in the interlude, that rules out all of them as this Grandmaster. The most obvious candidate is First Hassan but then why would he want reports? He is mainly the "final test" for Hassans. ...i wonder if it's actually zelretch or something. Food for thought later I guess.
And now for the newest chapter and...
Damn it.
the last part was such a highlight it's hard to think about the rest of it
And by that I mean: the conversation between Saber and SI!Caster was so...I'm not sure what is the right word for it, but I can describe how it felt. It felt like seeing something you had hoped for come true. I got to see Artoria talk about her regrets and someone attempt to soothe them. Perhaps that someone isn't the right one to do so, yet still, that someone persists, because like me, maybe I might not truly understand her perspective, but I care about how she felt because of what she had, all she had done, to the best of her capabilities and the best of her intentions. I got to see someone tell her, like I wish I could, that it's okay. Perhaps you might never let go of that guilt, I'll be honest I doubt she ever "truly"will, but at least she knows. She knows she truly was loved, not just as the Once and Future King, but as the person who gave her all for all the she loved. I was close to tears as SI!Caster continued...
And then Artoria said "northern lodestar" and I just broke.
That was the keyword that just opened the floodgates to my tears, because now this heartfelt interaction has my memories of Lostbelt 6: Avalon le Fae overlayed on it, which I love; memories of a story from Fate/Grand Order, which had my heart ache; memories of another northen lodestar, which I adore, and I can't tell if that's a good thing, as it means your understanding of
It is gonna be funny to observe Prelati casually inflict sanity damage on absolutely everyone present with an "Oh, this again. You really have a type, don't you?" if they ever get to see Not-Gilles and Saber interact out of combat setting. Or, hell, interact in general.
Last edited:
Chapter 13: In Which There Are Enemies in the Castle
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 13: In Which There Are Enemies in the Castle
They called her a witch, and like a witch, she burned.
She awoke, choking back a scream. It was late morning of her first day in Einzbern Castle. A glance at her phone told her it was about eleven. Tonight, most likely, El-Melloi's coalition would attack her new stronghold, and she would very likely die. If she didn't, she'd definitely have killed again. Either way, she would have done the unconscionable and allied with the Magus Killer.
But what things she had discovered by doing so.
With a start, she looked up to see the door opening, and Einzbern entering with a tray of sandwiches, setting them down on top of the reams of paper they'd jotted their theories down on. Tiffany would like to say that she'd taken charge on the planning, leaning only on Einzbern for factual information about the mechanisms of what she called the Greater Grail and the ritual of the Holy Grail War. She'd like to, but that would be a dirty lie.
Einzbern approached the subject of research with fiery and indefatigable passion, filling page after page with hasty, yet immaculate, alchemical shorthand, and Tiffany strained her little grey cells to keep up a useful contribution. It was…
Exhilarating. Despite the dire straits, she hadn't had this much fun in years. The mastery of the Einzbern's construction was obvious. She should have known better than to trust her old, envious grandfather, when he said that the Einzbern factory only produced worthless duplicates of outdated knowledge. Perhaps they did, but if so, what a genius the original must have been! She would have loved to spend even a moment in her presence. Speaking to Einzbern, she understood why the students of the Third Magician had wanted their teacher back; and she had beheld only a shadow of that pure vision.
It begins with a curtain call, and a call for understanding,
"Thank you," she told Einzbern, taking and biting into a sandwich. Realizing how hungry she was, she quickly wolfed down the rest. Einzbern herself sat down and took more measured bites of her own sandwich.
They'd been at work most of the night; despite this, they had largely only succeeded in outlining the magnitude of the task before them. The Holy Grail was designed to not allow interference in its functions from outside forces. Indeed, Einzbern postulated Angra Mainyu would only have been able to corrupt it by, in effect, coming at the Grail from the inside. In essence, the Einzberns had spent a very long time preventing exactly what they were trying to do now, hence the many scattered pages of notation littering the room.
"Will your husband," the word exited her mouth somewhat awkwardly, "be joining us today, then?" she asked Einzbern, as she was partway through the second sandwich. These were small tea sandwiches, not big baguettes filled with meatballs or whatever. She could indulge.
"Still very unlikely," Einzbern admitted sadly. "He's really not taking the news well. I wish I could just be there for him, but I need to work on this… and he understands that," she said.
Tiffany didn't know if she was glad to hear it, so she didn't say that. Besides, her mind was preoccupied with other things.
Or at least, it must. The play will demonstrate the righteousness of that saintly creature. The work, however, will demonstrate the lie of the arsonists.
She shook her head, trying to put the dream out of her mind. It wouldn't help, for now.
"Something troubling you, von Hohenheim?" Einzbern asked. "I ask, because you look very pained."
Tiffany waved her off. "Didn't get enough sleep. Haven't been, this whole War. Sometimes, I think our secrecy should be abolished, only because that way I could get a decent night's sleep instead of working," she joked half-heartedly.
"I see." Einzbern looked up as Sophia-Ri's warden, the woman named Maiya, entered with a tea tray and two cups. "Thank you, Maiya. Give my best to Kiritsugu," she said.
Maiya nodded stiffly, glanced over at Tiffany with an unreadable expression, then hastened out of the room.
Einzbern took a sip, then sighed. "I take it you don't believe that my husband is so affected by the situation at hand," she said, sipping again.
Tiffany flinched in her seat, then cleared her throat. "I wouldn't put so fine a point on it, Einzbern. It just seems out of character, and with a man of his reputation, I am wary what he might really be doing." That, and much more.
"I believe I understand," Einzbern said, closing her eyes for a moment. "My husband struggles to express emotion around others, but that does not mean he does not feel as strongly as you or I," she said. "In fact, in some cases, I would say he feels particularly strongly. The reputation that causes you to fear him is not one he has relished fostering, but it has been necessary. Both for maintaining his life, but also for giving him the opportunity to do the good, kind thing he came to the Holy Grail War for."
Forgive her for not crying that a murderer loathed his reputation as a killer. "But... Einzbern, I'm afraid I don't understand. He is a… a hunter of men, at least. You have to give me that. A man who can do that must have hardened his heart."
"I don't deny that he has locked away his emotions," Einzbern said evenly, "but they are still alive, beneath the surface. I see them bubble up in him when he is with our daughter, and when we are alone together. He cries, sometimes, at what he has done. Murmurs names of people I do not and, I believe, can never know. The demons he wrestles with are terrible, and my death, now utterly pointless, haunts him fiercely."
The work will be expensive, and long, and cruel. But in the end, it will be worth it.
Her teeth clicked together, as she bit down too hard on her meal. Right. Pointless. That was… that was the issue.
Caster had asked her, implicitly, to steer their research into the possibility of his prediction, their investigation of whether Angra Mainyu could really have been taken into the Grail and made the demon that embodied All the World's Evils. But, stomach-churningly, she hadn't had to. All their research, from what Einzbern could dig out of the old records, to the dusty tomes on demonology, had borne it out. If it wasn't for her Servant's assurance, she could have believed it was true.
And with this final dream still fresh in her mind…
"Anyway," Einzbern said, digging out a page and inspecting it, "we've made some good progress. By all indications, the Greater Grail should be uncorrupted, as it was made specifically to remain as insulated as possible from spiritual attacks. It can barely be said to exist in this world at all."
"That's were most of the magecraft reliant on Imaginary Numbers went in, which is good and bad; we can't do much with numbers, but we also don't have to," Tiffany agreed. "We have to get into the Lesser Grail, which you will become, eventually, and that's more Ether than anything else."
"Symbolically, a distinction- no, a dichotomy has been drawn between Justeaze and Angra Mainyu by this," Irisviel said, digging out another page and laying it on the table. "This symbolism, likewise, is empowered by the fact that Justeaze holds the Holy Grail, an allusion to Christ, wears the Dress of Heaven, a blessed implement, and wields Heaven's Feel, a divine gift, if one is inclined to think of the Root in such terms. Which many mages are," she said, studiously neutral. "Angra Mainyu, meanwhile, is the wicked counterpart to Ahura Mazda; simplistically, a 'Zoroastrian Devil'" she put sarcastic quotes around that, "but the actual dogma of the Church would contradict that."
"The Devil, generally, is not an equal-and-opposite to God, no," Tiffany said.
"Precisely." Irisviel grunted slightly, then stretched her arms above her head. "So a solution presents itself: Justeaze, in this framework, stands as the incorruptible light of heaven, in contrast to the base, earthly miasma embodied by Angra Mainyu. Thus, as I am made in Justeaze's image, and her already extant counterpart in this ritual, I need to 'become one' with her, embody the saint, and conquer this vile demon through fulfilling my purpose as a sacrifice that would save mankind from sin. Another allusion to Christ."
The expenses are trivial; I am wealthy beyond most. The length is nothing; my deeds insulate me from scrutiny. And as for the cruelty… I am used to it.
"It's all very neat, when laid out like that," Tiffany said with a frown. "The two problems are, one: The Lesser Grail is subservient to the Greater Grail, and however we slice it, you are not becoming part of the Greater Grail, as Justeaze once did. Second: Justeaze currently has no agency: her soul is occupied, not with maintaining the being known as Justeaze Lizrich von Einzbern, but the Greater Grail, and the ritual of the Holy Grail War. If you are to 'become one' with her, the same would become true of you."
She nodded. "So I need to be programmed with specific instructions to carry out, and those instructions need to be entered into me in such a way as will not fatally inhibit my ability to become the Lesser Grail, and we need some way to ensure that I am not merely replaced by Angra Mainyu as the wish-granter immediately, rendering all this moot," Irisviel said finally.
"That's the long and short of it," Tiffany agreed.
Together, they spent the next few hours hashing something out. Tiffany spent most of that time balancing alchemical equations, trying to find some mixture that could do something like what they needed, and Irisviel spent most of it poking holes in Tiffany's theories. If it wasn't for the urgency, it would have been almost nostalgic.
Servant Caster
True Name: Error: unable to read. Probe timed out, no response.
Contacting Administrator: Error: Administrator not found.
Contacting Secondary Administrator: …connection timed out. Retry? (Y/N).
Querying Central System: …no response. Surmise: Central System replicates error.
Warning: repeat read errors indicate serious risk of contamination/damage/alteration of/to Saint Graph. Please contact Administrator… running Admin Check… no Administrators found. Querying Central System for backup… response: no Administrators.
Well, that wasn't why things were urgent, but it wasn't helping. Ever since her dream last night, the whatchamacallit, the 'stat screen' for Caster, had been… like that, progressively writing more and more useless lines as it tried to define some defect in his Saint Graph, and failed to contact anyone who knew more. Some lines returned results in minutes, others in hours.
She didn't need to guess why. If she didn't miss her mark, the first Administrator was unavailable, as he was currently so many ashes and metal shards in the basement of Matou House, the Secondary Administrator was, if she wasn't mistaken, currently rotting in his office were she'd left him. And the Central System was what she'd been discussing with Einzbern, the anomalous homunculus which served as the core of the Holy Grail. Which, as mentioned, had no agency, and was unlikely to know anything in the first place.
Querying Central System for Protocol: Lost Crowns… response: 0/3 matches, positive.
Querying Central System for Protocol: Broken Chalice… response: negative.
Querying Central System for Protocol: Empty Nest… response: 3/3 matches, negative.
Situation identified. Print Statement: Adjutants.
If she knew anything about these sorts of psychic impressions, it was that they presented differently depending on the observer; it was unlikely that the three founders had constructed their Servant identification system to look like a computer printout, but that was a format that Tiffany recognized. She'd made a point of becoming familiar with the emerging field of electronic computing, actually, and had even published an unpopular paper on its possible use in magecraft, and the intriguing similarities between it and the art of golem-making. Information presented like this made sense to her, which was why it was presented that way.
Greetings, foreign magus!
An unexpected error has occurred in relation to [your Servant's [True Name]]. This is likely a result of [tampering with Saint Graph]. Unfortunately, no Administrators are currently available. As no Administrator is registered as a Master, but all three Administrating Families are confirmed to be safe, and the Lesser Grail is intact, we surmise that all Administrators have perished in the ongoing ritual, which nevertheless proceeds apace.
Points for foresight.
As a result, we cannot recommend you seek out an Administrator, or an Administrator's heir. Instead, it is recommended that you watch your Servant, [Caster], closely. [Instability, unexpected behavior and/or abilities, and/or loss of identity] are likely side effects of the issue relating to the [True Name]. Please exercise caution around [Caster].
If any of this information is inaccurate, and it *is* possible to contact an Administrator, please do so promptly. As you do, please give code phrase [for the Lord has innumerable names, and I know not one of them] to initiate neutral parlay for the sake of resolving the ongoing error. It is in everyone's interest that your Servant does not have issues related to the [True Name]. Do not hesitate. The code phrase is sacred, and you will not be harmed if it is provided to an Administrator.
Together, we will reach for the heavens above.
It made some sense, to her, that the founders would have wanted to ensure some kind of backdoor in case a Servant's summoning failed or warped them… but in this case, she was puzzled.
The work consumes all.
A clear head was needed to work this out.
The others must be persuaded into it. But they are.
Could she run?
The low must be made to crawl, so that they do not rise against me.
This was really two questions: could and should. Could she escape the Magus Killer, the planned attack, and anything else? And should she abandon the city of Fuyuki to its fate?
And I ensure it, and I watch the mud rise. And on the seventh day I rest, and see that it is good, what I do.
These questions brought on more. What was the fate of Fuyuki, really? Should she trust her Servant, or the research she'd done with Einzbern, the research that pointed in the direction of a corrupted Grail? Could she trust her Servant at all? Did he know, and had he therefore lied to her? Or had his madness merely hidden itself, and now that she had seen him in full, he would strike? But could she afford to be without him, come the attack El-Melloi must have planned tonight?
The cruelty becomes the point.
She wasn't certain, nor could she guess why the True Name of Caster would be… in error or tampered with.
Virtue is disproven. He shows me dizzying vistas, worlds beyond counting, and all there is to do is take and take and take from them.
Because she knew what it was.
The Lord does not strike me down, and I know why.
Who her Servant was. That past of his that he'd been trying to hide.
But the high come for me, and bring me to the mud, and the axe, and my knees.
The end of his story, but for the moment the axman's blade came down, and the nature of his counter-theodicy.
And I tell the others: fret not. Hell does not wait for us, my friends. The Lord has already forgiven what we've done. Smile, as you walk to your judgments. We are innocent men.
She had seen the final fate of her Servant, Gilles de Rais.
Emiya had come and asked them to join him and Saber in another room, where they were to discuss their strategy for the upcoming assault. "I've spoken with Caster, briefly, and given him a walkie-talkie, so we can remain in communication," he began, sitting at the head of the table, looking out of place in such fine surrounds, scruffy and unshaven, with heavy bags beneath his eyes.
"Modern technology certainly is incredible," Caster said, in a strange, bemused tone, coming out of the communicator set up on the table.
She restrained a shudder at his voice.
Irisviel then explained the basics of what they'd so far worked out, without going into detail and outlining what they needed to do next. Tiffany seriously doubted that anyone would have understood even if she'd tried. Caster was a lousy mage, by his own admission, the terms spellcaster must have been invented for someone like Emiya, and his assistant, Maiya, was probably not a mage, and was also still standing watch over Sophia-Ri.
The only surprise was Saber, who, as the conversation turned towards planning their defense, proved able to grasp the pertinent details of where their respective magecrafts should be deployed. King Arthur, Tiffany supposed, would probably at least have some experience with wizardry, even if the arts of the Age of Fairies were nearly as far gone as those of the Age of Gods.
As they laid it out, the situation became clear. Two Servants against two, three mages against four, that was the math on the surface. But the Servants were not equal, and neither were the mages. On the surface, her side lost every time. So, it was time to dig below that.
She laid out the capabilities she knew Baltazar constructs possessed, from their strength to their invisibility, to the oddities of their control method, the workaround to the lost art of automata, which had somehow earned the Balthazars such accolades, when similar efforts had earned her own family nothing but scorn. Such was the curse of serving the Founder's vision.
As well, she gave a brief report on El-Melloi, and an even briefer one on Eirene, the essence of which was 'I'll take care of her', otherwise only stressing her absurd tenacity. Emiya corroborated her knowledge of El-Melloi with his own findings and added what he'd discovered that she didn't know. Irisviel chimed in with the pertinent details of his subversion of the Servant bond. Then, once again, Caster reported on the abilities of Archer and Lancer, as well as himself.
The solution they found was this: do not strike where you opponent is strongest. Strike where he is weak and watch him crumble. She barely raised a fuzz. At this stage, it would have been hypocritical of her to object to killing a Master. El-Melloi had to go.
"We should be conscious of the fact," Einzbern said, "that if we kill both Archer and Lancer, we won't be able to remove another Servant without me becoming the Grail."
Emiya flinched minutely, his face never moving.
"And we aren't ready for that," Einzbern continued, casting a sympathetic look at her husband. "We've got the beginnings of a plan, but nothing concrete, nothing made yet."
"But," Tiffany added, "El-Melloi is unlikely to believe us, if we just tell him that the Grail is corrupted, even if we show him the evidence we've found. If I know his disposition, he'll assume it's a trick."
"Could we negotiate?" Emiya asked. "If we agree to turn over Sophia-Ri, perhaps he would agree to a ceasefire, long enough to allow you to work out a solution," he couldn't keep his eyes away from Einzbern, even though he was addressing both of them.
"Not likely," Tiffany replied, grimacing. "Because I taunted him with the idea that you would kill him by backing out of a promise on a technicality."
"Ah. That's… unfortunate," said Caster.
Emiya furrowed his brows, then shook his head. "If that's how it is, that's how it is. If we can't negotiate with him, then we'll allow him to attack and overextend," Emiya said, "then I'll threaten to kill Sophia-Ri. Either he'll drop out; unlikely, with what you just told me, or he'll call Lancer."
"He'd be furious at the insinuation that you could hurt him without him being able to stop you," Caster said.
"There's a chance," Emiya noted, "that my Origin Bullets could destroy a Command Seal in the moment a Master spends it. That would leave him vulnerable for a moment, after failing to summon his Servant, letting me handle him. But even if it's possible, for such a simple command as 'Come hither' it would be an extremely narrow window for success, so it is likely for the best that we don't count on it. Then, once Lancer is committed, Maiya will kill Sophia-Ri, and I'll kill the weakened El-Melloi, and Caster's familiars will hold off Lancer for the moments it'll take him to die."
"I have a very strong matchup against Lancer, so that should be no trouble," Caster responded in a dark, regretful tone.
"But if not, if El-Melloi kills Lancer, then she's safe, right?" Tiffany asked, steel in her tone.
"There's no reason she should be otherwise," Emiya said, looking evenly at her, yet with a distant look in his eyes.
Einzbern cut in, "She's not really registered as a Master by the Greater Grail, so, although Lancer would survive his Master's death by relying on her, without Command Seals she wouldn't be able to bind a new Servant. She'd effectively be an outsider once Lancer died."
Before that, Caster would have to work with Irisviel to identify and destroy the invisible constructs. This would have spread most Servants thin, but the one advantage of the one she'd been saddled with was that his water demons could strike independently of him; in fact, Caster was never to take to the battlefield at all, remaining in his Workshop to simultaneously lessen the load on her, allowing her to fight, and serve as the final fallback location in case of absolute disaster.
Once both his opponents were dealt with, Caster would rush his army to aid Saber and his two greater demons with all possible alacrity. He'd tried to stress to Saber that it was wiser to play on Archer's emotions than face him head-on, let him have the upper hand until they were in a position to break it, but it was uncertain how much had penetrated the staunch honor of the King of Knights. Never mind. Either it'd work, or they'd all die. Worrying wouldn't change either outcome.
That was about as much as they could manage, so they all dispersed to their stations. She watched the hours tick down until nightfall, consumed with doing as much as she could to prepare. Prepare for her inevitable confrontation with Eirene Menelaus Richardson-Dark, her old friend and older rival. The flame in her heart stirred. Anxiously, she kept arranging the gemstones she'd looted from Tohsaka into patterns on her desk with one finger. Five rubies. Two topazes. One agate. She wondered if the last three were heirlooms, given Tohsaka's affinity for fire, like her own.
'Caster,' she remembered to ask, looking at the brilliant crystals. 'Did you get around to checking Tohsaka Manor?'
'I did, Master. As you surmised, it appeared to have been ransacked. While the structure is intact, or at least, no more damaged than you left it, floorboards have been pried up, choice tomes are missing from the shelves, and the staff you left there has been removed.'
She frowned. 'That doesn't quite seem like El-Melloi's style, but maybe the Balthazars… no, surely they know the Association would come for them. Those items belong to his heir, or they would be sold at an auction after the War. Was there anything else missing? Anything strange?'
'Yes, Master, as a matter of fact there was one final, curious item. I could find no trace of Tohsaka's severed hand, the one with his last remaining Command Seal. His body had not otherwise been moved.'
That made her swallow in discomfort. 'That's more likely to be El-Melloi: grave goods won as spoils in the Holy Grail War would be exempt from his sense of propriety. But what could he hope to accomplish with it? I needed the Overseer to become a Master; he couldn't elevate one of his pawns. Kotomine, the younger, jumped to protect me as I ran, directly opposing El-Melloi's coalition and allowing me to escape them.'
'Kirei would never work against his father; he would only become truly dangerous if Risei were to die,' Caster responded.
She wondered at that, and wondered what the infamous Gilles de Rais would think was a 'broken mind' like he'd assigned to Kotomine, the thing that'd made him oh so very happy to watch his wife kill herself. Was it even real, or had he lied about it? How much of what he'd told her had been hogwash? Was he even now leading her to her death, and could she afford to worry about that when so much was on the line?
'You said yesterday that you wanted to talk later. Is that now?' he asked.
'No,' she decided. 'We'll save it for after the battle.' She had to spend a moment longer to figure out what she wanted to even do. And there was always the possibility, a part of her whispered, that he wouldn't take her finding out who he was well. And, she decided, she did need him for this next battle, at least.
The cold air pricked her face as she stood behind the parapets of Einzbern Castle, looking out over the dark forest. In the courtyard behind her, Caster's two greater demons lay dormant, tendrils occasionally slapping against and turning up the immaculate gardens.
'The cordon has been closed' he relayed to her, referring to loose ring of water demons he'd been asked to set up around the Castle, to keep out the constructs-
"I'm almost ready to assist Caster," Einzbern's voice came through her earpiece. It sounded strained, like she was struggling with something heavy.
"…Iri, you have to say 'over', Over." That was Emiya's empty voice.
"Right, apologies… Over."
Tiffany sighed. These were her allies, then? Murderers and puppets, what joy. It didn't matter. She just had to survive tonight, and then she'd be able to get the answers she needed for what to do.
The cold air blew as the Sun crested the horizon. And then it was dark.
"They're here," Einzbern's warning came. "Two of them were knocked over by the backlash, four of them are standing. Their location is:" she continued, rattling off a southernly location to Caster. "Over."
"Intercepting, Over" he said joylessly.
A few moments of silence. She gripped the hilt of her sword and checked her daggers at her hip. The black plastic bag in front of her squelched as it slumped to one side.
"Archer, Lancer- they're all there," Caster said. "Do I engage, Over?"
But before he could get a response, they heard it, the voice, booming over the treetops, sending flocks of birds flying. That of the King of Heroes.
"It is a good night, little nightingale, isn't it? I see you've chosen to cower among the other mongrels of this War. But that is fine, for I have trained a pack of mongrels of my own. Here they come, now." She could hear the smile on his face.
"I think I understand why you hide, why the mongrels band together behind such sturdy walls: it must be terrifying to be faced with a power so far beyond you. Not that I'd know, but still. If your death were my design, how trivial it would be to realize it, and how… unsatisfying a victory. Not something the King would accept, oh no.
"I wish to see you fight, little nightingale. You were willing to kill for your convictions, but so far, you have killed only in secret and in ambush. Worthy enough for mongrels, true, but not for me," his grin broadened audibly. "Now: prove the strength of your convictions in the pitched field of battle! Your mongrels against mine! And if you should make it, if you should prove your worthiness tonight… then I will come to you, little nightingale."
"Alas," he finished with false dismay, "I know that if I were to take the field, this battle would be decided instantly. Not even the Hero of the Sword could stand against my true power. So, I will accept a compromise, for this trial: I will not attack, yet. But every ten minutes that this battle goes on, every ten minutes that you fail to please me, and prove worthy of my grace, I will send a hailstorm of weapons against your keep. And should you fail me three times, little nightingale, my fury shall be incensed to the highest, and I will unveil my greatest weapon and level this castle. Is that clear?" She imagined him bowing theatrically, a broad, rictus grin, the mask of sadism on his face.
"Then, let us begin."
Vimana, Throne of the Heaven-Soaring King took to the skies once again, it's spear-point body aimed at the heart of Einzbern Castle. Tiffany felt something cold trickle down her back.
"Change of plans," she heard Emiya say, as she picked up the black bag and took a pitching stance. "If Archer isn't attacking, Saber, you need to kill Lancer as fast as possible. Everyone else, prioritize efficiency above everything; we need to get ahead of this countdown. Maiya, be on standby, we might need you to abandon guard duty to hit a pressure point. Over."
""""Copy that, Over,"""" Saber, Maiya, Einzbern and Caster responded. Tiffany paid it no mind, instead looking out for… there he was.
"Fly true," she whispered, then pitched the blubbery sack as far as she could, hurtling towards Lord El-Melloi, approaching the Castle at a dead sprint. She counted down the seconds until it hit the ground.
3…
2…
1…
Explosion. A star was born on the field before Einzbern Castle, as two of the eight crystals she'd looted from Tohsaka exploded mere meters away from El-Melloi, sending streakers of Greek fire over the forest and grass. She saw, with great satisfaction, Lord El-Melloi be blown away; but then, silver bloomed around him, shielding him from the viscous fire and blunting his impact against the ground.
That was fine; from the inferno, her precious Salamander leapt, the initial conflagration enough to put it on the level it had had when it faced down Assassin, spewing gouts of fire. In the moments before she ran from the roof, she saw the dark shape of Lancer intercepting it, but even that didn't worry her.
Lancer had two weapons, the red spear and the golden spear. Salamander's body was largely insubstantial, and so wouldn't be hurt by the golden spear, Gáe Buidhe but would be hideously vulnerable to the other one: Gáe Dearg, as some research had revealed. That was fine, though- tactically, if Lancer fought Salamander, he was wasting his time, and Salamander had been instructed to waste as much of it as possible, drawing out their engagement by letting him close enough to hurt it, then healing by burning down the forest. With that done, she had done her part, and could leave the battle outside to her Servant and Einzbern.
Meanwhile, Tiffany had a date with destiny. Choking down a thick, bitter draught, she felt a string pull taut in the air in front of her chest, leading, inexorably, towards its last remaining counterpart. She ran through the Castle, feeling the thread twist hither and yon, but somehow, always closer, always nearer, always pulling harder.
She heard something scratching the wall to her side, looked over too late to find that it was an outer wall, then the window exploded inwards. Trapped in a swirling vortex of broken glass, Tiffany felt something grip her throat and push her up against the wall. "Last chance to back out, Tiff, or I'm knocking your ass out and hauling you back to the Clocktower," Eirene hissed next to her ear, leaning over.
Her old rival had seen better days. Her dress had been badly mended with steel thread, the holes where Kotomine's Black Keys had skewered her plainly obvious, as well as the dark wounds beneath that dress. Her right arm was carved down the middle between the ulna and radius, she had obvious punctures through her left leg, pressing up against Tiffany, and her jaw had clearly been ripped off, then reattached by black steel. It looked like something was pushing out from underneath her skin, like her human body was being stretched across a monstrous frame.
"We've got to stop meeting like this." she said with a grin, her pulse starting to pick up.
Eirene threw her to the ground with a disgusted and frustrated snarl. "Why can't you take this seriously, Tiff? I am trying to save your life!" she yelled, bending over slightly and gesturing to herself. "This Grail isn't worth losing you!"
"You sure you want to be here, then? Not too afraid to find out if the Magus Killer lives up to his name?"
"Archer doing some fucking bullshit that wasn't in the plan is annoying, but if you don't get out of here, you'll die, one way or another. And I can't let that happen." She shook her head. "That's not the point; what the fuck is it that you want so bad that you're willing to risk your life for it this frequently?" she pleaded.
"The same thing you know I've always wanted, Rina," she said, quietly.
Tears flowed from her eye, too exposed by the twisted metal in her bones pulling at her skin. "I hoped- I came here, because I thought the wish could bring them back," Eirene admitted.
"So this is about Louise. It always is." She couldn't help the way her face fell.
"Don't do this, Tiff." Eirene clenched her eyes shot, agony on her brow.
"How many times have I told you I'm sorry for what happened? How many times have I told you I hate what it took to discover my nature?" she asked, voice growing louder despite her efforts to the contrary.
"And how many times," Eirene asked, her eyes opening like the shutters of a lantern, "have I told you I don't blame you?" She waved her arms, beset with black claws and darker threads, spilling out of her inhuman body. "It wasn't your fault: even if your Origin caused it, which it didn't, you couldn't have known. We all agreed to do it together." She sighed and drew herself up like a proper lady. "I don't want to spend time relitigating old arguments. You're all I have left, Tiff. Please don't make me lose you, too," she said, frankly, letting her arms hang.
"Loyal despite it all. I don't deserve you," she said, some genuine fondness in her voice. Then, she grabbed her tincture daggers, infused with lead. "But this is bigger than either of us. Even if I wanted to come with you," and I do, "I couldn't."
"You'll charge headlong into your own annihilation for the chance at a miracle?"
"I don't have to tell you my answer to that. If you remember anything about me at all, you already know the answer." Tiffany said. "Get out of my way, or I'll remove you myself."
Eirene spat. "Fine. I guess it's up to me to rescue you from your own decisions. Again." And she lunged. With a twist of her hips, Tiffany dodged the initial strike, getting closer to Eirene's body and getting each dagger around her arm like a pair of shears, then drawing them past one another. Very little Tiffany could do would destroy Eirene's Original steel- but lead was for purity, and steel was an alloy, however mystical its point of origin. All that remained of where she'd drawn her daggers through Eirene's arm was black smoke and a severed arm.
There were no tricks to fighting Eirene. It was just your mortal body against hers. And Eirene did not tire, did not flinch, did not lose focus, did not feel pain, did not go into shock, did not bleed, and did not injure easily, either. And Tiffany's daggers would only last for so many strikes before losing their infusion of lead tincture.
Wordlessly, Eirene picked her arm up, put it in her mouth and bit down on it, then dashed forward, jabbing at Tiffany with her empty stump, forcing her to dodge to the side rather than be skewered by the metal emerging in sharp, thorn-bush patterns, slowly outlaying a wireframe of the lost limb. When Tiffany dodged, Eirene caught her with a foot, making Tiffany stumble slightly, and that was all Eirene needed: she kicked off the wall, reversing her momentum, and drove Tiffany to the floor with an elbow.
Away from Eirene for a moment, Tiffany's hand flew into the right pocket, and drew out her very few lead talismans; they weren't much good for healing, but when Eirene came upon her again, her legs lashed out, and, ruining the lead, she channeled the purity into her kick, driving brilliant, white corruption into Eirene's leg, making her jump back in momentary surprise. "Don't get too comfortable," she said, rolling onto her knees and slowly rising, eyeing Eirene all the while, "I've learned a few tricks since last time."
"So have I," Eirene mumbled coldly through her arm, then her skin burst open, and claws dug into the hardwood floor. It was all Tiffany could do to drop her right dagger and draw her sword before Eirene forced her to block one forehammer of a strike. Then, her bifurcated arm snapped open like a blooming flower, the threads binding it together instead wrapping around each half, and then the halves dug into Tiffany's stomach so hard, her legs left the ground for a moment. She felt something wet running from her stomach as the claws cut into her.
With an effort of will, Tiffany did not succumb to the shock and pain, and instead swept her offhand dagger towards Eirene's throat, forcing her to dodge; but only slightly, because the split arm now opened like tongs and gripped her around the middle and pinning her arms to her side, cutting surface wounds as they went, the claws on the fingers of the ruined arm as sharp as those she, in retrospect, had used to scale the wall.
Eirene lifted Tiffany by the waist, then put her stump onto the arm in her mouth and pulled back. The arm stretched in the grip of her teeth, its human façade stretching and snapping, revealing gleaming darkness moving and shifting like clay, until it took on the appearance of a blade. "Ready to stand down now?" Eirene asked rhetorically, a deep frown on her face to match her sunken, tired eyes.
Rather than answer, Tiffany let go of one dagger and worked a finger into a pocket, wormed it around a Tohsaka gemstone, she couldn't see which one but could feel its familiar contours, and channeled a mote of Ruin into it. She didn't have jewel magecraft, her family had never been blessed by the Second Magician, so she couldn't activate the spell inside- but she could set the whole thing to blow.
The detonation of wind ripped her out of Eirene's grip, and also tore a deep cut on her stomach open, but she ruined her gold, and the treasure she'd worked on for months shaved three years of its one hundred to put her back together. Then, with distance, she tied the talismanic lead around her sword. She tested the leg that'd done the kicking and winced. Even gold wasn't good for putting you back together when you'd partially separated your own leg into alchemically pure elements. There was, in essence, nothing to put back together. So she took one look at Eirene, who was taking one look at Tiffany.
Then, they both reached the same conclusion about what she was going to do, and Tiffany ran in the opposite direction.
Eirene's new tricks proved useful here, too, forcing Tiffany into a fighting retreat, but so long as she had shining, cold, blue purity within her blades, Eirene could only dodge, not counter. Tiffany feinted, on occasion, letting Eirene think she was using her talismans to channel lead through her sword, but really conserving it as much as she could.
And all the while, she let Eirene cut off escapes down, any path that led them closer to Tiffany's allies, instead always electing to climb higher, back up to the walls and their parapets.
Halfway up an immaculate, finely engraved staircase, the Castle shook like a giant toddler was playing with it. "That's the first, little nightingale, but I expected that. Try not to disappoint me again," Archer's voice came, still ringing out as clearly as it had before.
The calamity sent them crashing down onto the landing together. In her earpiece, she heard Saber say, "Engaging Lancer in the Castle, Over," but paid it no mind. She'd landed on Eirene, took the chance to pin her shoulder to the ground with her dagger, then ran back up the stars, hearing the awful screech of tearing metal as Eirene dragged the pinned dagger out of herself.
There was no rain, but darkness loomed overhead as they came out upon the roof of the outer wall. Taking her chance, Tiffany sprinted to the edge, and, digging out another jewel, jumped off.
Wind howled past her as she counted down the seconds, then threw the last topaz ahead of herself. Gravity fought against wind pressure, and in the end, Tiffany paid out the difference, tumbling to the ground heavily, rolling to bleed off momentum. She got up, inspecting herself quickly: she hadn't broken anything, but her ribs and her everything were bruised.
Next step, now, she reminded herself. Cursing bitterly, she brought up her hand. The outermost Command Seal glowed blood-red. "Caster! Reinforcements, now! One greater demon!"
'As you Command, Master.'
The air twisted. The greater demons were slower to move, though not to strike, meaning she couldn't get one here fast enough without a Command Seal, and their regeneration wasn't as painless- but they were big, they were powerful, and they were leagues tougher than the lesser ones- That was Eirene, crashing down from the top of the Castle, enjoying none of Tiffany's protections and suffering not at all for it.
'Let it devour her,' she told her Servant.
'I thought you wanted her to live!' he protested.
'She will' was her response.
'Are you-' her Servant cut himself off. But despite not replying, the greater demon still moved towards Eirene. An implacable steel pillar met a boneless, shifting horror with a noise like throwing a metric ton of jelly into a wind tunnel, but Eirene still disappeared into its hideous maw despite her flailing.
Tiffany breathed, once, calmly. It is a matter of will. She dug out her second fiery potion, that she'd brewed some days ago, to protect herself from her own flames. An incomplete circlet of crimson fire ignited over her brow as she swallowed the small mouthful of tincture. The crackling flames behind her grew louder and louder.
'Salamander,' she relayed, calm as anything. 'Hold.'
Her trusty familiar did just that, and even without looking at it, she could hear how massive the destruction of the forest surrounding the Castle had made it, the height of a witch's bonfire, and the length of a lorry. She could feel the insistent, boiling heat wash over her from behind.
She did not count the seconds until Eirene tore her way out of the greater demon, leaving its broken carcass to slowly heal on the ground now stained black and turquoise by its intestinal juices. It'd be back in minutes, but Eirene was already charging. But it'd bought her the moment to breathe Tiffany needed. The juices had stripped nearly every bit of humanity from Eirene, now just a shifting mass of black tendrils forming numerous wireframes of normal limbs, with a pale, doll-like face at the front, racing towards her. And Salamander flew forth to meet her charge.
Its normal, friendly, blubbery exterior had been overtaken by plates of igneous rock, seeming solid despite glowing white-hot from its internal furnaces. Quickly, it wrapped itself around Eirene, then spewed a pyroclastic stream down over her body within its coils. Tiffany held a hand out to shadow her eyes from the brilliant stream of fire. Then, Eirene emerged from the hold like a boiled almond, sloughing off a now-melted outer layer of metal and shooting into the sky. There, crystal tinkling betrayed the unnatural rate of cooling, as she bent herself into a missile that skewered through Salamander as it hit the ground.
"Is this it?!" Tiffany screamed her question over the roaring flames, as Salamander let its tail rip off to escape from Eirene's spike. "Have I convinced you I can do this, yet?!"
"NO!" Eirene yelled back, twisting her formless limbs back into human shapes before uppercutting Salamander, which was busily blowing a stream of fire back at the forest for a refresh. "Because you're still not giving it your all, TIFF!"
"That so!?"
"Oh, you know it!" She sliced her way into Salamander, only to be caught out when it twisted back around and breathed flame into its own chest. "You still haven't used Reinforcement. You're still holding back! And if you're holding back against me, the rest of them will eat you alive!" A line of superheated metal shot out, and Tiffany had to duck a little.
"So it's come to this?"
Eirene, her arms grossly extended, wrestled Salander to the ground by the neck for a moment, before it threw itself back forcefully enough, bending over and slamming her down with it as it fell the length of its spine. "We were already here, Tiff," Eirene's voice came from the crater. "I can't stay to watch you die. I can't be in this War if I'm not with El-Melloi. And I can't let you go. So prove it to me! Prove you're strong enough to stand on your own two feet. Face me, you who would bring the Tower low and raise us into a golden age! Face me and prove the strength of your conviction!"
A cold breath exited her lungs- probably the last one in a while. "Very well then," she said. She shucked off her great coat and tossed it to the ground as far away as she could, hoping beyond reason to keep it safe. She snapped her suspenders idly, looking up at the night sky. The stars were beautiful, as always, even so far away from her home. Her voice surprised her, calm and steady, as she said: "Salamander: Reverse."
Her familiar went still, its head freezing in recognition of the ever-rare command. Then, it flickered, like a candle flame in the breeze. Its great power, the strength of Ruin itself, which had been paid for by the ancient, irreplaceable firs and oaks of this forest- it had flowed from her Origin, into her familiar. And now, it flowed back. Salamander vanished, a dark, coal-black core falling to the ground where it had been.
This was going to hurt.
It was a matter of will to hold herself together when her skin began to burn and flake. It was an inhuman effort to keep from screaming when her muscles boiled and stiffened in the same moment. It was a miracle that she didn't fall when her bones juddered and shook like overclocked boilers.
Flames ran off her golden form, forming great red wings as she closed the distance in a single leap towards Eirene. Her sword, glowing white, severed one immutable arm in the first strike, the first second. In the next, a punch caved in Eirene's chest. The third second, she went blind in one eye and lost all feeling in her face and left leg. The fourth, Eirene hit her back, her remaining fist crumpling against Tiffany's jaw, sending her end over end. The fifth, she flew, the sixth, she landed and hacked Eirene's legs off at the knees. The seventh, she nearly lost her grip on her sword as the skin on her hand burnt to charcoal. The eighth, she carved a furrow into Eirene's side, from her hip to her armpit.
In the ninth second, she let go of the Ruinous Reinforcement, pulling her blade out. For a moment, she felt no pain: then she began to ruin her golden talisman, her personal treasure of health, burning it down to less than half, and her nerves came back first and played an exquisite symphony along her spine. But she did not crumple to the ground, and she did not remove her sword from Eirene's neck, watching as her old friend and older rival lay there, her body open and ruined.
"That good enough for you?"
Eirene closed her eyes and bowed her head in defeat. "That was three seconds longer than you usually manage," she said faux-casually.
"I've figured out some tricks." You had to, when your Origin robbed you of the fundamental art for self-defense for modern mages. And what a trick it was, even if it'd be the death of her to use for more than a moment. All that setup, and she could only have seconds of god-like power. Still so far from the Founder. "And you've gotten faster, too. I've never seen you pull yourself together like that, before."
She sheathed her sword, rubbed her raw, red palm, the new skin still sensitive as she reached down and pulled Eirene up. Her metal was unfolding, slower now, and she watched quietly as Eirene shaped her body back into its familiar shape. Then, Eirene coughed up a ring and, after looking askance at Tiffany for a moment, put it on, at which point clothes emerged on her like- like magic.
"It's not about Lu, Tiff."
"I know. I'm sorry I said that."
"I miss her every day. But not everything I do is about what happened."
She couldn't respond.
"They wouldn't let me see you. They think it's your fault, what happened to me. That you sabotaged my Awakening."
"Is that why you left?"
"Yes. They couldn't see the worth in what I became." Eirene sighed. "Well… I guess I was worried you wouldn't, either."
"Are you kidding? Forget magecraft, you're a- well, I was going to say 'a monster'-"
"Please do," Eirene said, baring a mouth somehow full of razor teeth.
"You're a monster," Tiffany said fondly.
"You too."
She returned Eirene's smile genuinely. "I stopped coming to see you, because I was worried… but I wasn't worried you hated me. I was worried you'd forgive me. Because I don't deserve that. Not until I've made it right."
"It's not about forgiveness, Tiff," Eirene said, laying an arm on her shoulder. "It's about… us. I've lost enough already: I don't want to lose you too. Please, just stop running away from me." She stared into Tiffany's eyes, hers dark, ashen, but warm.
Tears trickled out of Tiffany's dry and ruined face. "I- thought I'd lost you, already. Acted like it, too. Convinced myself. But…" she looked up at Eirene, resolutely. "I promise I'll make it home to you. And I promise that, once I do, we'll sort this all out. Together."
"I'll hold you-"
They saw the brilliant fusillade of swords and spears, and then felt the resounding boom through their feet and into their skulls, rattling their brains.
"That was the second strike, little nightingale. I'm getting impatient. Do better."
"I'll hold you to that," Eirene continued unabashedly. Then, she stepped forward, and put her arms around Tiffany.
It was warm, like hearth-fire.
Reluctantly, Tiffany pulled back first. She grimaced at the ruined façade of Einzbern Castle. "It's taking too long, we don't have time for this," she mumbled.
"What are you going to do about it?" Eirene asked, eyebrow raised.
"What I should have done from the start," she said, striding forward, back toward the Castle. 'Caster. I am authorizing you to kill El-Melloi and the Baltazars. Our lives depend on it; do not delay.'
As usual, I am cross-posting on AO3.
They called her a witch, and like a witch, she burned.
She awoke, choking back a scream. It was late morning of her first day in Einzbern Castle. A glance at her phone told her it was about eleven. Tonight, most likely, El-Melloi's coalition would attack her new stronghold, and she would very likely die. If she didn't, she'd definitely have killed again. Either way, she would have done the unconscionable and allied with the Magus Killer.
But what things she had discovered by doing so.
With a start, she looked up to see the door opening, and Einzbern entering with a tray of sandwiches, setting them down on top of the reams of paper they'd jotted their theories down on. Tiffany would like to say that she'd taken charge on the planning, leaning only on Einzbern for factual information about the mechanisms of what she called the Greater Grail and the ritual of the Holy Grail War. She'd like to, but that would be a dirty lie.
Einzbern approached the subject of research with fiery and indefatigable passion, filling page after page with hasty, yet immaculate, alchemical shorthand, and Tiffany strained her little grey cells to keep up a useful contribution. It was…
Exhilarating. Despite the dire straits, she hadn't had this much fun in years. The mastery of the Einzbern's construction was obvious. She should have known better than to trust her old, envious grandfather, when he said that the Einzbern factory only produced worthless duplicates of outdated knowledge. Perhaps they did, but if so, what a genius the original must have been! She would have loved to spend even a moment in her presence. Speaking to Einzbern, she understood why the students of the Third Magician had wanted their teacher back; and she had beheld only a shadow of that pure vision.
It begins with a curtain call, and a call for understanding,
"Thank you," she told Einzbern, taking and biting into a sandwich. Realizing how hungry she was, she quickly wolfed down the rest. Einzbern herself sat down and took more measured bites of her own sandwich.
They'd been at work most of the night; despite this, they had largely only succeeded in outlining the magnitude of the task before them. The Holy Grail was designed to not allow interference in its functions from outside forces. Indeed, Einzbern postulated Angra Mainyu would only have been able to corrupt it by, in effect, coming at the Grail from the inside. In essence, the Einzberns had spent a very long time preventing exactly what they were trying to do now, hence the many scattered pages of notation littering the room.
"Will your husband," the word exited her mouth somewhat awkwardly, "be joining us today, then?" she asked Einzbern, as she was partway through the second sandwich. These were small tea sandwiches, not big baguettes filled with meatballs or whatever. She could indulge.
"Still very unlikely," Einzbern admitted sadly. "He's really not taking the news well. I wish I could just be there for him, but I need to work on this… and he understands that," she said.
Tiffany didn't know if she was glad to hear it, so she didn't say that. Besides, her mind was preoccupied with other things.
Or at least, it must. The play will demonstrate the righteousness of that saintly creature. The work, however, will demonstrate the lie of the arsonists.
She shook her head, trying to put the dream out of her mind. It wouldn't help, for now.
"Something troubling you, von Hohenheim?" Einzbern asked. "I ask, because you look very pained."
Tiffany waved her off. "Didn't get enough sleep. Haven't been, this whole War. Sometimes, I think our secrecy should be abolished, only because that way I could get a decent night's sleep instead of working," she joked half-heartedly.
"I see." Einzbern looked up as Sophia-Ri's warden, the woman named Maiya, entered with a tea tray and two cups. "Thank you, Maiya. Give my best to Kiritsugu," she said.
Maiya nodded stiffly, glanced over at Tiffany with an unreadable expression, then hastened out of the room.
Einzbern took a sip, then sighed. "I take it you don't believe that my husband is so affected by the situation at hand," she said, sipping again.
Tiffany flinched in her seat, then cleared her throat. "I wouldn't put so fine a point on it, Einzbern. It just seems out of character, and with a man of his reputation, I am wary what he might really be doing." That, and much more.
"I believe I understand," Einzbern said, closing her eyes for a moment. "My husband struggles to express emotion around others, but that does not mean he does not feel as strongly as you or I," she said. "In fact, in some cases, I would say he feels particularly strongly. The reputation that causes you to fear him is not one he has relished fostering, but it has been necessary. Both for maintaining his life, but also for giving him the opportunity to do the good, kind thing he came to the Holy Grail War for."
Forgive her for not crying that a murderer loathed his reputation as a killer. "But... Einzbern, I'm afraid I don't understand. He is a… a hunter of men, at least. You have to give me that. A man who can do that must have hardened his heart."
"I don't deny that he has locked away his emotions," Einzbern said evenly, "but they are still alive, beneath the surface. I see them bubble up in him when he is with our daughter, and when we are alone together. He cries, sometimes, at what he has done. Murmurs names of people I do not and, I believe, can never know. The demons he wrestles with are terrible, and my death, now utterly pointless, haunts him fiercely."
The work will be expensive, and long, and cruel. But in the end, it will be worth it.
Her teeth clicked together, as she bit down too hard on her meal. Right. Pointless. That was… that was the issue.
Caster had asked her, implicitly, to steer their research into the possibility of his prediction, their investigation of whether Angra Mainyu could really have been taken into the Grail and made the demon that embodied All the World's Evils. But, stomach-churningly, she hadn't had to. All their research, from what Einzbern could dig out of the old records, to the dusty tomes on demonology, had borne it out. If it wasn't for her Servant's assurance, she could have believed it was true.
And with this final dream still fresh in her mind…
"Anyway," Einzbern said, digging out a page and inspecting it, "we've made some good progress. By all indications, the Greater Grail should be uncorrupted, as it was made specifically to remain as insulated as possible from spiritual attacks. It can barely be said to exist in this world at all."
"That's were most of the magecraft reliant on Imaginary Numbers went in, which is good and bad; we can't do much with numbers, but we also don't have to," Tiffany agreed. "We have to get into the Lesser Grail, which you will become, eventually, and that's more Ether than anything else."
"Symbolically, a distinction- no, a dichotomy has been drawn between Justeaze and Angra Mainyu by this," Irisviel said, digging out another page and laying it on the table. "This symbolism, likewise, is empowered by the fact that Justeaze holds the Holy Grail, an allusion to Christ, wears the Dress of Heaven, a blessed implement, and wields Heaven's Feel, a divine gift, if one is inclined to think of the Root in such terms. Which many mages are," she said, studiously neutral. "Angra Mainyu, meanwhile, is the wicked counterpart to Ahura Mazda; simplistically, a 'Zoroastrian Devil'" she put sarcastic quotes around that, "but the actual dogma of the Church would contradict that."
"The Devil, generally, is not an equal-and-opposite to God, no," Tiffany said.
"Precisely." Irisviel grunted slightly, then stretched her arms above her head. "So a solution presents itself: Justeaze, in this framework, stands as the incorruptible light of heaven, in contrast to the base, earthly miasma embodied by Angra Mainyu. Thus, as I am made in Justeaze's image, and her already extant counterpart in this ritual, I need to 'become one' with her, embody the saint, and conquer this vile demon through fulfilling my purpose as a sacrifice that would save mankind from sin. Another allusion to Christ."
The expenses are trivial; I am wealthy beyond most. The length is nothing; my deeds insulate me from scrutiny. And as for the cruelty… I am used to it.
"It's all very neat, when laid out like that," Tiffany said with a frown. "The two problems are, one: The Lesser Grail is subservient to the Greater Grail, and however we slice it, you are not becoming part of the Greater Grail, as Justeaze once did. Second: Justeaze currently has no agency: her soul is occupied, not with maintaining the being known as Justeaze Lizrich von Einzbern, but the Greater Grail, and the ritual of the Holy Grail War. If you are to 'become one' with her, the same would become true of you."
She nodded. "So I need to be programmed with specific instructions to carry out, and those instructions need to be entered into me in such a way as will not fatally inhibit my ability to become the Lesser Grail, and we need some way to ensure that I am not merely replaced by Angra Mainyu as the wish-granter immediately, rendering all this moot," Irisviel said finally.
"That's the long and short of it," Tiffany agreed.
Together, they spent the next few hours hashing something out. Tiffany spent most of that time balancing alchemical equations, trying to find some mixture that could do something like what they needed, and Irisviel spent most of it poking holes in Tiffany's theories. If it wasn't for the urgency, it would have been almost nostalgic.
Servant Caster
True Name: Error: unable to read. Probe timed out, no response.
Contacting Administrator: Error: Administrator not found.
Contacting Secondary Administrator: …connection timed out. Retry? (Y/N).
Querying Central System: …no response. Surmise: Central System replicates error.
Warning: repeat read errors indicate serious risk of contamination/damage/alteration of/to Saint Graph. Please contact Administrator… running Admin Check… no Administrators found. Querying Central System for backup… response: no Administrators.
Well, that wasn't why things were urgent, but it wasn't helping. Ever since her dream last night, the whatchamacallit, the 'stat screen' for Caster, had been… like that, progressively writing more and more useless lines as it tried to define some defect in his Saint Graph, and failed to contact anyone who knew more. Some lines returned results in minutes, others in hours.
She didn't need to guess why. If she didn't miss her mark, the first Administrator was unavailable, as he was currently so many ashes and metal shards in the basement of Matou House, the Secondary Administrator was, if she wasn't mistaken, currently rotting in his office were she'd left him. And the Central System was what she'd been discussing with Einzbern, the anomalous homunculus which served as the core of the Holy Grail. Which, as mentioned, had no agency, and was unlikely to know anything in the first place.
Querying Central System for Protocol: Lost Crowns… response: 0/3 matches, positive.
Querying Central System for Protocol: Broken Chalice… response: negative.
Querying Central System for Protocol: Empty Nest… response: 3/3 matches, negative.
Situation identified. Print Statement: Adjutants.
If she knew anything about these sorts of psychic impressions, it was that they presented differently depending on the observer; it was unlikely that the three founders had constructed their Servant identification system to look like a computer printout, but that was a format that Tiffany recognized. She'd made a point of becoming familiar with the emerging field of electronic computing, actually, and had even published an unpopular paper on its possible use in magecraft, and the intriguing similarities between it and the art of golem-making. Information presented like this made sense to her, which was why it was presented that way.
Greetings, foreign magus!
An unexpected error has occurred in relation to [your Servant's [True Name]]. This is likely a result of [tampering with Saint Graph]. Unfortunately, no Administrators are currently available. As no Administrator is registered as a Master, but all three Administrating Families are confirmed to be safe, and the Lesser Grail is intact, we surmise that all Administrators have perished in the ongoing ritual, which nevertheless proceeds apace.
Points for foresight.
As a result, we cannot recommend you seek out an Administrator, or an Administrator's heir. Instead, it is recommended that you watch your Servant, [Caster], closely. [Instability, unexpected behavior and/or abilities, and/or loss of identity] are likely side effects of the issue relating to the [True Name]. Please exercise caution around [Caster].
If any of this information is inaccurate, and it *is* possible to contact an Administrator, please do so promptly. As you do, please give code phrase [for the Lord has innumerable names, and I know not one of them] to initiate neutral parlay for the sake of resolving the ongoing error. It is in everyone's interest that your Servant does not have issues related to the [True Name]. Do not hesitate. The code phrase is sacred, and you will not be harmed if it is provided to an Administrator.
Together, we will reach for the heavens above.
It made some sense, to her, that the founders would have wanted to ensure some kind of backdoor in case a Servant's summoning failed or warped them… but in this case, she was puzzled.
The work consumes all.
A clear head was needed to work this out.
The others must be persuaded into it. But they are.
Could she run?
The low must be made to crawl, so that they do not rise against me.
This was really two questions: could and should. Could she escape the Magus Killer, the planned attack, and anything else? And should she abandon the city of Fuyuki to its fate?
And I ensure it, and I watch the mud rise. And on the seventh day I rest, and see that it is good, what I do.
These questions brought on more. What was the fate of Fuyuki, really? Should she trust her Servant, or the research she'd done with Einzbern, the research that pointed in the direction of a corrupted Grail? Could she trust her Servant at all? Did he know, and had he therefore lied to her? Or had his madness merely hidden itself, and now that she had seen him in full, he would strike? But could she afford to be without him, come the attack El-Melloi must have planned tonight?
The cruelty becomes the point.
She wasn't certain, nor could she guess why the True Name of Caster would be… in error or tampered with.
Virtue is disproven. He shows me dizzying vistas, worlds beyond counting, and all there is to do is take and take and take from them.
Because she knew what it was.
The Lord does not strike me down, and I know why.
Who her Servant was. That past of his that he'd been trying to hide.
But the high come for me, and bring me to the mud, and the axe, and my knees.
The end of his story, but for the moment the axman's blade came down, and the nature of his counter-theodicy.
And I tell the others: fret not. Hell does not wait for us, my friends. The Lord has already forgiven what we've done. Smile, as you walk to your judgments. We are innocent men.
She had seen the final fate of her Servant, Gilles de Rais.
Emiya had come and asked them to join him and Saber in another room, where they were to discuss their strategy for the upcoming assault. "I've spoken with Caster, briefly, and given him a walkie-talkie, so we can remain in communication," he began, sitting at the head of the table, looking out of place in such fine surrounds, scruffy and unshaven, with heavy bags beneath his eyes.
"Modern technology certainly is incredible," Caster said, in a strange, bemused tone, coming out of the communicator set up on the table.
She restrained a shudder at his voice.
Irisviel then explained the basics of what they'd so far worked out, without going into detail and outlining what they needed to do next. Tiffany seriously doubted that anyone would have understood even if she'd tried. Caster was a lousy mage, by his own admission, the terms spellcaster must have been invented for someone like Emiya, and his assistant, Maiya, was probably not a mage, and was also still standing watch over Sophia-Ri.
The only surprise was Saber, who, as the conversation turned towards planning their defense, proved able to grasp the pertinent details of where their respective magecrafts should be deployed. King Arthur, Tiffany supposed, would probably at least have some experience with wizardry, even if the arts of the Age of Fairies were nearly as far gone as those of the Age of Gods.
As they laid it out, the situation became clear. Two Servants against two, three mages against four, that was the math on the surface. But the Servants were not equal, and neither were the mages. On the surface, her side lost every time. So, it was time to dig below that.
She laid out the capabilities she knew Baltazar constructs possessed, from their strength to their invisibility, to the oddities of their control method, the workaround to the lost art of automata, which had somehow earned the Balthazars such accolades, when similar efforts had earned her own family nothing but scorn. Such was the curse of serving the Founder's vision.
As well, she gave a brief report on El-Melloi, and an even briefer one on Eirene, the essence of which was 'I'll take care of her', otherwise only stressing her absurd tenacity. Emiya corroborated her knowledge of El-Melloi with his own findings and added what he'd discovered that she didn't know. Irisviel chimed in with the pertinent details of his subversion of the Servant bond. Then, once again, Caster reported on the abilities of Archer and Lancer, as well as himself.
The solution they found was this: do not strike where you opponent is strongest. Strike where he is weak and watch him crumble. She barely raised a fuzz. At this stage, it would have been hypocritical of her to object to killing a Master. El-Melloi had to go.
"We should be conscious of the fact," Einzbern said, "that if we kill both Archer and Lancer, we won't be able to remove another Servant without me becoming the Grail."
Emiya flinched minutely, his face never moving.
"And we aren't ready for that," Einzbern continued, casting a sympathetic look at her husband. "We've got the beginnings of a plan, but nothing concrete, nothing made yet."
"But," Tiffany added, "El-Melloi is unlikely to believe us, if we just tell him that the Grail is corrupted, even if we show him the evidence we've found. If I know his disposition, he'll assume it's a trick."
"Could we negotiate?" Emiya asked. "If we agree to turn over Sophia-Ri, perhaps he would agree to a ceasefire, long enough to allow you to work out a solution," he couldn't keep his eyes away from Einzbern, even though he was addressing both of them.
"Not likely," Tiffany replied, grimacing. "Because I taunted him with the idea that you would kill him by backing out of a promise on a technicality."
"Ah. That's… unfortunate," said Caster.
Emiya furrowed his brows, then shook his head. "If that's how it is, that's how it is. If we can't negotiate with him, then we'll allow him to attack and overextend," Emiya said, "then I'll threaten to kill Sophia-Ri. Either he'll drop out; unlikely, with what you just told me, or he'll call Lancer."
"He'd be furious at the insinuation that you could hurt him without him being able to stop you," Caster said.
"There's a chance," Emiya noted, "that my Origin Bullets could destroy a Command Seal in the moment a Master spends it. That would leave him vulnerable for a moment, after failing to summon his Servant, letting me handle him. But even if it's possible, for such a simple command as 'Come hither' it would be an extremely narrow window for success, so it is likely for the best that we don't count on it. Then, once Lancer is committed, Maiya will kill Sophia-Ri, and I'll kill the weakened El-Melloi, and Caster's familiars will hold off Lancer for the moments it'll take him to die."
"I have a very strong matchup against Lancer, so that should be no trouble," Caster responded in a dark, regretful tone.
"But if not, if El-Melloi kills Lancer, then she's safe, right?" Tiffany asked, steel in her tone.
"There's no reason she should be otherwise," Emiya said, looking evenly at her, yet with a distant look in his eyes.
Einzbern cut in, "She's not really registered as a Master by the Greater Grail, so, although Lancer would survive his Master's death by relying on her, without Command Seals she wouldn't be able to bind a new Servant. She'd effectively be an outsider once Lancer died."
Before that, Caster would have to work with Irisviel to identify and destroy the invisible constructs. This would have spread most Servants thin, but the one advantage of the one she'd been saddled with was that his water demons could strike independently of him; in fact, Caster was never to take to the battlefield at all, remaining in his Workshop to simultaneously lessen the load on her, allowing her to fight, and serve as the final fallback location in case of absolute disaster.
Once both his opponents were dealt with, Caster would rush his army to aid Saber and his two greater demons with all possible alacrity. He'd tried to stress to Saber that it was wiser to play on Archer's emotions than face him head-on, let him have the upper hand until they were in a position to break it, but it was uncertain how much had penetrated the staunch honor of the King of Knights. Never mind. Either it'd work, or they'd all die. Worrying wouldn't change either outcome.
That was about as much as they could manage, so they all dispersed to their stations. She watched the hours tick down until nightfall, consumed with doing as much as she could to prepare. Prepare for her inevitable confrontation with Eirene Menelaus Richardson-Dark, her old friend and older rival. The flame in her heart stirred. Anxiously, she kept arranging the gemstones she'd looted from Tohsaka into patterns on her desk with one finger. Five rubies. Two topazes. One agate. She wondered if the last three were heirlooms, given Tohsaka's affinity for fire, like her own.
'Caster,' she remembered to ask, looking at the brilliant crystals. 'Did you get around to checking Tohsaka Manor?'
'I did, Master. As you surmised, it appeared to have been ransacked. While the structure is intact, or at least, no more damaged than you left it, floorboards have been pried up, choice tomes are missing from the shelves, and the staff you left there has been removed.'
She frowned. 'That doesn't quite seem like El-Melloi's style, but maybe the Balthazars… no, surely they know the Association would come for them. Those items belong to his heir, or they would be sold at an auction after the War. Was there anything else missing? Anything strange?'
'Yes, Master, as a matter of fact there was one final, curious item. I could find no trace of Tohsaka's severed hand, the one with his last remaining Command Seal. His body had not otherwise been moved.'
That made her swallow in discomfort. 'That's more likely to be El-Melloi: grave goods won as spoils in the Holy Grail War would be exempt from his sense of propriety. But what could he hope to accomplish with it? I needed the Overseer to become a Master; he couldn't elevate one of his pawns. Kotomine, the younger, jumped to protect me as I ran, directly opposing El-Melloi's coalition and allowing me to escape them.'
'Kirei would never work against his father; he would only become truly dangerous if Risei were to die,' Caster responded.
She wondered at that, and wondered what the infamous Gilles de Rais would think was a 'broken mind' like he'd assigned to Kotomine, the thing that'd made him oh so very happy to watch his wife kill herself. Was it even real, or had he lied about it? How much of what he'd told her had been hogwash? Was he even now leading her to her death, and could she afford to worry about that when so much was on the line?
'You said yesterday that you wanted to talk later. Is that now?' he asked.
'No,' she decided. 'We'll save it for after the battle.' She had to spend a moment longer to figure out what she wanted to even do. And there was always the possibility, a part of her whispered, that he wouldn't take her finding out who he was well. And, she decided, she did need him for this next battle, at least.
The cold air pricked her face as she stood behind the parapets of Einzbern Castle, looking out over the dark forest. In the courtyard behind her, Caster's two greater demons lay dormant, tendrils occasionally slapping against and turning up the immaculate gardens.
'The cordon has been closed' he relayed to her, referring to loose ring of water demons he'd been asked to set up around the Castle, to keep out the constructs-
"I'm almost ready to assist Caster," Einzbern's voice came through her earpiece. It sounded strained, like she was struggling with something heavy.
"…Iri, you have to say 'over', Over." That was Emiya's empty voice.
"Right, apologies… Over."
Tiffany sighed. These were her allies, then? Murderers and puppets, what joy. It didn't matter. She just had to survive tonight, and then she'd be able to get the answers she needed for what to do.
The cold air blew as the Sun crested the horizon. And then it was dark.
"They're here," Einzbern's warning came. "Two of them were knocked over by the backlash, four of them are standing. Their location is:" she continued, rattling off a southernly location to Caster. "Over."
"Intercepting, Over" he said joylessly.
A few moments of silence. She gripped the hilt of her sword and checked her daggers at her hip. The black plastic bag in front of her squelched as it slumped to one side.
"Archer, Lancer- they're all there," Caster said. "Do I engage, Over?"
But before he could get a response, they heard it, the voice, booming over the treetops, sending flocks of birds flying. That of the King of Heroes.
"It is a good night, little nightingale, isn't it? I see you've chosen to cower among the other mongrels of this War. But that is fine, for I have trained a pack of mongrels of my own. Here they come, now." She could hear the smile on his face.
"I think I understand why you hide, why the mongrels band together behind such sturdy walls: it must be terrifying to be faced with a power so far beyond you. Not that I'd know, but still. If your death were my design, how trivial it would be to realize it, and how… unsatisfying a victory. Not something the King would accept, oh no.
"I wish to see you fight, little nightingale. You were willing to kill for your convictions, but so far, you have killed only in secret and in ambush. Worthy enough for mongrels, true, but not for me," his grin broadened audibly. "Now: prove the strength of your convictions in the pitched field of battle! Your mongrels against mine! And if you should make it, if you should prove your worthiness tonight… then I will come to you, little nightingale."
"Alas," he finished with false dismay, "I know that if I were to take the field, this battle would be decided instantly. Not even the Hero of the Sword could stand against my true power. So, I will accept a compromise, for this trial: I will not attack, yet. But every ten minutes that this battle goes on, every ten minutes that you fail to please me, and prove worthy of my grace, I will send a hailstorm of weapons against your keep. And should you fail me three times, little nightingale, my fury shall be incensed to the highest, and I will unveil my greatest weapon and level this castle. Is that clear?" She imagined him bowing theatrically, a broad, rictus grin, the mask of sadism on his face.
"Then, let us begin."
Vimana, Throne of the Heaven-Soaring King took to the skies once again, it's spear-point body aimed at the heart of Einzbern Castle. Tiffany felt something cold trickle down her back.
"Change of plans," she heard Emiya say, as she picked up the black bag and took a pitching stance. "If Archer isn't attacking, Saber, you need to kill Lancer as fast as possible. Everyone else, prioritize efficiency above everything; we need to get ahead of this countdown. Maiya, be on standby, we might need you to abandon guard duty to hit a pressure point. Over."
""""Copy that, Over,"""" Saber, Maiya, Einzbern and Caster responded. Tiffany paid it no mind, instead looking out for… there he was.
"Fly true," she whispered, then pitched the blubbery sack as far as she could, hurtling towards Lord El-Melloi, approaching the Castle at a dead sprint. She counted down the seconds until it hit the ground.
3…
2…
1…
Explosion. A star was born on the field before Einzbern Castle, as two of the eight crystals she'd looted from Tohsaka exploded mere meters away from El-Melloi, sending streakers of Greek fire over the forest and grass. She saw, with great satisfaction, Lord El-Melloi be blown away; but then, silver bloomed around him, shielding him from the viscous fire and blunting his impact against the ground.
That was fine; from the inferno, her precious Salamander leapt, the initial conflagration enough to put it on the level it had had when it faced down Assassin, spewing gouts of fire. In the moments before she ran from the roof, she saw the dark shape of Lancer intercepting it, but even that didn't worry her.
Lancer had two weapons, the red spear and the golden spear. Salamander's body was largely insubstantial, and so wouldn't be hurt by the golden spear, Gáe Buidhe but would be hideously vulnerable to the other one: Gáe Dearg, as some research had revealed. That was fine, though- tactically, if Lancer fought Salamander, he was wasting his time, and Salamander had been instructed to waste as much of it as possible, drawing out their engagement by letting him close enough to hurt it, then healing by burning down the forest. With that done, she had done her part, and could leave the battle outside to her Servant and Einzbern.
Meanwhile, Tiffany had a date with destiny. Choking down a thick, bitter draught, she felt a string pull taut in the air in front of her chest, leading, inexorably, towards its last remaining counterpart. She ran through the Castle, feeling the thread twist hither and yon, but somehow, always closer, always nearer, always pulling harder.
She heard something scratching the wall to her side, looked over too late to find that it was an outer wall, then the window exploded inwards. Trapped in a swirling vortex of broken glass, Tiffany felt something grip her throat and push her up against the wall. "Last chance to back out, Tiff, or I'm knocking your ass out and hauling you back to the Clocktower," Eirene hissed next to her ear, leaning over.
Her old rival had seen better days. Her dress had been badly mended with steel thread, the holes where Kotomine's Black Keys had skewered her plainly obvious, as well as the dark wounds beneath that dress. Her right arm was carved down the middle between the ulna and radius, she had obvious punctures through her left leg, pressing up against Tiffany, and her jaw had clearly been ripped off, then reattached by black steel. It looked like something was pushing out from underneath her skin, like her human body was being stretched across a monstrous frame.
"We've got to stop meeting like this." she said with a grin, her pulse starting to pick up.
Eirene threw her to the ground with a disgusted and frustrated snarl. "Why can't you take this seriously, Tiff? I am trying to save your life!" she yelled, bending over slightly and gesturing to herself. "This Grail isn't worth losing you!"
"You sure you want to be here, then? Not too afraid to find out if the Magus Killer lives up to his name?"
"Archer doing some fucking bullshit that wasn't in the plan is annoying, but if you don't get out of here, you'll die, one way or another. And I can't let that happen." She shook her head. "That's not the point; what the fuck is it that you want so bad that you're willing to risk your life for it this frequently?" she pleaded.
"The same thing you know I've always wanted, Rina," she said, quietly.
Tears flowed from her eye, too exposed by the twisted metal in her bones pulling at her skin. "I hoped- I came here, because I thought the wish could bring them back," Eirene admitted.
"So this is about Louise. It always is." She couldn't help the way her face fell.
"Don't do this, Tiff." Eirene clenched her eyes shot, agony on her brow.
"How many times have I told you I'm sorry for what happened? How many times have I told you I hate what it took to discover my nature?" she asked, voice growing louder despite her efforts to the contrary.
"And how many times," Eirene asked, her eyes opening like the shutters of a lantern, "have I told you I don't blame you?" She waved her arms, beset with black claws and darker threads, spilling out of her inhuman body. "It wasn't your fault: even if your Origin caused it, which it didn't, you couldn't have known. We all agreed to do it together." She sighed and drew herself up like a proper lady. "I don't want to spend time relitigating old arguments. You're all I have left, Tiff. Please don't make me lose you, too," she said, frankly, letting her arms hang.
"Loyal despite it all. I don't deserve you," she said, some genuine fondness in her voice. Then, she grabbed her tincture daggers, infused with lead. "But this is bigger than either of us. Even if I wanted to come with you," and I do, "I couldn't."
"You'll charge headlong into your own annihilation for the chance at a miracle?"
"I don't have to tell you my answer to that. If you remember anything about me at all, you already know the answer." Tiffany said. "Get out of my way, or I'll remove you myself."
Eirene spat. "Fine. I guess it's up to me to rescue you from your own decisions. Again." And she lunged. With a twist of her hips, Tiffany dodged the initial strike, getting closer to Eirene's body and getting each dagger around her arm like a pair of shears, then drawing them past one another. Very little Tiffany could do would destroy Eirene's Original steel- but lead was for purity, and steel was an alloy, however mystical its point of origin. All that remained of where she'd drawn her daggers through Eirene's arm was black smoke and a severed arm.
There were no tricks to fighting Eirene. It was just your mortal body against hers. And Eirene did not tire, did not flinch, did not lose focus, did not feel pain, did not go into shock, did not bleed, and did not injure easily, either. And Tiffany's daggers would only last for so many strikes before losing their infusion of lead tincture.
Wordlessly, Eirene picked her arm up, put it in her mouth and bit down on it, then dashed forward, jabbing at Tiffany with her empty stump, forcing her to dodge to the side rather than be skewered by the metal emerging in sharp, thorn-bush patterns, slowly outlaying a wireframe of the lost limb. When Tiffany dodged, Eirene caught her with a foot, making Tiffany stumble slightly, and that was all Eirene needed: she kicked off the wall, reversing her momentum, and drove Tiffany to the floor with an elbow.
Away from Eirene for a moment, Tiffany's hand flew into the right pocket, and drew out her very few lead talismans; they weren't much good for healing, but when Eirene came upon her again, her legs lashed out, and, ruining the lead, she channeled the purity into her kick, driving brilliant, white corruption into Eirene's leg, making her jump back in momentary surprise. "Don't get too comfortable," she said, rolling onto her knees and slowly rising, eyeing Eirene all the while, "I've learned a few tricks since last time."
"So have I," Eirene mumbled coldly through her arm, then her skin burst open, and claws dug into the hardwood floor. It was all Tiffany could do to drop her right dagger and draw her sword before Eirene forced her to block one forehammer of a strike. Then, her bifurcated arm snapped open like a blooming flower, the threads binding it together instead wrapping around each half, and then the halves dug into Tiffany's stomach so hard, her legs left the ground for a moment. She felt something wet running from her stomach as the claws cut into her.
With an effort of will, Tiffany did not succumb to the shock and pain, and instead swept her offhand dagger towards Eirene's throat, forcing her to dodge; but only slightly, because the split arm now opened like tongs and gripped her around the middle and pinning her arms to her side, cutting surface wounds as they went, the claws on the fingers of the ruined arm as sharp as those she, in retrospect, had used to scale the wall.
Eirene lifted Tiffany by the waist, then put her stump onto the arm in her mouth and pulled back. The arm stretched in the grip of her teeth, its human façade stretching and snapping, revealing gleaming darkness moving and shifting like clay, until it took on the appearance of a blade. "Ready to stand down now?" Eirene asked rhetorically, a deep frown on her face to match her sunken, tired eyes.
Rather than answer, Tiffany let go of one dagger and worked a finger into a pocket, wormed it around a Tohsaka gemstone, she couldn't see which one but could feel its familiar contours, and channeled a mote of Ruin into it. She didn't have jewel magecraft, her family had never been blessed by the Second Magician, so she couldn't activate the spell inside- but she could set the whole thing to blow.
The detonation of wind ripped her out of Eirene's grip, and also tore a deep cut on her stomach open, but she ruined her gold, and the treasure she'd worked on for months shaved three years of its one hundred to put her back together. Then, with distance, she tied the talismanic lead around her sword. She tested the leg that'd done the kicking and winced. Even gold wasn't good for putting you back together when you'd partially separated your own leg into alchemically pure elements. There was, in essence, nothing to put back together. So she took one look at Eirene, who was taking one look at Tiffany.
Then, they both reached the same conclusion about what she was going to do, and Tiffany ran in the opposite direction.
Eirene's new tricks proved useful here, too, forcing Tiffany into a fighting retreat, but so long as she had shining, cold, blue purity within her blades, Eirene could only dodge, not counter. Tiffany feinted, on occasion, letting Eirene think she was using her talismans to channel lead through her sword, but really conserving it as much as she could.
And all the while, she let Eirene cut off escapes down, any path that led them closer to Tiffany's allies, instead always electing to climb higher, back up to the walls and their parapets.
Halfway up an immaculate, finely engraved staircase, the Castle shook like a giant toddler was playing with it. "That's the first, little nightingale, but I expected that. Try not to disappoint me again," Archer's voice came, still ringing out as clearly as it had before.
The calamity sent them crashing down onto the landing together. In her earpiece, she heard Saber say, "Engaging Lancer in the Castle, Over," but paid it no mind. She'd landed on Eirene, took the chance to pin her shoulder to the ground with her dagger, then ran back up the stars, hearing the awful screech of tearing metal as Eirene dragged the pinned dagger out of herself.
There was no rain, but darkness loomed overhead as they came out upon the roof of the outer wall. Taking her chance, Tiffany sprinted to the edge, and, digging out another jewel, jumped off.
Wind howled past her as she counted down the seconds, then threw the last topaz ahead of herself. Gravity fought against wind pressure, and in the end, Tiffany paid out the difference, tumbling to the ground heavily, rolling to bleed off momentum. She got up, inspecting herself quickly: she hadn't broken anything, but her ribs and her everything were bruised.
Next step, now, she reminded herself. Cursing bitterly, she brought up her hand. The outermost Command Seal glowed blood-red. "Caster! Reinforcements, now! One greater demon!"
'As you Command, Master.'
The air twisted. The greater demons were slower to move, though not to strike, meaning she couldn't get one here fast enough without a Command Seal, and their regeneration wasn't as painless- but they were big, they were powerful, and they were leagues tougher than the lesser ones- That was Eirene, crashing down from the top of the Castle, enjoying none of Tiffany's protections and suffering not at all for it.
'Let it devour her,' she told her Servant.
'I thought you wanted her to live!' he protested.
'She will' was her response.
'Are you-' her Servant cut himself off. But despite not replying, the greater demon still moved towards Eirene. An implacable steel pillar met a boneless, shifting horror with a noise like throwing a metric ton of jelly into a wind tunnel, but Eirene still disappeared into its hideous maw despite her flailing.
Tiffany breathed, once, calmly. It is a matter of will. She dug out her second fiery potion, that she'd brewed some days ago, to protect herself from her own flames. An incomplete circlet of crimson fire ignited over her brow as she swallowed the small mouthful of tincture. The crackling flames behind her grew louder and louder.
'Salamander,' she relayed, calm as anything. 'Hold.'
Her trusty familiar did just that, and even without looking at it, she could hear how massive the destruction of the forest surrounding the Castle had made it, the height of a witch's bonfire, and the length of a lorry. She could feel the insistent, boiling heat wash over her from behind.
She did not count the seconds until Eirene tore her way out of the greater demon, leaving its broken carcass to slowly heal on the ground now stained black and turquoise by its intestinal juices. It'd be back in minutes, but Eirene was already charging. But it'd bought her the moment to breathe Tiffany needed. The juices had stripped nearly every bit of humanity from Eirene, now just a shifting mass of black tendrils forming numerous wireframes of normal limbs, with a pale, doll-like face at the front, racing towards her. And Salamander flew forth to meet her charge.
Its normal, friendly, blubbery exterior had been overtaken by plates of igneous rock, seeming solid despite glowing white-hot from its internal furnaces. Quickly, it wrapped itself around Eirene, then spewed a pyroclastic stream down over her body within its coils. Tiffany held a hand out to shadow her eyes from the brilliant stream of fire. Then, Eirene emerged from the hold like a boiled almond, sloughing off a now-melted outer layer of metal and shooting into the sky. There, crystal tinkling betrayed the unnatural rate of cooling, as she bent herself into a missile that skewered through Salamander as it hit the ground.
"Is this it?!" Tiffany screamed her question over the roaring flames, as Salamander let its tail rip off to escape from Eirene's spike. "Have I convinced you I can do this, yet?!"
"NO!" Eirene yelled back, twisting her formless limbs back into human shapes before uppercutting Salamander, which was busily blowing a stream of fire back at the forest for a refresh. "Because you're still not giving it your all, TIFF!"
"That so!?"
"Oh, you know it!" She sliced her way into Salamander, only to be caught out when it twisted back around and breathed flame into its own chest. "You still haven't used Reinforcement. You're still holding back! And if you're holding back against me, the rest of them will eat you alive!" A line of superheated metal shot out, and Tiffany had to duck a little.
"So it's come to this?"
Eirene, her arms grossly extended, wrestled Salander to the ground by the neck for a moment, before it threw itself back forcefully enough, bending over and slamming her down with it as it fell the length of its spine. "We were already here, Tiff," Eirene's voice came from the crater. "I can't stay to watch you die. I can't be in this War if I'm not with El-Melloi. And I can't let you go. So prove it to me! Prove you're strong enough to stand on your own two feet. Face me, you who would bring the Tower low and raise us into a golden age! Face me and prove the strength of your conviction!"
A cold breath exited her lungs- probably the last one in a while. "Very well then," she said. She shucked off her great coat and tossed it to the ground as far away as she could, hoping beyond reason to keep it safe. She snapped her suspenders idly, looking up at the night sky. The stars were beautiful, as always, even so far away from her home. Her voice surprised her, calm and steady, as she said: "Salamander: Reverse."
Her familiar went still, its head freezing in recognition of the ever-rare command. Then, it flickered, like a candle flame in the breeze. Its great power, the strength of Ruin itself, which had been paid for by the ancient, irreplaceable firs and oaks of this forest- it had flowed from her Origin, into her familiar. And now, it flowed back. Salamander vanished, a dark, coal-black core falling to the ground where it had been.
This was going to hurt.
It was a matter of will to hold herself together when her skin began to burn and flake. It was an inhuman effort to keep from screaming when her muscles boiled and stiffened in the same moment. It was a miracle that she didn't fall when her bones juddered and shook like overclocked boilers.
Flames ran off her golden form, forming great red wings as she closed the distance in a single leap towards Eirene. Her sword, glowing white, severed one immutable arm in the first strike, the first second. In the next, a punch caved in Eirene's chest. The third second, she went blind in one eye and lost all feeling in her face and left leg. The fourth, Eirene hit her back, her remaining fist crumpling against Tiffany's jaw, sending her end over end. The fifth, she flew, the sixth, she landed and hacked Eirene's legs off at the knees. The seventh, she nearly lost her grip on her sword as the skin on her hand burnt to charcoal. The eighth, she carved a furrow into Eirene's side, from her hip to her armpit.
In the ninth second, she let go of the Ruinous Reinforcement, pulling her blade out. For a moment, she felt no pain: then she began to ruin her golden talisman, her personal treasure of health, burning it down to less than half, and her nerves came back first and played an exquisite symphony along her spine. But she did not crumple to the ground, and she did not remove her sword from Eirene's neck, watching as her old friend and older rival lay there, her body open and ruined.
"That good enough for you?"
Eirene closed her eyes and bowed her head in defeat. "That was three seconds longer than you usually manage," she said faux-casually.
"I've figured out some tricks." You had to, when your Origin robbed you of the fundamental art for self-defense for modern mages. And what a trick it was, even if it'd be the death of her to use for more than a moment. All that setup, and she could only have seconds of god-like power. Still so far from the Founder. "And you've gotten faster, too. I've never seen you pull yourself together like that, before."
She sheathed her sword, rubbed her raw, red palm, the new skin still sensitive as she reached down and pulled Eirene up. Her metal was unfolding, slower now, and she watched quietly as Eirene shaped her body back into its familiar shape. Then, Eirene coughed up a ring and, after looking askance at Tiffany for a moment, put it on, at which point clothes emerged on her like- like magic.
"It's not about Lu, Tiff."
"I know. I'm sorry I said that."
"I miss her every day. But not everything I do is about what happened."
She couldn't respond.
"They wouldn't let me see you. They think it's your fault, what happened to me. That you sabotaged my Awakening."
"Is that why you left?"
"Yes. They couldn't see the worth in what I became." Eirene sighed. "Well… I guess I was worried you wouldn't, either."
"Are you kidding? Forget magecraft, you're a- well, I was going to say 'a monster'-"
"Please do," Eirene said, baring a mouth somehow full of razor teeth.
"You're a monster," Tiffany said fondly.
"You too."
She returned Eirene's smile genuinely. "I stopped coming to see you, because I was worried… but I wasn't worried you hated me. I was worried you'd forgive me. Because I don't deserve that. Not until I've made it right."
"It's not about forgiveness, Tiff," Eirene said, laying an arm on her shoulder. "It's about… us. I've lost enough already: I don't want to lose you too. Please, just stop running away from me." She stared into Tiffany's eyes, hers dark, ashen, but warm.
Tears trickled out of Tiffany's dry and ruined face. "I- thought I'd lost you, already. Acted like it, too. Convinced myself. But…" she looked up at Eirene, resolutely. "I promise I'll make it home to you. And I promise that, once I do, we'll sort this all out. Together."
"I'll hold you-"
They saw the brilliant fusillade of swords and spears, and then felt the resounding boom through their feet and into their skulls, rattling their brains.
"That was the second strike, little nightingale. I'm getting impatient. Do better."
"I'll hold you to that," Eirene continued unabashedly. Then, she stepped forward, and put her arms around Tiffany.
It was warm, like hearth-fire.
Reluctantly, Tiffany pulled back first. She grimaced at the ruined façade of Einzbern Castle. "It's taking too long, we don't have time for this," she mumbled.
"What are you going to do about it?" Eirene asked, eyebrow raised.
"What I should have done from the start," she said, striding forward, back toward the Castle. 'Caster. I am authorizing you to kill El-Melloi and the Baltazars. Our lives depend on it; do not delay.'
As usual, I am cross-posting on AO3.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Extreme is right, but there's a future chapter that covers it in a little more detail.
Also a big fan of the computer error Grail system message, it's a really neat way to showcase Tiffany's more modern perspective while being appropriately unnerving. Really curious about what Caster's True Name will end up displaying as, if she ever gets to find out. Maybe Gil will take a look at some point? (Unlikely, but you never know.)
I have no idea how Sha Naqba Imuru will show the weirdness of Caster's everything. And it's interesting that Tiffany finally got the Bluebeard dreams, implying Caster stopped subconsciously blocking them? Or her investigation into the Grail let her unconsciously bypass the block?
I have no idea how Sha Naqba Imuru will show the weirdness of Caster's everything. And it's interesting that Tiffany finally got the Bluebeard dreams, implying Caster stopped subconsciously blocking them? Or her investigation into the Grail let her unconsciously bypass the block?
- Location
- England
I don't trust him. Or, I don't trust his assessment that "It'll be just fine as long as I'm very careful wording the wish". That sounds like something you think just before your world-line ends.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
I mean, I have to say something obligatorily crude, like "Magus lesbians bond by beating the shit out of and almost killing each other", but sorry, that's actually the least interesting part of the chapter for me.
My homie Gilles finally reveals the rest of his Dream Cycle!/s
More seriously, very interesting that Caster's Dream Cycle remains same despite the mounting evidence that it really is a SI shafted into this Saint Graph. Also, kudos for making the stat screen something unique for Tiffany, even Fate forgot about that tidbit.
Also, you were almost there, Tiffany! Almost ready to cast off prejudices and accept Iri as a fellow person deserving of respect! How unfortunate.
My homie Gilles finally reveals the rest of his Dream Cycle!/s
More seriously, very interesting that Caster's Dream Cycle remains same despite the mounting evidence that it really is a SI shafted into this Saint Graph. Also, kudos for making the stat screen something unique for Tiffany, even Fate forgot about that tidbit.
Also, you were almost there, Tiffany! Almost ready to cast off prejudices and accept Iri as a fellow person deserving of respect! How unfortunate.
Lio managed to stuff an entire corpse into himself in less than an hour fresh off his awakening, IIRC. And he was an entirely normal human with no magical skill whatsoever.
Comparatively, turning into threadshoggoth is far more dramatic, but with magecraft in the mix, potential for change is greater.
Ye
Awakened Origens can start messing with the person not only on spiritual/mental level
More fast of done with magecraft
Awakened Origens can start messing with the person not only on spiritual/mental level
More fast of done with magecraft
- Location
- Portugal
Ok!
So here's my 100% accurate headcanon. I've said it's 100% accurate, so if you disagree you're wrong.
So here's my 100% accurate headcanon. I've said it's 100% accurate, so if you disagree you're wrong.
Turns out, there's no SI. The main character is actually Gilles de Rais. Something happened to him, maybe he did meet with Joan, maybe some eldritch bullshit, but he couldn't deal with it. He was confronted with the evil he'd done, blabla much anguish.
Instead, all this horrible things were done by this other person. I'm just an innocent guy, I swear! Don't mind this Mental Contamination! Alas, I cannot explain it.
The future knowledge of multiple Root branches (I don't know the terminology, shut up) have been rationalized as having seen them on tv.
This would also explain why the adoration of Saber (Joan!). Why the importance of redemption and of the "good" Matou.
The genuine Gilles de Rais could also just be a part of the character, but that's less fun.
Instead, all this horrible things were done by this other person. I'm just an innocent guy, I swear! Don't mind this Mental Contamination! Alas, I cannot explain it.
The future knowledge of multiple Root branches (I don't know the terminology, shut up) have been rationalized as having seen them on tv.
This would also explain why the adoration of Saber (Joan!). Why the importance of redemption and of the "good" Matou.
The genuine Gilles de Rais could also just be a part of the character, but that's less fun.
- Location
- Oklahoma
Other people spoke my thoughts on this chapter, very well written. I'm honestly excited to see how this all turns out.
wiggles eye brows Lets see if you 100% accuracy holds up!
Its a good breakdown of it, imo. Its a good theory, I think several are subscribing/have subscribed to it in the thread.
wiggles eye brows Lets see if you 100% accuracy holds up!
I generally don't like when fics of the "Lets put some actual effort into SI, lets make it not cringe" subgenre pull "It is not actually a SI" maneuver out, but as written if the fic decided that "yeah, we are doing this", I'd find it semi-believable.
More importantly, I think that everyone in-universe would find Caster just being Gilles completely believable. Tiff's dreams in particular align with what she saw of Caster; it not being completely clear to her if he actually found redemption or dark sort of "enlightenment", or is just completely bonkers even in death; that's pretty great.
NGL, we seems to be approaching some sort of a culmination. Ao3 shows 36 chapters being planned - is that correct?
More importantly, I think that everyone in-universe would find Caster just being Gilles completely believable. Tiff's dreams in particular align with what she saw of Caster; it not being completely clear to her if he actually found redemption or dark sort of "enlightenment", or is just completely bonkers even in death; that's pretty great.
NGL, we seems to be approaching some sort of a culmination. Ao3 shows 36 chapters being planned - is that correct?
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Thirty chapters, six interludes. Left to cover is the rest of this arc, its denouement, then preparing for the final arc, the arc itself, and the ending to the whole fic. Soon, the dominoes that've been set up will begin to fall.
Also, in the last chapter, there was a mistake SI!Caster made that no one noticed. A crucial mistake, in fact. So, magnanimous as I am, I will give you a hint:
It is a question of timing.