And this is Chaldeapostings, a collection of stories featuring the servants found in Fate Grand Order and what is essentially an SI OC master. Most of these stories are disconnected and distributed across the story as a whole.

Enjoy, and feel free to leave a review!

The Betrayer and the Betrayed

Part I

Explosions could be heard all across training halls, bullets creating craters in the concrete walls and floor.

A silver figure dashed forward with a cry, trying to bear her sword down on her opponent.

Her foe, a slight figure dressed in a dark, double-breasted coat, heavy pants that were tucked into golden greaves, and a read cloak that wrapped around her like a shroud, dodged the strike, almost floating to one side as a matchlock materialized in one of her hands while two more appeared behind her.

One shot fired. The armored warrior was moving and the bullet hit the ground behind her.

A second shot fired. The blade was barely fast enough to block the shot. A weaker blade might have shattered at the force behind it.

A third shot fired. This time connecting with the warrior's armored shoulder. It wasn't enough to stop anything, but it did make the fighter stagger.

The blade was brought in for a diagonal swing that should have cut the gunner from shoulder to hip had it connected. The blow was parried with the firearm in the other's hand, however, the swordsman made to overextend before the gun's stock clubbed against the side of their helmet.

Beneath the helmet, Mordred grit her teeth.

She quickly regained her footing, doing her best to ignore the ringing of her head from the blow, and struck out with her left fist while her right pulled Clarent back to her.

Her opponent was not easily caught off-guard. The tiny woman she was fighting replying with a jab to the gut using her firearm and a backward leap to disengage.

Taking Clarent in both hands, her gauntlets tightening around the dyed leather wraps of the hilt, she pulled her legs together and leapt over the hail of bullets that she knew her opponent had sent her way.

Red lightning began collecting in the blade, Mordred channeling her energy into the weapon. She was little more than a blur arcing over the battlefield towards her enemy.

Crimson eyes met green.

Smoke rose in clouds from the point of impact, lightning and light bursting from her blade and the ground it was thrust into. Mana permeated the air around them, and she felt a burning in her lungs she hadn't felt in a while.

The knight attempted to pull her blade from the ground when she felt something step on her wrist.

"Your attack was ineffective."

And then she the smoke was blown away and she saw the fifteen matchlocks arrayed before her.

This time, they fired a red beam and, this time, they all connected.

The next time Mordred's senses returned to her, jagged metal was all she saw and she quickly struggled to remove the remnants of her helmet without cutting herself to shreds inside it, and tossed the piece of scrap to one side.

Her opponent was once again quite a distance away from her.

"It was, however, rather pretty."

Arms crossed, Nobunaga Oda looked at the knight with what appeared to be mild disapproval.

"You lack finesse and I can see your attacks a mile away." Oda was a small woman - at least she did a lot of her fighting in her small form the Commander told her. Her voice sounds about as old as she looked. "I strongly suggest you exercise some creativity especially when you stand to face an opponent that can strike you from a distance."

The old warlord might have tried to phrase it politely, but she understood what was meant. Mordred grit her teeth at the reprimand.

"Closing the gap quickly is good enough." She replied.

Oda's response was to scoff rather visibly.

"I was told by the Commander that you knew how to conduct war, little prince. I heard that you at least waged war against your father. Perhaps this is why you lost?"

The older woman was baiting her. She knew that. Mordred drew a deep breath and tried to calm herself. She had been with the Chaldea a while now and had served under the Commander - her master - several times in the field.

She had seen her father again, come to a bit of an understanding even.

She also knew of Oda's history. A warlord that had moved to unify her nation that had been thwarted while she was close to achieving it.

The use of that nickname was one she wasn't too happy about, however.

"I am no prince, Oda. Stop calling me one."

"Your swordsmanship is sloppy." This time Oda wasn't even trying to be polite. Mordred held Clarent a little tighter. "I've fought your father several times, and she can at least make me try. You didn't deserve the crown, little girl."

She remembered approaching her father in life. She remembers the rejection, and her eventual rebellion. The war had ravaged Britain, costing them much and their people moreso.

She remembers dying at Camlann.

She remembers reaching out for her father, ever unable to reach her.

"Unworthy."

Mordred was charging her before she knew what she was doing, her teeth bared and Clarent flashing scarlet as she poured mana into the blade.

Halfway there, she loosed her attack:

"Clarent Blood Arthur!"

The blast of lightning didn't connect, only leaving scorched concrete in a cone before her while Oda dashed off to the side to avoid the attack.

She didn't expect it to, honestly.

"You judge my swordsmanship but you're never close enough to see it! Come here and fight me without any of your firearms, Demon!" Panting, she continued: "You sit pretty behind your weapons all the time, never fighting yourself. Is that how you won your battles? Letting your servants do all the work?"

She knew the warlord wouldn't let the accusation of cowardice slide. She knew of few that would let that happen.

Red eyes narrowed.

"Maybe that's why you were betrayed in the end."

Only then did the older woman draw her sword. Slowly walking towards Mordred, she spoke:

"Unlike your father, it took more than one betrayal to bring me down."

Even through the pain and exhaustion, Mordred managed to strike out with Clarent, Oda's katana parrying the blow and punishing her with a shallow cut to the right upper arm.

"But if a sword fight is what you wish for, I shall be happy to oblige."

What followed was perhaps one of the most painful lessons Mordred ever remembers learning outside of a live battle.

A swing was parried and punished with a cut to left upper arm.

A fist dodged and reciprocated with a pommel to the helmet.

Each time she delivered a strike, Oda would either sidestep or parry the attack, returning her attack with and shallow cut to the gaps in her armor.

There was nothing at all about the encounter that was worthy of the bards of old. It wasn't like a dance, it wasn't like the battle she had with her father atop the hills of Camlann.

She was picked apart and toyed with, and Mordred was having a bit of difficulty reconciling the woman she was fighting to the woman that greeted her when she first arrived.

Oda was rather cheerful and was known by many to spend time causing mischief with Souji Okita or found in the Commander's private quarters. Originally, Mordred actually had trouble taking her seriously and wondered how this servant was one of the most favored in the Chaldea.

Now she knew.

"You fight like a berserker, but lack the finesse behind your strikes to make the style work." She said as she delivered a cut to the back of her left knee which was promptly followed by a kick that knocked the knight down.

Before Mordred could get back on her feet, she felt her vision blur as something hit the back of her head and caused her to fall on her face.

Drawing a sharp breath and wincing at the feeling of her cheek and forehead brush against the cracked concrete, she quickly tried to push herself back up with her arms.

It was then she felt Oda's boot keeping her face down.

"Enough. It's done, girl."

Mordred's eyes darted from one direction to another, trying to see if there was anything she could use, only then realizing that she had dropped Clarent when she saw the sword a few feet from her.

She reached out for the sword, some small part of her not wanting to accept defeat in such a manner.

The sudden pain of a sword being driven through the back of her hand and pinning it to the ground had been all the was given before the boot behind her head was briefly lifted and smashed against her skull.