"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."

It was nighttime, so Illya made sure that Berserker was close by. Not so close as to alert the people in the house, of course, but close enough that he'd be able to come to her rescue if she needed. He could move fast for how big he was.

Lancer had been close by for a while, but it seemed like he was just spying on her. That was okay. She wasn't doing anything so secret that he couldn't know about it. She was spying too, but she didn't like to use that word. There wasn't really any strategic advantage to be gained from coming here herself. This wasn't Grail War business. Not really.

She had familiars everywhere, all but blanketing the city. A couple of them, she kept circling Ryuudou Temple, where Caster and Saber had fortified. Another pair had been following Rider ever since their spat in the grocery store. One was watching Lancer watch her watching the house. Others circled the town, keeping eyes and ears open for any unexpected movement. If there was anything particularly important, they would alert her, and she would be able to look through their eyes.

Not a lot happened in this city that Illyasviel von Einzbern couldn't see. Anything inside a bounded field was mostly off limits, but otherwise?

What am I doing here? she thought. This is stupid. You're being stupid, Illya. Go home. But she didn't want to go home.

Home was big and empty. Home was lonely.

That was fine. She loved being alone. She really did.

She didn't want to go home, though.

They were in there. Rin Tohsaka and the Makiri girl and… him. Shirou.

(And the Assassin that felt so familiar, but she adamantly refused to consider why that might be.)

(She didn't like thinking of those times, so she wouldn't.)

She wanted desperately to go knock on the door. To demand to speak to him. She wouldn't, but she wanted to. How can you be so happy? How can you laugh like that? Didn't you lose him too? The thought didn't help. It only made her feel colder. More alone.

She hadn't felt alone when he'd treated her like a sister. He hadn't even known, she didn't think, and he'd still treated her with respect and care. Her. After everything she'd tried to do to him.

What was she doing here? She'd been sitting in this stupid tree for an hour, since just after that weird loud lady with the motorcycle had disappeared. Since then… She'd just watched. There was nothing to see from here, but she watched anyway. She watched and tried to ignore the longing that was eating her alive.

Her thoughts ran in circles. A dog chasing its own tail, unable to move forward. A burst of magic from inside the house, then another, and then another. Minor spells. Practice, it felt like. She wondered if those were Shirou.

Come back with me.

Why would she?

I can make enough for you, too.

Why would he?

Assassin's presence solidified somewhere inside, and she gasped. It was somewhere near all that magic practice. Maybe Shirou had figured something out, and he could actually use his Servant now.

If that was the case, she tried to ignore the swell of impossible, stupid pride in him that she felt. He's the enemy.

If anything, that only meant that he would be a better opponent, right? There wasn't much fun in a fight that was already decided. There had to be the question of who would come out on top, and if he hadn't even been able to summon his Servant in any major capacity, he wasn't going to be any fun when she actually… When she actually did what exactly?

Around and around and around. The dog would never catch its tail unless someone cut it off and handed it to the poor creature.

Something buzzed in her skull. An alert. Something was happening. It was too dangerous for her to just be out on the street, even if she was hidden a little bit. When she saw through her familiars, she was no longer aware of her body or her surroundings. Squirming and grunting, she pulled herself higher up into the tree until she was hidden more completely, then closed her eyes. "Show me," she whispered.

The image flickered to life, clear as day. She recognized the setting immediately. The church on the hill. The carriage in front of it. So it was Rider, then. Wordlessly, the familiar showed her a ghost from moments before; Rider, that slutty bitch, entering the church, alone. Interesting. If she's in there, the bounded field has been broken, right? There's no harm. The familiar flitted forward, up to the stained glass window. The most she could see were moving shadows. Fighting? It looked like it could be fighting.

Back in her physical location, Lancer's presence disappeared. The familiar following him would have no trouble keeping up despite his inhuman nature.

The shapes stopped. The only sound she could hear were the soft flitting of crystalline wings. Then, with a resounding crash (and maybe a squeal?) the carriage broke through the wall of the church and disappeared. The familiar darted down to the hole, just in time to see Rider, covered in blood, throwing a body into the carriage. Someone definitely squealed, this time.

Was that body the priest? Kotomine? It seemed like a fair guess. But why? Why kill him? But then, why take the body if he was dead? So they kidnapped him, then. That seems really ominous. Given the timing of Lancer's departure, it wasn't a huge leap to speculate that Kotomine might be a Master. In that case… She racked her brain, trying to come up with a good reason that they wouldn't just kill him. Ransom? No way. That jerk doesn't have anyone who cares about him. Plus, if he's a Master… This was too strange. She couldn't leave this be.

I have to follow them.

So, she did.

The carriage flew down dark streets like a bat out of hell, wheels screaming on asphalt, monstrous beasts of burden roaring as they strained and pulled. More than once, it almost pulled away; there was even a close call where she did lose sight of it, and had to guess at a shortcut to meet back up with it. Illya's familiars could only move so quickly, and Rider was a Rider for a reason. There was a purpose to all of this. Wherever they were going, it was not random.

A place of power. The old, abandoned theater in one of the districts that were all but abandoned by everyone but the homeless. There was a leyline, here, and the rumor was that the last Grail War had ended here. If they needed this kind of power… There must be a spell. A ritual, or a sacrifice, or… something.

The carriage door burst open, and Rider's master, slimy and covered in blood (but apparently unhurt), scrambled out. Moments later, Rider followed, having ditched the leather jacket, three evenly spaced holes in her gut, and Kotomine — so it was Kotomine — was held roughly in an almost bridal-style carry, limp like a sack of potatoes. One of his arms ended at the burnt husk of an elbow, and his legs were bent in ways that suggested they'd been broken. His face was a mask of blood, his hair plastered to his skull with it. Deep gouges had rent the rich fabric of his robe, and what looked like savage claw marks from some kind of bear or something had been carved down his back. Rider looked angry. It would have been frightening, if Illya had been present and afraid of such things.

They disappeared into the theater, and the familiar slipped in after them. This was neither a home or a workshop; there was no field to break through or alarm to trigger. A few muttered words, and the familiar perched in a shadow and melted, magical latticework twisting and reshaping over the course of minutes until she looked through the eyes of a spider. Something as unobtrusive as possible. This sort of thing was hard from such a distance, but she was pretty good at familiar manipulation. It would have taken a lesser mage almost an hour, she was sure.

Voices came from deeper in, and she followed the sounds. No one but these people had been in this building for a decade, it seemed. Dust lay thick over every exposed surface, and it hung in the air like a thick suffocating clouds. Candles burned here and there, illuminating the path, and shadows loomed large and blanketing, smothering everything. She passed a broken ticket stand, and moth-eaten red rope lay in the shadows like dead, bloody snakes. When she had been very young, Illya had liked to pretend that her castle in Germany had been haunted, but it had always been bright and warm and inviting, no matter how many lights she turned off. This seemed like the sort of place where ghosts would really live. Somewhere decayed and forgotten. Somewhere… angry.

There was a feeling in the air. Even the familiar could feel it. The buzz of magical energy, and the buzz of intent. Something was about to happen. Something was poised. The Fates had pulled their thread tight, and Atropos was readying her shears. Whatever was happening here would happen. There wouldn't be time to reach them, even if Illya wanted to; the theater was at the opposite end of Fuyuki.

She followed the voices to the theater proper. This room was bathed in torchlight, making the shadows of the seats and the railings and the people inside dance. The dust was lessened in here, but the disrepair was just as in evidence; the cushions were being eaten away, the wood cracked and ancient, metal rusted. The rows of chairs reminded her, she thought with a shiver, of a legion of gravestones all attentively turned toward the stage in reverence.

On the stage, the wooden floor was spotless and gleaming. A complex magical circle, more convoluted than something even she could create, had been carved into the center and inlaid with what could only be tacky human blood, and where the curtain had been, there sat a row of headless bodies like a wall, propped up by some mechanism or magic that she couldn't make out. The priest knelt in the center of the circle, his blood dripping and mingling with that on that floor. He was still breathing, and he even, shockingly, looked conscious. His eyes were open, though fixed on the floor for the moment, and absolutely empty. From what Illya knew, that was par for the course.

Pacing the floor in front of the stage, wringing his hands, was Shinji Matou. He was pale and drenched in nervous sweat, and he was muttering inaudibly to himself. It looked more like a frantic one-sided conversation than a monologue.

Rider lounged just ahead of the front row in a heavy, comfortable armchair that looked much too whole to have entered the theater more than a day or so ago. She was still covered in blood, though it was dry, and her face was still twisted in dull rage. "-put this off," she was saying, her voice fading into audibility as the spider crept closer. "I haven't broken him yet, old man. He won't be as good a vessel if he's not afraid."

Off to Kotomine's left stood that wizened, wrinkly old bastard, Zouken Matou. "Fear has nothing to do with the ritual," he said, in a voice like a doting grandfather. He'd been more corrupted than anyone else in the room. This Illya knew from experience. The grandfather schtick was only more disturbing with that knowledge. He wore a wide grin, dark humor shining in his beady black eyes, though his head was bowed as he spoke to Rider through twisted, rotting teeth. "I understand that you're disappointed, my queen, but time is of the essence, and I do not believe the greatest torturer Heroic Spirit the world has ever seen would be able to break this man's mind before his body gave out."

Rider spat on the floor. "All the more reason for me to try."

Her spider took a wide berth, crawling along the wall at the edges of the light, trying to get a better angle on the circle that trapped Kotomine.

"Let me rephrase my clumsy words, only so that I may be more clear," Zouken replied humbly, and Illya couldn't help but wonder if his bowing and scraping was as transparently manipulative to Rider as it was to her. "If you have not broken him in the half an hour he was in your grasp, then that means he truly is what we seek. Not even fear fills his heart. There is nothing to influence the Spirit."

The circle… it wasn't just any magic circle. Not just any ritual. This circle… those runes, those designs, that inscription… It was a summoning circle. And if they kept calling him a vessel, that could only mean one thing. There was a term Illya had encountered in her studies. A theoretical concept that had never been successfully performed. One with a terrifying cost.

Pseudoservant.

A human being fused with a Heroic Spirit, granted incredible power in a mortal form. The research was scattered and vague, rife with speculation. But such a thing...

Vessel. An empty vessel. A Pseudoservant would likely be a kind of fusion of the two entities; both and neither at the same time. An empty human body would… She wasn't sure. If Kotomine was as empty as they said, would he be overwritten entirely?

In all of her reading, the impression she'd always gotten was that there was no true way to completely override the original vessel's body, but that was the question, wasn't it? It hadn't really ever been done before, and the rest was all speculation.

What if they were wrong about him? She knew enough about the priest to know that his influence would be ruinous, no matter the Heroic Spirit summoned into him.

This was bad. Whatever this was… Whatever they wanted to put inside Kirei...

It was bad.

Time to roll the dice.

Blink.

In an instant, she was inhabiting a different familiar, this one tailing Lancer. The Servant in blue was sprinting as hard as he could, but he looked confused, angry. Like he didn't know where he was going. She didn't recognize his surroundings, but she assumed he must be running toward the church. With a burst of energy, she willed the familiar forward, its glass wings straining to gain ground. "Lancer!" she called, fear tinging her words.

He didn't stop running, but his spear whirled in his hand and pointed back at her, his head whipping back to look at her.

Before he could strike, she projected her voice in a rush. "Lancer, Zouken Matou and Rider have Kotomine in an old theater. I don't know where, like an address, but I can guide you there with this familiar."

His face twisted in confusion. "What—"

"There's no time, Lancer!" She broke to the left, in the direction of the theater. With a curse, he turned to follow. "They're setting up some kind of summoning ritual with him as the focal point. Lancer, I don't know what they're trying to do, but it's really bad. We're enemies, and if this was just about you and your Master, I'd let him die, but it's not, and no one else is close enough, and I need you to stop them."

Lancer took a moment to process this, then stashed away his lance again as he ran. "Einzbern, right? That little girl?"

Irritation flared up, but she forced it down. This wasn't the time. "Yes, that's me, Lancer. You need to be fast. This will be bad for everyone."

"If it's so bad, why doesn't the bastard use a Command Seal?" he grunted. Buildings and unfamiliar streets whipped past, and the wind of their speed would have been blinding if her familiar had human eyes.

Kotomine's battered body flashed before her eyes. "What hand did he have his spells on?"

Lancer frowned. "The… right, I think."

"He doesn't have that hand anymore. Rider cut it off. Listen, Lancer, keep following my familiar. I'm going to go try to find out more."

His eyes widened. "Wait—"

Blink.

"—think you can control something like that, Zouken Matou?" Kotomine's voice was quiet, but it did not shake. He was weak, but he would not show weakness. "No one can control such a thing." He hadn't moved from the position she'd left him in.

Zouken barked out a laugh. "That's where you're wrong, Father." He put as much scorn as possible into that last word. "You see, for a being such as that, there is no such thing as free will. They are made to follow their God's will, and they are not granted the ability to choose. That's my loophole, you understand. I'm simply transferring the identity of 'the voice that must be obeyed' from Him to me."

There was one line that she'd read, a footnote, that at the time had made her laugh. It had seemed so mind-bendingly arrogant; so patently ridiculous. Now, recalling it chilled her to the bone.

"The possibility of manifesting a Divine Spirit has been one that has entranced Magi since the Age of Gods ended millennia past. Using a human body as a medium could allow for a kind of transubstantiation, a melding of the physical—the mortal and corporeal—and the Divine, though such a thing has never been attempted."

Kotomine was silent for a long, long moment. Then, impossibly, he smiled. Nothing else on his face moved, but the corners of his lips twitched up into something cruel. "Is that what you believe will happen when he is given flesh?"

"I do not need to believe anything, Father," Zouken said dismissively. "Knowledge requires no such idle fancy as faith."

"Very well then, Zouken Matou." He spread what was left of his arms, though they shook violently. "I confess to a certain amount of… curiosity. The Summoning will be easier with a willing subject, don't you agree?"

Zouken frowned. "What's your game here, Kotomine?"

The priest shook his head, lowering his arms to hang limply at his sides. "I have no game. I am nothing but an empty shell, you see," he said, and laughter burbled at the edges, "and I merely wish to understand a new experience. I would be the first of my kind, would I not?"

"Shut him up," Rider called offhandedly. "He's getting on my nerves."

Zouken's frown melted back into an affable smile. "My queen is correct. It is time to prepare the ritual, in any case. Shinji," he said, and his voice hardened. "Bring me the catalyst."

Breathing hard, Shinji climbed up onto the stage and held out a lacquered wooden box. Zouken took it reverently, then waved his grandson away. The lid opened without a sound, and he drew out a horseshoe. An ancient horseshoe. It barely looked anything like what a horseshoe should have been, but it was still very undeniably a horseshoe. It must be thousands of years old, at least, and there were words roughly carved into it in a language she didn't recognize. Flecks of something that might have been old blood dotted one edge, as though it had been used to kill someone at some point.

Catalysts were only objects—only pieces to draw an energy from another plane. They weren't anything that inherently had power most of the time, save for the connection with the one being summoned. This thing. This thing dripped with an undeniable magical energy that felt as ancient as it looked.

Illya, from her position as the Einzbern heir, had seen more than her fair share of artifacts and felt the power within them—conceptual weapons and relics, mainly. What one could feel from items that could serve as physical catalysts was often limited, even when they were from the Age of the Gods.

This catalyst was unlike any other.

Physical. Conceptual. Divine. Mortal.

Powerful.

Illya didn't recognize it, and that certainly didn't make her feel any better.

Zouken laid the horseshoe gently—reverently—before the summoning circle, and the soft click as it touched wood echoed throughout the silent theater.

Kotomine watched it calmly, then leaned forward to read the letters. "Gehenna. To invoke the Valley of Sacrifice is no small thing. So the one you'll be calling..."

"Do you not think such a thing to be appropriate?" Zouken said. "When you face an avatar of the grave itself, the only thing that can kill it would be… Well. Another spirit of death."

Blink.

"Lancer!" she said through the familiar, and his head jerked over again. "He's trying to summon a Divine Spirit into your Master! I think… I think he wants to fuse him with an angel!"

Lancer's face went white. "That's not possible."

"Normally, I'd agree with you," she said breathlessly, "but there's a framework over the circle that I don't recognize. I can feel something from it." Saying she felt "something" was a severe understatement, but trying to get Lancer to run any faster was pointless. "Even if it doesn't work, I think it could take out half the city when it fails!"

Lancer said something in reply, but she was deep in her familiar's sensory data. Time passed. She didn't know how long; she wasn't supposed to stay in her familiars for this long. There were adverse effects. A blurring. "You're just a few minutes away," she said, coming back to reality, "but you need to hurry. They're almost ready!"

Blink.

The room was still. The room was silent, but for the sound of Zouken's voice. "A wall against the descending winds," he intoned. "The four seals shall shatter and the crown shall emerge. Let the three-forked road to ruin reaching unto the Kingdom cycle and break." A wind rose in the empty theater, sending curls of dust swirling through the air, tugging at the hem of the old man's robes. Shinji was cowering a good distance away, while Rider had not budged from her armchair.

From where the spider sat, she could not see Kirei's face, bowed as his head was.

Every last cubic millimeter of the air was suffused with magic and the stench of death. Even through the familiar, which had no sense of touch nor smell nor taste, it felt like being trapped at the bottom of a rotting ocean. The spider did not breathe, but it was almost choking on the magical overload in the air.

"Shackle, shackle, shackle, shackle, shackle," Zouken recited in a pounding rhythm, each word growing louder and more intent as he spoke. "Five bonds for repetition." The wind became a gale, a torrent of raw power and force pouring from the center of the circle. Each line flashed a blinding red, once, twice, and then held, bathing the room in bloody crimson. The shadows danced. Dust choked and swirled.

Blink.

Lancer was close. She recognized his surroundings from the chase now, the particular dilapidated buildings he passed. He was moving fast. He was so close.

He wouldn't make it.

"Lancer, you have to get there in time!" she screamed. "It's happening!"

He won't make it.

Blink.

Columns of black smoke arose from the severed necks of the corpses, seven pillars of swirling smog that twisted and met twenty feet in the air, gathering like horrific stormclouds of pure, concentrated violence. The familiar felt a pull toward the circle, as though rusted fishhooks had been driven into each of its limbs. She resisted, and there was no time to think, because now there were lines of lifeforce pouring into the boiling clouds from from every direction; she couldn't wrap her mind around them for a moment, before it clicked with dawning, implacable horror.

The city.

He was ripping the souls from everybody nearby, and using them to power the Summoning. A pull this strong would dissolve bodies into ash, and so many of the people nearby in this part of the city would be homeless that he must have understood that the public backlash would be minimal.

The sheer monstrousness of that thought froze her mind.

Magi were cruel. She was cruel, but this—

A rumbling filled the theater, and the entire building shook. Chairs rattled and broke. With a resounding crash, along the edges of the great room, the mezzanine collapsed entirely, blanketing the room in a fresh coat of dust that was instantly wiped away by the pounding winds. A pulse of raw magical energy shook the very essence of the building. A second pulse. A third. Each closer than the last.

In the center of the maelstrom, Kirei Kotomine knelt alone as his matted hair whipped back and forth, as drops of his own blood flew from his wounds as they broke open and joined the tempest, and he was laughing. Illya saw the person underneath the hollow carapace, and he was laughing.

Zouken's voice had risen to a scream. "Thy spirit shall be under my command, thy fate determined by thy sword! Thou who hath no will and no reason, answer my call!" He stood tall as his withered, hunched frame would allow, steady, his hands thrown wide to either side as his robe whipped and buffeted around him. "Scourge of Gomorrah! Angel of the Abyss! Keeper of Sheol and The Righteous Cleansing Fire!" He screamed at the top of his lungs, and still, the familiar could barely hear his words. "The One True Horseman of Death!"

The pulsing quickened with each title, until finally it was a single, unyielding wall of pressure that enveloped everything. She lost sight of Rider and Shinji.

Lightning crashed somewhere within the cloud. Again. Again. Again.

The roar was deafening as Zouken's summoning reached its climax. "Grand Rider! AZRAEL!"
At that final word, that last name, the stormcloud coalesced into one pillar, blacker than night, whiter than the brightest light, deeper than the void between stars, more expansive than the universe, and plunged downward, smiting Kotomine and flowing into him and collapsing into an incomprehensible hole and roaring and the POWER of it the sheer HATRED AND DEATH exploded outward as magic, unrestrained, unleashed, poured forth and overwhelmed her familiar and shorted out her senses and flooded her body with the force of the backlash and—

The connection broke. Illyasviel von Einzbern was unconscious before her body hit the ground.

The ground heaved back and forth, and Lancer ran.

A crack opened up in the street as a sewer collapsed in on itself, and Lancer ran.

People died in every direction, ripped from life and fed into the cogs of some infernal engine, and Lancer ran.

The Einzbern girl wasn't talking anymore. That wasn't a good sign.

Who was he kidding? None of this was a good sign. This was the end of the goddamn world, localized to this corner of the city. You crazy bitch, he thought, but the anger was a mask for the fear. What do you think you're going to accomplish with this? The sickening pulses grew faster and faster, and the drain intensified, but Lancer was strangely untouched by it. Did it not affect Servants?

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered right now but reaching Kirei. He hated the bastard, and there would be a score to settle when all this was over, but the Einzbern girl had been right. This was bigger than any one of them and their personal grudges.

A familiar carriage. Medb's favorite ride that didn't have legs of its own.

(Her chariot was a close second, and more suited to battle, but less comfortable.)

Fear clawed at him, and he hardly knew what he was afraid of as he broke through the doors to the theater without slowing. Torches flickered and flared crazily, and he followed them. This close to the source of the disturbance, the ritual was its own kind of beacon.

He barreled toward the final door. It was old, rotted wood, and it would present no barrier to him.

Before he made it, the magic reached a fever pitch, and the door exploded outward, along with a rush of fire and force and mana. It blew him back, sending him soaring through the air with a startled yelp, and he hit the ground hard, tumbling and tumbling, Gae Bolg skittering away from him and vanishing, his head cracking against the ground. It sounded like hell—the wails of the damned and the screams of the dying in an unholy chorus that threatened to destroy his eardrums.

And then, all at once, it was silent.

It was still.

Not even the dust in the air moved.

With a shaking, coughing breath, Lancer forced himself to his feet, resummoned his spear, and stumbled forward to the doorway.

Inside, what once must have been the theater proper had been absolutely wiped clean. Mounds of rubble were piled against every wall, and all the seats seemed to have been torn away with the force of the spell. Medb and Shinji stood before the stage; Shinji clutched something, perhaps a talisman, in his shaking hands, and his entire body was wracked with trembles. The explosion hadn't blown the grease out of his hair, but he looked ready to pass out.

Medb looked as relaxed as she always did.

On the stage, Zouken stood, facing a kneeling figure that at first he almost didn't recognize. It was shaped like Kirei had been, roughly, but its clothes were tattered and torn and bloody, its head hanging limply. The Einzbern kid had said that he'd lost a hand, but he seemed to have both—

No. That wasn't quite true.

One hand looked human, but the other…

His first thought was that it was armored in plates of purest white up to the elbow, but that wasn't it either. The plates curved and molded together in a way that reminded Lancer of an insect's carapace more than it did metal, and where it ended the plates disappeared into the skin of his arm like they were a natural part of it. That hand ended in gleaming claws, wickedly sharp. Kirei — if that still was Kirei — was breathing hard. And that was when Lancer noticed the thing he should have noticed the moment things went still. The sheer, terrifying power radiating off of the stage. Nothing should be that powerful.

Nothing.

Zouken was panting too. "Tell me your name," he said to the figure.

When the voice answered, it was both familiar and alien. The sounds were the same, the vocal chords unchanged, but… Kirei's voice had always been slow and barely-inflected. This voice… it shook. "I have… many names. My name is Thanatos. My name is Abaddon. My name is Azrael." Slowly, his head lifted, and where once had been set two lifeless brown eyes, Kirei's body now carried eyes of a pale, piercing, icy blue. There was emotion in those eyes. Hatred. Confusion. Fear. The eyes fastened on Zouken, then flicked to where Lancer stood, in the doorway, too shocked to move.

Zouken followed Azrael-Kirei's gaze, and smiled as their eyes met. "Ah, Lancer, it's so good of you to join us," he said, overflowing with good humor.

At the name, Medb whirled around, her mouth slightly agape, her eyes wide and girlish. "Cu?"

He raised the lance and prepared his plan of attack. If he threw the lance, he might be able to get Zouken, but that would leave him open to Medb's counterattack. She was the biggest threat right now, so he should deal with her first. She was always the biggest threat when she was in the room. Adrenaline and regular battle-fear continued to pound in his chest, and for a moment, he allowed it to overwrite the horror and confusion of whatever the ritual had just accomplished.

"I think he wants to kill us," Zouken said with mock surprise. "Azrael. Muzzle your dog."

Azrael studied him, then spoke, quietly and deliberately in a near request. "Lancer. Please don't move," he said, and every muscle in his body locked tight, immobile no matter how he strained. A Command Seal? But no, in some indescribable way it felt different, and besides, Kirei had lost his Seals, hadn't he?

"Interesting," Azrael murmured.

Medb seemed entranced by Lancer's inability to move, and he could only imagine what horrible thing she was thinking about. He stopped struggling. Like a night terror, paralysis felt worse the more you fought it.

The old man cackled, clapping his hands like a small child in a candy store, then turned back to his new Servant. "Now, then." He paced around the circle, staring into it like someone examining a new car that they'd just received as a gift. "Fascinating, fascinating. I almost didn't expect you to come, you know. I don't like trusting the information I've stolen from others, but the Einzberns did keep these particular breakthroughs locked deeply away."

"I didn't have a choice," the fusion said. "The binding was absolute."

"Of course it was," Zouken replied. "I made some of my own modifications. You see…" He knelt down and pointed to specific lines that Lancer couldn't see. "These, right here. I needed these to allow your Divine Spirit to be contained by mortal flesh, but frankly, I wasn't sure how well they would work." For something so humble, Lancer thought, that sounds a lot like bragging. You just want to show off to the monster you've created. "And here. You know, the Grail reserves an eighth slot, the Ruler class, for extraordinary circumstances. It's never been utilized before, but it exists, and these lines here," he gestured almost excitedly, "hijack that opening to allow for your summoning. The Grail itself did not provide much of the required energy, of course, but this set of sigils here… these are an incredible siphon." He seemed to catch himself, and the old man straightened, his smile fading. "Now… It's a formality, you understand, but I would like you to swear yourself to my service."

"Swear?" Azrael whispered hoarsely. He still seemed to be getting his bearings, and understanding what had just happened.

"Yes, yes," Zouken said impatiently. "You are my Servant now, and I know you don't have a choice. Still, I would like to hear it." He laughed dustily, brushing himself off.

"No," Azrael said, and a heartbeat later his eyes widened, and his mouth fell open. Shock writ plain upon his face.

"No?" Zouken growled. "You do not have the capacity to tell me no."

"No," he said again. His hands, one human, one plated, began to shake, and he looked down at them in something like awe. His eyes—Kirei's eyes, and not—glistened. "No," he said a third time, in a shaky voice, and he began to laugh. Not snidely, not smugly, not as he had ever heard Kirei's voice laugh before—a genuine, uncontrolled outpouring of relief and joy. It echoed throughout the destroyed theater, rebounding and doubling over on itself.

Is he insane? Lancer wondered. No. No, he doesn't look that way. He looks… Like what? He couldn't put it into words.

Medb was watching none of this. She only had eyes for Cu at the moment. He couldn't even grimace at her.

Zouken took a step back, but it seemed more out of anger than fear. "You are overwhelmed by human emotion, are you not? Your true form does not possess the capacity to feel, and you do not know how to cope. That is what this madness is. I should have taken it into account. Emotional limiters of some sort," he mumbled to himself. "That is what you needed. I should have foreseen this incompatibility."

The laughter trailed off, and Azrael pushed slowly to his feet. The Summoning certainly hadn't shrunk Kirei's massive frame in the slightest, Lancer thought, as the man— Servant—whatever he was—towered over everyone present. He was smiling warmly, yet another thing that clashed unnaturally with what he expected from his Master. "It is entirely new, Master Zouken," he said. His voice was musical, and his use of the word Master seemed to mollify the old man a little. "You see, I have not had such powerful… reactions in a very, very long time." He strolled forward, clasping his shaking hands behind his back, and the circle did nothing to stop him. It was not a binding circle; it had never been meant to hold one such as he.

"And how do you feel?" Zouken asked. "This experience, that of being human, is what drives me, after all. I would not wish to exist without it."

Azrael stood before Zouken, and he bowed his head respectfully. "This is an incredible gift that you've given me, Master Zouken. The… weight of flesh." He looked once more at his hands. Slowly, he closed them, then opened them again. "Emotion. Desire. Even fear. I've… always been envious of such things. Mortals have so many blessings."

Zouken's frown melted into a smile, sensing the danger pass. "This is my gift to you, great Azrael. All I ask in return is your obedience. Will you give it?" The old fool didn't think anything was wrong, Lancer thought. Azrael projected nothing but warmth and serenity, but something was wrong about him.

"There is one thing that I have always been most envious of," Azrael said softly, and he paused to inhale, apparently savoring the hot, stuffy air in his lungs. "One thing that mortals possess that I simply… lack. Do you know what that is, Master Zouken?" His hands opened and closed at his sides in an apparent nervous tic. The right hand that flexed dug into its own strange flesh and scraped at it, the claws scratching the surface. He shook his head before the old man could answer. "I suppose it doesn't matter. The gift that you have given me, above all else, the thing I have craved for eternity, Zouken Matou…" He smiled, and for a moment, his eyes were as hollow and dead as Kirei's ever were. "Is free will." And no sooner were the words out of his mouth than Azrael was moving; in the blink of an eye, faster than a human could track, the white-plated, clawed hand clamped down over Zouken's skull. "Eternal life is given through death," he said softly, in the rhythm of a prayer, and Zouken screamed. White light poured from his mouth and eyes, as if he had become nothing more than a hollow shell of skin stretched over the birth of a new sun.

Shinji staggered away, squealing, and even Medb took a step back in shock, her laser focus suddenly interrupted. If Lancer hadn't been so horrified, confused, and distracted, he would have laughed at how annoyed she looked.

Zouken's screams grew louder, and louder still, and then become something more like choking. The light became white fire, and the smell of burning flesh filled the room. Azrael stood silently, and he wore a look that Lancer could only describe as… mournful.

The fire burned itself out, and the sounds of agony and death stopped as Zouken's corpse collapsed bonelessly to the ground, putrid smoke pouring from where light had been a moment before. Dead. He was dead. Burned from the inside out, by…

By holy fire.

"You killed many to bring me here," Azrael said quietly, then knelt and murmured a short prayer over the smoking corpse. "To speak nothing of the unholy abomination you had become, Zouken Matou. You received nothing but the judgement you were owed." He turned his gaze to Medb. "The stench of sin hangs heavy upon you, Queen Medb," he said, unreadable. "Though I believe I said something much the same to you in my church."

Medb frowned, and she didn't look nearly as concerned as she should have. "The priest did, yeah," she said, and in contrast with her appearance, she sounded more off-balance than Lancer had ever known her to be.

"I am he just as much as I am the avenging angel," he said, and a note of exhaustion crept into his voice. "That was the flaw in his plan. Angels do not have free will, but… you mortals do. It's a beautiful idea, to be able to choose." He tilted his head to look at Lancer, and he nodded. "You may move once again. My apologies for resorting to those measures."

Lancer sagged, and had to catch himself before he fell. He walked forward, slow and cautious. "You commanded me without a Seal," Lancer said tersely. "I guess that means you're still my Master, but you shouldn't be able to do that."

Abaddon gave him a sheepish smile. "I apologize for that. I suppose it was a bit hypocritical of me, after that little speech."

"A little," Lancer said, but… he wasn't angry. He wasn't even afraid any longer. That was strange. Everything was surreal, like afterglow without the pleasure, like a world that was too soft around the edges. A dreamscape; Lancer realized that though everyone was visible, no light sources remained. There was no shadow in this room.

With a heavy sigh, Azrael walked to the edge of the stage and slid to a seat, his long legs dangling over the edge like a child.

The soft sound of a grown man sitting down was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back; Shinji, no longer frozen, shrieked and tore out of the room like his ass was on fire. The talisman he'd been clutching — some kind of small, carved stone idol, no doubt to protect him from the siphon — clattered to the ground.

Azrael watched him go without concern, then rubbed at his face. "In any event, Medb, I am weary of death, this night. Though I did not ask for it, many innocent men and women died to allow me entrance to this world, and I would not see that body count increase further without cause."

"Sooo," Medb said, and the life was coming back into her. Lancer rolled his eyes. There it is. That obnoxious hunger. "You're not going to try kill me?"

Try. Like he'd break a sweat.

The priest-angel shook his - their? - head. "If you give me cause, I will, but I will not be the aggressor now that Zouken is dead. There is no longer any need."

Lancer could see the gears turning in her head, and he could almost hear her thoughts in his own. He's so strong that he's not even a little worried about leaving me alive led to indignation, which led to but he is that strong, which led, inevitably, to he must be mine. In some ways, she was predictable as a broken clock. She curtsied lightly, a girlish smile on her face. "That's very sweet of you, Azrael."

Don't be fooled, Lancer thought. She looks like a fun girl, but she'll rip your heart out. Literally. He paused in his thoughts. Was he… rooting for Azrael? Truth be told, he didn't know what to think or how to feel. This entity was both his Master, and he was not. Azrael… Azrael didn't seem cruel, the way Kirei did, though. Kirei would not have allowed Medb to simply exist without some kind of plan to cause pain. That was the kind of man Kirei Kotomine was.

But, a voice whispered in his head, there's always something. There's always a resonance. What other kind of person resonates with a person like Kirei, but a monster of one kind or another? He'd heard it said that the devil you knew was better than the one you didn't. He didn't even know which category his Master fell into anymore. Kirei had been awful, though, and his new Master was at least half Not-Kirei, so that was enough for now.

Lancer broke the silence first. "Master," he said.

The familiar-but-not face smiled warmly. "You may call me by my name."

"Which one?" Lancer said dryly. "Sounds like you have a few to choose from."

Azrael sat silently for a long moment. Disparate emotions warred on his face; sadness, happiness, confusion. "Not Azrael. But also… not Kirei, either. I am neither, but… I am also both. I have been called Abaddon, but not in a long time. That name, perhaps."

"Abaddon, then," Lancer said, giving him at least a modicum of respect, twirling his lance to rest on his shoulder. He'd do that much until he had a better read. "You killed the guy who brought you here. Which, good job. He sucked. But what now?"

Abaddon's smile turned sad, and yet again, his gaze fell to his hands. "I don't know," he said softly. "I've never been summoned into flesh, before. I've never been able to walk the mortal world before as anything other than a killer. Do you know what my purpose is, Lancer?"

He shook his head. "No, but I've got the feeling I'm about to find out."

"I am… many things. I have been many things. But most of all, I am an executioner," Abaddon murmured, and once again, disconcertingly, his eyes filled with tears. "I am humanity's executioner. When a timeline grows too dangerous… when it is no longer salvageable, and it threatens the stability of the greater reality, I bring about its end. I break the seals. I slaughter every single living person in that world." His breath caught. His fists clenched. "That's my role. I love you humans. I love you more than anything in the world, and my only reason for being is to destroy you. What I love, I must destroy because I love them." The thing that looked like Kirei Kotomine choked out a sob, and Lancer did not believe for a second that it was an act.

Lancer eyed the strange fusion of a being, and tried to wrap his mind around what he was seeing. No one would ever expect… what, an angel of death? to be so fragile. Maybe he really had never felt an emotion before.

Medb hopped up onto the stage to sit beside him, and placed a hand on his. Her eyes were wide and guileless, an impossibly easy mask for the cold calculation and cynicism underneath. "That sounds awful, Abaddon. I can't imagine being forced to kill the thing I love most."

Lancer grimaced. The balls on that lie. He'd lost the thread of her thoughts, now. If she was cozying up to him like this, she must have seen something that entranced her, because she didn't usually go for the sensitive guys.

Maybe it was just the scale of the killing that had her panties in a knot. That seemed like the sort of thing that'd get her off.

He also couldn't tell if Abaddon was taking her lie at face value or not. The priest-angel nodded, though, and wiped away his tears with the other. "I apologize," he said again, "you mortals… I did not realize how strongly you felt. You all possess a strength that I have never needed to learn." He laughed shakily. "I suppose it's time to learn now."

Lancer frowned. Kirei can feel?

Medb cooed understandingly. "So then," she said. "This world is yours, Abaddon. You don't have to kill this one. What do you want to do?"

He didn't answer for a long, long time. Lancer and Medb exchanged a confused look before Lancer remembered to scowl at her.

"I don't know," Abaddon whispered again. For a being that radiated so much power… for something that was at least half Kirei… for all the hatred of his natural existence he professed… Abaddon looked like a child that had lost his parents in a crowd. The crushing loneliness. The helplessness. The fear. "I don't know…"

END OF ACT ONE

Note: Big writing mood this chapter was Patchwork Chimera from the Umineko soundtrack. I really wanted to capture that vibe.

So I expect this is probably going to be... controversial? But it's been the plan, at least in broad strokes, since before I put a single word on the page. Hopefully I've built up enough goodwill by this point that y'all will give me enough of the benefit of the doubt to stick around until I can sell you on it. I've put a lot of work and thought into this.

(Illya isn't dead.)

Next chapter: Interlude: To The Beginning