Interlude: The Magus of Flowers.

Here where the flowers bloom forever. Here where glittering fairies dance upon the water, and the verdant trees stand tall and proud, unbent and unending.

Here in the center of it all, where a stone tower floats above a field of red.

He sleeps. Not for an especially long time, but still a time that cannot be counted by the hour and minute of a clock. Time, the prisoner knows intimately, can be measured differently here.

Here where the magus lies upon a bed of flowers, simple flowing robes of the finest cloth of a time long since past adorning him, his staff held lightly in an unbreakable grip. His hair cascades over his shoulders, white as snow with motes of rainbow light clinging to a few errant strands.

In this stone tower, sleeps a magus. The one sinful being in all of Avalon, he reckons, though not with any real conviction behind it. Most of the things he reckons are do not have much conviction.

He dreams of the world at present.

What his eyes are fixed on, are not gods or beast or mysteries. At this present, at this time, their time in the sun has passed, belonging now to a night lit only by the moon. And even so the moon shall grow dark one day.

He watches with the eyes of a man with infinite depths of patience, but the mind and capacity to snap irritably at an errant child when she did not grasp the concept of knighthood.

He watches the flow of time mesh with the fate of humanity, as a man wears his robe as it in turn wrestles with the wind.

A bothersome sort of man who loved humanity as a race-

-But could not see much point in especially liking the individuals that comprised it.

So why then did Merlin meddle in the creation of a single girl to become a king?

At its heart, the answer was as simple as it was cruel:

"Because it was interesting."

Thus he knows he is a sinner in a utopia that has no place for sinners.

Thus he knows this fate is deserved.

But-

Even though he knew his fate was sealed upon entering this stone prison-

What of hers? He had asked.

And as he watched her make a pact upon that sunset hill, he shook his head in sorrow. Even an inhuman being like him could see that mistake she was making. Her search for the Holy Grail would take her to countless eras, where she would fight and die in an endless cycle to go back to her origin only to destroy it.

And yet-

An eternity later-

She abandoned her quest when she had every opportunity to lay her hands upon the Grail.

And thus Merlin had rejoiced, having seen truly everything she had to give him. He had seen off Cath Palug into the human world, to learn as he did about that wonderful species, content in casting off the last of his attachments to the world outside the stone tower.

At this time now, he sees her again, summoned unintentionally by a young boy.

His eyes light up. This boy is more like her than she knows.

Perhaps this is it.

He had not known exactly why she had chosen to accept her fate at the end of that long journey for the Holy Grail, despite that journey.

He watches the boy become a man, every bit as broken as the boy had been, but a man nonetheless. And he sees her remember who she was before taking up that sword.

Merlin smiles in delight as the boy and the king become the boy and the girl, his heart lifting as she discovers what it means to love someone.

He himself does not understand human love, even after all time he has spent watching them, but he had learned to recognize it in the past. If only to run away once it reared its ugly head.

At the end of that short but eventful war (quite the tale indeed), he sees the promise made.

"We'll see each other again. No matter how long it takes, I'll find you again."

"Then I too will wait for you…Ah, of course. I never properly said this to you, did I? I love you, Shirou."

"I love you too, Artoria."

Merlin speaks then, for the first time since Cath Palug's departure so long ago.

"So that's why," he muses to himself quietly. His soft and melodic voice is no worse after that long stretch of never having used it. "Truly an outrageous ending for someone like her, no for those two."

And this Shirou Emiya character.

"What a guy!" exclaims the magus, laughing. "Just how much room is in that hollow soul of his? That he be no less stubborn, no, perhaps even more so than she ever was! Ah, humans truly are the best!"

So when it comes the time for Shirou Emiya to enter his own Reality Marble, Merlin grows a small frown.

"Doubtless it will be more boring work trying to find a unique path to this side of the world," he says, only slightly disappointed. "But still I cannot see into that realm."

And when the hand of Alaya reaches into that world, empty and beseeching, he grows thoughtful.

And after another time, but a shorter time than the times of silence before it, Merlin's prodigiously wise mind alights upon an idea: an interest, more like.

"I wonder," he says, standing up slowly and walking over to the window that was his only view of the outside. "What it would be like to be a Servant like those two children?"

A truly inhuman smile grows on his face. A joyful chorus of angels could sing. A gang of imps could cackle.

But the only sound that was made, here in the Garden of Avalon-

Was the sound of a robe wrestling with the wind.

And then nothing remained in this stone tower for a time but the laughs of the fairies dancing on the water, the rustling of proud trees leaves in the wind, and the echoes of a magus' laughter.

"Artoria?"

"...yes? Is something the matter, Master?"

"I could ask you the same question. You look kind of, uh, spooked."

"No, it is...nothing of consequence. Simply a strange feeling. Neither good nor bad."

"Are you sure that's it?"

"I'm sure it's nothing, Master."

"Uh, right. I guess I'll just go ahead then?"

"Indeed, Master. Good luck."

A steadying breath. A mutter.

"Well then. Black keys begone, here we go."

A flash of light fountains into the air.

And as it dies down the scent of springtime flowers fills the room.