The fascinating ecology of Chaldea started when Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, was caught sneaking into Ritsuka Fujimaru's bedroom in the middle of the night. The Avenger demi-servant Olga Marie arrived first, followed by the Shielder Mash, and then, well, Blackbeard was no longer a problem.
After, as the chaos settled, Leonardo da Vinci knelt next to the pool of blue fluid that was all that remained of the pirate. Frowning, she tasted it before saying, "This is a valuable resource. Nobody touch it until I can put something together to collect it."
Romani and da Vinci called it recycling (but everybody else called it burning) and da Vinci explained it very simply: The magical resource used to summon Servants, saint quartz, was both rare and indivisible. Breaking a saint quartz just meant the magic escaped, leaving some useless shards of stone.
But when a Servant shattered, a fraction of the magic used to maintain them condensed into that blue liquid, which they collected into mana prisms. It turned out to be a very valuable resource for operating Chaldea and providing mission support. And so, brightly, da Vinci issued the instruction:
"If we get any other useless Servants, make sure to recycle them, too!"
That led to other discoveries. For example, when one Servant recycled another, they got a tiny potential power boost in the form of quantum particles. These accumulated around a Servant, and could eventually be catalyzed into a permanent upgrade to their power level. This they called ascension.
It turned out quantum particles could be accumulated in a number of ways. It happened naturally on missions. Summoning rituals released a concentrated burst, too. Yes, there were plenty of quantum particles to be acquired. The trick, it turned out, was turning that potential power into a real upgrade. The more powerful a Servant was, the harder it was to find a catalyst that worked.
Da Vinci worked on it in her spare time, but she pointed out every time somebody asked that she didn't really have very much of that, even taking into account never sleeping. If only there was another way, she complained, all the way into the early days of the Orleans Singularity.
It took quite a while before she admitted that, actually, there was.
Like all the Servants, Karna, Hero of Charity, had watched his Master closely since he was summoned. He knew her favorite foods. He knew the songs she hummed when she forgot she was being observed. He knew how little sleep she got, and how fast she could run a mile. And he knew how she reacted when Servants tried to touch her. He'd watched as she sat, paralyzed, as Fionn slid his arm around her waist. The foolish Irish king had ignored Mash's warning and Olga Marie hadn't been there.
When Mash had kicked Fionn away, Karna had been there with his spear, and Beowulf and Stheno and Cú Lancer. "Don't worry, sweetheart," Cú Lancer had said, as the blue-gold fluid remains of Fionn pooled around their feet. "You've got plenty of Lancers."
As the mana prism wetvac trundled out from the wall, she'd lowered shocked eyes to her plate, hunching her shoulders in a way that told everybody she wasn't any happier about her lunch being spoiled by violence. The Servants watching took note, and later executions happened when she wasn't around.
She shone like a glass bird with a plasma core: afraid of fire but already beyond it. Though she was fragile, she was capable of anchoring uncounted Servants. Anybody who threatened to shatter the bird had to be crushed, for the good of humanity.
And now, for the good of humanity, da Vinci wanted him to risk doing that himself.
Ritsuka sat in her bedroom, looking at the Servant kneeling before her. She and Mash and Olga Marie had been playing with some nail polish Marie had liberated from somewhere when Karna had knocked. He'd warned her he'd be coming by to speak to her, which is one reason she had her friends there. But she'd been so caught up in the moment she'd actually forgot his planned visit. Now, still giddy and breathless with laughter, she curled her fingers in her lap as he spoke with his usual blunt, uncomfortable straightforwardness.
"There's something we've been keeping from you, Master, and it's time you knew." His calm gaze didn't even flicker as he said, "There is a sex rite between Master and Servant that can be used in place of physical artifacts to catalyze Servant ascension."
Ritsuka stiffened, her eyes searching his expressionless face and then turning toward Olga Marie. The Avenger demi-Servant laughed that edged laugh she had sometimes. "Mr. Charity never lies."
"That makes sense," said Mash thoughtfully, looking at her violet fingernails. "That explains a few things. But how did you find out about it?"
This too Karna answered smoothly. "It's installed knowledge, although I understand that Servants summoned in the beginning were imbued with the knowledge a little before Orleans."
"Why… why are you telling me?" Ritsuka stared hard at the Servant who had never looked at her like she was meat, but who had always scared her for an entirely different reason. Child of the Sun.
"I've absorbed all the quantum particles I can for now, and da Vinci tells me the physical catalysts I need have yet to be pinpointed." He met her gaze steadily. "She also tells me future battles are likely to be far more challenging than what we faced in Orleans."
"Oh," she said nervously. "You want to…"
"I want you to understand the choices." He rose gracefully to his feet. "I believe you'll want some time to think about this."
Ritsuka did, she really did. She wanted all the time in the world to think about it, or rather not think about it, to pretend he'd never come to her room, that she'd never summoned him, that the world hadn't been burned.
But it had.
And she had Mash and Olga Marie anyhow: friends she could laugh with. If she wanted to keep them, she couldn't allow herself time. She'd only find a way to run away.
"Wait! Wait… I want to… talk about it with you more." She swallowed her fear and glanced at Mash.
As usual, Mash understood her intentions perfectly. "Would you like me to stay, senpai?"
Ritsuka shook her head. "I don't want to do that to you. I… I can handle this by myself. I might have to someday. So I should."
Olga Marie gathered up the nail polish set. "Hrmph. I'm certainly not staying if Mash isn't. It's not like a goody-two-shoes like Karna is going to actually do anything wrong." Then, looking at Ritsuka from the side of her eye, she added, "But if he does, don't forget your Command spells, idiot. We can be here instantly."
Karna remained standing as the two young women filed past him out of the Master's bedroom, meeting both Mash's cold gaze and Olga Marie's burning one. They were both weak Servants compared to him, but Ritsuka knew they'd both fight to the death for her if she needed it.
She wouldn't need it, though. Not against Karna. If he wanted to hurt her, he was far too powerful to stop.
As the door closed behind her friends, Ritsuka's eyes stayed fixed on her bare knees, toying with the hem of her shorts. After a moment, Karna said, "Master?"
Clearing her throat, without looking up, she said, "How does the rite work?"
He paused before answering, as if gathering his thoughts. "Imagine that each of us have a circuit that can be closed by having sex, but only with our Master. Simply closing the circuit might condense a few quantum particles into a temporary boost in power, but for anything permanent, it must be mutually pleasurable. At least, that is the theory as I understand it." He spoke calmly, as he always did. He might have been discussing the weather, or his last duel.
She glanced up and then down again. "In our first Singularity, where Olga Marie… well, anyhow, in Fuyuki, Cú Chulainn, the Caster, he… he told me about a ritual too. And we did it."
She shook her head in frustration, remembering her nervous pleasure at the time, and her shame later, after Merlin Alter had told her what Cú had later confirmed to be the truth: that he hadn't quite needed the mana transfer nearly as much as he'd let her believe.
"I do believe Marie that you're telling the truth. I do." She glanced up at him, anxious that he didn't feel like his honesty was being impugned. He looked back at her, his gaze calm, and she looked down, flustered at even having this very private conversation with him.
Almost mumbling to herself, she said, "He at least tried to make it nice for me. He told me everything he was going to do and that helped a lot." She swallowed. "So please… tell me what you'd do?"
He moved, kneeling down directly in front of her. "What do you want me to do?"
The question almost sent her into a panic. "I don't know! Don't… don't hurt me. Don't lie to me." Don't burn me.
Moving slowly, he put his hands on her knees. His hands were warm and dry, and the lightest and gentlest of touches. "I'm bad with words, Master. Lying to you would be beyond my abilities."
Even on his knees before her, their eyes were almost level until he sat back on his heels, his thumbs sliding over her knees before his fingers glided down the back of her calves. "I think I would start by touching you gently, as if you were an unbroken horse." He lowered his head, concentrating on her feet as he cupped her heels in his palms. "I would hope you could grow more comfortable with me, comfortable enough to stroke my hair."
Hesitantly, she touched his white hair, running her fingers through fluffy softness that had reminded her of clouds of ash but was in truth far more beautiful. His head moved under her hand, like a cat leaning into scratching, but he kept his eyes down, his fingers moving lightly over her feet and ankles.
"Like this?" she asked.
He looked up at her so that her hand trailed along the side of his face. Her fingers brushed over his cheekbone, down to the corner of his mouth and along his throat to his necklace before he said, "Yes, like that."
Ritsuka froze, afraid of doing the wrong thing by lifting her hand away, and even more afraid of touching him further. But all he did was lower his head again, lifting one of her feet. Furtively, Ritsuka put her hand back on his hair again, once more stroking him like a cat.
After a moment of simply holding her foot, he began to rub his strong fingers along the edges of her sole and around her heel. She felt the massage not just along the muscles of her foot but in her calf and knee: a delicious loosening as his fingers lifted away both tension and the first layer of her fear.
"What… what is this?" she asked breathlessly.
He moved his hands to her other foot and once again each stroke of his fingers spiraled up her leg to her knee, and then further. She could feel her shoulders loosening, too.
"Nothing very much," he said softly. "It helps me as I think on what I would do. I really am not good with words." He glanced up. "Would you like me to stop?"
"Oh," she said. "You… you can keep thinking. I don't mind."
He tilted his head against her hand again. "Are you sure you won't touch me more, Master? I don't mind that either." With a half-smile, he said, "I've heard my body can put people off."
Ritsuka took the implied invitation to look over him, from the spiked collar around his neck to the gems embedded in his chest and the skin-like black and gold bodysuit he wore. Very gently, she pressed her finger into one of the spikes on his collar, and then yanked her hand away as it bit into her skin like tiny fangs.
"Why do you wear that?" she asked in a tiny voice.
Karna raised a hand to the collar. "I suppose it symbolizes my connection to my father." As he touched it, it fuzzed into gold light and vanished. "It comes off."
"You don't actually know?"
Karna gave her a wry smile as he returned to rubbing her foot. "I didn't design this version of my father's armor. I personally suspect da Vinci of modifying our patterns in the system, but I don't really know why any of us look the way we do."
"Oh," said Ritsuka, and her fingers drifted down his chest, just a little, to where the bodysuit began. She touched the thin, oddly hard fabric and once again pulled away, her face flushing. "Still thinking?"
When he didn't answer, she added, "I thought you'd know exactly what to do. Haven't you…" She trailed off, pressing her hands against hot cheeks, thinking about how he'd never looked at her like most of the others did.
He glanced up at her again with a little smile. "I have. But this isn't the same. My brides weren't terrified."
The casual observation instantly made Ritsuka shut down. She pulled her feet away from him, up into the chair, and huddled around her knees, all her fears of men, closed rooms, lies, danger, pain, trusting, flaring up again. Karna straightened his spine, his hands resting curled on his legs, watching her with an alien calm.
She peeped at him over her arms as her fear scritched across her skin, twisting in her spine, underscoring everything bad. He was overwhelmingly powerful, capable of sudden and shocking violence. She was alone with him. He could simply take whatever he wanted. She couldn't fight. She couldn't hide. Even if she got away from him, where could she go? Chaldea was full of entities just like him, and somehow they were all anchored to her. It meant they could find her anywhere. It meant she could never escape.
She'd practically been carried through the Orleans Singularity by them: by Cú Caster, who hadn't touched her again after she'd confronted him, and by his grinning Lancer twin; by vicious Beowulf and poisonous Stheno; by Jeanne d'Arc and Georgios, and, eventually, by Karna. They needed her physical body's proximity to fight at their best, and her soul as their anchor to the world. It didn't matter if she was afraid, or mad, or shattered. In the end, only Mash and Olga Marie cared about that.
And Jeanne… Jeanne had been very kind. Within the Singularity, only Jeanne, and later her altered twin, had required a temporary contract. That hadn't been so bad. Neither of them had wanted anything more from her than a kiss. She missed them now that they'd returned to the Throne of Heroes.
But after every draining fight, the others looked at her she was theirs. She hadn't seen what had happened to the dragon girl Servant who tried to climb naked into her bedroll, but she still knew. Her Servants were killers, each and every one. And the thing about killers was that it only took one wrong move to make them kill her, too.
This was the daily refrain of her ordinary fears, the fears that faded down almost to silence when she exchanged smiles with Mash while Olga Marie complained about something trivial. It wasn't like her fear of fire. She associated Karna with fire, but he was the child of the sun.
As her fears simmered down from their sudden boil, Ritsuka distantly remembered that the sun could be so comfortable. A killer, yes, but there had been summer days at her first group home when the sun had come out and they'd gone to the beach or the pool, or once, the zoo. Although she couldn't remember details, the feeling of that day was the same way she felt when she giggled at Mash, or stroked a dozing Olga Marie's hair.
Karna was nothing like that. Her skin prickled with a constant sense of danger around him. Her stomach would hurt when she realized he'd been staring at her. She'd had to frame this as talking even to begin, and she'd only been able to do that while empowered by laughing with her friends only minutes before. That sense of empowerment had faded fast, and now here she was, alone.
He watched her silently, as still as a statue. The only way she could tell he was breathing was from the glints in his gem changing as his chest rose and fell. She wondered how long he'd sit there, being patient with her fears. A while, perhaps. She remembered his patience from Orleans. But eventually, his patience with her would run out.
Ritsuka lifted her head, watching his quiet form. It occurred to her that she could try being brave, now, before he lost that patience. Olga Marie had been brave, back in Fuyuki, and she was absolutely fearless now. She wanted to be more like Olga Marie.
Slowly, she unfolded, putting her legs back on the floor again. "You were telling me what you'd do in this rite."
Moving slowly, he once again put his hands on her legs, this time sliding his hands from her calves to her knees. "I'd do whatever was necessary to close the circuit."
His hands curved over her knees, hotter than before, and continued up her legs, his thumbs stroking her inner thighs in a way that sent shivers down her spine. When the tips of his fingers disappeared under her shorts, he stopped, but leaned forward, until he was close to her ear. "I'd watch you. What made you flinch. How you breathed." He slid his fingers over her shorts and further up her thighs. "When I saw you treating this like a battle—" His nose in her hair, he inhaled her scent. "—I'd win."
A shudder rippled down Ritsuka's body, all the way to her toes, followed by a second one that clenched her thighs as Karna shifted away from her ear. His eyes, previously so calm, seemed to glow. The alien calm had vanished; this was Karna ready to kill, the child of the sun as warrior, not saint.
His mouth closed over hers for the barest instant, not a kiss so much as a statement of intent. Then, his eyes burning, he said, "Put your hands on me."
Nervousness and the tension in her thighs made Ritsuka obedient. She put both her hands on his shoulders, pressing her fingers into lines of overheated corded muscle. He smiled as he lowered his head. Guessing at what he wanted, she ran one hand around his neck and up through his hair again. In her heightened state of nerves, the silky strands were almost unbearably soft.
Then her hand tightened into a fist as his hands ran up her stomach and he unbuttoned her shorts. "I'd take off your clothes."
Ritsuka's fingers tightened more in his hair and his breath hissed as he tilted his head back. She brushed her fingers across his exposed throat and then down his chest to the red gem embedded there. Its heat pulsed against her palm,
Karna dug his hands into her hips, lifting her from the chair as he flowed to his feet. Her grip on his hair tightened as she almost overbalanced and in response his arms crushed her against him. His body felt absolutely feverish. Then he was lowering her to the bed, his burning gaze inescapable. Ritsuka didn't dare let go of his hair. He tugged off her shorts, leaving her in her panties.
Quietly, she said, "This really will work?" Even what Cú Caster had done had worked, even if he'd admitted when pressed that he wouldn't have seduced a male Master the same way.
Karna put his hands on either side of her. "If it doesn't work, I'll be putting your war on hold until I hunt down whoever put this knowledge into our heads to cut them into pieces."
She ran the fingers not entangled in his hair over his face, her heart pounding and her stomach churning. She was being brave. Everything would hurt in the end, because that's what always happened. But she wanted to live; she wanted Mash to live, and she wanted a world for them to live in. The world after incineration was a world for killers, but even then, living was better than dying.
He caught her fingers in his hot mouth for a moment and then surged forward to kiss her again, his mouth hard and precise against hers, his breath as hot as smoke but far less choking. He pushed her thighs apart so he knelt between them, pulling her once more against his overheated body. It felt good, but that very overheating stopped her from losing herself to the arousal he sent curling through her. The more he touched her, the hotter he got, and she couldn't help the fear that awakening his power would leave her nothing but ashes.
But that wouldn't make sense, would it?
It was not a thought to give her courage, but she couldn't think about why. Karna's hands on her thighs squeezed as his thumbs stroked her panty-covered core. His mouth burned her, but it was a terrifyingly addictive fire. He was going to push her down and take her, take everything he wanted from her, and she was going to let him.
Panic squeezed her heart briefly, mingling darkly with the flame of pleasure he'd kindled. She shook her head and pushed on his chest. He broke away, his eyes blazing with a feral hunger she recognized from other Servants, like he wanted to devour her down to her bones, like there would be nothing of her left when he'd taken what he wanted.
Panting more with fear than desire, Ritsuka shook her head again and then pulled her top off. Once again, he looked at her like he was evaluating her weaknesses watching her breathe and her burst of courage fled. She went from reaching around her back to unfasten her bra to curling around herself again.
But what patience he'd had before had vanished like mist in the sun. He forcibly stopped her from bringing her legs to her chest, instead shifting so he could pin her lower body against the bed with his. Then he dragged her arms away from her chest, holding them to her sides. "I won't let you run away."
"Please," she whispered, both afraid and aching for him to do more. Her chest rose and fell with her gasping breaths, and his gaze lowered. Then, releasing her wrists, he reached behind her back to complete the unfastening she'd started. After he tugged her bra away, he caught her hands before she could cover herself again, leaving her breasts bare and exposed to his gaze.
He looked for so long that she started struggling against him, remembering how he watched her in Orleans, knowing he'd be looking at her again in the future and remembering what he saw now. It was intensely humiliating. She'd never be able to bear it.
He released her wrists again only to cup her breasts in both hands. Almost instantly, her sense of humiliation vanished as his thumbs stroked her nipples. Her back arched and her head tilted back as she gasped in pleasure.
"Ah," he said softly. "That's what you like." Then he put that kiln of a mouth against her breast, exactly as she'd wanted to ask him to do before she'd lost to the fear. As he suckled she felt like he was pouring heat into her, stoking an inferno. He pushed her back to the mattress and she put her hands in his hair again distractedly.
Then he was removing her panties, and his fingers, far hotter than her flesh, pressed against her core. It was a soft pleasure compared to his mouth on her breasts, and she moved her hips fitfully.
He pulled away from her entirely and for a moment she was freezing. Her eyes flickered open and she saw him kneeling down, naked, on the bed. His body was lean and wiry, with ropey muscle on a narrow frame, with skin almost as white as his hair. Only his teal eyes and the crimson gem in his chest had color, and the gem blazed so brightly that the whole room was tinted in its light.
Her eyes skidded over his full erection and then backtracked as she stared at the size. Its length was proportional to his height, but it was far thicker than she'd expected. She twisted her fingers in the sheets, remembering Fuyuki, and how Cú Caster had taken her from behind. She'd never seen—
Karna bent over her, kissing her again as his hands roved over her body. He allowed her no time for thinking, for fanning her fears, only for feeling. Once again, his heat poured into her via his mouth and hands, until she was flushed and squirming against the leg between her thighs.
At that point, he straightened, lifting her hips until only her shoulders remained on the bed while staring down into her eyes. "This is what I'd do to complete the rite," he said softly, and jammed his girth into her. She covered her mouth, her eyes widening at both the stinging and the hot fullness. But even before the stinging had faded, Karna had begun to move against her, grinding her core against his pelvis in a slow growing explosion of sweetness.
He watched her, too, his eyes on her body as she shivered and trembled under his control. Her breasts spilled sideways, bouncing with his thrusts. It felt so good, and yet the way he'd stared! He'd always be seeing her like this now, under her clothes. It was exciting and terrifying and she wanted to cover herself again.
Instead, stuttering a little, she said, "Karna… Karna, don't tell anyone? Don't tell them what I'm like?"
He adjusted her legs so he could support her weight with a single arm—that Servant strength at work— and reached down to caress her breast. "I won't."
She closed her eyes as his hips and fingers moved, finally letting what he wanted to do to her happen. The pleasure swept her away, crackling through her body like lightning and leaving her blind to the world. He moved harder against her, shoving himself deeper, faster, rougher. Sunlight surrounded her, and he groaned before slowly lowering her to the bed.
Ritsuka opened her eyes. Karna knelt between her legs, breathing hard, a wild expression on his face. His hair had turned completely crimson.
"Did it work? Your hair…" she asked, and she wasn't sure if she wanted the rite to be real or not.
The wild-eyed expression faded and he pulled a strand of his hair so he could see it, in a surprisingly adorable movement. As she watched, the red faded back to white again, and he smiled at her. "Yes, it did. All available quantum particles have been catalyzed into my main body."
"Oh," said Ritsuka. "That's… good." And she meant it. She really did.
But she couldn't help remembering what Merlin Alter had said, when she'd first met him before Orleans, about how she'd give her body to a thousand Servants. Dread tickled under the languor. Karna had said they'd learned of the rite then, too.
She sighed and rolled on her side.
"I won't betray your privacy, Master," said Karna, moving so he could gently stroke her back.
Ka-chan. Merlin Alter smiled in Ritsuka's head.
"Thank you, Karna." But she knew: he wouldn't have to.
