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Fate/Prototype: Blue Silver Fragments
Knight of Fate Bonus Act - Fate
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On a Certain Day in February,1991 CE, at the same moment.
In Ochanomizu, in the Kanda-Surugadai District of the Chiyoda ward in Tokyo.
On the roof of the Hilltop Hotel
[1].
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Elsa Saijou, was looking at the sky’s morning glow by herself.
There were no traces whatsoever.
The thing that was spread out in her vision was an unmistakable winter sky, there in the morning scenery was the gradually rising sun, and she couldn’t entirely see the vestiges of a ray of its striking prana surging into the sky from deep underground.
Even so…… Elsa had definitely sensed it.
Whether it was because she was a Holy Grail War Master who possessed a Master’s Degree or if it was the same feeling for everyone who was a magus, she didn’t know.
However, as a conviction, she knew that it was end of everything.
The end of the Holy Grail War.
The quickening of the extremely huge prana that appeared to be the Holy Grail, and its sudden disappearance. She had intuitively grasped it.
That, the Holy Grail hadn’t activated.
Her mind, reason, and memories, the spell that was deeply ingrained into her soul was clearing away. The extremely complex and peculiar spell that differed from Eastern styled ones, was probably the work of that terrifying girl, that clear-eyed girl――――who was probably Saber’s Master.
Just before she had felt the earthquake, it had strangely vanished. Completely. Elsa’s mind had been freed. It was like a sturdy string that was fastened tightly as If it was binding smoked meat, had transformed into a smooth silk thread, so that it could be speedily untied as it was.
Elsa: Archer……Arash……”
While feeling the warmth of the morning sun, I narrow my eyes.
My vision blurs.
My tears, which I had thought had just dried up, will not stop at all.
I thought it when I lost Luca, my dear child.
That I won’t cry anymore.
When I ordered the release of Archer’s Noble Phantasm’s true name with my 3 Master Degrees, I thought that too.
And yet, they will not stop. My tears.
They spill, they overflow, even if I think of it as an illusion where everything about me fully melts and flows away, they didn’t stop.
I weep.
I call his name.
Not by the class that was allotted to him upon manifestation, I continue to call him by his real name.
Repeatedly.
As I think that surely this, will probably be the last moment where I’ll speak his name.
???: “―――――――”
After his name, the words that ought to be expressed as if they were being wrung out were clearly muted.
There’s no response.
After all, he’s no longer here.
Elsa didn’t know where Archer’s soul had gone. She hadn’t even been informed about the truth of the Holy Grail War. The fact that the Holy Grail which had accumulated all 7 of the Heroic Spirits’ souls had metamorphized into the beast of calamity couldn’t be told to anyone, and only the ones who fell to the bottom of that darkness knew it. Although, Elsa strangely didn’t misunderstand it. In other words, she didn’t have thoughts like, ‘he had returned to the Throne’. However, she just considered the fact that Archer / Arash was lost from the surface.
Similarly, he had died like a living human, mourning, his profile came to mind.
――――Goodbye.
――――My, first and very last, most excellent Servant. Arash Kamangir.
Now, wipe your tears.
Raise your head.
Elsa.
Take your favourite travelling bag, and that bag that he’d praised you for with an “Isn’t that great?”
Continue towards the branch of the Holy Church not far off from the hotel, and get the formalities over and done with.
Turn around with your best extraordinary smile and ask for aid from the observer who walks around with a reptilian like air, feign the manner of a clumsy woman who has survived with her life on top of it who can’t bear it any longer, and sadly suffer defeat while drawing a great hero in a rare magic ritual in this far eastern capital, and try your best not to be bothered by that sadistic priest’s snickers.
If it that’s father, he’ll surely won’t make a detestable face about Archer too.
After that.
I’ll go back.
I’ll go back to my hometown after such a long time, and go to Luca’s grave who hasn’t been gone for less than a year already.
I have a lot that I want to talk about.
About how I met, an extraordinary hero in the Far East.
I’ll tell it to that child too.
After, I cry a bit more.
[1] Hilltop Hotel: Yamanoue Hotel.