Ilyasviel von Einzbern dances amongst the snowflakes. She chases after Winter, swinging her arms ahead of her, clawing at the air to try and catch some of it for herself. For a moment, she succeeds as three snowflakes land into her hands.
She watches in fascination as the water crystals in her palm melts, darkening the cloth of her mitts.
The little girl giggles in delight, even when she tumbles and falls amongst the tall snowbanks.
Nothing can hurt her.
The shadowy figure standing high above her, clad in a duster blowing in the wind, is looking after her.
Nothing will ever hurt her.
"They won't return."
The small girl keeps her eyes on the forest before her.
"They've betrayed us." The voice continues. It pauses when she shows no sign of reacting to it. "Betrayed you."
Ilyasviel hugs herself.
Her eyes follow the dancing Winter storm.
For a moment, she can almost swear she could see a hint of darkness beyond the forest. One clad in a duster.
She will continue to believe in her protector.
The Winter is taken from her.
Leather creaks, pulling into her wrists as she pulls on her arms again. Her head feels heavy as she lolls it from side to side. A cluster of flames in the corner of the dim room she's in cast long shadows.
A knife glimmers.
No, Winter isn't being taken away from her.
It's being placed into her. She feels sick as warmth steadily leaks out of her, leaving her feeling colder by the moment.
"Do we sedate?" One of the towering figures arrayed around her cooly asked.
A pair of cool burgundy eyes stare directly into her.
"No." His lips curl up lazily. "I want her to learn the meaning of defiance."
It hurts.
She focuses on the scent of smoke.
It reminds her of him.
Ilyasviel gazes upon the two solemn faced maids in front of her. One is almost as short as she used to be. The second is tall and broad shouldered. Almost as tall as her father used to be.
For a split second, she gets a flash of memory.
She can almost smell the walnuts.
Ilyasviel decides she loathes the two before her.
"They're yours now." Behind them, Master Acht smiles an oily grin. His eyes flash with excitement when he catches her dark look. "You must learn to become a proper lady of Einzbern birth."
Ilyasviel briefly matches the man's grin.
It's two weeks before they find all the organs.
During that time, Ilyasviel is allowed to rest unrestrained in her bed, covered with soft down.
Ilyasviel von Einzbern is hunting down walnuts when she meets her next two maids.
"Don't break these." An absolute command is in Master Acht's tone as he finds her in the depths of the woods. "They will be the ones that bury you when you die."
Ilyasviel passively gazes at the two maids standing at his sides. To an Einzbern, even one like her, to be buried was the higest honor possible.
It meant your actions and words were that of a true human.
"You get no more, so take care of them." Master Acht drew Ilyasviel out of her thoughts. "It would be a shame to have to recycle you, so don't misbehave anymore."
There isn't enough of a resemblance.
They would do.
The small girl walks up to the two dull faced maids.
Her first question? If they knew how to hunt walnuts.
She'd never trust her corpse to a person who couldn't find walnuts well.
Ilyasviel von Einzbern's soul aches. Her breath is shallow as she struggles to stay awake. Fire races through her body, pumped through her veins by her own treacherous heart.
Black dots dance in front of her eyes.
A slight frown appears as Sella and Leysritt cover her view of the clear skies. Ilyasviel's mood drops slightly when she sees that Leysritt is carrying a shovel.
Sella pushes Leysritt out of the way, offering Ilyasviel a hand up. Leysritt pouts a little, but moves to assist. The willowy maid nods at the girl, offering her a pleasant greeting and congratulating her on her work.
It makes it feel like if everything Ilyasviel has experienced this last month was a dream.
Especially since...she now controls Herakles.
Ilyasviel, dusting herself off at the moment, gazes past Sella.
A bronze giant kneels in a circle of gore.
Ilyasviel fingers curl into fists.
She finally had power.
Sella and Leysritt are the only ones remaining when she's done. The child ignores the corpses strewn along the halls. They had never helped her.
They would stay unburied.
Leysritt pulls away the halberd she had just buried in Acht's skull. Gore sticks to it briefly, but the film connecting man and weapon breaks away when his body falls to the ground. Wild laughter almost escapes Ilyasviel's mouth, but breathing is too difficult.
Better to not do that.
Another explosion can be heard distantly.
Leysritt glances at Ilyasviel with child-like intensity. Her gore slicked halberd is held ready for another target. Sella begins moving to kneel before the weapon user, ready for her turn to die.
In the distance, Ilyasviel hears the roars of Herakles. Another of the castle's walls fall.
Ilyasviel meets Sella's confused eyes for a brief moment. Before Sella can do more than close her eyes in resignation, the small girl leans forwards and snuggles into the willowy maid. She starts in Ilyasviel's arms, glancing down at her in surprise.
Ilyasviel smiles at her. She gestures at Leysritt to back off.
It would be quiet if it was just Ilyasviel, Berserker, and Leysritt in Fuyuki.
A pair of magi observe the annihilation of Castle Einzbern with mild interest.
"Good to see she's ready." One of them muses. "I had almost thought she would have wandered away to Fuyuki without even attempting this."
"She's her father's daughter." The second lightly scratches his cheek. "I would have been more surprised if she wasn't a little devil."
"Mmm...well, let's go ahead and report things to the main house." The first begins walking away from the burning castle, indifferently giving it his back. "We'll need to move in our replacement models before the month is over."
"It'll be such a hassle to rebuild this castle..."
"We'll find a way to fix it."
"Then what about the ones in the castle?"
"Who cares about a bunch of dolls?"
Leysritt sneezes, shivering terribly when they arrive at the castle the Einzbern had set up in Fuyuki.
Ilyasviel privately agrees with Leysritt's opinion, but she makes a big deal of teasing her slightly dull maid. Leysritt is kind enough to ignore the way Ilyasviel sniffles as well, playfully reaching over to ruffle the little girl's hair.
Sella shakes her head, carrying over a set of blankets to the two. Drapping them on the two of them, she rolls up her sleeves and grabs a plank of wood. Repairs would have to be done, lest their breezy castle continue to whistle around them.
Ilyasviel clutches at the warm blanket and snuggles into it. Deciding she's useless for now, the little girl decides to make her way towards a closed window. She can hear her maids banging around behind her as they gather everything they'll need to make the place livable.
It's a bit of a struggle, but eventually she opens the window.
A sea of white greets her when she gets the stubborn latch opened. Ilyasviel's lips spread into an open smile as she takes in the sight of the massive forests just outside the clearing the family castle sat on. Her eyes eagerly drink in the different trees, smell the new scents, and listen intently to the sound of wildlife.
Briefly, she even considers sending her mind into the woods. The magic of the field that hovered over Einzbern forest made such a thing pathetically easy to her, but something else held her back from doing so. Further consideration makes her turn around towards her maids, who are currently arguing and waving hammers at each other.
...perhaps she'll wait just a while longer to sightsee.
Sella moves through the downtown marketplace like a wraith. While shopping for the Mistress' meal, she had come across something wondrous and terrible. Now, it was all she could do to keep up with her Mistress' insistent demands.
Just when today's trip to the market almost ended in failure, she did it.
She found him.
The crowds around her mean nothing to the maid. She uses her magecraft to force her way through, projecting enough of an aura to make them part like water before a shark.
All that matters to her is the boy ahead of her.
Sella quietly suffers another probing inquiry from Mistress Ilyasviel. The Einzbern maid answers the flood of questions to the best of her ability.
The boy ahead of her was indeed Shirou Emiya.
He was walking with that girl again, the one who sometimes caught her following them. The girl's long dark hair and slightly empty gaze disturbed the maid. She reminded Sella of the more broken of the puppets back home.
Mistress Ilyasviel prods her mind back into watchfulness.
Sella continues to stalk Shirou Emiya.
Ilyasviel gazes through Berserker's eyes.
The Heroic Spirit's heavy breath washes across a sleeping teenager's face as he kneels close to the boy. His massive hands are hovering slightly above Shirou's head, ready and willing to crush the skull at any moment.
This has become a ritual for Ilyasviel over these long weeks. She should have ended things a long time ago, but...
At the moment Shirou's face twists. He lets out a whimper, squirming beneath his covers. The boy is again in the midst of a terrible nightmare.
The girl continues looking on long into the night.
Ilyasviel decides to warn the boy. It wouldn't be fair to crush him openly. She was a lady, after all.
Leysritt reports to her a few days later.
A monstrous Shadow was rampaging through the city, devouring everything.
She asks if Shirou was dead yet.
The denial makes her faintly smile.
The spirits of fallen Heroes never arrive, despite Ilyasviel knowing they should have. Her duties as a lady force her to take action.
Ilyasviel, Sella, Leysritt, and Berserker wander through the streets of Fuyuki. The Master of Einzbern orders a full retreat when they observe a golden King get devoured by the same girl that had been wandering by Shirou Emiya's side.
She needs to see him.
Has to warn him.
Ilyasviel and Shirou find themselves sitting on a pair of swings on a park, speaking about nothing in particular. Throughout the whole conversation, Ilyasviel's eyes drift to Shirou's hands, which are holding onto the chains.
He wondered if those hands would clamp around the neck of the girl he had been with.
Would he forgive a monster?
Or should he be like her father?
Each time they meet, the boy looks more and more worn down. His strong back is almost broken, the boy is practically dragging himself onwards. It makes her feel sad.
It was okay, though.
She could protect him.
She still had Herakles.
Everything would be just fine.
Her Herakles falls.
The monstrous Shadow rose up and swallowed him whole.
It was impossible.
How could this be?
Everything is blurry. The priest that had carried her through the woods had vanished underneath her. Was he dead too?
Sella was gone.
Leysritt too.
A familiar sounding roar shakes the woods.
She stumbled to her feet, feeding the world her lifeblood as she struggles towards the sound of a confrontation.
Was...was he back?
Herakles had come back wrong.
Shirou had stopped him.
The end.
Ilyasviel wanders through the ruins of her home. The ominous rumbling of a building that was about to collapse means nothing to her now. Instead, the girl intently searches amongst the refuse scattered about.
She spots what she's looking for.
Beneath a few pieces of wood lies the body of Sella, unmoving since several days ago. Her attempt at using Reinforcement to move the piece of wood that pierced her is rewarded with failure. Ilyasviel sits down in front of Sella for a long time, staring at her maid's body.
She had died like a human, wasn't there anything she could do?
The girl runs through every solution she has available.
Ah...that would do.
The castle begins to collapse behind Ilyasviel.
Unfortunately for Leysritt, she was denied a chance to die like a human being. Still, they would be together forever soon.
The silver and gold cloth she's now wearing warmly glows against her skin.
Everything would be fine.
The broken boy screams her name as the gate closes behind her.
It was okay.
She could still protect him.
Everything would be fine.
The gate slams shut with a note of finality.
The totality of everything that ever was and ever would be spreads before her. The vista spreads infinitely in every direction, singing with all the lights of the rainbow. The Dress of Heaven - Leysritt, trembles around her body.
During the disastrous War, Ilyasviel had managed to take one Hero away from the grasp of the Shadow. That Hero thrashed within her very soul even now. Urging her forwards.
Ilyasviel takes a step forwards.
A hill rises before her at the speed of thought. Impossible geometries came together in a loud, eye hurting mess in front of her. The edges of the platforms were as sharp as diamonds and as solid as water.
Ilyasviel begins climbing.
The horizons of the infinite planes shift hues. The girl is bombarded with all manner of radiation as she ascends.
Ilyasviel presses on.
At the peak of the hill, the girl gazes upon all of Existence.
She thinks about the little brother she left behind.
"...I'll return to you, Shirou." Ilyasviel adjusts the crown upon her head. She places a hand over her heart. "But until then, I'll protect you too, Shirou."
The soul within her quiets down, drawing a light hearted giggle from the girl.
"What? You think a big sister won't recognize her little brother?"