Fate/Mythologie

[You]

35/ Nine Notched Pelt

~Interlude~

As Archer bounced from tree to tree pruning an immeasurable number of root balls and branches he was reminded of Amyomone’s suffocatingly moist air and lichen overgrowths staining the surrounding vegetation. The enemy he faced in that swamp was similarly botanical.

No fear — at least trees didn’t spit curse-like venom.

One fear — instead of his quick-thinking, hunky nephew, Archer’s companion was an insufferable magus who identified as a musician. The Tuner’s traditionally dashing good looks and gallant act appealed to Archer in that

kouros

boytoy

way he couldn’t stand after two weeks of continuous adventuring. Nevertheless, despite his annoyance, most of the time, Archer couldn’t help himself. But this Tuner? No thank you! At least Archer’s former lovers had enough self-respect to move on and define their own lives; the man-child’s slavish devotion to their mistress was wholly based on fictitious self-pity. But Archer never made a remark because no matter how honorable his own motivation sounded on his divine lips, it was equally empty.

“Situation confirmed,” his mistress sent a message through their telepathic link. “Archer cleared to invoke Noble Phantasm.”

“What of the Tuner?”

“Assistance unnecessary. First, exterminate Lancer in a manner befitting an Einzbern Servant.”

“Your command is my dearest wish, mistress.”

Archer severed the link before the scoffs overtook his mind. That insufferable Tuner was not fit to spar with a child let alone duel a Lamyros. As for the oppressively agreeable boy-child playing pretend Lamyros slayer, nothing more needed to be said. Whatever foolishness they had needlessly thrust upon themselves, his mistress’s order stood as tall as his honor. Then, like with any other of his legendary exploits, all Archer needed to do was perfectly save the day.

“Kreeee —”

The screech resembling a rusted hand-saw shaving away a slate board came from the bronze birds Archer summoned, the monstrous Stymphalian Birds. For a time during the Age of Gods, these birds with metallic feathers and poisonous dung terrorized an Arcadian marsh. For his Sixth Labor, Archer drove them away from the peninsula and back to their homeland. As fate would have it, Archer’s captain and crew would later encounter the same birds during their voyage to reclaim a throne. The bronze birds were a deadly mystery adapted for this swampish terrain and most importantly, they always craved meat, making them the perfect hunters.

“Caw, Caw —” The birds streamed ahead, weaving in and out of the waves of lignin bent on oblation.

They had caught Lancer’s scent far too quickly. Almost as if the birds knew what Lancer was the moment they materialized. That wasn’t possible. Archer had seen Lancer, even exchanged blows with him. Lancer’s fighting style, manner, dress, clearly precluded the Grecian mythological cycle as his source of origin. So why were the birds so agitated at the scent of someone that had nothing to do with them?

The vision from the tree flashed through Archer’s mind. If the demi-god ravished that woman after his deification, the him within the Throne of Heroes would have no memory of it. Even so, the World or the Grail supplied enough knowledge to Servants so that they understood their place within modern society. As a result, Archer knew he was somewhat venerated in the Far-East as a temple guardian.

I am proud of my

deeds

life

Do not drag me into that flame, that woman, that cycle with. . . .

“. . . A misattribution,” he grumbled under his breath while snatching several bundles of wickedly sharp branches aimed at his nape.

Almost fifteen years ago, a version of him would have become a raging storm without a moment’s notice. A mindless blunt weapon, he was a hero beyond perfect. Living up to that purity and succeeding where that iteration failed was the foundation of Archer’s tolerance for the Tuner. That was why he could not forgive the dishonor of a him-that-is-not-him inserted into someone’s selfish fantasy.

“Screeeeee —!”

Archer didn’t need the birds’ signal. His sixth sense murmured that he was within range of the ghostly forest’s founder before a humanoid shadow flickered among the moon-washed canopy leaves.

“Caw, Kreeee —!” The bronze frenzy darted towards their target, seeking to pierce his skin with their beaks, talons, feathers to feast upon his ether entrails.

There existed swarms of magical insects that could devour a bull in an instant leaving only a skeleton — these birds do the same to dragons.

“The

Pater Victor’s

Father Victorious’

birds. What sound and fury.”

But the dragon Lancer unleashed from his leaf-bladed spear was not made of flesh, scale, and mystery. It was the wooden lamentations of

losers

forsaken

bundled together, continuously repeating themselves because no one else did.

Like rippling bolts of lightning, wicked branches unfurled, quickly piercing and then tearing apart the bronze vanguard into bloody balls of bronze fluff. The remaining birds shrieked; their self-preservation instinct dominating their gluttony.

“ ——————!”

Archer roared. The booming undulation was filled with all the divinity the demi-god could muster, reminding the bird brains of the divine rattle he used to conquer their species.

Ignoring the birds that had were neutralized or pinned to surrounding trees as well as his natural instinct shouting at him to get away from the approaching fiendish branches, Archer took to the air, snatching and then pitching as many of the scattered birds as he could at the oncoming wooden tide. Filled with Archer’s divine magical energy, the birds — thrown like

dirks

darks

, — morphed into a storm of arrows. Not enough for Archer to blot out the night and wound every star though. That feat required his bow.

Fssssshhh —

The living arrows thrown with pin-point accuracy split entire branches, damming the draconic wave of wood, filling the forest air with bronze, wood, feathers, and splinters. With the immediate threat removed, Archer kicked off the ground the moment he landed, preempting any roots that shot up to entangle his feet.

The trees squawked their disapproval as crunching became the predominant sound filling the area. Both wood and metal were equally brittle under the weight of the single-armed giant trampling on the debris from the previous exchange to close the gap between combatants.

Possessing only a single arm not only nullified the Archer class’s range advantage but also allowed Lancer to continuously harass Archer without fear of reprisal. No matter. Archer was a Heroic Spirit who forwent putting any points on magecraft to max out all his weapon’s skill trees, and even though his resourceful heroic ranger aspect was summoned, those legends included the many times he fought without a weapon against Phantasmal Species. Conversely, it was possible to say that Lancer had pressured Archer to the point of plunging into hand-to-hand combat with a single arm.

So, was the savagery in Lancer’s eyes as he vaulted towards his opponent, leaving a cloud of sawdust and splinters, purely based on the grievance that tied him onto this plane or did they hide a deeper stratagem?

The Servants rushes fully roused the forest choir. Their scattered screeching now swelled in concert, saturating Lancer’s fist gripping the intricate, leaf-bladed spear with magical energy. Without a weapon, Archer must face an opponent who could

take lives

kill him

.

What a happy thought.

But who said he was without a weapon?

There was no need to materialize his bow or pelt, for littered across the battlefield were his weapons.

In response to Lancer’s leaping opening blow, Archer unpinned a bird from a tree. Using the bird’s metallic scutes as the grip, its hindlimbs as a hilt, and the bronze beak as the blade, Archer drew an arc, catching and parrying the leaf-blade.

Brilliant sparks and clashing magical energy lit up the forest like droplets of spilled lamp oil as tempered myrtle met bird-turned-weapon.

Single edge. A small curved sword similar to a heavy knife, the kopis derived excellent cutting power from momentum behind its recurved blade. For that reason, Archer held the

bird

weapon

in a reverse-grip, edge out, so that his stance was perpendicular to Lancer, minimizing the blind spots Archer’s absent arm caused.

Though Lancer was thrusting his weapon based on innate talent rather than honed training or experience, the small blade on the kopis only allowed Archer to continuously deflect with flicks of his wrist. Yet, regardless how disadvantaged Archer might have seemed, he would always find an opening — that was the fate of a hero that only feminine insecurity could bring down.

Furious thrusts met equally furious parries as both Servants, each hailing from the Age of Gods, fought with that opening in mind. The split-second exchanges accumulated and quickened. The blowback from each of their blows that no mortal could follow began to fracture and snap the debris Lancer and Archer were standing upon, forcing both to make temporary retreats to more stable footholds.

Shing.

Refusing to take the defensive, Lancer extended the full length of his spear while in midair. The thrust at Archer’s blindside morphed into a demonic uppercut, seeking to carve a slab of flank. But, Archer had labored through enough battles to instinctively cover any blind spots during a retreat. With nimbleness betraying his size, Archer spun like a top, knife flashing as the centripetal force beat back the edge of the leaf blade. The quick defensive maneuver didn’t come cheap. Archer was thrown off balance; compensation for avoiding disembowelment.

By forcing the fight into melee, Archer had limited Lancer to thrusts. Being point-based attacks, thrusts were harder to predict and thus deflect. However, Archer read the killing intent and the cutting air behind each attack to respond accordingly. Now, the additional breathing room had allowed Lancer to unlock the leaf-spear’s true potential — mid-range swings.

Left deflecting repeated, heavy swings, Archer struggled to match the new rhythm, throwing him further off-balance. Though predictable, windmill attacks for an amputee with no one to blame other than himself were ferocious giants while. . .

No, Archer’s tilted

Gigantes

giants

with less.

Casting aside any semblance of tactics, Archer leaped forth to meet the next swing in mid-air. Foolish. Archer had been constantly on the defensive to tease out an opening, and now to sink that cost in a misguided attempt to strike back? Even with the full force of Archer’s ridiculous bulk, the Stymphalian kopis could not match Saber’s demonic blade so what chance did it have against Lancer’s spear? It was obvious to all parties involved that Lancer would both absorb all Archer’s momentum and toss him back into the sea of trees to slowly drown and be digested.

Immolate one of your celestial

stocks

lives

, Archer, or continue to defer to that promiscuous opportunity that sings its siren song during these legendary replays.

Replay the legend? Don’t make me laugh.

Archer

Herakles

created legends.

— Lightning ran from the circuit known as Archer spreading like a spider’s silk web to the bronze kopis.

“Kree — Clink.”

One by one, pinned birds snapped onto the bronze-like magnets, extending the grip, hilt, and blade into a weapon more monstrous than a

xiphos

longsword

let alone a

kopis

shortsword

. Not only arrows and heavy knives, with enough

bronze

birds

, one could create a great sword befitting a raging destroyer.

Stymphalian Birds

Modular Avian Weapons System

— familiars of the Greek god of war, Ares. Were they born from his authority over warfare, a remnant of a sunken civilization, or a fragment of a destroyed

Aletheia

true body

?

The weapons collide.

No matter the weapon’s true origin, Archer’s heavy greatsword matched Lancer’s swing. The divine magical energy coating the edges of both weapons interweaved attempting to strangle and flood the other as their contest of pure strength played out. From parameters alone, Archer with the ability to double his strength for a moment had a clear advantage, if he had use of both arms.

Lancer’s naturally brawny body swelled as the magical energy from his spear continued howling until —

The combatants broke.

Not because the contest had grown stale, neither was it due to one having such a clear advantage continuing would be pointless. As their peacocking reached its climax, the trees began to shriek. The meaning of the land shifted ever so slightly, but enough to send the entire forest into disarray. The Tuner’s work, no doubt.

All screeching constituents of the forest began to writhe, shivering in grief. Lancer was no different. Eyes lowered, head bent, his spear now plunged into the ground, he stood, forever in some savage mourning.

“How could a Heroic Spirit with such martial prowess be a gardener of

kakodaímōn

evil spirits

.”

“Not a gardener, a shepherd.” Lancer fought with feral desperation in his eyes as if he held the world on his shoulders — an overrated expression in Archer’s humble opinion. Yet, the moment Lancer spoke, there was an arresting dissonant gravity weighing down each word as if he refused to speak for himself. “But you. . . you truly are this wretched history’s greatest hero, Archer. . . no, Father.”

“You are no son of mine.”

Lancer’s hand gripping the spear tightened, veins now visible.

“If so sayeth the perfect hero, then it must be truth. But I. . . can’t afford to be concerned with truth, Father. I, unlike you, am unable to save anyone.”

The woman he loved who took her own life.

The child he flung into the flames believing them an enemy soldier.

A white-haired red-eyed little girl desperately calling a name that was not his, as a version of him trapped within all the evils of the world faced the darkest light the planet ever created.

“You seek vengeance?” Archer asked.

For Archer, there was nothing to avenge. Only red eyes fixed onto a little girl with a mad purity Archer could not reject if the perfect hero wished to remain. But he understood the human impulse to rage against a past so filled with suffering. Of course he did.

“What grand and righteous thoughts you must conceive, Father, for you are a title; I, a sacrificial footnote. Vengeance is befitting of you whose life and fate was filled with enough import to have been twisted by the Gods. But vengeance for boiled beans that never sprouted?” He laughed a throaty, humorless yelp. “A miracle can only save the living. The dead can only rest in peace. What of the forsaken? The unseen, the unheard, the unexisting that this World is built upon? What of them, Father!”

Lancer looked up to see Archer’s unmoved face.

“Is that what you’re hoping to create here, using the Holy Grail? A record of the forsaken?”

“Oi, oi.” Lancer turned to his right. “See, I told you he wouldn’t comprehend,” shook his head and turned to the left. “No, the ears lent to you did not deceive, Father didn’t understand. Father, you could not fathom.”

“If you must persist on calling me Father,” Archer stepped forward, “Have the courtesy to name thyself!”

With a sigh, Lancer drew the spear from its soiled sheath.

“Too late. I’m always too late. Father, you ask for courtesy: then let me show you the courtesy we have been offered, the

fertilizer

corpses

it takes to cultivate a fig tree.”

To the wind with such empty words.

Regardless of Lancer’s talk of fruits, trees, and Fathers, his Master’s ritual had been disturbed. Lancer needed a decisive blow to finish the battle, so he could return. However, to Archer’s knowledge, there was only one decisive blow that could take all twelve of his lives. Lancer did not possess that holy sword. Then Lancer’s objective was to take as many lives as possible, rooting Archer in place as long as possible. One layer of revival magecraft took seconds to activate and non-fatal wounds could be healed later. Multiple fatal wounds would give Lancer enough time to disengage and aid his Master.

Out of the trees gushed

kakodaímōn

evil spirits

winged, transparent blebs bemoaning unfairness until the entire forest was filled with the screeching of ghostly vultures seeking pity as if they were less than the carrion left for buzzards to feast upon.

Tonight, their king would bring down Pan-Human history’s greatest hero.

Tonight, empty hypotheses would trump compiled reality.

Let us feast on flour cakes and beans as —

“Limited Deployment.”

In reply, instead of raising his bronze phantasmal greatsword to meet the challenge, Archer unconsciously glanced behind him.

Did he expect a little girl hiding in a scar on the earth?

Ridiculous; Archer was not that red-haired boy.

He was —

TateDonovanSteveReevesMarkForestMickeyHargitayRegP arkFrankGordonMikeLaneBradHarrisKirk MorrisDanVadisAlanSteelMarkForestGordonScottSamson BurkeNigelGreenArnoldSchwarzeneggerLou FerrignoBrianThompsonRichardSandrakSteveByersKella nLutzJohnMorrisonDwayne“TheRock”JohnsonTonyAilKevi nSorboRyanGoslingMarkAddyJonathanWhitesellPaulTelf erJ.MichaelTatumJoshKeatonTadahisaSaizen

More incantation than person, Herakles was an unbroken chain of contradictory roles. More than any other Heroic Spirit, his self had been twisted, reimagined, interpreted to become a tradition that wholly lent itself to others. Hero incarnate. There were no pages left in the legend for his own voice.

What loneliness.

What an unnecessary person.

So you threw away the bronze greatsword in your hand, for before you was a festering proof of heroism. Limited as it may be, the core of the Servant who called you ‘Father’ contained the impotent cry of the disenfranchised — thus the greatest hero musn’t respond with the armaments of the War God.

“You believe your fury to be just?” The thrown sword dematerialized before it crushed the dead leaves, tears of the evil spirits surrounding him. “My very first labor was overcoming what rejects this World.” The remaining arm reached into a hostile night.

What was snatched from thin air could have only been the materializing hem of a treated pelt. With only his teeth, Archer wrapped the pelt around his only arm and secured it in place.

“███・█████ ███████”

The moaning of the evil spirits in the trees drowned out Lancer’s invocation. Who needed to hear fabricated words the ones who forsook them penned, anyway? The true name was repeated in the spirit’s moans, their howls, and grunts. Look at me. Look at me. I was here.

Lancer’s spear allowed him control over the vegetation or rather, the evil spirits that controlled the vegetation. Therefore, this attack must be similar in form to his initial attack. The difference would be the magnitude. What were merely sharp, forked branches snapping against Archer’s blessed body were now entire tree trunks filled with noble magical energy beyond the simple grudges of lost evil spirits. Yet be it gods, the world, or even death itself, Archer had overcome them all.

Facing this Noble Phantasm, Archer finally smiled.

— I think it’s beautiful. I’m glad to be alive.

— Hera...kles. Oh, you’re named after your mom, that’s cute.

— Red eyes fixed onto the little girl telling him that she must be protected.

「ーだめ。そんなの、██████ でも死んじゃう。だから、もう逃げてよ、██████ 。」

His mind was clear. The encroaching forest had washed away all his thoughts.

There was no weight in his right hand.

There was nothing to protect in this forest, not even the

wish

life

of a girl. Unable to commit the act of saving; denying rejection was all the perfect hero had left.

This is how it should always have been.

So as a matter of course, magical energy, the lifeblood of his ether body, circulated, providing the impetus for —

Torrent and swirling vigor.

Archer stepped forward, pelt-encased single arm raised in defiance, ready to beat back the ocean a lesser hero would be washed into, dragged underneath the foam. His eyes were affixed onto Lancer’s figure through a gap between the rapidly expanding waves of trees. Quickly now, before that opening washed itself away.

Upper arm, collarbone, windpipe, temple, diaphragm, rib, testicles, and thigh.

Heart.

No need to designate targets if the entire

forest

world

was his target.

“

Nine Lives

Smashing the Hundred Heads

— ”

Archer broke the sound barrier.

Nine almost overlapping strikes delivered in an instant to annihilate nine heads.

A hundred continuous strikes delivered in a single breath to obliterate a hundred heads.

Either or both — the exact description never mattered. Nine Lives was not a single technique but a

style

dance

.

Left leg, a stake that pierced trees turning them into foot-holds that increased his momentum; right leg, a blade that severed all the roots that sought to tie him down; right arm encased in the spoils of his first labor, his trusted club forging the path forward.

Archer turned his remaining three limbs into weapons.

The trees, no longer chanting their grievances, closed around him. Their bird-song was of a future that was neither apocalyptic nor utopic.

What a nonsensical Noble Phantasm.

What different path? What separate tree?

There was only one world. That was why Herakles was the greatest. That was why Nine Lives was created to fell the Hydra.

I shall annihilate all that threaten this world, no matter how many times you revive.

The proof was wrapped around his dancing fist. The Nemean Lion skin, the product of a spontaneously generated feral world that yielded to the great civilizing hero’s fists. Therefore, no forest, no matter how pristine could bind him.

In less than a second, Archer broke through the fissure within the Noble Phantasm. Even with a Servant’s superhuman abilities, Lancer would be unable to react and defend against the ballistic missile on a crash course. Yet,

“This is the original?” Magical energy exploded from Lancer’s feet as he rocketed himself at Archer’s blindside. “How subdued, Father.”

The forest was silent as the two stars crossed.

Klush — the sound of an A-rank attack finally sinking into flesh, sent the ghostly vultures into a frenzy. They eagerly lapped at crimson ichor raindrops that splattered against the trees they called temporary homes.

The wound was deep but not fatal for a Servant. Archer had stopped his attack and twisted his body in mid-air to avoid most of the thrust. Archer’s quick thinking may have meant a thrust that would have split him in half only grazed his torso but it would leave an everlasting wound on the hero’s pride.

How did Lancer defeat Nine Lives?

Indeed, Archer’s flawlessly overlapping attacks annihilated the opponent without leaving them room to counter, but there were times when a follow-up was necessary. A two-handed overhead smash, or as in this case, a final thrust. The transition from technique to follow-up produced a lag. Yet, the lag-time was so minuscule that the only person who could take advantage of it was Archer himself if he ever faced a degraded version of his own Noble Phantasm. Granted, Archer was not in perfect condition. He was missing an arm. Still, the intimate knowledge required to exploit —

Only the ground could break Archer’s fall as he mowed down at least a tenth of the trees in the inlet. When he at last rose, the demigod’s proud visage was torn and blackened and over twenty percent of his body was corroded by Lancer’s Noble Phantasm, but Archer had not lost a single

stock

life

.

“You are no son of mine,” Archer’s clear voice rumbled across the small clearing his fall created through the transparent flocks of vultures to the other half-naked muscular man bathed in moonlight.

Merely words. Who else but a son could know the nuances of a style that humanity had crystallized into a mystery?

The Nemean Lion’s pelt tied around Archer’s arm dematerialized. Without taking his golden eyes from Lancer’s red pupils, Archer plunged his fist into his chest, withdrawing his vigorous, bloody heart. He held it aloft to bless the opponent he disowned and squeezed.

Pop.

The greatest hero, now deceased, slumped but did not allow his half-eaten knees to touch the ground. Like a marble statue, he stood heroic, for this was not defeat. . . far from it.

“— Hah —!”

Lancer retreated as quickly as his magical energy burst would allow. He needed to plunge his myrtle spear into the earth before his ritual had become irreversibly distorted and the vultures no longer had branches on which to nest.

A fatal mistake. Lancer would have been more than fast enough to secure a second life. Now. . .

“You are not my son, but you are a worthy opponent.”

The red glow filled Archer’s body.

. . . good luck.

The instant the Bow of the Hydra materialized in Archer’s right hand, his newly regenerated left had pulled back the string and let loose dozens of fatal arrows.

~Interlude Out~

[You]

36/ Fore Sake

You’re right as always, old man. A frontal assault against a Dead Apostle is the height of recklessness. I slip a hilt into my bound fist and clear over a hundred yards in less than seven seconds anyway.

The Dead Apostle, lingering in the shadow of the hollowed-out tree doesn’t say a word, nor does he change his stance — left hand hovering above the tree stump, one stiletto en pointe. His jet-black smirk without a hint of a sneer cuts through the pallor of his alabaster skin that authors can only claim their female leads possess. Hating everything about him is too easy, for he’s the very image that comes to mind when the title for a novel or movie advertises vampires.

“Hah —!”

Clenching the hilt within my right fist, I throw a straight with all the strength the Ash Lock and I can muster.

“The modality of my abstinence (忌み, ‘imi’ is a difficult-to-translate term that is typically rendered to English as ‘abstinence’ or ‘taboo,’ with the implication that violation/use of a particular tabooed item or violation of strictures related to the execution of a taboo is inadmissible and wrong, usually for religious reasons) unto admonishing your personage (人名, lit. ‘human name’) aside,” the rasping, last gasp of life escaping from a corpse over and over again. And, maybe it’s because I’m so accustomed to hearing nonsensical sentence fragments or phrases of momentary clarity while helping Father Kelsey perform last rites, “Church dog, manifesting grudges (怨念, onen) to plague what bears xenogenicity (異種, lit. ‘other species’) on the account of the singular is a sight for the short.” but the impenetrable constant flow of his curated sophistry jars me, reminding me this is not a being on his deathbed, but a Mystery drowning in death to surpass it. Therefore, in his eyes, I will forever be wrong. Likewise, Dead Apostle.

“Hah —”

The flick of his wrist, faster than any of the man-eating forest branches, catches the underside of my forearm and whips aways my fist. Instantly, multiple layers of sacred protection are shredded. I’m not hurt. An Ash Lock’s protections can easily turn away an exploding grenade. At the same time, each of my strikes, wrapped in the Word of the Lord, should raze his flesh as Divine Providence is forced into his Dead Apostle corpse. So why was the wrist that flicked my right fist away ice-cold?

His elegant defense might have sent my balance too far to the right, but I had already prepared my left fist. The friction from aggregating bubbles rubbing against each like a match head against red phosphorus flares the imaginary gasoline within my fist as it curves towards the Dead Apostle’s ribcage with enough blunt force to crack a century-old tree trunk.

“Guh —”

In less time than it takes for the light to reach human eyes, a human brain to process the image, and send a signal so my human muscles respond, the same claw that redirected my wrist slaps my fist away, like it’s a mere annoyance.

Still deathly cold. That doesn’t make sense. He’s looking at me with his Dead Apostle eyes, warding me away with his Dead Apostle claws, preaching with his Dead Apostle voice, so why aren’t his undead claws burning off?

Doesn’t matter. Just another Dead Apostle. Jump back, and purify him accordingly.

“Your kind is an insidious infection. Monsters outside human morals can’t be judged according to any of society's rules.” This might be a heretical opinion but — . “The Church has the right to execute with extreme prejudice.”

Flipping in mid-air, I don’t give the moonlight a chance to glint off the blade that materialized from the hidden hilt before throwing it at my opponent like I’m trying to bore right through him. Years of target practice on the Sister behind the Mission are compressed into a split-second. Efficient, cold, mechanical, the silver sword flies as straight and true as any arrow. Even without the Iron Plate Effect, a Black Key thrown with the Ash Lock is more than enough to blow a Dead Apostle back from the air pressure alone.

The opening sure-kill method I made up using the old man’s egging that if you can’t kill in four attacks then you’re too inexperienced for actual combat. Introduce yourself as a melee fighter, develop that idea, then the twist, a hidden Black Key.

His sharp intake of breath. “You bear elaboration.”

My disbelieving gasp.

With two perfectly manicured talons, he snatched my Black Key out of the air. That should have cost him an arm and a leg. Remember, Dead Apostle abilities are merely a human’s honed with unlimited time. So, that must have been — nothing special. Nothing special at all. He’s just a Dead Apostle like any Dead Apostle. . .

I’m five feet behind where I jumped. No problem, the traction on the Ash Lock-ed boots can grip still water, so mud is no problem. Almost skating through the grass, I close the gap as fast as possible.

Yes, he’s already broken the sequence. To a spectator like Rich, what I’m doing must seem futile. The Dead Apostle caught the Black Key. I’m done. He’ll catch everything else then make a pin cushion out of me.

But, “A being whose entire sense of self is built to avoid existential collapse wouldn’t understand.” So, I can’t stop.

With the third flick of the same wrist, he pitches my Black Key to pierce my words. There’s nothing that resonates with him in them.

As for me, there’s nothing sure about a sure-kill attack that can be broken.

“

Set

I announce

!”

In

a Single Action

less than a second

, the incantation is cast and my magical energy sears the Church’s foundation. When she first started teaching me magecraft, Cherry said that I might not have many magic circuits, but I shouldn’t worry because every person had magecraft they were suited towards. In her case, it’s manipulating imaginary number space, though her family changed her element into water when she was still a child so she could inherit the family’s magecraft, but that’s a story for a different time. For me, it’s the cremation rite, a sigil that ignites when magical energy is added, causing the target to combust. It’s a heretical taboo so I don’t use it.

Instead of bursting into holy flames, the Black Key turns on a dime, surging towards the Dead Apostle at the velocity it was thrown.

The fourth attack isn’t the resolution, it’s another twist.

That’s not enough. If the Dead Apostle caught one Black Key, he can catch another. The definition of insanity is mechanically doing the same thing again and again yet expecting different results. The only way a Dead Apostle can bear their cursed undeath.

Before he snatches the Black Key out of the night, my conceptual weapon-plated shoulder bludgeons his waist, my bound arms snaking around his knees to throw him into the mud among the maggots where his bleached, fetid flesh belongs.

“Gah —!”

I’m the one sent flying back. Ears ringing, sense of balance lost, my brain fires signal after signal. There are no pinpricks or flashes of light, only a brief glimpse of spherical eye floaters as empty as my alveoli superimposed onto the world. Structure bends so function breaks. I can’t breathe. Elbows and knees sinking into the mud, I’m forced to rely on magical energy to pump oxygen into my gaping mouth and down my throat.

He kicked me. That wasn’t a love-tap, trying to show me my actions were futile; that felt like a Scripture smashing against my chest. I almost blacked out, so there’s no way the Black Key found its mark. Instead, the blade sharply veered to the left where it was caught — with the hand that had not previously left the tree hollow.

— Pick yourself up.

Like the time Cherry found a hand-written letter from her brother in the mailbox, the Dead Apostle’s red eyes lock onto either the Black Key or the pale claw that should be reverting back to human flesh before his lips droop into a frown whereas hers curved into her normal crooked smile.

I glance back at Rich to make sure he understands. If he did, there’s no indication. Heretics. This fight has nothing to do with him. He won’t do anything until his life is at risk or he has something to gain. It’s a completely self-interested mindset, but I accept that because no matter how much these magi lie to themselves, their obsession is undeniably human. Dead Apostles on the other hand —

“You are as a claimant who dares inflict dispassion (退屈, taikutsu, boredom) unto a cardinal fault (人外悪, jingai aku, lit ‘Evil of Inhuman’).”

You don’t.

That’s the difference between us. It has to be. For it is said that Dead Apostles are sacks of flesh bound together with nothing but blood. To a Dead Apostle. everything is not foam, but a homogenous lake of blood. All crimes can be drowned in blood. That is a fact. Like this.

Alimango Island. Three hundred families. One Dead Apostle reduced them all to zero,

I announce

set

.

One after another, hilts are pulled from within my robe, blades materialized, and are thrown to purge the inhuman cause of human tragedy.

A sharp inhale. “Entirely wrong. Such circumstances were supplied by way of Fault (罪, tsumi, sin) pertaining to no extant Dead Apostle. Be it not recorded unto the Church and Thaumaturgical Association procès-verbals a Personage Designated For Sealing (封印指定を受けた魔術師) was present-wise.”

The Dead Apostle doesn’t try to dodge. Why would he? We both know my Ash Lock and Black Keys are ineffective because he wasn’t Christian when human, my faith isn’t strong enough, or a combination of both, yet I continue

casting

cantillating

until he may no longer counter with his profane Mass.

Flight A300. Two hundred and eighty-seven passengers. One Dead Apostle and his bees. No one made it to New York,

I announce

set

The barrage of Black Keys scatters into the almost black sky. The Dead Apostle tracks their high-speed movements with what must be Mystic Eyes. Yes, those specks of light can’t baptize you, but they have enough physical force to destroy the tree hollow you’re protecting!

“

Set

I announce

— !”

The volley of holy nails plummets from high, like the sprays of consecrated handgun bullets that you must have continuously survived throughout your lifetimes.

Transcendent (in name only), he is the center of his world. Every occurrence is judged based on whether it entertains him. Every action is for the game. Only a newborn Dead Apostle would believe they’ve been liberated from societal norms. Both magi and Dead Apostles are forever running around a racetrack, chained to their own rules, their own boxes. Therefore, the one chink in his armor is the tree hollow, for he cannot complete his performance as a Dead Apostle unless there are games to be played and boredom to be staved away.

A sharp inhale. “Commute by the empyrean route (空の旅, sora no tabi, lit ‘void journey’) is absent the perversion of any law (理) established within the Common Sense of Man. In so as much the transgression lies unto those who wrought desecration upon his corpus, unleashing the Demonic Bees (魔蜂, ma hachi). Thus, your impression is wrong.”

Dark red liquid from the palm of his hand sprays into the night. A cohesive hemisphere at first, eventually surface tension submits to the impulse, producing large droplets that hang in the air for longer than fundamental forces allow. Those droplets, filled with magical energy, sprout iridescent wings, spindly limbs, and scabby blue skin. Roughly the length of a straight-edge, the Dead Apostles’ scores of familiars split their zipper faces until they double as mouths, cannon fodder receptacles for the oncoming downpour.

A rural French town terrorized for a month and over half the inhabitants turned into Dead,

I announce

set

Dead Apostles may drink human blood because they require human genetic information; however, an existence built on hundreds of years requires equivalent energy. They take in animals and sometimes even phantasmal species to more efficiently repair their bodies and obtain familiars. These pixies aren’t actual fairies because subsuming more than one phantasmal species would overload the capacity of any Dead Apostle bar the Ancestors. Yet, even if they’re just some magus’s stolen artificial familiars, he’s controlling more than thirty at once.

A sharp inhale. “Certain assumptions are wrong. Per such instance, the Dead Apostle instigator had claimed the seat of priesthood (司祭の席) within your Church in times precedent.”

Maybe Father Phahn was right. Maybe he was able to wound Berserker. Maybe hunting this Dead Apostle was a terrible idea. Maybe I’m going to die. So many maybes, but,

Misaki City, 2000. The Numberless of the Twenty-Seven. Number of people deceased, unknown. The last estimate is over a hundred,

I announce

set

.

These are facts.

He inhales again. The sound is finally getting annoying.

“What measure do your ears require restoration? The Akasha Serpentes Who Bears Transmigration Among the Souls Free of Limits (アカシャの蛇や転生無限者) is the very personage by which the most substantial martial strength the Church was capable of mustering (聖堂教会が有する、最強の人員により構成された戦闘機関) was inaugurated.”

In the precious seconds it takes the keys of purification to make sword eaters out of bloody pixies, I burn up all the magical energy my circuits sent to my feet and rush in. One Black Key in each hand, reverse grip, held like ice-picks; I’ll drive them through his vantablack cloak into his undead flesh. Even if a Dead Apostle can react and then move faster than a bullet, you can’t outrun prayer.

“I will kill. I will let live. I will harm and heal.”

If keys of purification alone aren’t enough, I’ll combine them with the Church’s greatest miracle. Be sublimated o’lost soul and return to the hellish throne you’ve long rejected with sacrilege, blood, and sin.

“Haaargghahhhha —!” Someone screams in pain.

Me.

Nothing burns. Nothing sublimates. There’s only red. My red.

Wet. Prickly. My back is burning. I must have slid about twenty feet from where I finally hit the ground. I would keep screaming, but the blood filling my windpipe muffles any sound I make. Instead, I forcibly crane my head to one side and spit it all out. Every breath I take smells like iron, but at least I can draw breath.

Each of my wrapped hands still clenches the hilt of a Black Key. The silver blades have been snapped off, leaving jagged, magical energy-knit metal behind. No, the blades are not planted in the Dead Apostle’s back. The thin swords never made it past that inky cloak, blacker than the Tolosa skyline could ever hope to be. Nothing but an homage, a vanity, was it? Underestimating that cloak because it was so stereotypically Hollywood Dracula was foolish. The cloak absorbed, no, not absorbed, drank, the silver blades and then pummeled me what felt like the force of a fully-loaded dump truck. All official accounts had the Six-Hearted Revolver possessing a shadow that could consume entire rooms of victims. Yes, this is still normal for a Dead Apostle. Nothing more than a Dead Apostle. I get it. So what’s important is that I tried to stab and then baptize him, but I failed. That’s all.

He looks at me with those red eyes, actually looks at me instead of letting them waft over me.

He’s recognized me as a threat. Not to him, no. He’s sauntering towards my broken body like that time he took an evening stroll down a Chinese, a Turkish, an Egyptian bazaar. There are no lines on his face, just a small shadow across his eyebrows, rebuking me for committing sacrilege and interrupting his rites. He’s never considered the possibility that he could lose — I don’t blame him. Any wound can be restored with the Curse of Restoration, he has familiars formed from his blood, and neither Black Key nor Ash Lock can purify him.

“One’s self could only askance from such a measure of competence. Church dog, nay, whelp. Stay down and wait for my Lancer’s return, victorious.”

A sharp intake. Mine this time.

My. . . Lancer?

How are you a Master?

My first Dead Apostle and nothing I have can purify him. The Dead Apostle’s claws will break all my remaining Black Keys, pierce through my Ash Lock, and tear apart my already beaten body. And. . . a Master? A Master under the jurisdiction of the overseer of the Holy Grail War, not me. These past five days, five long grueling days I’ve spent hunting you, searching for you, wanting to kill you, and now it all doesn’t matter. That’s funny. The boys would really get a laugh out of a story like this, smothered with dramatic irony. I would laugh too if every

rule

chain

holding me together wasn’t breaking apart.

Accept it. My tearful eyes show me.

Accept it. My singed circuits groan at me.

Accept it. My battered body begs me.

“Your preceding statement pertained that your progenitors (両親, ryoushin, parents) were rendered non-extant by execution by Dead Apostles, yet persistence in undertakings to annihilate the self (自爆して) to terminate me is the peak of illogical foolishness. None but those who maintain an actively extant corpus are capable of inflicting termination.”

Run away, train, live. A dead Executor-in-training can’t purify Dead Apostles.

My brain that’s on fire says that he’s right. Logically, ethically, emotionally, absolutely right. But I can’t. I really, really can’t accept that one little thing, so for the first time in my life, I reject something.

England, 2003, Rail Zeppelin vs Child of Einnashe. Within a train full of magi, amidst a territorial battle between two Dead Apostles. Only one casualty.

I announce

Set

.

All because the old man was present.

“Two casualties. You are explicitly wrong.”

No, you’re wrong.

I can’t move, but that’s not a problem. The Ash Locks weren’t created to turn the Executor’s body into a purifying weapon; that’s just a side-effect. We wrap ourselves in the Lord’s Word to share in a higher calling. For even if the rules that have tethered me in place were broken, Absolute Divine Law still fixes this body in the uncertain, artificial ether we live in. The Ash Lock pressurizes, constricts, and squeezes as I manually take control of my body with magical energy. I’m off-balance and everything hurts, but I can force myself to move. I get off the ground.

Four scarlet hilts in each hand, claw grip. There are Executors who use this form to dance through Dead Apostles, ripping undead flesh into ribbons like they’re soaring through the sky with steel wings of purification. The most I’ve accomplished behind the Mission is a haphazard toss where none of the keys hit their stationary targets —

One immediately after another, four sets of eight hilts draw clumsy arcs in the night sky.

In reply, the Dead Apostle’s claw comes to claim my head.

My scorching circuits force my Ash Lock to force my right fist into a collision course with a claw that could tear me in half, but there’s no way I’ll make it. Too fast. An efficient, simple swipe. How many

flies

humans

must he have swatted? A more exceptional killer might revere such a killing motion. I blaspheme.

“

Set

I announce

.”

Blade forming, a Black Key plummets from the sky like a shooting star to slice his attacking claw. It’s pathetic; the equivalent of a papercut. No blood; he’s undead.

The Dead Apostle recoils. He’s never trained his body. He was transformed into a natural-born killer, so he’s never needed to spend hours monotonously repeating the same motion until there were no extraneous movements. Without the need for technique or martial skill; he will match whatever I throw at him with experience, strength, and tenacity. So I’ll

set

announce

everything.

Set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set, set!

The airborne hilts sprout silver blades that cut through the crisp lakeside air, haphazardly changing directions, creating a bladed birdcage, sealing the Dead Apostle’s movements. He catches and then snaps the incoming Black Keys with ravenous claws, creating gaps for my right fist to strike true while my left hand throws replacement keys into the air. In the chaos, my stake-like strikes begin to match the flurry of claws.

There are those in the Church who desecrate a fighting style or martial art, breaking it down to its base components and reassembling them into a series of movements solely made to execute those who do not belong in the Lord’s

utterance

world

. What I’m using is only a pale imitation of the unnamed techniques passed down to the old man. Strength, speed, accuracy, everything. I can’t compare to the old man at his prime. I already knew that. That’s why I chose to learn the Ash Lock. Even then, what I have isn’t enough. We only train our bodies because we’re making up for something that’s missing.

Still, I can’t win. I haven’t even delayed my death until I run out of Black Keys.

He doesn’t have to play at my pace. He could ignore the negligible damage with his high-speed regeneration that must be as if time was turning back and tear out my heart. He won’t because I’ll use the lag it takes for him to land a killing blow to set his ritual back a day or two with a stray Black Key. To a Dead Apostle, the game is worth so much than my life.

Amidst the murder of Black Keys and over five years of training compressed into seconds, he pushes me back, away from the center of the clearing and muddy grass to the gravelly lake shoreline. He’s already calculated the range of my Black Keys. He knows the more I throw up, protecting me, the shorter the distance they can travel. At the lakeshore, the Black Keys circling us won’t be able to reach the keystone to his ritual before he kills me.

I’ll kill him before he kills me then. Like I was planning, if my Ash Lock, Black Keys, and Baptismal Sacrament don’t work individually, I have to call down all the Black Keys above us and consecrate the undead monster with every ounce of faith I have before I’m out of Black Keys, out of range, or my body breaks down.

Finishes breaking down.

The adrenaline I’ve been running on has finally burned up. My body is numb, going into shock from all the internal bleeding. My movements are already losing their sharpness. Don’t worry. Keep burning the circuit and the Ash Lock will pick up the slack. The result? It’s costing me two Black Keys to get one back in the air.

Forcing my body to move with only magical energy is one thing, but,

“Ha, your Juggling (魔術, majutsu, “demon techniques”) per such lesser Thaumaturgical Circuits of a magus shallow of accumulated history is lacking. Operation of 「existences that already bear modality (form)」 (形式, keishiki, "form/mode") that are deficient of Thaumaturgical Foundations,

Formalcraft

Thaumaturgical Formality

are a method of higher apposite for you.”

The Dead Apostle sees through my condition in an instant. This is my trump card. I know the cost. The problem isn’t the amount of magical energy necessary. Simultaneously controlling dozens of Black Keys, means running multiple formulas on circuits built to handle one each. Prolonged use is whiting out my consciousness. Come on, just a little more. This can’t be the end. Please, just a little more then I’ll finally have everything he wanted.

But, I can’t. I’ve used up every single thing I have. Conceptual Weapons. Sacraments. Magecraft. There’s nothing left in Chris Frampton. I can’t, and all I needed was —

“Oi!” A voice sharper than any of the Black Keys around me cuts through the white. It’s not the all-powerful voice of a triumphant hero here to single-handedly save the day. Definitely not.

Rich steps forward.

[You]

37/ Demythologization of the Leitmotif

~Interlude~

A magus only used magecraft when ascending to a higher level or fighting another magus. A magus only fought if there was something he couldn’t give up. He did not rush at a mystery greater than his craft shouting clichéd lines from movies. That, evidently, was left to the Church’s heretic hunters wasting breath as paper fists crashed against monstrous claws.

Rich hadn’t seen much combat, but at the very least, he knew people didn’t shout the nonsense coming from the kid’s mouth when charging to their deaths. Poorly trained, or was he just failing to psych himself up?

Didn’t matter; the kid had no chance against that bloodsucker. Their compatibility was too poor. Even with the

Ash Lock

conceptual weapon

strengthening his body, the kid could only last the length of a pop song, two tops. Then, that bloodsucker would turn its controlling gaze to Rich.

Rich wasn’t intimidated. Minutes were a luxury. Archer could defeat Lancer in seconds as long as he regenerated his missing arm. He was, after all, the greatest hero mythology could offer. No matter how superfluous the giant’s personality, at least his abilities and loyalty lived up to that title. That gave Rich no reason to help the kid who was already beginning to struggle, throwing out Black Keys to cover a retreat.

Adding his magecraft to this farce would be beyond humiliating. He might as well give up as a magus because what the fuck were you doing potentially revealing mystery when all you had to do was stand tight and keep your circuits closed? This was the mentality that the Association claimed kept the mysteries flowing. Rich wasn’t a Clock Tower magus, not really, but his experiences led him to the same conclusion.

His father had been the Tuner for the Einzbern family, his grandmother before him, and so on and so on until a lone magus who sought a location of a legendary, cursed treasure his forefathers passed down to the next generation with their dying breaths. Instead, he found artificial children of nature, so beautiful, so perfect that the cold of the stone castle or the edge of rhenium halberds no longer made him shiver.

The first Einzbern Tuner had an opera written about him. All nonsense, the story was twisted for dramatic effect and to demonize industrial capitalism. That’s what happens when you’re in Dresden to oversee a shipment from the Ore mountains one fateful May and decide to keep a snot-nosed, young revolutionary company among piles of furniture which he keeps telling you is a barricade, warned Rich’s grandmother on her death-bed. That boy didn’t get it. They all didn’t get it. She added, like she was coughing out the last of the life lodged in her throat.

Rich understood.

When the next Justeaze model came of age, he was taught in the winter castle alongside her, as was customary. The other homunculi considered her their messiah, the next step in their evolution into higher beings as well as the one who would fulfill the Einzbern’s millennium-old wish to regain the Heaven's Feel. How moving. The mother had been an outcast, yet the daughter was an idol. Those two years Rich spent learning magecraft with that Justeaze model were truly magical: learning to shift water’s memory, planting transmuting traps underneath courtyard statues, casting wire to take animal form. Their teacher was strict and always deferred to the Justeaze model, but she wasn’t honest with herself, loved sweets, and was scared of ghosts. She was precious. Those two years were truly precious. He loved how the homunculi maintained the flowers in the courtyard even where there was a blizzard outside; how old grandfather Acht would mindlessly stroll through empty rooms with his father, in butler uniform trailing close behind; he loved the principles behind the mysteries he was taught. Most of all he loved —

So there must be something he could do for the

family

factory

!

Yes, his father, white, dandy, handlebar mustache perfectly groomed, said their beauty is the spark of undying admiration for their creators. We, who admire that

beauty

mystery

can do naught but nurture and protect that spark from those who seek to exploit it.

But there had to be more. Something beyond maintenance and grocery shopping, thought Rich in his youthful restlessness, because I want the best for h— them. Such beautiful machines, yet their only function was to endlessly prepare, fight, and sacrifice until the ritual was complete. That was no way to live. There was no pursuit of knowledge, no elevation of the soul, just a mountain of corpses reaching for an incomplete reward.

That was no compensation.

That was no resolution.

He left the winter castle before the Justeaze model attempted to summon her Servant, changed his name, and was accepted in Berlin University of Art’s College of Music conducting program. Rich’s family’s magecraft system was not musically inclined; in fact, they were closer to alchemical mechanics or plumbers, determining inconsistencies in the flow of power within the homunculi to lessen the impact of inherent physical or mental disabilities brought on from the coining process. Rich chose music because he could cheat, using the processing capabilities of his circuits to record and playback any score. More so, within the music he studied was a living mystery that was more than only a reminder of his family, it was a promise. So Rich did what any magus would do, he herded what was necessary and then planned to obfuscate the mystery he held.

First, he threw himself into the bullshit, listening to professors lecture about music theory and the rules of composition, but there were no rules, only ‘guidelines.’ To absorb more shit, he attended their office hours to aggressively agree that their interpretations weighed more heavily and had more concrete evidence than what Rich found in his readings. All his professors commended this enthusiastic, agreeable, promising young man on his diligence and good-taste.

Next, he piled himself higher and deeper, constructing a politely-worded thesis to counter most of the literature available. His supervisor was slightly shocked, but recovered as surely this was the pioneering work of a conscientious, compassionate, charming academic.

Then, he vlogged his research trip across the globe. Who wouldn’t want to watch a golden-haired, baby-blue eyed, boyishly rugged, sensitive conductor not only visit exotic locations, but also respectfully participate in a diverse array of musical cultures to raise awareness because there are so many more things on our one and only planet, Karen, than are dreamt in your bigotry. Like and hit the subscribe button if you think music can help teach us a bit more about each other.

Finally, his papers were submitted. Reviewers were impartial, of course they were impartial. This was peer review. But this subject matter, these locations. . . wow, this was definitely Wrichmotifs. Conflict of interest? Being a subscriber in my private time wasn’t a conflict of interest. A parasocial relationship doesn’t induce the same bias as professional or personal relationships. He’s making music theory sexy again. We need more people like him in this field. And hey, the idea that the modern understanding and use of leitmotif is driven not by Wagner’s but Wolzogen’s interpretation and catalog is. . . well. . . it sure is out there, but that’s Wrichmotifs! In this era of hot takes, at least, he’s sincerely backing his theory with rigorous research.

Like that, after roughly fifteen years of work and an overwhelming amount of publicity, Rich had almost finished what Hollywood started and ‘The Devs’ accelerated. The demythologization of the leitmotif. But what happened to the mystery?

A propagated mystery lost its status and ultimately transformed into a merely supernatural (or otherwise) method. At the same time, propagating a mystery increased its stability. This was the tightrope both magi and spellcasters walked. What was the greater mystery? The depths that could only be plunged into at a certain location at a certain time, or the shallows that were not only easily waded through but also took water from neighboring pools?

The answer Rich came to was neither: he created an intellectual dam. The leitmotif that Rich advertised and advocated were secular calling cards, complete musical ideas, yes, but repeated notes that represented a character, an item, or an emotion. These were discrete, recognizable, tepid references existing within soundscapes that audiences could easily pluck out to self-gratuitously revel in their own attention to detail. Little jingles that could be torn from the drama wholesale and remixed to promise victory or indicate a grand battle was occurring. Stated in music, they only served as entertainment and existed solely for consumption.

Due to his intellectually dishonest secularization, the true leitmotif, what Wagner preferred to be called the ur-motif began to dislodge, unable to be called upon unless compared to Rich’s definition of leitmotif, placing it in opposition to its alleged descendent. That is, what was once a single idea began to bifurcate in the same vein as alchemy and chemistry during the Industrial Revolution.

What Rich had accomplished these fifteen years only supplied him the means to achieve his goal. He must continue to mold the mystery until it suited his needs and the needs of the next generation that would tune the corpse of the Einzbern family. As he couldn’t make use of a decayed mystery, no magus could, he must post more videos, keep eating clean, and stay culturally relevant to ensure the leitmotif stayed demythologized so it could not drag his ur-motif into the decayed undertow of pop music.

Rich had sacrificed his dignity as a magus for the sake of his magecraft. He would not use it in such a frivolous battle where the kid was now beginning to ply circus tricks. That was equivalent to —

“Ha, Your Juggling (Majutsu, 魔術, “demonic techniques”) per such lesser Thaumaturgical Circuits of a thaumaturgy employer (Majutsu Tsukai, 魔術使い, “presto-digitator”) shallow of accumulated history is lacking. Operation of 「existences that already bear modality (form)」 (形式, keishiki, "form / mode") that are deficient of Thaumaturgical Foundations,

Formalcraft

Thaumaturgical Formality

are a method of higher apposite.”

. . . The fuck you just say?

“Oi.” Rich took a step forward; the grass squelched as his shoe displaced some mud, his voice ringing across the clearing. “Do you want to repeat that, bloodsucker?”

The bloodsucker had not stopped snapping the Keys of Purification which cut through the air or displacing the boy’s feeble punches and kicks away when he spoke. The kid couldn’t win, everyone in the clearing knew that. Provoking the kid wouldn’t suddenly increase his combat ability to make for a more interesting battle. That took talent, time, and training. So then, the bloodsucker must have been offering honest advice to a struggling teenager. Of all vampiric quirks to have that must be the worst.

“When one's strength alone is insufficient, a transaction (取り引き, torihiki, lit. ‘take and give’; a ‘trade’) is performed as to cover the cost. Therefore, even if the spellcaster is sparse (希薄, kihaku, ‘deficient / diluted/weak’) of thaumaturgical energy, thaumaturgy can be made to operate. In any case, being that the thaumaturgical energy utilized is derived not of oneself, but something borrowed from elsewhere it's fine that the spell’s caster merely performs the ritual. Ergo, performance of the ritual allows for the collection of mana (マナ, not the katakanization of 真名) without the need for extant circuits.”

“Ergo yourself.” There was no need for a downbeat. Rolling waves of rage already started to build inside of Rich. “How the fuck is that magecraft? You calling this retard kid leaving cookies out for fucking Santa, Formalcraft?”

Rich still remembered the chalk dust on his teacher’s hand when she wrote that magecraft was a general term that describes the artificial reenactment of mysteries. The practitioner would issue commands according to the foundation of his school using magical energy as the electric current to execute a predetermined function. Sure, there were some differences in the process depending on the schools, but it was magic circuits alone that allowed people to use magecraft.

“Absurd! Formalcraft involves a formal submission of requests to Gods/Faeries/the System of Nature via a set protocol as to enact the phenomenon. Explicitly, the only requirement for Formalcraft is knowledge — presumably the underlying theory/mechanics.”

Like knowledge on how to best suck kobold cock so it’d burn a house down for you. Are you seriously trying to fucking call that magecraft?

“Knowledge. . . without accompanying mystery is not magecraft at all.” The words seethed through Rich’s gritted teeth.

The miracle of magecraft was not the result, but the process itself. That’s what his teacher said. That’s what Sella said and you. . . don’t you dare for a second besmirch that with whatever the fuck this is. Fine, you can make a potion that glows when someone with magic circuits comes close if you buy all the ingredients from Dark Amazon and mix them properly, but that’s not magecraft, that’s making your morning protein shake.

“Thaumaturgy is an occult art, grounded in and actualized via non-extant elements. Science is as the process that which assimilates modalities outside the Common Sense of the Human Order. Formalcraft, like myself, is extant outside the confines, ergo thaumaturgy and myself are the god of the gaps — mystery.”

The white-hot anger washed off Rich’s face. An absolute denial of that incessant, calm voice that kid’s conceptual weapons were unable to shut up replaced the immediacy to stomp on something that he knew was objectively wrong because that was not how the world worked.

Like the young revolutionary in his grandmother’s story, the bloodsucker didn’t get it. He was a vampire, a being of higher mystery than either Rich and definitely the kid, but he fucking didn’t get it all. Outside the Human Order. God of the gaps. What sort of bullshit was that?

With the blankness of a face consumed with pure hatred, he drew a thin, wooden rod from his suit-jacket pocket. Any magus would recognize it as a wand, a traditional amplifier mystic code that had been parodied to the point of grudging social tolerance. These days anyone who carried a wand was just quirky and forever on their way to a LARP. On the other hand, any professional musician who saw the rod would immediately notice it was not a souvenir from Universal Studios. The ebony shaft threaded with amber veins that would be lost in the dark of the night if not for the pale luminescence of a small ivory bust at the handle, a water sprite riding a wave, was a conductor’s baton.

“Listen the fuck up, bloodsucker.”

This is magecraft.

Securely in his right fingertips, the baton crashed downward as the left palm fluttered heavenward.

“

Hör' es die Fluth

Hear me ye Flood!

”

A single line to hypnotize the body into believing it was a machine that solely conducted magical energy.

Yes, a magus only fought when there was something that he couldn’t give up.

No instruments were present, yet the brassy horns began to blare a simple progression, ten notes, a rising arpeggio in six-eight. And then. . . genesis.

*****

“Milady, I implore you to allow Archer use of his Noble Phantasm.”

“Invocation of Noble Phantasm under consideration. Rationale?”

“I’m about to dismantle this bloodsucker’s ritual.”

“Noted, exterminate Lancer’s Master in a manner befitting an Einzbern Tuner.”

“Your dearest wish is my command, mistress.”

Threads of consciousness slithered through the clearing sending back sensations and information that the magic circuits converted into

magecraft

music

. Do not be mistaken; the circuits themselves could not be an instrument, vibrating as magical energy courses through to produce sound. After all, magic circuits that were capable of making sound were unheard of even to the Association. But magecraft. . . yes, it was possible to produce sound from magecraft.

Projection. A genre of magecraft that used the image in the practitioner’s mind to create an item that not only shared the appearance but also its abilities. It was often called a vanity due to its inefficiency since the object only lasted a few minutes at best. But what if a magus tried to project not a physical object, but a phenomenon — say, a vibration?

Breaking the notes down to the five elements of sound, compiling and loading the

score

image

in the circuit, and then transforming fictitious energy into

vibration

sound waves

. After all, the function of any instrument was to create a quantifiable wave that used air as its medium. As long as the air existed, any sound could be replicated.

Graduation Air.

For notes may be gradated, but the four thin black lines of a staff are discrete graduations.

Yet, magecraft that only produced sound was merely a novelty. Over three-quarters of the population of the United States has a music player in their pocket. That can’t be the mystery Rich spent fifteen years protecting.

Strings textured the horns to produce the rushing of water, representing the lake. To that, Rich further added a rising and falling pentatonic to paint the natural song of the birds within the forest. Finally, his baton began to draw a new figure in the air, changing the rhythm, grounding the imaginary orchestra from six-eight to four-four. This was Rich’s foundational formula for Laguna Lake.

Brand-rank magi or higher were capable of using environmental parameters to create temporary magic foundations. The obvious advantage was using magecraft in places where magic foundations were lacking. But, brute-force calculating the mystical nature behind one’s current location was a mentally resource-intensive trick most magi would consider humiliating to use unless absolutely desperate. Individually parameterizing and then calculating the flow of the spiritual energy in the earth, the history of the surrounding trees, the pervading atmosphere that held the culture hostage, etc. was dangerously inconsistent with the magus ideal of determining the core as fast as possible, then switching it.

Rich had neither achieved a Brand rank nor was he innately gifted enough to instinctively establish an impromptu foundation within a spell. All he did was convert the environmental information he managed to scrape together into musical notation, and then lost himself to the feverish frenzy of magical energy propelling itself out of his magic circuits. If Rich were to lose his concentration for a second, he’d catch a whiff of burning skin as his nerves began to sizzle. Not because his magic circuits were few and of low quality, in fact the exact opposite.

The core ensemble of the

orchestra

system

Rich used to model the drama acted out in front of him consisted of one piccolo, three flutes (third doubling second piccolo), three oboes, a cor anglais (doubling fourth oboe), three soprano clarinets, one bass clarinet, three bassoons; eight horns (fifth through eight doubling Wagner tubas), three trumpets, one bass trumpet, three tenor trombones, one contrabass trombone (doubling bass trombone), one contrabass tuba; a percussion section with four timpani (requiring two players), triangle, cymbals, glockenspiel; six harps and a string section consisting of sixteen first and second violins, twelve violas, twelve violoncellos, and eight double basses. That was ninety-three instruments, tracks, emulated with a single human body. Needless to say, he was conducting his life away.

No wonder the magus couldn’t stand the bloodsucker’s proclamation that Formalcraft did not require magic circuits or that annoying girl’s ignorant assertions. The magecraft that Rich reached, the magecraft he preserved daily through weekly content, vape sponsorships, and sweet nothings to co-eds was the only truth left in his world. Magi lorded that magecraft artificially recreated miracles and mysteries. What a joke. No, what magecraft revealed was meaning through mystery.

The horn’s notes descended like a spear arcing towards the earth until the bass strings and clarinet twisted the notes upward in blatant defiance. Concurrently, the last three notes from the four-four transformation of nature into a heroic humanity falsely rang in a brass minor, so Rich immediately switched to resounding horn calls which failed to resonate with the rest of the piece. There was no way this kid was — defeated, Rich forged the opening nature arpeggio into a sword then struck down the fifth before raising the last two notes, all the while making sure the phrase was completely diminished but yet, still nothing.

No, the kid was doing better. Having mirrored the drama on this inlet stage, Rich had begun to transmute the flow of events with his music. But, music like storytelling was not pure expression. Within the art existed eons of formulas, arguments, and counterpoints. Most basic would be how major chords commonly expressed positive emotions while minor chords expressed the negative. The next level were cultural associations; in most western music flutes symbolized birdsong and the rising call of a horn, heroism. Unless Rich was able to reconstruct someone within the music, the effect he had on them was marginal at best. If that kid could not be represented using humanity, hero, or villain then, no, he won’t play those two notes. Those were reserved for the Einzbern alone.

Instead, he focused on the kid’s emotional state. Clarinets and horns in a minor key chromatically distorted nature’s arpeggio as percussion instruments rattled in the background, haunting the entire phrase. But wasn’t this the very thing that drove the boy? The very words he used to reproach the bloodsucker. No? Then let the violins take on an agitated vibrato. That didn’t. . . but there was something there so Rich tried to develop the idea, varying first his phrasing on the violins before being forced to move on and incorporate the woodwinds.

The kid’s movements were sharper. Where he was forced to sacrifice positioning to avoid fatal wounds, he was now able to predict the claw’s movements and divert most of the attack with either the flying black keys or his fists.

That wasn’t good enough. The bloodsucker needed to be shown what he was missing.

Rich added a male portion to the motif accented with chromatic flickering but again, nothing. Seriously? Not even a transformation that simple would — He switched the beat to nine eight and took the last three notes that in a minor key which represented the heroism of humanity then looped them in a major key to create a call. Then came the thundering hooves of movement that sprouted from the agitated violins of compassionate love.

As the psychopomps rode, the kid exploded into action, so Rich twisted the tempo and varied the pitch, both playing the kid like a puppeteer and for him, his audience.

How cliché. Out of all the tracks, the one that synchronized with the kid best was the most famous one. Synchronized? Fuck that. Synchronization was for the hack Fes-ranked Tuner in the Clock Tower who used music to repair magic crests. Hearing beautiful things makes one beautiful. A shared performance was able to both elevate the listeners and curtail extraneous processes in their magic crest or circuit, so he used a modified violin mommy bought him to synchronize metaphysical wavelengths. Pathetic.

Beauty was all around us, in the moonlight that seeped underneath the dark lake’s surface and blanketed the canopy of fictional trees, the ragged breaths of a kid mechanically wailing on the king of the night, or the giddy smile a slender homunculus made the second before she lowers herself into a river or takes a bite of donauwelle fresh out of the archaic oven when she thought no one was watching. You don’t need to construct something beautiful, Byron fucking Islema. Capture it in your art — that’s the path to 「 」.

Like all mysteries, the ur-motif that Rich secluded did not truly exist. It was a platonic idea, the embryonic form of the variety of motifs fed into the score to become the true drama. The shadows were played, and in the same way ‘cat’ was capable of conjuring a concrete image in our minds, we interpret the Truth through repetitious transformation.

Yet, how were listeners capable of differentiating what was a transformed ur-motif and pure music? After all, separating the ur-motif from its musical background demythologized it into nothing more than the equivalent of a jpeg to be rolled for, collected, and forgotten — what Rich called a leitmotif. No, the ur-motif must go beyond the music, speaking to the depths of the collective unconscious of nature or humanity. Not, ‘synchronizing wavelengths,’ but the representation and transmutation of concept through music. That was the terminus Rich sought — for what ends should be clear. But for now. . .

Unable to take his eyes off a grainy, 240p stream a boyish rocker girl showed him, Rich saw the runners weren’t special. The watchers, typing their lives away weren’t average. Equally pathetic, they ran through their lives at their own pace. Bound by relationships, societal expectations, needs, and addictions, they continued to

type

run

through a world so chaotic that for a second, it might seem miraculously ordered. So each participant told themselves there was meaning and defined that meaning not just for themselves but everyone around them, even if those meanings were contradictory, hypocritical, and inevitably changed as they forgot the race they had just run. An

ur-motive

mystery

transforming throughout the great opera known as life, ripe for magical exploitation.

So, Rich left the term ‘tuning’ to hacks like Melvin fucking Waynez.

This mystery that aimed to speak to the World rather than himself could only be called —

Magnituning

Grand Tuning

.

Now the kid was no longer about to collapse, Rich turned his attention to ruining the ritual taking place. His threads of consciousness had been squirreling away information about the tree stump in the middle of this artificial, inlet sea. Carved into the hollow was a magic square that invoked the power of the sun. Contradictory for vampires. More importantly, such a minuscule ritual wasn’t worth protecting with a bounded field that fooled nature. Rich suspected the array spread throughout the entire lake and what was carved in the tree was a miniature matrix that activated the ritual, a mass sacrifice of the evil spirits currently living in the forest to ascend Lancer’s Saint Graph, no doubt.

For a bloodsucker who knew nothing about how the world really worked, he sure knew how to make a stable formula. Taking control of any foundational formula worked similarly to a matchstick puzzle. Using a limited amount of magical energy, introduce a change that did not trigger any traps, keep the formula functioning, and place it under your control all at once. All the rows, columns, and diagonals of magic squares added up to the same number — the magic constant, making it impossible to distort.

Rich had no intention of taking control of the ritual. He was here to kick lake mud in the bloodsucker’s face. Disrupting a magic square, that was easy.

The music bellowed across the lakefront as Rich took the first four notes of the chromatically distorted arpeggio that he had mistakenly used as the kid’s starting point and played the progression on horns. The brass struggled to elevate the descending notes to some semblance of majesty, still ringing hollow as the chords alternated. Trumpets swept in, the final attempt at sealing the motif with a noble cadence.

Nothing happened as the repeated phrases pierced the night. Despite the amount of magical energy used, the mystery did not interfere with nature; it was a simple reminder. The land the two Masters fought on was considered utopia, yet what utopia serves as a home for evil, forgotten spirits?

Keiner! Rich’s music declared. Utopia was the resting place of heroes. Those the Valkyrie deemed worthy, forever to be remembered, forever to defend the world against your machinations. You do not belong in this sacred land. So begone foul ghosts of the past future.

This was the magus ideal, identifying the core and changing it as fast as possible.

Unsteady on his feet so that his back was hunched over, shirt saturated in sweat that the crisp winter night air refused to wick, Rich’s cracked lips twisted into a smile as banshee lamentations from the forest overwrote his music.

As the bloodsucker snapped a falling Black Key with one hand, redirected the kid’s thrusting kick with the other, and twisted his body so the airborne Black Keys behind him only grazed his evening formal wear instead of making him a pincushion, his neck turned exactly ninety degrees so his cold, Mystic Eyes would dominate Rich’s mind. This lapse in attention let the kid smack the vampire squarely on the cheek with a nasty right hook, yet the bloodsucker held his gaze.

No matter what mysteries they might wield, a magus was still human. The bloodsucker was the cruel night itself made mystery, far surpassing whatever craft Rich had exploited internet trends and search engine algorithms to salvage. That had been Rich’s logic when he decided not to tune the bloodsucker. What a joke.

Magical energy had long since fled Rich’s body and he was indeed rooted where he stood, breath ragged from exertion and lack of Od. Yet, a disgustingly sly smile was still fixed on that Uniqlo winter catalog face, for there were no doubts in the Tuner’s mind and thus the night ruler’s gaze was easily deflected.

“The only body. . . those weak-ass eyes could manipulate. . . is a little girl pissing her pants right in front of your chalky face,” Rich managed to wheeze out.

Without looking away, the vampire said some words to the boy and unsheathed a black sword from his midnight cape. No, the cape itself condensed into the rapier.

“Lancer!”

Calling for his Servant with a shout and eyes aflame, the vampire charged through the kid’s barrage of Black Keys, shot from a hemisphere encircling the combatants. His swordplay was cruel but dazzling, noble but disinterested. Keys could no longer graze the bloodsucker, much less purify the fiend.

The kid let out one final shout as his final line of defense, his body, began to buckle under the fury of the dark mystery. Rich didn’t know what the kid was trying to say; he doubted the kid knew either. Didn’t matter, the bloodsucker was desperate. He needed the Saint Graph he was to ascend to be present, before the last

ingredient

spirit

was driven away from the former garden, now shielded hall.

Rich’s small arrogant smile widened into a grin, showing the whites of his cracked lips.

Wait until that bloodsucker saw what Archer’s made of his Servant.

Idle thought, but which one of his Noble Phantasms did Archer use to subjugate Lancer? The birds, his favored pelt, his bow, or arguably the most famous poison in all myth?

Any minute now, Archer’s divine aura would burst through the shrinking woods.

The boy’s gauntlets caught the dusky blade’s edge; his chest, the bloodsucker’s left knee.

Any minute now.

The vampire grabbed the kid by the collar of his robes and pitched him, like a fastball, across the clearing. There was no need to stop and admire his own handiwork. The vampire pivoted to face Rich.

Sword aloft.

Baton unmoving.

Their eyes met once again —

Archer. . . ! Where. . .

In fearful desperation, the mandated shackles fractured.

— only this time, Rich lost control of his body.

A booming crash too late as the battle between two half-naked demigods manifested in the clearing. Stygian needle tip outstretched; the vampire had already begun to close the unsteady ground with demonic speed. Neither hero nor Executor could hope to save Rich.

A magus always walked with death, but Rich couldn’t accept this end. Anyone, anything, even that stupid girl, just not this fucking bloodsucker who had the nerve to claim that Formalcraft didn’t require magic circuits. No, it wasn’t the specifics; actually, it was the specifics because with enough deviant specifics, the lens one saw through the world became distorted. Rich kept the homunculus who correctly calibrated his lens in his mind, her pointed nose, delicate clasped hands, the sharp turn of her head when admonishing someone. This couldn’t be the e—

An impact then a wet tear.

Unable to feel any pain, Rich looked down at the blood dripping onto the blades of grass his shadow sequestered from the moonlight. The red beads flowed down the verdant strands before mixing with the sloppy lake mud underneath.

~Interlude Out~

[You]

38/ Umbra

During a short respite, the Dead Apostle implores Rich to partake in the quotable truth he’s translated from the world of magecraft. All the pastors I’ve had the privilege of hearing preach have always tried to honey their passion with the milk of logical argument. Father Kelsey always says a great preacher can call upon both, but most clergymen are better at one than the other. There is no distinction for the Dead Apostle. Impenetrable, clerical, I hazard holy. The argument is so blatantly the entreat that I can’t comprehend, only accept what is said as a prayer.

If the Dead Apostle’s arguments are oratorios, then Rich’s refutations are sweeping cinematic soundscapes. Even I, tone-deaf Chris who can’t tell the difference between our pipe organ and a digital one, hear the passion dripping from Rich’s arguments transformed into

music

magecraft

.

“

Hör' es die Fluth

Hear me ye Flood!

”

There are no visible instruments, yet the air becomes abuzz with a clear, twinkling melody. It gushes out of Rich’s meticulously sculpted body, then tempered by his conducting overwhelms the affronted shrieks filling the forest encircling us.

The notes don’t cool my sizzling brain; they croon to a similar hypnotic beat. That’s right, the rhythm I whisper to myself with when spellcasting. I’m no music aficionado. Music is a measured pattern of sounds and silences, mathematical vibrations plotted on a single axis. When someone asks me what I listen to, I pause for the right amount of time and answer Spotify’s Discover Weekly is the best place for new music. Crazy how good that algorithm is, right? Having no taste, I can’t say if what’s in the air tonight is ‘real’ music. But, there’s magical energy, so at the very least, this is magecraft.

The notes Rich’s circuits pluck from the ether into being intone that the plummeting Black Keys now arching upwards in defiance of the Dead Apostle’s claws and my repeatedly deflected fists are symptoms of heroism. This is the closest to humanity’s ideal condition without the final piece. It’s not. I’m not. This has to be more than that. This has to be petty. This has to be selfish. This is —

Now you’re overcompensating. I’m fighting a Dead Apostle. He’s the villain, not me. I’m a person, Rich, I don’t think we fit the binary mold of your movie soundtracks because no matter who we are, we’re merely idiotic, pathetic, weak human beings no offense, you tune dolls.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s impressive magecraft. Beyond impressive. A magi’s reply to the Dead Apostle’s instance that Formalcraft that solely requires ritualistic knowledge can be called magecraft must be. I don’t know whether that’s true, if it matters, or whether the Dead Apostle is referring to

Formalcraft

Elemental Conversion

or

Formalcraft

the magecraft style

. You obviously do.

Yet, even if the magical music has saturated the clearing like an ominous wind, the magical energy doesn’t directly target those within, but the location itself. Namely, the intervention is weak. Whatever effect on the Dead Apostle is negligible. He’s already pushed me half-way to the lake’s edge. This isn’t a fight. This is the Mission Prep, ‘

Bishies

Bishops

,’ going into the seventh innings needing five home runs.

But, that’s why I trained with the old man, right? We’re Executors, not warriors. It doesn’t matter what or how it is accomplished, we execute the Lord’s will. Keep playing, Rich — keep playing and you’ll reach me. You have to reach me because maintaining the Ash Lock that’s fastening my sense of self onto this plane is burning my brain to cinder. I need your

magecraft

music

to reinforce who I am and that this Dead Apostle must be my enemy, Master or not.

Yes, Rich, there’s resentment, so much resentment because there had to be resentment when he lost his parents.

Yes, Rich, there’s love, flitting, agitated love for the world and all of humanity because there has to be gratitude after being nurtured for these years.

Yes, Rich, there’s fire. There’s always been the fire of passion inside of me. I’m a person. That must be what I admired in Saber. That’s why I thought she was beautiful. That must be me.

These are the elements that make up Chris Frampton. The fragments that I’ve worked so hard to collect and bind to myself, expressed in pure music, so why did you cast them aside for —

. . . merely foam. . .

Stumbling feet stabilize, trembling fists tighten, my Lesser Source glides through the overheating circuits, using the music as a heat-sink as the Valkyries ride between the border of life and death. Their white horses thunder across the sky, leaving a tempest of broken families in their wake. Sisters in make. Sisters in duty. Automata of the One-Eyed Gallows God. There is no need for need, Chris. There is only the execution. You understand that, right?

This Ash Lock can’t purify him.

These Black Keys might as well be trying to pierce a Servant.

That overly-lengthy Baptismal Sacrament will never be fully recited.

So what? Rich’s march belts in defiance.

This is how you’ve lived. This will be how you die. There’s no difference, only the connecting movements. That’s why you thought she was beautiful.

That’s wrong. That oppressive wrongness sprouted from Lancer’s trees must be within me too. One of the flock, I too am tainted with the Original Sin and absolved through the Sacrifice of our Lord and Savior. After all that’s happened, I have to want to kill this Dead Apostle.

Forearm, inner thigh, and right kidney, the fists graze the first two and a spinning Black Key cuts into the third. The bruises and cuts regenerate the moment the wounds appear; he steps forward to throw off the attack, forcing me to retreat; I can sense my death in thirty exchanges. But, I can keep up now. Instead of letting your consciousness white-out, lose yourself in Rich’s white noise.

Keep swinging. Keep moving. Keep

setting

announcing

.

Then you’ll be okay with —

“All the mysteries your personage renders are as lacking as your signification to the Human Order that texturizes the planet, highlighting your ignorance.” The Dead Apostle shakes his head as a flash of his claws shatter the holy nails. “Your figure alone expresses your membership to the Holy Church. Your performance shares in their mission. Strike down Those Who Apostolate Death (死の

ともがら

徒

, shi no tomogara) who struck your pre-descendants down. How can there be such a breakdown of internal consistency? Your actions are out of character. You’ve fought with calculation of a mechanical level and none of the brainless impulse (気迫, kihaku, "drive/air/vigor") cursed resentment brings forth. Even that self-proclaimed magus’ spellcasting (呪文詠唱, lit. cursed text aria) interfaces with more pathos.”

Without thinking, “Shut up! Shut up! I don’t need any of your considerations!”

Not me. The incoherent voice line welled up from the pit of my stomach and flared out. Maybe it was a side effect of Rich’s music. The rhythms don’t match, though. The cadence of those words almost crackle like a flame.

Snap a falling Black Key, push away my bound leg, spin to avoid the next Black Keys, and target Rich, of all people, with your Mystic Eyes all you want, Dead Apostle. With such an obvious opening, my fist finally connects, striking him squarely in the face. Now, the follow-up —

But, “The veracity within the sought is absent vengeance.” Mystic Eyes still subjugating Rich, the Dead Apostle speaks to me.

I —

Set

I announce

!

Nothing. The Black Key hangs in the night air like last year’s lingering Christmas decorations. My fist drops limply to my side.

Punch, kick, gouge, knee, bite! Come on. You can feel the remaining Lesser Source ready to blaze through the circuits. As long as the Ash Lock is intact, you can force your body to move. So come on, this is the opening you were waiting for. The one to finally end —

Oh. . . I can’t move. Like my strings have been cut. No, not because of the Dead Apostle’s Mystic Eyes. Rich is doing more than a fine job warding them off with mental strength alone. Just. . . almost like he made it apparent the fire I thought had always been burning inside of me, inciting me, doesn’t exist. A cavity. Hollow. Emptiness encased in a thin membrane of soap.

Yes, maybe, absolutely, I don’t feel anything, but that’s right now. I’ll thrust these Black Keys through his undead flesh, and everything will finally be as it should. Parents avenged. A

life

story

concluded. That forsaken boy, affirmed. And me. . . finally, me. Yeah, that’s right. That’s absolutely correct. So why aren’t I moving?

“Lancer!”

It’s over. Not because either Lancer or Archer will burst out of the forest in the next few seconds, or Rich has disrupted the ritual, but because I’ve admitted defeat.

“Neophytes may employ the nerves as thaumaturgical circuitry (魔術回路). Though, to have thought there was a Spellcaster (魔術使い) so profligate as to employ exclusive thaumaturgical circuits unto the nervous system (神経系, lit. divine scripture system). Incompetent.” His goodbye is a simple fact.

To him, this is gospel.

To him, I’m some data point he can plug and chug to

refine

reify

his model of the World.

I understand now. For him, everything is foam too. The individual

droplets

bubbles

don’t matter as long as the information

pools

coalesces

to serve a greater narrative, his greater purpose. He doesn’t see Rich or me, only breaks us down, calling our useful components greater than the sum of our beings.

Accept everything to except anything. The Dead Apostle greedily drinks from his blood fount.

Even if I’ve given up, Rich is still playing. His magical martial march urges me to ride on, no matter the conclusion because the meaning is in the message. I know. That only reinforces what the Dead Apostle said.

— The veracity within the sought is absent vengeance.

If there’s nothing, then die. Accept that you’re being swept off the stage.

The Dead Apostle unsheathes a thin black sword. Condensed from the darkness of his cape, it’s shrouded in sinister magical energy. Having wrung me dry, he will now dissect the useless parts.

Demonic. His swordplay can only be described so. Sable starlight puts the black in my Keys of Purification to shame. I can clearly see the dark needle piercing through the moist air at a superhuman speed. I can’t stop it.

“What?” His sharp intake and my gasp.

The needle flashes, redirecting itself to zig-zag at seemingly impossible angles to both shatter the invading Black Keys and push back my Ash Lock-bound fists.

No blood, but the section where naked, black mystery met the Word of the Lord was torn. A greater mystery will overcome a lesser one. The absolute, defined domain, Rich’s music seethes to me. That is a gap you can’t surpass.

I must surpass that gap with this half-broken body.

“Was my articulation not as not sufficient, whelp? My most substantial mystery divulged, your expressed thaumaturgical techniques elucidated then advised upon, and even the Truth of your psyche bared for your apprehension. You lack reason. You lack reason to continue such hindrance!”

Rich adding additional mystical factors to the environment interfered with the ritual to the point the Dead Apostle needn’t worry about protecting the hollow anymore. He’ll use the full force of his greatest mystery to kill us.

When he drew his sword — my eyeballs started hurting. What Cherry calls my kind eyes. Pain. Not an ache, sting, or burning. But pain. Like everything in me was shutting down. They really hurt, so my body naturally moved as if programmed to follow whatever my eyes saw.

Like the sting of the bees that pollinate the flowers growing near the water’s edge at a springtime that has been ever-gradually stepping on winter’s tail ever since the Industrial Revolution, his rapier

shoots forth to pierce my ribs

has shot forth and pierced my ribs

.

“RRRyaaaa —!”

I twist my body to avoid it, but I’m too slow. The tip of his sword catches my left shoulder and blows through all but a single page of protection. It doesn’t hurt because my brain is drowning in flame. Not because of overused circuits, I know that feeling all too well since Cherry always says you need to feel the mystery to truly understand it. It’s these eyes. I just —

Like him.

Like him, my eyes are affixed beyond. As if a single frame in a filmstrip, a distant scene is injected into and then brands my brain before playing.

There’s blood.

As expected of a vampire there’s so much blood.

Don’t go any further. Leave it at Dead Apostle. That’s all I need to see. That’s all I need to know.

I kill scores with that sword. You probably don’t remember them.

My swordplay is impeccable. Inhuman. But, stagnant. If I kill every opponent on the first encounter, there’s no need to improve. No one’s ever survived. No Templar, no Knight, no Executor, no Age of Gods mystery.

Slash. Dead.

Thrust. Dead.

Slash. Thrust. Dead.

Each of them only glimpsed one, two, maybe three attacks. Equally meaningless, individual bubbles. Yet with each encounter, they pile on top of each other until the past becomes a spray of seafoam. The accumulated experiences, the mountain of forsaken bodies, these eyes accept them all.

A wide swing and then two thrusts. I know what will happen so I announce that a constellation of Black Keys shall plummet to cover my retreat. He’s too fast or I’m too slow. Either way, his slash tears open the portion of the Ash Lock protecting my chest.

My eyes hurt.

The Dead Apostle charges like he always does when he’s agitated. How —

Like him.

For all your evening finery and composed sermonizing, you’ve never been this close to your dearest wish, have you?

Wish. Goal. Objective.

Throughout your blood-sucking second life, you’ve always moved with purpose. A heretic might mistake it as their own, learning and then reaching the shape of Truth. Magi are people who only have the beginning and end, zero. Your goal does not point towards something that never existed. Yours has always been around you. You are confirming the shape of the World. There’s nothing. . . nothing, mechanical about you. A passion for understanding — taking each data point, carefully considering it under the existing framework and categorizing where it must fit.

Your sword affirms this has been your entire life in blood spilled.

Your sword declares my

announcements

sets

are empty words posturing.

The proof?

Everything of yours is encapsulated in that sword, that’s why it is named —

But he’s a Dead Apostle. Dead Apostle. He can’t be anything but a Dead Apostle.

That’s the difference between you and I —

Like him.

I admit it. I like him.

Not in the way I like Saber, the distant funeral pyre who tells me that everything I’ve wished for is possible. Not in the way I like Cherry, the person who raised me the best she could. Not in the way I like Kayla, the personification of halcyon days. Not in the way I like everyone because they like me.

If the boy I replaced survived, he would be like the wielder of this flowery rapier.

Love the world you’ve so carefully boxed yourself into, to the point that each spoken word becomes a link in a chain to anchor yourself to the world.

Sincerely.

Not because you’ve always lived this way and cannot think of living any other way, but because there’s an oath to protect and a goal to be reached. So at the end of this path, you’ll even sit alone, atop your chthonic throne. Lord of the manufactured. Forever waiting for enough souls to kindle that four-layered mortal solar engine you’ve replicated at this lake.

My eyes tell me to accept that.

— As long as anyone has lived a semblance of a life, there is no way you can call them a monster.

The beautiful things are ugly, and the ugly things are beautiful. In this way everything is merely foam, glistening in the weak moonlight. So, of course it’s there — the thing I’ve been searching for since I was born.

I’ve lost. I’ve completely lost.

How can a Dead Apostle be so unlike a Dead Apostle?

“Then drown and rot.” A voice. Not his. Not mine. Definitely not Rich’s. It hisses, dripping poisonous embers that reprimand me for forgiving this blood-soaked plague on the world.

What of the scores lost in this city alone? It roars.

What of the thousands slaughtered? It raves.

What of the millions drained? It rages.

Right, he’s a Dead Apostle. That’s all I need to know.

His sword closes in for the — how many times has it closed in?

I sacrifice three Black Keys to give myself enough time to clear my mouth of blood. The glob hits the mud our shoes have compacted and refuses to mix. Most of my damage is internal. Rich’s music is mental doping that, at most, affects the spiritual body, allowing me to ignore my already broken body. I’m not too worried about that though.

It’s hot.

My feverish brain sucks all the heat out of the other functions, except my eyes. They really hurt.

The eyes calculate the sword’s history so it can be accepted. The body moves accordingly because seeing is believing, even if the body can’t catch up. I pay the cost of the contradiction in bloody pages. The mental counter no longer ticks downward, the clicks begin to overlap, announcing that my prize is death. In order to accept the past to survive the present, I sacrifice the ability to block future attacks. A deathly feedback loop that shaves down my remaining protection. Ripped and torn, only scraps of my

Ash Lock

righteous vengeance

remain on my robes.

The Dead Apostle readies a thrusting stance. The biggest difference, both hands are on the grip. He’s serious.

I stab a thousand opponents, rupturing them like the disk-shaped red blood cells that are popping in my eyes. A thousand rivers of sticky red run down the black blade. Unconsciously, I whisper her name a thousand times.

That doesn’t make sense.

I inhale, sharply. It hurts my throat to make such an unnatural sound.

“Tan Hua are white.”

For the first time this entire night, his eyes widen, and for a second, his stance almost crumples. For him, every action has been ritual and every verse, ascendent prayer. Not a writ to beseech, but to confirm his faith.

He closes the gap between my heartbeats like I’ve done a thousand times before.

Can’t dodge, so catch the blade on the wrist of my left gauntlet where the conceptual weapon is still at its thickest in hopes I can sacrifice the arm instead of having the remaining oxygen knocked from my lungs when his knee, encased in a leather, thigh-high boot will strike me squarely in the —

“Gah —”

I’m too slow. My peripheral vision disappears as I double over. He doesn’t let my knees sink into the mud. His pale claw wraps around my robe’s collar, holding me a good foot above the ground.

“ — Ha, ha, ha. . .” I can’t help that I’m desperately gasping for breath. Good, I hope the increased oxygen flow increases the free radical-induced damage to my genetic information. That’s how petty I should be.

“If you are capable of visual confirmation, then why flounder? Your motivation (演算, keisan), your performance (性能, seinou), your juggling (魔術, majutsu) have all been neutralized. Your personage has always been as a secondary, but now your purpose is non-extant. Obliviate yourself.”

He doesn’t scowl nor do lines bulge, but he finally sees me. It’s personal. The last time that happened — I involuntarily gag but there’s already nothing left in my stomach. Half-digested Costco hotdog and soft-serve on his cravat would have been the right amount of petty.

“This obstinance must be rendered from the Tuner’s thaumaturgical function.”

I don’t look at Rich.

It has to be because I want to kill you for my own reasons, so please plunge your sword into my chest, giving me enough time to release all the remaining Black Keys in my robes.

Bracing for the death blow, I announce, “Se—”

The world flips upside down before I'm able to finish the incantation. Bladed tendrils of cold lake air cut into my raw wounds. Instead of crushing my head or stabbing my heart, the Dead Apostle threw me across the clearing. Correction: I’m pitched across the clearing. How on earth did a Dead Apostle pitch me as a God honest sinker. Nothing was imitated; he simply threw me without experience, form, even intent. I know as much about baseball as any other kid, having only watched the Bishies from the bleachers, but somehow the result surpasses the high school league and even the blunt weapons the kids duel with outside the downtown 7-Eleven.

S.V.S. with me as the ball.

The slugger that erupts from the Dead Apostle’s forest’s edge could only be that feral mass of muscle. His bat? The leaf-spear that can split the air faster than I hurtle through it. Bunt, line drive, flyball, anything more than a touch and I’m a fly against a windshield.

You should have killed me yourself, Dead Apostle, instead of pitching me to your Servant so you could deal with the greater threat, Rich. Even those kids at 7-Eleven after school know that the relationship between pitcher and batter surpasses intimacy. Say you’re playing a Japanese street sport for the clout as much as you want, but once you step up to that pretend mound, step up to that pretend box, you fight to understand the person you’re facing. It’s in the name of the game; everything else disappears into the background, even the greatest hero in history.

Like a rhinoceros from an Animal Planet video, Archer bulldozes Lancer. The left half of Archer’s steel-like body crushes Lancer’s collarbone. The crack is audible. If Lancer was human, he’d be as pulverized as I’m going to be in the next few seconds.

Lancer holds fast, magical energy streaming out of his feet, roots refusing to relinquish the nourishing soil that sustains them. He won’t budge. The temporary rank up to Lancer’s STR might not be enough to overwhelm an Archer at his peak with both arms, but —

Dark bulbous veins protrude from the second arm that should have been forever lost, uprooting Lancer and hurtling him back. The very next second, large, rough hands enclose my back, pulling back to nullify all the force I was pitched with. As gentle as a father swaddling his child.

He shouldn’t have saved me. I’m grateful that I’m not dead, but Archer won’t be able to shoot down the sprinting Dead Apostle. Archer may be a legendary archer but I’m sure scrawled in the margins of the fundamental laws of archery alongside not being able to change targets when the arrow is in mid-flight or the consistent lag time between choosing a target and firing is that a bow cannot be drawn with a child in your arms.

Heroic Spirits may be the manifestations of overturned fate and there are a number of legends of archers breaking the fundamental rules, but factoring in the Dead Apostle’s inhuman speed, Archer has no way to put me down, fend off Lancer, and prepare a shot before the Dead Apostle plunges his sword into Rich’s chest.

Rich. . . the Einzbern family aren’t suited for combat. Its Tuners even less so. I heard it with my own two ears tonight. If I’m truly grateful,

“Archer, throw me.”

Archer doesn’t look down. His muscles twitch. His golden eyes tell me he can’t. He can’t let another child —

— Boom. His regenerated arm snaps.

Back. Leg. Hips. Shoulder. Knee. Calves. The undead being living in mystery needed his entire body. Archer sent me hurtling with only the flick of a wrist and his forearm.

The dregs of my Ash Lock’s spiritual integrity vaporizes into the cold night air. All there’s left is to pray.

“I will kill. I will let live. I will harm and heal.”

Pray that if I’m going to die, then I’ll just have to take you with me, Dead Apostle!

“None will escape me. None will escape my sight.

Be crushed.”

A clearing molded into a magic circle must have sacred dimensions. Bisecting the circle from shore to Rich through the origin is the hypotenuse. Every other point on the circumference draws a Euclidean right-angled triangle.

“I welcome those who have grown old and those who have lost.

Devote yourself to me, learn from me, obey me.”

Sin, cos, tan — the exact trigonometry has no meaning since anyone could tell the distance from third base to home is shorter than second to home.

“Rest.”

Small golden-leaf-wrapped links scatter into the wind as my still-bound left hand tears off the old man’s rosary from my neck. In my right is the red hilt of a Black Key to run the Dead Apostle through.

“Do not forget song, do not forget prayer, do not forget me.

I am light and will relieve you of all your burdens.”

Dead Apostles are sensitive to death, so he must feel his own, flying towards his cloaked back. I doubt I’m faster than a handgun bullet, so react.

“Do not pretend.”

React!

Since stepping into the bounded field, I steeled myself for a mutual death. You have more than enough time, so why do you simply turn, your blade pointing at the ground.

As if you were a cross, arms spread out wide, resolute.

As if you were a shepherd, worried that this foolish lamb had not, could not comprehend your sermon.

“HAAAAA —”

We crash. Tumbling, tumbling. The wet mud softens a landing that doesn’t need softening and strips my final scraps of protection. Caking from my elevated body heat, the lake mud clings to the remnants of my useless Ash Lock, robes, and body.

I look down at the corpse I’m straddling — cold, pale, death strewn in the mud.

The greatest enemy of the Church. The monster that killed

his

my

parents. Everything I’ve been living for has been for this moment.

Yet — underneath the weak moonlight, I can’t see the Dead Apostle as anything other than what doctrine demands must be destroyed.

There is no hate

vindication

rejection

something

anything. . . .

“HAAAGGGGHHHH —!!!!!!!!!!!”

The Ash Lock finally snaps. The binding that has been holding me together tears apart as the Black Key in my right hand slips into his breast bone without resistance. Not enough. Not nearly enough. Squeeze out the last of your magical energy and force that still-gauntleted fist to bash Black Key after Black Key into the Dead Apostle until only hilts sit atop his evening formalwear.

He laughs. A staccato of sharp intakes.

Don’t waste your breath, Dead Apostle.

“Retribution for forgiveness, betrayal for trust, despair for hope, darkness for light, dark death for the living.

Relief is in my hands. I will add oil to your sins and leave a mark.”

Heart. Neck. Left hand. Right hand. Left foot. Right foot.

In each is a

nail

Black Key

, crucifying him to the earth his body shall return to.

I grip the old man’s cross in my left hand as if holding it could hold me together.

“Eternal life is given through death. Ask for forgiveness here. I, the incarnation, will swear.

— Kyrie Eleison.”

Be purified and purged of your Curse of Restoration.

No light, no sound, no change in the World to signify completion like heretical magical formulae. The Baptismal Sacrament is the antithesis of magecraft, the artificial mysteries that plague the world. The sacred power from the foundation purifies all that digresses from the Lord’s Natural Law.

You are unwanted. You are unneeded. You shall not transgress on the Lord’s Kingdom.

Be purified. Be executed. Begone.

This is bloody Work.

Ash Lock torn apart, Black Keys all spent, body broken, straddling a corpse, I exact his vengeance. The only thing that should have mattered to him these years is hidden in the background of Archer’s and Lancer’s clash of titans. Demigods manifesting on this plane as the crystallization of the myths we tell ourselves changed the inlet sea’s landscape with superhuman feats and divine magical energy. Compared to that, insignificant as this was, petty as this was,

it’s over. Thank God, it’s over.

Judging from the Master clairvoyance, Lancer at full strength would struggle against an Archer in peak condition. A Masterless Lancer who is hemorrhaging magical energy will quickly be defeated.

Right. Everything is over. I should be satisfied with that for now.

Rich’s circuits are no longer running as he steps away from me. He can see that the Dead Apostle is crumbling into dus—

“Why (何故だ, naze da)?”

The rasp only a corpse’s throat could make should no longer exist.

“You claim instruction in the laws of mystery, yet your actions exceed blind arrogation, plunging headfirst into ignorance!”

He unpins his hands from the ground without extracting the Black Keys from his palms. He stands; a simple click of each heel snaps the holy stakes that bound his feet. Mud against carrion sounds like two pieces of meat slapping against each other.

“A Baptismal Sacrament to drive the Lord’s divine providence into the body and Keys of Purification to return the flesh to dust.” Words tumble out of my mouth, “You weren’t Christian. No, that shouldn’t matter. My faith just isn’t strong enough. No, I definitely connected to the foundation. You’re a Dead Apostle. You should have been purified. You’re a Dead Apostle!”

I’ve been searching for you all my life, and you’re finally here. Everything I’ve worked for has been leading up to this moment when I finally, after all this time fe—

“Dead Apostle? When did I pronounce myself a Dead Apostle?”

Wha—

He’s too fast. I’m too broken.

He plunges his black rapier into my torso.

“Gah —”

I don’t feel it. That’s not the problem.

I don’t feel anything. That’s the problem.

“Not. . . a Dead Apostle. . . but you. . . “

Have to be a Dead Apostle — I. . .

“An introduction is in order.” He looks down, blond hair glowing in the pale moonlight, red eyes aflame, pitch-black sword bloody. “Eternal servant of his majesty Lycaon of Arcadia, Master of Lancer — Wolfgang Faustus, Lamyros.”

Lamy — ros.

— Considering the quality of the mana in the modern world, I wouldn’t believe that

Lamyros

Lamia’s children

still endangered humanity.

— I’ve decided. A Lamyros will be the perfect warm-up for challenging this burning warrior queen.

— Hail, child. A good day for a Lamyros hunt.

— Child, you don’t want this Lamyros to be a Master, do you?

This entire time, I’ve been —

This can’t be happening. I don’t mind a Dead Apostle killing me, but this. THIS? Get away. I can’t. There’s a sword sticking into my stomach. I trip and fall instead. Not because my legs can no longer support my body, I’ve been drained of too much blood, or even because of a stray rock in the mud. I trip over myself.

*****

Acrid, sour, like I’m inside a

stomach

furnace

rather than a primal womb.

Every breath clings to my skin like a membrane saturated with death. Death is not sterile, cold, and dry but a moist, liquefying blackness that fuels the fire ahead of me.

Unable to keep my footing, I begin to drown in the death, leaving nothing but bubbles that slowly rise to the surface of the viscous substance before popping, revealing there truly never was anything inside.

“Your life.” The poisonous hiss of the illusory flame in the center of the cave.

Whatever substance I’m sinking into responds to its words. Thousands of hands grab me and drag me down. Drowning me.

I don’t want to drown in my ██████ and die.

I flail, reaching for the sides of the pool. There’s nothing to grab for support. There never was. That’s what the flame has been saying all this time. I just haven’t been listening because —

All of us, no matter who we are, are merely idiotic, pathetic, weak human beings.

The thousands of hands tugging at me ease up. I don’t want them to. I’d rather drown than be beholden to Dilo’s words. Because none of me has anything to do with that bishop. What I want to feel and how I want to see the world comes solely from

him

me

. It has to.

I stretch my arm out to drag myself out of the pool, away from the flame. I need to get back. I don’t know what I’m returning to, but I can’t stay here.

“Gah, the idiot, didn’t he realize he declared all human beings idiotic, weak, and pathetic?” Drips the poisonous voice. My arm stops moving.

“There is only misunderstanding. It is impossible to truly hate something if you try to understand. Who actually believes that nonsense? Blind, foolish, small-minded man. Anyone alive sees the ugly things if they have lived long enough. Give a man enough bitterness, riches, or ambition and he shall betray. Even in your sanitized world where there is no choice but to externalize the evils of the world, they cannot be totally banished.”

No matter how blithely I live in a Central California bubble, the Sisters that cradle this town scream our sins.

At school/In an prosecutor’s office.

At the Farmer’s market/At an engagement feast.

In this town/On the open sea.

I can’t help but look at that mundane, petty ugliness and accept it, forgive it, calling the sentiment, the emotion behind all that ugliness, beautiful.

Protecting the station that you’ve worked so hard to obtain —

Protecting the self-esteem you’ve mustered until you know you’re the most suited for the job —

Protecting the genuine, romantic love that won’t lose to anyone else —

Dazzling in all its pettiness no matter the result. It’s there, what I’m missing but shouldn’t be.

“That’s why you’re disgusting.”

The viscous liquid drowning me begins to churn. The grating, jarring echo of a stomach about to evacuate its contents reverberates through me. The vultures in the forest screeched, their fictitious chatter begged to be validated, accepted, observed. They are the missing, strung together with the line of fate embedded in that word alone, and Lancer, their king.

This is the opposite.

The moist, viscous death made up of a jumble of splayed limbs amalgamate into fleshy scales that squeeze the remaining breath out of me. Made from not only the liquid in the pool but the cavern itself, the wyrm undulates like an intestine. Blind, deaf, mute, and ageusic. Only feeling. A colony of interlocking

scales

bodies

, it wallows in its own forsaken filth, decrying the Lord. Its rage and size forever grows. This serpent won’t encircle the world and fill the seas. It is already us.

The belly of the beast constricts me. I gasp for breath. Not even bubbles come out of my mouth anymore.

“Once upon an age, a Saint was said to have visited this island.” What venomous derision at the word Saint. “The inhabitants called this island something else back then, before it was used as a smuggler’s cove. The pious Saint, urged on by the cries of believers descended into the bowels of the earth and found a wyrm. A Saint and dragon, bah, how obvious. Not even worth the coffee brewed to tempt the telling.”

The mass of drowned bodies slithers, soft moans echoing as heads bash into rocks, incorporating those fleshy aggregates into the main body. The cavern is completely made out of wretched bodies. No wonder it feels like I’m inside of one.

“No hatred in your heart, not even for a vampire. None of the Love the Father blessed this world by way of sacrificing His Son. Disgusting. To blindly accept all is to affirm that this hateful world, filled with ugliness is correct. Do not avert your eyes!”

I haven’t.

I really haven’t.

This world is beautiful. If you don’t look at the individual evils and only the shape of the bubbles, the tapestry of Humanity, then —

“I don’t know what’s more disgusting, the systems that enslave the world or your championing them.”

The contempt radiating from the hollow flame is real. I even accept that; this flame forever burns in hate. It’s natural for you. Apprehension, fear, self-righteousness. You are absolutely valid. Look at me mixed in with this

sludge

dragon

. Anyone would revolt either out of righteous fury at the sheer wretchedness or fear for the aesthetics that shape their lives.

Like the saintly figure in robes beyond me, they would see that jutting out from the cresting waves of bodies, in front of the dark flame, is a

cross

sword

, a glittering slayer of dragons. With steady hands and desperate feet, they clamber through the wallowing filth knowing each

scale

body

that crunches underfoot is a flame scrawled message for those who shall come after. Many sink and drown in pursuit of that

cross

sword

, becoming one of the many

scales

bodies

, yet they persist.

The liquid scales, sweaty, fetid, sulfuric, may cling onto the skin like lakeside mud, but they will soon cake and be forgotten.

The wretched groans may resound in the brain, like a dragon’s roar, but they will be nothing but white noise to sleep to.

Because there is something to reach. There is something to avenge. There is something to feel.

“This path. . .”

Is ugly.

The dark flame knows all too well.

“Yes, this world’s stories are usually like this.”

It should make anyone furious. Even me, right?

You’ve pulled yourself from a pool of humanity’s refuse, those even the Lord has abandoned, stepped over these

scales

bodies

ceaselessly, uncaring, to be able to kill a Dead Apostle because that’s what you thought someone else would want to do. All to give meaning to a life unfulfilled. This is the place you’ve arrived at.

Chris, all there’s left is apotheosis.

Expel everything. Expound on why it’s wrong. Exact vengeance from it.

My eyes hurt. Everything truly is merely foam.

“Goddamn it, for the first thing in your life, reject something.”

The world doesn’t have to look like this. You won’t be the first. Look past the dark sea and foam at the edge of the shore. There is the shape of malice to be rejected.

Naturally, the hand must reach out for the cross. It ignites. This is a body that has been built for this purpose alone. It has no wish. But, even without a wish it must reject what has been forsaken. So, as a matter of course, the blade loosens from the

scales

bodies

that serve as its sheath.

. . . you are nothing more than a mere human being.

Shut up.

“Ah —”

I hesitate. Something huge rams into me. My knuckles tighten around the hilt. I can’t feel my left side anymore. The senseless serpent devoured my left side. There’s no pain because the legion of forsaken have no teeth; its fleshy gums impotently gnaw at me, trying to incorporate me into itself. Yes, there’s no pain, I scream solely from the fear of losing myself.

Your actions are out of character. You’ve fought with calculation of a mechanical level and none of the brainless impulse cursed resentment brings forth.

“Isn’t it ugly? Isn’t it disgusting? You can feel it now, the grudges, impotent wrath, and poison seeping into you, dragging you down to its depth. Reality and Fate playing its sadistic hand. This is what the bestial nature the world has produced; the wretchedness that consumes everything.”

The poisonous flame urges me to raise the cross, look beyond love and hate and begin walking down the

path

vengeance

as so many have before.

“Reject it. Otherwise, accept your drowning into despair. That itself is your hell.”

Everything inside of me screams to strike the wyrm down like the Saints of myth. To retain identity. To retain self. To retain purpose. Of course, there was nothing to break in the first place, so I am complete. There doesn’t need to be anything more than what was constructed.

Flaming

cross

sword

held aloft, it falls to vengefully sever that which all the evils of the world engendered, the wretched forsaken that even our Lord cannot save. All is right in the world, Amen.

This... isn’t a fate that you should thank me for.

I. . .

What idiotic words. What an insincere smile. What a stupid man.

I can’t.

Half of myself in the maw of the

wyrm

forsaken

, tears streaming down my face, I throw the cross away.

*****

Still impaled on his sword, I feel a Black Key flying from my hand as I regain consciousness. It was a clumsy throw like I was trying to swat something wretched away. Even my first throws behind the Mission were better.

“Such askance. . .”

Shocked, he tilts his head to avoid the Black Key thrown by someone who shouldn’t be able to move. He’s cut anyway. We’re so close together even his superhuman reflexes won’t allow him to dodge and come out unscathed.

It doesn’t matter. Keys of Purification won’t baptise his flesh. He’s not a Dead Apostle; he’s a Lamyros. A blood-sucking irregular Phantasmal Species. I may as well be attempting to pray a True Ancestor away.

A pained gasp. “What?!”

The flame-wreathed cut on his cheek doesn’t heal. But, even a cremation rite wouldn’t be enough to —

“A cremation ri. . . no.” Inflamed, red, bleeding. “You. . . hidden under its bowels was —”

Explosions and trees flying drown out the rasp of the pale corpse. In the foreground, Archer soars through the night sky, black bow drawn. He shouts something, but there’s so much noise that I can’t hear it. Nine phantasmal dragons draped in divinity shoot forth. God’s wrath manifests to punish the sinners who dare crawl on the earth.

The Dea— Lamyros unsheathes his sword from my chest in one motion as his other claw steadies him against the buffets of magical energy. He pushes through the tempest; his now visible Command Spell flashes. A stroke, a pair of wings, disappears.

A fortress made up of forest erupts from the lakeside, but the nine-headed divine dragons’ poison devours the chthonic defense. I can’t hear the vultures screeching in resignation or defiance. It might be because of all the blood that I’ve lost but everything’s drowning in bubbles. Like the foam that makes up the edge of the lake, a million bubbles make up Archer landing, Rich screaming, Lancer disappearing and the Dea— Wolfgang retreating into the night.

I fall onto the

bubbles

grass

. I hold my

bubbles

hand

out to the

bubbles

sky

. My breathing is shallow, so I use my remaining strength to twist myself to my side. A large cluster of bubbles stands beside me. Reflected in them is me disrupting Wolfgang’s ritual with my Magnituning. The cluster begins to move away from me, but a larger cluster further down the sea of foam shouts at it. I can’t hear what the bubbles are saying, but I understand that reflected in those bubbles are the shadows of the past.

“Umbral. . . foam. . .”

My breath is ragged. I don’t know if it took a unit of Planck time, aeon, or if they’re the same thing but eventually everything starts to go dark, even the bubbles. Amidst the darkening lake of foam floats a single black flame, smoldering hatefully. The same flame that hissed venomous words in that island cavern burns the world of foam back.

It flares for a moment, darkening until it loses all dimensionality. From the

abyss

maw

strides a Tiger. A lithe feline with black stripes as if blow-torched on and paws that sink into the foam. It stops when it reaches the dying me, and speaks in the same hiss.

“

Transience Ignited

Via Crucis — Unsealed

”

How? I couldn’t reject the forsaken. I threw the sword away.

“You still drew the cross.”

Still gripping onto the old man’s cross for dear life, I close my eyes and drown in my failure.

[You]

39/ Double-Glazed

“Sorry about the mess.”

“Mess? You should see my old apartment. You have the cleanest kitchen I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh. . . I wouldn’t. . . would you like some sugar with your tea?”

“No, no need. Drinking tea as-is is novel for me. Caffeine addiction. The ER will do that to you. Thank you.”

“No, thank you, Dr. Levitt, for all your help Wednesday night. It was. . .”

“My job. Regardless of what I’m doing now, I keep to the Oath. So I have to ask, your child. . . Chris. . . he’s —”

“. . . He’s a good kid. Thank you for helping him, but he’s not involved in the Grail War anymore, so please,”

“Is he why you’re fighting, Sakura?”

“People in this country find it easier to call me Cherry.”

“Then, Cherry. I find it difficult to accept that the heir of a noble magecraft family is consulting for the Church.”

“The Makiri lineage no longer exists. Either way, my involvement has nothing to do with my family. I only wished to repay a personal debt to Bishop Dilo. And if I may, I don’t find it productive to begin our negotiations with a one-sided interrogation.”

“. . . Sorry, old habit. Impossible to make an accurate diagnosis with incomplete information. For instance, why has the Church in the city put a target on you? That was an example, so please, don’t feel the need to answer that.”

“How are internal Church conflicts the US government’s business?”

“Your bishop came to Thorn to secure our involvement in this Holy Grail War. As I’m sure you know, there is no person worth trusting in our line of work, but like everyone else, we trust that bishop a little more than anyone other than our own. The bishop is no longer with us, and Thorn has a healthy suspicion regarding the remaining council, especially the current Chair. He’s known to be wily. You must have the same opinion, Cherry. Why else would you summon a Servant?”

“And your goal, Thorn’s goal remains the same? To change the Third Magic into magecraft?”

“A minority opinion only the more magecraft-inclined in the organization or Snowfield veterans who want to continue their predecessor’s work hold. Not in Tolosa, though. Our only role is to protect the interests of the US government and its citizens. That was why I was sent.”

“Then deploy Thorn —”

“ — Out of the question.”

“Please let me know what I’m misunderstanding. You acknowledge the supervision of this Grail War has been turned over to those your organization doesn’t trust, yet you claim your sole role is to protect Tolosa’s citizens.”

“The alternative risks open warfare on the streets of a California suburban town. Even for a magus that’s —”

“I’ve never been a magus.”

“Look, Cherry. Thorn may not trust the current overseer and those he answers to, but they’re still the Church. They haven’t broken any clause in our agreement and continue supervising the Grail War as agreed. There is no reason for Thorn to deploy unless the situation is beyond my control.”

“The fact that the very overseer is a Master?”

“After Snowfield and ‘America’s Cursed Day’, the government is tired of Holy Grail Wars and wants nothing to do with them, much less the remnant of one. As far as Thorn is concerned, Sancraid taking over supervision from Chris is an internal Church matter.”

“But, Amelia, you don’t. If you agreed with them, you wouldn’t have reached out.”

“. . . Yes.”

“Forgive me for prying, but does your being here have anything to do with Kuruoka Tsubaki?”

A brief silence.

“Amelia? Is something wrong?”

“Please don’t presume you know me, Matou.”

“I — Sorry, I apologize. I won’t. . . Doctor.”

“I’m asking for your help because of Assassin’s Master.”

“Assassin’s? Did you know she visited me?”

“Not Wegner, but the eighth Master. A teenage girl.”

“Yes, I believe her name was Nadine. She and her Servant visited me just before you arrived — Dr. Levitt?”

“Sorry, I’m just a bit tired. . . She’s working for Sancraid at the moment. He must have tricked her into scouting out your defenses.”

“A local girl? There aren’t any magus families in this town, so then. . . . She mustn’t know anything, poor girl. Have you tried —”

“Talking some reason into her? I tried and she almost killed herself.”

“Oh my. . . no, her parents.”

“Her mother’s already been in contact with Saincraid.”

“Likely compromised, then. No point asking about her father either then — I see. You want Saber to defeat Rider without implicating Thorn and take the girl into your custody. Isn’t that naive. . . since every Master at the meeting saw Berserker betray Rider. In their eyes, we are already allied.”

“Will you help me then?”

“Will you deploy Thorn as oversight for the Executors?”

“I do not have the author—”

“You do if the situation is out of your control.”

“Is the Holy Grail War outside of my control? Is there something Thorn doesn’t know that you do, Matou? You don’t strike me as a woman who voluntarily elects the most invasive treatment.”

“— A superhero can only save the people she sides with.”

“A su— Excuse me?”

“Sorry, it’s nothing, just something my. . . partner told me, once. H-He’s a lawyer, so he says things like that.”

“Isn’t that obvious? In every superhero movie that’s come out in the last ten years, the hero defeats a threat to save innocent people.”

“No, not that type of superhero. I guess it doesn’t translate well. Um, in Japanese it would literally be, ‘ally of justice.’”

“Superhero or ally of justice, what difference does it make?”

“I think. . . that’s wrong. An ally of justice can’t save anyone. You see, it’s in the name. The only thing she can save is her sense of what justice is.”

“How does that relate to this Holy Grail War?”

“Are you going to side with her, Dr. Levitt? This. . . Nadine.”

“I save people because. . . that’s my job. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have become a doctor.”

“You must be a good person, Amelia.”

“Please don’t. You’re sounding like my sister.”

“Sister? Older or younger.”

“Older. She was a police officer, but you already knew that.”

“Yes. . . I did. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Even superheroes can’t save those who have already passed away. That’s why doctors work so hard to save those who are still alive, giving meaning to those who aren’t with us anymore. Cherry, will you help me?”

“I’ll. . . let me think about it.”

Static, no, a phone buzzing. Everyone in the prayer room can hear the vibration through the wooden dinner table. It doesn’t last long.

“Chr— No, you’re the Einzbern Tuner. Why do you have Chris’s ph— he what?!”

*****

Song ceaselessly cascading from her heart, Caster gathers the remaining plates that are piled high with food and waltzes out of the kitchen with her serving team, leaving Mary and me alone in the sterile, stainless steel kitchen. Reluctantly, I take large bowls of proofed dough from the ovens with my nitrile gloved hands and place them on the table that serves as the kitchen’s island. I’m not doing this because Caster suggested we get started on the dessert, or because Mary told me my idle hands are going to be the devil’s playthings. I do it because like with Saber’s Master, this is the only way to get useful information about my target.

“Do you think they’re going to work together to kidnap me?” Caster finally being gone means Mary and I can return to our previous conversation.

“Berserker and Saber’s Masters? If you ask me, it’s not a matter of if, but when. Doctors and witches belong together; burning in hell, preferably.” My materialized ghost loiters behind me. If my hands are idle, then Mary’s gloved ones have been demonic since we arrived at the soup kitchen.

“They’re creeps. Like, that talk about superheroes. What the fuck was that about? It’s almost like they don’t even want the Holy Grail. Not like that matters. Rider is going to defeat Saber when we take the Mission tomorrow. Hey, that’ll be two birds with one stone. That Doctor won’t be able to stalk me anymore.”

And I guess Krista owes me since I was the one who got a stalker first. Not like that counts for anything anymore.

“You should be more ascared of her, Nadine. Doctors, once they get their lying claws inta ya, you won’t be seeing any peace until Judgement Day. And that Servant of hers. She isn’t natural. Something wrong with her head.”

“She’s a Berserker. They’re all crazy. It’s in the name, Mary.” I wince. That was dumb of me. Mary’s no assassin. Quickly change the subject. “Shouldn’t you be worried about yourself, Mary? Infiltrating is one thing, but you’ll have to occupy? besiege? takeover? the Mission tomorrow. I mean, yeah, I’ll be there too, but I’ll be with the bowl-cut — Father Phahn.” I push myself onto one of the tables.

She cocks her head and narrows her eyes. She wants to protest.

Protest like she did when Caster told me I could stop serving dinner and start to help make dessert. I shouldn’t even be in a kitchen like this! But soon, curiosity swept away indigence, and Mary went gaga over all the ‘modern culinary innovations.’ If she wasn’t going to help cook, why did she even agree to help Caster? Leave me to fry dessert for over a hundred people, will you? So much for being a Servant.

After Saber and Berserker’s Master’s wine mom conversation was interrupted, the bug I installed in the Mission went silent. I think they left in a hurry. The bowl-cut priest offered to drive us home, but someone (Mary) had promised Caster we’d help out the Fairy Godmother serving group at the People’s Kitchen tonight. It’s really just the philanthropic arm of the company they use for tax breaks, but Caster decided to sign it up as the Fairy Godmothers tonight because ‘everyone could use a bit of magic from a fairy godmother.’ Knowing her, she probably sang it. Me? Other than fulfilling my duties as Mary’s Master, this is the perfect time to uncover Caster’s weakness. With my eyes, that should be no problem.

No problem at all. That’s what I told myself when we arrived late and were immediately put on waiting duty. I say Mary and me, but Mary refused to even hold a plate. Then why even agree to help Caster in the first place?

They’re friends, obviously. Of course they are. Don’t be bitter. You have Command Spells, Nadine. Beer pong could never compare to the mystery within these three strokes.

We hadn’t arrived when the seating plan explained and orders were taken, so I ended up getting a few tables wrong. How disconcerting. The customers (that’s what Caster wanted us to call them) weren’t passive-aggressive mad or even fake cheery mad like my mom when the glass of wine she orders doesn’t taste exactly as she imagined. They would be amused. My mistakes were a novelty to be pointed out for the sake of being pointed out. That’s how contrived the illusion Caster cast over everyone was.

For example, during a trip back to the kitchen to load up on more plates, I saw the discarded menus on one side. Cardstock. Nothing too fancy, but nothing laminated. One use only. The type typically prepared for a wedding dinner. On the menus were five choices for mains, one vegetarian, one gluten-free (as if the homeless had dietary requirements); eight different sides so no one’s plate needed to look like their neighbors; and three drink options, all non-alcoholic. Such banal Tolosa fare. Yet, everyone ate it up.

Caster caught me eyeing the menus and stopped humming. Unlike my mom, she didn’t reprimand me for being distracted. I doubt Caster could reprimand anyone, for tonight she plays the role of fairy godmother to everyone whether they wanted her to or not. Her crystalline eyes never drooping, she added the final garnish to a dish.

“It’s the magic of choice. Make a wish and it comes true.” As if that explained all the posturing.

Whatever, run the show like you always do, that just gives me more of an opportunity to see through you.

Hiding from her dilute ███ with a smile, I loaded up on as few plates as I could manage and scampered back to the cafeteria.

Thinking about it now, atop this table, legs idly swinging since they’re too short to reach the ground, that’s not the magic of choice at all. All the possibilities have previously been planned, the ingredients brought in refrigerated vans to this location to be prepared, and the serving group taught how to create the dishes on that menu. It’s nothing but the illusion of choice. Everyone can see the fakeness: the ‘fairy godmothers’ are hired hands; the ‘restaurant,’ a soup kitchen called the People’s Kitchen to sound less shameful; the ‘customers,’ bums off the street looking for a free meal. The contrivance is woven through it all, so plain to see, yet is the very fabric that binds it all together. Above it all, Caster blithely sways and sings. She does not loom over anything; that is beneath her. She plays her party with such blind, dumbass fortitude that we have no choice but to fall behind. A Pied Piper hypnotizing the town’s children with tunes that promise them everything they will never be. He’s a summonable Servant, right? Anyway, the only way to end the mass hallucination is for Caster to disappear.

Speaking of the devil who’s made playthings out of my idle hands, Caster waltzes through the door and replaces her pair of nitrile gloves as easily as she might change long satin gloves at a dinner party. Damn, to her this may as well be a dinner party; her guests every bit noble as the Masters and Servants she entertained two nights ago. No, ‘who’ was never part of the equation for Caster. Entertaining alone is enough. What an equal-opportunist.

“Everyone’s happily eating,” she trills, “singing the song that can only come from hungry stomachs and hearts being filled.”

Mary nods. “The best time for the cooks to prepare dessert.”

For all Mary’s Mary-ing about no longer wanting to cook, there’s a sparkle in her eye and a fire that roars, this is my realm. If it’s here, I can overcome any challenge, defeat any opponent. She’s a terrible liar. There, you can see it in the slight twitch in her eye. She’s barely holding herself back because she’s told herself that those hands will never cook anything again. What a pain.

“There’s quite an array of dessert choices. The gentlemen are setting up chocolate cake over there, pies are in the oven, and ladies will be scooping out the gelato, but you, my darlings, are going to help fry the do—” She sees me sitting on the prep bench, bats those perfect eyelashes, flashes a dimpled smile without having dimples, and continues “— donuts. Nadine, be a dear and turn on the fryers. We’ll want the oil to warm up as we’re shaping the dough.”

I hop off the table to do as she asked. Why is my jaw clenched? Whatever, which one of these residue-encased switches turns the damn thing on. . . Hah, out the corner of my eye, I glimpse Caster deftly snatching a spray bottle and dishrag from a nearby three-compartment sink. With the grace of a princess given the honor of the first dance, she sprays and then wipes down the place my butt was.

Mary’s expressionless but God can I sense her smug approval. Ugh. I flip the switches and by the time I turn back around the cleaning supplies have disappeared and Caster’s rolling out the dough.

We’re soon cutting the dough with donut-shaped cutters. Even after flouring the cutter like Mary yammered on about, the dough still sticks to the so-called stainless steel. Not for Caster, of course, she somehow makes what we’re doing look both professional and glamorous.

As we work, Caster croons a tune with nonsensical lyrics. Barely audible, it wafts through the kitchen more scent than sound. I bet all the rodents have come out to swing dance, Disney-style.

“Sugar. . . butter. . . flour~”

“Lord Byron?” Can’t take the singing anymore.

Caster looks up bemused, “What of my Master?”

Now that all of my dough’s cut, I start corralling the holes into a little pile. “He’s not here.”

“He is in here.” Do you know how during art class you forget you have paint on your hand and go to brush your hair out of your face? The moment before disaster strikes, you realize and clumsily do a double-take. That’s when your other hand knocks over the jar of paintbrushes.

Well in one flowing motion, Caster’s flour-covered hand hovers over her almost sparkling white apron as she speaks, “I could never bother my Master with this whim of mine. He’s working hard to be happy. You can’t make others happy if you have no happiness to share. Much like this town. Hosting the Holy Grail War must drain not only the town’s purse, its talent, but also its morale, leaving the most vulnerable of us to fend for ourselves.” She turns to smile at Mary and returns to placing the cut dough onto the frying tray.

Because they’re the two weakest Servants in the Grail War or does she want to make sure Mary’s included in the conversation. Caster, you sure don’t know Mary who’ll barge into any conversation she has a mind to join.

Caster takes the rack with all the cut dough to the fryer and motions me to follow. After testing the temperature with a dollop of dough, she drowns the entire rack in grease. The oil bubbles the moment the dough breeches the shimmering surface and flecks of grease pellet my apron or sting my forearms. I’d complain that frying doughnuts is going to make me break out, but who am I kidding, I break out every night.

I can’t say the same for Caster. Mary, yes, she’d be right at home behind a deep fryer. She kind of has that lunch lady look. Caster, no. I’m seeing but I don’t believe. What a bad joke. Not surprising, her only punchline is God descending on Earth to play human. Look at me, it demands. This is better than you. This is so much better than you will ever be. Gah, I’ll even take asinine celebrities farting out the pledge of allegiance with their armpits on late-night television over Caster frying donuts.

Whenever a donut meets Caster’s strict standard of doneness, she points to it. With wooden tongs, I take it from the fryer and dip it in a trough of glaze before setting it aside on a wire rack to cool.

“Remember to glaze them again once the first layer hardens. Everything is so much more delightfully magical with double the sweetness.”

“Did you do this type of thing often, Caster? When you were alive.”

“Making donuts? Why, I don’t believe they existed during my husband’s reign.”

“Helping the less fortunate.”

“You look after your own,” Mary calls out behind us. As Caster and I fried the donuts, Mary circled the kitchen judging how the others in the serving teams were making dessert. “If you noticed the children down the hall had holes in their patches, you slid their parents what you could from your own poverty wage. No one talked about it openly, wasn't polite.”

My chest feels warm. Perhaps a yearning for an age where people. . . really understood each other, “That’s really admirable, Mary. We’ve lost that.”

Mary’s eyes harden. “People died all the same, Nadine. Kindness from your neighbors, aye, but kindness is afforded. When no one in your tenement could afford to be kind. . .” she trails off momentarily then nods at the kitchen door. “This is better. There were canteens like these for those who fell on hard times, where women would volunteer, but it’s different. No one ever built a system specifically for caring.”

Mary, a system can’t care.

“I can’t agree with you, Mary dearest.” Caster chirps. “Kindness is not a commodity to be traded for and bargained with. It is our innate goodness made manifest. The world could always use a touch more kindness.”

How saccharinely right. An opinion that may as well be a truth since no one would argue against it.

“Do you truly believe that Caster?” Mary asks.

Caster cocks her head, “Of course, why would I say something I didn’t believe?” Then, seeing the full tray of double-glazed donuts, “Wonderful, Nadine, Mary. These look absolutely scrumptious. I think I can hear the customers finishing their dinner now, so let’s not keep them waiting. Hmmm, two more trays maybe? Do you think you can handle that, Nadine? Oh, of course you can, why did I even ask? And remember, double glaze, double glaze!”

Taking the cookie sheet filled with freshly fried, double-glazed donuts, Caster waltzes through the kitchen, the obstacles like they weren’t even there, leaving me to fry the rest of the donuts and Mary to watch.

Grumbling, I get to work because someone signed us up for this, and as much as I would like to just stop, I have to admit the work is making it easier to want to kill Caster.

“Dearie?”

“Hmmm,” I start rolling out the proofed dough. Shit, how did Caster do it so easily with those skinny model arms of hers?

“Flour the rolling pin. Then you want to roll from the center —”

“Do you want to do this, Mary?”

But I do what she suggests. Global warming is real. I’m not a redneck who doesn’t trust the expert right in front of me.

Her eyes slightly narrow at my remark. She hasn’t completely forgiven me for what happened last night. So much for bygones being bygones.

“I’m more worried about Caster,” she said.

“What?”

“You asked if I worried about the Doctor and that witch. I’m more worried about Caster.”

“Really? You two seem as thick as thieves.” Rolling the dough out from the center really does give you an even sheet. Time to start cutting before the oil gets too cold.

“I’ve never told you why I had my life taken from me, have I?”

She must mean being framed for murder. I guess Mary finally realized what a competent Master I am. Maybe she’ll even reveal her Noble Phantasm.

My hand freezes in mid-motion; I swallow the lump in my throat, then push the stainless steel cutter into the flesh-like dough. Like any good Master, of course, I’m interested in my Servant’s past.

“N—”

“Of course, I was a woman, an Irish immigrant, and a woman who lived with a man without being married. But those were the meat and potatoes; every dish has meat and potatoes.” Eyes distant, Mary cuts me off without considering that I wanted to voice my opinion. “It was. . . when I was cooking for the Bowen household. I was in the city running some errands and came across a hat on display in a storefront. The shop was called Matilda’s and they don’t make hats like that one anymore, dearie.”

Mary narrates, painting a story instead of merely recounting past facts. I’m a great judge of character, so I can tell. Her words wash over me as I methodically cut dough into concentric circles. There’s Mary plodding across streets filled with horse-drawn carriages instead of cars, standing in front of a brick-and-mortar store looking through the glass at a mannequin with a hat on its head. She’s not really looking at the hat, she’s looking at her own reflection in the glass. Wait, that’s Laurent. Why did I conflate the two images?

“What’s so special about a hat?” I couldn’t stop the question from leaving my mouth. To my credit, though, no one hearts a picture without a caption.

“The deepest most brilliant blue with silk flowers and berries around the brim. Heavier on one side than the other, like any good cake. You could feel the hatter laboring over each petal until it was perfect. Made in Paris, too. I must have passed that store every day for at least a week, telling myself, yer a fool Mary, there’s no way a hat like that is for you. But it was for me or, at least, why wasn’t it for me? I had the money. I saved enough in a little envelope at my room at the Bowens’. ”

I finish placing the cut dough onto the frying rack and take them over to the fryer. Mary follows as she continues agonizing over the curve of the hat, the fake berries, and the workmanship in detail, like my perfect douche of a brother and the car he practically extorted mom to buy him ‘for college next year.’ Krista’s words, not mine. Anyway, what Mary did was dumb, yes. There’s no point making excuses for yourself over and over until you do what you knew you would do from the beginning. What a futile exercise. I will concede it’s less dumb than clicking to add things you’re not sure you even want to your online shopping cart so you can get free shipping.

“It was so lovely that I couldn’t muster the courage to wear it, so I kept it on top of its box above the room’s dresser for two weeks. You understand, doncha, dearie. I wanted to preserve how perfect it was in the store, instead of instantly turning it into just another hat someone wore. Eventually, I couldn’t help myself. What use is a hat if you don’t wear it?”

I dip the dough into the oil and it starts bubbling. This should be the last batch. I swear I can feel the sebum clogging my pores and hardening.

“The lady of the house, Mrs. Bowen was having a dinner party that evening and she wanted her guests to leave muttering, ‘why haven’t my own cooks made anything close to that?’ Of course, I was the one who had to prepare everything. Everyone had their eye on me that day: the men with carts, the greengrocer, the butcher, the bakers, and their apprentices. They’d hear me haggle and know I was a domestic, but their eyes would flick to the hat daring them to second guess themselves.”

“Mary,” I stop her, as I start dipping the donuts cooling on a wire rack into the glaze while a second tray is being fried, “What does a hat have to do with why you were framed?”

“It’s not just the hat, not specifically. It’s more — that one’s done, dearie.”

“I know.” Take your eyes off the fryer for just a second.

“It’s more to do with — let me finish and you’ll see. When I returned to the house, Mrs. Bowen was climbing the stairs, wearing the exact same hat. Her expression didn’t change when she saw me; she was too refined to be that obvious. She only asked me why I was late. I wasn’t, but I apologized. I apologized because I knew she wouldn’t find the differences she so desperately wanted to find between our hats. They might as well have been identical. After giving some instructions for the party, she turned to leave, just like that, as if our hats didn’t exist.”

Then you confronted her. You would never stand for that.

“I, the eejit I was, confronted her, ‘Our hats are lovely, aren’t they?’ Again, without changing her expression she asked ‘Our?’ And then I pointed to mine. Do you know what she said then, Nadine?” Mary asks with a knowing smile. There is no mirth, only bitter wistfulness aimed inwards.

For the first time, in a long time, I don’t know. Yet, these eyes see the world, so my answer must be that Mrs. Bowen stood there, speechless at getting so much shade from a servant. Maybe she even fired Mary and then blamed Mary for her husband’s murder that she actually committed or has the lack of True Crime Tuesdays with Krista finally gotten to me.

“She was speechless.”

“The lady of the household with her stature being challenged by a domestic? Surely not. ‘I can see how you were mistaken, Mary. They’re curiously similar but not identical.’” Ahhh. . . no doubt to this Mrs. Bowen’s eyes such a truth was obvious from a glance. Petty, it’s disgustingly petty because what made the difference to that lady was simply the head that wore the hat. The hat Mary fangirled over may as well have been nothing compared to that single truth. “I apologized and went off to perform my duties. A few weeks later, I was arrested.”

“Are you saying this Bowen family framed you?”

In front of me are two cookie sheets of fully glazed donuts.

“Lord no, Nadine. They paid me enough to live off and purchase a lady’s hat. They were kinder than most employers to servants were in my day. This is about Caste— no second glaze?”

“What’s the difference?” No hobo’s going to care.

Mary glares at me until I start dipping the donuts into the glaze again. If there’s one thing she’s passionate about other than her good name, it’s the kitchen. I’d never hear the end of it if I gave these single-glazed donuts to Caster.

“What did that story have to do with Caster?”

“You weren’t liste—”

“Stuck here, what else can I do but listen to you,” I almost snap. Serves Mary right. “What does a hat, a house you used to work in, and your bitch of an employer have to do with Cas. . .” I almost drop a donut into the glaze trough. “The jacket.”

The jacket Caster gave Mary last night. Mary’s story about the hat is how a normal person responds to a threat. Caster is different. Caster is gross. If it was Caster, the moment she saw Mary wearing the same hat, she would laugh one of her bell-like laughs and complimented Mary on her exquisite taste in headwear because that’s the right thing to do. A mirror of goodness that endlessly reflects your own pettiness back at you until you can no longer face it. If hell is a place of recurring torture, Caster is hell encapsulated in a person.

“My lovelies! Mayhaps five more minutes our dear customers are ready for desserts. Does anyone need more time? I want all of you to feel as comfortable as possible.”

I don’t look up and continue double-glazing the donuts. No one says anything, but I know they’re all shaking their heads. No one wants to disappoint a fairytale princess.

*****

Before we serve the desserts, Caster has all of us stand in a line in front of the customers so they can ‘appreciate’ all we’ve done tonight. With her face and voice, any few sentences is an Oscar speech; I think I can see some glistening eyes. Then Caster proclaims the serving team should take a break and mingle for she herself will serve the desserts.

I quickly find a table for Mary and myself at the back to watch the serving group segregate themselves from the customers. The same room, the same tables, but not identical. Similar, but not identical.

In front of the desserts, Caster addresses the dark sea of faces, never once breaking character,

even when someone in the back row, not me, shouts “Bitch!”

I don’t know if it was a heckler who saw through the self-important charade or, what do they call them at school, a neurodivergent episode. Either way, they’d have no hope if Caster had been wearing the ███ from the Master meeting instead of Twin Towers brand casualwear. Even without it, her beauty still clings the brain, teasing out every emotion, until the torrent of feelings overwhelms conscious thought. Normal people like the serving team have no resistance. I’m fine because my eyes that see into the world show me it’s all just paper. As for the customers, I’m sure they know that truth better than anyone else.

Mary leans in and whispers. “They’ll take the food and smile thankfully when she’s next to them, but they know they’re being used. Even if they don’t know what for or why.”

Yet instead of ignoring the comment and finishing her concluding remarks, Caster beams, “And you’re breathtaking. You’re all breathtaking, truly! Speaking to each of you, I’ve heard so many inspirational stories, so much hope, and laughter in the face of despair. Please, please, I beg of you don’t stop wishing for a better life. Dreams truly. . . come true.”

Applause. Some people cheer. Why? It wasn’t that great of a speech and I don’t think the people here want to believe in something as convenient as Caster either. In her presence, they believe. They eat it up as wholeheartedly as the dessert she’s serving us.

Caster eventually passes Mary and my table with the understanding smile and glittering eyes that she blesses every table. Since I worked on them for so long, I take a donut. Mary does the same, maybe a show of support since barely anyone wanted donuts. Too many donut shops in Tolosa, the customers have probably had their fill of discards or self-righteous charity.

I take a bite. It’s good. A thought strikes me as I chew.

“Byron’s party, yesterday at Farmer’s, I’ve always thought of Caster as like a mirrorball, reflecting everything that comes her way so she stays pristine.” I look at the half-eaten donuts on our plates. “She’s more like glass, double-glazed.”

Transparent, but since you see the form you forget there’s nothing inside.

“Double-glazed, like the donuts?” Mary asks.

“A style of window my mom always recommends to her clients. Two sheets of glass with a little space in the middle. That slit of inert air keeps the house insulated, can reduce condensation buildup on the windows, is better for the planet, whatever it takes to sell them, my mom will tell you it can do it.” I shrug.

Caster doesn’t reflect our pettiness back at us. It’s refracted, distorted until it’s unrecognizably Caster. In the process, she keeps a little piece of us inside of her. I’ve heard Servants are soul-eaters, capable of converting people’s minds and souls into magical energy, but my eyes looking at her pleasantly conversing with everyone here tell me it’s nothing that obvious. “‘I like her. . . but I don’t like that I like her.’ You can’t stand her, can you?”

Mary nods.

Caster is a genuine fairytale princess. Too brilliant. Too righteous. Even the modern world isn’t capable of staining her, like it has for the rest of us. Some deeper than others. We see a little bit of ourselves in her or at least a little bit of someone we want to be. That hurts. Not me though. I think she’s gross, acting with my brother’s ease, but considering she’s a Heroic Spirit, she probably acts like this even when alone.

I take the holy relic the bowl-cut priest gave us and attach it to my hair. A little tingle shoots through my body, the same sensation I feel when Mary materializes from her ghost form. That must be my magical energy filling the relic.

“During Farmer’s, Estella asked me to help her father.

Mary looks at me, her dirty blue eyes almost black from the shadows in the corner.

She wants help killing Caster.”

A blink, then.

“Aye.”

[You]

40/ Krista (XVII)

It’s almost midnight when we finish cleaning, portion out the leftovers, and store the non-perishables. Buses run until ten like everything else in Tolosa. I’m not inclined to beg a member of the ‘Fairy Godmothers’ for a ride, so I get my phone out to call my mom. I bet she’s in a good mood. She was supposed to meet the client that I no longer ‘deserved’ to know about. Pfft. How melodramatic. Anyway, I’m about to ring her when Caster waves Mary and me over. After suffering her all night, there’s no way I’m going to spend another fifteen minutes with her.

“Nadine, Mary. Your help was wonderful. Everyone loved the donuts, there was so much praise for them buzzing about.”

Everyone loved the donuts. That’s why there were two trays to refrigerate.

“Thank you, Caster, for the opportunity to feel the bustle of a kitchen again. First the jacket and now this. It’s more kindness than I deserve.” I take the terrible liar remark back.

“Yeah, it was. . . fun.” How cringe. That was as weak as you are, Nadine.

“Mary, you deserve every kindness, and Nadine, a young lady should always be having fun. I was hoping to continue our conversations during our carriage ride home,” Caster glances behind her. Thank God, it’s not an actual carriage. The way Caster talks makes you want to take every word as seriously and literally as possible. Instead, there’s a vintage car that every motorhead would slobber over but no one in their right mind would drive. Hmmm, now I’m almost disappointed they don’t take their magical carriages onto the freeway. “Apologies, but my Master has dispatched Estella to take you home as I am needed at haste.”

Almost on cue, the back seat windows lower in a much more nondescript Mercedes as they would in an overproduced spy thriller revealing the Silver Princess. The moon is weak tonight, yet I still get the impression she’s glowing.

Mary and I try to say our goodbyes quickly. Caster hugs the both of us and starts gushing about things we should do next time, a charity wine tasting, crab cookout beach clean-up, bible study luncheon carriage ride. In a rare moment of synchronization, Mary and I interrupt and insistently say our goodbyes. Caster hugs us again and tries to start gushing about more things we should do together, but armed with foreknowledge, we escape to Estella’s car. Caster keeps coming up with things I do not want to do behind us.

The chauffeur opens the door for us and Mary slides in first. As I stumble in, almost hitting my head and tripping at the same time, nice save, Caster enters her carr— car. When her unblemished sneakers disappear and the car drives off, the fog in my mind clears and I can see the barren dirt parking lot better. Not like there was much to see in the first place. I close the car door.

The black divider separating us from the diver goes up and the motor begins to purr. Seatbelt. For all my squirming about the leather seats, I can’t find one. No duh, even blind Estella doesn’t have one on. Magi don’t die in car accidents. I swallow at what could have been avoided.

“Before I begin, please, stee—”

“Mary and I will do it. We’ll help you kill Caster.”

She looks me straight in the eye. That doesn’t make sense. Let me try again, she eyes me.

“Nadine, my father’s taken your mother.”

“Lord. . .” Mary gasps.

Be quiet, heart. Stop pounding against the wall of my chest like you’re about to burst out. I’m just misunderstanding. But I don’t, do I, misunderstand things.

“Taken. . . as in kidnapped?”

Estella nods.

“What was she. . . oh. . .”

The client she said I didn’t deserve to meet was obviously Byron. My eyes must have been too preoccupied with the Mission infiltration to connect those dots. The only time my mother showed half the interest in me that she shows my brother was the morning after I went to Byron’s gauche failure of a fairytale palace. Imagine being able to claim on your Linkedin profile that one of your satisfied clients was British nobility. Fuck. Something begins to well up from deep within me. Something even Caster wasn’t able to draw out.

“What does Lord Byron want with her? He’s an upstanding man and Nadine’s mother has nothing to do with the Holy Grail War.”

“Two hours ago, Lancer was defeated.”

What the fuck does that have to with your alcoholic, pathetic nihilist of a father kidnapping —

Do you know how easy it would be for me to tease out that memory and tear it apart — no. . . for me to enter and steal every unoriginal thought you’ve ever had?

“I want you to take me to her, right now!”

What?! Stop staring at me like I’m the unreasonable one. How can you act so calmly when my mom was just. . . their stares almost hurt now. I need to stop. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Magi, us, we only see the objective mystery. There must be a logical reason. I should be concentrating on what Estella is trying to tell me. It’s been five days since I became a Master. It would be weird if one Servant hadn’t died. Let’s try this again.

“What does Lancer have to do with my mom?” Why does that come out of my mouth?

Mary puts an unwanted hand on my shoulder. It’s clammy in the way a ghost’s hand shouldn’t be. I’m the one with the Command Spells. I don’t need to be comforted. “Let’s hear Lady Iselma out first, okay dearie?”

All I get from you is false cheer? Where’s the fire in your voice from last night? Oh, I get it, Mary’s as sycophantic as everyone else.

Estella nods in gratitude before continuing. “As I was saying, Archer defeated Lancer. His Master escaped and is currently at large. According to the spirit board, there are six Servants active.”

“Spirit board? Like an Ouija board?”

“Broadly speaking. Where Ouija boards are used to communicate with spirits, the spirit boards the Church uses in the Holy Grail War specialize in confirming the statuses of Servants.”

That’s a useful holy relic for a certain bowl-cut priest who also happens to be a Master.

“And your dad has one of these, a spirit board.”

“There are currently four in Tolosa. The Mission has one, Father Phahn has another, the Thorn representative should have a leftover from Snowfield, and the one I created.”

“You can make one?” The words tumble from my tongue before the palpitating worry over my mom takes over once again.

“More than a decade ago, one of our old consultants left in a rush. In her quarters was a Victorian Ouija board. Using some notes the former dean of the

Norwich

Department of Modern Magecraft

left behind, repurposing the board wasn’t too difficult. I can’t help but think it’s missing something, perhaps it was made to be linked to the Fuyuki Grail, maybe it’s due to the location or the leylines, but the board needs to be synchronized with a Servant before it can confirm their status.”

So much for so-called mystery. Any kid knows that you have to pair your wireless earbuds before you can connect with Bluetooth.

“Your dad gathered everyone so he could pair them to your spirit board. But Lancer wasn’t there.”

“The spirit board I created exploits the infrastructure that endows Masters with their clairvoyance when they visually confirm a Servant. Linking the spirit board with the bounded field’s senses allowed it to register every Servant who stepped in the Iselma territory that night,” she pauses for a moment, almost deliberate. “Saber appeared because she was hunting Lancer. Lancer and his Master have been manipulating the leyline foci; he was drawn to our territory and Saber followed.” I understand less than half of what was said, but that isn’t important because I’ve already forfeited the Holy Grail War. “Disregarding Saber and Rider’s conflict, both Archer and Berserker have had dealings with you, Nadine. You could say whoever controls you, controls the intermediate flow of the war.”

I don’t protest even if I can see through her flattery.

“You want us to help you ally with Archer. . . no, that’s what your dad wants. Estella you want us to have Archer kill Caster.”

She gently smiles.

“Yes, on my account. No, on my father’s. His goal is to defeat Archer and he needs Berserker’s Master’s help.”

“Even with that crazed woman, Caster, and myself, we couldn’t touch Archer —”

“My father believes together, you can, Mary. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken Nadine’s mother.”

“But what’s the point? Aye, Archer’s the favorite by far but even without him, there are still enemy Servants left.”

The slight tremble in Mary’s voice betrays the lack of expression in her eyes because if all goes well on the bowl-cut priest part, only Berserker and Caster would be left. In that case, Mary who can’t fight to save my life and I will be nothing but collateral. Shit, don’t think about that. Get a grip already.

“Nadine, do you remember what my father’s goal is?”

Listen closely, amateur. These mysteries that we try to reproduce are all just paper. That’s why it’s all bullshit.

“To reach. . . urgh, the Root.” Again, I fail to enunciate the pause. “He wants to use the Holy Grail to get it.”

A man who dyes his hair, sitting atop the throne of bullshit.

“Yes, however, the converse is also true. He has no use for the Holy Grail if he is able to reach 「」 by other means. I doubt this means much to either of you, but the Holy Grail War ritual was originally established to regain a miracle. A fragment of that miracle still exists within Archer’s Master, the Einzbern homunculus, the Lesser Grail. To use that fragment of a miracle to reach 「」or obtain the Lesser Grail to force the war into a siege. Either would further my father’s goals.”

“Then why didn’t your dad attack Archer during the meeting?”

“Because Caster had no way of defeating him.”

“But you just said. . . .”

“Dearie, she means Lord Byron very recently found a way to kill Archer.”

Please stop interrupting. I was about to say that.

“Yes, Berserker’s Master put a particularly valuable automaton of mine out of commission. This gave my father the opportunity to send familiars to track her and saw your fight, yesterday. That spellcaster didn’t even put up a bounded field around the parking garage. How sloppy.”

Remembering the Doctor’s conversation with the Asian tree lady, I shudder. She wants me to trust her. Constructing a bounded field would have kept us from escaping, but she needed me to believe her. How pretentious. Don’t underestimate me.

Byron’s timeline becomes clearer. He must have decided to kidnap my mom last night. He rang her while I was passed out. No wonder she came down so quickly when I rang the doorbell. She must have been so excited she tossed and turned without getting a wink of sleep.

“Don’t you approve of what your father is doing? As I understand it, the goal of all magi is to reach the Spiral of Origin. His actions should bring great honor to your family.” Mary asks.

Estella blinks, “I mean this in the kindest possible way and the utmost respect for you, Servant. Don’t ever for a second believe you can comprehend a magus, again.” Barbs from a half-formed snarl almost hook into our flesh. “My father unwittingly killed my sister, the Princess of Gold. He tried to cover it up, even employing a Grand-rank magus and purchasing a cursed catalyst with the family fortune. When his stopgap failed and the Iselma family fell into disgrace, he gave up on the ‘honor of the family’ as you put it to atone. Magi do not atone.”

If Caster is a glass statue then Estella is her namesake, the ever-distant twinkling silver stars in the night sky. Not a motionless statue ever-transmitting warped light, Estella looks down on us mortals from on-high without concern. From that high up, everything looks the same and the only goal is in sight. We’re similar, but not identical. My eyes let me accurately value each person.

The car begins to slow down as I recognize the manicured lawns on this street lit up by streetlights regularly placed apart so they drown any wanderers.

“We’ve done a lot of talking, but my mom’s still. . . .”

“My father wishes to meet with you at midday tomorrow to discuss terms. Most likely it will be what we discussed, so you won’t be caught unaware. We’ll send a car. Also, I cannot guarantee your mother’s safety if you go to the overseer or any of the other Masters.”

Overseer or any of the other Masters, huh. It’s good there’s still one person. . .

“Lady Iselma, thank you for your forthrightness and agreement with Nadine. Yet, why would you reveal so much to strangers?”

“Caster’s fond of you, Mary. She sees you, a Heroic Spirit, as a kindred spirit.”

“My legend isn’t nearly as noble as hers.”

“Then the both of you understand what will be required to defile her legend.” Estella taps her lips with a manicured finger as her eyes twinkle. “We will not be able to speak as freely tomorrow, so I want you to know I will ensure your mother is as comfortable as possible. Sleep well.”

I almost breathe a sigh of relief. We have at least someone on our side. Everything’s going to be okay. I keep telling myself that as we get out of the car.

*****

The Mercedes drives off into the night after depositing us in front of my mom’s house. My kidnapped mom’s house I should say. There are no lights inside. Good. That means my stupid brother’s asleep. Oh shit, I totally forgot about him. What the fuck am I going to tell him?

“Mary?” I ask my still materialized ghost.

She looks at me.

“The Mission tomorrow and the thing with mom. It’s. . . well, everything’s going to be okay isn’t it?”

“No dearie, not for people like us.”

Fuck you too.

I fumble for my keys and unlock the door. If my brother’s sleeping, then it won’t hurt to have some light. I don’t want to bang my hip against the edge of a table again.

Fluorescent light fills the hallway revealing a lump of my brother’s blankets on the stairs and soft, almost brown, blonde hair clinging to the railings. Krista. She blearily blinks against the harsh light and rubs her eyes.

What is she doing here?

“Nadine? Who’s beside you?” Such a familiar voice. It’s only been what, two days but God I feel like I haven’t heard it for at least a week.

“This is. . . Mary.” That was bad. “She’s. . . she works at the church. She walked me home.” Better.

Mary raises her hand in greeting.

“Oh. . . nice to meet you, Mary. . . Krista” Good, still half-sleep. She always did need to set three alarms in the morning. “Sorry you had to see me. . . like this. Wait, where did these blankets come from. . .” she tries to stifle a yawn but she can’t hold it in.

“Thank you, Mary. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Mary looks at me.

I quickly nod at Mary when Krista’s inevitable follow-up yawn rears its head.

“Goodnight dearie, and Krista, a pleasure to meet you.”

I close the door on Mary. No problem, she’ll just change into her ghost form and sneak in through my window like a proper ghost. I’ve got to wash up and go to sleep, so I start walking down the hallway, doing my best to ignore Krista.

“Is she going to be okay walking home alone?”

“She lives close by.”

“You always did like old people,” she smiles at me.

My mom was kidnapped, I have to attack the Mission tomorrow, and I smell like a fryer. This is not a good time. I try to walk past her.

“I know you’re mad because I ditched you to play beer pong. I’m sorry.”

. . .

“An observation I made Wednesday night. ‘Omigod, I love your outfit. It’s soooooo cute.’” You have no right to stand up, his blankets cum-stained from all the jacking off he does in front of a mirror falling to your feet. “Do you think those pricks are going to even care about you when my brother dumps you for someone hotter? And you choose them over me, who’s had your back and put up with your bullshit since second grade.”

“My bullshit? Seriously my. . . bullshit.”

“God, you really can’t see it can you? They’re nothing but paper maché dolls willing to rip a page from whatever’s popular to slap onto their faces while dancing on the stage of mediocrity with their emotes and memes trying to say everything and nothing at the same time. Saying their lines so you’ll say the expected line back. Don’t try to live your life like it's one of my mom’s fucking Rom Coms, Krista. Oh, you got really drunk one night and fucked. His dick is paying me the smallest piece of attention but oh no my best friend is his sister what a conflict tehehehehehehehe but because I’m only-attractive-enough-to-be-relatable Krista who’s down to earth without too much personality if I express a sanitized version of me, everything will turn out okay. I’ll live happily ever after with my Prince Charming who peaked at high school and lonely, misunderstood spinster of a best friend.”

“You always think that you understand, Nadine, that you can see everyone better than they can see themselves. Sum an entire person up at a glance then reject it, calling it the truth. But you don’t know anything. Nothing at all. Your brother asked me to be his girlfriend at Farmer’s.”

I don’t know? What. You couldn’t even fathom the things that I know. Yes, I didn’t know that my brother asked you to go steady with him during that misnomer of a Farmer’s Market in this dead-end college town.

You on the other hand. . . You don’t know about the Holy Grail, Servants, Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, Berserker, Heroic Spirits, the Throne of Heroes, Masters, mages, magecraft, magical energy, magic circuits, switches, catalysts, Command Spells, Master’s clairvoyance, the Magecraft Association, the Holy Church, the Eighth Sacrament, exorcists, executors, Scriptures, vampires, Mystic Eyes, Thaumaturgical Circuits, thaumaturgical energy, magic, magicians, Magician’s Eggs, bounded fields, leylines, Divine Beast elephants, Class Skills, Personal Skills, Noble Phantasms, Ghost Liners, the Age of Gods, Phantasmal Species, the transcendental kind, the Anthropic Principle, Dead Apostles, Sealing Designation, homunculi, Saint Graphs, the Clock Tower, Od, Boundary Recording Bands, the Ring of Deterrence, the World, the light of the planet, the Root, and all the other mysteries that I shall know but have not yet seen. For my eyes see into the Moonlit World like yours never could.

You can’t see what I can because this town is shrouded in light pollution. You hike the Sisters and call that nature, but what is nature that you hike every weekend just to take a picture at the top. With a degenerate civilization blanketing the night sky, no one truly can understand how small they really are. Without the ability to look up at a mystery grander and older than anything we’ll ever be, you settle for looking at each other. You’ve never been there, the moment between life and death that stretches out towards. . . urgh. . . true infinity. Never felt the magical energy surging through your body doing everything it can to break out, your weak human life struggling to contain the majesty of mystery. In that moment you know. At that moment, everything is rejected until you truly are everything and anything. Krista, you will never know this and that is why you cling so desperately to other people.

You are nothing and I feel sorry for you.

“You and my brother; the two of you deserve each other’s company.”

“And you deserve to be alone.”

“I—”

“You’re not having the last word, Nadine. Not tonight.”



Day 5 — End

[You]

Thank you to Left for identifying the structural issues in the first draft, Raff for doing a very thorough job as beta proofreading the grammar, spelling, and supplying the locker idea in Chapter 23, and menwearpink for reading Chapter 37 and making sure the music theory wasn't too off. I’ve just posted a lot of text and I hope you enjoy going through it in the coming weeks and months. If you are a fast reader with a lot of time, it would be considerate to spoiler any volume 2 story specific feedback or details for at least the next week.
Another method, if you use Discord, is to leave feedback at this Discord channel.
https://discord.gg/aP3aHBsjcK

[Leftovers]

8/10 made me pick up twilight

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Took a long while to binge the new updates, and fortunately, I could still follow along. I find it interesting how Nadine and Chris have opposing character arcs around acceptance and rejection of the world around them, and I like Nadine a tad more than I did 1-2 years ago. She's still too up her own ass, but it's to be expected, and she is right in some ways, even if she rejects the experiences and feelings of others far too readily.

Archer was also a great character, and I even found myself liking Rich. Pretentious asshole he may be, but he sticks to his guns. Cannot say the same for Wolfgang and his thesaurus vomit, or at least, that's how it seems to me. In addition, I almost wanted to laugh at how off-base Amelia was with Uryu, Kuzuki, and of course, Shirou. She is clearly off her rocker and a true ally of justice. Without a doubt, she and Sakura are likely in for a nasty surprise when Nadine's true colors are revealed.

Finally, is it normal to experience intense rage whenever Mary goes on about the evils of doctors and her being framed? I feel it for sure.

[You]

Thank you for reading so quickly.
Yes, Amelia is being very selective when she explains what happened to other normal people who got swept up in Grail Wars.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

It took me nearly all evening yesterday and most of today to do it, but it was worth it. Speaking of Amelia, is it possible Thorn lied to her about those instances knowing full well how to entice her to cooperate?

[You]

It took me nearly all evening yesterday and most of today to do it, but it was worth it. Speaking of Amelia, is it possible Thorn lied to her about those instances knowing full well how to entice her to cooperate?

The official HGW5 reports and therefore probably the HGW4 reports were written by Kotomine which is why:

Shirou. . . he’s Cherry’s lawyer boyfriend. He visits whenever he gets the chance, even helped repair my bike a few times. He also knew Dilo. I always thought it was strange he was Japanese and also a ginger. His sister being an Einzbern homunculus kind of explains that but opens up a whole can of worms that isn’t my business.

“How did she. . .” Officially, there were only two Masters who survived the Grail War: Cherry and her sister.

“Saving Shirou.” That explains why the Kotomine HGW-726-F5 report listed him as a casualty. “She was the strongest Master. . . and possibly the most advanced homunculus the Einzberns ever created. I think that’s why they shut down after her defeat.” Except for the remnants that fought in Snowfield.

It's been a year since then.
Life at the tower knocked me around a bit, but like Sakura, I'm slowly expanding my territory.
"…It's not a problem.
I haven't told them about it, and Kirei reported that he's just an ordinary person who got himself killed by getting involved. …I don't know if we should consider ourselves lucky, but we're the only ones that know about him."

The information that Thorn has may not be entirely accurate but Amelia is also willfully misrepresenting it so she's not in the clear.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Ah, thanks for the clear-up.

Also, another question I've had for a long while is the dialogue of Wolfgang the Lamyros. How come nearly all the terms he uses are defined and have their kanji explained in parentheses, and what's the deal with his weird sentence fragments up until the very end? He seems to speak almost entirely in hanging participles or dependent clauses. I assume there is a very good reason for this, probably to sound extremely esoteric, but it's been grinding my gears since Volume 1.

[You]

Also, another question I've had for a long while is the dialogue of Wolfgang the Lamyros. How come nearly all the terms he uses are defined and have their kanji explained in parentheses, and what's the deal with his weird sentence fragments up until the very end? He seems to speak almost entirely in hanging participles or dependent clauses. I assume there is a very good reason for this, probably to sound extremely esoteric, but it's been grinding my gears since Volume 1.

The thing called the maelstrom of origins, it is probably the birthplace of everything. All phenomena flow out from it. If you know the origin, the results are naturally produced. To describe it as it is, you could say that it is the 'perfect knowledge'. By creating a standard like perfection or the like, we are ultimately limiting the concept, so even that description is incorrect. But since that the easiest way of defining it, the name stuck.
Essentially, all the branches of magic that have spread throughout this world are nothing more than one branch of a small river flowing out from this maelstrom. This is the reason that every country has their own traditions and legends. The core is the same, but what decorates the exterior is the background of the one who understood that 'river'. Astrology, alchemy, kabbala, spiritualism, rune, the innumerable researchers. Their origins are the same, so in the end they hold the same final destination in mind. Because, they who have touched the tip of the stream that split off from the maelstrom of origins called magic, they have imagined what lay before --- the shape of the beginning.

Like everyone else in the story, he's just trying to speak his truth.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Should have expected that answer. Sasuga.

[Pastykake]

In the memo Sakura is named in Eastern order whereas I would think this presumably Western organization would write her name in Western order—and indeed, they do within the paragraph. I like the chat room touch at the beginning, and the meta-canon where I'm guessing Waver or someone recorded his case files and they're regarded as fiction in-universe.

Not asking, but I'm curious how much Nadine's eyes are really letting her see vs. what's just her bullshitting herself. As we go on it becomes more obvious that at least some of her observations are colored by her personal perspective and emotions. Quite the unreliable narrator. Hers is the story line I'm most invested in. I was on her side about Krista until in this last scene she says she's put up with Krista's bullshit since second grade. Maybe I'm forgetting stuff that's written earlier, or maybe Nadine's just lashing out in anger, but I was blindsided by that.

As I read the Chris vs. Wolfgang fight, after Rich joins in I kept thinking it felt pretty climactic and wondered why it would be in what I thought had to be at most the middle of the story. Then I got to the end of the "volume" and understood, haha.

I like the inverted parallel between Chris's and Nadine's development arcs.

I dearly like this story. Reading the update on my way to and from work these past few weeks has been a delight. I hope to see it continue!

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Not asking, but I'm curious how much Nadine's eyes are really letting her see vs. what's just her bullshitting herself. As we go on it becomes more obvious that at least some of her observations are colored by her personal perspective and emotions. Quite the unreliable narrator. Hers is the story line I'm most invested in. I was on her side about Krista until in this last scene she says she's put up with Krista's bullshit since second grade. Maybe I'm forgetting stuff that's written earlier, or maybe Nadine's just lashing out in anger, but I was blindsided by that.

It'd probably be best for us to wait, since it seems to be an equal amount of both thus far.

- - - Updated - - -

Clearly, she and Assassin are very well-matched, which makes sense, since Nadine had no separate catalyst of her own to influence the process

[You]

In the memo Sakura is named in Eastern order whereas I would think this presumably Western organization would write her name in Western order—and indeed, they do within the paragraph. I like the chat room touch at the beginning, and the meta-canon where I'm guessing Waver or someone recorded his case files and they're regarded as fiction in-universe.

Yeah that's my bad

- - - Updated - - -

I dearly like this story. Reading the update on my way to and from work these past few weeks has been a delight. I hope to see it continue!

Thanks, I'm glad it was able to make your commute more interesting.

[You]

March 2021 Progress Report
One month has passed since the first half (Chapter 18 - 40) of Volume 2 of Fate/Mythologie, Mystery (神秘, Shinpi, translated sometimes as “Divine Mystery”) Mystère/...if merely foam, has been released. I hope you enjoyed what was posted and felt it was substantial. If you haven’t read up to Chapter 40, I encourage you to take your time and keep going. The reveals in Chapter 38 are definitely worth your wait.

Like I previously mentioned, as this series doesn’t have regular updates, I want to write up a progress report every month to motivate me to write as well as communicate what I’ve been doing.

Since last month I have:

1. Finished the outline for Day 6. It is currently planned to be five chapters. I like to outline an entire Day before writing the chapters. When I finish the Day, I outline the next day and so on. There is a master outline too for what happens each day.
2. I’ve finished the first draft of Chapter 41, but haven’t typed it out.
3. Started drafting Chapter 42.

I had expected to do more but couldn’t find the time. Anyway, here’s to next month. My goals for the April progress report are:

1. Type up Chapter 41 and polish it up so it's readable.
2. Finish drafting Chapter 42
3. Type up Chapter 42 and polish it up so it's readable.
4. Start drafting Chapter 43

I've taken to drafting longhand since its really easy to take a notebook anywhere and if you have a spare half an hour, even if you aren't at a computer, you can make some kind of progress.

[You]

Bugs sent me a very nice review of chapters 18 - 20 and gave me permission to post it here

*****

Two pages. Two pages that I thought would be a simple update or two, along with ensuing comments. I am very glad to be wrong.

Since this is a work I’d like to think I’m invested in, I went and reread everything from the beginning. Not having been around BL or TM content as a whole for a few months now has degraded my average loremastery even further, so I’d first like to remark what quasi-Rinspeak there is to be found in Mythologie espoused by Phahn or Laurent or Archer did a very good job bringing me back up to speed in a mostly natural way.

Secondly I’d like to congratulate myself for being good enough to leave comments in the past at key points so that I don’t need to repeat myself to an excessive degree here. Woo.


Thorn memo:

Recap episode. Given that it's been two years this is not only expected but appreciated, even for someone who reread everything in preparation.

18:

Our first glimpse into Mary's perspective, and while it would've been all too easy to dive headfirst into a plague-fueled nightmare, re-establishing Mary's humanity after being exposed to Archer's all-consuming divinity informs us of Mary's values while juxtaposing those of Nadine and her commitment to her makeup routine. Even though cooking was her job, even though cooking was all she could do, even though she has refused to ever cook again, Mary's pride is still within the kitchen.

Mary's wonder surrounding the food of modern times and its apparent diversity isn't anything but pure, ironic then when Nadine declares that food, culture, and--after a brief conversation with her mother--even magic have been homogenized despite the fact she is the very same existence as the fast food joints she denigrates; She jeers the concept for being stupid enough into believing it's anything above mediocre hollowness. I finally get why she talked shit on The Habit previously.

Nadine is the Princess of Silver while Krista is her personal Princess of Gold.

19:

Nadine's worldview is further elaborated here at the party, when she begins her very quick descent into the insufferable as she desperately clings to even a crumb of uniqueness to avoid being crushed by the mundaneness of her existence. I wouldn't mind so much if there was even a shred of self-awareness, but Nadine is far too self-obsessed to ever actually confront her flaws without an external factor. Which is where Byron comes in, but she still just doesn't fucking get it.

Byron's simplified explanation of the futility of the search for「」from the perspective of a loser conveniently affirms the position Nadine already decided upon. Her conclusion isn't earned, it's spat back into her face that the pessimism she faces reality with is objectively correct. It's this chapter that solidified my hunch that Nadine being a Magician's Egg or even having eyes that see through the world is all complete and utter bullshit. Yeah, it's all just paper. So what? Whether I'm wrong about this personal hypothesis remains to be seen, and frankly Nadine being rejected by the world she embraced after so much rejection on her part would be sweet, sweet schadenfreude.

All this being said, Byron is relatively easy to read--a gambler who failed, trapped by the sunken-cost fallacy on one side and on the other is the infinite library that still stands mockingly despite his best efforts. Yes, it's all so much paper, but the "illiterates" as he puts it daring to compare losses to him is an insult as both a magus and a father. How he would respond to Phahn's provocation goes without saying.

Ecce Homo--"Behold a man", the tortured personage of Byron that comes out of his hardships only for the worse.

Caster continues to exist in the background, doing her job as an idol of unattainability. But even in the seemingly divine, there is unmistakable humanity as well, Mary summing Caster and what I believe is the core of the chapter up neatly:

"I like her, but I don't like that I like her."

I begin to wonder if Caster is Marie, or quite literally just Cinderella.

We'll get to Rich later.

20:

The entrance of Saber, Sakura's Gram(?) wielding Brynhildr. Immediately we are asked why Brynhildr. Sakura's complete absence from magus life and culture would imply that it's unlikely she's obtained a catalyst, rather that she once again performed a compatibility summon. However, given Saber's internal opinion on Chris, I wonder if Chris himself was used as a catalyst of some sort or used as the "subject" of the compatibility.

Though Chris fails to reject anything and accepts everything, Saber still views him as a source of heat: as a righteous person. Which makes her opposition to Lancer mentioned early problematic. Sakura appears to want to exterminate the vampire before Chris can to save him from the emptiness that is sure to come after accomplishing his singular goal, but Saber recognizes the vampire's Servant as an extraordinary source of "heat".

Amelia's motivations in stark contrast are colored by her mentality. Chris is a child, and though he ruined her operation and almost got her killed, his status as a child is paramount and thus he must be saved.

Fight scenes are hard to comment on, but I can say the flow and pacing continues to be what I expect from someone emulating the disconnect between thought and action that F/SN prides itself on. Rider is a flame devoid of heat, merely a flickering image, but he sure knows how to make things flashy. It's this disconnect that seems to really insult Saber, conjuring an image of Sigurd but the substance isn't the same, it can't ever be the same. Rider's inability to shut his mouth does less to illuminate Saber's identity and more his own, as he mentions his very good friend was responsible for killing Saber's brother. This should be Atli, or Attila. Rider's friend could at this point either be Marcian or Gudrun/Kriemhild herself.