It had not been enough.

Nzambi had been wounded by my blow, but it had failed to destroy her Saint Graph. Beneath the soft surface of her body lurked an incredibly hard layer. My Freischütz had been allowed to pass through, but my axe had not.

She looked down at the glaring gash I had opened in her chest in irritation, then reached for one of the many hands dangling from her body. Then she tipped her head back, with her mouth agape like an anglerfish, slipped it between her teeth, and bit down hard. With a crunching of bones, the Command Seals faded from it – and from many of the other hands too, which crumbled into dust.

She’s… eating them? Eating Command Seals?

With my foe preoccupied, I took advantage of the lull in the fighting to retrieve Koharu from the ground and retreat with her clutched in my arms. I made it back to where Pran was waiting, and turned to find that my foe’s wound had closed entirely. Even her cape was as good as new, with no tear to be seen.

“Your nature eludes me, spellcaster. Though I understand those branches you wield, at least. The grasping claws of poor, vengeful souls. Rather fitting for you, I think.”

The desiccated hands dropped to the ground, one after the other.

“Still, I swore an oath to take care of any who fled through these gates, and take care of them I shall. That branch of yours is certainly bothersome… but I doubt it can save you from these.”

She gave no signal, but still the two war elephants advanced. They smashed two of the pillars standing in the hall with their foreheads, and then curled their mighty trunks around their toppled remains.

“Surely it can’t…? Wah! It can!”

The pillar one of the beasts flung at me must have weighed several tons. With Koharu slumped on my shoulder, we just barely dodged out of the way. I had no idea that an elephant could be so dexterous.

The other took the signal to charge, wielding its pillar like a battering ram.

“I have no more interest in you. Perhaps I shall seek out that boy next. His dear little head would look wonderful dangling from my neck.” Nzambi stepped up to squat on one of the war elephants’ trunks, and it obediently scooped her up onto its back. “Hm. Or perhaps he has gone and hidden himself away somewhere.”

We turned to run from the two advancing elephants, only to find our way blocked by more ranks of the walking dead.

“I’m… I’ll be fine, Erice. Get the boy… away from here…” Koharu had come to. She stumbled a little at first without my support, but soon enough raised her sword once more and set to cutting down the advancing zombies. It was clear that she was on her last legs, but I had no choice but to hope that that would suffice.

With a magus’ tactical thinking, she had already attempted to heal herself. Seven-tenths of her Command Seal had vanished from the back of her hand, but it would take more than that to repair the damage from her collision with the wall, and her right arm was in no better a state. Whatever that blade was that Nzambi had stabbed her with, it had been no ordinary weapon.

It must have damaged her magic circuit somehow. Oh, Koharu…

—-

The war elephant’s thunderous footsteps shook the floor as it lumbered toward us. Nzambi’s voice echoed around the corridor from the beast’s back.

“You should know very well, that outside of this citadel sprawls a kingdom of the dead.”

A ‘kingdom of the dead’? I had no idea what she was talking about, but I could sense nothing. Perhaps if I were a proper Master, I would have more insight.

“All those who have tasted death become my children, and how very dear they are to me.”

“All those who have tasted death”? It took me a moment to comprehend the true scale of what she had said. Was she simply spouting nonsense in an attempt to break our spirits? Or could it be possible that the Servants here had been so easily overwhelmed, rendered incapable of marshalling their full power, because of Nzambi’s sorcery?

“Although some are terribly forgetful. All I do is recall the memories of death that they have forgotten. Memento Mori, as they say. Come, Galahad. No more hiding behind a little girl’s skirts. Face me like a knight, and let us see how you died.”

We were not so green as to fall for cheap taunts. I flashed Koharu a glance, and she responded wordlessly: she was not to undo her Possession if she could at all help it.

-

Suddenly the internal broadcast system flared to life, projecting Ms. Fujimura’s voice around the arena.

“Code Crimson has been invoked. The barrier around the Colosseum interior has been deactivated. All survivors, proceed to the central battlefield.”

The barrier she referred to was the forcefield erected between the battlefield and the seats to ensure that no harm came to spectators during a match. Deactivating it was highly unusual.

The announcement played once more. I doubted that anyone else listening it would know the true significance of Code Crimson. I don’t know about the rest of the announcement, but that bit must be a message for me. I touched a finger to my forelock, but my call went unheeded.

Where are you, Ms. Fujimura?

At that moment, my phone ringtone blared. Karin.

“Hey, Eri! You alive? Still in the stadium? Listen, I’m super sorry, but the kid gave me the slip! I’ll seppuku myself later, okay?”

“Guess you get to live. Pran’s with me.”

“He’s what?!”

“Are you barricaded up over there?”

“Damn straight! We’re holed up in an empty stable just next to the arena! Got quite a few other survivors with us, too, and some of the fighters are helping us hold out, but they’re knockin’ on our door! I’m not sure how much lo- Crap! Momi, left!”

I heard a muted crash through the speaker, like something colliding with an iron cage, followed by the trumpeting of an elephant. Hannibal’s final remaining war elephant, most likely – probably alongside the man himself.

“That announcement just now was Caren’s voice, right? Is everything okay? Can we trust it?”

“It’s real. Can you get to the central arena from where you are?”

“I think so. The shutters are down, but we can blast our way through. Apparently we can use Noble Phantasms now.”

“Then do it! Before it’s too late! I’ll-” A muffled boom echoed through the speaker, followed by static, and then the line went dead.

I turned to Koharu. “Let’s go. We need to get to the arena.”

“But my teammates might still… I mean, there could still be competitors there, and you’ve seen what they can do. It’s as dangerous in there as it is out here. And what was that Code Crimson they mentioned?”

“It means you’re going to get your wish.”

She gave a little noise of surprise. Apparently she had understood what I was getting at.

“I see. In that case, let me lead the way. I’m more familiar with the Colosseum.”

—-

“A little late for directions, don’t you think? How could heading further inside help you, anyway? Are you hoping to checkmate yourselves?”

Still squatted atop the elephant, Nzambi rested her head on a bored hand.

“A trap, of course. Not appealing at all. I would prefer to leave it for my children.”

Another charge, and, a few seconds later, another crash. The war elephants’ advance upon us had reduced the artistic interior of the hall to rubble. Zombies seemed to spring out of every nook and cranny, reaching for us with grasping hands.

I followed Koharu’s lead, desperately trying to keep myself and Pran from harm.

-

Midway through our flight, Koharu stopped and turned. It was her turn to shout a taunt at our pursuers.

“Come, proud allies of Hannibal! Have you mistaken that woman for your master? I see how you strain under her yoke. Allow me to end your suffering!”

Nzambi’s eyebrows knotted in irritation. “Such ignorance. These kind souls were stolen from their forest homes to watch their comrades die on the battlefield. Do you truly think you can appeal to their better nature?”

She stood up on the elephant’s back and levelled her sword at Koharu.

“Enough of this. I shall crush you and be done with it.”

With a bellowing bray, the war elephants charged straight for Koharu. The knight stood waiting, sword clutched firmly in hand.

-

I hardly dared to look as the two collided with a violent crash… and then there was silence. The first thing Pran and I could make out was the beams of sunlight streaming into the corridor through the rising cloud of dust. The impact of their clash had torn a hole in the wall, opening the corridor to the open stadium in the middle of the Colosseum. The enormous battlefield lay before us once more.

Nzambi had leapt from her perch a second before the collision, and alighted before us without a care in the world for the destruction around her. The bellowing of the elephants was distant now, and I spared a moment’s pity for the poor zombies who must have been blown far and wide by the blast.

-

“So this is the Holy Lance, hm? A child this young?” Nzambi peered at the boy as she spoke.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

I ushered him behind me. At that moment, Koharu appeared over her shoulder, streaking toward her like a bolt of azure lightning.

Nzambi deflected the strike with a nonchalant swing of her blade, sending the tall knight flying. It was almost as though she’d seen it coming.

Dammit! Koharu!

She struck hard against the interior wall once more, but this time slid to the ground as two separate figures: the girl Koharu, and the knight Galahad. Her Possession had come undone; likely, it had been unable to bear the damage she had accrued. From the look of him, Galahad had hardly escaped unscathed either.

“Perhaps a Heroic Spirit from the future, drawn here from the Throne?” Nzambi closed on Pran. “No, I cannot imagine so. Well, whatever the case, any Heroic Spirit must know death. My knife will tell me true. What do you say, little golden child? Shall we spill your guts and find out how you died?”

What do I do? I’ve got to buy time somehow… but how?

If Nzambi’s gaze turned to Galahad and she elected to turn him into one of her zombies, I doubted we could escape with our lives. My best bet was to draw her attention to Pran, but…

Before the notion could fully occur to me, I was running. I bound my 'branches’ together into a blade - a shortsword, simple, fast and accurate – and planted myself firmly in front of her. I was well aware that my weapon could harm the boy I wanted to protect just as easily as my enemy: a quite literal double-edged sword.

“I won’t let you near him!”

“Do you mind? I thought I had said I was done with you.”

Nzambi’s blade – her enormous knife – and my branch-sword clashed, and locked together.

“He’s…” I swung my blade upward, placing my trust in the techniques he had once taught me. “Dammit, he’s my Servant!”

My foe easily batted the blow aside. “I think not. You are nothing but a spellcaster, and I know your kind well. Magi, spellcasters - miserable creatures all, caring only for their own gain, and nothing for the lives of others. It is the value you see in this child that makes you so desperate, nothing more.”

I knew that better than anyone, but… but!

“He’s my Servant! I don’t care if he’s useless!”

“Hahaha! So tell me, would you make him a toy to satisfy your affections? How cruel, how cruel! How do you expect someone useless to take pride in themselves?”

“Then let me be alone! It’s all I need!”

At this close a range, it was impossible to muster as much force as my axe could. The crushing weight behind Nzambi’s swing forced me back, and my blade began to come undone. The recoil sent one of its constituent branches lashing backwards, coming close to striking Pran. I immediately retracted my blade. My own defence was nothing compared to what would happen if that touched him.

“…Nngh…”

Seeing their prey snatched away before their very eyes, the evil spirits’ anger swelled. Gore sprayed as I began to lose control over the defiled blood they inhabited. Black blood oozed from the countless wounds their wrath opened across my body, even from behind my eyeballs, and dripped to the floor, defiling this sacred battleground.

“Well now. It seems that if you do not satisfy that loathsome branch’s hunger for spirits, it will devour you instead.”

“So… what?” None knew that better than I. My Erlkönig and my Freischütz, of which only a few bullets now remained, were not tools that would blithely heed my command. They were evil spirits in their purest form, and they were always watching for an opportunity to turn against their master. But even so…

“You’ll never touch him!”

“Pitiful. I can hardly watch. Even the child has better sense than you.”

Nzambi leapt forward to plant both hands on the ground, then, with her body still in midair, uncoiled her legs like a spring to land a devastating kick in my abdomen. If there had been any air left in my lungs, I would have screamed. The blow sent me flying, bouncing across the dirt floor of the arena. One of my ribs cracked from the impact, and I fought for breath.

As I lay sprawled, I suddenly felt the entire arena shake violently. The roar of an explosion rolled from the other side of the Colosseum. I heard clamouring voices, collapsing walls, sustained gunfire, shouts and screams. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I thought I heard Karin’s voice.

Through the earth, I heard the confused hubbub of battle.

-

My eyeballs were blocked with clotted blood, and sheer agony had rolled them back into my head. I forced them into place with my fingers and tried to struggle to my feet.

Before me stood Nzambi, with her knife to Pran’s chest.

I have to stop her.

My fingers clawed furrows through the dirt as I dragged myself onward, seeking him.

Praying that there existed something in this world so pure that it must not, could not be tarnished. Praying that there existed something in this world even the omnipotence of the Grail could not replace.

If not, how was I ever to move forward?

-

“You don’t seem to fear me, boy. Why is that?”

The child gazed silently back up into Nzambi’s crimson eyes.

“You aren’t a snake.”

He gently set his fingertip to the point of her blade.

“So I’m not scared of you.”

“…What?” Nzambi warily made to withdraw her knife, only to find it stuck fast. “Is that… It’s cracking?! What have you…?!”

A white-hot glow spread across the outlandish blade from the child’s finger. It flared fiercely for a moment, and then burst apart.

—-

After a moment, the heat and light receded enough that I could make out Pran standing alone. He sank to his knees, then collapsed to the ground, as though all strength had been drained from his tiny body.

Where’s Nzambi? I can’t see her!

The dusk-skinned woman had vanished without a trace. I reached out with my senses, seeking. Perhaps she had temporarily relinquished her physical body and returned to her transparent spiritual form? That would present its own dangers, but in any case, it seemed that for now we had one fewer threat to worry about.

Galahad approached the boy, taking care to keep his own two swords as far away from him as possible. Koharu, now a young girl once more, staggered to where I lay huddled on the ground. She winced with pain, but bore it bravely.

“Erice! She’s… She’s here! The Stigmata!”

“Finally… She’s here… with Lucius…”

-

As though a dam had burst, a wave of berserk Servants and resurrected corpses rolled across the open arena.

The pair entered from the upper seats far above, where they had a commanding view of the sorry state of the arena. He took a moment to survey the scene below him and then quite literally flew down the gentle curve of the outer wall. She lay clutched in his arms, clad in her ever-present black sailor uniform.

The great cape that fluttered from his shoulders was dyed in his colour: the purest, deepest red.

-

Code Crimson, it was called. The scarlet summons.

Its red was not the red of danger. It was the red of Rome. Of the proud battle standard of the Roman army, and their patron, Mars.

The Grail had build a thousand-year empire, and the cries of the populus called its defenders to their posts.

Now they had come, those defenders of the peace, and they would do their duty.

Manazuru Chitose, the Stigmata – and at her side, Lucius Longinus, the Holy Lance. They had answered the call.

-

“I’m sorry I’m late. The train was delayed, but we came as fast as we could.”

Chitose did not sound particularly apologetic as she alighted gently on the floor of the arena.

“I seem to recall doing most of the legwork.” Lucius responded, a little peeved.

“Well, of course you did. I worked up a fine sweat dealing with that mess in Shinjuku. Even the best of us need a break once in a while.”

Chitose’s Command Seals shone dully even as the pair bickered. These were no cheap imitations; they were true Command Seals, of the old world. These four arcane symbols were what had earned her the moniker of the Stigmata.

-

Recognising what that light signified, the Servants around her flocked to her. Perhaps, with their minds lost, they behaved no differently to startled beasts… or perhaps even in their berserk state, their warrior’s instincts acknowledged her as a worthy foe.

She spotted the pocket of resistance among her enemies – a rag-tag group of surviving citizens and Servants who still maintained their sanity – and called out to them in a voice that carried easily across the battlefield.

“Make your way around to me! Lucius and I will deal with them!”

—-

Those words presaged a massacre.

In one hand, Lucius readied a greatshield summoned from nothingness; in the other, he gripped his crimson spear. Roman soldier and Master stood back-to-back, cutting down their enemies faster than I could follow. “Overwhelming” barely seemed fit to describe the sheer power that accompanied each flourish of the Holy Lance.

-

This was the might of the champion who had emerged from the Holy Grail War. Lucius Longinus, the centurion who met his fate atop the hill of Calvary. The Lancer of the Seven Heroic Spirits. The strongest Servant, who had stood victorious atop the melee of the Holy Grail War and delivered its prize to Chitose’s hands.

No matter how illustrious the heroes whose souls they reflected, the Heroic Spirits of Mosaic City were but pale shades before his majesty.

-

We retreated warily, careful of our surroundings. Even as we distanced ourselves from the unfolding bloodbath, Koharu’s gaze remained locked on the battle.

“Did you see that… Erice? That… That strike? What are those… on her hands and feet? Are those… Black Keys?”

It was little surprise that she was so fascinated. Chitose took neither the Black Keys nor Gandr for her weapon. This display of violence, so unbefitting of a magus, was something particular to her.

“They’re called Sacri Clavi. They’re replicas of the nails used to pin the Messiah to the cross…”

Or more simply Holy Nails: a conceptual weapon imbued with the concept of “binding”, born from the Command Seals adorning each of her four limbs. With every strike, square iron nails briefly manifested around her limbs to skewer her enemies, wicked and indomitable. An empty-handed pile bunker.

“Or so Lucius told me once. You wouldn’t believe how hopeless she is at teaching anyone anything useful.”

“Holy… Nails?” Koharu shivered. She seemed nothing short of awestruck by this living legend.

But I doubt she herself is so pleased.

I knew Chitose would regard this battle as her greatest shame. She had been forced to acknowledge the breakdown of the city’s peace and personally take up arms against its people and their Servants. It was grim work, and she would not have undertaken it gladly.

She had tried to safeguard against this possibility by distancing me from my work, but it hadn’t been sufficient. An outside enemy had appeared in Mosaic City, and its arrival had been a long time in coming.

—-

Finally the wave of chaos began to recede, and I managed to regroup with Karin. Usually she would greet me with a cheerful grin or by chiding me for my carelessness when I returned from a job, but this time she could only blanch at the sight of our injuries. If Pran had been in the same sorry state, she might have fainted on the spot. However, fortunately there wasn’t so much as a scratch on him, and the sight of him – seemingly in an entirely different world to his surroundings, as usual - seemed to relieve her immensely.

That wasn’t enough to excuse him from a furious telling-off, though. He looked a little shell-shocked as he stood next to a wounded and bloody Kouyou.

-

The wings of the battlefield had been transformed into a temporary evacuation point, and the air was heavy with exhaustion and that uneasy relaxation that takes the place of terror once it recedes. People huddled together in anxious groups, rejoicing to find each other safe and well, finally contacting family and friends. A group of pigs raced past me, squealing shrilly. Pigs? What on earth are pigs doing here?

Of the competitors I had seen earlier onscreen, I spotted at least Minamoto Yoshitsune and her Master having escaped infection. The young samurai stood a little way from the rest in her own corner of the battlefield, attracting uneasy gazes as she stacked her collection of severed heads into an enormous pile.

-

Hannibal was the last Servant to fall before Chitose and Longinus’ unstoppable onslaught. Koharu watched his end herself, unable to do anything for him but witness his final moments. She fell to her knees in the spot where the Holy Lance had pierced him through, and heaved a heavy sigh.

Yoshitsune and her master stood at her shoulder, and after a moment offered some words of consolation. I had no words I could offer her; only the regrets welling up within me, as they always did.

-

Chitose had contacted the Caren Series in the other wards and was in the process of confirming the situation there. Koharu occasionally glanced at her from afar as she revealed that she had come to a decision.



“We can’t allow this Nzambi to wander Mosaic City as she wishes. I will contact the rest of House Riedenflaus and set to work pursuing her. She certainly left no small amount of promising evidence behind. We should start by identifying her Master…”

Karin did a double-take. “You’re going to what? Now?! Let yourself rest for five minutes, sheesh!”

“Hm? Very well. It has been so long since my last fox-hunt.” The latter dubious encouragement came from none other than her own partner, Galahad. What was he trying to accomplish with that?

I tried to talk her down as logically as I could. “Koharu, think for a minute. If you push yourself in your current state, you might never use magecraft again.”

“Then I will no longer be a magus.”

I struggled for a response in the face of such foolhardiness… but fortunately Lucius had arrived, and he understood her on a deeper level than I.

“I know you regret not being able to save your comrades, Riedenflaus, but it would mean nothing to chase this Servant alone. Now that we know her true name and capabilities, we can put together a proper plan.”

“The Roman’s right, Koharu. Right now, you and Erice need to be focusing on not being half-dead. You yourself said this Nzambi wasn’t even hurt, for goodness sake!” Karin’s concern was plain to see.

Koharu sank into thought. I knew full well that she had thrown everything she had into facing Nzambi, and yet it had not been enough. In the end, it had been the woman she respected more than anyone else who had needed to clean up her mess. She doubtless felt that she had shamed herself and her dead comrades both.

It was her Servant’s interjection that snapped her out of her fugue. “Let the little lady do what she wants. You don’t have any right to be lecturing her about anything, Longinus.”

“Sir Galahad, I see. Just what are you defending? Look around you. Do you feel nothing, to look at this awful scene?”

-

“That will do, both of you.” Just as Koharu’s fury with Galahad’s arrogance was about to hit boiling point, Chitose returned from her inspection of the evacuees. “The situation is still in flux. You should be using your brains to plan, not to bicker. What’s more, I still can’t seen to get in contact with Caren. Caren Fujimura of Akihabara, I mean.”

“I wonder what’s wrong… The city’s normal functions are currently paralysed, aren’t they? Could that be because of the failure of an administrative AI?” Koharu ventured hesitantly.

She shrugged. “Not possible. She’s alive, that much I know.”

Ever since the breakout of the infection, the entire Akihabara ward had been thrown into a state of chaos. An emergency team should have long since been dispatched to the Colosseum, but there was no sign of them. Interpersonal communications were still down, too; the best we could manage was expending Command Seals to communicate via magecraft.

None of it pointed anywhere good.

“We know she’s got to be somewhere in the Colosseum. I’ll go look for her.”

“I’ll go with y-”

“You stay here, Karin. You and Kouyou need to take care of the wounded.”

I flashed her a smile to try and salve her worries, and suppress my own fears. Chitose wordlessly gave the go-ahead.

“Wait.” The child called out, but not to me. Rather, to someone I never would have expected.

“Chitose. I need to tell you something.”

“Tell me what?”

“A dog called to me. A black one.”

He’s still going on about that dog? I was sure that Chitose would laugh it off… but instead she froze. Her confident smile had never faltered, even while surrounded by enemies a few minutes before, but now it was nowhere to be seen.

“It said to tell you something.”

“A black dog… And what did this dog say?”

“That death had come for you.”