"I hope your hungry. I'll have the food ready in just a bit."

Kairi remained seated at the dining table as he watched his daughter, Ayumi, stir the pan as a delectable smell permeated the room. His eyes darted down. His clothes were replaced by a simple gray t-shirt and slacks. Looking at a mirror on a wall at his side, he noticed that even his image had turned back to the man he once was. Before he knew it, all his weapons were gone and he had unconsciously taken a seat.

Kairi quietly grabbed the fork on the table. He was familiar with how illusions worked. Since flushing his mana throughout his entire body wasn't working, there was a more direct way of trying to break through it.

He sucked in a breath, then gritted his teeth and plunged the fork into his thigh. He wasn't really expecting it to work nor did he think an illusionary fork would hurt, but the throbbing in his thigh felt very real and very painful. It didn't even manage dispel the illusion.

A plate of fresh and warm meal was placed on the table. Ayumi beamed at him with an expression of glee.

"Eat up. I'm confident I got it just the way you like it."

Kairi turned from her face down to his plate. The utensils were placed beside it, including his fork. His hand that had been holding it was empty. The wound he'd given himself had vanished and stopped hurting as well.

"…You're not her."

The Ayumi in front of him tilted her head slightly much in the same way as he'd always known her to do.

"I know this is all just fake, Caster of Red!" Kairi pounded on the table and stood up, glaring everywhere around the room. "An illusion like this isn't going to work well when the affected knows it's all fake!"

While its realism was something that no modern magic could ever achieve, there were far more extreme mental manipulation magecraft that altered and affected the mind to "trick" people into experiencing severe delusions. Aside from being a little shocked, Kairi didn't feel that whatever Caster of Red had done had influenced his mind.

The scene changed.

Kairi stood in a dark and empty stone room, not much different from the catacombs that he and Saber made into their home base. A stone coffin behind him opened to reveal the playwright getting up and out.

"It is as you say," he answered with a smirk. "My Noble Phantasm does not directly affect or control the mind of those it targets. But then again, it is not meant to."

Noble Phantasm. Crystallized Mysteries that are owned by Heroic Spirits. They can be either powerful weapons or abilities that human imagination had embodied and symbolized a Servant's legend and life.

Kairi frowned. "To use it against an ordinary mage… I don't know if I should feel honored or depressed."

"Ah, but I am such a weak Servant," said Caster. "It is my belief, that should we fight without skills or tricks, then I will most definitely lose one-hundred percent. I was never a fighter, you see? The most I can do is keep you occupied until Assassin of Red arrives."

It will all be over for Kairi once another Servant comes into the picture. There was no way he could escape with two Servants around.

"But I feel that you are mistaking my Noble Phantasm to be a much too simple trickery." Caster of Red snapped his fingers.

Everything went momentarily black until candles flickered to life at the edge of the stone room. Caster of Red was gone and in the center of the room lay a wide square stone table.

"As you say, my Noble Phantasm cannot affect your mind." Caster's voice echoed from somewhere.

Lying on the flat stone surface was Kairi and his daughter. Other people dressed in black cloaks stood surrounding them.

"Hey…" Kairi remembered this place now. "No. This isn't…"

"I… I'm scared, Papa." Ayumi was looking at his younger self on the table beside her. "I don't… I don't want to do this."

"It'll be alright," said his younger self, holding on to her hand. "You'll be fine. You'll be perfectly fine, I promise."

"The Noble Phantasm granted to a writer of the ages, to I, William Shakespeare, can only seek to break the hearts of my audience."

"Stop." Kairi tried to grab hold of Ayumi, but his hands simply went past her. "Stop it!"

Kairi repeatedly tried and failed to get her off the table, watching with ever increasing dread as his daughter's eyes slowly began to flutter before closing and falling into a deep sleep.

"Don't do it." He turned to his younger self on the table. Kairi resorted to trying to hit him with his fists, but all of it passed through same as it did with Ayumi. "Don't say it! Just don't, you stupid idiot!"

"Do it," nodded his younger self to one of the cloaked men.

The event unfolded just as Kairi remembered it. Midway into the ritual of transferring his magic crest, something went wrong. Ayumi's body tensed and thrashed even whilst unconscious, with some of the mages trying to hold it down. His younger self stopped the ritual immediately.

One moment he was a bystander watching all of it from the side unable to touch anything, the next Kairi found himself to be the one on the stone table looking up at the dreary ceiling. He slowly turned his head to the right to see his daughter's body lying still with a cloth covering her face.

She was dead.

He had killed her.

Kairi sat up and reached out to her. Unlike before, he could finally touch her. Though this time, her body felt cold against his arms, lifeless and still.

Tears rolled down his cheeks. "Ayumi… I shouldn't have done it."

"Tragic."

Caster of Red entered the scene from the corner of Kairi's eyes. The great writer sat himself on a wooden chair and watched the necromancer closely.

"You loved her dearly. A mage's life has never been easy. If you had abandoned your ambition, she would have lived. But then, that would mean the end of your clan. The end of your lineage and magecraft passed down through generations. It was wishful thinking that your family curse would not pass on to her simply because she was not of your blood. Sadly, the permanence of death is what forces us a human beings to struggle in life. It's what pushed you into heights you would never had achieved being contented."

Kairi wiped his tears to glare at the Servant. "So you want to keep me in this twisted play of yours until Assassin of Red comes? Keep me in the same place as the other Masters of Red?"

"We can't leave you just standing in the room now, can we?" said Caster of Red. "Don't worry. You'll be sitting down quite comfortably with the rest once Assassin of Red is done with you. And then, we'll have Saber of Red become part of our cast as well."

"That so?"

Shakespeare raised a brow curiously at noticing that Kairi's change in tone.

Kairi gently laid aside his daughter. "My Servant isn't one that could easily be controlled, you know? In fact, I believe I'll get an earful from having myself toyed around like this."

She was loud and a little obnoxious, a tomboyish girl that preferred batting everything in her way down with brute force. She was the total opposite of what his daughter was like.

Still, his Servant showed a bright and cheerful smile that was exactly like that of hers.

"Tell me, Caster of Red… Can you hear the time ticking?"

The Servant frowned in confusion. "What are you speaking of? There are no clocks here."

Kairi smiled slyly. "It's about time for curtain call."

Outside of the ultimate play that is Shakespeare's Noble Phantasm, the Servant examined the still and standing body of the necromancer. His ears pricked after he noticed that, indeed, there was a ticking sound in the room. Which was strange, because there were no clocks there either.

Shakespeare finally realized that the sound was coming from the necromancer. Leaning down he found the source to be something attached behind the man's belt.

"A… grenade?"

The ticking stopped, and then, green gas flushed out from it, quickly filling up the room.

"W-What?!"

Caster worried for his safety, but after a few seconds, the gas didn't seem to really affect him. Weak as he was, even it were a strong poison, it would only mildly hinder a Servant like him. However, that was not the case for regular humans or mages.

The Masters of Red were shaken from their dazed states as they shifted into bouts of coughing and sputtering of blood.

The playwright immediately went to their aid and tried to remove them from the room one by one. If they died, then their Servants would disappear as well. Only after managing to get every single Master out of the room did the Servant finally noticed that the necromancer was gone. He'd broken free of his play the moment his concentration and narration had failed.

William Shakespeare clapped weakly and sighed. "Well played…"


"Have they really withdrawn?"

Archer appeared before Ruler. "I saw what was likely Rider of Red's chariot race through the sky in great haste. There must have been some serious incident on their side for them to leave in such a flashy manner."

Ruler sat on the church pew and contemplated. She and the priest that represented the Red faction had been going over the matter of their alliance when he had suddenly had a shocked looked on his face. He apologized and asked that they postpone the meeting due to an unforeseen emergency.

Shirou had quickly left the church, leaving Ruler wondering what on earth had happened.

"Do you think that the Servants of Black had attacked them whilst they were here?" asked Saber who stood next to Archer. "It may have been prudent to offer them our aid if that is so. If we were to be allies, then it is only right that we join them in battle."

"I don't think so," hummed Archer. "If it was, then they would have asked us to join them. The fact that they didn't even tell us what was wrong raises suspicion. They might not want us to know what happened."

"I agree." Assassin materialized sitting right next to Ruler. She hadn't realized he had been that close to her. "There is much they hide from us. Is it truly wise to ally ourselves with them?"

"I, too, hold reservations after seeing that priest," said Saber. "His name is… There is doubt that his lineage may be of concern to us. Some of the others will most certainly agree with me as well."

"His name?" queried Archer. "Don't tell me…"

"Kotomine," nodded Saber. "The young priest is named Shirou Kotomine. He bears no resemblance to my master that shares his first name, however, I believe it would be an exceptional coincidence to have the same family name of that priest here."

Ruler noticed that Archer's expression looked as if he had just eaten something rotten.

"Shirou… Kotomine?" he repeated hesitantly. He palmed his face. "What kind of sick joke is this?"

Ruler had known some bits and parts of the Holy Grail that they had participated in before they were summoned here. She didn't know much about the priest that served as the arbiter for it. Most of them did not seem to keen on speaking of him.

"I see." Ruler thought about it. The priest name Shirou Kotomine seemed to be an affable young man, but it was hard to measure his true intentions from that short meeting. "We will discuss this more once we return to the mansion. I would like to have everyone's opinion on the matter."

A knock came from the church doors. Leaning beside them was Lancer, dressed casually in his horribly colorful Hawaiian shirt.

"All done?" he asked. "Can we leave now? Nothing really left to do here since all the Servants of Red left."

The fact that he bothered to change to regular clothing meant that the Servant thought the area was suitably safe now.

"Yes," nodded Ruler. "I believe we should…" She knotted her brow after noticing something. "Where is Caster? Shouldn't she be here?"

Ruler looked toward Archer, who merely shrugged. "Last I saw she was carefully observing the Servants of Red from afar."

Somehow, Ruler felt an odd unease at that.


"H-How did this happen?"

Atalanta didn't know why the priest had ordered them to fall back and return to their base with haste, but once she'd fallen to the ground on her knees, she soon realized what had occurred.

Her Master was dead.

The link between Master and Servant was severed. She no longer had access to the mana provided for her. However, due to the Independent Action skill from her class as an Archer-class Servant, she would not disappear just because of that.

She really didn't care much for the death of her Master. After all, she hadn't even seen her Master before. But without a Master to provide her with mana, it was unlikely that she could fulfill her wish with the Greater Holy Grail. Fighting on her own reserves would drain her until she wouldn't be able to sustain herself in this world.

"I… have to return quickly," she said weakly.

The priest had ordered all of them to move as quickly as possible, asking Rider to pick him up and transport him back as the utmost importance. The rest of them would individually travel back as fast as they could. The sudden death of her Master had caused Atalanta to fall behind now, though.

She knelt in a wide open grass hills. It was far from the forested lands that she considered her natural hunting grounds. Weakened as she was, she knew that it would be dangerous for her if she were to meet an enemy Servant in her current state.

Her sharp ears pricked upwards.

Atalanta rolled to the side swiftly, narrowly avoiding a beam of purple light that pulverized the ground she had been on. She turned and made a quick shot with her bow at her opponent, but it was blocked by a barrier with a raised hand.

"Who are you?!" Atalanta glared at the female Servant that quietly floated down to hover a few inches off the ground. "A Caster-class Servant? Which faction are you from?"

The hooded woman aimed her palm at her and spell circles appeared and hovered around her. Atalanta had no choice but to dodge the slew of attacks, weaving left and right over the hills whilst taking countering with shots from her bow from time to time. In an open area like they were, she found it hard to dodge the bombard of spells, but she had little choice.

The enemy Servant's intention before her was quite clear. She wanted her dead.

With the way things were, she only had one chance of making it out alive.

A strong spell blasted near her and sent Atalanta rolling back. She righted herself and focused on her enemy, goading her with her eyes to take her best shot.

Atalanta could see the lower face of her opponent curl into a snarl, apparently infuriated. She raised both hands and many more spell circles appeared in the air. Atalanta rushed like wind towards her.

Multiple purple beams of light lanced and crossed as they came in droves towards Atalanta simultaneously. It went as she had expected.

Blasts rained down the hills and shelled down that sent shocks through the earth whilst smoke and dust covered rose. It was as if warplanes had carpet bombed the location.

"I have you now."

Atalanta surprised her enemy when she appeared through the smoke. She was able to evade the deadly bombing with the activation of her skill, Calydonian Hunt. It was an A class rank skill that allowed her to evade pretty much any attack for a very short duration.

The enemy tried to back away, but Atalanta already had her bow drawn and raised. She let loose her arrows and the trio of them flew towards her target. Two of them hit the enemy Servant on her shoulder while the third one that was aimed at her head had narrowly missed, tearing through her hood instead.

The Servant fell to the ground clutching her shoulder.

"Don't move!" Atalanta was on her without delay, knocking an arrow aimed directly at her face. "Now tell me—!""

Atalanta paused in shock as she stood there being glared at hatefully by the woman that almost killed her.

"You…" Atalanta lowered her bow. "You are…"

Medea took that chance to blast her away with a spell, sending Atalanta flying a few feet away. Tossed and hit by the attack violently, Atalanta coughed as she struggled to try and get back up on her feet.

"…Why?"

"Why?" Medea's voice was ladened with venom. "You of all people should know why."

Atalanta's vision blurred as she saw her old friend walk towards her. Her head and her body hurt and throbbed. It was all she could do to remain conscious. The damage she received was extensive.

Atalanta lost her strength and flopped on the grass. She could only move her head weakly as her old friend stood nearby watching her.

"…A simple death is more than you deserve." Medea's right hand was covered in purple light. She knelt down and raised her open palm.

Atalanta looked up, and through the haziness, could see the memory of a gentle girl that she once knew looking at her lovingly overlap with the spiteful gaze of the woman about deliver her death. It had been a very long time since they last met.

"Medea…" Atalanta closed her eyes in apparent acceptance, a small tear dropping from her eye.

Only the memories of their time together occupied her final thoughts before the darkness finally took her.


"Master!"

Mordred shouted as she entered the catacomb that was their base. She had rushed their immediately after a very brief communication with him that got cut out. Since her link with him was stable, she at least knew him to be alive.

"Master, where are you?!" she shouted.

"Over here."

A hand was raised behind one of the stone coffins.

"Master, are you—?!" Mordred paused once she got a close look at him. "Have you been drinking?"

"Of course not!" said her Master in annoyance. "Does it look like I've been drinking?!"

With a few empty bottles strewn all over the floor next to him who was leaning sluggishly, it certainly looked like he had drunk himself into a stupor.

"I breathed in too much of my own poison," he answered. "I already built up a resistance to it, but I still needed to make an antidote to get rid of it out of my system completely. You know it was damn hard to get here while trying to escape from there after breathing a lungful of that stuff? Be glad that I managed even that when they had a Servant on guard there."

Mordred was impressed by that. It was a difficult feat to stay alive after facing off against even the weakest of Servants. She couldn't help but grin proudly at her tenacious Master.

"Help me up here," he said. Mordred put his arms over her shoulder and carried him. "We've gotta leave. It's no longer safe for us here."

"What? Why? Did you manage to meet with the other Masters of Red?"

"Sort of." Her Master nodded weakly. "I'll tell you all about it once we get away someplace safe. We don't have much time. I'm worried they'll come after us soon."

"Who?" Mordred asked, but she had a bad feeling she knew who.

"The other Servants of Red. We can't trust them. Not anymore."

Mordred cursed. "Where are we supposed to go?!"

Even though they had been moving independently from the other Red Servants, they had still been operating within the territory that Red faction had established.

"Ruler," mumbled Kairi. "She's at least someone we can trust. That saint won't allow us to be killed while we're like this. We can ask for… her help. She's going to… want to know…"

"You can't be serious? If we go there—Hey! Hey, don't go sleeping on me! Dammit!"

Mordred slapped his face a few times. He didn't so much as stir. Her Master was already passed out deep asleep. He didn't appear to be sick, only tired after curing the poison in his body. He'll need some time to recover.

It was frustrating for her as she didn't really think they would head back there so soon. Not only would they be going there asking for help from people who should be their enemies, but what would her father think upon seeing her crawling to them like a beaten dog?

Kairi groaned in his sleep. Mordred realized that they really didn't have any other choice. Being stubborn right now could cost her Master his life if the Red Servants were truly going after them.

And she couldn't allow that to happen.

"Only because I think you're a Master worth keeping," she grumbled to her unconscious Master as she hauled him towards the exit. "The food better be worth it at least…"