FSF chapter 11, part 2



An underground facility.



In a room where the sun did not shine, a woman froze in the act of tending to a horse.

"What's wrong, Polyte? Your magical energy went a little wild for a moment there."

Hearing a woman's voice from the room next door, the woman called Polyte answered with some confusion.

"Just now I sensed my father's cherished birds but they soon vanished."

"Birds?"

"The Stymphalides  monstrous birds that my father, the god of war, was said to have loved... Although I hear that he drove them from the peninsula "

"I see. Maybe 'he' summoned them, then? He had your belt, didn't he? Still, if they've vanished, I doubt it would be a good idea to drop everything and rush over."

"Polyte" considered briefly, then nodded her assent to the voice's ready answer.

"I suppose so. Don't worry, Master; I won't act on my own again," the woman declared with dignity. Her cheeks reddened slightly as she continued.

"And Master calling me 'Polyte' is, well "

"What? Why? You're Hippolyte, so 'Polyte.' Oh, would 'Hippo' be better?"

" Polyte is fine."

The Rider Class Servant Hippolyte heaved an exasperated sigh. Her attitude hinted that she was less annoyed than embarrassed by the nickname. A serious look suddenly entered her eyes as turned them back to the direction the presence had come from.

Hippolyte did not normally excel in sensing presences. She was, however, sensitive to any that resembled the Noble Phantasm she wore  the war belt she had inherited from her father.

Polyte supposed that Alkeides was involved in a battle. She refocused and turned back to her horse. All the while gritting her teeth at the thought of the great hero she would one day have to settle things with  or rather, of the avenger he had sunk to.



X X



The meat processing plant.



"Oh, you protected me while you were at it? Good boy."

Filia looked up at "it," surveying the flock of crushed bronze birds with a faint smile.

It was Haruri's Servant, which had thus far kept its form and presence hidden. No one, however, was more shocked by its appearance than Haruri herself.

"What?"

It's gotten even bigger than before?

On the way to the plant, when it had been crawling on buildings, it had been roughly the size of an elephant. Now, however, it had completed a transformation into a mechanical spider gigantic enough to wrap its legs around even the enormous trailers used to transport an elephant to a zoo. Although it did not appear to be making any large movements, the sounds of spinning gears and metal scraping against metal still sounded from it and its eyes blazed with their usual white-hot light.

Then, a voice like a record player with a rusty needle, the same voice that Haruri had first heard, resounded in Bazdilot's workshop.

"EEEEennNNNe eEEEeeeENennnennNEEEMmimimimie."

Berserker's body shook as it roared, trying to make some appeal.

Haruri was perplexed.

"Come on, Haruri!" A grinning Filia called out to her. "You're his Master, so hurry up and give him an order."

"What ?"

"He's asking who the enemy is. If you leave him alone, I'm pretty sure he'll think all the little children apart from you and me are enemies and demolish the city. Is that alright with you?"

At that, Haruri hurriedly turned back to Berserker.

Designate an enemy. That was what Berserker's blazing eyes were telling her as it continued to stand between her and Bazdilot, shielding her.

Bazdilot had fired many more bullets, sometimes using magically-induced refraction to target Haruri's blind spots, but cables that sprouted from Berserker's body swatted every shot aside.

And Berserker was slowly vanishing into thin air. Even the sound of it was disappearing. The "pressure" it exerted, however, remained in workshop.

This is different from the concealment Filia performed in the city earlier. Even I can't see it.

Can this Heroic Spirit turn invisible under its own power ?

Haruri gulped. It was coming home to her that she had made a contract with a shocking Heroic Spirit.

Tell this Berserker who the enemy was, Filia had said. She felt that she was being tested. Could she kill a person, even an enemy Master?

Haruri pondered. Like a mage, she stifled her emotions and froze her trembling heart.

Would she give the order? The order to kill?

Would she, like a mage, free herself from the ethics of reality? Or would she prattle on about justified self defence, as if to openly declaring that she was still human? Even though she had thrown herself into the Grail War?

" "

After a brief indecision, she shouted at the invisible Berserker.

"Berserker! The enemy is this mage's workshop! Please smash it to bits!"

The area reverberated with Berserker's creaking and its grating cry, as if it was pleased to be ordered.

Filia, who had leapt to Haruri's side without her noticing, quietly laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Hya?!"

Haruri let out a cry of surprise. Filia narrowed her eyes.

"Well now, you dodged that nicely," she said, smiling kindly at Haruri. "You didn't outright order him to kill."

" Th-that's not what I "

"Oh, don't misunderstand me; I'm not blaming you."

Filia grinned broadly as she dispatched the surviving demonic beasts one after the other with arrows of magical energy. Then, without her smile faltering at all, she matter-of-factly declared:

"I mean, if you were the kind of girl who could give the order to kill that easily, you'd fall into the category of 'mage,' not 'human,' and then "

The end of her sentence was blotted out by sounds of destruction. The invisible Berserker must have begun to rampage. The nearby walls and floors were crushed. It demolished the entrance to a corridor that had been partially transformed into an otherworld by brute force.

"Now, you leave the rest to Berserker and run. I'll have to be cautious dealing with that mage with the scary face and the twisted Heroic Spirit; if I don't kill them carefully, the 'mud' will fly everywhere " Filia said as she leapt again and vanished through a break in the rubble.

Haruri broke out in a cold sweat as she watched her. She didn't need to be told to throw herself at the doorway now that it was no longer an otherworld. Almost as if she was fleeing Filia, rather than Bazdilot or his bow-wielding Servant.

Amid the roar of destruction, she had caught the end of what the smiling Filia had said.

"I mean, if you were the kind of girl who could give the order to kill that easily, you'd fall into the category of 'mage,' not 'human,' and then

"Honestly, there'd be no point keeping you alive."

It had been no joke. She was certain of that.

Haruri was still grateful to Filia for saving her. At the same time, however, she was deeply afraid of her. A question that she had pondered many time before reoccurred to her.

What in the world have I summoned?



" "

It can't have dematerialized, Bazdilot decided. It was probably an optical camouflage ability. Even the sound disappearing must be due to one of the Heroic Spirit's Skills, or possibly to that self-proclaimed "goddess."

Bazdilot judged that, if it had dematerialized inside his workshop, then, Servant or not, it would have suffered heavy damage from the wards and magecraft. He surmised that the "thing"  he could not tell if it was a Heroic Spirit or a monster  had been isolating its form, sounds and magical energy from the beginning.

After a brief pause, Bazdilot reached a coldhearted decision and telepathically communicated it to Alkeides.

"This workshop will likely be destroyed. You may go all out."

"Are you sure?" Alkeides asked. "You'll lose that device as well."

"Not a problem," Bazdilot responded without hesitation. "The Family is already capable of mass-producing it.

"Any Mana Crystals we produce now would just be a drop in the bucket. Don't worry; our current supply was evacuated the moment the workshop's defense mechanisms activated. I wouldn't be able to show my face to the Scradio Family if I lost it all due to my own stinginess."

Having dispassionately made up his mind to abandon something, Bazdilot performed reinforcement magecraft on his own body and leapt into the flying rubble.

"Either way, now that we've made this much of a scene, Faldeus and Orlando will take action. You making a bigger scene won't change anything."

"So long as our opponent calls herself a goddess  be the truth what it may  I have no intention of taking the secrecy of magecraft into consideration."

"I don't care. Arrangements are in place to dispose of the whole city if it comes to that. Faldeus will activate them if the need arises, whatever Francesca and the police chief think.

"It's only a sacrifice of 800,000 people," Bazdilot questioned Alkeides, his voice still impassive. "Even the Clock Tower would approve it in exchange for magical secrecy. But are you prepared to make it?"

"Naturally," Alkeides answered the probing question without hesitation. "It's a fair price to pay for the destruction of the gods."

Then, Alkeides unleashed his power. In order to bring the hammer down on the woman who called herself a goddess and the Servant of the mage who seemed to be her underling.

It did not matter if they were foreign gods, different from the bitter enemies he knew.



X X



The wetland mansion.



"Don't stick your head out the window, Ayaka. Snipers are scary, you know? Even I was shot dead by Pierre."

"I wouldn't stick my head out if you asked me to."

Ayaka and Saber were going over the situation while hiding themselves deep inside the mansion.

When Ayaka heard from Sigma that the mansion was "surrounded by a special forces unit, she had first assumed that it was SWAT or some other police unit in pursuit. According to Sigma, however, they were pawns of the mages who had organized this Holy Grail War.

"Part of the US government conspiring with mages? Is this some kind of fantasy movie?"

"Don't be like that, Ayaka. People in power and mages make a good combination, you know? In the shadow of the great King of Knights was the flower mage who brought him into the world. I may not have had a court mage myself, but I did have an odd fellow who followed me around."

" You mean Saint-Germain?" Ayaka could not help blurting out in spite of how nervous she had been to bring up the name earlier.

"You're well-informed. Is he famous?"

Saber looked surprised. Ayaka was just wondering how to explain when Sigma reappeared in the doorway.

"Seventy percent of the unit was just transferred to another location. The only ones left here are observers. So, if you want to move, I think now's the time."

"Transferred?"

Ayaka had a hard time keeping step with Sigma's matter-of-fact demeanor.

He was a participant in the Grail War and he had been in combat with Assassin when they had met him the night before, but he had not seemed immediately hostile. Saber had begun persuading him to "form an alliance" and "sit at the same round table." "As long as it's an anti-war pact," Sigma had surprisingly responded, with the result that they had ended up staying together in the mansion.

Ayaka heaved a big sigh and wondered how things had ended up like this.

To begin with, Saber had made a temporary agreement with the green-haired Heroic Spirit "while they dealt with mud and sickness." He had seemingly made a deal with Assassin, who had also been present, as well.

"I cannot forgive you for your deeds in life," Assassin has said. "Still, I am aware that you fought alongside one of the great chiefs. Therefore, I will spare you until we have eliminated that demon."

It seemed that they had avoided a fight to the death for the moment.

Before Ayaka had a chance to pick her jaw up off the floor, Assassin has suggested that, if they needed a base, there was a suitable house in the wetlands. Apparently the "demon" might return to it, so they had ended up going together.

After that, umm, there was a light in the window, so Assassin went to take a look. A little while later there was a big bang and a flash from inside the room

Ayaka had still been confused while Saber conducted negotiations. By the time she regained her senses, the situation had changed.

Ayaka felt that she really was just being dragged around. At the same time, she was torn between being ashamed of her own cowardice and grateful to Saber for protecting her.

She had fallen asleep with those thoughts. But then had come that dream, and after all that they were apparently up against a special forces unit.

I can't understand the people who willingly participate in the Grail War, she thought as she questioned Sigma.

"Wouldn't selling us out put you in a better position?"

It was a blunt question, but Sigma answered it.

"Faldeus is the type to eliminate you as soon as he's done with you. If it comes to that, I'd like to have ties to people like you as well."

"So we're insurance, then But isn't there a chance that you'll cut us loose as soon as you're done with us?"

"I won't deny it. That's why I don't mind if you keep your guards up with me. I don't trust you with my whole heart, so it's fine if you don't trust me with your whole head."

Ayaka sighed at Sigma's frank manner of speaking. She was wondering what she ought to ask him when Saber broke in.

"You said that seven tenths of the force moved. Has something happened?"

"Apparently a monster is on a rampage in the factory district."

"A monster?! You must tell me more about "

Oh, this looks bad.

Ayaka hurriedly tried to stop the conversation, but she was too late.

"I don't know if it's someone's Heroic Spirit or a creature summoned by a Heroic Spirit, but according to a communication I intercepted, a monster about the size of this house is destroying the factory district."

Once she was sure Sigma had finished speaking, Ayaka turned slowly to look at Saber. She saw a grown man whose eyes were shining like a little boy's.

"Saber."

"Yes? What is it, Ayaka?"

"Do you want to go?" Ayaka asked bluntly.

" What are you saying, Ayaka?!" Saber answered, avoiding her eyes. "I do want to go reenact the slaying of the demon cat, shield in hand! In fact, I'd absolutely love to! But I can't go dragging you into danger, now, can I?"

"You took to me into a forest with other Servants without warning yesterday."

"I suppose I did But still It is a monster "

They may only have known each other for a few days, but there were some things that Ayaka understood about Saber. He was basically a giant cat, acting on spinal reflex and with unbelievable energy. He would happily pounce on a tuft of green foxtail swaying in the breeze dozens of kilometers away if it caught his interest. Bu for all that, he was kind. And so, he ended up torn between his own desires and his concern for Ayaka.

Getting dragged around is a pain, Ayaka though, but being a burden is even worse.

Just as she was about to say something to Saber she saw "it" out of the corner of her eye.

" !"

Cold sweat broke out on her face. Her breathing became spontaneously ragged.

Why ?

There's no elevator here !

A girl wearing a red hood, lingering on the bed. She slowly turned her face toward Ayaka, but the hood concealed her eyes and expression. The girl's mouth moved slowly. Ayaka had a feeling that it was about to break into a grin. Ayaka was ready to scream in terror.

"What's wrong? Ayaka?"

At that point, Saber called out to her and she regained the reason she had been about to lose. The girl in the red rood vanished from the bed, leaving only Saber and Sigma staring at Ayaka's face in confusion.

"No, it's nothing. So, what are we going to do? Go take a look?"

Ayaka turned serious and made the suggestion herself. Before Saber could answer, however, Sigma interrupted.

"This is just advice, but it would be better if you didn't."

"Why?"

Sigma prefaced his response to Ayaka's question with, "I received another communication earlier," before adding a supplement concerning the current situation.

"It sounds like my real employer is up to something."

"Your employer Isn't that a US special forces group?"

"I'm not contractually obligated to maintain confidentiality, but it's still my duty. So, I can't give you the details, but at the very least, it definitely won't be anything good. You'd better stay away from there for a while if you don't want to be caught up in it."

At that point, Sigma fell silent for a moment. Ayaka could not be sure if what he said next was meant as a joke or not.



"Of course it was probably too late for both of us the moment we got near this city during all this."



X X



Somewhere dark.



Almost no outside light penetrated Francesca's workshop. Monitors were the only sources of illumination.

The workshop's owner, Francesca, was scattering pastries and bags of sweets across the disheveled bed as she squared off against her Servant, the boy Prelati.

"If that's how it is, I'll have to give you an order as your Master, you know? Speaking of which, don't you think giving yourself an order is an awfully perverse pleasure? How does it feel on the receiving end?"

"It's unspeakable; a mix of envy and masochism, like I might have a gestalt collapse in the midst of intoxication. Care to trade places tomorrow?"

"It sounds lovely, but I can't. I mean, you're go and start a game like stealing my Command Seals and making me kill myself instead the moment we switched, wouldn't you?"

"You got that right! I'd expect nothing less of me! You're a tricky one!" The boy Prelati cackled, slumping against the wall.

"So?" He continued. "What's your order? I can pretty well guess, of course."

"And you guess right! I want my Servant Prelati to go work out a peaceful solution to that war of the monsters in the factory district by force! Wow! Doesn't that sound fun?"

"A normal Servant wouldn't want anything to do with this, even if you did use a Command Seal."

"But you'll go, won't you?"

Francesca smiled impishly at her male self. The boy Prelati responded with an impish grin of his own and nodded.

Francesca rapped the floor with the point of her umbrella, as if to say that a contract had been sealed. The wall that the boy Prelati was leaning against drew back with a mechanical click. The wall then slid aside like the door of a train, breaking the workshop's isolated from the outside world.



Light, light, light flooded into the room, accompanied by a transparent indigo color. Francesca beheld the white radiance of the sun and a deep sky blue harmony. That is to say, an infinite expanse of firmament, more vibrant than the sky seen from above ground.



The boy Prelati, meanwhile, tumbled out as he had been leaning. A different view met his eyes.

Endless red earth spread out below him. The city looked like a mound of salt spilled on the barren plain. If it had been night, the city lights would have looked like a starry sky that was partial to one location.

Prelati faintly regretted that he did not have the chance to see that as he spread his arms without hesitation and began his freefall while executing a series of dance-like spins.



The lowest layer of the stratosphere, twenty kilometers up. That was where Francesca's workshop was.

It was a giant airship, two hundred meters from end to end. Francesca had taken a high-altitude unmanned airship that the US military was in the process of testing, applied many layers of wards to it  invisibility, wind-aversion, etcetera. She had piled modification on modification, mystically, scientifically, and as a matter of taste. That said, it was hardly a mobile fortress, bristling with weapons straight out of a scifi novel. It was simply a two hundred meter balloon used to lift the meager area of Prelati's workshop.

It was an extreme height from which Francesca could look down on everything, but could hardly grasp events on the surface with her naked eyes. With Prelati's enhanced sight, however, it was possible to confirm something on the scale of the disturbance in the factory district.

He saw a gargantuan mechanical spider on a rampage and a bowman-turned-avenger challenging it alone. The factories around them were destroyed. There was no longer any trace of the meat processing plant. He could see scraps of otherworld and ward-induced static, as well as demonic beasts that had spilled out of the workshop. A scene of chaos had begun to unfold.

Prelati laughed with simple, unadulterated joy at the sight.

"Ahaha! Splendid! Wonderful! It's wonderful, Francesca!"

Even while he laughed, the ground was perceptibly closing in on him. The boy continued to digest his clear view of the chaos in the factory district as he shifted his thoughts to the next stage.

I'd love to see that scenery spread through the whole city but not yet. Not yet. I've got to hold on a little longer.

He strove to keep a cool head, although the overflowing smile never left his face. But then, he was only making a pretense of restraint in order to experience longer, greater pleasure.

I've still got to control myself, if only to keep up appearances. That friend of Master's  Faldeus  could easily put an end to the whole city.

The boy Prelati, high on the speed of freefall, settled on a target. That done, , he spread his arms as he continued his head-first descent. Then, in the midst of the endless expanse of sky, he chanted, recited, sang. He sang the praises of his Noble Phantasm and chanted verses expressing the joy of deploying it.



"I make an offering. To this broken world I offer blessings and thanks and sacrifices!"

"I offer thanks to mother Até, born the embodiment of madness!"

"I offer blessings to the holy spirits of the world, who taught me magecraft, the madness of men!"

"O saint and knight who showed me a different madness, neither of you were mistaken!"

"I make an offering! To all humanity, permitted by this broken world, I offer the sacrifice that is me!"



As Prelati shouted his self-centered invocation, the space around him began to distort. As he hurtled toward the surface, he bellowed the name of the great magecraft that was his Noble Phantasm at the ground.



"Grand Illusion!"