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.”