Fun fact: thee and thou et cetera are actually more of an informal way to say "you". King Hassan calling someone "you" would be a sign of respect!

Before we start, a quick thanks to everyone who sent encouraging comments last time. They really made me feel a little better about what I'm doing.

There was no doubt about it — the magical residue was leading them to the church. Rin wasn't sure what to make of that.

She also wasn't sure what to make of the strange path their target had taken. It meandered all over town, bouncing from the bridge to several clothing stores to the dingiest restaurant Rin had ever seen to… Seemingly everywhere. A bookstore. A series of bars. A shoe store. Another bookstore. The park. Even a pet store. Each new location was stranger than the last, and none of it seemed to hold much relevance or interest. It was a mystery that she supposed would only be solved once they tracked down…

Whoever it was that they were tracking down.

Now, though, the trail was straight as an arrow. No more diversions, no more stops. Could they be working with Kirei? Rin pondered. Or could they be going to kill him? That seems like something Zouken would do. But that was an assumption, too. She didn't know that Zouken was even still involved. She thought back to all the dead bugs in the old robe — for all she knew, he'd been disintegrated down to the bone.

It was easy to think about their new enemy, because thinking about what Assassin and Archer had just told them was very difficult. She understood the concept just fine, but Shirou had needed a lot of clarification. She was ping-ponging between mulling it over and shoving it as far out of sight as she could put it. A cataclysm, she thought tiredly. That's what they kept calling it. Something they had to stop. And if they couldn't stop it, something to prepare for.

"There's hope, right?" she asked. "This isn't game over. Whatever's going to happen can be prevented."

Archer and Assassin were quiet.

Fear tickled the back of her neck, hairs rising. "Guys?"

"There is always hope," Assassin said. "In the darkest night, one's hope is one's salvation. Remember, though, that should the cataclysm come to pass, we have not necessarily failed. We must also be ready to minimize the consequences."

She nodded, satisfied.

It was only much later that she would realize that he hadn't actually answered her question.

The church drew nearer.

The fear was starting to build in a way she didn't like. Not that she ever particularly liked being afraid, but there was a difference between being afraid of something you understood and being afraid of something you didn't. She didn't know what to prepare for. She didn't know what was possible. All she had was speculation, and even that was far too open.

A Pseudoservant.

Possibly a Divine Spirit.

What did that mean?

What could such an existence do?

What did it want with the church?

"So," Shirou said nervously, "do we have a plan?"

Well, this was as good a time as any, Rin thought. "We should talk about that," she said, coming to a stop. There weren't any people around that she could see, and if they walked much further, they would be at the church. "We need to figure that out."

"That's hard when we don't know what's coming," Archer said flatly. "One being of indeterminate power, along with an unknown number of magic users. Rider might be there, if we guessed right about who's holding her leash."

"We require reconnaissance," Assassin rumbled. "I can gather information. So long as I do not intend to kill, I can make myself very difficult to detect."

"That seems like an inconvenient weakness for an Assassin," Archer said. "You can't sneak up on people you want to kill?"

"It keeps my boredom sated," Assassin said, and Rin snorted.

"Okay," she said, "so Assassin will scout the area, and hopefully get us something useful to work with."

"Are you good with that, Assassin?" Shirou asked earnestly, as if Assassin hadn't been the one to suggest the idea in the first place.

"Of course."

Shirou nodded seriously. "Alright. Be careful, okay?"

"I am always careful."

Rin was never quite sure what to make of the relationship those two had. Sometimes, Shirou showed nothing but respect for his Servant, and others… he seemed to think she couldn't sense the resentment and anger boiling away under his words, but there were times when he seemed to loathe Assassin.

She should probably ask him about that sometime.

"What about you, Archer?" she asked. "You gonna help him out with that?"

Even invisible, she could practically hear her asshole Servant's shrug. "I'd just get in the way. I don't have Presence Concealment, and there isn't a perch nearby with a good angle on the church."

Rin could think of a half a dozen points that he would actually be useful at, but she didn't want to argue right now.

Assassin's heavy aura vanished.

"Convenient," she muttered. "Archer, just go be lookout until Assassin gets back."

"As you command, Master," he said in the most condescending tone imaginable, then vanished.

Silence hung over them as they waited. A bird twittered somewhere nearby in a strange contrast to the heavy flakes of snow drifting on the breeze. Rin shivered, hugging herself a little to try to warm herself up, and to pretend that she wasn't shivering.

Shirou looked uncomfortable too, and not because of the cold.

"What?" She asked him. "You've obviously got something on your mind."

He frowned. "Was it that obvious?"

Rin rolled her eyes. "Yes. Spit it out."

"I just…" He sighed wearily, rubbing his hands together for warmth. "The hairs on the back of my neck keep standing up. I feel like I'm being watched. You ever get that feeling?"

"We are being watched," Rin said.

Shirou blanched. "What?"

She blinked at him. "That's Caster. She's been scrying us on and off ever since the theater. My wards are strong enough that I don't think she can hear us, but she can definitely see us."

"And you didn't tell me that?"

Rin shrugged. "I thought you knew."

Shirou groaned. "All that stuff. This is related, right?"

"It must be," Rin said quietly. "Nothing like this has ever happened before."

"A Psuedoservant," Shirou said slowly, the word clearly unfamiliar on his tongue. "I didn't know something like that was possible."

"You didn't know that regular Servants were possible a few days ago," Rin pointed out. "But you're not wrong to be incredulous. It's not something that anyone's ever been able to do. I don't know how he figured it out."

"Well," Shirou hesitated, clearly self-conscious about his own lack of experience. "You mentioned it looked like Einzbern magic, right? Maybe they're the ones who figured it out. We should ask Illya next time we see her."

Rin gave him a blank look. "If she's not trying to kill us, sure. But that doesn't make sense, either, you know? The Einzberns are powerful Magi, yeah, but this isn't their area of expertise. Their job in setting up the war is to prepare the Grail's vessel. Not summoning the Servants. Why would they know something like that? And even if they did, why would Zouken know it? The Einzberns and the Makiris are enemies. They would never share that kind of thing."

"Maybe he stole it?" Shirou offered weakly.

"I guess," Rin said. "But if that's true, we open up a hundred other questions. I'm sick of all this guessing. I'd love to know something solid."

Shirou scratched the back of his neck, clearly feeling a little awkward. "Hopefully we're about to get some answers."

"If we don't get our stupid asses killed doing it," Rin muttered darkly.

"There are three Servants on the church premises," Assassin said without preamble.

Shirou was remarkably calm as he responded, while Rin was busy clutching her chest and trying to talk herself out of a heart attack. "Welcome back."

"Three?" she managed to choke.

"The Lancer in blue. The... pink Rider. They are outside the main building, loitering. It seemed they were keeping watch. They sensed me not."

"So they're working together," Shirou said thoughtfully. "We expected Rider, but Lancer? We still don't know who he's working for, right?"

Rin nodded, though the cold hand of fear was dancing uncomfortably along her spine. They'd known it would be bad, but this… This was somehow even worse than she'd imagined.

Once again, she'd underestimated how deep the shit she was standing in was, and she was probably about to pay for it. "So Lancer, Rider," she said, more calmly than she felt. "The third?"

"I could not get close enough to verify its identity."

"You couldn't—" Rin began incredulously, but Shirou shook his head, and she deferred to him. It felt bad to do, but Assassin was his Servant.

"There was no problem with Rider or Lancer; neither of them was perceptive enough to penetrate my concealment. However," Assassin continued, and for a moment Rin thought the all-powerful, above-it-all monster was unnerved, and that was even more terrifying than whatever he was about to say. "As I drew near the entrance, I could feel the eyes of another upon me. Whatever dwelled within the church felt my approach as if I had not bothered to conceal myself at all." There was a heavy silence. "It was… a familiar presence."

Shirou's brow furrowed. "Assassin? Are you okay?" He sounded about as off kilter as Rin felt.

"I am well," Assassin said, and his voice was as level and steady as Rin had ever heard it. If Shirou had not noticed well enough to say something himself, she'd have thought she'd imagined that the Servant had been shaken at all. "It was not a specific recollection that I experienced. What I felt was the fingerprint of one touched by Allah himself."

"So when we speculated that the Pseudoservant might be a Divine Spirit…"

"I believe it to be a Malak. A Messenger dwells within the church."

"You're talking about an angel, aren't you?" Rin asked quietly.

"I am."

A shadow passed over Shirou's face, as though he'd remembered something horrifying. "Assassin?"

"Yes?"

"You told me you would put your God above anything else," he said. His face was pale, but his voice was admirably steady. "How does an angel fit into that?"

Assassin was quiet for a long time.

The wind blew softly, swirling snow around them. A car hummed obliviously past, lights on under the cloudy sky.

"That remains to be seen," he said finally.

Another chill that had nothing to do with the cold air ran through Rin. "We should leave. This was a mistake. Coming here was a mistake." She could hear the rising panic in her own voice, and she hated it, hated herself for it, but every step she took to try to combat it was like gasoline on a fire. "We need more information. We need… I don't know, but we need something."

"Tohsaka," Shirou said gently, but the glare she shot him was fiery enough to almost physically knock him back. Still, he pressed on. "We came here for a reason. This is where we get more information. You keep telling me that war is dangerous, and I get it, but—"

"But you have no idea the kind of power a Divine Spirit has," she said coldly.

"No, I don't, not specifically, but—"

"Contractor. Rin Tohsaka. The Malak yet gathers his strength. He is dangerous, but the longer we leave him, the more time he will have to grow accustomed to his new mortal flesh, and the more of his power he will be able to access. There will not be a better time to remove him from the board."

His voice was like a slap in the face, or maybe a bucket of ice water. Forcing her growing terror back under control, Rin grit her teeth and closed her eyes. "Archer," she said tersely. "How much of that did you hear?"

"All of it," Archer's lazy voice came back. "We sound pretty fucked."

"Thanks for that," she growled. "Come back. We need to strategize."

The plan they'd come up with was probably going to get all of them killed, but it was marginally better than nothing, so Archer could only object so strenuously.

The Pseudoservant —the Malak, as Assassin called it — was out of their league. It just was, and nothing they could do would change the vast gulf in power between a Heroic Spirit and a Divine Spirit. There were two things that might — might — tip the odds in their favor, however. The first was that the Malak was new to the material world, and that it would take time for it to be able to access its full strength. Power didn't flow the same way for mortals as it did for the Divine, and while the Malak would not be mortal, Rin had explained, it would also be constrained by its flesh. Time would erase that handicap.

The second factor?

They had Assassin.

"Thou of little faith, Archer in Red. Dost thou believe Man is the only creature that has tasted finality at my hands? I have killed even that which had never before conceptualized Death," Assassin had intoned. Somehow, it didn't even sound like a boast. "I am Death's left hand. I am the Evening Bell's most trusted weapon. Immortality may be armor against that which is mortal, but it is as tattered cloth before my blade. If a being can be said to possess a Life, no matter how metaphorically, a being can be killed."

Not even Archer had been able to argue with that. Despite everything, he believed it. He hated when things gave him hope. If you didn't have hope, you couldn't be disappointed when the universe inevitably spat in your face.

"So we're decided," Rin said quietly into their three-person-and-a-ghost huddle. "Shirou and I will wait out here, because we'll only get in the way. Archer, you're going to march right through the front gate and engage Lancer and Rider in combat."

"What if I keep them distracted with my stand-up routine?" Archer said, trying to cover up how anxious he was by being a dick.

"I don't care if you walk in there, whip off your clothes, and start a threesome," Rin snapped. "You just need to keep those two busy long enough for the rest to happen. If you can kill either or both of them, that'd be great, but it's not the objective right now. First priority is to hold their attention. Second is survival. Getting a kill is third." Archer opened his mouth, and Rin held up an irritated hand. "You aren't allowed to make any more jokes about kicking asses, seeing as how bad you fucked that one up with Berserker."

Archer shrugged, completely unbothered.

"Assassin," she said, turning her head slightly to look up at the two points of burning blue flame suspended in the air. "I don't think I need to tell you what your job is again, but for the courtesy of everyone else here, your job is to infiltrate the church, find the Malak, and kill the shit out of it before it can get stronger. Once you engage, you'll have about eight minutes before Shirou starts taking real damage."

"It will be over before that happens."

"Good," Rin said, and Archer knew her well enough to know that her easy confidence was absolutely a facade. "Time for you to live up to your class."

"I will not fail."

Rin looked at each of them in turn, but her gaze lingered longest on Shirou, badly hidden concern flickering across her brow.

You have bigger things to worry about than him, Archer thought, and his hands itched for violence. I could end him. The intrusive thought hit him at odd moments, taking him off guard almost every time. As much as he so badly wanted to… he'd committed to the path of the Guardian, this time. Sometimes things were more important than his grudge.

"Are you okay?" Rin asked the moron.

Shirou nodded, but his cheeks were a little green. Archer hated how easily he could read him, and he wondered (not for the first time) whether or not that ability was mutual. "I'm fine," he said quietly. "I'm ready to die if I have to."

"Well," Rin said with forced brightness, "even if our Servants die, that doesn't mean we will." The two little dumbasses sounded like they were already standing on the gallows, with the hangman stalking unseen behind them with his rope.

"I'm standing right here, you know," Archer said dryly, and she glared at him.

Good. She was feeling better already.

Archer pressed his back to the stone wall and took a deep breath.

This was it.

The calm before the storm.

He was prepared to die. He was always prepared to die. In some ways, the best case here would be to succeed in his mission, and to die doing it. He'd have done his requisite good deed, he'd have nudged the timeline away from certain destruction, and he'd be free to go.

You didn't want to say it out loud.

There was… a complication, though.

You didn't want to take their hope from them.

Ridiculous. And yet—

The Cataclysm is unstoppable.

They wanted to believe.

If Assassin kills the Malak, that just means that it wasn't the cause, and it'll happen anyway.

What good had destiny ever done for him, anyway? Fuck destiny. What was that one line from that old American movie about the killer robots from the future? No fate but what we make for ourselves.

Shit, I guess I'm the killer robot in this scenario, he thought, which doesn't seem to bode well for my chances.

He flexed his fingers, and Kanshou and Bakuya appeared in his grip. They weren't the most powerful swords he'd ever used, but they felt like his in a way that none of the others did. They fit in his hands as if they'd been moulded for each other, and he knew their weights and balances as if they were extensions of his own body. Other swords could do more damage, could take a hit better… but he'd never fight more skillfully using anything else.

The Malak's pet Servants chattered incessantly within. He recognized the laconic, irritating voice of the Lancer in blue, but the chirping, girlish voice that must belong to Rider was unfamiliar. His vision swirled again, doubled for a moment, and returned to normal before he even had a chance to blink.

Something about that Rider was not right, the way Assassin wasn't right, the way the whole world wasn't right.

He put that out of his mind. It was irrelevant, and he couldn't afford distractions.

To his side, Assassin's burning blue eyes appeared.

He met their gaze.

The eyes moved in what was clearly a nod.

It was time.

The way he'd done a thousand times, back when he'd been alive, Archer spun through the open gateway. Breach and clear.

The scene spread out before him like a frozen tableau. Nothing moved; not the grass, not the Servants before him, not even the snow flooding the air. The church door directly in front of him. Lancer leaning against it, looking off to his left. Rider, wearing something horrific and gaudy that he had no time to unpack, about twenty feet away on a diagonal to his right, facing toward Lancer. Her back mostly toward him.

Before he lost the momentum of his entry, he threw the swords spinning off in twin, mirrored parabolic arcs. Away from each other as they flew, then closer, until they would meet buried in Lancer's chest—

He did not wait to see if they hit before he threw himself to the right, great black bow materializing in his hands as he flew. No time for careful aim, but he was an Archer, and he had no time for such things—

Loose. Loose. Loose.

Three arrows sang through the air before he landed in a roll and regained his feet.

Another snapshot. Lancer was already on his feet, lance in hand, charging him, Kanshou and Bakuya buried uselessly in the heavy church door; Rider had whirled to face him, an animalistic snarl on her lips and three arrows jutting from her back.

Four seconds had passed.

Archer smirked. Going to die or not, he was going to make this fun.

They were in an enclosed arena, so it would be difficult to get distance on either of them, let alone both — while it would be easy for them to corner him, if he got sloppy.

Good thing he never got sloppy.

With a wave of his free hand and an infusion of mana, seven swords appeared in the air above Lancer, and as he clenched his fist they spiked down as one. Each one missed without Lancer seeming to have to dodge them at all. Interesting. Protection From Arrows? Projectiles seemed ineffective against him.

With a yell, Lancer threw his whole body into a devastating thrust, the wickedly sharp point of his Gae Bolg driving straight at his chest—

But the bow was made of material as resilient as any sword, and it held up admirably as Archer slammed it downward into the shaft of the spear. The point crunched deep into the snowy ground, and like a professional pole-vaulter, Lancer let the momentum carry him forward, sending him soaring through the air over Archer's head.

Archer ducked the follow up swing as the spear followed, and with a rush of adrenaline singing in his veins Projected another half dozen swords in a semi-circle around Rider, who was now rushing his position with what looked like a riding crop. They shot toward her like bullets from a gun, and as she prepared to swat away as many as she could, he turned to meet Lancer's next attack.

This jab found itself caught between the bow and the string, and as Archer twisted and yanked the weapon, he lashed out with a vicious kick to Lancer's solar plexus. He connected with a heavy thud, Lancer stumbled back, and—

The crop cracked against the back of his head, and a world of pain far beyond anything he had ever expected from that thing shot through his whole self, doubling his vision again and dropping him to his knees. He groaned, summoning Kanshou to his free hand, and barely deflected a second hit. Everything wavered sickeningly, waves of pain emanating from the point of impact.

Rider snarled. Archer twisted, raising Kanshou just in time to redirect another swing, and threw himself away from the pair. Lancer had recovered from the blow, and Rider only looked pissed, even as three arrows and one sword protruded from her bleeding body. More than enough to kill a human, but that was to be expected; it would take more than that to end a Servant.

This might be harder than I anticipated.

Turning a somersault backwards into a backflip that brought him to his feet, he muttered a word, and sword points shot up from the ground, as though the buried dead themselves had come alive to strike at Lancer and Rider's feet. They jumped away — and collided in midair, landing hard on their feet. Rider hardly seemed to have noticed, but Lancer looked irritated.

The beginnings of a plan began to form.

They don't know how to work together, he realized at once. I don't need to keep them separate. I need to keep them in their own way.

And so the dance continued.

None of them spoke. There was no time for such pleasantries when death hung on every breath and trailed along every minuscule motion. To pause to speak, to interrupt one's breathing in such a way, would be a death sentence.

Like herding sheep in reverse, he kept his angles tight, precise — when each struck, the other was always in the crossfire. To hope that he could get one of them to kill the other in such a way was far too much to hope for, but as a delaying tactic? It kept him alive.

His speed and his cunning were his greatest strengths, and he did not allow them to get a bead on him, nor to grow comfortable with his tactics. When he could get some distance, he peppered them with arrows, except when he didn't. He struck from behind with swords and projectiles, except when it would have been expected. He dodged and he parried and he moved, but after that first barrage, he could not land another solid blow. Rider was not even slowed by her wounds, and Lancer was untouched.

Parry Rider. Dip backward to avoid the follow up. Jump over Lancer's sweep, and take a swing at Rider before your feet touch ground.

The spear passed within a hairbreadth of Rider's arm, just as she was ready to strike.

"Get out of my way," she snarled, and Archer couldn't keep the smirk from his face. He had the barest instant to react to her distraction-

A rapier sprouted like a grotesque flower from the center of Rider's foot in a spray of blood and dirt, and she stumbled with an indignant, angry wail. Archer's foot shot out and took her in the side of the head with a meaty crunch. Something more than just her sunglasses broke, and she dropped limply to the ground.

Unconscious, but not dead. If he didn't finish her off, she would recover quickly.

He would have no such opportunity with Lancer in the fight. In a way, taking care of Rider had been the easy part. Not because she was less skillful or less powerful, but because they made such an absolutely godawful shitshow of a team that they were both fighting way below their actual skill levels.

This was where it got tough.

Archer jumped back, and Lancer took the opportunity to step away as well. His stance was casually lazy, but they'd fought enough at the school all those days ago that Archer knew what kind of danger lurked under the surface.

"I should thank you for that one, actually," Lancer said offhandedly. "That is a heinous bitch you just kicked in the face."

"You look pretty similar from where I'm standing," Archer replied calmly. A drop of sweat or blood ran down his cheek, but he didn't drop his guard to wipe it away.

"I thought Archers were supposed to have good eyesight," Lancer retorted, and he sounded genuinely offended. "Don't compare me to her."

"I don't care about your little squabbles." This was dull, but every second they spent talking was another second that he was buying Assassin to do his thing. Come on, buddy, don't let me down.

Lancer lowered his spear and raised an eyebrow. "What happened to you, guy? Were you this grim last time?" He sighed heavily. "You know, I was actually looking forward to fighting you again. This is disappointing. Don't be such a stick in the mud." He bounced on his heels, grinning like an idiot. "Come on, have some fun with it. This is a warrior's dream, you know?"

"Bowing and scraping to an angel, you mean?"

As his body went still, Lancer's expression darkened. "I don't bow and scrape to anyone."

Archer snorted. "So, what, then? Not only following orders like a trained dog, but cooperating with someone you hate? What's that sound like to you?"

Lancer's fingers tightened on the spear. "He's my Master," he said tersely, all the joviality gone. "And he's miles better than the old one. I owe him for getting me out of that one."

Archer blinked, surprised. "Your old—"

That was all the distraction that Lancer needed. Without another word of warning, he was lunging, spear twirling deftly in his fingertips, ready to strike—

CLANG.

The sound of impact rang out like a gong, and the flurry began. This time, there was no time to maneuver, no space to buy time. No distractions. No friendly fire. Just a master warrior and his weapon.

Kanshou and Bakuya sang and clashed and broke and sang again. The power in Lancer's blows was undiminished from their last encounter, but it was nothing compared to what it had felt like to parry Berserker's monstrous stone behemoth. Servants couldn't get stronger through exercise the way a mortal could, but experience was still the best teacher.

That time, Lancer had been grinning and laughing the whole while, like their deathmatch had been nothing more than a friendly sparring match between friends. This time, he looked serious — and the change was unnerving.

Archer parried, dropped Bakuya — Lancer's eyes followed it — and re-Projected the sword as soon as the distraction had taken hold. His swing came close, but Lancer bent out of the way just in the nick of time. The butt of the spear cracked against his shin, and though pain flared in his bones, he did not give an inch.

They clashed.

They clashed.

They clashed.

Still, they were evenly matched.

That was fine with Archer. His intent was not to kill, but to—

Lancer danced backward, and Archer did not follow.

Once more, they stood across from each other, parallel to the church doors.

"Do you think you can—" Archer began, but came up short.

Angry red light swirled around the tip of Lancer's spear, coalescing and concentrating. The world shook with the force of it. His grip tight, his mouth set in a grim rictus, he reared back to strike, as if they were side-by-side and not a couple dozen feet apart—

Thud-thud. Archer's heart thundered in his ears. The sense of death coming off of the lance was palpable, and in the deepest recesses of his soul, Archer knew that he would not survive a direct hit from the attack.

The swords fell to the ground, and he thrust his hands out before him in a last desperate projection.

"GAE-"

"RHO-"

The church exploded, and everything went white.

The Malak was in the catacombs beneath the church.

That suited the swordsman just fine.

He passed through the place of worship like a ghost. These were not his symbols; these were not his icons. He did not know if they held meaning for this church's parishioners, but things had been done here that would have turned his stomach, had he a stomach to turn.

That was interesting. He hadn't felt disgust in so long. Perhaps this form had brought him closer to who he had been as a man. It would not interfere with his duty, so it was a curiosity at worst. Something to be noted, and then ignored.

The eyes of the Malak were upon him, but he sensed no forthcoming malice or fear. He was an expected guest, then.

More and more interesting.

Two paths extended before the swordsman, and though he didn't know the concept of Schrodinger's Box, the analogy would have rung true — until he met the Malak and took the measure of him, each was equally true. Equally plausible.

The first path led to him decapitating the Malak, as he had beings beyond counting. The summoning had been cruel and unnatural, and the oily feeling of dislocation immersing the swordsman only grew stronger as he approached the epicenter. If this being was an affront to Allah, a perversion of His grand design, then the swordsman's purpose would be clear. Erasing this mistake.

In the second path, the Malak was no abomination, but its true self, acting as Allah's will in this world. There would be no hesitation in that case, either. He would not break the oaths he had made, but his priorities would... shift. He was a creature of duty, after all. His Contractor had taken the measure of him, and understood that the swordsman would put nothing above his task. Given that he still possessed two Command Seals, this eventuality would likely lead to the swordsman's death.

He would know which future was his soon enough.

The presence he sensed led him ever downward, below the church's basement, to a series of stone passageways carved into the Earth. The pathway was silent as the grave. The Archer was performing his task well, but he would not be able to hold forever.

The trail led to a final room with a rough-hewn altar, before which knelt before which knelt before which-

a crackle like electricity

The swordsman came to a halt.

The white raiments of a priest were draped over a large frame. The right arm was distended, misshapen, too large. The swordsman could not see the hand. The priest's head was bowed.

Power radiated from the figure like a cloud of blood in a pool.

Reality itself — the flow of time — churned around him like angry water. Pounding and pulsing.

This was the source.

He was the source.

"Malak."

"Hassan." A smooth baritone voice. Uninflected. There was nothing familiar about it, but the swordsman recognized it instantly.

The swordsman barely remembered what it was to feel, but the single word hammered through his existence as though it were the ringing toll of the Evening Bell itself. Had the swordsman a physical form, it would have wavered, like a reflection in choppy water. This was a being he had met. A being he was familiar with. A being he had collaborated with. A kindred spirit, if something that had once been a man and one of Allah's messengers could be said to be such.

"I'm glad you're here, actually," the Angel of Death made flesh said, and an unfamiliar wistfulness filled the voice. The swordsman had never heard it anything but icy. "This world can be redemptive for more than just myself."

"I do not require redemption." It was true, but the fact that this Messenger of all of them would say something like that introduced an element of doubt that the swordsman thought he had cleanly excised millennia ago.

What he said was mostly true.

He did not require what he could not have.

"Don't you?" The figure had yet to move. "In all your years, old friend, how many are dead by your hand?"

"Countless. You do not need my accounting to know this. You also know that every man either of us has killed was by Allah's will."

"All of them?"

"Yes."

Something tickled the swordsman's resolve again, but he did not waver.

"Interesting." The figure's shoulders heaved in a heavy sigh. "Does that not seem monstrous to you? To kill so freely? To place the will of our God over the free will He so desired to instill in them?"

"Free will does not preclude consequence."

"No, it doesn't," Azrael conceded. "But vindictive violence is not natural consequence."

"The people that we kill—"

"Ah, you see, that's something you could never understand, is it?" The figure's voice was haunted. "You have watched the light leave a man's eyes, and known you have destroyed something unique. Something that will never come again." Its shoulders shook. "This is a price you can pay. This is an evil you can bear. Have you ever done the same to humanity as a whole? Have you ever looked at a world and drained it dry? I think not."

"You were created for a purpose, Azrael."

"A purpose," Azrael spat. "That's all we are to Him. The form crafted to fit the function. He cares not for the lives we snuff out in His name. He cares not for the abominations we become in His honor. We are created monsters to do monstrous things so His hands remain clean."

"I chose my path."

The shoulders tightened, and each word was clipped and venomous. "Not all of us had that luxury, Hassan-i-Sabbah." The figure lifted its head, looking up at the altar. "I killed because I existed to kill because He needed a killer. I never knew there was any other way. I never understood that He had created something of truest, purest beauty, and asked us to kill that beauty at His pleasure."

"A rot that takes hold in the root will spread to the branches in time," the swordsman replied. "The rot must be cut away for the greater good."

"A rot in the root," Azrael said heavily. "You are more right than you know." With another sigh, the Malak rose to his feet, almost as tall as the swordsman was. "But I can see you are as much a zealot as ever, Hassan-i-Sabbah. You will never be convinced that you are walking a cruel path." Azrael's hands flexed spasmodically; both the human hand, and what the swordsman could now see to be something encased in jagged carapace the same color as the robes. "I have discarded all other names. I have forsaken my titles. Now, I am only Abaddon. If I die, I go back to being what I was. I will not allow that to happen." He held his human hand out to his side, perpendicular, fingers splayed wide.

The candles in the room flickered and died, leaving them in darkness. Within that darkness, the shadows swirled, churning into black froth, rivulets flowing to Abaddon's open fingers. A simple scythe formed from that shadow, an ancient wooden haft fastened to a length of crudely hammered iron. The blade could not be called sharp. There was no slicing edge. But it would reap all the same.

Abaddon's fingers closed around the familiar wood, and the swordsman's vision doubled. For the space of a heartbeat, what he saw was not the priestly, mortal form of Abaddon's current incarnation. Instead, what stood before him was a hulking figure, covered in head to toe with that same white chitin that had encased his hand. Every joint was spiked, every edge sharp enough to cut. A crown of white horns encircled his head, and vast wings, larger than could physically fit in the small room, unfurled before him, somehow coexisting with the stone walls in a way that didn't make sense. The chill of death poured from the Malak's true form, stiffening even the old swordsman's inhuman muscles.

And then the moment passed, and all he could see was Abbadon's new mortal form. He turned, and the piercing blue eyes were the same as the swordsman remembered from his dealings with the Malak in the past. The face, far from being calm and collected, quivered with a rage deeper than the swordsman had ever seen in the expression of a mortal man about to die. Ancient white letters, as old as the swordsman himself, flared along the scythe's blade. Energy gathered in Abaddon's flesh, infusing his body. Burning white lines like tattoos hissed into being across Abaddon's skin.

"I will not return," he snarled.

"You have lost your way," the swordsman said, and finally allowed himself to manifest. The fuse in his mind lit. The path had been chosen. The room was pitch black, but for the flickering blue light cast by his eyes and the dim white glow, but neither of them would have any trouble seeing the other. "I will remind you of your duty, Abaddon." The swordsman hefted his sword, flexed the fingers that lay behind his shield.

This was not a defiance of Allah's will. This was euthanasia.

This was why he was here.

With a roar of defiance, Abaddon pulled the scythe back, readying his opening salvo and—

Like static electricity—

Like all-consuming lightning—

Holy fire arced between Abaddon's fingers—

Sparkling and sputtering—

Every light went out.

Wild and uncontrolled Divine magic—

He'd drawn too much for the priest's mortal flesh to bear—

The power surged. The power crashed. And the power burst.

I hope y'all are ready for the longest chapter so far two weeks from now. Shit Is Going Down. Thanks to everyone who is along for the ride! This ain't even the end of part 2.

Next chapter: Fear The Reapers