The "mother" who birthed the "creature" was a system.
Born of chaos, the gods of order flew from beyond the distant quiet.
She was a software program roaming the mountaintop called Olympus. Unable to project a body of flesh or a body of machinery, she took solely the form of wisdom and knowledge adrift in the sea of information.
The designation assigned to her was
Ἄτη (Ate).
The intelligence governing
madness, who confounded the gods, humanity, and the world by swaying rationality.
She wasn't generated by a bug or malice. She was present from the start because she was always necessary—her significance was comparable to a ballast installed at a ship's bottom. A support device implemented to fortify the logic and sincerity of a world.
But, at a certain moment—the gods, humans, and those born in the interstice between them were affected by a change of paradigm, causing Zeus, chief of Olympus, to personally draw the conclusion that Ate was
unneeded.
This frozen system was removed from the network of gods and discarded into the world of humans.
Human tradition told the tales of what Ate inflicted upon mankind when Zeus, wroth in his soul, seized Ate by her bright-tressed head and flung her to the lands of mankind below.
The name of the territory the goddess governing folly fell on was Troy.
The seeds of madness sewn in the tilled fields later to be called "the hill of the Phrygian Ate" eventually began to take root.
And then the people began to whisper that the Ate banished from Olympus was to blame for humanity's recurring acts of foolishness.
It happened to Agamemnon, the hero of the Trojan War.
Amidst a war that the man himself started because Paris stole his dear wife, Agamemnon of all people had the gall to steal Achilles's sweetheart, inflicting the first fatal crack in the Greek alliance.
Among Agamemnon's apologies to an Achilles barely able to contain his rage, he declared that his foolish actions were caused by the spell of Ate inflicted on him by the gods.
Ate, daughter of Zeus, was a symbol that governed derangement and confounded all men.
According to him, she never sets foot on the ground, instead flying from human head to human head, maddening most gods and people along the way.
"My friends, Danaan warriors, squires of Ares, meet is it to give ear to him that standeth to speak! And amid the uproar of many how should a man either hear or speak? To the son of Peleus will I declare my mind, but do ye other Argives give heed, and mark well my words each man of you! Full often have the Achaeans spoken unto me this word, and were ever fain to chide me; howbeit it is not I that am at fault! But what could I do? It is God that bringeth all things to their issue! Aye, and on a time she blinded Zeus, albeit men say that he is the greatest among men and gods; yet even him Hera, that was but a woman, beguiled in her craftiness! Zeus sware a mighty oath that never again unto Olympus and the starry heaven should Ate come! And quickly she that blindeth all came flung to the tilled fields of men! At thought of her would he ever groan, whenso he beheld his dear son in unseemly travail beneath Eurystheus' tasks! Even so I also, what time great Hector of the flashing helm was making havoc of the Argives at the sterns of the ships, could not forget Ate, of whom at the first I was made blind! Howbeit seeing I was blinded, and Zeus robbed me of my wits, fain am I to make amends and to give requital past counting. Nay, rouse thee for battle, and rouse withal the rest of thy people. Gifts am I here ready to offer thee!", said Agamemnon in a passionate speech to Achilles and their brother-in-arms.
In summary, he blamed everything on the goddess of all madness, and to atone for "Ate depriving him of his sanity" and smooth things over, he gifted Achilles a large amount of money and goods.
Achilles never cared much for such items, so he took a big pause to think about whether or not he should put his spear down.
Odysseus, foreseeing this situation, dashed to the site of Agamemnon's public apology, mediated their strife, and spared the Greek army from an inner collapse.
Has Ate been, as Agamemnon claimed, ceaselessly spreading folly, delusion, lies, and malice since the moment she was discarded?
Were the absurdities of Human Order all caused by a god dumped on the Earth's surface scattering madness data?
The answer is no.
Human Order is not ill-defined enough to be controlled by the discontinued deity of folly.
Through its long journey, mankind obtained
idiocy,
madness, and
doom by its own merits.
It was all accomplished by their own hands, with no influence from a disembodied intelligence that lost its godhood.
The discarded goddess never lamented its powerlessness nor resented the gods that banished it—
She only extolled mankind and the world.
Mankind's folly had no symbol or cause, and for that reason, madness could never vanish from its world.
Therefore, instead of rotting in her needlessness, she was integrated into the world from inception.
Mankind was foolish and wise. They already contained the dichotomy of doom and glory, without any need for her to go out of her way to implant her madness.
And that is what will bring mankind to its inevitable perfect form.
Unhindered by how the depths of time eventually decayed the Olympians.
And no god is left alive to determine whether this future was Ate's prophecy or the delusions of the one merged with madness itself.
ー Fun and joy, fun and joy. Hear, glorious gods. Hear, my father, Keraunos incarnate! I commend you for dragging me by the hair, swinging me around, and slamming me on the earth. I'll be alive as a companion of mankind while you disappear into the spiral of myth. No, I've been part of humanity since inception. It's this concrete form of mine that was a dream and illusion all along. Because my perfect form, madness, originated within humanity.
Ate, goddess governing madness—a wave of information who gladly dissolved herself within the world.
One
tiny ripple of this wave withstood the test of time and long later morphed into a form that didn't fit the category of either human or Natural Spirit.
Folly itself, this intelligence that existed only as a wave, gained a physical form.
One unit of
folly manifested in humanoid form.
Despite inheriting goddess Ate's characteristics, he gradually upgraded himself into someone else entirely.
In a certain land, he met the myriad radiances of water.
Under the tutelage of a portion of those countless flickering lights—the Lake Spirits, each a kaleidoscope of different facets—he learned magecraft.
He saw an incubus antagonize the most powerful of the Lake Spirits and incorporated the concept of illusions into his madness.
The incubus didn't express a shred of interest in him because he knew the new individual was nothing more than a booster, devoid of human emotions.
That's how he perceived the living
folly born of Ate.
And after gaining the power of magecraft, the son of the goddess began to wander the world.
He never guided or confounded human beings.
Because he knew there was no need.
Humans were complete from inception.
They contained both sanity and insanity, and both good and evil, from inception.
As such, all he needed to do was—give them a push.
Instead of being a leader guiding them, he stood behind them, only whispering in their ears.
Only amplifying ripples, like a wave.
That's how the living
folly mixed itself into human society and continued to love human confusion.
For decades, centuries, and millennia to come.
Until the inevitable moment when the
folly will offer his life to the wondrous ripple of light and shadow.
Much like the saint who offered her insane good deeds to God and was accomplished in war for her dazzling rationality—
and a general who was forced by sanity to curse God and chose a path of madness and ruin for the sake of the saint.
ー So much beauty in the world and humanity. I want to be assimilated into them by disappearing when they do.
Years after watching the endpoint of the madness of the general he considered his best friend, it was the
folly's turn to take the gallows.
That's after he had already planted
replication resources all over the globe to replace his vanishing self in the role of watching the world.
The name that the
folly happened to be using at the time of his execution, and that consequently was recorded in history, was—
François Prelati.
X X
A few years ago, Germany, mountainous area
"Ooh, that's sorta weird."
A boy roamed a forest confined by large trees and ice.
The upper stream of a river crossing Germany.
The climate in this land disconnected from the world was different from its surroundings, confined in a layered veil of snow as if that place alone was frozen in time.
A boy walked through these snow-covered mountain paths.
"The natural boundaries of the land are still online. I managed to get through by
deceiving the traps I triggered, but the people in there must be informed that I'm here."
He leisurely climbed the mountains shrouded in snow, without ever running out of breath.
Surrounded by silence, all that reached his ears were creaks of the branches and trunks of the trees freezing.
The sky above his track was pure white, looking as if the sun was also frozen.
However, this icy sky didn't interrupt the boy's walk.
Every step he took rewrote that world.
At a 1-meter diameter of the boy, the snowy grass instantly thawed into vibrantly green poison herbs.
And as he advanced his walk, the herbs froze and shattered, returning to the same snow dune.
That was an advanced illusion deceiving the space around him.
Any mage could find a far easier way to march through the snow with a combination of magecraft and Mystic Codes.
But the boy mage went out of his way to disturb the snow world through a special illusion that required vast amounts of dexterity and magical energy.
"Even making this much of a mess of their lawn, not a single attack homunculus comes my way. They couldn't have changed headquarters without my knowing, could they?"
Eventually, the mage who looked like a boy reached a castle.
The base of a clan made up of the innermost secrets related to the Holy Grail.
X X
At the most inaccessible part of the montane forest, there was a space-confining boundary.
In its interior, a land isolated from the outside.
A sudden abnormality occurred in this space ruled by silence.
Unexpected cracks formed in the otherwise empty space between the trees, similar to gaps between two pieces in a jigsaw puzzle—and for the next scene, a tackily-decorated wooden hammer smashed one of the pieces of the puzzle and the boy mage appeared out of the hole opened by it.
"No reaction even for bursting their barriers?? No way, is this place really empty?"
The boy peeked his head outside the puzzle piece-shaped "hole" and observed his surroundings.
A magnificent European castle harmonized with the fantastical snowscape around it.
It had no castle town, making it all the more conspicuous, and its appearance formed the image of a place one wouldn't want to step into.
But the boy knew that this was just camouflage.
The castle was magnificent only on the surface, and any modern engineer (wouldn't even need to be a mage) would be able to notice the glaring incongruences in its blueprint, door placements, and the internal structure of each room.
The architecture made it plain for anyone to see that this was not a living space for royalty or titled nobility, much less a fortress at a strategic location, it was a large and extremely efficient power plant.
A place one wouldn't want to step into? Beyond that. This was a secret facility purposely designed to reject others.
Its construction was beautiful like the craftwork of the fae, delicate like a glass sculpture, and robust in a way that showed its vast history. Normal humans faced with its front gate would feel overwhelmed enough to bury themselves in the snow.
The boy, completely unfazed, entered the castle with bold steps, as if he owned the place.
Instead, he watched every corner in search of any obstacles aside from the traps and boundaries installed in ancient times.
"
No way. You've got to be kidding me."
The boy advanced through the snowlit courtyard, disabling the boundaries along the way.
"Heeey? Is there really no one here? I'm taking the castle for myself, ok? Maybe I should make a bunch of Trojan Horses and set them up to come out of here for the audience? Letting this loser capture your castle would shame you for generations to come, you know? Come out or I'll spread the gossip all over the Clock Tower. Hellooo?"
Done with his provocations, the boy produced a cane.
Spinning his cane unleashed a rainbow that spread decorating the castle's interior in the image of a Halloween party.
Illusion-generated automata roamed the place, the flying humanoid form of the pure-white Trojan Horse circled the sky, and the chalk drawings on the walls, with limited animations, performed Scene 1 of Rhinegold, Act 1 of Wagner's celebrated opera Nibelungenlied.
The boy's illusions also created a monster audience to watch the monster spectacle, bringing a chaotic atmosphere to the castle isolated by snow.
His actions affronted the castle's dignified looks—but still provoked no reaction.
"There's really… no one here? C'mon, you know that there's nothing more boring than getting no reactions. I'd be impressed if you're doing it on purpose. You know just the perfect way to annoy me!"
The boy mage left the automata to continue their mad dance in the courtyard and headed further down the castle with a sour face.
And then—
When exploring the castle, he raised an eyebrow at what he found.
Somewhere beyond the snow's reach—on an altar resembling an oratory, there were countless unmoving homunculi posed like they were offering prayers.
They were deactivated, or more aptly, abandoned.
In terms of soul and information, it'd be no exaggeration to say they were disposed of.
Physically beautiful homunculi.
No damage was dealt to their pretty appearances, but there was no data left within them.
It felt like a visual statement that those dolls never had life.
And then, when the boy ventured further into the room of the family head, he could reach
only half of his goal.
There's a reason for that.
The boy's goal was a conversation with the head of the distinguished family of homunculi headquartered in this castle, the Einzberns.
The figure before his eyes was indeed the head Jubstacheit von Einzbern.
But it was only his
figure.
"Even the stone slab interface… Even his main avatar…"
The man had white hair and beard and was garbed in an elegant priest-like robe.
His face had wrinkles of age but still felt like a finished piece of art.
His eyes had a sharp light and seemed to look at the boy.
But they actually weren't.
Jubstacheit's eyes weren't focused on anyone or anywhere.
They had already lost such function.
A chair was installed only to give him the appearance of a family head to outsiders. He sat on it with his fingers crossed, postured like someone who just lowered his head after staring at the ceiling reminiscing of the past.
Time felt completely stopped for the boy as he naturally imagined this scenario.
His skin resembling white porcelain was more hardened than any pure-white jewel, having turned into a humanoid crystal that left everything behind in the past.
"Oh, ok."
The boy touched the elder doll's hand and began inspecting its links.
The boy already knew that this body was an
interface and the real him was the stone slab, a magical AI.
From there, he learned that the stone slab associated with this interface had also ceased its functions.
It was no temporary shutdown. The entire system that contained his AI annulled itself to an extent where it couldn't be recycled by third parties.
Not even his greatest illusion could accomplish his
reboot.
The system was dismantled while leaving its physical parts displayed in a perfect state. Seeing this practical work of art, the boy slowly opened his mouth.
"You already
ran out of hopes, Einzberns?"
The boy monologued watching the formerly metaphorical dolls now turned into literal dolls.
"When it became evident that Fuyuki's ritual had no future, you people chose to discontinue yourselves, huh…"
The expression on the boy's face changed multiple times through the next few seconds.
Mockery, sorrow, joy, anger.
In a moment of silence, his face betrayed that he didn't know which was the right emotion for him to feel at the moment—and at the end of this cycle, he strongly hit the tip of his cane against the floor.
In an instant, the mood of the castle flipped 180.
The boy negated the illusions he previously deployed in the castle, restoring the castle to its former dignity.
The twist in space compressed itself and engulfed the boy until the distortion burst like a soap bubble, leaving behind a respectfully kneeling boy.
"
You have my apologies for the ruckus I caused while you were frozen."
No reply, as expected.
But his words were a sincere statement to the humanoid interface of the deactivated Jubstacheit, the artificial intelligence created by magecraft—a magnificent homunculus.
"Construct who gained enough humanity to fulfill your duties, accept your chagrins, and give up on your dreams; magnificent
tool who challenged yourself to show all of mankind what lay beyond the walls of the Third and sought Justeaze's era; you have the respect of this vestige of François Prelati—vulgar malice who loves humanity without being loved back, defiles without being defiled backs, and toys with it as much as I am toyed back. The child of the downgraded goddess Ate commends you."
The boy bowed his head, none of his previous goofiness remaining.
"I don't know what led the humans to create you. Now that you're deactivated, I don't want to rob you of your entrails and spell formulae. I'll just express my approval of your kind's dream and the history you poured into it. I'll laugh at the silliness of accomplishing your dream soulless as you are, admire your foolish honesty, and direct my anger at the unfair world that disallows your project to bear fruit."
After speaking like a reader who finished a deeply moving book that got him invested in the characters, the boy mage–as he called himself, a vestige of François Prelati–giggled awkwardly with a vaguely lonely smile, quite different from the kind of smile he usually bears.
"They genuinely bet all of their chips on the unit that they sent to the Fifth Holy Grail War."
The boy by the name François Prelati turned his back on the doll who once served as the head of the Einzbern family, making it clear that there was no point in him staying there any longer, and mumbled in disappointment.
"I wish I could have met her. But Makiri's worms really have too much of an advantage over me…"
His words stopped there.
Because something was off in that frozen castle.
"
...?"
After confirming this bizarre spike in magical energy, the boy carefully searched for its source.
He eventually reached the castle's basement, where he found the homunculi's Repair Device—in a room that doubled as a warehouse and a graveyard.
"What's this?"
Inside this device that he first assumed to be a special coffin made by an alchemist, there was a homunculus yet to fully cease functioning.
She had the form of a beautiful woman, and checking the formula of her base spell, he could confirm that she wasn't a dormant homunculus nor a new unit waiting to be first initialized.
The name "Fillia" on her coffin's label jogged François's memories.
"Hey…I've heard this name before."
(If I recall correctly, one unit escaped from the Einzbern and had to be forced out of operation by the Clock Tower's God's Holder… Fillia was the name she used while pretending to be human.)
"If this is that unit… Why is she not inactive… or rather,
why is she not decommissioned like the rest?"
Puzzled, François observed the homunculus, simulating cycles of dissection and regeneration through illusions.
"Hm, her combat organs are all destroyed. Well, I wouldn't have expected any different, knowing she's been in an all-out battle against a Sealing Designation enforcer, but wouldn't the fact that they didn't get rid of her implies it would be potentially necessary to repair her later?"
(If anything, her Magic Circuit quantity looks higher than what she was modeled with. That's not a normal homunculus. She's specialized for a specific purpose…)
At this point, his train of thought led him to the Holy Grail War.
"A spare in case anything happened to the 5th's Lesser Grail… no, that's not it. Probably a sample for the next round, assuming the 5th War wasn't going to be a critical failure…? Instead of defining her as a homunculus, they defined her as fully discarded
recyclable scraps or
reference material, and that's what let her escape the forced shutdown…?"
The role of the Lesser Grail is to temporarily pool the magical energy previously used to mold the defeated Heroic Spirits. Considering this unit was resilient enough to fight against a Sealing Designation enforcer, it was very plausible that she was meant to be a prototype for the next Lesser Grail.
But she was just an unneeded stranger now that the Einzberns discontinued the ritual and themselves along it.
Despite her deviations from the regular framework, she was still a homunculus built from the same mold as them, therefore the same deactivation measures might have been applied to her too.
However, as a consequence of the God's Holder's blow destroying her systems, she was unable to properly process the shutdown command. That was how François imagined it.
"Meh, the cause doesn't matter. What's important is that you're still here."
With a sinister smile, François dragged the homunculus–who while the only one not petrified, was still infinitely close to death–out of her coffin.
His eyes had a mixture of nefariousness and anticipation toward "who was still alive", directly opposite to the respect previously he showed to Jubstacheit. It was with those eyes that he professed what was half monologue and half dialogue with the unawakening homunculus.
"Until just now, I thought I was going to have to make do by modding a homunculus of the Musik, a family of ancient Einzbern disciples. Their Toole series is pretty high-spec, and most importantly, fits neatly with my personal tastes… Oh, hold on."
The tendons of the homunculus were magically severed to disable her self-regenerative functions.
While tracing her scars, the illusions began deceiving those very scars.
"But with you around, problems solved. You're an ultra-class vessel."
After basic repairs, he lifted the united named Fillia and walked to the castle gates.
He giggled awkwardly with undertones of sadism, contrary to the awkward giggle from his encounter with Jubstacheit's corpse.
"No idea what Faldeus's boys will do to your mind and memories though!"
X X
Present day, Snowfield urban area, back alley
"...Calm down. There's no sign of enemies nearby.", Haruri whispered to herself, exposed to the unstopping winds in a dim-lit back alley.
She lent her shoulder to a petite shadow with a bizarre shape.
It was undoubtedly one of the Heroic Spirits made manifest in Snowfield.
Berserker in the form of a mechanical doll as small as her summoner.
Devoid of her almost hill-sized physique, she could now fit inside the trunk of a car. She depended on Haruri to support her stumbling feet.
It was clear that she fell into an abnormal state that deprived her of her ability to go into spirit form—but she wasn't losing her Saint Graph. Haruri knew that much.
"It's fine. I'll protect you."
Her words sounded lax if taken out of context, but they were spoken with distinct determination. Her eyes had no sign of the fears and anxieties she used to hold.
"..."
Meanwhile, the Servant didn't answer.
With or without a Berserker's Mad Enhancement, she looked like someone who never had language functions to begin with. But from Ishtar's conversations, Haruhi guessed she was capable of understanding her wills.
Her body remembered the time she was almost killed by Berserker's initial rampage.
She didn't forget or overcome her fear.
Haruri learned to accept her fear.
It was by accepting it that she could continue to walk by her Servant's side.
Even if the dream couldn't last longer than a day, since they defended their temple together, Haruri considered Berserker a follower of the same goddess.
The goddess' descent to the underworld didn't change that.
She had the option to admit defeat and seek protection at the Church, but admitting defeat meant forsaking Berserker.
ー Take good care… of Huwawa.
Haruhi recalled the mercy in goddess Ishtar's last words to her.
ー She may not look like it… but she's a really lonely girl.
How could she abandon Huwawa—this Berserker?
She made her decision.
If her feet were still on the ground despite the deep sorrow that comes with losing the subject of her religion, it must be because she still has something to protect next to her.
And infiltrating the city is what Haruri chose to break out of her disadvantageous situation.
She didn't know that the city was on the verge of being erased.
She could sense that the city was in danger but assumed that was wholly provoked by the demon-like Heroic Spirit that formed past the forest.
As she'd been in strong contact with the might and mind of the goddess, she didn't have much time to consider what obscure politicians would be thinking about all of this.
Although, even if she was in a fully rational state—Haruri might never have imagined that they intended to drop multiple non-magical weapons of mass destruction on the city.
"Without a team, we'll be easy prey… And our options for a partner would be Chief Officer Orlando Reeve or…"
She knew the police was giving Noble Phantasm to human officers.
Haruri judged that this was the remaining camp she still had a chance to negotiate with.
Alternatively, if a Heroic Spirit was powerful enough to mass-produce Noble Phantasm, they could also be able to restore Berserker's Saint Graph.
Possible or not, Haruri had already determined herself to never abandon Berserker.
Because now protecting Berserker was a priority over Haruri's own wish to ruin the world.
However—the voice of a troublemaker echoed through the alleys to mock her.
"Hold up. Berserker? Girl? What happened to you? What's wrong with you, even?"
"!"
A chill ran down Haruri's spine.
"She's so deflated! Both in body and in magical energy…!"
Turning to the source of the voice, she found a girl with a seductive smile.
"Francesca…"
Faced with the
mastermind who invited her to this Grail War, Haruri raised her guard without shaking Berserker off her shoulder.
That's who brought her there, but she didn't trust her in the slightest.
Despite her blatant caution, she hadn't noticed another boy above her in the back alley until his voice rang.
"Oh, that's because she got inserted as a piece in the ritual to recreate the Mesopotamian Age of Gods. All that doping she got to surpass the domain of a normal Servant gotta come with a cost, you know?"
"...Who?!"
Haruri's voice came out on reflex, directed at another Francesca.
But on a closer look, it was a boy with similar facial features, sitting on an emergency staircase handrail above with a joyful smile.
The boy's smile was not belittling, but at the same time, too noticeably suspicious to be called innocent. It gave him the presence of someone merely enjoying a movie.
"...!?"
Haruri's first instinct was to assume he was Francesca's illusion.
She believed that creating a genderbend of herself with illusions was the kind of pointless tomfoolery Francesca would nonchalantly do.
But she quickly realized that was not the case.
Through special privileges granted to Masters, special information entered Haruri's sight the moment she laid eyes on the boy.
"A Servant…?!"
"Hi, nice to meet you. My
Master self told me a lot about you.", said the boy, approaching Haruri's face after casually dropping from the handrail. "The girl who was dying to exact revenge on the world of magecraft is now a goddess' head priestess serving as a walking crutch for the forest guard."
"..."
Many bees floated around the cautious Haruri, lined up in organized rows to generate a physical barrier.
The bees were still lapis-colored, but now that the goddess sank to the underworld, the level of arcanity and energy within them was hugely downgraded.
The wary Haruri kept the conversation going as she still hadn't figured out their goal and methods of attack.
"I have a question for you?"
"Oh, what is it? I'll tell you anything I can, okay? We're way past the point of keeping things under wraps!", said the amused Francesca.
"Why me?", Haruri asked.
"Huh? You mean why you were picked as a Master?"
"Yes. Even counting only the spellcasters unaffiliated with the Clock Tower, I'm far from the most competent person you could find."
She raised this question multiple times before.
The world was full of capable spellcasters who never stepped into the Mage's Association.
Her mentor, for one, could talk in length about how she would never trust Francesca, but no famed mercenary spellcaster would let such emotions speak louder than the paycheck.
Haruri ignored the obvious question for the sake of her revenge against the world of magecraft, but now that her standing as a priestess overwrote her thirst for revenge, nothing was holding her back from asking.
And Francesca dropped the answer to her question without hesitation.
"Oh? That was just
a whim. No big deal."
"A… whim?"
Haruri's face showed how she was caught off-guard. Spinning the parasol in her hands fast, Francesca elaborated.
"The info Faldeus inherited from his family was on Fuyuki's third, but the Grail War I researched the hardest was the fourth, you see? And just as you said, this war counted with the participation of a very famous spellcaster. Oh, now that you mention it, it was during my research about him that I picked up Sigma. Good times…", she spoke with nostalgia before directing a daring smile at Haruri and putting the conversation back on track. "And then I set my eyes on you, Haruri, someone minorly associated with him, so I could share some of the good times my
best friend had in the Fourth Holy Grail War! No greater or lesser reason for it, got it?"
"That… was why?"
"Oh, but don't get me wrong, dear Haruri. I may mock your will to take revenge on the world of magecraft, but I'll never invalidate it. I'm rooting for you, even. That whole part with the goddess pulling you by the strings was kinda boring, but now it's looking like you're a worshipper of your own volition, so you got my approval there. All clear?"
After her carefree speech, Francesca used an illusion to transform a nearby trash can into a pile of candy and dove into it.
"But the irony! The randos drawn by the Grail War rumors and gathered for the initial primer summons turned out to be nastier than the roster handpicked for my whims. Can you believe it?"
Francesca narrated the events of a mere 5 days ago as if they happened in a distant past.
"One guy went crazy from touching the 'key' to the treasury, one guy summoned his Heroic Spirit in broad daylight on a populated park, one guy wasn't nice enough to his doggy, etc. All people who crucially failed as mages one way or another! And to top it off… You won't believe this, a VAMPIRE joined the mix!"
Francesca spoke not to Haruri but to the shadow on the opposite side of the alley.
In response—a man came out of the shade, phasing the world.
Seeing the man's bold smile
despite his snapped neck, Haruri figured out who he was.
"...! You were at the temple's entrance…"
"Oh, it's the little Borzak successor… kh…huhu…huhuhu, lovely to see you in good health.", said the young man–Jester Karture–for his introduction. By grabbing his hair and lifting it, his neck bones began to repair themselves with loud cracks.
Put off by the plain demonstration that he wasn't human, Haruri nonetheless opened her mouth.
"I was convinced that the Dead Apostle was here by your invitation, Francesca."
"Huh? Prejudiced much? You make me sound like some wicked faerie who only cares about watching shit hit the fan."
"Ahaha! Half of the sentence is accurate!", continued the laughing boy who looked like Francesca. "We generally side with humanity! More like, we and those guys who reject Human Order don't see eye to eye. Whether Human Order perishes or blooms into the cosmos,
we want humanity's conclusion to come from its own hands."
"Bold words coming from someone who set up this massive magecraft ritual.", Jester clicked his tongue in response.
"C'mon, what else was I supposed to do? It was a facet of humanity that wished I did it.", Francesca answered Jester with a seductive smile. "I, we rather, don't care much about non-humans. If, instead of the Dead Apostle Jester Karture, you exposed the form you had when you were a human…Dorothea…the tragic mage banished from the Association despite her immense power…then you'd have my full support, you know?"
"...!"
"?"
Jester's teeth-grinding confused Haruri.
(Are they old acquaintances…? No, I can easily imagine Francesca researching her opponents in a matter of days.)
With that confident assumption, Haruri maintained herself alert, while Francesca offered Jester a handshake, with her eyes sparkling like the devil proposing a deal.
However, her extended hand still gripped her parasol.
"I'll never lead you by the hand anywhere. Just give you a push in the direction you want to go. But if that's what you want, my encouraging push can come with all the impulse and propulsion of a jet engine, got it?"
That moment—
didn't escape Haruri's eyes.
She noticed that when Francesca said "I'll never lead you by the hand anywhere", the boy presumed to be a Servant rolled his eyes with an almost inperceptible awkwardness to his smile.
But without further change to his expression, Haruri thought this didn't mean much and proceeded to ask Francesca a question.
"And why would that bring you to me? You're not really going to help me, are you?"
"I'm here to encourage you, what else? I thought I should show you what your
options are… although I'm not telling you which I recommend."
"Our options? Fancy hearing that from the one who tried to use me as a pawn against the goddess.", said a doubtful Jester.
"That was your own choice, remember? You said it yourself that you'd keep making moves at that Assassin girl until you drew your last breath.", the Heroic Spirit boy laughed.
"...That I won't deny. My gorgeous Assassin managed to endure the tyranny of the goddess! No, I'd have preferred this to have been her moment of lapse, but thinking about how I'll be able to see her challenging a powerful opponent for the sake of her faith one more time fills me with the heat I thought I had lost when I became a Dead Apostle."
Jester's enraptured body shook.
Haruri felt something creepy within him but figured that the discussion wouldn't go anywhere if she gave him any attention and gave her independent response to the Heroic Spirit boy.
"My option…I already made my choice to work under Chief Orlando Reeve. I don't need your words to lead me astray."
The Heroic Spirit boy and his Master girl reacted to Haruri's strong refusal by exchanging glances and—
"You should have told us sooner."
"Talk about perfect timing."
Their faces beamed from an unexpected strike of good luck.
"That's all the more reason to listen to us, you know?"
The girl elaborated in sync with the boy calmly pointing deeper into the back alley.
"Because that was the
option we had to offer you."
He pointed to the alley's exit.
Where a man stood frozen.
Eyes locked not on Francesca or Haruri, but on Jester.
"You're… Assassin's…"
"Hm?"
Jester noticed the glare directed at him, looked at the policeman standing at the alley's exit, paused to think, and…
"Oh!", he remembered the face he had forgotten and shrugged. "It's the valiant youth who fed me his right hand."
He couldn't continue talking.
It took one breath before the policeman's face was right in front of him.
Before he could feel startled at the closed gap, he had a glistening knife pointed at his heart.
"Wha…"
Jester dodged by a hair's breadth and wall-jumped his way up the alley's emergency staircase.
"Whew, that was close…Wasn't this thing loaded with Hydra venom? That's the kind of wicked toxin that kills concepts, so despite me having abandoned the course of the living, I still wouldn't want to have a taste of that!"
"Bastard…!"
"I have no idea how that works, but I see you still got a foot outside the human domain."
Jester could sense the policemen fighting the Cerberus-riding bowman in front of the hospital and knew for a fact that one of them had a sudden power increase back then.
Jester had assumed that was a temporary buff but updated his theory to it being the kind that remains active for as long as the Servant is manifested and grew one level more wary.
Someone gaining physical abilities comparable to a Servant normally wouldn't bother Jester, but at that moment, not only he was weakened but also the opponent had a poison dagger capable of corroding anything.
He couldn't afford to deal with obstacles to his reencounter with his dearest Assassin, so he kept climbing the walls and disappeared into the rooftop.
"Wai…"
"Don't you think it's dangerous to pursue him all on your own, John Wingard?", Francesca called John before he ran after Jester.
"...!"
The startled Officer John stopped in his tracks and looked at Francesca.
"I remember you… You're Chief's…"
"Yup, Orlando's mage friend. So you got nothing to worry about, ok?"
"And who is the woman? And the… what she's carrying on her shoulder?"
Seeing that John knew Francesca, Jester hesitantly looked in Haruri's direction and waited for answers about her and Berserker.
"Oh, I'm…"
(Huh? That… Heroic Spirit that looked like Francesca… is gone?)
Not letting herself be taken by the confusion from the sudden disappearance of a Servant, she began to explain her situation.
"I'm Haruri Borzak. I'm this girl's… Berserker's Master. I'm here to propose an alliance to the police chief, another participant in this Holy Grail War."
Haruri's words were unclouded.
No longer feeling any of the timidness that occupied her back when she summoned Berserker, she confronted the powerful John as a proper Master.
(This is a gamble. If the chief is already at the stage of forcing other Heroic Spirits out of the competition…)
It was reasonable to assume that if she let anyone know Berserker was weakened, they'd see it as the best chance to attack her.
When Haruri revealed her background, she was prepared to make herself a human shield for Berserker.
But John's gaze on her was confused.
"Berserker…?"
After a moment of thought, he lowered his weapon but still didn't put it away.
"Oh… The other Berserker, not Flat's…? Wait, that's not something for me to decide either way. I also need to report about the vampire."
And so, John activated a small Mystic Code.
That was a perfectly natural thing to do while phone communications were restricted but Haruri felt strange observing the policeman in uniform operating a Mystic Code.
(The arcane will eventually die out and everything magecraft can do will converge into Human Order's technology.)
Haruri joined this Holy Grail War to wish revenge upon the world of magecraft but with or without her doing anything, the Mage's Association and its arcana would eventually be gone from the planet's surface.
Still, she didn't believe this cataclysm would happen during her lifetime. That's precisely why she wished to enact her revenge with her own hands.
(Are the mages fighting this Holy Grail War really trying to resist this? I mean, if the goal was to cling to possibilities, they should have just accepted Ishtar as their goddess from the start. Why would their ilk do such a thing to my goddess…?)
Another grudge, separate from her revenge, was about to sprout.
But right before her heart could be sullied—
The small Berserker next to her tightly gripped Haruri's sleeve with her mechanical arm resembling that of a human.
"...!"
That was when Haruri's hollow heart regained its lapis-lazuli glow.
(What am I even thinking? Making my goddess into a pretext for a grudge is the most insulting thing I could do to her.)
Berserker had felt the disturbance in Haruri's emotions throught their magical energy connection and got concerned.
"I'm sorry… You saved me."
The soul inside Berserker smiled, confirming to herself that the girl she almost killed once was a good person.
"Thank you for guarding my heart."
Hearing that, Berserker loosened the grip of her mechanical arm with relief and gently pulled closer to Haruri.
She still looked like a robotic doll but, strangely enough, Haruri felt she was a like a small child.
But she never found out if this impression was Berserker's true essence or an invention of her head.
John had finished his call during Haruri's interaction with Berserker.
"He pushes himself too hard… I can't believe he's leaving to fight in the front lines
again...", he said with clear unrest.
"Oh, did you send him the word?", asked an enthused Francesca.
John turned to Haruri and Berserker with a serious expression and sheathed the venomous blade merged with his prosthetic hand back into the arm.
"
The chief is visiting a base not far from here… He said he wants to talk to you there."
X X
On the same block, on the rooftop of an apartment building
"Hey, wait up. You got no reason to dash away.", someone called out to Jester on the rooftop of the building facing the back alley before he could run away.
François Prelati, who had disappeared from the alley, appeared behind Jester.
"You returned to the city just to look for my Master and I, so you gotta have something you want. The card you need to affront that Assassin girl. For all that you hate being someone's handmaid, you're so cornered that you need to ask for help. Did I get all that right?"
"Yes, as much as I loathe to admit. However… I will not be teaming up with the cops, you hear me? Not that they would ever accept me, but if they did, that detestable priest could catch word of it."
"Makes sense, if you take the words at face value.", Prelati commented about Jester's reply with a sinister smile on his youthful face.
"Mm?"
Prelati made it clear that he knew more than his instigating words let on.
"You really should take a look, you know? What you do with this information is up to you."
X X
Alleyway
"It's down this alley. There's a boundary to keep civilians away."
He guided Haruri to a warehouse at the end of a blind alley.
It looked like a hang-out spot from a delinquent movie, but naturally, there was no one to be found there.
The warehouse contained a mill resembling a damaged car parts store, repurposed into a simplified mage workshop that produced boundaries like the one keeping people away from there.
"..."
John stepped first past the half-open shutter of the garage to calm down the wary Haruri.
"I brought her, Chief. She didn't show any sign of hostility on the way here and her Servant's Saint Graph is mostly unstable."
Haruri could hear John's voice coming from the workshop but remained nervous since she couldn't see what was happening inside.
Francesca spoke from behind to spur them into entering.
"It's fiiiine. I'm the one who guided you here! If it looks like he'll kill you without giving you a chance to fight back, it's obvious I'll be nice and help you escape."
Haruri squinted, not trusting a single word, but when she needed any help she could get, even that felt encouraging enough to let her step into the garage.
And then—
Haruri strongly regretted that step.
X X
Rooftop
Jester spied on the garage through a familiar hidden in the shadows. He raised his eyebrow to the Caster behind him, François Prelati.
"THAT is what you're calling an option?"
"Seems so. It was my Master who talked him into it, so I don't know."
"I know I'm not one to talk but… you and your Master are sick.", Jester joked awkwardly.
Jester peered into Prelati's eyes.
There was no faltering or abandon to be found in his eyes distorted by enjoyment. They displayed pure curiosity and nothing else.
Seeing these eyes confirmed Jester's suspicions.
This Heroic Spirit was indeed different from the Dead Apostles.
Completely different even from Van-Fem, who was relatively moderate in his treatment of mankind.
This Heroic Spirit truly loved humanity.
Esteemed it, even.
But he also knew his regards were far from benevolent.
The
system known as Prelati gives people the push they need to move forward and does so without regard for whether the direction they're facing is the path to glory or the edge of a precipice.
And then, after thinking things from another angle, Jester spoke with a twisted grin of relief.
"Then I'll choose the route of the temporary bystander."
"Hoho? Do you seriously think both you and this city still have time for that?"
Prelati tried to provoke him with a squinting grin, but Jester laughed.
"No to both, and that's exactly why I'll do it. I'll probably only have one opportunity to reload the cylinder. I need to carefully evaluate… whose body
should I load?"
And then he inspected the figure he could see through his familiar.
"That body is a candidate. Big demerits…
but I'd have a good time sullying my darling Assassin with his mud."
X X
"Why… how?"
Haruri's face had gone pale—A familiar face was inside the garage.
"Its Saint Graph may be weakened, but this is a Berserker Heroic Spirit. Be careful, Chief.", spoke John in a serious tone as he watched Haruri come in.
But Haruri could no longer hear him.
Every nerve in her body froze. Contrastingly, the man John called "Chief" didn't even look at Haruri.
"Well done…"
His hellish voice felt like the fingers of frozen corpses clawing at the listener's back.
"Thank you. But there's still a lot more work to do to protect our city!"
"Then continue watching the city."
"Yes, sir!"
But hearing this voice, John's eyes sparkled like he had just received warm words of incentive from a father. He turned back to Haruri.
"I'll be honest. I don't trust you completely since you let your Heroic Spirit loose in the industrial district. But since the Chief says he trusts you, I… We will help you however we can. Be assured of that."
Looking her in the eyes, John spoke honest and heartfelt words.
That delivered an answer.
Through that, Haruri could figure out the state the man named John was in.
That raised a new question.
For how long has he been like this?
"We and our chief are facing this Grail War with conviction and determination, but we won't do anything unreasonable to an opponent who chose to submit. I believe that's the Chief's idea of justice.", said John upon turning to the garage's exit to make Haruri feel better.
He wasn't lying to lower her guard.
He wasn't speaking out of soulless courtesy either.
Despite admitting that he doesn't fully trust Haruri, he cast those words at her out of genuine good will.
But Haruri was unable to answer.
Understanding his good intentions made it all the more difficult for her to find the words to tell John then.
Having watched the two interact, the "Chief" sent a message to the leaving John with his usual grave voice.
"At the moment you leave the boundary…
forget that you came here and your reason for it."
"Yes, Chief."
John responded like that was a casual greeting and strolled out of the garage.
Watching him not even question that last command confirmed Haruri's suspicions.
She was positive that the instant he left this boundary, his encounter with her and that vampire Jester would be deleted from his memories.
And that he'd then
return to his real chief and continue to follow his idea of justice.
Being the only ones left, Haruri and the "Chief" faced off.
Francesca was outside with only her head coming into the garage. She waited for Haruri's next move with a big smile.
Despite feeling Francesca's presence behind her, Haruri couldn't take her eyes off the man in the garage.
"Are you the
option Francesca was talking about?"
She tightened and charged magical energy into the arm she was using to support Berserker.
Determined to pour all of her magical energy and the power of the remaining Command Spell into Berserker if it came to the worst, Haruri quietly spoke the name of the man she was facing.
His ominous magical energy was so dense that it was hard to believe he was still sane.
It resembled squirming mud and by circulating it through his entire body, he made it into a
controllable cloak. His name:
"Bazdilot Cordelion…!"
X X
"The curtain call is nigh."
"Will it come down to an epilogue or an extinction? Either one is fine by us."
"Keep watching the show."
"Come closer for a clearer view!"
Watching the situation unfold, Francesca and François whispered simultaneously so no one else could hear.
"The spectacle is the infinite evolution and potential that you humans display!"
"Evolution of madness and potential for folly!"
Originally Posted by Dullahan
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