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What is the Incineration? You can explain it clinically. Human history combusted until nothing is left but ash, every moment in the past kindling for the fire. But that's a bit dry, yeah? The question is heavier than that. What is it like to live in a world where everything else isn't?It's like... you open the blinds to your window even though everyone says not to. And you look out. It's easy to describe. It's just black, pitch black. A darkness from a universe where no stars were born, and everything exists without light.It feels like just staring into that endless darkness for minutes on end. Like taking out your flashlight and shining it into the dark, like there's something to see. But there's nothing. There's nothing. Forever and ever there is nothing, and the brightest light could shine and all it would do is illuminate nothing and nothing forever more.It's pressing your face against the glass and wondering. Like looking at a car door when you're on the highway and thinking, "Wouldn't it be crazy if I threw myself out? Haha." Maybe it's even, though you're only imagining, like being part of the crew in a submarine. Wondering at all that pressure on the outside, all the water around you trying to smash you, and thinking what if it all rushed in. What would happen to you if you fell out that window? Would you choke and die without air? Would the pressure difference pop you like a balloon? Would you fall until the end of time? Would you just... cease? Vanish, like a drop of orange into a sea of black?Maybe that's the Incineration. Not knowing. Any of these things could be, and you would never know. It's like sitting at the last page of a book, feet dangling over the edge. You can see the back cover just above, the inky black of it, and it's coming down on you. It's the end. And you don't know what will come after, and you're scared, but even that doesn't matter anymore because your story is over. The book is done. Whatever lies next, you can’t know. The black just reminds you it’s coming, that it’s here.So yeah, maybe all that. Maybe that's the Incineration. But what is the Incineration to you? You, Ritsuka, what do you see when you shut your eyes and think about what should be in that darkness? And the answer there is easy. It's fire.It's Chaldea in flames, smoke in your eyes and your lungs. It's Fuyuki ablaze, a ruin that would never stop burning. You sleep without a blanket because the heat of it all chases you in your dreams. You wake covered in sweat and the hazy afterimage of flames coiling around everything you've ever known. But... that isn't too bad. It's about what comes after. The ash.You know, fire can take all these different and amazing things and make ash of all of them. Indistinct. Burn it up enough and you couldn’t tell a corpse from wood. The Incineration didn't want to just kill you. It wanted to erase you. To wipe the idea of you from being. It's like homesickness but not. Because the idea of home, what home is like, you--You're not thinking about this right. How about…Do you know what your mom sounds like? You'll do it wrong at first. You'll make a mom voice in your head, and you're thinking it sounds like her, but if you really think about it the voice really just sounds like yourself. You just think it sounds like her because you're thinking of her voice. It's missing the mom-ness, the warmth, and it plain doesn't sound right still. And maybe you're a bit freaked out then. How do I not know what my mom sounds like? But you know, the moment you hear it again it all falls back into place. Ah yeah, of course, that's mom.There's no mom now though. Just the black outside the window. There's no greeting, no home. Memory isn't good enough. People have all these handholds in the world around them to grab onto, to remember a bit more clearly even if it isn't perfect. The Incineration took those away too.You know where you are now, but when you look behind you there's no road. That's the ash. You think you know what your mom sounded like; you think. But when you think about it too much you can only hear your own too loud thoughts. Maybe you'll forget it entirely one of these days. You really wish you hadn't cleared out your voicemail before coming to Chaldea.
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Jack the Ripper is a child. There’s something distinctly wrong with that, but you really don’t have the force of will to question it. Especially not when she… they can cut someone up into a collection of distinct parts before the first hunk hits the ground. If you ignore how excited they are to ‘dissect’ people, it’s pretty easy to treat them as a kid. No, the more difficult thing to work with is how they treat you and why they’re here at all.Mommy. The first time they’d call you that you don’t even realize it’s you they’re talking to. You don’t try to weasel out of it because Da Vinci gives you a Look that tells you it won’t be smart to try, and frankly it isn’t that bad since they’re still more of a murder ghost than a child, but you’re pretty sure you’ll never get used to it. At least they’re low maintenance? In a few ways it’s almost like... the ideal of having a kid. There’s nothing you really have to teach them, and just giving Jack some attention keeps them more than happy. You have your meals together, sometimes with Matthew, and you get to break up the time by playing with them and reading to them. Mostly you get utterly demolished by a supersonic and near invisible child in any game imaginable that requires you to move around, but they seem to like it. And you well, it’s livened things up a lot more than you’d admit to anyone aloud. Even reading a book to someone is pretty fun when they’re so attentive. But y’know, why does Chaldea have children’s books?It starts to drip into your head bit by bit as time passes. There’s books for kids, some kids clothes that Jack can wear besides that cloak, some educational videos for kids too! No actual children though. If you went to someone’s house with your not-kid and they had a closet full of stuff for your not-kid to use you would feel sorry for them. For what that probably meant, one way or another. But this isn't some old neighbor’s house. “Baby shoes for sale, never worn,” isn't for secret bases somewhere in Antarctica.It’s a trail that leads you to a few curious places. First, Chaldea is kinda big. Bigger than you’d expect. It’s not that you couldn’t ask around but honestly? You don’t really feel like asking. It doesn’t take too long for Jack to find you places you’ve never seen before. You basically spruce it up as a scavenger hunt, and before long you find all sorts of interesting things. Abandoned labs, big ol’ tubes, and pretty expansive rooms with all types of equipment. Almost innocuously, a table with restraints sits on the far end. All of it is really, really interesting! So interesting that you couldn’t wait to show up to Romani’s office and talk about all the fucking amazing things you found! You can’t really call it a pleasant conversation. Which is good, since this isn’t the kind of conversation that should be pleasant. It’s the achingly awkward kind of thing, where you tell people after that you’d rather have your teeth pulled out. Full of those false starts and moments of silence where you just have to take a moment and… think. Think, because if you try to say the things you feel without putting them into words you’ll probably scream. So carefully, you build a bridge with language to convey as many of those feelings as you can. It’s never enough, like a shirt three sizes too small, some of it always gets lost. But it’s enough to talk about everything that’s down there. That and what Jack is. After it all you’re more spent than anything else. But it does end up clicking together. Why did you summon Jack first? You’re not exactly someone who wants a child or who has a history with children in any way. You don’t even have siblings!No, you summoned them because Chaldea was so smart, so willing to save the future, that they paved the way forward with the bodies of kids until they got what they wanted. And Jack came because they’re some… amalgam of dead babies. It’s so, so wrong that it’s hard for you to wrap your head around it. But it makes sense. It makes sense in a way that makes your stomach turn. And then it all comes to a head at the end of the day. Before you settle in for the night, Jack appears in your room. And you don’t shriek! Your nerves might be fried but you’re at least getting used to that. They usually want a hug before bed. But as you do something else falls into place. There’s a curious thing about the way Jack hugs. It’s not something you would pay attention to if it weren’t so consistent. They always press their face against your body, right into your abdomen, and as they hug you they rub their face back and forth. Their nose brushes against you in an exact, not almost exact but exact, line. As careful as a butcher tracing a line along a carcass.
“Jack, don’t you have a wish? You know, if we manage to get a Grail or something.”
“A wish for the Holy Grail... All we want is to go back inside Mommy. That's all we want.”
Fragments of a conversation bubble up into your mind and something almost snaps. You want to scream. To hurtle yourself out the window of your room or just shut the door and let no one in, ever. To cry, and vomit, and just die on the spot. You look down and your eyes meet Jack’s, their attention focused up towards you as your arms lie limp at your side. Bright green eyes voicing a question all on their own. They’re the eyes of someone who might one day cut you open and crawl into your body. Everything sane and human in you, every bit of Ritsuka Fujimaru wants to send them away. You want to be alone. But it isn’t just Ritsuka Fujimaru in you now, is it? Now there’s the Incineration. The fire of it in your head, the heat of it in your chest, hungrily eating at you. Leaving nothing but emptiness and ash. It’s still there, it’ll always be there, and the only thing it hasn’t—can’t burn is this place. Chaldea. Its people. The Servant still staring up at you and almost overflowing with a twisted kind of innocence. And if you push it all away there’ll be nothing left of you but kindling.So you, the last Master of Chaldea, gently force Ritsuka Fujimaru into shape. You wrap your arms around Jack, and you look at how happy they are! Listen, listen close to how they giggle when you lift them up and shake them around a bit. You do all that and your heart slowly stops racing; you even manage to send them to bed with a pat on their head and a smile.It doesn’t feel… wrong? No, it’s hard to call it anything like that. You feel loose in your skin, like you’ve crossed over a boundary in your self. Maybe that is wrong. But it doesn’t feel like it. After all, you’ve accepted Jack! You’ve held close to your body a knife so eager to cut it, but you're not afraid. And you’re okay.You’re okay.
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The past of a Servant is a deep and heady thing. It pours over your dreams, drenching them in a reality more concrete than the waking world. A universe mapped out in little hands pulling open a body to squirm inside, in lavender eyes peering at a sterile room knowing nothing but the joy of being alive. But only one wakes you with bile, your throat still burning even after you swallow, your hands still trembling from the heat of blood.Every dream you come closer to understanding Gilles de Rais. Perhaps you are the only person who could ever even attempt to try. It's not as if anyone wishes to talk to him, and he doesn't even leave his room too often. He just… waits.Maybe it would have been better if you had simply listened to Da Vinci and let her get rid of him. Maybe. But it's not as if you can simply attempt a summoning every day. And… there is nothing in Chaldea that calls to him. There are no secrets that heinous. You don't think Romani could stomach that, not when you saw the look on his face when he told you about Matthew. So it's you. He came here because you. You called him here. You, you, you. Ritsuka, you summoned this monster. So why?You borrow paint from Da Vinci to help answer that question. You pick a scene when it is still particularly fresh in your mind. A gorey one, because no matter how strong your stomach is even you couldn't stand the others. You don't try for anything special. Just one brush stroke after another, painting over anything you don't like, again and again. It gives you plenty of time to think.What does Gilles de Rais want? No, that isn't quite right. You know what he wants. They're messy, bleak things. Things full of despair, of rot. Someone who looks to paradise hoping only to see it crumble.What does Gilles de Rais believe in? That one is harder to put into words. You can say what he does not believe in. He does not believe in God, and he disbelieves with a hate that borders ecstasy. You have dreamed it, felt it in your own chest, a poisonous thrill ripping through a heart clenched tight. So in his own way, he believes in God more than anyone else. Because you know that even if no one was watching, even if no one would know, he would still do these things. His performance is for the sake of someone who does not exist. He clings to the altar so he might blaspheme upon it. Because…Because he wanted so desperately for it to be real. He believed in Him, maybe more than anyone else. He believed in His justice, His mercy, His love. He believed that all his trials had meaning because God was with him, was with her. That so long as he believed in Him, they would ever walk in light. That there would always be hope. And then came the fires, a betrayal he could not even witness with his own eyes, and the world was empty.So he curses God. He despises Him. Show me that you are real, he cries out towards the heavens. Punish me, he begs a sky devoid of lightning. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me! Again and again, until the emptiness becomes ritual. Until all that is left is that twisted thrill. Even if God will not punish him, even if God is not real, Gilles cannot forsake Him. For all that is left of Gilles is his hate towards Him.When you finish with the painting, it's more of a mess than anything. Red, and black, and blue over white and gold. But it'll have to do. A present doesn't have to be perfect, after all.And when you knock on his door Gilles is happy to receive it. "My, Master," he says as he raises it up to his face. Bulbous eyes focusing on the image as he practically towers over you. "Your sincerity and passion are apparent. I thought you had forgotten me after I accepted your invitation…"You smile. He smiles, even if a smile only suits him in a twisted sort of way, and you follow after him as he beckons you forward.Gilles obviously hasn't been allowed to harm anyone. There wouldn't be much of him left to talk to if he had tried. So you're sure that he acquired all his various bits of furniture in less murderous ways. The rubbery skin tapestries and organ instruments laying about don't seem to be made of people meat anyways, and thankfully the chairs and table are still the normal Chaldea standard bits of furniture. You take your seats and there's silence again. But there's something in the atmosphere now, coiling around you. An almost expectant look on Gilles' face as he holds the painting to his chest with one hand."Gilles," you start quietly after a few minutes. But the words sink down your throat into your stomach. What you were about to ask… this isn't really about your questions for him, is it? No, you know the answer."Gilles, you answered my summoning to save Jeanne." You can say that with confidence. With certainty. Because you know that at least to be true. That no matter what, no matter how twisted he becomes, there is one thing he cannot accept. Gilles de Rais can never forgive those who would burn Jeanne d'Arc. And what else could you call the Incineration? A fire that burns her away so totally and completely that nothing remains."Yes!" He exclaims, nearly yells really, at you. As if something is answering this building tension. "Excellent, most excellent. You truly understand my heart; you are indeed worthy of being my Master!"Then he leans in, a smile stretched so wide you can see the corners of it quiver, fingers clutching the table so hard that you can see the dents. "Master, why did you call to me?"And your thoughts stumble for a bit. They catch on that nail of you-ness, of the you that you can never quite articulate. That you can't give form to when you talk to Matthew, or Romani, or Da Vinci, or anyone else at Chaldea. But right now, the only person in front of you is Gilles de Rais. The only person who can hear this is already damned. And for no reason at all, the words come out so easily."I… hate this."Oh, what do you hate? You barely have the words for it. You hate Romani for pitying you, you hate Matthew for admiring you, you hate Da Vinci for knowing better than you. You hate every time Jack calls you mommy and then presses against your abdomen like they're about to climb inside. You hate the black outside and the strangers inside who all know each other but don't know you.You hate this. That this is your life. Because this isn't how it was supposed to be. This isn't the life you were promised; it isn't the future that everyone said will happen someday. It isn't what you wanted.No, it's 'keep moving forward.' It's the end of the world, unless you take another step. It's a bunch of empty assurances that they won't force you, that they care about you. That you don't have to do anything. Well, so long as you're okay waiting here in this empty void forever. As long as you're okay being surrounded by people who know that the reason there is no hope is because you can't get up. As long as you're okay with the fact that everyone else is dead.
Fuck you.
You hate them for pretending like there's even a choice. It's a noxious, thrilling thing to feel. It races backwards through your memories like fire. How much you hate every lie ever told to you about what the world was going to be like, about what your life was supposed to be like. How much you hate every lie you told yourself. And oh, they might not have been lies then. Maybe if the world hadn't ended they would still be true. But now, now they're lies, because everything is gone.You put your faith in them, and your world fell apart, and now you're left with nothing.You hate this, but you're not allowed to hate this. Not really. Not truly. Not unless you want to die. And no, you're not quite there yet."That's why I called to you, Gilles."And a smile, maybe something that could even be called a truly pleasant smile, arrives on his face. You imagine that must be the closest that he can get to bliss without turning someone inside out."Master," he starts, the glee overflowing from him, "I knew from the start you would fill me with inspiration! The last Master, the savior of all mankind! That you would be filled with such dark feelings, I know I will make my greatest masterpiece yet because of you!"You smile back at him when you say, "I hate you too, Gilles."He laughs.You laugh.The flesh-thing on the ground laughs too. Or maybe it's crying.And then with great tenderness, he pulls a book from underneath his robe and places it on the table. Gilles pushes it all the way over towards you, even. "Master, I am sure your creativity must be bursting as well. Shall we go to the training room? I would love to see your brilliance in action…"A face of agony looks as if it's trying to force itself out of the cover. You know this. Gilles' Noble Phantasm. A very powerful grimoire, you know from the second Singularity. A grimoire that can be used by someone with no magical talent at all. And the training room, a place that can simulate all types of battlegrounds and even enemies. You'll need to ask for some privacy given the situation but, well, you think they can spare you that much.You pick up the grimoire with both hands, and your skin itches and tingles where it touches. Then, with Gilles in tow, you head to the training room.You don't think too much about what happens there after you ask for some privacy. You don't think too much about Gilles' encouraging whispers, or the feeling of raw energy coursing through you as you open the cover, or what you call forth. All you know is it feels… liberating. Like painting, if you are the brush and those simulations are the canvas.You know that everyone is just polite enough to not talk about it. To not ask about Gilles or what simulations you've been running. Not even to ask if you'll keep doing them. Maybe that's enough.You can live with that.
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The Berserker Class was designed for weak Servants. Well, that is what you were told, anyways. That it was less about powerful people who went mad and more about stapling some level of strength to a weak spirit. In practice, you’re not sure how well that holds up. Though in a sense, yeah you’ll admit that Kiyohime seems to fit that description.She’s not particularly strong or tough, and while she’s not slow you can’t really call her quick by the standards of Servants. With her yellow eyes and green hair, with her kimono and dainty smile, you’d probably think of her as a fairytale princess if not for her horns. But you know it’s all paper thin. Kiyohime is not truly weak or frail, not when the monstrous power of her class expresses herself. Strength like coiling serpents fills her arms; fire hot enough to make steel run like water pours from her limbs. It is all for you, she says. How much she loves you. How much she wants to protect you.But Kiyohime doesn’t love you.Kiyohime loves love itself. The feeling of her heart swooning, an all-consuming heat that pulses out with each beat. She doesn’t want to love a person. She wants a thing that she can love, that will whisper love back to her.You’re fine with that though. It may sound a bit strange to think, but you don’t always care about being treated like a person. There’s something you can’t quite describe in being turned into a useless lump. To lie your head down in her lap and let her fingers toy with locks of your hair, sometimes orange and sometimes black, until she’s satisfied. “Master is Master and Anchin,” she’ll whisper sometimes with a giggle. It’s freeing, you think, to be loved without any regard for who you are or what you do. Even if it’s for her own sake and not your own.It’s kind of like those shape puzzles you played with as a kid. The circle goes in the circle hole and all. But if it’s the crappy ones, you don’t actually have to get it right. A kid can slot a square into a circle and they’ll hold it up all proud. Because it’s not about getting it right. It’s about making sure it’s not empty.You and Kiyohime can’t fix each other, not even if you both really wanted to. But you can fill these roles, can slip into the shape of the hole even if you can’t fill it. Isn’t that enough?Well, not that it’s perfect or anything. Kiyohime is famous for burning her love to death in a bell. So you can do anything you want, sorta, so long as you don’t love any other girl than her. So long as you never lie to her.Not that there’s really any competition for her. Jack is a child and Da Vinci makes you feel like a child. There’s just, well, Matthew. And that’s what leads you to your current predicament. Namely, sitting on your bed with Kiyohime right across from you. She’s as pretty as ever with a smile on her lips, and she has one of your hands hostage. Really, she’s just holding onto one with both of her own. Rubbing her thumbs into your palm every once and a while. But occasionally, she’ll give a finger a tug right at the base. It doesn’t hurt at all. She’s very gentle about it, so gentle and firm that you’d never be able to pull your hand back even if you tried. Even if she plucked off each digit one by one. Oh, and that’s your Command Seal hand. Whoops.“Master, I’m not jealous.” She qualifies this point with the utmost seriousness. After all, if she is actually jealous then that means something improper might actually be going on. It means that you might have given your heart to someone else! So she can’t be jealous.With that out of the way, she can freely talk about how she’s only a bit concerned about all the time you spend with Matthew. Just a bit!It’d be a relief if what you think about Matthew could be summarized with something as simple as ‘I love her’ or ‘I don’t love her’. But you don’t understand a single thing about Matthew Kyrielight. You don’t understand her smile. How genuine it is every time you venture forth together to face a new danger. You don’t understand her kindness. How glad she is to be in Chaldea when it rests on the bones of siblings she’ll never know. You don’t understand her past. How glad she is in each dream; how happy she is just to be alive.What must it feel like to look at the world each day with eyes that are eternally fresh? To see in every one of these experiences a lesson, in every person an example of what it means to live your life…You don’t know if you envy or pity her, that girl whose eyes shine with such sparkling innocence and unfailing determination at once.. But either way you can’t leave her alone. She is always waiting for you, and whether it’s books, or movies, or the few shows whose episodes you’ve saved on your phone… You find something to do with her.Maybe it’s because you also want to know what her answer will be.But the fingers of diamond pressing into your hand remind you that you haven’t actually said anything yet. You look back into Kiyohime’s eyes, her empty gaze. Her smile had slipped into something more neutral, more fragile while you were thinking. And it strikes you, how impermanent this girl is. Even by the standards of something as transient as a Servant.From the top of her head to her feet she is nothing but kindling. Fuel for the raging inferno of her heart. Her feelings, immature or not, are as heavy as any hero’s. Or maybe like a dragon in truth. And if she was really either of those, her story would be different. There would be tragedies still, yes, but she would be something born of tragedy. Defined and shaped by it. But Kiyohime is neither a hero nor dragon in truth. She’s only a girl. A girl whose desires would burn her flesh and boil the blood in her veins to steam.It’s the legend of a heart that could cross rivers, that could turn skin into scales, that could breathe white hot fire. A heart and the girl too immature to bear it. That is what Kiyohime is, the tangled threads of that girl still holding on despite everything.You think that’s part of why you like her. Of all your Servants, only Kiyohime would regret killing you. Jack would, eventually, if they thought about it. But by the time your insides cooled and home was lost to them again, they would have already vanished. And Gilles is Gilles. But Kiyohime, even if she never loved you, would mourn your loss. Would hate herself for what she had taken from herself. She would vanish beneath the waves, not understanding a single thing about her own feelings, gnawing on her heart in sorrow until she drowned. But she would be sorry. And for all her faults, you think you’d also be sad knowing she’d die.So you like her. You’d prefer she didn’t suffer, and even if you can’t love each other you both can share this tangled happiness. Also, you like living.“I don’t love Matthew. I think she makes me a bit sad, actually,” you say with the ease of the truth. And you know those words are true, or at least true enough, because Kiyohime’s next act isn’t violence. Her eyes glimmer with relief then. Still, she doesn’t let go of your hands.“And I love you, Kiyohime.” There’s a careful pause there. It’s the truth, in a few senses of the word, definitely true enough to not be a lie. And though you can feel her hands gradually warm up, you know there’s nothing false. Though you only relax when she lets go and throws her arms around you instead.“I knew you wouldn’t lie to me, Master,” she whispers right into your ear. “Only you, only you will never lie to me, Anchin.”But what makes your words true? Well, there is one thing that you cannot deny. More than her looks, more than her devotion, more than her company. There is one thing about Kiyohime that you cannot help but love. And it is love, for you need it. The very foundations of your heart clench in anticipation before she says that one word. Then, once she does, all the fear in you is chased away. It is a single word that can save you. That ever since you have summoned her, has saved you again and again. And you hope it always will.So you bring a hand to her head, still caught in her hug, and rub a finger around the base of one of her horns. “Kiyohime, can we do that again?”She gives a little content sigh first before agreeing. You’re sure she doesn’t really understand it. No, you don’t think that she’ll ever understand it. Not even if you do this a hundred times in a row.And you tell her, “I am Ritsuka Fujimaru.”And she tells you, “Truth.”All it takes is a single word from the girl who can never be lied to. And you are yourself. You are still yourself.So you can say you love Kiyohime, and it will not be a lie. For today she has saved you again.
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Each day, Matthew Kyrielight opens her eyes and is glad to be alive. She quietly exults in her own life, in this fragile little thing that has endured another night without guttering out. For it was not always guaranteed. She was not always able to rest easily thinking, “Ah, tomorrow I will do this.”
Tomorrow was not always promised.
But for now, there is another day. There are many things that Matthew looks forward to on any given day. Oh, she could list them for ages if pressed. The healthy burn in her muscles during simulation training, having meals with everyone else in the cafeteria, chatting with Da Vinci about potential improvements. But she looks forward to Ritsuka most of all. It’s not at all reasonable, she knows, to admire them so. It’s just… there’s a way of being human that Matthew understands. That she has seen in movies and read in books. Sometimes she sees it in the faces of the people who work here at Chaldea. But Ritsuka is different from that.
Ritsuka changes their hair, how they dress, how their body looks. Sometimes she follows behind a head of orange hair, bouncing around with more than a bit of energy. Sometimes it’s black and short, and it rarely bobs around at all. Every so often they even gain and lose entire inches to the kinds of shoe they decide to wear. But that moment, each time they reveal what they look like now to everyone else, their smile is always the same then.
“I live in whatever way makes me the most comfortable right now. Da Vinci just makes it all so much easier, so I do it more than I used to.”
That’s what they told her before. Not that she was rude enough to ask them! They just mentioned it offhandedly once. But she still doesn’t quite get how to wrap her head around it. Someone who simply shrugs their shoulders when asked how they see themself. And maybe it’s the same for many people, Matthew sometimes thinks. They’re comfortable with how they’re living right now, but if they feel differently then they can be something else.
And if that’s the case then maybe she can change too, can keep changing. Maybe she already is? Isn’t her stride more confident? Hasn’t she stood firm, shield unyielding to blows that could make the very earth shudder? She’s even grown out her hair a bit! Yes, it’s all true, and maybe that's part of what she admires in them. How they seem so certain in how they live. So certain that she tries to emulate that freedom in her own ways. But no matter how Matthew changes, Ritsuka keeps their distance.
It’s something she didn’t always notice. After all, it’s not like they leave her alone. They talk to her about books, watch movies with her, and even show her the bits of writing they do in their free time. But it’s only recently that she’s seen how different they are with the other Servants. The way they expose themselves to others, no matter how monstrous they are, to reach out to them. It’s hard to watch the affection in the eyes of the other Servants, the care born from the fact that they know Ritsuka. But she does not.
Matthew has seen the cost of it. She’s listened to them retch into a garbage bin after training with Gilles, and though she wasn’t there she knows that Romani has talked with them about the finger-shaped bruises on their wrist when Kiyohime was first summoned. But though she would lend them her shoulder for nothing, there is no burden they are willing to share. No, not a single tear. Not the smallest shred of vulnerability. Not with her.
Perhaps that’s why Matthew feels so guilty when she sleeps. For in her dreams lives a Ritsuka she has never seen before. One only half as confident and yet so much more easygoing. A Ritsuka who can smile so freely hardly feels like Ritsuka at all. But no matter how it feels, each night she lives another fragment of that life.
It’s a life made of inconsequential things, things that can hardly be considered as important as the work done at Chaldea. There’s school where they scramble to finish their homework the class before and chew on their pen once the test anxiety sets in. Sometimes after that Ritsuka goes to spend their time with friends, mostly just to laze about or play games. But more often than not they’re at home not doing much at all. A slothful lump that occasionally motivates themself out of sheer anxiety before rolling over to perfectly waste their afternoon. Though, that’s not to say that everything is so easy.
When it comes to things that they truly want to do, it’s a constant struggle. Arguments with their parents when they dye their hair, when they change their clothes, when they use what spark of magic they do have to change the color of their eyes. Even with all that, it’s an incomplete and half baked thing. One that rarely wins them any favors even with others who are different.
Because… Well, it’s not like the others don’t want Ritsuka around. But they can’t seem to make up their minds. First they ask everyone to treat them one way. A few months later they decide to go for a different look, different presentation. That’s alright too! Everyone still has things to figure out. But there’s a building frustration there. It slowly grows as they keep changing, and it’s always fiercer when they go back to one of the looks they’d chosen before. Ritsuka drifts away before the real barbs come out: the accusations that they aren’t serious about this, asking them if they think it’s funny to play pretend, the faux compassion married to the confusion of, “Why can’t you just
choose?
”
There’s a lot of things like that. Part of Matthew knows it’s wrong to long for those dreams so much. The countless freedoms she’s seen, the ones that are always beyond her reach, have their own costs. But even that is so much more. It’s all so much more than anything she could have imagined. How small is the wish to just see the sky compared to being able to
live?
Even with all its burdens. Still, there’s guilt alongside that wonder. She might not mean to, but she can’t imagine that they’d appreciate her seeing them at their most innocent, their most vulnerable.
She doesn’t know what they’d think of the fact that she remembers all the things they’ve lost.
No, she couldn’t even begin to predict how they might react. Ritsuka, who still stares out into the darkness beyond Chaldea every once and a while, fingers pressed against the glass as if to grasp the thin wisps of memory before they escape them. That a stranger knows the sound of their mother’s voice when they can’t recall it… She just doesn’t know. So Matthew turns away and says nothing, no matter what she sees.
Is that cowardice? Maybe so. She can accept that she’s too afraid to say anything, at least for now. But that doesn’t mean that Matthew won’t do anything. It
does
mean that sometimes she’ll ask the cooking staff to make something in particular and insist they not tell anyone she asked.
There’s a spark of realization, sometimes. An old memory slots into place. Something tender, something innocent and still young, it blooms across their features when they see the meal. And Matthew knows that they must be happy. Because the Incineration left nothing, not even ash. But with one small act they’ve reclaimed it from the fire. It’s not all lost. The Ritsuka Fujimaru from before, even if they’re not the same person, everything they were hasn’t been consigned to oblivion. It’s still there, even if Matthew is not brave enough to show them everything yet.
She hopes for that strength. She prays for it. With each passing day the hunger to be more grows. For if Ritsuka will not let her stand beside them, if they will always keep her at a distance, then she would rather be ahead of them than behind. If they will not share that burden, then she’ll be strong enough to carry it in their stead. A Matthew Kyrielight who can stand before the flames of the Incineration; a Matthew Kyrielight whose shield can protect them from the end of the world. That is what she wants to be.
But for now, she will walk behind them. She will move forward even if she cannot share in their burdens. And along the way, she will have her hands open wide. Wide enough to catch every cinder, every bit of ash that floats free as the fire washes over them. She will save every last fragment of Ritsuka Fujimaru.
Then at least, when the world is restored, she will have the courage to tell them. She will have the bravery to be to them what Chaldea, from its staff to its Servants, have been to others. An observer that acknowledges their triumphs, their struggles. One that affirms that they lived, that they will continue to go on. They are real, and nothing in all the world can ever take that from them.
These are the feelings of a transient life, a flickering flame that will not survive this year, that she reserves for the end of this mission.
“Ritsuka. Your journey is far from over.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
God has red eyes and white hair.No, that’s probably insulting to say. But it’s hard to even think of a single comparison. You could say that she has eyes like rubies, but there is not a gem in the world as lustrous. You could say they were red as blood, but the depths of crimson in her eyes could not be filled by all the battles of the world. It goes on and on. Is her hair like pearls, like alabaster? Can you say that it is like freshly fallen snow? Words fail you. Maybe that’s the point, the lesson in all this. Ishtar is not defined; Ishtar defines. She is beauty itself. In a thousand things you might find a shadow of her, yet all of it pales in comparison to the goddess. Even if the goddess is in another body.It’s like, you’re not a writer but you’ve had writer friends, and you’ve heard of that same struggle. When you can write a hundred words for that aching feeling in someone reaching out only to pull their hand back, but they can’t quite capture it in the same way as when you see it yourself. That place where words fail them because there’s too much to say in just one small action. It’s scary, really, in more than a lot of ways. Because you’ve dealt with killers, and monsters, and worse besides, but there’s not really anything quite… You’re used to fear. You’re used to the filth, to the bleak despair of it all, to the small moments of happiness that exist in spite of that. There’s nothing in you that’s quite prepared to deal with awe, and in its own way it makes her more dangerous than the Servants that would actually kill you.The thing is, you understand the others. You know why they’re here, and it’s either because of this place or because of you. But there’s nothing in you like Ishtar. So instead you’re left fumbling, dragged along in her wake like a child swept up by the riptide. It’s not like you can leave . A single sideways glance from her has your feet moving against your will. Even when you try to linger behind, her sigh of impatience has the ground under you crumble like sand. No matter what you find yourself falling over yourself after her.It’s, ah, kinda frustrating, actually. People are supposed to earn that sort of thing! Over a while, a back and forth where you gradually get closer. Someone shouldn’t be able to rip open your chest and make your heart seize just by giving you a smile and lifting up your chin with a finger. So you hold onto that ember of anger, keeping it tight in your stomach, letting it burn hotter and hotter until you can finally force the words you want to say out. “Ishtar, why are you here?” God turns to look at you. “Finally,” she says, as if she had been the one waiting for this moment instead of you. Then she steps forward, and the universe shrinks. This nondescript hallway begins to gleam with all the glory of a goddess’ light, the air thickens as her power floods the atmosphere, surrounding you until you’re left on a little island of normalcy. Back pressed against the wall as she closes in. You don’t even think she’s trying to intimidate, to scare you. It’s just what she is. Love, and war, and sex, and authority. Of course this is how she is once she’s actually paying attention.Ishtar goes to conquer; Ishtar goes to win. Though you can’t really call this a fight as you stand under her red gaze. But it’s a bit better than before, when it was all beauty and allure. This feeling in the air is oppressive, even deadly. You can work with that. If it’s only fear, then it’s easy enough to stand straight and look right at her… almost vaguely amused face? The way a single perfect brow is raised as if she’s the one who just asked the question.“Why?” She seems faintly humored by the notion that any of this is because of her. “You understand what I am. Is there a reason why I shouldn’t answer such an earnest prayer?”“There’s always a reason,” you say without even thinking about the response. “You do whatever you want, and if you want something then you want it. So why do you want to be here and not anywhere else? I’m not going to turn down your help but I still don’t get why you answered—”She sighs, and the sound silences you. “I will tell you a short story. During a great flood, two humans are attempting to escape calamity. Near them is a beautiful goddess. Worrying for the safety of the weaker human, the stronger one asks if she can place them upon the goddess’ boat. The goddess does not deny them, but she says that all upon the boat is her property. So if they are placed on her boat, she shall keep them forever.”Ishtar pauses for a moment before continuing. The air practically tingles against your skin, like lightning waiting for a target. “It should not need to be said that the goddess, greatest of the Anunna, unrivaled in glory and might, who holds all heaven in thrall, was being most generous in her offer.”Ah, hm. You can tell where this story is going. Though you don’t remember any of this which raises more questions. Is this a choice that you’re going to make? That you made in another world? But she doesn’t leave any room for further questions, for more pondering. That pale, perfect face is so close to yours now. That borrowed flesh still manages to perfectly suit the burning intensity of the divine. “So I have decided to be generous. I will answer your prayer, Ritsuka. The one that you refuse to voice. I will take you far away from Chaldea and the Incineration, and you will never suffer because of them again. All you have to do is say yes.”Huh. You… you haven’t thought about leaving in a long time. Not after Romani had you moved into a new room without a window. Leaving is a word without any substance. It just wasn’t possible, and so you couldn’t think about it. Running away only has meaning so long as you’re heading somewhere. But there’s nowhere else besides the path laid out before you. At least, there wasn’t. Not until now.What would it be like? You don’t ask the question, but she can see it clearly written on your face. Yellow—no, gold fills her eyes. The shimmer of a planet millions of miles away glitters right in front of you. A finger presses against your chest, right over your heart. Then something close to a frown appears on her face then, a minor note of displeasure. Like when you’re asked to do some mundane chore like taking out the trash.“You’ll have to stop being human,” Ishtar admits with a sigh. “If it was up to me we’d skip that, but my sister’s claim on human souls is near absolute. Especially now that we’ve withdrawn from the world. She’s gotten even more greedy now that Irkalla doesn’t exist anymore. We’d have to fight since there’s not much to bargain with. I’d win, obviously, but you probably wouldn’t survive.” That part is easy enough for you to imagine, though thinking gets quite hard when the finger on your chest is joined by the other four and her palm. Ishtar pins you against the wall like a lioness toying with her prey. There’s just enough pressure to give you space to squirm, to try and run just so she could enjoy the little game of catching you again.“Yes, you’ll have to become something more than human if you want to enter my world.” The frown turns to a smirk, and then the light of her divinity shines through her. “I’ll give you a taste.”The light grows brighter, so bright that even when you close your eyes it shines through, but it does not burn.You fall in.These are the things you are permitted to know, for a time. You experience what it is like to eat without hunger, to drink without thirst. You see the shape of the heavens, the abode of the gods, the lustrous colors of the three part firmament. You are given the form of men; you are given the form of women. You hear divinities proclaim the great destinies of mankind. But even these are pale and empty things. As the sun rises, it casts the shining stars into irrelevance. So it is that in the presence of Ishtar, one forgets the faces of the gods. The lady of all powers. Radiant one. Beloved of Heaven and Earth. She goes to conquer; she goes to despoil. As restless as a raging storm, she moves across the world. She devastates the rebellious, she pours her venom out over the land, she alone is victorious. Conqueror, protector, who can know all that is hers?Yes, for a time, you are allowed to know of Ishtar.You may bow, may prostrate yourself before her. Offer with your clever tongue hymns to her brilliance. You stand when given permission; you approach when she beckons. Then you worship at the altar of her. You whisper those carnal prayers with your mouth, with your fingers, with—And you forget. Your eyes snap open, almost as if you had been dreaming. First you hear the near draconic roar. Then you feel the heat. Waves of blue fire spiraling throughout the hallway before a dismissive wave from Ishtar snuffs them out. Kiyohime.You don’t even think about it. The only thing that stops you from rushing over to her as she howls insults and flame is the hand that grasps you by the shoulder. You turn and see Ishtar, her eyes red again and narrowed now. As if she’s taking your measure again, weighing you in her mind as her power continues to push Kiyohime back and smother her fires. Then she lets out a small chuckle, clearly audible despite all the chaos.“You’re smiling,” she says with amusement in her voice. You blink, and if you were smiling then you didn’t even realize it before it was gone. You… But Ishtar doesn’t stop there. Her voice is still clearly audible even as Kiyohime manages to grow more incensed. “I thought you were some pitiably noble creature I would spirit away. No, I didn’t give you enough credit. You enjoy this. That they need you, want you. It’s almost beautiful.”You can feel the heat burn in your cheeks and ears all of a sudden then, and an almost childish outrage you haven’t felt for ages spills out of you. “So what?!”She shakes her head then, and to your embarrassment you think she just restrained herself from laughing at you. “I am the last person to judge someone for their pleasures,” Ishtar begins, “but let me give you a warning. When this ends, whether you win or lose, they will all be gone. So enjoy it. I’ll be content watching for now. We’ll see how you respond to my offer the next time you hear it.”Then she lets you go. And as you run towards Kiyohime, already knowing you’ll have to burn through a Command Seal to calm her down, you feel a hint of dread. Not at her. No, you’re sure you can get things under control and explain everything to Romani. But what Ishtar said, that they’d all disappear. You knew that already. But, well, on some level you think that you probably thought you’d be dead at that point. Or maybe Ishtar would abduct you, or Kiyohime would keep you, or something else would happen before that. But if you win… if you win they’ll all be gone, and you’ll still be here.What then?
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You’ve seen the greatest hero of Greece before. Even now, despite everything that you’ve experienced, it is hard to describe him. Strong is more than an understatement, and while a living engine of destruction might fit better, the words are too flowery to capture it all. It’s easier to understand him by consequence, by the aftermath of his actions.
A howl of anger and anguish that splits the earth and stirs the sea. His swinging pillar of a blade that can pulverize bone with force alone even when the strike itself misses. The phantom aches from when he ran past you, your arm just barely in the way of his single minded pursuit.
He still broke it in three places.
But Alcides is not Heracles. He’s smaller than Heracles, weaker than Heracles. The man stripped from the god. Handsome, muscular, and tall, but all in a way that’s still recognizably human. No one would think of him as a monster, not in the same way that they might that raging behemoth of a demigod. The bargain bin Master got the bargain bin Heracles, yeah? Though, you suppose that’s the trick in it all. The grain of truth, maybe.
Alcides is not Heracles, but Alcides is not less than Heracles. You’ve seen both pushed to their utmost limits and yet… Even without divinity, even without the raging power of madness pushing that body beyond its limits, if it was a fight where they wagered their very lives he would not lose.
But you’re not really here to gush about Alcides. No, you’re distracting yourself. Walking in circles in your head because if you stop thinking it all comes back to the same point. If you die everything will be for nothing, so you must keep moving forward. If you live—if you
win
there will be a tomorrow. There will be another day. But for everyone outside of the Chaldea it will be nothing more than a moment. They will never know that for a whole year they did not exist. You’ve changed; you’ve changed so much. But the world will be the same.
How can anyone expect you to go back? To a home made unfamiliar, to friends and family that have become strangers to you. To a world that you’ve honed your spite for within the pages of a fleshbound book.
That is why you asked for Alcides. It is why you lie down on your bed, covering your eyes with your arm as he sits by it, and ask, “How could you forgive them? The gods, I mean.”
The silence that follows is so lengthy that eventually you manage to pull your arm away and take a look at him. You almost feel chastised as his golden eyes lock with your own, as if daring you to hide behind your arm again. Then he replies, “I do not know. I cannot know, Master, because I cannot forgive the gods. The blood of my family stains my hands because of them, I labored under a wretched man for their redemption, and my end was an ignoble one. It is why I was burned away.”
There is another pause then, enough for you to sit up a bit and clutch a bit harder at your sheets as some sort of tension builds in you. Then he continues, something almost wistful in his voice for a moment. “I have held up the sky. All the heavens, the vault of creation, and the stars within. It was heavy, yes, but so light compared to the world. I could hold the sky for a thousand years, Master. But I could not even hold my own children close to me.”
It’s almost electrifying then, the way it clicks. Alcides has never told you his wish. What is it that this hero among heroes cannot achieve himself? Or rather… What desire is so shameful that he would not voice it after all this time? Well to set it up there’s a big fact that needs to be considered. Alcides does not hate Heracles. No, he holds him in the highest regard. Heracles is the miracle where man meets god, greater and less than both. Yet you know without a doubt what his wish would be. What Alcides desires the most is this:
That the man known as Heracles would be a footnote. A small tale of a demigod lost to the ages. His story would end, so abruptly yet definitively, with the wife he married and the children they had together. There would be no legends or myths to tell, not of their hopelessly mundane love.
And then something bubbles up in you. A breathlessness like you’re about to cry, but a sound closer to laughter escapes you. For a moment you’re almost mortified, looking at Alcides as you huff in gasps of air. But then he laughs too, a rueful and loud thing all at once. You laugh together at the tragedy of it all, the comedy of it all.
What a small thing it is, you realize, the grasp of something as pitiable as a human.
When you finally finish laughing, you wipe away the few tears that managed to squeeze their way out amidst it all. Then you reach out and grab Alcides’ hand. You almost feel like a kid doing it given how much larger he is than you. But at least he doesn’t stop you. That’d be embarrassing.
“I cannot comfort you,” he admits even as he squeezes back. Even now he is careful enough to make sure that it doesn’t hurt you. “I am a shade, a shadow cast by a myth. The only role that belongs to me is in the legend of another, lamenting my fate and that of those who would also endure such hardships. There is no happiness to be found at the end of my story, and my sole desire is a small, petty thing at the expense of a better man than I.”
“But I would have it regardless.” His voice is low, yet you hear him so clearly it is as if his words cut through the air. Your hand is shaking. No, the hand you’re holding is shaking even as the rest of his body is still as stone. “Because this life belongs to me, Master. And so long as I have it I will do what I will with it.”
Alcides’ eyes all but burn, and you can’t tell if the golden glow of it all is just in your head. If you’re simply imagining the way he seems to almost fill the room with each passing word. Alcides would not lose to Heracles, you thought before. But you were just thinking of fighting, of determination and will then. Now you see that there is something more to both of them, a gravity that can hold their allies to the ground and uproot their foes. You are standing in the presence of a great hero. Yes, standing. On your feet atop your bed before you even realize it. Though it hardly changes the fact that you still have to crane your head up to look at him as he too rises.
“So,” you start, as if to challenge him, “it doesn’t matter then? It’s alright if in the end I can’t forgive anyone? I can just go on being a miserable person who hates people that have been helping me? It’s alright that I’m going to hate the world I
might
save? All those friends I used to have, fuck them too, right? Because I had to move on and everything, everything else will be the same! They won’t even know that anything
happened!
”
You’re really loud now. Actually, you just screamed that last bit. Your head is pounding and your face is hot. And haha, this is all going to be funny to explain to Da Vinci during your next therapy session. But right now the only thing that matters are the words that come out of Alcides’ mouth.
“Master, if you cannot forgive the world, then curse it. If you cannot accept your past, then reject it. If you cannot bring yourself to love a single person, then abandon them all.” He smiles, and it is a mirthless thing.
“There is no need to consider what is right. Do as you will.”
Something cold slots into place deep in your stomach in the silence that follows. An uneasiness runs down your spine. It’s not often you misread a Servant, after all. You looked too deep into that self-loathing, that longing, because you saw yourself in it. But that’s wrong. Alcides isn’t a reflection of you upon a mirror. He is your image on the surface of the water. What you see can tell you about yourself, but it reveals nothing about the water’s depths.
Alcides is not a whole person. He doesn’t walk that liminal space that you do, estranged from both normality and the grandness of life. There is not a fragment of regret in him, not truly. Because can you really regret something if you would do it again? And there is no doubt either.
He is the man who tore the divinity from his soul so that he might kill the god. The man who would put the legend to the sword, all for an ordinary life.
No matter the consequences.
And that’s not you. Not even if you tried your hardest could that be you. There’s nothing about Ritsuka Fujimaru that is so sharp, that could be turned outwards against the world. You have nothing so fearsome and relentless in you to cut your way forward. The only blades you’re familiar with are all pointed inwards, after all. If you made yourself jagged in the way Alcides is… you’d take a single step before ripping yourself apart.
But there’s still something you can take from there. That honesty he has. He knows that what he’s doing is wrong; he accepts that evil and steps forward anyways. He bears the contradiction of holding that admiration, that longing, and that resentment without stopping.
“I want to go home,” you admit, softly. Even if there’s still more left to do. Even if you carry all these unspeakable feelings in you. Even if not a single person will be able to understand. Still, you want to go home. You sink to your knees, light and heavy at once under the weight of your own contradiction. The impossibility of carrying all those curses and desires in the same hand.
There is a rumble like a falling stone from Alcides’ chest, and then he stands. There is something small in him, you think. Now that you see the man in full. There is something weak and human in the sigh that escapes him. In the dim tiredness of his yellow eyes when the heat of the moment has burned out of them. He regrets not a single thing, but the weight of his choices are heavy nonetheless.
“Who will return,” he asks. “The Master or the child?”
He leaves then, and even though each step echoes with his weight it sits differently. The world is heavy beyond words, he had said. And yet he would move it all the same. You’re not surprised then, that it echoes in his action. How else could he hope to lift that which is immovable?
Yet… you are not Alcides. In his strengths and in his weaknesses, you differ from him. He doesn’t remember what it is like to see the world as he did when he lived. The demigod who fought men and gods, who was filled with joy and tears, who found more awaited him than the tragedies of his life.
Is that arrogance, to think that you’re not like Alcides but Heracles? Oh yeah, absolutely. But he’s the one who brought it up first. The Master or the child. A choice to make, from his perspective. For Alcides is a man at the end of his journey, an unchangeable point. A shade gnawing on ash. He looks at his past and does not see a life. It is a chain, the links of heroism inevitably pulling the man to his end. So he curses, he laments, and he reaches towards the past with the greed of the dead. For Alcides
is
dead. A phantom who can only see in others his own journey, and at the end of the struggle he believes in only two possibilities. That you will keep holding on, clinging like a shadow to a person who is long gone. Or you will shed all these petty things and walk into the light of the world as a god would.
It is frightening because it sounds so true, so inevitable. But you are not dead. This long trial will not be the end of your journey. Isn’t that why you are so afraid? Because you do not know what will come next? Alcides’ path is an example, a future to fear, but it is not your fate.Not so long as you hold onto everything, all the longing and bitterness together, and continue to move forward.
The Master or the child? You have an answer, as weak as it is. As hopelessly hopeful as it can be. Without a shred of proof, you will believe it. You have to.
Sometimes, the answer is both.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
0
“Now that you have command over the army of shadows, victory is at hand. You can rest easy now, Master.”
There are few times that you ever feel like the Servant system is legitimately working for you. Without a catalyst it’s supposed to be a matter of compatibility, and it’s only when you see dozens of masks looking towards you from the darkness that it sounds right. You introduce yourself in turn, and then you get to work.
7
You don’t even make it to a dozen before some truths become abundantly clear. There’s nothing as deep or cohesive as a network. It’s not like they even share each other’s thoughts. No, they most
definitely
do not share each other’s thoughts. It’s something you get to see for yourself as you stand next to one of the lanky assassins, watching on the sidelines of the archives as two other identical looking versions of the Hundred Faced Hassan argue.
“
Evolutionary psychology?
You spend a few hours raiding through a single institution's archives, and that is the best you can think of? You strip away all nuance because they think men came from apes?” It’s an impressive display, you think, of how a cloaked figure can look so imposing with her hands folded together, A look of disapproval that bleeds through the bone-white mask.
It pairs well with the almost flailing her companion is doing. Each motion of the hands an energetic, almost violent gesticulation. “No no, that is not the end point. Listen, listen! I am simply considering the merits of another approach. I’m not necessarily evaluating its
correctness
as much as I am the merit of that perspective. Just let me get to my point here…” And the voices fade into a quieter though still heated discussion. That’s when you look over to the Assassin at your side with an almost bemused smile. He shrugs in response.
“There is no helping them,” he says with a sigh. You look over then to the cloaked figure hunched over a terminal, calculator on the side and notebook in hand. Their fingers scribbled down words faster than you could see, and the calculator would be referenced almost every other moment. “And them?” you ask.
He looks over and lets out a chuckle then. It’s so easy to notice when so many of them are together like this how differently they all sound. His voice is more rough, almost a grumble. “Mathematics has advanced greatly since we were in this world. They are our expert. So it is only natural for them to catch up. We devoted too much to our pursuits to let time alone defeat us in our specialties.”
You tilt your head then. “So what about your…” But before you can finish you hear the voice of one of the arguing Hassans, the more bombastic one.
“So is your position on whether the Quran is uncreated—” And before you can do anything the Assassin next you vaults over a desk and several stacks of paper without ruffling a single one. He slams his hand over the other man’s mouth, or at least where his mouth should be, with enough force you could see the whiplash as his head was rocked back.
“No! Not again! We will not be having this argument again!” You watch as the silencing progresses into a long chastisement of the other two, and you marvel at it all. So many faces, voices, thoughts, and yet they all draw from the same pool. Divisions of the one soul. A person with near a hundred selves within them. It’s not like you, exactly. But it’s close enough to set your heart a bit at ease. It helps that they’re maybe the most normal Servant you’ve summoned in a while.
But you’ve only just begun.
19
“You’ll never be as good as me.”
They all say it in such a matter of fact way. They’re all probably right too. Even if you had the same amount of time, you’d never have that same level of obsession. The sheer drive to commit everything you are to something. But you try, regardless, and it doesn’t seem to bother any of them too much given the results.
You lose oodles of pocket money to a sharp-tongued slip of a man wrapped in black cloth, true. But there’s something there in getting a better sense for the odds, in honing your memory sharp and keen. Your knees get shaky from crouching and prowling around with a giant of a woman who still manages to get through Chaldea’s halls unseen. But you can finally last more than a few seconds playing hide and seek with Jack. The pattern repeats itself. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be more than you are now. It makes you feel… better. About everything, really.
It doesn’t solve anything, but it helps. It’s a distraction, a helpful one. The same way that teatime with Jack, or being comforted by Kiyohime, or training under Alcides’ watchful eye are. It’s just that there’s so much more of them than there is anyone else. It’s easy to busy yourself with it all, each experience being so new. Learning from them and spending time with them.
Piece by piece, you assemble this relationship.
46
One day, you catch sight of a particularly
small
Hassan. A tiny girl who barely looks any older than Jack. You’re not under any illusions about who the Hundred Faced Hassan was. Not even when Jack calls you over with a cry of “Mommy, mommy!” and you resign yourself to the futile effort of playing tag with them and their new friend. They’re a killer, in the end. Someone who devoted themself to a hundred pursuits, who sharpened each fragment of themselves into a knife. Everything from rhetoric, to bug taming, to old fashioned poison making.
So you’re already prepared when you scoop the small purple haired girl up into your arms after a short run and loudly proclaim, “Got you!” You have a good sense for danger, after all. Even after all this time, or maybe because of everything, you still get goosebumps when you toss Jack around. They don’t mean to, really. But the idea of climbing into you comes to them as easily as they breathe. And as for this little Assassin, well, you’ve seen innocence as a guise to conceal a knife before.
Except you don’t feel a thing. Not even the slight twitch of your survival instinct buzzing up from holding a trained killer for hire. Then she starts to sniffle. And then she starts to
cry
because she got caught first and you feel terrible.
By the time Jack comes back around you’ve become ‘it’ again and have already promised to give the both of them a whole minute head start. It makes the child Hassan stop crying, which is quite good. And while Jack buzzes around her as they run off they don’t seem to be upset either. It’s good that they took such a long head start too, because it gives you a moment to think about what you’ve just experienced.
Despite a whole lifetime’s worth of killing, something that innocent and childish remained in them. It wasn’t removed; it wasn’t destroyed. Time didn’t grind it down to nothingness. Even if it’s small, it’s still there. She’s still there. No matter how much they changed or grew apart, who the Hundred Faced Hassan used to be didn’t just cease to exist.
So what remains of Ritsuka Fujimaru under the ashes of the Incineration? You ask that, and you let yourself forget the swollen bitterness in your soul for a moment.
Then you start running after the two kids again, of course.
71
Things aren’t just fixed because of that. If anything could do it that easily, your problems wouldn’t be nearly so large. Some days are better than others. Some days are far worse. But what you get out of this, out of every one of them, is time. Time to adjust, to sift through everything you’ve gone through while still having a goal to move towards.
And the Hundred Faced Hassan is quite a puzzle. Personally, you don’t think of yourself as a liar. Kiyohime would vouch for your honesty, even. Just because you act differently with different people doesn’t mean you aren’t telling the truth. In a sense, you think that they’re the same way. Not a single one of the Hassans is a lie. They’re all unquestionably themselves as much as they are Assassin as a whole. But there is something off about them. You don’t quite get it for the first few dozen. It starts to click more into place when you hit the second half.
The Hassans talk like they’re one person, but there’s no overarching sense of self. At least, not in Chaldea. They lose track of one another, get into arguments, or bury themselves in their specialties without regard for anything else. You spend five days watching the Hassan who mastered bug taming train a colony of ants using manufactured pheromones before she bothers to acknowledge you exist. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with that in general. But you can tell from how they talk about it, or try to talk about it, that it frustrates them. When they’re focused on battle, or an assassination, or sneaking about, cohesion comes naturally to them. But in the relative peace of Chaldea they don’t know what to do with themselves. Because each Hassan is refined, all the excess chipped away for the sake of perfection. All for a single purpose. And without it they meander about, unfulfilled.
You’re not so far along that particular path. No, you don’t think you ever will be. But you understand, and that means you understand what the Hassan of the Hundred faces wants too. How could you do anything but promise it to them, for someone struggling in a way so similar to your own?
88
Chaldea’s reactor room hums with enough power to grant nearly any wish.
That isn’t even an exaggeration either! Blue and gold pours out from its metallic heart, whatever magecraft used to power the facility bolstered by the light of six Holy Grails now.
Six.
Da Vinci once told you that just one is considered an ‘omnipotent wish granting device.’ And now there are six here in the core of Chaldea. It’s maybe the safest place to keep them, and their power is all being used for a good cause. Keeping this many Servants around would be a problem otherwise.
Today, the reactor is host to 89 people. You stand there with an army of shadows at your back, bone-white faces peering out towards the light. They don’t know why they’re here of course. There’s no point in a surprise if you just tell people what you’re going to get them. So you turn around and look just a tad up at the face of the woman who serves as the spokesperson when they all gather for official business.
Then you gesture towards the Grail farthest from you all, seated in metal next to the searing glow of the reactor’s heart. The one retrieved from the Sixth Singularity. “That one is yours,” you say.
A moment of confusion then. Murmured conversation in a language you don’t speak. Is it a test? Did you really say such a thing to them? But the spokesperson says nothing at all for a time. Then she shakes her head, and though some dissent ripples through the cloud of masks behind her they don’t disagree too much as she murmurs, “Ours is an insignificant—”
“I want you all to have it,” you interrupt. “When this is all over, it’s yours. If we win then you can go right ahead. If we don’t… I’d like you to leave one of you here. To make the wish even if we lose everything else.”
You weren’t sure before you said the words, but now you’re certain that you want this. You get it, after all. To feel pulled apart, frayed. Pulling yourself in every which way because it’s just what needs to be done. And wanting to feel whole in the end, to feel complete. Like you’re yourself. But you’re still here, still alive. There’s still time for you to figure things out in the end. And if you don’t… at least someone else will, right?
Silence reigns over the reactor room for a minute. Then the woman speaks. “You are our Master,” she says with utter confidence. Not a single other Hassan speaks up, not even a whisper of dissent. Utter unanimity in their agreement.
Then one of the Assassins steps forward. As if by unspoken agreement, the others begin to vanish. Acknowledging this Hassan’s initiative as the one who will stay. You watch as the cloaked figure settles onto their knees, facing away from the light of the reactor. A moment longer passes before you yourself move to leave. It’s then they speak.
“Thank you,” they say quietly. “It is difficult for us to express ourselves as a whole, but thank you. We will not forget the chance you’ve given us, to go before God as… myself.”
The Hassan holds out their hand towards you. “It is little compared to what you offer or the battles to come, but if you would allow it, I would pray for you. That you will also find completeness in your life, Master.”
So you take their hand and kneel with them in prayer. You pray for tomorrow; you set your gaze on a world beyond the Incineration. Because even if you don’t know how to be better, that doesn’t mean a way doesn't exist. You just need to keep moving towards it. One foot after another. And even if you go down the wrong path, you trust yourself to find the right way again.
Your future, the future you desire, you’ll arrive at it so long as you believe in it. So you will. It’s all you can do, Ritsuka, and it will be enough.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Do you know the sound of your mother’s voice?
You may have forgotten, so listen closely. Listen to the waves, to the tides, to the underwater currents a thousand miles deep. Drown in them, and you can feel it. It’s an embrace older than the first thing to speak, than the first thing to think, than the first thing to swim.
More than a billion years ago, a time so vast you cannot truly imagine it, the first things were born in a dead world. Splitting and recombining, spreading and consuming, too simple to have anything so noble as a thought. A world of endless maws before the first tooth had come into being. There is nothing of us in those ancient beings. Our fears and hopes, our hatreds and ambitions, they could not exist in such a time.
But love did.
Love was there for those things which did not deserve it. She sang her song for those without ears to hear it. Where she went, this still world churned with life. It was her purpose and calling; it was her happiness and joy. Know this: before there was suffering there was love. There was love for her children in all their multitude, and there was love for you.
Yes,
you.
You, born eons into the future, have her love now and forever. She loved you before you could speak. She loved you before you took your first breath. She loved you as she loves all her children, and the children of her children, and the generations onwards into perpetuity.
This world began in love. But, oh beloved children, how did you repay your mother’s love?
You abandoned her. You discarded her and her love to the depths beyond any sea. Her sole reward was to wait forever, suspended in the silence of a stillborn world where nothing could live. A sentence which denied her the sole function of her existence. Her misery and resentment cannot be known. Rejected by her children, robbed of her very purpose, even the embrace of death did not await her. Only an eternity of emptiness.
And love, still. A love that burns in her heart, that threatens to crack the cage of her adamant ribs. A love that throbs along the scar that stretches from chest to her abdomen, the parting wound of rejection. It is the agony of it all that she brings to bear upon you, humanity.
That is Beast II.
Once, you’d forgotten your mother’s voice. Then you hear her call for you in a foreign land, across the vastness of the ocean. You hear her cry out in a song older than any word. But it’s her. It’s mom. Mom.
And she wants you to come home. It’s a nostalgia that crushes your heart, that grips you to your soul. So much so that even riding a
dinosaur
hundreds of meters over a churning black sea barely registers in comparison. Because you forgot. Because everyone forgets, eventually. That it’s okay to feel small, to feel weak. You don’t have to be strong. There is someone who will look after you; there is someone who will always love you. And you forgot for the same reason that everyone does. One day that person won’t be there anymore. You can’t trust in that comfort forever.
But Tiamat sings with a voice like swirling currents, like waves lapping at the shore. She will never go anywhere. She will never die. It will be her and her love that will hold you firmly for all eternity. All you need to do, oh child, is slip into her embrace.
You’re reminded then of the Incineration. Of the black emptiness around Chaldea and the temptations you had once before. Though in this case, things are even more certain. Throw yourself into the sea, Tiamat cries, and you will be reborn. You will be safe. There’s no lie there. She means it. She truly, truly means it.
You still refuse.
There are still things you must do, that you want to do, that you cannot be satisfied without doing. So you refuse the waves and tides, you refuse your mother’s call to come home. She howls in response, a voice that shatters mountains and stir the seas to their depths. Because it is only you, only you humans that would deny her. Only you would reject her call. Only you, of all her children, would abandon and exile her from the world. It is a howl of anger, and sorrow, and fear. Because you have grown apart from her, and she does not know you any longer. You would destroy her, so she must kill you. That is all there is to say.
Or at least, that is all there is to say now. But there is more time, time bought so desperately with lives for just a chance of victory.
The Bull of Heaven looks horns with the Glistening One. With his mistress, the two drive Tiamat back to the once blue oceans. They leave valleys of glass and coiling tempests in their wake, but they do not return. So the story repeats again and again. Gorgon emerges from the sea, titanic serpents coiling around the progenitor goddess and wrestling her to the ground for a few moments more. A mere handful of soldiers man the dingir at the walls, firing into the waves of lahmu until they are torn apart chunk by chunk. A king dies in your place.
All so a great vastness may be carved below. So that a comet might strike and dash the mother of all into the underworld. Flowers bloom in Kur, death himself chases her into the breach, and victory is at hand and yet—
Yet something still doesn’t feel right. And you don’t know why. Not until the Sword of Rupture splits the ocean in two. Blood rains from the sky, pouring over your skin and soaking your hair. It drips into your eyes with a salty sting. It falls into your mouth and you taste the sea. You remember then a story of what it meant to bathe in a dragon’s blood.
You open your eyes and see the primeval waters still. An infinite, writhing expanse that has finally come to halt. There stands Tiamat with her great horns, with her braids of hair coiled in on themselves. Tiamat, your mother.
She has nurtured many lives, and many lives have loved her in turn. But they all grow, and change, and head to places where she cannot follow. She wants to love them forever; she wants to be at their side forever. Why are you going to a place she cannot follow, Ritsuka? So she asks the question that has burdened her, tormented her.
“Is my love… mistaken?”
With every sacrifice, time was bought for you to defeat her. But maybe this is even more important than that. That for once there is someone there to answer her, a voice to respond to her doubts, a child who can tell their mother why they have to leave home. Only now, and never again, there is enough time.
Time to say, “I’m sorry.” Time to say, “I still love you.” Time to say, “I won’t ever forget you.”
It’s not enough to fill that emptiness. It can never be enough to soothe all her pain, not when she will return to a place of nothingness. But even in the face of that bleak eternity, right now there is something that can be saved. All the words you have for her, for mom, that you couldn’t say before. That you didn’t know to say, because you didn’t think that you would never see her again. You can say them here, to Tiamat.
You talk until you have no words to say. Until you have no choice but to bawl out the rest. She sings for you in turn, a melody as comforting as any embrace. She sings until your heart is soothed. And then she vanishes, with her tears, into the sea.
But you still hear it in your ears, the voice of those primeval waters. This time you won’t forget. You will carry it with you, hold fast to it, for the rest of your days. The sound of your mother’s voice.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
In the Seventh Singularity you retrieved a tablet. Upon it, a group of beings inscribed their sorrow for all the things of this life. The contradictions, the messiness, the agony of living in an imperfect world. Bemoaning that even if all the world’s ills were solved, humans would continue to create those evils themselves. For mankind is also imperfect. But they could accept that. They could endure that truth.What they could not forgive was that there was one who was indeed perfect. There was a king without flaw, who knew all the sorrows of this world, and who had the power to fix them. They could not forgive his cruelty, his callousness! How he smiled and laughed at the world’s ugliness. So for the sake of others who may come after, they left that message. A recording of their anger and their ultimate goal: to destroy everything, to forget everything, and wager all their time on the altar of the origin. Solomon.It’s why you aren’t particularly surprised at what you see at your journey’s end. A temple outside of time. White like marble, suspended in an endless void. Above sits the ring of light, the whole of mankind’s history rendered up into nothing but heat. Everything you have ever known. All the hopes and dreams of everyone who has ever lived, more experiences than you can possibly begin to comprehend, reduced to raw energy for the goal of the Demon Pillars. But there’s nothing more to it, no matter how insurmountable and terrible the situation seems. All you can do is keep going.Though, it’s not like you’re alone. Matthew is by your side, and the stars are at your back. They aren’t doing it gently either. It isn’t a rain or fall of stars. It is a thunder of stars, a crash of stars. Servants slam into the temple and shatter a plan millennia in the making. They banter and laugh; they crush and kill. The Pillars howl their lamentations, they curse you and the Servants alike, and they die again and again. But they don’t really look at you, don’t really see you. You’re just a human. One of the 7 billion they sought to burn away to nothingness. They detest you and despise you, but there’s nothing they notice besides another branch of kindling they’ve failed to burn.It’s shockingly straightforward, really. Until you make it to the end and realize you don’t actually have a plan. Upon his throne Solomon sheds his skin. The illusion of his form breaks away to reveal a titan of gold and white. Antlers like tree branches emerge from his head, tinged red and scattered at the ends like burning leaves. A purple eye sunken into an open chest cavity, balefully looking out towards the world. Above the sky burns with radiance, countless bands of light coiled tight together. From the 72 Pillars to the great working above, it is all him. Goetia.The Beast who could not look away from mankind, and if their suffering could not be solved it would be better if they did not exist at all. Not because it was best for them, but because he could not bear to look upon them any longer. Are you just supposed to… beat him to death? Before he fires all that energy right at the temple? It actually sounds more ridiculous than the Seventh Singularity given all that you had to do to defeat Tiamat.Then Matthew steps in front of you. Shield at the ready, eyes forward, and without an ounce of doubt in her body. No, even more than that. She almost seems relaxed, at ease. Has she always been like that, you suddenly wonder. It’s not like you told her what to do or reassured her. Matthew looks at an enemy that cannot be beaten and steps forward because she will make a way. You weren’t even watching, not truly, beforehand. It was the cost of not sharing everything with her. The price of holding her at arm’s length because of all the ways you just couldn’t understand her. All the result of not letting her see too much of you. But she’s grown in a way you’re not even sure you can evaluate. The girl standing before you is without a doubt a hero.But before she can leap into battle Goetia speaks. Then you understand what this is all about. Why you all even made it this far in the first place. It isn’t about you, Ritsuka. It’s about her. All of this. From the temple, to the battles, to the bands of light yet to descend. All of it is for Matthew Kyrielight. For Goetia to ask, to implore. For this impossibly proud being to call on her, on a manmade life just like himself, to agree with him. That at least one person would affirm their sorrow—his sorrow. Everything was so at least one person could say that his wish was right. You have nothing to say to that. It… isn’t your place to say anything here. Not when you can see the tension coil in Matthew’s body, even more than the moment before she was ready to fight. All you can do is watch. Hadn’t you once wondered what her answer to all this would be? Now you are here to listen to it, to bear witness to her resolve.“Goetia,” and she says his name almost softly, “do you know why those people you saw could keep on living? Why those people who wept could go on and smile?”Silence answers her, and she goes on. “You’ve never really left this place, have you? Just watched. So you’ve always been apart from people and their lives. You don’t know how to make people who can be happy even though there’s suffering. They’ll be happy because you wouldn’t give them the choice to be anything else, and they’d all do it for your sake. Forever.”And for a moment there’s something furious in her voice. Anger. A burning, righteous anger that Goetia doesn’t even understand what he’s destroying to get what he wants. But even that subsides as she gives the Beast her answer. “I do not want your eternity. Even if my life will end in the blink of an eye. Even so, I would want to see the future of this world even if it is only for a second.”Then she turns to you with a smile. Even before she says it, you know what she is going to ask. You know what is about to happen, as the hateful light above burns brighter. So you do the only thing you can.You hold her hand for the last time.At that moment, you are filled with regrets. Why didn’t you let her grow closer to you? Why didn’t you reach out to her more? Why did you wait until she would leave you to feel like you should do more? But there is no time for those things now. The light above grows blinding white, and Matthew gives your hand one final squeeze before pulling apart. Her gaze is bright and clear. There is a smile on her lips and joy in her heart. And as for you and your heart and the things you said and didn't say, she knows. She always knew.Matthew Kyrielight saves the world because it made her human. Because it is the place that so many have given their lives for, have left their legacies on. Because it is the world you live in. For all of those, she catches the whole of human history upon her shield. The flames of the Incineration which consumed all the world at once, it cannot overcome her. Even though it could destroy any Servant, even all the Servants gathered here at once, it cannot pass this immaculate wall. All you can do is your duty. Even as light consumes your vision. Even when all you can see is a burning white that makes your eyes water. You watch Matthew’s life reach its conclusion, and you blink away the tears when all that remains is a single unbroken shield.For a moment you’re not sure what you’re going to do. You simply stand there and look towards that shield, so pristine it is as if nothing happened at all. But you can feel a familiar heat build up in your body. He’ll kill you anyways, right? But maybe if you burn up all three of your Command Spells you can make him feel it when you punch him in the face. The only thing that stops you from going out and dying is the voice that calls out to you.It’s Romani Archaman who asks you to wait. He asks you to hold back for just a moment. In your place he steps forward. His skin darkens; his hair lengthens and grows white. But it is still Romani. His hands still tremble the same way as whenever he thinks he’s in danger. But Romani who is Solomon still goes and wrestles with his own creation. He fails, of course. For all his faults Goetia is still mighty. He is still armed with the rings of Solomon and all the strength of the Demon Pillars. He knows it. With every breath Goetia curses Romani with something approaching glee. “The greatest fool of mankind, the incompetent king is making an appearance only now!” he says with laughter that shakes the temple. It’s a bit strange to see Romani’s expressions on a face other than his. But you recognize that resolve on his face. After all, you saw it just a moment before. “Ah, so you’re going too?” you ask, and he gives you the faintest smile in return. One final ring gleams on his hand as he stands firm. Even the bruises and burns left from his short struggle with Goetia seem inconsequential now. He surrenders everything. He returns everything he has gained to God, and as he was given everything he is left with nothing. “Ars Nova. The Time of Parting Has Come, He is the One Who Lets Go of The World.”He shines with light. The temple groans in agony as its very foundation is torn away. Goetia laments, he is shaken to his core. He all but howls in his disbelief, his shock. He cannot understand it. He cannot comprehend how the man he abhorred most of all humans, the very image of indifference and cruelty he strove against, how could such a person sacrifice himself? How could he accept vanishing from this world with such totality? Of all those who had ever lived, how can it be Solomon who accepts utter obliteration? Goetia trembles at the incomprehensible nature of it all, but you step forward. You walk up to him, to Romani, and you rest a hand on his shoulder. He feels so fragile now. If you squeezed your hand, you’re all but sure his flesh and bone would crumble into motes of light. “I don’t really know anything about Solomon,” you admit. “But even if all the deeds of ‘Solomon’ vanish… I won’t forget Romani Archaman. Chaldea won’t forget either.”His smile grows just a tad warmer. Maybe a shade sadder as well. Some regrets linger here too, you know. There are things you could not forgive him for looking away from in Chaldea’s past, no matter how powerless he was to change them. Even if that was unfair of you. And there are so many things he still has yet to do, that he wants to do. But it will have to be enough. “I’ll leave the rest to you then, Ritsuka,” he says with just the slightest quaver in his voice. “As my last order as the commander of Chaldea, achieve a perfect victory. This is the end of the journey you and Matthew have arrived at.” Don’t die, he means. Then he’s gone, and all that remains is you and Goetia.This is the nature of the battle. For Goetia, victory can only be achieved by killing you. So long as you die the Servants will disappear and he will have the time left to complete his great work. For you, the terms are the same as ever. Surviving is victory. You only have to hold out long enough for the Servants to wipe out the last of the Pillars, and he will cease to be.He has nearly every advantage. From reach, to strength, to magecraft, in every aspect he surpasses you. The only reason you aren’t a mess of pulverized bone and tenderized flesh is the shield you’ve torn from the ground. Even then your arms shake with every blow he lands, the tell-tale pain of bones fracturing as fists like hammers slam into the metal. Your skin burns as the metal gradually heats up from the purple bursts of magic that he sends your way. But you have one advantage of your own, even as your head pounds from the pain.Goetia is dying. No, even more than that. For the first time he is realizing what it means to die. What it means to feel weak, to feel hopeless. It eats at him no matter how angry he is. The confusion and agony of his own body crumbling away, the hands trying to brutalize you breaking down finger by finger. He is afraid. Afraid that after everything he has done, it will all come to nothing. All his efforts and desires will crumble away. The future he has envisioned for himself has ended up as nothing more than a lie. Below him is a yawning emptiness, the gaping maw of an ending he will never know. Goetia will cease to be. The desperation eats at him. He must keep moving forward, he must defeat you, because if he doesn’t everything he is will be lost. You understand that. You really do. It is his first time ever feeling like this. At most it’s been a few minutes. For you, Ritsuka, well… that’s been your last year. If the battle is to endure, then you will win. Because Goetia does not know his limits. He’s never had them in the first place. And you are keenly aware of your own. You know the exact feeling when you have pushed yourself too much, too hard, until something broke. You see it in Goetia when he raises his hand for another thunderous blow and he staggers. An entire chunk falls off of his side and crumbles to dust, a dozen fistfulls of flesh gone in an instant.When you slam the shield right into him, he shatters like glass. What’s left of his torso slams onto the cracked floor of the temple. The rest of his lower body dissolves before it even hits the ground. For a moment, beaten and bleeding, you stand above Goetia. The bands of light remain utterly still. It’s finished.“We underestimated the value of humans,” he admits after a moment. Even anger finally seems to have left him. “We failed to measure your true worth. But to this extent? That we cannot defeat a single human, even in this state… It is unpleasant, but I will ask. Ritsuka. Why?”You could tell him anything, really. There’s more than a few reasons. But you take a moment to think of what lies ahead. A Chaldea left emptier, quieter than ever before. Those regrets that will follow you for the rest of your life. The countless Servants you will part with in turn. Then, the world you will have to return to. None of it will be easy; none of it will be painless. There’s no guarantee that you will be satisfied at the end of it. No, nothing is promised for you.Still, you smile. And Goetia is silent for a moment longer as he looks at your face. Then he laughs and laughs in that booming voice of his even as his world turns to dust. He laughs at the foolishness of it all; he laughs at the stubbornness of it all. That is how Goetia, Beast I, the King of Demon Pillars’ life ends.All that’s left is to leave. So you turn from this place, the throne of the temple, and run. Still lugging that shield even as it slows you down. Keeping a steady pace even as pain throbs bone-deep from your legs. You cast your gaze across the temple, even if only to distract you. There you see the world fall apart. Scorched stone drifts into the endless black depths below. Far away, you see the monstrosity that no one besides Gilles would have summoned sink into those depths. The stars have stopped falling. Instead there are only glimmers of light as the Servants depart. No matter what happens now, even if you slipped and fell and died, the world is saved. Maybe that’s why you can’t be too upset that someone is standing in your way. He is made in Solomon’s image, but his hair burns orange and gold like flame. He is missing an arm. Darkness spreads to his legs and even his face, unraveling him with each moment. Even now, Goetia is still falling apart. Or perhaps it’s more the thing born from Goetia has been made to die. But he still stands. The rings of Solomon hover around him. You know, even if you do everything in your power, if you try to just run you will fail. He will never allow it. Goetia looks at you now, he sees you and only you. He would cling to your legs and hold you back until he faded away if need be. You glance at the sky, and the bands of light are no more. “They’re gone. The Pillars, your Noble Phantasm, all of it. No matter what you do, that won’t change, Goetia,” you say. Not that you expect him to stop just because of that. If that could convince him, he wouldn’t be standing here before you now. So he answers your unspoken question. “I know. It is a meaningless battle. But I will not allow you to return. You will disappear here, with me, Ritsuka.” There is almost a sense of wonder in his voice. As if he is amazed at his own words, at his own resolve. Compared to before, even his body seems tranquil. It doesn’t violently break apart. He doesn’t tear at the seams with each exertion. Slowly, inevitably he fades away. But it doesn’t seem to bother him at all.Goetia looks at you with fresh, gleaming eyes. He looks as if he has never seen the world before, and it is almost achingly familiar. Even if nothing else about them is alike, that much is the same. And he asks something of you.“My nemesis. My hatred. My fate. Please witness it. In this brief time, this story given to me.”How many times have you heard such a thing? How many times have you done the one thing you can as a human and simply acted as a witness to the life of another? So that they will not be forgotten. So that their life would have meaning. Is there any worse fate to disappear into the void alone? Unseen and unmourned? You’ve made yourself sick with the thought of that nothingness before. You’d reject it to the end for anyone. ‘I am here. I am alive. My life, it had meaning!’ You would listen to those words for anyone, so at least they would know they are not alone. Even if it is for your enemy. Even if it is for Goetia, who burned the world. You struggle with him so you can go home, so you can live. You struggle with him so that there is at least one person who acknowledges him, who affirms his resolve. This life is his. This is the end of his journey. Pitying humans, cursing humans, turning his eyes from them. For the one who sought to remake the world for his sake alone, you fill the emptiness of losing everything with one final battle. And when Goetia’s life is finally extinguished once more, you cannot say if he had any more regrets. You do not know if until the end his heart quaked with sorrow and despair. But you know that whatever he faced in those last moments, he smiled. It is only a little farther then. You only need to struggle a little more, you know, and then you will be safe. You will be back in Chaldea. It is only a few steps and you will make it. You will go home, Ritsuka. Then the floor beneath your feet shatters. For a moment, you are suspended in time. You know what is below you. Infinitely deep and dark. It is the same vastness that sat outside of Chaldea all this time. That inky black nothingness which stretches on forever. You wondered once, how it would feel like to fall into it. Whether you would dissolve, or pop, or fall forever. But now you realize. You don’t want to know. You never wanted to know. You were just terrified to go on living as you were back then. You didn’t want to die, Ritsuka. And you don’t want to die now either. So even though there is no one, even though the sole human in this place is you, you reach out your hand regardless. You stretch your fingers towards the point that would take you back to Chaldea. It might as well be miles away, but you desperately grasp towards that place. Then a familiar hand grabs yours. Lavender eyes meet your own, and you don’t even think about how impossible it is that Matthew Kyrielight is here now, pulling you to safety. No, you accept it without a thought. Of course the one who would save you from the Incineration is Matthew. With one hand and a shout she pulls you out of that dying world into the future. And you smile. Not in spite of the suffering that will come. You smile and laugh because you are alive, Ritsuka, Because here and now, even if it isn’t for forever, you are alive with her. Your journey is far from over, yes. The squeezing of her hand alone tells you that. But you can only hope that for every step along the rest of the way, it will be with Matthew Kyrielight.That alone is enough.