Akasha Bloodriver: No, not Vlad Ill. I want to avoid reusing Servants that have already appeared in Fate Extra. For Ushiwakaru... I do not know him (her?) and I would prefer to avoid using Heroic Spirits that I have not seen for giving Tamamo back her divine powers... I think she's powerful enough as she is, so no.

As for the Elders Ones and the Old Ones, I have a hard time understanding what you're talking about because you seem to be confusing the two... their names are very similar, it's true. The Elders Gods are a group of ancient gods who have come from the stars. They are neutral or even reasonably friendly to humans. Although Tamamo calls the Old Ones "gods" they are actually cosmic horrors. They are enemies of the Elders Gods, but they once defeated and imprisoned them. I think the Elder Gods bring together some gods of different pantheons that go back before the creation of the world like Annu, Tiamat and Apsu among the Sumerians, Cronus among the Greeks, Zurvan among the Persians. The legends say they created the world. For example, Eä (the sword of Gilgamesh) was used by Anu to separate Earth from Heaven, a legend found in Biblical genesis.


Dark Thirst


Yamada Chihiro was a young woman, rather pretty, married to a man ten years older. She married him less for love than for material security. He did not lack money, indeed, because he was the owner of a medium-sized company providing electronic equipment to Allied companies. At least Yamada Kuroe shared her humanism and dislike of the global plutocracy. Not surprisingly, they met during a protest against government corruption.

A doctor in medicine and prosthetics, Chihiro compensated for the loss of a happy life by devoting herself to her patients. A very sad life... despite the material well-being of a large modern house, the state-of-the-art in home automation did not replace the absence of children.

It must be said that she and her husband had little chance of having one... one of the plagues of this dying world was the decline of births. Rising temperatures reduced male fertility, while pollution - especially in heavy metals - increased the chances of women's miscarriage. As for the children who were born, they were often physically or mentally disabled. Obviously it had nothing to do with fertilizers and pesticides that were in drinking water... Experts said so... and we could take their word for it after all their studies had been paid by the agrochemical industry.

Such were the gloomy thoughts that crossed Chihiro's mind as she prepared the meal in the kitchen. However, on that day, these thoughts hardly disturbed her. Ms. Yamada had a reason to be in a good mood thinking about children. For once, her house wasn't empty.

As she returned to the living room, Chihiro smiled at her guest. Sitting on the sofa, Kishinami Hakuno followed an anime attentively. The adolescent's too serious face showed intense concentration. In the last two days, Yamada Chihiro had repeatedly felt a pinch in her heart. What happened to the young teenager to show such a lack of expressiveness? Inspector Minamoto had just warned Chihiro that an accident had made her amnesiac, but there was no need to be very good at psychology to understand that it didn't explain everything. In Hakuno's monotonous face, the gaze alone was mobile... and what mobility! These large intelligent and luminous eyes scrutinized everything, judged, weighed, classified. Some may have thought that Kishinami was not very smart because of her lack of responsiveness... but Chihiro was not mistaken. Behind this passivity was a mind of first strength.

- Careful, it's hot!

Seated on either side of the coffee table, the two women separated their chopsticks and bowed towards each other:

- Itadadakimasu!

Thanks to the resources of the robotchef, Chihiro had concocted yakisoba. That is, Chinese noodles sautéed in a mixture of vegetables (red peppers, seaweed, and Chinese cabbage), spices (such as ginger and pepper) and ground beef meat.

After the first bites, Hakuno began to opine with her head visibly enjoying this meal. Chihiro - who had been smiling since her arrival in the room - felt even happier having managed to put some animation on the adolescent's face. She was nothing like a chef in a big restaurant and was a bit afraid not to please her guest.

Except it didn't take much to please Hakuno in this area... She came out of seven weeks eating only the (limited) menu of a school canteen... After that, any family dish would have been a culinary masterpiece.
The meal continued in silence, Chihiro not having the heart to interrupt her guest. The latter ends by resting her chopsticks next to the now-empty bowl and unites her hands:

- Gochisôsama (Thank you, which was very good).

It took no more for the hostess to smile again:

- Do you like to be here, Hakuno-chan?

After a brief moment of reflection, the teen girl responded with a positive head movement.

- You will need new clothes. If you know your measurements, we can order them online.

- Online?

Hakuno tilted his head to the side, causing a strange cough attack at Chihiro's. The latter turned her head to hide her sudden emotion.

- You okay?

- Yes, yes... fine. I meant ordering clothes in Cyberspace.

Remembering that the P.T. of the Moon Cell was a legal tender in Cyberspace, Hakuno agreed:

- I have money to buy...

- I was talking about giving them to you. You are my guest, Hakuno-chan.

The teenager turned her gaze towards a point in the void, pretending to listen to a voice heard by herself. This was the third characteristic attitude of Kishinami after his lack of expression and the vivacity of her gaze... At times she seemed to talk to someone and even have lively discussions... except that there was no one! And that... well, that really impressed Chihiro. Uncomfortable, the woman-doctor waited for her guest to finish talking with her invisible friend...
She must have come to an agreement with... herself (?) since Kishinami turned to Chihiro and acquiesced:
- Okay.

Clearing her throat while hiding the feeling of discomfort inspired by the scene, Ms. Yamada smiles:

- Otherwise, you need something else?

- Books.

Yamada Chihiro would have expected almost anything: video games, perfumes, jewelry... but not books. After all, bookstores and libraries had disappeared about 50 years ago. Supposedly because they were "old-fashioned" and humanity had more sophisticated means of expression... but especially because the global plutocracy sponsored "educational" programs designed to turn consumers into bleating sheep, and of course there was a lot of advertising for their products.
Dictatorships have always hated books because they encouraged people to think for themselves (1).

Of course, Hakuno had noticed Ms. Yamada's startled and troubled expression. With her penetrating spirit, she immediately understood her reaction:

- I want to say something to read, not an interactive program...

- Ah, I see... I'll see what I can find for you.

Chihiro looked at Hakuno with curiosity:

- You must have received a special education to love books so much. Your parents are antique dealers?
The face without expression, Hakuno shook her head slowly:

- I have no memory of my parents.

Chihiro became confused, once again uncomfortable, dying to have forgotten in the thread of conversation that the girl had amnesia. She hesitated... insisting would be clumsy or perhaps hurtful. But something troubled Chihiro in the answer of the brown head teen...

- Hakuno-chan, I know you have lost your memory. However, I find it strange that you talk about your parents as strangers. They don't take care of you?

- They are dead.

Ms. Yamada remained breathless by this response, paralyzed and empty-minded, shocked to have led the conversation to what would have been a shock to the child in front of her. However, once again, Hakuno slowly shook her head:

- As I told you, Yamada-san, I don't remember my parents. I was told they died in a terrorist attack.

- I am sorry.

Kishinami had a brief smile:

-It's not your fault, Yamada-san. It was a long time ago. I can't remember.

Without remembering her parents, Hakuno certainly could not miss them as individuals. However, even if Hakuno couldn't see it, the place they had occupied in his heart must have looked like a gaping void...

- Who... who takes care of you, Hakuno-chan? A member of your family?

- I no longer have any family members alive. We... we could talk about something else?

For the first time, Hakuno showed an emotion. Her eyelids lowered, she stared at the floor, seeming to recall something painful... So he still had memories, realized Chihiro... Unfortunately, they were not pleasant and were undoubtedly linked to the death of her relatives. Ms. Yamada hesitated, but she needed an answer to this question:

- Hakuno-chan, nobody takes care of you?

The last Master holds a hand on her only jewel, a silver medallion in the shape of a mask:

- The best people look after me. She is more beautiful than you could imagine faithful as my shadow, very kind, amusing, wise, cultured...

Kishinami added mentally: [She has a fox tail and ears and she is the avatar of an Izumo goddess]. The Victor of the Moon stared a point in the void saying that, the answer made her blush.

Obviously, the hostess had never heard of Heroic Spirit in spiritual form... Chihiro masked it rather well, but she was devasted: "Hakuno-chan is so lonely that she invented herself an invisible friend". (2)


Politely apologizing, Tohsaka Tomoko played elbows to cross the vast crowded hall. As the elevator was literally stormed, she quickly climbed the steps leading up to the «morgue», the place where the old newspapers were stored. In the past, we had to physically keep the previous issues, a real puzzle for filing and consulting. The use of microfilms and viewers, and then computer terminals, had transformed this new work of Hercules into a more modest task, which did not require spending all its holidays there.

Tomoko had just made two interesting phone calls. She had first received a call from her grandmother who had confirmed that she had received her son at the Fuyuki station. The journalist had sent her away from Tokyo because it would be too easy to take him away to blackmail her. Yesterday, she listened to Kishinami Hakuno summarize her findings... a new Grail War... the invocation of creatures of the Cthulhu Mythos... Kimata seemed willing to do anything to get his way, and she would take every precaution to not be vulnerable.

Tomoko sighed.

She had also just had another stormy discussion with her ex-husband. To be honest, it was her fault... again. There had been so much between them and for so long that it was very difficult to work with him. Perhaps she still loved him... too much to forgive him.

There was blood between them.

Her eyelashes are filled with tears.

She could never forgive him.

Then why did she always come back to him?

The truth was that Sezuku was the only person she trusted... the man who betrayed her, who took from her one of the beings she loved the most... was the only person she really trusted.
If there really were gods and demons, they must have laughed at her... or cried.


As the journalist entered the service, a strange feeling made her stop. Wringing her neck, she looked all around her without noticing anything and then understood. Silence. The daily archives, despite the miniaturization, occupied the entire floor. Offices and storage areas of recent issues followed one another in series, an area too large to meet people at the entrance but not to hear conversations. Even with the closing of the offices, he had to remain a small team. At least one person had to stay to help her with her research. Her brow furrowing, Tomoko started again, occasionally stopping to listen. But all her attention did not allow the young woman to hear anything, apart from the absence of noise which oppressed her. That feeling of discomfort kept her from calling.
But, reframing her anguish, she did not turn back. Her footsteps rang in the hallway and it seemed to her that this lonely sound swelled monstrously. The first door was closed. So did the second one. And as she was pressing the beak of the next one, a roar startled her. A bell she had heard in practice, but never for real: the fire alarm.

Immediately, she began to run to retrace her steps. Too late! The fire door had closed. A rushed running sound, the movement of a shadow in her back, made her turn. Just in time to see a stealth silhouette leap out of a door frame. Right between her and the emergency exit…


Minamoto interrupted the driver's babbling with a movement of the hand. Leaning over the radio, he turned the volume button a few notches. Dispatch was picking up his call:

- All units in the vicinity of the Machi Shimbun, a fire has just started in the newspaper's offices! Emergency routes are disrupted by traffic. Clear cars in front of ambulances and fire vehicles. I repeat…
- Go for it! Cut the inspector.

Without protesting, Asano started the siren while his colleague put the beacon on the roof.


With her eyes enlarged with horror, Tomoko watched her opponent walk towards her. Guessing that the party had committed itself in his favor, he had stopped his furtive progression to advance in the middle of the corridor. It was... it was...

Despite her formation of Magus and the hereditary mental barrier powers of the Tohsaka family, Tomoko turned her eyes away from disgust...

Angles... angles entering into each other... the thing contorted itself all in obscene angles, soiled... without the purity of any curve... and this disgusting tongue, greedy for blood...
A Hound of Tindalos!

Despite the terror, Tomoko tried to gather her memories. Running away would be useless. This creature was not called "hound" because of its canine appearance... it looked like nothing... but to its ability to a bloodhound. Hounds of Tindalos were summoned by a witch to hunt, find and drain his enemies of their blood because the Hounds had some vampires' power.

How does she keep it away?

The Hounds were in the service of Tindalos a creature of which we knew almost nothing. Perhaps he was part of the Old Ones or perhaps not. In any case, it was said that Tindalos was a creature made only of angles. In the past, when Rome was young, the disciples of Pythagoras and the practitioners of the mysteries of Eleusis had created magical equations capable of keeping at arm such monsters from a sphere foreign to the world of men... Unfortunately, their knowledge had disappeared long before the foundation stone of the Clocktower was laid.

Although she looked away so as not to become mad to contemplate this... budding of impossible angles contorting, entering and exiting from each other according to non-euclidean principles, Tomoko felt the Hound of Tindalos approaching.

A memory returns to her, drawn from an old book with yellowed pages. A book published in the early twentieth century by the "Yellow Goblin" editions of New York, a carefully redacted version of the Necronomicon from its English translation by John Dee. She raised her fingers in a particular posture known as "the Elder Sign":

- CALDULECH! DALMALEY! CADAT!

She ended the imprecation with another sign that twisted her fingers in a strange way: "the sign of Koth".
The monster before her was only mildly bothered... For the spell to be truly effective, he would have had to hold in her hand a Mystical Code called "Scimitar of Barzai".

She could not stop it... but she made it hesitate. What saved her life, preventing her from being beheaded by the monster when it jumped on her. Rolling on the ground, Tomoko immediately got back on her feet and jumped into the corridor towards the emergency exit. Pursued by the tracker, Tomoko dash the stair four at time. In her panic, she misled and stormed into a shed where heavy rolls of paper were stored.

These areas, usually crossed by many forklifts, were empty. The fire alarm had driven out all personnel. Since the journalist had never set foot in the print house, she crashed into a random driveway. Sheltered between two of the gigantic paper cylinders, Tomoko took a look at her pursuer. The non-euclidean atrocity had stopped nearby; its dreadful tongue stood in the air describing a succession of absurd angles... it smelled her. Tomoko endeavored to breathe superficially and retreated into the shadows, her heart beating to break. After a minute or two, Minamoto's former wife ventured to look for a new observation post. She circled the roller and entered a span... and came to rest.

The Hound of Tindalos stood just at the corner, its tongue reaching towards her. Caught on the wrong foot by this target who threw herself in its arms, the monster reacts at the wrong time. its claws (?) drew long, sharp furrows in a roll of paper as the journalist escaped. Tomoko climbed an iron staircase and passed through the adjoining room. It was a hall on two levels, invaded by the noise of the powerful rotary presses that printed the newspaper. The pages covered with ideograms formed like a long ribbon in motion. Machines that should have been stopped still worked. The corpses of two bleeding machinists recounted the violence of the vampiric monstrosity that had killed everyone it met since it entered. Without even reacting to the anomaly, the young woman ran on the surveillance bridge. But before she reached the end, the creature from beyond the sphere reached her. Sharp cleats closed on her shoulder, tearing the leather from her jacket. The furious tongue was already searching for her throats pulsating with fresh blood. Cruel, naked fear came out of her lips in a howl.

- Stop! Police! Don't move.

The creature turned its head towards the call. Two men, Minamoto and Asano, pointed their weapons in its direction. When their eyes became accustomed to darkness, a tremor passed through them.
- Stoi! What the hell!

- I don't know, Mihei!

- Do you think we can cuff this thing?

Minamoto Sezuku swallowed, fleeing the thing from the look... this... this thing... had no definite shape... motionless it seemed to move... made of outward angles that seemed to be coming in... and budding up and spreading... it hurt the eyes... headache... pain in the soul itself even... everything in him rejected this appearance in an unspeakable disgust...

- Stay there and keep this monster in your sights, I'll go up and take Tomoko from it.

- You are crazy!

With his pistol held in both hands, the inspector reached the foot of the iron staircase. The monster did not move. The young woman was resting at its feet (or what he assumed to be it feet), half-collapsed. Blood flowed from her shoulder and she stared at the policeman with wide eyes. Her small breasts were lifted by breath breathing. At the top of the stairs, Sezuku held his gun and called:

- Tomoko-chan, are you conscious?

- Yes.

- Do not move!

The monster threw its head back to make a dreadful howl. From the outside of the hall, we saw all the windows shatter. Inside it was worse. Ears and nose bleeding, Tomoko lost consciousness. As if struck by a ram, Minamoto fell a good part of the steps before stopping his fall by grabbing the railing. Less touched, Asano manages to stay on his feet. Without dealing with the papers that were flying in all directions or the hemoglobin that was sticking to his face, he pointed his gun, emptying his magazine.

The weapon wasn't loaded with ordinary bullets, but with soft anti-cyborgs cartridges. Their ram-jet thrusters and micro-explosive charge were more in the category of rockets than bullets.

The shots did not injure the Hound of Tindalos but unbalanced it. Rocking over the balustrade, the overseas creature fell into the printer. The carpet formed by the paper tape drove it towards the rollers of the press. Before the thing could do anything, the movement had put it within range of the press and tons of scrap metal caught it.

On the other side, the pages of the newspaper appeared to be stained with a blue, foul mud.


In Tokyo city, most citizen lives in large, urban residential complexes, clusters of thousands of small apartments. For the resistance, these apartments make effective safehouses. The city was so vast that is it effectively impossible to place all urban complexes under surveillance; the bustle of a large population center was a very good cover. And with the international airport of Narita, and the commercial port escape route was always available. And with the abundance of stores and markets, obtaining supplies - and, often, illegal material- was not terribly difficult.

Nadia was a pop singer, a celebrity in Japan. She was well known for her extravagant parties and her many acquaintances.

But she, also, was a member of the resistance working to address against the plutocracy's propaganda in the media.

And her lifestyle was a covert story. The neighbors were jaded to see actors, producers, and celebrities and "family" come and go from the apartment of the singer at any time of the night or day. This allowed resistance fighters to come and go without concern.

The trick was that resistance fighters that Nadia hosted weren't in her apartment. Its many visitors have only used to camouflage the passage of opponents to the dictatorship. In fact, a secret passage led to another apartment... empty. Officially, it was for sale and could not find a buyer. Although not furnished, he had water and electricity through a bypass on Nadia's apartment.

It was in this empty apartment that Inspector Minamoto drove Tohsaka Tomoko. Wounded and frightened, she thought no less as quickly and well as usual:

-These monsters hunt me down... they'll find me...

Minamoto helped her ex-wife to sit on the floor of the empty apartment:
- Who?

- The Tindalos' Hounds! These... things felt me... they will find me again. You have to stop them... you don't understand. Killing one of them will not stop them. They thirst for everything that has emerged from life. They are alive in a different way than we are... and we awaken in them a cosmic appetite and a hatred that surpasses all that man can understand and express.
Uncomfortable, Minamoto Sezuku laughs:

- You are describing the Devil himself! I did not think you could believe in absolute evil.

- Evil is a prosaically human idea. The Hounds of Tindalos are beyond our morals. Within the spheres where they move, there is no right, no wrong, in the way we understand it. We were born from a world of curved lines. And they come from a world where everything is angles.

She grabs Sezuku by the lapel of his jacket:

- Go on, you have to go to a hardware store to buy plaster.

The police inspector looked at his ex-wife as if she had lost her mind:

- Plaster?

- And a bucket of water to mix it! Damn it, you're listening to what I'm telling you? The Hounds of Tindalos are made of angles. They only move in angles... for them, a universe made only of curves does not exist!

With her hand, Tomoko showed the corners of the room, the edge of the window:

- We need to clear all angles in this apartment to prevent them from getting in.


(1) "Where books are burned, men are always burned" Goethe.

(2) What would you think in her place? "Hello, the psychiatric hospital? I have a mad teen at home! "?