I listened to Resurrected Replayer off the Umineko OST a lot while I was writing this chapter.

Also, I'll call Saber Altria when Nasu comes to my house in person, shoots me in the face, and rips Artoria from my cold, dead hands.

Berserker was standing statuesque, very far away from them, and then he wasn't.

Shirou had never been hit by a truck before, but if he had, he imagined that the moments before impact would have felt a lot like seeing the screaming, red-eyed giant surging down the street toward him. He didn't even have time to close his eyes and wait for death. A resounding crash echoed through the early-morning street, but not the one he was expecting.

It happened in an instant, and Shirou could only piece the rapid images into a coherent sequence of events in retrospect. Archer dropped into a defensive stance, hesitating for the barest fraction of an inch. Shirou imagined he was considering the enemy; considering his weapons. The dual swords were obviously comfortable for him, and of the finest craftsmanship, but they would be ineffective against a beast with such raw power. He judged them, and found them wanting.

Archer's fingers opened, and he let the twin swords fall. Before they'd gone more than a few inches, they started to spark, wavering in reality, shattering before they'd even touched ground. He thrust his hands out before him, muttering something Shirou couldn't make out under his breath - a curse, or an incantation - and brought them together.

Berserker was close, and closing fast.

Golden light swirled and began to coalesce. It started in his hands, shaping into a brilliant hilt and crossguard of gold and blue and solidifying. The light shot outward, leaving in its wake a blade that stirred something noble within the soul, a crystallization of power and beauty that caught Shirou's breath in his chest.

Berserker's enormous stone sword was raised, gripped tight in two straining fists, and swung down with brutal strength. Archer stood no chance.

But the golden sword did. In one fluid motion, as the light of its creation faded, Archer brought it up to meet its counterpart. The force of the blow sent a shockwave through the street, a sound like a cannon going off a dozen feet away, but the golden sword held. Archer staggered a little under the force of the blow; his defense was successful.

Rin's eyes were wide. "That sword…" Shirou couldn't look away from it either, so he understood how she felt.

A moment of deathly silence. A look of something that was almost surprise crossed Berserker's face. "Even this fake, huh…?" Came Archer's voice, a note of wonder in it. And then, like a rollercoaster cresting its first peak, the real onslaught began. None of the flurry of blows had quite the power of that first strike, carried as it was by momentum, but even Berserker's weakest attack would have been enough to shatter a human's arm if they tried to parry it. Golden sword gripped desperately in a two-handed grip, he met each better than he should have been able to. Crashes and booms and roars assaulted the senses, Shirou's whole body vibrating with the cacophony.

Archer held his ground.

Tohsaka was about as frozen by awe as he was. Her eyes were wide, and her fists clenched and unclenched at her side. "If that sword is…" She sounded like she was talking through a math problem. "Then he must be…"

Shirou didn't know what she was talking about, but her voice broke something within him. He grabbed her by the arm, and she turned that deer-in-the-headlights look on him. "We have to do something!"

She looked dazed. Shirou realized that it had been a very long night for all three of them; none of them were moving or thinking like they should have been. "You're right," she said, shaking her head intensely. "We need Assassin."

"We need-" Shirou went cold. "No, we can't. I can't." The pain, like plunging into an ocean of icy fire. He couldn't do that again. Not unless he had no other choice.

"Rin Tohsaka is correct. My blade is needed, Contractor. This man was a monster even before his mind was taken from him."

Archer called out, strained. "Rin! Our plan from earlier! I'll cover your escape!" He grunted, a parry sending him skidding back into a brick wall hard enough to crack it. He's tired, Shirou thought, horrified. He's tired and he can't go all out, because he's protecting us.

His fingers on her arm tightened, and she pulled out of his grip, her face white. "Tohsaka, he's right. We have to get out of here."

That broke through the daze, and her expression morphed to outrage. "No! I will not run from this like a coward!" She raised a hand, and Shirou saw something glittering in her fingers.

"He can't fight if he's protecting us!" Shirou hadn't meant to yell, but he had, and she froze again. "Look at him." He pointed. "He keeps putting himself in front of Berserker's swings, even when he could just get out of the way and save some energy." His own technique sucked, but his understanding of the theory was decent. Fuji-nee had done her best. "He's stopping Berserker from coming after us instead of looking for ways to fight back."

Another crash. Rin's jaw tightened, a tendon straining in her neck. "Fine. You're right. We… we have to move." She glared at him with enough fire to melt a boulder. "Damn you."

Archer's body burned with fatigue. Not in the way he'd burned when he was mortal; this was more of a spreading weakness than the pain of overexertion. The repeated impacts had left his fingers numb, and he half expected his projected weapon to go skidding out of his hands with every block. He was surprised it hadn't shattered. He could not match the strength of the original, but even this shadow of a copy was powerful.

Using it felt like a betrayal.

She should have been here to wield it herself.

His true Heroic Spirit dwelled eternal within the Throne of Heroes, ready to be summoned as an agent of the Counter Force. It, essentially, received reports of the experiences of every single one of its incarnations throughout time and space, but he, this instance of him, did not. He was a projection, created by the Holy Grail to fill the role of "Archer" using the true Heroic Spirit as a template, not unlike the way the sword he held in his hand was a facsimile he had created to fill the role of "a sword that cannot be beaten." (A contradiction in terms, yes, but he had unshakable faith in the Sword of Promised Victory, and faith meant more than all the supposedly unbreakable rules in the universe. It was why he'd fallen so far.) Only bits and pieces of his myriad existences filtered down into any given summoning. Half remembered images and memories like the name of a once-beloved song that danced on the tip of the tongue. Every scrap of possibility his grasping, clawing fingers could reach told him that her presence was a constant. If Shirou Emiya entered the Fifth Holy Grail War, no matter what else changed, Artoria Pendragon fought at his side.

This was wrong.

It was like a persistent itch at the back of his mind. An insect bite that he couldn't reach. Was Assassin a symptom, or was he the cause? Was there a meaning at all, or was this just an especially rare turn of fate in the grand scheme of the multiverse? Did it matter?

Even now, fighting desperately for his life and his Master's life, the itch was everpresent. But was it only that? An oily sheen on reality; a sense that the world was offset just enough to drive him mad. He was intimately familiar with the pain of a phantom limb — this was a phantom world.

Duck. Redirect. Close the gap. Parry. His bones hurt. His hands would break before the sword did. He would break upon the self-loathing before the sword did. This was a mistake. He risked a glance behind him; the two Masters were still standing there. Idiots. "Go!" He barely had time to react to the next attack. They'd get him killed like this.

"Fine! I'm leaving this to you, Archer!" Rin projected absolute, casual confidence, but he knew her well enough to know that she was boiling over with rage and fear and indignation. "A little while is enough. Keep him busy by yourself." Something quieter.

"Archer is no match for Berserker," Assassin's booming voice intoned. "Allow me to support him."

Deflect. Parry. Recover.

He could hear the struggle in Shirou's silence, without even needed to see the boy. A war between his foolish heroic instincts and fear of the pain.

Archer barked out a laugh he didn't feel. "I'll be able to escape once you guys are gone." Parry. Smash. Dodge. "Independent Action is a specialty of Archers, after all!"

Behind Berserker, in the moment between strikes, he caught a glimpse of the giant's master. Illya. His gut clenched, and he grit his teeth against the flood of melancholy and guilt. She looked bored, nothing approaching recognition on her face. "Such a pathetic, nameless Servant, stop my Berserker? That's almost kind of cute."

They were really drawing this retreat out, weren't they? Did they want him to die?

"Archer, I-"

He cut Rin off before she could say anything. "Buying time is fine, but you won't mind if I beat that thing, right?"

Parry. Parry. Parry. The numbness had been replaced by pain, but pain was easier. Pain had always been easier.

Rin was silent for a moment, and he imagined her look of shock melting into one of determination. "Yeah, you don't need to hold back. Kick his ass, Archer!" With that, two pairs of running footsteps faded into the grey morning.

A fog was gathering around them. That was fine.

"Don't let them get away, Berserker!" Illya screamed, her boredom quickly being replaced by petulant anger. "Kill Archer and tear them apart!"

Holding ground was not Archer's strong suit. He could keep himself alive through battle as well as anyone he'd ever known, but it was a fast and mobile and evasive defense. If he'd used his usual tactics, Rin and Shirou (but mostly Rin) would have been wide open. He had been fighting with his hands tied behind his back, and Rin had just cut the rope.

Berserker roared again, and he answered with a feral grin. The shackles were off. Archer was tired, but he had more than enough fight left for this. He leapt backward, buying himself a moment to prepare. Berserker didn't follow immediately. So the great beast was capable of caution. Archer shifted his grip on Excalibur to a single hand, and opened his other wide. Magic circuits sparked to life, power flowed through him like an electric current, and a great black and red inversion of the blessed blade formed in the other. Darkness radiated from it the way light poured off its twin. Guilt would come later. This was combat, pure and uninhibited. Desperate and terrifying and uncertain.

Archer had never felt more alive.

"I am the bone of my sword."

Shirou ran until his lungs burned, and the guilt ran with him.

They'd left Archer to die. The unspoken goodbye in Rin's voice had driven it home to him, but it was too late to regret.

He stopped running, who knew how many minutes later, and Rin immediately collided with his back with a squawk, knocking the both of them to the ground. Shirou sat up first, and she followed suit a moment later, rubbing at an elbow that had been scraped raw by asphalt. "What the hell, Emiya? Do you remember what we're running from?"

He shook his head. "I mean, yeah, I do, but… We just left him, Rin. We should go back."

She slapped him across the face, hard. "Don't do that. You just told me we had to run. We made a choice, and we have to live with the consequences." She pushed herself to her feet, then grabbed him roughly under the arms and hauled him up as well.

His cheek stung, but he said nothing. He looked back the way they had come. They were far enough away that the sounds of battle were no longer audible, or Archer was already dead. A feeling like powerful magnetism was pulling him back that way.

She bulled her way in front of him, blocking his gaze. She looked terrified, and she looked angry, and he couldn't tell which was stronger. "What's wrong with you, Emiya? Come on, we have to go." More than either of those things, though, what he heard in her voice was confusion. "He'll make it. He's an ass, but he's strong and smart." He thought she was trying to convince herself as much as him. "He'll meet up with us later." She held up the back of her hand, showing him the Command Seal. She'd used one at some point, he noted. "Look, if he was dead, this would be gone. He's still fighting."

From somewhere behind the oppressive mist, a distant roar. So, maybe not as far as he'd thought. But then there was another roar, and this one was closer.

Shirou's heart lodged in his throat.

Rin grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him, then shoved him forward. "We have to go!"

Illya von Einzbern didn't understand what she was seeing.

It had all been so simple, at first. One Servant, two Masters. Wherever Assassin was, it wasn't here. Berserker would make short work of Archer, then dismember the girl, then break Shirou's legs and return him to her. Easy-peasy.

But it hadn't gone that way. Archer had summoned a sword that almost hurt to look at. He'd held Berserker - Berserker! - at bay. He hadn't given up an inch. Just when it had seemed like Berserker was going to win, the Masters had run, and everything had changed.

Twin trails of black and gold followed the two swords in Archer's hands, and he wielded them like buzzsaws, carving furrows in her Servant's ironhide flesh. He flowed like water, and Berserker's attacks were like trying to catch dust in the wind. Where Archer had parried more attacks than he'd dodged, at cost to himself, now he was slippery, never giving Berserker the opportunity to land a solid hit.

Berserker thrust, and he ducked under the blow.

Berserker swung, and his crossed swords caught the enormous weapon.

Berserker threw out a massive fist, and the black sword cut deep into his forearm.

An overhead swing crashed into the ground, cratering the pavement and sending shrapnel spinning in every direction. Archer was already moving, sliding between the great tree-trunk legs, swinging behind him as he passed. Berserker roared and dropped to his knees, and Illya couldn't help a scream as she realized what had happened. Those two swords had cut his hamstrings. "Kill him, Berserker!" she wailed, and he tried to obey, swiping behind him with one enormous hand. Archer danced backward, then lunged, burying the golden sword into Berserker's heart so deeply that the tip sprouted from her Servant's chest like an ugly flower.

Berserker struggled for a moment, then went still. Archer tugged on the sword, but found it trapped in poor Berserker's rocklike flesh. He considered this for a moment, then shrugged and turned to her. "Easier than I thought it'd be," he said casually, switching the black sword to his dominant hand.

She looked up at him, eyes wide, and took an unconscious step back. "Berserker! Berserker, get up!"

He approached her, raising the sword.

"Berserker!" she screamed, stumbling backward and landing on her butt hard enough to knock the breath from her. She fought the urge to burst into tears. She would not cry.

Sword held over his head, ready to kill, Archer hesitated.

Behind him, Berserker sprang to life with a roar as his eyes flashed blinding red, swinging his fist in a wide arc. It took Archer in the side hard enough to snap ribs and sent him slamming back into a wall hard enough to crash through it.

"Berserker!" She cried, smiling, and ran to the giant with tears in her eyes. Berserker stood slowly, as if testing his own regenerative capabilities, and she wrapped her arms around his leg in the biggest hug she could give. She'd known he was okay. She'd known how his Noble Phantasm worked. But knowing was different than believing, and in that moment she'd been so sure-

A flurry of arrows poured from the hole in the wall, and Berserker turned to shield her with his back. They pounded repeatedly into him as she screamed, unable to see what was happening, and she felt him go lifelessly still once again.

A few seconds later, the rain of steel stopped, and Berserker turned, alive once more. She saw that the dozen weapons lodged in his back were not arrows at all, but swords, each one a different size and shape. Archer emerged from the hole in the wall, a great bow in one hand, the black sword in the other. "How many times do I have to kill you, big guy?" He asked casually.

"Twelve," she boasted.

Archer tilted his head, then nodded. "I can do that."

The battle rejoined, and it dragged on. Archer cut Berserker's throat with the black sword, then found that it could no longer penetrate her Servant's skin. Berserker took advantage of his confusion and broke Archer's arm. The sword clattered uselessly to the ground.

The fight was confusing and hard for her to follow, and she found herself backing up into the alley, telling herself that she was not cowering.

Archer had more weapons than she could count. None of them were as powerful as the first two, usually shattering after just a couple blows. Berserker was like the world's most dangerous pincushion, swinging and roaring and punching with reckless abandon. Archer killed him again, driving a narrow sword deep into Berserker's gut and twisting, but he was breathing hard, his movements slowing. He still kept one step ahead, but that wouldn't last forever.

What ended the fight was bad luck, more than anything. A piece of rubble torn from the ruined street gave under Archer's foot, and he stumbled. That was all Berserker needed, and he capitalized on the opportunity. With a scream of rage and pain, he swung, and Archer tried desperately to parry, but with one arm hanging limply at his side and such a weak sword in his other hand, all he could do was dampen the blow. The nameless sword shattered in his grasp, and Berserker's sword took him in the gut.

It should have cut Archer in two, but all it managed to do was carve deep enough to glance off of Archer's spine with a hollow chunk. Archer gasped and coughed, spraying blood onto Berserker's indifferent chest. The sword was pulled free, and Archer staggered backward, face pale as a ghost, his good hand holding his guts inside him. That was annoying.

After all that he'd done, she wanted to see his guts. Illya balled her hands into fists and threw them over her head with a whooping cheer.

He mumbled something she couldn't quite hear. It sounded like a prayer. That seemed fair. Berserker raised his sword to finish him, but as she cheered him on, something strange happened. Archer glared defiantly up at his approaching death, no fear in his eyes, and growled words that made no sense.

"Unlimited Blade Works."

The world rippled, a wave of power spreading away from Archer like a stone tossed into a pond. A ring of fire burned around them, and even Berserker seemed taken aback. Then…

The world shifted.

Where they'd stood in the ruin of a shattered street, surrounded by carved ground and blasted craters, the three of them now stood in a wide, flat expanse of hardpan desert. The air was hot and dry, and though there was no sun that she could see, heat burned Illya's sensitive white skin. Instead, great gears hung in the sky like unfathomable clockwork, a deafening tick tick tick filling the air. As far as the eye could see, swords were stuck in the ground, point down. No two swords looked the same.

A Reality Marble? But that was impossible! A mere Archer couldn't have such a thing.

Berserker took an unconscious step back, red eyes darting from side to side in confusion. He made a sound more like an uncertain growl than his usual roar.

A sound of static, and the world wavered. Flickered back and forth between the street and the impossible desert. One second, tightly packed sand and stone; the next, broken asphalt. Two competing signals, like a broken television. Illya felt sick, and her thoughts had simply stopped; she was trying too hard to understand what was happening.

When Archer moved, he moved impossibly fast. His good hand closed on one of the hilts nearest him, and he yanked from the ground an odd spiraled sword, like an oversized unicorn's horn. With a roar of effort and pain, he threw himself forward, driving the horn-sword through Berserker's belly. Again, a sword erupted from Berserker's lower back, and the giant roared in pain.

Time stopped. The world flickered again, wavering and jumping. They were a tableau of violence and pain, silhouetted against the dead orange sky and made vague by distortion.

Archer screamed, throwing his body upon the hilt of the sword jutting from her Servant. She had just enough time to wonder what he was doing before the blade snapped, and with the most earshattering, painful sound Illya had ever heard-

the world

dissolved

into white.

She came to seconds or minutes later, back in the real world. It didn't look any different than it had before it had disappeared, not at all like a bomb had just gone off, but her whole body ached and burned in a way totally distinct from the usual, everpresent agony of the Command Seals etched across her entire self. Berserker seemed to be returning to life, as well. Whatever Archer had done, it had taken another of his precious regenerations.

She coughed, doubling over in pain on her side. Stars swirled before her, and she wanted to cry. Her throat was tight, and her vision wavered. Archer was gone. Escaped and crippled, or vaporized by his own suicide attack. She hadn't seen the telltale golden sparkles, so she couldn't be sure. Either way, one thing was clear.

"Berserker," she coughed. He turned to look at her, his body still riddled with weapons. She was so thirsty. "Archer is gone. Go kill them." Her voice was a rasp.

Berserker roared in assent, and disappeared in a rumble of groundbreaking footfalls.

Illya rolled onto her back, staring up into the early-dawn fog, and let her tears fall.

Two blood-caked masters fled across the suffocating city, and the mad warrior followed.

Rin was not out of shape. Not in the slightest. Powerful mages often neglected their physical bodies, bothering only to train their magical abilities. Idiots. If you could throw a punch, if you could move quickly, whole new avenues of strategy were opened up to you that most mages would never stoop to consider.

If she hadn't trained her body as intently as she had, she would be dead, her remains splattered across the street several miles back. Her lungs burned. Her legs felt like rubber. Her neck was stiff from all the glances she was throwing behind her. Even her arms hurt. How could she have known to prepare for this?

She didn't know where they were going, and she didn't think Shirou did either. His breath was as ragged as hers, and he was clutching his side with gritted teeth. His strides were looking more and more like limps. There was no way to run and to speak at the same time, and there was nothing to say. Archer had bought time, but not enough, and their death was drawing close.

Fog churned oppressively around them, reducing visibility to a matter of meters. If they'd been able to pull farther away, that might have made a difference in their favor, but as they were, it was no help. She chanced another look over her shoulder, and she would have screamed if she'd had the breath. A great hulking shadow moved at the edges of visibility, without even definition enough to mark it as humanoid. It was a malevolent mass of darkness. It was oddly muffled, but each of its footsteps was a crash, shattering the pavement as it passed. The sound of its sword dragging on the ground behind it was an earsplitting high squeal, and its roars invoked the inevitability of an oncoming train.

"Getting closer," she gasped, and she had no idea if Shirou would be able to hear her. It was a useless thing to say. He could hear the thundering giant just as well as she could.

"Thine options are but one," Assassin's voice boomed. "The price for stubbornness has been paid in blood."

Shirou's eyes were bloodshot. He didn't react to the words.

There was a crash behind them, a different crash, and she looked behind her just in time to see the shadow - now possessing limbs - swipe a parked car out of its way, sending it tumbling side over side into the sidewalk. The sounds of twisting metal and shattering glass, muffled by the blanketing fog. Its alarm went off, the blaring siren adding to the auditory assault, rhythmic. Berserker roared again, and the city shook with the sound.

"Berserker draws near. It will take thine lives as easily as it draws breath." There was an edge to the words. A frustration dancing in the consonants. "Allow me to fight. Allow me to fulfil the duty I was summoned to perform."

Shirou's breath had a rough edge to it, like something was catching inside of him with every exhalation. All Rin could do was hope that his lungs weren't filling up with fluid, or something. The kind of drain he'd suffered earlier could do terrible things to a body; for all she knew, something had ruptured he was bleeding internally.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry, and she wanted to deny that the tears were in her eyes. She wanted to curl up in a ball and wake from the nightmare.

That kind of thinking got you killed, and Rin Tohsaka was not the kind of person to lay down and die. If she gave up, she wouldn't be worthy of the name.

No time to aim, but she needed to buy a few more seconds. One of her precious gems flew up into the air and exploded in a dazzling white and an ear-splitting screech. Berserker's footsteps faltered, and the next roar was one of pain. She didn't know if she could pierce that monster's thick hide, but eyes and ears were always vulnerable. It was a massive expenditure of resources for minimal gain, but it meant they could run a few seconds longer.

The distance between them lengthened, but not by much. Everything was on fire, and nausea wracked her, but she had to keep it controlled. If she stopped to puke, she'd die.

Boom boom boom boomboomboom, the slowed footsteps regained speed, clashing with the nails-on-a-chalkboard sound of the sword on the ground.

She chanced a glance to the side. Shirou was wavering from side to side as he ran, and had dipped several feet behind her. There was a trickle of blood under the corner of his lips, and another streak of blood like a teardrop down one cheek. A vessel had burst in that eye. He wouldn't be able to go much further; Assassin's drain had been too much.

"Dammit," she gasped, without much fire, and dug a second gem out of her pocket. This one she let fall, then roared a word and snapped her fingers the instant she was sure Shirou had passed it. She couldn't look, but there was a grinding sound as a column of stone shot up from the ground, creating a barrier that might slow Berserker down. The crash that followed almost instantly suggested that it didn't. Two of her gems, and what had she accomplished? She wanted to laugh.

She could leave him. She could let him fall behind, and Berserker would stop to deal with him. That Einzbern kid had been interested in Shirou; maybe she'd have her Servant carry him back, and she'd be able to save him later.

Or let him die.

The thought was tempting.

The crashing and screeching and roaring were deafening. Another sound. Squealing metal, and then something passed by them fast enough for the wind of its passing to ruffle Rin's hair. She had just enough time to recognize a stop sign, ripped from the ground, before it disappeared into the white. If that had hit….

"Your foolishness dishonors us both."

The breath caught in Rin's chest as Shirou stumbled. Whether from exhaustion or a dip in the terrain or his ankle simply twisting out from under him, he lost his balance. She reached out a hand to try to grab him, to steady him, but there was nothing she could do in time. He dipped one way, overcorrected, and hit the ground, momentum sending him tumbling and skidding with a yell. She skidded to a stop as well, out of nothing more than sheer instinct and a desire to protect, and in an instant, Berserker was on them.

In the brief moments she had, she saw that the giant was covered in viscous blood, blades driven deep into his flesh all across his body. His eyes burned with rage, and a trickle of blackish fluid had run down his chin. Without breaking stride, he raised his cruel, bloodstained sword, chipped and bloody and cracked.

Shirou barely had time to look up and start screaming, his face a mask of blood.

"I will show you the meaning of duty, Contractor."

A scream of terror turned into a scream of absolute agony as the great black-armored man, nearly Berserker's own height, appeared to block the monster's way, standing over his suffering Master. Blue sparks showered down over Shirou's writhing body, illuminating him, as monstrous sword met black-iron shield. The sword was stopped, but Berserker's body carried the same momentum, and he barreled full-speed into Assassin. He took it in stride as best he could, using his own, significant mass to redirect the energy. The two of them spun off into the fog, harmlessly passing over Shirou's prone form. A solid brick wall collapsed like a child's sandcastle as they smashed through it.

She ran to his side, kneeling down beside him. He twisted and bucked and yelled, and his bloody eyes were wide and unseeing. This would kill him. Everything she'd done would be for nothing, and he would die, and if he died, then-

"Assassin!" She screamed, wrapping Shirou's limp, shuddering arm around her shoulders. "A few seconds at a time!" She screamed with effort and pulled him to his feet. "Dematerialize every second you can spare!"

She wasn't his Master, and she didn't have the authority to order him around, but the moment the words were out of her mouth, Shirou gasped, his whole body trembling, and started supporting some of his own weight. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. She shook her head violently, and started limping them forward as quickly as she could. "We need to get out of here while we can," she panted. "The pain will be-"

They'd barely made it ten steps before Shirou wailed again, his whole body locking up and nearly dragging them both to the ground. The sound of sword on sword echoed, and she caught a glimpse of a pair of shadows clashing just at the edge of sight. One of the shadows swung its hazy sword, and the other disappeared in the blink of an eye, fog swirling to fill the empty space. Berserker bellowed with rage and frustration.

Shirou was drenched in sweat and blood, and she felt so many things so intensely that it all became a kind of numbness. His breath was heavy, his movements slow, his face grey as slate, but he caught himself, and they started again to limp away.

Focus on their steps. On keeping Shirou standing. There was no room for anything else. Her mind was numb. Her body was numb. It would be so easy to just let herself fall.

The crashing footfalls grew closer. She didn't look. Louder. She didn't look. Shirou wailed again, pitifully, and buckled. It took everything she had to keep him from hitting the ground again.

She looked.

Assassin stood tall, swinging his shield in an arc to deflect Berserker's sword, then used the momentum to slash at the giant's arm. The cold steel bit deep into the flesh of Berserker's forearm, but when Berserker swiped again where Assassin had stood, he met only empty air.

Another roar of frustration, and another paroxysm of abject suffering from the boy at her side, as Assassin reappeared at Berserker's back, drawing a line of blinding blue fire across the beast. Shirou's scream was more like a whistle than anything, his voice destroyed.

Swing into empty air. Reappear. Seize. Strike. Disappear. Take a few steps. Claw for every millimeter of distance as if it were a mile.

Somehow, the intermittent, unpredictable nature of the pain made it seem even more cruel than an unbroken torrent of it would have been.

Assassin, for all his raw power, was managing little more than to distract. The constant materialization and dematerialization wasn't giving enough time for his mana to gather, to coalesce into something stable. The worst he could be was a buzzing wasp, there one minute, gone the next, repeated stings enraging the monster, but not truly hurting him. His sword drew blood, but didn't cleave; that blue fire burned, but didn't blacken.

The battle receded and drew nearer. Shirou stumbled forward and nearly dragged her down. Assassin was there, and then he wasn't. What am I doing? She thought. If I let him fall and ran, I'd be free.

But the truth was… she knew he wouldn't do that to her, were their positions reversed. She couldn't wrap her mind around why. It made no sense. It went against everything she knew about the world.

It made her want to be better.

Time was unreal. Nonexistent. Every moment was an eternity and every eon was an instant. The chase continued. The chase had no end. The chase would never end.

Until, of course, it did.

The first thing Rin noticed was something that looked like a bird but wasn't. Even in this state, she recognized a construct instantly. It flitted around Berserker and Assassin, curious, darting this way and that. A familiar, childish voice emerged from the construct, tinny and faint and afraid. "Berserker?"

Berserker ground to a halt, looking at the blue bird-thing. Assassin vanished, and Shirou went limp in her arms. She struggled to hold him up, and his eyes fluttered. "Stay with me, Shirou. Please…"

"You've been gone a really long time," Illya's voice said, and it was on the edge of cracking. "I'm… I'm alone and I don't know this place and it hurts and… and I don't like it. We'll kill them later. Please come back." Her voice broke on the last word. "Please…"

And as quickly and intently as he'd chased after them, Berserker disappeared into the fog, back the way they'd come. Silence descended upon them. After all that… All of that, and they only survived because a little girl had gotten scared and lonely.

Great fight, team. Good hustle.

"Shirou?" She did the only thing she could think of to rouse him, and slapped him across the face. His eyes shot wide with a grunt, and he found his feet. His breath came rough, his eyes darting this way and that, and she loosened her grip. He was heavy, and she was so weary down to her bones.

Assassin did not rematerialize, but Shirou mumbled something incoherent, then pitched forward. She couldn't stop him from hitting the ground; all she really managed was to slow his fall a little.

She looked down at the boy for a long, long moment. All was still and silent. She didn't know where they'd ended up. How to get home from here. Assassin couldn't come back out without maybe killing his Master. Her own Servant was missing in action. Emiya would not be able to move under his own power, even if he woke up. And she was more tired than she could ever remember being in her whole life, but there was no time to rest.

She started laughing as she bent down to try to pull Emiya off the ground, and she didn't stop until her own throat was raw and painful and she tasted blood.

Next chapter: A Moment To Breathe