Chapter Thirty-eight: Lilies and Cherry Blossoms

(*)

The maws of the black dragon, a dozen serpentine necks ending in deformed, razor-lined mouths, lashed out. No two were alike; in one a dozen smaller snapping jaws, in one the fang-lined pit of a lamprey, in one a hundred jagged, grasping fingers lining the inside of a jaw with red eyes blinking in its throat. All they had in common were that each one was large enough to hold a man comfortably inside it before crushing him to sticky paste. Twelve striking at once was enough to kill anyone on the planet.

Or so one would think from looking at them, anyway.

Saber charged, ducking under the first head to strike at her and stabbing upward, dragging her shining blade along its neck and slitting it open in a single smooth motion, black gore flooding out with each step. She leaped and spun in midair, blade swirling around her, and the next two heads both found themselves cut free from their necks entirely to hurl out and land on either side of the downed Rider. The swordswoman landed lightly on one foot, the grace of a prima ballerina, and her blade gleamed a brilliant red-gold as she poured mana in and swung it at nothing; another hurricane of magic that roared out, carrying nine heads at once with it, the magic burning at their flesh as the concussive force smashed them against each other with bone-crushing impacts. With a slight grin on her face, Saber set her foot down and held her blade behind her without looking, letting the final incoming maw impale itself on Excalibur, the sword going through the roof of its mouth and up through the top of its head, black mist roiling out of the wound madly. The mad dragon drew back, shrieking in rage and pain with such force Rider felt her bones vibrating in her body from the sound.

The entire exchange had taken maybe three seconds.

Saber whistled, her eyes locked on Assassin, or rather whatever little remained of him inside the hulking, deformed thing. "I see why you had trouble with these creatures, Rider. The large one is much faster than it looks, and the small one was clever enough to notice I was never vulnerable during that exchange. I don't think it even has a mind left, just superb instincts. They'll be troublesome opponents."

Rider, who had just seen the woman in question beat down a hydra made of insanity like it was a naughty puppy, tried to think of a proper response to that. "I… yes. You clearly look… troubled."

Saber giggled, filling Rider with fresh horror. "Well, I didn't say I was upset by it. Just noticing that while I might be the stronger, these two won't be making things effortless for me. Especially not when… ah, yes, here we go," she said, watching as the dragon's wounds began to sprout new limbs, mouths opening across its flesh seemingly at random, grasping hands lining one of its many necks, each one ending in claws the size of steak knives. "Opening a wound just causes mad growth when the chaos within leaks out and takes physical form. It's rather gross, isn't it?"

"… Did you just say 'gross.' You."

"Is that not the term the young people would use?" Saber asked with a grin. "I'm trying to fit in to our new time period. You could stand to adapt a bit yourself, if you plan to stay here."

"This is not a conversation I ever expected to have with you," Rider admitted. "And please, stop smiling so much. It's disturbing."

Saber's grin widened… and as it did, her sword rose slightly to turn aside an incoming blade, Assassin's weapon striking up sparks on her guard as he lunged for her neck and she parried without even looking. "Sorry, but I didn't stop paying attention to you. And your form is atrocious. Rider tearing into you and releasing the chaos within has truly destroyed you, hasn't it? You used to be an artist with that blade, and now you swing it like an iron bar."

"What… are… you…?" Assassin snarled, sounding like a dozen voices trying to speak at once with a single mouth that was actually changing shape as it moved.

Saber smiled. "Judgment."

She drew the blade down, light roaring along its length, and something invisible, formless, and sharper than a razor tore into the creature's blackened flesh, splitting it open from shoulder to waist, a wound Rider could have fit her arm entirely through. The creature screamed...

But it did not fall.

Within the gaping wound, there was no blood and nothing that looked like any organs she was familiar with. Just solid blackness, and something writhing that began to slide out, crawling across Assassin's skin and leaving trails of brilliant blood red as it moved.

Saber rolled her eyes, and leaped backwards with the barest motion of her legs, one of the dragon's newly-grown heads slamming into the ground where she had been standing a millisecond earlier. She slashed above herself, splitting another lunging serpentine neck halfway down its length, thick slabs of dead meat slamming down on either side of her. Black mist, thick and noxious, roiled off them in waves, but Saber did not appear concerned.

From the stumps, a pair of lamprey-like pits, lined with eyes down their length and dripping poison, hissed wetly at her. Behind the waving, snarling heads of the chaotic abomination, she saw Assassin's grievous wound seal itself closed; but rather than healing, it filled itself in with slick, bloody flesh, leaving his chest broader by nearly a foot and even more grotesquely deformed than before.

Saber grinned. "So, the smaller unit can also regenerate. Or is it more like the madness becomes entirely new flesh? What a confounding creature you are. I wonder what it will take to make you stay dead?"

"Are you… enjoying this?" Ride asked blankly. She felt she was probably regenerated enough to stand again by this point, but she felt like coming between these… things would just result in her ending up right back on the ground in a pool of her own blood.

Saber blinked. "Are you not?"

(*)

"I thought Servants healed better than people," Ilya muttered, walking toward the tunnels with Gilgamesh leaning onto her shoulders as he limped along. He was heavier than he looked.

"I'm not exactly normal by Servant standards. And your new pet did a lot of damage before you collared her," he muttered. "And should you be leaving her alone out here? That thing is fairly nasty…"

"Saber's invincible. She'll kill that thing and catch up to us soon," Ilya said without hesitation, sheer childlike faith practically rolling off her in waves. "In the meantime, the tide is turning. We made the darkness around this place start to break down. The influence of the dark god has waned, and we need to counterattack as hard and fast as possible. First step, find your Master and coordinate."

"She's not doing well. If you're counting on her to help you out, don't," he said. "I don't know what she's dealing with, exactly, but… the flow of mana from her is irregular, to say the least. I don't need it to stay alive, so there's no worry about me fading, but…"

Ilya cursed under her breath. "Well, at least you'd know if she was dead. I was sort of hoping we'd be able to form up with her and go to support Shirou, but…"

"I'll be genuinely shocked if she can walk," Gilgamesh confirmed. "And… bluntly, I don't feel I can do much good for some time. How are you at medical magecraft?"

"I'm not really a mage, and…" she gazed down at the Dress of Heaven, its white silk having lost most of its luster. "I think I broke it. It was really supposed to be used for the Heaven's Feel ritual, but I just… did something. It wasn't really a ritual just doing what my instincts told me to do when I got a link to Saber's core. Honestly, I don't even really remember it. It worked, though, so I clearly did something right."

"… Should I be worried that you're apparently the 'brains of the operation' and yet you're clearly just making things up as you go along?" Gilgamesh asked.

"I don't know. Should I leave you here to die instead of bringing you into the mountain with me to find Rin?"

"HA! Modern girls are scary and amusing."

"I don't like you."

"That's fine, I don't like you either, small pale thing that you are."

"I'm taller than you!"

"Maybe using your inferior modern measurement systems, but in Uruk I would be much taller than you."

"That doesn't even make sense!"

"It doesn't have to. I'm a king."

(*)

Sakura was no longer smiling.

The oddly calm, gentle girl who did terrible things without blinking had vanished. She had been… monstrous, perhaps, but she had at least meant well. Her desire to help was distorted through the lens of madness into goals that only a lunatic could call truly call of value to anyone, but the intent behind it had been born of something not unlike kindness. But now, she lashed out madly, a font of rage and hate so deep it was hard to even look at. There was nothing human in her eyes anymore; all that swirled there was a madness born of something so dark and vicious it made the darkest of human sins seem calm and placid. Whatever control of Angra Mainyu she had once possessed, it had dissolved with her calmness and been replaced by unspeakable agony, and unthinking hate for everyone and everything around her.

Shirou met it, and accepted it all without judgment or hesitation. He felt this might actually be making her angrier, because when your pain was that deep, just the idea someone might understand you could be terrifying. But it was the only thing he could do. Striking out at Sakura with anger in his heart was simply beyond him.

And he was, he had to admit, doing quite a lot of striking.

It wasn't really a battle, what was happening between them. There was nothing like tactics involved. Sakura was striking at him madly, randomly, almost a solid wall of blackness rising from her shadow into a storm of black and red spears that tore through the frozen air and blotted out the starry sky above her. And in return, the swords leaped from the frost, starlight gleaming along their mirror-polished blades. Hundreds. Thousands. Meeting the storm of blackness with an equal wall of silver, tearing the shadows into misty shards. They dissolved into metallic dust, the curses tearing into the magical blades even as the weapons ripped into them… only for the snow on the ground to swirl and leap up, gleaming silver-white as the weapons were created anew.

Shirou had worked out quickly that there would be no victory here through strength. Within this world that he had created, his power to create and control these weapons was virtually limitless. And with Ilya's power behind him, and what he knew… or rather, felt, with such fervor it had to be the truth… to be Saber's presence bolstering him as she had done during her time as his Servant, he felt almost no strain from maintaining it. His offense was, for all intents and purposes, truly as Unlimited as the name suggested. But the same could be said of Sakura; the power of Angra Mainyu was flowing through her, turning her into something not unlike the dark god's avatar. It might not be truly limitless, but it was more power than a single mage could burn through in a lifetime.

As things stood, the two of them could hurl their power against each other for hours without any true victor. At the extreme, a battle could last days, until one of them passed out from exhaustion or thirst. And given the power writhing in that tower, crawling under the skin of the half-born Grail, the world did not have days to spare. Sakura's plan was the worst-case scenario, perhaps, but even if she didn't succeed in feeding all of Akasha to its hunger, it would still be born into the world within a few hours at best. Perhaps the entire universe wouldn't be ended, but the world would be. A smaller scale catastrophe, perhaps, but still a crushing defeat.

The real enemy was there. The black tower that blighted the snowy landscape of the newborn world he'd created. If it became free, it would consume the Reality Marble, and him, and then surge forth into the real world to destroy everything in its path.

But if he killed it here, even if he had to give his life to do it…

It might not be possible, not even with every blade in his arsenal. It wasn't a creature of this world. Maybe it just couldn't die. But he had to try, and he'd never be stronger for the task than right now. So the initial plan had been to get past Sakura, even if he had to give up a limb or take mortal wounds to do it, and once he had a clear shot to unleash everything he had, his entire arsenal at once, on the Greater Grail.

It had not worked. At all. Sakura's defense of the tower, if it could be called anything so conscious as a 'defense,' did not leave so any spaces big enough to fit his hand through, much less his entire body. Not one sword had gotten past, not one. The tendrils of darkness were so closely interlinked, coming down with such fury, they might as well have been a solid dome over the Grail. The painful truth was that he would not be able to reach Angra Mainyu while its avatar stood against him. Sakura would have to be immobilized somehow. The details didn't matter, other than he obviously had to be careful; he had no idea how durable she was in this form. He couldn't avoid hurting her, most likely, but he absolutely could not kill her. 'Sacrifice one to save many' might have been the pragmatic path, even the sensible one, but 'sense' had never been his strong point. This power, his power, had been born from striving for something so impossible that some might even call it madness.

This cold, gentle, and yet powerful world… it was him. It had been built of his ideals. Betraying himself like that, especially in this place, would be giving up everything he believed in. He might save the earth by such actions, but he would prove he didn't really deserve this power. It would fail him, and whatever stepped out of the remains wouldn't be Shirou Emiya anymore. Not really.

So, he had thought back instead, of something Archer had shown him. The Servant had called specific attention to it before his second death, trying to leave Shirou a particular weapon to add to his arsenal. He had to believe that it had been for this moment, this battle.

… Or rather, he deeply hoped it was. Because if it wasn't, then he had no idea what Servant Emiya had been trying to tell him, and he had to believe that he wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to pass on something that wasn't vitally important. As much as he disliked himself, he had to hope that he wouldn't be actively trying to get himself killed.

Ugh, one more reason to hate Archer. He'd made syntax really complicated.

He called reached out to yet another wave of blades, thousands of them glittering in his mind like diamonds, unsure even if it was the sixth or seventh such that he had fired against her. It could have been the millionth for all the difference such made. What mattered here was that he had reached into the harmony of the steel, the perfect order of each magnificently forged blade, and shattered it.

The explosion was catastrophic, a veritable wall of fire and shrapnel that bloomed even more brilliantly for the darkness trying to swallow it up. The tendrils of shadow tried to wrap themselves around the flames, consume them, and were torn apart like cloth before a razor. He heard Sakura scream; but the sound faded beneath his own scream, as the flames, far closer to him and without any barrier of darkness to protect him, rolled over his flesh. He felt his skin burning off his body, seared down to the metal beneath his bones, a pain so deep that it vanished entirely, his mind no longer able to register it. It just became a searing cold as nerves died…

And almost immediately began to regrow, the vision of a resplendent, shining sword-

No, not a sword. Something with a similar shape, but no blade, no instrument of death at all, something far more precious than even the most magnificent blade.

- burning behind his dead eyes, just before they were restored, the sudden influx of light as he was able to see the world again almost painful on its own. The waves of darkness had receded, drawing back around Sakura protectively, repelling the flames from their avatar… and leaving empty air between him and the tower. It stood like an open wound in his world; the snow around it reduced to an empty void as it tried to overwrite the Reality Marble, and the blackness of its sickening flesh was deeper by far than the more gentle darkness between the stars. Even as he watched, tendrils of consuming night began to swirl around it once again as Sakura recovered from her shock. He would get only a single shot. One weapon.

He projected the weapon that Archer had left him. The blade of destroying contracts, a tool of darkness that had nonetheless saved him from that same darkness, at the utter end of his road. He couldn't know for sure it would work, but it was the only thing left...!

Target locked. Analyze vectors, streamline design, account for distance, account for wind resistance, account for gravity, aim for where predictions dictate the enemy cannot guard with existing defenses, and…

Fire.

Rule Breaker flew straight and true, with speed and accuracy that should have been impossible for its absurd, utterly childish design. Despite clearly not being built as a true weapon, when propelled and enhanced by his power it flew as well as any arrow, one more perfect bullet in his arsenal. The blade actually shifted as it flew, shifting itself for improved aerodynamics, seeking more speed and distance in answer to his will.

And less than a foot from impact, a single spear of darkness shot from the mass to impact against it with perfect, sniperlike precision, slicing the magical blade cleanly in half. The shrapnel fell to the ground, vanishing in the void as if it had never existed.

"Ha… hahahahahaha…" Sakura giggled, though there was no true joy in it. And really, he supposed, that was because it was not really Sakura doing it; it might have been emerging from her throat and using her voice as a medium, but it was an inhuman sound of absolute, undying contempt that the real Sakura could never have produced. She raised her crimson eyes, and the smile on her face was as utterly malicious as the empty chuckle as she said, "Was that your final gambit? That weapon is a part of Caster, and Caster is nothing but a part of me. Trying to defeat me with something like that is just childish, Shirou. You might as well pin all your hopes on begging me to let you win."

He winced. "I wanted to get you out of this alive. I did promise. I was hoping that severing whatever link you have to that… thing would be enough to make you start being yourself again."

Her smile widened, and something behind her eyes grew dark, the black overtaking the red to leave the orbs solid, glossy darkness. "I don't think I'll have any problems getting out alive."

Something shifted beneath them, the ground of the Reality Marble cracking and splitting, as something beneath the earth writhed and clawed to the surface. A hand pulled itself to the surface on Sakura's right; not the half-formed tendril-paw of the black giants from before, but a true hand with five distinct fingers, each ending in claws larger than Shirou himself and coated with either metal armor or just very thick, jagged black scales, he could not tell.

A second one, on her right, tore free of the ground a second later.

And then, not behind or in front of her but beneath her, rising up through her body like a wraith to wrap around her, raising her up as it grew into the sky, a face like a skinned corpse. Like a skeleton the size of a building, wrapped in armor of bone and hide freshly cut from a still-living beast, it gazed blankly down at him as it rose to a height that would have left its smaller cousins from the battle in the cave barely reaching its waist. Coated from the neck down in that spiky black plate, intricate patterns of red sliding up and down across it like oil on the surface of a pond, it let out a hissing breath like nothing so much as a colossal death rattle, radiating power and an unearthly hate.

"You, on the other hand, are going to have a bad time of it," Sakura said, floating up next to the surface of the creature's flesh until she was just barely visible, looking down at him from where it's heart would be were it a human, her eyes filled with a mixture of hate and disgust that he still, even after all this, found so utterly alien in her eyes he couldn't fully grasp it was her.

Because it isn't her, he thought. It's some inhuman, mindless thing looking out through her eyes, wearing her face, moving her limbs like a puppeteer. She's not a monster. She's a victim. I need to save her, no matter what.

And that thing, god or no god, needs to die.

Static sparked behind his eyes as his mind reached out, the shattered blades beginning to come together and rise anew from the snow, even as another wave took to the air.

(*)

Assassin landed on the floor in three pieces, tendrils of blackness already beginning to grow from them as they sought the other parts, new deformed muscle and thick spiky hide forming to fill in the gaps. He began to pull himself up on a new pair of limbs sprouting from his back like wings, but each one ending in a long bladed claw as large as his sword.

The dragon lost another head, and from the stump a flailing mass of black tentacles lined with dripping spines erupted, the creature's hundred other mouths roaring in unison. Somewhere in that mass of black, shifting flesh, a woman's voice screamed in agony along with them.

Saber grinned. "Wow. I have to admit, I wasn't certain you would be a challenge or not after this got started, but I think you two really have something going. I'm impressed! By all means, begin the next exchange, I'm waiting for you."

Rider was on her feet, but she had taken up a position a few hundred meters from the battle, watching it with genuine fear in her eyes. She just wasn't sure who she was afraid of, anymore.

She was healthy enough to aid in the battle again, she knew. But she didn't think she could add much, and frankly she didn't much want to. Saber had long ago realized that wounding these things just caused the madness within to leak out, taking on new forms and making them ever deadlier. She just didn't really seem to care, reacting to each new mutation with the air of a child pleased by an interesting insect under their magnifying glass. And so the avatars of Angra Mainyu progressed further and further toward communion with their master, and Saber just grinned that insufferable grin, giggling like a schoolgirl every time she turned aside their attacks and sliced one of them in half without visible effort. Rider was uncomfortably reminded that while she was apparently freed from the worst of her corrupted influence, she clearly still had some of that same madness within her. She might be friendly again, but she wasn't necessarily sane…

The Servant of the Sword spun on one toe like a ballerina, her blade flashing around her so quickly its image vanished from even Rider's eyes, leaving a dozen chunks of steaming black flesh flopping on the ground around her as the dragon's tendrils attempted to snap around her. She then bent her knee and leaped upwards without the slightest loss of motion as Assassin's newly clawed limbs tore in at her legs, even as his sword flashed for her neck. She cleared every blade, the final one by only literal millimeters, and swung down her blade from above as she descended…

Rider saw something like a smile twist his amorphous face, splitting the head and peeling back the black flesh to reveal the grinning skull beneath. "Zabaniya. Akuma no Tsubami Gaeshi."

Not merely the sword, but the newly formed blades on his back, split, each one becoming a scarlet-limned hurricane lashing out at the falling Saber from a half-dozen angles. In the air, unable to alter her course, she found herself essentially falling into a meat grinder, having no obvious choice but to parry roughly thirty completelysimultaneous slashes with a single sword.

Her smile widened, time seeming to slow around her as her mind locked onto each individual stroke, tracking the dimensionally refracted blades and realizing seconds that not all of them could be deflected. Well, I knew I wasn't going to get through this totally unscathed.

She reached down, channeling her mana into a full-body burst across the whole of her armor, twisted her body just so, and called up the sheathe of Invisible Air around her blade, only to release it almost immediately upon…

Impact.

Rider had to shield her eyes as a hurricane of light and wind tore across the battlefield, so intense even the colossal bulk of the dragon was hurled back. Assassin was sent skipping across the mountainside like a hurled stone across the top of a pond, leaving a thick trail of gore as he did. Saber landed with somewhat more grace, sliding on her hands and knees before digging her sword into the ground to stop herself fully, but Rider could see more than ten places on her body where the black cloth under her white armor was a shade darker, gleaming stickily in the moonlight with fresh blood. She had finally taken wounds, and the monsters were already regenerating. Rider stepped to intervene…

And stopped, her eyes widening as she realized Saber was still grinning, a gleam of triumph in her eyes, as she stood without pain, ignoring the wounds… because each and every one of them was little more than a shallow cut, no real damage to anything other than her skin. And far more numerous than them, Rider saw, were the scratches along the surface of her snowy armor.

As absurd as it was, there was only one explanation Rider could think of. She had, while falling, in mid-air, worked out which of the incoming blows would cause fatal wounds, which would be only superficial damage, and which would impact against her armor, and when lashing out in counter had prioritized blocking only the lethal blows with her blade and magic. Even the wounds she'd taken would likely have killed a human from shock and blood loss, but still…

"What are you doing?" Rider asked. "You're so far beyond those two that this fight might as well be a child's game to you. Why not just kill them and have done with it?"

Saber turned that brilliant grin back on her, and once again it was just… wrong. "First of all, it wouldn't be any fun. Second, I have been through some major changes and really do need to know everything I can and can't do now, and the best way to do that is to test myself in real combat. Third… I genuinely can't kill them, at least not as they are now." She paused to consider her own words, her expression growing thoughtful. "That actually should have been the first reason."

"What do you mean?" Rider asked, her tone a little numb as she watched the veritable ocean of slick black flesh flowing into newer and more nightmarish shapes out of the corner of her eye. They'd start attacking again soon.

"It's a misnomer to call this thing 'them.' More correctly, you could call it a single creature with two bodies. The exchanges up to now helped me determine 'they' react too perfectly together for separate consciousnesses. They can read each other's minds, or at the very least see through each other's eyes. And the way they regenerate isn't like Servants healing. It's more like opening their flesh lets the chaos within take physical form. They don't heal, they convert their inner curses into entirely new flesh. It may even qualify as Sorcery, though I'd have to check with Rin to be sure," Saber explained with a shrug. "Regeneration like that, fueled by Angra Mainyu's mana, has no functional limit. If I 'killed' one body, the other would definitely be able to recreate it in short order. The only real option I can see is to totally vaporize both of its bodies at the exact same moment."

Rider winced at the explanation, remembering Assassin's sudden reappearance from the depth of the dragon's belly when she'd torn it in half. "So what is your plan?"

Saber shrugged once again. "Well, at the moment, I want to see what happens if I push it to the utmost limits. How much madness can it release at once? What is the absolute end point where it can mutate no further? I need to hit that point. Make it desperate. Make it draw up every last iota of power it can bring to bear against me, force it into foolish, untenable strategies."

Rider blinked. "And if it has no limit? If the mutation can proceed endlessly without stopping?"

Saber's grin turned wolfish. "We'll die, I assume. So, you should probably get into the mountain, see about helping someone. Things out here may be getting a bit violent."

Without looking, she swung her blade up from the ground in a brilliant, impossibly fast arc, crimson light exploding from the weapon as it tore an incoming tendril into twitching chunks of meat as the creature began its onslaught anew.

Rider shook her head as the weapon danced, deflecting a dozen more such attacks in the space of a second, and said, "You are disturbing."

(*)

Tohsaka Rin was in easily the worst agony of her young life. She could not move, could barely breathe, even thinking sent waves of cold pain rolling over her entire body.

And then she opened her eyes at an odd sound, and through the bloody haze over her vision she saw Ilya and Gilgamesh looking down at her, reminding her that no matter how terrible things were, they could always get worse.

"Ugh, she's all bloody. It's repellent," Gilgamesh said. "You, small girl. Would you like to form a contract? I think we won't be getting much use out of this one. She seems to be used up."

"Not… dead," Rin growled, anger proving a good antidote to pain. "Not even… unconscious." She paused, taking a few deep breaths to ready herself for her extremely important next words. "Jackass."

"Oh, good. You're just crippled and bleeding out," he said cheerfully. "Though the swords actually did a solid job of keeping your wounds plugged. That's nice."

"Can't die…" she muttered. "Magic crest. Keeps me… alive as long as my heart and… and head are intact. I… I should be able to… fix all this. But I'm out of this fight."

Ilya winced. "All right. Not what I was hoping for, but I think we should get you somewhere safe…"

"There is nowhere," Rin countered. "We win. Or the world dies. Don't worry about me. Get to Emiya."

"Oh, no. If you die I'll never hear the end of it. You! Jerk!" Ilya said. "You must have some magic in your big stupid vault that can fix this. Whip it out!"

"Phrasing, please…" Rin muttered.

Gilgamesh sniffed. "First of all, you could stand to show your king some respect. Second, healing magic is complicated. It's not easy to find it portable, you know. This isn't a game where you can just chug down a potion to get all your health back."

"You did."

"And it turned me into a child! A better child than I was an adult, certainly, but even if she considered it a worthwhile trade, I also only had the one bottle. The best I can get you is some salve to help close these wounds, a liquor that helps with vitality. Nothing that will get her combat ready any time soon."

"I! Don't! Care! She doesn't have to fight, I just want her to not die!" Ilya snapped. "Patch her up and we'll go. I'll be back after we save the world to taunt her about how she didn't do any good in the end."

Rin actually chuckled at that, as Gilgamesh grumblingly dug out a container of some kind of foul-smelling green gel and began to inspect her wounds. "Did more than you did, brat. Took Kirei down. He did a number on me, but… right through the heart."

Ilya's eyes widened. "Wait, what?"

(*)

Saber did, despite Rider's thoughts otherwise, have a plan. It was just that she wasn't sure it would work, and she didn't really like to put too much stock in it anyway since it was more instinct than actual understanding, and she was having entirely too much fun getting there.

She couldn't help it. She had never before, not once since she was old enough to hold a sword, felt so utterly free. The bonds of King Arthur, forcing her to bury her heart and become the 'perfect king.' The quest for the Holy Grail, seeking forgiveness from God and Country, because she could not give it to herself. The corruption of Angra Mainyu, making her watch from behind her own eyes as her most bitter, hateful impulses ruled her every act. It was all gone, blown away like lily petals on the wind, and she had never felt so alive. For the first time in her adult life, nothing was left within her to guide the power she'd been blessed with but the will, beliefs, and desires of Arturia Pendragon.

Saber wished she had not spent so many years pretending Arturia didn't exist. She was actually a rather pleasant girl, as it turned out. She thought she would really enjoy being Arturia, if the world didn't end.

She danced from light to light, the glow of the moon and stars on the ground telling her where the dragon body's pitch-black blood had not fallen yet. Though calling it a 'dragon' was a misnomer, she supposed; it wasn't even really a hydra anymore. Just a roiling mass of fang-lined maws and spiked tentacles, like a thousand mutated sea anemones had been merged together, with a few hundred sharks and lampreys thrown in for seasoning. It couldn't even move anymore, having no legs… or so many legs they couldn't move together, Saber wasn't sure. But it was growing steadily outward, and it had insane reach, so ignoring it was an impossibility.

Which was an issue, because the Assassin body was following her footsteps with surprising speed for its new-found bulk. The creature had grown to the size of a bear with no sign of stopping, falling onto four limbs to support the new size… but that was okay, because it now had either, four bladed appendages bursting out of its back. It could move with the speed and agility of an animal while still fighting like four swordsmen at once. And the dragon's venom did nothing to it, for they were one being, so unlike Saber it could move however it pleased across the shifting battlefield.

Saber grinned as she turned aside two of the blades and leaped over the third, twisting in mid-air to slam aside the fourth with her gauntlet and roll under the dragon body's tendrils as they sought to spear her legs. Over the course of less than twenty minutes of battle, this thing had evolved from no threat at all into a form that she could call a worthy opponent. That was worth a celebration; a birthday present for her new life, in a way.

Now, all she had to do was survive, and have Shirou bake a cake. In that order.

The Assassin body's muscles shifted madly under its flesh, hurling out its newly formed claws with inhuman precision; the limbs were oddly pliable, letting them lash out much farther than they looked like they could, and they were fast, stabbing out like bullets and retreating back to their owner just as fast. It was less like sword-fighting at this point, and more like being shot at by a machine gun that never ran out of ammunition. It had clearly etched some of Hassan's techniques into itself as well. Saber weathered the storm, leaping back with each new exchange until she reached a point beyond the dragon body's reach and…

There.

She spun her sword up and stabbed down, impaling one of the four bladed arms and pinning it to the ground as it lashed for her leg. She then ripped her sword free of it, stomping down her armored boot on the wound to halt regeneration, and stepped into the onslaught, feeling the wind as the blades tore into where she had been rather than where she was.

And then she was inside their reach, and it really didn't matter how fast they were anymore.

Excalibur slashed out, vertical and then horizontal, the strikes so close together they were nearly simultaneous. The creature screamed, a cross-shaped wound ripped almost a full foot deep in its flesh; actually cutting the thing into pieces was much harder than it had been now that it was the size of a grizzly and made of solid muscle, but she did what she could. It snarled, lashing out again with its three free blades, and she spun her sword once to send them off in random directions before finishing the routine with a thrust directly through its head.

"You shouldn't have let me draw you so far from your other half. On your own, you're nothing," she said cheerfully, watching the creature twitch, impaled through the skull on the length of her blade.

It hurts… it hurts… it hurts… that dry whisper hissed out. It feels… sooooo… good…

And we are… so… HUNGRY.

The ground beneath them shattered, tendrils of darkness snapping up hungrily to dig into the Assassin body as it laughed with only bloodthirst and madness behind the sound. The dragon half of this abomination, sliding under the ground through the cracks torn in the sacred mountain, squeezing itself through them like poison seeping through a body. The tendrils wrapped around Saber's legs, clawing at her armor, tiny fangs trying to tear through it and into her flesh and pour corruption into her blood. Even as she watched, the Assassin body began grinning at her as a dragon's snapping jaws replaced its face and bony growths burst through its skin where the tendrils dug in, the massive shadowy form of the dragon-abomination flowing into him, until it was impossible to see where one body ended and the other began.

Welcome home, said a voice in her mind that was half-Assassin, half-Sakura, and behind them both was something cold, empty… and achingly familiar. She saw it every night, in her nightmares of her own death; every day of her wars, in the dead eyes of children hacked down in their homes by invaders; and now, in the empty, reptilian gaze of the twisted creature grinning at her like the face of death itself…

And she smiled right back at it, triumph in her eyes even as something flashed gold behind them. "I'm sorry, what is the saying these days? 'Been there, done that'?"

She barely even dropped her knees, relying more on mana to gather the force needed, and leaped, straight up, the tendrils falling off her like water. Your corruption holds no place for me, monster. I have seen the worst you have to offer… because all you can do is bring out the worst of me. I know my worst. I know my best. And I have come to accept them both, exactly as they are.

So… I know I am not a good enough person to forgive you.

She spun in the air, letting momentum shift her to aim down as gravity began to fight against her ascent, and shifted her mana from the burst carrying her up into her blade, which burst into a brilliance that made it seem like the sun had erupted into the sky in the middle of the night, outshining the moon a thousand times over…

At least, if the sun had an electric aura of pulsing blood red that roared across it, casting an almost demonic tinge across the landscape. Excalibur roared, and in Saber's mind, her blade might not have been half so malicious as the inhuman creature beneath her… but it was certainly far, far more furious. The shining golden light of Avalon, but forevermore tinged with the darkness that had taken root in both her and it equally.

A loyal ally and a traitor in one, calling out for blood even as you shine more beautifully than ever. Scream out, in dark revenge and righteous justice...

I hear your name, my old friend. You have a dark sense of humor.

"Excalibur Mordred!"

What erupted from the shining blade was not the perfect golden bolt of light she had seen so many times. It still shone brilliantly, the gleaming gold of the Fae Realms, but the light was broken and crackling like flames, and shocks of crimson lightning ran up and down it. Flaws, perhaps, simulating the flaws in her own soul that she had always tried to erase or pretend didn't exist instead of just… living with them.

But if you could call them flaws, they did little to diminish the beauty of the sword's wrath. Or, more importantly, the power.

The bolt tore down through the skies, a pillar of gold and scarlet flame that ripped into the ground, swallowing up that all-consuming darkness as quickly and ravenously as it devoured all else it touched. Something screamed, a sound she heard not with her ears but with her soul, reverberating through something deep inside her and calling out for mercy, screaming in agony, telling her that it hadn't done anything other than what was in its nature, what it had to do, it hadn't had a choice…

She watched the flames tear into the darkness, black flesh burning down into black mist, black mist being torn down into flecks of darkness, corrupt against the purging light of her wrath… before finally, after what seemed an eternity and yet could logically have not been more than a second at the most, vanishing entirely.

She landed at the edge of the newly formed pit she had created, looking down the glass-smooth sides of it. She couldn't see the bottom, even though there was quite a bit of light inside, by virtue of it glowing red-hot.

She smiled slightly. "I did have a choice. I understand if you don't like the decision I made."

She leaped down the pit into the labyrinth, because one should never waste a shortcut, and prepared for her next battle. Arthur or Arturia, there was always a next battle.

(*)

There was not going to be a next battle, if this continued along the path it was currently heading.

The blades were Noble Phantasms, each and every one. Copies, not as powerful as their true selves, perhaps, but each one was a mystery of the ages regardless. A blade of power and history. And they were barely scratching the armor that Sakura… no. That Angra Mainyu had wrapped around itself.

Even as he watched, a dozen silvery blades snapped off in its thick hide, leaving only cuts so small they barely bled. This wasn't a pathetic projection like the others. This was an avatar. The black god taking its first steps into the mortal world. Still just a shadow of the true creature, maybe, but it was the shadow of a god, and he was just a man, fighting with the tools of men.

"You can't save me. You can't save anyone." Something said in Sakura's voice, so thick with rage and hate it was barely recognizable and yet somehow still painfully, disturbingly, familiar. "Why would you even try to fight it? We offer peace. Salvation. The only way to make the pain stop forever."

He grimaced, feeling something slick and cold clawing at his brain with every word, as if the sound itself was poison. "You're offering death."

"The only peace man will ever know."

"Then if you don't mind, I'll take battle," he snarled, calling out with his mind for something larger, stronger, the worst weapon he could dream of to purge this thing from the face of the universe. He had never hated before, not really. Not that sense that something needed, absolutely needed, to die for him to ever feel comfortable in his own skin again. But seeing this abomination wearing a dear friend as mask, using her voice, calling for the death of everyone he loved…

Reaching into the depth of the armory, he found something that resonated with his fury, and a more pleasant, familiar sort of emotion came to him: irritation.

Ugh. I'll have to thank Gilgamesh later.

"Ig-alima!" he snapped, snow and silver light roaring up behind him in a vortex, and the monstrous blade that the golden Servant had used to crush Lancer into nothingness erupted from the ground behind him, called from the depths of his forge.

Gilgamesh had used it as a war platform, a tower to stand upon and rain death from above. Shirou had a more direct use in mind.

The weapon was a pitiful recreation; the true Ig-alima had been magnificently forged, gold and silver inlaid in every beautifully carved inch. The new version created within his world was… almost disgusting, all carved black iron as dull as stone. Something snapped in his mind, static roiling behind his eyes just from being near it. This was a divine weapon and he had counterfeited it, badly, and somehow it just repelled everything about him.

That said, it was still a very big damn sword, and that was really what he needed.

The divine construct, inferior though it was, slammed against the swinging arm of the shadowy colossus encasing Sakura. There was a flare of light and sound that ripped through the darkened skies, lighting up the Reality Marble so brilliantly that Shirou thought he saw the stars vanish, before he was forced to close his eyes to avoid being blinded. Just for an instant, blocking out the very worst of it, with reflexes so perfect that he almost scared himself…

And after that instant, his eyelids flickered open and he ignored the pain of the fading light burning into his retinas, to see that the gigantic blade was simply gone, shattered into nothingness. And so was the black giant's entire left arm.

"Did you think that would do anything? Did you think you could hurt me?" Angra Mainyu asked, something gleaming dangerously under the skin of the demonic skeleton. "You can't hurt me. Nothing can anymore. I'm free from all that. And when you're in here with me, you'll be free too."

Gritting his teeth, he reached out with his mind once again, calling up the storm of blades. The snow swirled around him so fiercely he could barely even see the creature anymore, but it stood out in his mind like a beacon as he guided the arrows into the newly formed wound. A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, the mighty colossus buckled as a veritable wall of silver and light roared into the sudden chink in its armor. But no screams, no pain. Torn apart from within, and the thing just… fell, almost silent except for that twisted death rattle it always hissed out. He supposed it made sense, that something so clearly not alive could not feel any actual pain, but…

He charged into the roiling mist of the dissolving beast, banishing those useless thoughts as he called two weapons to his hands. Not Kanshou and Bakuya, those would do nothing for him right now: in one he held the Rule Breaker, more out of necessity than anything else. As useless a weapon as it was, he had to believe that one scratch would be enough to free Sakura, if anything could. He made up for it with the weapon in his other hand.

He leaped onto the fallen giant, slashing out with a weapon that was logically too large to wield with a single hand, and yet felt like holding a handful of air. He brought it down on the few remaining plates, and the golden aura around it slashed through the darkness without the slightest hint of resistance where a thousand blades seemingly more lovely had failed to do more than scratch.

Her sword. The sword in the stone that chose the king. She didn't need it anymore, perhaps, but it was the perfect weapon for him right now.

A light against the deepest darkness.

He drove Caliburn deep, twisting it into poisonous black sludge, looking for the one spark of anything human in this toxic abomination. He needed to get close, just one scratch would be enough…

And he realized, too late, that the darkness possessing Sakura might have been acting only on instinct and madness. But it still had her mind, and she was much smarter than most people gave her credit for.

He cut through the darkness, his blade impaling itself into the snowy ground, and only as the mist vanished entirely did he realize she had left the giant armor behind at some point during their battle, slipping away into the twilight. And only as the razors of blackness slashed open the small of his back so deep they left bone visible did he realize where.

"You will not stand in the way of my Utopia," she said, her tone cold and empty as his blades went flying from his grasp with the sudden pain. He fell forward, snow slamming heavy into his face, the cold gentle and soothing against the sudden rush of burning agony, but he didn't have much time to appreciate it. He rolled forward, calling up and blade he could find in his mind and throwing it backwards. He didn't plan to hit anything, quite the opposite; he just needed a distraction. Any distraction. The silver dagger was almost instantly swatted out of the sky by the shadowy tendrils, but it at least let him wrap his numb fingers around Rule Breaker, spun on Sakura…

Oh.

He turned, and saw Sakura, and despite knowing his life was on the line he had to pause, just for a fraction of a second. She…

Her eyes were still black, but he couldn't call them solid anymore, because they were leaking black mist from the edges, forming clouds of poison that made them look almost like they were burning in her skull with a matte black flame. The same sick substance leaked from the sides of her mouth, making her look like she bore an empty black grin that stretched outside the edges of her face. As if she was wearing a shifting, grinning death mask made of mist and fire.

No. She is the mask. Cut her free and tear the thing out of her. It's the only option.

… Which was a great thought, but he couldn't risk hurting her, so actually doing that meant getting into melee range with a really terrible knife while she tried to rip his face off. And at this point, he had to assume that she was just going to kill him. Whatever was running the show inside her head, it wasn't her, or even the twisted version of herself she'd become. She hadn't wanted him dead, even at her worst.

But this wasn't her anymore.

He dove, a dozen blades of midnight slashing through the space his head had been in, a move he knew for a fact he could not have done. He was starting to accept that between Ilya, and Archer, and now he could even feel the reassuring presence of Saber anymore, he probably didn't qualify as 'Shirou' anymore than this thing before him was 'Sakura.' She had been conquered, but he had just… overwritten pieces of himself with others. Instincts, powers, knowledge, skills... but if you painted over something that much, who was to say that what remained below it was in any way the same?

Well.

Shirou Emiya had been an empty, broken man who did everything he could for everyone else in an effort to fill up an empty space in his heart. If giving up that was the way to save Sakura, he considered it a worthwhile trade and he'd be happy to see who he became next.

He rolled to his feet, the wounds in his back already half-closed. Even if they had been wide open, even if she'd cut through his spine, nothing could have stopped him from making that final push. He was like a man possessed. There was just no other choice. With impossible grace, he slid between a dozen strikes without fail, the dagger slipping in…

And being cut out of his hand at the last second with laserlike precision, a tendril of blackness striking the blade and shattering it in his hand. With strength that wouldn't have been out of place in a Servant, Sakura's hand clamped around Shirou's throat, even as her shadow slashed in at his legs, wrapping around them like razor wire. The blades under his flesh screamed with the sound of tearing metal as they fought to keep the corrupting magic from ripping him limb from limb.

"I told you. You can't hurt me with that thing. Just relax. Soon, you'll finally have real peace." she said softly, almost seductively… a grim thought, gazing at the way her features were twisted. A hungry, bloodthirsty grin painted over Sakura's real face even as her voice spoke in the gentle tones of a lover… made even worse by the fact that this close, their faces practically pressed together, he could see partially through it to her real eyes to show them filled with tears. A mask in every sense of the word, pushing emotions on her waking mind while her subconscious screamed.

She was strong, her hand clamped on his windpipe stronger than a human had any right to be, and he had lost far too much blood. He could already see black spots forming at the edge of his vision as these combined to leave him with too little oxygen to stay conscious; in a moment, determination wouldn't matter. He might have attained powers beyond anything he'd ever dreamed of, but he was no Servant. His body was still human, and in about thirty seconds, he simply wouldn't have enough air in his lungs or his blood to fight any longer. It was not a matter of belief or power, but physical structure. He would lose consciousness and die, and all of it would be pointless. She had, to all appearances, won.

He smiled at her, and it wasn't his own grin, but Archer's condescending smirk as the enemy walked into the trap he'd set. The sight of it actually seemed to pierce the haze around her mind and give her pause, the mask flickering for just a moment to reveal the tear-stained, wide-eyed gaze beneath it…

And Rule Breaker, a second copy of the same weapon born from the infinite weaponsmith and manifested from the depths of Unlimited Blade Works less than twenty feet from the target, flew with all his remaining power into the heart of the Greater Grail as the thing's guardian focused all its attention on a simple, unimportant little human.

The results were pretty impressive.

(*)

"Dammit. Dammit. Dammit," Ilya muttered as she ran as quickly as one could while wearing an absurd dress and carrying a child.

"You're not being very ladylike," Gilgamesh said.

"I feel like you aren't giving this situation enough gravitas!"

"Well, we're going to win. I'm here."

"I'd have more confidence in that if you hadn't lost outside."

"I didn't lose. We got Saber back just like I planned."

"That was my plan! And it doesn't matter anymore, Shirou is in danger and we wasted time giving Rin stupid bandages, so I…"

And then the mountain, already pretty much on the verge of collapse, was hit with what seemed like the thirtieth earthquake of the day. She squeaked with dismay as the ground under her bucked madly, but more importantly the ceiling started to fall as well, because it was basically held together by dust and prayers at this point. She tried to roll away from falling rocks, but already knew it wouldn't work because frankly there was nothing but rocks…

And then she was moving, really, really fast.

"Are you two all right?" Rider asked, though neither of them could really react because she was moving at something not unlike bullet speeds, dancing between debris in a tunnel like it was nothing at all. "I had to stop and get Rin out of the mountain on my way here. Saber has entered the tunnels, and I didn't feel safe leaving anyone alone with her."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Ilya said.

"Please calm down. We won't be hit with falling debris while I'm here," Rider said. "… Oh. You're screaming because of the speed. Well, bear with me, unfortunately. We're in a rush."

"This is very undignified!" Gilgamesh shouted, from his position tucked under her other arm. "But I'll allow it since you're loyally serving your king!"

"How wonderful," Rider muttered, taking the path her instincts told her was deeper into the mountain, not slowing even slightly despite the storm of stone, even at one point using falling stalactites as stepping stones in mid-air. "Archer. Are you combat ready? We need to reach the Grail Chamber. Something's happening at the mountain core."

"Obviously we were going there already," Gilgamesh said. "My chief slave is in danger, and as a noble king I must defend my subjects."

"Shirou, if you're dead when we get there, I'll kill you!" Ilya screamed, and there was not a lot of love or maturity in her tone when she did it.

She'd had a very long day, in her defense.

(*)

Sakura staggered back from him, the blackness falling off her like she had been wearing a coat made of glass that suddenly shattered. She screamed; not a delicate human thing, but throwing her head back and wailing like an animal, her hands grasping frantically at her heart as though she'd had the dagger plunged into her own body… but he couldn't even hear it as something much, much louder roared in pain and rage so deep it made Shirou's heart break just to hear it. Like the sound of a thousand people dying in unison, begging for mercy that would never come, the roars echoed through the Reality Marble, filling up space that should have gone on forever and reverberating back. Cracks began to appear in the starry sky, and the scream of the Grail became a keening, high-pitched, wail…

"Oh no," Shirou said.

He rose to his feet and tackled Sakura, putting his body between her and whatever came next. The wave of darkness and cosmic agony rolled off the Greater Grail as the beast within screamed, stillborn and yet alive enough to feel the regret of its own death. Pain roared over him, burning hot and icy cold at the same time, as his newborn world shattered around him, overwritten by a hatred so deep it swallowed universes. He felt Sakura struggling under him, still screaming silently, and he didn't know if it was from the same pain he felt or from her sudden return to her own mind making her realize what she'd done, but he didn't care. Perversely enough, it was helpful to him in a way. Her distress let him fight past his own, enough to whisper, "Shhhhh. It will be okay… it will all be okay…"

For what felt like years, that was all he could do. Hold the screaming young woman as tightly as he could and tell her it would be okay. It became a mantra against what felt like each and every one of his nerves being individually flayed, even as his mind practically drowned in black hate, and sorrow, and so much pain, none of it his own. That was the only reason he was able to stay sane, he thought. Knowing that all of it was some other thing trying to write itself onto him.

Or maybe he just wasn't sane to start with. It wasn't as though he'd never wondered about that, after all.

The storm subsided, eventually. A long, cold, painful eventually, perhaps, but he opened his eyes to realize all the pain was in his own body, and even that was slowly fading. Sakura was still beneath him, even, and what he saw was both reassuring and terrifying. Her hair was back to its normal shade of violet, and the red and black coating her was gone, but her skin was several shades too pale and her breathing was disturbingly shallow. "Dammit… Sakura, are you okay… come on, wake up, I…"

The pain filling his body concentrated, then. Shifting into a single, perfect point that took his breath away and left his body number, as a sword slipped into his back, sliding perfectly between the blades under his skin to cut into his spine.

"Okay?" Kirei Kotomine whispered, his tone as cold and empty as Servant Assassin at his worst. Shirou had a difficult time getting his eyes to focus, but it looked… not it had to be. The man had a hole through his heart, and inside it, in the center of his body where the heart should be, there was something…

Writhing.

"Is she okay? You have damned her, and yet you have the temerity to ask if she is okay? Like a brat on the schoolyard?" he snapped, emotion entering his tone in the form of what Shirou could only describe as almost toxic disappointment. The words of a man who has seen a bright future, and then seen it taken from him.

Huh, Shirou thought mildly, because the shock and pain of it all had shut him down to only the most basic of emotions. He's completely, totally, insane. I never really spotted it until now…

"But it will be all right. God has a plan for us all, doesn't He Sakura? We may not understand it, and He may not take the form we had hoped for, but God is always with us. We just have to take the time and effort to force him to make Himself known," Kirei said, stepping toward the Greater Grail, his eyes locked on it.

The tower was pulsing like a heart in the middle of cardiac arrest, the side of it slit open from top to bottom, as if Rule Breaker had been a blade the size of a building rather than a tiny knife. "Look at that. Look at what you've done. A metaphorical wound made real by the nature of the victim. You have… aborted a newborn God. Murdered Earth's future. Are you proud? Pleased, that you nearly damned the world? But it's not over yet. Both Holy Grails are still alive. And the power remains. All we need is something to give the future a lifeline to hold onto as it drowns in despair. Something to pull God to us after all, no matter how much the pain makes Him seek death instead.

"And well… is it not said that He helps those who help themselves?"

He charged, faster than an Olympic sprinter off the the block, agony evident in the clenching of his muscles… and yet it did not slow him at all, as he charged into the black stream flowing from the side of the corrupted artifact, and dove inside.