#fate fic

Out of all the fucking moments the universe could have picked—out of all the minutes in the day and days in the year—it had to be this very fucking moment where Riven was hit with the realisation so hard that he could have sworn it winded him. 

Because amongst the chaos of clashing swords, screaming soldiers and roaring monsters, there was one thing that just felt so abundantly clear.

He loved Musa. 

He really fucking loved Musa. 

He was in love with Musa. 

“Riv, your left!”

It was purely instinct and years of training that had his body moving before the creature’s claws swiped at him. That had him raising both swords and swiping them downwards until the creature screamed in agony and burst into dust. 

“Stay focused!” Musa barked the order at him, her hair sticking to her sweaty skin and her chest rising and falling with quick pants. Her armour was stained with the blood of their enemies, her cheeks flushed with the rush of battle and he honestly never thought she looked prettier.

“I love you!” 

Musa froze before whirling around to face him, lips parted and eyes wide. “What?” 

“I love you,” he repeated once again, his heart thumping wildly in his chest that he was scared it was going to jump out. But he said with everything he had, he said it like he had never been more sure of anything else in his life and maybe he hadn’t been until now.

“Riven,” she said his name in a sigh before she stomped over to where he stood, staff tucked against one side before she reached for his face, pulling his head down until their lips met in a messy but passionate kiss. “You have shitty timing and I’m starting to question if you hit your head but I love you too, dumbass.” 

His eyes lit up. “You do?” 

“Yeah, so survive this so I can tell you again, would you?” 

She pauses in her step. I wait a pace, for her to match my stride again, and she does. She doesn’t look over.

“I don’t know.” I can hear in her voice she doesn’t like the answer. “I shouldn’t be here yet, and neither should you. It’s not our timeline. No…it’s not…our first timeline.”

Not our first?

I guess there’s the semantics of real and not real if you look at it as ours or not.

“So. An alternate reality?” I hazard. “A singularity?” God, I hope not.

“…”

I steal a look, and the line of her mouth is set. I didn’t expect her to look any specific way at all, I think, but somehow, it still wasn’t like that.

“…In our worst case, I think we have to consider it could be a Lostbelt…” she says finally, voice bitterly sad.

“A what?” I ask, glancing over, brow knit.

She looks back genuinely surprised, and then like she’s mentally kicking herself. “Oh, of course. You died before- …” She lets out a breath, and stops walking. “Could you…?”

I throw up a bounded field for sound, and across the plane of swords, just barely in line of sight, I see Mozart’s head shoot up, and him give me a look. God damn that little Caster is adept at sensing things.

“The singularities you repaired? The ones Goetia caused? They were made to make the timestream unstable, to destroy things with pinpoint attacks at major events in history. A Lostbelt is a similar concept, but instead of a specific time targeted for its significance, made to cause massive damage to the flow of time and the world as it was, it’s more like…You know how the basic theory of time itself, is that we stand on a point in a river? Time behind you is set. You’ve done it. But ahead of you, it splits, into billions of possible little streams.”

“Entropy,” I agree, “People misdefine it as the state of extant decay, but it’s not. It’s the lessening of futures, in a sense. Of potential futures. The more defined, final state of something, the lessening of potentials, as the energy of an object is spent from the potential, into the concrete.”

“Exactly,” agrees Queen Makeda, “Time can be viewed, in a sense, as just another object experiencing Entropy, experiencing a lessening of potential futures, as the energy for them is transferred from potential, into the existing world around us. A decision tree becoming set. A Lostbelt, is what happened when you died. It’s a calculated attack on the Earth—or, the original Earth—our Earth. Our…everything: history, lives, everyone who ever lived, everything ever gained, or lost, or sacrificed for, experienced, made. All of it. By going back to an earlier branch on the decision tree of time, as it were, and—with massive magical cost—diverting the flow of time into a different branch. A ‘Lostbelt.’ A world that was lost, that shouldn’t be, grown out of a decision that wasn’t made.”

“…And like time…” I say.

“…Only one branch can, in the end, be chosen,” she finishes with me. Our eyes meet, and I see the weight of it all.

It hurts. I wish to God I was still with Ritsuka. I—in a sense, no, in two very real senses, both here and there, I am. But, in a sense that hurts me right now, I’m also not. Not for either of them.

“…You think that’s what this is?” I ask, gesturing to the world around us. Shit, if it is, then…? What do we even do? Try to destroy it? I…

I can see Roman, up ahead, talking to Ritsuka. Congratulating her, tapping her shoulder, all excited and goofy and somehow full of hope still, after all the world has put him through. All he knows is waiting ahead, for it to ask of him and take. I can’t stand it. She’s a baby again, like when I first saw her. Not the young woman I left, whose last expression was horror and pain, who I left alone. The kid, the one who looked at me with the same surprise this one did, when I first met her, and then gave me a grin. Not broken yet.

They’re standing by Emiya, and I am struck by the look in his eyes. He must be exhausted. He usually hides it well--…hid, it well, in Chaldea. He made food for people. He was like a mom to the kids. But occasionally, in the worst of it, I’ve seen this look on him before. He had it when he was first summoned, and he had it at the Temple of Time; again, in Shinjuku, looking in a broken mirror. It’s a look like he’s trying to beat himself over an anvil into a shape that can hold up, hold out, just one more day. Something alive and dead, more than any heroic spirit I’ve ever known. I am struck by the look, because I have seen Ritsuka wear its shadow too, after the Temple of Time. I didn’t think about it before, but watching her now, without a hint of it on her face, I see its absence in his shadow.

I can’t, I think, an agony in my chest, I can’t kill them. I wouldn’t stand against my own, either. If they were attacked, I would protect them. But…to work against…any Roman, any Ritsuka. I just…

Could the universe really be so cruel? I wonder, knowing the answer, Would you dare to give me such a task after the last one? Could you really do that to him, to her? I look at Roman, Makeda.

“…No,” says the Queen of Sheba.

I turn to her.

“…'No’?”

She shakes her head. “I can’t rule it out. I know it’s possible, but…It’s…wrong, too.”

Wrong? “How so?” I ask, hope starting to spike.

She gives me a sorry smile. “I’m really not sure what specifics it’s safe to tell you, so I’m not going to share most until we’ve made that death-defying jump in your Shadow Border. All I can say is that I don’t think it’s a Lostbelt. I don’t know, because I only looked two weeks in the future, but…” She considers, bites a lip. “People are…missing.”

“People are missing,” I echo, trying to guess.

“And other people…are here. Who shouldn’t be. Not in a ‘this is another time,’ or ‘another version of time,’ way either. It’s…specific. Targeted, almost. Like….” Whatever it’s like, she doesn’t say. She looks past me, at some of the civilians, and I turn to look with her. It hasn’t even occurred to me that they might be significant, beyond me being glad we saved some people, of course. But, she’s picking specific ones out of the crowd one by one at lightning speed like she’s checking her answers on a math problem, and her expression says whatever she expected, she was right.

She turns back to me.

“I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you more, eventually, but.” She shakes her head.

“Right. The jump.” I agree. “We do need to survive that part.”

She puts a hand on my shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think this is Lostbelt. I don’t think it’s a Singularity either. I think it’s something very, very different.”

“Not an alternate universe then, old fashioned, pure and simple?” I ask hopefully.

She shakes her head, then hesitates and tilts it, thinking. “Maybe, but not pure and simple, if it is.”

“Can you…if not with the why, give me a hint at least to the what?” I ask.

She has taken a few steps already, but right at the edge of the bounded field I threw up, she pauses and turns to look at me. She thinks, and thinks again. Then meets my gaze with an expression I don’t know a way to describe. “In a word, ‘Life.’”

————————————

“You said that this whole…everything happening early, you think it’s simultaneity?” says Da Vinci with a grunt of effort on the last word.

Together, she and the Doctor lift a piece of armor plating, and I hold it in place at the top, from on the roof of what we’ve got of the car, as Robin attaches it.

I’m amazed at how strong she is, after the effort all four of them in the memory-transfer…walk…whatever it was, expended that hour they did it. I’ve never seen pure concentration leave anyone looking so drained—for his part, Emiya’s barely on his feet. He’s still going, waving his hands, summoning piece after piece after piece of this thing, with no end, but he looks like he’s about to throw up, and we spirits aren’t really supposed to do that anymore.

When they’d just finished, Da Vinci didn’t look a whole lot better, and neither did our two Masters, but she’s bounced back, hard. So has the Doctor—or, well, he’s putting a really brave face on and doing pretty well at least. My lord has insisted on helping, despite how much we tried to make her rest, but she looks even worse than Emiya, so she’s been asked to sort the smaller bolts and wires and circuits. Which she’s doing, with the dedication of a woman restoring a priceless painting.

She’s really something, I think, watching her carefully sort parts of the dashboard Emiya has made, hands shaking, but not dropping a single bolt.

I smile. It…feels a little odd on my face, after the last…I…I have no idea how long I was in there, I realize. Time blurred so much with half a neck, I couldn’t even guess. But surely weeks, maybe months. Still, everyone else is bouncing back from hardships so dedicatedly, I have to try and not let them down. And, I do feel more and more like my old self. It’s strange, to be part of a team this big as a heroic spirit, but I am used to it very much from my time alive. It makes me happy to be able to do it again.

“Kotarou, can you attach this to the top?” calls up Billy. He tosses some kind of antenna my way, and I catch it, pretty easily find the slot where it’s meant to go, and give him a nod.

“Well,” manages the Doctor, out of breath, as the piece of plating he was securing is welded in place and he’s free to let go, “It’s the only thing that makes sense—well, no, it still doesn’t. But, it’s the closest I can get.”

“I understand that,” says Da Vinci thoughtfully, turning and looking for her next part, and crying out an ‘Ah-ah-ahhhh!’ of extreme dislike as she sees Cu Chulainn going past with what I guess is a really delicate piece, and she snags the crystal-looking device from his hands and hugs it to her chest. He sighs in annoyance at her, but shrugs, and goes back to get something different. “—but,” she continues, turning back to the Doctor, who is on his way now to attaching a hubcap to one of the wheels, “That’s…well, it isn’t how simultaneity works.”

“Oh?” says David, sliding half out from where he’s welding part of the undercarriage.

“Yes.” She turns back to the Doctor. “Simultaneity doesn’t work in events causally connected.”

“That’s what I thought,” says one of the human civilians. The doctor and Da Vinci both look at her in surprise, having forgotten she was there. I didn’t. There were only a few of the humans who had skills that they were able to talk their way into being considered both useful and trustworthy enough to help in building this car, and who Queen Makeda OK’d from her look into the future, and she’s one of those few. She was also the girl who brought Miss Da Vinci a sketchbook to work on when this plan was pitched, and I noticed back when she did that that there were a lot of schematics drawn on the pad, meaning she must do some kind of scientific work. She’s been awful quiet since being handed transistors to affix to part of the cab, but I can tell she’s been listening.

I don’t really think she’s a threat—I mean, I don’t think any of the humans here are. Even if they ordinarily might be, it would be hard for any of them to have an allegiance counter to continuing to be alive. Just, it’s my job to protect my lord, so it’s better to be careful and not need it after all, than ignore potential threats no matter how unlikely, and later wish you hadn’t.

“Well,” says the doctor, stopping what he was doing and wiping his forehead with a sleeve. I guess he and Da Vinci reached the same conclusion as me, regarding the young woman because neither one seems deterred in talking by being reminded she exists. “As a theory, yes. But not if an active force faster than the speed of light is in play.”

The human girl tilts her head, thinking about that.

“Did you catch her name?” I ask Billy and David mentally, since they’re the two close enough to know who I’m talking about.

“No—sorry,” says Billy sheepishly, and a half-second later David very proudly says, “Well I did—It was Adele.”

Adele, Adele, I think, committing it to memory with the face.

“Okay. Sure…” says Da Vinci slowly, considering the point as Doctor Romani goes back to work, “But in that case, what would that force be? It can’t simply be an…aberration in perspective, you seeing, or, experiencing events two months before they happen. Either you would have to be…living, or something, at a speed faster than the natural state of existence itself, or he and you would have to be traveling normally, but the incineration itself, would have to be happening at a speed so much faster than light that…”

He's nodding.

“But…this didn’t happen the-“ She stops mid-sentence and rolls in her lips in with a whoops look on her face.

He turns his head to watch her.

She gives a ‘haha ^u^' ‘ look back. I don’t know what either of them are thinking, but after a moment, she sighs, and says, “…You know I’m from a time in your future. I know from you, that this isn’t the way it happened.”

…But…then.

“…So, something changed…” he says with interest, brows furrowing. He sets down his wrench and turns, still sitting, to face her.

“Not just one thing. Unless it changed quite a while ago, and it butterfly effected a lot,” she says, voice lower. I can hear her from up top, and David can, I’m sure, from under the car, but I’m not sure anyone else could at all, even Adele – maybe Billy though.

“…You couldn’t say what?” he asks her.

She thinks, then slowly shakes her head. I am very sure it’s the truth, because she looks so genuinely annoyed by her answer.

“Maybe not as much as I think,” she offers after a moment, letting out a breath. Absently, she tosses the crystal in her hands from resting most of its weight in one palm, to the other. “For all I know, it felt like this to anyone caught outside in the incineration of humanity. It took a whole year the first time, for it to finish, from Chaldea’s perspective, once it began. Maybe the only real difference is that you weren’t in the same place.”

The Doctor thinks, then nods. “I hope you’re right,” he says, offering her a slightly worried smile, “I think that’s the best case answer for us all.” He goes back to his work on the tire, and then adds, “I wouldn’t worry about the displacement itself as being the root issue—the entire incineration is based on disrupting time. Of course some things would, or at least could, get severely broken. I think we’re better off trying to figure out the why here. That’s the part that worries me.”

Da Vinci nods to herself. She glances at him and watches him fondly, like a family member, and then smiles. “Well, you gave me a lot to think about. Thank you.”

“Keep me posted, if you figure anything o—”

“—Oy, lovebirds! He seems fine with a walk and talk, but you gonna stand there with an engine component all day, or get back to it? We’re on a schedule,” snaps Cu Chulainn as he passes Da Vinci, deeply peeved.

As interested as I am in their conversation, I think I’m with him on this one. I’m not sure how much longer Emiya can hold out, and I don’t want to find the answer to that the hard way. My Lord looks so hopeful and calm right now, working on her part of the Border, but I still remember the look on her face when we thought it was a bomb, back in the city, and there was nothing we could do about it. I don’t want to lose again. Not for this Master.

“Sor-ry for breathing for thirty seconds,” says Da Vinci, both very wrong about the amount of time that took, and clearly not actually mad at all. She hefts her crystal and vanishes inside the border after him.

It’s a lot of work, finishing the border, but with all three of the casters working together, the initial memory-transfer went fast enough that at least we aren’t under a time crunch. I mean—w-we are, but, not a worse than expected one. All told, there’s a lot less panic than I expected from the situation.

I mean, I know I’m off my game—I’m still trying to, in an almost literal sense, put my head back on straight. I almost wish the throne took memories passively during a summon right now, because I’d love to spend less time thinking about the last month—it’s slowing me down, and I can’t be like that. I have to be at maximum efficiency always, for any lord worth serving. And with the entire world at stake?

It's…terrifying. I mean, thank luck it’s not just me, not by a long shot, but this? …Heroic spirits are used to threats, but aside from maybe the Counter Force agent, we mostly don’t get called in on retainer for End of the World on this scale. I really want to do a good job. And yet, it’s not as bad or as terrifying, as it should be. Maybe because it’s so many of us? I think that at first, but, no. I don’t really think that’s it either. As the Border comes together, and I watch, and work, I think it’s for a lot of reasons. It’s like…watching a weaver finish a blanket, pulling on the loom, threads lining up and winding together just right, to make the correct image when it’s finished. Doctor Romani is capable and calm, friendly, a little bit humorous. It’s hard to imagine a more likable man to follow, even if he doesn’t always exude battle confidence. That makes sense to me though, I mean, he’s medical staff. His job is a good bedside manner. His job is to heal.

Wait, that’s not right, I think, helping Robin lower the last part of the engine into the front while Billy starts to secure it, He’s not. Not really. But then again, yes, he is. He’s just a lot of things, now, I guess.

I should be reassured to have what (although he hasn’t mentioned it) if my memories from the throne are right, and despite how ruined my head is right now, I’m pretty sure they are, a Grand Caster with us. Even without his spirit origin, his knowledge alone should be the most comprehensive a person could wish for. But, funny enough, that knowledge is not what’s helping the most. It helped, sure—his memory partition idea worked wonders, and the Border, a chain summon—but it’s his demeanor that’s making this run smooth. It’s the Doctor-ness. And he and his new caster—or, Da Vinci—they work like two shoes in the same set. Even though he doesn’t know her, her knowledge of him seems to be enough to find a rhythm immediately, and I guess, him being a former spirit, a relationship only one party remembers being picked up again is hardly news.

On top of that, Ritsuka is great, not just as a master, but she is spending a lot of time working with the civilians. They were angry, and scared, and who could blame them for it? Now, the ones who can help are attaching drive chairs to the Border, and the ones who can’t are helping take care of the injured, or keeping the few kids here calm, working out a shift schedule for sleeping, handing out food. I think my new lord would make a great community organizer.

Probably most important, and largely because of her and the first young civilian man who started trying to help her out there, whom I've heard her call Patxi, their mood has changed. Or, maybe their outlook. In only a few hours, they’ve become hopeful, and united. It’s a real sight.

And then, of course, there’s the other spirits. It would always be reassuring to have a reliable seer, so the Queen is very welcome, as is her assurance we’re going to make it through this. But the others? It’s funny. Like they mentioned right before the world ended, they seem to have, except for me, all come in sets. It can’t be coincidence. I believe in chance and fate both, a give and take of free will and destiny at war, but I know enough to know when something was happenstance for sure, and when it definitely wasn’t. One or two of us would be nothing, but the entire set? That’s too much coincidence to be coincidence. Especially with the Doctor pulling his own set immediately here. The Archer, Emiya, and his Lancer—they know each other. Despite their bickering, Cu Chulainn is like a hawk, trying to make sure the man stays alive, and Emiya always relies on him first, if anyone, in battle. I think maybe they were rivals, based on the sort of strange…frenemyship, that they have going. Billy and Robin are best friends, excited to be together. And then of course, Salieri and Mozart are tied by life and death both, even by nature, on Salieri’s end. It would be hard for anyone to be more connected, except perhaps David and the Doctor, by blood.

It has been helpful, in a way that cannot be accounted for in any other means. There is a trust that doesn’t need building, at least within sets, the ability to predict and work together has at least halved our difficulty and time on most of what we’ve been trying to do.

Which leaves me.

I am not at all unhappy to be here—I am very, very lucky. Not just to be rescued, but, to be working with someone like Miss Fujimaru. But…I don’t fit. I’ve met Robin, once, but I don’t remember it. I think it must have just been a mage ritual, and probably one of us killed the other. It was nothing of significance. Nothing with grudge, or friendship. Business, and fast, and impersonal, and not one that left anything but an echo on either of our memories. So then…why?

As the hours slip past a full day, and into the second, I keep wondering this.

I feel like…there must be an answer. How can everyone come in sets, but me? How can everyone have a clear purpose here, but me? I see the two new Casters whispering together some, and I hear the Queen of Sheba say something about fate, like a pattern, like a game of chess. I don’t hear the context.

But I think. I am always thinking. It is my duty, because I have someone to keep safe.

So, if it is a tapestry someone wove, like my instincts told me, then what thread am I? If it is a game of chess, if there is a reason, or a pattern, or fate. If there is anything at work here, but chance, and I feel so, so deeply certain in my gut that there is, then…why me?

I cannot find an answer. I look from every angle. Connection first, then purpose. Billy was the first. Emiya had the reality marble, and got Ritsuka her crest. Robin Hood I am told by Billy, kept Ritsuka alive by figuring out a way to make her invisible, and Cu Chulainn kept everyone alive at Ur Shanabi. Doctor Romani has knowledge. King David saved his life. Mozart made the summons here possible. Salieri saved Mozart. Sheba and Da Vinci are saving us now. So, why me?

I helped, in Mercury’s battleground. I am helping now. But, would they have needed me? Besides which, if I hadn’t been at Mercury, they wouldn’t have needed me for help with the aftermath at all. Everyone else was at Ur Shanabi. I was the only reason they went to Mercury. So why? Why me?

It’s not some…feeling of inadequacy. I’m an assassin; I know I’m weaker than most classes, and that’s okay. I am what I am, and I have my strengths as well as weakness. We all do. It’s just…I’m afraid, that if there is a reason, which there must be, I’m missing it. And that that is a mistake. That because of it, I will make some…error, in someone else’s cosmic chess game I just can’t quite make out, and it will cost the best master I’ve ever had. It…disquiets me. So, I keep thinking. I keep thinking, and thinking, and thinking, but I don’t find.

A few hours before the border’s completion, which should land a good ten hours before our deadline, still lost in these thoughts, I feel a tap on my shoulder.

“Sorry. Am I in the way?” I ask Da Vinci, who stands behind me.

“Yeah—if you could scoot a little,” she says, reaching over and past me onto the dashboard, affixing a screen to it. I duck out of the way and take a step back, reminding myself to finish connecting the wires I was halfway through whenever she’s finished.

It takes a few seconds, and she straightens up and turns, and as she does she glances at me, then gives me a long once-over.

“…What?” I ask a little nervously, all things considered.

“Nothing,” she says, what sounds honestly, “It’s just interesting.”

Interesting? “Me being here?” I guess.

She begins to step past me, then pauses, glancing past, to the people in the back of the Border, attaching seatbelts to the many, many rows of seats. Maybe, I think, looking for people she doesn’t want to overhear.

“Yeah,” she says, satisfied by who she sees, or, doesn’t, “I told you I know all of you, except the Avenger.”

I give a nod. “I’m…sorry,” I think to add, after a second, “That I don’t remember you.”

She smiles. “Eh, it hasn’t happened to you yet. I don’t think you could. Although I’ll be very offended if you forget me now.” She preens happily.

I smile on impulse. A very interesting woman.

“Okay.” Ritsuka’s voice, from outside, and a second later, she steps in. “I think all that’s left is the protective coating, and the seats, right?” she asks, spotting Da Vinci.

Da Vinci gives a nod. Ritsuka beams, relieved. “Well, and a few wires and such on the dash, but it’s easy stuff left,” adds Da Vinci.

Right. I step past her and resume my own work.

“What else can I do?” asks Ritsuka, “Should I help with the seats, or mapping out where people are going to go?”

“Mmmm,” considered Da Vinci, “Do mapping—you’ve talked to the civilians probably the most, so you’ve got a good idea of family units that’ll put up a fight about being separated.”

“You got it,” says Ritsuka.

She starts to go, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Da Vinci watching her. “Ritsuka,” she calls, when my lord is almost out the door. Ritsuka pauses on the step up, and glances back. “What would you say is the reason everyone is working so hard here? You too?” She sounds as if she’s puzzling something big slowly out in her head.

“The reason?” echoes Ritsuka, brow furrowing. She starts to answer, but then, seeing the look on Da Vinci’s face, she pauses to think harder about the answer.

Watching her, I feel a flicker inside my head, and I’m suddenly getting memories that aren’t mine—they’re hers. I have no skill like this. Maybe it’s the mystic code Da Vinci made for the memory transfer, that she’s still wearing, linking up on accident somehow, or maybe she’s thinking so hard she’s thinking at me on accident, with the link between Servant and Master, I-I don’t know, but either way, I see a sudden flood of thoughts like a flurry of snapshots and six second clips.

I see Patxi, who was the first of the civilians inside Blade Works to start helping her, offering her a hand and telling her to stand up and fight for it. I see her memory of Cu Chulainn ready to go ahead and die, because he was free, and Emiya pushing for them to get the Doctor to save him. Salieri, and Mozart, and the things they say to each other all strung together, heavy and light and a little jarring. The way Billy reacted, to what must have been finding Robin in Ur Shanabi, pistol whipping someone into a wall and sliding to a rest by the bed. And then I see her point of view of the way Billy talked to me. It makes the bottom of my stomach drop out, seeing my head half off in that trap in her memory, but she remembers it so much clearer than I do, and there’s something I’m deeply grateful to see, in the way Billy looks sick, taking a knee by me. She thinks of what I said to her, when she freed me, like it’s as important as these other memories. I see someone I think is the cowboy, in a trap very different from mine. Then memories of mages, things they said to her at Ur Shanabi about us being dead familiars, followed by a pile of memories of the ways we talk to each other, and to her. It almost breaks me, to see it like this. I don’t know if I’ve seen anything as beautiful, since I died, as the way this girl remembers us.

She thinks then of what must be her mom and dad, and a brother, they look so much like her. Eating a meal, fishing, her and the brother play-fighting over a game. And she replays moments of fear, again and again. Some of them I haven’t even heard the other spirits talk about. I see monsters, of all kinds, and humans with guns, mages, and threats, and I feel pain as her hand breaks, and she’s thrown back, as she falls, and the overwhelming terror she felt in the city, when the skyline began to dissolve.

And still. Those memories are tempered, by memories of everyone else here. Of their fear, and of their hope. Adele with her sketch book running up to help, with no idea what monsters who ruined her world we might be. Of Patxi helping her organize. Of the people sharing snacks, and bandaids, and ripping up shirts to hold a broken bone in place with one of the sheathes of a sword from this empty reality marble holding us up as the last bastion on earth.

The moment of connection breaks as she refocuses on Da Vinci, and I cannot look away, nor do I want to. There is a feeling in my chest I didn’t know before.

“Isn't it obvious?” says Ritsuka. “To live.”

.

—————————

.

“Preliminary systems, online!” calls Da Vinci.

“…Did you really have to put that right here?” I ask, feeling the most uncomfortable I think I’ve ever felt in my life.

“YES,” comes her absolutely untruthful reply.

I do my best not to look at it as I flip the last of the ignition switches, and slide forward to lock the captain’s chair into jump position. To help power the border’s calculations, and to operate a jump with as much precision as possible, Da Vinci has constructed and entered some horrible human-sized tank of bio-gel and hooked herself up to this massive apparatus, and the biometrics-to-mechanics streamline I get, but why she had to bolt the damn thing to floor literally three feet from me so there’s a giant glowing blue vat of scantily clad genius woman looking down on me at all times, I cannot begin to understand. Honestly, at this point, I think she and Makeda both are just having fun kicking the shit out of my walking corpse.

Well, I think, closing my eyes and trying to regain a little composure, At least if we all die in a few seconds, you can look her in the face and say something snippy with your last breath.

Weirdly comforting.

“Wonderful! And we’re almost ten hours ahead of schedule!” says my father happily, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat and swiveling it into the lock position beside me.

“Get out of that. It’s for Makeda,” I say.

“What? Why?” he asks, trying so hard to look hurt, “She can’t have any more experience driving a modern vehicle than I do.”

“The only heroic spirit here with any experience driving modern vehicles is Emiya,” I say flatly, “Makeda can look into the future.”

He clicks his tongue in disappointment and, when he can’t figure out how to un-lock the seat, just unbuckles the strap and crawls off over the top.

I put my head in my hands.

“There, there,” comes Makeda’s voice.

Dammit. Didn’t want her to see that.

I feel her hand on my shoulder, a reassuring squeeze, and then she taps the unlock on the seat, and slides into place on my left side, reaching up to flip her array of switches in the same sequence I just set mine.

“This is your technical advisor speaking,” comes Da Vinci’s voice through the P.A. system she’s using while inside the biogel vat, “We’re about to take off for Zero Sail. Everyone, if you could please take your seats, buckle-up, make sure all carry-on objects are stored in the proper bins, and lock your tray tables in the upright position.”

“That last part’s a joke,” I say, tapping the P.A. button myself, “There are no tray tables, but please do buckle up.”

The border is using a very basic, but sturdy, space warping spell to be bigger on the inside than its shell. This thing is massive and built like a tank, but it’s hardly a size to accommodate our over 200 passenger loadout, so thank heaven that was already part of the original design.

Beside me, Makeda checks a screen on the console, watching an array of 196 passenger seats to make sure they all indicate safety measures met, plus one in the back, and eight up front, for the heroic spirits and Ritsuka, the captain and co-captain seats for Makeda and me, and then of course Da Vinci’s weird little gel tube. Two-Hundred and Eight. That’s all of us, I think as I watch all but the last one, Emiya’s, lock one by one into flight ready.

“We’re sure about this?” I ask Makeda, even though I was the one who made this call in the first place.

She nods. “You could leave him, and have Ritsuka use her last command seal to call him after us, but you don’t need it. Running out of energy to sustain a reality marble causes it to end, as does any other means of countering it, such as breaking the user’s cast, or countering it. Dragging the caster into the void sea is an unusual way to do it, but it’ll break the cast, and it won’t break the cast until we’re all out of it, because being out of it is what will cause him to drop the reality marble. Just like you said.”

I take a breath. At the very back, I see the light indicating Emiya’s seat’s flight readiness turn green.

“I saw it, too,” says Makeda, knowing what I was hoping she’d say.

It’s weak to want that kind of reassurance. I know it. But the day I’ve had…

“Thank you,” I say, meaning it, and I give her a shaky smile. She returns it, hers like a sunbeam.

“Aaaaalright!” calls Da Vinci over the P.A., “Please stay calm, and at no point try to leave your seats until the ride is over. Keep in mind, this is a hell of journey we’re about to take, and it involves an unrecommended amount of screwing with physics and magecraft, so it is absolutely imperative that if you seem to see yourself leaving your body and floating up, you make the conscious choice to go back down into it! It’s your body folks. Just keep thinking that, and you’ll all be fine.”

“Yeah,” I click on the P.A. myself, “Uh. This is the resident doctor speaking. Please, do your best to focus on your breathing, and the reality around you. If you feel inclined to shut your eyes, think about the sensation of your hands against the armrests, and focus on that. Please ask the names of the people immediately to your sides, and if they begin to look unwell right after the jump, say their name until you get a response. So long as we do that, I promise, everything is going to be okay. This will be a little bit bumpy, because we’re driving a tank over a hill of swords, but don’t worry. There’s no physical obstacle ahead. Just stay calm, focus together, and it’ll all be alright.”

I feel eyes on me and glance over as I turn off the P.A., and I see Da Vinci looking happily down at me.

It’s so strange. I truly can’t doubt her account that she knows me. Everything about her makes me sure it’s true. But, it’s still strange. Even as a heroic—well—having been a heroic spirit, still, the sensation of someone knowing you deeply, when you don’t know them, it’s not a thing you can encounter enough for it not to feel strange to you.

At least it seems like I made a good impression, I think, and I start the ignition.

“Here we go,” I say to Makeda.

“Here we go,” she echoes with considerably more enthusiasm, closing her hands around the co-pilot steering wheel.

I flex my fingers once, then do the same, and hit the gas.

We take off with enormous speed, zero to one-hundred, and I hear shouts and screams form behind me, but it’s surprise, not fear. They’re holding together well—amazingly well, for what they’ve all been through.

The adults are, at least. A few of the children seem to not be taking it so well. I--I wish I’d had something to give them, to make it easier. If we’d had more time, I-

“OooooH, the wheels on the bus go round-and-round!” a boy’s voice starts to sing at full volume.

I think it’s the Russian boy who’s been helping Ritsuka so much—Patxi. The song is absolutely too young to be the mood choice for the age of the kids with us, but every one of them knows it, and after a second, I hear several terrified children’s voices, and motivated parents, join in just the same. The space behind me becomes just a blur of sound to me after a few seconds as the engine kicks up a gear and roars, but I can tell it’s worked, and I’m glad for it.

There’s a sudden calmness with the thought. I almost laugh.

She was right, I think, glancing at Makeda as we near our target speed, tearing through these mountains of sand and sword, Of course we were going to make it like this.

“Speed!” I call to Da Vinci.

“Understood! Expanding Void-Reality Observation Device: Paper Moon!” calls Da Vinci through the P.A., “Destination: Chaldea Base, Antarctica! Expanding Logic Formula on the Shadow Border’s external armor; removing existence verification for Reality Space—now! Future Prediction: hypothetically prove mirror world plane in twenty seconds! Relaxing space-time friction decompression for 0.4 seconds. Systems all Green.”

This is it. I close my fingers hard around the wheel and focus on my own existence with every fiber of my being.

“Shadow Border, untether from reality! Void Space Dive, Zero Sail: unfurl!”

There is a sensation like one gets if they drive over a hill to quick, or drop fast on a roller coaster, but not just in my stomach. It comes from every direction at once, like a wave of queasiness, and I see myself floating above my body and force myself to focus on going back in. Not. How. I’m. Dying!

“Holding!” calls Da Vinci’s voice, “Zero Sail successful! Emerging again from void space in thirty seconds! Everybody hang tight—we’re almost there!”

This has got to be the most agonizing thirty seconds of my life, I think, trying not to vomit. Despite the abject terror, I feel a strange thrill with it though. I’m no adrenaline junkie, so it kind of shocks me. I think it must just be that as backed into a corner as I am right now, I’ve felt this way for years now. And this is the first time I’m jumping into hell with a group of people I trust, to rely on. Somehow, even in the middle of this, that feels good.

Behind me, I heard the song stop when we jumped, and shouts with it, but there is sound from our citizen passengers again. They’re doing what I told them. I hear a lot of voices calling a symphony of names and reassurances. I hear Ritsuka’s voice, and Kotarou, just behind me, among them.

Beside me, I look up and see Da Vinci’s eyes practically glowing, a grin plastered on her face. Of course, I think, weirdly reassured by that, How else can a genius get her kicks? Makeda doesn’t look any more normal, though. When I glance at her, she’s also beaming adrenaline rush at the dashboard, fingers dug into the console and eyes sparkling. Aaaand how can a prophet get hers.

I sigh. Well. We’re doing this.

And somehow, that must be time, all together, because I hear Da Vinci call out:

“Annnnd, four, three, two, one! Begin jump out!”

The Border makes a horrible sound, but seemingly encouraged by it, Da Vinci calls, “Activating Paper Moon! Initiate planet navigational chart plus/minus convergence. Commencing Shadow Border docking sequence into reality boundary: disengage mirror world plane voyage! –Though the stratum divides, I continue to exist. Reapplying timeflow attraction from Reality Space. 0.09 second difference between target coordinates and current recognition—hell yes! Almost perfect! Here we go people; Emerging from Void Space! Ten seconds to arrival in Reality Space again!”

Ten, I think, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two—

There is a flash of light so intense I have to shut my eyes, and the same sickening stomach-drop all along your body sensation as when we went in, and the next second there is a physical thud, and I’m opening my eyes and fighting for my life to pull the border even as it hits solid ground and drifts, hard, exiting into reality at speed.

“Zero sail complete!” comes Da Vinci’s voice, “Reality Space entered successfully! Congrats everyone, we lived!”

“AH!” I scream, Makeda with me, as we are greeted with the sight of conference room wall coming up on us at almost two-hundred miles an hour.

WE’RE INSIDE! FUCK! OF COURSE WE’RE INSIDE!! THERE WAS NO WAY TO KNOW THE OUTSIDE IS INTACT! DAMN IT!!

I slam the gas to get traction as I yank the wheel. “THE DOOR!” I call to Makeda. She gets it and drags her wheel with me, and we barely make the conference room door, flattening six tables and any number of chairs in our way, taking half the door frame with us, and shooting out into the hallway at the most horrible speed possible. We slam the breaks with some room to do it now, but the end of the hall is coming up too fast, and I call out, “LEFT!” as I spot a hallway branch up ahead. We hit it with so much speed we’re driving on the wall for a second as we pull almost a ninety-degree turn to keep from going through the wall, tire tracks on the blue-white, sterile Chaldea Security Base walls. I hear all kinds of sirens going off in the building, and shouts, from inside and out. Oh God, help.

Having foresight I forget in the moment, Makeda slams on the horn as we tear down the hallway, and I see three staff members physically fling themselves through doorways to avoid being roadkill. Shitshitshitshit—

We’re down to almost eighty now, and slowing. Where are we—think! Oh thank heaven—that’s the hall to the command room up ahead.

“LAY ON THE HORN!” I call, swapping sole driver control to my wheel and dragging us left, hard, and then through a sturdy pair of double doors that thank God aren’t locked, and blow open, before slamming the wheel to the side as hard as I can and pulling the break, letting the border drift to a stop in the center of the massive room, destroying two work stations and a massive screen on the way as I wince.

Finally, the horrible thing stops, in the literal smoke of its rampage, on the center of the command room floor.

“…Did we survive?” calls Amadeus from behind me.

“Yes!” I manage, looking over my shoulder, and then at Makeda’s screen. Seats all still green. “Anyone hurt?”

There’s chatter, but no ‘yes,’ so I take that as a good sign, and collapse in relief against my console, turning the engine off.

There’s a whoop from Billy, and the entire machine erupts in cheers behind me.

“Congratulations on a successful voyage everyone! Welcome back,” comes Da Vinci’s exceptionally pleased voice from the P.A.

Collapsed and glad to be, I feel Makeda put a hand on my shoulder. “Thanks,” comes my muffled voice from through my arm.

“Told you we’d make it,” I hear her say proudly.

Yeah. You did. Have I ever been this tired before? No, I don’t think so. We really made it. I stay in my puddle of relieved, exhausted nerves, until I hear someone say, ‘Can we go out?’, and everything terrible reboots at speed and I shoot up.

“No! No—wait!” I call, tripping over myself in my hurry to unbuckle. I get caught going over the seat and have to hop to right myself. “Hang on! We uh—we just tore through the indoor halls of a security organization in an unregistered, military vehicle that sort of teleported inside a bounded field! Let me go out first—they know me. I can, uh, talk them into—” I had been going to say ‘not shooting us’, but there’s 196 scared civilians staring at me, so I manage, “Uh—cooling off about that. Give me a second.”

I hold up a hand towards the passengers, glance back at Makeda and my new Technical Advisor, then walk to the side door.

Oh, Olga Marie is going to have my head for this. I wish I’d thought about that part and what to say, just a little.

Taking a breath, I open the door.

To my absolute lack of shock, there are about fifty staff members with guns trained on me.

“Wait wait! It’s me!” I call, hands immediately up.

“…Doctor Archaman?” call one of them.

He lowers his gun, and I recognize him.

“Duston?” ask, taken aback. W-What is an engineer doing security’s job fo- …

No, I recognize more than just him. As the others slowly follow suit, I realize I know almost everyone here at a glance. Four of them work in the medbay.

“How did you get-?” asks Dustin, looking from me to the Border, “When did you get…?”

“What is going on?” I ask genuinely, taking a step out, “Where-“

Immediately I am doubled-over by an immense pain in my head, a wave of thoughts and images and feelings that aren’t mine—or—they are? A-Are they? W-what---what is…?

I must have fallen, because the next thing I’m aware of is my father holding me, trying to help me up, Dustin a foot away now, asking if I’m alright. I don’t know how either of them got where they are.

What’s happening, I think, blinking, trying to clear my head, That can’t have. W-Which can’t have…?

I look up, and no, my father’s really here. That must have…have all happened. He’s holding my arm. Behind him, I see the Shadow Border, see Makeda at the top of the steps, with Ritsuka. But then. …

“Where’s Mash?” I manage as I make it back to my feet, leaning on my father.

“She’s in her room, resting after the Rayshift,” says Dustin, “Like you told her to.”

Oh no. But. That can’t. That’s not…

Whatever hit me before, I feel it building up in my head, and I almost lose my footing, dig my fingers into my father’s arm to keep upright.

“Rayshift?” Da Vinci’s voice. Still wet and barely dressed, I see her in my periphery stepping off the Shadow Border behind me.

I give her a panicked look, kind of hoping somehow she can explain to me what just happened, because my mind is failing to pull an explanation.

“I don’t…understand…?” says Dustin, looking from me, to the Shadow Border, then at the staff around him. “Who is that—who are they? And…Sir?”

The pain swells in my head, a barrage now. It feels like the jump in the Border did, when I was looking down at my body, but in reverse. Like I’m too much jammed in at once. I know what’s happening then, and simultaneously, I don’t.

“I-I’m sorry.” I manage to find my father’s face through the way my head is swimming, and I focus on him. Do my best to lean into him. “I can't explain fast enough. I’m going to be alright—I won’t die; don’t worry. But I think I am going to faint now, and I might be out for a couple of hours. Thank you.”

I go out with the words like a light, my last thought how hard the floors are here, and that I sincerely hope he will catch me.

.

————————————————

.

.

Timeline: Two Months, Eighteen Days, Twelve Hours Forward. Coordinates: -4.R48X91, -R1.559X48 Graph: 10912.1313

.

Blood tastes like nothing in my mouth; I only know it from its smell:

Sharp, harsh, and routine.

“Got another one not burned out just yet.” The voice is casual, and close, but clipped too. Mercenaries, or military, something with practice and rank and an order. I know he’s talking about me.

“Leave it,” says the leader, “The more juice we get out of this, the better.”

“You sure?” asks the first man. I feel a boot nudge my right shoulder. Despite the injury there it aggravates, it doesn’t even rate in my head as pain against the background of everything else. “Can’t be too careful with a Servant.”

“It’s an Archer,” comes the second voice again. Closer. “They’re just like this. Burn out slower than the rest, without a source sustaining them. It’s not a skill to be worried about. He’s won’t get up and shoot you.” A gun fires, and I feel a bullet shatter my right shoulder. Usually a human weapon shouldn’t do that to me, but he’s not wrong. I’m all but dead already. And that one, I do feel.

“See?” comes the leader’s voice again. “Come on. We’re breaking camp. Just leave the system up and running. We’ll skim off what we can on the way. We’ll probably get a decent amount, even if they’re up less than another half hour.”

There are more orders barked, unimportant exchanges, sounds, and a small group moves out around me and leaves.

It becomes almost quiet.

Minutes pass. Just the sound of trees somewhere lush and a little humid. Bugs, some small creatures in the underbrush. And the churning, loud, irritating thud of the engine in their magecraft machine kicking over and over, the thrum of the stakes still operational.

It’s not just mine, I think slowly, trying and failing, like I have been since waking, to get my vision to clear.It’s been three fourths of an hour, but still, I can hear the thrum of stakes other than the one through me. He said ‘another.’ But how many now? I listen, try to hear it past the much louder machine. Focus on frequency. …Three. I hear three distinct, operational stakes. There are two more of us still breathing.

Almost as I think it, though, I hear a whir, and a thrumming stake winds down.

One more.

Me, and one other.

I can barely remember what happened. We were summoned into the middle of it. Chaos. Like being materialized into a woodchipper. Sounds and light, magecraft resonating inside my head. I can’t imagine what it even was, or why. This isn’t supposed to happen. How can they have known?

It’s what I keep thinking. They didn’t summon us. I know, because I didn’t accept a contract. I heard no order given to a single one of us, no command seal, no nothing. It was Alaya. I was brought by the world, by the Counter-Force. We all were. So how. How could they possibly know when and where it would drop us?

It isn’t…it can’t happen. But I can’t ignore the fact it has.

And every last one of us, we’ve failed.

Me and the other poor bastard here still bleeding out too.

I don’t even know who the others were. I didn’t have time to know.

They can’t have known. You can’t set a trap like that at a summon you didn’t create. How. How?!

The Counter Force has one fucking job. I am angry with it. It failed here.

There’s no point in cursing it, but there is nothing left to do but curse.

How was it so effective?! As many of us as there were, how did that trap account for everything Alaya brought? How can they have known?

There’s no point in wondering that either. There’s no point in anything. Even this clinging to life.

And still.

Still, won’t any living thing try to survive? Even half living. Even un-alive?

I guess I don’t really need a point. I don’t usually have one anyway.

I am on my stomach, a rod the width of a tank barrel, clear through my back, about six feet up and another four at least past me into the ground, pinning me. There are sigils in it, sigils in the carved lines on the ground, diverting the magic it leeches out of me to whatever machine is making the thudding fifteen feet off. I can’t even turn my head far enough to see past a few inches off the ground. I can only see part of a tent, and two empty poles, where things like me have already died and vanished. The last of us is past my feet, and no matter how I contort myself, there is no way to turn my head to see them. I could call out, I guess, but what would be the point? We will both die anyway. We will both forget this ever happened in a few minutes. I can’t even be sure they’d be awake to hear me in the first place, and the effort would only kill me sooner.

No point at all.

The second to last hum is gone, then, and any decision beyond that is made for me.

Just me, I realize with an emptiness as the air here grows closer to silence and I feel a presence fade completely.

At least once I am gone, it will be quiet here.

For a moment, I blearily watch my arm and hand, the deep gold crackles along darkened skin, like some sick joke, the way it could evoke kintsugi in the mind, and is the opposite.

What was ever the point?

Obstinate despite the impossibility for some reason, I take a breath and reach up behind me with my left arm, until I find the stake. Agonizingly, I force myself to lift the now badly damaged right arm too. Torn up from the summoned, clinging to materialization by a thread, I just barely get both hands up behind my back, and wrap them around the edges of the pillar sucking what’s left of my materialization away. It’s sharp. What does it matter, I think, and I pray the kind of prayer someone who doesn’t believe in praying anymore gives when facing the barrel of a gun, and I dig my fingers into the cool stone and rip up with all my might.

The pillar slices through my fingers.

I cry out and drag my hands back down, shaking. I feel the tears like a heartbeat in my hand, sharp and ragged. My right hand is severed, only a thumb I can feel left on it now, and as I drag my left back into focus by my head, I see on it the stubs of four fingers and the thumb, cut clean through, and lacerations across the palm that almost sliced it in half completely. I no longer have the appendages to try again.

That really is it, then.

Exhausted, I relax the muscles I still have, and I wait, the thudding of the machine sucking my last dregs of energy away impossible to truly turn out.

My vision blurs, and I let it. There’s no reason to expend the energy now, to try. I can’t get free, and I can’t win a fight. It’s time to let go.

It’s only death, I think. Death is hardly a friend, but it is old, and I know it better than even myself at this point. So, I wait as the blood pools.

…and wait...

The curse of being an Archer class persists. What must be another quarter hour slips through me, before I begin to see the half a hand I have left turning transparent at last.

Thank God, I think in nothing but exhaustion.

It is then that I hear something coming through the trees. It’s east, from behind and to the right of me. Before, I could have turned my head, but even that much effort now would kill me. That shouldn’t matter, but I am too tired to care.

I wait, and listen.

Movement, branches and leaves, and then footfalls. Not before. Before, it was flying or riding. But about fifteen feet off, it begins to walk.

I can feel energy too. Whatever is coming, it’s strong.

It approaches me from behind, and stops by my back for a moment, then a bare foot steps into my twelve inches of blurry vision, and then another. There are intricate spirals of gold wound around the ankles. I try to look up at their owner, but I no longer have the strength to lift my head.

“Oh? Well look at that. You’re still alive after all. Thirteen heroic spirits, and you’re the last one standing. You must be pretty tough, to survive that long like this, in spite of how you look.”

A woman’s voice.

She takes a knee, and I see dark hair, and find the energy to force my head up by an inch. I still can’t see shit, and despite all my effort, I cannot lift my head higher. She reaches down and takes my head in her hand and tilts it for me then, and it’s no longer an issue.

“Mm. You’re in some trouble here, huh?” she asks carelessly.

I glare at her. If I had the strength, I would spit. Sadly, I do not.

“Oooh, what a scary look!” says the woman who looks like a blurry, glowy nothing to me with the sun behind her and my eyes failing. She’s having fun with this. I really wishI could spit. “You know, you should be a little more courteous. I was planning on helping you, if you were nice.”

I hate that I feel a twinge of hope at that.

I’m not stupid. I know she’s fucking with me. Kicking me around because I’m helpless, and it disgusts me, but hope is instinctive. Even in me, occasionally. Something in my expression must betray me for a microsecond, because I see the blurry shape of a face smile.

I swallow, which hurts, and give her the most withering look I can, which probably isn’t much, about to black out.

“Well, as fun as you are to play with, I think you’re going to vanish if I really take my time. –You can hear me, yeah? I know you’re basically a walking corpse, but-” She wipes some of the blood on my face back with a palm, leaning closer, and then stops mid-sentence.

I’m too tired to try and react at all.

“H-Hey, don’t actually die, okay! Here.”

I don’t really process the words.

She takes my discorporating, shred of a left hand, and I feel something smooth and resonating against my palm as she forces what’s left of fingers shut around it.

“Okay! No more time to waste messing around!” I hear her voice like an echo as she stands. There is a sudden sharp, awful pain in my torso, and then I yell with a voice I didn’t think I still had as the pillar is ripped out of me and up. I hear it thud after enough time to mean she must have launched it several yards somehow, but I can’t put more meaning to that past the pain and instinctive jerking of body parts trying to work with a substantial piece of itself missing. I roll onto my side and curl up, fingers closing around the thing placed in my palm and crushing it until I feel it shatter, shards of glass or rock digging into my palm. A massive bust of magical energy accompanies it, rocketing up my arm and into my chest. I feel my about done-in core re-stabilize, body parts re-construct out of new ether, pain subside. And with it, as it repairs itself, my head clears.

After a few seconds, the hole in me closes, and I roll onto my back and take a shaky breath, staring up at cracks of bright blue sky past palm fronds.

“Wow, you made it after all,” comes the woman’s voice, pleased.

I’m exhausted, but with my broken shoulder only cracked now, I push myself up onto my elbows and turn to look.

She’s tall, pale, --Japanese, I think, with massive dark brown, almost black hair that floats around her in a nonexistent wind, and glowing gold eyes. She has summoned something like an intricate floating gold longbow the size of a kayak, and is sitting on its curve as if it were a mount.

“Hm.” She smiles at me, very proud of herself. “So, can you walk yet?”

I spit out some blood.

She laughs and flicks a wrist, summoning a glowing red gemstone, which she slings at me with the casual force of a baseball. I catch it on instinct and look down. There are shards of one just like it still embedded in my hand. I can see the shards shrinking as my fingers re-grow, a transitive alchemy. I know what this is, then.

“Why?” I ask, lowering the hand with the gemstone brimming with magical energy.

“I want a bodyguard,” she says carelessly, leaning forward on the tip of her bow, “And you seem capable enough, so long as you’re not dead.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“You’re a servant. Those jerks with the guns killed all the other ones, and it’s not like I can just go and pick another one up at the nearest mall. My options are limited.” She makes a casual gesture with her hand, all confidence. “Yours too, for that matter.”

“You’re a heroic spirit,” I say. I was too dead to sense before what exactly she was, but I can now. And a high class one, by the feel. Divine, at a guess.

“So?” she says, “All that matters is I’ve got enough magic to keep you, me, and a couple more going, if I wanted to. I’m independent. You need a master.”

“Is that an offer?” I say, a little taken aback. Not unheard of, but it’s not exactly standard for a spirit to bind another spirit to itself.

“Obviously,” she says. She hops off her bow and walks over, crouches down with her arms on her knees, and tilts her head at me, hair billowing out behind her. She studies me a few seconds, and her eyes flicker, turn a deep red, and there’s something about them that I feel strangely towards. Strangely and intensely, like I can’t even remember feeling before, ever. Then they’re gold again, and she breaks her eye contact and shrugs, and I’m left completely unable to tell what just happened. “So, are you ready to go?”

I wonder if I even can walk yet.

Probably, if I have to. She wasn’t kidding about the quantity or quality of magic in the gemstones she’s packing, at least.

“What makes you so sure I’ll follow you,” I say dismissively, pulling myself up off my shoulders to sit at her level. Ow.

She snorts. “Of course you will. It’s not like you have any better offers. Plus, you want revenge on the people who did this to you, don’t you?”

Yes.

“You need me at least as much as I need you.” She becomes suddenly flustered. “You need me more!—I don’t need a bodyguard, I just want one! But you, you need not to be dead. So?”

I watch her. She’s…familiar, somehow. But I have the memory of a block of wood, now. Even day to day. I wish I at least had a better impression if it was good, bad, or neutral familiar.

“Well?” she prompts, crossing her arms in a huff after about ten seconds of silence.

“You did a bad job of that. If you wanted to make me be your servant, you should have forced me into a contract before you gave me the gemstones,” I point out.

She clicks her tongue and snorts in disgust. “And what kind of bodyguard would that get me? If I made you a thrall, you’d be chomping at the bit to stab me in the back at the first opportunity you could survive! No. You don’t want someone with a dagger to their throat as the guy protecting you; the only kind of bodyguard worth anything is one who actually wants to take a blade for you. Or at least is willing to. Anything else is a waste of time.  I’d rather have someone owe me a debt any day, than be holding a loaded bow to them. A bow only works until you mess up. A debt sometimes works even after you do.”

There is an inarguable logic to that. It’s an unusual thing for a person to say, admitting to pragmatism rather than acting out of the goodness of their heart, but then, I guess she’s not trying to make me feel indebted. She’s talking about debt as if it’s a physical object, like the stone I’m holding. And in its own way, I guess she’s right. Whatever else is true about her, I think she means what she’s said, and my personal way of thinking or not, it’s a level of candor I can deal with it. And, I do owe her. Her pointing that out doesn’t change it.

“Fair enough,” I decide.

I drag myself to my feet, a little unsteady, and she hops up and reaches out a hand like she might catch me, then sighs and deflates as I steady my stance and blink down at my damaged limbs.

“No wonder you’re taking so long. You don’t just hold the gem. You either focus on it and suck the magic out, or you crush it to activate it.” She’s pointing to the gem I’m still holding. “Just holding it won’t do anything.”

I glance down at the red stone, pulsing slowly like a heart in my palm.

“…” When I look up, she’s watching me carefully. “I have more,” she says, almost a smile playing across her lips this time, “If you want to hold onto one for insurance, in case you have a reason to ditch me later, that’s fine, but use one of them so we can get going. Jeeze.” She summons and tosses me another little gemstone, a blue one this time, but with much the same feel to it in my hand. This one, I crush.

The energy surges through me like the pulse of an AED, just like the first, and I feel less severe wounds close, stiffness lift, senses sharpen.

“Good boy,” says the woman, very visibly pleased, “Okay then. Follow me.”

That would usually piss me off to a violent level, but the woman doesn’t reek elitism when she talks. Just a careless, playfulness, like this is a game we are both playing, and she is quite enjoying. She floats back up to her giant bow, and begins to ride it casually. I decide to let being talked to like a dog slide, all things considered, and fall into step just behind and to the side.

Very strange, how things turn out…

“What do I call you,” I ask after a moment. That’s strange, too. Usually, I wouldn’t feel the need to ask someone that. Maybe…maybe I did meet her before, on another summon. It wouldn’t be a surprise. I barely remember any of my own life. I’m lucky to know my name. Every summon is a blur. All but one, which I wish I could forget. Still, I don’t have nothing. Even I get echoes here and there.

“Ishtar,” says Ishtar, glancing at me, “Or ‘My Goddess,’ or ‘My Lady,’ would do too, I guess, or ‘Lady Ishtar.’ ‘Queen of the Heavens.’ ‘Goddess of War. Justice. Fertility. Love, Law.’”

I get it, okay. What a pain.

“…And you?”

I look over in surprise, but of course that’s the natural thing to be asked here. “I don’t have one,” I reply.

She double takes and stops walking, or, floating, and crinkles her brow at me. “Yes you do.”

? “No,” I say, “Not anymore.”

“Well, I’m not calling you nothing,” she huffs.

“I’m an Archer,” I offer.

“So am I; I’m not calling you my own class,” she says in even more disgust, arms folding over her chest.

I sigh internally. Okay. Then… “…I’m an Alter,” I offer after a moment of consideration.

She is about to shoot that down too on instinct, but then thinks it over, and sighs. “That’s the best you can do? You won’t give me, your Master, your True Name?”

You haven’t made me forge a binding contract yet, ‘Master,’ I think, but I say, “I don’t really have one to give anymore.”

“That’s…depressing.” She looks me up and down again. “What happened to you? Not the mage trap thing. Before that. I have literally never seen a gallu look so burned out. You look like if a heroic spirit had to solo bottleneck the exit to Kur for a thousand years.”

Thanks. I shrug.

“You’re not much for conversation, huh?” she says, genuinely disappointed.

I almost laugh.

She can tell, I guess, because she smiles at me. “Well, I will for both of us then, ‘Alter.’ But you’ve gotta get a better name sometime. I wouldn’t even call my dog just, ‘Dog.’ Everything deserves some kind of a true name.”

I gesture to the jungle ahead, and she gives a sigh and starts moving again.

It occurs to me then.

“Where exactly are we going?” That you’d want or need a body guard for, too?