V1C5

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Terror flooded the Colosseum like a breaking wave –

first quietly, an almost-imperceptible swell, but then gradually

escalating into a furious, all-devouring surge. Astonishment was

plain to see on every face, but it came in different shades. Some

spectators interpreted Hannibal’s betrayal as all part of a cruel

act, and cheered all the louder. They couldn’t even imagine that a

Servant could have truly killed a human.

I found it almost impossible to believe myself – all the more so

given that I had met the Servant in question not a few days ago.

Struggling for words, the witch vainly tried to continue her

commentary, but soon that too ceased. News of the incidents in other

wards had spread through the crowd, and no small number of spectators

had already been making to leave. Their presence in the stairwells spurred others who

had only been watching into a rush for the exits.

Watching from a distance through a monitor as I was, I managed to

maintain some degree of composure, but the spectators in the arena were

quickly swept up in the panic of those around them.

Ms. Fujimura spoke, calmly, steadily, as though this were just

another lecture.

“We must keep cool heads, Erice. I have already notified security,

and they should begin the evacuation shortly. The rest of the Caren Series is attending to the incidents in other wards.”

“You’re… evacuating? But…”

The panic I had feared was already beginning to spread. The analysis

channels broadcast an evacuation message, and monitors all across the

arena had switched to a static screen informing spectators that the

match had been suspended. The battleground had descended into a

full-on melee, spilling across both lines of ships. One of the rocky

islands thrust skyward, and the water level suddenly plummeted.

“No…!”

As I watched, another master vanished beneath the feet of one of

Hannibal’s elephants. A second victim. A Servant sprinting towards

them, tragically a few seconds too late, vanished in a burst of

golden dust.

Who was that? I couldn’t see… It wasn’t her, was it?

“Some losses must be expected, given the present situation. I am

attempting to contact the surviving Masters to enlist their

cooperation in bringing it under control, but around half are

unresponsive.”

“You mean, because of Hannibal?”

“No.”

I gulped. Did that mean it was Hannibal’s Master who was responsible?

No, that couldn’t be right. It didn’t make any sense.

“Did you know this was going to happen, Ms. Fujimura?”

She shook her head sadly. “No. Among all conceivable scenarios, I

had disregarded this one as highly improbable.”

Even the Holy Grail, in all its omnipotence, did not have the means

to prepare for every possible eventuality. She had undoubtedly done

all that she could, where she could, and now lamented that it had not

been enough. Fiercely, bitterly. Regret churned beneath her cool,

calm exterior.

I forced myself to ignore it. Right now, I needed to be the Reaper.

“I had made my preparations in Shinjuku, but it seems I have been

taken unawares. In the name of Caren Fujimura, municipal

administration AI of Mosaic City, I have invoked Code Crimson.”

Code Crimson! The scarlet

summons. I knew what it meant: it was Mosaic City’s highest threat

level. To the best of my knowledge, it had only been invoked once

since the restructuring of Akihabara.

“Are you capable of distinguishing Servants from ordinary citizens,

Erice?”

“Of course. I’m better than any-”

“Good. Your task is to eliminate any and all hostile Servants on

the premises. The security forces alone will not be sufficient.”

I shivered, both with joy at the request I had so long been waiting

for and with fear at the nature of what was being asked of me.

Unilateral elimination was a highly unorthodox measure to take. If

the situation hadn’t been so dire, I doubt Ms. Fujimura would even

have considered it.

“Do you really mean… every single one? Across the whole

Colosseum?”

“Wherever you suspect hostile intent, you may engage at your own

discretion.”

“Noted. One last question, Ms. Fujimura. Is this a mission for the

Reaper?”

“No. This is a personal request for Utsumi Erice.”

“Understood. I won’t let you down.” She knew that she was

directly contradicting Chitose’s restrictions, and she was doing it

anyway. Just that was enough for me.

—-

“I’m afraid there is something else I need to take care of”, Ms.

Fujimura said. “You require no further direction, I trust?”

I nodded confidently, and just like that we parted ways.

Now it was time to get to work.

-

I embraced them; loathsome spirits, vile spirits, evil spirits all.

I turned none away. As I would for a dear friend, I embraced their

rage, their sorrow and their terror, and made it all a part of me.

I steadied my breathing as I drew closer to the end of the passage.

The sounds of battle echoed from beyond, mingled with screams.

With each swish of my arms, deep crimson blood spattered across the

ground. I let it flow as I ran onward.

-

Ms. Fujimura had charged me with eliminating all Servants, and I knew

all too well what that meant.

The first thing I made out was a group of spectators jostling with

each other at the bottom of the ramp leading to the audience seats.

One of them, a man, was lashing out at the rest with wild abandon,

his frenzied clawing and scratching sufficient to draw blood. Despite

his contemporary clothing, I could tell immediately that he was a

Servant. As I watched, it began to dissolve into the mana it was

woven from, revealing medieval garments underneath.

Armed security personnel tore him from the spectators, dragged him to

the ground, and loosed a barrage of rounds into him from bullpup-type

handguns. He was weak, for a Servant; weak enough that ordinary

humans could engage him without much difficulty. However, the

thaumaturgically-enhanced bullets pierced straight through him to

ricochet from the hard floor, leaving him relatively unharmed. Only a

little worse the wear for the hail of bullets, he rose to his feet

once more and lunged for another nearby citizen.

Nearby, a hysterical woman tried desperately to control him with her

Command Seals, but even direct orders to stop did nothing to dissuade

him, and he showed no sign of being willing to revert to spiritual

form.

This is even worse than Hannibal. It’s like he’s lost his mind

entirely…

I checked whether the classification

tag I had received from my master for use within the Colosseum was

properly attached, then gestured to the security personnel. They

checked me, and then immediately fell back obediently.

-

I extended a ‘branch’.

The defiled blood pouring forth from

the evil spirits within my arm coagulated and flowed outward,

forming a black branch that shone with a dull lustre. It extended

from my fingertip with incredible speed, as though growing

organically.

Easily, so easily, it pieced the

Servant’s external barrier. It tore ravenously around his insides in

search of his Spiritual Core, and, that located, seized his Saint

Graph and wrested it violently from his body.

A Servant’s Saint Graph was their

centre, their heart, their CPU. It dictated their every function.

Rendered temporarily visible, it shone in vibrant hues – only

vaguely to ordinary citizens, but more clearly to magi. It differed

from person to person. The Servant clutched for his stolen heart,

gasping bestially as he tried in vain to return it to his body. I

could sense nothing higher from him than his most primal instincts.

A woman suddenly lunged for me from

the side; the same woman who had been trying so desperately to stop

the Servant with her Command Seals.

“What are you doing?! Stop it!

Stop it, I said! Don’t you understand? He’s my Servant!”

“I’m sorry”, I said. It was all

I could offer. I could not ignore any Servant who presented a danger

to those around them. Squeezing the life from a human’s neck or

gouging out their eyes would present little difficulty for even the

weakest of them.

Deprived of his Saint Graph, the

Servant finally lost the strength to maintain his corporeal form and

dissolved into colourless mana.

“I’m sorry”, I repeated.

“Please, evacuate as you have been instructed.”

“Just stop this!”, she implored.

“Please, just… Just stop…” The Command Seals were already

beginning to fade from the back of her hand. I was under no illusions

about the sense of loss that she must be experiencing.

She sank to the ground, her body

wracked with sobs. I managed to haul her to her feet and handed her

to the security personnel.

-

I stared at the Saint Graph, now

stripped of its vessel, clutched in the end of my 'branch’. As I

watched, it blackened, becoming one with the blood that held it. The

deceased Servant had not returned to the Throne of Heroes.

Once his Master’s wounded heart

healed, the Grail would summon a new Servant for her, and her Command

Seals would recover. All would be well, so long as the Grail

continued to function – although even if by some miracle it were to summon the same Servant, his memories would not be preserved.

-

In the time it had taken me to

attend to this one Servant, the hall had begun to fill with

evacuating spectators. I connected to the security network and

searched for my next targets as I forced my way through the tide.

Over the next few minutes, I

eliminated several Servants with hardly a moment in between. All had

lost their reason and become little more than animals. My branch

punctured their bodies and ripped out their Saint Graphs without

mercy or quarter.

One Master, a man, resisted

particularly vigorously, and gave me a punch to the face and a split

lip for my trouble. Taking the blow, I reasoned, was the quickest

method of quelling his anger. I disliked pain as much as

the next person, but I was capable of accepting it when I had to.

Seeing me continue to urge him to evacuate in spite of the punch, he

returned to his senses, blanched, and sheepishly apologised.

The Servant I

had eliminated had been a young woman; a wisp of a thing, barely even there. She had not

made for difficult work.

Now my mouth tastes like blood… This is the worst.

I felt the evil spirits’ excitement heighten even further.

If an ordinary fourteen-year-old girl with no training had taken a

punch like that, she would have dropped on the spot, unconscious or

comatose. Unfortunately, I was permitted no such reprieve; it would

require more than that to take me out of commission.

The Servant’s appearance and reactions had not given me any clues as

to her identity, and I wondered briefly who she had been. I was well

aware that many Servants summoned nowadays were lesser-known, but I

still felt ashamed of my ignorance. I would have to study harder.

In time, a new Servant would appear before the man who had been her

Master, and heal him from his grief – just like all the Masters

before him I had clashed with as the Reaper. But I had to wonder…

What happens to those Servants who pass on, forgotten?

I remembered them, always. I had to.

Even if they left behind no other proof that they had lived here, in

Mosaic City, that proof was here, within me, carved into my own

heart.

—-

As I eliminated Servant after berserk Servant, I began to notice a

peculiarity about them. More and more reports of Servants being

successfully pacified began to filter through the security network.

They were vicious and hostile, certainly, but their savagery was not

directed as one would expect of a Servant with a clear grievance.

They had not fallen into a state of violent insanity like berserkers

on the battlefield, and could be dealt with by keeping them at a safe

distance from others and restraining them with a Spiritual

Isolation Net.

I had also been keeping an ear open for any reports of the walking

corpses left behind by the Command Seal Hunter that had been widely

reported throughout the other wards, but as yet only one had been

discovered on the grounds of the Colosseum.

-

However, even as the the security personnel began restraining the

errant Servants, so too did the number of affected Servants grow.

Every time one Servant went berserk, three more cases would emerge in

their vicinity a scant few minutes later. It was almost as though the

insanity was transmitting through contact between their spiritual

forms, spreading like a disease. I began to hear the same words

uttered over and over again, a burgeoning whisper, from security

officers and civilians alike:

“They’re almost like voodoo zombies.”

It can’t be necromancy – we’d be looking at physical bodies

walking around, not spiritual ones. Is it even possible to make

zombies out of spiritual entities?

If the goal behind this was seizing

control of the zombified Servants from their Masters, there were far

more efficient ways to do it. If it was to turn them to some purpose,

the chaotic results hardly justified the sophistication of the

method.

It’s like whoever’s behind this doesn’t have any other objective

beyond spreading death…

-

The sounds of battle resounded

intermittently from the direction of the arena; sounds of raw

destruction that could only have been born of a battle between

Servants. I wondered what could be happening there, on the

battlefield still half-submerged in water. The surviving security

camera feeds hadn’t furnished me with any details.

A mighty impact rocked the Colosseum

with a loud bang, followed by an electrical crackling as the

remaining interior lights shut down. The emergency generator and the

security network’s mainframe must finally have fallen victim to some

attack or other. Robbed of any other means of communication, the

security personnel resorted to physically shouting to each other.

A large number of the interior exits

had either collapsed or become blocked by other debris. On seeing the

path had become impassable, evacuating spectators tried to return the

way they had come, only to have to fight through the rest of the

crowd pushing from behind, and the evacuation quickly fell into

confusion.

Those Servants who had escaped

infection – for the time being – remained cool and collected, and

were cooperating with those around them while protecting their

Masters. However, in their confusion and panic, some evacuees even

resorted to reckless actions in the hopes of forcing those Servants

to prioritise protecting them instead.

Someone needs to take command here. Where’s Ms. Fujimura? Where’s

my master?

About twenty minutes had passed

since the suspension of the match, and the chaos was reaching its

peak, when I suddenly spotted a familiar face.

“You…! What are you doing

here?!”

Pran stood like a statue in the

middle of the crowd of fleeing spectators. Karin and Kouyou were

nowhere to be seen.

“Did you come here all by

yourself? You need to find Karin and get out of…”

He blithely ignored me. “There was

a dog.”

“What do you mean, a dog?”

“It was calling me.”

Time to waste wondering what he was

getting at was a luxury I didn’t have. I hurriedly dialled Karin’s

number, but the call showed no sign of deigning to connect.

The 'branch’ drooping from my arm

came close to brushing him.

“Nngh… You can’t be here right

now, okay? You can’t be near me. It’s not safe.” I backed away from

him, bumping into evacuating spectators as I retreated into the

shadows of the corridor.

“We stay together. That’s what you

said.” Even in the midst of the chaos, I could still clearly make

out his voice.

“I know! I know, but…!”

He stared up at me with a frail,

quizzical expression.

“You’re going to cry. I know it.”

I started. For a moment, I could

have slapped him for real. Karin and Kouyou were doubtlessly out

there somewhere, risking their lives searching for him, and here he

was, mocking me. The evil spirits stirred eagerly, feeding on the

dark flame of anger that had flared in my breast. Control

yourself better, Erice. I could

not allow my frustration to get the better of me.

“Maybe so. You’re right. I’m

sorry.”

I admitted it, my voice shaking. I

wanted to cry more than anything, but what good would it do anyone

now? More to the point, why were my innermost thoughts and feeling

such an open book to this child? And why could I not accept him, even

though I could open myself to far viler spirits so easily?

A sudden sea change came across the

milling crowd. Now, all at once, they were running in one direction,

away from something. The churning pond became a surging wave, with

pure terror written upon every one of its myriad faces.

It must be him.

The Servant who followed them had

clearly lost his mind. I recognised him from his thin, light armour,

and his distinctive bulk, like a heavyweight wrestler. This man had

stood on deck with the Ottomans. I knew him to be one of the clan

leaders of the Matsu-ura League: an alliance of Japanese feudal

warlords from in and around the Matsu-ura county of Nagasaki, famed

for their naval prowess. They had fought both at Dan-no-Ura and

against the subsequent Mongol invasions. It would be no exaggeration

to say that they had helped to shape Japanese history as we knew it,

and he was one of their greatest warriors.

His naked blade was slick with

innocent blood, and not a trace of his strategist’s cunning remained

in his crazed eyes. His Master was nowhere to be seen.

I can’t watch this. The least I can do is put him out of this

misery.

It would not be easy. He may have

lost his mind, but he was positively busting with mana. The

innumerable bullet holes that peppered his body began to fill even as

I watched. If he unleashed his Noble Phantasm here, the casualties

would be unimaginable. I couldn’t afford to hold back.

But…!

My thoughts jumped to the child

behind me. My powers were a threat to every Servant in the vicinity,

not just my target. Was I really so confident that I could control

them?

“Get back! Please!”

A female voice rang out from above

me, sharp and clear. I looked up to see a girl sprinting along one of

the upper corridors, closely pursuing a Servant. She vaulted the

railing and flung herself out into empty space.

Is that… Koharu?

Her white coat flapped wildly as she

began her inexorable fifteen-metre plummet to the ground, and then

her diminutive body was eclipsed by Galahad’s lanky frame as he

materialised. The knight of the Grail wrapped an arm around his

Master’s waist with an exasperated sigh. The pair spun in midair as

they fell – and as I watched, an extraordinary change came over

them.

Two people, Master and Servant, had

leapt from the upper corridor. By the time they landed on the floor

below, they had become one: a woman clad in armour of deep indigo.

The same knight, brave and bold, whom I had once seen on an enormous

TV screen in Akihabara.

That’s it. Her Possession. It must be.

I had never imagined I would witness it quite like this.

The Matsu-ura warlord didn’t even

afford her the opportunity to recover from her fall. She took his

blow from a low-slung stance with her own sword.

“Koharu? That’s you… right?”

“It is.” In her possessed state,

Koharu stood taller than me. She had two swords, very much like

Galahad’s pair, at her belt; the one currently in her hand was a

longsword of curious design, with two pieces of ribbon-like cloth

trailing from the hilt, while the other still rested in its scabbard

and had yet to see use.

“He’s not going to stop, Erice.

Not until his Saint Graph is destroyed… Nngh!”

“So it seems”, I managed.

“So I’ve decided…” Her blade

danced as she spoke, blocking the Matsu-ura warlord’s weighty swings.

“I can’t just give the order to Galahad and be done with it. If I’m

going to kill him, it’s only right that I do it myself… Ungh…

With my own hands!“

The two warriors gripped their

swords in both hands, and exchanged a flurry of blows in a shower of

sparks. The warlord made to pull back, to open some distance between

them, and Koharu seized her chance to press all the harder. Her

opponent was her better in sheer strength, but with his every wild

slash, her blade licked silently and inexorably closer to his neck.

As I watched, spellbound, cracks

spread out across the concrete floor beneath them with a sharp

snapping sound.

Despite the warlord’s furious snarl,

he was powerless to stop what was coming. He writhed like a trapped

beast as his doom crept closer and closer, until at last Koharu’s

blade sliced his throat open in a crimson torrent.

“I owe him that much.”

She curtly flicked the blood from

her sword, painting a scarlet arc across the floor. Then, with

nothing so much as bitter remorse in her eyes, she drove the blade

through the spine of her twitching foe. She had dispatched him with

ease, without even needing to draw her second sword. Facing her on

dry land, the warlord of the Matsu-ura League had been hopelessly

outmatched.

As I confirmed the destruction of

his Saint Graph, a small figure wandered out from the cover of the

shadows to squat down and survey the aftermath of the battle. The

bloodstains were already beginning to disappear.

“Um… Pran?”

He stared avidly at the gruesome

spectacle, as though burning it into his mind. His gaze now was as

fierce as any he had directed at any street performer’s work.

-

Koharu and I told each other what

we knew. If the situation hadn’t been so pressing, I would have

jumped at the chance to grill her on the details of her Possession –

what effects did it have on her body? Could she still hear and talk

to Galahad? - but now was most definitely not the time.

“No. It was someone different I

was chasing. A magic-user, working alone.”

“A magic-user?” Apparently she

come from the arena hot on the trail of the very unknown foe I was

after: the one who had so incapacitated Hannibal, his Master, and

most other capable Servants in the Colosseum.

“The infected exhibit drastic

degeneration of their mental faculties and indiscriminate hostility

toward anything around them, while the infection itself appears

capable of propagating among spiritual entities. I have never seen

any magecraft quite like this. Ghouls, perhaps? Or maybe some

subspecies of minor vampire?”

“I can think of one thing that

could do this. You’ve probably heard of it too, but…”

But it couldn’t be real. It was the

stuff of fiction, of cheap popcorn thrillers. It had begun with

fanciful folktales that spoke of using the dead as mindless servants,

before they were warped and twisted by age of slavery to become…

“Zombies? Do you mean… Voodoo

magic? The kind that even children know of?” No matter how

much older she appeared to have grown, that expression of childish

surprise was the Koharu I knew.

“After the death of El Cid and his

master, the arena fell into chaos. We could no longer tell our allies

from our enemies, so we all elected to put some distance between each

other. I have yet to encounter any of my allies, but if the infection

has spread among their ranks, the harm they could inflict would be

grievous indeed. This Colosseum would be the least of our concerns.”

With Galahad possessing her, Koharu

was no longer merely human, yet not quite a Servant; she hovered

somewhere in between.

“Your Possession should keep you

safe from the infection… shouldn’t it?”

“I would like to hope so, but I

would prefer to err on the side of caution. More importantly, Erice.

That blood on your arm is no mere wound, is it?”

“No. No, it’s…” I felt a young

pair of eyes on me even as I answered, burning into me reproachfully.

“This is nothing but poison to Servants. You shouldn’t come too

close, just in case.”

“Understood.” She nodded.

Another question came, this time

from Pran. “Are you going to do more killing now?”

“If I have to.”

“Is that because it’s a war?”

Not a flicker of fear crossed his

face as he tottered toward me. He stood on tip-toes to stretch out

his hand to caress my swollen cheek, as though he were no longer

satisfied with just burning the image into his mind but wanted to

take possession of my pain as well. Once, he said, a hole had opened

up in him, where he had been pricked by a thorn.

“No, that’s not right. You want to

be useful to someone. That’s why.”

They’re the same thing, aren’t they? We love because we want to be

loved in return. If you want to know the meaning of life, ask the

dead. We living have to struggle in ignorance.

“I used to think like that. I’m

all alone, just like you. I’ll always be alone. And I thought I was

doing it to make somebody else happy. But now I think I was wrong.”

This child and his enigmas seemed so

out-of-place amidst the carnage around him that it was hard to

believe he was real. Koharu regarded him warily.

He scared me – for no reason so

much as that he reminded me of my childhood self.

—-

As Koharu’s battle had played out,

the evacuees had thinned from around us until none were left at all.

Now the dim hallway was enveloped in an eerie silence, lit only by

emergency lighting operating on its independent power supply. I hoped

Karin and Kouyou had managed to find a way to escape.

The way ahead of me grew brighter.

The end of the passage was near now. I could see where the arches

opened up to the outside.

There’s an exit right here, and yet they all ran the other way.

That can only mean one thing…

The presence alone told me that I

was right. Koharu, too, couldn’t possibly have missed it: the

approach of someone who commanded such an overwhelming amount of

mana.

“It’s them! The magic-user! She’s

a Caster!”

The entrance hall was strewn with

debris and possessions toppled or left behind. The afternoon sunlight

streamed in through the open doorway, and beyond, a Servant walked

barefoot toward us. Her hair was pure white, and her skin was deepest

ebony. Behind her, as she might a tote bag, she dragged the corpses

of three unlucky civilians. It did not take much to surmise that this was our

enemy.

“Not a Caster, I’m afraid. A

sorceress. Although I don’t care for the difference.”

She walked with strangely fluid,

viscid motions, but her voice had a young girl’s sweetness. The short

cape slung over her shoulders was dyed in garish primary colours and

patterned in African fashion, while golden jewellery adorned her

torso and legs. In one hand she carried a blade of absurd, outlandish

design, and as we watched, she set it to one of the corpses’ forearms

and severed its hand from its body.

Or rather, severed its Command Seals

from its body.

“Just look at the two of you. What

a pair you make.”

She moved on to the next, and the

next. Then, with her task complete, she began to collect the severed

arms, her eyes trained on us all the while.

It’s her! She’s the Command Seal Hunter!

The Command Seals she had taken now

dangled from her shoulders, her cape, her arms – still emblazoned

upon the body parts that bore them. There were hands, and ankles, and

extracted collarbones among the grotesque display. I could even make

out entire shrunken heads, their mouths sewn shut with thread. Mosaic

City’s distinctive Command Seal designs were plain to see upon the

fresher-looking articles.

“You aren’t even human, are you,

girl? You’re a homunculus… Barely alive, even with that Heroic

Spirit bound to you. Well, I suppose your Command Seals are as good

as anybody else’s.”

Koharu… So you really are…?

Her gaze – at least, I assumed she

was female – turned to me, and she scrutinised me intently.

“And you… Oh? Oh my. Just what

are you?” Her eyes,

as fiercely red as rubies, widened in surprise.

Behind her, the corpses whose arms

she’d taken rose unsteadily to their feet. I suddenly realised that

the area around us was littered with dead bodies; the remains of

those whose frantic flight for the exit had come too late.

No…! I froze at the sight

of a school uniform among them. Wait… It’s not Karin.

Thank goodness… Anyway, it must be her. This Servant is the one

responsible for all those murders!

The walking corpses’ empty eyes

trained on us, and they lurched toward us at a half-run, hands

outstretched and grasping. I grabbed Pran and ushered him back behind

me. Koharu stepped forward to engage the advancing horde; she sent

some of the dead flying with explosive kicks, and coolly sliced

the limbs from others to render them harmless. It was as though our

enemy was watching to see how we would react.

“I can’t hold myself back any

more, Erice. Please, let me fight her. You saw what she did to our

comrades!”

From the girl before me I felt both

a raging desire to fight and the crackle of raging mana.

“Come, face me. You can’t ignore

this fight forever.” The enemy Servant sounded almost bored as she

sent corpse after corpse shambling toward us.

Her taunts were for me and me alone.

She ignored Koharu as though she weren’t even there at all.

-

“Are you not yet entertained? How

demanding you are. Perhaps playing a while longer with my dear

children will ease your boredom.”

In answer to her call, more dead

bodies appeared from farther down the passage: two war elephants,

draped in chain mail. Both of their feet were dyed deep red with

blood and gore. I could only imagine how many people had met

horrifying deaths beneath their weight.

“My, an elephant of the African

forest and an elephant of the Indus. Such a rare sight. Aren’t you honoured?”

Once, these giant beasts had

terrorised the Roman republic. Now, they were Servants – of a sort

– under the command of Hannibal. That they were yet to disappear

suggested that Hannibal may still be alive, but I had no idea what to

make of the blind obedience they displayed toward our foe.

Koharu gulped as they neared; she

knew their formidable strength better than most. She looked back at

me as she readied her sword. I could feel her mana building even as

she whispered.

“I’m going to use my Noble

Phantasm. I need to end this in one-”

“Think again.” The enemy Servant

leaned forward into a crouch, and I heard the swish of movement.

Almost before the sound reached my ears, she was before Koharu,

swinging her outlandish sword. The blow to her flank sent the tall

knight flying. She smashed through the wall of the arena like a

piledriver, coming to rest half-buried in fallen rubble.

“I suppose Servants don’t die so

easily. I had hoped to take that right hand of yours, though. Would have

done, too, if you had been half a second slower.”

I levelled my Freischütz

at her, but Koharu beat me to the punch. Before I could fire, she

broke from her prison in a burst of debris and streaked toward her

foe, who caught the blow with her misshapen blade.

The

shockwave rocked the arena. Koharu’s battle against the Matsuura

warlord had been stunning, but this opponent was in a different league. The

Servant fought almost hunched double, with one hand flicking her

sword this way and that, beating back Koharu’s strikes with savage

blows of her own. As her enemy lifted her longsword above her head,

she seized her chance, sending the knight flying once more across the

arena.

Oh no…

Koharu’s

arc ended abruptly as she crashed into the sharp corner of a wall.

She vomited blood.

“This

sad little girl couldn’t finish off Hannibal when she had the chance.

I wonder how many people he went and killed, after that? Such a

shame. Imagine the guilt she must feel.”

This

was a Caster? This woman? This was hardly even a battle, and her mana

had not even reached its fullest peak.

What the

hell’s Galahad doing in there?

Galahad’s

current circumstances might be rather unusual, but he was still a

knight of the Round Table. Seeing him overwhelmed, even toyed by an

opponent with no business even lifting a sword, I couldn’t help but

doubt his qualifications as a Heroic Spirit.

“Haha.

Oh, little doe, such sprightly legs you have. Hahaha…

Hahahahahaha!”

With

a pitter-patter of bare feet on stone, the enemy Servant sprinted for

where Koharu lay. The fallen knight’s attempts to struggle to her

feet were thwarted by a merciless foot brought down on her right arm.

That outlandish sword followed a second later, pinning the arm to the

floor. It was still attached, but only barely.

“Hahahahahahahaha!”

Koharu’s

agonised screams were barely audible above the sneering laughter.

—-

“Hahahaha!

Hahaha… Ha?”

The

enemy Servant’s cackling stopped, cut short as my unerring Freischütz

struck her square in the back.

This

arcane bullet was the weapon of Samiel, the Black Huntsman. It would

pierce the Saint Graph of any Servant of Mosaic City, bringing immediate dissolution.

It

struck true - I saw it - but the bullet simply passed gently from her

back, through her mana-woven body, to be pushed out through her chest

on the other side. It fall harmlessly to the ground with a clatter,

without drawing even a single drop of blood. In her stead, one of the

articles dangling from her cowl – a bundle of collarbones –

crumbled to dust.

Slowly,

she turned around.

“Must

you be so eager to rush to death?”

“Don’t…

count me out… so easily!” Despite the sword pinning her arm to

the ground, Koharu made to grab at her legs. She received a kick to

the face for her trouble, followed by several more cruel stamps for

good measure.

Koharu!

Dammit!

“I’m

afraid that my dear children have matters to attend to on the far

side of this citadel at the moment. Our foes have sealed the exits,

it seems, and are fighting hard to last the siege. My children are

inside their walls, you see. I cannot imagine they will last long.

The Servants of this city are all so terribly frail, don’t you

agree?”

“You

mean there are still civilians left in here? Ones who couldn’t

evacuate?”

“Hahaha.

Once my family has grown large enough, the time will come to fly the

nest. Then our fun will really begin.”

She’s

going for this entire town! So what’s her plan right now? Stay here

and gather her strength?

There was

little doubt about it: I was facing a being once worshipped as a

deity, now summoned as a Servant. A Divine Spirit. However, if it had

been summoned by the Grail, there must be limits to the status it

could attain.

Don’t

let her intimidate you, Erice. She’s not a real god!

I tried to reassure myself. Perhaps it amounted to nothing more than

making myself feel better, but I couldn’t afford the slightest

hesitation in the coming battle.

-

I

swung my raised arm down, and the gnarled black branch extending from

my hand grew into a vicious whip. It extended three-, four-, fivefold

as it drew figure-eight patterns in the air, its flicking tip

travelling faster than sound. I closed a few paces and lashed out. My

enemy moved not an inch as my whip streaked across her chest, only

slightly grazing her. I had chosen to avoid going for a fatal blow.

But

it still had an effect.

The tip of my branch just barely touched her

cape and the arms she held crossed within, slicing open her flesh –

or as much as Servants had flesh.

“My,

my. Maybe my defences won’t be much use against you after all.

What was that – Imaginary Numbers magecraft, perhaps? Whatever it

was, I was told nothing of it. What secrets have been kept from me, I

wonder?”

It’s

working! Whatever defences she’s using, they don’t work against my

branch!

“You

aren’t a Master, are you, girl? A spellcaster, perhaps? In any

case, if you have no Command Seals, I have no use for you. And that

means I need no longer put up with you.”

Despite the

threat in her words, she made no motion to beckon the war elephants

closer. It was clear that she still regarded me with curiosity –

and therein lay my best chance of victory.

If she

wanted to know what I was, I would show her.

“Imaginary

Numbers? I should be so lucky. I’m hardly qualified for that.”

The boy was

a safe enough distance behind me now. I was going to make him watch

me kill again. The evil spirits exulted at the prickle of sadism

within my breast.

It’s not

a branch or a scythe I need. It’s an axe. An axe to destroy, an axe

to rend. I’ll need to call upon spirits starved of such impulses.

I

transformed the branch wrapped around my forearm into an enormous

double-headed battleaxe, gargantuan enough to cover one of my arms

entirely – and I allowed the evil spirits ever deeper into myself.

—-

The evil

spirits called out to me ever since I was very young.

At that

age, I could not tell the difference between them and the people

around me. I doubt I could even tell the difference between the

clamour of their countless voices and the sound of my own thoughts.

There was

never a minute, never a second of the day when they were not by my

side. I was a peaceful, comforting refuge on their long, dark road.

They were

neither Heroic Spirits, nor Anti-Heroes. They were Dread

Spirits. The souls of the dead, steeped in hatred and loathing.

They had no

fame to boast of. They had no glory or notoriety to their name. None

had given themselves to acts of infamy that would echo beyond their

lifetimes. They were nothing more or less than evil in its purest

form, misbegotten creatures that the Throne of Heroes spat upon.

They had

been given the gift of life - and yet they been rejected by the

world, stripped of even their names, and, in the end, denied their

place in the natural cycle.

To these

lost souls who so craved a return to flesh and blood, I, Utsumi

Erice, was the one and only candle in the dark.

-

I was on

the verge of losing my sense of self when the two of them saved me.

They taught me how to survive the curse I lived – at least, for a

little longer.

Take

control, Erice,

they told me. Grasp

the throttle, and bend them to your will.

Then I

could fly swift and sure, even in the darkest night.

To these

spirits that wounded me so sorely, they taught me to become mother,

and bestow upon them a name.

—

“Erlkönig.”

The great

hazel. The king of the fey, bedecked with crown and tail. Lord of the

wilis, those graceful nymphs of the silver willows, and gatekeeper of

the kingdom of the dead.

“For this

bough is the touch of the Erl-king’s hand.”

He who

laughs at those spirits who strut proudly across this world they

think their own. He whose grasp drags them from their horses.

“Lay

waste!”

With such

tempting prey before them, the evil spirits acceded eagerly to my

command. My black battleaxe wailed mournfully as it swung through the

air, its edge keen enough to slice a soul in twain. The strike sent

the enemy Servant’s outlandish blade spinning through the air –

and then I stepped in, and brought my weapon’s weight back down in a

second blow.

“My, my,

my.”

Her wound

was deep, stretching from shoulder to breast, and through the deep

slash I could see the stark white of flesh and fat.

“Wonderful,

girl. Truly wonderful. A display worth at least a shrunken head. Who

would have guessed your powers would be equal in kind to those of

Nzambi?”

Her true

name, freely given; perhaps this was the closest she came to

unreserved praise. I had heard of Nzambi, just about. She was the

origin of all zombie folklore: the high goddess of the Vili people of

the Congo, at once a great empress and the mother of all life.

“For both

of us wield death itself.”